{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 Wrath of God, City of Brass, 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.}
“Now is the Time on Sprockets When We Dance!”
This is the first full weekend without Vial/Ravager Affinity in Standard, and I, among thousands of others, can’t wait. While Tooth and Nail decks and G/B Control decks should be the first ones to rule the day, the slower environment means that other decks can finally show some promise.
Of course, when we internet Magic writers talk about the “slower environment,” it may be that we’re simply talking about it being slower by a turn or two. Still, that can be enough for some decks to strut their stuff. One that I’ve been playing for a while is the Cogs & Gears deck that Robert Yamamoto piloted to a 3rd/4th-place finish at the 2004 Nevada State Championships. Already I can read some of your minds. “Big deal. It was Nevada.” I got news for you, folks. Finishing that high at any big tourney means you’ve done well. Besides, I hear they know something about playing cards in that state.
Robert lost only two matches that day. One was to Affinity in the fourth round. The other was to Affinity in the semi-finals. Sensing a pattern yet? Along the way, he beat R/G Freshmaker, G/B Control (twice) and Tooth and Nail (twice). His deck looked like this:
24 Lands
14 Island
8 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Great Furnace
12 Creatures
4 Trinket Mage
4 Pristine Angel
4 Auriok Salvagers
24 Other Spells
4 Condescend
4 Serum Visions
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Scrabbling Claws
1 Sunbeam Spellbomb
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Conjurer’s Bauble
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Wayfarer’s Bauble
2 Ghostly Prison
1 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Echoing Truth
15 Sideboard
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Yosei, the Morning Star
1 Bribery
2 March of the Machines
2 Annul
1 Acquire
1 Relic Barrier
1 Pulse of the Fields
A month later, I was playing the deck in an Extended tourney. Yes, really. A cheap (five maindeck rares, another seven in the sideboard), rogue deck that was essentially a Mirrodin Block deck. I made the finals against an Affinity deck. That’s right. Two decks that were almost purely Mirrodin Block in the finals of an Extended tourney. That is so wrong. Of course, I lost.
As you can probably figure, Robert and I are both excited about Affinity leaving Standard. Maybe this deck can finally shine. Of course, there have to be some changes. Not many, but some. First, the Great Furnace has to go since it’s no longer legal. No more using Trinket Mage to get that artifact land to power up the Pyrite Spellbomb and the Engineered Explosives. Wayfarer’s Bauble can do that just fine, though. Instead, it needs to be a Swamp. Now, the Explosives can get up to four.
Clearly, March of the Machines isn’t needed anymore nor is Relic Barrier or Acquire. That frees up four sideboard slots. Annul looks like it should come out, but there are other artifacts that will be running around. In addition, Annul counters enchantments, too. Robert thinks that Wrath is better in the main deck than the Ghostly Prisons, which are best against weenie decks. He also suggested adding two more Engineered Explosives to the sideboard since White Weenie decks running Samurai of the Pale Curtain are a problem for the Explosives. With an SPC in play, you can’t get back the Explosives using the Salvagers because the Explosives won’t be in the graveyard.
That means that the deck would look like this:
24 Lands
14 Island
8 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
12 Creatures
4 Trinket Mage
4 Pristine Angel
4 Auriok Salvagers
24 Other Spells
4 Condescend
4 Serum Visions
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Scrabbling Claws
1 Sunbeam Spellbomb
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Conjurer’s Bauble
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Wayfarer’s Bauble
2 Wrath of God
1 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Echoing Truth
15 Sideboard
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Keiga, the Tide Star
1 Bribery
2 Ghostly Prison
2 Annul
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Pulse of the Fields
Robert also mentioned something about Cranial Extraction. As usual, if you have it, use it. If not, I’m not going to suggest in this column that you buy them.
However…
If you have, say, a birthday coming up, and your sweet Aunt Sadie says, “I’d like to spend $80 on you. What should I get you?” Say “Four Cranial Extractions, please!”
I’ve always liked the tool-box approach. It’s very versatile. It can pull your fat from the fire in numerous ways. It’s also like it’s pre-sideboarded for some decks. For example, let’s say you’re facing some, oh, I don’t know, mono-Black Soulshift deck that’s trying to kill you with Thief of Hope. “As if!” Trinket Mage up some Scrabbling Claws. If their graveyard is already so full that they can remove stuff without really hurting themselves, no worry. Use the Claws’ second activated ability, yank a particular card from their ‘yard, draw a card, and bring the Claws back with the Salvagers.
Have I mentioned how much I love this deck?
Playing the Deck:
The biggest thing to remember is that you have very few instants in the main deck. There are eight. Four of them (Condescend) require the other guy to do something first (except in extreme cases where you want to counter your own spell). So, only the single Thirst for Knowledge and the three Echoing Truths could reasonably be expected to be used on the other guy’s turn to untap the Pristine Angel(s).
Why bring this up? Because you won’t be doing a lot of “Ha HA!” combat tricks with these lovely ladies on your opponent’s turn. To get the protection bonus, you’ll have to do all the work on your turn. That’s not a tough thing to do in this deck, though. Swing with two Pristine Angels. No cards in hand for you to play in your post-combat main phase? Bring back a Sunbeam Spellbomb with the Salvagers, cast the Spellbomb, untap the Angels. Ta-daa!
