Sunday, December 19, 2004
Barbed Ape
Type 1.5
I've always wanted to build a deck with Grizzly Bears insane cousins,Barbary Apes. This is another in the series of fast decks that screw with your mana. Play goes something like this: get mana birds/elves out first, slam them with apes and badgers until you get a Manabarbs. Cast it and continue to hit them while they're down, their attempts at defense now bring them closer to death. The blue cards are the fun ones once you've got a barbs down. Unsummon that creature that just cost them life+mana to cast. Tap out the rest of their lands with a Power Sink, or simply prevent them from casting anything (and do 1 damage per land they have) with a Mana Short, which is especially cruel when every turn counts because they're dying quickly via apes.
Poison Counter
Type 1.5
I've been trying to build a poison deck for a while now. Trouble is, poison counter creatures are so wimpy they won't defend you against anything. Since they also cost a lot for their size, the first thing you have to do is keep yourself alive. I tried building a wall deck that threw up fast regenerating defenders. But all the walls could do was hold them off, you needed a wand or a dwarf to send a poison carrier through unblockable, a very vulnerable combination.
Next I tried "cover fire," the thought being that the best defense is a good offense. If the opponent's side was clear my creatures could attack un-impeded. But in a near creatureless burn deck, when I actually did play a creature it didn't last long. By the time it locked down I could burn them to death in 2 turns.
My latest thinking is that the best lock-down is always achieved with a blue counter/control deck. It can defend you as well as your roads to victory. And since the scorpions are black I've thrown in some bruise deck aspects; Oubliette's to remove creatures of any size for a reasonable cost, and should they come back they come back tapped, fair game for a Royal Assasin to finish off. The Assasin's do two things. Obviously, they kill whatever is thrown at you. They also serve a second purpose, drawing fire. Nobody hesitates to remove an assasin, but the hope is that your opponnent will hesitate to kill your little 1/1 Pit Scorpion just long enough for you to lock down with counter magic and poison them to death.
It still needs some more playtesting and fine tuning, it's awefully slow, might need a few Paralyze or dual purpose Unsummon in place of a few higher cost spells, but it's shaping up to be a nice little sadistically fun deck.
Nick (whose "Small Child" control deck I'm going to adjust for the cards available in this game and publish) suggested that land destruction might also work to "lock-down and poison." I've been thinking of building a Black/Green near-creatureless land destruction deck with Drop of Honey, this might be just the kill tactic for it. Here's my initial brainstorm:
4 Ice Storm 4 Sink Hole 4 Strip Mine 4 Marsh Viper 4 Pit Scorpion 4 Wild Growth 4 Dark Ritual 4 Paralyze 3 Drop of Honey 3 Desert Twister 22 land
Another idea for this Pioson Counter (apologies for the bad pun) counterspell varient is to go primarily Blue/White, include only enough black for Pit Scorpions, and only enough green for Marsh Vipers and Birds of Paradise.
Friday, December 17, 2004
Edge of What?
Type 1.5
I'm choosing this deck as my premier Type 1.5 deck because, although it still needs some fine tuning, it is the deck I've been most excited about since my original Type I.
The deck came together when I was thinking about an old Type II deck I still have (physical cards even). It's a quick little red/green land destruction deck, but what really makes it lock down is Stunted Growth. You knock out enough land early on so that they can't cast spells just long enough to stunt them. They're stuck drawing those 3 cards they couldn't cast for the next 3 turns. Time enough to bring them near death via spiders and elves, and pick up more land destruction to maintain the lock.
I had this fun type I, Edge, that was similar, without the lock down. And then I ran into a card from The Dark that I had dismissed because of it's outrageous casting cost: Amnesia. This card will knock out their whole hand if they still have any cards left and haven't killed you by the time you cast it. In steps just enough land destruction to do just that. Remove all the restricted cards from a type I red/green/blue deck and there's more than enough room for Amnesia, and to beef up the direct damage. It's a really fun deck to play, though the Amnesia are still a royal pain to come up with enough mana to cast.
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Type 1.5
Type 1.5 is basically type I, but with the restricted list banned.
The type I environment is "broken" in that it is focused on a reduced set of cards. Even with the most over powered and under priced cards limited to 1 each you still wind up with an environment focused on them. Third, fourth, and sometimes even fifth colors are added just for these cards. Add to that the predominance of certain cards which are also too powerful for their cost, Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Dark Ritual, Disenchant, Giant Growth, Juzam Djinn and Juggernaut, and you're looking at every deck having an awful lot of the same spells.
