{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.}
Yay-uh! I have come unto you this week-uh a sayyyyyyved man. I have seen the light-uh. Hallelujah! Say it with me, brothers and, uh, any sisters who may-uh also be out there. Inspiration has come to me-uh. It has come from the aether, and it has come from the ether. It has come from far, faaaar away-uh. From a land of lush forests and virgins drinking coffee-uh and contemplating a better world-uh. It has come from the state of Washington. Verily, I speak-uh of the Planar Chaos preconstructed deck-uh called Ritual of Rebirth-uh! Praise Forsythe and Rosewater!
Okay, so it wasn’t actually a religious experience when I saw the Ritual of Rebirth precon, but it was durn close. I’m used to precons having some nice cards in them, usually in the uncommon slots. Sure, once in a while, some wonderful precon designer slips in an Umezawa’s Jitte, like the Rat’s Nest precon. Seeing this deck felt kinda like when I saw Rat’s Nest, although I didn’t hear the same “cha-ching!” Still, precons don’t usually sport two excellent Legendary creatures like this one does. You get a Dragon Legend in Teneb, the Harvester, and a six-mana, Forestwalking, token-generating house in Jedit Ojanen of Efrava. This deck should send a message to future precon designers at Wizards: use better rares in the precons (if they’ll let you, of course).
My name is Chris Romeo, and I approve of this message. I also approve of this massage. Be right back.
Ahhhhhh. That was nice. I am sooooooooooo relaxed that my fingers can barely type this. Ritual of Rebirth (hereinafter RoR, pronounced “roar”) is, as Abe Sargent pointed out, one pretty dang good precon right out of the box. In case you don’t feel like clicking on the link three paragraphs ago or you’d like the list in an order you’re used to, RoR looks like this:
Ritual of Rebirth Precon – Unaltered Decklist
7 Swamp
11 Forest
4 Plains
2 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Sengir Autocrat
1 Bog Serpent
1 Twisted Abomination
3 Phantasmagorian
2 Essence Warden
2 Greenseeker
3 Fa’adiyah Seer
1 Wall of Roots
1 Spike Feeder
2 Havenwood Wurm
1 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
2 Icatian Crier
2 Jedit’s Dragoons
1 Teneb, the Harvester
3 Dread Return
3 Evolution Charm
2 Search for Tomorrow
2 Harmonize
2 Rebuff the Wicked
1 Resurrection
To reiterate, when I do my Precon-Decon columns, I like to play the unadulterated deck first. I used to try to predict which cards would be good and which wouldn’t, but I found I was too often wrong. You can’t tell about the passage of time because you’re reading the written word. However, between the previous sentence and the one before that, I played several games with this deck.
Seriously. Like eight of them. Just that fast.
What I can tell you right now are two things. First, this deck really is pretty tight for a precon. Sometimes it looks like it’s trying to do something secondary (Icatian Crier), but even that is feeding the beast. The discard potentially puts critters in the graveyard for Dread Return and Resurrection to bring back. Meanwhile, the Crier is also providing fodder for the Flashback payment on the Dread Return.
Second, I learned that…
You know what? I don’t wanna spoil the fun here. Why don’t you see if you can figure out what I’m seeing here. A couple of hints:
1) It’s actually what I’m not seeing in this deck that’s important; and
2) Black should never leave home without it.
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Yup. You got it. Not a single piece of removal in the deck. Not one. Heck, there’s not even a Rathi Trapper or a Temporal Isolation to essentially make them useless in combat. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Like Britney Spears‘s “talent,” nonexistent.
A Change in the Column’s Direction
This is usually the point at which I simply smoosh the two decks together, taking cards found only in two copies of the precon to make one deck. I’m skipping that part this time because I refuse to go through this exercise without any freakin’ creature control when I’m playing Black and Reanimation. Seriously, how does this happen? In my mind, between imagining Izabel Goulart washing my car and Kelly Carlson mowing the lawn for me, I pictured this scene at Wizard a few months ago:
(Interior: Boss’s office, a luxuriously appointed room with oriental rugs, ancient Greek statuary, leather furniture, and walnut and mahogany bookshelves lined with rare first editions including an original printing of the Gutenberg bible.)
Deck Designer: Hey, boss. Knock, knock. Am I bothering you?
Pointy-Haired Boss: No, no, you’re not bothering me at all. I’m just creating some new procedures designed to make it look like I’m managing when I’m really just producing more barriers to getting things done well and efficiently. What’s going on?
