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Yo! MTG Taps! – Pucamegaformidamorph
Yo! MTG Taps! Pucamegaformidamorph is now available!
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This week, Stephen and bigheadjoe are joined by PucaTrade founder Eric Freytag to discuss how the site works and promote their IndieGoGo campaign to add more features to the site. Then they take an EXTENSIVE look at the Dragons of Tarkir spoilers.
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Yo! MTG Taps! – Magic is Friendship
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In this episode, Stephen and brohoofjoe hold themselves accountable for their 2014 new year’s resolutions, create new ones for 2015, go over spoilers, then discuss their top albums of 2014.
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Yo! MTG Taps! – Aethersprouts
Yo! MTG Taps! Aethersprouts is now available!
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In this episode, Stephen and bigheadjoe are joined by Erin Campbell, host of The Deck Tease podcast, to discuss Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir and just about anything else.
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Yo! MTG Taps! – M15 Reasons Black is the New Standard, Number 9 WILL BLOW YOUR FACE OFF YOUR FACE
Yo! MTG Taps! M15 Reasons Black is the New Standard, Number 9 WILL BLOW YOUR FACE OFF YOUR FACE is now available!
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In this episode, Stephen and bigheadjoe go over their M15 Prerelease and Release experiences, and then discuss the first weekend of Standard with M15 legal.
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Yo! MTG Taps! – I Wish A Wizard Would
Yo! MTG Taps! I Wish A Wizard Would is now available!
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In this MASSIVE episode, bhj and Stephen go over the M15 spoiler in full. Saddle up, join the peloton and come along for the ride!
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Yo! MTG Taps! – Ambition’s Cost
Yo! MTG Taps! Ambition’s Cost is now available!
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In this episode, bhj and Stephen are joined by Charles L. Johnson III, owner of Brewport Games in Baltimore and Jamison Sacks, owner of Common Ground Games in Dallas, to discuss their first year owning their respective stores.
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Yo! MTG Taps! – Hairway to Stephen
Yo! MTG Taps! Hairway to Stephen is now available!
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In this episode we meet Stephen Marshall, talk MTG New Year’s Resolutions, rant a little about the Invitational coverage, and then are joined by some dude to talk about our favorite albums of 2013! (and 1 from 2012, apparently…)
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Yo! MTG Taps! Episode 62 – Now Available!
Yo! MTG Taps! Episode 62 – Mind The Banhammer is now available!
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Episode 62 – Mind The Banhammer
Joey and Bigheadjoe go over the results of GP Dallas and share their opinions on the “ban Jace” controversy that broke out this week. They also take a closer look at some of the New Phyrexia spoilers they discussed last week. Are some of these cards better than they looked at first?
• Ted Knutson’s “Jace T. Mind Sculptor Will You Please Go Now!”
• Aaron Forsythe’s “Skullclamp, We Hardly Knew Ye” (from when the DCI banned Skullclamp)
• Lauren Lee’s response – “#BanJace – Or Not”
• Horde of Notions podcast (Rogue deckbuilding)
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Spreading Cheese – Johnny, Vorthos and… Johnny?
Preface: I know, I know. I promised something awesome last time, and I still haven’t delivered. Believe me, this isn’t one of those things where I say I’ll talk about tempo and never do it, I really am experiencing technical difficulties. Give me another week or so. This stuff is harder than I thought.
Hi all, and welcome to another chapter of Spreading Cheese. This week I’ll talk a little bit about my deck, and also about fantasies. No, this won’t be a kinky M-rated article. Trust me. And I’ll also give you my thoughts on the recent happenings in the MTG world.
First of all, let me talk about Paris. In case you were living in a red cycling land, Magic Weekend Paris happened. A few interesting decks were put out by the attendees, and I’d like to discuss some of them and their potential.
