I must admit that when I saw Proteus Staff, I was intrigued. It looked like a good way to make your worst creature into a better one, a copy of the one you had, or a good way to get rid of your opponent’s best creature.”A card for Limited,” I thought and moved on to the next one. I didn’t think about it again until researching for my post-Mirrodin gauntlet when I found out that if you didn’t have any creatures in your deck, it would allow you to stack it any way you liked!
An effect so powerful is obviously one that merits further study. Either we can play with almost no creatures and get a really good creature into play, or we can play with no creatures at all and stack our deck for some reason.
If we only have a handful of creatures, we can’t use the Staff at all – and so we’ll have to make some. White gives us some good options in Raise the Alarm and our trusty cycling friend, Decree of Justice. The rest of the deck can then become a U/W Control deck with Wrath of God and counterspells. If we take this route, we can easily add a pair of Akroma, Angel of Wraths into the deck as the”good creature” we’ll kill with.
U/W Staff Control
Creatures (2):
2 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Other Spells (34):
3 Proteus Staff
4 Raise the Alarm
4 Decree of Justice
4 Wrath of God
4 Wing Shards
4 Mana Leak
2 Akroma’s Vengeance
3 Rewind
2 Stifle
4 Chromatic Sphere
Land (24):
4 Coastal Tower
2 Grand Coliseum
4 Flooded Strand
6 Island
6 Plains
2 Stalking Stones
In this deck, Proteus Staff just gets Akroma. If we’ve drawn both of them or they both die, the Staff and our token creators make sure we can draw the cards we’ll need to win – whether it be counterspells, more Wrath effects, or just land to cast the Akroma in our hand. Wrath of God, Akroma’s Vengeance, and Wing Shards help us survive a creature rush. Decree of Justice and Raise the Alarm help out with chump blockers in the early game and with the Staff later on. Mana Leak, Rewind and Stifle are our control elements and Chromatic Sphere just helps to thin the deck a little.
I don’t like this deck. It seems that it would be much better with Eternal Dragons and Exalted Angels, and we can’t play them because we’re angling to get Akroma into play. On the other hand, turning a token into a Dragon or a 4/5 Angel with Spirit Link isn’t that bad an idea:
U/W Staff Control II
Creatures (7):
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
3 Eternal Dragon
3 Exalted Angel
Other Spells (28):
3 Proteus Staff
4 Raise the Alarm
3 Decree of Justice
4 Wrath of God
3 Wing Shards
4 Mana Leak
3 Akroma’s Vengeance
3 Rewind
2 Stifle
Land (24):
4 Coastal Tower
2 Grand Coliseum
4 Flooded Strand
7 Island
7 Plains
If we get a stack of 1/1 guys from Decree of Justice, this deck turns them into an airborne army like no other. I’ve dropped one Akroma, as we don’t want to sacrifice a creature and find a copy of our Legend coming into play. All the control elements are still there, but we’re using Eternal Dragon to thin the deck rather than Chromatic Sphere (a much better choice overall).
Time to face the gauntlet. I’ve dropped red Elves altogether. If you can beat a Goblin deck, you should beat Elves – and if you can’t beat Goblins, you’re dead anyway. Red Rain (my land destruction deck from last week) is now in the list, as is Brian Kibler B/W Control deck. I was really taken to task for leaving it out in the first place – and, after playing it this last week, I can see why. It’s good and I prefer it to MBC at the moment. MBC has dropped Wrench Mind (finally) and Coercion has taken its place.
Red Rain has changed a little. I’m trying a version with more Red spells, less land and adding Chrome Mox back into the mix. I’m also trying out Oblivion Stone in the main deck, as more than one person pointed out it solves many problems against White Weenie and U/W Control.
Against Goblins, the games go just as you’d expect – except that later on you can turn a hapless 1/1 guy into something better. On the other hand, you have to have a 1/1 guy you don’t mind losing – and if they have Pyrite Spellbomb, Goblin Sharpshooter, or Siege-Gang Commander in play, you can waste three mana by tapping your Staff for nothing. Early on in the games, you want to see traditional U/W tools: Wrath, Mana Leak, Wing Shards. You don’t really want to waste a turn playing a Staff unless you can use it next turn – which means Goblins aren’t really applying much pressure and you would probably have won anyway!
