What makes IT Keeper??

[Freddie]

What makes "it" Keeper?

Recently a few friends and myself were sitting around having lunch, and one of them described a U/b/w control deck that he was brainstorming over. Since I had already seen the deck list in progress, I described it to another friend that the deck was "…a three color Keeper, with no REB in the Sideboard".

Since the U/b/w control deck was never intended to be a Keeper variant, but shares around 25 cards with most standard versions of keeper, this prompted a battle over semantics with the author.

This eventually lead to the discussion over what is, and is not keeper, and how you tell the difference.

When I attempted to describe the base premise of Keeper, as a definition, to prove or disprove decks by… I was at a loss.

After all, Keeper is a control deck, and control decks usually attempt to do the following:

1. Weather out the storm of the early game disruption, and fast creatures.
2. Establish itself, primarily with a high and consistent mana base.
3. Take control of the game with effective 1:1 and 1:X removal / counters.
4. Use a well-guarded victory condition to end the game.

Obviously this is not exactly what happens every game, there are times that you play suicide Morphlings, and hope for the best, or comb your opponent the turn before the would have killed you, robbing them of victory etc. But overall this is the game plan.

All control decks can do this, so is could Keeper be defined by that it uses 3-4 colors? Isn’t it possible to play a 3-color keeper? Even a 2 color keeper perhaps?

What specific qualifications create a "Keeper"?

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Lets look at what could be considered 2 ends of the spectrum as far as Keeper deck lists are concerned:

Azhrei’s Paragon Keeper:
Blue: (22)
2 Morphling

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
1 Misdirection

1 Stroke of Genius
1 Brain Geyser
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Fact or Fiction
2 Cunning Wish
2 Brainstorm

Back: (5)
1 The Abyss
1 Mind Twist
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Chainer’s Edict
1 Demonic Tutor

White: (3)
1 Balance
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 CoP: Red/Renewed Faith

Red: (2)
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Fire/Ice

Mana: (28)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
2 City of Brass
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
4 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island

Side Board: (15)
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Skeletal Scrying/ 1 Gush
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Allay
1 Shattering Pulse
1 Ebony Charm
1 Alter Reality/ 1 CoP: Red
1 Abeyance/ 1 Powder Keg
1 Pyroclasm
1 Aura Fracture
1 Moat/ 1 Powder Keg
1 Celestial Dawn/ 1 Masticore

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Nameless’s Keeper Redux:
Blue: (/19)
1 Morphling

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
1 Counter Spell
1 Misdirection

1 Stroke of Genius
1 Brain Geyser
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Cunning Wish

Black: (5)
1 Chainer's Edict
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mind Twist
1 The Abyss
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Green: (3)
1 Gigapede
1 Krosan Reclamation
1 Regrowth
                              
White: (3)
1 Balance
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Swords to Plowshares

Red: (1)
1 Gorilla Shaman

Artifact: (1)
1 Zuran Orb

Mana: (28)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
1 Dust Bowl
3 Wasteland
4 City of Brass
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Tundra

Sideboard: (15)
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Disenchant
1 Gush
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Ebony Charm
3 Duress
1 Grim Monolith/ 1 Circle of Protection: Black
1 Power Artifact/ 1 Circle of Protection: Red
4 Oath of Druids/ 3 Call of the Herd & 1 Aura Fracture

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Not taking the Sideboards into consideration, there are still a lot of MD differences between these two decks.

These to decks have the following differences to exchange Nameless’s Keeper Redus with Azhrei’s Paragon Keeper:

-4 Tropical Island, -1 Mox Emerald, -1 Dustbowl, -2 City of Brass, -1 Zuran Orb, -1 Regrow, -1 Gigapede, -1 Krosan Reclamation, -1 Dismantling blow, -1 Counter Spell


+3 Volcanic Island, +1 Tundra, +4 Fetch land, +1 Fire/ ice, +1 Cop Red, + 1 Cunning Wish, +1 Morphling, +2 Brainstorm

That’s a 14 card difference between the two decks.

Obviously these two decks will attempt to do about the same thing, tutor for important spells, to put the woop’in upon their opponents heads, gaining advantages on top of advantages, until the game is under their control.

So what makes the both of these decks Keeper? Or hat would make one of them NOT a keeper?

What are all of your opinions?

Let’s discuss.

Thanks

-Freddie

[DigDug]

You might as well ask "at what point does my apple become a core" while I eat it.

I think of it as being a blue-based, three-five color control deck.

[jpmeyer]

seMANtics

[Fishhead]

Tangent:  One weird thing I've noticed is that several of the less serious T1 players at C&Js believe that ABM and Keeper are the same deck.  "Oh no, I have to play Keeper again," they say when they are paired with Dave.  

To their perception, Keeper is a deck that

1) runs a bunch of cards they dont own (Moxes, Ancestral, etc)
2) FoWs thier good cards
3) requires a lot of thinking each turn; ie, plays slowly.