Speaking of Echoing Truth, this card is your friend in a huge way. Not only can it deal with hordes of Beacon of Creation tokens, Snake tokens, or Spirit tokens, it can also help you dig more Cogs and Gears out of your deck. For example, you can use a single Echoing Truth to save any number of Trinket Mages from death, allowing you to recast them and dig more artifacts out of the deck. Brilliant!
Don’t forget the card-drawing activated-ability of the Spellbombs. With a Salvagers in play, a Spellbomb can be used to dig deep, deep, deep into your deck. Don’t hesitate to use that ability. Drawing cards is fun!
Save your Condescends when playing against some of the other tier one decks. I can’t stress that enough. This deck can deal with an awful lot of threats simply with the artifacts it has at hand. However, you do not want an Entwined Tooth and Nail resolving. Death Cloud is bad, too, although it may not be all that bad at certain times because of the tricks you can play with the Salvagers. Still, you’ll probably want to Condescend Death Cloud if you can.
Against a deck that uses its graveyard as a resource (which is pretty much anything that can support Eternal Witness), you need to get to Scrabbling Claws ASAP. Then wind that puppy up, and go.
Any sort of weenie rush deck, typically Red and/or Green, is going to require that you bring in Pulse of the Fields along with Ghostly Prison. If those decks aren’t mucking with their graveyards, drop the Claws. You can also drop the Conjurer’s Bauble and a Condescend. If they are using their ‘yards, keep the Claws and drop the C-Bauble and two Condescends. For White Weenie decks packing the Samurai of the Pale Curtain, the other two Engineered Explosives come in, too. For those, drop two more Condescends.
One last trick to think about, whether you find room in the main deck or bring it in from the sideboard, is Necrogen Spellbomb. Since the Spellbombs can be activated at any time, you can force your opponent to discard whatever they just drew. If they are down to no cards in hand, a Necrogen Spellbomb plus Auriok Salvagers can lock your opponent out of every drawing anything useful (other than instants they would want to cast during their draw step).
You’ll Never Work in This Town Again!
Poor Karstoderm. When Darksteel came out, Karsty (to his friends) looked like another great card in a long line of 5/5 Green creatures with a drawback for four mana (see Blastoderm, Emperor Crocodile, Jade Leech, et al). Sadly, for Karstoderm, this drawback was huge in a format in which some people were playing with nothing but artifact lands.
You: “Yes! A third-turn Karstoderm! Woo-hoo!”
Your Evil Affinity-Playing Opponent: “At the end of your turn, Vial out a Ravager. Your Karstoderm’s now just a 4/4. On my turn, play Seat of the Synod. Cast Frogmite for free. Cast Myr Enforcer for free. Cranial Plating. Wow, Karstoderm’s dead. And they said there wasn’t any removal in artifacts. Oh, yeah, Plate up my Ornithopter. Fly over for, I dunno, I can’t count that high.”
You: “I want my mommy . . . .”
YEAPO: “Heh. Me, too.”
Karstoderm’s looking to finally make a splash in the Standard pool. When he yells “Cannonball!” you’d better watch out. A third turn Karstoderm can easily be followed up by a fourth-turn Plow Under, a fifth-turn Eternal Witness (getting back the Plow Under), and a sixth-turn Plow Under. With Affinity out of the way, some people think that Green will take a back seat in Standard because its artifact kill complement (“4 Viridian Shaman / 4 Oxidize”) isn’t needed in the main deck. I think it actually opens Green up for being the top color. In fact as my friend Joe was pointing out, anything running Green can now get a third-turn Plow Under, a fourth-turn Eternal Witness to bring back the P.U., and a fifth-turn P.U. Of course, they could do that before, too. It’s just that Green just had to worry about Affinity running away with things. If you’re casting Plow Under and Eternal Witness, you don’t have much time to also play Oxidize and Viridian Shaman in those first four turns, too.
Ponder on that. Two Plow Unders in the first five turns. So, while the opponent is trying to recover from having to redraw all of those lands (and not having any in play), the G/X player can nearly be ready for a Tooth and Nail with Entwine, a Death Cloud that will essentially end the game, or any number of other horrific and/or wondrous things.
Of course, this is nothing new. Tooth and Nail and G/B Control decks have been doing well even in the face of Affinity. Now, though, the loss of Affinity means that the base of the deck can be opened up to include pretty much and other color with Green, including, as Kenneth Nagle pointed out so well, Green. In other words, if you want to make a great post-Affinity Standard deck, start with this:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Kodama’s Reach
4 Eternal Witness
4 Plow Under
Presuming you’re running twenty-four lands, that leaves four slots of cards to tinker with. Go wild.
Ted Likes “Canyu Genju?”
