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Ep. 29 - Did You Miss Us?
18 Plays3 months ago
Hashtag we're back, hashtag Midlife, hashtag Scrysis, Hashtag Magic talk!
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Transcript
Introduction and Catching Up
00:00:12
Zachary Jeblonski
Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of Midlife's Crisis. We're back again off to after a short hiatus. I'm joined again by Charles.
00:00:22
Ciderspence
How's it going, Zach?
00:00:24
Zachary Jeblonski
I'm doing pretty good.
The Struggle with Game Logging
00:00:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Are you good at remembering to log your games in these apps?
00:00:31
Ciderspence
I've gotten a little better recently, but generally no
00:00:36
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I'm i'm a atrocious at it. I know you were mentioning one just before in our pregain or pre-call here. I've seen all several of these like come and go. i remember a long time ago when I was playing in a store in Georgia frequently, a couple the people there really tried to like rally behind one app, and then we were going to like kind of find out what the store meta was basically through this app.
00:01:00
Zachary Jeblonski
because it would aggregate you know all the game data and stuff. And it just it's just hard.
00:01:03
Ciderspence
Yeah.
00:01:05
Zachary Jeblonski
It's just really hard to do it. And it it fell apart pretty quickly. But I'm not against the idea, for sure. i kind of i hope somebody can figure it out, that kind of thing.
00:01:16
Ciderspence
I think one, I don't know. it I think there's a lot of value in it. And it's, it's one of those things that I think like a lot of aspects of commander, if you can, if I can be disciplined with it, I i think it's obvious what the gains are.
00:01:30
Ciderspence
It's just hard to be disciplined when it feels like sometimes playing a game of magic is just like, I don't know, wrangling a toddler. It's like, you just, you have the time you try to,
00:01:39
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:01:40
Ciderspence
You try to do it as quickly as possible. You try to enjoy it. And then when you're in the middle of it, you kind of get swept up in it and you don't think about any other stuff. I really applaud like EDH rec cast have like a show at the end of the year where they go over stats. And I think to keep, to be able to tabulate those stats, they must log so many details of every game that they play and, you know, they're content creators. So, I mean, I get that they have a,
00:02:07
Ciderspence
more vested interest in being diligent about it, but I'm still impressed that they're able to do that in so many games.
00:02:14
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:02:14
Ciderspence
I've recently been using using an app called Commander Codex to log games. I think I've i've logged probably the last 10 or 15 games I've played, give or take one or two.
00:02:27
Ciderspence
So that has been a lot better than what I'm used to. But yeah, I still i still haven't been able to lock it in as a habit.
00:02:35
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I mean, you know, I created a Google form for myself, which I never remember to use. I have, like I said, I've used apps in the past. I think, like, it's it's ultimately not that big of a deal. Like, it probably takes, like, a minute or less to to log these games. and And I was thinking about this kind of when we were talking about, like,
00:02:56
Zachary Jeblonski
you know, I'm pretty quick to set up for my next game. so I usually have downtime in between games, so there's really no excuse. I just need to like do it. because oftentimes I'm waiting on other players getting, you know picking out their decks or whatever, or maybe I got killed first or whatever.
00:03:11
Zachary Jeblonski
And so there's plenty of time to get it done. I just haven't. And then and the value is there too, because it's, it's always nice to see like, uh, what does the data say about this deck versus how I feel about the deck? Now i'm not saying the two are mutually exclusive, like, or that like, Oh, because I lost the deck, I should not like my deck. Cause that's not true at all.
00:03:30
Zachary Jeblonski
but it would be interesting to see like, Oh, I love this deck and it wins like, like less than a quarter of the time, which is for commander, a quarter should be your average most roughly.
00:03:42
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah, is so I, yeah, I would like to have that data, but I got to do the work to get it. How dare they?
00:03:48
Ciderspence
Yeah, it's interesting. Another idea I had recently is I, a thing I need to do is go through all my decks and just label them a lot more clearly. So that just from a glance at the deck, I know what it is.
00:04:00
Ciderspence
And also, I'd like to keep track of when I last played decks in the same visual way. So I think i'm going to just start putting stickers on the top that say who's the commander? And what's the last game
00:04:09
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh yeah.
Winning vs. Enjoyment in Commander
00:04:10
Ciderspence
I played with this deck?
00:04:13
Ciderspence
But yeah, like I guess the thing I was thinking is there's one deck that i I just finished building that I've been playing a lot recently because the first two games I played with it, I was happy with the deck, but it was it performed terribly.
00:04:24
Ciderspence
I think a lot of that had to do with the pot it was in, but I retooled it pretty heavily. And then the last game, and it's I was thinking of it because you were talking about a deck that you enjoy playing that never wins. This deck is 0 for 3 or 0 for 4 or something, but I started having fun with it.
00:04:38
Ciderspence
in the third or fourth game once I kind of tuned the interaction to the the pods I was playing in.
00:04:43
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. yeah
00:04:44
Ciderspence
So yeah, there definitely is a distinction between winning and enjoyment.
00:04:49
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I, I think so too. I mean, I think I, I always viewed winning as a component to enjoyment, and but it is not the full picture of enjoyment. Right. because if you, if you, you know, if you win with a deck, but all the other parts of that deck are miserable to you, like it doesn't matter.
00:05:04
Zachary Jeblonski
You know, it literally like the winning is not going to overcome those things. At least not for me. if it does for you, then you, then I got formats for you. It's called standard and modern.
00:05:15
Ciderspence
Yeah, and to be clear, I mean, i I get that too. I just think that winning at the expense of the other stuff is where it becomes socially, you know, a little, I guess, incoherent with the experience most people are looking for.
00:05:23
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:05:29
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, that's a, that's a whole thing with, with commander. And that's a great, that would be like a great, like a guest to have on someday in the future, somebody who's really adamant against commander and just like 60 cards. Cause I really liked that concept of like, and i and I respect it. Like, I don't, you know, obviously agree with big commander is my preferred format, but I respect that like methodology of like, when I sit down to play a game, I don't want to be concerned with making other people feel good, you know?
00:05:57
Zachary Jeblonski
Or like, I'm here to win and I don't care how I get there, you know, and I expect my opponent to behave the same way.
Play Styles in Magic: The Gathering
00:06:03
Zachary Jeblonski
Right. Like, it's like a one on one, like, you know, whatever we whatever we need to do to win, we're going to do it. And that's the way I enjoy playing the game. and I was like, that's a totally interesting foreign, I guess I would say, concept to me because it's like that's just not how I can play this game.
00:06:17
Ciderspence
Yeah, it almost it almost makes me think about those old conversations about about like what is a sport versus what isn't a sport, like is bowling a sport?
00:06:17
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh,
00:06:25
Zachary Jeblonski
oh yeah.
00:06:25
Ciderspence
and It makes me question what is a game, what isn't a game, because that that sounds like a contest, right? like If you are facing off on an against an opponent and all you care about is winning, that i mean and you don't care about the experience the other person has, that doesn't sound much like a game. like I feel like inherent in the nature of a game is there's some...
00:06:44
Ciderspence
notion of playing fairly and having a good time. Like otherwise we wouldn't play games, we would do something else. So I like, i
00:06:52
Zachary Jeblonski
I don't know. I don't think that is exclusive. like I think to them, that is that you're boiling it down to that game itself. like You remove all the politics and the and the socialness of it.
00:07:03
Zachary Jeblonski
you know Like two jet chess grandmasters sitting down to play, you know they have an equal footing. you know There's no cordiality between them. Or maybe there is, but very you know that's not it that's not a part of it.
00:07:14
Zachary Jeblonski
you know So I can see them you know arguing the other way.
00:07:16
Ciderspence
Wait, no, it's funny. yet
00:07:19
Ciderspence
Yeah, no, I get that. And I was just thinking, but what about the notion of sportsmanship? And then i was like, well, that is sportsmanship. And in fact, there is an expression gamesmanship, but it is not the same thing. So yeah, maybe it is true that inherent in the notion of a game is that you want to enjoy it, but you don't necessarily have to care about how others participating in the game feel about it.