To start with, let’s take my favorite player’s own brew, which can be found here. And of course, the player I’m talking about is none other than Patrick Chapin himself. His sixth-place UBr Tezzeret deck (which conveniently evokes the nickname “Uber Tezz”) is quite an interesting creation. At first, it looks like a control deck, but as my friends Lloyd and Marc Frias (you might know Lloyd as Maryland State Champion of 2009) pointed out while I was playing against Joey (of YMTGT, obviously) running the Chapin list, the deck is more of a combo deck. Paraphrasing some of what they said, and adding some of my own thoughts: The deck is a bit dependent on having an explosive opening hand. Drawing Tezzeret is almost essential to winning (thus having 4 copies). Also, relying on having many artifacts in play makes the deck slightly vulnerable. It is a bit easily disrupted by getting rid of Tezzeret (Memoricide really hurts the deck), and Ratchet Bomb at 2 or 0 is also very scary. Other than that, I believe it is a very solid deck. Maybe not Tier 1 yet, but at least tier 1.5 definitely. [Editor’s note: Chapin’s thoughts on the future of this deck can be heard on this Friday’s episode of Yo! MTG Taps!]
Of course, the most significant deck to come out of the tournament was an updated version of Brian Kibler’s Caw-Go deck from Worlds, Caw-Blade. That deck is a monster, it has ridiculous amounts of card advantage. I haven’t thought of a way to work against it yet, because I haven’t even encountered it, but it definitely looks scary. Similar to that (ok, not similar at all but it runs the Caws and the Blades) is Boros, which is also a scarily effective deck. I honestly don’t have an opinion about these decks yet, so I’ll refrain from saying much more, but those two decks right seem to be the best decks in Standard right now, and to be honest they’re much “better” decks than the Titan decks of pre-MBS Standard. Not necessarily stronger, but better for the format because they are more reasonable, fair (depends on your definition of fair, of course) and much more interactive. I believe the Titans were really lazy design (“Just make a 6/6 for 6 and add not only one, but two relevant and really good abilities”), and seeing them being replaced in favor of cards that require more thinking makes me happy.
Perhaps the only exception to my opinion of Titans is Sun Titan, because it doesn’t do too much on its own. It doesn’t lock down the board, it doesn’t make endless bears, it doesn’t kill everything your opponent has and it doesn’t deal 6 damage to your face/put an Eldrazi Titan onto the field. You actually have to think of how you have to build your deck, and you don’t immediately win when you play Sun Titan. Yes, that is why it was quite underplayed recently, and that is why I like it. Thankfully Naoki Nakada decided that the card was worthy and he showed that his playing skills are also worthy by placing 4th with a Sun Titan deck. His deck is like Caw-Blade but with even more advantage thanks to the Titan. Since the Hawks, the Mystics and the Swords all cost less than or equal to three, I’d watch out for Sun Titan. The only thing that confuses me is the exclusion of little Jace, especially since the 3-spot on the curve is pretty empty, but with so much card advantage already in the deck, maybe little Jace isn’t necessary.
Another exciting deck, while not in the top 8, was Martin Juza’s Kuldotha Forgemaster deck. You can find the list here. You know I’m a Johnny at heart, so this one excites me. The more Spike-oriented readers (are there any Spikes who actually read me?) might think that this is just a bad version of Chapin’s list, but I would disagree. Yes, they are quite similar, and this list lacks a maindeck sweeper to protect itself from fast aggro, but this list seems overall more consistent. The only problem is keeping the Forgemaster alive for one turn. If you can do that, you are likely to win, either via Myr Battlesphere or Blightsteel Colossus, which are hard to remove due to lack of throats and having large toughness.
Finally, I’m sure there are several Blightsteel Colossus+Shape Anew/Mass Polymorph decks, but one that really grabbed my attention with its clever design was Shaheen Soorani’s Caw-Mass Polymorph (name by me) deck. List here. It looks and plays like a Caw-Go deck, until it drops Mass Polymorph into Emrakul and Iona. The elegance here is that you actually have creatures that aren’t Mass Polymorph targets in the deck (the Hawks), and since the Hawks can remove other Hawks from the deck, you are still safe to cast Mass Polymorph. You also have Elspeth, and if things get worse, Gideon (and even Colonnade if you have tons of mana) as targets.
Now, all these new decks don’t mean old powerhouses like RUG and Valakut are gone forever, they’re under people’s radars right now, but don’t let that fool you. Valakut only got better with MBS and RUG is still pretty strong. RUG is harmed by many decks playing cheap sweepers against aggro decks since RUG’s mana sources and one of the primary win conditions are small creatures, but if you’re caught unaware, an early game explosion from RUG can still get you. Point is, don’t forget about the Titan decks.
