Planning the Adventure

D&D, netrunner, RPG

With the Android source book most likely dropping in the next week. I thought I better get a move on with this series.

“Fundamentally, adventures are stories. An adventure shares many of the features of a novel, a movie, an issue of a comic, or an episode of a TV show. Comic series and serialized TV dramas are particularly good comparisons, because of the way individual adventures are limited in scope but blend together to create a larger narrative. If an adventure is a single issue or episode, a campaign is the series as a whole.” (The D&D Dungeon Masters Guide Chapter 3)

When I started this series of posts I hadn’t got to that part of the DMs Guide. But it confirms that I’m not completely crazy with my comparison and taking ideas from other forms of entertainment.

This post continues the high level approach to creating a campaign and the adventures that make it up. Future posts will look at the details. But for now we continue to steal, sorry stand on the shoulders of giants.

“The basic elements of good storytelling should guide you throughout this process, so your players experience the adventure as a story and not a disjointed series of encounters.” (The D&D Dungeon Masters Guide Chapter 3)

The One-Damn-Thing-After-Another structure based on as previously mentioned 1930’s serials like Buck Rogers is discussed by O’Neil briefly. It’s a simple structure that is basically a series of encounters between your party and some big bad. They keep trading blows until finally one side is victorious. And potentially could be seen as “a disjointed series of encounters.”

We have already seen in the Paranoia post on planning an adventure the use of The Three Act structure. In the Dungeon Masters Guide they use beginning,middle,end for telling a story. Which is basically the Three Act structure.

In the DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics we get presented with O’Neil’s Heavy-Duty, Industrial-Strength Structure for a Single-Issue Comic Book Story. Which happens to be the authors version of the Three Act structure that they developed over their many years in the comic book industry.

“Act 1

  • The Hook
  • Inciting incident
  • Establish situation and conflict
  • Act 2
      • Develop and complicate situation
  • Act 3
      • Events leading to:
  • The climax
      • Denouement“

    Act 1

    For my planning using the above structure the hook and inciting incident are combined into one. The inciting incident aka “the event that causes our party to react, that provides the danger or puzzle or task that galvanises our party into action.” (O’Neal) is how we get the story moving and entice our party.

    Establishing the situation, conflict, and the McGuffin should all fall naturally within that inciting incident, and the opening scene setting.

    But what is a McGuffin?

    “A McGuffin is what the hero and villain are fighting over… The only thing that matters is that the plans, documents, secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters… it must be credible. If the conflict is over something inconsequential or silly, your hero is diminished…” (O’Neal)

    Act 2

    “take the story in a new direction. Something unexpected happens…” So in terms of the scenario or campaign, we are adding plot twists, complications, new situation(s).

    Act 3

    This is it the climax of the adventure. The player characters have solved the biggest problems, maybe even all of them. Defeated the threat, and restored order to the world. To paraphrase O’Neil. If this is the end of the story arc it could be the big finale, the final confrontation between the players and the big bad.

    Denouement

    For our purposes this ties up loose ends, has the heroes returning/delivering items, returning to base, shopping. And set up the next or future adventure.

    So that’s a quick look at a basic structure to use for adventures.

    In the comic book world there are basically two schools of thought on script development, full scripts and plot first aka “The Marvel Way of Plotting”. This is relevant to us planning our adventures because we have a similar choice. Our equivalent of the full script is the full adventure with all the details. Or we can go with the Marvel Way.

    These posts I’m writing are starting at a macro level, and then zooming in to the micro. Which means because I am still at that macro level for this post I’m going to focus on the Marvel Way.

    Stan Lee “With the Marvel style, I would give the artists the broad outlines of the story, and fill in the dialogue after the penciling was completed.”

    Once I’m happy with the campaign planning, and the plots I’ve created. I can zoom in and do the detail. For me that detail is the equivalent of the drawing of the comic book, and the subsequent dialogue.

    So what I’m proposing is that for each of the three acts a paragraph or two is written describing what is happening story wise.

    Which means I haven’t gone into lots of detail, but I have a good overview

    I do appreciate that so far that all this planning is for a linear medium. Where as the nature of an RPG is non-linear. Or it is if you don’t keep the players on the path and stop them wondering off. So I think that there is potential to learn from the video game industry on this front. I’ll have to look through my text books and hope that I can find stuff online.

    But that will be for a future post. For now I’ll leave this here and keep an eye out for the postman and hope they are carrying a parcel for me.

