This Friday I took my Goblin deck out to the local Friday Night Magic, and battled it out over the course of four rounds. Here's the report.
First off, living where I am (Park Falls, WI), the local FNM is an hour away in Ashland, WI. It's a new store, opened up a couple months ago, granting a great improvement over the 2-3 hours I'd drive previously. Hopefully that means I'll be able to attend more often. But anyways, goblins. On to the list!
4 Goblin Guide
2 Quest for the Goblin lord
1 Forked bolt
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Dragon Fodder
4 Warren Instigator
1 Ember Hauler
3 Searing Blaze
4 Goblin Chieftain
2 Staggershock
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
2 Siege Gang Commander
2 Teetering Peaks
3 Smoldering Spires
1 Tectonic Edge
18 Mountain
It's a red deck wins, with goblin flavoring. It's very fast, aggressive and surprisingly powerful. But if you're making an aggressive deck like that, don't you want mostly four ofs? So why all the odd numbers? I'm a bit embarrassed to say this, but it's a card availability issue. I haven't been buying most of the cards I've wanted to in the past year, and so I don't have a lot of the commons and uncommons I'd like. For example, I'm pretty sure I could do with more taplands. Their effects are pretty powerful. Not sure I want the full eight but I might. The presence of playsets of the rares and mythics might give the lie to this statement, but I make sure to trade into new, good goblins when they're printed. But anyways, let's get into the cards one by one.
4 Goblin Guide
This guy is good. Really good. Dropping him turn one on the play is easily good for six damage when they're getting their taplands or mana elves online. Later in the game he's still decent with haste and the possibility of pump. His drawback isn't as terrible as I initially thought; you generate enough tempo by swinging with him that the card advantage is less relevant. And hey, if he draws them out of a mana screw you're officially playing a more fun game of magic because of it.
2 Quest for the Goblin Lord
Only own two of these. I'm still not sure about this card, I haven't played the deck nearly enough to decide if the effect is too powerful or too slow. Sometimes it just never seems to get above three counters, and other times it makes an already decent horde into a impressive strike force. It's one of the cards that makes Dragon Fodder playable, so perhaps it'll get better or worse as I acquire other cards as well.
4 Lightning Bolt
What's that? Some of the best burn in a deck that tries to win quickly? I don't think I've ever heard anyone propose that before. Genius!
1 Forked Bolt
Should be a Searing Blaze, I think. Still a decent spell in it's own right, especially if they're playing out mana elves.
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
Now this guy is amazing. Despite his converted mana cost, he's actually a two drop, regardless. Even in a hand with six mountains he does more damage if you kick him on turn two than if you just play him out turn one. He acts as one turn of a lord effect, he gives everything haste, so he's also great on turn four next to a dragon fodder or ember hauler or warren instigator. He goes a long way towards making you feel like you're playing with 30 haste creatures, which is a great feeling let me tell you.
4 Dragon fodder
Once I start getting more of the other playables, I'll probably end up cutting this card out. It's got it's high points; it interacts well with all the lord effects. one Bushwhacker or Chieftain is enough to make these guys into respectable damage, and it certainly helps to get quest for the goblin lord online, and yet every time I look at it I wish it was Mogg War Marshal. Sigh. Still, getting two guys for two mana makes him pretty resilient to removal spells; they've got a wrath or pyroclasm effect or nothing.
4 Warren Instigator
Now this guy is nuts. I mean, everybody and their mother looked at him and thought "Not as good as goblin lackey", but Goblin Lackey is pretty darn good. As it turns out, this guy can be pretty good while still not being Lackey. Moreso than just the whole drop goblins into play thing, double strike is a very powerful ability, especially on a two mana guy. Given the ten lord effects I'm running and the Teetering Peaks, he often gets in for more than just two damage.
1 Ember Hauler
Double mogg fanatic? Sort of. As good as two mogg fanatics? Maybe. Just being a bear with the goblin type on him is decent in the deck, and being able to shock creatures at will is a useful ability. I expect he'll also do a number on opposing planeswalkers, which is a great thing to look for in a creature. Unfortunately, as a one of he didn't come up very frequently, and none of my opponents ran much in the way of planeswalkers, so I didn't get much opportunity to evaluate him. Once I crack some more M11 I expect I'll get the other 3.
3 Searing Blaze
That's right, I haven't been doing enough to crack myself a playset of Jace, the Mind Sculpter. Searing blaze has a significant drawback in that you need to play a land in order to get the most use out of it. So it's mostly a sorcery. That said, it worked wonders for me all night, clearing blockers and letting my goblin guides get in another two damage. And three damage to the player? For only two mana? Are you kidding me?
4 Goblin Chieftain
This guy is also really, really awesome. 1) He gives all your goblins +1/+1. That dragon fodder looks a lot better next to it. So does instigator and his double strike. 2) he gives everybody haste. On turns four and five that's significant if you're dropping your dragon fodders or siege gang commanders. 3) He himself has haste. No matter how clear your board is you can topdeck him and clock your opponent for two, threatening more on the next turn if you topdeck literally any creature in the deck.
2 Staggershock
This card I'm on the fence about. On the one hand, it's 4 points of burn for only 3 mana. Char and Flame Javelin were both excellent cards, so why not this? Well, staggering the damage out over two turns is less effective when you're trying to burn down their creatures and get your guys through. It's fine when you need to clear out a Wall of Omens after it blocks, but if they've got anything with power as well you're trading a card and a half to kill their guy, which isn't a good place to be. It does go well to their face (or their Jace), as those don't lose damage with the simple passage of a turn.
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
Could've used three more. As a 2/1 haste goblin for 3, he isn't bad. At four mana though, what with killing one of their nonbasics he's got the potential to be much better. While I'm not expecting to actively mana or color screw my opponent with this, it does set their gameplan back by a turn, whether that's laying a Sarkhan the Mad or a Sphinx of Jwar Isle. Either way, I'd prefer to lay some cheap dudes early and kill them before the game gets that far.
2 Siege Gang Commander
Another insane character. So sad that he's rotating in three months. Anyways, beyond the fact that he gets you four bodies for five mana, and that he lets you fling your team at those who would oppose you, this guy also interacts well with a goblin chieftan the turn before or a quest for the goblin lord; finishing the quest and making an impressive strike force with the boost. Oh, and did I mention being able to drop him with Instigator on turn 3?
1 Tectonic Edge
Again with the slowing down the opponent, although I'd prefer more ruinblasters to more edges. The edge makes colorless, which leaves you more vulnerable to Spreading Seas (the deck is mono colored, but most of the spells cost RR. Bushwhacker, Chieftain, Searing Blaze, Siege gang, so on.). It also is worse if you get an on curve hand.
2 Teetering Peaks
Worked out very well for me. Yeah, it's sorcery speed pump, but that comes with some pretty good stuff. Stick it on an instigator for four damage. Stick it on a dragon fodder token and force them to use their removal on it instead of your Chieftain, or take two damage. Very playable on turn three since the deck has many more two drop creatures than three drops.
3 Smoldering Spires
Makes a creature unblockable? Nice. Again, very good on turn three, especially with an instigator on the table. Why yes I'd like free goblins. I don't like including taplands in aggressive builds, but in this case I think the extra damage they offer justifies it. Not sure about playing with the full eight though.
18 Mountains
Dave Price tells me this is the best card in Magic. Who are you to argue with Dave Price?
So those are the cards. Allow me to lay out a couple lines of play with the deck; hands that came up when I was playing it.
Turn 2: Warren instigator. Turn three, Smoldering Spires making his creature unable to block, Goblin Bushwhacker. Swing in. On first strike damage, drop a goblin chieftain, pumping both attacking creatures. You do a total of eight damage on turn three, you can easily make that lethal on turn four.
Or Turn 3 Goblin Chieftain. Turn Four Dragon Fodder, Dragon Fodder, swing in for ten. That's only three cards!
Or one game, off a mull to five, on the draw: Turn two Instigator, Turn three bolt his Hypnotic Specter, use Instigator's ability to drop for free Siege Gang commander and Siege Gang commander. That got a concession.
Or one game, turn one quest, turn two bushwhacker, burned out. Turn three bushwhacker, burned out. Turn four Goblin chieftain, turn five Goblin Chieftan, Goblin Bushwhacker, activating the Quest. Swing in with three 6/3 goblins.
Quite literally more than half the creatures in the deck have haste, and more than half of that more than half give your other creatures haste. The deck can drop a nasty hand even after a board sweeper with just one or two cards, and hit you with it before you get a chance to untap. It'll steamroll you before you get a chance to do anything, unless you come out fighting and fighting hard. It's a real joy to play.
Showing posts with label Decks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Decks. Show all posts
Monday, July 26, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Rebuilding Raksha, Golden Cub
This is another EDH deck that could use some retuning. This one has Raksha Golden Cub as the general. If you don't remember it in "Decks that I once loved (I and II)" it's because it was properly put away, not cluttering up my desk. It's mono white. Let's go over what's already in it, this time sorted by mana cost.
Lands: 38
That's a bit low; I don't have the artifact acceleration like in my Progenitus deck, and this one still curves up to nine mana spells. If I recall correctly, the main complaint I had with the deck before shelving it was that I never actually got to cast Akroma. The fact that I was running a mana light deck might explain all that.
Darksteel Citadel: Perfectly fine in a monocolored deck. There are a lot of board sweepers played in EDH, a few of which will also kill off the occasional land. Being indestructible means I still have one mana after the meltdown. Nice, even if it doesn't matter that much.
Windbrisk Heights: Let's see, the engine that powered a standard deck for two years? Good if I've got a way to attack with three creatures. I have? Excellent.
Terrain Generator: I like this card in a deck with mostly basics.
Urza's Factory: For T,7 I can make a 2/2 token. Yeah, it was an important 1 of in the Teachings matchup in Time Spiral Block Constructed, but it is a slow kill condition.
Forbidding watchtower: And here's one that's even slower.
New Benalia: I guess scry 1 is nice?
Secluded Steppes, Drifting Meadows: Cycling is good. I like lands that cycle.
30 Plains: More interesting than your standard plains, actually. Contained within this stack of lands is one of the decks we prototyped for a playtest of one of our Awesome Games. So a number of these sleeves contain a basic plains as well as a bit of paper with other rules text on it:
Blue Card
Look Ma, I'm on TV! An appearance on a friendly news show does wonders for your organization.
Gain 3 media.
When it became apparent that I didn't have enough sleeves on hand to have both a playtest game and an EDH deck I went with both. Anyways, back to the matter at hand.
1 drops:
Skullclamp: What can I say about skullclamp that hasn't been said already? Quite a bit, actually. Skullclamp is good because it trades one sort of resource for another. It trades creatures in play for cards in hand. Cards like that are dangerous because you have to be very accurate with the rate. If you don't make the rate punishing enough then the card is broken and bad things happen. If you make it too punishing then nobody plays with it. Clamp was printed too much on the broken side of things. So if it's broken enough to be unfun, why am I playing it?
Two reasons: First off, this sort of card is extremely skilltesting. Yeah, you can get by off of power alone, but if you're really good you'll do a lot better with it than you would as a mediocre player. Randy Buehler famously said that Necropotence made him good; learning exactly how much life to trade for cards made Buehler the powerhouse that he was. The second reason was that I wasn't playing when the clamp was legal. Insanely broken card? Let me in on the action!
Viridian Longbow: Aside from the clamp this deck runs an equipment theme. Viridian Longbow is one of the weaker members. If I want to kill creatures I've got wrath effecs. If I want to kill players I'm usually better off attacking. (Yeah, those two excuses don't go together that well, I know.)
Bonesplitter: Equipment theme. You read the text box on Raksha Golden Cub? Vigilance, As long as Raksha is equipped, cats you control get +2/+2 and gain doublestrike. I want equipment around to stick on her so my other cats get huge. Not that I have many other cats in here as of this update.
Soul Warden: Classic Multiplayer one drop. Gains a lot of life. Expecially if you put it in a deck like this, which has a strong token theme. (This deck has a strong token theme).
Weathered Wayfarer: This guy is good; great at getting you more lands. He even gets nonbasics. Y'know, when I really need that Forbidding Watchtower. Anyways, I'm still leery about putting in too many search effects. This is one.
