Stepping up your game: Part 3

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jacelightning

29 December 2010

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Entering the Workshop

Table of contents

The Idea
The Deck
The Test
The Verdict

In my last article I talked about how to go about building and testing a deck in any given format, so for this article I wanted to talk about putting that process into practice. I was working on Extended but since in my next article I plan on giving a format exploration in time for Grand Prix Atlanta I thought a little bit of Standard Innovation might be just the ticket. I know standard is pretty well fleshed out, but now is the time when people begin to sit on what they know and when people stop trying to gain new information it is the perfect time to bring something out of nowhere. The format is healthy in terms of deck categorization with Control decks (U/B and U/W), Aggro decks (Boros and B/R Vampires), and Combo decks (Valakut and Eldrazi Green). Since the format is settled in that cycle, I wanted to take an old idea and make an interesting new brew on it. It’s time for the land destruction fun to begin.

The Idea

The idea for this deck didn’t start with a look at gatherer at all the cards in the format like I normally do. It started with a flip through my trade binder and seeing my playset of Destructive Force sitting there doing nothing. I traded for a bunch of them right when M11 came out because they were highly in demand at my store and I kept a playset because I always wanted to build a deck around it. Destructive Force is a powerful card because it clears away almost every creature in the format and takes away one of the opponent’s best resources their lands. So the question in my mind was what would take this powerful in the abstract card and make it powerful in a real game and deck? I need a threat that will survive the destruction of 5 lands and 5 damage and preferably something able to deal with other titans at the same time. While running this scenario through my head, I thought about casing a destructive force while I had an Inferno Titan on the field and how when he attacks he will be able to destroy other titans and even the popular Gaea's Revenge. This made up my mind to make these two cards the core to my deck. It was my main idea to win by casting Destructive Force with an Inferno Titan on the field and if that didn’t work I decided I would just like to win by swinging away with the titan and a little bit of planeswalker help in the form of Chandra Ablaze. The first ability is good and can clear out a good number of creatures in the format, but the second ability absolutely wrecks control decks and can be quite useful and if you get to the third ability it can be completely game over at that point. So if you look back at the three cards, I definitely want to put in my deck you can see my dilemma, I have three cards each costing 7,6, and 6 mana each so how am I going to build my deck around such expensive cards.

         

The Deck

Now that I had my idea firmly in grasp, it was time to begin to build the rest of the deck. In order to make my cards most effective, I thought some Ramp cards would be the best option Cultivate, Overgrown Battlement, Everflowing Chalice, Explore. As a side-note on Explore, I think it is one of the best 10 cards in standard right now. You might say that is pretty high for a cantripping ramp spell, but I want to point out the basic rules of the game, you only draw one card each turn and you may only play one land per turn. Explore breaks both of those rules by allowing you to play an extra land and an extra card in your hand. It’s absolutely against the rules of the game and it makes these ramp decks very good and has some card draw. That’s the end of the side note so I didn’t want a deck full of ramp so I thought about what if at the same time I was ramping I could keep my opponent from doing anything so I first thought about Counterspells, but that ultimately looked way too much like the R/U/G decks that have become so popular on the Star City Games Open Series. I then thought about what if I could anti-ramp my opponent by destroying their lands so that they could get stuck on three lands and unable to play that Jace, the Mind Sculptor. This was an interesting idea and I ran with it so I formed a land destruction package inside the deck formed of Melt Terrain, Roiling Terrain, Tectonic Edge, and Acidic Slime. I also looked at Goblin Ruinblaster but decided that ultimately that if I was going to pay four mana for a land destruction I wanted to be able to destroy any lands not just non-basics. I also wanted to have some spot removal so I put in a playset of Lightning Bolt. Then I turned my attention to my mana base, where I already knew I wanted a couple of Tectonic Edges. I also knew I wanted to have access to a single green and double red mana as soon as possible so I put in a full playset of Copperline Gorge and Rootbound Crag. I wanted some fetches so I put in 6 Mountains and three Arid Mesa to thin the deck out a bit. I also put in 5 Forests to finish out the manabase and make the deck ready to play for some testing.

