Yes, I said five-color control, and I do mean in the current Standard format. I was also very serious about the rogue bit. One of the first decks, if not the very first deck, that most Magic players build is a five-color deck. You buy your first couple of boosters and a starter and try to put something together from all of your "best" cards and end up with some multi-colored monstrosity that does OK against your friends but loses HORRIFICALLY to the first kid in your group who makes a small deck with only one or two colors in it. You then (for the most part, correctly) decide that decks which utilize five colors have a lot of inherent weaknesses, mainly due to mana issues.
While the above is true, many players never revisit those original assumptions to see if they are, indeed, correct. Depending on the current card sets available, five-color decks may or may not be viable. Domain and Gifts Ungiven decks are two recent examples of decks that successfully utilized all five colors in Standard.
This deck is very different from those two decks in several important ways.
This deck does not use any land search spells, thus freeing up more space for control elements.
This deck is not vulnerable to one or two land destruction spells shutting it completely out of a particular color.
This deck is highly customizable to any metagame, and there is no consistent "best deck" version of it.
The Hidden Power of Fifth Dawn
Fifth Dawn brought some obvious power cards to constructed Magic, namely Eternal Witness (possibly the most broken card from Mirrodin Block - Skullclamp included) and Cranial Plating. Fifth Dawn also contained a lot of cards that most people looked at and said, "Wow, great flavor, cool ability, but useless." Now why is that? Because the theme of Fifth Dawn is multi-color decks, specifically decks playing all five colors, or four at the least.
Generally speaking, Wizards seems to have mostly followed the formula that a card can have a lower converted mana cost (i.e. be cast earlier and be more playable) if it requires more of that mana to be of a colored nature. Take for example, White Knight and Pearled Unicorn. The Knight is CLEARLY superior to the Unicorn but can come into play an entire turn earlier because it requires two white mana to cast it whereas the Unicorn only requires one white mana to cast. The same principle is usually applied when dealing with multi-colored cards, or cards with sunburst that require multiple colors of mana to gain effectiveness. The Bringers cycle from Fifth Dawn perfectly illustrate this fact. Normally costing two colored and seven colorless mana to cast with only one color, they can be summoned a full four turns earlier by simply paying five colored mana.
Cards that are dependent upon having multiple colors or land types also get the same type of discount mana treatment. Great examples of this are cards from Domain decks such as Allied Strategies, which provided five cards for five mana. A similar card this deck uses is All Suns' Dawn. Regrowthing five cards should be very, very expensive, but because of the multicolored nature of the spell, it only costs five mana. Etched Oracle is another good example. A 4/4 creature for four mana is good; a 4/4 creature for four mana with a good ability is Ravenous Baloth. A 4/4 creature for four mana with a one mana Concentrate when it dies... wow.
How to Play Nice with Multiple Colors
Most players will tell you five colors don't work in a sixty-card deck due to mana issues, and even if they do work, they still don't work because by the time you put in enough land search and mana fixing to solve the mana problem, you don't have enough space left over to construct a winning deck. And even if you solve all of those problems it STILL won't work because you'll just auto-lose to land destruction decks. All of this is very true.
These reasons also ignore the relatively recent success of five-color decks in Standard. Domain was popular and powerful during Invasion's time in Standard, and there are several varieties of four- and five-color Gifts Ungiven decks floating around out there. The above reasons also think inside the box. They assume a traditional mana base built around basic lands, land search and artifacts. This deck uses none of those.
I'd like to take a few minutes to explain the above statement and how and why the manabase works. The first thirty cards of this deck are already set: four Night of Souls' Betrayal and then 26 lands which make up your mana base. Don't be confused by the fact that Night is a Legendary Enchantment; you need to run four of them, both so you can consistently draw it early and to replace copies that have been destroyed or countered. The Legendary Lands are included because during testing I decided I was more worried about Sundering Titan than about Blood Moon. You can quite easily switch out the Legendary Lands for basic lands if you feel the opposite way about it. You run 26 lands in this deck, which is enough to make sure you hit your land drops even without any kind of land search or acceleration. Those 26 lands provide 16-18 mana of each color, which is more than enough to cast any spells that you might want to regardless of their color. This also negates the need for color fixing spells or effects, freeing up more space in the deck for threats and answers. You can also replace the single colored lands with more multilands, either of the five-mana variety or of the two-mana kind, but I have found that having some lands without any drawbacks whatsoever is a nice counterpoint to all of the tap and damage lands.
Another problem that heavily multicolor decks run into is a lack of focus. Every color is good at doing different things, and it can be hard to combine all of these abilities together into a coherent whole. It took me a long time after I built the first version of this deck to realize where it was attacking my opponent, but once I figured that out, I've been able to play and build the deck better.
Put simply, this deck attacks your opponent's draw. Not the draw phase mind you, but their draw itself. You're trying to make your opponents draws irrelevant by neutralizing the value of their cards value before they even hit play. For example, once Night of Souls' Betrayal is out, if your opponent draws a one toughness creature like Sakura-Tribe Elder, it's a dead draw. Similarily, if they draw a land destruction spell when you have Sacred Ground out, it's a dead draw. Boil works similarily with many blue decks for a few turns after you cast it since they are now unable to cast any of their spells.
Since you can use any card you want to with this deck, it generally helps to build a control deck that plays the way you want it to. I want my control decks to be able to deal with any threat after it enters play, counter opposing spells, and have unbeatable win conditions. I want to be able to sweep the board of creatures, make my opponents' spells useless, and prevent my opponent from having any kind of a long game. Sometimes I also want a little bit of burn to force through the last few points of damage.
Basically, this is your chance to build the control deck that you've always wanted to without having to worry about the restrictions of the color pie. You want a counter-based deck with powerful removal? Go for it. You want a deck that can answer any permanent your opponent plays while still having counter backup? No problem. You want to combine the previous two and add discard? That's covered too. The only restrictions you face are:
1. No non-artifact mana acceleration.
3. Your imagination.
2. No one-toughness creatures.
The last big obstacle multicolor decks, and control decks in general, face is finding acceptable win conditions that don't interfere with the flow of the deck. In this deck the only pure win condition is Genju of the Realm. Bringer of the Black Dawn doubles as your card selection, and the Etched Oracles double as card drawing.