00:07:27
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:07:38
Ciderspence
So I guess I get that.
00:07:38
Zachary Jeblonski
But I, yeah, I also think that like, based on my interactions with 60 card players and stuff like that, it's not that they want to cause misery for their opponent, but if the best way for them to win or the way that they think they are best at for winning is a miserable play experience for their opponent, then they'll do it Right? Like it's like, but the end goal is the winning. And if there's collateral damage on the way, so be it. Right?
00:08:01
Zachary Jeblonski
You know, which is just a totally, it's it's an anathema to the commander play style, obviously, because like, playing like that will not get you invited back to many pods unless you are doing your bracket for CDH
Sportsmanship and Game Philosophy
00:08:13
Zachary Jeblonski
stuff. Right. And, and I'm not even, and I don't know enough about CDH, but i don't think those kinds miserable pay patterns are good in CDH anyway. So that might be a solely a bracket for type of thing.
00:08:24
Ciderspence
Maybe the see CDH pattern is to be so short that the misery is more bearable because it doesn't take that long.
00:08:30
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I mean, like i I occasionally will watch clips of CDH like on TikTok and stuff. I try to like get my head wrapped around it. I just I find CDH to be boring, to be honest, every time I watch it.
00:08:46
Zachary Jeblonski
but I also don't see like a lot of miserable pay patterns in CDH. It's very much just, it's just, uh, we're going to win this game on the stack and it's not, there's nothing, there's no misery to it. It's just, did I run you out of interaction before you ran me out of interaction kind of thing.
00:09:00
Zachary Jeblonski
whereas I think in like bracket four, that's when you get into that, that realm of humilities and, and, uh, we're going to make this miserable, you know, for everybody, you know, kind of thing.
00:09:10
Ciderspence
Yeah.
00:09:11
Zachary Jeblonski
it is like, and I, I think this could be like almost a whole episode because it's like, I, when you, you know, when you hear those like in shop talks, you hear them in the background you like listen to them, there is this weird.
00:09:22
Zachary Jeblonski
And I guess to your point, this kind of backs up at your point. I think Charles is like, there's this weird strain of magic that I haven't never been able to like fully understand, which is like, you'll hear people say the phrase of like, Oh, you see that new card X. Oh man. It's, Oh man. It's going to, I'm trying to think of a bet like the way magic players actually talk about it. be like, Oh, I can't wait to do that to my friends. Right. Or i can't wait to like, blah, blah, blah. You know, like it's going to make it so miserable and stuff like that. I'm like,
00:09:48
Zachary Jeblonski
It's so weird to me. I'm like, why do you care? Like, like, but I guess your point Charles is like, there is a subset. There's like a, a through line of magic where it's like, I like card X because it's going to make my friends miserable.
00:10:01
Zachary Jeblonski
and I'm like, what, what is this? Like, I don't understand this concept. And I, I haven't quite gotten to the bottom of that kind of whole philosophy yet.
00:10:08
Ciderspence
Yeah, in defense of some Magic players who who I think say things like that, i I don't necessarily believe that there's a large component of the commander community that just kind of enjoys playing the game with a masochistic bent.
00:10:22
Ciderspence
It's more that some cards read as... whoa, what, really? That's crazy. Or I can't believe that they put that on a magic card. And I think that people want to experience, you know, harnessing that power.
00:10:34
Ciderspence
And I think if they they think of their play group as the opportunity to do that, not necessarily as, you know, test subjects that they want to inflict with pain, or at least I would hope. i i
00:10:43
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:44
Ciderspence
Because I feel that way sometimes with cards. Like, I think when we were when we were first looking at the card mirror form,
00:10:50
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:10:50
Ciderspence
We were both thinking, what would be the coolest thing to turn all of your stuff into? we were like, well, obviously lands to avoid a board wipe or something, but what would be a cool thing that having 20 of would be game ending or game warping or you know make a game hilarious? And you know those things could result in a board state that for your opponents is not very entertaining, but for you would be hilarious.
00:11:11
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah i Yeah, I guess the kind of the final note I will put on that is I feel like the same players that say those things, and i'm not this is not a call to action for those players, but the same people that say those kind of things, they don't act that way in the game themselves. you know When you do play with them, they're not like, oh, yeah, let me play this game.
00:11:31
Zachary Jeblonski
I don't know, Trinisphere or some other BS card. And like, they usually are chill commander players. It's like, it's like the, the thrill of being able to flick that on other people is fun, but I don't see them actually doing it.
00:11:45
Zachary Jeblonski
So I don't know. And maybe that's just part of the excitement is like, oh, yeah, I can really get my friend. I think it's also like, oh, my friend got me with card X one time and this new card will absolutely destroy his deck that does card X.
00:11:59
Zachary Jeblonski
Right. And like, I think that's part of it is, you know.
00:12:00
Ciderspence
Yep.
00:12:04
Zachary Jeblonski
And also just like the design of commander in general kind of prevents that kind of play power and all we, this is, I'm just gonna, I need to keep track of all these topics, but like it's so rare that in our commander decks that we can put cards that interact with specific strategies because every card has to be so generically good at this point that it's hard to put in those like very specific cards that just stop one strategy.
Card Interactions and Strategies
00:12:30
Zachary Jeblonski
i just to give an example because i think i'm being a little too vague is confounding conundrum which is like a one in the blue enchantment and when it comes in i think it draws a card but basically a if any player plays or if any land comes into a player's play field basically after the first one they have to bounce the land so it specifically targets landfall decks and i tried running it but even something as vague as that or as general as that often wouldn't work right because I wouldn't run into a green ramp Carson I wouldn't run into this so you know often the any cards that like specifically go after specific strategies I think in general are bad at least the way the game is functioning now and just kind of wrap this all around and why I'm going on this tangent is like I think it's exciting to like seek that confounding conundrum and be like yeah my friend x who got me with that landfall deck I can't wait to put this in my deck and and really make him miserable and all that
00:13:20
Zachary Jeblonski
And in reality, you're never going to do it because you're like, well, that takes up a card slot and it only works if I play against one specific play pattern and I'm not guaranteed to play against that play pattern, you know? Yeah, I think it's just imagination, I guess. I guess i've i guess through talking to you, I figured out what's going on. Yeah.
00:13:37
Ciderspence
I mean, I think that puts a really nice point on it. i I do feel like Commander is the format for imagination. Like, I think the thought experiment that we go through with each of these cards is part of the fun of playing Commander.
00:13:42
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:13:47
Ciderspence
Because, you know, another way to think about it is like, yeah, it doesn't work in most decks, even if it's an exciting card. But Commander is the format where you get to choose who your commander is and build your deck around that. So if you find a deck where it's worth running a marginal or bad card because it synergizes with your commander, then you can put that in your deck and you can get your friend. and it can be worth playing. And you know that is something that you get to go through with deck building. so like you know And I imagine that you don't get to have those same conversations with yourself building a standard deck or building even a limited deck necessarily.
00:14:19
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:14:20
Ciderspence
So like yeah, I think part of that is baked in. And yeah, it does go back to imagination. like this is This is the format where anything is possible in theory.
00:14:29
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep. I agree. Uh, yeah. so why don't we transition to, uh, you know, any games that we played now, think we it's been about three weeks, I think since we recorded. So feel free to pull any game from any time period to talk about. I have, have two games I played in this Thursday at a store or this past Tuesday at a store.
00:14:50
Zachary Jeblonski
And then I have, I think on memory, the two games we played in which is like two weeks ago. And as far as my memory banks go, that's probably as far back as I can go. So yeah, I can kick us off or do you want to kick us off?
00:15:04
Ciderspence
Yeah, why don't you go for it? I'm trying to jog the memory banks.
