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The Continuing Evolution Of The Ooze Deck

As Bennie Smith introduces his kids to classic board games, he also has been spending time brewing some Ooze decks. He takes a more controlling approach in this article.

Hi there, welcome back! Did you miss me? My full-time job is with a company that makes and sells small kitchen appliances, and the holiday-selling season tends to ramp things up around here, especially after Thanksgiving weekend. Long story short, I just got crushed with work that ate into my Magic writing time and begged for a week off. It did however feel really strange to me to have a weekend without checking the comments section of my column, replying to you all and getting emails and tweets.

Yes, I missed you too!

I did however get some really fun news recently. Not long ago, my mom was talking about getting a “family” gift for me and the kids for Christmas and asked me for suggestions, and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to pick up a really, really good board game. Last year, she gave us a Wii game system, something we’ve enjoyed immensely. However, I have to admit I really miss board gaming, something I used to do a ton as a kid (starting with Clue, Life, and Risk) on into my college years (Axis & Allies, Supremacy, Gammarauders). But then all my non-roleplaying gaming time got consumed first by regular cards (Spades, Hearts, Bridge) and then by Magic.

When the kids came along I was glad to get them started on things like Sorry and Life. I tried them on Clue, but sadly neither of them seemed very impressed with that old favorite. I had an old copy of Richmond Monopoly that Anna Marie ended up loving, especially since it featured places and streets around the city. And of course I’ve been encouraging them to learn Magic by playing a few very simple decks with me. But I really want to get a few great board games we can play around the kitchen table on cold and yucky days, games that have a lot of great replay value and are as fun to play at 10 years old as they are at 20 or 30 or 40.

I knew Settlers of Catan was one game I wanted to have around, a fun game that’s pretty simple to learn but has a lot of strategic depth and a randomness that really keeps each game fresh and different. Some friends also recommended Ticket to Ride as a game with similar qualities, and a few months back Tommy from Richmond Comix pointed out they had an open copy at the shop available for board gaming. So not long ago I took the kids up there one afternoon, and we learned to play it, and all of us had a really good time with it. So I told my mom that either Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride would be a great family gift, along with some other ideas.

Mom called me up recently and blew me away by apparently finding some great deals and getting us both games!

settlers of catan

ticket to ride

I’m totally stoked.

Anyway, back to Magic!

This past weekend was the big close-out to the 2011 StarCityGames.com Open Series, culminating in the Invitational down in Charlotte, North Carolina. At the beginning of the year, I told myself that, even if I missed all the other Opens this year (and I did indeed miss them all), I would not be missing the one in Charlotte! Even as recently as the beginning of November, as I turned in my schedule for my part-time job, I blocked off this past weekend as open for the Open/Invitational rather than working. Of course, all year up until turning in that schedule, I was 99% certain I’d have a roommate by December, but due to some unfortunate circumstances, the person who was going to be moving in with me was unable to. I started working out my budget and finances and came to the unfortunate conclusion that there was no way I could afford to both not work and earn money that weekend and also spend money that weekend (on entry fees, gas, hotel, food, etc.). Blowing a gigantic hole in my budget right at Christmastime seemed like a really bad idea, so sadly I had to stay home and pull for my local buds that went down there instead.

Lucky for me, that didn’t mean I had to have a weekend off from work with no Magic to play!

There’s a new game shop that’s opened up not 15 minutes from my home called Collector’s Heaven, and they were granted a GP Trial for Orlando this past Saturday, and since I was off with no kids (an unusual occurrence), it seemed like the perfect opportunity to head out and support the local store. I’d been by a couple times before just to say hello, buy a few booster packs, and get to know the owner and TO. They have a pretty nice area set aside for card playing.

I decided to give my latest Necrotic Ooze brew another run. Here’s what I brought to play:


In my original deck sketch, I had three Gut Shots in the deck, but in searching for the cards, I couldn’t find any copies of it anywhere. I’ve since sent out a request to my card partner Josh to see if he has extras, but instead of the free removal spells, I added in the Mortarpod, Swiftfoot Boots, and Batterskull. I thought a more equipment-heavy approach was worth exploring in the Ooze deck, since at the very least, even if my opponent wipes the board with Day of Judgment or Slagstorm, I’m bound to at least always have a Reassembling Skeleton around to suit up and swing with. Of course, the Boots on a Skeleton is pretty unimpressive, but I wanted to see what having the Boots available might do on the occasion I can rip an Ooze off the top of my deck and win on the spot.

