Post by crusader on May 17, 2006 14:49:22 GMT -5
Ah breath it in. That's competition in the air you're inhailin... And possibly the experimental airborn neurotoxin I had released earlier.
Regionals is but a few days away and just wonderin' if any of you had been plannin to attend the ohio circuit. I've been building decks like crazy and finally stepped up into a winner. The format is unreal because dozens of decks, literrally, have come into light and all are winners.
Every guild has at least 2 decks, agro style or a control variant, to represent it. (almost, gruul usually runs 2 variants of agro obviously). And then theres the big hitter.
Heartbeat is probably one of the most successful decks out there, with one basic build and many smaller variants, usually contending with sideboard, its one of the craftiest to hit the tables.
Running 2 win conditions, Maga (from Betrayers) and Invoke the Firemind. And on top of that, it runs 1 swamp and 1 mountain... It seems incredibly frail, but when the engine hits, it soars gracefully to victory. With Sak Elders and K-Reaches, it obtains a large mana base. Then in one fell swoop, it throws heartbeats out. It transmutes using Drifts, to fetch Early Harvests, and floats a ton of mana.
It goes 2 ways now. Either transmuting Drifts for Invoke the fire mind to blow em out of the water, OR, transmute muddle the mixture for Weird Harvest, Cast Weird Harvest for 1 (or 2 if you need another drifts) and then fetching maga via the weird harvest and casting a maga for the kill.
It seems rather clumsy but it works, the bad thing is it is vulnerable to mortifies, creeping molds, and perhaps even Kamis of Ancient Law. a Solid counter deck can but it down, needles wreck it, and then you have the Azorius guild mage who says NO to transmute... Tsk tsk. Yet it thrives because most of those are side board cards, and in return, it sides the answers.
The next deck is U/R Wildfire/ Vore... This is a deck that runs land manipulation. Boomeranging and Eye of Nowherering your first land or two, Stone raining your third or fourth, and finally keeping you at 1 or 2 lands before it wildfires, while it has 1 or 2 and a few signets. With counters and draw like Compulsive research and tidings, it simply keeps you backpedalling, trying to get that 2 drop out of yer hand. Now, while your finally catching up, it strikes to kill with Magnivore, usually toting a 8/8 or higher, it beats you into submission.
U/R wildfire/ vore usually comes up on top. Its a powerful deck thats been through so many perfections, its an absolute powerhouse.
Contesting with Heartbeats and mildly with U/R Wildfire is Orzhov Aggro. Running Ravenous Rats, dark Confidant, Castigates, and Shrieking Grotesques, it eliminates many of your late game threats, while using the small beats to take the win. Mortifys, Last gasps, and jittes serve to remove, while it runs the big daddy himself, Ghost Council (aka Ghost Dad) of Orzhova as a very heavy beater and master of evasion, to overcome wraths and condemns.
Sure it costs creatures, but late game rats does very little, and it also nets you a 2 life trade, 1 from him and one to you.
All the discard in the world can't save you from Firemane angel. A blue/white/red control deck that just really stalls you into submission. Draw, Land, Go. Meanwhile, you fight a fleet of counters, wraths, dodge helixs of lightning, and even escape the final judgement, trying to outrace the angels netgain of +1 to +4 life a turn. With compulsives throwing the angels away and digging into your control, and even Story Circles making a brief appereance, you need to either outrace the engine or maybe hit em for one big bang. (or I guess Castigate, if resolving, can greatly hinder their plan)
And back from urza block is another familliar face. Anyone ever see tron? Yeah, it's kinda like that, but in Urza form. Turn 1 Steam Vents, 2 Mine, three Tower + signet, and four Plant = Turn 4 Kiega. It happens more than you think, and with a small variety of counters for control, electrolyzes for board the aggressives out there, the deck always seems to set up the perfect blaze/invoke the firemind, for the game, as early as turn 6. I top 8'd at a standard tourney with Osyp Lebedowics (sp) build, and it was an extremely fun deck. But of course, it has its falls (I'll touch that in a bit.)
