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Ep. 39 - My Interest Died on the Stack
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Hiya, we have a lot of game talk and some love Marvel Supheroes! Also, a rant by Zack on turn times (who would've guessed?)
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Transcript
Introduction and Card Search
00:00:00
ciderspence
How's
00:00:12
Zachary Jeblonski
Hello, Welcome to another episode of Midlife's Crisis. I'm Zach and I'm joined again by Charles.
00:00:18
ciderspence
it going, Zach?
00:00:19
Zachary Jeblonski
It's going pretty good. We were just right before the show started, we were searching for a word that shows up on a green card that tutors up. Was it an elephant or just a creature?
00:00:31
ciderspence
I think the creature is an elf. It tutors up any card. So I'll describe the card. And maybe as I'm doing so, we'll remember the name. Otherwise, I'll have to keep going through this deck list.
00:00:38
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. Yes. I, in lieu of a cold open, i thought it'd be that nice if you just, you know, we, we gave some inside baseball to the show where we reach try to remember the cards that are in our index.
00:00:45
ciderspence
That's right.
00:00:50
ciderspence
So it's two and a green tap. Put a counter of some kind. I thought it was chorus counter, but it seems like it's not because we searched for that on the internet and couldn't find it.
00:01:01
ciderspence
Put a counter on this card. You may search your library for a creature card with mana value equal to the number of counters. Again, I thought chorus counters, but not chorus counters on this card.
00:01:13
ciderspence
Put that card onto the battlefield. I think this is an elf. It's relevant because I was playing it.
00:01:16
Zachary Jeblonski
You said it was two and a green.
00:01:18
ciderspence
The ability costs two and a green to activate.
00:01:22
ciderspence
and it's a card that i've seen correct yeah i've seen this card before i i knew i had it in my collection and i just never played it because that ability while good is slow and scary and i think in a way that makes it a bad idea yeah i mean i think you there it is yisan the wandering bard oh not an elf there we go not enough human rogue one that's why
00:01:24
Zachary Jeblonski
the ability, but not the cost of the creature itself.
00:01:37
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I'm trying to see if but I can find it before you find it. That's my goal here.
00:01:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Dang it. You got there for me. Oh, I would have never found it because I was looking for elves.
00:01:50
ciderspence
yep but That is because I lied to you. My fault, everyone.
00:01:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, it's all good. All right. I'm ready to get into some games
Games and Player Experiences
00:02:02
ciderspence
No, you know what? That's enough magic for me. Have a good one, everybody.
00:02:02
Zachary Jeblonski
that we played.
00:02:04
Zachary Jeblonski
All right, cool. Good episode. We'll see you again next week. Thank you for joining another episode of Midlife's Crisis. I'm Zach. I'm joined again by Charles.
00:02:17
Zachary Jeblonski
and I'm just kidding, folks. We're still going to talk.
00:02:19
ciderspence
That's one way to get to episode 52 quicker.
00:02:23
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, man, this podcasting thing easy. We should just get on just three minutes. Done. Moving on.
00:02:31
Zachary Jeblonski
That's called efficiency, baby.
00:02:33
ciderspence
Love it. Value. Folks, two episodes in one.
00:02:36
Zachary Jeblonski
All right.
00:02:37
ciderspence
All right. I apologize to everyone.
00:02:39
Zachary Jeblonski
No, it's all good. So my my games I'm going to talk about are going to include a little bit of salt talk. We haven't had salt talk in a while. And I need to i rant a bit.
00:02:52
Zachary Jeblonski
So would you like to go first or do you want me to get into it?
00:02:52
ciderspence
Oh, here for it. No, i would like to get some popcorn. Proceed.
00:02:57
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay, so I had two games on my my Tuesday place. That's one of my favorite places to play. Everything I'm about to talk about is not pertained to the personalities of the players. Everybody was very nice and sweet. People were good spirited and very little salt. Good you know good people to play with.
00:03:16
Zachary Jeblonski
But we had two basically same things happen. uh, between two games, drove me nat and nuts or nuts. And we talked about time equity, my favorite bug bear. but the first game I played was, wow, I have already, i just remember the offending deck. I'm trying to remember my own deck. That's how that shows you where my brain was in this game.
00:03:42
Zachary Jeblonski
you know, I'll, I'll figure it out eventually. I don't remember what it was.
00:03:46
ciderspence
Was it a recent build or an older build?
00:03:50
Zachary Jeblonski
man, it's gonna bother me now if I don't think of...
00:03:50
ciderspence
Like, was it Lucy? Was it Sin? Was it...
00:03:54
Zachary Jeblonski
It's either... okay so it must have been...
00:03:56
ciderspence
It wasn't Emotee.
00:03:59
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, I know what it was. It was Ashki. Okay. It was Ashki Teamer. The reason why I remember this because i was going to play it one more time before I thought about changing it to something else. It was Ashki, and I was going against... The defending deck we'll talk about is like the modified Fantastic Four pre-con, and then I had an InSpirit in that game, and then somebody else. Somebody else doesn't really matter. Yeah.
00:04:26
Zachary Jeblonski
So it this is about Storm, not the not the character Storm from the Fantastic Four, but the mechanic Storm. And basically, what I'm to talk about is I had played two games in that store that night.
00:04:40
Zachary Jeblonski
And the only reason time i was played two games is because they each involved a 45 minute plus turn. And... and
00:04:46
ciderspence
I'm sorry, 45 minute plus turn singular.
00:04:49
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. Yes. And what's funny is when we get to the second game, that 45 minute turn was technically mine in the second game, but we're going to talk about that. That's in the, in a sec, the first game though.
00:05:02
Zachary Jeblonski
basically there was a modified fantastic four pre-con and for folks who don't really know what the fantastic four pre-con is about it's more or less about casting non-creature spells that's more or less what the deck is trying to get you to do and they were running crystal as the commander which is probably the best commander and even though she's not even a member of the fantastic four but she's basically
00:05:23
ciderspence
She is briefly a member of the Fantastic Four, but yes.
00:05:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, she's she's a mana dork. I'll just pull her up. crystal now church and Crystal. Oh, yeah, there it is She's a one red-green flying. Whenever you cast a nine-creature spell, she does or Crystal does X damage each opponent, where X is the number spells. Or X is number of colors, that spell is. And she taps, add one of each color except for black.
00:05:49
Zachary Jeblonski
Uh, so she's a four color commander. mana dorks in the command zone are exceptionally powerful. It's, it's like a topic that I think I wanted to talk about at some point is just realizing that like, we have to treat every commander that produces mana in the command zone as like a make a major threat. And I don't think people have caught up on that yet.
00:06:06
ciderspence
You may have a chance later this episode.
00:06:08
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay, because I'm realizing now that like that might be the singular most powerful thing you can put in the command zone is is a way to generate mana early. But anyway, I digress. But yeah, so this deck is really about casting down creature spells. Crystal does some pinging for you.
00:06:22
Zachary Jeblonski
and there's a variety of other synergies. And my opponent, just to kind of fast forward to near the end game, had gotten a variety of like value pieces or or engine pieces.
00:06:32
Zachary Jeblonski
On the board, he had crystal. He had there, the new Simic enchantment that copies the first non-creature spell you cast each turn. a variety of other things. And then the the big thing was improvised capstone was on paradigm at this point.
00:06:47
Zachary Jeblonski
And without going through every single piece he had, I think I timed it. It was close to a 45 minute turn. Okay. well, I guess is so,
00:07:01
Zachary Jeblonski
it I guess i don't have too much to say about this one. The second game will have more of to say, but this thing was like, it wasn't the result of the pre-con. A lot of what was driving this was cards that he had added. i just remembered a big thing that kind of drug out this turn is Jeskai Ascendancy that he had in the deck.
