Sire of Seven Brews: David’s Finest Pioneer Lists

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Season 23, Episode 11: Brew Session (Duskmourn and Foundations Potpourri)

It’s been a minute since we had a proper brewing episode. We rectify that today with a proper deck dump, featuring seven delicious brews from David’s sketchpad. No, there’s no copies of Sire of Seven Deaths, but there are some cool directions with Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate, Leyline Axe and Kiora, the Rising Tide, along with some updated Duskmourn concepts with Unstoppable Slasher, Abhorrent Oculus, and Overlord of the Balemurk.

Before we dig into the lists, we follow up on last week’s controversial discussion of the NV Invitational, where a sealed Alpha starter will be cracked open, stamped, and used to battle for seven rounds of ante against 40-card decks made from rare old packs from 1993 and 1994. You can read more about this event here.

Would You Open an Alpha Starter Deck? Announcing the Feast of the Unicorn

Is this a worthy celebration of Magic as Garfield intended, or an ostentatious and wasteful display of wealth? Is there any justification for cracking open (and then stamping) a sealed pack that could sell for $100,000 or more on the open market? David weighs on in the hollow promises of capitalism, when everything is reduced to cash. Maybe the real value we incinerated was the friends we made along the way?

Decklists

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Full Transcript

Introduction

[00:00:00] David Robertson: Hello and welcome to the Faithless Brewing Podcast. I am David Robertson from a chilly, Twin Cities, and I am joined by the CEO of the Faithless Brewing Podcast. He is Dan Traver. Dan, happy Thanksgiving. How’s it going?

[00:00:40] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Hello, David. It’s great to see you. Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving to you as well. I have survived Thanksgiving and I am thankful for that.

How about yourself? Yeah.

[00:00:49] David Robertson: Every year it’s, it’s kind of a gauntlet, you know, um, Both, uh, Katie and my families are around the city, so it’s just a lot of events. I think I did a family thing, like, five of the six days last week or something crazy, so. It gets to be a lot. My family is a lot.

[00:01:09] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah. Um. Probably my family is smaller than yours by the numbers, but, you know, we can get a good crowd together.

I managed to, like, combine that with a lot of driving up and down the eastern seaboard. So, definitely not a relaxing weekend, but it’s fun. It’s nice to be able to celebrate together.

[00:01:28] David Robertson: Yeah, now the grind to Christmas and winter break here.

[00:01:33] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Indeed, well, I mean, so I was looking at the calendar, right? I was up in Connecticut where my aunt lives for Thanksgiving.

I didn’t even realize this until I was like halfway up I 95 and I’m like, wait a minute, am I just coming back here in like five days? Because apparently the Thanksgiving weekend and the Envy Invitational that we talked about on last week’s podcast are like just back to back weekends because Thanksgiving was so late this year.

[00:01:56] David Robertson: Yeah, late Thanksgiving this year.

[00:01:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So something to look forward to, but, um, I’m still excited for it. David, what did you make of that episode?

[00:02:06] David Robertson: Um, yeah, it was really interesting to hear you guys talk about these old sets and stuff. The one thing that really resonated with me is, even back then, and I started playing, you know, my first, I think, starter was a revised starter, and I remember very vividly my mom buying me a dark booster pack.

Um, is you would hear about cards that you had never seen, like, already then. You’d hear about Ancestral Recall, or the, I mean, I don’t even think we have the term, colloquially, of Power Nine yet. But you’d just hear about these incredible cards that, um, you’d never seen, they wouldn’t even be, like, under glass, you know, up at the Source, or wherever.

So, it’s funny that the, like, legend of these packs was already true. Like, I could never imagine getting my hands on Alpha in 1994. Obviously as a 12 year old or whatever, I was very poor. If I had maybe my net worth now that I do then I could have, but like, even at that time, it already seemed like this distant, like an Arabian Nights, you know?

And, um, so that, that kind of story was really a struck home.

[00:03:17] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right. Cause we didn’t miss it by that much chronologically speaking, although at the time it felt like, you know, the difference between the first age and the third age or something, you know?

[00:03:27] David Robertson: Yeah, like, dark packs were just a thing. They were as expensive as a revised booster.

I mean, my parents just, they don’t, without knowing anything, just went to Schindler’s and just bought a random. You know, not knowing that 15 cards was not enough to actually play. They just like bought that for my brother and myself to like pour through.

[00:03:43] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Or 8 cards. Or whatever, yeah, I

[00:03:45] David Robertson: guess, I didn’t even realize Arabian Nights only has 8 cards, but Dark had 15.

[00:03:50] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I vividly remember the Dark because as a kid then I was taking piano lessons and my piano teacher had a little points system, um, where if you did well in your rehearsal for the week you would earn like a little merit point and you could save it up for prizes like an eraser or You know, a colorful notebook for the real try hards who wanted to build up their points throughout the year.

I don’t know, you could get like a Trapper Keeper or something like that. But she wanted to like, pick something that would incentivize me. And so she asked me what I was, like, what my hobbies were, and I said, Oh, Magic the Gathering is so cool. So yeah, she went out and bought, I think, two packs of the Dark, and she kept them in the piano bench.

And it took me months, David. It took me, like, many months to earn them. You had to learn your

[00:04:33] David Robertson: scales, learn your arpeggios.

[00:04:36] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Exactly. It was kind of like that scene in Searching for Bobby Fischer where he refuses to make a move unless he can earn a merit point for it. Our grand master point.

[00:04:48] David Robertson: Bad luck for that movie, by the way, Searching for Bobby Fischer.

Not only did that kid not end up being that, I mean, of course, elite chess player, but not that good at chess, right? Significantly worse than, Multiple Americans since then. Bobby Fischer, it turns out, is just a, you know, a raving crazy person, anti Semite. Um, none of those things were known, of course, in 1992.

I’m not blaming anybody. But like, now chess is way bigger than it’s ever been. That movie is very influential in a lot of young people’s lives. More or less, you know, bright men, more or less our age. And it just has nothing to do with actual, like, chess culture or how chess people think about the game, etc.

[00:05:24] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh man, I still love it. Still love that movie. Oh,

[00:05:27] David Robertson: yeah.

[00:05:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, so you had, it sounds like, a similar experience of encountering the game already in this stage where there was a time of lore, a time of legends.

[00:05:35] David Robertson: Yeah, it already felt old.

[00:05:38] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I was thinking about that discussion. In some ways, like this idea of like having missed out, we’ve come full circle, David, with these limited time secret lair drops, right?

Like if you think about it, Alpha was the original secret lair drop. If you weren’t a Gen Con, you just missed out.

[00:05:55] Speaker 3: Right.

[00:05:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): And then even this thing you’re describing of hearing of cards that you’ve never seen before and not being sure if that’s actually a card. That’s how we experience magic now, right?

With all these universes beyond stuff, you’re like, wait, that’s a card? Are you sure that’s a card? Because I’ve never heard of that. But it’s just not the same.

[00:06:13] David Robertson: Yeah, I mean, you know, the idea of like going back to what magic, you know, was, or quote unquote ought to be, or maybe what we wish it still was.

There is something to be said for what it is now, right? People fundamentally understand magic as a game. And when you hear the modern game designers talk about it, they could be describing any resource, right? You’re just Paying two of this and four of this to get X amount of power and X amount of toughness and those are just resources that you could put on a spreadsheet or something on Gantt chart.

There’s nothing wrong with that and it’s allowed the game to be sustainable, right? There’s a reason they can come out with four sets a year, people at various points love playing various constructive formats and limited formats, etc. So I don’t think all of the change has been for the worse, but there is something magical.

It’s hard to describe to people now when there weren’t even a lot of other options to pick from, like how Immersive, it feels embarrassing to say it now, like Flying Pegasus, or, you know, these basically like vanilla, you know, whatever, Two and a White for a Tutu Unicorn, whatever that was, and that, it felt like it was suggesting a whole world, and, of course, you can’t do that every set, you can’t just keep printing three mana tutus.

Uh, with cool, descriptive text, you have to keep, you know, creating all these very interesting and, um, sophisticated mechanics like Wizards does. So, I agree in many ways, like it’s interesting to go back to what Magic was, at the same time we have to acknowledge if Magic was still going to be alive, it had to make a lot of the changes that it made.

I think these were all sort of forced by circumstance.

[00:07:46] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic, he was actually on the Divedown podcast a couple weeks back for their 300th episode. Congratulations to them. And Shane, we will miss you. So what they talked about in that episode, I mean, apart from what Garfield’s vision of Magic was, at some point Garfield commented that like, you know, Magic is just one of the games that he’s made.

He’s just a game designer. He doesn’t think about Magic that often. He’s always thinking of the next game and like studying what other people are designing. And he commented that like, for the most part it’s the golden age of game design, but there’s a part of him that feels like people just know too much about games now.

Right, there’s a whole vocabulary that’s sprung up around what type of system this is and just like our collective knowledge of like, you know, this type of game is a roll and write or like this one has this amount of variance or this one is, I obviously don’t even know these vocabulary, but when I hear board game people talk about this, I’m like, it feels like they must feel when I’m talking about Magic.

I don’t think that was the case back in the 90s or the 80s when he was developing it, where maybe the bar was lower, it was more like. Uh, just like a white field of snow where you could just take your first steps and we could imagine everything else. But now it’s like, whatever choice you make, if you’re going to try to like recreate a great game, you’re being instantly compared to everything else.

[00:09:05] David Robertson: To your point though about people knowing about the structures of the games, that really is like the Thief of Joy, right? Like you used to be able to play Dungeons and Dragons. And you just think it was cool to be a dwarf or an elf or a wizard or whatever, but now it’s like, Oh, I’m the tank. Like, people describe their role, not even their character.

Like, I’m the one that gets the buffs, and I’m the one that heals, or I’m the one that, I have range weapons. Like, again, all this does is resort, is reduce everything to just an entry in a spreadsheet. That’s all, when you’re describing it that way, you’re not playing Dungeons Dragons, you’re just saying one person is gonna do this value on the spreadsheet, et cetera, et cetera.

I’m not, there’s nothing wrong with it, but like, Once you see through it, it’s like eating the fruit, you know, for Adam and Eve, like, you can’t go back to enjoying things in a pure way. When you look at how game theory has affected sports, right? Baseball degenerates to the three true outcomes. It’s just strikeouts, home runs, and walks.

That’s not fun, right? So, like, games that were fun, that were beloved for hundreds of years, begin to become less fun as you just apply these pure resources. Basketball degenerated just a bunch of three point shots and layups. Uh, and trying to draw fouls. Football is lucky because the game theory is you should throw more, which happens to be fun.

That’s one of the reasons why football’s popularity has exploded. Uh, it’s actually survived game theory, um, in a way that basketball and baseball haven’t. And we can go on and on, right? Like, shows have to have certain amount of Like, once you think about sitcoms is there must be a certain amount of jokes every certain amount of seconds.

I have watched like friends or whatever, lesser sitcoms in foreign languages. You can follow the plot without understanding a single word because it is just a rhythm, right? Like Chandler comes in and it’s like, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. And then Ross goes, duh, duh. And then the crowd laughs. And then whatever, Phoebe rolls in and is like, blah, blah, blah.

Like the whole thing is once, once you see that, it’s like, I can’t ever enjoy it. Unless someone’s doing something, you know, Arrested Development, or Seinfeld, these, these things that are disruptive. So I think, in general, your point, and Richard Garfield’s point, is true. You can’t ever put the genie back in the bottle, but, like, fundamentally, people knowing about all this stuff is why things get bad.