What's In, What's Out, and Why
First, a decklist, organized by color for your convenience. Oh, and because I know it's a nuisance to count them all, there are 26 lands in the deck. This breaks down to: 18 Black mana, 18 Blue mana, 16 Green mana, 16 Red mana, and 18 White mana, which would otherwise require you to run 86 basic lands.
Eradicate: There are quite a few creatures that you want to remove from the game in Standard right now, either because they're Indestructible or because they have great "goes to the Graveyard" effects. Getting rid of multiples of them (Eternal Witness) is also pretty amazing.
Bringer of the Black Dawn: Five mana for a 5/5 Trampler is nice. The fact that he's big and Black means that he dodges most of the removal currently in the format. The fact that he gives you the option to cast a free Vampiric Tutor before every draw phase is unbelievable.
Hinder: The cheapest "hard" counter currently available, this prevents your opponent from resolving that one key spell.
All Suns' Dawn: Eternal Witness is a great creature. Even if it was just a spell without the body it would still be good. With Dawn you get back five cards instead of one.
Pulse of the Fields: City of Brass, your opponent, Bringer of the Black Dawn, and Forbidden Orchard all do damage to you. A reusable means of lifegain is a must.
Naturalize: The banning of Affinity has, oddly enough, made artifacts MORE playable since you can now cast one without watching your opponent's face fill with glee because he now has a use for his Oxidizes and Viridian Shamans.
Etched Oracle: Last I heard, four mana for a 4/4 creature was a good deal. If that creature has some kind of ability, that's an even better deal. If the ability is life gain, you have Ravenous Baloth. If the ability is "cast Concentrate," that's quite simply amazing.
Engineered Explosives: The lengths Wizards went to protecting Affinity and the artifact lands from this card have made it much weaker than it should be because it can no longer destroy animated Lands (Stalking Stones). Even so, this works beautifully as spot removal for everything from Umezawa's Jitte to Genjus, to Arc-Slogger. It also doubles as mass removal against low mana-curved aggro decks.
Genju of the Realm: If you're playing with five colors, how can you NOT play a creature with higher toughness than Darksteel Colossus? On a side note, the creature this card "creates" is colorless. That means Terror kills it and it will deal damage to an untapped Pristine Angel.
Legendary Lands: As I said before, I am more worried about Sundering Titan than Blood Moon. If you feel differently, then definitely change these out for basic lands.
Boil: Blue is back and it's big. Boil backed up with countermagic is quite simply the worst possible thing that can happen to a Blue mage. This could easily go up to four depending on your metagame.
Bribery: Mainly included for Tooth and Nail, these are also occasionally useful against MBC or Rock. Do not use against any deck with access to bounce.
Terashi's Grasp: If you need more artifact and enchantment removal, here it is.
OUT
Many of the cards listed here might not seem like obvious choices, but they are all listed for a specific reason, namely that they have been in different versions of the deck that I built. On that point, I'd like to reiterate my earlier statement that this deck must be built to personal preference for maximum effectiveness. Most of the cards on this list are very playable in the main deck over what is there currently; it simply is a matter of what your expected metagame is and what cards you are more comfortable playing with. This is one deck with enough versatility that you can mold the deck to your own playstyle, rather than molding your playstyle to that dictated by the "best deck."
Bringers: I rate them in this order of effectiveness: Black, Green, Blue, Red, White.
Black - the best of the lot, even if it doesn't give you more of a bonus when played in multiples.
Green - a solid beater who brings along a LOT of little friends, especially great in multiples.
Blue - solid, but there is a limit to how many spells a reactive deck like this can play each turn.
Red - you don't want your opponent to have any creatures worth stealing, making the Red Bringer a rather bad choice.
White - you have no useful artifacts for the White Bringer to return. (Sunburst artifacts come into play with zero counters on them unless played with Sunburst)
Hondens: These require a different build of the deck to work properly, but are very powerful if you decide to go that route. I recommend them in this order:
Red - This works well keeping spirit tokens from your Orchard under control until you draw Night. With Night this renders any creature with toughness two or less dead.
Black - In a slower environment this simply dominates a shockingly high number of decks, and is particularly brutal if your opponent is playing blue.
White - Works well with City by extending the game longer, which is where you have the advantage.
Blue - In combination with any other honden, this provides more cards than the deck can consistently use.
Terror, Echoing Decay, Reciprocate: These are all good removal spells but there simply isn't room to run every good card in this, or any other deck.
Barter in Blood: You have Wrath so there's really no need to run this. It would merit more consideration if Eradicate wasn't around.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire: You don't have a lot of win conditions, so if one of them is Indestructible and has an instant-speed free Wrath of God in his pocket thats just gravy.
Pulse of the Tangle: Works great with Forbidden Orchard and against ground based aggro, but doesn't feel like it does enough. (Mainly becuase the big weenie decks right now use lots of Flyers or 1/1's)
Beacon of Destruction: Instant-speed creature removal regardless of color, good, a recursive win condition, good. Killing your opponent when they burn themselves down to stop Pulse of the Fields, priceless.
Hammer of Bogardan: This is a good card that is similar to Beacon of Destruction. Hammer is better than Beacon against Blue decks, but it can't kill Yukora, Patrons, or Dragon Legends.
Rude Awakening: Attacking with a bunch of 1/1's just isn't nearly as lethal or threatening as attacking with a bunch of 2/2's.
Beacon of Unrest: There's not much in your own deck you would want to use it on, since the Sunburst artifacts come back with zero counters on them. If Reanimator ends up making a comeback, the this gets a second look.
Sowing Salt: This could replace Bribery for use against Tooth and Nail and would be useful in dealing with Stalking Stones as well.
Pyroclasm: There just are not enough aggro decks in the current metagame to justify putting another mass removal spell in the deck.
Shunt: A really fun counterspell that often completely surprises your opponent. Very effective against discard, counter, and land destruction spells. Also works on "enchant X" spells. Stops everything from Last Word to Cranial Extraction. Please note, though, that this only changes the target of said spell. The player who cast the original spell still gets to make all the decisions relevant to it. (i.e. what card to choose, whether or not to activate an enchantment, etc.)
