The biggest local game store (LGS) in Syracuse, New York is called Altered States.

Okay, it’s not actually called Altered States; it’s called something else. It used to be called Altered States, though, but they changed the name for some reason that I used to know but can’t really remember. For our purposes here, I’ll just refer to it as Altered States because I don’t want to inadvertently give them any more business and because their name now is insanely long and cumbersome.

Confession Time: When I started this column, I asked Altered States to sponsor me. They said they’d had some trouble lending cards in the past, and they declined, despite the promise of free ad space on this very website. Because of that, I contacted another local Syracuse shop, Cloud City, and they were more than willing to accommodate. I don’t hold a grudge against Altered States because they refused to sponsor me; the fact that I don’t understand the decision doesn’t mean it isn’t the correct decision for that store to make, and I certainly acknowledge that. The following isn’t about me; it’s just something I’ve observed that requires a lot of backstory.

Altered States has been the biggest LGS in Syracuse for years now—at least a decade. As it commonly goes with monopolies, Altered States has little to no reason to give anything back to the community; it’s not like people are gonna stop going any time soon.

One of the most egregious ways Altered States makes a killing from Magic players is by giving out store credit as prizes. This is okay, but the problem is that the store credit they give out vanishes after two weeks. Another point of contention is that these store credit vouchers only go toward half of an event’s entry. For example, if you wanted to play in a tournament with a $15 entry, you’d need to have $30 in store credit. It’s worth mentioning that I don’t actually mind the halved store credit for tournament entry; if this wasn’t in place, a small number of people would just go infinite—which they did back in the early 2000s.

However, the store’s prices are ridiculous.

That’s a very small sampling. I saved that Tarmogoyf picture for last because it still blows my mind.

I’m not asking that all stores approximate auction prices. That would be insane. However, it’s nice when stores try to make their prices somewhat competitive. Altered States is not among those stores. They basically put a card’s price at its ceiling, jack that price up a bit, and then leave it there forever, regardless of whether or not the card sees play. This does not make buying singles great. As for all that store credit . . . I hope you’re in the market for some sleeves. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by stores with competitive prices like Cloud City and Jupiter Games, but . . . Jesus.

Oppression breeds competition. Competitors of Altered States have come and gone, and Altered States is still around while most of the rest have fallen to the wayside. There’s a sequence of events that happens every time a new store opens:

• The new store takes away a considerable chunk of Altered States’s Magic business thanks to better prize structuring, realistic prices for singles, the lack of requirement for players to jump through five thousands hoops to trade to the store, and so on.
• Altered States’s attendance slips a little bit, but it stays steady either because of commuters who live closer to Altered States or because of Altered States’s massive play area available because of the store’s ability to pay a lot of money for rent.
• Altered States starts to feel the slip in attendance.
• They lower prices for a limited time; they can afford the momentary loss. The name of the game is to drive out the competition.
• A race to the bottom ensues. The stores play a game of chicken to see who will be the first to run their tournaments at a loss.
• The smaller business backs down and stops running tournaments.
• Altered States jacks the prices back up almost instantaneously.

There was a store called Comix Zone that ran weekly Sealed tournaments that competed with Altered States. Altered States went down to $10 Sealed tournaments with full prizes before Comix Zone cried “uncle” and canceled its tournaments altogether. Adam Barnello also told me a story about how Comix Zone’s Constructed tournaments became a shark’s den after a while—all the good players played at Comix Zone in a desperate attempt to find an alternative to Altered States, and they kept just taking each other’s money on an almost rotating basis while the less competitive players stayed at Altered States because they didn’t know the history of Altered States’s relationship with its players (akin to the relationship between the pusher and Jack Nicholson in that one movie) and thus didn’t know any better. This kept happening until the players at Comix Zone slowly trickled out, one by one, and went back to Altered States for the easy money.

A similar situation is happening now with Cloud City as the offending competitor. Altered States has slashed the price of its FNM down to $3, while keeping their prize support the exact same, under the guise of a Holiday special for the month of December. They did not do this last December. Altered States also dropped the price of its weekly Draft from $15 down to $13. It’s not quite as egregious as Starbucks buying the mortgage of small-business coffee shops from the bank and screwing them over that way, but it’s still something.

