Thanks for the input on the backgrounds. I will see what everyone else says and go with the majority. I will the bolder graphic as I thnk the Mono-Black Control and Team America charts look better. Goblins looks just as bad as the original chart, and both versions looked bad because it is hard to find large versions for the art for goblins which mono-chromatic.
As for new content, each week will include updats to the charts and deck lists as well as a perspective, casual deck, and potentially discussion of a card which stands out to me. If this isn't sufficient new content, then I doubt the Recap is what you are looking for.
That being said, I agree that the discussion of the performance and advantages of mono-colored decks is a worthy topic of interest. Expect to see this is the Perspective for the recap of the past PE.
On the topic of archetypes, this is something I covered in a previous Recap. The breakdown of archetypes is a rather personal perspective of when the differentiation between two decks constitutes a difference in different archetypes. I think Team America is something between Blue/Red Aggro-Control and Blue/White Blink, but all three have overlap and different versions within the archetypes overlap more than others. It is definitely a fine line as I group Blue/Black control that splashes white for one spells or sidebaord cards as different than Esper control that includes a substantial amount of white spells.
For now, I expect these archetypes stand, but that doesn't mean I am unwilling to reevaluate moving forward.
First of all, I would say that the old style of banners is much better. Full color backgrounds make the graphic too hard to look at.
Now about the article: I think you can do better. There is hardly any new content here and there is no analysis at all - just stats and decklists. Why don't you try to address the mono-color trend? I also think your archetype list badly needs to be trimmed. Just by reading your article I can tell that "Team America" is a version of UW blink that splashes red. Are the decks so different that you need to include both? The same applies to Esper control and a couple others.
I have been playing a U/R Kiln Fiend deck online in the casual room, but it is quite fast. It might do well at a lower level event like FNM. I actually just placed an order for real life cards to build both the Kiln fiend deck and the merfolk deck.
I will try throwing him in the Kiln Fiend deck and see how he does at FNM. I tend to play less than tier 1 decks at FNM since I only own "good" cards online.
Scroll Thief... hmmm.... the next generation Shadowmage Infiltrator it is NOT. Sad but no. Infiltrator had fear, Magpie had flying and even Lu Xun had horsemanship. But this one is just a better Ophidian. The power level of creatures is now insanly high and I don't think this one is good enough.
There are, however, two decks I can think of that can play this one, and one is obviously a Mono U fish deck. But I'm not so sure how well it would do against the field. Levelers aren't that great in competitive environment nowadays and sadly Coralhelm Commander is all about leveling. Why spend so much mana in sorcery speed for a creature that will surely get Terminate'd or Path'ed, whereas I can just play Vengevine and/or Bloodbraid Elf, or Baneslayer Angel and just hit hard and win?
The second deck that can use him is a UR midrange/control deck. Red clears the table and Blue protects your Thief and as a reward he will give you cards. Maybe Kiln Fiend too? Hmm... now this would be nice.
Bottom line: Just because Scroll Thief is better than Ophidian and just because he has a relevant tribe doesn't make him an auto Tier-1 creature. I'm not so sure about Merfolk in Standard, but the UR Kiln Fiend/Scroll Thief version could really be an interesting deck.
I'm really looking forward to running Grave Titan in a giant deck. I'm also looking forward to playing with Knight Exemplar and Fauna Shaman. I've played with Ancient Hellkite and that card is a killer, should be excellent in tribal.
I know you are tired of the idea, but bringing the card to the forefront made me think about reknit. Might be fun to have someone skip their turn, and you just regenerate the vapors.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I do agree that both cards cmc can be very dangerous and upon further reflection I do not think I would run both. I think it would be a good idea to remove the tendrils completely and drop the vapors down to maybe two. I just think the life gain from it is to good to pass up.
As far as the Basilisk Collar, I completely forgot about that piece of equipment. It definately needs to go in the deck. The Highborn is a great suggestion as well. I think I will just add 4 to replace the Tendrils.
Creatures
4 Black Knight
4 Bloodghast
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Kalastria Highborn
After I designed the deck I discovered a thread on Mtgsalvation discussing the archetype in great detail. They will probably have it figured out before the cards get online.
Thanks again for the suggestions as your decks are all very creative and function quite well. I still occasionally play the BRW deck you wrote about in a previous article.
What are your thoughts on Scroll Thief? That is the card I really want to see do well as Ophidian is my 2nd favorite card.
