“Some Johnnies want to show off how their deck works. Others want to show off what their deck is trying to do. Certain Johnnies want to show off their deck’s theme. Other Johnnies want to show off their deck’s flavor. What all Johnnies have in common, though, is that they see Magic as a form of self-expression.”
— Mark Rosewater, “Designing for Johnny”
Rather than being stupid by loving a bad challenge, I love a good challenge, and one of my favorite challenges is building themed decks. Perhaps learning to play in the heavily thematic Onslaught block influenced this, but it’s probably just the love of constraints both external (budget, mana curve) and internal (things Brandon makes up).
Fortunately, many themes have built-in synergy. Tribal themes have lords; block themes have mechanics; “Laura Palmer’s Theme” has Moby songs. Themes may already point to synergy or let you find new interactions; whatever the case, constraints help improve deckbuilding skills, because the process of finding the right parts helps the deckbuilder find value in unusual places, and it’s that process that innovates.
For example, there are only four Goblins with 4+ power and no severe drawbacks. (Those four are Goblin Dynamo, Boggart Mob, Earwig Squad, and Scuzzback Marauders. Sorry, Okk.) In that light, Goblin Roughrider has surprising utility. It’s not great, but if you’re trying to fill out a Goblin deck, and you need some power, you could do a lot worse.
In the Knight court, the Roughrider is one of the six largest red ones, while Arrogant Bloodlord is one of the twelve largest, period. (The largest is Jerrard of the Closed Fist. I just saved your quiz team loads of embarrassment.) Those creatures normally aren’t that useful, but there’s more value in them than is obvious at first blush, and without looking at those cards under specific constraints, I wouldn’t have known.
Outdoing myself by 50% from last week, I present three theme decks in a meta-theme: Past, Present, and Future. Each one has taught me about how to find meaning from constraints.
PAST
Earlier this year I wanted to see whether my card collection could build a playable Alpha-legal deck, to get a feel for the game’s roots and what interactions would’ve given me the Clever Dan award of my theoretical mid-‘90s playgroup. The easiest place to start was three Wraths of God and four Swords to Plowshares, primarily because the creatures were terrible.
By today’s standards, beating with Alpha creatures is just embarrassing; the less work my creatures have to do, the better. I dipped into green to use Craw Wurm as a finisher; playing Wrath aggressively on turn 4 or 5 gives Craw Wurm a chance to try to beat sufficient face. Few other creatures in the set allow me to provide a reasonable clock without being mana-intensive (Shivan Dragon) or with a fatal drawback (Lord of the Pit), so Craw Wurm it is.
With that in mind I put together the following seventy (it was Alpha; everyone was doing it):
Creatures (16)
Lands (27)
Spells (28)
In deckbuilding, I found plenty of interactions that still shine. Few would doubt the choice of removal here, but there’s value in the hot techs of Lure on Cockatrice and Island Sanctuary with Jayemdae Tome. My playgroup doesn’t always pack the enchantment removal it ought to, so the Sanctuary is death to many decks, especially when I’m nixing its handicap with the Tome. Icy Manipulator is as useful as ever, possibly more so in a land of Aeons, Gyres, and Butchers than Lords, Forces, and Djinns.
Basically, all you do in this deck is play defense things, cast Wrath before your creatures, then win with random beats. The way some pros put it, playing with Sphinx of Jwar Isle against Jund was similar — “Do we
have
to play this guy?” — so it’s not like the concept’s irrelevant. While the deck was together, it held its own, and parsing the initial cards for value was flavorful as well as instructive on basic interactions and the original core of the game. I don’t know if Richard Garfield said, “I can’t wait until somebody pairs X with Y,” but he made powerful cards with drawbacks while including other cards that dodged the drawbacks. That’s such a huge part of deckbuilding, particularly in Johnnyland, that it’s great to see it work from the original pieces.
PRESENT
Scars Game Day last month let me achieve new heights by… bread roll please… having a Constructed rating over 1600! Five years of incompetence are now washed away; I’m officially better than an absolute noob. Whee.
