After completing this article, I decided that part two needed to be posted first because it was simply more interesting. Rather than reflect on what has happened, Magic players are always looking around the next corner. This article will take a look into the 2004 metagame resulting from Long leaving the format while drawing on the lessons learned in part one, which will be up tomorrow.
The 2004 Metagame
Now we look forward. The restriction of Long has certainly opened up the field for many decks. However, two cards are going to become central to the 2004 Type One Metagame: Mana Drain and Mishra’s Workshop. Multiple decks will be running both cards and using them for nice tempo boosts, which lead to unrecoverable game states. These two cards will define the metagame and the decks built around them. In actuality, Mana Drain is probably going to see three to four times as much play as Mishra’s Workshop in top 8s, simply because of availability. Nevertheless, both cards should be watched carefully.
If, for some reason, Mishra’s Workshop were to be restricted, I predict that Mana Drain would be the first uncommon to top $100. I realize that there is a generally a preference among policy makers for making Type One games longer. That bias means that Mana Drain is a very unlikely restriction target, since making control stronger is generally an admirable goal. Nonetheless, the DCI recognizes the problems inherent when Control decks are too strong as reflected in the Extended Banning of Oath of Druids. What must be kept in mind is that Mana Drain has the same potential to strangle too many archetypes.
The tempo boost from getting a spell Mana Drained is so huge that it literally forces decks to have either the acceleration to race Mana Drain or simply not exist in the same metagame. In other words, the fact that with UU up, control has Mana Drain means that Type One combo and Workshop decks must have a key threats by turn 2 – this requires lots of acceleration. In that way, Mana Drain heavily restricts the range of viable decks.
Most people think that Control is going to be one of the key decks to beat for 2004, and the Northeastern and apparently European penchant for the archetype mean that this will probably be true. With that in mind, here is what I think most people should be running as their gauntlet or for serious consideration of decks to play.
The first two decks to take a look at are the Mana Drain decks. Both use Mana Drain for a huge tempo boost. Tog is simply an amazing deck and given many people’s propensity to play control, this will suit most player’s needs nicely.
I get goosebumps looking at these cards in the Tog list:
2 Stifle
3 Duress or 2 Duress and a Mind Twist
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
Just look at that. Then add these cards:
1 Strip Mine
2 Gorilla Shaman
4 Wastelands
That’s Keeper’s mana denial component.
That set of twenty cards from Stifle to Wasteland is a rock solid pile of answers to Type One threats. It generally does not get stronger than that. Stifle has already replaced Misdirection as the metagame counterspell of choice. Check out the rest of the deck:
3 Psychatog
2 Cunning Wish
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Intuition
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Brainstorm
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Island
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
Sideboard:
1 Berserk
3 Red Elemental Blasts
1 Vampiric Tutor
3 Coffin Purge
1 Artifact Mutation
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Crumble
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Fire / Ice
1 Naturalize
1 Library of Alexandria
Eastman on TheManaDrain has suggested the use of Back to Basics maindeck – but his mana base is distorted as a result. If you expect TnT or Blood Moons, here is my suggestion: Cut the red entirely. Cut the Shamans for two Pernicious Deeds in the maindeck. Cut the Volcs for one Swamp, another Island, and another Tropical Island. Then cut the Red entirely from the sideboard for Xantid Swarms. Xantid Swarm is amazing for resolving game breaking cards like Mind Twist and Yawgmoth’s Will.
