Shiny and New

Quick and rather pointless updates seem to be a reoccurring theme here lately. Sorry for that, but I actually have a rather sizeable stable of decks that I thoroughly enjoy playing. The two new brews I promise like a month ago are still cooking. Well, simmering more like. Progress slow, but it is progress nonetheless.

For example, last night I received a nifty little envelope in the mail from Star City Games. The contents included:

For my big Highlander – Foil Treasured Find, Foil Snow-Covered Plains, Foil Snow-Covered Mountain.

The Treasured Find is to replace Regrowth… yeah, Regrowth is strictly better, but Treasured Find has strictly better art, AND is available in foil.

The Snow lands are to complete the cycle, because I already had Swamp, Island and Forest, and it bugged the hell out of me not having the full cycle in foil.

For the Nin, the Pain Artist deck – Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius and Epic Experiment.

I’m going to try the new Niv as the general in place of Nin. Kinda makes me sad, but I think it’ll help steer the deck back onto the right course.

Epic was always necessary, and it only occurred to me after sleeving the deck up that I hadn’t actually pulled an EE yet. Oops.

Stonehorn Dignitary – This one is for the other brew I’m working on by haven’t talked about here yet. Soon…

The Rakdos die from the RtR prerelease packs – I’d already collected the other four RtR guild D20’s so it was of paramount importance that I complete this cycle as well.

Stairs to Infinity – This is the promo plane for Plancechase 2012. Hadn’t picked one up and it’s one of the more hilariously zany planes. We don’t play with them planes all that often, but when we do it’s usually fun. Getting the mix right is tricky – you tend to only want planes that help out, but that’s like having a “ghost” player playing Group Hug. But you don’t want the planes that slow the game down to a crawl, like Eon Hub, making the game drag on in unfun ways.

Foil Savra and Foil Stonebrow – These two generals have cemented their place in my permanent roster of decks. I might at various times take either of them apart, but I love the decks enough that I know I’ll always go back and rebuild them later. So, it makes sense to keep foil copies on hand. I’ll talk a bit more about why both decks have earned their spots later.

Utvara  Hellkite – Basically this is just an awesome Mythic dragon that I didn’t already have, and wanted a copy. I already know with about 90% certainty that when it comes time to build a Jund-colored deck, I’m using Karrthus as the general. It might not be full bore on the Dragon theme, but it will absolutely contain enough of them to make Utvara Hellkite awesome. It was cheap now, so I picked it up for later.

I wanted to get a foil Thraximundar, because I know that Thraxi will basically always be a general I’m happy to be playing. The deck around him might change a bit, but Thraxi is by far my favorite general in those colors. I liked Garza Zol Vampire tribal, and Sedris Zombie tribal, but I always come back to Thraximundar. He just rocks. The only reason I didn’t pick him up this time was cost. I needed most of the other stuff more and needed to keep the total price tag low. He’s an investment I’ll be more than happy to make when I can, but now wasn’t that time.

I also wanted a foil Gisela, but I’m less committed to keeping her. When Gatecrash comes out, I really think I’ll be playing Aurelia instead. Gisela will be in the deck, but I think Aurelia will be a better general. The thing is, Gisela is totally awesome and when she’s out the deck is supercharge – but she’s too damned expensive, and more importantly she’s too scary to the rest of the table. Playing the deck with her in charge, I either get hated out before I get to 7 mana, or she just gets killed so many times that eventually I just can’t be bothered to cast her any more.

The sad thing is, I think this deck peaked with Jor Kadeen as the general. 5 mana is quite a bit different from 7 mana, honestly, and while the Metalcraft theme was janky and occasionally led to my getting dicked over hard by Austere Command, that iteration just felt like the most aggressive and resilient version to date. Gisela is just one of those relationships where I know she’s wrong for me, but I’m too madly in love to care.

So between the fact that a foil Gisela is still pretty darn expensive, and the fact that I’m not at all sure she’s going to remain the general, I couldn’t justify picking up this foil now. We’ll see how it goes in the future.