Continued from last week. This is a discussion about Magic: the Gathering
So I had one deck that got a lot of fast mana but ran out of cards, and another that gave players extra cards and turns, but fewer resources. I thought that each was less than stellar, right up until I played them in a game of two-headed giants.
Now, if planeswalkers are my favorite cards, two-headed giant is probably my favorite format. The complexity of the board state, the slightly slower pace, and the variety of plays make it fascinating to me. I get really excited when I have the opportunity to create two decks that add up to much greater than the sum of their parts, and that is what happened when I combined Superfriends and Supervillains together. They perfectly complement each other.
After playing them for a while, I started to think that there weren’t many ways that I could make the decks better. Then Wizards of the Coast went and printed Ral Zarek.
Honestly, if I were asked “what would be the perfect card to add to your supervillains deck,” I don’t know if I could have come up with anything better than Ral Zarek. Upon reflection, the only thing I could think of that would reasonably make the card better would be if the -2 ability Pyroclasmed instead of Lightning Bolted. But that’s just getting greedy. Even the fact that Ral Zarek both taps and untaps a permanent is advantageous; I can tap my Howling Mines so my opponent doesn’t get the extra draw, and then untap my partner’s lands to help him/her out. It’s downright nasty.
So in my local store, we’ve been doing a lot of two-headed giant, and we recently convinced the store owner to try a modern two-headed giant tournament. I’ve been champing at the bit to try these decks out in a serious setting, and now I have a chance. I’ll let you know how it goes.