2007)

To me, deckbuilding is the one of the essential things that is indicative of the serious Magic player. Sure, a person can get along alright for a time just using precons, or perhaps even just playing out of their buddy’s collection, but for someone who’s truly interested in the game, that’s not enough. Whether it’s participating in a sealed event, fixing that precon you got, whipping up something nice and janky from your first purchase, or even helping your buddy construct a new deck from the cards in his collection, you take that step to customize and build ownership of your playing experience. Whether or not the first few decks are any good doesn’t matter as much as the fundamental achievement of making them. Later on, if you choose to stick with the game and the constructed scene (whether serious or casual), you can measure your success by wins, creativity, prolificacy, the mysterious “fun factor”, etc., and take pride in the fruits of your hard work.

Unfortunately, as I’m sure has come up in other articles I’ve written for this site, I don’t do real “deckbuilding” very often. Most of the time, if I’m doing anything with the contents of my decks, it’s just clusters of small tweaks here and there, usually associated with the release of a new expansion or a particularly fruitful purchase of a set from which I needed more of something. It’s not really as slow and boring as that sounds, though. Over the past few years, I’ve had a few good ideas here and there which have ended up sticking around long enough to become solid, well-respected members of my “catalogue”. Besides that, I’ve also had cause to sit and do intensive rebuilds of a few of my existing decks. Most of my decks have much more than a single trick that they use to get ahead in the world, and every once in a while I decide to alter or remove one or more of those facets, taking the deck in a slightly different direction (or fix a problem I accidentally built into the deck during the last round of changes, those are embarrassing).

A good friend of mine loves building and rebuilding decks. To many of us in the group, that’s his dominant defining feature as a Magic player. There’s hardly ever a time when someone starts a game saying, “oh, that’s his ____ deck”, because he’s always bringing something new and different to the table every time we get together. My birthday was a couple of months ago, and I ended up receiving from this friend the gift of a brand new deck that he had built just for me! At the time, he had been pretty busy with his job, planning for law school, and going through the last few weeks of preparations for his upcoming marriage. So obviously, he had other things than Magic on his mind, and though the deck showed every bit of his usual ambition and cleverness, it lacked a certain measure of his customary levels of focus and tightness. Thankfully, this gave me the opportunity for another rebuild, and led to a new deck that I’ve been having a lot of fun with lately.

Let’s begin with the original list, as far as I can recall it (which is definitely not perfectly):

Forgotten Slots (4?)
4: ???

Land (24?)
13: Forest
9: Mountain
2: Fungal Reaches

Artifact and Multicolor (5?)
3: Killer Instinct
2: Journeyer’s Kite

Green (13?)
3: Rites of Flourishing
2: Gaea’s Blessing
2: Greenseeker
2: Llanowar Empath
2: Search for Tomorrow
2: Penumbra Wurm

Red (14?)
4: Rukh Egg
4: Stormscale Anarch
3: Skarrgan Firebird
2: Jiwari, the Earth Aflame
1: Homura, Human Ascendant

The first thing I noticed while playing the deck was that it felt like it was pulling my play decisions in two different directions most of the time. On one side, we have cards that are encouraging me to build up land and grab up cards in order to power out the big guys as quickly as I can. On the other hand, though, is the Killer Instinct, which can only really be a centerpiece card, and would much rather I try to keep as many creature cards as I can near the top of the deck, preferably ones that can do cool stuff as they die, or come back to fight again. Personally, I wanted most to explore the power and flair of Killer Instinct, as there are already plenty of decks (and we all have one, admit it) whose point is to draw way too many cards and/or get way too much mana in order to play guys who are way too big and can hit people way too hard.

When it was working, Killer Instinct was the most fun I’ve gotten out of a single card in a while. “Well, I guess it’s about time to draw, but wait, what’s this? Oh no, it’s a CRAZY ATTACKING CREATURE! Alright, I’ll draw my card now.” Supporting it in both helping to play it and thin the deck of noncreatures were land-searching cards like Journeyer’s Kite, Greenseeker, and Search for Tomorrow. Jiwari is a really great way of controlling what’s on the ground, and is especially good for clearing the way of blockers before rushing in with big guys. What I probably loved the most, though, was the wonderful way that the bombs worked with Killer Instinct itself. Penumbra Wurm replaces itself immediately with a token version of itself, Skarrgan Firebird can just jump back to your hand in the cleanup step if it damaged your opponent in combat, and Homura turns all of your creatures into dragons, even the small ones. Tons of fun for everyone (that is, everyone on my side).

