hey lua what decks do phoenix aceattorney and miles aceattorney play in magic
PHOENIX WRIGHT
once upon a time, a friend bullied me into going to a Pro Tour Qualifier, which was probably the largest Magic tournament i’d ever been to at that time, right?
i was happy to be bullied, to be clear, but the problem was… i hadn’t played standard-format Magic competitively in about 2-3 years. so my knowledge of the current metagame, what deck archetypes were popular, and what the current cards even were, was staggeringly limited.
“it will be fine,” said my friend. “here, take this spare deck i built. it’s super-straightforward and easy,” he lied.
he said this to me approx. 8 seconds before the first round began, so uhhhhh, i sure was playing a game of magical cards without ever having even looked at the damn deck before!
so, lo, literally in the course of playing the deck, i was learning how this shit was supposed to work. “oh!” i’d exclaim with delight, halfway through my turn. “THAT’S how those two cards are supposed to interact. oh that’s super clever. what a neat combo.” and then i’d proceed to shiftily look at my opponent over my cards, riffle those cards a lil bit, and then say “pass” with as much of an enigmatic vibe as i could muster.
meanwhile, my opponent was Actually Prepared, and they were Trying To Win, and they were pissed. they threatened to call Slow Play on me because i was taking so fucking long reading all the cards. as in, he literally called a judge over, who stood there watching me the whole time, in order to determine if i was being Criminally Bad At Magic versus just A Regular Amount Of Bad At Magic, and i was sweating bullets the whole time because i didn’t know this deck or their deck or any of those cards and AHHHH why is the judge staring at me!!!
….which only served to make it EXTRA-humiliating for this poor fuck when i proceeded to eviscerate them 2-0. hahahah get dunked onnnnnnnn nerd!!!
and then i also proceeded to eviscerate my next opponent???
sheer dumb luck. i cannot overstate how ill-prepared i was for this tournament. i absolutely did not deserve these wins.
meanwhile the friend who gave me the deck was having a much worse time with their deck, and they were like “what the fuck. you weren’t supposed to win. how are you winning with that shit, my deck’s so much better than yours”
anyway. i think that’s the kind of scenario Phoenix would get into if he were an MtG player. dude Gets Himself Into Situations And Then Uses Cleverness + Bullshit + Luck To Get Out Again.
(AA4-era Phoenix seems like he’s doing the same thing… but, in reality, he’s actually been meticulously crafting his deck in secret for the past six months. he’s not even aiming to win the tournament, he’s just exploiting a known weakness in the opponent-matching system that lets him know with certainty who he’s going to get matched up against (spoiler: first round is Kristoph), and he’s hyper-optimizing his deck to beat Literally Only Those People. meanwhile, Apollo, who built a tryhard hyper-optimized variant of Red Deck Wins, is lowkey annoyed that Phoenix's seemingly-random pile keeps vaulting him just one table above him in the standings, because Apollo knows his deck is better. he knows it!!!! just let him go 1v1 and prove it aaaaughhhh!!!)
((also, in case you want Actual Concrete Cards And Colors And Stuff: in general i think Phoenix prefers limited play (draft, sealed, "anything where you open booster packs on the spot & throw a deck together") to constructed play, because he doesn't like being tied down to any one game plan. when he does play constructed, i think he's less attached to a specific colors and more attached to specific mechanics. in particular: he's not a combo player exactly, but he likes mechanics that feel like bullshit. dude saw Madness for the first time & his eyes lit up & he was in LOVE, "you mean i'm discarding the card but then i can cast it for free??? hell YES." he absolutely ran a poison counter deck during New Phyrexia. ah fuck i just realized he was probably a huge stan for noted awful expansion Battle for Zendikar, i think i gotta cancel him now, sorry))
((and i think Phoenix also has a touch of Timmy in him! like, i went to a huge state tournament once with a bunch of really skilled players, and there was this one dude in our car who had a really solid deck, clearly adhered to a lot of the trends in the meta at the time... but his win condition was a Shivan Dragon. which wasn't a bad card at the time, it was a reasonable win condition, but it was... slightly suboptimal? not at all the obvious pick? sort of random? and multiple people asked him "why is that your win condition" & he shrugged and said "i like dragons." so the dragon stayed & that dude ended up getting second place in the whole tournament so FUCK optimal play, bring a dragon. i think Phoenix would sneak in a dragon now and again. just 'cause))
MILES EDGEWORTH
this one is trickier!!!
