You know what I hate? Poor spelling and incomplete sentences. Good luck getting banned.

Rip, interesting list, just a few points that came to mind -

Engineered explosives as a 1-of? Eliminating your own creatures isn't tech, but it is hate that is actually fetchable with trinket mage, and with all those moxen you should be able to set it to 3 reasonably often.

Daze? For an aggro deck this list is *slow* - seems like some tempo counters could be solid.

So the plan is... scoop to drain-based control? 4C/Tog/Control Slaver aren't hyped right now, but people still like them so they see play. What could possibly make them happier than a deck plan that looks like this:

T1: Do nothing, or ESG out a weenie (meets FoW)
T2-4: Either cast a fatty (troll/baloth) or sit on reactive, situational cards (F/I, naturalize, artifact mutation).

I don't want to discourage you but I would hope that few metas have slid to the point where this kind of design would be optimal. I'd recommend shifting your deck focus to cards that are either good against shop and against a wider variety of decks, with whatever cards you do still main primarily against shop being of the kind that win the game then and there - artifact mutation being the obvious example. Rather than main-decking something like naturalize which is kinda blah against any deck you play against and only really shines against oath, I'd put in something more generally relevant, and side something for oath in particular - claws of gix, or what have you.

As minimal streamlining, F/I should be Grim Lavamancers, which are great vs. control, welders and other aggro and acceptable vs. the rest. Without anti-counter disruption I can't see running RBaloth in a world with Mana Drain - the only other decks that plays a 4 mana creature in T1 either get it much earlier (shop) or get a much fatter guy (madness) - and the latter sometimes doesn't run roar for fear of the drain.

I don't like crucible of worlds in decks like this, either, but if you want to keep it and slow cards like the trolls in, birds of paradise is an automatic 4-of. Going first it makes trinisphere look terrible, and it gives your slow cards a chance of slipping past drain.

I've toyed with somewhat similar 5C decks, but my meta is not competitive so I can't say I've developed them... have you considered Gifts Ungiven? I don't think the card has been properly exploited as yet, and the 5C base offers a lot of potential power.

At minimum, a good default choice is four moxen. Explosive vegetation isn't type 1 playable, but having it as an option on a card that plays eot or off a drain, gets the mana untapped, thins your library of 4 mana, sets up Will and is blue makes it a lot better.

If mana-fixing is the issue, Gifts for Delta/Strand/City of Brass/Forbidden Orchard gives you any color you need.

Against non-control decks, Gifts at end of turn for Card X/Black Lotus/Regrowth/Will is at minimum a tutor that pays for the tutored card, if they give you X and Lotus, or more than that if they give you something else... giving you Regrowth/Lotus will usually set off Will, and any other combination is pretty incredible.

'X' can be a lot of broken stuff in this deck - balance, tinker, crucible, rack and ruin or isochron scepter all come to mind as options.

Against control, the generic +1 card advantage is unexciting but solid... whether you try to do something broken (and risk dropping a bunch of bombs in the grave) or just get mana/brainstorms will depend on the situation, although eot fetching some bombs and blessing, and blessing back the bombs after use is cute .

Zherbus - Is that really a correction, or a clarification? By SB options, I did mean the red spells, and by bad draw, I did mean phid over scrying. Doesn't hurt to lay everything out I suppose  .

on topic -
The thing about the 'more aggressive' stance of EBA w/duress, mages etc, is that I don't see that the kill engine of the deck optimizes it. Duress is great in Tog because it takes something good that would disrupt Tog's plan, and then Tog draws lots of cards and kills you because you don't have it. This gameplan looks a whole lot worse when your game-winning package includes of 2/2s for 2 and 1/3s that may not actually deal damage. These guys get blocked and killed by Mishra's factory, for god's sake!

It seems as if EBA is a good/bad deck in the same way that many people feel Keeper is a good/bad deck - good, in that it runs lots of good cards, and sometimes those bring it the win - but bad, because its overall gameplan is not optimal. To me personally, EBA's plan seems even worse than Keeper's - Keeper at least knows what it wants, while EBA seems unclear on whether it is trying to control the game (drains) or just disrupt and beat (mages).

