Clouded Judgement

The trouble with public polls is that they don’t lie – even when you’d like them to.

You just want me to lose money, you merciless animals

Ah well, I can’t be too unhappy. It’s a license to brew, after all… even if it is likely to take me down some strange alleyways.

What we learned in our last adventure

A couple of weeks back, I received a sound thrashing from the Modern metagame as I tested my Boomtown land destruction deck. In the course of taking my licks, I learned the following lessons:

1. Proactivity is King: As a rule, you can’t sit back in Modern. You need to be doing powerful things starting early in the game.
2. Disruption needs to be backed up… HARD: It’s great to disrupt your opponents, it really is. But don’t expect to wreck their hand, or mana, then have ages to close the game out. In Modern, there are too many good top-decks. You have to kill them quickly.
3. The field is too wide to be hated out: Modern is full of different, powerful decks doing different, powerful things. Cute metagame decks are not the ticket to success… with only 60 cards in your library, you can’t hate ’em all.

In short, we have to go big or go home. Just to make it spicy, I also have to go big in a way that isn’t terribly popular with other people. Where to start?

A bunch of terrible decks

Toshiro Umezawa

Those of you who know me will not be surprised to hear this, but the first thing I did was throw all my hard-earned lessons out of the window to build a durdly, slow, ‘cute’ metagame deck.

    

O – M – G guys, with the printing of Illness in the Ranks we can set up the Toshi interaction way earlier in the game!

• We can gain INSANE card advantage by flashing back the instants that make up most of our deck!
• We can auto-trigger morbid spells and blast people out with a bunch of 5-point Brimstone Volleys!
• We can dredge all our amazing instants with Darkblast…AND IT’S AN INSTANT!
• GIFTS UNGIVEN IS A 6-FOR-1, SO MUCH VALUE AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGHHHH

This deck was absolutely horrible, but I still had several goes at it. I justified it to myself with the mantra that Illness in the Ranks completely shuts down Splinter Twin. Eventually, I realised that I had incorporated so many cute interactions, there was literally no space to fit a way to reliably win.

This ‘deck’ is everything that’s wrong with the Modern cardpool. Let’s close the book and move on. Next on the list…

Salvaging Station

  

Back in the day, I used to play KCI in Mirrodin-era standard. My version was the vanilla, activate Myr Incubator then sac the tokens to Belcher you strategy. I remember getting demolished in a mirror match by one Paul Lim, who played a salvaging station variant which seemed very sweet. Although I have very few delicious artifact lands to feed into the furnace, I decided I’d have a bash at reinventing the strategy.

Sadly, I’m not actually good enough at Magic to build this deck. The rules interactions around my half-remembrances of how Paul played it escape me; trying to work them back makes me feel like an idiot:

• If I animate a Blinkmoth Nexus, I can sac it to the Ironworks and get an untap trigger for Salvaging station…so far, so good.
• Now… with the Nexus in my graveyard, is it still an artifact? If so, I can replay it with the station…unless it’s still a creature.
• My head hurts.

I started to think about another approach:

• I can activate a Chimeric Mass, sac it to the Ironworks and get an untap trigger for Salvaging station…so far, so good.
• Now… I can replay it with the station. Still so far, so good.
• Oh, wait. It’s a 0/0 if I activate it and just dies.

Determined not to let this go, I tried one more time:

• If I crack an Origin Spellbomb, then sac the Myr token to the Ironworks, I’ll get an untap trigger for Salvaging station…so far, so good.
• Now… I can replay the Spellbomb with the station, use one of my two floating mana to crack it again… and repeat the loop. Still so far, so good.
• I end up with as much colourless mana as I want. Where does that get me?

Well, lots of places.

• If I have some other trinkets, like Conjurer’s Bauble or Chromatic Sphere/Star, with a second Salvaging Station I can draw my deck… that’s a thing.
• If I can put a Disciple of the Vault into play, I can burn the opponent out with triggers.
• If I have an Emrakul in my hand, I can cast it and probably win.

I’m not going to lie to you, this deck actually sounded quite sweet in my head. Then, reasonable Dave got involved and ruined everything. Brewer Dave, you are an idiot! He screamed. Here is why:

• You have a combo which requires 3 cards to assemble, but which doesn’t just win when they do. It then needs a range of other cards to do anything at all.
• It folds to a single counterspell on the Salvaging Station, or the Ironworks. It folds to a single piece of artifact kill.
• This is the kind of thing players do when they’re starting out: build Rube Goldberg machines. It’s forgivable after 3 months of playing the game, not after 20 years.
• And besides… you’ll be playing the bloody thing on Magic Online. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY CLICKS THIS WILL TAKE?

And just like that, the dream was over: shattered by a brazen lack of click-economy. I will do many things in pursuit of brewer’s euphoria, but not even I am prepared to sacrifice the touchpad of my laptop and the viability of my index finger.

Sway of the Stars

  

I could suspend a Greater Gargadon, right, then suspend Sway with Jhoira, right, then somehow hang on for ages and BOOM! Hasty Gargadon, swinging for your whole life total!

I need a drink.

Old favourites are the best

I needed something with oomph. I needed something which could disrupt the fast decks, but also resolve big, game altering effects and deploy threats which killed in short order. Frankly, I needed a break.

Walking into work at 5.45am, I decided to stop churning decks through my brain and just watch an LSV Modern Masters draft video. At one stage in the draft, Luis was presented with the opportunity to draft a Death Cloud, after passing a Greater Gargadon.

“Death Cloud/Gargadon… yeah, no-one’s beating that,” was the general flavour of his remarks on the subject.

 

Jerry Maguire-style, he had me at ‘Death Cloud’. I was all-in.

Let’s just sacrifice everything!

Licking the nib of my digital pencil, I started to scribble down a list of things which would work well with a mass sacrifice scheme.

The first name on the teamsheet was Bloodghast. Sac him, discard him, mistreat him however you like – he is coming back for more, like a trusting (if undead and blood-hungry) puppy.

If we’re going to be playing with the little Vampire who could, we might as well abuse Smallpox too. Discarding a Bloodghast to Smallpox, then playing a land is a sweet, sweet feeling. Now, how else might I break the symmetry of Smallpox?

  

OK, bear with me on this one. I want you to imagine the following sequence of plays:

• Turn 1, make a Black/Red dual land and suspend Greater Gargadon.
• Turn 2, make a Swamp. Play the talisman. Tap it for a colourless mana, return the Swamp to hand and play the borderpost.
• Turn 3, Smallpox; in response, sac your only land to the Gargadon.

It’s a tiny thing, but by playing out the Smallpox in this way, we can eke out a tiny bit of value from that land we would have been forced to send to the graveyard anyway. One time counter on a Gargadon can be the difference between success and failure.

Oh, and we’re not justifying these mana-rocks purely on the basis of a corner case like the one above – they’re also great with Death Cloud, which will not force you to sac them. Needless to say, in an ideal world all our actual lands will be going the way of the Gargadon while Death Cloud is on the stack.

  

I was also going to need more creatures which interacted well with sacrifice – preferably the kind who will bounce back after a dose of the Pox, or a close encounter of the cloudy kind. Geralf’s Messenger seemed beefy and well suited to the job, but I resolved to try Epochrasite in this slot too; in all likelihood, the deck would regularly be working with very restricted mana, which might leave the cheaper creature better placed within my overall strategy.

