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A handful of you reading this who have played the hobby for more then a few years might remember me. I used to write the column "Commonality" for Starcitygames.com. Long story short, a very busy life and increasing demands for playtesting of any statement no matter how logically deductive drove me out of writing for them. But here I am again, back in the saddle. I’m staying with the same style (all common’s or budget decks) and we’ll see how it goes. Lets look at type 2/standard. Starcitygames has a wonderful database of almost every states top 8 deck with various features that make it a superb resource for some research. And by their records, the top 5 decks for putting people into the top eight were as follows: *Gifts Ungiven (9.64%) This shows us some pretty interesting things. One, the best decks in the format are taking less then 10% of the wins. This is a huge relief from the days of Ravager affinity. Also of the top 5 decks, one is definitely aggro (White Weenie/red), one combo or semi-combo (Gifts) and three control. The problem here is that building a budget deck usually means your going to end up playing a aggressive strategy. Control decks are harder to build as budget decks, and combo decks? I have yet, in years of searching, found a truly ‘budget’ combo deck that actually worked consistently and well. Lets take a look at the sole aggro deck, White Weenie/red:
This is a statistically average deck made by doing an average of all thirty top 8 WW/r decks that made it at states. That’s a darn big sample to draw from, and it shows some interesting similarities. Unlike a lot of the other ‘top’ decks, WW/r has very little divergence in its card choices. A very large portion of the deck is ‘fixed’ with a large majority of the decks all running the same cards and even same numbers of the same cards! Chances are if you play against a deck like this, you won’t be too surprised by anything they throw at you. Now lets try to ‘budgetize’ this deck idea. Not the deck itself, but the idea: white fliers backed up with red burn spells. Taking away even one set of very expensive rares (the Jitte’s) leads to a completely different deck in my eyes. Jitte’s ability to totally wreck opponents is the reason it’s so hard to get guys, trust me. Next to cut is Char. I’m not too worried about loosing this one, as a lot of people have been seen arguing whether it should have even been a rare! I mean, come on, efficient burn or not, it’s a BURN spell. How many of those have been rare and worth using? Okay, besides Urza’s Rage. Isamaru is almost a harder loss to me. But it’s always risky playing multiple copies of a legend in your deck, even if it is a very cool, undercosted one to boot. That aside, we’re left looking at lands.
The last kick is the loss of Glorius Anthem. This one really hurts: it simultaneously makes your creatures both harder to kill, and makes them bigger threats as well. Assuming we don’t get rid of any lands, we’re now faced with a top deck minus it’s (in some cases arguably) best cards. That’s fourteen cards (only three each of Isamaru and Char) that need replacing. What are some of the options? If you wanted to overload the cheap white fliers, your only options are Araba Mothrider and Courier hawk. Neither one is amazingly impressive, though Mothrider has the ability to act like a second set of leonine Skyhunter’s if its blocked. Courier Hawk’s vigilance really isn’t a big deal here as you’re very rarely going to be playing defense. The white non-fliers don’t add any help either, other then the also rare Savannah Lions.
