This is a deck I've wanted to put together for a long time since it turns so many traditional resources on their head. Borborygmos Enraged is a unique and interesting creature. He makes you want to still be interacting with lands at 8 or more mana. Thankfully green loves land enough that going big is very possible. Red isn't great in the mix, but it does offer some key pieces for a lands centric deck. Gamble for Life From the Loam is going to be our standard play with the card, but its flexible as far as tutors go. You also gain access to Seismic Assault and Aggressive Mining, two cards that give you great reach into the late game and back up your eight mana general. As always, this is a first draft and I don't build for a budget. If something seems like it would be too much just sub it out for something else.
Our engine is going to be the most important aspect of our deck since we are going to have to have all the pieces in place before we cast our commander for the first time. I took some inspiration from the Tiny Leaders Azusa I was working on.
Engine:
Burgeoning
Life From The Loam
Aggressive Mining
Seismic Assault
Exploration
Azusa, Lost But Seeking
Courser of Kruphix
Oracle of Mul Daya
Horn of Greed
Crucible of Worlds
Storm Cauldron
Seer's Sundial
Abundance
Recycle
Titania, Protector of Argoth
Sylvan Library
These form the core of our deck. We are going to put in more support for our theme, but these are our the cards that we want to find to make our deck run. They push us through our deck and add to our mana development at a really fast pace. We are going to be playing significantly more land than normal to make all these effects work, and we are going to need tons of mana for our Battle-cruisers.
Tons of Mana:
Mox Diamond
Lotus Cobra
Mana Reflection
Sol Ring
Mana Vault
Mana Crypt
Gilded Lotus
Grim Monolith
Basalt Monolith
Cultivate
Kodama's Reach
Skyshroud Claim
Boundless Realms
Orcish Lumberjack
Yavimaya Elder
Some amount of land to play is going to be valuable due to Aggressive Mining's drawback, but land to hand is also valuable because lightning bolt is fun. We have our Engine block and our Mana block. Now we need a Payoff block.
Payoffs:
Tooth and Nail
Regal Force
Avenger of Zendikar
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Genesis Wave
Praetor's Council
Terastodon
Karn Liberated
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Vorinclex, the Voice of Hunger
I don't normally include mana tutors this early, but our deck already has a really solid theme and some marquee cards.
Tutors:
Expedition Map
Sylvan Scrying
Gamble
Crop Rotation
Realms Uncharted
The rest are a balance of draw sevens, utility, and removal. This section will be the recipient of the initial change list.
The rest:
Wheel of Fortune
Memory Jar
Rings of Brighthearth
Grafted Exoskeleton
Mulch
Journey of Discovery
Hull Breach
Decimate
And the most important part of the the deck...
Land:
Taiga
Stomping Ground
Wooded Foothills
Misty Rainforest
Windswept Heath
Gruul Turf
Temple of Abandon
Terrain Generator
Barbarian Ring
Centaur Garden
Tranquil Thicket
Forgotten Cave
Blasted Landscape
Slippery Karst
Smoldering Crater
Kessig Wolf Run
Rootbound Crag
Reliquary Tower
Command Tower
Thespian's Stage
Dark Depths
Vesuva
Terramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Raging Ravine
Fungal Reaches
Ancient Tomb
Glacial Chasm
Petrified Field
Temple of the False God
Dust Bowl
Wasteland
Strip Mine
Fire-Lit Thicket
9x Forest
1x Mountain
This list is, as they all are, a first draft.
I'm dubious as to the usefulness of Recycle, Mox Diamond, Terrastodon, and Decimate. Recycle might just straight up not work. It seems like it would combine well with our Explore type effects, providing a continuous stream of lands. It obviously stops being useful unless we can chain cards together for it. Its possible that outside a Storm shell we just can't use it. Mox Diamond is essentially a free roll, but its possible we just don't care about the card. Especially since at two colors the fixing aspect of it isn't going to be very useful. Terrastodon is a great card. I identified it for possible exclusion because our payoff cards should be as tight as possible. If we need room for more engine or protection (something we lack entirely) than Terrastodon is the first cut from that pile. Regal Force almost got the initial identifier, but the ability to draw so many lands to hand is so explosive. It does vary wildly, but I'm going with explosive here. Decimate is awesome but even in EDH lining up all the card types can be hard.
Obvious cards that could find a home are Eternal Witness, Swiftfoot Boots/Lightning Greaves, Rubblehulk, Terravore, Nostalgic Dreams, other Regrowth effects, Elvish Pioneer, Sylvan Safekeeper, and Groundskeeper. Essentially protection effects for our fatties and our engine. We are also a bit lighter on land than intended, so we might want to sneak in 1-4 more land.
Well I hope you guys like this one. Next week I'll be back with some more hilarity.
The sorted list:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/we-eat/
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Tiny Builds
So having seen some tiny leaders in action, I have an idea of a really strong, archetypal deck. One of the better win conditions in the format is Thespian Stage plus Dark Depths. The combo is easy to assemble
and, with a little love, hard to stop.
On the quest for finding out the best suited deck for the combo, the first question we should ask is, what color/colors do we want to be? This combo is colorless so we can actually go anywhere. Green is the obvious color to support lands, but Blue is also a strong contender with card draw and Intuition. Black has the best removal in the format in the form of edicts. White gives us Weathered Wayfarer but not a lot else on its own, and Red is pretty unsuited to this particular style of deck. Lets go through our options one by one.
The clear winner to focus a deck around the combo is green though. It has the most tricks and the closest tie to land. Black has tutors and Vampire Hexmage, and blue has Intuition. While solid contributors they just aren't deep enough to make the central point of the deck. Green definitely has enough depth. In fact it has enough that I had to cut a bunch of cards to make the following list.
Mono-Green
The general for mono-green Depths is a toss up between Azusa for speed, and Omnath for being a huge threat on his own. We don't have Seedborn Muse, but we can lean on some X spells for explosive plays. Ultimately I settled on Azusa since I want to be more land oriented.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking
Enchantments:
Exploration
Sylvan Library
Courser of Kruphix
Songs of the Dryads
Sorceries:
Gelatinous Genesis
Explore
Life From The Loam
Mulch
Sylvan Scrying
Genesis Wave
Artifacts:
Mox Diamond
Zuran Orb
Expedition Map
Sensei's Divining Top
Crucible of Worlds
Horn of Greed
Creatures:
Budoka Gardener
Fa'adiyah Seer
Genesis Hydra
Vinelasher Kudzu
Dungrove Elder
Reclamation Sage
Unyaro Bees
Instant:
Crop Rotation
Constant Mists
Sprout Swarm
Realms Uncharted
Land:
Ancient Tomb
Bazaar of Baghdad
Dark Depths
Deserted Temple
Dust Bowl
Glacial Chasm
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
Misty Rainforest
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Petrified Field
Scrying Sheets
8x Snow-Covered Forests
Thawing Glacier
Thespian's Stage
Tranquil Thicket
This is my first crack at a mono-green version of the deck. This one is very focused on getting the two lands together as fast as possible. There are some pay-offs for going big with our mana. Genesis Wave is going to be huge for us, but unfortunately limits the number of Hydras we can put in our deck. Scrying Sheets are a way to draw some extra cards every once in a while, but unless we dropped several more non-basics the percentage hits are going to be quite low. It goes up when you consider Top and Library. Courser is going to be an all star for us. It not only lets us gain a significant amount of life, but also extends the range of our Explores. Playing extra lands is all well and good, but you run out of them pretty fast unless you can draw cards. Its the same logic behind including Crucible of Worlds and lands that eat themselves or other lands. Courser is even better than that since it lets us use our library manipulation to essentially draw extra cards. We are somewhat lacking on removal, but that isn't green's strong suite. Between the Glacial Chasm and Constant Mists we should be ok to prevent getting attacked to death, but only having two disenchants is disconcerting.
