Spreading Cheese – Varied Legacy

Hi everyone. Sorry, I have been neglecting writing articles for a while. I needed some time off to rearrange everything in my life, and I even took some time off Magic, and it’s safe to say that I’m back stronger than ever. Sometimes you just need to take a break from the game and that’s perfectly fine. If you’re not feeling the game, relax, clear your head, and take a deep breath.

Let me be perfectly honest: The primary Magic-related factor for my leave of absence was the dominance of Caw-Blade in Standard. As a primarily rogue deckbuilder, having one strategy be so efficient and hard to disrupt was very frustrating for me. It’s true that you can brew to beat that deck, and many builders better than I (for example Conley Woods and Michael Flores) have come up with their own builds which have proved to be at least mildly successful against Caw-Blade. Unfortunately, I do not have the time and resources to build and extensively test decks. I get to have only around 5-7 rounds of Magic per week, and not every deck I play against is Caw-Blade or RUG. Which means that I can’t really refine my play.

I tried building a few things, and as I mentioned in my previous article, I was working on a RB Rock type of deck, but in this current format not playing Jace, The Mind Sculptor (which is, if you are to believe Patrick Chapin (I do), the best card in Magic, period) seems very, very wrong (unless you are playing an aggro deck). As I was about to give up, Sam Black posted an article with the deck I had been trying to build for ages but wasn’t able to. It’s basically a deck that utilizes my three favorite planeswalkers, in order: Tezzeret, Venser and Gideon. It’s an amazing list, and it can work wonders, but it requires immense amounts of playtesting due to the huge variance in the deck. And time for playtesting is the thing that I did not have.

      

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m quite good at picking up and playing any deck, and I am almost never overwhelmed by the complexity of a deck, but the issue here is variance. For those not really aware of what that means, let me explain. Part of my day job requires me to be a decent statistician, but thankfully the variance here I’m talking about requires no such knowledge. Let me demonstrate by providing two examples:

1. Legacy Burn by Patrick Sullivan

2. Tezzeret ThopterSword by Drew Levin

Now look at the first list. Every spell except for the Figures of Destiny is a 4-of. Not only that, every spell serves the same purpose: Deal damage to your opponent. This is a deck that lacks variance. Note: Lack of variance is not necessarily a bad thing. To the contrary, many players would prefer a less varied deck. Also note: Variance does not equal Consistency. Variance means how varied your deck is in terms of cards and the general plan, whereas Consistency means what percentage of the time do you actually get your plan working.

Still not clear? Let me explain in more concrete terms. Draw a sample hand from that deck.  If you count Goblin Guide as a burn spell, what are the odds that your opening hand will contain a burn spell? Even without doing the actual math (which is more complicated than you would think, and most people usually get it wrong), 32 out of 60 cards in the deck are “burn spells”. Since your plan in the deck is burning the opponent to death, it seems that the odds are in your favor. This is Consistency.

Now let me explain variance. Not in the statistical sense, but in the Magic deckbuilding sense. Let’s play a game. I take out all the lands from the deck, which means only the spells remain. Now, I pick a random card from the deck and lay it face down. What type of spell would you bet (Wescoe check) this card is? If you guessed “Burn”, you are statistically most likely right. (32 out of 39) Because the deck isn’t really varied, almost all of the spells are burn spells.

Now here’s a counter(top)-example: Check the second deck I just linked. Let’s play the same game, removing the lands. I pick a random card, what type of spell is it? Now, if you’re sneaky, you might have noticed that the deck has a card type division of 19 Artifact, 2 Enchantment, 15 Instant, 6 Planeswalker. So, statistically speaking, the most likely choice is “Artifact”. 19 out of 42 isn’t as good as 32 out of 39, is it? (if it’s not immediately obvious, the burn one is 82% while the other is 45%.) So predicting what you’ll draw is much harder in the second deck, is it not? To compound that, even if you say “Artifact”, it doesn’t really cut it, does it? There are artifacts that act as extra lands, artifacts that act as removal, there’s the Top, the Bridge, the Foundry and the Sword, all of which do very different things. Which means the deck is very varied.

Just to hammer the argument home, is the deck inconsistent, since it is so varied? Not at all. Look at it from another perspective. How many cards can outright stall a game? 23, if you stretch the definition a little bit. How many cards are tutors/draw effects? 17. Or 23, if you count fetchlands. The deck has a very solid plan, the plan is hard to disrupt and even if you destroy a key component, it can be reacquired by Academy Ruins or a new one can be found easily. The deck has many means to protect itself. Not convinced? Here’s a counter-counter-example:

3. Charbelcher by Ben Perry

The deck looks very unvaried. Almost every single card is a mana generation card. That’s not the point though, think about the consistency: How many cards in that deck are win conditions? 7. How many card draw effects does the deck have? 0. How many ways does the deck have to protect its combo? 0 (pre-board). You basically have to mull down until you get your combo in your opening hand, and then hope your opponent doesn’t have the answer. Not a very solid plan for game 1. Yes, Burning Wish can be a win condition in itself too, but that requires you to jump through yet another hoop. So you’re saying that a combo deck is inherently inconsistent? I have a counter-counter-counter-example for you:

4. High Tide by Jesse Hatfield

5. Dredge by David Thomas

Look at these decks. High Tide isn’t very varied, while Dredge appears crazy varied. What do they have in common though? The High Tide deck consists of Win Condition, Protection and Card Draw. The Belcher list looks pathetic in comparison. High Tide is ridiculously consistent. Take it from me, I’ve played it, and it rocks. If you are fortunate enough to obtain a set of Candelabras, do play this deck. It’s a blast to play, it’s insanely resilient, and it requires you to think a lot when playing. If you can’t afford Candelabras, then play Dredge. The deck, as some of you already know, is one of my favorite decks, and for a good reason. As long as you get a way to discard a card in your opening hand (22 out of 60), you basically win game 1. Why? Because Dredge is essentially drawing 6 cards per turn, since your graveyard is actually what matters. More on these two decks later, but I hope you get the idea of Variance vs. Consistency by now.

Now, the whole point of this huge tangent was that varied decks require a lot of playtesting. Don’t get me wrong, unvaried decks aren’t necessarily easy to play. You can face a lot of difficult gameplay decisions in both varied and unvaried decks. But I’m implying that varied decks have more of an inherent difficulty, since you can’t expect to have a certain kind of card at all times. You need to be able to attack from all the angles, and to be able to do that you need to understand all the angles. That is the aspect which requires playtesting, since there are usually many angles that are not immediately obvious. Inconsistent decks, on the other hand, are just bad. I’ve tried to justify them several times in the past, but in the end you end up getting burned by (ha!) variance. This time I’m talking about real statistical variance though.

I’ve tried many Legacy combo decks before, but none have struck true with me as much as Dredge and High Tide did. Most people would say Dredge is easier to play and High Tide is an extreme mental exercise, but I completely disagree. I think playing High Tide is easier than playing Dredge. I do not find the math of High Tide to be brain-exploding, but maybe that’s because I’m essentially a mathematician (Here’s a secret, even though I do a lot of high level math, I’m terrible with basic operations like addition, so it’s not because of that, anyone can play this deck if they can focus). On the other hand, Dredge is really complicated because you have to go around many hoops to actually get to win if you’re playing through hate. Here’s an excellent article on Dredge by Richard Feldman, if you are a Dredge player you have to read this one, and his list is both very solid and rather cheap (no LEDs!)(and paying for StarCity premium is definitely worth that drop in cost anyway (yada yada you’ve heard it a million times before but SCG premium is actually really good (even if you don’t want to pay for premium, at least read Drew Levin’s articles, he’s got really good insights on the Legacy metagame))).

