Magical Hack: A Limited Point Of View

With the Pro Tour in Charleston this past weekend, the nature and purpose of this article series has to take a stand: to be more “The Week That Was”, a la Brian David-Marshall, more “Swimming With Sharks”, a la Michael J. Flores, or to stick out somewhat into its own territory. As Ben Bleiweiss explained rather succinctly, with the Pro Tour in Charleston came the death of Ravnica Block Constructed as a relevant tournament format, a death knell ringing out with the scent of char-broiled mage wafting on the air. While the summer tournament season in years past has seen a mid-season split between Block Constructed PTQs and Team Limited PTQs, this year there is no Block Constructed to explore, and the Team season has already played out to its fullest extent. Limited State Championships is this weekend here in the U.S., timed to coincide with (or interrupt, depending on your point of view and how grouchy you are in general) the Kobe PTQ season, a Limited PTQ season using the full Ravnica block.

Instead of choosing one of those two to choose from, I’ve always thought of this article series as a marriage between the two: The Week That Is, as it were. The focus for this article series is always on the next big event coming up for the PTQ-level player, with looks back into the past only so long as doing so proves useful. And unfortunately, the results of Charleston currently do not prove so, the lessons of Ravnica Block Constructed falling on deaf and uncaring ears as we try to muddle our way through a Sealed Deck season that is perhaps more complex than any we have yet played. This article series is undoubtedly for sharks, rather than historians or “fans of the game” as Brian’s article often writes for, his own love for the history of the game imparting that same joy of watching history as it passes week after week… but the lessons of the past are strongly on my mind as we look to each upcoming event, a long memory coloring my thoughts and experiences as we focus on “the next big thing.”

Ravnica Block Constructed, we hardly knew you. Ravnica Block Limited, on the other hand, is something we do not know… and keep trying to, only to find it is possessed of a near-infinite complexity and many different layers of thought and decision that need to be engaged in order to succeed. Following up on last week’s article, in which a somewhat unusual Sealed Deck was taken and explored to examine the difference between the “greedy gobbler” Sealed Decks that invariably play four colors and the most amazing medley of spells, along with a manabase teetering on the brink of destruction; and a merely “good enough” deck leaving some power cards in the sideboard in favor of consistent mana and synergy… this week’s experiment is an interesting thought-puzzle. By taking the Day 1 Undefeated Decks of Grand Prix – Kuala Lumpur, where three players did very well with four color “greedy gobbler” decks more interested in playing Thermonuclear War than traditional (read: “sane”) Magic, we’re going to take all three, chop them up and reconstitute them to see whether each individual piece, combined into a different deck, still strongly suggests the four-color mish-mash that served these three players so well.

We’ll be taking Kenji Tsumura Ravnica starter deck, James Porter’s Guildpact booster pack, and Nan Tu’s Dissension booster pack, just going down the page arbitrarily in set order. Round and round and round she goes, where she stops, no one knows…

Kenji:
Dimir Aqueduct
Screeching Griffin
Vedalken Dismisser
Dimir House Guard
Sewerdreg
Civic Wayfinder
Elves of Deep Shadow
Golgari Rotwurm
Selesnya Evangel
Shambling Shell
Lurking Informant
Hex
Ribbons of Night
Farseek
Fists of Ironwood
Recollect
Congregation at Dawn
Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
Boros Fury-Shield
Conclave Equenaut
Dromad Purebred
Gate Hound
Wojek Apothecary
Wojek Siren
Convolute
Ethereal Usher
Grayscaled Gharial
Induce Paranoia
Peel from Reality
Vedalken Entrancer
Darkblast
Blockbuster
Fiery Conclusion
Galvanic Arc
Greater Forgeling
Smash
War-Torch Goblin
Golgari Brownscale
Chorus of the Conclave
Moroii
Rally the Righteous
Razia, Boros Archangel
Skyknight Legionnaire
Woodwraith Strangler

James:
Orzhov Basilica
Daggerclaw Imp
Blind Hunter
Mourning Thrull
Wreak Havoc
Douse in Gloom
Withstand
Sky Swallower
Steamcore Weird
Train of Thought
Vertigo Spawn
Restless Bones
Fencer’s Magemark
Silhana Ledgewalker
Silhana Starfletcher

Nan:
Rakdos Carnarium
Ogre Gatecrasher
Rakdos Guildmage
Ocular Halo
Aurora Eidolon
Bond of Agony
Entropic Eidolon
Whiptail Moloch
Simic Ragworm
Shielding Plax
Breeding Pool
Ghost Quarter
Sporeback Troll
Valor Made Real

Note: As good as the Sideboard coverage is, we still seem to be missing one Dissension card and one Ravnica card, as we have 73 of the expected 75 tallied here. Let’s assume they were on par with our Grayscale Gharial and Valor Made Real, shunt them out of memory entirely, and move on.

