{From Right Field is a column for Magic players on a budget or players who don’t want to play netdecks. The decks are designed to let the budget-conscious player be competitive in local, Saturday tournaments. They are not decks that will qualify a player for The Pro Tour. As such, the decks written about in this column are, almost by necessity, rogue decks. The author tries to limit the number of non-land rares as a way to limit the cost of the decks. When they do contain rares, those cards will either be cheap rares or staples of which new players should be trying to collect a set of four, such as Dark Confidant, Birds of Paradise, or Wrath of God. The decks are also tested by the author, who isn’t very good at playing Magic. He will never claim that a deck has an 85% winning percentage against the entire field. He will also let you know when the decks are just plain lousy. Readers should never consider these decks "set in stone" or "done." If you think you can change some cards to make them better, well, you probably can, and the author encourages you to do so.}
When you last left me – you cold, heartless, fickle person, you – I was working on smooshing together two copies of the Ritual of Rebirth precon deck into something that might win you a few matches at your local Saturday Standard tourney. This was the deck, post-smooshing:
RoR uf da Vurm, v.1.0
8 Swamp
11 Forest
2 Plains
3 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Twisted Abomination
4 Greenseeker
2 Wall of Roots
2 Spike Feeder
2 Fa’adiyah Seer
4 Havenwood Wurm
2 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
2 Teneb, the Harvester
4 Dread Return
4 Evolution Charm
4 Harmonize
4 Last Gasp
Some of the things I learned while testing this version:
* Last Gasp can’t be your only creature removal – Please, stop flaming me. Last Gasp is great. It’s awesome. It’s Smother for today’s hip, new, fashion-conscious generation. And it still can’t kill creatures with toughness of four or more.
* Havenwood Wurm isn’t as bad as you think – It’s a nice trick. Opponents don’t really “fall” for it more than once, but, sometimes, well, they don’t really have a choice. If I’m holding a card with seven open mana, do they attack with their 4/4 or not? If the Red Zone is open, how could they not? Are they really going to leave a 4/4 sitting there whenever I have seven mana and a card?
* Tyra Banks still looks fine – Tell me she doesn’t.
* The deck wants actual mana acceleration – Greenseeker is excellent. She doesn’t actually accelerate your mana, though. I want to work Search for Tomorrow back into the deck, but I can’t figure out what to cut. I can’t lose Dread Return. It’s been the co-MVP along with Teneb. Harmonize is staying right where it is because I like cards. Evolution Charm has been right up there with Dread Return. Do I want to lose creatures? If so, which ones?
First things first, though. Out went the Last Gasps. In their place went Dark Withering. It is indeed a beast to cast. I plan on not having to do that. Between the ‘Seekers and the Seers (the title of my next short story, I think), I should be able to play Dark Withering for its cheap (B) Madness cost. Thus, version two looked like this:
RoR uf da Vurm, v.1.1
8 Swamp
11 Forest
2 Plains
3 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Twisted Abomination
4 Greenseeker
2 Wall of Roots
2 Spike Feeder
2 Fa’adiyah Seer
4 Havenwood Wurm
2 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
2 Teneb, the Harvester
4 Dread Return
4 Evolution Charm
4 Harmonize
4 Dark Withering
When I brought this deck back online, I ran into a Speedbump of sorts. Three to be exact. The first three decks that I ran into in the Casual Decks room were full-blown, Premiere Events and / or PTQ-winning decks. Game 1 was against a tricked-out Dredge deck. So that there’s no misunderstanding between us, I have no problem playing against that particular strategy in the Casual Decks room. Heck, you can get two of the Golgari precon decks, smoosh ‘em together, and you have a pretty good semblance of the actual tourney-winning deck. However, when you’ve simply copied the actual tourney-winning deck, well, that’s not very sportsmanlike in the Casual Decks room. We only get one game in this room. That means that I don’t get a chance to use my Withered Wretch-enabled sideboard. Second, I’m not sure that my deck is ready to compete against tourney-winning decks. Scratch that. I’m sure of it. That’s why I’m in the Casual Decks room. Duh.