Grim Reminder: While this could be a very efficient and reusable way to kill your opponents, you probably won't be getting enough use out of it to justify its inclusion in either deck or sideboard.
Matchups! Get your Red Hot Matchups!
When playing any particular match, you have to understand if you're in the aggressive or controlling role. With this deck you are ALWAYS the control deck. Against Mono-Blue, you're the control deck, against Mono-Black, you're the control deck: know it, live it, love it, act like it, play like it.
What does it mean always being the control deck? Well, for one thing, it means that you are going to be slower than your opponent. For another, it means you're going to play a long game. Finally, it means that you have lots of chances to make mistakes and lose, but you also have lots of chances to get things right and win.
Tooth and Nail: The good news in this matchup is that you're immune to Kiki-Titan. The bad news is that you don't have enough counters to stop them. Game one is average to bad for you depending on how soon they draw thier combo and if you have Eradicate or Genju ready to answer the Colossus. Once Colossus is out of the picture, the match gets pretty good for you as long as you don't get hit with Mindslaver. This deck can do some fairly brutal things to itself if given the chance, so try not to let that happen. After sideboarding, things get much better, as you bring in the Mana Leaks to slow down their land search, Cranial Extractionto rip apart their deck and Bribery to steal their Colossus. The third game is often decided while sideboarding since they might take out their Colossus or Duplicants to prevent them from being bribed. If that happens you have to guess correctly and pull your own Bribery for artifact removal.
Mono-Blue Control: This is good for you before sideboarding, and great after. One of the main reasons is that you have Night of Souls' Betrayal. This turns Meloku into a 1/3 flier with the ability to return lands to your hand. It also means that Magpie has no power, and does no damage, thus drawing the Blue player no cards. You have Eradicate and Wrath of God. Wrath kills Meloku and any Illusions he has created, while Eradicate completely eliminates one of the two to three win conditions they have. Engineered Explosives can kill any permanent they play, and Pulse of the Fields means that the one Stalking Stones they're protecting won't be able to finish the job on its own. In a recent playtesting game against MUC the Blue player conceded on turn 26 when I resolved a Pulse of the Fields because I had 15 more cards in my library than he did and he only had one win condition left in his deck.
Games against Blue take a LONG time. After sideboarding the addition of Boil and additional countermagic makes the match just outright horrific for them. When playing against blue, DON'T cast any spells until they do OR unless you think you have enough counters to exhaust them in a counter war. Your goal is to skip the early game where their Mana Leaks and Condescends are most effective, and force them into taking on the active role in the match, which they are not good at doing. Keep track of how many counters your opponent has used. Most blue decks run 12-16 counters, of which eight or more will be conditional, and take advantage when you know they're just holding a Magpie and an Island.
Your goal here is to deck them, using Extraction to go after their counters and your removal to deal with their threats. Vedalken Shackles and Bribery are notably ineffective when you don't have any creatures to use them on.
Your plan with this version is simply to force through a Boil then win with Oracles or the Genju.
Touche
White Weenie: The definition of a good match. Between your having removal for their Anthems and Equipment, Night of Souls' Betrayal killing about half their deck and Wrath of God killing the rest while Pulse and Grasp refill your life total, this is just brutal... for them, anyway.
Mono Black Control: Average. This is very much about who goes first, or who gets to two mana first. Once you have countermagic online, Black will have a LOT of trouble winning, but if they get a Wrench Mind or Distress early in the game to strip away your counters, you're in trouble. There are a lot of different builds of MBC around right now, so you should always try to get off an Extraction game one just so you can see how their deck is put together. For example, if they run Death Cloud, you'll need to bring in Sacred Ground. If they don't, then you'll want to leave it in the board.
Always name Extraction first with your Extractions after sideboarding since its almost 100% sure they'll have several of them waiting for you. Also, depending on how their build is set up, you might be better off leaving the Leaks in the board and instead bringing in extra artifact and enchantment removal.
Land Destruction: Average to bad before sideboarding, average to good after. In game one this match comes down to whether you draw more land and counterst than they draw LD. Even with 26 lands the answer is no more often than you'd like. R/G LD is tougher than mono-red LD because green gives them Eternal Witness, mana acceleration, and Plow Under. If you can get to and maintain four mana you'll have access to 80% of your spells, which is good enough to win with.
Finally, I'd like to take a second to go over this deck's worst matchup and its biggest weakness.
Burn.dec: Bad before sideboarding, if they have Blood Moon it becomes Very Ridiculously Bad and Horrible. Basically your deck wins by making opposing decks lose draws and creatures, then using countermagic to handle the few spells they have left that are an actual threat to you. Red burn decks either have very few creatures or none at all and simply throw more spells at you than you can handle in the early part of the game. They have Flames of the Blood Hand to negate your Pulse of the Fieldsand lots more spells than you have counters. Pulling the Explosives for Mana Leaks helps a little, but not enough.
Blood Moon: This card turns all of your mana red. Since you want to play with all five colors of mana this is generally a bad thing. You have Extraction and counters to stop it from hitting play, but that's it. Once it's down, if you didn't tap for a green mana before it resolved so you could nail it with Naturalize, or if you don't have Explosives down for three, it's most likely gg right there. Fortunately Blood Moon is seeing very little play right now. Why you may ask? Quite simply put, Blood Moon is most effective against Tooth and Nail, but if you're already playing red, why pick Blood Moon over Sowing Salt which is much, much less narrow? Besides, if you're playing red right now its probably some form of LD anyways, so why bother with extra cards for a matchup that's already very much in your favor anyways? This keeps the number of Blood Moons in the environment very low, which means you don't have to worry about it so much. Besides, Blue has to live with Boil and Choke, White with Flashfires, and Black with Karma, so just do your best to play around it.
Summary
I almost feel like a broken record at this point, but I'll say it again because it bears repeating. This deck is very different from almost anything you've ever played. You're going to have to customize it to your own playstyle for optimum effectiveness. That's one of the main reasons the "OUT" section is so long. It's there to help you tune the deck to your own playstyle.