On the plus side, Decree of Justice and Raise the Alarm are never dead in your hand – as they would be if they were all big creatures. We can kill a goblin or two and save ourselves a lot of damage. Basically, I wouldn’t miss the Staff if it wasn’t there, but every now and again it’s nice.
MBC was a different matter. MBC loves killing creatures, and so they could either kill your 1/1 or kill what you fetched. Even Akroma falls to the mighty Oblivion Stone. Recurring the Dragon worked well, but Visara doesn’t really care. Akroma’s Wrath worked wonders against Phyrexian Arenas and Oblivion Stones, but MBC used Persecute, Coercion, and Mind Sludge to great effect so even if I was in a good board position, I had no good cards to take advantage of it.
Proteus Staff doesn’t want to be in the deck when you’re playing against MBC. You certainly don’t want to waste so much space with token generators like Raise the Alarm that they can deal with easily. The deck needs more counters and card drawing against MBC, not cute Staffs that will put a single creature in front of a Terror.
Any deck that can’t hold its own against Goblins and MBC needs a lot of work, so I stopped testing to take another look at the deck. As I see it, the problem is that I’ve taken a standard, nothing-special U/W Control deck and bolted the Proteus Staff onto it to get a creature. U/W Control doesn’t traditionally worry about putting creatures into play until it’s in control anyway, and so the Staff is really just wasted slots.
Even so, there’s something special about being able to stack your deck, so I’m going to look at the interaction between the Staff and another new Mirrodin card: Goblin Charbelcher.
Goblin Charbelcher is a great card. It costs four – so won’t be used in a really abusive”kill you on turn 2″ deck (at least not in Standard, anyway) and it’s effect seems fairly random. In any normal Magic deck, you get a land every three cards (roughly) so, on average, it’ll deal two colorless damage per activation. The trick is obviously to arrange your deck the way we want it first.
Typically we want to have the Charbelcher in play, eleven non-land cards on the top of our library, and one Mountain following that. That way, once you’ve untapped you can deal twenty damage in one go. Proteus Staff lets us do just that.
For the combo to work we need a token creature, a Proteus Staff and the Charbelcher. As two of those are artifacts, I’m going to include four Fabricates. Next up: Token creatures. I see no reason why we should stray from Raise the Alarm and Decree of Justice – and if we’re going to play White, we should really play Wrath of God too. That gives us:
4 Proteus Staff
4 Fabricate
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Wrath of God
4 Raise the Alarm
4 Decree of Justice
I’d love to play more tutors but there really aren’t any we can go for. Diabolic Tutor is expensive and requires a big commitment to Black mana. Merchant Scroll doesn’t help us. Long-Term Plans would mean that we didn’t see the card we need for three more turns but with a few more cycling cards we could get that down to two, or even the next turn. Still, I don’t think it’s the answer here. Parallel Thoughts might be the answer… But I’m not sure it’s the answer to the question we’re asking. Investing five mana to remove our combo, or part of the combo, from the game seems foolish.
Lastly, I considered Read the Runes. Four mana lets us dig three cards deep into our deck and possibly keep some of the cards we’ve drawn. Thirst For Knowledge lets us dig that deep for only three mana, and you might be able to keep more if you have spare artifacts in your hand – a second Proteus Staff perhaps.
Given the access to Blue mana, I think we’d be foolish to avoid Mana Leak. That gives us thirty-two spells with a few slots free. I guess I’d like a mix of creature removal and a few more counters. Three Wing Shards and an Akroma’s Vengeance will do for now I’m going to use the last two slots for Aether Spellbomb. We can change these cards as we see fit after a little testing. So, lets look at the deck so far:
Belching Control
Spells (38):
4 Proteus Staff
4 Fabricate
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Wrath of God
4 Raise the Alarm
4 Decree of Justice
4 Mana Leak
4 Thirst For Knowledge
3 Wing Shards
1 Akroma’s Vengeance
2 Aether Spellbomb
Land (22):
4 Coastal Tower
4 Flooded Strand
3 Seat of the Synod
3 Ancient Den
3 Island
3 Plains
2 Mountain
The Seat of the Synods and Ancient Dens are just there to throw away to Thirst For Knowledge. It may be that we only need a pair of each. Flooded Strand lets us thin the deck a little, as does Thirst For Knowledge. I’ve added two Mountains to help out with the kill. If you draw one, it’s not that desperate – as you have plenty of spells that only need one colored mana – if you draw two you can still win anyway, you just have to remove more cards. I guess they’re there in case the game goes on too long and you don’t have twenty non-land cards left in the deck! I’m hoping that twenty-two lands will be enough, with the Thirst of Knowledge and Decree of Justice letting us dig a little deeper.