I played it out, though. Well, mostly. When I knew the game was lost, I conceded, making sure to say “Good Game” first, of course. I’m not a complete dikfore. I figure I’m a half-mast dikfore, maybe three-quarters. RoR uf da Vurm didn’t just roll over and die, though. For example, I made a Havenwood Wurm fly so that it could kill Akroma, Angel of Wrath. (It had picked up a +1/+1 counter from Spike Feeder.) Of course, she came back thanks to Dread Return. When she was joined by Golgari Grave-Troll, I couldn’t keep up, even with my Jedit-created tokens. The fact that I made it to turn 17 before the game was utterly lost made me feel pretty good. For what it’s worth, Jedit’s Forestwalking was huge. Two more turns, and I would have won.
Next up, I faced a Black Rack deck. Oh, and me without my Indrik Stomphowlers or Putrefies in the maindeck… of a deck made by smooshing together two Planar Chaos precons (i.e. no Ravnica Block cards). Again, I was surprisingly still in the game after quite a while. I finally got Teneb to hit in order to stabilize, but he was met by Faith’s Fetters. Again with the “GG” and “Do you really wish to concede?” Yes, I do. I must concede that a deck that often gets multiple exclamation marks from Frank Karsten is better than my precon deck. So far. Heh.
Finally, I was challenged by a full-on Boros Deck Wins deck, complete with Chars, Savannah Lions, Demonfire, eight dual lands, and the rest of the Boros Deck Wins crew. And I had to mulligan to four just to get two lands.
After that, I quit for the night. I was both tired and frustrated. I can’t remember the last time that I faced not one, not two, but three top tier decks in a row in the Casual Decks room. Yes, Cleetus, I know that ultimately I’d like this deck to be able to at least hold its own against those decks. Ultimately, according to the Merriam-Webter online dictionary, means “in the end” or “eventually.” In other words, not yet.
A Modest Proposal
Wizards knows that there is rather significant segment of its MTGO crowd that doesn’t want to face tourney-winning decks over and over again. That’s why they created the game ab initio with both Casual Decks and Tournament Practice rooms. The problem is that they’ve done a piss-poor job of making sure that the decks in the Casual room exhibit any semblance of being casual. Their solution? A while ago they came up with the Anything Goes Room. On a really hopping’ night in Anything Goes, that room has less than one-twentieth of the number of players in the Casual Decks room.
“What’s the big deal, Romeo?” you’re thinking. “You can just concede. Aren’t you the guy who’s always complaining about people who complain about folks just sitting there instead of conceding? Just concede already.” Yes, you can concede. But can you get back the one or three or eleven minutes of your life that it took you to get to that point? No. Because people don’t tell you what they’re playing before you roll the die. You have to play to find out what their deck is.
For example, your opponent leads with Forest and Greenseeker. Is the opponent playing the tournament-winning Dredge deck, or is he playing the Planar Chaos precon deck called Ritual of Rebirth? You won’t know until you’ve invested some time in the game. By the time you find out that, yup, it’s the Dredge deck, well, part of your life is gone, never to return.
The solution? No, not another room. The Anything Goes room has been anything but a solution to the problem. The solution is actually pretty easy: give Adepts the power to ban certain players from the Casual Decks room. They wouldn’t even need any change to the Code of Conduct. The same provision regarding room disruption (the one that gets folks muted for saying things like “Chuck Norris doesn’t play Magic; Chuck Norris IS Magic”) can be applied to people bringing tier 1 decks to the Casual Decks room. By playing such a deck, you’re disrupting the casualness of the room.
“But there’s no definition of what a Casual Deck is!” So what? Sure, Wizards’ “official” stance is that the “casual” games simply mean that they don’t cost any tickets to play and don’t count against your rating. We know that they don’t really believe that themselves, though. How do we know that? Because they specifically created the Anything Goes room in an effort to get people who want to play tourney-winning decks out of the Casual Decks room. (Why they couldn’t just do what I’m proposing and force them into the Tournament Practice room I don’t know.)
As for what’s a casual deck and what isn’t, look, if you’re playing on MTGO, and you don’t know what a tourney-winning deck is, you probably aren’t playing one. If, however, by some quirk of randomness and incredible, innate deckbuilding genius, you just happen to make a Teferi-Dralnu deck almost just exactly like the one that has been the king of the premiere events online and you do so totally independent of seeing any of those deck lists, then, by golly, you should be proud to get banished to the Tournament Practice room. The fact is that you know when you’re playing a top tier deck. And, no, having only two copies of Demonfire and one copy of Blaze in your Boros Deck Wins deck instead of three Demonfires doesn’t make it a casual deck. It just makes it inferior to other BDW decks by one-sixtieth. Fifty-nine-sixtieths of Boros Deck Wins is still a tourney winning deck in most cases.
