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04-09-2001
 Swinging with the bears
Well, these are some ideas which have been simmering around in my head
for a couple of weeks, but when I was going to write this, everyone and
their dog was posting hot a version of UG Tempo bears. I had a version
of the deck (except for the Excludes and FoFs) and was looking for a
public forum to demonstrate why I don't think the same way that 'good'
players do. Because that's what it's all about. Whoever dies after
being proven wrong by the largest number of people wins. As an aside,
Rizzo is the man. He may not be the greatest player (picking this up
solely from his entertaining tournament reports) but he's an exceptional
writer. And in the year 2040 when Wizards has gone bust because there's
no money to be made in online virtual reality tournaments, he'll still
be pretty good at spinning some weird shit about something. It may not
be magic, but it will be funny. But, I digress. Here's the deck that
someone used to win something, and which has rapidly become the template for
this design.
Basic Deck
Basically the whole point of this article is to try and tweak this and
make it better. If this is the best build, then it would appear that I
should have tried to write an entertaining article, instead of an
attempt at strategy. OK, enough trying to appear humble, because that's
not the image of reality that my ego has.
I think that this deck is the result of this question:
Now, if the answer to this question is incorrect, then UG is probably
not the best deck in the format. But if it is, this helps us to examine
the deck and perhaps tweak it until we have something which can win the
mirror match and overwhelm opponents other early bears. Even control
decks are sporting 8-12 bears, it seems. Domain, why hast thou forsaken
us?
First reaction: No 1 drops. The format as a whole seems to be lacking
in this department, so this isn't necessarily a weakness of the deck,
just an opportunity to speed the deck up. The first card I thought of
was Lay of the Land. Aggressive Urge also seems to be a pretty good
cantrip, especially in a format dominated by bears. Ripping out 3
Islands and 1 Fact or Fiction makes room for the thinner, which will
usually be searching for Islands anyway. Now we won't be so bored on
the first turn any more.
Looking round for more to dismember, we need to find some other cards
which (although they are good in the deck), are able to be edged out by
some hot new contender. I'm personally biased in favour of instants and
creatures. Looking through the deck, the only spell which isn't like
the others is Temporal Spring.
{Mind: Only if you ignore the Lay of the Land which you just put in.
Me: Shut up! Shut up! When I am ruler of the universe, no-one will ever
call me shorty-greasy-spot-spot ever again!}
But what should we replace Temporal Spring with? Opt, Nomadic Elf and
Prohibit all have their good points, and are cheap. Prohibit is to my
mind a slightly better card, able to stop bears and pesky lynxes til the
cows come home.
Modified UG Tempo Bears
From here, the next option to consider is adding another colour to the deck.
I think that Lay of the Land is strong enough to be included in a two colour
version, but it's value increases tremendously with more flavours of basic
land to search for.
Here's some extra cards which we can consider.
Within green and Blue we have:
Splashing red gives us:
Splashing white gives us:
Splashing black gives us:
Now, let's leave the black option out, because I feel that if we go down
that path, then this deck will evolve into Kowal.dec. And nobody wants
that.
That leaves us with red or white. The white card I have listed which
perhaps needs justification is Sunscape Familiar. When Planeshift came
out, I was enamoured with all of the familiars. The mechanic was great,
particularly for casual play (mmmmm, big fireballs). The black and
green ones were excellent, with red and blue a little situational (the
red one I currently only play in a Type 1 combo deck) with the white one
pathetically dragging up the rear. The white one is really only good in
an environment dominated by bears, with a deck that is mainly blue and
green. So, if the Sunscape Familiar is *ever* going to be good, this is
the deck for it. It may be that it's still not a good enough card, but
I'll go with it for now. It's on probation. The Meddling Mage would be
a good addition, if UW weren't the splash colours of the deck, but they
are and so it doesn't make it. Most of the 'tournament worthy' cards
listed above are a little controllish for this beatdown deck, excepting the
always excellent Questing Phelddagrif. As luck would have it, it too is
best in a base green deck (you only want to play the
pump ability more than once a turn). Here's how the numbers shake down
with this deck:
UWG Tempo Bears
+4 Sunscape Familiar +3 Questing Phelddagrif +4 Lay of the Land +2 Lashknife Barrier +2 Plains +4 Nomadic Elf -4 Repulse -2 Fact or Fiction -5 Island -4 Kavu Titan -4 Temporal Spring That's a reasonable number of changes. There are three less land in the deck, but 12 of the cards added contribute to making coloured mana accessible, or spells cheaper. The main drawback I can see here is that you have to play with white. I hate white. *************************** Large Side Rant about white ***************************White has a number of powerful cards which seem to me to be totally off colour. The two which really get me are both 4cc sorceries. White is supposed to be about valiant heroes (best legends maybe?), and healing, and other mushy stuff. Soldiers fit the bill quite nicely, and knights etc. Protection seems like quite a powerful ability which is right in theme, and first strike too. Best enchantment removal in the game. No problem with that. But all colours have a weakness. I have read too many articles about how black and red aren't supposed to be able to deal with enchantments to go into detail about that here, but obviously that is quite a gaping hole for those colours to deal with. So, white is supposed to be weak on the card drawing, mana accelerators and removal. I agree with the first two, but take issue with the third. The colour that is supposed to be weakest at removal (with the possibly exception of green) has the BEST removal, ever. Granted, Swords to Plowshares is out of print now, I'll let that one go. But Wrath of God and Armageddon? These cards make me sad. Armageddon is basically a green spell (and should have been red), since it essentially freezes the board position, which is best done when there is a large fatty on the table. Wrath of God to my mind is the whole reason (problem?) that UW decks have been so popular. Drawing cards, sweeping the board, Countering any spells that come down afterwards. That makes for a frustrating game to me. Both cards kind of have a 'god' theme to them, so I can see how they were misplaced with white, based on the name of the cards, and not their effect. *********************************** Sorry about that, back to the bears ***********************************Now for the deck with red. As I see it, the key problem that the base UG Tempo Bears has is that it can do about 10 points of damage easily, opponents take another 5 from their own painlands, and then the last 5 damage is quite hard to serve up. To my mind that calls for direct damage and/or hasted creatures. Little regenerating dudes are a pain as well. Scorching Lava could handle them. UGR Tempo Bear
Make no mistake, this is still a core green deck. Blue and red are only minor colours, and the double blue in the casting cost of Mystic Snake is vaguely worrying. We don't really want to overload on the red spells, especially those with RR in the casting cost. Luckily, Skizzik is the hasted, trampling fat-stick from 'nam, and when serving up for the kill doesn't require the kicker cost. Aggressive Urge could provide a little combat fun, especially when two bears are dancing with each other, but bounce and red removal are better, so they get the nod ahead of creature enhancers. Prohibit replaces Exclude, partly because you can cast Prohibit with G2 when you have a Nomadic Elf in play. Ditto Scorching Lava, which can remove a little regenerator from the game with RG2 to boot. I would *really* like to fit Fire/Ice or Urza's Rage in here, but they don't handle the regenerator problem. If that's not an issue where you play, board those Lavas by all means. The changes made from the UG to UGR deck are: +4 Skizzik +4 Thornscape Familiar +4 Nomadic Elf +4 Lay of the Land +4 Scorching Lava +4 Prohibit +2 Shivan Reef +2 Mountain -6 Island -4 Gaea's Skyfolk -4 Blurred Mongoose -4 Kavu Titan -4 Temporal Spring -4 Repulse -4 ExcludeWow. That's really a completely different deck, I guess. Thornscape Familiar and Nomadic Elf are slightly less efficient bears, but help with the mana. Apart from that, everything looks like fun. The spells are cheaper, except for Skizzik, who should be renamed "Mr T", because when he's on your side, everybody else is a foo'. The key things which I would add overall to three colour build of the UG Tempo Bears deck are Lay of the Land as the deck has no other first turn play, and Nomadic Elf. I hope this has been a decent read for you.
Mark Wilson |
