Oh Captain, My Captain!!!

Reality Is Merely An Illusion!

Welcome one and all! This is your boy Captain Red Zone coming at you again with another deck for your viewing pleasure. This week I’m going to bring to you a themed Commander deck that I’m kind of a shamed I made.  If you know anything about me, you know that I hate Blue. Let me explain. When I first started playing Magic my favorite colors were, in order: Red, Black, White, Green, and Blue... after artifacts. The reason? Counterspells. I hated counters because I was a bad player who always countered the wrong spell. I left mana up to counter a spell that never came. Even when I wasn’t playing blue I always seemed to have my win condition countered, even after doing everything to get my opponent down to one card in hand.
The other thing is counters are the do-it-right-or-pay spells of Magic. Your opponent plays a card you’ve never seen before and you have a chance to counter it, you read the card but can’t figure out why they are playing it. “Is this some combo I’ve never seen?”, “Is he just some guy playing a bad card”, “Is this a trick and he’s trying to lure out my counter?”, ”Is this the best card he has or the worst?”…all of that and more would run around in my head before I could choose to counter or not. Then if I let it go through and it turns out to be a problem? Too late, its here doing it's thing and I can’t stop it. Let go through it with the other colors. A problem card shows up and you have a card to stop it, it hits the field and you decide during the rest of that turn should it stay. If you still don’t like it by the end of the turn you can Doom Blade, Path to Exile, Crush, or Naturalize it. Blue? You usually have to bounce it back to their hand and wait until they play it again to counter it. Congratulations, you just 2 for 1’d yourself cause you didn’t know your opponent’s plan. Not knowing in the other colors still usually lead to a 1 for 1.

Then the good people over at Wizards printed M12. If you read one of my other articles or have seen the cards in that product, you should already see where this one is going. But for those that don’t know for one reason or another, Blue has been given a few cards in this set that made me want to give this color another day in court. Those cards being the new Illusion creatures.

Here’s a little Magic trivia for you. There are two legendary creatures in the game of Magic that are naturally Illusions. One is the five colored Cromat, that I always thought was an elemental, and the other is Mistform Ultimus.

After last week’s article, Cromat will not be here as our Commander for this one. Plus if I’m going to do this it should be a mono colored deck. So grab your 50 cent rare and let’s get this deck started before I come to my senses and realize what I’m doing!

It Was All A Dream!

We’ll start with our “lords” because there are only 3 of them and they gave me the idea to start with this deck anyway.

Lord of the Unreal, Adaptive Automaton, Mistform Warchief, and Brass Herald:  Three of these guys give a +1/+1 bonus to the other illusions that will be in this deck. Lord of the Unreal brings Hexproof, or trollshroud if you’re nasty, to our very fragile group of creatures. Brass Herald brings a little bit of digging. Adaptive Automaton is just one of my favorite new cards in the M12 set and the main reason I may be cracking some packs. Mistform Warchief helps us cast our already low cost illusions for even less, thereby making this deck even more aggro then it looks.

These lords are not the A-Team of Magic lords but for a tribe that has very little help in this department you could do worse (and by worse, I mean a tribe that only has the Herald and the Automaton as Lord-like figures).

But Lords aside, let’s start to see where this tribe is going. Your guys are going to die. Don’t worry, we will get around to saving them soon. For now think of what the illusions bring to the table for you. If a player points a spell at one of your guy, what is the chance it’s going to be a good thing? It’s a Path to Exile, Doom Blade, Oblivion Ring, etc. Your guy was usually dead anyway. With the exception of a few guys like the “lords”, most of these guys will end up in a graveyard. So look at the bonus these guys have.  Your opponent can’t Mind Control them cause they will blow up first. Most of your guys will never be put in a place where they will be attacking you. So let’s use this “flaw” to our advantage.

