Breaking Block: Spoiling the Party with Ponza

This article was originally posted at TheStarkingtonPost.com. Thanks to Bill Stark for the exposure and the opportunity to bring the post back home. If you don’t know, Bill’s site is one of the best sources on line for news stories and editorial content about Magic.

Just had a quick deck idea I wanted to roll around before I got back to following up the previous post. If you read the title of this entry on your way here, you already probably figured out that I’m going to explore a Block Ponza variant. The efficacy of a deck like this depends in part on how much the format slows down and how much (blanked here) mass removal is going to be floating around. That said there’s plenty of excellent burn available, and even a red Wrath (Chain Reaction), providing a Big Red deck with plenty of options.

Breaking Block: Investing in AIG (All-In Green)

In an earlier post, I explored what I thought to be the most important axis of the new Zendikar block format, abundant high-quality mass removal. Today, I’m going to look at what I think is the second most important choke point: explosive mana. There are conservative ways to exercise curve jumping like Everflowing Chalice and Eldrazi Temple, and I looked at them in some of my earliest posts (here and here) because that is where I expect the best decks to settle.

But I’m not going to be conservative today. I’m going to present the most powerful piece of mana-bludgeoning I can devise. The exciting thing is, while I expect some hybrid conservatively-big-mana control deck to be the best performing big-mana deck, I wouldn’t be shocked if some All-in-Green iteration was a major player in the format. Green mana is on steroids this block, both in terms of power and incidental functionality, and the outputs for that mana are also wonderful. I previously noted that much of the green mana is creature based and vulnerable to the format’s mass removal.

Matt Sperling: Solving Complex Problems through Teamwork

This guest blog comes to us today courtesy of Matt Sperling. Send him your appreciation @mtg_law_etc. If you’re interested in contributing, email me at bmoreno54@gmail.com. Now, enjoy the rest of the post.

I first need to thank Billy for letting me post here. I find Billy’s posts to be very insightful and helpful, and I’ve offered to contribute in the hopes that my thoughts appear useful by association.

As my own playtest group has been going through somewhat of an identity crisis of late, with people leaving the group or attempting to restructure how we spend our time, I’ve been reflecting on how to optimize the experience. Playtesting is basically an attempt to solve, through teamwork, a very complex problem: what deck to play. The task nearly always proves more difficult than I had expected.

Taking a step back for a second to talk about life in general rather than specifically Magic: The Gathering, I have found that among people who have truly brilliant minds for math, science, gaming, or anything, social skills and intelligence (which is of course difficult/impossible to quantify but I use to mean my own gut impression of how smart someone is) seem to be inversely proportional. I suspect the source of this trend is largely a feedback loop between social development and high-level intellectual development. People naturally inclined to spend time learning have less time to spend socializing, and then once you find yourself behind the curve socially and ahead of the curve intellectually, the incentives for how you spend your time skew towards learning and away from socializing. I aspire to surround myself with those who are smart, but not too smart to not be able to function socially.

Breaking Block: Thought Gorger Aggro

The first quick list I was going to work through after I saw the spoiler was yet another UW-control variant, this time leveraging the awesome power of Survival Cache. Even against aggro decks, it should be able to draw two cards fairly regularly on the play following up a turn 1 Sejiri Refuge and a turn 2 Wall of Omens. But then I realized the card was a sorcery, and while I think it still has a place, I just don’t feel like going down that road. Not when I can play an 8/8 trampler on turn 4 that draws 6 cards when it leaves play. Between Thought Gorger and Abyssal Persecutor, Black now has two backbreaking 4′s that happen not to care very much about walls. They may not both make this deck, but if they do, it’s cuz boom booms are awesome.

Breaking Block: Where Should I Wedge This Stick? Part 1

When you approach a deckbuilding exercise, for instance Pro Tour San Juan at the end of May, you are going to spend a lot of time poring through spoilers and brainstorming new creations. Sure, there’s a wealth of 2-set information to use as a jump off point, but the influx of cards from Rise of the Eldrazi and metagame influences from players who aren’t weaned on MTGO queues means that you and your team will have to figure out a lot for yourselves. It’s an exciting time, but also an overwhelming one.

You may prefer to play a certain kind of deck all the time, in which case your job is a lot easier. Just find the best tools available to that strategy. Probably though, your goal is a comprehensive (or as close as you can get) understanding of the new metagame and a reasonable prediction of what the best deck is going to be. To that end, you can, of course, bash your head against a brick wall. Eyeball cards that seem good and groups of cards that seem synergistic and throw best-estimate lists together. Throw them against each other and you’ll see what sticks out. Accentuate the strong parts, refine the numbers, sand off the soft masses. Decide these are the decks people will be playing. Then set about trying to beat those decks.