{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.}
This week’s column is sponsored by the number VII and the letter Gamma.
The past month or so has been pretty good to me in terms of being inspired by readers. There was Ian looking for decks from a pretty limited card pool. There were the people who hated on me for hating two-set Block Constructed. Today, I’ve got another piece of inspiration, this time from a sad, ol’, middle-aged guy like me:
Mr. Romeo,
I’ve been reading your column almost since the beginning of your time at StarCityGames.com. Like you, I got into Magic late in life. I had just turned 30. Also, like you, my first set was Urza’s Saga. [Chris’ note – I actually got into Magic about a month before Urza’s Legacy came out, or roughly three months after Urza’s Saga was released.] To make the comparisons even scarier, I tend to keep most of my cards, too. I’ve got the room to store them in my closet, and I paid too much for them to let them go for pennies on the dollar. Call me cheap, or call me frugal, but I just can’t part with my cards. Besides, as time goes on, I can finally afford to play Extended.
I applaud your continued championing of budget decks. I have one small complaint with your decks since Time Spiral came out, though. You haven’t thrown a bone to those of us who keep our cards! I understand you not wanting to load decks up with new and costly rares, and my friends and I appreciate that. What about using some of those purple Time Spiral Timeshifted cards that I’ve saved, though? For instance, I know that StarCityGames.com sells Browbeat for $5.00 a card, but I still have my originals. I want to use them!
I’m budget-limited, too. When I started playing, my twins had just turned three. I didn’t have much extra money. (My wife would say “none,” but I always found a way to scrape a few bucks together each week.) So, like you, I saved and bought four of each common and uncommon as the sets came out. I’d pick up cheap rares whenever I had some extra change. (Thank goodness for the local store’s two-rares-for-a-dollar box.) When I saw good, expensive rares that I wanted, I saved specifically to get them. For instance, I bought my Calls of the Herd one at a time until I had a set of four. Ditto for my Shadowmage Infiltrators. You’ve got to have some leeway in your “guidelines” for people like me.
Magic really grabbed me when I started playing, and I picked up many of the older cards, too, so that I could play in the Standard tournaments of the day. Essentially, if it’s a purple card, and it was originally printed in Tempest or later, I have it to play.
Now, what about some decks for us old guys who’ve budgeted well and saved our cards, huh?
Thanks,
Michael S.
Michael was dead on right. I preach and preach about people (a) getting four sets of each common and uncommon, (b) filling out – within their budget – the rares that they like, and (c) keeping their cards (or at least four of each) because you never know when they’ll come back around. Then, when Wizards gives us a hundred and eighty reprints, I treat most of them like proof coins or 9.9 graded first issues (“You can look at them, but you can’t use them.”). That’s just wrong, and I apologize.
Interestingly, I got this at about the same time that our resident free-side Standard tourney genius Sean McKeown was ruminating on Thornscape Battlemage. I’ve always loved the Battlemages. The two kickers allowed you to potentially get some huge card advantage. Thornscape Battlemage, for example, can take out a two- or one-toughness creature, destroy an artifact, and leave a 2/2 body behind. In an era of Sulfur Elementals, Soltari Priests, Signets, and Prismatic Lenses, Thornscape Battlemage is a spicy meatball.
And, yes, it can take out the Soltari Priest. You may be paying Red mana for the damage, but the source of that damage – Thornscape Battlemage – is still Green.
Another card originally printed in the same Block (Invasion) for which I have fond memories is Desolation Giant. Desolation Giant was a wacky animal. There was almost no situation in which you’d want to cast him without his Kicker. Look at the guy. Sans Kicker, he’s not even a Hill Giant. Hill Giant only requires one of the four mana used to cast him/her to be Red. This guy requires two Red mana. So, unless you absolutely need a 3/3 blocker and you have no one on board (or no one that you can’t afford to lose), this guy will almost always be cast with Kicker. In other words, his truest casting cost is 2WWRR.