I can see several ways to adjust the deck and what other colors we can add to spin the deck into other things, but they deserve their own post. Sideboards will vary wildly depending on your meta-game but having more solid disenchants is where I would start.
and, with a little love, hard to stop.
On the quest for finding out the best suited deck for the combo, the first question we should ask is, what color/colors do we want to be? This combo is colorless so we can actually go anywhere. Green is the obvious color to support lands, but Blue is also a strong contender with card draw and Intuition. Black has the best removal in the format in the form of edicts. White gives us Weathered Wayfarer but not a lot else on its own, and Red is pretty unsuited to this particular style of deck. Lets go through our options one by one.
The clear winner to focus a deck around the combo is green though. It has the most tricks and the closest tie to land. Black has tutors and Vampire Hexmage, and blue has Intuition. While solid contributors they just aren't deep enough to make the central point of the deck. Green definitely has enough depth. In fact it has enough that I had to cut a bunch of cards to make the following list.
Mono-Green
The general for mono-green Depths is a toss up between Azusa for speed, and Omnath for being a huge threat on his own. We don't have Seedborn Muse, but we can lean on some X spells for explosive plays. Ultimately I settled on Azusa since I want to be more land oriented.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking
Enchantments:
Exploration
Sylvan Library
Courser of Kruphix
Songs of the Dryads
Sorceries:
Gelatinous Genesis
Explore
Life From The Loam
Mulch
Sylvan Scrying
Genesis Wave
Artifacts:
Mox Diamond
Zuran Orb
Expedition Map
Sensei's Divining Top
Crucible of Worlds
Horn of Greed
Creatures:
Budoka Gardener
Fa'adiyah Seer
Genesis Hydra
Vinelasher Kudzu
Dungrove Elder
Reclamation Sage
Unyaro Bees
Instant:
Crop Rotation
Constant Mists
Sprout Swarm
Realms Uncharted
Land:
Ancient Tomb
Bazaar of Baghdad
Dark Depths
Deserted Temple
Dust Bowl
Glacial Chasm
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
Misty Rainforest
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Petrified Field
Scrying Sheets
8x Snow-Covered Forests
Thawing Glacier
Thespian's Stage
Tranquil Thicket
This is my first crack at a mono-green version of the deck. This one is very focused on getting the two lands together as fast as possible. There are some pay-offs for going big with our mana. Genesis Wave is going to be huge for us, but unfortunately limits the number of Hydras we can put in our deck. Scrying Sheets are a way to draw some extra cards every once in a while, but unless we dropped several more non-basics the percentage hits are going to be quite low. It goes up when you consider Top and Library. Courser is going to be an all star for us. It not only lets us gain a significant amount of life, but also extends the range of our Explores. Playing extra lands is all well and good, but you run out of them pretty fast unless you can draw cards. Its the same logic behind including Crucible of Worlds and lands that eat themselves or other lands. Courser is even better than that since it lets us use our library manipulation to essentially draw extra cards. We are somewhat lacking on removal, but that isn't green's strong suite. Between the Glacial Chasm and Constant Mists we should be ok to prevent getting attacked to death, but only having two disenchants is disconcerting.
I can see several ways to adjust the deck and what other colors we can add to spin the deck into other things, but they deserve their own post. Sideboards will vary wildly depending on your meta-game but having more solid disenchants is where I would start.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Build of the Week: Rafiq of the Hate Bears
This week we'll be looking into Rafiq. Rafiq is a very popular general. A lot of that has to due with the timing of his release. When Alara came out EDH got its first real boost in popularity. Its certainly the first time I played the format. This is why Sharuum persists as the Esper general of choice, why Sedris was the most popular, etc. So with all the theory out there, why talk about Rafiq? Well, for starts things that people like and that endure usually do so for a reason. Also, tracking over familiar ground looking for new angles is a valuable exercise. Lastly, there is a certain coolness to going with a classic.
What goals are Rafiq uniquely suited to fulfill? He's low cost, a strong attacker. He doesn't rely on artifacts, comes into play effects, or the graveyard. His triggered ability lends itself to general damage, since its essentially quadruple strike. Some math there, you start at 40 life. General damage is 21, or basically half your starting life total. Generals basically have double strike baked in, so doubling the damage of your commander acts like quad-strike. Its very similar to the math behind Infect, and in fact Rafiq supports an infect strategy quite well. I'm thinking of running lots of creatures for acceleration, very few artifacts with activated abilities, and a minor infect sub-theme.
Starting Point, Bearly getting going.
White is going to be our primary color since it offers the most of the disruptive little dudes we are looking for in our creature base. Lets figure out who is coming to the party first.
IN:
Gaddock Teeg
Scavenging Ooze
Trygon Predator
Gilded Drake
Aven Mindcensor
Grand Arbitor
Thalia
Ethersworn Cannonist
Spirit of the Labrynth
Containment Priest
Hushwing Gryff
Kataki, War's Wage
That's a solid hate package from the creatures, but there are some effects that only come on enchantments.
IN:
Rest In Peace
Stony Silence
Torpor Orb
We can back up the Stony Silence with Null Rod if we want, but I'd like to keep the hate to cards with bodies. There is going to be some anti-synergy with Torpor Orb/Rest In Peace but it should be manageable, and shutting down opposing artifact mana or utility creatures is going to do us more good than harm when we can always just attack, we do want to avoid using artifacts for mana though.
IN:
Birds of Paradise
Bloom Tender
Wood Elves
Noble Hierarch
Llanowar Elves
Avacyn's Pilgrim
We are sad we can't run Deathrite Shaman, but you can't have it all. We might want more mana bugs, but one of the reasons that Rafiq is a great deck to build around no artifact mana is because of his color requirement. Three different colors by turn three is not easy to do with artifact mana, which is really good at generating colorless mana, but less good at making colored mana. Mana elves, however, are solid at making colored mana and can let you play Rafiq a turn early. Lots of our three drops are very good at holding up the development of our opponents. He's also good at making creatures lethal.
IN:
Putrefax
Blighted Agent
Sigarda
Geist of Saint Traft
Knight of the Reliquary
These creatures are really good attackers, for one reason or another. Hexproof is great, Infect is strong. KotR gets big fast and also provides a lot of utility in case you need to cast Rest In Peace.
Other dorks
IN:
Wolvir Silverheart
Sublime Archangel
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Qasali Pridemage
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Coiling Oracle
Elvish Visionary
Glen Elendra Archmage
Mother of Runes
A good number of these are splashed by our hate, but they are always bodies, and we aren't going to have our hate in play every game. Silverheart is insane amounts of damage, and Sublime Archangel does some scary things. Edric gives us a huge number of cards. Mom is included because its been great throughout the years, but it might not have the chops for multiplayer. Especially with all the board wipes. We have to try to stop those,
Protection
IN:
Mental Misstep
Force of Will
God's Willing
Remand
Arcane Denial
Bant charm
We really only need to have tempo protection, so actually expensive counterspells are not what we are aiming for. Other options are Pact of Negation and Daze. The other side of spells is surprising our opponent with a huge surge to our creatures.
