Magic Origins week.

I apologize I haven't updated my blog in a long time, and here we are, and all I'm going to do it blab and not share a deck.

Dailymtg.com, the official magic site, is talking origin stories today. I figure I'll transcribe some of my origins, lest they be forgotten.

Growing up I collected baseball cards. To be honest with the whole world right now, I have no idea why. Before baseball cards I dabbled with coins, and stamps, but my interest waivered. When I was around six years old, a neighbor gave me a huge box of '81 topps baseball cards, and explained how some people collect them, and why. So I began collecting baseball cards. Then I had to try and learn about baseball, and then of course I had to maintain an interest in it. Keeping up with stats and games and plays. Watching it on tv, reading sports illustrated, and of course Becket. Here's the trouble, I never really cared for baseball. AT all. So I collected, I know now, for the sheer act of collecting. It's something I like to do. All my life I collected comic books, even though I'm not a stickler for buying and selling them now. I liked collecting coins, and stamps. I collected Hess trucks growing up, and during my long stint in the baseball card collecting world, where I was a half-phoney, I even branched out to football and basketball cards. I was mad about collecting in general, but masked it by being a baseball card collecting fanatic.

Nothing rivaled my collecting prowess of baseball cards. I even used to go to baseball card clubs after school, trade with friends, and if I met someone who was a ne'erdowell, I'd even get ripped off in trades because i couldn't keep up with the facade of a baseball fan, so i had no idea that this player's cards just dropped in price because his average sucked this year.

My best friend at the time was Ben. We used to hang out because we both collected baseball cards, liked 'watching sports' and had synergy because we were both flowering nerds. We found out we liked the same videogames. I had a sega, he had a snes, so we had opportunity to play all the new games together. I used to go over and play with his snes all the time.

One day, in the midst of my disillusionment with myself at not really being a baseball fan yet collecting the cards like mad, I went over to Ben's to play super nintendo and so forth. This was late '94, towards xmas. He said "hey you heard about magic?" and I said "no, what is it?" he said, "oh it's awesome, it's the great card game. My brother and I started collecting it. we have a bunch of cards, let's build you a deck and play."

So first, I watched him and his brother play. This was all 3rd edition and dark cards, some unlimited, a couple of legends cards thrown in.. I rememer seeing a spinal villain and lots o f lightning bolts. Their decks were not 60 cards, each was like on the cusp of 90, because all of these cards we so so new, and they both wanted to try them out.

We had a hard time picking two colors to work with, because we all wanted to try them all out. However I distincly remember my first play through, Ben cobbled together a gigantic deck of green and white cards. I remember playing crap commons, like bears and banding benalish heros, and then coming across some of the good stuff, like wrath of god, or cockatrice, or howling mine.

I don't even recall, 15 years later, if I won or lost, I just remember loving every second of playing that game. I remember seeing Ben's brother Dave slap down a cosmic horror and how we all thought it was insane amidst a field of mon's goblin raiders, drudge skeletons, and holy strengthed savannah lions. We played all day and I was taught various rules.

I came home and I'm sure I blabbed more about magic to my parents that day then anything else I had ever spoken of in my life. They were badgered enough that when 4th edition hit stores in april of 1995, and I had grown tired of 4 months of playing with my friends cards, that they let me start collecting magic. I walked into the only card shop in town, and I remember buying two boosters of 3rd, two boosters of 4th and two fresh crispy new 75 card starters of 4th. I also bought some dark and legends cards out of the case. I bought a spinal villain of my own because I both loved and despised blue. I bought a dark the fallen, dance of many, and I even bought a marsh goblins because the idea of a gold card was so crazy to me, that I had to own at least one. I remember buying a playset of blue elemental blast and red elemental blast, and I splurged and bought one of my first true magic-loves, Sol Ring. I bought loads of extra lands, all with money I had saved.

I walked out of the store and my dad said, "that's a lot of money you spent, but now you're good to go right?"

