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By: Necropotent, Steven Moody
May 25 2009 12:14am
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 Welcome to the Haze

par-a-dox noun : one (as a person, situation, or action) having seemingly contradictory qualities or phases

Remember Paradox Haze? A Time Spiral uncommon, this enchantment made its presence known in a set full of suspend spells and other upkeep-related abilities. On the surface, it seems that it's a dish best served to one's self, making your Ancestral Vision fire a turn or two earlier or doubling up on Honden of Seeing Winds' ability.

Paradox Haze never really saw tournament play. At one point there was some chatter about combining it with Greater Gargadon in a popular UR build. It never found its place, however, as people realized Greater Gargadon could rely on smaller creatures and land in order to find its way onto the table. Paradox Haze was a little too slow and cumbersome. A shame, really, because it's a fun card. In order to restore it to fame and glory, I'm going to see if I can build a cheap, casual deck which uses the Haze as its centerpiece.

Paradox Haze

A Selfless Approach

I mentioned earlier that at first glance Paradox Haze seems to function best when you target yourself and are able to start suspending spells or load up on upkeep-triggered abilities. In order to make things a little more interesting, let's take a look at pairing the Haze with other spells that work against the opponent, rather than for the self. I really think Black will help us out here in that it tends to offer the most upkeep-abusive permanents. For now, we'll look at what Blue and Black have to offer and go from there.

I ran a quick Gatherer search with the following parameters:

*Text:
     *DOES contain opponent's
     *DOES contain upkeep
*Format:
     *DOES contain Extended
*Color:
     *OR contains Colorless
     *OR contains Blue
     *OR contains Black
 

And this is what it spit out:

Bottled Cloister Bottled Cloister
Ebony Owl Netsuke Ebony Owl Netsuke
Fatespinner Fatespinner
Hollowborn Barghest Hollowborn Barghest
Nezumi Shortfang Nezumi Shortfang
Shapeshifter's Marrow Shapeshifter's Marrow
Skullcage Skullcage

 Well, it's a start. Obviously, Fatespinner won't do us any good because the opponent could simply choose the same phase to be skipped on each consecutive upkeep. Bottled Cloister is pretty useless for the same reason in that its ability is redundant with consecutive upkeeps. Shapeshifter's Marrow is interesting, but its triggered ability would only fire once and then you'd just end up with whatever creature happened to be on top of your opponent's library.

Hollowborn Barghest and Nezumi Shortfang could get along really well but the Barghest is terribly expensive to cast and he's not really winning the game on his own once he enters play. Ebony Owl Netsuke is on the other end of the spectrum and is even worse, in my opinion.

So that leaves Skullcage, which looks pretty entertaining. It's a lot more likely to damage the opponent than Ebony Owl Netsuke, it's cheap, colorless, and certainly unique. I like it.

Let's do another similar Gatherer search for "each player's upkeep":

Sun Droplet Sun Droplet
Necrogen Mists Necrogen Mists
Blood Clock Blood Clock
Gibbering Descent Gibbering Descent
 

Now that's what I'm talking about! Sun Droplet is designed to restore life at one point per turn. If the Haze is on us or on the opponent, it matters not: Sun Droplet's restorative powers will be increased, regardless. Necrogen Mists, Gibbering Descent and Blood Clock are all designed to be equally abusive to both players. We can make the abuse lopsided by racking up our opponents' upkeep count, letting these permanent do their dirty work in multiples.

Establishing a Base

At this point we've got a skeleton for a deck. Everything has been pretty cheap so far. Let's take a look at how many slots these cards will fill and, from there, we'll start working on balancing the rest of the deck:

4 Paradox Haze $0.05
4 Sun Droplet $0.25
2 Necrogen Mists $0.10
3 Blood Clock $0.50
3 Skullcage $0.04
2 Gibbering Descent $0.10

 I decided to run only two copies of the discard enchantments. We want these guys to come into play after the Haze has been established. Blood Clock and Skullcage landed at three copies because I'm counting on them to do a significant amount of damage (or disruption, in the case of Blood Clock). Without any creatures in the deck (yet) it seemed logical to run all four Sun Droplets. This might change later, depending on how many creatures we end up running. I figured I could display the prices on these cards since we're working on a budget.

Filling it Out

The first step in completing the deck list is to find some suitable creatures. Shadowmage Infiltrator, Dimir Cutpurse, and Blizzard Specter all immediately jump to mind. These are all good choices and they would certainly help keep the deck flowing, but these guys aren't doing much in terms of stopping our opponent's creatures and keeping us alive. For this purpose, Tidehollow Strix will work well. He flies and can get in some early damage. He also functions as a blocker/creature killer - very nice.

To find a little synergy with Necrogen Mists and Gibbering Descent, I decided to look into creatures with madness. In particular, Big Game Hunter and Nightshade Assassin caught my eye. Nightshade Assassin is neat, but I'm concerned that there won't be enough cards in hand to make his ability count. I know Big Game Hunter is limited at only crushing larger creatures, but his madness cost is super cheap and he is designed to take out (big creatures) the greatest potential threat to the deck.

