Rogue: Has there ever been a better time for WW?

[atwa2002]

First of all, english is not my native language, so don't blame me for any gramar/spelling errors in this post (I'll edit it when I find some).

A couple of weeks ago, I started thinking about building a white weenie deck. I usualy only play casual T1 and I rarely go to a tournament, but I had a feeling that WW could become a very good (rogue)deck.

Let me explain.

While trying to make a sideboard, I found a new card in my binders I had never looked at: Samurai of the Pale Curtain. I think this card can easily disrupt any deck that plays with permanents. (stax, dragon, any welder based deck).

I started to search for other new weenie creatures an found an other very good one: True Believer. Seems very good against any combo deck (it totaly wrecks Doomsday, TPS and most dragon builds) and it should also be usefull against slaver.

I already had a decklist, but because I was planning on making a casual deck, I needed to change the whole deck. First I didn't want to do so, but I saw an article written by a member of team meandeck, who said it could become a decent deck.

I'll post the list wich I now have:

Mana:
8x Plains
4x Flooded Strand
3x Windswept Heath
4x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
1x Chrome Mox
21 total

Weenies:
4x Samurai of the Pale Curtain
4x True Believer
4x Soltari Priest
4x Silver Knight
4x Raise the Alarm
3x Ramosian Sergeant
2x Battle Screech
25 total

Draw:
4x Skullclamp
4 total

Other:
4x Swords to Plowshares
2x Crusade
2x Seal of Cleansing
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Enlightened Tutor
10 total

Card Analises:
Mana:
7 fetch: I always liked to play a lot of fetch in a mono-coloured deck, I works out fine with me, but maybe some pro-players disagree with me.
8 plains: Obviously, you'll need these
5 strips: Great hate against almost every deck in the field
1 Mox: If I owned power, this would be Mox Pearl..

Creatures:
4x Samurai of the Pale Curtain: Great hate
4x True Believer: Also great hate
4x Soltari Priest: This was a white knight when I started this deck, but nobody plays black creature hate
4x Silver Knight: Great creature against goblins, fire/ice etc.
4x Raise the Alarm: 2 creatures for 1 card is always a good thing
3x Ramosian Sergeant: playing creatures from anywhere but your hand (at instantspeed) is a great thing
2x Battle Screech: This card often reeds: 22WW: put 4 flying 1/1 tokens into play.

Draw:
4x Skullclamp: Because of whites lack of draw engines, I first wanted to spash blue, witch made the deck inconsistend. T1 is the only format where you can play Skullclamp, so why not do so?

Other:
4x Swords to Plowshares: Best creature removal in the game, great against oath
2x Crusade: I'm not sure about keeping this card, it's cool to lay it down, but often you'd rather want an other card
2x Seal of Cleansing: T1 is al about artifacts, playing (searchable) hate md seems a good thing to do.
1x Crucible of Worlds: Allows many tricks (wasteland, fetch)
1x Enlightened Tutor: Allows you to search for the good cards

I'm not sure yet what to do with the sideboard, I'm thinking something like this:
4x Null Rod
3x Sacred Ground
3x Rule of Law
3x Disenchant
2x Seal of Cleansing

Please leave comments and tips.

[E Face]

Maybe as a good draw engine you could revert to Parfait's old engine of Land Tax and Scroll Rack. Its just a suggestion and i have not tested either engine (Skullclamp) in WW but maybe it could be more helpful. The only problem I see initially with it is that it is two cards, but thats my 2 cents if you want another option for draw. Plus, Samurai of the Pale curtain, which is arguably your bread and butter creature, has horrible synergy with skullclamps.

[goobafish]

Skullclamp has a reverse synergy with samurai of the pale curtain. You do not draw cards from clamped creatures when the samurai is in play. I too would go with the traditional land tax/scroll rack engine, it is both fast and effective.

[myhellfire1134]

look at dead deck white weenie. It is pretty much the best version so far.

[Manpriest]

As much as I would love to see WW playable again, there are a few major flaws in this deck that will mean it will never be viable (or at least not in the forseeable future).

1)  Force of Will - Most of the top contenders pack 4 x Force of Will.  How do you deal when your primary hoser (Samurai or Believer) gets dusted before it ever gets a chance to hit the board?

2) Fat - 7/10, 5/3, Tog, Hulk, etc... pack bigger and faster creatures that either 1) decimate your miniature army or 2) provide a much faster clock.

3) Combo - Combo has been dealing with removing permanents from the board for quite some time, be it chalice, sphere, 3sphere, or even True Believer.  Your idea that having a True Believer on the board will ultimately protect you from any combo deck is extremely flawed.

4) 3sphere - Probably the most important and dangerous threat to this deck...it scoops to a turn 1 shop/sphere.  Not that most decks don't have issues with this (and not trying to drum up another 3sphere debate) but your deck would roll over and die to it.  Yes getting a turn 3 Samurai could help you survive a sphere lock, that's assuming that they aren't packing swords for oath, stax to pop your permanents, fire/ice for spot removal, or any other means of dealing with him.

Yes Samurai of the Pale Curtain and True Believer might find a place somewhere, somehow to battle a few of the current decks, but overall I feel that there are far too many weaknesses in an aggro-white deck to even remotely consider viable at the moment.