Pump
IN:
Berzerk
Invigorate
Might of Oaks
Simic Charm
Vines of the Vastwood
Become Immense
Distortion Strike
This can shorten our clock significantly out of nowhere. But frequently, being a surprise is not as important as having solid advantage.
Perma-pump:
IN:
Grafted Exoskeleton
Elspeth, Knight Errant
Batterskull
Behemoth Sledge
Finest Hour
Swiftfoot Boots
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa's Jitte
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Shield of the Oversoul
Lightning Greaves
We have a number of beneficial effects here. From Infect to Unblockable. That's a lot of equipment but equipment is so good in this archetype. Elspeth does double duty of making guys and pumping guys. Her ultimate is also crazy good if you can ever get there.
The rest
IN:
Life from the Loam
Green Sun's Zenith
Sylvan Library
Mystical Tutor
Enlightened tutor
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Crucible of Worlds
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
These cards help cover some weaknesses and provide deck manipulation. The Tutors are going to be really good for us since we have a number of highly impactful artifacts and enchantments. Mystical Tutor can often end the game by getting a pump spell for Rafiq on your upkeep. Everything else just helps you keep up on resources. The LftL and Crucible combine with utility lands for good value, and even a combo finish.
Land
IN:
Wasteland
Yavimaya Hollow
Kor Haven
Rouge's Passage
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Stripmine
Thespian's Stage
Rishdan Port
Dark Depths
Inkmoth Nexus
Mutavault
Blinkmoth Nexus
Misty Rainforest
Windswept Heath
Flooded Strand
Tropical Island
Savana
Tundra
Breeding Pool
Temple Garden
Hallowed Fountain
1x Forest
1x Island
1x Plains
Centaur Garden
Cephalid Colosseum
Sunpetal Grove
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Seaside Citadel
Wooded Bastion
Horizon Canopy
Dryad Arbor
Windbrisk Heights
Mosswort Bridge
35 is a low total, and that's a greedy number of non-colored sources in a three color deck. We want to be lean though, and maximizing what you get out of your lands is a fantastic way to do that.
Creatures:34
Pump
Wolfir Silverheart
Sublime Archangel
Utility
Edric
Gaddock Teeg
Qasali Pridemage
Scavenging Ooze
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Trygon Predator
Coiling Oracle
Elvish visionary
Gilded Drake
Aven Mindcensor
Grand Arbiter
Glen Elendra Archmage
Thalia
Spirit of the Labrynth
Containment Priest
Hushwing Gryff
Kataki
Mana
Birds of Paradise
Bloom Tender
Wood Elves
Noble Hierarch
Llanowar Elves
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Rafiq back ups
Geist of Saint Traft
Sigarda
Putrefax
Knight of the Reliquary
Blighted Agent
Non-creatures
Pump:4
Berzerk
Invigorate
Might of Oaks
Become Immense
Distortion Strike
Vines of the Vastwood
Perma-pump
Grafted Exoskeleton
Elspeth, Knight Errant
Batterskull
Behemoth Sledge
Finest Hour
Swiftfoot Boots
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa's Jitte
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Shield of the Oversoul
Lightning Greaves
Utility
Green Sun's Zenith
Sylvan Library
Mystical Tutor
Enlightened Tutor
Life From The Loam
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Crucible of Worlds
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Hate
Rest In Peace
Stony Silence
Torpor Orb
Protection
Mental Misstep
Force of Will
God's Willing
Remand
Arcane Denial
Bant charm
Land: 35
Wasteland
Yavimaya Hollow
Kor Haven
Rouge's Passage
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Stripmine
Thespian's Stage
Rishdan Port
Dark Depths
Inkmoth Nexus
Mutavault
Blinkmoth Nexus
Misty Rainforest
Windswept Heath
Flooded Strand
Tropical Island
Savana
Tundra
Breeding Pool
Temple Garden
Hallowed Fountain
1x Forest
1x Island
1x Plains
Centaur Garden
Cephalid Colosseum
Sunpetal Grove
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Seaside Citadel
Wooded Bastion
Horizon Canopy
Dryad Arbor
Windbrisk Heights
Mosswort Bridge
I think this is a solid starting point. Ethersworn Cannonist and similar effects were cut since we really need to be able to capitalize on the relatively low cost of our deck versus the ramp oriented things our opponents play.
I'll be back in a few days for initial updates.
What goals are Rafiq uniquely suited to fulfill? He's low cost, a strong attacker. He doesn't rely on artifacts, comes into play effects, or the graveyard. His triggered ability lends itself to general damage, since its essentially quadruple strike. Some math there, you start at 40 life. General damage is 21, or basically half your starting life total. Generals basically have double strike baked in, so doubling the damage of your commander acts like quad-strike. Its very similar to the math behind Infect, and in fact Rafiq supports an infect strategy quite well. I'm thinking of running lots of creatures for acceleration, very few artifacts with activated abilities, and a minor infect sub-theme.
Starting Point, Bearly getting going.
White is going to be our primary color since it offers the most of the disruptive little dudes we are looking for in our creature base. Lets figure out who is coming to the party first.
IN:
Gaddock Teeg
Scavenging Ooze
Trygon Predator
Gilded Drake
Aven Mindcensor
Grand Arbitor
Thalia
Ethersworn Cannonist
Spirit of the Labrynth
Containment Priest
Hushwing Gryff
Kataki, War's Wage
That's a solid hate package from the creatures, but there are some effects that only come on enchantments.
IN:
Rest In Peace
Stony Silence
Torpor Orb
We can back up the Stony Silence with Null Rod if we want, but I'd like to keep the hate to cards with bodies. There is going to be some anti-synergy with Torpor Orb/Rest In Peace but it should be manageable, and shutting down opposing artifact mana or utility creatures is going to do us more good than harm when we can always just attack, we do want to avoid using artifacts for mana though.
IN:
Birds of Paradise
Bloom Tender
Wood Elves
Noble Hierarch
Llanowar Elves
Avacyn's Pilgrim
We are sad we can't run Deathrite Shaman, but you can't have it all. We might want more mana bugs, but one of the reasons that Rafiq is a great deck to build around no artifact mana is because of his color requirement. Three different colors by turn three is not easy to do with artifact mana, which is really good at generating colorless mana, but less good at making colored mana. Mana elves, however, are solid at making colored mana and can let you play Rafiq a turn early. Lots of our three drops are very good at holding up the development of our opponents. He's also good at making creatures lethal.
IN:
Putrefax
Blighted Agent
Sigarda
Geist of Saint Traft
Knight of the Reliquary
These creatures are really good attackers, for one reason or another. Hexproof is great, Infect is strong. KotR gets big fast and also provides a lot of utility in case you need to cast Rest In Peace.
Other dorks
IN:
Wolvir Silverheart
Sublime Archangel
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Qasali Pridemage
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Coiling Oracle
Elvish Visionary
Glen Elendra Archmage
Mother of Runes
A good number of these are splashed by our hate, but they are always bodies, and we aren't going to have our hate in play every game. Silverheart is insane amounts of damage, and Sublime Archangel does some scary things. Edric gives us a huge number of cards. Mom is included because its been great throughout the years, but it might not have the chops for multiplayer. Especially with all the board wipes. We have to try to stop those,
Protection
IN:
Mental Misstep
Force of Will
God's Willing
Remand
Arcane Denial
Bant charm
We really only need to have tempo protection, so actually expensive counterspells are not what we are aiming for. Other options are Pact of Negation and Daze. The other side of spells is surprising our opponent with a huge surge to our creatures.
