Freaky Friday pt. 2

So this is the prequel story to pt. 1 from yesterday. Before all the awesomeness of the FNM broke out, I picked up a couple copies of Elspeth vs Tezzeret. I must say, this is an awesome product!

Like I said in part 1, I bought 2 and DJ bought 1. Of course when you buy the Duel Decks, the first thing you need to do is battle them out, so DJ and I played 3 games. 2 I played as Tezzeret, and for the 3rd I played as Elspeth.

Overall, I feel that the Tezzeret deck is stronger than the Elspeth deck, but that doesn't mean Elspeth can't win. Tezzeret is simply more synergistic and every card has a purpose. The thing I didn't like about the Elspeth deck is that it feels too slow, and 2 of the 5 rares (6 if you count Mythic with them) are very clunky and junky and bad, those being Angel of Salvation and Rustic Clachan (Conquerer's Pledge would have been much better). The only way that I found Elspeth to win was with a very aggressive low mana draw.

 Game 1 DJ and I both got our planeswalkers to hit play, but neither of us found

our walker again for the other games

Tezzeret, on the other hand has a deck that is all about smart combos. One in particular that I was able to abuse was being able to put -1/-1 counters on a creature of mine and an opponent's with Serrated Baskelion, and then clear off that counter with either Steel Overseer or Energy Chamber. And then after doing that, I would proliferate to kill some soldiers while bolstering the ranks of the heartless machines.

End result of powerful Tezzeret combos? Utter Anihilation!

So I have already used the Elspeths to power out that pricey part of my Soul Sisters deck for the FNM (which, if I didn't mention in pt. 1, I ended up finishing 4th out of 24), there are lots of other cards from these decks which will be popping up in decks. Well.... Not really lots of other decks, but I now have everything I need for a solid casual Soldier deck and a solid casual Artifact deck (which the Duel decks are.... but I am going to make them better). Back in the day, I designed a Kor Soldier deck whose highest converted mana cost was 2, and only ran 17 lands. With some of the powerful cards from the Elspeth deck, I could remake the white weenie deck and actually make it work, with 4x Swords to Plowshares. I have never had an artifact deck before of any variety, but I do have lots of good pieces for one, and with the Tezzeret deck (2x Tezzeret) it will probably show up in a blog post some time in the future.

A quick extension from what I closed with on pt. 1:

I listed the 32 big decks in standard (then there's the rogue decks), but I just did a little more investigating into the Metagame that is interesting. I took the list of decks and tallied which colors the decks contained. While it's not perfect as some structures have many distinct variations (EX: 2 versions of Jund), The results are interesting regardless. After tallying, this is what I got:

White - 13 decks

Blue - 16 decks

Black - 8 decks

Red - 19 decks

Green - 17 decks

It's interesting to see how Black (8 decks) is used in half the amount of decks as the average of the other 4 (16.25). While the other 4 are fairly close to eachother, noting how white is on the fringe and red is the most popular is something to think about. I guess making space in your sideboard for Flashfreeze is a great idea for now.

That's all for this 2 part installment. Stay tuned as I prepare a short discussion on Mythics (and rarity in general) and their overall effect on Magic. Until then, stay classy