Now don't get me wrong, the type I game is still a hell of a lot of fun. But as someone who enjoys building decks as much or more than playing the game, it gets old starting out every deck with the same set of cards. Type II is an obvious alternative, but is hampered by the limited cards available in this computer game. I won't stop building type I, and I'm certainly not stepping down from challenges like The Deck, but I would like to try building some decks in a more balanced environment where winning doesn't so often come down to who draws the most restricted cards, and is more about quality deck construction.
Friday, December 03, 2004
MicroProse Astral Set Computer Cards
Been digging up more info on this game. The Astral Set are some cards that are unique to the computer game because they use random effects that would be hard to generate in real life. And there's some new art for token creature "cards". The Ruhk's kick ass, to see them in action play my Nevinyrall's Wrath deck, it's lots of fun, with Disks and Wraths of God destroying most everything.
I'm also trying to track down others who have posted decks specifically for this game. Found one so far: Grim's Homepage.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Deck Building: Structure
Why build a deck using a strict structure? It is much easier to add cards to a new deck than to remove them from an old deck. Having a structure and a method for building decks of that structure lets you build up a deck to 60 cards, rather than painstakingly hone it down.
Here is the most basic of deck structures.
20 creatures 20 spells 20 land
This is the foundation on which my deck construction strategy is built. We'll come back to it later. No real deck is actually broken down this precisely, I've not built one with more than 8-16 creatures for some time, but it gives us a way to break the 60 cards down into managable groups.
Let's walk throuh my deck building process. I'll just make your standard red/green creature deck. Start with the land at the bottom:
8 Mountain 8 Forest 4 Taiga
Then add the restricted cards on top of that, replacing a couple basic land with the appropriate colored Moxes:
1 Berserk 1 Fork 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Sol Ring 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Emerald 7 Mountain 7 Forest 4 Taiga
Now we start from the top of the deck, adding the core cards that define the deck. These are blocks of 4 each (at least for now). If your starting hand had one of each of these cards you'd be happy.
4 Kird Ape 4 Barbary Apes 4 Elvish Archers 4 Granite Gargoyle 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Giant Growth 4 Lightning Bolt ... 1 Berserk 1 Fork 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Sol Ring 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Emerald 7 Mountain 7 Forest 4 Taiga
Now let's brainstorm some cards that might go in the middle, but not decide how many of each to include yet:
4 Kird Ape 4 Barbary Apes 4 Elvish Archers 4 Granite Gargoyle 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Giant Growth 4 Lightning Bolt Fireball Disintegrate Shivan Dragon Blood Lust Sylvan Library 1 Berserk 1 Fork 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Sol Ring 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Emerald 7 Mountain 7 Forest 4 Taiga
Now we need to go in and break this up into 3 blocks of 20. I prefer to push these cards around in notepad, so I divide the deck into sections using rows of dashs. I start at the top and section off the top 5 blocks of 4. Then do the same from the bottom, sectioning off 20 cards:
4 Kird Ape 4 Barbary Apes 4 Elvish Archers 4 Granite Gargoyle 4 Birds of Paradise -------- 4 Giant Growth 4 Lightning Bolt Fireball Disintegrate Shivan Dragon Blood Lust Sylvan Library 1 Berserk 1 Fork 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Sol Ring 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Sapphire -------- 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Emerald 7 Mountain 7 Forest 4 Taiga
Now, presumming for a minute that the top and bottom blocks are complete, let's split the middle section into 5 blocks of 4 cards each, separating them with blank lines. This way we can see how much room we have for those cards in the very middle:
4 Giant Growth 4 Lightning Bolt Fireball Disintegrate Shivan Dragon Blood Lust Sylvan Library 1 Berserk 1 Fork 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Sol Ring 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Sapphire
Now this is the hard part. We're looking at 4 blocks of 4 cards, leaving us room for only 4 more cards in the deck. Thinking about the role each of these middle cards is going to play (thinking back to Deck Building: How Many?), let's pick a few that we'd like to keep, and decide how many we want of each:
3 Fireball 2 Shivan Dragon 1 Sylvan Library
Now is when we give a good hard look at the top and bottom 20 and see if there's anything we can take out because we're trying to fit 6 cards where there's only space for 4. I think with all the Moxes and the low cost of most of our cards that 4 Bird of Paradise is a little overkill, I'll take out 1. And with Giant Growths but no Blood Lusts, Berserk isn't as killer a card so we'll take it out too. Now we have a finished deck. I haven't played it yet, which is the only way to really hone a deck, but it shoud be pretty solid:
4 Kird Ape 4 Barbary Apes 4 Elvish Archers 4 Granite Gargoyle 4 Giant Growth 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Birds of Paradise 3 Fireball 2 Shivan Dragon 1 Sylvan Library 1 Fork 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Sol Ring 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Emerald 7 Mountain 7 Forest 4 Taiga
You may have noticed that I moved the Birds down. I like to keep my blocks of 4 together at the top, and a Bird is more like a spell than a creature anyway.
