Spare Parts
05-29-2008, 12:46 PM
First of all, this is my first thread and almost first contribution to this board, so please excuse me if I inadvertently broke some forum rule, such as posted topic to the wrong forum section or didn't provide expected content.
Back to the topic - I have searched this forum for rock variants and there are plenty of them, but majority of them plays no blue and if it does, it plays cards such as Gifts Ungiven or Intuition to bring online some sort of one-hell-of-a-slow-and-clunky engine that is able to dominate late game. Don't take me wrong, late game is a great thing, but to play almost half of the deck full of strange singletons that doesn't contribute to anything unless you do draw (and resolve)those Gifts / Intuition don't seem right to me (I have performed some testing on the subject, even played a few events with various builds of those Gifts Rocks).
I came to the conclusion that those deck archetypes just doesn't cut it. And that we need to look at the "Rock" concept from another angle.
Sure, we want to dominate the middle to late game. We need to get there as well. And we need to win in timely fashion (which tended to be quite a problem with Gift Rocks as well).
Then there was Landstill, an old and proven concept which was not making the cut because of various reasons, being it inefficiency of threats or inability to hold its ground against premier decks of the format.
I'm not going to tell you that I have found the solution. I didn't. I just tried my best to get as close as was possible with my limited abilities, and now I'm looking to you with this big letters "HELP" in my eyes, hoping that some of the fellow forum members might be able to evolve the deck further.
Well, then, here is the deck as of today's version:
Lands (24)
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Treetop Village
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
3 Windswept Heath
2 Forest
2 Island
1 Swamp
Creatures (12)
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Kitchen Finks
Spells (24)
2 Standstill
3 Fact or Fiction
4 Force of Will
2 Teferi's Response
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Pernicious Deed
1 Snuff Out
As you can see, its a cross breed between BHWC Landstill, Gifts Rock and Explorer Rock variants, giving up on graveyard recursion and stuff, taking up on consistency and execution of its gameplan.
So, where to start with explaining.
Kitchen Finks An awesome SHM addition, has subtle synergy with Cabal Therapy and Pernicious Deed, providing us with solid blocker and attacker. And the lifegain is sweet - 2x chumpblock and + 4 life gives us 3 turns to find a solution to an attacker, when it comes to the worse.
Veteran Explorer: Now that's some interesting creature. Imagine following 2nd turn - Explorer, Therapy, flashback therapy, play Standstill (after 1st turn village). Now that's some broken explosiveness. Gives us much needed mana to fully operate, takes us out of Daze's reach, enables fast FoF and Deed actions. Majority of Legacy decks are not prepared to utilize excess mana it gives them, or even don't have any basics to find.
Tarmogoyf: suprise surprise, I play goyf in the Legacy deck :laugh:
12 creatures + 7 creature lands let us play astounding 19 creatures in the main, which makes me often trading 2for1 for opposing goyfs (well, with Finks it is quite easy, with our card drawing even more so).
Fact or Fiction: best card drawing spell in the format, and with Veteran Explorers helping us to reach mana needed to play it, it's a house wrecking ball.
Standstill: 2 seems as the right number. FoF is almost always better, but we can't overload our deck with high mana casting spells. With all the manlands and other creatures, it is rather easy to set up effective Standstill trap for an opponent.
Teferi's Response: Now that's a great card that world seems to forgot about. StP my Treetop Village? Lightning Bolt my Mishra? Wasteland my Bayou? Teferi's Response that & draw 2! - and the fact that it even destroys Cursed Scrolls and Rishadan Ports etc is just a cute bonus cherry on the top.
Cabal Therapy: half of the "combo" with Veteran Explorer and Kitchen Finks. Still, it may not be enough to warrant it 4 maindeck slots. For now, I'm satisfied with it's performance.
Pernicious Deed: to have the way to clear the board once it's too crowded is important. Blah blah - we all know what deed is there for. It's one of the main reasons why this deck can even work.
Snuff Out: 5th kill spell. 4x Deed is not enough and I need more redundancy. May be switched for Smother or Shriekmaw, but I just love the "instant&tapped out" factor. And you can always play it for its full mana cost.
Matchups
Ah, I knew I could just make up some absurd numbers to fit in the theme with the majority of internet mtg population :D but I decided rather not to. Just a few basic points.