2 drops:
Jotun Grunt: hoses the occasional graveyard. Not nearly as effective as I'd like.
Cloak and Dagger: +2/0 and Shroud. No rogues though.
Knight of the White Orchid: Another good land search. That's two.
Auriok Steelshaper: Makes things cheaper to equip, pumps knights and soldiers of which there are plenty. (All three of my two drop creatures, for example.)
Veteran's Armaments: Gives a massive pump to one creature in a swarm. Also equips free to soldiers, like that steelshaper.
Lightning Greaves: A prince among equipment. More than once I had this and Armaments in play come turn seven. Play Raksha, Equip armaments for free, then equip Lightning greaves. Swing in with a 6/7 doublestrike vigilance shroud haste creature. That deals general damage. Good times.
Planar Collapse: A wrath effect for two mana? Sure I have to wait a turn and sure there have to be enough targets for it, but a deal is a deal!
Armillary Sphere. That's three search effects
Empyrial Plate: Another good equipment. Good if I've got a full hand, so I guess it just combos well with skullclamp. Like there's anything that doesn't.
Leonin Sun Standard: Multi pump effect for armies of creatures. Going to get to those armies of creatures sooner or later, I promise.
3 drops
Oblivion Ring: I could go either way on this card. On the one hand it's still just a 1 for 1, and people can kill it to get their offending permanent back. On the other hand, it answers most everything.
Devout Witness: Spellshapes Disenchant. (T,1W, Discard a card: Destroy target artifact or enchantment). Useful ability, especially when it repeats.
Order of Whiteclay: Gets creatures back from my yard, as a repeatable effect. Maybe he's why Viridian Longbow is in here.
Story Circle: Just hoses some decks. I remember one game where I had this keeping off a host of dragons from Dragon Roost. I lost that game when he got more dragons than I had mana to keep them away. Might cut this card, it can really annoy people.
Mirror Entity: What's that? Did I hear there was a token theme to this deck? Well you're in luck Mr. Douglas.
Prison Term: Targeted removal, but you can switch it to better and better creatures.
Aura of Silence. Talked about this card in my Reaper King articles. From now on it's officially Aura of Science!.
Mobilization: Finally a token horde producer. A very, very slow one. Still combos with skullclamp.
Nuisance Engine: Also produces tokens. Pest tokens. tokens that chump one by one while I'm waiting to find...
Loxodon Warhammer: +3/0, trample and lifelink? Also an excellent equipment.
Whispersilk Cloak: Shroud and unblockable. Neat.
Fireshrieker: Equipped creature has double strike. Great with the big creatures that are also in this deck.
Sculpting Steel: Copies clamp. also anything else that might be around. Will usually end up as an equipment of some sort.
4 drops:
Sigil of the new dawn: Repeatable Raise Dead if you have mana up at the right times. Not as good as I've hoped.
Auriok Windwalker: 2/3 flyer that shifts equipment around. Made it a wizard, in the same set as Raksha and two sets after Steelshaper. Really? Really? out of three relevant creature types you had to make it a wizard?
Breath of life: 4 mana to reanimate something. On the one hand, four mana. On the other hand, there are targets for it.
Kithkin rabble: Theoretically gets huge if you've got a token horde. But if you've got a token horde, what do you need a huge guy for? Better because it also counts whatever enchantments I might have, but it still encourages me to overextend into an opposing wrath effect.
Springjack Shepherd: Chroma goats. You know, so far the token producers I've gotten have been sub par.
Cradle of vitality: Makes creatures better if I've got the mad lifegain going on. Do I have lifegain, and in what condition is it's sanity? Soul warden (repeatable, but in 1 life chunks) and the warhammer so far. More coming up, like...
Faiths Fetters: An excellent control card. Kills somehting, stops it from activating it's abilities and even gets you +4 life when it enters play. Neat!
Nevinyrral's Disk: I've been talking and talkinga bout how this is a token deck with equipment in it, so it makes sense I've got a card in here that kills all of both. Probably gets shipped to a deck where I need answers more.
Ajani Goldmane: Supports tokens, supports Cradle of vitality and draws hate away from me. Planeswalkers are like that.
Galepowder mage: Negates blockers and reuses comes into play effects. Like springjack shepherd.
Endless Horizons: Number four in our shuffling series, but this one I don't mind since whenever it hits play, inevitably it's going to thin the deck down to where it's easy to shuffle. But Endless horizons is interesting for other reasons. If it works, it's a free card every turn, and all the mana you'll ever need. And it means you're drawing spells from here on out. But it's when it doesn't work that's the problem. I can see that jerk grinning from here, you know the one, the guy who just can't vindicate it fast enough because he knows you'll never play Akroma now. Still, I really like this card, even if I might only want to play it with seven or eight lands in play.
Taj-Nar Swordsmith: Kicker X, gets you equipment costing X or less. Probably should put him in the 5 mana colum since we all know he's getting clamp. Also a cat. Shuffle #5
5 drops:
Archon of Justice: He's big, he flies and he makes people really regret messing with my stuff. He's in.
Battlegrace Angel: Also big, also flies and works with cradle.
Boon Reflection: Also works with cradle. Still don't know that I have enough life gain effects to make either worthwhile.
Scourglass: Like Disk, only it leaves my equipment around.
Death or Glory: Half of a living death. The worse half. Haven't gotten a chance to play with it, it might be fun.
Knight Captain of Eos: Three guys for the price of one. Not as good as...
Cloudgoat Ranger: Even more guys for the price of one. Finally something that looks like token production.
Stonehewer Giant: Searches up equipment, and sticks it on something. Yeah, he's good in this deck. Search #6
Six drops:
Crovax, Ascendant Hero: Pumps tokens, shrinks opposing creatures, takes out the occasional Birds of Paradise and is even hard to kill.
Adarkar Valkyrie: Another angel, this one that raises things from the dead. Again, how can I say no? It's easier when I remember how many times exactly that didn't do a thing for me.
Austere Command: Customizeable board sweeping. Generally the deck has stuff that fits into all four categories on this card though.
Spirit of the Hearth: Another 4 power flyer. Was it two for one tuesday in the rare bin? Anyways, giving me shroud is neat, and he brings our cat count up to two.
Purity: 6/6 flyer for six, has the chance to give me life if someone's playing burn. Nobody's playing burn in multiplayer. Except this one deck... nevermind.
Jareth, Leonine Titan: Blocks anything, even most eldrazi. Hard to kill. Also our third and final cat.
Higher:
Mass Calcify: For seven mana it destroys all nonwhite creatures. Wipes a number of creatures while leaving mine intact. Hopefully nobody else is playing mono white.
Sigil of Distinction: Ok, technically this is an X mana artifact, but it gets better the more land I've got in play so I've got it over in the X spells. Doesn't work well with the searchers since they both put it into play, but it can be huge.
Benalish Commander: Also an X spell don't be fooled by the 3W mana cost. Basically works like Kithkin Rabble once he hits play, but he has the advantage of giving you a soldier for every turn before that. Not the best guy in the cycle but servicable.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire: 4/6 creature, hard to kill until he kills everything else. Neat. Eight mana though. Eight mana buys you a lot, for example...
Akroma, Angel of Wrath: You know what? Let me just quote it's text box: Flying, First Strike, Trample, Haste, Vigilance, Protection from Black, Protection from Red. No rest, no mercy, no matter what. Akroma is just awesome.
Evangelize (With Buyback): It steals creatures and it's a repeatable effect! How awesome is that? Too awesome; it can really make people want to quit playing, which is exactly what I don't want them to do.
And, of course, Raksha, the Golden Cub. The cat lord who has all of three cats to buff. Whoo
Ok, that's the composition. Let's see what all we've got: 38 lands, 27 creatures (Plenty of soldiers, knights, not many cats. More wizards than I would like. Bunch of angels, spirits, avatars. Possibly enough clerics to support some tribal effects. Definetly enough to support steelshaper's buff.), 17 artifacts (11 equipment, 5 non, and Steelshaper's Gift which can be either), 11 enchantments, 6 sorceries and 1 planeswalker.
So the question is, what do I want to do with this deck? As I see it there are three directions I could take it. One is to go more in the way of soldiers and token production, building a massive army and attempting to swarm people. The second is to make it more of an angel theme deck; hopefully more midrangey. The third is to take out a lot of the worse creatures and try to make it a control deck. I've got more wrath effects that I can put in.
Currently, I've rebuilt it into more of an aggro deck. I've cut some of the worse, higher casting cost cards and replaced them with lower casting cost cards that are still bad. Err, anyway. It's doing better as an aggro deck, but could still stand some tweaking. I'll talk about that in a future post.
Short version: Needs more spectral procession.
Lands: 38
That's a bit low; I don't have the artifact acceleration like in my Progenitus deck, and this one still curves up to nine mana spells. If I recall correctly, the main complaint I had with the deck before shelving it was that I never actually got to cast Akroma. The fact that I was running a mana light deck might explain all that.
Darksteel Citadel: Perfectly fine in a monocolored deck. There are a lot of board sweepers played in EDH, a few of which will also kill off the occasional land. Being indestructible means I still have one mana after the meltdown. Nice, even if it doesn't matter that much.
Windbrisk Heights: Let's see, the engine that powered a standard deck for two years? Good if I've got a way to attack with three creatures. I have? Excellent.
Terrain Generator: I like this card in a deck with mostly basics.
Urza's Factory: For T,7 I can make a 2/2 token. Yeah, it was an important 1 of in the Teachings matchup in Time Spiral Block Constructed, but it is a slow kill condition.
Forbidding watchtower: And here's one that's even slower.
New Benalia: I guess scry 1 is nice?
Secluded Steppes, Drifting Meadows: Cycling is good. I like lands that cycle.
30 Plains: More interesting than your standard plains, actually. Contained within this stack of lands is one of the decks we prototyped for a playtest of one of our Awesome Games. So a number of these sleeves contain a basic plains as well as a bit of paper with other rules text on it:
Blue Card
Look Ma, I'm on TV! An appearance on a friendly news show does wonders for your organization.
Gain 3 media.
When it became apparent that I didn't have enough sleeves on hand to have both a playtest game and an EDH deck I went with both. Anyways, back to the matter at hand.
1 drops:
Skullclamp: What can I say about skullclamp that hasn't been said already? Quite a bit, actually. Skullclamp is good because it trades one sort of resource for another. It trades creatures in play for cards in hand. Cards like that are dangerous because you have to be very accurate with the rate. If you don't make the rate punishing enough then the card is broken and bad things happen. If you make it too punishing then nobody plays with it. Clamp was printed too much on the broken side of things. So if it's broken enough to be unfun, why am I playing it?
Two reasons: First off, this sort of card is extremely skilltesting. Yeah, you can get by off of power alone, but if you're really good you'll do a lot better with it than you would as a mediocre player. Randy Buehler famously said that Necropotence made him good; learning exactly how much life to trade for cards made Buehler the powerhouse that he was. The second reason was that I wasn't playing when the clamp was legal. Insanely broken card? Let me in on the action!
Viridian Longbow: Aside from the clamp this deck runs an equipment theme. Viridian Longbow is one of the weaker members. If I want to kill creatures I've got wrath effecs. If I want to kill players I'm usually better off attacking. (Yeah, those two excuses don't go together that well, I know.)
Bonesplitter: Equipment theme. You read the text box on Raksha Golden Cub? Vigilance, As long as Raksha is equipped, cats you control get +2/+2 and gain doublestrike. I want equipment around to stick on her so my other cats get huge. Not that I have many other cats in here as of this update.
Soul Warden: Classic Multiplayer one drop. Gains a lot of life. Expecially if you put it in a deck like this, which has a strong token theme. (This deck has a strong token theme).
Weathered Wayfarer: This guy is good; great at getting you more lands. He even gets nonbasics. Y'know, when I really need that Forbidding Watchtower. Anyways, I'm still leery about putting in too many search effects. This is one.
2 drops:
Jotun Grunt: hoses the occasional graveyard. Not nearly as effective as I'd like.
Cloak and Dagger: +2/0 and Shroud. No rogues though.
Knight of the White Orchid: Another good land search. That's two.
Auriok Steelshaper: Makes things cheaper to equip, pumps knights and soldiers of which there are plenty. (All three of my two drop creatures, for example.)
