Pauper on Paper

So if you're like most magic players you have boxes of unused cards. Piles that are full of fun cards which don't quite make the cut in your Commander deck. Cards that aren't good enough for your modern deck and just rotated out of your standard deck. You've given up on whatever aspect of magic maybe due to the cost of things and you sold your most powerful cards. Well I have the perfect solution...

Pauper.

Pauper is a casual format where only commons are allowed. This restricts the power level as well as the buy in on a very sweet format. The rules are very similar to most other constructed events. Sixty cards with a fifteen card sideboard. One very important thing to note however is that Pauper is only officially sanctioned on Magic Online. What this means is that only cards printed at common online are available to add into your deck. This does however usher some other cards in as well as it kicks out. For example Hymn to Tourach and Sinkhole are not commons online and because of that they are not legal. However Battle screech was printed in Vintage Masters an online only set, as a common and because of that it is also legal. So with the basics down let's jump right in.

Established Decks:

Mono Blue Aggro

2 Gush
4 Force Spike
4 Counterspell
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
1 Bonesplitter
4 Vapor Snag

4 Spire Golem
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Faerie Miscreant
4 Delver of Secrets

17 Island

This deck operates on a tempo style of game play with cheap efficient creatures. There's great synergies with Spellstutter Sprite and Ninja of the Deep Hours and efficient disruption with Force Spikes and Vapor Snags. 

Mono Green Aggro

4 Nest Invader
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
2 River Boa
1 Shinen of Life's Roar
2 Silhana Ledgewalker
3 Skarrgan Pit-Skulk
3 Vault Skirge
4 Young Wolf

4 Groundswell
3 Hunger of the Howlpack
2 Mutagenic Growth
4 Vines of Vastwood
4 Rancor

16 Forest


This deck does what green does best. Which is just smash in with dudes. The pump spells can catch your opponents off guard and many times they can easily kill them. Vault Skirge itself can creature huge life total swings with a single pump spell and Skarrgan Pit-Skulk can make blocking impossible for the opponent. 

Boros Metalcraft

4 Glint Hawk
4 Kor Skyfisher
4 Thraben Inspector

1 Angelic Purge
2 Firebolt
4 Kuldotha Rebirth
4 Galvanic Blast
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Raise the Alarm
2 Rally the Peasants

4 Ichor Wellspring
4 Prophetic Prism

4 Ancient Den
4 Great Furnace
2 Forgotten Cave
1 Kabira Crossroads
1 Mortuary Mire
1 Mountain
1 Plains
2 Secluded Steppe
4 Wind-Scarred Crag

Here we see some very sweet synergies as well as powerful cards to help carry the deck. Ichor Wellsprings being used in contention with Kuldotha Rebirth to throw up Goblin tokens and Rally the Peasants to help finish them off. As you can see here the dual lands used in pauper are going to be most commonly be the gain life lands like Wind-Scarred Crag. Mana bases are tough to build with commons sometimes and three color decks are possibly the least successful due to the mana constraints. 

UB Control

1 Curse of the Bloody Tome
2 Pristine Talisman
1 Tragic Slip
2 Think Twice
3 Mystical Teachings
2 Exclude
1 Essence Scatter
1 Echoing Decay
2 Doom Blade
1 Disfigure
2 Diabolic Edict
2 Deprive
1 Crypt Incursion
4 Counterspell
1 Capsize
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Preordain
2 Evincar's Justice
4 Chainer's Edict

3 Swamp
4 Radiant Fountain
7 Island
4 Dismal Backwater
4 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Bojuka Bog

Now I know some of you like winning the game with no creature in play so here is the deck for you. The deck relies on the win condition of Curse of the Bloody Tome and Evincar's Justice. You may or may not have noticed by now but flashback spells and buyback spells are among the strongest in the format. Expect to see them played and putting them in your deck. 

There's much more but I've listed these just to show some of the variety in the top decks of the format. 

This Saturday night at Fanatix! 

Building a Deck

Now with a few examples of pauper decks shown I wanted to go ahead and walk you through the process of building a deck. The first thing I do a lot of times is find a card that seems particularly fun to play with. 

Cinn's Enlistment

So this card stands out for me because it's a 2 for 1 with a repeatable effect. Both of those things being very important in the deck construction. Without good card quality your deck will fall to the wayside while your opponent buries you in card advantage. So now we try to tackle how to build with this card. 

1. The card is four mana so it wont be holding up a very aggressive deck. So i'll need to buy my time until I can get these going.
2. The card can be replayed by discarding lands and it gets cast out of the graveyard.

So with that and not too much thought I think about a small creature in the same set as this card. 




Tilling Treefolk


Okay so now the gears are turning. Maybe some self mill would be good. I can get Cinn's Enlistment return the lands and start recasting it. What else mills? A quick Gatherer search reveals Satyr Wayfinder, Grapple with the Past, Mulch, Commune With the Gods. Okay okay cool. So what about my graveyard? I need other things to recast as well to keep things going.

