In part one we looked at some of the combo decks of Vintage. In part two we looked at mostly Control and Aggro-Control decks. In this article, we look primarily at the various Mishra’s Workshop-based decks that Type One has spawned.
Ravager Affinity
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Myr Retriever
4 Myr Moonvessel
4 Metalworker
2 Triskelion
1 Memory Jar
4 Skullclamp
4 Sword of fire and ice
4 Tangle Wire
4 Sphere of Resistance
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
2 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Tolarian Academy
Sideboard:
4 Tormod’s Crypt
4 Powder Keg
1 Arcbound Crusher
2 Triskelion
4 Chalice of the void
Or:
Ravager:
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Disciple of the Vault
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Future Sight
4 Thoughtcast
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
4 Shrapnel Blast
1 Wheel of Fortune
2 Glimmervoid
4 Great Furnace
4 Seat of the Synod
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Vault of Whispers
There is even a variant with Junk Diver and Ashnod’s Altar.
This archetype is really too new for me to make an informed analysis – although I’ll say what I know. There are several archetypes under this banner that have been successful thus far. Given the sheer quantity of synergistic cards printed, I have no doubt that at least one, if not more, of this archetype will emerge as an upper tier archetype. Cards like Moxen and Mishra’s Workshop only boost the concept’s viability and make it more powerful. So far, the archetype is something like Food Chain Goblins or Masknaught: An Aggro-Combo deck, but an aggro-combo deck that maximizes the best acceleration in the format because the creatures are of the best or second best color in the format: Artifact.
Imagine playing Sligh but every Mox tapped for Red or a land that taps for RRR – well this concept has that.
Strengths
One strength is the sheer quantity of possible combinations to run this deck in. I have seen builds with Junk Diver reusing Myr Retriever for infinite combo with Ashnod’s Altar. Other decks are more traditional Ravager Affinity concepts with Frogmite. Some of these use Mishra’s Workshop, some don’t. Some try to play with modular guys to feed some of the synergies. Most use cards like Wheel of Fortune and Yawgmoth’s Will.
The strength of the archetype is that it has a combo finish – something that most Type One decks have. This enables the deck to race control decks with a quick finish.
The combo finish gives the deck a modularity – no pun intended – in that it can win in more than one mode – the mode of beatdown. Not only is Disciple of the Vault a combo finisher, but there are other combo elements that one might potentially abuse.
Weakness
One weakness is that there is already quite a bit of hate in the format for artifacts. Null Rod and Gorilla Shaman spring to mind as dangerous cards to deal with frequently. One question is whether the deck is more consistent or as fast as the already established and tried Food Chain Goblins.
Concluding Thoughts:
Despite the weaknesses to Null Rod, Arcbound Ravager is one of the best creatures ever printed. This deck is capable of doing quite a bit of damage early until Null Rod doesn’t matter anymore. The sheer quantity of synergistic cards printed reminds me of the synergy between Madness and Flashback – and threshold. In my opinion, the real broken mechanic isn’t affinity at all – it’s modular.
At least when a Tog blocks a Phyrexian Dreadnought and survives, you know that you’ve likely done what needs to be done. When Tog blocks Ravager, all of Ravager’s power goes somewhere else. I think we will have not just one, but possibly two Affinity decks in the tier one.
Rector Trix
Rector Trix first reared its head last spring as, almost simultaneously, players around the globe stumbled upon the combination of Academy Rector and Cabal Therapy.
By Max Joseph, a.k.a. Westredale:
Disruption
4 Force of Will
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
Search/Broken:
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
4 Brainstorm
Combo Pieces:
3 Illusions of Grandeur
2 Donate
1 Rushing River
1 Yawgmoth’s Bargain
1 Necropotence
4 Academy Rector
Mana:
2 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
3 Scrubland[/author]“][author name="Scrubland"]Scrubland[/author]
4 Underground Sea
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
3 Dark Ritual
Sideboard
1 Aura Fracture
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Abeyance
2 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Mind Twist
1 Island
1 Balance
1 Timetwister
1 The Abyss
1 Illusions of Grandeur
2 Blue Elemental Blast
How does this deck play out?
The idea is to play Academy Rector and sacrifice her to Cabal Therapy or by blocking to find Yawgmoth’s Bargain and then draw either Illusions and Donate, or Tendrils of Agony for the same result.
