Such a Humiliating Deck...

Hello Everyone! This post is going to be like that really awkward feeling you have went you want to snack on a bunch of completely unrelated things. Like being hungry for a cheesburger, chips & salsa, and chocolate fudge all at the same time, when any combination of the 2 don't go great together, all 3 is just awkward. Like breaking up with your girlfriend at her family's reunion (no I have never done that, nor has it happened to me. I also don't ever condone doing it, but I digress...). Random like.... okay, I will stop.


I recently posted up an Esper Countertop list for legacy, but after 2 games I realized Tezzeret simply wasn't cutting it. With only 13 artifacts in the deck, there's a great chance he will miss (which he often did) and his ultimate was useless because it would only kill your opponent if you had a million Thopter tokens, but when that happens you're winning anyways. That left the only thing in black Thoughseize, which isn't required by any means (although it is awesome to make sure your spell doesn't get countered by stripping Force). On the other end of the I-actually-can't play-this spectrum is that it's really hard to justify paying $270 to buy a 4 mana enchantment that stops some decks. Reanimator has Iona, which will still kill you in 3 turns. Show & Tell still has Emrakul, which kills by itself.

But fear not! I found a $9 card that solves all those problems! In fect, with a little bit of sideboard tech, this card is far better than Moat. This card is.... HUMILITY

My thopter tokens are 1/1 flying creatures without this in play. With this in play, they just lose flying. Before I discovered this card, I was planning on just chump blocking Zoo all day slowing netting at least 1 thopter to attack with each turn, and slowing swinging back. However, with this card, I can trade all day and my Thopter-Sword combo goes from 1: prevent all damage target creature would deal you this turn, you gain one life, to 1: destroy target attacking creature, you gain 1 life. Oh, all creatures lose all abilities? Nice 15 mana legendary 1/1 with no abilities... So what super awesome card combos to trash some decks? Engineered Plague!

The aggro decks of choice right now are all tribal (Goblins, Elves, Merfolk, Allies) so having either piece of the combo is awesome, but together is just a genocide! Please note, Allies isn't a complete blowout to this combo, just the new ones that come into play. All the allies that are already in play should have a bunch of +1/+1 counters on them, but Humility will prevent them from getting any bigger, and will also prevent the new guys from getting big (and with Engineered Plague just kills them as they come into play). So these are a ton of edits, and I don't have an updated list yet, but right now I'm using 2 Humility and keeping the Plagues in the board. Legacy is awesome, because I'm splashing black with 2 Underground Seas and a Scrubland, so my mana is hardly harmed.

But let's go from Legacy all the way out to the future! The other day, WotC announced that once again they are offering promos from the next set for game day affiliated decks. This is a wonderful window for us prospecters into the next set and whether or Phyrexia will make all one or if Mirrans will endure. I still think the Phyrexians will win after looking at these images. Check out the cards, and look in particular at the background of Suture Priest and the set symbols of both cards. In the background of Suture Priest, we can see Mirroden clouded over and looking like death. That is clearly a new Phyrexia, there's nothing pure and chromey about it. Now look at the set symbols. Neither of them look absolutely perfect, the Phyrexian one looks like it could be slightly bigger, but is very similar to the Zendikar symbol. On the other hand, the Mirran one looks slightly inflated and shifted to the right, similar to the Morningtide symbol. Hmmm...

Regardless of who wins, these are very worthwhile to pick up. No one is going to be excited about these promos, and you should be able to very easily trade for at least a half dozen of each. People will move these bad commons for nothing. But is it really worth nothing? When New Phyrexia is released, Pristine Talisman will be printed with a Phyrexian symbol. All of a sudden, Suture Priest is now just another bad common that might make a splash in limited, but all those Mirran symbol Pristine Talismans are a colector's item, and are much rarer. Imagine if you traded a dollar card for 5 or 6 Pristine Talismans. Now New Phyrexia is released, and al of a sudden those Talismans with Mirran set symbols are worth 1-2 each. That 1 dollar card just became 5-12 bucks in your binder!

