{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. They contain, at most, eight to twelve rares. 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 Wildfire, Llanowar Wastes, or Birds of Paradise. The decks are also tested by the author, who isn’t very good at playing Magic. His playtest partners, however, are excellent. 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.}
A few weeks ago, JMS asked people to choose one card from among four or five choices around which he would build a deck. (“More prepositions, please,” pleaded the editor.) The card that I chose from that list was Eternal Dominion. The vote went to Blood Clock. I was stunned. Who doesn’t want to win by beating their opponents with their own creatures? I demanded a recount. The District Court said that I didn’t have standing to challenge the vote being that I don’t write for MagictheGathering.com. The Court of Appeals agreed. The Supreme Court said that it wasn’t their business. After 56 days, I conceded defeat.
That meant that I’d have to do my own work to build an Eternal Dominion deck. Great. Time to dig in.
Jumping in with Both Feet without Looking
The first thing I noticed about Eternal Dominion is that it’s a ten-mana Sorcery.
Ten mana? And it’s a Sorcery? What could I have been thinking?
I’ll tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking how I can’t afford a deck with four Kagemaros, four Kokushos, and four Darksteel Colossi. However, I sure would enjoy beating my opponents around their heads and necks using their own Kagemaros, Kokushos, and Colossi. I’m evil like that.
The next thing was to decide what to do in terms of deck style. I figured I could go aggro. Yeah, right. A Blue beatdown deck with Eternal Dominion as the finisher. Whatever. Obviously, this really needed to be a control or even a combo deck using the Dominion as its key win condition.
I went through thirteen versions of the deck.
Yep, thirteen. I had mono-Blue versions that stalled the game out long enough (in theory) to cast the winning Epic spell. I had a Green/Blue version that used mana acceleration to cast the Dominion well before turn ten.
I won three of my first fifty games.
Geez, The Pittsburgh Pirates have a better winning percentage than that.
My main problem was simple. You can’t cast spells after the Dominion resolves. That’s definitely A Very Bad Thing. Given how slow the deck has to be – come one, you’re waiting to get to ten mana – the other side was often a menagerie of Beasts, Spirits, Dragons, Snakes, and other creatures from Alice’s fevered imagination. Getting one creature into play every turn against that was just not enough.
From the Mouths of Babes . . .
Flash forward a few days. I’m visiting my in-laws. So that my wife can have some time with her sister, I agreed to entertain our eight-year nephew Matt. Matt loves Magic cards. Not the game so much, though, he likes combat. Mostly, though, he likes the cards.
“This is cool, Uncle Chris.”
“Which one is that, Matt?”
“Ghost-Lit Warder. It’s a ghost!”
I looked at it. Well, lookee here. I can use this to counter stuff after the Dominion resolves.
I made another change to the deck.
I started losing a little less. Thank goodness for small miracles.
Still, the deck wasn’t beating much. When it did win, it was often via concession. Who wants to wait around while I beat them up with their own cards? It’s kinda like the joke about the sadist and the masochist. The masochist asks the sadist, “Will you, please, hurt me? Please?” To which the sadist replies, “No! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
(So which one am I?)
I hated to do it, but I had to add four Wrath of God. Sadly, for cost purposes, that meant no Adarkar Wastes, a near must in a Blue/White deck. Just too much money for a deck From Right Field. (Of course, you can always add them.) The Wraths finally got the win percentage to fifty percent. When I quit tweaking the deck, this is what I had:
This is Bob
23 Lands
12 Islands
4 Plains
4 Cloudcrest Lake
3 Stalking Stones
4 Creatures
4 Ghost-Lit Warder
29 Other Spells
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Serum Vision
4 Echoing Truth
3 Talisman of Progress
4 Hinder
3 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Darksteel Ingot
4 Wrath of God
4 Eternal Dominion
(The first person who can tell me – on the message boards, not via e-mail – how I got from Eternal Dominion to This is Bob will get an autographed Magic card. My autograph.)
Like the Blind Guy Asked the Piano Teacher with the Sick Sense of Humor, “How Do I Play This Steaming Pile of Crap?”
Stay alive long enough to cast Eternal Dominion.
Okay, that’s the smarmy, snarky short answer. The more detailed answer follows.
Playing control decks is much tougher for me than playing beatdown. Beatdown is mostly “Hulk smash!” (I know that it’s not really that easy, but it often feels like it.) Control is often about deciding when to do what you want to do. Sometimes that means waiting when you don’t really want to. For example, let’s say that I have Hinder in hand, plenty of mana open, and my opponent is about to cast the creature that, when added to the others on the board, can kill me. Do I counter it? (Geez, I feel like Zvi. Just a little.)
