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First of all I’d like to apologize for not posting an article last week. I had almost the entire article on the U/x Mnemonic Wall archetype written up only to lose the whole thing to a browser error. From now on I’ll be typing these bad boys up in Word first! Anyway, I didn’t have time to go back and start from scratch last week and the result was a gap in the articles. I know that M11 drafting is upon us but ROE is such a fun format that I expect it to continue to see play for a while to come. I also am hoping that this article series will be a reference point for anyone in the future who is interested in the format, so I’m going to complete it even though it may not be as important now as it was when I started writing it.

 

The topic of the week is one of my favorite archetypes from ROE draft: U/x Mnemonic Wall Control. The deck can come in a lot of different varieties, but all involve a Blue base paired with one or both of Red and Black. Occasionally another color can be involved as well but this is the exception rather than the rule.

 

The basic strategy of the deck is to draft sweet spells and then tools to recur those spells. ROE has an incredible removal suite as well as some other powerful spell effects, and it’s not difficult to lock a game down. You basically just neutralize the other player’s game until you find one of your few finishers and then win the game with it.

 

Traditionally, strategies like this are weak in draft. I’ve had a great many decks in the past that had a ton of removal but always performed below expectations. The problem with these decks is that they often forced to use their removal inefficiently. Even though your deck may be stacked with first pick cards, you lose a lot of advantage if you burn your good cards killing your opponent’s bad ones.

 

Imagine an opening hand in an M11 draft with two Lightning Bolts, a Doom Blade, a Quag Sickness, two swamps and a mountain. Seems pretty spicy no? Well when your opponent plays a turn one Elite Vanguard and then a turn two Runeclaw Bear suddenly you are faced with the need to burn two of your best spells on a couple of garbage creatures. Eventually he can keep running out trash and no matter how much removal you have you will run out before he runs out of creatures.

 

So how do you avoid this grizzly fate? The answer is card advantage, which comes in two flavors: virtual and actual. Actual card advantage is obviously a well known and highly lauded commodity. No good magic player will dis the two for one. Fewer people talk about virtual card advantage however, which is the concept of effectively disabling several of your opponent’s cards with one of yours. You don’t actually remove your opponent’s cards – you just render them ineffective. Imagine the aforementioned scenario, except replace the Quag Sickness with a Reassembling Skeleton. Now suddenly your opponent can’t attack with his vanguard and you can chump the bear all day long. The presence of the skeletons on the board neutralizes his vanguard plus one other card (at the cost of some mana). Now imagine having something like a Jwari Scuttler – you’re invalidating all of your opponent’s non-evasive two power creatures. Even though the skeletons or scuttler are worse cards than the removal spells, in this case they are far more helpful as they allow you to get so much more value out of the removal. Instead of wasting your kill spells on bad creatures you can save them for real threats.

 

Luckily, ROE provides some excellent sources of virtual card advantage. Mnemonic Wall is a great example. The wall itself isn’t really worth anything except insofar as it stops one of your opponent’s three power or less ground creatures. Having it means that you don’t need to burn removal on that creature and can save the spell you just got back for a more worthy target. If your opponent just dropped an Emrakul's Hatcher and you nab a Vendetta back with your wall, if you had an empty board you might have to shoot the Hatcher with your new removal spell. Since you have the wall, however, you can afford to wait a turn and kill the Ulamog's Crusher that your opponent powers out with his spawn tokens. When I talk about the cornerstones of this archetype, it’s worth paying special attention to good sources of virtual card advantage as they are very important to this archetype. Of course real card advantage (like Surreal Memoir) is sweet too!

 

The other key to playing this deck is understanding that you need a variety of removal spells and that sometimes you have to draft lower pick removal over higher pick removal for the sake of diversity. There are a couple of basic categories of removal in this set: removal that hits only smaller creatures vs. removal that can hit any size creature, removal that kills Black creatures vs. removal that doesn’t, removal that can generate card advantage vs. removal that is generally a 1 for 1, instant removal vs. sorcery removal, cheap removal vs. expensive removal, and enchantment based removal vs. spell based removal. Vendetta for example is a cheap instant speed removal spell that kills anything but black creatures and is often a 1 for 1. Generally it’s regarded as one of the best removal spells in the format because it’s great against auras and levelers while also dealing with most of the format’s big boom booms. People routinely take Vendetta over other removal spells. In this deck you definitely want Vendetta, but there is a real danger in overloading on them. If you end up with like 3-4 Vendetta at the cost of other removal spells, you end up with a deck that can’t deal with Black creatures and has to really worry about all that life loss adding up. So let’s go through the various removal spells available and talk about what they all do. We already discussed Vendetta so here are the rest:

 

Staggershock: A little more expensive but the potential for card advantage makes up for it. It’s great against levelers and auras but can’t scratch larger creatures under most circumstances. It’s at its best against decks that hope to win with multiple small creatures, often with evasion.