The guy who takes care of the Magic side of Cloud City is named Aaron. He organizes play-testing and rides to PTQs, and he gives out Cloud City shirts that people can wear at PTQs. The players wearing the shirts are mostly newer players, but it’s not about judgment; it’s just Aaron taking in loyal customers and trying to make them better at Magic. I like this. After I made Top 8 in that PTQ, Aaron handed me a Cloud City play mat and told me to just keep it. In contrast, Altered States has had a lot of players playing there for a while, handing over their money week after week, but there’ve been no rides to PTQs organized by the store and no play mats or shirts given to regulars. I’m hoping that Aaron’s giving back to the community will be seen by the people who choose to save $2 and play at Altered States instead, but I don’t know. It’s strange to observe something over and over, only for it to happen again and have people fall into the exact same patterns they did before, despite knowing how it’ll all end (not optimally).

Last Friday, I played this R/U/G list, which was made famous by JohnnyHotSauce on Magic Online.

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

2 Daybreak Ranger

4 Delver of Secrets

4 Mayor of Avabruck

4 Snapcaster Mage

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

2 Dissipate

2 Gut Shot

3 Desperate Ravings

3 Vapor Snag

4 Mana Leak

2 Green Sun's Zenith

3 Gitaxian Probe

4 Ponder

[/Spells]

[Lands]

2 Forest

8 Island

2 Rootbound Crag

3 Sulfur Falls

4 Copperline Gorge

4 Hinterland Harbor

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

3 Arc Trail

1 Daybreak Ranger

3 Flashfreeze

3 Naturalize

2 Negate

1 Sword of Feast and Famine

1 Thrun, the Last Troll

1 Tree of Redemption

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

I thought it was cute. Mayor of Avabruck and Daybreak Ranger seemed so obvious after looking at that list; they do pretty good Tarmogoyf impressions.

Round One – Ed Brown

Ed is a nice guy whom I’ve played a couple times before. He’s playing G/W/b.

Game 1 is the first of many games (okay, every game) that I wish I’m playing the U/R tempo deck with a shitload of burn. Okay, I wish I could play that deck every week because it’s awesome. In the dark, Ed keeps Forest, three Avacyn's Pilgrim, Llanowar Elf, Birds of Paradise, and a Primeval Titan. I have a reasonable draw with a Mayor of Avabruck that’s never able to transform, thanks to his constant stream of dudes. I’m able to Mana Leak the first Primeval Titan, but I’m mana-flooded and can’t draw out of it before he hits the second Primeval Titan.

Game 2 comes down to a weird board position in which he has two Nightfall Predators and a Steel Hellkite, and I have Nightfall Predator and Howlpack Alpha. Instead of just attacking with Steel Hellkite and wrecking me that way, Ed instead goes to fight my Howlpack Alpha. I respond by fighting his Steel Hellkite, and then I Gut Shot the Nightfall Predator that fights the Howlpack Alpha. When his remaining man, a Nightfall Predator, attacks, I let it through, going to 11, and then I Vapor Snag it during my end step and counter it on its way back down.

From there, we kind of exhaust each other’s resources for a while, but I’m able to get the better of him because I’m running Snapcaster Mage and he’s not.

The interaction of Snapcaster Mage against transform cards turns out to be a cool interaction in this match. It didn’t make my deck very synergistic, but it’s still fun to be able to transform his guys, too, and it’s a cool interaction. I have a feeling R&D expected people to figure out how good transform cards were much earlier, especially in the case of Mayor of Avabruck and Daybreak Ranger, and designed Snapcaster Mage as a card for control decks to be able to handle them.

At the end of the game, I have two Snapcaster Mages in play against his Daybreak Ranger, and I attack. He declines to block and falls to 9. He has no cards in hand (he’s just been playing all the lands he draws) while I have one card, which is a Mayor of Avabruck that I play in order to keep my ground presence strong and to serve as a backup in case he transforms his Daybreak Ranger.

Ed rips Unburial Rites, and he casts it targeting Steel Hellkite.

Having not seen Steel Hellkite in Game 1, I didn’t know to bring in Ancient Grudge, so I have to pay for running Vapor Snags.