Veteran's Armaments: Gives a massive pump to one creature in a swarm. Also equips free to soldiers, like that steelshaper.
Lightning Greaves: A prince among equipment. More than once I had this and Armaments in play come turn seven. Play Raksha, Equip armaments for free, then equip Lightning greaves. Swing in with a 6/7 doublestrike vigilance shroud haste creature. That deals general damage. Good times.
Planar Collapse: A wrath effect for two mana? Sure I have to wait a turn and sure there have to be enough targets for it, but a deal is a deal!
Armillary Sphere. That's three search effects
Empyrial Plate: Another good equipment. Good if I've got a full hand, so I guess it just combos well with skullclamp. Like there's anything that doesn't.
Leonin Sun Standard: Multi pump effect for armies of creatures. Going to get to those armies of creatures sooner or later, I promise.
3 drops
Oblivion Ring: I could go either way on this card. On the one hand it's still just a 1 for 1, and people can kill it to get their offending permanent back. On the other hand, it answers most everything.
Devout Witness: Spellshapes Disenchant. (T,1W, Discard a card: Destroy target artifact or enchantment). Useful ability, especially when it repeats.
Order of Whiteclay: Gets creatures back from my yard, as a repeatable effect. Maybe he's why Viridian Longbow is in here.
Story Circle: Just hoses some decks. I remember one game where I had this keeping off a host of dragons from Dragon Roost. I lost that game when he got more dragons than I had mana to keep them away. Might cut this card, it can really annoy people.
Mirror Entity: What's that? Did I hear there was a token theme to this deck? Well you're in luck Mr. Douglas.
Prison Term: Targeted removal, but you can switch it to better and better creatures.
Aura of Silence. Talked about this card in my Reaper King articles. From now on it's officially Aura of Science!.
Mobilization: Finally a token horde producer. A very, very slow one. Still combos with skullclamp.
Nuisance Engine: Also produces tokens. Pest tokens. tokens that chump one by one while I'm waiting to find...
Loxodon Warhammer: +3/0, trample and lifelink? Also an excellent equipment.
Whispersilk Cloak: Shroud and unblockable. Neat.
Fireshrieker: Equipped creature has double strike. Great with the big creatures that are also in this deck.
Sculpting Steel: Copies clamp. also anything else that might be around. Will usually end up as an equipment of some sort.
4 drops:
Sigil of the new dawn: Repeatable Raise Dead if you have mana up at the right times. Not as good as I've hoped.
Auriok Windwalker: 2/3 flyer that shifts equipment around. Made it a wizard, in the same set as Raksha and two sets after Steelshaper. Really? Really? out of three relevant creature types you had to make it a wizard?
Breath of life: 4 mana to reanimate something. On the one hand, four mana. On the other hand, there are targets for it.
Kithkin rabble: Theoretically gets huge if you've got a token horde. But if you've got a token horde, what do you need a huge guy for? Better because it also counts whatever enchantments I might have, but it still encourages me to overextend into an opposing wrath effect.
Springjack Shepherd: Chroma goats. You know, so far the token producers I've gotten have been sub par.
Cradle of vitality: Makes creatures better if I've got the mad lifegain going on. Do I have lifegain, and in what condition is it's sanity? Soul warden (repeatable, but in 1 life chunks) and the warhammer so far. More coming up, like...
Faiths Fetters: An excellent control card. Kills somehting, stops it from activating it's abilities and even gets you +4 life when it enters play. Neat!
Nevinyrral's Disk: I've been talking and talkinga bout how this is a token deck with equipment in it, so it makes sense I've got a card in here that kills all of both. Probably gets shipped to a deck where I need answers more.
Ajani Goldmane: Supports tokens, supports Cradle of vitality and draws hate away from me. Planeswalkers are like that.
Galepowder mage: Negates blockers and reuses comes into play effects. Like springjack shepherd.
Endless Horizons: Number four in our shuffling series, but this one I don't mind since whenever it hits play, inevitably it's going to thin the deck down to where it's easy to shuffle. But Endless horizons is interesting for other reasons. If it works, it's a free card every turn, and all the mana you'll ever need. And it means you're drawing spells from here on out. But it's when it doesn't work that's the problem. I can see that jerk grinning from here, you know the one, the guy who just can't vindicate it fast enough because he knows you'll never play Akroma now. Still, I really like this card, even if I might only want to play it with seven or eight lands in play.
Taj-Nar Swordsmith: Kicker X, gets you equipment costing X or less. Probably should put him in the 5 mana colum since we all know he's getting clamp. Also a cat. Shuffle #5
5 drops:
Archon of Justice: He's big, he flies and he makes people really regret messing with my stuff. He's in.
Battlegrace Angel: Also big, also flies and works with cradle.
Boon Reflection: Also works with cradle. Still don't know that I have enough life gain effects to make either worthwhile.
Scourglass: Like Disk, only it leaves my equipment around.
Death or Glory: Half of a living death. The worse half. Haven't gotten a chance to play with it, it might be fun.
Knight Captain of Eos: Three guys for the price of one. Not as good as...
Cloudgoat Ranger: Even more guys for the price of one. Finally something that looks like token production.
Stonehewer Giant: Searches up equipment, and sticks it on something. Yeah, he's good in this deck. Search #6
Six drops:
Crovax, Ascendant Hero: Pumps tokens, shrinks opposing creatures, takes out the occasional Birds of Paradise and is even hard to kill.
Adarkar Valkyrie: Another angel, this one that raises things from the dead. Again, how can I say no? It's easier when I remember how many times exactly that didn't do a thing for me.
Austere Command: Customizeable board sweeping. Generally the deck has stuff that fits into all four categories on this card though.
Spirit of the Hearth: Another 4 power flyer. Was it two for one tuesday in the rare bin? Anyways, giving me shroud is neat, and he brings our cat count up to two.
Purity: 6/6 flyer for six, has the chance to give me life if someone's playing burn. Nobody's playing burn in multiplayer. Except this one deck... nevermind.
Jareth, Leonine Titan: Blocks anything, even most eldrazi. Hard to kill. Also our third and final cat.
Higher:
Mass Calcify: For seven mana it destroys all nonwhite creatures. Wipes a number of creatures while leaving mine intact. Hopefully nobody else is playing mono white.
Sigil of Distinction: Ok, technically this is an X mana artifact, but it gets better the more land I've got in play so I've got it over in the X spells. Doesn't work well with the searchers since they both put it into play, but it can be huge.
Benalish Commander: Also an X spell don't be fooled by the 3W mana cost. Basically works like Kithkin Rabble once he hits play, but he has the advantage of giving you a soldier for every turn before that. Not the best guy in the cycle but servicable.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire: 4/6 creature, hard to kill until he kills everything else. Neat. Eight mana though. Eight mana buys you a lot, for example...
Akroma, Angel of Wrath: You know what? Let me just quote it's text box: Flying, First Strike, Trample, Haste, Vigilance, Protection from Black, Protection from Red. No rest, no mercy, no matter what. Akroma is just awesome.
Evangelize (With Buyback): It steals creatures and it's a repeatable effect! How awesome is that? Too awesome; it can really make people want to quit playing, which is exactly what I don't want them to do.
And, of course, Raksha, the Golden Cub. The cat lord who has all of three cats to buff. Whoo
Ok, that's the composition. Let's see what all we've got: 38 lands, 27 creatures (Plenty of soldiers, knights, not many cats. More wizards than I would like. Bunch of angels, spirits, avatars. Possibly enough clerics to support some tribal effects. Definetly enough to support steelshaper's buff.), 17 artifacts (11 equipment, 5 non, and Steelshaper's Gift which can be either), 11 enchantments, 6 sorceries and 1 planeswalker.
So the question is, what do I want to do with this deck? As I see it there are three directions I could take it. One is to go more in the way of soldiers and token production, building a massive army and attempting to swarm people. The second is to make it more of an angel theme deck; hopefully more midrangey. The third is to take out a lot of the worse creatures and try to make it a control deck. I've got more wrath effects that I can put in.
Currently, I've rebuilt it into more of an aggro deck. I've cut some of the worse, higher casting cost cards and replaced them with lower casting cost cards that are still bad. Err, anyway. It's doing better as an aggro deck, but could still stand some tweaking. I'll talk about that in a future post.
Short version: Needs more spectral procession.
Monday, June 28, 2010
New Extended!
About a week ago Wizards of the Coast announced that they were truncating the extended format. Rather than being decks from the past seven years of cards, new extended only covers the last four years. There are two major effects to this change; first, the price of a number of old extended staples (Ravnica Block Dual lands, Dark Depths, etc), dropped like the economy. I'm generally fine with that, as I had very few of those staples, and quite a few more for new extended. Secondly, a whole new format for deckbuilding has opened up.
A whole new format you say? With very few known constraints? Excellent. Even if I don't have the cards to actually build most of these decks it's still a whole barrel full of fun to speculate about the format. So let's get to speculatin'!
First off: Faeries.
Faeries was the deck that dominated standard for the two years it was legal. While there were certainly other contenders, Faeries was the standard barrier to entry. If your deck didn't have a decent chance against the fey, then back to the casual room with you! The deck leveraged a punishing suite of synergies to work as either a fish deck when fighting control decks or a control deck when fighting aggro decks. At it's heart, Faeries is dependent on the interaction between Spellstutter Sprite, Bitterblossom and Mistbind Clique. All three provide bodies on the ground while disrupting the opponent. In addition, Faeries needs all four Cryptic Commands as a universal answer, and some number of Mana Leaks. From there you've got a couple more options in what you're using as a draw engine; Jace Berelen, Esper Charm and Ancestral Vision were all popular before. Jace the Mind Sculptor and Jace's Ingenuity are pretty obviously also contenders.
Faeries is the obvious contender, I don't want to go too much further into it. Suffice to say that whatever the metagame shakes out to be it'll have some percentage, and thus I'll be looking to include things like Great Stable Stag or Volcanic Fallout in any decks I'm designing to give them a better matchup.
Moving along, our next contender is the burn deck. This showed up in the last extended as a collection of the most efficient burn spells to give you a decent clock. Never really that good of a deck, it didn't lose much in rotation, so it's worth looking into.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Shard Volley
4 Goblin Guide
4 Rift Bolt
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Lash Out
4 Searing Blaze
4 Flame Javelin
4 Staggershock
24 lands
Two creatures, a 2/2 haste guy for R and a 2 mana burn them for five that can have three of it's damage blocked. 3 3 damage for 1 mana spells. 2 4 damage for 3 mana spells. The only thing that even looks like an innovation here is Lash Out and Searing Blaze; as they will sometimes kill a creature AND hit the opponent they simultaneously buy you some more time to enact your game plan and make sure you don't need to use that time. There might be some nonbasics worth running too (Ghitu Encampment and Mutavault for manlands, Valakut or Keldon Megaliths for more burn, for example.)
Moving Along, what about Zoo?
Zoo loses a lot in that Wild Nacatl and Loam Lion will have a much harder time finding their appropriate lands since the Ravnica Duals rotated. But as long as there are worryingly efficient creatures they still have options. A couple possible shells:
1) Boros Deck Wins. Hasn't been doing that well in standard lately, but it's possible. Steppe Lynx and Plated Geopede powered by Zendikar Fetches and backed up by Figure of Destiny and a burn shell like the one I listed above.
2) Screw it, going Domain Zoo regardless. The burn of Tribal Flames and Exploding Borders being backed up by Prismatic Omen. Allows you to play Wild Nacatl, Loam Lion and Might of Alara. Seems janky.
3) Go Naya.
4 Tarmogoyf (how long did you think I could go without mentioning him?)
4 Quirion Dryad
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Boggart Ram-gang
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Punishing Fire
4 Colossal Might
Lands (Including Grove of the Burnwillows)
Ok, that's obviously a pretty rough list. In particular the Quirion Dryad package might be too clever for it's own good. But each of those creatures packs a wallop, and everything else in the deck pumps Dryad, including repeated Punishing Fire. Knight of the Reliquary searches up redundant groves, and you can fit some pretty decent manlands in the mix. (Treetop village, Stirring Wildwoods are on color.)
