Recently though, boredom got the best
of me, and I started wondering why so many cards that I liked weren't
played more often. Like Goblin Ruinblaster...that card used to
almost be unfair! That then triggered my thoughts about just how
crazy magic power creep has gotten, and it motivated me to try to build a deck to once again show that power creep has really
given deck builders the ability to build better decks, even on a
budget, due to more “viable” card choices (i.e. fewer “vanilla”
creatures—I bet a lot of your new players don't even know what a
vanilla is anymore because they don't exist that much anymore, but
it's a creature without any ability texts) and cheaper costs of
rares. I guess it's my way of complaining to Wizards about how it's
killed a part of magic, but also how you can learn to deal with the part of
magic that power creep helped grow: casual/budget deck building.
Originally, I had been toying with the
idea of a land destruction deck. Ever since my first preconstructed
deck ever—”Groundbreaker”: a land-destruction deck from the
Exodus block—I had grown to like the idea of destroying my opponents
sources of mana. With land destruction, I could prevent people from playing their expensive
spells which I felt were at times unfair (this was way back before I
had any semblance of how spell power and efficiency) and if I played
my cards right, I could prevent people from playing spells of a
certain color by targeting only sources of a certain color. Playing
land destruction also tended to lead to more complex game choices:
instead of play this creature and attack with said creature next turn, it was now “Do I
blow up a land this turn, or do I play a creature and attack with
creature next turn?” Sure, the choices were still comparatively
easy compared to most decks, but it was a nice change of pace from
almost brainless Magic-playing (aside from doing simple combat math),
but I digress.
From the get-go, I knew I wanted my
land destruction deck to be budget/jank, basing it on how
Ruinblasters were so ignored. Next, I looked at what I would view as
Ruinblaster's distant cousins: Mold Shamblers and Acidic Slimes. I
then started looking at more options, and saw that I also liked
Lavaball Trap for the laughs and potential card advantage, as well as
World Queller. Now, the Queller might not seem vary land
destruction-themed, but if you get your opponent to some number of
lands that you are comfortable with, and have a surplus of lands,
yourself, then why not name “land” as your card type that you
want to have each player sacrifice? The choice of World Queller then
created another need for me: adding ramp to give myself that surplus
of lands, and it was definitely not bad for casing Lavaball Traps.
In terms of mana ramp, a few cards
popped out at me. I've had extremely good success with Ondu Giants
and Pilgrim's Eye from my experience with the aforementioned
sub-5-cent deck (again, I'll cover this deck in a future article), so
they were just auto-includes. Giants are just big butts at 2/4 that can
stop agro decks like Vampires pretty handily, and Eyes were good
because they helped shore up my deck's weakness of having no flying
blockers, and because if I started out a game without green, I could
still keep my hand and play Eye to get my Forest, for example. Next,
another great card jumped out at me: Nest Invader. Just having a 2/2
for 1G AND a flexible blocker or extra turn's worth of colorless
mana-acceleration was too good to ignore. It really makes me scratch
my head as to why the card wasn't being played in any deck out there,
so I felt it'd really be an injustice to not include him.
I started running this deck and had
mild successes, but there were glaring weaknesses: the deck was very slow and very clunky, and I seemed
to be peetering out near the late game, when my deck would start
getting the stranglehold on the game. I realized I needed even more
cards that could net me card advantage. Pretty soon, I started
looking at blue, specifically Enclave Cryptologist. It's really like a crappy
version of Baby Jace, but I knew it would work, because of my success
with it in my Mono Blue Jank deck.
With the addition of blue came another great card that also was from
my Mono Blue Jank deck: Aether Tradewinds. Not only could I bounce a
land, but I could also bounce a Ruinblaster or Shambler and get extra
value. (It was really cool seeing that my work for Mono Blue Jank
had helped me build another deck, by recycling past ideas.)
Unfortunately with blue, also came needs to tweak my mana base: I
added a ton more of those come into play tapped duals from Zendikar
(3 colors is manageable without a heavy number of these lands, but 4
colors almost required the high number), and I also added 3 Prophetic
Prisms. Lastly, I found another piece to my mana ramp puzzle:
Harabaz Druid. Yes, it seems like a worse Utopia Tree, but in
multiples it's actually sort of like an unholy union between a BOP
and a Overgrown Battlement.
As I kept playing, I kept wondering if
I could push this deck's jankiness to a whole 'nother level: in a
flash of inspiration I thought, man it feels really great playing
crushing opponents with all these ignored cards like Cryptologists
and Nest Invader—I wonder what it'd be like to have a deck with ALL
cards like that. And thus, the concept of Non-Tier was born.
