Magic 2014 DLC preview: Up to Mischief deck list (updated)

I’m a cynic, I complain about things. That’s literally how I got this job.

Did you take into account split cost Faeries as well? There’s plenty of meanness to be had there. Certainly they are smaller, but that’s easily offset when they counter every spell you play. Don’t need to be strong if your opponent doesn’t show up.

Besides, it’s beyond unnecessary. This is around the fifth entry to DotP14 using the same colours and general archetype, when stuff like Monored Set Shit On Fire gets neglected. (No, Izzet doesn’t count because it doesn’t exist in my perfect world.)

I’m also mainly an author, writing stories is what I do. Not, of course, that this was a story. Working in Top Tier Offices is pretty awesome once you get used to the neighbourhood of Secret Town.

WRONG, TORAKA. You got this job because your uncle blackmailed me.

Author, lawlz!

If it’s Volcanic Fallout or Banefire for 5+ they’re unable to be countered so that may be why? As for the time, that may be due to connection problems.

Right with ya there bro (sis?).
I’m basically similar but my competitive side needs a deck that can also get a decent win % no matter how difficult.

In paper magic for example, I’ll set myself an arbitrary goal (break this card, make a modern LD deck, or Legacy rats or w/e), and without breaking my theme I then do whatever I have to make that deck take wins against the best the competitive metagame can offer.

That’s just how I get my kicks I guess.

That’s how to enjoy the game. Haven’t found the time to test my standard cow tribal yet, but I’m determined to play it. (It’s not minotaur tribal for reasons of cow. I’ve also got two Purphoros’ Emissary in there. It’s a cow, alright?)
Other decks built so far, all casual standard:
– U/R More Annoying Than Izzet (Composed literally half of instants and sorceries because creatures are overrated. Guttersnipe soloing players, woo!)
– G/R Devotion Bros Nylea + Xenagos Excessive Mana (I mean it. This deck can play and fuel a Colossus… by turn 6 consistently.)
– Bant Elspeth + 59 (Lifegain Heroic white, with a splash of green and a lighter splash of blue. Who needs early game when you have the Fabled Hero of violating orifices?)
– U/B Flying Cards Be A Dick (It flies. And draws cards thanks to being U/B and three promo Bidents of Thassa. And is a dick to its opponent. True Dimir!)

Pretty sure that’s all of my decks. No, no mono, not even as a starter. ‘Cause mono-tony.

lol@Evil! That WILL happen.

@Toraka – There’s a lot of breadth of cards in there, I wouldn’t jump to any conclusion about a deck with so much Blue goodness is weak to anything before testing a few builds.

I still remember how the 2011 (10?) Duels mono blue illusions deck could be built as pure control and, despite the brutal aggro decks in the format, could beat everything and anything because Blue. and just working well. And Blue.

Okay, after using it once, I’m convinced. Also note the sick combo between that and Forced Frutition. Sure THEY get to draw seven cards, but SO DO YOU! Except you can stop at any time if you’re in danger of milling out!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=201006370
Actually got the combo off. Taken one turn before I draw out my entire deck, thinking I’m protected by Possession’s May, only to then realise that I have Mind Unbound on the field. Yup, I’m definitely playing Fallrietard control. After seeing what it can do, I long for that glory. Now if only it had a win condition besides drawing 30 faeries and literally swarming your opponent. (Then crying itself to sleep once the Sulfurous Blast comes.)

Also note that two Possessions, given one initial draw, would go back and forth indefinitely. However, since it is a may ability, it won’t kill either player. Howeverever, the active player is most likely going to lose when both players hold their decks in their hands, but she has to discard down to seven. Then again, so will the other one.

With all the Flash that’s going on, I doubt drawing on your opponent’s turn will be anything but hilarious. Who needs main phases, anyhow, when you can just play everything during THEIR turn?

Fingers crossed, if only because I enjoy watching true storms of magicka go off. Until you reach your final ritual you need for Dragonstorm and the other guy Remands it.
I don’t see Storm though, since it NEEDS rituals and the mana pool doesn’t exist in DotP. Artifacts could be, though. I think there is room for more controlly decks… not that Affinity had any interest in the game lasting longer than four turns, mind you.

With 7 decks including white, 7 with green, 6 with blue, 5 with red and 5 with black. I’d hope to see a little R/B maybe.

