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Luther: Damn that DBB; even in a budget contest he still manages to beat me down! I'll have to practice against a few people; but who... *Sound of cups being knocked over, coming from the direction of the water cooler….* Luther: You, new kid—ham! Come over here! Ham: Who, uh, me? Luther: Yes you; Daz has spent enough time away from the water cooler to actually be considered a crew member. You on the other hand... *blank stare from hamsandwich* Luther: Yeah, sorry about that—just ‘cause I've been handed a can of whoop-ass doesn't mean I should shovel the mess down on you. Hey, you busy at the moment? Ham: *glances at wrist and realizes he doesn't own a watch* Not really, why? Luther: How would you like to get one of these new fangled [Mini-Articles] under your belt? Ham: Really? Me and you? Working together? Uh, yeah! Of course! Luther: Yeah, okay kid... you'll have to build a deck on a budget of say... $20 in the casual style. You game? Ham: Okay. Do you want me to, like, not try really hard or something? I mean, it would be pretty embarrassing to lose to the newbie. *Begins to chuckle* Luther: Yeah, yeah, laugh on Baloney Boy, I'll try not to cut you too finely! *Huge grin creeps across ham's face* Ham: Okay Luth, casual. Twenty bucks. That's American money, right? Luther: Of course. Just a friendly casual game. Ham: *Crosses fingers* Sure Luth, we can do that....
Shalom, good people! Knowing that it was just a matter of time before I ran out of “lunch time” puns and witty “condiment-like” comments, I thought it might be a good idea for hamsandwich to break out of his shell (bun). So when Luther challenged me to “Design on a Dime,” I jumped at the chance to let my freak flag fly. Fortunately, we upped the “dime” to a twenty which opened up a few possibilities, but if you know me then you can rest assured I will be sending a couple large creatures on the march to track down and kill MDV’s resident vampire. My first instinct told me I should do some homework and feel out Luther and his deck building skills so as to anticipate what he was going to bring to the table. This proved to be quite a monumental task as he has several thousand posts in almost all areas of the forums. Hearing that he was more of a Control player through the grapevine, and having concluded my research as befuddled as when I began, I decided to, simply, go old-school. I will deal him twenty points of damage as fast as possible. I will put together a few large beaters with a supporting cast and find a way to punch them through whatever defense he decides to bring. The first creature who popped into my head was that slaughterhouse on legs from Coldsnap.
One of the most efficiently cost beaters ever to hit the table, with a tremendously prohibitive cumulative upkeep. Perhaps more at home in a Saproling deck, this is the kind of guy you don’t have over for tea. His bloodlust is indiscriminate and insatiable. “Good boy, Rex, go get the vampire!” So as not to place all my eggs in one basket I decided to add another beater. This one should have some more staying power, be a bit more expensive, but also have an extra use to help out the early game, and once they are both in play they should spell certain doom.
Swampcycling, regeneration, killing power: what’s not to like? A 5/3 with regeneration is a force to be reckoned with... again and again and again. All I need now is a supporting (and willing) cast of defenders. Oh yeah, and a way to punch these maniacs through Luther’s defenses. Let’s start with the expendable, dependable ensemble of suicidal servants:
Yes, the Gatewarden has defender. A cheap blocker who permanently depletes an attacker is nothing to scoff at, however, and besides, it will be sacrificed to the Soulgorger at some point. Mourning Thrull gives an early game life swing, and the Imp tends to get people second-guessing themselves. In addition, all of these creatures benefit from my next choice.
The sandwich decided to delve into the world of card disadvantage for this one, but a 5/5 lifelink on turn three is too hard to pass up. Yes, with this I can pump any of my creatures. It’s part of my backup plan (you should always have one), and even if it is a two-for-one exchange it’s a threat your opponent has to address. So how am I going to make this consistent? Simple. Recursion:
Go ahead, kill it. Try again. Too many counters on that Soulgorger? Sacrifice him in your upkeep and bring him back in your second main phase. This deck will not go away. They always say: “Fight fire with fire!” In this case it’s the undead with the undead.
I chose Nameless Inversion for my removal mainly because I can also use it to pump my giant, metal dinosaur, but also because Diabolic Edict was just too expensive. I won’t benefit from its changeling ability, but it definitely stands alone in Black removal. Aphotic Wisps is actually one of the first cards I thought of for this deck. It can grant a creature fear and it has a cantrip. I know it turns a creature Black, but for me that is unnecessary. Fear can get my damage through. Draw a card? Maybe that will help the disadvantage bestowed upon me by Empyreal Armor. So with my new favorite land…
…fourteen Plains and nine Swamps, our main deck total is: $16.36 We’re left just under a quarter of the budget to devote to a sideboard. What if, by some bizarre universal twist (right hand yellow) Luther decides to play creatures? What if he goes pro-Black? In all honesty, those are my biggest fears. So how about we go anti-creature with board clearing enchantments and high flying killers:
Nausea and Festercreep will keep the weenies at bay, and Niveous Wisps was the obvious choice to replace its Black companion offering a great evasive ability with a cantrip. Oh yeah, and Courier Hawk + Empyrial Armor = Turn Three Archangel. Deal with that.
