Subject: The Power of Chaos
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 15:18:32 -0800
From: "Robert E. Liszka" <rel2@wwa.com>
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

After talking to people about the impact of Stronghold, one thing stood
out: that people honestly think that sligh is dead.  One of the most
versatile decks that easily adapts to any environment is not going to
die just because of a few walls that are actually good(these are how
walls should have been in the first place anyway).  Wall of Roots has
been with us since Mirage.  It's played in 5CG, X-geddon, Red-Green,
etc.  Yet sligh has coped with this setback in its early offense and
triumphed.  After all, if they block, the wall still takes the creature
damage.  This sets up the one-two punch that sligh uses to get rid of
big fatties: block and bolt.  There is no loss of card economy since you
are still using one card to get rid of a single wall.  Who cares if they
gain the 2 life or you lose 2 life?  Consider it an honorable passage of
sorts.

However, for those who still feel the need to always have a direct
answer, there is one card that answers everything:

Chaos Charm

Simple, versatile, and effective.  For one mana you can destroy the wall
that's giving you grief.  This card answers against every wall except
green's wall of blossoms, since the cantrip effect has already taken
effect.  However, without countering the spell, every deck is going to
lose card economy to it(with the exception of global kill spells).

And yet, killing walls is just one of the three aspects of this card.
Ever run into a sligh on sligh battle?  Here is where you really don't
want to tap out in order to prevent that ball lightning from hitting
you.  Yet at the four mana point you could drop a 3cc and leave the one
man open to protect you from ball... while your opponent thinks it's
safe to cast it since your vulnerable.  Yes, this worked better without
shock in the environment, but you'll still be able to catch people on
it.

Although the third ability isn't as useful as the other two, it still
has proven to be useful.  Try dropping a pallimud after your opponent
taps out and chaos charming it.  An unlikely occurence, but extremely
gratifying to do.  Especially when it wins you a match.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about sligh(geeba) is it's
ability to take advantage of sub-par cards.  Or maybe this is just a
part of Jay's goals when he designs decks.  Despite that, sligh will
still be around for awhile with its ability to adapt.  Sometimes it just
take a little more creativity to find the solution.

Robert Liszka
rel1@cec.wustl.edu