Like many decks of its ilk, my three-color Black/x design had somewhat derivative beginnings. It started with Brian”Dragonlord” Kibler’s B/r listing on the Sideboard, which I built on Apprentice to do some light testing.
Wait – I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you the whole story, from its trembling string section beginnings to the rumbling bass crescendo of Regionals.
The Early Days – Testing Tog N’ Frog
Late February/early March was when the serious Magic players of Sarnia, Ontario really started to buckle down and think about Regionals decks. Traditional (non-Upheaval, non-Standstill) Psychatog was my deck of choice at the time, but that would change in the coming weeks – the notorious Frog In A Blender would experience something of a renaissance in my area.
So what were the boys of Sarnia testing in their ‘Tog decks? Probably the same things you were. I personally started with Alan Comer’s decklist from the San Diego Masters, determined to test like a mad fiend in order to find the best post-Torment configuration. Standing on the shoulders of geniuses, and all that – here’s the Comer listing:
Psychatog (Comer San Diego Masters)
2 Cephalid Coliseum
8 Island
4 Salt Marsh
4 Swamp
4 Underground River
4 Psychatog
4 Counterspell
3 Duress
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Force Spike
4 Memory Lapse
4 Opt
3 Probe
2 Recoil
3 Repulse
3 Undermine
Sideboard:
1 Duress
2 Engineered Plague
3 Gainsay
3 Innocent Blood
1 Island
1 Mahamoti Djinn
2 Persuasion
2 Slay
Some reading suggested a consensus opinion that Psychatog decks were in for tough times – the introduction of Torment powerhouse Chainer’s Edict into the card pool had the ‘Tog enthusiasts of Planet Earth crying for their respective mothers.
Chainer’s Edict
1B
Sorcery
Target player sacrifices a creature.
Flashback – 5BB
It’s pretty obvious what problem this causes for a deck with only four creatures in it, and no less an authority than Seth Burn would go so far as to venture the opinion that the deck had been”invalidated.” Without a ton of testing, I couldn’t agree or disagree, though Chainer’s pet spell did seem like trouble.
I didn’t give up hope though, and proceeded to wallow in a bevy of post-Torment Type 2 testing while still fully intending to play Psychatog at Regionals. I was trying Chainer’s Edict and Circular Logic in the deck of course, but less obvious additions like Possessed Aven and Plagiarize were being put through their paces as well. I was testing Obsessive Search, too, though I quickly gave it the boot – Opt was just better. With all the options, it seemed like it would take forever to hammer out the optimal ‘Tog decklist.
I started with a decklist shamelessly stolen from the San Diego Masters Series, and tried to tune it with an eye towards the local metagame (don’t I sound like quite the miser!) and the emergence of speedy R/G decks. Also, I had to learn to play the darn thing – which is a step some people forget about. Psychatog, like a fine wine, grows better with time.
Circular Logic
2U
Instant
Counter target spell unless its controller pays 1 for each card in your graveyard.
Madness – U
Circular Logic was a huge improvement over Memory Lapse in the late game, but it made the matchup with Frog-In-A-Blender (which was then getting its fifteen minutes of fame) even worse, always coming online a turn too late. All I could do was mentally calculate the number of times Circular Logic was superior to Memory Lapse (countering a critical late-game topdeck, for example, rather than just delaying it for a turn) and compare that number to all instances where I ended up getting wrecked by a second- or third-turn play I couldn’t Logic. It was a close call in most matchups – but against Frog In A Blender, at least, the Lapse was clearly better because it could buy time.
Possessed Aven
2UU
Creature – Bird (maybe a couple of other creature types in there too)
Threshold – Possessed Aven gets +1/+1, is black, and gains:”2B, tap: Destroy target Blue creature”.
3/3
Possessed Aven seemed good on paper… But it just didn’t fit the deck despite its efficient cost. When I saw that the Aven was simply giving my opponents an outlet to use otherwise-dead Flametongue Kavu, I shelved it for good. The market for a 3/3 or 4/4 flyer just isn’t there with those darn Kavu lurking about.