It’s the same reason bands get bad. Eventually, the Rolling Stones know what a Rolling Stones album is supposed to sound like. And then they don’t write great songs anymore. And that happens to the Beatles and Bob Dylan. And that’s why the artists that still make interesting music as they get older, intentionally release like theme records, right?

Like Dylan started recording these like old timey folk, uh, sounds, uh, after Time Out of Mind in the early 2000s. And the Stones intentionally would try to like, Oh, this is just gonna be like more reggae influence. Cause you just have to do something different. Cause you know what a Rolling Stones record sounds like.

It sounds like, whatever, Beast of Burden, or, or, whatever, and the Beatles knew what the Beatles sound like, Led Zeppelin knew what a Led Zeppelin record sounds like. That’s why bands are only good for, like, six or seven records. Then you two knows, I don’t want to just rewrite Mysterious Ways, or, or, uh, you know, Where the Streets Have No Name, etc.

[00:12:01] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I’m just thinking about what this means for the future of magic, or for the future of our enjoyment of magic. I mean, is it possible to put the genie back in the bottle just by replacing the players? Like, there’s no hope for you and I.

[00:12:13] David Robertson: Well, and, as we’ve talked about, when young people experience probably, you know, if they were to go to an alpha opening, they might just, without any nostalgia, Clouding their vision, they might argue.

They would just see it as like, not a pleasant game experience. You guys described, I think very accurately, it’s going to be super hard to cast spells. Um, you know, you might, you might lose a game where you don’t cast any spells. You just, you’re just taking basic lines from your starter pack. Um, so, maybe it will feel like less of a test of skill, right?

And maybe something like this is only going to be entertaining once a year. Uh, because of its specialness, not because of the pure, you know, process of playing the game. Whereas all these young kids, they’re being pulled in a million other ways. Right. And in 1992, the default, um, sort of mental state of a young person was boredom.

And in 2024, the default state of a young person is anxiety. Um, so when you, when you think about, if you think about it in that context, which I think is a pretty fair approximation, anything seemed cool. Then I’m literally describing like very immersive, but. Are they? Is it more immersive to have, uh, two and a white for a tutu unicorn with no other text that just kind of describes what it is?

How is that possibly more immersive than the, all the cool mice and stuff in Bloomboro, but It was, and I don’t have a,

[00:13:39] Speaker 3: you

[00:13:39] David Robertson: know, pragmatic or fact filled way of describing that, but because probably to these kids, they played a million games like you just described. They’re all sophisticated. They played a zillion, um, you know, games on their computer, the PS2, the, you know, this system, that system, there’s a million board games, the Golden Age of Design, etc.

[00:13:59] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So there is no putting the genie back, is what you’re saying.

[00:14:02] David Robertson: I mean, I also believe nostalgia is a type of depression. So like, yes, I expect this event to be very nostalgic, and I expect to enjoy it very much. But I think we have to acknowledge, like, look at how, if we can get political for a second, that when the Republican Party nostalgically speaks about what America used to be, These aren’t the words of, like, people who are happy.

It’s a type of longing for a thing that can never be again. I mean, it’s a very wistful, sort of elegiac, uh, sensation. Nostalgia.

[00:14:34] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Um, it’s profitable as well, right? I mean, you could describe a lot of, like, the entire medical sphere that’s aimed at trying to stave off aging. And the long decades ahead of us, it’s never going to work, but we’ll do a lot, we’ll take a lot of steps to try

[00:14:50] David Robertson: to

[00:14:51] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): return to the idea that we could be young again.

So I hear what you’re saying. Can I ask you a couple follow up questions on the details of the event? Because we had a very lively discussion in our Discord about some of the ethics of the situation involved, or just what does it even mean? the cultural implications of it, if there are any. So I guess the biggest question was what we were describing last week, right?

This invitation only sealed deck exclusive event with this rare product, right? Sealed alpha stuff from the old school sets, so there’s not much left of it in the world. I think I pointed out that, you know, if we were going to sell this product, it would fetch a pretty penny, right? So I guess the question is just, is this an eat the rich situation?

Like, cool, it’s cool that rich guys are doing what they want with their toys, but It’s just like a wasteful display of opulence.

[00:15:45] David Robertson: Well, I guess I agree more with Nick though. Why is leaving something that only has value as an actual game item in a sealed package? How come that’s like the noble thing to do?

And taking it out of that package and playing with it as Richard Garfield legitimately actually intended, actually intended you to play with alpha cards. Um, why, why isn’t that the, the actual noble thing?

[00:16:08] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, because they don’t just have value as game pieces. They have more value finding a sucker who will buy them for collectibles.

[00:16:17] David Robertson: Well, you know, again, the thing with capitalism is all people have to offer you is money. So once you decide you don’t need the money, you realize like how hollow all the promises of like, Capitalism at large are. It’s like, Oh, you should do this thing because it’s worth more money. Like, well, what if I don’t want the money?

Oh, then we literally can’t offer you anything. We have no incentive structure left. So that’s why when rich people say they have fuck you money, what they mean is there’s literally nothing to make me do anything I don’t want to do anymore. I don’t know if Nick is rich or not. I have literally no idea. I know that this is worth 100, 000.

It’d be difficult for me to convince My partner to open it up and stamp it. But if you don’t need the money, all you’re looking for, once you, whatever the minimum amount of money you need to make it to the end of your life, in whatever fashion you find to be acceptable, then the rest of your life should be spent to do things that make you happy.

That’s what retirement is, by the way. That’s why we invented retirement. People can still work when they’re 65. They’re very capable project managers and greeters at Walmart if they want to be. I mean, we just, we, in theory, you have enough money to live the rest of your life, and now it’s time to do something that isn’t just maximizing profit.

Because if you think, oh, you shouldn’t sell this 100, 000 thing, then you should just work until you die. Because every year, whatever your salary is, instead of, you’re retiring from your 85, 000 a year salary, your 102, 000 a year salary, and you’re making way less money. So it’s like retiring a year early to turn a 100, 000 starter pack into something else.

And that’d be a strange thing to say to somebody. Like, oh, you’re retiring at 64? You’re just incinerating value. Why don’t you work another year and make another 100, 000? And they’re like, well, I have all these fun things I want to do in this next year. It’s like, what are you, some sort of like capitalist pig?

Throwing away 100, 000 and you’re not working another year? And by the way, at 65, I’m going to tell you the same thing again. You can make another 100, 000 if you Work to 66?

[00:18:17] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I’ve seen my parents generation like wrestling with that, that very real question. Yeah, I like the way you’re putting that.

So, getting back to this idea that all capitalism has to offer is money, this is something that I was troubled by because we talked about, okay, we’re going to open, or Nick’s going to open, I will not be opening. Yeah, I will not

[00:18:38] David Robertson: be opening.

[00:18:40] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): An alpha starter deck.

[00:18:41] David Robertson: Will I be considering, if I, if I played against Nick, I had to have like a heart to heart with If I played against him, and he anted up a very valuable card.

Will I feel compelled to throw the game? I know it, like, would enrage him maybe to even hear me say that. I wouldn’t, I would feel uncomfortable with this man I’ve never met before, he’s taking me to his home, and he, whatever, is lucky enough to open, I don’t even know what the most expensive, you know, whatever, Beyond Power 9, a Duel Land or something.

He antis that and I anti a revised, uh, Uhtentrol. Do I feel comfortable trying to win that game? That’s a question I’m having to ask myself.

[00:19:19] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Like Robert Baratheon at the Grand Melee Tournament. Yeah, exactly. No one dares to strike him.

[00:19:24] Speaker 3: Yeah.

[00:19:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So we talked about how Nick will open one Alpha starter pack, but he happens to have more.

What I was worried about was, okay, so the comparison was made to, These cards are not the only copies. It’s not like he’s stamping and signing the one of one, which I thought was a very perverse comparison. But that’s a recent example, right, from the Lord of the Rings gimmick where various stores started pre announcing, oh, we’ll pay 150, 000 for whoever opens it.

We’ll pay 500, 000. Oh, this store in Europe is offering 2, 000, 000 now. And I think in the end, it was like a feel good story, quote unquote, because the person who found the One Ring was just Oh, we don’t really know much about them, but they seem to have been, you know, a good guy LGS employee somewhere in Canada, who would swoop in and buy its, well, beloved Post Malone, uh, who was on Wizard’s Payroll, among other things, and collaborating with Beyonce and all that.

I think he paid 2. 2 million. Poet,

[00:20:17] David Robertson: poet laureate of the United States, Post Malone. Poet

[00:20:20] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): laureate, whom Damon has described as a culture vulture on multiple occasions in this podcast. And that was kind of the end of the story. Like, everyone was sort of happy with that outcome. And I think I said at the time, like, well, is that a great outcome?

You know what, Post Malone’s just going to sit with this thing in his vault. If he’s the ring bearer, shouldn’t he do something with it for the greater good? Like, what, who knows? Whatever. Like, he improved that guy’s life, the guy who opened the one ring. So I was thinking about Post Malone more, and like, let’s say that Post Malone hears that Nick or somebody else has this rare old artifact, you know, a sealed alpha brick of 10 star art decks, and Posty decides he would like to have that in his vault, and whatever price people think that’s worth, a million, two million, Posty will triple it.

And now we’re talking about, if you don’t sell it to Posty, you’re incinerating value, right? Because that’s six million dollars that Post Malone would offer you for this. I don’t know why this, it kind of kept me up at night. Do you see where I’m going with this, David? Like, are we obligated to think of everything in terms of what it’s worth to somebody else?

[00:21:21] David Robertson: No, but that’s the whole point. I mean, so you’re talking to someone who’s also very principled in these ways, in a way that is frustrating to my friends sometimes. Like, I won’t own stocks in companies I don’t like. Even if you told me today that Tesla stock is going to double tomorrow. It’s like, well, they keep saying, well, what do you care?

Just buy it now. It’s just, it’s just a number on a screen. Why don’t you buy crypto before, because I was very strong and suspicious Trump would win and crypto would go up. Like, why don’t you buy crypto then? It’s like, I don’t want to be a part of this. So, you just have to decide how much or how little this stuff means to you.

To some people, everything is purely transactional, right? Like, I don’t, they might not personally like crypto, but if they, if there’s a sucker willing to spend 2 on it, they will buy it for 1. Those people are functionally drug dealers, right? This is exactly like the description of people from The Wire, right?

They just want to buy a product for a dollar and sell it for two. It happens to be crack cocaine in Baltimore. They happen to be excellent actors, you know, performing this task. But you have to decide for yourself. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong. Um, you could get into some like deep sort of, you know, like Jewish, right?

Like deep arguments that rabbis have been having for hundreds of years is like, What if you sold it for all this money and then you donated that money to like cancer research and you cured cancer, right? Um, or by your example of donating money to cure cancer, then other people donate more, et cetera, et cetera.

All that stuff, you can kind of disappear up your own ass, uh, with, I just think like some things allegedly have value. Some things don’t. I own many valuable cards myself. If I died tomorrow, Katie would have no idea what they are. She’s heard me say some cards are valuable. She has no idea of knowing what, you’d have to ask, you know.

Rat or someone else to stop by and take a look at it. I mean, how do you tell somebody that your cards are valuable, right? You look at a sheet online and it says what they quote unquote ought to be and as people who have tried to liquidate their collection have found it’s not always that number that you get to sell them for.

So then what were they worth?

[00:23:22] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): How do you know which cards are valuable to somebody else, right? And then how much do you know which ones were valuable to you? Which ones are sentimental or which represent you in some way?

[00:23:31] David Robertson: Well, and here’s another thing, like, I’ve had multiple friends shop for houses, and in Minneapolis, the housing market is not as bad as it is in other major cities, but like most cities run by liberals, they don’t build enough houses, um, because of well meaning, uh, NIMBYs.

