I’m back, and I’m ringing the bell – I’m rockin’ on the mic while the fly girls yell!
I may be the only writer ever to reintroduce himself to the Magic writing grind with a line from me main man, Robert Van Winkle. But that’s why everyone (cough) reads my stylings, right? It’s not for the strategy – it’s for moments like these. For any interested parties wondering as to my whereabouts, I have been huddled up in a cave for the past two months, swapping tech with D.B. Cooper. He told me that Skies was his deck of choice. I told him that he was out of touch.
P.S. – Vanilla Ice is not my main man; I was only kidding. Kidding, people.
Seriously folks, life and work have been far too busy over the last two months to permit written Magical musings. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking or playing! And given that I have a conscience and refuse to play the”I’ll write eight hundred words of utter garbage, two hundred of which is a deck list, and get paid” game, unlike writers on certain other sites, I dropped out of the scene. But no more, people. No more. I return with great vengeance and furrrrrrious anger to talk about a deck that is near and dear to my heart.
(No, it’s not Reanimator – I’ve long since put that deck to bed, even though I feel bad that I broke my promise by never getting around to writing the second half of my article on the deck. If you want to read more about the sickest kids on the block, I recommend James Doxey’s recent piece.)
In our local Sunday tournaments over the past five weeks, I’ve been on a bit of a tear, making it to the finals all five times to split the big money prize. A crew of us also rolled down one lovely Saturday to Bennie Smith stomping grounds in Mechanicsville for a cash tournament and put a hurting on the locals. One of the decks that I played during this successful stint was a T8 creation by syllogism, a B/G Oversold Cemetery deck that dropped an accelerated Braids, Cabal Minion to get a quick lock on the opponent. The deck also sported more synergy than any deck I had played in months, and I quickly became enamored with it. How could I make the deck better? How could I shore up its weaknesses? What were its bad matchups?
For informational purposes, here’s syllogism’s original list. I made a handful of modifications the first time around, adding an extra Ravenous Baloth and a couple of Graveborn Muses, cutting the straight-up Elvish Lyrist, a Stronghold Assassin, and dropping the Wirewood Herald count to three. I still won the tournament with the deck… But the adjustments that I made just weren’t very good. I found that I always wanted a Wirewood Herald when I didn’t have one, and Graveborn Muse just didn’t do enough for me – it powered up my hand nicely, but I found myself unable to drop all the stuff I was peeling and losing an alarming amount of life in the process.
After catching up on the huge forum thread about syllogism’s version, I decided to try two copies of Living Wish and devote a third of the sideboard to targets for it. This didn’t really jazz me, either. I think I must have a hardcoded bias against decks that play with Wishes (except B/R Reanimator, which clearly needs them). Over time, I have come to particularly hate Living Wish, as it frequently doesn’t do a damn thing except dilute the sideboard for a host of slow-ass creatures that serve as poor answers (and sometimes poor threats) to stuff that you aren’t really equipped to deal with anyway. I especially loathe it in this deck. Is wishing for Nantuko Vigilante really going to help you against Slide? When it’s all said and done, you’ve paid seven mana just to kill a lousy enchantment. Is telegraphing a Braids two turns before she drops really what you want to be doing in the early game? I think that maindeck discard is a flat-out better plan against most of the problem cards that Living Wish hopes to address, and it does it on a one-mana diet. You can’t plan for every possible scenario with a deck, and attempts at doing so…
Okay, I have to stop. I’m getting too angry.
[closes eyes] Go to your happy place… go to your happy place…
Despite my constant whining, I still brought home some scratch with the Wish-enabled version of the deck on Bennie’s home turf (though the prize money was mostly due to the kindness of James Eure, who conceded to me after he plucked Battle of Wits for the win – big up to James). The money was quickly spent on a chili bread bowl and some outstanding green tea; a sweet reward for the tiresome work of card-flipping.
I still wasn’t satisfied with the deck, so I decided to try it online in the unfriendly confines of Magic Online. There was only one small glitch; I didn’t own any copies of Braids, and I sure as hell didn’t have any Birds of Paradise. My online poverty led to much experimentation/improvisation, as removing the deck’s main win (and often, autowin) condition and primary anti-control element yielded a bunch of new angles. Before exploring those, let’s examine the core cards and the multitude of interactions present in a deck I like to call”Return of the Mack.” I currently think that this list is the deck’s best configuration for the current metagame. Put on your best Mark Morrison falsetto and make with the”oh my gawwwd’s” while reading for maximum fun.
