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. I hope you enjoy the rather obvious, and not in the least bit contrived title for this follow up to The Dark Night. In the last article I talked about how I put together a mostly black aggro deck, including a run through of the majority of playable black creatures in the format.
This article has been a bit delayed, mainly due to me being unable to get to the computer to write it because my fiancée needed it for actual work. Apparently. The tournament report I have is therefore before Planar Chaos became legal.
Here is what the deck looked like when I took it to my local Friday Night Magic:
The Dark Night v1.1
Designed by Steve McAleer for Standard
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nether Traitor
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
2 Skeletal Vampire
4 Bad Moon
4 Dimir Signet
3 Psionic Blast
3 Sudden Death
4 Consume Spirit
2 Gauntlet of Power
4 Watery Grave
4 Underground River
14 Swamp
3 Persecute
4 Stupor
4 Cry of Contrition
4 Cruel Edict
Let me begin with a brief word on my sideboard considerations going into the tournament. The primary problem I can see with the main deck is that against control I might not have too many targets for the multiple kill spells. Sudden Death is still good against the UB decks that use Teferi, or the UW decks that use Teferi, or… you get the idea. Sudden Death becomes less useful when the other guy plays Akroma or Simic Sky Swallower as their win condition. In this case Cruel Edict can cover you from horrendous beats.
I then decided that the answer to all my other problems was discard, which probably isn’t ideal for a varied field, but those of you who have been following my series of articles will know that my FNM hasn’t been that varied recently. Well, that’s slightly unfair; it has had a very varied selection of control decks to fight through! I think a better strategy would be to include some copies of Repeal, since it is a versatile temporary solution to enchantments, annoying blockers and can save one of your guys (or get a dangerous Dark Confidant back into your hand).
Typically, of course, I’m not the only person who noticed the critical mass of control decks locally. The first deck I face is Andy’s solution to this – GWU aggro, with acceleration, elephants and cloaks. Oh my!
I win the die roll and play first with a turn two Nether Traitor, then turn three Shadowmage Infiltrator and turn four Bad Moon. Andy plays a morph but while he is still tapped out from this I Sudden Death it. This turns out to be a good move as he reveals it was a Willbender, which would have been mighty painful. Andy's next play is Call of the Herd, which gets a Moldervine Cloak. I respond with a Hypnotic Specter and with 7 points of unblockable damage a turn I quickly win the ensuing race.
After the game I replace 1 Sudden Death and all 3 Psionic Blast with Cruel Edict. After all, I had seen a Willbender and the thought of Psionic Blasting myself for 6 didn’t appeal.
In the second game Andy mulligans to 5 cards while I keep a hand with Bad Moon, Cruel Edict and 4 land. Reflecting on it now this is clearly a bad hand that I should have thrown back. I had no card draw and no early creature to take advantage of the Bad Moon. Andy leads out with a Watchwolf. When I Cruel Edict it he has a Loxodon Hierarch to follow, and then gets a Cloak to make it 7/7. I don’t draw any castable creatures and die the turn before I am able to play the Vampire I had in hand.
In the decider we both mulligan to 6, I keep a hand with Dark Confidant, Shadowmage Infiltrator and Sudden Death (otherwise known as 'a keeper').
I start by playing out my two creatures, while Andy has Birds of Paradise and makes a turn two morph. Once again I use Sudden Death on the morph while he is tapped out, and once again he reveals it was the Willbender. The next turn Andy has Call of the Herd again, while Bob decides to take a disliking to me and flips over the Skeletal Vampire. In happier news, my draw for the turn is a Bad Moon, which I play and attack past the elephant token. Andy then attacks and flashes back the Call to make a blocker for next turn, as he is getting low on life. I draw Sudden Death to deal with the elephant token and attack through for the win.
There were 10 players this week, which meant that I got paired down in the second round. Joseph is playing a deck with Jotun Owl Keeper, Wrath of God and all the usual blue and white suspects.
I win the die roll again, and once again have the nice opening of Nether Traitor and Shadowmage Infiltrator. Joseph plays out a Jotun Owl Keeper on his third turn, but forgets to pay the cumulative upkeep on it. We only realise this in his main phase, so he sacrifices it and puts a bird token into play. The token is unable to block either of my creatures and the Infiltrator nets me a Bad Moon, which I put into play. On his next turn Joseph has Wrath of God to clear the board, and I play out a 3/3 Hypnotic Specter to keep up the pressure. He then gets a second Owl Keeper, which I Psionic Blast in my turn to deny him any bird tokens. When I play a Dark Confidant Joseph concedes.
I don't sideboard for the second game, as I haven't seen anything too scary to my deck. I just need to remember not to over commit and get blown out by a Wrath.
Game two begins with me playing a Dark Confidant and Bad Moon, while Joseph plays another Owl Keeper. I have a Shadowmage Infiltrator to continue attacking past him until Joseph plays Teferi's Moat. A Sudden Death kills the Owl Keeper, leaving behind two tokens. When I play a Hypnotic Specter to fly over the moat Joseph is forced to Wrath, which he follows with Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. I still have a full hand and begin rebuilding with Dark Confidant and Gauntlet of Power, followed by a 4/4 Hypnotic Specter! Joseph seems to be drawing blanks and the following turn I attack with the Specter and unleash a 9-point Consume Spirit for the win.
