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So, the current buzz about Innistrad is cards with no MTG card back.  I have some mixed feelings about them.  The mechanic seems REALLY fun, but the desing of the mechanic is poor, from a game designer's perspective.  I understand why they did what they did (if they did it the logical way, normal card + "token" that matched the normal card the printing company couldnt guarentee a 100% match in all packs) but I don't like the execution.  There are considerable down sides to double faces cards for new and old players.  The downsides make me wonder if WOTC is trying cause a reaction, or if they just hoped that the overall fun level of the mechanic, plus most players already having a vested interest in Magic would prevent them from loosing customers.  The reasons I would have not designed double faced cards are twofold:

1. New players don't own sleeves.  They arent goign to want to use the ugly checklist, and 1 in 4 packs won't even have one.  Several older players that are more casual do not use sleeves, or use clear/penny sleeves and will also have problems with the double faced cards.  With WOTC's heavy investment in "New Player Aquisition" I am frankly suprised that they would print double sided cards, these things considered.

2. Older players hate change:  From my experience, vested Magic players hate huge, major changes to the game that break the mold in a way that they feel it should not be broken.  My wife quit playing when Planeswalker cards were introduces and I know several more older players who are irritated by Planeswalkers, Flip cards, and now likely double sided cards as well.  The other beef I have with double sided cards that may or may not be a shared sentiment is the interaction with Ixidron and other cards that turn something face down.  The fact that playing an [card]Ixidron[/card] after a double faced card is on the board does not transform it, but turns it into a face down 2/2 morph creature is a backwards synergy that could have endeared the mechanic to many an oldschool player in my opinion.
In the end, I think the mechanic will be fun to play, but I worry for the torunament crowd.  Be sure to pack extra Opaque sleeves or prepare for a possible DQ for marked cards!  Glad that around the kitchen table no one cares!

Thats all I have for today, so until next time...
Use YOUR shoes as counters!

-Shoe

Welcome back to the Unsung Heroes of EDH series.  When we last left our heroes, Shoe had run out of creative titles and we were on the letter M, part one.  Today, we continue where the last episode left off.

I'm not too sure about Mirri here.  She has a somewhat relevant evasion ability, can play both offense and defense, AND has first strike for 3 mana.  What she doesn't have, is a big enough body to be relevant in EDH.  Do I think she would make a good voltron general...Not sure.  Green isn't exactly known for its synergy with equipment, but it might be fun to do some sort of Enchantress deck with Mirri at it's helm.  Throw in a little [card]Mythic Proportions[/card], [card]Wurmweaver Coil[/card]. [card]Rancor[/card] and [card]Dowsing Shaman[/card] and I think we have the beginings of a very unconventional voltron deck.  Makes me want to give her a shot.

EDIT: Built me a Mirri deck just like that.  Check it out Here!

I pretty much discussed this guy at length with his brother [card]Gallobraid[/card].  At least Morinfen flies. 

The Myojin here are all a victim of the EDH rules.  They basically are vanilla overcosted giants from the command zone.  This is a rule I highly would like to see changed, but I doubt it will be.  So many more generals would be playable if it just counted as cast from hand.  Even so, this guy is a DICK move in all but the most competative metagames if the rule were different.  Not broken, just mass LD + a fatty seems good.    

Same problem as all of the Myojin, just doesn't DO anything as a commander.  Life's Web and Night's reach are at least somewhat easy to get to your hand from the graveyard. 

Same problem as all of the Myojin, just doesn't DO anything as a commander. 
Life's Web and Night's reach are at least somewhat easy to get to your hand from the graveyard. 

Same problem as all of the Myojin, just doesn't DO anything as a commander.  Blue bounce could make this dude ok like his green and black brothers(?)

Not sure who is playing the white Myojin, but props to you!  I'd love to see that deck work.  White can recur the guy to some avail.  Anyway, on to our last Unsung Hero for the day:

There is only one general choice that no one will claim that starts with the letter N.  Unsuprisingly he comes from one of the top 3 sets to show up on this list, Champions of Kamigawa. 

Nagao here isn't a TERRIBLE card.  If you are into tribal samurai he is a decent choice of general compared to ...say...[card]Kentaro, the Smiling Cat[/card], but there just aren't enough good samurai to make a deck, but at least he isn't [card]Gallowbraid[/card].

I have been reworking my Big Box lately.  It has been a long time since I have added cards to it and, at some point, I had sorted the whole thing by color and it was all kinds of not shuffled.  I built my Big Box just a bit differently than the standard rules on the Big Box format’s website.  I prefer a little bit more randomness and a little more …well what’s the nice way to put it “mana management”in my Big Box environment.  Mana management is just my polite way of saying “Mana screw can be fun!”  My Big Box is riddled with [card]Castle Sengir[/card] and [card]Rainbow Vale[/card] in the land deck, and I merge the non-land decks all into one. 
You never know what color of card(s) you will be drawing, and it makes for all kinds of interesting situations.  I once saw someone end up tapping something like 6 lands to play an [card]Elvish Warrior[/card] ([card]Koskun Keep[/card], 2 to activate it and a [card]Henge of Ramos[/card] with 2 to  activate it).  

