Colossus.dec (aka Gnomish Terror Squad)

[Plognark]

Ok, this is a thought for a deck i've been toying around with for a while, and finally built and tested a bit at some friday night magic games as well as with a few buddies of mine.

Here's the (current) list:

Mana: (28)
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Volcanic Island
2 Island
2 Mountain
4 Wasteland
1 Stripmine
1 Tolarian Academy

8 SoLoMoxCrypt

1 Grim Monolith
1 Mana vault

Card Draw/Search: (8)
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Tinker
1 memory Jar

Critters: (14)
4 Welders
4 Copper Gnomes
4 Darksteel Colossus
1 Platinum Angel
1 Sundering Titan

Utility/Hosers: (9)
2 Crucible of Worlds
4 Trinisphere
1 Timewalk
2 Lightning Greaves

I'm still toying around with the sideboard, but it will probably consist of blasts and extra creatures, unless anyone has soem brilliant ideas  

I've noticed a lot of decks are packing a single Darksteel Colossus just on the off chance that they pull an opening hand tinker. Tinker used to be "Tinker, go get memory jar" but now it seems to be more like "Tinker, I kill you in 2 turns sucka!" and the colossus has turned into the tinker target of choice, simply for the random "i win" aspect.

I've also seen show and tell decks here and there, but I can't tolerate the fact that it benefits your opponent as well.

Copper gnomes seem like a nice, quick way to speed out a big colossus. In a deck like this it's not all that hard to wind up with six mana in the opening hand (and a colossus or the titan to spew out).

Even in the worst case scenario, they make nice chump blockers against fast aggro, and if your opponent gets wise to your tactics, they become yet another "must counter" in the deck. Also, they allow the colossus to come in uncounterable (pray for a stifle) and they can be recurred with welders to get the big guys out again.

Lightning greaves have been a great addition after some early testing without them. Adding protection to the welders is obviously good, but getting haste onto the colossus is a scary prospect. So far two seems like the ideal number, and i'm reluctant to cut them since they can get me a win a turn earlier (which can help against combo, or fast aggro, where they're forced into defensive mode if I can get them into 1 colossus hit = death range). They change a colossus from a 2 turn clock into a 1 turn clock, and deny my opponent the chance to untap a group of blockers or dig for an answer.

One weakness is, obviously, null rods. So far i've found that, even with null rod in play, i'm able to hard cast a Colossus off workshop/tolarian mana with fair consistency. Nullrods are just a fact of life for workshop deck players.

Another thing I fear is opposing welders swapping my colossus out of the game on me. I can counter this to a limited degree with my own welders and the lightning greaves, but it's still a threat. Triskelion (or razormane) seem like the best answers for this, but so far I can't figure what I should cut for them, or if I should simply leave them in sideboard.

The other weakness is against combo. The trinispheres (and to a lesser degree, the platinum angel) help but not that much. The one thing i'm considering is cutting the trinispheres to speed up the combo (and by combo, I mean early colossus drop)/draw aspect, but i'm afraid that i'll simply screw myself by not stalling my opponents. Trinisphere is such an amazing card, and frankly, i'm addicted to the effect it has on the game.

Any thoughts on what direction I should take this deck would be appreciated. I can say that this deck is loads of fun to play, especially when you can toss out a 1st and 2nd turn colossus every other game

[Hi-Val]

(flame deleted, since I moved his post elsewhere -Jacob)

STFU & die plz kthx.


The deck looks interesting, I'll say that much. I think that Gilded Lotus would go a long way to making the gnomes activate faster. You might also look at the blinding weakness this has to Null Rod. A maindeck ShatPulse would do a lot, especially with Gilded Lotus powering it up.

The Welders seem only okay in here. With Thirst and Gildeds, they could work a little better.

[majestyk1136]

STFU & die plz kthx.

Thanks for that wonderful commentary upon the substance of my argument.  Answer me this question:  How is this deck any better or more consistent than 7-10 split?  How does this deck not simply roll over and die to the simplest of fundamental T1 Disruption?  I appreciate people attempting to be innovative, but if you're going to play this, why not just put 4 Quicksilver Amulet in your deck??  It has the same approximate effect except it's Reusable and is quite a likely turn one drop with mox/shop opening.

[Hi-Val]

Your argument had no substance. That's why it was deleted.


I'm not saying this is better than 7/10 split (though most things are). I'm saying it's an interesting idea to try and "turbo" out The Subdivision and win with it. It's a halfway decent strategy to look at because Tinker->Colossus is a pretty good winner. Whether this is better than turbo-transmute, I don't know.