So, anyway, in my opinion, those decks are the decks to play right now. People might say that they’ll hate you for playing that, but they won’t, and even if they do, who cares anyway? Haters gonna hate. Just get your game on. Oh, those decks die to Mental Misstep you say? I disagree. After giving it a bit of thought and watching people’s reactions, I believe that card is severely overrated. Read that Dredge article I linked for how Dredge doesn’t care, and read this  article by Ari lax to see why most other decks don’t care either. Misstep will indeed change Legacy, but not in the way you think. It will change Legacy because people will think it’s good, and play it regardless of the situation, which means you can “get them”. I have the perfect deck for Legacy to “get” Mental Misstep decks. It’s a combo deck, which means no matter what they will never board out Misstep, which is ironic because the only 1-CMC card in the deck is Brainstorm, which is unlikely to be countered, since they’ll hold it for a “combo piece”. I don’t want to divulge this deck now, because we’re out of space and I want to do a detailed one on this deck later anyway.

In the meantime, think about New Phyrexia and how you can build to beat Caw-Blade. By reading this article, it’s probably no secret that my return to Magic is because of Legacy, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll ignore Standard. To the contrary, I am already brewing, and Joey and BHJ hit the mark on what I will be building when they were talking about NPH spoilers. Go back and listen to Yo! MTG Taps! if you care to find out (Hint: it’s going to be an improvement of a deck that I posted way black. Wait, that’s a typo. Or is it?).

P.S. For questions, comments, feedback, send me an e-mail at Spreading.Cheese [at] gmail [dot] com or follow me on twitter @nayon7.
P.P.S I now have my own podcast about rogue deckbuilding and Magic in general called Horde of Notions! Check it out at www.hordeofnotions.com
P.P.P.S Your weekly metal fix: Origin – Expulsion of Fury
P.P.P.PS Want more metal? I’m now a writer on http://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/Heavy Blog Is Heavy , so metalheads can check out my writings about metal on there. See the author called Nayon? That’s me.

Spreading Cheese – Black Sun and Red Moon

Hi all. This week I want to talk about a deck I’ve been brewing for a while, and this time it’s something that’s actually good, I believe. I’ll tell you the story behind the deck, and then get straight to construction. Unfortunately, I don’t include the namesake Black Sun’s Zenith in the decks I mention, because I cut it at the last minute. However, I wanted to keep the title, because it sounded cool. Deal. Also, another last minute edit: I don’t know when you’ll be reading this article, but I developed this list 3 weeks ago. I’m aware that Brian Kibler has been brewing something very similar to this recently, but I have nothing to do with his list, and I didn’t talk to him other than saying I also have an UB Infect list and saying it was awesome.

I was playing a modified version of Patrick Chapin’s Grixis Tezzeret list, since I was able to get a playset of Tezzerets for cheap, and he is my favorite planeswalker in the story, and we all know how big of a flavor nerd I am. Anyway, I was playtesting against BigHeadJoe’s roommate Travis, who was running UW Caw-Blade. I just felt like I didn’t have the threat density to match his deck, I kept falling short on answers. But I realized that Tumble Magnets were really good, an assertion that I had already made in my previous articles. I also felt like the red splash, while very useful, wasn’t worth the drop in consistency. I decided to add Inquisitions, since I’ve been raving about how good that card is as well. I also don’t really like Wurmcoil Engine, because even if you have artifact acceleration, it feels like 6 mana is so much for a single creature. Yes, it gives you 2 creatures if it dies, and the lifelink is immense, but with so much artifact hate around, relying on one big artifact creature feels weak to me. Yes, it probably was a good meta call for Worlds, but not anymore. So I was left without threats in my deck. Except for the Inkmoth Nexus.

Then I glanced at my sets of Phyrexian Crusaders and Vatmothers lying around. You do realize that a Vatmother kills in three hits at most, right? Two, if you’ve ever connected with a Crusader or twice with a Nexus, which are both hard to block. I mean, the “best” deck in the meta only runs white creatures. Crusader is INSANE. I was trying to justify playing Infect anyway, so I just stuck them in. Also, I didn’t like the mana ramp spells in the Grixis list, I don’t like the Opal because it is legendary and I don’t like the Sphere because I just don’t like it. I don’t need colored mana that badly anyway. So I stuck in Plague Myr. It’s the same thing as a Sphere, but it can actually swing in for a few hits if necessary, and it doesn’t expire. Of course, Contagion Clasp is really good, both in killing those early birds/Mystics, and also helping you get there with that last few points of poison. Also, Tezzeret helps you get Myrs/Clasps quickly, so having artifacts is good anyway. So right now I have:

4x Phyrexian Crusader
2x Necropede
2x Plague Myr
4x Phyrexian Vatmother
1x Skithiryx, The Blight Dragon (need some air game)

4x Contagion Clasp
4x Tumble Magnet

4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Preordain

1x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

4x Mana Leak
1x Go for the Throat

4x Inkmoth Nexus
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Drowned Catacomb
4x Creeping Tar Pit
5x Swamp
4x Island

Sideboard:
2x Corrupted Conscience (stealing stuff feels so good)
4x Duress
4x Spell Pierce
3x Go for the Throat
1x Contagion Engine (why not?)
1x Doom Blade

So, this is a rough draft of a list, but it’s what I’ve been playing, and it works really well. You shut down Caw decks with Tumble Magnet, and bring in the control cards in game 2, taking out the Vatmothers/Dragon because Sword of Feast and Famine blocks them all day long. Black Sun’s Zenith is just ridiculous, you clear the board and then make a dude with Tezzeret and swing. And don’t be afraid to go in for a damage kill; yes, most would say it’s suboptimal but it’s actually not that bad. Creeping Tar Pit is there mostly to nuke planeswalkers, but you can get in with that as well. Contagion Engine is ridiculous if it hits, not only can you wipe them to oblivion, you can also get to the poison kill really fast. Remember that Crusader can battle with a 4-power creature and survive, because he has first strike. You also chump block Boros all day long with him, same with Kuldotha red. The only matchup I’m not sure of is Valakut, but I guess you can race them. Also, you can steal their Titans with the Conscience post-board; Engine deals with Avenger; and you can tap down their Titan with Magnets, so it’s not that bad.

The numbers here are still under testing. The sideboard is likely suboptimal, and I never play Ratchet Bombs, but probably should. I’m also not sure of the amounts of the Planeswalkers, but I had to make some room for the other cards to breathe. So take everything in here with a grain of salt. Also yes, Luminarch Ascension completely destroys you, so you need the counters/discard really bad in game 2. At least the Crusader can swing past the angels, and Engine can help you a little bit (but not too much). Thankfully that card is under the radar right now.