Pump
IN:
Berzerk
Invigorate
Might of Oaks
Simic Charm
Vines of the Vastwood
Become Immense
Distortion Strike
This can shorten our clock significantly out of nowhere. But frequently, being a surprise is not as important as having solid advantage.
Perma-pump:
IN:
Grafted Exoskeleton
Elspeth, Knight Errant
Batterskull
Behemoth Sledge
Finest Hour
Swiftfoot Boots
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa's Jitte
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Shield of the Oversoul
Lightning Greaves
We have a number of beneficial effects here. From Infect to Unblockable. That's a lot of equipment but equipment is so good in this archetype. Elspeth does double duty of making guys and pumping guys. Her ultimate is also crazy good if you can ever get there.
The rest
IN:
Life from the Loam
Green Sun's Zenith
Sylvan Library
Mystical Tutor
Enlightened tutor
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Crucible of Worlds
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
These cards help cover some weaknesses and provide deck manipulation. The Tutors are going to be really good for us since we have a number of highly impactful artifacts and enchantments. Mystical Tutor can often end the game by getting a pump spell for Rafiq on your upkeep. Everything else just helps you keep up on resources. The LftL and Crucible combine with utility lands for good value, and even a combo finish.
Land
IN:
Wasteland
Yavimaya Hollow
Kor Haven
Rouge's Passage
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Stripmine
Thespian's Stage
Rishdan Port
Dark Depths
Inkmoth Nexus
Mutavault
Blinkmoth Nexus
Misty Rainforest
Windswept Heath
Flooded Strand
Tropical Island
Savana
Tundra
Breeding Pool
Temple Garden
Hallowed Fountain
1x Forest
1x Island
1x Plains
Centaur Garden
Cephalid Colosseum
Sunpetal Grove
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Seaside Citadel
Wooded Bastion
Horizon Canopy
Dryad Arbor
Windbrisk Heights
Mosswort Bridge
35 is a low total, and that's a greedy number of non-colored sources in a three color deck. We want to be lean though, and maximizing what you get out of your lands is a fantastic way to do that.
Creatures:34
Pump
Wolfir Silverheart
Sublime Archangel
Utility
Edric
Gaddock Teeg
Qasali Pridemage
Scavenging Ooze
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Trygon Predator
Coiling Oracle
Elvish visionary
Gilded Drake
Aven Mindcensor
Grand Arbiter
Glen Elendra Archmage
Thalia
Spirit of the Labrynth
Containment Priest
Hushwing Gryff
Kataki
Mana
Birds of Paradise
Bloom Tender
Wood Elves
Noble Hierarch
Llanowar Elves
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Rafiq back ups
Geist of Saint Traft
Sigarda
Putrefax
Knight of the Reliquary
Blighted Agent
Non-creatures
Pump:4
Berzerk
Invigorate
Might of Oaks
Become Immense
Distortion Strike
Vines of the Vastwood
Perma-pump
Grafted Exoskeleton
Elspeth, Knight Errant
Batterskull
Behemoth Sledge
Finest Hour
Swiftfoot Boots
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa's Jitte
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Shield of the Oversoul
Lightning Greaves
Utility
Green Sun's Zenith
Sylvan Library
Mystical Tutor
Enlightened Tutor
Life From The Loam
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Crucible of Worlds
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Hate
Rest In Peace
Stony Silence
Torpor Orb
Protection
Mental Misstep
Force of Will
God's Willing
Remand
Arcane Denial
Bant charm
Land: 35
Wasteland
Yavimaya Hollow
Kor Haven
Rouge's Passage
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Stripmine
Thespian's Stage
Rishdan Port
Dark Depths
Inkmoth Nexus
Mutavault
Blinkmoth Nexus
Misty Rainforest
Windswept Heath
Flooded Strand
Tropical Island
Savana
Tundra
Breeding Pool
Temple Garden
Hallowed Fountain
1x Forest
1x Island
1x Plains
Centaur Garden
Cephalid Colosseum
Sunpetal Grove
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Seaside Citadel
Wooded Bastion
Horizon Canopy
Dryad Arbor
Windbrisk Heights
Mosswort Bridge
I think this is a solid starting point. Ethersworn Cannonist and similar effects were cut since we really need to be able to capitalize on the relatively low cost of our deck versus the ramp oriented things our opponents play.
I'll be back in a few days for initial updates.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Build of the Week: Teferi, Temporal Archmage. Initial Update 2/3/15
Hello! This week I'll be looking to build a big mana blue deck with Teferi. He lends himself well to big mana with his -1 ability. There are quite a few blue cards that interact with large amounts of mana, and Blue is the color with the most interaction with Artifacts. That makes colorless mana have more impact, and colorless mana is easier to generate. That means we are going to want all the high cost hits.
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Karn
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
To get to this level of mana we are going to need to play tons of artifact mana. Normally I include the perfunctory amount at the end, but this is going to be a major component of our deck so we are going to put them up front.
IN:12
Gilded Lotus
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Worn Powerstone
Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Dreamstone Hedron
Basalt Monolith
Mind Stone
Fellwar Stone
Since Teferi can target lands and we are mono color We want to include Caged Sun and Extraplanar Lens. The common trick Lens is to play only Snow Covered Islands to reduce helpping out your opponents. We'll do this but honestly its not that big a deal unless you are playing against another mono blue deck, who's likely doing the same thing.
IN:2
Extraplanar Lens
Caged Sun
As an overall direction, ramp is ok but we want something meaty. Teferi likes other planeswalkers because of his ultimate. Two of the primary things we want to ramp into are planeswalkers. So building into the best mono-blue walkers seems like a cool direction.
IN: 5
Tezzeret the Seeker
Jace, the Mind Scuptor
Tamiyo the Moon Sage
Ugin the Spirit Dragon
Karn Liberated
There are other blue walkers, but these are clearly the best for us. Tezzeret is like a back up Teferi, and we can build around is -x for maximum value. Jace is of course great, and the colorless walkers were discussed in the opening paragraph. Tamiyo is included both to increase our walker count and because her + gives us really solid control of troublesome permanents. Sleep in EDH is back breaking because of how much happens between your untap steps. Her - can also net quite a few cards, and her ult is game winning.
Now that we have our walkers, how are we going to get value out of them? Walkers are notoriously hard to keep alive in EDH since they give people easy targets to attack.
IN:16
The Chain Veil
Contagion Engine
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
All Is Dust
Wash Out
Aether Spouts
Evacuation
Cyclonic Rift
Arcane Denial
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Into the Roil
Repeal
Capsize
Those are some good tricks and ways to extract value from our Walkers. We play a lot of board resets to buy us the time to use our massive mana lead. The Contagion artifacts do double duty of controlling the board and pumping up our walkers. We have a number of counter spells to try and force through our big plays and some single target bounce to protect ourselves but obviously there is no substitute for good old fashioned blockers.
IN:12
Ulamog
Kozilek
Steel Hellkite
Pentavus
Triskellion
Duplicant
Solemn Simulacrum
Phyrexian Metamorph
Mulldrifter
Consecrated Sphinx
Jin-Gitaxias
Psychosis Crawler
And for good measure
IN:2
Stroke of Genius
Blue Sun Zenith
And the rest are utility artifacts and library maniuplation
IN:10
Time Spiral
Sensei's Divining Top
Etherium Sculptor
Mystical Tutor
Thirst for Knowledge
Crucible of Worlds
Treasure Cruise
Intellectual Offering
Intuition(Crucible of Worlds, Petrified Field, Academy Ruins is our default)
Voltaic Key
There's definitely some things I'm missing, but that seems like a workable first draft. Onto the lands!
