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*** Tribal Apocalypse: Week 57 BE ***
Avatar of Me 

 Welcome back to Tribal Apocalypse's ever-boiling world. So, sometimes I pull a <insert the name of a truly good tribal player here> and end an event with a nearly perfect score. Yeah, it happens to me too. I know that NemesisParadigm once joked about the fact that I always draw attention to the other players' feats, and yet I was the 2nd highest-ranked player last year (and I'm actually the current 1st for 2012 now). But it's not really about skill. Of course, I'm not that bad. And I can build a decent deck. But here's the thing: I play every week. Seriously. In 2011, I only missed the times I was the host (plus a single time where I overslept, and I'm still pissed at me for that). This means a lot of chances to score Hall of Fame points. It's just a basic application of the Law of Large Numbers. I could even have a better score if I played strong decks every week, instead of half-baked attempts or poorly tested experiments. But that's not gonna happen.

 So, how exactly things went down this time? And did I end up winning the event? Let's find out (and no, I ended 2nd place).

• Event Number: 5 (2012), 57 (all-time)
• Date: February 4
• Attendance: 19
• Rounds: 3
• Special Rules: Endangered Week (only tribes with less than 50 members allowed)
• Top 4: mihahitlor (Assassin, undefeated); _Kumagoro_ (Avatar, undefeated); apaulogy (Rebel, 1 loss); raf.azevedo (Mutant, 1 loss)
• Special Prizes: none
• Tribes: Ape, Archer, Assassin (x2), Avatar (x2), Demon, Hound, Leviathan, Mutant, Mystic, Ninja, Noggle, Nomad, Pirate, Rebel (x2), Werewolf (x2) 
• First Time Tribe: Pirate

 So, we actually saw the 5th victory of a truly committed player who was already Top 16 last year, mihahitlor. And these are his lethal Assassins:

 

 Fun fact: I beat this deck last week with my Venser Human deck (this week I talk a lot about me, eh?). Here's mihahitlor's changes since that time: -1 Garza's Assassin, -1 Kiku, Night's Flower, -2 Sheoldred, Whispering One, -2 Grasp of Darkness, +3 Skinrender, +2 Royal Assassin, +1 Swamp. It looks like Sheoldred was too slow for the deck, while Skinrender and the good ol' Royal Assassin are more efficient than both Garza's (who disappears from the board after use, asking you to surrender a lot of life to come back) and the lovely Kiku. A big strength of this deck is of course Corrupt, which is able to cause amazing reversals of fortune in late games. I also like Profane Command, just because it's a good card that doesn't see a lot of play. I wonder if this deck would benefit from a green/white splash, though (with some fetches and some dual lands that wouldn't disrupt Corrupt's work). I'm thinking Putrefy and Mortify, because as it is, the deck is pretty vulnerable to stuff like Teferi's Moat. Which is exactly the way I managed to defeat it last week. See? I did it again. Enough talking about me! Let's talk about my deck.

 

 So, here I came. I'm very glad about the placement of this Avatar deck. I used it once last year, and did decently (2-1, plus an Endangered Prize for that week, which is uncanny, as the Avatars are just barely endangered). Then I hastily brought it back for the last round of the Invitational when I realized my planned deck (as everyone else's) was not legal. In that occasion, my mistakes (I'm not that bad, but I'm often not good enough, either) betrayed the deck. This time, the deck managed to raise above my mistakes. I made it into a more straightforward Buried Alive into earlier Exhume into later Living Death deck, with Cabal Coffers as plan B. And I recently acquired a playset of the new Liliana, falling so crazy in love with her that I tried to put her everywhere, even in a Wurm deck. Here, surrounded by the blackest Avatars ever, she was comfy enough, and made some good plays (spoiler alert: next week she'll be the Queen of the Spirits). Avatar of Discord is dangerous to handle, with its wild card disadvantage, but it can lead to strong early plays. But the MVP is often Demigod of Revenge. With one of those in hand, you can Bury Alive the other three and go for a mid-range finish out of nowhere. Old trick, I know. Anyway, I managed to defeat some good decks: first, a strange but interesting Demon deck by newcomer (I think) Sol_Kanar, featuring... Sol'kanar; then, the super-cool Pirate deck concocted by One Million Words (see below); finally, raf.azevedo's 4th place Mutant deck:

