Whoever thought of selling both beer and Dippin’ Dots in the same venue should be knighted. Right now, baking in the sun, on the first nice day in what seems like ages, I have a $6.50 plastic cup of Bud Light in one hand and a souvenir baseball helmet full of Dippin’ Dots in the other. These two were clearly meant to be together, forever and for always, in my belly.

I’m gonna be sunburned tomorrow, but that’s okay. I am at peace with it.

I’m at a triple-A baseball game. Rochester Red Wings at the Syracuse Skychiefs. There are two teams of people out there playing a game I vaguely know the rules to. I guess my use of “vaguely” is pointless modesty; I know enough about baseball to know that these men are playing it very poorly. Syracuse’s first hit was a textbook pop fly to right field out, only it wound up being a triple when two Rochester outfielders went for it.

Our seats are good enough for me to see it fall right out of the outfielder’s glove.

I’ve often thought the word “error” doesn’t do some of the boneheaded shit that earns the title enough justice. They should call them daggers instead. “Tonight, on ESPN’s Not Top Ten: Alex Avila’s Ninth-Inning Dagger Seals Detroit’s Hundredth Straight Loss. Also, More Skip Bayless.”

I’m sitting with two guys I went to high school with. They both used to play Magic, but they grew out of it. Much to my chagrin, I have not. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed, though.

I wonder if I could draw any parallels between this triple-A game and FNM. I doubt it. They don’t sell Dippin’ Dots and beer at FNM—at least not on this continent.

Good God, there really is no one here. What could everyone in Syracuse possibly be doing? Our ground seats, right behind the Syracuse dugout, were $10. And I know for a fact that there’s nothing else to do in this city. So, where the hell is everyone?? There are, like, forty people here. What gives?

It’s Armed Forces Day, which means while Paul and Tim were in the bathroom, I bought three miniature American flags; they were $2 apiece, but also three for $5! SO MUCH EV.

That’s what EV means, right? Whatever. The EV on these flags is literally limitless. And the money goes to charity. According to the guy selling them, the money’s for dogs for veterans, which is actually a really brilliant idea—dogs fucking own, and every veteran deserves a dog.

Isn’t the movie Limitless just a Simpsons episode? Right now, a lots of movies are based on Twilight Zone episodes. In forty years, movies will be based on Simpsons episodes. So, I guess Limitless is just ahead of the curve, even if it is a piece of shit.

I played this deck last Friday. It was okay.

"Justin Schibanoff’s R/W Humans"

• Creatures (27)
• 2 Doomed Traveler
• 2 Fiend Hunter
• 3 Lightning Mauler
• 3 Mirran Crusader
• 3 Silverblade Paladin
• 3 Stormblood Berserker
• 4 Champion of the Parish
• 4 Hero of Bladehold
• 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

• Spells (9)
• 2 Gather the Townsfolk
• 4 Honor of the Pure
• 3 Sword of War and Peace

• Lands (24)
• 13 Plains
• 2 Mountain
• 1 Slayers' Stronghold
• 4 Cavern of Souls
• 4 Clifftop Retreat

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Ratchet Bomb
• 2 Zealous Conscripts
• 3 Oblivion Ring
• 3 Celestial Purge
• 2 Revoke Existence
• 3 Timely Reinforcements

Buy This Deck

I can keep going. In one of the games I lost, my board was Lightning Mauler, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Stormblood Berserker, Honor of the Pure, and lands. My hand? Three Honor of the Pure. I’d like to think that’s not typical.

The upsides: Cavern of Souls is the real deal in this deck. The difference between four and eight duals is huge, and since the red is only a splash, you’ll always be able to cast all your non-Human spells. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is pretty bananas. Sword of War and Peace is Sword of War and Peace. Champion of the Parish with Gather the Townsfolk still breaks plenty of backs in this format; turns out Wild Nacatls are still pretty damn good.

Round 1 – Holden Omans

Holden, or, as I call him, “HOLDIN’ ALL DEEEEEZ,” is playing Wolf Run Ramp.

Game 1: I mulligan to four.

Game 2: I have turn-two Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, turn-three Silverblade Paladin, bond my two guys, and then I crack with them a bunch. He just keeps one of the worst hands imaginable. On turn four, he plays a Solemn Simulacrum, and I have the Oblivion Ring for it.

Game 3: I mulligan to five. I even have a Fiend Hunter for his turn-five Primeval Titan, but it never ends up mattering. Such is life.

0–1

Round 2 – Gino Vittore

My curve Game 1 is pretty gross.

Turn one: Champion of the Parish

Turn two: Gather the Townsfolk

Turn three: Lightning Mauler (bond to nothing)

Turn four: Hero of Bladehold (bond), attack with the team

After playing against Gino’s W/B tokens deck more times than I can count, I can more or less pick up on when he doesn’t have removal, which is often; I think he may have taken out Go for the Throat altogether in favor of Oblivion Rings, but either way, he didn’t see a Go for the Throat this game.

Playing Lightning Mauler on turn three and bonding it with nothing sucks for the most part, but where that play can shine is against:

• Players who don’t know what’s coming.
• Players who don’t realize anything’s coming at all.
• Players with no removal.