young!Miles is just going to play Whatever The Meta Deems To Be The Best Deck, right. the von Karma perfection thing and all. it's all very boring & micro-optimized to be the Best Deck Of Its Kind & he pours over the results of the big name tournaments week after week & does some math or whatever to hyper-optimize his own build of the Obviously Correct Deck. there is no soul in any of this, purely Executing On A Formula.
...but then he experiences Character Growth & has his big gay crisis & now he has to pick up the game again. he opens the latest tournament results... clicks around some win % stats for various cards in a desultory kinda way, and... his heart's just not in it, right?
enter 2-4 era Miles. 2-4 era Miles is playing some utterly unhinged Five Color Good Stuff thing. there's a lot of Planar Chaos cards in there, because that whole set was about Weird Shit & cards doing Stuff You're Familiar With (But In The Utterly Wrong Color!!!) & all that is resonating with Miles more than he'd care to admit. he cannot possibly talk about his unnecessary feelings but he can make a weird noise rock album about them. and by noise rock album i mean this fucking Magic deck.
and he's playing this deck with a 100% straight face, as though this is the exact same behavior that won him the Junior Super Series five years in a row & not a desperate cry for help from a madman. everyone else is like Miles... are you playing fucking singletons... in a fucking standard deck... you know your deck will be more consistent with four-ofs right... and then he gives a cool fish-eyed stare & taps out to cast some arcane bullshit legendary creature & gives a single rap of his knuckles against the table to indicate that he's passing the turn.
and it works, is the thing! all those years of training to be the Spikiest Spike Ever have paid off; this Five Color Good Stuff thing relies on some pretty clever insights to make the mana base work, and parts of what he's doing eventually get adopted by the larger metagame to become an Actual Serious Deck. but, like. it's still a monstrosity. any skilled players watching are still definitely wondering Are You Okay, Dude.
after 2-4, i think Miles settles back into playing something more normal. he still cares about winning, but he's going to do it with a touch of class. he wants a game that involves dialogue, some actual back-and-forth, because just trying to combo off is lame coward behavior.
aw yeah baby we're talking counterspells!!!
he's a blue player at heart & he's happiest when he's updating the autopsy report shutting down whatever his opponent's plan is. he'll splash other colors as the occasion calls for it, but he'd be happy running mono-blue the rest of his life. like, i ran a pretty fun Legacy deck back in the day which consisted of:
every kind of counterspell i could get my hands on,
propaganda because FUCK creatures,
thieving magpies for the card draw,
and a few silver wyverns to, y'know, actually win the game
...and i think Miles would appreciate that deck. just play counterspells until the opponent runs out of steam & then cruise your way to victory with a couple birds. simple. elegant. classic. doesn't involve any of this modern Planeswalker bullshit (Miles regards most developments that happened to MtG post-Time Spiral block or so as affronts to game design).
(i do think Miles has a secret fondness for sagas as a card type, however. they remind him of all that Character Growth, but in an abstract/subconscious/nonthreatening way. too bad most of them are a bit of poor match for the kinds of decks he likes to play)
FINALLY: i think Miles hates playing Commander with every fiber of his being & Phoenix loves it & this is a pretty serious point of contention in their relationship. poor dudes
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sit with you in the trenches
Steddie Week / Day 4: Hurt/Comfort ( @steddie-week )
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Eddie paces around the small living room. All the lights are open, every single one. It’s the only thing that gives him comfort.
The television is murmuring softly in the background. The man is still going on and on about the names of the victims of the fire.