And I remember thinking.. Not even close, but saying "dad this is a collectible card game. I'm gonna be collecting it for a while" I then remember my dad telling me I already collected baseball cards, and I promptly told him at that moment I could give a care about baseball or its cards or collecting any of those at all. I haven't purchased a baseball card since, and they promptly went into card boxes and were filed away, to the point that I still have them today.

I came home, cobbled together some clunky decks, taught my sister, she humored me and played once in a blue moon, and then I called Ben.

At this point, our magic skills were not stratagem.. they were, oooo this looks cool, put it in. Ben, his brother Dave, and I were my whole magic play group, for as long as I can remember.

We each played with huge, 150 card decks. We had no control over our urge to play with everything we came across that we liked. We each played 3-color decks.

Ben's favorite color was white, and then he liked blue, followed by green. So he clearly had the most white cards, almost as many blue, and then a smattering of green cards that his brother hadn't managed to get from him in trade.

Ben's brother Dave's fav color was Green. He then liked red, and then white. He liked big creatures, burn/removal, and white for disenchants and life gain.

My favorite color was, and always will be, black. It's evil, and I've always strived to be good irl, but in fanatsy relams, give me evil. I want to be lex luthor or a drow. Black had skeletons and zombies and death, and it had extremely powerful cards like demonic tutor, and terror, and hypnotic specter. and it had black knight to Ben's white knight. I latched onto black. For my next color, I agreed with ben... blue. I liked unsummoning and countering and casting the braingeyser I got in my packs of 3rd. My final color was red, because I liked disentigrating creatures to nothingness. We had a house rule that we wouldn't cast an x damage / drain life spell right to the face, we'd always try to win by creature damage with the occasional lightning bolt to the face, but nothing as uncouth as disentigrate for 8, drain life for ten.

So I had a massive 120-150 card deck of red/black/blue. Shuffling was hard, and getting enough mana was either overboard or never enough, but we loved to play. When Ice age, chronicles, fallen empires and homelands hit, we traded out cards for better cards, but they always stayed gigantic, and it reminds me of the innocence of beginning the game.


The last pack I bought before the great hiatus was a couple packs of tempest. I hadn't gotten much weatherlight and Ben and Dave didn't play much anymore. My deck had progessed to strict black/white. I still didn't go for green, even though today I consider it on par with black, and find it to be the best support color, and indeed, probably have more themed mono green decks then any other color mono-deck.

Magic was considered universally uncool in the halls of my schools growing up, so i never tried to branch out and find other players. As Ben and dave waivered, and we hung out less, my collection was put in a plastic card-collecting box, and stored under my bed.
In senior year I sold all of my cards, through want ad digest, and used the profits to buy a set of drums, to replace the set of drums i sold to buy one of the first ever commercially released cd burners (can you say 1x duplication speed, 400$?). Magic faded from my life.

Freshman year of college was insane.
Sophmore year i awoke through the fog to realize my best friend, Moshe, played magic, as did all his friends at home, as did a bunch of our friends in college. Here it felt like old times, using their cards to make decks, not having a collection of my own.
Finally, I saved up enough money, went to dragon's den, and bought precisely enough cards to build a black/blue deck, with skeleton ships and helm of obediences in tow.

In a pack I had bought, I opened an undermine, Foil. it was cream of the crop back then, and I had people jumping through hoops to trade for it. Moshe's friends from LI all wanted it, and I remember getting a doppleganger and a Verdeloth the ancient among other things.

Verdeloth. I stared in amazement at it... It spoke to me, called forth my love of thallids from the old days of playing, seeing Ben and Dave pile out fungus and saprolings.
Now I had to build a green deck.
A saproling deck.

I went back to dragon's den, and bought Saproling symbosis x 4, spontaneous generation x 4, and elvish farmers, then went nuts on my friends commons and uncommons boxes, and filled in the rest. Now I had two decks.

I started collecting regularly. When torment hit, I bought a booster box. When onslaught hit, I bought 2 and half booster boxes. And I kept my collection growing strong, til I'm here, with over 40 decks, most of which my friends refuse to play because they consistently kick ass.

