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Ep. 31 - Shredded Cheese
19 Plays3 months ago
We're getting hyped for Secrets of Strixhaven but before we get there we have to talk about some dope games and some dope deck tech. April showers bring May Carpet of Flowers.
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Transcript
Introduction
Switching from Windows to Mac
00:00:13
Zachary Jeblonski
Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of Midlife's Crisis. I'm Zach. I'm joined again by Charles.
00:00:18
ciderspence
How's it going, Zach?
00:00:20
Zachary Jeblonski
It's going good. we we So listeners, we we you know we we engage in a little pregame conversation, and we're midway through talking about the struggles of using Mac as a lifelong Windows user.
00:00:32
Zachary Jeblonski
and you know, you were commenting about like how like Mac kind of got close enough to windows to just, just be frustrating enough where like you're trying to do a windows thing and you can't because it's not a windows thing, but it feels like one.
00:00:43
Zachary Jeblonski
And, I, are you familiar with the movie, uh, office space? Have you ever seen that Charles?
00:00:48
ciderspence
Yes, I have. Yes, I have.
00:00:50
Zachary Jeblonski
And you your statement reminds me of one of my favorite lines.
00:00:51
ciderspence
m Yes, I have.
00:00:54
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah Your statement reminds me of one of my favorite lines, which is like when somebody is like, why don't you change your name from Michael Bolton to something else? And he goes, why should I change? He's the one who sucks.
00:01:03
Zachary Jeblonski
And that's how I feel between the Windows Mac thing where both sides are like, why should I change? He's the one who sucks.
00:01:09
ciderspence
Yes, there's a lot of that energy. i agree.
00:01:12
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah I remember like, obviously I figured it out since when I first got it installing a program and you have to drag the thing over to the folder.
00:01:23
Zachary Jeblonski
I must've, I literally had to Google what what I was supposed to do with that window when it popped up. and
00:01:30
Zachary Jeblonski
I was like so confused.
Identity Crisis: Mac vs. Windows
00:01:32
ciderspence
yeah it's just a weird case where there are lots of differences that you assume meant something 20 to 50 years ago. But I think they could both just do it the same now, but they insist on not just to preserve some sense of distinct identity, which I don't think any of us would ever confuse them for one another. They don't physically look the same on the outside. I would think that should be enough.
00:01:56
ciderspence
But they they seem to cling to these interior differences that just make it kind of frustrating to use whatever your primary isn't, right?
00:01:56
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
Magic: The Gathering Adventures
00:02:04
ciderspence
Like, I don't usually use a Mac, so to me the Mac is weird. But I assume that for primary Mac users, if they get a laptop that's not a Mac, that's weird.
00:02:08
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:02:13
ciderspence
And I don't know. I would think that it would be in both parties' interests to homogenize the experience. But it seems to not be.
00:02:19
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, you know, like I've got one word for you. I message. Apple has done everything in its power to make sure that, uh, that never comes to Android. So yeah, they there's, they, they, they are, they're good with creating these systems that alienate, you know, one side from the other.
00:02:42
Zachary Jeblonski
But speaking of alienating one side of the other, let's talk, let's talk some magic. Yeah. So let's get, I think you've gotten, you've gotten some games in since the, I guess it's been two weeks since we've talked. So you've, you've probably gotten some games in, right?
00:02:56
ciderspence
I have. I've gotten in a few Spell Table games and some I'm excited to talk about.
00:02:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay, cool. I got a solid three games in on Tuesday, which is the, the which is all, was which is what I've played since the last time we talked. So, and those were interesting. so do you want to kick us off?
Winning Strategies with Shredder, Shadow Master
00:03:13
ciderspence
Sure. I think part of the story of my last game was that I've been riding a pretty long dry streak. I think it had probably been a month to maybe longer, maybe six weeks since I had won a game outright.
00:03:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:03:29
ciderspence
There have been a couple of games in there where maybe everybody dropped from a spell table session or we played a five pod where we just kind of ended at some point because the store was closing and time was over and people just had to go home.
00:03:37
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:03:43
ciderspence
And i was I had the highest life total, but I hadn't actually won a game in a long time. And i i want to talk about that later.
00:03:53
ciderspence
But I did finally pick up a win on Thursday, and I was playing Shredder, Shadow Master, who says...
00:04:02
ciderspence
Sorry.
00:04:05
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, this is the, yeah, while you're pulling that out, this is the five mana shredder.
00:04:09
ciderspence
Yeah, it's like the Pseudo-Myriad Shredder.
00:04:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Not, yeah, not the, I guess super shredder is the one with where it gets bigger every time something goes to the graveyard. So it's not that one.
00:04:18
ciderspence
So it's... Yeah, it's it says... Sorry for the delay. Shredder, Shadow Master, 3 black black. Whatever Shredder attacks a player, for each other opponent, create a token that's a copy of Shredder tapped in attacking that player, except it isn't legendary. Sacrifice those tokens at the end of combat.
00:04:35
ciderspence
Whenever a Shredder deals combat damage to a player, that player loses half their life rounded up.
00:04:41
ciderspence
So, scary creature.
00:04:44
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:04:46
ciderspence
The game played out in a pretty interesting way. It went fairly long, I would say 10 to 15 turns or something.
00:04:52
Zachary Jeblonski
that
00:04:53
ciderspence
I was able to ramp out Shredder on turn five and people seemed cool with it. Then I swung with it and people seemed cool with it. And then everybody's life total was, you know, under 20 and people were mad.
00:05:07
ciderspence
So after that, which, you know, I assume is, you know, this is a kind of familiar pattern when you play a busted commander that people haven't seen before. They're like, well, that does look scary, but let's let's play it out.
00:05:18
ciderspence
And then it played out that once, and they were like, never again. So it got swords, and then it got countered.
00:05:22
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, but I mean like...
00:05:24
ciderspence
And then I didn't cast it again until almost the end of the game.
00:05:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, yeah.
00:05:29
ciderspence
But by that time, there were other scary threats on board. And it made it through a turn rotation when I couldn't attack. And then I did attack, and I had enough mana to use my card of game.
00:05:43
ciderspence
which is Secret Tunnel. this like This land can't be blocked.
00:05:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Nice.
00:05:48
ciderspence
It's a land cave. It taps for colorless, and you can pay four and tap it, and two target creatures you control that share a creature type can't be blocked this turn. So I actually think that's a little worse than it reads, because it it means you have to have two creatures that share a creature type, which in a lot of decks is easy, right?
00:06:04
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, it has to be too. Yeah,
00:06:06
ciderspence
And in some decks is a lot worse than just being able to have one creature become unblockable. But in a deck where if you get to swing with one creature, you, by necessity, will have two other creatures that share a creature type with it. It's great.
00:06:21
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah it makes sense.
00:06:23
ciderspence
Yeah, and I happen to have Secret Tunnel and Rogue's Passage out. And so I unblockabled all three of the Shredders and have life totals when they were low enough for me to also deal some ancillary ping damage and get the win.
00:06:37
Zachary Jeblonski
Nice.
00:06:37
ciderspence
So that was fun.
00:06:38
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, because I was about to ask, like, how, you because the I think the the big thing that sticks out to me about Treader Shadowmaster is there's no evasion on him. So you got to find a way to get him through. So I was curious how you did that. You were doing that through the lands.
00:06:50
ciderspence
Yeah, a lot of the deck is evasion. Yeah, I want to come back to the point about the lands also. But yeah, a lot of the deck is evasion, probably too much of the deck is evasion. I went back and looked at the deck after the fact, because I and noticed it felt like I didn't have a lot of creatures that game.
00:07:06
ciderspence
i had a few and I had a lot of interaction. So i took some hits uh and i was able to deal with some threats but i didn't have a lot of other creatures on the board and when i looked at the deck list i think i only have 14 creatures in the deck which is not enough and i think just a lot of the slots are brotherhood regalia silver shroud costume whisper silk cloak key to the city a lot of things to give unblockable i probably
00:07:32
Zachary Jeblonski
Why do you, why why is 14 creatures not enough?
00:07:37
ciderspence
oh, well, I think in a deck like this, especially, it's important to have blockers, because if you get to do the thing, you don't get to win right away, and everyone wants you out of the game at that point.
00:07:44
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, okay.
00:07:50
ciderspence
So I think it's not a tenable position to, like, have Shredder as your only creature, especially if he has to attack to do the thing so he's going to be tapped and he can't block, and you're going to draw a lot of heat.