Tog is undoubtedly of the control genus, but it is by no means simply a control deck. Keeper on the other hand, is the remaining pure control deck:
Steve O'Connell (A.K.A. Zherbus, Owner of TheManaDrain.com) Keeper designed for the 2004 field
4 Flooded Strand
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
4 Wasteland
1 Island
1 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
2 Stifle
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
2 Skeletal Scrying
1 Mind Twist
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Fire / Ice
1 Balance
2 Decree of Justice
2 Gorilla Shaman
Sideboard
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Disenchant
2 Rack and Ruin
1 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Vampiric Tutor
3 Damping Matrix
1 Blue Elemental Blast
Playing Keeper requires being sharp and careful. I know people who can pick up multi-color control decks like this and win, but they are few and far between. Most of the time, it would be like me playing mono Blue – I’d do acceptable, but even if I win, it’s a much bigger struggle than I needed to put up with. In order to perform at a top level, you need good tech and a well tuned deck. In other words, in my view, Keeper is a metagame deck much like Dumptruck in Extended or Fish in T1. Instead of being a genuine archetype, it is simply the four-to-five color control deck with the best cards for the metagame. That is the best way to see Keeper. Through that lens one can begin to understand the complexity and skill needed to build and play well with Keeper.
That said, Steve’s list is beautiful. It’s flexible and has plenty of really solid answers to most of the best threats in Type One. Cunning Wish increases the accessibility to the metagame answers. It is clear that Steve foresees Damping Matrix as being a metagame call to seal games. Damping Matrix, if it comes down early enough, has real hosing power. It stops Goblin Welders, Dragon’s win condition, a Tog from growing, and Illusionary Mask, among other things.
Now we get to the Mishra’s Workshop decks.
If you like the Tog deck, as you probably should, then consider this deck a serious threat, my own personal build of TnT:
4 Mishra’s Workshop
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Grim Monolith
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
Before we go to the maindeck, let me comment on the mana base. Ancient Tomb adds some stability to the mana base and resiliency to Wasteland. The full complement of Wasteland in this deck is necessary for the new metagame and a threat to the control decks. The single Forest and Mountain help secure the deck against Wasteland and make it strong for:
Blood Moon maindeck is a serious threat for control decks. When it comes down, it could well be game. It is not a threat to this deck’s mana base, because it comes down after threats have been cast. That is the beauty of this Workshop deck as compared to the others – it is very threat heavy – playing a threats like:
4 Juggernaut
4 Su-Chi
And then following it up with cards like Wasteland, Blood Moon, and:
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Memory Jar
1 Wheel of Fortune
Survival gives this very strong aggro deck a midgame. Here’s how:
1 Squee
4 Goblin Welder
1 Anger
1 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Triskelion
1 Platinum Angel
This is the”toolbox” as the name of the deck, Tools ‘n Tubbies implies. Squee is the first card you generally search out to keep the engine going turn after turn and you continually spin out threats. Triskelion answers opposing Welders and doubles as another turn one fattie. Karn serves a similar function but can wreck an opposing mana base. One of the best tricks with this deck is to get Anger in the graveyard, then a fattie, then Goblin Welder, play it, and weld in a hasty fattie.
Platinum Angel is a very solid answer to many combo decks out there. Turn 1, Taiga, Goblin Welder, Mox, means that Dragon has to try to draw the game. If they try and mill you then you’ll have Anger and Angel in your yard and your hasty Welder can weld in the Angel. Then it only takes a few turns of beatdown to end the game. Angel can come online in only one or two turns after Survival is active – a very strong play against Combo. Pillar is also very strong against combo.
Many people have proposed modifications to TnT using Solemn Simulacrum or even Duplicant. Another possible change is using Shaman instead of Karn or Solemn Simulacrums. These are not bad choices, necessarily, but ignore the fact that despite this deck’s power, its still an aggro deck in Type One. Speed is of the essence and adding more utility for speed is foolhardy in my opinion.
TnT is a very solid choice in a heavy control field. But what makes TnT even more attractive is this:
3 Xantid Swarm
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin
3 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Chalice of the Void/ Artifact Mutation
This sideboard is exquisite. The Swarms and REB’s come in against control. The Rack and Ruins help, along with Goblin Welders for other Workshop matches. Goblin Welder + Tormod’s Crypt is a real threat against Dragon. And Chalice of the Void is a very nice threat for combo. Having such a solid SB for so many decks is nice.
Here is a $T4KS list I’d recommend. For a full lesson on playing the deck check this out.
