Spinning the Top: Super Secret Staples

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Spinning the Top: Super Secret Staples

By Devin Malko on April 22nd, 2009 · Filed in Multiplayer, Casual · 19 Comments

Game six of your long afternoon of Magic, and everyone is shuffling up the decks from the last two games. Every one of your friend’s decks is a familiar, well known machine for winning games (or just drawing hilarity out of them). You get to your first turn, draw seven and play: Swamp, Cabal Therapy. What to name?

Standard has Cryptic Command and Bitterblossom, Extended is filled with fetchlands and Chrome Moxes,

Legacy has Force of Wills and Tarmogoyfs, and Vintage has the power nine; what cards fill the role of staples for multiplayer? What cards show up time and again, week in, week out, and perform the heavy lifting? Which set of cards do you keep on mental speed dial for considerations in deck building? Which of your duel staples is it time to leave behind for your trips to the wide open multiplayer plains?

Welcome to another installment of Spinning the Top, this week we’re going to discuss the staple cards of large multiplayer. The huge spread of cards that you will see in multiplayer is one of it’s largest draws, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a few repeating offenders showing up in almost every game. I’m going to list and discuss five separate cards for each color, artifacts and lands, that should be played in your FFA decks, but that may not have crossed your duel-tuned mind. Along the way, we’ll hopefully be able to delve a little deeper into multiplayer deckbuilding theory, and I’ll point out some cards you may be tempted to play, but that should be skipped.

The cards on this list emphasize versatility, scalability and reusability in the place of efficiency, mana cost and raw power that categorize PT and FNM decks. A quick review of these ideas and their impact on cards:

Versatility: We have limited spaces in our decks, but almost unlimited situations to respond to. FFA decks will often throw any strategy from any point in Magic’s past at you, and you’ll often need to find some card in your 60 that will be a useful countermove if you want to be in the running for the win. As a result, cards that can adapt and deal with more situations are better. EG: Terror is better than Deathmark, and Vindicate is greatly better than both.

Scalability: With extra opponents mucking up our get-to-21-at-any-costs math, we need to consider the cards that scale with our opponents. These can be obvious effects like Syphon Mind and Sizzle, or more subtle, like Pyroclasm and even Gifts Ungiven, as opponent shopping can be a very powerful strategy.

Reusability: We can’t one-for-one seven foes, and we can either respond with effects that scale and pick up advantage that way, or we can keep using the same cards over and over again. Cards like Masked Admirers and Hammer of Bogardan aren’t the greatest spells of all time, but when they can keep returning, they can accumulate card advantage simply by being themselves multiple times even though you only had to draw it once.

Alright folks, let’s see the cards you’re not playing enough of:

White

Seal of Cleansing: For the very first card on the entire list, you’ll notice I’ve picked a card that neither appears to reuse itself or scale. It’s versatility, however,

makes it a great card for those big games. As a Disenchant effect, it already has a lot going for it. The cards that will most often pop up as problems for you will be artifacts and enchantments; they build combos, as well as usually contain the blanket effects that neuter your deck, or super-boost an opponent's. But wait, there’s more! Seal of Cleansing also plays rattlesnake to the people who are counting on artifacts and enchantments to go the distance! People will, and probably should, wait to play out a combo piece until you’ve been tempted into popping the Seal somewhere else, and this can give you precious turns in which to work your deck against everyone else. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s also an instant speed response that can get through almost every hard or soft lock that gets played in multiplayer, allowing you to stymie a lock already in place! While a little slower than disenchant, its extra potential should get you to consider this card in most decks that would pack Disenchant. Its slightly superior to it’s new sibling Dispeller’s Capsule as it doesn’t require any mana to use, so can affect things like last week’s Landless Lockout deck.

Rout: I think this column has been pretty up on wrath effects, and I don’t intend to stop now. Rout offers an almost unique variation and upside to Wrath of God: it’s instant speed! This scores huge on the Versatility section of the judging. With traditional wraths you need to weigh the value of your current board and the possibility an opponent’s creatures become dangerous in the next turn. With a Rout in hand, and seven mana on the board, you can wait until the absolute last moment to wrath away your foes. Don’t know if that Greater Gargadon is coming your way? Wait until you know for sure and you’ll discover many turns in which you save your own creatures for multiple rounds just by sitting in Rout and other instants. On the scalability axis, Rout, like all wraths, is better the greater the percentage of creatures on the board are not yours. In an eight player game, the wrath automatically scales up to the task. This card, unfortunately, comes in at a ripe old zero on the reusability scale. A combination of the lack of self-reuse and the inherent difficulty in replaying sorceries makes Rout almost always a one use weapon.