End of Modest Proposal
Still, Wizards wasn’t going to keep people from playing PTQ-worthy decks in the Casual Decks room while I was working on this thing. So, I had to take a different approach. The next night, I decided that I’d start posting for games like this: “STD – Testing a new deck; please, don’t bring a deck found in Frank Karsten’s list of Premiere Events decks. I’m just not ready yet.” That should get me some decent results, right?
Except that, even if I went 5-2 for the rest of the night, I’d still be at .500 with this version of the deck. Obviously, as it stands, the deck can’t hang with the big boys. Moreover, it’s not going to get much better just looking at its own cards.
That’s right. It was time to look outside of Ritual of Rebirth precon for cards. *sigh* Yeah, I know. But what are you gonna do?
Mana Acceleration
This deck really wants actual acceleration. Not just land grabbing like the Greenseeker and Evolution Charm provide, but the real thing. In other words, it wants to be able to cast Jedit or Teneb on turn 5, or even 4.
I didn’t want to drop creatures for more spells, though. So, out went the two Fa’adiyah Seers and in came two more Wall of Roots. Yes, I bought two more. You want mana acceleration and “the creature that will define Time Spiral Block Constructed” or not? In other words, if you like Green, you should have four Wall of Roots anyway.
Better Removal
I thought about some clever build-up here. I could go through a list of cards, talking about their pros and cons. You’re a smart bunch, though. So, let’s just cut to the chase. Putrefy. If you have Green and you have Black and you want removal, well, you know what Carol Mencia would say. “Deet duh dee!”
RoR uf da Vurm, v.1.2
8 Swamp
11 Forest
2 Plains
3 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Twisted Abomination
4 Greenseeker
4 Wall of Roots
2 Spike Feeder
4 Havenwood Wurm
2 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
2 Teneb, the Harvester
4 Dread Return
4 Evolution Charm
4 Harmonize
4 Putrefy
How’d it go? Let’s open up the red box see. I was going to do a game rundown, but I just noticed how long this thing already was. I haven’t even gotten to the Tournament Practice Room yet, either. The short version is that this version of the deck went 7-4 in eleven games. That’s a pretty good record, but a couple of wins were dubious at best. I wouldn’t necessarily call them Palmer Losses because the opponents didn’t make a play that turned a win for them into a loss. However, they played very badly. In fact, one opponent suspended a Phthisis when he was the only player with a creature on board. I was judicious in my use of non-creature spells, using Evolution Charm to grab lands, Putrefying a guy of his, until all he could do was use the Phthisis on his own guy, the only one on board when it un-Suspended. Believe it or not, the same sort of thing happened in another game. My opponent Suspended Phthisis on the first and second turns. Later, two turns before the first was to un-Suspend, he played a creature. I had a Wall of Roots in play, but I used it for mana, and it died before either Phthisis could kill it. Net result? My opponent lost a creature and two copies of Phthisis, while I lost a Wall of Roots from which I got five mana.
RoR uf da Vurm was still getting hammered by decks with fliers, and it needed more mana acceleration. I was stuck about what to do. I sure didn’t want to drop any of the support spells. I mean, look at them. Do you want to get rid of Harmonize? Not with the card advantage that it gives your don’t? Dread Return? No way, Josie. Dread Return can get you a third-turn Legend in play. (T1: Forest; cast Greenseeker. T2: Swamp; Wall of Roots; use WoR’s mana ability to activate Greenseeker, dropping Jedit or Teneb into the ‘yard; grab a Swamp. T3: Play the Swamp; cast Dread Return using the three lands and the WoR’s mana ability.) Putrefy stays because it does really fun stuff against some opponents, and I don’t just mean that it kills a creature.
One of those seven wins, for example, was against a Dragonstorm deck. During his upkeep, when a Lotus Bloom came into play from Suspension, I Putrefied it. He conceded, and showed me his hand. Given the gas he had, I would have played through it. All he needed was another land. Oh, well.
So, Harmonize, Dread Return, and Putrefy had to stay. What about Evolution Charm? Again, I liked the tricks it did. As an Instant-timed Raise Dead, it could bring back the Legends (or Abominations or Wurms) pitched to the Greenseeker. Thinning the deck of land was pretty tight, too. Finally, making a guy fly came in pretty hand sometimes. (See above, where Havenwood Wurm killed Akroma.)
