Is Keeper Viable?

[Dozer]

Oath: Oath has more countermagic (including duress) and a kill that can slip under drain.

Why does Oath have more counter than Keeper? As I understand it, it has a bit more space than most archetypes, but why don't Oath builds use that space for something more commonly disruptive (e.g., Chalice)? Can't think of too much off hand, as I am relatively unfamiliar with Oath builds, but it seems like they should be running more disruptive things than counter.

They often do, as Chalice is no longer an uncommon sight in Oath lists. As for the counter magic, Oath never tried to accomodate so many different things, like various removal spells, counters, draw and MD tech. The space for the win condition in Oath has always been taken up by Oath + 2 critters, and that's all the removal and win conditions you need rolled into one tight package. The rest of the deck is just gravy, whereas Keeper never had a way to rely on just a single card to topdeck and win. Until DSC came along...

In my mind, Keeper has been made obsolete by Tinker -> Colossus. Once that kill started showing up in control decklists, those lists started to concentrate on making Tinker happen. More tutors, less other win conditions, and when Gifts came along it exploded right into Tinker's face. If you look at the sample list Stephen provided, you will immediately note a lot of unusual things. Steve ignores a strong "deckbuilding convention" of modern Vintage with his list: No basics, no Tinker -> DSC. Both are unusual. The way of this decklist is what Keeper has always done: Gain a small advantage and hang on to dear life. Every spell needs to pull its worth, the combination of Scrying and Wishes makes that possible.

A decklist like this, and in that I think it is archetypical for Keeper, has no plan to overpower their opponents. Slaver and Gifts as well as (obviously) the combo decks do ridiculous things as fast as they can. And here's the crux: Keeper gets bested in all categories by these decks. Faster win, better draw, more raw power, and just a better mana base.

I am still in love with 4cc. And in the right metagame, it's a very strong deck. Only when you are up to your knees in Slaver, Stax, Gifts and Fish, Keeper of old tries to do too many things and gets none right. And one thing is clear: It's even more unforgiving than combo decks. Once Keeper stumbles, it is almost impossible to get back on track. All of your resources are scarce, and one mistake can leave you bleeding, crushed beneath the weight of superior firepower.

As an addendum, I think the crucial fall-back for Keeper these days is Pithing Needle. Any Keeper/4cc decklist I'd build these days would start with 4 Pithing Needle. It still is an underestimated card in Vintage, in my opinion, and on its own already the embodiement of what Keeper used to be.

Dozer

[zeus-online]

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[CCClark]

Well around here there are 30 person type 1 tournies every Sunday.  Keeper has always been my favorite deck to play.  I can still put together Keeper with all black borders and foils, even the beta duals and power.   I have tried to play Keeper several times and usually do quite well with it if not win the entire thing.   The problem I keep seeing is hitting one of the dedicated decks.   Slaver is tough, real tough.   It's got so many cards you just can't let hit the table and keeper is working with the same amount of countermagic most of the time as Slaver.   Board is the only place you can even the odds.   The same pretty much goes for Stax.   Having only maybe a couple sources of killing artifacts in the main and relying on wishes for the rest makes for a rough game. 

In the end it, comes down to playing a deck that has an answer to everything, but not enough answers in the main to take on a dedicated deck that tries to power through a threat in one type of area.   Keeper is perfectly capable of winning just about any match, you just better be damned good at knowing your own deck and what you are up against. 

Let me try to explain this way.   Remember when Sligh was such a problem against keeper? (Before Chill).   It was just a plain rough match.   That deck was so fast and did what it did so well and refined, it made the match a nightmare and if you won, you won with a struggle the whole way.   That's how it feels against everything now.   These newer generation of decks are a lot like that old matchup, they just feel so dedicated and refined into doing one thing, while keeper is trying to do several and is reliant on being pro-active to everything they do.

I think my main reason for not playing it anymore is Oath.   Oath has more countermagic and a much, much faster kill that's easy to get into play quickly.   I could beat all the rest of the decks unboarded with a fair struggle but Oath is just a monster.   That deck is just plain well suited to take a keeper deck down.    It typically has 4 more counters to shove a 2cc kill spell into play.   Odds are you're not stopping that without some luck.   When someone finds a way to stop Oath easily with one card that keeper can keep in the main, I might bring it back out again. 

Till then Keeper will always be my first love and will sit and wait for it's time to come again.    It's holding it's own and is still viable, but you need the right metagame.

[Smmenen]

Dozer my list has one Island adn 4 Fetch.  You can sit on a fetch and an Island and get Drain mana.  It's true I eschew colossus and Tinker though.

