A penny for my overcosted thoughts
Of course we know how to play
multiplayer, we're a hive
Alright ladies and gentlemen; shuffle up your Gemstone Mines, forget everything you know about Virulent Slivers, and away we go!
5 Slivers of Advice for Multiplayer Victory
Magics is Serious Buisness
Redundancy aside, Mr. Meathooks has a very good point. As anyone with a full set of fingers can probably confirm for us, there are more players in eight player free-for-all than in PT-Kyoto matches. The increase in the number of players makes us need to step back and look at the board as a whole while making decisions about allocating our fairly limited resources. While having removal/permission for every big enemy creature is usually the mainstay of at least one deck in Standard, it’s a pretty impossible strategy for you in multiplayer. Since we were thinking of that fact when we built our decks (wink wink) we know our deck has the proper level of removal/permission to keep us out of blowout scenarios, but we need to think about how to use it.
I like to divide almost every play an opponent makes into one of three camps: Threats, Rattlesnakes, and Engines. Threats are the most self-explanatory. They are simply a card (or occasionally a collection of cards) that is capable of killing an opponent in short order. Loamdragger Giant from our last discussion is about the most generic a threat can be. Multiplayer threats can, of course, get much better than Loamdragger Giant and are usually needed in some form to win a multiplayer game. When you see an opponent make a play that isn’t a creature, that doesn’t mean it can’t be a threat. Worm Harvest for 7 is essentially a 7/7 that really, really hates Pyroclasm.
Rattlesnakes are a little more complicated, but they consist of any card that serves to convince players not to do something. One of my personal favorite rattlesnakes for medium play is Royal Assassin. It dissuades people from attacking with non-vigilance creatures, and from using tap abilities. The best part of him is that he keeps people from attacking not only you, but anyone you might want to defend at the moment. Most pieces of removal and permission fall into this category, especially if the opponents are aware that those kind of cards are present in your deck.
The final class of plays, engines, is the hardest to define, but still incredibly important to notice and react to accordingly. The plays I call engines are cards (very often collections of cards) that serve to give advantage to their controller, usually without detrimentally affecting someone else too much. The multiplayer classic Rhystic Study is perhaps the quintessential engine card. It creates massive swings in card advantage without directly impacting an opponent, unless that opponent chooses to deny Study's controller the cards. Other examples include things like Oona, Queen of the Fae’s activated ability and Phyrexian Arena.
These categories are not hardly clean cut. Many, many cards fall into two or even tnree categories. Oona, Queen of the Fae is a 5/5 flying threat that engines up some Faerie blockers. Dread is a 6/6 rattlesnake threat. Underworld Dreams is a great example of a Rattlesnake/Engine, it convinces people not to draw cards, while slowly lowering the total opponent life total.
There’s an acronym I like to use for prioritizing my responses to plays: WaT MiR DiE (okay, I made that stupid sounding thing up on the spot). It stands for Watch Threats, Mitigate Rattlesnakes, Dismantle Engines. Don’t react to threats as soon as they appear, wait until the last moment you can afford to deal with it, because A) someone else might deal with it, and B) many threats will be resolved for you by shifts in the board's state. Don’t throw Terror at the Loamdragger Giant until you are out of chump blockers and it's about to hit you for 7. When a rattlesnake hits the other side of the table, don’t walk right into it (don’t draw 15 cards for the Underworld Dreams), but don't allow it to dominate your play, either. If you see a Dread staring you down, and you have a Mobilization spitting out tokens, use those before you throw Akroma, Angel of Wrath that players way, and don't allow the Dread to let it's controller get away totally unattacked. Finally, engines are the only cards that require rapid response. Cards like Rhystic Study, Seedborn Muse, Insight, and Arcanis the Omnipotent will take the game right out from under you if they are allowed to stay unimpeded for too long. Deal with them when you can, before the opponent’s advantages make your response lame ducks anyway.
Whew, Crystalline Sliver is a talkative dude, ain’t he? He’s very important though. Keep his ideas in constant consideration so that you don’t end up without resources and nowhere to go.
What's a little *** between friends?