00:15:07
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay. I will start with, I'll just start with my Tuesday games because I i was actually, I was like, can I even remember the games? and Anyway, so i played two games on Tuesday, both monocolor games actually, just so happened.
00:15:23
Zachary Jeblonski
So I started off with Lucy McLean Positively Arm, my new mono white deck. I'm very happy with this deck at this point. it's It's a fun time consistently. It's capable of winning, but by no means is it like like fast or anything like that.
00:15:41
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I just really like this commander. I really like this deck. Much better than I liked my previous mono white commander, which was Wilford Mott. but I guess with some of the standouts here is like the things I had to be careful with, and I'm going to mention this as my card of the week is, I have silver quill lecturer in the deck.
00:16:00
Zachary Jeblonski
Uh, it's four and a white. it's a creature core wizard creature spells. i cast have a demonstrate, which is whenever I cast a creature spell, I can copy it. And if I do, I choose an opponent to also copy it.
00:16:11
Zachary Jeblonski
Each copy becomes a token. And I remember when this card was revealed, I was like, this has to be amazing. This has to be like, this card is nuts. I bought a couple of copies off the bat.
00:16:21
Zachary Jeblonski
And then every time I went to put it into a deck, was like, oh man, I don't think I can put this into a deck because... every single time you're like wow it'd be so cool to copy all my creature spells i'm like but i dont want to get my opponent's copies that's bad i don't like that and you know so i was like oh this really strikes me as like a typo card right so like if you're running a typo you don't really care like say you have a core typo deck k or you don't really care if your opponents are getting a copy of your core creatures because each individual core creature is probably pretty bad
00:16:52
Zachary Jeblonski
or a wizard or whatever it is. Right. So was like, that's probably where it needs to go. And that's, I don't have any type decks in white. I guess I'll just leave this in my collection. And then Lucy comes along and I was like, Oh, this is great for Lucy because Lucy cares about making tokens.
00:17:06
Zachary Jeblonski
So now if I make a copy of a really good white creature spell, I also can get another copy of it. So I can end up with three copies. Basically I can cast the creature spell, make a copy, give my opponent a copy that triggers Lucy, which then I can get myself that copy as well. So I could be three, three creatures for the price of one.
00:17:25
Zachary Jeblonski
But the real ridiculousness with this, and this is where you have to control yourself a little bit is if you have silver quill on the battlefield,
00:17:36
Zachary Jeblonski
first, and then you cast Lucy into it. And then you demonstrate Lucy to an opponent. And you guys both have an agreement on keep giving Lucy's to each other. Because basically the first Lucy comes in, sees the next my Lucy come in, which causes me to give them a Lucy, which causes them to see my Lucy and back and forth.
00:17:58
Zachary Jeblonski
You can kind of trade secrets, and I'll explain what trade secrets in a sec is, but you can basically each draw your entire decks, basically, or or as far as you want to go. So it is a little bit of like an infinite loop that have to be a little cognizant of, but I thought that was a pretty neat interaction.
00:18:15
Ciderspence
Interesting.
00:18:15
Zachary Jeblonski
That's card of the week.
00:18:16
Ciderspence
Yeah. Nice.
00:18:19
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. So we, with the way I did it, it as I said, once I re because I didn't realize it was going to happen until somebody in the pot was like, yeah, you do realize this is going to go like not, it's kind of infinite, but more or less it's like a trade secrets.
00:18:30
Zachary Jeblonski
And I keep talking about trade secrets, but it's a banned card. Let me talk about it real quick. a trade secrets is one blue, blue sorcery target opponent draws two cards. Then you draw up to four cards. That opponent may repeat this process as many times as many times as he or she chooses.
00:18:46
Zachary Jeblonski
And it's banned in commander because what often what happens is is like the player A who cast it onto player Well, you guys will usually draw your decks and C and player C and D will just be sitting there looking at you guys doing a nothing and then pretty much get, you know powered out of the game. Right. So it creates a poor play pattern. So in this situation, Lucy kind of does the same thing. So I told him as I look, we're we're all, we're each drawing three cards only like, and that's all we're doing. So that's what we did. And we we decided three cards done, you know, because otherwise I i think that would be a poor play pattern, but yeah,
00:19:16
Zachary Jeblonski
i know that was a very long explanation of this card elite, but I thought it was a pretty neat interaction.
00:19:21
Ciderspence
No, yeah, it's cool.
00:19:22
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. But yeah, ended up winning that game. It was a solid time. You know, that deck wins the same way it always wins, which is just like I make eight or 10 tokens of small sizes and then I find a pump effect and that's and then that's it. So but I enjoy that deck quite a bit. I like the politicking of it. I like giving people tokens. So eight a plus for me.
00:19:46
Ciderspence
Nice.
00:19:47
Zachary Jeblonski
So how about you?
00:19:47
Ciderspence
do you find that the play pattern of go wide with tokens and find a pump is more satisfying in white than in green? Because I think we've talked about some of the green finishers as not being your favorite.
00:19:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:19:58
Ciderspence
Do you feel like the white finishers of the same variety are different?
00:19:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:20:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, so I think, all right, so here's what it is. This is, you know, I'm discovering things about myself. So I have Rydia, the red-green deck that I played one game with like three weeks ago or two and a half weeks or ago or something like that, and won with it.
00:20:14
Zachary Jeblonski
But it's full of landfall tokens and stuff like that. It's landfall deck. And the thing I realized is i I really dislike it when I'm managing multiple kinds of tokens at the same time.
00:20:25
Zachary Jeblonski
So like in that green landfall deck, it's like, you know I have a card that makes two two robots when the landfall comes in. I have a card that makes three three badgers when the land comes in. well yada yada yada I'm much i'm a much more happy token person if the tokens are more or less, I'm just making more and more of the same thing.
00:20:42
Zachary Jeblonski
And so when I constructed Lucy, I made sure that effectively all I'm only making three kinds of tokens. I'm making either making a soldier, a human or an angel and that's it. and I'm, I'm happy with that.
00:20:52
Ciderspence
Okay.
00:20:59
Ciderspence
Gotcha.
00:21:00
Zachary Jeblonski
I really went out of my way to like, make sure that Lucy can only make like a very limited amount of tokens because otherwise I will hate it.
00:21:10
Ciderspence
nice
00:21:12
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah. So yeah, I
Challenges with the April O'Neil Deck
00:21:13
Zachary Jeblonski
bet, uh, how about you? and do you have a game you want to highlight?
00:21:17
Ciderspence
Yeah, I think i'll I'll just talk a little more about my my recent journey with this deck. So I built an April O'Neil human element deck. This is, me find it.
00:21:28
Ciderspence
Should have been.
00:21:28
Zachary Jeblonski
April O'Neil.
00:21:31
Ciderspence
So basically she makes tokens whenever a player plays an artifact, instant or sorcery spell.
00:21:38
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, wow. It's whenever a player.
00:21:40
Zachary Jeblonski
Interesting.
00:21:40
Ciderspence
Yeah. So I think the dream for this card is, oh, everybody's casting these all the time. You make here. I'll read it now. Sorry. So April O'Neil, human element, three in a blue legendary creature, human detective.
00:21:54
Ciderspence
Okay. She should be newscaster, but that's fine. Whenever a player casts an artifact, instant or sorcery spell, you create a mutagen token. Mutagen tokens are from the turtle set. It's an artifact with one tap and sacrifice this token, but a 1-1 counter on target creature. Activate only as a sorcery, and she's a 2-5.
00:22:12
Ciderspence
So yeah, my my dream build of this deck was just like mono blue artifacts without Urza, because I don't run that. And I was excited to build it. I put in...
00:22:21
Ciderspence
you know, the cards I thought would be powerhouses in it. And I took it to a shop. I was very excited for its debut. And it didn't do anything because the game I played was over on turn four.
00:22:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Ooh.