The deck is performing just great against Threshold, because there's not a lot to Counterbalance here and I can afford to play around Daze without too much effort which leaves him only 4x FoW to work with. Also, this deck is able to solve all Thresh's threats without many problems because of high number of my own creatures that are able to trade with theirs. Just keep an eye open for those Mystic Enforcers / Fledgling Dragons.
As for the Goblins matchup, results vary and I'm not capable to give you any solid results yet. Sometimes I can walk through 1st turn Lackey on the play as if it was nothing, sometimes I crumble to not-so-spectacular draw from the goblins player. I'm able to hold a big force of goblins at bay with my creatures (finks+goyf+mishra are a powerful team to fight through). And then there are Deeds. Slow him down, deed away, therapy the hand for dangerous ringleaders seems like the best way to approach this matchup.
So, now, what are the problems of this deck that I know of and want to solve?
1.) 15 blue card for FoW (including FoW itself). That's just too few. Fortunately this deck with all of its mana and Explorers makes it possible to hold open 5 mana for FoW and still operate in the longer game, but to be able to use it in the first 2 turns is often critical. I just don't see way how to make the place for more blue cards, and even can't seem to find out which blue cards to add in the case I find the room.
2.) only 5 "kill your stuff" cards. 4x Pernicious Deed + 1 Snuff Out is too few, and I often have to block opposing goyfs with 2 creatures to kill them (fortunately I have lots of them, and Finks make for a great blocker which doesn't exactly 2 for 1 me). I would love to fit 2 more Smothers/Snuff Outs/Shriekmaws in the deck, but just don't see how. Maybe switch 1x Finks and 1x Cabal Therapy for 2x Shriekmaw?
3.) Lands. 4x Mishra 3x Treetop 5x basic land in the 3c deck just begs for mana problems - sometimes i'm unable to play Deed, sometimes Finks... one Wasteland can ruin me. And on top of that I would love to add 6th basic land to the deck.
4.) Any other problems I didn't realize, but you surely will.
Ah, seems like this post got out of hand and is slowly growing over my head, so I will close it up. Thanks to everyone who was able to read it through my grammar and stylistical mistakes, you know, English isn't my native language.
Back to the topic - I have searched this forum for rock variants and there are plenty of them, but majority of them plays no blue and if it does, it plays cards such as Gifts Ungiven or Intuition to bring online some sort of one-hell-of-a-slow-and-clunky engine that is able to dominate late game. Don't take me wrong, late game is a great thing, but to play almost half of the deck full of strange singletons that doesn't contribute to anything unless you do draw (and resolve)those Gifts / Intuition don't seem right to me (I have performed some testing on the subject, even played a few events with various builds of those Gifts Rocks).
I came to the conclusion that those deck archetypes just doesn't cut it. And that we need to look at the "Rock" concept from another angle.
Sure, we want to dominate the middle to late game. We need to get there as well. And we need to win in timely fashion (which tended to be quite a problem with Gift Rocks as well).
Then there was Landstill, an old and proven concept which was not making the cut because of various reasons, being it inefficiency of threats or inability to hold its ground against premier decks of the format.
I'm not going to tell you that I have found the solution. I didn't. I just tried my best to get as close as was possible with my limited abilities, and now I'm looking to you with this big letters "HELP" in my eyes, hoping that some of the fellow forum members might be able to evolve the deck further.
Well, then, here is the deck as of today's version:
Lands (24)
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Treetop Village
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
3 Windswept Heath
2 Forest
2 Island
1 Swamp
Creatures (12)
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Kitchen Finks
Spells (24)
2 Standstill
3 Fact or Fiction
4 Force of Will
2 Teferi's Response
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Pernicious Deed
1 Snuff Out
As you can see, its a cross breed between BHWC Landstill, Gifts Rock and Explorer Rock variants, giving up on graveyard recursion and stuff, taking up on consistency and execution of its gameplan.
So, where to start with explaining.
Kitchen Finks An awesome SHM addition, has subtle synergy with Cabal Therapy and Pernicious Deed, providing us with solid blocker and attacker. And the lifegain is sweet - 2x chumpblock and + 4 life gives us 3 turns to find a solution to an attacker, when it comes to the worse.