Glory: An epitome of reusability and versatility, Glory can be incredibly helpful for any deck that plans to go with a creature centric strategy. An opponent’s

Glory on the field can prompt dramatic considerations of the necessary course of action. Nothing hurts more than trading a creature to kill a Glory or Genesis. Glory can hold off attacks and wraths just to keep it out of the yard. Combined with effects like Cabal Therapy or Nantuko Husk, Glory can be downright beautiful. Once it’s in the yard, however, it really starts to hum. It offers a great deal of flexibility: a Glory activation can counter spells, a la Rebuff the Wicked, allow perfectly safe blocking a la Akroma’s Blessing, or open the board for game winning sweeps a la Blinding Light. With the larger amounts of mana available in multiplayer, a binned Glory can serve as a major source of card advantage and extend the running distance of the creatures you’ve already spent a card on. It’s as close to a perfect ten in the reusability sector as any card is likely to get. Sensitive to either target graveyard removal or Tormod’s Crypt effects, Glory can be dealt with, but it’ll almost always go at least two-for-one, usually trading from play and creating at least a one card advantage with its ability.

Austere Command: If Austere Command just had two modes, Purify and Wrath of God, I’d still recommend playing it, but it can be so much more selective. With the ability to at least be a straight up wrath effect, this card can be as good as the original, just two turns later. But the ability to get all the big relevant threats, and pull a Shatterstorm or Tranquility can be just as overwhelming in a larger game. Austere Command scores high on Versatility and Scalability, but, like Rout, falls short on the reusability scale. As a result, three or four of this card in a deck is not as highly advisable as four WoG, but when on a budget, four-of Austere can patch a gap as WoG and provide powerful options. In a true multiplayer take-all-comers deck this can be at least a two-of.

Soul Warden: This little girl does only one thing, but she does it very well. Her scalability in multiplayer is absolutely extreme; Soul Warden can generate

great amounts of life, very quickly. She punishes opponents for dropping flocks of utility creatures, and even gets a little bit off big threats. Because her ability triggers on one of the most common cards in multiplayer she doesn’t tend to wait around, hoping somebody will jump through the hoops and trigger her accidentally. Her versatility is a round zero as she only does one thing, and she can’t really even attack for a back up. Her reusability is fairly mediocre. It’s not zero, as she is a creature card with a low mana cost and power less than two, which makes her the most recurable card type in the game. Her slightly sexier cousin, Auriok Champion, has some cool extra abilities, but the inability to splash her in a W/x, or even X/w deck makes her relevant to a lot less decks. But in monowhite the champion is better than her exodus sister.

White Card to Skip: Ghostly Prison. While the card has demonstrated solid power in decks like stax and monowhite control, two mana to prevent an attack is much more important in duel formats where the ability to pay is highly controlled. When an opponent wants to hit you with an Akroma or a Hellkite Overlord, paying two is hardly enough to warrant them to stop.

Blue

Rhystic Study: Perhaps the ultimate multiplayer card draw engine, Rhystic Study has been known to draw kill-on-sight responses from players of all different kinds

of decks. Its scalability and reusability are sky-high. It requires no new input from you once it hits, and can draw a minimum of two to three cards a turn in a six player game. If all your opponents are cautious about giving you the free cards, it can delay their threats and combos from coming online for turns. The only major downside to Rhystic Study is how good it is; it will often draw responses and removal quickly in an attempt to stem the card advantage bleed it creates.

Blatant Thievery: If Confiscate is good, wouldn’t five confiscates for one extra

be great? Well yup it is. The card of course has huge scalability, giving a free six mana spell for each opponent after the first. Its flexibility is great: it can double as a huge block of threats by taking each opponents' best; a Tranquility/Shatterstorm by taking great artifacts and enchantments away from your opponents; and even a huge Explosive Vegetation by taking a bunch of lands. It has the inherent card advantage of all Control Magic effects, but multiplied by the number of opponents you have. And just to put frosting on the cake, it doesn’t have the fragility of staying around and waiting to be Disenchanted. A resolved Blatant Thievery can go a long way towards winning a game, partially negating the difficulty of reusing it.

