The Ban List

 Sorry everyone-with the winter storms of late, power has gone out and I haven't had a chance to test the final changes to Call My Body Home.

Instead, we have ban list thoughts, because the new ban list has been making all the waves, right? And with good reason; it would appear that they shook up every format excepting Pauper and Commander.   

The only one that really impacts me is the one of Dreadhorde Arcanist, a creature in my Triggerhappy deck.

While an understandable ban, I have to admit that the Arcanist was a key part of they deck, making excluding blue a reasonable decision-on top of a more consistent manabase. 

So what do I do? Arcanist is a unique card in Red-I cannot think of a single card that replicates the effect in that color. 

But this is still an aggressive deck, right? 

Seasoned Pyromancer comes up in the search, and finding ways to draw cards to keep the deck consistent, while also looking for a creature to keep the threat count stable. Along those lines, Mentor of the Meek could help generate card advantage as it will trigger on token generation. However, one of those cards costs $25 and one costs $1.

With 23 instants and 4 sorceries in the deck, Bedlam Reveler doesn't seem like a bad option but... none of these things really give me the reach that I was hoping for.

Brimaz, King of Oreskos is also on the list, as a game ending threat unto itself, while Monastery Swiftspear or Soul-Scar Mage are in aggressive red decks for a reason.

But I do not like this. Again, I don't believe the ban was a bad thing, as Blue cards with 1 CMC seem to be inherently abusable in Legacy (and lots of other formats) and the Arcanist does not exist in a vacuum. But the problem still remains that there aren't replacement effects for it in the color scheme I'm running and that bothers me-mostly because I thought I'd figured this deck out!

Then again: I always like a puzzle, and this can be the deck I mess around with after I'm done testing the headliner. 

Perfect Practice

It was Noah who suggested that I should swap Swords to Plowshares out for Path to Exile.

I should've seen this before but I suppose it does speak to the raw power of this build: I've been able to overcome the lifegain drawback from StP and still have a chance to win.

Noah also pointed out that Path has positive interactions for me with Unexpectedly Absent, where I could potentially get rid of a creature without Path's drawback, because my opponent wouldn't want to shuffle his/her deck.If they do decide to shuffle, then odds are they are hoping for something better than they have and that's also a good sign.

Unfortunately, none of my games with Noah provided me with an opportunity use Unexpectedly Absent.
My games with Matt, however, were another story. A little bit of a bummer for him, since he suggested that tech, having to be on the bad end of it.

I had a difficult decision early in a game against his mono-white control deck: he'd played a Mox Diamond and my turn two had just started. I decided to take a risk cast Unexpectedly Absent for zero to put the Diamond back on his library.

My thinking was that if he didn't have another land in hand to discard, I've just seriously impacted the early game and I can take advantage.

If he had another land to discard, odds are he wouldn't have a second land to play and again, we'd be in the same place.

Unfortunately, the worst case happened; He had two lands in hand, so my attempt at setting him back was for naught. After the game was over and I'd taken my loss, Matt said I should've held back and waited but I thought I had an opportunity to jumpstart my game over his and I'm just not sure that I made the wrong choice.

That said, I've played against Fuz a bunch over the last weekend-my game versus his mono-b zombie deck is pictured-and Triggerhappy overperformed. I won far, far more games than I expected to, and that was without replacing Swords with Path. Unexpectedly Absent was good and even usable with Kari Zev's Expertise for zero. That's pretty sweet for an X spell.

So I think that's the final chapter. I've been running this deck for a long time and I think it's as good as it's going to get.

Multiple Calibers

I spent most of Saturday night doing one thing; playing Triggerhappy against whatever Jason threw against it.

In the end, he suggested that four Hazoret was too many and maybe splitting the selection between that and Ogre Battledriver and Bedlam Reveler was wise.

So now I mix and match. The strength of Triggerhappy is still the Young Pyromancer/Monastery Mentor engine, but with the new additions, hopefully I can shore up the card draw and make going wide a stronger possibility.

One very weird thing has been the mana: it seems like I usually get a lot of land! I am still reluctant to cut them any further, though. It just feels like pushing a button that leads to a door with an unhappy tiger in it, instead of wins.

However, after a series of games against Matt, he had a really intriguing suggestion: Unexpectedly Absent.

Being pinned down by Humility in several games, or just found myself in a board stall from a non-creature source, Unexpectedly Absent might just be the trick I've been looking for.

The Divine Option

Stone Quarry was replaced by Temple of Triumph. You knew that was coming.

But Hazoret; that might've been new. Oketra the True isn't a terrible option, since she leans into the "go wide" aspect of the deck but I'm starting with Hazoret the Fervent first, because if the creature game stalls, Oketra can't close the game out. Hazoret can.

