Terrible Magic Looking Forward

How I'm feeling right now

Here at Terrible Magic, we as Team Heavy Salami are sharks. That means we don't look back. Why? Because sharks don't have necks and they can't actually look behind them. You know what has necks? Sheep. And I don't mean that in the metaphorical "WAKE UP SHEEPLE" sense, I mean that sheep the actual animals have necks. Sheep need necks so they can look behind them to make sure there are no sharks sneaking up on them. I've side tracked a bit but what I'm getting at is that Terrible Magic is moving forward and has some fun endeavors in the works.


New Look

If you actually read our stuff regularly and not just an article or two, you may have noticed we have a new look. This really encompasses us here at Terrible Magic better than the meat face did. You can see it has sunglasses because we're pretty cool dudes, it's heavy because we play Magic and don't move a lot, and it slightly curves to the left because...well...we slightly curve to the left. Also it's in front of a Magic card because surprise, surprise, Heavy Salami is about Magic. Check out that sweet 5 color background. Those nice defined lines. The meat deli font. It's all real nice looking if you ask me but I'll say just about anything is all real nice looking so you should probably ask Dan.


We have a Twitter

Sometimes we have hilarious quips that are under 140 characters and want to share them with the world. Have a whole article for one quip or saving several quips to put all into a single article sounds like a bad idea. Now don't get me wrong, we are full of bad ideas and support those ideas, but that usually stays within the realm of deck building. If you want updates on events we are at or just want to see what juicy may-mays we have for you then check us out. I'm a fan of this one in particular.

If for some reason you don't find this funny, that's okay because it still makes me laugh and my tears of laughter at this picture will hide my tears of sadness from your lack of love.


We have shirts (kind of)

In Heavy Salami fashion, we have janky first drafts of shirts. They're comfy and beautiful and in the future we will hopefully have ones with a little bit cleaner of a design. We're thinking koozies are gonna be next and then after that probably blankets. After blankets it will be steering wheel covers and scented candles. The possibilities are endless really. We tried to trademark the design but turns out you can't copyright meat. Any Magic event we go to we'll be reppin' that sweet logo so if you see this, then you're seeing us.

Dan: I'm looking into Heavy Salami fanny packs and golf-visors as well. Possibly Heavy Salami cake pans.


Introducing the Salami Scale

For those of you who don't know what the storm scale is, take a look at the link real quick and familiarize yourself with it briefly. To sum it up, it is a 1-10 scale of the likeliness of a mechanic to return in future sets. Here at Terrible Magic we are going to start using the Salami Scale. It will be a 1-10 scale of how janky a particular card or deck or combo is. A 1 at the bottom of the scale is basically 0 jank and you will see this card/deck played by pros. An example card would be Always Watching, and an example deck would be Bant Collected Company. On the high end at 10, that card/deck is nothing but jank and will probably never see real competitive play unless you're the trailblazer to do so. A card example would be Prism Array and a deck example would be Winner Winner Lifegain dinner in that article. It has potential to win in the sense that you do have a win condition but typically you'll go 1-4 or 0-5 depending on how land stuck your opponents get. As far as 2-9 goes I'm not gonna give you specific examples of cards and decks for all of those but just know that the higher the number, the jankier it is and the more we like it. Keep in mind not every article will be using the Salami Scale but now that it's out there we will be using it regularly.


Our partnership with 5 Color Combo

"Partnership" might be a bit of a strong word for where we're at. We don't really want to put a label on it and just have fun together and see where things go. What I can say is that Dan and myself will occasionally have guest articles on 5 Color Combo, so check out their site and check out our stuff once we get some things written for them. We will make a post here letting you all know when we do in fact have something up over there and hopefully will make updates here when we have articles there so you can check us out in two places. Now that we are about to double our internet presence, it's almost going to be like there are two Dans and two Gaiges which is about four more than anyone wants.

Dan: We're going to go on double dates with eachother.


Here at Terrible Magic we never stop moving, well, at least in the writing sense. In the real world sense we don't really move at all. Sometimes we get up to get a beer and sometimes we lean over in our chair to grab a new deck but that's about it. We have new things ahead and hopefully in the future we will have more newer things aheader. The future is looking bright and the meat is looking thick. Check back later this week for more articles!





Have general questions about us but didn't have an opportunity to ask? Want some sweety meaty swagger by getting a Heavy Salami shirt? Want us to Photoshop ourselves into a picture with you? Let us know with a comment or a message!

$20 For Parts, $500 For Labor

"Yup, looks like your problem is that your tower is just 250 lands."

Good morning (or whatever time o'clock it is when you read this) pals! Today is that day of the week that let's you know we are still alive. It's Wizard's Tower Wednesday! Dan and I are back from our week of being gone and we are writing articles with the fierceness of two dudes who haven't written articles in a while.

Before continuing on, if you are confused by what Wizard's Tower is check out our intro article that will explain at you the best format in Magic you didn't know existed. Now I feel like the past couple of articles have all started with "I'm gonna do something a little different this week..." and if I keep saying that it's not really different is it? While I'm busy having an existential crisis trying to figure out if always different means the same, read on ahead to see something a bit different from other WtW (Wizard's Tower Wednesday) articles. (I will be typing out WtW for the rest of the article if I need to say Wizard's Tower Wednesday anymore in this article and hopefully can make this the norm for future articles so that I can spend less typing that one phrase and more time trying to help you be the best you can be.)

The whole point of WtW is to help you, using our vast experience in the format, to see what are the best and most fun cards and type of cards to add to your tower for maximum weird stuff. Every week we will talk about a couple cards of good examples and bad examples for a tower. Today will be a bit broader because we're gonna talk about which mechanics are gonna add stuff or take away from your tower and your fun/jank level.