Other people were trying new things in their own Psychatog builds – local player Chris Borek was the first to try Zombie Infestation, which had excellent synergy with Psychatog, Circular Logic and Obsessive Search.
Zombie Infestation
1B
Enchantment
Discard two cards: Put a 2/2 Zombie token into play under your control
This was a part of Chris’ solution to what would come to be known as”The Edict Problem.” With plentiful Zombie tokens to soak up creature removal, the Psychatog would theoretically be able to mop up the game unhindered. This nifty enchantment also provides an outlet for late-game land and redundant copies of itself. Borek had mixed success, and didn’t really have the chance to give the Infestation the testing it perhaps deserved. Given more time, he might have added Upheaval – and imagine where that might have taken us? Eventually, he needed more space for tempo cards and the Infestations were cut.
Then there was Plagiarize.
Plagiarize
3U
Instant
Until end of turn, if an opponent would draw a card, he or she skips that draw and you draw a card instead.
Many of the old Masters Series versions had Probe in them, and in tandem with Cephalid Coliseum, this thing is the Probe from hell – resulting in a draw of four cards for you and a discard of three cards by your opponent. I started running one Plagiarize in the maindeck and it came in handy every so often – clearing out a handful of Edicts to make way for a Tog, forcing a control player into a counter war on his turn, or providing a three-card swing by hijacking an opposing Phyrexian Arena for a turn. With Plagiarize being a 4CC spell with no effect on the board, one was the right number for me, though many other Sarnia-area Tog players didn’t bother with it (or Probe).
Obsessive Search, as mentioned before, seemed to fit into the deck – but in the end, it just wasn’t that good.
Obsessive Search
U
Instant
Draw a card.
Madness – U
When is this better than Opt? Not too often. I feel much safer keeping a one-land hand with Opt than I do with Obsessive Search, and Opt is the better search spell my itself. In tandem with Cephalid Coliseum, Probe (which I was taking out of the deck anyway) or Psychatog, the Obsessive Search gets better – but not enough to justify its presence in the deck. It doesn’t shrink the deck as much as Opt, which is an amazing hand and mana fixer at just U. After briefly testing the Search, I brought the Opts back.
It’s noteworthy that no one in the Sarnia area really changed the Psychatog status quo with these builds, a la Zevatog, and the discovery of the house that is Standstill. Rather, our testing was much more meat and potatoes, with the goal being to refine rather than to revolutionize. While we did test Standstill, it was in U/G tempo decks and not control decks.
The deck started to get tighter as I tried to decide on the right balance of bounce, kill, and utility. Eventually, I added enough Edicts to justify removing all of the Cabal Pits from the deck, a move that was partially necessitated by the threat of massive early damage from Reckless Charged weenies. It was the right call – any creature that I needed Pit to thwart (Yavimaya Barbarian, for example) would fall easily to the Edict.
Speaking of Reckless Charged weenies – I was just starting to test Torment cards in my ‘Tog deck when Frog In A Blender variants started to show up at the store for the first time.
The much-ballyhooed Frog deck has been deconstructed and analyzed by better theorists than yours truly, so I won’t spend too much time telling you about the versions being played around here. Suffice it to say that we’re all avid readers of the usual web content, and Seth Burn build was a solid start. This is my testing build, which is probably exactly like Seth’s (I haven’t checked) but may be a couple of cards off:
Geordie’s Frog In A Blender Listing (with thanks to Seth Burn)
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Raging Goblin
4 Quirion Sentinel
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Grim Lavamancer
3 Violent Eruption
4 Fiery Temper
4 Sonic Seizure
4 Reckless Charge
4 Firebolt
7 Forest
4 Mountain
4 Barbarian Rings
4 Karplusan Forest
2 City of Brass
Sideboard:
4 Compost
3 Mage’s Contest
8″assorted other cards”
My playtest games with this beast would show me the same things that everyone else would eventually realize – it demolishes Psychatog because it is so fast…But it loses to other R/G decks that play with better cards. With the local metagame at 60% Tog, though, beating Tog was a huge incentive to play the deck…And as a Tog player, I knew I had to be prepared.