So instead of Bedlam Reveler, we have a heavenly option.

My tests haven't yielded much, just yet. I was able to play Fuz two matches: one against a G/B deck using Darkest Hour and Elephant Grass with pro-black creatures. I lost that match, and felt a bit dumb doing so. Not because the deck idea is dumb; because if I had one Disenchant, I can with that game.

But I couldn't get going fast enough and now, more than ever, I am convinced that a general sideboard would be great. Wear/Tear, if I have to. What would Fuz bring in? Would it be enough to make this a truly bad matchup for me? It just seems pretty stupid to die to that combo-but, creature decks being prevented from attacking is an old standby.

My second matchup didn't tell me much either, unfortunately. This was against a U/G milling deck and it didn't have-or didn't find-any mass creature control. One resolved Monastery Mentor meant that I could usually overwhelm him.

Our decks were just operating on different planes and my angle of attack was more efficient than his.

Hazoret did make appearances; the one game I won in the G/B matchup I did so in part because I could discard spare cards to it to do damage, and because Fuz let the upkeep on the Elephant Grass slip.

The opening allowed me to use Boros Charm to bestow double strike, and Burning Shoal to provide +2, leading to an attack for 14.

I would say that this wasn't encouraging or discouraging, at least for now. What gives me hope is that Fuz said that he liked that addition. So there's that. We'll see how it pays out.

Strike the Cartridge

After over a week of testing, I'm starting to think it doesn't matter if Ogre Battledriver or Bedlam Reveler is the card.

They both do something and do it well. Battledriver is more beneficial in multiplayer situations, where having multiple, hasted, boosted creatures is a good thing. It's terrible on it's own, however.

Reveler is both a great way to refill my hand if the game stalls and a useful "gotcha" card combined with Burning Shoal. But it doesn't help me "go wide" like Battledriver does. Going wide isn't necessary in 1v1 situations, though.

So maybe the answer is: Neither?

The obvious way to make Triggerhappy a better deck is to add blue. That's a good way to make most decks better though, so what does that really say?

However, testing has not been without uses. Against Matt's mono-white prison deck, I was able to glean that the sideboard for this should have artifact and enchantment removal, and perhaps a little graveyard control.

So that's good to know. I think that I'm going to start creating those "generic" sideboards. They won't always be necessary but when someone has a deck they want to test, they should come in pretty handy and help me get and provide more information.

In the meantime, it feels as though Triggerhappy doesn't quite have the right card that it wants and I need to do some more exploring.

Caitlin suggested changing the lands up; at 22, I may have too many but with the addition of cards like Temple of Triumph I could help smooth things out better while getting a "free" spell.

And that is one place I haven't explored much; mana base tweaks, so I think that's next.

Absent Bedlam

So I took Triggerhappy to other people in order to get suggestions and recommendations. Kari Zev's Expertise is still awesome.

The thing is, nobody really had any strong opinions. Sure, the Reveler could be great. Sure the Ogre Battledriver could be great. However, there wasn't a clear "yes, that is better and what you should do" argument.

Which means that there's nothing else to do but try Triggerhappy without Bedlam Reveler and see what happens.

However, if I'm going to remove Bedlam Reveler then some adjustments need to be made. Accepting that there is a loss of Burning Shoal interactions, (hopefully made up by the bonus Battledriver gives) what is next?

1) I need to go all the way up to four Battledriver. The threat count is too low for my comfort and, if Fuz is right, having one show up is critical for my win condition. Four also means that testing will be more fruitful, as the card will show up frequently.

2) I need a way to draw cards. In white this is practically nonexistent and in red this is...difficult. However, Faithless Looting exists and is probably my best bet. Four mana to see four cards and pick my best ones is hard to top.

I'll start there and see what happens. 

The Suggestion

I've been experimenting. That's a good thing but I haven't really seen how it pays out yet.

First, I tried Collective Effort. It looks cool, right? Those tokens created off the Mentor or Pyromancer aren't immediately useful (hence Ogre Battlemaster) so why not take out their best creature and boost my team? But it just didn't play out very effectively. I would consider giving it more time but given what Triggerhappy wants to do (go wide with lots of creatures) I'm not sure that a simple +1 counter is really amazing.

Kari Zev's Expertise was next up and I liked this card more. The "Traitor" effect is frequently useful and I have enough cheap spells that the second ability comes in handy. This lead to trying out Boros Charm over Make a Stand, because free stuff is free.

Sram's Expertise, on the other hand, felt like too little, too late. That test didn't last very long.

Fuz took a look at the deck and, after some thought said to me:

"I don't see why Bedlam Reveler is in there."

"Because it helps reload my hand," I told him.

"But it doesn't come out until turn 4 at best and if you get an Ogre Battlemaster that isn't dealt with immediately, you win," he replied.