I draw land and get rocked.

Round Two – Ryan Sullivan

Ryan and I actually went to high school together. We even had the same babysitter before preschool, so, yeah, we’ve known each other a while. He’s trying to get a job in Syracuse, and once he does, he’ll be moving into my apartment with my girlfriend and me. He knows all about the column and played Magic when we were both in high school. Like all my friends from high school, Ryan dropped the game upon graduating; I was the only one out of all of us to stick with it against all logic and reason.

Since I’m obligated to play Magic every Friday night, Ryan said he’d join me, and he told me to build him a control deck. This is what I built him, and this is what I played against.

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

1 Consecrated Sphinx

1 Grave Titan

4 Snapcaster Mage

1 Wurmcoil Engine

3 Solemn Simulacrum

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

2 Liliana of the Veil

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

1 Doom Blade

1 Wring Flesh

2 Disperse

2 Dissipate

1 Go for the Throat

4 Forbidden Alchemy

4 Mana Leak

2 Black Sun's Zenith

3 Memoricide

1 Batterskull

[/Spells]

[Lands]

8 Island

8 Swamp

3 Ghost Quarter

4 Darkslick Shores

4 Drowned Catacomb

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

4 Spellskite

4 Ratchet Bomb

2 Dissipate

1 Wring Flesh

1 Go for the Throat

1 Black Sun's Zenith

1 Geth's Verdict

1 Liliana of the Veil

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

I like that deck a lot, although it depends heavily on knowing what the opponent is playing; the main-deck Memoricide might be a little outdated, especially if Wolf Run continues to not be any good. As it stands, I probably should’ve switched those three Memoricides for almost anything else; Ryan is just coming back to the game and had no idea what to name . . . ever.

Games 1 and 3 play out almost identically—I’m able to Gitaxian Probe early, see that he has no countermagic, and safely run out Daybreak Ranger, transform it, and protect it with Mana Leaks. I don’t really remember Game 2 as much; he went first, had a lot of counters for all my stuff, attritioned me out, and won a thirty-minute game with a pair of Solemn Simulacrums.

Round Three – Zach Murphy

Zach was playing mono-Black infect. My only notes for Game 1 are, “Drew three Snapcaster Mages.”

Game 2 I thought I had won; I attack him unmolested for four turns straight with a lone Snapcaster Mage while I Gut Shot all his guys. If you’ve never responded to a Whispering Specter trying to wear a Lashwrithe with a Gut Shot when you’re tapped out, I highly recommend it. However, 12 is the lowest he gets down to, because he draws removal for the rest of the guys I play all game, and he follows it up with Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, and the only ways I have to deal with that in my seventy-five are Mana Leak and Vapor Snag. I have neither.

Game 3 is just a bummer; I have an early Nightfall Predator that’s forced to fight a Phyrexian Crusader. Those Mirrodin Besieged Crusaders are fucking awesome. When I don’t follow my Nightfall Predator up with anything on my turn, he plays a Phyrexian Vatmother to try to bait the Mana Leak that I don’t have. I cast Desperate Ravings in an effort to dig, but he follows up his Phyrexian Vatmother with Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, and I just lose.

Just like with Legacy R/U/G, being outclassed by creatures is a real concern. Over the weekend, I played R/U/G in a Legacy event at Jupiter Games in Johnson City, and while I got rocked by a couple decks that I should’ve beaten (Goblins and Delver Bant) thanks to some loose play, I played against a G/W Maverick deck, and there was absolutely nothing I could ever do against a resolved Knight of the Reliquary. If it’s bigger than a Tarmogoyf, I’m probably dead to it. At least in Legacy, you can bring in Submerge. There is no Submerge in Standard, and if the creatures are bigger than a Nightfall Predator, you’d better have the Mana Leak for it or it’s gonna torch your ass.

Round Four – Adam Trumble

Adam’s a nice dude who’s also a regular at Cloud City. He and his roommate are always really nice to me, and they always ask, “So, Jon, whatcha playin’ this week?” which is nice because no other regulars ever even read this unless I post links on Facebook. Tonight, Adam’s playing the Honey Badger reanimator deck I played a few weeks ago.