For Game 2, I sideboarded thusly:

−3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

−3 Mirran Crusader

−1 Stormblood Berserker

+3 Oblivion Ring

+2 Ratchet Bomb

+2 Revoke Existence

You could definitely make the case for Thalia, Guardian of Thraben being awesome by itself against a W/B tokens deck, but my logic was that with the stuff I wanted to bring in, the games would go a little longer anyway, and since I was better equipped to fight a long game, I wouldn’t need the tempo swing that Thalia, Guardian of Thraben offers.

Mirran Crusader came out because it was underwhelming and because I wanted to keep my curve as low as possible. There are an awful lotta 3s in this deck, especially when you factor in virtual 3s such as Lightning Mauler and sometimes even Stormblood Berserker.

My opener for Game 2 is super reactive: two Oblivion Ring, Fiend Hunter (probably the best card in the deck in this matchup), and I end up drawing the third Oblivion Ring (never had to cast it) and a Ratchet Bomb.

Geno has a quick start with Gather the Townsfolk, Lingering Souls, and a couple of anthems, but he’s pinched on black mana. His lands are three Plains and two Vault of the Archangel, and after my Ratchet Bomb, all he can do is watch as a Sword of War and Peace off the top turns what should have been a grindy game into a bloodbath.

1–1

Round 3 – Justin Cohen

Game 1 is just very strange. I get off to a quick start with Champion of the Parish. Justin plays one of his own off a Plains, but he declines the trade when I attack, so I just play my Lightning Mauler and pass.

Then, Justin goes Clifftop Retreat, Accorder Paladin. And all of a sudden, I have no idea what’s happening. Looks like we’re in a mirror match!

I work part-time at Cloud City, and yesterday, I had a newer player (who was in his 40s) come in and ask me if a bunch of cards were good. Is Moonsilver Spear good? Is Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker good? First, I told him that Moonsilver Spear wasn’t actually very good.

“But you get to put a 4/4 into play! And your creature gets first strike!”

I realized I had to back up.

What I ended up telling him is that the cards played at any given time are evaluated chiefly in context. If a card fits favorably into the context of a metagame, it’ll be played. While evaluating cards in a vacuum is very tempting and easy to do, you don’t play your cards in a vacuum, you play them with and against other cards. There are plenty of cards with powerful effects that simply don’t see any play because they’re too slow, have too high of a drawback, or in the case of Stormblood Berserker, just don’t fit with what you’re trying to do.

Justin plays another Accorder Paladin, knocks me down to 13, and passes.

I cast one Honor of the Pure (I only have three lands) and swing with all three of my men. Justin trades his untapped Accorder Paladin for my Lightning Mauler and falls to 8.

Justin’s turn. He casts Lightning Mauler, bonds it with his Champion of the Parish, and attacks with his team: an Accorder Paladin, a 4/4 Champion of the Parish, and a Lightning Mauler.

I have him dead next turn, so I declare no blocks, and I allow myself to fall to 2.

His next play?

Kessig Malcontents

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Game 2, I mull to six on the play and keep a Cavern of Souls, Champion of the Parish, no-more-lands hand like an idiot, but I’m bailed out by peeling a lot of lands. I get the nutty turn-one Champion of the Parish, turn-two Lightning Mauler, turn-three Silverblade Paladin curve, and he just can’t beat that.

2–1

I didn’t fall below 18 life in the last two games. I think being able to side out Stormblood Berserker was a non-zero factor in that; I feel that Game 1 was very winnable for me as long as that Stormblood Berserker was any other spell. I don’t necessarily think Justin lost our third game to me, but rather, to his own Stormblood Berserkers. The card just does not fit in this deck.

Round 4 – Matt Brown

We talked about the match afterward. The transcript of that conversation is as follows:

Me: “All right. Game 1 . . . I think you nut-drew me. What was your hand like Game 1?”

Matt: “Uh . . . Gravecrawler, Diregraf Ghoul, two Geralf's Messengers–“

The land in question is Slayers' Stronghold. What tipped me off to Matt’s hand being nothing but Tragic Slips was when he just said “go” on turn three with three black mana untapped and four cards in his hand, so instead of playing a Silverblade Paladin, I knew I could just play second copies of both Doomed Traveler and Gather the Townsfolk and race his board, which was, at that point, just a pair of Diregraf Ghouls. As expected, Matt used two Tragic Slips on two Human tokens the following turn, and I was able to win the game shortly after.

Matt: “Yeah, that certainly didn’t help matters.”

Me: “Yeah, like, I didn’t have to play any cards in my hand after that; I just had to, like, sink mana into that land and just–“

Matt: “Have a dude.”

Me: “Yeah. And then Game 3, you uhh . . . I had a Timely, then a Fiend Hunter and an O-Ring for your two Geralf's Messengers, but then you peeled Liliana off the top, and then you peeled Olivia right after that, and you rolled me. And I peeled some 4-mana-costing things that didn’t do anything. All right!”

2–2

I didn’t see a single Celestial Purge that match, which kinda bummed me out.

Round 5 – Mark Carfagno

I don’t really remember this match other than him sitting down and saying, “I think I ruined a good deck,” him playing a second-turn Tempered Steel off Razorverge Thicket, Razorverge Thicket, Birds of Paradise,, and me getting two nut-draws back-to-back. The match still took forty minutes even though he was dead by turn six both games, but that’s okay.

See you next week!

Jon Corpora

Pronounced Ca-pora

@feb31st