Rising Waters In Type II

Why?

When I go to a tourney at the moment, I know most of the cards that will be in most of the decks there. I know in advance what decks some of my opponents are playing. It feels tired, it feels old. More than anything I’m getting bored of playtesting my decks against the same archetypes week after week – and my playtest partners are getting bored of them even more. There are only so many times you can play Speed Green With Vine Dryads or Sabre Bargain before you get bored.

I’ve been on holiday and I’m coming back to the Magic arena refreshed, and with the new cards coming in I’m looking for a few new things to play with. We’ve also invited Andy Smith to join Team PhatBeats and he’s accepted (we needed a unanimous vote in favour, which is why we had to wait until Alan was back), so I want to try to keep him from getting too bored.

In a previous article at http://www.curiosity-shoppe.com/magic/Articles/block.html, I explained my thoughts that there were two major ways to build good decks types after a block rotation. The first is to look at lots of mono-coloured decks and well-known archetypes, and the second is to build decks around cards that look interesting. As we still only have limited knowledge about Invasion and its new mechanics, I thought I’d take a look at a deck that’s quite well-known – Rising Waters – and try to answer two simple questions: Can we make Rising Waters better using some existing Sixth Edition cards, and can Rising Waters work in a Type II environment? Now maybe it’s not all that different from what we’re playing in MBC, but it’s a world apart from anything in Type II – and that alone will be welcome light refreshment.

Before I start I’d just like to say that I’ve looked over a few sites to try and find if anyone else is thinking, or writing, about this and I can’t find any articles. If anyone is thinking about it, or has written about it, I’d value your input – please mail me, maybe we can make a really good deck!

Down to business. There are lots of Rising Waters decks out there, some more controlling and some little more than Blue Skies with four Rising Waters in them. I’ll use a version I took to a PTQ in London, UK. I narrowly missed out of the top 8; not bad for my first PTQ. Here’s the decklist:

Creatures (12):
4x Waterfront Bouncer
4x Stinging Barrier
4x Drake Hatchling

Other Spells (25):
4x Rising Waters
4x Eye of Ramos
4x Counterspell
4x Thwart
3x Gush
3x Seal of Removal
2x Daze
1x Rethink

Land (23):
2x Dust Bowl
1x Rath’s Edge
20x Island

Sideboard (15):
3x Withdraw
3x Dominate
3x Hoodwink
2x Submerge
1x Bribery
3x Darting Merfolk

I won four, lost two, and drew one. I had to win the last match of the day to get into the Top 8, and I lost it 2-1 because of one of my own mistakes. I’m pretty sure I could have won either the draw or loss if I’d practiced more and known what Jewelled Spirit actually did, so I think the deck itself is pretty good.

So what can we do to make it better? We have to look at three things: Better land, better creatures and better spells (obviously). I’m going to make things easier by assuming that most of the cards in the deck at the moment are good, or the best choices, from MBC. After all, they wouldn’t be in so many MBC decks if they weren’t now, would they? First things first, let’s look at land.

Rising Waters wants four Rishadan Ports pretty badly; in MBC they’re not allowed, but they go straight back in in Type II. During the day I found that Rath’s Edge helped me a lot, but it also lost me one game because my opponent blew up my Dust Bowls and I couldn’t kill his Rath’s Edge. I’m loathe to add more than one, but I think we need to keep it. Dust Bowls are excellent as they help us blow up any non-basic land our opponent puts on the table, leaving our Ports to tap their basic land. On the face of it, it looks like we’ll just be taking four Islands out for four Ports. That’d give us 23 land as follows:

16x Islands
4x Rishadan Port
2x Dust Bowl
1x Rath’s Edge

During the day I often found I had much more land than I needed and, given the casting cost stops at four and there are four Eye of Ramos, I often sideboarded an Island out for a one, or two casting cost sideboard spell. 27 mana sources may be too much, so we may want to go down to 26 (dropping an island). However, with four Ports, the amount of blue-producing land has decreased, so maybe they stay – only playtesting will say for sure.

