Avacyn Restored — Thoughts on Standard

I’ve been playing a ton of AVR lately. Admittedly, most of it has been in limited formats as opposed to constructed, but a lot of the cards are showing up as strong candidates for standard once everyone’s done brewing.

Barcelona last weekend showed us that Wolfir Silverheart is the fatty to beat in this set. 12 power for 5 CMC is just insane (and if you play it right, 4 of it has haste!). And while every deck that featured this bomb in the top 8 lost out to the Miracles deck, keep in mind that block constructed and standard are two very different realms. I see a lot of potential in Silverheart after Primetime and his buddies are gone.

And then there’s the Miracles deck itself. Overhyped? Perhaps. It doesn’t mean it’s not a tough list to play against, though. I was fortunate enough to have enough of its main components at my disposal to assemble a rough copy. And let me tell you, add elements of standard to it and it is just straight oppressive. The biggest problem with the list was its mana base, so Glacial Fortress and Seachrome Coast fit right in there. And how about a Ponder or four to rig the top of your deck for miracles? I’m even tinkering with a copy of Blue Sun’s Zenith in the mainboard as a late game finisher — Blue Sunning for five or six on your opponent’s turn is absurd; it either thins out your deck to up the odds of ripping a miracle off the top, or it puts a copy or two straight inyo your hand to hard cast when it’s your turn.

I’m considering replacing the Devastation Tide x4 with Day of Judgment x4 against the super aggro decks, though I need to test more. Thus far, the list has done well against a 90%-optimized GW Humans deck. It’s a coin flip at times — they resolve a Hero of Bladehold off of Cavern of Souls and I’m suddenly on a 1-turn clock. But the real trouble comes in the form of Thalia. That is very often a turn 2 win for the Human player unless I rip a Terminus off the top. I’ll probably need to put a copy or two of Phantasmal Image in the sideboard to deal with her. Nevermore is also a pain; they name Entreat the Angels and I suddenly need to scramble for a Tide or somehow get off a Tamiyo ultimate.

All things considered though, the deck is pretty robust: hit the right land drops and you can pretty easily stall them for enough turns to win off of a miracle Entreat. The tools are definitely there, I just need to familiarize myself with how to play the deck. The methodology behind decision making will likely vary wildly depending on the matchup, and there’s no way to learn other than grinding it out in playtesting.

And, if all else fails, I’ll disassemble the deck and my trade binder will suddenly have a lot more valuables.

For now, though, it’s more brewing and playtesting. I plan on running this list for Game Day.

Avacyn Restored — Thoughts on Limited

Now that I’ve had some time to play around with Avacyn Restored, I thought I’d jot down what I feel will be the decks to draft in Limited. My record so far in AVR Limited are as follows:

Sealed
3-1-0 Prerelease tournament, G/W
2-1-1 Release tournament, G/R soulbond aggro

Draft
3-0-0 Next Level draft, G/R soulbond aggro
3-0-0 Release tournament, G/R soulbond aggro

I did okay with G/W at the prerelease, but I wasn’t entirely convinced what I drafted is an archetype that works. I lucked out pulling a Sigarda, so many games were won simply because my opponents had no answer to a 5/5 flying hexproof for five mana. That said, white has some strong non-rare tools, namely cards like Seraph of Dawn and Cloudshift. Dropping an Archangel can potentially change the game as well, and the format is slow enough to see 7-drops fairly often.

Which brings me to red. Red is faster than the other four colors in this format. There are just too many useful cards at 2 or 3 cost — Thunderbolt, Lightning Mauler, Hanweir Lancer, Fervant Cathar, Thatcher Revolt, Kessig Malcontents, the list goes on. Oh, and let’s not forget how big of a gamechanger miracle-casting Thunderous Wrath can be. Red will cause problems in the early to mid game, but if you survive the onslaught you’re in good shape, as it tends to run out of momentum.

This is where green comes in. Green is all about giving you value through soulbonding. Ever tried soulbonding Hanweir Lancer with Druid’s Companion? How about Wolfir Silverheart and Pathbreaker Wurm? Scared of flyers? Bond together Geist Trappers and Nightshade Peddler and those pesky blue and white spirits suddenly cease to be a problem. Green is super scary in a format that is light on removal. At the same time, green also has some truly powerful utility cards like Borderland Ranger and Lair Delve at its disposal, which is one of the top reasons I believe it will be the top Limited color in AVR.

In comparison, black is left a bit wanting. It has only two removal options in Death Wind and Bone Splinters, both of which have a rather restrictive casting cost. Black also has neither soulbond nor miracle. I understand they wanted to add flavor, but it does leave the color a little bland, almost core-set-ish. It does have some bombs here and there like Harvester of Souls, but aside from that there’s nothing too impressive.

