{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.}
When I left you last week, I was doing quite badly with a Black and White deck inspired by and built around Necrotic Sliver. Part of the reason was that I had run in directly into a gauntlet of tournament-winning decks. The other part was that the deck sucked.
I was in a bit of a pickle. I have called Necrotic Sliver one of the two best non-rare creatures in Planar Chaos. Of course, I had to build a deck to prove that point, or no one would believe it.
Which brings me to a mini-rant. Why is it that if I, Chris Romeo, he of no Pro Tour points, can’t make a card work in a deck then the card is no good? That makes no sense. If I can’t build a tourney-winning deck around a card, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the card is no good. Don’t get me wrong; the card might actually be really and truly awful. However, the reason for such a failure could also be that *gasp* I’m really and truly awful.
Over the past couple of years, when I get into a situation like this, I call in my friend Joe. Joe is one of the best deck doctors that I know. If he had his own show, it would probably be called Pimp My Deck. Since there are about sixteen other columns on the ‘net with that name, though, we’d probably call it something like Save My Deck! Joe always seems to have some insight into how you want a deck to work that escapes me. He also thinks of cards that I completely pass up.
One of Joe’s revelations went something like this. Necrotic Sliver screams control. Come on, man. It’s a living Vindicate. However, by getting so caught up in the whole Sliver thing, I had essentially built a beatdown deck that didn’t really beat down on anybody. Alternately, it was an aggro-control deck that was light on both aggro and control.
Joe suggested that I go more of the control route. Use the Necrotic Sliver’s ability as a sort of sub-theme while going more controlling with the deck as a whole. Joe also brought up two cards that weren’t in the deck, one of which I had already been considering and one of which I hadn’t even thought of.
The one I had already looked at was Debtors’ Knell. ed_ification had suggested it as part of his B/W Slivers deck, and I was considering it for this one… if it ended up as more of a control deck. Heck, everyone knows how much I adore that spell. It was featured in my one and only Battle Royale appearance. In fact, over the past year, if I got anywhere near a Black and / or White deck, I would try to shoehorn in Debtors’ Knell. It got so bad that I pretty much had to force myself to not consider the card even when it might have fit into a deck. As Joe pointed out, that’s silly. If the card is good, use it.
The synergy between Necrotic Sliver and Debtors’ Knell is ridiculous. Kill something. Bring the Necro-Sliver back. Kill something else. With Grave Pact on board, the silliness is exponentially, um, sillier. Kill something with the Necro-Sliver, watch your opponent sacrifice something, bring the Sliver back, and do it again.
Now, let’s bury the needle on ridiculousness. Have Crypt Champion be the creature you bring back from the ‘yard. If you also have a Necrotic Sliver in there, your upkeep would look something like this:
1) Bring back Crypt Champion with the Knell.
2) Bring back Necrotic Sliver with the Champion. (You don’t really care what the opponent brings back, if he can, unless it could potentially be nasty. If it could be nasty, you pretty much don’t bring back the Crypt Champion, do you?)
3) The Crypt Champion has to be sacrificed since you didn’t pay Red mana to cast him.
4) Your opponent sacrifices to the Grave Pact, and…
5) You still get to do Silly Necrotic Sliver tricks.
So, for bringing back one creature at the cost of free and investing three mana thereafter, you can kill two creatures and a non-creature permanent? Whoa.
This is the new Necrotic Sliver deck.
Necromancing the Stone, v.1.2
4 Godless Shrine
4 Caves of Koilos
2 Orzhov Basilica
1 Desert
1 Urza’s Factory
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Gemstone Mine
5 Swamp
3 Plains
4 Mindlash Sliver
4 Necrotic Sliver
4 Crypt Champion
4 Blackmail
3 Funeral Charm
4 Cruel Edict
3 Orzhov Signet
4 Mortify
3 Grave Pact
3 Debtors’ Knell
Joe doesn’t like the Cruel Edicts. He thinks that they should be in the sideboard only, in case I face Silhana Ledgewalker; Akroma, Angel of Wrath; Paladin En-Vec; and others that this deck can’t target. I like it as a maindeck choice. He wants them to be Castigates. Because of the Knells, I would rather have the card in the ‘yard than removed from the game. This means that I’m probably wrong, but I have to see for myself.
