On the Stack 15: The Best Spells to Ramp Into With Llanowar Tribe

I've been writing freelance articles for the Card Kingdom blog. My latest piece, a character bio of Urza, just went up today. But a lot of the articles I pitch don't get accepted by the blog editor, and I still want to write some of them anyway, so I'm going to start posting them here.

My most recent unsuccessful pitch was a listicle of things to do with Llanowar Tribe, a card recently revealed for Modern Horizons by my favorite pro Magic player, Dana Fischer.




 
This is a great card for ramp, one of my favorite Magic archetypes, which involves getting as many mana-generating cards on the table as possible and using them to cast powerful expensive spells early. It's also, hilariously, three Llanowar Elves stuck together.

My train of thought looking at Llanowar Tribe went something like this:

Turn 1: Forest, cast Llanowar Elves.
Turn 2: Forest, tap both Forests and Llanowar Elves to cast Llanowar Tribe.
Turn 3: Play another basic land. I now have seven mana available; what do I cast with it?

Here are my favorite 7-drop options in Modern.

White

Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Konda, Lord of Eiganjo are arguably the most powerful 7-mana white creatures. Unfortunately, their costs include double white, and at this point in the game we only have access to one Plains. With that in mind, I'm going to recommend a Trostani's Summoner, which gives you 10 power right off the bat, or Mikaeus, the Lunarch, whose X cost makes him more versatile. In fact, use them both. They get along well.

  

Blue

The hands-down favorite in blue is Simic Sky Swallower. It's hard to block and hard to get rid of, and casting it on turn 3 feels really good. I've actually put together a decklist for it, with some help from folks on Discord, and I'll share that at the end of the post.

Black

Black is a hard one, since its most powerful spells tend to require double or triple-black costs. But with one Swamp in play, you can cast Garruk, Apex Predator and start making Beast tokens.

Red

Red gives us Dragonlord Atarka, an 8/8 with flying and trample that kills your opponents' creatures as it enters the battlefield. This is probably the fastest version of the Llanowar Tribe ramp deck, which makes it the most useful in the fast-paced Modern metagame. I have plans to make this decklist too and play it against the Simic Sky Swallower deck to see which one I like better.

Green

Big stompy creatures is what green is all about, so you'd think we'd have a lot more options here. But it turns out that the most powerful green creatures don't have the most interesting abilities, and while trample is important to have, we can do better than just trample.

My recommendation for mono-green Llanowar Tribe ramp is Giant Adephage, which takes control of the board fairly quickly by copying itself, or Gaea's Revenge, which protects itself.
   

Colorless

The best colorless 7-drop to ramp into is probably Myr Battlesphere, which does a lot more damage than it looks like at first, even if you don't have other Myr in your deck. I also recommend backing it up with Karn Liberated or Platinum Angel.

Ramping Up

Of course, you can only have four of any one spell in your deck, so you're going to have to come up with at least six more spells to fill out your list. I (or at least the committee who helped me build the Simic Sky Swallower deck) recommend doubling down on both mana-generating creatures and big stompy payoffs to keep the deck running at full speed, and filling your sideboard with whatever removal and damage prevention is best in your colors. Don't be afraid to ask your local (or digital) play group for suggestions, and don't be afraid to ask people why they make the suggestions they do.

Happy brewing!

Decklist: Big Gulp

Creatures

3x Craterhoof Behemoth
4x Elvish Mystic
4x Hydroid Krasis
4x Llanowar Elves
4x Llanowar Tribe
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Simic Sky Swallower
4x Somberwald Sage

 Noncreature spells

4x Chord of Calling
2x Coalition Relic
3x Nissa, Steward of Elements

Lands

4x Botanical Sanctum
4x Breeding Pool
4x Hinterland Harbor
5x Forest
3x Island

Sideboard

4x Autumn's Veil
4x Fog
3x Haze of Pollen
4x Weather the Storm

On Film: Rating the James Bond Movies

Let's start with the obvious: James Bond is a racist, sexist product of a racist, sexist society. Even the best Bond movies are deeply problematic, stereotyping nonwhite people, objectifying women (including scantily clad dancing girls in all the opening credits sequences), and killing lots and lots of people, and as a result they're not very good overall. But it turns out they’re great “dumb fun” movies to watch when I’m feeling down and just want something to complain about.

Having kvetched my way through most of the series with the Geek at my side, here are my thoughts about all the Bond movies I’ve seen, in order of release, and a couple for which I’ve only read the book.

