The Retired: Shrapnel

Like so many players, I fall in love with cards from time to time. One of them is Seismic Assault. What better thing to do once you have all your lands, than to pitch them into your opponent's face? And what better way to mitigate the 'drawback' to Necrologia than to pay a bunch of life, draw all the cards, and then discard down to hand size by getting rid of those pesky lands?

It all seemed like a great idea, in 1998. Once Odyssey block came out, adding cards that did damage via removing stuff from my graveyard just made sense! But Grim Lavamancer was expensive, so Organ Grinder came into help.

3 Manaforge Cinder
3 Mogg Fanatic
2 Grim Lavamancer
3 Organ Grinder

3 Seismic Assault

3 Dark Ritual
3 Incinerate
3 Necrologia
3 Scorching Lava
3 Terminate

3 Rakdos Carnarium
2 Rocky Tar Pit
4 Swamp
9 Mountain
2 Dragonskull Summit
4 Canyon Slough

4 Blightning
3 Soul Feast

There is just one problem: Another color does this better, now; green. A lot better. So I'm taking it apart, because redoing the whole thing just doesn't seem worth it. There's a R/G deck for Seismic Assault, maybe even a RGx deck, but there definitely isn't a RB deck worth the time.

Dig Out The Metal

Leave it to Jason to hit the weak spot in my deck.

Two matches: one versus a mono-green deck with Predator Ooze and Dungrove Elder, conveniently Rancor'd, which are stubbornly resistant to my removal suite, and another against a mono-black (mostly) zombie deck, including the greatest hits of Gravecrawler, Geralf's Messenger and Nether Traitor.

In the mono-G matchup, I couldn't race him; even with Soul Feast, there is a point where Necrologia is a dead card for me, usually when I'm at 5 or less, because I don't have sweeper cards. All my damage was directed at Jason but I couldn't get enough to win the games.

Zombies!

Against zombies, I lost 1-2 and the game I won was where my removal mattered juuuust enough (special props to Scorching Lava), and then I was able to Necrologia for 6 and throw 4 lands away to do 8 damage and come from behind. But the games I lost were ones where I had to remove undying creatures twice, using up resources that needed to be directed elsewhere, so I couldn't carve out enough time to arrive at a board state that let me win.

They were close games though, so nothing is dissuading me from my current design. Yes, the Vampire Nighthawks would have been useful in the mono-G matchup, but so would Damnation, Scar, Thoughtseize or a hundred other combinations. This is where a sideboard would be useful and certainly the Nighthawks and more discard would probably be where I'd look to shore up difficult matchups.

So let's call it good with this list:

3 Dark Ritual
3 Incinerate
3 Seismic Assault
3 Rakdos Carnarium
3 Necrologia
3 Scorching Lava
2 Rocky Tar Pit
5 Swamp
2 Shadowblood Ridge
3 Terminate
3 Manaforge Cinder
3 Mogg Fanatic
2 Grim Lavamancer
3 Organ Grinder
10 Mountain
4 Blightning
2 Dragonskull Summit
3 Soul Feast

Now, some people may have heard about the next Commander set which is coming out in a month, so let's talk about Commander stuff for 30 days!

20 or 18 Year Old Whiskey?

I know that last time, I said I would be dabbling with Vampire Nighthawk in the Lose Hope slot.

I didn't.

I know, I know: Vampire Nighthawk is good. I should run good cards.

But as I was cleaning up my desk, I ended up finding the Any Colour You Like deck (which instead of dismantling I twisted into a Painters Servant/Grindstone deck) and while taking it apart I found the four Soul Feasts that were in there.

The drawback to Soul Feast is that it costs more than the Nighthawk but the upside is that it dodges removal, which is a big deal these days, and doesn't take a turn to get going: I cast Soul Feast, I gain 4 life, no waiting.

When I asked Fuz about these options, he said "It's like asking if you want to fuck a 20 or 18 year old whiskey."

I did not know I could fuck whiskey, so it may be time to expand my horizons.

I ended up taking the Soul Feast configuration against Fuz's White Weenie deck in two nailbiting games. Manaforge Cinder did some critical mana fixing in both games and Blightning was fantastic. It hit a Wrath of God and a Disenchant in game 2 (pictures), which was critical because I was on the end of a beatdown of epic proportions, going down to one life due to an early Student of Warfare, rapidly leveled up to deal me 8 a turn.

I cast Seismic Assault, then used everything up in order to stabilize the board; discard Swamp + Grim Lavamancer to kill the Student. Then discard another land to kill a Knight of Meadowgrain. Lavamancer activation to kill Knight Exemplar (two of them!) and Incinerate for Knight of the Holy Nimbus.

In a last ditch effort, I Necrologia'd for five, going to one life, then next turn was able to cast Blightning and Incinerate off a Dark Ritual run through the Manaforge Cinder in order to give me more time. I used that time to cast Soul Feast to go up to 5. At 8 life, with a Hero of Bladehold and a Crusade on the board Fuz swung at me for 10.

I blocked the Hero with an Organ Grinder, then activated the Grinder to bring Fuz down to 5. Blocked a token with a Grim Lavamancer, then took 3 from the unblocked token. Fuz says "Go," and I untap, pitch a land for 2 damage an cast a second Soul Feast to win.

Whew. Now, did I get lucky, or have I chosen wisely? It's hard to say, but the fact that I pulled out close matches against an aggro deck (a matchup I know to be difficult) makes me think that I've got this deck on the right track, at least for now.

Blightning Rod

I thought I had this posted on Thursday. Sorry everyone! We now join our story in progress...

Although I won games against Fuz with my original configuration of Shrapnel, I knew it was just luck. I needed to win games more decisively, which meant either a) speed or b) disruption.

Theros still isn't out (when I wrote this last Thursday), but the best 'faster' card that I thought would be helpful was Read the Bones. Lacking that, I've been using Lose Hope (over Festering March and Flame Javelin) as a way to provide disruption. I like Lose Hope, actually. The filtering is nice and I'm having to make some choices that I think I'm getting incorrect. Which is good, because that means I'm learning.

However, Lose Hope is also another creature killer and I have quite a bit of that, as I've seen in games against Noah and stonethorn. Too much of a good thing, perhaps, leaving me unable to finish the game.

And replacing Lose Hope with Read the Bones is risky, because I already want to go all-in on cards like Necrologia. I'm not sure I can take the life loss.

That's the questionable card, though. I had an 'Aha!' moment and removed Dread and Murderous Redcap for Blightning and that was an excellent decision. In all my games, whenever I cast Blightning, my opponents were unhappy with it. Always a good sign.

The other 'Aha!' moment I had was with the mana base. It's challenging to make a deck that has, as two of its key spells, RRR and BB in them. If I had more lands that could produce red or black, I would be in better shape (of course, right?)

So I went to ye olde binders and found two Dragonskull Summit which should make everything better. Not as good as Badlands but it's best to use the tools available, since purchase of a Badlands invokes the My Money rule. (My Money > less of My Money.)

However, I want to return to the Lose Hope conundrum. The redundancy they provide may not be reason enough to keep them but I do like the brainteaser of which cards to scry. Still, if I could add in something that created problems and contributed to speeding up my win condition, this might be a better thing. I'll have to keep my eye out. A card like Vampire Nighthawk could be exceptionally good for this deck, giving me time to set up my combo through lifegain against more aggressive decks, or be a win condition on its own against slower ones if I look for the turn 1 Swamp, Dark Ritual, Nighthawk play.

We'll put the Nighthawk on deck, if Lose Hope doesn't cut it.