I added the Gemstone Mines because sometimes it is nice to have the Red mana for the Crypt Champion. Also, with Urborg on board, you can tap it for Black mana all day long without it going away.
My first match ran me into an R/G Land Destruction deck. While I lost in three games, it was quite a long three games. In real life, we would have drawn. Of course, he got to reach into his sideboard for Cryoclasm while I had nothing. The two games I lost were quite long. In both, despite all of his LD, he had very little pressure, especially when Funeral Charm and Cruel Edict cost so little. The Signets were a huge boon. In game 2, the one that I won, I was able to recover from some early LD and get a Necrotic Sliver on board with a Grave Pact. Once that happened, he couldn’t get Stone Rains or Booms quickly enough. He also couldn’t keep up any pressure.
The biggest caveat that I took away from this match was that I would need to make sure to side out Debtors’ Knell once I got a sideboard. In none of the three games did I ever have seven mana when I also had a Knell to cast. I got up to six several times, the key number for this deck since it allows you to cast a Necrotic Sliver and use its ability on the same turn.
Note to Self for Future Sideboard: Sacred Ground? Is LD really going to be that big now? It could be. I’ve been lurking on a few random matches, and it seems that Boom / Bust has made people more bold about LD, especially with Flagstones of Trokair.
I next faced off against a mono-Black Rack deck even though I had advertised “No Rack Decks, Please.” It’s not that I didn’t want to face them. It was simply that the previous (inferior?) version had beat them without a sideboard, and I had no reason to think that this wouldn’t do the same.
I was right. Necromancing the Stone won 2-0, and I wish I had that seventeen minutes of my life back.
Note to Self for Future Sideboard: Does this need more artifact destruction? Necrotic Sliver is grand, but what if you need more than it offers? Disenchant? Or would Return to Dust be better because of its versatility? Think on that.
In my third match, a trend began, as I faced my first of three B/W decks. I lost all three matches in two games. Persecute is not this deck’s friend, and neither is Extirpate. These three matches showed me two things. First, Persecute is horrible for this deck. Second, it needs card drawing. When I mention Black and card drawing, two ideas come up: Phyrexian Arena and Dark Confidant. With Debtors’ Knell, there’s no way the Confidant goes in here. That leaves the Arena. What to take out, though? Joe says that he doesn’t like Cruel Edict in the main deck, so that’s my first choice. However, I also fear the life loss. This deck doesn’t win quickly when it wins. That one life per turn will be significant. Do I add back in Essence Sliver? What about Tendrils of Corruption? With Urborg in play, that card in this deck is like playing it in a mono-Black deck.
Another card that has been dead a lot – and it caused my cheeks to squinch tightly when I realized it – was Grave Pact. You see, the part of me that’s a deckbuilder and writer just wants that card to be “totally awesome to the max,” as That Guy would say. It didn’t work out that way, though. Against decks like B/W Control or reanimation strategies, it’s great. They have few creatures on board. Often, the ones that they have you have a tough time dealing with. Ditto for Dralnu decks. Grave Pact is awesome there, especially in multiples. Against beatdown, though, it was not very good. Moreover, it wasn’t good against those other decks when I didn’t get many creatures, and this deck doesn’t give up many creatures, at least until there are some in the ‘yard and Debtors’ Knell on board.
However, the player side of me, the one who wants the decks to actually win, had to face facts. Grave Pact goes into the sideboard (probably) for those matchups that involve creatures that won’t die, can’t be targeted, or otherwise annoy me.