Tooth and Nail does well in T2 because there are few answers to Colossus. Think of this as the Tooth and Nail for T1. At least it gets Workshop acceleration. It may or may not be good. Worth discussion though.

[rvs]

Tooth and Nail does well in T2 because there are few answers to Colossus. Think of this as the Tooth and Nail for T1. At least it gets Workshop acceleration. It may or may not be good. Worth discussion though.

That's a pretty spot on comparison Hi-Val. Even though I absolutely hate Gilded Lotus, running it in this deck seems to be a no-brainer. Now, in order to make it more tooth-and-nailish for T1, maybe a good idea would be to add Leonin Abunas. If you can drop that before you drop your big guy, they all of a sudden need 2 plows (or 1 balance, unless you are named Kerz), so it might be worth a test run. Since it seems your deck would be Gilded Lotus dependant already because of the Gnome Activation you need, it doesn't really seem to hurt on paper.

[Plognark]

It may or may not be good. Worth discussion though.

Thanks, that's all I was after  

I like the gnomes over quicksilver for a few reasons.

1) Quicksilver costs more. I can get 6 mana in an opening hand pretty easily with this deck. 8 is pushing it.

2) Gnomes are, at the least, a 1/1 beater and a chump blocker, even under null rod, and are usually able to be cast turn one. Quicksilver can't even boast that much.

3) Gnomes can get any artifact out, even a memory jar or trinisphere if I really need to avoid a fat mana drain being fed into a decree of justice.

Another thing I favor with the colossus over the titans is that they trample, and kill one turn faster (Like I said, I have problems with allowing combo to set up, so I want to smack them down ASAP).

Decks that run null rod (fish and the new turboland, some madness...can't recall any others off the top of my head) may pose a problem, although so far I haven't had much trouble hard casting the colossus or the lone titan. Once the colossus hits play the entire game tends to turn around. I still need to test more against those deck types.

I like the idea of gilded lotus in here, although the null rod weakness won't go away. One option i'd considered was a battery of su-chi, since their mana trigger is just right for a welder-swap into a gnome, and they make decent beaters against fish (and other decks), although i'm not sure how I would adjust the deck for them.

The idea of cutting out some of the welders is interesting, I may give it a run and see how it goes.

[majestyk1136]

Your argument had no substance. That's why it was deleted.


Tooth and Nail does well in T2 because there are few answers to Colossus. Think of this as the Tooth and Nail for T1. At least it gets Workshop acceleration. It may or may not be good. Worth discussion though.

A couple of things.  Analogies to t2 are pointless due to the vastly different card pools in the 2 formats.  Aggro is viable in T2 and aces out control in most cases due to the presence of Ravager Affinity and the total lack of good counterspells/powerful removal.

Indeed, tinker-> DC is quite a good finisher given an opponent that has no answers.  In t2 there are few answers to the iron giant, but T1 is chock full of them.  And if this were the penultimate play in T1, why isn't this play dominating the format right now?

I keep on coming back to the same Idea, why not replace copper gnomes w/ Quicksilver amulet?  In a workshop deck there is little difference in the 2 cards other than the fact that the amulet has almost none of the failings of the Copper Gnomes other than sharing the type "artifact."  And if we're at that point anyway why not bust out the '"Timmy, Power Gamer" is a good card' argument?

@Plognark:  I understand that you like the smaller mana commitment implicit in the Gnomes, but how frequently do you draw a 6 mana opening without a workshop anyway?  It's probably going to be turn 2 before you break this off most of the time.  I mean, if you draw broken, you are just as broken with Gnomes as you are without them.  By the way, the Welders and Trinispheres are the answer to Mana Drain and its ilk anyhow.

EDIT:  By no means am I complimenting the power level of Quicksilver amulet by advocating it over a very fragile creature.

[Plognark]

I keep on coming back to the same Idea, why not replace copper gnomes w/ Quicksilver amulet?

1) Quicksilver costs more. I can get 6 mana in an opening hand pretty easily with this deck. 8 is pushing it.

2) Gnomes are, at the least, a 1/1 beater and a chump blocker, even under null rod, and are usually able to be cast turn one. Quicksilver can't even boast that much.

3) Gnomes can get any artifact out, even a memory jar or trinisphere if I really need to avoid a fat mana drain being fed into a decree of justice.

[Hi-Val]

A couple of things.  Analogies to t2 are pointless due to the vastly different card pools in the 2 formats.  Aggro is viable in T2 and aces out control in most cases due to the presence of Ravager Affinity and the total lack of good counterspells/powerful removal.

