Amongst my many crimes against humanity, I teach jazz piano. As far as the average punter knows, the clever bit about jazz is that people like me just “make stuff up” as we go along. After all, with 88 notes to choose from, anywhere from one to ten fingers playing at the same time, and an effectively infinite combination of rhythm, melody, and harmony, surely nobody could be actually deciding on what to do? It has to be kind of random, right? Unsurprisingly, wrong. What actually happens is that you learn to make an awful lot of decisions very quickly – in real time, indeed. This makes teaching jazz a difficult proposition, since trying to explain all the options, and why certain ones are “obviously” poor or good, is next to impossible. The first time a student tries to play through a chorus of “I Got Rhythm” I generally expect it to take, ooh, about three weeks (without breaks for sleep, naturally).
I started playing when I was four years old. Eighteen years later, having taken pretty much every exam going, with a shiny Bachelor of Arts degree in hand, and a successful career as a jazz musician well underway, a friend gave me a book called, with startling aptness, “The Jazz Piano Book” by Mark Levine. (I gave you the author so it would be easier for you to buy from Amazon.) The book has 400 or so pages. I started learning new stuff on page 5. By page 11, I was seriously lost. I could see the “answers” he was giving, but there was a yawning chasm where high-level theory should be in my head, and that meant I had almost literally no clue how he got there.
Amongst my many crimes against humanity, I play Magic. As far as the average punter knows, the clever bit about Magic is that people like us just “make stuff up” as we go along. After all, with hundreds or even thousands of cards to choose from, anywhere from 0 to 4 copies in a deck at the same time, and an effectively infinite combination of colors, mana costs, strategies, and synergies, surely nobody could be actually deciding on what to do? It has to be kind of random, right? Unsurprisingly, wrong. What actually happens is that you learn to make an awful lot of decisions very quickly. This makes teaching Magic deckbuilding a difficult proposition, since trying to explain all the options, and why certain ones are “obviously” poor or good, is next to impossible. The first time a student tries to build a deck of “Time Spiral Block Constructed” I generally expect it to take, ooh, about three weeks (without breaks for sleep, naturally).
I started playing when I was 25 years old. Ten years later, having taken pretty much every PTQ exam going, with a shiny Top 8 badge in hand, and a (successful?) career as a Magic journalist well underway, a friend gave me a book called, with startling aptness, “Deckade” by Mike Flores. (I gave you the author so it would be easier for you to buy from Top8magic.com.) The book has 700 or so pages. I started learning new stuff on page 5. By page 11, I was seriously lost. I could see the “answers” he was giving, but there was a yawning chasm where high-level theory should be in my head, and that meant I had almost literally no clue how he got there.
Which brings us to right here, right now. It’s my belief, based on what’s out there on the good pages of StarCityGames.com and elsewhere, that at least 90% of strategy articles assume a vast quantity of knowledge on the part of the reader. Don’t get me wrong… they have to, otherwise you’d never get anything done, and every article would just repeat every other article. But my experience teaching jazz piano suggests that, far from being a mystic realm of staggering complexity, deckbuilding with any given pool of cards can be broken down into some fairly simple, repeatable steps. Admittedly, you may find yourself doing these steps thousands of times before you arrive at an answer you don’t like – “your deck sucks” springs to mind – but at least on the journey we can develop the tools that will be useful time after time after time.
This two-parter is about precisely that – the journey from “no idea” to “some idea.” Amongst the things these articles won’t do:
1. Give you a 75-card list that will win Pro Tour: Yokohama.
2. Tell you what archetype will win Pro Tour: Yokohama.
3. Give you sideboard options predicated on a particular metagame.
What these articles will do:
1. Show you many, many possible deck archetypes, not just for Time Spiral block, but for any format. Deck Blueprints, if you will.
2. Assume nothing. I can tell you now without looking that “Mono-Blue Beatdown” is going to be hideous, but it will still be there, with the cards that would make it in, because one day, in some format that time forgot, “Mono-Blue Beatdown” might be the value.
3. Have a watchful, but forgiving eye, on history. Looking at the history of Magic can tell us a huge amount about what may or may not be successful. This assumes that you have a huge knowledge of Magic history. So, although we’ll talk about decks from the past, it won’t stop us from trying to build historically unsuccessful decks here. The goal is the journey, not the outcome.
4. Leave signposts for the future. By working your way through the deck ideas presented here, you can gradually develop comparisons with equivalent decks in other formats to come. The cyclical nature of Magic means that when Wizards give you lots of 3/3 elephants for three mana, and previously you’ve had 2/2 Gray Ogres for three mana, that’s a pretty apparent upswing for that particular archetype.
5. Be relentlessly optimistic. It’s entirely possible that none of these deck ideas will be worthy of a PTQ. Probably a few will be. Either way, we won’t simply down tools just because of the existence of a particular card in the format, whether it’s Teferi, Mage Of Zhalfir; Damnation; or, and this seems unlikely, Spellshift. As Mike Flores himself put it recently in one of the articles I understood, there are many reasons not to build a deck, and relatively few reasons for building one. We’ll carry on building regardless.
6. Most of all, we’re going to go slowly. When I teach jazz piano, I try to explain at least most of the major steps that lead to a particular harmony or rhythmic idea. I’ll try to do the same here.