  

At this point, I finally decided to start learning the lessons of my previous foray into Modern. I wanted to start interacting with my opponent immediately – and I did not want to be run over by an aggressive deck without hope that I could staunch the bleeding.

Death Cloud is great, but it’s slow in the context of the format. These two cards would keep me in the game until my bigger effects came online.

Now, time for a confession: I couldn’t really make this deck without running the next card… and there is no way I can describe her as ‘bargain basement’.

Lili is the only truly expensive card in my deck, but she’s essential to its function. She gives me more hand disruption, another way to interact early with a hexproof idiot and an ultimate which, on the rare occasion it goes off, is pretty relevant to my plan of inflicting a crippling resource grind on the opponent.

So, what does this monstrosity end up looking like?

The Meatgrinder

The beast, unveiled.

This is what I’m proposing to take into the two man queues.

I opted for Epochrasite over Messenger, both because it is cheaper (resources will assuredly be scarce) and because it is a better blocker in the face of early aggression. It also comes back more than once in a longer game, which can be surprisingly relevant.

I included Damnation in the maindeck, in order to have an answer to sturdier creatures and a catch-all in the event that I was being savagely beaten down as my gameplan was stuttering. If I expected more slow decks, these two slots would probably be occupied by Thoughts of Ruin, but as it stands, those are relegated to the board.

My game plan is simple:

• I want to suspend a Gargadon, ideally on the first turn, then begin a brutal slog of resource destruction which I can mitigate from my own side by abusing my sacrifice outlet and recurring threats.
• I want to nickel and dime my opponent with as many Smallpoxes and Liliana activations as possible, so that, by the time I bring a hasty 9/7 monster to bear, they will have as close to zero permanents and cards as possible. If I can achieve full blowout by resolving a Death Cloud from which I can easily recover, but which floors them completely, so much the better.
• I want to squeak every point of damage and life loss out of my Bloodghasts, Epochrasites and spells as I can, so that my Gargadon is as close as it can be to lethal.

My deckbuilding motivations are pretty simple, too:

• I want to beat the most successful Modern deck of recent times, Melira Pod.
• I want to be brutally hostile to aggressive creature decks in Game 1.
• I want to be able to transform, after sideboarding, into an even more focussed Land Destruction deck against slower strategies which commit less early pressure to the board.

  

Time will tell how successful I have been on each of these counts, particularly against such a resilient strategy as Melira Pod – but I feel like I’m starting from a good place. Sam Pardee, after his GP winning performance with the deck, said that his worst matchup was ‘anyone with Pyroclasm’… I am the maindeck Pyroclasm guy. Smallpox is also no picnic for creature-combo decks; in the board I have Torpor Orb to nerf any infinite-trigger shenanigans.

Playing the deck… tightly

I’ve run various iterations of this deck through the Tournament Practice room to get a feel for it and sand off the rough edges. Those practice games have taught me that, more than any other strategy I can remember playing with, this one rewards precise sequencing and awareness of the game state.

Here are some of the mistakes I made when I started to learn the deck:

• I routinely missed opportunities to sacrifice a Bloodghast to Greater Gargadon before playing a land, which would recur it for free.
• I forgot several times to hold priority when casting a Smallpox, Death Cloud or Thoughts of Ruin; this meant that I missed out on a number of free sacrifices to my Gargadon and instead wept, as my permanents sank uselessly into the graveyard alongside my opponent’s.
• I once forgot to take account of the 1-point life loss incurred by casting a Smallpox; in combination with the damage incurred from playing the spell with Talisman of Domination, I dropped to zero life and lost a game I was favourite to win.

These mistakes are soul-destroying and leave one gripped with the conviction that they are the poorest player of the game who has ever drawn a card. But, certainly for someone of my modest ability, they are necessary: from the agony and shame, I have forged an iron determination to eliminate such idiocy from my play.

I want to never miss a sacrifice, or a Bloodghast trigger.

I want to never accidentally pull my Gargadon off-suspension with a sacrifice-inducing spell on the stack (something I have caught myself about to do twice, but thankfully averted).

I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror after every match.

Here we go again

The people have spoken: it’s time to jump back in those queues and see if we can manage better than an ignominious 25% record.

If I lose, I lose alone; if I win, I win for Gerry Boyd and every other man, woman and child who has ever resolved a Death Cloud with a tear in their eye.

Boomtown

When I write about Magic decks, I’m typically sharing ideas for the purpose of spreading fun around our card-slinging community.

Not today.

Today, I’m going to write about the antidote to fun; the extinction of fun. Well, except if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool griefer. Those guys will enjoy what follows an unhealthy amount.

If you play Magic to:

• Meet new friends
• Enjoy cool and complicated board states with big splashy plays
• Shake hands with your opponent after an honourable match, then have them earnestly wish you good luck for the rest of your tournament
• Still like yourself by the end of the tournament

…just stop reading now.

Remember the good old days?

You know, the days when it was OK to print cards like Sinkhole?

Sinkhole is one of a very specific breed of magic cards: the kind which shut down your opponent’s ability to actually play the game, starting on turn two.

While land destruction effects are widely despised in any form, they are typically confined to cards costing three or more mana; this allows a slightly larger window for an opposing player to try and establish themselves in the game.

At two mana, it is conceivable that a player going first could blow up each land their opponent plays every turn, beginning with their first, before a second can ever be deployed… or at least until the survival of those lands becomes irrelevant in the face of a vastly superior board position.

Thankfully, Sinkhole is relegated to older formats in which it sees little play – formats so powerful that they can shrug off such punitive disruption. No-one playing a more contemporary game will have to worry about such demoralising shenanigans.

Oh…wait.

Boom//Bust is a split card from Planar Chaos, which offers two options both decidedly unfriendly to the real estate on the board. For the uninitiated, split cards work very simply: you can play them as either of the spells printed on the card, although usually not both.

It’s also legal for play in Modern, a format which looks set to be used for at least one round of PTQs each season for the foreseeable future.

And Boom costs only two mana.

But I don’t want to blow up my OWN lands, you fool

Don’t worry, my disproportionately angry friend – neither do I.

If Boom was guaranteed always to kill one of our own lands, we simply wouldn’t play it. It would put us at a card disadvantage which would rarely be worth the sacrifice.

Happily, there exist ways to make the card rather more one-sided. The first and best known of these is Flagstones of Trokair, a land which, when it dies, handily replaces itself if your deck has been constructed correctly.

Flagstones was used to mitigate the downside of Boom in this way in Time Spiral block and the accompanying Standard format, so many older readers may be familiar with it. However, building a deck with only four lands which can help us break the symmetry of our marquee spell is going to yield underwhelming results. We need more lands that play ball.

…which brings me to Darksteel Citadel.

Artifact lands are almost universally banned in Modern, having enabled the dreaded affinity deck in some of its more potent previous incarnations. A by-product of this ruling is an obsession on my part with running the sole survivor, Darksteel Citadel, in various decks. Those decks typically care about the land being an artifact, so it will play nice with Tezzeret the Seeker and Thirst for Knowledge; this one is a break from the norm, because it only cares that the Citadel can’t be blown up.

It is the ideal partner for Boom, enabling multiple copies all on its lonesome.

Eight lands still isn’t enough for me. I want more!

Fetchlands are not the premier target for a Boom, but they’ll do in a pinch. The trick works as follows:

• Cast Boom, targeting your fetchland and an opponent’s land
• DO NOT pass priority. On Magic Online, you achieve this by holding down the CTRL key as you cast the spell.
• In response to your own Boom, crack your fetchland. Keep holding that CTRL key until the ability is on the stack!
• Put your fresh new land into play.
• Allow Boom to resolve. Since your fetchland is gone, it now only has one target: your opponent’s land, which will die ignominiously.

