A Future with Azorius

I've been fairly ill this week, which is why I not only missed my Tuesday post but was absent entirely from MPDC as well. I'm slowly getting back on my feet, and I should have another post Saturday to make up for the one I missed on Tuesday. Thanks for your patience!

A couple weeks ago, I was discussing the dominance of the Izzet Control archetype in Standard Pauper right now and examining whether or not Azorius might have the right tools to combat it. After that post, I spent some time experimenting with a very aggressive build that relied on powerful 2-drops and a great deal of spot removal to try and put a lot of early pressure on Izzet Control. And while the build seemed to have promise, ultimately it wasn't proving to be very effective. So I went back to the drawing board, and starting looking at ways to delay and sidestep Izzet's plan through effects that tap down creatures rather than removing them. This lead to playing quite a few more spells, which pushed the deck more towards the midrange and made Prowess creatures particularly attractive. Here's where I ended up:

Azorius

by gwyned

Creatures 4 Elusive Spellfist 4 Jeskai Student 4 Lotus Path Djinn 4 Mardu Hordechief 2 Student of Ojutai 18 cards Other Spells 4 Anticipate 4 Send to Sleep 4 Treasure Cruise 2 Crippling Chill 2 Whisk Away 1 Clutch of Currents 1 Feat of Resistance 1 Sheer Drop 19 cards

Lands 7 Plains 4 Evolving Wilds 4 Island 4 Skyline Cascade 4 Tranquil Cove 23 cards Sideboard 4 Pacifism 3 Cleric of the Forward Order 3 Felidar Cub 2 Disdainful Stroke 2 Negate 1 Whirlwind Adept 15 cards

These five creatures represent some of the stronger ones in Azorius colors, play well with spells, and have the added benefit of being immune to Twin  Bolt and other 2 point damage spells. The deck can also sift through its library very quickly thanks to Anticipate and Treasure Cruise, all the while casting plenty of spells to keep fuel for Delve. Send to Sleep has proven to be quite strong as long as you have Spell Mastery active, and this deck also finally gives Skyline Cascade a chance to shine. It's quite capable of locking down the worst creatures for two or three turns in a row, giving you plenty of time to power through with your Prowess-enabled creatures for the win.

Thus far I've had great success with this build against Izzet Control specifically. I also had three very close games against the sacrifice-themed Rakdos deck that is seeing more play. I wouldn't say I'm totally satisfied with this build, but I'm certainly pleased so far.

What changes or additions would you make? Let me know in the comments below.

Collaborative Story-First Character Creation Results

A couple weeks back, I wrote about a character creation process for D&D 5th edition that I adapted from the Fate Core System. Essentially, this was a "story-first" approach where each character creates their own background and first adventure, and then each other character assigns themselves a role in two of the other character's adventurers, immediately creating a sense of connection and camaraderie among the party.

So I went through this process with a group of my college buddies, none of whom have ever played Dungeons and Dragons before (although they are all very familiar with the fantasy genre in general). Between the creative free-writing assignments for their backstory, first adventure, and secondary role in two other adventurers, as well as the actual process of rolling up the stats for the characters, it took us almost four hours, which is a long time for a session dedicated to character creation. But as my design document states, this is a highly collaborative form of group storytelling, and it should come as no surprise that it took us a whole play session to complete.

We ended up with four separate backgrounds (one for each character), plus three tales that were the result of their collaborative storytelling. If you're interested in seeing the results, feel free to check them out here. But overall I was very happy with the process. I've got several great threads that tie the characters together, the potential for some very interesting interactions between the players, and several hooks that will tie into the story that my players are already telling. While it's a lengthy process, it's one that I highly recommend you try. If you're interested, you can download my detailed description of the process here.

This group will be meeting next Friday night, so in a few weeks I'll be sure and recount the highlights of this experience. I'm certainly looking forward to it!

Standard Pauper Double League Update

As of yesterday, the Swiss rounds of Phase 1 of the Standard Pauper Double League are complete! Congratulations to our first round of finalists - tikimunkee, Malum, Nate316, bava, mattp81, iniksbane, Uluruguru, and ZombieNeko. These players will now compete in an eight player Double Elimination bracket until only one player is left standing! If you want to keep up with how these players are doing, just check the Top 8 Double Elimination Phase One bracket, which I will update frequently.

