{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.}
Goodbye, Mister Grinch
When Thurl Ravenscroft died in May of this year, headline writers fell all over themselves pointing out how “grrrr-reat” he was. I can’t really blame them. It was an easy angle. After all, Ravenscroft was the voice of Tony the Tiger. The fact that he will always be remembered is nice, but it also depresses me in a way. You see, to me, Ravenscroft should be remembered as the man who sang the songs in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966). (Sadly, due to a production mistake/oversight, Ravenscroft didn’t get any on-screen credit for his singing, and many people still think it was Boris Karloff who sang.)
Ravenscroft’s two most memorable gigs couldn’t be farther apart, philosophically. Tony the Tiger is a mascot for a sugar-coated children’s cereal, and he exists only to shill for the product. On the other hand, The Grinch is one of the best morality plays in the history of written language concerning the pitfalls of confusing the gift with the thought behind the gift and the reason for the gift giving. It reminds us that ideals are more important, stronger, and longer lasting than stuff and things. It’s a moral that applies any time of the year, not just Christmas, and it applies to innumerable parts of our lives.
If you can’t tell, I love How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It’s my favorite animated Christmas special/movie. And, man, what great music. “You’re a Mean One, Mister Grinch” is a song I can listen to at any time of the year. I can hear it now:
You’re a rotter, Mister Grinch.
You’re the king of sinful sots.
Your heart’s a dead tomato splotched
With moldy purple spots,
Mister Gri-inch.
Your soul is an appalling dump heap overflowing
With the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.
(That’s right. McKeown gives you hip, Dresden Dolls lyrics. I give you forty-year-old lyrics from a cartoon.)
I’m not going to do in this column what so many of the obituary writers did. It would be easy, though. Last week’s deck was a complete failure. As I said at the end of that column, I wanted to be aggressive and say “grrrrr.” Today’s KBC deck is a Green and Red deck. That’s usually written as G/R. G/R decks are usually aggressive with undercosted creatures brought out even earlier than usual thanks to mana acceleration and accompanied by Red burn to clear the way for attackers. When I play one of these aggressive decks, I think “grrrrrr” as I head into the Red Zone. So, how can I not think of Ravenscroft when I’m playing an aggressive, G/R deck?
Nevermore!
(Sorry, I couldn’t let that one go.)
The Fuel for the Ire deck, as I’ve already said, was horrendous. What really hurt was that I later found that Greg Hogan finished in the Top 8 with an Ire deck at the Little Rock PTQ on July 2nd. (Way to go, Greg!) Okay, it was different from mine, but the theory was the same. This week, I wanted to do some damage to my opponents. I knew just the colors that would help me.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece that included a G/R deck that tried to use the double-Soulshifting power of Forked-Branch Garami. I called the deck Fork You because I’m as clever as Salma Hayek is hot. It was almost completely KBC-legal except for Grab the Reins in the maindeck and Scrabbling Claws in the sideboard. I’ve played it in two tournaments and done quite well, though not well enough to finish first in either. (I blame my lack of skill as a player and sideboarder more than the deck.)
When we started playing KBC tourneys at the end of June, I knew that at some point I’d want to revisit Fork You. A couple of weeks ago, I met my friend Joe at the local coffee house (“All the Caffeine and Unshaven Legs You Can Stand!”), and we tested for the next day’s tournament. I brought Fork You in which I had simply lifted Grab the Reins for Blind with Anger.
It seemed to be a logical and easy switch. Both cost 3R and allowed me to take a creature. While there was no Entwine feature on BwA, it is Arcane. I could Splice Glacial Ray onto it. The downside, though, is that Blind with Anger can’t take Legendary creatures. Game after game, Joe showed me why that blew greazy chunks.
“Horobi’s Whisper on your Hearth Kami. Swing with the Prisoner. Any responses?”
“Yeah, I’d like to respond by saying that I wish I could use one of these two useless BwA’s to take the Yukora!“
Joe also made an inspired suggestion. Use Cunning Bandit in the Grab the Reins/Blind with Anger slot. The flipped Bandit (a.k.a. Azamuki, Treachery Incarnate) can steal anything and is a 5/2 to boot. I loaded this version up in Magic Online and did some testing. This new version was much better but still lacked some punch. It needed evasion beyond just stealing a blocker or burning it out.
Then, while researching Greg Hogan’s Ire deck, I saw Martin Caillouet’s mono-Green deck that finished fourth in the same tourney. I was struck by a couple of things about Martin’s deck. First, there were no Kodama’s Reaches. What? How can that be? Aren’t Green decks required to run those now? I guess not. He also eschewed Sensei’s Divining Top. Huh? I guess he just wants to play beefy creatures.