Your main options if you go with more burn are also limited if you go only for the best of the lot: instant speed burn that can hit both creatures and players. The results? Shock, Guerilla Tactics, and Glacial Ray. None of these is going to have the reach that Char does, but they’re all very useful. Glacial Ray is really only a standout in a splice/arcane heavy deck, and Guerilla tactics, though a card I’ve loved ever since the very first printing, is also not a hugely useful addition in the current meta-game. This leaves us with the humble Shock. One mana, two damage, instant speed. The advantages to Shock are small, but useful. You can use it turn one to clear away anything annoying. This might be anything from a Bird of Paradise, to an opposing Lantern Kami. Burning anything in response to your opponent trying to slap Jitte on it will never be a waste. Ever. The hardest thing to get around, as I mentioned above, is going to be your two amazing creature pump ‘spells’, Glorious Anthem and Jitte. Both allowed you to kill a opponent a lot faster then just the creatures alone, and neither had a worthwhile replacement. So it’s time to look in a completely different direction. There are a handful of instants that allow you to pump up your entire team until end of turn: Wojek Siren, Rally the Righteous, Path of Anger’s Flame, and Charge across the Araba. All of these are ‘global’ pump spells (or in the case of Siren/Rally, radiance pump spells) that can make your team suddenly bigger in response to damage going onto your opponent’s skull or in some cases, a sudden Pyroclasm trying to clear the board. Siren has the advantage of being very cheap to give you a one-turn shot of Glorious Anthem, but only for your white creatures. Rally the Righteous offers a severe beating for your opponent instead, but they both have the same drawback. Because of the way the ‘Radiance’ mechanic is worded, if they kill your initial target for the spell in response, none of your creatures become pumped as the spell never ‘hit’ its original mark. Path of Anger’s Flame has all the offensive punch of the Rally, but without the possibility of being derailed by instant speed kill cards. At three mana, it’s also a good fit for the deck at a similar spot and use as Char. Charge Across the Araba would also be pretty amazing, as this deck does not really need more then 2-3 lands in play at once, but getting to the five casting cost in a timely fashion with only 21 lands might be a serious problem. Looks like we’re limited to either Wojek Siren or Path of Anger’s Flame. I’ll personally go with Path as I find it more of a kill card in a deck that shouldn’t be playing defense. Yes it’s harder to cast and no, it won’t save you from pyroclasm, but it shouldn’t have too. Lets take a look at a list with the changes:
This leaves three slots in the maindeck for any number of solid cards. Guerilla Tactic’s could be used as another burn spell, or Wojek Siren as an alternate source of pump for your mostly white creatures. Frostling might be useful as well for other creature heavy decks, as well as giving Path an extra body to pump.
If you want even more of a hedge against Jitte dominating you, find a few Manriki-Gusari to throw in the sideboard. The +1/+2 helps against removal like Hideous Laughter and Pyroclasm, and allows the equipped creature to wreck equipment all day long. A very odd call to help break up graveyard dependent decks like Reanimator and Gifts would be to run several copies of Reito Lantern. In response to something in the graveyard being targeted, spend three and put the target on the bottom of their deck. Their spell/affect that’s targeting is countered upon resolution because the named target is no longer valid. And no, once they’ve named a target card, they can’t change their mind. Anyhow, to wrap up, WW/r has some options that make it useable, if not amazing. Even without the key cards like Jitte, Glorious Anthem and Char, its still can be a fun and effective deck to run. You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Most Popular
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I
have to take time for a short rant/word of advice here: casual player or not,
low budget or not, you NEED good multicolor lands to compete in this game. It
makes it so much easier to build reliable decks when you have land cards that
can support any color combination you want. I spent a lot of time trading,
hunting and buying all the painlands, dual lands (damn few!) and other good,
solid land cards I could. I hung onto my old ice age painlands and their
reprints as well, and got the ultimate reward when 9th edition rolled
in and they ALL came back. Life is good. But anyhow, to sum up, go for the
lands. Half this decks effectiveness is the fact that over a third of its lands
can give it either color of the deck. In a long series of games and matches
like a Regional or State championship, the amount of times that will save you
from mana screw is just priceless.
For
red creatures, one jumps out right away: Hearth Kami. In a format ruled by the
Jitte, any card that functions as both a fast attacker and a way to kill a Jitte
with minimal effort is a good mark in my book.
Sideboard
is almost as hard as the maindeck as you loose at least one set of 4 rares that
are outrageously hard to get (Pithing Needle) and a set that most white/anything
decks all want 4 of, in Hokori. On the good side, Terashi’s Grasp is an
excellent card, and so is Suppression Field, and neither one should be terribly
hard to get. Grasp kill’s so many useful cards and Suppression field can really
wreak havoc with so many popular cards: Sakura tribe elder, Frostling, Hana
Kami, Kagemaro all require a extra two mana to be used. Especially versus
Gifts, a Suppression Field makes their various ‘loops’ a lot harder to do as
each one usually revolves around Hana Kami, which now reads “G3” to activate its
ability. Suppression Field also does a wonderful job of slowing down Jitte.