|
Home Decks Combos Articles Visual Spoilers Features Art Links Search BLOG Forum |
|
|
|
I hope you all had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyful Kwanza, and all that jazzmatazz last month. But!! That’s not what we’re here for. Since I’m such a generous and charitable son-of-a-gun, I’m giving you not one but two Creature Features! Lucky shmucks, all of you! This will ease the pain from your selected Holiday when you didn't get that playset of Circus you asked for. Editor's Note: Word of the day... is "HECK". ~Streetz~
Back to creatures! Dying to know what the cohorts are? They’re not gonna like this, but, I now present to you Creature Type Spotlight: Mercenaries and Creature Type Spotlight: Rebels! Holy Heck, It’s a Mob!
What is a rebel? A rebel is a person who breaks the rules, they go against the system. They aren’t anarchists, they just don’t like the current law. So they’re not going to pay attention to it. Rebels listen to Punk music. Tell me, R&D, how is ANY of this white?! It’s pretty darn obvious that Rebels should be red. So, how did they end up in the same color as law and virtue, even though they’re all about undermining and thrashing about? The answer lies in the cards’ flavor. Rebels came around in Masques, as you all probably know. (There were probably a handful before too, but they were in the land of creature types like ‘Summon Pixie-Queen’, if you get my drift.) The rebels of Masques were a tribe of humans called the Ramosians (Named after the Dragon Engine Ramos, not important.) They’re led by an old person named Cho-Manno. The government of Mercedia is a really greedy, twisted, not nice group of people. They’re chummy with Yawgmoth. Therefore, the enemy of them had to be white. Plus, their innate ability is very white.
A mercenary is a person who fights for another person in return for payment. Mercenaries don’t care if you’re good, evil, ingenious, or crippled as long as you’ve got the greenbacks. Mercenaries are the opposite of Loxodon Peacekeeper. Where do Mercs fit into the color pie, then? I’d place my money somewhere between black and red. Here’s why:
Mercenaries mechanically are pretty much Black rebels. In Masques, we met the Cateran Guild: A black coalition working with Gerrard to get the bones of Ramos. Of course, then the Cateran went crazy go nuts and started slaughtering the good guys. Surprise! They were evil all along! Silly Gerrard! Holy Heck, It’s Figureheads!
Here's where Tekk wants me to add something to his article about how Mercs and Rebels affected the metagame... but you know what... I have NO IDEA. I wasn't up on the metagame of the Masque's Block as that was around the time (after Masques) that I stopped playing for a while. I basically missed all of the Invasion Block (a loss on my part). ~Streetz~ Cateran Overlord is easily the most well known Mercenary around, at least. (Soldier of Fortune comes in a close second.) While I don’t recall him seeing much tournament play, he’s big, mean, and awesome looking. 7/5 for 7 mana that can fetch his lessers, then eat them: He sounds like my kind of guy. Holy Heck, It’s Sample Decks! You know, there are a lack of Rebel and Mercenary decks in the database. We have more Vampire decks than Rebel and Mercenary combined. That saddens me. You know what that means? We’re skipping this. Keep reading. You brought this upon yourselves. Make more Tribal decks. Correction. I can always find some decks using google. !! Sorry, no descriptions here.. just some fun decks from the past using Mercenaries or Rebels. ~Streetz~
Note: Notice how many of the Rebel decks looks the same. That's all I could find on Google.. sorry. Holy Heck, It’s Pop Culture References!
