Post #100!

Hello everyone! I signed on today to write about some recent happenings, like epic trades, new decklists, and about how I drafted Rise of the Eldrazi last night, and I saw on my little info tab regarding this blog that I had 101 posts. Oh No! I missed recognizing an awesome milestone! I quickly looked through the history of all my posts, and is it turns out that there were 2 posts I started in late October that never got published. One was the draft of my remix of "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha, and the other was a semi-theory article about the value of haste and enters the battlefield abilities on creatures (I think Zvi did one first). So, with those 2 out, there were only 99 posts published, making this number 100!

So, with my self-praise aside, I'm going to start with the ROE draft because that requires me to use my memory, something that can dissapear as I'm watching epic videos from my facebook wall and watching the news. I had never drafted ROE before, but always wanted to. I didn't discover Toys until the M11 Pre-release, by which point Eldrazi was no longer the current draft format. But word got out about a couple people wanting to draft Rise, and I jumped right onto the bandwagon! It wound up being a 4-man draft, and my deck was pretty sweet. I first picked a Pelaka Wurm, but no one was in red, so got 3 Heat Rays and 2 Staggershocks, and finished with Ulamog's Crusher, Spawnsire of Ulamog, and Pathrazer of Ulamog (with another in the board), but Ulamog himself decided not to show up. I also happened to have a Kargan Dragonlord as a random epic dude. I don't remember the other decks, although one guy went the mono-level up route and even got a Training Grounds to make the deck awesome!

We simply had everyone play everyone, and after a heartbreaking topdeck-5-lands-strait-when-almost-any-spell-would-make-me-win game 3, I went 4-0 from there, putting me in 2nd at 2-1 (we had 3-0, 2-1, 1-2, 0-3 so we had no stupid tiebreakers). The only money in the set was the Kargan Dragonlord, which I missed out on. However, as soon as we finished backdrafting, I turned to the guy who picked the Dragonlord and prompted a trade. He settled on a Wurmcoil Engine + Consuming Vapors, which I was satisfied with.

I wound up setting up a trade that got up to $31, and I knew he wanted a Vengivine from me, but he said he had no others. So instead I wound up trading nothing overwhelmingly important and I acquired Eldrazi Monument among others. With another guy, I got many fun cards including Grave Titan and FTV: Relics  Isochron Scepter. That last one was an interesting trade as when we put down what we wanted, we were off my $4, but the only card each of us could go for were $8 each! So after 2 rounds of upping the trade, I just grabbed a short stack of foil lands and took a short loss because everyone was waiting for me to finish trading so we could draft XD.

I want to take a moment to talk about Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. I talked about how he is awesome, but I never made any decks. Mark took the liberty of making this control list:

Creatures:

2 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Lodestone Golem
3 Wurmcoil Engine

Spells:
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Mindslaver
2 Everflowing Chalice
4 Preordain
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Go for the Throat
2 Mana Leak
2 Black Sun Zenith
3 Stoic Rebuttal
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

Lands
4 Creepting Tarpit
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Tectonic Edge
1 Verdant Catcombs
1 Misty Rain Forest
4 Islands
3 Swamps

This deck uses Tezzeret as another card draw card until you can burn for some damage or push through lots of damage with the -1 ability. After all, what's better than getting Wurmcoil Doom Bladed, and then making the tokens 5/5s?

Just now as I copied that from our facebook thread I realized that there aren't any Brittle Effigys, which solve the Wurmcoil issue that many decks will face soon. Maybe cutting a Phyrexian Revoker? We added 2 over the course of our conversation, but as always, the list is liquid. Since he took care of the control side of the spectrum, I feel like he can be an aggressive planeswalker as well. I made a "mono-white" deck with metalcraft a couple months ago, but the only reason it was white was for Tempered Steel, and a couple Myrsmith to get more value (and probably Indominable Archangel in the board) but it was either win by a little or just lose. aka BAD. However I feel like Tezzeret can push it over the top. The mana isn't good enough to go Esper, but here is my take on UB artifact aggro:

4x Etched Champion
3x Silver Myr
3x Leaden Myr
2x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Grave Titan
4x Lodestone Golem
3x Phyrexian Revoker

4x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
3x Go for the Throat
2x Brittle Effigy
3x Into the Roil
4x Preordain

4x Creeping Tar Pit
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Drowned Catacombs
2x Tectonic Edge
5x Swamp
5x Island

Now this isn't perfect, but it's interesting trying to max out on artifacts while staying aggressive because typically artifacts are just toolbox cards that assist your real goal. I would talk more about cool decks (how about droppign free Myr Battlespheres every turn?) but it's snowing and I need to wake up an extra 2 hours early =(. So until next time, stay classy!