Feeling Fiend-Blooded

Posted on July 17, 2014

Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded is the worst Planeswalker ever printed. His first ability causes headaches, his second ability is brutal, but it takes too long to go off, and there’s no guarantee that his ultimate will be useful when you can finally use it. And, most importantly, he can’t protect himself.

I built a deck for him anyway.

It wasn’t easy. It was late, and I had had one-too-many cans of Pepsi the night I built it. Should it be Jund? I asked myself. Does it need Life from the Loam or Living End? What do I do?

Seeking answers, I asked a few notable individuals what they would do with a play set of Tibalt:

“I would use the Tibalts for style points while gunslinging.”

—Patrick Chapin

“I’d use them to try to discard lands to make my Knight of the Reliquary bigger. :P”

—Brian Kibler

“Yeah, I don’t think much of Tibalt. Probably for the best—a 2-mana Planeswalker isn’t good.”

—Travis Woo

“So it's funny because I got a play set of Tibs with the goal of making a fun deck . . . okay, let's be honest—I wanted to break that mo’ fo’. But now, well . . . now I sleep with my play set of Tibalts under my pillow, hoping that the card fairy will come by one of these days and take him the hell away from me, leaving me a Gold token.”

—MJ Scott

“If you want to play with Tibalt, it is more about what your opponent is up to, rather than anything your deck is doing. Yes, you could in theory build some sort of graveyard value deck, but that's not likely to be consistent or high-impact enough. If Tibalt is in your deck, it is because you assume one or both of the minus powers will be potent against your opponent.”

—Patrick Sullivan

“An entire play set of Tibalt? One was pushing it, but this? Four? Now that's just a bit on the extreme side. First, I would put them in my right-side cargo pocket on my cargo shorts to let ’em fester a bit in my presence. Then I would start to take them on more trips and adventures. We'd see the state fair, maybe go to a movie together, maybe have a nice dinner at a fancy place. Just me and Tibalt, getting to know each other. We'd start to grow closer. I'd take those Tibalts with me everywhere: to work, to tournaments, as I sleep, when I shower. You get the picture.

Then, as any good friends do, I'd start to mimic his mannerisms. First, I'd grow hair, but just on the very top of my head, and it would grow down over the front to cover my eyes. I'd start listening to emo music, and we'd commiserate together about how much our life sucks. Finally, once things had progressed far enough, I would grind the copies of Tibalt into a fine pulp, mix it into a nice shake, and consume the essence of Tibalt. At that point, I would transform into a half-man/half-demon. I'd walk around Magic conventions and trade cards at random for as long as it took for me to acquire another play set of Tibalt.

Then I'd take that play set, put it into some sort of Life from the Loam strategy, and hope it panned out. If not, I'd give up on the deck and go back to playing the strategies I normally do.”

—Brian Braun-Duin

“I would give them to Adam Prosak on consignment. He once traded a Tibalt for a cookie, and I can’t imagine ever getting more value than that out of a Tibalt.”

—Craig Wescoe

Was this a good trade? #mtgmedina #MTGFinance #SCGINDY pic.twitter.com/7E7KJiXEHH
— Adam Prosak (@Adam_Prosak) March 10, 2013

I’ll be honest: I went to a local bakery and tried to trade my foil Tibalt for a dozen cookies after reading Craig’s response. I was thrown out, of course, but the baker’s fury got me thinking about this Tibalt deck a little more:

It should be red, I thought. Just red. Mono-red, as the kids say.

I quickly threw together a package of cards that wouldn’t mind being discarded, and others that actually prefer being discarded. I found cards like Hellspark Elemental, Reckless Wurm, and Fiery Temper. And then I saw Demigod of Revenge and knew that maybe, just maybe, I could make Tibalt a happy camper. Better yet, cards like Faithless Looting, Gathan Raiders, and Lightning Axe let me discard my Wurms and Demigods while Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Devil's Play gave me an alternative win condition.

Tibalt Madness ? Modern | Jimi Brady

Planeswalkers (3)
3 Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded

Is this the best way to build Tibalt? Almost certainly not, but it seems like the kind of deck that Tibalt would enjoy. For being the worst Planeswalker, people tend to want to kill him pretty quickly whenever he shows his fashionable self. That second ability really is scary, especially for blue mages.

Oh, and swinging with three Demigods of Revenge in a single turn is pretty satisfying. I highly recommend it.

Stay Fiend-Blooded,

Jimi Brady

www.twitter.com/jimibrady

http://www.twitch.tv/obtaurian