Kamigawa block Peasant

[Nazdakka]

Every year, I run a peasant block constructed tournament at my Uni's Games Society. This year it's my first try with Kamigawa block constructed, and I could use some suggestions for my deck. The deck construction rules are:

Legal sets: Champions and Betrayers of Kamigawa.
Deck size: 60 card maindecks, 15 card sideboards
Other rules: All rares are banned. A deck may only contain 5 uncommons between maindeck and sideboard, all other cards must be commons.

(Aside: I run this every year because a lot of people have extremely limited collections. With this format they will almost always have the cards they need, and so can compete with the people with huge collections. I do know that this sort of format is too small to give a really good environment, but each tourney is a 1-off so it's not too much of a problem.)

Anyhow, here's my current deck:

15 Island
7 Swamp
4 Mountain

4 Dampen Thought
4 Psychic Puppetry
4 Reach Through Mists
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Toils of Night and Day
4 Consuming Vortex
1 Eerie Possesion
4 Horobi's Whisper
4 Ire of Kaminari
1 Glacial Ray

Provisional SB:
3 Glacial Ray
4 Mountain
4 Hisoka's Defiance???
4 Thoughtbind?


This is quite a complex control deck, the general idea is to stall using the Toils and Puppetries while splicing Dampens, targeting oneself. The Dampens enable spliced Horobi's Whispers to mow down opposing creatures, while also stocking the graveyard for a kill with (usually) 2 10+ point Ire of Kaminaris to the face. I'm posting this up because I'd like a few suggestions on how to improve it, plus maybe a little help with tuning the exact quantities.

Answers to questions I expect:

Why not go with a regular Dampen deck?

Dampen kills are better in limited than constructed because of deck size: In limited you essentially need 6-7 shots with Dampen to seal the deal, in constructed you need 10-11. Given the beatdown comes faster in constructed than limited and that I can only run 4 Ethereal Haze, I anticipate often dying before I can pull off a milling win.

Why not more Glacial Rays?

This one's simple: mana. I've got to run sufficient blue to keep my engine running while having Swamps around for Whisper. Red is only currently needed for the random Ray and to cast killing Ire of Kaminaris. If I tried to squeeze in more Rays, I'd need more Mountains and the manabase would then be just too unreliable.

All this said, another possibility exists: Cut the Whispers and rely on 4*Ray as creature control. I don't like that idea either because Ray costs mana. Splicing free Whispers is enormously easier than splicing Rays, plus Whispers is a more generally flexible spell. Going straight U/R is a definite possibility though, I'd curious to know what you think.

What problems exist in the card pool?

Problem 1) is an entire colour: black. I can't kill black creatures with Whisper, and black decks are liable to pack Distress, which is nasty for me. Against black decks I would plan to cut all my black cards for 3 more Rays, aiming to hurt their low-thoughness creatures. I might even try Yamabushi's Storm.

Problem 2) is counterspells: I don't know how this deck would react to someone boarding 4*Thoughtbind 4*Hisoka's Defiance, and I'd rather not find out. No real good here, I'd probably be forced to board in Thoughtbinds of my own and hope for the best

So, any ideas or suggestions on how to improve this pile? I've got until Saturday the 12th to develop this.

[Jacob Orlove]

What happens if you accidentally mill your own Ires?

[Nightfall]

I'm not sure how effective this deck will be.  As Jacob pointed out, you could easily mill your own win conditions away.  I think that typical dampen would work better.  White is pretty effective, giving you Ethereal Haze, Candle's Glow (not very relevant, being uncommon), and the awesome Waxmane Baku.  If you get two Baku's on line, you can surive a long time.  Cage of hands is another good creature control card which will always take care of their largest creature.  Between the Baku and Cage of Hands, you easily make up for the loss of Whisper.

Beatdown isn't going to be very fast in this format, so I feel that a more typical dampen thought deck would serve you better.

[Jacob Orlove]

If you want to play control, Hana Kami/Soulless Revival might be a better bet. You get Sakura-Tribe Elder, Kodama's Reach, Rend Flesh, and all kinds of other goodies, with Kami/Revival for a late-game lock.

