Well, Prophecy is out and last week I said I’d have a look at it. Once again I’ve been beaten to the crunch by a whole host of writers who seem to have lots of ideas that (I guess) you don’t want to hear for the millionth time, so I’ve got to come up with something else for you to read.
Before I get to the meat of the article I thought I’d let you in on a few of my thoughts while I’ve been trying to think what you may be interested in.
Back when Masques came in and we lost the Tempest block I wrote an article on how to cope with loosing so many cards, I submitted it to a website I’d seen called Star City that had an article competition and I won a $50 prize. For a couple of months I did nothing then submitted another article, only to find the competition had ended because there weren’t enough submissions.
That got me thinking: I really like writing about Magic, if there weren’t enough articles maybe they’d take me on as a featured writer? For a month or so after that I kept submitting articles to Omeed until I got an email from Pete offering me Featured Writer status. I can’t begin to describe how it felt but if you ask people around the office I guess they’d say that I was literally bouncing around. I was on top of the world.
Ever since then I’ve tried to write articles I think people will actually want to read. My favourite was a submission I wrote called”Addiction” dealing with my feelings towards the game of magical cards. The article that’s stirred up the most responses was my article on Merfolk decks and the articles that people tell me are actually good strategy reading seem to be”Ged-don with it” and”Permanent Sideboarding”.
So, when you plan to write about something and it becomes obvious that you shouldn’t, what do you write about? Several people have told me that my articles swap between rants on one topic or another and strategy. I guess that makes this week a rant week, either that or I prove them wrong and talk about magical cards again.
I thought about writing a few words about MercStack, a new black deck that a few of us have been working on. I also thought about building a few staple archetypal decks (Speed green, Blue Control) with some of the new Rhystic cards in. Finally I thought about looking back at one of my favourite decks and building a Type II version of it. So, a deck… how about counter-burn? How about a counter-burn deck with Prophecy cards in it?
Once again I’ve trawled through the deck archives (courtesy of The Dojo) to find two versions of counter-burn decks.
“Counter-Hammer” by P.Chapin (February 1998)
Card Drawing (8): 4 Impulse
4 Whispers of the Muse
Counterspells (13):
2 Disrupt
4 Counterspell
3 Dissipate
4 Dismiss
Burn/Removal (13):
3 Nevinyrral’s Disk
4 Incinerate
3 Hammer of Bogarden
2 Earthquake
1 Fireball
Land (26):
3 Quicksand
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Reflecting Pool
7 Mountain
11 Island
This deck has a simple aim: Stop my opponent from doing things and cast Hammer of Bogarden until they are dead. The rest of the burn deals with creatures that make it into play, whilst Nev’s disk gets rid of artifacts, enchantments and prot-red creatures that might spoil the day. The land mix is designed to try to deliver two red and two blue at all times. Three red is only necessary later in the game when the Hammer is being brought back to the player’s hand for the kill.
The deck has an impressive amount of library manipulation and card drawing (8 spells in total), four of which that can be reused or help to thin the deck for only one blue mana. These help to make the deck more consistent and reduce colour-screw.
Two other things to notice are the casting costs and damage of the burn spells, and the casting costs and effects of the counterspells. First the burn spells:
4 Incinerate
3 Hammer of Bogarden
2 Earthquake
1 Fireball
We have four 2 casting cost, and 3 three casting cost, each dealing three damage. Then we have three X spells, capable of clearing weenies or a more direct kill later in the game.
As far as counterspells go we have:
2 Disrupt
4 Counterspell
3 Dissipate
4 Dismiss
Two one casting cost, four two casting cost, three three casting cost and four four casting cost. The four expensive ones also replace themselves – a very valuable asset (when the cost of a card is normally four mana anyway). With 26 mana sources in the deck we will be hoping to play a land on each of the first four turns so these should be castable, and we can use the burn to get rid of anything that causes us a problem in the meantime.
So, we’re looking at what counters, burn and card drawing the deck should have. If we fast forward a year we’ve lost the Mirage block and so Hammer is no longer a winning strategy – we need something else.
“Counter Phoenix” played by Forrest Evans (January 99)
Card Drawing (6):
4 Whispers of the Muse
2 Intuition
Counterspells (16):
4 Force Spike
2 Mana Leak
4 Counterspell
4 Forbid
2 Dismiss
Burn/Removal (14):
3 Shock
3 Incinerate
3 Shard Phoenix
1 Earthquake
3 Nevinyrral’s Disk
1 Capsize
Land (28):
4 Reflecting Pool
8 Mountain
16 Island
The first thing I notice comparing this to the first deck is that the number of mana sources has gone up. When you look for the reason why you can see that, not only are there four Whispers of the Muse but one Capsize has been added. Looking closer you can see that the strategy is EXACTLY the same, stop the opponent doing things, burn stuff you don’t like and repeatedly cast a spell to win – the spell has changed to Shard Phoenix, but the strategy is the same.