    Time is fleeting, Madness takes it’s toll

    magic, MtG


    Well I’ve surprised myself by looking at a third MtG card in the current Standard format.

    This time I’m looking at a card that has been controversial since it was printed!

    Nexus of Fate started it’s life as a Buy-A-Box promo for Core Set 2019. Nothing wrong with that you may think. You buy a booster box and get a copy of Nexus of Fate (while stock lasted).

    But for many it’s appearance confirmed their worst fears about these promo cards since their reintroduction with Dominaria. That WotC would print a tournament legal card which has a small print run, and the price of the card would shoot up. Especially if it was a powerful card. Plus there were reports of some unscrupulous LGS’s not giving the buy-a-box promo with the booster boxes when purchased and selling them separately on eBay.

    The tail end of last year Nexus of Fate turned up in a deck called Turbo Fog. Being super lazy after hearing talk about the deck in podcasts that didn’t go into much detail except to mention the deck had a few fog cards in it, and Nexus of Fate. I didn’t rush to the Internet and look at deck listings.

    Naturally because it had a weekend in the spotlight at a pro tour or whatever the official event was, the price jumped. But that happens to a lot of cards.

    What made people salty naturally was the “exclusivity” of the card. To have them you had to had bought a booster box, or for a playset four booster boxes.

    I did hear the argument that being a buy-a-box promo instead of just a Mythic in boosters meant that there were probably more copies of the card out there in the wild than if it had just been only in boosters. So it could have been a big benefit for players that it was a promo.

    I checked the price of Nexus of Fate a couple of days ago, and it was sitting at around £25. That’s not cheap. However it’s cheaper than buying a £90 booster box to get one. In fact a playset costs about the same as a booster box. Ok you haven’t got 36 booster packs as well. But you do have that playset of a card you want!

    So while I would baulk at paying that for a card, there are many out there that wouldn’t. Especially if they are taking part in these big official tournaments where they are expecting get into the prize pool.

    Jump forward to last week and in the digital world of MtG:Arena in the best of one format the card has been banned. Apparently there are decks on there that go infinite using Nexus of Fate that have no actual win condition. Except that your opponent quits or something. Plus for their e-sports and twitch streamers it makes boring viewing. Which is probably more the reason that it was banned, bad tv, over it not being not a fun experience to be on the end of.

    So 7 CMC is not a cheap card. Without any ramp (which blue doesn’t have) this isn’t being played before turn 7 at the earliest. So with a deck like Turbo Fog the fog is basically there to keep you alive until you can start playing Nexus of Fate, and other big cost cards that might be in the deck.

    As an instant you can play this any time. During your end step, during your opponents. And this is what I think makes the card powerful. If it was a sorcery that could be played on your turn only it would be a bit less powerful.

    Once you play the card, you get to take an extra turn after the current turn ends.

    The fact you shuffle the card back into the library is important. When you get to the last few cards of your library you are going to be constantly drawing the card. Which means you basically have infinite turns! That’s game over for your opponent.

    So that’s the controversial Nexus of Fate.

    Horrors from the deep surface

    Commander, Game day, magic, MtG

    I’ve not been to a Monday Commander session at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole since the first one was held a few weeks ago.

    So half term gave me the ideal excuse to get along to another one.

    When I arrived a couple of ex-students of mine Josh and Tom were there, as was Andy a regular at the shop and training MtG judge. It appeared a bit of Commander deck building advice was being given to Josh.

    I used my Muldrotha deck for the first game of Commander. Which was a true roller coaster ride. I do regret using my Cyclonic Rift to save Tom from a massive attack by Andy that would have killed him. I had already “bluffed” Andy not to attack me the previous turn of his. Well it wasn’t a bluff, I had the card in hand with the mana open to cast it. But Andy wasn’t sure of that.

    What was my reward for saving Tom’s butt? Yeah you guessed it, a few rounds later he killed me first before moving on and killing Andy and Josh in a single strike.

    Game two for the afternoon saw the Horrors from the Deep wake from their slumber and head towards the surface to wreck havoc and destruction.

    Trench Gorger is such a great card to play once you have sufficient mana out. As you can see in the game yesterday it got rid of my remaining 22 lands, to become a 22/22. With trample. Which is nice. But the big benefit is that it gets rid of dead draws. Well not completely. There were still one or two cards that were in the deck to help me ramp and get lands, and therefore useless now. But that’s better than nearing 30.

    Andy took out Josh. His threat assessment was that Josh was the bigger threat. Well he’d know because it was his deck Josh was playing.

