It's an awesome common that's powered by having certain lands in play - and [card]Mountain[/card] and [card]Plains[/card] aren't all that hard to get into play nowadays with [card]Terramorphic Expanse[/card] and [card]Naya Panorama[/card] around.
You see it in nearly every iteration of Extended and Standard Zoo now - all this and it's a simple common!
I have to admit that the following is a particularly badly thought out rant. How consistently does your deck perform? How often does your awesome deck tech work? How often does your combo go off?
When I first started playing Magic, I was never concerned over how consistent something was. Neither did I give much thought to mind games. In fact, due to budget constraints, I was playing preconstructed decks. Of course, this was the age when preconstructed decks were pretty good, although they were still far from consistent. This was also during the block known for being broken – Urza block.
At this period in time, while I only had one or two decks, most people had several. Looking back, I know why I won as many games as I did – everyone I played with was toting around 120-150 card decks. I was only using 60. Despite my lack of experience at the time, my preconstructed decks seemed to be winning more often than it should have. It was consistent with its plays, and forced the less consistent decks to play catch up all the time – not something to do easily, considering we were all playing cards of similar power/quality.
Over time, I’ve become more interested in building more consistent decks. I’ve built surprising consistent (although not resilient) decks during Onslaught-Mirrodin, Mirrodin-Kamigawa and Kamigawa-Ravnica periods, although recently I haven’t tried anything new. Zendikar feels weak, and Alara feels restrictive. I’m sure it’s just a matter of getting used to it after the insanity of Time Spiral, but it feels like I can build less decks I like to play – so I started looking at Extended.
I missed about 2 and a half blocks (Planar Chaos – Alara Reborn), but I find that a lot of my cards are still pretty good in Extended. Barring me missing all-so-important [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]s and [card]Thoughtseize[/card]s, I could still build a decent Extended deck. Not something that’d win any tournaments, but nevertheless consistent. But I realized I’m digressing, so moving along.
A deck can become consistent by either consistently drawing the cards it wants or making sure it always has the cards it wants. You can do the former only one way. Do a lot of testing and know a lot of theory. There is always a right number for a given metagame – while you can’t predict the metagame to a very high certainty, you can certainly guess quite well. The latter is the same – tutors. Tutors have always fascinated me, as they allow you to fill your deck with 1-ofs. They also allow and enable interesting decks using (or abusing) [card]Gifts Ungiven[/card] or [card]Mystical Teachings[/card]. More recently, Wizards printed [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card], [card]Ranger of Eos[/card] and [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card], all very interesting cards in their own right.
You can also be consistent by being resilient. If they can’t destroy what you’re attacking with, they’ll lose eventually. Attacking with a [card]Sphinx of Jwar Isle[/card] or even [card]Kor Firewalker[/card] seems like a rather mundane idea, but if they can’t deal with it easily, they’re still going to lose.
Drawing a lot cards, while being a strange idea, does work for consistency. How else can a deck like Turbofog continue to keep drawing [card]Fog[/card]s? The more cards from your library in your hand the more likely you are to find the card you want. Some combo decks go to the extreme of making your entire library available, but that’s another story altogether. (Those decks, while fun to play, take too damn long because playing your entire library isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do.
I’m a player who’s interested in one turn wins. However, recently, I’ve moved my focus to more resilient decks. Decks that win in a single turn usually aren’t very resilient. Take for example, a [card]Mycosynth Golem[/card] deck I used to play.
My slight change allowed the deck the win in one turn – but the deck is easily stopped by something as trivial as a single [card]Essence Scatter[/card]. Unfortunately, awesome one turn wins are easily stopped – so they generally fail at being resilient. Does that mean that I should stop playing them? Absolutely not. There’s nothing quite like going from doing absolutely nothing – to doing absolutely everything.
One of the easiest ways to build a resilient deck strategy is redundancy. Four copies of every card! Multiple functional copies of the same card! Multiple combos! If each of your cards will be a problem, can you imagine drawing into multiples? Having four copies help. Having multiple functional copies = more copies of the same card. Can you imagine how consistent you’ll be at having 3 mana by turn 2 if you played 4 copies each of [card]Birds of Paradise[/card], [card]Arbor Elf[/card] and [card]Llanowar Elves[/card]? Multiple combos makes things even better – they can deal with one combo – only to run into the next one they usually can’t deal with. In addition, your deck becomes unpredictable. You can win one of many ways – but you only need to pull off one. Redundancy has its problems – there are a lot of cards you don’t want to draw too many of.
Another way to be resilient is to be able to deal with the problems other decks give you. This is what a lot of decks do. If you can deal with anything your opponent can throw at you, they’ve then got nothing. If you know that you’re weak against a 20/20 Marit Lage token from [card]Dark Depths[/card], then you should have an answer – be it [card]Path to Exile[/card] or [card]Into the Roil[/card].
You could also just play great cards. Every deck has a finite number of answers. You can always have more problems than solutions for your opponent. If you play a 2/3 on turn one, followed by a 3/4 on turn two, and then you follow with a 4/5 on turn three, and then an [card]Umezawa's Jitte[/card] on turn four, you’re well on your way to winning. To me, the best strategy is simply playing great cards – it’s also the easiest. Continuously playing cards your opponents have to deal with is great.
There can also be another way to have resilience – resistance to removal. If you play a lot of good cards requiring your opponents to have very specific hate cards, you can count on your threats staying on the table a lot longer. An example would be anything with shroud. [card]Calcite Snapper[/card] is good for precisely this reason. Protection is also a bane for a lot of decks: [card]Kor Firewalker[/card] and [card]Great Sable Stag[/card] are both stubborn enough to stay around for a long time. It’s also why something like [card]Progenitus[/card] is so darn difficult to get rid of. There are also other ways to be resilient against removal – a good example would be the ability to recur from the graveyard – [card]Bloodghast[/card] and [card]Stinkweed Imp[/card] are both ridiculously good at this. There are other ways to be dodge solutions – but that would be a story for another day. ([card]Arcbound Ravager[/card] is an example of that.)