00:07:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Right. Makes sense. Now that's really cool. So how many hits would you say you got in? Was
Valga Vault Deck Analysis
00:08:07
Zachary Jeblonski
it two or three? How many hits do you think like you, like on average, you connected that game with shredder too? Yeah. So that's like, you know, so we think about it what because the damage happens first than the having. So it goes what? 35, rounded up So to then
00:08:27
ciderspence
I think the damage is rounded up. So it's, yeah, 35 17.
00:08:29
Zachary Jeblonski
down just round is up yeah
00:08:30
ciderspence
then 12 to 6, yeah.
00:08:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:08:33
ciderspence
and then
00:08:34
Zachary Jeblonski
And 12 to 6.
00:08:34
ciderspence
twelve to six yeah
00:08:35
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay. okay Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, assuming nothing else happens, of course. You know, people crack fetches or whatever else they do. But yeah, no, I think that's like i that's a kind of... Yeah, your comment about like Shredder came everyone's like, yeah, let's see how it plays out. like That is such a like new commander thing. like Not like new to commander, but like when a commander is new to the game.
00:08:57
Zachary Jeblonski
And it's always kind of fun when you're when you're piloting that deck and you're like, yeah, they're going to give me this grace even though I know what's about to happen. It's just... But it does mean that like next time you play it, if you were to ever play with those people again, you won't get that grace again. You know?
00:09:14
ciderspence
Yeah, and I think that's fair and correct.
00:09:17
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like when I play Italian now and you're like, Nope. You're like, I know what that is.
00:09:25
ciderspence
That's right.
00:09:28
Zachary Jeblonski
So I think there's a good segue to let me talk about basically a very similar situation that you just experienced that I went through because I played, i made the Valga vault deck.
00:09:40
Zachary Jeblonski
and this is not the value of everybody plays, but it's the mono black one. so i'm gonna go through it it is like a literally like an essay on this card for anybody who doesn't know it's six black black black which means it's nine mana total it's a flying lifelink ward sacrifice three nine three non-land permanents if a card you didn't control will be put into an opponent's graveyard from anywhere exiled instead And during your turn, you may play cards exile with Valgovoth. If you cast a spell this way, pay life equal to its mana value rather than pay its mana cost.
00:10:16
Zachary Jeblonski
So I played this for the first time on Tuesday at store and it was very similar in that like, yeah, let's see what it can do kind of thing. And i was like, okay. So on average, I can get Valgovoth on turn six. Like when I goldfish this, I kind of pay attention to what turn it is. and it's usually turn six.
00:10:31
Zachary Jeblonski
if everything goes my way, like, I mean, like we, we have like the line of the beautiful line that I can get out turn five, but that's pretty rare. I had the line on Tuesday and I don't know if I would got it out on turn five, but I got it out.
00:10:44
ciderspence
Ooh, okay.
00:10:48
Zachary Jeblonski
It was probably turn six actually, but I, I had, I had the gas in my hand for it. So, Well, so sure. Game goes on. I get it out. Turn, let's say six. I think it was six, even though it fell faster than that.
00:11:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Turn seven, I dropped my card of the week, which is Mjogen of Knight's Reach. It's five, black, black, black.
00:11:13
Zachary Jeblonski
Hold on one sec. Cover for me. I have a phone call real quick that have to take. Just, I don't know. Talk about stuff.
00:11:21
ciderspence
You got it. Yeah, feel like you talked about this on an earlier podcast. I've seen this actually, funnily enough, in a home game that I play with a buddy of mine. His son also is into magic.
00:11:35
ciderspence
My son is a little bit into magic. So anyway, they're they're both pretty young. But we've played in a pod together a few times now, and this was... I think my friend characterizes his son's deck as being all bombs, no breaks or something like that, where it's just, you know, the rares or mythics or even splashy uncommons that he has in bulk that he doesn't have in decks. His son just kind of goes through it and picks out cool looking stuff to put in the deck.
00:12:05
ciderspence
So anyway, I remember a game where he had this card and it was slow enough that he was able to get it out and
00:12:07
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh yeah.
00:12:11
ciderspence
think a bunch of times about when to use the ability that I assume you're about to talk about.
00:12:15
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah. So I, yeah. So like valuable turn six, turn seven, a Miojin activated immediately. and that was more or less the game from there. I mean, the game went on for a while longer, but, because at that point, all I'm doing is I am chunking people for nine, because Valkyrie himself is a nine, nine,
00:12:34
Zachary Jeblonski
and then I'm playing as many of the cards as I can off of his ability. they got rid of him once through a board wipe because that's really realistically the only way you're really going get rid of him is through a board wipe because the ward is pretty, pretty rough to deal with.
00:12:48
Zachary Jeblonski
but by that point, the damage had been done. I was able to like, one of the decks was a Vadric deck. So I was able to take a bunch of pump spells from him and pump Valga vaults and smack people.
00:12:54
ciderspence
Nice.
00:12:58
ciderspence
Oh, that's hilarious.
00:13:00
ciderspence
Ouch.
00:13:01
Zachary Jeblonski
The thing I will make a note of with when it comes to Valgoloth, and this is kind of what I expected that when I was goldfishing it is, is you are really riding the line on your life total. Even though he's a 9-9 life flanker, I spent most of that game below 20 just because of like, you know, you're losing life playing anything you take from Valgoloth.
00:13:21
Zachary Jeblonski
And then I have things like black market connections and, you know, and black in general, you know, it's like, you know, pay life or lose life doing things.
00:13:29
ciderspence
Right.
00:13:30
Zachary Jeblonski
so you really are riding the lightning with this. So like, I was always like, I think I ended that game
Expensive vs. Low-cost Commanders
00:13:37
Zachary Jeblonski
at six life, even though like I'm more or less dominated that game.
00:13:40
Zachary Jeblonski
I was still like one burn spell away from being dead, which is kind of fun. Like it was kind of fun being like, how many of these spells can I play that I've stolen Valga Vault and still be out of like burn range in case somebody has something.
00:13:55
Zachary Jeblonski
but no, I, I liked it. i think, I think this is, here's my hot take of the week here. i think this is the best discard commander, outside of target target is broken and I don't really consider whatever target target it is turd, but outside target, I think this is the best one.
00:14:12
Zachary Jeblonski
And the reason why is I, I, cause I have, you know, me, I have, you have seen, or I've tried every discard commander probably there is.
00:14:19
ciderspence
you You like the hits. The hits are discard for you.
00:14:21
Zachary Jeblonski
I do. And the problem you always run into with the other ones is like, either you strip everybody's hands and then it turns into, well, then what? Like you've stripped everybody's hands, but you yourself can't really close the game out and it's going to take forever. And you know, all it takes is somebody to draw like one turn, uh, draw spell and then they're back in the game and yada, ya yada, yada.
00:14:42
Zachary Jeblonski
Or, the lower end ones like tiny bones and stuff like that. You're so annoying so quickly that you just get hated out because you're all like by turn two or three, you're starting to like, you know, maybe we'll discard a card and stuff like that. And you're, so you're, you're already being annoying.
00:14:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Whereas Valga Valter is very much is like, I'm doing nothing questionable for like six to eight turns. And then I'm doing some very questionable stuff. But by that point I have a nine, nine, right. Or something like that.
00:15:10
Zachary Jeblonski
So i think I think he's the best in that regard. And I think he's the best for the other table people too. Like there's much less annoyance and more just... wham bam we're doing the thing and it's not you know like paper cuts it's very much like i'm playing this eight mana thing that strips everyone's hands instead of a thing that like oh every time you cast a spell you have to discard a card or every you know on your upkeep you discard a card at random like i don't play any of those because it's it's i realized like i don't want to be annoying until it's time to go you know kind of thing so yeah i think yeah
00:15:43
ciderspence
yeah I think that time to go thing you mentioned is really key with big commanders as well. I think there's, I experienced this some when I play Bruna, but there's one nice thing about playing an expensive commander is you're kind of forced to spend the beginning of the game setting up.
00:16:01
ciderspence
And so, you know, there's this notion of like in a game, when do you want to become the threat? Do you want to become the threat early or not?
00:16:08
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:16:09
ciderspence
Probably not because often, player who's the threat early kind of draws the table's ire and has to dig back out of that the rest of the game. When you play an expensive commander, you kind of can't be the threat early unless people are familiar with the deck and familiar with what it does.
00:16:22
Zachary Jeblonski
Nope.
00:16:24
ciderspence
And they say, oh, that like an adult, you know, you're playing an Eldrazi Titan and it's like your commander costs 20 mana, but they're like, if your commander enters the battlefield, you'll win the game. Or like you said about Itali before.
00:16:35
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:16:37
ciderspence
But when you spend that time setting up, you're often in a better position to deal with the disruption that comes with your commander, even if it's more likely to come because your commander's scarier.
00:16:48
ciderspence
Or even just psychologically, you're a little better prepared to deal with it. Because i I feel like I told myself, well, I'll probably get to cast Redder twice. I wound up getting to cast him a third time.
00:17:01
ciderspence
But I also wasn't that bummed that I couldn't cast it again, because it's like, I don't know, man. Like, it's seven mana. i I'll cast it when I can cast it, but I know it's expensive.
00:17:10
ciderspence
I'm not going to be able to cast it if it gets removed over and over and over again. With a two or three mana commander, that tension and that stress and that feels bad is a little bit worse, right?
00:17:14
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:17:19
ciderspence
It's like you play early, you get it out, you're doing something, but maybe you feel like you weren't doing as much as you could have done before it gets removed the first time. And then it's like, okay, well, it costs five now.
00:17:30
ciderspence
That's going to take a turn. and I can't really do the thing when it comes back this turn. So you don't feel great when you do recast it. But then it gets dealt with again. Now you're in this really weird spot, right? You probably could afford to pay seven for it, but it's gotten removed twice. Is it worth it?
00:17:43
ciderspence
Do you want to just start focusing on your backup plan now? And did you get enough value out of it before it got removed? I feel like it just feels a little worse when your two to three mana commander gets interacted with than it feels when your higher mana value commander got interacted with.
00:17:58
ciderspence
Maybe because your mindset has to just be different when you're playing an expensive commander to start with.
00:18:03
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I think it's that. And I also think it's a proportionality thing, right? So if you have a two mana commander that dies once, you've doubled the cost of your commander. But if you have a nine mana commander that's died once, you've just, i don't know, what, ten you added 20% to the cost, right? Instead of doubling because it's only two extra.
00:18:22
Zachary Jeblonski
I think that for me that goes a long way. Like I'm much less inclined to cast low cost commanders over and over again than I am to recast a big commander because usually the big commanders are worth, they're worth the big cost and adding two is like whatever, you know?
00:18:39
Zachary Jeblonski
You know, I, did you know, I did, I didn't CAD recast Valgavel till the very end of the game after they killed it once. Cause it is, you know, nine to 11, 11 is still a lot. But to your point, yeah. Like the lower cost commanders are just, it just feels more painful to recast them when they've died once or twice.
00:18:58
ciderspence
Yeah, I guess I've never thought of it that way, but you're right. like If you assume that your commander gets removed infinity times, certainly the infinity and one-th time you cast it, you would rather it be the one that does something interesting when it gets there versus the thing that is a value piece that you know feeds into the rest of your deck, which is likely the case for most of the cheapest commanders.
00:19:20
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, for sure. right. what Got another game you want to talk about?
00:19:26
ciderspence
Yeah, I can talk about well one other interesting experience. so There was a game, but the game wasn't that interesting. Last weekend, I was on vacation with the family, and I typically will try to find one night to get out to a local game shop and play some Commander.
00:19:42
ciderspence
So I had identified the shop that I ordered a bunch of cards from, and they said they had games on Saturday night. So I came back on Saturday night. They were going to be playing from 6.30 11.00.
00:19:55
ciderspence
which sounded great. I got there a little after 6.30, maybe 6.45. And when I got there, it was very similar to the situation we had on that Sunday. There were exactly five people.
00:20:06
ciderspence
There was a pot of four that was playing.
00:20:06
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, God. Yeah.
00:20:08
ciderspence
And I got there and I was like, all right, I'll just hang out and wait and see if some other players showed up. They did not. So I sat there.
00:20:15
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:20:15
ciderspence
Now I happened to have a bunch of decks. I had just gotten a bunch of new cards from the shop. So i was swapping cards in and out. actually had quite a good time. But... but I only got in one game at the end of the night, and it was basically a pity game where where the guys were kind of packing up, and I was like, anybody anybody got one more in them?
00:20:33
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:20:33
ciderspence
And we did get a game in. i played, let's see, Raphael. a let's see which one this is. I played Raphael.
00:20:47
ciderspence
The one who doubles damage for stuff that has counters on it. That is Raphael...
00:20:54
ciderspence
the muscle for four for four and a red legendary creature mutant ninja turtle double all damage that creatures you control with counters on them would deal when
00:20:55
Zachary Jeblonski
The muscle, yeah.
Ashling Deck Showcase
00:21:02
ciderspence
it enters make a mutagen token and has partner but i didn't play with a partner oh it has character select or i didn't play with a character select partner i actually got to do a few fun things before the game was over
00:21:15
ciderspence
which, again, I think I'll get back to later. But yeah, it was just an interesting experience of sitting at a table for four hours before getting in one 30-minute game.
00:21:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Oof.
00:21:27
ciderspence
Still satisfying, though. I actually enjoyed it.
00:21:28
Zachary Jeblonski
That's good.
00:21:29
ciderspence
i had a good time. i was able to tweak a bunch of decks. That shop was pretty cool. I wound up picking up a copy of Scrubland. They had a damaged one, so I was able to get for less than...
00:21:37
Zachary Jeblonski
Like the scrubland?
00:21:41
ciderspence
you know less than You get it in most places and yeah, I put it right into that Karai deck.
00:21:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Wow.
00:21:46
ciderspence
So it was very exciting.
00:21:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Nice. i Yeah, I don't i don't own it i don't own any duels. All
00:21:52
Zachary Jeblonski
all right, that's cool. Yeah, I got... Oh no, i was going to do a nice segue when I forgot how to do it anyway. Uh, so, the other, I guess, big game, I would say, or interesting game I got in at the same store after the Valga boss game was, I got a solid Ashling game and, like you've seen it once before just in the, the Friday store.
00:22:14
Zachary Jeblonski
but in that store, it was like a lockout lock horns moment. And, and I, and I just really sputtered for a long time trying to get going. But in this game on Tuesday, this was the like, you know, everyone was like, oh you're playing that Ashley.
00:22:29
Zachary Jeblonski
I don't think she's very good. I was like, okay. And it and they learned real quick.
00:22:33
ciderspence
To be fair, that was my experience with her.
00:22:34
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:22:35
ciderspence
i played her and she wasn't very good. So the next time I saw her, I was prepared for her to not be very good. So yeah, I i get that person's sentiment. Please continue.
00:22:43
Zachary Jeblonski
No, they, they, they learned real quick because i you know, I did the thing that, you know, that, so just to let me walk through how this is supposed to go for the people on the list thing. It's, this is actually rekindled. This is the blue, red one. It's one in a red on the front.
00:22:59
Zachary Jeblonski
And, uh, when the red side enters, uh, you may discard a card if you do draw a card and then on your first main phase, you may pay blue. And if you do, you transform it to the blue side. And when this creature transforms into the blue side and at the beginning of your first main phase, you add two mana of any one color. Spend this only to cast spells Mana Valley Foregrater and then you can pay red to flip her to the other side.
00:23:21
Zachary Jeblonski
So here's here's the turn order for this deck. It's turn one, play land. Turn two, play second land, play Aisling. Do your discard draw if you want to. you know Usually there's at least one card in your hand where you're you're good to get rid of.
00:23:34
Zachary Jeblonski
Turn three, you flipper with the blue, play a land, and now you four mana. Then you play a four mana mana rock. What I played was Firemind Vessel, which is just a four mana mana rock that enters tapped, and then it taps for two mana of different colors.
00:23:54
Zachary Jeblonski
So that means when, when turn, so now we're on turn four, when turn four comes around, you have two mana from Aisling, two mana from the mana rock, four from your lands.
00:24:05
Zachary Jeblonski
that's eight mana on a turn four. And, yeah, so I kind of, it kind of went from there. So I, I, I played a, I think a spell i've never actually done. It's in several of my decks, but I just never had it out, which is, I played a room from dust morn.
00:24:21
Zachary Jeblonski
it It's mirror room flat fractured realm.
00:24:21
ciderspence
Oh, nice.
00:24:25
Zachary Jeblonski
And the the part that's important is the fractured realm part, which is five blue blue. If a triggered ability of a permanent control triggers that ability triggers additional time. So that means actually triggering as well as everything else.
00:24:35
ciderspence
Oh, extra mana, yeah.
00:24:36
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. And then, you know, from there, the game just got completely out of control. Like they didn't handle, they they got rid of Aisling once. But here's the thing about the way the Aisling deck works is once I'm at turn four and I drop like an eight drop, I do not care if Aisling dies really. Like i like i they killed her like turn five or six and I never casted her again. Because like she's done her she's done what she needed to do.