The next thing I noticed was the inclusion of Kodama’s Might, Unchecked Growth, and Kodama of the South Tree. Okay, now there’s a nice li’l bit of synergy that will give the desired evasion: Trample. I just had to figure out how to work those into my G/R deck.
Actually, it wasn’t that hard. If Martin could do without Kodama’s Reach and Sensei’s Divining Top, so could I. (I hope.) I still needed more room, though. Commune with Nature had to go. It was a tough decision. I felt like a judge on one of those insipid contest shows like American Idol or Top Model.
“Well, it was a tough choice. Commune, you are suu-uch a great one-mana play. On turn 1, you can grab me Sakura-Tribe Elder or Hearth Kami. Later, you’re good at getting Kodama of the North Tree. It’s just that I think Kodama’s Might is better right now. <The crowd gasps.> It acts as a counterspell against burn spells. It can help my guys win in combat. It can end the game if a guy is unblocked. Best of all, though, it’s a Splicing enabler and can also be Spliced onto some other Arcane spell. And it costs the same to cast or Splice. So, I have to go with Kodama’s Might.”
The New Deck
As I did the preliminary testing to tweak the numbers of creatures and spells and the land mix, I noticed something very, very hot.
Forked-Branch Garami can Soulshift Kodama of the South Tree back to your hand? Woo-hoo!
That ended up being huge on more than one occasion. The FBG was very good before these changes. Being able to bring back a Pain Kami and a Hearth Kami all at once is A Very Good Thing. I had plays where I would actually sac a Pain Kami to kill an opposing critter while also popping off the Hearth Kami to kill an O-Naginata or an Umezawa’s Jitte simply because the Garami was about to die. It allowed me to have some serious card and board advantage. Now, I could start bringing back a house and a half that pumped my guys and gave the trample.
After much testing, online and with actual people over diet soft drinks and salads, I came up with this KBC deck that I call And the Horse You Rode in On. (You have to kinda look at the two deck names together.)
Creatures (25)
- 3 Kodama of the South Tree
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 4 Forked-Branch Garami
- 3 Cunning Bandit
- 4 Pain Kami
- 3 Kodama of the North Tree
- 4 Hearth Kami
Lands (23)
Spells (12)
Sideboard
A Look Behind the Numbers
I really wanted to get four Kodama of the South Trees into the deck. The problem is that, no matter what I did, they were still Legends. There are several theories on Legends, as far as I can tell:
1) Use Only One Copy of the Legend in Question – This seems to work when the Legend in question is hard to get into play and/or tough to kill once it gets there. I don’t like this theory. Sure, there are decks that can search for a particular Legend. (Time of Need comes to mind.) If it dies, though, you’re S.O.L. Unless, of course, you can somehow reanimate it.
2) Use Two Copies of the Legend in Question – This seems like the right starting place for Legends (Gifts Ungiven-toolbox types with reanimation aside). If they’re tough to get into play (e.g. Akroma, Angel of Wrath: casting cost 8WWWWWWWW) or tough to neutralize once there (e.g. Visara, the Dreadful), I like two copies. For example, set the Wayback Machine to Onslaught Block Constructed. This was before the Kamigawa-Era Legend Rule. Once Akroma hit, there was almost nothing that anyone could do about it. (Of course, we used Pacifism in our B/W Slivers deck, and that worked very well.) It took a while to get out, though. Running three was risky since your hand could be clogged up with Akromas. Visara was almost as bad. Other than tons of Red removal (Goblin Sharpshooter, anyone?), there weren’t a lot of ways to stop her. Cruel Revival was one of the few one-for-one trades with Visara. In a case like that, two’s fine.
3) Use Three Copies of the Legend in Question – This is where I feel that most of the Legends that I would play fall. I want them as quickly as possible, and, yet, I don’t want to have them clogging up my hand. This is especially true of Legends that can be fairly easily dealt with like the four-toughness Kodama of the South Tree and the two-toughness Azamuki, Treachery Incarnate (the flipped Cunning Bandit). It also seems to be a good number even for the untouchable Kodama of the North Tree. While your opponent can’t Rend Spirit him, you also can’t save him with Unchecked Growth. Many times, I’ve had my KNT taken out on the attack by Samurai of the Pale Curtain helping Hand of Honor.
4) Use Four Copies of the Legend in Question – This is what you do when you really want the Legend quickly or you can do tricks with it. For example, if you own four of Kokusho, the Evening Star, you want four in your deck. The faster you get to that second one, the faster you can make your opponent lose ten life. Some Legends you want four of in the deck because of other tricks. Kagemaro, for example, gets bigger with each Kagemaro you have in your hand. You’ll probably be popping him off at some point, though, to work some mass removal. It’s nice to have another in hand, ready to hit the board when that happens.