I think that Darkblast is a very nice and important tool for 4cc.  And I really like my Burning Wish inclusion as well. 

[orgcandman]

I've always felt like Duress in Keeper was kind of a crutch.  If you think about it, Keeper is... even against other Mana Drain decks, the control deck because it is slower and has to keep its opponent from 'going off.'  Duress is a card most useful for its ability to soften up a counterwall, and allow the aggressive player to push its key spells through.  Objectively, I don't like it as a one mana card that lets you snatch a threat away from your opponent for two reasons.  Firstly, that is what all of your counterspells do; and secondly, what if you draw Duress in the mid game and Duress your opponent and see nothing relevent, and then they rip Yawgmoth's Will and kill you?

Also Duress forces you to fetch out Underground Seas early, which can be quite terrible especially against decks that play Waste effects.

Superficially I agree with you 100% about duress, and especially about the fact that you're fetching out an early underground, which can be devastating.

However, I DO advocate running 2 of them, and my reasoning is that they're proactive counterspells #9 and #10, and the likelihood that you'll see them early is dimished. Seeing them mid to late game is good in that, you may run into a stalemated gamestate against control, where even breaking a single fetchland puts you behind on mana temporarily enough that your opponent can capitalize and win. It allows you to board it out in games 2/3 for more specialized solutions, AND it doesn't hurt to ditch it to scrying.

I'll re-test it though, because I've lately been feeling like they haven't been pulling as much weight.

[Whatever Works]

Dozer my list has one Island adn 4 Fetch.  You can sit on a fetch and an Island and get Drain mana.  It's true I eschew colossus and Tinker though.

I think that Darkblast is a very nice and important tool for 4cc.  And I really like my Burning Wish inclusion as well. 

I like your list. I would NEVER take it to a tournement because I simply think there are better options in almost all circumstances, but if somebody wanted to build keeper that would not be a horrible start.

However, if your going to run cunning wish you really should drop to 3 skeletal scrying's in the maindeck, 1 in the sideboard. Then with the 1 new availible card slot I would either run 1 maindeck sacred ground, or more likely I would throw in a snow covered island.

The BIG problem keeper has it that it is reactionary (I know there are several reactionary decks), but it is a reactionary deck that cant "go off"... I guess you could have a large yawg will late game, but it cant play like meandeck gifts and just say oops! I just brainstormed into Tinker/Time Walk... or just gifts EoT... w/FoW... and then know that your opponent will not get another turn.

Kyle L

[Dozer]

Dozer my list has one Island adn 4 Fetch.  You can sit on a fetch and an Island and get Drain mana.  It's true I eschew colossus and Tinker though.

I think that Darkblast is a very nice and important tool for 4cc.  And I really like my Burning Wish inclusion as well. 

I don't want to be misunderstood here -- I like that list. It's just the low number of basic lands that caught my eye. Of course you can have Drain mana this way, but the basics count is still significantly lower than in other current decks, which are almost fully operational under Wastelands and/or BtB. Burning Wish is an auto-include, and I do not question it, as well as the Darkblast which is a perfectly reasonable inclusion.

CCClark and Whatever Works have already established what I would say is the answer to the initial question "is Keeper viable":

There are better options in almost all circumstances.

Leaving aside the sentimental reasons for playing 4cc, I'd ask: What does Keeper do better than its successors, Slaver and Gifts? At the moment, the only one I can think of is "get rid of creatures" due to the inclusion of white. If that is a relevant concern in your metagame, AND you want to play a control deck, AND the aggro decks are faster than Slaver or Gifts, then 4cc would be a good choice. Maybe. If TnT took off somewhere again, I'd probably rather play 4cc than Gifts if I was looking for a control deck.

4cc originally was a board-control deck. It had a good amount of power against Combo, but against a deck with no permanents, it had plenty of dead cards. Looking at the Big 3 today, the only real permanent control measures Keeper should need are Wasteland/ Shaman and Darkblast (against Welders). But as a true, non-hybrid control deck, 4cc is much to vulnerable to non-basic land hate and even more so against gaps in the barrier. When you could halt an entire offense with Moat or slowly pull ahead with Abyss, life was great for a deck like Keeper. Where are today's 2-for-1's? How do you pull ahead in virtual card advantage nowadays? Balance, Abyss, Moat, even Exalted Angel are great examples of massive carriers of virtual CA, dealing x-for-1's left and right. But for the areas that matter today -- hand, stack and graveyard --, these x-for-1's are scarce or too slow. Take Mind Twist as an example. For the grave, there is Tormod's Crypt, but apart from that?

