INSPIRED TO DO SOMETHING (THE GOOD AND THE BAD)

        Inspired is a unique mechanic that can be really useful or not. Like most creatures would normally do when they are tapped, is they become untapped and the inspired mechanic triggers.

       Some creatures with inspired can be triggered right when they become untapped, some you would have the choice to pay mana cost to trigger it, unlike bestowed enchantment creatures, the mana cost isn’t usually high to trigger the inspired mechanic. For example, let’s take Fellhide spiritbinder that is a 3 colorless and a red mountain to cast. After your turn is over and the opponent took his or her turn, now it’s time to do untapping of your creatures and mana. Now the Fellhide spiritbinder is untapped, you choose to do the inspired mechanic so you pay 1 colorless and a red mountain mana, then you put a token on the battlefield that is a copy of another creature except it’s an enchantment in addition to its other types. It also gains haste and you exile it at the beginning of the next end step.

       There are some creatures where you don’t have to pay mana cost to trigger its mechanic to do anything. You just untap the creature and the inspired mechanic triggers.  Some will give you life gain, a +2/+0 (till end of turn), tap target creature, put +1/+1 counters on it, ETC. there are different kinds of things that inspired does when it’s triggered. Some are ok and some are not ok, it depends on your style of playing.

Which inspired mechanic creature is your favorite?

Please leave a comment of your thoughts.

Thanks for reading my blog!

LANDS OF CONFUSION

      If you were anything like me when playing magic the gathering where you get mana screwed, then I know how you feel. You can build your deck and think it will be awesome to use and come to find two mana on the battlefield with the opposite color mana cost creatures and spells in your hand. Nothing can be more annoying than having that happen, well except for having to hear the gundam style song and seeing the dance constantly, and the opponent showing no mercy and destroys you in a few amount of turns.

     I decided to do some internet search on how to not get mana screwed, after a few dozen websites or so, I finally found it. It’s called the land formula. It seems pretty interesting to read and of course I had to read it a few times because I got easily confused on what it was telling me I should do. I realized there’s math involved, which anyone who knows me personally would think “oh crap”, yea true story. But I understood it a little better when I tried out the math problems on paper.

     I am going to use my Minotaur’s sword deck to use as an example for this formula.  First you separate the single and the multiple (such as RR) mana cost symbol and separate the color if you are playing more than one color deck. Take those single color mana cost symbol and count them up.

     First up are the red symbol cards:

1x Canyon Minotaur
2x Fanatic of Mogis
2x Minotaur Skullcleaver
2x Deathbellow Raider
1x Furious Resistance
2x Punish the Enemy
1x Thunder Strike
2x Madcap Skills

     There are 13 single red mana symbol in this deck, now let’s count up the multiple mana symbol of  the same color cards.

2x Borderland Minotaur
1x Rageblood Shaman
2x Rakdos Shred-Freak

      There are 5 multiple red symbols. Multiply it by 1.5, and get the total of 7.5. Add it to the already 13 to make it 20.5 to your total.  Let’s count up the black cards.

Black mana symbols:

2x Felhide Minotaur
3x Undead Minotaur
1x Doom Blade
2x Wring Flesh
3x Deviant Glee
1x Mark of the Vampire
2x Quag Sickness
2x Rakdos Shred-Freak

There are 16 single black symbol cards. Now for the multiple black symbol.

3x Minotaur Abomination
1x Hero's Downfall

    There are 4 multiple black symbols in this deck. Multiply the 4 with 1.5 to make it 6. Add that to the already 16 to make it 22 total.  To figure out the ratio you add the 20.5 with the 22 to get 42.5. Take the 42.5 and divide it with 20.5 to get 48.23% of your cards in your deck to produce red mana. Basically everyone wants to (or need to) have at least 24 mana in the deck. Because really any more than that would get you mana flooded unless you’re playing EDH, then it wouldn’t be a problem, right?

    Take the 48.23% and minus it with 24 and the answer will be 11.57. So round that down to make it 11 simply because there’s no way to put in .85 of a land, that can be quite difficult to do. The answer 11 is how much red mana you are going to need in the deck. Now I understand that Rakdos shred-freak is a hybrid red and black card since there are two in the deck you can divided them evenly by putting in 2 red mana and 2 black mana. You can divide the 22 black with the 42.5 and see what you can get out of the total, which is 51.76% and do the minus with the 24 and get 12 as your total. But if you are planning on a 24 land deck, you can figure that part out.