This is your last chance. If you’re a Pro, there is going to be almost nothing for you from this point on, unless you enjoy laughing at the incredibly slow way in which we stumble up the foothills of deckbuilding. But if you’ve ever wondered why “Mono-Blue Beatdown” isn’t a popular saying, or why they made Bogardan Hellkite rare, or why slivers might be good, or why the Pope likes U/W Control, or… let’s get started.
Part 1. Mono-Color Aggro.
I’ve started here for three reasons. First, single color decks have the fewest cards to look at. We can compare them easily. Second, with mono-color decks we have no mana issues to cloud things. Stick in 20-24 Forests and you’re good to go (unless you need Mountains, Swamps, Plains, or Islands.) And third, aggressive decks are active decks, i.e. they do stuff. Control decks are generally reactive decks. In other words, they do stuff about your stuff. So we’re going to concentrate on doing stuff. Let’s start with Green.
1. Mono-Green Aggro.
Hmm, historically there have been decent Aggro Green decks. What do they do? There are broadly two types. The first has lots of little men, often giving extra mana, and they swarm over an opponent faster than they can raise their defenses. A card like Rancor was great for this, since it made the deck quicker, and came back to re-use. Then they looked for a use for all that extra mana they had available courtesy of Birds Of Paradise or Llanowar Elves or Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary or Gaea’s Cradle, and made something moderately ginormous. Force of Nature, that kind of thing. The deck generally had ways to make a guy bigger, like Giant Growth, or even all your guys bigger, like Overrun. The other kind of Green aggro deck was generally a little slower, and often featured elephants. The benchmark here was finding 3/3 bodies for three mana that you made on turn 2, thanks to the ubiquitous mana acceleration.
What’s the problem? With these decks, sometimes they just ran out of steam if the first bunch of creatures got killed. The first type of deck, weenie swarm, really committed its resources to the board, and against Wrath of God that was a real issue. This was one of the reasons Rancor was so good, because even a 1/1 elf became a 3/1 trampler. So we might want to look for ways to come back into the game after a Wrath of God effect, or ways to get us more cards in hand. What we get:
Mana Acceleration – Gemhide Sliver, Wall Of Roots, Yavimaya Dryad.
Decent Weenies – Ashcoat Bear, Kavu Predator, Mire Boa, Spinneret Sliver, Thelon Of Havenwood, Uktabi Drake.
Big Men to win at the end – Durkwood Baloth, Groundbreaker, Spectral Force, Verdeloth The Ancient.
Pump spells (making guys bigger) – Might Of Old Krosa, Stonewood Invocation, Strength In Numbers, Thrill Of The Hunt, Gaea’s Anthem.
Extra Cards – Harmonize.
What do we think? The mana acceleration isn’t great, although the sliver ability means that you can make “another” Gemhide when you cast a Spinneret Sliver. Of the weenies, the trample ability is nice on the Predator, regeneration is always handy (although not against Wrath of God), and the Drake gets to evade and have haste. The big guys are pretty spectacular. Baloth suspended is a nice late game threat, Groundbreaker is Giant Solifuge on steroids (but without that lovely untargetable bit), and Spectral Force is quite simply the best value trampler since Dita von Teese. An 8/8 for five mana is fantastic. Verdeloth won’t get a look-in, especially as we won’t be running too many lands. Why? Because our spells are mostly cheap, and we don’t want to draw lots of lands late-game. In fact, we don’t want to draw any, really. Pump spells are decent, with Stonewood Invocation good in so many ways, with the Split Second ability being the key here, and +5 +5 is a lot. They also give us Crusade in Green, which does very nicely at turning lots of 1/1s into 2/2s, but is less exciting turning a single 3/3 into a 4/4. Oh, and we even get to refill our hands with Harmonize, which isn’t something Green usually gets to do.
Overall – not sure I like the early monsters, but there’s some very nice cards here.
2. Mono-White Aggro.
Hopefully some of you are thinking, “Mono-White Aggro, I’ve heard of that, but it isn’t called that, it’s…” yes, White Weenie, which has a long and occasionally honorable tradition in Magic. Again, there are two schools of thought. First, make lots of little men, hit you hit you hit you die die die. And then there’s make a little evasion man, like a Soltari Priest from days gone by, make it truly enormous with Empyrial Armor, hit you hit you again, oh look you’re dead. The big advantage to the second strategy is that you still have plenty of “gas” left in your hand if they deal with your Super-weenie. The key to White Weenie decks is finding very aggressive monsters, so let’s see what we get:
Amrou Scout – 2/1 for two mana, nice ability.
Benalish Cavalry – perfect. 2/2 for two, with an ability that makes him a “virtual” 3/3 in the red zone.
Icatian Javelineers – only 1/1 for one mana, so we want the ability to be good. And it is. If Javelineers can make it in Standard, there’s a good chance they’ll be okay in Block too.
Knight of the Holy Nimbus – yum.
Outrider en-Kor – it costs three mana, but the ability is good.
Serra Avenger – A 3/3 for two mana, with those abilities, is an incredible deal, but can we afford not to play her turns 1-3? Yes we can.
Sinew Sliver – 2/2 for two mana
Soltari Priest – evasion.
Whitemane Lion – for trickery.
Plus a special mention for a fabulous four-mana monster – Calciderm.
That’s quite an encouraging list. What else do we get for the deck?
Griffin Guide – it does a lot, but might be too expensive, especially if they just kill the guy we’re aiming it at.
Temporal Isolation – gets stuff out of the way.