 

Flame Slash: A good mid-range removal spell that can kill most evasive threats as well as small guys. It’s cheap and efficient but lacks instant speed making it very vulnerable to totem auras.

 

Heat Ray: Can kill anything at instant speed if you have enough mana – but this deck isn’t exactly a ramp deck so it’s not quite as good here as it is in a base Green build. It’s still worth including though as it’s one of your only ways to kill large Black creatures at instant speed.

 

Forked Bolt: Is a bit like a worse Staggershock. It’s better on the mana but the loss of instant speed hurts.

 

Induce Despair: A very versatile if unreliable removal spell. If you have enough high cost finishers it becomes probably the best removal spell in the deck as it can deal with any creature (even with auras) at instant speed for a reasonable mana investment. You need to be able to back it up with a 7-9 cost creature though for it to be fool-proof. Still, you can likely count on getting it off for 5 most of the time which is still very good.

 

Last Kiss: The life gain is OK but this is one of the most narrow removal spells in the format as it doesn’t often get card advantage and only hits small creatures. The fact that it is an instant helps, however.

 

Corpsehatch: Expensive and sorcery speed but it gives you quite a bit of value. Just be conscious of the fact that it can’t hit Black creatures. Chaining this with (Mnemonic Walls) can utterly shut down an opponent’s ground game very easily.

 

Consuming Vapors: The potential for card advantage and life gain is nice, but you’ll often just end up getting tokens. Against non-token strategies though this is amazing and if you can chain it with walls it can become truly devastating. This is probably the best archetype for this spell.

 

All is Dust: The second most powerful removal spell in the format. It’s expensive and doesn’t hit Eldrazi, but it’s still an amazing spell. The more sorcery speed your deck is, the better this spell gets because it deals with auras very well.

 

Disaster Radius: The most powerful removal spell in the format, although it’s less awesome here than it is in a deck where you are likely to have more of an offense going when you cast it. The same limitations of Induce Despair apply here, but it’s still a windmill slam first pick.

 

Consume the Meek: This spell is really easy to make asymmetrical in this deck because you are unlikely to play cheap creatures. It’s not a great target for wall, but it is instant speed and really allows you to get the most out of your other removal. Consider this like a super Staggershock when filling your other removal needs.

 

Narcolepsy: Deals with almost anything but it isn’t a spell so you can’t recur it. It’s still a high pick, however. Just remember that you have limited slots available for non-creature, non-spell cards.

 

Domestication: If you already have some unconditional removal this becomes better than Narcolepsy as you can use it to generate both real and virtual card advantage. Stealing a 3/3 and shutting down your opponent’s 2/2s at the same time is awesome and allows you to focus your removal on better targets. That said, be careful and watch out for pump effects.

 

Lust for War: Is absolutely amazing in this deck as it is both a removal spell (as long as you have something that can block the target, such as, ohh, I don’t know, Mnemonic Wall and a finisher that is very hard to deal with.

 

Explosive Revelation: I will almost never play this because I always end up with too many one-cost spells in this archetype for it to be useful.

 

Spawning Breath: Another unexciting spell that is fine maindeck but really better off in the board.

 

Lastly, before we get to the section on forks and cornerstones let’s talk a bit about the other problem that this deck faces: finishing. Usually you don’t run many creatures in this deck because you want so many spells and recursion methods. As such, finding a way to kill your opponent can be difficult. Sometimes any dork will do – Halimar Wavewatch and Frostwind Invoker are reasonable common choices (especially the wavewatch). If you’re lucky you’ll get an awesome bomb rare like Sphinx of Magosi. Because you are playing for the late game, you can also run the cheaper eldrazi such as Ulamog's Crusher and Artisan of Kozilek just fine. In fact, if you have some Induce Despairs, these cards become your preferred finishers. Skeletal Wurm can do in a pinch too as it is difficult to remove. Anyway, the problem is that because you have so few finishers, your opponent can play intelligently and save his removal for those cards. Even if your opponent has a lot less removal than you, if he uses it wisely he can disrupt you very effectively. Thus it’s important that you have some finishers that are resilient, or some way of protecting your finishers (such as Deprive). It’s important to know your opponent’s game plan as well as your own and use all of your resources optimally. If you cast the wrong spells on the wrong targets you can easily lose a very winnable game.

