To preface this, I had been working on this deck for a while after Eastman's CA came out. I really wanted to play the deck, but as I wasn't willing to shell out $130-190 US a pop for bazaars, I decided to try and get the core strategy (animate a 7/10 land eater on turn 2) on line without bazaars. I'd like to also note that I won't be running this at waterbury for different reasons. As such, I'm releasing this now, with almost all of my testing and notes, as best I can.
As a final note to this preface, this is my first...erm...well...I guess it's a mini-primer on a new deck. As such, if I am lacking information about the deck, or I am unclear, please ask. I'll modify this and attempt to reflect the changes. Onto the deck
The following people have had help in testing and working this deck through some iterations: (hopefully spelling is correct)
- Jason Riendeau (Apollyon)
- Steve O'Connell (Zherbus)
- Rob Woelk
- Team Myriad
The basic premise of the deck is CA without using a "terrible" mana base (city/gemstone/bazaar), resiliency to wasteland/strip/moon/b2b, and a fast, efficient aggro strategy that can be supported by control/disruption elements.
This is the farthest progression on the deck to date. I don't have enough time to continue it, but hopefully others will as it's fun, fast, strong, and available.. It should be noted that the deck can be budgetized without sacrificing any consistency...just speed.
Initial lists looked something like the following:
4x thirst
4x careful study
4x brainstorm
4x welder
3x titan
3x animate dead
3x dance of the dead
1x platz
1x possessed portal
1x tinker
4x force
4x duress
2x drain
1x ancestral
1x time walk
7x SoLoMoxen
3x underground sea
3x volcanic island
3x island
4x polluted delta
Eventually, problems with this were apparent as thirst was just too
costly to use in conjunction with the careful study. Hands were just
becoming too depleted. Not to mention the fact that jumping from 1
mana to 3 mana for a progressive draw engine ended up in stalled turn 2's.
Further, possessed portal wasn't putting up the results that would be
desired. The only reason we started with this core is to try and
somewhat "duplicate" cerebral assassin in a more controllish skeleton.
The problem is that squee has synergy with bazaar and portal, making
them optimal together. As we didn't run bazaar, we didn't run squee, and
thus portal hurt.
It was around this time that I started toying with the idea of a pure aggro-control strategy that didn't use portal as a complete lock, but rather wanted to just put it's fat in the 'yard and animate it ASAP.
The key to making the draw engine more consistent lay in the tech being used by Control Slaver to improve mirror matches. This key: Deep Analysis. DA has extreme synergy with Careful Study, and allows us to get a 1->2 mana curve going. It also helps us to keep our hand stocked. I've found that, barring a counter-heavy match up, we can keep a solid 4-5 card hand.
One of the key advantages of this approach should be apparent. Having drain up on turn 2, being able to consistently take advantage of 2cc permanents on turns 1&2.
The next incarnations were clunky, but getting more refined. Take the following:
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Island
1 Black Lotus
1 Tinker
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
3 Dance of the Dead
3 Animate Dead
1 Platinum Angel
1 Triskelion
3 Sundering Titan
3 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
1 Frantic Search
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Goblin Welder
3 Deep Analysis
4 Careful Study
As you can see, we had some rather odd choices. Crucible was there to prevent issues with titan eating our mana base, and we had a tolarian academy in a deck sporting most definitely not the correct number of artifacts to use.
However, despite it's horrible appearance on paper, this list showed extreme promise. Careful Study and Deep Analysis were gold together, and allowed consistently getting some fat on the board, with counter backup on turn 2-3.
The only problem was the mana base. As Titan hits, he eats a lot of mana. He's still a huge threat, but he was eating some of OUR mana as well, cutting us off from potential drain mana. This really hurt, as draining into double DA, or into a DA and animate spell was excellent, and titan was hindering that.
One direction that we attempted to go in order to rectify this was a non-artifact creature based approach. This had the advantage of shutting off opposing welders, and keeping our mana intact. The only issue was, our toolbox creatures weren't as good as the powerful utility provided by the artifact creatures.
The big divide here was whether or not to go with slightly more stable mana and less utility, or go with the fatties 7/10 and buddies that provide utility. Titan and friends won out, as the breakout extended deck
Teen Titans showed us that some mana instability is OK.
Here are some comments that were made while finalizing a decklist, as well as some card choices that we made:
...
1) Wastelands and Crucible really don't make a good fit today. I would
personally cut all 4 Strips and the Crucible for things like Mystical
Tutor, Memory Jar, and Demonic Tutor.
2) This deck might be able to support Intuition, but definitely not
AK's. There's just too many card-slots you want to use.
3) Frantic Search is awesome in this deck.
4) Pentavus is a more flexible version of Verdant Force. I would use
that instead.
5) Ancient Tomb would be awesome if it could support the spellset.
