I should have put a bartering section in the last part... one hour of shopping trip = one magic game. I guess I didn't think of it because I'm not really into shopping or chick flicks...
1- Never ever play frustrating cards. No Blue has been mentioned in the article but also no Wrath of God, no Stone Rain etc... Basically no unfair things.
2- Never play too complicated cards. This isn't because she's a she, but because she's a beginner. Warp World may not help you get her into the game whereas explaining the word Forestwalk on Heartwood Treefolk is a lot easier.
3- Rules are ment to be broken. Don't insist that after mulligan she should start with 6 cards. An example: When my wife was my girlfriend and we were playing Magic, she used to play Dark Ritual as a land. I mean, she was always playing it as if the card was a land and every turn she was tapping it and getting 3 black mana. Her reasoning was very simple: The card says "Mana Source" (5th Ed. version) and she was using it as a mana source! Let her do that. It doesn't matter if she crushes you with a turn 3 Delraich.
4- Balanced decks are mentioned in the article and this is really very important.
5- Art matters! And especially for girls. Try to give her cards that she would like. Stay away from cards with brutal art. Unicorns are mentioned in the article but faeries or angels or even elves would also do.
6- Go step by step. Start with creature decks (with lovely art) without or very few game texts on them and then raise the level of complexity in time.
7- Try to play in large groups instead of one on one games for a while. She should see that you are not the only one! This one especially worked very well for me I must add.
I agree with pierrebai that you should have played both Blood Seekers for the reasons he stated. It would also help activate your Gruul Draz Vampires, helps you play control while still dealing some damage, and hurts decks with creature recursion or token generation.
Classic Shaterri: you make some excellent, insightful points but way overstate them. From a decision standpoint I can concede that casting casualties on T5 was probably correct in the abstract, but I think you are being results-oriented and hyperbolic in your assessment of the degree to which my line was a mistake.
God, I can't wait until you finally post an article so I can just rip it to pieces.
(Don't worry folks, Shaterri is a Magic bud of mine, he's been brutally attacking my play decisions for years. I can't seem to make him go away...)
re: seastalkers: I just didn't spend a lot of time on blue because it was clearly not going to cut it. I like the seastalkers, but you value it more than I do. Maybe I'll come around to your view after I've played with/against it more than I have to this point. Three mana is a lot, and I hate that it doesn't tap flyers, but it is definitely going to take over in a late game against ground creatures, particularly with the "tap two at your eot, tap two more on my turn, swing for win" trick.
Night, I agree, in fact I had written "borderline playable" and then changed it. I would still run it as it can be very good. Most people don't go after small vampires with their removal, in my experience, at least not until it's too late. :)
I agree that the seastalkers are awesome. I'd put them higher than you. They completely shutdown entire decks until taken care of. One can still race a living tsunami, and in some circumstance, bouncing the land can become a liability.
I was in the same boat in my swiss. I had magma rift and mosquito in hand with 5 lands out while facing an Eel and other creatures.
I actually rifted the eel to ensure my safeness and then played the mosquito for evasion. Worked out well and won me the game.
My 2 sealeds were much more aggressive than my draft. I chose Red with Burst Lightning over Inferno Trap and then a 4/4 Landfaller came my way so I grabbed it and it was R/G from there on with 3 Burst Lightnings, Rift and Spire for removal/reach. Im going to do another sealed and draft later today and see the difference of speed.
5 vampires is not enough to make sure you have 2, especially considering that his vampires are all tiny and very vulnerable. As for mind sludge, its my very personal preference to avoid running costly discard spells (mind rot is more playable in my opinion because of its 3-mana cost). But I can see why some people would like it.
Just built Jund deck, similar to your deck but not quite the same and I am loving it. I was wondering if you had considered sideboarding deathmark? I like your sideboard choices, but it seems like Deathmark would be a good sideboard since like you said, if you're playing white, you should be playing baneslayer. Just my thoughts, great article and like the lists.