Enough folks made the same suggestion about this deck that I decided to try it. The suggestion was to drop one of each of the two Genjus (Genju of the Fields and Genju of the Falls) for two Sensei’s Divining Tops. Not only would it help smooth things, they said, it would give me artifacts to pitch to the Thirst for Knowledges in an extreme case. I say “extreme” because you don’t really want to pitch SDT’s. However, they allow you to do a great trick. You can activate the SDT. If there’s a Thirst anywhere in there, put it on top (no pun intended). Then, use the second activated ability of the Top, essentially having it switch places with the Thirst. Cast the Thirst, pitching the Top. You’re three cards deeper into the deck, and you got to keep the two other business spells.
In testing the Tops, I found that they worked just fine. Too fine, in fact. I was so happy to see them that I wanted to see one in every game. Problem was with only two in the deck, I only saw one about every other game, and some games it was way at the end. I then tried it with a full complement of four SDT’s, losing one Mana Leak (not good in the mid- and late game) and one Echoing Truth. And now I’m sold.
The Possibilities are Endless!
A couple of readers were intrigued by me being intrigued by the reprinting of Eradicate. I want to point these two guys out because they’re doing what I like to see: thinking outside of the box. Kevin Swafford pointed out that Lifespark Spellbomb can be used to animate the other guy’s land. Eradicate can then strip that land and all others with the same name from the deck.
Your Cost: Two cards and 3BBG
Meanwhile, Michael Graves pointed out that, as with the Lifespark Spellbomb, nowhere on the Genjus does it say that you have to cast the Genju on a land you control. So, drop the appropriate Genju on an opponent’s land, activate, and Eradicate.
Your Cost: Two cards and 4BBX (where “X” is the appropriately colored mana for the land you’re enchanting)
What I really like about these two ideas is that these guys have actually built decks around them and played them (or will soon be) in actual tournaments. You go, boyz!
Meanwhile, in the fora, SouthernKnight mentioned a very specific use for one Genju in the mirror match. If you’re playing Red, a Genju of the Spires plus a Vulshok Sorcerer, Rod of Ruin, or any pinger that doesn’t remove the creature from the game (e.g. Frostwielder or Nine-Ringed Bo) is reusable land destruction. Just Genju up the opposing Mountain, activate, and ping.
Rules Notes and General Observations from Around the World:
Echoing Truth vs. Genjus: You can’t cast Echoing Truth on a Genju-animated land. Heck, you can’t cast Echoing Truth on any land. The first part of Echoing Truth reads “Return target nonland permanent[.]” The Genju may be swinging, but it’s still a land. In addition, targeting the Genju itself does pretty much nothing except make your opponent recast the Genju. Once the activated ability has been, well, activated, the land is a creature with the appropriate abilities until the end of the turn, regardless of whether the Genju is on it or not.
Having said that, it can be a bit of a Jedi Mind Trick to say to your opponent “Whoa, cowboy. Before you attack with that thing, I’m gonna bounce your Genju.” S/he might think the land then can’t attack. You’re not under any legal obligation to tell him/her that it can. Moral and ethical, maybe, but not legal.
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner + Your Own Equipment = Nombo: Troll Ascetic can’t be the target of opponents’ spells or abilities. Which is mondo cool because you can put Loxodon Warhammer on it, but your opponent can’t Terror it. Nya nya! Kira, however, counters the first spell or ability that targets any of your guys each turn, regardless of who controls the spell or ability. That means that you have to try to equip the Loxodon Warhammer once, have it countered, and equip it a second time to get it to stick. This, of course, can be dicey. If your opponent can do anything to your guy, your attempt to equip it the first time now opens up the targetability floodgates. Just watch your backs.
Blademane Baku is a House and a Half: I lost a game to the Blademane Baku last weekend. I hadn’t read the card carefully enough. I though it got +1/+0 for each ki counter removed. I mean, heck, that would be bad enough. But +2/+0?!? Outrageous! So, on turn three, you can hit me with two Lava Spikes and swing with the Blademane Baku for five. That’s eleven damage on turn three. Ugly, just ugly. Luckily, he’s pretty fragile and my Honden of Infinite Rage took care of him in the other games.
Why Isn’t Nine-Ringed Bo in Your KBC Sideboard?: Okay, it may be a little early for most folks to be thinking about Kamigawa Block Constructed. The third set doesn’t get released until the beginning of June, over two months from now, and won’t be constructed legal for almost three months. I’ve been thinking about KBC it for a while, though, since I’ve had chances to play in two-set KBC tourneys. I’ve come to the conclusion that you have to find room for Nine-Ringed Bo in your sideboard. There are too many Soulshift tricks that can ruin your day. Thief of Hope is awful. Zuberas are nasty. And I think I heard something about Kokusho and the new Legend rule or something like that. Trust me. You’ll need to find room for three or four NRB’s in your sideboard. Not five, however.
Eradicate: is a sorcery. It’s not an instant. It’s a fan-freakin’-tastic card, but it’s not that good. You can’t cast it as a combat trick on your opponent’s turn. Heck, you can’t even cast it as a combat trick on your own turn . . . Charles.
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. Don’t miss the newest reality-show sensation, When Lingerie Models Attack . . . Other Lingerie Models!
Chris Romeo
CBRomeo-at-Travelers-dot-com
P.S. Sorry for the complete lack of cheesecaske shots this time. Here’s some gratuitous stuff here, here, here, here, and here.