So, in one sense, "what is Keeper" depends on your play level.  I'm not sure if these beginning players have managed to iron Keeper down to its most basic form or whether they've totally missed the point, but I thought their perspective was interesting.

[Freddie]

Thats pretty funny, because the first time that i played Super Grow at a local tourney, the 1st round opponent (less serious) asked, "Is this your keeper? After I cast a Friggen meddling mage, and had fetched 2-3 tropical islands...

I smiled and said... "well not exactly"

Thanks for the input so far guys.

-Freddie

[SpikeyMikey]

This is actually rather easy.  One thing in common between all keeper variants is an abundance of one or two of's.  What makes this so special?  As anyone can tell you, the more of a card you run, the more consistantly you get it.  Non-Keeper counter-control decks run as many 4 of's as possible, whereas Keeper uses tutoring to fetch silver bullet effects that enact a sweeping change on the game.  It runs counter to normal deck theory.  Thus, I would define Keeper as a counter-control deck that utilizes a silver-bullet theory as opposed to a normal redundancy theory.

The lines blur from time to time with decks like OSE, where there are a few tutorable silver bullets, but I think the deciding factor is how much of the deck is silver bullets and tutoring effects.  I'd say if that accounts for 50% of the spells in a deck, it's a Keeper.  An easy way to visualize this is to imagine FoF becoming un-restricted.  Keeper would not run 4 Facts, likely, it would stay at one Fact, or two at the most.  Mono-U would go back to the 4 Fact configuration.

[Zherbus]

Keeper would run 3 FoF, and cut the Geyser and something else. Thats what it did PRE-restriction. That was a bad example really.

I think the silver bullet theory applies much less nowadays, and what defines Keeper for me is 4-5 color control that comes with answers to every possible dilema. As a result of trying to cover all of its bases, it will have to run powerful 1-ofs.

[SpikeyMikey]

I got in to T1 right around that time, but I really didn't pay much attention to Keeper.  I don't know as I would be able to find space for 3 in my version.  In any case, I may have given a poor example, but I stand by my definition of Keeper as a deck that relies on silver bullets.
     

[spevack]

Quote To their perception, Keeper is a deck that

1) runs a bunch of cards they dont own (Moxes, Ancestral, etc)
2) FoWs thier good cards
3) requires a lot of thinking each turn; ie, plays slowly.

Point 2 may not apply as strongly as points 1 and ESPECIALLY 3, but I'm waiting for the day that someone mistakes Academy for Keeper.  

Seriously though, in general I think Keeper is the name given to Powered Weissman-style control decks.  I think the Powered part is key.  Without the Power, it's not Keeper.  It's just control.

I also think that the deck needs to have white in it to fall under the Keeper umbrella.  If it's not playing Balance, then it's not a Keeper variant.

[TracerBullet]

Keeper is a Multi-color (think 3 or more) control deck based around Blue card drawing and overall powerful cards.  Anything that fits that bill is Keeper.  Good Keeper or bad wanna-be Keeper, it's all Keeper none-the-less.

[PsychoCid]

I can't see a deck as being 'Keeper' if it runs less than 4 colors.  A Keeper REDUX it may be, but not Keeper.  Just far enough away from the standard to not quite fit  Additionally, certain spinoffs may tack additional words on ('Trinity' Keeper), etc.

Zherb really covered my train of thought.

[box]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

The world may never know...



I honestly think that noone will ever be able to come up with a definate answer to this:

I played TurboLand for 3 games against some kid. He thought I was playing Keeper.

[TunaBoo]

To a lot of new people anything with power and blue is keeper. I played powered white oath at a tourney... the judge even asked me "are you bringing your keeper deck next weekend"

I was like "no, I won the last 4 tournies with an OATH varient, I don't want to be hated out. So I think I will play KEEPER this time"

He was like "Oh"

[Rakso]

Quote Players today often ask me what the difference between ‘The Deck’ and Keeper is. After reading the draft of this article, Brian Weissman himself emphasized it: “You might want to mention that the Keeper deck was originally called that because its kill mechanism was a combo involving Millstone and Elemental Augury. The idea was that every turn you’d use Elemental Augury to Sylvan yourself, while at the same time manipulating your opponent's draw and basically denying them the chance to ever draw anything useful. You would get them in this soft lock, and ‘keep’ them there through a combination of counterspells and deck manipulation.  This combo was awesomely effective once it was up and running, but I’d imagine the players of ‘The Keeper’ eventually realized that Augury and especially Millstone only really helped when they were ahead, so they dropped those elements in favor of more ‘come from behind’ type spells.

I still say "The Deck" is more elitist.

[Nameless]

Since my deck was one of the above mentioned I feel that I should at least respond with my own thoughts as to what a 'Keeper' deck is defined as...

