Like I’ve said before, cards don’t rotate out in Type One in the same way that they rotate out of Standard and Extended. If you want to get rid of a deck once and for all, you’ve gotta restrict something major in order to render it unworkable. And as much as people dislike admitting this, sometimes you’ve gotta put aside a deck because another comes out that – dare I say it – is strictly superior.
There is no Stacker 1, Only Stacker 2
11 Mountain
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
5 Moxes
3 Cursed Scroll
3 Winter Orb
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Grim Monolith
1 Memory Jar
4 Goblin Welder
4 Juggernaut
4 Su-Chi
2 Masticore
1 Karn, Silver Golem
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
1 Wheel of Fortune
As far as I know, this was the first deck to combine Goblin Welder, Mishra’s Workshop, and the four-mana artifact creatures. It was probably the third best deck in 2001 era Type One behind four Fact or Fiction mono-Blue and four Fact or Fiction Keeper. Your matchups against budget aggro were really strong because your creatures were huge and cards like Cursed Scroll and Goblin Welder were huge threats. Keeper and mono-Blue weren’t too tough, but the problem was that a strong draw from them would beat even your strongest draws. The deck just couldn’t stand up to turn 1 Mana Leak, turn 2 Mana Drain, turn 3 Fact or Fiction with counter mana up, but if a turn 1 creature hit, you might be able to race them before they could stabilize.
A few months later, Ze Germans made a better version of this where they added four Fact or Fiction and some Blue restricted cards. That only got to stick around for a few months before FoF was restricted, so it was back to this version. So you know, yes, I did try Survival of the Fittest in this deck before, but that version was slower than the four FoF version at drawing cards and was almost two turns slower than this version at killing, so I disregarded it. Ze Germans tried it again after the Incarnations came out and brought us the TnT deck that we know and love today, even if it’s not exactly playable right now.
(Benny Rott, December 2002 Dülmen)
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Taiga
3 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath
2 Forest
2 Tropical Island
1 Strip Mine
1 Memory Jar
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Grim Monolith
4 Juggernaut
4 Su-Chi
4 Goblin Welder
2 Triskelion
1 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Masticore
1 Druid Lyrist
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Anger
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
At that point, I pretty much had to give up on Stacker. If we compared the decks, TnT’s kill was just as fast, yet its sources of card advantage (Survival of the Fittest and Genesis) were much stronger than Stacker’s. Its mana base wasn’t that much worse because it could protect its dual lands with Quirion Ranger, and it had a good enough game against mono-Blue that it didn’t need to worry about Back to Basics. The only real strength that Stacker had that TnT didn’t was a large amount of creature removal with eight Bolts, three Cursed Scroll, and two Masticore. The removal only really helped against aggro, and now with Survival of the Fittest, you didn’t need to worry about aggro, since you could just present a stream of enormous threats and win, Anger/Wonder if necessary to race them.
I hardly dare say it, but TnT was strictly superior to Stacker. Some people tried to revive Stacker later on by loading up with the disruption elements, but those also were ultimately discarded after Stax and Mud came out and were better able to lock the opponent down.
Recap:
Stacker had removal, but the removal didn’t matter. TnT had worse mana, but it was robust enough that it didn’t matter. The keyword here is”enough.”
More Elementary German:
From the people that brought you”gebeatdownt” comes the following:
Wegcyclen: to cycle away
Totblocken: to chump block
Intermission
So I forgot about Stacker and started working on Tog. The first Tog version I built was literally my Extended Tog deck, but with cards like Mana Leak swapped out for their superior Type 1 versions:
9 Island
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Library of Alexandria
5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
4 Psychatog
1 Wonder
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Gush
3 Cunning Wish
2 Misdirection
1 Upheaval
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mind Twist
This deck was pretty cool. You could beat up randomness pretty well with it, since you had Psychatog, Upheaval, and Wonder. You’d be amazed how quickly this deck could play an Upheaval/Tog because of Moxes and Mana Drain. I did need to run a lot of cards like Powder Keg and Smother in the sideboard, though. Aggro wasn’t the greatest matchup, yet. While this deck was pretty good, after I saw this, I knew that I needed to make a couple changes:
(Roland Bode, January 2003 Dülmen)
4 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Psychatog
4 Quirion Dryad
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Gush
3 Daze
3 Misdirection
3 Sleight of Hand
2 Counterspell
2 Cunning Wish
1 Foil
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Fastbond
1 Regrowth
After seeing that, I added Green to Tog, which appeared to make it strictly better. Berserk and the Fastbond/Gush combo sped the deck up tremendously, and let it kill through fairly complicated board positions before Upheaval could come online. While it was fun to go Upheaval, Fastbond, Tog, it usually wasn’t needed, so it was cut shortly after.
The other thing I noticed during the last round of that tournament was that GroAtog was well, strictly superior to Tog at that time. Both decks had about the same number of counters and about the same goldfish. Tog had more hard draw, but GAT just so saw many cards that it still would be able to find whatever cards it needed. It’s also important to note that since GAT was using lots of cards like Brainstorm and Sleight of Hand, it could reduce the number of land in the deck, yet still see enough of them, which allowed it to add in more business spells.