I'm going to use this section to try and answer two questions that I think most people will be asking about this deck. First, why all the two and three-ofs in the deck? Well, for a lot of reasons, honestly. First, the three Bringers all have reusable tutor effects, which means perfect draws for the rest of the game, eliminating inconsistency. For the other reasons, I'll use Wrath of God as an example. There were originally four Wraths in the deck, but it became apparent that between the Nights, Eradicates, Extractions, and Explosives that four Wraths in the deck often led to a dead Wrath sitting in your hand. By cutting what was frequently a dead card, I was able to add more versatility and flexibility to the deck without detracting from its strengths.
The second question has to do with sideboarding. In every single matchup listed, the Mana Leaks come in, so I'm sure many of you are wondering why they simply aren't maindecked in the first place. The answer has to do with again, versatility. Oftentimes several of your cards will be dead in any particular matchup since the maindeck is geared towards being very general, while the sideboard contains a lot of very matchup-specific cards. This means that you will often have plenty of dead cards for any given opponent between your deck and sideboard, the Mana Leaks act as kind of a universal "safe in" for your deck. Sometimes, as in the White Weenie matchup, the Leaks come in for the Hinders as a simple manner of tuning. Against Tooth and Nail they serve as a safe replacement for the almost completely useless Engineered Explosives. Against mono-black decks they work as solid alternatives to Eradicate. This is why the Mana Leaks live in the board, even though they come in very frequently.
Yeah, Barter in Blood eats decks that run few creatures to beat down late game in a five-turn or less clock. Hideous Laughter is a prime sideboard card against WW, Beacon, and Meloku.
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That was really interesting ! I've never heard of a serious attempt to make 5-colour control work in standard, so pretty much all the ideas were new to me.
How would the deck do against mono-G beatdown ? Whilst Snakes is really a block deck, I'm increasingly seeing people choosing mono-G for type 2 (or near-mono with a U splash).
I have a lot of respect for this kind of approach to rogue decks. Rather than saying "OMG this goes 90% vs the whole field", just present a good, solid discussion of the deck and let people draw their own conclusions. That's the way to encourage innovative deck design.
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You side in Mana Leak in EVERY match up. Maybe it should be md.
You didn't read the whole article. Last paragraph:
Quote from morgan_coke »
The second question has to do with sideboarding. In every single matchup listed, the Mana Leaks come in, so I'm sure many of you are wondering why they simply aren't maindecked in the first place. The answer has to do with again, versatility. Oftentimes several of your cards will be dead in any particular matchup since the maindeck is geared towards being very general, while the sideboard contains a lot of very matchup-specific cards. This means that you will often have plenty of dead cards for any given opponent between your deck and sideboard, the Mana Leaks act as kind of a universal "safe in" for your deck. Sometimes, as in the White Weenie matchup, the Leaks come in for the Hinders as a simple manner of tuning. Against Tooth and Nail they serve as a safe replacement for the almost completely useless Engineered Explosives. Against mono-black decks they work as solid alternatives to Eradicate. This is why the Mana Leaks live in the board, even though they come in very frequently.
Oddly enough, I was tinkering with 5 color control two nights ago. My aproach was more artifact oriented, but im now sold on the Night's Betrayal, Just a few questions:
Why only 3 Cities, is the pain THAT bad?
I dont think you refuted the use of Gifts in your deck. It seems particularly effective...
If you included i apologize for wasting your time.
This is a fine artical!
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Awakening ?/180: Features Domain, with more land comes more mastery over the elements. Channel and Growth are expanded making landcasting more interesting.
Good Article, nice written, but Night of Souls Betrayal doesn't stop Witness from Regrowing, so I won't call it ''fairly irrelevant''.
Still, intresting Article.
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Sometimes those with the most sin cast the first stones.
Excellent article. Well written, to the point, and not conceited like the "This deck is the deck to play." articles.
I'm going to give your version a run and see how I like it!
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Wow, VERY good artilce. Basically everythign I have come up with in testing this deck, minus the nioght. That is just an amazing idea, Night is powerful, but I have never attempted it outside of B/x decks.
EXCELLENT article. This has inspired some deckbuilding on my part, and if the world was governed by me (it will be, it will be!) this would be article of the month.
I can't even nitpick about this article, it was... amazing.
I'm NOT AT ALL ABLE to build Madness, since I'm already building one for my partner in crime. Before you suggest a deck, check if it is madness. If the deck you were going to suggest IS in fact Madness, instead of posting, discard 2 cards.
Thanks for all the kind words everyone, a couple of responses.
Pita: If you have to pick one of them, generally I'd go with Barter over Laughter because it kills ANYTHING. But Laughter is better against Green and White Weenie. Basically, I'd say metagame/testing choice but my advice is to lean more towards Barter if it's not immediately clear which is better.
Batelur: Green beatdown is absolutely abused by Night of Souls' Betrayal given that a lot of the Green builds only creature with more than one natural toughness is Troll Ascetic.
Effeetsnob: There used to be four Cities, but when Tendo Ice Bridge came out I dropped down to three of them because having two cities in your opening hand is a good way to lose a lot of life fast. As far as Gifts goes, it's a great card, but it works a lot better when you can abuse it with Witness, Revive, Raise Dead and lots of one-of answers. Since there's already an article in the works on this topic by someone else, I'll let them cover it. But if you want to use it, by all means do so.
Silver Seraph: Witness as just a Regrowth is a good spell, but it's nothing like Witness for Witness, have an undying creature or the kind of card advantage Witness normally provides.
I'm becoming less and less sold on the Genju of the Realm in the deck as more and more people are running Naturalize and Terashi's Grasp to deal with all the Swords and Jitte's in the environment, plus the fact that Plow Under and Boomerang kill him as well. I'm leaning towards replacing him with Beacon of Destruction (with a bringer out you can just draw one every single turn until opponent is well and truly dead), or possibly Myojin of Cleansing Fire, Clearwater Goblet, another counterspell (Shunt?) or another Naturalize.
as a long time fan of five color i have to say bravo. nice job.
my current five color deck runs in a different direction,but the control element is still there... it just also has mana fix (pentad prism, and chrome mox) and shrapnel blast for those "problem" situations...
i had the genju of the realms going on the darksteel citadel pre-bannings, and these days they go pretty much anywhere.
i also use spirit links in my deck. on my creatures... we all know what that does, but i'm always surprised by how surprised my opponents look when they drop out their 2 Darksteel Colossus and i spirit link them both the next turn.
anyway... as i said, i am impressed with this build and it really has made me think about the night of souls' betrayal...
i'm thinking about building it with a black / green honden deck (you're thinking... idiot... that doesn't work... but- ) with grave pact... that'd be just my style...