     It seems like when I do the math problem with the black cards, I come up with 23 lands total. So does that mean I add one more creature or spell in? Would that mess up the math I just did? It didn’t really explain that part of it. But they do say that having 20-23 lands are an aggro kind of decks. I will have to research it a little further to see if I can get a better understanding of this land formula. But whatever you do don’t do (as I did) the 20 land, 20 spells, and 20 creatures. It just doesn’t work very well in your favor as a new player to the game.

     As for the colorless lands you feel the need to put in, remember every two nonland source of mana lower the land count by one. But when adding trick colorless lands, add an extra land for every two colorless lands you put in.

Confusing right? Yea something to read into a little bit more.

     I hope that this will help with your mana troubles in a way. I know I might’ve not explained as well as I should, but I’m only writing this as I understood the article I read online. So don’t hate on me about it, which I know some of you might just do.

    What ways do you build you mana base around to make your deck work smoothly? Leave me your answers in the comments.

   Thanks for reading my blog; I hope it didn’t confuse you as much as it did to me.

MINOTAUR’S SWORD

Theros has done a good job of putting out a fair amount of Minotaur, well enough for me to make a deck with those kinds of creatures with the mix in of the M-14 core set.  Now I’ve made some changes to the deck from what it was previously listed as which works out good because I haven’t published it yet and no one knows what I had in it before (which also saves me the trouble of getting “why's that card there? That makes no sense” or that one douche bag who thinks that everyone else’s decks are trash, has something to say, which will probably say something anyway). Here’s my deck list/breakdown.

3x Deviant Glee
1x Furious Resistance
2x Wring Flesh
2x Madcap Skills
1x Hero’s Downfall
1x Doom Blade
1x Thunder Strike
2x Deathbellow Raider
2x Rakdos Shred-Freak
1x Rageblood Shaman
2x Quag Sickness
2x Minotaur Skullcleaver
3x Undead Minotaur
2x Fellhide Minotaur
1x Mark Of the Vampire
2x Fanatic of Mogis
1x Canyon Minotaur
2x Borderland Minotaur
2x Punish the Enemy
3x Minotaur Abomination
12x Swamp
12x Mountain

Granted that some of the Minotaur’s in this deck doesn’t have any abilities on them and I’m pretty sure most people wouldn’t put a bunch of cards in without any type of ability added to them. But it’s ok for me because a Minotaur deck is what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Even though some of the cards have no abilities, that is where the enchantments come into play to pick up the lack of abilities. I am not building the decks for pro-tour or anything like that.

Deviant glee is a great enchantment to have for a one drop mana to attach to creatures. Deviant glee give the creatures a +2/+1 and if you tap a mountain it will give it trample till end of turn, which is a great thing to have added to the creature.

              Madcap skills is also a good enchantment because it gives the creature a +3/+0, I know the +0 doesn’t sound so great but the enchantment also provide that the enchanted creature can’t be block except for 2 or more creatures, in my opinion it’s a great card for a 2 drop manna cost.

Rageblood Shaman is a great 3 drop card for what it can do. It has trample and gives other Minotaur creatures I control a +1/+1 and trample. I know I only have one of Rageblood shaman in the deck but it’s the only one I have for the time being and I plan on getting at least 2 more for the deck. That way it can give my Minotaur’s 3 +1/+1’s.

Fanatic of Mogis is a pretty good card as well. It’s 3 of anything and a mountain to cast out onto the battlefield. When it enters the battlefield it deals damage to each opponent equal my devotion to red. That means each permanents that has a red symbol on it deals damage. So if you have 2 Deathbellow raider with madcap skills on each of them and 2 Rakdos Shred-Freak which means it would deal 6 damage right off the bat. If you wait just long enough and hold off on putting Fanatic of Mogis out by turn 4 and at the right time, it can be a good finisher card.

I also have some good instants and sorcery cards in the deck as well, like doom blade that can destroy a creature and the wring flesh card to give a minus 3 minus 1 onto a creature making it a little less powerful creature to attack you with or kill it. Let’s not forget punish the enemy; even though it a 5 drop card, it’s a good card for what it can do. It deals 3 damage to target creature and 3 damage to target player.

How big of a fan are you of Minotaurs?

Please comment and thanks for reading my blog