    With my big threats on the board I was able to take Andy out, well at that point I had them all with flying whilst grounding everyone else’s fliers.

    It then took a couple of rounds for the horrors that had surfaced to pound Tom into submission. And get me my first win with this deck. Wow.

    It was great to catch up with Josh and Tom. Everyone had a fun time. It’s great that The Hobbit Hole hosts this for those that are at a lose end on a Monday.

    Sunday Afternoon Gaming

    Game day

    A relatively short post for today. Which many will be glad to hear.

    Yesterday I had the pleasure to game with one of my favourite persons to game with (the others know who they are), Diego.

    In this relaxed afternoons gaming we got Wingspan to the table. Which was a first play for Diego. And got a very respectable score of 60 points. Truth be told I was expecting Diego to crush me. But it was my eggs that grabbed me the victory and winning a couple of the end of round bonuses. We were pretty much matching each other score wise up until that point.


    Wingspan was followed up with me teaching Hanamikoji to Diego. Because it is so quick to teach and play we got three games in. With Diego winning two of them. I think this may well be at the moment my favourite two player go to filler game.

    We finished off the fun filled afternoon with a couple of games of MtG. Diego was kind enough to allow me to test my Simic Standard deck against his Elf deck. The version tested is giving me more reliable draw of the counter spells. One more tweak and I think I then need to fix a sideboard.

    Thank you once again Diego for sharing you home and hospitality with me once again.

    I’m going to finish this post with some photos of Nico and Loki the attack chihuahuas playing on the bed last night.

    More Simic Deck Testing

    Deck tech, Game day, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

    Yesterday it was Ravnica Weekend at your FLGS if it does the whole MtG thing. Which means they were running a new D&D MtG cross over one-shot, plus a poorly promoted store championship using the draft format.

    Sometimes, especially recently since Arena went into open beta, that WotC are trying to push everyone to the digital format of the game. They deny it naturally, but as the saying goes “actions speak louder than words”. And the actions of WotC are sending a very clear message to players and FLGS’. But this rant should be for another day and another post. Let’s get back on topic.

    I went along to my FLGS The Hobbit Hole with the hope to test out my latest iteration of my Simic deck.

    Naturally there were a few D&D sessions in progress when I arrived. Plus there was a Pokemon tournament about to kick off.

    Table space was at a premium. Luckily I was able to find a player to test my deck with and more importantly a corner of the shop to play.

    Michael who I was playing against was playing a mono white aggro deck. It was using life gain as an effective way to pump up some of his creatures. Which was very effective and in one particular game fast and deadly.

    I didn’t use the sideboard. I think that still needs to be settled on. But just playing the main deck and getting a feel for it was good.

    I know technically I have a 50/50 split between creatures and spells. But I’m counting Frilled Mystic as a counter spell. I think it’s a nice two for one in this deck. Counter spell and body on the ground.

    In a recent MtG podcast I listened to there was mention that Nexus of Fate was being used in one or two decks that were Simic. I thought that sounds interesting, I have a couple of them. So I thought I’d add my copies to the deck give them a whirl. See what the fuss was about.

    However against this white aggro deck I either needed more bodies out or bounce spells like Blink of the Eye.

    I definitely wasn’t hitting the counter spells consistently enough in this match up. When I did they were the games I won. I was thwarting the game plan of my opponent, buying me time to get my pieces into play.

    My feeling at the moment is that Steel Leaf Champion and Carnage Tyrant get moved to the sideboard fully and replaced with counter spells.

    Ok here is the version 2 of my main deck that I played yesterday.

    Creatures:19

    4 Llanowar Elves
    3 Hydroid Krasis
    2 Incubation Druid
    2 Steel Leaf Champion
    3 Frilled Mystic
    2 Zegana, Utopian Speaker
    2 Biogenic Ooze
    1 Carnage Tyrant

    Spells:19

    2 Open the Gates
    4 Syncopate
    4 Essence Capture
    3 Thought Collapse
    3 Wilderness Reclamation
    1 Vivien Reid
    2 Nexus of Fate

    Lands:22

    2 Breeding Pool
    6 Forest
    1 Hinterland Harbor
    5 Island
    1 Memorial to Genius
    2 Memorial to Unity
    4 Simic Guildgate
    1 Woodland Stream

    Michael and I finished off the afternoon of MtG with a couple of 1v1 Commander, his vampire deck against my Simic Horrors from the Deep deck. I’m not a big 1v1 Commander fan. For me it’s not Commander, at that point it’s Highlander (and that’s a different way to build decks).

