Subject: Analysis of 5cU
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 19:51:35 GMT
From: c s i v i l s @ h o t m a i l . c o m (Craig Sivils (csivils@hotmail.com))
Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy

When I first saw a listing of the Mike Donias 5cU deck, I was amazed
at the simplicity and elagance of the deck.  It was the closest thing
to a t2 version of "the deck" that I had seen to date.  The basic play
strategy of both decks is almost identical.  Survive anything that you
opponent can dish out and eventually winning the game will be a minor
detail.

Rather than a meta-game matchup analysis or an exact deck listing, I
wanted to talk about some of the cafateria choices made by a deck
builder trying to fine tune a 5cU deck.  I'll present my opinion on
most of them but I am actually interested in hearing the opinions of
others.

WALLS OF BLOSSOMS

With Stronghold the 5cU deck got much stronger with the addition of
walls of blossoms.  The walls of blossoms increased the cantrip count
which helped dig through the deck faster which increased the deck
consistancy.  They also were a very strong card against one of the
decks biggest weaknesses, weenie rush.

Some people originally were against the addition because it was in
viloation of the original 5cU's principal of no non-land permenants.
The objection was that by adding creatures you provide targets for
anti-creature spells.  The hidden flaw in this argument was that:

*  Card advantage wise the anti-creature cards are still dead
*  People don't tap mana for dead cards in hand (time advantage)

So at a deeper level, the walls played very much into the decks core
theme and also had the benefit of helping to prevent opponents from
sideboarding out their anti-creature cards (more changes also
contribute to this).

UKA MONKIES MAIN DECK
One of Mikes very clever moves was the addition of main deck Uka
Monkies.  When tuning my version, I ran two disenchants during the
brief period of time where scrolls couldn't target players but had to
add more when the scroll suddenly remembered that it could target
players.  This basically meant that I only needed two anti-enchantment
spells but that two anti-artifact spells were not enough.  Thus, the
monkies can step up and fill in quite nicely.  The monkies also can
either act as a road to victory or as a 2/2 wall.  The fact that they
are in as anti-artifact and not as a real creature also keep them
compatible with the deck theme.

With the huge number of artifact based decks running around I've
actually gone to two disenchants and two uka monkies main deck.

LOBOTOMY
With the convergence upon weenie decks as the norm for the meta-game,
lobotomy often was too slow to be a main deck card.  This is an
agonizing decision because lobotomy is just so good against some decks
and yet just a tad too slow against others.  The real question here
comes down to what you predict the competition will look like.

CAPSIZE
Another card that got cut during the transition to the post-stronghold
5cU.  While capsize was a very flexible card and was most useful
against bounce decks, the biggest problem was that 6 mana was usually
better spent wispering.  Still, the cut of a card this flexible should
be intentional and thought out rather than just lost in the shuffle.

LAND CONFIGURATION
The land is one of the most vital aspects of this deck.  This deck is
made to abuse the reflecting pool to it's full potential.  The land
configuration in the posted stronghold version of 5cU is IMO horrid.
While I do agree that a wasteland is crucial to deal with volraths
stronghold, the deck needs more two color lands to get the mana on
line faster.  The fetch lands are a bad idea (sheesh, and I used to be
the only defender of fetch lands in this group) because the deck needs
every real land that it can get.  I also perfer 2 paradise, 2
gemstone, 2 COB to the 1 paradise, 1 COB, 3 gemstone configuration.
This is simply because I hate drawing more than 1 of any of the
rainbow lands in my opening draw.  I tend a little more towards pain
lands than Mike did simply to be able to go toe to toe with a speed
deck (although too much pain is easily possible).  One of the more
interesting tweaks is the possibility of having no islands.....  Yeah,
no islands in the 5cU deck.  This is possible by using 4 Sac lands and
bumping up the other multi-sources of blue.  Having no islands is
beneficial for three key reasons.

* It helps vs fish decks, fish are rough on anything with islands
* You can sideboard in boil vs fish decks and bounce decks (HA!)
* You can be amused if anyone sides in boil against you.

Everyone who has heard this suggestion think I am silly and mention
ruination.  It's 4CC and destroys all my land...
treat it like geddon:)  Until people really run ruination it's not a
big issue anyways.

THE RED CONTENT
This is yet another area that I don't agree with the net consensus on.
The mainstream approach is to go with two fireballs beefing down the
red.  While I also cut the number of red cards I originally added a
mountain and put hammers in the deck to help with weenie decks.  The
problem there was that the RR in the hammer casting cost was often too
slow to be of help vs weenie decks.  Stronghold provided a much better
solution in the form of shard phoenix.  Shard phoenix is one mana
cheaper than splitting a fireball among two X/2 weenies, is non
targeted and has one Red mana in the casting cost.  The RRR recall
effect is quite doable once the 5cU deck reaches mid-game.  The Shard
phoenix also answered a few key weaknesses in the old 5cU deck.

* One more answer to untargetables
* Much easier to ram through vs a control deck than a 10+ pt fireball.
* An answer to rainbow efreet (old deck just died if a rainbow landed)

The shard phoenix was superior to hammer recursion because it only had
to be recalled in the event that it was in the graveyard for some
reason.

And my favorite detail on the shard phoenix... it flies over the
stronghold walls :)  I've gone to using 1 fireball and 1 shard phoenix
in my 5cU deck.

NUMBER OF COUNTERSPELLS
The pre-stronhold version of 5cU as posted by Mike Donias had 4
counterspells and 4 dismiss.  In playtesting I found that I often lost
counter wars because I couldn't always afford 4 mana for a dismiss.  I
moved towards 4 counterspells, 2 dissipates and 2 dismiss.  In the
post-stronghold version, the number of counterspells in the example
deck jumped to 4 counterspells, 3 dissipate and 4 dismiss.  Besides
being too many IMO for this deck it still has the old trouble of
occasional opening draws of two lands and 3 dismiss.

The reason I consider this a mistake is because the extra
counterspells were made possible by the removal of lobotomy.  Lobotomy
was removed because it was so weak against weenie rush decks (red in
particular).  Dissipate isn't exactly much stronger vs weenie decks.
IMO the space can be better used.

The one concern that must be kept in mind though is that the number of
cantrips is critical to this deck.  The more useful cantrips the
better.  The right number seems to be between 15-20 with the closer to
20 the better.

Craig