Wolves

Wolves
(wish I had a more interesting title)

Before I get to the deck list, let me explain some things.

It's all about Wren's Run Packmaster. The 'goblin king' of wolves. Trouble is, He requires you to champion an elf. So this couldn't be a strict Wolf deck or he'd have no one to champion. However, I didn't want this degenerating into an elf deck with a mild Wolf theme. I wanted the Wolf theme to permeate. It turns out elves and wolves have a lot of synergy.







Creatures:

Elves:
3 x Llanowar Augur
4 x Elvish Harbinger
1 x Kaysa (the creature type overhaul WoTC did lists her as an elf druid legend now)
3 x Wolf-skull Shaman (makes wolves)
3 x wren's run packmaster (makes wolves)
2 x Tolsmir Wolfblood (makes a fatty wolf legend)

Wolves:
4 x Watchwolf (best wolf, in my opinion)
3 x Wyluli Wolf
3 x Lone Wolf

Welves: (Ok, Changelings really, but they count as Wolves and Elves)
3 x Avian Changeling

Spells:

Elf Makers:
2 x Hunting Triad

Wolf Makers:
1 x Fable of Wolf and Owl
4 x Sound the Call

Incedentals:
2 x Spidersilk Armor

The packmaster makes wolf tokens, and gives them death touch. As stated he requires an elf to come into play, but when it comes into play, it IS a 5/5 for four mana.

So Champion an Elf huh? How do I remedy this? well first of automatic 4 of Elvish Harbinger. They essentially provide a tutor for the two main elves you need to get wolf tokens rolling, Wolf-skull shaman and the packmaster. They can be championed and if the packmaster dies, bam! search for another one. The harbingers can also, obviously, search for any of the other elves you need. I didn't want this to be a normal elf deck or slight variation upon, as I said, so I did not throw in llanowar elves. The mana base also did not need help via spells. I figured the harbingers provide extra mana, and that's all we need.

This deck explanation is all over the place, but let me break it down for a second in terms of drops (mana costs). Basically, there are three 6-drop cards. Tolsmir Wolfblood x 2 (he's a legend, but works so well I wanted two of him in there) and the Fable. There's one five drop card, that's Kaysa. Everything else is a 4 drop or less. The packmasters are 4-drops, and everything else besides the hunting triads are three drops or lower.
So basically only 4 cards out of a 60 card deck (22 lands, pepper as you wish [plains/forests/etc], I own one mutavault so it'd go in for sure!), cost over 4 mana. That's a pretty speedy run of things.

The hunting triad's are in there in case you need an elf for the packmaster and you don't have one to spare. A simple 1/1 token won't be missed. Also, I picked this because of the reinforce ability. If you have a playfield laiden with Wolves, who the hell needs 3 elves? Attack with that 5/5 watchwolf with death touch thanks to Tolsmir and the packmaster, and then reinforce him when your opponent blocks with a 6/6, making yours a 9/9 and killing their blocker. It's also a tribal spell, so it'll count for ol' Wolf-skull.

The fable-- Every card in the deck except the three-run of changelings is a green spell, have fun popping out tokens. Likewise-a-la creatures being green, so Kaysa helps them all except the changelings.

The changelings are elves and wolves! They provide flying defense and offense, and can get deathtouch, plus +1/+1 from tolsmir, and they can be championed to the packmaster.

the Augurs are cheap one-drops that can be quick blockers in the early game, or championed during the later game, or sac'ed to give a giant growth. I felt they were a nice addition. Wyluli's make great lil' creature pumpers. Spidersilks protect against flyers, and give an extra point of toughness. Attack with your predator dragon good sir, I block with my deathtouch 2/3 reach wolf token. Lone wolves? mini-rhoxes. Tolsmir/kaysa/wyluli pumps... maybe reinforce one, and send that lone wolf's jaw right to your opponents face, and watch him clamp down.

