Actually, I am! A rock made of Magic cards!

At the level I (try to) play, Magic lends itself to some pretty serious obsessive-compulsive behavior. Last Friday, I played in FNM and then the midnight prerelease for Dark Ascension. I ended up splitting the finals of the prerelease; I didn’t feel great about my deck, but I guess I severely undervalued Curse of Death's Hold and two Moan of the Unhallowed.

The all-nighter was something I hadn’t pulled in a good long time. I missed it. The later it became, the easier the matches were. I’d forgotten how easily lesser players crack when they’re burning the midnight oil; walking players into mistakes came much easier at 3:00 A.M. than it did at 7:30 P.M.

I might not have much to show for my pet rock, but I’m comfortable with giving up watching some television shows to play Magic. Just don’t expect me to be caught up on 30 Rock by the time this article goes up.

I played the B/R Metalcraft deck that took second at SCG’s open in DC.

"Michael Rooks’s B/R Metalcraft"

• Creatures (8)
• 4 Chandra's Phoenix
• 4 Etched Champion

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Chandra, the Firebrand

• Spells (27)
• 2 Geistflame
• 3 Brimstone Volley
• 3 Go for the Throat
• 4 Galvanic Blast
• 1 Devil's Play
• 3 Slagstorm
• 1 Chimeric Mass
• 1 Ratchet Bomb
• 4 Mortarpod
• 4 Shrine of Burning Rage
• 1 Mox Opal

• Lands (24)
• 8 Mountain
• 1 Stensia Bloodhall
• 3 Ghost Quarter
• 4 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 4 Dragonskull Summit
• 4 Inkmoth Nexus

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Ratchet Bomb
• 4 Vulshok Refugee
• 2 Manabarbs
• 2 Surgical Extraction
• 4 Traitorous Blood
• 2 Whipflare

Buy This Deck

It was okay. I’m sure I’d never think to play anything that looked like this in an actual tournament where I was to play a deck I wanted to play—there are no creatures, Mortarpod is often just a dead card, and you jump through a lot of hoops just for a Gray Ogre with protection from colors, but I had a fun time playing the deck and would certainly recommend it.

Manabarbs is a fucking great card. I’m glad I finally got to play it. They should really make more cards like that.

Round One – Bret Weed

Bret’s playing his super-controllish U/B deck again, so my hopes aren’t very high; the deck I’m playing is a little too midrange to beat a Jace, Memory Adept—especially one backed up by a ton of countermagic. Getting paired against Bret Round 1 was pretty frustrating—I had been hoping he’d just get smashed by a dedicated aggro deck so I wouldn’t have to worry about playing against him, but then I looked around the room . . . at all the other decks playing . . . not a Delver of Secrets in sight. Just a bunch of Curse of Death's Hold decks. So, Bret’s deck’s actually pretty-well positioned, at least at Cloud City.

Game 1 goes just as expected when Bret plays a turn-seven Jace, Memory Adept backed up by Mana Leak. I start trying to figure out my outs—the fact that he gets to Archivist every turn isn’t great, but he’s not putting any real pressure on me . . . until he drops Karn Liberated and starts taking away the cards in my hand, of which there aren’t very many. The game’s over soon.

Things look pretty promising for Game 2 when I start with two Shrine of Burning Rage, especially when he doesn’t have the Mana Leak for the second one, but he’s eventually got the Ratchet Bomb, and I have to blow the pair of Shrine of Burning Rage at 6 and 7, respectively, putting him to 7 life. I desperately hope against hope that he’ll tap out for something so the Devil's Play in my hand can finish him off, but then he casts Liliana of the Veil, forcing me to fire off the Devil's Play sooner than expected, playing right into his Dissipate.

I stay in it because he’s not really doing anything else other than to ratchet up Liliana of the Veil every turn, and when he ratchets it up once more, I fire off my only card in hand—a Surgical Extraction—in response. Bret shows me:

The hand hits me like blunt-force trauma to the head. I stare at the cards for a while, then at Bret’s Liliana of the Veil with 5 counters on it, and I just scoop.

Round Two – Mark Carfagno Jr

He pulls his deck out of a Deathfed deck box. He’s a nice kid, and we start chatting a bit. I ask him if he’s playing in the prerelease after this, he says yes, he’s excited about some of the new cards, and so on. Small talk!

My Game 1 plays are Shrine of Burning Rage, Chandra's Phoenix, Chandra's Phoenix. He doesn’t interact with any of those cards, and they end up being enough to kill him by themselves. To his credit, he was really nice to talk to the whole time, and the smile never left his face. I credit this to not having played enough games of Magic and generally being a good person. You’ll become jaded, too, kiddo.

Between the end of FNM and the midnight prerelease, I did a Cube Draft with Adam Barnello, Bret from Round 1, and a different, newer player, who, between excited questions about certain cards in the Cube, how to draft, his Elf deck from ’95 (all scrubs have an Elf deck) and ideas for Werewolf decks, detailed his Magic dreams . . . to no one in particular. Bret offhandedly imparted this piece of advice to him:

“Leave your dreams at the door.”

Brilliant.