That led me to this version:
Necromancing the Stone, v.1.3
4 Godless Shrine
4 Caves of Koilos
2 Orzhov Basilica
1 Desert
1 Urza’s Factory
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Gemstone Mine
5 Swamp
3 Plains
4 Mindlash Sliver
4 Necrotic Sliver
4 Crypt Champion
3 Essence Sliver
4 Blackmail
3 Funeral Charm
3 Orzhov Signet
4 Mortify
4 Phyrexian Arena
3 Debtors’ Knell
At this point, I wanted to check on the deck’s price since so much switching around had gone on. Looking at the non-land rares, I found this:
3 Essence Sliver @ $3.00 each = $9.00
4 Phyrexian Arena @ $7.00 each = $28.00
3 Debtors’ Knell @$4.00 each = $12.00
Total Cost of Non-Land Rares = $49.00
Excellent. We’ve kept the spells under fifty dollars, and you can even go lower if you’re willing to buy the slightly-played (i.e. S.P.) versions. Of course, there are a few rare lands in there that aren’t duals. Those costs look like this:
1 Desert @4.00 each = $4.00
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth @ $4.00 each = $8.00
2 Gemstone Mine @ $6.00 each = $12.00
Total Cost of Non-Dual-Land Rare Lands = $24.00
I don’t think From Right Field is the place for a deck that requires an extra outlay of almost seventy-five dollars. I’m going to cut sixteen dollars worth of lands, the Gemstone Mines and the Desert. This shouldn’t have any effect on the deck’s ability to play spells. Of course, Crypt Champion won’t stay in play, but that was never the plan. Also, picking off X/1 creatures for free will be a thing of the past, but that’s what we deal with when we’re on a budget. That drops the cost of extra cards back under sixty dollars to fifty-seven.
The Urborgs, however, will stay for now. They power up some nice back-to-back-to-back Black spells. In addition, if I drop Essence Slivers for Tendrils of Corruption, putting the deck back under the fifty-dollar mark, the Urborgs are most definitely needed.
Necromancing the Stone, v.1.3.1
4 Godless Shrine
4 Caves of Koilos
3 Orzhov Basilica
1 Urza’s Factory
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
7 Swamp
3 Plains
4 Mindlash Sliver
4 Necrotic Sliver
4 Crypt Champion
3 Essence Sliver
4 Blackmail
3 Funeral Charm
3 Orzhov Signet
4 Mortify
4 Phyrexian Arena
3 Debtors’ Knell
My next two matches were against R/G Beats, and, boy oh boy-ar-dee, did I miss Grave Pact and Cruel Edict like you wouldn’t believe. It would have also been nice to have some mass removal a la Wrath of God. Oh, yeah, I lost 1-2 and 0-2.
At this point, I was becoming very frustrated. I’ve put a lot of time into this. More important, I’ve made a rather bold statement regarding Necrotic Sliver, but I can’t back it up. The rub, as Bill Shakespeare might say, is that cards don’t exist in a vacuum. Anyone can see that, on the surface, Necrotic Sliver is huge. If there’s not deck for him, though, it’s all for naught. I was looking for great example of this, and the best I could find was something that another said about Oxidize. Now, sadly, I didn’t keep the link to that article. No, of course not. That would be too easy. My apologies to him or her. However, what s/he was saying about cards not existing in a vacuum went something like this. Back in Mirrodin Block, Oxidize was a Green staple and a first-pick in drafts. That’s because the Block was all about artifacts, and Oxidize hosed some of the most powerful cards in the format the flock up. If Oxidize was reprinted in Planar Chaos, it would be an eleventh pick.
I don’t feel that Necrotic Sliver has that kind of peak and valley. Like I said, you can look at the ability on the card and see the potential for ruling the board. I just fear that he needs something that I can’t provide. Am I really going to be forced to surround Necrotic Sliver with a bunch of expensive spells? Is it not really possible to make a good B/W deck relying most heavily on common and uncommon spells?
Or am I just playing the deck incorrectly? Should I start using a sideboard so that I can really get a feel for the deck? I decided that sideboarding was best. I had artificially hampered my deck by not using a sideboard. Now, I would.
