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01-07-2001
 New kid on the block; Apoc offers IBC another dedicated control deck
Pernicious Deed. You knew there would be a deck to use this card in IBC. A number of people thought that deck might be one with Ebony Treefolk and sundry other beatdown cards, holding the Deed as some liability insurance if the other deck came out faster, or if they suddenly found themselves facing down multiple Collective Restraints. While that deck may be perfectly functional, and quite successful in its application, some of us knew better. After all, what is the Deed? One part Keg, another part Disk. Whichever way you look at it, its the sweeper analogy that IBC has needed to bring No-Permanents Blue online.
Sure, you could play Dromar-Go, or Domain, if control's your bag, but then what are you going to do with all that Apocalypse brokenness? Not much, neither archetype looks to have gained hugely from Apoc’s introduction, other than improving their mana base a little with Caves of Koilos and Yavimaya Coast respectively. So, with the Deed in mind, lets look elsewhere. Without looking too far you might start thinking about U/B/g, and you might even arrive at the following decklist with a minimum of effort: 4x Nightscape Familiar 3x Mystic Snake 2x Spiritmonger 4x Undermine 2x Spite/Malice 1x Prohibit 4x Opt 3x Fact or Fiction 2x Probe 2x Repulse 2x Lobotomy 1x Yawgmoth’s Agenda 4x Pernicious Deed 4x Salt Marsh 4x Llanowar Wastes 4x Yavimaya Coast 8x Island 3x Swamp 3x Darigaaz’ CalderaHmm, looks a lot like Wizards are building our decks for us again, doesn’t it? All you have to do is take some of Apoc’s best rares, view them in the right context, and a decklist just falls out of the mix. The list above was in fact my first draft, and thus far I have not been disappointed with the results of preliminary playtesting. The most pleasing aspect of playtesting has been the level of synergy the whole deck has. Raw power coupled with excellent interactions, sounds like a good recipe to me. Its interesting to note that the most obvious criticism one could level at the deck is its choice of kill. Spiritmonger, all around superstar and chase rare, has some problems in the block. Not insurmountable by any means, but certainly not small enough that they warrant no consideration. Firstly the block has some great regenerators, two in particular. Nightscape Familiar already sees play, and its hardly rocket science to figure out that Spectral Lynx may see play, after all, he does belong to the most glaringly obvious deck that Wizard’s preconstructed. While these are not the end of the world, and you typically just bash the Monger against them to increase his size while you wait for a Deed to clear the way, they do offer your opponent the important commodity of time. I’m not sure that there is an easy answer for these cards, or if the question they pose the deck is large enough to even warrant searching for answers. However, I can say that I’m uncomfortable with how often they seem to dictate your strategy and management of resources. The second issue is of course the ubiquitous Terminate, but then, since Terminate is a problem for virtually any creature you might choose as your kill, we’ll just have to accept that as an unfortunate liability and hope to have the counter. Right now I’m thinking about where the deck may want to go from here; as the deck stands everything is working well. Usually when you draft a deck and put it to the test some cards immediately leap out as being either sub-optimal or weaker than expected, but so far that hasn’t been the case here. A third Repulse might be worthy, it helps against those annoying regenerators and is amazing with the Snakes. Some more Prohibits would be nice, it happens to be great against all those R/G decks with annoying bears, for those of you wondering what kind of scrub plays with Prohibit, and with kicker it is a virtually unconditional counterspell in the block. The land may need some more work, although its working fine so far. Anyway, thats enough from me. I’m sure a lot of you out there already started work on this archetype in any case. Flames, criticism etc etc all welcome, just send them to: kmazadum@wave.co.nz Murray Winiata |