00:07:20
Zachary Jeblonski
and for anybody who just needs to know what that is, it's an older enchantment, but it's, it's blue, red, white to just sky colors. and then whenever you cast a non-creature spell creatures, you control, get one, one to on a turn. And then here's the big one untap those creatures.
00:07:33
Zachary Jeblonski
And then whenever you cast a non-creature spell, you may discard a card. If you do, or you made, if whenever you cast a non-creature spell, you may draw a card. If you do discard card. So we had a couple Maddors including his commander out.
00:07:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Plus this, plus some other, you know, value pieces. And you can kind of see how the turn just kind of never ends. And he's very slowly pinging us down with crystals passive ability, but it's not really going anywhere. And we sat there and we sit there and of course, like,
00:08:02
Zachary Jeblonski
of course, without naming names, this player was getting a little, confused by all the different triggers and everything that was happening. So then you have people joining in and inputting what's supposed to happen and how the trigger is supposed to be layered. And then that creates discussions. And then one thing that leads to another and you have an insane turn.
00:08:17
ciderspence
Can I ask a question to jump the gun a little bit? And i I don't want to shortcut the story, but this was the last turn, right? Or was this a turn in the middle of the game?
00:08:18
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:08:26
Zachary Jeblonski
This was not even the last turn.
00:08:28
ciderspence
Okay, let me just say, I think my only input on this is, I think it is unacceptable to have a 45 minute turn that doesn't end the game. Like, I think it's unacceptable to have a 45 minute turn.
00:08:37
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes.
00:08:40
ciderspence
And unacceptable is...
00:08:42
ciderspence
is my is my gut reaction where like obviously people make mistakes people do things that they shouldn't do that doesn't make them bad people that doesn't you know whatever nobody's going to the salem witch trials over this but like don't do that but also like don't don't definitely don't do that and not win or lose like don't like nobody wants to keep playing
00:08:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Right.
00:09:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
Managing Long Turns and Game Flow
00:09:04
ciderspence
There was an episode of the commands or extra turns where they drafted banned cards. One of the banned cards was Shaharazad, which is banned.
00:09:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:09:10
ciderspence
I think it's banned because it's annoying to like, it's a card that makes you play a separate game and then return to the original game.
00:09:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep. Yeah.
00:09:17
ciderspence
And that's what taking a 45 minute turn is.
00:09:17
Zachary Jeblonski
It's one of my, it's, yeah.
00:09:20
ciderspence
Nobody likes that. Don't do that. Sorry.
00:09:22
Zachary Jeblonski
It's one of my favorite old timey cards that once in my life, I want to, I want to do it. Like I want to go through the whole, I want to do the whole Shahar Azar trigger.
00:09:31
ciderspence
It doesn't sound like you do because I think you just did it.
00:09:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Well, no, the reason is because I'd be mentally prepared for that, right? Like I'm going into this pod. Hey, we are going, I'm going to attempt as a resolve this shahar's art. If I do, we're going to do this thing. Everyone's on board before the game starts.
00:09:44
Zachary Jeblonski
We good, right?
00:09:44
ciderspence
Gotcha.
00:09:45
Zachary Jeblonski
It's sort of like sitting down to a bracket for game, right?
00:09:45
ciderspence
Yeah.
00:09:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Or a chaos game. Like we go, we talked about it.
00:09:50
ciderspence
Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:09:50
Zachary Jeblonski
there was no indication that this gentleman's term was coming up. That was going to do this. And to be fair to him. And also was in the beginning of my story is once again, it says nothing about him. he also had never experienced that with his deck. Like he got the right pieces and, you know, and the right setup and everything was right. And I do believe him, even though he never said these words, I did believe that this was the first time the deck has done the thing, in this way.
00:10:13
Zachary Jeblonski
And I've been in that position as a magic player where like I put together a deck and I didn't realize a certain combination of those cards would lead to and indeterminately long turn. Right.
00:10:23
Zachary Jeblonski
And kind of to your point, Charles, what I'll do a lot of times, and you might've seen me do this couple times is like, if I realized the triggers are just getting exponentially worse and it's going to get longer and longer, I'll just find a way to like, just end my turn. Like I'll just refuse to cast something to stop the triggers from happening or whatever, and just move on.
00:10:39
Zachary Jeblonski
because you get to a certain point and it's like, If it's not determinant that I'm going to win or even that I'm going to get or or it's going to take me so long to get any kind of damage or value out of this process. just in the interest of fun for everybody. I'd rather just end my turn or move to combat or whatever else.
00:10:56
Zachary Jeblonski
and then try again on the next turn or something like that. But yeah, there's nothing really to say here. It's just like, Hey, everybody like watch your turns a little bit. And if they start to get a little crazy, maybe consider whether or not, if winning the game is really so important that you want to make your opponents wait a half an hour or more.
00:11:14
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, so he he ended up winning the game, but that wasn't the last turn. So let's put it that way. Yeah, I don't know.
00:11:22
Zachary Jeblonski
don't know. How do you feel about the stormy kind of turns where they do take a while?
00:11:27
ciderspence
i have it I have a complicated relationship with them. I really don't like them, but it is frequently the case that I take the longest turns at the table.
00:11:38
ciderspence
I feel bad about it. I do try to mitigate it, but I understand that it happens. But I don't think that... So we played a game together on Friday night where I took...
00:11:52
ciderspence
a very long turn but i think very long was 15 minutes maybe i think i freak i will you know every other game night have a turn that takes 15 to 20 minutes and i don't feel good about that uh i do actively work to make my turns take less time and i goldfish decks a lot to try to get comfortable with them get a feel for what they're going to do so i'm less surprised by them but i know the long turns happen i try to give grace when other people have long turns but i think
00:11:57
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, no, your turns were totally fine.
00:12:23
ciderspence
in line with what you were saying it's kind of easy to tell in the middle of a long turn hey can i win the game here or am i just spinning my wheels for value and i think it's important for any one player in a pot of you know three or four or five people to recognize that you know if you're going to win the game that's an event that you know maybe you commit more to because then you can get to the next game but if you're not going to win the game i think you have to give up on optimal play try to just shortcut it and put yourself in a position to maybe win the game later because otherwise like you know what's worse than a 45 minute turn a 45 minute turn where everybody else then has a two minute turn and you have another 45 minute turn so like you can't that can't be the pattern of play for a game it's like
00:13:01
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep, I agree.
00:13:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. Yes.
00:13:15
ciderspence
I think a player who's going to regularly take 45 minute turns is no better than like playing a toxic commander who's, you know, whose play pattern is, oh, I get value, but my value rex that makes you all discard your hand and you can't play cards or in a jar you can't cast spells or something.
00:13:28
Zachary Jeblonski
Right.
00:13:30
ciderspence
It's like, yeah, that's a way to play the game, but like nobody likes that and that's not fun. And, you know, sometimes it's okay to, especially like to your point about Charizard, if you know going in,
00:13:42
ciderspence
you know when you see somebody's commander you know what you have a sense of what the place experience is going to be like so you can either prepare for it or say hey i'm not interested in that can you play a different deck uh you can walk to another table whatever but yeah to just start taking 45 minute turns is tough yeah that's bad even for me and i was going to remark later one of the things that we also i was talking to another buddy mine who was at that pod with us and we were talking about you played a budget version of your emoti deck at that same pod and you emotes a cascade commander and we were both kind of you know marveling at how consistently efficient you were with
00:14:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:14:21
ciderspence
long long in terms of cast turns, not taking long in terms of clock time. Like, you were very efficient with cascading in a way that it was obvious that you had thought about this deck a lot and played this deck a lot, and you kind of had a system down for casting all of the Emote spells without it taking 45 minutes.
00:14:37
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:14:38
ciderspence
Like, you had a... you You got to a position where your board was full, but it didn't feel like you were taking insanely long turns. It just so felt like you were way, way, way ahead, which was which was pretty impressive.