The next thing I notice is the lower number of library manipulation and card drawing spells. The knock on effect of this is that the number of counters and burn spells has gone up – again to keep the deck consistent.
So, what about the counters and burn? Looking at the burn we have, it’s got cheaper for a start and we’re down to one X spell. We still have three re-usable red-damage spells. Although not a burn spell, the Capsize deserves mention if only for the ‘bouncing disk’ trick that makes the disks reusable too. In response to activating the disk, the control player capsizes it. Removing the source of the effect doesn’t remove the effect so the disk still blows things up and was generally re-cast the very next turn.
Counters: We’re up to 16 and they’re cheaper on average. We have 4 force spikes at one casting cost. Six two casting cost spells, 3 three casting cost spells and only 2 four casting cost. This reflects the fact that, at the time – the environment had just speeded up quite a lot. Suicide Black and Sligh variants were at their peak and without the Spikes and Mana Leaks, the environment was just too fast for blue.
OK, so if we’re going to build a deck like this we’re going to need some deck manipulation and card drawing, counterspells, land and all seasoned with a sprinkling of Burn.
As I’ve looked at land mixes and burn before I’ll start with the counterspells. We have a lot to choose from at the moment (with six full expansions and Sixth Edition in Type II). I’ve split them up into three groups below:
Actual counters (no conditions or ways out):
Counterspell (UU)
Desertion (3UU)
Memory Lapse (1U)
Rewind (2UU)
Thwart (2UU)
Foil (2UU)
Conditionals
Annul (U)
Remove Soul (1U)
Intervene (U)
Spell Blast (XU)
Quash (2UU)
Rethink (2U)
Get Outs
Daze (1U)
Miscalculate (1U)
Power Sink (XU)
There are also a number of new creatures that have Daze (or Mana Leak) effects that we might consider but lets stick to counterspells for now.
So, how fast is the environment? How fast do our counterspells need to be? How much can we let through with the intention of letting our burn take care of it? Well, with Suicide Black and Speed Green we need to be able to deal with decks that put powerful creatures out early. With Trinity Green and Ponza we need to be able to counter early Plow Unders and Stone Rains. Basically the environment is FAST. We need to have a mix of counters that can help us out and still be useful in the later game.
We start with four counterspells. Voted the best blue card in the Golden Mox Awards recently, it remains one of the most powerful cards ever printed. It’s the basis for most blue control strategies and only missed out when two blue mana looks unlikely (in the old 5CG decks many used to run Mana Leak instead). As we’re not going to be playing with many creatures Intervene is out, and Memory Lapse is only really good as a staller for us. It’s not like we’re making them tap-out to cast it under a Winter Orb now is it?
We probably need a combination of some Daze and Miscalculates. Daze has the advantage that we don’t need to have any mana untapped to use it. On the other hand it’s easily sidestepped by the cautious opponent. I’d probably run three of each for now and see which is best in play testing. So. We’re up to ten:
4 Counterspell
3 Daze
3 Miscalculate
We should be heading up to around 15 or so. I like Quash a lot but its more of a sideboard card really. I also think that Annul is good in the current environment and might like to put two in – lets see what else there is first. Rethink is new and I don’t know how it’s going to fit into the environment so it may be a good idea to play with some of these to find out. I’ll play with three for now and hope they’re good. If it turns out they’re not we can get rid of them for something else.
Finally Foil: I like the look of Foil. I think that, although effectively throwing three cards away to counter a spell is expensive, there are times when you’d want to do it, and having the option is probably a good thing. The alternative is Thwart and we know that it’s very good already. I’ll play a couple of each and see how the new Foil spell works. That gives us:
4 Counterspell
3 Daze
3 Miscalculate
3 Rethink
2 Foil
2 Thwart
That’s 17 counterspells, seven of which we can play if we’re tapped out. It’s probably one or two too many but we’ll go with it and see where we end up.
Next I’d like to look at how much land we’re going to need. I have a feeling that around 26 is probably right. Along with the 17 counters that leaves us 17 spells for burn, card manipulation and finishers. Here’s where 17 counters starts to look a lot. If we use three Powder Kegs instead of the Nev’s Disks (the closest thing we’ve got really) we’re left with 14 burn and card drawing spells.
There are two routes open to us. We could play the Hammer game, add three Hammers and kill our opponents that way, or we could add a big, resilient creature or two (or even both). I’m a big fan of giving myself lots of ways to win and, with the reduced amount of land that produces red and blue mana I think that three Hammers may be too many. I’ll add two Hammers and two Morphlings. Morphling is good because, as many counter players have found out, we don’t need to use out own counters to defend it (most of the time). Morphling can look after itself.
That gives us 10 free spells. Of these I’d like somewhere between 6 and 8 card drawing spells as they make the deck more consistent. If we look at the current versions of Big Blue that are around at the moment, Stroke of Genius seems to be the card of the moment, early game they let you draw one or two cards to get you past a land or spell glut, whilst late game they get you to your winning cards. Brainstorm is also being played a lot. In the early game Brainstorm helps you to get to the land you need. With all the Ports and Tangle Wires in the environment we probably need some instants to cast before we’re tapped out. Brainstorm is good. For consistency’s sake I’ll go with four Brainstorms and two Strokes.
