Transcript
Zachary Jeblonski: Hello, welcome to another episode of Midlife's Crisis. I'm Zach. I'm joined again by Charles.
Ciderspence: How's it going, Not especially, but i I enjoy good athletic achievement in many forms.
Zachary Jeblonski: I'm doing good. Are you are you a soccer or football fan?
Zachary Jeblonski: i'm not I'm not a sports fan in general, and I'm i don' i'm not a soccer fan, so you might be asking yourself, Zach, why would you bring this question up?
Ciderspence: Zach, why would you bring this question up?
Zachary Jeblonski: Because I live in the, I guess you could call it the ground zero of the impending, I guess, World Cup. I live pretty close to where, I guess, some of the games are going to played.
Zachary Jeblonski: and it's been, interesting interesting to see the, the gouging take place, in terms of, uh, pricing. So I'm thinking how I'm going to feel my Marvel superheroes expenditures. Uh, and I'm going to give people rides to the stadium on my bicycle.
Zachary Jeblonski: I think it's a good plan.
Ciderspence: oh
Ciderspence: Yes, that is that is a plan.
Zachary Jeblonski: For once, somebody might actually go to the American dream mall. We'll see.
Ciderspence: but
Zachary Jeblonski: I've been there once. That place is creepy. i don't know if you've ever been.
Ciderspence: I've been several times. It's much better for kids than it is for adults.
Zachary Jeblonski: Is it?
Zachary Jeblonski: i heard good i heard it's gotten a little bit better in the last like year or two, but like you know it's been a while since I've been there. When I was there, I was like, wow, there's like nobody here and half the stores aren't open. and it's it's just bizarre.
Zachary Jeblonski: It's a bizarre place to me.
Ciderspence: Yeah, it's so it's weird. There are a couple of weird things about it. One weird thing is, i don't know if you're familiar with New Jersey's Blue Laws.
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh, I've become familiar with them since I moved here.
Ciderspence: Yeah, so the mall is affected by what's known as the blue laws in New Jersey. And I don't understand all the particulars, but the one that is most salient is that on Sundays, stores in counties which have quote unquote blue laws are not allowed to sell certain items, including clothing, electronics, and some other stuff.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: And that mall is in a town or county or whatever with blue laws. So a lot of those stores that you're talking about being closed, if you go on a Sunday, they were closed by law. I think they have since worked out some deal where they don't have to close the stores and it's a little bit less creepy. But that was certainly something that we noticed the first time we were there on a Sunday and it was definitely strange.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, no, I, yeah, I've become familiar with that. I've i've been living here for, uh, I guess a little, like three years or so, a little over three years. yeah, I guess where I first run in, ran into that was, uh, in Walmart, uh, cause you go to Walmart, Walmart's open, but what they do on Sunday is they literally use like almost like a police tape and they tape off certain sections of the store. So you can't take products from those sections on Sunday and you can't, so you can't buy products. And I'm like,
Zachary Jeblonski: Wow. But it's also become like a matter of principle too, because I know, i know to what you're alluding to, the American dream mall has intentionally been breaking the law to kind of like push the issue. and yeah, I've seen a lot of the the town council going back and forth, the whole thing, you know, part of me is like, this law is ridiculous, blah, blah, blah. And the other part of me is like, heck yeah, small county take down this big American dream corporation. So it's like, I'm torn between these two sides.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, it's a it's bizarre. It's bizarre. But I don't know. I would say it probably served a purpose when they designed it. But knowing the American legislatures, it didn't. It probably didn't.
Ciderspence: Yeah, I don't put it past any archaic law to have never served its intended function.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, unless the intended function was to support some kind of oligarchy or something. But yeah.
Ciderspence: Yeah.
Zachary Jeblonski: well, anyway, speaking of oligarchies, let's talk about something that's not our oligarchic at all. match it together.
Ciderspence: Well, not all monarchy is bad. Let's just be clear on that.
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh yeah. I do really like the Russian oligarchs. Those guys are legit.
Ciderspence: I was thinking of the mechanic, but yeah, that too.
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh, okay. Oh, I'm saying oligarch. You're saying monarch. Okay. They're both good. yeah
Ciderspence: It's fair. I guess they are by definition, not the same thing.
Zachary Jeblonski: No, yeah, I guess oligarchs is like more than one and monarch is one, i guess. don't know. Some etymologists out there will be like, how did they not know that mon means one?
Zachary Jeblonski: Anyway, I don't know. I'm on a roll today. So why don't we get into the games we played? Uh, you know, we should have a jingle for this. I'm just, sorry.
Ciderspence: We should.
Zachary Jeblonski: I'm just like, yeah, have a jingle.
Ciderspence: That's a great idea.
Zachary Jeblonski: don't have like, I would really want a 1950s, like pop, pop, fizz, fizz. Oh, what a relief it is. Kind of jingle. and That's what I'm, that's what I'm looking for.
Ciderspence: Wow, okay. That was pretty specific.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: i didn't I didn't anticipate that on the way in, and now I'm i'm reconsidering whether I want the jingle. Well,
Zachary Jeblonski: Game, game. i don't know. I can't, there's no way I'm that creative to come up with this in the spot.
Ciderspence: but if you're going to sing it, I definitely want it.
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh boy. My, our three listeners will go down to two. i can't I don't know if I can do that.
Ciderspence: thats
Ciderspence: It's possible.
Zachary Jeblonski: All right, let's, why don't we talk about the games that we were both involved in first, and then we can talk about any other games besides those since last time we talked. and So, yeah, we got two, two, and we got how many games?
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, it was two, right?
Ciderspence: Yeah, it was two. Yep.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, two games in with our friend and a rando at a store. So, let's talk about the first one. uh, was, i can remember this.
Zachary Jeblonski: I was playing mono black Valga boss. This the second time I've played this deck.
Ciderspence: Yes.
Zachary Jeblonski: Uh, a friend and comrade was playing Bay tour, the, three color abs and dragon from Tarkir. And that's when you were playing your mono green, right?
Ciderspence: Yeah, and I was playing Azusa.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, Azusa. And then the person the to across from me that was the the rando i was playing Ulelec, I guess the pre-con commander from was like Modern Horizons 3 whatever.
Ciderspence: We didn't.
Zachary Jeblonski: So yeah, that was that was it was a good game. it was back and forth. i i made a couple mistakes, but i don't know. In retrospect, there were mistakes. I don't know if I could have foreseen there mistakes with the cards at hand. But one of the things that really, i think, would have changed that game is at one point I sacrificed a land of braids to draw cards.
Zachary Jeblonski: and I did end up drawing three off you guys, you guys didn't sag lands, but that put me a turn off.
Ciderspence: we didn't
Zachary Jeblonski: And I think that term was enough to do me in on that game. so that's kind of like the one decision I go back to on that game. but yeah, no, it was, it was good.
Zachary Jeblonski: Uh, tell me about your side.
