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27-08-2001
 Care Bears
CareBear: A lovable cartoonish bear, at least until it smashes your face
in. I believe the original toys had shaved bottoms (like some species
of baboon), but that's neither here nor there.
There are a lot of bears out there. Competitive IBC decks need to be
prepared to deal with the CareBear rush, or be eliminated. I think that
the evolution of the environment has followed somewhat along the
following lines:
Initial Premise - The format is slow, with the uber-powerful cards being
quite expensive. Mana accelerators etc are drastically curtailed.
Response to slow powerful cards - This means that Counterspells are good
(even though they, too, are more expensive then normal).
Response to counters - You need to get around counterspells. This means
play with them yourself, disrupt the opponent with bait/discard, or play
cards which sneak under the radar before thet are set up to stop
everything you do. This is the Bear Wall (TM), and the rationale behind
most CareBears variants.
Looking ahead - Every deck needs to come prepared to deal with their
opponent packing CareBears and/or counters.
This article is divided into two sections, first discussing the
continuum between UG Temporal CareBears and RG Rocketshoes CareBears,
then a look at how the metagame may evolve to deal with bear walls.
As an aside, I do not understand why more people are not playing with
Lay of the Land. In every format they have been in tutors have been
powerful. Sure, this one only gets a land, but it puts it straight into
your hand. LotL seems like a natural choice in a deck that doesn't have
any other first turn plays. It's a great mana smoother. Or maybe I
just suck.
Here's a list of basic 2/x creatures for two mana:
First up, the green bears:
There have been a variety of UG and GR CareBear decks out there, and it
seems to me that there's a fluid continuum, from straight RG to RGu to
GUr to UG. Green has the greatest bear depth, and along with mana
fixing, that's what the 'weak' colour adds to these decks. First up,
it's the RG build.
GR CareBears (Rocketshoes)
GR Rocketshoes specialises in lots of creatures, many of them hasty,
with all of the support spells being burn. There are a number of
slightly different builds of Rocketshoes out there, but they seem to have
a few things in common: 4 Blurred Mongoose 4 Kavu Titan 4 Thornscape Familiar 4 Raging Kavu 4 Skizzik 4 Shivan Oasis 1 Keldon Necropolis 9 Mountain 10 Forest And varying numbers of burn: Thornscape Battlemage Fire/Ice Scorching Lava Ghitu Fire Flametongue Kavu Urza's Rage The build I would be inclined to go with is Thornscape heavy 4 Blurred Mongoose 4 Kavu Titan 4 Thornscape Familiar 4 Raging Kavu 4 Skizzik 3 Flametongue Kavu 3 Thornscape Battlemage 4 Ghitu Fire 4 Scorching Lava 2 Urza's Rage 4 Shivan Oasis 1 Keldon Necropolis 9 Mountain 10 Forest This deck can be divided up into three large chunks: 1. 12 Green bears 2. 16 Burn (includes some creatures) 3. 8 Hasty beatingsThornscape Battlemage is not the most mana efficient removal creature (cf the mighty Flametongue Kavu), but they help cover a key weakness of the deck, aka protection from red. This deck is the best of the four for the Thornscape Familiar, as it has the highest number of red spells. Janky Tech: In a format dominated by bears and starting the mana curve with two drops, why not include Thornscape Apprentice in the deck? He's a feisty little 1/1, and in 'battle of the bears' being able to give one of your dudes first strike is significant. He can also stay back and block Blurred Mongoose all by himself. Mmmm, first striking Skizzik......
GRu CareBears This deck is essentially a slightly evolved form of GR, with basic lands turned into IBC duals to provide the blue mana. Here's Kei Ikeda version, a semi-finalist in GP Kobe Green-Red Beats, Splash Blue 6 Forest 4 Mountain 4 Yavimaya Coast 4 Shivan Reef 4 Shivan Oasis 1 Treva's Ruins 1 Keldon Necropolis 4 Raging Kavu 4 Skizzik 4 Thornscape Familiar 4 Kavu Titan 4 Blurred Mongoose 3 Flametongue Kavu 3 Thornscape Battlemage 4 Fire/Ice 3 Urza's Rage 3 Prophetic Bolt This deck is a little more specialised, with 1. 12 Green bears 2. 16 Burn (includes some creatures) 3. 8 Hasted crittursThis is really a straight GR deck, with blue to pay for Prophetic Bolt. It's very similar to the straight GR build, though. In evaluating this deck, my instincts are that (unlike the UGr build) the 'evolved' version of the deck is not quite as good as the original. People wanting to play URG might want to look at the next offering.