Also on the contender list for aggro, we might see a resurgence of Kithkin. The little white men held their own in their standard format, splashing into black, red or green as the metagame called for it. The main engine of Windbrisk Heights and Spectral Procession is still very good, and there is plenty you can do with that shell. My guess is that the deck will be better as a black/white tokens iteration, if only because Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth makes splashing so easy. Turn three spectral procession, turn four drop Urborg and activate Mind Sludge from under your windbrisk heights, stripping their hand.
Moving into the realm of midrange, Jund will still probably be a contender. It always struggled against faeries, but a wider card pool will benefit it more. The Punishing Fire combo and yes, Tarmogoyf ought to boost it's power level.
Also, it might be possible to build a competitive version of Doran Rock. Doran, the Siege Tower benefits from having a relatively easy mana base (Murmuring Bosk is fetchable by Verdant Catacombs), and the non-linear nature of the deck benefits from recent printings more than, say, faeries. Wall of Omens in particular looks neat next to Mr. The Siege Tower. The deck has card drawing (Harmonize, Sign in Blood), efficient beaters (Putrid Leech, Doran, Tarmogoyf, Chameleon Colossus), excellent removal options (Path to Exile, Maelstrom Pulse, Doom Blade), disruption options (Duress, Thoughtseize, Fulminator Mage, Gaddoc Teeg), and generally anything else you want, 'cept counterspells. Unless you want to run Dash Hopes. Hmm...
Punisher Burn
The same shell as above, only substituting out Keldon Marauders and Shard Volley for Dash Hopes and Browbeat. Dash hopes will hopefully let you counter their spell, because they don't want to lose five life against a burn deck. Similarly with Browbeat, either three cards or five burn for three mana is a deal. Yeah, probably not the direction you want to be taking this deck.
Back on the midrange, you know what deck really gains from the new format? My Reveillark deck. (And part II). The final list almost entirely within new extended; swap out Eternal Witness and Ninja of the Deep Hours for ponders, maybe Venser as well, swap out a couple Ravnica Duals for 10th edition painlands (or redo the manabase with less Ancient Ziggurat and more filterlands) and we've got a fully functioning extended deck. Awesome
You could also make a traditional 5 color control deck, much like the ones that also faced off against faeries. As usual, the heart of the deck is the Vivids/Reflecting Pool package that lets your mana get crazy fixed. Previous versions included Cruel Ultimatum as it's haymaker, cryptic commands and cloudthreshers. Wrath of God for removal and Esper Charm or Jace Berelen for card drawing. As the deck can quite literally stretch for any card in the format, it gains a whole lot of new options with the addition of two more years of sets. Esper charm in particular has an unfriendly casting cost, and isn't the best card drawing. Ancestral Visions, for example, is a much more appealing option. All that as it may be, this deck is probably superior designed as a response to the metagame. As it potentially has the tools to overcome any sort of decks in the metagame, it's best designed in response to a known metagame.
Want one better? Future Sight saw the printing of Glittering Wish. While all the wishes got worse with the M10 rules changes (still annoyed about that particular change, by the way), Glittering Wish does allow us to construct a wishboard for a 5 color deck. Some notable cards:
Gaddock Teeg
Meddling Mage
Qasali Pridemage
Guttural Response
Maelstrom Pulse
Terminate
Bant Charm
Ajani Vengeant
Cruel Ultimatum
Nichol Bolas, Planeswalker
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Wilt-leaf Liege
Figure of Destiny
Stillmoon Cavalier
Knight of the Reliquary
Behemoth Sledge
Anathamancer
Dauntless Escort
Intimidation Bolt
Thought Hemorrhage
Zealous Persecution
Kitchen Finks
Firespout
Branching bolt
Doran, the siege Tower
Or you know what? Take a gander through gatherer yourself; there were five sets with a strong multicolor theme in the past four years (Shadowmoor, Eventide, Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn), and they offer some powerful and interesting multicolor cards.
The question remains, what's the best way to build this particular deck? Well, it's gotta have your traditional five vivids/pool manabase. Additionally, since you're expecting to cast multicolored cards rather than heavily single colored cards, the filter lands get slightly worse. Cloudthresher for 2GGGG and Cryptic Command for 1UUU heavily incentivizes you to play Flooded Groves since it can provide UU on one turn and GG on the next. Playing a deck with Gaddoc Teeg and Meddling Mage doesn't nearly as much, since you need the lands to make two of three colors, and therefore you need the right land if you're doing it off of the filter and not another source. I might have to go into that in more detail later.
As far as the rest of the main deck goes, it's gotta support 4 Glittering Wish at GW. The deck lends itself otherwise to a control deck, so you probably want four wall of omens and four kitchen finks in the main too. At this point I'm thinking it might be worthwhile to staple a wishboard onto a Doran Rock Shell, which would be awesome. But again, you can vary this strategy to whatever the metagame has. Also note that it gives you the option of leaving your clunky finisher cards in your sideboard, where they won't clutter up your opening hand.
Moving along, another Reveillark deck to note is Blue White 'lark, or UWr 'lark. Imagine this set of plays:
Turn one suspend Gargadon
Turn two suspend Riftwing Cloudscate
Turn three play Aether Adept, bounce a land
Turn four play Venser, Shaper Savant, bounce a land
Turn five Riftwing cloudscate comes into play, bounces something. Play Reveillark, sac Venser and Adept to the gargadon and bounce whatever permanents they have left.
Ok, Magic Christmas land, yeah, I know. Still, you can manage an astonishingly powerful series of plays with those cards, noting that there are others that slot in well in the mad bounce plan, or otherwise interact powerfully. Cryptic Command, Nevermaker, Body Double (the old infinite combo) or even wall of omens.
While I'm talking Combo, let's take a look at the combo decks available in the format.
First off: Seismic Swans. Use cascade cards to cascade into Seismic assault and Swans of Byrn Argoll. Direct land to deal two to swans, drawing you two cards and hopefully enough land to keep tossing it at the swans for more cards and eventually ten land to just burn out your opponent. Has game if it doesn't assemble it's combo; being able to use seismic assault to control the board and able to run numerous manlands. Gets better with Worldwake manlands.
As most combo decks, or at least combo decks that are allowed to survive bannings, Seismic Swans tends to be a trick deck to pull out when the metagame has forgotten about it. If people are starting their sideboards with four pithing needles, you probably want to move on to another combo.
Next up, scapeshift. This deck lost a lot of resiliency with the ravnica duals. Now to be sure to kill someone with scapeshift you have to run enough mountains in your main deck, while still being able to pay GG. One option that a slower extended might allow is using Prismatic Omen as a combo piece. Drop Omen on turn six, and immediately follow it up with a scapeshift. Search out six lands, two of which are Valakut. Since they're all mountains, each Valakut will trigger six times, burning your opponent out. The deck's still pretty weak to counterspells though.
Another contender is, well, anything that gets you Emrakul, the Aeons Torn into play sooner than turn 15. Jhoira of the Ghitu, in Time Spiral block, allows you to suspend him for four, and it still counts as casting him. Or drop him under a hideaway land and fulfill the condition. (Hmm... spectral eldrazi? a mono white combo deck? Madness.)
Yet another option hinges on exploiting Oren Rief, the Vastwood and it's interaction with persist. Take a look at this:
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Woodfall Primus
4 Terastodon
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Dramatic Enterance
4 Summoning Trap
12 Ramp Cards
4 Oran Rief, the Vastwood
20 other lands, as necessary.
Or some such. Get finks into play, gain two life. Block with it, persist it, gain two life, and then put a counter on with the Vastwood. +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters cancel each other out, finks has another lease on life as a blocker, and another persist for even more life. You can reset multiple at once with a single vastwood too. This goes double for Woodfall Primus, which destroys a noncreature permanent each time it persists. At that point you'll have a harder time trading it away in combat, so you want a Gargadon suspended to sack and blow something up as desired. OR whenever someone tries to Path to Exile it.
Dramatic Enterance lets you cheat on the mana costs. Summoning Trap will very seldom whiff with twelve legitimate game ending threats. And if faeries are as played as people expect you might get to cast it for it's trap cost.
I'm going to end with an archetype near and dear to my heart: Goblins.
Lorwyn block being tribal provided quite a number of interesting goblin cards. In addition, there are powerful cards that have been printed in other sets surrounding. Let's take a quick rundown of options:
Stingscourger (yes, one of my favorite cards, as I've mentioned.)
Mogg War Marshal
Mogg Fanatic
Goblin King
Knucklebone Witch
Mad Auntie
Wort, Boggart Auntie
Marsh Flitter
Earwig Squad
Tattermunge Maniac
Vexing Shusher
Boggart Ram-gang
Murderous Redcap
Dragon Fodder
Goblin Chieftan
Goblin Guide
Warren Instigator
Goblin Bushwhacker
Goblin Ruinblasters
Tarfire
Fodder Launch
Warren Weirding
and all sorts of lesser goblins with more specific abilites. Additionally there's all that excellent red burn I listed above. Still not enough? Auntie's Hovel makes splashing for Black relatively painless, which gives disruption options: Thoughtseize, Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek, Thought Hemorrhage, etc. I've actually got a legacy goblins list (rogue build) that's fairly similar to what's available. Lemme list it quick.
4 Goblin Guide
3 Tattermunge Maniac
3 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Stingscourger
3 Goblin Chieftan
1 Mad Auntie
2 Greater Gargadon
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Flame Javelin
4 Staggershock
24 assorted lands
The sideboard is metagamed differently, but most of the components can be found in new extended.
Those are all the decks I'm going to cover currently. There are doubtless more options out there, and more card interactions than I've heretofore thought of. Have fun brewing!
A whole new format you say? With very few known constraints? Excellent. Even if I don't have the cards to actually build most of these decks it's still a whole barrel full of fun to speculate about the format. So let's get to speculatin'!
First off: Faeries.
Faeries was the deck that dominated standard for the two years it was legal. While there were certainly other contenders, Faeries was the standard barrier to entry. If your deck didn't have a decent chance against the fey, then back to the casual room with you! The deck leveraged a punishing suite of synergies to work as either a fish deck when fighting control decks or a control deck when fighting aggro decks. At it's heart, Faeries is dependent on the interaction between Spellstutter Sprite, Bitterblossom and Mistbind Clique. All three provide bodies on the ground while disrupting the opponent. In addition, Faeries needs all four Cryptic Commands as a universal answer, and some number of Mana Leaks. From there you've got a couple more options in what you're using as a draw engine; Jace Berelen, Esper Charm and Ancestral Vision were all popular before. Jace the Mind Sculptor and Jace's Ingenuity are pretty obviously also contenders.
Faeries is the obvious contender, I don't want to go too much further into it. Suffice to say that whatever the metagame shakes out to be it'll have some percentage, and thus I'll be looking to include things like Great Stable Stag or Volcanic Fallout in any decks I'm designing to give them a better matchup.
Moving along, our next contender is the burn deck. This showed up in the last extended as a collection of the most efficient burn spells to give you a decent clock. Never really that good of a deck, it didn't lose much in rotation, so it's worth looking into.
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Shard Volley
4 Goblin Guide
4 Rift Bolt
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Lash Out
4 Searing Blaze
4 Flame Javelin
4 Staggershock
24 lands
Two creatures, a 2/2 haste guy for R and a 2 mana burn them for five that can have three of it's damage blocked. 3 3 damage for 1 mana spells. 2 4 damage for 3 mana spells. The only thing that even looks like an innovation here is Lash Out and Searing Blaze; as they will sometimes kill a creature AND hit the opponent they simultaneously buy you some more time to enact your game plan and make sure you don't need to use that time. There might be some nonbasics worth running too (Ghitu Encampment and Mutavault for manlands, Valakut or Keldon Megaliths for more burn, for example.)
Moving Along, what about Zoo?
Zoo loses a lot in that Wild Nacatl and Loam Lion will have a much harder time finding their appropriate lands since the Ravnica Duals rotated. But as long as there are worryingly efficient creatures they still have options. A couple possible shells:
1) Boros Deck Wins. Hasn't been doing that well in standard lately, but it's possible. Steppe Lynx and Plated Geopede powered by Zendikar Fetches and backed up by Figure of Destiny and a burn shell like the one I listed above.
