Momir BASIC on Magic Online
For the most part I've stopped playing Magic Online and sold all my online cards, which has given me no money, of course, but an absurd number of tickets. I might still play in various Limited events from time to time, but as for Constructed games, I'm really only interested in playing against folks I know.
With some of my excess tickets, though, I decided to pick up a couple of Momir Vig avatars, one for me and one for the only other person I know who has a Magic Online account. Magic Online has a format called "Vanguard" which... well, this page explains it, but basically you add little avatar cards to your deck, and each avatar gives you special abilities. Momir's ability is: "X, Discard a card: Put a token into play as a copy of a random creature card with converted mana cost X. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery and only once each turn." He's got an entire online-only format built around him, where you create a deck that consists of nothing but 60 basic lands and the Momir avatar. Then you just play the whole game with random creatures. Momir himself, sadly, costs around 8-9 tickets (and tickets are a dollar a pop), but still, when you get a Magic Online account (which costs ten dollars), you get a ten dollar credit in the store. So you can just grab ten tickets, go to the trade room, buy a Momir and a bunch of lands and you're good to go. (I'm not advertising on their behalf, BTW... I'm just saying, it's not that bad a deal.) The downside is that their server is HORRIBLY unstable. Ugh. That's supposed to be fixed in version 3.0, but in the meantime multiple crashes a night are not uncommon.
Anyway, lunatron and I tried it out tonight, and it is a blast, although exceedingly silly. She got a Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant as her 3-drop. In most formats, Sasaya's apparently pretty useless, but it indirectly allowed her to win the game here. All she had to do was wait until she had seven cards in hand and, since all her cards were automatically lands due to the format, she could activate the ability. Then she just started laying down the same land type over and over, and was able to start generating multiple Dracos (the game's only 16-drop creature) and eventually overrun me. For my part, I just put in a new, weird creature a turn and attacked. I even took a chance on the seven-drop. The reason doing a seven-drop in Momir BASIC is chancy is because that's the converted mana cost of Akroma's arch-nemesis, Phage the Untouchable. Because the tokens you create aren't played from your hand, getting Phage is an automatic loss. In my case the gamble paid off, because I got Serra Avatar, who started out, at least, as a 24/24. Alas, it wasn't enough to hold off a horde of angry Dracos!
We started our second game, in which we appeared to be having a contest of worthless creatures. "Gee, you got a creature whose damage can be prevented if I remove one of the many lands I've discarded into my graveyard! Gosh, I can tap my creature to make something colorless! Golly, you can force both of us to draw a basic land and discard a basic land! Darnit, I get a 1/1 for my FOUR drop? Oh, you get a Defender for your four drop, that's okay." I mean, really. The only good creature either of us got were from the Rakdos guild. But then, sadly, I crashed, so we had to adjourn the game. Another time!
With some of my excess tickets, though, I decided to pick up a couple of Momir Vig avatars, one for me and one for the only other person I know who has a Magic Online account. Magic Online has a format called "Vanguard" which... well, this page explains it, but basically you add little avatar cards to your deck, and each avatar gives you special abilities. Momir's ability is: "X, Discard a card: Put a token into play as a copy of a random creature card with converted mana cost X. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery and only once each turn." He's got an entire online-only format built around him, where you create a deck that consists of nothing but 60 basic lands and the Momir avatar. Then you just play the whole game with random creatures. Momir himself, sadly, costs around 8-9 tickets (and tickets are a dollar a pop), but still, when you get a Magic Online account (which costs ten dollars), you get a ten dollar credit in the store. So you can just grab ten tickets, go to the trade room, buy a Momir and a bunch of lands and you're good to go. (I'm not advertising on their behalf, BTW... I'm just saying, it's not that bad a deal.) The downside is that their server is HORRIBLY unstable. Ugh. That's supposed to be fixed in version 3.0, but in the meantime multiple crashes a night are not uncommon.
Anyway, lunatron and I tried it out tonight, and it is a blast, although exceedingly silly. She got a Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant as her 3-drop. In most formats, Sasaya's apparently pretty useless, but it indirectly allowed her to win the game here. All she had to do was wait until she had seven cards in hand and, since all her cards were automatically lands due to the format, she could activate the ability. Then she just started laying down the same land type over and over, and was able to start generating multiple Dracos (the game's only 16-drop creature) and eventually overrun me. For my part, I just put in a new, weird creature a turn and attacked. I even took a chance on the seven-drop. The reason doing a seven-drop in Momir BASIC is chancy is because that's the converted mana cost of Akroma's arch-nemesis, Phage the Untouchable. Because the tokens you create aren't played from your hand, getting Phage is an automatic loss. In my case the gamble paid off, because I got Serra Avatar, who started out, at least, as a 24/24. Alas, it wasn't enough to hold off a horde of angry Dracos!
We started our second game, in which we appeared to be having a contest of worthless creatures. "Gee, you got a creature whose damage can be prevented if I remove one of the many lands I've discarded into my graveyard! Gosh, I can tap my creature to make something colorless! Golly, you can force both of us to draw a basic land and discard a basic land! Darnit, I get a 1/1 for my FOUR drop? Oh, you get a Defender for your four drop, that's okay." I mean, really. The only good creature either of us got were from the Rakdos guild. But then, sadly, I crashed, so we had to adjourn the game. Another time!