My favourite card from the next set is [card]Awakening Zone[/card]. I don't know why, but it feels like the kind of card I play often. =D
Going Shopping for a New Phone
Recently it's been becoming more apparent that I'm having less and less free time to blog (and tweeting more instead) - but that's really because I've been doing two very important things: studying for my exams in April and shopping for a new phone. As far as studying for my exams is going, it's not going well. I'm not sure how to study for something I've studied for before, and practising isn't quite working as well as I'd hoped. Finding a new strategy is a lot more difficult than I thought. I guess I'll be roughing it out until I find new motivation and methods to study properly.
Shopping for a new phone hasn't been easy either. There are now three smartphone-type operating systems to choose from - the last time I went shopping for a PDA + phone combo in 2006, I had only one choice - Windows Mobile. Now, there are three main contenders in my view - Windows Mobile, iPhone OS and Android. (I'm aware of Symbian, and even more aware of Blackberry - but let's face it - the flagship devices of these two OSes are totally incomparable to the other three. Perhaps the iPhone 3GS is lagging in this area now, but I'm sure the next iteration due this year will change that - and when I'm shopping in this window of time, it's worthwhile to wait 2-3 months.)
The best thing is that phones of this class have gotten much cheaper. They used to cost RM2,500 to RM3,000 pretty easily - and while they still do sometimes, they can often be bought much cheaper a lot earlier in their life cycles. (like say RM2,000)
Windows Mobile's flagship device is clearly the HTC HD2. Nothing else comes close to it. The biggest reason I dropped it out of contention was the fact that Windows Mobile is going to be replaced by Windows Phone 7. And Microsoft seems to be fully intent on alienating its current userbase. With every announcement they make about Windows Phone 7, I get less and less happy. I can't blame Microsoft for the radical changes they are going for for WP7, but they could have at least made an effort to keep their remaining userbase.
Let's move on the iPhone. The current flagship is crappy compared to the HTC HD2 and the HTC Desire. It has one button. It doesn't have a nice home screen - if you could call what it has a home screen. (I lived with a home screen like that once. That was when Palm OS was king, and was about to be dethroned because it forgot that OSes need updating.) What it does have however, is awesome third party support. There are apps for everything - and if those don't satisfy all your needs, you can jailbreak for the remaining missing features - customizable home screen, lock screen info and so on. However - the current flagship is set to be replaced this year, and so anything could happen.
The Android flagships are probably the Google Nexus One (for the US) and HTC Desire (for the rest of the world). Considering that Android's situations is similar to what Windows Mobile's situation was previously, it's difficult to know when they will be replaced - although a good bet is within a year's time. I didn't even consider Android until I saw it for myself and realized why it just fit. I don't even know why. Widgets on the home screen, the apps all felt like what I was used to. The openness of the platform seems the same as Windows Mobile - except that the SDK default language is Java - which I'm guessing can make things a little sluggish at times - but I'm not worried since there's an accompanying NDK for those apps that really need speed. When people realise that speed matters more, they'll work on apps in the NDK.
So, currently, I'm planning to purchase a HTC Desire - but I'll be waiting 2 months to see if Apple can change my mind. It hasn't won any points with me with iPhone OS 4, but Android so far certainly has won many with version 2.1.
Card: Wild Nacatl
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!
Thoughts on Consistency
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.
Deck Resilience
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.