Lifegain gets a bad rap.
Really, it does. Those of us who started off as casual players remember one of the first things we learned when moving to a competitive scene is that Lifegain Sucks.
Sadly, this has led many a player to believe that lifegain is not only bad, but has no impact on a “real” game of Magic. Neither is true.
Sacred Nectar doesn’t suck because gaining four life sucks-Sacred Nectar sucks because card disadvantage sucks. All Pulse of the Fields does is gain you life, and that thing was a house back in the day. Sizzle sucks for the same reason-it’s card disadvantage that doesn’t put you markedly closer to winning the game on its own.
So why does lifegain get such a bad rep? Simple: it doesn’t win you the game. The main difference between a Healing Salve (targeting yourself) and a Lava Spike (targeting your opponent) is that there is no special case of The Philosophy of Fire that lets you kill your opponent by Healing Salving yourself over and over.
It’s perfectly acceptable (however imprudent in most competitive metagames) to build a deck around a core strategy of being able to deal, on average, 10-20 points of direct damage per game.
But you’d expect that building a deck around a core strategy of gaining, on average, 10-20 points of life per game wouldn’t even be worth considering.
[JARRING CHORD]
[The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain enters, flanked by two junior cardinals.]
Ximinez: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise… Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency!
You’d be surprised how much the game of Magic changes when my opponent has to send 30-35 points to the dome to win and I still only have to come up with 20. (And I’m playing burn spells, too!)
Most importantly, I’m selling out to get this life total boost. There are no Sacred Nectars, Healing Salves, or even White Hondens in my deck. I’m gaining life while going about my business as a control deck-blowing up your dudes, shutting down your Jittes, and beating you down with my fatties.
Here’s the recipe.
The Spanish Inquisition
Creatures (7)
Lands (26)
Spells (27)
- 3 Terashi's Grasp
- 2 Genju of the Fields
- 4 Wrath of God
- 4 Blaze
- 2 Devouring Light
- 4 Faith's Fetters
- 4 Lightning Helix
- 4 Searing Meditation
Sideboard
Every non-combo deck in Standard (that I’ve heard of, at any rate) plans to win by sending twenty to the dome. Even the control decks.
So how does my deck beat, say, Grave-Shell Scarab? It’s a 4/4 beatstick that my opponent can replay on every single turn of the game if he wants to. Sounds like a bad time, right?
I beat it like this:
Firemane Angel hits you in the air for 20, while Grave-Shell Scarab beats me about the head and shoulders on the ground for 28.
I am at six. You are at zero.
Good game.
The rules of Magic change when you have so much more life than your opponent and have not sacrificed any kind of card advantage to obtain it.
So while this is not really a “lifegain deck,” per se, in order to understand how to play it correctly, you need to be conscious of what this overload of lifegain does to the game. You don’t need to covet your life total once it gets into the single digits against aggro; you can feel secure that it will go back up again once you stabilize. If G/B tries to race you, don’t bother stopping them if you can just play a threat and race back. A Faith’s Fetters or Lightning Helix they weren’t counting on will turn the race around just as it looks like they’ve won it.
Having said all that, let’s get to the good stuff!
Strategy
In case it wasn’t clear, TSI is a control deck. It is constructed around a bunch of inherently strong cards with built-in lifegain effects, which allows it to play many slower cards that are more versatile than their cheaper counterparts, and which also affords it the amazing recurring damage source of Searing Meditation.
Look at Faith’s Fetters. At four mana, this one-for-one removal spell is horrifically slow…but its slowness is made up for by the massive four-point lifegain that is stapled to it.
Fetters might just be the sleeper control card of Ravnica, by the way. It answers Jitte extremely well; since pretty much nobody is running maindeck enchantment removal, aggro players must draw and play three Jittes just to end up with one in play if you stuck a Fetters on the first one. It’s also a one-for-one against every possible control finisher short of a Grave-Shell Scarab played with mana open to sacrifice it. It even trades with Meloku! (Though any Illusions created in response will obviously stick around to pester you.)