How popular were Psychatog decks in the area? Well, one Friday Night Magic tournament had no less than 50% of the field running some sort of Psychatog deck, with six making T8 and two self-described”anti-Tog” beatdown decks rounding out the field. I wasn’t part of the solution, either – as a Tog player myself, I was”part of the problem.”
The”Weird Sideboard Experiment”
Prior to the Frog In A Blender craze, the Psychatog deck was so popular in Sarnia that I decided to goof around with a strange sideboard against it – one Duress, four Mana Maze, one Unnatural Selection, and four Lobotomy. The idea was to sideboard out your countermagic and put in the ten sideboard cards. From there, you hope to drop turn 2 Mana Maze, and leave the opposing Tog deck with a bunch of dead counterspells.
Mana Maze
1U
Enchantment
Players can’t play spells that share a color with the spell last played this turn.
It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, but I only tested it for a short while. In any case, it wasn’t worth the nine sideboard slots it monopolized, and the Unnatural Selection was pretty random – it did win me one game where there was a Psychatog standoff, but with Chainer’s Edict coming into more widespread use, it was fairly redundant.
Speaking of sideboards, I had more tweaking to do.
Knowing that FIAB’s success against the thoroughly-despised Psychatog archetype could make it very popular, I went to the store one afternoon with a bunch cards to test in the sideboard of my ‘Tog build. I wanted to get the matchup with Frog to 50% or better after boarding in preparation for that week’s competition – to dominate FNMagic around my locale, you have to be like the proverbial midget at the urinal… Always on your toes. The cards in question were four each of Caltrops, Nausea, Ravenous Rats, and Aether Burst.
Caltrops
3
Artifact
Whenever a creature attacks, Caltrops deals 1 damage to it.
Caltrops was the first to get disqualified – and really, it was just common sense. The card didn’t do enough against Wild Mongrel and Grim Lavamancer, and some Frog builds were running four Yavimaya Barbarians in place of the more fragile Quirion Sentinel. Testing had shown that more than anything, the Tog deck needed time, that most precious of Magic resources… And Caltrops wasn’t providing it. Though multiple Caltrops could conceivably create tremendous virtual card advantage, my deck was able to take control in the late game anyhow by virtue of card drawing, countermagic on key threats, and the Tog itself, which I began to call”Moat” whenever I cast him against R/G. These were more versatile roads to victory.
Psychatog does have a Moat-like effect against many Red-Green decks. A savage beating, this superstar arrives with much fanfare as early as turn 3, and ensures the savage murder of at least one opposing creature whenever you are attacked. This Abyss-esque attrition is something that even creature-heavy decks can’t stand for long, and they often have to stop attacking as a result. Thus,”Moat.” In testing, though, my Psychatog deck would tend to depend on an early ‘Tog – a crutch that could easily be kicked out from under you should you draw your seven and find no toothy grin staring back at you.
Nausea
1B
Sorcery
All creatures get -1/-1 until end of turn.
Nausea never really got tested, since its application was easy enough to theorize about. The 1B Sorcery would sometimes come down and kill a Lavamancer and a Raging Goblin, granting much needed time and card advantage, but sometimes it would wither and die in hand against a Wild Mongrel/Yavimaya Barbarian draw. Nausea was given the axe.
Ravenous Rats and Aether Burst, though, were extremely good at doing what needed to be done… Namely, giving the deck some breathing room in the early game, time enough to find the ‘Tog, cast the Fact Or Fiction (not necessarily in that order) and start taking control.
Ravenous Rats would almost always prevent six or seven potential damage by itself, with a double rat draw taking a ton of punch out of the opposing hand – soaking up attacking creatures or removal spells after causing the discard of two crucial early-game cards. While this”vermin tech” was met with some skepticism from the other Sarnia-area players, who saw it as an invitation to get drilled with a Madness spell, my testing was showing Mr. Rat to be the right call time and again. Frog In A Blender players, piloting the prototypical”tap-out happy” deck, are seldom in a position to take advantage of a rat with Madness burn. If they want to keep mana open use Madness cards via the Rat discard, the Rat performs as a sort of virtual Stone Rain, and the Frog player hurts himself more by playing around the little guy and slowing himself down.
