Originally when I volunteered to cover The Rock I was not particularly excited about doing so. My opinion of the deck this season had best been summed up by a Vintage player talking about Sui-Black in Vintage: "I just don't get why people play this deck. It's so incredibly underpowered in Vintage that it almost feels like you're playing against a bad Legacy deck." Change the word Vintage to Extended, and Legacy to Standard, and that's the feeling I got when doing the testing for this article as well. "Accelerating" your way into a turn 2 Spike Feeder is not very impressive when your opponent's turn 2 play is a Sundering Titan killing your two lands. Clearing the board with a Pernicious Deed just doesn't feel so good when the turn afterwards you get Firebolted to death.
So why play Rock this Extended season? Nostalgia? Familiarity? Don't have the cards to play something else? Just want something to test against? Live in a combo metagame? Whatever your reasons are for wanting to play Rock, rest assured that there are lots of other people just like you. It has been quite a popular deck this Extended season, and should you live to see turn 5-8, it's even a good deck.
For the analysis in this article, I took five different Rock decks that t8ed five different PTQs (four PTQ's and GP Seattle), and one from a local FNM to use as the basis for my analysis. Rector - Pattern was deliberately excluded, because even though it is commonly misnomered as Rock, it plays and 'feels' quite different from conventional Rock, and deserves its own article. Red Rock was ignored while designing the deck, although I promise to discuss it below.
Building The Deck
The obvious spot to start at is the manabase. All of the decks used Swamps, Forests, Llanowar Wastes, and Treetop Villages. Three of the Six decks used at least one Wasteland, while Volrath's Stronghold was used in only two. The FNM deck was the only one using Pine Barrens, but I suspect that’s mostly due to an exceptionally high Teen Titans count and an exceptionally low RDW count at local FNMs more than a need for manafixing.
Spike Feeder has a pair of significant advantages over Ravenous Baloth. The first and most obvious is he costs less. This is highly important, when you consider that RDW in particular is very good at stressing your manabase.
The other advantage, is that he can be used to gain two life at a time. This can both gain you life, while leaving a 1/1 body around, as well as reduce your chances of getting burned to death with the life gain on the stack.
These two advantages combined more than make up for the smaller size of Spike Feeder when facing down aggressive decks, which is where you want the feeder/baloth to have the biggest impact.
If there is one thing Rock is good at, it's beating combo decks. The combination package of Duress, Cabal Therapy, and Cranial Extraction are absolutely deadly to combo players. Originally I intended to use them in a 3/4/2 role respectively, however the end result was a 61 card deck, and a Duress was moved to the sideboard.
In order to use the Recurring Nightmare strategy, obviously Recurring Nightmare must be included. There also has to be either tutors to fetch the nightmare when it is needed, or multiple copies thereof.
Red Deck Wins Game 1 against RDW causes the deck listed above headaches. The creatures of the red deck are relatively controllable, however the burn typically becomes lethal before Spike Feeder recursion manages to stabalize your life total. Sakura Tribe Elder is actually very useful in this matchup, helping you to get around Rishadan Port, and typically soaking up a burn spell as well. Unless desperate, Pernicious Deed should be saved for destroying Cursed Scrolls. To offset the difficulties of game 1, two Ravenous Baloths and a 4th Smother are going into the sideboard. They replace two Cranial Extractions and an Eternal Witness. Also, when facing artifact heavy versions of RDW, containing Great Furnace, Mox, and Scroll, I would replace the two copies of Duress with an Uktabi Orangutan and a Viridian Shaman.
The post sideboard games play out with a similar strategy to game one. Your goal is still to contain the creature rush and use Baloth/Feeder to counteract the burn. Your opponent's goal is to disrupt your manabase for long enough that his creatures and burn spells go lethal . The extra pair of Baloths helps your strategy immensely, and in an RDW dominated metagame they should be maindecked in place of one Extraction and one Witness. This matchup is certainly winnable, but is by no means easy. Worth noting is that about half of the decks I faced in testing, were opting for maindecked Sulfuric Vortexes in place of the more conventional Pillage or Tangle Wire, (no 'Tog locally at all) and were thus limited in terms of mana disruption to Wasteland and Port.
Ravager Affinity Pernicious Deed, I thee love. Deed is your strongest spell, and you should use it liberally. Don't hesitate to fire off a Deed for 2 which only kills one creature. If that Deed also takes out three lands and an AEther Vial it was well spent. You can expect your opponent will always name Pernicious Deed with his Meddling Mages (if he plays them), which conveniently leaves Pikula vulnerable to your Smothers.