Alright, let’s get to fantasies. What I’m talking about is the “flavor of Magic” (nice abrupt transition from Spike to Vorthos I did there, eh?). Anybody remember that? “You are a Planeswalker.” Do you guys ever imagine that whole thing when you’re playing? You probably aren’t doing it when you play competitively (and you really shouldn’t, your mind should be on the game), but sometimes it’s fun to do in casual games. Now, imagine you’re a Planeswalker. Not a card with loyalty counters and stuff, but and all-powerful magician. What deck are you playing? This works best with one or two-color decks, since the flavor starts to break apart when you use three colors because you really have to justify it well, but that can also work. The best way to think of your colors is, for two colors, Ravnica block and for three colors, Alara block (as much as I hate the block, it did some things right). If you’re playing wedge colors (RUG/BGU/BWR/URW/GBW), it’s harder to think of, but it’ll still work out. Here are some typical archetypes and the kind of planeswalker I associate with them in my mind (it’s important to think of motivations):
Mono W aggro: A valiant paladin who bravely fights to protect his people from evil
Mono W control: A zealous priest who hates all that is evil
Mono U aggro: A merfolk lord with a command of the elements
Mono U control: A brainiac wizard with a desire to control and understand everything
Mono B aggro: A bloodthirsty monster with a hunger for flesh
Mono B control: An insane ex-wizard who likes causing pain
Mono R aggro: An angry “insert race here” who just likes to fight
Mono R control: A crazy/angry/both shaman who likes to blow stuff up
Mono G aggro: An aggressive druid who wants to protect nature
Mono G control: A holistic and slightly deranged druid who wants to spread nature
Fair enough? It gets more complicated after this, so I’ll leave most of it to your imagination.
The dual color builds are covered pretty well by Ravnica, so just read up on the flavor of Ravnica. Similarly for Alara colors.
RUG: A witty shaman who doesn’t like to play by the rules, he/she wants to master all elements, wants too many things. Can’t control the forces he/she tries to master, but has more wild power because of that.
BGU: A wizard who is very interested in the cycle of life and death, combining nature and death by forcing them together with magic. Will never have the understanding of a BG necromancer, because he approaches the problem differently, but because of that he will probably be more powerful (not because of mastery of life and death but because of knowledge of traditional magic)
BWR: A former white mage who lost his faith in the system, and had to resort to using extreme methods to fight evil. He/she has succumbed to corruption but still tries to hold on to his/her ideals he used to have. Very powerful, but also very emotionally conflicted.
URW: This is the one that makes the least amount of sense for me. A UR mage would be a crazy knowledge junkie, a WR warrior priest would be a fiery zealous warrior, and a UW mage would be the epitome of calm and collected control freak. Maybe we can call this the pent-up former UW mage who just couldn’t take it anymore and destroyed his/her entire academy in a fit of rage? Totally unstable and bipolar, very powerful magically but has no control over his powers.
GBW: This one’s easy. A necromancer/priest/druid who gives himself to the cycle of life and death. For him/her alive or dead is not a distinction, it’s just the current mood of the day. Creates organisms, then recycles their parts to make something diffferent. Master of healing and murder. Not as explosively strong as some of the other wedge guys, but more consistently strong. Has a very long term plan that doesn’t make sense to mere mortals. Of course, completely insane.
There is almost no way you can justify 4 colors, and 5 colors is just any flavor of “jack of all trades, master of none.”
Now, what good is all this stuff? Well, when I’m playing a deck, I sometimes like to imagine that I’m roleplaying this planeswalker, and my enemy is this other walker, and we are facing each other in this epic standoff. Imagine you’re playing Boros against UB control. Here’s some progressive metal to set the mood: Iron Thrones – Like a Moth to Flame. Your opponent is the evil planeswalker who’s been slowly executing his plan (which is still not completely known by you, but you know he doesn’t have any good intentions). You’ve finally tracked him down, and the moment you approach his lair, you get a crippling headache. 
You seem to have forgotten how to summon your trusted Goblin Guide. Instead you draw some white mana from a nearby field, summoning a Lynx. It looks docile right now, but you know that the moment it gets a hold of the scent of this new terrain, it will be ready to strike. Then you see the mage. He is disguised in a dark hood, his eyes glowing blue with power. With a swipe of his hand, he unleashes a torrent of blue mana, and you suddenly feel cut off from the field you just drew mana from. You realize that he flooded the field with his own blue mana to keep you off of using it.
