Hi boys and girls, welcome to another session of Forgotten Power. Now I know you missed not having an article last week so I’m going to make it up to you this week with……a bedtime story. So without further adieu:

There once was a little boy named Jimmy who went to play games with his friends at the local card shop. He worked and he planned to build the best deck in all the land. He spent long hours tweaking, deep into the night, even in his dreams he played the game.

So came Friday night and everyone gathered to play the game. Jimmy’s first opponent was Matt. Matt played first and dropped a first turn black lotus, ancestral recall, and a time walk, and got to go again. Matt beat Jimmy before he even had a chance to play a single card. But how?

How could this have happened to Jimmy with all the work he had put into his deck?

It’s quite simple really.

Jimmy had accidentally entered into the tournament without finding out that it was Vintage night. But Jimmy had only been playing for the last year, how could he play against players who had cards that he could never afford?

Then Jimmy read Forgotten Power and learned a thing or two…..

…..lets read on shall we?

For those of you who don’t spend much time in the areas of the forums that I’m usually in you probably are unaware of the fact that last week I had to get my wisdom teeth removed and was….well…medicated. (Yeah that’s a good word for it…medicated). Anyway, I couldn’t work on the article while I was taking said prescription so you get two cards this week for the price of one. First up we have:

Glyph of Destruction

This is an older card, and if you don’t own any you’ll probably have to go to a website to purchase these for a deck but, they’re a common and not very expensive. So let’s look at this card for a minute.

Hmmm… big red anarchy sign for the artwork- passes that test- low mana cost – good- gives a wall +10/+0?!?!?! This is definitely a card that has a very strong ability, but what in the world are you going to do with it? Walls can’t attack so that’s out of the question.

But there are other options:

The good: +10/+0 to any creature is a good start. This is not a commonly used card which often spices things up in any type of play. The one red mana cost makes it very easy to play early in the game. Your opponent can be attacking with an infinitely large trampling creature and this will stop it, because all damage dealt to the wall is reduced to zero.

The bad: The fact that it can only target a wall that you control and the whole “destroy wall targeted by glyph of destruction at end of turn” thing kind of take away from the psychotic tendencies of this card.

And the ugly: So what can we use to make this card work to our advantage? Through the years, Magic R&D has put out enough cards that help tweak abilities of certain cards that finding ones that work best is often the hardest part. Glyph of Destruction is a perfect example. So let’s look at what exactly we need to get the most out of glyph.

First and foremost – we have to be able to use this spell. It is to be played on a blocking wall. Well, you can’t exactly guarantee that your opponent is going to be attacking you early on in the game, so what can we use for that? Fumiko the Lowblood.

Fumiko the Lowblood works great for this, because it also has a bit of slight of hand to where they think that using her bushido is how you will be blocking, and then out pops the glyph with a surprise. Another is Grand Melee but I recommend Fumiko because Melee makes all of your creatures block. So now with Fumiko we have forced attacking creatures. Phase one is complete.

You need a good wall in play on which you are able to use for this effect. I would recommend Wall of Razors because of its two mana cost for a 4/1 first strike ability. This card will help slow down their attacks and weed out smaller creatures. The only downside to it is that it’s relatively easy to kill by pinging, or burn spells. Wall of Stone is also a fine choice because it’s an 0/8 which makes it harder to kill.

Okay so now we have a creature to use, and the ability to use it. But the big question still remains -- how do I inflict damage with a wall? Since were putting this on a blocking wall cards like Rolling Stones won’t help much.

But Fling will.

The fact is that the wall is going to crumble at the end of turn anyway, so why not sacrifice it and have it do some damage to your opponent. A lot of sleigh decks from the Tempest block centered around this concept. Example: Raging goblin, blood lust, blood frenzy, attack, fling – take 18 damage. The same principle is implied here. Build up your wall to make him even bigger just in time for your opponent to see a large wall being thrown at their face. Another way to build the wall up (especially if you play mono red) is Granite Grip. And yet nother great card for this would be Furnace of Rath.

Please know that I’m not telling you that this is how you have to play this card, this is just a possible way in which you could put a deck together built around Glyph of Destruction.

This is how you could see a game going using a glyph/fling strategy.

Mountain, go
Mountain, wall of razors, go
Mountain, granite grip, go (now a 7/1 wall)
Mountain, Fumiko/Furnace, go
Mountain, go
Blood Frenzy, Glyph of Destruction, Fling (with just Fumiko that’s 21, add Furnace and you just threw a 42 damage rock into their skull)

And thus, here is the deck:

Chapter 2: How to find cheaper power

It’s been said a hundred times – “power has a price”. Well I’m hoping to disprove that.

The Power 9 aren’t the only cards that can win you tournaments. To build a strong, cheap, type one deck takes time and patience. I usually find a card that I see as being a strong card by itself. For example let’s use Phyrexian Processor. Pay life to make equally big creatures each turn. That’s not a bad card – the life payment has a drawback, to get large creatures you lose a large chunk of your life. So now we have to look into how to make this card better. Put Angelic Chorus into the mix and after the first creature you’ve gained all your life back. Let’s say fourth turn you are able to play Angelic Chorus with a little mana acceleration, fifth turn Phyrexian Processor with a 10 life payment, sixth turn 10/10 comes into play and gain 10 life (now back up to 20 life). Each turn you can bring in another large creature and gain half your starting life total. Talk about a sticky situation for your opponent.

In other words, find something you like, and build a deck that has synergy/combo effects with it. Now let’s look at card number two to see how putting a deck like this together works.

Tolarian Winds

This was one of those cards that I saw long ago and just sat there on my brain saying “PLAY ME!!!! PLAY ME!!!”

So I sat down one day and took a long look at the possibilities that this card gave me. Tolarian Winds is one of those cards that gives you so many options in so many different deck types. Let’s look at it.

The Good: Tolarian Winds is a very cheap cycling card to help you remove the “crap” cards from your hand that you don’t need at that time and draw new hand. As an instant this card is capable of being used on your opponent’s turn. So if hypothetically speaking, if you are playing a counterspell deck but you’re lacking a counter in your hand you can cycle to find one to use. Recursion decks can use it to put wanted creatures with higher mana costs into the graveyard to be brought back by Hell’s Caretaker/Reanimate.

The Bad: Without some sort of way of seeing the cards that are coming up in your deck you are drawing blindly hoping to get the cards you need. With newer sets cards like Sensei’s Divining Top that let you see what is coming up in your deck you can wait for just the right time to use your Winds to get that needed card.

The Ugly: As I said before, many older cards have been made even stronger. Niv-Mizzett can use this ability much like the curiosity combo. Anything that has to do with card drawing abilities are very powerful with Tolarian Winds.

Instead of Curiosity, I'm going to use Tolarian Winds.  Let take a look at how my deck panned out:

As we’ve seen these are a couple of ideas on how to make cheaper older cards work stronger and to your advantage. Especially with Tolarian Winds there are multiple options on how to play this card. So have fun and get creative, because let’s face it, there’s nothing more satisfying than pulling off a trick that your opponent has never seen a card do before. So toy around, tinker with the cards you have and make them stronger. And until next week…

...Keep your guard up.

And so little Jimmy learned a thing or two about the game and got some pretty good ideas for a new deck and played in the tournament the following Friday, and did much better than the week before. And he lived happily ever after. The End.

(or at least until the next week when his friend built a stompy green deck that owned his deck, so he had to build a new one against his friends….but we’ll save that for another article)

ConManXVII

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

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