Search (Flashback)
Search (Retrace)
Search (From Graveyard)

So this leads me to a few new discoveries. Battle Screech, Marshaling Cry, and Travel Preparations. Now I found several other cards but I felt like these came closest to achieving what I wanted my deck to do. So with those in mind I have Battle Screech to think about. The flash back requires some more white creatures. Now usually what I do is find several sweet synergies and then look for strong support cards to help fill out the deck. So one of the best cards in pauper in white is Squadron Hawk. This is a good an early play that helps me flash back Battle screech I like it. Now other thoughts run through my head. What about Tilling Treefolk? Is there any good way for me to get value from him? Now looking back through the other lists helps here as well and I see Secluded Steppe. Aha! A good way to get lands in the graveyard and get value from my Ent. So after a bit of tinkering, browsing through decks, and searching Gatherer I come to this list. 

4 Thraben Inspector
4 Satyr Wayfinder
4 Squadron Hawk
3 Tilling Treefolk

4 Grapple with the Past
3 Raise the Alarm
2 Commune With the Gods
3 Travel Preperations
4 Journey To Nowhere
4 Battle Screech
2 Cinn's Enlistment
1 Marshalling Cry

4 Blossoming Sands
2 Selesnya Sanctuary
4 Secluded Steppe
4 Tranquil Thicket
3 Forest
5 Plains

So there's a lot of things going on here and several decisions made due to other decks in the format. Commune with the gods can get value out of Journey to Nowhere. Thraben Inspector ups the creature count and makes Grapple with the Past and Battle Screech better and Raise the Alarm helps me live to the end game. I won't be building a sideboard just yet but just keep in mind your sideboard should be built to better your deck against primarily the decks you can't beat and those you will see the most often in your playgroup. So there you have it! I haven't (Change that to HAVE https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNdEKVtq-XmJqM1hRR1MIirGhwTKlDKqv This is the playlist the videos will be uploaded to as record more. Thanks!) got a chance to play any games with this just yet but I have brewed a prior deck as well as posted a Deck Tech online. I would invite you to check those videos out and let me know what you think. Hopefully I will be posting some videos of the deck we made today soon and we will see how it runs.

 I'm usually at Fanatix on Fridays and look forward to playing some pauper with you guys soon. Until next time be sure to check out www.dothanfanatix.com for information on upcoming pauper events!


 



-Clio Canfield

List of all the Pauper differences online: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/casual-related-formats/paper-pauper-and-peasant/662888-differences-between-mtgo-and-paper

My Decktech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EkMao3TPyA

My Playlist with that deck. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNdEKVtq-XmJ8A5yPhQj2oqdU_xIVvb8o

Casual Corner - Titania's Dominion

               Greetings fellow spell slingers! It's been a while since I've posted anything here on the Fanatix blog and I've been itching to talk about some of the latest happenings in the Magic world. As we all know, the holidays is a turbulent time, one in which we scatter, scuffle, and scramble about ferociously in an effort to eventually (hopefully) take it a little slower with our friends and families. When things do slow down, I'm always on the lookout to find an opportunity to jam some extra games when possible, and while that didn't happen too terribly often this year, the hustle and bustle of the season couldn't stop me from thinking about Magic. What's been on my mind? Straight up? Casual formats!

                Look, I find Standard, Modern, and Legacy plenty interesting, but I've been completely enthralled with all things Casual lately. So, I'd like to discuss a couple of Casual formats today: one old, one new, and I'm always on the lookout to play something blue. So, if you're interested in the ramblings of a single-minded, Singleton-format-loving madman, read on dear reader, read on.

                First up, I've got to talk about a bit about the release of Commander 2014. I've got to say that I think Wizards of the Coast, under lead designer Ethan Fleischer, did a tremendous job with these. I know, I know. These decks have been out for a while. They're so 2014, but it's refreshing when you see the caretakers of our game go to such lengths to try and satisfy as many players as possible. Personally, I thought they did a great job of giving most of the niche audiences a little something to appreciate. For those that like to see design space explored aggressively, we have a cycle of Planeswalkers that can start in the Command zone. This is a pretty natural progression, I know, but with only five slots to play with, I feel like Wizards threw a pretty juicy bone to those that love more radical designs as well as those that enjoy seeing some of the story elements get fleshed out. I was a little skeptical at first, afraid that this tactic was going to be too gimmicky, but I think ultimately the Planeswalker Commanders were well-executed and well-received. Plus, even with all the haymakers crashing about, they found a few slots for the efficiency-loving Legacy players, too. Containment Priest is hateful, hateful hate bear and Malicious Affliction has been a blowout every time I've seen it cast. All in all, this release was a great addition to the Commander product line and I'd highly recommend them as a way to begin your journey into the format.