That leaves us only four slots for Burn spells. Lets see if we can find room for some more. Here’s the deck so far:
4 Brainstorm 2 Stroke of Genius
2 Morphling
3 Powder Keg
2 Hammer of Bogardan
4 Counterspell
3 Daze
3 Miscalculate
3 Rethink
2 Foil
2 Thwart
26 Land
We’ve got a lot of counters and a lot of them are based around stopping the early creatures and spells that might wreck us. Of all of those we need to most worry about three casting cost Tangle Wires and four casting cost Replenish and Parallax Tides. A first turn Negator could be Shocked, similarly a second turn Boa, first turn Jaguar or a Rootwater Thief. Do we really need the Dazes? If we drop the Dazes we can add another three burn spells. We’d be down to 14 counters (which is a respectable number) but we’d have the burn to compensate. That’d give us seven slots for burn.
If we look at the early two decks, there were some cheap spells, a couple of X spells and a mix of instants and sorceries. I think that Shock is necessary to help us early on and Earthquake will probably help us a lot too. We can’t play that many Earthquakes as we’ll probably get hit by a few creatures before we blow them up, so we’re only going to play one or two. If we play one and four Shocks we have space for two more burn spells.
Extending the theme of using new spells to try them out there are a few burn spells we could play from Prophecy: Rhystic Lightning and Flameshot. Flameshot’s alternate casting cost would be MUCH more useful if it was an Instant. It’s not, and sacrificing a Mountain in my own turn sounds bad to me so lets play with Rhystic Lightning. Who knows, it might be really good!
The deck looks like:
Creatures (2): 2 Morphling
Other Spells (32):
4 Brainstorm
2 Stroke of Genius
4 Counterspell
3 Miscalculate
3 Rethink
2 Foil
2 Thwart
4 Shock
1 Earthquake
2 Hammer of Bogarden
2 Rhystic Lightning
3 Powder Keg
Land (26):
We need to add 26 land, and need to try to make sure it sticks around, helps us out and, if possible, can produce two blue early on and three red later in the game.
We can get the land to help us out by using Dust Bowl and Ghitu Encampments. The Encampments are good early blockers and can help finish our opponents off later in the game. There’s also one more card I’d like to try out (having seen it at the Nationals this year), and that is Terrain Generator.
Starting simply lets go for:
3 Dust Bowl
1 Terrain Generator
4 Ghitu Encampment
7 Mountains
11 Islands
I’d like to play some cards that can produce both colours of mana but we’re very limited. We can’t play with Thran Quarry as we only have two creatures in the deck. If we play with City of Brass we’ll probably find it tapped by Rishadan Ports every other game, and we can’t really afford to spend our life that way, we need it to soak up a few early attackers. So lets’ stick with what we’ve got.
“PhatBeats Counter-Burn” (Version 1).
Creatures (2):
2 Morphling
Other Spells (32):
4 Brainstorm
2 Stroke of Genius
4 Counterspells
3 Miscalculate
3 Rethink
2 Foil
2 Thwart
4 Shock
1 Earthquake
2 Hammer of Bogardan
2 Rhystic Lightning
3 Powder Keg
Land (26):
3 Dust Bowl
1 Terrain Generator
4 Ghitu Encampment
7 Mountain
11 Island
It’s not a tourney deck yet, it’s a deck to test out a few things. Can counter-burn work in the current environment and are Rethink, Rhystic Lightning and Foil any good?
I don’t know. I’m going to put this together and have a look at it. I think I’ll probably play with the configuration of the counterspells (take out a Thwart for a fourth Miscalculate maybe, maybe even take out the Miscalculates for Daze). I might play with Thuderclap to see if it’s better against creature decks. Maybe Arcane Lightning will make a showing, or a second or even a third earthquake.
The sideboard can be interesting too. We have access to all of red’s artifact destruction and anti-white cards. In the mirror match we can play all of red’s anti-blue cards too. With blue we can get rid of (or counter) the Absolute Laws and Worships we might come up against and as anyone can tell you Morphling is one of the best and most resilient creatures ever printed.
I’d probably start the sideboard off with a few Misdirections. Maybe add a few Chills against Ponza, maybe a few Seals of Fire or Seals of Removal against Suicide Black, White and Green. We could play Dominate to help out against White as well as another earthquake maybe.
I hope that you take the time to play this and let me know what you think. I’ll probably put it together in the week and play it against the rest of the team and see how it does. If you’d like to take it to a tourney I’d be very flattered – and very interested in how it plays.
For those that are interested, life is slowly getting better for me. I’ve just finished moving house and now live with my team mate Tarik. The job’s going OK and I have my yearly review next week (fingers crossed). It looks like I’ll be going on holiday next month too.
Cheers, Jim.
Team PhatBeats.