One of the Best Articles on here ever. I can eveything you di and I'm going to try it with a few changesof my own. Keep it up morgan_coke.
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Say WHAT in Standard?
Yes, I said five-color control, and I do mean in the current Standard format. I was also very serious about the rogue bit. One of the first decks, if not the very first deck, that most Magic players build is a five-color deck. You buy your first couple of boosters and a starter and try to put something together from all of your "best" cards and end up with some multi-colored monstrosity that does OK against your friends but loses HORRIFICALLY to the first kid in your group who makes a small deck with only one or two colors in it. You then (for the most part, correctly) decide that decks which utilize five colors have a lot of inherent weaknesses, mainly due to mana issues.
While the above is true, many players never revisit those original assumptions to see if they are, indeed, correct. Depending on the current card sets available, five-color decks may or may not be viable. Domain and Gifts Ungiven decks are two recent examples of decks that successfully utilized all five colors in Standard.
This deck is very different from those two decks in several important ways.
Fifth Dawn brought some obvious power cards to constructed Magic, namely Eternal Witness (possibly the most broken card from Mirrodin Block - Skullclamp included) and Cranial Plating. Fifth Dawn also contained a lot of cards that most people looked at and said, "Wow, great flavor, cool ability, but useless." Now why is that? Because the theme of Fifth Dawn is multi-color decks, specifically decks playing all five colors, or four at the least.
Generally speaking, Wizards seems to have mostly followed the formula that a card can have a lower converted mana cost (i.e. be cast earlier and be more playable) if it requires more of that mana to be of a colored nature. Take for example, White Knight and Pearled Unicorn. The Knight is CLEARLY superior to the Unicorn but can come into play an entire turn earlier because it requires two white mana to cast it whereas the Unicorn only requires one white mana to cast. The same principle is usually applied when dealing with multi-colored cards, or cards with sunburst that require multiple colors of mana to gain effectiveness. The Bringers cycle from Fifth Dawn perfectly illustrate this fact. Normally costing two colored and seven colorless mana to cast with only one color, they can be summoned a full four turns earlier by simply paying five colored mana.
Cards that are dependent upon having multiple colors or land types also get the same type of discount mana treatment. Great examples of this are cards from Domain decks such as Allied Strategies, which provided five cards for five mana. A similar card this deck uses is All Suns' Dawn. Regrowthing five cards should be very, very expensive, but because of the multicolored nature of the spell, it only costs five mana. Etched Oracle is another good example. A 4/4 creature for four mana is good; a 4/4 creature for four mana with a good ability is Ravenous Baloth. A 4/4 creature for four mana with a one mana Concentrate when it dies... wow.
How to Play Nice with Multiple Colors
Most players will tell you five colors don't work in a sixty-card deck due to mana issues, and even if they do work, they still don't work because by the time you put in enough land search and mana fixing to solve the mana problem, you don't have enough space left over to construct a winning deck. And even if you solve all of those problems it STILL won't work because you'll just auto-lose to land destruction decks. All of this is very true.
These reasons also ignore the relatively recent success of five-color decks in Standard. Domain was popular and powerful during Invasion's time in Standard, and there are several varieties of four- and five-color Gifts Ungiven decks floating around out there. The above reasons also think inside the box. They assume a traditional mana base built around basic lands, land search and artifacts. This deck uses none of those.
I'd like to take a few minutes to explain the above statement and how and why the manabase works. The first thirty cards of this deck are already set: four Night of Souls' Betrayal and then 26 lands which make up your mana base. Don't be confused by the fact that Night is a Legendary Enchantment; you need to run four of them, both so you can consistently draw it early and to replace copies that have been destroyed or countered. The Legendary Lands are included because during testing I decided I was more worried about Sundering Titan than about Blood Moon. You can quite easily switch out the Legendary Lands for basic lands if you feel the opposite way about it. You run 26 lands in this deck, which is enough to make sure you hit your land drops even without any kind of land search or acceleration. Those 26 lands provide 16-18 mana of each color, which is more than enough to cast any spells that you might want to regardless of their color. This also negates the need for color fixing spells or effects, freeing up more space in the deck for threats and answers. You can also replace the single colored lands with more multilands, either of the five-mana variety or of the two-mana kind, but I have found that having some lands without any drawbacks whatsoever is a nice counterpoint to all of the tap and damage lands.
Another problem that heavily multicolor decks run into is a lack of focus. Every color is good at doing different things, and it can be hard to combine all of these abilities together into a coherent whole. It took me a long time after I built the first version of this deck to realize where it was attacking my opponent, but once I figured that out, I've been able to play and build the deck better.
Put simply, this deck attacks your opponent's draw. Not the draw phase mind you, but their draw itself. You're trying to make your opponents draws irrelevant by neutralizing the value of their cards value before they even hit play. For example, once Night of Souls' Betrayal is out, if your opponent draws a one toughness creature like Sakura-Tribe Elder, it's a dead draw. Similarily, if they draw a land destruction spell when you have Sacred Ground out, it's a dead draw. Boil works similarily with many blue decks for a few turns after you cast it since they are now unable to cast any of their spells.
Since you can use any card you want to with this deck, it generally helps to build a control deck that plays the way you want it to. I want my control decks to be able to deal with any threat after it enters play, counter opposing spells, and have unbeatable win conditions. I want to be able to sweep the board of creatures, make my opponents' spells useless, and prevent my opponent from having any kind of a long game. Sometimes I also want a little bit of burn to force through the last few points of damage.
Basically, this is your chance to build the control deck that you've always wanted to without having to worry about the restrictions of the color pie. You want a counter-based deck with powerful removal? Go for it. You want a deck that can answer any permanent your opponent plays while still having counter backup? No problem. You want to combine the previous two and add discard? That's covered too. The only restrictions you face are:
The last big obstacle multicolor decks, and control decks in general, face is finding acceptable win conditions that don't interfere with the flow of the deck. In this deck the only pure win condition is Genju of the Realm. Bringer of the Black Dawn doubles as your card selection, and the Etched Oracles double as card drawing.