Right now however with the Simic and Azorius in the mix, I've seen two new builds. The first runs a few simic signets, savage twister, wildfire, and Simic Skyswallower (possibly the best beasty in block). Turn Four they had tron with the simic signet, so they threw the skyswallower. Immediately following was Wildfire. Now i'm sitting with a Paladin En'Vec and 0 lands, vs a 6/6 Flying, Trample, no target monstrousity. Ouch. And the deck is consistant, also running Kiegas and a bit of permission.
The next build is similar, but it uses tron to get out big blue guys like Meloku, Isperia, and Kiega, and even Yosei, while maintaining board control with fetters and condemns for the early beats. Im not 100% sure the point of tron, sure the accelleration, but if it just nets you a few legends quicker at the cost of mana stability, whats teh point? Eh oh well.
Now straying from tron, there has been a few versions of U/W control lately, but they all rely on the heavy hitters like Meloku and Kiega, and maybe even Jushi Apprentice as a secondary milling condition. The decks are good and fun, but I think they have the speed to contest with Wildfire or Heartbeats, or the means to beat Tron or Orhzov Aggro.
Gruul Beats hasn't been played much lately, its kinda out of date, it had its moment in the sun back with Guildpact and PTQ Honolulu, but looks like Heezy Street is on a nice vacation. But wait... With Seal of Fire and the Rakdos Pit Dragon in teh format, doesn't that just encourage the fast beating aggro deck? I guess it helps, but with Twisters, Condemns, Clasms, Wraths, Judgements, Pontiffs, and Kindle hte Carnages in the format, almost every color has an answer to the fast beats, And your left with no creatures and no hand in the end.
Zoo's been all over, an assortment of random creatures from 2-3 colors or so, but it faces midgame issues like Beats. That is, if your opponent lives to see midgame, you probably just lost.
I haven't found a great Rakdos deck yet, but the search is not lost, one was posted on SCG earlier and it seems doable. Mixing the discard aspects of B/W Aggro like the Grotesque and Ravenous Rats, with Terry Soh's (I think it does look like him) Invitational card Rakdos Augermage comming to the table, theres very few times you'll have no advantage over your opponents hand. Now, toss in jitte, helix, and the onboard destruction of Rakdos Guildmage. WINNER! Well, we'll see. But what about Wrath effects (assuming they topdeck, because thats probably the only way they'll be able to cast it)? We can overcome those with the Crypt champion and Dark Confidant. I'll begin testing it in a lil bit when my group gets to the shop.
There are two last decks, the one I played at the Regional last weekend, and the one I just threw together last night and got so psyched I had to write this article.
The first I played last week. I came in top 8 and placed 5th outta 30-something. I went 3-1 before the cut to the top 8. I played Hand in Hand. I didn't know there was an online build so I kinda just winged it with the general idea in my head. Black/White/Red... It runs 4 Paladins with 8 Hands. IE: 4 Paladin En'Vec, 4 Hand of Honor, 4 Hand of Cruelty. You have 12 creatures with protection with a field where Mono-decks are unheard of. Short of Green Blue, there is no match up where at least 4 of my creatures are untouchable.
Backed with red splash for Helix and Char, the decks biggest problem is the mana fixings. With all my 2 drops costing solid of one color, aside from Dark Confidant, I had gone through perhaps several mana alterations. The final involved 11 Dual lands, 3 Pain lands, and some swamps and plains.
The first match up was vs. a new build that shop players all played. It was the Simic Izzetron build. Turn 4 Skyswallower and turn 5 wildfire wrecked my game one. Game two I had just enough quick damage to actually triple helix for the win before tron kicked off. Third game kiega and skyswallower got me after twister ate most of my guys.