On the other hand, isn’t six mana an awesome deal for a Wrath of God that leaves you a 3/3 creatures afterwards? Wrath costs 2WW. That means, with Kicker, Desolation Giant gives you a 3/3 for RR. Yeah, that’s good eats.
Now, notice that the two Kickers on the Thornscape Battlemage are the same colors that we need to drop the D-Giant with Kicker. Hmm… artifact destruction, Green direct damage, and mass creatures removal. Would those be any good in a deck? (Please, refrain from answering rhetorical questions. Thank you so very much.)
You know what else would probably be good? More direct damage, please. Disintegrate was a common back in Fifth Edition. Can that be right? And “X” damage spell with those kinds of extra abilities was common? Gatherer says so. Therefore, it must be true. Now, this card may be a bit outside of Michael’s timeline, but I don’t think so. If he was as much like me at that time as he says he was, he picked up a bunch of those for a dime or a quarter each out of the big box of commons that the local store had lying around.
I also noticed that he specifically mentioned Call of the Herd. Normally, I wouldn’t include that card in a deck. It’s still about a nine- or ten-dollar card. So, a full set by itself would run the deck to forty dollars right there. This one, however, is for us old guys, and Michael said that he still had his Calls. Since he wouldn’t be spending any extra money on those, they could go in here. That also meant that he had Birds of Paradise. I heard that second-turn 3/3 Elephants followed by third-turn 3/3 Elephants are pretty good stuff. Just in case, though, I decided to use Utopia Sprawl as well. BoPs tend to die pretty quickly, and the Sprawl means I have eight chances to make Red or White mana on turn 2 or 3.
Thus, the original skeleton of the deck looked like this:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Disintegrate
4 Call of the Herd
4 Thornscape Battlemage
4 Desolation Giant
When I start my decks, unless I know that I’m going with a weenie theme, there are twenty-four lands in them. I can go up or down as the deck progresses, but twenty-four is the base. That meant that I had three slots of four cards left to play with. Since I used an X spell (Disintegrate) and three colors, I knew that I was probably going to need to grab lands from the deck. I’d thought about Rampant Growth, but I wanted to use a couple of Time Spiral Block spells. (This might be part of the reason that I’m not a 1900+-rated player. I think about spells that “I want to use” rather than “the best spells out there.” I live with it, though.) Search for Tomorrow gave me another first-turn play. The other card I’ve wanted to use is Hunting Wilds.
Hunting Wilds has been rattling around in my brain since I saw it. On the one hand, I can grab Ravnica Block dual lands with it. On the other hand, with the Kicker, those lands can swing. On the third hand, with the Kicker, those lands can be killed by creature-kill spells. On the fourth hand, it has a Kicker, which is a sweet flavor element for this deck.
With only one slot left and a mostly Green deck, I had to add Harmonize. Sorry, Michael. I know that you mentioned Browbeat, but, as long as I’m playing with Green, I’ll pay one more mana to guarantee myself that I get three cards. Maybe later. For now, all I had to do was to add lands. In the end, my first pass with this deck was:
Kickers, Inc., Issue #1
3 Temple Garden
3 Stomping Ground
3 Desert
1 Plains
1 Mountain
13 Forest
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Thornscape Battlemage
4 Desolation Giant
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Disintegrate
4 Call of the Herd
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Harmonize
4 Hunting Wilds
I know that, with Search for Tomorrow, Birds of Paradise, and Utopia Vow, this deck looks to be a little mana-acceleration heavy, especially when you add in Hunting Wilds. Maybe it is. I’m shooting for as close as I can get to a guaranteed second-turn Call of the Herd or a third turn Thornscape Battlemage with both Kickers to knock out a Signet and a smaller blocker. We could be turned up to eleven right now mana-acceleration wise, but that’s why we test.