Gossamer Phantasm, Illusionary Servant, Errant Ephemeron, Krovikan Mist, Phantasmal Dragon, Phantasmal Forces, Phantasmal Monster, Riftwing Cloudskate, Somnophore, Wandering Eye, Palichron, and Zephid:  Here is the goal: Play out as many under cost guys with some kind of evasion as possible and hit hard as early as possible. Gossamer Phantasm, Illusionary Servant, and Phantasmal Dragon are all at good price and worth a spot removal trade. Krovikan Mist could easily finish someone off in this deck. Somnophore and Riftwing Cloudskate can keep pesky things like a Blinding Mage under control if played right. Palichron pays for itself and could easily avoid trouble by flying back into the hand. Wandering Eye, Phantom Monster, Zephid, and Phantasmal Forces are extra flyers that can help bring the hurt.

AEther Figment and Phantom Warrior: These guys can hit players without fear of the bigger guys on the other side of the field. Plus with a lord or two out they can easily slow bleed a single player out of the game.  Two unblockable dudes coming in as a 3/3(or 5/5 if kicked) and a 4/4 can put a clock up quick.
AEtherplasm, Mistfolk, Phantasmal Abomination, Phantasmal Bear, Phantasmal Image, Phantom Beast, Phantom Whelp, and Vertigo Spawn: These are our ground forces so to speak. Phantasmal Abomination and Phantasmal Bear are, again, under cost for their size. AEtherplasm, Vertigo Spawn, and Phantom Whelp provide nice battle tricks. Phantasmal Image is a bomb. It is a copy of the best dude on the field (that can be targeted) for two mana no less.
Frost Titan, Kozilek, the Bucher of Truth, and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre:  Frost Titan is here to lockdown a few dudes while doing his thing. The Eldrazi, on the other hand, are here for a different reason that I’ll get to later.

A Pleasant Illusion Is Better Than A Harsh Reality

Here is the part where we put a little reality in to this deck. A few things that don’t go up in smoke just because you looked at them funny.  So on to...

Jace Beleren, Jace, Memory Adept, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor: Yeah I know, I just put this deck out of the price range for some people. But hey if you don’t have these that’s cool, their just here for card draw and the occasional win. Chances are they will be dead before you get to use them more than once so feel free to replace them with Howling Mine type cards.

Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Crystal Ball, Sensei’s Divining Top, Private Research, Blue Sun’s Zenith, Mind Spring, and Advice from the Fae: Hey, if I’m playing blue, I’m going to draw me some cards! It’s one of Blue’s more redeeming characteristics. A little deck manipulation with Ponder, Preordain, Top, Brainstorm, Advice, and Crystal Ball to get what we need. Side note, I want to get my Top and Crystal Ball altered to look like a Beer Keg and a bottle of Cristal champagne .

Don’t judge me, you know you’re feeling that.

Sleep, Misstep, Reality Spasm, and Cryptic Command:  These are our big assault spells for when we’re ready to swing in for the kill or some serious damage.  Tap that field down and keep it tapped.
Time Stretch, Amnesia, Mana Short, Back to Basics, Phantasmal Terrain, Shapeshifter’s Marrow, Copy Enchantment, Rite of Replication, and Relic of Progenitus: A few hate cards and cards to be hated for. Hey if you’re That Guy playing, chances are you got a target on you anyway so why not play a few things to earn that bullseye? Amnesia is really good against the guy who thinks he’s smart cause he has a had full of cards and a Reliquary Tower out. Mana Short can put an end to a few infinite mana combos but it’s not a catch all. Marrow, Rite, and Copy Enchantment gives you extra backup. Phantasmal Terrain is here just because it has Phantasmal in its name and acts like a Spreading Sea. I hope I don’t have to tell you how to use Back to Basics and Time Stretch.
Future Sight, Into the Roil, Cast Through Time, Day of Dragons, Disappear, and Propaganda: A few of the other Blue cards that I like. Future Sight is amazing and you should play it! Period! I have dreams of playing Amnesia or Mana Short with a Cast Through Time out. Propaganda and Ghostly Prison have become two of my personal staples. Disappear is a somewhat on theme removal spell. Then we have Day of Dragons that turns all of our guys into 5/5 flying Dragons... in a Mono Blue deck!