2) Screw it, going Domain Zoo regardless. The burn of Tribal Flames and Exploding Borders being backed up by Prismatic Omen. Allows you to play Wild Nacatl, Loam Lion and Might of Alara. Seems janky.
3) Go Naya.
4 Tarmogoyf (how long did you think I could go without mentioning him?)
4 Quirion Dryad
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Boggart Ram-gang
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Punishing Fire
4 Colossal Might
Lands (Including Grove of the Burnwillows)
Ok, that's obviously a pretty rough list. In particular the Quirion Dryad package might be too clever for it's own good. But each of those creatures packs a wallop, and everything else in the deck pumps Dryad, including repeated Punishing Fire. Knight of the Reliquary searches up redundant groves, and you can fit some pretty decent manlands in the mix. (Treetop village, Stirring Wildwoods are on color.)
Also on the contender list for aggro, we might see a resurgence of Kithkin. The little white men held their own in their standard format, splashing into black, red or green as the metagame called for it. The main engine of Windbrisk Heights and Spectral Procession is still very good, and there is plenty you can do with that shell. My guess is that the deck will be better as a black/white tokens iteration, if only because Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth makes splashing so easy. Turn three spectral procession, turn four drop Urborg and activate Mind Sludge from under your windbrisk heights, stripping their hand.
Moving into the realm of midrange, Jund will still probably be a contender. It always struggled against faeries, but a wider card pool will benefit it more. The Punishing Fire combo and yes, Tarmogoyf ought to boost it's power level.
Also, it might be possible to build a competitive version of Doran Rock. Doran, the Siege Tower benefits from having a relatively easy mana base (Murmuring Bosk is fetchable by Verdant Catacombs), and the non-linear nature of the deck benefits from recent printings more than, say, faeries. Wall of Omens in particular looks neat next to Mr. The Siege Tower. The deck has card drawing (Harmonize, Sign in Blood), efficient beaters (Putrid Leech, Doran, Tarmogoyf, Chameleon Colossus), excellent removal options (Path to Exile, Maelstrom Pulse, Doom Blade), disruption options (Duress, Thoughtseize, Fulminator Mage, Gaddoc Teeg), and generally anything else you want, 'cept counterspells. Unless you want to run Dash Hopes. Hmm...
Punisher Burn
The same shell as above, only substituting out Keldon Marauders and Shard Volley for Dash Hopes and Browbeat. Dash hopes will hopefully let you counter their spell, because they don't want to lose five life against a burn deck. Similarly with Browbeat, either three cards or five burn for three mana is a deal. Yeah, probably not the direction you want to be taking this deck.
Back on the midrange, you know what deck really gains from the new format? My Reveillark deck. (And part II). The final list almost entirely within new extended; swap out Eternal Witness and Ninja of the Deep Hours for ponders, maybe Venser as well, swap out a couple Ravnica Duals for 10th edition painlands (or redo the manabase with less Ancient Ziggurat and more filterlands) and we've got a fully functioning extended deck. Awesome
You could also make a traditional 5 color control deck, much like the ones that also faced off against faeries. As usual, the heart of the deck is the Vivids/Reflecting Pool package that lets your mana get crazy fixed. Previous versions included Cruel Ultimatum as it's haymaker, cryptic commands and cloudthreshers. Wrath of God for removal and Esper Charm or Jace Berelen for card drawing. As the deck can quite literally stretch for any card in the format, it gains a whole lot of new options with the addition of two more years of sets. Esper charm in particular has an unfriendly casting cost, and isn't the best card drawing. Ancestral Visions, for example, is a much more appealing option. All that as it may be, this deck is probably superior designed as a response to the metagame. As it potentially has the tools to overcome any sort of decks in the metagame, it's best designed in response to a known metagame.
Want one better? Future Sight saw the printing of Glittering Wish. While all the wishes got worse with the M10 rules changes (still annoyed about that particular change, by the way), Glittering Wish does allow us to construct a wishboard for a 5 color deck. Some notable cards:
Gaddock Teeg
Meddling Mage
Qasali Pridemage
Guttural Response
Maelstrom Pulse
Terminate
Bant Charm
Ajani Vengeant
Cruel Ultimatum
Nichol Bolas, Planeswalker
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Wilt-leaf Liege
Figure of Destiny
Stillmoon Cavalier
Knight of the Reliquary
Behemoth Sledge
Anathamancer
Dauntless Escort
Intimidation Bolt
Thought Hemorrhage
Zealous Persecution
Kitchen Finks
Firespout
Branching bolt
Doran, the siege Tower
Or you know what? Take a gander through gatherer yourself; there were five sets with a strong multicolor theme in the past four years (Shadowmoor, Eventide, Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn), and they offer some powerful and interesting multicolor cards.
The question remains, what's the best way to build this particular deck? Well, it's gotta have your traditional five vivids/pool manabase. Additionally, since you're expecting to cast multicolored cards rather than heavily single colored cards, the filter lands get slightly worse. Cloudthresher for 2GGGG and Cryptic Command for 1UUU heavily incentivizes you to play Flooded Groves since it can provide UU on one turn and GG on the next. Playing a deck with Gaddoc Teeg and Meddling Mage doesn't nearly as much, since you need the lands to make two of three colors, and therefore you need the right land if you're doing it off of the filter and not another source. I might have to go into that in more detail later.
As far as the rest of the main deck goes, it's gotta support 4 Glittering Wish at GW. The deck lends itself otherwise to a control deck, so you probably want four wall of omens and four kitchen finks in the main too. At this point I'm thinking it might be worthwhile to staple a wishboard onto a Doran Rock Shell, which would be awesome. But again, you can vary this strategy to whatever the metagame has. Also note that it gives you the option of leaving your clunky finisher cards in your sideboard, where they won't clutter up your opening hand.
Moving along, another Reveillark deck to note is Blue White 'lark, or UWr 'lark. Imagine this set of plays:
Turn one suspend Gargadon
Turn two suspend Riftwing Cloudscate
Turn three play Aether Adept, bounce a land
Turn four play Venser, Shaper Savant, bounce a land
Turn five Riftwing cloudscate comes into play, bounces something. Play Reveillark, sac Venser and Adept to the gargadon and bounce whatever permanents they have left.
Ok, Magic Christmas land, yeah, I know. Still, you can manage an astonishingly powerful series of plays with those cards, noting that there are others that slot in well in the mad bounce plan, or otherwise interact powerfully. Cryptic Command, Nevermaker, Body Double (the old infinite combo) or even wall of omens.
While I'm talking Combo, let's take a look at the combo decks available in the format.
First off: Seismic Swans. Use cascade cards to cascade into Seismic assault and Swans of Byrn Argoll. Direct land to deal two to swans, drawing you two cards and hopefully enough land to keep tossing it at the swans for more cards and eventually ten land to just burn out your opponent. Has game if it doesn't assemble it's combo; being able to use seismic assault to control the board and able to run numerous manlands. Gets better with Worldwake manlands.
As most combo decks, or at least combo decks that are allowed to survive bannings, Seismic Swans tends to be a trick deck to pull out when the metagame has forgotten about it. If people are starting their sideboards with four pithing needles, you probably want to move on to another combo.
Next up, scapeshift. This deck lost a lot of resiliency with the ravnica duals. Now to be sure to kill someone with scapeshift you have to run enough mountains in your main deck, while still being able to pay GG. One option that a slower extended might allow is using Prismatic Omen as a combo piece. Drop Omen on turn six, and immediately follow it up with a scapeshift. Search out six lands, two of which are Valakut. Since they're all mountains, each Valakut will trigger six times, burning your opponent out. The deck's still pretty weak to counterspells though.
Another contender is, well, anything that gets you Emrakul, the Aeons Torn into play sooner than turn 15. Jhoira of the Ghitu, in Time Spiral block, allows you to suspend him for four, and it still counts as casting him. Or drop him under a hideaway land and fulfill the condition. (Hmm... spectral eldrazi? a mono white combo deck? Madness.)
Yet another option hinges on exploiting Oren Rief, the Vastwood and it's interaction with persist. Take a look at this:
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Woodfall Primus
4 Terastodon
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Dramatic Enterance
4 Summoning Trap
12 Ramp Cards
4 Oran Rief, the Vastwood
20 other lands, as necessary.
Or some such. Get finks into play, gain two life. Block with it, persist it, gain two life, and then put a counter on with the Vastwood. +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters cancel each other out, finks has another lease on life as a blocker, and another persist for even more life. You can reset multiple at once with a single vastwood too. This goes double for Woodfall Primus, which destroys a noncreature permanent each time it persists. At that point you'll have a harder time trading it away in combat, so you want a Gargadon suspended to sack and blow something up as desired. OR whenever someone tries to Path to Exile it.
Dramatic Enterance lets you cheat on the mana costs. Summoning Trap will very seldom whiff with twelve legitimate game ending threats. And if faeries are as played as people expect you might get to cast it for it's trap cost.
I'm going to end with an archetype near and dear to my heart: Goblins.
Lorwyn block being tribal provided quite a number of interesting goblin cards. In addition, there are powerful cards that have been printed in other sets surrounding. Let's take a quick rundown of options:
Stingscourger (yes, one of my favorite cards, as I've mentioned.)
Mogg War Marshal
Mogg Fanatic
Goblin King
Knucklebone Witch
Mad Auntie
Wort, Boggart Auntie
Marsh Flitter
Earwig Squad
Tattermunge Maniac
Vexing Shusher
Boggart Ram-gang
Murderous Redcap
Dragon Fodder
Goblin Chieftan
Goblin Guide
Warren Instigator
Goblin Bushwhacker
Goblin Ruinblasters
Tarfire
Fodder Launch
Warren Weirding
and all sorts of lesser goblins with more specific abilites. Additionally there's all that excellent red burn I listed above. Still not enough? Auntie's Hovel makes splashing for Black relatively painless, which gives disruption options: Thoughtseize, Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek, Thought Hemorrhage, etc. I've actually got a legacy goblins list (rogue build) that's fairly similar to what's available. Lemme list it quick.
4 Goblin Guide
3 Tattermunge Maniac
3 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Stingscourger
3 Goblin Chieftan
1 Mad Auntie
2 Greater Gargadon
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Flame Javelin
4 Staggershock
24 assorted lands
The sideboard is metagamed differently, but most of the components can be found in new extended.
Those are all the decks I'm going to cover currently. There are doubtless more options out there, and more card interactions than I've heretofore thought of. Have fun brewing!
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Rebuilding Reaper King II: Attack of the Revenge
Let's finish rebuilding the Reaper King deck. Or perhaps building the Progenitus deck, depending on how you want to define it. But that's not important. Let's get down to strategy. The first question you have to ask when building a deck is "What exactly do I want to do with this deck?" More specific than just "Win", how do we plan to win, against what opponents? We should answer the "against what opponents" part first, it'll inform our further decisions.
I stated in my last article that I'm building this deck for generic EDH opponents, figuring on three at a time. I could build a deck with the express goal of beating my brother in duals but that'd require a significantly different strategy. (He plays Sharuum the Hegemon. Said deck would need a lot of artifact destruction and graveyard hate.) I don't know much about the EDH metagame proper, so I'll have to design with generic multiplayer in mind. Let's move on to the other half of the question.
How do I plan to win? With giant creatures swinging across the red zone, bashing people's faces in. Good, good. Last post I was referring to this as an aggro strategy. That's sort of innacurate. It's really hard to win with a true aggro strategy in multiplayer. Your creature rush might destroy one, maybe two opponents but then you'd be spent, and the rest of the table pick your teeth with you. What I'm building is a lot closer to a midrange deck; it's got bigger creatures and some control elements; stuff that deals with opposing creatures, stuff that draws you cards. The objective of an aggro strategy is to beat down your opponents before they have a chance to do anything about it. The objective of a midrange deck is to grind out card advantage over a long series of turns so when everybody's playing off the top of their deck you've still got a dragon in play. It's hard to gain card advantage in an absolute sense in multiplayer; one of your cards has to be worth more than each opponent's card. On the other hand though, your opponents will have to spend their resources on your other opponents as well, so it balances out. Still you want to practice your table talk to make sure they send most of their resources elsewhere.