One of the primary benefits of being mono-color is that we get to run all sorts of utility lands for maximum value. We are going to start with 38and see if we need more or less.
Eye of Ugin
Petrified Field
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Tower of the Magistrate
Ancient Tomb
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Wasteland
Academy Ruins
Temple of the False God
Nykthos, Shrine to Nix
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth(purely to be able to tap our painlands for colorless)
Reliquary Tower
Minamo, School at Water's Edge (Untaps Nykthos and a few of our dudes.)
Diamond Valley (Eating Eldrazi makes them searchable with Eye of Ugin and dodges lots of exile effects)
Deserted Temple
Thespian's Stage
Mystifying Maze
Tolaria West
Dust Bowl
Thawing Glaciers
18x Snow Covered Island
This gives a huge number of things to be doing with our lands if we start to flood out. I have a feeling that Nykthos isn't going to do enough in this incarnation of the deck, but its a really solid way to get a lot of mana going. We are focused on colorless permanents so we might want to look at including some color dense stuff in the future to power up our Shrine to Nix. Things like Future Sight or, hilariously, Mind Over Matter.
Dudes:
Ulamog
Kozilek
Steel Hellkite
Pentavus
Triskellion
Duplicant
Solemn Simulacrum
Phyrexian Metamorph
Mulldrifter
Consecrated Sphinx
Jin-Gitaxias
Psychosis Crawler
Memnarch
Value:
Time Spiral
Sensei's Divining Top
Etherium Sculptor
Mystical Tutor
Thirst for Knowledge
Crucible of Worlds
Intellectual Offering
Intuition
Voltaic Key
The Chain Veil
Contagion Engine
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
Stroke of Genius
Blue Sun Zenith
Protection:
All Is Dust
Wash Out
Aether Spouts
Evacuation
Cyclonic Rift
Arcane Denial
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Into the Roil
Repeal
Capsize
Planewalkers:
Tezzeret the Seeker
Jace, the Mind Scuptor
Tamiyo the Moon Sage
Ugin the Spirit Dragon
Karn Liberated
Artifact Mana:
Gilded Lotus
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Worn Powerstone
Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Dreamstone Hedron
Basalt Monolith
Mind Stone
Fellwar Stone
Extraplanar Lens
Caged Sun
Sculpting Steel
Land:
Eye of Ugin
Petrified Field
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Tower of the Magistrate
Ancient Tomb
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Wasteland
Academy Ruins
Temple of the False God
Nykthos, Shrine to Nix
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth(purely to be able to tap our painlands for colorless)
Reliquary Tower
Minamo, School at Water's Edge (Untaps Nykthos and a few of our dudes.)
Diamond Valley (Eating Eldrazi makes them searchable with Eye of Ugin and dodges lots of exile effects)
Deserted Temple
Thespian's Stage
Mystifying Maze
Tolaria West
Dust Bowl
Thawing Glaciers
18x Snow Covered Island
Immediately stuff jumps out at me to add. Future Sight is probably number one on the list since its simultaneously a color dense permanent for Nykthos and infinite with Top/Sculptor. With Top its 1 draw a card. I also think we could use more things to ramp into, or more to do with our colored mana. More clones would be great. Also, to address the obvious, Teferi is amazing with Stasis effects. He can keep your mana up or build to his ult since his fellow walkers are protected by the Stasis effect. I don't think that's particularly fun even though its very strong. I might include Frozen Aether at some later date as a way to stave off Haste dudes, but honestly Teferi should pay for himself immediately and let you hold up Evacuation or some other non-sense. Sunder would be cheeky, but might be exactly what we want. I did not intentionally leave out Mindslaver, and it might be the right call. I did intentionally leave out Time Twister. It would be very good, but as much as I don't care over much about listing expensive cards I'll draw the line at a card from the power nine, weakest of the bunch though it is.
Updates* -
These are some changes to make based on initial reception.
OUT:
Pentavus
Triskellion
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
Aether Sputs
Fellwar Stone
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Into the Roil
The reasoning behind the majority of these changes is that we had started to split between a big mana deck and a proliferate deck. Pentavus, Triskellion, Tide and Clasp are really only worth it if we go full bore. Engine is still fine because it functions as a board wipe. Rewind gives us mana at the wrong time, and Pact of Negation is cool but not worth the risk unless you are going to win immediately. Aether Spouts would be a sweet instant but at sorcery speed is going just be worse than Wash Out or Evacuation most of the time. Into the Roil is competitive with Repeal and Cyclonic Rift. Rift is obviously insane, so the choice was between ItR and Repeal. I sided with Repeal since its easier to cantrip with it and the primary advantage of ItR, its fixed cost, is meaningless here since we are in the business of out mana-ing our opponents.
IN:
Blightsteel Colossus
Mana Drain
Trechery
Tower of Fortunes
Future Sight
Expedition Map
Myojin of Seeing Winds
Gauntlet of Power
Invoke Prejudice
We make room for more big mans with Blightsteel and Myojin each being game ending threats, though in different ways. We get to make more mana with Drain and Gauntlet leading the charge. Treachery should have been in the first draft, I just forgot it. Tower of Fortunes gives us a colorless way to draw cards. The last three cards, Invoke Prejudice, Future Sight, and Expedition Map, are all about powering up Nykthos. Invoke Prejudice is uniquely hilarious since normally we won't control a colored creature. Our general is a planeswalker and thus will leave even other mono-blue players out in the cold.
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Karn
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
To get to this level of mana we are going to need to play tons of artifact mana. Normally I include the perfunctory amount at the end, but this is going to be a major component of our deck so we are going to put them up front.
IN:12
Gilded Lotus
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Worn Powerstone
Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Dreamstone Hedron
Basalt Monolith
Mind Stone
Fellwar Stone
Since Teferi can target lands and we are mono color We want to include Caged Sun and Extraplanar Lens. The common trick Lens is to play only Snow Covered Islands to reduce helpping out your opponents. We'll do this but honestly its not that big a deal unless you are playing against another mono blue deck, who's likely doing the same thing.
IN:2
Extraplanar Lens
Caged Sun
As an overall direction, ramp is ok but we want something meaty. Teferi likes other planeswalkers because of his ultimate. Two of the primary things we want to ramp into are planeswalkers. So building into the best mono-blue walkers seems like a cool direction.
IN: 5
Tezzeret the Seeker
Jace, the Mind Scuptor
Tamiyo the Moon Sage
Ugin the Spirit Dragon
Karn Liberated
There are other blue walkers, but these are clearly the best for us. Tezzeret is like a back up Teferi, and we can build around is -x for maximum value. Jace is of course great, and the colorless walkers were discussed in the opening paragraph. Tamiyo is included both to increase our walker count and because her + gives us really solid control of troublesome permanents. Sleep in EDH is back breaking because of how much happens between your untap steps. Her - can also net quite a few cards, and her ult is game winning.
Now that we have our walkers, how are we going to get value out of them? Walkers are notoriously hard to keep alive in EDH since they give people easy targets to attack.