As a retort, you decide to draw mana from another nearby plain, and as you feel the flow of mana into your mind, you also see your Lynx get stronger. You order the lynx to attack with its newfound strength, and while your Lynx leaps onto the enemy you summon a sage you once met in your travels to the wild plane of Zendikar. She steps out of the mana gate you opened, and by your command, forges a majestic sword out of a nearby stone for you.
The blue mage seems intimidated by the creatures you have produced, but you quickly realize that his fear was a facade and he is actually planning something. He produces a chalice from within his cloak, and draws some mana into it, and then goes into wait for your next move. You decide to act cautious. As you draw mana from a nearby mountain, your lynx grows even stronger, but when you tell it to attack the enemy, the mage suddenly takes a sip from the chalice, and using that strength, lunges and rips out the throat of your lynx. You do not mourn its passing, because it died valiantly on the field of battle. With the vigor brought by the rage caused by your comrade’s death, you suddenly remember how to summon your Goblin Guide, and you do so, and along with it you summon your trusted squadron of hawks with a whistle. You hear the caw of the alpha hawk, and you know that its brothers will soon arrive. The guide attacks your opponent, and he is hurt, but you also sense that your opponent has benefited from the light your guide shone while charging your opponent.
Wiping off the blood from his tunic, your opponent draws some more mana, and summons an artificer. The artificer begins working on something, but you cannot understand what it is. Seeing as you are facing a difficult opponent, you decide to ask for help. You begin to gather your mana to call upon your longtime friend, Koth, but your opponent drains your mana quickly, and you cannot procude enough mana to feed the temporary leak he caused. Instead you decide to command your guide and hawk to attack your opponent. He commands his artificer to protect him from the guide, and they spar in a battle that leaves them both fatally wounded, while your hawk unleashes its fury on your opponent.
Your opponent doesn’t seem too fazed by your attacks, but you know that he is at least a little hurt. Seemingly inspired by your actions, he decides to summon another planewalker. You instantly recognize the help he has summoned: The fabled Jace, it is said that most who face him do not survive, or at least do not remain sane. Now you start to feel the fear. Recognizing your fear, Jace reaches out towards you, and you suddenly start feeling numb. You feel as if you are forgetting something important, but just can’t place your finger on it…
The story goes on like this. Imagining a battle like this makes games much more fun, and if you tell your opponent and they partake in it, the verbal trade-offs add even more to the fun. It’s not a huge deal, but if you’re looking to spice up your games of Magic, this is a way to do it.
As for what I’m playing myself, I’m testing out Dredgevine, as I said I’d play Dredge in every format possible. It’s a rough list right now, extremely good against control, but weak against fast aggro and heavy disruption. I’m still looking for ways to improve it. Here’s the list:
4x Vengevine
4x Fauna Shaman
4x Bloodghast
4x Hedron Crab
4x Birds of Paradise
3x Shriekhorn
3x Jace, The Mind Sculptor
3x Bonehoard
3x Memnite
2x Stoneforge Mystic
1x Trinket Mage
1x Sword of Body and Mind
———————–
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Evolving Wilds
2x Celestial Colonnade
1x Creeping Tar Pit
5x Forest
3x Island
1x Plains
The interactions in this are pretty insane, from brainstorming with Jace then milling yourself to drop 2 Vengevines, followed by discarding another to Fauna Shaman, getting a Trinket Mage and casting it to get a Memnite and cast it, bringing back the Vengevines. But the real player in the deck is Bonehoard. Mark my words, this card is poised to see an increase in value. A Bonehoard on a Bird is just devastating, since you mill yourself there will be creatures in your yard, and probably one or two in your opponent’s yard too.
As I said, this is a test build, and I’m thinking of ways to make it more resilient. It’s not a great deck, but it is pretty fun to use against control players. I wouldn’t recommend trying this in a highly competitive environment just yet, but we’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, I’m trying to exploit huge Johnny cards like Knowledge Pool. It’s not easy, but when did that ever stop me?
If you were to ask me what I would play at a coming SCG Open, I probably would play a Tezzeret deck. Or a deck involving artifacts, even if it might not involve Tezzeret. Speaking of which, I’ll probably be at the SCG DC Open this weekend, so see you there! Next week, I’ll try to get that technical problem fixed, and if not, I’ll still come up with something amusing.
P.S. For questions, comments, feedback, send an e-mail to me at Spreading.Cheese [at] gmail [dot] com or follow me on twitter @nayon7
P.P.S If you would like me to write more planeswalker battle stories like this one, please let me know! I’d love to do something like this once in a while.
