TMD is back up, so I can start again in my quest to improve decks that aren’t as popular as they should be. If you know me, you know my trademark is an aggro-controlling RG deck. Most of my decks possess green. I wanted to make a nice aggro-control Sligh, but green doesn’t fit, so this is somewhat a departure for me
. I built this a couple of months ago and didn’t get great feedback from the community because of the strength of combo at that point. Now that control and aggro are back to being good in most metas (or were never gone) I’ll see if the community wants to discuss what I call IsoSligh.
IsoSligh by Steven Petersen
Mana
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Mountain
3 Volcanic Island
2 Great Furnace
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Black Lotus
1 Chrome Mox
2 Mox Jet/Pearl/Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
Disruption
4 Wasteland
3 Gorilla Shaman
2 Stifle
1 Pillage
1 Strip Mine
Burn
4 Fire/Ice
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Shrapnel Blast
2 Incinerate
Card Advantage
4 Isochron Scepter
3 Grim Lavamancer
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Wheel of Fortune
Creatures
4 Slith Firewalker
Sideboard
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
4 Rack and Ruin
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Pillage
2 Stifle
This would be the deck I would take a random tournament if IsoSligh was my choice. The sideboard and maindeck need metagaming.
I decided to take a heavier land destruction route when updating Sligh. Tog took a similar route. Originally, I attempted to deal as much damage as possible, as early as possible.
I consider it somewhat humorous that I’m running more of the Power 9 in Sligh than any other deck in type 1 (besides Long, Keeper (with Twist), and a couple of randoms). Playing Sligh well in a 5-proxy environment may be difficult. It isn’t impossible though. You could replace a couple of moxen with lands (Great Furnace), although that might hurt the speed of the deck a little too much.
I’m curious if there are people who would like to see Sligh developed to the max, not going easy for power considerations. With Isochron Scepter, there is no longer an excuse to not run Ancestral Recall in your Sligh deck. I’m still waiting for it to be broken in a U/G control form (I’ll probably be waiting awhile).
The strength of IsoSligh comes in its ways of creating card advantage. The extra LD component will often serve to shut down your opponent’s mana base, and as a result the card sin their hand. It is also an incredibly synergistic strategy that accompanies the best addition to Sligh since Lightning Bolt, Slith Firewalker. The implications of tempo advantage with this guy are nearly as threatening as a Dryad. The one problem with a Dryad is that he requires you to cast spells. The Firewalker just wants your opponent to not do anything, something faciliatated by land destruction.
This Sligh attempts to have an answer to everything in the maindeck (something I like to do). Two cards that really shut it down are Null Rod and Pernicious Deed. Pillage can take care of Null Rod and Stifle can deal with Pernicious Deed. Stifle is more generally useful and that’s why there are 2 Stifles and 1 Pillage.
Everything but the creatures, lands, and Time Walk, Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune, and Pillage can be put on an Isochron Scepter. You don’t usually lack things to imprint on it and sometimes its best to leave it without imprinting to best use Shrapnel Blast (ie having it imprinted on another Scepter). The card advantage that Isochron Scepter generates, whether it has Fire/Ice or Ancestral Recall, or is just serving as a regular source of burn is one of the most important things in this deck’s success. You can create more card advantage and tempo than Sligh had been able to before.
I personally dislike attempting to play “bomb” cards in my decks. They tend to not be as strong as you want them to be and rarely will ultimately win games that you mean for them to (meaning you would have been able to win those games if you hadn’t run that “bomb” in your deck). The exception to this would be the Pyrostatic Pillars; They are an absolute bomb against a lot of combo decks, but manage to serve other purposes as well (scaring the hell out of control). I don’t include Blood Moon because of its obvious clash with Volcanic Island. It would be a consideration if someone wanted to play this deck as MonoRed. It can be dropped 1st or 2nd turn when you need it to hit because of the additional speed the Moxen provide. Price of Progress is a card I personally dislike and rarely play. I tested it in earlier version but found that it was weak due to the heavy land destruction component. It also failed to bomb any of my opponents out of the game.
The matchup for this deck against the 4 major archetypes: aggro, control, combo, prison.
Aggro
You have burn. You have reusable burn (Scepters). So if they aren’t running artifact destruction effects main you should be ok. Suicide cries when it sees scepters often. Decks with Null Rod are tougher. Pillage is dominant though
.
Control
You are running a bunch of land destruction along with some decent threats and burn as your kill. This will truly test the skill of the players involved. If you are the better player, you will come out on top most of the time. You have Pillars in your sideboard to push this match towards your side more.
Combo
Aggro-control decks without counters have trouble against combo. You have Stifle, which is awesome against Dragon and sometimes Belcher. Problem is with decks like TPS. These matchups needs more testing. It shouldn’t be in your favor, but it shouldn’t be too far off either.
Prison
Gorilla Shaman is a house. Goblin Welder is terrible when half your deck deals damage. That said, this is a tough matchup and is often based more on draws than anything else. Be careful not to let your moxen die lest they get an active welder knocking out your scepters.
If anyone is curious about a particular matchup I'd be happy to evaluate it to the best of my abilities. I’m curious to see what everyone thinks of this evolution of Sligh.
