{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.}
“What’s snoo?”
Not much. What’s snoo with you?
Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
You know what? The jokes from second-grade are still the best. I bring up the snoo joke because I got an intriguing e-mail from a new reader and player.
Dear Chris,
I hope that it’s not presumptuous of me to call you “Chris,” but “Mister Romeo” seemed too formal.
I am a fairly new to the game. I started last summer, right after Coldsnap came out. A friend and his friend showed me how to play.
I think I’m ready for playing in a tournament. I understand the rules and the types of decks pretty well. I want to build my own deck. I’ve been reading through your past articles, and you seem like the kind of person who could and would help me.
The only problem is that you assume that players already have four each of all of the commons and uncommons. I don’t. I have playsets of each common and uncommon from Time Spiral and Planar Chaos, and I’ll be getting a set of Coldsnap in the next week. However, I am on an even more limited budget than most. I won’t be getting any of the Ninth Edition or Ravnica Block sets. I’d only be able to use those for about six more months, and it’s just not worth it for me to spend that much money. I don’t mind looking through the commons box at the store for what I might need. I can even buy some of the cheap uncommons. (That means no Remands or Lightning Helixes!) I might be able to spring for some of the really cheap rares, but, like I said before, I don’t want to spend good money (more than $5) on any rare that I won’t be able to play with in the summer of 2008.
Can you help me?
Thanks,
Ian Z.
Clearly, Ian’s new to Magic. He said so! I like helping out as much as I can. I don’t normally give individualized assistance because it takes too much time given all of the people who ask. This case is a bit different, though. Sure, it will help Ian individually, but it will also help a bunch of other folks in a position similar to Ian’s. This is a general call to arms, getting a deck or two out to people who are even more budgetarily constrained than I am. In addition, I get another article out of it. We’re all winners!
I wrote back to him, asking him to clarify some things. How did he feel about spending money on the more expensive rares that we know will be reprinted this Summer in Tenth Edition? (He was fine with it if he thought he’d actually use the card.) What colors did he like? (A real trooper, he likes all five. He just wants to play a good deck.) Control or beatdown? (Beatdown.)
The first deck I turned to was a Goblin Storm deck. I mentioned it a month or so ago as one that my brother took to an unsanctioned tournament in February. He and Joe have helped me tweak this deck. Here’s how it stands now:
Surge of Goblins
21 Mountains
4 Frenzied Goblin
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Goblin King
4 Rift Bolt
4 Rite of Flame
4 Grapeshot
4 Seething Song
4 Browbeat
4 Empty the Warrens
2 Surge of Zeal
1 Seal of Fire
The reduction of lands down to twenty-one was at my brother’s behest. He felt that he kept getting mana flooded. You’ll also notice that Mogg War Marshal is now Frenzied Goblin. That was another suggestion by Jonathan. He felt that the War Marshal clogged up too much mana. Moreover, when he saw what the Frenzied Goblin did, he was just giddy. He mentioned that, during his testing, many times, there would be that one creature on the other side that just messed up combat math. Frenzied Goblin took care of that.
Surge of Zeal was the weird addition. He wanted his guys to move ASAP. We hit on the Surge for obvious reasons. The problem is that Surge of Zeal will never really do both things that you’d like it to do. Yes, it will give your six or eight tokens Haste, but it won’t up the Storm count on Empty the Warrens at the same time. Although, I guess you could do some silly trick like cast a couple of spells, play Empty the Warrens, cast Surge on the ones that are there, then cast a second Empty the Warrens. Of course, that would only give Haste to the first tokens. I dropped the Surge count down to two when I noticed that it often sat in my hand doing absolutely nothing.
I sent this version to Ian. He responded with three points. First, he loved it. Second, we had to drop Browbeat. Third, we had to drop Goblin King.
Huh?
Let’s look at the second point first. “Did you know that Browbeat went for $4 each? And that’s if you choose the SP ones.” I did not know that. I guess since I played back during Judgment and got several of them when they were uncommons, it didn’t strike me that they’d be so expensive. Clearly, we needed something else for Ian in that slot.
As for his third point, we don’t know that Goblin King will be back in Tenth Edition. I believe that it’s more likely than not. I won’t be throwing out my Goblin Kings any time soon, that’s for sure. But we don’t know absolutely. You might be pretty sure, but we’re talking positive. Like “I’d bet my genitals on that” positive. Since I wouldn’t, Goblin King has to go.
