[Primer] PMITA Man-Prison (RBW aggro-control)

[Polynomial P]

I generally play decks without Yawgie Will and without Blue. I am not sure what my fascination with these decks, but I somehow am drawn to them. A few months ago I was trying to revive Dawn of the Dead (http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=27434.0), which was a rogue deck I won several pieces of power with. But I couldn’t help but feel it was a bad deck. I talked to Eric Becker about the deck and why it was bad….and the reasons were numerous. So he suggested I take an idea of his and work on it.

Becker said that mana-screw is the hardest thing to work out of and that the combination of Gorilla Shaman and Chalice of the Void is brutal. He wanted to put those two cards into a deck with Sphere of Resistance and a bunch of men, like Dark Confidant.  The deck would run Bazaar, of course (all members of Team Ogre are required to run Bazaars in everything), and he suggested Diving Tops too (which later got cut from my list).

I wasn’t going to reveal the list, but I have had interest from several people and there are so few tournaments in the Midwest that I couldn’t wait to win a tournament before posting this.

The base of the deck was this:

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Duress

4 Gorilla Shaman
4 Dark Confidant
3 Jotun Grunt

4 Bazaar

Upon looking at this I noticed that we were solidly in the colors for Hide and Seek (this was before all the tournaments that Hide//Seek placed well at). And so I added a few of those. I felt that the deck was going to scoop to fish, so I put in a few Lavamancers and filled out the rest of the list. Here is what I am currently running after several iterations of changes:

4 Chalice of the Void
3 Sphere of Resistance*
4 Duress
4 Hide//Seek
2 STP

3 Gorilla Shaman
4 Dark Confidant
3 Jotun Grunt
3 Grim Lavamancer
2 Viashino Heretic*

5 Moxen
1 Lotus

4 Bazaar of Baghdad

2 Mountain
1 Swamp
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Badlands
2 Scrubland
3 Plateau
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

* = Cards that can be dropped from the deck depending on the metagame.

If I play 61 cards I move another STP to the maindeck.

SB is some mix of:
More Heretics,
4th Sphere
STPs
Ronom Unicorn
Grave Hate
Jittes
REBs/Pyroblasts

The deck plays fairly straight-forward: Disrupt and constrict the opponents mana development, get a guy or two on the table, and cycle dead cards with bazaar. However, the wins swing wildly from playing an almost Stax-like game to going completely aggro with Jotun Grunts and Lavamancers.

I think most of the maindeck choices are fairly self-explanatory. Viashino heretic is brutal. He stops most fish creatures and wrecks Stax. I consider him the only controversial choice, and he is hardly controversial.

Cards that didn’t make the cut:

Balance: I always want to play this card, but always hate it so much. After balance, you keep scrubland and a mountain, they keep workshop and academy. Not exactly fair. Balance is also going to cost you a creature or two most of the time too. I just don’t like the card in this deck.

Sensei’s Diving Top: This was initially in the list as a 3-of. Then I cut it to a 2-of for extra Hide//Seeks and Heretics. Then I cut some more out. It has a lot of synergies with this deck, but frankly, I would rather have something useful in that spot. Its also very mana-intensive for a deck that wants to spend mana on spells, lavamancer, heretic, and cycle excess cards with Bazaar.

Goblin Welder: Yeah, we tried this guy to do welder tricks with Top, bazaaring spheres into the grave, mess with the opponents board. He got replaced by Grim lavamancer because the fish matchup was really difficult.

FTK: A great sideboard card, but way too far up on the mana curve for this deck.

Fire Imp: The mini-FTK doesn’t do enough in my opinion. Jitte replaced him.

Matchups:

Rit-based Combo: This is a good matchup for you with the mana denial package. But you really need to find a chalice or a sphere, or they will walk all over you. Seek help a bit, but every deck runs 2x win conditions now, so you really need to disrupt their mana.

Gifts: This is probably your best matchup. The first seek makes it hard for them to tendrils you out, provided that you can disrupt their mana. This is my favorite matchup with this deck.