Cascade - Good

For those of you like me who don't know what bituminous means, it is of bitumen, a sort of coal. So essential "coal blast"

Cascade is one of my favorite mechanics in all of Magic. I don't know where it lies on the storm scale so I don't know if we'll ever see it again, but I feel like the answer is no. Any form of deck manipulation is awesome in Wizard's Tower and this card in particular is also removal which is also always good for your tower. You burn something for 4 and then just get a free random spell and if you have any sort of decent tower you'll have some awesome spells to get to play randomly. There aren't many cascade cards that exist but there are only 1 or 2 that are too good to be in a tower and the rest feel free to throw them in. No one will want to turn a cascade card in to a land because it's basically two spells for the price of one. It's like buying a 10 piece of tendies at Burger King for $1.50, there is just no way you can say no to that.

Delve - Bad (or Too Good)

Too smug to be in your tower

Even bad delve cards just become ridiculous in Wizard's Tower. If you have 4 or more people playing and even just a handful of people play some stuff that gets into the graveyard early on, you can play a 6 or seven cost spell on turn 2 and with having no color restriction, you can play some pretty crazy stuff. Now I'm all for graveyard manipulation because it is just as fun as deck manipulation, but this is the wrong kind. When you delve away cards they are essentially out of the game forever since there is no easy way to bring things back from exile. The whole point of graveyard manipulation is for people to be able to play things that were already cast or put stuff back into the library. Every card you delve away will not only paint one more target on your face, but will also bring one more tear to everyone's eye as you take cards out of the game. "But what about using delve to get rid of certain cards so their graveyard selection is my choosing." You can try and argue and tell me I'm wrong because I am wrong a lot, but if you think delve is a good idea, then you can just go read some other scrubs blog and I guarantee it's probably more helpful and less funny. So who's the real winner?

Scavenge - Good

He just wanted to be a tiger so he got a bunch of battle scars

Now scavenge is that good shit graveyard manipulation. This card in particular where it gives every creature in the graveyard scavenge is a hilarious one to play. Scavenge gives use to any creature that dies in order to buff other creatures. Because you can only scavenge as a sorcery you don't have to worry about dealing with everyone shouting over who gets to scavenge when something dies and figuring out priority and going through the "I pass priority, do you scavenge? No? Priority passes to player 3, do you scavenge? No?" and so on. You have to get the luck of the draw so that the timing of the death and the mana cost lines up with your turn and at a time when you have the extra mana or lack of other options in order to scavenge. Again, just go out and get this card because it's not expensive and no one really wants to kill it when it hits the field since it gives utility to all the creatures in the graveyard. "But you said exiling cards form graveyard is a bad thing." It still is but exiling only cards that have scavenge is no biggie, and if you do have this on the field, you're not exiling 5 graveyard things for 1 mana, you're exiling 1 graveyard thing for 5 mana so the process is much slower. Yes I'm contradicting myself a bit but isn't that what Magic is about? "No." MOVING ON!

Madness - Bad (as in Actually Bad)

This would give me nightmares but my apartment is sitting on concrete, so good luck zombies

Unless you have an Innistrad or discard themed tower (which again, themed towers could be super cool) madness is just too mediocre on it's own to be good. Even From Under the Floorboards, which is pretty decent on it's own, doesn't really shine unless you at least have the option to pay its madness cost. Your tower might have some looters or rummagers that get you to discard but in a deck of 250 cards with 4+ players, you probably won't be lucky enough to pull both. Don't make your friends hate this format because every game they get the madness card that's almost good but isn't since they have no way to activate madness. Sure you can tell me about the one game where you were forced to discard a card by another player and instead got 6 zombies, but that is exception. The one time you used madness effectively on accident probably felt better than the time you got 2 extra tendies for free, but again, exception, not the rule. Don't bog down your tower with a specialized mechanic that will only make new tower-comers immediately turned off to what is clearly the best format.

There are plenty more mechanics that we will talk about in the future. Maybe we'll cover whether flying or trample can fit into a tower. If you really need to be told whether or not evergreen words work in a tower then you're wasting both our time. I'm gonna use my extra un-wasted time to not talk about evergreen mechanics and walk to the mall and get a soft pretzel. It's gonna be a good Wednesday. We'll just keep rolling out cards and mechanics until some point when we stop. Who knows when that is? Enjoy the rest of your week and check back later this week for more fun things.





Already have these mechanics in your tower? Not really sure how flying or trample works? Get lost in your local mall and need help? Send us a comment or a message!

Guest Article: Butter's Super Duper Bad Lore Prediction

Hey all, this is an article our friend Butters wrote for us. We gave him a different font to ostracize him. I dunno why. Hope you enjoy! - Dan

Hello friends. Who am I? Not Gaige or Dan, that’s for damn sure. Not sexy enough. I’m just some balding dad who is even worse at magic than those two.

So why am I writing something instead of them? It’s definitely not because I pester Dan on a day to day basis telling him to upload something for my entertainment and he got tired of it and told me to write my own damn piece. It’s because I asked to. And now their viewership is gonna take a nosedive because I have no creative juices and I’m an atrocious writer.

Me getting the creative juices flowing for this article.

Anywho, I’m gonna talk about some Magic story predictions, because you more certainly don’t want my card predictions. I am wrong about the playability of about 90% of the cards, just like everyone else. I’m here to give you my thoughts on the progression of Magic’s shitty story writing. Even though it’s bad, I am captured by it. I need it. I crave it. By the time this is posted, the rest of Eldritch Moon’s story has probably been figured out. But as of right now, all we know is Emrakul is the bitch fucking up Innistrad and everyone in Hanweir is part of Land Cronenberg. But my predictions are going past Innistrad, and even Kaladesh. Mainly because I think I’m clever, but I’m really not. Now, Let’s kick this turkey. I’m gonna assume you know the story so far. If you don’t, well, fuck you.

You know what they say: A town that eats together ends up morphing into a giant, horrific ooze together.