The next article will discuss further honing of this deck after playtesting. It needs some more "cleverness," maybe a third color (blue for Time Walk/Twister, Ancestral Recall and Braingeyser would help keep the momentum going), or maybe a lock down card like Mana Barbs. We'll see.
Deck Building: How Many?
This is the first in a series of articles I plan to write on deck construction. I would like to start asking for deck contributions for this site, but first I need to establish some guidelines.
First off, let me clear up a real basic one. Decks contain 60 cards. This rule can be hard to achieve, but all the rest of the guidelines are founded on it, so it cannot be broken or even bent. Your deck simply will not work. The mana distribution will be all wrong, you won't draw the right cards when you need them. Just trust me. 60 cards, no more no less.
The primary question this post will answer is, "How many of a given card should I include in a deck?" We're building with tournament rules, so decks have at least 60 cards, no more than 4 of a single card, and there is a restricted list (that I have yet to write up), with the cards on that list being limited to 1.
Here is the significance of including a given number of a certain card:
- One Card — Only include one copy of restricted cards. You'll rarely ever draw one, but they're powerful if you do. Other cards that you may only want to include one of are those that might be helpful late in the game, but you never want more than one. I'm thinking maybe Sylvan Library or Jayemdae Tome. But I'm having to theorize to come up with anything but a restricted card that you would only want to include 1 of in a deck. If you actually want to draw a card later in the game, and it's not restricted, go with 2.
- Two Cards — Include two copies of a card that you want to get you out of a bind later in the game. Examples include a "reset button" like Wrath of God, a tie breaker like Control Magic, or a large (5-6 mana) creature in an otherwise fast deck. You aren't likely to see one of these cards in your opening hand, you rarely ever draw two in a game, but in a medium to long duel you'll probably get one, and it could tip the scales and help you win the game.
- Three Cards — These are tricky. They are cards that are important to how the deck functions, but you don't necessarily want them in your starting hand. It might be useless to have more than one at once, or they might just cost too much. You might find that a card that you originally included 4 of works really well, but if you draw 2 or 3 your deck slows down too much. Or you might decide that you really need to add a block of 2 of a certain card, so you have to knock down a couple of your 4 blocks to 3. Try to avoid this last reason, as it dilutes the consistency of the deck.
- Four Cards — Here is where we get into the meat of the deck. These are cards that you want to see in your opening hand every game. Numerous blocks of 4 are what make tournament decks consistent.
One final type of block that's worth mentioning is a concept I've been playing with recently, having 3 of one card and 2 of another very similar card effectively making a block of 5. Do this when there are two cards that do nearly exactly the same thing, but one costs more and is slightly more powerful, so you include 3 of the lower cost version and 2 of the higher cost. One example I can think of is Island Sanctuary and Moat. They both do the same thing, stop all non-flying creatures from attacking, but Moat is much more expensive to cast, requiring 2 of the same color mana, and 4 altogether. Check out Killdraw to see this concept in practice.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Linked Artillery
Type I
This one is long overdue. A long time multi-player game favorite, this deck used to have Land Tax and Land's Edge, along with the Orchish Artillery/Cannoneers CoP Red / Spirit Link combination. It also had Jeweled Amulets to help produce the 2 red necessary for some early Orchish action. Lacking the Ice Age cards (Jeweled Amulet and Orchish Cannoneers) I have brought in the Cities of Brass again, to help with the mana problems, and stretched the rules a bit by having 8 Orchish Artillery.
The Orcish combination is easily drawn since there are so many of each of the cards required, and the deck is fast and deadly before it gets the setup, with a veritable white weenie deck swarm. The white first strike creatures work exceptionally well along-side the Artillery, allowing them to pick off creatures two or three times their size without dying.