Reins of Power:

for Fog or Kill Target Player? I guess that sounds good. Another one of the blue cards that has extreme flexibility but low

reusability, Reins of Power can do a great number of things based on exact board state. At its weakest, it can trade control with a bunch of attacking creatures, thus preventing them from smacking you around. At its best, it can turn a well defended opponent into a fragile kitten, one who only controls your two small utility creatures, or in mainly blue decks, no decent creatures at all. In the middle ground, you can use it politically to tap an opponent out so a second can finish him or her, or lend/borrow utility creatures for a turn. Unfortunately, Reins of Power only comes up in at about three on the scalability rating. While a greater number of opponents increases the chances someone has a board you want, it doesn’t pick up steam the wayBlatant Thievery or Syphon Mind do.

Vesuvan Shapeshifter: While Pickles is an interesting and valid multiplayer strategy, Vesuvan Shapeshifter can shine all on its own in large games. At its worst, it is simply a five mana Clone or Hero’s Demise, but at its best, it really shines. The ability to repeatedly borrow an opponent’s best creature or unmorph triggers gives Vesuvan Shapeshifter decent reusability and versatility marks. It really only scales in the sense that more players equals more options. This lack of scaling is one of mono-Blues greatest problems in multiplayer, and the reason why cards like Rhystic Study that help fix that issue are so great.

Reweave: One of the few cards in blue that has a decent degree of reusability, Reweave offers a fairly unique effect that can be a high-quality-targets-only variation

of Vindicate. It’s unlikely that a sacrificed Akroma is going to pop up with anything bigger and badder. The same is true of Gaea’s Cradle and Form of the Dragon. In a non-Arcane deck, Reweave only shows up highly on the versatility scale, but in a deck with eight to twelve other Arcane spells, it really shines as a repeatable way to remove high value targets. Reweave splicing Reweave may be the most hilarious play in magic, and a powerful one at that. In mono-blue decks hurting for permanent solutions to one-of big finishers, Reweave offers an instant speed twist on Vindicate for colors that usually only get Boomerang.

Blue Card to Skip: Force Spike, et al. The set of situational counters, like Force Spike, Remand, Remove Soul and Mana Leak are generally bad choices for the countermagic slots in a multiplayer deck. With such powerful countermagic as Counterspell, Cryptic Command and Dismiss floating around, these lesser variants have a great chance to simply sit in your hand, unusable.

Black

Syphon Mind:

Discard in multiplayer is bad. Just bad. It accrues tiny amounts of advantage that evaporates quickly over the course of a game, and, just to boot, it can make players really angry if it empties out the hand and takes away favorite cards. So why am I advising playing a discard card as a staple? Because Syphon Mind is really an efficient draw spell that happens to come with a little disruption on the side. It can remove a little bit of gas from opponents' hands, but it really shines in getting three to seven cards for four mana. It shines in the scalability department, but comes up with nothing in reusability and versatility. But it's still worth playing. Syphon Mind is very powerful, and should be strongly considered for any black mana producing midrange or control deck.

Decree of Pain:It slices, it dices, it draws 15 cards and wraths the board! Nothing elicits groans from a multiplayer group quite like Decree of Pain on a full board. For only eight mana, you can remove all the threats on the board and guarantee yourself a hand of five solid cards (at least). It even overcomes the classic disadvantages of wrath effects by giving you a card for each of your own creatures you kill. Take this big, powerful sorcery for a (though large) quite efficient cost, and what do we do to it? We give it a cheap, instant-speed, uncounterable, cantripping Infest? Well now, seems that scalability and versatility just sat down and had a love child card. Either mode of Decree of Pain would be playable. Slap them together and you get the crème de la crème of black board sweepers. What it lacks in reusability it makes up for with drawing you right into the next Decree of Pain.