That was a brilliant article. Congrats. When I went to see what was on the homepage and wishing for Godots article to be there I saw this and it made me crack up. I Like It!
I thought my deck was aggressive enough to warrant their inclusion, and I had to play *something,* and RB was the clear color choice to me.
My experience has been that they are not amazing, but if you have an aggressive enough build and your opponent isn't in black, they get the job done. It's like your opponent is starting at 10 life, because once they do hit ten, they simply end games in a couple of swings.
I liked them in this build given the 2x marauders and 2x geopede, as a T1 guul followed by a t2 marauder or geopede was usually good enough to drop Villain to under 15 in the first few turns. Find a little more damage after that, and suddenly it's 3/2 intimidate, and the one-mana investment ends up doing 8 damage in the game.
Terrible when back on your heels, though. Then he's just a waste-of-space speed bump. Anyway, I think I need more experience with the format to form a full opinion, but my current stance is that it's a solid inclusion in a very aggressive sealed deck, but will disappoint if you don't get off to a fast start.
I agree that you were much, much too greedy with your Casualties in R1G2; the *possible* extra card advantage isn't worth the substantial loss of tempo that letting the creatures live costs you, especially given that you're hitting the point in the game where both Blue and Green are starting to hit their guys with big butts (whether it's Green's 4/4s for 5 or Blue's 2/5 fliers or 3/3 unblockables or... etc etc. Your odds of getting better than a 2-for-1 are honestly pretty slim here, and you should be happy to have such a perfect opportunity. As it was you gave Villain at least 3-4 more turns than they should've had this game, and IMHO you're lucky to have won at all.
Also, while I agree the blue isn't deep enough, I'm surprised to see no mention at all of Merfolk Seastalkers. In my experience they've been absolutely nuts, a top-10 uncommon for sealed (the only cards I'm happier to see are Baloth Woodcrasher, Inferno Trap, Living Tsunami, Marsh Casualties, and Vampire Nighthawk -- I put them ahead of Frontier Guide and Geyser Glider and on a par with the Khalni Gem) and an active push into blue. As aggressive as Zendikar purports to be, running so many lands means that you really want something to do with your mana late game, and 'tap two guys' is everything you could hope for.
I endorse cutting the footing and paint for both blood seekers. They come down early, make your feast of blood playable (5 vampires) and are very good against some type of decks (*cough* cobra trap *cough*). Having two in play really hurts your opponent.
I disagree about the mind sludge: it's amazing exactly because it hots 2-3 late cards that are usually either answers or costly fatty or bombs. I love mind sludge like I loved voices from the void in Alara.
Yes, I'm very greedy, I want to eek the maximum value out of every spell I have, and will freely spend the life resource to do it. Sometimes this tendency leads to incorrect decisions, and when it does I try to acknowledge and learn from it. That being said, being greedy is a solid baseline stance. It is mostly correct to wait and use non-random discard when it can clear out a hand, as there's a huge difference between "lose all your cards" and "lose all but your best card."
There is also a big difference between a 2:1 and a 3:1, and if you can control the board in a way that forces your opponent to over-commit into your sweeper, that's a good thing. Five damage to a creature, a Dark Banishing effect and a 2/2 flyer for two cards is much better result than five damage to a creature and a 2/2 flyer for two cards.
In all of these examples, it basically comes down to me being more interested in board control and winning the war of attrition than in life totals, particularly against a GU opponent who isn't going to dome me for 5 out of nowhere. The moment the eel had the potential to actually kill me and not just reduce my life total, I dealt with it, but when I see a four-turn clock, I see a three-turn window to maximize my spells.
Again, I try to be honest with myself about when I've taken the tendency to far, but the tendency to value board control over life, and to want to maximize spells is, in general, the correct baseline mentality.
ill agree i know during the beta i playtested with turbo fog and won a good number of games easily. The best part was a total lackof baneslayer angels in my decks.
decent is something that i would have a fun time playing and could win a good number of casual games with but not something i would feel completely comfortable running in a tournament environment. So maybe something like a tier 2 deck perhaps.