Not in my backyard, people. Fine. We won’t go into that. That’s one of my hobby horses. What I hear my friends say all the time is a house, quote unquote, shouldn’t cost that much. This house shouldn’t cost that much. But what do they mean by should? Like the timber and Uh, iron, and, you know, the, the door frames and things, that shouldn’t add up to the total, you know, it should only be 300, 000, it shouldn’t be 500, 000, etc.

You can play these games all day, it’s just, what are you willing to spend for what a thing is? I think the fact that Nick already owns this and probably didn’t exactly, like, count out 100, 000 ones and hand them to a person. This just feels like something that’s part of a passion of his that he cares a lot about.

Uh, you can tell with the way he talks about it, like, the history of the game is important to him. It’s a part of how he remembers his youth. What is that worth to him? Well It’s not worth more than 100, 000 or whatever. I don’t even know where a starter pack is worth 50, 000, 500, 000. Um, would it be worth more to him if he was destitute?

Yeah, probably, but he’s his own man. He can do what he wants with it.

[00:24:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): It’s so funny you, you raised that house analogy because one of the comparisons made in our life and discussion in the discourse was about whether this is like, um, whether, whether stamping the cards is like buying a house just to burn it down.

Um, Uh, or whether it’s more like buying a house to live in it, because, you know, the cards are meant to be used. And then, like, well, as soon as you open it, right, as soon as you unseal it, it is no longer a sealed pack, and it sort of just becomes the individual cards in it. The individual nails, boards, timbers, or whatever, which do not add up to, you know, The value of the house.

[00:25:26] David Robertson: So is, why is the pack so much more than like, is it because there’s a percent chance in a starter deck that you open a card that’s worth way more than 100, 000 or whatever?

[00:25:35] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): No chance of that. There’s no chance. Um, some, some would say, Oh yeah, well, if you get exactly a Black Lotus or a Mock Sapphire and it’s graded a quad nine by whatever grading company, then it’s technically worth more, but that’s just not going to happen.

So it’s not even really gambling. I think at this point for some of these, it’s just the idea that it’s a sealed pack. It’s a cultural artifact, then that has value beyond being just instances of these individual cards out in the wild.

[00:26:01] David Robertson: It’s such a tautology though, right? Like, it’s a cultural artifact because it’s a thing that you can play with, but as soon as you play with it, then it isn’t a thing.

It’s like saying a car is valuable because it’s never been driven. It’s like there’s no miles in this car. This

[00:26:14] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): is how collectibles work, right? I mean, people leave things in their original packaging and that somehow makes them valuable. Better, right?

[00:26:21] David Robertson: Until eventually they get less valuable. Like baseball cards exploded, right?

Because all the boomers were like, could finally afford Mickey Mantle cards. They couldn’t, when they were young, you know, they’re whatever a yuppie in 1983. You’ll let me pursue my stereotypes here. But then what happened is the baseball cards collapsed. No one gives a shit about Mickey Mantle anymore.

And young people don’t care about baseball period. So. You know, whatever, magic, uh, the, the set based on My Little Pony doesn’t do well, and, and people abandon the game in droves, and all of a sudden, still valuable, but maybe not as valuable, uh, because the old people like you and me, who maybe have enough earning power to start buying these artifacts to, whatever, I don’t know what people are trying to do, feel something, um, they finally own the, the Power Nine, or whatever their goal was when they were young, we are either dead or infirm, you know, we don’t care, and the young people whose first set was, you know, You know, whatever, Bloomboro, it just means nothing to them, right?

And now the pack is worth even less and it was never played with.

[00:27:22] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I’m so glad you brought that up. I worry about that too. So you’re saying that basically they don’t have to ever reprint these cards for their value to eventually decline into irrelevance, right? They could just destroy the game and then once this generation of people like us who cares about these artifacts dies off.

[00:27:38] David Robertson: I’m arguing, even if the game is successful, it’ll still have some value, but it’ll be significantly less, because I’m extending the analogy to baseball cards, which is not perfect. The only people who care about these old cards are people who are already middle aged, they grew up with the game. There’s a reason young people don’t care like you and I do about universes beyond, and it’s because Alpha and Beta don’t mean even less to them.

This isn’t something they saw a six year old older, a cool kid, right, when I was twelve, someone who seemed impossibly old at twenty two, I have these incredibly old cards. You know, now I’m twice as old as that guy I thought was older and cool, now. Um, some young kid who’s coming up, and this is one of a dozen games that they play very well online.

Um, I mean, I don’t know who the most popular, like, young streamers are. It’d be interesting to ask, like, I don’t even know who a young, the youngest streamer is, but maybe even streaming won’t be a thing, right? Like.

[00:28:33] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh God. What comes after streaming? Huh.

[00:28:37] David Robertson: I mean, this was always a hobby. This isn’t a thing that you have to monetize.

You don’t have to monetize your hobbies. That’s the number one thing. Oh, I like working out. Well, you should film yourself every day. Uh, doing curls. It’s like, why? That’s a weird thing to do. It’s a thing that you do for this, maybe this very narrow band of time is the only time when you try to do that.

[00:28:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So I decided to try to crowdsource some information on this beyond our Discord.

So I went on the Magic subreddit, I made a brief post that was just like, hey, if you had an alpha starter deck, what would you do with it? I left it up for like three hours, just flooded with responses, but I got a pretty clear picture. Um, About 20 percent of the posts were meme answers. They would eat it.

I think that was a very common answer. They would literally eat it or do something stupid with it. 70 percent said sell it, you know, no question. Sell, sell, sell. It’s just money, right? And this is, you’ll see this for any kind of post on, you know, r slash magic TCG, where someone has, you know, found an old binder or they’ve inherited, you know, their brother’s old cards and they want to know if there’s anything like, well, what are these things?

But the posts that rise to the top of the algorithm uploaded are just like, oh, pointing out this card is worth X, this card is worth 5, that one’s worth 7, and that one, you have one card there worth 20. So this is what people care about, right? How we’re trained to think that cards should be their dollar equivalencies are what the story is and I understand I invited this as well by the way.

Raising the prospect of like how much the starter is worth last week. So I was not surprised that that is the number one response. There was very little, I think maybe one comment about like, oh yeah, this, I would never open it. Um, everyone else would just sell it and maybe 10 percent of people would organize a great box opening or a box break or something and harvest the clicks and all that.

So yeah, I think that’s a representative sample of like what these things mean to people in general. Uh, I don’t think there’s a very large slice of the magic population out there anymore that cares about the old stuff in the way that like you or I do.

[00:30:34] David Robertson: And how many 50 year olds still play magic? I mean, it’s less, right?

There was X amount of people that played when it started and then they. For whatever reason, lost interest or life got busy. So less than the number of people even then. And as we get older, right? I mean, you don’t get born at 50. Every year, some percentage of us die. And, you know, more and more, right? I mean, you see, uh, Kai Budde, you know, the, maybe the greatest magic player of all time is, has an illness that will eventually, uh, end his life.

I mean, it’s just, it’s just the way of things. So things that seem like they’re going up forever, uh, they just don’t, right? Like baseball cards, comic books. I mean, these things go through waves and, When the value is totally arbitrary, right, so you’re saying this is valuable because these cards are rare.

It’s like, oh, the cards are rare, and they’re so powerful, or they could be. But you can’t ever play with them, so you create this weird tautology, and once it gets exposed There’s nothing left there. I mean, the games we’re proposing to play with this deck are probably not going to be, from a purely game standpoint, the most entertaining.

There won’t be a lot of, like, mana curve discussion or anything like this.

[00:31:54] Speaker 3: Yeah.

[00:31:54] David Robertson: I’m guessing a lot of games will be won by, like, Earth Elemental attacking over and over again.

[00:31:59] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Earth Elementals are a freaking monster, my god.

[00:32:02] David Robertson: Unbeatable. Trades with Krahorm. Yeah.

[00:32:05] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): But I mean, that’s, that’s why it has that second red pip that makes it just like impossible to cast with all power unlocked by an Earth Elemental.

You got four mountains in your deck. I think we’re probably on the same page. Any other comments on the event or anything you took away from that episode that you want to weigh in on?

[00:32:24] David Robertson: I’m very excited to, uh, to see what this is like. I’m glad, hopefully someone’s capturing it. I don’t know, you know, he’s, he does not have a large social media presence, which I appreciate.

I don’t, I don’t have a large social media presence either. Um, yeah, I look forward to see what the actual games are like though. I think they’re going to take a long, long time.

[00:32:44] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): 50 minutes, best of three. It’s a strict tournament structure. Yeah, it’ll be a lot of fun. And I don’t know exactly what the plans are to document it, but We certainly want the memories, so

[00:32:55] David Robertson: At least opening up the pack and like, flipping through and seeing what’s in there.

I mean, that at least is of interest.

[00:33:02] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): And stamping it.

[00:33:04] David Robertson: Yeah.

[00:33:04] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): And stamping it. Why not? Alright. Good. So, let’s look forward. Today’s episode, we’ve got a big pile of delicious brews that you’ve been kicking around for, I don’t know, the last month? We haven’t had a proper brewing episode recently. So that’s the main thing we’ll talk about for the rest of this episode.

Foundations also came out. You know, we did our set review episode a couple weeks back. Any thoughts on the impact of Foundations so far in our formats?

[00:33:36] David Robertson: Um, you know, I think Foundations has a bunch of cool cards. There’s a bunch of cards I wasn’t even aware of, um, that, you know, we didn’t talk about. The rollout of this was bad.

I don’t want to, like, turn this back into a critique of Wizards, but, like, I didn’t realize Arcanist was in Foundations until somebody, like, had a screenshot of it, so. Uh, I’ve been fooling around in Pioneer, as some people in Standard have, with like, Cauldron giving Arcanist’s ability to, um, various creatures.

Uh, and then you get to tap and draw three, which is pretty sweet. Arcanist is a six mana, three four wizard that taps and draws three.

[00:34:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Part of the, uh, Odyssey, Titans,

[00:34:19] David Robertson: you know?

[00:34:21] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That was my bet. I had that in our, in our list of cards to discuss in the reprints, and then I deleted it. And I was like, yeah, this, this card is irrelevant.

Tapping to draw three is no good. But, yeah, I mean, I guess Soul Cauldron. So is that actually a powerful thing to do, or is it just kind of fun to see if it works?

[00:34:37] David Robertson: I think unless you specifically have, like, The combination, I think, that you have to play if you’re going to play it in Pioneer is the, um, red backup card, and then, um, Prof’s Enduring, or Prof’s Memory.

[00:34:53] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay.

[00:34:54] David Robertson: So you kind of need to, like, have a combo finish there, where, because when you tap to draw the three, then Prof’s triggers, you don’t get to attack with that creature. So, you need a way to just, like, get a bunch of draws going, and then sack it to your backup creature, uh, with your Cauldron, and just Domeface.

[00:35:09] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Wait, are you trying to go off in one turn, or are you just trying to overwhelm them with value and then eventually deal 20?

[00:35:15] David Robertson: I mean, I think you can kind of do both. You don’t have to go off in one turn, but if you’re just getting like 6 plus 1 plus 1 counters, your creature’s already huge. Eventually just Voldar and Thrillseeker, like, chuck it after you tap it, because Voldar and Thrillseeker’s ability doesn’t rely on any, um, tapping.

So you just get, like, every tap You’re tappy to draw three and functionally, like, bolt your opponent, if you want to think about it like that, with profs in play.

[00:35:39] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That sounds really fun! I feel like, without Soul Cauldron, there’s like a whole swath of creatures that we just wouldn’t ever talk about.

