Article -- The Nantuko Consiparcy

[Morphling]

It seems to me like it's just a matter of allowing a slightly higher chance of the mid-game arriving in exchange for a fighting chance if it does. Seems reasonable.

[Shade]

Quote (Peztacular @ Aug. 11 2002,15:34)>>Shade supported by disruption cards that remove the aforementioned threats certainly DO wreck Keeper.

Of course, if your supporting the Shade with disruption, then your not pumping mana into the shade, and would probably better off with a 1 casting cost 2 power creature rather then a 2 casting cost one.

See, I think that's the misconception here.  You want to play your disruption first, then follow it up with insanely-pumped Shades.  If you're throwing down early Zombies instead of stripping away cards/land, then you're not playing correctly.

[Magimaster]

Quote (Shade @ Aug. 11 2002,17:13)See, I think that's the misconception here.  You want to play your disruption first, then follow it up with insanely-pumped Shades.  If you're throwing down early Zombies instead of stripping away cards/land, then you're not playing correctly.

sometimes, that's not feasible. "Mono Black" has little card drawing, and often has to work with whatever is in its opening hand or what it topdecks, not the most reliable method.

A hand full of creatures and no disruption is almost as likely as a hand chock full of disruption and no threats. So how do you adapt? You can't always count on the ideal plays happening when you want.

Also, since Zombies do cost less, it's easier to play them in tandem with your disruption

ie. Instead of hymning him, you can cast a Zombie and a Duress, if you have them in hand, or perform another similar play.

[Shade]

Quote (Magimaster @ Aug. 11 2002,17:58)

Quote (Shade @ Aug. 11 2002,17:13)See, I think that's the misconception here.  You want to play your disruption first, then follow it up with insanely-pumped Shades.  If you're throwing down early Zombies instead of stripping away cards/land, then you're not playing correctly.

sometimes, that's not feasible. "Mono Black" has little card drawing, and often has to work with whatever is in its opening hand or what it topdecks, not the most reliable method.

A hand full of creatures and no disruption is almost as likely as a hand chock full of disruption and no threats. So how do you adapt? You can't always count on the ideal plays happening when you want.

Also, since Zombies do cost less, it's easier to play them in tandem with your disruption

ie. Instead of hymning him, you can cast a Zombie and a Duress, if you have them in hand, or perform another similar play.

I guess it also depends on your version of the deck.  Here's my build:

CREATURES (15)
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Phyrexian Negator
3 Phyrexian War Beast

DISRUPTION (21)
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
1 Mind Twist
3 Null Rod
4 Sinkhole
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland

UTILITY (3)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Will

MANA (21)
1 Black Lotus
4 Dark Ritual
1 Mox Jet
15 Swamp

I like to pack lots of early disruption, then drop Hyppies, Shades, and War Beasts.  About the only time I don't use my disruption early is if I'm staring at a Rit/Negator first turn.  Of course, this is my maindeck build against a control-dominant field.

[Magimaster]

You're using MIND TWIST in place of CONSULT?!


aaaaaaaargh....I am choking in bile....


that tells me volumes....volumes my friend...volumes...


other than that...looks standard issue off Legend's primer.

[Shade]

Quote (Magimaster @ Aug. 12 2002,02:19)You're using MIND TWIST in place of CONSULT?!


aaaaaaaargh....I am choking in bile....


that tells me volumes....volumes my friend...volumes...


other than that...looks standard issue off Legend's primer.

Yes, I am...

And I like it that way.

I've heavily playtested Consult, but just find it too difficult to use effectively.  Maybe it's just bad luck, but I always end up removing far too much and depleting my Will-power substantially.  It's been the difference in many games for me.  Twist has alweays acted as, worst case scenario, a 5th Hymn, which is very nice to have.  

Oh, and I wouldn't say it's "standard issue."  I don't use Reavers.  They take away from Necro.  If I were playing TRUE suicide, I'd go with Reavers, Zombies, and Shades as my creature base.  They're the fastest, most effective creatures for the mana cost.

[Nevyn]

I don't really play either version very often so I make no claim to have expertise here, but  here is my view.

Zombies Pros: At one mana, these creatures fill in very nively with the mana curve and ensure good mana utilisation while being a solid mana investment for threats of their size. Thus the zombie version is likely more consistent with less variance in performance between draws.

Zombies Cons: Spending one card on a two damage per turn threat. Keeper uses it's life as a resource and a too-slow clock can often let keeper get back in the game before it dies. This goes double for mono-blue and other combination decks.

Shade Pros: A strong threat in parts of the game where zombies are just by-standers, and a more effective creature against other aggro decks. Also, the pro-zombie arguments tend not to consider disruption-light draws (which also occur more often when you devote fewer slots to disruption) where the zombies would stall out, but where you could use a mana glut to apply lots of pressure with a single shade.

Shade Cons: Oscar picked on Reaver a bit too, and as a group there is a problem there. As a former WW player, I have experienced firsthand the dangers of a glut of two-drops in an aggro deck, and the curve is really an under-analysed strategic concept in modern type one as people focus on questions/answers and not enough on consistency and timing.

However, in considering the shade's effect on your curve, consider that most of your options are sorcery speed, meaning that you want to consistently tap out on your own turn. Shade keeps available mana from being wasted.

In short, I agree that suicide needs to be carefully planned out in terms of it's threats and the turns that it deploys them, but I also think it needs to consider how easily it's threats are dealt with and how effective they are overall.