Now, let’s talk some Legacy. Of course, I’m into combo decks as usual. I’ve recently gotten on the Painter’s Servant kind of decks, and here’s the list that placed 9th at the latest SCG Legacy open in Memphis. The UR version is pretty good, but I want to take a more Back to Basics approach, literally. I propose going Mono Red. What does that get you? You get to play Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon. Also, I’ve realized that Humility decks are quite popular, and—as Drew Levin pointed out when I asked him through Twitter—both Magus of the Moon and Painter’s Servant still work through Humility, due to some weird layering clause. Hey, I’m fine with that. You also get to play Koth, who is really powerful if your combo plan is disrupted, and he can also give you mana if you need. Anyway, this deck plays like a really aggressive deck until you get to drop the combo. Even if you never hit the combo, it’s still puts so much fast pressure on your opponent that it’s ridiculous. Here’s my take on the traditional list (modified from Caleb Durward’s List):

Key Cards
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Grindstone
4 Painters Servant

Disruption
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Pyroblast
3 Blood Moon
2 Umezawas Jitte

Accel
4 Simian Spirit Guide
3 Chrome Mox
1 Koth of the Hammer

Toolbox
1 Figure of Destiny
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Vexing Shusher

Lands
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
11 Mountain

Sideboard
1 Goblin Welder
1 Viashino Heretic
1 Faerie Macabre
2 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Trinisphere
1 Goblin Pyromancer
3 Pyrokinesis
3 Boil

This is a really fun deck to play, you have a big toolbox of answers against many decks that you can fetch with a recruiter, and Painter’s servant + REB/Pyroblast is ridiculously good, and Grindstone just ends the game.
Trinisphere + Boil in the board really hurts High Tide, which is big right now. Also, you can destroy their Candelabras with the Heretic. Against other decks, you just put on pressure until they crack. Team America can be an annoying matchup with all their disruption, but at least Stifle isn’t great against this deck and the Moon effects hurt their manabase quite a bit. Turn 1 Moon effect should really put a dent in their plan as you beat them up, because they literally have no basic lands. You just have to push until you stick a moon effect, then basically win the game. This applies to almost any 3-color deck. Recruiter helps you get the Magus if you don’t have it. Afterwards, you can stick a painter and counter everything they play with a Blast, and you can destroy their basics too. Again, at that point you basically win, so you really want a Moon effect. Against Goblins you just try to outclass them with quality over quantity, or just stick your combo since they have no answers. Game 2 when they board in their hate, you just board in the Goblin Pyromancer and laugh like a maniac. Against Merfolk, all your Blast spells work right off the bat anyway, you can use that to your advantage to slow them down/stick combo pieces, and game 2 you just bring in the Boils and the artifact hate. Against artifact decks, realize that you can use your own welder to grief them by switching out their cards that are useful with ones that are less useful. Against Emrakul, you bring in Faerie Macabre and remove it in response to the Emrakul trigger, then Grindstone again. There’s also Tormod’s crypt. Thankfully you don’t completely depend on the mill plan like the multicolored painter decks.

This is a really powerful and aggressive deck, and it can either explode turn 1 or disrupt your opponent into oblivion. I understand that Recruiters might be the entry barrier here, but here’s a tip: Try to get Chinese Recruiters. They’re much cheaper. And also realize that there are literally no other expensive cards in the deck (well, cheaper than having many duals and fetches, some lands are expensive and so is the stone, but they’re also better than goyfs, jaces, FoWs).

That’s all I got this week. Hope you enjoyed this stuff, and here’s my thematic advice of the week: Sometimes you need to go back to simpler cards and strategies. Complicated decks are very powerful but usually have fundamental weaknesses, like their manabase or lacking answers for protection against their color. Just try to attack from those angles.

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: Weekly metal plug: Benighted – Sl*t (NSFW song title, beware)
Want more metal? Check out http://www.heavyblogisheavy.com, where I write about metal under the username nayon.

Spreading Cheese – (untitled)

Hey everyone. Today I’ll talk about both Standard and Legacy. This week is a bit of a slow week for me, as I’m on the final steps of the awesome thing I’ve been talking about for a month or so now, so bear with me. Anyway, I’m terrible at writing intro paragraphs, so I’ll just jump in already.

So, Standard first. What should one play in Standard right now? Caw Blade with red splash.

Ok, now it’s Legacy’s turn. Just kidding. Of course I’m not going to just mention Caw Blade and move on. You guys probably realize that there are other decks in the format, for example RUG. I for one have never been a fan of RUG, it’s an amazing deck, but I just hate red. It’s my least favorite color, and I can’t justify playing it except for metagaming reasons or combo decks. I just end up being unhappy when I play red. So I looked at the next closest choice, BUG. Well, alright, I realize that it’s bad against both Swords, but I have a game plan.

First of all, let’s take a look at the most recent list that placed 9th at the SCG Open at Edison. Now, when I look at that list, there are several things that BUG me (ha ha). In a format riddled with Swords, Mystics, Hawks among other costing-less-than-or-equal-to-three threats; playing anything less than 4 Inquisitions is completely unacceptable. Another thing is that while Sorin Markov is good, the tutoring of Liliana Vess and her interaction with Jace is pretty strong, you can have any answer you want at any given time. If I were to play BUG, I’d do the following:

-1 Duress
-1 Sorin Markov
-1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
-1 Avenger of Zendikar
+1 Inquisition
+3 Liliana Vess

The key strategy here is that you will try to take care of Swords/Mystics in the early game with discard, and then you can force your way through with Liliana + Jace, you can destroy swords with Acidic Slime, and can afford to cut one Avenger because it’s tutorable by Liliana when you’re ready. Now, I haven’t tested this at all, but the ‘grab a bullet’ strategy seems solid in my opinion.

While we’re on the subject of BUG, let’s also think about Genesis Wave. Remember Mike Flores’s UG Wave deck? It kind of died down because of the uprising of the counterspell decks like UB, UW etc. There aren’t that many counterspell decks right now, only Caw Blade. and even then, they don’t have as many counterspells as Caw-Go. Anyway, that list looks alright, but Frost Titan by itself is pretty dead in the current format.

What I’m proposing is something different. Add black for Ob Nixilis, The Fallen.

Yes, I know, many of you have forgotten that card exists. He’s like Valakut but better! If you hit him off of a Wave, you’re probably winning, especially if you hit multiples (yes, they die due to the legend rule but not before draining). You don’t even care about attacking with him (thus the Swords don’t matter), and if you’re playing against Valakut where they bolt him in response to your non-lethal drain, you can crack fetches in response to protect him from the bolt. So I’d cut some lands from that list to add Verdant Catacombs, and cut Frost Titans for Ob Nixilis. I know, this isn’t a super optimal build in the broad sense because it’s less resilient (Ob Nix dies way easier than Frosty, and there’s also the legend rule), but this is more like a combo deck.

If you’re feeling more adventurous, instead of adding black to that deck, you can add white for Admonition Angel. That’s just evil, because you pretty much exile everything they have after a resolved Wave. The only problem is you have less fetchlands, and the triple white on the angel is a bit harder. But it’s entirely legitimate.

I believe one of those three decks I just described should be good enough to try. No? I’m testing a UB deck, and the initial results against Caw-Blade seemed good, but I don’t know how it operates against other decks, so I’ll hold off on that for now. The above decks are modifications on tried and true archetypes, whereas my UB build will be something different.

By the way, here’s the weekly metal plug: The Bridal Procession – Flesh to Flesh (for fans of Behemoth)

Now let’s talk Legacy. Did anyone watch Alix Hatfield’s finals game against Eli Kassis? Here are the decklists for those who are curious. That was such a great game, the commentators kept saying it was skill, but there was also quite a bit of luck involved, which made it even more interesting to watch.

I have something to say about the comments made by Gavin Verhey and Jacob Van Lunen. It’s pretty clear they have never seen or played that deck before. I can excuse that, especially in Legacy, as it’s nearly impossible to play and master every single deck, but some of their comments were slightly disappointing, considering they’d seen Alix play earlier in the day. Now, there is no way that I can deny Alix made the most optimal play at each step, but the guys have to realize that he didn’t have many plays either. At each step, thanks to Eli’s crazy amounts of discard spells, he had at most 2 spells he could cast to respond, and the only two serious decisions he made were to hide some spells with a Brainstorm, and the Ponder he cast in game 3 that resulted in him topdecking a Time Spiral. The Brainstorm play requires some thinking, but the Ponder was just Alix looking at his top 3 cards, not seeing the Spiral he needs to win, and then shuffling and topdecking like a champion. Gavin and JVL kept saying how insanely skilled Alix’s plays were, and in general High Tide decks do require a reasonably high level of skill, but in this case Alix didn’t have any real options. He just cast the only spells he could cast to not lose the game, and he did it right without doing anything stupid. Other than that, after you know the deck, it just plays itself. Believe me, because High Tide was the first Legacy deck I built and played, and it’s the deck I’ve played the most. As I said, Alix’s playing was top notch, but the way the commentators kept saying how insanely skilled his plays were just made the commentators look uninformed. It was a really fun game to watch muted though. Definitely one of the best games of Magic I have watched.

