Tact or Friction — Curio City

I’m an incredibly tractable person, I find. Someone voices something on a forum, I think about it a

little, and I come to agree with them. I fear sometimes that my attempts to be reasoned and balanced are

nothing more than pretty window-dressing, and that I’m just inclined to follow the most recent

conventional wisdom.

Consider; Aaron Forsythe made a comment, last year, about the nature of “parasitic”

mechanics, like Affinity or Splice, and how he felt they weren’t very good, how they didn’t enrich the

game as much as more open mechanics (the name for them has been lost to me now). At the time, I agreed

with him; all those mechanics felt either way too good, or just plain bad, and both stifled the

environment.

Now, in hindsight, it was unfair, really, to use these two mechanics as examples. Affinity itself

wasn’t that overpowered – it was R&D’s perhaps reckless zeal to enable the mechanic that pushed

it over the edge. Who knows what world it would be if, say, Galvanic Key had Affinity, and not Myr

Enforcer? Splice had then downplayed itself, in a block that simply couldn’t add much more power to

Standard without the potential of just entirely knocking the wheels off the cart.

Then, Patrick Sullivan, while voicing dissatisfaction with the great designer search, said that

Aaron’s words had done more harm than good; that players of the game had latched onto the simple principle

behind what he’d said, and treated parasitic now as a pejorative term. He – and others, who work in

the field of game design – claimed that the game was not overly helped by the Great Designer Search,

or the articles that followed in its wake, regardless of their source.

I fancy he’s incorrect in this regard; no matter what the game, there will be those who derive

enjoyment from flipping up the lid and tinkering with it, and feeding the interests of those folks is not

about to harm the interests of those people who don’t. These people don’t enjoy the game any less because

of their tinkering. Really, it appears the greatest crime committed by these amateur design articles in

the eyes of these professionals is not being as good as stuff they’d want to read.

Patrick mentioned that Aaron appears to be against parasitic mechanics, and it’s quite easy to think

that, in the current context. Time Spiral and Ravnica have featured fewer obvious deck skeletons.

While cards interact, they are more likely to be in two-and-three card stacks, rather than a solid-based

deck where you swap out or tailor the numbers of about ten, fifteen cards, and be done. Now you have to

build your decks by clambering together two or three similar skeletons, finding places where deck

fragments intersect. It’s the same puzzle as always, but with smaller pieces, and worse, because the

pieces aren’t giving us hints. Look at Block – every other deck’s a Teferi deck, and it’s not

because Teferi has some bonkers synergy or anything. It’s just that Teferi’s a really powerful card and he

can look too good to not run.

Patrick brought up an important point, though, even as I feel he obscured another. Those parasitic

mechanics that seem to be maligned useful for play at the professional level. The absence of these deck

cores have made it very tricky for the Feldmans and the Nassifs, who rely on navigating past these cores

(if not the decks themselves) as specialized predators in a coral reef. That’s just the price of progress,

it seems; the most stalwart ally of these kinds of players is time, and the more of it they have, the more

they can observe the coalescing of a field. As Flores says; breaking a format is a one-off, solving a

format can be done forever and ever. And not every format can be broken – just observe Gabe

Walls’ statements about Beach House. A deck that basically packed it in to Owling Mine was not exactly

exciting in that format, but Owling Mine didn’t even break the format. It was just an extra cog in the

clockwork.

Perhaps more important, however, is that these parasitic mechanic (lords, the name itself sounds

pejorative) are really quite valuable in teaching people how to play. Onslaught was a giant block of

parasitism, with out-of-tribe cards like Wirewood Symbiote and Outrider needing to jump a very high bar

for the tribes they wanted to help one way or another. It’s very rare that you can print an

“open” card that also manages to corral even a single deck behind it.

That’s why the guy who designed Cloudstone Curio deserves a raise.

Taste The Rainbow
I have been making Curio decks up and down since my first outing with the card, over a year ago. A simple,

mana-free engine that R&D costed just out of the “danger range,” the card can be the glue

for so many other decks. As Vanishing and Echo were added to the Standard pool, the possible options for

the Curio Use just went up.

I’ve been suffering through a lot of inappropriate communication lately. I almost called it

“Curio Abuse” … but is abuse really the correct term for any of the things we do with cards?

I mean, in some cases, there can be confusion; perhaps Disciple of the Vault had been designed to be a

simple, efficient way to punish an opponent for destroying your artifacts (as Black can rarely do such

things without help), and what was done with it in the Ravager Affinity, making it a proactive tool to end

opponent life was an “abuse” compared to the original intent. But I don’t think that’s quite

appropriate, even then. In the Curio’s case, using the Curio as a means to avoid paying echo costs, or to

rescue Vanishing permanents… that doesn’t strike me as “abusive” by any means.