Control Slaver: Ick. This is your worst matchup in my opinion. Seek does little, they don’t need tons of mana and can win so many ways. Your graveyard hate in Jotun grunt is less than effective against them too. Somehow I am 2-0 vs this deck in tournament play, but I do not think those results are typical.

Fish: Probably in your favor, but unless you get a lavamancer to stick the first game, you are going to lose. I usually side in like 12 cards against fish.

Stax: Another good matchup thanks to MD Hide//Seek, Jotun grunts, Bob, and Shamans. I SB in a lot of cards, and many of their weapons aren’t great against you. A single chalice will never shut you out of the game either.

Mana-less Ichorid: Do people play this deck? It’s a scary matchup but if you can keep them from Dread returning, you have a chance to win. Jotun grunt, swords, Seek, and lavamancers can keep less than 3 creatures on their side of the table and that’s your best hope. This deck is the reason I put graveyard hate in my SB.


I really like this deck and think it is fun to play. Yes, sometimes you are going to get blown out by the good decks in the format, but PMITA Man-Prison does what it does: it is consistent and will surgically dismantle most decks. I do not feel like there is an auto-loss against any deck in the format. I guess I should just say "The deck just wins, baby!"

[ErkBek]

It's good to see somebody taking one of my ideas and running with it. I've got dozens of other well thought out decks that just sit on paper because I rarely get to play outside of tournaments anymore.

It seems to me that 4 Hide/Seek are a just 1 too many. Maybe I'm wrong here, but is drawing 2 in a game really what you want to do?

Other than the Sensei's Tops being mana intensive, did you often find that you'd just rather draw a card that actually does something in place of it most of the time?

and there are so few tournaments in the Midwest that I couldn’t wait to win a tournament before posting this.

Funny how about 1 year ago how this was just the opposite.

[Polynomial P]

The problem with Hide//Seek is that even if you draw one, against any deck in the format, it isnt enough to win the game. Its dead against only a few decks (Fish), so I really like running four. Ive been running four for about a month now and I havent looked back.

Other than the Sensei's Tops being mana intensive, did you often find that you'd just rather draw a card that actually does something in place of it most of the time?

It has a lot of synergies with this deck, but frankly, I would rather have something useful in that spot.

Thats what I was trying to get at here. I would draw top and think, well, next turn i can do something useful. Its bad in your opening hand because you want do something early on that changes the game state (chalice, sphere, duress, lavamancer, confidant, etc) and its a bad topdeck late in the game because you either want to seal the deal or get yourself out of a losing position. And dont even mention the times i would see 2 of them   I think that Top is a great long-game card, but not so good in a format as fast as vintage.

It's good to see somebody taking one of my ideas and running with it. I've got dozens of other well thought out decks that just sit on paper because I rarely get to play outside of tournaments anymore.

Yeah, it was a good idea and this is the type of deck that I like to play. Thanks for giving me a hint on this. I just wish there were a few tournaments in the Midwest that I could play this at...

[vroman]

after large amount of testing and playing tournament matches against this deck, is proven itself to me. it takes the cardpool of URBfish and Mtn wins again, adds a few unique gems, and reorganizes itself into a more efficient strategy than either. my only criticism (which applies to this whole category of decks), though Jacobs deck has wide variety and depth of effective disruption, the lack of explosive mana means you can only usually cast one such disruption piece per turn, most importantly the first turn. against combo that can do many, many broken things on the first turn, or stax that can do one very devastating thing, the hate deck style of threat development (esp sans FoW) can be overwhelmed.
I think jitte is underplayed in vintage. anyone who experienced post-affinity-ban kamigawa block legal standard should know how jitte dominates the aggro mirror. fish variants are popular. confidants are showing up everywhere. welders are easy targets. its brutal vs ichorid. if you use your attack step, board jitte.
heretics main makes game 1 very stressful for stax.
overall good deck. Id play it over U-based fish variants for sure.

[Myriad Games]

I like this deck, especially in a metagame involving lots of Combo and/or Gifts. It has a lot of similarities to the current builds of TMWA, as the decks adjust to combat the rise of Gifts. How have the Bazaars worked out for you?