And in addition to that, the spells 4cc has to contend against are just more powerful earlier. Sure, Scrying can be more powerful than TfK, but it takes longer. A Toolbox-approach with Wishes has a solution for everything, but often just not early enough. 4cc and Keeper always had to survive the early game, and that has become harder than ever. Not only are the Aggro decks pushing through in the first four turns, but now the combo-control decks try to end the game right there as well.

There may be a new multi-colored control deck out there, but for the moment I see none being on par with the rest of the field. 2-for-1's are crucial, and that's why I was pointing out Needle as a card I wouldn't leave out of a Keeper decklist.

Dozer

[dicemanx]

It is just no fun when you are purely the reactive deck - the modern control mirrors feature decks that have "instant-win" options while you don't.

If Keeper wants to compete, I think it has to turn towards hybridization. I was a big fan of the deck up to a year ago, when I became frustrated with the fact that I had all the answers but couldn't draw them consistently when needed (ie there are no wrong threats just wrong answers), and that if I did gain a momentary initiative I couldn't always put my opponent away. My answer last autumn was to hybridize 4CC with Oath - I cut back some of the creature removal and cards like Angel/DoJ and added 3-4 Oaths and 2-3 creatures (2 + blessing or 3 with no Blessing), one of them Colossus to go with the alternate plan - Tinker. The creatures didn't have to be the current Oath regulars (SotN and Akroma) - they could be castable creatures like Morphling, Hydra, or one that I tried for fun - Crosis the Purger).

The other way I see it suceeding via a hybrid is to go the Gifts route - add some number of Gifts and Recoup and win via Bruning Wish or Tinker. This of course would beg the question: why go hybrid when you could just play straight Oath or Gifts? Well, the answer is flexibility and lack of dependence on one strategy, and having effective answers against any archetype. You sacrifice proficiency of accomplishing a specific goal, but you gain the ability to better fight against plans that would stop the attainment of that goal in its tracks.

[Smmenen]

Dozer my list has one Island adn 4 Fetch.  You can sit on a fetch and an Island and get Drain mana.  It's true I eschew colossus and Tinker though.

I think that Darkblast is a very nice and important tool for 4cc.  And I really like my Burning Wish inclusion as well. 

I like your list. I would NEVER take it to a tournement because I simply think there are better options in almost all circumstances, but if somebody wanted to build keeper that would not be a horrible start.

However, if your going to run cunning wish you really should drop to 3 skeletal scrying's in the maindeck, 1 in the sideboard. Then with the 1 new availible card slot I would either run 1 maindeck sacred ground, or more likely I would throw in a snow covered island.

Kyle I think you and Diceman have gotten it wrong.

Your understanding of the basic theory is correct - the problem with Keeper is that isn't hybridized, but you're mistaken the fact that it isn't hybridized for an inability to seal the deal once it has control.  I don't think Diceman has futzed around much with 4cc, but I played with it alot in testing in 2004 (even late in 2004 - simply becuase i test every deck - I try to gain expertise on every deck in the format). 

You see, the thing is that every one of these control decks shares the same 45 cards or so.  Those 45 cards in many respects are the most important: 4 drdain, 4 fow, ancestral, will, dt, walk, 4 brainstorm, etc. 

Put simply, I think this deck already is hybridized, it's just hard to see it.  Why?  Becuase Yawgmoth's Will exists.  Basically, once this deck builds enough steam, it will Yawg Will or Mind Twist and when it does that, it will be so far ahead that it might as well have just played Gifts or whatever else it could have played. 

Your confusing the fact that keeper was a totally reactionary contrrol deck like mono blue with the fact that those things don't really exist if you have Yawgmoth's Will in a deck.

Second, I compeltely disagree about Scrying in board.

One of the key plays that makes this deck not suck compared to other decks is that you can like turn two eot scry for two with three mana on the board (essentially third),  You always want a scrying in hand so you can do a small scrying, a big one, whatever you want.  That's the card you want to see ASAP.  I would never wish for a scrying.  That's ludicrious. 

[dicemanx]

Your understanding of the basic theory is correct - the problem with Keeper is that isn't hybridized, but you're mistaken the fact that it isn't hybridized for an inability to seal the deal once it has control.

