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Editor:Audrey Chin-Quan. Monday 8th August 2005.
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 Everyone loves a Cliffhanger! Hi all, Today I would like to tell you about a deck for type 2 that you can play for hours and hours of fun. Problem is that this deck that you will be playing for hours and hours will probably end up losing the 1 game you play! Why would I tell you about a deck that seems to play forever just to lose just before time is up? Hmm... Good question. WHY! Because Stallone said so that's why!!! (No, Stallone did not actually tell me to but you'll find out in a minute what I am babbling about).
Look how sad you've made him now! He looks like you've just run over his cat.
The deck I am here to discuss today with you fine people has been aptly name Cliffhanger. This deck doesn't necessarily have games that make you bite your nails down to your elbow like the name would suggest; it's far more fun than that!
Disclaimer: Playing this deck may cause sweating, paralysis, frustration, headaches, brain aneurisms, advanced delusional schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage, and/or death.
Lets take a look at the list now so that you can get an idea of what you will be dealing with here.
Now I know some of you are thinking, that doesn't look too bad, what's wrong with it?
1 slap for each of you! How about you have a couple of games and find out :)
The deck moves about as slowly as your grandmother (after she's packed it in). The deck is incredibly fun and challenging if you are the person playing it though.
I aptly named this deck Cliffhanger because in effect when you start the game you are already on the brink of losing. I likened it to the scene in the movie Cliffhanger where Stallone is hanging from the mountain by one hand. Sadly most of us aren't in as good shape, but thankfully we have a better grip on pronunciation :)
This deck starts the game hanging on with 1 hand. The deck deals so much damage to itself via City of Brass,
Glimmervoid, Forbidden Orchards and Phyrexian Arena that most beatdown decks don't have to work very hard to finish it off.
The first thing you have to make sure you do with this deck is somehow stabilising the board so that you can stay in the game with your Pulse of the Fields. You will usually deal yourself somewhere in the range of 4-8 damage to get yourself set up and that combined with your opponent's men you should pretty much start the game somewhere between 8-12 life :)
You will find that another problem you have is that the deck has so few win conditions that it finds it very hard to win the game if (and I really mean if) it gets to a stall situation.
The deck does have some good points though. Pulse of the Fields is so good for this deck that it's amazing. The deck has some great synergies in it also, look at Forbidden Orchard and Night of Soul's Betrayal, best mana fixing combo ever :)
The deck is funny in that it seems to have good game against everything but it also loses to everything just as much.
Tooth and Nail hates the main deck Extractions but will sometimes just cast its namesake before you cast an Extraction. Night of Soul's Betrayal eats their men like Sakura-Tribe Elder and Eternal Witness but in the end Mr Colossus and Mr Jiki will get you.
Mono red doesn't really like Night of Soul's Betrayal as it killed most of its guys and Wrath of God deals with Arc Slogger but once again sometimes they just win with speed and burn.
Mono blue control is good fun to play against provided you could win game 1, as you probably won't get to a 2nd. Mono Blue will hopefully roll over if you can Cranial Extraction their Vedalken Shackles, but then again if you can't the shackles will own you something shocking.
White Weenie is a deck I haven't had much experience against with this deck so I am really not sure what happens there.
Mono green seemed to be ok, as they don't really have anything tricky for you. Occasionally you will run out of Wraths though if you can't keep down a Night of Soul's Betrayal .
Back to the question of why? Why do you want me to play this 'pile' you ask?
This 'pile' is a real test of your skills as a Magic player. Because this deck is equally bad and good Vs the whole field (pre-9th Edition) you will have to play it like a genius to survive. If you can pilot this deck to victory in a small to medium sized play test group you can truly pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself on a well-played night.
Does anyone remember the technique that some of the Pro's used to use with the 6 sided die? The idea was that every time you made a mistake you would move the die up 1 number and if you got to 6 at any point in the game you would automatically concede. This technique sounds a little harsh but boy do you keep an eye on what you are doing when you have to watch out for yourself killing you faster than your opponent at times. This deck has a built in 6-sided die. If you make 6 mistakes it won't matter if you have the die clocking over at all, your opponent should just win regardless.
Threat Analysis is another thing that 'bad' control decks teach you about very well. Assessing threats is something that I think has been lost a little in recent times. Most of the time these days threat analysis is left to being used mainly in limited formats. Do I Rend Spirit or Befoul that creature or is it not as important to the game as I immediately thought? Can my creatures take it down without much trouble? These are simple examples of harder questions that need to be answered.
David Low, as you will probably all have heard of at some point, still builds his Highlander control decks with very few counterspells to make sure his threat analysis is up to scratch. I also won the last Canberra Highlander with "Jas Control" which only ran 3 counterspells total, and 1 of them was Mana Leak.
I know all of this seems strange to you and heck why shouldn't it? You out there in the land of the Internet are used to playing finely tuned decks built by 10,000 people online. The decks you usually play are so tuned and honed for the metagame that your play skills are only truly needed when you meet a truly good player. This deck demands that you play well and keep playing well or it will pound you into the ground for your carelessness.
If anyone out there is getting annoyed at why I am promoting this relatively untested pile of crud you will have to forgive me. This deck is not good enough to be played in any form of sanctioned tournament and even if you could learn how to play it I wouldn't recommend playing it against anyone twice. People in general have no interest in watching you try to keep yourself in the game from turn to turn, Pulsing to keep yourself on 1 life after combat, stacking Phyrexian Arena and casting Pulse again to make sure it doesn't kill you in your upkeep. That's the sort of skill im talking about!!!
If you are interested in playing a fun control deck for about a week against a variety of opponents then this deck is for you, if not you should probably stay well clear of playing and facing this deck.
1 thing that I can promise you with this deck is that you will have a good hard game and you will use every trick you know to keep yourself alive. Good luck keeping your grip on that mountainside ladies and gents!
Thanks for reading, I hope some of you will give this deck a whirl at least on apprentice and see if you can pull out a few wins with it.
I am currently doing a series of testing for a good fun deck for type 2 for grinding at Nationals this year. Unfortunately for all of you I aint telling you what it is until the morning of Nationals itself (note the blatantly obvious self promotion for an upcoming article of mine :)). The deck will be relying on surprise quite a bit and without it my chances of grinding might be severely reduced :)
I hope you have fun Cliffhanging and I will hopefully see you all at Nationals!
Until next time,
Jason Scott
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