After the first three matches, I was almost happy with the deck. It held its own against three tourney-level decks (mono-Red, Firemane Control, and R/G), but lost all three in three games. It’s better than losing all three matches zero games to two, but it’s still three match losses. The games that I won were fast affairs. Second- and third-turn Call of the Herds in two of them and a third-turn double-Kickered Battlemage in another that cleared the way for some savage Elephant beats later on. Disintegrate was the MVP of the game win against Firemane Control, though, removing from the game all three Firemane Angels that he saw. The losses, meanwhile, were what you’d expect. Too much mana acceleration ramping up to pretty much nothing.
The weak link did turn out to be all of the mana acceleration. Sadly, what felt worst were the Birds of Paradise. The fact of the matter is that Utopia Sprawl does the exact same thing but doesn’t die to Shock, Sudden Shock, or Searing Meditation. I wanted some other sort of control or combat trick in that slot. That led me to Carven Caryatid.
Kickers, Inc., Issue #2
3 Temple Garden
3 Stomping Ground
3 Desert
1 Plains
1 Mountain
13 Forest
4 Carven Caryatid
4 Thornscape Battlemage
4 Desolation Giant
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Disintegrate
4 Call of the Herd
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Harmonize
4 Hunting Wilds
Any better? Let’s see…
A little. This time, I went 1-2 in my three matches with all three again going the full three games. If nothing else, you’re gonna get to play your full fifty minutes with this deck. And, of course, I’ve been doing it without a sideboard.
Something still didn’t feel right, though. As I looked over the deck, I realized what it was. The deck had no focus. Call of the Herd is very aggressive. Carven Caryatid is not. Desolation Giant screams control. It also doesn’t play well with Hunting Wilds, blowing up the two creature-lands.
Thornscape Battlemage is an interesting critter. On one hand, it’s actually pretty aggressive. One of the sweetest plays that this deck can make is creating a second-turn Call token and then nuking the X/2 blocker that the opponent puts out by casting the Battlemage with the Red Kicker. Oh, and you get a 2/2 body to swing with on the next turn, too. Sometimes, though, the Battlemage feels like a control card, taking out a creature and an annoying artifact while dying for the cause in combat.
I decided that I needed to be more aggressive with the deck. So I dropped the Caryatid for Sulfur Elemental. The Hunting Wilds became Mwonvuli Acid-Moss. I’d still be up two lands net (the one I gained and the one he lost), but I could remove Urza’s Factories and the like.
Kickers, Inc., Issue #3
3 Temple Garden
3 Stomping Ground
3 Desert
1 Plains
1 Mountain
13 Forest
4 Sulfur Elemental
4 Thornscape Battlemage
4 Desolation Giant
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Disintegrate
4 Call of the Herd
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Harmonize
4 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
Again, I went 1-2 in three matches, again with all three going three games. Sheesh. Talk about frustratingly close to being good. Guh. The games I won, I got just enough mana to do the job. The games I lost were typically colored by mana flooding.
The next day, I got an e-mail from my friend Karl. He’d been drafting the night before. He had taken a late Wurmcalling and was impressed by what it had done for him. We talked about his draft, and a light went on in my head. What could I do with all of that mana this deck was giving me other than pumping it into Disintegrate? Make lotsa Wurm tokens. And what if it gets countered? Well, that’s no different from any creature spell getting countered. I was intrigued.
The problem was figuring out where it went. I didn’t really want to lose anything, and I wasn’t going to play sixty-four cards. “Wait. Sixty-four? Why would I add four Wurmcallings?” I asked myself. A card like that is not one that you want to hit right away. I’d only run three if I ran it. Now, if I only ran three, couldn’t I drop three of the currently-four-of slots down to three cards each? Yes, I could.
