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Anusien
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« on: October 12, 2006, 03:01:27 pm » |
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The main reason to play this is because it's an aggro deck that really beats the everliving shit out of Control decks. The two main control options are UW, which can't beat Flare (and so I haven't tested versus this), and UR Tron. You have 8 ways to shut down Wildfire and you have 8 counters backup.
// Lands
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Flagstones of Trokair
5 Island
5 Plains
4 Adarkar Wastes
// Creatures
4 Drifter il-Dal
4 Knight of the Holy Nimbus
3 Serra Avenger
4 Savannah Lions
4 Paladin en-Vec
4 Soltari Priest
// Spells
4 Remand
4 Spell Snare
4 Psionic Blast
3 Unstable Mutation
That's where I am right now. I took Michael Flores's gauntlet list and started tweaking. The first thing was the mana. He had 2 Chanceries, and they don't fit. Not only do they cramp your development (you really want all your mana each turn, which I'll discuss more regarding Flagstones), but you can really only use UW in counters. You cna only use UW in playing Paladins proactively, which ends up wasting a lot of your mana. He also had 3 Gemstone Mine; I'd definitely consider Tendo Ice Bridge if it were legal but it only took a couple of games where my lands were slowly ticking away and I kicked it to the curb. It also gets exponentially worse without the bouncelands.
Flores has 4 Flagstones of Trokair, and I feel that the color balance is pretty good right now (I'm thinking of cutting an Island, because you have so much that requires WW, but this really needs testing against Zoo to see how much the life loss hurts). The real issue is that sometimes you get a double Flagstone draw/hand/curve and it basically takes away your entire turn 2 to fix your mana. That shouldn't happen more than 10% of games or so (probably less), but in the ones it does it takes up an entire turn. The problem is that there are going to be a lot of matchups where you want the full 4. They're nice against Wildfire and early versus Smallpox. However, given that you beat the former, and I haven't seen anything good from the latter, I may scale these down.
Counters:
Flores originally had 4 Mana Leak and 4 Remand. I feel with 8 counters there are 3 possible configurations, but these arise from three options: Rune Snag, Remand, Spell Snare. Rune Snag just feels strictly better than Mana Leak. Running your own Rune Snags to make the opposing ones better in control is a non-factor; you rarely have 2 back but not 4 (and without your own counter). On the flipside, piggybacking their Rune Snags will win you games versus UW Control or Tron in the late game where they could pay 3 but not 6 or 8.
4 Remand, 4 Rune Snag
4 Spell Snare, 4 Rune Snag
4 Spell Snare, 4 Remand
I think those are the three valid configurations. I'm really leaning towards one of the configurations with Spell Snare, so you can use your counters defensively. This lets you play a turn 3 Knight of the Holy Nimbus with counter-backup, which is something the original configuration can't do.
At the moment I'm on Snare/Remand because of tempo and cantripping, but there are some matchups you need to be able to play the control role, and with Remand/Spell Snare you can't ever stop a Hypnotic Specter. I think this depends on the metagame, but I'm open to arguments.
Creatures:
I want a 4th Avenger, but it does deceptively awful things for your curve. The main contention is Drifter il-Dal. I haven't done a lot of thinking over it; he hurts your development, but he's a genuine threat, which is something no other 1 drop seems to do.
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