                Aside from the above-mentioned praises of the C14 decks, I really enjoyed that they made the choice to make them mono-colored. Even prior to the C14 release, I had always had an affinity for single-colored Commanders. I find the deck-building constraints to be a bit refreshing, actually. It really forces you to "go deep" in a color to explore all the color has to offer. Sure, you often find yourself turning to artifacts for must-have effects that don't exist in your mono-colored ecosystem, but even so, I feel like the constraint really pushes you scrutinize all the nooks and crannies of the color. I'm always tickled when I get to peer into Magic's past and find a gem that would in no way conform to modern development practices or stumble across a more modern card that bends (or breaks in half) the color pie (Hello Time Spiral block!), but is the perfect fit for my theme or strategy. How about a few examples? Something old: Desert Twister. Yes, the very first Vindicate was a costly mono-green card. Something new: Utopia Vow. A trippy card from Planar Chaos that allows green to do a pretty solid Pacifism impression. Something Blue: Psychic Venom. Because, you know, sometimes you have to have snakes on a Plains.

                With all that said, I'd like to move into the main topic: reengineering one of the C14 decks. As much fun as they were to play out of the box, the C14 decks really compelled me to put on my brewer's hat (drag out my brewer's cauldron??) and seek to build around one of the new cards. The spark-wielding Commanders were interesting and Feldon of the Third Path seemed nuts, but the legendary creature that kept catching my eye was Titania, Protector of Argoth. She's got such an interesting set of abilities. This seemed like the perfect build-around card. Plus, I knew it would push me to finally acquire a card that I've always admired from afar, but never had a chance to play with: Doubling Season!

Dorks vs. Rocks

                Before we power slide down the rabbit hole, I'd like to take a quick aside and pose a question. Well, first I want to set up the question. I've been pondering one of the interesting deck building decisions that you need to make when crafting a mono-green EDH deck: dorks vs. rocks. For the uninitiated, "dorks" is short for "mana dorks" and most often refers to cheap creatures, usually one or two mana (but not always) that produce mana. On their own they have a few tradeoffs. If drawn early, they can be one of the more powerful things you can do in EDH. The one-mana versions like Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves are about as close to Moxes as Wizards R&D is comfortable allowing. Ramping your mana in EDH is nearly always a plus. (I say "nearly always" to avoid getting side-tracked on the topic of politics in EDH and remaining threat-neutral during some portions of the game.) However, there are some obvious drawbacks. Drawn late in the game, your friendly forest critters provide little more than a warm body on the battlefield. Sometimes that's valuable. There's often things to do with stray creatures, but on turn 14 you're not going to impress anyone by using your Birthing Pod to chain your Elves of Deep Shadow into a Sakura-Tribe Elder.  Perhaps the more likely scenario: it becomes a small appetizer for an opposing Sheoldred or is a casual bystander when Sir Sweepsalot (every group has one) decides to wreck the board...again. This brings me to the major tradeoff to consider when considering the inclusion of mana dorks: they're vulnerable. So, what's the alternative? Rocks. "Rocks" is short for "mana rocks" and refer to artifacts that produce mana. There are some doozies out there (I'm looking at you Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, and Grim Monolith), but perhaps the most commonly played one is the obscenely powerful Sol Ring. But here again, we have a tradeoff. While more resilient to mass creature removal, these rocks only produce colorless mana. Often, this is a minimal drawback, but if colored mana is a concern, there are plenty more options such the Signets, Darksteel Ingot, and Coalition Relic. Here's the thing though. Mana rocks have become so prevalent in EDH that most players are packing some form of hate for them, ratcheting their liability factor up a couple of notches. So, what's a Green mage to do? I usually hedge my bets and run a split of some sort, but keep a keen eye on your play group's tendencies and balance your dork-rock ratio accordingly. If you've got any thoughts on how to conquer this portion of mono-green deck building, be sure to leave a comment and share your approach.

                Alright, we've clearly got a build-around-me style Commander here with Titania, so let's break down the card's abilities and start assembling the pieces that will most readily play nicely with her. Step one, let's take full advantage of her enters the battlefield trigger by playing a healthy portion of lands that sacrifice themselves as well as spells that allow you to sacrifice lands. Wait, should all that apply to her second ability? Yes! Her self-synergy is amazing. As far the land base goes, here again, playing a mono-colored commander lets us go a little deeper into the card pool; We'll have an easier time establishing green mana when we need it, so we have extra slots that can be devoted to lands that generate value with Titania's first ability. Step two, we really want to leverage Titania's token generating ability. This part of her rules text is what makes her such an insane build-around card. Of course, Titania will not stay on the board all the time , so we're going to be scouring Gatherer for cards that bolster our token-producing options and are generally good with token strategies. All the while, we'll keep an eye out for cards that will be insane during the times when Titania gets to stick around for a couple of turns. Lastly, we'll explore a strategy that Titania brings to the table, but isn't printed in her rules text. Because we're "devoted" to green, we can also dabble in a few a "Forest-matters" or "Green-matters" cards that should be maximized in a deck like this. Below I'm going to break down some of my choices into three groups: Land-centric, Token-centric, and Forest/Green-centric. Many of the choices will be obvious inclusions for their general power or utility, but others are making the cut because we're pushing the strategies that Titania presents to us as far as we can. On to the cards!

