Worst Shop Deck Ever - with tournament report!

[vroman]

I was beginning to become bored with ubastax and type 1 in general, so on April fools day, I threw loads of different crap rares into ubastax (as if there werent already enough in the established list) and to my surprise came up with something that actually tested fairly well. so after eschewing virtually everything stax-ish I ended up with this embarrasing pile.
Before you skip this thread as just another joke pet deck, I will spoil the surprise and tell you I top8d with this in chicago on saturday 4-7. not the most thrilling endorsement (it was 21 person tourney) but not totally dismissable.

4 workshop
4 wasteland
4 barbarian ring
3 mountain
1 strip
1 academy
5 mox
1 lotus
1 sol ring
1 mana crypt
4 bazaar
4 welder
4 null rod
3 crucible
3 moxmonkey
2 karn
3 words of war
4 serum powder
4 jesters scepter
3 mycosinth latice
1 trisphere
side
4 tormod
3 heretic
3 slice+dice
5 redblast

first the recognizable parts. the manabase is very familiar, I cut factories (painfully) to make room for more red sources. if you'll notice, I've come to agree with the position that mana vault is not very good in stax. burning single use mana accel to drop permanents that arent necropotence is not very efficient (ie who uses ritual to cast turn 1 hypnotic specter anymore?). at least black lotus can get you welder + 3-drop artifact turn 1. also with the addition of 4xquasi-mana-source serum powder, I can feel justified in dropping one of the restricted artifact manars.
then theres bazaars, yes, and crucibles, yes, yes, and welders and null rods, of course. then from that point on the deck rejects your reality and substitutes its own. rather than go into the esoteric illogic of why these cards are in the deck I will just glance over how they performed in the event.
so now a brief tournament recap. we brought 3 people; myself, Blaine christiansen (manaless ichorid), and Jacob Riehm (RBW man-prison). we all made the cut. Jacob got prize (3/4). so to summarize the Team Ogre stats:
-3 players
-3 archetypes
-12 bazaars
-0 blue cards
-3 top8s
any questions?

my matches:
rd 1 - WB fish: win 2-1
rd 2 - WU fish: win 2-0
rd 3 - RBW men: lose 1-2
rd 4 - UB fish: win by opponents absence
rd 5 - slaver: draw
top 8 - slaver: lose 1-2

so basically I beat up on a lot of fish decks, and then got schooled by slaver brokenness. confidence is high I wouldve beaten the UBfish deck if he had shown up in time. since I dont have to worry about jotun grunt, words of war in first gear is game over for them. post side I have 5 single R kill spells.
how to fix slaver matchup? hm. slaver has always been incredibly dificult to hate out. it has so many distinctly different strategic goals: welder; drain->hardcast robot; tinker; yawg will. any one of which can win the game straight out, and any hate cards designed to nix one strategy are usually irrelevent to one or more of the others, and then its rock-paper-scissors if you draw the worthwhile trump cards at the right time. for starters 5 red blasts are way overkill. this card is really only superb against gifts and most fish builds. its rare that playing workshop will afford you the opportunity to perpetually keep red mana open and have atleast 1 card in hand to stave off that EOT gifts you least expect or topdecked tinker. its really hard to play the reactive control game with this archetype. redblasts main tactical advantage vs slaver is to protect bomb locks v drain/force. words-war and b-ring are quite efficient, but not the swiftest means to eliminate major threat like welder. so maybe turn 2 of those redblasts into good old fashioned Lava Darts. with 4 tormod and 3 heretic, that should be a fairly robust if not guaranteed anti-slaver package.

among the oddball cards:
I countered 7 spells with Jester's Scepter! the RFGing ability in and of itself was never relevent, mainly bc I didnt face any combo. at one point I had 2 J-scepters in play w 4 mana open, and due to land-fetching, enemy knew generally what was underneath (all threats) and was effectively locked bc I could counter almost any guy he cast.
Myco-Latice never hit play, though tested strongly online as fairly dramatic way to end the game w welder+null rod or one sided geddon w shaman/karn. plus it has some weird niche effects on its own like shutting down force of will and merchant scroll and ichorids.
Words of War was MVP stomping fish decks and catching all kinds of counters and discard. even sans bazaar this enchantment is a slaughterhouse against decks based around small men. what else would you rather draw than an endless series of Shocks against fish?
I serum powder muliganed only once this tournament and as always I got a strictly better hand. also having permanents that tap for mana, even severely under-powered ones, is never bad; as this made casting and using karn/words-war noticably easier.
karn was awesome as always and having 2 in the deck made milling into him all the more likely.
only 3 crucibles wasnt so bad, esp after dropping factory.