Hinder and Spell Crumple:  I hate counterspells but these two make it for Commander hate. Sorry.

Elixir of Immortality, Three Wishes, and Intuition:  Remember the Eldrazi from earlier? Well this is why they’re here.  Three Wishes and Intuition lets us puts them in the grave so we can have extra chances to replay our fallen illusions. If we ever get the chance to cast them, gravy. But we need them to bring our guys back to us. Like I said, they will die a lot, but with this back up plan it doesn’t matter as much.

Is the Dream Over?

I think this deck works best with 33 Islands, but as always you should feel free to play around with the mana base.  But there it is. A Blue Deck I’m ashamed that I made. But hey, it was fun and maybe I’ll even get around to playing it someday.


Hope you had fun and please leave any comments or suggestions.  Until next time...

This is your Captain speaking… we’re heading into the Red Zone!!!

Walk Into The Random!!!

Drop down and Get Yo M12 On!!!

Welcome one and all! Today I will, once again, be talking about a few random things on my mind. This is my more casual section so I figured I should let you know now. There are no decklists here but maybe a few ideas will pop up. Here I talk about a few things like game play, news, and other topics of interest to me.  So, if this all sounds boring to you, then you may want to check back later this week when I talk about another Commander deck that isn’t real.  To all of you who are still here, let us take a walk into the random.

M12 Is Upon Us

The M12 Prerelease was this past weekend and have I got to tell ya…..nothing. What!! See I had to miss it! WHAT!!! Let me explain, I am a married with a child. My wife of 5 years is one of those people who don’t like Magic. I on the other hand love this game. So, to keep the peace in my house, every other weekend I go out with my friends and we play. On the weekends I don’t go, I stay home with my wife and son and sometimes we do stuff like go to the beach, movies, or just watch some TV. Good old family time!! So guess which weekend this prerelease landed on.  But I’m not going to let that stop me from telling you a few of my opinions about M12! So let’s go!

First, I’m so glad to see that Wizards has given us Oblivion Ring back. The Standard Meta has taken a huge hit since it left. Planeswalkers got out of control, huge creatures have run rampant, and artifacts have stolen match after match. This is one card I think the game needs to keep in the core set as a fall back answer for nonland permanents. I’m only speculating here but I don’t think cards like Jace, The Mind Sculptor and the Titans would not have taken over the format so much if we would have still had the Ring around.

This years M.V.P.!!!

Next, have you seen Blue lately?? With the new illusion creatures in this set, Blue is doing a go job of pretending to be Green and Red. It has bears, dragons, and even new lords!

The new face of .... Aggro????

 And the funniest thing is I hate blue. I like to turn dudes sideways and run them out into the red zone. I like to keep attacking, kill things at instant and sorcery speed, and bring down my opponents life points. These are things Blue is not known for outside of Merfolk decks. Yet here I am ready to crack some packs and the idea that I maybe passing something like a Runeclaw Bear for a Phantasmal Bear because X, Y, and Z (I’m already in UW, etc) just feel wrong… but I can’t help but to feel like it’s the right thing to do. This goes to show that they did something really good in this set and I tip my hat to them.

But it’s Not All Good

What can I say; there are a few things about every set that we all won’t like. Call me spoiled, but I’m just not that impressed by the Mythic rares in this one. Not that I don’t like the titans or the Planeswalkers, but this set did it wrong in my opinion. When the Planeswalkers were first put in the core set, it gave players a chance to grab a couple without needing to crack Lorwyn packs. When Wizards started doing the half-new core set thing, they added cards like Lightning Bolt and Baneslayer Angel that gave that set this new frontier feel. The Titans gave you five good reasons to crack packs with the core set they were in.

