Two decks this week and some commentary! Fun! Dig in, eh?

As promised, the decklist featuring an under-used blue enchantment! That enchantment? Unstable Mutation, of course!

U/B Rogues

11 Swamp
5 Island
2 River of Tears
2 Underground River
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

4 Oona’s Prowler
4 Stinkdrinker Bandit
4 Prickly Boggart
4 Inkfathom Infiltrator
4 Looter il-Kor
4 Frogtosser Banneret

4 Psionic Blast
4 Morsel Theft
4 Unstable Mutation
3 Thieves’ Fortune

Sideboard:
4 Extirpate
3 Sudden Death
3 Earwig Squad
3 Terror
2 Rain of Tears

Obviously, there are some differences to be looked at between this and mono-black Rogues.

First, there’s the question of “why not just play mono-black Rogues? They have Oona’s Blackguards and discard up the yin-yang!” That’s true, but there’s only one way that MBR will win, and that’s through the red zone. Sure, you’ll rip your opponent’s hand apart if your Blackguards live, but you really have no extension. You have to go all in if you’re playing MBR, and you pray they don’t have Firespout or Damnation or what have you. With U/B Rogues you have extension in the form of Psionic Blast and Morsel Theft.

Second, there’s the card advantage issue. While most of the U/B answers are one-for-ones, there’s a significantly higher incidence of card draw in the U/B build. If you get prowl on, you get Lightning Helix-plus-card-draw for one black mana (if you have a Banneret out, too), albeit at sorcery speed. Thieves’ Fortune basically says “Impulse on my turn for one blue”. Looter il-Kor lets you see and filter through a ton of cards. If you’re attacking, which you should be anyway in an aggro deck, you get raw card advantage over most decks just for playing the game.

Third, and probably most importantly, you get a better selection of evasive creatures. Unblockable and shadow are vastly superior to flying. And the inability to block is moot, because most of the decks that you’d want to be blocking dudes against are the ones you’ll probably be losing anyway (i.e., anything with Chameleon Colossus, etc.) And with the sheer number of black creatures, it’s unlikely that their Terrors and Slaughter Pacts will be doing much against you.

There are also a couple of sticking points I feel I should mention. First, there is no Bitterblossom in this list. Why? Because the 2cc slot is already full up. Prowlers, Infiltrators, Morsel Theft, Looter il-Kor, Frogtosser Banneret and Stinkdrinker Bandit all want to come out on two mana. The advantages gained by Bitterblossom in this instance are minimal. Second, Unstable Mutation? Really? Really! Think about it this way. (Ignore the two-for-one possibility for a second.) A single Unstable Mutation on an Inkfathom Infiltrator hits for five, four, three, two, and one damage. That’s 15 damage for three mana. If it lives. With two Mutations you hit for eight, six, four, and two. That’s 18 damage. Usually you don’t even have to connect that many times, either, because by the point you can cast your direct damage, they’re already in burn range.

The best part about this deck is its flexibility. It can be an all-out assault, firing on all cylinders, or it can be a more marginal, almost tempo-based deck, massaging out small advantages, slow-rolling through mass removal and evading their weenies while neutralizing threats with Psionic Blast. And being in two of the best colors in Standard means that you have the ability to sideboard for almost any situation. You can reliably side for R/G Aggro, Elves, and, to an extent, Faeries. While my build is built to exploit the prowl mechanic, you can take out the Frogtossers and some of the support spells to make it faster or slower.

Having said that, there are some issues that I’m trying to work out of the deck right now. The manabase needs help. A lot of it is due to the fact that I simply don’t have the lands available to me. Otherwise there’d be more in the way of duals. The other problem with the mana is that the deck plays significantly differently if prowl is NOT an option. With prowl, the curve tops out and three for Psi Blast. There are many games I’ve won with just three or four land. Likewise, there are many I’ve lost with just as many land. I’m thinking about bumping the land up to 22 and cutting and Oona’s Prowler. Which leads me to my second point.

Oona’s Prowler, I’m pretty sure, does not fit into this deck as well as I had hoped. At least as often as I’m hitting for three damage with it, I’m hitting for one or less, or being chumped by Bitterblossom tokens. I have yet to decide what to put in its slot, though. I’ve considered Dauthi Slayer, but without the Rogue creature type, the card may be a less perfect solution to a difficult question.

The sideboard, I’m sure, needs help. I’m not sure why I put Rain of Tears in there aside from hitting manlands and storage lands. But with the rise of Quick ‘n’ Toast, maybe an LD package is what we need? I don’t know. In that case I’d like Fulminator Mages, but they are currently inaccessible in my area and I’m not made of money to buy some with.

