Card Spotlight: Fires of Yavimaya

On this beautiful Day before Christmas, what better time to celebrate talking about one of my favorite cards. It's cold outside, inside the warm glow around the Christmas Tree.

I started playing competitive Magic around 2000/2001. Urza's Block/Masques Block was the T2 format. Then Invasion got released, bumping Urza's Block out of the way, and introducing one of the staples of that particular Standard format: Fires of Yavimaya.

When a card has a whole archetype named after it, you know you've got something powerful on your hands. According to the MTGSalvation Wiki, it was 'the deck to beat going into the 2001 World Championships'. A version splashing black even reached the quarterfinals in the hands of Jan Tomcani.

The deck was a Red/Green aggressive midrange deck that abused the interaction between fading and haste, essentially giving an extra attack to creature that weren't supposed to have that attack. Llanowar Elves, into Fires, into Blastoderm, into Saproling Burst (removing 3 counters) was the most aggressive opening the deck was capable of. This little sequence was good for a turn 4 kill.

Lucky for us, all of the cards that made that deck great - except Saproling Burst - are legal in peasant. We have mana elves, good 4-drop beaters, efficient burn to finish the game, Flametongue Kavu.

The catch, sadly, is that the deck's namesake card is only a 1-of. Well, if you look at the typical Fires of Yavimaya deck, but take Fires of Yavimaya out of the equation...
Mana elves, midrange fatties, efficient burn. Yep, sounds like a typical and very solid Gruul Midrange deck to me.

Want to make the Fires deck more consistent so that it turns more into an archetype than a fun single build-around card? Cards like Lightning Greaves, Lightning Mauler and Reckless Charge are great ways to mimic the power of Fires.

Fires of Yavimaya slots perfectly into Gruul decks with mana elves that look to curve out into 3-4-5 drops. Green midrange already has the ability to go bigger faster because of its mana ramp, but adding haste turns it up to eleven. The combination of Elf+Fires turns a midrange deck into an aggro deck, combining the speed of aggro with the size of midrange.

Against aggro decks that are lower to the ground, the card is at its worst. Taking a turn off on turn 2 or 3 to cast something that doesn't directly affect the board is a huge cost. Against other midrange and/or control decks it may look like you're taking a turn off, but you get a pretty big boost by making your damage output more unpredictable.

I really enjoy playing with Fires of Yavimaya as subtle build-around card that feels and plays out very Gruul-like. The fact that you don't have to go out of your way to support it sets it apart from other build-arounds and makes it a great fit for any peasant cube with an available guild slot.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Card Spotlight: Psychic Spiral

For a while, one of my friends kept asking me to add cards to my cube that mill opponents. Mill is also one of those archetypes that keeps popping up on different forums. People love their mill.

Traditionally, there have been 3 kinds of mill decks: control decks that win the game by locking it up and slowly grinding away at the opponent's library, a sort of burn-style mill deck that plays multiple mill spells to burn the library away as fast as possible, and different combo decks that use a one-shot mill spell or big draw spell to finish the game.

Let's call them control, aggro and combo mill.

Including mill as a win condition brings multiple problems. Control mill is slow. Both aggro and combo mill decks are faster, but are parasitic. To function, they need a critical mass of certain spells (mill spells and rituals/free spells, respectively) that do not go well into other decks.

So, for mill to work, you basically need a card that 1) can mill someone out on its own, 2) doesn't need multiple unplayable set-up cards that only work with it and 3) doesn't take 10-15 turns to kill. Oh, and preferably it's not too fragile.

Psychic Spiral checks all the boxes above, while also having fringe use in attrition based matchups as a way to shuffle your graveyard back in. The best part is that you can build a Psychic Spiral deck in 2 completely different ways (or let them overlap):

Control with Psychic Spiral as a finisher
With Psychic Spiral, you have a card that can finish the game without being vulnerable to creature/enchantment/artifact removal. It works best in a spell-based control shell (in contrast to a permanent-based control shell) that naturally puts cards in your graveyard. You can basically fill your deck with removal, counterspells and card draw. Usually, it ends up as either U/R, U/B or U/r/b with a couple of sweepers.
Example deck: U/R Control

Psychic Spiral combo
If your cube has any cards that support other graveyard archetypes (Reanimate, Spider Spawning, Psychatog) or synergies (delve, dredge), you can draft Psychic Spiral combo. Pick up all the cantrips, self mill, looting, etc you see and start churning through your deck like a madman. The great thing is that all the aforementioned both help to fill your graveyard AND dig towards Psychic Spiral. If possible, you want to run 1 or 2 cards that can get Psychic Spiral from your graveyard when you mill it.
This deck feels a little like storm combo in traditional cubes (without having to run storm-only cards!), and can be U/R, U/B, U/G or a combination of those.
Example deck: U/G Spiral Combo

Psychic Spiral has turned into one of my favorite cards in cube over the last year or so. With the inclusion of a single card, we've inserted decks that feel very different that most other decks.
It's one of the best control finishers available to peasant cube, and one of the best linear combo finishers in the format.

If you like the idea of mill as an alternative win condition and/or love spell based combo in cube, I'd really recommend trying out Psychic Spiral.

Card Spotlight: Diversionary Tactics

Tokens is an archetype I've always been fond of. When Urza's block was standard legal, I played blue/green with Deranged Hermit. In Ravnica block, I loved Selesnya tokens. The biggest reason I liked those decks?

Sadly, both Opposition and Glare of Subdual are not peasant legal. Which, especially in the case of the ridiculously powerful Opposition, might be best for the format. Still, the effect has become iconic (for me) in Magic, and one of the reasons I built my cube years ago was that I could play with cards and archetypes I've always loved playing - within the boundaries of peasant.

Flash forward to a month or two ago, when my buddy and I where looking for obscure white enchantments to push the green/white enchantment-matters archetype. My buddy is doing a Gatherer search, and stumbles upon this little gem:

First, we laughed it away, reminiscing about Opposition and Glare of Subdual. You have to tap TWO creatures? This can't be good. Can it? Wait, can it? White does have a good number of token makers on its own. If you add green to the mix, there are even a couple of cards that make (multiple) tokens each turn.

We decided we'd try it, just to see if it was any good. To the surprise (and satisfaction) of both of us, it actually turned out way better than we could've imagined. This card, in the right deck of course, has been singlehandedly responsible for multiple game wins and turnarounds over the last couple of months. It's able to break stalemates, tap down big tramplers or flyers that the token deck otherwise can have trouble with, even tap down whole boards of attackers in some occasions.

You do need the right deck for it to shine. In a deck with 10-12 creatures, it's plain bad. But, as long as your deck has a couple of ways to make multiple creatures with one card, Diversionary Tactics can be great. We're at a point where we pick it very highly in token decks. Opposition, it's not, but it's the closest thing I've found for peasant.

If a card is described multiple times with statements like "I should've held removal for it", "the only thing that could save/wreck me now is Tactics" or "oh crap", you know you've got a winner.