00:24:59
Zachary Jeblonski
the game ended with like, I had three copies of city on fire. I had four minds dilations. I had like an ancient copper out. I had just, I was just pooping stuff on the board every turn.
00:25:10
Zachary Jeblonski
and it just got, it just got completely out of hand. so that, that's basically what that deck does, right? Like it's just turn four, you're dropping an eight drop and, and, and zaniness, you know, goes from there.
00:25:22
Zachary Jeblonski
i
00:25:22
ciderspence
I feel like if someone had asked me to describe what I consider to be your magic happy place, it's having three or more copies of Mind Stylation on a battlefield.
00:25:30
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, it it is.
00:25:30
ciderspence
So I i imagine you enjoyed this.
00:25:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. I taught that at near the end of the game of six triggers. So I think I had three mind simulations with the mirror room. So six. So it was the top six on everyone's deck.
00:25:43
ciderspence
That's,
00:25:43
Zachary Jeblonski
So it was very, I was basically milling people at a certain point.
00:25:44
ciderspence
yeah.
00:25:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Like it was almost like a mill at a certain point. But yeah, no, that was, yeah, I think, only thing I'm going to make change with this deck is I think I need to, I've been, I was kind of avoiding putting crackle of power in here, but I think it needs a crackle power. I think I need
Deck Resilience and Strategy Counteraction
00:25:59
Zachary Jeblonski
a little bit more oomph on actually like killing people.
00:26:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Cause right now it's just like value the deck, but the value is not necessarily doing anything. so I just, I think that I need to put like maybe one or two like closers in it. But other than that, that that's, that's what this deck do.
00:26:14
ciderspence
Nice.
00:26:15
Zachary Jeblonski
And I'm not really sure the best way, like, so I like to think about these decks in like terms of like, how should my opponents deal with this like in the future? You know, obviously you could like sword jazling, you know, on turn two or whatever.
00:26:29
Zachary Jeblonski
I think it's a really resilient deck too because it's like, it's one of those things where I'm like, I don't know the best way to stop this deck other than just pressure and normal counter spells or whatever.
00:26:39
Zachary Jeblonski
Because if somebody's like sword dash thing on turn two, I just wouldn't cast her again. And I would just ramp regularly, you know, and go for the bombs that way, you know, kind of thing. I don't know. It's interesting. It's, it's, it, it strikes me as a resilient deck.
00:26:50
Zachary Jeblonski
I'll play it some more times and see if that's still the case. I'm sure I'll run into, so to an archetype that where I'm like, Oh, that's how you stop this deck. Like they clearly stopped me. Like, you know, so yeah, but,
00:27:05
Zachary Jeblonski
I'll just play, uh, artifact hate. There you go. Like, like what's that one, uh, green creature, collector oof where you can't tap your mana rocks.
00:27:09
ciderspence
That would do it, yeah.
00:27:12
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, there you go.
00:27:13
ciderspence
Oh yeah, that'd be bad.
00:27:14
Zachary Jeblonski
That would just, cause, and the other part of this deck is like treasures and stuff. Yeah, that would completely destroy me. So there you go. If you ever play against my Aisling deck, just play collector oof and you got me. yeah.
00:27:24
ciderspence
I'll write it down.
00:27:28
Zachary Jeblonski
Uh, I used to get so salty about collector roof when I was first starting to play the game. i mean, nowadays I'm just like, okay, yeah, that's viable. But like that card is just so hard to play because everybody's got artifacts they want to tap, including the people that have the collector roof. So I don't know.
00:27:41
Zachary Jeblonski
But anyway, that's a, that's a tangent. do you have another, another game you want to talk about?
00:27:46
ciderspence
Not really. I think I just wanted to talk about some some features of gameplay that I've been thinking about of late.
00:27:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:27:55
ciderspence
So yeah, as I mentioned, I went through like a month to six week stretch of not winning any games. And so it was an interesting time to think about, a do I want to keep playing? B, am I having fun in the games that I'm playing, even if I'm not winning?
00:28:06
Zachary Jeblonski
Eh?
00:28:08
ciderspence
And, you know, C, if so, what is it I'm enjoying if it's not the satisfaction of winning a competitive game. Because i I don't think of myself as like a bracket one player where i'm I'm playing decks to just be goofy and like show people silly cards. Although I do think that there is some aspect of that in my gameplay. Because a lot of what I've been doing The last month or six weeks is just playing Ninja Turtles stuff.
00:28:34
ciderspence
Playing Ninja Turtles Commanders, I've put together several decks that are only cards from the Ninja Turtles themed sets. And that you know there are three of them, three set symbols, TMT, TMC, PZA. So I include all those cards as in the card pool for those decks that only have Turtles cards.
00:28:51
ciderspence
But those decks are, you know, they're certainly bracket one to bracket two-ish. I play them mostly in bracket two games, although sometimes I'm not sure when one of them seems like it might be good enough, then I'll just say, and a lot of these games have been on Spelltable.
00:28:56
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:29:06
ciderspence
When I play in person, I've had the same experience, but I've done that fewer times comparatively to Spelltable, so I think of that kind of as my baseline at this point.
00:29:18
ciderspence
But yeah, I'll usually play in a bracket two or bracket three lobby. I've enjoyed a lot of the games that I played, even though I lost them. A few games that stick out. I played a game with Baxter Stockman, who's an Izzet artifact commander from the Turtles set.
00:29:35
Zachary Jeblonski
I was like, what is that name?
00:29:35
ciderspence
And I got down a new card from the set Improvised Arsenal. That's an equipment.
00:29:40
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:29:41
ciderspence
Let me...
00:29:43
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I just, I got pulled up Baxter Stockman here. yeah.
00:29:47
ciderspence
Yeah, he's not that good. I mean, it's... And I think he's, like, kind of a temple of this whole regime. Like, I think a lot of the commanders I've been playing aren't that good, but I wanted to play them.
00:29:59
ciderspence
And I think, kind of like the high mana value commander thing, it's like, if that's if that's your setup and you know that going in, maybe you just can't be butt so upset about the results.
00:29:59
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:30:09
ciderspence
Because it's like...
00:30:09
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:30:10
ciderspence
I am actively choosing to enter a somewhat competitive space with a commander that I think is not that competitive. and i want to build around it and try to make the deck function and be as good as it can be, but I also recognize that there's a ceiling on it.
00:30:26
ciderspence
and so you know Knowing that going in, it would be weird to be really upset that the deck has a ceiling when I knew there was a ceiling. So I guess maybe that's part of why I wasn't that frustrated by losing all the time.
00:30:40
ciderspence
I would have preferred winning for sure, but I still had a good time playing the deck. Anyway, so this is Improvised Arsenal. Equip creature gets plus one, plus oh for each artifact you control. It equips for one red. It's an artifact equipment for one and a red.
00:30:53
ciderspence
And four and a red create a token that's a copy of this equipment.
00:30:57
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:30:59
ciderspence
So it's expensive to do that. You probably don't want to do it. But in a deck like that, Turtles only deck that didn't have a whole lot going on, I basically was just making copies of Improvised Arsenal every turn.
00:31:10
ciderspence
It was pretty cool.
00:31:11
ciderspence
And I think that was kind of representative of the gameplay experienced.
00:31:12
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:31:15
ciderspence
Like there were a lot of, I was able to find cool moments with a lot of these decks that weren't finding a way to get to or near in some cases the finish line.
00:31:26
ciderspence
And I enjoyed the cool moments, like making a bunch of improvised arsenals. There was a game, this game I played at the shop last week. Somebody had the the tree, the mono black tree, I think, that swaps your life total with its toughness.
00:31:43
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, tree of perdition.
00:31:45
ciderspence
Yeah, so that player was kind of on a rampage. They had eliminated one player, and they were about to take out my opponent, my other opponent, And I asked him, do you have any do you think you can do anything if you get another turn? And he said, yeah, maybe. Why?
00:32:02
ciderspence
And I cast Untimely Malfunction to change the target of the trigger to myself. So I actually was you know taking a light hit, but this guy was trying to knock out my opponent. And part of that involved switching his life total to 13 so the damage would knock him out.
00:32:17
ciderspence
But instead I put my life total 13 so that that player had enough life to withstand the attack and got another turn. But it was just like a cool interaction. And I was like, yeah, I do like untimely malfunction.
00:32:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, that is a cool interaction.