Core Cards
4 Birds of Paradise
I can’t really illustrate how dreadful the mana is in B/G decks without resorting to profanity or being excessively vulgar. The last time I gave into these impulses was in the forums, and the Ferrett had to give me a spanking. He thinks it was a deterrent, but I liked it… daddy likes the pain… give me … oh my, the leather… oh yes, I…um…
Let’s just agree that the deck needs four Birds, okay?
4 Oversold Cemetery
Oversold Cemetery is the deck’s namesake and”engine,” so to speak – but oddly enough, I have found it to be more of a support card than anything else. Most of the time you can win without it, since a turn 3 Braids just wins against plenty of decks out there (not as many nowadays with the rise of R/G), as does a sixth turn 18/18 Nantuko Husk. Still, it enables so many of the sick synergies present in this deck that it’s a crime not to have four of them. It’s also easy to slip under the Counterspell radar against the format’s major control deck (if I need to tell you what that is, stop reading).
4 Nantuko Husk
Kid Crunch and Munch works on so many levels. He enables Mike Tyson style knockout swings, he sets up Oversold Cemetery recursion, he provides an easy outlet for Wirewood Herald and Caller of the Claw mania, he screws up your opponent’s combat math, and he works in a stupid stack trick with Mesmeric Fiend or Faceless Butcher on the side. How can you not have love for such sickness? Husker Du is a little vulnerable to the most common removal card in the format (Smother), but other than that, he’s a titan.
4 Wirewood Herald
Words can not describe how crucial this little dunweeble is to the deck. I don’t even announce our elfin friend as Wirewood Herald when I cast him; he gets called by his true name: Demonic Tutor. I’ve experimented with running only three, but I found myself wanting one in every single game. Without a doubt, Wirewood Herald is the key to the entire deck.
I can hear the cries already:”A scrawny 1/1 loser? You must be out of your mind! Time to stop reading!” No. I am completely correct on this; play the deck and you’ll see what I mean. Respect my mind or get your brains knocked out.
3 Llanowar Elves
I think that seven accelerants is the right number for this deck. I’ve run it with four of these soon-to-be-gone forest dwellers and have found myself getting the”all-mana, no-threats” draw far too often for my liking. In testing the deck, it was a really hard call between the twenty-third land and the fourth elf, but for right now I think the land is the right choice. Lands can’t get Firebolted off jump-street by R/G beats. Crucial keys, ya’ll (this was Alicia Keys’ catch phrase during the 2002 Grammy Awards for whatever reason – where the hell is she now?).
And here’s the land setup:
10 Swamp
10 Forest
3 City of Brass
Cutting a City of Brass from syllogism’s original build was tough, but the right thing to do considering the heavy amounts of R/G in the field. Upping the total land count to twenty three was needed since the accelerants were almost always DOA here. I might re-add it though if mana problems creep back up – right now I’m doing okay just raw-dogging it.
One of the things that I tried to do with my version of this pile is give it a much healthier game one matchup vs. the ever present R/G beats. This compelled my moving the four sub-optimal Braids, Cabal Minion to the sideboard and removing Living Wish from the mix entirely. You may have noticed that there are two second-place B/G Cemetery builds from a couple of the overseas qualifiers. Those decks still ran both of these cards, so it’s definitely a testament to its quality in the”classic” configuration. However, astute readers will also notice that those decks also both lost to U/G variants in the finals – and neither Braids nor Living Wish is particularly stirring vs. U/G, where throngs of cheap threats come swiftly. I’m always trying to perk up existing archetypes, and this is simply one man’s attempt to do so. If you think your version is the bomb, then tell me why in our forums.
We’ve got eighteen slots to give the deck some flava, so let’s get to it!
Flava
1 Caller of the Claw
Quite often, the Caller is merely used for powering up a Nantuko Husk to lethal levels. This is just fine – the threat of taking a shot from a Very Huge Pipe-Hitting Thug is often more than enough to deter your opponent from taking chances in their attack phase. The longer you survive, the more time you have to crush your opponent with the card advantage generated from Oversold Cemetery. Caller of the Claw is also quite good for the already well-documented recovery from board-clearing effects. You want only one in the maindeck, but have the ability to go up to two if the matchup dictates such a move.