Fortify – ah, just what we wanted, four guys attacking get an extra eight damage, carnage.
Mana Tithe – when you put pressure on your opponent, they don’t have time to mess around. That usually translates to tapping out, and that means Mana Tithe is a hard counterspell.
Momentary Blink – we get to save a guy.
Rebuff the Wicked – they say kill our guy. We say no thanks.
Sunlance – cheap removal.
What do we think? What tends to happen with White Weenie is that everyone builds it as a kind of default test deck, and then concludes that it doesn’t have the tools to succeed. We don’t really have an Empyrial Armor to stick on our Soltari Priest, so the weenie rush is going to have to be good enough. The monsters are rather good, although we’re missing our super-aggressive one-drops like Savannah Lions and Isamaru, Hound Of Konda. On the plus side, Mana Tithe on Damnation followed by Fortify seems a presentable win. Go build.
3. Mono-Black Aggro.
A Black aggro deck is likely to look a little different to our first two archetypes. Black doesn’t often get super-efficient monsters, balanced by the fact that it gets to blast things out of the way. Efficient monsters are likely to have drawbacks, and that’s where a deck like Suicide Black comes into its own. It takes the drawbacks and says “I don’t care.” Carnophage… fine, I’ll pay life every turn. Sarcomancy… oh you killed my guy, ouch ouch ouch. Hatred… your life’s lower than mine, you’re dead. Now I’m fairly certain that they haven’t reprinted Hatred, because that would be, as they say, a bit good. Let’s see what we do get to work with:
Cheap Monsters – Dauthi Slayer, evasion and a 2/2 for two mana.
Faceless Devourer – evasion.
Nether Traitor – plenty of reasons to like this. It has shadow, it has haste, and it keeps coming back for more.
Pit Keeper – A 2/1 for two mana is about as good as Black gets, mostly…
Sangrophage – … unless it’s a card like Sangrophage.
Skulking Knight – A 3/3 for three mana… let’s not worry about drawbacks, remember?
Trespasser Il-Vec – good ability, works well with madness.
Withered Wretch – a straight-up 2/2 for two mana.
You may have spotted that several of these guys cost three mana, rather than the ubiquitous two mana of the White Weenie deck. It is a general fact that Black rush is going to be a bit slower, and that brings with it problems that we may struggle to overcome. Let’s see if there’s anything else good in the monster department:
Avatar Of Woe – you might even get this out cheaply, but it’s certainly very big.
Corpulent Corpse – a turn 1 suspend might be good value, especially as we don’t exactly have monsters queuing up for the turn 1 play.
Faceless Butcher – has a nice “swing the game” feel.
Liege Of The Pit – ah, a chance to play it as a “vanilla” 2/2 with the morph ability, and then make it huge. It’s not Hatred, but the idea’s the same, using your life total as a resource if needed to beat your opponent to death.
Mirri, The Cursed – haste is good, flying is good, first strike is good, power and toughness not quite so good.
Phantasmagorian – it’s big, it keeps coming back.
Sengir Nosferatu – super-tough to kill.
Let’s call a halt for a moment. This second list doesn’t seem very aggro, does it? They’re mostly big finishers, or guys with medium abilities at a medium cost. That’s quite discouraging for an aggro deck. Is there anything else going for the archetype?
Bad Moon – giving all our men a boost seems good, and for only two mana.
Null Profusion – we liked Harmonize in the green deck, now here’s a way to just keep on playing threats out.
Removal – no, it’s not a card name, it’s a bunch of cards that get things out of the way. Sudden Death, Strangling Soot, Midnight Charm, Dark Withering… there’s plenty of kill spells available. But we don’t want too many; after all, we’re trying to put our opponent to zero at top speed, so having a reactive hand won’t be the value for us.
Overall, this is the worst of our three archetypes so far. However, as we can see, the cards we were finding seemed to be pushing us more towards a control deck, like all those big monsters, and lots of removal. When you’re building, listen to what the cards tell you. Sure, here we’re “forcing” an archetype, because we want to see what kind of cards would fit. But if we were doing this for real, now would be the time to get a fresh piece of paper and get cracking on Mono-Black Control. We’ll do that later. For now, it’s…
4. Mono-Blue Aggro.
Oh dear, this is going to be grim.
Cheap monsters – Coral Trickster, Dandan, Drifter Il-Dal, Fathom Seer, Gossamer Phantasm, Looter Il-Kor, Lord Of Atlantis, Spiketail Drakeling, Voidmage Prodigy, Flying Men.
The Gossamer Phantasm is nice, Looter gets through our deck, Lord Of Atlantis is a legitimate “Grizzly Bear” (i.e. a 2/2 for two mana), and the Drakeling has a fair ability against a board-sweeping effect like Damnation. Let’s not kid ourselves: the White and Green aggro decks have many more monsters available, with better abilities at a cheaper cost for the most part. At least there are some Blue spells that can improve things a little :
Unstable Mutation – would make an unblockable 2/1 like Drifter Il-Dal do a lot of damage very quickly.
Pongify – make our little men bigger.
Psionic Blast – direct damage for blue is a big bonus, so we might be able to squeak through some damage “to the dome.”
Plus we have various ways to say “no,” some tempo cards like Snapback and Temporal Eddy, and assorted ways to refill our hand with card drawing.