Hey Paul, thank you for the mention, I'm not sure I'm quite in the league of flippers and AJ just yet, but will get there :). Some interesting decks there, some things for me to think about for the future.
rockin start. With regards to the tournament in question - I really think it would be easiest and best if all 8 players knew the field they were facing, then had to use the same sideboard for every matchup. Maindecked changes should be closely watched - a slight change up from a top 8 listing is ok, but no major archetype shifts etc.., Each deck is going to have a bad matchup of the other seven, this is a major point :)
If this is to go forward, let's decide on that last spot. I agree with you that WW is a good 7th slot. Once the top 8 decks are identified, perhaps a vote could happen next posting of this for the players of each said thing...or not. If this fizzles, (which murphy's law says it should as there are so many variables) I won't be surprised, but it would be a grand experiement, that could perhaps be revisited each year.
I am a fan of enter the battlefield effects .... I made a 250 classic singleton Bant deck, featuring all ETB effects and spells that flicker them, bounce them back to hand, or even use the Polymorph ability, since the dudes on the battlefield are already spent ... it's some fun stuff ... can't wait for Mass Polymorph in M11 :)
I'm toying with a Mono Black Suicide type of Aggro deck too and I have a few suggestions for you if I may.
First the obvious: You really want low cost cards with Tutelage. Consuming Vapors and Tendrils are really not the best options for that deck. There can be games in which you draw your Consuming Vapors and that card will kill you instantly before even you can use it.
I suggest testing cards like Executioner's Capsule, Brittle Effigy (not a whole playset but 1 or 2), Gatekeeper and Nighthawk (those 2 you have in your list) but also Kalastria Highborn and Basilisk Collar too. Especially the Collar.
Other good cards to consider are Consume Spirit, Quest for the Gravelord and at least 1 or 2 Death's Shadow.
For the sideboard, instead of Mind Sludge you should try Mind Shatter. Instead of Leyline of the Void you should try Relic of Progenitus (or maybe even Suffer the Past; it's an instant by the way!). Vampire Hexmage must be in the sideboard against planeswalkers. Deathmark and Duress should also be there too of course.
It's true, I should have mentioned this. I didn't want to make any decks using it though, because those, while being flicker decks, are still more about cycling than flickering, but the card, as it is a monster of a card, definitely warranted talking about or mentioning, so I should have put in a note about it! you're totally correct. I hate it when i miss obvious things like that. Each article's a learning experience right :P ?
also, dang that Urza for having so many sets and me for getting them confused allatime
Wow that is hilarious and that guy is my hero. I first played V&V in 1981 and fell in love with superhero rpgs after that. He is the reason I eventually got into Champions/Hero System.
By the way, did you know you can't use the sound effect FLICK in comic books? I learned this from my friend Jeff Dee, creator of the Villains & Vigilantes RPG. When he worked on some comics he found this out - because an L and I too close together can sometimes look a little like a U, they just avoid ever having FLICK appear in sound effect balloons etc... Funny, huh?
Great article, love the photoshop pictures and humor involved. You really give a lot of good information here and plenty of decklists and card combinations to play around with. The first time I really saw how awesome momentary blink was when playing in a time spiral sealed event. I was playing White/Red and was quite far behind on board position until I got out a Bogardian Hellkite and proceeded to Blink it a few times. I thought I was the smartest player in the world!
I found a few typos btw:
Flicker was in Urza's Destiny not Legacy. (You actually do mention this below it.)
'Let' instead of 'yet'.
I listed the "American Pie" elementals deck in my article a month or so ago which is a Flickerer deck for sure. Lots of great ways to use Flickerwisp and Momentary Blink (my tools of choice in this belt) to horrifyingly good effect. I find the deck stalls like no one's business and can shut down aggro decks merely by outlasting them. Control decks have conniptions trying to stop it and midrange is usually not flexible enough to stop it. I could go on but really the point is simply that the synergy provided by flickering + enters the battlefield cards (Mulldrifter, Flamekin Harbinger, Reveillark and more) is extremely powerful. It does lose, but usually to mana screw draws (the landbase is the worst aspect of the deck and a main drawback to any 3c deck) or very tight opposition (tier 1 decks with good pilots).
I am surprised you did not mention one of the all time mightiest of Flicker tools: Astral Slide. This baby was responsible for a few tourney archetypes back in the day. Sure it requires the deck be built around it with cyclers and something to take advantage of but it was quite the powerhouse.
Oh dear. I call it "blinking", not "flicking", perhaps because I only began playing magic post-momentary blink. Now I feel like such a newbie.
The opponent you land-locked should have just returned the Izzet Boilerworks to his hand!
Thanks for the input on the backgrounds. I will see what everyone else says and go with the majority. I will the bolder graphic as I thnk the Mono-Black Control and Team America charts look better. Goblins looks just as bad as the original chart, and both versions looked bad because it is hard to find large versions for the art for goblins which mono-chromatic.