[Polynomial P]

I like this deck, especially in a metagame involving lots of Combo and/or Gifts. It has a lot of similarities to the current builds of TMWA, as the decks adjust to combat the rise of Gifts. How have the Bazaars worked out for you?

Thanks. The deck was designed with Gifts and Combo in mind and since then I've adjusted it to make the Stax and Fish matchups winnable (if not outright favorable).

Bazaars are awesome. In a deck like this (or TMWA) you are inevitably going to end up with dead cards or right answers at the wrong time. Without brainstorm to get rid of the junk in our hands, we need a way to continuously filter that junk and produce threats that matter. Bazaars lets you do that. And dont get me started on how good confidant and bazaar is.

You're right, the latest build of TMWA is very close to this, which is another reason I decided to go public with the list now.

[Engine_number_9]

It seems like over kill against Gifts to run 4 Hide/Seek when they are near-dead cards against Fish and Slaver. You could add a Lavamancer and a Grunt at the expense of a Hide/Seek and a Heretic. The Gift and combo match-up will still be good, however your Fish and Slaver match-ups won´t be as poor as they are now.

[wethepeople]

The Bazaars and Heretics really don't thrill me in this deck. It has costed me five mana to blow up an opposing Mox, where as I could just run Gorilla Shamans or Goblin Vandals and do virtually the same thing for two. Other than jewely, what do you plan on targeting? If there even is something else, I suggest just running Goblin Vandal because it only requires an attack phase, as does Heretic, for 3 less mana.

Bazaars haven't been doing much for me besides taking up my land drop for a turn, and occasionally drawing me a card, I personally don't think they are worth it.

However, I cannot make these assumptions so early with such minimal testing, for I have only play some 10 or so different games with the deck. I myself am a fan of TMWA, so this seemed like something worth trying out.

As far as Hide/Seek goes, it is great to me. It's not entirely dead versus Fish becasue it gives you a couple life and steals something that can turn the game around, like Ancestral or Time Walk. But besides that, it is outstanding versus Gifts, PL, and other combo (obv.)

The only change I would make is more STPs maindecked, it may just be me because Vintage is so Fished in my area, but it is always nice to have the creature advantage game one.

[Polynomial P]

Hide and seek could possibly go down to a 3-of in the deck, but I enjoy seeing it in multiples against so many decks that I would be hard pressed to cut one. There have been a few other people that have posted 4-hide//seeks in a deck and I would like to hear from them whether or not they tried three and why they decided on 4. Its not that bad against slaver....since it can remove a weld target, or a tinkered out bot. I wouldnt mind finding another spot for Grim Lavamancer, so maybe a hide//seek could be cut for him. (In my near gifts/combo-free metagame, I drop 3 Spheres from the MD for 1 Swords, 1 Lavamancer, and 1 Heretic, so lavamancers could easily be used as a 4-of).

Heretics are great in my metagame since there are alot of stax decks here. He also slows down fish until you can find your grunts or lavamancers. The deck has alot of problems with cards like darkblast/B-ring/Fire+Ice and heretic avoids all of those. I've been very happy with heretic as a whole, but if you are in a staxless environment you should probably cut him from the main deck. In addition to double duty vs fish and stax, heretic races colossus, removes weld targets, and costs a whole lot less to use than G-shaman for anything except moxen and chalices. Vandal is very efficient, but I didnt like that his rear end is only 1. I have not actually tested him though.

Bazaar is so good in this deck. It works well with grunt and lavamancer, but the card filtering past turn 3 is incredibly important. Metagame hate decks like this will consistently have dead cards and the most efficient way to find relevent threats (especially in RBW) is bazaar. I could maybe....Maybe see going to 3 bazaars, but I wouldnt go below that. If you are having trouble finding things to pitch to bazaar it is likely that you are playing mana sources you dont need or threats that dont matter. You have to be judicious about what cards hit play in a deck with bazaars.

[frolll]

I'll begin by saying that the deck is quite good. Good job on design!