One final thought occurs – and that’s that I might just want to try out Chrome Mox in this deck. Speeding up a combo deck by a turn is always worthwhile – but will it work? With Chrome Moxes, the deck would have thirty non-colored cards in it. I think that that’s probably too high to risk it, but we can always try it if the deck seems to need just one more turn all the time.
The very first thing I noticed against Goblins was that I needed two White mana on turns 3 and 4 in every game. An occasional mountain, too many Islands, or a Seat of the Synod would stop that, leaving me unable to cast Wing Shards and Wrath of God. Fabricate almost always fetches a Proteus Staff, as you can then put a Charbelcher on top of your library.
Thirst of Knowledge is too expensive. The early turns are all about surviving, and I didn’t want to have to use three mana to dig into my deck. I also found that I was so short of land I needed the Seat of the Synods and Ancient Dens – I couldn’t afford to throw them away.
So I made some changes. Thirst for Knowledge becomes Chromatic Sphere. That’ll help us out with our mana and will still thin our deck. We can also cast them on turn 1 when we have nothing else to do. I’ve dumped two of the four Charbelchers, as we really want to get the Staff with Fabricate and then stack our deck with the Charbelcher on top. That gives us a little more room to play with. I’m going to use it to add three Renewed Faiths. That’ll let us thin the deck even more and gain life while we do!
I tried dropping one Mountain for awhile, but drew it in too many games to be comfortable with only one. I started counting how many spells were left in the deck when I used the Charbelcher and sometimes it was too close to twenty. If your opponent can get to twenty-six life, and you draw your Mountains, you’ll be lucky to kill them.
I played a few more games against Goblins and found the deck acceptable – not great. It still seems a little like a watered-down U/W Control deck (because it is) but the addition of the Charbelcher gives you a quicker way to win than Akroma or a Dragon. You can kill on turn 6; previously, you could kill on turn seven if you turned a token into Akroma on turn 4. We haven’t gained much space by dropping the creatures, as we’ve got four Fabricates and two Charbelchers, but the Renewed Faiths help a little.
Whatever sideboard we have will have to let us either kill critters easily, negate their damage or counter them. Remove Soul is cheap and would probably work better than Rewind and Mana Leak. Circle of Protection: Red would probably give us the turns we need to kill them. Their only real option is to use Oblivion Stone to kill it – which is slow enough for us to win – or turn into a Patriarch’s Bidding deck and overload the COP after a successful Bidding. I’d suggest three Remove Souls and three COP: Reds for now.
The game against MBC has now changed. You still struggle to get a token creature to sacrifice to your Proteus Staff, but once you have you should be able to win. My favourite is to put land on top of my deck followed by Goblin Charbelcher, a lot of non-land cards, and a mountain. I plan on doing around forty damage. That way they can Coercion, Persecute, or Mind Sludge you and you just keep drawing and playing land until you draw, play and activate the Charbelcher – if they have Oblivion Stone in play, it’s too late for them. Their only hope is to stop you activating the Proteus Staff.
As I said, stacking your deck is just too powerful to ignore.
The board should probably include some way of getting your Proteus Staff back. Myr Retriever isn’t a great suggestion, but it’s better than none. A well-timed Akroma’s Vengeance the turn before you drop a Staff is often a good play, so a second Vengeance might make it in. You also really need something to combat their Coercion. Grabbing your one Staff or Fabricate on turn 3 can be a real setback. One possibility is Ivory Mask; once it’s in play, Coercion, Persecute, and Mind Sludge are just bad spells. They can get rid of it, but it’ll slow them down and give you more time to go off. The only spot removal we have for their Stones is Altar’s Light, and so one or two of those might make it into our board if we feel we really need them.