Not content to flaunt my superiority at virgin DCI numbers, I took the same deck to an 8-man Standard event on Saturday and tied for first with it (intentionally drew in the last round). I had some good luck, but the deck seems to have honest-to-goodness game. Although my configuration is for Standard, the basis is rooted in Johnny/Casual, so feel free to tweak this to your liking:
Creatures (30)
- 4 Clone
- 4 Silver Myr
- 4 Sea Gate Oracle
- 4 Aether Adept
- 4 Augury Owl
- 2 Wurmcoil Engine
- 4 Steel Hellkite
- 4 Grand Architect
Lands (23)
- 23 Island
Spells (7)
Sideboard
Architect… blue with imprint… blueprint… get it? Ah ha ha, and laughs were had by all.
Anyway, the paths to victory are, in descending order of ideal, importance, and frequency:
1)Â Â Â Â Â Ramp via Grand Architect or Semblance Anvil into a Steel Hellkite/Wurmcoil Engine/Argentum Armor on turn 4;
2)Â Â Â Â Â Pump a bunch of blue creatures with the Architect and just keep swinging; and
3)Â Â Â Â Â Win the long game with Clone on a Mimic Vat.
Plan 1 takes over the game quickly. A turn 2 Owl with a turn 3 Oracle gives the deck consistency past its opening hand, allowing you to sculpt the ramp pieces to the optimal play. In the best of worlds, you’ll have a turn 4 Architect to follow that up, then tap all your blue creatures for one of the trio of awesomes. Generally, you don’t want to cast the Architect until your fatty is ready, so that way if it resolves your opponents can’t stop the mana.
The Architect also allows Augury Owl to be virtually a free spell. Take Cloud of Faeries, make it a 2/2 (thanks Architect!), let it scry 3, and you’ve got quite the nice card.
Steel Hellkite is reasonable in current Standard as-is, but on turn 4 he’s absurd. The thing I like most about him is that your blue creatures can tap for his activated ability, letting you destroy an opposing ramp player’s stuff as long as it can’t block the Hellkite.
Oh, and Wurmcoil Engine loves Sword of Vengeance. Imagine how good it is, and then add some.
Clone fills in the gaps in your board state by becoming a second Architect, an extra fatty, or your opponent’s bomb. Cloning Stoneforge Mystic and getting my Argentum Armor online before Quest Weenie does is priceless. A Vatted Clone is particularly troublesome. Is it an Aether Adept? A Wurmcoil Engine? A Titan? The scrying and cloning and Vatting give this deck supreme amounts of flexibility to respond to the board as a means of advancing its game plan.
Counterspells out of the sideboard have been effective surprises, as the maindeck has no instants. I faced a Mono-Green Eldrazi Ramp player who preferred to cast Summoning Trap mid-combat. On a pivotal turn, he had one card in hand. I had Dispel and read him as holding Trap, so I glibly swung my Steel Hellkite (threatening to off Joraga Treespeaker), to which he responded glibly with Summoning Trap. He wasn’t happy to find out the blue ramp deck had a counterspell…
Out of the sideboard, you want Brittle Effigy and Dispel against ramp, Spell Pierce against aggro, Thada Adel against anything with Islands, and more Mimic Vats against anything where the games will go long. I beat U/W Control with Thada Adel on a Mimic Vat; towards the end I stuck Argentum Armor on the Thada token, destroyed Venser on the attack, and beat for eight. It worked all right. Day of Judgment just lets you Mimic Vat something tasty, while All Is Dust doesn’t kill your primary win conditions, so you’re starting off relatively resilient to the sweepers of the format.
Adapting this to Old Man Johnny play is easy. Just take some small blue filtering creatures, Grand Architects, and some powerful artifacts, and put them together. The engines, both mana and Wurmcoil, are thoroughly transferable to whatever you want to do with them. For those of you who like blue/artifact decks, Grand Architect can do wondrous things; if you build around the Architect, he’ll build around you, or something.