Avatar of Woe:

In Slivers of Advice, I talked about rattlesnakes and how much I enjoy Royal Assassin for its ability to act as a discourager of small attacks and minor utility abilities. If a 1/1 for three with a conditional kill ability was interesting and playable, what about a 6/5 Fear with an unconditional kill ability for

? Well it is. Coming down for

by turn five in almost all eight man games, and most six man games, Avatar of Woe is a quick evasive threat all on its own. When you combine it with manaless, powerful removal, the card turns dead sick. Early trades, and maybe an out-of-the-gates stopping wrath can get her into play in a hurry, and once there she dominates the board until dealt with. Reusability is very high, scalability is strong , in that she comes quicker in bigger games, and she is the easiest recurable card type, in the color that recurs creatures best.

Stronghold Overseer: 5/5 flyers for six are decent. 5/5 flyers for six with shadow are better. 5/5 flyers for six that can dramatically reduce the amount of damage you take are amazing. The versatility stat on Overseer is just way up there. He combines a solid clock (I know of no creature in magic that can block him), with the ability to keep swarms of tokens completely at bay, as well as reducing damage from midsize creatures. His ability is reusable, and he never gets any easier to block. Like Avatar of Woe, he can really only be recurred by the vast majority of black cards that can recycle creature cards. While he lacks in the scalability department, he can be a very good late game threat.

Oversold Cemetary:

A classic multiplayer generator of card advantage, Oversold Cemetery is perhaps entirely Reusability. It comes with quite of bit of good old graveyard jumping for your creatures at a total mana investment of

. The free part is not critical, but it’s nice, as you can pick up a creature for free and then just keep playing your turn at full pace if that creature is not of use to you at the moment. At first glance, Oversold Cemetary would appear to be useless in terms of Versatility, but when you consider the myriad of things that creatures can do with 187s, it opens up a great new realm of possibility. With evoke elementals, it can give you two extra cards a turn, or a cardless terror each turn. It can allow you to recur a creature likeSymbiotic Wurm as a token generator if you have a sac outlet, and with cards like Mystic Snake and Draining Whelk, it can be a countermagic engine if you can find a way to kill them repeatedly. Like, say, chumping an opponent's beatstick all day long.

Black Cards to Skip: Dark Confidant and Friends. Black has a long history of Suicide creatures that occasionally give it a strong aggro presence. These creatures in multiplayer will not go the distance before their drawbacks become insurmountable. You are much better off waiting and paying the full price for a large quality creature.

Red

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker:

Kiki-Jiki has seen some competitive play, so he doesn’t quite fit on this list, but he really shines when playing in a slower environment like FFA and is almost a different card. Instead of his simple comboing-out potential, he is more often used as a powerful card advantage engine in multiplayer that is hard to overcome. He's completely reusable, and the haste means that he is always at least an overcosted Heat Shimmer. When combined with any number of 187 and tap abilities on other creatures, his uses balloon out into all sorts, from Terror to Counterspell. He doesn’t scale, but nobody’s perfect.

Molten Disaster: Sometimes you need kill someone, and kill them dead. As the only big X burn spell with split second, Molten Disaster has a unique role to play. As an Earthquake effect, Molten Disaster obviously has scaling down pat, but the kicker does give the card some versatility. For one less damage, the damage you do get is completely guaranteed. No one is going to activate a Circle of Protection: Red or gain 5 life in response; they are just going to die.

Wild Ricochet:

In terms of wacky versatility I don’t know if any card can top Wild Ricochet. I’ve never seen anybody not have a fun use of the Ricster, and it’s a fairly easy splash. Bouncing around everything from Banefires to Cruel Ultimatums is a good, old-fashioned time. Opponent One throws the Cruel at you? Send two cruels at Opponent Two. Scalability is middling. Like some of the other spells on this list, it only increases in value due to more players doing more good things to bounce around. It’s not reusable, but the card advantage swings are big enough that it almost doesn’t need to be.

Shattering Spree: A card advantage machine in the color
least known for generating big card advantage swings. At most stages of the game, a monored deck can tap out and destroy all the artifacts in play, and be sure that a single piece of counter magic is not going to one-for-one them. Its not high on versatility, as all it does is kill artifacts, but the Scalability and Reusability are inherent to the card. It can usually kill as many artifacts as there are to choose from, and suffers no weakness from countermagic.

