My eight year old loves Magic and Pokemon and he's quite proud of his B/R deck he tweaks once every two weeks or so with new cards bought with his allowance. One day, as he was testing out one of his newest builds, I decided to play a UW deck his sister owns that uses Suppression Bonds, Claustrophobia and Turn to Frog among others, most of the cards were chosen for their artwork rather than their function.
He played a great game, causing me to mill some key cards out of my deck, stealing then sacrificing my creatures or just reducing their PT. So I went into defensive mode, playing cards like Ox to block his creatures and Suppression and Claustrophobia to pin his key creatures down. I managed to finish him off (just barely) using a fairy.
He burst out crying. It was then that I took a step back and looked at the board state and realized just how much I locked him down without realizing it. He had milled nearly half my deck and killed or stolen all but my lone flyer and I had a full hand. Meanwhile, he had five of his biggest creatures locked with enchantments, nothing in his hand and a meager two creatures in his graveyard. Enchantments was very thing he had no answers for with his B/R deck.
I hadn't even considered it. I just steered the deck his sister owns without thinking about it. Needless to say, I felt super bad. I broke the "don't be a jerk" rule in a big way. An adult like me pummeling a kid like that? Poor kid told me he felt he had no chance at winning because of the casual way I played. Especially since he didn't have any answers for the enchantments I played.
So I thought long and hard how to find answers to deal with these enchantments without deviating too much from his BR colors.
So I came up with doing the obvious by adding Nevinyrral's Disk for the obvious destruction.
Then I was thinking of spiking his deck with dual BW and RW lands to give him access to Disenchant for a more flexible Shatter and Cloudshift to make creatures stolen with Act of Treason stick around longer and make Returned Centaur a real punch to the face.
Am I missing anything obvious here?
He really really liked Sigiled Starfish for the repeatable Scy, but I don't see anything in B, R, or W with similar function.
Well the obvious change would be to splash in either green of white to gain access to their artifact and enchantment removal spells, you can add in cheap duals or trilands that come into play tapped. Another way which might involve more tweaking of the deck will allow you to deal with the enchantments is using a creature sacrifice and recursion engine easily doable in black. A simple Palace siege, Dictate of Erebos, with Disciple of Griselbrand, attrition, innocent blood set up could do this. However this won't won't work with oblivion ring effects. Also if he has red he can simply sacrifice pacifismed creatures with effects like collateral damage, fling.
Those are a lot of good ideas and more than a few that I didn't think of like the discards and Collateral Damage. Tri-color lands would be interesting. I was thinking strictly duals, but tri colors could allow him to cast a wider color net and smooth out his mana needs. He tends to need black more than red in his deck since the majority of his red spells are less than 2CMC or X spells.
From what I can see, they're all within an 8 year olds budget.
I can tell he's not too crazy about wiping the board (one of my "teaching" decks is Jokulhaups. Obviously not one I play very often.) so if he can avoid the Disk, I think he would.
Seems like the issue is not so much enchantments in general as it is auras in particular. A simple answer to that is bouncing the enchanted creature and replay it. Cards like Skull Collector, Oni of Wild Places, Blood Clock, Ancestral Statue, Cloudstone Curio, etc. are all within the r/b color spectrum and allow creatures to shake of auras. Of course, having access to black also makes it possible to sacrifice and reanimate a creature. Conjurer's Closet can blink an enchanted creature to shake of any auras, retrigger ETB effects, reset counters, "untap" creatures, etc. An easily abused card that also solves the aura problem.
I would say that the normal answer of black vs enchantments is discard. Give him some copies of distress and let him decide which card to take.
After a while or with help he'll learn that he needs to pick the stuff he cannot answer, if he thinks the spell will be relevant.
Discard where you make the choice, or random discard is less interactive. The only decision he'll make is when to play. Not really great for learning or too hard for learning.
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These are the decks that I have constructed, and are ready to play:
01. Ankh Sligh to be exact.
I didn't take him to the LGS yet, couldn't get off work on time.
Good point with Distress, good way to teach him about threat assessment. It's more $$ (relatively speaking) but isn't Surgical Extraction better? Like a Jester's Cap on crank?
Oh wait... I get it now. Different animals.
He's hooked on the idea of milling my deck and grabbing beasts back from the graveyard. So I'll look at those cards too.
Weird option. Apostle's Blessing can make the enchantment fall off at the end of your turn, or sneak a critter through. (Though if you do end up splashing white, Shelter trades the flexible mana cost for a cantrip.)
He played a great game, causing me to mill some key cards out of my deck, stealing then sacrificing my creatures or just reducing their PT. So I went into defensive mode, playing cards like Ox to block his creatures and Suppression and Claustrophobia to pin his key creatures down. I managed to finish him off (just barely) using a fairy.
He burst out crying. It was then that I took a step back and looked at the board state and realized just how much I locked him down without realizing it. He had milled nearly half my deck and killed or stolen all but my lone flyer and I had a full hand. Meanwhile, he had five of his biggest creatures locked with enchantments, nothing in his hand and a meager two creatures in his graveyard. Enchantments was very thing he had no answers for with his B/R deck.
I hadn't even considered it. I just steered the deck his sister owns without thinking about it. Needless to say, I felt super bad. I broke the "don't be a jerk" rule in a big way. An adult like me pummeling a kid like that? Poor kid told me he felt he had no chance at winning because of the casual way I played. Especially since he didn't have any answers for the enchantments I played.
So I thought long and hard how to find answers to deal with these enchantments without deviating too much from his BR colors.
So I came up with doing the obvious by adding Nevinyrral's Disk for the obvious destruction.
Then I was thinking of spiking his deck with dual BW and RW lands to give him access to
Disenchant for a more flexible Shatter and Cloudshift to make creatures stolen with Act of Treason stick around longer and make Returned Centaur a real punch to the face.
Am I missing anything obvious here?
He really really liked Sigiled Starfish for the repeatable Scy, but I don't see anything in B, R, or W with similar function.
My Decks:
All my Decks are budget
EDH:GRWHazezon TamarGRW, RKazuul, Tyrant of the CliffsR, BMikaeus, the UnhallowedB, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GRXenagos, God of RevelsGR, BGPharika, God of AfflictionBG
Standard:BMono Black Control(devotion)B- retired
Casual:UWHeroicUW, UGWall tribalUG, BPhylactery LichB
Modern:UBAbyssal PersecutorUB, WKnight TribalW
From what I can see, they're all within an 8 year olds budget.
I can tell he's not too crazy about wiping the board (one of my "teaching" decks is Jokulhaups. Obviously not one I play very often.) so if he can avoid the Disk, I think he would.
I might take him to the LGS today.
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After a while or with help he'll learn that he needs to pick the stuff he cannot answer, if he thinks the spell will be relevant.
Discard where you make the choice, or random discard is less interactive. The only decision he'll make is when to play. Not really great for learning or too hard for learning.
These are the decks that I have constructed, and are ready to play:
01. Ankh Sligh to be exact.
Good point with Distress, good way to teach him about threat assessment. It's more $$ (relatively speaking) but isn't Surgical Extraction better? Like a Jester's Cap on crank?
Oh wait... I get it now. Different animals.
He's hooked on the idea of milling my deck and grabbing beasts back from the graveyard. So I'll look at those cards too.
Another is Altar's Reap.
Weird option. Apostle's Blessing can make the enchantment fall off at the end of your turn, or sneak a critter through. (Though if you do end up splashing white, Shelter trades the flexible mana cost for a cantrip.)
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