{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.}
Tomorrow (presuming that I stay on my regular publishing schedule), we’ll be fighting for our Regionals lives. [I focused on Regionals articles only on Friday, so pushed Chris to Monday. – Knut] I’ll be playing White Skies and hoping that no one sits down across from me with Shrines. Most of us will be struggling to win more than we lose, but a chosen few will be slinging cardboard for good money.
Big whoop. I’m ready for block season. In Summer 2005, that means Kamigawa Block Constructed (a.k.a. KBC). Not Champions Block, mind you, but Kamigawa Block. This is not Champions Block. I don’t care if Aaron Forsythe, Randy Buehler, and Richard Garfield all call it “Champions Block,” it’s not. It’s Kamigawa Block. Geez, oh, Pete, the word Kamigawa is in the name of every set, just as Urza was in the name of every set in Urza’s Block. (Of course, we could carry this too its illogical extreme since the word “of” is also in the name of each KBC set. Maybe we should try to get people to call this the Of Kamigawa Block . . . . Nah.)
What? You don’t care about the name? All you care about is the cards? Oh, no no no no no no no. Names are very important. Charlize Theron is movie starlet. Mildred Footfunk, well, do you really wanna see what she looks like in lingerie?
Cards? Hold yer nuggets, son. I’m gettin’ there.
Normally, I eschew (“gesundheit”) looking at Block Constructed decks before the third set is released for two reasons. First and foremost, I feel that building decks from a partial block forces me into closing my mind. When the third set comes out, instead of seeing what new decks I can build, I simply see what cards fit into existing decks. Not very good for the creative juices. Second, only the Pro Tour Playas ever got to play sanctioned tournaments using only the first two sets of a block. I’m not one of those. Besides, no one really looked at the two-set block decks for us scrubs. Except, of course, for Zvi. On the flip side, Zvi’s writings can shape a format like no one else’s can. He could suggest a mono-Artifact deck for KBC, and half the people who show up at your next KBC tourney will be playing it. Why tease myself, though?
Then, Affinity was banned in March. No one around here wanted to keep playing that boring Standard format between the first and the twentieth of March, and very few folks voted for Extended. That was when Joe and Kerri, our local tournament organizers, suggested sanctioned KBC tourneys until the Affinity bannings kicked in. Huh? Really? We could play sanctioned events with just two sets even though we weren’t Pros? I didn’t know we could. We never had before. I guess previous TO’s didn’t think anyone would show up for those tourneys. In March of this year, we did, though, for three weekends.
We had a blast with our decks. Of course, this was weeks before PT: Philadelphia. We found mono-Blue Ninjas to bee too slow in block (no Ornithopter). Mono-Black Rat Ninjas and mono-Black Kami-Shift looked unstoppable until they ran into the Shrine deck. And, of course, there were Snakes.
This first From Right Field column on KBC, though, isn’t about any of those decks. It’s about a mono-Red deck that has some serious game against the PT: Philadelphia decks. The question then becomes what does Saviors add to the mix for this deck? (I know. I know. I said I hate doing that, just modifying a two-set block deck for all three sets. This one is just so good.)
The deck was born from a desire to beat the PT Philly decks, especially the Hana Kami–Gifts Ungiven deck. To do that, you have to know how that deck wins. Like many control decks, the three-color Gifts deck often gets very low on life before it stabilizes and then dominates. Specifically, this deck gets a nice lil’ combo going whereby it can cast Ethereal Haze every turn, Splicing Soulless Revival onto the Haze. The Spliced Revival brings back Hana Kami which, in turn, can be sacrificed to get back the Ethereal Haze. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Once that engine gets going, you’ll never deal combat damage again, unless you have a Nezumi Graverobber or Reito Lantern on board.
So, I got together with Joe and Charles, and we asked the question: could we build a deck in KBC that didn’t rely on creatures to deal the final points of damage? When you ask a question like that, you’re almost certainly directing yourself to Red, absent a spell such as Mirrodin Block’s Consume Spirit.
Charles had been playing a mono-Red deck during our KBC tourneys that seemed thisclose to winning. Invariably, a Blademane Baku with sixty-gajillon counters on it would break through for the win. However, the Red Baku’s tiny back end sometimes made that impossible. A burn spell was often needed to clear the way, or a flipped Cunning Bandit that allowed him to steal a potential blocker. Still, the Red weenies didn’t seem to be able to go all the way. They wouldn’t end the game. However, it was obvious that the skeleton was there for a winning deck because of how close he would get.
