Vortex, Quit Vexing Me

I got q's, v's and x's in that title, what's not to love?

But let's get to the meat of it:

If the core concept of Vortex-using Mirri's Guile and Dark Confidant to set up draws to make for better Gamekeeper use-is good, then one solution I haven't put enough effort into is redundancy.

Enter: Pattern of Rebirth. With six board resets, Pattern is very likely useful and it may even serve as an additional consequence to removing Dark Confidant, something every opponent is going to want to do. I've added two in place of Worldly Tutor.

I've got Plated Slagwurm in as a placeholder at the moment-untargetable giant monsters aren't bad-but I'm looking through Gatherer for something better, preferably something in theme but anything scary will do. The issue with the Slagwurm is that it doesn't have trample or any other interesting ability, so it can be chumpblocked easily and taken down by anything with deathtouch. The next closest options are Siege Behemoth (which I'd run just for the name) or Plated Crusher, because of the trample.

Liliana Vess is still a possibility: raw power can't be overlooked as a solution.

Then I remembered: I own a Griselbrand. Just one, but I do have one. And if I'm going to try and go for raw power, well, that's one of the most powerful cards ever printed so...why not swing for the fences?

With the new tests, things have gotten better. Pattern of Rebirth and Languish have been good additions. The ability to reset the board more frequently and Pattern's buttressing Gamekeeper's ability has been helping Vortex get there and the creature-lands have been great at providing additional pressure.

So far, things have been positive. Griselbrand hasn't made an appearance yet but I've finally had a chance to test Liliana against Fuz against a UW aggro spirits deck and a UG delver deck.

I lost the UG match because I used Liliana's ability to get a Griselbrand instead of Languish or Pernicious Deed in game two. The glory of cool things biting me in the ass on that one. I won the UW match when Fuz got stuck on one Island with two Boomerangs in hand. I also got a little greedy in game 3, swinging for 4 damage with the ability to take 6 next turn, Languish at 1 and then fetch something massive and maybe get lucky to get another big dude.

Plaxmanta-a card I hadn't seen-came in to ruin my day. I went big and lost. However, twice during these matches I was able to use Liliana's +1 ability to discard Darksteel Colossus and set up a better opportunity for Gamekeeper. She earned her keep.

Does It Suck?

There isn't much to do when you're on the road from Nevada to Washington except listen to really terrible country music radio, unless of course, you're stuck with the Jesus channel, or the barely tolerable Spanish pop station. So I thought about the deck and I came to a conclusion:

Call of the Herd should be cut. I need to make this deck either a) faster or b) more defensible. Well, generating a 3/3 isn't going to do either of those things, even if I can get two of them for an affordable price.

So. Liliana should come in, maybe? I don't know. I'm going to try Read the Bones and Languish. Read should help accelerate my combo and Languish should give me time, right?

Except when I goldfish the deck, it just feels like I'm missing something. Before I had Read the Bones I had put in Liliana and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar, and Vraska, the Unseen. Essentially attempting to use raw power to get around the issue that's nagging me about this deck that I can't quite articulate.

Because the concept is solid and I've been streamlining the card selection down to help bring the concept to the forefront, yet testing the deck by myself has felt unsatisfying. Maybe bouncing this deck off actual opponents will change that feeling. But adding power didn't feel satisfactory, so I'm hoping card draw will help.

Next up; Shadows over Innistrad thoughts, and I've got a Doomtown event Wednesday and that always means new and weird interactions with the concept of losing. 

Out

I played a few games with Vortex against a couple of decks Noah had and I have come to one conclusion:

This deck isn't fast enough, nor slow enough. That is: It doesn't set up the combo quickly enough, nor does it have enough ways to halt my opponent to get set up so instead it becomes extremely reliant on lucky draws to either a) get that giant monster on board and swinging or b) draw a reset that allows me to get to a).

So I'm going to have to think on this. Fortunately, I'm going to take off tomorrow to help my Dad with an interstate move. So I won't have time for Magic but I will have time to think. I hope to resume posting April 5th. Cheers!

Swirling Around

I did some goldfishing with Vortex before taking it out on the road.

First, Eternal Witness was replaced with a Worldspine Wurm in an attempt to up my threat density.  

Then I realized that Raven's Crime wasn't doing what I wanted it to. Repeatable discard is really good but I'm only running 22 lands. I need to get to four lands, getting to five is certainly helpful and pitching those lands isn't helpful. Worse, now that I've added Hissing Quagmire, getting rid of lands is an even worse idea.

So, out they went. 4 Duress and 4 Cabal Therapy will have to do. As replacements, I tried to think of a few options, including Liliana Vess. It doesn't seem like a bad idea, since that card does much of what I want (discard, tutoring) and the cost is not out of this world. However, I wanted to keep the mana curve cheap and I discovered that I had two Worldly Tutors in the binder. Worldly Tutor in response to Gamekeeper's triggered ability is a pretty good idea.

With the last two slots, I added in a Swamp, as the deckstats.net evaluation said I needed more black mana, and a Garruk Wildspeaker because I had no Liliana. I'll have to fix that soon! But for now: Garruk fits in reasonably well and I can test Liliana Vess online for now. In the meantime, Garruk can perform some mana ramp, or just produce 3/3s for me to use.

My first test was in a four player chaos game against Matt, Caitlin and stonethorn. This is actually a really, really bad situation for Vortex, because the discard in the deck is not multiplayer-appropriate. That cuts off a portion of my control and the games played out along those lines.

The Pernicious Deed allowed me to play politics in the game, directing attacks away from me under threat of having everything blow up. However, my inability to properly disrupt my opponents coupled with my low threat density meant that I couldn't make a go of it in the two games. I wouldn't be the first player out but I couldn't be the last one standing.

That's OK: I cannot blame the hammer for failing to do the job of a chainsaw. I got some practice in with this deck and that's what matters.

Vortex

Let's get back to some sixty card madness. Sure, tonight I'll be playing Doomtown but it'll be thinking of...well, Doomtown. One thing at a time. I tried to streamline the cards in a couple decks and I'm looking forward to seeing how those play out. I'm also a couple expansions short so I'll probably try and pick those up...

But I'm getting distracted. Let's get to some decklistin'!

8 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
7 Forest
3 Treetop Village

4 Pernicious Deed
4 Mirri's Guile

2 Darksteel Colossus
4 Dark Confidant
4 Gamekeeper

1 Eternal Witness
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Raven's Crime
4 Call of the Herd
4 Duress
3 Gaea's Blessing

The basic plan? Play Gamekeeper, sacrifice Gamekeeper, get Darksteel Colossus, win. To help me do that: Mirri's Guile and Dark Confidant as the card drawing engine. Discard and Pernicious Deed to protect the Colossus (and me), Gaea's Blessing in case I need to start over and Call of the Herd and Treetop Village provide some win conditions if for some reason nothing else is going on. Riding a Treetop Village to victory is a long standing tradition, so why not?

I just named this after a Transformer, probably because I wanted a deck that started with the letter V. I'm a little quirky like that.

Possible thoughts: Hissing Quagmire, and more copies of Darksteel Colossus. At the moment, that's all I got, so hopefully when I take this for a spin, some new ideas will pop up.