00:14:46
Zachary Jeblonski
I appreciate that.
00:14:50
Zachary Jeblonski
Because, yeah, I mean, and thanks for bringing it up and I appreciate the compliment. the It actually segues into the point i was going to, the next thing was going to make, which is like, goldfishing your decks is very, very important, especially if your decks where you involve a lot of like triggers or especially if the deck triggers that you have involve you drawing cards, because that'll often cause you to, not you specifically, Charles, but like anybody playing.
00:15:15
Zachary Jeblonski
that'll often cause a player to take very long in the turn because one of the big defining things that stops people from being able to advance is when they draw a card as a result of a trigger, they have to go through their whole decision-making process again.
00:15:28
ciderspence
And this is why when you said what Jeskai Ascendancy does, everything made sense because it did did the three things that are going to make a turn go infinitely long, right?
00:15:28
Zachary Jeblonski
But yeah, it's a goal.
00:15:31
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. Yes.
00:15:37
ciderspence
It untaps all your creatures, especially if you're running mana dorks. So it just basically gives you infinite mana.
00:15:41
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:15:43
ciderspence
It makes you draw a card, which means you're continually seeing new options, but it also makes you discard a card, which makes you think, oh, what of these which of these bangers in my hand do I have to let go of because I'm not sure what direction this turn is going to go.
00:15:55
ciderspence
So those are all three, like, one thing that makes your turn take longer because you have more options, another a card that gives you new options you didn't see, and then having to discard, having to give up on something that you're excited about. Those are all things that are, you know, that are kind of prone to this type of scenario.
00:16:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. And the the next thing that like players can do to kind of help with this process and it's something i learned is knowing the difference between a card that will get you closer to winning the game versus a card that may also get you closer to winning the game, but it's going to take a lot more time to do so.
00:16:29
Zachary Jeblonski
And the best example I is when I first started playing Magic, I didn't understand this concept. There's a lot of Magic players don't understand early on of like time equity and things like that. So when I first made a Modi, which is can be a deck that consumes a lot of time, like you mentioned, because you can have Cascades on top of Cascades and the stack can get wild and it can get out of control.
00:16:48
Zachary Jeblonski
When I i first made a Modi when I was a fresh young magic player, I was like, what's better than one Modi? Many emotes. So I put in a lot of clone effects that took off legendary so that whenever I casted a spell six or greater, it cascaded more than once.
00:17:04
Zachary Jeblonski
You can imagine what happened to my turn times once I did that. And I realized really quickly that it's actually much better for the pod and much better for the play experience that instead of cascading more, you just make sure that the stuff you cascade into is more impactful. So you spend less time, but get a similar amount of damage on the board or similar amount of advantage.
00:17:27
Zachary Jeblonski
and that's one of the things that i always try to, I, I do with all my decks, even non cascade decks is like, I asked myself, does this card, is there is a more time efficient way to get the value that this original card would have given me?
00:17:40
Zachary Jeblonski
so that when I get into the flow of it, my deck isn't getting slowed down by like, Oh, every time I do X, I draw a card. So then I have to read, decide, read, decide what I'm willing to do and all this other stuff. Right. Like, is there a way to like remove those speed bumps so that the turn just kind of goes.
00:17:54
Zachary Jeblonski
and that's kind of like my whole thing with, with just to go back to the game I was talking about, which is like, you know, just make sure that when you have, and you put value pieces into your deck, that it's not overly interrupting your flow of actions, I guess it's a very, I'm being very like generic, but I hopefully in my, hopefully the point I'm trying to make comes across, even if it's not the most well-formed thought out point.
00:18:19
ciderspence
Yeah, I mean, I think a summary is like, don't take 45 minute turns and do what you can to keep yourself from having the ability to take 45 minute turns. And if you find yourself gold fishing a deck that's having that type of turns, think about ways to not do that in live play or limit playing that deck, because that's not an experience I think that many Magic the Gathering players would enjoy.
00:18:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. And, and then, then I'll move wrap this topic. I'll move on to the next game, but another deck, here's a great example of that, which is a sagas. Like i'm running a saga commander is, is really guilty of this issue.
00:19:00
Zachary Jeblonski
good luck if you're going to saga commander that's just everybody i did a long time ago i did a tracks of sagas because she could proliferate the lower counters so you know you sometimes you have to imagine what your play experience is going to be like and if i have like four sagas on the board and i have a tracks out that means when i start my turn i draw a card i go through all the saga triggers then in my end step she proliferates i go through all the saga triggers again or a whole set of new saga triggers not to mention all the other sagas that i played that turn
00:19:29
Zachary Jeblonski
And you just very quickly see how that's going play out. and And so if you're going to be somebody that wants to run a deck like that, if you were like whether it's Tom Bombadil or Traxa, or I'm just talking about specifically Saga Commanders,
00:19:43
Zachary Jeblonski
you really have to goldfish the heck out of that. And you have to create some sort of system, you know, maybe using a little plastic cubes that I use sometimes you have to create a system so that you can ram through all those triggers and, and try to get, you know, everything done in a concise, intelligible way. Uh, so that, you know, your turn times aren't exponentially longer than everybody else's.
00:20:06
Zachary Jeblonski
so just, uh, just a lot of PSA for everybody out there in the audience, if you're going to run that sort of commander.
00:20:13
ciderspence
Yeah, and i I have a Saga deck. I have not played it often, but I kind of recognize that as well. And I think it's... Yeah, I think can we talk often about like the puzzles that Magic the Gathering presents you.
00:20:26
ciderspence
This can be one of those puzzles, right?
00:20:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, this is a puzzle.
00:20:27
ciderspence
It's like, I have a commander that has a
00:20:28
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:20:31
ciderspence
a clear or an obvious or a common play pattern that is toxic or not fun for the table. I want to play this commander. How can I play it in a way that's not toxic or not fun for the pod? Like it's worth investing in figuring that out before you just trot it out.
00:20:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Like, like that new Quan, the new Quandrix dragon that came out and secrets of six Draven and gives all your instant sorceries cascade.
00:20:46
ciderspence
So yeah.
00:20:54
Zachary Jeblonski
You know, every time a new big, bold, a green, blue creature comes out, I look at it and see if I'm going to put it in the Modi. And I looked at Quandrix and I was like, no, because, yeah, I'll get more value when I cast my Insta-Centered Sorceries, but I can already see how the turn table how the turns are going to right? Because if I have a Modi and Quandrix out at the same time and I cast a big Sorcery, now I've got two Cascades.
00:21:15
Zachary Jeblonski
And then each of those cascades could then trigger either Quandrix or Modi. And you can just, you know, in my head, I can see the flow chart of how this is going to go. so I just want to, just won't put that kind of card in my deck. I'd rather cascade once with something more impactful than cascade four or five times with a bunch of little things. Right.
00:21:34
Zachary Jeblonski
So moving on to the second game, which I think is the far more egregious game and a game where i got snippy. I'm just going to admit it on podcast here.
00:21:45
ciderspence
I'm just going to say, I'm sorry for your loss. If you had 45 minute turn and then you had a worse game, that is, that's a tough night.
00:21:51
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. So, and this is a, this is a situation where, I think everybody's gonna on my side on this one. The first one I could, you you could, you call me complaining and you could say, zach he's doing the thing. Let him have his fun. I understand that completely.
00:22:06
Zachary Jeblonski
I didn't, I didn't, for the record, I did not trample this guy's fun. I didn't say a thing to him, but anyway, this game, i was playing Amalia And I was versus Amalia is a white black life gain commander that explores some graveyard gets big, all that sort of stuff. lot of little white Healy dorks versus Venom, which is a Jund creature sacrifice, basically deck into white black.
00:22:31
Zachary Jeblonski
harm I can never pronounce Cardi. I can't pronounce this pirate, but it's the white black pirate from Lothar. Lost Caverns of Ixalan that turned your, your vampires into four, three demons.