Another apparent difference is that Keeper does have matchups where it actually hold advantages over competitors like Tog and Slaver. Does EBA?

If it mostly doesn't, one direction I can see EBA taking to give it some real strategic advantages might be towards some U/W fish like build - Meddling Mage is still really good in Fish.

Apologies for the slightly messed paste job.

Toad - I think that's a little pessimistic. A few years ago, that view was representative of WotC/community relations. That's no longer true. We know that Buehler knows something about T1. We know (for better or worse) that Rosewater wants to throw some card kinks into Type 1. That's fantastic. A really productive next step would be to let just a smidgen of Type 1 understanding diffuse down a few levels of the company. Of course it is unreasonable to expect meta-game understanding, or even major deck type knowledge in random reps - but understanding that it is a real format with real strategy and playskills involved is not. If there could be a 'Type 1 memo', a one page document passed down to all the spokesman types explaining a bit of the logic of our format and presenting in a short paragraph each two top decks, I think it would do a lot.

It would be nice if it didn't matter what some random rep is telling people, but it does. The 14 yr old who wrote in, and everyone who read about the P9 for the first time in that Ask Wizards, now thinks we play a bizarre, incomprehensible, 'un-fun' and luck-based format. Not many people here would agree with all of that.

Wow - it's Keeper, with 4 mages, sub-optimal draw and missing SB options.

Or... prove (explain) me wrong.

All perfectly fair points, Dr.S. My offense stems not from misrepresentation of the raw numbers, but on the old fashioned fairy story the responder weaves around them. Building the Type One community has been about proving, given a balancing restriction list, that the format is not just about who draws the most P9 and who plays first. And I'm not even going to comment on the line about '1 of each P9 in any top deck'.

I'm not going trying to start an anti-WotC rant thread, but it *is* disappointing to see this kind of attitude still being posted on their web site, even from a lower level rep. This really does read like something a Wiz rep might have commented at least 2+ yrs ago - and it seemed worth bringing to people's attention.

How about those "cards ... so powerful that games involving them often just come down to who draws theirs first"? Sounds like Standard.

Q: "I heard there was a group of cards called the Power 9. The only card that I know that is in this group is Black Lotus. I was wondering what the other cards are?"

A: From Robert Gustchera, Magic R&D:

"Besides the Black Lotus, they are the 5 Moxes (each of which costs  and taps for 1 colored mana -- Mox Pearl, Mox Sapphire, Mox Jet, Mox Ruby and Mox Emerald), Time Walk, Timetwister, and Ancestral Recall. They're called the 'Power 9' because in formats where they are legal, most people believe you must have 1 of each of them (they are all restricted, so you can't have more) in any top deck. All of these cards appeared in the original Magic set, nicknamed 'Alpha.'

"These cards are so powerful that games involving them often just come down to who draws theirs first. That's no fun, so Wizards doesn't print these cards anymore. That means they are very expensive and hard to find, so not many people play with them now. But for people who still have these old cards, there's 'Type I' (also called Vintage), which is the format in which all kinds of old cards are legal, including the now all-but-legendary 'Power 9.'"


WTF?

Taking it back to the days of 1996, WoTC-Style.

Just to be absolutely clear: morphing is not stopped by Damping Matrix. Being able to unmorph is a static ability, not activated/triggered etc.

Wheel of Fortune is fine so long as you don't face a lot of combo - Sligh usually gains more from a resolved wheel than other control or aggro decks. Jackal pup is strictly a four of, bump it up. Shock is bad - try replacing them with Grim Lavamancer, which swings a few times, removes blockers and is a pseudo-cursed scroll late game.

Side note - bumping is generally frowned on on TMD.