The reason that this isn’t an optimal play is that you need two mana plus a fetchland in order for it to work – so you can’t cast Boom on turn two if a fetchland is your only target. At worst, this version makes Boom into a Stone Rain, which is still a respectable spell; if you have a one-mana play which you can make using the land you just fetched, you’re still gaining some tempo.

Four spells does not a deck make

I’ll concede that point. We need more ways to blow up lands if we want the strategy to work. Luckily, there are cards at three mana which fit the bill.

  

Of this motley pair, I’m more attracted to Molten Rain. It’s marginally harder to cast, but I plan to deploy a deck which won’t struggle to hit RR by the third turn – and I expect the damage it can deal to be relevant.

There is an argument for running both, of course. To make a land destruction deck work, a certain density of spells which will take out a land is required… but having played some of these decks before, I also know that a great way to lose is to flood out on them. There is nothing more demoralising than dying to your opponent’s one-drop creature, which they resolved before you started blowing up all their lands, having smashed their manabase turn after turn. As it attacks you for two, over and over, as each draw step yields another Stone Rain or a land rather than the removal spell you so desperately desire, you may very well go mad.

I want to make space in my deck for cards which can kill creatures and kill my opponent. I also want to have access to extra copies of those cards and my land destruction later in the game.

This brings me to the card which, together with Boom, inspired this particular deck:

Welcome to a world of utter degeneracy

With Snapcaster on our team, we get to do dreadful, dreadful things. The ideal play pattern runs as follows:

• Turn two: Cast Boom, hitting one of our synergistic lands (ideally the Citadel) and the opponent’s first land.
• Turn three: Cast Molten Rain on the opponent’s second land.
• Turn four: Snapcaster comes down, flashing back Boom to clear away our opponent’s third land.

That’s exactly what was about to happen here… had my opponent not gone on rampaging tilt and disconnected after the first Boom.

This is clearly an amazing draw, but it’s not actually that unlikely. In fact, simply drawing any additional land destruction alongside a second-turn Boom is very good against a lot of strategies.

Any deck can experience a draw which is light on mana – and in these cases, a couple of lost lands are frequently enough to leave them down and out. Even a draw which sees them make land drops on turns one through four can be severely disrupted by a couple of Molten Rains. The important thing is to capitalise on each stumble, bringing enough pressure to bear that an opponent can be finished off before they can meaningfully recover.

Choosing our threats

My first draft of the deck carried a suite of burn and creatures with which to finish off the opponent – but in an effort to maximise the land destruction theme, they included several Avalanche Riders and Restoration Angels.

  

This was a fine combination when it worked; the problem was, I was creating situations where an opponent was choked for mana early in the game, but I wasn’t putting them under pressure with these creatures until turn four and five.

I kicked the deck around with some much better players and arrived at the idea of playing everyone’s favourite one-mana threat, the mighty-morphin’ Delver of Secrets, to start bringing the heat from turn two onward.

  

I still had space to plump for some four-drops, though – but again following advice, I pushed through my budget-friendly instincts and traded my way to some premier planeswalkers:

  

Ajani supports my strategy in the same way as Avalanche riders, typically taking out a land for the whole game… but he can also keep a threat under wraps, give me some help burning an opponent out or even wreck their mana for good if the game goes longer.

Elspeth, as it was put to me, is just awesome.

Topping the curve, I wanted something which would hit like a train and help me to close out the game in short order. Happily, I didn’t have to shell out anything for the perfect candidate, whom I was fortunate enough to pick up for next to nothing when he was unfashionable:

Full disclosure: this guy is pretty pricey, so if you’re looking for a budget alternative, I’d try something like Archwing Dragon. It’s more mana intensive, but cards in this slot should generally only have to attack once or twice for you to win.

The rest of this deck is rounded out four copies each of four strong cards, all of which help advance your strategy or close the game.

  

  

• All this deck ever wants to do is profitably cast Boom on turn two. Casting Serum Visions on turn one will help to make that happen.
• Lightning Bolt needs no introduction. Alongside Lightning Helix, it gives the deck a means of mopping up creatures which have slipped through before you started cutting off your opponent’s mana… and equally important, it provides reach to let you finish things off before the opponent stops reeling and starts casting good spells.
• Remand helps us to keep an opponent bottle-necked, whilst drawing us into more action spells. It can be surprisingly effective in a land destruction strategy: remanding an opponent’s play, then untapping, making a land and snapcastering a molten rain to cut them off from playing it again feels pretty good. That said, it’s the spell I’m least sure about in the deck, since I want to be spending my mana proactively with almost every other card… holding up two mana to counter something can be awkward.

Just show us the deck, already

Here is my current working copy of ‘Boomtown’:

The maindeck, I’m pretty happy with. The sideboard is, frankly, a mess… but it’ll get better as I play more matches and understand which strategies I’m really gunning for.

• Sudden Shock is a little piece of technology I adopted after some tough matches against poison, but it has proven to have further-reaching value.
  • It kills a Glistener Elf or an Inkmoth Nexus stone dead, regardless of how many pump spells the poison player has in hand.
  • It kills an Arcbound Ravager, or any potential target for his modular counters, without a moment of concern.
  • It kills Kiki-Jiki or Melira, as a Pod player goes for their combo, in a way that eliminates all chance of shenanigans.
• Wear//Tear is a bit of a catch-all utility card, but I like it. So far it has destroyed Birthing Pods, Vernal Blooms, Cranial Platings, Inkmoth Nexi, and Oblivion Rings. I hope to snag a few Prismatic Omens in due course.
• Slagstorm I’m a bit ambivalent about. I added it because I noticed that decks with an abundance of mana-creatures could ignore my core strategy – and I wanted to be able to punish them for committing lots of them to the board. I plumped for a three-damage sweeper so that I could handle a wider range of creatures… still, I’m not sure it shouldn’t be Pyroclasm.
• Boros Charm… this used to be in my maindeck. Some games I would win simply because I had aggressively Lightning-bolted my opponent early, then managed to charm them for four, untap and snapcaster them for the final four… but my win rate didn’t really dip when I exchanged them for more Remands. I still have them as insurance against sweepers and some extra reach, but I rarely side them in. They should probably go.
• Restoration Angel is here because A) I’m addicted to value and B) I sometimes feel like I want another creature or two which can sneak in damage. Since they aren’t essential enough to make the maindeck, I could see just dropping them.
• Smother is my concession to Tarmogoyf. By including them, alongside a single Watery Grave, I give myself an out to one of the most popular threats in Modern. Short of that, I have to race the Goyfs or tap them down with Ajani, which is less than ideal.

Put your money where your mouth is

I may be about to punt a large number of these

I don’t generally build decks which have an eye on cut-throat competitiveness; it’s not my style. However, this is a land destruction deck with a healthy smattering of premium cards in it, so I can’t kid myself that’s it’s a purely fun contraption built for shits and giggles.

For that reason, I’m not going to treat this in the same way I do my other, more friendly durdlings: this is not something I will be running out in the casual rooms simply for the joy of playing. If I’m building a deck which is only acceptable in competitive surroundings, I owe it to you, the reader, to actually measure its effectiveness in that environment.

I will therefore be vacating the Tournament Practice room, where this deck was born and took its first steps, for the steeper climbs of the Two-man queues. My plan is to jam as many games as my ticket balance will allow, then report back to you with my findings.