Anyway, now that I got my rant out there, let’s think about this a little bit. Legacy players tend to be really touchy-feely about combo decks, and since a combo deck just won a major tournament with a very impressive finals match (albeit extremely lucky—you have to admit that Alix would have lost if either: he didn’t topdeck the Time Spiral, his draws off of the Spirals weren’t supremely optimal, or Eli wasn’t mana screwed for the first few turns), we can expect to see ridiculous amounts of hate for combo deck in general, and especially for this particular deck. What makes High Tide special is that it can also run counterspells, so it’s not as easy to hate, but we all saw how discard spells cripple the deck. Also, it’s really hard for the deck to go off with less than four lands.

Taking this into consideration, and the fact that there are other decks in the format, I propose a black-based disruption deck. For example you can play Pox (look at the last few pages of this thread for lists and the first page for explanations), but that deck has bad late game, so I’m not sure. Part of me wants to make a DredgePox build, but I don’t think it would work. Maybe Pox-Reanimator? Nah. Dredge is good against High Tide, because there isn’t room for Dredge hate in the board. So you can wing it, and Dredge is well-posed in general in this metagame. Just make sure anyone isn’t running Extirpate against High Tide decks, that would be pretty bad for Dredge. Another option is adding a set of Verdicts (you also run Hymns, obviously) and maybe Tidehollow Sculler to the disruption toolbox of Junk. Vindicating Islands also seems like a solid play.

Honestly, I don’t know if Time Spiral will push the deck into a format breaker. The deck is really good, but it’s difficult to put together thanks to Candelabras, and it’s a headache to play. Add to that the fact that most people just don’t like combo, I don’t know how it will play out. It’s too early to tell. But expect to see some hate for it, and prepare to play against it.

That’s all I’ve got this week, but stay tuned next week for some awesome content!

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: Want more metal? I also write at http://www.heavyblogisheavy.com, so metalheads can check out my writings about metal on there under the name Nayon.

Bigheadjoe’s Awesome Rogue Deck of the Month – February

Sup jerks?

Over the last few months I have been playing a wide variety of aggro decks: Elves, Vampires, Mono-W Metalcraft, but deep down all I really wanted to do in Standard was cast Gideon and Wrath my opponents’ creatures away. So I decided to play UW control, and what do you know? The rest of the non-Boros population in Standard decided to do the same! This lead, inevitably, to me having to face the dreaded control mirror at my FNM. This is a matchup I don’t really have the patience for on a Friday night, so I decided that I needed to change the deck in such a way where I could break serve in a control matchup, while still allowing myself the tools to stave off the Boros rush. So I came up with this list. Sort of a “Broliferate Two Point Bro.” I’m not going to babble too much about the list as I feel it’s pretty self-explanatory. Getting to 4 mana on turn 3 is vital as you want to Jace or Day by then.

4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Seachrome Coast
3 Island
3 Plains
2 Tectonic Edge
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Eye of Ugin
4 Jace the Mind Sculptor
1 Ulamog
1 Kozilek
1 Emrakul
4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Sphere of the Suns
1 White Sun’s Zenith
1 Blue Sun’s Zenith
3 Contagion Clasp
2 All is Dust
3 Day of Judgment
3 Gideon Jura
4 Preordain
3 Tumble Magnet

Sideboard:
1 Day of Judgment
4 Luminarch Ascension
3 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Stoic Rebuttal
3 Ratchet Bomb

The sideboard is just a placeholder. Obviously build your sideboard to best fight the decks you expect to see where you play this deck. I think someone should play it in the SCGOpen in DC this weekend! I would if I wasn’t going to be busy entertaining all you NICE PEOPLE.

Also, make sure you read Noyan’s article below this… didn’t mean to post right after he posted an artice!

BHJ

Spreading Cheese – Flashbacks and Restrictions

Hi again everyone, and happy new year. In case anyone hasn’t read my previous article, I had talked about my experience growing up in Turkey and playing Magic. I also promised a continuation of that story, and I will definitely continue it, but I also want to cover new ground, so I’ll follow a new format in my articles. Each week, I’ll tell a piece of my story from back in Turkey, and I’ll try to relate it to current happenings in the MtGverse.

Now, you might remember me saying it seemed like the Magic scene in my hometown was pretty much dead. I had gotten into college, and everybody had started to fall apart. For the record, I believe this was right before Ravnica came out, so people were also experiencing Kamigawa burnout. Most of us still stuck to Onslaught/Mirrodin, playing in our homes with each other. There were elf decks, goblin decks and artifact decks. But everyone got sick of playing each other pretty fast, because there was a clear hierarchy of decks, and people couldn’t afford to make their decks better/make better decks, because opening packs for rares was futile since packs were really expensive (with the current exchange rate, they would equate to costing $10) and we couldn’t order many cards online due to shipping prices and again, the steep exchange rate between the dollar and Turkish money. Of course, since we were a tightly knit community, we traded a lot with each other to complete decks, but that wasn’t enough. At times, we just gave each other cards for free, out of good will. This might seem alien to some of you guys, but ‘helping each other out without expecting something in return’ is a really big thing in Turkish culture, and those who know me might recognize this in me when I trade in your favor or just give away cards.

Anyway, this mentality of not having the cards to build any proper deck is actually a good mentality. If you’re not playing at some high level event but you’re just playing at FNM, especially depending on your meta, you might not have to have four Jaces and four Primeval Titans. Even more so, as BigHeadJoe always likes to point out in the podcast, restriction breeds creativity. I always try to envision this. It’s relatively easy to build an above average deck by throwing down on all the money cards (not something like RUG for example but maybe the UW control of last season), but it’s harder to see the subtler interactions between the smaller cards. Now, mind you, right now there isn’t much of that in Magic, since right now all interactions are pretty much tailor made for players by Wizards or there is no interaction but just heaps of power cards (a la Battlecruiser Magic, or as I’ve pointed out in earlier articles, a limited deckspace), but let’s look a few years back to RAV/TS/Coldsnap Standard. That, in my opinion, was one of the best standard environments in a long time. Anyone remember Martyr of Sands? No? Let me also remind you of Proclamation of Rebirth, especially the Forecast ability. That was a great deck in my opinion (I personally played it a lot during that season), and the interaction was great because it didn’t win you the game right away. Instead, it gave you leverage to not lose the game, and then you could win the game through whatever means you wanted to.

Let me give you another example. Remember Project X? Crypt Champion, Saffi Eriksdotter, and many other creatures that interacted well with that combo. Yes, I just mentioned two “combo” decks as an example of a good environment, but remember that the same Standard environment had decks like Pickles and Boros too.

Going back to my original point, restriction does breed creativity. Back in Turkey, due to everyone occasionally opening packs and everyone playing a set archetype (and no two people played the same deck), the trading scene worked in a supply-demand basis; ie., all elf cards got traded to the elf player, etc. A side effect of this was that no one ever got to build a different deck, since we barely had one deck together and we were trying to improve that deck desperately. Since coming here to America, I’ve found that I commit less to a single deck and just try every possible thing, due to the “abundance” of cards compared to Turkey. That’s something neat, especially if you’re like me coming from a place where cards were a commodity, but it’s also not good, because the longer you play with a single deck, the better you get at playing it and you see more ways to improve it. Especially if you’re playing in a specific metagame.