(For what it’s worth, the Selecting Tenth Edition Wrap-Up on the official site tells us that we’re only positive of a few cards carrying over from Ninth to Tenth. As far as I can tell, none of those are the rare dual lands. In other words, if I work on any multi-colored decks with Ian, they won’t include any of the Ninth Edition pain lands or Ravnica Block “Shock” lands.)
Joe never liked Browbeat anyway. That slot becomes Sudden Shock. Ian has those. What about the Goblin King slot, though? Did I want to try more spells, or did we want some actual creatures?
I decided to split the baby. I’m pretty sure that all of the Pro Tour Playas will tell you that you don’t want to go from a four of to two-and-two. “It’s like you can’t commit.” Except, in this case, it may be the best thing to do. You see, those two-and-twos are going to be two more Seal of Fire and two Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician… if Ian would be okay with that. Ian said that the $1.25 price tag on Ib Halfheart was much better than the Browbeats. Since he could potentially use those in Standard until Fall of 2008, he was okay with that. Thus, Surge of Goblins looked like this:
Surge of Goblins
21 Mountains
4 Frenzied Goblin
4 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician
4 Rift Bolt
4 Rite of Flame
4 Grapeshot
4 Seething Song
4 Sudden Shock
4 Empty the Warrens
2 Surge of Zeal
3 Seal of Fire
I sent the decklist next to my brother since this had become his pet deck. “I told you I don’t like Seal of Fire.” It’s true. He’d told me that. “It just sits on the board or sits in my hand.” But if it’s on the board, it deters them from playing a creature that it can kill, I argued. “Isn’t the point to play a lot of spells in one turn?” Yeah… “And you’ve lost your card drawing, too. Isn’t there a spell that can replace those things?”
Actually, there was. And Ian has them. Mishra’s Baubles. The Bauble would feed Storm without using up mana, and it would draw a card. Sweet. So, this is the deck I sent to Ian:
Surge of Goblins
21 Mountains
4 Frenzied Goblin
4 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician
3 Mishra’s Bauble
2 Surge of Zeal
4 Rift Bolt
4 Rite of Flame
4 Grapeshot
4 Seething Song
4 Sudden Shock
4 Empty the Warrens
He said he liked it. “I might even splurge and spend $5 for four copies of Ib Halfheart!”
The only cards Ian had to pick up were the two Ib Halfhearts, two Surge of Zeals, four Seething Songs, and four Frenzied Goblins.
Now, you know that I couldn’t just let this go without playing it a bit. I knew that Ian was going to tell me how it worked (if he used this deck), but I wanted to play it, too.
I played two matches with this before I was convinced that it was at least good enough to play in a local weekend tourney. I took it into the Tournament Practice Room on MTGO, and I immediately met up with one of the new R/W Land Destruction decks. If you haven’t seen one of these, they could be potentially more devastating than Wildfire decks. They run Flagstones of Trokair to blunt the effects of the Boom half of Boom / Bust. What that means is that they can play Boom on their second turn, and, thanks to the Flagstone’s ability, when they sac it to the Boom, they aren’t down a land. You are, though. That means that the LD can start on turn 2, and they don’t miss a beat, hitting you with Stone Rain on turn 3, Demolish on turn 4, etc., et al, Al Gore, “don’t destroy the land.”
Surge of Goblins beat the deck. It took three games, but I wasn’t running a sideboard. Ib Halfheart was my hero. Gonna blow up a land? I’ll make Goblins. Gonna blow up all of the lands? I’ll make lotsa Goblins.
The second match was against Dralnu & Teferi. Again, Surge of Goblins won in three games. The key was to simply wait, play a hugely Stormed (thanks to a counterspell or two) Empty the Warrens, and then cast Surge of Zeal. After that, Grapeshot and Rift Bolt (not Suspended, of course) could do cleanup if Damnation hit. In this match, the Bauble was king, getting me extra Stormage while grabbing me a card for the next turn. I was never sad to see the Bauble. In fact, I might toy with dropping the Grapeshots down to three for a fourth copy of the Bauble.
That’s where I stopped. Hey, I had more work to do, and I had just beat two of the toughest decks around. I wasn’t messing with success. Also, My Name is Earl was on. After that, I had to watch The Office, Scrubs, and 30 Rock. Yes, I was done with Magic for the night.
