Secret Chronicles Tech: Horn of Deafening

We played Revised, and Revised was all we knew. Then something happened. A new set appeared down at the local Shinder's and we flocked to it. It was white bordered, and cards had a random assortment of strange set markings on them. The set: Chronicles!

While the broader history of Magic will remember Chronicles as the set that SLASHED prices on everyone's Elder Dragons (not mine, since I got 'em in Chronicles), I will always remember the most played card from this set among my personal play group.

Horn of Deafening.

Horn of Deafening ruled the combat phase, reducing the biggest collossus on the opposing side into a mewling kitten.

Forget about using your Frozen Shade, Serra Angel, Sengir Vampire or Shivan Dragon.

Yeah, that's right…Shivan Dragon. I'm telling you, this card was a real monster.

And with an activation cost of only 2, you could afford to play your normal game every turn as well, nullifying attacks while simultaniously working your way to victory.

I remember games devolving into a race to see who could get more Horns of Deafening out first…who could win the "Horn War" per se. It worked in any deck, and completely crushed any creature-related strategy. I'm looking at my copies of the Horn, and the only edges more worn in my entire collection are the ones on my Sol Rings.

Horn of Deafening:

Didn't die to Wrath of God.

Couldn't be Terrored.

Could be Shattered…but who played with those?

You might ask me: "Isn't this worse than Icy Manipulator?"

1. Yes, Icy Manipulator did virtually the same thing only in a slightly different way. And for only 1 mana.

2. Believe it or not, NO ONE had an Icy Manipulator at this time. Having an Icy Manipulator was like having a Mox. It was a rumor you might have heard about. Shady details, wild inaccuracies. You'd never see one in the flesh, unless it was through about 6 inches of plexiglass.

Icy Manipulators were regulated more tightly than Thermonuclear Devices.

Instead we blew the Horn. Again and again, until things settled into a long winter of artifact-powered creatureless control. Because the man with no creatures was immune, you see.

I'm looking at my copies of the Horn, and the only edges more worn in my entire collection are the ones on my Sol Rings. Horn of Deafening was used almost as much as a Sol Ring.

I recently uncovered my collection of Horns during excavations related to the building of a new EDH deck. "What the heck", I thought and threw it in.

I see some very specific benefits to Horn of Deafening in EDH, namely the enemy Generals.

A lot of 'em are either HUGE, or they have annoying abilities that activate when they do combat damage. Horn of Deafening completely protects you from General damage. Unless they have shroud, which has potential to be a concern. We'll see.

And besides generals, there are plenty of other nasties you never want getting through the red zone.

I see Maze of Ith in EDH decks all the time. Not to mention Kor Haven. What's the difference? Maze of Ith is annoying because it produces no mana. Kor Haven requires white mana.

I'm not a betting man, but if I was betting, I think I'd bet on Horn of Deafening.

Get ready to make some noise!

A Quick Look at the New White Weenie

Folks have turned White Knights sideways since the beginning of Magic. Facing a wall of impenetrable first strikers was actually my first clue that…hey…I had a thing or two to learn about deck building. And I still do…sigh.


Anyway, White Knight made an appearance back in February at the San Diego Pro Tour. If you've been reading your DailyMTG, you've probably already seen it. But here is Craig Wescoe explaining the function of his deck.

Wescoe made it to the Semi-finals with pure white mana on his side, and won himself $13,000.

Looking through the deck, I am overjoyed I never had to face off against a traditional white weenie with equipment like Basilisk Collar. Enlightened Tutor would have been overjoyed. More ways to stop my ever-increasingly-pitiful Juggernauts.

Some interesting technology on Wizards' side…they have updated their deck list application so that you can actually "play out" a couple of hands of any deck they've presented.

Go ahead and deal out a few 7-card selections of Wescoe's deck here.

Hassle: The Dorkening

A vital brick to any Geek Pyramid, Magic is right there in the gamer toolbox next to D&D and World of Warcraft.

Some of you may not be "hip" to the hip-hop movement known as Nerdcore, but regardless of your musical tastes it's always fun to see your favorite game slipping its way into other media, and in this case it comes from the dripping mouth of one M.C. Frontalot.



 I'll say this…I've owned Front's first CD Nerdcore Rising for quite some time, and I can say he rolls right up there with Jonathan Coulton for awesomeness.

Here are the lyrics:

I played Hassle: The Dorkening once,

had eighteen cards in my hand, all Muds,
and I didn’t seem to need a mud card to win.
Hadn’t tapped a Mud yet — then the other kid grinned.
See, he’d just drawn a battalion of rolling explosions,
plus a card that made me frozen.
Those and the roll of a twenty die did it.
My last hit point had already got hitted.
My last instant had already got acquitted.
Got called twice in a turn dimwitted:
it didn’t swell up my ego much.
I played Hassle: The Dorkening once.