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Ancient Tomb
4 Volcanic Island
3 Polluted Delta/ Flooded Strand
1 Shivan Reef
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
This mana base looks not too different from the TnT list. I believe that Ancient Tomb is underused in Type One at the moment, and this is reflected in my Workshop lists. The reason for Shivan Reef is simple. The deck needs another land that produces Blue and Red, but not another Fetchland and not Glimmervoid. It needs an actual mana producer because otherwise too much of its Red and Blue needs are loaded onto four vulnerable Volcanic Islands. Glimmervoid is nice, but too risky. City of Brass is inferior to Reef, so Reef it is. A basic Island isn’t bad, but you don’t want to risk not being able to cast a Welder.
5 Moxen
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Grim Monolith
30 Mana Sources
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Tangle Wire
4 Smokestack
4 Goblin Welder
The lock parts are rock solid. A big part of playing this deck correctly is simply playing them in the correct order. You have to know what the opposing deck is likely to do in any given situation and which lock parts are the real threats. It’s really easy to make a play error when playing them. If you have a mana light hand with, say one Mox and a Mishra’s Workshop and no other mana sources, playing a Sphere if you are likely to get Wastelanded is probably not wise. Playing a Smokestack if you are likely to get Force of Willed may be the wrong play if that is the key threat that you need to resolve. Instead playing a Chalice for two may be desirable, if they need to counter that as well.
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Timetwister
2 Meditate
2 Thirst for Knowledge
The rest of the deck is self-explanatory except for the Meditate/Thirst combination. Thirst is a really nice addition to the deck. It has very nice synergy with Goblin Welder and can be played at almost any time. Meditate is more conditional, but has the added advantage of being a great combo with a ramped up Smokestack. More testing will help ascertain whether more Meditates or Thirsts are needed, but for now this ratio has been working fine. Somehow I’ve managed to get Meditates when I preferred them and Thirsts when they were the better spell.
The sideboard probably consists of something like this:
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin
3 Blood Moon
1 Triskelion
2 Fire / Ice
3 Tormod’s Crypt
Stax is a good choice for almost any metagame – particularly those with Combo and Control. It has the tools to deal with most decks, but it has a weakness to Dragon and needs a bit of luck to successfully execute its plan consistently. Since Dragon only needs to cast one spell (an Animate spell) in order to win after Land, Land, Bazaar, it isn’t that affected by Sphere of Resistance. Chalice for two isn’t bad, but it is a very short delaying tactic until a Necromancy is found or Intuition for Necromancy is cast. Goblin Welder is essentially a dead card. Wasteland is important and helpful, and getting a Smokestack online very early may be the best shot at beating Dragon. Although Chalice for Two followed by Chalice for Three is basically game, getting that down past Force of Wills and Duress is difficult.
I’d mention Slavery, but Matthieu Durand is going to write an article about is shortly. I believe that both Stax and TnT are real monsters right now – but ironically, the more savage deck is probably the TnT deck, simply because it mysteriously acquired the tools to really destroy combo with Pillar and sideboarded Tormod’s Crypts, and its game against Blue-based control is just superb with Swarms, Pillars, Blood Moons, and Survival – not to mention some fattie beatsticks.
I tested it against Spoils Mask and its plan is merely to Survival up Karn, blow up one of Mask player’s Moxen, then Welder out a Phyrexian Dreadnought for a Mox. Dragon could be something of a problem match-up, but Blood Moon is a real threat and TnT has the Angel trick to help get by game 1. More on the TnT Dragon match-up later. Pyrostatic Pillar also means that random Tendrils combo decks are going to have a difficult time winning.
As good as I think this deck is – a deck that gets better after Sideboarding against everything, I think we have to realize at the end of the day that it is an aggro deck. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I rarely advocate aggro decks – in doing so you need to know that I think this deck is very strong – and Type One policy makers should be happy if TnT is a strong deck because we want an attack phase. The old GroAtog deck could beat TnT by playing Tog and then Gushing and casting Berserk. Tog like the one sported at Gencon by Carl Winter doesn’t have that luxury. Building up to Berserk requires time, which means needing to deal with cards like Pillar and Blood Moon. TnT has few threats to its power and many answers to deal with the few remaining threats.