00:32:27
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:32:28
ciderspence
So yeah, I was able to experience enough fun moments that, you know, that it,
00:32:35
ciderspence
it made it
Finding Joy in Losing Streaks
00:32:36
ciderspence
not as tough to keep losing. Although, you know, at some point you would like to win. So it was, it was nice to get the shredder win in, but, but it was, it was interesting to go through a long stretch without winning and see, you know, do I really enjoy playing the game?
00:32:41
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:49
ciderspence
I think the answer was yes. And I think being true to my, my ethos about choosing commanders and what I want to do as I play the game, like experiencing new sets kind of made it,
00:33:03
ciderspence
easier to stay the course. And so i i was pleased with that after some reflection.
00:33:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, usually usually for me, it's like, I don't pay attention to my dry spells for too much. I know I had a dry spell for like a month or two, actually, a couple months ago. And for me, it's just like, if my deck got the ability to at least once kind of do the thing it's supposed to do usually I'm okay with that game not ending in a victory, right? Like it's And I know this goes to like the kind of like the toxic commander ethos, right? Like there's a lot of people out there that are like, you're not entitled to your deck doing the thing, right? Which I kind of get, right? Because there's there's commanders out there where like, you can't allow that commander to do the thing even once. You know, Atali is like the classic example of this.
00:33:52
Zachary Jeblonski
And I'm talking about the the new Atali. Yeah. But I feel like if my deck like did one or two things that are like that that are related to what the deck was trying to do.
00:34:03
Zachary Jeblonski
I'm usually like not that I'm like, OK, we're losing at that point. Of course, I'm not still go going to try to win, but the game ends in a loss. I'm like, yeah, I think the real dry, the real rough dry spells are when you have like an entire night or multiple nights in a row where like you're not drawing well.
00:34:17
Zachary Jeblonski
you You know, you never really get to do anything that your deck does, you know, that or normally does. It's like that's when it to me, that's when it gets rough.
00:34:26
ciderspence
when Yeah, when you feel like you you aren't getting to play. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:35
ciderspence
what I paused because like at this shop a week ago, there was a player who was so frustrated with two or three games he played in a row. he was He was saying to him, he kind of went too far in describing how frustrated he was.
00:34:44
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:34:50
Zachary Jeblonski
ohh
00:34:50
ciderspence
But one of the other pod mates said, do you think you're like, this sounds like a skill issue. And I guess they knew each other because he seemed really upset. So this was, this was a comment I wouldn't have made, but I guess they knew each other and they had this.
00:35:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, that's that's incendiary is what that is.
00:35:04
ciderspence
Yeah. but he was like, no, it's not a deck issue. It's a luck issue. And I was like, well, I mean, the more you say something's a luck issue. And of course I didn't say this out loud. I wasn't even in the pod. I was just next to them.
00:35:15
ciderspence
But it was, it was weird to hear somebody push back too hard on the notion of, Maybe it's a skill issue when they were complaining about how bad their luck was was two or three games in a row. It's like, well, I don't know, man. Like the common factor there is that presumably you built these decks. So maybe there is a, maybe there's a design flaw in your model.
00:35:34
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:35:35
ciderspence
But, but yeah, I mean, it is the case that sometimes you do get unlucky or you feel unlucky and whether, whether it's luck or design matters a lot less in that moment when you feel like you're not getting to play your deck.
00:35:47
ciderspence
So I, yeah.
00:35:49
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. The classic, the classic thing for me, and I run into this actually when I go to my store on Tuesdays a lot, I actually, I think I just ran into it where, there's always somebody that's like, I'm not hitting my land drops. And then everybody always asks how many lands you're running.
00:36:01
Zachary Jeblonski
And I swear, like this happens, like this happened like the last three times a row. The guy's like 34. and I'm just like, I'm like, bro, they like, like I got a certain point. Like I'm going to be very gentle when I say this. I'm just like, yeah, you are way too low on lands. Like, you know, you have to, you got to bump that up. It's like, I can, I can only feel bad for so long here. Like, you know, it's not luck when your deck construction is 34, you know?
00:36:28
ciderspence
Yeah, it's weird. It's like, that's a weird comment to hear about a 34 land deck, mostly because of the dec dichotomy of like, who's saying it in in what scenario, right? Like, there are plenty of decks that have 34-ish lands, but those are like elf decks or something that are running lots of creatures that you can cast for one or two mana that make mana so that you don't need to hit that many land drops. You just need one or two at the beginning or whatever, and you can... But those are also not inexperienced players who are prone to talk about
00:36:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Exactly.
00:36:58
ciderspence
how sad they are about the luck, right? Like they their design their deck was built a little more intentionally. So yeah, you would think that for a newer player, they'd want to be a little more conservative and make sure that they get to play the game by having more lands.
00:37:10
ciderspence
But I guess that isn't as fun when you're putting a deck together. So
00:37:13
Zachary Jeblonski
i think that, I think, I think your comment is, I think it's actually flipped. I think what what I've noticed is it's the newer players that do this the most because they always think they can shave one more land to fit this card they want in.
00:37:25
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah,
00:37:25
ciderspence
yeah.
00:37:26
Zachary Jeblonski
That's something I've noticed. It's always like, yeah I just got this new card. I guess I'll take out a land. You know, it's like that that mentality of like, you know, because I used to be that player and it wasn't until a little ways ago. i don't know, like a year or two where I just decided to hold myself to a land count.
00:37:42
Zachary Jeblonski
And and just that is the land count no matter what. It's not going below that. but yeah, that's, you know, I mean, that's the kind of the the great criticism of magic, right? The land system. And like, especially for newer players, they're just going to view it as well, this card draws me cards. So that means I can draw the lands I need. So I only need, I don't need another, I can replace a land with this card. You're right. Like that sort of thing.
00:38:09
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, that's, yeah, the that guy making that comment sounds wild. sounds like a Sounds like a skill issue.
00:38:15
ciderspence
Yeah, it was it was it was not a good moment. Yeah. i yeah I wound up playing with him later in the in the night, so I'm glad I didn't say anything. But yeah, it it did sound like a skill issue.
00:38:23
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:38:28
ciderspence
Or not even a skill issue, like a like a design issue.
00:38:28
Zachary Jeblonski
What is, yeah, it's a design issue, you know. I have made that comment many times at the store where somebody's like, oh, my, you know, my, you know, I keep drawing bad cards or something like that. And I'm like, it it's your deck. Why do you have bad cards in your deck? It's like, hi
00:38:48
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, now, what I think is fun, and this is my recommendation, this is what I try to do in my games, is like when you when you're drawing poorly and the deck is just doing something dumb or whatever, you can kind of get the table, you can politic that a little bit and be like, yeah, I'm just, yeah I'm not doing anything.
00:39:05
Zachary Jeblonski
Here, let me show you these four lands I just drew off the top, right? like you know So like people can get like on board with you struggling a little bit. you know I think sometimes that helps alleviate some of the...
00:39:15
Zachary Jeblonski
the saltiness in my opinion. like I'll never forget. It was a couple months ago. I forget exactly which deck, but I showed the pod this, I drew nine lands in a row and they were like, Holy crap.
00:39:29
Zachary Jeblonski
Right. Cause it's math, you know, it's possible, but it, but it's a mathematically unlikely, but I was like, yeah, let me show you guys.
00:39:31
ciderspence
Yeah, that's that's a lot.
00:39:36
Zachary Jeblonski
And I like literally laid out all nine cards and they were like, Jesus, that's ridiculous. You know? So it's kind of fun sometimes to remember. I don't know, to like, let's all remember that this is a game of variance and, know, sometimes the dice don't roll in your favor.
00:39:51
ciderspence
It's true.
00:39:52
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Any other games you want to talk about before we kind of move on to maybe what we're working on?
Anticipation for New Magic Set
00:40:00
ciderspence
I don't think so. I feel like there's something else I want to talk about, but I don't remember what it is. Maybe it'll come to me in a minute.
00:40:06
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, well, we can always switch it up when it does come to you. So we have we're the and of the upcoming set is Secrets of Strixhaven, and um'm I'm budgeting myself on magic. like i haven't I'm just not buying magic right now, just just for for reasons.
00:40:24
Zachary Jeblonski
But I think I'm going to pick up maybe like three cards, i'm like three new commanders. Because I like a lot of the designs on the set, especially the legendary stuff.
00:40:34
Zachary Jeblonski
So I wanted to talk about two that I'm likely to scoop up, provided hopefully they're not ridiculously expensive. One of them is a pre-con commander, so I can't imagine he'll be expensive. but The other one, maybe.
00:40:45
ciderspence
Are you talking about Killian?
