I haven't played the 2-player version in a while and I'd like to update it since it has slightly different dynamics and requires fewer players to work. The 4-player version is quite a bit better tuned, so I'd like to update the 2-player version given what I've learned.
Here's the deck I'm working with:
| DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | |
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Creatures (20) 1x Hedron Crab 1x Screeching Sliver 1x Mindlash Sliver 1x Delver of Secrets 1x Millikin 1x Rotting Rats 1x Golgari Thug 1x Soratami Cloudskater 1x Looter il-Kor 1x Nezumi Graverobber 1x Bloodcurdler 1x Runed Servitor 1x Dimir Guildmage 1x Stinkweed Imp 1x Gomazoa 1x Reckless Scholar 1x Viscera Dragger 1x Architects of Will 1x Shoreline Ranger 1x Twisted Abomination | Lands (20) 4x Island 1x Lonely Sandbar 1x Halimar Depths 1x Shelldock Isle 1x Magosi, the Waterveil 4x Swamp 1x Barren Moor 1x Bojuka Bog 1x Cabal Pit 1x Dakmor Salvage 1x Creeping Tar Pit 1x Evolving Wilds 1x Terramorphic Expanse 1x Ghost Quarter Spells (20) 1x Elixir of Immortality 1x Expedition Map 1x Nihil Spellbomb 1x Darkblast 1x Death Rattle 1x Metamorphose 1x Memory Lapse 1x Crippling Fatigue 1x Deep Analysis 1x Mental Note 1x Manipulate Fate 1x Words of Wisdom 1x Reanimate 1x Grim Discovery 1x Gravepurge 1x Cremate 1x Raven's Crime 1x False Memories 1x Mind Funeral 1x Archive Trap |
This deck is designed such that both players will cause it to mill out, either incidentally, or intentionally. There's a lot of cycling, and cantrips, a few cards with dredge, and a few cards that mill.
When players enter the endgame, a large number of cards behave significantly differently, either by putting cards back into the deck to stop the player from losing, or by causing other players to draw cards, which they won't want to if the deck is empty.
The midgame is about pressuring your opponent to either spend their resources to stay alive or to spend their resources to mill the deck more quickly.
In general, attacking your opponent is a safer, more selfish, plan if you have the creatures for it. If you mill the deck, your opponent can often flip it on you with a few cards and then kill you with the empty library.
At one point, the deck had an effective converted mana cost of 1.9
Card Specifics
I would have to say that the strongest card in the deck is by far Metamorphose. It deals with any threat in the deck and then allows you to draw that threat on your turn. It additionally puts a card on top of the library, keeping you alive in the endgame and potentially taking your opponent's endgame card from them.
Creeping Tar Pit is a very strong mid-game card. It puts a lot of pressure on your opponent to act and there are not very many cards that can deal with it. However, it doesn't do anything relevant at the endgame and likely can't attack if you want to cast anything.
Darkblast is very potent in this deck. It kills many of the commonly cast creatures and the dredge trick can kill the important X/2s. If there are relevant creatures in play, both players have an incentive to dredge Darkblast, either to kill that creature or to prevent the opponent from doing so. As a result, cycling and cantrips will be used to fight for control of Darkblast when it shows up. Darkblast will show up every game, so you can plan around it.
Reckless Scholar is one of the most dangerous permanents in play. During the mid-game, it helps to filter your draws, improving your chances in the late game. It can help you fight over dredge cards as well. In the late game, however, it becomes ": Kill target player." It can do this during your upkeep as well, so an empty library isn't all that dangerous to you. This will likely be killed as soon as your opponent can.
Gomazoa is a very useful tool to have in play. In the endgame, you can use it repeatedly to avoid dying to an empty library since its summoning sickness goes away during your upkeep. If you have to, you can block with it in the midgame and rid your opponent from a troublesome attacker.
Magosi, the Waterveil is a niche card, but it does provide a useful effect on occasion. If the library is empty, you can skip your turn and let your opponent deal with that first. On occasion, this will just kill your opponent.
Runed Servitor and Dimir Guildmage are both 2/2s for 2. This happens to put them in a sweet spot where they are relatively difficult to kill with removal and also relatively difficult to block well for much of the game, given the rest of the creatures in the deck. This lets them pressure your opponent for a good chunk of the early and midgame. They both also have the ability to force your opponent to draw cards, giving them an added use at the endgame.
While Metamorphose is probably the best card in the deck, Death Rattle is second in terms of removal. It kills anything and can exile cards from the graveyard in addition, occasionally allowing you to 2-for-1 your opponent.
Screeching Sliver might not look like much, but it's a huge part of what makes approaching the endgame so complicated. Screeching Sliver says NO to Metamorphose and Gomazoa and any other effect that puts single cards back on top of the library. Additionally, the threat of using it cuts off lines of play for your opponent (such as cycling to nab the last card in the deck), and then not having to use it lets you draw the occasional card.
Millikin starts where Screeching Sliver leaves off and also gives you a mana for your troubles. While the deck doesn't require a lot of mana to operate, having more mana gives you more options. Being relevant during the endgame is an added bonus and you will occasionally mill into more options before casting your spells.
Stinkweed Imp having Dredge 5 is incredibly relevant. It can be used to block most of the threats in the deck and then mill an additional 5 cards as you recast it. Looting Stinkweed Imp multiple times is one of the fastest ways of shredding the deck.