Spreading Cheese – Bluntness, Cheating and a RUG Beater
Hi readers! This week I’ll be different. I’ll focus less on the decks and more on some general Magic talk. Before we begin, I want to make a few things clear. Some people seem to have the opinion that my column is about building ‘janky’ casual decks. So let me clarify. The purpose of my column is to make people think differently about Magic and have fun.
I do build rogue decks, true, because the only kind of deck that anyone can build is a rogue deck. If your deck is UB Control, RDW, RUG Control (I’m going to get to that) etc, you didn’t “build” a deck (unless you are the actual person who came up with the deck and Top8’ed with it, in that case, I sincerely congratulate you); you just netdecked it (let’s not argue about the semantics, you all know what I mean). Building a deck is coming up with your own idea and executing it. Building a deck is NOT replacing Mana Leaks with Deprives in some Gerry Thompson list. That’s netdecking and making adjustments to the list.
It’s true that the decks I build aren’t up to par with top tier decks like RUG Control. That is because I am also one person with a limited viewpoint. My goal is to show you ways to think about deckbuilding, so you can take those tools and build your own decks. Does this mean that if you’re a Spike who just takes whatever list Top8’ed the most recent PTQ/GP/States/SCG Open/Random 5k, there is no point in you reading my articles? No. You might receive less from my articles, because you have already made your mind on what you want to do and you don’t want advice on how to build a deck. But you might learn to think slightly differently about cards and include some tech in your deck. You can also learn to assess cards differently, so you won’t go into a tournament in a new format with last year’s bad deck.
What tools you say? Go back and read my previous articles. The Deckspace, ways to win the game, DDRS. These are all important tools for deckbuilding. They’re not all relevant in every format (right now the onslaught of control decks in the meta makes life hard), but they are all ways to think. At the end of the day, decks go away but the skills you learned stay there.
Also, I won’t just talk about deckbuilding. I will talk about interactions in the domain of Magic and many other things in general (read further, you’ll see). It’s just that we’ve just received a new block, so the format is still fresh and there are still ideas for deck building. When the format settles, there will be less to talk about in the area of deckbuilding. Also, there really isn’t much to talk about lately. Yes, there are changes to WPN and draft order, but there isn’t really much to discuss about that. They are just facts that we have to accept and live with. Are you disappointed that Wizards decided to tighten the wallets/make more money by cutting WPN from non-affiliated TO’s? Well, Wizards aren’t a company that go back on their word (See Reserve list issues) even if it makes customers unhappy, so complaining about it isn’t going to change anything. Remember that Magic is a product and Wizards are a company that provides us with this product. They want to make money. Voting with your wallet can make them care, not much else can. Nothing to discuss. The draft order change can spike a bit of discussion, but Mirrodin Besieged isn’t released yet so there is nothing to discuss. What? You say you can try to draft old blocks in reverse order? Wait, what kept you from doing that in the first place? Why didn’t you think of it back then? I have always thought about doing that, and I actually initiated a reverse Ravnica block draft once. You’re saying that it wasn’t legal back then? Well, it’s still not legal, old formats will remain unchanged, so if legality was holding you down, you still can’t do it. If you truly never thought about it, well, maybe it’s time to think outside of the box a little bit, don’t you think?
Wow, I’m really harsh this week, aren’t I? Notice how there’s no disclaimer saying “if I offend anyone, I’m sorry, this is just my opinion.” Why should I need a disclaimer? When you are saying what you think is right, you shouldn’t be afraid to say it. How is this related to Magic? I’ll show you how, but you should also think about this in real life situations.
When you think your opponent is doing something shady, just say it. Don’t sit there and suspect something; confront your opponent. This is a game, and it is meant to be fun; I can understand people wanting to avoid confrontation, but you really don’t have anything to lose. If you fear for your reputation, don’t worry. If you are known to be a good person in your local store, their opinion of you won’t change anyway. Conversely, if you are known to be a prick, trying to act nice won’t change that.
What you CAN change, is your opponent’s behavior. Calling out someone on sloppy/shady conduct will force them to tighten their conduct in general. If they were honestly mistaken/sloppy, they will learn something and not make the same mistake again. If they were truly trying to exploit something, you will force them to back off and know that you are not to be trifled with, so they won’t try to cheat against you anymore. So in either situation, you don’t lose anything and your opponent gets what they deserve, whether it be good or bad.