Aether Burst was a tremendous tempo saver, removing whichever creature happened to be getting the Reckless Charge treatment on any given early-game turn. It was clear that Rats and Bursts would find a place in my sideboard, with Duress, my one copy of Plagiarize, and other slower cards hitting the bench in the Frog matchup.
As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered.
We had maybe one tournament where Frog was a factor, but after that the whole speed archetype blinked right off the Sarnia radar – it just wasn’t strong against much of anything besides Psychatog. Seemingly overnight, everyone had become interested in Aggro-Black with a splash, a deck with similar anti-Tog qualities and the ability to maintain a sensible matchup against a wider portion of the field. Why?
Brian Kibler B/r Aggro listing was posted on the Sideboard, and it would pioneer the basic concept from which a tremendous number of Black/x decks would evolve. I’m sure I wasn’t alone when I brushed my primary deck aside to concentrate on finding out just how good Kibler’s deck was.
One Month To Crunch Time – Kibler Black, What About Bob?, and Mortivore Just Wins
Brian Kibler B/r deck, from the Sideboard. In many ways the prototypical B/x Braids deck:
16 Swamp
4 Tainted Peak
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
4 Flametongue Kavu
2 Ichorid
2 Shambling Swarm
4 Duress
4 Chainer’s Edict
Sideboard:
4 Slay
4 Phyrexian Arena
2 Shambling Swarm
2 Mortivore
2 Persecute
1 Ichorid
Note the Mortivore in the sideboard. Though I never built Kibler’s deck (I started my testing with the version below), I did eventually come to the conclusion that Mortivore was insane of my own accord. Brian was, unsurprisingly, ahead of me by a couple of weeks on that score…Though he ran only two. At one point I was ready to go up to four copies of Mortivore just because it was so hard to lose against R/G when I drew one.
As it turned out, Kibler’s deck was quite good indeed, but I didn’t switch over right away. I kept on testing Psychatog until I found a B/R listing I liked even more than Kibler’s – and it came from Team Academy!
Team Academy B/R
4 Duress
4 Addle
4 Terminate
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Chainer’s Edict
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Flametongue Kavu
2 Shambling Swarm
2 Ichorid
16 Swamp
4 Tainted Peak
4 Sulfurous Springs
Sideboard:
4 Slay
1 Ichorid
2 Shambling Swarm
1 Persecute
3 Haunting Echoes
4 Ravenous Rats
The switch occurs here. I would eventually abandon all of my Psychatog playtesting (which wasn’t going well anyhow, seeing as I had overlooked the Upheaval option – probably the best solution to the dearth of Chainer’s Edicts and other removal in the environment) and focus all of my energies on finding a good Black/x deck to play.
The above listing is from the Team Academy webpage and I really liked it immediately… Except that it couldn’t beat Compost in R/G. Ever. I playtested this deck for a couple days and I lost to Compost so often that I’ll still be losing to it three years after I die.
Ignoring the Compost problem for the moment, let’s take a look at the things that made me like this deck immediately.
First, it didn’t play Braids. I didn’t like playing with Braids then, and I still don’t now. It’s a great card against the control decks, but it isn’t very good against much else, and I wanted her out of the deck.
Second, it had four Terminates, and I love the idea of playing with Terminate. Kills Skizziks at instant speed. Gets rid of Spiritmonger, and it makes the survival of an opposing Mortivore a sketchy proposition. (In any case, it would quickly become clear that Ichorid was the way to go in any B/x mirror, with the possible exception of B/g. As a result, I didn’t expect to see many Mortivores in the mirror.)
So starting from that decklist, I began playtesting. The Compost frustrations mentioned above were troublesome, but I quickly noticed that the deck was still excellent against control even without Braids. The first game was slightly worse…. But after sideboarding, the deck would have little trouble.
The Flametongue Kavu were clearly nuts, and I didn’t want to run a Black/x deck without them. I also didn’t want to lose to Compost. I decided to make a Black/Red deck that didn’t play Braids, but didn’t lose to Compost either. That meant I had to add Green. Green gave me options like Pernicious Deed and Simplify, but also the one I liked best – Thunderscape Battlemage. It also occurred to me that I could use Compost as well as destroy it.