One way or the other, this deck will stomp Luther into the ground. Consequently, being a full-blooded American, I think I’ll pop around the corner with my change for a couple “celebratory cokes” and toast my ultimate victory over that silly, English vampire….
After my utter defeat at the hands of DBB last time around I am determined to redeem myself. Luckily the format is much wider and the budget larger so perhaps I can piece together something that will be able to hold “The Sandwich” at bay. Just for reference, all prices displayed here were taken from www.mtgfanatic.com and were accurate at the time of release. If you live in a country that uses a currency other then the US dollar, I advice you use the calculator found here to make the conversions into your native currency. Last time I tried a lockdown deck and in the end that didn’t work out so well for me, so I need to change tact, come at this opponent from another angle and catch him unaware. I’ve built quite a career out of running Control decks and that is what most people will expect me to field, but instead I’m going to settle on a style of deck I usually feel ill at ease using because it will be so unexpected—I’m going to go the Weenie route. Whilst initially I feel the pull towards Kithkin, those nauseatingly cute little pains in the kneecaps, I feel that is something that can be predicted and forestalled with little effort. The same can also be said about Goblins and even Elves, so perhaps I need to try something a bit further a field. Stirring the primordial ooze that otherwise functions as my brain, I dig around my memories for something to work from and I start to remember the days when Kamigawa was in T2 and the big bag in those days had been the Rats—jackpot! But my inner combo-freak screams out I can fulfill his thirst at the same time, and I feel it might be an idea to listen to. Dredging through the compiled list of combos I’ve gathered over the years (yeah, I know, “weirdo”), I came across the starting point for this deck which is a cheaper method to the same combo that made many Rat Swarm decks so dangerous in their days.
But the problem with any Combo deck is that without the cards that make the winning combination in hand you may as well be swimming upriver, dragging a large bag of rocks behind you. So with that in mind, I need a means to grab these cards out of the deck and I almost immediately jump on Night Dealings. I say almost because I was hoping and dreaming that some of the earlier editions of Diabolic Tutor might have fallen suitably in value, but, “alas; ‘twas not meant to be.”
With the main frame of my deck in place I decided now was the time to concentrate on getting that damage through and to bolster the number of Rats to feed the engine. Keeping in mind that we want to build up numbers and push through damage whilst keeping to the Weenie theme, I settled on a series of small Rats with useful if annoying abilities.
Although both the Bog Rats and Carrion Rats are fundamentally weak cards, they are cheap and will hit play quick; they also help to keep the mana curve low which always aids a Weenie deck run. Swarm of Rats is simply a solid choice because it allows me to power through damage for the Night Dealings and also creates a sort of fusion between the existing creature base and the end effect of the combo (yes, I’m trying to justify a “Win More” choice here), allowing me to funnel even more damage through to my opponent or simply take down their own beat-stick. Ravenous Rats and Chittering Rats are there to keep the mana curve on a steady level yet also to act as a form of disruption or stall, rather than a hardcore form of control. But I still saw a fundamental flaw with the deck as it stood; without some means to protect my spells and interfere with “The Sandwich’s” game plan I was one card away from a complete white wash. With that in mind and the fact that I already had splashed some Blue in for the Faces of the Past, I decided to bring in some counterspells—admittedly this is somewhat predictable, but nevertheless it is the strongest means to defend myself.
None of my choices are what you would consider “Strong Control,” but each performs an additional function that makes it worth the loss in strength. For starters Perplex acts in a threefold manner; either ham has to be willing to lose his hand in order to deny me the spell I’m trying to play, which can be the strongest form of disruption in the earlier stages of the game, or he’s got to lose another answer that he’s holding onto. Either way I come off better for the exchange. But in the later game or even when I’m in a tight bind it allows me to go and grab Faces of the Past or even a creature. Condescend is probably the strongest of the counterspells, but in truth it’s the small addition of scry 2 that drew me to this spell—the ability to sort out my next two draws could make the difference between victory and defeat. Runeboggle is most definitely the weakest of the three counterspells I chose, but I picked it for three reasons; firstly it allows me to keep up my tempo due to the card draw. Secondly it is easily splashed in which always helps in a two-color deck, but thirdly is because it’s cheap, which is equally important in a budget build as power rating. With limited space left and not much money left in the budget I now settled down to build a mana base. In truth, although I need a consistent flow of mana, I can stand to run off of four mana at best, so speed is really not a major issue here; only consistency. By the same token, the Blue mana requirements are somewhat less then the Black mana, but there will be times when I need to grab a hold of both. With this in mind, and keeping the remaining fund levels at the forefront of my conscience, I settled upon a cheap, albeit effective mana sorting solution.
After my utter defeat at the hands of DBB I have reservations about the deck, but by the same token I feel that the things I learned from my first experience have steered me towards a clearer and more effective manner in regards to deck design. So for record, here is the complete deck list:
So all I have to say now is: “Ham; you ready for the harvest?”
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Vampsandwich. 
In the original concept you would use Intruder Alarm, but
since that runs at ten times as much as Faces of the Past yet they both achieve
the same result I feel no shame taking the cheaper route; especially since we’re
running on a budget.
Rat's
- R - Plenty.