Next matchup was vs. Heartbeats. First game he was about to maga me for 28 life loss. The whole game i sat on 1 red mana with 2 chars in hand. With 3 untapped land (1 blood crypt), and finally my opponent having heartbeat out allowed me to double char for the game. The second he invoked the firemind and I burned perilously. The next game went like the first, except it was a helix + char and my opponent got slightly peeve'd, but we shook and said Good luck.
1-1, sweet...
Round 3: My first 14 spells of game 1 were counter'd while Vhitu Gazi saprolings mauled me. Apparently Blue/Green/White has something going for it.
Game two my opponent stalled on 2 land, but so did I. Finally we both hit a land patch. Then I overwhelmed him with creatures before he got Simic Skyswallower out, by then, Char and Helix won me the game.
Game Three was devilishly close and rekindled my faith in jitte.. My opponent did however mana flood. The deck was nice but the large land patches were to frequent. I suggested Mikokoro and he aggreed, with voidslimes, rewinds, remands, mana leaks, spell snares, and hinders, you can afford to give you opponent a card every now and then.
2-1
Round 4: This wasn't a fair matchup. All day I hoped to play aggro, which I thought would be more present, but so far i had played 2 Control and 1 combo deck. But finally, my unfortunate opponent was packing Black/White/Green Zoo. First game was instant, turn 2 Hand of Cruelty, Turn 3 Hand of Honor, and turn four Paladin En Vec.
The final game went the same, although hand of cruelty died to a putrefy, but it didn't matter much at that point.
----
First round in top 8 I played Blue/White/Red control with the Angels. Game one I was stalled by Circle of Protections. My mortifies just didn't show up. Side out: 4 Descendant of Kiyomaro, 3 Last gasp, Side In: 4 Faiths Fetters, 3 Kami of Ancient Law.
Next game went in my favor, with 2 chars and a helix in one turn for the win. During the game i had dark confidant with jitte attached. I had taken 10 damage in the period of 5 turns with him. *ouch* and finally my opponent played a creature while he was at 14, Kiega. So I attacked and he took the 4. I then mortified his kiega. So the only target he could choose was confidant. Now let me tell you, his DECK was not made for confidant. But needless he flipped 3 lands in 3 turns and took 0 damage. Pfft....
The final game I flooded with land while he tossed 2 angels to grave turn 3, and then threw kiega and an angel turn 5 and 6. Strike 3, I'm Out. Oh well, we shook, said Good Luck, and I reclaimed my 3 pack prize. I wasn't upset, I had played great and had a blast, + opening a voidslime, demonfire, and Grand arbiter out of 3 packs was amazing.
---
I guess the lesson in the end was, even though I was trumped by the Simic Wildfire Tron deck, and probably would every match up, my deck was more adverse and prepared, as only one of the 10-14 guys playing the Simic Wildfire Tron deck made it to top 8.
---
The final deck I wrote up last night on apprentice and fish bowled in maybe 2 dozen games. And I love the results. 9/10 its a consistant beat source. So heres the list. Any response is appreciated.
7 Plains
7 Islands
4 Adarkar Waists
4 Hallowed Fountain
3 Jitte
4 Remand
3 Plumes of Peace
2 Meloku the clouded Mirror
3 Pride of the Clouds
3 Court Hussar
4 Suntail Hawk
4 Azorius First Wing
4 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Azorius Herald
4 Ninja of Deep Hours
--
Ok So its ran great goldfishing but I have 11 Decks to pit it against so if it wins atleast 75% of the matchups, I'll pack it for regionals.
The interaction between the Heralds, Hussars, and the Ninjas is great. Netting 8 life and a draw, or possibly 2 Impulses +1 draw. The pride is an answer to Wrath of god, just because its a consistant supply of flyers when forecasted. The First wings are immune to seal of fire, pillory, fetters and any other enchantment which might rear head. Plumes let the guys through and remand is just there to prevent the bigger things for taking off and to provide a draw.
