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.

Patience, practice and patientpractice

Or something clever like that.
Anyway, new changes to Zx means that Oona's Grace is now the card drawing engine and so far I like it but what it means is that using Life from the Loam is now more important than ever and that patience is critical to this deck.

I need to stall until I can absolutely, 100%, no questions asked, go off and get as many turns as I want in a row.

I was playing Fuz and sadly, I don't remember his deck, only that I was holding out fairly well but I was also starting to get panicky. I had drawn over half my deck and blown two Walk the Aeons to buy time and I still didn't have the cards required to combo out.

So I started dumping all my mana into drawing cards via Oona's Blessing and doing it on my turn.

The first problem is that I got worried about something I shouldn't have. The board state was bad but it wasn't dire; I had a turn, likely more if I played it right, to get what I needed.

The second problem is that I violated the advice I give nearly every new player to Magic; only play the spell you need to, at the last possible moment you can play it. Since Oona's Blessing is an instant, the time to play and replay that spell was on Fuz's turn and keep mana up in the meanwhile to threaten a counterspell or Venser, which he knew I had because Oracle of Mul Daya was in play allowing him to see my draws.

Having to play around countermagic does things to the mental state of players and even I haven't gotten the hang of it. Of course, having to play countermagic is a pretty tricky beast too, so I suppose it works out, it's just that saying No in Magic is a lot more powerful than most other effects.

Because I rushed things, I ended up using all my resources and having no way to stop Fuz when he monkeywrenched my board and swung.

Zx is a deck that is going to take some practice to play with; twice now I have found myself in situations where the right play was to be patient and wait, read the cards, take in all the data and execute my masterstroke when it would actually BE a masterstroke.

Instead, I've ended up a Bond villain.

RTFC

Or, why paying attention matters, part 7.

One of these days I should just outline the basic rules any Magic player ought to keep in mind but one of them, perhaps the most important one, is going to be: Read (and comprehend) The Fucking Card.

Here's the situation:

I'm playing the updated version of Zx-no Jin-Gitaxis, Teferi back in, Venser for extra bounce, no Oona's Grace yet. C is playing W/B weenie/lifegain with Ajani Goldmage to back them up, and stonethorn who's got a U/B Tezzerit deck. They've been gaining life while picking on each other, so I'm still at 20 but they're in the 40s.

I'm doing a whole lot of nothing except preparing to go off, C is stuck on two lands and stonethorn has three Wurmcoil Engines in play (an OG one and two Phyrexian Metamorphs copying it), Tezzerit, Tumble Magnet and Torpor Orb.

But I've got everything in hand. Teferi on board, Venser in hand, Walk the Aeons, Life From the Loam; everything is ready to go.

So I start to go off. I think I've got it. I can take infinite turns, create more creatures, use Venser to bounce what I don't like and Loaming Shaman to keep from decking myself.

Gleefully ignoring Torpor Orb.

So I begin to show the combo, it can't be stopped and yeah my library is dwindling down but I can basically swing through C's defenses and yeah I'll lose a creature a turn when I hit stonethorn but since I can Loam my stuff back I'll never get-

TORPOR ORB

And it's at this point that C points out to me that my enter the battlefield triggers don't happen.

Just like that, it's over. My brain melts down and instead of even trying to play kingmaker or mess with someone or find a way out, I decide to deck myself in order to deprive my opponents from killing me.

Now my disappointment comes not from not being able to answer Torpor Orb. My issue is that 1) I didn't comprehend the situation correctly and 2) I mentally bailed when I understood what was happening.

I read Torpor Orb. It was read aloud to the group. But what it did just wouldn't sink in until it was too late, so instead of trying to plan for an inevitable win against the card that was keeping me down, or trying to even make a plan I just blithely went with plan A because 'Hey, I've got it, and that's cooooool.'

No. Not so much.

I could have taken a few extra turns to work out my position, I could have given some of those turns to C to make stonethorn's boardstate untenable, or at least vulnerable enough that Torpor Orb didn't matter. I could have worked my way out of it.

But I didn't, because I didn't read the card.

Read-and comprehend-the fucking card.

Adjustments

It didn't take long for me to figure out what the holes in Zx were.

Jin-Gitaxis doesn't make sense in this deck because I can't use it effectively; sure I get to draw seven cards (which is rich like candy from a stripper) but the goal of Zx is to prevent my opponent from taking another turn.

So the opponent's hand doesn't get emptied and in the meantime I've got a vanilla 5/4.

Two Venser, Shaper Savant and another Teferi were added to replace Jin-Gitaxis. Jin will have its day, somehow. I just don't know how yet.

No, wait. I do. We'll keep it between us for now. And by between us I mean; for such time that I can play it in a deck and write about it.

Back to Zx: I really like Preordain because it's cheap but I'm wondering if the instant Oona's Grace wouldn't be better. Since I can get lands back, discarding them isn't an issue and until the Horn of Greeds come online being able to draw cards repeatedly is a good thing. I'll likely be making that change soon, just to try it out.

Zx

A new deck that I built very, very recently, named after the song by Dukatalon. This series of posts should be interesting because unlike most of the decks I'll write about, this deck hasn't been around very long and will undergo several changes as I learn more about what works and what doesn't. It was inspired by this build that Ali Aintrazi wrote about at Starcity.

I take a look at decks like that and I think; yeah, taking infinite turns is awesome and all but how can I make that cooler?

Enter Jin-Gitaxis, Core Auger. Because drawing 7 at the end of each turn is awesome.

Land
4 Undiscovered Paradise
2 Ghost Quarter
8 Forest
9 Island

Creatures
4 Oracle of Mul Daya
2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
2 Lotus Cobra
3 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
2 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
2 Loaming Shaman

Instants
4 Counterspell

Sorceries
3 Walk the Aeons
4 Life from the Loam
3 Preordain

Artifacts
4 Horn of Greed

Enchantments
2 Exploration
2 Rites of Flourishing

The gist of the deck works like this: Walk the Aeons with buyback, Life from the Loam the sacrificed lands back, play the lands, draw more cards and when my library gets too low, Loaming Shaman everything back in and create an advantage that eventually allows me to swing for the win.

Changes will be made because that's the nature of things.