When playing aggressive, creature based decks in competitive Magic, there’s no card that engenders as much consideration as Wrath of God. Its ability to remove your whole army and generate massive card advantage is critical for many control decks to live long enough to secure their threats and go for the long game. When piloting a deck sensitive to Wrath of God, there comes a point in many games where you have to look at your opponent’s hand, lands and board position and mentally size up “What’s the chance of a Wrath?”. Many times the difference between winning the game and losing it is whether you gamble correctly on that very question. In multiplayer, however, there’s one side of that gamble that’s very clearly the right one.
Hibernation Sliver’s Planeswalker Corollary: In multiplayer, someone is always going to have the creature to attack your ‘walker, so think hard about including them in decks designed for four to eight man games. Consider if they are worth it for one activation, or do you need three to five turns of out them to be worth a spot in your deck?
It's me
There comes a point in every multiplayer madness where one player does something so huge, yet mean-spirited, that despite the advantage it generates and the cleverness it represents, the rest of the table will be filled with disapproval, not glowing praise. Sometimes it’s a particular card (I’m looking at you, Phyrexian Tyranny!), an underhanded double cross, or kicking a player while he’s down (“I Violent Ultimatum your three Ravnica bounce lands”). While we don’t like these plays, we are sometimes forced to play against them, and occasionally even make them ourselves. When you know that an opponent’s deck is going to play these cards, or you know that they would truly allow your deck to blowout big time, you need to do respond appropriately, or they’ll cost you many games.
If an opponent’s deck is of known underhanded construction (Zuran Orb, Crucible of Worlds, Balance, for example) you need to focus harder on the individual plays an opponent has made so far this game and do your best to mitigate those particular moves. If you know Bob in seat three is going to drop a Phyrexian Tyranny as soon as he hits , it’s best not to disenchant Tod’s Puppet Strings over in seat one, even though you’ve got the card, the time and the mana. If you’re up against unknown decks, watch out for odd tactical moves and plays that are begging for another card to shore them up. Why did he suspend Wheel of Fate and then play Wheel and Deal? Oh! I bet a draw punishing card is coming up soon!
If you know a particular player has a penchant for kicking puppies where it hurts (Say, Lobotomizing the Rolling Stones from your all wall deck) make sure to avoid setting yourself up for overly obvious moves, and in general move to eliminate that person when the chance presents itself. In the archives, there is a great series of articles (here and here) about the fourth psychographic the author calls “Dave.” I highly recommend reading that for dealing with these kind of moves.
When your deck wants a dirty-card that’s sure to provoke anger and displeasure from the entire rest of the table, playing it takes a certain extra level of finesse. Don’t attempt to resolve your Manabarbs, War’s Tolls, Dovescapes, and Kaervek, The Mercilesses until they are sure to be fatal. Too often, that “knockout punch,” if played too early, can simply end in you bruised and bloody with your board swept away and your resources and future bleak. When playing these cards, too soon is worse than not at all.
The right time to charge: Always!
If you are playing a deck that seeks to win through non-arbitrary combat damage, like most decks in Magic, there will come a time when the kid gloves have to come off. Many players will sit in large games paralyzed by the amount of resources marshaled against them. The best beasties stay at home to block, and the X burn spells stay in the hand waiting for some theoretical future creature that needs to die. The simple truth of the matter is, at some point, you need to actually kill the opponents. And not just with vigilance creatures and one-hit-kill attacks either. When you can tell that a player is in a bad way, their resources are low, they’ve aggroed into a wrath, or their engines haven’t come online right, it is time to finish that player off.
There are a couple of things that I like to watch for when I decide to go for the kill against a player. Desperation trades are always a good sign, did an Arcanis just suicide block a 4/4 without bounce mana? Was Cryptic Command used as a Dismiss on Incinerate? Terror a grizzly bear? These kind of plays indicate that the player (assuming they understand the game basics, and aren’t simple making play mistakes) cannot long weather dedicated attacks and focused spell barrages. Swing almost all out. Go down to one, or two cards left in hand, just get that player killed. Don’t put yourself in his shoes to kill him, but remember: to win the game, someone has to eventually die.