--
Thats that. Good luck all and any comments are appreciates.
Regionals is but a few days away and just wonderin' if any of you had been plannin to attend the ohio circuit. I've been building decks like crazy and finally stepped up into a winner. The format is unreal because dozens of decks, literrally, have come into light and all are winners.
Every guild has at least 2 decks, agro style or a control variant, to represent it. (almost, gruul usually runs 2 variants of agro obviously). And then theres the big hitter.
Heartbeat is probably one of the most successful decks out there, with one basic build and many smaller variants, usually contending with sideboard, its one of the craftiest to hit the tables.
Running 2 win conditions, Maga (from Betrayers) and Invoke the Firemind. And on top of that, it runs 1 swamp and 1 mountain... It seems incredibly frail, but when the engine hits, it soars gracefully to victory. With Sak Elders and K-Reaches, it obtains a large mana base. Then in one fell swoop, it throws heartbeats out. It transmutes using Drifts, to fetch Early Harvests, and floats a ton of mana.
It goes 2 ways now. Either transmuting Drifts for Invoke the fire mind to blow em out of the water, OR, transmute muddle the mixture for Weird Harvest, Cast Weird Harvest for 1 (or 2 if you need another drifts) and then fetching maga via the weird harvest and casting a maga for the kill.
It seems rather clumsy but it works, the bad thing is it is vulnerable to mortifies, creeping molds, and perhaps even Kamis of Ancient Law. a Solid counter deck can but it down, needles wreck it, and then you have the Azorius guild mage who says NO to transmute... Tsk tsk. Yet it thrives because most of those are side board cards, and in return, it sides the answers.
The next deck is U/R Wildfire/ Vore... This is a deck that runs land manipulation. Boomeranging and Eye of Nowherering your first land or two, Stone raining your third or fourth, and finally keeping you at 1 or 2 lands before it wildfires, while it has 1 or 2 and a few signets. With counters and draw like Compulsive research and tidings, it simply keeps you backpedalling, trying to get that 2 drop out of yer hand. Now, while your finally catching up, it strikes to kill with Magnivore, usually toting a 8/8 or higher, it beats you into submission.
U/R wildfire/ vore usually comes up on top. Its a powerful deck thats been through so many perfections, its an absolute powerhouse.
Contesting with Heartbeats and mildly with U/R Wildfire is Orzhov Aggro. Running Ravenous Rats, dark Confidant, Castigates, and Shrieking Grotesques, it eliminates many of your late game threats, while using the small beats to take the win. Mortifys, Last gasps, and jittes serve to remove, while it runs the big daddy himself, Ghost Council (aka Ghost Dad) of Orzhova as a very heavy beater and master of evasion, to overcome wraths and condemns.
Sure it costs creatures, but late game rats does very little, and it also nets you a 2 life trade, 1 from him and one to you.
All the discard in the world can't save you from Firemane angel. A blue/white/red control deck that just really stalls you into submission. Draw, Land, Go. Meanwhile, you fight a fleet of counters, wraths, dodge helixs of lightning, and even escape the final judgement, trying to outrace the angels netgain of +1 to +4 life a turn. With compulsives throwing the angels away and digging into your control, and even Story Circles making a brief appereance, you need to either outrace the engine or maybe hit em for one big bang. (or I guess Castigate, if resolving, can greatly hinder their plan)
And back from urza block is another familliar face. Anyone ever see tron? Yeah, it's kinda like that, but in Urza form. Turn 1 Steam Vents, 2 Mine, three Tower + signet, and four Plant = Turn 4 Kiega. It happens more than you think, and with a small variety of counters for control, electrolyzes for board the aggressives out there, the deck always seems to set up the perfect blaze/invoke the firemind, for the game, as early as turn 6. I top 8'd at a standard tourney with Osyp Lebedowics (sp) build, and it was an extremely fun deck. But of course, it has its falls (I'll touch that in a bit.)