• If all goes well, it will be a valedictory post in which I pat myself on the back for a work of deck-building greatness
• If it goes rather more realistically, the article will at least serve as a warning to inveterate brewers about how easy it is to throw away your money online

Be it tragedy or triumph, I will endeavour to make it funny – and to include a number of comedy screenshots, come rain or shine. Cross your fingers for me.

The Pig Detector

Tell me, dear reader: do you know how often the humble pig is depicted in popular culture?

I do.

Can you say with certainty that you will detect any such depictions whenever and wherever they cross your path?

I can.

Now, you maybe saying to yourself, that seems unlikely.

Our modern world is crammed full of competing stimulus, bursting at the seams with colours and sounds and live broadcasts and brand messages and 24/7 information feeds.

How could a mere man be certain, were he even to want such certainty, that no porcine reference would elude him?

The answer is simple. I have acquired a Pig Detector. An infallible Pig Detector.

The process of detection

As a user of the Pig Detector (AKA my son, David) my experience could not be simpler. I need only to carry him with me, occasionally pausing to perform simple maintenance work such as producing food, diluted fruit juice and fresh nappies. His hyper-sensitive pig-detection algorithms will do the rest.

A typical detection event will run as follows:

1. Carry David into a new area, such as a room of the house, street, retail location, visitor attraction, etc.
2. Hear David emit his signature Pig noise.
3. Cease all activity.
4. Patiently scan the entire area for the Pig image you know is present.
5. Eventually find the image. Point at it.
6. Hear David emit his signature Pig noise.
7. DETECTION COMPLETE.

You want proof?

My son can detect a Pig anywhere, no matter how obscure the depiction appears by comparison to a real pig. If this sounds like hubris, allow me to present the evidence.

Name: Piglet

Location: Retail display, Mothercare

Status: DETECTED

Name: Peppa, George and Daddy Pig

Location: Casually lying on top of a fixture, Morrisons

Status: DETECTED

Name: Digby Pig

Location: Inside David’s buggy

Status: DETECTED

The Gameplan

Leveraging this remarkable ability might be somewhat challenging – it is, after all, a pretty niche specialization – but I’m optimistic that we can find a way. As the continued success of supercar sales during the world economic downturn has proved, people are always willing to pay for quality.

Alternatively, it proves that rich people simply have more money than sense, but if anything that bodes well for the launch of commercial Pig detection.

I’m currently still at the information-gathering stage, by which I mean I’m hanging around in public places such as cafes, restaurants and soft-play venues, hoping to overhear conversations which contain key phrases like: “…if only I could track down that damned PIG!”

Over to you, pig-seekers

In 2011, a crack Pig Detection professional was sent to Broxburn, West Lothian, with his parents, purely because they lived there.

This individual promptly escaped the traditional, stereotyped lifestyle of a toddler, into the underground pursuit of swine-tracking. Today, still supported by his parents, he survives as an elite hog-locator.

If you have a problem (related to missing or hidden pigs), if no one else can help, and if you can find him….maybe you can hire… The Pig Detector.

To be the Best: a by-the-numbers system for writing your ‘Best Man’s speech’

He’s finally done it.

Your Brother/Cousin/Best mate/other has taken the plunge and proposed to the man or woman he loves. You’re one of the first people to find out, as he excitedly explains to you that he’s getting hitched and he wants you to be his Best Man.

Caught up in the moment, you exuberantly agree. Some moments later, you start to think about what it actually means: organising a Stag Night, which will be a logistical pain but probably quite rewarding… and giving the keynote speech to the assembled guests.

You may be the sort of person who relishes this opportunity, who has a thousand ideas for a memorable address and who is unfazed by stepping into the spotlight. Congratulations! This article is not for you.

However, if you’re perhaps:

• A little bit intimidated by the idea of speaking to all those people
• Unsure of what’s expected of you
• Feeling lost because you have no idea where to start

…then fear not, you’ve come to the right place.

Don’t panic

There is a simple, 5 step process which will take you from a standing start to a memorable speech, regardless of your Groom, your audience, or your experience in public speaking.

This post will walk you through the formula, which is distilled from the combined wisdom of all the smart, funny people I’ve had the privilege to talk to about the subject over the years. Their golden nuggets of advice have helped me write a bunch of speeches with friends and colleagues – now they can help you do the same.

For simplicity, I’m going to refer to the happy couple throughout as the ‘Bride and Groom’ – but this guide will work for any shape of relationship, provided the participants have asked you to play the role of a Best Man.

Step 1:  Know your mission; know your audience

As Best Man, you have to take the Groom on a journey.

When you stand up, the Groom has just finished making his own speech. Traditionally, it will have been heartfelt and emotional, containing a tribute to his  Bride which will have reminded everyone just why they turned up to share in the happy day. He will be on the mountaintop.

You have to take him from that mountaintop, all the way to the abyss.

You can lean him out as far as you like over that bottomless pit of humiliation, until in the mid-point of your speech you are holding him suspended only by his metaphorical hair… provided that, by the end, you can set him back on the mountaintop.

The “hero’s” journey

In practical terms, this means that you’ll fulfill the expectations of the audience by telling stories which may provoke laughter and have the Groom squirming in his seat, but you won’t share anything that could do permanent damage to his relationship with the Bride or her family. You will skate close to the thin ice, but you’ll never allow yourself to go crashing through it.

To help you judge how far is going to be far enough, it’s a good plan to chat to the Groom about the Bride and her family. Get a sense of who they are and how they talk to each other. If they’re a little mischievous and enjoy a risque joke, maybe you can get away with some off-colour gags; if they’re more reserved, perhaps it’s not a good idea to divulge exactly what happened on that infamous holiday to Ayia Napa.

Getting back to the mountaintop requires a switching of gears.

Once you’ve embarrassed the poor guy enough, it will be time to start reminding the guests that the Bride has not, in fact, been sold a pup. You’ll talk about his admirable qualities, the reasons why he’s been a good friend – and extrapolate those into reasons he’ll be a good husband. Don’t be bashful: he must have something going for him and, even if you never allude to it again, now is the time to spell it out for the world.

Finally, it’s traditional for you to say something(s) nice about the Bride. Good options include complimenting her appearance, considering she’s likely to have invested a lot in looking good for the day; explaining the positive impact she has had on the Groom since they got together; and reassuring her that many years of happiness lie ahead.

Oh,and for total clarity: never, ever insult the Bride. A brave Best Man who enjoys a great relationship with the lady (say, that of a brother and sister), might gently tease her, but only with affection and only if he has nerves of steel. One remark has the potential to sour your whole contribution to the day: I counsel you not to risk it.

That’s the basic framework. If you keep it in mind, it will greatly simplify the writing of your speech and boost your chances of hitting all the right notes.

Step 2: Get his mates in on the act

If you sit down with a blank page in front of you and expect yourself to cook up funny anecdotes, that’s more likely to produce high blood pressure than great results.

Humour is best harvested from its natural habitat: good-natured banter between friends.

Invite the Groom’s best friends to join you for an evening and help build the speech. Even if you don’t know the people involved tremendously well, it’s likely that they’ll be flattered when you ask them to participate in the Best Man process – everyone likes to play a part in the big day. In my experience, a table in a quiet pub or the living room of your house with a few beers are ideal settings, but your judgement about what will relax the group is best.