Cranial Extraction should ALWAYS name Disciple of the Vault first unless there is already one in play. Arcbound Ravagers are very managable given your abundance of blockers and removal, but a Vault Ninja always spells trouble. As with RDW, you want to play a slow controlling game: grinding the ground game to a halt and winning with your graveyard recursion. Somber Hoverguard is the biggest Non-Disciple threat you will face as it is immune to Smother, has flying, and is typically too big to hit with Deed.
There is not a huge need to sideboard stuff in but, since Uktabi Orangutan and Viridian Shaman are already on our sideboard, it's certainly advisable to bring them in (replacing Cabal Therapy), as well as Ravenous Baloth (Cranial Extraction) and any other artifact hate.
You adopt the same strategy for game two as for game one, but with the added benefit of having more artifact hate in your deck. The one downside is you lose the ability to ExtractDisciple, but as long as you keep his artifact count down, and your life total up, the 1 mana Lava Axe is managable.
Teen Titans Ouch! Sundering Titan is the very definition of Rock domination. Pretty much any time it enters play the game is over. During testing, the only time I EVER managed to beat Teen Titans game 1 was when I ramped up to a "quick" (turn 3) Cranial Extraction, and extracted Titan before it hit play. From that point on however the matchup suddenly becomes very winnable. The smaller creatures are fairly easy to keep in check via Pernicious Deed and Smother, while anything large that gets through, dies to Diabolic Edict. Most of the time however, A Sundering Titan will come into play and just slaughter you.
If you want to win this one, you've got to have a method of dealing with Sundering Titan. My recommendation is Coffin Purge. Not only will two copies of Coffin Purge permanently deal with all 4 of your opponent's Titans, but they only cost 1 mana, and don't interfere with your own graveyard recursion, unlike Nether Void. However, you're not out of the woods yet. Show and Tell is the ultimate anti-sideboard-sideboard trick for your opponent, giving him a method of getting a cheap Titan into play even despite graveyard hate.
There isn't much to do about Show and Tell, except forcefully rip it from hand with Duress and Cabal Therapy. So in addition to Coffin Purges, you are going to have to bring in additional copies of Duress. That fourth Smother is also a good idea, since keeping Goblin Welder off the table is definitely desirable.
Despite the strength of Cranially ExtractingSundering Titan, I recommend going down to one Extraction for this matchup, because if you don't win the game fast, you won't win the game at all.
Various Combo Decks. Beating Combo is the best reason to play rock at the moment. Just about all of the combo decks are favorable matchups, from Aluren, to Life, to Mind's Desire. Your big strength is your ability to rip apart an opening hand with Duress and Cabal Therapy One dejected Mind's Desire player joked during testing that it didn't matter what hand he drew, because it would all just be Therapied away before he could go off anyway. The second major benefit is Cranial Extraction. With the notable exception of Cephalife (and to a lesser extent, it's component decks of Life and Breakfast as well), all of the combo decks in the format revolve around one specific spell. It's very hard for Aluren to win for example, without its namesake card. The great advantage over Life is that even going off won't win a Life player the game.
Recurring Nightmare + Eternal Witness(es) + Cranial Extraction will eventually end up decking the Life player even if he goes off. This "combo" works in any matchup, but rarely will you actually get enough time to implement it. Life is the one exception, because killing it with damage is improbable, and your opponent is highly unlikely to kill you any time soon either, especially once you Extract his ability to Living Wish for Serra Avatar.
Cards not Discussed Oversold Cemetery: Originally this was a Kokusho, The Evening Star, believe it or not. However the "engine" with Recurring Nightmare just never seemed to work the way I had hoped. Furthermore, Recurring Nightmare, while very powerful, did not have the best of synergy with Sakura-Tribe Elder, Spike Feeder, or Ravenous Baloth. With those cards, what I really wanted was a way to get them back into play without having to sacrifice the creatures I already had in play. Typically, Cemetery was plopped down immediately following a Pernicious Deed activation and could quite often last the entire game. It proved espescially strong in the aggro matchups, where it essentially allowed me to "draw" a Spike Feeder every turn.
Engineered Plague: Goblins can be quite difficult to beat without it. It has uses in other matchups, such as naming "Beast" versus Aluren. A single Plague very nearly made it into the maindeck, and could quite possibly replace a Cranial Extraction at some point in the future.