I kick off Game 1 by mulling to six; Adam tanks and eventually decides to keep. I like it a lot when people agonize over whether to keep because that usually means it’s a loose hand, and I usually win those games. As it stands, he gets mana screwed, and I keep him off Merfolk Looter. I played a Daybreak Ranger, and to keep it from transforming, he plays a Phantasmal Image, copying my Daybreak Ranger. I don’t do anything on my turn, and I get a Nightfall Predator while he keeps his 2/2.

At this point, I’m able to Gitaxian Probe, and his hand is all 6- and 7-drops. An Insectile Aberration eventually teams up with the Nightfall Predator to beat him down while I counter all his 6-mana spells.

For all its flaws, one of the nicer things about this deck is that you can start out with a curve of guys and never have to worry about something stupid like Day of Judgment because of your Mana Leaks. It’s important to take advantage of this if you end up deciding to play with this deck. For Game 2, I keep a loose hand on the draw—three Delver of Secrets, two Mana Leaks, Gut Shot, and a Sulfur Falls.

Of course, I rip the Island.

Island, Delver of Secrets, go.

Land, Merfolk Looter.

Take 2 and shoot that shit in your end step. Untap, trigger, brick, draw, attack for 1, Sulfur Falls, Delver of Secrets, Delver of Secrets, go.

Adam reels back in his chair. This is clearly not what he signed up for. He plays a third land and passes.

Untap, upkeep, trigger. Reveal Gut Shot number two. Cue opponent’s groan.

“HEY-OOOOOO!” Yeah, I’m not the pinnacle of sportsmanship in this game. My notes say it all:

Transform, transform, transform, swing for 9.

“Dream Twist?” He fills his graveyard with irrelevant stuff. “Flash back Dream Twist?”

I vehemently yell, “WHOO-HOO!” when he hits a Day of Judgment, and he laughs. That’s the nice thing about the 1–2 bracket: Everyone stops taking themselves so damn seriously.

Because I am calling a lot of attention to myself at this point, people start to come over to see what the big deal is, and they walk away chuckling when they see three Insectile Aberrations on my side. I feel bad at this point and quietly let Adam know that I have the Mana Leak even if he does have the Day of Judgment. He tells me he doesn’t have it anyway and shakes my hand.

Would I recommend this deck? Uhh . . . probably not. It’s good against control, but there are other decks that are good against control, too, and that don’t just roll over to creatures bigger than 4/4. Here’s the deck I’m on right now in Standard:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

2 Chandra's Phoenix

2 Grim Lavamancer

2 Stromkirk Noble

3 Snapcaster Mage

4 Delver of Secrets

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

1 Negate

2 Desperate Ravings

2 Vapor Snag

4 Brimstone Volley

4 Galvanic Blast

4 Incinerate

4 Mana Leak

4 Ponder

[/Spells]

[Lands]

9 Island

9 Mountain

4 Sulfur Falls

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

4 Manic Vandal

3 Flashfreeze

1 Snapcaster Mage

3 Arc Trail

2 Stromkirk Noble

2 Vulshok Refugee

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

It’s obvious from this list that I value being able to go over the top much more than the recent U/R decks that have been popping up do; the main deck is about two cards off from the deck that won SCG: Vegas, while the sideboard is pretty different, featuring four Manic Vandals, because the only card that really beats the deck is Spellskite, and I like Uktabi Orangutan better than Dismember any day. Vulshok Refugee looks especially spicy if mono-Red continues to rise, and the throw-fire-at-his-face plan stays intact. Gut Shot is a cute card, but if we’re trying to preserve the game plan of sending burn to the dome as a win condition, we just can’t realistically play it.

I cut the Negates from the ’board altogether. Still not sure if that’s right.

Desperate Ravings isn’t a card I’ve actually played with in this deck, but it served me well in this R/U/G deck, often smoothing out my draws and keeping me gassed up, so I figured I’d give it a shot here. However, I did have a dream in which I replaced them with Solemn Simulacrums. Maybe that’s worth a shot. (I don’t actually think that’s worth a shot.) See you next week.

Jon Corpora

Pronounced Ca-pora for fuck’s sake

@feb31st