Mr. P puts on his Robe and Wizard Hat.: January 2012

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Mr. P hates everything, and Episode Two: Party with the King.

Wow, I sure am pleasant to read, aren’t I? In reading over my last two posts, I’m struck by how much I like to write about the things I don’t like. Let’s recap!

So far, we’ve learned that Mr. P hates:

Combo Decks

Combos in general

Control Decks

Land Destruction

Discard

Decks with too many counterspells

Decks that do nothing

Decks that blow up the board every turn

The General Damage rule

Also, I haven’t mentioned it yet, but Mr. P also hates:

The Eldrazis (particularly the Annihilator effect)

The Infect mechanic

“Set your life to 10” effects

Mindslaver effects

Buyback

Based on this, you might assume that Mr. P only builds balls-out aggro decks. This is about 75% accurate as of right now. However, it took me a while to get to the point where I realized that the only thing that is worth doing in EDH is advancing the board state.

(ASIDE: Here, we reach a crossroads; does Mr. P take the arrogant route and assume that everyone knows what that means, or does he take the pedantic route and explain every single cute phrase that he includes in his awful writing?)

When I talk about “advancing the board state”, I am referring to taking actions that move the game closer to its conclusion. There are myriad ways of doing this; the most obvious is to play a bunch of big dumbos and turn them sideways, since probably 90% of games are won through people taking lethal damage. Other ways of advancing the board state include playing artifacts or enchantments that do stuff, mana-ramping, drawing cards, and various other things that most decks what to do without thinking about it.

The easiest way to understand advancing the board state is to consider thing that have the opposite effect. Recurring Oblivion Stone with Academy Ruins is not advancing the board state. Playing Spell Burst with buyback is not advancing the board state (hell, playing anything with Buyback is not advancing the board state, except for possibly Lab Rats). Playing Propaganda effects is not advancing the board state. Destroying lands is not advancing the board state. Discard is not advancing the board state.

I think the natural tendency for most people when they start playing EDH is to build one of two decks: the “all threats/no answers” deck or the “all answers/no threats” deck. The “all threats/no answers” deck (the “Heavenly Inferno” precon, for example) has a whole bunch of scary things, with no board control or card-draw to back them up. It has no way to deal with anything, so its only plan is to continue to play more threats and try to eliminate people before they can deal with the threats it has played. These are the decks that tend to have to overextend, which makes them bend over to board wipes . These decks can advance the board state all day, but since they often get shut down by single cards, it’s easy to get frustrated with these types of decks.

Some people are worried about this, and so they go ahead and build the logical opposite, the “all answers/no threats” deck. This style of deck can answer everything all day long, without ever doing anything to actually win the game. Usually these deck are based around blue/white, and run lots of Wraths and Counters and a few inconsequential creatures that never actually get there, and the games go on forever and people are glazing over and now they’re wandering off to get a drank and now they’re pulling out their trade binders and now the game SUCKS. I think of these decks as “TurboNothing” decks. The “Political Puppets” precon is a good example of this type of deck. (For a much more interesting and better written account of the struggles DJ and I had with building a deck like this, go over here.)

Semi-interesting point about Political Puppets: most people who buy it and then decide to modify it start by adding a bunch of obnoxious Insta-Win combos (Transcendance, Thought Lash, Illusions of Grandeur, etc). This is because the logical win condition for TurboNothing decks is to eventually combo out; clearly they’re never going to win through doing damage.

This, of course, is the rub; in other formats, the idea of locking down the board before eventually hitting your combo is completely acceptable. One of the main challenges of transitioning from “competitive” formats like Vintage or Legacy into a “casual” format like EDH is wrapping your brain around the understanding that EDH games that end like this are not particularly satisfying for anyone; the people who have been combed out feel cheated, and the person who combed them out (often) feels like a dick. However, this understanding comes with time, which is why many people’s initial EDH lists include things like Counter/Top and Sundering Titan. (Mine certainly did.)

Eventually, most people realize that the format is not about these types of decks and either 1) build something different, or 2) decide EDH is not for them. Part of the joy of EDH is the deck building process, and typically the decks that are the most satisfying to play are the ones that run a decent balance of threats and answers; figuring out how to achieve this balance is part of the fun. I think many people dislike combo decks or combo finishes because they feel too “easy”; people like winning games of EDH in ways that are memorable, and it’s not particularly memorable to tell a story with “and then Steve resolved Tooth and Nail and combed us out and the game ended.”

