The Planeswalker's Stronghold

Well the long sought day has finally come. I have found my signature 5color card, and it is none other then Warp World. I have been in the process of retooling my deck to accommodate this adjustment. The current deck list can be found here . DoMT has now become a story of three decks. There is two fully functional EDH/Commander decks shuffled with 100 fill in cards. Each of the stand alone decks has it's own sleeve color, to allow for easy pull out and separate play. The final 100 is split into two sleeve groups, one for "non-EDH consideration" cards, and the other for everything else. My hope is, this will make the EDH fine tuning process easier, so I don't have to look up card legality on the fly. Items removed since my last posting: Not all of these are gone forever. Many simply represent their current usage in a more vital deck, or have been bumped to test new interactions. Arid Mesa Benediction of Moons Berserk Brawn Brion Stoutarm Civic Wayfinder Co...

No more waiting. Here’s my decklist at last: 91 Creature/Equivalents 1 Academy Rector 1 Avenger en-Dal 1 Kazandu Blademaster 1 Meadowboon 1 Mother of Runes 1 Phantom Flock 1 Shinewend 1 Sun Titan 1 Transcendent Master 1 Wall of Omens 4 Enclave Cryptologist 4 Sphinx of the Magosi 4 Thrumming Bird 1 Bribery 1 Bringer of the Blue Dawn 1 Helium Squirter 1 Lighthouse Chronologist 1 Master Transmuter 1 Mulldrifter 1 Myojin of the Seeing Wind 1 Sage of Fables 1 Sphinx of Lost Truths 1 Animate Dead 1 Carnifex Demon 1 Dusk Urchins 1 Guul Draz Assassin 1 Mirri, the Cursed 1 Necroskitter 1 Skeleton Ship 1 Skinrender 1 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon 1 Spirit Monger 1 Vorosh the Hunter 1 Vulturous Zombie 1 Witch Maw Nephilim 1 Apocalypse Hydra 1 Kulrath Knight 1 Lightning Reaver 1 Lord of Shatterskull Pass 1 Rakavolver 1 Spitting Hydra 1 Stigma Lasher 1 Taurean Mauler 1 Avenger of Zendikar 1 Birds of Paradise 1 Bloom Tender 1 Cytoplast Root-kin 1 Eternal Witness 1 Fangren Firstborn 1 Fauna Shaman 1 F...

5C Proliferate, Part III – Mana Fixing Fixing the mana problems for my 5-Color Proliferate should be pretty easy. Minor Problems The best way with any deck to figure out what adjustments you need to make is to just play it and see how it does. I’ve done that a lot over the past month, and I’ve thankfully taken notes of what types of problems I’ve had as the deck evolved. My current decklist is predominantly Blue and Green. Through my tuning process, I’ve whittled down the White, Black and Red components so they are minimized (for the most part). I’ve had some problems though in the last few weeks having enough (any) red and black mana online, as well as getting enough acceleration to start casting spells a turn or two earlier. As I normally do, I started off with a standard 110 land manabase, with a bunch of additional artifacts/creatures. Why 110? I don’t know. I’ve played this game for a long time and that is what it seems to take. I dumped in a bunch of the dual lands, shock lands, ...

Check out my newest card for First Reminder: Not bad for my first piece of altered artwork. I like it at least.

5C Proliferate, Part II - Draw Everything seems to be progressing well with my 5C Proliferate deck, as my major overhauls are complete for the most part. Over the last three weeks, I’ve injected the deck with a substantial amount of removal and drawing capability to help build a strong skeleton that can be fleshed out with a 'proliferating counter’ theme. One of the biggest problems from the initial games I played with 5C Proliferate was that I had no sustainability after my opening seven-card hand. I consistently went into top-deck mode after a few turns, and had to rely solely on luck to mount any sort of offense. In short, there was no sustainability at all. Now, I did include some elements of card draw, but as I revealed last week, my initial intent was to have a highlander decklist, with a wide variety of spells to chose form. What I ended up with in result was a diluted deck that always petered out around turn 5. Starting Point What nice about the card drawing aspect is that ...

5C Proliferate, Part I- Defense In Grim Tidings #26, I revealed some serious problems with my 300 card 5-Color Proliferate deck. I’m dedicating the next few weeks to perform diagnostic checks on the concept to see if I can make it work. Lets dive right in with my first task at hand: Staying alive long enough to even attempt a proliferate strategy. Most theme decks run the risk that a player might spend too much time “setting up” if the strategy is non-linear. Proliferate falls into this category, in my opinion. In order for the proliferate mechanic to work, it relies on having other permanents already in play with counters on them. By itself, proliferate doesn’t do anything. It requires permanents on either side with counters already on them. Otherwise there is no incentive to activate the mechanic. This puts the player at a disadvantage right off the bat, as there is a time-delay between getting the counters started before the engine starts manufacturing more. This could be a turn or ...

I think the majority of magic articles I write aren't very helpful. For the most part are a stream of self-congratulatory praise of how great my proven decks are. Sure, my cutting sarcasm and wit occasionally generate a chuckle (I still love the Chaos Orb piece) but for the most part, I they all smoosh together into a long wordy rant of why I think this-or-that card is so great and why you should play it too. It’s my own fault. I pretend that everyone who reads my ramblings knows who I am, and has the same preference in play style. I assume everyone plays Casual-Competitive Magic, that they all play 300 card 5-Color decks, highlander style, and they have access to all 10,000+ cards to randomly insert in Deck XYZ at any moment’s notice. Obviously this is untrue. The root of the problem may lie in my core deck: “First Reminder”. I gush on and on about this deck, partly to brag on my collection, and partly to show-off my self-proclaimed cleverness. The deck has gained notoriety (for w...

I skipped a set review (actually two) over the summer as I took a break from Grim Tidings. Now that I’m thinking about Magic again, I’ll insert my thoughts on the latest big expansion, Scars of Mirrodin, and its impact on Casual 5-Color. What is 5-Color Again? For those who have forgotten, 5-color Magic is a format that requires you to build a deck of at least 300 cards, with a minimum of 25 cards from each color. I encourage everyone to go to the actual www.5-color.com link, but basically All cards are legal, except for the Unglued/Unhinged expansions, and there is a special Banned/Restricted list specific to this format. Highlander is optional, but extremely fun. When I consider a card in this discussion, it’s in terms of a “big-deck” format. There will be a lot of cards out there that are better for Standard or Legacy or whatever 60-card format, but for this review, I’m really just looking at the best cards and their impact for 5-Color (and to a lesser extent EDH). Also remember, I...

With the rebirth of Second Reminder (See GT #21), I am brought back to a long-standing debate of a very specific card selection. It was reinforced again during my last Cube draft, when I selected none other than my old buddy, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails. To give you a brief history, "8.5" has been on my internal “watch list” for quite some time. 8.5 appeared in the original Grim Reminder 750, and then in both incarnations of Second Reminder as well. It has been a favorite pet-card of mine since Kamigawa block, due to both its flavorful name, and clever game-warping abilities. Last night was no exception. I drafted a WG weenie deck, packed with a plethora of great cards, including Academy Rector, Mirari’s Wake, and Debtor’s Knell. Eight-and-a-Half was a third or fourth pick for me, perhaps based on his relative obscurity in the common Magic vernacular. What transpired next drove me to write this article. We played two group games with our decks. (8.5 fortunately is the lightest car...

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...