But, I had some problems running into aggro decks, because of your main hate is not that relevant against them and if we except Jötun Grunt, they have the biggest creatures (and md Jittes sometimes, that's a beating in the ass, a bad time). So, what's the main sideboard plan when facing aggro (like Vintage Boros (French deck, don't know if it's known...) or old schooler with Taiga-like decks) ? I found the Jittes in the sideboard being not that good because these decks already play with it or play artifact destruction and/or burn. Also, Dark Confidant is not really shining in these matches, and it bothers me because your Bazaar of Baghdad become a less good draw engine...

Just asking, 'cause maybe it's the way I play against aggro that kinda sucks, maybe... I'll try to be the control deck when facing a deck that is far more straightforward on aggression than mine, but is the best plan in doing so is to prefer dropping Spheres of Resistance and keeping open mana to play Swords to Plowshares and Hide/Seek, or should I go crazy with pounders and try to race? Your answer will be greatly appreciated for I also have a friend who is interested at the deck.

[Polynomial P]

Thanks for the comments Frolll. Unfortunately, the deck isnt designed to beat all out aggro decks, but is aimed at the top tier decks. If you are in a heavy aggo environment, i would drop the spheres from the MD and maybe a hide/seek for some better cards (probably jitte and STP). Jitte completely controls the aggro mirror. You could increase the number of grunts and lavamancers to 4 as well, and lose the viashino heretics from the MD.

My SB plan against blue based fish decks is:
-3 Sphere
-4 Chalice
-2 Duress
-4 Hide//Seek

+3 Jitte
+3 REB
+1-2 Viashino Heretic
+1 STP
+3-4 Ronom Unicorn

Against non-blue decks, the REBs dont come in (obv), so i would probably leave in duresses and a Hide//seek, even if they are weak in the matchup. However, i wouldnt have much else to bring in against them. Fortunately i havent had to play against Boros.dec in america....but it would not be favorable. You can also retool the SB for something that would fit in your metagame. Depending on what I expect at a tournament, I change 3-4 cards in the MD and 4-6 SB cards.

[wtp.]

I actually think Dark Confidant is outstading versus Aggro because it gives you the edge on the game because it is most likely that you have greater card advantage. This deck does have a fairly low average CC, so taking great amounts of damage is very rare, and even when you do it's worth the extra card. There aren't many other cards that Fish has to offer as a draw engine, besides Ninja I believe, and Dark Confidant is certainly stronger than the others, but as you already know, card advantage wins games, and versus Fish, it is necessary if you have intentions of controlling the Combat Phase.

/wethepeople.

[orgcandman]

re: heretic

When we tested this guy in TMWA, we found that while he can randomly win games, he was very slow. The saving grace for him at that time was that aggro creatures were either artifact (which he dealt with) or couldn't climb over him. Now, however, especially with the additional speed in the format, and coupled with the fact that many decks are running Jotun Grunt, is he still all that great? One thing that was wrong with him was that you had to wait a turn to get him active. Eventually, he was cut (but not after some of us acquired foil asian versions...) and we haven't really looked back. How has his speed and mana committment fared in testing, specifically against gifts and fish?

re: bazaar

We've talked about this as an inclusion in TMWA, as far back as a year ago, but never could really justify it, as the card disadvantage was really big. I guess with grunts, and lavamancers, you're more interested in seeing this card, but again, here I have to question whether or not it's really worth it. In TMWA we don't have as many redundant pieces, so there's far less to pitch, but even so, do you find that there are times where bazaar just eats up your land drop and gives nothing back?

-Aaron

[BC]

I think Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Man Prison should be referred to with brevity as "Ass Man".  That is all the constructive criticism I could come up with for this deck.  It looks really good.  I have only played against this deck once (with Oath) and I beat it handily, largely due to the fact that I nearly always draw the nuts when playing against Jacob.

[frolll]

I did some extended testing against aggro decks (mostly Boros-style, along with Big Fish, Grey SUI and Vintage_Goblins) and, hell yeah, I find that the Jitte were not only amazing but also they could help me to race some upper tier deck as well. So, my current input is Jitte's awesome. I mean, I really mean it, this card could change the tide of a game against aggro like almost no one else card would. I've cut the Spheres of Resistance and the Heretics. Stax is at an all-time low in my meta but Ichorid is also raising it's ugly head and his undead followers are kinda predators to this deck in its first form (while this form is performing great when confronted to Gifts and the like).