[00:35:46] David Robertson: Yeah, Soul Cauldron is like one of the better designs of recent magic, as far as I’m concerned.

It, like, involves a graveyard, it’s combo ish, it’s never been actually too good in any deck, so it’s never been, like, close to a ban. It makes all these fringe Strategies playable, like that black red tree list won, you know, a major Pioneer tournament. So it like, dramatically alters even like the boring black red midrange.

Like all of a sudden it’s actually a cool combo deck. Was it better or worse than the normal deck? We could argue, but yeah, just Cauldron makes all this stuff possible. It’s like the Necrotic Ooze of Pioneer.

[00:36:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Another famous glue card. Who can forget when Necrotic Ooze was holding together all the hopes and dreams of Brewers?

Good. So yeah, Arcanist. Apparently, like, Felidar Retreat is in this set? I was just reading about a deck with that. I was like, what? When did that get in there?

[00:36:39] David Robertson: But again, like, it wasn’t obvious, at least like on Mythic Spoiler, the places that I went, or on the Reddit thread, so, they need, and then of course they are rolling out, like, a commander set, and then a jumpstart set,

[00:36:49] Speaker 3: Um,

[00:36:51] David Robertson: And then they had spoilers from a future set, you know, that was happening, so it was a bad job on the rollout.

Foundations is an incredible set, I think. In terms of having like standard staples, fun old cards, it’s made all these crazy standard, they’re playable. I mean, I think standard’s kind of solved. Um, but, and I think black is a little too good in standard. But, I think you’re seeing that overall standard is incredibly diverse.

Pioneer is far from solved, is incredibly diverse. Modern is an MH3 format. I think there’s a scheduled BNR happening soon. I don’t know if it’s even soluble with the way that they’ve chosen to handle the format. I

[00:37:35] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): mean, the chatter I’m seeing is that Pioneer players are discouraged at the lack of tournament support for Pioneer next year.

And just like the number of decks showing up in League, Dumps, and Magic Online seems to be at an all time low. Not all time low, it’s been much lower in the past,

[00:37:51] David Robertson: but

[00:37:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): it’s declining for sure compared to what it was a couple months ago in the RCQ season when, you know, we were talking about major Pioneer tournaments and now there are none for all of 2025 where Pioneer will be the featured format.

It’s a little concerning. It’s making me wonder if, you know, it’s all by design, right, we’re supposed to collectively shift our energy to standard, which is getting more attractive, notwithstanding what you’re saying about it being currently solved. As it will grow, it will become more Pioneer like, and, you know, maybe it’s just time to just totally abandon modern, shift to Pioneer and maybe Standard instead.

[00:38:26] David Robertson: Yeah, I mean, I think Wizards needs to be a little clearer with itself about what it wants to do, right? How many of these formats are you going to support, and what support’s going to be? I’m a little bit of an outlier in the sense that I love to play Pioneer, I love to play competitively in the sense that I am, you know, putting up my hard earned ticks to play online, but, I have no interest in playing tournaments or qualifying for anything, so the presence or lack thereof of RCQs means nothing to me.

It just changes the number of people who are playing Pioneer, and often the people who play Pioneer that are made to do so by the schedule are very bad for the format. They just complain about it all the time, they don’t want to brew at all, right, they just play the stock list and then complain that the games aren’t interesting to them or whatever.

Which is what you see a lot of people, a lot of pros doing right now in Standard. They’re being made to play standard because that’s what we’re doing now, and they don’t like it, right? They’d much rather play whatever their chosen format is, limited, or modern, or what have you.

[00:39:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, and I agree with what you’re saying that modern, whatever happens at the Schedule BNR, it’s not going to make modern.

It will never be what it was, and it probably won’t even be that good, even if they somehow ban not just the One Ring, but whatever else needs to be banned to restore parity. It’s just not enough.

[00:39:41] David Robertson: Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of sad when like, Aspiring Spike is streaming standard. Like, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

[00:39:49] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah. Okay, sticking with Foundations for a second, I would just say that the cards that I’ve seen people, at least on our Discord, getting the most excited about definitely were Leyline Axe and, more recently, Kiora. I think I would lump in the new Eldrazi as well, Slayer of Seven Deaths. Leyline Axe, I don’t know if it’s good, right?

I haven’t seen a convincing Leyline Axe deck. But obviously everyone who manages to get a turn one or two into a kill will make some YouTube videos about it and, you know, get like a little bit of attention. But it’s just like a fun card to sort of think in that space. And I’ve seen a lot of cool looking brews in our Discord.

I think you’ve got some interesting ones as well. I think you’ve got a Leelanix deck that you’ll talk about. I’ve

[00:40:29] David Robertson: got two of them.

[00:40:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Two of them. So happy to see that at least, at least that design has been generative, uh, and doesn’t seem to be overpowered, so far.

[00:40:39] David Robertson: It’s absolutely not overpowered, that’s for sure.

[00:40:42] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Kiora, she’s showing up more. I mean, she turns out to be one of the playable cards in Modern, which I think I predicted. And you see this Primarily with the Goriyo’s Vengeance package, where she herself being legendary means that you can also, in a pinch, bring her back with Goriyo’s, although she’s mainly there to just set up the Gristle brand or attract something.

And I even see people experimenting with, like, the Tamiyo interaction and just playing her in a more fair way. Other people are using Kiora with the Shifting Woodland Omniscience Package with a Benevolent Rumble. So, whatever she’s doing is good enough for modern.

[00:41:18] David Robertson: And then, and you also described, you know, using that red land to give her haste, right?

There’s innate ways to give her haste that make her a little more threatening as well.

[00:41:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Have people been doing that?

[00:41:27] David Robertson: I’ve seen inspiring Spike playlists like that. Maybe he’s, maybe the default after being crushed by red white energy over and over again is that, uh, Goryoz is the way.

[00:41:38] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Interesting. So yeah, Kiora seems to be playable for Modern, which is exciting to at least get one card, um, for Modern.

Pioneer, uh, it’s picking up, right? I think La’levin just got a 5 0 and they wrote a nice article about it yesterday. It seems to be a card that people are finding more to do with. Now, La’levin so far is the only one to have put up a good result with Kiora and Pioneer. But, you know, there’s something there.

And that might be a card we want to return to later.

[00:42:04] David Robertson: Well, the only one to put up a 5 0, that’s not Kiora. There could be people 4 1ing all the time. I mean, if you 4 1 every league, it’s just a very good result.

[00:42:14] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Correct, and I see you do have a Kiora brew here as well, so I mean, between Kiora and Leyline X, I’m thinking if we were going to feature a Foundations card for like a brewing week, it’d probably be one of those two.

Does that sound about right to you?

[00:42:26] David Robertson: Um, yeah, I think so. Uh, there’s a few other cards that are like a little fringy, um, but yeah, Purely on cards that, like, raw power level can kind of justify them when the synergies start to collapse. And the thing about Kyora is, like, any card that loots is, like, always somewhat playable because, as Law11 points out, he is, like, exploiting the thoughts of his push split.

That’s why Fable is so good. It’s not that good in decks that don’t have black because you don’t get to discard the best removal spell or the best hand disruption spell against control, combo, or aggro. And Kiora or any looter in black is always going to be at least worth thinking about because getting rid of Thoughtseize against red aggro and getting rid of push against blue white control is like Kiora’s drawing cards.

She’s not filtering, she’s not smoothing, forget about the graveyard. I mean, the other parts of her, are they relevant enough? People should read Law11’s article. He makes arguments for why he thinks that they’re different than some of the other three mana looters we talked about as comparisons to Kiora.

Um, and yeah, time will have to tell if that’s enough.

[00:43:32] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, I saw Odin’s in our discord was pairing Qi’ra with Fable for just maximum looting and rummaging, and so far finding that those cards can’t actually carry an awkward pile of surrounding pieces. So if you have enough looting, then yeah, you’re allowed to play like higher variance stuff.

[00:43:50] David Robertson: Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All right, good. So, uh, that will be in the future, maybe a Foundations Brewing episode. Today, we are going to be sort of catching up on David’s deck sketchpad for the past few weeks. So you’ve been working on a lot of different stuff. Some of these you’ve tested, some you have not. Where should we start here?

It looks like we’ve got about seven decks to get through. Yeah,

[00:44:14] David Robertson: so let’s just start at the top here. So the first card I’m interested in is Alicia, who laughs at fate. She is a 1, a black, and a red for a 2 2. And she has the Raid ability, so if something attacked at the end of your turn, it doesn’t have to be Alicia.

Her ability triggers, which is that a creature with casting cost equal to her power is returned to play. So we have a huge pile of 2 drops that naturally put cards in the graveyard and can be brought back by Alicia herself. So, already that’s interesting to me, right? I think the lower to the ground red black lists have had some success in the past, they’ve gone on a favor, but you naturally have Bloodtithe Harvester, which can put itself in the graveyard, Fear of Missing Out, uh, Rummages, Inti gets to loot if you attack, or rummage if you attack, and then Smuggler’s Copter can put any creature in the graveyard.

Combining that with Voldar and Thrillseeker, which is A, something that pumps Alicia, as well as helps you put a random card in the graveyard. Yeah, so this is just the red black list that, you know, at various points in Pioneer’s history, we’ve had a 4 Push, 4 Thoughtseize, of course. And then this just pushes the curve way down into Uh, much more aggressive, and then Alicia basically has, assuming she doesn’t die, uh, a come into play ability that is very powerful, if you think of her like making two mana and drawing a card, uh, or something, the equivalent of that is, is very interesting.

[00:45:48] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So as I’m looking at the decklist, I mean, yeah, the curve looks spectacular. Nothing above three, and like, just a beautiful pile of ones and twos. It’s the one drops where we’re getting a little bit underpowered, right? The four Archfiend vessels and the two Bloodsoaked Champions. We’re really relying on looting those away.

Is that, is that fair to say? Like, we don’t want to draw and cast these.

[00:46:12] David Robertson: Correct. So yeah, we have, well, and, um, we also have the ability to Crew Copter, which makes a one power, one drop a little better than it would normally be. It’s just a raw card.

[00:46:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): True. If you had the curve of like, turn one, Blood Soul Champion, turn two Inti, do you think you would discard?

[00:46:36] David Robertson: Oh, just naked?

[00:46:38] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah.

[00:46:39] David Robertson: Um, I guess it depends on the matchup. If they have open mana, probably not. Although they’d probably kill Inti before combat if they have a removal spell. I’d think about it. There’s so many variables, right? I have to look at the texture of my hand and everything else.

[00:46:53] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Hmm, I guess what I’m wondering is, the fact that there are 1 drops here, that, that shouldn’t trick me to thinking I’m supposed to curve out with them, right?

Like, it’s okay if my turn 1 play is nothing, or just a Thoughtseize, and then turn 2, I play a Copter, so I’m not really, like, flying out the gates, I’m just trying to apply steady pressure and then eventually do this reanimation thing with Alesha.

[00:47:15] David Robertson: Yeah. The other thing is, like, you don’t have to discard your One Drop.

Like, you can just pitch Fear of Missing Out or whatever. Like, if you get that back for free with Alicia, that’s just incredible. Hmm.

[00:47:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): It’s very clean. The total number of discard effects, it looks like, is 15, is that right? Between Inti, Blood Tithe, Smuggler’s Sculptor, and then If you’re missing out, I guess 17 if you count the Bitter Triumphs.

[00:47:38] David Robertson: I do count the Bitter Triumphs, that’s why they’re there. You can also, like, you can also just attack a creature into, like, a bad block, right, just to get it back. So, like, you could attack a Bloodtithe Harvester into a 4 toughness creature, and then just Alicia it back. You know what I mean? Like, you don’t, you don’t even have to have a creature in the, now it’s not as powerful.