is this deck as terrible as it looks? did my impeccable playskill pilot an otherwise dreadful pile to top 8 alone? unknown. I think perhaps M-Latice is too clunky since it does nearly nothing on its own, and has the small chance of completely backfiring if they can float mana for hurkyl et al. this would also eliminate the necesity for shaman+karn. esp the latter since I have quad n-rod to consider, though I find the negative interaction there to hardly ever be an issue. nevertheless that frees up 8 cards to run two or more traditional workshop elements like chalice/tangle/smoky/etc. but why would I want to do that? thought prison main? when historical prudence and accurate testing results are totally thrown to the wind, anything is possible!

[Odd mutation]

Hi,

Congratulations on the strong finish.

Nice to see the Words of War was working out! Whitewolf and I have been testing those ourselves.

Robrecht.

[yespuhyren]

Congrats on the T8.  Really interesting list.  The only question I have is how does this test against non fish decks?   I am not knocking you, this deck really made me think a lot now.  I am just curious how it would have done against other decks.  Again, its hard for me to say this and not sound like I'm trying to kick dirt on you, because I'm not, but you only won two of the 4 matches and it was 2-0 against fish and 0-2 against RBW men and Slaver.  I think if we can figure out what cards would help make other matches easier, you could probably cut some stuff to strengthen this deck.  All in all its not enough games and matches to judge it, meaning its not enough to dismiss it.  I think you might be on to something with Serum Powder, and good congrats on going nuts with random stuff.  Keep up the good work!

Jason

[Tin_Mox5831]

Wow. I don't even have a clue what to say to that list. I guess I'd be prepared to play against it after seeing Mark Trogdon's Shop decks for the better part of a year.  Good job at the tourney, this proves it: You can play 60-Mountain.Dec and still T8! All you do is play Mountain, Go. They assume you're playing Uba and scoop to your intimate knowledge of the deck.

Congratulations again.

Later,
Dave

[EKM_Ichorid]

You played this against me online, I was the one who accidently looked at the scepter cards and then even cast a spell I knew would be countered.

It's a sick deck actually.

[Wise]

Vroman your a hero, <3

This post violates Rule 4, Lack of Content.  Please familiarize yourself with the forum rules to avoid this kind of problem in the future.
-DA

[vroman]

@everyone
thanks for compliments

@ yesuphren
I give full credit to meadbert for convincing me to test serum powder and Words of war. I think the deck does fine against combo. J-scepter is much more likely to hit something important, and possibly win the game on its own by rfging 1of tendrils or yawgwill. if not lets me counter something vital like darkritual. Im going to cut mycosinth for thought prison.

[yespuhyren]

Did you ever run into a situation where Serum powder was dead because of 4x Null Rods?  I often found that when I threw this together.  I didn't serum mull, but when I had serum in hand or play nrod was a huge play and I ended up nulling off my own stuff.  I mean, look at the stuff you kill

4x Null Rod

Stops

2x Karn
4x Serum Powder
5x Mox
1x Crypt
1x Sol
1x Lotus
4x Jester's Scepter (for countering, the RFG is still pretty cool and really cool with welder)

[meadbert]

How to best use Serum Powder is a good question.  I found that Null Rod was too painful.  A problem is that dropping Null Rod left me too open to Empty the Warrens.

I liked Sphere of Resistance to combat Warrens since Serum Powder makes it much easier to opperate under your own Sphere.  Vroman liked Tangle Wire better because Serum Powder helped to nearly ensure you start with 3+ mana and in that manner hurts Sphere's main strength which is its low casting cost.  I would claim that Sphere's low casting cost has never been a strength because Sphere is pretty bad if you do not open with Shop.  If your oppening hand has Wasteland, Mountain, Mox and no other mana sources then opening with Mox, Mountain, Sphere is not that strong.

The problem with Sphere is it can still leave you somewhat open to Rebuild versus Wasteland-vulnerable decks which are becoming more and more common.  What I like is that in multiples they can be devestating and they do not shut off your own Moxen.