Sideboard
3 Grave Pact
4 Sacred Ground
4 Stonecloaker
4 Return to Dust
As soon as I played again, I was faced off against a Dredge deck. Thank goodness I dropped in that sideboard, huh? The correct answer is “yes,” since I won the match. I lost a tight game 1. However, bringing in the Grave Pacts and the ‘Cloakers (taking out the discard because, well, why help them do what they want to do anyway?) won me games 2 and 3. They weren’t easy wins. In fact, they were tough. You should expect as much when you’re going up against one of Bennie Smith metagame-shaping creations.
The next match I faced off against a U/G Pickles deck. I got the ultimate first-turn Mindlash Sliver, second-turn Signet, third-turn Necrotic Sliver in game 1 and won by hammering his lands. Debtors’ Knell came down on turn 6, and I just eliminated his ability to make mana. He had gotten a couple of creatures out, and they had lowered my life considerably, but the Essence Sliver hit, and he conceded. For game 2, the Grave Pacts came in for the Champion. Pickles couldn’t stand losing its creatures at that rate, and game 2 was also mine.
As the testing wore on, I often found myself dropping the Champion. Turns out that you do care what they bring back from their graveyard, and they often have a dangerous creature that costs three mana or less. For example, you don’t want to let a Dredge deck bring back Fa’adiyah Seer. Joe was right about the Champion when Grave Pact was in the maindeck, and maybe the Pact needs to come back from the sideboard. However, as it stands, the Crypt Champion is a liability more than an advantage. I dropped a Champion for an Essence Sliver because gaining life while blowing something up is A Good Thing. The other three Champions became Shrieking Grotesques.
Necromancing the Stone, v.1.4
4 Godless Shrine
4 Caves of Koilos
3 Orzhov Basilica
1 Urza’s Factory
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
6 Swamp
4 Plains
4 Mindlash Sliver
3 Shrieking Grotesque
4 Necrotic Sliver
4 Essence Sliver
4 Blackmail
3 Funeral Charm
3 Orzhov Signet
4 Mortify
4 Phyrexian Arena
3 Debtors’ Knell
Sideboard
4 Shadow of Doubt
4 Sacred Ground
4 Stonecloaker
3 Return to Dust
In the end, those changes didn’t help much, although Shadow of Doubt was huge against a Dragonstorm deck, helping me win games 2 and 3. The changes didn’t really hurt, either. The deck just kept sputtering along, winning some and losing some, but never distinguishing itself. This was when I contacted some guy named Ben Bellwhistle or BoaB Bleiweiss or something like that. He claims to be both from New Orleans and Roanoke, like you can live in two places at once. He suggested that I stay focused on the Slivers but forget about using Grave Pact in the maindeck because I didn’t have enough creatures to do that. Instead, he suggested this decklist:
Necromancing the Stone, v.1.5
4 Godless Shrine
4 Caves of Koilos
3 Orzhov Basilica
1 Urza’s Factory
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
7 Swamp
3 Plains
4 Mindlash Sliver
2 Sinew Sliver
4 Necrotic Sliver
3 Essence Sliver
4 Orzhov Signet
4 Last Gasp
4 Mortify
4 Phyrexian Arena
4 Persecute
3 Debtors’ Knell
This version turned out to be pretty good. It actually won more matches than it lost (3-2), but that could have easily been even at 3-3 or below 50-50 if I’d played seven (3-4). Moreover, when I added up the non-dual-land rares, the cost of the deck was eighty dollars. Not a budget deck.
That was when I remembered my old buddy Phyrexian Gargantua. He can stand in for the Phyrexian Arena and gives the deck more creatures. That would drop the non-dual-land-rare cost to fifty-six dollars. Believe it or not, and I’m sure for many of you it will be “not,” the change was actually pretty good. The deck still went 3-2 over the next five matches, but I felt more in control. In a few previous games, my Arenas killed me. In those games, I was digging for Mortify or Necrotic Sliver to kill it. I even had one game in which my opponent just sat behind his defenses waiting for my Arena to do the last six points of damage to me. It did. Moreover, the second or third Arenas became dead cards. The Gargantua almost never was.