As for new content, each week will include updats to the charts and deck lists as well as a perspective, casual deck, and potentially discussion of a card which stands out to me. If this isn't sufficient new content, then I doubt the Recap is what you are looking for.
That being said, I agree that the discussion of the performance and advantages of mono-colored decks is a worthy topic of interest. Expect to see this is the Perspective for the recap of the past PE.
On the topic of archetypes, this is something I covered in a previous Recap. The breakdown of archetypes is a rather personal perspective of when the differentiation between two decks constitutes a difference in different archetypes. I think Team America is something between Blue/Red Aggro-Control and Blue/White Blink, but all three have overlap and different versions within the archetypes overlap more than others. It is definitely a fine line as I group Blue/Black control that splashes white for one spells or sidebaord cards as different than Esper control that includes a substantial amount of white spells.
For now, I expect these archetypes stand, but that doesn't mean I am unwilling to reevaluate moving forward.
First of all, I would say that the old style of banners is much better. Full color backgrounds make the graphic too hard to look at.
Now about the article: I think you can do better. There is hardly any new content here and there is no analysis at all - just stats and decklists. Why don't you try to address the mono-color trend? I also think your archetype list badly needs to be trimmed. Just by reading your article I can tell that "Team America" is a version of UW blink that splashes red. Are the decks so different that you need to include both? The same applies to Esper control and a couple others.
I have been playing a U/R Kiln Fiend deck online in the casual room, but it is quite fast. It might do well at a lower level event like FNM. I actually just placed an order for real life cards to build both the Kiln fiend deck and the merfolk deck.
I will try throwing him in the Kiln Fiend deck and see how he does at FNM. I tend to play less than tier 1 decks at FNM since I only own "good" cards online.
thanks again for the comments
Sometimes I like to slap a couple Proteus Staffs (staves?) in my white-blue flicker builds for added fun. :)
Scroll Thief... hmmm.... the next generation Shadowmage Infiltrator it is NOT. Sad but no. Infiltrator had fear, Magpie had flying and even Lu Xun had horsemanship. But this one is just a better Ophidian. The power level of creatures is now insanly high and I don't think this one is good enough.
There are, however, two decks I can think of that can play this one, and one is obviously a Mono U fish deck. But I'm not so sure how well it would do against the field. Levelers aren't that great in competitive environment nowadays and sadly Coralhelm Commander is all about leveling. Why spend so much mana in sorcery speed for a creature that will surely get Terminate'd or Path'ed, whereas I can just play Vengevine and/or Bloodbraid Elf, or Baneslayer Angel and just hit hard and win?
The second deck that can use him is a UR midrange/control deck. Red clears the table and Blue protects your Thief and as a reward he will give you cards. Maybe Kiln Fiend too? Hmm... now this would be nice.
Bottom line: Just because Scroll Thief is better than Ophidian and just because he has a relevant tribe doesn't make him an auto Tier-1 creature. I'm not so sure about Merfolk in Standard, but the UR Kiln Fiend/Scroll Thief version could really be an interesting deck.
LE
I'm really looking forward to running Grave Titan in a giant deck. I'm also looking forward to playing with Knight Exemplar and Fauna Shaman. I've played with Ancient Hellkite and that card is a killer, should be excellent in tribal.
I know you are tired of the idea, but bringing the card to the forefront made me think about reknit. Might be fun to have someone skip their turn, and you just regenerate the vapors.
Lord Erman,
Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I do agree that both cards cmc can be very dangerous and upon further reflection I do not think I would run both. I think it would be a good idea to remove the tendrils completely and drop the vapors down to maybe two. I just think the life gain from it is to good to pass up.
As far as the Basilisk Collar, I completely forgot about that piece of equipment. It definately needs to go in the deck. The Highborn is a great suggestion as well. I think I will just add 4 to replace the Tendrils.
Creatures
4 Black Knight
4 Bloodghast
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Kalastria Highborn
2 Consuming Vapors
3 Basilisk Collar
1 Grim Discovery
3 Dark Tutelage
3 Disfigure
22 Swamp
2 Dread Statuary
After I designed the deck I discovered a thread on Mtgsalvation discussing the archetype in great detail. They will probably have it figured out before the cards get online.
Thanks again for the suggestions as your decks are all very creative and function quite well. I still occasionally play the BRW deck you wrote about in a previous article.
What are your thoughts on Scroll Thief? That is the card I really want to see do well as Ophidian is my 2nd favorite card.
