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Buuuurp! Goblin Charbelcher and the Evolution of Twelve-Land Decks

I played a twelve-land Affinity deck to a 9-1 record, winning two tournaments while dropping only one match in Swiss play to Goblins, which I later defeated in the finals. Also, the deck had enough raw power to take my eight-year-old son, Liam, into the finals of a Friday Night Magic event, even though he wasn’t playing it very well. In fact, in the finals against the more standard midrange Affinity deck of his opponent, he became disheartened when his opponent cast a Rush of Knowledge and then played out Myr Enforcers, Frogmites, and on the following turn, a Broodstar. His opponent’s Rush had allowed my son to play Future Sight in the interim, but his board position was almost non-existent besides mana and the Sight, so he conceded the game.

For fun I took his turn, cast eight spells and then Tendrils to win the game.

I only write about Magic when I have something to say. In this case I may have less to say, but much to show you about what I’ve found out since Mirrodin’s arrival into the Magic universe. To keep this somewhat focused, I’m going to stick with a Standard slant, as the Pros in New Orleans basically broke open Extended for us all to see and while my draft rating has popped over 1800, I think you are left in better hands that appear on this site as far as that subject is concerned.


The Evolution of the Twelve Land Deck

To get to the root of the subject we must go back a tad in time to a point when Mirrodin had just come out. Like so many, we were going over the cards trying to find the ones we liked or thought were broken. Of particular note to us (like many) was Goblin Charbelcher. Early on, the Star City mailing list, as well as numerous other internet sources of Magical technology, was percolating with decks built with the Belcher in mind. I was aware of the Blue/White Proteus Staff idea early on and built such a version. It tested only so-so, however, and after its debut, a couple of my top locals (Jeff Winkelmann and Tom Harlan) thought that they could make a run with a mono-Red version.


I can’t remember the exact contents, but when I got a look at the deck, my focus was bent on getting the land count as low as possible. The approach seemed to include Chrome Mox (of course) and some number of Mirrodin Talismans. I worked on the deck some, trying various different cards and came up with the following decklist:


Mono-Red Belchatron

4 Lightning Rift

4 Spark Spray

2 Gempalm Incinerator

4 Starstorm

3 Sulfuric Vortex

3 Shrapnel Blast

3 Grid Monitor

2 Hammer of Bogardan

3 Pyrite Spellbomb

4 Goblin Charbelcher

4 Talisman of Impulse

4 Talisman of Indulgence

4 Chartooth Cougar

4 Chrome Mox

12 Mountain


As you may be able to tell, I based the deck on Onslaught Block-era mono-Red control with a few important Mirrodin substitutions. There was some impetus to use such a build, as in this configuration the deck was favorable in the Goblin matchup and also, with the main deck Sulfuric Vortexes, was very good against mono-Black Control, two decks that we expected in abundance at States.


What we found out about the deck was that if you had two starting mana sources, it generally exploded with mana (mostly because of the Talismans) and allowed for very explosive starts of four mana on turn 2. While a turn 2 kill is possible (though unlikely in this form), we often saw Goblin Charbelcher played on turn two. That seemed like the trademark”Boo yah, Grandma!” play.


We played the deck in this configuration for about a week before States and found it compelling, even if the randomness factor of this sort of Belcher deck was quite high. Whenever anyone blurted,”Activate Charbelcher!” most folks would stop their matches and watch the game at hand to find out if lethal damage was going on the stack, or if the thing was going to reveal an unfortunate Mountain. The deck favored some who ran it, while screwing others. Jeff would routinely Belch folks out in one activation and set a record of forty-four damage, while he killed me on turn 3 often enough to make the deck look good. I, of course, would get Mountains early and often, and joked about my”1.7 damage per activation” average.


We got a room in St. Louis the night before States and had quite a long testing session where Jeff took the deck down to ten land. I told him that he was crazy and he retorted,”I’m the only one that can do this. Watch me topdeck the land!” I pulled out decks from the gauntlet including Goblins, Kibler B/W, Kibler Zombies, U/W, MBC, and R/G. I told him that the session was to include mulligans done by the rules.


