Hello again. It’s great to see all of you back again for another excursion into the realm of the casual. One of the first things I wrote for StarCityGames.com when I became a featured writer was a series entitled “Building Your First Five.” This series debuted on October 17, 2002 and ran in eight parts through January 8, 2003. (There was one added article that would develop the themes later, but the main series was in those initial eight parts).
As you can probably tell, the concept of the series was simple. I went step by step over the processes to building your first Five Color deck. In my capacity as a member of the Five Color Ruling Council and a writer of the format, my experience has been that the main reason people don’t play Five Color is not that ante is optional, since it’s merely optional. It’s not that we have an unrestricted Contract, since that was restricted. It’s not that they don’t like the idea, because it sounds like fun to most people. By far, the most commonly cited reason for not building a deck is either not knowing where to start or not having the desire to build a deck that large. People who want to get into Five simply don’t know where to start.
That’s why I began writing that series around four and a half years ago. For the past four and a half years, I have pointed people to that series of articles when they express an interest in Five Color. It will help them walk through the deck building process.
However, four and a half years is a long time in the Magic world. In Five Color, there have been a lot of changes (tutors, banned and restricted list, ante, sleeves, Contract, Wishes, and minimum number of cards per color). That series does not reflect the new changes. There have also been a lot of new cards printed since then, and these recent cards are not taken into consideration in those articles. The simple fact is that an online Magic article has a shelf life, and that series may have exhausted it.
As such, I feel that it is time to revisit and redo the old series. Now, I don’t expect these articles to take as long as the previous series. The eight entries in the previous series came in at 77 pages in Word, 92 pages if you include the other article written a few months later in the series. That’s a novella! Expand that out and you could have a small book!
I am not writing 92 or 77 pages on any topic a second time.
However, I do feel that there is a need for a revamped series of articles. Now I had an idea on how to do this. I am going to copy the original article into this article, then delete parts like the intro and so forth. Then, in bold, I am going to add my own comments on how things have changed or to clarify things that I may have left vague. I am also going to build two new decks for the series, and the three previous decks built will be stripped out, which removes a lot of the old series so you won’t have to read it. Additionally, I am going to skip parts seven, eight and nine, and probably six as well. Therefore, the amount of stuff in this new series will be much easier to read and require a lot less writing.
I am doing this because a lot of what was written previously is still true, and although enough has changed that it warrants a new series, not so much has changed that the old articles are that far off. Many of the underlying principles and ideas are still true, despite the changes.
Alright then, without further ado, allow me to present to you the first article:
Begin the Original Article (Comments are in bold)
(Snip) I removed a bunch of the intro here.
Now, we need to start thinking about building a Five-Color deck. That’s all Step One is, really. Just thinking. We need to plan our route of attack. So for a second, I want you to envision your favorite deck of all time. What was it? Why was it your favorite? Did it win, or was it just fun? Are you still able to play it, or have the cards left the format?
Note that The Knut would never have let me get away with a two-word fragment like “Just thinking” in one of my articles. The point still stands, obviously. Step One is just thinking about your deck. What do you want to build?
In reality, there are two ways to build your 250 deck. This series looks at path number one. That path is the planned route, where you try to figure out what you want to build and then build it. A second way is just as good. Grab some land, some random cards, and shuffle. Attack your deck stock binders and trade binders with equal degrees of savagery and grab all of the goods you can, then shove them in a deck. That’s a fine way to start. These articles are for the first method. If you want to use the second, then you aren’t the kind of person that has issues with knowing where to start, which is what this series is addressing.
For this article series, we are actually going to construct three (Two Now) different Five Color decks, in order to show how to do it. It’s like "This Old House" meets StarCityGames.com.
(More Snippage)
I am going to build two decks, not three. The first deck will be a deck chosen from the Framework as a way to show how to build something from that concept. The second deck will be an attempt to take an existing deck and turn it into the 250 deck. I wanted to show deckbuilding from two different takes, one with the concept of a deck and the other from a concept of the way to play a deck.