Naturalize: Not actually intended for Affinity, these were to help deal with Isochron Scepter-based decks. Instant speed artifact hate is a real premium when getting Orim's Chanted every single turn, and Naturalize got the nod over Oxidize for the superior versatility against unexpected or uncommon decks such as Opposition.
Red: Quite simply, I don't see justification for it. The typical reason is because Flametounge Kavu when combined with Recurring Nightmare provides a very potent removal package. That is true, but the deck it is most effective against, is Affinity. You can get a very similar effect using Viridian Shaman but with the added bonus of being on color and able to kill lands. RDW is rarely hampered by recurring FTKs, since by the time the nightmare engine comes on line, RDW is typically in the "burn him out" stage of their plan, and doesn't particularly object if you feel you must kill that Mogg Fanatic he's got. While Flametounge Kavu is a very powerful card, It's just not worth the decreased consistency that adding a third color brings.
That's just about everything you need to know about The Rock, and how to play it this Extended season. Until next time, may your Deeds bear Witness to your greatness.
Special Thanks Dr. Tom, for making me write this All my playtesting partners, for all the advice Sean Connery, for making The Rock such a good movie You, for reading the entire article
I was told today that this kid on my team called 911 twice this morning and hung up both times. They called back and his dad answered. The reason the kid called 911? He got an erection and didn't know what to do. I wish I was making this up.
Apparently there's a lot to be said for writing articles about decks you don't particularly like ! This seemed like an informative and fair analysis. And hey, there's nothing wrong with a weak deck being playable thanks to the metagame - combo is pretty good right now, so The Rock has its place.
I always find it hard to work out where The Rock stops and other B/G decks begin. Are those weird stompy-like decks which also run Black still "The Rock" ? Phyrexian Plaguelord is long gone... is Pernicious Deed now the card which defines Rock-ness ?
As for Red Rock, I think what little advantage it ever had was mostly surprise value. In an environment full of LD, nobody needs to be running a third colour if they can avoid it.
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(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
5CB PotM - June 2005, November 2005, February 2006, April 2008, May 2008, Feb 2009
MTGSalvation Articles: 1-20, plus guest appearance on MTGCast #86!
<Limited Clan>
I would say this is the best article I have read here thus far. I have not yet read everything, so there may be something even better yet. Anyway, Red in the Rock is like smoking rock; not the greatest idea ever. I tried it and it made the deck extremely clunky due to mana screw at every corner. I also think that Cemetary is an excellent idea in your build. Anyway, I saw your blurb about wishes and I was wondering if you had tested with them?
This could be very possibly the best article on Salvation yet.
I'll agree. This is very well-written and informative. Makes me want to build this deck... and then I'm reminded that I'm too broke to spend money on cards.
I always leave the mana base for the end. Is it that a fatal mistake?
Not really. It works either way. Personally I prefer having a good idea what lands and in what numbers I'm using, because it lets me know how I want to design my manacurve, and what color requirements I can handle. (for example, I wouldn't try anything with triple in that deck).
In the end, I suspect it doesn't matter much. After the deck has been built and playtested, changes will be made most likely to both the spells and the manabase, so it doesn't matter much what order you originally picked them in.
How does that deck win when has taken control? You can't recur the Villages, so they may die. Do you move your spike counters onto birds of paradise? Or isn't this even necessary?
It's been my experience that most players will scoop once I've taken control and shuffle up for the next game. If they don't however, it depends on what matchup. Against an aggro deck, I'm going to win by keeping the board clear of his creatures (via deed and witness recursion). Against combo, I'm likely to just extraction them until they can't possibly go off. Versus control, the key is just keeping pressure on your opponent's life total. Most control decks are designed to stop quick creature rushes, and cannot handle steady pressure and card advantage over the course of several turns.
I was told today that this kid on my team called 911 twice this morning and hung up both times. They called back and his dad answered. The reason the kid called 911? He got an erection and didn't know what to do. I wish I was making this up.
I always find it hard to work out where The Rock stops and other B/G decks begin. Are those weird stompy-like decks which also run Black still "The Rock" ? Phyrexian Plaguelord is long gone... is Pernicious Deed now the card which defines Rock-ness ?
You mean those decks with Call of the Herd, and Rancor? It's conventional to refer to them as "aggro rock", so the magic community as a whole has decided that they are rock.
I personally would define rock as any BG deck that is based around graveyard recursion and card advantage, which fits both the control and aggro version under it's umbrella, while still excluding things like the t2 BG decks. The real problem with defining it as deed, is some of those aggro versions that are conventionally reffered to as rock, don't maindeck deed
I was told today that this kid on my team called 911 twice this morning and hung up both times. They called back and his dad answered. The reason the kid called 911? He got an erection and didn't know what to do. I wish I was making this up.