Raf is very fond of the Living End tech, since we saw it applied by him to a lot of different tribes. Mutants are the best choice, of course, since many of them cycle, and this means you can fill the graveyard and look for the cascade spells at the same time. As mentioned above, in the last round this deck faced my Avatar deck: Living End vs. Living Death. And Living End has two advantages, actually: first, it's more reliable, since every cascade spell in the deck stands for it; second, it can be instant speed, if the cascade enabler is (like Violent Outburst, for instance; and it happened in the match, actually: I attacked with a full Avatar host only to see my side wiped out and raf's side replenished within a single stack resolution). The big advantage of the Avatar deck against a Mutant deck? Both aim to fill the graveyard then reanimate a bunch of creatures, but if both battleplans go unopposed, the board state at some point may end up like this:

  

vs.

  

 Which is like base model vs. super-accessorized. Good (combo) games, anyway.

 But what about the 3rd place deck? Well, I didn't face that, so who cares? Ok, apaulogy does care. And his Rebels too:

 

 SBena ran a similar deck and placed 5th, so it was a good week for the rebellion. Watching closely, though, this deck has a very different architecture than SBena's. First of all, we have the Rebels combo with this semi-forgotten enchantment from Rise of the Eldrazi:

 It was conceived to help the levelers, but it helps the Rebels ability just as well, and this means a more reliable fetching engine for the deck, allowing in turn for a nice toolbox-oriented structure. You need a tapper? Fetch Whipcorder. Better kill that Titan? Call Big Game Hunter. Can use some life? Aven Riftwatcher is your choice. You got caught by surprise by an hasted alpha attack or massive discharge of damage? Just fetch Children of Korlis and sacrifice it on the fly. Black is pestering you? Here comes Nightwind Glider. No, wait, it was red? Thermal Glider, then. All this stuff died? Time to fetch Lin Sivvi and start again. And maybe Shapesharer to duplicate what you need most. And when you're ready to kick ass, the world famous rebel general Mirror Entity will change everyone from weenie to fattie. Aesthetic-wise, the only false note here is the inclusion of the overly abused Stoneforge package, but it surely adds even more punch to the deck.

 And speaking of nice builds, we had the pleasure to see Pete Jahn aka One Million Words again in the tournament. And this time with an exquisitely crafted deck, featuring a tribe which never appeared before in Tribal Apocalypse: Pirate.

 

 The Pirates have a strange history in Magic. There are officially 17 of them, but before the recent online release of the Masques block, there were just 4 online. And now they are 8, which is still not a big number. Where did the missing 9 come from? The answer is that weird, weird set that was Portal (and especially Portal: Second Age; plus one from, my God, Homelands: 'nuff said). But don't worry, with Portal being an "introductory set" and all (you know, the ones where, in order to make everything simpler for beginners, "to block" became "to intercept" and "graveyard" became "discard pile"), they are all just terrible. Suffice to say that the only rare one is a functional reprint of Phantom Warrior. The other are mostly French vanilla flyers, when not stuff with the old-fashioned seagoing flavor clause "can't attack unless defending player controls an Island". So, there's that. Anyway, out of the 8 Pirates available, Pete used 7, leaving out only the off-colored Ramirez DePietro (also because he's bad again: a 4/3 first striker for Titan mana; it's astonishing what we were given as creatures back in the time). The highlights are the Masques ones, of course, and especially this cycle:

 I would say that this is a fun deck, but the actual amount of fun strictly depends on which side you're on, since it's a prison deck, and playing against a prison deck is rarely fun. On top of the Rishadan Pirate cycle, we have the very fitting flavor-wise yet very powerful Rishadan Port, plus another of the big Masques cards, Tangle Wire, both working to shut down the resources that weren't plundered by the Pirates or bounced in hand by Temporal Adept, Boomerang, Hoodwink, or Seal of Removal. When this deck fires on all cylinders, it's unstoppable. The issues come from the other half of the tribal base: Talas Researcher is slow, Kukemssa Pirates is clumsy as much as its name, and the cute, singleton Pirate Ship reminds us of a more candid time when spending 5 mana for a flavorful pinger was cool. The deck ended with a 1-2 score, but I believe the pairings and overall luck didn't do it any favor. I'm looking forward to see the Pirates raiding and looting again.