Overall, it feels like we’re heading away from a proper Aggro deck towards tempo, and historically that means we’re going to pair up with Green. In truth, there have only really been a couple of decent Blue aggro decks. The first relies on flying guys, and tended to have quite expensive cards in it like Air Elemental. The second was known as “Fish,” which involved Lord Of Atlantis and cards like, I kid you not, Merfolk Of The Pearl Trident. Next.
5. Mono-Red Aggro
Honestly, this could be an article all on its own. There have been so many Red decks down the years, and they can be divided and defined in a number of different ways. You can be certain that, however I divide them, someone’s going to take issue with my definitions. So, here they aren’t:
“________“
“________“
“________“
“________“
Now that we’ve got those out of the way, let’s talk about some general options. Option one: we could aim for a deck with a gajillion monsters, zero spells, and a single-minded desire to smash face. Number two has a few less monsters, perhaps 28 or so, and then uses up eight slots with burn spells that might have to be used on an opposing creature, but that ideally would just go directly to the head. A third option starts to feel a bit more controlling, often using mana denial spells like Pillage or Stone Rain to stunt the growth of the opponent’s board position, and making the weenies more effective. Add in some removal / burn, and you’re probably down to about twenty monsters or so. Any lower than that, and we’re pretty much heading for “Big Red” territory, which we’ll come to when we talk about Mono-Red Control, shortly before Easter 2009.
Monsters – Blood Knight, Goblin Skycutter, Mogg War Marshal, Thick-Skinned Goblin….
Oh dear, this lot are terrible. Where are my Jackal Pups? My Mogg Fanatics? Mogg Flunkies? Yuck. It’s at least three mana before we can start adding monsters that do stuff, like Blazing Blade Askari (3); Avalanche Riders (4); Jaya Ballard, Task Mage (3); Coal Stoker (4)… there’s a long list, but very little contributes to our aggro strategy. There’s no way in the world we can build the 36-monster deck, the cards just aren’t there. We have some instant-speed burn available (Fiery Temper, Orcish Cannonade, Sudden Shock) and at the more pedestrian sorcery slot we have the excellent Rift Bolt, plus Grapeshot, and a finisher in X spell Disintegrate. Once again, we’re being pointed away from an Aggro strategy here, and the list of Red cards is going to look a lot more inviting once we’re trying to kill things. See you later, Red Aggro.
Time to take stock. We’ve looked at five possible archetypes. Green had some very nice cards, but had a real hole in the mana acceleration department. Black doesn’t really cut the mustard, but has plenty of Control possibilities. Having dissed Blue from the start, I was surprised at how many notionally playable spells there are. We’ll look at a Skies deck later, as Errant Ephemeron feels like it’s a card that ought to be good enough for block, plus there’s Tempo to explore. But, Drifter Il-Dal plus Unstable Mutation doesn’t feel like a reason to play a whole deck round it, so let’s leave Blue on the bench too. Red we’ve definitely decided to ignore. That leaves White – surprised? You shouldn’t be. It’s in the nature of the color wheel – which, according to some, Wizards are currently in the business of utterly destroying – that White will have access to decent small monsters, and that’s one of our prime requirements for an aggressive strategy. Fortify feels like a potential game-winner, and White also has ways to deal with opposing monsters (and it only needs to deal with one or two before the game is over.)
Aggro Decks you Should Build: Mono-Green, Mono-White.
Aggro Decks you Could Build: Mono-Blue.
Aggro Decks you Shouldn’t: Mono-Red, Mono-Black.
(Disclaimer: Remember, this is an exercise. If you build Mono-Blue Aggro and expect it to win anything above Kitchen Table Magic level, you have a higher expectation than I have. In any format, there are cards which, compared to say, Benalish Cavalry, are just retardedly powerful. Dragonstorm; Damnation; Akroma, Angel Of Wrath; Akroma, Angel Of Fury… and cards like these can be format-defining. In other words, if you can’t deal with them, you may as well go home. Right now, don’t let that matter.)
Part 2. Mono-Color Control.
Time to pick up the pace a little. By now you should have some idea of what we’re looking for in Control decks, not least because it’s what an Aggro deck fears. Here’s some of the key components:
Removal: Since most decks win with creatures, it stands to reason that if they haven’t got any, they can’t win. Now, in some ways, Removal is quite a misleading term, as there are occasions where you won’t actually remove the creature from play. I tend to think of this as Threat Removal, and that’s a much broader church that encompasses cards we might otherwise miss. Pacifism doesn’t kill a creature, and doesn’t even stop it doing naughty things (take Prodigal Sorcerer, for instance), but it sure does stop a whacking great Spectral Force taking chunks out of our life total. A good clue to a card’s usefulness is if it can nullify multiple threats at once. Teferi’s Moat against any kind of mono- or even two-color Aggro strategy can be amazing. So, when looking for Removal, don’t just think “must kill,” think “must stop” – they’re not the same thing.
Counterspells: What’s even better than dealing with a monster when it’s on the board? Not letting it get there in the first place. A monster that doesn’t exist isn’t going to hurt anyone any time soon, and that’s why counterspells are so good. And of course they don’t just stop opposing monsters. Once we’ve established control of the game, we really don’t want them casting Damnation to get rid of our Akroma. So we counterspell it. In most Magical years, we’d be talking about counterspells in Blue, but right now we get to talk about them elsewhere too.