Since the release of Planar Chaos, I’ve been eyeing the Curio more carefully. Decklists featuring the

curio were scruted and effed, and I found remarkably few people had written about it. It was, as it were,

old tech. Understandable – I mean, the card doesn’t do anything that unfair, and its best synergies

seem to be mana intensive. The closest comparison we have to the card right now is to Wirewood Symbiote in

Extended – which has the dignity of costing one, and even untaps Spectral Force to boot…

and supposedly, isn’t even all that busted. Still, we work with what tools Wizards gave us. And Wizards

gave Curio-based decks a boon in Planar Chaos.

There was a serious lack of reasons to go White back in the older lists. It was there for, at best,

Azorius Herald and Court Hussar, with the all-star Soul Warden muscling into bench space, but invariably

being the first thing cut. After all, as just a one-drop, it doesn’t advance many other plans. So why is

it that when I built decks in Green for this deck, I kept on coming back to Essence Warden?

Strange things, strange things indeed.

I think the main reason that Green-based, non-White Curio decks aren’t hurting for space right now;

rather, they’re hurting for more creatures to use as part of them. Plus, White creatures are already

busting all over the place with life-gaining options. Why bother with Soul Warden when a Loxodon Hierarch,

played three times, will do more than an Essence Warden can manage on its own? And you never want to

bounce the Warden itself, surely? So with combos that lack the Hierarch, what are the options for

consistent, easy lifegain that are better than the Essence Warden?

Not many, let me tell you. And when you venture into other colors… well, let’s just do a quick

run-down of the colors combinations.

Green/Black
I toyed with this combination for a while, but the Black doesn’t offer much that doesn’t cost four mana.

When you’re talking about bouncing and replaying a card multiple times a turn, it can be a real drudge to

wait until turn 12 to do it – and besides, most of Black’s best cards for the casual player aren’t

creatures. Hopping Nekrataals sounds like fun, or Nightshade Assassins, but you just don’t have much to

win with aside from a squad of 2/1 dorks. There’s removal, that’s for sure, but less of it than you’d want

in a deck that wants to be as many permanents as possible. No, the permanents do too little for too much

in this combination.

Blue/Black, Red/Blue, Black/White
Not an avenue I explored too much. I mean, why would you? Blue and Black tend to have faff creatures. Most

Blue/Black creatures with comes into play or leave play abilities are either total wusses themselves (Sage

of Epityr), or have a drawback (Dream Stalker and Avatar of Discord). There wasn’t enough meat here to try

tricks with the Faceless Butcher, so I moved on. Red had some nice tools, but coupled with Blue, I kept

thinking there were better things to focus on – and let’s face it, when you can put Remand

and Electrolyze in a deck for the casual room, you need a really good reason to not. Just in turn, casual

and budget play tends to operate around cards you have to put in your deck, Castigate represents a similar

problem – especially with the slim pickings Black offers a Curio deck, and White… well, yeah,

White remains a problem, as you’ll see.

Red/White
This deck doesn’t even want the Curio. With White’s rescue dudes, like Stonecloaker and Dust Elemental,

there’s just no reason to waste time with the artifact; you can do better with just Whitemane Lion and

Dust Elemental, both of which are just plain good creatures in their own right. I’ll bet any money that

Rivien’s written about this yesterday, or he’s going to write about it next week, so I’m going to refrain

from going into too much detail. Yet, if you have some Curios, you can use the Red and White pieces from

the other lists, I suppose, and put them together. But really, you’d be looking at a slower version of the

same deck.

Blue/White
I tested this one more thoroughly than the others, but the problem remains; there’s just nothing much to

bounce aside from Azorius Herald and Court Hussar. You chew aggro up and spit it out, but you don’t do

anything to control, and you can’t really try. The only creature counterspells in Standard need Green, or

cost six, and White’s flash creatures are best assigned to replacing the Curio anyway.

Black/Red
This falls even more prey to the Green/Black problem. You have some awesome spells – including

Squealing Devil, who loves to turn up early, beat down a little, then fuel some other evasive

creature through for a game-winning pseudo-Fireball late – but you just don’t have the mana to fuel

them. You have to play Signets to power into your four-mana spells, and you have to have filler early men

like Ravenous Rats. Some take the philosophy that, provided your opponent’s got no cards in hand and no

creatures in play, you don’t care how bad your dudes are, but I’m sick of losing to topdecked singletons

like Murray or the like.

It did cement in my mind the awesomeness of the Mogg War Marshal, though. With Curio down, he lets you

buyback any creature for 1R, and buybacks himself as well, leaving behind a chump-blocker. With trample so

rare in the format (barring for Tromp the Domains, which really wizzed in my corn flakes last night), the

tokens can hold off pretty much anyone while you continue to recycle dudes. But unfortunately, I couldn’t

fit in Stingscourger – there are just too many other things that cost four mana.