That’s when we began looking at nothing but straight burn with a few creatures that could act as something other than simply creatures (e.g. Hearth Kami which is also artifact destruction). From Champions and Betrayers, these were the burn spells that seemed useful:
Lave Spike and her partner {Shark Boy} Glacial Ray
Yamabushi’s Flame
Ire of Kaminari
First Volley
Flames of the Blood Hand
Torrent of Stone
Yamabushi’s Storm (don’t dismiss this right away; it can wreck Snakes)
Obviously, we’d have to also go with Sensei’s Divining Top. Red doesn’t like losing steam. The Top can help reduce the chances of that happening, although it can’t prevent it altogether. Just imagine what happens when the top three cards are all lands, and you don’t need anymore.
Since we wanted to be able to win even if the creatures couldn’t deal damage, the deck’s spells would be mostly burn. However, some creatures would have to make the cut. First of all, Hearth Kami and Frostling are efficient, aggressive creatures that can sometimes swing for a few points of damage. Second, they are utility creatures. For a final slot of creatures, Joe wanted to go with some mix of Zo-Zu the Punisher, Kumano, Master Yamabushi, and Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot. I would be independently testing my deck online. Since I had none of those rares, I went with Ember-Fist Zuberas.
Ire of Kaminari and Torrent of Stone ended up being too mana intensive for the deck and, often, not very useful even when I did have the mana. After about the fourth time that I spent four mana on the Ire and got a whopping two damage (“woo hoo!”), I knew it would be cut. At the same time, Torrent almost never got Spliced because the deck couldn’t handle losing that many Mountains. This, then, is what I started testing most fervently online:
Disco Inferno (“Burn, Baby, Burn”), V.1.0
22 Lands
21 Mountain
1 Shinka, the Blood-soaked Keep
12 Creatures
4 Frostling
4 Hearth Kami
4 Ember-Fist Zubera
26 Other Spells
4 Lava Spike
4 Glacial Ray
4 First Volley
2 Yamabushi’s Storm
4 Yamabushi’s Flame
4 Flames of the Blood Hand
4 Honden of Infinite Rage
I’m sure you noticed that I have no Tops. That’s because, at the time I started testing this, I had no Tops online. I threw in the Honden because it was permanent damage. Man, oh, man, did it turn out to be good.
Joe’s version dropped the Zuberas and First Volleys for the other two Yamabushi’s Storms (he felt that Snakes would be prevalent in large enough numbers to main deck all four), three Zo-Zu, two Ishi-Ishi, and a Kumano. I tested an early version of my deck with a single copy of Soul of Magma since it costs the same to cast as Kumano. I rarely had the five mana needed to cast it, and, when I did, I wouldn’t have had enough mana left to activate Kumano’s ability even once. Moreover, when I could get a five-mana creature out, the game never made it to my next turn, or, rather, it did get there but it would have been over anyway, thanks to the other burn spells in hand. In other words, I had no great hope for using Kumano.
Over the next couple of weeks, I kept testing my online version while Joe and a couple of our playtest buddies kept testing theirs. Why would anyone work so hard on a deck that would be obsolete in a couple of weeks? Believe it or not, on June 11th, there was a Grand Prix Trial in Knoxville that was Kamigawa Block Constructed. Yes, before Saviors was legal.
Disco Inferno was killing the Gifts Ungiven deck, as expected. The two decks that Joe and I really feared were the Legends deck that could get Kodama of the North Tree out on turn 4 (this deck can only kill the KNT by blocking it) and Snakes. Not only is a horde of Snakes a bad thing when backed up by Seshiro or his kids, the Snakes deck can also get Godo quickly. It’s essentially game if Godo gets a Dragon’s Fang or Jitte. Killing the Dragon Fang is next to impossible while the lifegain from the Jitte is horrendous for Disco Inferno.
Sadly, those two decks – especially Snakes – did a number on Joe and the boys at the GP Trial. They had arrived with Cadillac dreams and left with Yugo realities. (To be fair to Joe, all of his matches ended 1-2. Had he gotten a slightly different draw or not had to mulligan in one of each of those “2,” he could easily have been undefeated.)
Despite this – and because of my hard head – I wasn’t about to give up on the deck. It had done too well for me in the Tournament Practice room online. However, I needed to be able to answer one fundamental question: was the Honden of Infinite Rage helping the deck that much more than the Sensei’s Divining Top would? The only way to tell was to do some trading and get some Tops.
I didn’t see any significant change in numbers after switching the Hondens for the Tops. What I saw was a difference in the ways that I won and lost. Wins with the Top version were fast and furious. Once I hit three or four lands, the Top made sure that I kept hitting business spells. Of course, the losses occurred when the Top didn’t do anything except waste time as I rearranged three lands. The Honden version was able to win longer games since it had a permanent source of damage. The games that it lost, though, were ones in which the Top would have been useful to dig down to business spells more quickly.