Gu is playing the same Solar Flare inspired deck as in my last FNM report. This is not a great match up for me, with Wrath of God, Condemn, Mortify and Faith's Fetters!
I start with a Nether Traitor and Dimir Signet, while Gu plays out a signet of his own and a bounce land. On my fourth turn I play Bad Moon and he condemns my Traitor. In consecutive turns Shadowmage Infiltrator is fettered, Dark Confidant gets mortified and Angel of Despair kills my Hypnotic Specter. The angel attacks me once before I draw my seventh mana source and kill it with Consume Spirit. We hit a period of stalemate, but where I fail to draw another creature Gu gets a Skeletal Vampire of his own, and is able kill me with a couple of hits.
After the game I made a crucial mistake in my sideboarding strategy - I took out the 3 Sudden Death, 3 Psionic Blast and one Dark Confidant for 3 Persecute and 4 Stupor. What I should have done is removed the 4 Bad Moon, 2 Gauntlet of Power and 3 Psionic Blast for 3 Persecute, 4 Stupor and 2 Cruel Edict. Sudden Death trumps Skeletal Vampire nicely, while Cruel Edict would have taken care of Angel of Despair. Leaving in the Bad Moons is also a bad idea as his creatures were already bigger than mine.
For the second game I kept a 6-card hand of Bad Moon, Nether Traitor, Shadowmage Infiltrator, Swamp, Swamp and Underground River. I played the Nether Traitor on turn two, and it was once again condemned when I played Bad Moon on turn three. Shadowmage Infiltrator was then fettered for the second game in a row. I am able to hold onto a Dark Confidant for a couple of turns before it too dies, leaving me with two Nether Traitors in play at that point. Gu by this time has a Skeletal Vampire to race me, and it comes down to my last turn where I must kill Gu before his vampire kills me on the next attack. I still have two traitors and Bad Moon in play, with 8 mana and no cards in hand and Gu on 10 life. A Consume Spirit on the top of my deck would let me do exactly enough damage, however I draw a Gauntlet of Power and Gu is the winner. Just to rub it in I find that the next card down is Consume Spirit – but then again, if I had sideboarded correctly I would have had an additional 3 outs in Sudden Death.
I finished the tournament in third place with a positive record, which is not a bad showing from a new deck. I have since played through quite a few more games with the deck, so there are some lessons from playing this deck to examine:
* Card drawing
When the deck wins, it is because I am able to play an early Dark Confidant or Shadowmage Infiltrator and keep them around for a bit. Without either of these cards it can be a struggle to gain card advantage. As I mentioned in the forum thread of the first article, what this deck really wants is Night's Whisper.
* Skeletal Vampire
I have found that the Skeletal Vampire is really not needed. Along with Gauntlet of Power, it is the only card in the deck that costs more than three mana. But whilst the Gauntlet is always good, pumping my creatures and fuelling massive Consume Spirits, I don't find myself playing the Vampire that much.
* Nether Traitor
I am still not entirely convinced by Nether Traitor. On the plus side, he is nigh unblockable and the haste is really useful, but I have only used his ability to return from the graveyard a handful of times. Mostly this is because people want to deal with any other creatures I have first, because he doesn't draw me cards or make them discard theirs. I could easily see this spot go to Dauthi Slayer instead though.
* Gauntlet of Power
It's surprising that there aren't more decks around using this. The mana acceleration it generates is awesome and results in some very unfair, often game-ending Consume Spirits. My prediction: Expect this card to get more love later this year when the Ravnica duals rotate out along with the Urzatron...
There are only a couple of changes to make to the deck at this point, but I think they should make a large impact.
Out: 2 Skeletal Vampire, 1 Psionic Blast
It's a shame to drop the card that was the inspiration for the deck entirely, but I don't think it is needed any longer. The potential life loss from revealing this with Dark Confidant was too great compared to the impact it has had in my games. The single Psionic Blast removed is to cut down on another slight bit of life loss due to the arrival of...
In: 3 Phyrexian Arena
You may remember that I was originally struggling to decide between this and Dark Confidant as my main draw engine. Having played with the deck for a bit now I've decided that I want to have my cake and eat it! The Arena is less fragile than the 2/1 Confidant, and also survives Wrath of God and now Damnation. This should also dramatically lower the number of starting hands with no card draw, and puts the average mana cost of the deck down to 1.63 for Dark Confidant purposes.
So I leave you this week with the current deck:
The Dark Night v1.2
Designed by Steve McAleer for Standard
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nether Traitor
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
4 Bad Moon
4 Dimir Signet
3 Phyrexian Arena
2 Psionic Blast
3 Sudden Death
4 Consume Spirit
2 Gauntlet of Power
4 Watery Grave
4 Underground River
14 Swamp
I have left the sideboard blank for now, pending the inevitable developments from Planar Chaos entering the format. What cards do you think should be in there? Hit the forums to have your say.
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