00:22:44
Zachary Jeblonski
And then, uh, uh, yeah, that one.
00:22:46
ciderspence
Cladaleno?
00:22:48
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. Yes. And then another deck to the right that I don't remember matter. Oh, I let somebody borrow my Italian deck cause they were, didn't have a deck. So fast forward, we get near the end of the game. Everyone's low on health.
00:23:01
Zachary Jeblonski
My graveyard's pretty huge. I get board wiped or everybody board wipes. There's like nothing on the board except for Junt player has some creatures on the board with a greater good. He has a huge graveyard, yada, yada. yada So it's like 845 or let's say nine. Let's be fair. Let's be nine.
00:23:22
Zachary Jeblonski
And the Stork was a 10. And that's why I know how long this turn was. it gets to my turn and I cast raise the past. right. And raise the past as a two white, white sorcery return all creatures power to, or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. It's, it's great. And Amalia, most of my creatures meet that criteria.
00:23:42
Zachary Jeblonski
So I'm about to bring back like, I would say 10, we'll say 10 creatures and they all have different life gain effects on impact. And then most importantly is a starscape cleric that's coming back.
00:23:58
Zachary Jeblonski
And it's actually a cleric is a a creature from Bloomberg. It's one in a black, it's got offspring, which doesn't matter for this situation flying. it can't block. And it says whenever I gain life, each opponent loses one life.
00:24:09
Zachary Jeblonski
So this is all gonna happen. I'm about to gain like, I think it was like close to 30 some life. So everybody was about to lose 30 life. i I was about to win. So I cast raised the pass. Nobody responded on the stack. I went, I literally did the priority thing.
00:24:23
Zachary Jeblonski
It resolved. All those creatures entered, all those triggers entered the stack. And then my opponent spent 45 minutes trying to see what combination of greater gooding his creatures and using various abilities that his creatures had to kill me on the stack to prevent those triggers and resolving.
00:24:42
Zachary Jeblonski
And that's what I sat there for 45 minutes waiting for him to figure out.
00:24:47
Zachary Jeblonski
I got no words.
00:24:51
ciderspence
Okay, I have follow up questions, but did he get there? Did he get you?
00:24:55
Zachary Jeblonski
So that that's going to be debatable. So what happens is it's like eight, four, it's like now nine 45, I've been playing Slay the Spire on my phone for like a half an hour. I've been like throwing out little snide comments every now and then as they're trying to make it just because like I've, I very quickly got to the point where I didn't care if I want or lost at this point. I just, I want to go home.
00:25:15
Zachary Jeblonski
But, you know, I don't want to be a jerk to the rest of the pod people, right? You know, in case they had a response or whatever. So they go through this whole thing. They come up with this very Rube Goldberg-esque system of events that they think can get them there.
00:25:29
Zachary Jeblonski
and And it involves killing that Starscape Cleric on the stack because technically Starscape Cleric's triggers aren't on the stack yet. Because the Starscape Cleric says whenever you gain life, each opponent loses one life. So I have all the life gain triggers in the stack. I just don't have any of the Starscape clerics. So technically if they can kill it before any of the stack resolves, then they won't, I'll gain the life, but they won't lose any life.
00:25:49
Zachary Jeblonski
And they had also, in as part of doing this and I think it was Kukushko or somebody with something else was in the the the graveyard where they could they could burn me out, basically. They could burn me out on the stack before the Starscape Cleric got resolved or got his triggers.
00:26:07
Zachary Jeblonski
Well, it involves killing the Starscape Cleric and yada, yadda yada, yada. I had a shelter in hand. So their whole thing was to like get eternal witness to do this, to to cast tear sunder to kill Starscape player. And I was like, I waited like 45 minutes because I wanted them to tell me what they were going to do. So I don't know what the shelter or to, to cast shelter on.
00:26:28
Zachary Jeblonski
And so they finally And I'm like, all right. In response, I cast Shajiri Shelter. And then they're like, well, why don't you tell me that? And we wouldn't have gone through all this. And I'm like, well, you know, I mean, like, I'm not going to tell you what my protection spell is in hand, you know, while you're figuring out how to kill me.
00:26:44
Zachary Jeblonski
So I guess you could, and they said they said that they had, they, if they redid the whole thing, they probably could find a way to get around the shelter. So I guess it's up in the air whether or not I lost or won that game because the store clerk was like, Hey, you got to go.
00:26:57
ciderspence
Oh, wait a second.
00:26:58
Zachary Jeblonski
And I'm like, yeah, we do got to go.
00:26:58
ciderspence
Oh, sorry. Okay, yeah, hold on. Sorry. I just have to interject. That's not how it works. The why didn't you tell me i could have done this differently is not a valid Magic the Gathering expression.
00:27:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Well, I mean, because i think I think he was like, well, we didn't have to spend this exorbitant amount of time figuring out how to kill you if we knew that you had that. And I'm like, well, that's on you guys. Like, like I'm not crazy here. That's your problem. a
00:27:23
ciderspence
I will say i i find this story... I agree that this is bad, but this is less bad to me, I think, than the first one because I think this is something I've said before on the podcast, but like the urge to to stay alive in-game in Magic the Gathering is very hard to appreciate if you're not in-game.
00:27:46
ciderspence
like you're You're playing this deck.
00:27:46
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah i understand.
00:27:48
ciderspence
I think you know from from a bird's eye view, this is this is a game. We play it for fun. It's a hobby, whatever. But when when you're in it, it does feel like a fight for your life. So the the notion that somebody could exhaust all of their options before being eliminated, I think is a little easier to grapple with.
00:27:58
Zachary Jeblonski
It does. It does.
00:28:06
ciderspence
But I think that also includes you holding on to the information and the target of your shelter because you also don't want to be eliminated by this player who's trying to eliminate you to stay alive themselves. So I would say that this one is, you know, 45 minutes is still 45 minutes. Nobody wants that. Don't do that, please. People self-included. I'm looking in the mirror also, but I do think there's a difference between trying your hardest to exhaust your options options to stay alive and having a turn that just goes out of control because you can't make the optimal decision quickly.
00:28:39
ciderspence
And I think, This is a little more understandable to me. Again, not better. i wouldn't have felt that much better about it at the time. But I guess I can see myself in one of those positions more readily than the position of I'm just accruing so much value. I'm not sure if I'll get there or not, but I want to keep going.
00:28:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I mean, I guess for me, i'm like I'm very much like, I have been in these situations where I'm like, hey, I know there's a very, in my head, I'm telling myself, like there's a really complicated way to to make this work. I guess I put an internal time limit on myself of like 10 minutes or so, where it's just like, if I haven't figured this out by then, then I just pass priority and and whatever happens, happens, whether that's die or whatever.
00:29:21
Zachary Jeblonski
Because I mean, i yes, I understand the the impulse to not die, but also I think like, There has to be a limit on that, like of like how much time you're going to give yourself to get there.
00:29:34
Zachary Jeblonski
You know, so I guess I guess in long story short, I don't know who will technically won that game. By the end of that, I did not care. i was like, you guys can say you won. I'm cool with that.
00:29:45
Zachary Jeblonski
They did.
00:29:45
ciderspence
I mean, just to go back, like if you have a protection spell and you fizzle what they were trying to do and then they say, wait, I could have done something differently, that doesn't matter. like once you Once you ultimately commit to your thing, like I think this is this is a consequence of takesies, backsies being a little more rampant than they need to be.