And man, do Red’s flash creatures suck!

Green/White
The most obvious, and simple combination. I explored this in the past, and it’s only gotten a few new

tools. Green hasn’t really gained any new, amazing comes-into-play abilities on its creatures, with only

Harmonic Sliver and Indrik Stomphowler showing their faces. The main vice of this deck is that it’s very

draw dependent, and mostly builds on the Glare skeleton. And when you have that… why not play Glare? The

cost between the rares isn’t that distinct. We’re not talking about the kind of investment it takes to

play with duals, after all. Glare of Subdual goes for four dollars; Cloudstone Curio for a buck

twenty-five. So there’s a distinct gap – about ten dollars – but it’s not the kind of boundary

that duals or the like represent. Ultimately, though, the main reason this color combination gives me the

skeeves is that there’s no way to reach across the board, no way to affect your opponent without a splash.

Removal-less archetypes are bad! Certainly in the casual room, where you just know someone’s

going to ruin your day with some creature or other.

Here’s just a very basic list, using the cards I have; as you can probably tell, it bashes the hell

out of aggro with all its lifegain – with Loxodon Hierarch, Caryatid, and the acceleration /

lifegain, it can just romp over it. It also can’t recover very readily from a Wrath, which is awkward.

What would be great is some kind of card that would let you pick up multiple creatures at once, eh?

Thus, we’re at the same problem as with Red/White. You don’t need the Curio in White – since it

doesn’t fly, have fear, or bash for 6 on turn 4.

Blue/Green
Take Blinking Snake.dec; replace Blink with Curio. You have more or less the same deck, but can cut the

White. When you do that, though, the deck starts to look a bit sad, with a similar problem to Red. Without

the Hierarch to hold the ground, you rely on clunkier, less-immediate answers like Carven Caryatid, whose

impressive tuchus isn’t nearly as useful as turning sideways, killing a chump-blocker, bouncing, and being

replayed. It’s one point’s difference – which right now, isn’t that much of a difference.

Being able to bounce Mystic Snakes sounds cool, but it’s a lot of mana and requires an opponent

to refuse to stockpile spells in hand. Mana development is really crucial to these decks, and having that

mostly fuelled by three-drops in Standard makes these lists worse.

I tried an alternate direction with it, actually; simply adding another mini-combo, in an attempt to

see if some removal could make a difference. I tried out Reality Acid, despite all my knowledge that it

was not The Poop, it was just plain Poop. What eventuated was… uninspiring.

So where’s the problem? The deck got really flabby around the three-mana slot, and I found that I

wasn’t happy bouncing three-drops unless they were doing something drastic. Worse, Patagia Viper is just

bad at doing buyback duty compared to Dust Elemental and Mogg War Marshal, and it’s a big gulf.

Dust Elemental does more as a big, evasive man, and Mogg War Marshal costs less and is easier to cast…

so where’s the competition? With only Reality Acid to control the game, you just can’t compete with any

decks that want to swarm you, since you can’t flash men out at instant speed, like the earlier-mentioned

Wirewood Symbiote. Generally speaking, I just barked up the wrong tree here. The deck’s got some game, and

of course, Mystic Snake is good – but I think the key to it is Momentary Blink, and the manabase

that can support that.

Green/Red
This was the one that surprised me. Green/Red is not the kind of deck I look at for efficient weenies

that do neat things, and it’s very much not where I look for a game that closes with me with thirty-plus

life and seven in the grip. The Gruul build of the deck is better able to abuse Stingscourger through its

cheaper drops in general, and a greater focus on building a manabase over time. The best added component

is that Red gave the deck removal in the form of Stalking Yeti, and, thanks to Skarrg, could utilize the

generally-underwhelming Vinelasher Kudzu as a legitimate threat. Trampling over blockers is remarkably

easy, since this deck can guarantee hitting land drops if it gets a Curio out, and can even use

Silly Curio Tricks to replay a Yavimaya Dryad six or seven times.

I’m not happy with the manabase yet. It wants Green on turn 1, Red on turn 2, and double Green on turn

3 – so the colorless lands might be more bother than they’re worth, which would be a shame. Don’t

expect to use the Curio to cast Citanul Woodreaders in cycle, though – that six mana play may look

appealing, but if it can happen, you’re probably losing. Stomping Grounds would make the deck better, as

I’m sure you’re aware, and fix one mana issue right away; the Yavimaya Dryad can’t get you Red in this

list, and in the late game, multiple Red sources are better as they let you play winners like Mogg War

Marshal, Stingscourger, or the remarkably useful Keldon Marauders time and time again. To my amazement,

the Marauders are a decent deal even without the Curio. Against control, they represent a cool five damage

for two mana, and against aggro they happily block other threats like Watchwolf and Scab-Clan Mauler (who,

believe it or not, still exists in the casual room). Plus, sometimes Kird Ape runs into him, a strategy

that I find puzzling, but will capitalize on it my opponent opts to run it.