Non-Tier meant a lot of changes...well
rewind that. Non-Tier literally means absolutely no non-basic land cards from the
tiers of competitive magic: all the way from the sweetest U/B
control deck in tier 1 to the jankiest Myr swarm combo that some
people might swear by. Therefore, I had to drop my best cards, like
Acidic Slimes, Harabaz Druid, Kor Skyfishers, Evolving Wilds, and in a cruel twist of
irony, the card that set off the original concept of the deck—Goblin
Ruinblaster—was dropped (damn you various Boros sideboards!). I
even had to make sure that Sejiri Refuges were still not being played
in UW control decks. So, Non-Tier is definitely a hard restriction
to impose on yourself.
In fact, cut to two weeks later and I'm
still finding more cards to get rid of: I heard of Nest Invaders
being played in some green deck with Beastmaster's Ascension...and
sure enough, there was a UG Monument deck that played it. And even later than that I saw some Pyromancer's Ascension decks were still playing Enclave Cryptologists, so good bye jank Baby Jace :(. A few big
adjustments and a whole lot of play-testing later, the final version
was crafted:
4CC Land D Jank | The Rusty Machete
22 Creatures:
13 Spells:
I won't lie, the fact I had to drop a ton of cards wasn't all bad as it forced me to innovate more and helped me add at least one gem to the deck: Ulamog's Crusher. The whole concept is, I needed a good finisher, something that dealt damage and meant it, and an 8/8 is most certainly meaning it. The whole idea came from the fact that I noticed with Annihilator, people were almost 100% going to sacrifice lands: sacrificing lands vs. destroying their lands didn't mean much of a difference to me, and it was free too! Also I had used this is in that sub-5-cent deck and loved it (hmm, a lot of my stuff seems to have come from that deck).
Observations
Yes, the deck looks like an absolute
mess, but in all honesty, I like it...enough to actually finally feel
like I'm having fun, while playing seriously. Here are some
observations I've made while playing the deck:
1. The deck is hard as hell to play,
making it extremely easy to misplay if you aren't careful. You
really need to know when you can destroy lands vs. when you need to
reallocate resources for ramping, and when you can be agro (i.e.
start playing out creatures) or being control (destroying lands,
keeping creatures back, playing instants etc.).
2. The deck is also exciting because
you normally start winning when your back is against the wall.
There's been more than one time where I've won with 1 life for
example. And when the turnaround happens...it gets really flashy. A
completely empty board on my opponent's side has happened (or would
have happened had the opponent not conceded) more than once to say
the least:
 |
| Even my roommate who's never played magic knew something went terribly wrong for my opponent. |
3. This deck is extremely robust
against Day of Judgment. The reasoning behind this is all my real
business spells are late game... and the rest are just 2 for 1's
(including most of my creatures) that won't set me back in card
advantage too much even if all my creatures get wiped out at once.
4. Mystifying maze doesn't beat a
Crusher.
5. Mysteries of the deep is really good
with World Queller only because it helps refill your hand after a
World Queller has been on board for many turns, or in any battle of attrition in general.
6. World Queller is pretty good against
decks that like to run a few enchantments (such as Dark Tutelage in
Vampires) or Planeswalkers, because I don't play any of those card
types. Bonus observation: you can choose Instant, Sorceries, or
Tribals if you want to get a grin from your opponent.
7. Thanks to Aether Tradewinds, and the
general chump blockers and strong late-game style of my deck, I've yet to lose a match against Quest Combo. So if you hate
that deck due to its cheapness, play this deck to embarrass them :).
8. Gain life Zendikar dual lands are
actually somewhat relevant...there was a game where I was actually
using Crystal Ball to find me more dual lands off the top just because I needed
to survive and the 1 life bonuses really added up.
 |
| I believe all those Zendikar lands came in the last three turns thanks to Crystal Ball. |
9. I set out to make this a Casual Room only deck because it was too silly, but I soon learned that 1) everyone plays poison even though it's bad, 2) no one plays matches, 3) surprisingly more bad sports in Casual Room than Tourney Practice. I jumped in to the Practice room and was looking to get my ass handed to me, but I'm actually 50-50 (18 game wins-18 game losses), which was about the same record in Casual Room. I attribute this to the decent sideboard this deck has, due to the array of cards you can access with 4 colors.
Next Time...
Next Time...
Due
to the sheer size of this week's article, I'm splitting it into two
parts like my old "Jokesin' With" articles. Expect to see sideboard
notes, a pretty extensive set of screen shots of memorable matches, and a brand new section that
might be a permanent fixture for my future articles!
And
for those of you who are scared I might not go back to $5 dollar
decks, you can set aside those fears. I just wanted a
change of pace and there's only so many possible variations I can go
through before I revert to old ones. Interestingly enough, when I
had first made this deck, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of
8 dollars (which wasn't bad in the realm of budget) but now it's closer to $5.20 :).
Keep
Jokesin'
-HWU
(aka Avatar of Woo on MODO)
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