A funny thing happened on the way to the Massive Deck Update, January 2016 Edition: it wasn’t all that massive. Don’t get me wrong, the cards were excellent; there just weren’t that many updates. Let’s examine what that happened.
In my Oath of the Gatewatch review, I listed 29 cards on the Definitely Play list. That side of the list always means that they’ll get played, but not necessarily in my decks—some of them simply aren’t my style, don’t fit into my environment, or whatever. That’s usually just a handful; I normally expect in the neighborhood of 80% of those cards to make it into my decks. In this case, only sixteen of those 29 made it in, a paltry 55%. So was the fault with the set, the cards, or something else?
It’s clearly something else (and that feels a lot like the “no, really, it’s me, not you” breakup trope). I went in with the firm desire to play most of those cards. This update was agonizing. There simply wasn’t room for all the cards. We’re getting to the point where I’m going to have to get moving on the other 30 or so Do Over Project decks just to create space for all the cool cards coming out. Emotionally, I’m just going to have to face the fact that there are too many cards and not enough slots. For future deck updates, we might just get into the situation in which a card will need to be something like a straight upgrade in order to make it in (like Mystic Confluence over Jace’s Ingenuity or Make a Stand over Rootborn Defenses—although even that one is questionable).
In my review, I mentioned that that raw number of cards in the set on the “definitely” list was down over previous sets. I also mentioned that I don’t see this as a negative. First, it demonstrates that the designers and developers aren’t just engaging in some kind of arms race to make things bigger, stronger, faster (there doesn’t seem to be any push for Magic’s version of the Steroid Era). Second, it challenges deck builders to extract more mileage out of cards or consider more creative angles for building with them. Limitations tend to breed creativity, which in the end is a net positive for the format.
I normally list my whole suite of decks, but since only fourteen of them actually saw updates, I’ll list only those which got something.
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This deck is all about using the graveyard as a toolbox, sacrificing creatures to do stuff. Matter Reshaper provides the sacrifice fuel and then does something as well. In the worst case, it’s card draw. In the best, it will dump one of the twenty or so nonland cards in the deck onto the battlefield. It’s just a win all around.
Borderland Ranger provided some redundancy in the deck. I found that I was already getting more than enough land, so it was a reasonably easy cut. Obviously, Civic Wayfinder could have been the cut, but I’m a fan of keeping the OG cards in favor of the new ones. I had considered cutting Agent of Erebos, worried that because the deck functions on the graveyard, the Agent might be a Clone target. It turns out that 1) the shenanigans the deck performs aren’t all that scary and 2) there are normally way better Clone targets on the battlefield than my stupid little Agent of Erebos.
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Although I want World Breaker to actually break more of the world than it does (just based on its name), it does what needs to be done in this format—exile dangerous stuff. It might seem counterintuitive to have a card with a cast trigger in a deck with Lurking Predators (normally, you want enters-the-battlefield triggers), but since there are bounce tricks in the deck, I’ll get World Breaker back often enough. I probably won’t need to use its regrowth ability all that often, but it’s nice to know it’s there. Although I’ll miss Prophet of Kruphix (well, I’ll miss me playing it), it created an easy opening to slip a new card into.
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This deck has the most counterspells of any deck I play and is also the most mana hungry, so putting in Sphinx of the Final Word and Zendikar Resurgent makes perfect sense. I wonder: if the Sphinx came on a less bashy body, would I want to play it? I don’t think I would, since I want it to do something else while it’s waiting to not let my instants and sorceries get countered. It opens up some design space, perhaps. Imagine if the ability were tacked onto something like Compulsion or Evolutionary Leap.
Zendikar Resurgent is also a case of the card doing something else. Even in a deck with a moderately low creature count (for me, anyway; I know that for some folks 28 is too many creatures), the something else is worth it. Otherwise, I would just play Mana Reflection, which makes me wonder if I should play Mana Reflection, too. Volcanic Vision just wasn’t getting there for me, since the cards I wanted to regrow most often were X spells. If that were an important part of the deck, I’d play Regrowth at two mana instead of Volcanic Vision at 7.
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Oh, Blinky the Eldrazi, how much I love you, because I swear I’ll use you responsibly. I swears it. The obvious uses for Blinky are to reuse your own enters the battlefield triggers, regain control of something someone stole, and save your creatures from targeted removal. The less obvious use it to reset someone else’s creature with a pile of counters on it (screw you, Thief of Blood!) or to simply get an untapped creature out of the way for an attack. Ayli will provide some lifegain in a tight mana package, which is why the Defiant Bloodlord really never got a chance. The seven mana cost is a little prohibitive, although Champion of Stray Souls got some consideration for removal. Burnished Hart is techy for getting into the graveyard, but this is a green deck, so it doesn’t need so much help with mana ramp. Add in that Burnished Hart was never a recursion target, and it was an easy removal. You’ll notice that I also changed the mana base a little to provide for some colorless mana. The deck’s life gain is enough that I won’t worry about the damage from the pain lands. That Wastes is the only one I considered putting into a deck for now.
Speaking of Thief of Blood, it’s led to a funny play line in our Commander 2015 League. All the decks have Vivid lands in them, but being two-color decks, they don’t really need them. The presence of two copies of Thief of Blood have led to all of us removing the counters from the Vivids even if we don’t need to. As a side note, expect an update on the goings-on of the League next week.
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Phytotitan was funny along with Greater Good, but it didn’t do much else (since the deck doesn’t play Warstorm Surge). Something had to go to make room for the greatest of all distortions. The cast trigger will fill up the hand, then the counterspell ability will put big things into the graveyard so that they can come back later for Living Death or Victimize.