What's In, What's Out, and Why
First, a decklist, organized by color for your convenience. Oh, and because I know it's a nuisance to count them all, there are 26 lands in the deck. This breaks down to: 18 Black mana, 18 Blue mana, 16 Green mana, 16 Red mana, and 18 White mana, which would otherwise require you to run 86 basic lands.
4x Night of Souls' Betrayal
2x Eradicate
2x Cranial Extraction
3x Bringer of the Black Dawn
Blue
3x Hinder
3x Condescend
Green
2x All Suns' Dawn
2x Naturalize
White
3x Wrath of God
2x Pulse of the Fields
Multicolor
4x Etched Oracle
3x Engineered Explosives
1x Genju of the Realm
Mana
1x Coastal Tower
2x Elfhame Palace
1x Salt Marsh
1x Urborg Volcano
1x Eiganjo Castle
1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1x Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1x Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
1x Cloudcrest Lake
1x Waterveil Cavern
1x Lantern-Lit Graveyard
2x Tendo Ice Bridge
3x City of Brass
4x Mirrodin's Core
4x Forbidden Orchard
3x Boil
3x Mana Leak
3x Sacred Ground
2x Terashi's Grasp
2x Bribery
2x Cranial Extraction
IN
Night of Souls' Betrayal: This is the heart of the deck. It serves as an enabler for Forbidden Orchard and renders the following creatures fairly irrelevant: Slith Firewalker, Eternal Witness, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Savannah Lions, Meloku, the Clouded Mirror, Genju of the Spires, and Nezumi Shortfang. Night also puts a severe crimp on any creature-based attack strategy since all of your opponent's creatures suddenly are much less effective. Three Leonin Skyhunters is six damage a turn normally, with Night out, that becomes three damage a turn.
Eradicate: There are quite a few creatures that you want to remove from the game in Standard right now, either because they're Indestructible or because they have great "goes to the Graveyard" effects. Getting rid of multiples of them (Eternal Witness) is also pretty amazing.
Bringer of the Black Dawn: Five mana for a 5/5 Trampler is nice. The fact that he's big and Black means that he dodges most of the removal currently in the format. The fact that he gives you the option to cast a free Vampiric Tutor before every draw phase is unbelievable.
Hinder: The cheapest "hard" counter currently available, this prevents your opponent from resolving that one key spell.
All Suns' Dawn: Eternal Witness is a great creature. Even if it was just a spell without the body it would still be good. With Dawn you get back five cards instead of one.
Pulse of the Fields: City of Brass, your opponent, Bringer of the Black Dawn, and Forbidden Orchard all do damage to you. A reusable means of lifegain is a must.
Naturalize: The banning of Affinity has, oddly enough, made artifacts MORE playable since you can now cast one without watching your opponent's face fill with glee because he now has a use for his Oxidizes and Viridian Shamans.
Etched Oracle: Last I heard, four mana for a 4/4 creature was a good deal. If that creature has some kind of ability, that's an even better deal. If the ability is life gain, you have Ravenous Baloth. If the ability is "cast Concentrate," that's quite simply amazing.
Engineered Explosives: The lengths Wizards went to protecting Affinity and the artifact lands from this card have made it much weaker than it should be because it can no longer destroy animated Lands (Stalking Stones). Even so, this works beautifully as spot removal for everything from Umezawa's Jitte to Genjus, to Arc-Slogger. It also doubles as mass removal against low mana-curved aggro decks.
Genju of the Realm: If you're playing with five colors, how can you NOT play a creature with higher toughness than Darksteel Colossus? On a side note, the creature this card "creates" is colorless. That means Terror kills it and it will deal damage to an untapped Pristine Angel.
Legendary Lands: As I said before, I am more worried about Sundering Titan than Blood Moon. If you feel differently, then definitely change these out for basic lands.
Boil: Blue is back and it's big. Boil backed up with countermagic is quite simply the worst possible thing that can happen to a Blue mage. This could easily go up to four depending on your metagame.
Bribery: Mainly included for Tooth and Nail, these are also occasionally useful against MBC or Rock. Do not use against any deck with access to bounce.
Terashi's Grasp: If you need more artifact and enchantment removal, here it is.
OUT
Many of the cards listed here might not seem like obvious choices, but they are all listed for a specific reason, namely that they have been in different versions of the deck that I built. On that point, I'd like to reiterate my earlier statement that this deck must be built to personal preference for maximum effectiveness. Most of the cards on this list are very playable in the main deck over what is there currently; it simply is a matter of what your expected metagame is and what cards you are more comfortable playing with. This is one deck with enough versatility that you can mold the deck to your own playstyle, rather than molding your playstyle to that dictated by the "best deck."
Bringers: I rate them in this order of effectiveness: Black, Green, Blue, Red, White.
Hondens: These require a different build of the deck to work properly, but are very powerful if you decide to go that route. I recommend them in this order:
Barter in Blood: You have Wrath so there's really no need to run this. It would merit more consideration if Eradicate wasn't around.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire: You don't have a lot of win conditions, so if one of them is Indestructible and has an instant-speed free Wrath of God in his pocket thats just gravy.
Pulse of the Tangle: Works great with Forbidden Orchard and against ground based aggro, but doesn't feel like it does enough. (Mainly becuase the big weenie decks right now use lots of Flyers or 1/1's)
Beacon of Destruction: Instant-speed creature removal regardless of color, good, a recursive win condition, good. Killing your opponent when they burn themselves down to stop Pulse of the Fields, priceless.
Hammer of Bogardan: This is a good card that is similar to Beacon of Destruction. Hammer is better than Beacon against Blue decks, but it can't kill Yukora, Patrons, or Dragon Legends.
Rude Awakening: Attacking with a bunch of 1/1's just isn't nearly as lethal or threatening as attacking with a bunch of 2/2's.
Beacon of Unrest: There's not much in your own deck you would want to use it on, since the Sunburst artifacts come back with zero counters on them. If Reanimator ends up making a comeback, the this gets a second look.