Board sweepers: I already mentioned how good multiple-threat removal can be, and nothing demonstrates this better than the three words Wrath Of God. This is pretty much the defining spell for Control decks in Magic’s history. Putting all the monsters in the bin at once has always been a powerful strategy, not least because it so often generates pure card advantage (I cast one spell to destroy more than one of yours, so I still have more resources available to do other things, like buy ice cream, or whatever.)
Card Drawing: Board-sweepers aside, and these are often few and far between, most Control decks down the years are happy to make one-for-one trades with their opponent’s resources, on the basis that the longer the game goes, the less relevant those annoying little white men are going to be, while we’re drawing Teferi, Akroma or whoever else. As we saw with the aggro decks, most spells there are generally cheap and cheerful, and don’t require huge investments of mana. Comparatively speaking, the Control decks do need that mana, and one way of getting past unwanted clumps of land late game is to have plenty of card drawing. After all, if you’re drawing one card a turn and I’m drawing two, who gets more options? (It’s me. Don’t say I never give you any answers.) Card drawing comes in many forms, ranging from the one-shot deal of Inspiration, to card-draw-on-a-stick Archivist, to infinite card draw in the shape of Whispers Of The Muse. The last one of these, by the way, is in Time Spiral…
S… l… o… w… D… o… w… n…: We’ve already established that Control decks generally want to survive the early game and then win at their leisure. Anything that makes the game go longer is probably good. This might mean cards that tie up mana – Magus Of The Tabernacle is a current example, or Ghostly Prison from Kamigawa Block. Then there are cards that effectively rob turns from your opponent, like Frozen Aether. And then there are cards that are super-unsubtle, and simply say “If you have no mana, there’s a good chance you’re casting no spells.” This, my friends, is known as Land Destruction, or LD for short, and boy oh boy do people hate LD. In fact, LD is so incredibly irritating that you can make entire Aggro decks based around it.
A Way to Kill: sometimes you’ll find that you don’t even need a monster to win. Spells, usually Red, usually with an X in the casting cost, such as Disintegrate or, even better, Demonfire, have served very nicely thank you as straight out win conditions. If you’re going down the monster route, choose wisely. Chances are, you’re going to want to protect him / her / it very badly, so making it very hard to kill is a good idea. Indeed, the perfect kill monster for a Control player would probably be something like this:
The Fat Lady, Singing
8UUU
Summon Creature – Game Ender
37 trillion / 37 trillion.
TFLS is untargetable.
TFLS is uncounterable.
TFLS is indestructible.
TFLS has every good ability ever, with no drawbacks.
If TFLS is in play, you win the game.
If TFLS comes into play, you win the game.
If TFLS is miraculously dealt with in some inexplicable way that doesn’t suit your Control view of the multiverse, you win the game.
“Don’t read. Just shuffle.” – GG, Control Mage.
Since I’m studying for my Level 1 Judge exam at the moment, I can unhesitatingly tell you that some in the DCI may have issues with such a creature, and I can also unhesitatingly tell you that it doesn’t currently exist. However, if you look for as close to the wish-list as you can find, you won’t go far wrong.
There are some other bits and pieces that Control decks like, and we’ll point a few of them out along the way. But now, let’s see what our five mono contenders make of the Control challenge.
6. Mono-White Control.
It’s no coincidence that, if you look on the back of a Magic card, you’ll find White and Blue next to each other, and traditionally U/W control has been a more popular and versatile (translation: successful) archetype. One of the big things White has always had going for it is the ultimate board sweeper, Wrath of God. Always, always, always. Until last Thursday, when they made it Black instead. Oh well. What do we have to work with?
Enchantments – Temporal Isolation is a Pacifism equivalent, although there are some unscrupulous tricks an opponent can pull off with the Isolation (basically involving the creature leaving play with damage on the stack, and you taking a beating). Sacred Mesa is multi-purpose, since it can generate small blockers, effectively gaining us life, and therefore time. Later on, it can act as a win condition, pumping out hordes of weenie flyers. Most usefully of all, it can do all this at instant speed. Nice. Porphyry Nodes used to be called Drop of Honey before it got a Planar Chaos facelift, and watching your opponent put men in the bin, at a cost of just one puny mana, could be good times.
Instants – Angel’s Grace is about as cheap as “please don’t kill me this turn” gets. Dawn Charm does some of the same kind of things for twice the price. Honorable Passage is a thoroughly amusing card against Disintegrate. Mana Tithe is the standout here, because it gives White access to something it, by past experience, shouldn’t have – a counterspell. Admittedly it’s a teeny tiny counterspell, but when that one mana you have is exactly one more than they have, it’s a great big don’t-mess-with-me counterspell. It’s probably better in a White Weenie deck to avoid a board-sweeper, but we can bear it in mind for our Control deck too.
Sorceries – hello, White got some removal reach. Saltblast is happy to kill anything and anyone that isn’t White, and Sunlance isn’t far behind. And now I’m panicking. If I write the words Heroes Remembered, I’m going to have to get involved in a really major discussion about lifegain, which for some obscure reason is something that plenty of players care about passionately. In my entire life, I can only recall one player who says things like “yeah, it’s alright” or “it’s a bit situational” or “I think I slightly prefer other options.” Everyone else is either:
“Are you kidding me? I can’t believe they printed a card that let’s me get all the way up to 40 life! That’s insane! In fact, lifegain is so good they’ll probably ban Lightning Helix in Vintage!”
or:
“Give me an S. Give me a U. Give me a C. Give me a C. Give me an S. I can’t spell, but lifegain succs.”
