The Retired-Operation: Mindcrime

I am setting this aside.

Operation: Mindcrime

 

4 Ravenous Rats
1 Blizzard Specter
3 Doomsday Specter
4 Arctic Merfolk
3 Nightscape Familiar
2 Ghastlord of Fugue
4 Man-o'-War
2 Parasitic Strix

 

3 Condescend
3 Expunge
2 Impulse

 

4 Underground River 

9 Swamp
9 Island
1 Darkslick Shores

 

3 Serum Visions
3 Lobotomy

What the heck is the unifying theme here? I get that there's a "ETB triggers and repeat" idea happening, but what it doesn't have is a way to lever the tempo that Mindcrime is trying to generate via discard and bounce into a proper win condition. There's also just 'but it's good, right' cards like Ghastlord of Fugue or Serum Visions. 

It just seems to hope for the best. I can tell it lacks a strong identity because I so quickly threw it out for a Liege deck. It was easy to look at my lack of cards that met the Hexdrinker rule and just toss them for something else. Especially since it helped me take apart another deck that was using the Glen Elendra Lieges in a RUB deck. If it's that easy to dispose of, then clearly neither deck is worth the effort I'm putting into them.

So, I'm putting this out to pasture, and harvesting the cards for a new deck I'm calling Night of Owls. 

Recap

With the last post being about the number of decks I've got, I figured I'd need a filler post between then and the next new decklist. However, instead of filler, I thought it might be cool to go back and play some of the decks I've been working on and provide a little update to them. As an added bonus, I had a chance to meet indigo.rider and play with him and it's always cool to meet new people and play (or make guinea pigs out of for my blog.)

First up, I brought out Operation: Mindcrime. The deck is still in my brain so it seemed like a good idea. indigo's deck was a bit hamstrung-a W/R humans build, stalled by color issues (he had lots of plains but a grip full of red, or mountains but no plains) and I was able to create the advantage I needed to win the games. As an added bonus, the Parasitic Strix was very useful in helping salve the wounds Underground Rivers gave me in the early game.

The second match was with Undisputed Attitude, with the Pyre Zombie additions that indigo had suggested. Unfortunately, though indigo had changed decks to a G/R build, he was similarly plagued by mana issues and my B/R deck is relentless.

In the third matchup, we were joined by a third human (thedrowningman) and I brought out Oak God for giggles. They both knew what I was playing and I simply said; hey, you still have to stop me.

Which is what they did: I was pounded pretty hard, unwilling to use my creatures to survive and give me time to make my combo work. indigo took over the game shortly after my removal, with a funky Blood Artist/Exquisite Blood combo that thedrowningman found difficult to race.

Last night, I went with Rid of You against stonethorn and Merrick and for the first five turns I thought I was boned. My initial hand was mostly keepable; Island, Mountain, Sundial of the Infinite, Crystal Ball Galvanoth. But what I ended up drawing was: Sundial, Crystal Ball, Crystal Ball, Galvanoth. So...yeah. stonethorn is off to the races playing U/G infect and Merrick had a nice Angel deck happening with green to back it up.

I hit my third land (Island) and drop the Crystal Ball, then start Scrying like hell to find anything that will help. Salvation arrives in the form of a second Mountain and a Slagstorm, which wiped the board and gave me time to set up mean things. Merrick killed stonethorn off (he had put her to 9 poison in one turn so he was asking for trouble) and I pulled off the Galvanoth/Sudden Disappearance/Sundial trick and she couldn't recover.

Finally, I went with White Vision Blowout, against a new human, whom I hadn't played before. He was rocking a G/W golem build that in game one got rolling pretty well until I played the Eye of Singularity, killing two 4/4 trampling Golems, giving my flyers time to get through.

Game two, I had pump for my creatures (Yay, Angelic Voices?) but I could not withstand the Golem onslaught. So we're on to game three.

The key play again involved the Eye, when I took out two Sphere of Suns and two Shimmering Grottoes; that set him back on mana far enough that I was able to get out Lin Sivvi and overpopulate the board.

A Mind-Body Problem

So this is what I discovered:

Against a W/B token deck, Mindcrime does alright. Even though they have flashback, cards like Man-o-War are as good as Doom Blade.

Against any green deck, I am boned. And not just boned, but spanked hard, put away wet and left to huddle bemoaning my fate. Because green monsters just don't care about the discard: they're going to come and hurt me. My creatures aren't big enough to stop them and in repeated games, I got stuck on mana.

This happened against my girlfriend, playing a midrange green deck and against Fuz playing a more aggressive Undying deck. There really isn't much to tell you about the plays, here: I couldn't get the deck rolling and in two cases, I found myself holding an Expunge and dealing with either a pro-black or hasty, repeating ghosts. Man-O-War doesn't quite make that work, especially when my delaying tactic can't be followed up with a threat.

Fuz hit me with some suggestions: Countersquall out, replace with, of all things, Parasitic Strix. I was dubious but it actually fits the overall theme pretty well. The Strix I especially like: it gives this deck a little reach that it didn't have before, as well as a cheaper, difficult to block creature. On top of all that, it falls at the 3 spot, which is one that is overlooked in this deck. Ignoring that kind of versatility when I'm having so many other issues would just be foolish.


Finally, with quite a few spells at the 4 spot, I also cut a Lobotomy and added a Darkslick Shores. Adding a land and removing one of the more expensive cards in the deck should help me survive long enough to actually play a Lobotomy when I need to. That's always a good thing.