Now, Innistrad is in a shitty spot at the moment, and I’m willing to bet that Jace and friends are gonna be quite cocky now. They fucked up two of the three titans. Surely the third will also be defeated by their mighty friendship. And they’ll be right, but not before they get royally beaten. When all looks bleak, Lilianna will step up and use her massive army of zombies to hold back the Eldrazi swarm. This will buy the League of Friends the time to start thinking of a plan that will actually work, which will probably involve needing either Sorin or Nahiri. Speaking of Sorin and Nahiri, Sorin will catch up Nahiri, and boy will he have words with her. We can expect some world class dialog and discussion here. Nahiri will bitch about how Sorin is a fuckboy, and Sorin will call Nahiri a whiny brat. After an indeterminate amount of exposition, they will start fighting. And it’s a battle that neither side gain an advantage over. At one point, it will look like Sorin is winning, another, Nahiri is winning. It’ll be too close to call at first, and we’ll be left with a cliffhanger.

I'm still bitter about this piece of art. And fuck Dan for making me add pictures.

Now here is where I see the story going a couple of different ways. The battle will be interrupted by the friends. Option A) Lilianna stumbles upon them first and notices Sorin battling with currently an unknown planeswalker (in her eyes) and struggling. Seeing her opportunity to be the new Lord of Innistrad, joins Nahiri in the fight against him. Sorin is beaten and is forced to planeswalk away, to brood as her normally does, yet again to not contribute anything to the conclusion of the story at hand. Lili and Nahiri have a tense yet pleasant conversation about what just happened. There rest of the Gatewatch appear and it is discovered that this is Nahiri. WOOO! They found the next best person, according to what Ugin told Jace. Nahiri will be cold at first, but after learning that Zendikar has been saved, and that Sorin had now been effectively usurped from his own plane, she decides maybe she’s overreacting a bit and decides to help out. Her knowledge about imprisoning the eldrazi before, and that Sorin had imprisoned her in a shard of the moon, comes in handy in getting a real good plan together. But how will they use the moon to imprison Emrakul? If only there was a Moon Sage somewhere on the plane that could help with that… Tamiyo makes a timely appearance, or meets back up with Jace sometime before finding the Sorin and Nahiri scuffle. Lili, Tamiyo and MAYBE (Highly unlikely) Nahiri join the Gatewatch.

Arlinn gets one or two magic stories about how her and her werewolves fight off the Eldrazified denizens, but ultimately don’t succeed. Arlinn lives.

Option B) the entire gatewatch stumbles upon the fight between Sorin and Nahiri. They try to reason with them to stop their fighting, but since their relationship has been ruined beyond repair and because they don’t know how to communicate their feelings properly, they don’t. Eventually they realize Nahiri brought Emrakul here and help Sorin defeat her. Sorin doesn’t acknowledge their help and doesn’t appear grateful. However, he does learn his lesson about upholding his end of a bargain and the benefit of working with others. Now Sorin can contribute the knowledge of his previous experience of imprisoning eldrazi and using a shard of the moon as a prison for entities. Again, Tamiyo shows up and through the power of friends, imprison Emrakul. Lili, Tamiyo and MAYBE (Highly unlikely) Sorin join the Gate watch.

Arlinn gets one or two magic stories about how her and her werewolves fight off the Eldrazified denizens, but ultimately don’t succeed. Arlinn lives.

God, Lucy Lawless is hot.

Why imprison Emrakul instead of killing her? Because Wizards needs to keep their options open. If they want, they can never have the eldrazi come back into the story. It can be forever contained in Innistrad’s moon. However, if they want them to come back, they easily can by unleashing Emrakul. It’s a much better way of handling it than killing them all off now, and then decide later they want to bring them back and retconning their death. That’s just lazy writing. But then again, this is Wizards we’re talking about.

And why imprison Emrakul instead of driving her off? Because the moon is Chekov’s Gun and not using it is stupid. And Wizards needs to tie up some storylines, they can’t keep adding stories with no conclusions. Tying this up allows them to focus on the current stories, and develop the new ones without having too many threads going off in tens of different directions.

Now for Kaladesh. This is a bit less involved than Innistrad. It’s going to be a smaller problem compared to Zendikar and Innistrad. However, it should have a connection to another big threat that the Jacetice League will come across. My money's on Bolas. We haven’t seen him really involved in a while. Tarkir doesn’t count because that technically happened a long time ago. It won’t be so high stakes. We mainly end up there because the Gatewatch just defeated the fucking eldrazi trio. That’s some bad damn good work. They need some R&R. So Gideon and Chandra get all hot and bothered for each other. I mean, they just looked death in the eye and won, who wouldn’t be? So they hop, skip and jump over to Kaladesh because Gideon wants to see where Chandra is from, and she’s hesitant to go, but decides she needs to face her past. They get back, have a few magic stories about being a couple and shit is great, but find out that the place is in trouble by some shadowy, corrupt fucks. They see the guards aren’t too nice to the citizens, people are in low spirits, and THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH.

Turns out Jimmy is a planeswalker and bitches about the cost of living.

They go on a crusade to oust the people in power and put honest citizens in place. Turns out, Tezzeret and Bolas are the fuckers pulling the strings. Tezzeret gets a card, but Bolas stays in the shadows for the most part, getting a small role. The new planeswalker helps our friends out, and they foil Bolas’ plan, or did they? Bolas already got what he was looking for and was basically working on getting some bonus information. In addition, he now knows there is a group of planeswalkers going around being goody two-shoes. But the Gatewatch also are on to him.  Without really knowing much about Kaladesh, it’s hard to speculate on specifics, but Bolas could potentially have his hand in the ruling class of Kaladesh for a long time by now. As Kaladesh is an artifact plane, it probably has something to do with the phyrexians. However, the phyrexians won’t have a part here.

I don't know what she does, but I bet it's cool. Probably robits.