What about dropping creatures? And then I thought “and go below twenty?” That really left me with only one choice. Evolution Charm was leaving for Search for Tomorrow. I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.
RoR uf da Vurm, v.1.3
8 Swamp
11 Forest
2 Plains
3 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Twisted Abomination
4 Greenseeker
4 Wall of Roots
2 Spike Feeder
4 Havenwood Wurm
2 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
2 Teneb, the Harvester
4 Dread Return
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Harmonize
4 Putrefy
This version also finished 7-4, but there were no cheap wins where opponents wasted their destruction spells on their own creatures and no games where they conceded even though they might have won had they played it out. My favorite loss – yes, there is such a thing – was against the guy playing a U/G deck with Jodah’s Avenger. He put Keen Sense and then Ophidian Eye on the Avenger. I couldn’t figure out why he’d give me such advantage if I was holding Putrefy. Then, he showed me what he was doing. First, he’d give the Avenger Shadow. Next, he’d give it Double Strike. Sure, that dropped it down to a 2/2, but he drew four freakin’ cards every time it hit me! By the time I drew Putrefy, it just didn’t matter.
Given that I hadn’t limited the types of decks I played against (i.e. I got a decent spread of opposing decks) and that time was running out, I figured I needed to create a sideboard for the Tournament Practice Room.
Whachoo Want? Baby, I Got It. Whachoo Need? You Know I Got It.
I knew that my biggest problems would be against Dragonstorm, Reanimation strategies, and fliers, specifically Akroma. Starting at the end, Green has one of the best flier hosers it’s ever had. I don’t mean Silklash Spider. That takes too much mana to kill Akroma, and it most likely can’t be done in one turn. That means the Spider sits there waiting to be killed, and it will be killed. No, I’m talking about Elvish Skysweeper. For six mana, in one turn your can drop him and kill Akroma. Yeah!
Against Reanimation strategies, I am eschewing Tormod’s Crypt. The Crypt is good against certain versions of that strategy. However, the top way to Reanimate right now is via the Dredge mechanic, and the Crypt only hoses the ‘yard once. In other words, they just fill it back up. I’m going, then, with Withered Wretch. I’ll just eat whatever’s in there that’s a problem. Kill it, and I’ll drop another.
For Dragonstorm, gimme Shadow of Doubt. I have nothing else (cheap) that I can use.
Finally, I need my generic Enchantment kill. That’ll be Indrik Stomphowler. With Dread Return, I feel like I only need three of him in the sideboard. That means that I took the following to the Tournament Practice Room:
RoR uf da Vurm, v.1.4
8 Swamp
11 Forest
2 Plains
3 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Twisted Abomination
4 Greenseeker
4 Wall of Roots
2 Spike Feeder
4 Havenwood Wurm
2 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
2 Teneb, the Harvester
4 Dread Return
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Harmonize
4 Putrefy
Sideboard
4 Elvish Skysweeper
4 Shadow of Doubt
4 Withered Wretch
3 Indrik Stomphowler
Dear Mr. Romeo,
None of the sideboard cards are in the Ritual of Rebirth precon? Where’d the person who “walked in off the street” without a deck get those?
Yours,
Rick (the “P” is silent)
What is it with people wanting to show the flaws in my logic? Okay, look, this is an “exercise” in deckbuilding. You know what an exercise is, right? Like when I go running or walking, I stretch first. However, when I might really need to run – say I’m attacked by a scalpel-wielding maniac who wants to cut out my kidney for a transplant patient in Bulgaria – my assailant won’t be giving me a chance to limber up my hamstrings first. “Hold on, Frances. I need to get nice and loose.” Let’s just say that, for the purpose of this exercise, the storeowner said that you could borrow the cards for the sideboard as long as you bought two copies of the precon. How’s that? *sheesh*
Match #1: It was quickly apparent that I was playing against yet another G/R deck when my opponent made a first-turn 2/3 Kird Ape with a Stomping Ground. I was never really in this one, even though it took him a while to beat me. I made a second-turn Wall of Roots and then Suspended Search for Tomorrow with mana from the Wall. With the Wall at 0/4, the Kird Ape took it out when Might of Old Krosa pumped the Ape to a 4/5. By the time I had stabilized the board, I was at two life thanks to Uktabi Drake, and Spike Feeder was nowhere to be seen. Sudden Shock ended it.
