Dark Design

Saturday 22 January 2011

Update - Farme Fatale

It’s going to be a big old week at Adventures in the Meta... We’ve got our the Farme Fatale EDH list to go through, our Mirrodin Besieged speculation to update, more lords to discover and of course we’ve got a new deck to publish.... 

I also want to say a huge thanks to everyone who has contributed a deck idea or a combo and I am pleased to say we now have a wee back log. So this week coming we’ll be putting up as many of them as we can. So if you sent in a deck list then it’ll go up this week.

I think updating the Besieged spoiler list is going to be a mountain and it may be better now to wait for them to spoil the whole set. Which I am confident they will do before the pre-release. That way we can have a look at it as a whole and I’ll give you Gordon Vader’s tips for first picks and the best of the bombs. Mean while I think we’re going to have a look at EDH and more specifically Farme Fatale...

If you may remember I was lamenting my chances against the big money decks...So I bet your wondering how a bunch of cows and farm related cards did in the grand scheme of things....

Well since you asked it came second... Not bad for herd of cattle.. I’ll post the list later but here’s the game highlights. 

My opponents were...

Wort Raid Mother
Kemba the Regent

Sygg River Guide 
Sedris the Traitor King

and I had Uril the Miststalker


Wort’s deck was (as you can probably guess) was all about conspiring and there was plenty of that going on....
Sygg was codename for polymorph and whilst there wasn’t much of that going on there definitely lots of target practice... and he managed to steal both Kemba and Wort and punish their pilots with their own generals..

Kemba had plenty of swords to choose from, but a turn five Quietus Spike pretty much ensured she was never going to stick around long enough to use it. ( Some EDH lists band the spike)

Sedris played it safe for a few turns, but did manage to set up a reality strobe and much fun was had with its bouncing shenanigans.

I have to confess I had a dream start.  Turn one divining top into turn two mana vault into turn three  khalni heart and then winter's night and oblivion stone...  I had all the mana in  the world...   and soon I had a fire-breathing life-linking shiv embraced pump-able 15/15 cow. Now with Kemba out for the count I could have been mean and taken her pilot out of the match in two turns, but it pays to have allies in this game and under the guise of keeping Wort free from her conspiring abilities I swung at her removing her conspirators and went over 70 life in two turns...

With a cow that big on the battlefield it’s safe to say I made a few enemies and Wort in particular was keen to bring down the beast... and tried some pretty massive burn spells to achieve just that...

Meanwhile Sedris got back in the game and with a steel hell-kite he managed to remove Kemba’s Quietus Spike along with half her armoury... It was then very clear that I had the biggest threat on the board and no amount of sticking my neck in the sand was going to keep that fact safe... So I did what all sensible cows do in these situations... I blew up the world... Now it was a pretty god time to do it... It took out 3 of the other generals, the remainder of Kemba’s swords, Wort’s Mana Reflection, a steel hell-kite and a minion reflector. The oblivion stone had been with me long enough for me to save m general and my mana vault and if I’m honest that seemed like good value to me, particularly as Wort kept asking me how big my cow was and then counting his lands and then his fingers...

And there the story would have ended had it not been for a bit of pre game trading... During Which Kit (Kemba’s pilot) had asked me if I had any Open the Vaults. I replied that I did not, but that I did have the very excellent Roar of Reclamation.   So ‘hey presto’ on Kemba’s next turn they all came back... The minion reflector and the hell-kite and all the swords... And of course the Oblivion stone...

But bigger things were brewing and a cheap FNM foil and pure old fashioned greed were to take Wort out of the race altogether...

I had found myself another enchantment and more cows and had managed to table a Zodiac Ox and a Taurean Mauler. The Mauler got to 5/5 as a conspired bolt sent it to the slaughterhouse, but Iril was getting out of control...

The enchantment I had found was Scourge of the Nobilis and that my friend is a scary card to have on a big cow.  With llife-link and  pump able 9/9, Uril was looking like no cow you’ve ever seen.  