It depends. Am I also holding Wrath? Does the creature have Haste (meaning I die this turn)? Can I use the Top to change things? If I had a Top on board, first, I’d use it to see what I could dredge up for the next turn. Is that a Wrath two cards down? You can have your creature.
Your opponent and his or her abilities will even make your decisions for you in some cases. In one game that I played, my opponent played out every creature he could get his hands on. I took the damage, and then Wrathed away about six creatures. Sure, I was down to nine, but I was able to drop a Ghost-Lit Warder and cast Eternal Dominion the next turn. The card and board advantage of that Wrath was, well, ungodly.
Much of your game will depend on your sideboard. I’d suggest Scrabbling Claws for decks that use/abuse their graveyards. Temporal Adept will help you counter Tooth and Nail by keeping Boseiju off of the board. If you want cheaper alternatives, use Annex or Shifting Borders. (I use Shifting Borders because Naturalize won’t give them back their land.)
My hope is that the deck will actually be good once Mirrodin block rotates out and takes Tooth and Nail with it. Sure, this deck loses some of its cards, but they can be replaced. Serum Visions can be replaced by Sleight of Hand. The Talisman can become Fellwar Stone. (That also helps you use any activated abilities of opposing permanents that you might get to steal.) Darksteel Ingot is almost irreplaceable. Yes, there are other ways to get mana, but this one was indestructible. Ur-Golem’s Eye isn’t good enough. Hopefully, Ravnica will give us something. Since it’s being touted as Invasion, Mark II, I’d think something U/W will show up. I’m not sure what to do about Thirst for Knowledge. Murmurs from Beyond can ruin your game if it hits Dominion, but Counsel of the Soratami is a sorcery. I’m stuck. (Please, don’t say Gifts Ungiven . . .) [Gifts Ung… – Knut]
Playing the Deck Until October 20th
Against Mono-Red Weenie/Mono-Red Burn: Lose with grace, and bring in Circle of Protection: Red (“Now an with Uncommon Silver Nine Logo!”). I wish I had better news, but there isn’t enough countermagic to stop Lava Spike with two Glacial Rays Spliced onto it followed by Glacial Ray with Glacial Ray Spliced onto it followed by Glacial Ray. If you get lucky, you’ll face a more creature-oriented version that doesn’t have a lot of hasty guys. I doubt it though. Just win games two and three.
Against Tooth and Nail: You obviously have to stop the namesake spell. Just hold the Hinder. Cast Dominion, and grab something nasty. (I actually beat a Tooth deck by taking an Eternal Witness once. He asked what I was doing. “Getting back my Ghost-Lit Warder.” He tried playing around it, but I had a second one, too.) From the sideboard, you know that the T&N player is getting Boseiju. You have to bring in Shifting Borders (Temporal Adept for you folks with lotsa money). I was surprised at how well this deck did against Tooth. Not Bluetooth, though. That one beats you silly by out-countering you.
Against White Weenie and Black Hand: Both of these matchups depend on the player across from you. Over-extending is your friend. If you can get that one extra creature on board when you Wrath, things are going well. Of course, the Black Hand player has Distress. If it can hit Dominion, Hinder it. If not, ask yourself what s/he would/should take and figure out if you can lose it. Two Wraths in hand? Let him have one. Your last Wrath? Probably not.
Against MUC: This is a weird matchup. MUC relies on Meloku and the Vedalken Shackles. Against you, the Shackles is essentially worthless until the Dominion resolves. Then again, you can grab a Shackles and use it yourself. They have a lot of counters, so be ready for a stack battle over the Dominion. If you catch them off guard, you can win it. If not, you lose. You may need to find sideboard room for Minamo’s Meddling or Rewind if MUC shows up a lot around you.
I don’t want to give you an inflated evaluation of this deck. It will most likely not win your Friday Night Magic tournament. You might finish at .500. You will have fun if you don’t play with a bunch of weenie-heads who concede as soon as Eternal Dominion resolves.
. . . Wormhole . . .
As I was working on this deck, a friend of JMS named Zed was also working an ED deck. Zed took a different route. He decided to go more combo. I’m not even sure he had countermagic. All he cared about was getting the Dominion off. He could do it as early as turn 4.
“What? How could he do that?” they screamed.
I’m not going to give out his decklist (even though he said that we could). I’m just telling you Krark-Clan Ironworks. You can have fun figuring out the rest for yourself. (Here’s a hint: artifacts. I’m not giving you more than that.)
