Laharl’s Magic Supplement: June June is just one month away from the OGC limited tournament which you’ll have a much better chance in if you read the reflection on Ravnica block in last months article, with Ravnica block behind us we have to look forward to the somewhat unnecessary Coldsnap and the next block Time Spiral later this year, however there is still much to discuss, and with that welcome to Laharl’s Magic Supplement! Hot Topic: When Wizards strike back Ever opened a booster pack and been disgusted by the rare at the back of the pack? Of course you have, Wizards have developed this special skill of putting junk rares into their sets, whilst they can quite easily claim that it is to even out the power level of a set it is still very frustrating and there are other theories too. Every set has its junk rares, just look at the current standard format: Ravnica Block: Blood Funnel, Sky Swallower, Bronze Bombshell Kamigawa Block: Part the Veil, Enshrined Memories, One with Nothing Core Set: Imaginery Pet, Mind Bend These cards are just plain bad, then Wizards includes cards that appear utterly useless within their own block, fine examples are Ratcatcher, who has two other rats in ravnica block to interact with; Gobhobbler Rats and Hellhole Rats, utterly useless, however put it into Kamigawa block and there is all kinds of rat goodness, such as Nezumi Shortfang, Okiba Gang Shinobi and the great Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni, the last two work exceptionally well as the Ratcatcher has fear easily allowing you to Ninjutsu the ninja. Likewise Imi Statue appears useless in Kamigawa, oh no please don’t tap my Umezawa’s Jitte. Then look at the previous block and the horrors of Mirrodin and it goes from junk rare to block hoser. Of course there are many more junk rares in the standard format and many more out of it, Mudhole anyone? Desperate Research? Sunstrike Legionaire? Then there is the possibility that Wizards put such awful cards as rares simply to prevent you getting the good rares you will actually use, hence you spend more money getting more packs and although you may get some cards you want you usually get more things you don’t, this leads to the wonders of the chase rare, such as char, these are powerful cards but are hardly deserving to be rare, it just makes them harder to come by and more packs get bought, and that’s why you should order individual cards. Then there is the somewhat less believable theory that Wizards are a bunch of sadists and enjoy imagining the look of disgust on your face as you pull a One with Nothing from your Saviors of Kamigawa booster. Advice: Trading In my experience there are three types of magic trader, they are: 1. The ‘interested in a cards use and power’ trader 2. The ‘interested in the cash value of a card’ trader 3. The ‘Tightarse’ Someone from the first catergory is good to trade with, as you are trading things that are useful to they are willing to less expensive cards just because they have a use, the disadvantage to this kind of trader is they may not take price into account, for example old, expensive but not very good cards do not appeal to this kind of trader whereas someone interested in the cash value will have a much higher opinion of it. Traders who are interested in cash are in my experience are the best type of trader, as cards are not overvalued just because they are powerful, web sites like MTGtrader have accurate lists of the worth of every magic card, making it easy to set up trades based upon the cash value of the cards. The problem is select cards from each set become uber popular and uber expensive as a result, recent examples include; Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (approx. 7 pound fifty), Rumbling Slum (approx. 10 pounds), Circu, Dimir Lobotomist (approx 8 pounds). Lastly is the tightarse who will try to extort as many cards out of you as possible for a card they have that they know you want, trading with tightarses affects your trading style, almost corrupting you to their ways of exploitation. Tightarses are best avoided and you could probably get the card(s) easier by ordering online, a strong trading environment should have a mixture of traders of both power and cash determined traders. What’s new in tourneyville?: Zoo Zoo decks are usually R/W/G and consist of the horribly effiecient and powerful that can be found in these colours, this type of deck is an example of aggro at it's finest, your superpowerful creatures maul your opponent and you have the spot removal to get rid of any threats, the things zoo decks like least are other aggro decks as it leads to a fair matchup, here is an example of zoo deck taken from the pro tour event at honolulu. Land 4 Temple Garden 4 Sacred Foundry 4 Stomping Ground 4 Battlefield Forge 3 Forest 2 Brushland 1 Karplusand Forest Creatures 4 Savannah Lions 4 Kird Ape 4 Isamaru, Hound of Konda 4 Scab-Clan Mauler 4 Watchwolf 3 Burning-Tree Shaman Spells 4 Lightning Helix 4 Char 4 Umezawa's Jitte 3 Devouring Light Sideboard 3 Sundering Vitae 3 Kami of Ancient Law 3 Moldervine Cloak 4 Ghostway 2 Otherwordly Journey Combolicious: Yosei, the Morning