[Nazdakka]

Well, some testing against a non-goldfish opponent has shown that the deck I posted sucks... as people were saying, it has got too many ways to go wrong - colour screw, milling away Mountains/Ires, not seeing a Dampen to properly enable Whisper, running out of splice hosts, etc. etc. It did have the normal Dampen kill as a backup plan, but if it became needed I would often have wasted too many splice hosts Dampening my self and would run out of steam before I could win. The colourscrew I was suffering has also made it clear to me now that I can run no more than two colours without playing Green for Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kodama's Reach.

I'd like to run Arcane control in some form - given the usual turnout I expect lots of aggro decks based around the themes of each colour, and a strong and synergetic control deck seems to be the logical answer to that. My guess at the fundamental turn of the format would be around turn 6 - the Samurai deck in particular has Nagao, Call to Glory and a ton of decent beaters to get a quick-ish kill. Given the failiure of my U/r/b attempt, I see 3 options:

1) Straight U/R splice, using Vortex to stall and Ray/Ire for the kill. That deck could run the superb Blind With Anger in the uncommon slots for  damage to the face and combat trickery plus First Volley and/or Torrent of Stone for extra creature kill. I could even run Earthshaker! The advantages I see with this build are that it has an excellent concentration of quality arcane spells and no obviously awful matchups. The biggest problems I can see are that the burn must be split between creatures and the opponent's face, and I might run out.

2) U/W Dampen, using non-Arcane stalling tactics like Cage and Waxmane Baku. I like this idea, but I have a feeling that I would wind up running out of splice hosts if I start running Cages, Bakus, etc. Baku has a great big bullseye painted on him, given he'd be the only creature in the deck. The other problem is that white's arcane selection contributes Ethereal Haze... and that's it. Almost all of white's arcane spells are combat oriented and so I would be suffering a hit in terms of card quality by playing White as opposed to red. I'd also have only 1 uncommon slot availible this way, as the Dampen kill takes up 4 of my 5.

3) G/B Spiritcraft, using Hana Kami/Soulless Revival. The availible cardpool pushes me towards a blocking-oriented soulshift deck using Zuberas and sacrifice dudes to gain card advantage. Say something like this:

12 Forest
11 Swamp

4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Hana Kami
4 Burr Grafter
4 Scuttling Death
4 Ashen-Skin Zubera
4 Dripping-Tongue Zubera
1 Thief of Hope

2 Kodama's Reach
4 Horobi's Whisper
4 Rend Flesh
2 Devouring Greed

That's straight off the top of my head, but the idea is clear - make favourable trades in combat, aiming to come out ahead in the long run with recursive creatures. I'll look at all of these, particularly 1) and 3), and get back once I've tested some more.

[Jacob Orlove]

3) G/B Spiritcraft, using Hana Kami/Soulless Revival. The availible cardpool pushes me towards a blocking-oriented soulshift deck using Zuberas and sacrifice dudes to gain card advantage.

Actually, I was envisioning a build more like this one:

3 Hana Kami
2 Hideous Laughter

4 Kodama's Reach
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder

4 Rend Flesh
4 Horobi's Whisper
3 Glacial Ray

3 Soulless Revival
2 Joyous Respite (don't laugh)

3 Scuttling Death
4 Gnarled Mass

2 Mountain
9 Swamp
13 Forest

Gnarled Mass and Scuttling Death are there for random defense, and to help put dampen decks on a clock. You basically pump out crazy mana, then either splice awesome removal spells (laughter, ray, whisper), or use Hana Kami/Soulless Revival to recur Reaches and Respites.

That's just a rough draft, though. There's probably ways to refine the build. Edit: such as possibly replacing Gnarled Mass with Kami of the Hunt.

[Nazdakka]

3) G/B Spiritcraft, using Hana Kami/Soulless Revival. The availible cardpool pushes me towards a blocking-oriented soulshift deck using Zuberas and sacrifice dudes to gain card advantage.

Actually, I was envisioning a build more like this one:

3 Hana Kami
2 Hideous Laughter

4 Kodama's Reach
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder

4 Rend Flesh
4 Horobi's Whisper
3 Glacial Ray

3 Soulless Revival
2 Joyous Respite (don't laugh)

3 Scuttling Death
4 Gnarled Mass

2 Mountain
9 Swamp
13 Forest

Gnarled Mass and Scuttling Death are there for random defense, and to help put dampen decks on a clock. You basically pump out crazy mana, then either splice awesome removal spells (laughter, ray, whisper), or use Hana Kami/Soulless Revival to recur Reaches and Respites.

