Friday Night Focus is a series of articles aimed at the Friday Night Magic player. It will present deck lists that are suitable for FNM competition, some match reports of the decks in action and other random discussion. The decks presented in this series will not have any particular budgetary constraints in mind, but they will aim to be both competitive and fun to play.
Hello again, and welcome to another instalment of Friday Night Focus. There has been a bit of a gap in between the last article and this one as I have been busy planning for my upcoming wedding! This week I will start by wrapping up the coverage of my Form of the Firemind deck, before moving onto an entirely new deck idea.
The Firemind Strikes BackThose of you who have been following the rest of this series will know that I’ve recently been working on a deck using the other dragon combo in standard. Form of the Firemind is a UR control deck that also contains the Niv-Mizzet + Ophidian Eye combo.
In the previous article I detailed two run-outs at Friday Night Magic with the deck. The first time was marred by play errors that gave me a poor record on the night, but offered invaluable experience on playing the deck and the weaknesses that needed addressing. After retooling the list I took it to a second tournament and faired much better. Check out the previous article for the full deck list and results - I will highlight the important learning points from this last FNM and give the updated deck list below.
* The deck has a weakness to enchantments, especially Ivory Mask.
There is nothing in either the main deck or sideboard to deal with a resolved enchantment; this directly resulted in a loss in the second round against an Ivory Mask that shut off my burn spells. Repeal seems like the best solution, offering a versatile spell that also complements the card drawing throughout the rest of the deck.
* My local meta-game is still control heavy.
This is obviously specific to my circumstances, but the main deck cards that are strong against aggro but weaker against control should be moved to the sideboard, giving me a better game 1 against most of the decks I will face.
* Mystical Teachings is an all-star in this deck.
It can fetch everything but Izzet Signet and Demonfire (even including Niv-Mizzet with Teferi in play) and is a great alternative to playing multiple copies of Ophidian Eye.
With these points in mind, I have made the following changes to the deck:
-1 Sulfurous Blast, -2 Psionic Blast
I've cut these two cards down to singleton copies main deck as part of a Mystical Teachings toolbox.
+1 Repeal
An answer to enchantments in the main deck that is never going to be a dead card.
+1 Mystical Teachings
With three copies now in the deck we are fairly sure of seeing one per game, which in turn will give us access to almost any card in the deck.
+1 Demonfire
The final change is an increase to three copies of Demonfire, the secondary win condition against opposing control decks.
3 Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
3 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Repeal
4 Izzet Signet
4 Rune Snag
4 Cancel
4 Electrolyse
1 Ophidian Eye
1 Psionic Blast
4 Careful Consideration
1 Sulfurous Blast
3 Demonfire
3 Mystical Teachings
4 Steam Vents
2 Shivan Reef
2 Izzet Boilerworks
2 Watery Grave
2 Blood Crypt
5 Island
4 Mountain
2 Desert
3 Repeal
3 Sulfurous Blast
3 Psionic Blast
2 Evacuation
4 Trickbind
I've changed the sideboard to include Trickbind instead of Shadow of Doubt - since Trickbind will also stop Empty the Warrens, or Ignite Memories, in the budget storm deck that is becoming more popular. The rest is focused on improving the match-up against aggro decks, and providing extra copies of Repeal to fight against problem artifacts and enchantments.
And so, at last, we come to the dawn of a new deck. So far in this series I have concentrated on updating or overhauling existing decks from the previous standard season. This week I am going to change tracks and put together an all-new deck.
I always find that there is some trigger that sparks the idea for a new deck - this can be anything from a cool ability on a card, a new mechanic, or even just a crazy theme. In this case I was inspired whilst playing online against a mono-black deck that included Bad Moon. The rest of the deck seemed fairly normal, but a revelation struck me when I played my Skeletal Vampire... a 4/4 flyer with two 2/2 flying bat token friends!
Strangely enough, I won that game.