There are 2 points that round out what I would and would not consider 'Keeper':

1)  The deck relies heavily on card advantage mechanics and countering to acheive control of the game; be they through cards such as Ancestral, Gush, Tome, or even Future Sight.

2)  The deck has a broad number of options available through the use of the 'Silver Bullet' strategy, in order to maintain a victory condition in any situation, and in turn be able to deal with any situation that may arise.

When you consider these two aspects then one could assume a great many decks fall into this category.  However, we can look at Azhrei's and my own deck lists to demonstrate this to an end...  We both seek to acheive board control through the use of counters and card advantage; point 1 taken care of.  We both have specific ways to deal with a large number of situations, through main deck and SB, that allow us a path to victory in any match; point 2 check.

My own version involves a lot of transformational work with the SB, and the card advantage that is gained through the use of 'off-beat' cards in the main deck, such as Gigapede and Krosan Reclamantion; but is primarily focused on this area and color scheme to abuse the viability of the transforming SB strategy.  Darren uses a different approach in that he has a much more reactive SB that calls for a more dedicated Red mana base in his main deck.  They both are after the same end result, and acheive victory in much the same manners.

While there may be a 14 card difference in decks we have to consider that a good portion of this is the mana base, beyond that there really aren't too many differences.  Darren would rather use Brainstorm and fetch-lands to manipulate his library better.  I like the Cities of Brass though because they let me 'feed' Dust Bowl without loosing too much in the way of my own mana base, and at the same time I can send that extra land to the graveyard, if the need arises, to retreive my Gigapede.  His mana base is perfect for what he's trying to do, just as mine is suited to my own goals.  If I weren't using a Dust Bowl it's highly likely that I would be running Sylvan Library over a vanilla Counterspell, while utilizing the fetch-land mana-base, simply because it's a very powerful tool for card advantage.

Using my own guildlines I can think of a few more decks that would fit this category and still might not look like something more traditionally associated with 'Keeper', but that's not really the point, because in the end I think one of the reason's we actually call it 'Keeper' is because using that predefined term lets us quickly and easily categorize a deck into an archtype.  Being able to classify a deck in this manner efficiently is just another way we increase out ability to comminucate affectively.
 

[-CF-]

In one of his rare posts, Cividel has answered this question perfectly: http://www.themanadrain.com/cgi-bin....+keeper

I'll drop the quotation, cause the font will look much better without it - here is the post:
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This is where I'm branded a fool now and forever more.


        Keeper is not a deck.


When you're done laughing, I'll continue.

"Keeper" as most people have come to know it is a decklist with severe brokenness. Keeper is actually much different, it's a collection of deckbuilding theory and wisdom earned from playing constantly and knowing your cards. When you run into something new, odds are they haven't played that deck as much as you have played yours so you outplay them. If that particular angle fails, you just out broken them and draw a billion and nine cards and play thirty three counters in one turn, or at least that's how it feels to someone who's on the end of Keeper on a brokenness binge. Keeper is seen as being invincible by some people, what they fail to realize is that it's not the deck -- it's the people who play it. The average Keeper player is willing to trade carefully or spend a lot of money for a pile of broken cards and play it. The real Keeper player could just as easily be playing nearly any other deck in the format because of the testing they have against it, but they are willing to play something that might not be perfect because it's while it might not be the best, it's never the worst. It's about consistency, focus, and skill. They are willing to draw a line in the sand and say, "Ok, here's the deal -- you think you can take me? Bring it." and come out grinning after the battle.

Keeper isn't a deck you build, it's a deck you earn. You pay for your skill in dedication and testing. People that just netdeck Keeper are missing the point, and they are the ones that bitch when they fail with the deck. The deck I have chosen to play has a history reaching back into Legend -- literally -- since Legends was the set that started making what we know as the modern T1 control deck possible, with Mana Drain, The Abyss (which, I might add, was actually frowned upon and multiple Moats was seen as the way to go in early builds), Moat and Mirror Universe. Keeper isn't a pile of the most powerful cards ever printed, it's a pile of the most powerful players ever to play contributing ideas and knowledge. Even the good players who don't play Keeper add something to the deck, as the innovations they create to beat Keeper make it stronger. It adapts and changes, as any good body of knowledge will do, to beat the decks in the field as effortlessly as possible so that when you run into something hard you can concentrate.

Keeper is not perfect, Keeper is dead blah blah blah blah blah.
If that's the case, why do people prepare so heavily for it? It's part of the field, but played by a bad player it's not hard to beat since they tend to let their own deck screw them. Why do people's deck posts go, "I beat Keeper 67 out of 70 games! I'm amazing! Keeper sucks!"? It's a benchmark deck because it _is_ a benchmark. If you can consistently beat Keeper, congrats! You have just helped it evolve into something nastier, meaner and harder to beat and I thank you for it, Good Luck on your next endeavor. You've earned yourself a place in the history of Keeper, giving less skilled players a small window in which they can copy your deck and beat the defining deck of the format.
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--
Chris