I question the difference between decent and competitive in this context. What do you mean exactly? It wins against bad decks but loses to good ones? :/
this was the cutest article ever. my girlfriend doesn't know how to play but i told her to read this and though she didn't get the specifics of it, she totally agreed with your tone and tips. =) kudos.
Steve, Your lady is right on the money. Most of those points helped my long term (21 year+) become interested in the game and while she is not a great player (I don't own physical cards anymore so we don't play anymore) she understands the rudiments of the game and we had quite a lot of fun in the diners late at night playing Magic and drinking Coffee (no more coffee for me though.)
When the game came out I was having no success getting her to play in the weekly D&D game I had going in my tiny studio apartment. She just liked listening but didn't want to get involved with "I draw my sword and wait for the orcs to charge." Which I totally understood. When I started getting into magic though she loved the art and was as exciting to see new cards for that as I was to see them for the abilities. We both loved the art of the Dark even if the set was a bit of a downer after legends and antiquities and arabian nights. As I started playing tourneys she became my sparring partner and I had to go through some of those steps above to make the playing field a little more even. A friend of mine said my casual decks were almost perfectly balanced against each because of the time I spent tuning them for our games.
I lost interest in paper magic for reasons that had nothing to do with my gf and I, and while she wondered why we stopped playing it didn't really bother her. It was really for her just a way to spend time with me doing something fun. So we do other things instead. But I agree 100% with the points here in.
How can you say vampire bite is a lava spike, and refuse to consider it, then play unstable footing, which is a lava axe? I might actually play unstable footing , your deck could use the reach, but it seems like a contradiction to dismiss vampire bite and automatically maindeck footing. Granted, footing is not vulnerable to 2 for 1s (while it also fails to offer significant lifegain opportunity), but that argument is valid for... goblin war paint! I'd say you were a bit inconsistent there in your deckbuilding.
My fiance is moving in with me in the next few weeks, and she's new to the magic scene.. Her fantastic phonecall timing usually means she interrupts 4 out of every 5 games.. I tell her that I'd love her to play, but I fear the only way to get her to play is with a Faerie deck lol..
Ah well, all I can do is try, shes very understanding..
Nice read and as a player who has a wife that plays also I have to agree that the best ways are the base set and set decks, in my early days of playing we played a lot of magic together well she was my first opponent apart from the microposse game which both myself and brother loved.
She did pick up the game well and got to the point of making her own decks which she would spend all day planning and would surprise me when we got to play our next sessions.
Now she works awkward shifts so we haven't played in a while, but you have given me the idea again to pick a couple of zen decks and give her a game.
Both my sons have also picked up the game with both having MTGO accounts and both have tried Shards Tribal Madness
The precon decks are a great way to get people into magic and I always found it a shame other CCG's never followed MTG's idea and fill out a whole deck that worked together not just half of it and throw in some random cards you couldn't even play.
Once again nice read, hope your next article tells us about your first deck build would be interested to see what you made.
I have a distate for discard spells in limited. THey always hit me when i'm holding my bombs, I always draw them when my opp has lands or noth in hand. When they hit me early I discard lands and never draw more, or discard spells and draw lands. In short, I'd avoid Mind sludge as much as possible in sealed unless I'm running like 10+ swamps.
Differences in deck build:
I don't like goblin war paint at all and would avoid playing that card if possible.
I think blood seeker is better than you give him credit for, and would happily play it over more situational cards like unstable footing, sludge and war paint. I'd replace those 3 cards with 2 blood seekers and goblin bushwacker, giving u a much more powerful early and late game.
Haha... I'll have to write another one some time!
I should have put a bartering section in the last part... one hour of shopping trip = one magic game. I guess I didn't think of it because I'm not really into shopping or chick flicks...