00:40:45
Zachary Jeblonski
I'm talking about a Quintorius.
00:40:48
ciderspence
Oh.
00:40:50
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:40:51
ciderspence
okay.
00:40:53
Zachary Jeblonski
So I'm going to talk, yeah, let's talk about Contorius as I brought it up. I think he's a face of a pre-con. Yeah, he's he's one of the pre-con faces. And he's a Planeswalker commander. He's two red, white.
00:41:06
Zachary Jeblonski
Whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard, create a three, two red and white spirit. one Plus one, you may discard a card. If you do, draw two cards and then a mill card. And a negative four spirit to control, get odd double strike and vigilance to end of turn. You can be your commander.
00:41:22
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah. I just really liked his design. He was spoiled like a month or two ago and I like, heck yeah. So I've already kind of prototyped the deck for him. and I think my, like my shtick for the last like year and a half is just like, I've just gotten a, I've just gotten a lot more involved with graveyard stuff than I used to. Like, i mean, a lot of the decks I've made the last like six months or so have been something around the graveyard.
00:41:43
Zachary Jeblonski
And this is kind of just another example of that, except, you know, no black here. It's just red and white. So a lot of the cards in the deck will get the card out of the graveyard. Maybe not necessarily put it on my battlefield, put it in my hand, but it just gets it out of the graveyard, like shuffle it back into my library, exiled, et cetera.
00:42:01
Zachary Jeblonski
So yeah I'm kind of excited for that. My current red, white deck is just a little... It's just sometimes it does something and then sometimes it doesn't.
00:42:11
Zachary Jeblonski
And i I've never been able to smooth it out and get it to like be more consistently doing something. So I think I'm just ready for a change. So he kind of came along and I was like, all right, cool. So I'm probably going to pick him up.
00:42:21
ciderspence
Nice.
00:42:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Have you, are you going to, do you have anything coming up in then the new set that you want to do?
00:42:29
ciderspence
Yeah, I'm Zimone enthusiast, so I'm going to be all Quandrix all the time in this set.
00:42:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh yeah. And we got some Zimone coming up. Yeah.
00:42:36
ciderspence
So yeah, i expect to pick up a lot, or at least enough to get Zimone and whatever support pieces. I know there was like the The Power of Two one, i will definitely pick that one up. All the mathy, nerdy sounding Simic stuff, i will I will get by Hook or by Crook.
00:42:54
ciderspence
So I'm pretty excited.
00:42:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. So it looks like it's just one new Zimone. It's the infinite analyst, analyst, which is the first spell you cast with X in his mana cost, cost one less to cast for each plus one, plus one on Zimone.
00:43:01
ciderspence
Yep.
00:43:08
Zachary Jeblonski
And whenever you catch the first spell with X in its mana cost, each turn put two plus one, plus one counters on Zimone. Okay. Yeah, that's cool.
00:43:15
ciderspence
Yeah, I think Primo is also its own card in this set, so I will probably also build around Primo, just because I like that guy.
00:43:21
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I think I saw him. I think he's a mono green, Is Amano Green, yeah Primo the Unbounded. I think he
Building a Witherbloom Deck
00:43:29
Zachary Jeblonski
might be the
00:43:29
ciderspence
Not mono green, right? I think he's Simic, yeah.
00:43:31
Zachary Jeblonski
He's Simic. He's like, yeah. Yeah. I think he's the alternate commander. He's X green, green, blue trample. Primo enters with twice X counter, ta twice X plus one, plus one counters on it.
00:43:43
Zachary Jeblonski
And whenever one or more creatures you control with base power is zero, deal combat damage to player, create a zero, zero green and blue fractal creature token, put a number of plus one, plus one counters on it equal to the damage dealt.
00:43:54
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, that's cool. I like the art on them too. The the fractal designs are pretty cool.
00:43:58
ciderspence
Yeah, I agree. It's pretty cool looking.
00:44:00
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. The other commander that I'm probably even the most excited to build around, and also I'm worried about how expensive he's going to be, i is they did a they did a cycle of Elder Dragons for each of the different quote-unquote schools of magic.
00:44:19
Zachary Jeblonski
And the the green black one with their bloom is the one that I think is interesting. and it's with bloom, the balancer six black green, uh, affinity for creatures, which means his, he costs one less for each creature you control flying death touch, incident sorcery spells you cast have affinity for creatures.
00:44:39
Zachary Jeblonski
so I think this is, will be my new Golgari dev. Cause I, I've been struggling to kind of find my home local Gary for awhile. But I think, you know, something that always piques my interest is when a color pie break happens, when they like kind of get around the color pie a little bit.
00:44:53
Zachary Jeblonski
And this is to me a good example that where, you know, Golgari are not the colors you think of when you think of spell slinger. There's no red, there's no blue. but that's what he is. He's basically a spell slinger commander and Golgari.
00:45:08
Zachary Jeblonski
so I, I kind of prototype that out and that seems like it's gonna really interesting font. It looks like one the things that like, it's kind of appealing and it's kind of similar to Aisling in a way in terms of like, there's very much a,
00:45:23
Zachary Jeblonski
what I would say is like a very clear, defined, simple game plan here, which is get as many creatures on the battlefield, fire off a big, black closing spell, you know, like, and that's really all you're doing is just filling the board, firing off a big black closing spell.
00:45:40
Zachary Jeblonski
So the way you kind of close out the game, or at least what I'm going to is like a torment of hail fire exsanguinate, you know, these big X black spells. And that's just kind of how you, how I would kind of end the game.
00:45:53
Zachary Jeblonski
But then you get to play, i would say, some really fun, dumb cards, which I haven't seen in a while, like Army of the Damned, which is five black, black, black. So eight eight mana sorcery. So it gets reduced by the creatures you have if he's out on the battlefield.
00:46:08
Zachary Jeblonski
You create 13 tap 2-2 black zombie creature tokens, and it's got flashback. you know, so assuming that you have six black pips, which is a lot to ask for, you could fire this off for three mana. If you have five creatures, then you make all those other creatures and then flashback it for another three manner to make another set of creatures.
00:46:28
Zachary Jeblonski
Right. So, uh, you can do stuff like that. but I think the way I really want to like take somebody out as a spell that like, I think is cool because mathematics, but it's, you know, you don't see it much because it's kind of hard to to work with, I think, is exponential growth.
00:46:43
Zachary Jeblonski
And that's a sorcery. That's XX green, green until end of turn double target creatures power X times. So I would like to make Witherbloom someday like a, you know, 4,000, 4,000 and smack somebody with that.
00:47:00
Zachary Jeblonski
But yeah, no, I think it, I think, yeah, it's a really cool spell, but you know, it's hard.
00:47:01
ciderspence
That's awesome.
00:47:05
Zachary Jeblonski
You can't really win the game off of it because you're usually only taking a one player and it's got double X in it. It's, you know, there's a lot of like,
00:47:10
ciderspence
But there is also that sorcerer. I think, does Black have two ways to fling a creature? I know there's at least one.
00:47:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, yeah, yeah. I guess I could to put the fling in there.
00:47:17
ciderspence
Oh,
00:47:19
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. There's a Jared, I think, as a creature fling. Like, he he can fling as an activated ability, I think.
00:47:25
ciderspence
oh nice.
00:47:27
Zachary Jeblonski
but yeah, so it's just like a lot of that, like big X spells or big mana spells, but in Golgarian green, you know, I, I tried to put in a fair amount of spells that make tokens because you want creatures on the battlefield, all that stuff.
00:47:39
Zachary Jeblonski
so I'm excited to try that out. My only worry is, like I said, I think he's hovering around $33 right now. You know, there's always the dragon tax. There's always the mythic tax, you know, we'll see, you know, I think, oh, go ahead.
00:47:51
ciderspence
Yeah, I believe you'll find one.
00:47:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Sorry.
00:47:54
ciderspence
Oh, sorry. I was just saying, that i I'm optimistic of your chances.
00:47:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, because I think, and the reason is, and I'm not planning on buying this, but I think because I think the reason why he's probably going reasonable is I think the one that everyone is going to chase is the blue-red one, which is Prismari, the Inspiration, mana, same thing, blue-red, Flying Ward, Pay five life, and Instant and Searchry Spells you cast have Storm. So I think this is the one that people would chase because this is the one that people are are you know probably think is the most busted and all that.
00:48:27
Zachary Jeblonski
i have I have no desire to ever pilot a storm deck. That's just not my vibe. so
00:48:33
ciderspence
i will I will put it in lots of stuff. I'm excited about it.