Indeed, tinker-> DC is quite a good finisher given an opponent that has no answers.  In t2 there are few answers to the iron giant, but T1 is chock full of them.  And if this were the penultimate play in T1, why isn't this play dominating the format right now?

Analogies to T2 are anything but pointless. It's still fundamentally the same game. Tooth and Nail is concerned with putting out the Subdivision just as much as this is. The analogy is perfect.

T1 is not chock full of answers to Colossus. The only thing you gain is Welder and Swords over T2. Lightning Greaves and Big Pimpin' go a long way to stopping those.

Why isn't this play dominating the format? It dominates as much as it can. Tinker is restricted. Perhaps you may not have noticed CS adding Mystical in to grab it and 4cc running Tinker for bombs as well. I certainly have. TPS and Belcher run it as an alternate win. I'd say that it's pretty much at saturation point right now.

[majestyk1136]

I keep on coming back to the same Idea, why not replace copper gnomes w/ Quicksilver amulet?

1) Quicksilver costs more. I can get 6 mana in an opening hand pretty easily with this deck. 8 is pushing it.

2) Gnomes are, at the least, a 1/1 beater and a chump blocker, even under null rod, and are usually able to be cast turn one. Quicksilver can't even boast that much.

3) Gnomes can get any artifact out, even a memory jar or trinisphere if I really need to avoid a fat mana drain being fed into a decree of justice.

Opposing welders won't play havoc with your Quicksilver amulet once you put a creature into play, that's why.  "Oh, I see you have put an 11/11 into play.  Allow me to turn him back into a Copper Gnomes for you and then watch you shuffle that fatty back into your deck while you do this:   "  And to add insult to injury they will then likely shoot the gnomes down with a Trike or Fire.

[Plognark]

Opposing welders won't play havoc with your Quicksilver amulet once you put a creature into play, that's why. "Oh, I see you have put an 11/11 into play. Allow me to turn him back into a Copper Gnomes for you and then watch you shuffle that fatty back into your deck while you do this:  " And to add insult to injury they will then likely shoot the gnomes down with a Trike or Fire.

I know, those are all valid concerns, and are pretty much the reason why I started this thread: to see if anyone had some ideas to improve on it

[majestyk1136]

Sure, check out a couple of threads that detail decks that have a similar skeleton to your deck and try replacing one or two of the threats in the deck with a Colossus or ways to dig up a tinker.

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19536

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17915&highlight=

[Methuselahn]

Ok, this is interesting enough.

Well, I know how Show and Tell decks play out and goldfish.  I would think that this idea would be at least a turn slower.  Even then, the new Forbidden/Oath decks run a turn faster than Show.  

Copper gnomes seem like a nice, quick way to speed out a big colossus. In a deck like this it's not all that hard to wind up with six mana in the opening hand"

Doesn't the seem a little steep for the Gnome ability tho?

One weakness is, obviously, null rods.

show and tell:1
copper gnomes:0

isn't:
-Moxen/Welder/Thirst for Gnome->Colossus,
-Moxen/Workshop/Gnome->Colossus,
-Workshop.dec/Colossus
strictly inferior than:
-Forbiddan Orchard/Oath of Druids?

Also, I don't see you winning alot of games when your opponent goes "Volcanic.Welder.go."

4 Welders + 4 Darksteel Colossus in the same deck just doesn't seem right.  

[rozetta]

I don't know about anyone else, but I'd have to wonder exactly how often this deck produces 6 mana on turn 1 (of which 4 is non-Workshop). I've played decks with this sort of manabase before and it's really not all that common (even with Ancient Tombs which are not present in this list). To even be able to, for instance, cap someone on turn 1 is quite rare and would probably mean you expended most of your opening hand on mana and have very little in terms of threats versus a control deck.

[Plognark]

I took a look at the new orchard oath in that other thread; that deck looks brutal  

I won't get much time to test this deck this week, unfortunately (damn people and their weddings ), but i'll keep toying with it and see if I can come up with a better list. Thanks for all the feedback  

[Hi-Val]

I realize I was hitting the crack pipe pretty hard yesterday when I said Gilded Lotus. I meant Thran Dynamo; there's really no need to have to generate colored mana.

[Plognark]

Thran Dynamo sounds good. The only reason gilded lotus was decent for a while, really, was because of memnarch and his need for blue mana (as far as I can tell) although it's handy if your running more than 2 colors in a workshop deck, I suppose. It helped me a lot when i was running a 7/10 with some strange color mixes, but it's not needed here.

