When Weirdguy came into my office a mere 4 months ago to show off a stack of used Magic: The Gathering he scored for a few dollars, I had no idea that my suggestion to play together would culminate in a tounament of almost 10 players vying for a Fat Pack prize and bulk discounts at a local game store. The variety of players is nothing to snear at. We had participants from complete newbies (like myself) to regulars (like The Dark Horse) and everything in between (players who had previous experience years ago like Weirdguy). Decks spanned collections dating across nearly the entire history of M:TG – some players with 4th edition cards and others with the newest Conflux decks. Given the spread, one could only believe that the dispersal of wins throughout the tournament should come down to a lot of luck.
But something occurred to me during the tournament that I kept to myself. I did not complain because the tournament was all about having a good time with friends. I had recently acquired several interesting Conflux cards and tried turning my Shards of Alara deck into a 5-colour deck. Many players looked at me with shock when they realized I had only about 8 weeks of Magic experience under my belt when the tournament began... and that I was attempting to play 5 colours. In hindsight, I realize that was overly ambitious of me.
However, I did notice something else: even as a relative newbie, I know that each colour traditionally lent itself to a particular play strategy. And that had not changed for the current block. However, lately it seemed like the Bant decks were doing unusually well during the tournament. Even neglecting the relative luck involved (whether it was opponents not drawing well, or the white player drawing unusually well), there is no denying the facts of how the tournament eventually played out. Three of four semi-finalists played white decks. Two were Bant (a fellow newbie, and an average experienced player with a history of gaming). The other was the tournament Dark Horse who revealed a history of playing as recent as only a few months ago. The final qualifier, I will concede, was simply mostly skilled (I bow to his deck-building and play-time savvy).
Cold hard fact is, when we finally got to the final best of 3 match-up, both players played with white Life-restoring decks. Weirdguy played a Shards of Alara white-blue-green deck while the Dark Horse played black-white deck dating back to Time-Spirals. And while I respect Dark Horse eventually winning, it was almost painful to watch how close it came. The fact is, the current incarnation of the white deck is insanely powerful with what appears to be very few options to counter it. In Bant, especially, the danger lies in the combination of Lifelink and Exalted.
Give one creature Lifelink large enough to attack alone and field several Exalted creatures, it's very easy to create something that's practically unstoppable. And it gets worse with the old standard “Magic creatures don't pull punches.” That means a chump block doesn't prevent a Bant players from accumulating a bunch of Life. In fact, I've watched Bant players duke it out to the point I got bored watching.
And if you don't believe me... just ask Weirdguy, who 2 nights ago tried playing a non-white deck for a change and easily got trounced by the same newbie-constructed Bant deck (with minor modifications from Alara Reborn). Something fishy is going on in the Magic game, and I'm not sure I trust it. One thing's for sure, I predict a whole lot more white decks in our next tournament. :p
On a related note, here's part of my collection. This rant came about following Friday night's Alara Reborn party. We capped off the night with a multi-player game where, exactly as you would guess from my rant, 2 players in the end stretched it to 2:30am ...both with white cards. I mean, do I need any further proof that something is wrong here?
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