    The draw back of having a fun afternoon of playing MtG was Michael and I didn’t qualify for any of the cool promos that were being given away for Ravnica Weekend. But still a fun afternoon.

    Super Casual Friday Night Gaming

    Fenland Gamers, game night

    Whaaaaat?! Another Friday evening gaming session at The Luxe Cinema? No way. It’s like this is a regular thing or something!

    We knew Ollie was going to be late. So Love Letter: Batman (the best version of the game beyond any doubt, and if you disagree you are wrong) hit the table to pass away the time until his arrival.

    The Usual Suspect easily won the game. At times unnaturally guessing Jonathan’s card on the very first play of the round. Luckily I managed to score one token before the inevitable victory. Sadly for Jonathan he didn’t, and was left with a big fat zero points.

    We’d just finished the first round of game two with the opening point going once again to the Usual Suspect, when Ollie arrived. So we dealt him in and explained the rules to him.

    This second game was a game of two halves. The first half was Jonathan trailing behind on the token front and slowly catching up, then over taking everyone to reach six tokens. We then entered the second half, where Jonathan just sat there on six tokens, and I come from behind to catch up with Jonathan and snatch victory from him.

    I can’t remember at which point I did the following but it just seemed the right and funny thing to do at the time. In one of the rounds Ollie played Catwoman and chose me, so he asked to see my hand. So I stretched out my right arm, and waved my hand at him. Accompanied with “there you go”. Oh did we all laugh. Sometimes being literal can be a hoot.

    Our next game of the evening was Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck. Jonathan went over the rules for Ollie whilst I topped up my beverage supply.

    This ended up as a two horse race between Ollie and Jonathan. Early on Ollie didn’t look like he was in the running, whilst Jonathan looked like he was going to run away with the victory. But from nowhere Ollie started amassing points, while the Usual Suspect and I tussled for last place.

    Ollie Ollie timed his come back perfectly and once again Jonathan had had victory snatched from under his nose.

    A pattern for the evening was starting to emerge.

    Our final game of the evening was Perudo. It is my sad duty to report to the long time sufferers of this blog that I was knocked out first. Or to put it another way, I was last. The final head to head was between the Usual Suspect and Jonathan. Can you guess which way the game went? Yep Jonathan grasped defeat and gave it a big huge hug.

    After a surprise evening of just light filler type games, we had a great evening of gaming at a superb host. Topped off with the customary greasy dodgy meat with lashings of chilli sauce and shredded green stuff.

    Blue Moons, Tea Houses and Tree Spirits

    game night

    A monthly meet up the night before one of the most commercial and manufactured nights of the year, probably wasn’t going to get many people to attend. But that’s the advantage of hindsight.

    Last weekend it was looking like it was just myself and The Usual Suspect that had committed to go. Honestly I didn’t fancy an evening gaming with him. Longtime sufferers of this blog know all about The Usual Suspect by now. It wouldn’t be an enjoyable time. So I cancelled the February meet up.

    Then a couple of days before the cancelled date Gavin contacted me asking if the monthly meet up had been cancelled. Which I confirmed it had. In response I was asked if I was free that night and if I wanted to meet up and play some games. Naturally I was (I have no life after all). So we made arrangements to meet up.

    Our first game of the evening was Blue Moon Legends. Neither of us had played the game before. It had only been in my collection less than 6 months, when a chance to buy a second hand copy, still sealed, at a bargain price came up on Facebook. It would have been rude not to snap the game up.

    The thing I liked about this game before I had got it, and was a major attraction, everything you needed for the game was in the box. It came with 8 decks, and rules to construct and draft decks from that card pool.

    Gavin and I played with the recommended starting decks for learning the game.

    I loved the tug of war element for attracting the dragons. And how if you win a dragon and your opponent has more than one, you move one of them to the middle before you get to add one to your side.

    The hand management is interesting, and really comes into it’s own when you get down to the last remaining cards of your deck. No cards in hand or your deck is an end condition. That looks at who has the most dragons. So you could use that to your advantage to prematurely end the game and grab the win.

    The two games we played had a nice back and forth between the two decks. And it never felt that there was a run away winner, with no chance of coming back into the game.

    Once you get used to the turn structure, the game flows nicely. And a nice touch is the summary of the main parts of a turn on the central game board. That game board is a nice alternative to a single big play mat or two play mats. It clearly marks where the deck goes, the discard pile, leaders, etc.

    The plastic minis for the contested dragons are cool.