IN:16
The Chain Veil
Contagion Engine
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
All Is Dust
Wash Out
Aether Spouts
Evacuation
Cyclonic Rift
Arcane Denial
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Into the Roil
Repeal
Capsize
Those are some good tricks and ways to extract value from our Walkers. We play a lot of board resets to buy us the time to use our massive mana lead. The Contagion artifacts do double duty of controlling the board and pumping up our walkers. We have a number of counter spells to try and force through our big plays and some single target bounce to protect ourselves but obviously there is no substitute for good old fashioned blockers.
IN:12
Ulamog
Kozilek
Steel Hellkite
Pentavus
Triskellion
Duplicant
Solemn Simulacrum
Phyrexian Metamorph
Mulldrifter
Consecrated Sphinx
Jin-Gitaxias
Psychosis Crawler
And for good measure
IN:2
Stroke of Genius
Blue Sun Zenith
And the rest are utility artifacts and library maniuplation
IN:10
Time Spiral
Sensei's Divining Top
Etherium Sculptor
Mystical Tutor
Thirst for Knowledge
Crucible of Worlds
Treasure Cruise
Intellectual Offering
Intuition(Crucible of Worlds, Petrified Field, Academy Ruins is our default)
Voltaic Key
There's definitely some things I'm missing, but that seems like a workable first draft. Onto the lands!
One of the primary benefits of being mono-color is that we get to run all sorts of utility lands for maximum value. We are going to start with 38and see if we need more or less.
Eye of Ugin
Petrified Field
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Tower of the Magistrate
Ancient Tomb
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Wasteland
Academy Ruins
Temple of the False God
Nykthos, Shrine to Nix
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth(purely to be able to tap our painlands for colorless)
Reliquary Tower
Minamo, School at Water's Edge (Untaps Nykthos and a few of our dudes.)
Diamond Valley (Eating Eldrazi makes them searchable with Eye of Ugin and dodges lots of exile effects)
Deserted Temple
Thespian's Stage
Mystifying Maze
Tolaria West
Dust Bowl
Thawing Glaciers
18x Snow Covered Island
This gives a huge number of things to be doing with our lands if we start to flood out. I have a feeling that Nykthos isn't going to do enough in this incarnation of the deck, but its a really solid way to get a lot of mana going. We are focused on colorless permanents so we might want to look at including some color dense stuff in the future to power up our Shrine to Nix. Things like Future Sight or, hilariously, Mind Over Matter.
Dudes:
Ulamog
Kozilek
Steel Hellkite
Pentavus
Triskellion
Duplicant
Solemn Simulacrum
Phyrexian Metamorph
Mulldrifter
Consecrated Sphinx
Jin-Gitaxias
Psychosis Crawler
Memnarch
Value:
Time Spiral
Sensei's Divining Top
Etherium Sculptor
Mystical Tutor
Thirst for Knowledge
Crucible of Worlds
Intellectual Offering
Intuition
Voltaic Key
The Chain Veil
Contagion Engine
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
Stroke of Genius
Blue Sun Zenith
Protection:
All Is Dust
Wash Out
Aether Spouts
Evacuation
Cyclonic Rift
Arcane Denial
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Into the Roil
Repeal
Capsize
Planewalkers:
Tezzeret the Seeker
Jace, the Mind Scuptor
Tamiyo the Moon Sage
Ugin the Spirit Dragon
Karn Liberated
Artifact Mana:
Gilded Lotus
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Worn Powerstone
Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Dreamstone Hedron
Basalt Monolith
Mind Stone
Fellwar Stone
Extraplanar Lens
Caged Sun
Sculpting Steel
Land:
Eye of Ugin
Petrified Field
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Tower of the Magistrate
Ancient Tomb
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Wasteland
Academy Ruins
Temple of the False God
Nykthos, Shrine to Nix
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth(purely to be able to tap our painlands for colorless)
Reliquary Tower
Minamo, School at Water's Edge (Untaps Nykthos and a few of our dudes.)
Diamond Valley (Eating Eldrazi makes them searchable with Eye of Ugin and dodges lots of exile effects)
Deserted Temple
Thespian's Stage
Mystifying Maze
Tolaria West
Dust Bowl
Thawing Glaciers
18x Snow Covered Island
Immediately stuff jumps out at me to add. Future Sight is probably number one on the list since its simultaneously a color dense permanent for Nykthos and infinite with Top/Sculptor. With Top its 1 draw a card. I also think we could use more things to ramp into, or more to do with our colored mana. More clones would be great. Also, to address the obvious, Teferi is amazing with Stasis effects. He can keep your mana up or build to his ult since his fellow walkers are protected by the Stasis effect. I don't think that's particularly fun even though its very strong. I might include Frozen Aether at some later date as a way to stave off Haste dudes, but honestly Teferi should pay for himself immediately and let you hold up Evacuation or some other non-sense. Sunder would be cheeky, but might be exactly what we want. I did not intentionally leave out Mindslaver, and it might be the right call. I did intentionally leave out Time Twister. It would be very good, but as much as I don't care over much about listing expensive cards I'll draw the line at a card from the power nine, weakest of the bunch though it is.
Updates* -
These are some changes to make based on initial reception.
OUT:
Pentavus
Triskellion
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
Aether Sputs
Fellwar Stone
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Into the Roil
The reasoning behind the majority of these changes is that we had started to split between a big mana deck and a proliferate deck. Pentavus, Triskellion, Tide and Clasp are really only worth it if we go full bore. Engine is still fine because it functions as a board wipe. Rewind gives us mana at the wrong time, and Pact of Negation is cool but not worth the risk unless you are going to win immediately. Aether Spouts would be a sweet instant but at sorcery speed is going just be worse than Wash Out or Evacuation most of the time. Into the Roil is competitive with Repeal and Cyclonic Rift. Rift is obviously insane, so the choice was between ItR and Repeal. I sided with Repeal since its easier to cantrip with it and the primary advantage of ItR, its fixed cost, is meaningless here since we are in the business of out mana-ing our opponents.
IN:
Blightsteel Colossus
Mana Drain
Trechery
Tower of Fortunes
Future Sight
Expedition Map
Myojin of Seeing Winds
Gauntlet of Power
Invoke Prejudice
We make room for more big mans with Blightsteel and Myojin each being game ending threats, though in different ways. We get to make more mana with Drain and Gauntlet leading the charge. Treachery should have been in the first draft, I just forgot it. Tower of Fortunes gives us a colorless way to draw cards. The last three cards, Invoke Prejudice, Future Sight, and Expedition Map, are all about powering up Nykthos. Invoke Prejudice is uniquely hilarious since normally we won't control a colored creature. Our general is a planeswalker and thus will leave even other mono-blue players out in the cold.
Dawngate Post-mortem
For those that hadn't heard of it, Dawngate was a moba made by Waystone Studios. They were a new studio put together by EA games. They created a masterpiece of a game that never caught on due to the initial reluctance people have of moving into a new moba. Moba's take time and effort to build up a player base since it takes time and effort to acquire characters and learn the various champions (in Dawngate they are called Shapers). DG did some many things right that its sad to say that the servers close on February 5th and the game will disappear from the face of the earth. As my own tribute I'm going to talk about the game I fell madly in love with and all the things I adored about it.
(Disclaimer for those that played DG, I'm going to call vim gold for simplicity)
Resources seamshorces.
