[Single Card Discussion] Viashino Heretic

[Cownose]

Viashino Heretic  2R
1R, Tap: Destroy Target Artifact. Viashino Heretic deals to that artifact's
             controller damage equal to the artifact's total casting cost.
1/3

In testing out PTW's latest Gay/R builds I began to wonder why he filled one slot with a gorilla shaman. It seemed (to me at least) that the shaman was merely adding redundancy to the job that null rods already do in the deck, with the added benefit of a small man. Several times gorilla shaman seemed to fall short for me. These shortcomings become painfully obvious when facing the slaver and 7/10 split matchups which seem to be becoming more and more frequent in the tourneys I attend. The inability of gorilla shaman to hit artifact creatures coupled with the fact that killing anything over 2cc is next to impossible led me to look for a different option. In looking through my boxes of cards i came upon the Viashno Heretic, which I had forgotten about since around 1999. I was wondering if anyone else thought that perhaps this creature could be used in the slot normally reserved for gorilla shaman in an attempt to try and shore up one of Gay Red's big weaknesses: its inability to do anything meaningful against fat like Sundering Titan and Platinum Angel. I tried to weigh the pros and cons of the two creatures, and heres what i have been able to come up with:

Gorilla Shaman

Pros:
Can be cast turn 1 (helps with standstill)
Gets to work immediately if necessary
Can eat more than 1 artifact in the same turn
Is a monkey (and thats just cool)

Cons:
Cannot kill artifact creatures
Killing anything higher than 2cc is probably not gonna happen
Is only a 1/1
Killing artifacts other than moxen eats up lots of your tempo


Viashino Heretic

Pros:
Can be a decent blocker against goblins and other small men
Can hit any artifact for two mana
Cancels out some tempo loss by doing damage
Can be enchanted with curiosity or sigil of sleep in a pinch
Can do a crap-load of damage if he eats big men

Cons:
Costs three mana
Costs three mana (this is a big one)
Can only be used once a turn


In closing, is the three mana cost of heretic just too big a barrier for him to replace gorilla shaman? Would shaman's creature slot be better used to shore up a weakness rather than give efficient redundancy? What do you guys think?

[Kowal]

Pern has been running Heretic for over a year now, if I recall.  It's been especially good for him lately.  I don't think he's been on top of the drain the last couple weeks, so I'll send him this way next time I see him.

[Kushluk]

He's pretty cool. I tried him in landstill for a while.

Somtimes, as you may imagine, the payoff is rather large, other times, rather small, somthing like misdirection. Mindslavers can turn into large shrapnel blasts.

Heretic may also be a consideration in 4 colour too. I like running an extra mana disruption slot (2nd gorilla shaman) and I have been considering replacing him wtih somthing like Dwarven Miner or Blastminer (bait counters by playing him as a morph) or even this guy.

[Razvan]

I've run Viashino Heretic since Legacy came out. It is a fantastic card, although not as powerful as Shaman in straightforward control decks. Heretic is obviously good against Workshop decks, as the aggregate damage adds up (and it helps tip the scales by blowing up various prison components). It's very useful against the new Affinity.

Furthermore, it's even good against Fish. it's a 1/3, which means it blocks factories, and can kill Null Rods.

I would say that Shaman is more powerful, since it can be used to clear away the moxen, but Heretic generally comes out on turn 2 (with a Mox), and can be good to go.

[Silverdragon]

I think the main reason for Shaman over Heretic is the tempo advantage. In general you want to use the Shaman only to deny the mana of your opponent early (e.g. killing moxen) and sometimes to hit for some damage or to chumpblock.
When you compare the Shaman to Heretic the most obvious thing to mention is like you said the casting cost, followed by the activation cost. In my opinion the Heretic will almost never be used to do the job the Shaman was designed for in this deck and I'd never replace the Shaman with the Heretic MD because you lose so much speed (which is most important for fish).
Nonetheless I consider Heretic in the SB as a good metagame option against 7/10 and other Workshop decks.

[Dante]

The heretic is often used in decks that can support it coming out quickly (ie. full power).  Since fish only runs the 1 Mox, you're looking at turn 3 casting, turn 4 activation, which is why you'll typically see Rack and Ruin in the Fish side.

The maindeck Shaman fits in nicely as part of the mana denial strategy (5 strips, null rob, stifle) and there are few good decks (fish, FCG, ug madness) that don't run nearly full power.

Bill

[dromar]

I agree with Silverdragon. Heretic can mop up against decks with big stuff, especially 7/10, but in the end the Gorilla Shaman kills mox earlier, faster, and cheaper. And that's good . It couldn't hurt to have Heretic in the side though, cuz' he can win you the game outright sometimes.

[Master]

I think it comes down to this... Shaman is good for mana denial. Heretic is near worthless for this purpose.