    I just love that a friend and I who fancy playing a two player card game, can pick this up and play straight away. Everything we could ever need is in there. Pre-constructed decks – check, draft – check, deck construction – check. I know especially with the constructed side, and pre-constructed decks there is a finite replay ability. But it’s still a lot of game play. The only other game I have in my collection that is really as flexible as this, and in away is similar in idea, is Epic the Card Game.

    Despite Gavin winning both games, I had fun playing this.

    Next up it was time to take Gavin to the tea houses and play Hanamikoji. We played 5 games of this. But then it is a quick game. Apart from the first game that Gavin won, all the rest went to a second round. This presented Gavin with a mental block he struggled to overcome. For me in the second round words like attacking and defending start popping into my head. If Gavin currently has the gheisha’s favour I’m attacking it, if I have it I’m defending it. When defending I just need to make sure I match my opponent, because ownership doesn’t change on a tie, whilst trying to get the upper hand on the ones he controls. And that’s how I’m evaluating the situation.

    We finished the evenings gaming with the recently delivered Kickstarter Kodama Duo (which is also just hitting the shops now too).

    This is the 2 player version of Kodama (which could play 2 iirc). Basically they have tweaked the game to make it a better 2 player experience. But if you have Kodama, you can use this with that as well.

    After a false start (we were scoring incorrectly) we started growing our trees, and attracting Kodama.

    I like the I split, you chose mechanic for drafting your branches each round. That’s a nice improvement. Plus the person who only got one card gets a spirit token after scoring to replace a symbol on one of their branches.

    Through out our play Gavin and I were fairly evenly matched on the score front. It was only the last scoring kodama that gave me the win.

    I liked the original. This is just as nice as the original. It still looks beautiful on the table. Yeah a nice 2 player only version of the game.

    So that was the second Wednesday. Some 2 player games, (which let’s face it often get left on the shelf on game nights, and need opportunities like this to play them) with a great friend. And hosted as usual by our excellent hosts The Luxe Cinema.

    Thrashing around

    magic, MtG

    Yesterday I talked briefly about my love of being able to play dinosaurs in MtG thanks to our visit to the Ixalan plane. I also looked at probably one of the star cards for green from the set, Carnage Tyrant.

    In today’s post I thought I’d look at another card that won’t be with us for much longer, because it will be keeping Carnage Tyrant company when the Ixalan block rotates out. Yeah I know why am I only just looking at these cards now then? Because, reasons!

    But over the last few months I’ve grown to really like this card.

    Today we are looking at a great utility card for green, which is definitely a really good sideboard card, and that’s Thrashing Brontodon.

    At 3 CMC for a 3/4 body it’s pretty good. Plus it doesn’t die to removal after it hits the battleground. Well unless they hit it a couple of times. Which I’ll take that trade any day. Plus it can block and still be around afterwards.

    But in this current Standard meta where enchantments like Wilderness Reclamation and Experimental Frenzy are very popular, there has to be some form of removal in your deck. That’s where the ability of paying one mana and sacrificing Thrashing Brontodon comes in. If you pay that cost, you lose the body naturally, but you get rid of that enchantment or artifact.

    I can assure you Wilderness Reclamation especially with a couple out can be abused in combination with the right cards. I’ve already in a previous post about my Simic deck described one such situation. And John the owner of my FLGS has been on the receiving end of such an abuse. I’ve been on the receiving end of an Experimental Frenzy. Not fun if you can’t get rid of it.

    And that’s why you will find copies of Thrashing Brontodon in the sideboard of a lot of decks that splash green in Standard. In my Commander decks it’s an instant include. And despite technically not being a big stompy creature it’s in my big stompy deck.

    With the almost default inclusion of Llanowar Elves in decks with green, having your copy of Thrashing Brontodon out turn two is a realistic play. But even if not, it’s still a great turn three play.

    If you are remotely interested what card would you like me to look at next in the current Standard legal sets? You will notice that these two posts so far have been from the Ixalan block, and cards that I have used and played in my decks. But more than happy to talk about other cards.

    Keyforge Age of Ascension Announced

    keyforge, news

    Yesterday in a FFG Live simultaneous broadcast on Twitch and YouTube, FFG sprung an announcement about the next Keyforge set.

    Coming in Q2 of this year is Keyforge Age of Ascension.

    This new set will be a combination of old and new cards. The new card pool of 370 cards will be a combination of 166 old cards and 204 new cards. From the live stream Garfield said a lot of the cards dropped from the first set were commons. The reason being so that players are more likely to see the new cards.

