Bonjour mes amis! I would like to make you welcome here at the Kitchen Table, so have a seat, pull up a chair and browse away.
Last week I introduced the new and improved Five Color format, and today I want to talk about one of the issues that people bring up when they are confronted with Five Color. “I don’t have the cards!”
As you’ll recall from last week, the new format allows you to play with proxies, so that is no longer an issue. However, just in case you missed last week’s article, allow me to bring you up to speed with our normal format, already in progress:
Some major changes were made to Five Color, and the new format is:
300 cards
25 cards of each color
Vintage Legal sets
Its own B&R list
Casual friendly mulligans
Proxies unlimited
Ante optional, not required
You can check out the format and see the B&R list and mulligan rules here.
Obviously with the proxy rule in place, you can hurdle the question of not having the right cards to build a Five Color deck. However, not everyone will want to play a bunch of proxies. Some players might prefer only the real cards, or at least mostly the real cards. Proxying a dual land or Chaos Orb may feel a lot better than proxying a Recoil or a Gaea’s Skyfolk.
Today’s article assumes that you are not interested in running a deck with nothing but proxies, so again, the question lays there — do you have the cards to build a Five Color deck?
Absolutely!
First off, I want you to set aside the view that there are “right” cards to play and wrong cards to play. There is fun to be had, but only if you let yourself slide from the expected into the unexpected.
Today I want to show off some of the staples of a more casual Five Color. Now, just because I say casual does not mean I am saying “not good” or cheap. Please do not confuse your terms. By casual, I mean that if you take a deck with these cards to a Five Color tournament, you may want to streamline it and play a bunch more proxies to give yourself enough power to compete with other tournament caliber decks.
However, I still want your deck to be good. What I am going to do today is divide this article into two parts. For one, I am going to give you some ideas for cheap cards that have a lot of power for your deck. For the other, I am going to look at cards that came off the B&R list that you can also look to for power.
Cheap and Powerful
What kind of Five Color deck are you interested in building? A cheap and powerful aggro deck featuring creatures from Carnophage to Watchwolf to Elite Vanguard can do very well. Sprinkle in Lightning Bolt, Skullclamp, and more and you can have a very powerful deck with little monetary investment. You probably have many of these cards anyway. Most players have a stock of cards that includes Kird Ape, Incinerate, Jackal Pup, Skyshroud Elite, River Boa, Serendib Efreet, etc. I suspect that you have most of the cards for this sort of Five Color deck just sitting around, and the rest are cheap to acquire.
You can also add some powerful elements to your Five Color aggro deck on the cheap. Armageddon is just a few bucks, and most people either have a set, or know someone who does and isn’t playing them. Other cards you might want to consider include Ravages of War as a proxy, Winter Orb, some countermagic to give your deck some staying power, and so forth.
A lot of players may not want to build an aggro deck. After all, if you want to build one, you would already have a few in your deckbox to pull out. I never have more than one hyper-aggro deck built at a time, because I generally don’t like playing with them too much outside of tournaments.
If you want to play control or combo, or perhaps a slower aggro deck, then the card selection becomes more interesting. A lot more options are opened to you at this stage. Let’s take a look at a few that have some serious power behind them:
Allied Strategies – This is a powerhouse of card drawing. If you are playing five colors anyway, then why not look at the more powerful domain cards? Other domain cards, like Tribal Flames, Exploding Borders, and Ordered Migration have some serious power too.
Winds of Rath — If you want to play control, then Wrath effects might be the way you are looking. Even if you have a full complement of Wrath of God, you will likely want some more options. There are some Wrath variants that are pretty cheap, and Winds of Rath is a classic example. It’s just a five mana Wrath that saves creatures with auras on them, which you can actually build around if you want. There are some other cheap Wraths too, like Kirtar’s Wrath and Final Judgment.
Utopia Tree — Mana fixing is important, but Birds of Paradise is too expensive. Utopia Tree is just a couple of bucks and artifact mana like Fellwar Stone can be acquired on the cheap with ease.
Savage Lands — If you don’t have the old or new dual lands, the best lands to have are the tri-taps from Shards. These each give you three colors of mana and the enters-the-battlefield tempo loss is acceptable for slower decks that are not looking to drop Savannah Lions on turn 1. You can also look at lands like City of Brass, Murmuring Bosk, Exotic Orchard, the pain lands, and whatever else you have laying around. If you are running a lot of these non-basics as mana smoothing, take a look at cards that search up lands like Weathered Wayfinder, Sylvan Scrying, Crop Rotation, Scapeshift, Reap and Sow, and Tolaria West as your land search.