How are type 2 green-black decks not defined as the rock? Just because their hand disruption is fairly limited doesn't mean they don't qualify under your definition.
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Good article, but as someone pointed out starting with the mana base is fairly ridiculous. You first decide which cards you want to play, then see how much green/black you have and make a mana ratio accordingly. Starting with the lands to see how much colored spells you can play is stupid. But other than that this article was very good.
You really just need to embrace the rage. I keep a small colony of hamsters next to my computer and every time I lose a match to mana screw I throw one against the wall.
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Originally when I volunteered to cover The Rock I was not particularly excited about doing so. My opinion of the deck this season had best been summed up by a Vintage player talking about Sui-Black in Vintage: "I just don't get why people play this deck. It's so incredibly underpowered in Vintage that it almost feels like you're playing against a bad Legacy deck." Change the word Vintage to Extended, and Legacy to Standard, and that's the feeling I got when doing the testing for this article as well. "Accelerating" your way into a turn 2 Spike Feeder is not very impressive when your opponent's turn 2 play is a Sundering Titan killing your two lands. Clearing the board with a Pernicious Deed just doesn't feel so good when the turn afterwards you get Firebolted to death.
So why play Rock this Extended season? Nostalgia? Familiarity? Don't have the cards to play something else? Just want something to test against? Live in a combo metagame? Whatever your reasons are for wanting to play Rock, rest assured that there are lots of other people just like you. It has been quite a popular deck this Extended season, and should you live to see turn 5-8, it's even a good deck.
For the analysis in this article, I took five different Rock decks that t8ed five different PTQs (four PTQ's and GP Seattle), and one from a local FNM to use as the basis for my analysis. Rector - Pattern was deliberately excluded, because even though it is commonly misnomered as Rock, it plays and 'feels' quite different from conventional Rock, and deserves its own article. Red Rock was ignored while designing the deck, although I promise to discuss it below.
6 Forest
4 Llanowar Wastes
2 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold
The obvious spot to start at is the manabase. All of the decks used Swamps, Forests, Llanowar Wastes, and Treetop Villages. Three of the Six decks used at least one Wasteland, while Volrath's Stronghold was used in only two. The FNM deck was the only one using Pine Barrens, but I suspect that’s mostly due to an exceptionally high Teen Titans count and an exceptionally low RDW count at local FNMs more than a need for manafixing.
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Wall of Blossoms
4 Spike Feeder
2 Eternal Witness
1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
The other advantage, is that he can be used to gain two life at a time. This can both gain you life, while leaving a 1/1 body around, as well as reduce your chances of getting burned to death with the life gain on the stack.
These two advantages combined more than make up for the smaller size of Spike Feeder when facing down aggressive decks, which is where you want the feeder/baloth to have the biggest impact.
3 Smother
3 Diabolic Edict
2 Duress
2 Cranial Extraction
3 Vampiric Tutor
It would be nice to include other cards, such as Living Wish, Engineered Plague, and Withered Wretch. Unfortunately the deck is at 60 cards already.
Matchups
Red Deck Wins
Game 1 against RDW causes the deck listed above headaches. The creatures of the red deck are relatively controllable, however the burn typically becomes lethal before Spike Feeder recursion manages to stabalize your life total. Sakura Tribe Elder is actually very useful in this matchup, helping you to get around Rishadan Port, and typically soaking up a burn spell as well. Unless desperate, Pernicious Deed should be saved for destroying Cursed Scrolls. To offset the difficulties of game 1, two Ravenous Baloths and a 4th Smother are going into the sideboard. They replace two Cranial Extractions and an Eternal Witness. Also, when facing artifact heavy versions of RDW, containing Great Furnace, Mox, and Scroll, I would replace the two copies of Duress with an Uktabi Orangutan and a Viridian Shaman.
The post sideboard games play out with a similar strategy to game one. Your goal is still to contain the creature rush and use Baloth/Feeder to counteract the burn. Your opponent's goal is to disrupt your manabase for long enough that his creatures and burn spells go lethal . The extra pair of Baloths helps your strategy immensely, and in an RDW dominated metagame they should be maindecked in place of one Extraction and one Witness. This matchup is certainly winnable, but is by no means easy. Worth noting is that about half of the decks I faced in testing, were opting for maindecked Sulfuric Vortexes in place of the more conventional Pillage or Tangle Wire, (no 'Tog locally at all) and were thus limited in terms of mana disruption to Wasteland and Port.
Ravager Affinity
Pernicious Deed, I thee love. Deed is your strongest spell, and you should use it liberally. Don't hesitate to fire off a Deed for 2 which only kills one creature. If that Deed also takes out three lands and an AEther Vial it was well spent. You can expect your opponent will always name Pernicious Deed with his Meddling Mages (if he plays them), which conveniently leaves Pikula vulnerable to your Smothers.
Cranial Extraction should ALWAYS name Disciple of the Vault first unless there is already one in play. Arcbound Ravagers are very managable given your abundance of blockers and removal, but a Vault Ninja always spells trouble. As with RDW, you want to play a slow controlling game: grinding the ground game to a halt and winning with your graveyard recursion. Somber Hoverguard is the biggest Non-Disciple threat you will face as it is immune to Smother, has flying, and is typically too big to hit with Deed.
There is not a huge need to sideboard stuff in but, since Uktabi Orangutan and Viridian Shaman are already on our sideboard, it's certainly advisable to bring them in (replacing Cabal Therapy), as well as Ravenous Baloth (Cranial Extraction) and any other artifact hate.
You adopt the same strategy for game two as for game one, but with the added benefit of having more artifact hate in your deck. The one downside is you lose the ability to Extract Disciple, but as long as you keep his artifact count down, and your life total up, the 1 mana Lava Axe is managable.
Teen Titans
Ouch! Sundering Titan is the very definition of Rock domination. Pretty much any time it enters play the game is over. During testing, the only time I EVER managed to beat Teen Titans game 1 was when I ramped up to a "quick" (turn 3) Cranial Extraction, and extracted Titan before it hit play. From that point on however the matchup suddenly becomes very winnable. The smaller creatures are fairly easy to keep in check via Pernicious Deed and Smother, while anything large that gets through, dies to Diabolic Edict. Most of the time however, A Sundering Titan will come into play and just slaughter you.
If you want to win this one, you've got to have a method of dealing with Sundering Titan. My recommendation is Coffin Purge. Not only will two copies of Coffin Purge permanently deal with all 4 of your opponent's Titans, but they only cost 1 mana, and don't interfere with your own graveyard recursion, unlike Nether Void. However, you're not out of the woods yet. Show and Tell is the ultimate anti-sideboard-sideboard trick for your opponent, giving him a method of getting a cheap Titan into play even despite graveyard hate.
There isn't much to do about Show and Tell, except forcefully rip it from hand with Duress and Cabal Therapy. So in addition to Coffin Purges, you are going to have to bring in additional copies of Duress. That fourth Smother is also a good idea, since keeping Goblin Welder off the table is definitely desirable.
Despite the strength of Cranially Extracting Sundering Titan, I recommend going down to one Extraction for this matchup, because if you don't win the game fast, you won't win the game at all.
Various Combo Decks.
Beating Combo is the best reason to play rock at the moment. Just about all of the combo decks are favorable matchups, from Aluren, to Life, to Mind's Desire. Your big strength is your ability to rip apart an opening hand with Duress and Cabal Therapy One dejected Mind's Desire player joked during testing that it didn't matter what hand he drew, because it would all just be Therapied away before he could go off anyway. The second major benefit is Cranial Extraction. With the notable exception of Cephalife (and to a lesser extent, it's component decks of Life and Breakfast as well), all of the combo decks in the format revolve around one specific spell. It's very hard for Aluren to win for example, without its namesake card. The great advantage over Life is that even going off won't win a Life player the game.
Recurring Nightmare + Eternal Witness(es) + Cranial Extraction will eventually end up decking the Life player even if he goes off. This "combo" works in any matchup, but rarely will you actually get enough time to implement it. Life is the one exception, because killing it with damage is improbable, and your opponent is highly unlikely to kill you any time soon either, especially once you Extract his ability to Living Wish for Serra Avatar.