Also, Call me crazy, I really wanted to run a four-of, of Sound the Call. It's kinda silly, but I've thought it was unique common and wanted to include it somewhere, and when I was slapping this together I figured I'd go for it. The first is a 2/2 wolf with no abilities for 3 mana. Kinda lame compared to Lone wolf, Watchwolf, Avian Changeling and so forth. the second is a 3/3 and makes the orignal a 3/3 for 3 mana. The 3rd... well you get the picture. Four 5/5 wolves are a potential.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

There's no disenchant/naturalize functions in this deck. also there's no card-draw/card-advantage, but you can't have everything. However, you could play around this deck to do so. Take out the 3 augurs, and throw in three Elvish Visionarys, that can be championed for potentially double the card draw advantage. Throw in some elvish replicas, hexhunters, or what have you.

This deck has room for Shared Triumphs, Luminescent Rains, and so forth. Hell if you feel you need to you could pop in llanowar elves.

Finally, I didn't include any Changeling Collossusii.. we all know they are f**king awesome. They cost 30 bucks a pop. I frantically open morningtide packs hoping for one, but can't justify spending 30 bucks online for one card. Hence I do not throw them in all my green-laiden creaturetype/tribal decks as I try to make decks I will some day own, if I have not already put them together myself. As stated, I did open one Mutavault, so it can go in this deck nicely, but once again I can't afford four of them.

Of course, as always, you can always just use my deck as a jumping off point. In any event, the wolves were a fun deck to research and put together on paper. I'm hoping to get it together soon, So I can experience it for myself.

Deck Idea: Sham-wow! (all creatures!)

SHAMANS!
Creatures
2 x ashling the pilgrim
4 x bosk banneret
2 x cragganwick cremator
1 x elvish hexhunter
2 x essence warden
1 x heartless hidetsugu
1 x initiate of blood
1 x kumano
4 x leaf crowned elder
3 x lightning crafter
1 x nullmage shepard
4 x rage forger
1 x sachi, daughter of seshiro
3 x sakura tribe elder
1 x tattermunge witch
3 x treefolk harbinger
1 x wickerborough elder
2 x woodfall primus
1 x loaming shaman

Lands
forests & mountains


I love leaf-crowned elder. I love its kinship ability, but my friend already has an all green treefolk deck and my other friend has a white-black-green treefolk deck, and since both are fairly good, I had to come up with another use for ol' leafycrown. Then it hit me, Shamans!

First off: the MVPs.
Leaf-crowned elder
Rage Forger
Bosk Banneret

Leaf-crowned elder was the build-around card. That's why there's 3 treefolk harbingers. They are the only non shamans in an all-creature shaman deck. The "all creatures" is something I've never done before, and it just fell into place to work with this deck.

Burn: Rage forger, Ashling, Cragganwick, Kumano, Lightning-crafter provide the burn! ashling, kumano and lightning crafter serve as creature removal too.

Naturalize: elvish hexhunter, nullmage shepard, wickerborough elder, and woodfall primus provide the anti-enchantment/artifact in this deck. You may think 3-5 is too many, so switch out at your leisure. I just face a lot of esper decks, and the hexhunter is a 1-drop, the shepard is repeated removal, the elder is fetch-able with the harbingers, and the woodfall primus is a huge beast who can be esaily played via leafy's kinship, and can also hose planeswalkers, and lands.

Treefolk Harbinger can fetch: Leaf-crowned elder, wickerborough elder, woodfall primus & bosk banneret.

Loaming shaman can put back cards from your graveyard to your deck, eventually getting kinshipped back out. the snakes serve as mana resources. The essence wardens are life-gain 1-drops that are shamans, and the tattermunge witch helps with attacking (rage forger is good friends with her).

enjoy.

Deck Idea: The Deadly Duplicator!

In case you can't tell that's a reference to Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.
















This is the build-around card.








spells
4 followed footsteps
2 recollect
1 regrow (or reclaim instead)
1 gifts ungiven
1 mirrorweave
3 copy enchantment
3 paradox haze

creatures
4 spawnwrithe
4 chronozoa
4 clone
2 essence warden
3 orchard warden
2 wickerborough elder
2 daring apprentice
3 farhaven elf

lands
islands/forests - no need to get fancy but by all means don't hold back on my account.

