What I originally planned to do here was post a decklist, add some witty comment to it, and send it in to Craig, but I decided he wouldn’t appreciate my doing that with the flagship article for this column. It looks like I may need to actually talk about Magic. The first thing to discuss is what this column will be about; primarily offbeat decks in Standard formats, or themed decks for offbeat formats. It will be casual, but I won’t hand you some kind of lame duck deck that will consistently earn you losses to the next door neighbor’s blind pet muskrat. No siree, I will put in your digital hands a ruthless machine of efficient destruction sprinkled with the contents of a bottle of win all over the top, known as a deck only to ignorant laymen. Well, okay, not that either.
How about something fun?
Now you’re getting the idea.
The basic goal is going to be examining one or more decks that will be a little off the beaten path. I want to leave you with something that has a fair shot at FNM or the kitchen table. If it does better? Great! Something competitive might even slip between the cracks. While I’m not specifically building on a budget, decks that are uber-expensive will either not make the cut, or had better be really interesting or thematic. Also, while I will typically focus on online formats and decks, when appropriate for a deck’s format, I will try to suggest some older cards for paper players, and with expensive decks, I will try to suggest substitutes for any expensive card that is not absolutely vital to the core build of the deck. The end result is that I hope to put forth each week a deck which is strong but not highly tuned, which is affordable or can be made so, and hopefully act as a springboard for one’s own ideas, especially for those who like to tinker.
Oh, and a word of warning, I’m sure I’ll take up some space now and again to discuss some non-Magic things, just to keep the lot of you from thinking I’m too predictable. We couldn’t have that; not only would I bore you, but then the feds would track me down and it’d be all over. I’m just too bald to die young. That aside, let’s see what particular slab of beef is on the menu today.
Creatures (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (31)
Well, they don’t attack directly, in this deck. Once in awhile, I grab Natural Affinity and some other cards and try to win through lands actually attacking, and most of the time I’ll end up winning a few games with it and then I’ll hit a streak where people are packing whatever is currently filling the "Instant Pyroclasm" role (Decree of Pain, Hideous Laughter, Sulfurous Blast, et cetera). This leads me to quickly shelve the deck after being reminded for the fortieth or fiftieth time that going all-in with lands goes really, really badly when the opponent has an answer. This deck is geared for Standard.
What the deck does: The deck attempts to set adopt a cautious approach, using Stormbind, Savage Twister, Stuffy Doll, and possibly some Development-gifted Elemental tokens to hold off the hordes of angry beaters, while you set up a win with some combination of Stormbind, Savage Twister, Stuffy Doll, or Lightning Storm. Considering your win conditions and creature control are mostly the same, your resources may get stretched thin, which is why Research and a speculative sideboard (for FNM – for casual, use whatever "wishboard" rules are in place for your group, or discuss them prior to play) are in order further on down the line, including Gaea’s Blessing to help you recycle your deck’s resources while sifting through it. The rest of the deck either is or interacts with lands, so let’s have a look at them.
Compulsive Research and Trade Routes help you sift through your deck to find what you need, while Life from the Loam allows for you to re-use some lands that have been pitched to Trade Routes, Stormbind, or Lightning Storm. Summer Bloom was used alongside a Karoo-powered manabase for the dual purpose of acceleration and often returning lands to your hand whether or not you can find a copy of Trade Routes. Academy Ruins is your sole "tricky" land, and exists pretty much to retrieve Stuffy Dolls that have managed to end up dead, not to mention whatever artifacts you might include in your sideboard/wishboard.
A note about playing Lightning Storm online; make sure you hold the Control (Ctrl) key to retain priority when casting it, otherwise you will miss your chance to discard to it, and a Lightning Storm for three damage is just insulting compared to the twenty-plus it can do in this deck.
Who this deck is for: This deck is for patient people, or people who like to win in original fashions, or people who just like screwing around with land. It has the side benefit of giving you a chance to play both sides of Research and Development to a useful end in the same deck, and that’s a pretty rare opportunity, I’d guess. This deck is not for people who want to win quickly, win with creatures, or have a lot of control over what the opponent is doing – at least maindeck. An interesting thing in this deck is that if you ever somehow end up in, say, a multiplayer game where no one is paying you much attention, you could use Gaea’s Blessing (from either a sideboard, wishboard, or deck tweaking) and Research to eventually give every legal card for your current format a try within the confines of the deck. You’ll probably never get much of a chance to use this without also doing something like taking infinite turns, or setting it up with Doomsday or a similar effect, but I thought it would be interesting to make note of strictly for theoretical reasons. It’s cool to say your deck can do something neat like that. It’s also a fairly cheap deck, due to the unique nature of the manabase.