But now? Two of the Planeswalkers are reprints, one of which only sees play in casual formats like Commander. All five titans are back but if you have been playing since last summer the only good thing with this is Primeval Titan is down in price since you may have the other ones you would play with. This may sound a little hypocritical, since I just said:

 “When the Planeswalkers were first put in the core set, it gave players a chance to grab a couple without needing to crack Lorwyn packs.”

   This could easily be:

“When the Titans were reprinted in the core set, it gave players a chance to grab a couple without needing to crack M11 packs.”

I’m not saying I have beef with the Titans, my problems isn’t even with the Planeswalkers. I’m just saying that the combination of the two makes this set feel a little boring to me. With 3 new Walkers, it feels like 3 out of 10 cards are cool new cards you want to get whereas before it felt more fifty/fifty. Maybe it’s me, but this seems to be the part of the set that just doesn’t sit right with me.

A Time To Kill

This past weekend I had a chance to sit down with a new DVD from the friendly people at Netflix. I watched a movie called “11:14” that a friend recommended. It’s a story about the lives of 5 people that all happen to cross each other’s path at 11:14pm because of a couple of “accidents”.  It’s done like Pulp Fiction, so prepare to watch it a few times before you catch every detail of how things happen. I found it very funny and my family enjoyed it. We watched it about 3 times just to see how things worked. Car accidents, graveyard sex, a penis in the middle of the road, and Motherf**king Patrick Swayze!!!

 Motherf**king Patrick Swayze!!!

This movie is on point and if you haven’t heard about it go check it out.

Well that’s all for today, join me next later this week when I talk about another deck that I’m excited to try and kinda embarrassed to play.

Oh Captain, My Captain!!!

Security is a False God!!!

Welcome back one and all! From the moment I saw the new Commander product in full my mind has been full of ideas. New Commanders that need their own decks, old decks that need new cards, old cards that got reprinted that need to go in old decks, the list just goes on and on!  But the one thing that I wanted to do so badly was build a deck I kind of wanted to do but never could figure out where to take it. That deck being my five color Commander deck.  At first I wanted to do an all dragon deck, but then my brother show me HIS deck with Scion of the Ur-Dragon at the helm. Then I wanted to use Cromat as my Head of State, but was quickly talked out of it by a few people in my group. Apparently he’s a horrible guy to play. I don’t see why but from popular polls he can be in a deck but is not fit to lead. So I made a Slivers deck with Sliver Overlord as the go to guy. 

It works but it felt a little too linear. I mean come on all you have to do is put in ever good sliver you can find and when you run out of slivers fill in the extra space with any staples and bombs you have room for. Very good, very fun, but when you look around almost EVERY slivers deck is the same thing. I wanted something new, something different, something I could get down on my needs and thank the heavens for…. AND I GOT IT!!!

Your Capacity to Keep Your Vow Will Depend on the Purity of Your Life

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I went to the Temple of the False God and found Karona. With the new summer multi-player product came some new cards that made Karona, False God a lot better as a General. Those cards are the new Vow auras.

 Now in case you don’t get it yet, here’s a quick rundown. Karona maybe a False God but she is a giving one. She likes to run around the table give of herself and giving +3/+3 to the creatures of each players favorite type. The problem? She will let your opponents kill you with General damage, WITH YOUR OWN GENERAL NO LESS!! That stinks!!! But now that the vow auras have been printed, you can have her make a promise to never attack you. So, when she decides to move over to the next player she can do what you really want and smash someone else’s face in. now this sounds like a new kind of deck that uses a general that doesn’t see much play. So, just a little FYI, I haven’t built this deck or play tested it but I am going to do a little brainstorming. Here we go!

My Religion Is Based On Truth and Non-Violence

Just because Karona is taking a vow of non-violence doesn’t mean your opponents other creatures have. So let’s turn our side of the board into a true church.

Vow of Duty, Vow of Flight, Vow of Malice, Vow of Lightning, and Vow of Wildness: You should already know what these are for. Don’t forget you can have the biggest dude on the field that doesn’t belong to you sign a Vow contract with you as well.