What will these decks be? I have no idea yet. Well, that’s not true, actually. I am leaning towards building a No-Holds-Barred Aggro deck for the first deck. I am just not sure what Subtype I will choose, or if it will be a Hybrid deck instead of NHBAggro. At least I have an idea with that.
As of right now, I have no idea what the deck will be that I will use to inspire a 250 deck. Don’t worry, I won’t choose Hulk Flash!
Like most of Magic, Five Color can be thought of as broken into the basic three archetypes: Control, Aggro, and Combo. However, most decks incorporate at least two of the types. Control might have a little combo to win with, for example. Aggro might toss in a combo with its creatures, like, say, Mortal Combat, in order to help secure a win. Control might utilize a more creature-centered focus with Flametongues and Battlemagi in order to beatdown and keep command of the board.
You’ll note that I have fleshed out casual Magic into more than the CAC Triangle, into a fully formed Framework.
So, yeah, the three types are there, but they blend together. I’ve seen the beatdown decks with control critters have combo elements to them – all three types in one tasty package!
True, True.
Think about what you want out of Five Color. What does your playgroup enjoy? Will this be a more casual deck with multiplayer Five Color? Will your decks use a lot of big effects and bigger creatures in an attempt to assuage your inner-Timmy? Or will you want your Five Color deck to dismantle all other Fives that stand before you?
Again, more thoughts, but no action yet.
Now that you have the general idea of what your deck might do, allow me to introduce you to the rules of Five Color. Here we will analyze some of the rules of the game, and also look at how it changes deck building.
Before we go off into the rules of the format, and how that affects deck construction, I want to pause for a moment. As a reminder, some of these details have changed over time, so it’ll be interesting to see what changed and what stayed the same.
Please note that, as a casual format, Five Color allows some serious changes based on what locals want to play. Your group and store are encouraged to come up with rules you want to, and Five Color supports that. In fact, we have several optional rules to encourage people to take what they will. For 5CQs and higher tournaments, you have to go by our rules, of course.
You play with 250 cards minimum.
I’ve heard a lot of players refer to the format as 250 because of this rule. This is, of course, the most daunting aspect of Five Color: How do you find 250 cards that fit together in a cohesive theme? Well… We’ll talk about that in a bit, but for now, just recognize that the deck is big. No, bigger than that. Big.
And fun.
You must play with eighteen cards in each color.
This is actually easier for some colors and harder for others. Every deck type, for example, can easily find eighteen Black cards. Finding Red or White cards can be much harder for some decks. It is important to point out that gold and split cards can count for either color, but not both. Post-Invasion block makes this requirement much easier; so, for example, each Fire/Ice and Prophetic Bolt in a hypothetical control deck can count as either color, probably Red.
Today you are required to run at least twenty cards of each color, not eighteen. Despite the printing of many sets since the publication of this article, it is still difficult to fill out Red in many decks. Some decks just toss in burn and Flametongue Kavu to fill the spots. The problem with that is that burn and/or FTKs aren’t always synergetic with the deck’s design.
Some people will “cheat” a color by playing cards that cycle, have hybrid mana, or are split cards. With enough work, you can eliminate a color entirely. For example, my Red section could be four each of Chartooth Cougar, Lay Waste, Rakdos Guildmage, Assault / Battery and Fire / Ice.
Red is truly the weakest color in Five.
The problem with weakening that with your Red section (or any other section) is that you have weakened your deck as well just to eliminate Red. Why not embrace Red and play it? After all, if one deck has a poor Red section and another has good cards for its 20 card section, which one is likely to win? The better deck is the one with 20 more good cards over the other.
All cards printed in legal sets are allowed, except…
Five Color allows everything from Arabian Nights on through Onslaught. Note that cards are legal in 250 as soon as they are available at the pre-release. Also, no Portal or Unglued. However, 250 has its own banned and restricted list – wholly separate from the DCI and Type 1. And the list is updated monthly. With its own B&R list, a player needs to check the list regularly in order to avoid playing with the wrong cards. For this series, we will actually hit the B&R list in a later article, so just hold on tight for now.