2 Stronghold Assassin
Los asesinos used to ‘role’ deep (it never gets old) (You gotta give Jordan some respect for his finish, though – The Ferrett) like the three amigos, and they do have ridiculous synergy with most of the cards in the deck. However, against R/G he’s just a 2/1 punk that gets killed on sight. Two is the right quantity in this dark era, as they’re still solid gold against U/G, G/W, Beasts, and any other random non-black creature decks you might come across. If your opponent isn’t packing any burn, Stronghold Assassin will be an all-star performer.
3 Phantom Centaur
Words can not convey how diesel Phantom Centaur is – unquestionably the best four-drop in Standard right now. He’s pro-black (it says so right on the card), five power for four mana, can’t be burned out easily, and in this deck is essentially Chainer’s Edict-proof. That’s a pretty attractive package.
Oh, if I only had a dollar for every time the ladies uttered those words to me… I’d have a dollar.
3 Faceless Butcher
When my man Faceless B gets on the cut, you know that good times must be on the horizon. He’s mainly in the deck for stupid stack tricks with Nantuko Husk and recursion with Oversold Cemetery as well as being needed”removal” for those lame Call of the Herd and Roar of the Wurm tokens turning up on tables everywhere. Bill the Butcher’s 2/3 body isn’t even that bad for getting his dirty beats on every once in a while.
3 Ravenous Baloth
On the other hand, Ravenous B’s stocky frame is excellent for getting in the enemy’s grillepiece. Four power, four toughness, four mana, four life. Of the wonderful things that you get outta life, there are fouurrrrrrrr… Yes, I’m not all hip-hop – I can even bust a jazz standard when needed.
Baloth + Oversold recursion puts the game out of reach for many aggressive decks, but that’s just a side bonus. He’s frequently quite formidable as a third-turn monstar. There’s nothing wrong with an unburnable and un-Smotherable early beater, right?
3 Smother
Most versions of B/G Cemetery pack three of this card in the sideboard. Well, I think that with the rise of R/G, it’s high time to maindeck the sucker. It lowers your creature count for Oversold, but the possibility to get those crucial two-fers (when they go for Elephant Guide) is too enticing to pass up. For 1B you also up the chance of being able to exterminate a blocker in your opponent’s end step and allow Chief Nantuko to play a sixteen-point tune.
3 Cabal Therapy
I absolutely love Cabal Therapy. Maybe it’s because I’ve conditioned myself to seemingly always name the right stuff with it (just ask Teddy K). Proper calls with Cabal Therapy dictate careful thought and a good working knowledge of the metagame. Although conventional knowledge says that the card is more effective once you know what you’re up against, it’s never bad in game one if you know how to use it. Patience is the key. Remember that analogy about the father bull and baby bull sitting atop a hill overlooking a field full of cows? I could elaborate, but that would require getting vulgar again.
Don’t just cast it blind on the first turn and name Counterspell because you see an Island. That play is for suckers. Instead, wait. See what you’re up against. Figure out what cards in your opponent’s deck typically linger in their hand. Figure out what card is the biggest detriment to your board position/ability to win the game. When the time is right, strike. You can quite often get two or three cards out of your opponent’s hand if you play Cabal Therapy properly (just ask Tybuc, who got three Corrupts and a Diabolic Tutor stripped from his grip in this weekend’s Sunday Standard finals). Flashing it back is never a concern because of all the sacrifice-synergy. I would run four straight up, but there isn’t room.
Sideboard
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
She’s sideboard material because I’m afraid her time in the sun has come and gone. B/G Cemetery loses its biggest auto-win setup for game one, but it’s still here in the sideboard, at least. The metagame is thick with beatdown decks in which Braids is either easily dealt with or can be circumvented rather comfortably. Still, she is positively murderous in certain matchups and pretty much the only way you can ever win against Slide or Wake.
3 Withered Wretch
I think this guy’s time has finally come. He’s clutch sideboard material against Tog, U/G, Wake, and against the new Ensnaring Bridge/Zombie deck that’s been popping up online. Withered Wretch is tougher to cast in the early game, but he’ll be well worth it in the long run in these matchups. I really think he’s vital against U/G, because as we all know, sometimes that deck just dishes out a Royal Air Force-style beating. This deck has no defense against fliers save for four mana-producing 0/1 speed bumps.