Kickers, Inc., Issue #4
3 Temple Garden
3 Stomping Ground
3 Desert
1 Plains
1 Mountain
13 Forest
4 Sulfur Elemental
4 Thornscape Battlemage
4 Desolation Giant
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Disintegrate
4 Call of the Herd
3 Search for Tomorrow
3 Harmonize
3 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
3 Wurmcalling
This one did better, going 2-1. Of course, we’re only talking about three matches again. In those first three sets, in any of the matches that I lost, if I had won one game, the deck would have also been 2-1. However, we learn to get a feel for the decks that we play. The first three versions never really felt ready to win. They did well at not losing badly or quickly, but, except for the couple of games where I simply overwhelmed my opponent, the deck never seemed truly in control.
This version felt different. For example, my first match, I played against a Dralnu du Louvre deck. Kickers, Inc., won that match two games to none. Yes, that’s right. Against one of the toughest decks around and without a sideboard, this deck won 2-0. More important, I never felt that I was in an uphill battle against Dralnu. He had to find answers and just didn’t have enough.
The second match was the loss. It was a thrashing, too. You know what this deck does against Dragonstorm? Exactly. Other than Jester’s Cap from the sideboard, I really don’t know what it could do.
The third match was against a deck based on the mono-Red PT: Yokohama decks. I say “based on” because I don’t know for sure that it was exactly like those. I mean, my opponent didn’t give me his decklist or anything. It sure looked like it, though. Anyway, Kickers, Inc., won the match in three games. The first game was a quick loss when I couldn’t mount a defense. The second game was the great back-and-forth battle. Harmonize and the Acid-Moss were the MVPs in this one. I simply had more options in the end, finally overwhelming him with Wurm after Wurm. The third game was a quick win with Elephant tokens and Kicker-ed Battlemages doing what they did best leading the way for a game-ending Disintegrate.
It still didn’t seem like I was using all of that mana as best I could. Karl made another suggestion. Drop the Acid-Mosses for some real beef. “You have enough mana acceleration on the low end if you turn one of the Acid Mosses into a Search for Tomorrow. Drop the other two Acid-Mosses, since three of those just aren’t doing enough, and get a couple of Dragons in there.” So, I looked for an Old Guy’s Dragon.
Shivan Dragon it was.
Shivan Dragon was in Fifth Edition, right about when we started. It dropped out of Sixth, but came back in Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth. If Michael has saved his cards like he says he has, I know that he has four of those. We’re only going to use two, though.
Kickers, Inc., Issue #5
3 Temple Garden
3 Stomping Ground
3 Desert
1 Plains
2 Mountain
12 Forest
4 Sulfur Elemental
4 Thornscape Battlemage
4 Desolation Giant
2 Shivan Dragon
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Disintegrate
4 Call of the Herd
4 Search for Tomorrow
3 Harmonize
3 Wurmcalling
The Mountain count may have been a little low since we added in a double-Red Dragon with an activated ability that cost R. The deck still wants a first-turn Forest, though, and another Mountain might have been too much.
I don’t really know because I only let this version play for one match. I was rolled by another R/G deck. Why? I couldn’t grab Temple Gardens or Stomping Grounds with any of my spells. Search only grabs basic lands. Both Hunting Wilds and Mwonvuli Acid-Moss had allowed me to grab any Forest, and that includes those nice Ravnica Block dual lands.
(Digression: If you’ve checked Gatherer in the past few weeks, you may have noticed that Wizards has figured out what a great place that is to sell advertising. I am disappointed, however, to find out how many people are selling “duel lands” really cheap. I guess any land is a duel land when Magic is played one-on-one in a duel, but I think we all know what’s wrong here. My favorite ad, though, was for Green cards. I thought “How weird. A site doesn’t sell the Red or Black or Artifact cards.” Silly me. It was a site for people to get their green cards from the U.S. Government. Interesting.)
Needing a way to grab Temple Gardens and Stomping Grounds, I went to Farseek. There was only one teeny tiny problem. If all of the Gardens and Grounds (the name of my new nursery/coffee shop) were out, I couldn’t get a land that produced Green mana. That wasn’t much of a problem, though, since that also meant that I already had six lands in play (disregarding land destruction) that could produce Green mana.
Creatures (14)
Lands (24)
Spells (22)
The final change that you should notice is going back up to four Harmonizes. While Disintegrate is potentially huge, a full fist of cards is huge-er… more huge… really nice.
This was the pile with which I entered the Tournament Practice room for the final few matches. I did indeed start out without a sideboard. Again, if my maindeck isn’t solid, I’m not going to flounder around just hoping that my sideboard can win me games 2 and 3. All. Day. Long. It’s just not worth it.
Final Match #1: Black Rack lives! Game 1 was won on the back of Thornscape Battlemage. While I hadn’t used the White Kicker much before this match, it offed two Racks and a Phyrexian Totem. After that, Elephants and Disintegrates went the whole way. I held the only Wurmcalling that I drew just in case. It ended up being worth it.
Game 2 was all him. My hand was relentless hammered, and I saw only one Battlemage, which took out a Totem, not a Rack. The game ended with double Rack.
The finale was won by Wurmcalling, but not in the fashion you might expect. Between my Battlemages and Desolation Giants and his discard and creature removal, we were both without any non-land permanents. And then I drew a Wurmcalling, which I played with Buyback for a 4/4 Wurm. The next turn, I drew another, making another 4/4 Wurm. Now, that was going to eat into his life total, no doubt. But he conceded when he drew The Rack. “I won’t be able to empty your hand before those kill me. Good game.” Wow. Wurmcalling as anti-Rack tech. Sweetness. (1-0, 2-1)
Final Match #2: “Thank goodness for Desolation Giant” is all that I can say about this match. I didn’t think that people were still playing mono-Green, but I guess they are. As long as Jamie Wakefield is writing about Magic, people will play mono-Green aggro. This deck didn’t actually have a problem with the MGA creatures… except for a double-cloaked Silhana Ledgewalker. If you don’t get a flier out to block, you need mass removal. Enter the Giant.
Game 1 was a blowout. I had Call of the Herd on turn 2. He had a Ledgewalker. I had another Call on turn 3. He had another Ledgewalker and a Birds of Paradise. I dropped the Battlemage with the Red Kicker to off the Birds, and he lost his Ledgewalkers to blocking. He played a Llanowar Elves and a Moldervine Cloak. I Disintegrated it, and swung through for eight damage. He dropped a Spectral Force, but still took five more damage. He couldn’t attack because he was out-creatured. It didn’t matter, though. I swung with the Elephant that was left and the Battlemage, dropping him from four to two when he blocked the token. Then I played the Battlemage with the Red Kicker for the final two.
We had a Battle of Epic Proportions in game 2. Twenty-two turns it went, and, in real life, I’m pretty sure I would have won this match 1-0. My best play was actually my opponent “overextending” and dropping a second Spectral Force. I put that in quotation marks because you can’t really call an MGA deck playing a second big beefy guy overextending, can you? Whatever you call it, I followed his second Force with a Kickered Desolation Giant. He kept topdecking creatures, however, and put Moldervine Cloaks on them. The card that won this one was Harmonize. I Harmonized up another D-Giant, followed by two Elephants, and then a never-ending stream of Wurms. With all of the back and forth in this game, it was one of my favorite in a long time. I wish I could remember how to save those game logs to play back later. I’d actually watch this one again. (2-0, 4-1)
Final Match #3: I was actually going to be pretty descriptive about this one, but then I decided that no one would really care. Suffice it to say this deck can’t beat Dragonstorm unless they beat themselves. The sideboard needs something like Jester’s Cap or even Parallectric Feedback. (2-1, 4-3)
Final Match #4: Another Red and Green deck. Okay, so it was nothing like Kickers, Inc., other than the Red and Green mana. His was the ultra-fast version with Kird Apes, Scab-Clan Maulers, and Chars. Funny thing is, even a 2/3 first-turn Kird Ape tends to stay on his side of the board when second- and third-turn Call tokens hit. He ended up matching my tokens with his own and then using a Suspended Rift Bolt to enable two 3/3 Scab-Clan Maulers. Then, Desolation Giant with Kicker hit. Thus went game 1.