Here’s where the speculations stop being speculations and become more like terrible fan fiction. Since I already mentioned the phyrexians, I’ll talk about them first. We probably won’t see the phyrexians for a little while longer unfortunately. Wizards still has some other storylines to wrap up. Before we do, we’ll be going back to Theros and getting Elspeth back. The next we see phyrexia will be on Elspeth’s home plane, where at the conclusion of that debacle, will discover that Elesh Norn has figured out how to planeswalk to other planes infected by phyrexian oil.

So what do we get to before more phyrexians? Well I’m glad you asked. Because the next plane we see visit after Kaladesh is Shandalar. It’s been a long time coming man. Why there? Because Lilianna needs help with the chain veil problem, but Jace needs more information on the veil and it’s origins before he can really help. So away they go. But guess what mother fuckers! Garruk is there and boy, he has beef with Lili. Oh wait, who is also there? Ob Nixilis.Why? Because fuck I want him to be and we have gone into fan fiction territory. Yeah this is a lot of black focused planeswalkers, but most won’t have a card, at most, Lili and Garruk will get a card, but Ob won’t.

Now that I think about it, Shandalar seems like it would be similar to OG Zendikar and Worldwake. Rich in mana, old ruins. Goblins, elves, angels, and dragons. Fuck guys, let's go!

Jace and Lilianna encounter Ob first. Ob recognizes Jace as one of the punks that ruined his revenge on Zendikar. They get in a tussle and it is a close one. But when Lili starts to use to chain veil to whoop on Ob, he recognizes what it is and backs off. He ain’t no dummy. So instead he decides to stalk the duo and see what they are up to. They finally reach the Onakke catacombs, Jace starts his research and casting spells to figure out how to rid Lili of the curse. That’s when they are attacked by Garruk. Lilianna is forced to hold him off as Jace completes his spell research. They are successful and make their escape. Afterwards, Ob Nixilis approaches Garruk with a proposition of helping each other destroy their enemies. I would like to call this the Brotherhood of Evil Planeswalkers. Other potential members to join would be Tibalt, as he just loves chaos and fucking with other planeswalkers sounds like fun, Vraska, as she has beef with Jace, Ashiok, if he/she gets disrupted by the Gatewatch when they rescue Elspeth, and Sorin if he gets kicked out by Lili and Nahiri.

The point of the Brotherhood is the same as the Gatwatch, to bring the story in tighter and not have too many plot points in limbo. Smaller plots will still exist from time to time, but we’ll really have the two major problems on the phyrexians and Bolas, with the Brotherhood trying to disrupt the Gatewatch along the way. The story will still have planeswalkers that won’t join the Gatewatch or Brotherhood, like Raz, Sarkhan, Narset, Kiora, etc,  that will assist. Ugin will continue to give advice which the Gatewatch won’t follow.

But what the fuck do I know. I’m just some nerd. I’m probably wrong. I mean, I’ve never been right before. Let me know what you think will happen and if I’m full of shit.

Waiting Tower Wednesday

Me in the morning. And Night. And all day.

Gaige:

Friends, I'm sorry to say that Wizard's Tower Wednesday is postponed until next week. I've been in Indiana for work with no internet since Sunday and didn't get home until about midnight last night. Tomorrow I'm going to Electric Forest and I'm spending all day today packing. I was hoping to get something up today, either an article or my peep, but sadly neither will be happening. I will be gone and won't be writing anything until next week. I would like to to tell you that we have some exciting news that I'll be sharing next week, but it's not really exciting, and it's not really news. So instead, I'll say we have some words next week that I'll probably share.

I'll be back to regular articles next week, and if any of you mages are going to Electric Forest and want to hangout with one half of Heavy Salami, try and find me. I won't have anything that says Heavy Salami anywhere but if you just start asking "Have you seen Heavy Salami?" I'm sure it will make it to me eventually. If you're bored just watch a bunch of cat videos or troll around the internet looking for new spoilers. Until next week!

This is an actual image of Gaige.

Dan:

Similar to Gaige, I'm kind of booked. I've been practicing (lol like it'll help) for GP Pittsburgh quite a bit, so my time after work has been spent biking around town to get to stores for Standard events. It's kind of sweet because even if I get stomped at the GP (I will), I'll at least have wicked strong quads from all this biking.

Me and some friends will be at GP Pittsburgh! We will be competing in the main standard event, and once we scrub out, will be all over participating in side events. If anyone else is going and want to say "hi", look for the dude wearing a Heavy Salami shirt who is loudly complaining about how bad he is at Magic. I'll be sporting our sexy new logo, and I'll be lookin' hot in it, so come and objectify me. I imagine we're gonna explore the city and get a bit exotic afterwards as well. Keep an eye on the Heavy Salami twitter for live updates about how quickly I lose my matches. (You can click that sentence and be deposited on our Twitter)

You have no idea how stoked I am for these shirts.

Also, I really hope one of you submitted The Molten Frog Tornado (you can click that, too) deck to play. Let's get to the feature table and have a mirror match.



I don't really have anything to sum up in italics, since this entire post was kind of a summary. Leave a comment if you're going to be at GP Pittsburgh or Electric Forest and want to get toasty with the Heavy Salami crew!

Sunday Funday: How to Spend Your Bulk Commons

Just pretend those dollar bills are commons. I didn't feel like photoshopping this.

Oh, hello! Didn't see you there. Well, you crazy Magic followers, I have something a bit different for you today. Gaige here, and if you're anything like me you are helping to keep Wizard's of the Coast in business. Rather than pay 40$ for the one card I need I'd rather buy a booster box for $100 so that I can whiff and not get the card I need and then spend another $50 in boosters until I finally get what I'm looking for. But there is just something about opening boosters that makes me all tingley. That thrill of shuffling through 14 cards to see what the 15th card is and see if I care about it. And then there's the smell. OH THE SMELL! If you don't know what I'm talking go out and buy a pack right now and crack that shit and take a whiff. It smells beautiful and kind of like my childhood.