Fervor:

Fervor is worth playing just for “counter target sorcery speed removal”. The ability to get at least one hit from each your creatures can make them much more palatable. Scalability is middling, in essence it counters every sorcery speed removal, so the more that are in your opponents' hands, the more virtual card advantage you are accumulating. It's persistent, so it is reusable, and it has a surprising degree of versatility. Lots of creatures have good tap abilities that you would normally be forced to delay. For example, in Blue/Red, you can get three cards from Arcanis and use Daring Apprentice as “Seal of Counterspell”.

Red Cards to Skip: Jackal Pup et al. Cheap quick creatures will consume deck spots, and their drawbacks will rapidly make them useless, as no one wants to swing a Pup into a Sundering Titan.

Green

Eternal Witness:

I know, I know. This card gets played in constructed, but in multiplayer it is an absolute house. For one mana more than Elvish Visionary, you get one more power, and a non-random card. It fits into a million engines (Reveillark, Crystal Shard, Genesis, Oversold Cemetary and tons more) and generates relentless advantage in reusing resources. It gets anything so its incredibly versatile, it is reusability, and it scales a bit. As turns go by, the selection of goodies in your yard gets deeper and deeper. If

isn’t hard for your deck, Eternal Witness is in, period.

Genesis: One of the single best multiplayer cards in the game, a Genesis in your opponent’s yard is never a fun thing to see. Giving Recollect to every creature in your yard, Genesis is a one card engine, almost immediately starting to pull you out ahead of your opponents. When combined with cards like Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw, or Eternal Witness the power presented by this ability quickly gets out of hand. It’s the quintessential reusability card, it scales rapidly with game length, and with the diversity of green creatures alone, it has more versatility than it has any right to. If your G/x deck has any plans of going anywhere near a long game, pack at least one of this baddie.

Defense of the Heart:

In six to eight player games, this card is so incredibly broken that banning it is a constant consideration for many multiplayer groups. On its own, it’s a powerful engine, but combined with cards like E-Witness and Darksteel Colossus, it rapidly approaches insane. For four mana, it,s almost always Tooth and Nail with suspend 1. If you’re sick enough to combine with Skull of Orm and multiple Forbidden Orchards, your opponents are in for a world of hurt, and you’re in for a world of complaining.

Dense Foliage: If you have no intention of playing creature enchantments (and many decks don’t), this card is all upside. Negating the effects of removal and creature burning entirely, Dense Foliage fixes a green deck’s worst weaknesses. The virtual card advantage it generates scales with the number of cards stranded in your opponents' hands, and it tends to stick around.

Symbiotic Wurm:

In many ways, the Wurm is just a big dumb fattie. But this big dumb fattie is a 7/7 for eight with the kicker of having a nice reusability clause. With the addition of being the biggest token generating creature with seven little babies, the Wurm has also a good deal of versatility when combined with cards like Nantuko husk and Kiki-Jiki.

Green Cards to Skip: Rampant Growth and its other simple ilk. Getting one basic land is not a big enough shift to use a card on. There is land fetch that can be worth playing, cards like Harrow, Scapeshift or Explosive Vegetation all create a shift that is larger and more useful than single use, one land effects.

Artifacts

Icy Manipulator: The Bonecrank keeps the best creature on the board totally at bay, for an upkeep of just

. If pressed it can even deal with mana sources or time relevant artifacts. Four to come down is a little costly, but much less important in a large setting.

Oblivion Stone: The O-Stone deals with any non-land that’s giving you trouble, and if pressed you can keep the permanents you really care about. It has large flexibility as a result, and like all wrath effects, scales for the number of permanents that your opponents have dropped onto the field. Artifacts can be reused with cards like Academy Ruins or Sanctum Gargoyle, as so isn’t out yet.

Duplicant: An amazing piece of removal that’s also a big threat on its own. Very few creatures have protection from artifacts, and Duplicant gets to borrow that creature’s size to use against their owner. It doesn’t get any easier to recur than an Artifact Creature, but he only scales to the number of targets.

Sensei’s Divining Top: This column’s namesake, because just as I hope to do when writing this, the Top provides a constant flow of quality card selection, for the low price of

per upkeep, even less if you can manage to activate twice the round before. Combined with routine shuffle effects, the Top becomes almost as good as card draw. Combined with being almost impossible to kill, its cheap play cost and activation cost ensure that it fits among everything else you want to do that turn. And if it needed anymore sweetening, it can be popped to draw one of those three cards, if they are essential.