Specifically, it usually goes something like this:
Turn One:
Land, Duress. Or: Land, Brainstorm.
Turn Two:
Land, Dark Ritual, Cabal Therapy, Mox, Academy Rector. Flashback Therapy to kill Rector and find Bargain.
Turn Three:
Draw nineteen cards with Bargain and win.
If the opponent attempts anything threatening on their turn, you can draw enough cards to find Force of Wills and use them. If you want to go off immediately, there is a risk that you might stall out, but if you see Black Lotus or Yawgmoth’s Will you probably won’t. That basic game plan has a few variations depending on the draw you get. Sometimes a Dark Ritual Necropotence is the best turn 1 play, and sometimes you’ll draw a Mox Pearl or Mox Jet to get a turn 1 Rector (or Black Lotus). Despite the limited number of key cards, they seem to arise with surprising consistency if you are playing a good built of the deck.
Mike Krzywicki has suggested an alternative design that uses Living Wish and Elvish Spirit Guide as additional acceleration and as a way to find more Academy Rectors. It remains to be seen which builds are superior.
Difficulty of Play:
The good news is that this is one of the easiest combo decks in Type One to play. The game plan is rather straightforward as I have described, and the decisions that need to be made along the way are few – unlike a deck like Draw7 or Long. Generally, Cabal Therapy names Force of Will, and once you have used one or cast a Duress, you have a good idea what cards you might want to deal with.
Strengths:
A key strength of Rector Trix is that the deck is relatively simple to play. Another advantage is that the deck is all about Yawgmoth’s Bargain, and surprisingly, Yawgmoth’s Will. These are not bad cards to build a deck around – quite the contrary, they are among two of the very, very best cards in the format. The deck has an excellent amount of disruption in Duress, Cabal Therapy, and Force of Will to help mount a strong offense. The deck is relatively quick – comboing out on average on turn 3, but the turn it wins is after the turn that it had already sealed the game up, so the deck is faster than it would appear from the goldfish turn.
The deck appears to have favorable matchups against many of the tempo-based decks that infest Type One such as GroAtog, Fish, and other aggro-control decks. It also can be a headache for any Tog or Aggro player. The significant disruption is also good enough to slow down most other combo decks long enough for Rector to win. Additionally, this deck has strangely had a very good matchup against the older Workshop-based prison decks. This is for the same reason that Rector seems to be quite strong against the tempo decks – despite the weakness to mana denial, it only need to resolve a single four-mana spell and the game will swing wildly out of control. New Workshop prison has substantially stronger tools in Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere – but against the heavy disruption that Rector packs, it may not be good enough or fast enough.
Weaknesses:
The deck has inadvertently been subject to much of the hate aimed at Dragon combo. Tormod’s Crypt and Coffin Purge (originally intended to hit Rectors) stops the Rector from finding Bargain and can’t be stopped by Cabal Therapy. The deck also has to survive a barrage of Stifles and Wastelands that are common in Type One decks. Another weakness is that the difference between a well-tuned build and a build that you might randomly construct is quite large.
One issue that was not clearly resolved over the last year is whether it is better to use Tendrils of Agony as the win condition, or, the Illusions-Donate combo. I prefer the Illusions-Donate combo for three reasons. First, Illusions-Donate is Blue and therefore helps to support Force of Will, a key card in any good Type One deck. Second, Illusions can be found with a second Rector. Third, Illusions can be randomly drawn and randomly cast in topdeck mode to Donate away and win a game that Tendrils would not have made possible. The space”saved” by using Tendrils does not compensate for those three facts.
On the whole, this deck is underplayed and under-represented in the Vintage field. I would not be surprised to see this deck pull out some major wins during the summer and into the fall – it only takes the will to reawaken the deck. If it remains under-played into the fall, and if Dragon continues to see little play, then the graveyard hate for it may diminish resulting in a ripe field for the plucking. This is especially true when you consider that Type One players tend to have short memories for this sort of thing.
$T4KS: The Four Thousand Dollar Solution
“No, No, No! Sack first, then tap.”
4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire
4 Trinisphere
4 Goblin Welder
4 Meditate
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Timetwister
1 Triskelion
1 Karn, Silver Golem
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Badlands
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Black Lotus
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Grim Monolith
1 Lotus Petal
Sideboard:
Blood Moon
Chalice of the Void
Other goodies.