While we’re on the topic, let me point out a few things in case some of you don’t know. The objective of shuffling your deck is randomizing it. The best and most legal way to do this is give your deck a few riffle shuffles or ‘push shuffles’ (take it into two halves and push them into each other), do a pile shuffle of seven piles, then a few more riffle/push shuffles. And by a few I mean at least 5. Afterwards, you present your deck to your opponent. Ideally, you should do the same thing to your opponent’s deck, but at FNM this is rather tedious, so either cut their deck into 3-4 pieces and put it back together in a different order, or give it a few riffle/push shuffles and then a cut. Don’t ask me why you should do this, because there are people who have more expertise in this subject than I do.
Introducing Mike Flores:
Now, it doesn’t mean your opponent is cheating if he doesn’t follow these rules to the letter, but you should recommend it to them, because this will help them randomize their deck better, making the game more fair. Note: if you mulligan a hand with 1-0 lands or 5-7 lands, you SHOULD do a pile shuffle, I know it’s tedious but believe me, it helps.
Also, always count the cards in your opponent’s hand. I’m not talking about simply asking them, I’m talking about actually counting the cards. I’ve caught players with more cards than they should have. This is especially easy to catch early game, because you can just count the cards they’ve played, add it to their hand and see if it adds up to 60.
Two interesting things that have happened to me: First, I was playing against a young kid. He always shuffled poorly, and always had 8-9 cards in his hand at the beginning of the game and claimed he had 7. When I asked him to spread out his hand so we could count clearly, he immediately took a mulligan, and I shuffled his deck properly when he presented (he didn’t present, I made him present). I had to “remind” him to draw six cards (he drew seven). It looked like he didn’t really know the game, but I knew that he did, and was just trying to look like he didn’t and was trying to get away with it. I would never have noticed if I didn’t pay explicit attention. Second: I’ve witnessed players with large hands draw extra cards more often than players with small hands. I know a player who I’ve seen to draw four cards with a Jace brainstorm, but they already had so many cards in their hand before, and I didn’t keep track of it before they drew, so I couldn’t prove anything. There were also other factors that made the situation worse, so it suffices to say that I try to never play with that player and be extra careful when I do. (To the players at Amazing Spiral: this player doesn’t play there, so don’t worry.)
Alright, enough with the grim discoveries, about cheating players, let’s talk about something else. I recently read the new Planeswalker novel, Test of Metal by Matthew Stover. It involves Tezzeret and Nicol Bolas, among other famous Planeswalkers. It continues the story from Agents of Artifice, but you don’t need to read AoA to enjoy ToM, it’s a completely different story. It’s also a really good story, but I can’t talk about it at all without spoiling anything. It’s more Sci-Fi than fantasy, which I prefer. The main storyline can be convoluted at times but it’s awesome, and there’s also a backstory, filling us in on the life of Tezzeret and some happenings in Alara. I definitely recommend it, and in my opinion it is the best post-Mending (post- Time Spiral block) novel (it’s actually the only good post-Mending novel, excluding AoA). If you think certain people act totally out of character and the dialogue is awkward, don’t worry, there’s all a good reason for it. The plot is very well-thought out, but my concern is that there is so much character development and crucial plot devices that Wizards will ignore most of what happens in the book, as they usually tend to do. There are rumors (confirmed in the book) that Tezzeret will show up in Mirrodin, so we will see how that goes soon enough.
In other news, how was your Game Day? Mine conflicted with the Rally to Restore Sanity, so it was slightly undercrowded. I decided to mise with a Mass Polymorph deck, placing second and losing only to UR Force, which I was hoping I wouldn’t face. My deck was simply a UG control deck with an added flavor of Token generating cards (and Garruk) and big scary creatures. I had played pretty much the exact same deck when M11 first came out (with similar degrees of success), except for having a win condition in Hagra Diabolist. The reason for the change was threat diversification to combat Memoricide (and I can also cast these creatures given enough time) and fear of Leyline of Sanctity. In the end, I decided the Diabolist version was better since I run 4 See Beyond and Preordain anyway. If your metagame doesn’t have control decks, I absolutely recommend that you play this deck, because you can Polymorph as early as turn 4 with 3 tokens and win:
Turn 1: Khalni Garden, 1 token 1 land
Turn 2: Land, Explore playing another Khalni Garden, 2 tokens 3 lands
Turn 3: Land, Growth Spasm, 3 tokens 5 lands
Turn 4: Land, Mass Polymorph bringing 3 Diabolists all triggering at the same time, seeing 3 allies thus triggering thrice for 3 = 3x3x3 = 27 life = win.