But, um, cause you’re getting something from, you know, like, Bloodtithe Harvester comes into play and gives you another effect.

[00:48:05] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That’s interesting. Alright. Have you had a chance to try this one yet?

[00:48:11] David Robertson: No, this is on my list for this afternoon.

[00:48:13] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All right, I’m excited to hear how that goes. Looks very clean.

Seeing a lot of people bring with Fear of Missing Out in every format, and I just, I cannot quite figure out if that’s actually a strong card. Like, I noticed you were only playing three copies. Is that because you feel like it’s not really on plan, it’s just like another card whose stats match what the curve is looking for, and it has a discard effect?

[00:48:35] David Robertson: Yeah, I mean, I guess you could argue, should you just play four of them and three Inti, because Inti is a legend, maybe that’s just, and it always discards? Um, my experience playing against Fear of Missing Out is that it’s not very good, but everyone plays it, uh, and I am a pretty arrogant guy. I’m not sure that I’m right and everyone else is wrong, but it’s just like, is this card actually good?

Like, I’m not, I don’t get it. And this deck cannot easily generate Delirium, right? We have four artifacts, we have four sorceries. Uh, I mean, it’s possible, but it’s very unlikely until you’re very late in the game.

[00:49:10] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right, so, the argument is, well, it’s a two drop, it rummages, it’s like a friendly rummage, so you can go up a card.

That card’s existed for a long time, right? The um, the spectacle guy, the Rakdos reveler, or whatever it’s called. Yeah. And no one’s playing that. So is it the third toughness that makes it good? Is it the enchantment type? Is it, are people actually unlocking delirium?

[00:49:31] David Robertson: I mean, against me, they’re just rummaging.

I guess it’s very good in the black red tree list, because it helps you put the tree in the graveyard, so that’s fair enough. But I see it in, like, Fearless all the time, like just Black Red Demons is playing some number of Fear of Missing Outs. Yeah, I guess I just, I’m not understanding it. But yeah, I’ll play them.

I mean, it does what I want it to do. Discarding is actually very important in this list, and it is a straight up two drop that does that, so

[00:49:59] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): yeah. Okay, good. What’s next?

[00:50:03] David Robertson: All right, up next is a blue red list. I played a version of this when Malcolm first came out. We are now up to an incredible density of legends, though.

So, Kellen, Planar Trailblazer. Um, was kind of hyped, and now people have decided it’s not good at all. I actually think this card is very good. Uh, so we’re playing four of those, four Malcom still, three Inti, four Riel, and two Kiora. Those are basically powering up our Mox Ambers. It’s basically just like a blue red tempo list with a bunch of cheap answers.

You have sort of, your late game is like Riel plus all these discard. Kiora is nice here because we aren’t playing Treasure Cruise, we’re not using our graveyard for anything else, so she’s just kind of like a free roll. And of course she’s incredible with Rielle in play, and Inti in play.

[00:50:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, Malcom, this is the 1w21 flash flyer.

That will basically loot whenever, like proper loot, rather than discard, whenever it hits them. And then eventually you unlock some bonus mode, but that’s probably not going to happen. I don’t see a lot of people playing Malcolm, but you’re still a believer. Is the idea just that you feel like it fits in nicely into an interactive suite of stuff?

Yeah, I mean,

[00:51:16] David Robertson: that’s exactly right. Like, because you are, now you have Kellen, you play Kellen, you leave up two mana to Level up Kellan, that can be done in instant speed. So now you have the option to like, level up Kellan, play a removal spell, play a Malcolm, or cast Counterspell. So you’re like level, your second turn has all these options, and as you know, I’m an option lover.

And then you have all these legends, so you have Mox Amber, which is a great card to play in a deck that’s also playing a bunch of looting effects, because the first Mox Amber is incredible and the rest of them are useless. So you’ll, in theory, never get jammed with Mox Ambers. You have Kiuras and And Malcolm’s, and Inti’s, and Izzet Charms, and whatnot to get rid of them.

So yeah, I mean, this is the kind of deck I like to play. Uh, I tried versions of this before. You know, once they legalized Copter, Malcolm felt like it was actually not the best looter, the best 2 mana looter in the format anymore. Um, but the presence of Kellen makes me a lot more interested in the Flash part, because you just put so much pressure on them when you have all these options, uh, with 2 mana up.

[00:52:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): When I look at the interactive suite you’re playing, it’s taking me back to the early days of magic theory, where it was, you’d hear about, like, Counterburn being a deck, and it’s like, oh, he’s got a Counterburn deck. There’s no, like, inherent logic to that, right? Why would counterspells and burn spells be good together?

And yet, it seems to be enough. So you’re looking at four Tars the Tower, two Burst Lightning, three Fiery Temper. That’s your burn suite. I guess you can add the two Izzet charms to that. That’s counter and burn. And then your counterspells, four Sensor, two Spell Pierce, one Negate. And then again, the two Izzet charms.

I mean, is the idea that you assume this will be enough to get you through the situation, whatever it is?

[00:52:55] David Robertson: Yeah, I mean, of course, as the game gets longer, you’re gonna be running out of gas, right? Your removal is good in the early game, it starts to fall apart as the game gets longer. Longer, um, you don’t want to play too many counter spells with Kellan, just normal counters, because it doesn’t do anything, right?

When you reveal it to Kellan. Um, but yeah, because you have like Riel and Kiora and, uh, Kellan, you have these like cards that can give you value right away. And then as the game continues, they continue to kind of like level up the amount of impact they can have.

[00:53:27] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): And then how do you envision this, this interaction of sorcery speed threats, like your three Intis, your four Riels, your two Kioras?

How do those fit in with the counterspell plan? Are you going to tap out for them, or are you going to play it patient and wait until you can get like, one good turn with them?

[00:53:43] David Robertson: Yeah, it’s more of like a play versus draw thing, right? If you’re out ahead, then you can just afford to leave all your mana up, and otherwise you’ll often have to play out against your opponent.

Um, but yeah, I mean, Indi’s just, like the trample is very, very relevant, uh, with Rielle. And sometimes you’ll just do your curve, right? You just play a Mountain, you kill their Elf, you’ll play Inti, you play Riel, you attack with Inti, you functionally draw two and you get a 3 3 Trampler. And then, like, they have to kill one of those two cards next turn, and then you just start to, like, take over the game.

Like, just, just pure, there’s no counterspell in there, you just, your threats just lined up well against, like, limited removal, for instance. I

[00:54:21] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): mean, I love that you’re still brewing with Riel. I think we did an episode on that on our Wizards show, but I think you’re the last one brewing with Riel. I’ve always been the only one.

[00:54:32] David Robertson: No one was ever with me in the first place.

[00:54:35] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): And Fiery Temporary. I don’t really see anyone playing with that anymore. So yeah. Who is right? Who is wrong? I guess. Everyone else has decided these cards are not cutting it.

[00:54:45] David Robertson: Well, I mean, as soon as you’re playing like, well, should you play Malcolm, right? There’s a lot of like guided decisions here, but once you’re playing Malcolm and Kiora, then Fire Temper gets a lot more attractive.

[00:54:57] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah. All right. All right. So there’s like a certain threshold of discard synergies and madness synergies and all that, that once you go below it, there’s no longer a purpose to playing all these cards.

[00:55:07] David Robertson: Correct. And then again, we get to play two Odawara, two Sokenzin, like incredible cards with Riel, but just very good with all the legends we’re playing anyway.

Great with Inti.

[00:55:17] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That’s right. That was always a delicious line. Channel Odawara for just one mana with Riel. Draw a card

[00:55:24] David Robertson: with Riel.

[00:55:25] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Alright, so I hope that this allows you to relive that glory. And yeah, maybe prove some people wrong about killing. And Riel. Alright, next up is Leyline X. The first of two Leyline Axe brews.

[00:55:39] David Robertson: Yeah, so okay, you can have Leyline Axe in play on turn zero, then what do you do with it? So the two cards that let us equip for free, cheaply, are Fervent Champion and Kemba, Ka, Enduring. So Fervent Champion is Javier Dominguez’s Invitational card, so I think everyone’s aware of this at this point. It just reduces equip cost by three.

So if you play Leyline Axe for zero, you play Fervent Champion on turn one, You get to attack with a 2 2 double strike on turn one, right, so it’s like a super wild Nakadl. And then Kemba just automatically equips when it comes into play, right, so If I have Le Line acts on zero, I play Kemba. She automatically equips to Le Line Acts and if she makes a cat, same thing.

The interaction that kind of intrigued me though was um, blade hold, war Whip with Lava Spur boots.

[00:56:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh boy, .

[00:56:31] David Robertson: I saw Croakies do this once on his stream in Standard and I was like, wow, that is really good. So Blade Hold War Whip reduces the cost of aquip of other things by one, which makes lava spur boots a free equip.

That doesn’t sound that good, but it means that if a Lavaspur Boots is in play and Bladehold Warwhip is just cast, it just becomes a 3 power double strike attacker.

[00:56:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): With Ward 1.

[00:56:55] David Robertson: With Ward 1. So, that’s already, like, interesting. But then, it means that, like, Kemba can come into play, pick up the Warwhip, and then, if you have a Lavaspur Boots, equip that to Kemba for free.

Right, so now you’re attacking with a 4 power double striker. With Ward 1. And those interactions just keep happening all over the place. So The next card that I sort of found once I wanted to play those cards was Emberheart Challenger. If we’re reducing the equip cost to zero, then you can just equip Emberheart Challenger every turn for free, and you basically are drawing a card.

And then I wanted a suite of one drops. Well, Warden of the Inner Sky rewards you for having all these artifacts in play because they aren’t actually the ones attacking, so you can constantly tap your axe and your Lavaspur Boots to crew up your warden, make, you Pump your warden and scry. Uh, and then Kellyn was just sort of there because it lets you tutor up Trample in the form of a single shadow spear.

It also can tutor up Shelter by Ghost, which is the best, uh, aura they’ve ever printed. So you have access to, like, unconditional removal and lifelink if it matters.

[00:58:06] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): We’re talking about Kellyn Feyblood, the Eldrian one. Yes, exactly.

[00:58:09] David Robertson: So the adventure part of it is one in a white, uh, searcher library for a equipment, uh, Uh, or aura,

[00:58:17] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): just straight up open the armory plus a creature

[00:58:21] David Robertson: and in itself, uh, pumps creatures that are equipped, or if it’s equipped other creatures get plus one plus.

Oh. So it has some like extra value there. It’s also a double Stryker if you’re, if you’re crewing it up with stuff. So you, you actually just have like a density of these like threats that are hard to deal with. And then we get to play a couple MXs, like just making random bodies that you get to make into real creatures is.

Um, very threatening, right? Like a double striking mirror. Uh, every time you make a mirror with a Lavaspur Boots in play, it effectively has haste, which is a line I kept missing when I was playing with it on the ladder with Rhett. We actually, like, missed lethal multiple times. Heh

[00:58:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): heh. Gosh. I mean, I love all the synergies you’ve found here.

You said that some of the threats are hard to deal with, and I’m wondering if that’s actually true. Because, in my recollection, whenever someone’s trying to do something cool with equipment, The way you deal with it is you just, like, draw some fatal pushes and burn spells and it just sets them so far back on tempo, like they’ll eventually reassemble their interaction, but it takes enough turns that by that time, you know, the deck that was playing removal just assembled their plan and is no longer as threatened by it.

You know, a 3 2 haste double strike warwhip.

