The Planeswalker's Stronghold

Magic players are ridiculous when it comes wasting money. Myself included, I am totally addicted to getting the most pimped out version of each card I can, especially for my 5C First Reminder deck. It gets so expensive in some cases, I’m embarrassed to admit what I’m spending my money on. I’ve been working on foils for this particular deck for over two years now, and of the 300 cards, I am just over 75% complete. Of the remaining 25%, about half of those cards are not available in premium form. This leaves me with about 40 cards (or so) to upgrade. I have no idea what I will do next when I reach this milestone, but it will likely be retirement. As I continue to bling it up, I consider a rating classification of which version is better than the previous. There are so many options out there, it helps to develop a hierarchy criteria of which version may or may not be better than another. Caution: You’re probably about to read one of the nerdiest columns you may ever seen on the internet.

Okay, I admit it, I didn't try very hard on the title, but really what more could I say there? If you have spent anytime reading about this deck, or 5color in general, you know that's the long and the short of it. For what ever reason, the red portion of the color pie has spent more time in the shallow end of the creativity pool then any other. All red consistently has going for it is Haste, Land Destruction, Direct Damage, and temporary creatures. In my mind, the best thing to do for your deck, is keep red to a minimal amount, so on each review I cut it back to 25 cards. Here we go, bolded cards are new for this year. Anger Arc-Slogger Blood Tyrant Bringer of the Red Dawn Conquering Manticore Dwarven Miner Godsire Inferno Titan Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs Meglonoth Electrolyze Fire // Ice Jund Charm Order // Chaos Burning Wish Conflux Pure // Simple Splinter Twin Wild Research Briorn Stoutarm Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker Rith, the Awakener Sarkhan Vol

Well, a summer has passed, and the Indianapolis Colts are gearing up for another run to NFL glory. Sadly, Grim Tidings has been absent from this webpage since the Superbowl (Too much crying in my beer, I suppose.) Regardless, as Aegis continues to document the latest updates to his DoMT, I thought it might be nice to reshare my “other” H5C deck on the blog. I previously discussed way back in Grim Tiding #16, that I reassembled my Second Reminder H5C deck when Zenikar debuted. As it turned out, I only ended up playing it for just a few months. My focus drifted away, and I ended up needing too many cards for other decks. I learned to abuse Kiki Jiki in far too many ways, much to the chagrin of my poor EDH opponents. Second Reminder was ultimately dissembled in this wake and transformed into 4-5 other unique 300-card decks, including my completely Standard legal 5C deck I played over this past summer. Enter August 2010: M11 has debuted, with a big influx of great cards into the Magic univ

Each year, after the core set release, and before the Fall rotation, I like to take a minute and document where the Deck of Many Things is, and how it has evolved. This year I plan to break this documentation up into several smaller documents, each focused on a specific portion of the deck. Now for those that may not know, this deck is made up of 300 cards, in a highlander style. 5color dictates the size of the deck, and that there must be atl east 25 cards of each of the five colors. I have been playing this deck very heavily for a full 2 years now, and still love it. Today, I'm going to begin by talking about he manabase of the deck. The most basic of deck construction principles, is that a deck should be about 40% mana, which would put the decks manabase to 120 cards. The common line of thought in the 5color world, is that this is too much, putting the correct number to roughly 110. With today's revision I am going to push down to a daring 105. I think this number is achie

This last Friday, I decided to let Tater take Mass Polymorph (which needs a better name?) for a spin around FNM. After discussing the deck with GrimJack, I felt it was worth experimenting with a GU version of the deck, stripping away the red mana and most of the red spells. Refocusing the list yield this first attempt. 1 Magister Sphinx 2 Bogardan Hellkite 4 Beastial Menace 4 Mana Leak 4 See Beyond 4 Cultivate 2 Garruk Wildspeaker 3 Fog 4 Growth Spasm 4 Mass Polymorph 4 Preordain 7 Forest 7 Island 4 Halimar Depths 4 Khalni Garden 2 Misty Rainforest The deck performed really well despite the last minute changes to the brew. Scary as the fact is that you can't hard cast a single creature in the deck, the list looks to be pretty close to right. A judge playing in the event, responding to a judge call from Taters opponent, compliment Taters play regarding use of the stack, and trigger resolution. Tater went 2-3 on the night, and missed prize support by only a hair!

I found the rumor season for M11 a bit sad, as it revealed that Warp World would not be included for next year. This once again leaves me without a deck concept to move forward with. I turn in desperation to the clear replacement to Warp World, the new blue spell Mass Polymorph. The concept seems pretty clear. By controlling the creatures in the deck, I can hit specific targets and effects off the Mass Polymorph. In looking at my Warp World deck, the first thing that jumps out is I need to add blue to the mana base, which means I should probably drop a color. Since Mass Polymorph only effects creatures, and not lands, my prior win condition (Ob Nix) is pretty much out, so I have little need for black. The lack of land fall triggers also removes the need for most of card advantage tricks. In fact the only thing resembling a win condition from the original deck, is the Hellkites. Getting all four Hellkites out in one hit for a win condition is pretty tough, because I have to cheat ou