I loves me some Squee. Click on the picture for the full-sized version. ;-)
I think Squee is my all-time favorite Johnny card in Magic. In the evil paper Magic world, I have for of the original version of the card, all in foil and about another 20 or so in good old non-foil goodness. Every time I see a new expansion, I always look for cards I can abuse with Squee for my casual Squee decks.
Of course, in Shadowmoor they've given me a really nice Squee-outlet tool in Knollspine Invocation. So, I decided to spend the month's $15 to get a set of Squee, Goblin of Coolness and some cards that might help to make a good deck.
(Shameless plug: Actually $17.44 for playsets of Squee, Mind Stone, Firespout, Knollspine Invocation, and a few more cards from the wonderful folks at MTGO Traders, who offer good prices and a PayPal discount!)
In my humble opinion, any card that says "Discard a card" to get an effect is a card that Squee was built for. In paper, my all-time favorite casual deck was a highlander deck built around Squee. Of course, I cheated the Highlander rules by playing 1 Regular Squee, 1 Foil Squee, 1 Autographed Squee, and one Personalized (hand-painted by a good friend of mine with talent) Squee. The deck featured all kinds of the original spellshapers and other discarding for effect cards like Balduvian Horde and Null Brooch. It was one of those decks that people never really minded playing against, and played differently every time you played it based on who you were playing and what you drew in that particular game.
Anyway, with that in mind -- I'm going to spend the next couple of posts building the best budget Squee deck I can in MTGO. Granted, Squee is a touch stiff pricewise at around two tickets each, but he's a great utility card to have fun with in MTGO.
Here's where you the loyal reader come in. See the poll to the right? Help me pick the base of my new casual Squee deck. Red's a given, since I know I plan to use Knollspine Inquisition for the main kill mechanism of the deck (at least for now) -- but other than that, what works best? Straight Red? Blue/Red with lots of drawing effects? A White/Red defensive build? Green/Red agro or mana-acceleration Squee? Maybe an evil Black/Red Squee abomination?
Just remember, the deck's being built for the casual room -- not a tourney. I hope to stay away from too many things that casual players find annoying, specifically Land Destruction, Counters or Discard. A certain amount of burn is unavoidable in a base-red deck, but not all burn, okay? A couple of those in the deck might be okay, but if there's too many -- that might not be as fun as possible for the folks playing against me. It's okay, I don't mind losing -- I just want the deck to have a chance to win, and generally be fun to play.
So, vote. And after that, e-mail, post or catch me in game to give me some ideas. I want to have some fun with my little red recurring friend this month -- and I think that's a cheap way to play MTGO on a budget!
Later,
Don!