For all of the other players in this event, Phase 2 of this league will start first thing tomorrow Eastern Standard time. Phase 2 is also open to anyone else who would like to play. Just make sure you send an E-mail to gwyned at gmail dot com by the end of the day today (Tuesday, December 8th, 2015). If I don't hear from you by the end of today, you will NOT be part of Phase 2, so don't delay! I will send out an official E-mail tomorrow morning once the pairings for Round 1 of Phase 2 are available.

I've had a couple frequent questions come up that I thought I would address here:

1. What are the prizes? When will they be distributed? You can view the prize payout here. Prizes will not be distributed until the end of Phase 2 of the league.
   
2. What happens if I'm unable to reach my opponent or play my match by the deadline? It is each player's responsibility to make sure your match gets played. If your match is not complete by first thing Monday morning each week, and you have not E-mailed me, you will immediately receive a match loss and be dropped from the event.
   
   If both players have E-mailed me but have been unable to play their match, I will handle that on a case-by-case basis. But in that situation, I reserve the right to still drop one or both players. Get your matches played out on time!
   
3. Is the league Swiss rounds or Double Elimination? I'm so confused... Both phases of the event are played out separately. Each one consists of five rounds of Swiss play, then a cut to Top 8. Those Top 8 players will then battle in a Double Elimination format tournament to determine the final ranking for prizes.
   
   Furthermore, once both phases are completed, the 1st place player from both phases will battle in a best-of-five match to determine who is the Grand Champion of the Double League!

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me at the above address. And keep an eye on my Twitter account for the latest updates. Good luck and thanks for playing!

Azorius Against Izzet

So for the last week or so I've been looking at the success of the Izzet Control / Prowess deck in the current Standard Pauper metagame and discussing possible avenues of attack against it. During this week's MPDC, several of the players were discussing the possibility of using an Azorius archetype to try to combat the Izzet menace. It turns out that Izzet is particularly vulnerable to a combination of removal, bounce, and discard, and while that last one may be out of reach, Azorius has some excellent tools for the other two, and furthermore has the ability to generate some great early pressure to help keep the game from going long (which generally works in Izzet's favor). So what cards would be good in such a build?

1. First, White has some excellent targeted removal right now. Cards like Gideon's Reproach, Kill Shot, or even Sheer Drop are certainly worth consideration. Even better, between White and Blue you have three enchantment based removal spells in Claustrophobia, Pacifism, and Tightening Coils, which also keep the affected creatures from filling up the graveyard for Delve.
2. Second, Blue gives you access to all manner of good bounce spells. While Disperse may have been the card of choice at one point, Clutch of Currents has also proven to be quite strong, despite being only Sorcery speed. Another popular choice right now is Whisk Away, which denies your opponent their next draw while getting the creature out of play for a round. Alternatively, locking down a creature with something like Crippling Chill can play a similar role fairly effectively.
3. Third, White has some excellent two and three drop creatures that can generate a lot of pressure in the early game to help keep Izzet off its game plan. Obvious examples include Cleric of the Forward Order, Mardu Hordechief, Sandsteppe Outcast, and Topan Freeblade. Cards such as Alabaster Kirin, Lotus Path Djinn, Separatist Voidmage, or even Student of Ojutai might also warrant inclusion.
4. Finally, Blue also gives you the ability to stretch the game out into the midgame. You can take a play out of Izzet's own strategy with spells like Anticipate and the excellent Treasure Cruise, or even bring in a little bit of countermagic such as Negate or Dispel post board to help shore up any weaknesses. 

I've played around with a few Azorius builds, but I don't feel like I've found the right combination of cards yet. If you've got some ideas or experience with such a build, I'd love to hear them in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

Responding to Izzet

Last time, I wrote about how the various Izzet decks have come to dominate the Standard Pauper metagame as of late, and lamenting the fact that they are not only strong decks, but also being played by a lot of different players.

My post generated more comments than most, including some great strategy on how to combat the Izzet menace. But since I know that a lot of my readers might have missed the discussion, I thought it was worth repeating some of the advice that was given.