I guess there’s a fifth option, too. That is, you don’t use any Legends. However, that’s not part of this discussion since I was looking at Kodama of the North Tree, Kodama of the South Tree, and Cunning Bandit/ Azamuki, Treachery Incarnate.
As often happens lately, I did most of my testing online. The deck did quite well. I wasn’t having any mana problems, mulligans were few and far between, and I was beating some of the so-called Tier One KBC decks like Black Hand. So, I packed this up for Friday night’s tournament.
Kinda.
You see, I only had one Unchecked Growth. How does that happen? How do I have six Stampeding Serows (one foil!) and only one Unchecked Growth? It’s not the law of averages, I tell you that. It’s just God pulling a practical joke on me again. If I had needed Serows instead, I would have had only one of those. Joe said he’d bring me the other three. To hold their places – and just in case he didn’t make it – I’d need an actual KBC-legal card.
That’s when I looked at Shinen of Life’s Roar again. Hmmmm . . . an instant-timed, uncounterable Lure. It can also be brought back by the Forked-Branch Garami? “That’ll do for now,” I thought.
I played a couple of test games before the tourney. Shinen of Life’s Roar came up big in both. Even after Joe showed with the Unchecked Growths, I decided to go with two UGs and two Shinens.
I’ve Been Punk’d!
For the second week in a row, my deck punked out on me. Last week was understandable. The deck was essentially a janky combo deck. This one, though, was a solid G/R beatdown deck that had worked quite well in a previous incarnation. As I said above, mana had not been an issue, either in amount or color. Then, round one started.
Round 1 vs. Daniel Cooper playing White Weenie
I played Daniel in round one last, week, too. Hmmmmm… He had the same White Weenie deck but without the Masako, the Humorless-es. Booo!
Digression: A lot of people have asked why I haven’t been crowing about White Weenie being good in Black or even playing it. Frankly, I’m tired of it because it’s so good right now. I’ve spent years trying to convince people that White beatdown decks were viable in whatever format it was. I couldn’t do it because my decks were never good enough. Why? Because it was just me and one other guy in Upper Elbonia working on the deck. Now that everyone is singing its praises, it gets tuned regularly by a cast of thousands. I was going to bust out my new special tech for helping White Weenie over the top against other KBC weenie decks, that tech being Celestial Kirin. Unfortunately, Mike Flores – a better writer and player than I am – already beat me to the punch.
Back at round one, game one, I had to mulligan to six to get two lands. I got neither a third land nor a Sakura-Tribe Elder before he got to four lands. Once White Weenie can set out two threats a turn, it’s game over.
For game two, since I hadn’t seen any Equipment in game one, I took out three Hearth Kami’s for the Arashis. This is where I made a critical decision. Was it a mistake? You tell me. (You would anyway.) My seven-card hand had zero lands. No-brainer there. Mulligan to six. At six, I found three Mountains, Hearth Kami, Cunning Bandit, and Kodama of the South Tree.
Do you keep that?
I did. I figured I had turn 2 and three plays that I could make, good ones at that. I’d surely get a Forest by turn 4. Besides, I was sure that, had I thrown this back, my five-card hand would have been awful, forcing me down to four.
It didn’t work. My deck kept feeding me Mountains and Green spells. Cooper buried me. I was now on a five-match losing streak, ten straight games. This one hurt most off all. It wasn’t a loss with an experimental deck that someone else claimed was good. This was with my own deck that I had seen just barrel over people.
Round Two vs. Adam playing Snakes
Why did it have to be snakes? I was worried about this deck more than any other. The only mass removal I had was for fliers. If I couldn’t keep the Snakes in control, this would get ugly fast. I was able to match him nearly creature for creature except for those Snake tokens. The thing was, he couldn’t overrun me. Between the Pain Kamis, Elders, Cunning Bandits, and Kodamas, he couldn’t really afford to attack. Half of his tokens would get through; the other half would die.
This allowed me to do something I had never done before. I was able to wait until I had five counters on the Bandit – yes, five – before flipping him. I got the Bandit flipped just in time for Adam to drop Seshiro. Again, despite have superior numbers and quality, he couldn’t swing. I’d take Seshiro, stealing his bonus and making his Snakes back into 1/1 dorks that would mostly die in combat.
This standoff ended when I drew the Shinen of Life’s Roar. I was able to swing with everything, forcing him to block an Elder and dealing all twenty damage in one fell swoop.
Finally, a win. And against a good player with a good deck.
For game two, I dropped the Hearth Kamis for the Reito Lanterns. The match is much more winnable when Sosuke’s Summons doesn’t keep popping back up. I won game two simply because I had more and bigger guys. While I got out a Lantern, it didn’t matter. He never cast a Summons.