So I want to build a deck around Skeletal Vampire and Bad Moon. Obviously if we're playing Bad Moon, we need a decent number of creatures to take advantage of it. Ideally they should have some form of evasion, and need to be useful even without Bad Moon in play. In search of inspiration, I looked through all the decent black creatures available in standard, and rated them using the Oasis Rating System*. These are the highlights, arranged by cost:
* Key:
+++: Definitely
+: Maybe
++: Definitely Maybe
Creature |
Rating |
Notes |
Corpulent Corpse Dark Confidant Hypnotic Specter Crypt Champion Endrek Sahr Twisted Abomination |
++ +++ +++ ++ ++ ++ |
Fear gets past most blockers at the moment Bob! But can he play nicely with Skeletal Vampire? Great card advantage, draws fire from Bob Double-strike and reanimate are both solid abilities A cute combo with Bad Moon Cycles early to find a dual land, a big beater later on |
As you can see from the list, the second colour in the deck is a toss up between blue and red. Red gives us the Shadow Guildmage and double-striking Crypt Champion, whereas blue would support Shadowmage Infiltrator and Moroii.
Taking blue, and the Shadowmage Infiltrator, seems far and away the best choice, since it gives us additional card drawing and a decent toughness. Using Twisted Abomination to hunt for Watery Graves allows us to skimp on lands that just produce blue mana, and doubles as a sizeable man in the late game.
There were no particularly inspiring creatures at one mana, with the converted mana cost of Corpulent Corpse ruling him out of a deck that would be running Dark Confidant. For a two-drop I like Nether Traitor, especially against control decks where he will keep coming back. Also at two is Dark Confidant, although with both Skeletal Vampire and Twisted Abomination in the deck the amount of damage he could be dealing is quite large.
Hypnotic Specter joins the Shadowmage Infiltrator as a must have for three mana, and means that almost every creature in the deck must be killed quickly or threatens massive card advantage. With 8 creatures at the two and three mana points I decide against including Moroii, especially considering the additional life loss it would bring.
Onto the support cards - we need some removal of our own, and could do with some reach to punch through damage in the late game. The cards that seem to fit the bill are:
Sudden Death: A great answer to Teferi - one of the most played cards recently in my local meta-game.
Psionic Blast: Another Teferi killer, this can also hit your opponent to deal those last few points of damage.
Consume Spirit: Since we can make a lot of black mana there should be the opportunity for this to get obscenely powerful.
Gauntlet of Power: Complements the Bad Moon beat-down plan whilst also generating huge Consume Spirits.
Last on the to-do list is the small matter of naming the deck. Since Skeletal Vampire is known in some circles as batman, and the key card in the deck is Bad Moon, what could be more perfect than the pun-riffic:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nether Traitor
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
3 Skeletal Vampire
3 Twisted Abomination
4 Bad Moon
3 Psionic Blast
3 Sudden Death
4 Consume Spirit
2 Gauntlet of Power
4 Watery Grave
4 Underground River
14 Swamp
The average mana cost in the deck is 2, which early testing showed was still too high - several losses came from Dark Confidant flipping a Skeletal Vampire or Twisted Abomination. There are two options to deal with this problem - dropping Dark Confidant for Phyrexian Arena, or cutting down on the higher cost cards.
Depending on which path is taken the deck goes in radically different directions. With Phyrexian Arena as a third turn play we effectively kill off our plan of 2-drop, 3-drop, Bad Moon and move instead into a more controlling role. I can see this build running 4 copies of the Vampire and instead using discard early in the game for disruption. Taking out the higher cost cards cements us in a mid-range aggro position and means that we will be concentrating on getting in for early damage as much as we can, then trying to finish the job with our spells.
I've been playing control decks constantly since Time Spiral was released, so the urge to return to a more aggressive plan decided my course of action. I definitely think it is worth revisiting the control version of this deck though.
But which cards to cut? With Skeletal Vampire acting as the top of the curve threat, I was loath to remove it at this point. Similarly, the Gauntlet of Power fills a mana acceleration role that is otherwise absent from the deck. This left Twisted Abomination as the casualty, and left me looking for a replacement mana fixer. The obvious solution was to bring in Dimir signet, as it would provide both blue mana and some acceleration. It is unlikely to be a great second turn play, since we would far prefer a Dark Confidant, but it could set up a third turn of Bad Moon and 2-drop if necessary.
So at this point I have a promising looking new deck ready for the next FNM. Join me next time when I'll reveal whether it sinks or swims...
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