Article -- Firing Up Fifth Dawn: Artifacts

[rakso]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=7490

Ben Bleiweiss (see "Some Words About Fifth Dawn in Type I") said:

"Will anyone build the Crystal Vein/Fastbond/Crucible deck? Obviously this card is best used with Fastbond (which is restricted). Will it be used in any other deck than a Fastbond combo deck? Probably not, but you never know - a Goblin deck might want to recur Wastelands every turn of the game - or some deck might want to bring back a slain Mishra's Factory every turn. Zvi's Turboland deck has never been accurately translated to Type One, even though it has a bazillion more tools to work with in this format and has been a proven winner in several Extended metagames. Look Type One people - another deck for you to stea... errr, borrow and retool!"

First of all, however, the combo has it tough since you can get infinite mana off just two cards. For example, you have Grim Monolith / Power Artifact, Animate Dead / Worldgorger Dragon (and a land in play), Metalworker / Voltaic Construct, and most recently, Auriok Salvagers / Black Lotus (or Lion's Eye Diamond).

[AIcOPed]

I think rakso is wrong about CoW. I think its interactions w/ wastlands/strip mine alone call for consideration. (and almost every deck uses wastes/strip). The only deck this combination is uneffective against is belcher, and then you still have the interactions w/ fetchlands. Then let us talk about the combo of fastbond/zuran/ CoW. W/ CoW and FB and a fetchland/wast/strip/ you will devestate your opponent in one turn w/o the zuran. if you have the fetchland you can pull enough land from your deck to hard cast a turn 1 FoW and mana drain. this is huge. Yes, FB is resticted, so are the 3 tutors in my deck that draw it, so is most of the card draw that gets me to it. Let us talk about cow and future sight w/ no fb in play. this means when you get stuck w/ a useless card, you can shuffle it away and keep the FS going. w/ the FB/FS/CoW, you can almost guarantee you will get the ZO or whatever and then go infinite. I would like to point out that if you have all 4 in play, it is an auto win since you can gain inf life (arbitrarily large, blah,blah) and then shuffle library until you cast time walk for extra turn and DoJ for kill (or whatever your kill condition is). There are other interactions, such as strenghening brainstorm, helping to minimize an opponents mind twist on you, recovering after balance, and so on.

But other than that, I think the article was mostly on, although, personnaly I would have been more guarded in my dismissal of a couple of cards.

[Kushluk]

The simple point is that Fastbond + CoW isn't a combo, it's Fastbond being a really good card. Generally in Type 1, you can only play one land a turn, that is why Crucible probably can never be broken.

The Rakso is correct.

[Loci]

I would like to try CoW to protect myself against Strip/Waste. Problem there is you need fixing early on meaning 4 CoW main and that just will never work unless you play a Workshop deck and you might not need to fix that much and you really do not want to use the mana on CoW for fixing anyway.

[goober]

CoW will always take up slots that could be used for card draw, tutoring, permission, or brokenness, which are all better than a psuedo-combo piece.