Ladies and gentlemen ... welcome ... to the MAIN EVENT!

(That's right, you deserve the super-special ring announcing.)

So I guess, first things first, I should introduce myself. Give a little of my background and (hopefully) what qualifies me to write for this site. My name is Dave (here's where you go, "Hi Dave") and ... I have no witty "aholic" reference to go with that. "Magicaholic" sounds pretty tame, or potentially like I have an abnormal fascination with Siegfried and Roy. Which I do, but that's neither here nor there. It also could sound like one of those sweet new un-FDA-approved drugs that the late-night commercials keep recommending for me to ask my doctor about. "Yeah, doc, I think I might need to be put on Magicaholic. No, I'm not concerned about the potential side effects of bleeding, underarm tumors, or night sweats." ... OK. Introduction, take two. My name is Dave. In my ordinary daily life, I'm a mild-mannered thirty-something with a wife, a cat, a house with two-point-four garages, but every Friday night I turn into ... ... Take three. My name is Dave. I've been playing Magic almost since the beginning -- and writing about it for almost just as long. I started with a Portal set and two Tempest precons back in 1997, and have been involved in just about every aspect of this game since then. It's been twelve years that have shaped my competitive spirit, and many friendships. Cheesy, but it's better than the first two.

I started out writing on the Internetz with the newsgroup. I could probably go look up what that newsgroup's name is (rec-dot...something?...dot-magic?), but I think it has little activity nowadays -- but back then, it was one of the major discussion forums for Magic, back before there were websites dedicated to the game like this one here. I submitted some stuff to The Dojo, and got a tournament report printed for my very first tournament ever. Here's the deck I played:

If you can tell me why there are two Undiscovered Paradises in the manabase, or why I played Canopy Spider, you're a better man than I. But it was good enough for 3rd place out of 12 people, so who am I to complain?

I started writing for Star City ... man, when DID I start writing for Star City? My first archived article there now is from February of 2000, but it makes reference to previous articles, so who knows? Wayback Machine doesn't know either. Makes me feel a little less ... useless, since that thing knows EVERYTHING that happened on the Internetz. I did coverage at Pro Tour New York 2000, the team one that Potato Nation won. I was on TV maybe. (Back then, Wizards had a deal with ESPN2 to broadcast the Pro Tour; they put coverage people into Judge shirts and set them at each table to, I guess, not make it obvious that there was some scrub who didn't actually KNOW Magic sitting under the bright lights on the stage at Madison Square Garden.)

I took a writing break and started working for Gray Matter, the Premier TO in the New York / New Jersey area. I also ran tournaments for soldiers stationed overseas when I lived in Germany for three years.

When I got back to the States, I filled in for Chris Romeo at Star City writing the budget column, and have been back to writing ever since.

So what will this column be about? Well, I can tell you that it will NOT be about budget decks, in all likelihood. Producing a weekly column about a situation that you are exempt from SIMPLY BECAUSE you write a column about said situation is hard enough; doing two every week (or, an additional one a month even) would be increasingly difficult. And increasingly ironic. And not even Alanis Morissette and I have enough irony for that.

No, this column will be about everything ELSE I think about Magic. And it's very possible that these columns may get VERY fractured, but I hope you'll enjoy reading my schismical (and whimsical) (hey that almost rhymed) thoughts about the game we all love.

A disclaimer before proceeding: I am, at heart, a Magic theorist much more than a Magic practitioner. I am capable of brainstorming on competitive decks as much as contemplating wacky combo decks, but what you see in this column will rarely if ever have any testing attached to it. Take everything in here with a grain of salt, and we should be good to go. If you like something you see, by all means, take it, tweak it, test it -- but if you don't, not even the playskills of Jon Finkel nor your grandma's banana bread will be able to help you salvage a win.

I had an SMS from the inimitable Rick Ashby this week telling me that blue-white control was good in this metagame, and that Martial Coup was the new Decree of Justice. He asked if I wanted a list. I told him I'd rather develop one in a vacuum and then compare. It's more of an exercise that way, and less of me just snickering at Rick.

So the first question is, IS Martial Coup the new Decree of Justice? I just don't see it. Maybe it is, but Decree has two things that Martial Coup will not be benefiting from: one, instant speed, and two, the distinct lack of an uncounterable mass removal spell in the format. Decree of Justice was at its best when you were cycling it at end-of-turn (or even mid-combat), messing up combat math or putting your opponent on an unexpected clock. Martial Coup doesn't give you that. And Martial Coup also has to compete with Volcanic Fallout, which has taken over as the mass-removal-du-jour among decks that can support it. Reliance on a bunch of 1/1 tokens never felt so bad.

