This is an article sent into me by a MDV reader named John Mazzariello, commonly known as hamsandwich in the forums. He had challenged my First Impressions: Red article, and being the smart mouth that I am, I used the same tactic that I have used on numerous of you in the past to win my argument. “If you can do better, let’s see it.” I went even further in a pm with him telling him that I am the head of article scheduling and editing, if he could get the article to me by the end of the week, I would personally edit the article and force it into our schedule.

Once in a while, you meet a determined person who is just as bull headed as yourself, and the following article is a representation of that, as John is the first person to step up to the plate and answer Tynion’s challenge.

Perhaps his lead could turn into a recurring theme… ~Chris Newton~

It has been a long time since I have sat down and tried to write anything of consequence. I can remember my bachelor days, locked up in my studio apartment, tapping away at my most recently purchased typewriter for hours into the night. It was production I was after, steadfast in my belief that an artists greatest work could only come from a thousand fruitless ventures into the dark recesses of ones mind. I wrote stories about the common man. I wrote volumes of poetry that now fill musty cardboard boxes in my basement. I wrote seven chapters of a novel, dripping with sex, drugs, and rock and roll because that is what the publishers told me would sell. It was my passion. It was my life.

I had some long standing traditions that went hand in hand with my writing. I was a collector of sorts. Whenever it was that I felt I had written anything worthwhile I would need a new typewriter. It’s energy had gone, you see, as I had drained all the magic from its keys. So out the window it would go, three stories down, to spread itself out in the parking lot; artistic shrapnel. The following day would be spent hunting down a new vehicle for my habit. I often laugh at myself now, because I had collected so many of these typewriters that most of them would probably be worth money today.

Being a home-owner with a family, I have made peace with the necessary evil that is money. My daughter likes things, like food and shelter, you see, so I do my best. I’ve aged from those days.

My passion took a hard left when I first met my wife. Some of you may understand that feeling; the one many people deny, or believe does not exist. That feeling of when you see someone in a particular light for the first time, and you plunge headfirst into the dark caverns known only to those who have ventured into true love. It was the first stunning revelation of my life, and I channeled my creativity to one purpose. Love poems. Words to entice, words to lure, and words to undress; I found myself a veritable fountain of drivel. I shelved my novel and, without loneliness and constant whiskey to turn the gears, so too most of my other work.

I then turned to a career, home improvement, thinking about things like health insurance and a healthy diet, and role playing for kicks; instead of rolling to the bar. I had finally let go of my rock star fantasy and blossomed, if you will, into a husband and father.

So here I am, after a ten year hiatus, sitting once again in front of a blank page and scraping the dark recesses of my brain for the words I’m going to need. Only this time that page is on a computer screen, and no matter how satisfied I am with the finished product, this computer is staying right here.

Why, you ask? It’s because the gauntlet has been thrown. After two years of lurking around the articles, combos, and decks pushed out by this, the best MTG site on the web, I signed in to the forums and I opened my big mouth.

I don’t win tournaments. I’m lucky to get out to FNM once every few months, and being a recent D&D convert I am by no means an expert deck builder. I have, however, built a reputation at my local table for never saying die: Hanging on to that one card that everyone says is just plain awful, placing it in my binder and spending hours staring at it, and then plugging away into the night figuring out a cost efficient way to use it. I do it for the challenge. As I said, being just a few years into the game, my collection and knowledge are nowhere near that of an expert, so I could look on the web and copy a tournament winning deck, spend the bucks to flesh it out, and try my hand at the local shop more often. But like a lot of you, I simply prefer the challenge of competitive deck building.

Here’s a deck built around a rare my table mates cast aside as worthless. One friend just gave me a copy and said, “It’s worth it to me if you can make it work." That card: 

Sky Swallower...

If you check out the thread, you can see my response to Tynion’s First Impression’s article. There was one particular card, Stomping Slabs, which he had given a D. ‘Forget about the pesky “reveal the top seven cards of your library…” part, we’re talking about seven damage for three mana. This must be a good card.’, I had thought to myself. In the forum, and later in a private message to Tynion, I called him out on this card and spoke boldly of a T2 deck where this card could work. He said, “Write me an article.” So I set about diligently building, and chronicling my attempts at utilizing this card.