DD: Well, I have my decklist for the Planar Chaos preconstructed deck you wanted me to build, and I thought I could get you to sign off on it.
PHB: Lemme see what you have here. Mmmm-kay. Essence Warden. Good. Harmonize. Okay. Hmm… two Legendary creatures? And one’s a Dragon? …
DD: Yeah, I thought we could throw them a bone with this. Besides, I think we’ll sell a ton more precons if we use good rares in them.
PHB: I don’t know. We don’t want to suppress the secondary market for those cards. The small card shops are our bread and butter when it comes to sales of packs and decks, you know.
DD: I, uh, I thought that Wal-Mart and Target and…
PHB: I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You can have your two Legends…
DD: Excellent!
PHB: … But, in exchange, you can’t have any removal.
DD: Not even Utopia Vow?
PHB: Nothing.
DD: Oh, okay. Fine.
(Interior: the dark and oppressive hallway outside of the boss’s office)
Fellow Designer: How’d your precon pitch go, D.D.?
DD: He made a management decision.
FD: … Oh …
…
This exchange, imaginary as it is, leaves me in quite a bit of a bind. Not that I don’t like a little light bondage once in a while. I just can’t stand it when I have no control at all.
(Do you like how I “tied” that all together, starting with salvation, moving to a deck with no creature control, and then into S&M? That took some work. I expect props of some sort there. And, obviously, I’m not above begging for them, either.)
I do these Precon-Decon columns with the premise that the player could walk into the card store with twenty-five bucks, buy two of these decks without spending any money on any other cards, smoosh them together, and potentially do passably well at the Saturday Standard tourney. The issue in this case is that I don’t think that they can. There is no creature control. If you have two of these decks, well, lemme get back to all of that math that I took in college. Zero times two… yup, still zero.
So, you wouldn’t want to buy two of these to play at a tournament.
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. Don’t let the doorknob hitcha where the dog shoulda bitcha.
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net
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Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, man, that was pure gold. You shoulda seen your face! No, seriously. You were all like “Huh?” And then like “Wha-?!?” And I was all like “Heh!” But, no, I’d never leave you hanging like that. So, are we still solid? Sure. Sure we are.
As I was saying, due the complete lack of any sort of creature control in this deck, if you were to walk into the local store on a Saturday, you’d have to invest some time in finding some card to add for creature control. Just so this thing doesn’t complete come apart at the seams, I’m going to presume – and be careful when you presume so that you don’t make a “pres” out of “u” or “me” – that you can find four copies of Enslave, Last Gasp, Condemn, Assassinate, and Temporal Isolation at this mythical store into which you walk for a Saturday tourney. Those will be the four cards we look at adding to this after we cull the “best” cards from the two copies of Ritual of Rebirth.
Good versus Bad, Better versus Worse
I put “best” in quotation marks because there’s been a lot of talk on this site over the past few weeks over what makes a card good or bad or better or worse than another card. Since Magic players really do tend to be a fairly smart bunch, sometimes too smart for their own good, we pretty much all know that the cards are good or bad only in comparison to what else is out there. Some cards are generally more useful in more situations and decks than others, and those tend to be called “good,” “better,” or “best.” So, when I say that I’ll be culling the “best” cards from Ritual of Rebirth, please, know that I know that I’m talking about “in relation to the other cards in Ritual of Rebirth.”
For instance, Sengir Autocrat is a pretty darn good card… in a deck with Grave Pact and several cards that would enable the sacrificing of creatures. Honestly, drop the Autocrat, Grave Pact, and Nantuko Husk onto the board, and watch most decks curl up and die.
In Ritual of Rebirth, though, eh, not so good. Sure, there are the sacrifice outlets in the Dread Returns, but you only get to use the Flashback on those one time each. After that, as my nephew would say, “All gone, Unca Chris!” For all of that, you’ve paid four mana and gotten a 2/2 with three 0/1s and not a whole lot to do with any of it.
So, is the Autocrat “good” or “bad”? The answer, of course, is “yes.”