Enter Saviors
The GP trail was over. Any KBC decks would include Saviors. It was time to get looking at how those cards might affect the deck. I went to ask The Gatherer what Red cards might help this deck. Sadly, there isn’t any maindeck help for this deck in Saviors. The cheap cards like Glitterfang and Godo’s Irregulars aren’t for this deck. Those cards are for decks that plan on winning by beating. Disco Inferno deals combat damage only incidentally. Even Akki Underling wasn’t good enough. Again, he only works in decks that want to swing for the win. Besides, a Red deck should never have seven cards in hand. If it does, it should be able to win simply by throwing those seven cards directly at the opponent.
In fact, the best card from Saviors for this deck is Jiwari, the Earth Aflame, and it’s really a sideboard card for Snakes. Oh, but can it wreck Snakes. Sadly, it takes a lot of mana to do that job, but it can be done.
About this time, I spoke to Joe again. I asked him what he thought the biggest problem with the deck was. “I had no way to shuffle if the top three cards were all useless.” We discussed a Red and Green version of the deck using Sakura-Tribe Elder (in place of the Ember-Fist Zuberas in my deck) to enable shuffling the deck. It didn’t work. The mana was too hinky. You see, the deck wants lots and lots of Red. For example, it needs 1RR to cast Lava Spike with Glacial Ray on turn three. However, the Elder is Green, and, while Green is the color of mana searching, too much Green hoses the Red. No matter how I switched the mana, I couldn’t get it to work.
King Solomon’s Answer
Then, it struck me. Why not use both the Top and the Honden? The Honden isn’t something you want to draw in multiples, and the Top isn’t any good after the first one. So, I started testing this:
Disco Inferno, V.2.0
22 Lands
21 Mountain
1 Shinka, the Blood-soaked Keep
12 Creatures
4 Frostling
4 Hearth Kami
4 Ember-Fist Zubera
26 Other Spells
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Lava Spike
4 Glacial Ray
4 First Volley
4 Yamabushi’s Flame
4 Flames of the Blood Hand
3 Honden of Infinite Rage
(Again, if you expect to see an inordinate number of Snakes at your KBC tourneys, make the First Volleys into Yamabushi’s Storms.)
I knew that this would be the version when I started getting people conceding matches to me after the first game. When they don’t want to try to win games two and three, you know you’re onto something. Still, Snakes was a problem. So, I had to decide on a sideboard.
15 Sideboard
4 Yamabushi’s Storm
3 Jiwari, the Earth Aflame
4 Nine-Ringed Bo
4 Sideswipe
Obviously, with no Saviors cards online, I had to test this the old-fashioned way. It seemed that the best sideboard strategy was to drop the Hondens for Jiwaris and the First Volleys for the Yamabushi’s Storms. At first, it didn’t work very well. I was losing at the same clip as before sideboarding (65%). Then, I realized that I needed more mana to use the Jiwari properly. I began using the Top not to get more business spells (unless they were direly needed) but to get land. With Jiwari, the deck wants six or seven lands.
With this new Top approach, all of a sudden, the winning percentage flipped to almost 60% in favor of Disco Inferno. I wish it was a greater shift, but Snakes is Some Good, I tell you what.
What About Shrines?
Um, yeah, about the Shrines deck. See, it’s kinda like this. If they get an early Honden of Cleansing Fire (a.k.a. Honden of Annoying Lifegain), you can pretty much pack it up and go home. There is one exception to that rule. If you were smart enough to hold any Flames of the Blood Hand, you can beat Shrines. You must cast the FBH during their upkeep with the lifegain still on the stack. If that keeps you in the game long enough to throw more burn during their turn or yours, you can win. (My only wins against the Shrine deck have come this way.) Other than that, you simply hope that they don’t get the White Shrine early. Luckily, many sub-optimal versions of the Shrines deck only run three of the four big ones (Red, White, Green, and Blue) on the theories that (a) they’re Legends and (b) “I’ll draw one.”
And, no, Aura Barbs is not an answer. Unless the Barbs kills the Shrine player, they will gain back on their turn life equal to what the Barbs took. Feh.
There you have it. A mono-Red KBC deck that only runs three rares and can beat everything but Snakes, Kodama of the North Tree, and Shrines.
Whadya want? The things costs like twelve bucks to build.
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. Please, welcome back from the ’80’s, Kajagoogoo!
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-AOL-dot-com