This deck first emerged as a serious Type One contender last year in the field of GroAtog almost entirely on the strength of Sphere of Resistance. Sphere was a powerhouse against the efficiently based GAT deck that ran fewer than nineteen mana sources, and twelve alternative casting cost countermagic and draw spells.
How Does This Deck Play Out?
The concept is simple enough: lock down the game fast. All of the prison parts are non-symmetrical because you have superior board advantage. Play one on turn 1 and two on turn 2 and then seal the deal on turn 3 with some draw spells or additional disruption. For example, a good start might be:
Turn One:
P1: Mishra’s Workshop, Mox Pearl, Smokestack.
P2: Land, Mox, go.
Turn Two:
P1: Add a soot counter to Smokestack. Tap Workshop, play Tangle Wire. Polluted Delta -> Volcanic Island, Goblin Welder.
P2: Sacrifice Mox (or land), tap down, draw. Play a land, go.
Turn Three:
P1: Tap Down Mox Pearl, Smokestack, and Tangle Wire to Tangle Wire. Sacrifice Mox Pearl to Smokestack and add a counter to Stax. Draw. Play a land, pass turn.
P2: Sacrifice both lands and draw. Pass turn. On endstep, Welder welds out Smokestack for Mox Pearl.
Turn Four:
P1: Tap down Wire and another permanent to Tangle Wire. Draw a card. Play another lock part or a Draw spell. Pass turn.
P2: Draw a card. Play a Land. On endstep, Welder welds out Tangle Wire for Smokestack.
Turn Five:
P1: Add a counter to Smokestack. Draw. Play another lock part to draw spell. Weld out Mox Pearl for Tangle Wire, pass the turn….
Eventually Karn comes down and all of the prison elements swing in one lethal blow.
As you can see, the game was effectively over on turn 2 because the prison player can hold the game down with the lock parts. A more brutal opening would have been a turn 1 Trinisphere followed by Smokestack or Tangle Wire, because the Trinisphere prevents their Moxen from being cast and makes most of their spells much more difficult to cast.
The good news is that Trinisphere was”pre-built” for this deck. What that means it that almost all of the spells in the deck cost three or more – all the draw7s, draw spells, and lock parts. The only spells that cost less are mana, which come down before Trinisphere anyway, and Goblin Welder – which isn’t difficult to cast because the deck needed three mana to cast the draw spells anyway, so it is designed to get to three non-Workshop mana.
The basic idea is to use aggressive draw to amass a huge board – with every draw spell you put more permanents into play and play more lock parts than your opponent can deal with. They also help find more Workshops and the coveted Tolarian Academy.
This list that I have posted here is what I consider close to ideal for this concept. I have cut the Thirsts and the Chalices in an effort to take the deck back to its roots. The only real change is the Trinisphere. The Trinisphere is effectively Chalice of the Void and Sphere of Resistance in one card. It comes down quickly and, like Chalice, prevents your opponent from being able to play Moxen and other acceleration that would help them break the lock. Chalice of the Voids are vulnerable to cards like Gorilla Shaman and aren’t necessary to the plan. They don’t actually lock down the board like Smokestack and Tangle Wire do – Trinisphere, Sphere of Resistance, and Chalice of the Void affect the ability to cast spells, and indirectly help secure the board position. Trinisphere is the best of these three.
Meditate is re-included over Thirst for Knowledge because after a lot of testing, we decided that Thirst simply wasn’t what this deck needed. The difference between getting four new cards in hand and two new cards in hand (because Thirst makes you discard) is not insignificant, because much of the time Meditate is used to draw into lock parts whereas Thirst is used for synergy purposes that the deck really doesn’t need.
Difficulty of Play:
This deck isn’t overly difficult to play – but you must make the right decision at every stage of the game. Prison decks aren’t forgiving – they require that you lock down the board immediately and any slip up can give the opponent the window of opportunity they need to escape the lock. You must knows the rules of the cards you are playing with – how to time the interaction between Smokestack and Tangle Wires, how to effectively stack both on your turn and your opponents, and understand what this decks weaknesses are.
