Invite Me!

The 2006 Magic Invitational is now just under a month away, and I’m still waiting for my invitation.

I realize there were a lot of problems with the voting this year—Mike Flores being invited, for one, even though he’s not very good at playing Magic—but the Invitational is still one of my favorite tournaments just because I think it’s a neat idea for an all-star game. And I mean, even in baseball someone somewhat less deserving makes it to All-Star weekend just because he’s a nice guy or has some neat accomplishment to his name.

Omar Vizquel comes to mind for all those years he made it despite being in the same league as Alex Rodriguez, Nomar Garciaparra when he was good, Miguel Tejada, and Derek Jeter. Now, I really like Omar and miss seeing him play, but there’s just something about a decent hitter with a great glove making it over any much better hitter with a more than passable glove.

Like, he’s really cool and all, but he’s not going to impress a lot of people at the All-Star game because chances to make spectacular fielding plays come along less frequently than chances to knock one over the wall.

I think that’s kind of what happened with Flores. He does cool things with decks (and gets credit, at least, for a lot of things), but he’s there because he’s popular and will draw some sort of viewership, not because he’ll hit a home run in the finals for the victory.

Honestly, though, I’m not sure who they were trying to attract. People who know tournament Magic will probably all pay at least passing interest to the format since it’s almost unavoidable that they do so. People who don’t know will either follow it or not depending on whether it interests them, and I’m not sure bringing a big-name tournament and deckbuilding expert into the game will actually increase that following.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway, whatever happens this year, which in the end won’t matter a lot except for the invitational card, the only lasting remnant of any of these tournaments besides the memories of people who played in them, I’ve decided I’d better get the push started to get myself invited to the 2007 Invitational.

I think I’d be a good candidate, but I’d make it on the Vizquel ballot.

I’m very personable, so I think the other invitationalists would get along with me, so I think we could all have a lot of fun. My deck building and playing skills are what I would call “existant,” so if I get some good cards I could, theoretically, do fairly well. Plus, I work well under pressure, and the Invitational would likely give me enough material for at least three weeks of blogs.

Plus, you could count on me to make the absolute best invitational card ever.

Ever!

You’ve probably been following the Dissension previews, right? So you’ve seen Terry Soh’s card and how it got knocked down a few steps in one area to get improvements in another, completely antithetical area?

Basically, Soh’s card used to be this:

Jin, Master of Disruption
BB
Creature – Zombie Wizard
0: Reveal your hand. Target player chooses a card from it and you discard that card. If you do, that player reveals his or her hand. Choose a card from it. The player discards that card. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery and only once each turn.
2/2

But now, as it will be printed in Dissension, it’s this:

Rakdos Augurmage
BBR
Creature – Human Wizard
First Strike
T: Reveal your hand and discard a card of target opponent’s choice. Then that player reveals his or her hand and discards a card of your choice. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery.
3/2

If you think that Jin is decidedly better than the augurmage, you’re right. The problem with Jin is that he can, on second turn, make an opponent lose a land from his hand. That’s really, really bad. It’s the reason Duress can’t pull a land out of someone’s hand; you can manascrew someone before their second turn, and that’s so much not fun to play against.

So, yeah, the ability probably had to include a tap symbol.

Unfortunately, instead becoming usable on the third turn, it’s now usable on the fourth without some form of accelerant.

To make the drawback on the ability more worthwhile, then, they added a point of power and gave it first strike. Which is absolutely retarded. Who wants to attack or block when you have a killer ability that can only be played as a sorcery. And who wants to play a harder to cast Balduvian Barbarians?

My guess is they kept it out of mono-black, and maybe even raised the casting cost, to make it a bit harder to use with Dark Confidant. Jin, Master of Disruption was clearly broken in conjunction with Bob because you would discard one of the two cards you drew that turn, to still be one card up while your opponent’s hand never gets any bigger.

However, just because of that, I would have left Rakdos Augurmage with a casting-cost of two. Let Terry and Bob fight it out for who gets cast second turn and who has to wait until third, possibly making your mana curve so much less efficient.

Unless…

Unless, of course, the rumors about some sort of Rakdos Ritual are true. I’ve heard about two possible variants: one a functional reprint of Elvish Spirit Guide (though I have a feeling it’ll be a black creature that gets removed to add red to the pool) and one a weaker Dark Ritual that goes like this:

(BR)
Instant
Add BR to your mana pool.

Getting the broken draw of two of these gives allows first turn Bob, second turn Terry no problem. It fits with the Rakdos Hellbent strategy, and mana accelerant like that is probably the best reason I can think of to take a card down a notch. Rakdos Augurmage’s casting cost is probably the best evidence yet of such a card existing, and I’d say that’s pretty cool.

I mean, I don’t think it will see play in Vintage, but it’s still pretty good. Rakdos-Izzet combo can now officially be insane until Kamigawa rotates out.

4x Izzet Guildmage
4x Desperate Ritual
4x Lava Spike
4x Infernal Tutor
4x Rakdos Ritual
4x Blood Crypt

The best part is, it’s still just two colors. Broken.

I can seriously see this deck developing, and if it has to be me that takes it to the forefront, I will.

You’ll see.

I don’t care; I’m crazy!

I’ll do it!

(Also, I forgot to share my possible Invitational submission, but I’ll get to that some other time. Mostly because I don’t have it written yet.)