[00:59:31] David Robertson: But I mean, assemble that, these, the reason these things are all interesting is because they, it doesn’t take a lot of mana. Fervent Champion equips for free, Kemba equips for free. Bladehold Warwhip is a creature by itself, right? It’s just a 3 mana 2 2 double striker.

So okay, you can push that, but it’s just in play. And then, Lavaspur Boots just equips for free to anything. So I don’t have to assemble anything, I just play a Kemba. It picks up whatever’s equipment is in play and then Lavaspur Boots gives it haste for free. I mean, there’s nothing to assemble. There’s the, that’s the key thing about Lavaspur Boots, like Rhett was very skeptical.

I mean, I started with four, he maybe played only two. Every time we played it, Like, Control had to actually kill the Lavaspur Boots because the, every threat I played had haste. Um, it was just doing a shit ton of damage out of nowhere.

[01:00:18] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): But you do have to assemble because Lavaspur Boots is, doesn’t do anything, right?

You need a threat. So it’s like, it’s half a card. And then you also have Leyline Axe.

[01:00:27] David Robertson: True, yeah.

[01:00:27] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Which is also not a full card by itself. So you just like, don’t actually have that many standalone cards in your deck, right? So you have like a bunch of pieces that combine to make a card that wasn’t good enough, potentially become slightly above average.

I’m being cruel, not slightly. It combines to make a creature spectacular, but then if that creature dies, you’re kind of back to having these underpowered cards. That’s my fear. I’m guessing that’s what Rhett was also getting at, right?

[01:00:57] David Robertson: Yeah, but I mean, it turns out that because the equip costs are so low, the fact that all these creatures have haste becomes, like, very relevant.

Like, you end up just, like, stealing games at the end. And Leyline Axe lets you go over the top, like, you just make a Myrix token, end of turn, crew it up with Leyline Axe and Lavaspur Boots, which only takes two mana if there’s a Bladehold Warwhip in play, and all of a sudden you’re attacking for, you know, like six, seven damage, and you get to make one every turn.

[01:01:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, so the Warwhip continues to be an important contributor even after the Firmyard and token is dead? Right? Is that what you’re saying? Right, because

[01:01:35] David Robertson: it’s reducing the cost. It reduces the cost of Axe and Boots. And another Warwip. I mean, crewing the Warwip isn’t, doesn’t happen very often now. But once it dies, so it still requires a removal spell, right?

They still have to push it or stomp it or whatever. So like you’re saying, they do their pile of fatal pushes, they push our Warwip. Now we play an Emberheart Challenger, and we equip our boots for free, and we draw a card. Maybe they have another push, maybe they don’t. Uh, and then we play a Kellen, that’s a 2 for 1.

Maybe they have another push. Like, every card we play now is threatening to have You know, two or three extra power and haste, um, depending on what other equipment is in play.

[01:02:12] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That’s fascinating. So, the cards that you’ve included here to, I’m not going to say outgrind somebody, but to continue to provide threats.

You have the four Emberheart Challengers, the four Kellins, and then the two Murexes. That seems to be, like, the plan in terms of providing card flow, card advantage.

[01:02:31] David Robertson: Well, then you have two Kellins and a Jor Kadeem. And Kemba’s a Mana Sync.

[01:02:36] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I see. Alright, so it’s not like you need to draw more cards, you just need to have threatening things to do with them.

Alright, I like it.

[01:02:46] David Robertson: And you still get free wins sometimes, right? Like you’re on the play, you just like axe plus champion, you get in for four, they like play it, you know, they thought, they play a land and thought sees you. You know, they’re just so far behind the eight ball, right? You just, you just steal some games that You just got, you know, the nut draw.

[01:03:02] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So fish out your bladehold war whips from the bulk box and go fish out the Lavaspur boots from your legacy playables box and put them back in the pioneer box. Four copies of Lavaspur boots. I did not think I would see that in a pioneer brew, but it’s convincing.

[01:03:18] David Robertson: And Rhett was, Rhett was, uh, dismissive and then he was like, man, we are like having to tutor for these Lavaspur boots all the time with the, uh, the Feyblooded.

Like, every time we’d have to just tutor for him, it was so good, and he’s like, well, I guess we should play four.

[01:03:31] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Geez. Alright, that’s very cool. So none of the other interacts with equipment stuff tempted you? Like Sram or any of the Nahiris or anything like that?

[01:03:41] David Robertson: I went through all of it, and it all seemed worse than what I’m playing right now.

The Nahiris are terrible. Sram is interesting, um, but it’s actually like a bad turn to play. Like, we don’t want to play like a value game. We are an aggro deck, so anything that needs to, like, be delayed a turn is not good. Like, Kama comes out and gets equipped right away, and Bladehold Warwip is a creature when it comes into play.

[01:04:08] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I was looking at maybe another one of the random 4 Muradin 2 drops, like the one that makes a 3 1 or something, plus or minus 1, but that one unfortunately can’t be equipped to the Fervent Champion.

[01:04:19] David Robertson: Or, or Kellan if it’s not all the way pumped. So, it’s a little dicey. Or, or a Murex token, which is the big one, honestly.

[01:04:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): We need more Formiridon cards. When will they give us more Formiridon cards?

[01:04:35] David Robertson: Yeah, I agree.

[01:04:37] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Uh, this deck looks cool though. Okay, so that’s a Boros Leliant Axe deck. Now you’ve also experimented with, it looks like an Izzet Leliant Axe deck.

[01:04:47] David Robertson: Yeah, so we played a blue, you and I both, played a blue red, like, Gleaming Geardrake, plus swords, I think there’s the red green sword, um, plus Case of the Filch Falcon, plus Enigma Jewel Omenhawker.

We, you played a modified shell, I think we both went 3 2, the deck is cool and fun, but Felt like it was lacking something. So, with that as a baseline, of course we’re playing swords anyway, you could imagine playing Fervent Champion in that deck, and I think in some of the versions I played before, um, I kind of turned it over to you, it had it in there, the list I played did not.

I never liked the Omenhawker card, um, and I always thought, like, well, maybe we should be trying to get more free wins by playing in Soul Artifact. Leyline Axe kind of lends itself to, again, these free wins, and Rhett said something in passing, like, man, it’d be really great if we could get more fervent champions.

Well, Mockingbird can be an extra fervent champion. So you, right now, you just have all these, like, ways to steal games, uh, where you’re much worse. You can play an artifact on turn one, and we have a bunch of them. So you have four Spyglass Siren, that makes an artifact, four Cases of the Filch Vulcan, four Enigma Jewel, Uh, Diamond Pickaxe, 4 Leyline Axe.

So, those can all come down on turn 1, or 0. And then you can just Insult Artifact that didn’t get there, right? You just beat your opponent down if they don’t have Push. Maybe they’re playing Red Removal. You can play Leyline Axe on turn 0, and you can play Fervent Champion, right? Now all of a sudden you’re attacking for 4 on turn 0.

Now you can play like, Fervent Champion into like, Mockingbird Fervent Champion, and they all like, pump each other, so you’re attacking for like 6 on turn 2, kind of a thing. Or you can play like a slightly grindier game where you like play Enigma Jewel into Gleaming Geardrake. Uh, right, that’s just like a great value play.

Gleaming Geardrake is actually a really cool card to copy with Mockingbird. Because it gives fuel to your Enigma Jewel. It helps flip your case of the Filch Falcon. They both get pumped up every time an artifact gets sacrificed. So you, basically we’ve, I’ve made the game, the deck less interactive. Which is kind of how you and I like to build these decks, a little more mid rangey.

And we’re more all in on like stealing games. And we get to play Burst Lightning as well instead of A different burn suite, Burst Lightning, very good, obviously, in the mid to late game. And then Diamond Pickaxe even has normal, you know, okay, just indestructible artifact for Insole Artifact. It creates treasures which pump our Gleaming Geardrake, uh, and it equips a Fervent Champion for free, so.

[01:07:13] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I was trying to figure out what you were talking about, like, why we would need extra Fervent Champions, and I just now realized that the Fervent Champions buff each other. I mean, that’s like, that’s a line that almost never comes up. But whenever Fervent Champion attacks, another target attacking knight you control gets plus one, plus zero until end of turn.

So that’s what you’re looking for here, right? You’re not trying to like, find enough equipment for all of them?

[01:07:37] David Robertson: No, yeah, exactly. We only have the four leyline axes, but they’re actually very good in multiples, right? Like, Fervent Champion on one, they play mana elf, we play Mockingbird. Whatever, kill their upplate, Case of the Filch Falcon, and just attacking with multiple 2 power haste creatures is very good.

[01:07:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): And now potentially a 3 2 double strike. Trampolized.

[01:08:00] David Robertson: Yeah, exactly. So, so, yeah, that’s a great point. Leyline Axe, like, takes it to the next level because the extra plus one, plus O you’re getting from the second Fervent Champion gets doubled. So if you, again, we’re just trying to steal wins here. So Leyline Axe on zero, Fervent Champion, attack for four, next turn play Mockingbird, crew up the Flying Creature, right, they can’t even block it, and you’re attacking for six power just on your Flying Creature, and then two power on the ground.

So that’s already 12. On turn two. Again, that’s not going to happen all the time, but you just have these ways to steal games.

[01:08:37] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): This is a really intriguing curve. I mean, you have so many one drops. You have Fervent Champion, Spyglass Siren, Mockingbird. That’s already twelve. On top of that, the four Enigma Jewels, which can be crewed up with Ensoul on turn two.

You have the four Fields of Falcons and a pickaxe. So you have like twenty one one drops. I’m just like wondering, what’s this spectacular turn two follow up? Outside of Ensoul. I mean, the Cure Drake is actually not that threatening on turn two. I mean, I liked it, but it was It’s almost like doing its own thing, you know?

[01:09:08] David Robertson: Yeah, that’s, it’s very possible you want a different 2 drop, I don’t know what it would be, um, yeah, but it’s possible it’s the wrong one.

[01:09:19] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I mean, in your Prophetic Memory deck, I always felt like, oh, that gets so much more powerful with a 1 drop. Like, we talked about this last, um, the Enchantments decks a couple weeks back, where Inti gets so much more powerful with a 1 drop.

I just wonder if there’s a card like that, or even just like Smuggler’s Copter. Maybe Geardrake is just, like, the right mix of stuff. It’s great with Felsfalcon, makes the jewel plausible.

[01:09:40] David Robertson: Yeah, I guess, my thought there is always, I want, like, an out to, like, have a chance to draw some cards if the nut draw isn’t there.

Because I don’t like mulliganing to just, if I don’t have the nuts, I can’t keep it. But if you, like, open on Enigma Jewel into Gleaming Geardrake, you’re, like, in okay shape, right? You’re not going to steal the game, but you’re going to play, like, a highly interactive game where your first threat that they have to kill is already a 2 for 1.

Um, and it’s just going up from there.

[01:10:03] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): True. And I do remember, like, whenever we last tried this deck, the drakes could occasionally make the entire game about the drake. And that’s always nice, especially with Mockingbird, to get you another drake, if you have to.

[01:10:14] David Robertson: And the drake as a flyer, like, that can get lightning axed, like flying double flample, is You know, that just is going to end the game as well.

[01:10:24] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, interesting.

[01:10:25] David Robertson: Because like, Enigma Jewel doesn’t just pump the Drake and Kace and Spyglass. It also just makes Ley Line Axe very equippable if you don’t have a Fervent Champion in play. But because it’s natively an artifact, okay, you don’t have those draws where it has to be a faster game. It’s just another body and soul artifact.

Sure, it’s, you know, susceptible to two for ones, but everything is. Uh, with Insoul Artifact, that’s just kind of the nature of the card, so.

