Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Killed By Killers Who Kill Each Other

That's a mouthful of a title. You can thank the now defunct Planes Mistaken For Stars.
5 Swamp
5 Mountain
2 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Grixis Panorama
8 Island

2 Powder Keg
4 Thran Turbine
2 Well of Discovery

3 Fact or Fiction
3 Wheel and Deal

4 Phyrexian Tyranny
4 Megrim
4 Propaganda

2 Disintegrate
3 Rhystic Tutor
1 Kaervek's Torch
4 Demolish
I built this deck well before Liliana's Caress came out and now...I don't feel the need to purchase the cards to replace it. Sure, if some fall into my lap, Caress > Megrim because it's got a cheaper converted mana cost (CMC) but My Money > less of My Money so there.

The premise behind this deck is to combo the opponent out, using Phyrexian Tyranny to make drawing cards hurt, Megrim to make discarding suck and Wheel and Deal to have the opponent(s) take it from both ends.

One of the critical points for making this deck was that it is creatureless. I don't have too many decks like that and while some very good creatures have been suggested by friends, I always stay away from those because having a creatureless deck does something really crucial to most decks out there:

It blanks all the opponent's cards that exist to deal with creatures. Most decks run a suite of Doom Blade or Wrath of God or more and I don't care about that.

On the other hand, I do have to make some concessions to what most decks do run, hence the Propaganda and the Powder Keg. Powder Keg may not look like much but I had a couple so I went with it. Back in the day, that card was critical in control matchups.

The upside of this deck is that is can win in one turn and getting the components out isn't hard. It's also difficult to defend against because both Megrim and the Tyranny can win games for me and most opponents can only take out one.

What could this deck use?

Probably red damage spells, especially sweepers. The ones in there are in there to help me finish off games where Wheel and Deal just didn't do enough, or to take out the individual creatures that need to go. But those spells aren't the most efficient choices. That said; they hurt and that's what I really want from them.

Being a blue deck, draw spells are always nice but since Tyranny works on both players, I need spells that put cards in my hand, instead of drawing them. Fact or Fiction neatly gets around this, along with being a huge skill tester for my opponents. They have to give me something-what are they going to do? And even if I get five lands (which happens) I've also just moved five cards closer to something better in my deck.

Since there is a 'taxation' element to the deck with Propaganda and Phyrexian Tyranny, Demolish and Rhystic Tutor get the nods over Pillage (which requires RR to cast and in a three-color deck that's just insane, unless I want to spend thousands on lands. And My Money > less of My  Money.) or Diabolic Tutor (has BB in the CMC.)

There's also a bit of misdirection in the form of Well of Knowledge. Should you pay for more cards? That seems really good, right? In my case, I'm using Thran Turbine as a workaround in addition to being a way to pay for the Tyranny's costs but hopefully my opponents are having to make choices between drawing cards and attacking. The more time they give me, the better.

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