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By: Dr_TRex, Dan Montgomery
May 28 2009 12:43am
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This week in the Dinosaur Doctor's Office we take a look at a deck with a number of interesting problems. First, it looks far too much like a list from Elder Dragon Highlander. Second, it's split too many different directions for it to do anything coherent. Finally, it has an extra organ lurking inside it! Without further ado, let's get going on today's Dinosaur Doctor's Office!

 Nicol BolasCruel UltimatumNicol Bolas, Planeswalker

Angel of DespairYore-Tiller NephilimDin of the Fireherd

Symptoms: Who can tell when the deck never runs the same way twice?

Now, the problem isn't that the deck can't win, but more that it never does the same thing twice. One game it plays mana ramp and drops big men galore, leaving the opponent behind quickly. The next game, it never does anything meaningful, and drops lands, watching the opponent chew on its jugular. Here's an example of the kind of gameplay it experiences:

I play a tapland; he plays a llanowar reborn, I play a bounceland, he plays overgrown tomb untapped and plays Safehold Elite. I replay my tapland. He gets in for 3 and plays Quirion Dryad followed by a bounceland, returning his depleted llanowar reborn. I untap and evoke a mulldrifter, followed up by a second bounceland, before shipping it back. He plays a vivid grove and festercreep and cracks in for 5. I untap drop a swamp and clear his guys with culling sun, but the safehold elite persists and comes back as a 1/1. He plays kitchen finks and attacks me down to 12. I untap and play Oros, the Avenger, who looks rather pitifully upon a field of white creatures. he drops double power conduit and cracks at me again. I block the finks with oros, but take 3 damage and fall to 9. On my turn I play a signet and drop malfegor, cleaning up his guys, but they just persist back anyway. I hit him for 6 with oros, but it's pretty clear that there's nothing I can do at this point. he eventually attacks me down to 4, using his power conduits to convert the counters on his vivids to +1/+1 counters on his guys.  He ends the game with a grafted murderous redcap who receives a counter from power conduit, burning me to death.

I might have had a better time if I had replayed crumbling necropolis and held culling sun for a turn, but it was pretty apparent that I was never really in the game. The bouncelands combined with the taplands were just too slow to get anywhere. I found myself sitting with heaps of spells in hand but no mana to cast them. As you can see, the deck is very inconsistent currently, a condition directly related to the problems it's having at the moment.

Second I face a deck which is miraculously more inconsistent than this one... Take it from me, that's about as inconsistent as they come. the first play of the game is his Aether Charge, which i answer on my turn six hardcast Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind. He plays berserk murlodont and hits me for 4 with charge. I respond on my turn by pinging him with Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind and hardcasting an Angel of Despair, destroying his charge. I attack him for 4 with Niv-Mizzet, and he answers with an embermage goblin, searching up a second copy. I swing in for 9 after pinging him with niv-mizzet again. I play orzhova church of deals. On his turn he pings niv-mizzet with the goblin, then hardcasts claws of wirewood, killing niv-mizzet, but dropping himself to 2. he follows that up with a blaze for 2 on angel of despair, but I hit him with (orzhova church of deals), dropping him to 1, and I do it again to end the game on my own turn after untapping with malfegor, aetherplasm, and 3 lands in hand.

Well, if there's one thing this game showed me it's the power of dropping giant flying men into play. If there's two things it's that having no good early drops or removal can result in disaster. (At least it should... more on that another day.)

The next game was against a black white blue deck. He dropped a turn 1 martyr of sands and on turn 2 he sacked it for 12 life. I dropped some signets and he played a mourning thrull as well as (Rune-tail Kitsune Ascendant), who instantly flipped thanks to the martyr from earlier. Eventually, I played a Blood Tyrant 2 turns early, but he zapped it with mortify. my next turn I played yore-tiller nephilim and left mana up to makeshift mannequin blood tyrant. He used unmake to... well... unmake my yore-tiller nephilim, but when he attacked a giant vampire sprung up to block the damage from his thrull. I played Oros, the avenger my next turn, and cracked him for 7 with my growing tyrant. he answered with a damnation. my next turn I played Mindleech Mass, which was met by a deathbringer liege. I trampled over the liege and played damnation from his hand, cleaning the board once more. I played Oona, Queen of the Fae and activated her milling ability; he conceded.

One last highlight might be a later game where Rakdos the Defiler managed to pick up double strike from Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion and swing across, desecrating my opponent's side of the board to a mere 3 lands. It was improbable, and on a better draw from my opponent it wouldn't have worked, but it was the kind of moment that makes you smile at how great Magic can be sometimes.

Let's get a closer look at this list:

 

Let's take a step back; that's a lot to take in all at once...

A lot...

It looks almost like a highlander deck gone horribly wrong, and that isn't a great place for a deck to be. Now, in terms of the numerous massive legendary bombs it's packing, that's not the worst problem ever, but in terms of the utility spells, mana acceleration, and land base, it's a disaster. Decks tend to have an easier run when they can count on drawing a given set of spells at the right moment. One of the biggest problems this deck has is getting its spells played in a timely manner; when half your deck is massive creatures at massive mana costs, that shouldn't be much of a surprise. So the thing we're treating at the moment is the general lack of focus, which is displayed  in both the mass of singleton spells and in the fact that this deck is 12 cards too big.

Diagnosis: No-focus-a-tosis combined with Inconsistencia with complications from Excess Card Syndrome.

Treatment: Rework the Deck!

-2 Cruel Ultimatum, -2 Profane Command. -2 Culling Sun, -1 Esper Charm, -1 Grixis Charm : Great spells, fun spells, don't get me wrong; but by the time they can do anything helpful for us, we're ready to hardcast big creatures without worrying about the other side of the board.

-1 Oros, the Avenger, -1 Numot, the Devastator, -1 Bladewing the Risen, -1 Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind, -1 (Rakdos, The Defiler): when we play a creature, we want that creature to do something relevant, or at least end the game quickly. As cool as this dragon quartet +1 may be, they are all fairly small compared to our other creatures, and they can also be too slow to do anything important.

-1 (Orzhova, Church of Deals), -1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion : As much fun as ending one game with Orzhova was, the situation isn't going to come up frequently enough to warrant stretching our already tight mana. The same goes for Sunhome; sure there are one or two awesome moments when you double strike your opponent to death, but you're far more likely to find yourself in a bad place with your mana.

-7 Signets : A good as these cards are at accelerating, Acceleration simply isn't what we need here, so out they go.

On second thought, let's remove the mana base entirely and start again. Actually, the Arcane Sanctums and Crumbling Necropoli can remain, but otherwise we need an overhaul. when we're done reworking the rest of the deck we'll figure out what mana sources look good.

hmm... That's odd... With all those pieces we took out, we seem to have had an extra kidney amidst the rubble. We'll set it aside for now and do something with it later.

Prescription: Now, as much fun as reanimating huge creatures is, the last version of this deck didn't really have any way to get them there in the first place. It could overstock it's hand and discard the surplus, but that wasn't very reliable if you happened to draw signets and wanted to play them...

+4 Compulsive Research and +2 Ghastly Discovery, to help us find a way to discard the giant men in our hand as well as help us find ways to get them into play.

+3 Yore-Tiller Nephilim which is stellar at recruiting fallen soldiers. To go with them, +2 Aetherplasm as well, since not only does he make an amusing blocker, but with this next card he can be downright abusive. The card in question you ask? +2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, who not only lets you play Aetherplasm to surprise your opponent's unwitting creatures, but also let's you drop yore-tiller nephilim when it can't be removed instantly. We'll keep him at 3 since he's legendary.

With all these changes going on, let's just add some new lands and see how the list stands: 

 

Ah; much nicer. Here's how it looks after physical therapy:

He starts off with a mountain, I play arcane sanctum. He plays a second mountain and Iron Myr. I play a vivid creek. he plays great furnace and Thunderstaff, swinging for 1 with his myr. I play a second arcane sanctum and pass the turn. he plays a second iron myr and attacks for 1. On my turn I play Watery Grave untapped and Yore-Tiller Nephilim. he plays a Myr Retriever and attacks with 1 iron myr, leaving him with mana to activate Thunderstaff. I take tha damage. On my turn I play Compulsive Research, discarding Bogardan Hellkite and Blood Tyrant. I attack, resurrecting the Hellkite and killing all of his creatures.

In the next game I face down the scaries birds of paradise I've ever seen. by turn 3 it was swinging a swrod of light and darkness as well as bonesplitter axe. When he made to equip it with Umezawa's Jitte, I used Makeshift Mannequin to get back the Bogardan Hellkite I had discarded earlier to kill it in response to the equip. The next turn he dropped silhana ledgewalker and armed it just as nicely as the bird, rampaging across the board to drop my life even lower and return the dead birds to his hand, which he promply played. I swung back with a kokusho I had played as well as the hellkite and a stray Aetherplasm that had showed up at some point, but even with the 26 damage I inflcted on him, he survived thanks to sword of light and darkness and finished me off with a a Stonewood Invocation.

The third game: my opponent plays some lands, ramps his mana with kodama's reach and reap and sow, while I play lands and a yore-tiller nephilim. His next turn he reap and sows, killing my crumbling necropolis and adding a second cloudpost to his side of the table. I play compulsive research, discarding nicol bolas and mindleech mass. I swing in, hitting him with mindleech mass and playing the savage twister from his hand, leaving reiterate, and nothing else important. He sits around doing nothing for a minute or so, until he spits out a "Nice <deleted> deck..." and concedes.

There were a few other games in there, but not much of interest happened in either. One game I was blown out by a very early Time Stretch, and another my opponent didn't play anything but basic lands and a turn 5 nettle sentinel before conceding to my board of... that terrifying monster: Aetherplasm

The mana has been beautiful with the addition of shocklands, and with the exception of one hand which got stuck on 2 lands, I have never had a yore-tiller nephilim I couldn't cast. This is one patient whose rehabilitation went beautifully.

Wait... wasn't there a spare kidney lying around here somewhere? Oh yeah, here it is! Forget finding a transplantee; let's build a whole new body around that forgotten kidney:

The first game was very back and forth. I started off playing a land, which he answered with a land of his own. A few turns later saw me playing Twisted Justice to answer his yore-tiller nephilim. I followed that up with Aeon Chronicler suspended for 5, which was met by a land. Next, rather embarassingly, I accidentally skipped my turn, discarding Cruel Ultimatum. He answered with a Cruel ultimatum of his own. On my turn I cast Sins of the Past to replay my discarded ultimatum. He played a fully loaded Etched Oracle, which I responded to with Thought Reflection. He attacked for 4, and I began drawing sick numbers of cards courtesy of Chronicler, Reflection and Kiss of the Amesha. He attacked again, before drawing 4 off his Oracle and playing Prince of Thralls. I responded with Din of the Fireherd to kill his prince. On his turn he dropped (Nicol Bolas Planeswalker), stealing my token. I played Cruel Ultimatum, killing the token and drawing some cards. (Lots of cards actually... I ended the turn with 15 in hand...) On his turn, he destroyed my reflection. I responded with Form of the Dragon and my unsuspended Aeon Chronicler Smacked him viciously in the face. He killed my Chronicler and Form of the Dragon, but I just untapped and blasted him to death with a huge Banefire.

The second game was rather unfortunate... I manaburned for 4 due to a misclick, and lost all my hopes of a comeback, suffering a beatdown at the hand of a pair of Knotvine Paladins and a Behemoth Sledge.

The third game saw a Cinderbones for his turn 3 play and 3 signets for mine. His turn 4 consisted of swinging for 1, while I played signet number 4. The terrifying cinderbones struck again, and on my turn 5, I dropped Nicol Bolas. Playing an 8 mana creature on turn 5 is pretty sweet, and when his cinderbones attacked again, I gladly took the hit, which was amplified by double Predator's Strike. I untapped, and rampaged across the table in a way that only nicol bolas can. I emptied his hand, and hit his cinderbones with a very small banefire for 1. He conceded after playing a rampant growth, and I didn't really blame him.

And that's all I've got for today!

Until then, this is Dr. T-Rex, signing off from the Dinosaur Doctor's Office.

1 Comments

ha ha by whiffy at Thu, 05/28/2009 - 12:19
whiffy's picture
5

man what a much more enjoyable read. Good job. You were able to keep that fresh humor and make the article longer and more enjoyable to read through it throuness. keep em coming t rexy.