One other thing to keep in mind is that there are a lot more enchantments and artifacts in Type II. We also don’t know what people are going to play because of the new Block rotating in. Blue is notoriously bad at dealing with artifacts, and I had Hoodwinks in the sideboard to try to help. Sixth Edition could help us a little more with Adakar Wastes. That’d allow us to add a few Disenchants. If people don’t seem to be playing many we can take them back out, but it seems prudent to assume they will.

So, I’ll start off with 23 lands as follows:

12x Islands
4x Adakar Wastes
4x Rishadan Port
2x Dust Bowl
1x Rath’s Edge

If there don’t seem to be enough Islands, I’ll drop the Rath’s Edge for one.

Next up, I’d like to look at creatures. In MBC Waterfront Bouncer is a real power card – but how good is he in Type II? Well, pretty much all of the good creature removal that’s not red in Type II right now is also in MBC. We have to consider Wrath of God, but that’s four mana, and we’re hoping to stop our opponent from getting that much spare. As far as red spells go, there are a lot more to worry about in Type II than in MBC, but red can’t deal with enchantments any better than blue can, so we’ll have to hope that the rest of our spells will be enough. As far as most other colours go, our Bouncers won’t really be at any more risk in Type II than they are in MBC, and none of our creatures will be. We also have to remember that Chill will be AMAZING under a Rising Waters lock.

The bouncer is also quite an early drop in the big casting cost arena of MBC, so he won’t be too slow for Type II. Reusable creature bounce (and especially removal) is next to non-existent in Blue. Once again we don’t really know what creatures will be coming in in Invasion. If there’s a horde of untargetable green creatures he won’t be much use, but Wizards don’t seem to print too many of those in one set, so he seems a safe bet.

That leaves us Hatchling Drakes and Stinging Barriers. Leaving the Ribbon Snake or Drake debate alone (I personally like my fliers to fly all the time, that way they can attack even when I don’t have Rising Waters on the table), let’s look at the Barriers. The Barrier’s ability to kill small creatures and block slightly bigger ones is undeniably good in MBC, but how good is it in Type II? There are a lot of small
creatures, sure, but green mages playing River Boa carefully will almost be able to ignore it. Even so, a pair of Barriers are just as good in Type II. Wall of Air and Glacial Wall are bigger for less mana, but they don’t really give us a mana-free way of killing our opponent, and who wants to play with creatures that just sit there and defend?

The Drakes/Snakes give us a three-toughness creature and the ability to fly. Even with Longbow Archers added to the plethora of creatures that can block fliers, the three toughness gives us both an excellent blocker and a Shock– or Seal of Fire-resistant creature to put down on turn three. Back in the Lightning Bolt days, four toughness was thought to be the sign of a resilient creature; nowadays, three seems the level to look for. In Sixth Edition we have several other creatures we could consider. Phantom Warrior would give us guaranteed evasion, whilst Wind Drake flies and has a power of two all the time. Both of these only have two toughness, though. We could up the stakes and go for bigger creatures, but that would make things difficult for us once Rising Waters hits the table.

So as far as creatures go, I’ll stick with what I’ve already got. That leaves our ‘Other Spells.’ This is where I think the main difference lies between the two formats. We can dip into white, and we can have access to a number of different artifacts and blue spells to look at.

The first I’d like to consider is Sky Diamond. Sky Diamond costs two mana to cast and comes into play tapped. That means we can use it on turn three to provide one mana. Eye of Ramos is three mana, so again we can use it for one mana on turn three, if we want to keep it around. There’s more than that to think about, though.

Playing a Diamond on turn two gives us four mana on turn three and five on turn four. An Eye gives us one (or two) mana on turn three, and five (or six) on turn four. Which is best? If you look at the rest of a deck, there are a few three casting cost spells, namely the Drakes and Eyes. We can’t start to counterspell until turn four with an Eye – something that caused me much grief during the day, even with Daze and Thwart in the deck.