Lets not be so black and white here and trivialize the argument - I used the term "initiative" rather than "has control". If you are at the state of "has control" that's suggesting that you will be virtually winning no matter what your opponent does, so your bombs/kill cards are irrelevant. I'm thinking more of the situations where there is back and forth action with windows of opportunity for both sides, but while Keeper has certain game ending spells it can play (Will mainly; Mindtwist and balance are bombs but are situational), the opposing control decks have a far greater number/or likelihood of being in a position to resolve bombs. In other words, Gifts is a far superior Will deck then Keeper can ever dream of becoming, while CS can end the game with Will or Slaver. Oath likewise will likely be well on its way to winning if it can drop and keep an Oath around. That's what I'm focusing on - a spell upgrade, so that instead of dropping an Angel or cycling Decree I can drop an Oath or play a Gifts and hammer them while I have the chance (or before I die to their strategy).

With my suggestion of a hybrid strategy, you are of course not diminishing the strength of Will; instead you are upgrading your win conditions and invalidating the need for certain answers by increasing the number of bombs in the deck. This also allows you to more effectively combat the "weaker" decks like Goblin aggro. When thinking back to 2004 there were enough R aggro/burn and G/R aggro decks that would give Keeper enough trouble as it was, and my inclusion of Oaths radically changed that, because I now had cards that gave a big boost against aggro strategies as well as being enough of a bomb against other control decks. These days there are fewer aggro strategies to worry about - instead the control decks have all become focused on very quick "combo" finishes, so that too needs to be addressed.

[Whatever Works]

Steve you got some good points about your analysis of 4cc that I can definatly relate to (I played the deck solidly for almost 6 months to win multiple tournements), but I find that no matter how you look at it Keeper has flaws that go far beyond deck design.

1.) For Keeper to succeed it has to be piloted by a very good player. Not many good players have any interest in playing the deck.

2.) Keeper runs alot of broken cards and is amazing at keeping board control, but that isnt as important now as it was 2 years ago.

3.) Keepers best matchup aggro no longer really exists.

4.) Keeper gets outdrawn by alot of decks making it difficult to win the control mirror

5.) Keeper obviously can go broke with Yawgmoth's will. BUT EVERY DECK CAN, and most decks can do it better then keeper in a mid to late game situation.

Kyle

[Smmenen]

I really like the term initiative because I think it encapsulates the nature of Vintage - which is that what matters isn't so much who can seal the deal, but who can gain initiative.  Once any deck has a decent in game "initiative" its almost impossible for any other deck to recover.

I think that 4cc big advantage in terms of fighting for initiative is the flexibility of Scrying, and that's basically it. 

[Klep]

Let's define initiative here.  What is it?  Is it like tempo?  Is it like Flores' "velocity"? What?  There's no use arguing a point if no one knows what it means.

[Godder]

In chess, initiative refers to the control of the action such as it may be, and generally involves the ability (either short or long term) to create threats pointed at whoever doesn't have the initiative. To put it another way, who is dancing to whose tune determines who has the initiative.

Taking that to the simplest example in Magic, Aggro vs Control. Aggro will almost certainly start with the initiative thanks to the ability to create lots of threats quickly, usually in the form of cheap creatures. If Control deals with the first rush, they will probably have the initiative thereafter, since Aggro will probably be dancing to Control's tune, as it were. There are exceptions depending on board position, cards in hand and life totals, but that gives you some idea of what initiative is.

[dicemanx]

"Initiative" is a term borrowed from chess. The side that has the initiative is the "attacker", while the opposing side is relegated to the role of the defender or counter-attacker. However, this doesn't mean that the player that has the initiative has won or is very close to winning - he merely has the opportunity to advance his game state and make progress towards achieving his goals. Intitiatives can be long lasting or temporary, but sometimes a flurry of activity results in nothing in the end. The critical part is to try to convert your initiative into some sort of tangible gain, whether it is material gain, a positional advantage, or mate.

In Magic, I consider the player who has the initiative as the player who is either putting pressure on the opponent or has a window of opportunity to resolve spells and advance his plans. The idea is then to convert the initiative into something more tangible, like drawing more cards and working on getting a counter wall up or locking up the ground to prevent the opponent from attacking you ("materialistic gains" in chess as a fair comparison), or alternately setting up a knock-out punch like Willing into a win or punching through enough damage ("mate" in chess). Where the comparison starts breaking down is that the process of converting an initiative into advantage(s) tends to be more automatic in magic, whereas in chess there is a greater sense of struggle and even an uncertainty whether a certain line of attack will result in success. For instance, if Keeper and another control deck battle through a war of attrition and neither has much of a hand and no firm control of the game, the Keeper player could rip a Scrying, cast it (has initiative), and possibly convert it into something more tangible (some counters and card drawing). This is a very simple and trivial case - what's more interesting is the nature and quality of the cards that the deck with the initiative is trying to resolve. This means that the struggle in converting initiative into tangible advantages occurs long before the game is played - it goes back to the deck building process and putting in ways of maximizing your chances of of a successful conversion.