 Quick watch on the other big players: bad week for Ultimate Champion Ayanam1, whose Leviathan deck (with Quest for Ula's Temple!) went very badly, prompting him to start a project where he'll try to win a tournament with every colorless tribe; NemesisParadigm was just 9th with a new Nomad deck featuring the Academy Researchers/Eldrazi Conscription combo, but I'm sure we will see it again, after some fixing; newly deposed Number 1 player of the current ranking Owain tried a Mystic deck without much success.

 And now for something completely different (yet just the same we did the last time)...

THE TRIBES YOU ARE NOT PLAYING

 In the last article I got a comment from a player named Eibon, who never played in Tribal Apocalypse (I repeat here the invitation I made there: come join us sometime!), yet wanted to share this cool Ogre deck after I posted my sad attempts at one (remember, the Ogre is an unplayed tribe; the first player who brings one of those to an event will receive a secret surprise prize from Blippy):

 

 And here's Eibon's comment on the deck (with just some editorial polishing): "I play a lot of tribal magic in my kitchen table. Sometimes I search ideas from this forum, but I rarely copy the whole deck... anyway, I got a solid Ogre deck, and I definitely want to see it in action in the hands of some other player. The main plan is aggro: they hit very hard and fast enough. The secondary plan is taking control of all creatures by using Mirrorweave on Drooling Ogre, and then drop an artifact onto the table. Mirrorweave also gives legs to the Ogre Sentry, therefore a good target for it is also Ogre Marauder, to make a last push. Or Jagged Poppet to take enemy's hand away, after you drop your Viscera Dragger into the graveyard waiting for her unearth ability. There's also a lot of multitarget damage spells, so you can get rid of weenies and get your opponent damaged before casting Blood Ogre. Very fun to play, not the best tribal deck, that's for sure, but try it and enjoy." I'm already enjoying the build! I also appreciate the use of the flavorful O-Naginata, mainly because I kinda forgot about its existence, and it's a good card for big guy decks. Also, Trinket Mage-friendly. Mmm...

 But let's continue the Parade of the Unplayed with another couple of demo decks which I'm sure somebody out there can build better than me. First, some sexy Dryads.

 

 The goal: giving a Forest to the opponent (if necessary) via Yavimaya Dryad, then pumping the landwalking Dryads with Rancor, Snake Umbra (which doubles as card advantage), and Seething Anger, which in turn pumps Quirion Dryad along with all the other red spells (some of them with buyback, to repeat the pumping each turn), and the blue-hybrid Snakeform (used for combat tricking and drawing). Cool fact about the Dryads: since 4 of them are lands, you have more room for non-tribal spells. Enjoy your building space. And now, Spikes: the Good Kind.

 

 This has turned into sort of an AJ_Impy-style build, with all full playsets and a very clear battleplan: make the Spikes big with Doubling Season and Oran-Rief. It kinda works, but you can also customize the build as you see fit. If the stopping power of the walls, the Khalni Gardens, Spike Feeder's lifegain, and Spike Weaver's Fog effect turns out to be solid enough, it's also possible to maximize the growth caused by the Double Seasoned switching of counters back and forth with some mana multiplier like Mana Reflection or Caged Sun. Every 2 mana spent with a single Double Season out means one counter added; with 2 Doubling Seasons, the ratio becomes 1:1.5 (2 mana for 3 new counters).

 Before wrapping up, I have to ask: why nobody commented on the Ayanam1 interview? Is it because you hate him (in that case: not cool, guys, not cool), or was there a problem with the comments (in that case: oh well)? Anyway, thanks for reading and see you around! (I'll stop inviting people for tournament practice on Wednesdays because very few showed up if at all, which makes me think I picked the wrong day or time. Any suggestions on when a second Tribal Gathering might take place during the week?)