…
The next deck that Ian wanted to work on was a White Weenie deck. “My friends said that Chris Romeo was the White Weenie guy.” Okay, I’ll take that. I’ve been overly fond of White for a long time, in fact, ever since I started playing the game. This seemed as good a time as any to work on yet another WW deck. Let me rephrase that. This may be the best time since I started playing Magic for a tourney-winning WW deck. (I don’t count Rebels, even though they were White, because it was the mechanic that made that deck so solid, not the good weenie creatures themselves.)
The first thing I needed to find out, though, was if Ian would be willing to spend the money on Glorious Anthems. If he wasn’t, then, I was going to scrap that plan. I think we can make a serviceable WW deck without them right now because White has so many great weenies. We could always use Fortify for a temporary boost or protection. The Anthems are what push the deck over the top, though. They’re just too good to ignore. We know that they’re going to be reprinted in Tenth Edition, so that hurdle’s been jumped. “Sure,” he replied. “I can get them for $4 each, and I know that I’ll use them.”
The second thing I asked about was Snow-Covered basic lands. Did he have them, and/or would he get them? Turns out that the person from whom he is getting his Coldsnap decksets is also selling him twenty of each of the five Snow-Covered basics. This was key because it allowed me to use Gelid Shackles rather than Pacifism.
The third question was whether he would be willing to spend three or four dollars on a set of Icatian Javelineers. He said he had no problem with that “since it looks like they’re going to be a staple for White Weenie decks for the next year and a half.”
Finally, I needed to know if he’d splurge for the two-fitty or three dollars for three copies of Leonin Skyhunter. He wasn’t sure about that. We don’t know if the Skyhunter will be around in X, and, while that doesn’t seem like much money, it would mean he couldn’t get some other cards that he might rather have. I finally convinced him when I pointed out that, of the cards he already had, the most likely replacements in the deck were Benalish Cavalry, Quilled Sliver, or Sidewinder Sliver. He got back to me saying that he might indeed get the Skyhunters, although he wanted to test it with a few Sidewinder Slivers to up the one-mana creature count. He had to agree, though, that a 2/2 flier for two mana was better than a ground pounder. Since I’d already been working on such a deck, I sent Ian this deck:
At the Speed of Glaciers
20 Snow-Covered Plains
2 Mouth of Ronom
4 Icatian Javelineers
3 Leonin Skyhunter
3 Knight of the Holy Nimbus
4 Whitemane Lion
4 White Shield Crusader
4 Stonecloaker
2 Celestial Crusader
4 Glorious Anthem
3 Griffin Guide
4 Gelid Shackles
3 Rebuff the Wicked
I encouraged Ian to invest in four Serra Avengers since they’re just soooooooo good not only in White Weenie but in G/W Ghazi-Glare, R/W beatdown decks, and really anything that wants to swing with White creatures. He said that he’d consider getting both those and Soltari Priests if it looked like he’d be playing White Weenie decks more in the future.
If Ian goes with this deck, he’ll be laying out twenty-two dollars for the only eleven cards he doesn’t currently own, four each of Glorious Anthem and Icatian Javelineers and three Leonin Skyhunters. If he chooses the Sidewinder Sliver over the Skyhunter, he’ll be under twenty dollars.
As with the Surge of Goblins deck, I knew that I wanted to play this. After all, I am The White Weenie Guy. I took it into the Casual Decks room. After four straight wins over Mono-Green Aggro, B/R Aggro Control, a weird mono-Blue aggro-control deck, and G/W beatdown, I figured this build was pretty good.
…
We worked on a few other decks including mono-Green, R/G, mono-Black. He either didn’t like how they played (R/G was too slow because of the need to use Terramorphic Expanse), couldn’t afford the cards he’d have to buy to make the deck work well (mono-Green and mono-Black), or just didn’t like the way the deck played (mono-Black didn’t have enough beatdown without the outlay for cards he didn’t have). So, he said he’d work with the two above. Hopefully, I’ll hear from him soon about how the tourney turned out.
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. My non-Magic advice for this week: sticks and stones may break my bones; but words will never hurt me. So, please, don’t throw sticks and stones.
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net
P.S. I thought that I’d just throw out the decklists for the R/G, mono-Green, and mono-Black that Ian passed up.