The first thing you notice when entering DG was the lack of any resource bar on most of the characters. In DG all characters were Garen. If a character would have mana in another game, instead they don't. Everything worked off of cooldowns only. This sounds utterly insane to anyone who has played other mobas, but it worked beautifully. What's been the primary issue with League for so long? They were adamant that there should be a lanning phase and that it should matter, but the mana system makes lanes stagnate. They have tried so many things to shake up lanes and make them more action oriented. It turns out that when you don't have to worry about going out of mana you can harass and use abilities far more. That was the whole reason people find League more playable than Dota. Abilities are able to be used more frequently and are less punishing to miss. DG took it one step forward and because of that there are characters that can only exists in that world. That isn't to say that no one had resources in DG. They still had Shapers with Rage and Energy. They even have one shaper that has a mana-like system, but its only to balance out her passive that reduces your ability cooldowns when you deal damage. The other reason there was far more interaction was...
Role Play
In DG you are faced with two distinct and important choices on the character select screen, Shaper and Role. Picking your role was independent of picking your Shaper. The roles were Hunter, Tactician, Gladiator, and Predator. Hunter was the jungling role. It gave you health back for killing neutral monsters and bonus gold for the same. Tactician was the support role. It doubled the gold you got from nearby lane minion deaths and proc'ed bonus gold for hitting an enemy Shaper. This made lanes far more active as Tacticians jockeyed for position and bonus gold. In lane, when minions die if you didn't last hit them you got 1/4 of the gold value of the minion passively. It made it a bit more forgiving for missing last hits, and for supports meant they were completely free to focus on getting their tact bonus gold. Gladiator was what people would consider the carry role. It gave double the value for last hitting a minion. Predator gave bonuses for kills/assists and killing spirit well workers(we'll get there). The beauty of the role system was that it divorced Shapers from positions. One of the worst aspects of League over the years has been that they push certain champions to be played in certain positions. This happened initially with Riven. Its why she had more health regen at level 1 than some characters had at level 18. Its inelegant. They have improved somewhat with the Hunter's Machete and Sightstone and support items, but the Role system is a far better execution since it costs no in game currency. Your options of items are not artificially limited by the design of the jungle specific items. You can do what ever you want. The roles defined how you many money, not who got money. Your Gladiators generally wound up with gold but it wasn't until late game that they really pulled ahead since Hunters and Tacticians were pulled away from their revenue streams. Shapers were not pinned to a role either. I played Basko primarily as a Hunter but in spots could play him as a Gladiator or a Tactician. Ashabelle was another favorite and she could Mage Hunter really effectively. She was also a premier Gladiator and solid tactician. Positions were interchangeable to a much greater degree than in other mobas due to the role system. Sure there were Shapers that you expected to see played one way, but doing things outside the box wasn't unusual, especially since...
Two to Tango
There were no solo lanes in DG. The center lane was removed and the two lanes were brought closer together. This is a huge change to the structure of the map we've all agreed on. The center of the map had the primary objective of the game planted smack dab in the middle of everything. It was called Parasite and it was like Baron + Inhibitor rolled into one. This is perhaps the most radical departure from the standard moba, but its the one that was the most impactful. The center of the map became the most contested area, which also meant it was equidistant from both lanes and both jungles. Fights naturally involved more of both teams since its was easier to get there in time to do something. The removal of the center lane also meant that the remaining lanes were duo lanes. There were no solo lanes in the game. This to me was the heart of the game. Even when bad match ups existed they were covered by lane partners to an extent. People could get away with a bit more since they didn't have to play Malzahar into Mordekaiser or Garen into Teemo. Sure, people could still botch it, but it wasn't nearly as harsh an experience. And speaking of experience, because the lanes were even, the only people that pulled ahead on levels were the junglers, and then only for the first clear or so since they had to become more and more involved in the game as time went on. They did have to pick up the equivalent of Smite but....
Spells to go around
The spellbook was a completely different animal to Summoner Spells. Summoner spells are chosen before the game and basically you only get to choose one since the game is built around flash existing. Dota has no spell system but their myriad activated items accomplish a similar purpose. The Spellbook was a selection of Summoner Spell like abilities that were available to each Shaper and were learned inside the game. Also, you ended up with three of them, there were more to choose from, and you could sell them back for a decently steep cost. There was Vanquish which is a neutral monster nuke, but you could eventually sell it back if so inclined. This meant that you could shift your spells to a more appropriate setup on the fly if needed. You learned the new spell at 10 and 20. You go to level 20 in the game, which isn't a big shift, but it does satisfy a certain part of my brain that likes increments of five. Speaking of being...
Statisfied
The game homogenized a whole mess of stats. Attack Damage and Ability Power were consolidated into Power, which scaled the damage of your abilities and auto-attacks. Movement Speed, Attack Speed, and Cooldown Reduction were all compressed into a stat called Haste. Lifesteal applied to all damage done by your Shaper. This was another huge shift, and played really well. It let them make great items since they didn't have to worry about stats being unusable for half their characters. They didn't need to make a Frozen Mallet + Rylei's Crystal Scepter. With less redundant items and more homogenized stats, each item felt different. There were also no disparate parts. Items upgraded linearly from tier 1 to 2 to 3, and all tier three items cost about 3k gold. The items were named after various vitality's. The Shaper were connected to a Spirit, such as the Spirit of Rage. So their items were named things like Rage, Corruption, Valor, etc. There were six base items, one for each primary stat. The six base items branched into several tier 2 items, which then branched into tier three items. This gave you a significant amount of flexibility in your build order. Of particular note is the Haste stat which allows you to be permanently faster than other characters. In other games, they use boots to increase your movement speed, but all of the boots give essentially the same movement speed boost, so a character with a higher base move speed will always be faster than a character with a lower base movement speed. Everything evens out with a boots movement system, the only thing that matters is the timing of the purchase. With the Haste stat you could change the speed dynamic between two Shapers permanently. Speaking of dynamic relationships...
Lore is Core
Dawngate is unique among mobas in having a dynamic, integrated lore system. The characters received their powers by bonding with Spirits and getting the ability to Shape the world around them. There was a three day a week webcomic that showed you the Shapers living their lives in the world. It spawned unique voice lines and periodically had votes on the direction the community wanted the lore to go. Do we want Zeri to turn Kahgen in or help him sneak out of the city? The choice resulted in a Bandit skin for Zeri, and would likely have gotten her a Virtuoso skin if she had turned Kahgen into Renzo. It was truly alive and vibrant in a way that LoL has never gotten, and other mobas don't even try. It involved the community, and it connected everyone because it hooked lore into the gameplay without needing to do anything obnoxious to accomplish its goal.
That's about all I have to say on the topic other than Waystone Games went to great efforts to connect with its community. The game was growing, with a progression patch that would do wonders to alleviate some peoples issues with the game, which wasn't perfect. DG was just better than everything else.
(Disclaimer for those that played DG, I'm going to call vim gold for simplicity)
Resources seamshorces.
The first thing you notice when entering DG was the lack of any resource bar on most of the characters. In DG all characters were Garen. If a character would have mana in another game, instead they don't. Everything worked off of cooldowns only. This sounds utterly insane to anyone who has played other mobas, but it worked beautifully. What's been the primary issue with League for so long? They were adamant that there should be a lanning phase and that it should matter, but the mana system makes lanes stagnate. They have tried so many things to shake up lanes and make them more action oriented. It turns out that when you don't have to worry about going out of mana you can harass and use abilities far more. That was the whole reason people find League more playable than Dota. Abilities are able to be used more frequently and are less punishing to miss. DG took it one step forward and because of that there are characters that can only exists in that world. That isn't to say that no one had resources in DG. They still had Shapers with Rage and Energy. They even have one shaper that has a mana-like system, but its only to balance out her passive that reduces your ability cooldowns when you deal damage. The other reason there was far more interaction was...