[misslehead3]

Im not sure anyone has alreaduy addressed this, but how does this deck handle EOT hurkyl's recall or rebuild. Does it not just scoop. And Yespuhyren was saying nulll rod is anti-synergetic with all your stuffs. have you tested dropping Null Rod and adding Null Brooch. It would give you good defence against fows and also bounce spells. Plus it has good synergy with the odd feel of the deck, being a rare that most ppl would dismiss as junk.
And shouldnt this thread be in the tourney reports forum given how you include a tourney report with this. Deck looks like a hell of a lot of fun to play nonetheless though.

[vroman]

the plan vs combo was j-scepter randomly rfging win conditions (or bounce) or end the game w m-latice+nrod. the new plan is still J-scepter = rand(extract)*5, and thought prison to disrupt their plans, with possible lock via pyropillar effect. this is not a rock solid plan I admit. but neither is any combination of stax components.
null brooch I do not particularly like. its a 4 drop w no immediate effect, and unless uba is in play, losing hand is actually harsh drawback, bc I do need some cards in hand, even if only 1 or 2, in order to effectively dig w bazaar. also cant counter creatures wtf? so they get their confidants and jotuns no problem. great.

[yespuhyren]

With 4 Shamans, wouldn't just cutting the 4 Null Rods for something else make your J-scepters and Serum Powders just THAT much better?  Why not just throw in 4x Orb of Dreams instead of Null Rod as far as slowing down combo, or even 4 REB main?

[demonic effect]

The biggest problem with the deck that I see is that it trades Shop deck strengths for cards that just seem rather slow.  Ex.  Words of War seems extremely slow against most decks coming out at best turn 2 with no impact on the game until turn 3 and its use is only fully realized under a bazaar which probably means at best turn 4.  While it is no doubt great tech against fish, this strategy just seems too slow against most of the T1 decks out there. 

Similarly, Serum Powder's inclusion seems a bit strange to me too and maybe you could clarify how great it has been in testing/how to use it properly for the deck.  Obviously every deck can come up with bad hands to which we all wish we had a serum powder in hand.  However, considering the lack of inherent power within the deck in terms of traditional lock cards or crazy combo (like ichorid) I don't understand how you justify sacrificing space for a bad mana piece.  Wouldn't another threat be better?

In terms of Thought Prison:  why?  its a 5cc artifact that will be unable to come out early in the game when you need it most against the decks its best at namely combo and combo/control.  Wouldn't a Pyrostatic Pillar just be better since it can come down first turn, you still have the welder method of getting cards into play if things become tight and regardless you have a lot of cards that won't succomb to Pyrostatic Pillar.  Even if you did, you should be able to race them considering you also have Words of War, barbarian ring, and a few creatures.  If this is not the case, then it seems at best thought prison isn't sufficient and at worst that Words of War just isn't good enough to take up a slot.

The final Problem I see is that the deck seems to be mixing strategies.  ON the one hand, cards like Jester's Scepter and Words of War can be great in their own right.  On the other hand, the inclusion in a Shop deck (while seemingly fitting) seems to be juxtaposed to the focus which is to create some sort of lock.  Specifically, those cards either require that you leave mana open and/or use it on abilities which, although good, means that you are unable to play a threat and in the case of Scepter may not even be relevant.  While I think the deck may have a lot of promise later in the game and definately has some cool effects which can be very strong in their own right it just seems that the early game plan is kinda confused.  Your early disruption seems to stem from Null Rod (which shuts down Scepter, limits mana in form of Serum Powder as well as moxes etc..., and prevents Karn from doing his thing)  Crucible (which is good, but requires that you also have a strip effect which can't be tutored/drawn into effectly except with bazaar which means it probably won't be an early game disruption unless you have both workshop and bazaar which is just fun) and Mox Monkey who, although definately useful, does not provide anything near a hard enough lock to support on its own your mid-late game strategy.  Thus, it seems to me that the deck is having an identity crises and would bow down to decks that are faster than fish.

Honestly, I think the deck has a lot of potential.  I'm going to start messing around with the idea and I'll definately be willing to post anything that occurs from my testing.  Again, all of this has been born from a lack of testing but none-the-less there seem to be major flaws that just stand out.