(DISCLAIMER: obviously, I’m ignoring the fact that there are some people whose playgroups like infinite combos, land destruction, prison decks, etc. I know these playgroups exist, I’m just not writing this for them. )

For me, the revelation that decks that want to end with a combo finish are f'ing boring came through playing with three decks: my friend Melvin’s Horde of Notions deck, my friend Cassidy’s Intet, the Dreamer deck, and the Reaper King deck I’m featuring here.

Horde of Notions was Melvin’s first EDH deck, and it was basically five-color GoodStuff. Although it could do different things, the games always ended in the same way: Tooth and Nail for Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite, or Conflux for Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite or some other combo. Eventually, Melvin got tired of us complaining and took out Pestermite, which meant that the deck was now five-color GoodStuff without a win condition; he ended up taking the thing apart soon afterwards.

Intet, the Dreamer was Cass’s first EDH deck, and it was basically three-color GoodStuff. Although it could do different things, the games always ended in the same way: Tooth and Nail for Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite. Eventually, Cass got tired of us complaining and took out Pestermite, which meant that the deck was now three-color GoodStuff without a win condition; he ended up taking the thing apart soon afterwards.

Meanwhile, I had recently gone 4-0 at the Shadowmoor prerelease with a silly deck that featured Reaper Kin g and six Scarecrows (and two Farhaven Elf for mama fixing!) Not wanting to miss out on all the miserable combo fun, I set out to build my own obnoxious combo deck.

(design)

The initial build of Reaper Kin g was pretty terrible. You look at Reaper Kin g, and you think “wow, he can blow stuff up!” The downside of this is that the way he blows stuff up is by playing Scarecrows, and the Scarecrows are all pretty terrible. So now you’re saddled with a bunch of suboptimal creatures that are only worth playing when your General is in play. This leads to one of 3 options:

1) Play changelings

2) Play GoodStuff

3) Play combo

The Changelings are all pretty underwhelming, although they do give you the option to go into Terrible Tribal Shenanigans!™ territory. More likely, you’re going to end up in the land of either GoodStuff or Combo.

From a GoodStuff standpoint, five-color gives you access to…well…everything. The most obvious route is to just grab all the best cards of each color, shove them into a pile together, and add a pile of terrible Scarecrows and call it a day. This was my first pass at Reaper Kin g. I also ran a fair amount of Affinity stuff, because BROODSTAR! Because I was a terrible deck builder, I decided that I didn’t need to run much removal because, hey, my General was removal! This worked until someone Control Magic-ed my General. Back to the drawing board.

The second pass at Reaper Kin g wedged in some Wrath effects, and also worked in a fairly substantial draw and tutor package including the Blue and Black Bringers. (As a side-note, the Bringers are my one issue with the “color-identity” rule; I hate the fact that you can only play these guys in five-color decks. Whatever.) If you ever want to run a contest for “creature that will draw you the most hate ever of all time,” make sure you leave room on your nominations list for the Blue and Black Bringers. Good lord.

Somewhere in the deck building process, I began to figure things out. The main thing that I figured out is that HOLISTIC WISDOM IS GOSH DARN BROKEN. Seriously. In a world where EDH drives the prices of obscure bulk rares from older sets into the $5+ range, I cannot for the life of me figure out how this card is still selling for 75 cents. THIS CARD IS INSANE.

Here’s a quick list of what Holistic Wisdom does in this deck:

1) Turn any late-game Sorcery topdeck into an extra turn.

2) Turn any late-game Artifact topdeck into a Vindicate

3) Turn any late-game mana-ramp topdeck into Last Stand

Make no mistake; this deck is a Holistic Wisdom combo deck. The main interactions it is looking for are:

1) Time Warp recursion

eventually followed by

2) Last Stand recursion

Last Stand is ultimately the deck’s win condition: if you have out Urborg or Prismatic Omen, Last Stand essentially does about 25 life loss to someone, plus some other things, for 5 mana.

In order to accomplish this, the deck is full of Time Warp effects (in its optimal build it runs three), and it also runs a large suite of Sorcery mana ramps (which can be turned into Time Warps if drawn late game.) It also runs the requisite suite of Scarecrows, so it can get some damage in early before the combo finish. Finally, it runs a fair amount of 5-color good stuff because hey, where else am I going to play that foil Maelstrom Nexus?