Spoils-Mask
Road To Victory:
4 Illusionary Mask
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Phyrexian Negator
Roadmap To Victory:
4 Spoils of the Vault
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Necropotence
Ways to Deal With Speed Bumps:
4 Duress
4 Unmask
4 Hymn to Tourach
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
Accelerators:
4 Dark Ritual
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus
Sightseeing:
15 Swamps
Sideboard:
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Lightning Greaves
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
3 Metagame Slots
I’m actually a little saddened, because when put up against the gauntlet it can’t get the consistent numbers that the other decks do. It has a tough race against Dragon – where it basically plays the combo and hopes to win before they do. That race is something in the neighborhood of 50-50. Against TnT, if they survival up a Karn + Welder, that’s pretty much game. Spoils Mask’s real strength is the power it has in control heavy fields of Landstill and Keeper. In those match-ups, 12/12s really shine – against Fish as well.
If Tog, TnT, and Stax are Tier One, then Spoils Mask is 1.5. So is the Tendrils variant I came up with. The match-up against Stax is painful for both players. Playing SpoilsMask requires playing very carefully and thinking ahead. You never play a Mask into a Mana Drain, you must always play a discard spell first. You also can’t rely on double Spoils. It’s a very fun deck to play, but it’s also difficult to figure out the correct sideboard for the deck as it really doesn’t want to sideboard out anything. One strength of the deck is that its mana base is impervious to Wastelands and other hate such as Blood Moon.
That brings us to Dragon.
Dragon by Richard Mazziutto and Peter Olszewski
The Outlet:
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
3 Compulsion
Outlets/Tutors
4 Intuition
2 Lim-Dul’s Vault/1 Demonic Tutor + 1 Vampiric Tutor
Protecting the Combo:
3 Duress
4 Force of Will
1 Time Walk
Eight Red Creatures
4 Squee
4 Worldgorger Dragon
Eight Animate Effects:
3 Necromancy
3 Animate Dead
2 Dance of the Dead
The Win Condition:
1 Ambassador Laquatus
1 Ancestral Recall
The Mana:
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
1 Island
1 Swamp
2 Bayou
1 Underground River
Sideboard
3 Xantid Swarm
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Stifle
3 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Verdant Force
Dragon has reached its stride. It will remain upper tier – probably in the Tier One simply because it can win so quickly – but it will never do as well as it did the last few months, simply because people now expect it and know what to do about it. Interestingly enough, Dragon can still attempt to draw a game against TnT in which TnT has turn 1, Taiga, Mox, Goblin Welder and in which Dragon plays turn 2 Combo and finds that the TnT deck is sporting Platinum Angel. Here’s how it works: TnT has in play at least one Welder, Platinum Angel, Taiga and possibly more stuff. Dragon has in play: Bazaar, at least two mana sources, Ambassador Laquatus with an Animate on it (it was animated the previous turn). Now Dragon plays another Animate on Dragon and tries to draw:
1. Animate is played and targets the Dragon. Dragon comes in and trigger goes on stack.
2. All permanents are removed except Dragon, hence WGD goes to graveyard, and its leaves play trigger goes on the stack.
3. All permanents come back including Ambassador Laquatus and two Animate Dead that both need new targets
4. Target the Dragon and then a man in the TnT’s graveyard and they resolve in reverse order.
5. Ambassador, new man, and WGD are in play and with the comes into play trigger on the stack. You then repeat ad nauseum until all of TnT’s creatures in its graveyard are in play.
The key is that when Dragon animates the opponent’s men and the Gorger commands everything to leave play – when they return, they don’t remember they were associated with the Animate – they come into play as if newly played. A permanent never remembers previous times when it was in play (except phasing). The reason that this doesn’t happen for Dragon when its Animate is removed is that its Animate falls into the graveyard is because Animate says”when Animate Dead leaves play, destroy enchanted creature.”