Mono-Green Beats
20 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Mouth of Ronom
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Boreal Druid
3 Uktabi Drake
4 Silhana Ledgewalker
4 Giant Dustwasp
3 Pouncing Wurm
4 Spectral Force
4 Evolution Charm
4 Moldervine Cloak
4 Harmonize
2 Might of Oaks
Ian was intrigued by this one, but said he just didn’t want to have to buy so many cards. Llanowar Elves, Silhana Ledgewalker, Spectral Force, Moldervine Cloak, and Might of Oaks were all cards he’d have to purchase. While we know that Might of Oaks is coming back in Tenth Edition and Spectral Force will be around until Fall of 2008, this left three slots of cards that might be wasted for him. I have a feeling that he will someday play a deck like this because I know that he liked the idea behind the deck. This deck recovers from mass removal incredibly well. Not just because of Harmonize, either. Evolution Charm is one fantastic Charm. Don’t forget it when building your Green decks.
R/G Beats
4 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Mouth of Ronom
2 Highland Weald
9 Snow-Covered Forest
5 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Boreal Druid
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Wilderness Elemental
4 Karplusan Strider
3 Pouncing Wurm
4 Arctic Nishoba
3 Into the North
4 Harmonize
3 Sudden Shock
3 Evolution Charm
I wanted this one to work so badly, and that’s exactly how it worked! <rimshot.wav> The problem was due in large part to not being able to get explosive starts. No Kird Ape, since it lost its bid to be in X to Mogg Fanatic. No Moldervine Cloak. No Stonewood Invocation. No Timbermare or Groundbreaker. No Stomping Ground or Karplusan Forest. There is one ultra silly trick in this deck, though: the second-turn Karplusan Strider. Just drop a Forest and Elf on turn 1. Then, on your second turn, drop another Forest, use the Simian Spirit Guide’s ability to add R to your mana pool, and voila! Four mana for a second-turn Strider. Yummy. (You can also get a turn 3 Arctic Nishoba, which is also very stupid.)
Why the Strider? Why not, say, Sporesower Thallid (the card that I’d had in that slot), a 4/4 for four mana and a decent ability? As Karl Allen pointed out when I asked for his help, the one extra power on Sporesower isn’t as great as the fact that the Strider is so hard for a lot of decks to deal with. Sure, the Sporesower might make some tokens, but it won’t happen often.
Another sweet early play for this deck is the second-turn Wilderness Elemental. An even sweeter play is the first-turn Elemental off of a Forest and two Simian Spirit Guides. Oh, by the way, Wilderness Elemental is still stupid in Standard, what with all of the dual lands, common Guild lands, Deserts and the like.
I liked the beef in this version better. Possibly, I could have sold Ian on the mono-Green version if I’d used the Nishoba, Strider, or even and the Pouncing Wurm, but I think he was put off by the Spectral Force. Folks, if you like to cast Green fat, you. Must. Get. Four. Copies. Of. Spectral. Force. They’re still only six dollars each. I know that Timbermare and Groundbreaker are the hot shhhtuff right now, but Spectral Force is still da biz-omb. In any event, he said that he was considering this one, but I never heard back from him on it. Whether he actually uses it or not, I guess I’ll find out.
Mono-Black Beats
20 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Frost Marsh
3 Mouth of Ronom
4 Dunerider Outlaw
4 Stromgald Crusader
4 Big Game Hunter
4 Nantuko Husk
4 Chilling Shade
4 Nekrataal
4 Midnight Charm
4 Sudden Death
4 Tendrils of Corruption
I’ll be honest here. As much as I like mono-Black, I didn’t like this one at all. The only Ninth Edition cards I could put in were Nantuko Husk and Nekrataal. That meant no Festering Goblins, Ravenous Rats, Dark Banishings, or Phyrexian Arenas. He didn’t want to spend the money on Dark Confidants. Soul Spikes were iffy, but we both decided against them because there was no extra card drawing to help with the alternate casting cost.
This was not the version that he declined to use due to price. I think that’s obvious. That one included Bad Moon, a couple of other Time Spiral block rares, Festy, Ravenous Rats, and Darkblast. I was a bit confused by this, though, since he could get Bad Moons for the same price as Glorious Anthems. He said that there were just too many other cards to go looking for. This saddened me because I thought that version wasn’t too bad. Oh, well.