And this is exactly what I was debating - increasing the number of bombs and game ending plays when you do gain the initiative via hybrid strategies.



Edit: Godder gave a nice example of initiative in the early game. Now imagine that in that scenario, to turn the tide and wrest control of the initiative away from the aggro player, the Keeper player resolves an Oath early instead of a Plow or maybe Balance or some other removal spell. He has contained his opponent's initiative in a very significant way, instead of resorting to an attrition war. In this specific case, Keeper has counterpunched instead of merely defending.

[Zherbus]

Objectively, I don't like it as a one mana card that lets you snatch a threat away from your opponent for two reasons.  Firstly, that is what all of your counterspells do; and secondly, what if you draw Duress in the mid game and Duress your opponent and see nothing relevent, and then they rip Yawgmoth's Will and kill you?

When I used it, it was a metagame call. It wasn't meant to push through anything, but rather as more of a FoW #5-8. It was the next best thing without running trash like Foil or Misdirection, as I was playing in a 2-Land [Insert combo theme here] heavy environment. The games were being lost well before Mana Drain could get online, so I augmented the decks with Duress (like Control Slaver at the time) to survive the early game explosiveness that was only previously controlled by an opening hand containing FoW.

Also Duress forces you to fetch out Underground Seas early, which can be quite terrible especially against decks that play Waste effects.

The metagame at the time did not see Wastelands except for in mirrors.

Also, I'll leave with a quote from my last article on SCG that explained the rationale...

Duress

There was a time when Duress was decidedly not worth the card slots in Keeper. Of course, the last time it was discussed, the fundamental turn was closer to 3-4. Duress provides very little for the long game, but is very powerful in the short game which is what the developing Vintage format is fundamentally based around currently. From a design standpoint, it originally came into being as a Red Elemental Blast substitute in the sideboard. After it eventually made it to the maindeck, Duress became a natural fit that was great against everything out there. Duress is to hit your opponents Oath, Intuition, Lotus, Dark Ritual, Draw Seven, Ancestral, or whatever turn one so that they are stunted. It's not meant to cripple your opponent, but to slow them down to the speed of 3cC's game.

Justin Walters, a.k.a. Saucemaster wrote:

"To add to this, one of the deck's biggest strengths is the way that Duress and Scrying interact. Scrying, for all its efficiency, is still relatively expensive in Type 1 terms. You want Scrying in the mid-game, typically on turn 3 after Drain or on EOT turn 4. With Force/Drain alone, you will sometimes stunt your opponent's game plan enough for this to still be relevant to the game in many matchups. With Duress/Force/Drain, I'd go so far as to say that you usually stunt your opponent's game plan enough for it to be relevant. Duress is great at giving you a slight disruptive edge in the early midgame. Past builds of 4cC weren't really built to convert that temporary advantage into a permanent one, and in a number of games it would slip away before you could convert it into a game win, which typically made Duress a suboptimal choice. This 3cC build, however, is much better geared to convert that temporary early game advantage into a lasting midgame advantage."

So there you have it. I have no idea if it's good now, as I haven't so much as looked at a T8 list in close to a year. However, the choice to include it then was not only a sound theory, but one that paid off.

EDIT: I played with a basic Swamp back then too. Fetching that out in the mirror was absolutely key if I recall correctly.

[PucktheCat]

Why doesn't Keeper run Tinker -> DSC?  I understand that the last time the deck was seriously updated that finisher wasn't highly regarded, but it seems a natural way to add explosiveness to the deck.

The dominant Keeper decks always had great win conditions.  Early on "The Deck" used a tough, resilient Angel to win the game.  That may seem pretty weak by today's standards, but it was a pretty competitive with the other creatures available at the time.  Later it used Mirror Universe, then Morphling to end games quickly and reliably.  All of these were very fast and efficient kills in the environment they saw play in.  All of them were quite capable of stealing games that the deck had no right to win.  Without that I think the deck is doomed to fail.

You'll notice that the biggest distinguishing factor between modern Vintage Drain/Control decks is the win condition.  We even name them by their kill cards (Control Slaver, Oath, Meandeck Gifts).  These are the decks with the game stealing win conditions now.  First turn Tinker or Oath is the direct decendant of the Angel Gambit.

Leo

[Zherbus]

Puck, again, I can't answer for today, but Welders made Tinker very risky. There was a time when we ran Colossus and Big Platz, and they did fine... except in matches where 3/4cC was already weakened.

... or so I remember.