Make the decision on when to attack carefully because sometimes the players with the best position can be the closest to losing. A player with three strong enchantments and four good creatures may look like he’s in great position, but you need to look at the circumstances around that player. Is he attacking, blocking, and trading creatures in combat with multiple players often? Is she low on cards-in-hand or tapping out on her own turn, each and every turn? Is the player tutoring often and immediately playing the tutored card? These type of signs point to a hollow board position. If you commit your midrange creatures, point a couple of threats their way and attack in earnest for a couple of turns, you’ll often be surprised how many seemingly great board positions can crumble into death’s door in a turn or two. You’ll have to expend more resources to kill this player versus the first kind of target talked about above, but in the end you’ve removed a stronger threat, so it’s usually better to kill these types of players first. Those in the first camp of desperate straights can wait a turn or two if someone in a hollow position can be killed along the way. Plus, it reduces the chances of being knocked on your butt by the person in the hollow board position after you finish up Mr. In-A-Bad-Way.
Slivers, The other 5-color meat
As you’ve probably noticed, this column mentions the fact that there are eight players in an eight player game quite a bit (Hint: It’s kind of important). Usually, its to say how that stops us from doing something we want to do. But there is one thing that those other seven players can help us with: killing each other. The beauty of Free-For-All is just that; it's totally free-for-all (Gosh, I'm redundantly repetitive today). Everyone is fighting everyone else. Not every threat is coming your way, not every instance of a combo is going to smack you into a thousand little pieces, and this can play to your advantage.
When two opponents are embroiled in a bitter struggle consuming most of their resources, it's often best to leave them to it for a couple of turns. Let them burn through cards in hand, and trade away their creatures; very often, adding a third player to that little skirmish will cause it to stabilize. In that situation, you’ve spent resources for the enviable goal of conserving other people’s resources. Seems paradoxical? That’s because it is. If two foes want to kill each other, remember Victual Sliver and let them.
Great Sliver? Or the Greatest Sliver?
He’s right. Moving on.
Part the Second: Where Spinning the Top Addresses Aggro
A couple of people have mentioned that the first Spinning the Top seemed very down on aggro, so I’d like to present a very powerful aggro deck for multiplayer that hits hard, fast and in a very multiplayer friendly way.
Hostile IntentMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Lands 25 17 Mountain 4 Ghitu Encampment 4 Spinerock Knoll Creatures 16 4 Flamekin Harbinger 4 Ashenmoor Gouger 4 Figure of Destiny 4 Hostility | Hostility Friendly Sweepers 15 4 Volcanic Fallout 2 Flame Wave 2 Molten Disaster 4 Flamebreak 3 Cave-In | Variable Burn 4 3 Browbeat 1 Banefire |
This deck is pretty obvious in its design and purpose. Play sweepers until Hostility shows up. Then use the sweepers to simultaneously clear out the blockers and make a lot of 3/1 Elementals to beat face. You have to be prepared to play close to the chest and fight the whole table, but turn six Hostility into Cave-In can be game for at least 2 players.
The key multiplayer principles of Card Advantage and Expansion are keenly visible in this deck's choice to use sweepers with Hostility instead of straight-out burn. A card like Flamebreak can not only net card advantage by killing more than one creature, it does a very mana efficient amount of player damage as well. In an eight player game, Flamebreak goes in for a full 21 damage for a measly . In a good board state, it has the additional benefit of opening out the ground for your other creatures, all of which have a respectable toughness.
The beauty of the board sweepers with Hostility in place is the simultaneous creation of numerous 3/1 Elemental tokens and the creation of the open field for them to attack in. Each subsequent board sweeper cleans out the Elementals you've already got, but they have haste and as such aren't slowed down by being Wrathed and replaced.
To top off the deck's synergies, man-lands hide from sweepers and have first strike. Five damage by the end of the first strike phase should be enough to keep most of your opponent's creatures out of profitable blocking positions. Spinerock Knoll can be very easily triggered by a Flamebreak's worth of tokens in even a three or four player game.
All in all, these powerful, scalable synergies are essential for a dedicated aggro deck to succeed in multiplayer. Even cards that are otherwise great, like Lightning Bolt and Flame Rift have no good place in this deck. The sweepers in the deck may not deal damage as efficiently as either Bolt or Rift, but they combine scalable player and creature damage into one card, that then synergize exceptionally well with the big red dude.
May the Hive be with you,
RogueNewb
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