00:22:33
Ciderspence
And so i thought to myself, self, that wasn't very satisfying, but it's not really April's fault. This game just was over pretty early. And then I played another game with that same pod, which is and that I'm kind of going through a a phase transition with where I'm playing. Like I'm finding that driving to a better game is no longer quite as satisfying as staying local for a worse game. so I'm trying to kind of, you know, mentally prepare myself for playing in games that I enjoy less or like finding a way to enjoy these games better just because I can't
00:23:08
Ciderspence
I don't think it's worth it the trade off to me anymore to regularly drive 45 minutes to get to a game and, you know, come back at midnight or whatever.
00:23:17
Zachary Jeblonski
Was this like like where this like the Thursday shop or or i where were you going?
00:23:20
Ciderspence
This is a Wednesday shop that that we've both been to once. And the games, the games aren't bad.
00:23:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Wednesday shop.
00:23:25
Ciderspence
It's just that I think this, this meta is so fast that, well, guess I'll talk about a little bit more. So like the next game we played with that same pot, I didn't play April. I played another deck of mine.
00:23:36
Ciderspence
That's a little faster. And this time the player that went off in game one didn't go off in game two, but another player went off. And these are all like Sol Ring into Signet starts or whatever.
00:23:48
Ciderspence
And, you know, we've talked a little bit about Sol Ring on the podcast.
00:23:48
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Solar ring should be banned. Sorry, just putting it out there again.
00:23:52
Ciderspence
I mean, it's it's it's fine to have that opinion, right? And i don't I don't even mind it. I don't run it either. I i totally get it. But i I think what I was running into was so many of these games have that explosive start.
00:24:07
Ciderspence
that it, and again, this varies from shop to shop, from pod to pod, but so many of the games I was playing, so you know that was the game two there. The next week I had two games that weren't like that, where I played with you know players who were content to play kind of lower power or slower decks. And I got in some good games there. I didn't play April on either of those decks, but then I played another couple of games with her online and those games were also pretty fast. And these are all games that I would consider bracket three or that we kind of self-identified as bracket three. And I don't i didn't get the sense that people were lying about that. I think that that's just what some people think bracket three is.
00:24:40
Ciderspence
Like, you know, you want to try to... I think in bracket four, the implication is that you're doing something game-breaking to tilt the odds in your favor as early as possible.
00:24:53
Ciderspence
The sense I'm getting from what people perceive bracket three to be is that you're kind of... in You're trying to maximize the chances that you get off to a busted start. So it's...
00:25:04
Ciderspence
And it's not like by running game changers. It's just by, you know, running the stuff you can that's not game changers and trying to synergize for something really fast.
00:25:17
Ciderspence
So like the fact that anybody could have a Sol Ring Signet start and anybody and people are running a lot of turn one plays that kind of muck up the board or like impact your opponents means that if I want to play yeah If I want to be in a position to play magic cards in those pods, I needed to reduce my curve. So I brought this, the curve, the average curve in this deck down from like, i don't know, three and a half or four or something closer. Probably. I haven't looked at the stats, but probably closer to like two.
00:25:46
Ciderspence
where I'm running a lot of two-mana rocks, a few three-mana rocks with value, because it it's just kind of mana-hungry, a few finishers within just like a lot of one and two-mana interaction. And it made me think back to what you were saying about that enchantment that's one of the blue and messes with green players but draws a card.
00:26:03
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:26:04
Ciderspence
i've been I kind of leaned into putting more of those effects in the deck that are kind of specific, but that only costs one or two mana just because I want to be able to do something in the early game if somebody's going to have the type of explosive start that's going to keep me from being able to develop my board.
00:26:24
Ciderspence
So I run a lot of like one mana, like blue counter target non-creature spell with mana value three or less or something like that. Just so that like, if somebody's got a soul ring start and I happen to go before them, maybe I just counter that so that that doesn't get out there.
00:26:38
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I have have a copy of...
00:26:40
Ciderspence
And the two times I've played it in this format, it's it has been more satisfying just to have something to do on those early turns, even if i'm not if I'm no longer capable of doing the most fun thing that I had envisioned with this deck.
00:26:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I run only in one deck because i i you know I'm not convinced that it's good. But I have mental misstep in one of my decks for just to snipe a Snow Wring. And i'm I'm waiting for the day that I get to do it. I've never been able to do it. It's never been in my hand when I needed it but that's a phyrexian blue so you can play it with no lands uh by just paying two life and counter target spell will convert a mana cost one i just want to do it someday because soul ring is one of my uh my bugbears but uh uh but yes to your to your point it's like it's such a difficult idea of like how much do i put my deck to like
00:27:18
Ciderspence
Yeah.
00:27:32
Zachary Jeblonski
slow down my parent, my opponent's fall fast starts, you know, like, and it's just like, it's a feels bad when you draw them late in the game and like, Oh, this does nothing, almost nothing now, you know? yeah, it's a challenge. I don't have, I don't have any great insight on that.
00:27:47
Zachary Jeblonski
I really don't.
00:27:49
Ciderspence
Yeah, I think the other thing that I don't like about it is that it also pushes you in the direction of running more board wipes, which I don't want to do. So i i don't know. But, i you know, I mean, if this is the format that I want to play and I want to have fun and do stuff in the games, I, you know, I should...
00:28:06
Ciderspence
you know That's just what it is. so like i I think I'm just am going to have to think about the decks that I build going forward in a similar way. I'm sure there are one to two man of things that i enough 1-2 mana things that I want to do that are that are useful in a commander game or with the commander I've chosen that that it'll still be a fun journey. But it it has kind of shifted for me.
00:28:28
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, i I'm kind of the other way on it, where it's just like I did go the other way, which is like I just was like, well, outside of acute mental misstep in one of my decks, like I just I don't run the low end interaction anymore because i just I favor the board wipe more.
00:28:43
Zachary Jeblonski
because it's if my opponents are really getting off to a fast start, my theory is like, all right, well, as long as I can survive till turn five or six or something like that, then we're just going to reset the playing field. And then hopefully by that point, we're more or less on somewhat equal footing, unless they're playing a landfall deck there's nothing I can do really do about that.
00:29:01
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, thats I don't know. It's a tough one.
The Role of Board Wipes
00:29:03
Zachary Jeblonski
You know, like, i mean, the game is almost designed where like, you're not really supposed to have an easy time catching up if they get off to a fast start. Like it kind of is what it is. but it it does, I don't know. I, I'm putting this out there. I'm not saying like this, it does feel good to like have somebody like poop out their whole hand onto the board and then board wipe it.
00:29:24
Zachary Jeblonski
And then like, yeah, we're all back to the same starting point again. so you know, man, that's, you know, that's what I do. Yeah.
00:29:33
Ciderspence
Yeah, I mean, I'm not against a board clear with value. So I run desynchronization in that April O'Neil deck, which is return all non-historic permanents to their owner's hands.
00:29:39
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:43
Ciderspence
And I actually use that in the game that also featured my card of the week. So I was in a pretty good spot. I had... 10-ish, maybe 8 to 10 mutagen tokens out, and I cast Cyberdrive Awakener.
00:29:56
Ciderspence
I wasn't even going to win with it, but I was going to inflict a lot of damage.
00:30:00
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. That was going to hurt.
00:30:01
Ciderspence
And i had us i had a I think I had a counterspell, like, one again, a one-mana non-creature spell counter backup in hand.
00:30:01
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:30:09
Ciderspence
And so I went to swing on my opponents and two of them took a massive a amount of damage and one of them cast selfless squire three and a white flash human soldier. It's a one one when it enters the battlefield prevent all damage that would be dealt to you this turn. whatever damage that would be dealt to you is prevented, put that many 1-1 counters on Selfless Squire.
00:30:28
Ciderspence
So I think that player was looking at 20 damage, instead made a 21-21 that they hit me with for lethal the next turn.
00:30:37
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:30:38
Ciderspence
But hey, that's Commander, baby. I i respected the hustle.