I still didn’t like the deck, though. All in all, it was actually quite a long and boring set of games. Maybe that’s the nature of control decks, a nature not inherent in me as a gamer. Or it could be that I just don’t like struggling so much with a deck.
(Also, to be absolutely fair to Ben, his version did perform better any of mine. I don’t want anyone to think that he didn’t really help. In fact, it’s not like we collaborated for days or even hours on it. It was more like seconds. He asked what I was doing. I told him and said it wasn’t going well. He asked for my decklist and said he’d look at it between BoaB column test games. I sent it to him. He came back with the suggestions of using Persecute and Last Gasp. It probably took you longer to read this – and it definitely took me longer to type it – than our actual exchange. In other words, I work on it for two weeks and get a sub-.500 deck. He looks at it for a minute, maybe two (tops), and it’s better.)
The Sad Realization
This is when I start getting upset at myself and the game. I’d love to keep working on this deck. The cards in it are too good for there not to be a good or even great deck in there. However, unlike a Pro Tour Player who can play hundreds or thousands of games over several weeks, I have to move on. Okay, I guess I could keep doing this, but, honestly, who wants to read about me working on a deck that’s not getting better over the course of four or five weeks? I know that I don’t.
That’s the frustrating part. I almost never get the chance to really work on a deck. If the idea starts out fairly solid and needs only tweaking to get it ready for Saturday, I’m golden. I get to write an article about a pretty good deck. If not, I’ve failed you, both as a deckbuilder and a writer. My failing as a deckbuilder is pretty obvious. Touted a card as worth its weight in gold but couldn’t make a deck with it work. My failing as a writer is less obvious. However, to me it’s glaring. Articles like these are a chore to read. Anyone can throw together cards that don’t work. It happens all the time. It happens more often than throwing together cards that work well. Writing about such an experiment is a grind. There’s just no way, for a hack like me, anyway, to bring life and verve to a constant string of losses unless they are fun and interesting losses. These weren’t. The opponents just outlasted me.
I could try to fudge things. I could say something like “At least now you know that the deck won’t work. I wasted my time so that you don’t have to!”
Except that I still believe that Necrotic Sliver is the best non-rare creature in Planar Chaos. Of course, as we should know by this point in our lives, believing that something is true doesn’t make it so.
The Plea
Having failed you, I know that you won’t do the same to me. I have faith. (See the previous paragraph.) I want to see a discussion on making a budget B/W Necrotic Sliver deck. When I say “discussion,” I mean debate backed up by testing. And I don’t want to see decks with four Wrath of God, Damnation, Persecute, Angel of Despair, etc., et al, ad nauseam, either. I’m sure that we could just take Solar Pox and find a place for four Necrotic Slivers. That’s not the point… even if I really like the idea. But no. I want to make a deck worthy of a rogue player. I just can’t do it myself.
Regretfully yours,
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net
P.S. Looking back over the number of changes that I made to this deck and the time I took from beginning to end, I can honestly say that I put more time into this deck that any other deck about which I’ve written, save possibly the B/R deck (now known as Quinn’s Harley) that I’m constantly updating. I tried many cards in here even after I decided to “stop” working on it. I looked at Plagued Rusalka to maximize Grave Pact’s ability. I went toward heavy discard with Castigate, Blackmail, and Funeral Charm, but that didn’t work, either. (Sorry, Joe. I know how much you love Castigate, but the Knell wants the cards in the ‘yard.) I tried low-mana control (Last Gasp, Darkblast, Condemn) with big ole fatties (Avatar of Woe, Twisted Abomination). I went back to a more beatdown-oriented deck with Stromgald Crusader, Nantuko Husk, and the Grave Pact. I even went with a Sliver-oriented beatdown version with Sidewinder Sliver and Pulmonic Sliver. Nothing that I did – nothing – made the deck significantly better than .500.
P.P.S. Next week, there’s actually some honest-to-goodness fun on the way. I promise!