Additionally, since the other Animate and the creatures leave play at the same time – the animate never kills it. So that once all the TnT’s creatures are in play, Dragon can then draw. However, with Triskelion, TnT cannot draw. This is because if you have Trisk when it comes into play on your side you simply remove two points to your opponent and one to the Trisk sending it to the graveyard again so that the Dragon player must Animate it until they have lethal damage.
Dragon versus Spoils Mask is often a race. Spoils Mask can apply some key pressure with Discard spells, making the use of a Bazaar less powerful and slowing down the game plan of the Dragon deck. If Spoils Mask can get Necropotence into play, Dragon will have to use Compulsion and Ancestral Recall in order to actually win.
And so we have four key cards composing my predicted metagame: Mask, Bazaar, Workshop, and Drain, with most of the emphasis on the latter. It’s possible that Vengeur Masque could come back with a vengeance, thus making Mask used in two maindecks and Survival in two as well.
1st Place, Nov. 30th, 2003 Dulmen.
Vengeur Masque
Carl Devos and Stefan Iwasienko
1 Black Lotus
2 Forest
4 Savannah
4 Tropical Island
2 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Illusionary Mask
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Phage the Untouchable
1 Ancestral Recall
3 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Time Walk
1 Tradewind Rider
1 Voidmage Apprentice
3 Volrath’s Shapeshifter
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Quirion Ranger
4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
2 Meddling Mage
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Devout Witness
1 Enlightened Tutor
2 Swords to Plowshares
Sideboard
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Meddling Mage
2 Misdirection
2 Naturalize
1 Sacred Ground
2 Seal of Cleansing
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Uktabi Orangutan
The advantage of this sort of deck is that it has answers to most threats, the power of Blue, and multiple ways to get 12/12 tramplers online.
It’s possible that Rector will also make a comeback, but Tendrils will certainly be around, possibly most visible in European tournaments using this sort of build:
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
2 Glimmervoid
1 Tolarian Academy
5 Moxen
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
2 Chromatic Sphere
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Yawgmoth’s Bargain
1 Mind’s Desire
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
4 Xantid Swarm
3 Duress
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Timetwister
1 Windfall
4 Brainstorm
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Crop Rotation
2 Tendrils of Agony
The single biggest problem with this deck is that relative to Long.dec, it has fewer threats. It relies far more heavily on”Draw 7s” to combo out and thus on Xantid Swarms to ensure that its spells resolve. It is also several turns slower on average and not nearly as powerful. Some variants of this sort of deck might include more Blue and some Force of Wills as a way to protect itself and stop hosers.
And there we have it. Breaking this metagame will require hard work and strong design. I’ll do my best to tinker with combo and see how strong I will make it, but I probably won’t be publicizing my results.
While I’ve said what the metagame is supposed to look like at its highest levels, I think the tournaments results are going to appear more random then ever. We are going to see a lot of weird aggro decks, strange control decks, and old favorites doing well in tournaments. This is partly because killing Long really opens things up.
My initial feeling is that the format is finding a balance. While a really broken combo deck might be out there, I think it will be unlikely to disturb the format in the next few months, because it will probably be so difficult to play, and even more difficult to build with the new restrictions. My new Tendrils deck has one huge flaw relative to Long.dec – it has to rely on”Draw 7s,” where Long.dec used those only as a last resort. Long just wanted a bit of juice in the graveyard to cast Yawgmoth’s Will and get enough storm to find Tendrils and win. This deck is much slower and more disruptable because it has less business.
Now to summarize a bit and draw upon the lessons we’ve learned. I believe people are going to bring out Control in force for the next few months. Tog and Keeper are going to be prominent and visible. Workshop decks will be making top 8s, but not as much as you’d expect given their metagame importance, in part because they are so expensive to build. Furthermore, I think the only two bad match-ups for Tog are the TnT and the Stax match-up, with TnT being the only truly bad match-up, and Stax a bit close – and probably favorable for Tog after Sideboarding. After Sideboarding, TnT keeps its strength, but Stax will taper off a bit.