Even still, that gets whacked by null rod

[TrixR4Kidz]

you ever think about cutting welders since they don't really do that much in this deck aside from welding in angel and the couple of other fatties you have.  Maybe you should consider possibly metalworker for early strong mana, or even more draw.  I don't really like the welders in this deck, I would add more elements to the deck that would help it's speed of getting the pure fatness out

[serialjester]

you ever think about cutting welders since they don't really do that much in this deck aside from welding in angel and the couple of other fatties you have.  Maybe you should consider possibly metalworker for early strong mana, or even more draw.  I don't really like the welders in this deck, I would add more elements to the deck that would help it's speed of getting the pure fatness out

I thought that too, basically adding the Metalworker/Staff of Domination engine to the deck would be really brutal, whereas with the welders you don't abuse them, they are a fallback plan at best. Already maindecking greaves is a huge plus, since you'll be able to haste the worker and accel out much faster than in a welder build.

[Covetous]

if you're using type two cards, why not consider something like summoner's egg--you can do silly things like turn 1 egg, turn 2 shrap blast laugh at you.  Or, weld it out for something useful and get a fatty in the process.  But again, why would this be better than a more consistent stacker-esque deck that is based more on consistency rather than bombs?

[eastman11]

I wouldn't ever consider cutting the 3spheres if you're worried about speeding up the deck.  Without that kind of disruption, this deck kinda begins to resemble Mask, at least in its motives: drop the fat as fast as you can and hope they don't find a way to burn it (in this case with a Welder) before you swing for the kill.  The best defense against Welders here is the two Greaves, and if you do manage to drop your Colossus first turn, chances are you aren't going to get the Greaves equipped.  Null Rod is also a problem, it will probably slow you down too much, regardless of whether or not you can still operate under it.  You'll be locked out of the match before you can get around it for the most part.  Fire/Ice is too good, that would be my first choice to deal with Welders, and Trisk is good, but he might be too slow to operate when you need to deal with the Welder as soon as possible. The only other option I can think of is Masticore, but if Trisk is too slow, Masticore will kill you.  But testing might reveal otherwise.  As far as Null Rod goes, a Shattering Pulse might be a good idea.
       The only other question I would have is how much did the Welders really help you in the match, and how many times did it just seem an extra card in hand while you try to power out a Colossus?

[Plognark]

I'll admit that welders weren't spectacular here, but they did allow me to do some interesting stuff.

Against opposing workshop decks the welders are nice (especially under greaves) since they allow me to play with their gadgets and give them a hard time.

Against controlish decks, I found I would actually throw out a gnome over a welder first turn. Once a few of my playtest buddies got wise to the first/second turn colossus deal, they'd wind up countering the gnome off a force, giving me an opening for a trinisphere or welder. Oddly, I wound up using them as counter bait and then welding them back in. And for those who decided not to counter such a janky little card, they soon realized their error as I swapped the gnome back in to get out the big guy.

This deck does very well against 4cc, wtf, monoblue, and Tog/hulk (although my SB was accidentally well tuned for dealing with Tog/hulk, admittedly). The SB also gives me a good shot against opposing welder decks (I don't want to reveal my "secret tech" though, since i'm using it in more mainstream workshop builds, especially stax.)

It's the match against gay fish and combo that's a pisser, which makes me really wonder about the viability of this build (of course, all workshop decks have a rough time vs. combo). Trinisphere is definately a keeper, there's no possible way I can cut it and stand a chance; it helps against both decks.

The null rod mixed with direct damage/ping and light counter really kicks my ass, even post SB, and it ticks me off that i'm even considering adjusting the SB just for a bloody fish deck

The green-splash U/R fish is also kind of nasty because of artifact mutation, but then, any deck with mutation is brutal to workshop decks. You can't win them all.

So far my win chances vs. gay fish are around 30-40% pre SB, and they really don't get any better post SB (at least vs. my friend's build). They get a bit better if I can win the coin flip, as i've got a far better chance of spewing out something big first/second turn.

As much as I like the idea of dropping welders in favor of metalworker/staff, that's not going to help me against fish at all....it's just going to give them more fire/ice and grim targets and more stuff to hose with null rod  

I may simply have to run a battery of razormanes SB to deal with it. Ug. Not that razormane is bad or anything...

One deck I haven't tried playing against is U/G madness, but I have a suspicion that that deck would be a rough fight unless I get a good hand. I haven't seen a U/G madness in a long time though, it might be played too little to be worth worrying about.