Anyway, let me get back to my story. After a year or two of playing less and less (I actually quit Magic for the first time back then, because playing wasn’t satisfying anymore, since the metagame was stagnant and nothing new ever happened), I suddenly stumbled upon something. There was a cafe downtown called Onaon (it means “ten by ten” in Turkish, and I have no idea why the place was called that), and there was a budding Magic scene there! I was extremely enthusiastic and I just threw together a Standard deck (I believe it was a UB mill deck) and just went there to play. It was a dark cafe where they played metal music (which is fine by me), everyone wore black (and so did I back then), and everybody smoked (not fine by me, but it was Magic, so I dealt with it). (Speaking of metal, here’s your weekly dose, First Fragment – Obsolete Ascendancy a new Canadian tech death band that does it right). But I was disappointed to discover that they didn’t play Constructed, they played Draft. Keep in mind that I had never even heard of something called draft before. I was really put off by the concept of drafting, because I really loved building a deck over time and honing it to perfection (ah, the days when I had free time on my hands), and draft was the exact opposite of that. Add to that the fact that I completely sucked at drafting, it wasn’t really enjoyable for me. Not only that, due to the price of packs, drafting cost around $30-35. That was really expensive, and they played Wednesday evenings late at night, which was inconvenient for my school life. But I still went there every week, because I actually got to play Magic. I didn’t get any better at drafting, I always sucked, but at least I got to play Magic. Why did they draft incessantly? It’s because no one could afford to build a constructed deck, because even the manabase of a deck cost a fortune (thanks to Ravnica shocklands and 2-3 colored decks). To finance their drafting habit, people usually played with the packs they won as prizes, and by trading rares they pulled from a draft to the owner of the place, a guy called Mehmet. He didn’t really know English very well, but he managed enough to barely understand cards. He was friendly, just like Tarik, and he ripped us off less, because he also made money from the Magic players eating at his cafe while they played (and the food was really good too).

Many times I tried to get people to play constructed, but everyone just loved drafting. I don’t know how it happened, but at some point after Time Spiral came out, everyone’s card pool reached a critical mass (and decks with less colors became more viable, i.e. less shocklands necessary, i.e. more affordable decks), and we started playing constructed again. The Magic scene at Onaon was cool, but it also had drawbacks, but that’s a story for another time.

Now, before I close, I want to say one last thing. Last FNM, I had no idea what to play. I had been out of the scene for a while, and didn’t have too many cards, and had no idea how to beat the big decks of the metagame. I didn’t even know what I could potentially play against. So I just took my favorite color combination (green/black, for those who were totally oblivious) and just threw together cards I deemed viable-ish. I didn’t have more than a few copies of certain cards that I wanted, so the deck ended up looking really awful. Here’s the list, from what I can remember:

4x Vengevine
2-3x Garruk Wildspeaker
3x Obstinate Baloth
1x Lotus Cobra
1x Mul Daya Channelers
4xBirds of Paradise
2-3x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Liliana Vess
2x Doom Blade
1x Assassinate
2x Bloodghast
2-3x Consuming Vapors
2-3x Vampire Hexmage
3x Duress
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Verdant Catacombs
4x Tectonic Edge
Some random assortment of basic lands and a few other cards.

My sideboard had stuff like more Duress/Inquisition, more Vapors, a few Consume the Meeks, 4x Memoricide and some other stuff.

Yes, this deck is a complete mess. One Cobra? One Assassinate? Two fetchlands? No feasible way to bring back Vengevines? I just built this with stuff I pulled out of my binder. Here’s what I played against: Vampires, Some kind of UB Control, Mono Green Eldrazi. I lost only a single game to Eldrazi, but won the round anyway, and I placed first in the tournament. Now, does this say my deck was awesome? Definitely not. Normally, random posters online claim they made the best deck ever, even beating metagame giants like UB and Eldrazi, and even defeating tier 1.5 decks like vampires. Now here’s the truth: The vampires deck I played was a mono black deck that my opponent had just borrowed before the tournament, hadn’t looked at, and he wasn’t even really a regular Magic player. In addition to that, the deck didn’t really have any solid win condition, the largest creature in the deck was (according to my opponent) a Vampire Nighthawk. The UB control deck? It didn’t have Jace, and it wasn’t really the UB control lists you see anywhere, it was just some budget deck, and it also played mill, which enabled me to bring back 2 Vengevines and a Bloodghast the turn Garruk reached ultimate. The Eldrazi deck? Game 1 I lost legitimately, game 2 my opponent got flooded with lots of mana and no cards, Game 3 my opponent got mana screwed and I Memoricided Primeval Titan. So all of them were either luck/bad decks/inexperienced players/good matchups for me.

So here’s the PSA: When reading a deck’s results, keep things like luck, matchups, and opponent skill in mind. It’s basic statistics, really. If a deck does 6-0 at Worlds, does that mean it’s a great deck? Not necessarily. It might have been well equipped against the meta, and the pilot might have been lucky. Remember Conley Woods’ Magical Christmasland deck from last year? If I recall correctly, that deck had also gone 6-0 or something like that. If a deck consistently does well (5-1s, 6-0s and a few 4-2s) for a few tournaments, does that mean it’s a great deck? Not 100%, but much more likely than the other case. So dear readers, please, please test decks before you just brew them, think about how they would do in your metagame and how well you can play it.

Now that the PSA is out of my system, let me share something else. The deck I built was completely awful, yes, but I believe it would have done acceptably even if I wasn’t lucky. Why? Because it’s not as bad as it seems, I put some thought into it. I have control and ramp matchups in check with the discard, I have removal against big and small creatures, I have the recurring creatures against control, the Baloths against aggro, and the hasty creatures that can alpha strike against decks that tap out. I have some mana accelleration to cast multiple creatures to bring back the Vengevines, I have Garruk to aid alpha strikes, Liliana for some late game hand control and also tutoring, Assassinate was against Grave Titan. I have Hexmages against planeswalkers and small creatures and Ratchet Bomb, since my important permanents all cost four. I have Wurmcoil for some big creature action, and my sideboard was built to hate out major archetypes. Still not a great deck, but it was an OK deck. If I had a few more cards, I believe I could have built an above average deck. So here’s the second PSA: Don’t underestimate decks that look awful, and even if they do, some awful decks have the right idea and the wrong execution, so take from them what you can. I’m definitely not telling you that this deck was good or you should play it, but I’m saying it had a few punchlines and a few cool tricks. It was also a good exercise in building with restrictions, i.e. having only the cards that were in the trunk of my car and 15 minutes to build a deck.

So, what was today’s message? Don’t believe everything you read, try them out yourself. Try imposing restrictions on yourself to see where you can take cards, ignore the biggest flashiest cards and try to think of the little cards too. After all, even though the Titan wins the game, it wouldn’t have gotten there without that Mana Leak or that Overgrown Battlement.

-N
P.S: I’m loving the new Mirrodin Besieged spoilers:

   

 

Maybe it’s more of the same “built-for-you-by-WOTC” synergies, but at least it seems like they’re trying to push small creatures, which I like.

P.P.S: Would you like to see me discuss spoilers and stuff like that? If so let me know.
P.P.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

Spreading Cheese – Ted, Sam and… Nag?

Hi guys. Last week I said I would talk about poison. And do that I will. Those who aren’t interested in poison, don’t just click away immediately! I have something for you, it’s a method for improving a deck. It might be obvious to some, but many people I’ve talked to seem to find this insightful, so I’d like to share it. I’ll use a poison deck as the example, but you can apply the same ideas to your own deck too.