I went 2-2 in the Swiss and made Top 8 (it was a very small tournament). First round I beat U/R Counterburn Snapcaster in three hard-fought games. Second round I got swept by R/W aggro with Mirran Crusaders crushing me in the second game (that guy is a big problem for the Ooze deck). Third match I struggled with mana issues (color screw one game, stalled on two mana in the second) and got crushed by Wolf Run Green with what felt like infinite Wurmcoil Engines. I won the fourth match win-and-in in two games against a red midrange deck splashing green for Primeval Force and presumably Ancient Grudge in the sideboard.

The first game in the Top 8 match was a struggle as I dealt with some color issues against my opponent playing a Fish-like U/W counter-aggro deck built around Geist of Saint Traft. I played really tight Magic and was able to get him down to two life but was never able to draw the green mana I needed to deal with the Sword of Feast and Famine that tore me up.

The second game I mulliganed to six and kept a decent hand with two lands and two Spellskites to buy me time, and my opponent ended up having to mulligan to five. He missed his second land drop and passed the turn, and since I hadn’t drawn a third land yet, I breathed a sigh of relief and felt pretty good behind the Spellskites and the Doom Blades I’d drawn. My opponent then proceeded to draw several lands in a row, dropping turn 4 Mirran Crusader, turn 5 Mirran Crusader, turn 6 Sword of War and Peace while I choked on nothing more than the two lands I had in my initial grip. The Spellskite quickly fell to the equipped Crusader beatdown, as my opponent cackled and giggled loudly at his good fortune.

Yeah, it was a bit frustrating, not because I wanted to go to Orlando, but because I was hoping for a better showing for the deck. Still, I learned some things of value from the struggle. I don’t think that equipment is the route the deck wants to go. I’m now thinking that perhaps the green mana is more of a liability rather than a help, and perhaps a core U/B control approach might actually be complementary to the core creatures in the combo: Spellskite is a great blocker and defense against Kessig Wolf Run; Civilized Scholar’s looting ability is one that’s been successful in control/Fish-type decks in the past, plus the ability to shift gears into 5/1 beatdown mode is valuable; Bloodline Keeper can provide an endless stream of chump blockers and also shift gears towards flying beatdown; and Grimgrin is reusable creature removal attached to a quickly-growing and game-ending large body. Necrotic Ooze copies most all of these sweet abilities and, sometimes, just gets infinitely large and presents a threat that can sometimes just end the game on the spot.

The question then becomes… what sort of control cards should I flesh out the rest of the deck with? Counterspells? Card draw? More creature removal?

I’ve cooked up two approaches I want to try out going forward. One is just straight up U/B Control Ooze:


I just can’t bring myself to play Trespassing Souleater without going back to having Swords in the deck. Skinshifter was different not only because it was a solid card in its own right, but being able to lend the Ooze 13-toughness has proven to be nearly as valuable as lending it evasion.

Instead, I wanted to load up with creature control, so that when I was ready to go on the attack, I could simply just clear out the blocker and swing in. One card in particular I really wanted to try: Tribute to Hunger baby!

Man, imagine how much better this card would be if you replaced “Opponent” with “Player?” Sigh. Regardless, this was a card that’s been on my shortlist to play, and each time I get crushed by Geist of Saint Traft or a Mirran Crusader, I’m kicking myself for not having Tribute to Hunger in my deck. I haven’t yet had the pleasure of dealing with an opposing Thrun, the Last Troll, but I imagine it’s equally as annoying. I made sure to add this to the mix, along with some Vapor Snags, a Disperse, and a Dismember.

Some of you may be wondering… where are the counterspells in my U/B “control” deck? Well, those who know me really well probably don’t blink an eye when I omit counterspells from my blue deck… but I got some mainstream validation to this way of thinking from Mike Flores recent article What I Would Play This Weekend. He talks about how this metagame is all about people winning or trying to win with creatures, which is true. So that means your Mana Leak is more or less just a worse Doom Blade versus most creatures that don’t have protection from black or hexproof. Besides, with my deck, I’m much more likely to tap out most turns playing out my creatures than I am to hold back to counterspell, especially with no instant-speed mana dump outside of Forbidden Alchemy.

Another control-ish approach would be adding red for Gut Shot… and the card du jour, Desperate Ravings!


I’m not sure whether going this route is brilliant or insane. Ravings digs really deep, but in this sort of deck you’re also trying to be precise with what goes to the graveyard and what you want to play to the board. I know there’s some common sense involved: you don’t play Ravings except for when you don’t have anything in your hand that you’d mind hitting the graveyard or if you’re digging deep for an answer. But I also worry about ripping that game-winning Ooze off the Ravings draw and have it randomly picked as the card to hit the bend. I likely just need to playtest enough to get past The Fear.