2 Ray of Revelation
Enchantment kill, and you can even produce the white mana with a Birds of Paradise or City of Brass. What a deal!
1 Stronghold Assassin
Guy Smiley (look at the card art!) is superb against decks that don’t remove creatures. Unfortunately, those decks are in short supply these days. Regardless, I want to draw a Stronghold Assassin against U/G or G/W because it just wins the game in these matchups.
1 Ravenous Baloth
It’s never a bad idea to have some fat on-hand in case things get rough in the trenches. The extra life gain is welcomed against R/G, Sligh, and Zombies.
1 Elvish Lyrist
Having enchantment removal that you can tutor for with a Wirewood Herald is savage (but not Wirewood Savage). It’s even more devilish when you’ve got Oversold Cemetery going and the opponent has enchantments just asking to be offed.
1 Elvish Scrapper
There are only two artifacts in Standard that need attention, but they’re biggies: Ensnaring Bridge and Mirari. I guess if an Opposition deck becomes prominent, you could throw Static Orb into the fray. Scrappy-doo takes care of artifacts like his harp-toting cousin does enchantments, and at the same cost – so why not give him some sideboard love? Watch out for those Engineered Plagues, though – that card really puts the clamps on elf-kind. Fortunately, nobody’s ever been smart enough to name Elf against me yet. How lucky! I think the card is starting to lose advocates as well; it’s not really included in many Psychatog sideboards anymore, and MBC decks usually run just one copy to tutor for when needed.
1 Caller of the Claw
Obviously, the second Caller of the Claw goes in against Slide decks, MBC, and anything else with board sweepers (is there anything else?) I noticed that one of the top decks from the overseas qualifiers ran two straight up; probably not a bad idea, but I just can’t fit it.
1 Cabal Therapy
I wish I could find some way to put this one in the starting lineup. Send all recommended cuts to the forum thread.
The finished product:
Return of the Mack
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Nantuko Husk
4 Wirewood Herald
4 Oversold Cemetery
3 Llanowar Elves
3 Phantom Centaur
3 Ravenous Baloth
3 Faceless Butcher
2 Stronghold Assassin
1 Caller of the Claw
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Smother
10 Swamp
10 Forest
3 City of Brass
Sideboard:
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
3 Withered Wretch
2 Ray of Revelation
1 Stronghold Assassin
1 Ravenous Baloth
1 Elvish Lyrist
1 Elvish Scrapper
1 Caller of the Claw
1 Cabal Therapy
Answers to questions that are probably on your mind
Q: In the mythical fantasyland of deck”tiers,” where does this deck fall?
This is a tier two deck right now – but it’s definitely in the top half. Slide decks are its Achilles heel, and the U/G matchup depends on whether on not you draw a Stronghold Assassin. It’s also fairly difficult to play properly. You need a good deal of experience to determine what the proper things to fetch with Wirewood Herald are, when to put ten damage on an opponent with a Nantuko Husk simply because you might not get another opportunity, and so on. Also, the deck has so many interactions that you’ll inevitably spend a few matches trying to figure out how to make them all come together in winning fashion.
Q: If you’re running a sideboard full of creatures, why not run a couple copies of Living Wish? Wouldn’t that make sense, you moron?
Well, it’s as I said earlier: I hate Living Wish. If my hatred makes for a weaker deck in your eyes, then don’t play the deck. It may seem irrational that I have such hate for a card in a deck that seems tailor-made for it, but there it is. Living Wish is simply too slow for the environment right now. I’d rather take my chances with raw dog plucks than to fall behind on tempo.
Q: You say earlier that Braids is an auto-win against many decks, so what’s up with you putting her in the sideboard? You just removed one of the deck’s best paths to victory and I’m not sure it’s for the better.
Right now, Standard it’s all about beating R/G – the alpha male of the environment. If you’re spending four mana for a 2/2 creature that they can kill for one or two mana, and then subsequently put a six-point swing on your noggin… Guess what, sport? Yep. You’re going to lose. If I’m spending four mana, I want a Ravenous Baloth or a Phantom Centaur – something meaty, something hard to take down, something can actually can put up a fight!
Braids can also be good against U/G if you catch them in the bungus draw, but more often than not the deck just churns out undercosted fatties, happily sacs a land, and you catch a lumping. I’d rather have the maindeck Smothers against U/G.