Now, sorting this by color and guild as seems to help us at least start to make something less of a mish-mash from this otherwise unordered chaos:

RGD Sealed Pool Experiment 1

Kenji, James, and Nan

Test deck on 06-25-2006

Ravnica Limited

Creatures (41)

Lands (6)

Spells (26)

… Obligatory blank space for deck construction inserted here…

…

… Doesn’t everything feel better when there’s a Rakdos Guildmage sitting in your pile? …

…

… (Burma Shave insert) …

…

… D’you know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!

…

… And I’m spent!

This is pretty easy to compress into usable form, as we toss away the crap and keep the power cards. Identifying the cards that are the most promising, we see these cards: Rakdos Guildmage; Razia, Boros Archangel; Moroii; Civic Wayfinder; Galvanic Arc; Fiery Conclusion; Douse in Gloom; Ribbons of Night; Hex; Peel from Reality; Vedalken Dismisser. (Fiery Conclusion may be the “sketchy” inclusion here, but it’s a powerful and splash-able removal spell that appears to be card disadvantage, but which can easily be harnessed as five damage for two mana by setting up a sacrifice at minimal cost. More sketchy is the eight-mana Razia, because eight mana is a lot to pay for anything these days, especially when you need four specific colored mana.) Our most powerful cards are clearly Black and Blue, as dipping into Dimir gets you the best half of Rakdos Guildmage, a 4/4 flier for four mana, two creature-damaging removal spells with life-gain attached (and in one case, your card back), the wonderful Time Ebb-plus-2/2 play of Vedalken Dismisser (and oh, how he was mocked for his prohibitive cost back when we just had Ravnica to play with!), plus Peel from Reality and Hex.

Starting with what one could presume to be the base of the deck, then, we see the following:

Lands: Dimir Aqueduct
1cc: Darkblast
2cc: Peel from Reality, Train of Thought, Lurking Informant, Mourning Thrull, Rakdos Guildmage
3cc: Douse in Gloom, Daggerclaw Imp
4cc: Ocular Halo, Vedalken Entrancer, Dimir House Guard, Entropic Eidolon, Moroii
5cc: Ribbons of Night, Sewerdreg
6cc: Hex, Vedalken Dismisser

Backup singers: Restless Bones, Convolute, Ethereal Usher, Induce Paranoia, Vertigo Spawn

We have seventeen very solid cards, and some decent backup cards… in fact, I could see it being quite reasonable for any of those five cards to be added in, depending on how the opponent’s deck plays out. Of those five, Ethereal Usher is clearly the sketchiest, but while you can laugh at a card that transmutes to become Hex or serve up a Vedalken Dismisser, I for one wouldn’t suggest laughing at it twice. Its ability, while too weak for most draft matches, does happen to break open stalled games reasonably well, sending damage across consistently to chip away until the opponent is dead. (This deck would never find that out, however, as stalled boards are broken up much better by Hex. Derf derf.)

Rather than try to figure out how to splash a third color to meet your needs, I would instead start by trying to look at the deck as a three-color deck, as you have a lot of flexibility in your need for Blue mana: one for Dismisser, one for Moroii, and lots for Train of Thought, but otherwise we have a very Black deck that could still be looking for its second color. White offers some fliers and that’s it, even if one of those fliers is the excellent Blind Hunter, while Red has Galvanic Arc and two or three decent creatures. Green, though…

Lands: Dimir Aqueduct, Breeding Pool
1cc: Darkblast, Elves of Deep Shadow
2cc: Peel from Reality, Farseek, Fists of the Ironwood, Lurking Informant, Mourning Thrull, Rakdos Guildmage
3cc: Douse in Gloom, Recollect, Daggerclaw Imp, Civic Wayfinder, Silhana Starfletcher, Shambling Shell
4cc: Dimir House Guard, Entropic Eidolon, Moroii, Simic Ragworm, Sporeback Troll
5cc: Ribbons of Night, Sewerdreg, Golgari Rotwurm
6cc: Hex, Vedalken Dismisser

This is 24 cards, and there’s room to shave a few for quality reasons if that is what you want. As far as colors go, your spells cost seventeen Black, ten Green, and three Blue mana. Either you can stick with it as-is and play sixteen lands, or cut one card to fit down to 23 and play just seventeen lands, which should be more than enough with two creatures tapping for mana, and a creature and a spell searching for a land. Sixteen should be less than enough, though, as we are lacking any Signet action and thus we dearly need our colored mana in order to fix our colored mana. If a card is going to go to the grumper, we shave off Fists of the Ironwood for not doing quite enough in this deck, which can’t really do much with the 1/1’s and doesn’t get too much use out of the trample ability either. We can, however, go further if we try: add one Rakdos Carnarium and one Mountain, both of which we like for turning on the second side of Rakdos Guildmage (and clearly the Carnarium was making it in anyway, as is probably the Orzhov Basilica), and we can squeeze that little bit further to get Galvanic Arc on our side as well. Choose the card that least impresses and cut it from the team, in this case likely Recollect as it is the slowest and most situational “good card” here, and let’s see how things look mana-wise when we cram Galvanic Arc in and go full-on “greedy gobbler” style.