00:30:01
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:30:02
ciderspence
But like once you say what you're going to do, if I have a way to stop it, that's just it. like you you had your chance to figure out how to do it. I'm not obligated to tell you how I can stop you. And if you say how you're going to do it, and then I say I'm going to stop you, unless you made an egregious error with something that you didn't understand on board or that you missed for some reason that people think is okay, that's just, you just got got. i mean, I think that's that's part of playing Magic 2 is, you know, having your attempts thwarted, like you're all trying to compete against each other. I think that's part of ordinary gameplay. So I don't
00:30:38
ciderspence
Back to the question of like, did you win or did you lose? No, I think you stopped that from happening if you protected a piece that it was critical for them to destroy to stay alive. So in my mind, that's how it ended, but I can understand you not caring.
00:30:48
Zachary Jeblonski
Well, yeah, I think and and think to give them a little credit, i think what they were saying and I'm and this is probably my fault for not explaining clearly is they were saying not that that they would have redone the whole process differently. It's just that now that I've casted the Shijiri Shelter, they were going to they were claiming that basically there might be a way to then.
00:31:09
Zachary Jeblonski
you know, with that on the stack, continue to find a way to like kill me. Right. and it just was like, oh, well now that I've added this element, let's go through this whole process again and see how we can stack these triggers again. How much creatures, you know, I'm like, you know, I don't care. I just don't.
00:31:25
ciderspence
Were they making creatures to sacrifice or something?
00:31:28
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, there was like a lot of stuff going on because the guys, the Jun players graveyard was, I mean, it had to be close to 50 cards in it. Like, and so you had like, i think he had like at sushi was in the in the graveyard and they were going to find a way to use those treasures to do this.
00:31:43
Zachary Jeblonski
And then like, there was just, it was between him and the other guy to the left of them. They were collaborating together, like discussing the order of events and all this. And I think he had some stuff in his graveyard that could be tapped into as well.
00:31:51
ciderspence
right
00:31:54
Zachary Jeblonski
It was very much like a a very attenuated series of events to get them where they needed to be to you know handle. But I guess the last little like thing i' I'll say on this, which was fun funny, is you know i go through the whole priority check on raise the pass because I know once all my creatures come back, there's going to be a whole crap load of triggers and I'm going to win the game basically.
00:32:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Nobody responds to that. I put all the creatures out. I, all the triggers enter the stack and then, then they start doing their low calculations and like five minutes in, they're like, one of them did say, oh well, we, you know, i wasn't, i wasn't aware that this was going to happen when resolve it kind of respond to it And I said, no, absolutely not. You cannot respond to raise the past. That's done. We're, we're here now. It's like, you i was like, you can't like, like, what are you doing?
00:32:42
ciderspence
Yeah, I think if you explain what it does, and you especially if you do a table check as you explain what it does, once it resolves, you can't you can't take it back.
00:32:42
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah.
00:32:51
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, yeah i did I did all that.
00:32:51
ciderspence
like yeah no Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
00:32:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:32:54
ciderspence
It's like that you're you know you're your friendly obligation is to do that, to do your best to make sure that everyone's on board with you resolving the spell and kind of give a broad blanket what you know especially if you's you know there's something sometimes you'll you know when you're in discard right like if you discard something that's got flashback or that's got you know encore or something or something that has a graveyard ability or something it's you know it's nice it's friendly to say hey just so you know i put this in my graveyard blah blah blah blah but you're not then obligated to say every turn hey remember i got this thing remember i got this thing and remember i got this thing So like if you say what raise the past does and you're like, okay, I'm about to resolve this thing.
00:33:28
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I'm not. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
00:33:34
ciderspence
It's going to bring all my stuff back from the graveyard. It's or it's going to give me a lot of triggers. Is that cool? And then that's cool. That's cool. Like you don't then get to bring one of those things back and someone say, oh, wait, I didn't realize that was in your graveyard and then that was going to happen.
00:33:47
ciderspence
No, you had your chance. And then it's, yeah, you don't just keep getting chances.
00:33:49
Zachary Jeblonski
You had your chance. Yep.
00:33:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, so that was my little, well that's my spiel for Tuesday. i kind of walked away, Tuesday it was like definitely like, you know, like kind of a day. But I guess the the the moral of the story, folks, is if you're going to play a deck involving a lot of triggers, goldfish the heck out of it Consider removing and replacing some cards that maybe create triggers that don't, aren't worth the time investment.
00:34:19
Zachary Jeblonski
And then if you're going to think about how to kill somebody or how to handle a situation, give yourself a time limit. that's that's my That's my two takeaways.
00:34:28
ciderspence
Yeah, we briefly tried in our pod playing with a life tracker that keeps track of turn time. And it seemed like a bad idea. But I will say the one time that I vividly remember us doing it, I wound up taking a 15 minute turn. And I think that was good context to know with that deck I was playing.
00:34:45
ciderspence
just to say, hey, this this turn was is a little out of control. and i i I don't know. I think it's just good to check yourself. I think the other thing I would say is that you mentioned that you didn't rain on the guy's parade in the first game.
00:34:58
ciderspence
I think sometimes that might be the inclination to not say anything.
00:34:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:35:04
ciderspence
And I agree that getting salty is something to avoid where possible. But I do think that like checking in with the player who's spiraling I think that's just a good thing generally. So if nobody's saying anything as a player takes a 45 minute turn, I also think that's probably not optimal because I think you just have to let the player know, hey, do you think you can win this turn?
00:35:26
ciderspence
Do you think all your turns are going to be like this? Like, i think you do have to kind of prompt people who get in that zone because, you know, having been there and not turns that long, but in long turns, you're just thinking about the turn and the mechanics and stuff, you're kind of like that meme of the person with the whiteboard and all the equations and whatever, and you're not really thinking about the pod.
00:35:42
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:43
ciderspence
I think sometimes the pod has to reassert itself and say, hey, there are other people here. We're also trying to have fun eventually. Is that going to happen? Or you know are we just going to do this to the grave? So I think checking in is is still a good thing to do you know as politely as possible.
00:36:01
Zachary Jeblonski
No, I agree. I agree. I think that's, you know, I, that's why I don't necessarily feel any ill will towards the first player on that first time. Cause it was like a very, wonky set of of value pieces that created this long turn and yeah i didn't like push him on it i think you're right about that the the second game was much more egregious because it's like you know come on guys but yeah i think those are before we get to the games we had on friday did you have any other games you want to talk about before those friday games
00:36:34
ciderspence
Yeah, I had a few games that I just wanted to bring up a little bit.
Marvel Decks and Positive Game Outcomes
00:36:36
ciderspence
So I did wind up playing a bunch of the Marvel decks that I built. I've been really excited about this set so far.
00:36:40
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:36:42
ciderspence
I think I remarked to you at the store on Friday, one of the games that I played and won was a direct result of us talking about cards that would be good in a deck, me getting those cards, me casting those cards, and basically winning the game almost immediately afterwards.
00:36:57
Zachary Jeblonski
which Which one was this again?
00:36:59
ciderspence
This was not Raise the Palisades, Call Forth the Tempest.
00:37:04
Zachary Jeblonski
i'll call forward to Tempus, yeah.
00:37:04
ciderspence
So I played Niko Minoru. She basically burns when you cast a spell from anywhere other than your hand. So whenever you cast a a spell from anywhere other than your hand, she deals two damage to each opponent. She uses a two four She costs three and a red. She's got an ability, two and a red, tap, discard a card. Exile cards on top of your library until you exile a non-land card. You may cast it without paying its mana cost.
00:37:26
ciderspence
So I didn't really use that ability much. It was just burn, like, you know. If you've heard the podcast before, you know I'm in my mono red burn era.
00:37:35
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:37:35
ciderspence
So this is just another one of those decks. But, you know, I kind of had some good pieces out. This was turn six or seven. the board, everybody had kind of put out their value pieces or whatever, but I was able to exile and cast Call Forth this Tempest from exile.
00:37:50
ciderspence
And I wiped the board of my opponent's creatures. And basically, the game was over the next turn because they had to rebuild. And I just had a turn where I went off and burned them out. So that was one game that I just wanted to bring up. So thank you, Zach.