Q: You use two sissy elves in the sideboard to take care of artifacts and enchantments. Wouldn’t the more manly Nantuko Vigilantes be a better call?
No. You can’t tutor for those with Wirewood Herald, and they don’t come cheap, either. I have this obsession with not paying five mana for stuff when I have better stuff that does it for one. Call it a hang up, call it what you will – it’s how I am. But… but… summoning sickness! Isn’t the 187 worth the extra mana? No.
Q: Why not Mesmeric Fiends? Aren’t they nuts with Nantuko Husk?
Yes, they are. But Fiend-beans die (wait, are they undead already?) rather quickly, and they don’t do double duty like Cabal Therapy. I wish I could have them in the sideboard, but the inn only sleeps fifteen.
Q: What’s the typical path to victory for this deck?
With syllogism’s build, half the time I won just because I dropped a turn 3 Braids, Cabal Minion and held on tight, but that was months ago. That approach doesn’t fly any more – thanks, Kai. My version of the deck depends on a delicate mix of early acceleration, a big creature, disruption with Cabal Therapy, and making efficient trades in creature combat early so that Oversold Cemetery wins the card advantage war in the mid-game. Sounds like a lot to come together, right? B/G Cemetery is surprisingly resilient, and winning situations develop seemingly out of nowhere. You’ll feel nervous in the early game until you realize that your opponent isn’t putting any damage on you because they have to get through an army of Wirewood Heralds. Smother takes care of a pesky Mongrel. You’ve made a couple of decent trades thanks to a Nantuko Husk. Then you get a favorable Cabal Therapy off and Phantom Centaur steps on the gas pedal. Oversold Cemetery hits the board and you start bringing stuff back. Then suddenly, you sacrifice a bunch of dudes and get massive board position with Caller of the Claw. A few turns later, the game is over.
Q: Have you tried…
Graveborn Muse?
Yes, and I didn’t like it for reasons explained earlier in the article.
Bane of the Living?
While having Mutilate on demand (with Oversold Cemetery in effect) is certainly an idea worth further exploration, this is not the deck for it. I’ve seen the attempts at bringing The Rock to Standard and they’ve all been crap for the most part. Maybe someone will figure it out eventually.
Silent Specter?
This is probably not a creature that you’d think belongs in the deck, but I’m kind of itching to try it. A 4/4 flying discard machine that you can recur seems like it could have a few nasty applications, especially when you can drop it and morph it semi-early with the aid of mana accelerators. It’s probably not great against R/G though. Food for thought…
Elephant Guide?
It seems like a good idea for this deck; someone try them and let me know, eh? You can’t expect me to do all the work.
Mindslicer?
Only my demented mind is capable of even thinking about putting a bad card like Mindslicer in an otherwise good deck. Think about it, though… you drop a few small creatures… you get Mindslicer out… you sac him and discard your hand full of critters, only to get them all back later while your opponent loses their stocked grip. Hmm. It looks like I’m a couple days too late to pass this off as an April Fool’s joke.
Matchups
If you ever expect to win a match with this deck, you bettah lissen up (Ali G, vox). Sideboarding suggestions are listed below the discussions. Damn, this is getting long.
R/G Beats
Ugh… R/G has a lot of burn to throw at your dome and the creature pressure comes at an unrelenting pace. Violent Eruption, in particular, is a breaker. Try to do stuff that slows down their tempo – block that incoming Basking Rootwalla with a Wirewood Herald instead of taking a point of damage and letting them drop a Wild Mongrel. Make them spend the mana to save the stupid little thing; you go and fetch one of the Wirewood homeboys and do it all over again. As soon as you get four to six mana and some breathing room, Faceless Butcher, Ravenous Baloth, and Oversold Cemetery will take control of the game.
They’re likely to spend early burn spells on mana creatures; this may or may not be a problem for you, depending on your draw. Save your Smothers for Grim Lavamancer or possible Elephant Guide attempts. Cabal Therapy should be gunning for either Violent Eruption or Elephant Guide. Wild Mongrel is not a bad choice, either. If they’re maindecking Phantom Centaurs of their own, be sure not to waste all of your green men in gang blocks – they’re needed to bring em’ down. Eventually you should reach board parity and overcome them with bigger guys. The top end toughness for R/G’s kids is usually around three, whereas yours is around four. And your guys keep coming back for more.