Loxodon Warhammer: Lifelink, trample, and a big power boost. What's not to like? Equipment has some inherent reusability, and the Hammer can do a multitude of things: it can push your large creature through chump-blockers, it can put you ahead in a race against one or more opponents, and it can boost even a 1/1 into a legitimate threat. It, however, doesn’t scale in the slightest.

Artifacts to Skip: Howling Mine and friends are even more disadvantageous in multiplayer than they are in constructed. They give away more and more cards the more opponents you have. There are better draw engines in almost every color, and even artifacts can provide better card sources than things like Howling Mine.

Lands

Mikokoro, Center of the Sea: Colorless, deckspace free card draw is at a real premium, and Mikokoro tops the list. For the low cost of simply not making colored mana, Mikokoro has the extreme benefit of drawing cards for a cheap price. I know right above this entry I mentioned that cards like Howling Mine should be skipped, but Mikokoro behaves a little differently than the Mine. First, Mikokoro can be activated at the end of your last opponent’s turn, thus giving you first access to the cards. You can also choose not to activate it at all, if keeping opponent’s cut off from cards is worth not getting any new cards yourself, or if your hand is full. Finally, it gives you a political tool, promises such as “Don’t attack me and we’ll all Mikokoro,” is a common statement from many a playgroup. These opportunities scale with the number of opponents you are fighting. As lands are the least likely to be destroyed in multiplayer games (due to the stigma of land destruction) a Mikokoro is usually good for as many cards as you want to give and take.

Maze of Ith: Perhaps the king of really, really, annoying multiplayer cards, Maze of Ith can provide an enormous disruption to aggressive plans. The Maze can defend you, and defend any opponent that you need to defend for political reasons. Uncounterable, hard to destroy, and manafree to activate, the Maze of Goddamn, Would You Stop That is a powerful tool to be in control of. It consumes a land drop, but that is not really a major cost when going to late game. If you are playing something like Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, then Maze of Ith will absolutely rock your socks to the core. Acquiring Mazes is neither cheap nor easy, but if you are playing Highlander or control, then I recommend playing them at least as a one of.

Volrath’s Stronghold: If there’s a downside to the Stronghold, it’s that it’s so popular and legendary, and as a result will fairly often end up getting wastelanded by someone else’s Stronghold. The essence of reusability, Volrath’s Stronghold is an amazing source of powerful card selection. If you are just drawing one card a turn, the stronghold will guarantee that it’s a good one. It even comes into play untapped, so the power of this effect only comes with the downside of being colorless, a downside that is not dramatic on a legendary land. It has the same huge versatility of all the creatures in magic that come with easy sacs and normal deaths.

Vesuva: If the other lands on this list are good, wouldn’t you like to play all of them? Well, Vesuva has a serious bout of versatility. It can Wasteland any legendary land that an opponent happens to drop, and can borrow the power of any normal land an opponent has decided to drop. With cards like Maze of Ith, Cabal Coffers, Reflecting Pool, and others running around, you get to play all of these cards in a wallet-friendly way for only the cost of a comes-into-play-tapped land.

Deserted Temple: Lands have tap abilities, it’s funny how that works, and the Temple gives you all of those again. You can combine it with multimana lands for really big spells, and it combines with utility lands for card advantage boosts. If nothing else, it can act as a bad mana fixer, using one land to untap another to create two of the same color.

Lands to Skip: City of Brass and the other pain-only lands. You don’t need to trade away large chunks of life to fix mana. You’ll need to tap your lands many, many times to go the entire length of an eight player game and so if you take a point from each mana, you’ll very quickly find that the color is easier to get with Coastal Towers and tri-lands, or cheap fetches like Terramorphic Expanse and Panoramas.

Alrighty then. Many, many words later, hopefully you have some better ideas for cards to run in your decks. Along the way maybe you’ve even learned something about deckbuilding theory for multiplayer.

May All your Cabal Therapies Hit Four-of Force of Wills,
Devin Malko

By Devin Malko on April 22nd, 2009 · Filed in Multiplayer, Casual · 19 Comments