Lastly, I’m divided on blue. On one hand, it has badass utility cards like Mist Raven and Peel From Reality, while on the other, its guys just don’t live up to the hype. Wingcrafter is nice, but that’s about it. For instance, you wouldn’t mind having an Elgaud Shieldmate protecting your fatty with hexproof, but at four mana you expect more.

Overall, I like the format better than DKA/ISD/ISD. Like I mentioned earlier, triple AVR is more core-set-ish than triple ISD, but it’s a nice change of pace. I’ll share my thoughts about the impact of the set on Standard in a later post.

Double Strike

So I just had to be an asshole twice in the span of an afternoon.

I thought it would be the end of it when we went our separate ways a little over a week ago. I can put away the tour guide hat, add another tick to the tally of favors my folks owe me (which would actually hold some weight were they not already helping me pay my student loans), and rest easy knowing that my involvement in this ordeal is over.

But it’s never that simple.

Turns out the girl has fallen head over heels for me. Right as I got home Monday night, no more than 24 hours after she had left New York, my parents called me up and confirmed what I had been dreading: that I’d have to brace myself for round 2. Apparently, immediately after I dropped her off, she got on the phone with her aunt, the main culprit who engineered that entire weekend. She said some things to her aunt, who then immediately passed it on to my folks with a strong hint that things should move forward.

Again, all of this without any of my knowledge or consent.

Thankfully, my parents remembered to keep me in the equation this time. They tipped me off so that I’d at least have an idea that it was coming, but I didn’t have nearly enough time to prepare. She had sent me emails the entire week, most of which I had responded to with no more than a sentence or two. I wanted so desperately for her to pick up the hint and just drop it, but no such luck. I came back from lunch today to an email in which she basically spilled her guts and pushed to make things official.

I wasn’t having any of that.

Let me be clear, I was lukewarm to her the entire weekend: cold enough that she’d understand that I wasn’t interested, and warm enough that she couldn’t go complaining after the fact that she spent all that money to come to New York only to be treated like shit.

But I guess people will settle for anything. My lukewarm display was enough for her to pledge her future to me. Red flags raised right there. I crafted an email that tried to let her off easy, without being completely confrontational, but she fought back harder. She had a counterargument for every single sentence I wrote, as if butting heads with me would somehow change my mind.

The sirens were blaring at this point, so I bit the bullet and rejected her in a more direct manner. I felt no connection. I had a decent time, yes, but our interaction was more forced than organic.

So yeah, that was that. I had to get my hands dirty but at least it’s over. Was I wrong to do what I did? I’d like to think not. At the end of the day, I can’t force myself to have feelings for someone, no more than anyone else can under the same circumstances.

And here I thought I would be writing about how I did at the prerelease for the new MTG set. Perhaps later.

Post-Mortem: Trollpanga League Season 1

While it’s not technically over, my involvement in the project has come to an end for the season, so I figured it’d be a good idea to look back.

Trollpanga started as a “fuck it, this seems cool, let’s do it” type of deal. Many people expressed interest, and there was a lot of community involvement. But because we dove right into it without fully planning out everything, it eventually ran out of momentum and has since fallen by the wayside. There was no buy-in to the tournament, it was first-come first-serve. On top of that, there was no prize. We thought bragging rights alone would be sufficient, but with no physical incentive it became increasingly hard to ensure people showed up for their matches.

Part of it was also that we were often too lenient, opting to reschedule matches instead of just disqualifying no-shows. It worked fine for the first few weeks when the sheer volume of matches not yet played easily filled in the gaps, but as everyone finished up their round robins, absenses soon became a problem.

And then there was the whole stream fiasco. The week after Mark had thrown up an awesome overlay, we stopped streaming altogether. The drivers on Henry’s capture card suddenly started bugging out, we couldn’t figure out the problem, and proceeded to forget about it. We ran matches still, but with no outgoing feed, the hype died immediately.

There are other minor issues here and there that we need to address should we ever decide to do a second season, but the key takeaway from all of this is already abundantly clear: run a tight ship, or go down with it.

It’s also frustrating that, on a personal level, the interest I regularly display for things I’m passionate about completely wither and die as soon as those passions become responsibilities. When the things I love doing become a job (or worse yet, a chore), all the fun gets sucked out of it. That’s why I’ve never aspired to be a writer — I like writing, and people have complimented me about my writing skills, but I hate that feeling of dread that comes with responsibilities looming overhead.

The same applies here. I love Street Fighter, and Trollpanga was partially my brainchild. It was great when everything ran smoothly during those first few weeks, but as soon as I had to go around and police people to play their matches, it became unbearable.

That’s something that I need to fix moving forward, but I need the people involved to cooperate with me. In the event that we do return for a second season, I’m hoping that things will naturally get easier with a tighter system.