Before that, let’s take a look at what’s been going on in the Magic tournament world recently. The SCG Open and Invitational at Richmond has provided us with a slew of new decklists to beat and get beaten by. Aside from regular players such as RUG/BUG “Control”, an old deck has resurfaced: Valakut Ramp has placed first in both tournaments. The lists don’t seem to have changed too much from the old lists. BR Vampires has also made an appearance, and so has Boros. There’s also a Mono Black Control list, and there’s are UW/UB lists in the Top8 of the Open. To be honest, this seems to be a balanced distribution of decks, at least compared to what we used to have (7 Frost Titan decks in top 8). It seems that right now, there is a deck for any kind of player, so I recommend that you should go and pick up one of those decks. Especially, if you have budget concerns, Vampires seems like an awesome option. I want to note that I really like the inclusion of Dark Tutelage, since that card’s been a favorite of mine for a while now. If your budget is limited, but not too limited, you can go with Boros. If the sky is the limit, you can pick any one of the Jace/Primeval Titan decks.

Having said that, I also want to point out the new Commander announcement. Personally, I am very excited about this announcement. It will finally put EDH on the map for more people, and the fact that they are printing new generals and not making the format sanctioned means that they care about and understand the format. Take a look at this:

The card is a perfect EDH card! Fine, I’ll call it Commander from now on. By the way, let me explain why not making the format sanctioned is a good idea. Commander is a format played purely for the fun of it, if they would sanction the format, people wouldn’t play casually anymore and there would be an overflow of degenerate Spikey decks, which everyone would netdeck and there goes our format. I’m glad about this entire situation. I’d like to talk about making a Commander deck sometime. Perhaps after the release of the new product? We’ll see.

Alright, now let’s get back to poison. Here’s the deal about poison decks. The most common kind of poison deck I’ve seen is the “pump the poison creatures” deck. It can be UG, UB, GB, UGB or something like that. Even I’ve talked about two decks like that in my previous articles. The problem with this kind of deck is that the creatures are bad without the pumps, and the pumps are bad without the creatures. Yes, you can get a surprisingly quick kill with the right hand, but that’s no good when there’s so much removal and countermagic so easily available to every deck in the format. The other approach I’ve seen is midrange Rock-style with Hand of the Praetors, Mimic Vat and Livewire Lash. Now this is a better approach, because it is more consistent, but it’s also a slow approach with synergistic cards. I love that kind of game, but Wizards doesn’t seem to lately, they’re all about being explosive. Mana ramp, bam! Huge creature, swing and do flashy stuff. No room for tricks. I believe the game will change with Mirrodin Besieged, and poison will be much more viable then. But we have to work with what we’re given.

Given our constraints, there are two ways to take this. The first one is a fast-ish deck, while the other is a more controllish deck. Let’s think about the fast deck for a moment. Note that the mentality I’m going to use here is applicable for any kind of deck, so you should read on even if you’re not interested in poison. I’ll call this the “dialog” method. You just talk to yourself with three personalities: The Enthusiastic Dude (TED), Skeptical Annoying Man (SAM) and Neutral Analysis Guy (NAG). Let’s go:

Ted: I want to make a Poison deck!
Nag: I’m listening.
Sam: Poison sucks! All poison creatures are awful!
Nag: He has a point.
Ted: That might be true, but you have to deal half the damage to win the game.
Sam: But your creatures die so easily to removal!
Ted: Then we must somehow deal with the removal…
Nag: You should either disrupt their hand or counter their removal.
Sam: Then you come across blockers who can easily kill your creatures…
Nag: And we already established that we won’t use cards like Distortion Strike because they’re bad topdecks.
Ted: Hmm… Good point. We should either run removal then.
Sam: You realize that you’re running out of space in the deck, right?
Ted: That’s true…
Sam: And also most of your opponents run counterspells too, and you’ll just lose tempo by getting your creatures countered and/or removed, and they’ll just get control of the game by that point. You’re not RDW, you know.
Nag: It seems like you’re losing this argument, Ted.
Ted: But Vampires can do it! They’re entirely creature based, and their creatures are small too!
Nag: Their creatures are more cost effective than yours, they’re more synergistic and they have more reach in general.
Ted: So what are you saying?
Sam: You should abandon this awful deck idea.
Nag: Don’t be so rude Sam. But he has a point, Ted. Sometimes an idea just doesn’t work with the current cards, and you just have to abandon it. Even if your creatures were more effective, if you tried to incorporate counterspells, removal and other resiliency factors, you basically run out of room in your deck.
Ted: I guess you’re right.

That’s the idea for the dialog method. You come up with ideas, shoot them down as hard as you can, and keep ones that are good while abandoning ones that are bad. You also need the objective nagging voice in there, because sometimes you just can’t give up a deck because you really want it to work. Unfortunately some decks just don’t work, so you’ll have to come up with a better approach or wait for new cards to come out. I also mentioned a more controlling deck that involved poison, let’s take a look at that. I’ll use the same approach to solidify it for you guys. (By the way, Nag listens to progressive metal, for example this: Painted In Exile – Revitalized, just in case you wanted some metal to listen to yourself.)

Ted: So guys, I just came up with another idea to do poison!
Sam: Here we go again…
Nag: Be polite Sam, let’s hear him out.
Ted: What if I made a control deck that won with poison?
Sam: So you’re basically replacing the win condition of a regular control deck with poison?
Ted: Pretty much.
Sam: Why would you do that?
Ted: Because I like poison.
Nag: But do you have a real reason to do it? Like what advantage does poison provide you?
Ted: Well, as I said before, you need only half the amount of damage to get there. You can also use proliferate.
Sam: Well your creatures are much, much worse than creatures of regular control decks though…
Nag: Skithiryx isn’t that bad.
Sam: Well, ok, just one creature. But for one more mana you could be casting a Titan!
Ted: Titans don’t have evasion and regeneration though.
Sam: Alright, let’s say you did play Skithiryx. What else? Even if you play 4, which you don’t want to since he’s legendary, that’s nearly not enough to get there. One Memoricide or even Mana Leak would ruin your day.
Ted: Hmm… I’ll add more poison creatures then!
Nag: We’ve already discussed this. Poison creatures aren’t good enough, and they don’t have enough card advantage to compete with better cards.
Sam: Also, they die easily and don’t really do anything immediately.
Nag: Well, there’s Ichor Rats
Sam: That card’s awful.
Ted: But it at least it gives its counter when it enters the battlefield, even if it dies right after, you can proliferate for the win!
Sam: You opponent can proliferate you to death too.
Nag: Come on Sam, play nice. Realistically speaking there’s a very low chance of that happening.
Ted: So what proliferation suite should I play? Contagion Clasp and Throne of Geth?
Sam: Throne of Geth sucks. It’s useless if your opponent doesn’t already have a poison counter.
Ted: Well you can proliferate your own artifacts with counters if you have any, for example Lux Cannon, and you can also proliferate -1/-1 counters on enemy creatures, caused by Clasp.
Sam: Sux Cannon.
Nag: Even though he’s trolling, Sam has a point. Throne of Geth is too situational. Also, you have too little initial sources of poison. It’s a bit risky.
Ted: I can take the risk. The rest of the deck will be counterspells and disruption, so I can deal with opposing counterspells and removal.
Sam: You have no turn 1 plays.
Ted: Inquisition of Kozilek seems to be a good idea since I can take removal, counters, or even opposing creatures!
Sam: Fine. Let’s see what kind of Removal you got.
Nag: I assume it’s a pretty standard package.
Ted: Yep. Doom Blade, Consuming Vapors, you can even play Contagion Engine along with the clasps!
Sam: I feel like a control deck would destroy you.
Nag: Let’s see what else he has before snap jdugments.
Ted: Mana Leaks, Stoic Rebuttal, Jace2.
Sam: So you’re basically UB Control but worse?
Nag: He does have a point.
Sam: Also, Creepy Carpet wins many games for UB Control because it’s that awesome, for you it’s basically anti-synergy!
Ted: I can still play it, it fixes and you might even be able to get in with the damage!
Nag: Unlikely. But it can be a good addition to the mana base along with the Scars dual and The M10 dual. You should also run Tectonic Edge for obvious reasons.
Sam: It will still suck. If you have a Jace2, why would you play this awful deck instead of something real?
Ted: What was I supposed to do? I just wanted to make a poison deck. I don’t want to play the same deck everyone is playing.
Nag: Fair enough. This deck won’t be really good though. Seems like it will be hard to make a proper poison deck, at least not until Mirrodin Besieged hits.
Sam: Not even after that. Poison sucks.
Nag: You don’t know that. Ted, show us a rough list.