Yeah. I had a match win. I was underwhelmed.
Round Three vs. Joe with U/B Reanimator
With no disruption on my side, my only hope was a quick win. It didn’t happen in either game. (Again, since he asked, I won’t be spilling the beans on this deck. Thus, the shorter match recap.)
Round Four vs. Ed Greer with Black Hand
Ed won the PTQ that was held for PT-LA in Knoxville. He was playing the same deck. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t. And the Horse You Rode in On had been beating Black Hand decks quite handily (pun intended). With Hearth Kami to kill Equipment and the Garami to bring it back, the Jittes and O-Naginatas hadn’t been a problem. The beef wasn’t really a problem, either, since my beef was as big or bigger or, in the case of the Pain Kami, could bring down much bigger guys. Yet, I still lost 2-1.
Another Horrible Week
Here I was. Another week, another promising KBC deck that flopped like Point Pleasant. I went back online to see if I could tweak the deck. Looking back at my notes, I kept coming up with this question: could it be that the deck really did need Kodama’s Reach? Martin Caillouet’s deck didn’t use it. Of course, his was mono-Green. I swapped out the Unchecked Growths for Reaches and headed into the Tourney Practice room on MTGO.
The results were promising. Of course, I lost the element of surprise in that there was no Trample from the Unchecked Growth. On the other hand, there was still the Trample from the South Tree’s triggered ability. I ended up going 12-10 online over the weekend with this new version. Some highlights:
1) Getting Cunning Bandit flipped with three counters against a Black Hand deck. I simply kept taking the creature wearing the Jitte after it had attacked. It left him with a tapped creature that dealt no combat damage and couldn’t block.
2) Swinging with a 7/6 Trampling Hearth Kami thanks to Kodama’s Might spliced onto Kodama’s Might with a Kodama of the South Tree on board.
3) Even better, my opponent blocked the South Tree with his Bleeder and his Nezumi Graverobber. Dude, I just played Kodama’s Might spliced onto Kodama’s Might. I have one in my hand! Before damage was on the stack, I made the KST a 6/6. This, in turn, turned the Hearth Kami into an 8/7 Trampler.
4) Against a WW deck, I blocked a creature with a Pain Kami. My opponent tapped out to save the attacker using Eight-and-a-Half Tails’ ability. I used the Pain Kami to kill the 8.5 Tails.
5) Against a mono-Blue deck, Pain Kami again to the rescue. My opponent cast Meloku, leaving two Islands up. If s/he made it to the next turn, I was going to lose. I had to cast the Pain Kami, hoping s/he didn’t have Hisoka’s Defiance. S/he didn’t. I popped it off immediately, killing Meloku. S/he left two 1/1 Illusion tokens, but they couldn’t get the job done quickly enough and
6) Hearth Kami recursion killing all four Jittes that a Black Hand deck dropped against me. I killed the first with a Kami from my hand. The second Hearth Kami drawn from the top of the deck before he could swing with anything wearing the Jitte. Forked-Branch Garamis brought ’em back.
Epilogue
I must confess that this piece was one of the toughest I’ve written. Every time I started a version, someone else would harsh my mellow. Let’s take a look inside my fevered mind . . . .
The First Cut
“Geez, this White Weenie thing isn’t working as well as I’d hoped. The other weenie decks are matching it. How can I get over on them? Let me check the Oracle for Kamigawa Block again. Araba Mothrider? Probably not. Blessed Breath? Maybe. It is Arcane. Wait a second . . . What does Celestial Kirin say again? Holy Wicked Weasel! I can blow up their whole world with a freakin’ Otherworldly Journey! Excelle . . . Oh, geez, would you look at that. Mike Flores just posted a piece about that today. Flock… What do I do now?”
The Second Cut
“Well, mono-Black does look interesting. There are a lot of powerful creatures and spells in the common and uncommon slots. I can’t believe that no one’s using Kiku’s Shadow, though. What doesn’t that kill in this block? Seshiro, the Anointed? That card is outst . . . oh, clap, not again. Oh, well, I guess I can work on the G/R Forked-Branch Garami deck and port it to block.”
The Final Cut
“I don’t believe this. I finally figure out how this can function, I work in Shinen of Life’s Roar, and Jay Mugyourmom-Sellyourcar is modifying the Soulshift deck on MagictheGathering.com? I can’t get a break!”
In the end, I went with this since I actually played it in a tourney. However, I only have three more KBC pieces to work, and I don’t want to leave you budget folks without a good, cheap deck. For the last three weeks, then, I’m going to look at some of the top KBC decks and modify them to make them cheap (i.e. drop the Jittes).
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. Please, don’t touch anything. This is a crime scene.
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-AOL-dot-com