Monopolarized

Does the Hero Zone have any copies of Monopoly? It’s a game store, I’m doing this anyway.

I played Monopoly with my girlfriend and her mom the other weekend. Now, I love my girlfriend (her name is Elizabeth; we’re in our third year. Hi honey!), and her mom is pretty cool too, even though she may or may not necessarily approve of me and the dating of her daughter, but playing Monopoly with the two of them were quite an experience.

Monopoly brings out the absolute worst in people, myself included. If Normal-me met Monopoly-me, Monopoly-me would punch Normal-me in the face and take my wallet. It’s that bad. On the first turn, Elizabeth went from her normal, loving, warm-hearted self to a miserly reptilian creature who was not above feigning pity and nearly bringing her mother to tears and begging.

“Sssaint Charlesss Placccce, with hotel isss Ssssseven-hundred fifty.”

It was awful. I missed my Normal girlfriend.

Okay, actually it was a lot more fun than I remember it being, but that may just be because I was having some initial luck and didn’t lose in the first few turns. I still don’t think I’d want to play it that often in fear of my heart getting all black and shriveled.

I think what I’m trying to say is that Monopoly needs an attack phase. Right now, all it has is enchantments and I prefer my combos to be spell-based rather than permanent-based. I think there’s a clear hierarchy among the playing pieces, so this should work out:

• Level 1: The hat, the shoe, and the thimble all do nothing on their own but are good to have around. It’s like Llanowar Elves, Scavenger Folk, Druid Lyrist and Basking Rootwalla.
• Level 2: The wheelbarrow and the dog are speed and utility. So, Wild Mongrel and, like, Humble Budoka.
• Level 3: The horse and the car are speed and power, like Cradle Guard and Kavu Titan.
• Level 4: The cannon is the start of an endgame. Could be Centaur Chieftain, maybe.
• Level 5: The battleship is the capper, once you’re using the battleship you should end the game soon. Consider it Verdant Force.

Heck, throw some Forests and Giant Growths or whatever on that and you’ve got a deck that might not be too terribly awful, at least in a group game…like Monopoly.

“Sssaint Charlesss Placccce, with a hotel is Ssssseven-hundred fifty.”
“Swing for four.”
“What?”
“Giant Growth it.”
“I’m confused.”
“Berserk; you lose.”
“I quit, you’re dumb.”
“Woohoo! Atlantic City is mine at last!”

Interesting that a blog on Monopoly—which is clearly an Orzhov family-game based on greed, pettiness and The American Way—has turned into a Gruul topic because there’s nothing quite as fun as turning d00ds sideways and beating opponents into a bloody mess.

Now that I’ve got two Guildpact guilds into this blog, I might as well make the trifecta—

I was hoping the Izzet would be beyond broken since blue and red have a tendency to avoid costs and mess with artifacts. They may still prove to be, especially with URzatron making a whole bunch of excess mana that can be pumped into various replicates and other sundries. There wasn’t really anything that looked too hideously degenerate, at least for me, though.

As such, my favorite Guildpact card is Burning-Tree Shaman. (I saw it on a spoiler because I’m evil like that, and the devil—who was helping me look over the spoiler—told me right away that centaur was made to be busted in half.) A 3/4 beatstick for three mana is already hot, and if it punishes the use of every card that contains a colon and doesn’t say to add something to your mana pool, from Jitte and Top to Goblin Welder and Gorilla Shaman to Ashnod’s Coupon, well, that’s just gravy.

And good gravy too, not just brown and water.

It already costs like $12 online. I recommend you get some right away and build a deck that smashes face and makes people not want to use their cards to do cool stuff. There’s not a lot of strategy to that, though, so you can figure it out on your own. Just try to use creatures that have power greater than their converted mana cost, like Rumbling Slum, which is also cool.

The two other cards I’d like to try building a deck around are Leyline of the Void and Leyline of Singularity.

Graveyard hate is t3chtonic in Vintage, and it should be good in other formats too as Dredge starts percolating into them. Playing a free enchantment that hoses all strategies that use the graveyard, then, could be really awesome. Unfortunately, without Leyline of the Void in your opening hand, it costs 4, which is a lot and may come out too late.

Planar Void from Urza’s Saga is similar and costs 1, but under that enchantment, cards do spend a bit of time in the graveyard before being removed. Time will tell, I suppose, but I still think it could be a sleeper, at least as a sideboard card, in a wide array of formats.

Leyline of Singularity is also interesting. I’d like to think it’s really good, but at the moment, I can’t think of any deck that really, absolutely has to have multiple copies of one permanent out. I mean, sure, redundancy in beatdown decks is cool, but how many 3/3s do you need on the board when a 1/1, a 2/2, a 3/3, and a 4/4 do the same thing and follow a mana curve better? If only there were a way to make all of an opponent’s lands count as not being lands.

I think Leyline of Singularity could open your deck up, though, playing fewer copies of single cards, more draw and more specific answers to control the board. You wouldn’t even need to play blue necessarily, if you’re not afraid to mulligan until you get the leyline and the ability to protect it.

For now, I leave it here. Good luck caving people’s nads in.

Next time, more inanity from the insanity, or vice versa.