[Harkius]

Perhaps I am missing something obvious here, but is Tinker/Colossus really a viable idea without Welders of your own in play? If you spend the time and effort Tinkering the beast out, only to have your opponent Weld it back into your graveyard, you have accomplished nothing. Remember, Welder targets your opponent's stuff, too. As such, Tinker is a relatively worthless idea against anyone running Welder (i.e., CS or potentially Stax).

That is the reason that I wouldn't bother with it. If your environment is mystically lacking in these, though, it would be a fine replacement for the Decrees of Justice or Exalted Angels.

Harkius

[dicemanx]

As such, Tinker is a relatively worthless idea against anyone running Welder (i.e., CS or potentially Stax).

In a deck running up to 4 Skeletal Scrying? Thats a pretty dismissive statement to make...(not to mention Keeper has creature removal and could play Pithing needles as well).

[Harkius]

I guess maybe you should explain to me what Skeletal Scrying has to do with Tinker, then. As I understand it, the two have little to nothing to do with each other. If you simply mean that you could remove the artifacts in your graveyard from the game to prevent the resolution, then I agree, that would probably help. Nevertheless, Darksteel Colossus still seems a bit fragile to be Tinkering into play with this deck.

I am well aware of the creature removal of Keeper, and am aware of the presence or absence of Pithing Needle. However, I am equally aware that the forum, in general, already sees Keeper as a dead archetype and as a janky list. I don't see that adding these two cards in place of more...stable win conditions will help matters. The issue just comes down to this: Keeper is already fragile. Giving yourself a win condition that can be nuked by Welder seems like a dangerous prospect, at best. Many people running Welder will be running Mox Monkeys, as well. Then, it takes a mere activation of the Monkey to nuke a Mox, and your Colossus is gone. Without a Welder of your own, it is gone, probably for good, unless you decide to use Will to play it from your graveyard.

As a result, I don't think that my statement was that dismissive. While it is true that I hadn't considered the likelihood of using Scrying to prevent the activation of the Welder, I think that it is equally (at least) important to remember the scadloads of anti-artifact hate in the environment. It only takes one artifact to switch with the Colossus, and then it is probably gone for good. And, if you want to run Welders of your own, you probably might as well just be running Slaver, instead of Keeper.

My thoughts on the matter.
Harkius

[Clown of Tresserhorn]

The kill in Keeper or any control deck for that matter is YawgWill. The actual win condition is pretty irrelevant. When you gain advantage through scryings/will you'll stay ahead enough to put the game away. That said, Tinker-->DSC is cheaper than decree, doesn't require you fetch out a tundra, and can randomly win you games against decks like fish and stax.  Welder is a pain yes, but Keeper should be fighting to keep it off the table anyways, and if it resolves, you have up to 6 outs to deal with him (not including scrying). Shaman isn't really an issue if you just hold back 1 mox before you tinker.

I'm not saying tinker/colossus is better than decree, but it's certainly better than you give credit for.

-Bob

[dicemanx]

I see no major issue with running Tinker Colossus in Keeper, especially given that Scryings help against Welders. In fact, Keeper seems to be the *best* candidate for Tinker-DSC given that it has so many outs against Welders and given that it needs a better clock/bigger bomb against certain decks. Whether it will make any difference in reviving the archetype is another matter alltogether.

Also, I disagree that there is a "scadload" of anti-artifact hate in the environment, and as far as Gorilla Shamans go not every CS list runs them (whether they should is a different issue). Even if they do run Shamans you'll likely face 1 or 2, which means its hardly worth worrying about them resolving *both* a Shaman and Welder against your Tinkered DSC with you not having an answer to stop them (and having a Mox in play to boot). 

The kill in Keeper or any control deck for that matter is YawgWill. The actual win condition is pretty irrelevant.

I am in total disagreement with this statement. Most control decks in the modern environment, aside from having Yawgwill as a game ending option, utilize other potentially game ending bombs (Tinker, Oath, Slaver etc). Having a multifaceted approach is superior than relying on Yawgwill as your big play. The win conditions *do* matter in Keeper.

[orgcandman]

The advantage to decree over tinker is one of timing. Decree comes down at your opponents EOT just before you take your turn. It also draws you a card, rather than costing you a card. It's also uncounterable.

There IS something to be said for a win condition that seals the deal in 2 turns. However, decree will seal the deal on an unstable board, and provides cheap chumpers. Also, it IS 100% possible to dump huge angels on the board, and seal the deal in a 2-3 turns also.