Don’t worry, all is well. I just won’t write the words Heroes Remembered.
Creatures – now here’s a lady to drive all thoughts of lifegain from your tender little mind. Akroma, Angel of Wrath is a very unusual creature. Why? Because there have been plenty of iconic reprints down the years, of fantastically brutal monsters doing fantastically brutal things. Ernham Djinn and Serra Angel are two prime cases in point. Lots of fanfare that these cardboard killers were on the loose again – and they just looked pretty in the fifty-cent rare pile. Akroma, Angel of Wrath was, and here I use a technical term, an unmitigated beating. She’s back, and when it comes to Block, flying-first-strike-vigilance-trample-haste-protection-from-Black-protection-from-Red-6/6 may not actually make you a cup of tea, but it does ensure you have time to make one before the next round. As you might expect with White, there isn’t a huge amount of monsters designed to help you stay alive, like 0/7 Defenders for two mana. Magus Of The Disk may turn out to be vulnerable in a way that Nevinyrral’s Disk wasn’t, i.e. it’s a creature so it dies sometimes. Magus Of The Tabernacle is good, but may be a bit too slow. Flickering Spirit is clunky, Children of Korlis doesn’t stop you dying, no, not a lot to add here.
Overall – I really want Wrath of God in my Mono-White Control deck. I don’t want a card that sounds a bit like Wrath of God, but only is Wrath of God a full turn later, even if my opponent does nothing about it while it’s suffering summoning sickness. We have an outstanding finisher in Akroma, some welcome Removal, but not a huge amount else. Not the best of starts.
7. Mono-Blue Control.
Aren’t titles misleading? Fact is, a lot of “Mono-Blue Control” decks have a very important color right alongside them – brown, or to you and me, artifacts. Whether it’s Vedalken Shackles or Nevinyrral’s Disk or Serrated Arrows, Blue has looked for mechanical help in dealing with the opposition. Still, let’s see if there are reasons to be cheerful:
Removal – Eternity Snare is Threat Removal; Reality Acid needs some help, but can be good; Erratic Mutation is great in Limited play and might be worth a shot here. Piracy Charm deals with very small men, and Ovinize generally means your blocker is going to take down their guy or gal. Psionic Blast – I hope you understand that being able to deal four damage to a creature or player at instant speed in Blue is A Good Thing.
Counterspells – if we can’t find them here, something’s gone seriously wrong with the color pie. Of course, if we do find them here, we could still argue something’s gone seriously wrong with the color pie. Cancel is as pure as it gets: three mana equals “counter target spell.” For four mana, we get to replace Rewind with Dismal Failure, which probably won’t be. We also get a kind of pro-active counterspell (a.k.a. discard) in the shape of Venarian Glimmer. Spell Burst can potentially act as a late-game super-counter… and while we’re on the subject of late game, how about Draining Whelk, a counter that becomes a win condition. Now that sounds like synergy.
Board sweepers: No. Now that’s an issue for sure, but doesn’t necessarily mean we need to throw our hands up in despair. What it does mean is that we really want to be able to deal with individual threats once they hit play, and ideally make sure that plenty of them don’t get there to be a threat at all.
Card Drawing – yes, Blue has always been good at this. Here we get Careful Consideration. Then there’s Think Twice (which is as good an example of card advantage as I can instantly imagine – I have one card, I spend five mana… ta da, now I have two cards). Truth or Tale is the watered-down Fact or Fiction, but to be fair, if it was improved Fact or Fiction the whole building would be on fire. And then there’s the historical biggie, Whispers of the Muse. If you want to know how good Whispers used to be, my erstwhile colleague from Mox Radio Dave Sutcliffe ran four of them in his Control deck, and on every single one was printed the words:
“Blue player! Do you have a Counterspell?”
I suppose I should be dull and worthy and tell you that the existence of Teferi in the format means that tapping six mana at the end of your opponent’s turn isn’t always a good thing, but I’d rather you got on with feeling the power of buyback, turn after turn after turn. We’ll save flash-boy for another time.
S… l… o… w… D… o… w… n… – Against suspend, Clockspinning messes with the math. Then come three spells all from the same mold. Temporal Eddy, Snapback, and Wipe Away all force your opponent to spend mana all over again in order to get back to the same game state as before. You get the same effect, plus a nice little flying 2/2 in Riftwing Cloudskate. If you can let one attack through of a problematic monster, and then bounce at the end of their turn, you have a two-turn breathing space before it’s turning sideways again. And, for when you really have to, there’s Walk The Aeons. Three islands is a lot, and so is six mana, so it’s probably not the best. What probably is the best of this little lot is Frozen Aether. It slows pretty much everything down. Although making monsters appear tapped isn’t going to spare you an attack – they have summoning sickness anyway – the same can’t be said of lands. Every turn they lay a land, it’s as if they didn’t. That’s proper braking.
A Way To Kill – And that other time is now. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir is a fearsome monster in so many ways, I’m not going to list them. The face that it forms part of a largely unbreakable lock in Extended should give you some clue to its usefulness. The fact that it’s almost certainly the best card in Standard, judging by what Pros said in Geneva, should also make you feel glad to be blue. And any time you can do things at the end of the opponent’s turn – well that’s the heady days of Draw-Go decks where, strangely enough, all you did on your turn for ages was draw a card, lay a land, and pass the turn. Teferi lets you do this kind of paint-drying tedium. [And remember, folks… Teferi is a Legend. – Craig.]