FUTURE
I love the Time Spiral block more than anyone (yes, even you in the back who named your band Ichor Slick). It’s got so many abilities you can mix together, cards that confuse people when they give abilities to an abnormal color,* and one-of abilities that produce odd decks.
* I’m convinced that, in a casual group, strategically employing a few off-color
remarks
abilities is supremely useful. You get used to a color’s style so much that you’re thrown off every time Evolution Charm makes a creature fly or Floodgate wipes a board of weenies.
But it was only after last month, when a gift card led to a Future Sight booster box, that I was able to live a Vorthosian dream: the future-shifted deck. Having started in the old frames era (hello, Hundroog!) but loving the abilities of Time Spiral, my decks tend to look weird from all the card frames, so I relished the challenge of making a viable deck out of future-shifted cards. Zendikar’s full-art basic lands were a natural fit for making this the best-looking deck possible.
Once I sorted out the seventy or so cards eligible for this deck, not counting the zero Tarmogoyfs from the box — it’s my second-turn right as an American to bear Tarmogoyfs! — the following seemed the most reasonable (deck, not name — the set name/two ‘90s groups/deck-style portmanteau clearly isn’t reasonable):
Creatures (27)
- 1 Baru, Fist of Krosa
- 3 Centaur Omenreader
- 4 Grinning Ignus
- 2 Imperiosaur
- 2 Nacatl War-Pride
- 4 Nessian Courser
- 1 Quagnoth
- 2 Shah of Naar Isle
- 3 Skizzik Surger
- 1 Tarox Bladewing
- 4 Thornweald Archer
Lands (23)
Spells (10)
In terms of how it plays, it’s solid R/G beats with plenty of large haste, which changes multiplayer math as well as it ever has and some useful burn. Imperiosaur and Shah of Naar Isle lets you have the cheap beef of the future on your kitchen table today! It’s my third-turn right as an American.
But the main thing is how nice this deck looks. I hate foils, but every player’s crazy ‘bout a sharp-dressed deck. This was the winning board state a few nights ago:
That Yavimaya Dryad and sleeved Forest are from my Two-Headed Giant teammate, playing his Natural Affinity/Nacatl War-Pride deck. Thanks to ramp, he put out the Dryad on turn 2, giving me that sleeved Forest so I could cast a third-turn Imperiosaur. The Dryad’s just posing with my board. Always the spotlight hog.
Now What Did I Learn from All This?
The Grand Architect deck taught me something about my play style that deserves its own article, but with all three, I was schooled in a few things:
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â How to find interactions where you don’t think there will be many;
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â How to make meaningful decks from meaningless themes; and
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â How to push the limits of an idea.
The first point is relevant to Constructed, the second to Limited, and all three to Casual. There are some nasty combos in Alpha; I wouldn’t have known that unless I purposed to build an Alpha-legal deck. Future-shifted red and green creatures are above the curve; I wouldn’t have known that unless I purposed to build a future-shifted deck. A fourth-turn Wurmcoil Engine is great; I wouldn’t have known that unless… okay, I might have already known that.
But Standard’s no different from other constraints. It’s a format Wizards made up, forcing you to choose among several set and block themes, whether you go all-in on one theme or mix some together, and so forth. You want to get a feel for metalcraft? Build an all-metalcraft deck and see what happens; then you’ll know if you need to scale back some and add utility, a complementary mechanic, or something else. (For the record, a nearly all-morph deck can work, while a nearly all-clash deck cannot. Pro tip!)
Your playgroup is a constraint as well. How fast/powerful does it like its games? What card(s) have a reputation and will make you a target, e.g. is Elvish Piper hated so much that it basically dies before it hits the field? Formats are just nice names for constraints, and the more you absorb that lesson, the better decks you’ll build, as you’ll understand better how piles of cards can turn into decks. And that’s the main thing.
Earthdyedred on Twitter/Gmail and atearthdyedred whilst roaming the foraÂ