 

On to the forks and cornerstones:

 

Forks:

 

 

Most of these cards are pretty obvious – removal and bomb finishers. Some, like Drana and the assassin are both! A few cards deserve special mention, however. Guard Gomazoa is at its best in this deck because of the excellent virtual card advantage that it provides.  Nirkana Cutthroat is also good here because it holds off the entire opposing team at max level (with the exception of evasive creatures). Regress is also exceptional in this deck as the card disadvantage that comes from using it as a tempo spell is pretty easy to recoup and because it’s so good when you use it to get back Mnemonic Wall.

 

Cornerstones:

 

 

Echo Mage is obviously good in a deck full of good spells, and Mnemonic Wall/Surreal Memoir are equally obvious. See Beyond is another nice spell that combos well with the wall and helps you create some card quality advantage in the late game. The mana fixers are critically important if you want to play three colors. Cadaver Imp helps you keep your finishers alive and also is pretty sweet when you use it to recur walls. The scorpion and oracle are both good for providing card advantage by netting you a card when you cast them and then providing virtual card advantage on the table. Deprive is also at its best here as it helps you protect your late game and can be recurred. It’s still a tricky spell to play correctly, however. Last but certainly not least are Splinter Twin and Keening Stone. The stone is the stone nuts in this deck. It’s a very quick finisher that is also very hard to disrupt. Almost nobody will be backing artifact removal main and you still won’t see much out of the board either. Because you are killing your opponent’s men the stone should be quick to get off the ground and will often deck your opponent in two to four turns. I think an argument could be made that the stone is as good as Drana in this deck, although I think I’d still side with the vampire lady. The fact that it’s even close goes to show how ridiculous Keening Stone is in this archetype. Splinter Twin, on the other hand, can completely change the way you play the game. It’s nice because in this deck there is very little risk to casting it. If you try to put it on a wall and they remove the wall in response, you aren’t really losing a card because the wall itself doesn’t really count as a card (unless it’s the only thing holding off the other guy’s team, in which case why didn’t your opponent remove it earlier?). And if you stick it.... well then things just get silly. I’ve had more than one occasion where I literally locked my opponent out of the game with Deprive + Mnemonic Wall + Splinter Twin. I’ve also had the opportunity to burn my opponent out from 20 with nothing but repeated Staggershock to the dome. The two or three times that I was able to draft a Splinter Twin with this archetype are probably the most fun I’ve had in draft ever, and that’s saying a lot.

 

Hybridization:

 

Another thing that is worth noting about this deck is that it hybridizes quite well. Because it shares finishers with token decks and EVERY deck likes removal, a lot of the Red and Black token generation spells can work well here. Also, you can put a recursion package in any deck that has sufficient spells to take advantage. Just keep in mind what the abstract game plan is. If you are hybridizing, make sure that your “foreign” spells fill a specific role in your plan and aren’t just a “plan B” that has no synergy with plan A. It’s easy to find synergies with this archetype – Emrakul's Hatcher provides reasonable defense and/or accelerates out a finisher thus allowing you to be more selective about your removal. So don’t play with the plan of killing the first few creatures your opponent plays and then trying to rush out a fattie as soon as possible. That’s just not the way you want to play this deck most of the time. Make the hybrid work with the backbone of your strategy, not the other way around.

 

Matchups:

 

Honestly this archetype can be strong or weak against ANY opposing deck. It all depends on your removal suite. Too many one-for-ones at sorcery speed and you are weak against levelers and auras. Too many card advantage spells that only kill small creatures and you are weak against ramp. Too many copies of Vendetta and you are weak against Black. Your overall plan is close to unbeatable if you put the right pieces together, but don’t be afraid to skew your removal choices one way or another if the cards for particular opposing archetypes are exceptionally strong at your table.

 

It’s worth mentioning that the mirror match is something of a nightmare to play. Both players will have a surplus of removal and a paucity of finishers. I think the advantage goes to whomever has the most countermagic and sources non-creature based card advantage. Recurring Insight is an absolute beast in this matchup. Also, Keening Stone... just Keening Stone.

 

We’re in the home stretch here! Only a few more archetypes to cover and then I plan on writing a final wrap up article that will explore the connections between archetypes. Happy drafting, even if you do cheat on the Eldrazi with a little M11 action on the side!