1. Don't assume they always have the answers. Izzet is so strong that when they have the perfect hand, you're probably not going to beat them anyway. Sometimes you just have to play as if they don't have the counter to what you're about to do and thus go for the decisive strike, rather than waiting for a better opportunity.
   
2. Defensive creatures aren't a good answer. Between the pump effect of Prowess and Elusive Spellfist being unblockable, holding your creatures back to block is generally not going to be good enough to beat them.
   
3. You won't often be able to win the long game. Thanks to Treasure Cruise, Tormenting Voice, and (to a lesser extent) Anticipate, Izzet can generate a ton of card advantage. Given enough time, they'll be able to assemble a winning combination. Most of the time, you'll want to finish them off before they get to their late game.
   
4. The best answers are bounce, removal, and discard. Get cards out of their hand, take out their creatures, and bounce them back into their hand after they've generated multiple Prowess triggers. Enchantment-based removal like Pacifism or Tightening Coils are great in that they ignore Toughness and don't fill up their graveyard for Delve.

Special thanks to rremedio, Forli, and David Kot for their comments and tips!

Izzet Overwhelming?

As I was pushing through my post-Thanksgiving sleepiness and pondering what to write about for my post for today, I decided to go browse the stats over at the Standard Pauper Mirror, a handy app I've mentioned before run by rremedio1 that compiles data from both of the weekly Standard Pauper PREs. As of this writing, it doesn't include the results from earlier this week, but it's still a very useful snapshot of what's going on in the Standard Pauper metagame right now.

As I was analyzing the data, two interesting facts stood out to me:

1. There is a surprising difference in the metagame between the Sunday and Monday PREs. This is most clearly illustrated in the case of the Rakdos Delve deck, which by the numbers is the most popular choice of decks right now. Yet despite putting up some strong finishes, it is seeing almost no play in MPDC.
   
2. More importantly, Izzet in its various iterations is posting some incredible numbers, with a match win rate somewhere between 60-70% when you average it out between the most popular versions. Rakdos may be the most popular deck, but Izzet is by and large the runaway powerhouse of the format right now. Earlier this week I complained a bit on Twitter about the fact that I literally have not played against any other archetype in the past two weeks, both in my matches for the Standard Pauper Double League and during MPDC.

So for all you players out there with experience with Rakdos Delve, tell me this: does it have a good matchup against Izzet Control? If so, maybe that's would explain why it's so popular.

Fate Core Character Creation

I am in the process of preparing a new Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition campaign for some of my college buddies, and wanted to do something special when it came to character creation. So I spent some time with my friend Google looking for some group character creation guidelines. In the process, I came across a Character Creation ruleset that is part of the Fate Core System, a  ruleset perhaps best known for being the engine that drives the Dresden Files RPG. After perusing the rules, I was quite impressed with how they helped players not only create interesting and unique characters, but also guided them through the process of linking those characters' stories to one another. Here's a quick summary of how that works:

1. Each player comes up with a high concept and a trouble. The high concept is essentially a short phrase that stands in for the typical race and class in fantasy RPGs, while the trouble is something in that character's background or personality that consistently keeps him or her from living out this calling.
2. Each player then comes up with a character background. This background includes their upbringing, an event that forced the character into his or her high concept, and that character's first adventure. Each of these steps turns into a short paragraph, and the first adventure is recorded on a separate index card.
3. Each player then comes up with a secondary role in another character's background. The players pass around the index card with their first adventure summary to another player, and that player then connects their own character to that adventure in some sort of supporting or secondary role.
4. Each player then passes the index card again, repeating the previous step. Afterwards, each character is organically connected to two other members of the group.
5. Each player finalizes the rest of the details about their character. Only once these elements are complete does the player pick out the relevant stats and abilities of their character, based on the stories that have already been crafted.

I love the way that this makes characters that are primarily story-driven, rather than rules-driven. It also instantly creates camaraderie and connections among the group. So, with the above summary in hand, I incorporated those concepts into the standard character creation process for D&D 5th edition, and came up with an awesome first session to play out with my friends. If you're interested in my final document, let me know and I'd be happy to share it with you.

So what do you think?