Also, I was mistaken at first. Dark Confidants are great in the aggro matchup. The cards that they keep filling my hand with are all I need to take a timely advantage by gaining the Swords to Plowshares war, for example. I've upped Swords count to 4, too, and upped Jötun Grunt and Grim Lavamancer of 1 more each. Overall, with these little modifications to the deck, I feel more prepared to fight aggro decks and, as the sideboard contains the Spheres of Resistance and Viashono Heretics, along with various red blasts (mixed up for Meddling Mage issues) and 4 Leyline of the Void, I don't think the matchups against Gifts, CS and combo (mostly ZBS here (Ze Br4in St0rm, a French Brain Freeze deck, combo-ctrl in fact)) are that bad.

So, thak you for bringing us a pretty cool deck and for the comments.


Ps: Someone suggest me to cut 1 or 2 Bazaar of Baghdad and add something like 1 or 2 Maze of Ith or 4th Wasteland and Maze, or the like. Could it be a good idea? I mean, Bazaar in multiples aren't really the hottest thing in the deck. Having one active with 1 or 2 Dark Confidant is sure ass-kicking, but a 2 Bazaar of Baghdad hand is an auto-mulligan and missing a land drop (i.e. a critter) in the aggro matchup because the Bazaar is wasted and nets you nothing but a wasted turn is sad...

[Polynomial P]

I am glad you are having success with the deck, frolll. Thats what is great about this deck....it can really be tweaked to your metagame by changing out 6 or so cards. I really like seeing bazaar, but as you said, not in multiples. Try cutting 1, but I wouldnt cut more than one. I dont like the random Maze of Ith, so I'd probably go up to 4 wastelands.

[wethepeople]

I really like seeing bazaar, but as you said, not in multiples. Try cutting 1, but I wouldnt cut more than one. I dont like the random Maze of Ith, so I'd probably go up to 4 wastelands.

I actually made that exact modification to my list because I figured Wastelands were necessary if you are really going for the whole mana denial thing.

On the subject of Hide/Seek, I highly recomend running four, they're amazing. I actually like seeing two at hand because it is really common for it to be countered because it virtually ruins your opponents gameplan, and having a second one nearly garuntees its resolution.

The only time I dont enjoy H/S is Fish, obviously, but even then its not terrible. I did however add additional STPs to improve the Fish matchup, although Maze of Ith is going to remain in my binder.

With Combo so common in New England, I believe that these Hide/Seek decks such as "PMITA" and "tmwa" are at an all time high, I am sure that I will bring one to my next Vintage tournament.

//wtp.

[vroman]

I would definitely try goblin vandal over heretic. this deck really doesnt want to have to come up w a 3rd mana source (or 4th through resistor, if main deck slot). against vintage stax, heretic and vandal are nearly equal at killing artifacts; heretic is only better in being much harder to kill. though is it worth 2 more mana for +0/+2? In Man Prison: no. vandal is also basicaly shamans 5-X, for killing moxen against non-stax, if played main.
If you cut the heretic/vandal slots from main, then Jitte is your ticket.
I strongly discourage dropping any number of bazaars. Jacob knows this, so Im adressing everyone. 8 is a good number for draw engines (ie 4 AK + 3 intuition + ancestral), 4 bazaar + 4 confidant is solid. multiple bazaars in opening hand is NOT a problem, if hand has mana too. bazaar gives every card free cycling at 66% efficiency. so processing dead cards, like extra bazaars! is exactly what bazaar is for. you Always want to see bazaar, bc your going to draw plenty of non-strip-effect-manas, but you never need more than 2 on board (or 3 w resistor).
bazaar isnt as good in this deck as say ubastax, or its dream home: ichorid; bc here the graveyard is only inherantly useful for paying additional costs of Jgrunt and lavamancer, w/o any card-advantage recursion. yet the free card filtering, w confidants to make up the difference, is Broken. the most important Rule Ive come away w from playing serious vintage for more than 2 years now, is that bazaar of baghdad is the best draw engine in Magic. its so good, even simple decks like Jacobs aggro-control build can eke out priceless efficiency. which more so than lack of workshop, is why I find legacy so boring.
hide/seek is one of the best utility spells in recent years. if you are happily in the rather demanding colors, then yes play 4. extract + disenchant + yard hate+ most efficient life gain spell: 2 mana gain 11!
this deck is better in execution than the streamlined RBstax decks GWS and myself have been running lately. Ive never been so disatisfied w welder.
maybe Tomb of Yawgmoth will fix some of the long standing mana conflicts of multi-C stax. I cant wait to put Nether void back in stax.

