So at my new LGS, Tiny Leaders has taken off. I decided to get into the format, and am looking into building something neat. My first thought was something with Courser of Kruphix. Maybe Junk with Courser and Knight of the Reliquary for crazy value? Then I remembered my Shu Yun build. I really liked the idea of doing a Prowess-Storm deck where Shu Yun is the Storm combo kill condition. After a quick look through the ban list, it seems like the only card I would want to play that's banned, besides the obvious, is Balance.
An introduction to the format can be found here:
http://tinyleaders.blogspot.ca/p/tiny-leaders-magic-gathering-format.html
Things to keep in mind:
Each spell is essentially worth two
damage since Shu Yun has Prowess and double strike. Counting his base
power, that means we are trying to play seven spells and pay for the
trigger. Also, because Shu Yun is a creature and not a spell, a la
Tendrils of Agony, we can spread our damage over two turns if needed. We
can do something like Distortion Strike swing for five. That sets us up
to swing the next turn with a rebound spell, our opponent at 15, and
already at 5 power. We would only need five spells and paying for the
trigger at that point, and every attempt by our opponents to stop Shu
Yun only makes him bigger.
The first step when building Storm is to look for where our mana comes from, where our cards come from, and what our kill condition is. We know that our kill condition is likely going to be our Commander, so our first priority is determining where our mana comes from.
Red is second only to black when it comes to ritual effects.
A search of Gatherer reveals these:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
That's a decent start but the meat is going to come from the artifacts.
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Mox Diamond
Lion's Eye Diamond
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Tiny Leaders decks are 49 cards, and we have 15 mana cards here. That's a pretty solid number when we figure that we're going to have 15-20 land.
The next important point is figuring out how to set up for the kill.
The classic cantrips go in first:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Sleight of Hand
Impulse
Gitaxian Probe
Opt
Serum Visions
Sensei's Divining Top
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wild Guess
Think Twice
Frantic Search
Jeskai Ascendancy
This will smooth out our early turns and the low cost nature of the spells with up our storm count, but we do need to go net positive on cards for bulk to go off.
Wheel of Fortune
Meditate
Thirst for Knowledge
Ancestral Visions
Compulsive Research
Monastery Siege
Oona's Grace
Sphinx's Revelation
Invoke the Firemind
That's another 23 cards. Bringing us to 38 aready! Clearly some cuts are going to have to be made, but we'll par down later. That's our mana and draw packages, but how do we get to attack? How do we protect our general? What are our backup plans?
Well, there are a variety of ways to protect our general and push through damage.
Shadow Rift
Emerge Unscathed
Distortion Strike
Remand
Pact of Negation
Mental Misstep
Daze
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Feast and Famine
Silence
Snap
Snapback
God's Willing
Burn:
Lighting Blot
Chain Lightning
Rift Bolt
Forked Bolt
Other Removal:
Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
The Kill:
Hurkyl's Recall
Recall
Retract
I am trying to minimize other creatures since they don't trigger prowess, but three jump out as unskippable:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Young Pyromancer
Mentor is better than Pyromancer here as we are built with lots of artifacts to trigger Prowess.
We are waaaaay over the card limit, so lets start paring down to a usable framework.
Mana:
We are keeping all of the rituals. They only generate Red mana, but they are all plus mana spells.
IN:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Some of the artifact mana needed to go, but its difficult to decide what. Ultimately our desire to recall means that we want to keep the artifacts that can be replayed. I decided against Mox Diamond due to our low land count, and Lion's Eye Diamond since we can't play Past In Flames. Lotus Bloom is basically only useful if its in our opening hand, but the upside of a free spell that generates three mana is enormous. Chrome Mox needs to eat a spell to generate mana, but we are much more likely to have spells we can't cast than extra lands. Chrome Mox also has the upside of being able to hang out in play to wait for a recall if you just want the prowess trigger but don't want to eat a card. Mox Diamond will die if you don't pitch a land.
IN:
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
That's 13/49, onto Cantrips and Draw
We want to favor red mana since all of our rituals are red. Wild Guess being double red does make casting it pre-ritual awkward, so we are going to drop it.
IN:
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
The strongest of the cantrips need to be included, especially the 0-1 mana variety.