Heretic is a good card against big artifacts. But it'll never be maindecked. And in the sideboard, I would almost always prefer something a lot faster or more effective like oxidize, artifact mutation, or rack and ruin.

Heretic effectively takes 5 mana to blow up the first artifact and has to wait till the turn after it's cast to do that. Rack and Ruin, Artifact Mutation, and Oxidize are all better for this purpose.

But it's certainly not a bad card. Try it if you wish.

[~m.oconnell0257~]

I think he is great tech and ive been playing him in my sideboard for like 4 months now. It has won me alot of games with Jeff Anand's great deck, Broodstarrunner.dec. In this deck, i'd use viashino heretic over mox monkey anytime. My reasoning for this is that mox monkey can't kill artifact creatures and viashino heretic does The only thing that i don't like about him is that you can only use him once per turn  Otherwise I think he is a great card!

[Bulls on Parade]

While I really like Viashino Heretic on the whole, I don't understand why it's being compared to Gorilla Shaman- two marginally different cards that serve harshly contrasting purposes?

Master's basically got it right- Shaman is about mana denial.
Heretic, on the other hand, is about flashy plays that involve going out of your way to screw one or two archetypes.

Ultimately, I'd consider sideboarding Viashino Heretic were I playing a deck I could rationalize it being worth the investment (unfortunately I can't name one offhand), but would maindeck Gorilla Shaman in many more metagame situations in almost any archetype.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

I think this argument has been pretty much summed up in the fact that herectic cannot replace monkey because they serve different rolls.

Heretic should be confined to sb because it is only necessary against workshop decks and is horribly slow at 3cc.

Another replacement I would consider to help out against bigger men is gobling vandal.  (1/1 for R, if attacks and unblocked can pay R destroy target artifact defending player controls and deals no combat dmg)

At 1cc for a 1/1 he is efficient in combat and the cost for the ability activation is low enough that eating moxen with it seems plausible, while also being able to eat angels or titans.  The fact that he needs to attack unblocked is a thing to consider however, as he has no form of natural evasion.

[Meddling Mike]

I would personally say that the biggest difference is the heretic only being able to take down one artifact at a time. Often times a shaman will hit the table and take down a crypt and some moxen and maybe even a mana vault all in the same turn. A heretic on the other hands gives an opponent a turn to find an answer before he can do anything, and typically when he is active he'll only be taking down moxen anyways.

The tradeoff is really losing the versatility of the heretic in favor of the speed and efficiency of the shaman. In most cases the shaman is the optimal choice.

[whitepanther]

Shaman can also eat moxen and things of that ilk if you can't find the Null Rod to drop. This makes it like an additional, but one sided Null Rod which I feel tips the scales to it over the Heretic. However Heretic would be worth consideration in the SB if large fat (see Sundering Titan) were incredibly common in your area, but you did not feel comfortable for some reason with just Rack and Ruin.
In the end I would say that Rack and Ruin is the best choice for the Sideboard and Mox Monkey to the main. Heretic as it stands now is too slow for T1 at the moment.

[jCoKn]

Having tested gay/r alot lately, I'd have to say that Heretic is a definite no, mainly because of its huge cc. Is there anything else that costs more than 2 in the deck? (Alt. cc excluded) This throws off YOUR tempo, which is very non-kosher.

He's a great card, but I really can't see him fitting in any decks where Shaman already reigns supreme. Gay/R's gameplan is mana denial and board control... the Monkey's job. People argue that if someone drops a 7/10 on you that you die, and they're probably right... but in that case you either should have mulled your hand in search of more answers (FoW), or maybe have played differently.

Germbus has STP (+ a million other responses), Gay has Monkey, FCG has no non-goblins, Slaver has R&R, and essentially all other good decks already have a really good anti-artifact solution. Don't get me wrong, Heretic's ability is awesome, but it's just too slow in the fast-paced world of T1.

[jazzykat]

The key to stopping most welder based decks is to destroy their moxen (ie mox monkey). They could build up to X land + a mana drain to cast 6+ casting costs, but you have counters of your own and wastelands. Plus you ruined their tempo something terrible by denying them a consistent access to mana.

Beware! Tog has a much smaller mana curve and while it loves its acceleration destroying moxes will not do nearly as much to it as long as they got their spell of a turn or two early. Against slaver style decks mox monkey=death because you are not only wrecking a mana base but weldables as well.

Heretic is cute but shaman is just better against a lot of decks.

[maskedman504]

The damage that the heretic does seems significant, however, alot of times the target for heretic just gets welded in response. The Mox Monkey, atleast for me, has worked out alot better due to the fact that he can hit multiple targets upon coming into play. Since the heretic's targets are usually welded away and the monkey can hit multiples of the more important artifacts anyway (mana artifacts , i.e. moxes, crypts etc), to me, the monkey just seems like a better choice.

[Zherbus]

Noone is really adding anything that hasn't been disected before. Closed.[/color]