Defensive Monsters – Given the fact that blue doesn’t have a board sweeper, and therefore wouldn’t be putting your own monsters in the bin along with the opposition, there are a fair number of irritating Blue monsters that could successfully get in the way of a weenie horde, not least a selection of morphs. Fathom Seer gets to block 2/2s as a morph and then live, Aquamorph Entity can take down all weenies in a 5/1 guise, and plenty in reverse. Coral Trickster can cheaply buy you some time to find a more permanent answer. I’m not saying these make up for no access to a Wrath effect, but they are the kind of cards we would consider for the deck.
Overall – the Counterspells and plenty of irritating Tempo means that Blue has more in the tank than White. Put them together, and you normally get some kind of powerhouse. That may not be true this time around.
8. Mono-Black Control.
That’s better. We talked earlier when we went through looking for Aggro possibilities that we were being pointed in this direction, and here we are.
Enchantments – Feebleness kills things, or at least significantly reduces damage. Melancholy is Black’s Pacifism, which is handy if we don’t have enough raw power to straight-up kill the threat. Against large monsters, although sadly not white Akroma, Enslave can be a win condition. I steal your Spectral Force. Your Spectral Force hits you for eight. In my upkeep, don’t forget to say ow.
Instants – as we might expect, Black is pretty good at killing things. Situationally, we have Cradle To Grave as a quick fix for the latest thing that moves. Dark Withering is much better with madness, indeed technically six times better, but either way puts stuff in the bin, and that’s the important bit. Strangling Soot, Sudden Death, even niche cards like Kor Dirge and Midnight Charm, there’s any amount of options. But the one we need to really look at is Tendrils Of Corruption, because in Mono-Black Control, our life total is really important. It follows therefore, that if we can “Corrupt” a monster for 4-6 life, that’s another hill for our opponent to climb. Unfortunately we can’t actually Corrupt, which is the Tendrils of Corruption’s rather more powerful predecessor, but since we’re mono-colored there are going to be plenty of Swamps around the place. This card is really important in this deck.
Sorceries – oh look, more ways to kill things. Assassinate and Premature Burial are both okay but narrow, unlike Damnation, which is of course Wrath of God. And I think I told you that board sweepers were good for control decks, yes? Once you add Phthisis, probably suspended, and you have a good chance to kill pretty much everything that moves.
A Way To Kill – let’s be honest, Black monsters aren’t exactly stellar across the range. When Green gets a 2/4 that gets another 2/4 when it dies, for a sum total of four mana, Black spends five mana just to get one of them. With all that removal, Black had to lose out somewhere, and it’s no secret that in Planar Chaos especially it’s just basically weak. In our Control deck however, we’re not looking for average consistency, we’re looking for special monsters that are going to put our opponent’s into sideboard mode at top speed. For that, it’s hard to ignore a monster like Stronghold Overseer. He’s the kind of guy that only targeted removal takes care of, he’s not being blocked out of existence any time soon. Alternatively, it’s hard to argue with the extreme awkwardness associated with trying to kill a Sengir Nosferatu. Make it with seven mana up, and he’s likely to go all the way.
Overall – we lack card drawing, so it’s only really Damnation that is going to generate card advantage for us. Jumping ahead a little, you can probably see why people are pairing Black with Blue right now, in Standard and in Block. Blue gives you that card draw and Teferi, Black gives you a board sweeper and a million ways to make guys dead. Plus, a little card called Mystical Teachings, which… well, I’ll let someone better qualified talk to you about Dralnu du Louvre. Meanwhile, Black seems to have a large percentage of what we want in a potential Control deck.
9. Mono-Green Control
This is where we conduct a little experiment to see how you’re doing. Go ahead and make your own list of the cards that are likely to fit into a green Control card-list. Remember, here are the kind of things you’re looking for:
Removal – Nullify individual threats.
Counterspells – stop them hitting play at all.
Board sweepers – kill lots of monsters in one go.
Card Drawing – extra cards equals extra options for us.
Tempo – slow the game down.
A Way To Kill – awesome monster, X spell…
If you’re so minded, feel free to post your selection in the forums (not a deck, just the cards that would / might be of interest).
I don’t want to spoil things, or be unnecessarily discouraging, but I’m currently of the view that this is going to be a very difficult deck to find the cards for – so good luck.
10. Mono-Red Control
When we started to examine the Red aggro deck, it was already apparent that the Control option was going to be (by the standards of the decks we’ve seen thus far) pretty juicy. Here’s some of the components:
Removal – Fiery Temper – three damage for three mana is fine. Lightning Axe – five damage really does kill most things shy of a Spectral Force. Orcish Cannonade – the damage and versatility are fine, and replacing itself (known as “a cantrip,” or “cantripping”) makes it valuable. Sudden Shock is sometimes played in Extended decks, admittedly as an answer to specific problems, but that should still give you an idea of the usefulness of the Split Second ability. On the sorcery side we have Conflagrate (which you really can’t consider a board-sweeper due to prohibitive mana needs); the excellent Grapeshot; Rift Bolt; and when you absolutely positively have to put a monster in the bin, Shivan Meteor. There are at least six of these spells that I’d be confident about beating up opposing armies, and none of them are exactly hideous.