That's just a rough draft, though. There's probably ways to refine the build. Edit: such as possibly replacing Gnarled Mass with Kami of the Hunt.

I might try this, but I've had bad experiances with a very similar deck in Standard. Just after Kamigawa came out I was playing around with a similar concept to this (I used a bunch of Spiritcraft guys like Soilshaper and Thief of Hope for extra survivability), but I just found it was just not very good - sometimes the deck would do nothing whatsoever and randomly lose to awful oppostion, while sometimes it would play some creatures, do some damage, and then just roll over when the opponent did something relavent. I'll give G/B a try though, because I'm not sure the pure Splice deck is a good metagame call due to people playing discard and countermagic.

Now, the Splice deck again. Running Black is very appealling, but I can't get it to work consistantly enough. I'm going back to straight U/R, and it seems pretty good *providing* people don't hate it out. It doesn't like discard at all, and I have a horrible feeling someone might SB Honden of Night's Reach, Sideswipe, or similar nasties.

My current list:

16 Island
10 Mountain

4 Glacial Ray
3 Blind With Anger (U)
3 Ire of Kaminari
4 Reach Through Mists
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Consuming Vortex
4 Psychic Puppetry
3 Toils of Night and Day
2 Sift Through Sands
1 Eerie Possession (U)
1 Petals of Insight (U)
1 Torrent of Stone

Shoot things, draw cards, repeat *many, kill with Rays and Ires to the face. Like I said, I fear discard, untargetables, and enormous creature swarms. This deck is crying out for an arcane version of Pyroclasm, but the nearest thing I can find is Earthshaker (v. expensive, dies immediatly to otherwise dead creature kill) and Hideous Laughter (wrong colour),

[Jacob Orlove]

There's Yamabushi's Storm, but that's not arcane and is only half a pyroclasm.

I think the G/B deck is stronger than you're giving it credit for--Theif of Hope is weak in constructed, as is Soilshaper, and your opposition in this format will be much slower than affinity and the like.

Possible SB options for the deck include Psychic Spear/Distress (with the former being more castable, the latter being recurrable), Wear Away (if you forsee any major artifact/enchantment use), Yamabushi's Storm, random creatures (eg Nezumi Cutthroat), or even 2 island/plains 3 blue/white cards, to replace the red splash with whatever.

[Nazdakka]

Well, I wound up going 3-1 to finish 4th, losing only to the winner in the last round. He was playing a B/G soulshift deck similar to the onne I posted above. I felt a little hard done by with the result - the last match was a complete rout, but given the decks we were playing I felt I had a decent chance of pulling it out 2-1, but then that's why we play the game :-/.  I also had a straight B/G variant of Jacob's Hana Kami deck built, with a few adjustments (added 2 Uproot to give a late game lock), and that deck went 2-1 with 1 bye.

My final sideboard was:
4 Hisoka's Defiance
4 Thoughtbind
4 Yamabushi's Storm
1 Eye of Nowhere
1 Toils of Night and Day
1 Ire of Kaminari

Given what happened, I would have added 4 Yamabushi's Flame to the SB in place of 3 Yamabushi's Storms and the useless Eye of Nowhere - that would probably have given the power I needed to beat the soulshift deck. I'd also have swapped Thoughtbind for Minamo's Meddling, given I expected lots of mirrors - I'd simply forgotten about the Meddling!

[LotusHead]

12 mountain
12 islands

4 Glacial Ray
4 Lava Spike
4 Ire of Kaminari
2 EarthShaker
3 First Volley

1 Sire of the Storm
1 Soratami Savant

4 Reach Trough the Mists
2 Peer Through the Depths
2 Dampen Thoughts
1 Eerie Procession
4 Consuming Vortex

4 other cards.

This is my "Splice Girls" casual Block deck I play with (I actually use 2 Disruption Shoals because they look like Splice Girls, and are Arcane)

It fits in with the Peasant theme, and has good game against a lot of block decks (especially other peasent decks).  This deck, like yours can use Dampen Though on one's self to get fat graveyards for the Ire kill, or to put kill cards in opponent's graveyard.  

Glacial Ray is clearly the MVP of this build, coupled with the 1cc Arcane Spells.  The 4 creatures are all bombs if they resolve, plain and simple.  

Splice Power!