So, more specifically, what constitutes a midrange strategy? The main point is that nearly every one of your cards has to have added value. The easiest place to see this is on kill spells. The card Corpsehatch is probably going to make it's way into my deck. Destroy target nonblack creature. Doomblade does it for 2B less. Corpsehatch also puts two manabugs onto the battlefield; 0/1 creatures that can be sacrificed for one mana. It trades one for one with their creature, but gives me the added value of the two Eldrazi Spawn tokens. If a card doesn't give added value, it ought to be very versatile or ultra-efficient. (Maelstrom Pulse or Terminate, for example).
I also want to put in as many Semi-soft locks as possible into the deck. "Semi-soft lock" is an excellent concept with a terrible name. Coined by Patrick Chapin, it refers to a card that will win you the game unless your opponent can neutralize it. This'd allow most any card (Grizzly bears only takes ten turns! That's a 2/1 advantage over Squire!), except that a true Semi-soft lock ought to be really hard to answer. Godsire (8 mana 8/8 that taps to put more 8/8s onto the battlefield) doesn't really qualify because he's actually not that hard to take down. Any kill spell that doesn't depend on damage, or low converted mana cost will off him. Progenitus, on the other hand does. There are only a couple things that'll deal with someone who has protection from everything, and a 10/10 body is enough to end the game on his own pretty quickly.
It might not be the right idea to use Semi-soft locks in multiplayer; they create really big effects and therefore enemies. If you Cruel Ultimatum someone then they might have trouble coming back from that, but someone else will see you don't get too powerful from it. I think it won't disrupt my politics too much if I leave them mostly on creatures. People are already planning their multiplayer decks to fight through waves of dragons so they'll be less unduly threatened by something huge hitting play or coming their way. At least that's how I'm rationalizing my already stated goal to play and swing with huge creatures.
One more question: What are they going to be doing to stop me? The first thing to know is that you don't strap them into the deathtrap and gloat; you strap them in, kill them and THEN gloat. Their bodies give much worse reactions but on the whole it's much safer. Not that I have much experience with world domination. But anyways. I plan to win through the red zone. The easiest way to stop me from doing that is by killing my creatures. I plan on midranging them until I've still got resources left and they don't. Since I can trade my creatures one for one with their removal spells (either directly with a terror or by forcing them to use a Wrath of God; I don't think I'll need to lay more than one dragon-sized creature at once with this deck)
More problematic are cards like Moat and to a lesser extent Ghostly Prison. Stuff that makes it really hard to attack them. I think I'll have to include some things that kill enchantments, but I don't want to include too many. Too many and I'm playing a control deck. I just want enough to kill the occasional moat effect and maybe disrupt a combo deck. Same sort of thing with artifact removal.
Speaking of combo decks, what exactly do I plan to do about combo decks? I plan on hoping that someone else will deal with them. Ok, not entirely, but I don't plan on putting too many resources to that effect. I could build a deck that could stop any combo at any time, but then it'd be a control deck, and wouldn't have nearly as much space in it for bashing with giant creatures. This goes against my primary goal of the deck. So I'm going to put in a few answers to combo decks, but nothing like the main focus. In particular I think I'll be ignoring combo pieces on the stack since answer require leaving mana up and I want to be able to tap out to drop huge creatures.
So now that I've gone over that, what exactly do I need to fit into the deck? Let's add them all up:
A lot of huge creatures
A lot of things to accelerate into them
A bunch of stuff that fixes my mana (five colors, remember?)
A couple things that draw me cards
A Couple ways to kill creatures, clear out blockers and let my creatures through
A couple answers to enchantments and other combo pieces.
Note that most of our cards ought to do two of these tasks. So let's take a look at what we've already got:
Big creatures (loosely defined): Worldheart Phoenix, Bringers of the Black and Green Dawn, Maelstrom Archangel, Lightning Reaver, Sedirs, the Traitor King, Magister Sphinx, Godsire, Malfegor, Meglonoth, Rude Awakening and Progenitus
Accelerants and fixer: 3 signets, all five obelisks, Fertile Ground, Prismatic Omen, Solemn Simulacrum
Card drawing: Etched Oracle, Life from the Loam, Fact or Fiction, Sylvan Library, Stroke of Genius:
Things that kill stuff: Austere Command, Nevinyrral's Disk, Obelisk of Alara, Bituminous Blast, Chandra Nalaar, Fire and Ice and Dominate.
Answers to combo pieces: Dimir Doppelganger, Puppeteer Clique, Aura of Silence, Night Soil
Total cards: 39. 100 less 39 is 61. Right now I've got 36 lands in the deck, I think I'm going to push that up to 40. I'd push it higher but there are mana accelerants too. Twenty one cards left. How am I going to spend those 21 cards?
I'd like at least one more card to deal with Artifacts and Enchantments. Austere Command and Disk should also be in that category, but they aren't exactly discriminate about their targets. Nantuko Vigilante makes the cut. Although not exactly the greatest answer it does leave behind a 3/2 body. 20 left.
I could use some more accelerants. Without putting too much effort into the search I'm pulling out Drumhunter. Drumhunter obviously has a lot of upside to this sort of deck. Also, I just got a Kozilek's Predator, which ought to make a great accelerant of it's own. And while I already expressed my dislike of shuffling in EDH, I guess I can't pass up one or two. Going to try Shard convergence, because if I'm going to be searching for basics I might as well get a couple at once. Also Ondu giant, because he comes with a real good size with him. I'm also going to play Khalni Gem; it's got a lot of potential downside as well as upside. I'd like to see it play before I reject it completely. Sacellum Godspeaker might get in depending on how many creatures top 5 power at the end. 15 cards left.
I think we're in a decent spot what with drawing cards; besides the cards that actively draw there are other sources of card advantage; the Unearth ability on the Traitor king or playing Worldheart Phoenix from the yard. I could use some more creature kill. There are always armies to fight through, and I'd rather be dealing my damage directly to people's faces. Adding Explosive Revelation, Corpsehatch and Word of Seizing to my deck. 11 left.
Anything else I want to put in? Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Ajani Vengeant get in. 9 left.
I've got a stack of giant, imposing creatures in front of me, and I've got to winnow it down to nine. Nine! Hardly enough. Paleoloth Charnelhoard Wurm make it in on the hopes of card advantage. Apocalypse hydra on the hopes of a truly epic size. Skyward Eye prophets because I might actually need to get more lands into play, even at six mana. Ulamog's Crusher because I can't have a huge creature deck without at least one Eldrazi. I'd have more if I owned them. Archon of Justice because it's hard to deal with, Kedereckt Leviathan because of the "bounce the world" trigger, Mindleach Mass because I'd love to see it in action and Deathbringer Thoctar because I love goblin sharpshooter so much. 0 cards left.
Done! That is, except for the mana curve, and the mana base, and all that. So not really close yet.
0 cards at converted mana cost 1.
9 at CMC 2
8 at CMC 3
10 at CMC 4
12 at CMC 5
8 at CMC 6
2 at CMC 7
6 at CMC 8
3 X spells
Progenitus at 10
That's entirely too much at 8. And not enough accelerating. A quick look at the cards at eight: Kedereckt Leviathan, Ulamog's Crusher, Nichol Bolas, Planeswalker, Mindleech Mass, Godsire and Rude Awakening. Guess which one doesn't fit. Goodbye Rude Awakening. I understand you make a decent EDH kill effect, but I need to switch you out for another mana accelerant. Something that doesn't cost me eight. What about Sacellum Godspeaker? I've got 13 creatures that'll count. On turn four when he comes down I'll have seen 11 cards. Rough calculation I'll have 11*13% appropriate creatures in hand, adds up to one or two. I think I'd like something better. Hello Harrow! The card I most regretted cutting earlier. Still not that happy with the curve; I mean I came into this knowing it'd be horrible but I'd like it to be... less horrible. I think I'm going to also include Fist of Suns. Lets you play anything for the low low cost of WUBRG. Seems good. Gonna cut Obelisk of Alara for it. Even though the obelisk is pretty cool it's not a creature and it is expensive.
Ok, what about the mana base, what distribution of lands do I need? First off, I intend to cast Progenitus as near to turn ten as I can manage. That puts a pretty hefty constraint on the distribution of colors. Secondly there are a number of things that need five colors on five. Bringers, Maelstrom Archangel, Fist of Suns activations. I'll want five color lands. Five color lands usually come with significant drawbacks. For example, Pillar of the Paruns is out; too many non-muliticolor cards/activated abilities. Same with Ancient Ziggurat, only creatures. Vivids all make it in. So does City of Brass; I'm more concerned about casting my spells than the one point of life, but this will be one of the first cards on the chopping block if it becomes necessary. Exotic Orchard comes in; random yes, but I expect it'll make at least three colors against three opponents. Rupture Spire makes it in easily; I can afford the two mana because my curve is so high. That's eight. I might take a reflecting pool out of reveillark if it turns out to be necessary.
I've got a cycle of Shards taplands to put in. 13. Nine of ten Ravnica bouncelands makes 22. Wish I could dig up a selesnia sanctuary. I'm going back and forth on including Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds. On the one hand they're great at getting the colors I might be missing, but they do involve shuffling. They fix for five colors, but only for one turn; after that you're stuck with whatever basic you searched for. Gonna put them in for now. 24. Need sixteen more. The deck is pretty evenly split otherwise, but there are green mana accelerators that could use some more support. Right now I've got what, 14 green sources? Sixteen if you count the fetches. I still need all five colors though, so I'm going to just go with 3 of each basic with an extra forest. I'm tempted to put a Terrain Generator in there, but I need as much color as I can get. 21 ways to get green mana by turn three, should mean I have at least one to start my other green accelerants.
Actually, looking at the low end of the curve, I've still got Night Soil there. It's a great card, mind you, but reallynot what I need here. I've already got stuff that hits creatures in the yard (Dimir Doppelganger, for example) and CC is a lot harder for me to produce than CD (That is, double green is harder than, say, green white). Replacing him with Knight of the Reliquary. He's not going to be nearly as awesome in this deck than most because I have much fewer sac lands and cycle lands and what have you to intentionally make him huge. On the other hand, him alongside ravnica bouncelands is pretty sweet. Can you say card advantage? I expect him to get killed rather quickly, but that's part of the plan. He gets killed, then I drop a lightning reaver which gets ganked, then I play a Paleoloth that obviously needs to be answered, and then they've got nothing left when I get to Godsire. Or if they get him than they'll miss Progenitus. Or if they get him then maybe they won't be able to stop Magister Sphinx, or Apocalypse Hydra, or what have you.
Also, upon reviewing the cards Malfegor, you're getting cut. Look, I know you're shiny and all, but you force me to discard my hand, which I don't want to do. Also, BBRR cost is a little hard to swallow seeing as you're a six drop. Replacing you with blood tyrant at 7. Resleeving and counting it out I'm consitently coming up with only 98 cards. Which is odd, because I've got two cards sleeved still from the old version. Ok, ok, I can't count. Checking again, and checking against the curve from up above I've still got 98 cards. Guess I was over by one in my previous iteration of the deck. Last minute janky insertion: Cream of the Crop. Cream of the crop is a card that I always figure is better than it's letting on. Odds are it isn't, but you can see the appeal of using it in a deck with creatures this large.
Call it first draft done. Still by no means sure that it'll work out. I'm going to goldfish it a couple times now, see how it turns out.