Land-centric

                This group will either actually be lands or will allow us to abuse lands, usually by allowing us to play additional ones per turn or by having effects when they enter play. Alright, let's get the nastiness out of the way: Strip Mine. Yes, recurring this seems nasty, but in multiplayer it is much less punishing and Titania on her own won't recur it that many times. Even with Crucible of Worlds in the 99, recurring Strip Mine won't break any games wide open and EDH games have a nice self-correcting power balance. If you get too aggressive with land destruction, you'll feel the heat immediately. Okay, now the obvious fetch lands. I try to play these in EDH anyway, but they're extra good here and you should include them in you can. What about these OTHER fetch lands? I'm referring to the Panoramas from Shards of Alara. Admittedly, I haven't played with these much, so I don't know exactly how good they are, but in a mono-colored deck they do provide many of the same benefits as your "real" fetch lands. Some other interesting lands that I'm excited to play are Lotus Vale and Scorched Ruins. These seem to be tailor-made to play well with Titania. Even she's not out to make Elementals, having lands in your graveyard will be a common occurrence with this deck and should almost always be a value-generating benefit.

                There are some other neat lands that sacrifice themselves, but what about nonland cards? How about the obvious: Life from the Loam. This is a one-card engine and is a ton of fun to play. In this deck we'll be recurring all manner of utility lands and some sweet, sweet cycling lands. Other nonlands in our land-centric group include ways to power out a mana advantage. Exploration, Burgeoning, Summer Bloom, and Oracle of Mul Daya are among the cards that really let us leverage our land theme. In some games, these cards will be virtual Time Walks as you will be operating several turns ahead of your opponents where mana production is concerned. Here again we have something old: Gaea's Touch, something new: a card I can't wait to try, Wave of Vitriol and something that acts very Blue: Font of Mythos. Hopefully, the font will let us exploit our multi-land-per-turn advantage. And of course, we want to press that advantage by doing some sweet stuff when the lands enter, so let's touch in a Lotus Cobra and Rampaging Baloths for good measure. What's that? Rampaging Baloths also plays well with our token-centric strategy? Let's take a look at some of those cards, too.

Token-centric

                Most players I know really enjoy token strategies and I'm no exception. You get to play with even more cardboard (or dice, or coins, or paper clips)! The cards chosen here are doing lots of cool things to leverage this strategy. In particular, I was looking for cards that accomplished one of the following: makes more tokens, makes our tokens better in some way, or generates value from the tokens entering play. Here again, we'll start with the obvious one I mentioned earlier: Doubling Season. This, along with its more token-focused little brother, Parallel Lives, have been the backbone of many token strategies for a long time. Some other goodies that I'm looking forward to playing are Ant Queen, Hermit Druid, and the EDH all star, Avenger of Zendikar. Wait, what is this little gem from Prophecy? Squirrel Wrangler? Not a powerhouse per se, but he's doing basically everything this deck wants to do. He's in! So now that we're filling the Multiverse with irrelevant 1/1 Insects, Squirrels, and lowly 0/1 Plant tokens, what are we going to do to actually win? Here, we'll lean an old favorite, Coat of Arms, a new favorite, Craterhoof Behemoth, and a very blue (sad) Garruk Wildspeaker that has to wait a turn before he can throttle people with trampling tokens.

Forest-centric

                In the final group, I wanted to include a few cards that made good use of the fact that we're all green and should have a relatively high number of Forests in play. These cards weren't quite as plentiful as I thought they might be, but there are several that I think will be potent in this build. My nomination for something old is Fortitude. This is a decent way to protect Titania from some of the board sweepers and removal we expect to see floating around. It plays well with our commander and just might buy her way out of a jam here and there. Our new (ish) inclusion in this category is Baru, Fist of Krosa. His grandeur ability will never be a thing, but I like his pseudo landfall ability enough that I thought he warranted inclusion. The mass trample is what sold me. Perhaps the card in this group I'm looking forward to casting the most is Beacon of Creation. I imagine this card tag-teaming with Ant Queen and Coat of Arms to assemble an insect-led invasion. Who doesn't want to beat down with thoraxes and mandibles?!