• Dr. No: Haven’t seen it, but the novel does not lead me to expect great things, especially from the character of Honey Rider.
• From Russia With Love: Not awful, but pretty typical Bond. This is the first one with Q, and the gadgets aren’t particularly outrageous yet.
• Goldfinger: Between Oddjob and Pussy Galore, this one manages to be racist, sexist, and homophobic all at once. It does, however, establish all the important Bond tropes that Thunderball didn't get to, so watch this one if you like continuity and have a strong stomach.
• Thunderball: Not awful. Got some great nature shots; I think my favorite character was the stingray that hangs around while they’re disarming the nuclear warhead underwater.
• On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: Relatively decent; I barely had anything to complain about. It’s a mashup of a regular Bond movie with a romantic comedy, with a notable cameo from Blofeld's extremely fluffy cat and possibly the best skiing footage I've seen in a Bond movie. I actually started to sympathize with both Bond and his girlfriend of the moment. The ending is rather abrupt, though, and if you have started to sympathize with Bond&girlfriend, it will be painful to watch.
• Live and Let Die: AVOID. I started watching this one because I love the opening theme, and stopped about ten minutes later after seeing more racist caricature of black American and Caribbean culture than I thought could be packed into an entire movie.
• The Man With the Golden Gun: Not awful. One of the villains is a little person, and I am not qualified to determine how problematic that is.
• The Spy Who Loved Me: Not awful. The villain has a cool underwater base, so this movie has my favorite part of Bond Movies: awesome ocean nature shots.
• Moonraker: This one’s about space eugenics. It’s really dumb, except for the part where the space eugenicists are defeated by two secondary characters who aren’t conventionally attractive enough to survive space eugenics.
• Never Say Never Again: This is a remake of Thunderball with worse nature shots. Rowan Atkinson is in it though, as the Mr. Bean of diplomats, and there’s some cool-for-its-time video game stuff.
• Goldeneye: Relatively decent. Has the best female co-protagonist, a KGB programmer, and Dame Judi Dench plays M for the first time and gets to call Bond out on his antics. This is also the one with the hilarious tank chase.
• Tomorrow Never Dies: Not awful. The villain is Fake News, so this one hits a bit close to home. Michelle Yeoh plays a Chinese agent working with Bond, and she definitely makes it more watchable. It’s also got some nice underwater footage.
• Casino Royale: Haven’t seen it, but the book was powerful, both in good and bad ways. The book also taught me the rules of baccarat, which came in handy watching some of the other movies.

On the Stack 14: My Concerns About the Future of Paper Magic

I was not concerned about the future of paper Magic: the Gathering until I read a Daily MtG press release telling me not to be concerned.

In "The 'And' of Magic Arena," published at the beginning of February, Magic senior designer Aaron Forsythe and game director Chris Clay wax poetic about the innovations coming to Magic Arena, the new digital Magic platform (still in beta), and how they won't affect the paper game, and so we should definitely not be worried about Arena changing how Magic is played on paper.

The idea that changes to Arena will not affect paper Magic is incorrect, and the fact that Wizards insists on it is troubling.

While Wizards may not be making any official changes to paper Magic to follow digital Magic, the popularity of Arena will absolutely change how players think about the game. Not only will regular Arena players have different expectations of card availability and tournament structures (since Arena prioritizes best-of-one matches), but the fact that Arena makes tournament grinding accessible to a wider audience will make the Magic community as a whole more aggressively competitive and less friendly to new or casual players, and reduce interest in play formats that are not available on Arena, especially casual formats like Brawl, Commander, and Two-Headed Giant.

My core engagement with Magic is through face-to-face social interaction. That does not exist on Arena, and as a result, playing digital Magic turns a game I play to relax into a major source of stress. I am concerned that, in trying to keep the digital game from affecting the paper game, Wizards will continue to focus on digital innovation to the detriment of face-to-face social play, and that people like me will be prevented from participating in the innovation and get left behind.

***

I got a little more hope for the future of paper Magic from a more recent Daily MtG post, Gavin Verhey's State of Product Design. Gavin reminded me that, in addition to all the Arena excitement, 2018 was a big year for paper Magic products created for people like me. Last year, we got Battlebond, a set designed for Two-Headed Giant play; the return of Core Sets and Welcome decks; and self-contained products like Game Night, Archenemy: Nicol Bolas, and the Spellslinger Starter Kit.

Wizards still cares about people like me, and that's comforting to know. But I will be watching developments in Arena more closely now.

On the Needles 21

Make Nine Update

I have finished one of my Make Nine projects: my favorite sweater now has pockets large enough to hold my phone. I'm still plugging away at the sleeves on the sweater I'm knitting, and I'm about to start working on a pair of shorts I cast on last year, to go with the Quirky Monday Craftcast's Pisces craftalong.

Pokemon Art Challenge

I also finished my Pokemon art challenge this weekend. February 14 was the last one: Melmetal.