Im also interested to hear the discusion becker and you had that concluded Dawn of the dead is bad. it did win you half a lotus and some mox right? I definitely liked its synergistic engines.

[Smmenen]

bazaar isnt as good in this deck as say ubastax, or its dream home: ichorid;

Bazaar of Bagdad:  Dream Home

6 Bedroom, 3 bathroom Dread Home.  Spacious upstairs, gorgeous cabinets, full of appliances and utilities.   Only $999 a month.   Contact your nearest PTW or your nearest realtor.   

[ErkBek]

Im also interested to hear the discusion becker and you had that concluded Dawn of the dead is bad. it did win you half a lotus and some mox right? I definitely liked its synergistic engines.

Just because a deck won half a lotus and mox over six months ago doesn't mean the deck is still viable. 6 or 12 months ago the midwest was about 60% stax and IT tore up the metagame. I won and/or split for 7 pieces of power with IT, but I wouldn't play the deck here anymore because the metagame has shifted so much since then. Now we've got a 40-50% mana drain metagame. Both IT and Dawn don't post the best matchups vs. drains, thus I built new decks for this new metagame. Here's my full PM to Jacob

Does fish even have bad matchups anymore (Oath...ok, but who plays that)?

I don't think UW fish is a very good deck anymore. Maybe its just that it doesn't mesh well with my playstyle, I don't know. It seems to me the whole deck relies on meddling mage a little too much.

With URBana fish, I feel like Stax and Slaver are my 2 worst matchups. I do fear Long and Gifts at times since I know how powerful thier decks are, but chalice @ 0 backed up by almost anything is game over. Slaver and stax are tough to out tempo at times, that's why I fear them. I'm 2-1 vs. CS and 1-1 vs. stax playing URBana fish though. Oh, and oath can be rough if you're not running duress.

Okay, so time to tear apart Dawn.

3 Zombie Infestation
4 Squee Goblin Naboob

I really hate how squee does nothing on its own. As for ZI, I just don't like how all it does is produce a couple dudes.

4 Dark Confidant
3-4 Jotun Grunt (Depends on if I play 61 Cards)
2 Devout Witness (aka, the weakest link)

Grunt is a really nice addition to the deck IMO. I like how he replaces werebear and wretch in one card. I personally don't like witness at all in vintage. It just seems underpowered.

4 Chalice of the Void
2 Null rod
4 Duress
2 STP
1 Darkblast
3 Life from the loam
1 Vampiric
1 Demonic

So you've dropped your maindeck green cards down to just Life from the Loam. Is that card even that good in here? From my limited testing the Bazaar Loam felt like it took forever to really pay off. And in vintage you just don't have that time. If you were to cut ZI, would you keep playing Life?

T
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So I was thinking. What other synergistic cards could you run with bazaar?

Deep Analysis - seems better than life because you actually get to see new cards, but adding blue  seems like it would take the deck in the wrong direction.

Sensei's Top - Vroman posted about the interaction of top + bazaar in the staxless stax thread a while back. I really like the idea of playing out your threats. Then using top + bazaar to continue to produce 1 quality threat every single turn. Seems to me that you could really take advantage of this combo. Top is also strong with bob and shuffles too.

Anger - I love the idea of anger in here. Speeds up the deck by a probably 4 to 6 damage, but is that needed?