Now after I buy all these boosters I just have a butt ton of commons that I don't know what to do with and I'm sure you do as well. I'm gonna help spend those commons. "Do you mean use commons?" Did I fucking stutter? No I'm gonna help you spend your commons and give you some ideas on how to do so. 

This is definitely not a cube. It's a rectangular prism.

One of the most common (heh) ways to spend your commons is to build a cube so that you can play with your old commons in a draft environment that you've created. If you have lot's of commons but not a lot of rares to support your booster packs, do a peasant cube where each booster has 13 or 14 commons and your "rare" is actually just one or two uncommons in the pack. It will give you the ability to build a cube on a budget and use all your commons while also giving you a very unique draft environment. With no rares it can really bump up the power level of the commons and the uncommons that are in each booster. Those really bad kill spells become good all of a sudden and some creatures will finally see play. Let that fugitive wizard finally make it into your blue aggro deck. That card needs some love.

I love medieval pictures because you can never really tell whats going on

Get all the commons you have together and build as many Pauper decks as you can. For those of you that don't know, Pauper is a format where decks only have commons. Then host a tournament of the poor. It's like a tournament of kings but it consists of a lot less people and a lot less physical activity. To really get that pauper feel have everyone bring stale bread and dirty water. You might also want to grab some moldy heads of lettuce to throw at the loser. So grab some friends and some food you found on the street and host a big pauper tournament. Have everyone pull one of your already built pauper decks from a hat or a handkerchief tied at the end of a stick, and let the fun begin. Use any remaining commons to make a pauper trophy that the winner gets at the end of the tournament. Host regular tournaments and have the trophy holder defend their title. Then at the end of each tournament, whoever holds the trophy has bragging rights until the next tournament.

Look how much land it cost to cast this table

If you're tired of playing with your cards and you want to get crafty make a sweet Magic table with a surface made of commons and tokens and whatever other cool things you have lying around. Maybe combine bottlecaps if you drink or the wraps that go around fat packs. Sprinkle some glitter, sniff some glue, turn it into a whole day thing. Maybe just get wasted and cover the table surface in adhesive and start throwing stuff at it and whatever sticks is your new table decorations. If you want to be meticulous about it and try to create something like the picture above but on a budget, glue the cards down in the pattern you want then use Modge-Podge over top. Use polyurethane or lacquer if you have a little bit of extra spending money that you don't want to use buying more cards.

A correct shape for a draft

If you don't have some sort of base table shape to create the actual table, just start gluing cards together until you start to make a table like shape. Rather than spend the money on wood and a real table just make legs out of piles of cards and make a table top by laying the cards out flat. I dunno what else to say about this. Make a table or make whatever this monstrosity is. It's almost a table. It could be with enough commons. 

We've hit the motherload

Staying on the arts and crafts boat, use your commons to make some of this bullshit. I have no idea what any of them are other than the earrings. That one in the upper left is a book I guess. Then next to that is some danglers. A Da Vinci helicopter is on the left side middle, then an action figure, and then a box, The bottom left is just a card with a ribbon attached. That's not even a craft. I guess if you're bored just punch holes in your cards and tie ribbons in them. Then call it crafting. Maybe connect them together and put them in your doorway like these: 

Now you have some hippy doorway noiseless chimes so that everyone can watch you poop and you can watch your cards spin in the wind. Although if you did this as an entrance to your Magic cave and threw some pillows on the ground you could get some Magic palace thing going on so when you have your pauper tournament you actually feel like a prince. 

It's beautiful but I don't like to think about how much time this took

Now if you just have way more commons and way more time than you know what to do with, and also own property, you can dedicate the rest of your life to something beautiful. I like to think that when I have a house I'll do this in my basement but what would probably happen is that I'll lay down 20 or so cards and then just throw sealer over the rest of the floor and call it good. Maybe I'll paint a giant "M" before putting a clear coat down. It's pretty cool and I would love to see this everyday in my house, but I also don't want to hate my life for the months that this will take to finish. If you attempt this, I wish you luck and you are a braver person than I ever will be.

There is no joke here, only Temur. Because red, green, and blue. Get it?

If you've been having trouble with your boosters packs or your top decks, get all your friends together for a common burning party. Sacrifice all your cards to one of the gods of Theros or MaRo in hopes that they will send their blessing to you and give you better pulls and better tops decks. Feel free to also burn any junk rares or worthless foil mythics out of anger. Your anger and passion and cards all combined will turn into a beautiful smoke that's color will match your mage affinity. As the cards burn and you start to inhale the smoke loudly chant, "STORM AS A MECHANIC WILL COME BACK! STORM AS A MECHANIC WILL COME BACK!" With these words you will summon the great sages of Wizard's and they will grant you their blessing. Once you have their blessing go buy more boosters and know that Wizard's is looking down on you with a smile (because you spent more money on them).

Arnold: The orginal waifu

Use your cards to build a 1:1 scale model of your true love. They may not know you love them but that doesn't matter any more because not only do you have your own version of them, but you have a better version of them because your version is made entirely of Magic cards. You can make some candle holders out of the remaining cards that didn't end up being part of the body and you can light a candle for your lover every night. Roll up some length wise and light the end to create a magical incense that will spread that beautiful booster pack smell all throughout your room. You also now have a new friend you can play Magic with. If you ever have an odd number of people for any events you can bring out your cardboard sweetheart and give them a deck and see how they fare.

