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27-09-2001
 Deep Spawn
Today I'd like to talk about one of my favourite decks in a
long dang time.
It all started a long long time ago, back when everybody I knew was
building what today would be called bad limited decks, since their
collections were so small. The original crappy deck I was playing had
High Tide and Deep Spawn. My opponent scoffed as I launched my
insidious combo, playing High Tide, and then with my
uber-powerful Islands, tapped out to cast Deep Spawn (only 5 islands in
play). He pronounced Deep Spawn to be a crappy card, and you know
what? I'm starting to think he was right. He then played Paralyze on
the giant blue lobster, since I was tapped out. But a few turns later,
the mighty morphing morphling monster had rolled to victory.
Here's the core card, a primordial version of morphling:
Since those humble hard-casting beginnings, I've been trying to find
more consistent ways to 'break' Deep Spawn. As I see it, the cathartic
crustacean has three minor drawbacks.
First, you 'mill' yourself, (putting cards from your library into your
graveyard).
Second, the casting cost is prohibitive.
Third, he's tapped down for a turn after becoming untargetable.
And then I hit upon the greatest multi-player mechanic ever invented:
graveyard manipulation.
When Ice Age came out (about 1986 I think) there was this little beauty.
Small Side Rant: It seems like many people nowadays complain that
wizards builds their decks for them. I care not for that complaining
and whingeing (people like that are asking for noogies). This card is
made for Deep Spawn. Incidentally, about the only graveyard recursion
available at this time to me was Raise Dead and Regrowth. Both sucked
(Regrowth is ok, but not in a deck built around Deep Spawn).
With graveyard manipulation, all of the 'drawbacks' of the Deep Spawn
either become nullified or actually help the deck to work.
Because both people reading this probably won't be that familiar (ah,
familiars) with the Fallen Empires set, here's another card:
The plan is: animate big creatures and either attacking with them or
reprocessing them into lots of fish sticks. Sadly, the deck still
struggled. It took too long to draw into the crucial cards. Since this
deck is Blue-Black, card drawing should be it's forte. We can use even
stronger card drawing than normal if they have a discard effect tacked
on to them.
The initial search for card drawers involved creatures:
These all involved digging through my library and had the side effect of
putting critturs in my graveyard. But they were too slow, and they
really can't block anything either. My deck isn't playing with any
brokenness like Squee, so these guys eventually got the boot. It wasn't
until Invasion was released that the answer came through for me. I was
thinking 'I need something which draws me the card right away, but can
be a useful chump blocker early'. And there I saw it.
Vodalian Merchant, how sweet thou are.
Looking back though spoiler lists, I found another card I hadn't thought
of (because I didn't own any), Merfolk Trader (Hai, everybody! Hi, Dr
Nick!). This is the original Vodalian Merchant, identical in all
important respects (except he helps me break the 4-card maximum rule).
Rummaging through the singles boxes at the excellent "Heroes for Sale"
store here in Palmerston North, I managed to find 2 copies of Merfolk
Trader.
Other card drawing spells which have made their way though the deck are
Sift (initially pillaged for another deck, and then not good enough to
make the cut here when they were available once more), and Catalog (draw
2, discard 1) is good, just not quite good enough for the deck. Frantic
Search was in the deck from Urza's block until Invasion and the
incredible Probe were unleashed. The extra card it draws and the
possibility of a bonus discard ability pushes it well in front of it's
competitors. Thumbs up to wizards for making an expensive sorcery which
doesn't directly affect the board position but is good enough to be used
in tournament decks.
The deck is made up of the following sections:
This is very much a base blue deck, so much so that I desperately want
to fit Nightscape Familiars in the deck. But the deck was built before
they were around, and I can't for the life of me see what gets bumped
from the deck for them.
But wait. I must have been smoking crack or something as I made up that
decklist stealthily while at work. Looking at the actual deck, I do see
room to squeeze in some Nightscape Familiars
The changes are
The full decklist is
Deep Spawning (Circa September 2001)
This deck really 'combos' the opponent over the course of two turns.
Turn 1: Animate a huge Polar Kraken, at the end of opponents turn, sac
it to the Homarid Spawning Bed, take 11 1/1 tokens. Turn 2: Play Sunken
City, attack with 11 2/2s. You can usually kill more than one opponent
like this. Using the Hells Caretakers to sacrifice a token for a Polar
Kraken, then saccing the Kraken to the Spawning Bed has this effect:
1UU, Tap Hells Caretaker: Put 10 1/1 creatures into play. Or if you're
stuck, you can 'cycle' between a Vodalian Merchant in the graveyard and
one in play, to see more of your deck. Now, although there is a little
bit of a combo feel to this deck, it correctly follows the principle
that if you're going to kill people, do it quick. That way people don't
sit around bored all night (either because they got eliminated early or
they're in some sort of aevil {said with the pronunciation of Dr Evil}
stasis lock).
To an extent, this deck is reactive to what your opponent does (like
having a hammer, and hitting whatever they put in front of you). Just
like in basketball, if they cut off the right, you drive left. If they
disenchant your Spawning Bed, you have to tough it out with 11/11
trampling monsters, or content yourself with a 6/6 weenie (it's hard,
but I'm sure you'll manage). If they try to kill your big dudes
(particularly remove them from the game) then the Spawning Bed saves
them by incubating them in the graveyard for you (they seek him here,
they seek him there), providing a horde of little blue dudes by way of
compensation (there are too many bracketed comments in this paragraph).
Now, it's notable what isn't in this deck. It has no flyers, creature
removal, or counterspells. Counterspells are weak in multi-player
generally, but all together the omissions paints a grim picture of your
ability to disrupt you opponents. This means that it's opponents can do
what they want to you (usually in the form of a red X-spell). This is
by design, for two reasons. Firstly, I think an important part of any
casual play deck is hope. First, by being slow and without
disruption/removal, the deck gives opponents hope that they can survive
(important if you want to play more than one game against them with the
deck). Second, the deck can do what it wants to do (bring big fatties
into play) with much more frequency when all of the cards are 'aligned'
towards the same purpose. Also, only the Sunken Cities and Spawning
Beds are dead draws when top-decking (that's why there are only three
of each in the deck).
Or maybe I just suck at deck building, and can't make it faster and
better. There, you made me say it. Are you happy now? Ah well.
Possibly no-one will play this deck. I've spent far too many hours
exploring the nuances of play, and it never seems to work as well for
anyone else.
But that's not the point, this is. 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.
As I've already said, this deck has some glaring weaknesses. However,
in multiplayer, that's ok. It's required, in fact.
The worst thing a multiplayer deck can do is look more powerful than it
actually is. If someone has a kick-arse deck, everyone else will
instinctively band together to slay the obvious threat. This is a
concept that competitive duel playas sometimes miss in multi-player
(they just get annoyed that everybody somehow wants to kill them, when
they KNOW that they have the best deck and somehow DESERVE to win).
Even though a deck may be the 'best' deck from a goldfishing standpoint
(a term which has always seemed more relevant to *my* deck than anyone
elses) being overly powerful disregards the subtle political nuances at
the multiplayer table. Play your own decks, despite what the 'best'
deck is.
Part of this deck's appeal is that it can be taken down by a concerted
attack. Imagine how many people would want to play with you if they all
played virtually as a team and still lost? You'd be playing solitaire
quick-smart. So, the Deep Spawning deck isn't much of a threat early.
When you know it's a threat, you still have a turn to react. And when
it 'goes off', the game ends really quickly and no-one's too sore about
it, because the next game starts again quickly. And that's all I have
to say about that.
Mark Wilson
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