And I’ll make my own game up, and you won’t know
which mode of the turn phase we’re in, and when to go,
and how to lay down cards, and at what angle.
I’ll have artifacts like Enchanted Kangol
and Mic of Spurious Rhyme Busting,
and creatures like MC Chris On Robotussin,
and MC Hawking (who tramples for ample damage).
The rules will be written in C++ and Spanish,
and hit counters will increment only.
The winner of the hand is the one who’s the most lonely
because everyone quit
mumbling about futility and shit.


A masterpiece that pulls no punches.

Not So Bad: Traitor's Clutch

Today during a random card excavation I came accross the much-maligned Traitor's Clutch…an overcosted, measly common from Time Spiral.

OR IS IT?

Well, it is a common, I'll give you that. There are 3 important aspects to consider for this card:
1. It is an instant
2. It gives a creature shadow
3. It has flashback

The other portions of the ability are fairly pointless…few if any games I have ever wished my creatures to be black, especially when they are probably already black, since I'm playing black.

1. It is an instant. This puppy has combat trick written all over it. Cast it before the "declare blockers" phase, and you can get just about any creature over the fence. What kinds of creatures? Perhaps a 10/10 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade or a 21/21 Kresh the Bloodbraided. Token swarms are useless!

2. Why does your creature get to walk right through your opponent's defenses? Shadow, my dear Watson. A relic from the age of Tempest, "shadow" creatures can't be blocked by non-shadow creatures.
And vice-versa…so if your opponent has 1 problem creature, giving him shadow means your entire non-shadow army can get right through.

Will your opponent have defenses to guard against shadow? Probably not, since Shadow is a form of evasion only slightly more common that Horsemanship. And Horsemanship might as well say "CARDNAME can't be blocked".

3. Traitor's Clutch has flashback. Here's a scenario: cast Traitor's Clutch to do lethal damage to your opponent. He sends out a counterspell. You cast it AGAIN, for 2 measly mana, right out of your graveyard. Game. Set. Match. A pretty good feeling.

At one point, I argued that Looter il-Kor was the Greatest Looter of All Time, much for the same reasons I now find myself considering Traitor's Clutch.

The bad: 5 mana is really a boat-load of mana to consider for the results. Too slow for constructed, I look forward to heavily testing this gem in EDH. Especially in a deck leaning heavily on the side of discard, since accidentally tossing this beauty in the grumper suddenly makes it CHEAPER and BETTER.

The name Traitor's Clutch is derived from the il-vec, vile collaborators to the brutal Rathi Evincar. They live in a place called the City of Traitors.

Anyway, thanks everyone for watching my humiliation in the previous post. That I could share it with you recouped some of my precious ego to the point I could continue my card-collecting pursuits without risk of water damage. From the tears.

Saturday Night is Alright…for opening some Packs!

Sometimes it just can't be helped.

I try to limit myself as much as possible when it comes to buying random packs of cards. You never get what you're looking for, and you spend about 100% more money than if you bought the equivalent singles.

But, I have an incredible weakness, and it is the Target "Value" Packs. MULTIPLE random packs from random sets overloads my BS detector every time. And this time it included EIGHT BONUS CARDS.

The fine folks at Excell Marketing (Target's distributor) certainly don't play magic. I'm seeing in my mind's eye a row of gorillas, stuffing fistfuls of cards into plastic clamshells.

Well, I found out what was in there. I took one for the team.

Here I am:

So totally worth it. I feel so vindicated.

So now that you've seen this travesty, hopefully it will inspire you to go out and bust your own Target Extreme Value Packs. Ha!

Random Card of the Week: Elite Archers

Today's random card is Elite Archers, a rare card you might find in any bulk bin or 25¢ box at your local hobby store. Originally printed in Urza's Saga, and a couple core sets after that.

The original art is pretty good, and done by the British comic book illustrator Greg Staples. You may have seen his work in the pages of Batman, Spiderman and Judge Dredd.

The main problem with Elite Archers is the cost. 6 mana for a 3/3 is pretty bad. The bad stats are counterbalanced by a repeatable Lightning Bolt effect you can only use on attacking/blocking creatures.

For good or for ill, Elite Archers are going to end in a "Soldiers" deck. Soldiers are one of the main "tribes" of magic, and you are going to find Solider-themed cards in just about every set since they started paying more attention to creature types.

So you might negate the cost with cost-reducers like

Ballyrush Banneret
Daru Warchief

Or "cheat" your Archers into play with the well-timed machinations of

Preeminent Captain

3 points of damage assigned before combat damage is definitely a boon, especially in a Solider deck where First Strike is more the norm than the exception.

But here's a question…why use bows when you could be using CATAPULTS?

Notice that in this case, the target can be any creature…regardless of attacking status. And believe me, if you are playing solders, you will certainly have at least 5 on the board.

Your target could be a blocking Wall of Spears. OR it could be a completely uninvolved Grim Lavamancer, at home in his favorite rock chair, enjoying the latest issue of Lavamancer Monthly. No one is safe!

If you have a large collection of single cards, say in a Soldier-themed EDH deck, then Elite Archers really starts to shine. In a big, chaotic multiplayer game, Elite Archers becomes a cheap, reusable "rattlesnake"…subtly suggesting other players point their Sygg, River Cutthroat or Bog Wraith elsewhere.

