It was the best of cards, it was the worst of cards
Challenges and Articles forum
Posted on Sept. 25, 2011, 6:08 p.m. by rckclimber777
I wanted to talk about one of my favorite cards from Innistrad. Parallel Lives . This card has serious potential which many people have already discussed and some have even gone so far as to say that it is broken. Now the ideas of this thread are certainly not comprehensive, but rather ideas that I think will produce a competent and competitive deck. Those who are far more clever than I will, I'm sure, find far better uses for this card. I hope that this only serves to inspire you to embrace that creativity in all of us. Having said all this, let's begin.
The first thing we need to do is to look at the card itself to figure out what we need to focus on. Any "effect" that puts a token into play, put twice that many tokens into play. So obviously we'll look at token production, in particular mass token production. The main cards that come to mind when I think of token are Elspeth Tirel , Garruk, Primal Hunter , Wurmcoil Engine , and Mimic Vat . These of course only begin to scratch the surface of cards to go with it. So we'll put 3x Elspeth and 2x Garruk, 2x mimic vat, and 2x wurmcoil to the list.
Now the card is in the Innistrad set, so lets take a look around for some great cards within the set. We already have some high cost cards in the deck and so we need to start looking low. The first card we come to is Doomed Traveler . One mana and when you kill it you put a token out there (that has flying!). With parallel lives on the field that's two spirits. We'll put 3 in as it's an amazing card for us but we also have other things that we need to fit in. Though it may be good enough to later consider a full playset.
Now most of our tokens are pretty puny and we'll need tons of them to do much damage to our opponent, but Innistrad offers something else for us intagible-virtue. Suddenly all those tokens are now that much stronger and they don't have to tap. Awesome, but in this case I'm going to leave it out because we will have tons of tokens running around and there are more things we need to worry about.
Before we get too carried away with the tokens we need to think about all the other weaknesses of the deck. First of all, whenever you build a deck around a card, finding that card becomes a priority. So we need card draw. Innistrad offers us a solution that gives us more card draw than most blue decks. mentor-of-the-meak. With tons of tokens entering the battlefield, we'll be looking at plenty of card draw. Along with mentor of the meek, we'll put in a couple Gitaxian Probe s. In addition to giving us card draw, we'll also get a glimpse at our opponent's hand and what to be aware of.
What things are going to be huge against us. Board wipes!!! This is where things get tough. If we can't recover from a board wipe then we're not going to be successful. Especially with all the board wipes out there that are great for use against tokens ie racthet bomb, day of judgment black sun's zenith etc. So someone plays DoJ against us then we need to respond. What better than Fresh Meat . It costs 4 mana to play which is expensive and you're not going to be able to play it in response if you're not sure to have the mana available, this is why that gitaxian probe was so important to play because now we know to keep our mana ready for it. Along with board wipes if we let things go to our graveyard we might as well make sure that we still have decent board position afterward. So anything that goes into graveyard from play that gives us more tokens would be great. Mausoleum Guard . Along with this is Myr Sire another card that will die and be better off that way, not to mention that we've neglected the 2 mana spot a bit already.
Now with all of the tokens and chump blocking that we'll be doing it might be good to take use of this new morbid mechanic. Since we have a high mana curve let's take advantage of one of the best early mana ramps we could hope for. Caravan Vigil . We could use this, but we also might want to simply flood the board with tokens so I'll leave that to you.
Now our opponent just played out their planeswalker or titan. Now we're in trouble. There is almost nothing in our arsenal except blunt force trauma to deal with these threats. So let's fix that... carefully. The first thought is Beast Within . Destroys target permanents, great green removal, but wait. It produces 2 tokens now. So let's look for a better card. Oblivion Ring it is.
Now what happens when your parallel lives gets annihilated by acidic slime or something else like that. Well that is certainly a problem, but not above the free return provided by Noxious Revival . We could splash blue here and throw in more control, but it'll make the deck a bit tough to work with.
Now for the last few cards to think about. There are three that deserve mention here.
First we'll look at the perennial power house Hero of Bladehold . Great card and now whenever she attacks we'll get 4 creatures instead of 2 and she'll even make you're other tokens just a little more powerful when she attacks.
Next card to look at is Geist-Honored Monk , she comes in with 2 tokens and has power/toughness equal to the number of creatures on the field. Not bad and has potential, but for now we'll say no.
Finally there is Blade Splicer a great 3 drop that could give us 2 golems if used at the right time or thrown on a mimic vat. Not bad, we'll make it 1 or 2 of though.
Another cards for consideration would be Shrine of Loyal Legions . Two CMC spot. Not bad. Gets more counters for each white spell, getting better. Spits out tokens for each counter now we're talking. With Parallel lives this becomes the moment your opponent either hopes for a board wipe or scoops.