I've been tinkering with this idea for a while in my head, ever since I opened up a followed footsteps in a Ravnica pack (hoping for a loxodon heirarch). It was such a sweet build-around me card that I wanted to do a whole deck based on it.

I, of course, couldn't figure out what the deck would be, so I filed the footsteps away in a regulation blue/green deck I have. I started playing that deck one day, and popped out an essence warden, then slapped the followed footsteps on it. I instantly loved the combo that made. On another magic gaming night, my friend plopped down a Chronozoa during a game, which I had never seen. It's awesome. spawnwrite was all over dailymtg.com for a while in various decks, and so it was fresh in my mind.

The last bit came to me on Monday. I was playing a 1 v 1 game with my regulation blue/green deck against my friend's treefolk. He slapped down Orchard Warden. I cast persuasion, because i couldn't have him gaining mass life. Then I drew my followed footsteps, and cast it on the Orchard Warden. Essence warden is an exponential life gain with the footsteps on it, and also, if i had 5 essence wardens out due to the footsteps, whenever anyone else played a creature, i'd gain 5 life from them as well. With the Orchard Warden, It went 6 life, then 12, then 18 life gain in three upkeeps of followed footsteps. If one unenchanted essence warden is out, he helps with the gain regardless.

So here's how it works. The followed fotosteps can go on:
Chronozoa, making it a more insane token machine than before.
Spawnwrite, making it a more insane token machine than before.
Essence Warden for exponential life gain.
Orchard Warden for exponential life gain.
Wickerborough elder for anti-esper and/or anti- artiface/enchantment laiden decks.
Daring Aprentice for absolute control of the game.
Farhaven Elf for land acceleration.

Clone should clone any of the great creatures above, for more duplication.

Paradox Haze yourself = followed footsteps INSANITY.

Copy enchantment the paradox haze, or the footsteps, to increase the insanity.

Clone, copy enchantment and followed footsteps can target juicyness on your opponents side.

Mirrorweave a spawnwrite after you attack with everything. Mirrorweave an orchard warden before casting a wickerborough elder. Mirroweave a daring apprentice to shut down an opponents turn.

Recollect/regrow all your lost treasure when someone trys to stop your extreme combo fun.

Gifts ungiven: Ideally you pick two cards you really wan, and a regrow and a recollect, for maximum usage on it.

The deck plays from there, and it's pretty insane.

Deck Idea: You Draw Now!

Spells:
4 Ebony Owl Netsuke
2 Dark Suspicions
3 paradox haze
3 underworld dreams
4 forced fruition
2 howling mine
1 ivory tower
2 plagerize
4 arcane denial
4 dark ritual

Creatures:
2 dimir guildmage
4 tidehollow strix
2 drift of phantasms
1 psychic membrane
3 fog bank

The obvious Stratagem here is make your opponent draw himself to death. I have a lot of friends who have deck-you decks. I myself was never drawn to the idea of decking an opponent. I did get a couple of Underworld Dreams in trade and love them, and that lead me to want to craft a deck around them.

The MVP is forced fruition. You throw out your combo spells until you get this bad boy. I threw in some dark rituals to get the mana flowing faster, and there's ways for you to draw extra cards as well, so hopefully your mana base shouldn't screw you. Underworld dreams and forced fruition = every spell an opponent plays, 7 cards and 7 damage. Forced Fruition plus the ebony owl means someone will definately think twice about countering your spell, because during their upkeep, they get at least 4 damage. If you have out a paradox haze, or two, that means they get 8 damage or 12, etc et al. The plagerize is there so you can scoop some cards off a forced fruition, or arcane denial. The arcane denials act as counterspells and added card draw.


The creature base is pretty simple. Guildmages to help you or other draw cards. Tidehollow strixes for flying death touch weenie defense. Fog Banks for easy blocking while you wait for combos to roll. You can figure out the rest, and pepper in lands as you see fit.

Also, consider added one memory plunder or two, as added card draw per opponents mean extra cards in their graveyard.

Happy decking!