My own additions to that list would be:
1- Never ever play frustrating cards. No Blue has been mentioned in the article but also no Wrath of God, no Stone Rain etc... Basically no unfair things.
2- Never play too complicated cards. This isn't because she's a she, but because she's a beginner. Warp World may not help you get her into the game whereas explaining the word Forestwalk on Heartwood Treefolk is a lot easier.
3- Rules are ment to be broken. Don't insist that after mulligan she should start with 6 cards. An example: When my wife was my girlfriend and we were playing Magic, she used to play Dark Ritual as a land. I mean, she was always playing it as if the card was a land and every turn she was tapping it and getting 3 black mana. Her reasoning was very simple: The card says "Mana Source" (5th Ed. version) and she was using it as a mana source! Let her do that. It doesn't matter if she crushes you with a turn 3 Delraich.
4- Balanced decks are mentioned in the article and this is really very important.
5- Art matters! And especially for girls. Try to give her cards that she would like. Stay away from cards with brutal art. Unicorns are mentioned in the article but faeries or angels or even elves would also do.
6- Go step by step. Start with creature decks (with lovely art) without or very few game texts on them and then raise the level of complexity in time.
7- Try to play in large groups instead of one on one games for a while. She should see that you are not the only one! This one especially worked very well for me I must add.
These are a few points I can think of now.
Great article by the way.
LE
I agree with pierrebai that you should have played both Blood Seekers for the reasons he stated. It would also help activate your Gruul Draz Vampires, helps you play control while still dealing some damage, and hurts decks with creature recursion or token generation.
Classic Shaterri: you make some excellent, insightful points but way overstate them. From a decision standpoint I can concede that casting casualties on T5 was probably correct in the abstract, but I think you are being results-oriented and hyperbolic in your assessment of the degree to which my line was a mistake.
God, I can't wait until you finally post an article so I can just rip it to pieces.
(Don't worry folks, Shaterri is a Magic bud of mine, he's been brutally attacking my play decisions for years. I can't seem to make him go away...)
re: seastalkers: I just didn't spend a lot of time on blue because it was clearly not going to cut it. I like the seastalkers, but you value it more than I do. Maybe I'll come around to your view after I've played with/against it more than I have to this point. Three mana is a lot, and I hate that it doesn't tap flyers, but it is definitely going to take over in a late game against ground creatures, particularly with the "tap two at your eot, tap two more on my turn, swing for win" trick.
Night, I agree, in fact I had written "borderline playable" and then changed it. I would still run it as it can be very good. Most people don't go after small vampires with their removal, in my experience, at least not until it's too late. :)
I agree that the seastalkers are awesome. I'd put them higher than you. They completely shutdown entire decks until taken care of. One can still race a living tsunami, and in some circumstance, bouncing the land can become a liability.
I was in the same boat in my swiss. I had magma rift and mosquito in hand with 5 lands out while facing an Eel and other creatures.
I actually rifted the eel to ensure my safeness and then played the mosquito for evasion. Worked out well and won me the game.
My 2 sealeds were much more aggressive than my draft. I chose Red with Burst Lightning over Inferno Trap and then a 4/4 Landfaller came my way so I grabbed it and it was R/G from there on with 3 Burst Lightnings, Rift and Spire for removal/reach. Im going to do another sealed and draft later today and see the difference of speed.
Good Article. Thank You
5 vampires is not enough to make sure you have 2, especially considering that his vampires are all tiny and very vulnerable. As for mind sludge, its my very personal preference to avoid running costly discard spells (mind rot is more playable in my opinion because of its 3-mana cost). But I can see why some people would like it.
Just built Jund deck, similar to your deck but not quite the same and I am loving it. I was wondering if you had considered sideboarding deathmark? I like your sideboard choices, but it seems like Deathmark would be a good sideboard since like you said, if you're playing white, you should be playing baneslayer. Just my thoughts, great article and like the lists.
I've given up wholly on getting my wife to try the game out, but mostly that's because she simply isn't to strategy games of any kind.