Since Wizards now allows Portal sets in Eternal formats, we have also decided to allow Portal in Five Color. That means we have eight Armageddon effects, although Ravages of War is quite pricey. The best tutors are banned or restricted, and Jungle Lions and Sea Drakes do not break the format.
I have a second comment from this paragraph. I do not intend to do this with the B&R article, which last time took two articles and 15 pages of writing to do. Instead, I’ll just point you at the official Banned and Restricted List for the format.
All games are played for ante.
(SNIP)
I just cut out a major section on ante. Since this article, ante has changed significantly, and it is important to discus modern ante and not get people confused by the old way.
First of all, you cannot play ante cards, including Contract, unless you are playing for hardcore original Richard Garfield ante. That means flipping over a card and anteing. This is how major events are still played. If you want to play your Contract, then you must be playing for real ante. You still only get to play one Contract.
Many polls have shown that very few Five Color players actually play hardcore ante. They play pack ante, art ante, buck ante, buy the next drink ante, ghost ante, and so forth. Contract is not legal in these formats at all. Similarly, cards like Jeweled Bird, Demonic Attorney, and so forth are also not allowed in this case.
Some people like playing for ante, and others do not. Our rules are for two things. 5CQs and higher tournaments use our rules. We are also the default rules when two people sit down to play who do not know each other, until they agree on new rules. If you and your group want to eschew ante, then you would agree with the super majority of current 5C players. Just shuffle and play, and forget ante even exists, but remember that it’s always there if you want to play for ante.
Sleeves are now allowed – sorta.
Sleeves are now supported for casual play and local tournaments at the discretion of the Tournament Coordinator. However, they are still disallowed at title events. So, you may now use sleeves in casual play. Before, this prevented players from playing with cards that they did not want to be damaged – and as such, was a restriction on deck building.
Isn’t crazy to imagine that 5C once banned sleeves? Almost everyone plays sleeves now. They are typically allowed at all tournaments today.
Some cards have official Five Color errata.
Before using a Wish, Chaos Orb, Ring of Ma’Ruf, Jeweled Bird, or Contract, make sure that you review the current rulings. We will actually discuss the Wish, Contract, and Bird in a later article. Maybe the Chaos Orb as well.
We have to have our own rulings for Wishes and the Ring because we don’t have sideboards but we do have tournaments. We also needed to make official rulings on Chaos Orb.
For example, in those rare ante matches, can you get an ante card with a Wish? There’s no Wizards or DCI ruling that can help answer that question. What does it mean to cast a Wish or use a Ring in a tournament with no sideboard? Can you just get cards removed from the game, or can you get any card you own? What does ownership mean? Our rulings are simple.
1). To get a card, it must be within your immediate range of motion, like a binder or box of cards where you are sitting.
2). It must be a card that you own before you played the Wish, not during resolution. I can’t “give” you a card you need as an observer of a 5C game.
3). It cannot make your deck illegal, so no searching for a second restricted card, a banned card, or a fifth card.
I think those are realistic expectations for a card in a casual format that occasionally has tournaments. You don’t want someone rummaging in their spare bedroom closet for fifteen minutes swearing that they know they have the perfect card for the situation somewhere.
Every multiplayer group needs to decide what to do with Wishes. Our format was no exception.
And that’s pretty much it for the rules that affect deck building. There are other rules, of course, like mulligans, which are very liberal in Five Color. Still, the above rules are important to keep in mind when thinking about a Five Color deck. All of the other standard rules (no more than four of a card, excluding basic lands, for example) apply.
A bit more on mulligans are necessary, I believe. The existence of our generous mulligans allows deckbuilders to get away with a lighter mana base than you might think would be otherwise appropriate.