Firemane Angel and Kumano are fantastic finishers in this deck. Most aggro decks outright buckle when you go “Wrath, play Kumano, untap, play my sixth land.” Firemane is a 4/3 first strike blocker the turn she comes out, and her constant lifegain whether she is in play or in the ‘yard does an excellent job of taking you out of burn range all by herself, even when she is immediately dealt with via burn. (By the way, why are people so excited by the prospect of maneuvering this card into the graveyard? I’ll take a 4/3 flying first striker with my extra point of life per turn instead, thanks.) Also, any time the game goes on for awhile (as in, long enough for you to get up to 10 mana-this comes up roughly once every 3 games), she demands a Grave Robbing or Extraction or else she’ll just end the game by sticking to the table no matter what.
I was going to discuss individual card choices in depth, but with States looming just around the corner, I’m rushing to get this article to Ted as fast as I can. Instead, here’s a quick Q&A to answer questions I’d expect most people might have:
Q: Isn’t Honden of Cleansing Fire/Sunhome Enforcer/Descendant of Kiyomoaro, etc. good with Searing Meditation?
A: Yeah, but the whole point of this deck is to gain life while doing powerful things, not just “let’s gain some life!” What’s really important is what the card does before the lifegain part, and things like Honden and Sunhome don’t add much to a control deck like this one.
Q: Why is Blaze in there?
A: Blaze is basically a more versatile Dark Banishing for this deck. It kills Hypnotic Specter and Jushi Apprentice on turn 3, and then scales up to kill Meloku on turn 6. And it also goes for the dome against Gifts and Ideal, where it’s actually one of your most efficient finishers.
Q: Why is Terashi’s Grasp main when you already have Faith’s Fetters for Jitte?
A: Grasp is main for Enduring Ideal, not Jitte. It has targets against most decks (Glorious Anthem and Suppression Field/Jitte against White Weenie/Boros, Plague Boiler/Jitte against G/B, Tatsumasa/Jitte from Godo decks, etc.), so it’s nowhere close to a dead card in other matchups-but game one against Ideal is ridiculously difficult if you don’t have it.
Q: Where’s Razia?
A: I really wanted to play her, but couldn’t think of any matchups other than post-board G/B where she’d be markedly better than cards I’m already running. So I cut her.
Hope that helps clear things up. Moving on…
Matchups
So up until last week, my playtesting group was only halfheartedly testing Standard, because we thought we were going to make the eight-hour trip to the Extended PTQ in Ohio instead of going to States. Then it turned out that we couldn’t make the PTQ after all, but could make States instead, so we started putting TSI through the paces against the decks we’ve seen posted on SCG at the last minute.
That’s a roundabout way of saying that I don’t have numbers for you. No win percentages or anything like that. All I got are words.
TSI vs. White Weenie/Boros
TSI eats fast aggro for breakfast. It’s a control deck with mass removal (Wrath), recurring removal (Meditation, Kumano), and both explosive and recurring lifegain (Helix, Fetters, Grasp, Genju of the Fields). It’s not even fair.
Affinity or U/G Madness from back in the day could have given this deck trouble, but 1/1 flyers and 2/2s that cost mana most assuredly do not. Unless something goes seriously wrong, or unless you are completely unfamiliar with how to play a creature control deck against aggro, you are favored to beat these decks every single time you get paired against them.
My only advice here is to watch out for Devouring Light. Some WW players may be running this card, and if it looks like they are running a “suicide” attack into your Firemane Angel, it may be because they are trying to force a block that will result in your Angel getting RFG’d. If the one point of lifegain per turn is more important than staving off immediate damage (such as if you have Meditation down), then make sure you don’t reflexively make that block.
Sideboarding:
(no changes)
You’ll pardon me if I did not devote sideboard space to these matchups. Just be extra wary of Hokori and maybe Charge Across the Araba in games two and three and you’ll be fine.
TSI vs. Flores Blue
This matchup is complicated, but favorable if you play it correctly. The Blue deck’s primary path to victory is playing a Jushi Apprentice and successfully defending it. Jushi is the only thing in the Blue deck except for (situationally) Meloku that is capable of “getting out of control.” An unanswered Jushi that goes on a card-drawing rampage will win the game for the Blue player more than anything else, and the 1/2 should absolutely be considered the most important card to remove in this matchup.
If the Blue player is going first, and he runs out a Jushi on turn 2, you have only Lightning Helix to kill it before the other guy can untap and defend it with countermagic. If he is on the draw, your answers are doubled; now you can Blaze it out before he untaps as well.
Should an opponent successfully untap with Jushi Apprentice in play, I would advise you to start throwing as much removal at it as you can at it, until either you run out of removal or your opponent runs out of countermagic.
Remember that Flores Blue has the following relevant counterspells against you:
4 Mana Leak
4 Hinder
3 Disrupting Shoal
2 Rewind
That’s really not so many. Much of the time you can just go, “Blaze Jushi. Mana Leak? Okay, Fetters Jushi. Hinder? Okay, Wrath Jushi. There we go-got him.” Wrath for Jushi is a fantastic trade, by the way. Take it whenever you can get it.
In the late game, start playing around Mana Leak as soon as you can do so without having it impair your ability to win the game. If you can render Mana Leak a dead card, then the opponent is left with only these cards to counter your threats:
4 Hinder
3 Disrupting Shoal
2 Rewind
The key to the long game is gaining card advantage through recurring damage sources like Firemane Angel and Searing Meditation. Firemane’s ten mana ability comes up quite a bit in this matchup, so consider that running a Firemane into a Mana Leak is not nearly as bad as having it Hindered. Meditation is not terribly difficult to force through, and then as soon as an Angel hits play or takes a dive, you’re in business.
Wrath is your best answer to the opponent’s threats, since it trades with Meloku plus any number of tokens that might be generated in response to, say, a Faith’s Fetters. Fetters is next (because it eliminates Keiga without triggering the “steal your guy” ability). Devouring Light is better against Keiga, Blaze is better against Meloku. Keep these factors in mind when you are holding multiple removal spells and trying to decide which to use on a Jushi Apprentice or the like.
Sideboarding:
+4 Genju of the Spires, +3 Journeyer’s Kite
-2 Devouring Light, -2 Firemane Angel, -2 Searing Meditation, -1 Terashi’s Grasp
Expect both Pithing Needle and Cranial Extraction from the Blue player. He has eight cards to board out (since Threads and Shadow of Doubt don’t do anything against you), and these six are sure to come in-probably along with two copies of Remand. Terashi’s Grasp, though it was dead in game one, stays in to take out Pithing Needle-but only two copies. Drawing more than one Grasp is unlikely to be productive.
Two Angels come out because they are almost guaranteed to get Extracted, and you don’t want one in your hand when that happens. Games in this matchup tend to go long, so it’s unreasonable to expect that your opponent will never draw an Extraction, and if he does cast it, I have a tough time imagining him naming anything other than Angel. Meditation isn’t as exciting in this matchup without its primary source of fuel, so I have been boarding two of those out as well.
Genju of the Spires is a wonderful threat in that it can only be fully answered by two cards: Boomerang and a well-aimed Pithing Needle. Quicksand can take out a Mountain and save the Blue player six to the face, but it won’t keep the Genju off him forever. Barring an immediate answer, the 6/1 is quite literally capable of killing the opponent by itself.
Journeyer’s Kite is a bit like your own Jushi Apprentice. Yeah it fetches land and not business spells, but TSI flourishes on land. Mana Leak becomes dead in a big hurry once Kite gets going, Firemane Angel’s ten-mana activation cost becomes a non-issue (assuming she wasn’t Extracted), Kumano and Blaze approach lethal status if they resolve at all, and no amount of Quicksanding will run you out of Mountains or Plains for your Genju. At some point, Kite will also run you almost completely out of land, making your topdecks hot ‘n’ spicy for the remainder of the game.
TSI vs. Enduring Ideal
In order to test against a more gauntlet-ish Ideal deck, I took Osyp’s deck from the challenge and subbed in the original Dutch enchantments from last year’s Standard:
+2 Form of the Dragon, +4 Faith’s Fetters, +1 Meishin, the Mind Cage, +1 Ivory Mask
-7 Hondens, -1 Reverence
Quick Aside: Punting
(First, a quick definition for our international readers. “Punt” is a term that comes from American football, a sport in which each team takes turns playing offense and defense. The offensive team is the one that has control of the ball; if that team comes up short of reaching the goal, they must relinquish control of the ball by “punting” it-kicking it, that is-across the field to the other team, who then assumes the offensive role upon receiving the punt.)
I’m not sure where the Magical application of the word “punt” comes from, but I love it. I first heard this term from two-time St. Louis Prelease Midnight Flight Champion Timothy “T-Galbs” Galbiati, over the summer at GenCon.
Basically, punting is when you lose a game of Magic because you screwed something up pretty badly. It’s like you threw the game, but with more force-you didn’t just throw the thing, you punted it.
“Bob had him on the ropes until he forgot about Lure and punted the whole match.”
My teammate JP was on his way to an embarrassing loss on MODO in which he had a Jitte in play in a game of CCB Limited, and was actually going to lose the game. His opponent had two Moss Kamis and a ton of other, smaller fatties down, and my friend had only one medium-sized attacker with Jitte equipped. His opponent then played Ryusei-though the guy hardly needed it to win at that point-so my friend ramped his Jitte up to five counters, killed the dragon, and emptied the table of everything but his Jitte. Had the guy just not played Ryusei, my friend had no outs.
A punt of this magnitude is something we like to call The Punt For Red October.
End Aside.
Why did I just explain what a punt is? Well, you have three major paths to victory against Enduring Ideal in game 1:
- Opponent never draws Ideal.
- You blow him out with Terashi’s Grasp.
- He punts.
Game one is not good for you. Not good at all. Your most realistic way to win is if he walks into a Grasp (on, say, Ivory Mask when Form of the Dragon is in play and you’re holding 5+ points worth of burn), so you need to maximize your chances of letting your opponent lose to you by messing up.
Pretty much all of your opponent’s potential punts involve playing Form of the Dragon and getting burned out. So try to get him to do this!
Don’t drop Meditation for no reason. When Meditation is on the table, your opponent may remember that you could potentially burn him out from five life-a fact he might otherwise forget, leading him to punt with Form. Don’t Helix him from 20 to 17 unless you actually think your hand is fast enough to kill him before he casts Ideal; this will remind him that you are a red deck, and can go for the dome. If your hand is Mountain-heavy and contains a Blaze, you might even try to convince him that you are a color-screwed Boros player; this might lead him to hardcast a Form early, thinking your weenies won’t be able to race, and that you won’t be packing enough burn to come up with five points in one turn.
Just keep little things like this in mind when heading into a tough matchup like this. Remember, this is States. Punts will be flying left and right, so catch as many of them as you can.
Sideboarding vs. Ideal:
+4 Tempest of Light, +4 Hunted Dragon, +4 Genju of the Spires, +3 Journeyer’s Kite
-4 Searing Meditation, -4 Firemane Angel, -3 Kumano, -2 Devouring Light, -2 Genju of the Fields
That’s right, the whole damn board.
The only reason this matchup isn’t an utter disaster is that you are actually a favorite in the post-board games, so it’s not unreasonable for you to pull out a few match wins here and there.
Now that you have access to Hunted Dragon, you can safely plan on winning after your opponent casts Ideal. If he ever plays Form of the Dragon without Meishin out, Hunted Dragon just kills him. (That’s literally a guarantee-he can’t play spells because of Epic.)
A lot of the time, if you draw Tempest of Light and either Hunted Dragon or Genju of the Spires, you can just win the game guaranteed once you negate his Genju of the Realm path to victory with a Faith’s Fetters or Terashi’s Grasp. (End step, Tempest away your Meishin and Form, untap and play either Hunted Dragon or Red Genju on a non-summoning sick Mountain; swing for the win.)
It is rarely correct to throw out a Hunted Dragon on turn 5. Most of the time, you want to save that guy for after Form of the Dragon hits play, but playing your 6/6 Flying Haste guy before then is acceptable in the case where you have a second one in hand, or when the rest of your hand is garbage and it looks like you are going to lose the game unless you just flop a Dragon into play and hope it goes the distance before Ideal resolves.
Lightning Helix has two purposes in the post-board matchup: going to the dome as quickly as possible (don’t hold onto it in game two unless you have two of them and can remove an Ivory Mask), and killing Sakura-Tribe Elder. Elder gets in the way of Red Genju, and that fantastic 6/1 is one of your best standalone paths to victory… assuming you can keep his path clear of blockers. Trading Wrath for Elder or Faith’s Fetters for Elder is perfectly fine if it makes way for a Genju to come through for six.
TSI vs. Thug Gifts
Back at PT: Philadelphia (the debut of Kamigawa Block Constructed), certain Japanese players (including Shuhei Nakamura, 9th place on tiebreakers) sideboarded four Mindblaze and four Glacial Ray into their slow green decks against Gifts Ungiven. Why?
Gifts is great at killing creatures, but man is it bad at handling burn to the dome.
In this matchup, it is TSI’s ability to go for the dome, not its creatures, that lead it to victory. Against Gifts, you are most likely going to be doing all twenty points of damage without the aid of the “declare attackers” step.
The key here is that Gifts is really, really slow at beating you down. Most of the time, they will have exactly one threat coming across, and you can just use stuff like Wrath, Faith’s Fetters, and Devouring Light to keep it off your back or counterattacks with Genju of the Fields to put you back up on life. Meanwhile, you set up for a dome-blasting win with some combination of Blaze, Searing Meditation, and maybe a Lightning Helix or a swing from one of your beaters.
The most important thing to know about the matchup against Thug Gifts in particular is to watch out for Mana Leak. It will blow you out if you walk a game-ending Blaze into untapped Blue mana. Fortunately, all your “fogs” like Wrath, Devouring Light, and Faith’s Fetters targeting Grave-Shell Scarab (they’ll sac it in response and Dredge it back) require the Gifts player to tap a good deal of mana to put another threat back on the table next turn. This is usually the easiest way to negate Mana Leak, though drawing out the counters with threats like Firemane Angel works just as well as it always has.
Sideboarding:
+4 Hunted Dragon, +3 Genju of the Spires
-3 Terashi’s Grasp, -3 Kumano, -1 Lightning Helix
Game two they have Cranial Extraction and possibly Naturalize, but you have Hunted Dragon and Ball Lightning. The sources of haste damage are fantastic, as they essentially function as extra Blazes.
That said, I would caution you to be careful of getting wrecked by your own Hunted Dragon. Don’t run him out there unless either you are holding Wrath or you can finish the opponent off even if he has the Putrefy for it. Giving him an extra six power worth of attackers definitely gives him a shot at racing you, so make sure you don’t offer him this chance to beat you unless you’re confident that six to his dome will make you win before he does.
TSI vs. G/B
This is a tricky one to talk about. I mean really, what is a G/B deck? A million different builds will be showing up at States. Control with Plague Boiler and/or Carven Cyclingatid, aggro with Shambling Shell, and anything in between.
One thing they all have in common is Hypnotic Specter. Kill this guy by any means possible, even if it means burning a Blaze on him. He will get out of control even faster than Jushi Apprentice does from the Blue deck.
Essentially, your strategy against G/B will fall somewhere between your strategy against White Weenie and your strategy against Gifts, depending on the build of the deck you’re up against.
Really it’s a matter of where to put your burn. The more small guys you see, the more burn you need to aim at them. If you see a bunch of big, slow, fatties, don’t bother shooting those stupid Birds – that Helix needs to go straight for the dome.
Sideboarding:
+4 Hunted Dragon, +2 Genju of the Spires, +2 Journeyer’s Kite
-3 Terashi’s Grasp, -3 Kumano, -2 Firemane Angel
I would recommend this boarding strategy against any G/B list that is not running Plague Boiler. If you see Boilers in game one, I would leave in two Terashi’s Grasps and leave the Genju out. Like so:
+4 Hunted Dragon, +2 Journeyer’s Kite
-3 Kumano, -1 Terashi’s Grasp, -2 Firemane Angel
By the way-Firemane Angels only come out because of Cranial Extraction. If you feel your opponent does not have Extractions, or if he plays one naming anything other than Angel, then mise! Leave the Kites out in game three and put the Angels back in.
Other Matchups
Unfortunately, we’ve had no time to test the deck against anything but the above matchups, which we think will be the most popular decks at States. Ideally, we would have spent some time against njx’s mono-Black deck, Jim’s Glare deck, or Abe’s Wildfire deck, but…well, can’t do everything.
Anyway, that’s what I’ll be running this Saturday, and what those of my teammates who are in attendance will be running. Card for card, unless something comes up in testing between now and then.
Best of luck at States!
Richard Feldman
Team Check Minus
[email protected]