For game 2, I knew I needed more speed and a way to kill fliers. Out went the Havenwood Wurms, and in came the Elvish Skysweepers. Games 2 and 3 were all about Reanimation, lifegain, and having the Skysweepers. In game 2, I got the sweet turn 1 Greenseeker followed by a Wall of Roots. That allowed me to toss Teneb into the ‘yard with the ‘Seeker and haul it out on turn 3 with Dread Return. Game 3 was about the same with Jedit coming into play from the ‘yard on turn 4. I had to use the Skysweeper to kill two Drakes, but fortunately Jedit leaves tokens behind. As he closed the life gap, I Harmonized into both Spike Feeders. I gained life like crazy and then brought one back with the Flashback on Dread Return. The other came back two turns later. With Jedit hitting for five unblockable damage each turn, the game was soon over. (1-0, 2-1)
Match #2: Ah, The Return of The Black Rack. Game 1 was devastating. I kept a bad hand. I mean, I was idiotic. No Forests. Greenseeker. Two Swamps. A Plains. Dread Return. I don’t know what I was thinking. For game 2, again the Wurms went away replaced by the Stomphowlers and a single Skysweeper. I won game 2 as the Putrefies and Stomphowlers (one of which got reanimated) dealt with The Rack while the creatures dealt with his life total. I had to mulligan to five in game 3. The game seemed to be in hand. I had forced him down to nine. Then I drew a Stomphowler. He had no Rack on board. I knew I couldn’t keep it because it would get hit with discard. The turn after I dropped the Stomphowler, he got Underworld Dreams. Then came The Rack. Three turns later, the match was over. (1-1, 3-3)
Match #3: It’s like the complete lineup was out this night, including the U/G Scryb and Force deck I faced in this match. Game 1 came down to the fact that he just couldn’t counter enough of my spells thanks to Dread Return having Flashback. I didn’t make any changes from the sideboard because there was nothing in there that was better than what I had in the maindeck. Game 2 was back and forth. I had the game in hand with Teneb bringing his Spectral Force into play under my control while I was at nine life. Except that he was holding two Psionic Blasts. That dropped me to one. He then swung with two Llanowar Elves. Since I only had one creature, that was it. He conceded game 3 when I started with the relentless Turn 1 Greenseeker, Turn 2 Wall of Roots, dump Teneb with the ‘Seeker at the end of his turn, and Turn 3 Dread Return of the Teneb. Obviously, he didn’t have Remand. (2-1, 5-4)
Match #4: I keep thinking that there’s a Mono-Black Weenie / Suicide deck viable in tourney-level Standard. If so, it would look a lot like this guy’s. Festering Goblin. Bad Moon. Sangrophage. Mindslicer. Game 1 was all to me. Putrefy hit his Sangrophages after he had paid life to keep them. I swung a Jedit into his Mindslicer. With both of our hands empty, I won thanks to the fact that Jedit gave me a token with which to keep swinging back. Games 2 and 3 were extremely close. I made no sideboard changes, and that was a big mistake. I should have dropped three Wurms for Indrik Stomphowlers to take out the Bad Moons. In game 2, I used Spike Feeder to kill two Skulking Knights by targeting them to get counters. In game 3, Putrefy killed Plague Slivers. However, in both, his creatures got a bit bigger than mine. When I finally stabilized, he was able to pull Faceless Butcher tricks, and that was it. (2-2, 6-6)
Match #5: This is probably the deck that I was most worried about: a mono-Red weenie deck heavy on the burn. Fortunately, RoR uf da Vurm packs turn 1 Elves (Greenseeker) and Walls that stem the onslaught. In both games, Spike Feeder put the game out of his reach as Jedit, his tokens, and Twisted Abomination rang up the hits. (3-2, 8-6)
Match #6: And now, the second-most worrisome deck: Red/Green Gruul Beats. Early Wall of Roots and Spike Feeder kept the game from getting out of hand. The MVP? Havenwood Wurm. It Flashed into play and killed a Kird Ape. Then, it took a Char. A second one came into play at the end of my opponent’s next turn. When I Dread Returned another one, game 1 was mine.
