It’s almost here! It’s almost here! I dance the dance of joy, rubbing greedy palm against greedy palm, anticipating that joyous day, Release Day. Release Day, which brings with it a new frenzy of buying, of product sales, of grotesquely overpriced new cards. More than anything else, Release Day is the change point. It’s where everything becomes new.
We all love new stuff. Ravnica – holy crap, is Ravnica really a year old now? Wow. Ravnica brought in a wave of new stuff, and I was really glad to see it. I still have, proxied up, the one paper deck for Ravnica I ever had the ambition to try and make. Chord of Calling, Loxodon Hierarch, Primordial Sage… I was reasonably on mark as to which rares I’d enjoy playing with. But as I was “forced” to wait longer to make my decks by the slower arrival online, I was able to plan a lot more.
Now, there are going to be a lot of articles like this in the coming months. Untested, undeveloped, casual decks, that are basically all just showing the really aware what not to do. For the rest of us, there’s still some good to it, because how we’re going to screw up is as important as what we’re going to get right.
Players do this all the time. Looter Il-Kor earned a raised eyebrow from me when I first heard its name mentioned in the context of an aggro deck; then it was mentioned that Merfolk Looter was played in U/G Madness – and it was just plain good even when you didn’t want to madness creatures. Because of that familiarity, I can reliably look at the Looter and recognise just how much better it is.
I’ve been working on a couple of decks, wondering what I’m going to change when the Brand New Stuff arrives. Due to budgetary constraints, I can’t offer any awesome insights into The Stone Cold Nut tech that’s really being brought by better players than me.
So we’re going to take a dance through some old decks – casual decks – and see what the transition has brought. I can’t promise the same kind of old school wacky that Abe brings, but there’s something to be had here.
Part of making decks is recognising what makes them up. Some parts are interchangeable, others irreplaceable. Sometimes you gotta look at what a deck loses and realise it’s irreplaceable. Sometimes you will find gemstones in the transition, though. And… well, a lot of the time you wind up with a steaming turd.
First cab off the rank is a deck I only recently trotted out; now, before it fades finally into That Good Night, I did have a fan suggest Guardian of the Guildpact as a possible substitute in the deck, possibly in the sideboard. What I found most delightful about him is that he basically has Protection From Magnivore.dec.
Snow Dad
2 Blessed Breath
4 Kami of Ancient Law
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Azorius Herald
4 Tallowisp
2 Pacifism
4 Remand
4 Secretkeeper
1 Krovikan Whispers
4 Gelid Shackles
1 Followed Footsteps
2 Indomitable Will
1 Infiltrator’s Magemark
8 Snow-Covered Island
7 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Azorius Chancery
4 Boreal Shelf
What it loses: Tallowisp, Blessed Breath, the entire enchant-creature engine, and really, all reason for living. What a woeful lot this poor deck has to face up to without the gorgeousness that is little Tallowispy.
I … I need a moment to compose myself here. Ahem.
I’ll be fine.
Fine.
Ahem.
Anyway.
What Tallowisp brought to the table was a means for a “slow” aggressive deck to accrue card advantage. The deck relied on Tallowisp to fuel a stream of utility and removal while you went about your game plan of dealing the twenty. Because the auras came “free,” the threat of card disadvantage is reduced. You can afford to run auras that do nothing but make your men evasive, or better in combat.
The problem is that the deck loses this removal and card advantage engine and doesn’t have a hell of a lot to work with to replace that. Fortunately, however, that engine has been replaced with a new, different one. This engine doesn’t give you the same degree of power – instead of removal, you’re getting threats – but it does free you up to do things with your mana.
Remand in Snow Dad existed to buy you a turn. It was there to steal you moments of tempo and very rarely to actually prevent something bad from happening. You can use instant speed removal an instant speed effects more readily now, since you don’t rely on a sorcery-speed card advantage engine. So let’s see what we get:
Amrou Scout
Amrou Seekers
Errant Doomsayers
Knight of the Holy Nimbus
Outrider En-Kor
Zealot Il-Vec
Defiant Vanguard
So we lose a creature base thus:
4 Kami of Ancient Law
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Tallowisp
4 Secretkeeper
4 Azorius Herald
Which is twenty decent dudes; one is a cheap mana man who generates a lot of long-game card advantage if he gets through unblocked. Two of them come down on turn 2, and one is your fatty who does Win Condition duty. There’s a squad of evasive men in there – the Secretkeeper and the Herald – but generally your men in the Snow Dad deck were bent around the Spiritcraft theme. If Tallowisp wasn’t feeding you removal, or your ninja wasn’t getting through assisted, you would sit around finding yourself miserable at how mediocre your dudes are.
With this in mind, think about what you’re going to use – what you’re going to replace, and what the deck will overall lose in the process. Is Ronom Unicorn going to get a spot? How many non-rebels are worth running? Is it worth running non-rebels?
And an idle game – what three-mana White creature would you most wish had been a Rebel in this set?
Hugs and Kisses
Talen Lee
Talen at dodo dot com dot au