Once you get everyone together, you need to start collecting their stories. Before you begin, make sure you have the essential piece of equipment: a smartphone which can record voice notes. Trying to scribble down material, amid laughter and fast-paced chat, is a thankless task and you’ll inevitably lose key details; just as importantly, actually capturing the tone of a person’s voice or a memorable turn of phrase can be really valuable when you are planning your own delivery.

Seriously, don’t leave home without it.

You also don’t want the conversation to meander so much that it’s difficult to draw out specific information when you come to review your notes. To get around this, create a list of general discussion topics you want to cover; these will likely be a bit different for every Groom, but I include my most recent list for reference:

• Earliest memories of the Groom
• Strangest things the Groom has done
• Funniest situations you’ve been in with the Groom
• The Bride and Groom: how they met each other, how you met her, how they are together

If you keep the atmosphere one of reminiscence and fun, you should have no problem getting enough ideas to build a great speech. Make sure to share your own stories on the topic as you go – this is a great time to record them, as input from others will doubtless bring back things you would otherwise have forgotten.

Step 3: Identify your themes

Once you have a wealth of shared memories to browse through, it’s time to review them and pick up any underlying themes which can tie a speech together.

With the right links, your speech will be turbocharged

While it’s certainly an option to simply tell the 5 best stories about the Groom, this approach is much less satisfying than one which links entertaining anecdotes together to highlight aspects of his character. Done well, a themed speech will have those closest to the Groom nodding their heads in recognition – and on occasion, teaching them something they didn’t know!

As you look for themes, it’s worth bearing some key questions in mind:

• What does this tell me about the Groom?
  • What common behaviours or attitudes of his does it highlight?
• How many other stories support this interpretation?
• Can I use the common thread to say something positive about the Groom?
  • Specifically, if I use it to take him to the abyss, will I later be able to flip it around and get him back toward the mountaintop?

If a theme ticks all of these boxes, quickly double-check – is it actually interesting enough to feature?

For example, if the Groom is obsessively clean and tidy, it might be easy to mock him for it and later to point out that it’s not all bad, but that subject matter can be very flat if not well-delivered. Don’t invest your energy in a theme if it’s not likely to be good fun.

Step 4: Plan a Gambit

How are you going to give your speech a shot in the arm that helps it stand out in the memories of the guests? Simple: you’re going to run a Gambit.

In the context of the Best Man’s Speech, a Gambit is an unusual maneuver which introduces an extra element to the speech, enhancing the experience for the audience. It can take the form of a simple prop, or a musical interlude, or a series of film clips, or really any theatrical flourish which you will be comfortable delivering.

Of all the steps, this one is the most open to interpretation.

If you have uncovered a strong enough theme in Step 3, you might extend it into a Gambit. If, for instance, the Groom is a Teacher, you might:

• Wear a mortarboard hat
• Arrange to have a small blackboard set up on an easel before you speak
• Deliver the speech as a lesson on ‘how not to behave if you want to meet a decent woman’, taking him to the abyss with details of his dodgy histroy
• Conduct a recap section near the end in which you counterbalance the rum stories with positive observations, setting the Groom back on the mountaintop

By combining a couple of simple, relevant props and fitting the style of your delivery to the theme, you’ve created a little bit of theatre which chimes with a major element of the Groom’s life: the perfect Gambit.

This is too much theatre. Any less is fine.

Of course, there will be situations in which you can’t uncover a theme which naturally inspires your Gambit. In these cases, a good alternative is to impose a strong, generic theme and fit your anecdotes into it. A good example I’ve seen executed is the ‘Photoshop special’:

• Arrange to have projection equipment set up before you speak
• Accompany your speech with a slideshow, filled with images relevant to the stories you are telling
• Have the images Photoshopped, so that the Groom’s face is superimposed onto a range of unlikely characters and dubious situations

Although this is remarkably simple as a concept, it can be truly hilarious if you invest the time in finding the choicest images. Other strong generic ideas include creating an audience participation speech using a Pub Quiz or Game Show format, delivering your speech as a poem, or singing a song. Your comfort with each of these will vary based on where your personal talents lie.

One final option is to pull a stunt, in order to get a reaction from the audience. This is difficult to do well, because you must be conscious of not overstepping the mark, but I do know of a famously teetotal individual who faked swigging from a bottle of whisky to calm his nerves… and created a significant frisson of humour and excitement, which was only heightened when other diners at the top table tried to relieve him of the bottle and were rebuffed.

My recommendation is only to try this approach if you have an idea which you feel very good about – and which you are sure won’t cause offense.

Before we move on, a word about logistics: if you’re planning something which involves props, needs equipment to be set up, or has any special requirements, try to visit the venue ahead of time. Introduce yourself, talk to the people who will be running the reception and give them a general idea of your plans; they’ll be able to steer you on what can and can’t be accommodated.

Armed with superior knowledge about the theatre of operations, you’ll be able to tweak your strategy, or even discard entirely segments which turn out to be impractical. Make  a list of the things you’ll need the venue team to do for you, share it with them, then check in again on the day before the wedding so you’re certain that they have things in hand. Even the best of Best Men can end up in a bad spot if his props go missing, or his wireless microphone runs out of battery.

Step 5: Prepare to deliver

Now for the hard part…

Except it’s not hard. Here are the reasons why:

1. You know your mission, to take the Groom on a rollercoaster ride out over the Abyss but land him safely back on the Mountaintop.
2. You’ve considered your audience and included points you think will tickle them, while deleting anything which you think will offend.
3. You’ve done your research, involving his friends and gathering a wealth of stories from which to select your material.
4. You’ve planned a resonant theme, which will bring your speech to life.
5. You’ve created a memorable Gambit– and you’ve made sure that the necessary background arrangements are in place to help it go smoothly.

With that level of detailed planning, you’re in better shape than most people when they stand up to speak.

Although it’s hard to be believe, you’ll be even more prepared than Boy-scout-falconry-man.

But you’ll have one more weapon in your arsenal: practice.

In the week leading up to the event, try to grab a small audience of sympathetic people to whom you can deliver the speech in full. Any of the Groom’s friends who were helpful at the research stage, your own close friends or your partner are ideal candidates.

Don’t just do it once, run it again and again. Stop at the end of each section and ask your audience for feedback:

• Which stories are the strongest?
• Which parts of your delivery are working best? What are the strong turns of phrase – and do they have any suggestions about how else you change anything that isn’t quite working?

Once you’ve got through the full speech and you’re becoming fluent at delivery, ask them:

• Does the speech flow?
• Would they change the order of the segments?
• Is there anything else they would like to suggest that might improve the speech?

You’ll learn a lot about the strengths of the speech by delivering it and hearing the opinions of your audience. You’ll also have a few days to change things up if your practice session reveals a problem.

This is also the point at which to decide on whether you will be using notes. All speeches are better without notes, but few people will expect you not to use them, so you have a lot of flexibility.

If you do decide to use notes, I recommend a series of small cue-cards with written prompts, which you can hold in your hand; these will keep you on the right path but ensure that your exact phrasing is spontaneous. There’s nothing worse than watching someone read from a sheet of paper without ever looking up.

If, after all your preparation, you’re still nervous… consider this:

• Everyone listening wants you to succeed. You’re part of the celebration that they’ve all bought into and they want to keep the good vibe going. They would laugh even if your opening was a bit shaky, so the fact that you’re actually bringing a brilliantly-rehearsed powerhouse means that you are home free.
• Everyone will appreciate the work you’ve put in. It’s apparent, even to the most casual observer, that there is a difference between a Best Man who stands up without a plan to ramble drunkenly for 5 minutes and what you are about to do, which is the culmination of several weeks’ planning. The guests will be impressed; the Groom will think you’re an absolute champion for working so hard to enhance his day.