00:38:05
ciderspence
And then i played last Thursday, so not this previous Thursday, but two Thursdays ago. I played at, no, sorry, two Saturdays ago. I played at a store I hadn't played at before, and I had a couple of really good games there.
00:38:19
ciderspence
One game I wanted to shout out, there was a podcast from the Goldfish crew where they were talking about, are there too many legends? And one of their mastheads for there being too many legends was Colleen Wing from the from the recent Marvel set.
00:38:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:38:32
ciderspence
So Colleen Wing.
00:38:33
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:38:34
ciderspence
She is one in the white legendary creature, human samurai hero. She's a two, two. Whenever you cast a spell that targets a creature you control, put a one, one counter on Colleen and scry one. So of all the decks I've built in the model set, I think she was the first one I built.
00:38:48
ciderspence
She's a character. I like she's, uh, She and her friend, Misty Knight, have a detective agency in the comics called Nightwing Investigations. I was looking for a way, like one of the first things I did in the Marvel set was try to look for a way to put her and Luke Cage and Iron Fist, who are all buddies in the comics, together in one deck with one of them as a commander. it doesn't work out because they're all mono red or mono white.
00:39:08
ciderspence
But I really like her. Anyway, I played a deck with her, had a really good time, even though I got off to a slow start. So I don't know. I've had a lot of fun with this set so far. one Won a few games, had a great time.
00:39:18
Zachary Jeblonski
That's awesome.
00:39:20
ciderspence
So yeah. Okay. Now, why don't you set up the games that we played on Saturday together?
00:39:27
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh yeah, sure. or Friday.
00:39:30
ciderspence
Yes, Friday. Sorry.
Friday Game Recap
00:39:31
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we went to the store Friday. went to a store Friday and we had, uh, two games, uh, four pod. It was, it was me, you, a friend and, uh, a gentleman from the store and the first game. Oh, the first game.
00:39:49
Zachary Jeblonski
uh, was I brought out, uh, my budget, a Modi deck, cause it's $60. I'm actually just pulling it up again, just to make, see with the, with how much the price has moved since last time I looked at this.
00:40:01
Zachary Jeblonski
but it's my, it's my $60 Modi. Oh, wow. I actually had $52 now. So it's actually way below pre-cons now. Okay. but yeah, so I, you know, I tried to hold it a $60 budget on this deck. it's the, it, the reason why it exists is because like a lot of times I would want to play Modi and,
00:40:17
Zachary Jeblonski
Modi can only really come out in certain pods. you know like it it probably can' it's like It's in a weird space where it's not quite good enough for bracket four, but kind of too good for bracket three. But anyway, so I bring out the budget one when I get that Modi fix without feeling like I am overpowering the pod.
00:40:36
Zachary Jeblonski
so it's eldrazi tribal but it's you know the cheap eldrazi for the most part there's not not there's not the good titans or anything like that in there but enough about me my right friend was playing white black killian deck uh the pre-con blood one with the auras and him goading and then you were playing uh mono green elves do you want to talk about that one
00:41:03
ciderspence
Yeah, I was playing Shang-Chi. Let me see. Shang-Chi. I was playing Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, one and a green legendary creature, a human warrior, or hero.
00:41:15
ciderspence
You may activate abilities of creatures you control as though those creatures had haste. And tap, add two mana of any one color, spend this mana only to activate abilities of creature sources. So...
00:41:26
ciderspence
I basically used that first ability and ran a lot of elves with mana abilities. And so, you know, we were talking, you were talking earlier about it maybe just being busted to have mana production in the command zone.
00:41:39
ciderspence
This is kind of that. I did wind up using the mana for a few things. It's obviously not like the traditional one, but the fact that it has haste and it, I think, you know,
00:41:51
ciderspence
It's a combination that makes it, I think, on par with some of the other things because it lets you, if you're able to cheat out things, or if you're able to get things out, it lets you activate abilities fast that you ordinarily would activate slow. you know I gave the example of Ysuan earlier, who's going to be my part of the week. But yeah, being able to tutor something out, not at ins instant speed, but the turn that comes down, it turns out is pretty good. And the commander being able to help with that is is pretty strong.
00:42:19
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, yeah. And then our final player i was playing the pre-con, the T'Challa or Black Panther pre-con.
00:42:30
Zachary Jeblonski
And I'll read T'Challa out. That's whenever T'Challa enters or attacks, create a tapped Vibranium token. Vibranium tokens are basically power stones but happen to be indestructible. And whenever you cast an artifact spell with matter value four or greater, put two one ones on T'Challa. So I guess to talk briefly about his deck, his deck did well. I mean, T'Challa got really big and got really threatening in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, he,
00:42:55
Zachary Jeblonski
he the child kept getting, basically his commander kept getting removed or impeded in certain ways. it wasn't able to close the deal out, but I will say it was a pretty good showing from the, from the pre-con. do you have any comments on the pre-con?
00:43:10
ciderspence
Yeah, I think it's pretty good. I remember one of the MTG podcast crews kind of talked about it and said it's pretty good. It's a little unfocused.
00:43:21
ciderspence
There are kind of a few sub-themes, obviously big artifacts because of the Vibranium tokens, but there's also like a Monarchy sub-theme in there that makes it a little bit less streamlined with what it's trying to do.
00:43:29
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:43:34
ciderspence
And I think you kind of felt that a little bit in his deck. like There were The highs were very high, like there were some really good cards in there and there was some good synergy and there was some like his board definitely kept accumulating value that was hard to disrupt with the vibranium tokens. And he got a board wipeout that was going to wreck, you know, much of the rest of the table and leave him in a really strong position.
00:43:55
ciderspence
But I also felt like at a point he was out of cards and then he had some kind of non impactful plays. And I think that's, you know, that's kind of just a pre-con experience. Like it is synergistic. It's pretty strong, but.
00:44:07
ciderspence
it's maybe a little unfocused.
00:44:09
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I agree with that. It does have that pre-con problem where they're trying to smash two archetypes together. and a lot of times it would be better if they just focused on one archetype. So that makes sense. But I, I, I agree. I just was doing a a quick scan of the legendaries in there. I think a Selesnya monarch deck would be really cool.
00:44:28
Zachary Jeblonski
So, it'd be nice if I would like to play against a Selesnya monarch deck with a lot of those cards, that'd be kind of cool. It was something, it would it be something even I would consider, but I've already made my Slenia deck, my heinous bracket four stacks deck. So,
00:44:42
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. So anyway, so to get back to the game as well, we kind of alluded to it, uh, a Modi does what a Modi does. I was able to kind of just go and go.
00:44:52
Zachary Jeblonski
but then I smacked into the big weakness of my deck, which is fine. It's, you know, I'm working with them budgetary concerns and this deck definitely was made in my, I would say 2024 to 2023 mindset. So there's a lot of like parts of this deck where all like, as I was playing it, I was like, oh,
00:45:10
Zachary Jeblonski
I would not have included this card if I was making this deck today. So I'm gonna do some revisions on it. but yeah, I'm able to put a lot of big Eldrazi's out. and, uh, it just took me a long time to find any, I would say cool finishers. I had a lot of Eldrazi's out that didn't have keywords, so it wasn't really easy to get in anywhere.
00:45:28
Zachary Jeblonski
eventually did find my trample or enabler, but it was kind of like too little too late at that point. But yeah, no, I, I included a ton of value, got a crap ton of lands, got a lot of Eldrazi's out. Uh, I was very threatening for most of the game.
00:45:40
Zachary Jeblonski
I just couldn't quite close it out. I couldn't find the pieces I needed to close it out. and, uh, you ended up closing it out. do you want to talk about it a little bit about how your deck performed?
00:45:50
ciderspence
yeah i thought Yeah, I thought my deck performed pretty well, so I put it together the night before. i swapped out a few cards at the very end. I was just kind of looking for all of the things I had that tapped to do something or that had an ability that I could use like commander's mana for.