By the way, if you can’t tell, the Autocrat is one of the cards that I’m setting aside when we smoosh the two RoRs together. Other cards that don’t make the first cut:
Bog Serpent: Nice beef, but I’d rather cast other stuff for six mana. Like, oh, I dunno, Teneb;
Phantasmagorian: Another card that could be awesome in the right deck (Unraveling Mind, Abe?) but just doesn’t work here. He’s too big to cast, and you almost never want to pitch cards to him, even if you had them to pitch; and
Jedit’s Dragoons: Not enough of anything (body or life) for what it costs.
These are the cards that I absolutely will try to include in the first cut of the modified RoR:
Greenseeker: She fills the ‘yard, thins the deck, and gets your mana fixed. A couple of weeks ago, I was playing against a Dredge deck, and killed her with a Shock on my opponent’s first turn. “You’re the first person,” he said “to kill her that quickly.” I won that game, and it was probably because of that play;
Wall of Roots: Early defense and mana acceleration, too;
Jedit Ojanen of Efrava & Teneb, the Harvester: Legendary beef – it’s what’s for dinner;
Dread Return & Resurrection: Duh;
Evolution Charm: As much as I like Midnight Charm, this may end up being my favorite. All three of those abilities are very good. Last night, for instance, I moved a counter from Spike Feeder onto Jedit, made him fly with this Charm, and had him block and kill a Simic Sky Swallower. He also left behind a token creature. Niiiiiice. And that’s using what is the least useful of this Charm’s three modes;
Search for Tomorrow: More land, please; and
Harmonize: It, um, draws lotsa cards.
Fa’adiyah Seer is one about which I’m really on the fence. If this was a Dredge deck, she’d be a three- or four-of no questions asked. It’s not a Dredge deck, though. It’s a deck that likes having some cards in the ‘yard sometimes. For example, you don’t mind turning over Dread Return if you have a Dragon in the graveyard and three creatures on board that you’d like to sacrifice. You also don’t mind turning over a Dragon if you have Dread Return in hand. However, if you’re at a point in the game where you don’t really want to dump spells into the ‘yard, she becomes Squire with half of the toughness. And, really, do ever want to be compared unfavorably to Squire?
My first pass at smooshing these two decks together (with the presumption of the aforementioned removal spells readily available) looked like this:
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
As you can see, I quickly eschewed (“Gesundheit!”) White altogether. Part of the reason for that was to get the deck running as smoothly as possible, mana-wise. The best way to do that was to cut it down from three to two colors. Or, to be more precise, two main colors and a couple of White sources so that we can actually cast Teneb. It would have been nice to have Resurrection and Rebuff the Wicked, but something had to go for full sets of Dread Return, Evolution Charm, Harmonize, and Last Gasp. Of course, I could have gone with the two Resurrections and only eighteen creatures, but that few creatures didn’t feel right.
I also don’t like all of the two-ofs in the deck. However, when you start with two decks that have a lot of one-ofs – and I’m getting into that higher math again – you end up with a lot of two-ofs because one times two is two.
Finally, I was still not sold on Fa’adiyah Seer, but the deck needed two more creatures. If it was late enough in the game, surely, she’d be good… wouldn’t she? So, I added two to get the creature count up to twenty. Was it a good call? Let’s see.
Game #1: As I always do with these decks, I started off on the Casual Decks room. I immediately ran into a Black/White Martyr of Sands deck. Do I need to go into details on this game? Gawd, I hope not. It was bad enough experiencing this the first time. To be quite fair, though, I actually conceded the game because it was taking soooooo looooong to play. Could I have won? I seriously doubt it. He had Skeletal Vampire. Of course, I had four Last Gasps, none of which showed up in the first thirty-five cards I drew. Still, I had to get to bed. Yes, it took that long. (0-1)
This opponent’s deck points out why sometimes you can’t really tell how your deck would perform in a tournament because you haven’t gotten to use your sideboard. A lot of decks – and I have to include ones I’ve made, too – look better in one-game match-ups because they have a trick that the opponent wouldn’t think to worry about in the maindeck. In this case, it would be a combination of huge lifegain and continual graveyard recursion. Obviously, I could put Withered Wretch in the sideboard and ruin this guy’s plan to essentially gain infinite life. He would gain quite a lot of life, regardless of me ripping the Martyrs from his ‘yard, but the beef in RoR uf da Vurm can take back huge chunks. Moreover, I did get to take his Martyr once with my Teneb. I just couldn’t stay awake to finish the game.