Skipping to the end... Wort had a last nasty trick and played It That Betrays followed by a destructive force... A quick wink from Sedris and we were encouraged to hand over our ‘non basic’ lands... and that would pretty much be 5 each... So with about 30 land’s (28 non basic) Wort was looking pretty sweet for the win... Sedris on the other hand had other plans and a Minion reflector and a FNM foil Anathemancer taught Wort all about the evils of greed and sent him to the abyss with 56 points of damage...

Cutting the rest of the game short basically Sedris and I were left to contend the game and it was anyone’s game until he cracked out a Storm-tide Leviathan. Even with my top in place I couldn’t find an answer (I’d used the oblivion stone twice by this point and I’d had to use my swords to ploughshares on the Steel Hell-kite. )

I’ll put the Farme Fatale list up next week, but I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who sent in suggestions...

  



Thursday 20 January 2011

Some words with the Wonderful Wizard from Oz


Today we’re going to take a look at a deck that I happened to meet in combat. I’ve seen lists like this before, but there was a trick here I had not seen and that plus some great piloting by Aussie player Gazz gave me a real run for my money. Anyway after a post game chat I asked Gazz to send in the list and he did.  Now I know we are a budget blog and there are a few pricier cards in Gazz’s list, but if you haven’t got the cash then I’m going to offer up some alternatives to a few of these cards (I’m sure Gazz wouldn’t mind that…but this is his list as he sent it first...)



So here's the list: 

// Lands
    2 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
    2 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
    4 [WWK] Stirring Wildwood
    3 [SOM] Seachrome Coast
    1 [M10] Glacial Fortress
    4 [SOM] Razorverge Thicket
    2 [SOM] Plains (3)
    3 [SOM] Island (4)
    3 [UG] Forest

// Creatures
    4 [M11] Squadron Hawk
    4 [M11] Fauna Shaman
    1 [SOM] Memnite
    4 [ROE] Vengevine
    4 [7E] Birds of Paradise
    3 [ROE] Nest Invader
    4 [ZEN] Lotus Cobra
    1 [M11] Frost Titan
    3 [ROE] Sea Gate Oracle
    1 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
    1 [FD] Trinket Mage

// Spells
    2 [SOM] Culling Dais
    3 [ZEN] Eldrazi Monument
    1 [V10] Sword of Body and Mind

As you said, i need to fit at least one acidic slime in there, and I've got to work out the sideboard at some point too.

But there are some cool tricks too, the culling dais/vengevine combo is great.  They bolt vengevine? sac it, draw into two creatures, play them, get vengevine back.  (this is a great play and it was the combo that prompted me to ask hm to send it in, it also saves vengevine from its natural nemesis Journey to Nowhere)

The fauna shaman/vengevine thing is obvious too, say you pitch vengevine and grab a squadron hawk, rather than paying 4 for vengevine, you're paying 4 for vengevine and two flying 1/1s.
Pitching for trinket mage to get memnite works in a similar way.  

The sword of body and mind can and will win you games that you can't otherwise win, (such as when you had emperion out :P) but shaman obviously can't grab it, so a stoneforge mystic makes it easier to grab.  

The mana base is a bit sketchy because i built it out of the lands i had available to me, and decided to use the same lands on MWS

So if anybody has any suggestions I'd be very interested, I want to see this deck do well, even if it's not me playing it :D

Ok so the original list does run a few pricier cards and whilst you can’t exactly replace some of them you can get pretty close for less.   
So if budget is a problem then you can get away with 2 vengevines rather than 4, if you can’t afford any then Cudgel Troll is a pretty good poor man’s version. Ok he doesn’t have haste, but he does regenerate and therefore once you’ve got him, he’ll ‘keep coming back’ like the vines..(I know it’s not a perfect replacement, but it also doesn’t cost £15… You can use Overgrown Battlements for lotus cobras once you’ve tutored a few of them into play you’ll be ramping all over your enemy. Add another trinket mage and an elixir of immortality and then you can get al your discarded critters back…