What to watch out for: You’re going to have problems with any threat which is not a creature, since your answer will involve either trying to burn your opponent out as quickly as possible, or using Research to find an answer, shuffle it into your deck, and use your draw to find it. Luckily, you’re in good colors for dealing with all kinds of permanents; Stone Rain, Wreak Havoc, Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, and others can help with lands, with artifacts and enchantments subject to some combination of Ancient Grudge, Naturalize, or Krosan Grip. Creeping Mold is a good multi-purpose card, but tends to be more expensive than its narrower cousins. That said, let’s look at two different sideboards:
FNM style sideboard:
4 Gaea’s Blessing
3 Bottle Gnomes
2 Krosan Grip
2 Wreak Havoc
1 Govern the Guildless
1 Pyroclasm
1 Spell Burst
1 Tormod’s Crypt
Casual wishboard:
3 Gaea’s Blessing
2 Krosan Grip
2 Wreak Havoc
1 Confiscate
1 Govern the Guildless
1 Icy Manipulator
1 Jester’s Cap
1 Pyroclasm
1 Spell Burst
1 Sulfurous Blast
1 Tormod’s Crypt
The FNM sideboard keeps Dragonstorm in mind, with Bottle Gnomes (to gain life with to survive long enough for a Savage Twister to matter – assuming you can get to seven mana), and uses a full complement of Blessings in case of opposing graveyard hate. Beyond that, it has some spells that are good at what they do. There’s Govern the Guildless to snag Akroma, Angel of Wrath or Draining Whelks from their owners, as Timmy will no doubt show up. Spell Burst is probably worth fetching if you’ve benefited from a Summer Bloom, since doing so with this deck can leave you far ahead on mana. The casual wishboard, so to speak, keeps primarily the same core of spells, but diversifies by including Confiscate (for gaining control of non-creatures, or artifact creatures like opposing Stuffy Dolls or a Triskelavus. Killing one of these can be rendered useless by an opposing Academy Ruins (one of the reasons LD is in both versions of the sideboard). Moving on, we’ve all seen Jester’s Cap used well in Fader by this point. Icy Manipulator can be annoyingly effective in many ways, and Sulfurous Blast is yet another sweeper.
Finally, this deck has a lot of cards that can come up at rather bad times; late game Summer Blooms and early game Life from the Loams tend to fall into this category more than most (since you really don’t want to over-dredge in this deck; unless you’ve already got Gaea’s Blessing in there, you don’t have much in the way of retrieving dredged cards). Luckily, all cards serve as fuel for Stormbind, so try not to burn spells just to get them out of your hand; you always want to be holding something back with this deck, because not only will it make your opponent(s) suspicious, but extra lands can go to Trade Routes, and few things are more disconcerting that Stormbind backed by a full grip and six-plus mana. It gets better if your opponent has seen you win with Lightning Storm before, because they will often get nervous and rush you when your hand gets large. I’m always one for psychological games, and this deck is very capable of playing them with a large hand, even if in truth you’re holding nothing but a fistful of lands. Note that the casual wishboard uses a few more narrow artifacts, as you’ll probably have more time for Stupid Academy Tricks (the other SAT).
…
Hopefully this gives you a taste of what this column will be doing in coming weeks, and gives you something fun to toy around with. Bear in mind that someone who comes just to win will probably pack a deck that will trounce this most of the time, but in a more laid-back setting, it ought to serve you well.
In other news in the gaming geek community, Neverwinter Nights 2 has been sighted stealing the free time of gamers across the world. Despite its flawed status and problematic multiplayer implementation at this point, many issues are being corrected rapidly by the community (as Obsidian works on more official patches). I bring this up for two reasons; one is that I’m hoping some of the rest of you either play NWN 2 or will look into it, because it’s a really good game and promises to be much better as time goes on more likely than not, in much the same way NWN 1 still continues to thrive years after its peak time. Not to mention I myself am wickedly addicted to it… and hey, it might occasionally be good to go smack some orcs around with people I know. The second reason is that while I understand it is more or less impossible to allow the same sort of framework with Magic Online, I sure wish it wasn’t. If the community could become involved with patching and bug fixing, and leave the developers more time to work on other things, I think it would help the product out a good deal. You’d be surprised of what the typical gaming community consists of; you will usually find, if you ask, scripters, programmers, students of law and medicine, and usually you can find someone who will solve almost any problem provided it can possibly be solved. I appreciate and applaud gaming companies who have learned to take the talents of their fans into account.
Planar Chaos is shaping up to be a very odd set, and while I’m not entirely sure that I agree with everything that they’re pulling (I was a big believer in the sanctity of the color pie), I must admit that I wanted to give a very public props to Wizards for their classy tribute to the Lovely Mare. While some part of me would like to be mildly suspicious that someone in the PR department came up with such a gesture, I have to admit that even if my dark, Machiavellian suspicions were true, their heart was in the right place at the time. Even being someone who is familiar with Jamie through primarily second- and third-hand sources, I was still moved by the tribute. I’d been asking around about Jamie for the last couple of months because I hadn’t seen much of him. I hope that R&D was indeed correct that he’s forced to play with it, because just recently I made quite clear (as did Craig) that we’d all like to see him back, assuming he’s ready. It’s especially telling that, even though you can’t tell, it’s taken me a long time to type up this section, and that I avoid using blatant terms, because it’s very contrary for me to not have a blunt answer ready quickly for most any situation. Well played, Wizards… well played.
Signing off,
Rivien Swanson
flawedparadigm a(aye Carumba!)t gmaSPAMSUCKSil d(.)ot co[I like NWN 2.]m
Flawed Paradigm on MTGO (when I actually log in)
GodOfAtheism just about everywhere else.