I love everything about Flavor of Love and Rock of Love on VH1. From the unattractive women, some of whom I would give the obligatory Adam's apple check, to the crazy antics of not just the fame starved women, but the hosts themselves. Whether it be Pumpkin spitting in New York's face, Crazy Lacey being well crazy, or Somethin' pooing on the floor, there are many hilarious juvenile moments that speak to the basest portions of my personality. Call me low brow if you want, but in the end, I think its the strongest "Kids don't do drugs" message since Dave Chappelle revived Rick James from the realm of the forgotten. Sure it's never implicitly said, but even a four year old has to say "Mom, what's wrong with that person?"

Sadly, I can't talk much more about those shows here. For one thing, the content level is slightly above a good portion of the readers age ranges. Second, this article is about a single magic card. So, what is my 'Rock of Love'? Well it's a new card from Morningtide - Stomping Slabs. For those not familiar, as it is new territory, let me share the card first with you:

First off, we have to discuss why we would ever want to play Stomping Slabs? Pause for a second, I'm going to take this moment to say -I'm very sorry for this, but Irrational Love is about to get very Rational.

As you can see there are limitations to the card, yet a distinctly high potential power to the card. For all you blind "Ripple 2.0" and overeager this "card roxorz/sukorz" people - the following words are for you: Math is your friend. I once taught High School Math, so I'm going to make the following lesson simple enough that even the idiot kids in my classes of years gone by could follow along. Also don't call me out on math not being exactly right - this is not actuary level, nor do I want to lose our average reader as I'm afraid I may already have. This is going to be simple math for simple people or as I like to call it the K.I.S.S. approach (Keep it Simple, Stupid).

All Examples assume: 60 Card Deck, 4 Slabs in Deck.

Examples:
1) Ideal Opening Hand:
Slab in opening hand. Perfect mana layout for casting on Turn three. (Four Draws)

7 X (3 / 49) = ~42%
T.Dmg Value = 3

So in this basic ideal opening hand you have Slab in hand and don't draw a second one. Drawing every turn you have 49 cards in deck and cast it on turn three. 42% of trigger, means that a little less than one in two times it'll do the 7 damage. This gives it a T.Dmg of 3. Obviously this isn't very good and this the ideal opening hand!

2) The Booyah Principle
Continuation of Example 1: It triggers - We draw another. Booyah! (Next Draw = Slab - 7 Cycled to Bottom)
7 x (1 / 41) = 17%
T.Dmg Value = 1.20

Okay, first off, when calculating a second trigger you have to account for one thing - the seven cards cycling - including or not including one slab. In this example, we triggered so we know that one slab and six other cards are on the bottom, one is in the yard, and another is in hand. Even though there are two left in deck, we know one is out of draw range so we're going with one because we have 0% chance of hitting that second one. We also know the other six cards will never get hit so they aren't included either. Thus we get a 17% and a very low damage value. Obviously a second trigger chance is very low if we're successful once.

3) Un-ideal Opening Hand
Two slabs in opening hand. Perfect mana layout for casting on Turn three. (Four Draws)
7 x (2 / 49) = ~28%
T.Dmg Value = 2

Ouch. So because we have two in hand our chances of trigger went from 42% to 28% a decrease of 14%. This also drops the damage value by 1, which is fairly significant, but not too bad. As you can see the number left in deck is vital and drawing more than one at a time is bad news!

4) The Fiddlesticks Principle
Continuation of Example 3. We casted one it missed! (Five Draws)
7 x (2 / 41) = ~34%
T.Dmg Value = 2.4

Okay, we had a low chance and we missed. We still have a second one to cast, and you know what our odds got much better! With less cards in the deck unknown and the same number of slabs, our second cast has much better odds of hitting. Which almost validates a statement; if we miss, our chances improve to hit later. So that's the whammy prize, our odds increase for later.

Whew! Okay fellas, I hate to do this to you. What's next is little science with our math, but it's full of great hints for deckbuilding with this card and deckbuilding in general. It's all about improving our odds to hit.

Method 1: Exercise!
For years you've probably heard people telling you need to lose some weight. Whether it's your mom nagging you to go play outside or that annoying know-it-all who keeps telling you Fetchlands are amazing - well they're right (take it from my fat behind). In this case, we want to thin down our deck - please look up Diabetes and Heart Failure for real life thinning down reasons. By utilizing Terramorphic Expanse, you play two cards for a single land. This lowers your remaining cards and improves your odds of success. For instance, a single Terramorphic Expanse in an ideal example changes your formula to 7 x (3 / 48) = 44% or about a 2% improvement over no Terramorphic usage. 2%'s add up fast and are the reason many finely tuned decks always seem to get the right card at the right time.