Sowing Salt: This could replace Bribery for use against Tooth and Nail and would be useful in dealing with Stalking Stones as well.
Pyroclasm: There just are not enough aggro decks in the current metagame to justify putting another mass removal spell in the deck.
Shunt: A really fun counterspell that often completely surprises your opponent. Very effective against discard, counter, and land destruction spells. Also works on "enchant X" spells. Stops everything from Last Word to Cranial Extraction. Please note, though, that this only changes the target of said spell. The player who cast the original spell still gets to make all the decisions relevant to it. (i.e. what card to choose, whether or not to activate an enchantment, etc.)
Grim Reminder: While this could be a very efficient and reusable way to kill your opponents, you probably won't be getting enough use out of it to justify its inclusion in either deck or sideboard.
Matchups! Get your Red Hot Matchups!
When playing any particular match, you have to understand if you're in the aggressive or controlling role. With this deck you are ALWAYS the control deck. Against Mono-Blue, you're the control deck, against Mono-Black, you're the control deck: know it, live it, love it, act like it, play like it.
What does it mean always being the control deck? Well, for one thing, it means that you are going to be slower than your opponent. For another, it means you're going to play a long game. Finally, it means that you have lots of chances to make mistakes and lose, but you also have lots of chances to get things right and win.
Tooth and Nail: The good news in this matchup is that you're immune to Kiki-Titan. The bad news is that you don't have enough counters to stop them. Game one is average to bad for you depending on how soon they draw thier combo and if you have Eradicate or Genju ready to answer the Colossus. Once Colossus is out of the picture, the match gets pretty good for you as long as you don't get hit with Mindslaver. This deck can do some fairly brutal things to itself if given the chance, so try not to let that happen. After sideboarding, things get much better, as you bring in the Mana Leaks to slow down their land search, Cranial Extractionto rip apart their deck and Bribery to steal their Colossus. The third game is often decided while sideboarding since they might take out their Colossus or Duplicants to prevent them from being bribed. If that happens you have to guess correctly and pull your own Bribery for artifact removal.
Recommended sideboarding:
-3 Engineered Explosives
-2 Night of Souls' Betrayal
-2 Naturalize
+2 Cranial Extraction
+2 Bribery
+3 Mana Leak
Mono-Blue Control: This is good for you before sideboarding, and great after. One of the main reasons is that you have Night of Souls' Betrayal. This turns Meloku into a 1/3 flier with the ability to return lands to your hand. It also means that Magpie has no power, and does no damage, thus drawing the Blue player no cards. You have Eradicate and Wrath of God. Wrath kills Meloku and any Illusions he has created, while Eradicate completely eliminates one of the two to three win conditions they have. Engineered Explosives can kill any permanent they play, and Pulse of the Fields means that the one Stalking Stones they're protecting won't be able to finish the job on its own. In a recent playtesting game against MUC the Blue player conceded on turn 26 when I resolved a Pulse of the Fields because I had 15 more cards in my library than he did and he only had one win condition left in his deck.
Games against Blue take a LONG time. After sideboarding the addition of Boil and additional countermagic makes the match just outright horrific for them. When playing against blue, DON'T cast any spells until they do OR unless you think you have enough counters to exhaust them in a counter war. Your goal is to skip the early game where their Mana Leaks and Condescends are most effective, and force them into taking on the active role in the match, which they are not good at doing. Keep track of how many counters your opponent has used. Most blue decks run 12-16 counters, of which eight or more will be conditional, and take advantage when you know they're just holding a Magpie and an Island.
Recommended Sideboarding:
Plan A:
-1 Genju of the Realm
-3 Bringer of the Black Dawn
-3 Engineered Explosives
-1 Etched Oracle
+2 Cranial Extraction
+3 Mana Leak
+3 Boil
Your goal here is to deck them, using Extraction to go after their counters and your removal to deal with their threats. Vedalken Shackles and Bribery are notably ineffective when you don't have any creatures to use them on.
Plan B:
-3 Bringer of the Black Dawn
-3 Engineered Explosives
+3 Boil
+3 Mana Leak
Your plan with this version is simply to force through a Boil then win with Oracles or the Genju.
Touche
Recommended Sideboarding:
-2 Cranial Extraction
-3 Hinder
+2 Terashi's Grasp
+3 Mana Leak
Mono Black Control: Average. This is very much about who goes first, or who gets to two mana first. Once you have countermagic online, Black will have a LOT of trouble winning, but if they get a Wrench Mind or Distress early in the game to strip away your counters, you're in trouble. There are a lot of different builds of MBC around right now, so you should always try to get off an Extraction game one just so you can see how their deck is put together. For example, if they run Death Cloud, you'll need to bring in Sacred Ground. If they don't, then you'll want to leave it in the board.
Recommended Sideboarding:
-2 Eradicate
-2 Naturalize
-1 Bringer of the Black Dawn
+3 Mana Leak
+2 Cranial Extraction
Always name Extraction first with your Extractions after sideboarding since its almost 100% sure they'll have several of them waiting for you. Also, depending on how their build is set up, you might be better off leaving the Leaks in the board and instead bringing in extra artifact and enchantment removal.
Land Destruction: Average to bad before sideboarding, average to good after. In game one this match comes down to whether you draw more land and counterst than they draw LD. Even with 26 lands the answer is no more often than you'd like. R/G LD is tougher than mono-red LD because green gives them Eternal Witness, mana acceleration, and Plow Under. If you can get to and maintain four mana you'll have access to 80% of your spells, which is good enough to win with.
Recommended Sideboarding:
-1 Genju of the Realm
-3 Engineered Explosives
-2 Naturalize
+3 Mana Leak
+3 Sacred Ground
Finally, I'd like to take a second to go over this deck's worst matchup and its biggest weakness.
Burn.dec: Bad before sideboarding, if they have Blood Moon it becomes Very Ridiculously Bad and Horrible. Basically your deck wins by making opposing decks lose draws and creatures, then using countermagic to handle the few spells they have left that are an actual threat to you. Red burn decks either have very few creatures or none at all and simply throw more spells at you than you can handle in the early part of the game. They have Flames of the Blood Hand to negate your Pulse of the Fieldsand lots more spells than you have counters. Pulling the Explosives for Mana Leaks helps a little, but not enough.