So what wasn’t working? First of all, I wish I could figure out what the 4 forgotten slots are, as they would probably serve as a decent example of some of the thoughts I was having while rebuilding. The land count got lowered because it was really only necessary to get to 6 in order to get rolling, as well as because I planned on including a lot of land-searching that could continue to thin the deck for Killer Instinct as the game progressed. Fungal Reaches had to go because, sadly, it is not a basic land, and there aren’t many cards that like to search for it. Rites of Flourishing is a great card, and I look forward to exploiting it in the future, but it doesn’t seem to compliment the point of this deck very well. Sure, it can ramp up the mana base, but as I said before, that, in and of itself, isn’t all that crucial. What happened in practice was that my opponent got ahead, and I got tons of creatures jumping to my hand instead of being pulled out of a hat by Killer Instinct. For a similar reason, Llanowar Empath is a cool guy, but if I use him to his full and proper potential, the creature has to get played and deal with summoning sickness, rather than bursting through a wall like the Kool-Aid Man. [Editor’s note: Oh yeah!] Gaea’s Blessing was an interesting way to recycle, but not powerful enough in the late game, and there’s no way to activate its super-recycling ability (besides, I needed the copies for a change to another deck). Rukh Egg looks like it would be great here, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, quirks of timing limit its usefulness. If it gets flipped by Killer Instinct, then it won’t die until the end of the turn (I seriously doubt an opponent will block it if it’s put on the attack). Then, its own end-of-turn trigger that gives you the bird will have to wait until the end of your opponent’s turn. You do get a 4/4 flyer, and that’s okay, I guess, considering all the trouble that went into it. The biggest problem is when that it gets played, it does nothing, and that’s at the 4th turn or later. A decent opponent will find a way around hatching it, and the only way for the deck to do it is by means of Jiwari. Finally, Stormscale Anarch doesn’t do very much. Maybe my friend originally intended to fill the deck with more Gruul-aligned multicolor cards.

It was definitely important to expand on the land-searching in order to keep the deck rolling, both in terms of the curve and succeeding with Killer Instinct. To that effect, I added Terramorphic Expanse, Evolution Charm (which also does other useful things), and completed the sets of Greenseeker and Search for Tomorrow. One neat thing that can also be done with any of these cards is to be able to activate them between multiple Killer Instinct triggers if one of them comes up a dud and you still have more ready to resolve (for the Search, just stack it to unsuspend between triggers). After they finish shuffling up the library, you have a brand new chance for beats, as well as another land. I also wanted to try to get myself to the Killer Instinct, itself, as soon as possible, and I couldn’t find any good tutors in Red or Green, so I decided to use Citanul Woodreaders. If I’m on 6 mana and don’t have the Instinct in hand, then maybe a kicked Woodreader will get me closer. They’re also good defense early game, and it’s not too much of a tragedy if they get flipped later. Running through the deck rather quickly and dumping a series of creatures in the graveyard strongly suggested to me that I needed to find a good way to recycle. As I dug through my box of old commons, I found out that not only did I have a couple copies of Repopulate, but also some Battlefield Scroungers, as well! Repopulate can be cycled whenever it’s not useful, and the Scroungers can also be made to pop out of the library with haste (and usually as a 6/6). In my continuing quest to come up with creatures that could also do other useful things, I found a set of Shock Troops in my old commons. They give me some removal and direct damage, and it’s also really satisfying to sacrifice one of them on a hunch, and then be rewarded by flipping a Firebird. Finally, I decided to add a couple more bombs for the sake of fun and comedy. I was able to get another Penumbra Wurm in trade, and added a Goblin Dynamo for a potentially game-ending surprise burn.

I’ll do like a certain notable deckbuilding author (who shall remain nameless, as he is still under double secret probation for those horrible “Dragon War” decks), and make a nice list for you.

Out: -4 [Forgotten Cards], -3 Forest, -3 Mountain, -2 Fungal Reaches, -3 Rites of Flourishing, -2 Gaea’s Blessing, -2 Llanowar Empath, -4 Rukh Egg, -4 Stormscale Anarch.
In: +4 Terramorphic Expanse, +4 Citanul Woodreaders, +4 Evolution Charm, +2 Greenseeker, +2 Search for Tomorrow, +3 Battlefield Scrounger, +1 Penumbra Wurm, +2 Repopulate, +4 Shock Troops, +1 Goblin Dynamo.

Land (20)
10: Forest
6: Mountain
4: Terramorphic Expanse

Artifact and Multicolor (5)
3: Killer Instinct
2: Journeyer’s Kite

Green (24)
4: Citanul Woodreaders
4: Evolution Charm
4: Greenseeker
4: Search for Tomorrow
3: Battlefield Scrounger
3: Penumbra Wurm
2: Repopulate

Red (11)
4: Shock Troops
3: Skarrgan Firebird
2: Jiwari, the Earth Aflame
1: Goblin Dynamo
1: Homura, Human Ascendant

So there you have it. The deck has been phenomenally fun to play and mess around with, and has plenty of room for tweaking in response to new acquisitions or odd new cards from odd new sets. Page on over to the forums and hit me up with any questions, comments, and concerns you may have, or maybe even some cool deck ideas!

Have fun, guys.

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