In Five Color, you may take the following mulligans:
A). A hand of all lands may be sent back. When an opponent takes this mulligan, you may also take their mulligan for free.
B). A hand of all non-lands may be sent back. Again, an opponent may ride your mulligan for free.
C). A land of one land may be sent back. As before, the opponent can ride that baby. These three mulligans are referred to in the rules as the land mulligans. According to the rules, you may only land mulligan once for each type, and then you can ride opposing mulligans or drop to the option below. In casual, I’d suggest allowing these mulligans for as long as they go on instead of capping each person at one of each land mulligan type.
D). After all land mulliganing is complete, any player may Paris mulligan and do so as often as they like, with one less card each time. Unlike the land mulligans, no opponent may ride your Paris.
As I mentioned above, these generous mulligan rules allow deckbuilders to cheat the system a bit and play less mana. A fully tricked out deck with duals and fetches might run 80 or less lands, when 40% is 100 lands and a third is 83. Running less than a third seems foolish until you understand the mulligan rules. We’ll take more about mana in a later article.
Now go back to that idea you had. Which decktype were you thinking about again? A deck you had a lot of fun with before, maybe a deck you miss. Maybe it’s a deck you wish were viable again, but time has passed it by. Mull over that for a bit while we discuss the manifestations of a few archetypes in Five Color.
Yeah, mull. Mull, I said!
The dominant beatdown deck is probably 3-2-1 Contract. The idea behind 3-2-1 Contract is simple: Play with really fast creatures and try to get a Contract as soon as possible in a blitzkrieg attempt to overwhelm your opponent before he can attempt a defense. Defense is harder than offense in Five Color, and this deck type tries to use that to its advantage. All of the creatures ideally cost three or less and only use one colored mana in its cost, at most. Then they put in a bunch of Contracts, tutors for Contracts, and other effects like Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, and so forth. Sample beatdown creatures include Savannah Lions, Sarcomancy, Carnophage, Jackal Pup, Mogg Fanatic, River Boa, Skyshroud Elite, Kird Ape, Serendib Efreet, Sedge Troll, Phyrexian War Beast, Chimeric Idol, and so forth. Pepper with a few Armageddon effects, or maybe some burn and Price of Progress, and you have a strong, classic decktype.
Beatdown is still dominant. The cards have changed a bit. Insert Isamaru, Hound of Konda alongside Jungle Lion and Watchwolf. Cards like Magus of the Scroll or Grim Lavamancer also make appearances.
For all of the decisions that the 5CRC (Five Color Ruling Council) has made about cards in order to keep combo in check, it is still aggro that is the dominant force in 5C. Why is that?
Aggro is more consistent than the other types. In a format where inconsistency is the basic idea, any deck that can eliminate much of the inconsistency is going to be powerful. Imagine a deck where every color has aggressively costed creatures that support an aggro style. No matter what color of lands you draw, you will begin beatings immediately. You also have access to a bunch of tutors to get Price of Progress to help end games. With access to the best aggro creatures of all time, any aggro deck is going to be scary.
Combo can take several forms. There are some classic combos that have now been nuked with the Banned and Restricted list – like Mind over Matter/Urza’s Blueprints or Oath of Druids/Anarchist/Replenish or Earthcraft/Squirrel Nest. Instead, new combos need to be found – and they are out there. Recoup/Yawgmoth’s Will plus Traumatize/Morality Shift/Hermit Druid can get a Replenish or Living Death and win instantly. Underworld Dreams, Black Vise, and all subsequent Vise-like effects + Windfall, Prosperity, Wheel and Deal, and so forth might be nice. And old school. Mono-brown was played heavily for a while, but the restriction of Transmute Artifact has toned it down a bit. There may still be some options there, though.
Again, combo is fun, but hardly the best archetype in the genre.
If you have a combo that you really like, it’s very easy to build it into a Five Color deck. I’d guess that over half of the control decks out there play a full set of Sylvan Libraries with an Abundance or two. Lots of control decks have a combo or two hidden away for special occasions; I personally have Goblin Bombardment in my Living Death deck, for example.
