[Free Article] Building Gifts for a Merfolk/Zoo Metagame

[Holiday]

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/18744_Legacys_Allure_Building_Gifts_for_a_MerfolkZoo_Metagame.html

Interesting article about trying to use Gifts Ungiven to find the Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek combo.

What I liked about it was how Doug took the reader through the process of deck building and using testing to refine the list, instead of just throwing a list out there and sticking to it. He justifies all his card choices.

In the end, this will probavbly never be a viable Legacy deck. However its nice to see someone come up with an idea, follow it through with testing, and decide it probably isn't going to work. This is the obvious opposite of the far more common scenario of someone coming up with a deck idea, falling in love with it, and sticking to regardless of test results when in reality its probably better played at your kitchen table than a tournament.

[sco0ter]

I really enjoyed that article, as I always do with Doug's articles on rogue decks.

I also like all the interactions with Gifts piles and Fires. The deck is really appealing. But why the hell doesn't he mention Force of Will, even in one word? He already runs 14 blue cards. Including 4 FoW would certainly be doable. (e.g.: -1 EE, -1 SDT, -1 STP, -1 Crypt, +4 FoW).

The deck is light on win conditions (Foundry and Fire), but it should work.

[Aggro_zombies]

Tezzeret is much better than Gifts at finding Thopter Foundry, and has a number of uses aside from that (like being a Fog or untapping Moxen). It can't find removal spells, but his removal suite is really anemic anyway.

Part of the problem with the deck is that decision-making is complicated by the low sweeper power of the deck, and the conditionality of its most common sweeper (EE). The fastest way to find a sweeper is Gifts, but Gifts is slow and in most cases the opponent won't give you the Firespout or the Humility, forcing you to spend all of turn five using Restoration to get Humility back, at which point you get burned out and die. EE takes two turns in the early game or an entire turn in the midgame and doesn't clear the board of threats against either Merfolk or Zoo. Punishing Fires is strictly a late-game removal engine as it's extremely unlikely to kill anything early on. He doesn't have a way to control access to the board as his counter suite is small and mostly mana-intensive, but his board control suite is pretty bad. He tries to make up for this with a really good late game, but the gateway to the late game is a four-mana instant that is actually step one of a two-turn setup for a combo that then takes some number of additional turns (# turn > 3) to actually win. He can't really stabilize prior to that and his stabilization engine is vulnerable to Grip and any form of accumulated pressure. In a lot of cases, he won't survive to untap. That's been my experience with decks less focused on Punishing Fire shenanigans, anyway (why do you like that card so much, Doug? That engine is so bad in this format).

In other words, he needs a better removal suite, but then that weakens him against combo, control, and more controlling versions of aggro-control. He also outright loses to Progenitus if he can't resolve Humility. But then, these are all problems inherent in control decks and a large reason why they're DoA in the current format.

Interesting deck, but I can't think of any meta where this is the best control option. It's too slow and inefficient and is built to take advantage of a card that's just not that powerful in this format (half the reason Gifts is retarded in Vintage is because it gets powered out by Mana Drain. The other half is its ability to find ridiculous broken shit like Time Vault or Ancestral. Neither of those are applicable in Legacy).

Thopter Foundry is probably best as an alternative combo-kill option for aggro-control decks.

[Forbiddian]

I'm actually pretty disappointed with this article (relative to Doug's usual stuff).

He set out to beat Zoo and Merfolk and succeeded in only being able to beat Zoo and Merfolk (and maybe Goblins). Instead of trying to get the engine to run, he just MD'd 12 removal + Pulse of the Fields, including running Humility and Firespout, and other cards that seem designed specifically to stop Zoo and Merfolk.

His older lists focused a lot more on the Sword of the Meek combo, but it looks like that combo has been sidelined behind a wall of removal.

[hi-val]

The deck has a pretty good match against a lot of the field (I know, I know!) because it can utilize recursive removal. So, decks like Bant Threshold lose every creature save Goyf to Fire or Fire*2, which gives you a lot of breathing room. I wasn't focused on making a Thopter combo deck, it's just that Thopter is absolutely the best way for this deck to win since you end up giving your opponent a lot of life and Thopter does a straight 1-for-1 mana/damage conversion. Humility was a way to have an out to Progenitus; Firespout could likely be Wrath or something else. Curiously, the deck can go for black over white with the inclusion of Abyss and Innocent Blood. Sometimes, though, you gotta sit behind a lot of removal before you can get Thopter going : )

[Aggro_zombies]

I'd think the best option would be to be in blue-white-green. Then you get Tarmogoyf and Rhox War Monk as creature control elements that give repeated value without using the graveyard. If your opponent plays it smart with Relic, or uses Extirpate (a bad card, I know, but perennially popular with the sort of black players running the middle tables), your deck is hosed on all of its late-game engines. If you lose your one Sword, you don't have enough other "chaff" artifacts to continue to make Thopters, and Punishing Fires is soooooo sloooooow. The creature plan is a good backup plan.

But then, if you do that, you're playing aggro-control with Thopter Foundry backup, which is exactly what I said earlier.

Note that you can swap white for black and have Bob too. And no matter what the colors, Counterbalance fits right in.

[hi-val]

I really don't like turning on opposing removal, and since just about every noncombo deck runs 4-8 removal spells, I can't count on creatures living for a long time. I only feel comfortable with like, zero creatures or 12+ unless they have Shroud. Hence, Gigapede and Worm Harvest are insane. Extirpate actually does nothing against Punishing Fires since Grove is a mana ability and you can respond to Split Second with it. The way I would lose my one Sword would be to have it in the graveyard and have that removed; Sword is rarely in the graveyard and often in play, and I haven't had situations where I can't blow a Top to save a Sword. You can remove the whole Foundry combination, up the green and just run Gigapede and Worm Harvest if you want, though.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I could be biased, but I'm not seeing any advantages over playing, say, Quinn. And several disadvantages.

[Phoenix Ignition]

I could be biased, but I'm not seeing any advantages over playing, say, Quinn. And several disadvantages.

I was going to say this as well. I haven't played with the deck in the article, but it looks really clunky. 2 mana 2 damage spell that recurs is not going to kill anything except a lavamancer against zoo, and anything else spending 5 mana on is going to be awful (still can't kill a goyf with it). Just looks like a pile of removal, without much synergy (StoP + Punishing fire isn't synergy, it's still just bad).

I like how the new site makes your name "TheInfamousBearAss
assin" now.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Yeah, Zilla did that on purpose because he's very, very clever.

[Forbiddian]

For me, it says TheInfamousBearAs

Meh.

[jimirynk]

(a bad card, I know, but perennially popular with the sort of black players running the middle tables)

African American players, be respectful it is black history month you know.