Lands: Dimir Aqueduct, Rakdos Carnarium, Orzhov Basilica, Breeding Pool, Mountain, Island, 5 Swamps, 6 Forests
1cc: Darkblast, Elves of Deep Shadow
2cc: Peel from Reality, Farseek, Lurking Informant, Mourning Thrull, Rakdos Guildmage
3cc: Douse in Gloom, Galvanic Arc, Daggerclaw Imp, Civic Wayfinder, Silhana Starfletcher, Shambling Shell
4cc: Dimir House Guard, Entropic Eidolon, Moroii, Simic Ragworm, Sporeback Troll
5cc: Ribbons of Night, Sewerdreg, Golgari Rotwurm
6cc: Hex, Vedalken Dismisser

Compare and contrast it to a deck of just three colors, two main colors and a light splash:

Lands: Dimir Aqueduct, Rakdos Carnarium, Orzhov Basilica, Breeding Pool, Island, 5 Swamps, 7 Forests
1cc: Darkblast, Elves of Deep Shadow
2cc: Peel from Reality, Farseek, Lurking Informant, Mourning Thrull, Rakdos Guildmage
3cc: Douse in Gloom, Recollect, Daggerclaw Imp, Civic Wayfinder, Silhana Starfletcher, Shambling Shell
4cc: Dimir House Guard, Entropic Eidolon, Moroii, Simic Ragworm, Sporeback Troll
5cc: Ribbons of Night, Sewerdreg, Golgari Rotwurm
6cc: Hex, Vedalken Dismisser

The question is whether Galvanic Arc is worth the tighter manabase, which has to actually worry about drawing the wrong proportion of Green and Black mana because it is trying to squeeze so much wiggle room out of not quite enough colorless fixers. Signets and double-lands significantly help your mana when you want to get away with greedy things, but three on-color fixers squeezes you very hard… Kenji had four, James Porter had six between lands and Signets, and it was only Nan Tu who had to face the same problem of no Signets to help smooth things over. His build seems rather unusual, if not downright bizarre, and in this case with Recollect perhaps being able to get back Peel, Douse, Ribbons, Rakdos Guildmage or Dismisser it may be rather reasonable… that last card squeezed in, to put Galvanic Arc in the deck, is really a judgment call: it’ll probably work out “in time” most of the time, but its effect on your manabase can be subtle and insidious because there’s not quite enough Green and Black sources, and every once in a while you might choke on your mana because you drew the Mountain instead of a land that was more productive. I for one would leave the Arc out and keep my mana a little better, but I would be surprised if three players would have less than four opinions on that particular matter.

For alternate builds, let’s look at the following:

R/W/B:

Lands: Dimir Aqueduct, Orzhov Basilica, Rakdos Carnarium
1cc: Darkblast, War-Torch Goblin
2cc: Fiery Conclusion, Lurking Informant, Mourning Thrull, Rakdos Guildmage
3cc: Boros Fury-Shield, Withstand, Douse in Gloom, Rally the Righteous, Galvanic Arc, Daggerclaw Imp, Skyknight Legionnaire
4cc: Screeching Griffin, Aurora Eidolon, Entropic Eidolon, Dimir House Guard, Blind Hunter, Ogre Gatecrasher
5cc: Ribbons of Night, Sewerdreg, Greater Forgeling
6cc+: Hex, Conclave Equenaut, Razia, Boros Archangel

25 solid cards, a lot of evasion creatures, but not much in the way of fat. This deck will have a difficult time answering large-ish creatures, even if it should prove excellent at racing with evasion so long as you keep to a B/W/r core. However, it seems underpowered without the Blue addition, which still wants all of the cards that made it into the previous deck and doesn’t really give you a lot to favor this build besides a Razia at the topmost end to look forward to. Moroii is just flat-out better than Razia, pound for pound, and the “bonus” of having Skyknight Legionnaire comes at the downside of having to play both White and Red, both of which are solid but uninspiring in this card pool.