Method 2: The Dichotomy of Order and Chaos
When you're dealing with odds which is your friend - chaos or order? Depends. You need to learn when you want to shuffle and lose your known to gain the unknown. Basically, if you have a bunch of Slabs on the bottom of your library, your chances of getting them are zero, so you want to shuffle. If you have a bunch of non-Slabs on the bottom by all means don't shuffle! And if you don't know anything at all about your bottom (ha-ha I said bottom), it doesn't really matter what you do. This is important because if you're playing with Slabs you're hopefully trimming down which can lead to many shuffle opportunities. I could bore you with the exact formulaic moment you want to shuffle, but let me proclaim my theory:

Method 3: Start as low as possible!
This is more or less common sense, but when playing Stomping Slabs - always start with the lowest amount of cards possible. Almost all of the time this means play 60 cards! Don't play 66,65 or even 61. Much like the earlier principle, every card you add to your deck above 60 basically decreases your chances of dropping a rock by ~2%. Of course if you add like 100 cards it won't drop you down to below 0% (this is simplified math after all), but it definitely puts it down to ~0-1%. There are some cards out there can help to even lower your deck below 60. Of course these are harder to find and use, but Serum Powder can easily get you down to 53 cards off the bat if included.

Method 4: If in doubt, cheat!
Why worry about math at all when we can make our chance to trigger 100%? This is the easiest method of all, and the basic premise most Johnny-style players will take. You can do Vampiric Tutor, Mystic Tutor, Long-Term Plans or even something a little closer to the block such as Liliana Vess. All of these examples use a separate card to make sure Slabs triggers.

Now that we've talked a little bit about the card, I'm going to show you some ways you can actually play with it. The first way will be a Johnny-Spike creation based on a popular deck right now and the second will be quite simply a Johnny-Timmy Super Slab Synergy Feature. The first deck will take advantage of a super powerful card right now that happens to match up perfectly with Stone dropping - Spinerock Knoll.

This is a fun deck - albeit not that original as it's highly popular right now. I playtested it a little and more or less got similar results to other Dragonstorm decks, which is an unadulterated level of annihilation. This is a variant that, eventually will lose the element of surprise, but definitely uses Snow-Covered lands to throw an opponent off and unleashes Swath or Stomping Slabs to unleash the Hideaway card - which hopefully is Dragonstorm. While Dragonstorm is a tad fickle, most unprepared players are simply annihilated by it.

Other variations in this deck include a focus on deck thinning and stacking. Take notice Lash Out and Release the Ants for clashing - winning the clash is nice, but it's even better for a Scry 1. Clash is about as good as it gets in Standard right now for Scry-methods in mono-Red. Release the Ants can easily be swapped out for Titan's Revenge as well, even though both interact poorly with Swath. There's also a total of ten other deck thinners which helps to increase the odds of hitting a combo - whether it be the Dragonstorm insta-death or a slimp Slab stomp to the head.

The next deck will revolve around Stomping Slabs purely instead of merely using it as a means to an end. It's our more Johnny-Timmy variant and will utilize Blue and Red to ensure successful stomps. I don't want to spoil all the fun before showing you the deck so lets get this show on the road.

Holy Mackerel synergy fans! We got ourselves a deck here. We're utilizing all the fun of Slabbing with lots of other fun tricks. It's impossible to predict this deck because no one will see it coming. With no Boomerangs, who suspects the Magnivore, with Burning Wishes dipping into our wishboard - the opponent is utterly left clueless While I admit this deck has some resources out of some people's ranges, I also admit it's an optimized killing machine, and most of these cards are worth owning for an astounding collection.

Best part is Serum Powder's help thin the deck from the start, and the cards removed are still Wishable for! So if you have a Powder and a Stone Slab you can chunk it in there and Wish for it later. Meanwhile, Recoups give each Slab a second life and look at how much thinning out and sorting the deck does! This thing is a monster - with numerous ways to finish and start, ensuring no two games will play the same. Whether you drop non-stop rocks on your opponents head, send a Magnivore raging over them, or simply nuke them out of existence with Demonfire.

There you have it. Stomping Slabs - not quite as bad as many make it out to be. Definitely a fun card to play with - just don't try to do it in a draft - unless you can get four. Hopefully I piqued your interest a little bit. Maybe my math inspired you to finally pass Algebra, or that you now hate me with a deep passion. In the mean time, tell me what you think in the forum:

~Cashew~

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Articles Spotlights from 2008:
A Fresh Perspective: Stasis - Part One.
The Apprentice Magician - Part Six.
Design on a Dime: The Lunch Meat Edition!
Fit the Flavor 2008 - FINALE!
The Games People Play - Market & EDH.
Sarpadian Empires, Vol VII: Foreword.
More Evil Than Evil.
Pauper Chronicles: Top O' the Morningtide to You!
Words from the Streetz: Uncommon and Common Magical Treasures.
The Writers Guild: The Inside Scoop.