00:30:40
Zachary Jeblonski
I have gotten, yeah I've gotten got by a self-esquire before.
00:30:46
Ciderspence
Yep. And I mean, you know, that's the flip side that you were talking about with your narrow with, you know, the disutility of narrow spells. Like I, like I said, I was holding interaction, but not that kind.
00:30:56
Ciderspence
So yeah, got got with selfless squire wasn't the first time won't be the last.
00:30:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:31:01
Zachary Jeblonski
Nope. I mean, it's, you know, but even like, even self-esquire, you can look at that as a narrow spell, you know, almost on a way. Right. Because I guess it does in affect non-combat damage too. So you could use it against like, like, so like, spell slinger, like somebody fires off a big, uh, crackle of power or something like that.
00:31:20
Zachary Jeblonski
don't know. It is somewhat narrow, but,
00:31:21
Ciderspence
Selfless Squire, I think is, it's narrow, but I think it's in the, I think of it more as like a sacrifice effect is also technically narrow, but it's good because it gets around a lot of stuff.
00:31:34
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:31:34
Ciderspence
Or like a minus X minus X spell is technically narrow, I guess. But like a minus two minus two board spell is kind of narrow, like a delayed blast fireball or something where it's like, yeah, it's narrow, but that's a pretty good board wipe.
00:31:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:31:47
Ciderspence
Like, Something gives all creatures minus two, minus two. Yeah, it's narrow because there are big creatures on the board sometimes and it won't deal with those, but it gets rid of token players. Selfless Squire is good because it doesn't target.
00:31:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:31:57
Ciderspence
It just helps you and it gives you a board on the other side. So it is four mana though, so.
00:32:02
Zachary Jeblonski
And it, you know, yeah, it it's four mana, but it all and it also affects non-common damage too, like I said. So it could potentially be huge against a Spellslinger deck, but I feel unfortunately like a lot with Spellslingers, it's...
00:32:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Sometimes it is the big X cost one shot, bam. But I think a lot of times it's also like lots of little shots that it's not as quite as effective with.
00:32:26
Zachary Jeblonski
But I still like that card. i used to get got by it years ago, but I feel like it shows up less and less now. Yeah.
00:32:33
Ciderspence
Yeah, it had been a while since I saw it, but yep.
00:32:35
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah okay. And then i I'll, I'll, uh, I'll throw in my other game I had on a Tuesday. so I went from model white to model black. I am still in my, what do i want to do with my model black deck? i kind of enjoy it the way it is, but i kind of want to try making Val go off the commander. So I'm like, let's try it again. Let's see if I get any more insights on this deck.
00:32:58
Zachary Jeblonski
and it's the commander of it currently is the flip shielded, which is the three black, black, children Menace, when it enters the battlefield, each opponent sacrifices a non-token creature. You can pay four and a black to basically flip Shieldred to the backside. I can only do this if my opponent if one of my opponents has eight or more cards in our graveyard, which actually is a challenge sometimes.
00:33:19
Zachary Jeblonski
But on the back, it's a saga. First step is destroy one creature planeswalker per opponent. Step two is each opponent discards three cards and mills three cards. And then the the reason for the season is the final step, which is Rise of the Dark Realms, essentially, which is put all creature cards from all graveyards under the battlefield under your control. And then Shieldred flips back to the other side.
00:33:40
Zachary Jeblonski
so the, you theory behind the deck is I'm going to try and get this rise the dark realms thing off and it's a mono black. So I have a really, really limited card pool to, protect shielded once she's a saga. It's just like almost nothing. Uh, there's a few cards like imps mischief. you know, I think it might literally be imps mischief. There's like a few very limited ways to protect her once she's in the saga form. so which is kind of fun. It's kind of like a high stakes, like, Hey, it's coming. The, the time, the, the, the, the bomb underneath the bus in the movie speed, it's ticking down or whatever.
00:34:14
Zachary Jeblonski
and there's not a whole lot I can do to stop it if you guys have removal, you know, kind of thing. so I think it's pretty fun. I don't know. i go go back and forth. like I kind of want to try big boy Valgavoth as commander of the deck.
00:34:26
Zachary Jeblonski
But I also just like what Shieldr does in terms of like, I like commanders that have these like multiple phases to the deck where it's like the first phase is this and now we're in the second phase of this. And then the final phase is now that I've rise of a dark realm everybody, do I even have enough to win or am I just going get board wiped on the next turn or whatever? So,
00:34:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, so I think it's a good play pattern. i guess my second card of the week, because I'm not sure if I talked about it before, went off on that deck pretty well. And I've started putting it in on every black deck. It has never failed to disappoint.
00:34:58
Zachary Jeblonski
Like, i I mean, it's never failed to be good. Like, I think every time I've drawn it, it's been good. So I think this should become a staple. I think people will need to pay attention to this card, which is... Stargaze it's from Bloomberg. It's X black, black sorcery.
00:35:11
Zachary Jeblonski
Look at twice X cards from the top of your library, put X cards from among them in your hand and the rest of the graveyard lose X life. So, it, you basically look at double your X and then put X into your hand. So usually like I'll fire this off for like X is three, four or five, somewhere in that range.
00:35:28
Zachary Jeblonski
And if X is three, so we're talking about a total five mana, I'm looking at the top six cards in my library, choosing three of them, putting them in the hand, the other three to the graveyard and I lose, you know, three life. it's,
00:35:39
Ciderspence
Yeah, that seems really good.
00:35:41
Zachary Jeblonski
it's really good. Like it is, it's like I did X's four. I remember this cause I, so I looked at eight and six of the cards were lands. So I could put four of the lands in the graveyard and then keep two lands and two good cards and boom, you know, like it's such a good card. and you know, it's cheap. I think it's only like 10 cents or something like that.
00:36:02
Zachary Jeblonski
So highly recommend it for black decks. I mean, you do lose some life, but it's black. What do you expect?
00:36:08
Ciderspence
i don't know if we've talked about this before, but it is also, it is of late come to my attention that digging is really good in commander games. So cards that let you look at, you know, drawing two or three sounds great and it is great, but looking at six and taking one or two, I think is better than drawing three, just because you get to see more cards.
00:36:15
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yep.
00:36:25
Zachary Jeblonski
yep
00:36:27
Ciderspence
Like it's kind of the reliquary tower conversation about like, Yeah, it's great to keep all the cards that you draw in your hand, but pairing it down to seven gives you a lot more of that value than you might think.
00:36:39
Ciderspence
And the same with like looking at if you can look at 10 cards and pick two, I think that's a lot better than drawing four or five. Like I think just being able to find the cards in your deck for the situation that you're in.
00:36:52
Ciderspence
is what you what you actually want to do. And so getting to see more of them gives you a better chance at that than having more of the top few cards.
00:37:01
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. And then, and then kind of like the little cherry on top is, it puts the cards you don't pick into your graveyard. so if you have a black deck that cares about that, which a lot of black decks do,
00:37:13
Zachary Jeblonski
it really just checks every box. Like it says it's card selection in terms of, you get to look at a huge chunk. It's card draw, it's graveyard fill. and it's reasonably costed. Like it's just two black and an X. you know, if you're that desperate and X is one, you're still looking at the top two and picking one of them. Like it is, it's, it's just really good. so yeah, that's my secondary card of the week.
00:37:37
Zachary Jeblonski
And I won that game as well. You know, the the cheeky thing I can do with the deck, this is what I've pulled off I think once or twice now with it, is I did basically try to find all the mono black proliferate cards that made sense.
00:37:52
Zachary Jeblonski
And, you know, I got her to the saga. And then I wait till saga step two where everybody thinks i have another turn to go. And then I fire off, what's it called?
00:38:03
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, that emergence it's four and a black put target creature from a graveyard on the battlefield on your control proliferate. so I just basically grabbed the best creature even before the rise of dark realms goes off and proliferate rise of dark realms goes off. And then yeah, that that was kind of it.