                Lastly, I rounded out the build with some general utility calling on the battle-tested prowess of cards like Reclamation Sage, Scavenging Ooze, and everyone's favorite uncle, Yavimaya Elder. Green isn't the best at producing raw card advantage, but I aimed to squeeze in a few options by including Praetor's Council, Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury, and Garruk's Packleader. I've yet to actually cast Creeping Renaissance, but I'm hoping it normally reads "draw a ton of cards from your graveyard." I'm really looking forward to jamming some games with this deck as I think it will prove to create very fun and interactive games. I've got my complete list below. As always, be sure to share what cards you think I completely missed. What sleepers do you think would be right at home here?

//Commander
1 Titania, Protector of Argoth
//Lands	//Spells	//Creatures
1 Bant Panorama	1 Armillary Sphere	1 Ant Queen
1 Crystal Vein	1 Awakening Zone	1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Dust Bowl	1 Beacon of Creation	1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Encroaching Wastes	1 Beast Within	1 Baru, Fist of Krosa
1 Evolving Wilds	1 Burgeoning	1 Cartographer
18 Forest	1 Coat of Arms	1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Gaea's Cradle	1 Concordant Crossroads	1 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Ghost Quarter	1 Constant Mists	1 Deranged Hermit
1 Havenwood Battleground	1 Creeping Renaissance	1 Eternal Witness
1 Jund Panorama	1 Crop Rotation	1 Garruk's Packleader
1 Lotus Vale	1 Crucible of Worlds	1 Lotus Cobra
1 Misty Rainforest	1 Doubling Season	1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Myriad Landscape	1 Expedition Map	1 Paleoloth
1 Naya Panorama	1 Exploration	1 Rampaging Baloths
1 Petrified Field	1 Explore	1 Reclamation Sage
1 Reliquary Tower	1 Font of Mythos	1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Scorched Ruins	1 Fortitude	1 Squirrel Wrangler
1 Slippery Karst	1 Fresh Meat	1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Strip Mine	1 Gaea's Touch	1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Tectonic Edge	1 Harrow
1 Terramorphic Expanse	1 Kavu Lair	//Walkers
1 Thawing Glaciers	1 Life from the Loam	1 Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury
1 Tower of the Magistrate	1 Manabond	1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Tranquil Thicket	1 Parallel Lives	1 Nissa, Worldwaker
1 Verdant Catacombs	1 Praetor's Counsel
1 Windswept Heath	1 Realms Uncharted
1 Wooded Foothills	1 Restore
	1 Scapeshift
	1 Summer Bloom
	1 Sylvan Scrying
	1 Wave of Vitriol
	1 Worldly Tutor
	1 Zuran Orb

                 Ah yes, I did say in the opening that I wanted to discuss a new format, didn't I? I really wanted to talk about the very cool Tiny Leaders format, but the more I thought about, the more I thought it deserved its own article. Plus, the format seems to have caught on like wildfire AND it's being shaken up by upcoming cards from Fate Reforged, so I think I'd prefer to wait and dedicate a post to it. With all that said, that's going to do it for this installment.

Thanks for reading. I'll see you on the battlefield!




Eric Peel has been playing Magic: The Gathering since he discovered the game in college, around the time of Invasion block. Most of the time Eric's simply a devoted family guy, but occasionally he finds time to sling spells or become temporarily devoted to a Therosian deity. He enjoys multiple formats, finding fun and competition in Limited, Constructed, and Multiplayer Magic.

His current favorite card is Bloodghast.

UnKhanTrollable

All aboard the hype train! Next stop. Tarkir!

                Magic players really have it good when you think about it. I don't many other games that get such an infusion of new toys as frequently as us noble spellslingers. I'm not really sure at what clip video game publishers release DLC, but I can't imagine it matches the rate that Wizards of the Coast gives us new goodies and definitely not for the same game...for twenty years straight! No, Magic has something special going on when it comes to keeping things fresh. A few weeks ago, I was getting all set to begin writing an article about the upcoming rotation. I also wanted to start taking a look at what kind of expectations we have for the first-ever "wedge" set.

                A quick aside: Mark Rosewater, Magic's Head Designer, has tried on many occasions to stress to the player base that Khans of Tarkir is a wedge set and not the beginning of a wedge block. The foundation of the block is based on a unique draft structure that they wanted to experiment with and it is all wrapped up in the trappings of a time travel story. So, the Khans block will not have as many parallels to the Shards of Alara block as one might guess without considering that information. End aside.

                I was all set on examining how rotation works and ready to take a stroll down memory lane with the Return to Ravnica block, but I couldn't keep pace with the changes and spoilers that WotC was unleashing. The first, dubbed, again by Mark Rosewater, as a game changer was quite literally that. In his article, Metamorphosis, he goes into great detail about the new two-set block paradigm and how Standard will rotate in the future. He also breaks down all of the factors and consideration that led them to make the change. It's very well-written and has some visuals that very clearly illustrate the shift. The community's response to the changes was overwhelmingly positive and I'm looking forward to watching the next few years of Magic unfold.