Crippling Fatigue and Deep Analysis are two very potent cards that do something very useful for cheap, but only if they're in the graveyard and only if you're willing to pay 3 life. They essentially will show up every game, either drawn, or milled into. The life payment rewards aggression by lowering people's life totals and making the aggressor the one who can cast these more freely.
Areas To Improve
The deck is not without some problems. Combat only matters occasionally. I would like it to matter slightly more. Slowing the milling down by any amount would do this, but would also make the rest of the milling cards irrelevant. There quite a few mill-only cards which I'd like to address, since they're very polar draws.
Three changes I've decided upon already are as follows:
Duskmantle Guildmage replaces Dimir Guildmage. Dimir Guildmage came down consistently on turn 2 and started applying a lot of immediate pressure. If the board became stalled, it started to eat your hand and then draw cards. It was very oppressive and but didn't kill you. Duskmantle Guildmage doesn't provide any card advantage, but does encourage you to dredge as a way to deal large chunks of damage.
Pilfered Plans replaces Mind Funeral. Mind Funeral was good for only one thing: Milling a bunch of cards by surprise. You would generally have to tap out to do this and you could generally tell how many lands were left in the deck based on what was milled and exiled. However, if you weren't trying to do this, it was just a dead card, especially in the early mid game. It's possible that this is fine since as a card, it would guide you to make different choices, but for now, I want to try something else.
I will note that a card like Mind Funeral slows aggro multiple ways. For a player that has a good board state, it's a dead card. For that player's opponent, milling a bunch of cards helps to mitigate them since most creatures are irrelevant during the endgame. I DO want the player on the back foot to have the option of pushing for this.
Rapid Hybridization replaces Archive Trap. Archive Trap was cute, but highly polar. It often was card disadvantage, and even when you could play it for free, it was often wrong to unless you needed to dig for dredge or Crippling Fatigue. Further, casting it in response to cycling to kill your opponent out of nowhere gets old really fast and is not stellar game play. Rapid Hybridization will play as a combat trick aura in the midgame and then be decent removal for their endgame-relevant creatures as well as let you trigger Golgari Thug and Runed Servitor.
These three changes make it a lot more difficult to mill the deck, particularly quickly. Combat will be more relevant and dredge/flashback cards will be drawn more often than they are currently. I would like to add in incidental mill where I can moving forward on cards that are otherwise still fine.
Hedron Crab is a card I'm looking to replace with a 1- or 2-drop blue creature. It's nice that it mills a lot, but that's ALL it does. Bloodcurdler is a decent attacker that also mills. Unlike Mind Funeral, this is still a bad top deck for the defending player since it doesn't mill everything away at once.
Mental Note doesn't quite do enough to justify having to spend a mana to cycle. As with the 100-card version, I'd be open to replacing this with Peek, but we still need incidental mill somewhere...
Gravepurge would have been awesome at 2, but is presently a bit clunky. Rarely will you ever cast this to just get multiple good creatures back. It instead cycles for 3 or Disentombs for 3. If you're lucky, you get to cast it during the endgame and not die. It conveniently puts back a variable number of cards, which lets you dodge Millikin.
Nihil Spellbomb just does too much too easily. It sits in play and counters any sort of reanimation or disentombing and cantrips and lets you fight over dredge OR exile dredge. I'd like to try Conjuror's Bauble over this since that at least doesn't turn off Gravepurge. Though not having to keep a mana open to draw is relevant and this clashes with Cremate. I could possibly replace Cremate with another spell, possibly Unearth or Misinformation, but I'm not sure presently. Regardless, it would be nice if the graveyard mattered more and exiling all of it whenever you want is a bit of a hindrance to that.
Mindlash Sliver is quite weak. I'll grant that in this deck, there are more things you can do with it, like ditching a flashback card and pressuring your opponent's endgame spells, but more often than not, it just doesn't do much. If it's removed, I want to replace Screeching Sliver with Cathartic Adept.
| DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | |
|---|---|
|
Creatures (20) 1x Hedron Crab 1x Screeching Sliver 1x Mindlash Sliver 1x Delver of Secrets 1x Millikin 1x Rotting Rats 1x Golgari Thug 1x Soratami Cloudskater 1x Looter il-Kor 1x Nezumi Graverobber 1x Bloodcurdler 1x Runed Servitor 1x Duskmantle Guildmage 1x Stinkweed Imp 1x Gomazoa 1x Reckless Scholar 1x Viscera Dragger 1x Architects of Will 1x Shoreline Ranger 1x Twisted Abomination | Lands (20) 4x Island 1x Lonely Sandbar 1x Halimar Depths 1x Shelldock Isle 1x Magosi, the Waterveil 4x Swamp 1x Barren Moor 1x Bojuka Bog 1x Cabal Pit 1x Dakmor Salvage 1x Creeping Tar Pit 1x Evolving Wilds 1x Terramorphic Expanse 1x Ghost Quarter Spells (20) 1x Elixir of Immortality 1x Expedition Map 1x Nihil Spellbomb 1x Darkblast 1x Death Rattle 1x Rapid Hybridization 1x Metamorphose 1x Memory Lapse 1x Crippling Fatigue 1x Deep Analysis 1x Mental Note 1x Manipulate Fate 1x Words of Wisdom 1x Pilfered Plans 1x Reanimate 1x Grim Discovery 1x Gravepurge 1x Cremate 1x Raven's Crime 1x False Memories |
Change List
(9/30/13)
Duskmantle Guildmage replaces Dimir Guildmage
Pilfered Plans replaces Mind Funeral
Rapid Hybridization replaces Archive Trap
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