[01:10:50] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, I mean, I noticed you’re not playing Stubborn Denials, which is a card we would typically see when we’re trying to steal a game with Insoul.

[01:10:57] David Robertson: So, I looked at a lot of Insoul Artifact lists, they typically don’t play any Stubborn Denials main, and they play like two or three side, or they’ll play like one main or something.

Uh, for something like this, I thought I’d just focus on trying to actually end the game, especially if we’re Often going to maybe not have creatures with four power, you know, we aren’t like a multiple in soul deck, you know, there’s normally in soul decks play a bunch of cards like that, like a Fervent Champion with Ley Line Axe on it actually doesn’t turn on Stubborn Denial.

It’s just a two power creature.

[01:11:25] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): True, true. This deck looks super fun. I have not yet seen Mockingbird in action, but I know we’ve been including it in more and more lists, and this seems like another really sweet use of it. One of the most exciting Mockingbird decks that you’ve proposed so far. Okay, so that’s two attempts at Ley Line X.

Now we’re going to shift to a totally different direction. So we did a week on the Overlords cycle, um, we did a week on the Oculus, and now we’re kind of bringing it all together. Overlords and Oculi united at last in this disgusting looking blue green pile that also randomly has Atraxas on top.

[01:12:06] David Robertson: Yeah, so, I really, really liked, and I think you did too, mana elf on one, eldritch evolution into oculus.

So if you can do that, that felt, that feels great, right? It dodges even fatal push, it takes a while for black red list to get that together, you at least get a body back so you replace your elf. Okay, so that’s great, we’re not upset with that. But I was playing a bunch of cards around it, we played like that package that the, I forget what it is.

It’s a game. It had, um, Supermorph or whatever, the Megamorph creature.

[01:12:37] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, the Deathmess Raptor. Yeah. Megamorph.

[01:12:39] David Robertson: So, you know, cool card. I have nothing, I’m not opposed to it, but, um, this is just another way to think about what we want to do. So, as opposed to playing, like, Man Elf and a turn two Deathmess Raptor, that’s not bad, but it’s not great either, right?

And there’s, there are more Graveyard hate cards around, so maybe it’s not that good. I was trying to think of other, like, turn three things I want, or turn two things I want to do with my Man Elf. And I was really liking the overlord and the overlord. The green and blue overlords are both three manna, two impend, um, which is fine.

Uh, and then what I realized is if we were able to make them into creatures somehow, then Elridge evolution takes those fives all the way up to seven. So,

and the green overlord is by far the best one. It also just like gets you to. Attracts a mana eventually, right? Like, even if you don’t have the Eldritch Evolution, like, you just play Elf into Green Overlord into Teferi’s Time Twist, you just double ramped anyway, right? Like, it turns Teferi’s Time Twist into Rampant Growth.

Super Rampant Growth, whatever you want to call it. Um, and you get a 6 5 blocker, which hasn’t been super impressive, but you know, whatever, they still have to kill it, right, or it trades with whatever else is happening. And the cool part is the blue overlord, like, elutes, so it helps you find whatever piece you don’t need, right?

If you have Eldritch Evolution, it can help you find the Teferi’s Time Twist and vice versa. So, that’s basically all our deck does. Um, The other cool thing is that Teferi’s Timetwist release to the wind cards are not just good with Overlords. Oculus puts cards into play face down. So if you put a Overlord face down or an Atraxa face down, you also have these cards that let you turn them into something.

Because they’re going to have to spend their moves while killing the Oculus. We’ve seen that happen. They must kill it. Okay, now we have a 2 2 face down, now we have outs to just draw Teferi’s Time Twist and turn that face down creature into whatever it might be, an Overlord or an Oculus or what have you.

[01:14:48] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): On the one hand, it seems like there’s a lot of steps involved, like getting Atraxa into play, right? Like Time Twists on an Overlord to make it a creature so that we can then evolution it into Atraxa. Maybe what you’re saying is like, all these cards are totally fine just doing something smaller than that, right?

Like, Assume we start with a mana elf, there’s 10 of them. You’re going to do something good on turn two, you know, between your eight overlords and the four evolutions. And then most likely, once you’ve done that, you’ve kind of unlocked the time twist, and to a lesser extent, release of the winds. So I hope that’s true.

I mean, I’m like, not, I’m trying to envision like how those lines actually stack up to opposing decks. Like if I do turn one elf, turn two impend, turn three time twist, like what has my opponent done in the meantime? What do I need this overlord to do for me?

[01:15:39] David Robertson: Well, the other thing is you can time twist into Eldritch Evolution still in your line if it’s the green one because it gave you a mana back.

[01:15:48] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Interesting. Do you think we need all four of the oculus here?

[01:15:53] David Robertson: Uh, I think so. I think, I think looking at this list I would probably cut a Release to the Wind and play another land. We also have two Up the Beanstalks, by the way, so we get to trigger off the Overlord and just play a value game against control.

[01:16:06] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Time twist on Up the Beanstalk, the Out to convert that into something else.

[01:16:10] David Robertson: Yep.

[01:16:11] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Makes a lot of sense. I mean, yeah, for Oculus, for Atraxa, it feels like a lot, because I keep thinking, oh, well, you don’t want to draw these, you don’t ever want to, because they’re hard to cast. But I guess you’re saying Atraxa is not that hard to cast once you have the Everywhere token.

Or multiple of them. Oculus is a little hard to cast, right? There’s no dedicated way to fill the graveyard beyond the blue overlords.

[01:16:34] David Robertson: I’ve just been burning these decks with Oculus where you like draw two of them or something. And now you can’t like tutor up more than one or something because of how the game progressed.

[01:16:45] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, I see.

[01:16:46] David Robertson: So I just always want to have an Oculus in the deck to tutor. And we have an Overlord of the Flood Pits to loot away Oculus side we don’t need.

[01:16:55] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, we could, I mean, put Kioras in here instead, and then we have even more looting to get rid of the oculus, or to set up oculi that we draw, and then play a reanimation spell.

I don’t know, it’s interesting. Curious to see how this plays out. Like, it’s so simple, but like, maybe it’s just enough.

[01:17:15] David Robertson: Yeah, and again, like, I was surprised by how good the green blue list we both played, uh, was. I thought I would, like, struggle to win a game, and I think we ended up, like, 3 2, could have easily 4 1’d.

Um, well, you know, with a lot of speculative cards, like, a bunch of cards in there that no one is even considering for Pioneer, so

[01:17:32] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I remember feeling like the Deathmiss Raptors were so important for Getting your oculus across the finish line, right, because the first oculus always dies. I think we agree on that.

But if it’s setting up something, and like somehow just like this death mist raptor engine gave you that ability to like fill the board with creatures, to like not have to worry too much about removal, and just feel like you have inevitability. And I’m slightly worried that this deck is more like trying to get single threats into play that may or may not stabilize.

[01:18:02] David Robertson: Yeah, I mean, we won’t know until we play it, so.

[01:18:06] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): It looks sweet though, and I love the mashup concept. All right. Oh, this next deck looks really sweet, David.

[01:18:16] David Robertson: Alright, so people may remember, I built a Soul Diviner, uh, Maze Mine Tome list back in the day, and, uh, it was pretty good. I think I, you know, I think 2 across three leagues or something.

I think Zac played it on stream and 3 2’d with it. Um, so I’ve always been wanting to come back to it. We talked maybe about playing it with Sleepcursed Faerie, when Sleepcursed Faerie was spoiled. We never did a Sleepcursed Faerie a week. And then the card Unstoppable Slasher got printed. And I pointed out this card is maybe just a card that’s good against Control, and a card that’s good against Midrange, and a card that’s good against Aggro.

So that’s just like a super good card. And it turns out to be very good in Standard. And it’s actually incredible with Soul Diviner because It must be killed, right? They can’t take 11 damage or whatever on the first attack, and 7 on the second attack, etc. And if it dies, then Soul Diviner just gets food, right?

It makes Unstoppable Slasher an even stickier threat. So those two cards already are interesting. You add in Sleepcursed Fairy, so we’ve got another Soul Diviner card, and then Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, as we were shouting it out earlier, is actually sweet with all these cards, because if you give Unstoppable Slasher Sleepcursed Fairy’s ability, it gets to try to untap itself, so basically it can just attack every turn.

If you give Soul Diviner Sleepcursed Fairy, you can eat both tokens from the Unstoppable Slasher when it comes into play. We’re also playing Omenhawker, so you could put like The Omenhawker ability on, um, something like Soul Diviner, and then you can tap it to, uh, generate mana to activate your Maze Mind Tome if you want to draw with it, or, uh, you could use your Sleepcursed Faeries, like, untap ability, uh, after combat to, um, tap for Maze Mind Tome, etc.

And then Omenhawker, of course, works good with our Maze Mind Tomes and our Sleepcursed Faeries if we don’t draw our Soul Diviner. So, um, yeah, this is just a classic black blue. Interactive, like Dimir shell, with just this like synergy based pile of creatures as opposed to like quote unquote good cards.

[01:20:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, four Thalsis, four Push, one Duress, uh, that will get you a good chunk of the way, and then you’ve got two additional interactive spells, a Heartless Act, a Bitter Triumph, two Liliana of the Veil, that’s where you’re going to try to slow the game down a little bit to get your engine online. Beyond that, it seems like the Slasher is doing most of the heavy lifting in terms of actually winning the game, is that right?

[01:20:49] David Robertson: Yeah, and Sleepcursed Fairy will just eventually become actually a very good threat as well.

[01:20:53] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I can figure out what Stun Condors do. I’ve been resisting for years. Well, it’ll be a 3 3

[01:21:00] David Robertson: flyer that’s hard to target. It’s a 3 3 flyer with Ward.

[01:21:04] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, it has Ward too. I see. Okay. All these extra lines of text. Just give me a good old fashioned unicorn for two and a wait.

That’s all I really want in a creature.

[01:21:16] David Robertson: Someone you can just memorize. And Liliana, Liliana’s an incredible card with Soul Diviner, right? Like, it comes down, it, um, edicts our opponent. They must attack Liliana if they’re an aggro deck. And then we yield. Don’t block, and we eat the token before they damage it, uh, draw a card.

[01:21:32] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Wait, I think I’m not following what you’re saying.

[01:21:34] David Robertson: Soul Diviner can just eat the last token off of Liliana, so like if we just play Soul Diviner against aggro, they play their two drop and attack, we don’t block. We play Liliana, Edict them. The aggro deck’s gonna be out of cards if they choose not to, um, attack Liliana.

[01:21:49] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, I see.

[01:21:50] David Robertson: But then we also have like a 2 3, a Soul Diviner in play, like they have to, they have a big body, they have to, uh, a card with a bigger butt they have to think about. Boom. So they kind of have to, like, over attack and get Liliana, then Soul Diviner just eats the last token off of it. Just draw a card for our trouble, take no damage.

[01:22:04] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So Soul Diviner turns Liliana into, like, a cantrip edict that also fogged them.

[01:22:09] David Robertson: Yes. Or they can leave it alone. Again, like Liliana for us is just like a loot card, right? Soul Diviner eats a token off of it and draws, but Liliana is making them discard a card every turn. So we get to loot your favorite thing in the world and they’re just losing a resource every turn.

[01:22:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All right. I see what’s happening here. It looks very sweet. Now one thing that you did not include, which we were debating, was that there is the ability to put Omenhawker’s ability, or combine Faerie with the Soul Cauldron, which if you do that, will just endlessly tap and untap itself, and I think you were asking, is there any way to convert that to a kill?

There is the card Unctus, I think that’s a pioneerly old thing that will draw your deck if you do that.