Performance-wise, I’m ambivalent. I did horrible in the round robin portion, losing a ton of matches by a score of 2-3. I hate these losses the most; I’d rather get scraped 0-3 than lose 2-3 because of some dumb mistake. I rallied back briefly in the ladder portion and went through four opponents and got my revenge on two players, but neither of them were people I couldn’t conceive of ever winning against, so nothing special there.

I need to get back in the tournament scene again, too much time off is never good with Evo around the corner. At NYU Spring Fighter, I lost to Han in winners, which is understandable as we typically go back and forth. But I dropped out to Phire. Say what you will about Akuma’s trials and tribulations against Cammy, but I know for a fact that I’m on a higher level than Phire (no popoffs or callouts intended). Yet for some reason, I completely zoned out during the match, let him jump on me for free repeatedly, and the games didn’t even look close.

I need to resharpen my fangs and starve myself a little. The hunger and drive have been missing for long enough.

Som i serem

The best player in the world twice denied by the woodwork while the former most unjustified transfer makes good of his only opportunity. It was a great game, but it was not to be. The season is over. We’ve been on cloud nine for three years straight, now it’s straight down to rock bottom as Madrid will inevitably win the double. Pep will also leave in the summer. We have some rebuilding to do.

Blaugrana, it is a sad day. But how are we to know that blue and red run through our veins if we don’t bleed?

Weekend Festivities

Spring Fighter III, MLG Spring Arena, El Clasico…many things to look forward to this weekend; shame I won’t be around for most of it. Much of my Saturday and the entirety of Sunday will be devoted toward showing a complete stranger around town. Couldn’t have happened at a more inopportune time.

I wish my folks would have given me a chance to say no before they surreptitiously gave my contact info to some girl I had never met before. I also wish that they’d put my needs and wants into consideration before agreeing to a favor asked by their friends. I know full well what they aim to accomplish with this: I’m 23 and single, which clearly means the Xu family name dies with me unless they step in and pick a suitable mate for me. I thought Chinese people were supposed to be smart.

Long story short: someone is visiting New York for the weekend. I have never met this person before but am expected to be her tour guide. I have no say in the matter. I don’t even think I’m allowed to be upset.

What’s done is done, I suppose. Time to suck it up and do my parents a favor. Haven’t decided how much effort I want to put into it yet, but I’ll readily and shamelessly admit that it all depends on how attractive this person is. If my time is to go down the drain it’d better damn well be worth it.

Not saying I have anything against this person in particular. I could have done the dickish thing and just ignore all her calls and leave her hanging, but since I decided against it, the onus is now on me to do at least an adequate job. I just hope she understands and doesn’t expect me to work miracles. I’m not ruling out the possibility that it’ll be a fun and fulfilling weekend, but I’m also not making any promises.

Cardboard Crack

So I took the plunge…again…

I don’t know what it is that keeps bringing me back to Magic: The Gathering. It’s one of the rare gems that I can only put down for so long before being pulled back in. My story with Magic has always been love and hate — love for the incredible depth and replayability of the game, and hate for the monetary investment it requires.

To me, Magic is a game of haves and have-nots, and it’s about making due with the haves until you crack and spend more money to obtain the have-nots (there’s trading, sure, but I’ll get to that in a bit). The problem used to solve itself: I would spend what little money I had to begin with, and that was it. No money earned meant no more money spent. But now that I have purchasing power, I have to subdue my urge to break the piggy bank.

And it wouldn’t be so goddamn hard if that feeling I get from opening boosters weren’t so…addicting. The chase is better than the catch, and MTG is a constant carrot-on-a-stick. For me, a lot of the fun comes from building decks rather than actually playing. I love finding cards with similar mechanics and trying to make them synergize, and by proxy I love opening a fresh pack and discovering new possibilities.

It’s the same basic principle behind playing loot-based RPGs (Diablo and pretty much every MMO out there). I played Diablo II extensively, coming back each season after the ladder wipe and started fresh. The fun was getting to the point where my characters were all decked out in endgame uniques and runewords. The act of playing the game itself (as in, killing monsters and completing quests) became increasingly boring, to the point where most of my time in D2 was spent trading gear with other players and becoming rich through in-game arbitrage.

The same holds true in Magic to a degree, though my card library is limited for the time being. Wizards of the Coast’s ingenious ploy to keep the game fresh and make more revenue by banning outdated cards sadly means my old cards are all useless. Well, there is this format called “Modern” where almost every card ever printed is legal in competitive play, but I won’t get into that. I think the best way to approach this would be to work with what I have, and try to increase my stockpile by doing booster drafts with friends — it keeps the costs down, and sets up potential trades.

There are already people at Next Level who have begun to show interest, so I’ll start there and see where it takes me.