Bonus Legacy Section
If you’re paying for Premium, you know about StarCity’s new Legacy writer, the man with the coolest real name this side of Stone Philips, Nathan J. Xaxson. Now, I’m no NJX, but I did play in a Legacy tournament last weekend. Wanting to be the odd man out, as usual, I played (almost) mono-Green. I ran:
Split Pea Soup
13 Lands
4 Windswept Heath
2 Island
7 Forest
24 Creatures
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
2 Rogue Elephant
4 Skyshroud Elite
4 Vine Dryad
4 River Boa
3 Elvish Warrior
3 Mtenda Lion
23 Other Spells
4 Land Grant
2 Bounty of the Hunt
4 Rancor
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Reprisal
3 Tangle Wire
2 Vitality Charm
15 Sideboard
4 Tormod’s Crypt
4 Compost
4 Sandstorm
3 Acridian
I hate to admit this, but I love this format. I get to use all of these old card that I have sitting around, cards that have sparked my imagination for Kitchen Table decks but nothing that I had ever had a chance to play in sanctioned tournaments. Why would I hate to admit it? Mostly that’s because, like a lot of folks, I figured the format was dominated by rare-heavy decks. It doesn’t seem to be. Our tourney was populated with Goblins, my G/w deck, a mono-Black Clerics deck, two mono-Red burn decks, and White Weenie among others. The two finalists were the two mono-Red decks. The most expensive card – money-wise, not mana-wise – in either deck was Lightning Bolt.
In the first round, I played one of the finalists, Jonathan Patrick. We had just finished playing some test games, and I owned him. You know what that means, right? Yep, he beat me. Of course, it took three games. The third was a tight one that came down to whether I got a creature or he got burn. He kept getting burn spells while I could not get to a creature on a dare.
In the second round, I played Daniel Cooper sporting the mono-Black Clerics. My free Vine Dryad with Rancor along with Tangle Wire was too much for him in game one. In game two, I was able to get out a first-turn Compost thanks to the Elvish Spirit Guide. The fact that I got another in the game didn’t matter. Even though I was drawing two cards each time he pretty much did anything, he was wiping out my guys and swinging for huge damage. Game three again came down to key cards. I was able to prevent graveyard shenanigans with not one but two Tormod’s Crypts. However, I couldn’t get to a creature.
You’ve probably noticed that I only played in two matches. I got a bye for the final round. So I ended at 0-2-1, but I had fun swinging for three on turn 1 several times.
You’ve probably also noticed some of my card choices, too. Let me explain.
Vitality Charm can do crazy tricks like instantly create a 1/1 token that kills an oncoming Slith Firewalker. It also gives Trample to a creature that’s being blocked. One time, at band camp, I won a game doing that. Instant-timed Trample is a neat combat trick.
Mtenda Lion, though? It’s a 2/1 for one freakin’ (i.e. Green) mana. Yeah, anyone playing Blue can stop it up. Oh, well. That’s what sideboards are for. In the meantime, I can be swinging for four on turn 2 if I can get a Rancor on it.
If you have to ask about Sandstorm, you don’t understand Goblins.
The worst choice was probably Reprisal. I was expecting a lot more beef. Spiritmongers, Jitte-pumped creatures, maybe, oh, I dunno, a dragon or two. No such luck. When I lost game three to Jonathan’s Red deck, I was holding two Reprisals. That’s what I get for thinking. Next time, those Reprisals move to the sideboard for the Acridians and a fourth Tangle Wire.
Bottom lining it, I’d suggest you see what you can do about getting your local tournament organizer to let you play some Legacy. Sure, you might run into Landstill or Goblins. Luckily, there are cards to deal with all of that.
I’m sorry that this piece isn’t as funny or profound as it usually is. As you might know, I went to college in New Orleans. Even though I was only there for four years, it’s always felt more like home than anywhere else. The devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina have bothered me in a way that I can’t really comprehend yet. While no one to whom I was close still lives in the city – they all moved after graduation or after going to graduate school – their families still do. Moreover, the city itself is a living, breathing entity like no other city that I’ve ever been in except for New York. You often hear filmmakers say things like “The city is another character” when talking about New York. The same is true for New Orleans.
Hopefully, next week, I can be a bit more lighthearted and fun again. In the meantime, show me how great of an audience you really are, and donate something – time, money, clothes – to one of the various Katrina relief funds.
Thanks,
Chris Romeo