Ciderspence: Yeah, uh, it was, it was the first time I played this deck in a long time, probably two years. I remember I, before I stopped playing it, I played it pretty regularly and it was one of those cases where the first build didn't really do a lot. And so I tweaked it a fair amount, and wound up putting some pretty strong cards in it. So I i think it was technically a bracket three, but,
Ciderspence: by card inclusion, it's probably one of the more high octane card quality decks I have. Yeah.
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah i think I think that's firmly a bracket three deck. I didn't see anything in that deck that was like unmanageable, you know?
Ciderspence: yeah
Zachary Jeblonski: i mean, we went a lot of turns. You got to remember that too. Like...
Ciderspence: That's true. I think it's just one of the more, i think the thing that stuck out to me was that I saw some cards and I played some cards that I don't play in many decks anymore. Right? Like I think we've talked about how, because some unmentioned or some unnamed player that I play with really doesn't like soul ring.
Ciderspence: I've started taking it out of most of my decks, just kind of out of respect.
Zachary Jeblonski: i
Zachary Jeblonski: I have never enforced the people that you can run solar if you want to run solar.
Ciderspence: No, there was only that one time that you threw the tantrum and most of those chairs were able to be rebuilt.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, you're right. i only put the table once. Yeah.
Ciderspence: I, I didn't, I'm not saying that's the, that's the cause, but yeah. another one of the cards that I don't really run anymore is the one ring. it's not like I had that in one hundred decks cause it's expensive and hard to find, but I did have it in a few decks and it was in this deck.
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah
Ciderspence: And I think I had a turn four or turn five, one ring, and that really changed the game. No pun intended. But that that had an overwhelming impact on the game for me. But otherwise, like it was landfall. i I realized pretty late in the game that my turns were taking at a long time.
Ciderspence: And you know it made me, I guess, glad that I don't play it more often and you know sad that I was playing it because the turns were taking long. But I think by the time my turns started taking a long time, the game was almost over.
Ciderspence: So I guess that was a small silver lining.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, that's, no, mean, I, I don't think your, your turns run egregious, especially for not for a landfall deck. but that's always, that's the struggle I've always had with landfall decks is that you could do, you do get to that point where your engine set up, where it's just the problem. The, this is the issue that I have. and i think most magic players have is like, you can game plan your whole turnout ahead of time.
Zachary Jeblonski: But then what when you have an engine set up where you're drawing cards and you're doing things, then suddenly you can't game plan it that much because your your variables are constantly changing. Like what's on top of your library is constantly changing. What's in your hand is constantly changing. So like it just gets more and more like laborious. And it's it's actually very similar to the problem I have when I play Valgovoth, the Mono Black one. Yeah.
Zachary Jeblonski: Because when I do do that big massive discard spell, which I got one off in the game we played, which was Dark Deal, where everybody discards their hand, draws that many minus one.
Ciderspence: Yep.
Zachary Jeblonski: I, I, what I've learned when I play these kinds of decks is like, I don't sit there and agonize every card that I took from people. I literally skim through everything that was taken. make note of what are instance and then like, that's it. Like, and then over the course of the rest of the game, I'll like keep poking at the the pile to kind of get a sense of what's in there.
Zachary Jeblonski: but it's hard. It's hard when like the information you're presented with in your turn is constantly changing because you have like a car draw engine or whatever. I say, so I think to your credit, you did you did a great job like trying to get through your turns and you know and as quickly as you can, given that the information is constantly changing on you.
Ciderspence: Yeah, thanks. Still still don't want to play Landfall for a while.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, that's kind of why Rydia is getting taken apart because like Rydia does the same thing. Rydia gets to that point where the engine's going and I'm like, man, i don't have the brainpower for this. And that that brings me, when we get to Dex on Deck, I'll tell you what Rydia is turning into and I think that's going to help solve that problem.
Ciderspence: Oh, nice. Spoiler alert. Okay.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, a little taste of things to come. Yeah, i think other i think the from my perspective, like the game plan more or less played out how I intended it to.
Zachary Jeblonski: Minus, I guess the two big hits were Miesack and Alanda draw three cards, which I'm not sure if it was the best idea. I've done that a couple times with Braids. And I go back and forth on it every time.
Zachary Jeblonski: And the problem is, is like, you don't know what you would have drawn if you hadn't done that. So like, it's hard to like make that call. and then the other thing that really just took me out is, or I shouldn't say take me out, but really pushed me back was, the, theyre the, the,
Zachary Jeblonski: The, the random player playing against annihilated to me and I had to get rid of two lands, which was rough.
Zachary Jeblonski: You know, but overall still pretty good game. i had one.
Ciderspence: Yeah, one interesting thing about the other player in our pod is that it was a literal child.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: I think he was probably, i don't know, somewhere between 7 and 15.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: i i i have an 8 and 4 year old, so i I think he was older than that, but i'm I'm not sure.
Zachary Jeblonski: That's a rage.
Ciderspence: And, you know, above that and below 25, I don't know.
Zachary Jeblonski: He was firmly nine, I'm going to say.
Ciderspence: There's just something. Okay, so he was a kid, so we were playing some board wipes and he was not... okay with that.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, he was not happy with that.
Ciderspence: he He was very much in please don't touch my stuff mode. And nobody, i don't think anyone targeted him with anything, but his board got swept up a couple of times, maybe three times.
Zachary Jeblonski: No.
Ciderspence: Maybe there were three sweepers in that game.
Zachary Jeblonski: I think I was responsible for two, and I think i think our friend got him with one.
Ciderspence: and He was really upset.
Zachary Jeblonski: I think. I did too, I know that. I think in our friend, caught him with one, I think is what it was.
Ciderspence: Yeah, I think that's right. So yeah, he was he was upset. And because Zach had the first or the most board wipes, he was the the recipient of his ire.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. Which is fair. I mean, like, i'm I'm not salty about it. I'm just commenting on as it like, like, it was just rough. Because I was basically three turns behind that game. Two from his Annihilator and one from my own choice of sacking the land.
Zachary Jeblonski: because the whole the whole game basically is i have Dark Deal in my opening hand. So I want Valgavoth out and then the Dark Deal. So that's a total of 12 mana. So like the whole game, I'm trying to get to that 12 mana.
Zachary Jeblonski: And I also have a Dark Ritual in hand. So that's plus two right there. So I really just need 10 mana on the board to do what I'm trying to do. And I just, I didn't get to it until like the second to last turn, you know, and then that was it.
Ciderspence: Well, and you you tried, and I also hurt you by, you played an early, not too early, but you played a strategically timed Throne of Eldraine, either right after a board wipe or like at a point where I had a creature on board that I could sac to destroy an Artifactor Enchantment.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yes. Yeah.
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah
Ciderspence: That creature got removed, and you immediately played Throne of Eldraine, which is a great ramp piece, one of my favorites that will come up later if we do talk about overlap today.
Ciderspence: But what you didn't know was that I had ramped enough to have enough mana to cast an Evolution Witness, I think, Eternal Witness, to cast and Eternal Witness, get it back, and sack it in the next turn cycle and blow up the throne.