And EDH helps with the casting cost as well, slowing the game down so you can build up your "castle" proper before the barbarians start pounding. If you're looking for EDH Soldier fodder, look no further (except for more Soliders). If you aren't…leave Elite Archers in the bin where it belongs.

Rise…of the Monsters!

I remember back to the first day I tried to play Magic. In my friend Mike's basement, with the cards all spread out, trying to figure out what exactly it meant to "tap" a card. Did you get to untap it at some point? All these mysteries. The rulebook didn't help.

I don't remember a single card I opened in my first Starter Deck, but I do remember a very awesome-seeming card Mike opened.

It was this

It remained the most powerful creature in my mental Magic encyclopedia for some time. It was HUGE, and it had a couple of very important drawbacks to offset that hugeness. You basically needed to play green, and you had to use a lot of pure green mana sources on top of that. No Sol Rings or Dark Rituals to help you power him out!

In Magic parlance, this was one of the first "fatties". Big giant creatures you used to quickly finish off your opponent. For the inmates at the Wizards of the Coast insane asylum, coming up with a good approach for these "fatties" was a long and treacherous road.

Lead of Development Aaron Forsythe went deep into the rabbit hole on the subject when he wrote Fat: A Retrospective.

Back then, there were two camps: those who saw big creatures as a huge advantage onto themselves and added massive drawbacks, and those who tried to make the beasts relatively drawback free.

For a long time, the drawbacks were winning.  Large, powerful creatures were mostly absent from competitive decks because they just weren't competitive.

They also weren't too popular in casual kitchen table decks, either…because they weren't fun.

Witness the staying power of two non-drawback "fatties"

Reprinted many, many times. And shuffled into people's decks until the cardboard literally disintegrates.

To anyone who has played magic for a long time, it is obvious that the current design team's been creeping up the power of creatures. Some of the traditional favorites found in decks looking to put large creatures into play are

Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Angel of Despair
Bogardan Hellkite
Darksteel Colossus
Inkwell Leviathan

Back in the Conflux set, Wizards dropped a huge creature bomb in the form of

Basically they asked "how powerful should a creature be if it has an almost un-castable cost?" Progenitus is the answer. Of course that didn't stop people from "cheating" this lovable hydra into play using spells like Natural Order, Hypergenesis, Polymorph and the most recent Summoning Trap.

My friend Greg likes to use Jhoira of the Ghitu. It is a very powerful feeling, a Progenitus with four suspend tokens. You can feel the clock ticking.

Now the Magic world is all a-buzz again as they do any time a new set is coming around. One March 1st, Wizards choose a rather unique way to spoil one of the new cards for the set "Rise of the Eldrazi". You can take a look here…just click on the jewel and watch.

Despite the amateurish nature of the animation, this card itself is pretty impressive.

I see this card as the exact opposite in most ways of Progenitus. They are both huge creatures. The casting cost for the Butcher might be a little easier, but 10 is still nothing to sneeze at. But while Progenitus is cool because of his almost complete invulnerability, this Kozilek fellow is cool because of his unbelievable offensive powers.

Any type of removal wipes this guy off the map. But if you weren't saving your Path for him and he gets to attack…well it's about time to call it a day.

Everyone else in the world has already commented on Koziek, so I might as well give my current thoughts.

1. The biggest of his powers by far is the line "When you cast Koziek, Butcher of Truth, draw four cards." According to current card templating, this means you get the four cards even if someone counters Koziek. So worst case scenario…Koziek is essentially a Tidings that costs 10 and also uses up one of your opponent's counters.

2. "Defending player sacrifices 4 permanents" sounds completely broken. But don't forget the defending player gets to choose the permanents. Unlike Progenitus, Koziek can be stopped by a large enough wall of creatures. Don't think someone can make 4 more creatures a turn? There are decks that do it. And you will probably get at least one turn of horrible chump-blocking before the end, regardless. Then you notice he doesn't have trample, or flying, or fear or any other type of evasion. Maybe you'll topdeck some removal.

3. Graveyard recursion is right out. Not only does he get shuffled back into your library, but so does the rest of your graveyard. You are immune to milling, but your graveyard is no longer a resource you can depend on. Forget about Knight of the Reliquary, or even Tarmogoyf. Not for use in Dredge Decks.

4. The card I hope I have in my hand when my opponent casts Koziek…Phthisis. There will also almost certainly be more Eldrazi-specific hate coming in this set, perhaps based off colorlessness.

5. His colorlessness is an important consideration. There are many effects that ask you to "pick a color" or work off matching colors. Koziek lacks a color. You can't get him out of someone's hand with a Persecute, no matter how hard you try. You can't cast him with Dream Halls, or tutor for him with Conflux. He's neither monocolor nor multicolor.

You can, however, suspend him with good ol' Jhoira. So I can honestly say I know of at least one deck that will be getting the Koziek upgrade. Unless Greg likes protection better, but I'm willing to bet he'll go for the extra card draw.

I'm a sucker. I can't wait for April 17th.