TnT v. Stax is pretty draw and skill dependent. The onus is probably on Stax to win the match. Winning the die roll is probably critical, but TnT’s SB is much better as well. However, Dragon generally beats Stax, but will have trouble beating TnT a solid majority of the time given its new configuration. Tog has three Coffin Purge for Dragon and shouldn’t have any real trouble – especially with maindeck Stifles and Wastelands. The Spoils Mask deck splits pretty evenly with Tog and TnT, but has a bit of a rough time versus Stax. As you can see, this is a messy metagame nowhere resembling anything like Rock-Paper-Scissors.
Don’t forget, you may not even see some of these decks in your local metagame. You should take a deck you are tested with and feel confident in playing. As the results for the first few months come in, they might seem inexplicable or random. This partly reflects the fact that people are going to be trying all sorts of decks in the wake of the restrictions, and because people prefer control and aggro workshop aggro decks.
The Color Wheel
There is one last issue I’d like to address: The color wheel and the problem of White. Recently Green has really made leaps and bounds with Berserk, Xantid Swarm, Naturalize, Survival of the Fittest, Verdant Force, Elvish Spirit Guide, and other goodies seeing renewed interest. All of the other colors see a good amount of play except for White. I believe this is because of a fundamental mistake with the color wheel.
White is just not used in Type One that much, as its use is almost exclusively confined to Keeper and Rector in competitive Type One. That is a problem. White has been neutered and made terrible.
I believe that the attempt to make White the strong weenie color is a part of that mistake. Despite Savannah Lion and other goodies, some of the most played White cards in Type Two remain Wrath of God, Decree of Justice, and Eternal Dragon, and in Extended, Dumptruck’s Seal of Cleansing and Exalted Angel. This belies the fact that Black is the true weenie color. It has what is probably the best weenie creature ever printed: Nantuko Shade. Moreover, it has the disruption that makes it naturally strong in Black.
You’ll recall in my discussion of my Type One experience in 1995-6 about our metagame consisting of U/W control decks, land destruction decks, and mono-Black weenie decks with heavy disruption. Even then, the pump knights, and cheap Arabian Nights critters were much better than White’s meager Savannah Lion’s and few pump knights. If White even gets good enough weenies that they are regularly used in Constructed play – my theory is that they will be too good, much like Rebels. White simply has nothing to complement the weenies to make White the best weenie color. Other colors do.
But that isn’t the real problem – its mere a symptom. Orienting the color wheel to give Black and Green some of White’s traditional pie is an error with long term consequences for the older formats.
The bottom line is that there is always going to be overlap in the color wheel. The reason White is continually weakening is because Wizards has realized this, but has continually expanded White’s strengths in other colors because, on the surface, it makes sense to do so. For example, in Mirrodin, it is clear that Green despises the artifice. White opposes the artifice only if it is evil, aggressive against White’s values, or lawless. Nonetheless, White still has an interest in good removal spells, but that interest doesn’t seem as compelling as Green’s in Mirrodin. By printing the best artifact removal for Green, you inherently weaken White for Constructed play. I’ll explain why.
A good way to integrate Green’s theme with Mirrodin would be to print Green creatures which get stronger (angrier) when the opponent has artifacts (such as getting plus +1/+1 when opponent controls artifacts like Citanul Druid), protection from artifacts, or actively harming the opponent’s artifacts. The perfect example of this, and of a good Green Mirrodin card is Molder Slug – it is a fattie – a Green flavor, that has an ability which answers the Artifacts – but is sometimes unwieldy and unfocused. Contrarily, White’s answers are direct and focused – Dust to Dust, Disenchant, etc. By giving other colors removal and mass devastation effects where Wizards need not, White is progressively weakened and seen as a less attractive Constructed option.
The point is that by having lots of”bleeds” you discourage people from wanting to play a specific color, and that White’s abilities bleed out too much relative to other colors, necessitating greater effort to keep them within White.