The greatest part of decree is the "Suprise, you're fucked" factor. Decree basically says "I'm at least getting in 4-7 dmg, plus I'm drawing a free card" where tinker says "Here's an 11/11 dude that you can't destroy."

Tinker gets hit by reb, decree COULD get hit by stifle, but stifle can be played around.

Also, when you draw DSC in your opening hand, it forces you to use a brainstorm + fetch ASAP to get rid of it. Decree can sit in your hand, or you can cycle it away.

Just some observations.

[forests failed you]

I had some success playing Keeper over the Summer.  I played both Decree and Tinker/Colossos in my deck.  However, I also played with other targets for my Tinker. 

In a silver bullet answer deck like Keeper, Tinker becomes much stronger when it is not only a win condition, but also a tutor.  To be honest, most of the time I was searching out Isochron's Scepter or Crucible of worlds with the Tinker, using those cards to take control of the game; and then recasting Tinker for Colossos with Yawgmoth's Will.

Tinker is just such a grossly over powered card that I would be hard pressed not to play it in a control deck.  Plus, Tinker plus tutors gives you a very solid game plan against random aggro stuff like FCG or Fish.  They really don't like it when you tinker that guy down; whereas Decree is often too slow to be particularly effective in those match ups.  Adding versitility to a deck is almost never a bad thing, in my opinion. 

[Harkius]

I never meant to imply that Tinker, in and of itself, was a bad card. My apologies if that was the message that I was sending. Quite the opposite. The effects of Tinker were well demonstrated by Finkel, amongst a multitude of other people. Tinker is abusive. So abusive that it almost isn't cute. But, the Colossus, on the other hand, is a slot I feel would be better used for something else. Something that I would feel a little more comfortable relying upon for the win. As is, DSC is a big, scary guy, and that is nice, but it is also the kind of thing that becomes a target for anything your opponent can do about it (StP, Welder, etc. If any other played solutions remain).

So, I think Tinker has a place, but Colossus doesn't.

Harkius

[dicemanx]

Tinker and DSC are a package deal in decks other than combo or CS. With respect to Keeper, there's little reason to laud Tinker while claiming DSC has no place in the deck. And while I can appreciate orgcandman's arguments regarding Decree vs Tinker-DSC, perhaps the only way to elevate Keeper to competitive status (assuming that its not competitive already - hard to say without much empirical evidence) is to increase the power of its win conditions even at the cost of increased vulnerability or the liability that comes from drawing DSC. We can give DoJ (or Exalted) all the praise that we want, but if Keeper is not successful against the field, then what good is that praise?

I also think its very easy to overlook just how many games DSC can outright steal for you in the early game from decks that would otherwise give you problems, such as Fish or Goblins or Stax (you can even race Oath if you Tinker before they get Oath down). 

[forests failed you]

Whenever I think the metagame will permit me, I break out this list.  I took home at least four pieces of power over the Summer/Fall playing this list, and I still think that it is quite good.  In fact, Samite Healer has informed me he took second place playing this list just last week at a Mox tournement in the New England area.  However, he told me that he made some changes to the sideboard.  I'm no exactly sure what they were, but I do remember that he had added Pithing Needle to the sideboard, which is definately something I would add in a metagame featuring so many Goblin Welders and Gorilla Shamans.

3cc Keeper List, by Brian DeMars

//Counters
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

//Drawing
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fact or Fiction
3 Skeletal Scrying
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Sensei's Divining Top

//Tutoring
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
2 Cunning Wish
1 Tinker

//Removal
1 Mind Twist
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Disenchant
1 Balance

//Miscellany
1 Time Walk
1 Isochron Scepter
1 Crucible of Worlds

//Win
1 Darksteel Colossus
2 Decree of Justice

//Artifact mana
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring

//Lands
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Tundra
2 Island
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds

2 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria

//Sideboard
SB: 2 Energy Flux
SB: 1 Swords to Plowshares
SB: 2 Disenchant
SB: 1 Stifle
SB: 2 Arcane Laboratory
SB: 2 Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 2 Duress
SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt (or, 1 Coffin Purge, 1 Tormod's Crypt)
SB: 1 Skeletal Scrying

I wrote a primer for this list a while back.  If anybody would like to check it out in regards to figuring out why I made specific card choices, as well as general play stratagy feel free to check it out.  The forum is called "3CC Keeper, building and playing it right" and it is in the open forum. 

