[Free Article] I've Got 99 Problems But A Cage Ain't One

[Womba]

The Workshop article should be up soon. In the meantime we have a tournament report containing 100% more LINsanity than your average Magic article!!

Enjoy!



http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/23611_Ive_Got_99_Problems_But_A_Cage_Aint_One.html

[Prospero]

Great work, I enjoyed this.

[XxtSundaybxX]

Very entertaining like usual, Mark.

[cvarosky80]

Great article and congratulations on yet another great run.

[voltron00x]

I like this article.

In other breaking news, the sky is blue.

[PeAcH]

Congratulations Marc once again for the great job you are doing writing about our beloved format!

Keep it up

[ErtaiAdept]

I would just like to say that after reading this article, I am unable to refer to the cage as anything but "Johnny Cage" so good work.

[ReubenG]

Great article as always.  My only complaint...How can the Bazaar of Baghdad deck be also known as Seal Team Six?  Shouldn't it be Johnny Cage vs the Republican Guard.

[ErtaiAdept]

So reading this again I have a question about your plans for Jailer.

I played around with this list a little online last night and found that with only chain of vapor and 1 Darkblast I was really weak to jailers.  Was your hope to just not face that many of them?

[XxtSundaybxX]

So reading this again I have a question about your plans for Jailer.

I played around with this list a little online last night and found that with only chain of vapor and 1 Darkblast I was really weak to jailers.  Was your hope to just not face that many of them?

I can't speak for Mark, but as someone who tested the deck pretty extensively with him, we were primarily worried about jailer the most actually. However, we knew the hype would be toward a leyline/cage combo out of sideboards. 4 CoV/1 Darkblast seems light but you also have cabal therapies. Since all of the other hate cards target leyline/cage you can use the Chains to bounce jailer because all of your other answers answer the leylines.  In addition, you can just beat your opponent down with dudes if they have a jailer out.

[Womba]

So reading this again I have a question about your plans for Jailer.

I played around with this list a little online last night and found that with only chain of vapor and 1 Darkblast I was really weak to jailers.  Was your hope to just not face that many of them?

I can't speak for Mark, but as someone who tested the deck pretty extensively with him, we were primarily worried about jailer the most actually. However, we knew the hype would be toward a leyline/cage combo out of sideboards. 4 CoV/1 Darkblast seems light but you also have cabal therapies. Since all of the other hate cards target leyline/cage you can use the Chains to bounce jailer because all of your other answers answer the leylines.  In addition, you can just beat your opponent down with dudes if they have a jailer out.

Our metagame has mostly consisted of 1 to 2 Jailers at most. People use Jailer as a compliment to Leylines and other stuff rather than a primary hate card for our metagame so this build was banking on some of that being exploited. Like Allen said we knew going in Jailers were going to be a pain but we only anticipated few if any with Cage being the new flavor of the week. Because of this I felt comfortable between Unmask/Chain/Darkblast to be fine for this event.

[ErtaiAdept]

So reading this again I have a question about your plans for Jailer.

I played around with this list a little online last night and found that with only chain of vapor and 1 Darkblast I was really weak to jailers.  Was your hope to just not face that many of them?

I can't speak for Mark, but as someone who tested the deck pretty extensively with him, we were primarily worried about jailer the most actually. However, we knew the hype would be toward a leyline/cage combo out of sideboards. 4 CoV/1 Darkblast seems light but you also have cabal therapies. Since all of the other hate cards target leyline/cage you can use the Chains to bounce jailer because all of your other answers answer the leylines.  In addition, you can just beat your opponent down with dudes if they have a jailer out.

Our metagame has mostly consisted of 1 to 2 Jailers at most. People use Jailer as a compliment to Leylines and other stuff rather than a primary hate card for our metagame so this build was banking on some of that being exploited. Like Allen said we knew going in Jailers were going to be a pain but we only anticipated few if any with Cage being the new flavor of the week. Because of this I felt comfortable between Unmask/Chain/Darkblast to be fine for this event.

Ok that's pretty much what I was thinking. I'm looking at running this in a local event coming up and I think Jailers will more prevalent so I'll make the tweaks I think are necessary.  Thanks for the response.  And keep those articles coming, I find them rather helpful.