These guys have the right idea

If you're not ready to make a cardboard clone of your one true love and still want to do some romancing, then this next idea is for you. If you really want to show your crush that you are the one, let them know how rich and beautiful you really are. "Well how do I do that with Magic cards?" I'm glad you asked. Like the gentlemen pictured above, strip down and hop in your bathtub and cover your fun parts with some cards. We don't want to show them everything you have to offer just yet. Then start throwing cards around like they're nothing to you. If you replicate the above picture but using Magic cards, there is no way anyone could refuse you. Take a couple with you spread out on the bed laying on a pile of cards with just a little of your naughty bits showing. Get prints of your photo shoot and drop them off at your soon to be life partner's residence. "Why wouldn't we just send these via text?" It doesn't have the same effect as an anonymous envelope full of your best angles. 

If any of these real suggestions don't sound like something you would be interested in as a means of using your commons talk to your LGS. A lot of game stores will take bulk commons off your hands and hand them out to newer players who may not be able to regularly afford boosters. Junk commons may not seem like anything, but when you're seven or eight and someone just hands you a box with a couple hundred cards, it will make your day. Your LGS will also probably know of any middle schools or high schools that have active Magic clubs that may take some donations of cards to give to new members. There are plenty of people out there who would gladly take bulk boxes of cards. Even if you only donated half and used the other half for your sexy photo shoot it would still make someones (or several someones) day.

Want to show us how you used your commons? Want the salami blessing to help your odds when opening boosters? Need a photographer for your sexy photo shoot? Leave us a comment or send us a message.

Funky Deck Friday - Gettin' Froggy Wit' It

Na na na na nuh nah naaa

Hey duders and lady dudes, it's Dan, and I'm here to bring you a very special Shitty Deck Sunday. Mainly because it's Friday. But Shitty Deck Sunday is always special - special used in the same way as that the one kid's mom would use to describe him as he ate rocks on the playground. Everyone knew that kid, right? Anyways, the moral of the story is that this deck is stupid, but kind of endearing.

The deck we're taking a peek at here is a masterpiece of Standard technology; deftly crafted by professionals taking care to ensure maximum jank for the frugal wizard.

>>This is the Jund Molten Frog Tornado deck.<<

First things first: Yes, this deck can actually win games. Yeah, it surprised me too. But it turns out some decks aren't equipped to fight a deck running about 40 shocks. We'll delve into the matchups against tier decks later, but for now, let's have a rundown of the cards shoved into this pile. I'm going to highlight the use of each card, and along the way give you some gameplay tips so that you too can live the dream with the Molten Frog Tornado.


How Enchanting - The Enchantments:

The enchantments are the meat of this deck. You know, meat, like Heavy Salami (nice plug, Dan). Half of the deck's name, and its main win condition, is a cute little enchantment from Origins.

If you can't take the heat... get the fuck out of my FNM, ya goober.

Brace yuhselves, cause this is the only time you're going to hear this: Molten Vortex is a crazy powerful card. Yeah, that's right. This trash bulk rare makes every land in your deck into a shock, and in a deck with forty lands and ways to abuse lands going into the graveyard, things get silly quick. You want to aggressively mulligan to try and snag a Vortex in your opening hand. It's very important to get one down early, though not the end of the world if you have to wait until turn two or three, and that's where our next enchantment comes in.

Reveal the top four and confuse target opponent when it's just four Mountains.

Vessel does it all in this deck. It digs up our Vortex, it can find a utility/multicolored land, it puts land into the graveyard for our creatures, it can grab one of those aforementioned creatures, and it can even dig up another vessel in case you want to roll like that. You probably shouldn't, but you know, desperate times and such. I should be running four of these, but in my testing I often would snag one of these when I really needed a land or something back from my GY, so I replaced the fourth with Reclaim, which I'll talk about later.

Crawling Sensation is a chill one-of in this deck. It's not super necessary in most games, but occasionally a steady stream of bugs as you remove their threats can give you enough pressure to close out a game early. We have a second in the board in case you find yourself in a match that needs infinite chump-blocks, and if your shop has a lot of decks that run non-evasive creatures, you may want to up the mainboard number.


The Critter Crew:

This is the most beautiful and simple creature base I've ever got to use. Four Frogs, four Groundskeepers. It's like a rich person's estate party in the spring. Each of these guys are vital to the deck, and without one or the other, chances are you won't win. I mean, you can, and I have, but it doesn't feel as good, and we're all about the good feelz here at team Heavy Salami.

O land wizard, embrace me in your leaves.

Groundskeeper is our early-game engine, but he also scales into late game very nicely. He's simple - a wimpy dude who lets you pay one and a green to return a basic from GY to your hand. Noice. Early on you can return one if you have nothing else to do, and late game you can often recur several of them to reload your Molten Vortex railgun. Most decks would never need this utility, but this deck often finds itself with over 10 or 15 lands chillin' in the yard. But instead of lands, they're shocks. You like shocks, right? Well GroundsMcGee here does too, so he'll help you recur the same Mountain as much as you please so you can throw it at your opponent over and over.

The Gitrog Monster is the card that flips this deck over the edge. Up until turn five this deck is running at like quarter throttle. Once you get a Frog on board, and if you're able to untap with him, you're running at like... two entire throttles. I don't know how motorcycles work. There are very few things that can screw with Gitrog's groove in this deck, and he isn't the easiest thing to kill outside of exile effects. Let's take a look at what all the Gitrog does.

So majestic.

• First off, he's a 6/6 deathtouch. This frog fucks. He can block World Breakers, Oblivion Sowers, Sylvan Advocates, Kalitas, and most other dudes on the ground and live to brag about it to the lady frogs.
• Saccing a land on upkeep sounds bad, but is it really? Frog lets you play two per turn, so you don't fall behind on lands, and if you're sacrificing a basic land, then Groundskeeper lets you just return it back to hand if you need it.
• Playing an additional land keeps you from screwing yourself over as you eat up all your lands, so good foresight R&D.
• Whenever one or more lands hits the GY, draw a card. Oh sweet lord, let's talk about this.

So in this deck, lands are hitting the GY like it's... I dunno, something hittable.

Let's go with this guy's face.