For my second list I’d like to offer up my R/G Aggro deck that I may be playing at Regionals.

R/G Aggro

2 Treetop Village
4 Karplusan Forest
8 Mountain
7 Forest

2 Cloudthresher
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Troll Ascetic
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Birds of Paradise

3 Stonewood Invocation
3 Call of the Herd
4 Flame Javelin
4 Incinerate
3 Sulfurous Blast

Sideboard
1 Cloudthresher
1 Chameleon Colossus
2 Firespout
2 Loxodon Warhammer
4 Riftsweeper
3 Kitchen Finks
1 Shivan Dragon
1 Stonewood Invocation

The list is spawned out of my playtest partner’s R/G “I friggin hate faeries” list. While I’m trying to achieve a similar win record against Faeries, I’m trying to be able to win against other stuff, too. Magus hits so many decks right now. Except RDW, of course. Troll Ascetic is one of the best creatures in green, and is criminally underplayed, in my opinion. Call of the Herd is a counter magnet.

The sideboard is heavily influenced by the Zvi Mowshowitz (et al.) deck from PT: Hollywood. The only thing that I have an issue with right now is the singleton Shivan Dragon. Without the Primal Command from Zvi’s build, I wonder how effective it will be just hoping to naturally draw into it. I may add some. But it also doesn’t have the extensive manabase, opting instead for a lower curve, topped out with two Cloudthreshers.

In testing, though, it seems to annihilate Faeries (at least, when piloted by my friends) and gives most midrange strategies a run for their money. But I haven’t tested it against Lark Combo, so I don’t know what will happen there. Teferi’s Moat set to green is probably game over right now. I’m also unsure of the Elves matchup. It seems pretty 50-50 right now, or maybe 40-60 in Elves favor. So, in all honesty, I’m still not sold on the deck.

My other option for Regionals is the Goblins deck that Gabriel Nassif played at PT: Hollywood. It’s basically R/B Tokens, but with some other bits of flair. I have a history with Goblins, as a look at the other posts on this block will tell you, so I feel like I could probably pick it up and play it with very little practice. I may make a couple changes to that list if I do play it, but Shadow Guildmage seems like a weenie beater right now. And Regionals is pretty aggro-centric, if I remember right, so we’ll see.

My commentary this week is about one thing: the announcement of the Mythic rarity. I’m not going into the numbers crunch of it, because it’s been dealt with before, but I am going to side with Dave Meeson at Star City Games. I think it’s simply a way to get tournament players to buy more packs instead of relying on the secondary market, which, personally, I think is getting out of hand. I’ve been resisting this trend for a while, but with Future Sight, Lorwyn, Morningtide, and now Shadowmoor producing $20+ dollar staples, I’m getting to the point that I simply can’t afford to play the game competitively, and that’s, honestly, about the only thing keeping my buying packs right now.

I think WotC has been taking many a cue from Upper Deck’s World of Warcraft TCG of late, though. Planeswalkers and wither are both mechanics that I think are taken from WoW’s hero cards and damage system and then given the Magic spin. But I think both Timeshifted and Mythic rarities are stealing from the WoW rarity and Magi-fied, right down to the rarity color-coding.

In WoW, you have five levels of rarity: common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary. The color-coding for those, respectively, are: white, green, blue, purple, and orange. Seeing a similarity yet? Now, I’m not saying that Magic is trying to become World of Warcraft, but I think WotC has realized that some of its player base is moving to a different game (some of their higher-caliber players have even worked on design for the game) and are trying to bridge the difference gap. One of the biggest selling points for WoW, though, is the franchise. The name. The rarity of the Legendary Loot cards and the drive to buy packs isn’t from the cards themselves being inherently powerful, but because the Loot card gives you an item in the WoW online game. I think that’s something that Wizards isn’t seeing.

I’m not trying to sound cynical here, nor do I think that Magic is dying and hemorrhaging players, but as a casual player of WoW (both the MMORPG and the TCG), I can’t help but see the similarities, and I don’t think that the changes to Magic will bring in new players. In fact, I think a large factor in keeping players OUT of the game is the cost. When I tell people that my Magic collection is the single most expensive investment in my apartment, they get a very worried look on their face. For me, ultimately, I’m spending money to have fun. But let’s face it: if the prices (both primary and secondary, especially when Mythic is thrown into the mix) keep going up, I’m going to have to look for somewhere else to spend my entertainment dollar.

I don’t think the game is dying. But my interest in it may be flagging, at least in the “I’m driving a ton of sales in order to stay competitive” sense. And I don’t think I’m the only one.