After goldfishing, I have my doubts. Certainly the huge creatures are all kinds of fun, but I'm suspicious my opponents won't leave me alive long enough to use them. I think I'm gonna have to actually play the deck a couple times before I change it again though. So here's where it's going to have to rest for now. The final decklist:
Lands:
Vivid Crag
Vivid Creek
Vivid Grove
Vivid Marsh
Vivid Meadow
Dimir Aqueduct
Boros Garrison
Golgari Rot-farm
Izzet Boilerworks
Orzhov Basilica
Gruul Turf
Rakdos Carnarium
Azorius Chancery
Simic Growth Chamber
Seaside Citadel
Arcane Sanctum
Crumbling Necropolis
Savage Lands
Jungle Shrine
Evolving Wilds
Terramorphic Expanse
Rupture Spire
Exotic Orchard
City of Brass
3 Plains
3 Island
3 Swamp
3 Mountain
4 Forest
(Noncreature) Artifacts:
Obelisk of Bant
Obelisk of Esper
Obelisk of Grixis
Obelisk of Jund
Obelisk of Naya
Dimir Signet
Gruul Signet
Azorius Signet
Fist of Suns
Khalni Gem
Nevinyrral's Disk
Enchantments:
Aura of Silence
Fertile Ground
Cream of the Crop
Prismatic Omen
Sylvan Library
Instants
Fire and Ice
Word of Seizing
Stroke of Genius
Bituminous Blast
Dominate
Harrow
Fact or Fiction
Sorceries
Life from the Loam
Austere Command
Corpsehatch
Shard Convergence
Explosive Revelation
Planeswalkers
Chandra Nalaar
Ajani Vengeant
Nichol Bolas, Planeswalker
Creatures
Bringer of the Black Dawn
Bringer of the Green Dawn
Archon of Justice
Puppeteer Clique
Skyward Eye Prophets
Worldheart Phoenix
Ulamog's Crusher
Godsire
Kozilek's Predator
Ondu Giant
Mindleech Mass
Dimir Doppelganger
Charnelhoard Wurm
Meglonoth
Knight of the Reliquary
Nantuko Vigilante
Solemn Simulacrum
Sedris, the Traitor King
Deathbringer Thoctar
Lightning Reaver
Paleoloth
Drumhunter
Etched Oracle
Blood Tyrant
Maelstrom Archangel
Kedereckt Leviathan
Magister Sphinx
Apocalypse Hydra
Progenitus
I stated in my last article that I'm building this deck for generic EDH opponents, figuring on three at a time. I could build a deck with the express goal of beating my brother in duals but that'd require a significantly different strategy. (He plays Sharuum the Hegemon. Said deck would need a lot of artifact destruction and graveyard hate.) I don't know much about the EDH metagame proper, so I'll have to design with generic multiplayer in mind. Let's move on to the other half of the question.
How do I plan to win? With giant creatures swinging across the red zone, bashing people's faces in. Good, good. Last post I was referring to this as an aggro strategy. That's sort of innacurate. It's really hard to win with a true aggro strategy in multiplayer. Your creature rush might destroy one, maybe two opponents but then you'd be spent, and the rest of the table pick your teeth with you. What I'm building is a lot closer to a midrange deck; it's got bigger creatures and some control elements; stuff that deals with opposing creatures, stuff that draws you cards. The objective of an aggro strategy is to beat down your opponents before they have a chance to do anything about it. The objective of a midrange deck is to grind out card advantage over a long series of turns so when everybody's playing off the top of their deck you've still got a dragon in play. It's hard to gain card advantage in an absolute sense in multiplayer; one of your cards has to be worth more than each opponent's card. On the other hand though, your opponents will have to spend their resources on your other opponents as well, so it balances out. Still you want to practice your table talk to make sure they send most of their resources elsewhere.
So, more specifically, what constitutes a midrange strategy? The main point is that nearly every one of your cards has to have added value. The easiest place to see this is on kill spells. The card Corpsehatch is probably going to make it's way into my deck. Destroy target nonblack creature. Doomblade does it for 2B less. Corpsehatch also puts two manabugs onto the battlefield; 0/1 creatures that can be sacrificed for one mana. It trades one for one with their creature, but gives me the added value of the two Eldrazi Spawn tokens. If a card doesn't give added value, it ought to be very versatile or ultra-efficient. (Maelstrom Pulse or Terminate, for example).
I also want to put in as many Semi-soft locks as possible into the deck. "Semi-soft lock" is an excellent concept with a terrible name. Coined by Patrick Chapin, it refers to a card that will win you the game unless your opponent can neutralize it. This'd allow most any card (Grizzly bears only takes ten turns! That's a 2/1 advantage over Squire!), except that a true Semi-soft lock ought to be really hard to answer. Godsire (8 mana 8/8 that taps to put more 8/8s onto the battlefield) doesn't really qualify because he's actually not that hard to take down. Any kill spell that doesn't depend on damage, or low converted mana cost will off him. Progenitus, on the other hand does. There are only a couple things that'll deal with someone who has protection from everything, and a 10/10 body is enough to end the game on his own pretty quickly.
It might not be the right idea to use Semi-soft locks in multiplayer; they create really big effects and therefore enemies. If you Cruel Ultimatum someone then they might have trouble coming back from that, but someone else will see you don't get too powerful from it. I think it won't disrupt my politics too much if I leave them mostly on creatures. People are already planning their multiplayer decks to fight through waves of dragons so they'll be less unduly threatened by something huge hitting play or coming their way. At least that's how I'm rationalizing my already stated goal to play and swing with huge creatures.
One more question: What are they going to be doing to stop me? The first thing to know is that you don't strap them into the deathtrap and gloat; you strap them in, kill them and THEN gloat. Their bodies give much worse reactions but on the whole it's much safer. Not that I have much experience with world domination. But anyways. I plan to win through the red zone. The easiest way to stop me from doing that is by killing my creatures. I plan on midranging them until I've still got resources left and they don't. Since I can trade my creatures one for one with their removal spells (either directly with a terror or by forcing them to use a Wrath of God; I don't think I'll need to lay more than one dragon-sized creature at once with this deck)
More problematic are cards like Moat and to a lesser extent Ghostly Prison. Stuff that makes it really hard to attack them. I think I'll have to include some things that kill enchantments, but I don't want to include too many. Too many and I'm playing a control deck. I just want enough to kill the occasional moat effect and maybe disrupt a combo deck. Same sort of thing with artifact removal.
Speaking of combo decks, what exactly do I plan to do about combo decks? I plan on hoping that someone else will deal with them. Ok, not entirely, but I don't plan on putting too many resources to that effect. I could build a deck that could stop any combo at any time, but then it'd be a control deck, and wouldn't have nearly as much space in it for bashing with giant creatures. This goes against my primary goal of the deck. So I'm going to put in a few answers to combo decks, but nothing like the main focus. In particular I think I'll be ignoring combo pieces on the stack since answer require leaving mana up and I want to be able to tap out to drop huge creatures.
So now that I've gone over that, what exactly do I need to fit into the deck? Let's add them all up:
A lot of huge creatures
A lot of things to accelerate into them
A bunch of stuff that fixes my mana (five colors, remember?)
A couple things that draw me cards
A Couple ways to kill creatures, clear out blockers and let my creatures through
A couple answers to enchantments and other combo pieces.
Note that most of our cards ought to do two of these tasks. So let's take a look at what we've already got:
Big creatures (loosely defined): Worldheart Phoenix, Bringers of the Black and Green Dawn, Maelstrom Archangel, Lightning Reaver, Sedirs, the Traitor King, Magister Sphinx, Godsire, Malfegor, Meglonoth, Rude Awakening and Progenitus
Accelerants and fixer: 3 signets, all five obelisks, Fertile Ground, Prismatic Omen, Solemn Simulacrum
Card drawing: Etched Oracle, Life from the Loam, Fact or Fiction, Sylvan Library, Stroke of Genius:
Things that kill stuff: Austere Command, Nevinyrral's Disk, Obelisk of Alara, Bituminous Blast, Chandra Nalaar, Fire and Ice and Dominate.
Answers to combo pieces: Dimir Doppelganger, Puppeteer Clique, Aura of Silence, Night Soil
Total cards: 39. 100 less 39 is 61. Right now I've got 36 lands in the deck, I think I'm going to push that up to 40. I'd push it higher but there are mana accelerants too. Twenty one cards left. How am I going to spend those 21 cards?
I'd like at least one more card to deal with Artifacts and Enchantments. Austere Command and Disk should also be in that category, but they aren't exactly discriminate about their targets. Nantuko Vigilante makes the cut. Although not exactly the greatest answer it does leave behind a 3/2 body. 20 left.
I could use some more accelerants. Without putting too much effort into the search I'm pulling out Drumhunter. Drumhunter obviously has a lot of upside to this sort of deck. Also, I just got a Kozilek's Predator, which ought to make a great accelerant of it's own. And while I already expressed my dislike of shuffling in EDH, I guess I can't pass up one or two. Going to try Shard convergence, because if I'm going to be searching for basics I might as well get a couple at once. Also Ondu giant, because he comes with a real good size with him. I'm also going to play Khalni Gem; it's got a lot of potential downside as well as upside. I'd like to see it play before I reject it completely. Sacellum Godspeaker might get in depending on how many creatures top 5 power at the end. 15 cards left.
I think we're in a decent spot what with drawing cards; besides the cards that actively draw there are other sources of card advantage; the Unearth ability on the Traitor king or playing Worldheart Phoenix from the yard. I could use some more creature kill. There are always armies to fight through, and I'd rather be dealing my damage directly to people's faces. Adding Explosive Revelation, Corpsehatch and Word of Seizing to my deck. 11 left.
Anything else I want to put in? Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Ajani Vengeant get in. 9 left.
I've got a stack of giant, imposing creatures in front of me, and I've got to winnow it down to nine. Nine! Hardly enough. Paleoloth Charnelhoard Wurm make it in on the hopes of card advantage. Apocalypse hydra on the hopes of a truly epic size. Skyward Eye prophets because I might actually need to get more lands into play, even at six mana. Ulamog's Crusher because I can't have a huge creature deck without at least one Eldrazi. I'd have more if I owned them. Archon of Justice because it's hard to deal with, Kedereckt Leviathan because of the "bounce the world" trigger, Mindleach Mass because I'd love to see it in action and Deathbringer Thoctar because I love goblin sharpshooter so much. 0 cards left.
Done! That is, except for the mana curve, and the mana base, and all that. So not really close yet.
0 cards at converted mana cost 1.
9 at CMC 2
8 at CMC 3
10 at CMC 4
12 at CMC 5
8 at CMC 6
2 at CMC 7
6 at CMC 8
3 X spells
Progenitus at 10
That's entirely too much at 8. And not enough accelerating. A quick look at the cards at eight: Kedereckt Leviathan, Ulamog's Crusher, Nichol Bolas, Planeswalker, Mindleech Mass, Godsire and Rude Awakening. Guess which one doesn't fit. Goodbye Rude Awakening. I understand you make a decent EDH kill effect, but I need to switch you out for another mana accelerant. Something that doesn't cost me eight. What about Sacellum Godspeaker? I've got 13 creatures that'll count. On turn four when he comes down I'll have seen 11 cards. Rough calculation I'll have 11*13% appropriate creatures in hand, adds up to one or two. I think I'd like something better. Hello Harrow! The card I most regretted cutting earlier. Still not that happy with the curve; I mean I came into this knowing it'd be horrible but I'd like it to be... less horrible. I think I'm going to also include Fist of Suns. Lets you play anything for the low low cost of WUBRG. Seems good. Gonna cut Obelisk of Alara for it. Even though the obelisk is pretty cool it's not a creature and it is expensive.
Ok, what about the mana base, what distribution of lands do I need? First off, I intend to cast Progenitus as near to turn ten as I can manage. That puts a pretty hefty constraint on the distribution of colors. Secondly there are a number of things that need five colors on five. Bringers, Maelstrom Archangel, Fist of Suns activations. I'll want five color lands. Five color lands usually come with significant drawbacks. For example, Pillar of the Paruns is out; too many non-muliticolor cards/activated abilities. Same with Ancient Ziggurat, only creatures. Vivids all make it in. So does City of Brass; I'm more concerned about casting my spells than the one point of life, but this will be one of the first cards on the chopping block if it becomes necessary. Exotic Orchard comes in; random yes, but I expect it'll make at least three colors against three opponents. Rupture Spire makes it in easily; I can afford the two mana because my curve is so high. That's eight. I might take a reflecting pool out of reveillark if it turns out to be necessary.
I've got a cycle of Shards taplands to put in. 13. Nine of ten Ravnica bouncelands makes 22. Wish I could dig up a selesnia sanctuary. I'm going back and forth on including Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds. On the one hand they're great at getting the colors I might be missing, but they do involve shuffling. They fix for five colors, but only for one turn; after that you're stuck with whatever basic you searched for. Gonna put them in for now. 24. Need sixteen more. The deck is pretty evenly split otherwise, but there are green mana accelerators that could use some more support. Right now I've got what, 14 green sources? Sixteen if you count the fetches. I still need all five colors though, so I'm going to just go with 3 of each basic with an extra forest. I'm tempted to put a Terrain Generator in there, but I need as much color as I can get. 21 ways to get green mana by turn three, should mean I have at least one to start my other green accelerants.