Zachary Jeblonski: Eternal witness. Yeah.
Ciderspence: So that also didn't help your cause to get to the mana you needed.
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah For the record, listeners, because I have this, this is one of my favorite discussions I have in stores all the time. Everyone's like, you don't run Manorox? I'm like, this is precisely why I don't like Manorox.
Zachary Jeblonski: Because if I had, don't know, Burnished Heart, you wouldn't have been able to get rid of those two lands that I got. you know i mean like This is why I don't like Manorox.
Ciderspence: Well, Burnished Heart is a tricky one, right? Because you really need the six mana. But if you had the six mana, yeah, I have been able to get rid of it.
Zachary Jeblonski: right or Right. Or if I had a Psalms and Malacrum, let's, but let's change it to that. Right.
Ciderspence: Yeah.
Zachary Jeblonski: I would have, I would have kept that land. You wouldn't have been able blow land, you know, like that. This is to me is like, well, but but theck you get four men off the throne. I was like, I would have, if I kept it, but you know, you can see the problem there.
Zachary Jeblonski: You know, I, i for me, I'm much more of like, I want that locomotive effect. I call it the locomotive effect with my decks where like I have this slow build of value turn after turn to turn that's really hard to stop rather than those like high spikes, you know, that that bring a lot of attention.
Zachary Jeblonski: but i don't know, maybe I still got to keep throwing a bell drain in this deck just because the card draw side of it is actually a big reason why it's in the deck less for the ramp.
Ciderspence: Yep.
Zachary Jeblonski: because there's 18 pieces of ramp Vagabot deck so that when I goldfish it, I can often run out of cards because i have I'm making so much mana.
Zachary Jeblonski: And and i've I've learned to build these kind of theft decks. I assume when I build these decks that basically every card that I thieve is terrible.
Zachary Jeblonski: Like that's the way I assume when I build these decks. And it's more of like, oh, what a lovely surprise. Like if I actually like managed to take something that's good. Because I used to build, i remember back in the day, i used to build like theft decks as, oh, surely my opponents will have something that will help with this part of my deck.
Zachary Jeblonski: And that never happens. It never happens. It's always like I steal three oxen for my friend. Oh, cool. Great. You know, it's like,
Ciderspence: It does feel more and more like, yeah, what you're getting from everybody else's deck is hyper specific and unlikely to support your bigger game plan.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yes.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. The most you can help for is like what I got from you, which was like a heroic intervention. Right? Like that's like the most you can hope for with these kinds of theft X is, you know, like, you know, you know, somebody I'm trying to think, uh, you know, I'm playing Lucy, the amount of white make tokens thing and somebody thieves off me. It's like, congratulations. You can make three one, one soldiers now.
Zachary Jeblonski: I hope you're happy with that. It's like, you know, so yeah, uh, it's a, it was, it was a good game though. It was, it was close. And did you eventually seal the deal with Avengers Endicott and some Anthem effects?
Ciderspence: Yeah, it was like a turn after Avengers Zendikar. You actually, i was swinging for you for lethal and you made a heroic, not a heroic intervention, but you made a heroic play for the table and exiled Avenger before I could pump the tokens.
Zachary Jeblonski: and
Ciderspence: So the tokens were small. They were big enough to kill you because you only had one creature.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: But then after that, was Oh, yeah. After that, I took out the Ulaleck player and our friend remained.
Ciderspence: And conceded after I was able to... Like, I had on board four or five land drops. And I had found another land.
Ciderspence: And I had... What's her name? Titania on board so i was gonna make a bunch of five threes with haste in addition to some other big creatures so our friend had a lot of life but I think I had him on that turn following because I was gonna sacrifice five lands
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, I think i think so too. Your engine had just, you know, the One Ring had done some work that game.
Ciderspence: it really had yeah it's it's worth pointing out that like I was at the point where the damage from the one ring was starting to become a problem. But I did draw a gain to life when a land enters card.
Ciderspence: And that kind of stabilized me to get me to the end game.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, that really kind of, yeah, for sure. yeah then we get to the the second game i'm like playing my little swan song for my golgari deck that i'm going to take apart for witherbloom so my marion deck is just literally like 35 legends it's basically gold carrying legends and there's there's not that many ways to close out the game in the deck the The one which almost was my card of the week is Lumra is probably one of the ones that I can close the game out with.
Ciderspence: It's pretty good card.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, but you know rightfully said, I think it would be unbalanced if it wasn't this way. It doesn't have trample, which always makes it super awkward. I feel like every time I get a Lumra out, I have no way of getting it through.
Zachary Jeblonski: but yeah, Lumara, if anybody doesn't know, it's four green, green from Bloomberg. vigilance reach its power and toughness is equal the number of lands you control. And when it enters, you mill four cards and return all land cards from your graveyard the battlefield tapped.
Zachary Jeblonski: I think probably by the end of this game, I had, I think I was in the neighborhood of like 22 or 25 lands out in the battlefield at this point. So that's how big he was. That was at the very end, by the very end of the game.
Zachary Jeblonski: But yeah, and I mean, the the deck probably performed the best it's ever done. Actually, that's actually the best that Marin deck has ever done. But even that, it's it's it's kind of like to what end kind of thing. So yeah, I'm not sad to take this apart. It was and it was an experiment. It was fine. I'm good. let's But you had another good showing with something.
Ciderspence: I played Mr. Negative in the second game.
Zachary Jeblonski: There it is. Yeah. Yeah.
Ciderspence: And yeah, he did well. Our friend played, what's the name of the Bellacor, right?
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, he paid Bella Corey out.
Ciderspence: Bellacor is...
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, three blue, red, black.
Ciderspence: he's like spelled weird. Oh, you got em Yeah, gotta go for it.
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh, no, I just know the cost. to
Ciderspence: Bellacor. There's like a... Okay, Bellacor, the Dark Master, three, blue, black, red. Like you said, legendary creature, demon, noble flying, uh, Prince of chaos. When Bella core, the dark master enters the battlefield, you draw X cards and you lose X life where X is the number of demons you control and Lord of torment.
Ciderspence: Whenever another demon enters the battlefield under your control, it deals damage equal to its power to any target.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yep. Yeah. yep
Ciderspence: Uh, those are both relevant. But particularly that second clause came into play a lot, especially in the late game.
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah
Ciderspence: So he's playing a demon kindred deck. I'm playing Mr. Negative, which I also have as a kind of demon side a sidebar theme deck.
Ciderspence: So it's like a theme deck built around a character from K-pop Demon Hunters, like one of the bad guys.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: So that character is a demon, although Mr. Negative isn't a demon. But the deck does have some demons in it, including my card of the week. And the fact that my deck had demons in it became relevant towards the end of the game in a pretty big way.
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah Yeah, so I guess we'll talk about the actual card of the week because we're we're going to have our individual cards of the week, but this is probably the actual card of the week for both of us, which is a Mimic Vat. And this card was played by our friend. It's a three-mana artifact.