One thing I would probably change about this list if I were to play it today would be to cut the two sideboard Blue Blasts for Pithing Needle.  At the time I was playing this deck there were a lot of FCG decks floating around and I found that the Blasts were Necessary to counter Goblin Spells that had relevent comes into play abilities; in particular, Swords just didn't get the job done against  guys like Kiki Jiki, Ringleader, Recruiter and Siege Gang Commander.  However, FCG has  subsided and I'd be much more interested in improving my match up against Slaver and Gifts.  Perhaps some number of Sideboard Disrupts, Mana Leaks, or Duress would be useful.  I'm not a big fan of Duress in this deck myself for reasons that I have already stated, but a lot of players think it is quite good and versitile.  I will admit that it is good against combo.

The main reason that I would play this deck, and the main reason I did play this deck is that it has a very strong match up against Agro and Stax.  Disenchant is an absolute beating, as is Energy Flux from the board backed up by counter Magic.  I'll admit cutting Red does hurt because you lose access to Shaman and Reb, but I think that the  better Mana Base is well worth that concession.

Though you don't have REBs to counter opposing TFKs and Gifts, you have to keep in mind that they can't really use REB against you to counter your key spells either because your draw engine is based around Skeletal Scrying.  Basically REB is an answer to your counter magic.  Furthermore, if I were playing Slaver or GIfts I wouldn't bring in REBS for his match up, and when I was playing Keeper I always thought it was a boarding error when my opponents brought REBS in against me.  For whatever it is worth.  Nothing made me happier than Casting an early Mind Twist and randomly hitting REB from my opponent's hand.

[orgcandman]

I'm not saying there's no merit to Tinker->DSC in multi-colored control decks. However, in decks where you only have 1 or 2 targets, at least one of those targets being uncastable by hand, there doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to increase your vulnerability and hurt your Card Advantage engine by including tinker. In a deck where you have 3+ targets (such as CS) or a deck that can combo-win (Gifts/combo) obviously, tinkering out DSC/Fusillade/Jar/Slaver/Titan/trike etc.. all have merit, and in fact, can abuse tinker. But, when it's only going to go for 1 card that is otherwise a burden (IE: you have no discard outlets, not enough mana sources to be able to hardcast him unless the game has gone super late, and your only way of removing him from your hand is via brainstorm + shuffle) then your win condition is costing you 2 cards. This in and of itself isn't bad, but coupled with the fact that DSC is easily dealt with through 1 mana, 1 card answers and it becomes much harder to justify.

Brian's deck is different in that it has multiple other targets for the tinker, such as scepter or crux. The advantages that these two decks can supply far outweigh their downsides, but again, that isn't to say they are neccesarily the best. More that, because of them you include the best tutor for them in tinker, and because you have tinker, you can now justify DSC.

It's really justifying the inclusion of tinker into your deck first. Once you can realistically say "Yes, tinker belongs here" then justifying DSC becomes cake. Since my multi-color list is more traditional, I can't justify tinker, and as such, can't justify DSC.

As far as win conditions bringing keeper back in style, that's the reason why keeper is good right now. Everyone is running the same 1-2 win conditions. Keeper can deal with these through it's amazing amounts of board control. That's really why keeper is viable.

[MaxxMatt]

I don't understand why, on heart, if someone would play a control-board deck such as 4C-C/3C-C/Keeper, none come out to these conclusions.

Wastelands are useless ( someway redundant? )
Stripmine is good but slow
Shaman is good but not game ending
Needle is good but not game ending
Red is good when dealing multiple threats with single cards
White has only Balance

Put ALL those data in a single deck, shake a bit the cards and you would play a deck that, swapping Skeletals for Gifts Ungiven, adding blue winner and minimizing off colors roles, can put out the best control board available by Keeper, as fast as all the previously proposed decks cannot do.

Would you like to play Shamans?
Would you like to recur Strips?
Would you like to bit opponents down since the early game?
Would you like to avoid stupid off-color issues?

Put Tinker, Demonic, Recoup and a Shaman on the Gifts pile and you would INSTANTLY acquire the best "Keeper-esque" game situation ever assembled.

Because we are not talking about lists, I cannot argue any more, but seeing AGAIN Wasteland, Decrees, Skeletals and Shamans in decks with SO MANY duals and SO MANY colours make my heart cry in agony...

Minimize the deck's inherent flaws SINCE HIS BASIS and try to use the best tools available, without being nostalgic.

2005 faded out slowly but we still has his precious tool: Gifts Ungiven.
It has been largely abused by really good blue based decks.
Mute Keeper to achieve the same goals but with it as winning tool.

Hate the opponent's grave with Furnaces/Crypts
Hate the opponent's board with Shamans/Needle/Stripmine
Hate the opponent's draw engine with additional drawers ( TFKs or a complete set of Gifts )

Isn't it... Keeper?   

MaxxMatt