Control can take a few types. Probably a popular one utilizes the 187 creatures to build an effective card advantage engine with creatures, then tries to swing through with them. Flametongue Kavu, Man O’War, the Battlemagi, Bone Shredder, Ghitu Slinger, Avalanche Riders, Ravenous Baboons, Nekrataal, Uktabi Orangutan, Wall of Blossoms, and Monk Realist are excellent examples of the sorts of creatures this decktype might harness.
Another control type deck chooses to focus on a more traditional control atmosphere with cards like Wrath of God and all other Wrath effects, Teferi’s Moat, Evacuation, Starstorm, Savage Twister, some burn, some bounce, and some countermagic. It is a very blue-focused deck, spiced with a few defensive creatures like Ophidians, Wall of Blossoms, and Jungle Barrier. The deck tries to create a large card advantage barrier between the players, then drops a Morphling or Rainbow Efreet-type creature and rolls for the win. Alternatively, Avatar of Fury is an excellent choice for the beatdown creature.
And now there is the rest of the Framework. At the time of this writing, I had not fleshed out my concepts for the Framework. Now, however, I recognize Resource Denial decks as a separate entity from Controlling the Board, Crazy Combo Man and No-Holds-Barred Aggro. I also recognize Hybrid decks as distinct from each of those.
Resource Denial is an important strategy in Five Color. Cutting off a color is often as simple as playing one Stone Rain. With ginger mana bases, taking on someone’s mana is an effective strategy. Cards like Dwarven Miner are played alongside Avalanche Riders. Other effects like Armageddon, Winter Orb, and Tangle Wire are all used to effectively slow down or stop opposing players. You can devastate players with a Blood Moon or a Ruination.
Hybrid decks are probably the most common. Aggro-Control decks with a serious countermagic punch do well while Temporal decks can dominate with cards like Winter Orb coming down after several beaters are played early. It is these sort of decks that can prove quite powerful.
Of course, you probably already have a deck in mind. Maybe it’s a Living Death type deck. Or you could have some tribal deck like Slivers or Beasts or something. Maybe a Sneak Attack deck, or Erna-Geddon (with more geddons than Armageddon and more big creatures than Ernham). Maybe the Rebel engine gets your dander up. Fluctuator combo? Invincible Counter Troll?
Invincible Counter Troll? Wow, is this article old. I dropped a reference to the old ICT decks. I could add more recent decks to my list of questions. What else gets your dander up? Affinity? Dragon decks? Izzet Combo?
Whatever you have in mind, here is what I want you to do over the next week. Think about your deck. If it were just sixty cards, how would you build it? Then think about what you would have to cut to bring your deck down to sixty cards. All of those things you want to cut will now make it. Review your card collection. Look at those cards that have rotated out of Extended and are now next-to-useless… But not in Five Color.
I really like this idea. Think of one of your favorite decks you’ve ever built. Remember all of the fun cards you wanted to play in it but couldn’t, because of space? Welcome to Five Color.
Also, remember that for this series, we are going to build, not one, not two, but three separate decks for 250. (Just Two, sorry) One of the decks is up for grabs. I may let the posts that I get decide what deck type we will build, right here, in these articles. So pop by our forums and let me know what theme you would like to see us use.
(More Snip). Sometimes I can be a wordy bastard.
Next week we will discuss the card pool, look at the cards you own, and build the skeleton of these three (two) decks. Building a Five deck is not hard; it’s just different, and we will explore that difference in the next article.
Until later,
Abe Sargent
Still true.
Okay, so here are the things to look for next week. The next article in the series will be cut and pasted like before, only the large swathes of article that would have been taken up with the three sample decks will instead be taken up by the two new examples. That means large amounts of space in bold.
I will know what decks I am building then, and I may announce in the forums here beforehand based on your comments, so turn them babies in!