Bonus Section: Called Out by Evan Erwin – The Red Barren Deck
Darn it to heck, I might as well make this a bit longer while I’m at it. I am going to presume that you’ve all seen Barren Glory, right? You should have because you checked out Evan’s Magic Show from Friday, April 13th. Barren Glory’s a White Enchantment from Future Sight and costs 4WW. During your upkeep, if you control no permanents other than Barren Glory and have no cards in hand, you win. It’s the tournament-legal version of The Cheese Stands Alone that Wizards has been dropping hints about… for, like, about five years.
This card is so very, very wrong. We’re talking about a Standard format where any two-color combination is as easy to build as any other. So let’s just play a Red/White deck with this, throw in four Greater Gargadons, and win the game. This card is to incredibly wrong that I can’t stand it. It’s one thing to print cards that say “… or you lose the game” like Phage, or “You can’t lose the game” like Platinum Angel. Cards that simply say “You win the game” are dangerous. Frankly, I can’t believe that someone hasn’t broken Coalition Victory yet. That card has a tough set of conditions to meet, I guess. Barren Glory, though, geez, lemme just play all of my spells and sac a bunch of stuff to the Greater Gargadon. Ugh. I can’t wait to get four Barren Glories. Heh.
Anyway, this is my second pass at the deck (with help from Evan and Joe who pointed out that the first version didn’t have Barren Glory in it – deet duh dee! – and who liked Seal of Fire over Pyroclasm since we already had Shard Phoenix and Rough / Tumble):
The Red Barren
4 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
4 Sacred Foundry
3 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Boros Garrison
9 Mountain
3 Plains
4 Wall of Shards
4 Shard Phoenix
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Seal of Fire
4 Boros Signet
4 Temporal Isolation
4 Lightning Helix
4 Barren Glory
4 Rough / Tumble
Unlike a lot of decks with the Gargadon, you actually want to hold the Gargadon until the turn before you can cast the Barren Glory. If you get the Glory late and have seven mana to cast the Glory and Suspend the Gargadon on the same turn, do it.
Be careful with sacrificing permanents. You don’t want the Gargadon coming into play with the Glory on board. Also, make sure during your upkeep that, if the last counter is about to come off of the Gargadon, you stack the abilities properly. That is put the Gargadon’s remove-the-counter ability on the stack first and then the Glory on top of it. That way, when the Glory’s ability resolves, the Gargadon hasn’t come into play to ruin things.
With cards like Shard Phoenix, Wall of Shards, and Seal of Fire, you should be able to get your board empty when you need it. Unlike the Phoenix and the Seal, the Wall can’t sacrifice itself per se, but, again, you can stack the triggered abilities during your upkeep so that it’s not there once the Glory’s ability goes off. In other words, you simply choose not to pay the Cumulative Upkeep Cost.
So, far, the deck has been quite fun. It loses to a well-placed piece of countermagic or Disenchant… sometimes. I mean, you still have Gargadon and Shard Phoenix to swing. In fact, the first three test games that Red Barren won didn’t even involve the Barren Glory. We may have to work Blue in for Spell Snare, though. Unfortunately, running countermagic could leave a card in hand during your upkeep. You could try a silly trick during your upkeep like casting Temporal Isolation and then casting your own Spell Snare on it, but that’s risky. Your best bet is simply not to leave the Glory out there for long enough to allow you to get hosed. Just drop it the turn before you can win.
Staying in the game is not hard. Wall of Shards is pretty much impossible for opponents to get around. In fact, they have to go through it or simply neutralize it in some way. Repeal is a very temporary answer for it. Faith’s Fetters and that ilk can thwart its purpose. Just don’t pay the upkeep, and the Wall goes away.
With all of the deck’s mass removal, you can stay in the game. You have to win, though. Without the Glory, the Phoenix and Gargadon have to do the work. That’s not easy when the other guy’s trying to kill you.
I know that I sound like a teenage boy trying to figure out the hottest chick in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue (“That one! No, that one! No wait, that one!”), but I have a new favorite card: Temporal Isolation. Not only does it act like a Pacifism of sorts, it goes well beyond that. Did you realize that you could cast it on a Flashed Bogardan Hellkite, and the Dragon won’t deal the five damage from its comes-into-play ability? Just make sure you cast the T.I. while the Hellkite’s triggered ability is still on the stack, and you’ve essentially neutered Dragonstorm.
Anyway, as silly as Barren Glory is, it fells like my kinda card. I’ll keep working on this. I might even take it to Regionals. Heh.