Final stage to the process of building the deck is to add the lands and get our mana base correct. In this process will also be determining the exact card numbers.
One thing to keep in mind is dual lands are always better. So 4x Sunpetal groves and 4x Razorverge thicket is probably a good call. You may consider shimmering groto. It'll help hard cast gitaxian probe if necessary and does that added mana fixing if you need it.
After all that here is what I came up with from this. A tale of two lives
mozerdozer says... #3
Yea I was about to say you forgot about the best, most versatile card, Prototype Portal .
September 25, 2011 6:23 p.m.
rckclimber777 says... #4
Yea, I was thinking about it and think parallel lives with tempered steel will be great as well, but kinda started along a path that I couldn't really stop. But Prototype portal with shrine of loyal legions or myr sire would be fun too.
Actually this whole thing was first brought about by me wanting to build a deck with parallel lives tempered steel and prototype portal. Unfortunately as I went along I got side tracked more and more until my artifact base was gone. But yes an artifact deck with prototype portal and parallel lives will be another amazing combo that I may look into at some point soon.
September 25, 2011 6:27 p.m.
SwiftDeath says... #5
if you beast within your opponents titan they will only get one token parralel lives only works with tokens that enter under your control.
September 25, 2011 7:02 p.m.
Parallel Lives + Mimic Vat + Grave Titan = 2x titan and 16x zombies. Sac the titan via call to the grave or even just let it die. Even without the vat thats 4x zombies per turn
This is insanity!
September 25, 2011 7:06 p.m.
rckclimber777 says... #7
aww you're absolutely right. I didn't see the addendum there "under your control". It seems oddly worded. Anyway good call. So obviously beast within is worthwhile as well.
September 25, 2011 7:06 p.m.
double post: Beast Within only produces one token for them since it only affects tokens entering in under your control not the opponents.
September 25, 2011 7:09 p.m.
SwiftDeath says... #9
that mimic vat to grave titan with parallel lives is one of the most disgusting combos i have seen in a while on this site.
September 25, 2011 7:58 p.m.
I have tried similar ideas with Doubling Season - of course the innistrad version is sans the counters ability, and therefore sans the 1 extra colourless mana. This card does have awesome potential. Zektar Shrine Expedition , Precursor Golem , any splicers, Splinter Twin , Myr Turbine , and Rite of Replication are just a few of the ideas, along with those aforementioned, that come to mind.
;)
September 25, 2011 8:01 p.m.
rckclimber777 says... #11
I hope that you enjoyed the deck idea and discussion. There are many other things you can do with the card and I'm very interested to see what other people come up with.
September 25, 2011 10:06 p.m.
What happens if more than 1 Parallel Lives are on the field? Does each one go on the stack individually and therefore 4 PLs turn 1 token into 16 tokens?
September 25, 2011 10:58 p.m.
rckclimber777 says... #13
Yes. they'll go on the stack on the stack after one another. Thus the effect will give you 2 to the power of x tokens where x is the number of parallel lives on the field.
The effect triggers, one doubles the number of tokens so now the effect is putting out double the number of tokens and the next one activates doubling that and so on for each parallel lives.
This at least how I interpret the rules.
September 25, 2011 11:05 p.m.
lol where is Epochalyptik when you need him, or Rhadamanthus
September 25, 2011 11:06 p.m.
rckclimber777 says... #16
Alright found my answer through the oracle of Doubling Season and yes it was right. if there are 2 parallel lives on the field then you'll get 4x the number of tokens that you would have originally. I figured it was and I feel like I had seen it somewhere else too.
September 25, 2011 11:25 p.m.
MrJacobobobobobo says... #17
When I saw Doubling Season , I instantly thought GB zombie ramp. Grave Titan , Army of the Damned , and even Cemetery Reaper will all become majorly OP cards, especially with the ramp factor, like Birds of Paradise , Rampant Growth , Solemn Simulacrum and Rites of Flourishing . I was even thinking of it's impact with Garruk Relentless Flip Flip, with would cause him to shit out two 2/2s and, if flipped, two 1/1s with deathtouch. Plus, he can tutor creatures. Sac a bird, get a titan. Dead draws cease to exist.
Obviously the kind of deck I'm making is very different from your build, and would create an almost completely separate discussion. I'd love it if you guys could give me some advice and playtesting so we can figure out what should and should not be in the deck.
rckclimber777 says... #2
As a side note another one thing that I like in conjunction with parallel lives is prototype portal in a tempered steel deck. I'll take plenty of tokens of hovermyrs, memnites, etc.
September 25, 2011 6:11 p.m.