But please remember that this does NOT have to be either-or. Decks can run 4 Sarcomancy/4 Shade, can they not? This is not a battle of 1 drops versus two drops. Compare each cards' effectiveness and cost, and don't group them together too much. It is possible to run shades without reavers and to run zombies without running 8.

[Zherbus]

Quote (Nevyn @ Aug. 12 2002,12:35)But please remember that this does NOT have to be either-or. Decks can run 4 Sarcomancy/4 Shade, can they not? This is not a battle of 1 drops versus two drops. Compare each cards' effectiveness and cost, and don't group them together too much. It is possible to run shades without reavers and to run zombies without running 8.

Yep thats what my Suicide list posted above has.

(critter base:
4 Negators
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Sarcomancy
4 Nantuko Shade)

[Shade]

Hey, Rakso, why don't you come out of your hole and reply to some of these comments?  There have been some very good points made here and I'd like to see how you defend your accusations against the almighty Shade.

It's kinda strange how Rakso rarely replies to these article threads, don'tcha think...?

P.S.  sHaDe StIlL oWnZ j00!

[Rakso]

Rakso's computer is busted and he has very good reasons for minimizing time spent posting. I think I told Zherbus.

[Shade]

Quote (Rakso @ Aug. 14 2002,04:46)Rakso's computer is busted and he has very good reasons for minimizing time spent posting. I think I told Zherbus.

Are you referring to yourself in the third-person, or is this someone other than Rakso?

[42up]

my question is, with the shifting of sui to stop aggro, what kind of meta would you play it in?  If you have some random meta, then knives would be your choice, a semi-powered then void.....but now for sui?  Sui, IMO, was always built for the high-powered metagame.

As a point, it is coming down to kegs and rods being the only real difference between "sui" and knives.  And really, what is better in this aggro meta?

I am really stumped here.  If the meta has so much aggro that sui needs to maindeck against it, then why is it sui and not knives or void?

[Magimaster]

The 3 are molding together I guess. The only real difference between Void and Sui would be Rods over Kegs and of course, the Nether Voids and some minor changes, like in the creature base. Knives I guess is the in-between, but you could run Void's creature base in Sui and still come out with very good results...(obviously a little worse than with a standard issue creature base)

I dunno, that's just my take on it right now. I am probably/most likely wrong.


On a side note, I just finished my set of 4FBB Dark Rituals (4th or 5th, Korean)  . Now, my deck is invulnerable, and it gets +100 style points.  

[Superman on Dope]

My Suicide Black decklist is pretty much an exact duplicate of Zherbus's, right down to the last card.  Likely a strong coincidence.  

I prefer to run the Shades with some Zombies (Sarco), and I think I have a pretty good mana curve going.  With 14 Swamps, Lotus/Jet, Rits and Strip/Wastes for a mana base, I don't want to have too many 2cc drops, so the Reavers were out of the question, which let me run Necro again, which is pure evil as we all know.  


As for Shades being bad against control, I'd have to disagree.  They've won me many games by providing staying power against control where otherwise it would have been a lost cause.  The problem is many people tend to think Suicide ( or mono-B, whatever you want to call it) should be played like Stompy or Sligh, where you try to attack and win as quickly as possible, forsaking any mid-game strategy.

[dandan]

You mean SRB. Sligh is an aggro control deck capable of destroying land and artifacts galore with colourless reusable sources of damage for longer games. Scrolls are only good in longer games and most good Sligh decks run 4 (although 3 is also an alternative)

The thing about Nantuko is that simply it greatly strengthens black against mainstream aggro and scrub decks whilst not making it a lot weaker against control (some might argue better against control). As such Suicide has no need to occasionally kill itself (Consults and Necro excepted) in order to achieve its goals. I can't really see any logical argument for not using Shades.

The real conspiracy (or consiparsy) is Wizards printing a Type I creature for a monodeck shortly after refusing to reprint Type I power or allowing proxies. (Look you don't need Ancestral, you don't need proxies you just need to buy lots of packs of type II cards or shell out inflated type II prices to make the dealers happy)

My proxies will do until Shades rotate out of standard and I can buy them for $3.

[Matt The Great]

I don't feel like starting a new topic for a mere extension of the original article, so from here on I suggest the focus shift to Rakso's article "Nantuko Conspiracy, Part II" published on Aug 16.

Two main points:

1) Sample Game Not Proving Anything
If those Shades had been anything else, would it have made a difference? No. Ruken still would not have been able to get a single point of damage past Rakso's spot removal.

In Rakso's sample game, the impact of running Shade over a Zombie did not make itself present until Ruken's ELEVENTH TURN. Ruken apparently did not have a Shade until then - I'm inferring this from the fact that he cast Phyrexian War Beast earlier, then did nothing for a turn or two. So the sample game really did not show the impact of running Shade over anything else at all.

2) Speaking of opening hands, there is no discussion of whether Ruken's hand should have been paris'ed.

3) Rakso makes some talk about comparing turns one and three, and says something about a mana curve - I can only assume this is the result of his being very busy, because:
a) it was Ruken's first and second turns on which he played Swamp and Swamp, Hymn. Seems to be using the mana he was given just fine.
b) Rakso lists eleven turn one plays - which is precisely the number of a 'true' mana curve, as developed by Jay Schneider. Just because modern Type One Sligh has had its curve flattened to a near-line, doesn't mean eleven first-turn plays is a bad curve.