Game 2, Mark has a Bonehoard the turn after I Surgical Extraction him for Splinterfright, passing up on the Boneyard Wurm that had been milled by an Armored Skaab. I really should have figured there was only one Splinterfright in the deck, but honestly, I wasn’t really thinking about it. It doesn’t end up mattering; sure, he plays Bonehoard, but he plays it right into my three Traitorous Bloods. This match was not the last one in which Traitorous Blood with Mortarpod completely blew out my opponent.

Round Three – Adam Blanden

It’s probably fair to say that you are the least engaging and likable version of yourself when you are in high school. You are self-obsessed, but not self-aware. You have stupid thoughts, but all the entitlement in the world. You are, to be succinct, the absolute worst, and you should be fired.

Adam and I went to the same high school. We were not friends. I’m pretty sure I would be correct in assuming that’s my fault. Adam was very devoutly Baptist, and I never missed a chance to make fun of him and his like-minded friends for it because I was a narrow-minded sack of shit. Somehow, I was still surprised during our senior year, or, as I remember it, The Year We All Got Facebook, when he didn’t accept my friend request. I vaguely recall my fake righteous indignation at this among my friends (I was the only one of my friends who wasn’t in AP classes in high school; Adam was in all the AP classes with them, so they all knew him), used purely for comic effect. But in the back of my mind, it always bugged me a little bit.

Then, I didn’t think about Adam for a long time.

I went to our LGS before PT: Philly to pick up a Commander deck from a friend. I wasn’t qualified for the PT—I just wanted a chance to meet then-editor Trick Jarrett face-to-face, as well as Drew Sitte, whom I’d just done some card alterations for. I remember being really interested in what kind of sick mind actually would want his Magic cards defaced. But I digress.

Sitting there, on a Thursday night, playing Legacy, of all things . . . was Adam Blanden! And he was excited to see you! He grabbed you, shook your hand, and told you he got married! And he was excited to see you! It was like high school never happened! And he was playing Pox, you guys!

That was a weird night.

Since then, Adam and I have grown very close. We playtest at each other’s apartments, we’ve met each other’s significant others, and it’s been nice, for me at least, to have a friend who knew me when I was young, even if I was a raging dipshit.

Adam has completely changed since high school. Admittedly, Adam was very intelligent in high school, but that made him a bit of a know-it-all. Talking to Adam now, though—he’s humble and he’s open to different perspectives—it’s a trip every time I see him, and it’s definitely something to aspire to, because I’ve changed very little since high school, if at all. My complexion’s better. That’s the only change I can really think of.

He’s playing a stock Solar Flare list, eschewing Honey Badger’s crazy mana base and high-variance-yet-explosive Mind Twists in favor of Mana Leaks. I can’t say I blame him.

Our Game 1 starts off mind-numbingly slowly. The first action is an Etched Champion from me, quickly followed up by a Dismember from Adam that puts him to 16. A hit from a random Chandra's Phoenix puts him to 14, but it’s quickly Oblivion Ringed, as is my follow-up, Mortarpod.

The game continues to the point at which I have a metric ton of lands to go with the firepower in my hand, while Adam struggles to make land-drops. I draw a second Mortarpod and play it on an empty board. Adam draws a card and passes. I draw . . .

A second Brimstone Volley.

This is my hand:

I now have a new win condition . . . as soon as he taps out.

Right on schedule, Adam untaps, draws, and taps all but one land for Wurmcoil Engine.

He’s at 14 life.

“Sac my Germ, deal 1 to you?”

“Sure.”

“Volley you, Volley you?”

“Uhh . . . sure.”

I show him the pair of Galvanic Blasts in my hand. “Kill you on my turn?”

Adam looks me in the eyes, smiling faintly, like someone who’s just experienced a compound fracture but hasn’t looked down at the bone protruding from his flesh yet. “Uhh . . . okay.”

We start to shuffle up for Game 2. Adam looks dazed, but he’s still got that smile on his face. He finally looks me in the eye.

“You’re a jerk!”

We both laugh. Of course I’m a jerk!

All I wrote down in my notes for Game 2 was:

I’m pretty sure I won that one.

Round Four – Ryan Kilpatrick

Our first game was uninteresting; he mulled to six and missed his third land-drop for many, many turns.

There are very few cards that completely and irrevocably change the complexion of any game of Magic. They are usually quite unfair and often become banned. Every single card’s basic, intrinsic value is to change to the rules of the game in order to benefit its controller. Some cards are more effective at this than others; I don’t harbor the illusion that Squire creates a much bigger swing for its controller than does Stoneforge Mystic.

As well as creating the guise of aiding their controllers, cards are engineered by R&D to be balanced; if the card makes things appear too bleak for the opponent, the card might be overpowered. It could even be banned. Cards that don’t fulfill the former requirement are fine. There need to be bad cards, too.

There are certain cards that change the concept of a game of Magic entirely. They are a small subset. And an even smaller subset of this subset makes games of Magic more exciting—even if they do bring the game to a sudden, unexpected finish, it’s usually an agreeably intense one. This is all a roundabout way of saying I beat Ryan with Manabarbs in Game 2.

I don’t what I’m playing tomorrow. Have a nice weekend.

Jon Corpora

Pronounced Ca-pora

@feb31st