The Rock Rebuilt
5 Swamp
3 Treetop Village
4 Llanowar Wastes
2 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Wall of Blossoms
2 Eternal Witness
4 Spike Feeder
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Cranial Extraction
3 Vampiric Tutor
3 Diabolic Edict
3 Smother
1 Recurring Nightmare
1 Oversold Cemetery
1 Smother
1 Cranial Extraction
2 Duress
4 Coffin Purge
1 Engineered Plague
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Uktabi Orangutan
2 Ravenous Baloth
2 Naturalize
Cards not Discussed
Oversold Cemetery: Originally this was a Kokusho, The Evening Star, believe it or not. However the "engine" with Recurring Nightmare just never seemed to work the way I had hoped. Furthermore, Recurring Nightmare, while very powerful, did not have the best of synergy with Sakura-Tribe Elder, Spike Feeder, or Ravenous Baloth. With those cards, what I really wanted was a way to get them back into play without having to sacrifice the creatures I already had in play. Typically, Cemetery was plopped down immediately following a Pernicious Deed activation and could quite often last the entire game. It proved espescially strong in the aggro matchups, where it essentially allowed me to "draw" a Spike Feeder every turn.
Engineered Plague: Goblins can be quite difficult to beat without it. It has uses in other matchups, such as naming "Beast" versus Aluren. A single Plague very nearly made it into the maindeck, and could quite possibly replace a Cranial Extraction at some point in the future.
Naturalize: Not actually intended for Affinity, these were to help deal with Isochron Scepter-based decks. Instant speed artifact hate is a real premium when getting Orim's Chanted every single turn, and Naturalize got the nod over Oxidize for the superior versatility against unexpected or uncommon decks such as Opposition.
Red: Quite simply, I don't see justification for it. The typical reason is because Flametounge Kavu when combined with Recurring Nightmare provides a very potent removal package. That is true, but the deck it is most effective against, is Affinity. You can get a very similar effect using Viridian Shaman but with the added bonus of being on color and able to kill lands. RDW is rarely hampered by recurring FTKs, since by the time the nightmare engine comes on line, RDW is typically in the "burn him out" stage of their plan, and doesn't particularly object if you feel you must kill that Mogg Fanatic he's got. While Flametounge Kavu is a very powerful card, It's just not worth the decreased consistency that adding a third color brings.
That's just about everything you need to know about The Rock, and how to play it this Extended season. Until next time, may your Deeds bear Witness to your greatness.
credits
Editing
Goblinboy - Primary Editor
Qwerty - Secondary Editor
Images
iloveatogs
Formatting
Senori
Special Thanks
Dr. Tom, for making me write this
All my playtesting partners, for all the advice
Sean Connery, for making The Rock such a good movie
You, for reading the entire article
Mafia Stats
I always find it hard to work out where The Rock stops and other B/G decks begin. Are those weird stompy-like decks which also run Black still "The Rock" ? Phyrexian Plaguelord is long gone... is Pernicious Deed now the card which defines Rock-ness ?
As for Red Rock, I think what little advantage it ever had was mostly surprise value. In an environment full of LD, nobody needs to be running a third colour if they can avoid it.
(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
5CB PotM - June 2005, November 2005, February 2006, April 2008, May 2008, Feb 2009
MTGSalvation Articles: 1-20, plus guest appearance on MTGCast #86!
<Limited Clan>
This could be very possibly the best article on Salvation yet.
I'll agree. This is very well-written and informative. Makes me want to build this deck... and then I'm reminded that I'm too broke to spend money on cards.
Not really. It works either way. Personally I prefer having a good idea what lands and in what numbers I'm using, because it lets me know how I want to design my manacurve, and what color requirements I can handle. (for example, I wouldn't try anything with triple in that deck).
In the end, I suspect it doesn't matter much. After the deck has been built and playtested, changes will be made most likely to both the spells and the manabase, so it doesn't matter much what order you originally picked them in.
It's been my experience that most players will scoop once I've taken control and shuffle up for the next game. If they don't however, it depends on what matchup. Against an aggro deck, I'm going to win by keeping the board clear of his creatures (via deed and witness recursion). Against combo, I'm likely to just extraction them until they can't possibly go off. Versus control, the key is just keeping pressure on your opponent's life total. Most control decks are designed to stop quick creature rushes, and cannot handle steady pressure and card advantage over the course of several turns.
Mafia Stats
You mean those decks with Call of the Herd, and Rancor? It's conventional to refer to them as "aggro rock", so the magic community as a whole has decided that they are rock.
I personally would define rock as any BG deck that is based around graveyard recursion and card advantage, which fits both the control and aggro version under it's umbrella, while still excluding things like the t2 BG decks. The real problem with defining it as deed, is some of those aggro versions that are conventionally reffered to as rock, don't maindeck deed
Mafia Stats
Strengthen my steel should I falter
Smite my back should I flee
Save my soul should I fall
Official Recovering World of Warcraft Addict of The Ivory Tower