(One of the other Casual Room tricks, one that often makes a deck look better than it really is, is to overload on Enchantments and Artifacts. Most decks will not pack enough maindeck removal for those types of permanents to win the game, thus, making the Enchantment- and/or Artifact-heavy deck perform better in one-game matches than it would in best-of-threes. This is part of the reason why I move my decks from the Casual Room to the Tourney Practice Room after I feel that they’re solid enough in game 1. I want and need to test them against what is most likely to show up at a Saturday tourney.)
Game #2: Speaking of Enchantments, this opponent was sporting a decent G/u Enchantress deck. We traded damage for a while, but then he got a Treetop Bracers on his Yavimaya Enchantress. At that point, he was at ten and I was at fifteen. His Enchantress had become a 9/9 “flying” behemoth. Fortunately, I had the Forestwalking Jedit and three Evolution Charms. So, I swung with Jedit, giving me a token, and dropping him to five. He swung with the Enchantress, and I let it go. No need to waste a Charm to prevent non-lethal damage. On my turn, I swung with Jedit, and he bounced it. Still, I got a token because he had waited until I attacked. I recast Jedit. On his turn, he played his last card (another Enchantress, natch) and sent his Enchantress into the Red zone. I clicked “OK” … apparently too many times. His Enchantress came through with no blocks! Ugh. I typed:
“Frack! I could have won!”
“How?” he asked.
“Blocking your Enchantress. Then, I could have swung back with Jedit next turn.”
“You don’t have anyone who can block her.”
“I’m holding another Evolution Charm.”
Even though I had just pulled the same trick, he seemed either clueless about how I would have won or upset that he hadn’t truly won our game. “So? Who could have blocked?”
“The token. Or my Wall of Roots. Whichever one I cast it on.”
“You still couldn’t have killed me. I have another Enchantress to block,” he shot back.
“Jedit has Forestwalk.” And then he left.
I had a tough time putting this down as a loss. On the one hand, in a real-life tourney, that misplay never would have happened. It’s not that I missed it. On the contrary, I was actually waiting to make the play. “Send her over,” I kept thinking. “I can make my Wall fly, and chump block her.” Being of an empty hand, he literally had no way to stop me, not like when he stopped a double Last Gasp on the Enchantress (back when she was a mere 5/5) with Mana Leak on the second Last Gasp. In other words, except for the fact that MTGO let me click too many times too quickly, I wouldn’t have lost.
On the other hand, I did lose. I was an eager beaver and clicked right past declaring blockers. In an online tourney, I would have lost the game.
So, do I put this down as a win or a loss? Since this is testing, I’ve decided to call it a win. The point of testing is to see how the deck performs. But for misclicking, I would have won. That is pilot error, not a problem with the deck. (1-1)
Romeo’s First Baseball Reference of Spring?
This story is from the end of the career of Orioles’ Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer. Palmer was known as a meticulous student of hitters, memorizing tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses. It was even said that he knew how big or small or tall or wide each home plate umpire’s particular strike zone was and could sculpt his pitching performance that game to take advantage of those differences. As such, he was an invaluable tutor for the Orioles’ young pitchers as he got to the end of his career.
After a Spring training game during his last season, Palmer was helping a young pitcher pick apart his performance. They were looking at videotape of the youngster’s outing that day. “Fast forward to that home run ball you gave up,” Palmer said.
“I didn’t give up any gopher balls today,” the kid said, perplexed that Palmer, known for having an almost photographic memory of a game’s entire pitch sequence, might have confused him with another pitcher.
“Yes, you did. In the third inning. You threw a fastball right down the middle, and he hit it to the warning track.”
“Right. To the warning track. It was just a fly ball for an out.”
“Only because the wind was blowing in,” Palmer replied.
Because they were trying to improve the rookie’s performance, Palmer knew that the specific outcome of that particular pitch and swing wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was what would typically have happened in that situation. Palmer knew that, two out of three times (wind blowing out or no wind at all), that would have been a home run. The kid just got lucky that day. The wind was blowing in.
From here on out, when I can remember to do so, of course, I’m going to call a game win that I should have had but for bad clicking or a horrendous play mistake a Palmer Win. Conversely, when I win only because my opponent makes a game-losing mistake (or gets complete mana-hosed), I’ll call that a Palmer Loss.