Zachary Jeblonski: I've played against this card at a fair amount in my career, but I i think this is the most impactful I've ever seen it be. And it's a three-mana artifact and it says, whenever a non-token creature dies, you may exile that card. If you do, return each other card exile with Mimic Bat to its owner's graveyard. and and And then the controller can play three and tap to create a token that's a copy of a card to exile with Mimic Bat. It gains haste, exile at the beginning of the next end step.
Zachary Jeblonski: so I'd say the real, the real big thing with Mimic Fat here is it really stopped both me and yours, death shenanigans, I guess is the best way to put it.
Ciderspence: Yeah, I think that's the best way to put it.
Zachary Jeblonski: you know, because a Marin deck, so I'm, I'm either sacrificing or I'm expecting things to die constantly. and the controller has the ability to, on each time something dies, to just exile it from the graveyard. So basically he can ensure that the best things are always being exiled instead of remaining in our graveyards.
Zachary Jeblonski: And also for me in particular, and this is going to come up for you in a sec. it It messes with all the feigned death effects. Yeah. So I wanted to use Kaia's Ghost Form on a creature, but that doesn't work because his trigger will resolve before Kaia's Ghost Form does.
Zachary Jeblonski: And any other feign death effects aren't going to work because as as long as he exiles it before your effect resolves, your effect looks for the card and it's not there and it doesn't come back. Yeah, I think you got it. you got I got hurt by it a little bit, but I think you really got you got you got stumped on that one a little bit.
Ciderspence: Yeah, I think one one interesting thing about this card is that I had seen it at a table before, and I'm pretty sure I'd seen it in online gameplay before. But I think this was probably the first time
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. Yeah.
Ciderspence: that I had enough experience to appreciate two really relevant details about it. One, you brought up that it's a Mei. You don't have to exile any given creature.
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah
Ciderspence: You can keep whatever you want there and not exile something. So once our friend had a good target, he was able to keep something really good and available for a few turns in a row.
Ciderspence: And for a little while, that was Lumara. Yeah, that was Lumara in that game as well? There was something...
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, this was the Loomer game. This was the Loomer game.
Ciderspence: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, for several turns, that was Illumra, which ramped him, which was pretty great. And then for several turns, that was one of my creatures. But yeah, the fact that it doesn't just like, it's not like a fairy artisans where you make a token and it gets exiled as soon as there's another token was relevant. And also the fact that when you make the token with Mimic Vat,
Ciderspence: you don't lose the card. So you can make that token as many turn cycles as you want. Now it does tap mimic that, so you can only do it once per rotation.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: But being able to make the token multiple times also came into play. So one of the creatures that that I got, yeah, I also had feign death effects. So one of the plans with that Mr. Negative deck, Mr. Negative has an ETB.
Ciderspence: When he enters battlefield, you and target opponent swap life totals. So that's a fun, i think we've talked about on the show before, that's a fun little, you know, party trick.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: It makes games a little little interesting, a little wonky because, you know, I'm trying to lower my life total and then switch it with someone. Or I'm trying to switch my life total with someone who's got a lower life total and draw some cards.
Ciderspence: I was able to do both of those things in the game. and then by late game, I had had a couple of pieces on that said, uh, you know, whenever an opponent loses life, they lose that much life again.
Ciderspence: and or whenever an opponent would gain life, they lose life instead.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: but one of the demons that said whenever an opponent gains life or whatever opponent loses life, they lose that much life again is one of the things that got trapped under mimic that after a board wipe.
Ciderspence: And that creature is also a demon. So once our friend had his engine online with his commander out, each time he made that creature, he was able to both deal damage to someone from Belcour's trigger and also deal that damage again because of the creature's own ability.
Ciderspence: And it also says your opponents can't gain life. So that was being able to kind of summon that effect was pretty useful in that game, especially at the end.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, I'd say so. Yeah, it was good. It was a good one. yeah i Yeah, I mean, i that that game when that game went long. A lot of back and forth. It was good.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, we had another random player for that, and he was just catching some strays. But no, he was playing a pretty chill deck. Yeah, I don't know if i have any more further comment on it.
Ciderspence: Yeah, it was a fun game.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. But i'm I'm happy to to let this deck go. That's good. I want did my experiment. I'm good. All right.
Zachary Jeblonski: Let's talk. Do you have any other games you played minus the ones that we played together?
Ciderspence: Oh, yeah, I did play.
Ciderspence: Yes, I do. But why don't you tell me about your other games? Because did you have more in-person games this week?
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, I did. So yeah, ill I'll fire it off. So i played I played three games. I think two of them are worth talking about, I guess. I mean, I guess very quickly I played Sin. this is definitely one of those decks that has very steadily been working away its way up the rankings of my favorite decks to play.
Zachary Jeblonski: and I wasn't expecting this random Soul Tie Commander from Final Fantasy to to really be fun, but he is. Just to remind everybody, is It's since Spira's punishment for black, green, blue. So seven mana, big guy. He's a flying seven, seven. And whenever he enters our attacks, i exile permanent card from my graveyard at random. Then I create a tap token. That's a copy of that card. And if the exile card is a land card, repeat the process.
Zachary Jeblonski: I just really enjoy playing this deck. I got to play it again I guess as a callback to the other games, I also run Archery into Despair in this deck, just like you run it in Mr. Negative, and that's the 8-mana demon that your opponents can't gain life, and at the beginning of each end step, each opponent loses life equal to the life they lost that turn.
Ciderspence: It's good card.
Zachary Jeblonski: So i actually managed to close out this Sin Gain by doppelganging the Archfiend of Despair. So I had four Archfiend of Despairs and, you know, then you just you basically just have to like sneeze in somebody's direction and they die because that's yeah, whatever life they lost, they would they would times it by two times it by two times it by two by two times two.
Ciderspence: Oh yeah, ouch.
Zachary Jeblonski: So yeah, no, the deck is just a lot of fun. I mean, it's also somewhat controlly. So what I did I basically searched up every counterspell that puts a card in the graveyard, and that's also in there because I want to fill my graveyard. So I have things like refute, which is counter target spell, draw a card, then discard a card.
Zachary Jeblonski: And I think one of the best ones in here is a Confounding Riddle is an instance, two in a blue. i can either do i can either i can choose one. I can look at the top four cards in my library and put one in my hand and the rest in the graveyard, or I can counter target spell unless the controller pays four.
Zachary Jeblonski: So this is just like a great card where like early on the game, I'll just fill up the graveyard. I'm not countering anything, but late in the game when I've got my engine going, and now I have counter spell. Like it's, it's so the deck is very much like full of these kinds of like modal, spells like that.
Ciderspence: Yeah.
Zachary Jeblonski: But the one requirement I hold to, because I want to make sure that my hits for sin are good, is that there are basically no permanents in the deck minus lands that are less than like five mana. Because I want to make sure that every hit from sin is an impactful one.
