For those awaiting with baited breath (get some Tic-Tacs for that) my latest tournament report, I thought I’d spare you and my deflated ego my latest effort to drive my DCI rating down even further. Rather, I’d rather focus on a new Extended deck that – while late in the season – shows some promise and might be worth playing at some upcoming PTQs.
I’ve mentioned my friend Paul Poncy in my columns in the past. Back in the day, he was considered one of the best players in the area, if not the state. He was certainly the best deckbuilder I knew. He always had some weird, unwieldy concoction that would work you over. He came up with the concept of the Millstone-less Millstone deck, later known as Turbo Kitty, long before I ever saw it on Usenet.
He got out of the game around Tempest, mostly due to the fact that he could no longer keep up with the spiraling costs of the game. Recently, though, he’s been getting sucked back in, and starting to show flashes of his old brilliance.
Preparing for the recent Extended qualifier up in Portland, Paul had a funky Burning Wish-based R/B deck that killed with Kamahl, Pit Fighter and Jeska, Warrior Adept, and he wanted to play it, or something like it, at the qualifier. He wanted to make it a reanimation deck of sorts, using Reanimate to recur Blistering Firecats. But that didn’t work as hoped. Enter Dave and his knowledge (and possession) of all the cards he’d missed from Tempest through Invasion blocks. We swapped out new cards for older, better ones. We added Terminate, Flametongue Kavu, and Urza’s Rage and lo and behold, came up with the monstrosity we called…
Dr. Funk
4 Terminate
4 Urza’s Rage
4 Shock
3 Flametongue Kavu
4 Blistering Firecat
2 Rorix Bladewing
3 Chainer’s Edict
4 Burning Wish
4 Starstorm
2 Vampiric Tutor
2 Skeletal Scrying
2 Shadowblood Ridge
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Forest
6 Swamp
8 Mountain
2 Wasteland
Sideboard:
1 Decompose
1 Haunting Echoes
1 Volcanic Hammer
1 Lightning Surge
2 Firebolt
1 Chainer’s Edict
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Void
1 Jokulhaups
2 Hull Breach
2 Pyroclasm
1 Blaze
The usual kill mechanism is a kicked Rage or a Rorix (whose real name, apparently, should be”WTF?” since that was heard quite often when he was wheeled on the table). The deck has lots of seemingly janky choices; let me start with the pit fightin’ dragon. Flametongue, you may say, that makes sense. Blistering Firecat, certainly. But Rorix? It costs six, for crying out loud!
That was my assessment of the card. There’s gotta be something else you can play in that slot, I said – until I started getting my face smashed by it. Give the massive amounts of creature removal the deck packs, staying alive until you can cast it is not a problem. At five toughness and with an evasion ability, it’s also very hard to deal with. Rock has to pop a Deed for six to kill it. And Sligh just rolls over and shows its soft white underbelly to the big guy.
Speaking of cards Sligh doesn’t like, Starstorm – what can I say to truly describe how incredible an instant-speed Wrath of God is? Oh, wait, I think I just did. I was sitting next to Paul for his penultimate match of the day, and by turn 3 his opponent, playing Piledriver Sligh, had a Mogg Fanatic, a Jackal Pup, and two Goblin Cadets on the table. Paul had three lands in play, a Starstorm in hand and a really big smile on his face.
Can you say”card advantage,” boys and girls?
To top it all it, the card cycles, so even when it’s a dead card against an open board, you can dig a little deeper into the library.
There aren’t many decks designed to use Starstorm, but this is one that maximizes the broken-ness of the card.
The lone Forest was there so you could Wish for Tranquility, easily found with a Wooded Foothills (or just drawing it once in a while). Hull Breach, however, is far superior to Tranquility and easily found a home in the sideboard. There are also no Sulfurous Springs or Karplusan Forests. Originally that was because Paul didn’t have any of these cards and have to make do with Odyssey filter lands. However, we discovered that with in combination with the Onslaught fetch lands, you don’t need the painlands. Shadowblood Ridge works just fine for casting a Terminate, and it gave you a use for Wasteland when your opponent didn’t have anything worth using it on.