Eddie wrangles his hands, waiting to hear the worst news of his life.
“Hanes. Hanewood. Hawork.”
Eddie pulls on his hair, a breath of relief caught on his lungs.
No Harrington. Steve’s fine. He’s just late. A day late. His “stickler for a schedule” boyfriend has been missing for a day and Eddie can’t even do anything. Can’t do anything because if he does anything it would raise questions.
There’s a crunch of gravel outside that makes Eddie jump, immediately opening the trailer door. There it is. The beamer.
Eddie freezes on his spot, a sound in between a sob and a cheer escaping his mouth. He watches as Steve comes out of the car, but the side door also opens, and— who?— Eddie squints. Robin Buckley comes out.
“Hey, Eds.” Steve greets him, his voice cracks, as soon as the lights hit him. Eddie gasps.
Steve’s face is swollen. Swollen is saying it lightly. His left eye is swollen shut, his lips busted. He’s still wearing the damn Scoops Ahoy uniform.
“Oh my god, swe— Steve.” Eddie pulls the door open, but his eyes stray to Robin who’s glued beside his boyfriend’s side.
Steve pulls her closer, “Eddie, you know Robin, right?”
“Yes.” Eddie trails slowly.
“We were in the fire together and she didn’t want to leave my side. But then, I wanted to go see you.” Steve says, “She’s safe.”
Robin nods earnestly, “I am a lesbian.”
“Oh.” Eddie whispers, blinking before saying, “Oh. Come in, come in.”
He opens the door wider for the two of them. They both stumble inside the trailer like conjoined twins, falling immediately on the couch.
“What happened, sweetheart?” Eddie asks, though he is afraid to hear the answer.
“There was a fire.” Steve answers, “I saved Robin and a few other people. Hence… my face.”
He moves to get an ice pack for his face and blanket for Robin. Eddie doesn’t fully believe it, but it doesn’t really matter right now.
He’ll ask tomorrow and Steve will tell him the same thing. Eddie will learn the truth by himself, in a few more months, a floating cheerleader in front of him.
“Here,” Eddie sits beside him, putting the ice on his boyfriend’s eye, “Robin, do you need anything?”
Robin stares at him with owlish eyes. So different from the girl he had band practices with. He always had his inkling that she might be one of them, but he never thought he'd find out this way.
She shakes her head slowly, accepting the blanket and wrapping it around her arms, “No. This is good enough. Thank you for letting me stay."
They all sit in silence for what could’ve been hours, and Eddie doesn’t really believe in God, but he thanks some kind of deity for letting his boyfriend come home safely.
“I am sorry.” Steve breaks the silence a few minutes later, taking the ice off his eye.
“For what?”
“For being late. For making you worry.” Steve says. Eddie turns to Robin to check on her, but she’s dead asleep on Steve’s lap.
“Does she know we’re dating?” Eddie asks.
Steve smiles shyly, “Yeah. It was a big bonding moment. She thought I was talking about her, leading to her coming out to me and then I told her about my wonderful, metalhead boyfriend.”
Eddie smiles, brushing his hand through Steve’s hair as he lays on his side with a sigh of relief.
“You did good, baby. You just adopted your first lesbian.” Eddie jokes, making Steve crack a smile.
“Does anything hurt? Why didn’t you go to the hospital?” Eddie asks.
“No.” Steve says immediately, like he hates the prospect of going to the hospital, “I just— I just wanted— wanted to see you. I know if I went then you won’t be able to come.”
Eddie smiles fondly, “Alright, Stevie. Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you guys wake up.”
Steve hums in response, but he’s already drifting into sleep, falling deeper into Eddie’s arms.
Eddie kisses the crown of his head, pulling him closer to him. The relief of having Steve here beside him, safe and alive, is something he will never take for granted again.
Tomorrow, Eddie will shower him (and Robin) with love and care. But right now, he tightens his embrace around him and let’s the relief sweep him off his feet.
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