You’re ready

When you have followed this system through, you will find yourself in the top 1% of most prepared public speakers. Everyone is willing you to succeed, you have planned to succeed… so you will.

You’re going to be brilliant: believe it. Let your inner rock star come out to play. Oh, and enjoy the drinks people are going to be buying you after ‘that awesome performance…’

It won’t look like this when you ace your speech. But it will bloody well feel like it.

1

They do say, young man, that leopards don’t change their spots; but they talk rubbish and we all know it. How long has it taken (with your help) to change every part of my life?

You’ve changed so much I barely even recognise some of your baby pictures; I’ve changed completely, because now I’m someone who likes to look at baby pictures.

Let me show you:

Less than a week old

Less than a week before your birthday

The same guy? If I hadn’t seen you grow with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.

When I sat down to write this little note, I had only the haziest idea of what it would look like; I knew I wanted to leave you another little milestone for the future, so that the time around your first birthday would be as accessible for you as the time of your birth, but beyond that I had a blank page.

I finally settled on borrowing a tradition from the office of the US President: please consider this the first annual State of the Next Generation Address.

A grand upheaval

I’m not sure it’s possible to convey just how enormous has been the change to my habits, desires and priorities your arrival prompted; but I’m a game guy, I’ll have a bash.

In the very early weeks of your life, your mother and I had to deal with two major tremors in the fabric of our lives.

• On the Emotional level, we had to get our heads around just how precious you were to us and how big/scary/downright unwelcoming the world was for a little person. That meant many moments of worry, of dizzying responsibility-related panic, of beating ourselves up over small mistakes in your care… it also meant many moments of quiet communion with you during late night feeds, or soppy tears and husky voices as we read you stories. It’s a big, big love to have drop into one’s lap and it took a while to get used to it. Honestly, there was a time in the hospital when I thought I’d never be able to hold you without tears… a granite-jawed, stoic frontiersman your old man is not.
• On the Practical level, we had an incredibly complex, time-intensive routine to incorporate into our normal functioning. Speaking only for myself: I’m not good with chores and maintenance-type tasks. Getting on top of the feeds, changes, sleeps, sterilisations, baths et al that you brought with you was pretty challenging. There were a lot of actions and they were required very regularly; it was a thorny process, involving many raised voices from all three of us.

The primary factor in achieving comfort with these changes was a simple one: confidence.

A very good friend (and one of your many uncles) expressed it best to me when talking about bringing his second child home: “Well,” he shrugged, “You know they’re not going to blow up… so it’s fine.”

That’s the truth of the matter. As each day passed and nothing awful happened, we started to become less stressed; at the same time, you began to space out your sleeps and feeds as your own rhythms settled down. We became slicker at doing all the maintenance jobs; at the same time, your level of demand for those jobs began subtly dropping off.

In the months leading up to your half-year, my memory becomes a bit of a blur. I know there was a lot of lying around, combined with a fair amount of hilarious fashion decisions into which you had no input. Luckily, you don’t have to rely on my hazy descriptions, as your mother has a host of photographs:

You appear terrified, but that bear suit is nonetheless one of my fondest memories.

This is from a coffee shop in St Andrews, I believe – part of a long tradition of photos in which we’re largely chopped out. You’ll be used to it by now, I suppose.

At the time of writing, this is the closest you’ve ever been to PJ in your life.

I included this one just for laughs. Sorry, mate.

As you can see, these were some good times. You had moved on from being a tiny, largely unresponsive baby to a bubbly wee guy with recognisable features and an interest in the world.

One of my most treasured memories from this stage is of carrying you around in your baby harness:

I will never get tired of these pictures. If you ever feel like shrinking so I can fit you back in that thing, just let me know.

Once we reached the half-year mark, you really started to up the pace. Firsts arrived with the regularity of Scottish raindrops.

• You started wriggling around a whole lot more – we’d find you in all sorts of bizarre, sprawling positions when we walked into your bedroom in the morning.
• You began sitting up of your own accord, which seemed a revelation at the time, but was quickly dwarfed by your other spiralling achievements.
• Your risk-taking nature started to assert itself (or your Mother’s – a matter of interpretation) as you began taking to swings, ballpits and the garden.

As ever, these moments are preserved in glorious technicolour:

Nap? I thought you said ‘gymnastics’.

Move the bottle, son, it’s undignified.

Faster, faster MUHAHAHAHAHAHA

You were always this good-looking; even my DNA couldn’t hold you back.

As we closed in on your first birthday, every day was a surprise. You’ve never been quiet, sunshine, but your chatterbox nature really started to exert itself:

• You had favourite words and sounds which you would repeat, over and over. At one point, you said ‘Bob’ so frequently that we assumed he must be a close personal friend; later, you would spout ‘sugoi’ in long, gurgling chains. I’m told it means ‘awesome’ in Japanese, which indicates that you were already an optimistic cosmopolitan even at this early stage.
• A range of ear-piercing shrieks and deafening bellows were deployed, to indicate your impatience with our failure to feed or amuse you sufficiently well or quickly. If you ever complain about someone else being demanding, forgive me when I laugh blackly in your face.

You weren’t just getting louder, either: you were becoming mobile.

• At first there was the rolling; you would stretch yourself into a crude spindle and tumble sideways toward nearby objects. This was hilarious to watch, but heralded the end of that precious period during which we could set you down in  one spot, nip to the loo and expect you to still be there when we returned.
• Then came the commando crawling. Whenever I was called upon to describe the pained, desperate way you would drag yourself forward an inch at a time, I could only compare it to watching Sean Connery’s grim struggle after taking an abdomen full of lead in action classic, The Untouchables. Watch it and see if it brings back any memories.
• Latest in the developmental line is your full-throttle crawling. As I type, you are perhaps the fastest thing on four legs in our house – and trust me, the cat is no slouch. It is both exhilirating and terrifying to watch you barrelling around the domestic environment, finding specks of dirt to eat, hinges in which to jam your fingers and cat food to decorate the kitchen with; how close I feel to each end of the spectrum is a function of how likely I am to catch up to you before disaster strikes.

Here are a few of your highlights from the run-up to your first birthday. Please note: you spent a lot of time at the swing park!

With your good pal, Music Bunny

 

BANANA!

Photogenic doesn’t really cover it.

You were no stranger to the Seven Seas, even at an early age. YA-HAAAAAARRR

In short, you’ve come a long way from eating, sleeping and involuntary muscle movements. You’re a proper little guy – and watching you grow is proving to be more fun than I could ever have imagined.

Lifelong learning

More eloquent people than I have remarked on the double-life a parent is obliged to lead, as both teacher and student. All I can add to their insight is an extra, assenting voice.

You came into this world knowing almost nothing, David, but you weren’t quite the blank slate I had imagined you would be. It wasn’t so much what you had to learn that surprised me, but what you didn’t – the mannerisms and attitudes which were written into your DNA, but which I had always assumed would have been the product of nurture over nature.

I’ll give you the perfect example: when you are tired, you roll your head from side to side. You do this whether sitting up or lying down, wherever you happen to be. When I first saw you doing it, I presumed that you were irritated and struggling to be free of my interference. Your mother corrected me; when I asked her how she knew, she replied that she did the same thing.