I came up with the following listing, which is really the first incarnation of”School Canoe,” the deck I would eventually play at Ontario Regionals:
School Canoe v. 1.0
4 Duress
4 Addle
4 Terminate
4 Chainer’s Edict
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Thunderscape Battlemage
14 Swamp
3 Tainted Peak
3 Tainted Wood
2 Sulfurous Springs
2 Darigaaz’ Caldera
Sideboard:
3 Mortivore
3 Compost
3 Ichorid
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Ravenous Rats
The Ichorid and Shambling Swarms were put into the sideboard because my testing had been narrow, and I didn’t understand their importance in the B/x mirror match. Don’t worry – I would come to my senses. I was more preoccupied with killing Compost than anything else, and included seven ways to destroy the bothersome enchantment between the maindeck and the sideboard.
The Mortivores I decided to try after scanning through the complete list of Black cards in Apprentice for the hundredth time. I looked at the big black beast for that hundredth time and realized it the absolute sugar against Red/Green. My suspicions were quickly confirmed – in testing against Trent Rogers’ R/G beatdown deck, Mortivore would single-handedly win me games after sideboarding time and time again…
Speaking of Trent’s R/G deck, we were making progress there as well. Fire/Ice, while a fine burn spell, was replaced with Firebolt at my request, and the results were tremendous – especially against Black/x decks and other R/G builds. While Fire/Ice was fairly attractive because of it’s ability to kill a Nantuko Shade/Mesmeric Fiend in the early turns, each Firebolt would drill two of my creatures game after game after game after game after game. It was especially frustrating to have my Flametongue Kavu card advantage essentially negated by a flashed back Firebolt. It wasn’t all bad news, though – Pernicious Deed was good against Compost, and it proved it’s worth even more with quick defense against multiple Call of the Herd draws by the R/G player.
Still, my deck in its current configuration – with no Shambling Swarms or Mortivore in the maindeck – was hard-pressed to show favorable results against R/G in pre-sideboard testing. I didn’t give it too much thought, since Mortivore kept autowinning the post-sideboard games.
My teammate John Labute would spark the next wave of”School Canoe” testing with his decision to replace the maindeck Mesmeric Fiends with Ravenous Rats. The choice of Rat vs. Fiend is one that was doubtless pondered by thousands of players all over the world, and I was no exception. The Fiend was better against control (but the Rat wasn’t bad at all!), while the Rat was better against beatdown (but the Fiend, with its ability to draw a burn spell and break up the opposing mana curve) wasn’t bad either.
I decided to give Addle the boot and play both, reasoning that the Mesmeric Fiend was a reasonable substitute for Addle in any case. It was around this time that the Neutral Ground Grudge Match decklists were released, prompting me to make another change in time for the upcoming Friday Night Magic – the addition of Urza’s Rage in place of the Duress. I also added a couple of Haunting Echoes to the sideboard, in order to help with Psychatog and (especially) Control Black.
This would prove to be a mistake, though the Rage tested well against creature decks (surprise surprise). It was too hard on the mana base, though the addition of a City of Brass helped out a little.
School Canoe v. 1.1
4 Terminate
4 Urza’s Rage
4 Chainer’s Edict
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Thunderscape Battlemage
13 Swamp
3 Tainted Peak
3 Tainted Wood
2 Sulfurous Springs
2 Darigaaz Caldera
1 City of Brass
Sideboard:
3 Mortivore
3 Compost
3 Haunting Echoes
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Ichorid
With a greater number of black creatures, I noticed that my Ichorid was far more effective when I did sideboard it in.
This version of the deck saw heavy testing against a diverse field, including Psychatog, Counter-Trenches, and R/G beats. It was performing well, but the games against control were closer and I didn’t have good sideboard cards against creatureless or semi-creatureless decks. I was having trouble against control black especially, where I had sixteen essentially dead cards – Flametongue Kavu, Urza’s Rage, Terminate, and Chainer’s Edict. It was clear something had to change, and when testing started to show that I could easily lose the mirror despite all of my removal simply because of the two maindeck Ichorids in many Black splash builds, I knew I had to play maindeck Ichorid as well.