Check out the following link for further reference: http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=5273
Strengths:
The best strength of this deck is its sheer power. In order for a Prison deck to succeed, it has to be able to quite powerful indeed in this format. One of the strengths of this deck is the fact that it can fight Force of Will. The ability to play very fast lock parts quickly means that it can play through Forces of Will.
Trinisphere was a huge boon to this archetype. Previously, this deck had serious trouble against Rector and Dragon decks, because both decks were so fast, played a lot of acceleration, and the Prison elements didn’t stop the combo very well – especially since both decks played Force of Will. Trinisphere has helped both matches quite a lot, since you can’t go Land, Mox after Trinisphere, while you could after Sphere of Resistance. Previously, Stax needed about three lock parts operating synergistically to beat Dragon, but now Trinisphere + Smokestack is basically sufficient.
This decks biggest strength is the way that it just destroys Storm-based combo – and mana heavy combo in general. Turn 1 Trinisphere or Chalice of the Void is basically game against most combo decks, so long as you have enough tools to back it up.
This deck also tends to own Aggro-Control decks – which is a huge benefit. It has very high win percentages and performs very well against the vast majority of the field.
Weaknesses:
Unfortunately, despite the inherent power, its biggest weakness seems to be to the tier one decks. Trinisphere may not prevent a Psychatog from hitting play, or worse, Cunning Wish for Artifact Mutation or Rack and Ruin. Consider:
Turn One:
P1: Land, Mox, go:
P2: Workshop, Mox, Trinisphere
Turn Two:
P1: Land, Psychatog. It’s not worth it for the Tog player to try to leave Mana Drain mana up because the Stax player could play Wasteland and then drop another lock part.
At this point the Tog is already in play and so the Stax player needs to really do something about that.
P2: Wasteland a land, Tangle Wire.
Turn Three:
P1: Upkeep: Tap down, Draw. Land. Go.
P2: Tap Down, play Smokestack, or whatever. Play a land.
Turn Four:
P1: Upkeep, Cunning Wish for Rack and Ruin or Artifact Mutation. Tap down Tog, play a land, go.
P2: Upkeep, add a counter to Smokestack and tap down Wire, Stax, and Mox. Play another lock part or a Draw spell.
Turn Five:
P1: Upkeep: Rack and Ruin the Smokestack and the Trinisphere – although sacrifice the Mox to Smokestack. Tap Down Tog and Land.
P2: Play a Goblin Welder.
Turn Six:
P1: Tap down Tog and a land, and then leave UU up, and draw and play another land.
P2: Play large spell… Mana Drain…
Turn Seven:
P1: Cunning Wish for Berserk. Or Intuition for AKs, or something good. The problem is that the Tog is on the board. Stax can’t really kill it any time soon and it has to deal with Mana Drain and Force of Wills. It may be a close game, but Tog is the favorite.
The only real way to deal with that kind of problem is to draw Karn and a Welder.
Even if Stax had gone first, the turn 1 Trinisphere might have been Force of Willed, so the fact that Stax is playing first is basically cancelled out.
Perhaps the biggest weakness of Stax at the moment, is other Workshop decks. There is little that makes Workshop, Trinisphere worse than Workshop, Metalworker, or Workshop, Mox followed by multiple Affinity spells on the following turn. Stax has almost no chance of beating Workshop Slavery because of Gilded Lotus and Force of Will. If a Gilded Lotus hits play – which is very likely – Stax will probably not win. Mindslaver is a real beating against Stax in that Smokestack is a one-sided Chaos Orb. Their Welders interfere with your play as well.
Another problem with this deck is that so many decks in Type One are so fast now that the board can quickly spiral out of control. Consider:
Turn One:
P1: Workshop, Mox, Smokestack
P2: Workshop, Mox, Genesis Chamber, Arcbound Ravager. Make a token. Frogmite. Token.
Turn Two:
P1: Land, Goblin Welder. Tap Workshop, Tangle Wire.
P2: Tap down tokens, Ravager, and Mox. Land, Disciple of the Vault! Make a token. Tap Workshop for a Modular man. And use the remaining mana for Myr Enforcer.
P1 concedes. About the only thing that can stop this insanity is Trinisphere – but even then the Affinity deck has a chance unless you quickly capitalize on the game.
The same problem can happen in other contexts as well:
Turn One:
P1: Mountain, Goblin Lackey.
