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20 November, 2006

Friday Night Focus - Verminator


By Steve McAleer

When building a new deck I generally follow one of two paths; updating an existing older deck, or designing around a card or theme. Today I'd like to share with you my process of updating a deck for Friday Night Magic competition in the new Time Spiral Standard format.

The deck in question is a budget BUg control deck that I use in MTGO. I put it together using a selection of staple commons and uncommons, as well as a couple of rares picked up through drafting. As it is BUg control, my pet name for this deck is...

Verminator


Designed by Steve McAleer for pre-20th October Standard

 

3 Dimir Guildmage
1 Golgari Guildmage
3 Dimir Cutpurse
3 Blizzard Specter
1 Gleancrawler
1 Skeletal Vampire
1 Simic Sky Swallower

13 Creatures

4 Last Gasp
4 Remand
4 Telling Time
1 Dimir Signet

 

3 Golgari Signet
4 Putrefy
4 Ribbons of Night
1 Dream Leash

25 Other Spells

7 Island
6 Swamp
4 Frost Marsh
2 Golgari Rot Farm
2 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb

22 Lands

 

Approximate Deck Cost: £31.70

 

This deck has a healthy win:loss ratio in the casual decks room, and the only real weakness it has is to non-aura enchantments. For matches involving a sideboard there will need to be some way to shore up this vulnerability if required.

The deck plays out by using the signets to ramp up your mana, then using the plentiful removal options to get in several hits with Dimir Cutpurse or Blizzard Specter. Combined with Dimir Guildmage you can soon empty your opponent's hand through discard and by forcing them to play out their removal. Once their hand is exhausted you can drop one of the 'big three' to finish them off. The most valuable spell is probably Ribbons of Night, which removes a creature, gains you life and replaces itself every time in this deck.

Note that in this type of control deck I would normally run more 'hard' counter spells, but part of the design takes into account that some members of the casual room don't like playing against counters. There are still some people who will concede if you Remand a spell, but to be honest I don't have any time for these types of whiners.

The New Frontier

One notable point about this deck is that it doesn't actually contain any cards outside of Ravnica Block and Coldsnap; this means that it doesn't lose anything with the rotation. In addition, as I am building it for Friday Night Magic competition I am using my 'real life' cards and therefore have access to more options - particularly in terms of what lands I can use. I will be looking for superior versions of the cards already in the deck, and adding good cards that are new to the format.

Starting with the creatures in the deck - we need to look at what we are hoping they will do; how do they fit into our game plan? Well, the Dimir Cutpurse and Blizzard Specter are all about depleting the opponent's hand, the Cutpurse also draws cards when it hits. The Dimir Guildmage also fills this role, primarily shutting down the opponent's options, and then drawing additional threats and answers. So the creatures are mainly producing card advantage, and are hoping to avoid combat. The remaining three fatties are present to finish the job of actually killing the opponent.

For the first draft of the rebuild I decide to stick with the Cutpurse, and also use the newly available Shadowmage Infiltrator. The Infiltrator doesn't have the discard ability of the Cutpurse, but it does have evasion and the extra point of toughness means that it can survive Pyroclasm, Electrolyse, Shock, Sudden Shock and Seal of Fire. I'm able to replace the Blizzard Specter with Hypnotic Specter, which is more fragile but potentially far more devastating if it hits. In place of the hand disruption from Dimir Guildmage I decide to try out Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. There is a lot of hype around Teferi at the moment, and certainly his ability to shut off counter magic and combat tricks looks great. He's a bit tricky to cast, especially in a three-colour deck, so I'm only playing two copies of the card. Finally, the Simic Sky Swallower remains as the game-ending fatty.

The spells in the deck currently perform one of three roles. Firstly the removal (Last Gasp, Putrefy, Ribbons of Night) is there to make sure that there are no blockers to prevent my saboteur creatures from hitting the opponent, in addition to taking out anything that is a realistic threat to my health. There is also some disruption (Remand, Dream Leash) to foul up my opponent's plans in conjunction with the discard from my creatures. Finally there are spells and cantrips to draw through the deck and find the answers I need (Remand, Telling Time, Ribbons of Night). The signets are primarily to fix my mana, although the acceleration they provide is also welcome.

As this deck is to be played in a slightly more competitive environment than the Magic Online casual room, I am far less likely to be facing creature based aggro decks. There will likely be plenty of control decks (whether packing counter spells or with board sweeping effects and the plan of winning with a single huge threat) and there is also the possibility of coming up against some nasty combo decks. I want to make sure that my removal is able to cope with all three of these strategies, and minimise the number of dead draws against most decks. To this end, I have dropped the Last Gasps and two of the Ribbons of Night, replacing them with Cruel Edict and my one copy of Psionic Blast. The Edict enables me to deal with giant threats such as Simic Sky Swallower and the Psionic Blast doubles as a straight burn spell against a creatureless deck.

I have enhanced the counter suite by adding Cancel and a single copy of Spell Burst - potentially supplying me with 'infinite' counters if the game goes long. To support this I have also added three copies of Gaea's Blessing, which recycles my used cards and also cantrips.

