Yet another Vintage Solitaire deck for Magic Online

 It could be a lot faster, yet I made it with several win conditions and it has a wide range of turn wins: as little as three turns with the average being seven. I use several solitaire rules to give the experience some variance: no mulligan and only basic lands. Here is the deck. Near the end of the gameplay I took out Djinn for another clone, but the change in gameplay is minimal. Also, only the 'draw three, return two' (the 2nd ability) for JTMS can be used.

Djinn out, second Clone in, for the final state of the deck.

There are some turn ones loaded with mana thanks to Black Lotus and/or how many Moxen are in the opening hand.

The one hydra enables some early wins. Before I added it, every game was a turn six or turn seven if Blightsteel Colossus did not get lined up perfectly.

Here is a sample of typical wins by turn. Lining up green into Elvish Piper and dropping a big critter is the most streamlined win, but there are many routes to victory. Here is a turn three win, obviously enabled by Black Lotus.

Here is a Black Lotus-enabled turn 4 win.

And another Black Lotus-enabled turn 4 win, this time with several Moxen and even more mana to load up the Hydra.

Turn five Blightsteel Colossus via Elvish Piper. No need for Black Lotus for this one. Infect did it all.

Another turn five win, this time with a 10/10 hydra.

Turn six Blightsteel Colossus via Elvish Piper. 

Turn six via Elvish Piper plus Hydra (since it has Haste). 

A late Blightsteel (turn seven).

Cloned Blacksteel Colossus (for fun, one is enough to win) turn seven.

Turn seven with Elvish Piper. The second big critter was not needed, just here for fun.

There are slow games. Here is a turn eight end. The deck has enough power (no kidding, as in Power 9 power), tutors, and so on. It's rare to go more than eight turns.

Cubing with Foundations (Early Thoughts)

 I have continued to play Magic Arena but since the last core set was issued, I have not thought about collecting paper Magic or cubing with paper Magic. I love core sets, which I guess makes me a minority in the Magic playing community given the two times Wizards has gapped core sets since Origins. Yet finally someone came to their senses and we will soon have a new core set, Foundations. Here are some previews.

Not only is this set featuring many classics from the previous core sets, it is also featuring reprints from non-core sets (which is the usual fare). Progenitus with the original art is easily the best pick. It's a singularly Johnny card and I am a Johnny, and that artwork is amazing. 

I would like to cube Foundations by itself, but I would also like to add my own list to the cube from Tenth Edition, my favorite Magic set of all time (did I mention that I love core sets?). On paper, the price of the most expensive cards, which are those that are more expensive than the pain lands, is a small number (thank you Wizards for the perfect reprint policy). Here they are.

This means that even the most expensive cards are not prohibitively expensive. Remember, this set has 363 cards (383 when you include the lands), and that is 121 each of commons, uncommons, and rares. I have all of the commons and the uncommons, but I am missing probably 30 or 40 of the rares. So that's what I have now as far as affordability of the paper cards. I already have a good selection, but I will never have enough Xth edition cards, and that means that I will be buying a few more. 

In Magic Online, I am in much better shape. I have at least one of every non-land card.

And so there is a physical cube and an online cube. It's early days since Foundations comes out roughly three weeks from today. A new core set, finally!!!

Standard Themes 2024: WU Spirits

 This theme is built mostly from Innistrad Midnight Hunt and Innistrad Crimson Vow. Even though Lunarch Veteran is not a Spirit, it turns into one, and the same is true for some of the other creatures useful for this deck. Also, Lunarch Veteran's lifegain triggers so much life gain that it can boost many other cards, and turbocharge pretty much any deck.

Voice of the Blessed is by far the strongest card in the Spirits deck, and it gets really big on lifegain triggers.

The theme has two legendary creatures that can be used for casual Brawl and Commander builds.

Spirits have a lord: Patrician Geist.

Mirrorhaul Mimic can be used to generate additional Spirits.

Behold the Unspeakable can generate a Spirit token.

A historic summer of Magic Standard is about to begin

 Once Outlaws of Thunder Junction comes out in a week or so, we will have 12 large sets in Standard. I have been having fun playing an Insidious Roots deck in Arena. My decks usually live in Platinum, but this one made it to Mythic. I have been posting many of the games to my Magic YouTube channel. Here is a link to the playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4fjHQoGTndWyZ0nh_lJ8d_a03Pw2MC4N

The deck started at Mythic 85% and after playing many games, I ended at 80%. I made several optimizations along the way, and I am happily surprised at this fluke. I would have been happy with yet another well-tuned Platinum deck for casual play!

Here is the decklist:

Deck

4 Insidious Roots (MKM) 208

8 Swamp (LTR) 267

3 Commune with Spirits (NEO) 180

3 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (DMU) 107

4 Ashnod's Harvester (BRO) 117

3 Glissa Sunslayer (ONE) 202

4 Faerie Dreamthief (WOE) 89

3 Boseiju, Who Endures (NEO) 266

4 Deathcap Glade (VOW) 261

2 Restless Cottage (WOE) 258

4 Underground Mortuary (MKM) 271

3 Forest (LTR) 271

4 Sheoldred's Edict (ONE) 108

2 Vein Ripper (MKM) 110

4 Hero's Downfall (VOW) 120

3 Gix's Command (BRO) 97

2 Junji, the Midnight Sky (NEO) 102

Anyways, about Summer 2024: I have been cracking a booster box of each set, and plan to build a bunch of casual decks focusing on all rotating commons from Midnight Hunt, Crimson Vow, Kamigawa Neo, and New Capenna. I have the commons complete all in a book. Once Outlaws comes out, I plan to start building decks centered around the rotating commons and using as many of the cards from all of these sets as possible.

I hope you are as excited as I am about 12 large sets in Standard.

Falco MTGO Solitarie Test Deck

 I build these decks to understand how cards interact. In order to make this deck work against an opponent, you can substitue 10 or so cards with cards that interact with opponents (destroy creatures, counter spells, and so on). Falco is a lot of fun. Add a bunch of counters, build up mana, and then start casting from the top of your library. Tribute to the World Tree and Satsuki are the first to go to make the deck have more synergy.

A Standard Cube Begins

 I cracked seven packs (IRL: in real life) of Midnight Hunt and made four decks with the cards. I reconstructed each deck in Arena and am playing them against the bots. It's my way to see how many of the cards play. These three decks are very low-power. As I crack more packs, I will be able to make stronger decks.

The first one is WG.

The second one is BR.

The third one is UG.

The fourth deck is WB

The major pulls from these packs are:

I am sure these three cards will continue to be used as I crack more packs and make more decks. Here are the deck lists. These decks are very low-powered. The game here is to make enough decks with this selection to have all of the cards in at least one deck.

Strixhaven Mystical Archives are a home run

 Yeah! I loooove these cards. I am having a lot of fun collecting them. Including one in every pack of Strixhaven is a stroke of genius, the design is just perfect, and the cards are iconic and playable. What more can we ask?

I have these and most of the others. Out of 63, as of now, I am only missing 15. I had to order many as singles just because I wanted to collect them. Home run, Wizards, home run!

I go through some of these in this video: