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28-06-2001
 Multiplayer Mucking with Mana
This is a rambling discussion about a deck that I threw together once the mighty Reef Shaman was released. Together with Dream Thrush we have eight cheap creatures that can muck about with an opponents land, or smooth our mana draw.
The Changing land type ability inspired me to go back and look again at a weak DeathGrip deck I had built a few years ago. It was based around DeathGrip (a black enchantment that has "BB:Counter target green spell") and Sleight of Mind. This deck had been designed to compete with (out counter) a mono-blue championship deck, but failed miserably back in the day.
Fast forward to the present. Dream Thrush and Reef Shaman are great at both giving you the black mana you need, or denying opponents the colours of mana that you aren't set up to counter. The core of the deck contained: Sleight of Mind Mind Bend (also changes land type and colours) DeathGrip Perish Dream Thrush Reef ShamanThis deck was much more powerful and consistent than it's pre-Invasion predecessors. It was routinely going out and taking on multiple opponents and dominating the board for several turns. But it did not win. The main reason that it did not win was that it violated one of the fundamental multiplayer deckbuilding rules. First and foremost, it appeared too good. All of the other players felt themselves utterly able to sympathise with whoever I had writhing in the crushing DeathGrip of reason. The deck had the unfortunate knack of uniting each of it's foes against it. Tournament quality decks do not translate over well into Multiplayer because it is a different environment. In a duel (1 on 1) it does not matter if you appear all powerful, because there's no politics about who to attack. But in multiplayer, if someone appears too powerful, everyone else unconsciously unites against them, all with the clear (and accurate) vision of the powerful player standing over the charred corpses of the rest in the very near future. The board position cannot appear too overwhelmingly in your favour, or you're bucking for a fireball from every red player. Then the charred corpse will be you. That's what this "Counter Everything" deck did. And so it had to die. I tried changing various bits of the deck, with new ideas bubbling to the surface during the design process. Two important new concepts were adding sea serpent type characters, and Sea Singers. A Sea Singer is a little mook with the ability to steal opponents creatures if they control an Island (hellloooo Reef Shaman!). The core of the New deck looked like this Reef Shaman Dream Thrush Sea Singer (Ways to Sacrifice stolen dudes, like Claws of Gix or Marjhan) Sea Serpents, of various persuasions.This is now a much cooler deck. Sadly, there was not room to fit the DeathGrip 'engine' in there, but this deck is more fun to play with and against. Basically, you turn your opponents lands into Islands, and then you can attack with your angry serpents and steal their creatures with Sea Singer. Although the core cards in the deck are all blue now, I kept the black splash for Nightscape Familiar and Disturbed Burial (both excellent multiplayer cards). I couldn't help but notice that on the sideboard they have the Estonian National championships, and the surprise deck is called killer u-b, and is a much better built (and whatever type legal) version of this deck (blue stuff and Nightscape Familiars). The main difference is that their deck plays with better blue fatties, and has counter spells, that tends to earn you an afternoon of vindictive hating where I'm from (the amount of time spent hating you is directly proportional to the coolness of the spell countered). Differences between the two decks (hereafter called the DeathGrip and Sea Singer decks, respectively): 1. The Sea Singer deck is creature based, and thus coughs out early blockers on a consistent basis. In particular, Nightscape Familiar accelerates the Serpents into play as well as blocking tenaciously in the early game. The DeathGrip deck often loses to a critical Serra Angel that sneaks past the counters when tapped out. 2. The DeathGrip deck counters spells. After it has done it's thing, the game state is effectively UNCHANGED. The Sea Singer deck lets people do what they want (no lasting grudge here!) and then tries to control said dangerous creatures if and when those creatures attack them. This is clearly a much more effective multiplayer tactic. 3. The Sea Singer deck has better recursion. In particular, Sea Singers that are being given plowshares (removed from the game) can hop into the safety of the graveyard for a little snooze, Using any of the mechanisms via that you were disposing of your opponents stolen creatures.. 4. It doesn't mess with peoples minds. Sure they're annoyed that their Shivan Dragon exists at your sufferance, but as long as you only pick on someone who's going for you (or who you can wipe out) they should be able to scheme until they feel they can turn on you. All of this points to the Sea Singer being a deck that isn't going to get you slain by vindictive friends. And it's just darn tooting good fun to flick their mooks back at them with a Skull Catapult.
Until Next time,
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