Blood Moon: This card turns all of your mana red. Since you want to play with all five colors of mana this is generally a bad thing. You have Extraction and counters to stop it from hitting play, but that's it. Once it's down, if you didn't tap for a green mana before it resolved so you could nail it with Naturalize, or if you don't have Explosives down for three, it's most likely gg right there. Fortunately Blood Moon is seeing very little play right now. Why you may ask? Quite simply put, Blood Moon is most effective against Tooth and Nail, but if you're already playing red, why pick Blood Moon over Sowing Salt which is much, much less narrow? Besides, if you're playing red right now its probably some form of LD anyways, so why bother with extra cards for a matchup that's already very much in your favor anyways? This keeps the number of Blood Moons in the environment very low, which means you don't have to worry about it so much. Besides, Blue has to live with Boil and Choke, White with Flashfires, and Black with Karma, so just do your best to play around it.
Summary
I almost feel like a broken record at this point, but I'll say it again because it bears repeating. This deck is very different from almost anything you've ever played. You're going to have to customize it to your own playstyle for optimum effectiveness. That's one of the main reasons the "OUT" section is so long. It's there to help you tune the deck to your own playstyle.
I'm going to use this section to try and answer two questions that I think most people will be asking about this deck. First, why all the two and three-ofs in the deck? Well, for a lot of reasons, honestly. First, the three Bringers all have reusable tutor effects, which means perfect draws for the rest of the game, eliminating inconsistency. For the other reasons, I'll use Wrath of God as an example. There were originally four Wraths in the deck, but it became apparent that between the Nights, Eradicates, Extractions, and Explosives that four Wraths in the deck often led to a dead Wrath sitting in your hand. By cutting what was frequently a dead card, I was able to add more versatility and flexibility to the deck without detracting from its strengths.
The second question has to do with sideboarding. In every single matchup listed, the Mana Leaks come in, so I'm sure many of you are wondering why they simply aren't maindecked in the first place. The answer has to do with again, versatility. Oftentimes several of your cards will be dead in any particular matchup since the maindeck is geared towards being very general, while the sideboard contains a lot of very matchup-specific cards. This means that you will often have plenty of dead cards for any given opponent between your deck and sideboard, the Mana Leaks act as kind of a universal "safe in" for your deck. Sometimes, as in the White Weenie matchup, the Leaks come in for the Hinders as a simple manner of tuning. Against Tooth and Nail they serve as a safe replacement for the almost completely useless Engineered Explosives. Against mono-black decks they work as solid alternatives to Eradicate. This is why the Mana Leaks live in the board, even though they come in very frequently.
Which color are you?
Non-Judge - Comprehensive Rules Delver
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How would the deck do against mono-G beatdown ? Whilst Snakes is really a block deck, I'm increasingly seeing people choosing mono-G for type 2 (or near-mono with a U splash).
I have a lot of respect for this kind of approach to rogue decks. Rather than saying "OMG this goes 90% vs the whole field", just present a good, solid discussion of the deck and let people draw their own conclusions. That's the way to encourage innovative deck design.
(I'm on on this site much anymore. If you want to get in touch it's probably best to email me: dom@heffalumps.org)
Forum Awards: Best Writer 2005, Best Limited Strategist 2005-2012
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MTGSalvation Articles: 1-20, plus guest appearance on MTGCast #86!
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U U
You didn't read the whole article. Last paragraph:
Why only 3 Cities, is the pain THAT bad?
I dont think you refuted the use of Gifts in your deck. It seems particularly effective...
If you included i apologize for wasting your time.
This is a fine artical!
Genesis Complete!!! 306/306
(Land centered mechanics Affinity for lands; Synergy with lands (Affinity for activated abilities)
(Extended-ish Power level) PM me if you are interested
Awakening ?/180: Features Domain, with more land comes more mastery over the elements. Channel and Growth are expanded making landcasting more interesting.
Still, intresting Article.
I'm going to give your version a run and see how I like it!
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Are you writing another artical?
Sneaky ninja....
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I wish I had a life
I can't even nitpick about this article, it was... amazing.
Pita: If you have to pick one of them, generally I'd go with Barter over Laughter because it kills ANYTHING. But Laughter is better against Green and White Weenie. Basically, I'd say metagame/testing choice but my advice is to lean more towards Barter if it's not immediately clear which is better.
Batelur: Green beatdown is absolutely abused by Night of Souls' Betrayal given that a lot of the Green builds only creature with more than one natural toughness is Troll Ascetic.
Effeetsnob: There used to be four Cities, but when Tendo Ice Bridge came out I dropped down to three of them because having two cities in your opening hand is a good way to lose a lot of life fast. As far as Gifts goes, it's a great card, but it works a lot better when you can abuse it with Witness, Revive, Raise Dead and lots of one-of answers. Since there's already an article in the works on this topic by someone else, I'll let them cover it. But if you want to use it, by all means do so.
Silver Seraph: Witness as just a Regrowth is a good spell, but it's nothing like Witness for Witness, have an undying creature or the kind of card advantage Witness normally provides.
I'm becoming less and less sold on the Genju of the Realm in the deck as more and more people are running Naturalize and Terashi's Grasp to deal with all the Swords and Jitte's in the environment, plus the fact that Plow Under and Boomerang kill him as well. I'm leaning towards replacing him with Beacon of Destruction (with a bringer out you can just draw one every single turn until opponent is well and truly dead), or possibly Myojin of Cleansing Fire, Clearwater Goblet, another counterspell (Shunt?) or another Naturalize.
my current five color deck runs in a different direction,but the control element is still there... it just also has mana fix (pentad prism, and chrome mox) and shrapnel blast for those "problem" situations...
i had the genju of the realms going on the darksteel citadel pre-bannings, and these days they go pretty much anywhere.
i also use spirit links in my deck. on my creatures... we all know what that does, but i'm always surprised by how surprised my opponents look when they drop out their 2 Darksteel Colossus and i spirit link them both the next turn.
anyway... as i said, i am impressed with this build and it really has made me think about the night of souls' betrayal...
i'm thinking about building it with a black / green honden deck (you're thinking... idiot... that doesn't work... but- ) with grave pact... that'd be just my style...
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