P2: Workshop, Mox, Smokestack (Trinisphere is worse here).
Turn Two:
P1: Attack with Lackey, play Siege-Gang Commander. Make three tokens. Wasteland your Workshop…
P2:”…”
There are several ways this can play out – but all of them are not good for Stax.
The only real way for Stax to get itself out of most of these situations is by aggressively playing Draw7s to dig up mana to play more lock parts. Finding Triskelion can be a huge boon as well.
Make no mistake, this deck is very powerful. The problem may be that this deck may go the way of Masknaught and Dragon: become slowly obsolete. It isn’t that this deck is getting worse – its that other decks are getting better, faster than they can print cards like Trinisphere.
At the core though, the concept may just be fundamentally flawed as Mono-Blue or Nine-Land Stompy. First, the deck relies on attacking the board. This deck has no way to deal with cards like Force of Will except to try and play through them, and most of the decks in the format tend to play lots of spells and break out of the lock too quickly. There is really no card that Wizards could print which would solve this problem because in approximately half of all games, you will be going second. Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere are better lock components for this deck than anything we could ask. Until they print a card that is strictly superior to Smokestack and Tangle Wire, I don’t see this deck going anywhere.
Second, this deck has some consistency problems in that it is overly reliant upon certain mana sources. Without drawing Tolarian Academy or a Mishra’s Workshop, this deck has a less than probable chance of being able to play the lock parts it needs in the order it needs. This was one of the reasons for running Ancient Tomb. Unfortunately, Ancient Tomb caused some colored mana problems and didn’t really resolve the consistency issue because of it. The fact of the matter is that you are not always going to get a Workshop or a good combination of accelerants and that creates a need to mulligan.
Concluding Observations:
Going back to the deck’s roots has made this deck stronger. This deck may prove very potent as a metagame deck designed for specific fields. It is inherently powerful and likely to win games from many of the aggro-control decks that infest the field. Many of the bad matchups can be solved with Sideboarding and every good gauntlet should have this deck on it.
Welder MUD
by David Morales
6th place, 2004-01-18 Barcelona
4 Grid Monitor
2 Masticore
4 Metalworker
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Memory Jar
4 Powder Keg
1 Sculpting Steel
4 Smokestack
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Tangle Wire
2 Winter Orb
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 City of Traitors
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
3 Petrified Field
1 Tolarian Academy
Sideboard
4 Damping Matrix
4 Defense Grid
2 Juggernaut
1 Phyrexian Furnace
4 Tormod’s Crypt
Much of what has been said about Stax applies to this deck. The single important difference is that this deck never has Blue, sometimes has Red, but more importantly, is more a pure lock deck instead of a quasi-Combo lock deck. Stax wants to play a million perms, draw a million cards, and crush you. Welder Mud is more methodical. Instead of accumulating its card advantage with busted draw7s in one spurt, it decompresses the game through grinding away at the opponent over many turns and draws many cards with Grafted Skullcaps.
The single biggest difference in how the deck plays out is Metalworker. Stax tries to play a turn 1 threat, and then two turn 2 threats and has the feeling of just bouncing out of the hand into your face. This deck wants to play a Workshop, Metalworker, and then play three or even more threats on turn 2 with obscene gobs of mana.
I have always preferred Stax to this archetype because I felt that Stax was more flexible – although Mud may be better in certain environments. Mud has tended to be the preferred Prison deck in most metagames, although its presence, like Stax, has waned.
Difficulty of Play
The deck is easier to play than Stax, but requires careful understanding of the rules as well.
Strengths
This deck has more solid mana denial and a lot of interesting synergy that Stax lacks. The deck has much less reliance on Workshops because of Metalworker. If Possessed Portal can be tried in a deck, it should be tried in this one.
Weaknesses:
Here is a weakness of this deck;
Turn One:
P1: Land, Mox Go:
P2: Workshop, Metalworker Go.
Turn Two:
P1: Land, Go.
P2: First main phase: Wasteland a land. In response, Cunning Wish for Rack and Ruin. Second Main phase. Tap Worker and reveal: Smokestack, Tangle Wire, Mox, Grafted Skullcap, and Metalworker, (holding City of Traitors.) Play Smokestack, Ok. Tangle Wire, Force of Will. Grafted Skullcap. Ok. Metalworker. Ok.