Veteran Explorer: Now that's some interesting creature. Imagine following 2nd turn - Explorer, Therapy, flashback therapy, play Standstill (after 1st turn village). Now that's some broken explosiveness. Gives us much needed mana to fully operate, takes us out of Daze's reach, enables fast FoF and Deed actions. Majority of Legacy decks are not prepared to utilize excess mana it gives them, or even don't have any basics to find.
Tarmogoyf: suprise surprise, I play goyf in the Legacy deck :laugh:
12 creatures + 7 creature lands let us play astounding 19 creatures in the main, which makes me often trading 2for1 for opposing goyfs (well, with Finks it is quite easy, with our card drawing even more so).
Fact or Fiction: best card drawing spell in the format, and with Veteran Explorers helping us to reach mana needed to play it, it's a house wrecking ball.
Standstill: 2 seems as the right number. FoF is almost always better, but we can't overload our deck with high mana casting spells. With all the manlands and other creatures, it is rather easy to set up effective Standstill trap for an opponent.
Teferi's Response: Now that's a great card that world seems to forgot about. StP my Treetop Village? Lightning Bolt my Mishra? Wasteland my Bayou? Teferi's Response that & draw 2! - and the fact that it even destroys Cursed Scrolls and Rishadan Ports etc is just a cute bonus cherry on the top.
Cabal Therapy: half of the "combo" with Veteran Explorer and Kitchen Finks. Still, it may not be enough to warrant it 4 maindeck slots. For now, I'm satisfied with it's performance.
Pernicious Deed: to have the way to clear the board once it's too crowded is important. Blah blah - we all know what deed is there for. It's one of the main reasons why this deck can even work.
Snuff Out: 5th kill spell. 4x Deed is not enough and I need more redundancy. May be switched for Smother or Shriekmaw, but I just love the "instant&tapped out" factor. And you can always play it for its full mana cost.
Matchups
Ah, I knew I could just make up some absurd numbers to fit in the theme with the majority of internet mtg population :D but I decided rather not to. Just a few basic points.
The deck is performing just great against Threshold, because there's not a lot to Counterbalance here and I can afford to play around Daze without too much effort which leaves him only 4x FoW to work with. Also, this deck is able to solve all Thresh's threats without many problems because of high number of my own creatures that are able to trade with theirs. Just keep an eye open for those Mystic Enforcers / Fledgling Dragons.
As for the Goblins matchup, results vary and I'm not capable to give you any solid results yet. Sometimes I can walk through 1st turn Lackey on the play as if it was nothing, sometimes I crumble to not-so-spectacular draw from the goblins player. I'm able to hold a big force of goblins at bay with my creatures (finks+goyf+mishra are a powerful team to fight through). And then there are Deeds. Slow him down, deed away, therapy the hand for dangerous ringleaders seems like the best way to approach this matchup.
So, now, what are the problems of this deck that I know of and want to solve?
1.) 15 blue card for FoW (including FoW itself). That's just too few. Fortunately this deck with all of its mana and Explorers makes it possible to hold open 5 mana for FoW and still operate in the longer game, but to be able to use it in the first 2 turns is often critical. I just don't see way how to make the place for more blue cards, and even can't seem to find out which blue cards to add in the case I find the room.
2.) only 5 "kill your stuff" cards. 4x Pernicious Deed + 1 Snuff Out is too few, and I often have to block opposing goyfs with 2 creatures to kill them (fortunately I have lots of them, and Finks make for a great blocker which doesn't exactly 2 for 1 me). I would love to fit 2 more Smothers/Snuff Outs/Shriekmaws in the deck, but just don't see how. Maybe switch 1x Finks and 1x Cabal Therapy for 2x Shriekmaw?
3.) Lands. 4x Mishra 3x Treetop 5x basic land in the 3c deck just begs for mana problems - sometimes i'm unable to play Deed, sometimes Finks... one Wasteland can ruin me. And on top of that I would love to add 6th basic land to the deck.
4.) Any other problems I didn't realize, but you surely will.
Ah, seems like this post got out of hand and is slowly growing over my head, so I will close it up. Thanks to everyone who was able to read it through my grammar and stylistical mistakes, you know, English isn't my native language.