Board sweepers – I trust by now we’ve established this as a central tenet of a Control deck. Historically, Red has been able to call on cards like Earthquake or Starstorm, and although neither are quite Wrath of God – the “can’t be regenerated” is a pretty good bit of Wrath – much of the time they did the job. In Time Spiral Block, Red got Sulfurous Blast. Keen-eyed readers will have spotted that both Earthquake and Starstorm had the magical letter X in them, and that’s quite important. Simply, although Sulfurous Blast has some versatility, dealing two or three damage to everything is still only dealing two or three to everything. Against, let’s say, Serra Sphinx or Errant Ephemeron (both 4/4 flying monsters) it comes up a little short. Thankfully, help is at hand in the form of a Black card. Well, a card that used to be Black. Thanks Planar Chaos, that’ll be Pyrohemia. Pestilence, as was, is rather fine in a deck that wants things dead, especially when we have big toughness defensive guys like Aetherflame Wall to help keep Pyrohemia around. Between the Blast and the Pyro, Red is very well set up to kill a lot of things in one go.
Card drawing – Orcish Cannonade apart, there’s nothing, which is another reason all that removal is so welcome.
Tempo – Red doesn’t really get to bounce guys like Blue does, but it is known for stunting mana growth with Land Destruction spells. Of course, we do have the usable Goblin-o’-War in Stingscourger… but with a prohibitive echo cost, we may have to look for ways around the drawback. As for LD, the cards we’ve mentioned before, like Stone Rain and Pillage, cost three (i.e. they’re pretty cheap). The LD available to us here generally isn’t. Avalanche Riders features Hall of Famer Darwin Kastle, a 2/2 body tacked on to a landkill spell, but it still costs four, or a whopping eight mana over two turns. Realistically that’s one mana more than we want to pay, so you can imagine what I’m going to say about Plunder, which costs five to hard cast. Too expensive by two? Yep. The one card in this department that does raise an eyebrow is Volcanic Awakening. As we’ll see in part two later in the week, Storm is an extremely powerful mechanic across multiple formats, and that ability to, for example, unsuspend a Rift Bolt, cast a couple of cheap spells and then Volcanic Awakening for four could be potentially crippling. Like so many major effects, the key is to work out whether you will have time or, if you prefer, the “luxury” of setting up to do this. In Two-Headed Giant he’s awesome. Here, less so.
A Way To Kill – there was much fan interest when a piece of artwork came into the public domain a while before Planar Chaos was released, owing to the remarkable similarity between the figure depicted and a certain 6/6 every-ability-in-the-world-ever Angel from the past. Akroma, Angel of Fury should never be confused as being as good as her predecessor, but that isn’t the point. Right now, we’re looking for a kill mechanism available to red, and any monster that’s that hard to kill with a pump ability to help end the game even quicker has to be taken seriously. Plus, there are assorted ways to get her face-up and smashing face rather quicker than eight mana plus summoning sickness would suggest. Morph, what a great ability. Thanks Wizards, you’re top. Then there’s Bogardan Hellkite, which, if memory serves – and it does – featured rather heavily in the World Championship-winning deck of Makahito Miharo at Paris 2006. Other monsters can help you stay around too. Jaya Ballard, Task Mage is a fantastically tedious card to play against, provided your opponent can keep her alive. Firemaw Kavu is almost guaranteed card advantage, and Magus of the Scroll is another guy who can take an opposing board apart turn after turn. For those of you who are really new to all this, playing lots of 1/1 and 2/2 monsters with Sulfurous Blast and Pyrohemia may not altogether be the way forward. There are different ideas on how to define the term “synergy” in Magic, but I promise you this is the antithesis of all of them. I almost found myself committing to saying “don’t do it, ever” and then remembered that Rasmus Sibast played Black and White weenies at Worlds last year, and had Wrath of God main deck. Just like licorice, it takes allsorts. Of course, if you don’t like any of the monsters, there’s always Disintegrate… [No love for the Torchling? – Craig.]
Overall – yes, yes, yes. There’s absolutely no reason not to like the idea of throwing together a pile of murderizing Red spells.
So, here’s our Control deck summary:
Control decks you should build – Mono-Black, Mono-Red.
Control decks you could build – Mono-Blue.
Control decks you shouldn’t build – Mono-Green, Mono-White.
…
Well done! We’ve made it together through ten possible decks.
If you’ve not built your own decks before, now is a great time to go and find the cards for the best 4-6 decks we’ve talked about here. Once again, don’t think for a moment that any of them are format-defining, or probably tournament-worthy. Throw them together, and find a friend to bash heads with. You’ll pretty quickly spot the weaknesses in the deck as you die time after time to the same cards, but you’ll also get to see the interactions that seem really powerful. These are the ones you should hold onto, as we head into part two…
COMING SOON – In the final part, we’ll explore lots and lots more deck ideas for Block, and show you some different perspectives on the card pool that will help you to find your own creative possibilities. I also absolutely guarantee to reveal part of a Top 8 deck for next month’s Pro Tour: Yokohama, or your no money back.
COMING SHORTLY AFTERWARDS – normal Removed From Game service will be resumed, as I round up the utter carnage of the Grand Prix Circuit in Dallas, Singapore and Amsterdam (where you can of course join me for bonkers amounts of audio coverage this coming weekend.)
In the 700 page tome of knowledge that is The Deckbuilding Book, this article has been page 11. I hope that, unlike me all those years ago, you didn’t get completely lost.
Until later this week, take care, and as ever, thanks for reading.
R.