The threat of a gargantuan Nantuko Husk can often inspire some cheeky blocks from their side of the table, too. If you play right, this is a matchup that favors you in game one. Expect Compost in game two, so sideboard accordingly.
+1 Ravenous Baloth
+1 Elvish Lyrist
+1 Ray of Revelation
-2 Stronghold Assassin
-1 Oversold Cemetery
U/G Madness
I think that the original incarnations of B/G were made to give U/G fits, and I tried to stay true to that ideal. Losing a Stronghold Assassin in the maindeck hurt, but the cut was necessary. You’re packing a lot of cards that are bad for them – Smother, Faceless Butcher, Stronghold Assassin, etc. but all of that can be negated by a Wonderful draw. Try to kill the madness enablers as quickly as possible – do not let them get a third-turn Arrogant Wurm. Cabal Therapy for either that or Circular Logic when possible in the early game.
Things get much better for you after sideboarding, as Stronghold will take completely take over the game if you pluck it. Expect Compost as well, hence the Elvish Lyrist. Withered Wretch can take care of the Wonder problem, as well as put the kibosh on any Quiet Speculation antics (they’ll always get that Ray of Revelation).
+2 Withered Wretch
+1 Stronghold Assassin
+1 Elvish Lyrist
-1 Oversold Cemetery
-1 Ravenous Baloth
-1 Nantuko Husk
-1 Llanowar Elves
G/W Madness / G/W/r Beasts
Against G/W, employ the same strategy as you do against U/G – Stronghold Assassin your way to victory. Beasts is a more difficult matchup because Contested Cliffs can actually remove your guys, but it’s a bit slow. Glory is annoying, so you may consider siding in Withered Wretch. The Faceless Butcher/Oversold Cemetery/Nantuko Husk trio does a real number on them, but watch out for enchantment kill retrievable via Living Wish. Sometimes you can get greedy with the Oversold stuff and get busted with a Naturalize right when it hurts the most.
+2 Withered Wretch
+1 Stronghold Assassin
+1 Elvish Lyrist
-1 Oversold Cemetery
-1 Phantom Centaur
-1 Nantuko Husk
-1 Llanowar Elves
Goblins
The only way goblins ever win is by attacking full-bore every turn – and this plays right into your hands. Your Wirewood Heralds trade one-for-one with just about every creature they run, and while their creatures go to the graveyard permanently, you go and get another dork. Soon after, you’re dropping a Ravenous Baloth after casually stopping to sip at the pool of your opponent’s bitter tears. Sparksmith needs to be terminated with extreme prejudice, but other than that you just sit back and make good combat trades and eventually overwhelm their resources with fat creatures and goodies you got back from Oversold Cemetery. I’m not going to say that the Goblins matchup is 100%, but it’s very very good for you.
+1 Ravenous Baloth
+1 Caller of the Claw
B/R Reanimator
In game one you probably have no chance unless you get lucky with Cabal Therapy or they get a really lousy draw. You simply can’t win fast enough; they’ll get a huge monster on-line and beat the tar out of you with a quickness. Sickening Dreams also crushes you handily. To have a chance in game one, they need to be stupid and you need to have a Faceless Butcher primed up and ready to go when they get out their first fattie. My advice is to be very lucky. But after sideboarding, you probably can’t lose. Withered Wretch is a nightmare for Reanimator, and Braids is almost as bad. Just remember that their deck is very easily disrupted – the first five turns must go perfectly for them to win the game most of the time. Cabal Therapy throws a wrench into the machine, and Martha Stewart herself seals the deal.
+4 Braids, Cabal Minion
+3 Withered Wretch
+1 Cabal Therapy
-3 Smother
-3 Ravenous Baloth
-2 Stronghold Assassin
Astral Slide
Once again, the first game against Slide is almost a lost cause – unless, once again, you get lucky with discard. Cycling Slice and Dice is a terrible beating unless a Wirewood Herald is among the fallen and you’ve got the mana on hand to follow up with Caller of the Claw. The same is true for Wrath of God. You can’t do anything about the enchantments in game one, and Exalted Angel ends the game in five turns. No strategy I outline here will make things any better, so follow the sideboard matrix and hope for the best. Be sure that you don’t cast Braids when they have Astral Slide on the table, or else you’ll quickly find yourself on the wrong end of that plan. Slide is falling out of favor because it’s an auto-loss to Psychatog, but it’s kind of sad that a matchup is so poor that you have to pin your hopes on never facing a semi-popular archetype. Such is life.