...
1) welder is most likely going to be counter bait in the deck.
Honestly, animate / dance are much better ways of putting the fat into
play, as they don't die to lava dart. We also (and this is important
to remember) can theoretically have access to 8 welders. THAT's ha-wt.
…
3) Gifts Ungiven may end up really making this deck insane. We have
access to pentavus, titan, platz, and trike, meaning that if we drain
into a gifts, it's basically game. Plus you can do crazy things like
fetch animate, dance, demonic, tinker, while there's some fat in the
yard. Honestly, there's no good play for the opponent at that point.
Gifts is really silly in the deck.
4) Along those same lines, Fact or Fiction might be an interesting
card to try. It's essentially a semi-tutor for fat/animate spells.
Since this deck is so 'yard heavy, it will most likely give you
favorable splits. I don't think that this will be as strong as gifts,
but we'll see.
some minor adjustments after testing sessions:
...
I'm also finding dance to be rather subpar, and I'm
looking into running reanimates in it's place. The
problem with dance is that tapping out during upkeep
opens the deck up to disruption early, unnecessarily. I'd
also like to keep reanimation spells at different
casting costs so that chalice doesn't completely hose
us. I may also test out necromancies as well.
Combining reanimate with DA might be suicide, but I
thing it's at least worth testing.
...
I'm finding myself really wanting to fit duress in
here. I've started testing with them and they're
pretty amazing.
Basing my next round of refinement on these notes, I worked during lunch breaks, and evenings to get a list that was usable, and combined all the utility and functionality into a neat little package. That lead to the following decklist:
Worse.Than.Cerebral.Assassin.
dec
2 Goblin Welder
2 Duress
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Careful Study
3 Deep Analysis
3 Brainstorm
1 Frantic Search
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Tinker
3 Reanimate
3 Animate Dead
2 Sundering Titan
1 Platinum Angel
1 Pentavus
1 Triskelion
4 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Island
1 Swamp
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mana Crypt
As you can see, we're running off very few mana sources. In fact, we're running off 21 mana sources. You'll find that since you only need 1-2 mana to support your spells, you will be very happy with the mana supply. Careful study into DA allows you to see 4 cards off the top.
If you also look, you'll see that you have 61 cards main. I'd like to cut that down, but really am having trouble justifying what should be cut to drop down to 60.
This deck wants to turn 1 careful study, turn 2 drain->deep anal/flashback deep anal/animate, turn 3 (if not animated already)study->animate and ride to victory.
I think that the basic play of the deck should be apparent. As such, I'm going to go straight into the matchups. Keep in mind that these were done without this deck having a sideboard, and with only approx 10 games each. As such, some of the testing could be slightly skewed as being more negative.
Oath: Moderately Unfavorable
This match up boils down to getting your creatures animated (duh!) before you've taken an akroma hit. This isn't a stellar match up, and slots will definitely have to be dedicated to making this match up even.
Stax: Slightly Favorable
This match up is slightly favorable with the pentavus main. The goal is to get your bus on the board, put some dudes up, and start swinging. Trinisphere was one of the big reasons that I had trouble with stax. Without, 3sphere on the board, you're pretty much set, as tapping down won't be all that bad.
Control Slaver: Even
Trike is the key to this match up (duh?!) and honestly, with the animates, you have access to their welders as well as your own. Titan is house here as well. Pre-board, I'd say it's about even. Post board, you should have a few slots dedicated to dealing with welder. Probably not lava dart, but perhaps Fire/Ice, as it can also help in the oath match up (ice akroma).
CA/Dragon: Moderately Unfavorable
They get to respond to all of your animate effects with necromancy. This can be a problem, as they both run more animate spells than you, AND they have access to a dragon based win condition. The key to this match may be using the welders, and bringing in some duplicants from the board, but honestly, this, like oath, is not a match up I'd like to see.
3cC: Even
They have swords, duress, chalice, and match you for counters. Your advantage: SPEED. You MUST play the beatdown here, as you have plenty of must-counters for them to deal with, while they have almost nothing that scares you outright pre-board. Post board, dealing with chalice can be a pain, but it’s definitely not un-winnable
Mono-U: Slightly Favorable
If you can get yourself a fatty early, there's almost no way they can recover, except with (some mono-u builds) tinker->colossus. Even then, racing here is definitely an option. The high amount of counters isn’t much of a concern as usually your cheap threats will allow you to power through their counters and your threats are large enough where their primary draw engine is a non-issue.
Tendrils Combo: Even
This is really how well the opponent can play. You have essentially 10 counters for them, but the problem really is that none of your counters buys you a next turn win usually. It takes you 3 turns to win once a fatty sticks, so in those 3 turns you better have plenty of disruption. Post board, you’ll probably have either sphere of resistance or arcane lab.