Going back to Swanky's description of Context and Metagame bias - the latter seems reasonble//self-evidently true. Contextual brokeness, however, is a valid standard for restriction that the DCI uses all the time - LED is a terrible card in most decks, a strong card in Madness and a broken card in Long, for example. Gush was fine in stasis/turbo-land and not at all fine in Grow-A-Tog. The list goes on.

Do note that this is a theoretical point - I don't favour restricting intuition, or any Tog card at the moment.

I'll repeat a question I asked in the other EBA thread, and BreathWeapon touched on in his thread-opener - what advantages does EBA have over Tog and especially, Keeper? Which important matchups are better?

HiVal says the deck works off angels, matrix and mage - and all but the last see play in Keeper. A theoretically better mana base (3 colour) seems counterbalanced in practice by heavy up front mana requirements - B on T1, - W on T2, WW on T4, etc. I'm as big a fan of mage as anyone, but I have trouble seeing EBA as something other than an awkward mash of sub-optimal control (-Balance, -Mystic, -good draw, -SB REB/Shaman/Rack&Ruin) and a sketchy, underpowered creature base (2/2s for 2? Who runs those anymore?).

What I'd actually like is for someone to thoroughly, intelligently rebuke me. Help me out =).

Living Wish is bad - Survival is your tutor engine. As mentioned 1-2 zealots should be maindeck - along with genesis, a house vs. control, and possibly spore frog (genesis+frog wrecks aggro all day).

Not running wastelands+strip main is a serious mistake that will cost you dearly in all kinds of matchups - vs. dragon, vs. control, even vs. the mirror. Disruption is part of what makes Oshawa viable.

As an additional general note - posting deck lists without further write-ups/discussion is against the rules and can get you banned if you do it enough.

In a casual or multi environment where you have a bit of time to set up, Future Sight can be a complete house in gro - ditto w/any of the blue-affecting familiars.

Can't speak about Madness, but COP:Green is some bad vs. Oshawa. Mongrel ignores it, and tutored for zealots kill it. Bleh.

As a more general deck philosophy question, could someone explain to me which matchups EBA handles better than Keeper and/or Tog? It has always rubbed me as a deck that didn't know what it wanted to be... less broken+flexible than Keeper, and a much weaker set of win conditions than Tog.

Understand that I'm not doubting that it has some advantages - I'd just like to hear them from players of the deck.

The Ravager list is solid, and Stacker xx listing looks interesting... but you *were* kidding about 'Keeper', right?

Brainstorms, extra dazes and the lack of draw apart curiosity (with 12 creatures??), the madness package without wurms all seem terrible. Seems strictly worse than U/G fish, save for a beefier 1 drop (rootwalla).

Then again, I am fairly certain that list was trademark JP humor.

Actually, I think you'd be better going back to the original build and working off that. Or check out this Dulmen build (#2):
http://www.morphling.de/coverages/top8decks.php?id=110

The Wizards boards and quality type 1 deck building do not mix - you'll get more of this calibre of answer:

Sounds like you've been goldfishing.

The power of the Ravager decks that have been cropping up in random T8s in T1 and T2 is that their damage is difficult to stop - disciple lifeloss is automatic and comes in neatly divisible packages, and arcbound counters are damn hard to permanently remove from the board.

Your list sacrifices this redundancy for a single burst of raw killing power, - thereby making timely counterspells fatal. You *must* sacrifice most-->all of your board to maximize the effect of zerk/fling, leaving you crippled if it doesn't work out as planned. That's bad.

Atog compounds this problem, since his 'counters' do not move around and any random creature removal (eg swords) will cost you the game.

I've never played a game against Madness, but I've played a lot of Keeper vs. Oshawa, and Kavu isn't really what I'd want to see - Troll's untargetability and Mongrel's frequent ability to outgrow it make it a little meh.

What makes Oshawa special as an aggro-deck is how its slowness and free mana push the match into the late(r) game, normally control territory - but where Oshawa can bring its card advantage engines to bear. Squee is just better than anything Keeper's got.