00:46:05
ciderspence
One kind of corner case that i ran into that I was happy about, I run a lot of basic land cyclers in my decks just to kind of keep my quote unquote land count at 40 while still having, you know, fewer just lands that do nothing later in the game.
00:46:22
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:46:23
ciderspence
And i think from asking the internet, but you know, it could be wrong. I think land cycling abilities on creatures are eligible for that mana that my commander produces. So I was...
00:46:35
ciderspence
i I liked the fact that I could use his ability to pay for cycling to get the lands early in the game that set me back traditionally.
00:46:39
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:46:42
ciderspence
But yeah, I mean, it was basically just elves. Like, I think there are 24, 25 elves in the deck, which is probably not enough. There are some creatures that aren't elves that do things that there probably is an elf that does. I just don't have it or I just couldn't find it in time.
00:46:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:46:56
ciderspence
But yeah, there's like there's pretty good. so You know, I have the thing that gives Elves Shroud. I have a couple of things that pump Elves. And I got to a point where I had out two things that tapped for approximately the number of creatures I had.
00:47:12
ciderspence
So I had a lot of mana and then I had an untapper out. So yeah, I just had like a lot of optionality on my turn. And so my card the week, Ysau and the Wanderer Bard. I got to a point. So Zach was the threat.
00:47:23
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:47:24
ciderspence
we talked pretty loudly about how zach was the threat and how to deal with zach as the threat uh the t'challa player
00:47:32
ciderspence
put out the board wipe uh the board wipe the delayed board wipe thing and then it came around and so i said to zach hey zach uh well zach had a way to deal with the board wipe thing we made some deal where zach let me do something and not impact my board if i
00:47:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:47:51
ciderspence
I don't remember. Oh, I was going to not swing at him, I guess, was something because I'd been swinging at him. Oh, yeah, your life total was low because you were the threat. And I agreed to not swing at you if you stopped the board wipe or something. Because, oh, yeah, because despite the fact that we needed a board wipe for Zach, I was running elves, which are, I think, notoriously prone to board wipes because you get rid of all those creatures. And those creatures are also the card production.
00:48:16
ciderspence
So it's just really hard to get back on track if you're running a very heavy creature deck. after a board wipe so while the board wife would have been great for zach it actually wouldn't have been that great because the board wipe the particular one left artifacts and lands both of which zach had a lot of also the t'challa player had a lot of so i would have left both of them in a really good position would have wrecked me i think it would have actually not impacted our other pod mate that much because he had he had a dressed up creature
00:48:22
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes, it is. Yeah.
00:48:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:48:46
ciderspence
but not a a wide board outside of the auras on that creature. But yeah, the board wipe was not in my best interest. So I, you know, Zach and I made a deal.
00:48:56
ciderspence
This was this was maybe one of the more fun games i've I can remember playing in recent memory because it was a chance for us to both be very political. I think we both were playing decks that were pretty strong but had pretty glaring weaknesses.
00:49:09
ciderspence
And at different points, like the table kind of recognized that we were in a good position and was kind of working against us.
00:49:09
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:49:14
ciderspence
And we both tried to talk our way out of it. And it was, it's funny, like, having played with zach a lot now zach has a very distinct political style and i think it takes it takes a minute well i i think you're always good natured about it afterwards which makes all the difference right
00:49:27
Zachary Jeblonski
I appreciate that. I appreciate you sugarcoating that. I like that. Yeah.
00:49:35
ciderspence
But, you know, at first I was appreciating this, but then I found myself basically doing the same thing. Like when I was trying to, I also didn't want the board right to happen. So Zach is, Zach was swinging, swinging in at me for like 40 damage or something in one of the turns.
00:49:49
ciderspence
And he was asking me how much collective toughness I had on my board, which is never a question you want your opponents to ask you. But he he sent like 40 damage at me. I was able to soak up like 30 of it with creatures, but I made sure that the table knew.
00:49:59
ciderspence
I was like, oh, so now Zack's going to wipe out some of my board and then he's going to not want the board wipe to happen anymore because then it would just impact him symmetrically, which was true.
00:50:07
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:50:09
ciderspence
But I also wanted to make sure that the board wipe player knew, hey, if you board wipe now, you're helping Zack more than you would have been before.
00:50:09
Zachary Jeblonski
Which is true.
00:50:15
ciderspence
Ignore the fact that that would also still annihilate me, which is probably in your long-term best interest. But yeah, that player didn't board wipe that turn. And then by the next turn, I was kind of in a position to be able to Yisan twice to kind of tutor my deck for answers.
00:50:31
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:50:32
ciderspence
And I was able to keep... In fairness, that the T'Challa player did attack me, which kind of led me to be defensive and then kind of realized my the potential of the Yisan approximately infinite mana combination.
00:50:45
ciderspence
I was able to tutor up some things that remove artifacts and i could do it not at instant speed but i let the creatures resolve they had abilities that would remove creatures and because my commander lets me activate abilities at instant speed i could deal with them before the attacks resolved so i did wind up pulling that one out i think the next turn i don't know i had to out have a lot of elves and i think the table kind of scooped to that i had to i had an onboard pump effect so but that was a really fun one
00:51:03
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah,
00:51:15
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah that was really good. Yeah, I mean, it was... Like, I knew... It's like... that i knew at a certain point, like, once you had a pump out, I was i was s SOL. Because, like, Emody doesn't...
Deck Reflections and Strategies
00:51:28
Zachary Jeblonski
interaction is not a, my budget mode. He does not really interact to be honest. It's very much like I'm just going to out value and hope that it's enough. And sometimes it's not, you know, it wasn't enough to get through the elves and that's okay.
00:51:40
Zachary Jeblonski
But like, everyone's like, well, can you do something about this? Or can you, I was like, no, I really can. What I do is I poop out creatures and I hope that gets the job done. That's what that deck does. and it's all the lamest Eldrazi that you've never heard of. Uh,
00:51:56
ciderspence
Well, it's funny. We were at the beginning of that game when you said you were going to play an Emote deck.
00:52:01
ciderspence
You know, I'm familiar with Emote's work. You're like, no, no, no it's not that Emote. It's a budget Emote. And i was I was skeptical. But I think by the end of the game, i understood...
00:52:11
ciderspence
I understood both of our perspectives. Emote is a very powerful value engine and you got a lot of value, but the value that you got was below the level of the value you get in value decks these days.
00:52:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:52:24
ciderspence
And so I could definitely see what you were saying where it's like, hey, I'm not, you know, this isn't, oh this deck is not sending its best.
00:52:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:52:31
ciderspence
Like it will send them, you know.
00:52:32
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. Let me tell you about a nine mana five, seven that I could put out. It's got flash. that That's what it does. Yeah.
00:52:42
ciderspence
Yeah, but i but but I do think that that was part of this being a fun competitive game, because I think if you were putting out your usual value, that game would have been a lot shorter and would have been even more one sided.
00:52:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:52:52
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, if this if this was big boy Modi, yeah, it would have, it would have gotten way out of hand because big boy Modi is full of really expensive, good stuff, you know, including my card of the week that I came from a deck that I did.
00:52:52
ciderspence
As it was, it was.
00:53:05
Zachary Jeblonski
I i didn't even, or a game that I didn't even talk about, but it's fine. Uh, my card of the week is astral dragon. and this is one of my favorite blue kind of closer pieces. It's a six blue, blue dragon. It's a four, four. It's a very low status for dragon, but that's because.
00:53:22
Zachary Jeblonski
When it enters, you make two tokens that are copy of target non-creature permanent, notably any non-creature permanent, not just yours, except their 3-3 dragon creatures in addition to their other types, they have flying.
00:53:34
Zachary Jeblonski
This deck is definitely a closer. i you know You just copy something like a any kind of damage doubler on the board or any kind of damage piece or like a Warstorm Surge or something like that.