GUr CareBears This deck is much more of a distinct deck than the GRu build, which is very similar to the GR deck. It is a core UG deck, with a tiny splash of red for the burn. Dave Price played a very elegant build of this deck, and here it is: 4 Blurred Mongoose 4 Gaea's Skyfolk 4 Kavu Titan 4 Mystic Snake 4 Repulse 4 Exclude 4 Fire/Ice 4 Urza's Rage 4 Prophetic Bolt 4 Shivan Reef 4 Shivan Oasis 4 Yavimaya Coast 6 Forest 6 Island This deck has 1. 12 Bears 2. 12 Bounce/Counter 3. 12 BurnThis is a very consistent build. In any five cards, on average you would expect a bear, bounce, burn and two land. Hmm, seems like Fact or Fiction would be a natural here. This deck has so many cards screaming for slots that the urge to tinker is almost overwhelming (must... take... medication). Thornscape Familiar, Ghitu Fire and Fact or Fiction all seem like strong additions to the deck, but it's hard to work out what to take out for them. It seems like one of the problems in this format is that there are so many good spells in include in your deck, it's hard to decide what best fits your needs. All in all, this seems like the UG deck which has been floating around for a few weeks, morphed a bit towards Rocketshoes. I think that it's probably a superior deck to the original.
UG Tempo Bear This deck is several weeks older than the others, decades in internet terms. It has a bigger blue component than a green component. 4 Blurred Mongoose 4 Kavu Titan 4 Gaea's Skyfolk 4 Mystic Snake 4 Temporal Spring 4 Rushing River 4 Repulse 4 Fact or Fiction 4 Exclude 4 Yavimaya Coast 10 Forest 10 IslandsJanky Tech: For this deck, another one mana 'cantrip' would help to keep the land count low and smooth the draw out. Since this is really a base blue deck, despite all of the creatures being green, let's make that cantrip Opt. It lets you cut the land down a little. I would probably cut two forests and two Rushing Rivers for four Opts. My crappy version 4 Blurred Mongoose 4 Kavu Titan 4 Gaea's Skyfolk 4 Mystic Snake 4 Temporal Spring 2 Rushing River 4 Repulse 4 Fact or Fiction 4 Exclude 4 Opt 4 Yavimaya Coast 8 Forest 10 IslandsHow to deal with the bears ********************************** Well, there are a number of single card strategies that stop the bear rush. The primary problem is that these aggressive decks often have enough disruption to overcome even cards specifically designed to handle bears, such as: Nightscape Familiar, Spectral Lynx - Both of these come under the 'fighting fire with fire' category. The regeneration stops bears (and Spiritmongers) all day long. Unfortunately, as creatures they both need to be played on your turn, unlike luverly instants. Blue bounces them and red burns them, albeit not very successfully unless it's a Scorching Lava. Breath of Darigaaz - This is a great sweeper card for decks, and I can't understand why it's not being played more in Solution-esque decks which are splashing red for Prophetic Bolt etc. The downsides are that it hurts you as well (may put you into direct burn range) and is best cast for the expensive price of 4 mana. Prohibit, Evasive Action - This one puzzles me. Although Exclude provides more card advantage then either, these counters are excellent for the early plays. Additionally, they can handle the odd non-critter back breaker like Ghitu Fire (well, Evasive Action can handle that one, anyway). Sunscape Familiar - Curses. I had thought of this a couple of weeks ago, but recently I have read what seems like 5 articles/reports praising the virtues of this little guy. So now I'm just one of the sheep, bleating on about what everybody else already knows. Ah well, you probably thought that already anyway. Actually, Thunderscape Familiar blocks pesky 2CC regenerators well, while waiting to build up to rage mana..... Well, thanks for reading this far. I hope that some information contained herein helps you with your decks. And remember, dogs are cooler than cats.
Mark Wilson |