Two of the Urza’s Rages came out for Ichorids, but I didn’t know what to put in for the other two. This is when I started thinking about a deck that Evil Matt Fox was currently trying…”What About Bob?”
Morgue Theft
1B
Sorcery
Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
Flashback – 4B
The”What About Bob?” deck had started because of a conversation we’d had on ICQ about Black splash decks and what B/g had to offer. The subject of two-for-one card advantage was raised, and I postulated about a deck that would play nothing but two-for-one creatures. It was then that it dawned on me that Morgue Theft/Penumbra Bobcat was six creatures for two cards, given enough time. Play Bobcat (1), it dies, comes back (2). Morgue Theft the card, play it again (3). Dies, comes back. (4). Flashback the Morgue Theft, play it again. (5) It dies, comes back. (6)
What About Bob?
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Penumbra Bobcat
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Call of the Herd
2 Spiritmonger
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Chainer’s Edict
4 Pernicious Deed
3 Duress
3 Morgue Theft
Sideboard:
4 Compost
3 Mortivore
8 assorted other cards
Though that deck never really panned out for Matt (the time you wasted getting back a crappy 2/1 wasn’t really worth all the Theft casting), I started to think about Morgue Theft in my own deck. Since every Black/x mirror match I’d played had resulted in both players drawing off the top like idiots until one guy got luckier, it seemed like it was worth a try. Draw… Morgue Theft. Grab two Phyrexian Ragers. Draw two cards, and I’ve got two 2/2 creatures. That’s a gamebreaker when both players are frantically peeling and hoping for gas.
The Theft was also good at getting repeated use out of my Flametongue Kavu – which, as you know, is completely broken. In testing against R/G and other B/r decks, I’d found that the guy who drew the most Flametongue Kavu would win about 90% of the time, especially before sideboarding. Morgue Theft would let me Flametongue a creature, trade for another, and then do it all over again on turn 6… Then trade on turn 7 and grab him again for later use by flashing back the Theft! That’s too much card advantage for many decks to handle.
Morgue Theft was also very good with Ravenous Rats, with multiple castings and chump blocks taking a lot of the sting out of an early game assault. It could return Thunderscape Battlemage, giving me an additional eight Battlemage uses to kill Compost, and allowing me to play an unkicked Mage early on without fear of being unable to kill a topdecked Compost later on.
When the time was right, Morgue Theft could return a Nantuko Shade. This was an important ability in the late game, where the Shade could actually survive against R/G. I’m sure anyone who has tested the Black/x vs. R/G matchup knows that any early Shade won’t survive more than a few turns, if it even has time to cool from the touch of your hand before getting blasted into oblivion by Urza’s Rage, Firebolt, or Flametongue Kavu.
When you have ten mana, it’s a different story. The R/G player is on a clock. With a week to go before Regionals, this was the deck:
School Canoe v. 1.2
4 Terminate
4 Chainer’s Edict
2 Morgue Theft
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Thunderscape Battlemage
2 Ichorid
12 Swamp
3 Tainted Peak
3 Tainted Wood
2 Shadowblood Ridge
2 City of Brass
1 Darigaaz’ Caldera
1 Llanowar Wastes
Sideboard:
3 Mortivore
3 Compost
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Ichorid
3 Slay
2 Haunting Echoes
At this point I had added Shadowblood Ridge to the mana base. Why? Two reasons. First, the Ridge gives you both R and B at once when you’re stuck with one of those”Tainted Land” draws, which allows you to cast Terminate. Second, less painland damage. The switch to two City of Brass was starting to cause pain damage losses with two Sulfurous Springs in the deck. Shadowblood Ridge tested well and I would keep the change intact through Regionals.
The second City of Brass and the elimination of one Darigaaz’ Caldera was prompted by the number of times we got annoyed with the one turn delay caused by the Caldera. Evil Matt in particular didn’t like running Calderas in his deck:
“It keeps f***ing me,” he’d say, referring to the mana setback that would prevent him from casting a fifth-turn kicked Battlemage. In the end, we went down to a single Caldera because the painland pressure was off with the addition of Shadowblood Ridge.