Game 2 was marred by mulligan activities. I went down to five and never recovered, while he got a really fast start.
The final game looked a lot like the first. I used my tokens and even a Battlemage to keep too much damage off of me. He started overwhelming my defenses, but a Desolation Giant showed up to reset the board. He came flying back, though, and, by the time I stabilized with another D-Giant, I was at one and he was at seventeen (all from pain and “Shock” lands). I then ripped Call of the Herd, casting both. He got nothing. I dropped him to eleven with the two elephant tokens and then cast the Shivan Dragon I’d ripped from the top. He got nothing. And I won.
Wow.
Seventeen to one against a deck packing Red, and I came back for the win. Wow. (3-1, 6-4)
Final Match #5: Because of time constraints, this would be my last match. Geez, did I luck out. Dralnu du Louvre! Yeah! Well, I needed to test against that deck anyway because, if you can’t hang with that deck, you’re in for a long day. Luckily, Kickers, Inc., even without a sideboard was well hung.
The deck simply overwhelmed Dralnu in game 1. He couldn’t counter everything and actually got to a point where his position was Teferi and land on board and one card in hand with no Think Twices in the graveyard. I took a chance and cast Wurmcalling with Buyback for four. It hit. On his next turn, he dropped a land and passes. I swung with the Wurm, and he blocked with Teferi. I could have been wrong on this analysis. Tell me what you think. A Teferi player who is holding something useful won’t block and lose Teferi. I made another big Wurm, and it hit again. He finally got Damnation after the two tokens had hit for eight, but the game was essentially over. I played Harmonize, and he conceded.
I figured game 2 would be all about Extirpate, and I was right. I made sure to cast my Call of the Herd and flash it back before dropping another. Because of that, he never Extirpated a Call. He did get Disintegrate (it had been countered), but there are only three in the deck. He also got my Harmonizes after my first one resolved. Finally, he got the Thornscape Battlemages. However, he never really affected the board except for the occasional counter that prevented something from hitting. Between the Call tokens and the Shivan Dragon that hit, I’d won. That’s right. Kickers, Inc., beat Dralnu two to nothing. Whether he had sideboarded badly, kept a bad hand, or just got beat, I have no way to tell. I do know that neither game ever felt out of my control.
I had thought – and I’m sure that most people would – that the Teferi matchup would be much, much worse for me than it turned out to be. After looking back over my deck, I realized that part of the reason that it wasn’t was simply that Teferi didn’t hose my deck up the way that it would most others. Sure, I couldn’t abuse the Flash potential of the Sulfur Elemental, but that was a negligible constraint. Essentially, this was a deck based on the Sligh principles: use all of your mana every turn. Dralnu & Teferi just couldn’t keep up. (4-1, 8-4)
Holy dead animal flesh on a stick! Four and one in matches against those decks, and I didn’t use a sideboard?!? Simply amazing.
What about that sideboard, though? Most likely we need Krosan Grip. Jester’s Cap will be good to hose the Storm decks. You know what would work great against Dragonstorm, though? Chameleon Blur. No, seriously. I went back to that match. (I played the final three on the same day.) In both games, I could have Blurred and followed with a Kickered D-Giant in both games. Wouldn’t that have been awesome? Like, totally. For a more rare answer, though, use Seht’s Tiger. The deck can support the colors. Witness all of the Kickered Desolation Giants. Other than those cards, you probably want something to hose the graveyard, too. For that, I’d use Stonecloaker.
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. Please, join me next week, when I finally decide on my Regionals deck. I hope.
Chris Romeo
CBRomeo-at-Travelers-dot-com