However, I know other people who've tried (some who've failed) and I think your pointers are on the ball.
That was a brilliant article. Congrats. When I went to see what was on the homepage and wishing for Godots article to be there I saw this and it made me crack up. I Like It!
I thought my deck was aggressive enough to warrant their inclusion, and I had to play *something,* and RB was the clear color choice to me.
My experience has been that they are not amazing, but if you have an aggressive enough build and your opponent isn't in black, they get the job done. It's like your opponent is starting at 10 life, because once they do hit ten, they simply end games in a couple of swings.
I liked them in this build given the 2x marauders and 2x geopede, as a T1 guul followed by a t2 marauder or geopede was usually good enough to drop Villain to under 15 in the first few turns. Find a little more damage after that, and suddenly it's 3/2 intimidate, and the one-mana investment ends up doing 8 damage in the game.
Terrible when back on your heels, though. Then he's just a waste-of-space speed bump. Anyway, I think I need more experience with the format to form a full opinion, but my current stance is that it's a solid inclusion in a very aggressive sealed deck, but will disappoint if you don't get off to a fast start.
I agree that you were much, much too greedy with your Casualties in R1G2; the *possible* extra card advantage isn't worth the substantial loss of tempo that letting the creatures live costs you, especially given that you're hitting the point in the game where both Blue and Green are starting to hit their guys with big butts (whether it's Green's 4/4s for 5 or Blue's 2/5 fliers or 3/3 unblockables or... etc etc. Your odds of getting better than a 2-for-1 are honestly pretty slim here, and you should be happy to have such a perfect opportunity. As it was you gave Villain at least 3-4 more turns than they should've had this game, and IMHO you're lucky to have won at all.
Also, while I agree the blue isn't deep enough, I'm surprised to see no mention at all of Merfolk Seastalkers. In my experience they've been absolutely nuts, a top-10 uncommon for sealed (the only cards I'm happier to see are Baloth Woodcrasher, Inferno Trap, Living Tsunami, Marsh Casualties, and Vampire Nighthawk -- I put them ahead of Frontier Guide and Geyser Glider and on a par with the Khalni Gem) and an active push into blue. As aggressive as Zendikar purports to be, running so many lands means that you really want something to do with your mana late game, and 'tap two guys' is everything you could hope for.
I endorse cutting the footing and paint for both blood seekers. They come down early, make your feast of blood playable (5 vampires) and are very good against some type of decks (*cough* cobra trap *cough*). Having two in play really hurts your opponent.
I disagree about the mind sludge: it's amazing exactly because it hots 2-3 late cards that are usually either answers or costly fatty or bombs. I love mind sludge like I loved voices from the void in Alara.
Yes, I'm very greedy, I want to eek the maximum value out of every spell I have, and will freely spend the life resource to do it. Sometimes this tendency leads to incorrect decisions, and when it does I try to acknowledge and learn from it. That being said, being greedy is a solid baseline stance. It is mostly correct to wait and use non-random discard when it can clear out a hand, as there's a huge difference between "lose all your cards" and "lose all but your best card."
There is also a big difference between a 2:1 and a 3:1, and if you can control the board in a way that forces your opponent to over-commit into your sweeper, that's a good thing. Five damage to a creature, a Dark Banishing effect and a 2/2 flyer for two cards is much better result than five damage to a creature and a 2/2 flyer for two cards.
In all of these examples, it basically comes down to me being more interested in board control and winning the war of attrition than in life totals, particularly against a GU opponent who isn't going to dome me for 5 out of nowhere. The moment the eel had the potential to actually kill me and not just reduce my life total, I dealt with it, but when I see a four-turn clock, I see a three-turn window to maximize my spells.