Next up I tried White Weenie. They can’t really kill your little guys without killing their own, but the deck has an annoying habit of dropping Worship the turn before you were going to kill them – forcing you to cast Akroma’s Vengeance. As long as they don’t have Mana Leak you can largely get on with the combo, casting Wrath or holding back for Wing Shards when you really have to. I found that stacking extra land and Akroma’s Wrath before the Charbelcher worked wonders. No Worship, no equipment, no creatures. Two turns later, you win. If you’re really confident, stack the extra land, the Vengeance, one more land and two Belchers. They’ll need two Mana leaks to stop the first one, and the second will make it and win you the game.
On the other hand, when they got a good start I found myself on the back foot. Another Akroma’s Vengeance in game one would be very handy – but I’m not sure what we drop for it. After boarding they have Annul, Altar’s Light, and will probably bring in Second Sunrise to confound your Wraths. We need to kill their creatures and equipment more than anything, so Akroma’s Vengeance – and possibly Oblivion Stone – could be the answer. We cast the Stone and blow it up in their end step. If they cast Second Sunrise, we get our Stone back and can blow it up in our next turn. In five games without boarding, I won four and lost one. MBC is much harder.
Now, given that the deck isn’t doing awfully against MBC, how will it do against MBC’s favored cousin, B/W Control? Well, after losing five straight games in a row I have to say”Badly, that’s how.” They can not only kill your 1/1 guys at instant speed, but their creatures come back from the dead, they can blow up all your artifacts and steal them out of your hand. Looking at the difference between MBC and B/W Control, I’d have to say that it’s down to the build of MBC I’m playing, rather than the archetype. If you drop the Nekrataals for more instant creature removal, MBC will deal with the deck easier, especially after sideboarding if they drop spells like Promise of Power and Visara for more creature kill.
R/W Slide is next on my list and I noticed one major failing: No maindecked Akroma’s Vengeance. The sideboard has Shatter, but in game one you can’t kill the Staff or the Charbelcher. If you see Spark Spray or a Lightning Rift on turn 2, you can stop the Proteus Staff working but if you’re unlucky and they get to activate it you’ve lost. I don’t see this so much as a win for our new deck; more of an omission in the version of Slide. Given its record against Goblins and other creature decks, I think we could happily cut a little creature control for a pair of Vengeances and add a third in the board.
After this change, I couldn’t keep hoping they’d run out of creature removal, as the longer the Staff stayed on the board, the more likely a Vengeance was. If you could use the Staff’s effect at Instant speed, it wouldn’t be so much of a problem – but that’s probably why it’s at Sorcery speed! I still won games but they were mainly down to my own Vengeance.
After all of this, I stopped testing. Here’s the current list I have:
Belching Control II
Spells (38):
4 Proteus Staff
4 Fabricate
2 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Wrath of God
4 Raise the Alarm
3 Decree of Justice
4 Mana Leak
4 Chromatic Sphere
3 Wing Shards
2 Akroma’s Vengeance
4 Renewed Faith
Land (22):
4 Coastal Tower
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
8 Plains
2 Mountain
As much as I want this deck to work, the fact that the Staff targets the creature and is at Sorcery speed makes it a real drawback. If it was an Instant, you could wait for the right moment, pop a few Soldiers into play, and stack your deck. It its cost was”2U, Sacrifice a creature, TAP” instead of targeting the creature, creature removal wouldn’t be a problem and you could go off whenever you liked!
All of these lead me to believe the Staff is worded precisely the way it is to make sure it isn’t used this way – or at least to hobble some deck that worked a little too well in the Future Future League. With MBC, B/W Control, and R/W Slide so good at killing little creatures at instant speed, you’re always going to have a problem activating the Staff – but if you can, you’ve probably won.
There was a time when I would have tried and tried this deck, tweaked it, and talked myself into believing it was good. That was some time ago. Having a real gauntlet to test against puts things into real perspective. All in all, I wouldn’t play this at States. It loses too often to MBC and B/W Control to be considered.
I looked into playing different colors, but only Green has enough spells to make tokens (which are just as vulnerable to MBC and B/W Control) and the only other token generators are Promise of Power, Dragon Roost, and artifacts (Nuisance Engine and Pentavus). Using the Engine increases the number of artifacts you have to get in play and activate before you can win; using Green spells might be the answer but you lose all your removal, and the spells aren’t cheap – leaving you open to Goblins and White Weenie.
I don’t think Charbelcher works for now – but if you have a working deck, feel free to send me the listing (I’ll only publish it if that’s okay with you) and I’ll have a play with it.
Cheers, Jim.
Team PhatBeats.