                Next, the spoilers begin leaking out via social media as the WotC crowd travels to various cons. Before we know it we get THE announcement. The one we've been speculating on for so long: Fetches. Allied Fetches. This is pretty huge. It will impact multiple formats and should, at least, begin to break down some of the barriers to getting into Modern and, to a lesser degree, Legacy. But they will be terrific in Standard, too. It's now known that the Sultai's mechanic will be Delve which will play exceptionally well with the fetch lands. And then there's Courser of Kruphix. Already a Standard stand out, Courser's value gets shifted into overdrive with fetches in the format. As you can see, its monetary value gets shifted into overdrive as well:

Image courtesy of www.mtggoldfish.com

                Now, it's Christmas in September and the spoiler season is in full swing and new cards are dropping daily. The wedge theme is bringing blow after blow of mid-range goodness delivering some very  stout creatures. The majority of the creatures we've seen to date are all up side in the rules text, leaving you only to figure out how to cast them on time given their demanding mana costs. Even the recently spoiled Butcher of the Horde is sporting mostly upside, regardless of being a Demon, a race that typically asks for a mandatory payment in exchange for some benefit. Exciting stuff built into the game's very first white Demon. There's so much to talk about...so many presents to open. Every new card has to be analyzed, every one warrants a discussion. Spoiler season is awesome. New formats are awesome. And Khans is shaping up to be awesome.

                There's way too many spoilers to cover here, but I would like to open it up for discussion. With so many audiences being targeted with each new set, let's toss out a few fire starters. Check out the questions below, jump into the comments and chime in. See you at the Prerelease!

1. Of the Charms spoiled so far, which do personally like best? Which do you feel will see the most play in Standard?

2. Of the legendary Khans spoiled so far, which are you most looking forward to building around in Commander? Which do you think will cause the biggest splash?

3. How would you go about attacking Courser of Kruphix after the upcoming rotation?

4. Which mechanics are you looking forward to playing with in Limited the most?

I want to here from you! Let us know what you think and comment here on the blog. :)

-Eric Peel

Jankville. Population 1.

              Magic is filled with some really niche slang. Honestly, it's addictive. When the jargon catches on, it's nearly impossible not to at least try it on for size. Sometimes, it sticks and sometimes, just by letting it slide passed your lips,  you feel like an utter lemming . Often, it just conveys an acknowledgment of the game state: "that's a thing", "blowout", "crack in", "exactcies", etc. Occasionally though, the lingo inspires a bit more aspiration...like where you'd like to live? Let's examine some of these exotic locales.

                Lots of players gaze longingly towards the horizon at the twinkling village known best as Magical Christmas Land...a place often sought, but rarely reached. "Just wait until I assemble these three cards, across four colors, create infinite mana and cast this creature that will almost certainly beat you!" It's not just the combo players either. The aggro players are looking to retreat to a vacation hideaway on the majestic beaches of Magical Christmas Land: "Okay, check it. Turn 1 Gobo Guide, Turn 2 Ash Zealot, Turn 3 Ram Gang, Turn 4 Hellrider. They will never recover. GG!" As you may have guessed, Magical Christmas Land occurs fairly rarely. You might get to pitch your tent there every twentieth game or so. I don't begrudge those looking to assemble something wacky, I love living the dream too, but the odds are forever not in your favor.

                There's also much talk about taking these nice excursions to a quaint part of the Multiverse: Valuetown.  Now, this is where it's at. Trips to Valuetown are exciting, but what does that mean exactly? I tend to think of these as small interactions, generally between two cards, that create enough synergy to net you some form of advantage. The best of these take place when the cards involved are individually strong, but synergize in a way that creates more...you guessed it..."value." These interactions range from cute to downright powerful, but they are generally very attainable, and really, just fun to put together. They make you feel clever and they help you edge your way to a win. I can't recommend an extended stay in Valuetown enough.

                Enough exploring these well-known places. Let's get on to the main topic. Let's talk about a place that few want to visit. In fact, when going anywhere near this place, most prefer to roll up the windows, lock the doors, and tell the kids to hide any valuables. This place is seedy. This place is not for the faint of heart. This place is Jankville.

                Every Standard environment, especially those as large as it is now with M15 in the mix, has a myriad of cards that sit on the sidelines. Some are clearly for Limited. Some scream EDH. Some are simply underpowered. Yet others are really interesting, sometimes working on a unique axis, but get precluded from the format by cards that always invalidate them. I understand that not everyone feels this way, but to me there's always a strong appeal to taking one of these castaway cards and trawling the format looking for just enough synergies to elevate the jank into the realm of playability. Today, I'd like to look at a few cards from a couple of these camps. I may never even get a chance to sleeve up any of these cards, but the mental exercise of building the deck lists is always enjoyable.