Zachary Jeblonski: so it's interesting because you'll see a lot of like graveyard support pieces that have been coming out recently and and a lot of them are like three mana like creatures and stuff and i like and i just refuse to put them in there because i want every hit with sin to be huge so yeah it's it's good deck i really enjoy it And then real quick, I'll talk about my card the week with the game that goes with it.
Zachary Jeblonski: I got a game in with Lyshex, which is my Azorius Voltron commander. and she's Voltron through spells basically only.
Zachary Jeblonski: She's a one white blue prowess. Non-creature spells you cast have one less to cast. And as long as you've cast two more two more non-creature spells this turn, Lyshex has double strike.
Zachary Jeblonski: this This is probably the closest deck I have to bracket four, probably. like yeah i think this is stronger than even my Emotee deck because I don't know if i had the nut draw or just like that's just how tuned I've made this thing.
Zachary Jeblonski: But I smacked somebody for 18 on turn four. uh with Lyshex so yeah the game went very quickly it was like we were starting the game at like 9.05 p.m the store closed at 10 I was like am playing this deck and I had the game wrapped up by 9.45 like it was done it's like you know
Ciderspence: Nice.
Ciderspence: Nice. How many turns did it go? So if you almost took somebody out on turn four, did you need
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, so I took, I, I did, I domed somebody for 18 on turn four. I did 21 plus on turn five to another person, not the the other guy that got hit by 18. Then I went back to the 18 guy and got him that turn. And then the next turn I i killed the other guy. So that was four or five, six, it was turn six where I had ended the game.
Ciderspence: Oh, you you killed two players on turn five.
Zachary Jeblonski: Uh, no, so turn four, no, you're right. No, turn seven. Yeah. So it's turn seven when I ended the game.
Ciderspence: Gotcha.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. yeah. I mean, it was just like, just things like, you know, every, almost every card in this deck draws a card. like, like, so like an early card I have is honor. It says one man of sorcery from edge of attorneys. I know he knows anything. It's literally one white pip and it's sorcery, put a one, one counter on target creature draw card.
Zachary Jeblonski: So that's what, like, that's what I mean. like almost every card in the deck draws a card. so that the hand just goes and I had, I had Teferi's Ageless Insight, so all my draws are doubled.
Zachary Jeblonski: And yeah, I have a couple lifelink effects. So I think I ended the game with like 70 life or something like that.
Ciderspence: Nice.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, it's it's really good. I mean, but just for anybody out there, like if I play this again, it's all you have to do is kill Lyshex, then it kind of, it's real bad for Lyshex for the deck. So if nobody interacts with her yeah, it turns seven and probably kill everybody. But like if if you interact, it's like it's a whole different game after that point.
Zachary Jeblonski: But yeah, those are those are the other games I played.
Ciderspence: And what, did you mention your card the week?
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh yeah, so my card of the week is in Lyshex and I had it on turn two. was a Prophecydetic Memory. It's one in a blue legendary enchantment when it enters, draw a card. So once again, it goes back to that thing of like almost every card draws me a card.
Zachary Jeblonski: No maximum hand size. At the beginning of combat on my turn, if you've drawn one or more card this turn, or if you've drawn more than one card this turn, put X11 counters on target creature you control where is the number of cards you've drawn this turn minus one. So you can see kind of how crazy this goes with Lice, Hex, because...
Zachary Jeblonski: I don't remember exactly, but I know like by the last turn of the game, she had 18 plus ones on her. So this this this card is like one of the best cards in the whole deck. like If I get this card, it' you know any kind of plus one effects are huge because of the double strike.
Zachary Jeblonski: So yeah, this this went about as hard as you can imagine it going.
Ciderspence: Yeah, that plus to Faerie's Ageless Scent Sight sounds really, really strong.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, and then by by the last combat, I was playing against a mono-white Avacyn deck, and he he just i had i have like five unblockable enchantments in the deck that make her unblockable, and he destroyed one of them.
Zachary Jeblonski: So all I did was cast Shelter, which gives her protection from a color of my choice, and it draws me a card.
Ciderspence: Nice. There you go
Zachary Jeblonski: And I just made protection from white, so basically unblockable again. you know, so it's just, if I'm, if it's allowed to get going to that extent, it's just really hard to deal with. Cause I probably will have some kind of protection or something like that.
Zachary Jeblonski: but yeah, like I, I know this was a while ago, but like I did play this at our pods and you guys successfully killed her like two or three times. And yeah, as long as she gets interacted with at least once, this deck becomes very much like instead of bordering on four, it's very much like a solid three. Like if she gets interacted once, like that's kind of the thing and that's fine. I'm i'm okay with that. This is a glass cannon deck really. so yeah, that, that was, uh, that was Lyshexed.
Ciderspence: Nice. Yeah, that I mean, that is a really strong deck. And you're right, it is the case that if you can interact with it early, it sets it back. But I mean, that's the case for most strong decks.
Ciderspence: Like we kind of talked about your experience at the store with that Atali deck, right? And where you said you made the table wide agreement, hey, we just can't let Atali resolve.
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Ciderspence: Because it's too strong. If it gets going, that's the game. And I think Lice is like... Because it's one player per turn, it's not quite the same.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, it's not.
Ciderspence: But it is...
Zachary Jeblonski: I would still play against an Atali 10 times, or I would play against a Lysax 10 times over than an Atali.
Ciderspence: Yes, but i but it is one of those cards that you kind of need to target. but And it's twofold.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yes. Yeah.
Ciderspence: Because it's snowball-y, but also because it is the case that... It's a deck where if you disrupt the commander... And I guess Itali's like this too, but if you disrupt the commander, you can, you know, we talk a lot about players getting off to an early lead in a game and then getting kind of reduced back to the stone ages by the rest of the table. And then they're like kind of not a threat for a while.
Ciderspence: I feel like Lyshexed is one of those one of those types of decks.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. Yep. Yeah, you go back to the Stone Age for sure.
Ciderspence: Itali's not, right? Because Itali is you don't really get a chance to not focus on Itali. You kind of need to be ready to deal with Itali anytime Itali would come out because that could be it. But Lice Hexed, if you remove her two or three times and you make it, first of all, you get some of those cards out already.
Ciderspence: And then you make it more expensive to cast. Then you really set that player back unless there's like Onboard Haste or something. And in Blue-White, it's like harder. So, yeah.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, like, I played Lyshex on turn three with no protection up because I only had three lands, you know, so she made it a turn cycle without anybody doing anything. But you do have to play risky when you play this deck. Like, you can't be like, I'm going to save Lyshex until I can play her and I have protection. And, like, you know, like you can't do that because...
Zachary Jeblonski: like, cause to your point, you're in Azorius, you don't really have haste enablers unless you want to do swift foodop boots, which I don't run in the deck because it doesn't draw me a you know, so you really got to run her out on turn three or turn four if you miss a land drop or something, because you need, you have to wait a turn cycle to get that attack ability and all that. So,
Zachary Jeblonski: it is the most glass canody of glass cannons, which I appreciate. It's fine. I do run like I run, let's say three backups. So if she gets removed like three or four times, then I'll switch to a backup, but they're nowhere near as good as she is like,
Zachary Jeblonski: One of the backups I have is Danitha. She's two and a white and she has, yeah, first strike vigilance lifelink.