Removing the Reveler is not what I want to do. It feels like a bad idea: Reveler doesn't just refill my hand and provide a decent body to attack with, it also has some fantastic interactions with Blazing Shoal. Trust me, you only have to hit an unwary opponent for 10+ once to see how useful that is.

These arguments were not convincing to Fuz. As we spoke, I had to admit that I might've been falling into the Glory of Cool Things trap. He thinks Reveler is "win more". I think it does something critical-refills my hand while providing a board presence.

There's only one way to find out.

Bang-Bang

Oh, MAN am I behind. Sorry!

So let's start with this image from a game I played against Lauriel.

Here's what I learned: I cannot beat both a Ghostly Prison and a Propaganda.

With a deck that wants to swarm the opponent and goes low on the mana in order to do it, having the protection of those enchantments just blows me out.

Which is OK, actually. First, it means that I know my sideboard material: Orim's Thunder.

Second, there are a pretty limited number of these kinds of taxing effects and not too many decks run them. And while Wall of Denial is a pain in the butt, it can be nullified via swarm tactics.

It is for this very reason, though, that I built decks with Disenchant in them. In the years when Jason was my primary opponent, having a Disenchant in my deck was often the difference between winning and losing. Being able to follow up on such an effect was often where my deckbuilding skills faltered. But I was certainly prepared for my opponent!

Now that my opponents offer a greater range of decks to play, I don't auto-include those cards anymore.

It's giving me an idea, though: what if I built a "generic" sideboard? I have five-maybe more-R/W decks. Why not set aside fifteen cards that could fill in the gaps? I could streamline the maindeck stuff, while having that backup plan. And until I take a deck to a tournament, having a general purpose sideboard could be far more useful than just having to grimly accept every Achilles' Heel.

The First Round

Some good, some bad.

I've managed to play a couple multiplayer games piloting Triggerhappy and the results will probably not be a big surprise:

It's very draw dependent.With only 17 creatures and few card drawing effects, sticking a threat early is important.

Unfortunately, going down to five or fewer cards in multiplayer is incredibly unwise, so I don't do that. It's not good to do down to four or less in 1v1 games, either however the curve on Triggerhappy is so low that if I can cast a threat turn two, I can get away with it.

However, this is the choice I find myself frequently confronted with regarding this deck: needing to get that threat out early so the deck can work.

I almost took a picture of the last game I lost, to prove the point. In this case, I had six lands and zero permanents.When you're the low man on the totem pole in multiplayer, people take advantage of that. I don't blame 'em, I just know it doesn't give me much to work with in terms of improving the deck.

On the other end of the spectrum, when I can play two Monastery Mentors and have them go untouched, everyone else is pretty much screwed. Again, this is such a "well duh" moment that I don't get a lot of information out of it.

What does this all mean?

It means that, at least so far, Triggerhappy is stuck with one of my least favorite qualities for a Magic deck: you have to aggressively mulligan.

It also has one of my favorite qualities for a Magic deck: resilience. If you can get a threat-even one-Triggerhappy can grow faster than grass and turn a game around.

Still, I just have a feeling that there's some sharpening of this edge to do. 

Trigggerhappy

I had some fun with the name of this deck because while Triggerhappy isn't one of my favorite Transformers, any deck that is using Monastery Mentor and Young Pyromancer pretty much lends itself to triggered abilities. Here we go:

4 Bedlam Reveler

4 Monastery Mentor

4 Young Pyromancer

2 Seeker of the Way

1 Sun Titan

2 Ogre Battledriver

2 Lightning Bolt

3 Gut Shot

4 Gods Willing

3 Make a Stand

3 Blazing Shoal

1 Shining Shoal

3 Pyrokinesis

3 Swords to Plowshares

9 Mountain

9 Plains

3 Stone Quarry

The basic premise (for those of you who don't see it): cast Young Pyromancer and/or Monastery Mentor, cast a bunch of spells (some hopefully for free), make tokens, swing. Bedlam Reveler helps refill the hand, and Ogre Battledriver gives those tokens haste and a damage bonus.

First thing is first: 4 Inspiring Vantage need to go in there. An aggro deck like this needs easy access to its colors and with the mana base being so tight, dual lands like the Vantage will help.

After that; I have to admit that Ogre Battledriver might be difficult to cast given the mana base and a single copy of Sun Titan looks a little silly.

But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in the interactions that Gut Shot or Blazing Shoal can provide as free spells. Along those lines, Sram or Kari Zev's Expertise might be cool choices but first I'll need to run this deck through some paces.

However, it's going to have to wait for a bit: I'm headed out of town tomorrow and won't get to play Magic until I return on Tuesday. So I hope to have an update in one week, on the 1st of June, and resume regular posting from there. Cheers!