00:38:18
Ciderspence
Yep, I can confirm that this play pattern is devastating. I've seen it happen. Not fun. I kind of knew something like it was coming. I was like, there's no way he's just going to run this out and hope it works out for three turns.
00:38:29
Ciderspence
Indeed, he did not.
00:38:29
Zachary Jeblonski
I have done that. I have done that.
00:38:32
Ciderspence
Well, not not that game he didn't, and it it worked to your advantage.
00:38:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Not that game, but yeah. like I think like i'm looking i have like i think that is that might be the only proliferate card in the entire deck because there's really not that much in mono black proliferate that makes sense.
00:38:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I think that's the only one. I have imps mischief, which is one in a black instant. Change target it of target spell with a single target and lose life equal to its mana value. So that's like my one way to protect her when she's a saga.
00:38:57
Zachary Jeblonski
And then I have, bad emergence to proliferate her when she's a saga. Oh, I'm sorry. I have the, the, the mono black Vraska that proliferates.
00:39:07
Zachary Jeblonski
So I have two ways to proliferate and one in smithship and that's it for the most part that I can see that protects her when she's a saga. So it really is like, I'm out on, you know, if you guys got a, a nature's claim or really anything, it's, it's, it's, you know, she's,
00:39:23
Ciderspence
Do you think Contagion Clasp is too bad to run in there as another proliferate source?
00:39:27
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I thought about it. I think it's too bad. Yeah. It's, you know, i didn't, I didn't want to get too like down that. Yeah. Cause contagion class is yeah. That's like a six mana proliferate.
00:39:41
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. i was like, yeah I'm not going to pull that off. I mean, cause you could do contingent engine and that's a 10 mana proliferate proliferate. So theoretically I could flip around saga 10 mana, go right to the rise of the dark realms.
00:39:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Uh, but that, that's a total of 15 mana and I'm like, that's not probably gonna happen.
00:39:55
Ciderspence
Yeah, that's true.
00:40:03
Zachary Jeblonski
you know, i don't know, maybe, maybe you could put contagion class in there, but like, I just, I didn't think it was worth it, you know?
00:40:10
Ciderspence
I get it.
00:40:11
Zachary Jeblonski
But yeah, that's, uh, that's shielded mono black. Uh, I have it fully prototyped out to turn it into a Valgov off. Maybe, maybe I'll do that. Maybe it, maybe I'll do that. I'm going back and forth because I've had fun with her as she is, but I also really want to try mono black, big boy, Valgo off and see if I can make that work. So I don't know. We'll say.
00:40:29
Zachary Jeblonski
but yeah, I think that's it for my, uh, cards of the week or I'm not cards of the week, games, we've played, uh, that I've played, uh, uh, do you have another game you want to reference?
00:40:38
Ciderspence
No, I think I'm good with those.
00:40:39
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay. So let's, why don't we do some decks on deck? We haven't done decks on deck in a while. and kind of talk about what's happening there. do you want to start us off or you want me to start, uh, start it off?
00:40:51
Ciderspence
Sure, I'll start for this one.
00:40:52
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:40:53
Ciderspence
So I think a deck I'm excited to build, I'm still kind of going through the turtle set and building a lot of decks from it. So I have the April O'Neil Human Element deck.
00:41:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:41:02
Ciderspence
I built a Leonardo the Balance and April Live on the Scene character select partner deck. That's just cards from the turtle set and from the PZA set of like guest star cards and the commander set.
00:41:17
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:41:19
Ciderspence
I have another, there's the Selesnya, Michelangelo, and Leo one that draws a card when you put a counter on something.
00:41:29
Ciderspence
That's another deck I built just with cards from the set. Another deck I want to build not just from cards from the set is Shredder Shadowmaster. Three black black, five five legendary creature human ninja.
00:41:41
Ciderspence
Whenever it attacks a player, for each other opponent create a token that's a copy of it.
Exploring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Set
00:41:46
Ciderspence
tapped and attacking that player, except it isn't legendary. Sacrifice those tokens at the end of turn, or the end of combat.
00:41:52
Ciderspence
Whenever Shredder deals combat damage to a player, that player loses half their life rounded up.
00:41:59
Zachary Jeblonski
Interesting, so myriad almost.
00:41:59
Ciderspence
So this is an effect that I think you've seen before, but yeah, Myriad, lose half your life if it hits you.
00:42:05
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:42:06
Ciderspence
So yeah, there are some, you know, some of the, there are some cute things I want to do with the deck. It's probably going to start off as a deck that is trying to do too many different things and never effectively does one of them, and then I'll kind of have to choose among the things that I get to have to which one seems the most worth trying to fully actualize, but I'm excited about putting this one together.
00:42:27
Zachary Jeblonski
Did you, oh, that did you put cover of darkness in that?
00:42:32
Ciderspence
Which, let me see cover of darkness.
00:42:34
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I'll pull up cover of darkness. It's like the first card I thought of when I saw this cover of dark. Uh, it's one in a black enchantment. And when it comes in, you choose a creature type and the creatures of the chosen type have fear, meaning they can only be blocked by artifact or black creatures.
00:42:49
Zachary Jeblonski
so when you're trying to get the shredders in, that might be good.
00:42:49
Ciderspence
Yeah, I think I have... Yeah, I've got that in my Nazgul deck. i might Yeah, I could see swapping that out for here. Yeah, it would be nice if all of them hit all the time. i i think the first card I thought of was Sundial of the Infinite to try to keep the tokens around.
00:43:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh yeah. Yep.
00:43:04
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:43:06
Ciderspence
and But yeah, I guess giving...
00:43:09
Ciderspence
Yeah, you kind of need to give all of your creatures whatever thing you're trying to give them.
00:43:12
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. That's the fun challenge of that deck is like, you know, your myriad tokens aren't going to come in with any auras or equipments that are attached.
00:43:13
Ciderspence
So...
00:43:19
Zachary Jeblonski
You're to have to find like some creative ways to get them to go through.
00:43:23
Ciderspence
Yeah, and this is one of the cases where a mono-colored deck makes it harder to build, but I think that makes it more fun to build, where there's not a lot of easy access to token doublers or to massive trample.
00:43:23
Zachary Jeblonski
or
00:43:37
Ciderspence
5-5 is pretty good, but I can't think of an automatic source of all your creatures have trample in mono-black. So, yeah, it's going to be hard to get them through.
00:43:43
Zachary Jeblonski
No, yeah. Oh, a Chrome's Memorial.
00:43:46
Ciderspence
No problem's more, yeah, yeah, but... but not ones that don't cost seven mana. I mean, I guess I could try to build around artifacts and try to power it out or something, or try to reanimate an artifact, which I think is not that easy in Black.
00:43:52
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:44:00
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:44:00
Ciderspence
I don't know. I think there are ways to do it. But yeah, that's that's the one I'm thinking about most these days.
00:44:06
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah. That, that, yeah, that's the fun. Yeah. Like, yeah. So just what we talked about with shoulder deck, which is like, it's always fun to like, I'm in a color range that does not support what I'm trying to do very well.
00:44:17
Zachary Jeblonski
And it's, it's fun to try and figure out how to make that happen. you know, what i think I think you could also, you know, I know this will be up your alley. You could probably Voltron up Shredder a bit and just always attack the player. That's the biggest problem. And then if the Miria tokens get in, that's great. And if they don't, then at least they probably killed something that they that blocked them, you know?
00:44:38
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. yeah f
00:44:38
Ciderspence
I do love good Voltron deck, but yeah. Yeah.
00:44:41
Zachary Jeblonski
That's why was throwing it out to you, you know, because there's an option.
00:44:42
Ciderspence
and i yeah
00:44:44
Zachary Jeblonski
to
00:44:45
Ciderspence
yeah
00:44:47
Zachary Jeblonski
nice. Uh, let's see what, all right. so you saw it once, but I feel like you didn't get a good chance to see what it could do. because I kind of locked horns with another player in that game.