The biggest, most obvious strength that GAT had was that it could kill in multiple ways, compared to Tog’s one. Tog could only really kill through drawing a lot of cards and then attacking with a large, possibly Berserked Tog. GAT could kill this way, but it also could kill with its proto-Tendrils of Agony kill of Quirion Dryad and Yawgmoth’s Will. This is the biggest difference between old GAT and the deck that people call GAT these days. That combo kill let Dryad serve as a huge threat even if it came out late, since you could grow it to an enormous size in a single turn when you’re pumping it with Sleight of Hand and Gush rather than Thirst for Knowledge.
Tog wasn’t”bad” during the post-Onslaught, pre-Scourge time period at all. I’d say that it was the second best in the environment behind GAT (and please, don’t bother with that”But what about the metagame!” crap.) It’s just that it had all the same good matchups that GAT had, except that it also lost to GAT since GAT was the tighter, more streamlined version of itself. In fact, a lot of the common reasons that people give as to why they would play an inferior version of a deck couldn’t even justify playing Tog over GAT. GAT was cheaper to build and more forgiving of mistakes than Tog. And it didn’t have the stigma of being a”Type 2 deck” that turned off a lot of people with Tog.
Recap:
Tog had more draw, but the draw didn’t matter. GAT had fewer ways to fix the board, but it could win without them. GAT had cheaper spells, so it could run more of them
Just so you don’t think I only like Asian movies
[jpmeyer] you’re gonna be mad jealous
[jpmeyer] I went to see mean girls yesterday. at 2pm. in a theatre where i may or may not have been the only male and may or may not have been the only person over the age of 15
[Negator] actually
[Negator] I am!
Back to Stacker
So for fun, I went back to Stacker a few months ago, mostly because I wanted to play with Sword of Fire and Ice (which I regret to say, should be cut from the sideboard of U/G Madness in order to make room for Chill.) Here’s the list I was tinkering around with:
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Polluted Delta
4 Volcanic Island
2 Seat of the Synod
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Island
5 Moxes
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Memory Jar
4 Goblin Welder
4 Juggernaut
4 Su-Chi
1 Platinum Angel
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Leak
4 Brainstorm
3 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
This deck was pretty fun, and it beat Tog pretty well, since you would usually end up winning an EOT counter war over a Thirst for Knowledge and winning through the cards you got from it. The more and more I looked at the Workshop Slaver deck that we were working on over at Meandeck, the worse and worse my Stacker list was looking:
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Volcanic Island
4 Shivan Reef
2 Ancient Tomb
1 Tolarian Academy
5 Moxes
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Mindslaver
3 Gilded Lotus
1 Memory Jar
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
4 Goblin Welder
2 Pentavus
1 Memnarch
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Timetwister
1 Windfall
1 Time Walk
On the surface, these decks really only seem to share Goblin Welder, Mishra’s Workshop, and Thirst for Knowledge at their cores. The first deck looked like an aggro-control deck; it would try to beat down with a large creature while keeping mana open so that it could cast counters if necessary and maybe cast a card drawing spell to reload if need be. The second deck looked more like a Tinker deck that would just try to accelerate out into extremely powerful cards and hope that that card could single-handedly win the game.
It was way more complex than that. First off, there’s that whole misconception that Workshop Slaver is some sort of combo deck (with the combo being Mindslaver plus mana) since Control Slaver is gets called Control Slaver, which seems to blind people into not thinking about racing with the deck’s creatures or trying to lock out the opponent. In actuality, it’s the first deck that’s the least flexible. All it can do is beat down and try not to die. Workshop Slaver, on the other hand, can beat down, but it can also try to lock the opponent out with Chalice or kill them through Mindslaver.
There are other assumptions that people make that blind them into disregarding options that are available. Just because the deck is called”Workshop Slaver” doesn’t mean that you have to go for Mindslaver. Very often, simply winning can be a better gameplan. Pentavus is a surprisingly strong clock, especially when combined with Goblin Welder. The discovery of this method of playing the deck allowed Workshop Slaver to have stronger matchups against decks such as Fish and Oshawa Stompy than was originally thought. Before, Workshop Slaver would have The Fear when it came to Null Rod. You’d be afraid of it, they’d play it, you’d go to pieces, and they’d win. After all, it shuts off Mindslavers and since your deck is called Workshop Slaver so of course you should lose. Right?
Don’t forget about Tinker, either. Most people see Tinker and think that it has”Get Memory Jar!” written on it in big, block letters and don’t stop to think that while Memory Jar may draw them into something with which can win them the game, there might be a better chance of winning the game outright by getting say, Memnarch. It might not seem as flashy, but it can still win you the game.
Recap:
New Stacker had more creatures, but Slaver could beat down as well. Slaver appeared to have fewer options, but in actuality it could kill in more ways.
So until next time, remember that just because a variant of a deck does something different, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the difference is relevant.