U/B/W:

Lands: Dimir Aqueduct, Orzhov Basilica, Rakdos Carnarium
1cc: Darkblast
2cc: Peel from Reality, Lurking Informant, Mourning Thrull, Rakdos Guildmage
3cc: Withstand, Douse in Gloom, Daggerclaw Imp
4cc: Screeching Griffin, Aurora Eidolon, Entropic Eidolon, Dimir House Guard, Blind Hunter, Moroii
5cc: Ribbons of Night, Sewerdreg
6cc+: Hex, Conclave Equenaut, Vedalken Dismisser

Struggling for cards and gasping for air, the color combination that would bring the most evasion starts to reach for the bad cards much too soon, needing Dromad Purebred and Restless Bones even to try and get up to 23 playables. It’s four short and not looking very good.

B/G/w:

Lands: Dimir Aqueduct, Rakdos Carnarium, Orzhov Basilica
1cc: Darkblast, Elves of Deep Shadow
2cc: Farseek, Fists of Ironwood, Lurking Informant, Mourning Thrull, Rakdos Guildmage, Selesnya Evangel
3cc: Douse in Gloom, Recollect, Congregation at Dawn, Daggerclaw Imp, Civic Wayfinder, Silhana Starfletcher, Shambling Shell
4cc: Dimir House Guard, Entropic Eidolon, Simic Ragworm, Sporeback Troll, Blind Hunter
5cc: Ribbons of Night, Sewerdreg, Golgari Rotwurm

6cc: Hex

Simply put, just not as good as the Blue. It may have one more “in color” Karoo than the version I suggested might be best, but you trade off Moroii for Blind Hunter, and Dismisser / Peel for Selesnya Evangel / Congregation at Dawn.

G/W/R:

Lands: Orzhov Basilica, Rakdos Carnarium
1cc: War-Torch Goblin, Elves of Deep Shadow
2cc: Farseek, Fists of Ironwood, Fiery Conclusion, Mourning Thrull, Selesnya Evangel, Rakdos Guildmage
3cc: Boros Fury-Shield, Withstand, Congregation at Dawn, Douse in Gloom, Rally the Righteous, Galvanic Arc, Skyknight Legionnaire, Civic Wayfinder, Silhana Starfletcher
4cc: Screeching Griffin, Aurora Eidolon, Ogre Gatecrasher, Simic Ragworm, Sporeback Troll
5cc: Ribbons of Night, Greater Forgeling
6cc+: Conclave Equenaut, Razia, Boros Archangel

You end up playing your Black cards anyway, or at least Ribbons / Douse in Gloom plus enough Black to use the Guildmage. There’s not enough wiggle room to turn this into anything other than a three color evenly-split deck with a full-on fourth color splash, meaning you are playing your underpowered cards and have terrible mana. How embarrassing.

U/B/R:

Lands: Dimir Aqueduct, Orzhov Basilica, Rakdos Carnarium
1cc: Darkblast
2cc: Peel from Reality, Train of Thought, Fiery Conclusion, Lurking Informant, Mourning Thrull, Rakdos Guildmage
3cc: Douse in Gloom, Galvanic Arc, Daggerclaw Imp
4cc: Induce Paranoia, Vedalken Entrancer, Ocular Halo, Steamcore Weird, Dimir House Guard, Entropic Eidolon, Ogre Gatecrasher, Moroii
5cc: Ribbons of Night, Sewerdreg
6cc: Hex, Vedalken Dismisser

This is actually a very solid deck, again getting one more on-color Karoo than the G/B/u deck, even if having an “actual” dual land, the kind with a $20 price tag, should be basically the same thing. This is probably the best of the “backup plan” decks, but it just seems like it is trying to stretch itself too thin and isn’t using your most powerful cards, to the point where Induce Paranoia’s enhanced effect is part of the reason you’re playing it… most of the reason being because you have to worry about your opponent’s bombs, because they will probably be difficult to recover from. You do get more removal than the B/G-base deck, but you also have creatures that lose in a fight without gaining any benefit.

As we saw by trying to play a non-Black-based deck, like it or not the Black squeezes its way in, so I am going to just dismiss any further solutions that exclude Black. We’ve looked at U/B/W, U/B/R and U/B/G, discussed their merits at least in passing, and come to the conclusion that the Blue cards can’t really stand on their own as a main color. Of the three “other” choices, it is the Green that gains you the most by advancing it as your color of choice instead of the Red or White; the White is pretty terrible, at least as far as your game-plan would be developing, with a few fliers and no way to hold the board, while the Red gives a few solid cards but can’t hold its own as a second color, leaving the Blue filler to try and close the gap.

May you be so lucky as to grab your own Rakdos Guildmages at the State Championships,

Sean McKeown