00:53:46
Zachary Jeblonski
and the game won very quickly it's too expensive to go in the budget emoting to help with the closing problem there uh but it's in a lot of my big blue decks timmy decks and specifically this is from my sin soul tie reanimator deck but astral dragon very good uh if you need like a a very scary closer
00:54:07
ciderspence
Yeah, that's a horrifying card.
00:54:09
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah the the one i think the the card i've copied most with astral dragon to close out games and sin is a wound reflection because then you have three wound reflections, and that means that any damage anybody takes is basically times by eight, and that's usually enough to to close out the game.
00:54:25
ciderspence
Yeah, that's pretty good.
00:54:27
Zachary Jeblonski
But yeah, I guess we we got a little bit time left. Do you want to talk about any games you played or any decks that you're working on before wrap up?
00:54:35
ciderspence
Uh, yes. I feel like there was another thing I wanted to bring up that was brief, but yeah, i mean, like I said, I've just been playing a lot of games. There was another game. One of the commanders we talked about when we were looking at the Marvel set early was Misty Knight.
00:54:52
ciderspence
And I had a fun game with her. So Misty Knight is one in a red.
00:54:57
Zachary Jeblonski
Let's pay it.
00:54:59
ciderspence
Legendary creature, human detective hero. She's got an ability to and tap and discard a card. Draw a card for each card you've discarded this turn. She's a 3-1. At that Saturday night game, I played in a game where one of the players was playing group hug and was just giving us lots of cards.
00:55:19
ciderspence
uh which you know ordinarily is is good fine whatever i think people have opinions about group hug but group hug fed very heavily into my discard strategy because it you know at some point they were giving us too many cards to use which ordinarily you know is neutral right you have to discard some of your stuff that's fine but i want to discard some of my stuff and another player in the pod was playing uh i don't mono black like mean stuff And, you know, had the, had the you know, the the why this is just a little guy, why me attitude about it.
00:55:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:51
ciderspence
And it kind of engendered some bad will. So I think this led the group hug player to be okay feeding into my discard a little bit more. But I was able to have a turn, i don't know, turn six or turn seven where I had some pieces on the board, but I just had so many cards and I drew one of the things that lets me, you know, discard four or five things. I had out two of my burn pieces and then on my end step, I just did like, you know,
00:56:16
ciderspence
the remaining 20 damage to the table because I just had like, you know, 15 cards in hand that had to discard down the hand size. So that was a pretty fun fun one as well. Yeah.
00:56:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Nice.
00:56:25
ciderspence
Just to say again, like I'm really enjoying this marble. Yeah, I guess. Oh, yeah. One thing I want to talk about. So I mentioned that Goldfish episode where they talked about are there too many legends? Sure, there are too many legends.
00:56:34
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:56:35
ciderspence
But I think part of their discussion was around does every creature need to be legendary among these UV sets?
00:56:42
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:56:42
ciderspence
when it's a named character. i just want to defend the notion that named characters can be legendary. I've had a lot of fun playing as these characters that I know and love, right? I think playing Misty Knight, who is you know a detective from Marvel Universe, he's got a bionic arm, she lost an arm in a, and I don't remember exactly what the circumstances were for her losing an arm, but basically her superpower is she's a detective, she's got detective skills, she's a pretty good fighter, but then she has a bionic arm.
00:57:08
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:57:09
ciderspence
Uh, that's pretty cool. Uh, I think it's okay that there are so many underpowered legends. I think playing an underpowered creature as your commander and still having an okay game is kind of a badge of honor. Like, I, I think we've talked about, like, not playing commanders that are too popular.
00:57:26
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:57:27
ciderspence
I think an extension of that is playing commanders that are underpowered, but in in a credible way. Like, win or lose, like, yeah, you probably win less that way, but that's okay. Like, I think we're both at the point in playing Magic where we're not trying to win all the time. We're trying to have, you know, the types of experiences that we like.
00:57:43
ciderspence
I think i I frequently find that to be the case when I play a commander that does something, but maybe not something especially good.
00:57:43
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:57:49
ciderspence
I... In particular, I'll just call back to the to Colleen Wing. I really like her. i think that deck is a lot of fun. And yeah, it's underpowered, but you know it lets me do Voltron-y stuff.
00:58:01
ciderspence
And she gets a little bit of advantage. I've been thinking about how to benefit off the Scry and Mono White. I don't have a lot of ideas, but the ones I have, I'm going to put in the deck and hope that I see them in-game. So I do think that there's a space for...
00:58:14
ciderspence
wizards producing and players playing underpowered commanders even if the player who's not connected to that character or who or who looks you know for the best and brightest cards to run as commanders might not see the reason for their existence i think there's a reason for them i think they have a lane and i think it's a pretty fun one
00:58:32
Zachary Jeblonski
No, okay. I can see that. I think my thing when I listen to that podcast episode is I'm more on the line of just get rid of Legendary Rule. Just be done with it. Because I think I feel for the constructive players out there. Because you get all these cool cards you can't really play because you... can't put the multiples in your deck that you would want to i think i think you just get rid of legendary rule like i do have a deck that would benefit greatly by that talion would benefit greatly by removing the legendary rule but i think even if even considering that i think uh i think that's like the cleanest way to address the issue uh for all the formats involved
00:59:14
Zachary Jeblonski
But, eh, I do want to side with your point. I think it's important that people who have characters they really enjoy get a chance to play them as your commander. So I do kind of support that side of it. So I'm glad that exists. I'm glad that all the legendaries exist so that people who like the characters can play those characters.
00:59:32
Zachary Jeblonski
But i think it's just I think it's just time for the legendary rule to go. And real quick, I wanted to add, I had, I played a game, I think maybe two weeks ago.
Episode Wrap-up
00:59:42
Zachary Jeblonski
it was my Esper, uh, the, uh, the destined warrior. It's party deck. It's lame. think, or not late. I'm sorry. It's, uh, it's, it's kind of bad. I've played this a couple times. I've let people borrow the deck. doesn't really do anything, but the only thing is I'm bringing that up is I did start that game with a ley line of anticipation on the board.
01:00:00
Zachary Jeblonski
And I basically played that deck as a draw go type of deck. And I had a lot of fun with that, even though i didn't come close to winning that game because the deck itself was kind of bad. But I decided to break it down and I'm going to make an Esper draw go deck because I really had a lot of fun with that experience of like,
01:00:18
Zachary Jeblonski
Just cram every flash enabler into the deck and then just play a flash speed. that's gonna be the whole kind of gimmick of that deck.
01:00:25
ciderspence
Nice.
01:00:25
Zachary Jeblonski
There is no, no Esper commander that really works for that. I looked through all of them and the best one I could come up with. And the one I'm going go with is, inquisitor gray facts.
01:00:37
Zachary Jeblonski
Uh, she's a one white, blue, black, uh, vigilance, other creatures you can control get one Oh and have vigilance. And the whole reason she's going to be in the deck is she has an activated ability of one tap. tap target creature and opponent controls and then investigate. So she's a little bit of a card draw engine in the command zone.
01:00:52
Zachary Jeblonski
I can hold my mana up to play things at flash speed. And if I don't need anything, then I can at least make a clue. And if I have enough mana, I can make clue and draw off of it. So kind of that's probably the the next thing on on tap.
01:01:04
Zachary Jeblonski
But anything else before we kind of wrap things up?
01:01:09
ciderspence
No, I'm good with that.
01:01:12
Zachary Jeblonski
All right. Cool. All right. Well, thanks for joining me with and for another episode of Midlife's Crisis, Charles.
01:01:18
ciderspence
Thanks for having me, Zach.
01:01:20
Zachary Jeblonski
All right. We'll talk to you guys in next week.
01:01:23
ciderspence
Take it easy, everybody.