Riddlekeepr, Windborn Muse, Ghostly Prison, Stuffy Doll, and Propaganda: You have to put some money in the collection plate if you want to bring your problems here. With a fee of 2, 4, or 6 mana a dude, I’m pretty sure we won’t see too many fights here. Good old Stuffy can keep at least one player sitting still for a while and may even provide a good way for the table to deal with a single player who got to turtle up quickly, remember it’s says choose not target so you can get around those player shroud effects . Also, while Riddlekeeper may not be too big of a deterrent in this format, two cards for each creature can add up quick.

Wall of Omens, Wall of Denial, Fog Bank, Overgrown Battlement, Wall of Frost, and Wall of Blossoms:  All good buildings need walls, and here at the Temple of the False God we have spared no expense.  We have walls that replace themselves in Blossoms and Omens. We have a mana wall in our Overgrown Battlement. Walls made for punching like Fog Bank Wall of Frost, and Wall of Denial.

Angelsong, Fog, Batwing Brume, Darkness, Dawn Charm, Deep Wood, and Heavy Fog: Look, sometimes Walls aren’t enough to keep out the people who want to bring us harm. So we will pray for bad weather, and with a line up lick this, it will happen. These should give us time to set up the mana base and walls so we can stay in the game. We can even save a player or two. I mean isn't that what church does? Save People?

The Wrath of (the False) God

Our God here maybe a false one, but that doesn’t make her any less vengeful. Sometime we need to show those non-believers where the true power lays.

  

Wrath of God, Damnation, Day of Judgment, Decree of Pain, and Martial Coup: Come on now, what self respecting God never kills everything that has upset it? With a set like this, it should become clear to the whole group that fighting is only allowed outside your temple walls.

Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, Oblivion Ring, Oblation, and Spin into Myth: These are for when you don’t want to punish the table for the sins of one person. Spot remove is really good if used right and these make sure your doing things right.

And the Rest Will Follow

So what kind of church would we have without a few loyal worshippers willing to take our word to the masses?

False Prophet, Steel Hellkite, Baneslayer Angel, Platinum Angel, Emeria Angel, Verdant Force, Bloodbraid Elf, Skyward Eye Prophets, Qasali Pridemage, and Nin, the Pain Artist: More removal, token makers, a few angels, and some prophets….. Sounds like soon someone will be passing me some “Kool-Aid” for the big ritual.

Gideon Jura, Garruk Wildspeaker, Ajani Vengeant, Sorin Markov, Liliana Vess, and Venser, the Sojourner:  I had to drop a few of my favorite Planeswalkers in here. Gideon is remove, a creature, and a target willing to sacrifice himself for our church. You’ve got to respect that. Garruk is our groundskeeper, he make the lands work better, put a guard dog out at night, and will also sacrifice himself for us. Ajani and Sorin helps us take care of those local thugs that keep trying to get violent on our grounds. Liliana is for searching out cards like a tucked God or something. Venser works great with our Walls and Stuffy, but he also makes sure when our guys leave the church that nothing gets in their way.

Lightning Greaves, Sol Ring, Sensei’s Divining Top, Darksteel Ingot, Whispersilk Cloak: Must… struggle…… against…. yearning……for……..Staples!..... Their….. Too……… Good!!

The Signets and Bounce Lands of Ravnica: Those 2cc artifacts from Ravnica are all here. Yes they do get destroyed but they are not auto includes. If you want to, you can easily replace them with ten dual color lands of you choose. I like them, I have all ten, and not to many lands I would like to take from my other EDH decks just to build this one. I also have all ten of the Bounce Lands so they make it in here as well on the same principal.  So feel free to play around with this part.

About here we could slip in about 7 or so other cards from each color of our favorite type. Mine? Fact or Fiction, Wildfire, Mageta the Lion, Ring of Gix, Grave Pact, Greed, and Harmonize. 30 lands divided by 5 comes up to about 6 of each and there we are. A deck made for a God.

So until next time, this is your Captain speaking... We're headed into the Red Zone!!!