00:44:59
Zachary Jeblonski
uh, but I built the flip Ashling, And when this car was first debuted, I was like, this is going to be good. i don't know how it's going to be good, but I think it's going be good. And then i I bought a copy. It just kind of sat in my collection for awhile and then to give credit where credit's due, uh, Tomer over at MTG Goldfish did today I think it wass like 35 for 30 or something like that. basically where he does these big compilation videos of a bunch of different commander deck ideas that fall a budget and he had Ashling in there and he kind of made the light bulb finally go off for me on what, what's, what's her deal.
00:45:31
Zachary Jeblonski
So just kind of explain what she does. She's one in the red legendary creature elemental sorcerer when she enters or transforms into Aisling rekindled. You may discard a card if you do draw a card at the beginning of your first main phase you may pay blue if you do transform Aisling and on our other side the important side for this deck.
00:45:49
Zachary Jeblonski
It's Aisling Rhymebound. And whenever this creature transforms into Aisling Rhymebound, and at the beginning of your first main phase, add two mana of any one color, spend this mana only to cast spells, mana four greater.
00:45:59
Zachary Jeblonski
And you can pay a red on your main phase to flip her back to the front side. But basically the whole point of this deck is Turn one land, turn two Aisling, turn three flip Aisling.
00:46:12
Zachary Jeblonski
So that uses one of the three lands that we have on turn three. and But she makes two mana, so we're back up to four. Play a four mana mana rock of some sort or four mana mana ramp spell.
00:46:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Then turn four, we should have six mana now. And then from there on out, it is bomb after bomb after bomb after bomb, essentially. You know, so I broke my longstanding distrust of mana rocks because it's just the way the math works with with her, you kind of have to. So I am running like Hugron Archive and Stone Speaker Crystal and Thran Dynamo and stuff like that. I'm still running a lot of my favorites like Machine Gun's Effigy, which only makes one mana, but I think it's worth it, stuff like that.
00:46:56
Zachary Jeblonski
But basically, you're really trying to get to that like turn five, eight mana, essentially is what it is. Because at turn five, you have five lands and a mana rock that taps for two. And she's making two. So that's nine, actually, technically on turn five. but Let's say eight mana on turn five. So eight mana turn five, that's when you're hitting your Amanatou's Auguries, your Phyrexian, the portal to Phyrexia. Like you're just like from there on out, it's just bomb after bomb after bomb.
00:47:23
Zachary Jeblonski
And in playtesting, she seems really good. And the game I got to play with her, i locked horns another player who did a really good job of of kind of keeping me down, which is fine. But i still think it proved pretty resilient. And I had a short-lived but ultimately fruitless comeback near the end. But you know regardless, i think I think she's very powerful.
00:47:45
Zachary Jeblonski
So yeah, that's Aisling Rekindle.
00:47:48
Ciderspence
Yeah, I was excited to see a powerful brew of her because I i did a, what's that set called? A Lorewind-only version of her that was very, very bad that I played a couple of times.
00:47:59
Ciderspence
Once, maybe just once online and it was it was atrocious, but it just let me see some cards in the set. So I was i was also wondering, what what would she be good at?
00:48:05
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:48:08
Ciderspence
It's not this, but it's probably something. So it was nice to see a deck where she got to where she got to shine.
00:48:10
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah it's probably something yep yeah i mean it's it's in my gold fishing if like if i'm not interacting with i mean i it seems like it's gonna be pretty overwhelming by like turn five like because there's just something big's happening every turn basically You know, so yeah, I mean, like i said, probably the biggest thing which I did get to fire off in the game was Amanatou's Augury.
00:48:33
Zachary Jeblonski
But I was just looking through. i have a lot of my fun pet cards in here, too, which I don't get to play very often, like Dance with Calamity. I think it's one of my favorite cards of all time. as an eight mana sorcery.
00:48:44
Zachary Jeblonski
it's essentially where you play blackjack with yourself, where you shuffle your library as many times as you choose, you may exile the top card of your library. If the total mana value of the cards exile this way is 13 or less, you may cast any number of spells from among these cards without paying the mana cost.
00:48:58
Zachary Jeblonski
So if you go over 13, you've just exiled bunch cards off your library nothing happens. If you're under 13, then of course you get to cast everything under there. But it is a fun game to play, especially in a deck like this where the mana values are so high that, you know, yeah, I could be at six mana value and the next card I could flip could be an eight and then I'd get to cast nothing.
00:49:11
Ciderspence
Yeah, was just thinking that.
00:49:17
Zachary Jeblonski
And I really like this card design. I think it's fun. So...
00:49:21
Ciderspence
Nice.
00:49:22
Zachary Jeblonski
so yeah, that's, uh, one of the decks I, I need to get another game in because I, I, I need a game hopefully where I'm not locking horns just to kind of get a a full C of what I'm doing.
00:49:32
Zachary Jeblonski
but yeah, any other decks you're working on?
00:49:36
Ciderspence
yeah there's a deck that i i i want to build but i'm just not sure sorry i'm looking up okay so another deck that i'm i have built but it's terrible and i want to make it better and i'm not sure exactly what to do with it what direction to go and another turtles card karai future of the foot one white black legendary creature human ninja Sneak 2 white black. So sneak is, you may cast a spell for 2 white black if you also return an unblocked attacker you control 2 hand during the declare blocker step. She enters tapped in attacking. So it's like Nujutsu, but more limited.
00:50:14
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:50:15
Ciderspence
Whenever Karai deals combat damage to a player, return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand. If her sneak cost was paid this turn, instead return that card to the battlefield. So it's like Reanimate or E.
00:50:29
Ciderspence
but it also to reuse the effect, you'd need to be able to sneak her in a lot. So it's, I don't know. It's one the, it reminds me a little bit of Chun-Li where it seems like it could be cool, but I think the requirements list is long enough that it's going to be hard for it to be consistent.
00:50:50
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:50:50
Ciderspence
And so I see some frustrating gameplay with it, but I, I do want to build it and play it. So, it's It's on decks on decks. I think it was right to come after the Shredder deck that I'm much more excited to put into practice and play.
00:51:06
Ciderspence
But I do want to build this deck, so it's also on the list. And i I'm excited about building this character. i just am, you know, the deck makes me nervous because I feel like i've seen I've seen myself play decks like this before, and especially on the heels of the April deck where I played a few games of it not being able to do anything.
00:51:21
Ciderspence
I'm not excited to go in that direction again, but, you know, got to be true to yourself and whatnot.
00:51:26
Zachary Jeblonski
No, for sure. and that that brings up an interesting point because I i played against a... your Renny dragon deck on Tuesday. you're running is the dragon from, I think it's temp, dragon's tempest or whatever that when he comes in, he does damage where X is number of lands you have. So he's a big ETB dragon.
00:51:46
Zachary Jeblonski
And they, and this guy built, and the reason I'm bringing this up is like, I built a deck with him as the commander. And it was like, he was the commander. He was dragon tribal kind of,
00:51:56
Zachary Jeblonski
And he was also trying to blink, you know, because he wants to blink or any and be dragon tribal and hit people, you know, like, and the what I was going to ask, like, there were so many like things he was trying to get his deck to do simultaneously that there was many times where like, you could just see the deck kind of like struggle under its own weight, so to speak.
00:52:03
Ciderspence
Yep.
00:52:38
Ciderspence
Right.
00:52:42
Ciderspence
Yep, that's a lot of things.
00:52:43
Zachary Jeblonski
it's a lot of things.
00:52:43
Zachary Jeblonski
It's not impossible. Like I certainly, I would be, I would,
00:52:45
Ciderspence
And things that don't synergize especially well with each other, which I think is kind of also part of the problem.
00:52:49
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I mean, I'd be interested to see it for sure. but I remember telling the guy, he was a guy who, he did okay with the Arani deck, but I think it was purely on the strength of dragons are dragons and you can, you're always going to do okay with dragons basically.