4x Ichor Rats
4x Doom Blade
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Mana Leak
3x Jace2
3x Stoic Rebuttal
3x Contagion Clasp
3x Contagion Engine
2x Skithiryx
2x Consuming Vapors
————————————
4x Drowned Catacombs
3x Creeping Tar Pit
3x Darkslick Shores
3x Tectonic Edge
6x Island
6x Swamp

Sam: That’s 57 cards.
Ted: I’m not sure what the last 3 cards should be.
Sam: They should be Don’t Play This Deck.
Nag: I don’t think that’s Standard legal.
Ted: You’re mean, Sam. I’m not trying to qualify for a PTQ.
Nag: What is your goal? That’s important to keep in mind. I don’t think you can top8 a SCG Open with this.
Ted: I guess you’re right. Well, I want to do well in my FNM, that’s the short term goal.
Nag: Then I believe this is fine.
Sam: Who has 3 Jace2’s and plays casually at FNMs?
Noyan: I do!
Nag: You’re weird, and you’re not even a part of the discussion. Go away.
Ted: You can always replace them with The other Jace, that way you can preempt your opponent’s Jace!
Sam: You can’t prevent your own sucking.
Nag: Ahem. What happened to those last 3 cards?
Ted: I guess I can run Jace’s Ingenuity. The card advantage might be useful.
Sam: I still think this deck sucks.
Nag: Well then, play something else!
Ted: I think I like this.
Nag: Good for you. I’m tired, Let’s end this.

That’s how it goes. This is a very useful process, as long as you play each character’s role well. Don’t make compromises and don’t lie to yourself. And be realistic.

I don’t know what I’ll do next week. Maybe I’ll have a surprise. Maybe I won’t talk about tempo. Either way, have a nice week, and hopefully you can build better decks than I do.

Follow me on twitter @nayon7.
Questions & Comments? Email me at: spreading.cheese@gmail.com

-N

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
————————————
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!

Spreading Cheese — MoNO Black (& my Archenemy (& Parentheses))

Hello again, everyone. Before we start, let me look at what I’ve said I’ll do this week (you probably should too, I refer to that article a lot during this one).

• Tempo
• A U/W Deck
• Whatever comes to mind during the week.

About the U/W deck, I haven’t been able to test it enough due to STILL not having enough copies of a certain planeswalker (everyone seems to be hoarding their own copies). I do proxy, but the introduction of a new game-changing deck by Patrick Chapin every week is throwing off my deckbuilding lately. I’ve been viewing him as my arch-enemy lately (even though he probably has no idea about my existence. In my defense, I have mentioned him in a few tweets (I’m @nayon7 on Twitter, follow me!), but he probably gets mentioned around a million times per day, so he wouldn’t get to me), because every deck he builds lately I face off and lose to at least twice per FNM.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect him immensely (more than most, at least) and am an avid follower of his articles. BUT HIS DECKS ARE SO GOOD! And they always seem to be especially good against decks I build. I was going to debut my awesome U/W deck this week, but I have no idea how I can beat his Pyromancer Ascension list mentioned in Yo! MTG Taps! Episode 42 and his SCG column. Yes, it is also Mike Flores’ list too, but Flores’s lists haven’t been consistently trumping mine for a few weeks now. Long story short, until I tune my U/W secret hidden awesome tech (that people around me already know about, and my dedicated readers should know that it is a slight modification of a deck I’ve been playing earlier this year, hint hint) to beat anything Patrick Chapin ever proposes, I won’t post it.

That brings me to whatever comes to mind during the week. Beating Patrick Chapin decks is what comes to my mind every weekday. Seriously, I’ve been having nightmares involving losing to Chapin decks lately, I’m that scared. And we all know, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to playing black decks. Considering one of my favorite cards of all time is Dark Ritual, you can say that black decks have a special place in my heart. So I’ll talk about a black deck this week.

But before that, I want to make an addendum to previous week’s article. Voltaic Key. How I forgot to add that card, I do not know. But it is awesome. Lux Cannon goes into overdrive with that card. Definitely run at least 2-3 of that card in your Lux Cannon deck. Also, on the same train of thought, I’ve been trying to break Mindslaver all week to no avail. It’s not bad, I can pull off pretty insane moves with the deck, but it is not Patrick Chapin Good. So I’m also going to hold back on talking about that one, until it is worthy. While trying to break Mindslaver (I was trying Mono-Blue because of Jace2 and Grand Architect (Architect didn’t really make it)), I realized fusing blue into my colorless control deck last week might stand a chance against Patrick Chapin Decks (bear in mind that the Pyromancer Ascension deck wasn’t out yet when I made this deck). I took the deck apart after playing against PyroAsc, so I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it was a pretty good deck other than that, because the only things that could beat it were PyroAsc and Devastating RDW (and Devastating RDW was a pretty close matchup).

Here’s what the list looked like:
3x Jace2
4x Preordain (guess who else loves this card)
3x Lux Cannon
3x Voltaic Key
4x Mana Leak
3-4x Stoic Rebuttal
3x Contagion Clasp
4x Everflowing Chalice
3x Wurmcoil Engine
3x All is Dust (might want to play 4)
4x Eldrazi Temple
19x Islands

I also recall playing Mox Opal in the main, a lot of Volition Reins in the board, and 3x Platinum Emperion in the board as a miser’s tech (as I said last week, my metagame is weird). There seems to be one other card that I played, but it escapes me.

Cards I DID NOT run (and recommend that you don’t run either):

• Throne of Geth – It works well with Koth and cards that do things when they die, but it doesn’t really work well in this deck.
• Steady Progress – Many people told me to run/asked if i was running this card, but NO. I’m not saying it is a bad card, but this just isn’t the right deck for it. For card draw, use Preordain and Jace2. For proliferation, use either Clasps, or just untap your cannons with your Voltaic Keys.

Anyway, as I predicted last week, Lux Cannon was INSANELY good. Especially when I have a key or two on the board, destroying a bomby creature of my opponent or a critical land each turn wins the game really fast. Destroying lands also makes your late game Mana leaks useful. Lux Cannon is rising really quickly to my ‘Favorite card in Scars’ slot. Expect to hear more about this card in the following weeks.

As I mentioned earlier, Devastating RDW devastated (not really, just barely beat) this deck. Wurmcoil Engine really wins the game against them, but Clasps are good too, and Mana Leak and Lux Cannon take care of their creatures. I lost my matches against this deck mostly due to play errors.

Contrast this to Pyromancer Ascension. That deck just out-card-advantages, out-counters and out-wins this deck in general. I don’t recall resolving a single relevant spell against this deck (that lasted on the board for more than one turn), and post-board they can just side in even more counters and card advantage to just beat us. You win this one, my archenemy (And also Mike Flores).