Turn Three:
P1: Land. Go.
P2: Tap down Metalworker and Workshop and Grafted Skullcap. Add a counter to Smokestack. Attack with Worker. Go. Eot, Rack and Ruin the Smokestack and the Skullcap.
Turn Four:
P1: Untap with Mana Drain mana up.
P2: Concede.
The same problems occur against Workshop Slavery.
Turn One:
P1: Volcanic Island, Mox, Brainstorm. Go.
P2: Mishra’s Workshop, Metalworker.
Turn Two:
P1: Mishra’s Workshop, tap it and Mox, and Volc and play Gilded Lotus. Tap Gilded Lotus for Thirst for Knowledge. Discard a Pentavus. Play a Chalice of the Void for zero.
P2: Wasteland the Workshop. Tap the Worker to reveal Powder Keg, Tangle Wire, Sphere of Resistance, Smokestack, and Winter Orb.
Play Powder Keg, Force of Will. Play Smokestack, Wire, and Trinisphere – they all resolve.
Turn Three:
P1: Tap down Mox, Chalice, and Volc. Play another Workshop and tap Gilded Lotus for Mindslaver. There is nothing that the Mud deck can now do to stop from being slaved. This game is effectively over.
Workshop Slavery
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Volcanic Island
2 Polluted Delta
2 Shivan Reef
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Ancient Tomb
3 Gilded Lotus
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Thirst For Knowledge
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Timetwister
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Force of Will
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Mindslaver
1 Memnarch
1 Pentavus
Sideboard
3 Mogg Salvage
3 Trinisphere
3 Blood Moon
2 Triskelion
2 Platinum Angel
??
This deck is very brutal and was tuned as a foil to Psychatog. Mindslaver is a very powerful card that was heavily abused in Extended, and this is something of an equivalent to that deck.
So, How Does this Deck Play out?
There are basically two different ways this deck plays its game plan.
The first relies on Workshops, the second does not.
The idea behind the Workshop is to be able to speed out Mindslavers and Chalice of the Voids set at two. Here is a not uncommon use of Workshop:
Turn One:
Volcanic Island, Brainstorm.
Turn Two:
Mishra’s Workshop, Mox, Gilded Lotus.
Or:
Turn One:
Volcanic Island, Brainstorm
Turn Two:
Mishra’s Workshop, Mox, Chalice of the Void for 2. (Sometimes this play is doable on turn 1.)
Turn Three:
Land, Brainstorm or Goblin Welder.
Turn Four:
Land, Draw7 or Thirst.
The idea behind Gilded Lotus is that it is an accelerant. While it technically produces less than it costs, on the following turn you will have upwards of seven or eight mana to work with – enough to pump out two or more excellent threats.
Alternatively, the deck could get the non-Workshop draw. This hand plays out much like Drain Slaver (covered in part one):
Turn One:
Volcanic Island, Brainstorm or Goblin Welder. Mox.
Turn Two:
Land, go. On opponents end step or first mainphase: Thirst For Knowledge.
Turn Three:
Land, Fact or Fiction or Draw7. Weld in Slaver or Man with Welder.
This game plan is very strong against many decks. In many ways, it is the preferred plan. The Workshops can then come into play like this:
Turn Four:
Mishra’s Workshop, Gilded Lotus. This can help you activate a Mindslaver that you might Weld in.
Strengths
The strength of this deck is its redundancy and power of strategy. The deck has nine cards that draw three cards. It has a really solid plan for achieving Slaver lock that goes online quickly. The deck has a number of great draw spells to support its plan and it has Forces of Will to protect itself. Chalice for two is an extremely powerful play in this deck because it creates a very nice tempo advantage.
Consider:
Turn One:
P1: Mishra’s Workshop, Mox, Chalice for Two. Force of Will pitching Psychatog. Force of Will in response pitching Windfall. Chalice resolves.
P2: Land, Mox, Go.
Turn Two:
P1: Land, Brainstorm.
P2: Land, go.
Turn Three:
P1: Land, Draw7 or Thirst for Knowledge.
At this point, the Chalice has kept Mana Drain at bay and created just enough of an advantage to ensure your spells resolve. Eot, P2 Cunning Wishes for Rack and Ruin.