Type II is faster than MBC, at least at the moment, and the ability to start to use counterspells and cast four casting cost spells seems more important to me. There was one play during the PTQ I attended where I Dominated a Blinding Angel on turn six. I couldn’t have done that without an Eye of Ramos, but I was back down to six mana the next turn. Although an interesting play, I think it’s more important to be casting four casting cost spells a turn earlier. Feel free to email me with lots of reasons why an Eye is better, and I’ll publish them next article.

So, Diamonds for Eyes (for now) – the Diamond art is cooler, anyhow. What else can we look at? Well, I’d like to add two main deck Disenchants and two to the Sideboard. I’d also like to look at Daze and Rethink, and consider Memory Lapse as an alternative.

Daze is really good once you have a lock; it’s pretty good early game, too. Rethink is good early game, but slightly expensive under a Rising Waters lock. Memory Lapse is really only good under the lock or if you’re about to win. I’d love to be able to pick out a few decklists of Forgotten Orb and Propa-Orb to show you – but I can’t find any right now, so you’ll just have to believe me that it used to get played when Winter Orb was in Type II. I believe that they’ll be pretty good with Rising Waters – so I’ll add them for several reasons.

The main reason is that I know how easy Daze is to play around: You just wait one more turn. A lot of my opponents in the last tourney knew this and played around it very effectively, rendering it useless at being an actual Counterspell and making it more of a free Boomerang that only targeted my own land. Memory Lapse will Time Warp your opponent. Not only will they use up their mana, the spell goes back on top of their library so they (effectively) lose a draw. Obviously, playtesting will have to check this out.

Finally Seal of Removal. Seals are great, All through the day they made my opponents think twice about playing creatures. Why should they tap out to play something if I’m just going to bounce it back to their hand? Sixth Edition offers us Boomerang or Unsummon. I like the fact that they’re both instants, so you can do even more in your opponent’s turns, but Boomerang costs more – and I prefer Seals to Unsummon. Again – I’m going to try Boomerang to see how it plays. After all, it allows me to retroactively deal with enchantments, artifacts, creatures AND land – not just creatures – and you can save any of your own permanents from destruction, giving you another way to make your opponent waste mana.

As far as card drawing goes, Sixth offers nothing quite as good as Gush. Having played with it and against it so much, I know just how good it is, both under Rising Waters and without the Waters on the table. It stays.

My final question is how to squeeze in the Disenchants. I’m adding four painlands to make them work, so I’d better add at least two. With the cheaper cost of Sky Diamonds over Eye of Ramos and my feeling that 23 land is one too many – I’ll drop one land and a Boomerang. This gives us the following Deck.

PhatBeats Type II Rising Waters (version 1.0)

Creatures (12):
4x Waterfront Bouncer
4x Stinging Barrier
4x Drake Hatchling

Other Spells (26):
4x Rising Waters
4x Sky Diamond
4x Counterspell
4x Thwart
3x Memory Lapse
3x Gush
2x Boomerang
2x Disenchant

Land (22):
4x Rishadan Port
4x Adakar Wastes
2x Dust Bowl
12x Island

The sideboard, as ever, I leave to the reader. You should consider your local meta-game very carefully. There are a few more things you might like to try: Perhaps one Waters could be taken out for an Enlightened Tutor. That way you can get a Diamond when you need it, or a Waters when you need that. You could take a Sky Diamond out for one Marble Diamond (if you’re adding Tutors, I’d try it at the very least). Maybe more Disenchants and a few Plains could be added?

At the end of the day I think there’s a viable Type II deck around here somewhere. It might just be mono-blue, it may have more white and be more of a UW control deck. Even if it does work it might only be a second tier deck – who knows? Certainly not me, not yet. After all, there are another 330 cards coming our way and they’re gonna shake things up a little.