So, black. I really like playing Mono Black, maybe because of its evil connotations, its high risk high reward cards, the way the card frames look, or simply because I like death metal (I highly recommend listening to music when making decks, it seems to improve my deckbuilding immensely (For death metal fans, I’ve been listening to Behemoth while writing this article)). Whatever the reason, black has always been my favorite color (even though it has been quite weak lately). So let’s take a look at my pre-rotation black list that was mentioned in a previous episode of YMTGT and in my previous article. I don’t really remember the details of the list, but I’ll put down the most important parts and what I can recall:

• 4x Sadistic Sacrament – Running this card 4-of maindeck has really helped me against tough matchups, especially against narrow decks, resolving this turn 3 insures you will win.
• 3-4x Duress – One of the best discard spells ever, and also awesome against planeswalkers.
• 3-4x Vampire Hexmage – The bane of Control and RDW.
• 3-4x Dark Tutelage

Tutelage is my favorite card in M11, hands down. Most have spoken strongly against it, but it has worked wonders for me. Note that you just don’t slap this card into your deck, you must build with it in mind. For the naysayers, I have taken note of every game I resolved a Tutelage. I have resolved Tutelage in 72 games, 61 of which I won. I have lost a single game due to Tutelage, but that was due to my bad deck design (at that time) and resolving Tutelage in a desperate situation where I was already losing and I just resolved Tutelage as a last ditch in order to fish for a Consuming Vapors against my opponent’s Ulamog. I have lost 4 games in which I resolved Tutelage to a single-turn Conscription win. 4 games I lost due to drawing land for 4-5 turns straight, even with Tutelage out. 1 I lost due to not finding an out for Abyssal Persecutor in time, and 1 game I just lost, fair and square. So yes, Dark Tutelage is a really good card by my standard. I also had a few ways to make it even better, which I will discuss below.

• 3x Consuming Vapors – Since you kill off the small creatures through other means, you just drop this on their bombs and profit. Also gains life for Tutelage.
• 4x Abyssal Persecutor – This card is really aggressive and cheap, but you need an out to him. Consuming Vapors also helps here.
• 3x Brittle Effigy – At that time, there weren’t any decks in the metagame that didn’t run any creatures. It also got rid of my Persecutor in the really off chance I faced something without many creatures.
• 3-4x Basilisk Collar – Not only does this make Persecutor a total monster, it also allows you to play two Tutelages and still survive, gaining you immense card advantage. It also enables…
• 4x Phylactery Lich – This card puts the pressure on your opponents like nothing else. It can also chump block everything. I’m sure some people will yell “But you can get two-for-oned”, but remember that nobody ran artifact removal back then, and if they wanted to waste a Ring or Pulse on something that’s not Tutelage or Persecutor, that’s totally fine by me. You think I don’t run enough artifacts? That’s because you don’t know that I also run:
• 3x Crystal Ball – This card makes Tutelage so good that it’s not even funny. Yes, blue has Jace2 which is clearly better, but you can do this at instant speed and you can also run cards that cost BBB.

There was more, but that’s all I can remember. Why am I talking about a pre-rotation deck? Look back. Which of these cards rotated away? If you said “none”, you’re right. I’m not advocating that you should play this deck right now (though you can totally play it if your metagame doesn’t have any PyroAsc or ramp), but it was quite good back then, I consistently went undefeated.

Now, with so many artifacts running around, people have started to play artifact hate, so counting on Phylactery Lich isn’t as good an idea as it used to be. Also, Crystal Ball is a bit slow, and Dark Tutelage stops you from playing huge bomby spells (which define the format), so the whole Collar/Lich/Ball/Tutelage package has to go. In place of Tutelage, running 4x Sign in Blood is absolutely essential.

Before we proceed further, I want to point out that Mono Black is very meta-dependent, so take the numbers I will give you with a grain of salt, and adjust accordingly.

Readers of my previous article should recall “The Deckspace”. I mentioned how bomby spells restrict the playable subset of the Deckspace to be small. We will take advantage of that. Many decks rely heavily on bombs and ignore midrange strategies. That is very good for us, because we can snatch their bombs right out of their hands with our spells. That is the ultimate power of black. First, run Duress, because EVERY deck in the format runs non-creature spells. Also, run Inquisition of Kozilek, because every good deck runs spells that are costed under 3. In addition to that, run Sadistic Sacrament, because it allows you to look at their library, take out whatever seems scary, and then, next turn, cast a spell that will really wreck them.

The spell I’m talking about is the new gem provided by Scars of Mirrodin: Memoricide. Many people underestimate this card, but it is a total buzzkill against decks that rely on bombs, ergo every single deck in the format (except for PyroAsc, but our sacraments and discard should help there). Sacrament and Memoricide also deal with threats that can come back from the graveyard. Now, if you are in an aggro heavy format, you want less Duress and more Inquisition.

Here’s what I would run in my own meta:

4x Sign in Blood
3x Duress
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Sadistic Sacrament
2x Memoricide

Now, let’s throw in some tricks. Unless you have been unaware, Mimic Vat is insanely good. Creatures that have “Enters the battlefield” or sacrifice effects really shine with it, but you can just kill your opponent’s bombs and have fun with them all day. Make sure you read up on the rules though, because there are a few subtle interactions in there. Now, let’s try to find some creatures that would be good in the vat. Vampire Hexmage is an obvious player, taking care of not only planeswalkers, but also PyroAsc too! Putting one on a Vat ensures that your opponent will never have a planeswalker that lives more than a single turn for the rest of the game.

Remember how I said discard was good? Well, I didn’t explicitly say that but the previous paragraph in denial should have given you that idea (oh how I love denial). Liliana’s Specter on a vat is basically denial on a stick, you can even deny your opponents the cards they draw before their main phase! Speaking of discard, Mind Sludge is good again, so you should definitely give that a try. If you hate creatures, a Skinrender is bound to share your feelings. So is Doom Blade (hilariously on Twitter), since no one runs black anyway.

Finally, big dudes on a vat are never bad, so you can either run Wurmcoil Engine (my preference because of the lifegain) or a Grave Titan. Either one of those on a Vat is pretty devastating.

4x Sign in Blood
4x Doom Blade
3x Duress
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Sadistic Sacrament
3x Mimic Vat
3x Vampire Hexmage
3x Skinrender
3x Wurmcoil Engine
3x Mind Sludge
2x Memoricide
2x Liliana’s Specter
————————————–
20x Swamp
4x Tectonic Edge

The Tectonic Edges are obviously there because we all love mana denial.

For the sideboard, there are various meta-dependant choices, like Brittle Effigy, Consuming Vapors, Consume the Meek, Grasp of Darkness, and various other copies of the main deck hate cards. Again, the numbers in the deck and board are very tentative, so adjust according to your own metagame.

I like this deck, because it has a shot at beating PyroAsc and control in general. I call this MoNO Black, because of saying “NO” to anything before it’s even played. Imagine playing against a normal control deck:

You: “I want to play Lorthos.”
Control Player: “No.”
Y: “Can I cast a creature?”
CP: “No.”
Y: “Can I just go home now?”
CP: “No.”

Now, think of this deck:

You: “Can I pla-”
MoNo: “NO!”
Y: “Then can-”
MN: “NO!”
Y: “But I-”
MN: “NO!”
Y: *cries*

Yes, I want to make my opponent cry. I want all those Pyromancer decks to cry. Today I am evil. Until next week, may you be evil too.

P.S: Next week, I will talk about tempo. Seriously though, I have no idea what to talk about. We’ll see what happens this week.

(P.P.S: Wow, there are so many parenthesized statements this week! I warned you on my first column, my articles are very train-of-thought (and my trains of thought tend to go on long tangents and connect them back together all the time)).

-Noyan