Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Giant Howling Wurmies
Type 1.5
Here we have it, another fast-large-creature / burn deck. It evolved from a desire to play a deck with Two-Headed Giant of Foriys. Like Serra Angel and Sengir Vampire it's 4/4 creature with two special abilities that costs five mana, only it doesn't require two of the same color. I looked at its abilities—block two creatures and trample—and tried to think of what deck environment would benefit most from them. My first thought was that it would work well in an environment where you don't have very many creatures (making it's double-blocking ability pull its weight), so I paired it with Craw Wurm and built ths deck.
Except for one card combo the rest of the deck was rather uninspired, mostly just copying the burn aspect of Yawgmoth-Chi. The cool new part is a low-cost artifact combo: Howling Mine + Relic Barrier. You can keep the effects of a Howling Mine for yourself if you tap it with a Relic Barrier after you have drawn a card.
Two turns after getting the combo into play you'll have made up for the two cards it took to set up and have a one-card-per-turn advantage. Assuming your opponent doesn't break the combo and hasn't locked you down with a Moat or something, if the rest of the deck is any good the card count advantage will be overwhelming.
Utilizing the card count advantage is where this deck is failing. Each spell requires most of your resources each turn, so except for a huge mana advantage as you can play a land or mana source nearly every turn (Wild Growth works well here since it pays for itself), you end up sitting on a bunch of cards, as you're unlikely to cast more than one x damage spell per turn, nor will you have much mana left over for a Fireball after casting a Craw Wurm.
So what's next? I have some ideas of course, and I'll share them, but I'd like to open the floor again if any guests would like to come up with a solution. The goal is to make a deck that runs well with the Howling Mine + Relic Barrier combo. Ideally the deck would work well enough with a Howling Mine in play that even if you don't have a Barrier out you would still have the advantage. Oh, and including at least a couple Two-Headed Giants would be really nice.
The most obvious solution is to make it a speed-kill deck, adding one-mana-drops like Kird Ape, Scrybe Sprite and Giant Growth. Another thought, and this might go along with the speed-kill direction, is to add Icy Manipulator and Winter Orb, increasing your chances of pulling an environment altering artifact and the means to control it. Another direction would be to make a trample-explosion deck, taking Ball Lightnings, War Mammoths and Two-Headed Giants and blowing them up with Giant Growth and Blood Lust. I've some other ideas as well, but I'll stop now and let you have a go.
It will be at least a week before I come back with my solution, so if there's anybody listening who thinks this idea has some merit I'd love to see your take - just post the contents of the deck file (found in the Playdeck folder) in the comments.
Update I forgot to mention another novel card that made its way into this deck: Desert. I was looking for very low cost card in addition to Lightning Bolt to help fend off fast small creature decks, both in the early game where mana is scant, and later when I'd rather be spending the bulk of my mana resources on big creatures or burn spells. Desert did just the trick since it costs nothing and can also be used as a mana source. It is far more effective in multiples, and with the Howling Mine running it's easier to get more than one. It's also unexpected, and while the computer's AI will never be surprised, the human who built the deck that the computer is playing may well have not anticipated the card.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Yawgmoth-Chi
Type 1.5
As promised, here is my version of a Yawgmoth Priest Su-Chi deck. It is a fast-large-creature / burn deck. Let me break it down by card purpose.
For mana we have a bunch of dual lands (because I added white—more on that later), Mishra's Factory, Dark Ritual and Mana Vault. I had to ditch the Basalt Monoliths. If it were a pure burn deck I would have been able to justify that much mana production, but since it is also a fast creature deck Mana Vault was the obvious choice, especially with the creatures I chose.
For creatures we have Su-Chi, Juggernaut, Black Knight, Mishra's Factory and Priest of Yawgmoth. The Su-Chi and Juggernaut have their weaknesses, but a creature that only costs 4 and has a combined power+toughness of 8 is a good deal, and with a Dark Ritual or a Mana Vault you can summon one on the second turn. That is everything I like about an opening combo. You have a high probability of drawing it in your opening hand because there are two cards that if you pull either one of them will work with either of the two other cards. And in this deck each of the four cards is still useful later in the game. The creatures are still big creatures at a low cost, and the fast mana can be converted directly into points of damage by a burn spell.
I ended up only having 3 Priest of Yawgmoth even though they were the genesis for the deck because unless you're casting an end game x damage spell they are under-powered for their cost compared to all the other creatures in the deck.
For direct damage we have Lightning Bolt, Fireball and Disintegrate. That's plenty of creature removal to keep your Juggernauts and Su-Chi out of creature combat where the Juggernaut's low toughness and the Su-Chi's tendency to blow up in your face can be a liability. And in the absence of creatures to remove, unlike the creature specific cards like Swords to Plowshares or Control Magic, direct damage can be brought to bear on your opponent (though clearing their creature threats and killing them with your own is still the most efficient way to win—if this were just a burn deck it would have Basalt Monoliths, remember?).
For non-creature threats (nasty enchantments or artifacts like Moat or Winter Orb) we have a few Disenchants. Yes, I added a third color for a single card, and you know what, even if red or black did have a means of dealing with enchantments I think still would.