Something I’ve noticed; if you have multiple Dryads in hand, it’s generally a better plan to let the

first one give you a Forest, then, on your next turn, once the first is able to attack, bequeath a forest

on your opponent. The upshot’s the same, but you get the mana to play with, and they don’t, prolonging the

turns your generous donation can be a bother.

Stingscourger is really, really good, but I’ve never once paid his echo. He hits the table, removes a

threat, gets in the way of something, then comes back to hand thanks to Scryb Ranger. With that 2 power of

his, he can block a lot of stuff, and do so easily.

If the deck could use anything, it’d be a beefy four-drop and some better lands. Rumbling Slum fits

the build, and even thanks to the lifegain represented by Essence Warden, wouldn’t be even that painful.

He’d probably be best off replacing the Citanul Woodreaders, though. While I love my Green Turtles, I have

to accept that they’re inefficient cards when played for three, and unimpressive when cast for six. I’d

avoid Harmonize and the Caryatid, though – unless I had those good lands I mentioned.

Where that leaves us
One card, three or four common deck “bones” – not even complete skeletons – and

there we have ourselves four decks. That doesn’t strike the possibility of mono-colored, or three-colored

combinations, and also abstains from multiplayer options. This is all off one card, who doesn’t really say

on it what it does. The power of the Curio is entirely defined by the cards around it, rather than the

card itself. I find that fascinating, and the card simply murmurs to me, asking me to do things with it,

to see what this combination will do, to test these pieces around it. In this regard,

Curio is a delicate jewel, demanding a setting, and yet providing you with a style guide to craft it.

I don’t know if you could make a Magic set where every rare was a Curio. I doubt you could, in fact;

the card’s simplicity is part of its charm, and its efficiency is perhaps what makes it usable. Could

Magic be more like this? I don’t know. I think we still need these “parasitic” mechanics,

these skeletons of decks rather than these bones of skeletons, if only to give the format a place to

coagulate. I think that too much freedom can be a bad thing, and too few borders can be stifling to

creativity.

The solution, however, is not to avoid, or embrace parasitism in itself, I feel. Given where

the Curio has taken us, showing us facets of older cards we already knew, showing differences in the newer

cards, and being worse than some colored cards, but better than colorless ones, I think the

solution is to instead make those non-obvious pieces engaging. Let those players who don’t care about the

obvious parasitic lists find something to sift past, to power up their decks and give them new directions

to move in. Kamigawa block may have been maligned for many things, but who wasn’t surprised to see Azami,

Lady of Scrolls in the Top 8? Who wasn’t surprised to see Honor-Worn Shaku, or Godo, Bandit Warlord? These

cards we now know as mighty, but originally thought of as, perhaps, blase? They had power, they just

didn’t have obvious power, and that was their lure. Of course, the “obvious” power in

Kamigawa was a paper tiger, its two major thematic mechanics, Splice and Spiritcraft, being dead ducks as

history shows us. Yet, I wonder…

Could it be done? Could Wizards bring together the power mechanics, but leave the field open that the

tools to build decks are not about sifting through the data and finding the best list, but instead sifting

through the pieces and finding a good enough list?

This is an area where I’d have to leave answering the question up to these professional designers.

I’m just an amateur, after all.

Hugs and Kisses
Talen Lee
talen at dodo dot com dot au

PS. By the way, since I’m apparently annoying everyone this week, Patrick, if I’ve

misrepresented your meaning, I really do apologize.

PPS. Yeah, I said I was done, but this struck me as pretty cute for those lovers of combo out there.

The deck’s not feasible to play on MTGO, because it can’t recognize infinite loops, but here’s a quick

list:

The Lenses and Tithes were just in my list to test, but I can’t see many other ways to accelerate in

White. Simply, the deck wants a Soul Warden, a Stormfront Rider, a Curio, and some other dudes; by the

Rider’s power, you can pick up two guys as it comes into play, spawning two soldiers. Each soldier’s

arrival prompts the Curio to trigger, and you can pick it up with the curio. That prompts another soldier

to turn up, and so on until you choose to stop. This isn’t exactly a robust, amazing combo, but the Riders

are a solid card in their own right, and chances are the deck’s good without the combo. I certainly fancy

it’ll be worth a shot alongside Mournglash’s evil mono-White Gauntlet of Power deck.