[Valdner]

After reading Carl Winter's report, this is what I quickly threw together:

//NAME: Heavily-Metagamed-Weenie
// MURDER!!!
        4 Soltari Priest
        4 Meddling Mage
        4 Icatian Javelineers
        4 Savannah Lions
        4 Samurai of the Pale Curtain
        3 True Believer
        2 Exalted Angel
// "Disruption"
        4 Orim's Chant
        4 Aura of Silence
        3 Serenity
        2 Swords to Plowshares
// Other Spells
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Time Walk
// Mana
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Pearl
        6 Plains
        4 Windswept Heath
        4 Flooded Strand
        4 Tundra

w00t

[LotusHead]

I've seen hate decks employed by powerless players to hate out the most popular decks of the day. (not their fault: Not everyone has power), and they just want to watch "Oath", "Slaver", "Fish" just die to their decks. Sure, maybe they have little game against FoW Combo or Burn.dec, but they make their mark.

As for White Weenie, I wish it COULD be revamped into something special...at least to kill said decks.

But it's clock is just weak against anything but Random.dec.

If Samurai of the Pale Curtain is to be included in this build (which as we know doesn't combo with Skullclamp), why not take a nod at T2/Extended tech and use AEther Vial as a "tempo upper"?

Pretty much noting on this list costs anything other than 1 or 2 mana. having 3-4 dudes out by turn 3 seems pretty good, eh? AEther Vial?

Good luck!

[Gabethebabe]

TPS shits over WW any time of the day. True Believer does not wreck TPS. When TPS wants to cast Tendrils, they make sure that first your True Believer is bounced. Or they just FoW it. The rest of your deck does nothing against TPS.

Your creature base is really weak. Ramosian Sergeant? BATTLE SCREECH? WTF?
There should be at least 4 Savannah Lions and 1-2 Isamaru there to make decent 1-drops.

Skullclamp without any decent type of accelaration/combo makes your deck even more slow. Why would you spend mana to drop a creature, pay 1 to clamp it and draw 2 cards. I´d rather turn the creature sideways than draw cards from it.

[Kasuras]

Some random comments on the deck:

-Sligh ran 8 fetches because they only need 2 lands out really and because it's good together with Lavamancers, you want at least 4 lands out by turn 6 and thus 7 fetch is way too much.

-I recommend playing more mana. 21 is probably not enough to survive a Trinisphere, since there are things to come after. Suicide ran 21 because it had access to Dark Ritual.

-You might want to take a look at Serenity: by the time you get to play it versus artifact.dec; they have about 2 cards left in their hand and thus it is a strong card versus those decks, if you survive long enough that is.

The problem with this deck is that it a) can't do anything about the "creature type - spell" (aka Y. Will) b) wants to draw cards but isn't able to have a good draw engine. (drawing a creature, letting it die, etc. will only give you a card advantage of +1, no other benefits and probably a creature in those 2 cards you drew but they come into play with sickness while you want to kill asap.)

[rmn]

I don't understand why Ramosian Sergeant is in a deck with no other Rebels.  Perhaps RTFC is in order.

I agree that too many of your creatures cost 2 mana, and think some Savannah Lions or Isamaru might be in order, though Icatian Javilineers might be more useful in certain metagames.

Battle Screech is pretty slow, and Exalted Angel might suit your purposes better.

Skullclamp does not work with Samurai of the Pale Curtain out, and besides, it is better to beat with creatures than sacrifice them in this format.

It might also be good to use more evasion creatures; the small size of Suntail Hawk and Soltari Trooper could be dealt with by increasing the number of Crusades.

[Gabethebabe]

http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=246

(no further comments)

[Bdrake5150]

Now just for reference these results were not in a large tournament, but in a weekly tournament at a local shop here in CT.

A friend of mine played an adapted Legacy deck against a field of T1 decks including CA, Oath, Belcher, CS and others, and made the top 4.

Granted the suprise factor had alot to do with it, becasue really who metagames for Angel Stompy?

If he reads this perhaps he can put up his decklist.

I have seen that a WW deck can be successful, and deadly. It is not Teir 1, but if piloted and built properly it can make a big splash.

Jason

[warble]

As a player from BACK in the day, you should know better then to post a white weenie list without flickering ward.  Goodness man!

As to my other critique, savannah lion and the new 2/2 legend ought to make up 6 of the stakes through control's heart.  And the quite obvious you need maindeck disenchants and orim's chant and dude I love you Empyrial Plate?  Okay you need to try out the real white weenie, maybe I'll give you my *secred tech* list.  With the exception of samurai you can make do without all those new cards you're talking shiz about.

[OptimusDeutz]

Ill post this for humor's sake. I brought this deck with me to the tournament expecting to play on the side, and entered anyways after making a few adjustments from Legacy to Type 1 (specifically going from 3 chrome mox to the configuration you see in the list)

Angel Stompy
 Mana
       11 Plains
       4 Ancient Tomb
       1 Chrome mox
       1 Mox Saphire
       1 Mox Pearl
       4 Tithe
 Critters
       4 Mother of Runes
       1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
       4 Savannah Lions
       4 Silver Knight
       4 Soltari Priest
       4 Exalted Angel
 Control & Draw
       4 Swords to Plowshares
       3 Disenchant
       3 Mask of Memory
       3 Sword of Fire and Ice
       4 Parallax Wave        
 Sideboard
SB:  1 Disenchant
SB:  4 Seal of Cleansing
SB:  4 tormod's crypt
SB:  3 Decree of Justice
SB:  3 Armageddon

The real winner for this deck is very often Parallax Wave. When it works it has managed to remove several creatures from the game at once for the few turns it will take for me to win.

The deck obviously has several MAJOR weaknesses, BUT its major strength is its consistent beats with the back up of removal from sword to plowshares and parallax wave.

This may be another decent place to start, but it seems that if there are bigger beats out there these little guys would get stomped.

Stephen