Mana, Drawing, and Removal

With so many spells in the 3 and 4 casting cost range, I'd like to have a way to speed things up a bit. Talisman of Dominance should work well here and I choose it over Dimir Signet. Why? If there are two Sun Droplets on the table, tapping a Talisman for blue or black will deal one damage to me, loading up each Droplet with a counter. This translates into two life on the following upkeep, netting a gain of one life for free.

With all the discard, I'd like to take advantage of spells or abilities which make both players draw cards, such as Jace Beleren or Words of Wisdom. The theory behind spells like these is that their cheap card drawing is offset by giving cards to the opponent. Hopefully, we can negate this by allowing our opponent to draw cards off of us and then force them to discard them during their multiple upkeeps. Vision Skeins will work nicely here and it's a cheap spell, both in terms of price and casting cost.

The issue we must confront concerns our opponent and the threats they will potentially deliver. If this weren't an Extended deck, I'd leap at the opportunity to run Recoil, one of the most effective removal spells for this type of discard-heavy build. As it stands, I believe this deck needs a bit more in its arsenal that will allow it to deal with opposing creatures. Tidehollow Strix is already in but needs to be supplemented. I'm leaning toward Cruel Edict over other straight up "destroy target creature" spells because it gets around shroud and is easier to cast.

Final Decklist

Here's what we ended up with:

Paradox Opponent
Extended
Creatures
4 Tidehollow Strix
4 Big Game Hunter
8 cards

Other Spells
4 Sun Droplet
4 Talisman of Dominance
4 Cruel Edict
4 Vision Skeins
2 Necrogen Mists
4 Paradox Haze
3 Blood Clock
3 Skullcage
2 Gibbering Descent
30 cards
 
Lands
10 Island
12 Swamp
22 cards

Sideboard
0 cards
 
Blood Clock

 

How Things Played Out

Pretty fun overall. The Sun Droplets were wonderful at keeping me alive while I set up the Haze. Blood Clock is absolutely devastating when you're working against it for multiple, consecutive upkeeps. It combined well with the discard enchantments: by stacking the discard triggers first, if my opponent chose to return a permanent rather than pay life, he would be forced to discard what he returned.

I'm still unsure about the validity of Big Game Hunter and Cruel Edict. I added 4x Shadowmage Infiltrator in place of Big Game Hunter to see if things improved. The Infiltrators helped, to an extent, but in order to "win more," the deck needs mass removal which is hard to find on a budget. Right now the grand total is $6.24, which isn't bad for a cool deck that mixes up the gameplay a bit.

If You're Going Classic

Here are a few of my thoughts on building this deck for Classic Constructed. I mentioned earlier that Recoil would be a definite, especially in a situation where your opponent is sitting on an empty hand. Braids, Cabal Minion with a Paradox Haze on the opponent is just gross and Chainer's Edict is strictly better than Cruel Edict and deserves inclusion. All this to say that making it Classic legal would probably make it a bit stronger. There's also Words of Wisdom (which I mentioned earlier) that seems to be hands down better than Vision Skeins in this deck.

I hope you enjoyed the article. If anyone puts this pile together, let me know how things fared and what changes you'd make.

5 Comments

nice deck. could almost be by Joe (not verified) at Mon, 05/25/2009 - 03:11
Joe's picture

nice deck. could almost be multiplayer, if you added in the board wipe :)

intersting approach. The next by LOurs at Mon, 05/25/2009 - 04:08
LOurs's picture
4

intersting approach. The next exercice might be the paradox of "skip your upkeep" (Eon Hub + glacier ...) or maybe a larger view about "how to abuse of some cards in order to skip some phase"...

I had tons of fun with a by Lord Erman at Mon, 05/25/2009 - 04:18
Lord Erman's picture

I had tons of fun with a Vanguard deck that used Paradox Haze + Braid of Fire and Jaya Ballard as the vanguard I build and played a few years ago. Things were even getting more ridiculous when I had multiple Braid of Fires on table. It was definately a lot of fun.

This article reminded me of that deck.

LE

Great Budget Build by Basic Land at Mon, 05/25/2009 - 07:42
Basic Land's picture
5

Nice job on keeping the deck budget as well as fun. I already had most of the cards, so building it was really budget for me. It was satisfying whenever I got a soft lock on an opponent and a win was inevitable.
I can't wait for the next article.

Excellent work. by AJ_Impy at Mon, 05/25/2009 - 15:41
AJ_Impy's picture
5

A well-written deck walkthrough with an interesting concept and good appreciation for cost. If I could make one suggestion, it would be to use Magus of the Abyss over Big Game Hunter, as even just with a single haze it becomes a one-sided Barter in Blood, it doesn't touch your Tidehollow Strixes and you can abuse Blood Clock with it to keep its effect and avoid life loss. As a plus, a playset can be acquired for less than a ticket, and they have great synergy with Gibbering Descent's Hellbent.