Also, assuming New Phyrexia is the next set, imagine what effect that will have on draft! Now that we have New Phyrexia, then Beseiged, then Scars we will go from having a ton of infect to almost none as the packs go. It may be a viable strategy to NOT go infect when there are 5-6 infect playables in the pack because the infect can dry up incredibly fast as all the packs go forward. It would stink if infect was so deep pack one that you and 3 others were in infect and doing very well, then all of a sudden 1 of the 4 gets infect skrewed, then in the last pack everyone is infect skrewed. Maybe by printing more infect for pack 1, infect will become so enticing that everyone will get in eachother's way and infect will not win because the quality of the decks all go down. That would be nice for a change! That being said, if I open Skittles pack 3, I'm still taking it, if only for hate.

Moving away from the battlefield, I have made a simple, yet significant change to how I will be trading from now on. I just purchased a second binder to hold trade cards that will be reserved for premium cards. I consider premium card to be anything worth $10 or more. The ultimate goal with trading to build up a collection of valuable cards, and I guess eventually reach the holy relic of M/NM Alpha Black Lotus. But considering that's not going to happen (currently $3,102.99), lets just go with the gaining value plan. It is much harder to move small cards compared to large cards. You may have heard of trading up or trading down. While in one sense you can be trading up/down in terms of actual value (trading my 35 for your 40, like when I have been offered a Prime Time for my Vengevine 1-for-1 twice, and yes I took it both times), but I want to bring it to a new perspective: how many cards for how many cards?

This past weekend I closed the books on an awesome trade that ended like this in my brain:
My:
playset of Blackcleave Cliffs
Genesis (wow, I never thought I would move that)
3x Chrome Mox (dang, just bought those, but for those cards it's worth it)
a bunch of other stuff I can't remember... I think a Creeping Corrosion was in there somewhere

His:
FRIGGIN AWESOME JAPANESE SET OF ENLIGHTENED TUTORS!!!!!

The only premium card I traded were my 3 Chrome Moxes, and I ended up with a set of sexy Enlightened Tutors. I traded stuff I didn't care about for something I wanted really bad. I traded a bunch of 2-3s plus 3 12s and a 6 for 4 15s. See what I'm getting at? I cumulated the value of all my jank into something very worthwhile and tough to get.
So back to me getting a new binder. I moved all my cards valued at 10 or more into this binder. By having 2 binders I can control my trades a lot more by restricting what the other guy sees. What if I look into his binder and see nothing I'm interested in? He will only see cards that are worth less than 10, so I can make a trade just for the sake of creating a commradery with him without risking too much value by trading down. A single 10 in your binder is more valuable than 5 2s. We can also take this from a new perspective: What if the guy I'm trading with has something like Sword of Feast and Famine, something I'm currently in the market for. I always tell people they can pull out cards they want as they go, because it's easier to assemble trades that way. If I see him pulling out a short stack of cards, I can trade for a Sword without even having to tap into the valuable cards. Trading up as many cards as I can, making the sub-10 binder tiny and the premium binder overflow is definitely something I'm in the market for.

Of course, the premium cards aren't a holy ground I can never trade out of. In fact, I would love to move my 3 Thoughtseizes at 30 each right now. I'm not playing them in my Humiliating deck right now, so as far as I'm concerned it's liquid. If you look in my binder, you will also see my Entombs and Reanimates and all the essential parts of the Reanimator deck. Am I giving up on the deck? No. I am marking those cards up 5-7 each and putting them up for trade. It doesn't matter if the other guy argues, If I want to move Entomb at 40 instead of its normal 33, so be it, I'm the seller and you're the buyer. If no one else has Entomb for trade, your going to wind up back at my binder. I don't want to get rid of Entomb, but if I get a good enough trade, I'm not going to hold it back like some sort of holy relic.

Weird... I started and ended that last paragraph calling premium cards holy....

Anyways, that's all for me today! Until next time, stay classy!