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Sometimes, in my tinkering, I build decks that are just made for a bomb. I can't help it. There is just some trick or card that I fall in love with, and I have to build the deck. The lesson today is how. I hope that at the end of this article you will have a grasp on the thought process that I go through when building a single-card strategy deck.
Step 1 – Analyze the card.
Many cards in Magic are made for certain conditions. Under ideal circumstances, that card is more powerful than it would be otherwise. Many cards are very linear. Naturalize is great when there is an artifact that you want to destroy, but totally dead when it has no targets. Day of Judgment is more variable, but still pretty easy to analyze. When facing off against an opponent with just one superior creature, it's even. You lose a card, but he loses the critter. When facing a field full of dudes, it becomes more ideal. When I build around a single card, I am attracted to cards that require me to build the ideal situation for my card. That means that the other cards in the deck must help the main card do its job.
I've written many articles here on ManaNation about my love for Warp World. Warp World is a card that really forces you to build your deck correctly. The first requirement of Warp World is no sorceries, instants, or Planeswalkers in the deck (other than Warp World). The reason for this is we want to maximize the value of Warp World. There is no reason to play a card that Warp won't activate. But just dropping a bunch of permanents won't win the game by itself. That's where the finesse of Warp World-building comes into play. Walking the fine line between acceleration, removal, and Warp abusers is a puzzle that I work on over and over again. But I've already written too many Warp World articles. I'll gladly write another if the audience wants it. Within the Extended card realm, there are a plethora of choices, and maybe they'll let it shine again in M12.
Step 2 – Get the card.
The real difficulty with playing a single-card strategy is getting to play the actual card. In order to play the card, we need it to be in-hand. There are multiple routes to increase the odds of getting the card.
The most direct route is the Tutor method. Let's say I have four of my target card, but I also have four Diabolic Tutors in my deck. Now my chances of seeing a way to get the card in my opening hand goes from 29 percent to 42 percent. You would think your chances would double, but these numbers are based on getting at least one of a card or Tutor. Hands with two won't count twice. Unfortunately, Tutors have gotten more and more expensive in mana cost, so their value is decreasing—especially when the card you're searching for costs less than the Tutor.
The second route would be to cantrip. If we have slots available after our maximization efforts, we can slip in cards that help us filter our way through the deck. Simply playing a card that draws another can increase our chances of drawing into our bomb. Let's say our bomb costs 6 mana, and we pack no acceleration or Tutors. So, by turn six, our normal chances of seeing the card are roughly 60 percent. If we play just one cantrip on the preceding turns, we move up to 63 percent; two cantrips, 67 percent; three, 70 percent; four, 75 percent; and so on. Cantripping is probably my favorite route to getting the card. I can't think of a single stage of evolution in Warp World that had Islands and didn't include Sea Gate Oracle. Cards like Oracle not only cantrip but look at extra cards. One Oracle played increases odds of finding a card by nearly 7 percent (note that a second Oracle doesn't have as significant an impact).
My least-used route to getting a card is survival. The idea of survival is just to outlive the odds. If I make enough turns and draw a card each time, I'll get there eventually. In many players' eyes this is how control decks run. In truth, many decks that are control are only single-card strategies where we play a lot of survival cards. The best means to survival is to control the field and generate card advantage, then eventually play our single-card win condition. I know many control mages are screaming at me right now. I understand that control decks are much more than just a single card, and that playing a control deck properly takes significant skill. But at their core, many control decks are single-card strategies. The cards you survive with require skill to play correctly, but it's still a single card that wins the game.
Step 3 – Protect the card.
Here's the rub. I have the card that is bombastic. I play it. My opponent finds an answer and I'm Mr. Sad Face. I once played against a Phylactery Lich deck where my opponent was able to hook his Lich to a Darksteel Axe. The grin that came across his face was priceless . . . especially on my turn, when I dropped a Contagion Clasp. When he attacked, I played Grasp of Darkness. Envision the brokenhearted look on his face. I normally don't take pleasure in doing stuff like that, but his arrogance when he played the Lich deserved it.