Ciderspence: Yep, she's good.
Zachary Jeblonski: So she has a bunch of keywords that kind of help or an equipment spells cast one last gas. So she can kind of be a Lys Hex, but she's nowhere. She's not going to deal anywhere. The non damage that Lys Hex can do just because There's no double strike and she's not getting prowess triggers.
Zachary Jeblonski: I am Riptide Gear Hulk is the other replacement that does have double strike and prowess so I can kind of replace Lys Hex with it. It's one white, white, blue, blue and it just balances two permanents when it comes in or one permanent.
Zachary Jeblonski: but it doesn't have the cost reduction that Lyshex has, right? So like usually i'm only, I'm only going to plot down a rip-tied gear hulk if, if the command tower or the command tax on Lyshex has gotten to a point where the cost reduction doesn't matter anymore.
Ciderspence: Right.
Zachary Jeblonski: So there's a little of backup, but very much it is that, that, that glass cannon effect.
Ciderspence: Yeah, one card that I think i think we've talked about that I think would be cool in the deck is Wraith Vicious Vigilante from the Spider-Man set.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, I had, yeah.
Ciderspence: Double Strike, 1-1, can't be blocked for one white and blue. I think that would be a nice backup or like backup or deflect attention type card in your deck.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: Because that's another card that if you put it down, it's like, okay, we've got this. You've got Lyshexed. What are you going to do? i was thinking about this when we were talking about Throne of Eldraine. If you could ever wait to cast Throne of Eldraine until a turn where you had enough mana to then cast your commander, that then it's like it's going to stick because Valgavoth is the target. Nobody would hit Throne of Eldraine while Valgavoth was out there.
Ciderspence: yeah, it was... yeah it was I think there is value to those pieces that you can play in conjunction with something higher value so that you kind of make your opponents make a tough choice and that you hope that you win that trade. And also you've got some value even if they do remove the thing you think has higher value.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, I mean, the Valgavelth one's a good interesting one because I have yet, and I've only played it twice, so but I have yet to see anybody remove Valgavelth directly because I think that that ward is substantial.
Zachary Jeblonski: Valgavelth usually gets swept up in board wipes is usually what happens. But yeah, no, so that was, that was, those are, those are my games to and my card week.
Ciderspence: Nice. Yeah, I had one spell table game I wanted to bring up. One of my decks has been a... It's kind of in the Chun-Li class of historically poor performing.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: But I want to give her another shot. It's Tori Davinon, Fury Rider. One red, red, white. Legendary creature, Human Knight. With Vigilance and Trample, she's a 3-3. Whenever she attacks, all other attacking creatures I control get plus one, plus one until end of turn.
Ciderspence: Other red attacking creatures gain Trample until end of turn. and untap each other white attacking creature I control. So through various incarnations of this deck, I tried to put in other support pieces that did similar things, like pump creatures a little bit.
Ciderspence: And my hope was to get either a big finisher type creature out, like Gisela, or the one who doubles damage, but most recently when I was tweaking it, I cut most of those small incremental things in favor of just more of the big creatures that give, give things either a huge boost or that themselves have a huge boost or that themselves have additional combats.
Ciderspence: and I've, I had out an extra combat creature. so I was kind of taking some damage, but stabilized in life and in an online pod.
Ciderspence: And this is another one of those spell table games where somebody dropped at random at some point in the middle. So like it didn't, it wasn't like a clean win or anything. But at some point I had down my card of the week.
Ciderspence: Holga, Relentless Rager. Haste, 4-6. She must be blocked if able. Whenever she attacks, each a creature you control attacking a player gets plus 1, plus 0 until end of turn for each creature that player controls.
Ciderspence: So I played, i which do you remember which Boros angel is the hasty, a
Ciderspence: is that it's either Gisela or, what's the easiest way to scryfall search for a red white angel?
Zachary Jeblonski: We got Gisela, we've got...
Zachary Jeblonski: Here, let's see. Colors equal and white.
Ciderspence: don't think it's Gisela. It's the one who gives you an additional combat.
Zachary Jeblonski: Aurelia.
Ciderspence: Yeah, Aurelia, War Leader.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yep, yeah, that's the one.
Ciderspence: Aurelia, the War Leader. Flying Vigilance Haste Whenever she attacks for the first time each turn, untap all creatures you control. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase. So I had Holga on board.
Ciderspence: i I think I played her second main or something the turn before. And she was still on board when Gisela came out. And Tori was also out. So Tori pumped my creatures by one. Holga pumped my creatures by two for one of my opponents and by six for another of my opponents.
Ciderspence: And that the point where the pump was six didn't have a flyer. So that player took lethal from Gisela in both combats, even though they were like 30 plus life.
Zachary Jeblonski: Well, if you were attacking with Holga, they couldn't have blocked it anyway. was that Everything has to block Holga.
Ciderspence: Well, there were two opponents, so Holga went with the other player.
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh, gotcha.
Ciderspence: They had a lot of creatures on the ground. And I don't think everything has to block Holga. I think Holga has to be blocked.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yes. Oh, Holga must be blocked. Okay. I thought i read that as like everything must block.
Ciderspence: Yeah, it's not one of those all creatures have to block it. Yeah, no, it's just that you can't leave her unblocked.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: Yeah, so Holga with the other player. Gisela, again, got plus five, and then got plus five again. with two plus It later was one plus one because it was like I announced attacks and there was some disconnect between my announcing attacks and declaring blockers.
Ciderspence: where i think my what The opponent I swung at with Tori would have blocked Tori to death so that she wouldn't have survived the second combat.
Ciderspence: But luckily her trample and other... The bumps, her buffs from the first attack still carried through, even though she was dead to not give the second plus one plus one. So it might've been 35 damage instead of 36 that I dealt that combat to the big creature, the large number of creatures player. Sorry if you're listening.
Ciderspence: But then I was able to close it out next turn with an attack. All right. I think a concession or something, but it was, it was cool to see Holga help that deck get to the finish line because like I said, I've had a lot of,
Zachary Jeblonski: Nice.
Ciderspence: unsuccessful journeys with it. So that was that was a fun one. And that yeah, she was she was a good car of the week for me.
Zachary Jeblonski: Okay, cool. I like it. Yeah, so let's let's get to some of the decks on deck while we're well we're kind of getting to the end here.
Zachary Jeblonski: i guess since I alluded to it, I'll just start us off. So I had a you know kind of somewhat similar experience to your Monogreen deck when I was playing Rydia last.
Zachary Jeblonski: And I was like, man, i just don't like this. don't like dealing with all this like landfall and like making decisions constantly. But I do have basically the whole landfall package or pretty good package. And I'm like, you know what I need?