(analysis)

This deck starts off doing the standard: mana ramping, drawing cards. It usually wants to wait to play Reaper Kin g until it has a scarecrow in hand, as Reaper Kin g often doesn’t stay on the table for very long. It runs enough board control to make it to the mid-game, at which time it starts taking extra turns and generally boring people out of their minds. Eventually, it gets people into range where it can finish them off with Last Stand. (Side note: I realize that this listcould be substantially more "optimized" in order to reliably counter out. If you're having those ideas, you may not be the target audience for this blog.)

(if you were to build this…)

Start by apologizing to your friends for boring them to death. Then curse SCG and the Legacy format for what it has done to the price of duals. If you can’t dig out a Capture of Jingzhou (which I’m sure most people have kicking around in their bulk rare box), you can always run Walk the Aeons in this slot, although the buyback is pretty steep. If you can’t dig out a Temporal Manipulation (which I’m sure most people are currently using as a bookmark), you can run Beacon of Tomorrows or Time Stretch in this slot, although both are insanely expensive and Beacon of Tomorrows doesn’t recur very well (Time Stretch is on my list of cards that are “too easy” and I refuse to run it, even in an obnoxious GoodStuff combo deck like this one.)

If you want to take this in a more pleasant route, start by picking a different general. Seriously. The Scarecrows thing on its own is pretty awful, and 5-color GoodStuff decks are totally boring. Honestly, the only other interesting thing I can think of to do with this would be to make some sort of 5-color Metalcraft, although that just sounds awful.

Anyways…Reaper Kin g!

(sorted by function)

General

Reaper Kin g

Scarecrows (or something like them) (13)

Sakashima, the Imposter

Cairn Wanderer

Guys that Find Things (2)

Trinks

Dildo

Guys that Do Things (2)

Etched Oracle

Duplicant

Not Very Good, but Seems Cute (1)

Etched Monstrosity

5-Color GoodStuff! (1)

Maelstrom Archangel

Let’s Protect the Team! (3)

Lightning Greaves

Swiftfoot Boots

Crystal Shard

Let’s Reuse Things! (5)

Let’s Draw Some Cards! (7)

Let’s Get the Things We Want! (3)

Sensei’s Divining Top

Demonic Tutor

Praetor’s Grasp

Let’s Fix Our Mana! (1)

Prismatic Omen

Let’s Ramp Our Mana! (10)

Let’s Take Some Extra Turns! (3)

Time Warp

Temporal Manipulation

Capture of Jingzhou

Let’s Do Stuff! (1)

Tezzeret the Seeker

Let’s Get Rid of Stuff! (6)

Swords to Plowshares

Engineered Explosives

Let’s Encourage People not to Attack us! (1)

Collective Restraint

Let’s Do Something Broken! (3)

Last Stand

Rite of Replication

Maelstrom Nexus

Lands! (37)

Tundra

Scrubland

Plateau

Savannah

Underground Sea

Volcanic Island

Tropical Island

Badlands

Bayou

Taiga

Plains x 2

Island x 2

Swamp x 2

Mountain x 2

Forest x 4

Reflecting Pool

Misty Rainforest

Temple of the False God

Kor Haven

Volrath’s Stronghold

Phyrexia’s Core

Miren, the Moaning Well

Dust Bowl

Strip Mine

From a nostalgia standpoint, I love this deck. From every other standpoint, I hate this thing.

Up Next: Attacking, and all the issues that go with it, plus Episode Three: A Deck Mr. P actually likes!

Mr. P's Current Favorite Functional Reprint

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

What happened last night

...Mr. P counts his lands.

"Flashback Recoup targeting Living Death?

Flashback Living Death?

Insurrection?"

Saturday, January 21, 2012

A thousand words about interactivity, and Episode One: Teneb, The Harvester

Back in 2003 when I used to play Type 1, I had three pet decks. The first was Keeper, which you may remember as a Mana Drain based control deck. It was a blue control deck that ran cards from every color (Red for Gorilla Shaman and Red Elemental Blast in the sideboard, White for Balance and Swords to Plowshares, Black for Demonic Tutor and Yawgmoth’s Will, Green for Regrowth.) It had a “silver bullet” strategy; that is, it could find whatever card was the greatest weakness of the opposing deck and play it. For this purpose, it also ran a Cunning Wish suite. It was highly interactive, but only in the sense that it wanted to stop the other player from doing anything. It would eventually win with Morphling beats, or Exalted Angel beats, or Decree of Justice Soldier Tokens. I loved playing it because it seemed to have an answer to anything.