I was also trying Slay in the sideboard, though I was never totally happy with it. It did help against explosive R/G draws (especially those with second-turn Call of the Herd), and it was a fine sideboard card against Tempo U/G, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to get Duress in there somewhere. With the switch to Crypt Creeper on the eve of Regionals, and the departure of the last bit of targeted disruption from the maindeck (Mesmeric Fiend), I would eventually make this change, along with going up to four Composts in the side.
With fairly consistent performances against all decktypes, the Canoe was starting to become popular amongst the Sarnia players, and I started to get a lot of testing help from Evil Matt Fox, John Labute, and former Ontario Regionals champion (sort of, first in the Swiss) Jean-Marc Babin.
The Night Before Regionals – Last Minute Testing, Last Minute Changes
Testing in our hotel room at Regionals brought last-minute attention to a couple of issues that I’d known about but successfully ignored.
First, the matchup with R/G just wasn’t very good. You play three Mortivores in the sideboard… And if you don’t draw one, you probably lose. Second, the maindeck Ichorid in B/w Braids (if they play it instead of the Mortivore in Noir-style B/w Braids) just wins them the first game… And in the second, the first assclown to draw his Ichorid will probably win. It’s a total crapshoot.
Testing was also showing that the Shambling Swarm in opposing Black decks was crushing to School Canoe, and we’d do well to play a few of them ourselves. The nice side effect would be that it would improve the matchup against beatdown. So I knew I wanted to throw in a couple of Swarms.
As far as the Ichorids went, I wasn’t going to let luck decide my Regionals, and I was expecting a lot of Ichorids and B/w Braids, so I wanted to do something to break the parity in the mirror match – besides the obvious bomb in Haunting Echoes. The answer was Crypt Creeper: A card I’d wanted to test but never gotten the chance.
Crypt Creeper
1B
Creature – Zombie
2/1
Sacrifice Crypt Creeper: Remove target card in a graveyard from the game.
Crypt Creeper is a faster clock than Mesmeric Fiend. It was better in the mirror than Mesmeric Fiend, and better against R/G than Mesmeric Fiend because of its ability to trade with opposing bears. It solves the Ichorid problem and breaks the parity in the mirror.
Now how do I fit them into the deck, along with the Shambling Swarm?
It took a while, but in the end I decided to cut four Mesmeric Fiends for the Crypt Creepers, as well as a Thunderscape Battlemage (with a heavy heart) and a Ravenous Rat for the Shambling Swarms. I couldn’t bring myself to remove the Morgue Thefts, since they were so cool.
The last issue was the sideboard – without Mesmeric Fiend in the maindeck, it was clear that I needed to put Duress back into the board. So I settled on this configuration for Regionals:
School Canoe, Final Version
4 Terminate
4 Chainer’s Edict
2 Morgue Theft
3 Ravenous Rats
4 Crypt Creeper
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Flametongue Kavu
3 Thunderscape Battlemage
2 Shambling Swarm
2 Ichorid
12 Swamp
3 Tainted Wood
3 Tainted Peak
2 Shadowblood Ridge
2 City of Brass
1 Darigaaz’ Caldera
1 Llanowar Wastes
Sideboard:
4 Compost
3 Mortivore
3 Duress
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Haunting Echoes
This deck is designed mainly to beat B/x decks, especially those that include Ichorid. The matchup against traditional R/G and Control is 50% at the worst, and if you’re a good player I think you should be able to pull it through.
Against decks like Kibler’s”Rug” and Zevatog, I’m not sure what the percentages are. The one Zevatog deck I played against, I lost to, though my draws weren’t strong. Lack of testing against Zevatog was one of the shortcomings of my playtesting.
“School Canoe” served me well at Regionals – and I think if I had played a little better, it would have brought me to a better finish than I had, though my result was certainly anything but poor.
So that’s the story of my playtesting for Regionals! If you want to know how it turned out, you can read my tournament report, also on StarCity. I hope you enjoyed hearing about the development of my deck!
Geordie Tait
[email protected]
Ontario Magic Player
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