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« on: August 08, 2013, 05:08:06 pm » |
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Discussion about Dark Rituals has been relatively non-existent lately. Despite Burning Oath posting results, discussion still has not snow-balled. I took a fairly long break away from the game, I was very unimpressed with the format. In addition, I found myself rather doing anything else, other than playing magic. But after an extended break, the format really opened up, and I started to regain interest. I really wanted to play a gush deck, since I had been playing them up until the point I "quit". I was working on a list with a friend, with promising results, but I knew I wanted to test some other ideas out. When I first got into vintage, I instantly fell in-love with tendrils of agony. Something about killing my opponent before they got to draw a card seemed thrilling. I've since had a long last relationship with dark rituals, playing decks like bob-tendrils,grim and pitchlong, meandeck gifts, and TPS. However, as of the last few years, there weren't really any ritual decks doing well consistently. Sure, you could rely strictly on play skill and top 8 a tournament with rituals, but they really weren't well positioned. Lodestone golems were everywhere. Then Burning Wish was unrestricted. Steve brewed up a list involving Oath of Druids, which gave a combo deck a higher percentage chance against workshops, as well as making you more threat dense. Something long decks lacked since the restriction if brainstorm. However, if you are anything like me, and you despise Oath of Druids as a card and a strategy, it wasn't enough to make me sleeve up some rituals. So I started brainstorming and messing around with some ideas but I wasn't satisfied. So I sat the deck aside and sleeved up a ECW deck and played some games. It just wasn't the same. I could see my dark rituals taunting me. I decided to play in my first tournament since "retiring" and I needed a deck. I decided I would rather lose every game and have a blast casting dark rituals all day, rather than play a gush deck I really didn't want to play. Another train of thought I had was, rather than play a gush deck that still had a mediocre win % against workshops(without tweaking the Maindeck drastically) why not play Long, and just kill them before they get a turn. Seems logical right? Maybe, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Here's what I settled on:
Allen Fulmer
5th place
"4C Pitch Long"
4 Burning Wish
4 Dark Ritual
4 Force of Wil
2 Cabal Ritual
2 Duress
2 Mental Misstep
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Memory Jar
1 Mind's Desire
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Necropotence
1 Ponder
1 Rebuild
1 Timetwister
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
4 City of Brass
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
2 Flooded Strand
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
SB:
4 Xantid Swarm
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Tropical Island
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Duress
1 Pyroclasm
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Yawgmoth's Will
The first thing I decided, I wanted Force of Will. It theoretically makes the deck faster(1/2 turn) which is something I was aiming for. Being able to cast a game winning spell before my opponent was able to sit on mana drain was important. The bigger reason was it gives you a better chance against workshops on the draw.
Next, I knew without brainstorm, the deck had to be threat dense. If my opponent could stop my opening hand, I had to feel like I could draw adequate pressure without a real draw engine. Therefore, as much as I dislike windfall, I opted to include it. It's an okay card, I just am not thrilled with paying 3 mana to draw 4-5 cards, allowing my opponent 4-5 new cards. I would much rather play infernal contract in this circumstance. However, I needed to be conscious of my blue card count for FoW. So Windfall got the nod. I also included gifts because, well if you've ever resolved gifts, you already know why. I felt since I was looking to make the deck as threat dense as possible, there's no better blue bomb(that's not already in the list ie twister/desire) than gifts. The rest of the bombs are pretty standard.
The protection:
As stated above, I definitely wanted FoW. Next I didn't want to get blown out by opposing missteps on my rituals, etc so they were included. They're also free. After they were in, I debated leaving it with just those spells but I was worried about flusterstorm. So I had two options. I could either play duress, or I could play my own flusterstorms. They each have their ups and downs. Flusterstorm is blue and it gives you the last say, where as if you duress and then they mystical/gush/top etc. however Duress is castable off ritual. I was finding that when going off, I didn't have a random U floating on turn 1 or 2 to have flusterstorm backup. However I did have small amounts of B floating. So I added 2x duress. They have been everything I hoped they were. They don't slow the deck down like I was worried they would, like a TPS deck.
No Time Walk? "You're cray". I've never been a huge fan of time walk in a long style deck. It's too frequently 1U, draw a card.
I was unsure of how many workshop decks would be in the field, even though they have been on the decline. So I decided rather than concede game 1, Ill play 3 MD bounce spells. Rebuild, hurks, CoV. Worst case rebuild cycles, also adds storm for tendrils and desire.
In combination with my point above about workshops, I wanted to be able to make land drops for my first 2-3 turns. So I decided on 13 land. 12 seemed light in gold fishing, possibly allowing me to get blown out by only a single wasteland. I also decided on half of the 5c manabase. Partly because I was only able to borrow a few duals, and also it gave me the option of Xantid swarm out of the sb. Which seemed very strong when casting draw 7s repeatedly against decks with FoW,Drain,Misstep,Flusterstorm, etc. It was indeed very strong, and still remains strong in testing. Another reason I liked City of Brass' were for casting a burning wish for another red card, say pyroclasm. Needing to either fetch out two volcs(to cast it in the same turn) or Wish and then pass the the turn(sometimes you don't have this option).
Why play this deck, especially over the burning oath deck? Force of Will. Force of will gives you a better chance against workshops, it gives you an advantage in the mirror match(burning oath), the missteps help with this as well. Your blue matchup is just as good, if not better. Grafdiggers cage is much less effective against a list without Oath of Druids. Can it still be effective? Of course, but not as back breaking as if you were playing oath. Another reason I like this deck better is, I don't like passing the turn after resolving a bomb, like you would with oath. Can you tell I really dislike Oath of Druids?
I've made a few changes since this tournament/list. I'm not going to go through them all, but I will say that I've added Timewalk back into the deck. I'm not certain it's staying in the deck for the next tournament, but we shall see. It's especially nice if you cast bargain, short on mana. Instead of drawing until you "hopefully" hit lotus/petal/ruby/jet, you can timewalk and go off. It's also handy if you cast a draw 7, short on mana. Timewalk, and win with the rest of your draw 7 hand.
My initial worry with this deck was that it would not be consistent. I don't feel this is an issue. It's been very consistent for me. There will be hands you will have to experiment with. For example, hands with lands/rituals/protection, but no bomb. Preordain would really help this out. And I'm working on fitting a couple in.
Thanks for reading
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