It’ll be cool to have two identical converted mana cost things like Malignus and Lord of Extinction in hand when I want to counter a five mana spell. Of course, if I have the ten mana to cast Kozilek, the Great Distortion, I can just hard-cast them—but who wants to do stuff the easy way?
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My first thought was that Reflector Mage is a straight upgrade to Aether Adept, but in retrospect, it’s only objectively better in this deck because I have other methods of getting my own creatures back to my hand. And it’s not that much help with something another player has stolen from me. If it were the only blink weapon in a deck, then I wouldn’t use it. Since it’s part of a suite, having weapons which strike different kinds of targets makes strategic sense. The impulse to also put Blinky the Eldrazi into this deck is strong, but I’ve always promised that (at least initially), I’ll only do one of any new card in the deck suite.
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It’s a Dragon deck, there was an available Dragon in its colors, so the swap in was easy. The switch out of Rith came first, so when Wardscale Dragon was free, I immediately thought of this deck. Ashiok is better in a control deck than one that is becoming more of a beatdown deck with control elements. I’m sure it’ll find a home eventually.
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Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is another card from this set (along with Blinky, who I’m thinking of asking to go steady with me) which I want to use in multiples. This deck likes to Wrath away other players’ boards, so doing that and getting a fistful of Zombies seems like the right call. There is also a reasonable argument to put it into Thraximundar, which likes to murder creatures one at a time. I took Orzhov Pontiff out of here hoping to put it into Karador, but then I realized that the Haunt is not optional; I can’t just choose to keep it in the graveyard. It suddenly seemed less good.
PURPLE HIPPOS and MARO SORCERERS
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Bringing Endbringer into a deck whose primary modus operandi is drawing cards makes sense. It would be better if the mana were there every turn via Prophet of Kruphix, but what are you gonna do? You’re gonna put in Seedborn Muse. It almost led to putting in Yeva, Nature’s Herald, but I realized that I don’t have enough green creatures to make it worthwhile. Seedborn Muse made me think of Kruphix, God of Horizons, but now we’re starting to drift into a different deck. It looks like there is enough colorless mana in the deck to work with Endbringer; if not, I’ll fix it.
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The deck makes a bunch of tokens. Turning them into something crazy, like Hellrider, could be quite something. My only concern is that there might be too many legendary creatures. We’ll see how it plays out.
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Flavorwise, this was an easy swap to make. Thassa is master of all things tentacled, and Frozen Aether only works in an Arctic sea deck.
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There are fewer more organic fits for the deck that benefits from sacrifice. Having a handful of Eldrazi Scion tokens and an attacking Thraximundar is a raw winner. Sifter of Skulls is once again a card leading me into temptation to put multiple places. Finding something to remove from this deck was the hardest of them all. Everything absolutely wants to be here. My first thought was Hibernation, but the card has saved me multiple times. Perilous Research goes with the theme of the deck reasonably well, but it’s mostly redundancy. I can live without it (and I play it in Yasova anyway).
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Dazzling Reflection is an ideal card for this deck (especially with the Sunforger package), although it doesn’t actually make someone do something to themselves, it just provides me with more opportunity to make them. Reroute has consistently been a dead card, strangely enough. When it gets played, it’s a blowout. Unfortunately, most of the time I find myself playing it on something not particularly great just to draw the card. That’s a clear sign that the card isn’t pulling its weight.
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As I mentioned earlier, Make a Stand is a card that I consider an upgrade to Rootborn Defenses in certain circumstances. This is one of them. It’s a creature-based deck which is way better when many creatures are on the battlefield, which means it hurts when they get nuked. This is one way of preventing that from happening, while buffing them if I want to attack. Dream play with Make a Stand is after the defending player casts Comeuppance.
Since the list is relatively short, here are the updates by card:
Colorless
Deceiver of Form: Rith
Kozilek, the Great Distortion: Kresh
Matter Reshaper: Adun
White
Eldrazi Displacer: Karador
Dazzling Reflection: Ruhan
Make a Stand: Ruhan Do-Over
Blue
Crush of Tentacles: Thassa
Sphinx of the Final Word: Intet
Black
Sifter of Skulls: Thraximundar
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet: Obzedat
Green
World Breaker: Animar
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar: Ezuri
Zendikar Resurgent: Intet
Multicolor
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim: Karador
Reflector Mage: Lavinia
The weirdest non-update was for Karn, in which I expected to put a bunch of Wastes. Reviewing the deck list, it turns out that the 38 lands in there all do something.
Sure, if someone plays Ruination, I’m truly ruined, but it’s a card I’m not likely to see in my local environment, so the risk factor is reasonably low. I don’t see too many copies of Trailblazer’s Boots, so I should be safe. Primal Order may be a real beating, but who plays that?
While the number of cards making it into decks from Oath of the Gatewatch is relatively low, I’m thoroughly excited about each and every one of them coming in. Most of them will be immediate impact cards to my local environment, which is what we ask of new cards for the format.
Our Decks Without Comment feature will return next week.
Check out our awesome Deck List Database for the last versions of all my decks:
EREBOS and the HALLS OF THE DEAD;
KARRTHUS, WHO RAINS FIRE FROM THE SKY;
LAZAV, SHAPESHIFTING MASTERMIND;
PURPLE HIPPOS and MARO SORCERERS;
RURIC THAR AND HIS BEASTLY FIGHT CLUB;
If you’d like to follow the adventures of my Monday Night RPG group (in a campaign that’s been alive since 1987 and is just now getting started with a new saga called “The Lost Cities of Nevinor”), ask for an invitation to the Facebook group “Sheldon Menery’s Monday Night Gamers.”