Just so that there’s no misunderstanding, I’m only going to do this in clear-cut cases, situations in which an act or omission was the obvious difference between a win and a loss or vice versa. I’ve already given an example of a Palmer Win. That was Game #2 up there. As an example of a Palmer Loss, check this out. A few days ago, while working on another deck, I was facing a mono-Red burn deck. The game was close. I had more than lethal damage on board. He was at three, and facing a horde of weenies. I was also at three. He drew and Suspended a Rift Bolt. D’oh! All he had to do was actually cast the thing, pointing it at my head, and I was dead. Instead, he gave me a turn to swing and kill him.
Is There Such a Penalty as Sportsmanlike Conduct?
This may beg the question of whether I should have skipped my combat phase and let him beat me. I thought about it. Maybe he had misclicked like I did. While that’s a lot less likely with choosing how it play Rift Bolt than what I did, it’s still possible. Moreover, he didn’t type anything like “crud” or “darn.” That didn’t mean that he didn’t catch his mistake, but it also didn’t tell me that he had caught it. I decided that, no, I shouldn’t just give him the game. I am a firm believer in the philosophy that we learn best from our mistakes. Hopefully, he’ll remember that loss and go on to many more wins in which he actually casts a Rift Bolt for the Fatal Blow.
You may now post that I am a complete dikfore.
More Tales of Management
I have to share this with you. I just got this e-mail from one of our managers. It said:
“The card scanner on the East side of the building (Center Support / Mailroom side) doesn’t appear to be functioning properly so please use another entrance for now. Thanks!”
If you work in a “secure” building like I do, you know that the card scanner not “functioning properly” means that you can’t get into the building using that door. In other words, this manager sent an e-mail that said “You won’t be able to get in through that door. So, when you find that it won’t open, use another door.”
Really? Really?!? Did you really think you had to send an e-mail telling people to use another door when the one that they’re trying to get in won’t open? Do you think that little of your employees’ intelligence? Or did you yourself actually stand drooling by the door, waiting for it to open, and, when you finally figured out several hours later that it wouldn’t be opening, then decide that you’d help other people avoid your fate by warning them ahead of time? “Don’t panic! But, the door won’t open! When it doesn’t open, stay calm! Use another door! Find one that opens! Open it! Walk through that one instead! – Helping you help yourself, The Management”
Sheesh.
Game #3: When Joe first saw Kavu Predator, he sent me an e-mail. “This would be almost broken with Wall of Shards, wouldn’t it?” Yup. And this opponent took advantage of that synergy. Just so we’re all on the same page here, my opponent’s Wall of Shards made me gain life. Every time it did this, Kavu Predator got bigger. The casual viewer would say “those just offset each other.” Except that they don’t. The Predator takes bigger and bigger chunks of life each time it swings while the Wall is only giving one extra life each turn. Two Wall of Shards was just too much. Last Gasp wasn’t enough to handle the Kavu. It would have been had I gotten it early. I didn’t. (1-2)
This game made me contemplate removing Last Gasp for Assassinate. Sure, Assassinate means that the creature is typically going to get in one lick. You know what? I wish that the Kavu Predator had only gotten in one lick. “What if that one lick would end the game, though, Romeo?” I answer that with the question “What if Last Gasp wouldn’t stop the creature, either?”
By the end of this first series of games, the deck was 5-6. It both lost to and beat R/W beatdown (not quite full-on Boros) decks. Ditto with W/G/r Sliver decks. It was crushed by a Thelonite Hermit deck. (Last Gasp, where were you?) That game made me note that the sideboard needed some sort of mass –X/-X removal a la Hideous Laughter or Nausea. (Note to self: check to see if there’s anything like that in Standard now. If not, call MaRo about adding Infest to Tenth Edition.) On the crushing front, RoR uf da Vurm worked over a G/B Dredge deck pretty well.
That’s where I’m going to end this week’s piece, much to Craig’s elation. Next week, I’ll try to make the deck good enough to stand tall – or at least even – in the Tournament Practice Room. Until then, keep those cards and letters coming.
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net
The Real P.S. I wasn’t going to start this exercise until next week, but my hand was somewhat forced by JMS’s column last Monday on the official site. I didn’t want people to think I had simply read his column and said “Hmmm, I think I’ll work on Ritual of Rebirth next.” Yes, I am that paranoid. So, I moved this up a week. Because I have to turn these in so early, you’ll know that there’s no way that I could have read Jay’s piece and then done all of this. Craig can even confirm it for you. [It’s all lies. – Craig, amused.] The column that was set to appear this week should be up on April 24th.