I made no sideboard changes for game 2, but I had to mulligan to five. I kept four lands and a Search for Tomorrow. The only spell I played that game was the un-Suspended SfT.
Game 3 was over almost before it started. I got the ridiculous third-turn Teneb off of Greenseeker and Dread Return. Teneb brought back a Twisted Abomination that I had Cycled into the graveyard. At that point, my opponent was so desperate that he dropped all three of the cards he had left in his hand to feed his Stormbind, killing Teneb. That left me with a Twisted Abomination, Wall of Roots, and Greenseeker. So, of course, I Flashbacked the Dread Return. With Teneb back in play, my opponent drew his card and then conceded. (4-2, 10-7)
Match #7: This was going to be the big test for this deck: Dragonstorm. I held a Putrefy in case a Dragon hit, you know, normally. When he un-Suspended a Lotus Bloom, it struck me: I can Putrefy that thing during his upkeep. When I did, he conceded. For game 2, I dropped the Walls and the Wurms for Shadow of Doubt and Elvish Skysweeper. The SoDs were brought in for the obvious reason. If they can’t search their library, their carefully planned Dragonstorm would be for naught. The Skysweepers, of course, were for the Dragons that got hardcast. He tapped out on his third turn for Compulsive Research, allowing me to get the third-turn, Dread-powered Teneb into play. When he was at fourteen life and I was at twenty-four, thanks to Spike Feeder, I swung with the Teneb for a second time. He cast Bogardan Hellkite, choosing Teneb to take one damage and me for the other four. Obviously, he thought that he’d block Teneb to do the other five damage. Putrefy said no to that plan. He dropped to eight and then three when I Teneb-ed his Hellkite. He drew and then offered "GG." (5-2, 12-7)
Whoa. Winning over Dragonstorm 2-0 was definitely an ego booster. At least I knew that the deck didn’t suck. I figured to even things out, I should go looking for a Dralnu du Louvre deck.
Match #8: So, I went and asked for a Dralnu deck. I got one. Dralnu is an interesting matchup because I can’t play anything with Instant timing, but the deck’s only Instant is Putrefy. Teferi doesn’t mess things up too much. Fighting through the countermagic is tough, but Dread Return has Flashback. This was the deck that made me think I should have included Sudden Death in the sideboard. Still, Dralnu is worse for this deck than Teferi, so I like Withered Wretch.
Anyway, I got someone answering the request for Dralnu. I Putrefied two Signets. Being ahead on mana, I was able to cast Havenwood Wurm with Flash in response to him casting Teferi. When I won that game, my opponent conceded the match. No way, was I going to count that as a match win. So, I went looking for another Dralnu deck.
The second one gave me a great match. I got off two Putrefies to kill Teferis. A third was Commandeered and pointed at my Teneb. It was twenty-one long turns, and Dralnu won.
For game 2, I dropped Search for Tomorrow (Teferi hoses Suspend) and Havenwood Wurm for Withered Wretch and Shadow of Doubt. The Wretch actually hit the board on the third turn. He never got to play anything out of his ‘yard, but it didn’t matter. He got Skeletal Vampire, and, even though I saw twenty-eight of my cards, I saw no Putrefies or Tenebs. Match to Dralnu. (5-3, 12-9)
I was surprisingly upbeat about the Dralnu match. I had lost 2-0, but they were tough wins for Dralnu. I’m sure that at some point I had made big mistakes. Maybe not. Either way, making Dralnu work that hard for wins has to be a good thing. Right?
Match #9: This was a tough, tough win, but it was worth it. My opponent was playing a B/W deck with Teysa. In game 1, I got the awesome third-turn Teneb. When I killed his Teysa with Putrefy and then reanimated it the next turn, he conceded. For game 2, I dropped the Wurms for Elvish Skysweeper. I figured I’d need to kill some fliers, and I’d need a way to sacrifice guys to counteract Teysa’s ability if it got going. This was when his Mortifies and Condemns showed up. Neither Teneb nor Jedit stayed around long enough to do anything. For game 3, I didn’t do anything else. It was simply a long game of attrition that was won when, you guessed it, Teneb finally stuck. (6-3, 14-10)
Match #10: Finally, the end. It’s not that I wanted to quit playing. I just wanted to quit playing this deck. This opponent came with a R/W/U This Girl deck tweaked to add Teferi. Yeah, really. Think about that. Anyway, I won game 1 on the strength of a hard-cast Teneb. My opponent was apparently lacking countermagic at that point and dropped a Teferi instead. On my turn, just as with Teysa in game 1 of the last match, I Putrefied his Legend and the reanimated it with Teneb. I honestly don’t know why he didn’t concede at that point. His countermagic was useless. A couple of turns later, the game was over.