I believe this is reflected in a spate of recent printings have, in some ways, been reversing White and Black. Black is aggressive, not defensive like White, and giving it powerful weenies makes sense – not spells like Smother, Death Cloud, and Mutilate, which make it a defensive color. Mutilate is, in essence, a good Black Wrath of God variant. Black also got Smother, which is one of the best new removal spells that would have been great in White. I wouldn’t have minded seeing White get both cards.
I believe that White should have the best Constructed flyers, best artifact and enchantment removal, and most effective mass removal. Black should have the best hand destruction and weenies. If the natural strengths of White, as I describe them, are allowed to shine, White would see much more Constructed play – not as forced through weenies, but through the goodies that people like from White in the tradition of Serra Angel and Moat that Exalted Angel hails from. Decree of Justice is now the win condition in T1 Keeper, and has completely replaced Morphling.
Here is a card in the Spoiler:
Death Cloud – XBBB
Sorcery (R)
Each player loses X life, then discards X cards from his or her hand, then sacrifices X creatures, then sacrifices X lands.
The swarm’s million wings stir the foulest of breezes.
#40/165
While I realize this is much in the flavor of Pox, it is nonetheless one more step down the road to Black taking over the key mass removal and control elements that have defined White since Alpha, and have made White alluring for Constructed play with cards like Wrath of God, Cleanse, and even Moat. Perhaps if instead of losing life and discarding cards, the card said each player gains X life, sacrifices X creatures, and sacrifices X lands, this might be a very flavorful White card. My hope is that Wizards comes to realize that White can never be the color of the weenie. White is the color of the powerful creature finisher – the creature for control decks to win with, most likely a flyer, the best creature, enchantment, and artifact removal and the best protective cards.
I think the bottom line is that if White is to be the color of defense, order, and law – it must have the best defensive cards. Weenies do not fit that theme if they are the focus, and increasingly, White is losing the best defensive cards to other colors – the best”answers” if you will. If White is to have the best”answers” that aren’t counterspells, it needs the best removal for creatures, artifacts and enchantments. Circle of Protection spells simply do not cut it. Giving White some more solid hosers might also be a step in the right direction. I’m not saying to print a new Swords to Plowshares – but limiting White’s removal to attacking creatures is not necessary if White views a Black or Red creature as a threat to its order – it will not wait until the critter attacks to remove it from existence.
Just looking at Mirrodin, Green, Red and Black all have arguably better removal than White in Shatter, Deconstruct, Terror, Glissa Sunseeker, and Molder Slug, despite White having Arrest. If White had Glissa (a very Northern Paladin type card), what then? The point I’m making is that the way the color wheel is oriented, even if Wizards were to decide that White is to have the second best removal, other colors would be drawn into that pool of cards inexorably, like a forcefield tugging on them unless there was a concerted effort to avoid digging into that pool. Each time it’s done, it affects White’s overall success and weakens the color’s future strength. In order for White to grow stronger, the first step is to decide to keep targeted and mass removal as a White part of the pie. The remaining removal has to be limited in some way (Terror for black and Shatter for Red) or else be thematic to the color such as Molder Slug.
If White can stay in its color and over time accumulate some playable cards, they will most certainly filter their way into Type One.
Down The Road
Here is my plan for the next few months. One of my plans since I started writing was to help diffuse knowledge about Type One so that there might more consensus and general agreement about Type One. To that end, I will begin a project that I have been planning for months: I will spend an article every few weeks or so analyzing one specific match-up. What I need from you all is for everyone who is interested to reply in the thread to this article suggesting a match-up to test and report. Hopefully, my testing will provide some insight in key plays.
It will follow a lot like the Long.dec v. Tog report did. I don’t want to hear suggestions just for a specific match-up – I want to hear many suggestions for a specific match-up. If someone else has already suggested a match-up that you want to see, then repeat it so that I know more people are interested. A match-up that people have already said they’d like to see is Tog v. Spoils Mask and I’d love to do a match-up piece featuring Spoils Mask to provide more insight into how to play the deck. Hopefully, at some point during this ongoing project, the Type One metagame will have more agreement about how a specific match-up actually occurs than we did before. At the very least, I’ll be saving a number of you a lot of testing time.