+4 Braids, Cabal Minion
+2 Ray of Revelation
+1 Elvish Lyrist
+1 Caller of the Claw
+1 Cabal Therapy
-3 Smother
-2 Stronghold Assassin
-2 Nantuko Husk
-1 Faceless Butcher
-1 Llanowar Elves
MBC
An MBC matchup is Caller of the Claw’s chance to shine, so be ready to set up the bomb when the Mutilate falls. Your Wirewood Heralds/Birds/ Elves will soak up Chainer’s Edict and bathe in Innocent Blood in the early game. Cabal Therapy completely demolishes them (always name Diabolic Tutor early and Corrupt late) and that’s a big advantage for the home team. Eventually MBC will succumb to the Oversold Cemetery onslaught, so just keep the pressure on.
They have basically two cards that hurt you: Haunting Echoes and Visara the Dreadful. Don’t let either of them happen – that’s why you snag those Diabolic Tutors. Keep swinging and everything will come out all right in the end. An early Braids provides an extra victory path after sideboarding and one that can’t do anything about, since none of MBC’s removal can touch her on turn 3 (assuming you have Edict / Blood insurance, and you always do).
+4 Braids, Cabal Minion
+1 Cabal Therapy
+1 Elvish Scrapper
+1 Caller of the Claw
-2 Ravenous Baloth
-2 Stronghold Assassin
-1 Smother
-1 Faceless Butcher
-1 Nantuko Husk
Psychatog
I’ve heard folks claim that this is a bad matchup, but I don’t really see why. Sure, they can Upheaval-Tog at any given moment – but isn’t that the case against 90% of the decks in the field? You have a ton of little creatures to soak up their removal and you have Oversold Cemetery, which if forced through, makes the Psychatog player’s life a living (or undead) hell. Three maindeck pro-black dudes swing through Doctor Teeth without remorse. As always when playing against Tog these days, don’t walk into Force Spikes. Swing fast, swing often, and above all else, try to resolve an Oversold Cemetery as soon as you have an opening. You might not kill them before they tap 4UU, but you’ll find that Phantom Centaur is the inspiration behind more defensive Upheavals than a Psychatog player cares to acknowledge. The sideboard contains some very anti-Tog cards as well, so the matchup gets appreciably better in games two and three.
+4 Braids, Cabal Minion
+3 Withered Wretch
+1 Cabal Therapy
-3 Faceless Butcher
-2 Stronghold Assassin
-1 Ravenous Baloth
-1 Llanowar Elf
-1 Smother
Mirari’s Wake
I don’t see too much Wake these days… But you can bet that a deck dedicated to completely shutting down the attack phase will give B/G Cemetery some issues. Moment’s Peace and Wrath of God do much work against you, and once they get going, all the jealous punks can’t stop the dunk. Game one is certifiably bad, but with your sideboard and a decent draw, games two and three should be a cinch. You’ve all heard of the WWW, right? Well, if you add a W, you get the following acronym/aphorism: Withered Wretch Wrecks Wake. Believe it. Serve chilled with Braids, enchantment kill, and discard. Enjoy.
+4 Braids, Cabal Minion
+3 Withered Wretch
+2 Ray of Revelation
+1 Cabal Therapy
+1 Elvish Lyrist
-2 Stronghold Assassin
-3 Smother
-3 Faceless Butcher
-2 Ravenous Baloth
-1 Nantuko Husk
Whew! Well, that about covers things, I think. It is now that I must solicit the honest opinion of the readership: Am I too verbose? I prefer to be fully comprehensive whenever I do analysis, as it’s so easy to just spew out a decklist and spit out a few half-truths about a deck and how it plays. Would most people prefer one large article or two smaller ones? I think people tend to enjoy things as is, given that my articles have two of the most-viewed threads in the forums, but I’m not sure. Drop a line and let me know.
P.S.:
If you’re not watching Da Ali G Show on HBO already, you’re missing out on the funniest show on the tele. They’re set to re-run the first season starting this next week, so do yourself a favor and check it out. Big up yourself; respect.
Enjoy life.
Jim Ferraiolo
Dobbs on MTGO and IRC
[email protected]