Welder - In a metagame with Vroman and Kevin, you've got to be able to beat stax. Welder seems like a nice help there plus if you run the gorilla shaman/chalice/welder package you've got some strong and efficient artifact disruption. Now obvisiously welder is just stupid broken combined with some artifact locks. I don't see this working though if you aren't running ZI though, however it could give the deck some brokeness that it desires.

Okay, so here is a totally new list (beware it may suck). I think green needs to go in favor of red.

Mana 22
6 artifacts
16 Lands

Draw/Filter 10 (14)
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Sensei's Top
1 DT
1 VT
(4 Dark Confidant)

Men 12
4 Dark Confidant
4 Jotun Grunt
4 Gorilla Shaman

Disruption 16
4 Chalice
4 Sphere of Resistance (or Glowrider)
4 Duress
3 STP
1 Darkblast

Okay, so some quick theory behind this list. Basically in vintage I feel that you can't just have proactive disruption that is only in the form of hand disruption; however mana denial is different. People can top deck out of a no threat hand, but its much harder to topdeck out of a mana lock from my experience.

As you know, I love the Gorilla + Chalice combo. I think this deck can utiltize it better than URBana fish. I've also added the 2spheres because I feel chalice and sphere are the 2 best disruptive cards in stax.

I really like this list a lot. I've been trying to think of some sort of workshop aggro like deck, that doesn't use shop for some time, and I think I've found it. The deck would be based around the Gorilla, Bob, chalice, 2sphere, and duress package, but until you PM'd me, I never could figure out a way to put it all together. I know this deck isn't even Dawn anymore, its like a totally new take on non-blue aggro control though, which is what dawn is. I don't see gifts or long having much of a shot vs. you and in the fish matchup you can probably just out threat. The one thing I'm afraid I did though, was neglect the stax matchup. Do you think Kataki needs to find its way back into the maindeck? What about fitting welder into the maindeck? Milling 2sphere, droping a threat, and welding in sphere seems pretty hot to me.

Well, get back to me ASAP as I'm interested to here what you have to say.

-Eric

[Polynomial P]

Basically Dawn of the Dead was great vs stax and fish, while slaver and gifts were slightly favorable. Then Eric Becker showed up and made combo so good and so easy to play, that it killed my deck and the metagame, thus my loathing of eric becker (j/k Eric  ). This deck is effectively what DotD meant to be: Non-blue aggro control. I think this deck has better game vs the entire field than DotD ever did.

I think alot of people are down on Bazaar in this deck because they dont understand how to effectively milk bazaar for what it is worth. Vroman and I have been playing bazaar in decks for over a year now, and it takes a while to learn when to activate and what to discard. 2 Bazaars in the opening hand is fine if you can play out a turn 1 threat (chalice, duress, sphere), then turn 2 bazaar into another threat. You really only want to see a second bazaar if yours gets wasted, but i do think that Bazaar is so crucial to this deck that 4 is probably right so that you can see 1 during a game. Ill probably leave 4 bazaars in my build.

I am surprised the hate that Viashino heretic is getting since he has been nothing short of amazing for me. BR Stax is running about 7 blockers + darkblast, so vandal seems less than good. Vandal doesnt help vs welder, doesnt block, doesnt race collossus, and isnt a win condition vs any deck. Ive really liked heretic in a fairly stax heavy metagame, at least as a SB card. If i was going to play in the TMD open, i would probably drop him from the MD, but have 3 in the SB.

[wethepeople]

Knowing that both TMWA and PMITA are fairly similar decks, I ask the same question as I did in the other thread.

Any plans with the release of Roots of Evil? The card is insane and it is bound to ruin just about everything.

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=31719.0

It seems to fit well in any Hide/Seek-based deck out there, any thoughts?

[Polynomial P]

If this is true as printed, I will be testing 4 in my SB. The card is costed aggressively for its effect, but i dont know if it is versatile enough to make it into my maindeck. Time (and testing) will tell, but this is the card i am most excited about in the PC spoiler.

[wethepeople]

I am going to try it out maindeck. Apparently it can take non-basics, so when teamed with Wastelands you are able to RFG every Dual of one specific color in their deck. Shit's insane.