Subject: Please use this revision ;) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 23:58:08 -0500 (CDT) From: Ben Bleiweiss To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Subject: Here's an interesting little article Topic: How to completely 100% fix T2 for the better There's a lot of people who are saying that magic isn't very fun anymore. There are too many cards that promote either engine decks, or weenie rush decks. Do you want to know a little secret? This can be fixed in one fell swoop. What are mid-game cards? Mid-game cards are those spells which try to push and shove the game in a direction, without being an overtly instant-win card. MGC's are cards which usually have a 4-5 casting cost, or have an activation cost which is steep. For instance, here are some T2 current cards that would be considered "Mid-game" cards. Nekrataal: BB2, when it comes into play, kill a creature. In an of itself, it will not end a game. But it swings the pendulum in the favor of the caster, such as a move and countermove. Let's take a look at Terror (a non-mid game card) vs. Taal. The situation: You and your opponent have had a long-standing game. At this point, you each have 2 cards in hand (it doesn't matter which cards, for the point of this example). He has 6 forests, and a llhurgoyf in play (Which is 4/5), and you have 6 swamps in play. It's your turn, so you untap, upkeep, and you draw a-- 1) Terror: B1, instant: Terroring your opponent's llhurgoyf, which moves the game from being in his favor to being a stalemate once again. 2) Nekrataal: BB2, 2/1 1st striking creature: Killing your opponent's llhurgoyf, and swinging the momentum of the game into your favor. The problem with the current T2 environment (And the one soon to be as of November first) is that Wizards has rotated out nearly every damn mid-game swing card. And that's why the problem could be solved: as of early-mid next year, 6th edition is being released. There are a ton of cards that could be rotated in from Alliances, Mirage, Visions, and Weatherlight, but I'm not at all concerned with these. The big cards are those that haven't been around for a long time: Casualties of Ice Age, 4th edition, and Chronicles. Cards that were passed up or rotated out in the last edition that should have every right to be played at this point. So here, I present to you, the top 10 cards that SHOULD be in T2 right now, and why they should be, and why they would make magic better for it. 10) Mishra's Factory: Taken out mostly due to rules problems (can I activate it more than once a turn? Can I attack with it the turn I play it? Blah blah blah), Mishra's Factory was a staple card in that every deck could play it, and every deck had some way to deal with it (as it counts as a land, creature, and artifact all at once). People LIKED playing with Mishra's factories. It can block in the early game, and kill in the end game. It's almost never useless to draw one. 9) Stunted Growth: A lot of green mages played with this card. But it's "Out of flavor" for green. Who cares? It's a card that blue mages had to counterspell, and that gave green a window of opportunity to do something with what they had on the board. It was 3-1 card advantage. It was a card green could use mid-game with their extra mana to some effect other than to gain life, or to cast another creature. IT was an interesting card, and one they reprinted for black (agonizing memories). Give it back to green. 8) Stormbind: They've printed Seismic assault, Ogre Shaman, and Cursed Scrolls to approximate the effect of Stormbind. THe assault is overly color specific, Ogre Shaman dies easily and costs a bit too much, and cursed scroll makes you stay at 0-2 cards. BUt STormbind was the original thinking-man's card conservation card. You knowingly lost a card (At random, no less) from your hand to basically cast a shock. This could devestate your entire strategy (since you could lose a key card from your hand), so you had to plan accordingly for what you did/didn't want to keep when measuring if it was wise to stormbind a creature/player. Cursed scroll, on the other hand, encourages you to dump down to the one (or copies of one) essential card, and direct damage away. Or to keep emptying your hand. The strategy with stormbind was that it involved STRATEGY. Cursed scroll's strategy can only move in one direction. 7) Control Magic: For UU2, gain control of that creature NOW. Legacy's allure is actually not a bad control magic replacement, but drawing it in the late game will be too late to swing a game. For UU2, you got your opponent's creature, which both gave you an extra blocker, and deprived them of an attacker. Consumate Swing/mid-game card. 6) Serrated Arrows: 4 casting cost artifact, which killed 1-3 creatures. It would sit on the board, and dare the opponent to cast anything. Why would this be good for T2? It's an off-color solution to deal with protection from creatures (sligh deal with WW, WW deal with Necro, Necro deal with WW, Blue deal with Scragnoth, etc). Also, It is more or less slow (as it can only kill/impede one creature a turn), allowing a more defensively themed (non-combo) deck to organize itself. 5), 4) and 3) (In no particular order): Sengir Vampire, Serra Angel, and Ehrnam Djinn: These three were the staple cards from their respective decks/colors. The Sengir for black attack/necro decks, the Serra for WW as the kill, or U/W control, and the Ehrnam for armageddon decks. Why are they all gone from T2? Too powerful. Look Wizards, unless the creature is 2/2 for dark ritual and makes you lose the game if you don't have a bolt, it's not too damn powerful! These are the creatures that players like to see. I'd love to play with any of these three again. The 4/4 flying twins (Sengir and Serra) were able to deal with weenie rush deck (doubly so for the serra, which could attack and block), but were eminently vulnerable to creature kill (Serra more than sengir, due to the nature of it's color). Ehrnam was a Jackalope herd that could stay in play, and was just the right size (with the drawback it had) for a green creature. THat's right, 4/5 for 4 mana. Red needed to give up it's speed to kill it. Black/White/Blue could deal with it one for one (terror, Contagion, Banish, Taal, Edict, Plow, Wrath, Control Magic, etc). It was big, it could block, it could kill. Serra and Sengir were big, they could block, they could kill. These were all good creatures, that people LIKED to play with, and that didn't imbalance the game horribly. BUt sengir and serra were "Out of theme" (As Air elemental was directly 'inferior' to either), and Ehrnam was 'too powerful'. So now G/W geddon deck have no kill card, WW has to rely on the (soon to be rotated out) armor, and Necro has absoluately NO good large creatures to choose from for the kill come NOvember first. 2) Icy Manipulator: This card could go in any deck. It would always have a use. It slows down the game. That's a good thing. You nullify attackers with it, kill blockers, stop mana production. It cost 4 mana to bring out, and was the key to many control decks (Even above and beyond prison), and mid-game decks (like Necro and some WW to deal with large creatures). Bring it back. 1) Swords to Plowshares: If there is ANYTHING that is needed now, it's swords. There needs to be some damn way to remove creatures from the game without disintegrating them (which is too slow, and a sorcery). There needs to be a good way to deal with ball lightning if you aren't playing Red or Black (For bolts or terrors, but who main-decks terrors?). THere needs to be a way to stop the creature engines once and for all, which is not by sending a creature to the graveyard, but taking it out of the game entirely. This is the counter to recurring nightmare people: You take out their key creature (Force/Great Whale/whatever), and it all falls apart. YOu plow sligh's ball lightning, and even though you save 6 points of damage, you have to take out 6 more of their life total. YOu can deal with the large, the small, come one, come all. Reprint this. Ben Bleiweiss. PS--If you want to have real fun playing magic, find someone who has a copy of the PT one top 8 decks. Play with them. I'll guarantee you will have more fun with these 8 decks (most of which are very imaginitive, since it was the 'five of every set in the deck/sideboard concept) then you do playing whatever format you play in right now.