Star+Debtor’s Knell+Martyred Rusalka Debtor’s Knell combo with just about everything that has a ‘come into play’ or ‘is put into a graveyard from play’ ability, Yosei just so happens to have one of the most powerful of these abilities, then all you need is something that a can sacrifice a creature, such as Martyred Rusalka, you need all three in play (that is the hard part), then at the end of your opponent’s turn sacrifice Yosei to the Rusalka, tapping the necessary permanents, then in your upkeep return Yosei to play with the Knell! Your opponent has their turn, skipping their untap step in the process, then at the end of their turn sacrifice Yosei again, after two or three turns your opponent will completely tapped out and will never have an untap step again for the rest of the game! Because Debtor’s Knell is a black/white hybrid, you can alter this combo, try replacing Yosei with Kokusho, the Evening Star and the Martyred Rusalka with a Plagued Rusalka, with this incarnation of the debtor’s knell combo your opponents lose 5 life and you gain that much life every turn, killing a 1 toughness creature in the process. Then there is the Knell is a black/white deck that can both Yosei and Kokusho, as well as Angel of Despair, sacrifice this every turn and return it to play each turn and your opponent will quickly run out of permanents. This is a particularly nasty combo, but it is quite easy to stop, well for each colour except red, which is pretty much doomed to die. White has Samurai of the Pale Curtain, which completely stops the combo; it also has access to enchantment destruction to get rid of the Knell. Blue must counter the Knell or bounce it then counter it. Black has the Leyline of the Void, which also completely shuts the combo down, as well as removal spells that remove from the game such as Eradicate (admittedly that only stops Yosei), green can easily destroy the Knell with all manner of enchantment removal. The worst part of this combo is the access to it, Yosei and Kokusho are not only rares from Champions of Kamigawa, they are 2 of the most desired cards in the set and are appropriately expensive to order. Debtor’s Knell is also a rare, this from Guildpact is not exactly a cheap rare either, Rusalkas are no problem; they are uncommons from guildpact. Deckframe: Scornful Egotist On first impressions, Scornful Egotist appears to be the one of the worst cards ever printed, 8 mana for 1/1 whose only ability is a morph cost of U. This would normally be incredibly bad, but it is from the Scourge set, a set where high mana costs are important. Cards like Torrent of Fire and Rush of Knowledge work incredibly well with the Egotist as you are effectively paying 3 mana for an 8 mana creature. Torrent of mana becomes 5 mana for 8 damage and Rush of Knowledge becomes 8 cards for 5 mana. The Egotist gives a tasty +8/+8 to ancient ooze. So the egotist proves to very useful inside Onslaught block and near useless outside of it Whatever you do, not sacrifice the egotist to a Hit from Hit/Run because its only a 1/1 or your in for a painful surprise. The Egotist becomes a 9/9 is you play Accelerated Mutation on it, but more usefully use could the mutation to give something else +8/+8. A decent U/R/G deck could be made from Scourge cards with Scornful Egotist as the central card that powers the deck. Building on a Budget: Owling Mine You may remember a few months a go the Owling Mine deck was in the ‘what’s new in tourneyville?’ section. The surprising thing is that Owling Mines are actually quite easy to make on a budget, there are three key elements to an Owling Mine deck and they are: card drawing, delaying and punishing your opponent for having a large hand. First comes the card drawing, with things that makes each player draw cards are preferable to targeted card drawing, there is a fair amount of this in the standard environment, here are some options considering the fact this is a budget build; Vision Skeins, Skyscribing, okay I didn’t realise Kamigawa block was that bad at making each player draw cards. Next you’ll want to delay your opponents as much as possible, bounce spells are invaluable here as they delay the opponent and fill their hand up, some options are: Boomerang, Unsummon, Consuming Vortex, Eye of Nowhere, Soratami Mirror-Mage, Peel from Reality, Repeal and Vacuumelt. The there is the issue of counter magic, which Remand fits into perfectly, also Muddle the Mixture proves useful as a counterspell but is much more useful for its transmute ability. Now you’ll want a way to deal with all those pesky weenies, answers include Pyroclasm, Rain of Embers, Yamabushi’s Storm and Cleansing Beam are solid choices. Now your opponent has a nice large hand you’ll be wanting to punish them for it, Sudden Impact, Gaze of Adamaro and Ebony Owl Netsuke do this exceptionally well. The tricky part lies with the rares, Howling Mine and Kami of the Cresent Moon are very effective at making each player draw cards, whilst Adamaro, First to Desire really hurts when your opponents hand is huge and deters them from attacking you. Here's an example of a deck you could make: Owling Mine (Standard Type 2) (60 cards) Land (20) 11 Island 9 Mountain Creatures (6) 3 Adamaro, First to Desire 3 Kami of the Crescent Moon Spells (34) 4 Howling Mine 4 Ebony Owl Netsuke 4 Boomerang 4 Eye of Nowhere 4 Sudden Impact 4 Gaze of Adamaro 4 Visions Skeins 4 Remand 4 Pyroclasm 2 Muddle the Mixture There may be a large amount of rares in the deck but they are necessary to make the deck work and besides Adamaro costs next to nothing, your objective is too keep your opponent’s hand full and then hurt them with cards like Ebony Owl Netsuke and Sudden Impact, bounce magic stops threats becoming threats or you could alternatively attack their mana base so if they miss a land drop they are in real trouble. This deck loves to play decks in the standard format where the majority of them are not skilled in emtpying their hand (except the Rakdos, who contrary to what I have previously said, slaughter this deck), the deck struggles with deck that empty there hand incredibly quickly, most of which fortunately reside in the extended format. Blast from the Past: Chaos Orb This card is not so much famous for its playability more than fact it is unbelievably broken, drop the card from a certain distance and each permanent is touch where it lands get destroyed is just ridicolous, it was banned by Wizards eventually for accusations of cheating at tournaments, a card like this would never be printed in today’s formats, so all to the players who moan about Umezawa’s Jitte, be thankful you haven’t had to put up with this. The card has no skill with it, unless you class strategic falling as skill and not cheating. I think this is one of few non-ante cards that are banned in both vintage and legacy formats. The orb is like a very random Vindicate and as a result suffers the same critisism as the jitte in the way it gives colours access to abilities they shouldn’t have that said it is from a time in magic history when the colour wheel was horribly broken, Psionic Blast anyone? Card of the Month: Kiku, Night’s Flower Kiku is a perfect example of a bomb, she may look harmless but that ability of hers is both very powerful and effective, and it is also an interesting, original twist on black removal, which is usually ‘destroy ~’. Of this makes her very effective in black vs black matches, as a lot of black removal doesn’t work on black creatures. Of course there is a weakness to her ability, she cannot kill creatures with more toughness than power, which admittedly are quite rare, but it does mean she cannot kill the likes of Meloku, the Clouded Mirror and Burning-Tree Shaman. Fear not Kiku goes into the type of the deck that is packed with removal so the things she kill cannot kill stand very little chance surviving anyway. Something I have not done in card of the month (that I should have done for Avatar of Discord last month) is comment on the art, and I’m a big fan of kiku’s art, true it’s nothing spectacular but it does portray her as a merciless assassin, which she is. Although it is quite amusing she is pictured with the flowers she uses as a weapon in the novels whereas in the picture built by the flavour text of the cards of kamigawa block you’d get the impression she uses animates her enemies shadows against them, something strongly backed up by Kiku’s Shadow. Like I said a specific deck is what Kiku goes best into, such as this MonoBlack Kill (Extended) (60 cards) Land (20) 18 Swamp 2 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse Creatures (25) 4 Nantuko Shade 4 Nezumi Cutthroat 3 Ogre Marauder 4 Wicked Akuba 4 Plagued Rusalka 2 Kiku, Night’s Flower 2 Mortivore 2 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni Spells (15) 4 Sickening Shoal 4 Chainer’s Edict 4 Last Gasp 3 Eradicate Simple game play, kill just about everything your opponent plays and deal horrific amount of damage with the shade and the akuba, with all that creature removal Mortivore is an ideal choice and Ink-Eyes allows you to take the choice of your kills for yourself. Kiku can be used to kill little craps that aren’t worth an edict or shoal. Eradicate is horrifically powerful against non black decks, and against black decks either feed it to a shoal or take it out for Smother or something of that caliber. This kind of deck is a favourite of mine and is great fun to use, not too fun to be on the receiving end of though. Learn Magic Terminology! Land Drop: The land you play on your turn, you ideally want to hit your land drop each turn by playing a land. Bomb: A card that dominate a game on its own, e.g Visara the Dreadful, Opposition, Leafdrake Perch Junk Rare: A card that is rare and has next to use in constructed play. Chase Rare: A powerful card that does not need to be a rare but is made so to increase sales Legacy: A format of magic that gives players access to all magic sets, it has quite an extensive banned list Vintage: A format of Magic that like Legacy gives players access to all magic sets, it is somewhat more lineant and tolerant than Legacy, many of the cards banned in the Legacy are only restricted in Vintage Restricted: Cards that too powerful to have four copies of in a deck, hence the amount of them is restricted to a certain, normally 1.