We played fifteen games with me using an assortment of the decks we had and Jeff went 12-3 with the Belchatron. We were somewhat scuffling as to who would play the deck, because even though it usually tested well, we were acutely aware of how it could randomly crap in your face. In the end, Jeff decided to run Goblins and I took the Belcher. I was terribly tired, had a cold, and was in the mood to take my chances as a rogue, as I wasn’t feeling that I was in any condition to make a run at the title.


There will be not a full report of my events with the deck, but I will only say that I went 4-3, losing twice to MBC – a deck that had never won a game against the Belchatron in practice. One game I lost included a turn 2 Charbelcher that I activated three times for eight measly damage before it was Oblivion Stoned away. Along the way, I beat Affinity, R/G Land Destruction, White Weenie, R/W Slide, and lost the third game against G/W fat beats.


Not a terribly bad showing, but it was in keeping with the deck’s nature of extreme power and inconsistency. No one will be talking about the deck as tier one, but it sure is a hoot for a Friday Night Magic gathering.


The Mana

What we found was that, while the deck forced a fair share of mulligans with the twelve-land setup, it seemed little worse than any other deck. Because of the setup, I always forced both myself and anyone playing me to take proper mulligans with the deck, and aside from the Charbelcher itself acting like a cranky Millennium Falcon, we found the mana stable enough to give us the results I talked about.


Mind’s Desire?

After fooling with the Mono Red concoction, for some reason I thought that the mana build might lend itself to a Mind’s Desire deck. When the Desire decks had come out of Extended last year, I worked with them some and one thing I had come to believe was this: the less land you could have in those decks, the better you could go off. Lands stormed up with a Desire are rather useless, and you’d much rather have a spell if at all possible – so by lowering the land count, you increase the consistency of your combo.


The link between this theory and a Standard approach to a Desire build was that Talismans should be rather good. They help to ramp up the mana for faster Desires, and then inside of a Desire chain when played for free, they would immediately be available to produce more mana for other spells you may have drawn to your hand.


It seemed worthwhile to package all of this into an Affinity build. You could usually get some free men that were also free spells – items that helped fuel the Desire approach as well. Unlike normal Affinity builds, Frogmites and Myr Enforcers weren’t so much beatdown creatures here, as they were speedbumps or some damage that could lower the requirements for a game-winning Tendrils of Agony. With all of this in mind I built the following deck.


Twelve-Land Desire Affinity

4 Mind’s Desire

4 Myr Enforcer

4 Frogmite

4 Mana Leak

3 Thoughtcast

2 Future Sight

3 Thirst for Knowledge

4 Rush of Knowledge

2 Tendrils of Agony

3 Aether Spellbomb

3 Shoreline Ranger

4 Chrome Mox

4 Talisman of Indulgence

4 Talisman of Progress

4 Seat of the Synod

4 Island

4 Ancient Den


At this time I was still of the belief that the winning play was to cast Rush of Knowledge for many cards and then attempt to”go off” on the following turn. This didn’t seem to work very well and the deck wasn’t very explosive. There was something intriguing about it though, and I put the deck forth to one of my Magic mailing list affiliations: the Jokulgoblin Group. It wasn’t long before one of my most favorite and longtime internet collaborators, Claude Mona, expressed an interest in the idea and began testing and tweaking the deck. It was Claude who really pushed Future Sight (I had initially included it as something that would help Rush draw five cards), and was telling me how good Sight was with the number of Talismans and free or cheap casting cost spells in the deck.


He also realized that Desire wasn’t working out as well as we’d hoped. My own testing of the deck was telling me many of the same things. I upped the Future Sights to four and took out Rush of Knowledge. I also took out the Shoreline Rangers, which had played a part similar to Chartooth Cougar in the Belchatron deck, and added in more Talismans. The results were fairly remarkable.