Right now however with the Simic and Azorius in the mix, I've seen two new builds. The first runs a few simic signets, savage twister, wildfire, and Simic Skyswallower (possibly the best beasty in block). Turn Four they had tron with the simic signet, so they threw the skyswallower. Immediately following was Wildfire. Now i'm sitting with a Paladin En'Vec and 0 lands, vs a 6/6 Flying, Trample, no target monstrousity. Ouch. And the deck is consistant, also running Kiegas and a bit of permission.
The next build is similar, but it uses tron to get out big blue guys like Meloku, Isperia, and Kiega, and even Yosei, while maintaining board control with fetters and condemns for the early beats. Im not 100% sure the point of tron, sure the accelleration, but if it just nets you a few legends quicker at the cost of mana stability, whats teh point? Eh oh well.
Now straying from tron, there has been a few versions of U/W control lately, but they all rely on the heavy hitters like Meloku and Kiega, and maybe even Jushi Apprentice as a secondary milling condition. The decks are good and fun, but I think they have the speed to contest with Wildfire or Heartbeats, or the means to beat Tron or Orhzov Aggro.
Gruul Beats hasn't been played much lately, its kinda out of date, it had its moment in the sun back with Guildpact and PTQ Honolulu, but looks like Heezy Street is on a nice vacation. But wait... With Seal of Fire and the Rakdos Pit Dragon in teh format, doesn't that just encourage the fast beating aggro deck? I guess it helps, but with Twisters, Condemns, Clasms, Wraths, Judgements, Pontiffs, and Kindle hte Carnages in the format, almost every color has an answer to the fast beats, And your left with no creatures and no hand in the end.
Zoo's been all over, an assortment of random creatures from 2-3 colors or so, but it faces midgame issues like Beats. That is, if your opponent lives to see midgame, you probably just lost.
I haven't found a great Rakdos deck yet, but the search is not lost, one was posted on SCG earlier and it seems doable. Mixing the discard aspects of B/W Aggro like the Grotesque and Ravenous Rats, with Terry Soh's (I think it does look like him) Invitational card Rakdos Augermage comming to the table, theres very few times you'll have no advantage over your opponents hand. Now, toss in jitte, helix, and the onboard destruction of Rakdos Guildmage. WINNER! Well, we'll see. But what about Wrath effects (assuming they topdeck, because thats probably the only way they'll be able to cast it)? We can overcome those with the Crypt champion and Dark Confidant. I'll begin testing it in a lil bit when my group gets to the shop.
There are two last decks, the one I played at the Regional last weekend, and the one I just threw together last night and got so psyched I had to write this article.
The first I played last week. I came in top 8 and placed 5th outta 30-something. I went 3-1 before the cut to the top 8. I played Hand in Hand. I didn't know there was an online build so I kinda just winged it with the general idea in my head. Black/White/Red... It runs 4 Paladins with 8 Hands. IE: 4 Paladin En'Vec, 4 Hand of Honor, 4 Hand of Cruelty. You have 12 creatures with protection with a field where Mono-decks are unheard of. Short of Green Blue, there is no match up where at least 4 of my creatures are untouchable.
Backed with red splash for Helix and Char, the decks biggest problem is the mana fixings. With all my 2 drops costing solid of one color, aside from Dark Confidant, I had gone through perhaps several mana alterations. The final involved 11 Dual lands, 3 Pain lands, and some swamps and plains.
The first match up was vs. a new build that shop players all played. It was the Simic Izzetron build. Turn 4 Skyswallower and turn 5 wildfire wrecked my game one. Game two I had just enough quick damage to actually triple helix for the win before tron kicked off. Third game kiega and skyswallower got me after twister ate most of my guys.