All of my sketches are posted on my Tumblr. I am now taking a long and well-earned break both from Tumblr and from sketching.

Writing

I've been doing some freelance writing for the Card Kingdom blog about characters in the recent Magic: the Gathering stories. Here's my most recent post, about Lavinia, Azorius Renegade.

On Games 8: Donut County

Annapurna Interactive’s Donut County is, for my purposes, the best game made in 2018. It doesn’t take more than an afternoon to play. It has relaxing mechanics and simple controls that play well with my arthritis. And it’s got cute cel-shaded graphics and an adorable story about a raccoon learning to respect people of other species and a human girl learning to stand up for herself and her community against the rising tide of capitalism.

Story and puzzle spoilers below.

On the Needles 20: Make Nine 2019

There's a crafting challenge on Instagram called Make Nine, where people set goals of nine projects they want to complete in a year and post photos of their progress as they go. I don't use Instagram; I'm just learning about this from a podcast. But I think it's something I should do anyway.

I haven't been doing very much knitting in the first two weeks of January; the chilly, damp weather here in the Pacific Northwest is not good for my arthritis, and I think I gave myself a repetitive strain injury playing mobile games over New Year's. But once I can start knitting again, here's what I plan to do.

Things to Finish
1. The sweater with rainbow stripes. I'm almost done with the body; the next step is the sleeves.
2. I made a glove last month before my arthritis really started acting up. I will make the second glove.
3. I designed a shawl pattern last fall. I'll finish the shawl and revise the pattern, and maybe post it on Ravelry.
4. Over the summer, I started designing a pattern for pants with short-row butt shaping, and I started knitting a pair of shorts to test it out. I will either finish these or unravel them.

Things to Continue
5. I started making a blanket with little bits of sock weight yarn left over from other projects. I will work on that in between the other projects.

Things to Start
6. My favorite sweater doesn't have pockets. I will make patch pockets for it.
7. I now have the pattern for Celestarium, a circular shawl with a star map on it, and the first skein I need to make it. After I finish the first four projects on this list, I will buy beads and start knitting it.
8. I can't forget to make a Christmas present for the Geek's mother. Still have to figure out what that is, but it's going on the list so I don't forget.
9. A friend of mine sent me a big skein of laceweight yarn in an interesting green and blue gradient. I want to make a lacy crescent or half-circle shawl with it.

I probably won't get to all of these things. I think I'll have more energy for knitting once I'm done with my daily Pokemon sketch challenge (today was day 780 out of 809!), but this is mostly to make sure I don't start too many new things, and that I always have something to look forward to working on.

On the Stack 13: Playing Magic by Post

A while back, I was interviewed for a Kotaku article about small Mastodon instances. Neither I nor the friend with whom I run wubrg.social actually had any quotes get into the article, but the author expressed some interest in talking to us at some point about our instance, and specifically the practice we’ve set up of playing Magic by post in the local timeline. So I’m going to assemble my thoughts about it here in case that actually happens.

The idea of Magic by post probably came from this LoadingReadyRun video in which the characters play Magic like correspondence chess, sending their plays back and forth by snail mail. I was reminded of it on Twitter by someone who was trying to revive an obscure Magic format called Tiny Leaders, and borrowed the idea for wubrg.social, which my friend and I created with play-by-post in mind.

The basic idea of play-by-post is that each player has their own paper deck and posts declarations of their actions to a shared thread, along with photos of their board state and shared information like their life total and the number of cards in their hand. Posts are hidden under content warnings to prevent clutter in the timelines of people who aren’t part of the game. The amount of information in each post varies based on both what the poster is doing and whether their opponent can respond; for example, if your opponent has no land untapped, it’s usually safe to post a whole main phase because there’s very little they can do in response to each spell you cast. Most of the time, the etiquette has settled into one post for the beginning of a turn up through declaring attackers, a pause for the opponent to block, and another post for damage and the rest of the turn.

Games are usually slower than face-to-face games, since play is asynchronous, and especially slow when players are in different time zones or when more than one player has to respond to each action. The most complicated game we’ve played so far was a four-player Commander game with one player on a different continent from the others. The game could only progress while everyone was awake, so it took about three days, and we ended up using a Google Sheet my co-admin has developed to record the big complicated board states and link to descriptions of the cards involved. The game was won by a mono-black sacrifice-based deck, which profited from a board wipe played by the Artifacts deck.

Play by post is a lot of fun, even when it gets that complicated. It gives me more opportunities to play Magic with the people I want to play with, and the slow pace of the games means I don’t have to focus on it as intensely as a face-to-face game, and can take a turn or two at a time on a break from work.

If this sounds like something you'd enjoy doing, leave a comment and I can get you an invitation to wubrg.social.