“No you don’t,” I retorted, to which she responded by demonstrating her version of the motion. I was immediately struck by a feeling of having seen, but never recognised a fundamental pattern – it was obvious in that second that I had seen her roll her head a thousand times, but had never connected it with tiredness or, latterly, with your behaviour.

It was a wonderful moment. Your mum was demonstrating for me the unbreakable bond that will always exist between you; without words, she was telling me that on a fundamental level, you were made of the same stuff. I knew intellectually that this was true, as I knew it was true for you and me, but this was the first time I felt it. Every time since, when you exhibit a behaviour of yours which reflects one of ours, I get the same little thrill.

Of course there are many things we do need to teach you – and let me be clear, you are a quick learner. Having seen you explode forward from the start line of total helplessness to your current milestone of exuberant exploration, I know just how quickly you can push back your own horizons. I promise you that I will never underestimate your potential having seen the leaps already made.

I can’t round off a section on learning and teaching without stressing how much you have taught me. Thanks to you, I’ve learned:

• That even a man who hates domestic chores can change nappies and clean bottles like a pro when your welfare is at stake.
• That it is possible to have more fun sitting on our living room rug with you than cube drafting.
• That I could love you more today than the day you were born, an idea I would have laughed off at the time.

Bring on Chapter 2

I’m told that children of two are ‘terrible’ – but I’m quite happy to find out for myself. It’s been great fun hanging around with you this last year, so I can’t believe that your company over the next 12 months won’t be worth swallowing a few tantrums for.

I’ll be back, once the dust has settled on this next stretch of our journey, to document it all for you once again. I hope we’ll read this together one day and share some laughs, when you’re taking your first steps into the big bad world, or perhaps even when you have kids of your own. I also like to think that, even when I’m not around to talk to, your childhood will still be here for you to explore and to wonder at as I did first time around.

I love you, bambino. Until next year…

Clash of the Titans

Tonight, we do something… different.

Tonight, we push the boundaries of what is possible with the meager resource pool of 12 geeks and 540 pre-sleeved Magic cards.

Tonight, we play team cube sealed.

Dear reader, you will of course recall my primer on the nature and appeal of cube-drafting… skimmed it again? Good.

With all that in mind, let me tell you a tale of triumph, tragedy and camaraderie.

Late in the evening, we descended like a cloud of geeky, chuckling locusts upon Spellbound Games (Glasgow’s premier gaming store – and arguably the most community-integrated business I have ever encountered). Huddling in our threes, we filtered through the stacks of over-powered cards, trying to find amongst them the most appalling, degenerate things we could possibly do to each other.

What’s that, you ask? Who’s ‘we’? Let me break it down for you:

Team Handsome AKA The Thawing Glaciers

Gerry, Duncan and Billy

Bacon Buddies

Antwan, Stuie and Chris

Doomgape

Paul, Doug and Peter

Inter YerMaw

Gordon, James and Yours Truly

I would spout lavish biographies for each contestant, but I’d only end up failing to do the other gents justice before musing for several paragraphs about why I make a twat of myself in every photo; that would be a painful process for all involved. Let’s get to the meat of the thing.

How it goes down

Each of the four teams receives a stack of 135 randomly determined cards, a quarter of the total cube pool of 540. Over the following 50 minutes, they must collaborate to build three decks from the cards available in that stack, adding basic lands as required from a separate pool.

The deck-building process is a delicate balancing act. The teams must consider several factors:

• What archetypes are available?
  • Does the stack contain a host of small, efficient creatures and burn which lend themselves to aggro decks?
  • Is it jammed full of controlling effects which clear the board, draw cards and present enormous threats late in the game?
  • Are there any highly synergistic combinations of cards which suggest a particular type of gimmick deck?
• What colour combinations and splits are viable?
  • Most decks in a cube event will be in at least two colours, even if one is very clearly the primary colour and the other a splash.
  • When building three decks, it’s important to consider which colours are strongest in the pool; which colours will sit most easily together, based on the mana-fixing which is available; and how it is appropriate to split up certain colours.
  • Some colours lend themselves to being split as splashes amongst multiple decks, if the right cards are present; for instance, red and black typically have removal options without heavy mana commitments, so they might be apportioned to several decks in order that they all have a chance to deal with problem creatures.
• What is the appropriate power distribution amongst the decks?
  • Once a pool is opened, certain combinations of cards may represent a powerful core or theme for a deck.
  • If multiple packages like this exist, how hard should the team work to split them across the decks? Should they be as evenly spaced as possible, or crammed into one deck to create a monster which will almost guarantee a match win each round?

There’s more, but hopefully this will give you a flavour of how difficult the decisions faced by each team are.

Our personal challenge

In last night’s event, the men of Inter YerMaw were faced with a series of tough calls. a quick glance at our pool revealed:

• The tools for a powerful green ramp deck
• The mana fixing and variety of effects for a fairly interactive White/Blue/Black (Esper) midrange deck
• The creatures and burn for a Red/White (Boros) aggressive deck with a clunky curve, but brilliant equipment

In the process of building, a few things became clear:

• It was difficult to decide on the optimum configuration for the Esper deck, as the effects were almost universally of medium power and the options were so varied. Even today, we are still debating card choices!
• The Boros deck was walking a difficult tightrope between including all the amazing equipment in our pool and ensuring that it had enough creatures to actually carry that equipment.
• Close to the end of deck-building, with the clock ticking loudly, it started to dawn on us that the Green deck (now including black and a series of very neat interactions) was absurdly powerful.

With the ‘end of deck-construction’ alarm ringing, we were forced to accept that complete optimisation of our strategies was a pipe-dream. Now we had to roll the dice, sling some spells and hope that it all came together.

Playing the event

Once deck construction is complete, each team chooses a seating order for its members, which will determine the opponents each will face in their matches: Team A’s player 1 will face Team B’s player 1, etc.

The teams are then randomly drawn against each other, after which point the players will sit down opposite their numbered counterparts and play a match. The team’s result overall is determined by the aggregate of the match results: if Team A’s players 1 and 2 win and their player 3 loses, Team A will win the round 2-1.

One endearing feature of the team format is the ability to confer with your wing-men (or gal-pals; cube is a gender-equitable pursuit) throughout the event. In practice, this means consultations over whether starting hands are suitable or should be mulliganed, or guarded discussions about which sequence of plays will produce the best results on key turns.

Round 1: Inter YerMaw vs. Doomgape

Nervous and excited, we took up our positions.

• In seat 1, wielding our strong Green/Black (Golgari) deck, I faced off against Peter.
• In seat 2 was James, packing the Esper midrange brew against Paul.
• In seat 3, Gordon rounded out the line-up, facing Doug with our Boros concoction.

With apologies to the Magic-illiterate segment of my audience, I’m afraid I must now get technical.

The Golgari deck was exceedingly complex, running a toolbox of creatures which could be fetched by Fauna Shaman and recurred with Genesis and Volrath’s Stronghold. Squee was one of these creatures, greatly enhancing the strength of the interaction. This made it very powerful in the long game and incentivised me either to slow down the play, or accelerate my own game plan.

   

Luckily, acceleration was not a problem, as the deck also had a suite of ramp spells to put me turns ahead in mana development. It also had some strong cards to abuse the early ramp, in Grave Titan and Wurmcoil Engine.

 

Finally, it was packing a Crucible of Worlds engine, which included Strip Mine, Wasteland and Evolving Wilds.

   

Yes, folks, we really opened this in a sealed deck.

