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Chicken Dinota
May. 30th, 2021 03:46 pmI haven't talked about Magic: the Gathering in any sort of depth in a while, so I feel like rambling about that a bit.
I'm still playing a bunch of Magic Arena, and I made it to Mythic (top) rank in constructed again this month building around Winota, Joiner of Forces. Winota is from a set with a Godzilla-esque "humans versus monsters" theme, attack with non-Human creatures and Winota fetches up some Humans to join the fray, temporarily making them indestructible as a bonus. One Human in the newest set is Blade Historian, which lets attacking creatures deal damage twice. This is a strong enough payoff that you can often win immediately after playing Winota, as soon as turn four. Sure, it takes some setup, and sure, there are ways to disrupt that plan (keep your board clear, counter Winota, instantly deal with it before you can attack). But not many cards in Standard (the format where you play with cards from the few most recent sets) allow a plausible game-plan of "play this on turn four and then win immediately", so that's more than enough to make these decks popular.
I've been mostly playing the variant that tries to rush out more early stuff with Professor of Symbology (fetches some extra spells) and Clarion Spirit (creates Spirit tokens when you play more than one spell in a turn). But I kind of suspect the strongest variant is Winno's Doggos, which plays Pack Leader (makes Dogs stronger and indestructible when attacking) and Alpine Houndmaster (comes with some friends and gains more attack power when it has company).
I really wanted to make Warrior tribal work with Winota. Kargan Warleader is a pretty decent payoff, and playing that on turn three isn't bad either. But it's a Human, and with Winota you really want your Humans to follow Winota and as big-as-possible a crowd of non-Humans into battle on turn four. A lot of the other Winota payoffs, like Blade Historian, are not Warriors. The low end of the deck isn't quite consistent or resilient enough. There's one more set coming into Standard before Winota leaves, so I guess I'll see if new cards in that set can make that work.
I had one game today where I built up my board very fast with Winota nowhere in sight. My opponent was playing Emergent Ultimatum, which has a game-plan of stopping you for however many turns, then playing stuff that wins approximately immediately by itself. (The card Emergent Ultimatum itself lets you search for three such threats, then politely lets your opponent choose which two out of three to be wrecked by.) I got my opponent down from 20 life to 6, they wished me a good game, then wiped me out with Shadows' Verdict. My opponent was right to expect they had that one, but nothing is so delicious as having your opponent's hubris in early GG-ing punished by the Magic gods. I had about a 4% chance of drawing a card that might have some hope of wining the game, I didn't concede, and in fact I lucked out and drew Haktos the Unscarred. Haktos is one of my favorite card designs from a Greek-mythology-inspired set, a top-down take on Achilles, with immunity to most things save for a randomly selected weakness. My opponent probably had a few things in their deck that could still deal with it, but they didn't have it, and I won the next turn.
I'm still playing a bunch of Magic Arena, and I made it to Mythic (top) rank in constructed again this month building around Winota, Joiner of Forces. Winota is from a set with a Godzilla-esque "humans versus monsters" theme, attack with non-Human creatures and Winota fetches up some Humans to join the fray, temporarily making them indestructible as a bonus. One Human in the newest set is Blade Historian, which lets attacking creatures deal damage twice. This is a strong enough payoff that you can often win immediately after playing Winota, as soon as turn four. Sure, it takes some setup, and sure, there are ways to disrupt that plan (keep your board clear, counter Winota, instantly deal with it before you can attack). But not many cards in Standard (the format where you play with cards from the few most recent sets) allow a plausible game-plan of "play this on turn four and then win immediately", so that's more than enough to make these decks popular.
I've been mostly playing the variant that tries to rush out more early stuff with Professor of Symbology (fetches some extra spells) and Clarion Spirit (creates Spirit tokens when you play more than one spell in a turn). But I kind of suspect the strongest variant is Winno's Doggos, which plays Pack Leader (makes Dogs stronger and indestructible when attacking) and Alpine Houndmaster (comes with some friends and gains more attack power when it has company).
I really wanted to make Warrior tribal work with Winota. Kargan Warleader is a pretty decent payoff, and playing that on turn three isn't bad either. But it's a Human, and with Winota you really want your Humans to follow Winota and as big-as-possible a crowd of non-Humans into battle on turn four. A lot of the other Winota payoffs, like Blade Historian, are not Warriors. The low end of the deck isn't quite consistent or resilient enough. There's one more set coming into Standard before Winota leaves, so I guess I'll see if new cards in that set can make that work.
I had one game today where I built up my board very fast with Winota nowhere in sight. My opponent was playing Emergent Ultimatum, which has a game-plan of stopping you for however many turns, then playing stuff that wins approximately immediately by itself. (The card Emergent Ultimatum itself lets you search for three such threats, then politely lets your opponent choose which two out of three to be wrecked by.) I got my opponent down from 20 life to 6, they wished me a good game, then wiped me out with Shadows' Verdict. My opponent was right to expect they had that one, but nothing is so delicious as having your opponent's hubris in early GG-ing punished by the Magic gods. I had about a 4% chance of drawing a card that might have some hope of wining the game, I didn't concede, and in fact I lucked out and drew Haktos the Unscarred. Haktos is one of my favorite card designs from a Greek-mythology-inspired set, a top-down take on Achilles, with immunity to most things save for a randomly selected weakness. My opponent probably had a few things in their deck that could still deal with it, but they didn't have it, and I won the next turn.
