Simon Says #22: Power and Consistency

Hi guys, I am a bit late with my response because I had a Legacy GP to play last weekend. As always, thanks for your comments and feedback.

@apricio: I agree with you on the Earthquake. Even as a splash, it would have been more reasonable than Platinum Angel. I could have used it myself and taken a burn spell from my red opponents. As for Tangle Wire, this card is one of the best weapons for aggressive decks against control decks. In the later stages in the game, it is going to hinder the control deck from casting its lategame spells. In the early game, it advantages the player with more permanents, which is going to be the aggressive deck. Playing Tangle Wire in an UBrw control deck with only minimal board presence and the need to get the most value out of every single card is not something I would advise. Futhermore, Shelldock Isle and Grim Monolith don’t really combo with Tangle Wire, and at the time that Gilded Lotus comes down, the Wire has most likely lost its impact. In the best case, Tangle Wire slows down an opponent who hasn’t commited much to the board yet (which is already the perfect scenario for my deck), in the worst case he is ahead on the board and the tap effect hinders me much more than him.

@Disco: Thank you for the praise. One of the key skills in Magic is patience, and players have an irrational fear of the opponent’s draw step, leading them to make hasty decisions. I try hard not to fall into that trap.
Considering Rhox War Monk, it’s certainly a very efficient creature. However, if you consider that I won’t ever engage in a true race against my Bant opponent, the Monk becomes a 3/4 with an awkward mana cost, basically a glorified Hill Giant. His creature suite looked quite midrangy, so in order to have a chance he needs to decide where to position himself. If he sees a way to win a prolongued game, he should cut cards like the Monk for lategame spells. If not, he needs every high-powered creature he can find, but even then the Monk doesn’t support his aggressive potential that well.

@Cock Horse: Thank you. Sadly, I only managed to record one of these, but will try to record at least one Cube drafts whenever they are available. A lot of people think that Cube is just casual fun (and it certainly is fun!), but it also offers great strategic depth. The next episodes will focus on M13 and I’ll try to do some more intros on core strategic concepts.

Re: Upheaval. This card is so insane because it just does everything. The best application is an offensive Upheaval with floating mana, dropping a game-winning threat afterwards. This was the main application during the reign of Psychatog in Standard. However, it also serves a defensive role as a reset button if needed. The fact that it returns lands as well makes it so much more viable than Devastation Tide. In these matches, I mainly kept Mystical Tutor as a way to Upheaval if things went wrong, but that wasn’t really needed. The very last game showed the true potential of Upheaval, even though it was a rather harmless one :).

@Comments: I might have undervalued the Demon. For five mana upwards, I expect a lot from my creatures and I regularly stabilize on a life total, which is why I try to shy away from self-damaging cards. Masticore is a completely different card, as it is meant as a way to keep early aggression and dangerous utility creatures in check. The fact that it costs 4 instead of 3BB is also a big deal. I agree that Masticore is also not on a particularly high power level, but you have to differentiate between the drafting and the deckbuilding portion. I try not to pick expensive creatures to highly, as there is quite a lot of them going around. This means that a creature has to be truly insane for me to consider it an early pick. This is not the case for either the Demon or the Masticore. With this strategy, I will then end up with a lot of great cards, and then I have to see what creatures I have to work with. As a result, cards like the Masticore might make the deck if I have an application for it, and the Demon would most likely make all my black decks if the curve allows it. This is really not a question of one card being better than the other, but how the drafting dynamics and priorities affect my options during deckbuilding. I third-picked a Marsh Flats over Consecrated Sphinx (which is in fact insane), so I believe that passing Bloodgift Demon for an 18th-pick Scalding Tarn is the natural extension of this strategy. Come pick 21, I take the chance to make up for my lack of creatures and board control by picking up Masticore instead of Tolaria West, which doesn’t have good targets at this point. The comment “Manticore is basically unplayable and so much worse then the demon, it is ridiculous.” is not completely wrong, but it appears to me that it simplifies things too much. Maybe the above explanation helps to understand my approach and reasoning.

Finally, a big thank you to everyone chiming in to tell me how much they enjoy the show. I try hard to give you the best possible content doing what I love to do (teaching and analyzing, mainly), and your comments show me that my efforts are paying off, which is great to know!