Molten Vortex has you discard a land to shock something, and if a Frog is on the field, it's a shock that draws you a card. Vessel of Nascency puts the three cards you didn't pick in the yard, and if one is a land, you draw another card off that. Tormenting Voice and Magmatic Insight offer you the ability to discard a land (and therefore draw a card) in order to draw two more cards. Build your own Ancestral Recall! Hooray! 

'Trog Frog is the biggest, scariest engine in the deck. If you ever untap with a board of Molten Vortex, Groundskeeper, and Gitrog Monster, you have to really screw up to lose. For an example of how dumb this can be, I'm going to share a not-so-humble-brag story from my last FNM.

I was in very late game, a minute or so left until time, against a guy with a board of Duskwatch Recruiter and Loam Dryad. He didn't have much since I had been removing every threat he played all game, though not without taking quite a bit of damage on the way. My board was the dream: Frog, Keeper, and Vortex. I was at 3, he was at 23, and I was a little sad. But I had ten red sources on board, so I went for it, and the magic happened. Shock Recruiter, draw a card, shock Dryad, draw a card, swing for 7, he's at 16. I had two mountains in hand, and I just repeated "Pay red, discard mountain, draw a card," and since I'm running 40 lands, every card I drew was a land, which meant it was a shock, which meant I drew another card, which meant I ended up burning him from 23 to 0 in one turn. Felt great, man.

Other Dumb Spells:

We only have five other spells in the deck. Two Tormenting Voice, two Magmatic Insight, and one Reclaim. Voice and Insight early game help you to dig for whichever piece of the dream board you're looking for. Late game, if things are going according to plan, Voice can become a way to get value out of unused Vortexes in your hand, or to pitch a land to feed the Frog, and Insight ends up playing the same Frog-feeder role.

Actual picture of a Frog being resurrected.

Reclaim is a nifty card, and I rarely find myself sad when I draw it. It might even be worth playing two. Our combo is pretty vulnerable, as removal or enchantment destruction makes us sad. Reclaim is a dope way to just recycle the card back on top. Sure, you miss a draw step, but G at instant speed to bring back a Gitrog Monster who just ate two Fiery Impulses isn't a bad rate. It also helps to make sure you can get a Vortex back after a stupid Dromoka's Command. Have an extra Vortex you don't need in hand? Pop that Tormenting Voice back on top so you can pitch the Vortex. You can bring back a Vessel to dig four deeper, or you can even put an Evolving Wilds on top before you shock with a Frog on field, that way you draw the wilds, play it, and when you sac it you draw yet another card off of the Frog! #value


Land, ho!

So there are some lands. Forty of them, in fact. The lands are also spells, and that makes me a tiny bit aroused. You know, not much, but at like the level of a mid-nineties teenager who just stole his mom's Sears catalogue.

Different era, but just as sexy.

I'll give a quick rundown of the other two thirds of the deck, since it's fairly simple. Game Trail is the most important land, by far. Turn one you want to be able to play either a Vessel or a Vortex, and then drop the other one turn two. If you drop the Vortex turn 1, well, now they know your deck. Can't just feed them information like that as we make our way to the pro tour. If you drop the Vessel it's less suspicious, and then you follow up with Vortex turn 2. Without a Game Trail, though, you had to play a Forest turn 1, so when you use a Mountain to play Vortex, you don't have the red mana available to shock something if needed. This can be the difference between killing a Thraben Inspector with one Mountain when he's only at two toughness, or needing to blow two on him after a Thalia's Lieutenant hits the board.

Hissing Quagmire is the next best, cause opponents will often be in such awe of the number of lands you're throwing at them that they'll forget you have a sneaky dutchtouch land. Cinder Glade, Foreboding Ruins, and Smouldering Marsh are just for fixing, and while they're good, Evolving Wilds and basics will be able to get the job done if you want to save cash.

Most importantly, I put 40 lands in here with 21 spells for a total of 61 cards. Why? Well, mainly to screw with people when you have to register a deck list. Very vital meta-game play.


Sideboard, and the Matchups:

So my sideboard isn't set in stone. There are a lot of strong cards in it, with a few irreplacable ones, such as Clip Wings and Radiant Flames. There are also some that probably aren't great, and some others that are should probably be on there, such as Reclamation Sage. Rather than just spell out the sideboard, I'm going to talk about the matchups and offer sideboard ideas, and then you can customize the board to your shops meta.

G/W Tokens - This may surprise you folks to hear this, but the game one matchup isn't bad. If we get a decent draw, a Groundskeeper+Vortex combo is enough to keep their early plays in check, such as Nissa, Hangarback, and Gideon. Once we land a Frog, if they don't have a Declaration ready to roll or a sufficiently huge dude to Dromoka's Command (Frog still kills them all but Gideon, thank you Deathtouch), then we can run away with the game.
Post board it is much worse, as they'll know to bring in all their Declarations, Evolutionary Leap, etc. I recommend bringing in Virulent Plague to deal with tokens more efficiently, Fall of the Titans to pop planeswalkers and creatures with one card, and Devour in Flames to melt walkers at higher loyalty. Some on-the-fence cards are more Reclaims to bring back Vortexes that have been sacced to Dromoka's Command, Clip Wings to kill Avacyn/Sigarda/Linvala, or Bonds of Mortality to nullify the Avacyn ETB effect. Bonds is a low-cost include, as you draw a card when you play it, and also offers some protection against Dromoka's Command, since you can sac that rather than your vital Vortex.