00:48:37
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:48:38
ciderspence
But I did want to just say on the Witherbloom, the sentence instant and sorcery spells you cast have infinity or have affinity for creatures is just wild and great.
00:48:41
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:48:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:48:50
ciderspence
I know there's a lot of grousing about design and pushing cards and stuff, but it is cool when they put new stuff together.
00:48:50
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, it is.
00:48:57
ciderspence
And this is certainly something I didn't expect to see on a magic card. And it's just, it's fun to think about.
00:49:03
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, it is. It's it's it's it's it's neat, you know. i Speaking of which, I know i we were talking about a deck. This is a deck that only has 14 creatures in it, which is funny for deck that has affinity for creatures. But but yeah, like they it it it's cool because it just opens up a lot of spells that you don't normally consider because in green-black you generally don't have a lot of like help with instant sorceries.
00:49:26
Zachary Jeblonski
So yeah, i'm like I'm excited to use... Oh, yeah. Like one of them is spell from Bloomberg, which is for the common good, which I thought was cool, but I never really had a home for it. And it's XX green.
00:49:41
Zachary Jeblonski
Create X tokens that are copies of target creature you control. Then tokens do you control get indestructible until your next turn, and you gain one life for each token you control. You know, it's like, it's it's a cool spell.
00:49:51
Zachary Jeblonski
it only gives indestructible to your tokens, you know, so that's why I think people, don't see it out there, but yeah, I mean, it's just like, you know, lot of, a lot of neat spells that I'll be able to pull out of the the boxes that I don't normally get to play.
00:50:02
Zachary Jeblonski
So I'm excited to try that.
00:50:03
ciderspence
Yeah, that's awesome.
00:50:05
ciderspence
Yeah, I will please place send the the deck link for that because it because it's a lot of X spells, at least the green ones, I think I'm also going to want for Zemone. So i would like to see what off the beaten path green X spells you you have in your repertoire and borrow them.
00:50:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I'll send it over. It's at 104. have to do a little bit more trimming.
00:50:28
ciderspence
Not for me, because some of those cards are black, so I'll take it right now.
00:50:28
Zachary Jeblonski
but Oh, a lot of the cards are black. I think it is... Oh, I struck a nice balance. Actually, about half the deck is black, so that's good.
00:50:39
ciderspence
There you
00:50:40
Zachary Jeblonski
Now, there's a lot of great green blue. Doppelgang is the one I would be excited to put into Zemoan.
00:50:45
ciderspence
Doppelganger is really good. there's the other There's another one that just makes copies of stuff that has X in it.
00:50:51
Zachary Jeblonski
There's a couple of Simic ones that make copies. Yeah.
00:50:53
ciderspence
Yeah. So I figured that'll be a theme. But yeah, yeah i'm sure I'm sure it won't be impossible to put a deck together. But I do like finding, think, a thing that I enjoy doing to my own detriment is really overdoing it with a motif. Like, I'm not going to put some expels in it. I'm going to have 40 expels in it and at least play that version of the deck first.
00:51:16
ciderspence
Where there are enough cards that you have to run some that aren't good.
00:51:19
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:51:20
ciderspence
But and's I like it. So what what can you do?
00:51:25
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh yeah. Outrageous robbery. I'm excited to play that. yeah, I have that in my, uh, my Zevlor deck, but I've never had it in my hand to cast it.
00:51:29
ciderspence
Nice.
00:51:35
Zachary Jeblonski
So yeah. so fingers crossed, this is not a, 80 to $90 situation. I don't think so. I don't think Witherbloom is the one that people really want. I, like I said, I think it's Prismari that, that everybody wants.
00:51:49
Zachary Jeblonski
the Simic one's Prismari.
00:51:52
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I think $10 I'd be happy with. you know The Simic one is fine. It just cascades on cast and gives your Incident Sorceries cascade. you know Maybe someday i'll I'll experiment with that one to see how compares to a Modi or something like that. But but yeah. And I don't think I have any other decks on deck. do you have any other decks on deck?
00:52:14
ciderspence
Yeah, I'm building lots of stuff, man, just all the time. i just but I just put together the Shredder deck.
00:52:17
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, I know. I know. I know. Yeah.
00:52:20
ciderspence
I'm still trying to tinker with that Raphael deck. i'd made a I talked about the in-universe Baxter Stockman deck, but I think i'm go to put together an Artifact.
00:52:33
ciderspence
an artifact-y version of that deck as well. And just, I don't know if I know you so you looked it up, but I think it probably wasn't interesting enough to read, but I'll read it now.
00:52:42
ciderspence
Yeah.
00:52:43
Zachary Jeblonski
A baxter? I wasn't trying to slander your boy here.
00:52:44
ciderspence
Yeah. No, no, no, he's not good. It's okay. it's a he he doesn't
00:52:49
ciderspence
yeah He doesn't need the defense. Baxter Stockman, three blue red. When it enters, make a one one colorless robot robot robot robot artifact creature token. At the beginning of combat on your turn, target artifact creature you control gets plus three plus so and gains first strike and vigilance until end of turn.
00:53:05
ciderspence
He's a three three. that's, that's probably not a card worth building around, but, uh, I've got a lot of artifact decks or I've got enough artifact decks that I have a lot of copies of like some good artifact cards.
00:53:19
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:53:19
ciderspence
And so I have some lying around. So in addition to the in-universe version, I want to make a, a better version, with just, you know, lots of artifacts stuff, but think including lots of the big, uh, artifact creatures, um, creatures,
00:53:33
ciderspence
what The snake one, the X-costed snake that has protection from multicolor. I just saw it. I forgot its name. you know The Phyrexian ones, the one that makes the worm toke or the tokens when it dies.
00:53:47
ciderspence
Meteor Golem, all the big stuff.
00:53:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:53:51
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. I mean, i i when I first read him, he's one of those commanders where i'm like, okay, okay. And then I was like, oh. Because i thought I thought his second clause was going to be at the beginning of...
00:54:03
Zachary Jeblonski
I thought what it was was like every time an artifact came in, you were able to give an artifact creature three o for Shrug and Vigilance. I thought that's what it was, but it's that...
00:54:10
ciderspence
would have been great. At the beginning of each combat, that would have been great.
00:54:13
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:54:13
ciderspence
I mean, not great, but that would have been more playable, but it's okay.
00:54:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Even each combat would have been interesting, yeah, because then you would have some really nice blockers, you know
00:54:20
ciderspence
Yeah.
00:54:23
Zachary Jeblonski
you know. Yeah, I mean, the cool thing about a commander like this is he is unassuming, so I can't imagine people spending removal on him. So that that has a value in itself.
00:54:36
ciderspence
Yeah, i there were I'm trying to remember what else. Oh yeah, I'm also going to try to do the same thing. i built in-universe Bebop and Rocksteady deck, which is...
00:54:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:54:48
ciderspence
Bebop, Rocksteady. it's It's like a 7-7 for three mana, so one Golgari, Golgari. Whenever Bebop and Rocksteady attack or block, sacrifice a permanent unless you discard a card, and it's a 7-5.
00:55:03
Zachary Jeblonski
Nice.
00:55:04
ciderspence
So actually played this one in like a bracket two game with the in universe one.
00:55:04
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:55:07
ciderspence
And it was, it was pretty fun. you know, having to sacrifice or discard all the time, is tough, but if you build around it, I think it's, it could be good. and seven, five vanilla is like, I don't know for three mana, seven, five is pretty good.
00:55:20
ciderspence
other than that, it doesn't really do anything later in the game, but it's fun to swing with it. It's, it's fun to just have seven power to throw around and, you know, green and black have lots of ways of,
00:55:30
ciderspence
getting rid of your creature for value. And at three mana, yeah, and at three mana, and in those colors, you can get it back pretty easily.
00:55:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. Yeah. And then drawing off of like power and stuff like that.
00:55:40
ciderspence
So yeah, I think there are there are lots of ways to make an interesting deck out of this guy. So I look forward to doing that too.
00:55:48
Zachary Jeblonski
I almost forgot. i am I am thinking about building another deck, but not with new cards, with old cards. Well, older cards. Because i I think I might, I have a little bit of the, oh, everybody plays Valkyrie. Like had the red black one. I think I might switch my red black deck.
00:56:06
Zachary Jeblonski
And I still have the red clone shell for when I was messing around with red clones with like Roxanne and some other commanders. And I was like going through like every red commander and being like, which one has like ETVs or whatever that would really benefit from red clones or be interesting with red clones. And I think I stumbled upon something pretty dumb.