P2: Rack and Ruin your Chalice and Mox. (may or may not have Force of Will).
Turn Four:
P1: Workshop, Gilded Lotus, another Draw spell and Goblin Welder.
P2: Intuition for AKs, go.
Turn Five:
P1: Tap Workshop and Gilded for Mindslaver. Mana Drain. Tap Mox. Weld out Mox for Mindslaver. Activate Mindslaver.
P2: (P1) Draw lots of cards and play Tog and remove hand and graveyard from game.
It generally has no problem continuing the Slaver lock and is very quick to abuse cards like Pentavus and Memnarch. It also can use Trinisphere – a powerful Sideboard target that can stunt many game plans – especially Combo and is solid against Drain Slaver.
The deck is very degenerate and abuses a very good draw spell: Thirst For Knowledge.
Weaknesses:
This deck is extremely top heavy. This means that the deck needs a certain combination of cards to be able to play its spells. The real problem with the deck is hands like this:
Mishra’s Workshop,
Mox,
Shivan Reef/Volcanic Island,
Thirst For Knowledge,
Force of Will,
Goblin Welder,
and a Draw7.
Consider:
Turn One:
Volcanic Island, Welder.
Turn Two:
Mishra’s Workshop, Mox.
Turn Three:
Draw, go.
Turn Four:
Draw Brainstorm. Brainstorm into Mox and Gilded Lotus. Play Mox and Gilded Lotus.
The problem with this example is that the two game plans I explained in the previous section don’t overlap very well. If you don’t have a Gilded Lotus, Chalice, or Memory Jar to drop with Mishra’s Workshop, the Workshop may well interfere with your ability to play your three mana spells. This is a problem that relates to the deck’s consistency. What this means is that you will need to carefully pile shuffle after every game to minimize the need to mulligan. Brainstorm helps quite a bit, but the deck can often have the”workshop” problem.
Another example of a problematic hand is this:
Volcanic Island,
Shivan Reef,
Mox,
Goblin Welder
Gilded Lotus,
Chalice of the Void,
Pentavus,
Mindslaver
This is the opposite problem. In this hand, you have the mana for the three-mana spell plan, but the spells for the Workshop hand. These hands aren’t very keepable.
Those two scenarios are the consistency problem. But Workshop Slavery has a few other weaknesses as well.
Null Rod is a very painful thorn for this deck. It stops Slavers, Pentavus, and Memnarch. It stops Gilded Lotus and most of your mana, and causes excessive reliance on your hand. Some versions of this deck run Cunning Wish to find an answer – but your best bet is having played a Chalice for two or holding Force of Will for Null Rod. You may also Weld in a Pentavus, should it die. This is one reason that the Man Plan comes in. The other is that aggro-control decks with Null Rod like U/G Madness and Fish may stunt your mana base and you bring in very large men to overrun them.
One final weakness worth pointing out is Gorilla Shaman, and Drain Slaver. Gorilla Shaman can tear up your game plan very quickly by destroying your Chalices and making Mishra’s Workshops useless in certain hands. Drain Slaver is a problem because a Mana Drain they might play on a large spell becomes Desertion in that they can use that mana to drop a Mindslaver – a legendary artifact that uses your Welders to keep the lock going.
Trinisphere helps against Drain Slaver by forcing them to choose between various spells they might want to play.
Concluding Observations:
This deck has done a vanishing act. It appeared briefly, did rather well, and now has almost vanished from the scene. The reason appears to be that although this deck is strong, it only takes some marginal adjustments for other decks to fight it so that they can at least compete. The deck’s consistency problems also weigh against it. It remains to be seen whether this deck will return in the summer and perform well, or whether it will be superceded, like Stax has by new Workshop archetypes such as Affinity.
Well that’s it. I know that there are decks I could have included and perhaps a few that I shouldn’t have. My goal with this series was to try to weave a greater shared understanding of the format and explain in some detail the weaknesses and strengths of each archetype. I thought by doing this we could eliminate some chaff from the format. I think this goal was probably too ambitious. Explaining why a deck has good matchups or bad matchups or wins in a particular case and loses in a particular case doesn’t lead automatically to the conclusion that one deck is viable and another isn’t. Magic is too dynamic and subtle for that sort of bright line analysis.
Stephen Menendian
Smmenen at lycos dot com