Protection can come from multiple sources, but my single-card decks rarely have room for them. In days of old, there was a deck called Critical Mass. Critical Mass was a deck that had only three types of cards: winning critters with low mana costs, mana acceleration, and counterspells. The idea was to accelerate into enough mana to play your winning single-card critter, then protect it with Counterspell. This deck was a fine example of protection through counters. Sadly, I can't claim any deck that does such a thing. To be honest, I'm not a counter mage.
Another way to protect your assets is to use cards that are just more resilient or cards that make other cards resilient. Asceticism is a great card for Green single-card decks. Say you're planning on running rampant with an Omnath. It would behoove you to drop Asceticism on the field first before running out your ever-growing mana lover. Otherwise, the first time you turn him sideways, he'll run smack dab into a Doom Blade. Of course, you could just play a Thrun and have no worries anyway. Back in the day, I ran a Cephalid Breakfast deck with Lightning Greaves, which served as both a combo piece and protection.
The last thing I've used to protect my single-card strategy is timing. Things are so much easier when you can play your bomb during your opponent's end-of-turn. If your bomb is an instant or can be made an instant, your opponent's choices for answers become reduced. I really felt that Leyline of Anticipation would have found a home in single-card decks, but to date, I really haven't seen one. I have found decks that abused Summoning Trap as described, but that's the best example I can offer. If you've ever been on the receiving end of an EOT Summoning then attacked with Annihilator, you know the value of timing.
Step 4 – Have a "holla back" card.
I just had to use that phrase. As an "old man" of forty-plus, I have never used the phrase "holla back girl." It wasn't until recently that a student explained to me what it meant. To define it for the other ancients out there, to be a holla back is to be a backup plan. If a person strikes out with his (or her) main date, he (or she) can just call the "holla back" to fill in for the evening. In Magic terms, if your bomb card is made defunct by your opponent, you need to have a backup plan for winning the game. Depending on the deck, I will include the backup bomb in the sideboard as often as I have it main-decked. In my White Proliferate deck, I often win with Grindclock, but it isn't very hard for my opponent to board in an Eldrazi and think himself invincible. Little does he know that I board in a Trigon of Infection and use the poison for the win.
The Example
So those are the steps I go through in building a SCS deck. Let's run through an example deck as an illustration.
Step 1
The card that I'm going to build around is Shape Anew. Shape Anew before Besieged was a conundrum. Basically, you wanted two things in your deck that were diametrically opposed to each other. To trigger the Shape Anew, you needed a cheap artifact that you didn't mind playing without, and you needed a large, bomb artifact that would be Shaped into the game for the value cost of 4 mana. These two desires conflicted with each other. About the only plausible "trick" that I saw used was Trinket Mage. Trinket Mage allows you to have only one cheap artifact in your deck so you never have the worry of Shaping into a worthless card.
This process works, but to what advantage? Imagine this scenario pre-Besieged. You've played Trinket Mage fetching a Chimeric Mass. Next turn, put the Mass into play for free (
= 0), then play Shape Anew saccing the Mass to flip into a [fill in the blank]. For all the playable artifacts in Scars, there just wasn't a good Shape target. I couldn't come up with anything to fill in the blank. Platinum Emperion was the only high-cost target I would want to hit.
Now with Besieged in the sleeves, we have many more options. First, in the saccable artifact range, we gain two cards that aren't artifacts but give us items to Shape up. Master's Call is an inexpensive common that curves out very well with Shape Anew. (EOT on turn three, play Call, then on turn four, sac one token for a bomb.) Another addition to the mix would be Inkmoth Nexus. It makes your Shape Anew cost 5 instead of 4 because you have to spend a mana to make the Nexus into an artifact, but it does provide another route to the end result. I'm willing to pay 1 extra as opposed to the 4 more you need to make Dread Statuary work. So now I actually could have thirteen cards in my deck that provide me with the tools to make Shape Anew work. I've actually dropped the Trinket Mage plan. There is a small chance of saccing a Call token and Shaping into my worthless Mage target. Even at low percentages of fizzle, I still hate wasting a Shape, and nonartifact cards that make artifacts are plenty.