Eventually, I got tired of watching people glaze over from endless games where they never did anything, and I moved on to playing 5 Color TPS (The Perfect Storm). TPS was the exact opposite in terms of interactivity; it wanted to play Turn One Xantid Swarm, and then combo out on Turn Two. If the other player was playing something without Blue, it would combo out on Turn One. In this case, “combo out” meant taking a 15 minute turn in which I played the entire Vintage Restricted List and then played Tendrils of Agony for lethal. I loved playing the deck because it was like a gigantic logic problem; how can you win with these 7 cards?

Eventually, I got tired of watching people glaze over from seemingly endless games where they watched me take a very long, very confusing turn before announcing that the game was over, and then playing a second game in which the exact same thing happened. I remember countless matches where my opponent’s entire experience was play Plains, lose; game two, play Plains, lose. TPS was the ultimate deck for inducing the “what the f just happened?” look from unsuspecting opponents. I eventually started to feel bad about this.

Towards the end of my time playing Type 1, I also assembled Burninator, which was a completely one-dimensional burn deck. Typical Burninator games went like this: Turn One: Mountain, Bolt. Turn Two: Mountain, Bolt, Bolt. Turn Three: Mountain, Bolt, Price of Progress, Fireblast. The fact that the deck functionally ran 16 Bolts helped this game plan tremendously. Burninator would board in something like 10 cards against combo decks, because it needed to try to outrace them; it pretty much ignored all other decks. Sometimes people would Force of Will my Bolts, which just meant that they were taking 1 and discarding a card instead of taking 3. Whatever.

Eventually, I got tired of watching people glaze over from relatively short games where I ignored everything they played and just endlessly Bolted them. This was also around the time that “Workshop, Trinisphere” became the popular thing to do in Type 1, and now I was the one glazing over while my opponent Wasted my lands and beat me to death with Juggernauts.

I don’t miss Vintage at all.

When people try to defend Vintage (which is what you constantly have to do if you are a Vintage player), they usually have to do so based on one of two accusations: one, that it is completely dependent on winning the coin flip or dice roll, and two, that it is totally non-interactive. I certainly used to make the arguments against these ideas, and at the time I totally believed them. The interesting thing about subjectivity is how a few degrees this way or that way can seem like such a big deal from a certain perspective; it’s like when baseball announcers make fun of a pitcher because their fastball is only 90 miles per hour. When you play Vintage all the time, you begin to see how an opening hand with a Dual is substantially different than an opening hand with a Fetch. Interactivity becomes measured in how you use your responses to things, or if you are the one initiating the actions to which your opponent responds. Interaction in Type 1 is extremely subtle, and hard to recognize from an outside perspective.

Conversely, part of what I enjoy so much about EDH is that the good games of EDH involve interaction on the most obvious level possible: playing big dumbos, blowing stuff up, and attacking with the world. Because of this, I have developed a strong distaste for decks that seem “non-interactive.” The most obvious examples of this would be decks that run mass land destruction, heavy discard, “lockout” style combos, or endless counterspells. I detest hard combo decks, but at least those decks usually win relatively quickly. To me the worst games of EDH are the ones where someone assembles a board state that prevents anyone from doing anything , without advancing the board state at all. I think of this type of deck as “TurboNothing.”

At a game at our LGS a few months ago, a player created a game state where he had Dovescape, Humility, and Lightmine Field in play; this hard-locked everyone (himself included) from doing anything at all. The other night someone was discussing the interaction of Knowledge Pool and Arcane Lab/Rule of Law. I feel that most people who are drawn to EDH are specifically looking to avoid these types of boring, non-interactive games.

I have tried very hard to avoid building these types of decks. As a result, there are certain cards that I will almost never run because I feel that they are too antithetical to interaction. I’ll talk about specifics at some point in the future.

I bring this up here because, of all the decks I have, the Teneb deck I’m writing about here is the closest thing I have to a true “prison” style deck. As you’ll see, it is clearly not optimized for maximum douchiness, but it is strong enough that I never want to force my opponents to grind a game with it.

Let’s break this thing down.

(Historical background)

Teneb is my oldest deck, and (truth be told), I never play it ever. I keep it together because it is the first EDH deck that I built where it really seemed like the pieces of deck truly worked together the way that I wanted them to. Some of this was metagaming; one of the general rules of thumb for EDH is that usually when people start building EDH decks, they include many, many answers to creatures, some answers to artifacts and almost no answers to Enchantments and graveyards. The fact that Blue, Black, and Red have virtually no Enchantment removal is certainly a factor in this, but more so is the fact that often Enchantments are less obviously threatening than creatures are.