My games against Peter, who was playing a Red/Green (Gruul) beatdown deck, went largely as follows:

• Peter would mulligan, then deploy some early threats whilst I developed my board.
• I would activate Fauna Shaman, resolve a Plow Under, or play a strip mine and start to improve my hand while attacking Peter’s mana.
• Eventually, I would stabilise on a low life total, with Peter hoping to draw a burn spell which could finish me off while I tried to close that window of opportunity by gaining life or killing him quickly.

The range of powerful options and trickery available to the deck made it a joy to play. Peter fought valiantly to make an impression for his team – and twice had me dead to any burn spell on top of his deck – but ultimately didn’t have the tools to push through a ridiculous series of interactions. In fact, in our second game the board state became so stupidly lopsided that his teammate Paul was only able to laugh out loud when consulted.

Of course, Paul himself was playing a deck which created either laughter or despair for his opponents. James found out, to his cost, what it was to play a deck full of solid spells against a who’s-who of the cube’s top 20 cards. Paul started the match with a first-turn Sol Ring and things went downhill from there. Each time I glanced to my right, he had added a Kokusho, or a Liliana of the Veil, or a Griselbrand, or a Recurring Nightmare to his side of the table.

   

James’ face was, increasingly, a work of dark poetry.

When the match was over, Paul even managed to flash a Mind Twist which he had never deployed, leaving us to roll our eyes and wonder why a cold, distant god despised us so.

In the pivotal clash, Gordon lost out narrowly to Doug’s slightly ‘bigger’ aggro deck, whose creatures slightly overmatched his own. After the fact, he declared himself unhappy with the overall feel of his deck, foreshadowing a lesson we would eventually learn for future Team events.

With the next clash looming, Gordon and I broke for some much-needed chicken snacks.

The only thing I regret is waiting until 9pm to get started on this bad boy.

Result: Doomgape 2-1 Inter YerMaw

Round 2: Inter YerMaw vs. Team Handsome

As if it wasn’t intimidating enough to face a crack unit named for their formidable beauty, I had the misfortune of lining up against ‘The Handsomest Man in Scottish Magic’ himself, Billy Logan.

Seat 1: I faced Billy, sporting a Blue/Red (Izzet) control deck.

Seat 2: James took on Gerry, who was playing a base-Green ramp deck which included the brutally powerful Mirari’s wake.

Seat 3: Gordon’s opponent was Duncan, whose deck I didn’t get a great look at – suffice to say it was also playing some red spells.

My games against Billy were extremely uninteractive, with one player or the other gaining the ascendancy through a series of powerful and inevitable plays.

In the first, I managed to win despite the fact that Billy resolved a Bribery which put my Grave Titan into play under his control. The secret? Pack Rat, an egregious card in limited formats which was part of my Fauna Shaman toolbox.

Suffice to say that, without true mass removal, Billy’s otherwise excellent deck had very little in the way of answers to a rat.

In the second, Billy countered my Fauna Shaman to cut off early access to the rat, then locked me out with a Frost Titan as I stumbled slightly on mana.

The third game was a true testament to the power of Pack Rat. I kept a hand without green mana, but with a rat and two colourless utility lands. A rat on the second turn essentially ended the game, although Billy played like a man possessed to try and cut it off. Eventually I drew Squee setting up an unbeatable engine which quickly ended the match.

Sadly, in seat 2, James had been overrun by the powerful, early monsters Gerry had ramped onto the board; while in seat 3, Duncan had similarly claimed the spoils for Team Handsome.

As we prepared for the next round, James and Gordon were both expressing dissatisfaction with their decks, while it was increasingly obvious that a traffic cone could have piloted my degenerate stack to a winning record.

“Activate Pack Rat, discarding Squee. GG mate.”

Had we made an error in not consciously splitting its powerful combinations across all three decks? It certainly felt that way to my teammates – and I was left to regret waiting until so late in deck construction to start focussing on those cards, which if addressed earlier might have yielded a more even distribution of our pool’s ‘oomph’.

Result: Team Handsome 2-1 Inter YerMaw

Round 3: Inter YerMaw vs. Bacon Buddies

Entering the home straight, our team had the dubious honour of being the only one firmly out of contention for 1st place. Nonetheless, a quick pep talk had us firing on all cylinders again, determined not to go quietly into the night. Imagine Judi Dench quoting Tennyson in Skyfall and you won’t be far off.

Seat 1: I faced Chris, running classic Blue/White (Azorius) control.

Seat 2: James was up against Antwan, piloting a spicy Boros recipe which included Stoneforge Mystic plus Sword of Body and Mind.

Seat 3: Gordon met Stuie, rocking a pretty nutty Green ramp deck himself.

My matches with Chris were not tremendously well-balanced. Although he set a high standard for power with his opening play, Library of Alexandria, I was able to fire off Plow Unders in both games and get my engines online to grind out the wins handily. I cannot overstate how powerful the axis of Fauna Shama/Squee/Genesis/Pack Rat was when my opponent had  no way to interact with my graveyard.

The fun stuff was happening elsewhere, however…

Gordon had the joy of staring down the following sequence of plays from Stuie in their first skirmish:

• T1: Forest, Elf, Mana Crypt, signet.
• T2: Forest, Primeval Titan, cheeky wink.

   

Predictably, he did not take the game from that position.

As Stuie continued to demonstrate why fast, plentiful mana is a bad thing for game design, the deciding exchanges were taking place in seat 2. James and Antwan were reaching the climax of their third game as I wrapped up my own match and I was able to join in the final decision of the game.

The board state:

• James on high life, with 4 cards in library and Consecrated Sphinx in play alongside Celestial Colonade and oodles of Mana.

 

 

• Antwan on 3 life, with 2 cards in hand and two mana available, a Stoneforge sporting the Sword of Body and Mind.

 

It was Antwan’s end step and James cast Impulse, which in that situation, read: “Tutor your library for a card, then stack your library as you choose.”

The choices were: three uninteractive cards and Remand.

“I take the Remand, right?” asked James.

“Definitely,” I replied, adding nothing to the process except an opportunity to claim later that I was partially responsible for his triumph. Yes, I am that guy.

Seconds later, James swung with vastly more than lethal damage and counterspell backup against a defenseless opponent. It’s testament to just how hard we’d been kicked in previous rounds that we flinched when Antwan pretended to tap mana… before extending the hand with a broad smile.

We had done it! At least one victory was ours – and a greater one had been delivered to Team Handsome, who took down the tournament thanks to our result and some dubiously calculated tie-breakers.

Result: Inter YerMaw 2-1 Bacon Buddies

As the dust settles…

Based on Billy’s stated position of being so pumped about winning that he could, “…play a trumpet with his c**k,” alongside the general sounds of laughter and enjoyment heard around the shop during the event, I’m happy to conclude that this one was a hit. We’re certainly keen to run more team cube in the future – and I expect the only problem we’ll have is oversubscription.

On our next outing, I’ll be particularly conscious not to concentrate all the power in one deck; also, I’ll try to ensure that all the players are involved and invested in the deck they’re playing, so that we don’t have a situation where someone is less than comfortable with their build (as Gordon ended up being this time).

I’d like to offer thanks to Joao, for generously donating his premises to make our cube dreams come true; and to our cubers, who were just a fabulous bunch to rock some cards and some laughs with.

Before I sign off, I just have to share some of my idiotic deck with you all. Ask yourself: does this seem fair? Until next time, cube-lovers…

Wrong, on so many levels