00:53:01
Zachary Jeblonski
But I was like, man, I think you need to pick a lane on this one. Like, you know, do you want to blink? do you want a dragon tribal, you know, kind of thing? because You know, he's running cards like Leyline Transformation because, you know, he's got blink creatures in there that he wants to turn into dragons. And I'm like, oh, man, I don't know. This is you're you're trying to you're asking a lot of your deck. So.
00:53:20
Zachary Jeblonski
But hey, i'd tell you what, though, I much rather play against a million players who are striving for these for these like complicated game plans that are difficult to pull off.
00:53:32
Zachary Jeblonski
than see another XYZ Bland deck that we've seen a million times. And, oh i'm sure you I'm sure your Yuriko is just, it's so different from all the other Yurikos, you know, kind of thing.
00:53:43
Zachary Jeblonski
So, yeah.
00:53:44
Ciderspence
don't Don't pick on the ninjas though, Zach. i was just Just relax, man.
00:53:47
Zachary Jeblonski
I look, look, I was just trying to think, all right, your Korvald is so different from all the other Korvalds. There you go.
00:53:55
Ciderspence
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, dragons, fey, whatever things
00:53:59
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah I think uh I think uh oh decks on deck wise for me I think I think I'm just gonna finally give in i think I'm gonna turn Rydia into just a straight up landfall deck with that's a lot less and more straightforward so I think I'm gonna switch her out for Tanook uh Memorial Ensign from uh the same set or no from Edge of Attorneys and this is a real simple guy whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control tanuk deals one damage each opponent and if it's a second time this ability is resolved draw a card so i think i'm just gonna like cut all the tokens out just landfall burn let's keep it simple and i i think think that's what i'm gonna end up doing with it because i'm like i think i just need to make peace with the fact that i'm not a token guy and if i am going to use tokens it has to be like a very like
00:54:47
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, the only tokens I make are X. So it's really simple for me to keep up with it. So I think that's probably my plan there.
00:54:54
Ciderspence
Nice.
00:54:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. I was like, i was like, he's, he's probably too easy. He's probably too straightforward. And I'm like, you know, Zach, sometimes you just need to do the thing.
00:55:03
Ciderspence
Yeah, play it
00:55:03
Zachary Jeblonski
I'm like, okay.
00:55:04
Ciderspence
play the hits. There's definitely a place for that.
00:55:05
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Sometimes you just got to do the thing. So think that's it for, for my decks on deck. do you have any other decks on the deck you want to talk about?
00:55:13
Ciderspence
No, I got a lot of ideas, but I think those are the two I'm most focused on.
00:55:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I got a lot of ideas too. Just haven't gotten around to to to putting them together here. We're running a little low on time, so I don't know. Is there anything else want to touch on before we kind of wrap it up?
00:55:32
Ciderspence
No, I think generally i just wanted to say I've been really enjoying the Turtles set. like it's There are a lot of cool cards in it and playing you know i I tend to play at least a couple of decks with all cards from a given set.
00:55:45
Ciderspence
So I've done that with Turtles enough to see a lot of the cards and they're fun. like you know i've I've heard from other videos and stuff about people thinking that Turtles is like Spider-Man and I i will say as a person who personally enjoys Spider-Man and had fun with the set, but recognized that a lot of the concerns that people were expressing about it made sense.
00:56:07
Ciderspence
I do think that Turtles is just a different, it's a different, it is quote unquote, a different animal. Like it is a different set.
00:56:14
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:56:14
Ciderspence
It's got different mechanics. The mechanics are a little more interesting and more flavorful. And it's just cool. And I, I hope that other people are enjoying it as well. I've seen a, I've seen a fair amount of it in the wild too.
00:56:24
Ciderspence
And I think, people that I've played with seem to be enjoying it. So I think it's cool. This is a fun set to be immersed in again. i kind of took a a bit of a breather for Lorewind Eclipsed. I played it, but not as much as I played Avatar or Turtles.
00:56:39
Ciderspence
I mean, Avatar or Spider-Man. But I'm back into playing a lot of Turtles decks and I'm enjoying it a lot.
00:56:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, that's cool. i For me personally, I'm more or less skipping the turtle set. like I don't think I'm buying any cards from it. Turtles isn't for me, but it has been really nice to see a lot of people excited about it. i know we've together played against a player who all you know I think every single time they've played a Turtles deck.
00:57:03
Zachary Jeblonski
and then on Tuesday I played against somebody that very excited about their turtles deck. so it went so far as to get like and a custom Etsy card box, but you know, the turtles on there and everything. I'm like, Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm excited that everyone's excited for, for this set. if it doesn't appeal to me, not everything has to appeal to me.
00:57:19
Zachary Jeblonski
and, uh, yeah, it's, it's nice to see. I mean, I think and the thing I'll give turtles is i think, I think it is a better set than Spider-Man was.
00:57:28
Zachary Jeblonski
But I think there are some similar challenges with the turtle set, but I think it is, i think it's, it's hidden for the people that needs a hit for, and I i think that's good.
00:57:38
Zachary Jeblonski
And then I'm excited for strict saving coming up. Cause I'm, you know, I'm, I'm an in universe guy, so I'm excited to be back in in universe. and I think which is be, Oh, it's not the last in universe set of the, of the year we have uh smash break reality verb i think is later this this uh it's reality fracture there we go yeah it was a word that was a verb yeah and then yeah we'll see what the rest of the year brings but uh but yeah i'm
00:57:57
Ciderspence
Reality? Stop. What is it? I'm thinking of the card. It's not Reality Ship. What is it? Reality something? Reality Fracture?
00:58:12
Ciderspence
It's a little sad to hear you be uncertain whether it was the last in-universe set of the year, given that it's March. But, I mean, I guess those are the times we're in.
00:58:19
Zachary Jeblonski
this is the time we're in and i wouldn't be surprised if we're down to one in universe set for next year, but we'll say, i think the money train be a rolling. And i mean, i can't, I cannot begrudge wizards for making the decisions they're making. Like any business person in their position will be like, wait, the in universe set sells X X better than the in universe ones.
00:58:41
Zachary Jeblonski
Huh? We should probably do more of that. You know, which is like, I can't, I can't begrudge that.
00:58:46
Ciderspence
Yeah, i don't know. i I got a lot of love for Universes Beyond. I think I came to the game not because of Universes Beyond, but I think a lot of my enthusiasm is from Universes Beyond. And I think it translates to mindsets.
00:58:55
Zachary Jeblonski
for sure.
00:58:57
Ciderspence
Like, I'm also excited about Strix Hammon. I really love Zimone. So i'm I mean, I'm not a big fan of Zimone Mystery Unraveler, but I like the character and I like her other cards.
00:59:07
Ciderspence
So I'm hoping that there's something... Not busted in that way, but cool to do with her from this set. I'm sure there will be. so yeah, I'm looking forward to it as well.
00:59:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. trick so I, when I started playing, it was, Innistrad Midnight Hunt was the set that was out when I started playing. And I think that was like shortly after the original Strixhaven.
00:59:26
Zachary Jeblonski
so Strixhaven was still big and prominent when I was, just starting to play magic. So Strixhaven has a slight like nostalgic bend for me. I'm like, yeah, we're going back to that set that I remember, you know?
00:59:38
Zachary Jeblonski
so yeah, I'm excited to see it, uh, see more of it. And, uh, yeah, but, uh, Anything else before we wrap up?
00:59:46
Ciderspence
Nope, I'm good there.
00:59:47
Zachary Jeblonski
All right. Well, thanks for joining me again. we will hopefully talk again next week. We do call it midlife's crisis for a reason. So thanks for everyone's patience out there who are listening.
00:59:58
Zachary Jeblonski
And we will talk again in future. Thank you, Charles.
01:00:02
Ciderspence
Have a good one, Zach. Take it easy, everybody.