Back in my prehistory days, I had built a bad deck around Enchantments in White and Black (the General was Ghost Council of Orzhova), and somewhere along the way I had the revelation that I should be running all of the green Enchantresses that I used to play in Legacy Enchantress. I added green, and since I only had two options for General, I chose Teneb (his ability seemed like a decent backup plan, whereas Doran was pretty useless in a deck that wants to abuse Moat).

Going into Green also allowed me to run mana ramps, which quickly became my absolute favorite EDH strategy. In went Kodama’s Reach, Explosive Vegetation, Sakura Tribe Elder, and all their friends. I dug through my binders to find enchantments that seemed good, threw in a bunch of Wraths effects, and a few techy cards (Damping Matrix!), and the deck was complete.

(evolution)

This deck has been through many, many changes since I first built it over 3 years ago. The most prominent change is I have slowly been removing most of the creatures from it. Originally, it ran a suite of “GoodStuff” creatures like Yosei and Angel of Despair; at this point, the only non-Enchantress creatures in the deck are Eternal Witness, Academy Rector, and Britney. Also, I’m constantly trying to update the list even though I never play it. The most recent addition is a Creeping Renaissance (from Innistrad), which is going to name “Enchantment” every single time.

This deck is my “project” deck; I’m less than 10 cards away from having all of the non-land cards in the deck foiled. Predictably, the cards I’m missing are all super expensive foils: Demonic Tutor, Sol Ring, etc. It’s nice to have a project.

(analysis)

This deck is a “prison” deck; it really wants to create a situation where other decks can’t do all that much (there’s a reason I never play this thing). Ideally, it gets a draw engine online, finds Moat early, establishes board protection with Privileged Position and Sterling Grove, deters board wipes with Karmic Justice, establishes personal protection with Solitary Confinement, and eventually wins with Sigil Of the Empty Throne Angel tokens.

That’s right…this deck wants to win by assembling a 10 card soft combo.

As much as I love this deck, there’s so much wrong with it. The chief problem is that it’s f'ing boring to play against; it literally has no way to win fast, and it really wants to wipe the board repeatedly while slowly attacking for 4 or possibly 8 each turn. For a while, I was running Helm of Obedience as a way to win quickly (via combo with Leyline of the Void), although being locked out and then comboed out isn’t really any more satisfying than being locked out and slowly beaten to death. So there’s that. There’s also the fact that this deck bends over hard to things like Austere Command, Fracturing Gust, or Oblivion Stone, cards that many decks run. Finally, it leans pretty hard on Replenish for the late game, and the recent printings of Relic of Progenitus, Nihil Spellbomb, and Bojuka Bog have all given people attractive “nuke your graveyard” options, something this deck does not deal with well.

On the other hand…MOAT!

(If you were to build this…)

I haven’t really talked about my current playgroup yet, but you can probably figure out some things about what they do and do not like by looking at the cards that could be in here and are not. (It’s not like I don’t own Mindslaver or Sundering Titan.)

If your playgroup is OK with combos, go ahead and slot in Helm of Obedience. Theoretically it could also win by committing more to a “General Damage Voltron” strategy by running stuff like Shield of the Oversoul and Eldrazi Conscription, although this seems awful (my playgroup doesn’t play with the general damage rule, and I hate it either way.) Also, you could slot in more discard effects including Myojin of Night’s Reach, Identity Crisis, Words of Waste, and the like. I hate these effects, too, and therefore I do not run them.

Some of the other card choices are dictated by the fact that this deck has gone through many revisions that have never been playtested because I never actually play the thing. In typing up the list, I am noticing a few things that could clearly be optimized, mostly in the mana base. If I were to try to optimize this thing, Riftstone Portal would probably be cut for Marsh Flats. I would also probably remove either Seal of Cleansing or its identical partner Seal of Primordium for Expedition Map (to find Serra’s Sanctum).

Here’s the current list; I have listed it by card function (which I feel is more useful) and also by card type.

(sorting by function)

General

Teneb, the Harvester

Enchantress Effects (4)

Argothian Enchantress

Verduran Enchantress

Mesa Enchantress

Enchantress’s Presence

Tutors for Enchantments (2)

Academy Rector

Enlightened Tutor