Hey Paul, thank you for the mention, I'm not sure I'm quite in the league of flippers and AJ just yet, but will get there :). Some interesting decks there, some things for me to think about for the future.
rockin start. With regards to the tournament in question - I really think it would be easiest and best if all 8 players knew the field they were facing, then had to use the same sideboard for every matchup. Maindecked changes should be closely watched - a slight change up from a top 8 listing is ok, but no major archetype shifts etc.., Each deck is going to have a bad matchup of the other seven, this is a major point :)
If this is to go forward, let's decide on that last spot. I agree with you that WW is a good 7th slot. Once the top 8 decks are identified, perhaps a vote could happen next posting of this for the players of each said thing...or not. If this fizzles, (which murphy's law says it should as there are so many variables) I won't be surprised, but it would be a grand experiement, that could perhaps be revisited each year.
fun article
I am a fan of enter the battlefield effects .... I made a 250 classic singleton Bant deck, featuring all ETB effects and spells that flicker them, bounce them back to hand, or even use the Polymorph ability, since the dudes on the battlefield are already spent ... it's some fun stuff ... can't wait for Mass Polymorph in M11 :)
Hi Don.
I'm toying with a Mono Black Suicide type of Aggro deck too and I have a few suggestions for you if I may.
First the obvious: You really want low cost cards with Tutelage. Consuming Vapors and Tendrils are really not the best options for that deck. There can be games in which you draw your Consuming Vapors and that card will kill you instantly before even you can use it.
I suggest testing cards like Executioner's Capsule, Brittle Effigy (not a whole playset but 1 or 2), Gatekeeper and Nighthawk (those 2 you have in your list) but also Kalastria Highborn and Basilisk Collar too. Especially the Collar.
Other good cards to consider are Consume Spirit, Quest for the Gravelord and at least 1 or 2 Death's Shadow.
For the sideboard, instead of Mind Sludge you should try Mind Shatter. Instead of Leyline of the Void you should try Relic of Progenitus (or maybe even Suffer the Past; it's an instant by the way!). Vampire Hexmage must be in the sideboard against planeswalkers. Deathmark and Duress should also be there too of course.
Hope this helps.
LE
It's true, I should have mentioned this. I didn't want to make any decks using it though, because those, while being flicker decks, are still more about cycling than flickering, but the card, as it is a monster of a card, definitely warranted talking about or mentioning, so I should have put in a note about it! you're totally correct. I hate it when i miss obvious things like that. Each article's a learning experience right :P ?
also, dang that Urza for having so many sets and me for getting them confused allatime
And honestly the reason why I changed FLICKER ME THIS to "Flicker Me This" was to avoid that very reasoning!
Wow that is hilarious and that guy is my hero. I first played V&V in 1981 and fell in love with superhero rpgs after that. He is the reason I eventually got into Champions/Hero System.
By the way, did you know you can't use the sound effect FLICK in comic books? I learned this from my friend Jeff Dee, creator of the Villains & Vigilantes RPG. When he worked on some comics he found this out - because an L and I too close together can sometimes look a little like a U, they just avoid ever having FLICK appear in sound effect balloons etc... Funny, huh?
Great article, love the photoshop pictures and humor involved. You really give a lot of good information here and plenty of decklists and card combinations to play around with. The first time I really saw how awesome momentary blink was when playing in a time spiral sealed event. I was playing White/Red and was quite far behind on board position until I got out a Bogardian Hellkite and proceeded to Blink it a few times. I thought I was the smartest player in the world!
I found a few typos btw:
Flicker was in Urza's Destiny not Legacy. (You actually do mention this below it.)
'Let' instead of 'yet'.
I listed the "American Pie" elementals deck in my article a month or so ago which is a Flickerer deck for sure. Lots of great ways to use Flickerwisp and Momentary Blink (my tools of choice in this belt) to horrifyingly good effect. I find the deck stalls like no one's business and can shut down aggro decks merely by outlasting them. Control decks have conniptions trying to stop it and midrange is usually not flexible enough to stop it. I could go on but really the point is simply that the synergy provided by flickering + enters the battlefield cards (Mulldrifter, Flamekin Harbinger, Reveillark and more) is extremely powerful. It does lose, but usually to mana screw draws (the landbase is the worst aspect of the deck and a main drawback to any 3c deck) or very tight opposition (tier 1 decks with good pilots).
I am surprised you did not mention one of the all time mightiest of Flicker tools: Astral Slide. This baby was responsible for a few tourney archetypes back in the day. Sure it requires the deck be built around it with cyclers and something to take advantage of but it was quite the powerhouse.
Keep up the funny Johnny articles. :D
Congrats, you win! I'll look for you online, or msg me when you see me.
Put Unstable Footing in the sideboard.
Anyone try splashing black for some Kor Firewalker removal with this deck. I keep getting wrecked by mono white Firewalker builds.
I can say that ghweiss thinks he's better than me :)
I'd like to see an Atog deck with Atogatog as the commander, its something I've not got round to trying yet.
just use mumble/ventrilo/whatever everyone else uses.