Subject: Preparing for Regionals (or Rock-Paper-Sissors, part 1) Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 16:40:56 -0700 From: "Chris" To: "'fkusumot@ix.netcom.com'" Well, regionals are coming this weekend. Are you ready? Well, I'm not. Even after 6 weeks of preparation am I ready for this weekend. I did some surveying the last few days and found out that no one really is set with the deck that they're ready to play. Some groups are huddled together in their "private" sessions to work on the master deck that they hope will sweep regionals. A lot of people aren't posting decks are swapping secrets because of the "dojo" effect. All well besides, I don't even know what to play. A little sidetrack before we get to the bulk of the article. I started fiddling around with the 5 color blue deck, I'd say 6 weeks ago. I bumped into one of the donais brothers on irc and bugged him about a deck. He handed me a very rough version of the 5cu deck, the one without dissipates and no stronghold to speak of. After a lot of tweaking (putting in intuitions, shocks, wastelands), I tested the deck week after week. Along the way, I put several test decks together. These decks are what I consider the archtypes to beat for regionals. Anyways, I finally decided this weekend that the 5cu is a pile as Truc Bui would put it. It does nothing, takes too long to execute, and is too vulnerable to creatures with light counters. Mana deprevation kills it too. So after some deep soulsearching, I put together some more decks, posted those decks on my page (you can get to it through frank's links or by going to http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/ndc/chrisw/hypertext/decks.html) So here come the decks and the various strategies employed in each of the decks. Archtype deck #1 - Toast. 4 mogg fanatics 4 jackel pups 4 mogg flunkies 4 fireslinger 4 ball lightning 4 shock 4 incinerate 4 fireblast 2 thunderbolt 4 cursed scroll 4 wasteland 18 mountains The sligh deck is direct and simple. It will just kill you, burning you to death. This particular archtype has thunderbolts it the main not only because it will deal 3 points of damage, but also gets rid of that nasty of all creatures, the tradewind rider. 4 wastelands too becuase of the rampant use of non-basic lands. Typical sideboard consists of pyroblasts, ankhs, big fat (rathi, wurm, whatever), ruination (if the field is rife with nonbasics) and other assorted goodies. The deck is simple. Deal a lot of damage, deal a lot of damage fast. How do you beat this deck? Simple, deny it a few spells, or gain a little life and gain control of the board. The key is to slow down the deck. The sligh deck usually goes off in spurts. By dealing with the short term creatures and the long term cursed scroll, you can overcome the sligh deck. However you must always remember that the sligh deck can always "accidently" kill you. The draw that the sligh deck can have as well as the improbablity that it will have mana problems can make this deck a winner. If you want to play with this deck, you might want to fiddle with the land for sideboard uses. Chaos charm and word of blasting (don't laugh) might also be a viable choice with an environment rich with walls. Ankhs are really good choices for damage, but if you think cops and chill might be a problem, you might want to put in multi-color lands for slights and disenchants. There's nothing more degrading to a blue player than to slight a chill to blue. hehe. Probability of Sligh in top 8 of any given regional. 70%. Archtype #2 - Midnight in Harlem. 4 Sarcomancy 4 Dark Ritual 4 Sewer Rat 4 Dauthi Slayer 4 Black Knight 4 Erg Raiders 2 Barrow Ghoul 4 Bad Moon 4 Diabolic Edict. 3 Hidden Horrors 2 Nekrataals. 3 Living Death 16 Swamps 2 Volrath's Stronghold Gee, did I accidently write down 4 dark rituals? I must be insane! Of course not. There's nothing more depressing that a player going first turn ritual sarcomancy, slayer. Second turn bad moon, take 6. The deck is fairly simple. Beat them down. They got rid of your creatures? Drop some more. They're stopping you? Drop some more. Whoops? all your creatures are in the graveyard? Cast Living Death. All right. This deck has all the subtlety of a firestorm in a forest but think about it. If you're just a bit slow, you might just die. Variations on this deck include necro for some drawing, tombstone stairwell and altar of dementia to get some creatures for the stairwell or just enough to mill them to death, or a more classic black version with terrors, unholy