Arc-Slogger — Arc-Slogger rocks in a 300-card deck! It is a virtual essential in any casual control or combo or mid-range deck that can handle the Red mana. There are a lot of cards out there that benefit from a large deck, like Tolarian Serpent. None of these have high price tags and yet they have a very powerful impact on the board.
Rakavolver — Rakavolver is great with both kickers paid; a 5/5 flying, lifelink beater. Rakavolver is also great because is a nice beater for cheap. Not all beaters are going to have an Akroma-sized price tag. Some are going to be downright steals. Others are going to have decent price tags, like Fledgling Dragon. Only you know your own card stock, but there are a lot of beaters that I bet you own, but are not playing. From Kavu Titan to Ant Queen, from Shivan Dragon to Serra Angel, from Etched Oracle to Bosh, Iron Golem, from Teneb to Oros, and from Tidespout Tyrant to Simic Sky Swallower, there are a lot of creatures out there with a price tag under a buck to a couple of bucks that will make your deck better. You might also have a few higher value rares sitting around, like Exalted Angel, Eternal Dragon, Kokusho, Meloku, Avatar of Fury, and so forth. Toss them in too. You might as well be playing them, after all. That’s why I started playing Five Color; it was a place to play the cards I owned, but wasn’t playing at the time.
Kor Haven — Why not toss in a Kor Haven into your control decks? Don’t count on it replacing one of your lands, but supplementing your lands. There are a few lands that I say “Might as Well” too, including Urborg, Academy Ruins, Yavimaya Hollow and the expensive Karakas. If you’ve got them, I’d run them.
Chartooth Cougar — One of the things you need to know is that sometimes it becomes hard to get 25 cards of each color. A R/G multicolored card can count for one color, or the other, but not both. With this restriction in place, it can be hard to figure out where to get other cards for your color. One way is to run cards like Chartooth Cougar which cycle, or in this case, Mountaincycle. Other options include split cards and hybrid cards, which do not require you to play a minimized color. These will all allow you to focus on one or two colors and make your manabase reflect that. I prefer to actually run all five colors, as opposed to cheating a color, but something like Chartooth Cougar can really help with that.
Return to Dust — It is very important to know what removal can give you a chance to score some card advantage. Orim’s Thunder, Hull Breach, Dismantling Blow, and Return to Dust are all cheap ways of dealing with multiple threats or drawing cards when dealing with one. All four of these are light on the pocketbook and long on value. Try to get card advantage where you can, even in small ways.
Wing Shards — Similarly, look for cards that can provide you card advantage when popping creatures. Wing Shards is a great reason to rack up a storm count that can provide you with many deaths of opposing creatures. Other ways to knock out multiple foes include Pyroclasm, Infest, the often free to play Massacre, Retribution of the Meek, and so forth. I’m sure that some of these answers will be found among your deck stock and are easy on the budget.
Recoil — Bounce can be great tempo, and all of the best bounce cards except for Upheaval are quite cheap. Aether Mutation bounces and makes you an army. Jilt, Recoil, Man-o’-War, Undo, Dead/Gone, Capsize — all have quite reasonable price tags.
I hope that you found some cards in your collection or ideas for some cheap cards that can be the foundation of your new Five Color deck! Next week we’ll take a look at where to start building that 300 card deck. Now let’s take a look at the new Banned and Restricted list.
B&R Craziness!
Under the old B&R list, there were a ton of cards on the list, despite several major moves to pull cards off. In January, we pulled off many recursion cards, and there were still 81 cards on the lists. 24 of those were banned.
Under the new B&R list, only 8 cards are banned, and 61 cards are on both lists.
In other words, 16 cards were pulled off the banned list, and 20 cards off the lists entirely (some were moved from banned to restricted, and others were just unbanned and unrestricted, plus a few came back on, like Regrowth, which was unrestricted in January).
That’s a metric ton of changes. What I want to do now is highlight the changes, and how they impact your deckbuilding.
One-mana Tutors — Four cards on the old banned list were four one-mana tutors that were banned by the 5CRC because of the early game consistency they gave players. That mistake has been corrected, and all four cards are now back to restricted status. They are Imperial Seal, Mystical Tutor, Demonic Consultation, and Vampiric Tutor. You now have these available again to fetch what you want from your deck.
Combo Engines — One of the main categories of banned cards were combo engines. The following engines were banned under the old list — Survival of the Fittest, Wild Research, Holistic Wisdom, Phyrexian Portal, Parallel Thoughts, Yawgmoth’s Bargain, Oath of Druids, Panoptic Mirror, and Crucible of Worlds. Some of these came off, and others are still on.
Parallel Thoughts is deemed too similar in power level to Battle of Wits, and is left on. Also currently on are Phyrexian Portal and Holistic Wisdom. All of the other cards are no longer banned.