I just hope he hasn't gone and put Mark of Asylum in his deck.

Although ... that would be awesome.

You know, you used to be able to run an Enlightened Tutor package in UW Control, I wonder if you could do that with Idyllic Tutor? There's plenty of good enchantments that you could package up for tutoring, from win conditions like Hoofprints of the Stag or Mobilization to defensive measures like Runed Halo or Story Circle. I mean, you're gonna play four Oblivion Rings in this deck already anyways, maybe it's worth looking into.

It's too bad Declaration of Naught can't counter Volcanic Fallout.

Just as a start:

Well, that looks fairly wretched. There's absolutely no card drawing, which is a necessity. There's no enchantment card drawing either, which means you can't just fetch up a Treasure Trove and go to town. (I know, I know, not the ideal card drawing enchantment, what did you want me to say, Standstill?)

The win conditions look atrocious. You have no way to protect your soldier tokens against Volcanic Fallout, no air defense, and you're forced to protect that lone Mobo if you expect to win. Blech.

Needs Jace, maybe?

Telemin Performance might be middling at best. I mean, if you can resolve it against Cruel Control, you'll get a Mulldrifter or a Broodmate Dragon or one of those 1/6 walls that they're playing nowadays -- and probably mill away a good portion of their deck. Against Kithkin, well, you get ... a Goldmeadow Stalwart. Congratulations. Inkwell Leviathan costs frickin' NINE but you need something that's sturdy enough to avoid random singleton removal spells, and he definitely does. Wrath is about all that kills him, and you should be able to protect him by the time you get to NINE FRICKIN' MANA.

I don't know. Personally I'm not playing any deck that purposefully avoids playing the colors that are decent against Faeries, which (in my opinion) is still the deck to beat out there. Plus the fact that I wrote "Some Other Counterspell" rather than picking one of the crappy choices available to me should speak volumes about what I really think about blue-white control.

You can put your thoughts in the forums.

So what I really want to build is a Relentless Rats deck. It's in Tenth Edition but I would hate for it to go away in Eleventh Edition (sorry! Magic 2010) and never have gotten another chance to play them. I waited too long with Battle of Wits and look what happened; never again!

The first Relentless Rats deck I built used the Ravnica enchantment Bloodbond March, which was a heck of a lot of fun when you dropped after the first Wrath. Man, that made for some big Rats. Thrumming Stone was overrated; Bloodbond March was where it was at.

But I think that a modern-day Relentless Rats deck should be a little more straightforward. Do you really need anything tricksy if you can put together three 4/4 Rats?

Wait.

So I was looking through Gatherer for black card-drawing cards (because, ostensibly, drawing one Rat a turn just isn't enough) and found this little gem:

Go ahead, click it. I didn't know what it did either. But MAN oh man is it awesome in this deck. Rats get Wrathed? End of turn, put them back on top of your library. This deck actually WANTS to continuously draw creatures, and that's exactly what Footbottom Feast does.

That may be the shortest decklist ever. It may actually have TOO MUCH land. Really you will only ever cast Profane Command with X=3, so five mana is the tops. If you get to six, though, you can cast TWO Rats a turn. Hmmmm ...

And No Rest For The Wicked! By sheer happenstance I was putting it into the banner and read it, and was like, "Really? That works GREAT in this deck. I have nothing to do on turn 2 anyways!" It's amazing what a little poking in Gatherer will do for you.

Only two and a half weeks until the Front Range Magic Team Challenge. (Trouvez les d�tails ici.) I need to put together a team. I was not, as you may surmise, selected for the Colorado Springs team. Shocking! I know. I don't exactly have the pedigree that comes with one of these assignments, evidently. I mean, I've BEEN to a Pro Tour. I was just doing coverage. So now I'm going to be faced with putting together a second Springs team to come up and try to defend our honor.

Leading up to the tournament, I'm planning on doing a few interviews with the members of the Springs A-team, so you can get to know them as more than just the pretty faces of the opposition. Despite the Denver-Springs imitation of the Hatfields and the McCoys, all it would really take is one good inter-family marriage to work the whole thing out. That's what I believe. If you disagree, my shotgun would like a werd wif yew.

Well, I think that will just about wrap up this edition. I gotta go buy my tickets for Watchmen this weekend. Nothin' says lovin' like a hyperviolent superhero movie with questionable moral parables to tell. Which is why I figure I'll let the wife skip this one.

Discuss this article in the forums.