         

The Test

Since this isn’t a deck I’m testing out for a big tournament, I compromised a bit on the testing because I wanted to run it at FNM. I cobbled together a sideboard based on what I knew to be in my metagame and it looked something like 2 Pyroclasm, 2 Chain Reaction, 2 Chandra Ablaze, 1 Arid Mesa, 2 Raging Ravine, 3 Harrow, 1Melt Terrain, 1 Roiling Terrain, 1 Acidic Slime. Basically I wanted some board sweepers against aggro. I wanted more of some of the cards in the deck like Melt Terrain, Roiling Terrain, Chandra Ablaze and Acidic Slime. I also wanted to bring in Harrow if the match up wasn’t going to have access to Counterspells so I could ramp on their turn and be ready to play even bigger threats on mine. I also wanted another win condition in the sideboard and that came in the form of the Raging Ravine. I don’t normally test decks this way, but I wanted something new to run at FNM so I played it. The verdict is 2-2. I won two match-ups against U/B Control and Valakut, but lost to a Naya Mimic Vat deck and to a G/W Tokens list. Now in these four match-ups I won against the better deck and lost against the homebrews. Let me point out some things I learned about the deck. First off the land destruction package can be a potent way to lock someone out of the game and can be a focal point of the deck itself as a Roiling Terrain after a Destructive Force is as good as game over. Those land destruction spells might all look like they cost four mana to cast, but after a few ramp spells they might as well be Stone Rain. People don’t see it coming and will often time keep loose hands that can ‘get there’ because there is some power in them, but if you can destroy their resources before their power cards come down they are stuck with a handful of great cards, but no lands to cast them with. That something to keep in mind is to make this deck just a dedicated land destruction deck. Another thing to keep in mind is just how vulnerable this deck is to a certain blue titan. In order to beat a Frost Titan, you need to have a lightning bolt in addition to the 3 damage from an Inferno Titan so maybe a Mark of Mutiny is needed out of the sideboard just to get that lethal amount of damage or Land Destruction needs to emphasize so that frosty can’t see the field. A final thing I want to think about this is deck is its vulnerability to Counterspells. In the main, I don’t want to do anything to directly address this in the main deck but perhaps a few copies of Summoning Trap could be really helpful in the sideboard as a part of the control match-up.

         

The Verdict

So the ultimate question is what is the deck at the end of the day. If we can’t draw some conclusions from our process then what have we gained. This deck is an interesting study as it does some powerful things and has some regularity with all the ramp cards in the deck, but ultimately it is quite vulnerable to the best deck in the format U/B Control so with a bad match-up against the best deck it won’t be a force in the format. I honestly think that in a metagame with a lot of ramp or aggro it is in a good position to battle. Here’s where the rubber meets the road. I know that this deck isn’t ultimately a great deck that will break out, but what it did do is allow me to see the inner workings of the best decks in the format. This is the thought that I want to leave you with. That every deck you build is a lesson to be learned. Every deck that goes 35% against the field and decks that have very swingy match-ups is a stepping-stone. I once heard Patrick Chapin say that nine out of every ten decks he builds is a bad deck. That stat made me think about how many decks I build are bad decks, but how in every one I learn something that makes the next one better and better. Right now a lot of people aren’t building decks but rather just waiting for the pros to do it for them, but I encourage you to build your own decks make mistakes and figure out the metagame. Am I saying to not listen to the pros advice? Absolutely not! Take all the information into consideration that you have available, but don’t be afraid to build a few mistakes and learn from them. It will make you a better deck builder and a better magic player because even if 9 out of ten or even 99 out 100 decks you build are bad there is always that one time where it just falls perfectly together. Let me know what you think about this deck and if you have any suggestions and let me know what decks you’re brewing up and maybe we can all just figure out how to step up our game.