Again, I try to be honest with myself about when I've taken the tendency to far, but the tendency to value board control over life, and to want to maximize spells is, in general, the correct baseline mentality.
ill agree i know during the beta i playtested with turbo fog and won a good number of games easily. The best part was a total lackof baneslayer angels in my decks.
decent is something that i would have a fun time playing and could win a good number of casual games with but not something i would feel completely comfortable running in a tournament environment. So maybe something like a tier 2 deck perhaps.
I question the difference between decent and competitive in this context. What do you mean exactly? It wins against bad decks but loses to good ones? :/
this was the cutest article ever. my girlfriend doesn't know how to play but i told her to read this and though she didn't get the specifics of it, she totally agreed with your tone and tips. =) kudos.
Steve, Your lady is right on the money. Most of those points helped my long term (21 year+) become interested in the game and while she is not a great player (I don't own physical cards anymore so we don't play anymore) she understands the rudiments of the game and we had quite a lot of fun in the diners late at night playing Magic and drinking Coffee (no more coffee for me though.)
When the game came out I was having no success getting her to play in the weekly D&D game I had going in my tiny studio apartment. She just liked listening but didn't want to get involved with "I draw my sword and wait for the orcs to charge." Which I totally understood. When I started getting into magic though she loved the art and was as exciting to see new cards for that as I was to see them for the abilities. We both loved the art of the Dark even if the set was a bit of a downer after legends and antiquities and arabian nights. As I started playing tourneys she became my sparring partner and I had to go through some of those steps above to make the playing field a little more even. A friend of mine said my casual decks were almost perfectly balanced against each because of the time I spent tuning them for our games.
I lost interest in paper magic for reasons that had nothing to do with my gf and I, and while she wondered why we stopped playing it didn't really bother her. It was really for her just a way to spend time with me doing something fun. So we do other things instead. But I agree 100% with the points here in.
How can you say vampire bite is a lava spike, and refuse to consider it, then play unstable footing, which is a lava axe? I might actually play unstable footing , your deck could use the reach, but it seems like a contradiction to dismiss vampire bite and automatically maindeck footing. Granted, footing is not vulnerable to 2 for 1s (while it also fails to offer significant lifegain opportunity), but that argument is valid for... goblin war paint! I'd say you were a bit inconsistent there in your deckbuilding.
I'm liking the sound of that deck.
hmmm, thats interesting bingo I did not know any of my players were related. Hopefully all three of you come to play this weekend.
My fiance is moving in with me in the next few weeks, and she's new to the magic scene.. Her fantastic phonecall timing usually means she interrupts 4 out of every 5 games.. I tell her that I'd love her to play, but I fear the only way to get her to play is with a Faerie deck lol..
Ah well, all I can do is try, shes very understanding..
Nice read and as a player who has a wife that plays also I have to agree that the best ways are the base set and set decks, in my early days of playing we played a lot of magic together well she was my first opponent apart from the microposse game which both myself and brother loved.
She did pick up the game well and got to the point of making her own decks which she would spend all day planning and would surprise me when we got to play our next sessions.
Now she works awkward shifts so we haven't played in a while, but you have given me the idea again to pick a couple of zen decks and give her a game.
Both my sons have also picked up the game with both having MTGO accounts and both have tried Shards Tribal Madness
The precon decks are a great way to get people into magic and I always found it a shame other CCG's never followed MTG's idea and fill out a whole deck that worked together not just half of it and throw in some random cards you couldn't even play.
Once again nice read, hope your next article tells us about your first deck build would be interested to see what you made.
I have a distate for discard spells in limited. THey always hit me when i'm holding my bombs, I always draw them when my opp has lands or noth in hand. When they hit me early I discard lands and never draw more, or discard spells and draw lands. In short, I'd avoid Mind sludge as much as possible in sealed unless I'm running like 10+ swamps.
Differences in deck build:
I don't like goblin war paint at all and would avoid playing that card if possible.
I think blood seeker is better than you give him credit for, and would happily play it over more situational cards like unstable footing, sludge and war paint. I'd replace those 3 cards with 2 blood seekers and goblin bushwacker, giving u a much more powerful early and late game.