Ferris Beulher (Rebel): Teen Flicks from the ‘80s are the greatest type of movie ever. Our pal Ferris here outsmarts the school system time and time again, making his principal look like an absolute moron. And also manages to smash a car and get rich off a fundraiser to save his kidney that has nothing wrong with it. Nyaoi Kumori (Rebel): This one shouldn’t and won’t ring a bell to you guys. This is a story of my dark and tragic past. You see, I’m… disgusted to admit this…. A former otaku. Yeah, I was one of those kids who never went outside and pirated anime off of bit torrent. (Unliscenced, legal stuff only! Don’t sue me, Bandai!) I even role-played. This one here was one of my many characters from those days of old. Nyo was a spunky, cynical (hey, I directly controlled her actions, do actually think she’d NOT be cynical?) catgirl trying to gather a guerrilla fighting force to overthrow the government. Yes, I said catgirl. I’ve lost all of your respect, haven’t I? Toshi Umezawa (Mercenary): I know what you’re thinking. “HEY! He’s already a Magic Legend and he’s NOT a Mercenary!” Well, while that isn’t his creature type, he sure as heck is a mercenary. Read the Kawigama cycle of novels, and you’ll see what I mean. Holy Heck, It’s Somnophore! I’m going to have to apologize a lot here. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
Finally, you’re probably wondering what the heck prompted this anyway. “Aggravated Assault, what does that have to do with anything?!” See, it’s a funny story. I had originally planned to include a deck of my own conceiving for the Illusion article. I had this fun idea of locking down the opponent by knocking them repeatedly with Somnophore, a la extra combat steps. The problem was, it stank. So, I extended the challenge to you! Now that that’s all squared away… So, judging! I came up with Deck names myself if you didn’t give one, is that ok? Too bad! :-D Deck#1: Bouncing Illusions
Thoughts: I liked the idea, but it didn’t seem to go much further than that. I tested this against an Extended White Weenie deck and got wiped, he killed me while the only spell I could’ve played was Otherworldly Journey. The Thran Dynamo and Urza’s Incubator were good natured, but if I couldn’t get enough mana to play even those… well. The deck could definitely benefit from some early game plays: Either some Chumps like Steel Wall or something more agro like Cloudskate. While I liked the deck, it seemed catered more towards evasion than Somnophore. I see where you were going, but you didn’t quite make it. Deck #2: Headscratch
Thoughts: Alright, first off, why 66 cards? Cropping out six could have given you 2 extra points! (In order to be Tribal Legal, at least 33% of the deck needs to be the same creature type. It used to be 20 cards; tough break…) While the deck wasn’t amazingly original (Somnophore + Neko-Te) it did manage to get the job done. Of course, getting the job done was relentlessly attacking with an equipped Phantom Warrior and Hazy Homunculus. Somnophore was dropped on my second to last turn; he dealt the killing blow. For the record, I was playing against a T2 G/W Snake… thing. Not sure where he was going with it. Deck #3: Little Men With Knives
Thoughts: Sure, the old “Use pinging to trigger deals damage to player effects” trick is old hat, but that doesn’t stop this deck from practically being a shoe-in. I used this deck against a fellow with a Blue Artifact Control deck. I would have run him into the ground, but at during his last 2 turns “alive”, he plays Platinum Angel followed up by Darksteel Forge. Yeah, I hate the Mirrodin block too. Also, filling up the extra slots with Vorthosy goodness? You sir, have hit a nerve in my cold dead heart. If I were Streetz I’d add this to the deck database. (Hint hint!) Editor's Note: Tekk didn't give me the names of the deck creators.. and thus they are ? for now. ~Streetz~ Holy Heck, It’s Over! Don’t you feel so lucky now? This has been my gift to all of you. See you next time, when I’ll overuse the word holy yet again. But not as an interjection this time. Peace Out, maggots. You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Most Popular
Articles of 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
As
per my style, I’m going to start the article with something completely
unrelated! You may not know this (or maybe you do), but I love attention. If any
of you out there have something you’d like to tell me, feel free to send an
email to me or PM me in the forum. I’m always looking at more creature types to
write about, and hey, fan mail is nice too. I’ll extend a few rules though:
don’t shamelessly plug anything, and don’t send anything along the lines of
‘Will you be my friend?’ Go peddle your wristwatches elsewhere, and if you want
to be my friend you can join the forum and get to know me like anyone else.
Also, don’t send any pictures of yourself to me. Unless you’re female. And hot.
... ... ... is Streetz editing this yet? I bet he
is. [Yup. I did. *grin* ~Streetz~]
We
start by asking ourselves the default question: 
But
what about Mercenaries? 
Alright,
time to praise the most famous member of our community. This time around, we’ll
peek at… take a guess. Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero for Rebels and Cateran Overlord
for Mercenaries! Wahoo!
Black
Deck.
Dark
Triumph. 
Samurai
Jack (Rebel): Remember Samurai Jack? The poor guy spends his childhood
traveling the globe training with Xiaolin Monks, Vikings, and Robin Hood, then
he gets sucked into Magic Time Vortex (Haha!) and it turns out his nemesis is
supreme dictator in the future. Now he’s gotta defeat him and liberate the
planet. Great stuff.
Some
things didn’t go down as they should’ve. First of all, last article I said you
could get bonus points for using Aggressive Assault. How many of you cocked an
eyebrow? You should’ve ‘cause Aggressive Assault doesn’t exist. What I meant to
say was Aggravated Assault. If you figured that out for yourself,
congratulations! You get a delicious cockroach cookie! I baked them myself!
(These of course are not made of cockroaches; they just look like them. I’m not
a cannibal!)
I’m
also apologizing for something else, and this holds more meat. I had some
computer problems around the time you guys were submitting decks. Because of
that, there may have been some decks I didn’t receive. (I hope that’s the case,
since I only got three!) If per chance you submitted a deck and I’m not judging
it here, swing it by me at gatlingshuriken@gmail.com again and I’ll take a
look-see at it, judge it, and post it soon. (Haha!)
Note: Originally, Tekk wrote this in December 2005 and his comment here was "...
and post it next year." Thus the ha ha's. Sorry for posting this
late. ~Streetz~
Originality:
9/10
Originality:
6/10
Originality:
6/10