                So, if you're so inclined, and think you can handle the jeers of your Magic-playing peers, buckle up as we take a detour through Jankville and look at some of the cards that didn't quite make the cut in this Standard. Many of the cards we're going to be looking at hail from the Return to Ravnica block or M14, as they 're the ones on the verge of rotation. Most of the jank from Theros will likely remain jank, but they do have a sliver of hope as new cards rotate in from Khans of Tarkir.

                The first deck I'd love to escort out of Jankville would look something like this:

Howl of the Jank Pack

23 Lands

8 Forest

4 Mutavault

2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

3 Plains

4 Temple Garden

2 Temple of Plenty

15 Spells

1 Howl of the Night Pack

1 Hunter's Prowess

2 Market Festival

2 Obelisk of Urd

3 Raised by Wolves

3 Selesnya Keyrune

3 Unflinching Courage

22 Creatures

4 Bassara Tower Archer

2 Briarpack Alpha

2 Elvish Mystic

4 Gladecover Scout

2 Heliod's Pilgrim

4 Nyxborn Wolf

4 Witchstalker

                I really enjoyed casting Raised By Wolves in Theros Limited. It felt pretty powerful, so I began pondering how it might translate to Standard. No doubt, there are a lot of things wrong with this deck. There isn't a critical mass of Wolves in Standard, so this looks to lean especially hard on the Raised by Wolves. Luckily, one of the Wolf creatures that does exists, Witchstalker, has hexproof, which really mitigates the risk of going in on an Aura strategy. That led me to explore some other hexproof creatures in the format in the form of Gladecover Scout and Bassara Tower Archer. The hexproof is also cute with the other main Wolf in the deck, Nyxborn Wolf. Bestow already removes much of the risk of attaching an Aura, but having hexproof makes going for it feel pretty safe. The white splash is mostly unnecessary, but gets us access to Unflinching Courage, Heliod's Pilgrim (for more cute Aura synergies) as well as another honorary Wolf in the form of Selesnya Keyrune, which does actually add a nice hedge against sorcery-speed removal and sweepers.

                Speaking of sweepers, besides playing relatively underpowered cards, this deck (and others we'll explore later) falls victim to a Standard staple that wreaks havoc on decks looking to win with a near-creature-only strategy: Supreme Verdict. I actually like casting Supreme Verdict myself from time to time, but it's presence makes wining with decks like the above very difficult. Still, if you enjoy tribal strategies, consider giving the Wolf clan a shot before the rotation occurs. If you can blow out one opponent by flashing in a Briarpack Alpha to up your Wolf count and unexpectedly growing your Raised By Wolves creature, it might just be worth it.

                Next up, I want to look at another strategy that I wanted to be good, but just never was. I've always enjoyed the "Swamps matter" style mono-black control decks. Sure, there's a top-tier mono-black deck in Standard, and even though it plays a lot of spot removal, it usually plays a little bit more like a tempo deck, with Pack Rats and Nightveil Specters picking up incremental advantages until Gray Merchant of Asphodel can seal the deal. The below deck, though, moves much further towards being a pure control deck, leveraging both spot and mass removal, mana ramp, and only a handful of ways to close out the game:

Black Betrayal

23 Lands

23 Swamp

30 Spells

3 Bile Blight

1 Caustic Tar

2 Corrupt

2 Devour Flesh

3 Drown in Sorrow

2 Extinguish All Hope

1 Fated Return

1 Grave Betrayal

4 Hero's Downfall

2 Liliana of the Dark Realms

1 Liliana Vess

2 Silence the Believers

2 Ultimate Price

4 Underworld Connections

7 Creatures

4 Crypt Ghast

3 Gray Merchant of Asphodel

                 Come on, even the spikiest of Spikes reads Grave Betrayal and thinks how fun it would be to land it on the battlefield and start turning all their removal spells into creatures. Yes, the card was likely designed with the EDH crowd in mind, but it would be no less fun robbing players in Standard of their Polukranos, Stormbreath Dragon, or Desecration Demon. Of course, your opponent might not be keen on playing nice with your seven-man, do-nothing enchantment. Maybe they decide to wait you out by not casting any creatures at all? They'll assume that after all the Underworld Connections activations, you'll surely deck yourself in short order. Right? That's when you land your six-mana, do-nothing enchantment! Caustic Tar is another janky card I'd love to see break out in Standard. It adds a couple of pips of black devotion to the board for Gary, plus if you're interested in splashing in some green, Voyaging Satyr is licking his chops at the thought of doing something other than producing extra mana. It's a rare occasion when the satyr gets to actively contribute to the demise of your opponent.