Actually, looking at the low end of the curve, I've still got Night Soil there. It's a great card, mind you, but reallynot what I need here. I've already got stuff that hits creatures in the yard (Dimir Doppelganger, for example) and CC is a lot harder for me to produce than CD (That is, double green is harder than, say, green white). Replacing him with Knight of the Reliquary. He's not going to be nearly as awesome in this deck than most because I have much fewer sac lands and cycle lands and what have you to intentionally make him huge. On the other hand, him alongside ravnica bouncelands is pretty sweet. Can you say card advantage? I expect him to get killed rather quickly, but that's part of the plan. He gets killed, then I drop a lightning reaver which gets ganked, then I play a Paleoloth that obviously needs to be answered, and then they've got nothing left when I get to Godsire. Or if they get him than they'll miss Progenitus. Or if they get him then maybe they won't be able to stop Magister Sphinx, or Apocalypse Hydra, or what have you.
Also, upon reviewing the cards Malfegor, you're getting cut. Look, I know you're shiny and all, but you force me to discard my hand, which I don't want to do. Also, BBRR cost is a little hard to swallow seeing as you're a six drop. Replacing you with blood tyrant at 7. Resleeving and counting it out I'm consitently coming up with only 98 cards. Which is odd, because I've got two cards sleeved still from the old version. Ok, ok, I can't count. Checking again, and checking against the curve from up above I've still got 98 cards. Guess I was over by one in my previous iteration of the deck. Last minute janky insertion: Cream of the Crop. Cream of the crop is a card that I always figure is better than it's letting on. Odds are it isn't, but you can see the appeal of using it in a deck with creatures this large.
Call it first draft done. Still by no means sure that it'll work out. I'm going to goldfish it a couple times now, see how it turns out.
After goldfishing, I have my doubts. Certainly the huge creatures are all kinds of fun, but I'm suspicious my opponents won't leave me alive long enough to use them. I think I'm gonna have to actually play the deck a couple times before I change it again though. So here's where it's going to have to rest for now. The final decklist:
Lands:
Vivid Crag
Vivid Creek
Vivid Grove
Vivid Marsh
Vivid Meadow
Dimir Aqueduct
Boros Garrison
Golgari Rot-farm
Izzet Boilerworks
Orzhov Basilica
Gruul Turf
Rakdos Carnarium
Azorius Chancery
Simic Growth Chamber
Seaside Citadel
Arcane Sanctum
Crumbling Necropolis
Savage Lands
Jungle Shrine
Evolving Wilds
Terramorphic Expanse
Rupture Spire
Exotic Orchard
City of Brass
3 Plains
3 Island
3 Swamp
3 Mountain
4 Forest
(Noncreature) Artifacts:
Obelisk of Bant
Obelisk of Esper
Obelisk of Grixis
Obelisk of Jund
Obelisk of Naya
Dimir Signet
Gruul Signet
Azorius Signet
Fist of Suns
Khalni Gem
Nevinyrral's Disk
Enchantments:
Aura of Silence
Fertile Ground
Cream of the Crop
Prismatic Omen
Sylvan Library
Instants
Fire and Ice
Word of Seizing
Stroke of Genius
Bituminous Blast
Dominate
Harrow
Fact or Fiction
Sorceries
Life from the Loam
Austere Command
Corpsehatch
Shard Convergence
Explosive Revelation
Planeswalkers
Chandra Nalaar
Ajani Vengeant
Nichol Bolas, Planeswalker
Creatures
Bringer of the Black Dawn
Bringer of the Green Dawn
Archon of Justice
Puppeteer Clique
Skyward Eye Prophets
Worldheart Phoenix
Ulamog's Crusher
Godsire
Kozilek's Predator
Ondu Giant
Mindleech Mass
Dimir Doppelganger
Charnelhoard Wurm
Meglonoth
Knight of the Reliquary
Nantuko Vigilante
Solemn Simulacrum
Sedris, the Traitor King
Deathbringer Thoctar
Lightning Reaver
Paleoloth
Drumhunter
Etched Oracle
Blood Tyrant
Maelstrom Archangel
Kedereckt Leviathan
Magister Sphinx
Apocalypse Hydra
Progenitus
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Silly Deck Idea
This started as an off the wall deck idea. Then I heard someone took a similar deck to decent results in Legacy: Link!
The deck is based around doing broken things with Dream Halls. Like putting it into a deck. Dream halls lets you cast a card by discarding a card that shares a color. The other major parts of the combo came from the set Conflux; the legendary Progenitus and the eponymous Conflux. Having Dream Halls in play lets you cast Conflux on the cheap, searching up your playset of Progenitus and another Conflux; use the progenitus to cast each other, and if they get counterspelled or wrathed away you've got backups, and an extra Conflux to repeat with.
Which is all well and good if you don't mind waiting until turn seven or eight to finish them off. If you want to speed things up you need a quicker way to get Dream Halls into play, or Progenitus. Show and Tell is made to fit the bill; For three mana you and him both get to drop something into play, and the only way he can beat your Dream Halls or straight up Progenitus is if he drops an Aluren and combos you out in response. After that we can add in some mana accelerants, like Lotus Petals or Elvish or Simian Spirit Guides to shave the occasional turn off of it. Let's bang out a rough draft list:
4 Dream Halls
4 Conflux
4 Progenitus
4 Show and Tell
4 Lotus Petal
~16 other cards, ~24 lands.
In the 16 other cards we can slot Brainstorm, Ponder, Force of Will and either another cheap cantrip, some more acceleration or maybe some more countermagic. What we end up with is a mono blue combo deck that's not that quick and not that impossible to disrupt; killing them by turn five is still a turn or too too late, and they can counterspell your Conflux or Dream Halls right off the bat. Or rip them, with duress or Thoughtseize. Yeah, Force of Will is nice, but you can't rely on always having it in hand. So how do we make this deck better?
I'mma gonna take a look at the back end first. There's a very handy piece of disruption for practically anything they might be doing: Obliterate. If you destroy all creatures, artifacts and lands, then they can hardly have a better set of enchantments in play than your dream halls. And obliterate is even uncounterable. Inasmuch as progenitus can dominate a clean board, we can still speed the kill up some.
If you search up False Cure, Beacon of Immortality, force of will and two Progenitus, then you can pitch the Progenitus to play False cure and Beacon to kill them regardless of their life total, with Force of Will backup. Can't ask for a much nicer kill than that.
I'd really like more than 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder as card drawing/digging. I'm not sure what else would be good in this slot though; There are a number of good blue draw spells out there. The linked article uses Ancestral Memories, which I guess is good if you've gotten dream halls out, but it doesn't help you find dream halls itself, which is a major minus. yeah, you can play it on it's own, but only if you're sitting around until turn five anyway.
On the other hand, this deck doesn't necessarily have to be mono blue anyway; if we went into Black, we could use Duress and Thoughtseize instead of Force of Will, and get your card drawing through things like Sign in blood. If you're brave, you can run Dark Confidant, but the occasional Progenitus flip will appraise you of costs not even Bob Maher would be willing to pay. You lose out in that being blue black makes you run those expensive expensive duals and fetches. And the card drawing isn't as good. You could also run green for the spirit guides and maybe Natural Order as well. Or... Or...
A couple other thoughts that came up; remember the Shoal cycle from Kamigawa? Blazing shoal discarding Progenitus gives you ten damage right there; if you ran it with man lands you could run that almost as a seperate combo. probably start your manlands count with Mutavault; the merfolk subtype might be important in case your opponent's Lord of Atlantis gives you islandwalk. The other thought I can't get out of my mind is Shining Shoal; the white one. If you can redirect ten damage, you can almost kill somebody. Not that many sources in legacy will do ten damage at a time (tendrils, for example, does it in increments of two).
I suppose I should bang out an actual list before I go...
4 Conflux
4 Progenitus
4 Dream Halls
4 Show and Tell
4 Force of Will
4 Obliterate
1 Beacon of Immortality
1 False Cure
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lotus Petal
2 Pact of Negation
4 Crystal Vein
4 Scalding tarn
12 Island
A little land light, and definitely a first draft, but that's all I've got. What, you expect me to actually test my bizarre deck ideas? The nerve...
The deck is based around doing broken things with Dream Halls. Like putting it into a deck. Dream halls lets you cast a card by discarding a card that shares a color. The other major parts of the combo came from the set Conflux; the legendary Progenitus and the eponymous Conflux. Having Dream Halls in play lets you cast Conflux on the cheap, searching up your playset of Progenitus and another Conflux; use the progenitus to cast each other, and if they get counterspelled or wrathed away you've got backups, and an extra Conflux to repeat with.
Which is all well and good if you don't mind waiting until turn seven or eight to finish them off. If you want to speed things up you need a quicker way to get Dream Halls into play, or Progenitus. Show and Tell is made to fit the bill; For three mana you and him both get to drop something into play, and the only way he can beat your Dream Halls or straight up Progenitus is if he drops an Aluren and combos you out in response. After that we can add in some mana accelerants, like Lotus Petals or Elvish or Simian Spirit Guides to shave the occasional turn off of it. Let's bang out a rough draft list:
4 Dream Halls
4 Conflux
4 Progenitus
4 Show and Tell
4 Lotus Petal
~16 other cards, ~24 lands.
In the 16 other cards we can slot Brainstorm, Ponder, Force of Will and either another cheap cantrip, some more acceleration or maybe some more countermagic. What we end up with is a mono blue combo deck that's not that quick and not that impossible to disrupt; killing them by turn five is still a turn or too too late, and they can counterspell your Conflux or Dream Halls right off the bat. Or rip them, with duress or Thoughtseize. Yeah, Force of Will is nice, but you can't rely on always having it in hand. So how do we make this deck better?
I'mma gonna take a look at the back end first. There's a very handy piece of disruption for practically anything they might be doing: Obliterate. If you destroy all creatures, artifacts and lands, then they can hardly have a better set of enchantments in play than your dream halls. And obliterate is even uncounterable. Inasmuch as progenitus can dominate a clean board, we can still speed the kill up some.
If you search up False Cure, Beacon of Immortality, force of will and two Progenitus, then you can pitch the Progenitus to play False cure and Beacon to kill them regardless of their life total, with Force of Will backup. Can't ask for a much nicer kill than that.
I'd really like more than 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder as card drawing/digging. I'm not sure what else would be good in this slot though; There are a number of good blue draw spells out there. The linked article uses Ancestral Memories, which I guess is good if you've gotten dream halls out, but it doesn't help you find dream halls itself, which is a major minus. yeah, you can play it on it's own, but only if you're sitting around until turn five anyway.
On the other hand, this deck doesn't necessarily have to be mono blue anyway; if we went into Black, we could use Duress and Thoughtseize instead of Force of Will, and get your card drawing through things like Sign in blood. If you're brave, you can run Dark Confidant, but the occasional Progenitus flip will appraise you of costs not even Bob Maher would be willing to pay. You lose out in that being blue black makes you run those expensive expensive duals and fetches. And the card drawing isn't as good. You could also run green for the spirit guides and maybe Natural Order as well. Or... Or...
A couple other thoughts that came up; remember the Shoal cycle from Kamigawa? Blazing shoal discarding Progenitus gives you ten damage right there; if you ran it with man lands you could run that almost as a seperate combo. probably start your manlands count with Mutavault; the merfolk subtype might be important in case your opponent's Lord of Atlantis gives you islandwalk. The other thought I can't get out of my mind is Shining Shoal; the white one. If you can redirect ten damage, you can almost kill somebody. Not that many sources in legacy will do ten damage at a time (tendrils, for example, does it in increments of two).
I suppose I should bang out an actual list before I go...
4 Conflux
4 Progenitus
4 Dream Halls
4 Show and Tell
4 Force of Will
4 Obliterate
1 Beacon of Immortality
1 False Cure
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lotus Petal
2 Pact of Negation
4 Crystal Vein
4 Scalding tarn
12 Island
A little land light, and definitely a first draft, but that's all I've got. What, you expect me to actually test my bizarre deck ideas? The nerve...
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