“Have you ever heard of Scry?” I said. Of course Tynion had. It was my first thought on how to set up a deck to use this card. With cards like Cryptic Annelid and Foresee, it had to be possible to make this work. Blue and Red. “I can do that,” I thought, “Search and destroy.”

Now if any have paid attention to my often shortsighted posts in the forums, you would know that I’m a Simic man. Give me +1/+1 counters, slimy creatures, and crafty evasion. However, Red is the one color I have not splashed with the guild (yet), and I wasn’t going to start here. I am not a burn player, either, and though I dabble in control, I am much more at home building giant creatures. So this was a pretty big challenge for me.

I started with Red, White, and Blue, thinking solely of utilizing the Scry mechanic to set up my deck while splashing in various dual purpose cards. Judge Unworthy had come up for removal, while I included Foresee and Cryptic Annelid to dig through my library up to six cards deep, and I chose the Countryside Crusher for my big guy to complement the seven to the head I was intent on dealing with this deck. I threw in a couple counterspells to help hold the board until all this could work, and voila! I had a giant pile of crap.

How would I cast anything if I was dumping my land in a graveyard, and how could I cast a successful Broken Ambitions while trying to lay out a Red Giant on turn three, which virtually shuts down my mana production? This was going to be harder than I thought. Sure, with a Crucible of Worlds I could get my lands back, but I couldn’t help thinking that with access to cards like Long Term Plans and the Top, a casual deck with this set up might work. However, my big mouth had landed me in the Standard card pool. Maybe I had rushed into this. I felt like a Kithkin Greatheart with no Giant in sight.

I began thinking about something that Tynion had said. He talked about the percentage of Slabs actually working, and that a deck for it would have to be expertly thinned, not just rearranged. Then it was there, nesting in my ear, slipping into my consciousness like afternoon light through the darkest of curtains. “Edge of Autumn,” it said. Of course, I needed speed. I needed lands and mana. I needed chumps to take damage.

So I shifted gears. It would be death or glory. To deal with Standard decks, Stomping Slabs needed to be doing just that: Stomping. Enter Green.

I began to gather up my Green cards and my Red cards; thinking of only of thinning and speed. I built a deck with my Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Sentinels, and of course: a playset of Crucible of Worlds. Though this deck won two out of three of my first games, Stomping Slabs was zero for five. The Crushers combined with the Crucible and Shard Volley to produce a synergy that was downright silly, but Tynion was right. Editor’s Note: Music to my ears ~ Tynion. Although I will keep a copy of Stomping Slabs in my binder and stare at it for hours on end, it’s just not that good. (Yes, that is me, slowly bending at the knees to retrieve my gauntlet.)

So in the interest of good deckbuilding I cut the cards that underperformed. Here is the deck as it now stands, with I’m sure, more revisions to come after another round of tests.

It’s not the deck I set out to build. Writing about it proved to be harder and consumed more time than I thought it would, and my article even shifted from its premise of utilizing a poorly graded rare to a chronicle of the experience of my failure. But despite not being able to deliver on my first impression of this card, I will pat myself on the back for trying. It got me here, tapping away at my keyboard, bringing back a flood of good feelings, and thinking about the game I love. It was an uphill battle from the start, but I feel I held true to form, coming full circle to my +1/+1 counters and my big, trampling idiots. I’ll be working on this one, and if I get lucky enough to find myself free on a Friday, I may just test it where it counts. Until then, when in doubt: Don’t ever be afraid to build it bigger, even if it ends up not being what you set out to create.

~hamsandwich~

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Articles Spotlights from 2008:
How to Win with Milling: A Guide to a Slow Painful Death
Memories of an Old Magic Player 10: The Outsiders Journal #3.
The Apprentice Magician, Part Three.
Class-Wars Deckbuilding Contest Results!
Tribal Coffee: The Smaller Tribes.
[Mini-Article] Controlling the Game: Without Blue.
Raiding the Dollar Bins: Return of the Vault Ninja.
A Fresh Perspective: Stasis - Part One.
More Evil Than Evil.
Memories of a Jarhead.