Bant Coco/Humans - Coco is an annoying matchup, but not unbeatable. Duskwatch Recruiter, Tireless Tracker, Thraben Inspector, and Thalia's Lieutenant are all easily burnable with a Vortex. The three toughness creatures are a bit more of an issue, but with an early Groundskeeper are quite manageable. Their removal consists of Reflector Mages and Dromoka's Command, so try and save your Reclaim to grab back your Vortex after you have to sacrifice it. Rather than pro-actively burning out their creatures, your best bet is to wait to respond to a Thalia's Lieutenant trigger or Dromoka's cast.
Game two the matchup doesn't change a ton, but chances are that they'll bring in Declarations for the Frog, and Gideon to be annoying as hell. Radiant Flames is a house in this match, and I'd definitely bring it in. Fall of the Titans is sweet, some extra Reclaims to recover from Dromoka's is nice, and Crawling Sensation is a good way to get chump blockers so they don't run you over.


2/3/4/5/80-Color Rites - They just keep adding colors to this deck, but it's basically the same thing. And that thing is a sweet matchup for us. The fewer colors, the better, as Reflector Mage's three toughness is once again a problem. Against the strictly G/B deck, where there are a lot more 2 toughness creatures, this is an excellent game one for us. In case you're wondering, always blow up the Loam Dryad, as you don't want them to get extra mana.
After board this match is a little tougher. Reality Smashers are big, but not as big as the Frog, so your best bet is to hope to stick one of those and stonewall them. Transgress and Matter Reshaper are a huge bummer for us, as one exiles our Frogs in hand, and the other just replaces itself if we kill it. You'll want to bring in Radiant Flames and Kozilek's Return, as those cards are gold up until Smashers come out. Fall of the Titans is good again, and Crawling Sensation can give you chumps for days. Some other possible swaps could be bringing in Reclamation Sage or Caustic Catapillar to take care of Rites, Virulent Plague if you're afraid of the Brood Monitor combo or think Blisterpods are annoying, and Clip Wings if you think a flipped Abbey is likely.


R/G Ramp - This is basically a race-Ulamog situation. If you land Frog on curve and have a Vortex, you can usually launch lands at their face and kill them before they can hit the 10 mana they need. Having a backup Vortex in hand is very useful in this matchup, since World Breakers can and will exile them, and it's annoying.

He ceaselessly hungers for Frog legs.

Post Board, Gaea's Revenge is the biggest issue. All we can do is chump with Insects, or trade our Frog for it. A second Crawling Sensation helps a lot, as it can chump a Revenge or World Breaker forever, and give us an alternate win-con when not on chump duty. Other than that, Clip Wings is nice for Atarkas, and a Reclamation Sage might be nice to hit a Hedron Archive. They also get Jaddi Offshoots, which really harsh our mallow and slow our plan a lot, though I don't think they merit bringing in Radiant Flames. Fall of the Titans could be nice, as you can pop a Jaddi and Chandra, or Chandra and their stupid ramping face.


Mono-W, U/W, G/W Humans - Congrats, you are probably going to win. Seriously. This is by far your best matchup. Almost every single one of their creatures dies to just a single land until they get Always Watching down, so you just wait until they play a Thalia's Lieutenant, Always Watching, or whatever, and in response blow everything up. The Frog also blocks everything that doesn't fly, and will be able to swing in with blatant disregard. The only two boogeymen are Declaration in Stone and depending on the build, Archangel of Tithes or Avacyn, though by the time they come down they're fairly easy to burn out if you have a Groundskeeper.
After board the matchup really doesn't change a lot. They might bring in Stasis Snare, so I'd once again pack a Reclamation Sage or Caustic Catapillar to blow up that or an Always Watching. Bring in all the burn, too. Kozilek's, Radiant, Fall; all of them will kill multiple things. Pulse of Murasa shines here too, as it lets you trade a Groundskeeper for a 2/1 early on, and then bring it back later along with a chunk of life to stabilize. Crawling Sensation is a maybe, since chumping is nice, but Gryff's Boon can quickly ruin that. Overall, your odds are still good with an early Vortex, so you want to do all you can to get one in your opener.


Control - This is bad, people. Control absolutely fucks this deck. Like, real badly. Anguished Unmaking thoroughly unmakes this deck, as it permanently removes any of our win conditions. Ruinous Path and boardwipes are some of the most efficient ways to deal with Froggy. Counterspells are backbreaking. Planeswalkers are annoying. This is a really, really bad matchup, and if your store is full of control players, I don't highly recommend trying this out.
Post board it goes from bad to badder (shut up thats a word). They get more exile and removal, and we don't get a lot. Reclaim is good against non-exiling removal, Crawling Sensation gives us a repeatable threat that can be tricky for them to deal with, and Display of Dominance can be a massive blowout.

I also guarantee that your opponents will ask to read this card because they've never seen it.

So all in all, the deck is alright. Some matchups are better than others, but other than control, you actually have a fairly good chance in most matches. If your shop is heavy on weenie decks and agro, this can clean house, and costs only a bit over $50 or $60.

You can save even more money if you drop out some of the duals. Smoldering Marsh and Foreboding Ruins can pretty safely be swapped for Swamps and Evolving Wilds, since you don't need any black until turn 5 at the earliest. Cinder Glade is nice, but Mountains and Forests will do the trick. The man-land is also helpful, but in the end non-essential. Game Trail is really the only necessary dual, as having the option to put out a Vessel or Vortex on turn 1, and then follow with the other while still having a red to shock is extremely strong. But that said, if you go budget and play with just basics, this deck will do some stuff and only run you around $25. That isn't too steep of a price to pay for some delicious salt from players who are used to winning in five minutes with their agro decks.

--------------------------

So there it is, guys, the Molten Frog. It's... something. Seriously, though, if you're looking to take a break from spiking hard and jamming Top 8 decks, you know what they say: Grab life by the Frog.

- Dan

P.S.
Heavy Salami has a sexy new look! Rather than a picture of meat, we are now a picture of meat with sunglasses. Let us know what you think!

Too cool for school. Also, meat doesn't go to school.

Like the Frog? Have your own Lands deck brew? Do you hate the Frog? Well, then you can just leave, but for everyone else, leave a comment or send us an email, we'd love to hear from you!