And believe me, this isn’t that extreme of a hand. I Polymorphed on turn 5 in most games. Of course, countermagic and Pyroclasm ruin your day, so don’t rely on this deck too much if you expect to face control. I have a sideboard plan in the works for this deck, taking out the Mass Polymorph element and becoming an aggro deck to beat control, but it’s not well formed yet, so I’ll post it later.
Speaking of control, my archenemy a.k.a. Patrick Chapin has finally pointed a light on RUG Control (Link of the list for those without SCG premium here). Yes, it’s an amazing deck that puts together control and turboland. I’ve been aware of this deck since it placed well in some states in the 2010 States Championships. I was just hoping that no one would realize how good it is and just keep playing UB Control/UR Control/Titan Ramp decks. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I want to say that this is a really scary deck that’s hard to beat. It also narrows down the deckspace even further. It’s especially hard to beat while you’re trying to beat other decks too. You can bet people will be flocking to play this, though. I’ve had a shell of a deck ready for this situation:
4x Leonin Arbiter
4x Tunnel Ignus
4x Goblin Guide
4x Lightning Bolt
3x Arc Trail
3x Ajani Goldmane
3x Emerge Unscathed
2x Sword of Body and Mind
2x Condemn
2x Sun Titan
2x Baneslayer Angel
1x Revoke Existence
1x Cerebral Eruption
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4x Arid Mesa
3x Tectonic Edge
9x Plains
8x Mountain
Well, alright, it’s more than a shell of a deck. It’s also not that awesome of a deck, but it can beat RUG control without too much trouble and can hold its own against some other decks. White Knight, Kor Firewalker, Celestial Purge and Leyline of Sanctity in the board can take care of black and red decks. Against control decks, you might want Luminarch Ascension, and against elves you want Day of Judgment. Adjust your board accordingly. If you aren’t expecting to see any RUG Control or ramp, switch the Arbiter-Ignus package with 3x Stoneforge Mystic, 3x Cunning Sparkmage, 2x Basilisk Collar and Goblin Guide with Wall of Omens This way you become more of a control deck to deal with aggro. If you expect non-RUG control, play 4x Luminarch Ascension instead of Arc Trail.
Of course, needless to say, this deck beats ramp decks very easily, thanks to 8 hate bears in the Arbiters and Ignuses (Ignii?). Goblin Guide is there for the early damage. Yes, it gives them land, but they have a lot of ramp so they’ll get the land anyway, you might as well get in some damage before it’s too late. Also, if you get an Ignus, they won’t want to play the extra land. Sword is for Frost Titan, and Baneslayer is there for Persecutor (pre-empting its popularity since GerryT called it good). No Stoneforge Mystic, since Arbiter prevents searching. Emerge Unscathed is removal protection and also protects from Frost Titan and can let you go through with the Sword for an alpha strike. Arc Trail takes care of early game annoyances like Lotus Cobra and Oracle. One miser’s maindeck Revoke existence is good because almost everyone plays artifacts or enchantments. It takes care of Volition Reins, and that’s its most important purpose. The miser’s Cerebral Eruption is for Avenger of Zendikar (one copy for one copy). It can also be used to mise against Elves, Goblins, Poison, Myrs and Artifacts. The rest is fairly obvious. As you can see, this list is pretty much designed to beat decks that ramp, and Frost Titan decks. And RUG lies in the intersection of those two decks.
I actually had another deck to post this week, but I am forced to adapt to the situation to answer RUG. I couldn’t build a new deck, because I was really busy this week, so I couldn’t really playtest to my heart’s content. Still, I gave you two decks in spite of that (four if you include RUG)! Next week, I don’t know what I’ll talk about. Oh wait! I’ve talked about the ways to win the game in my first article, right? I covered poison and damage. I guess I should cover milling then! As I said, See you all next week.
P.S: Obligatory death metal plug, follow me on twitter @nayon7!
Joey Pasco
bigheadjoe
iwantmymtg
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