Wild Research is no longer banned or restricted, and you can play four of them if you want.
The others are all restricted now. That means you can play Yawgmoth’s Bargain, Oath of Druids, Survival of the Fittest, Panoptic Mirror, and Crucible of Worlds as one-ofs. Enjoy!
Power Level — Other cards that came off the banned list did so because of power level. The line of power was moved, and Yawgmoth’s Will came back alive from death. Time Walk joined it. Flash is also off. Tinker is off.
In previous articles, I discussed how I felt that the power level to ban a card was really high, and some of these cards simply didn’t hit it. I voted against banning the Will, the Walk, Flash and I can’t remember how I voted against Tinker. Perhaps I was for it, perhaps against.
The point is that the line has been moved. How powerful a card has to be in order to be banned has increased. Only EIGHT cards in all of Magic are now powerful enough to be banned, and that number could drop.
Flash is unrestricted too, so Flash-Hulk is back in Five Color, although a bit harder to do with the new color and size requirements. Jeremy Bush increased the size of the deck 20% and the color requirements 25%, and that is hard on a combo deck. Some of the unrestricted and unbanned cards can help.
Intuition, Gifts Ungiven — These two “tutors” have been unbanned and restricted. Again, the power level moved, so they are back.
What is still on? Sundering Titan, Battle of Wits, Phyrexian Portal, Bringer of the Black Dawn, Holistic Wisdom, Parallel Thoughts, Shahrazad and Insidious Dreams. That’s it.
Okay, let’s look at the newly restricted cards.
Back in January, the 5CRC unrestricted a bunch of recursion cards, including Regrowth and Nostalgic Dreams. Since then, none have been a problem. However, with the new format and the new list, Jeremy Bush has put these two back on the list. Now, Jeremy has always not liked recursion much. On the council and in forums he is an outspoken critic of the power of recursion.
I would argue to pull these back off, because they were pulled off and ignited nothing at all, just snoozes. They were safely off the list for seven months and nothing bad happened. To me, that seems to indicate they should remain off.
However, my mind posits a counter to that. With all of the new powerful cards re-entering the format for the first time in ages, these two powerful recursion cards need to come back on the list because their power level has jumped. A recursion spell or tutor is only as powerful as the cards in the format. As their power level rises, so does that of Regrowth.
I have a counter to the counter. I’d rather see what damage Regrowth and Nostalgic Dreams do unrestricted, before we put them back on the list. I think they have earned a trial period unrestricted with the big boys due to good behavior these last few months. After all, it is harder to get a card off the list than it is to get one on. I know, I’ve seen it.
And then one final counter to my counter of their counter would be that: now it’s not that hard at all. One person can take them off anytime, only a council found it difficult. Jeremy Bush can pull the cards off whenever. In fact, he just did. Kevin and I argued for the removal of a few cards behind the scene, and some came off August 1. Just like that, boom.
The Wishes — With the new Exile ruling for Wishes, they now have no function in Five Color tournaments. The old Wishboard is gone. You cannot get cards from a wish/sideboard, and you cannot get cards RFG’d. In tournaments, the Wishes can be played, sure, but they do nothing.
Now, in casual Magic, I’d say they can still do whatever they did before. If you want wishboards, quick tutors, whatever, do it. Whatever rule you were playing with before around the kitchen table, just keep doing it.
Transmute — The final transmute cards that were on the old list have been pulled off, leaving no transmute cards there. They were never played too much, and now you can rock them in four-ofs if you wish to do so. This includes Tolaria West.
What other cards have come off the restricted list:
Windfall
Weathered Wayfarer
Cruel Tutor
Mishra’s Workshop
Diminishing Returns
Future Sight
Grim Monolith
Life from the Loam
Memory Jar
Mind Twist
Replenish
Planar Portal
Stroke of Genius
This gives you some powerful tools you can play in your decks with multiple copies allowed of each.
The result is that a lot of good cards, strong cards, and solid cards have been allowed, but no amazing or broken cards (in a 300 card format at least).
Before I leave you, one more note on a card. Contract from Below has been given Five Color errata. It now only antes when you play it if you are playing for ante, and the language to remove it from your deck if not is gone. What does that mean? Simple. You may now play Contract from Below in any deck even if not playing for ante, and it discards your hand, and draws you seven.
It also has a price tag of significant cheapness, so pick up a few if you don’t have them.
…
With that, we come to the close of another article. This new Five Color is really exciting. Next week we’ll look at where to start building your deck, and then article #300 is coming.
For article #300 I am doing something special. I will be bringing back my most requested article series of all time. I’ve gotten more forum posts, e-mails and conversations about bringing back this series than any other. What will it be? Check it out in two weeks!
Until later…