    In the live broadcast there was mention of three new keywords, deploy, alpha and omega. Deploy will allow you to insert a creature in between other creatures on the battlefield, instead of just on one of the flanks. Alpha means that card has to be played at the start of the third phase before anything else is done. Otherwise it can’t be played. Whilst omega is the opposite, it is the very last card you play in the third phase.

    Naturally there will be a new starter set, that will contain the following:

    As you can see the starter decks are gone. As are the power and stun cards, which have been replaced with cardboard tokens. A much much better option, and practical. It was mentioned that the tokens in this starter set are smaller than the original starter set ones, “to make it easier to fit everything into a deck box” (their words paraphrased from the live stream). Instead of the starter decks, they are replaced with two,poster playmats. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Great for teaching the game. But durability is a concern. Plus is this just something being put in to justify keeping the rrp at the same cost as the previous starter set? I’m also convinced that the reason for the smaller tokens is cost, and the fact they are printing 44 more than before.

    The this starter set will sell, because players will want those new power and stun tokens. But will it offer value for money? Is all the extra stuff on top of the two included decks worth the difference between buying the two decks separately?

    UPDATE: Taken from Facebook – “Just a heads up about the new set regarding prices….

    The new RRP for decks is £9.99 which is a £1 increase

    The new RRP for starter sets is £23.99 which is a huge drop of £12”

    £4 for the tokens? I could live with that.

    End of UPDATE

    During the broadcast there was also some reveals about OP play, and some of the stuff you can get. They showed off two playmats. One was a four horseman one. They looked ok.

    Apparently there will be alternative ways to get stuff from the prize wall if you can’t get to an event where there is one. Well that’s what I read afterwards in a comment on Facebook. I didn’t hear them say that myself. But I did skip through some of the game play. Which if that’s the case, is a good sign and shows they are listening (maybe).

    I appreciate that FFG are doing these live events on a regular basis. But they need to improve the production quality. It was annoying during the live gameplay with the new decks when they went to show the new cards they were not shown, or there was a delay for the image to appear. I know this is all new for them, and they are learning. Maybe they need to talk to the Tap,Tap, Concede guys about their live MtG coverage.

    You can read the full FFG announcement here and watch the video here.

    All Hail The Carnage Tyrant

    magic, MtG

    For me one of the fun things about Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan was being able to build decks that had dinosaurs in them.

    I have a fun (for me) to play Commander dinosaur tribal deck. Which could do with an update. Add some of the tribal cards I’ve gotten since building the deck, replace one or two of the cards with the more powerful option that I now have. But I digress.

    There are a few dinosaurs from those sets that I just love. The elder dinosaurs fantastic. Ghalta, Gishath, Regisaur Alpha, Burning Sun’s Avatar, Rampaging Ferocidon (unjustly banned in Standard), Thrashing Brontodon and Raptor Hatchling to name some of my favourites.

    The incredible thing is that two or three of them still have a place in the Standard meta. They will always have a place in my dinosaur tribal deck (until we ever return to Ixalan).

    But there is one that if you splash green in your deck is an auto include. And when it comes out strikes fear in your opponent.

    Yep Carnage Tyrant.

    If Carnage Tyrant isn’t in your main deck, there is usually a copy or two in the sideboard.

    For a 6 CMC, it’s not a cheap card. But you get a lot of bang for your buck. First off it’s a 7/6 body with trample. So no chump blocking with a 1/1 to stop the damage getting through.

    But it’s these next two abilities that make this card so powerful, and an auto include. Carnage Tyrant can’t be countered. So those pesky control players can’t use their counter spells to stop you casting it. Then when it is out on the battlefield it has hexproof. Which means that now it is out they can’t target their removal at it.

    And that’s why at the very least you will see copies of it in the sideboard. It’s the anti-control card.

    But even at 6 CMC being green, you have ramp. So in all likely hood Carnage Tyrant could be out turn four, definitely turn five. There is not much that will be out at that point to stop it.

    Sadly because it is such a good card in Standard, it’s not a cheap card to buy. So Commander players will have to wait for it to rotate out to pick their copies up.

    I have heard/read that in some decks now with Hydroid Krasis now on the scene that Carnage Tyrant isn’t as powerful as it used to be in some decks. I can’t really comment on that, I’m not really playing at the high levels the people making those statements are. For me in the decks I’m building and playing it’s a star card.

    I’m going to miss Carnage Tyrant when it rotates out, I hope it likes it’s retirement homes in my dinosaur tribal deck, and the big green stompy deck.