You’ll notice that there’s no discard in the deck. A deck with black that doesn’t pack Duress? That’s what I thought, however, the deck really doesn’t need it, and there’s no real room for it, either, unless you take out the Vampiric Tutors. The only time you might want it is to make sure you can force through a spell against a blue deck, but an Overmaster in the board accomplishes the same thing and draws you a card.
If a deck is at least 50% black cards, then, yes, Duress is an automatic. In this deck, it’s a support color, therefore, no Duress.
Flametongue Kavu, cast aside early in the season against a field full of Spiritmongers and 12/12 flying Cognivores, is actually very good against the current field of creatures with toughness of four or less – Wall of Blossoms, Ravenous Baloth, Llanowar Elves, Arrogant Wurm – ol’ FTK still does the job nicely. Sometimes, yes, it’s a dead (or not as useful) card against really big fatties, hence, there’s only three of them, and what the Flametongue doesn’t get, Terminate, Urza’s Rage or Chainer’s Edict will.
I must admit, when we were putting together the sideboard at close to the 11th hour (I think it was 10:45 or so), I spaced it and totally forgot about Perish, which should have had multiple spots in the side instead of true jank like Volcanic Hammer (because we couldn’t think of anything else for that slot) or Pillage.
Aside from that bout of vapor lock, the sideboard is tight and has ready answers for the field. Haunting Echoes is there for emptying graveyards, and the faster Decompose if needed on a right-now basis. Void is brutal against Sligh and provides a smattering of discard. Jokulhaups is your emergency reset button.
And Lightning Surge goes in the”there must be something better than Rorix” category. I laughed at it, until I had twelve uncounterable, unpreventable points of damage headed to my dome. That definitely belongs in the deck.
From what I learned and observed, the premise of the deck is sound and extremely viable. There are definite improvements to make. Such as:
Adding Invasion sac lands: Too often the deck was ready for the Rage-with-kicker kill but begging for that 12th land. I had considered using them initially but was afraid of opponent’s Wastelands and Dust Bowls. But they really weren’t an issue with the Onslaught fetch lands, which had the deleterious effect of reverse-thinning the deck so you didn’t get that 12th land as fast as you might without them. I’d definitely find room for a few Sulfur Vents and Geothermal Crevices.
Obliterate over Jokulhaups: If we are running Invasion sac lands, then we can get away with the more expensive but uncounterable Obliterate. This card is abusive against Oath decks (you can simply deck them after casting this if you time it right, once they’ve either played or discarded the bulk of their land).
Reanimate in the sideboard: Why not a singleton here? This is not a reanimator deck, but being able to Wish for a Reanimate to steal Visara or Spiritmonger from an opponent’s graveyard would certain be a fun surprise. At least for you it would be.
Adding Perish, Recoup, and Disorder to the sideboard: I can’t believe I forgot Perish. Disorder is there for white weenie decks. Recoup can be a nice bonus to reuse sorceries and to get Burning Wishes that were discarded.
Firebolt to the main deck: The deck doesn’t really need much in the way of instant speed burn, so the sorcery-speed Firebolt, reusable (especially with Burning Wish) gets bumped up to the main, leaving us a few more slots in the sideboard.
With the benefit of hindsight, the deck now looks like this:
Dr. Funk v1.1
4 Terminate
4 Urza’s Rage
4 Firebolt
3 Flametongue Kavu
4 Blistering Firecat
2 Rorix Bladewing
3 Chainer’s Edict
4 Burning Wish
4 Starstorm
3 Vampiric Tutor
1 Skeletal Scrying
3 Sulfur Vent
3 Geothermal Crevice
2 Shadowblood Ridge
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
6 Mountain
4 Swamp
Sideboard:
2 Hull Breach
1 Decompose
1 Haunting Echoes
1 Chainer’s Edict
2 Perish
1 Void
1 Obliterate
1 Recoup
1 Lightning Surge
1 Reanimate
1 Blaze
1 Overmaster
1 Disorder
The deck is surprisingly good, better than I certainly expected. In our testing, it was no worse than 50/50 vs. Rock and U/G Madness, ate Sligh for lunch and gave Oath decks fits. This was before these improvements. Based upon those results, the archetype is definitely viable in the current Extended environment.
I’ve played my last qualifier, hence, I won’t be running this deck again anytime soon. We’ve brought the funk – it will be up to you to bring the noise.