I called Faeries a very long time ago when talking to a friend so maaaaaybe following a creature based tribal theme if they do Vampires again I’d expect a more red focus with cards such as Falkenrath Marauders, Markov Blademaster, Rakish Heir perhaps. Stromkirk Noble to screw with Humans would be nice. Maybe splash some black adding things like Go for the Throat (so artifacts can clearly counter the deck), Stromkirk Captain and Vampiric Dragon. A bunch of haste +1/+1 countery goodness. I’d like to see something around that at least, but probably won’t.

As for Artifacts I’d guess there will be Myr based stuff seeing as B+B has some.

Cow tribal.
Come on, Theros has been out for ages now, you can do cows! Of course, not that there were enough decent cows to fill half a deck, and that is including non-cow goodies like a Whip of GG, Purphoros’ Emmissary (which is technically still a cow), Tymaret, and the game-ending Underworld Cerberus.

So maybe not. Be careful what you wish for though, we don’t want to see the mistake that was last year’s RB deck again. Except now with Olivia Voldaren to break ties.

Personally, I want to see a GOOD 3-colour deck. And an artifact one, but also 3 colour. How about a Naya (WRG) one? No big strategy, just mana ramp, fixing, and really big fucking things that smash stuff really hard.
(That was Naya’s theme during Alara block. The others got stuff like Exalted and Unearth, but Naya’s cards only cared about your stuff being really really big.)

Sorry mate gotta but I really gotta disagree on several points here.

Firstly, as a introductory, beginner’s magic game, the Planeswalker card type’s intrinsic complexity and unintuitiveness simply don’t fit in the main game. Maybe in a Challenge. The decks derive complexity from the subtle interaction of cards, as this is invisible to new players until they get beaten in ladder and go WTF, which is a good way to learn.

Secondly, I think, while the balance has been rocky this year, and isn’t as good as some of the previous iterations, it’s still in a reasonably good place now, and it’s very fun and enjoyable – and Deck Pack 2 is a step forward.

Thirdly, with regard to Faeries: You Are Doing It Wrong. Bigtime.
The deck can be built two ways, neither of which is Aggro. The only viable builds I’ve seen are Aggro-Control (super annoying, tough to play, and very nearly tier 1 in power), and Combo/Midrange (which while weaker, but is simpler to play and utterly hilarious).

Aggro-Control stuffs the opponent around until they either die from air damage, or you manage to untap with a game-breaking bomb like Oona or Stolen Identity.

It’s incredible to lose to this with one of the stronger decks, everything telling you lol, I’ve already won, only to have the faeries squeak through another turn, then another and suddenly you’re dead :)

The Combo-Midrange variant just tries to stay alive long enough to draw into the mill enchantments and put the opponent on a 4-5 turn unavoidable clock. This is a bit luck-based, but if you get it off you are rewarded by a combo that’s basically as lethal as Panoptic-Warp from last year, but way less annoying.

I don’t think either variant is tier 1, but it’s definitely not far off and I may even be wrong, as someone figures a tighter build with a more consistent curve. Very good addition to the game and with Enchanter’s Arsenal (another deck I’m really impressed with) almost makes up for the appalling mess that was Deck Pack 1.

Doing it wrong? -_- The way you’re describing the faeries (Aggro-control) is exactly how I’m running it. (Did you even read my post?) It’s probably the only way to run it. The deck simply doesn’t have the tools to survive and combo like you’re describing. It’s also largely luck based, as nearly all your control relies on you having some sort of board presence. Against beatdown, if you don’t draw your one and two drops to power your Spellstutter Sprites and make your Scions of Oona useful you just lose. I’m still winning a high percentage of my games with the deck, but it’s so fragile it’s just a pain in the ass to play. If they resolve just one not tiny flying blocker and you have no answers, you just lose. If they resolve any sort of board wipe no matter how small it is, you just lose.

And your thing about planeswalkers I just totally disagree with. They aren’t complex at all and are easy as hell to use. If this really is an intro for new players, that’s all the more reason to introduce these vital aspects of the game. That card type has gotten so popular that leaving it out of any Magic game is just stupid. Also, it’s pretty important to introduce new players to the concept of a mana pool don’t you think? It’s near impossible to play this game without it.

No fighting, please.

I have to agree that Planeswalkers might be a bit over the top. There are tons of unintuitive rules bendings associated with them. For instance, saying “I bolt your Liliana” is actually wrong, as you would bolt the player and then, upon resolution once it’s too late to counter the spell, choose to redirect the damage. Attacking them with creatures, however, is declared in the declare attackers step; You block knowing whether or not you’re defending your Planeswalker. Then there’s the priority and speed thing, in other words, why you can’t bolt a non-Vess Liliana to death most of the time.

