2001)

When I shave, I often nick myself here and there, giving myself ´´razor burn.´´ As this deck will show, ´´razor burn´´-- a nick here and the nick there-- can be pretty deadly in the end.

This installment of Commons Format will examine a Commons Format take on the traditional ´´Counter-Burn´´ deck that will use a new Apocalypse creature, Razorfin Hunter, to help control the board.

In general, it is very difficult to build control decks using only commons. Commons format is dominated and defined by fast creature decks because the most powerful commons cards are generally creatures. So far in Commons Corner, we have seen two decks that can be considered control decks to some extent: a mono-black discard deck and my blue-black Counter-Stinging Barrier deck. Many Magic players eventually build the ´´All-Prodigal Sorcerers-deck,´´ which are effective if you could get out two or three of the tapping wizards. Prodigal Sorcerer's ability is to tap and deal one damage to any target, so with three Prodigal Sorcerers in play, you could kill your opponent's creatures with three toughness or less. My Prodigal Sorcerer-deck always seemed kind of weak in the early game because Prodigal Sorcerer costs three mana (2U) to cast, so I usually could not protect it with a Counterspell until too late in the game to matter. In this article, I will call creatures with Prodigal Sorcerer's ability ´´pinger´´ creatures.

The following deck takes advantage of a new Apocalypse card, Razorfin Hunter, to provide a new take on Commons Format Control.

Card Name: Razorfin Hunter
Mana Cost: UR
Type & Class: Creature - Merfolk Goblin
Pow/Tou: 1/1
Card Text: TAP: Razorfin Hunter deals 1 damage to
target creature or player.

Since Razorfin Hunter costs only two mana (RU) it can come out earlier and can more easily be protected with a Counterspell. In addition, this deck uses Stinging Barrier as another creature with, which has a high toughness so it is hard to kill and serves as effective defense in of itself. Moreover, this deck packs extremely efficient burn, Lightning Bolt and Incinerate, to provide additional early defense. Here's the decklist:

Counter [Razor] Burn

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
4 Counterspell
4 Arcane Denial
4 Exclude
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Inspiration
4 Razorfin Hunter
4 Stinging Barrier
14 Island
10 Mountain

As with any control deck, this deck works by countering key threats while winning the long game by building up massive card advantage. Here, the ´´pinger´´ creatures (Razorfin Hunter and Stinging Barrier) act as the core of the deck to control the board and your card drawing spells build up additional resources in the long term.

This deck is a model of consistency: it has eight inexpensive burn spells, eight real counterspells (and four anti-creature counterspells), eight card-drawing spells, and eight creatures that can tap to deal a damage to any target.

The core of this deck is eight burn spells and eight ´´pinger´´ creatures which serve as the creature control elements. The key to this deck is to establish board control using your pinger creatures, backed by burn. Once you have two pingers on the board, you can kill all of your opponent's two-toughness creatures. Moreover, if your opponent plays a larger creature, your burn spells can help them take it down: a lightning bolt with two pinger creatures can kill a 5/5 creature. One of the key ways this deck obtains card advantage is to use its pinger creatures to repeatedly kill off small and medium sized creatures.

The sixteen creature control cards also double as win conditions. The eight pinging creatures can do repeated damage to your opponent and the burn in this deck can deal 24 damage combined. After repeated damage with the pinger creatures gets your opponent's life down into the single
digits, this deck can often do the last 6 to 9 points of damage by throwing burn at your opponent's head. Unlike my U-B Counter-Barrier deck, which only had four Stinging Barriers, this deck has many more win conditions.

The next block of spells in this deck is the counterspells: Counterspell, Arcane Denial, and Exclude. These are there to counter problematic spells. You save the counterspells to handle the creatures and dangerous
threats that cannot be killed by your pingers and burn spells. Exclude serves as a counterspell against creatures, but it also is card advantage because it's a cantrip.

Accumulated Knowledge and Inspiration round off the deck by providing card drawing that will allow you to win in the long-term.

Now, a word about Arcane Denial, a card that some have argued is card disadvantage. Having eight ´´hard´´ counterspells is a valuable feature of this deck because you want to be able to counter those critical spells that can give you problems, such as Fireball and Pestilence (in Commons Format) or Ghitu Fire and Wrath of God (in Type II). It's true that Arcane Denial will allow your opponent to draw some cards, thus you should only use Arcane Denial to counter a spell that your pingers and burn really cannot handle. In this deck, however, your pinger creatures and
card drawing spells should create so much card advantage that allowing your opponent to draw a an extra card should be offset. In short, you should save Arcane Denial for the important threats, spells that will make you lose the game. For those who disagree with this analysis, an
acceptable replacement is Miscalculation, which is strong early in the game and can cycle itself when it's not needed.

Conclusion

For control freaks like me, this deck provides another alternative to the speed weenie designs prevalent in Commons Format. Razorfin Hunter provides an inexpensive ´´pinger´´ creature to support the Stinging
Barrier, its big brother in the sea. If you use this deck against someone old enough to shave, you may want to warn your opponent to be careful: ´´razor burn´´ can be rather deadly.

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