I knew that I’d need something to kill those fliers in game 2. Of course, the Skysweepers took over for the Havenwood Wurms. At this point, you may be asking, as I asked myself, "if you’re always taking out the Wurms…" Well, because I have enough on the low end of the mana curve in game 1. The Wurms have been a great help, although I may not be emphasizing enough how well they worked. It just seems that often they’re the most expendable ones in a matchup. For example, when the other guy has Teferi, the Wurm is "just" a 5/6 Trampler for seven mana because I can’t expect that I’ll be able to Flash it into play. When that opponent also has fliers, well, the choice seems easy.
This opponent, it turns out, also had Sacred Mesa. To be fair to RoR uf da Vurm, this game took so long that, in a times match, I would have won 1-0. We were back and forth for almost forty minutes. In fact, on turn 12, we were both other twenty life, me thanks to Spike Feeder and he thanks to a Faith’s Fetters that stopped Jedit in his tracks. Soon, though, he was able to crank out too many tokens, and I conceded so that we could get to game 3 before I took Luanne to dinner.
That’s right. Had I not conceded, game 2 would have gone over forty minutes. And that’s MTGO time. Imagine how long it would have been in real life with all of the shuffling of the library and all. Ugh.
I clearly needed the Indrik Stomphowlers for game 3. So the Abominations and a Search for Tomorrow sat on the bench. There was a lot of back and forth in this one, too. I got him to three with Teneb and took a Lightning Angel. I was at six. Of course, if he hadn’t cast Faith’s Fetters on a Teneb earlier in the game, it would have been over. I point this out because of what happened next. He cast another Fetters on the Angel I’d taken, dropped a third, and swung for six. Big deal? Yes, because not one of my sideboard cards showed up the entire game. None of the four Skysweepers which would have killed an Angel here and / or there, and no Stomphowlers to take the Fetters off of the early Teneb. (6-4, 15-12)
…
Six and four is not bad at all for a deck that, in the main, is almost exclusively Time Spiral and Planar Chaos. I probably should have found room for Sudden Death in the sideboard, though. As I’ve said before (and I’m still looking for a tutor), my sideboarding and sideboard design skills are sorely lacking. I look at sideboards that pros use, and I can’t understand why they use one or two copies of a card if they don’t have tutoring. If you have problems, for example, with decks that use their graveyards as a resource, why wouldn’t you use four Withered Wretches or Cremates or Tormod’s Crypts? The answer is probably obvious to you, but not to me.
If I Had a Million Dollars
Actually, if I wanted to build a G/B/w deck right now, I’d just build the G/B Reanimator deck. (Out of respect for Bennie Smith, I won’t call it Dredge. If you want to know why, look at Bennie’s columns over the past few months. He explains it much better than I would.) However, after having played with Teneb, I’d say that Dredge decks need to start finding a spot for him. Holy steaming poo on a stick, folks, I stole a Teferi, for cryin’ out loud.
However, if you had to tie me down to this deck as the base, I’d invest in two more Tenebs over two Havenwood Wurms, and a third Jedit over a Twisted Abomination. Then I’d get lotsa rare dual lands that would allow me to cast any of the spells in here more easily.
And that’s it for this Precon Decon. Yet another awesome Planar Chaos precon. Next week, though, something completely different. Still about Magic, though. So, not completely different, I guess. Well, you understand me, right?
Chris Romeo
CBRomeo –at-Travelers-dot-com
P.S. I know that this thing is already long enough, but I have to comment on a rumored Future Sight card. Have you seen Barren Glory? For 4WW, you get an Enchantment that says “At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control no permanents other than Barren Glory and have no cards in hand, you win the game.” Really? Really?!? Dear gawd, I hope this isn’t right. In a format – heck, in a block – that includes Greater Gargadon, this is way, way too easy to do. Just Suspend the Gargadon the turn you can cast this puppy, and start sacrificing things to your Gargadon (making sure not to sac so much that it comes into play, of course). Does this mean that decks simply must start carrying maindeck Enchantment kill? Talk amongst yourselves.