00:56:26
Zachary Jeblonski
I don't know how you would feel about this deck, but I'm kind of curious to see what it would do. Which Rakdos the Muscle from Outlaws of Thunder Junction. He's a five mana flying trample.
00:56:39
Zachary Jeblonski
Whenever you sacrifice another creature, exile cards equal to its mana value from the top of target player's library. until your next end step, you may play those cards, man of any type can be spent to cast those spells.
00:56:49
Zachary Jeblonski
And then you can sacrifice another creature to give Rakdos indestructible and tap him only once each turn. So what if I were to make, i don't know, like five red clones of Rakdos, they all sacrifice each other because a legendary rule and then all those triggers happen.
00:57:06
Zachary Jeblonski
And all those trigger, they would see all each other die. And then all those sees would see what the triggers happen to. so in a weird way, it's kind of like this super, super mass theft, but super, super like library drain. It's not even a mill because they're all going to exile.
00:57:27
Zachary Jeblonski
so I prototyped this out. I'm i'm curious to see how this would work or what it would do. And it's like one of those decks that's impossible to goldfish with because you have no idea what you're going to hit off of people's libraries or, or anything like that.
00:57:40
Zachary Jeblonski
so I think I might build this cause it's real, it's real dumb. It's really like, instead of sacrificing creatures that give you value.
00:57:45
ciderspence
Wait, don't you just deck someone?
00:57:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Say what?
00:57:48
ciderspence
Don't you just deck someone?
00:57:49
Zachary Jeblonski
It, I mean, if I, you know, the, the, the dream is you have him out and then you have, Ortheon out, which is a
00:57:54
ciderspence
Yeah, i but at five, at five you deck someone, right?
00:57:56
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:57:58
ciderspence
Five.
00:57:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. because I'm assuming I had to do the math on this because they're all five.
00:58:00
ciderspence
Each of them sacrifices... Yeah.
00:58:01
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:58:03
ciderspence
So each of them is five mana value.
00:58:05
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:58:05
ciderspence
You sacrifice five of them, presumably.
00:58:05
Zachary Jeblonski
if i yeah
00:58:09
ciderspence
Well, either way, you'd sacrifice five of them, unless you can't Legend rule. So five would see...
00:58:14
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:58:15
ciderspence
But I would see the first one.
00:58:15
Zachary Jeblonski
five Five would see five, right? You know?
00:58:18
ciderspence
Yeah. I think... i You might just win here.
00:58:23
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, well, that would be 125, think, right, card?
00:58:24
ciderspence
If you make all five. Let's
00:58:26
Zachary Jeblonski
So you would you would deck somebody.
00:58:31
ciderspence
see. Yeah, I guess not quite enough to just win on the spot. But yeah, that's a lot.
00:58:36
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, it's really dumb, too. like Could you imagine dying to that? Yeah.
00:58:41
ciderspence
Yeah, I mean... But this is... i mean, in red, this is... pretty straightforward to build around, right? Like you play some of my favorite cards from like Shadow, yeah, Ortheon.
00:58:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:58:50
ciderspence
You play Devastating Onslaught.
00:58:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:58:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Or, you know, just a lot of like electro duplicate, uh, you know, a twin flame and, you know, all the, all the red, you know, like, uh, you know, clone spells, mirage phalanx, Rion, Rionia.
00:59:12
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah, I was just like, this seems, this seems neat. It seems dumb. So I think I, I think why I might build it.
00:59:18
ciderspence
it's somehow less onerous if your goal is to kill people by milling them out than to play their cards. you know like At this point, you're not trying to play all of the 30 cards or all of the 125 cards you exile, right?
00:59:29
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:59:30
ciderspence
You might play some of them, but this is just kind of a win con.
00:59:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, you're not.
00:59:34
ciderspence
I don't mind win cons.
00:59:35
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. It's like one those things where like, and I think this is one of the reasons why people hate theft decks a lot, is especially for newer players, decision paralysis sets in and then their turns kind of take forever because they thieve a bunch of cards and then they sit there and look through them all because they're not familiar with them. They're not in their deck and then they take forever to... but With deck like this, Rakdos, you only get to play them until your next end stuff. So that's the end of that turn, basically.
00:59:59
Zachary Jeblonski
And you have to send mana for those cards. So I'm thinking most of the time I'm doing this, I don't got mana to cast anything that I'm stealing. It's just basically going to exile. It's basically what it's doing. Yeah, so I think I might my mess with that.
01:00:13
Zachary Jeblonski
I think it...
01:00:13
ciderspence
Well, except you can do it at instant speed, right?
01:00:14
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
01:00:17
ciderspence
And once each turn, you you have a free sac outlet at least to exile. You know, if you have if you happen to have big mana stuff that you can sacrifice easily, you could, in theory, sacrifice a bunch.
01:00:29
ciderspence
I mean, you could get a bunch of cards to draw from on your turn when you untap, right?
01:00:33
Zachary Jeblonski
You could. Yeah.
01:00:34
ciderspence
Yeah.
01:00:34
Zachary Jeblonski
But I think like most of the red clone stuff that I have only works at sorcery speed. so like, in fact, I don't have a single instant that is a red clone.
01:00:40
ciderspence
Gotcha.
01:00:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Cause I don't think there is one. And then the, re you know, like, you know, the the ideal one would be Ortheon on the battlefield. And then i wait till the end step of my previous opponent's turn or whatever.
01:00:58
Zachary Jeblonski
but you know, that's the ideal. And like, you know, that's like a 3% of the time I play the deck that'll happen kind of thing. Especially if people see a Ractus and an Ortheon on the battlefield, I would assume that somebody will put two and two together and be like, oh, we can't, can't allow that.
01:01:11
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah,
01:01:11
ciderspence
But you're in haste colors, right? Like you could do, like yeah, I think that Ortheon, if you double the trigger, should just kill everyone, right?
01:01:14
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah I could.
01:01:21
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh boy, that would be after that'd be 100 and maybe 250 cards. Yeah.
01:01:27
ciderspence
Yes, if you put down a double the trigger thing, don't worry about it, don't worry about it, and then you sneak at sneak attack out Ortheon or something.
01:01:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Don't worry about it.
01:01:34
Zachary Jeblonski
Don't worry about it.
01:01:35
ciderspence
Is Ortheon small enough to meek attack out? Hold on. this is So, as as I think you can tell, i don't hate this deck. i I will get a little frustrated by it, but I do want to see it.
01:01:47
ciderspence
Oh,
01:01:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I think I want to build it because I just, I have a feeling it's not going to work anywhere near as well as I think it will, but it'd be funny nonetheless.
01:01:52
ciderspence
he has a sorcery. Yeah. Yeah.
01:01:57
ciderspence
Yeah, it sounds cool.
01:02:00
Zachary Jeblonski
But yeah, that's that's the end of my decks on deck. Anything else you want to talk about before we kind of wrap things up?
01:02:07
ciderspence
I'll just queue this up as a topic for next time. I think the thing I wanted to talk about was the concept of overlap index. This week, there were two, I think I saw two videos from...
01:02:14
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, okay.
01:02:20
ciderspence
creators that I kind of follow. One in praise of the notion of using overlap to kind of juice up your decks. And one that in title said why overlap is killing your deck, but I think kind of took a more balanced stance on some overlap is good, but maybe more intentional overlap is better.
01:02:40
ciderspence
And so it was something that I was thinking a lot about in the most recent few decks I've been putting together and some decks I'm tweaking that i wanted to talk through just the know what are your thoughts on overlap when do you think it's good when you think it's bad what are some of your favorite off the beaten path overlap cards stuff like that
01:02:56
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, and my overlap you're referring to like, like the amount of cards in your deck that do like kind of the same thing.
01:03:03
ciderspence
oh sorry no the exact opposite the amount of cards in your deck that filled different roles so like a canonical example for me of course would be bonder's ornament which is a bad mana rock and an even worse draw spell, but in a deck where you have the mana and nothing to do, lets you draw a card and where you need the mana, if you have it down, gives you mana.
01:03:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, okay.
01:03:27
ciderspence
So it's like, it functions as kind of ramp in in an expensive deck and kind of card draw in a deck where gonna have mana. So it kind of plays both roles.
01:03:36
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay. Yeah, let's get into it next week. So there you go, listeners. You something to forward to next week.
01:03:43
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, anything else? All right.
01:03:45
ciderspence
No, I'm good there.
01:03:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Well, thanks for joining me on another episode.
01:03:50
ciderspence
Take it easy, everybody.
01:03:51
Zachary Jeblonski
And eventually I'll find the button here for this.