Type I

You can't build a deck around a single card (Balance being an obvious exception, but that's why they restricted it). You can build a deck around a set of very similar cards, or a single card can be the knockout punch, the final lock-down from which they never recover. But when you base a deck around a single card the other cards become just supporting cards. How can supporting cards keep you alive, or even win the game if you never draw that one card? This is how various decks that I have tried to build have failed. I built a Lord of the Pit deck with lots of fast mana and fuel creatures for him to eat. It would fizzle with a bunch of elves and birds, and rarely last very long.

That is exactly the situation that I found myself in when I tried to build a Lich deck. The life gaining cards were a waste of space without a Lich. And the card required so much support, counterspells so they couldn't kill you with a Disenchant, and lots of permanents; permanents are literally your life when you are the soul-sucking undead. I eventually built a deck good enough that you could live long enough to cast a Lich, but the Lich always just ended up sitting in my hand. So I took it out, and bumped up to 4 Control Magics and a Psionic Blast.

The resulting deck is good enough to take on any I've built so far. It's creatures are cheap but powerful for their cost and size. The control deck aspects mean you can take on anything of any size. It's more of the usual suspects, but that's hard to avoid in a type I environment full of finely honed decks playing only the best cards.

One thing that may not be immediately obvious is the need for City of Brass in a two color deck, and the lack of a full set of Moxes. The cards in this deck are really cheap to cast, necessary in this cutthroat speed and power environment, but nearly all of them require two mana of the same color. I usually make it a rule that no matter how many colors I'm playing, only one will require two of the same. But this deck broke that rule in favor of powerful spells like Control Magic and Counter Spell. Worth it of course, but it just wasn't drawing the right mana. I could have increased the amount of land in the deck, but that just dilutes it's power when what I need is the right color mana, not lots of it. So City of Brass was introduced and it's worked much better since then. A little painful at times, but what's a little sacrifice compared to consistency and power?

posted by Nils T. Devine  # Monday, November 29, 2004