Having a good late game plan is also never a bad idea. Many decks have a good early game – but at the cost of their late game plan. Having cards that are equally devastating regardless of when you play it is great – especially if you expect to run into a lot of slower control decks that are full of enough answers. It is for this reason having a deck filled with 12 mana producing creatures is a bad idea – but it’s rarely a bad thing to draw a [card]Baneslayer Angel[/card] or even a simple card like [card]Lightning Bolt[/card].
Why this new obsession over resilience? I don’t really know. That’s just how it is now. I decided that for now, I’d rather play a deck that can win against just about anything, rather than a deck that can win against most things.
I prefer taking public transport to work. I think a lot of people don’t appreciate the value of public transport – either that or I’m super lucky every damn day. 1. Public transport is cheap – It’s the cheapest way to get someone else to drive you places. Your total fares per day may seem high (mine is RM 8.10) – but the fact is that in Kuala Lumpur, RM 8.10 is barely enough to cover your parking charges, let alone your fuel and road toll costs. For me, RM 8.10 a day is get someone else to drive you home is a bargain! That comes up to RM 178.20 a month, considering that the average month has roughly 22 working days.
2. Public transport is faster – This may seem counterintuitive, and this is because it’s not always true. However, this holds true for me. Despite the fact that I take one monorail, one light rail transit train AND one bus home (that’s three different modes of public transport – and three sessions of waiting for something to come), I actually get home on average half an hour earlier than if I were to drive every day. How is this possible? Traffic jams. Taking two trains that can’t be obstructed by cars saves me an enormous amount of time. If the bus frequency were actually regular (which it isn’t thanks to traffic jams), I would be able to get home 45 minutes to an hour earlier on average (of course, this is an example of faulty logic, since if it didn’t jam, I could get home in 30 minutes – public transport would take 50 minutes if it didn’t jam – but if it did jam, driving would take 1 hour 45 minutes on average and public transport would get me home in an average 1 hour 15 minutes including waiting time).
3. Public transport alleviates stress – Public transport is simple. You get on the train. Squeeze with people until the desired stop and get off. Yes, this is less comfortable than a car. But getting squished by other people isn’t so bad compared to braving Kuala Lumpur’s jams. Imagine being squished in your car by other cars. And buses. And motorcycles. Then, imagine moving inches at a time. On public transport, I can be reading a newspaper, listening to music or even playing a video game. If I were in a car, I can’t do any of those – I’d then lose my spot to some crazy driver who is trying to play bumper cars in real life.
Those are the three main advantages for public transport I can think of. There are numerous others. I am aware of the many problems with Malaysian public transport, among them being bus frequency (actually a fault of the traffic jams – and is really a chicken and egg problem), reliability, overcrowding, etc. but I think the chief reason is people making excuses not to take it. There are always a few genuine excuses in there, like there’s no bus going to my housing estate and so on – but I’m highly doubtful that that many of the drivers in KL can honestly claim that. Part of public transport is finding your way around – and it may surprise you how fast it can be, despite the number of interchanges you might need to make. There’s also an impression that only lower income people should take the bus – this is incorrect. Go to any developed country and look at who takes the buses.
Looking at PT San Diego's Top 8 decklists is kind of disappointing. It's unfortunately, but it looks like little from Worldwake is changing anything, yet. I'm guessing me thinking people would be able to build, test and optimize new decks was a little optimistic.
All that was really new was an Open the Vaults deck making Top 8. I think. (I'm terribly outdated in this department.)
[deck title=Niels Viaene - Open the Vaults] [lands] 2 Celestial Colonnade 4 Glacial Fortress 4 Island 2 Kabira Crossroads 2 Marsh Flats 3 Plains 1 Swamp 2 Terramorphic Expanse [/lands] [creatures] 4 Architects of Will 4 Filigree Angel 4 Glassdust Hulk 1 Sharuum the Hegemon 4 Sphinx of Lost Truths [/creatures] [others] 3 Courier's Capsule 3 Day of Judgment 2 Fieldmist Borderpost 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 2 Journey to Nowhere 1 Mistvein Borderpost 3 Oblivion Ring 4 Open the Vaults 4 Spreading Seas [/others] [sideboard] 1 Day of Judgment 3 Flashfreeze 2 Hindering Light 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 2 Journey to Nowhere 4 Negate 1 Oblivion Ring 1 Sanguine Bond [/sideboard] [/deck]
I'm not really sure how the deck works, but the idea appears to be to keep the board clear of creatures with [card]Day of Judgment[/card], [card]Oblivion Ring[/card] and [card]Journey to Nowhere[/card] while maintaining some card advantage with [card]Courier's Capsule[/card] and [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card].
When you've stabilized, depending on what's in your hand, you swing with one of your big creatures - be it [card]Sharuum the Hegemon[/card], attacking with your [card]Celestial Colonnade[/card] or more likely, either a [card]Filigree Angel[/card] or [card]Glassdust Hulk[/card].
Although there are four copies of [card]Sphinx of Lost Truths[/card], I think that the [card]Sphinx of Lost Truths[/card] and [card]Open the Vaults[/card] 'combo' is probably not reliable enough to count on going off often enough (especially since it's really only awesome with [card]Filigree Angel[/card] in your graveyard or [card]Glassdust Hulk[/card] on the table - rather situational to me).
The synergy between [card]Open the Vaults[/card] and a lot of cards in the deck is notable - because you play it late in the game - when most people have exhausted their cards trying to deal with you.