IN:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Compulsive Research gets passed over because its too slow, same thing with Oona's Grace. Sphinx's Revelation and Invoke the Firemind were too cute. Since we can generate a ton of mana, the X spells were another outlet for that mana. We have plenty to do with Shu Yun's trigger though, so having sinks probably won't be needed. Ancestral Visions is iffy, but a free spell that draws three cards is huge upside. If its in our opening hand than it unsuspends the turn after we play Shu Yun, which is perfect. Monastery Siege and Jeskai Ascendancy are permanents that give us huge upside. They both have a filter mode, and Siege can even be used to protect ourselves from removal. Meditate's drawback is pretty steep even though it draws so many cards. I'm going to cut it and Thirst due to their high cost relative to our mana generation.
IN:
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
That's another 12 cards, which brings us to 25 cards.
Here is where we have to make a call on how many lands we are going to run. Normally I'd start with 20, which is about 40%. I think we are running so much additional storm mana, and have so many cantrips, that we can safely run 15.
That gives us nine slots to play with. The back up win conditions we are going to run with are Monastery Mentor and Grapeshot. Young Pyromancer is great but we have very little space. We need to keep a Recall effect, Rebuild cycles and Retract costs one, but Hurkyl's Recall is the most flexible so we are going to run it. We can keep four cards for removal, and burn is likely our best bet, so in go Lightning Bolt, Rift Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Path to Exile. I choose Path since we are trying to kill people with regular damage. The bolts can all go to the dome, reducing our effective storm count. A bolt is 3 + 2, so we get a huge reduction in the resources we need to kill our opponent. We want to protect Shu Yun with spells for prowess instead of permanents. The Swords are great and they will probably find their way into the deck somewhere down the line, but right now they seem too mana intensive to be worth it. The last three slots are very hard to decide between. Distortion Strike is amazing and needs to be included. Mystical Tutor is non-negotiable. That basically makes it a fight between Mental Misstep and Daze. Daze can be cast on my own spells more readily so it gets the nod. This category really should be larger, but until the concept proves itself I'm not willing to run less mana or draw.
IN:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Onto the lands!
We needs lots of red and blue, and comparatively little white. With the speed of the format a land that comes into play tapped is going to be a very real cost, so we need to play untapped lands at all costs.
Lets start where we always do for a three color deck
IN:
Plateu
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
That's nine of our lands. Slots fill up in this format so fast.
Running all non-basics opens us up to hate, but we really don't have the luxury of running basics.
IN:
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
To increase our artifact count we are going to include the set of artifact lands
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
First Draft:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Land
Plateau
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
We might want to find something to get our Commander haste since right now he has to hang out in play for a turn before going in for lethal. The next step is fabrication then testing. There will be many updates to follow.
Update #1, 2/7/2015
Got to play with the deck a bit over the last couple days. There were some good games but I made some mistakes while preparing for the format. First of all, the starting life total is 25 instead of 20. That five extra damage is hard to push through. Second, Mana Vault is banned and I missed it. Whoops! Third, the format is waaaaaaaaay more removal heavy than I anticipated. We do need our general to hang out in play for a turn to do anything, so we have to play more protection for him. We have some easy cuts so we'll start there.
OUT:
Mana Vault
Clifftop Retreat
Azorius Signet
Izzet Signet
We are going to need to be more consistent and rely less on speed. Boros Signet stays for density and because its the only Signet that can pay for Shu Yun's trigger. That's four slots that we get access to. We need more protection. It would be most helpful if it could be cast without needing to target an enemy spell. We definitely want one more counterspell, and one protection spell.
IN:
Izzet Charm
Emerge Unscathed
Izzet Charm is both a counterspell and a dig spell. It can even clear blockers out of the way!
Emerge Unscathed has rebound, which is a very good mechanic for us. It lets us protect our dude for a turn, then get a free trigger and evade blockers on the rebound.
I did find I wanted more burn with the life total so high. We have to be able to push through a lot more damage. We need to be able to use our burn for other reasons though, so we can't just shove Lava Spike into the list. We aren't go that deep quite yet.
IN:
Boros Charm
Another Charm makes its way into the list. This one will likely have only two modes, 4 to the noggin or Indestructible my stuff. Indestructible my stuff not only protects Shu Yun, but can help protect Mentor tokens from sweepers. That isn't super valuable since most sweepers in the the format are toughness based, and we can already protect them just by casting spells. Four damage is more than most spells can live up to in this environment unless we want to play Flame Rift.
IN:
Apostle's Blessing
This one is more iffy, but I like that it can be cast for a colorless mana while going off.
Other suspect cards,
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendency
Sensei's Divining Top
but we'll see where these changes land us.
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