Another kicker is the target. Besieged has given us more ammunition with which to load up our Shape Anew. Blightsteel Colossus is by far my favorite. While other potential targets just die, the Colossus remains invulnerable to most removal. Sure, I've seen my share of Into the Roil and Revoke Existence, but the games where the big boy has been untouched exceed his shortcomings.
Step 2
Getting one of my four copies of Shape Anew is a lot more problematic than getting to an artifact on the field. However, Shape does have the advantage of being Blue. Blue is the color that can dig through a deck the fastest. Here is a list of cards that come to mind right now:
Since our setup for the card is Blue and White, we can basically fill our deck with cantrips and diggers. In fact, we could see the following scenario. Turn one: Preordain; turn two: Augury Owl; turn three: Sea Gate Oracle; turn four: Foresee. Let's pretend for a second that I played that sequence of cards and never found my missing Shape Anew, and always put anything not named Shape Anew on the bottom when I scryed. That would mean I have seen twenty-four cards of my deck in four turns. The probability of not seeing a Shape with that kind of draw is less than 11 percent.
Don't misunderstand me. I would not advise putting all these diggers in one deck. But when you need to hit a single card consistently, some of them should make the cut. The main question is how many. What I normally do is go extreme. Either use none or all, and then add or delete as I test. From this list, I would say the only must-have is See Beyond. You never want to draw a Blightsteel Colossus, but unfortunately you will. For those times, See Beyond can be a value card, allowing you to shuffle the big guy into your library.
Step 3
With Blue and White as the color base, the best protection is counterspells. The problem with counters being used for protection is speed. Let's say I have a Cancel and Shape Anew in hand. Anything thrown at my big boy can be handled by Cancel, but now I need 7 mana available: 4 to cast the Shape Anew and 3 to Cancel anything you do. Basically, I'm saying a hard counter is out of the question. Other options are available, though. Deprive, Negate, and Mana Leak can be used at only 2 mana. Also, Dispel and Spell Pierce can be considered. Dispel is probably only for sideboard when facing a counter mage.
With this deck, we also need to protect ourselves. Basically, Shape Anew plays like Polymorph. Back when Polymorph decks were in vogue, I won many a game with just Allies. Almost every game played the same. I would play multiple Allies on turns one to three, and his Progenitus (or whatever target) could only watch as most of my horde would overrun his life points. With this deck, we will see the same situation with Elves, but we have a couple of advantages Polymorph did not.
Basically, the big difference is that we have access to White mana. First, Condemn and Wall of Omens fit nicely in our curve and can buy us the extra time we need. Second, our big boy likes Day of Judgment, while the Polymorph targets never did. One well-timed Day can spell the doom of many speed critter decks. Third, our big boy can win on one swing, while even the mighty Progenitus needs at least two attacks.
Step 4
I don't personally have a "holla back" plan in my deck right now. But I know what it should be: Venser, the Sojourner has great synergy with almost every permanent in the deck. Mostly I envision him bouncing a Wall or an Oracle, generating more card advantage. He can also untap a land so you can protect more easily. He can even make the big boy unblockable. But the real value comes in via his emblem. Wizards should print a way to remove or destroy emblems. Until then, his ultimate ability is slow death for our opponents.
The Deck
While it is still a deck open for tinkering, here is the list I run right now.
[cardlist]
[Creatures]
4 Sea Gate Oracle
4 Wall of Omens
2 Blightsteel Colossus
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Shape Anew
4 Master's Call
4 See Beyond
4 Day of Judgment
4 Preordain
3 Venser, the Sojourner
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Inkmoth Nexus
4 Halimar Depths
3 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Plains
4 Island
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
Class Dismissed
Well, that's a run-through of a single-card build I've done recently. I realize that going this long between articles may cause a different readership. So, if you don't know, I love to hear from you in the comments. Good or bad, I welcome all responses. Until next time (whenever that may be), let us all resolve to Shape Anew our world to our advantage.