Let's play a "what if." What if black had a spell called Rottenchant (1, Instant, Destroy target enchantment.)? Then you could play Shatter and Rottenchant in a red/black deck and be able to deal with artifacts and enchantments. But now you've invested two different cards to deal with one situation—that nasty environmental enchantment or artifact that's got you locked so bad you can't burn or attack your way out off. And you have to get lucky enough to draw the correct one. If your opponent doesn't have any enchantments, then one of your cards is useless. If they don't have artifacts the other is useless. If they don't have either you're looking at a lot of useless cards. That's why I prefer having one card that destroys either type, and will add another color to a deck just to have that card.
The only downside that I see is Blood Moon, but that's far less of a threat since we're playing primarily red/artifact. The worst that could happen is that you end up sitting on a Black Knight because you can't come up with the .
So that is how I justify adding a third color for a single card. If you have any counter arguments please add a comment. In the meantime you will see this technique continue in my next post, a deck called "Giant Howling Wurmies," a very similar fast-large-creature / burn deck, but red/green/white and a co-dependent combo (not as consistent but potentially game winning).
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Priest of Yawgmoth
I'm going to break formula here and present an idea for a deck rather than a playtested and polished one. Here's the idea: if you sacrifice a mana producing artifact to a Priest of Yawgmoth (1, 1/2 creature, Tap to add an amount of black mana equal to target artifact's casting cost to your mana pool) you can double the artifact's mana production. Sacrifice a Basalt Monolith after tapping it and you'll have 3. Even better, sacrifice a Su-Chi and you'll trigger it's mana production side-effect and get 4.
I've learned a few lessons from the deck prototyping that I've done with this concept so far. First is that if you're playing with Su-Chi you'll want to have someplace to sink the mana should it go and get itself killed before you get a chance to sacrifice it to Yawgmoth. Mishra's Factories work well for this. Second is that of the three creatures just mentioned, the Priest of Yawgmoth is the most vulnerable, enough so that some Animate Dead might be warranted. Third, and this is probably the most obvious, have plenty of spells with X in the casting cost. Fireball is the most obvious, but Rock Hydra also works rather nicely. Using a prototype deck I cast a 21/21 hydra.
If anyone would like to share a deck they've developed from this concept either post it in the comments or email it to me. I'll refrain from posting my version (should I even have a chance to finish it) for at least a week so that you won't be influenced by anything more than my ramblings in the above paragraph (making the deadline Sunday, May 22nd for you last-minute folk).
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Temporary Template (new site feed)
Temporary template change here. Archiving has changed here in blogger land. My other blogs are grandfathered in to the old archiving system, but this one is not, so the design has to change for archiving to work. But it's about time I got some of the new features working, like Previous Posts listed by title. Based on the struggles I've been having over my current freelance design project I'm realizing that I need to keep my design skills sharper than they have been, so when my freelance is under control I'll come back and give this thing a design overhaul.
Note: with the updates here this mtg sub-site now has it's own Atom Feed. So now when the site goes dormant for months at a time and then I post a flurry of decks you'll know. And if you don't have a feed reader, or know what one is, get yourself over to Bloglines right now.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Blue Skies
Type 1.5
This deck has a bit of a story behind it. It started last October when my old high school roommate sent me this deck: Josh's Moat and Castle. Since then I've been considering building a competitive version of the deck.
I'll skip the part where I explain that decks must contain 60 cards, no more, no less, I've covered that before. First thing then was to make all the cards play well together. If we're playing with Moat (and of the two theme cards it's by far the better card) then we can't play any land bound creatures. So what does that leave us with for white creatures? Mesa Pegasus, Osai Vultures, and Serra Angel. Clearly the Serras are going to stay (earlier drafts of the deck contained 4), but the other two creatures just don't hold up on their own. They need supporting enchantments in order to survive creature combat with anything, and cost too much mana to be really fast. Supporting enchantments (except global ones like crusade) are a no go. So I fished around and found Thunder Spirit (tip: use the Advanced Search to generate a list of white creatures with flying) and then started thinking about adding another color.
Blue was the obvious choice for dominant flying creatures. I added Serendib Efreet and Phantasmal Forces. The Serendibs are huge for 3 mana, and at 4/1 the Forces have power equal to their casting cost, and the Castles could make them slightly less disposable (though unfortunately they were eventually squeezed out of the deck). Blue also let me play another fun card, Siren's Call, which works well with both Castle and Moat.
I started playtesting the deck at this point. It was on the right track, but just wasn't fast enough. I'm on a Type 1.5 kick, so there were no moxes for fast mana. I was playing Mana Vaults, but the trouble with them is that you have to draw them in the right order, a Vault followed by a Serra or Phantasmal Forces. Even adding in the Flying Men that I had forgotten wasn't enough. Unless I'm playing a reactive deck I want an opening move first hand every time. So I dipped in to a third color: green.
Green gave me the speed I was looking for. Scrybe Sprites clearly fit right in, Giant growths let my small/mid-sized creatures take on the big boys, and Birds of Paradise in my starting hand lets me play a Serendib or Thunder Spirit on my second turn, dominant creatures at that phase of the game, flying or no.
So that's the deck. If it weren't for the origin I'd probably ditch the Castles in favor of either the Phantasmal Forces, or a Jalum Tome or two to burn through the extra land in the middle to end game. Other than that I'd say this is a very solid deck, capable of taking on just about anything in it's class (it's about three for five against the Plague Rat test deck).
