A different kind of Iron Man.

The following is a true story about the greatest game of Magic I have ever played and ever will. And there are pictures.

It all started with a Cudgel Troll. He grabs the card and tears it into pieces. “Regenerate from this!” Much laughter follows.

“Okay—I’ll see that Cudgel Troll and rip up this Roil Elemental.” Riiiiip!

He countered by tearing up a Gargoyle Castle. “If I rip up more money than you do, you give me that foil Master of the Wild Hunt. If you win, you get the Time Warp that you wanted.” The challenge had been made and neither of us would back down.

A playset of Kabira Evangel soon joined the pile of torn cardboard. Not too impressive. I think that the first money card was my single Day of Jugment. Soon enough, we were ravaging our rare binders—trying to one-up each other each round. Soon we were counting out money rares, estimating retail prices, and tearing them into pieces. Tearing playsets of cards like Path to Exile and Bloodbraid Elf were outclassed without hesitation. M10 dual lands were quickly beaten by Zendikar fetchlands. It didn’t take too long before we were tearing our planeswalkers into shreds. Nearly all of the cards are in standard because that’s what we had in our binders/on us at the time.

When the binders began to run low, we tore apart our decks. I said my goodbyes to my Yawgmoth’s Will, Damnations, two Vindicates and these guys:

(reassembled for the photo after the event)

In the final round, he managed to estimate about $250 of cards at once—including the rest of his fetches, a playset of Rishadan Ports, a playset of Morphlings, two of which were signed by rk post. If I had any more money rares on me, I’d have kept going. But I could not come up with more than $250 for the next round, and I had to concede to the winner. We agreed, though, that truly we were both the champs.

Of course, he never was able to get that foil Master of the Wild Hunt because it—and all of his Time Warps—had been torn up during the binder-genocide. A friend recorded a lot of this on video and I’ll post those when they’re up—I’m writing this from memory so things are probably off a little bit. But the idea’s the same: we tore up hundreds of dollars worth of Magic cards to play a game of manliness.

The end pile included(just some highlights):

2 playsets of Garruk Wildspeaker
a playset of Sorin Markov
6 or 7 Jace Belerens
a playset of regular Ajani Vengeants
2 ajani goldmanes
2 playsets of birds of paradise
a playset of morphlings (two signed)
a playset of honor of the pure
a playset of rafiq of the many (one foil)
a playset of master of the wild hunt (one foil)
a playset of noble hierarch (one foil)
a playset of rishadan port
3 baneslayer angels
5 or 6 broodmate dragons
7 day of judgment
3 wrath of god

2 damnation
4 maelstrom pulse
2 vindicate
1 yawgmoths will
8 path to exile and bloodbraids
2 timewarp
2 great sable stag
a bunch of siege-gang commanders
playsets of goblin guides and warren instigators
more sphinxes of jwar isle than i can remember
At least six of each M10 dual
A playset and more of each Zendikar fetch
and sooo much more

In the end though, I had probably the best Magic-related experience of my life. It was a huge rush of fun—and a reminder that Magic is a game. Hundreds of dollars gone in half an hour, but it was a blast and it felt strangely LIBERATING. The cards are just made of cardboard, after all—and it’s cool to have that reminder. The important part was having fun with friends. :D

hi-res images:

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/6297/dsc01012ar.jpg

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/4576/dsc00989ay.jpg

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/364/dsc00990n.jpg

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/8692/dsc01007e.jpg

But we aren’t going to be playing constructed again for a very long time.

Fog Nauseam

I really like the fog deck that uses Luminarch Ascension. I also love the interaction between Ad Nauseam and Tainted Sigil, and in general I think that Tainted Sigil is a pretty cool and unique kind of fog on its own. I was originally working on ways to recur the Sigil, with cards like Open the Vaults and Sharuum the Hegemon, but that deck ended up really wanting to be the Time Sieve deck, which is not the direction I wanted to go in. I came up with the following list, which I think is pretty cool. I still need to test it more in actual matches, but it seems fun.

Fog Nauseam (60)

Sideboard (15)

For the most part, the sideboard’s just thrown in there for now. I really want to make the sideboard a transformational one (replace green with blue) for control matchups. It’s really hard for the manabase to support that, though (especially since ideally we could sideboard in Jace Beleren as well). I’d also love a slot or two for Identity Crisis. It needs work.

A hard part for me is the manabase, especially since we need room for at LEAST two copies of Reliquary Tower.

Feedback, suggestions, criticism, etc much appreciated.

The Red Color Pie

Red’s one of the most fun colors to design for. The color’s philosophy (passion, emotion, rage, fire, etc) is just plain fun. I’ve recently put a lot of time thinking about red. These are some of the designs that I have come up with for red.

You know how most sets will usually have that one zany red rare for Johnny? Cards like Warp World, Goblin Game, Kaboom!. These are some of my favorite kinds of cards, and I’m gonna start with a few of these guys.

Kablooey! 5RR
(Rare) Sorcery
Reveal the top 6 cards of your library and choose a card from among them. Kablooey! deals damage to each player equal to that card’s converted mana cost. Then put the revealed cards on the bottom of your library in any order.

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Coming Soon

Hey there—

This site will be up and running eventually. For the time being, there’s not much here but that logo and this bit of text. Over the course of the next week or so, I plan to get the site’s design ready.

If you want updates, you can follow me on Twitter.

See you soon.