Zachary Jeblonski: i need the game to just end while I'm doing stuff instead of me having to do stuff to make the game end. And what better way to not think about doing those things than to have a commander that more or less just handles it for you.
Zachary Jeblonski: so let's remind people of a commander from edge of Eternities and that is, Tanook Memorial Ensign. Uh, he's a one red, green legendary creature, Kavu pilot landfall. Whenever land you control enters Tanook deals one damage to each opponent.
Zachary Jeblonski: If this is the second time this ability has resolved this turn, draw a card. So I'm basically taking the Rydia shell, putting it in him. I'm taking out a lot of the things that make the tokens because I i find that that slows me down a lot when I have to keep like making tokens or or remembering token triggers and stuff.
Zachary Jeblonski: Just focusing on the burn part of this. And yeah, so when I'm doing all my shenanigans, then at least my opponents will be dying. And then kind of to speed things up, you know, I have things like city on fire, fire emancipation, tour brand.
Zachary Jeblonski: you know, so those damage doublers or damage additionals. So if everything's going well, then lands are hitting for three or six damage per, and then the game should be wrapping up pretty quickly at that point.
Zachary Jeblonski: so that's probably the next thing I'm going to put together.
Ciderspence: Nice.
Zachary Jeblonski: you got any decks on deck?
Ciderspence: Yeah, I think one deck I'm trying to figure out how I want to build is, so we talked about a couple of the Secrets of Strixhaven decks I'm working on. I'm putting together Zimone from this set deck.
Ciderspence: She does something, oh, your X spells are discounted by her power. Something something about the first X spell you cast each turn.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: So I'm working on that one. I put together a a within set version of Primo. forget the name of this version of the token, but Primo, it's not a token in the set. The Primo, the legendary fractal creature that cares about creatures with base power and toughness zero, zero dealing damage.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: So that one is ready to roll. I haven't played it yet, which makes me sad, but hope to get a game in with it this weekend. But another deck I want to put together is Zafi. I don't know whether it's Zafi or Zafi and the Tempest. Five blue and red. I think we might have talked about this one.
Ciderspence: Once during each of your turns, you may cast an instant or sorcery spell from your hand without paying its mana cost. That's obviously scary and awesome.
Ciderspence: I think there actually aren't...
Zachary Jeblonski: I said, I said, I said, said,
Ciderspence: Say it again.
Zachary Jeblonski: said ammanatus's augur says hi
Ciderspence: Yes. Yeah, it's it's cool. i I'm not sure exactly what I want to do with it, though, because I don't want to just buy all of the most busted instants and sorceries.
Ciderspence: Well, mostly instants, because you'd like to be able to do this once a turn. I wonder if one way I could build it is to just load it up with counterspells and then efficiently cost it other stuff, right?
Ciderspence: No, just to kind of... Just to say, hey, I mean, if you...
Zachary Jeblonski: You're like, I wonder if there's one way I could build this. Just fill it up with counters.
Ciderspence: Yeah, I mean, it it's it i mean it has the it has the potential to just be holding up a counterspell once a turn for free, which is just kind of exciting.
Zachary Jeblonski: You're right. It does. It does do that. i would,
Ciderspence: So and I have a lot of expensive counterspells, right? Like those are not good cards. So I have a lot of them that aren't in decks.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, or yeah, do my, or one of my favorite expensive counter cells that I bought a couple copies of, is I thought it was cool, but I'm like, how in the world am i ever going to play this? Is Overwhelming Intellect.
Zachary Jeblonski: It's a counter, it's a four blue blue, so six mana counter spell, counter target creature spells, not all spells. Draw cards equal to that spell's converted mana cost.
Ciderspence: Oh, that's great. Yep. I would like to find that. What set is that from?
Zachary Jeblonski: And then the other, what is that?
Ciderspence: What set is that? Well, I see that's the pun.
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh, it's an oldie. Overwhelming end Intellect. I guess the original set is Saviors of Kamigawa. So the original Kamigawa. But it's like 20 cents.
Ciderspence: Nice.
Zachary Jeblonski: The other good one is the Cascading Counterspell. What is that? it's It's one of those ones I put in decks all the time because I love Cascade, but it's actually pretty bad, so I always had to take it out.
Zachary Jeblonski: I can't think of it. But yeah, there's a Counterspell. That's a five mana Counterspell that Cascades. And I'm like, yeah, give me that.
Ciderspence: Nice. Yeah, it seems like also a good home for like expensive modal spells, right? like
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: There are some good spells that are expensive modal instants.
Zachary Jeblonski: You got to put dance with calamity in there. got do it, man.
Ciderspence: Dance with Calamity.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. It's one of my, it's one of my favorite designs. It's a magic blackjack. It's seven and a red.
Ciderspence: Oh, is that the reveal? And if you reveal too many, you lose...
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. You, you have to reveal. And and if you get past 13, you don't get to cast anything.
Ciderspence: Yeah, I have some decks that that would be a great fit in. I've decided that my Raphael deck is going to be really gambly.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: But I think not this one.
Ciderspence: I don't mind Calamity, but I don't... at At least in version one, I don't think this is going to be that type of deck.
Zachary Jeblonski: Okay. Well, the other thing you can do, the other thing I was going to do, you I was going to suggest is you could fill a flash enablers too.
Ciderspence: Don't worry, it's not it's not that Zafi deck.
Zachary Jeblonski: And then this way you can hold up both your incense and sorceries.
Ciderspence: Yeah, I think i've I've got to see what instance I have. Because I think it's the case that there are a lot of instants that are just too expensive to play. And you're really kind of paying a pretty heavy tax for them being at instant speed.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: But if I don't have to pay for them, that makes them a little more valuable. And I've got to think about the numbers of like how many of these big spells do I want? Because I can't have my hand stuck full of these before I cast my commander.
Ciderspence: I'll never get anything cast. so
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, that's always a danger of being like turn three and you're just playing a land every turn and your hands full of like seven drops.
Ciderspence: Yeah, with a seven mana commander. So yeah, lots to think about, but I pulled it in my and the cards that I got for the sets already, so I'm excited to to figure something out and get it to a debut, hopefully this weekend again.
Zachary Jeblonski: Nice. Yeah, and I guess see it the other game I'm going to make probably two Shrixhaven decks. I'm being a i'm being fiscally responsible with Magic for for a little while working through some hits I took in my personal life.
Zachary Jeblonski: which is no problem because i realized that like I have so many cards in my collection I'm not utilizing. so the good news is for Strixhaven, I only you need to get the commanders and I can basically make the decks without any other cards from Strixhaven.
Zachary Jeblonski: But my good pal and friend got me my next commander, with the balloon, the balancer. And this is one of the the dragon cycles, or I guess one of the strict saving school cycles. So it's with balloon, the balancer six black green affinity for creatures. So he costs one less for each creature you control. He's got flying death touch incident. Sort you cast have affinity for creatures.