Role Play
In DG you are faced with two distinct and important choices on the character select screen, Shaper and Role. Picking your role was independent of picking your Shaper. The roles were Hunter, Tactician, Gladiator, and Predator. Hunter was the jungling role. It gave you health back for killing neutral monsters and bonus gold for the same. Tactician was the support role. It doubled the gold you got from nearby lane minion deaths and proc'ed bonus gold for hitting an enemy Shaper. This made lanes far more active as Tacticians jockeyed for position and bonus gold. In lane, when minions die if you didn't last hit them you got 1/4 of the gold value of the minion passively. It made it a bit more forgiving for missing last hits, and for supports meant they were completely free to focus on getting their tact bonus gold. Gladiator was what people would consider the carry role. It gave double the value for last hitting a minion. Predator gave bonuses for kills/assists and killing spirit well workers(we'll get there). The beauty of the role system was that it divorced Shapers from positions. One of the worst aspects of League over the years has been that they push certain champions to be played in certain positions. This happened initially with Riven. Its why she had more health regen at level 1 than some characters had at level 18. Its inelegant. They have improved somewhat with the Hunter's Machete and Sightstone and support items, but the Role system is a far better execution since it costs no in game currency. Your options of items are not artificially limited by the design of the jungle specific items. You can do what ever you want. The roles defined how you many money, not who got money. Your Gladiators generally wound up with gold but it wasn't until late game that they really pulled ahead since Hunters and Tacticians were pulled away from their revenue streams. Shapers were not pinned to a role either. I played Basko primarily as a Hunter but in spots could play him as a Gladiator or a Tactician. Ashabelle was another favorite and she could Mage Hunter really effectively. She was also a premier Gladiator and solid tactician. Positions were interchangeable to a much greater degree than in other mobas due to the role system. Sure there were Shapers that you expected to see played one way, but doing things outside the box wasn't unusual, especially since...
Two to Tango
There were no solo lanes in DG. The center lane was removed and the two lanes were brought closer together. This is a huge change to the structure of the map we've all agreed on. The center of the map had the primary objective of the game planted smack dab in the middle of everything. It was called Parasite and it was like Baron + Inhibitor rolled into one. This is perhaps the most radical departure from the standard moba, but its the one that was the most impactful. The center of the map became the most contested area, which also meant it was equidistant from both lanes and both jungles. Fights naturally involved more of both teams since its was easier to get there in time to do something. The removal of the center lane also meant that the remaining lanes were duo lanes. There were no solo lanes in the game. This to me was the heart of the game. Even when bad match ups existed they were covered by lane partners to an extent. People could get away with a bit more since they didn't have to play Malzahar into Mordekaiser or Garen into Teemo. Sure, people could still botch it, but it wasn't nearly as harsh an experience. And speaking of experience, because the lanes were even, the only people that pulled ahead on levels were the junglers, and then only for the first clear or so since they had to become more and more involved in the game as time went on. They did have to pick up the equivalent of Smite but....
Spells to go around
The spellbook was a completely different animal to Summoner Spells. Summoner spells are chosen before the game and basically you only get to choose one since the game is built around flash existing. Dota has no spell system but their myriad activated items accomplish a similar purpose. The Spellbook was a selection of Summoner Spell like abilities that were available to each Shaper and were learned inside the game. Also, you ended up with three of them, there were more to choose from, and you could sell them back for a decently steep cost. There was Vanquish which is a neutral monster nuke, but you could eventually sell it back if so inclined. This meant that you could shift your spells to a more appropriate setup on the fly if needed. You learned the new spell at 10 and 20. You go to level 20 in the game, which isn't a big shift, but it does satisfy a certain part of my brain that likes increments of five. Speaking of being...
Statisfied
The game homogenized a whole mess of stats. Attack Damage and Ability Power were consolidated into Power, which scaled the damage of your abilities and auto-attacks. Movement Speed, Attack Speed, and Cooldown Reduction were all compressed into a stat called Haste. Lifesteal applied to all damage done by your Shaper. This was another huge shift, and played really well. It let them make great items since they didn't have to worry about stats being unusable for half their characters. They didn't need to make a Frozen Mallet + Rylei's Crystal Scepter. With less redundant items and more homogenized stats, each item felt different. There were also no disparate parts. Items upgraded linearly from tier 1 to 2 to 3, and all tier three items cost about 3k gold. The items were named after various vitality's. The Shaper were connected to a Spirit, such as the Spirit of Rage. So their items were named things like Rage, Corruption, Valor, etc. There were six base items, one for each primary stat. The six base items branched into several tier 2 items, which then branched into tier three items. This gave you a significant amount of flexibility in your build order. Of particular note is the Haste stat which allows you to be permanently faster than other characters. In other games, they use boots to increase your movement speed, but all of the boots give essentially the same movement speed boost, so a character with a higher base move speed will always be faster than a character with a lower base movement speed. Everything evens out with a boots movement system, the only thing that matters is the timing of the purchase. With the Haste stat you could change the speed dynamic between two Shapers permanently. Speaking of dynamic relationships...
Lore is Core
Dawngate is unique among mobas in having a dynamic, integrated lore system. The characters received their powers by bonding with Spirits and getting the ability to Shape the world around them. There was a three day a week webcomic that showed you the Shapers living their lives in the world. It spawned unique voice lines and periodically had votes on the direction the community wanted the lore to go. Do we want Zeri to turn Kahgen in or help him sneak out of the city? The choice resulted in a Bandit skin for Zeri, and would likely have gotten her a Virtuoso skin if she had turned Kahgen into Renzo. It was truly alive and vibrant in a way that LoL has never gotten, and other mobas don't even try. It involved the community, and it connected everyone because it hooked lore into the gameplay without needing to do anything obnoxious to accomplish its goal.
That's about all I have to say on the topic other than Waystone Games went to great efforts to connect with its community. The game was growing, with a progression patch that would do wonders to alleviate some peoples issues with the game, which wasn't perfect. DG was just better than everything else.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Simplicity
A few days ago I was watching the daily when someone brought up Heroes of the Storm. In the course of the discussion, the topic of simplicity arose. I contended that Chess is not a simple game and got a significant amount of backlash. I didn't understand why people thought Chess was simple when to me it clearly isn't. It relates back to a saying that Blizzard loves to design around, "Easy to learn, difficult to master." Does easy to learn constitute simple? Obviously not for that saying to hold true. So how do we separate games like Chess from games like Checkers? I believe both games have a property I'm going to call intuitive. With only some small explanation you can play both games. However, there is a cap to how good you can get at Checkers. There is a dominate strategy and the game is solvable. Chess has no dominate strategy and is not solvable for a human being. Chess and Checkers are both intuitive, but Checkers breaks down and becomes simple while Chess does not. Indeed Chess has a pretty enormous place in upper academia and institutions of higher learning. No simple game could accomplish that feat.
So really the contention was over the definition of the word Simple in relationship to games. I don't think a game that is intuitive and easy to learn is simple. Nor is a game that is difficult to learn necessarily Complex. Its about the number and impact of the decision you make.
So really the contention was over the definition of the word Simple in relationship to games. I don't think a game that is intuitive and easy to learn is simple. Nor is a game that is difficult to learn necessarily Complex. Its about the number and impact of the decision you make.
First Foray into Tiny Leaders
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.
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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