Off This Week

 Work is sending me out of town, so I'll get back at this next week!

The Retired: Wish

Wish is one of those decks I built in an attempt to have all the answers to a problem. As you might imagine, it did all of the things kinda, and none of them well.

3 Aven Cloudchaser
3 Viridian Shaman
3 Azorius Guildmage
3 Azorius Herald
3 Coiling Oracle
2 Treva, the Renewer
4 Diligent Farmhand
3 Stonecloaker
3 Fleetfoot Panther

4 Repulse
4 Muscle Burst

7 Forest
6 Plains
3 Treva's Ruins
3 Seaside Citadel
5 Island

2 Supply // Demand

Built in the days before planeswalkers, the goal here was to use Aven Cloudchaser and Viridian Shaman to keep any difficult permanents off the board and the combo of Stonecloaker and Fleetfoot Panther to reuse the effects. 

Repulse could buy me time against difficult creatures, I basically had it all covered!

Except the thing about control decks is that they have access to answers when they need them, not that they are all answers all the time. 

So, let's put these lands, if nothing else, into a better deck. 

The Retired: We Bite

 I think it's fair to say that if I've been through a deck and am not more interested in playing than I was, it's worth retiring. 

3 Whispersilk Cloak

2 Stigma Lasher
3 Kris Mage
3 War Elemental
2 Blood Knight
2 Mogg Fanatic
3 Hazoret the Fervent
3 Stromkirk Occultist

4 Seal of Fire

4 Chain of Plasma
4 Fiery Temper
4 Fireblast

2 Forgotten Cave
21 Mountain

I still believe there's something to be said for the risk/reward of having almost no hand size; Hazoret the Fervent is a pretty great payoff. Seal of Fire is perfect for the theme, Stromkirk Occultist keeps the cards coming.

I think I have to admit that the card I want to build around, War Elemental, is the problem here. Big dumb dorks that don't have an impact on the board are not helpful for winning games of Magic and it's time I let this concept go. There are several cards that will be better served in decks with tighter themes or better lynchpins and I look forward to adding them. 

The Retired: Razorclaw

 And...as much as I hate letting this one go, I am doing it. Partly because when I picked it up, I was wondering; how the heck does this even work??

2 Druidic Satchel
3 Gruul Signet

3 Mitotic Slime
4 Golden Hind
3 Hound of Griselbrand
3 Valley Rannet
3 Skyship Stalker
3 Flametongue Kavu
2 Countryside Crusher
2 Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar
2 Demanding Dragon

3 Cream of the Crop
3 Primitive Etchings

8 Forest
7 Mountain
4 Gruul Guildgate
4 Sheltered Thicket

1 Domri Rade

I hate to say it but t his deck is 100% the Glory of Cool Things, right? The Cream of the Crop/Primitive Etchings combo is neat but it doesn't actually win the game. It just draws cards, which might be fine if it came online early. Instead this deck ends up doing almost nothing for the first three or four turns. 

That just isn't going to work out well. There's probably some consistency that could be bolstered, too: a Primitive Etchings on turn three is better than four, but it's so clear that I'm dealing with some scraps to get this going, right? 

No one was ever going to be thrilled with Golden Hind as a mana accelerant, and the payoff cards just aren't strong enough. 

But it's OK. There will be another way to use these things!

The Retired: Super-Charger Heaven

 Named after the White Zombie banger, we have:

4 Wonder

4 Oath of Scholars
4 Zombie Infestation

4 Boomerang
3 Counterspell
4 Circular Logic
4 Aether Burst

1 Underground River
6 Island
3 Dimir Aqueduct
5 Swamp
4 Fetid Pools
4 Sunken Hollow

2 Upheaval
3 Infest
1 Decree of Pain
4 Crippling Fatigue

So what's up here? Well, the goal is to use Zombie Infestation to ensure that my hand size is always smaller than my opponent's. That way, Oath of Scholars always triggers, ensuring that I have more cards to pitch to Zombie Infestation. 

Then big brain play is to have 8 mana available, cast Upheaval, then Zombie Infestation, then pitch the hand for all the zombies, and win. And if that doesn't happen, there's always making flying zombies with Wonder. 

The problems were: 1) there was no ramp, so getting to 8 mana meant waiting 8 turns (Dimir Aqueduct aside). 2) I don't have any other sources of card draw aside from the Oath, so the deck is extremely reactionary, without a way to filter through my cards to get what I want or need to get out of a pickle. 

Because either I've got Oath/Infestation out and I'm winning. Or I don't and now I need 8 mana to get to what I need. This is not going to be a successful deck. Plus, since I need to discard my answers to stay in the game, and cards like Crippling Fatigue, while useful still put pressure on my life total.

So you're getting retired; maybe this combo can be useful in a different deck, and maybe it's worth salvaging at a future date! But for now, going to put Super-Charger Heaven away.

A Little Tidiness

Here's 20 decks that I've built, some of which I've even written about on the blog. And I'm going to retire them. 

I've been reading 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman and in an attempt to enable better focus on my part, as well as get things done, I've realized that I just have too many decks. I still do, but you have to start somewhere, right?

I'm starting here. I have gone through all of my 60 card builds and decided that there were decks that just weren't fun for me to play. So instead of trying to force myself into playing them, why not eliminate these decks and utilize the resources elsewhere? 

When I started playing Magic, there was no mechanism to build and test decks without physically building and testing that deck. But that was 27 years ago! I just kept doing things that way because that was they way I learned to do them.

Time to find a better way. I'll still use these decks for The Retired series, and I'll keep digital versions of them in Cockatrice. I'll always have the template, and I don't have to actually store and maintain something in my brain that isn't helping me.