Zachary Jeblonski: So Golgari Spellslinger really is kind of cool. Like I'm always a big fan of when, when the color pie is being stretched or whatever. So I have prototyped him out for the most part. I think I'm at 103 cards. i'm just still a little bit more trimming.
Zachary Jeblonski: But the thing I, I, I, I've really found myself gravitating towards is I was like over more and more, I've been jamming all the X cards. So basically I have more or less filled up the stack with X cards cause it just really works with his ability. So it's kind of like two things. It's,
Zachary Jeblonski: it's x incident sorceries and incident sources that make tokens hopefully a lot of tokens uh you know an example of this is dread summons which is x black black sorcery each player mills x cards and for each creature card put into a graveyard this way make a 2-2 black zombie you know so if this goes
Ciderspence: Oh yeah, that's pretty good.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. if it goes well enough, like if you mill enough creatures, you basically only paid two mana for it because then you're going to be able to affinity out another thing and then affinity out another thing. And your real limiting factor here is just the pips. you know, eventually you run out of your ability to pay the colored mana on a lot of these, but,
Zachary Jeblonski: It seems like it's gonna be a lot of fun. And then black, the good thing about black is, you know, like in Spellslingers with blue and red, usually red is the the thing that gets you over the edge and and closes out the game for you. You know, your crackle of powers kind of thing.
Zachary Jeblonski: And the good thing is black has plenty of ways to do that, or at least has several ways to do that. Chief among them for me is gonna be Exsanguinate, which is x black, black sorcery. Each opponent loses X life. You gain life equal to life loss this way.
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah, so I just, you know, going to jam some spell slinging stuff in there like primal amulet, uh, things like that. but otherwise it's just, it's green, black spell slinger and it seems, seems cool. I'm excited to try it out.
Ciderspence: Yeah, that is awesome. And you also have green. So if you wanted to go the swingy route, right, you've got all these tokens on board, green would let you pump them. And green also has some haste enablers.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah. Yeah.
Ciderspence: So you could just have as a backup to just hit face. So yeah, that's that sounds that sounds scary.
Zachary Jeblonski: one of my I don't have too much uh token pump I probably should have some token pump in here uh but the one pump I do have in there because I've loved this design even though it's real bad because in commander there's four there's three opponents not one but I have exponential growth in here which is uh xx green green sorcery until end of turn double target creatures power x times so I'm definitely looking forward to like doming somebody for like 400 with my commander at some point.
Zachary Jeblonski: that, uh, so like there's some, there's some stuff in there, but I, I probably, now that you mentioned it, I probably do and should put some token pump in there. cause I, I am a little short on wind cons like black has a fair amount, but not that many.
Zachary Jeblonski: i don't know. We'll say, matt
Ciderspence: I bet there are some green expel pump things.
Zachary Jeblonski: Oh, I'm sure there is. Yeah.
Ciderspence: And there probably are also some expel haste things too.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, the the classic is Finale of Devastation.
Ciderspence: Like...
Zachary Jeblonski: It pumps and gives everything haste.
Ciderspence: Yeah, there you go
Zachary Jeblonski: But one other card I want to shout out because i' i I'm putting it in here. It's not an X card. And when I've goldfished it, it's been hilarious. Is Peer into the Abyss.
Zachary Jeblonski: It's a four, black, black, black. So not an X spell, but seven mana regardless. target player draws cards equal to half the number of cards in their library and loses half their life round up each time.
Zachary Jeblonski: So I have definitely drawn 34 cards when I've goldfish this. So yeah, it it seems it seems sufficiently dumb, so I'm excited for it.
Ciderspence: Nice. that Yeah, that sounds like a a good time for you. for for for us in the pod? I'm not sure. We'll see.
Zachary Jeblonski: i also have I'm not going to read through them, but I also have a fair amount of cards that are like target player draws X life and our target part draws X cards and loses X life or whatever. so I'm like, there's gonna be some situations where like, I'll just fire that off as a kill spell. Be like here, draw 30 cards and lose 30 life or whatever, you know?
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah. Uh, any other decks you're working on?
Ciderspence: No, that's that's it for the moment. I'm still kind of working my way through Strixhaven to see if there are any other commanders I want to build. But yeah, those are the ones I had my eye on.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, there's like so many of them, and I've just kind of cherry-picked the ones. the the other the I won't go through the whole thing, but I'm also going to build a I'm not going to get the pre-con. I'm just going to pull the commander off of it, which is the Quintorrius History take Chaser. That's the Boros Planeswalker one.
Ciderspence: yep.
Zachary Jeblonski: I played—I didn't mention this, but I did play my red-white deck again on Tuesday. Kind of like similarly when I played Maren, I was just like— do I want to keep this deck together? How do I feel about it? And I think that game kind of reaffirmed it.
Zachary Jeblonski: that deck I've never been able to get that deck to be, consistently performant. It's always been rough and, and, uh, so I'm, I think I'm going switch it over to this Quintorious commander. So excited to do that. I just need a little, I just need to smooth out the roughness a little bit on the, on that deck. So, that seems cool.
Zachary Jeblonski: So, Yeah. Anything else you want to talk about before we kind of wrap things up?
Ciderspence: No, I think I'll just try to offer more of a primer for talking about overlap next week.
Zachary Jeblonski: Okay.
Ciderspence: I think maybe next week we'll talk about the role that overlap plays in our deck building kind of, and maybe that'll also open the door to kind of a a talk about how our thoughts about building decks have changed over like the last year and a half or two years. Cause I think that,
Ciderspence: And again, by overlap, i'm I'm using the term to mean cards that serve more than one function in your deck.
Zachary Jeblonski: Gotcha.
Ciderspence: So that can just be something that's a heavy theme fit, like you know you're running a goblin deck and this card is a goblin, but it also ramps or something.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah.
Ciderspence: I would consider that an overlap card.
Zachary Jeblonski: yeah
Ciderspence: Or it could be like Throne of Eldraine that draws cards and also produces mana. Or something like Decree of Pain that wipes the board and draws cards.
Ciderspence: you know, by rule, i well, not by rule, but like in practice, these are often kind of over-costed for both effects. They're kind of like modal spells where you're paying a little bit extra when you cast it to be able to get both pieces of function.
Ciderspence: But yeah, I've just found these days that they they make deck building more satisfying because you can still kind of hit the notes you want to hit in a given deck and also feel better about including the cards you want to include, even if they're not, you know,
Ciderspence: strictly best in class or if they probably don't deserve to be in there if you're if you're trying to be efficient about it.
Zachary Jeblonski: Yeah, for sure. I, I, already know my number one pick because if you ask me on a certain day, I might say it's not my favorite card in magic.
Zachary Jeblonski: So, uh, but I'm going to save that for the, for next week. The viewers will be held in a suspense.
Ciderspence: Nice. Well, that that is a tease if I've ever heard one.
Zachary Jeblonski: All right. Well, uh, thanks for, uh, joining me again today, Charles.
Ciderspence: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me, Zach.
Zachary Jeblonski: All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back next week.
Ciderspence: All right. Take it easy.