My Big Box is also mostly commons and uncommons with around 8 rares per color, most of which are jank.  I like the fact that having only jank and utility in the big box suddenly makes unplayable cards sitting around my Magic table into the biggest bombs.  I have seen [card]Ronom Serpent[/card]s blow out a whole table, and wins on the back of [card]Pyromatics[/card].  However, when you are in an environment that is a closed pool of cards, most of which are jank and can’t do things that rares normally do, you have to tweak things to make the game progress…at all…ever.

The first major thing that my Big Box has that speed things up and keep things fun are proxies.  When I was introduced to Big Box, [card]Ember Shot[/card] was always treated as a [card]Wheel of Fortune[/card], and [card]Malicious Advice[/card] was treated as a [card]Fork[/card] (both of which showed up in great abundance). Another thing that has been suggested to me by a multitude of players is to have some sort of wrath effect proxied in.  I am considering doing just that and maybe even proxying in a powerful spell of each color.  Something like: change Fork to [card]Twincast[/card], keep [card]Wheel of Fortune[/card], [card]Wrath of God[/card]…I like where this is going, but I am less sure of what to do in the other 2 colors.  Tutoring for non-land is forbidden (God that would take forever, the non-land deck is something like 1500 cards!) and I don’t know what to even do with green.  Basically all Green does in Big Box is fix your mana anyway.  It’s something to think about anyway.

Second, NO TUTORS Mui card draw!  Tutoring is BRUTAL in multiplayer to begin with.  If there were tutors in a 1500 card shared deck, people would just plain QUIT! The land deck is much smaller, coming in at 200-250 cards-ish (like I would actually count.) and you basically have to search that deck to make Big Box work with all of the colors in the same deck.

Finally, you have to put in a LOT of extra staples and don’t forget the haymakers.  Out of the approximately 250 green cards going into my box, 100 of them are land fetch.  Blue and card draw will probably be similar, as will white and artifact/enchantment removal, black creature kill and red burn spells.  Also, there needs to be as many haymaker spells in the deck as possible. I’m talking [card]Fireball[/card], [card]Overrun[/card], Giant evasive creatures…you know what I mean.  Something has to end the creature stalemates and that is somewhat 
difficult in a format where everything is limited fodder.

I hope my random ranting about my Big Box gave some insight on how to make a good one for yourself, and I honestly hope that you try the format out if someone around you has one, and if not, make one yourself out of your 5+th copies of your draft crap.  You will never has this much fun with [card]Bog Hoodlums[/card] anywhere else!

So until next time, Use YOUR shoes as counters!

-Shoe

I'm not going to talk too much about making a stack for Type 4 today, as that has been done to death by other writers. What I want to talk about is the actual rules set of Type 4. The rules my local playgroup use are very different from what I am used to and there are tons of "variations on a theme" of the format's rules.

First, The starting hand size that my local playgroup uses is 0, max hand size 5. I find this method to be much less interesting because there are far fewer choices of what I can play for several turns and it tends to make card draw cripplingly overpowered. I personally would vote  for the 7 card hand just like normal Magic. You can still only play one spell per turn and that in and of itself is a limiting factor for the format.

Second, How spells can be played each turn varies from group to group. In his recent article Abe Sargent mentioned that paying an alternate  cost
(like the one on [card]Force of Will[/card]) does not count against the one spell
per turn rule. Also, the limitation on how many activated abilities can be
played per turn varies as well. I don't think I like the option that Abe
proposed/his group uses because you are still playing the spell. I am ok
with cards with Cascade still working properly, so an exception for that may
be in order, but with cards like the [card]Bringer of the[/card]_ Dawn and Zendikar Traps in the mix, some
alternate costs play like a cost reduction, not like using an altogether
different resource to play cards.

  Activated abilities seem to cause some of the most fuss for Type 4,
some people restrict to only one activated ability per turn, others allow any
number of activations, preferring to simply not include unbounded activated
abilities in their stack (like [card]Firebreathing[/card]). Sometimes X spells and
abilities are left out of a stack, other times they are restricted to 5, or
10, or really any arbitrary number agreed upon by the group. I think that the
best option amongst these is to simply leave unbounded activated abilities and X
spells out of your stack.  Most of those cards are good in other formats
and Type 4 should be (in my opinion) to play cards that are simple, fat and/or
expensive and do crazy things. 

Finally, I have seen many groups alter the  starting life total of this format. As far as I know, that is a new thing  (my group used 40, then 30, and now 25). I have not played enough Type 4 with changing life totals to have much of an opinion, but it does seem like a decent idea to be able to take a bit more damage than usual in a format with first turn [card]Stalking Vengeance[/card].  One of these days, if it continues to be popular, a consistent version of Type 4 that everyone is comfortable with should probably be thrown together. I am not sure that every playgroup would adopt it, but standardization is good for a format. EDH and other more popular formats can attest to this.

Shortly, I plan on making my own stack and experimenting with what the best setup is. 

Until then,
Use YOUR shoes as counters!


-Shoe