What do you think? Have any of you been working on an Ooze deck or have some thoughts on the directions I’ve been exploring? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

One other interesting thing happened over the weekend. The Level 2 judge who came to run the GPT brought along a judge in training named Josh, who’s also a big fan of Commander, and between rounds we talked about that quite a bit. I brought up to him that I’ve been working on a Horde deck I wanted to bring to my local Commander players. He wasn’t familiar with the format, so I told him what the general rules were. I only recently learned about the format myself. The end of October, in time for Hallowe’en, Adam Styborski wrote about a fun new format called Horde Magic (Hording all the Fun). I was quickly intrigued by the idea, especially fighting Zombie hordes and channeling one of my favorite TV shows The Walking Dead (what a killer mid-season finale)! I’ve been accumulating cards for the deck as I go through my collection building Standard and Commander decks but haven’t yet found enough Zombie tokens. Here’s Adam’s quick rundown of the rules as developed by the format creator, Peter Knudson:

In Brief: Horde Magic is a multiplayer variant where all players work together to survive and defeat an opposing, automated, semi-random “horde” deck.

Rules Rundown: There’s a lot going on in Horde Magic. We’ll break it down into gameplay, player, and horde rules.

Game-Play Rules:

  • The objective is for the allied team to survive and eliminate the threat of the horde.
  • Players achieve victory when the horde deck has no cards remaining in its library, no cards in hand, and no creatures on the battlefield.
  • Players will lose the game at zero life, as normal.
  • If the team were to attack or otherwise deal damage to the horde “player,” then that number of cards are put from the top of the horde’s deck into its graveyard.

Player Rules:

  • There are up to four players total, and each player brings his or her own deck.
  • All players share their turn and life total, a la Two-Headed Giant, and each contributes 20 life to the starting total (one player is 20, four players is 80).
  • The team takes the first three turns of the game, then alternates with the horde deck.

Horde Rules:

  • There is no player for the horde deck; it will play automatically.
  • The horde is a 100-card deck, taking away a random 25 for each player under four on the team (three players is 75 cards, two players is 50).
  • The horde is built using token cards as well as regular Magic cards.
  • The horde’s turn starts by revealing the top card of its library. If it’s a creature token, it is set aside and this process repeats until a nontoken card is revealed. Then, all of the creature tokens are cast (they cost 0 Mana), followed by the revealed spell.
  • The horde will only cast spells once per turn, at the start of the turn. A creature hit by Boomerang or similar will be cast again after the revealed spell for the next turn has been cast.
  • The horde deck has any amount of mana needed, and can always pay additional costs required (such as Sphere of Resistance and Propaganda).
  • All creatures the horde controls have haste and must attack each turn if able.
  • If there is a choice presented for the horde, such as a player casting Fact or Fiction or controlling a Planeswalker that the horde’s creatures could attack, the choice is made as randomly as possible.

Josh thought the Horde deck idea sounded cool and quickly latched on to the deckbuilding implications for the tokens you choose. For instance, when running Zombies or smaller token creatures, you’ll want a higher concentration of token creatures. But Josh pointed out that you’d want a different mix of tokens if you were building a Dragon horde with 4/4 and 5/5 flying Dragon tokens.

A Dragon horde deck… now that sounds freaking awesome! So now I’m channeling my inner Christian Bale/ Matthew McConaughey Reign of Fire dragonslayers and cooking up an entirely different type of Horde deck. What sort of cards do you think would be good in a Horde deck chock full of flying dragon tokens?

reign of fire

By the way, if you know anyone in the Richmond area who needs a place to live within the next month or two, I VERY much need a roommate and will have my house ready for him or her to move in. So keep an ear out for me and if you hear of anyone they can contact me via the email, Facebook or Twitter info below and I will send along the details.

That’s it for this week!

Take care,

Bennie

starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com

Make sure to follow my Twitter feed (@blairwitchgreen). I check it often so feel free to send me feedback, ideas, and random thoughts. I’ve also created a Facebook page where I’ll be posting up deck ideas and will happily discuss Magic, life, or anything else you want to talk about!

I’ve started a blog, it’s not Magic-related but you may find it fun to read and comment on. I update at least once a week so check on it often and let me know what you think! I recently revamped my blog header with a perfect drawing from the awesome MJ Scott, check it out!

New to Commander?
If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

My current Commander decks (and links to decklists):

Previous Commander decks currently on hiatus: