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By: Lord Erman, Nafiz Erman
Dec 27 2011 10:12am
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ROGUE PLAY
From Casual Room to FNM
Part VI
by Nafiz Erman

Hello dear readers and welcome back to Rogue Play. Since I started this From Casual Room to FNM series, I surprisingly never had the chance to build decks that had Blue as their main color. Twice I build Black decks and then showed you decks with Forests, Mountains and Plains'. But now this week I'm finally going to "complete the circle". Finally the wait is ending and finally I'm going to tap Islands this week. And trust me dear readers; it'll be worth the wait.

So what's our theme this week then? Well, this week's theme is card advantage. We all know that games are won (or lost) because of it. The one player who has the most cards in his hand, will most likely have the correct answer needed during a game. And this is what we're going to focus this week dear readers. Meaning card advantage and meaning having cards in hand. And lots of cards. As a matter of fact, this week we will kill with card advantage.

This week we will do some absurd things such as this:

Wow, Psychosis Crawler, eh? I always thought of it as a Commander type of a card.

Well yes my inner-me, for a very long time I also considered Psychosis Crawler as a Commander-only creature. But recently when searching for ideas for my series I came across that one and said "Let's give it a shot". And I had no idea that the results were going to be this good.

So, without further ado, let's start with the casual section.

 

DECK #1 & DECK #2
Casual Psychosis Crawler decks

At this section I'm going to show you two versions dear readers, and the first one is a mono Blue deck. Oh yes I said mono Blue and no, the deck doesn't have Grand Architect in it.

My very early testing with Psychosis Crawler actually showed me one thing: The card -and thus the deck- was almost unstoppable after turn five. But there was one other thing that testing revealed; the deck was rarely seeing beyond turn five! So I basically divided the deck into two parts; what to do after turn five and how to survive until turn five.

Ratchet Bomb

The first part was easy, so I decided to concentrate on the second part first; meaning how to survive until turn five. I will not tell you here in long paragraphs all the cards I tried but will basically tell you the end result. Which has the two cards you see on the left and right for starters.

Claustrophobia is a Blue Pacifism and you know what? It works. It really does! So they play that horrible monster which is ready to tear you apart and you simply play this enchantment onto it and technically get rid of it.

Ratchet Bomb is another early game card of the deck. Please remember dear readers that we're at the casual section now and here I don't build decks with sideboards. And therefore I had to come up with something that was going to help me against Aggro. People do play turn one Mountain into Stromkirk Noble, you know!

Claustrophobia

And Ratchet Bomb is the perfect answer to those decks. It's even better if you can repeatedly play it thanks to Buried Ruin and if you can put counters on it faster than normal thanks to proliferate cards.

Speaking of proliferate, I have to say that I also have Tezzeret's Gambit in deck as well as Contagion Clasp. I do have them because my removal isn't only those two cards I mentioned above. I also have Dismember but most importantly, I have Tumble Magnet. And as you can guess, I also have Sphere of the Suns to play my Psychosis Crawler on turn four. And all those artifacts with counters on them simply mean proliferate cards. Tezzeret's Gambit is great with them and it's also great with Psychosis Crawler and that's why it's in.

So these are all the cards that help me get to beyond turn five. Ratchet Bomb, Claustrophobia, Tumble Magnet, Dismember, Contagion Clasp and even Stoic Rebuttal (makes sense with all those artifacts) are the cards I'm playing until I reach to turn five. Those are very useful cards and they are really good in keeping me alive. And now let's take a look at what I'm doing after turn five.

As a matter of fact, I do some very interesting things after turn five. Such as casting these cards:

Distant Memories Venser's Journal Time Reversal

I'm sure some explanation is needed now.

Alright, let's take a look at those cards separately and try to understand what I'm doing with them. Because they all look horrible at first and most of you wouldn't even think of putting them in your decks no matter how casual those decks are.

So let's begin with Distant Memories. None of us like giving choices to our opponents. But sometimes making them choose something for us, isn't that bad. Fact or Fiction or the recent Sphinx of Uthuun are good examples. Normally Distant Memories is not a such card, but in the right deck it can turn into a win-win card. And this dear readers, is the right deck.

I told you; Distant Memories CAN be a win-win card.

Alright, you also see that I have Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur in deck. That's one other card that goes well with Psychosis Crawler and it's also one other reason why I have Venser's Journal in the deck.

This is so much fun pain!

And the last card that I have to explain is Time Reversal. Just imagine dear readers what would it look like if you happen to play it when you have Psychosis Crawler on table. Or don't imagine things but look at this screenshot:

Time Reversal wins games.

Okay dear readers, you already saw the most part of the deck this far. Let's see the complete deck list now and then we'll talk a bit more about it.

Casual Blue Psychosis
A Standard deck by Nafiz Erman
Creatures
3 Psychosis Crawler
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
4 cards

Other Spells
4 Tezzeret's Gambit
4 Sphere of the Suns
4 Ratchet Bomb
3 Think Twice
3 Tumble Magnet
3 Dismember
3 Claustrophobia
2 Stoic Rebuttal
2 Blue Sun's Zenith
2 Contagion Clasp
1 Venser's Journal
1 Time Reversal
1 Distant Memories
33 cards
 
Lands
4 Glimmerpost
3 Buried Ruin
16 Island
23 cards

 
Psychosis Crawler

 

As I said, during early turns I do everything I can to stay alive. I even have Glimmerpost in the deck (every single point of life counts!). Then I bring in my Psychosis Crawler which most of the time dies upon entering the battlefield, then I bring it again thanks to Buried Ruin, and then start drawing cards. Well yes, that simple! Draw cards and win the game.

I am finishing my opponent with sheer card advantage... literally!

Things are of course very easy after I get out my Psychosis Crawler and manage to keep him on table. But getting there is very difficult. And that's the reason why I pack all those removal cards I mentioned above.

Life gain is also a fantastic way to combat Aggro.

And when everything is under control, Psychosis Crawler comes in and starts doing its "thing".

So yes dear readers, that was the first casual Psychosis Crawler deck of the article, and I hope you liked it. Now it's time for the second one. This one is a  deck and this time just because we are playing Red, we have a much better removal package. But I didn't add Red to the deck just because of Galvanic Blasts and/or Slagstorms. They are important of course but the main reason I added Red is something else.

It's actually Molten Psyche.

So my game plan with this deck is the same as the first mono Blue deck. Meaning stay alive until turn five, get your Psychosis Crawler out, start drawing cards and win by just drawing cards.

But this time I kill my opponent much faster simply because of Molten Psyche.  Just because I'm still playing many artifacts in the deck, I do achieve Metalcraft quite fast. And that means that Molten Psyche will deal double the damage of course! Sometimes I cast my Molten Psyche and even win right at that point. 

One other thing I have to say is that I'm still playing cards to proliferate in this deck. Slagstorm surely is nice, but testing revealed that even a playset is not enough. And besides, Slagstorm can't kill titans. And that's the reason why I have Ratchet Bomb and Tumble Magnet in this deck as well. And of course this means Tezzeret's Gambit and proliferate.

Finally I have to say that I play my Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur in this deck as well, because he's so much fun with Psychosis Crawler!

Okay, I think I explained the basic idea behind this second deck well enough. And now it's time for the list:

 

Basically all the things I said above. Early turns I do everything I can to stay alive, then bring in my Psychosis Crawler and finish with it. Sometimes the sheer amount of cards I draw are enough for the win, and sometimes the win comes with a Molten Psyche.

Okay dear readers, these two were my casual Psychosis Crawler decks and I hope you liked them. Now let's see how we can upgrade them and make them semi competitive decks.

 

DECK #3 & DECK #4 & DECK#5
Semi Competitive Psychosis Crawler decks

If you're following this From Casual Room to FNM series, then you know that I have a rule here at the semi competitive section. Here I add only two expensive cards to my above casual decks and try to make them semi competitive with just those two cards.

Normally choosing which two cards I'll use is an easy process. But when I started looking at the options for the first mono Blue deck, I ended up with three very good cards. But just because I didn't want to break my own rule, I had to let one go. Oh and I mean these three by the way:

Consecrated Sphinx Solemn Simulacrum Phyrexian Metamorph

All three were nice but at the end I decided to leave Phyrexian Metamorph outside of the list. Of course I know how good that card is and of course I know that I could have used it in this artifact-heavy deck of mine, but the other two were simply better options.

And here's the list after I added my Consecrated Sphinxes and Solemn Simulacrums to it:

 

At first I was very worried about this deck's performance against good Aggro decks. I mean, we're not in the Casual Room anymore and we should be ready to fight good decks right now. But surprisingly the deck performed very well against those fast decks. And the reason was... Buried Ruin!

So I was using Ratchet Bomb once and killing a few creatures. Then with the help of my Buried Ruin, I was getting that Ratchet Bomb back to my hand and was using it again. And with four Ratchet Bombs and three Buried Ruins, it was almost impossible for Aggro decks to deal damage to me. And besides, what I couldn't kill with Ratchet Bomb, I was simply killing with Dismember or I was leaving it tapped with either Claustrophobia or with Tumble Magnet.

Also please do note that I have four Gut Shots in the sideboard which I always side in against dedicated Aggro decks. It really felt great to kill several Stromkirk Nobles and some Gideon's Lawkeepers on my turn zero before even playing a land!

Okay that was the first deck of this section. Next I have my upgraded version of my Turbo Psychosis deck. I added Consecrated Sphinx and Jace, Memory Adept to it, and this is how the deck looked like after I finished upgrading it:

Semi Competitive Turbo Psychosis
A Standard deck by Nafiz Erman
Creatures
3 Psychosis Crawler
3 Consecrated Sphinx
6 cards

Other Spells
4 Sphere of the Suns
4 Mana Leak
4 Tezzeret's Gambit
3 Think Twice
3 Brimstone Volley
3 Ratchet Bomb
3 Slagstorm
2 Jace, Memory Adept
2 Galvanic Blast
2 Molten Psyche
30 cards
 
Lands
4 Sulfur Falls
3 Buried Ruin
2 Rootbound Crag
9 Island
6 Mountain
24 cards

Jace, Memory Adept

 

At first I didn't add Consecrated Sphinx to this deck. I first tried Spellskite as one of my expensive cards. Then I switched to Solemn Simulacrum. But at the end I realized that Consecrated Sphinx really is one of the best cards one can use together with Psychosis Crawler, so I added it to the deck.

Consecrated Sphinx and Psychosis Crawler are good buddies.

And during testing I saw how correct that decision was. Having one Consecrated Sphinx out with Psychosis Crawler was excellent already but having two out... well, that was awesome! 

Of course things are even more funnier with two Consecrated Sphinxes out. So "funny", that even Wolf Run is helpless against them.

And during testing I saw that adding Jace, Memory Adept to the deck was also a good choice. And with Tezzeret's Gambit's help, I even did some crazy things as can be seen below:

Uh-oh, am I just proliferating Jace to his ultimate? And when Psychosis Crawler is on the table?

So yes, once again I saw how powerful Psychosis Crawler can be in Standard if only "paired" with the correct cards.

Speaking of correct cards to pair Psychosis Crawler with, I also have to say that Garruk, Primal Hunter is another good candidate. Psychosis Crawler loves card drawing and Garruk's middle ability is just doing that. Pairing those two cards sounded like a lot of fun to me and thus I started building the next deck you'll see below:

 

To be honest, I spent a lot of time tweaking this deck's mana base. As you can see I have a lot of "color specific" cards in the deck (cards with double or triple colored mana in their casting costs), and finding the right mana base and adjusting the numbers took a lot of time. But the end result was very satisfying. And I wasn't wrong; Garruk, Primal Hunter together with Psychosis Crawler was tons of fun indeed!

Garruk with two Crawlers... this is going to hurt a lot.

Garruk may not be Consecrated Sphinx but as you can see, he has his uses. 

 

DECK #6 & DECK #7 & DECK #8
Competitive Psychosis Crawler decks

And finally we reached to the section where we will upgrade our decks into their most competitive versions. Let's start with the mono Blue one. Let's make it as competitive as it can get.

Here's the deck I have in mind:

Competitive Blue Psychosis
A Standard deck by Nafiz Erman
Creatures
3 Solemn Simulacrum
3 Consecrated Sphinx
2 Psychosis Crawler
8 cards

Other Spells
4 Ratchet Bomb
4 Sphere of the Suns
3 Mana Leak
3 Think Twice
3 Tezzeret's Gambit
2 Tumble Magnet
2 Dissipate
2 Claustrophobia
2 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Dismember
1 Venser's Journal
1 Jace, Memory Adept
1 Karn Liberated
29 cards
 
Lands
4 Glimmerpost
3 Buried Ruin
16 Island
23 cards

Blue Sun's Zenith

 

The hardest part for me was to say goodbye to Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur but that had to be done. Karn Liberated came in and replaced Jin, and I have now much more counterspells than before.

I tested this above deck very intensely for a long time and I think that the numbers of cards are telling you that fact. And now it's as competitive as a mono Blue deck can get in Standard. And the best thing I like about it, is the fact that it can win in many different ways. Some games I won with just Consecrated Sphinx. Bring in two and hit hard. This is still a good plan.

Sometimes I win with a huge Psychosis Crawler with counter back up, and sometimes I win with Jace. Tezzeret's Gambit is still in the deck and that card helps me in ultimating my Jace.

Jace ultimates and my Crawler simply kills the opponent. You know what they say; too much of anything can be deadly. In our case that means drawing too many cards can finish games.

This deck performed very well against Aggro decks contrary to what I was expecting. And Ratchet Bomb was the key card in those games. But against decks like Wolf Run, those Ratchet Bombs were almost useless. And that's the reason why I added Mind Control to my sideboard. They play their titan and if I cannot hold it under control with a Tumble Magnet or with Claustrophobia, I simply steal it. Perfect!

Alright, that was the mono Blue version. I will not show you an upgraded version of the  Turbo Psychosis deck because my testing showed me that the above version was just fine. Maybe a few changes here and there would be okay, and maybe the sideboard could use a few different cards, but other than those minor changes there was nothing I could have come up with to make it even better. So now I'm going to show you the final version of the RUG Psychosis Crawler deck which I'm sure you'll like a lot.

Here it is, in all its awesomeness(!) one of my finest work of recent times:

 

I will not explain you this deck with just mere words. Instead, I recorded the below video and recommend you to watch it. In that video I tell you everything you need to know about the deck and also show you one game so that you see the deck in action.

I hope you liked it.

And finally I want to show you another version. I came up with this list at the very last minute, tested it and saw that it was perfect and so I decided to share it with you.

Here it is:

 

What I did here is simple: I took my beloved Psychosis Crawler / Consecrated Sphinx duo and put them into the well known  Control shell. This one plays like a usual and ordinary  Control deck until it brings in its Psychosis Crawler out. After that the procedure is the same; draw cards with Consecrated Sphinx and kill with Psychosis Crawler. But the methods it uses to get there are different than the other decks in this article.

As I said, most of the time the opponent thinks that he's facing a regular  Control deck and he doesn't even understand what "hit" him after Psychosis Crawler kills him within a few short turns.

 

WRAPPING UP PART VI

Okay dear readers, that's all from me for this week. I hope you liked all the things I did with Psychosis Crawler. At the very least, I'm sure now that you don't think of Psychosis Crawler as a Commander-only creature.

And before I say goodbye, there is one final thing I want to tell you.

 

The reason why Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is so devastating
And an advice how to fight him

Normally the player with Jin plays him at the end of your turn. And you look at him on the stack, then you look at your hand with seven Doom Blades and smile and let the card resolve. Well congratulations, you just lost the game!

In paper Magic of course you can respond to that Jin by simply Doom Blade'ing it upon entering the battlefield. But here on MTGO things are a bit different. Here, you have to tell the program that you need to Doom Blade Jin after it enters the battlefield.

What do you mean?

What I mean is very simple: You do need to have a stop set at your own End Step. Do you have it? I know, you don't. As a matter of fact, none of us have. So even though you have seven Doom Blades in your hand, you just can't kill Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur simply because you don't have a stop set at your End Step. This means that Jin will enter the battlefield and will make you discard all your hand.

So how can we fight this? It's actually simple. The moment you see Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur on the stack, just tap a land. That's all! Tap a land. Jin then enters the battlefield and just because you have mana in your mana pool, the program gives you a chance to use it. Then you'll tap another land and play Doom Blade. That's all!

Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur

So use this advice I gave you the next time you face Mr. Jin!

 

NEXT WEEK ON ROGUE PLAY
From Casual Room to FNM, Part VII

I hope what I showed you in the past six articles was nice, entertaining and interesting. But you know what; you've seen nothing! The best part is about to come. This week I finished my opponents by just drawing cards. Next week I will finish them... well, as a matter of fact I will not be doing much to finish them. That will not be necessary. Because they will do all the dirty work themselves and at the end will kill themselves as well!

Curious? Check back next week then!

And thanks for reading.

See you online
Nafiz Erman, aka Lord Erman

6 Comments

Yeah I saw some of your by Paul Leicht at Tue, 12/27/2011 - 10:55
Paul Leicht's picture
5

Yeah I saw some of your Psychosis Crawler decks in action in the Juff room. Definitely a devastating card with the right deck. Nice builds as per usual. I typically DO have my end step stopped just because I play against a lot of draw go type decks (do nothing unless counter until beginning of op's end step, then cast your game winner.) So that end advice does not apply to me but it is a good thing to know in general.

I wish either Consecrated Sphinx wasn't so expensive or that it wasn't so central to the good versions of this archetype. Budget versions will just suffer in the TP without it. Same to a lesser extent with the Garruk version though I suspect it is not that hard to find replacements for that card.

As always a wonderful read.

A possible budget replacement by chokehold at Wed, 12/28/2011 - 04:23
chokehold's picture

A possible budget replacement could be Sturmgeist, its big, it flies, and it can draw you cards.

Fun deck, I love it!

I like the geist but it is no by Paul Leicht at Wed, 12/28/2011 - 08:12
Paul Leicht's picture

I like the geist but it is no Sphinx sadly. Stupid power level difference there I am afraid. Even so I agree it does have merit in a budget build.

Burning Vengeance by grapplingfarang at Tue, 12/27/2011 - 13:35
grapplingfarang's picture
5

I've tried Psychosis Crawler at the top of the curve in a Burning Vengeance deck, seems to fit nicely. Desperate Ravings and Think Twice already add a decent amount of damage with Crawler, and Faithless looting will add to it even more.

Impressive! I already got by PiDave at Tue, 12/27/2011 - 15:40
PiDave's picture
5

Impressive! I already got almost every card for the UR TurboPsychosis basic variant and I already love it. I just had to switch the four Slagstorms with three Blasphemous Acts and a Rolling Temblor to keep the bottom line just a bit short of 28$. Can't wait to test it for real! :)

Thanks everyone for the by Lord Erman at Wed, 12/28/2011 - 08:12
Lord Erman's picture

Thanks everyone for the comments and I'm glad you liked the article and the decks. Sturmgeist can indeed be a good replacement for Consecrated Sphinx, good thinking.

Thanks again.

LE