With the spells decided the final task is to look at the mana that is required to cast them all. I have used the relevant Ravnica duals that I own, supplemented by Frost Marsh from Coldsnap. Terramorphic Expanse both fixes my colours and thins my deck, and Ghost Quarter will take care of any troublesome lands on the opposing side of the table. I have included a single copy of Gemstone Caverns mainly to test how it performs - it is obviously extremely good with a luck counter on it, but I was also interested to see how badly it would hurt as just a colourless source of mana.

Verminator v2.0

Designed by Steve McAleer for Standard

 

4 Dimir Cutpurse
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
4 Hypnotic Specter
2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Simic Sky Swallower

15 Creatures

4 Remand
4 Cancel
1 Spell Burst
3 Gaea's Blessing
1 Psionic Blast
3 Cruel Edict
4 Putrefy

 

2 Ribbons of Night

22 Other Spells

3 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Gemstone Caverns
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Frost Marsh
3 Watery Grave
3 Overgrown Tomb
3 Breeding Pool
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest

23 Land

Approximate Deck Cost: £186.20

 

The approximate price shows the difference between budget and normal deck building quite well - especially since half of the price comes from the lands!

Looking at the deck list I can see that there is a glut of creatures at 3CC, which may prove to be too many. The spells are distributed nicely between two and three mana however, and should give a consistent opening.

Re-Considerations

After testing it became clear that there were some weaknesses in the deck. Specifically the Dimir Cutpurse and Hypnotic Specter were constantly killed before getting a hit in - they are too important for the opponent to let them live, and die to almost every removal spell in the format. In addition to this the deck would routinely run out of cards going long, with not enough ways to draw new cards. The sheer amount of 3CC disruptive creatures pulled the deck away from what it wants to do, namely control the opening turns. Instead I found myself having to play out creatures early with no way to protect them. I was also not too happy with the number lands that come into play tapped with this deck - Frost Marsh and Terramorphic Expanse are too many, so some of these will definitely have to go.

In terms of what worked well –
Spell Burst was nice when it showed up, but I only drew it once. With only one copy in the deck I either need to increase the count or add in more card drawing.
Ribbons of Night was always amazing. For some reason I had forgotten what a valuable card this was in the original deck list, and I want to go back up to four copies of this spell.
Psionic Blast is, of course, Char - and if I can manage to get hold of any other copies I will find a way to get them into the deck.
Gaea's Blessing was routinely good, but I struggled to find more than one copy per game, which points to requiring more card drawing as well. It did lead to one memorable situation where I took out an opposing creature with my fifth Putrefy of the game, much to my opponent's exasperation!

Bearing this in mind I am making the following changes to the deck:

-2 Hypnotic Specter, -4 Dimir Cutpurse
These two creatures are great if they hit, but getting them to live long enough to do this is very difficult. With two Specters left in the deck along with the Infiltrators, I can concentrate on getting them out with the cards to protect them, rather than have to run them headlong into removal on turn three.

+2 Ribbons of Night
I have already mentioned how this spell does it all - draw a card, kill a creature and help me to survive. I am convinced two is too few, although the count may be reduced to three if something more worthy presents itself (for instance, if I can get a second Psionic Blast).

+4 Careful Consideration
This is exactly the type of draw spell I need in the deck - I get to see four new cards, and can discard any extra lands. It will dig towards Gaea's Blessing, which can be used to set up further Considerations. The timing effects of playing it are interesting, and I can certainly see myself playing this during my main phase later on in the game to gain an extra card.

In addition I am also tweaking the mana base:

-4 Frost Marsh; +2 Island, +1 Swamp, +1 Terramorphic Expanse
This reduces the number of lands that must come into play tapped to four, and gives me the maximum number of deck-thinning lands.

 

Verminator v2.1

Designed by Steve McAleer for Standard

 

4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
2 Hypnotic Specter
2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Simic Sky Swallower

9 Creatures

4 Remand
4 Cancel
1 Spell Burst
3 Gaea's Blessing
1 Psionic Blast
3 Cruel Edict
4 Putrefy
4 Ribbons of Night
4 Careful Consideration

28 Other Spells

 

4 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Gemstone Caverns
2 Ghost Quarter
3 Watery Grave
3 Overgrown Tomb
3 Breeding Pool
4 Island
2 Swamp
1 Forest

23 Land

3 Krosan Grip
3 Spell Snare
1 Simic Sky Swallower
4 Voidslime
4 Shadow of Doubt

15 Sideboard Cards

Approximate Deck Cost: £201.60

 

The Sideboard Plan

As with the original deck list, the decks major weakness is to non-aura enchantments - if you are unable to counter them there is no other way to deal with them. Krosan Grip provides a nigh uncounterable way of dealing with enchantments, and as a bonus also hits artifacts. Shadow of Doubt deals with any potential Dragonstorm shenanigans, which would be bad news for this deck - there is no way we will be winning a damage race. I have also included Voidslime, Spell Snare and a second Simic Sky Swallower that can be brought in to turn the deck into a straight permission build. These cards will be useful against other control decks, while the Spell Snares also give us the chance to stop aggro in its tracks, as it still stops many of their important spells.

Any comments on this deck are welcome in the forum; let me know especially if you give it a try yourself. Next time I will have details of how Verminator performed at Friday Night Magic and what further changes need to be made to the deck.
 
Steve McAleer

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