strength, and some flying weenies. Disks to control the board, or some multilands for sideboard materials like slights and disenchants. Wastelands main and Choking sands in the sideboard is a good choice as well as gloom, perish and dread of night for the assorted color hosers. To beat this deck, cops and light of day won't be enough. The creature onslaught is tough to fight off and is a stretch for any deck. It's simple and effective. To combat this, some lifegaining or creatures control (with propaganda/orb or some good ground defense) is definetly the way to go. For faster decks, just pray you're able to deal more damage than they can (good luck) Probability of top 8: 60% Archetype #3 - Feeling blue? 4 Ophidian 4 Man o War 4 Air Elemental 2 Waterspout Djinn 3 Suq'ata Firewalker 3 legacy allure 4 Counterspell 4 Whisper of the Muse 3 Mana Leak 4 Impulse 2 Dismiss 2 Nevinyrral's Disk 4 quicksand 17 island Effective is probably the easiest term you could use for the deck. It controls the board through use of counterspells and good creatures. (Note again these are archtypes and are used to test, not to handle single abusive cards like cursed scroll.) A simple assuault of damn good flyers usually ends the games with the control of the board through counterspells, allure and man o wars. Ophidians are your healing salves, while whispers and impulse help you go through your deck faster. Varients include the bouncing decks with sapphire medallions, capsizes, and tradewind riders. Other versions include a steel blue version using a more control deck with propagandas, winter orb and sky diamonds, and another version that uses red for some creature removal and sideboard uses. Other cards to think about putting in is reins of power for more of a beatdown and evacuation to control some more creatures. A merfolk version obviously exists, but that's actually another archtype that I'll talk about later. The basic strategy to kill the deck is to overwhelm them. Blue hardly ever has massive creature control. You have to keep hitting them to draw out couterspells and just keep pounding at them until they concede. The propaganda/orb version of this deck does very well, because not only are you controlling the ground attack, you're also attacking from the air. However, timely removal of your control elements leaves you at risk. Also a 5cu would take you to school as the deck would then be too slow to disrupt it's game. Probability of Top 8: 40% Archtype #4 - "I can't belive it's Merfolk!" 4 Rootwater Divers 4 Manta Riders 4 Tidal Warriors 3 Portent 4 Lord of Atlantis 4 Counterspell 4 Mana Leak 4 Winter Orb 2 Merfolk Traders 2 Legacy's Allure 3 Man o War 2 Suq'ata Firewalker 2 Tradewind Rider 4 Undiscovered Paradise 14 Island What? A merfolk deck? You're kidding me. I kid you not sir. This is actually a pretty potent deck that simply comes over and smacks you around a bit. You try something, they counterspell it or let it through. If they let it through, chances are that an orb's coming down the next turn and you're in a hole. The deck does wonders with a low mana base and fast casting creatures. Drop a merfolk or two, drop a lord and go wild. Walls in your way? Turn a land into an island with the tidal warrior and beat your opponent up the head. This version is a bit more defensive with the allures. Variations include the inclusion of undos, more counterspells (disrupt and memory lapse are favored). A propaganda tossed in does wonders with the main deck orbs as well. There's also the cursed fish variation with cursed scrolls instead of winter orbs. Sideboard usually has chills, hydroblasts, a few more counterspells and boomerangs. Because you use paradise in conjuntion with the orbs in the main, you can splash a few different cards like perish, disenchant, tranquil domain. However 1 or 2 of each is recommended as you might not draw the paradise. Beating the fish deck is a bit hard. The deck attacks you mainly with a creature base, and with a handful of counters and mana deprivation, it's hard to really combat it. The best defense is to drop some defense and take it slow. Disruption is a great tactic. If you can disrupt the hand and get rid of the orb, you can do quite well. Mass removal is tricky against this kind of deck because of the threat of counterspells. Earthquakes are good against this kind of deck because of the low mana requirement to kill 2 or 3 creatures. Probability of Top 8: 50% Archetype #5 - "Message in a Bottle" 4 Necropotence 4 Drain Life 4 Bottle Gnomes 4 Dark Ritual 4 Funeral Charm 4 