Answers like swords, Exalted and Kavu are prequisites to not losing, but don't win the game themselves, either - the need to deal with early survival has made me consider Dismantling Blow main deck again.

P.S. No no, the Astral Slide suggestion is good! Think of it... Rune of Protection: Red and Green main deck... the silver bullet theory lives again!

Psst- Decree can be hard cast for 4/4 Angel Tokens, too. The only thing worse than bad Keeper players is bad anti-Keeper tech.

Re: Perish, try Hibernation and +1 Cunning Wish main deck instead. I also thought I needed it to control Big O, but I've found that Hibernation is more than enough. It's available game 1, and gives you another shot at countering SotF, as well as retarding their mana production by sending vineyard back to the hand - and doing it off their own vineyard mana is classy. Just watch those mongrels with both spells - I've been killed by a 14/14 mongrel before =/.

Can't say I've ever been a fan of impulse in Keeper - I always seem to want to keep 2, 3 or even all of the cards - but YMMV.

*ahem*. My bad.

The point on removal (/answers) vs. winning-the-game cards is well taken... and helps clarify the Tog/Slavery vs. Keeper/Still/Phid distinction.

A question for anyone/everyone that I find both interesting and on topic, then, is what kind of cards does Keeper as an archetype want to see in new sets to improve its competitiveness?

Without making a particular card, it seems to me the ideal Keeper card would be highly flexible, either "cycling" when not needed and/or being useful against several different classes of permanents or effects; have 2+ for 1 card built-in, at least by the late game; and be white, limiting the ability of other decks to play it.

One example that crossed my mind looked like:

W1 Instant
Counter target activated ability. If a non-land permanent's ability is countered this way, destroy that permanent.

Other thoughts?

JP - Not to be a dick, but I remember a thread recently where you laid out the basic 'skeleton' of Hulk Smash and noted the many slots left open for adaption as a positive thing - an opportunity for metagaming and superior deck construction. Presumably the implication was that the Hulk skeleton was sufficiently powerful to win on its own much of the time, but that tweaks in the remaining cards could improve its particular matchups.

Your Keeper-ish skeleton sounds somewhat the same - its certainly strong enough to win on its own sometimes - and you note that the remaining cards can tweak it from an ok to a good deck - which sounds like what you said about Hulk. Is your criticism the genericity and apparent lack of a focused game plan of Keeper's core? Isn't the a large part of point of Keeper as a control deck bringing together the most stupidly broken cards from its colors?

If you've got a devastating response saved up, I'd love to hear it - probably make me better as a player .

Addendum: I thought a bit more and decided I could put it more cogently: Isn't the "skeleton" of Keeper the absolutely most powerful control cards in the game, and its flexible portion the most powerful controls/hosers/bullets in a particular meta?

No. Think for just two seconds about that... a single currency trading at equal rates for differently value currency would quickly generate anyone infinite money. Canadian dollars are worth fewer Euros than US dollars.

Just look it up for once: http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi

Sligh should be a good matchup for GAT. The problem with your list is a lack of pitch counters - add several copies of Misdirection and some dazes, and the matchup should change radically.

Let's compare spades to spades; we don't have jackal pup 5-8 to run in firewalker's place. We have goblin cadets, who is infinitely more useless than pup in a strong aggro meta; and mogg fanatic, who doesn't swing hard at all.

I'm loath to even bother answering the equation of firewalker and cadets as bad against blockers. Walker remains good despite blockers after a few hits, cadets becomes jank; walker swings in by surprise when their attackers are out, cadets remains jank; and walker will never turn on you  if they chump block or cycle decree.

To be absolutely clear, though, who or what do you advocate in walker's place? Can you really be pushing cadets for a self-proclaimed aggro meta?

So you're saying don't run a creature, because some decks can bolt it?

How about we don't run spells, because they can be mana drained.

Yeah.

Edit: After some thought, I realize this deck runs *12* bolts, giving it the "bolt advantage". Possibly Goblin Sligh should stop running goblins to make these 'dead cards'.