With a Future Sight in play we found that the cards just rolled off the top of the deck and that keeping that mechanism going with card drawing was a key element to playing the deck correctly. Early on we were still fooling with Desire, but found that its six-mana casting cost was proving to be a problem. There were times we would start a turn with Sight in play, play a lot of spells, and then hardcast a Tendrils without any help from Mind’s Desire. We decided to try running the deck without any Desires at all, and replaced them with Tendrils. What we got was the following deck:


Twelve-Land Tendrils Affinity

4 Myr Enforcer

4 Frogmite

4 Mana Leak

4 Thoughtcast

4 Future Sight

4 Thirst for Knowledge

4 Tendrils of Agony

4 Aether Spellbomb

4 Chrome Mox

4 Talisman of Dominance

4 Talisman of Indulgence

4 Talisman of Progress

4 Seat of the Synod

4 Vault of Whispers

4 Island


This was the deck I played to a 9-1 record, winning two tournaments while dropping only one match in Swiss play to Goblins, which I later defeated in the finals. Also, the deck had enough raw power to take my eight-year-old son, Liam, into the finals of a Friday Night Magic event, even though he wasn’t playing it very well. In fact, in the finals against the more standard midrange Affinity deck of his opponent, he became disheartened when his opponent cast a Rush of Knowledge and then played out Myr Enforcers, Frogmites, and on the following turn, a Broodstar. His opponent’s Rush had allowed my son to play Future Sight in the interim, but his board position was almost non-existent besides mana and the Sight, so he conceded the game.


For fun I took his turn, cast eight spells and then Tendrils to win the game.


This interaction with Future Sight was so pronounced that we began to call the deck”the new Wake,” after the saying for the old Mirari’s Wake decks:”If you get Wake into play and get to untap, you just win.” In this case, if you got Sight into play and got to untap, you almost never lost.


Later, because I was gearing up several younger players (including my son) to play in the local Junior Super Series tournaments, I tweaked the deck to include a tad more land and two Broodstars. With this we found another interesting interaction – namely, that this deck can really pour out the artifacts and make large Broodstars. The theoretical deck, which was never really built, was to use the basic formula presented above but to replace the Tendrils with Lightning Greaves and another Broodstar. In this configuration the deck would play much the same, only the killing blow would come from a hasty Broodstar played from the top of your deck.


Back to Desire

After the Extended Pro Tour in New Orleans, and the debut of the Japanese Twiddle Desire deck, most notably played by Tsuyoshi Fujita, there was a bit of a renaissance in building a version for Standard. While surfing the StarCityGames forums, I was seeing attempts at the deck that weren’t quite to my liking. I felt that any Standard Desire deck would be most successful if based on the ideas that I’d been working on with Claude. From the point I was at, it wasn’t too hard to take a stab at the deck and I came up with this listing on the first pass.


Lotus Desire

4 Mind’s Desire

4 Thoughtcast

4 Future Sight

3 Thirst for Knowledge

3 Index

3 Twiddle

4 Dream’s Grip

2 Tendrils of Agony

4 Aether Spellbomb

4 Chrome Mox

3 Gilded Lotus

2 Talisman of Dominance

4 Talisman of Indulgence

4 Talisman of Progress

4 Seat of the Synod

4 Vault of Whispers

4 Island


This wasn’t too bad for a starting effort, and I was surprised that it goldfished on turn 4 the first time I tried it. However, having spent some time with the build, and doing such things as going to four Gilded Lotus, I must say that it’s my opinion that the deck has problems that aren’t easily remedied.


In fact, they are the same problems everyone is having with getting a Desire deck to work well in Standard. The deck is highly inconsistent and often too slow. Ideally, you would like to get Gilded Lotus into play as soon as possible, as often as possible, yet this isn’t easily done. I’ve tried Seething Song, but that card has only one use in the deck: to play the early Lotus. And that scenario simply does not occur often enough.


Where Extended has a plethora of fast mana and the tutoring power of Tinker, Standard has much poorer versions of those effects. Fabricate is good, but it’s no Tinker. What I’ve found in tweaking this deck is that it’s very much about cutting important spells for other important spells, and I’ve yet to get a consistent mix or see a mix that I thought was definitively powerful.


Don’t get me wrong. I think the deck is fabulous fun, and very interesting to play… I’m just also rather skeptical that the deck is or will ever be that good with the current card pool.


So there it is. That’s what I’ve got. Some decks that I’ve been playing and the thought process and ideas that went into their construction.


Have Fun and good luck,

Will Rieffer