Diabolic Edict 4 Nevinyrral's Disk 4 Stupor 2 Spinning Darkness 2 Corpse Dance 2 Agonizing Memories 1 Coersion 4 Wastelands 2 Ebon Stronghold 15 Swamps Necro has been and always will be in my opinion, the strongest card in the game. The ability to simply draw cards using life is amazingly good. Bottle Gnomes are also amazing as well. The Necro deck simply drops a gnome or two in the early game, hits the opponent with a stupor or two while charming or edicting creatures away. No creatures? No problems. Funeral Charm does an amazing job of letting the opponent discard a card as well. The main avenue of attack is the drain life, which in this particular deck is probably it's biggest weakness since a counter or two can usually disrupt that. However, given the massive hand destruction that this deck carries, that's never realy a problem. Varients include the steel necro version using Stalking stones and Steel Golems to provide a second method of attack. Some include brush with death because it can't be copped, but because of the mana needed to maintain it and the slowness of that method, I don't recommend it. There's even a 5 color version of the deck floating around, although for obvious reasons, I don't recommend this as well because of the fragility of life that this deck already balances at. You can include some cinder marshes or sulferous springs in the main board for the inclusion of shatters and such in your board if you fear the null rod. Sideboard for this deck includes choking sands because of the prevelence of non-basic land. Disruption is key, as thus the sideboard also includes perish, gloom, 2 more agonizing memores, and terrors (for that annoying tradewind). Glooms are switchable with dread of night if more white weenie decks are prevelent. Necro should never really have much problems with anything. The sheer disruption of this deck is so great that nothing should really concern you. Of course if an anvil drops down followed by a null rod, you might as well pack up your cards. The same being if you stupor someone and down drops 2 sand golems. That's why you have a coersion or 2, becuase sometimes you might want to look at their hand before anything else. Also, with an sub-optimal draw, the necro deck can just lose because it doesn't have staying power to come back at low life. Gnomes and drain life aren't just going to do this. Beating the necro deck involves a quick beatdown followed by a disruption of it's game. Aura of Silence as well as anvil of bogarden is great against a necro deck. Probability of Top 8: 50% Archtype #6 - Whitey gets even. 4 White Knight 4 Soltari Priest 4 Warrior En Kor 3 Man o War 2 Utkabi Orangutang 2 Soltari Monk 4 Tithe 4 Shock 3 Mana Leak 1 Aura of Silence 2 Disenchant 3 Empyrical Armor 2 Armageddon 3 Mox Diamond 3 Scabland 3 Undiscovered Paradise 3 Adakar Waste 2 City of Brass 7 Plains As you can see, the deck is pretty diversified, with the mana count being pretty low. However, 4 tithes are like 4 plains in your hands. It's good to tithe! :) Anyways, the deck is pretty straight forward. Drop a few fast creatuers, deny them a few things here are there. Slap an empyrical armor on something, clear the path with shock and man o war. Then drop geddon to control the board. The deck is varied with spells that are pretty effective against any kind of deck. Variations of the deck include dropping 2 of the colors for a more solid concentrated deck. Straight white weenie with crusades are good too as everyone knows. Sideboard usually contains pyroblast, aura of silence, sand golems, and honorable passages. Since colors are being splashed though, it'd also be good to put in knights of the mists, some more oragutangs, and hydroblasts. Knights are amazing when it comes to the new environment rich with white and black. Beating this deck comes down to the threats you have to neutralize. There are so many spells that this deck packs that neutralize a lot of the spells that you can use. A careful player can easily take this deck and go all the way. Dropping one creature or two, and simply pounding the opposing player works remarkably well. Dread of night works well to slow down a lot of shadow threats as well as dropping down the amount of damage you can take. Taking care of mana and resources, a normal neccessity of any deck, becomes even more crucial when playing against this deck. Probability of Top 8:90% Part 2 to come tomorrow... Christopher Wong Computer Specialist UCI Health System http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/ndc/chrisw