(Intermission: Did you know that Xenagos the Reveler’s first ability is an ability that doesn’t target anything and adds mana to a player’s mana pool, thus it would resolve as a mana ability, except that it doesn’t because with the first Planeswalker came introduced a new rule that Loyalty abilities can’t be mana abilities? Weird, as I’m saying.)

Okay, assume that that’s fine, it’s a game to teach after all. The only problem is that most Planeswalkers will flip the game your way if they don’t die literally the turn after they are dropped. (Or a reasonable time after that. They can’t be allowed to survive.) So all decks would need some way to ensure that the other guy can’t turtle up behind his ‘Walker, without making the decks OP without a Planeswalker to kill. Yeah, easy. What would you give the green stompy deck, then? Would you want to play a game with so much removal forcibly flying around that there’s no realistic point to playing any creature with toughness 6 or less? (Like DotP14 now, but slightly worse yet.)

Alright, we SOMEHOW fixed that and all the decks are balanced. So the stompy deck gets a Garruk, Set Shit On Fire (TM) gets a shiny new Chandra, maybe a Xenagos for the non-shitty R/G deck, and the Esper and G/U decks get…

Oh. That’s a problem, isn’t it. Even if it’d be singletons available only as promos, you can’t give one deck a Planeswalker without giving one to all of them, and you’d want the colours to fit as well as possible. Plus, even when dodging to mono coloured ones for multicolour decks, not all possible cards really fit the flavour, and some Planeswalkers are best left untouched even with means to remove them. (Remember Thoughts of Wind? Jace the Format Sculptor would probably turn that into a DotP14-dominating deck.)

Besides, when you start playing paper (which is what DotP hopes to achieve since they can then suck the buying price out of you every single week) there’s a good chance you’ll be going for months without opening a single one, until you collect enough decent rares suckled from the bottom of the draft pool to trade for one. At which point you’ll probably have stopped playing this imbalanced, luck-above-skill-rewarding game.
Or, you know, you could buy a single booster after the draft and pull an Elspeth. I did that last Friday.

So in conclusion, I think Planeswalkers won’t happen until there are enough of them, but the mana pool NEEDS to happen. You just can’t really play ramp or multicolour with only basics.
(Case in point why the mana pool is awesome: I have a green ramp deck that splashes blue, red, and black because I do what I want. All of it (besides a Mul Daya Channelers) is in Standard right now. Mana base: 2 Rootbound Crag, 1 Temple of Mystery, 17 Forest, 1 Island, 1 Mountain, 1 Swamp. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how I do it, but I never run into colour issues.)

Ok sorry you’re doing it right. You made it sound like you were trying to play beatdown with it.

Looks it’s not tier 1, but it works more often than it loses to itself, so it’s a totally fine deck with a decent skill cap that looks like most of the rest of the tier 2 decks.

That said, its pack brother, Enchanter’s Arsenal, is way more consistent and stable. If the ‘oh you had the earthquake huh’ aspect of Mischief gets your goat (which I totally understand), then play that instead.

What Toraka said is basically what I’m saying. Walkers would be fun and all, but they just don’t fit the game any more than say, Storm cards would. I totally think they should be introduced in the Challenges though, like Storm.

Except, uh, Toraka did you just call paper magic more luck than skill ^^ What the hell happened to you at last FNM mate?

I’m sorry, that came out wrong. Paper Magic and most types of Magic in general are awesome. DotP14, however, is… eh. Odds of success depend largely on whether or not you’re playing Izzet or removal spam, and all the decks are so brittle that you NEED the free mulligan.
In this game, I’ll turn down a flying bear because it’s situationally bad and just doesn’t do enough, because I know that I can count on getting something useful despite low numbers. (I think odds to get one out of a playset in DotP are around 90% or something, if you want to mulligan aggressively.)
In Paper? Fuck, I played Fleshmad Steed at a recent Sealed, partially because my pool was spread completely evenly across all five colours with many multicolours, and partially because I valued not having to mulligan for lack of creatures more than actual quality. (In fact, that won me a game into third place. Okay, maybe I got carried by a Bident of Thassa and it merely served as another body swinging into too few blockers with a Bestowed Emissary, but small steps.)