Next matchup was vs. Heartbeats. First game he was about to maga me for 28 life loss. The whole game i sat on 1 red mana with 2 chars in hand. With 3 untapped land (1 blood crypt), and finally my opponent having heartbeat out allowed me to double char for the game. The second he invoked the firemind and I burned perilously. The next game went like the first, except it was a helix + char and my opponent got slightly peeve'd, but we shook and said Good luck.
1-1, sweet...
Round 3: My first 14 spells of game 1 were counter'd while Vhitu Gazi saprolings mauled me. Apparently Blue/Green/White has something going for it.
Game two my opponent stalled on 2 land, but so did I. Finally we both hit a land patch. Then I overwhelmed him with creatures before he got Simic Skyswallower out, by then, Char and Helix won me the game.
Game Three was devilishly close and rekindled my faith in jitte.. My opponent did however mana flood. The deck was nice but the large land patches were to frequent. I suggested Mikokoro and he aggreed, with voidslimes, rewinds, remands, mana leaks, spell snares, and hinders, you can afford to give you opponent a card every now and then.
2-1
Round 4: This wasn't a fair matchup. All day I hoped to play aggro, which I thought would be more present, but so far i had played 2 Control and 1 combo deck. But finally, my unfortunate opponent was packing Black/White/Green Zoo. First game was instant, turn 2 Hand of Cruelty, Turn 3 Hand of Honor, and turn four Paladin En Vec.
The final game went the same, although hand of cruelty died to a putrefy, but it didn't matter much at that point.
----
First round in top 8 I played Blue/White/Red control with the Angels. Game one I was stalled by Circle of Protections. My mortifies just didn't show up. Side out: 4 Descendant of Kiyomaro, 3 Last gasp, Side In: 4 Faiths Fetters, 3 Kami of Ancient Law.
Next game went in my favor, with 2 chars and a helix in one turn for the win. During the game i had dark confidant with jitte attached. I had taken 10 damage in the period of 5 turns with him. *ouch* and finally my opponent played a creature while he was at 14, Kiega. So I attacked and he took the 4. I then mortified his kiega. So the only target he could choose was confidant. Now let me tell you, his DECK was not made for confidant. But needless he flipped 3 lands in 3 turns and took 0 damage. Pfft....
The final game I flooded with land while he tossed 2 angels to grave turn 3, and then threw kiega and an angel turn 5 and 6. Strike 3, I'm Out. Oh well, we shook, said Good Luck, and I reclaimed my 3 pack prize. I wasn't upset, I had played great and had a blast, + opening a voidslime, demonfire, and Grand arbiter out of 3 packs was amazing.
---
I guess the lesson in the end was, even though I was trumped by the Simic Wildfire Tron deck, and probably would every match up, my deck was more adverse and prepared, as only one of the 10-14 guys playing the Simic Wildfire Tron deck made it to top 8.
---
The final deck I wrote up last night on apprentice and fish bowled in maybe 2 dozen games. And I love the results. 9/10 its a consistant beat source. So heres the list. Any response is appreciated.
7 Plains
7 Islands
4 Adarkar Waists
4 Hallowed Fountain
3 Jitte
4 Remand
3 Plumes of Peace
2 Meloku the clouded Mirror
3 Pride of the Clouds
3 Court Hussar
4 Suntail Hawk
4 Azorius First Wing
4 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Azorius Herald
4 Ninja of Deep Hours
--
Ok So its ran great goldfishing but I have 11 Decks to pit it against so if it wins atleast 75% of the matchups, I'll pack it for regionals.
The interaction between the Heralds, Hussars, and the Ninjas is great. Netting 8 life and a draw, or possibly 2 Impulses +1 draw. The pride is an answer to Wrath of god, just because its a consistant supply of flyers when forecasted. The First wings are immune to seal of fire, pillory, fetters and any other enchantment which might rear head. Plumes let the guys through and remand is just there to prevent the bigger things for taking off and to provide a draw.
--
Thats that. Good luck all and any comments are appreciates.