                One of the subtle downsides to employing a strategy like (one that puts a lot of the burden of winning on a handful of cards of the same type) means you suffer badly from incidental hate cards. Normally, you might think that being enchantments, your Grave Betrayal, Caustic Tar, and Underworld Connection would be relatively safe. Unfortunately, in a post-Theros world, the enchantment hate is plentiful and efficient. A single Back to Nature could single-handedly neuter this deck's primary game plan. There are still ways to win, but you might find yourself looking to extort your opponent to death with Crypt Ghast or trying to muster enough targeted life loss via Corrupt and Gray Merchant. An unanswered Liliana Vess could close the game quickly with her ultimate, but getting to ultimate with a planeswalker, even in Standard, seems to be a bit of a rare occurrence. Regardless, if you enjoy killing creatures and landing game-altering effects, you might enjoy a foray into this section of Jankville.

                I'll conclude with a deck very similar to one that I did actually sleeve up for an FNM. The event was prior to the release of Magic 2015, so it's not quite the same, but the core of the deck and it's game plan are all detailed below:

Hour of Pyro

22 Lands

7 Island

7 Mountain

4 Steam Vents

4 Temple of Epiphany

22 Spells

2 Essence Scatter

2 Frost Breath

1 Harness by Force

3 Hour of Need

4 Lightning Strike

2 Peel from Reality

3 Retraction Helix

1 Sea God's Revenge

4 Titan's Strength

16 Creatures

4 Akroan Crusader

4 Battlefield Thaumaturge

1 Purphoros, God of the Forge

3 Satyr Hoplite

4 Young Pyromancer

                 As you have probably deduced, this deck is looking to operate on a bit of a tempo plan. It's not a very pure tempo plan in the sense that you get a threat on the board early and stay ahead with counter spells and bounce, but it does aim to leverage small, speedy threats, bolstered by tricks, to make them incrementally better. Of course, the dream is to close the game out swiftly by upgrading several of your creatures into 4/4 flying Sphinxes by way of Limited all-star Hour of Need. Since we're playing a heavy assortment of Instants and Sorceries to produce maximum tokens from Young Pyromancer, we can also take advantage of some nice cost reduction action thanks to the distinctly odd Battlefield Thaumaturge. Given the slightly slimmer mana base that this deck craves, the little edges that the Thaumaturge provides are really nice and can keep your tempo plan moving forward. With two Thaumaturge in play, the Hour of Need and one-of Sea God's Revenge become absolute steals.

                As I said, I opted into this deck not-too-long ago for an FNM at our local (and awesome) Fanantix. When things were churning, it was really great fun, but unfortunately, things didn't seem to churn too often. On a few occasions, I just drew a lopsided mix of creatures and spells. This was often the plight of players pursuing a Heroic deck in Theros Limited and the problem is not completely removed in Constructed either. Two of my matches pitted me against decks packing (what I can only assume) was a full complement of the afore-mentioned Supreme Verdict. This deck has basically zero game against sweepers so I was not surprised to drop games against the decks that leaned so heavily on the uncounterable wrath. Blue-White based control decks weren't the only trouble. A friend of mine, Trevyn, was running a sweet Black-Green deck making use of all the new Constellation goodies in Journey to Nyx. At one point, I had developed a substantial board position with Young Pyromancer cranking out Elemental tokens at a nice clip. With a smirk, Trevyn said, "I hate to do this."

                "No you don't," I snapped back.

                "Doomwake Giant."

                The acidic flavor of a dinner gone by lurched into the back of my throat. "You sicken me!" I joked. All in all it was a fun outing, but I never quite got to smash face with Sphinxes the way I'd hoped. C'est la vie.

                Alright, that's about a wrap on this one. If you're looking for some upside to playing a deck that's not on the quite radar, here's a couple I can offer: Since the cards aren't major players, you can generally pick up most of the pieces you need relatively cheaply. Also, when you do pick up a "W" on a match, it's much, much sweeter. I enjoyed exploring some of the cards that will likely be lost to history in this current Standard format. I hope you did as well.  If you have some pet cards that are looking to take up residency in Jankville, brew up a quick list and drop it in the comments. It's always interesting to see what ideas are rattling around in the heads of fellow players.

                I'd like to close with a shout out to Faxatix owner Phillip Chalker. His willingness to foster the Dothan gaming community is unmatched. I appreciate the opportunity to write for the Team Fanatix blog and I look forward to sitting down across the table with you other spellsplingers! Until next time, don't be afraid to put a little jank in your tank.


Eric Peel has been playing Magic: The Gathering since he discovered the game in college, around the time of Invasion block. Most of the time Eric's simply a devoted family guy, but occasionally he finds time to sling spells or become temporarily devoted to a Therosian deity. He enjoys multiple formats, finding fun and competition in Limited, Constructed, and Multiplayer Magic.