[01:22:52] David Robertson: Yeah, so unfortunately that does not kill our opponent, we need another card. Uh, you know, in there. So, I was hoping there’d be a card that, you know, was already, like, close to playable. I wouldn’t have to be just playing it for assembling that one combo.

So, something to keep an eye out, though. If there’s something that’s rewarding us for tapping or untapping, you could just make this base shell much more combo focused. Uh, you know, forget about the unstoppable slasher part and just, and just try to win the other way.

[01:23:21] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Although, I’m guessing it will not work without the unstoppable slasher.

Like, the deck will not work.

[01:23:26] David Robertson: Slasher’s just a super sticky threat, and it’s really hard for your opponent to deal with permanently. Um, it blocks against, you know, red, you just put it in front of whatever they’re putting, they’re attacking you with, it’s going to trade. They’re probably going to have to cast a spell just to get their profit creature big enough to put Slasher in the graveyard.

And there’s just a body, right? Soul Diviner taps that turn, eats a token, the last one goes off of it. It’s back next turn to attack or block again.

[01:23:53] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That makes sense. Uh, I guess, last question is about Maze Mind Tome. Four copies is a lot for a card that most people assume has just been rendered obsolete by a bank buster.

So, what would happen if we switched them to Bank Busters, hypothetically?

[01:24:06] David Robertson: Well, Bank Buster works a lot worse with Soul Diviner, and we have very few cards with 3 power. So, Bank Buster is only good if you have a bunch of 3 power creatures. And is much worse than Control Decks. Um, Mazemind Tome’s ability to gain life is actually very important.

[01:24:20] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, so the Tome, you can just keep pulling the counters off and just use it forever. Yeah. The Reckoner, you will flip it quickly, get your pilot, but then you’re just like out of card draw. You just have a 4

[01:24:31] David Robertson: Yeah, and you have to remember that you also have to leave up two mana at the end to get your pilot.

If you remove your last token with a Soul Diviner, you don’t get anything.

[01:24:39] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Ah, true. Okay. Interesting. Alright, I love this list. I hope it works as well as you’re saying. Love to see Soul Diviner get a little bit more run. All right, I think we have one last one here.

[01:24:54] David Robertson: Yes.

[01:24:55] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Going into Sultai colors. It’s got Omenhawker, it’s got Enigma Jewel.

I love that we keep trying to find something to make these cards beautiful. They’re such brewer’s cards, David.

[01:25:07] David Robertson: Okay, so, this started off with me talking about how Overlord of the Balemirk is the worst card in the format. True. So I was like, alright, what we need is a way for cards to naturally go to the graveyard, so I never miss on Overlord.

Every time I miss with Overlord, I just lose my mind. I just lose my goddamn mind. I hate it so much. So, we have that. We have Omenhawker, and we have Valigavost Faithful, and we have Insidious Fungus. So these are cards Um, Hawker doesn’t put itself in the graveyard, but they are incentivized to kill it because they know it’s a, you know, a synergy piece.

This is not a card.

[01:25:41] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): It’s a must kill.

[01:25:42] David Robertson: If your opponent plays an Omen Hawker, you can guess it’s very important in their deck, is maybe the best way to say it. Insidious Fungus is nice. It actually ramps you naturally if you Let’s just say you go turn one, Enigma Jewel. Turn two, Insidious Fungus. Ramp with it.

Turn four, uh, you’ll basically have it in the graveyard for Overlord to pick up again. So it naturally ramps to cast the Overlord for its full cost if you want to. Uh, it puts itself in the graveyard. It’s for main deck, uh, Enchantment, Destruction, Law of Eleven’s been talking about how important that is.

Val’govos, Faithful, is a loop with Overlord of the Balemark. So, Overlord of the Balemark puts Val’govos, Faithful, back in our hand every time an attack comes into play. We attack with our Overlord of the Balemark, our opponent kills it or takes five. When they kill it, we just play Val’govos, Faithful, put Overlord of the Bailmark back into play.

That puts Valgavost Faithful back in our hand. So that’s a late game grind, very difficult for mid range decks to interact with that. We also have like nutty openings because of the way that Omenhawker and Enigma Jewel interact with Collector’s Vault and Valgavost Faithful. So we can get, um, turn three Atraxa into play with a series of draws.

I’ve outlined a couple of them here. So if you play a soul piece on turn one, you play a Collector’s Vault on turn two and loot, And you get a treasure. Then on the following turn you can loot again, you can play a Valgavost Faithful, and activate it. Same turn.

[01:27:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Four Collector’s Vault, four Enigma Jewel, four Hawker.

Have we ever decided if that’s actually good? I mean, it unlocks so many sweet lines like the one you just described. Um, whether you’re trying to do like a smaller reanimation move, or whether you’re even just trying to ramp to something. Like, this is also a great way to just cast an Atraxa on turn four.

But those 12 cards in your deck, they don’t quite add up to a card individually. So do we have a lot of confidence in this part of the deck?

[01:27:44] David Robertson: Mmm, a lot of confidence. I don’t know, we’ve never actually built a deck that’s done this before. You were a big believer in Collector’s Vault. The key is that Insidious Fungus kind of makes it all work.

It just gives us generic use for our mana and it lets us see a bunch of cards. And it means our overlords never miss. So just naturally ramping and drawing. Plus a Valgavost Faithful, again, it just, we can like, play a Valgavost Faithful, leave it in play, when they try to kill it we just bring back the Insidious Fungus, then we turn the Fungus into another card, etc.

[01:28:13] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, and I guess on the Collector’s Vaults thing specifically, I’m inspired by Brewers in our Discord, uh, I think, uh, Big Mammu and others have just like gone really heavy on Collector’s Vaults and they have an entire library, entire vault of Collector’s Vault brews. I never really got a firm answer on whether that’s actually good or not.

Like, obviously, you know, we share the success whenever there’s like a fun thing that happens, but I don’t see this being picked up really, By like, other decks. Have you seen it? Like, at other 5 0s?

[01:28:42] David Robertson: Uh, I’ve not, no. Vault was even, like, considered not good enough for Standard. The thing is, like, Vault is just one of the pieces.

We don’t just need Vault.

[01:28:50] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right.

[01:28:51] David Robertson: Because we, our, all of our lines to do our thing are Soulpiece on 1, this is like our nut draw, right? Soulpiece on 1, either Vault or Overlord or Grizzly Salvage on 2 can lead to a turn 3 Atraxa. That’s, that’s the key part. That’s really sweet. Because the soul piece plus Vevo faithful means we only actually need three normal manna.

Um, and the soul piece is the, is the fifth manna, the fourth and fifth manna there.

[01:29:19] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So this is truly like trying to unlock the what Voss faithful can do that no other card can do, right? Correct. We would not wanna Shopify here, we would not want write them off. It’s specifically, ’cause Vevo is both a creature

And that can be confined with a bill Meck. And because once you reduce it

[01:29:35] David Robertson: and you can find with a grizzly salvage.

[01:29:37] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Ah, true. When reduced, it actually becomes the cheapest possible reanimation effect as well.

[01:29:43] David Robertson: Exactly. And plus a loop with Overlord, we have a Singleton Abberant, Abberant Oculus in play as like a fifth reanimator target, um, that’s also like highly castable because we put so much shit into our graveyard between Salvage and Overlord and Vault.

We’re just playing 4 push, no Thoughtseize, so obviously post board you have to make adjustments. And then you’re already playing Enchantment Destruction. For any graveyard hate that they play, you already have four Insidious Fungus main, so you don’t even need to side in that much stuff.

[01:30:12] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All right, I mean, the synergies seem to be firing here.

I guess my question about the Bail Merk is the same as before. Like, if you do impend it, what happens next, right? So you hit, you’ve made it so that you will get a card back, but then the Bail Merk is just sitting in play. So, what’s happening in the meantime? It seems like you’re not actually taking control of the game until you get a Traxion to play, is that right?

[01:30:35] David Robertson: Yeah, I mean, that’s about the nuts and bolts of it. Uh, first of all, you can play turn two Vault or Fungus, and so you can naturally cast Overlord on turn four, uh, very commonly, right? This deck actually just naturally ramps, so that’s the first part is, you’re just casting a four mana 5 5 that’s going to draw you a card for sure, and threatens to draw a card every turn for the rest of the game.

But it’s also just part of your nut draws, like I said, you just play a soul piece into Overlord, into third land, um, Valgavost Faithful, Gitotraxa, or Abernaculis, or Maybe an Overlord, maybe that’s the best hit that you have. That’s still probably worth it because it draws back the Valgavoth, so you just get to do it again next turn.

[01:31:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I like it. Alright, it looks fun. Let’s have a kind of deck that would be good to burn 20 or 30 tickets on and see no return on those tickets whatsoever, but it’ll be fun. So this is a nice spread of brews, David, um, where do you think you’re going to start?

[01:31:33] David Robertson: I’ll probably just start with the black red list, because it’s very simple.

Um, if it’s good or bad, it’s not going to be that bad, just because you get to play all the cheap interaction. Um, the other ones are like hard to solve, right? Like, the, if the blue green evolution list is good or bad, there’s a bunch of different ways you can go with it, so.

[01:31:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, I think the Malcolm Legends deck is a style that I don’t understand, but the interactive suite you’ve picked for it should allow like a skilled pilot to at least eke out some victories.

Um, maybe get a 5 0. I think the one that I will probably start with is the blue red Geardrake. Leyla and Axe Mockingbird deck. Just cause I, you know, I have fond memories of that gear trick being in play, and I’m intrigued by the Leyla and Axe. Like, especially now that this Forbidden Champion Mockingbird combo can power up the champions.

So that deck looks very sweet, the curve looks gorgeous, I just want to see how that actually stacks up in practice.

[01:32:35] David Robertson: Yeah, and so, I think the key with the Axe Axe is you need a deck where when you have the Axe, you can use it. There’s something to do with it where it helps you steal games. But if you don’t have the axe, your deck can’t be doing nothing, right?

So like, we kind of have like eight versions of the axe, if you want to think of it. Like, Insul, Artifact, and Axe both kind of do the same thing. And then around it, we just have like enough pressure, in theory, to um, possibly, you know, steal games.

[01:33:03] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I hope so. I mean, yeah, we’re not really playing any outs to get rid of the axe if it’s not in your opening hand.

It’s just a four mana card that is a little bit awkward to draw at any point in the rest of the game. But hopefully it’ll be made up for by, you know, the deck building choices you made here to maximize the axe when it is in your opening hand or to equip it cheaply. So it’s like a decent format to play.

[01:33:24] David Robertson: Yeah, so I think that’s where the jewel part comes into play, right? You don’t always have axe plus champion, even in the late game, right? They kill your champion or whatever. But the fact that Enigma Jewel lets you put it on your drake for very little is the part that in theory can steal games when you are way behind.

[01:33:38] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah. Nah, it looks good.

[01:33:40] David Robertson: Or on your Filched Falcon token, right? Put something in the air and then it’s a 5 5 double striking flyer. Trample.

[01:33:48] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah? Alright! Some souls! Alright. This is gonna be fun. Okay, anything else on your mind this week, David, or should we call it here?

[01:33:56] David Robertson: I think that’s it.

[01:33:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Alright, sounds good.

So, you and I will be battling in paper, uh, pretty soon, um, with some old cards. I hope, I hope that’s gonna be everything we’re dreaming.

[01:34:07] David Robertson: Yeah, I’ll see you Friday, Friday evening in Connecticut.

[01:34:10] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Alright, I can’t wait. That’s going to do it for us for this week. We will let you all know in the future how the testing goes and, uh, any outcomes from burning down the house at the end of the invitation.

Always a pleasure, David, and talk to you soon.

[01:34:27] David Robertson: All right. Take care, bud.