Under Preconstruction - Hawk and Awe

Posted on December 6, 2010

Last week, I pulled an Extreme Makeover: Magic Edition on the Metalcraft precon. I left you with promises of a sideboard and an aggressive take on Metalcraft. First, I’ll make good on the former.

[caption id="attachment_12051" align="aligncenter" width="299" caption="Still less frightening than Ty Pennington."]

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"The Smiths 3.0"

Last weekend, Frank Gore broke his hip, and took my fantasy football team down with him. Having to play through the playoffs without my best player feels an awful lot like playing a blue control deck without Jace, the Mindsculptor. Riddlesmith is the Brian Westbrook of card-drawing permanents; yeah, he does his job, but why would I want to start him over my superstar?

[caption id="attachment_12052" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="As a lad, even Jace was known to ride the pine now and then."]

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What I'm saying is, in order to be competitive, the deck NEEDS Jace, the Mindsculptor. One of the biggest problems in a control deck is running out of answers, so we need a real way to reload in the midgame. Riddlesmith helped get us what we need, but usually at the cost of discarding lands, and the deck cannot function without at least six lands in the late game. If you're stuck looking for a replacement for Jace himself, Jace's Ingenuity would probably be better than Riddlesmith.

I moved the extra counters to the sideboard in favor of Ratchet Bomb, which help our Metalcraft count while efficiently dealing with Pyromancer's Ascension and the various weenie decks. I needed more win conditions, and Inferno Titan was everything I could ever ask for. Once he comes down, it's extremely unlikely an aggro deck can win, and he even domes Planeswalkers. He also looks sexy in a Basilisk Collar.

The sideboard is mostly dedicated to the control matchup, where our maindeck is at its weakest. The Sparkmage package, the Etched Champion, the Titans – they all end up being worse against Jaces than good old fashioned Negate. The Phoenixes also come in (with the Mountain) as inevitable win conditions that excel at killing Jaces (where Baby Jace is also of assistance). Against ramp decks you want Flashfreeze, plus the Negate and Phoenixes to put them on a clock. Nihil Spellbomb comes in against the rarely-seen Vengevine as well as Pyromancer's Ascension decks.

There's a lot more I could say about The Smiths. Why don't I rename it now that Riddlesmith is gone? Why did Morrissey decide to go solo?

I want to answer all these questions, I really do, but I'm just too excited about the next deck.

I went back to the drawing board with The Smiths 1.0 and made some radical changes.

The four mana Myr all came out for Ornithopter, in the hopes of triggering Metalcraft by turn one. Mox Opal got added in for the same reason. The four-pack of ‘smiths came out for Vedalken Certarch, which I imagined to be a Rishadan Port that could also take care of blockers.

[caption id="attachment_12053" align="aligncenter" width="492" caption="I may have overestimated his capabilities."]

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Chimeric Mass got bumped up to four copies as it is the most versatile Metalcraft enabler; in helps set up explosive starts, while still being live in the late game. Rusted Relic and Argent Sphinx were too slow for the deck I was envisioning, so they got cut for Steel Overseer. Besides being a must-answer two-drop, the Overseers also help make my Ornithopter less terrible.

I wavered back and forth on Adventuring Gear. On the one hand, it offers four extra damage as early as turn two with a Memnite or an Ornithopter combined with a fetch land. On the other hand, it's completely dead if I don't have a land, and I plan on cutting down on those to make room for Mox Opal. If we had something like Kor Skyfisher to rebuy lands I would be fine with it, but we don't, so I had to look elsewhere for my one-drop equipment.

Trusty Machete beat out Darksteel Axe handily, as most people won't Shatter my equipment and the extra toughness is relevant. At this point, I was four cards over sixty, and wanted to keep my artifact count where it was. The only colored cards I could cut were Galvanic Blast or the Certarchs I just added. It was likely the Blasts would be better all around, but I already have a good idea of what a burn spell can do, and I wanted to see if the Certarch had potential. The Vedalkens stayed in.

With such a small red splash (only the Sparkmages were left), I felt comfortable cutting back on Mountain for some colorless lands. Tectonic Edge was obvious, and a couple Dread Statuaries were added for addition late-game reach. Keep in mind it becomes an artifact creature for our Steel Overseer. All that was left to decide was the name. Given that we have both the 0-mana 1/1 and Cunning Sparkmage, I went with a twist on the old joke.

"Memnite Shamanlan"

Once again, I started in the casual room. Doing so allows me to see how the deck functions without being on too quick of a clock, and without getting my spells countered or getting combo'd out. I see it as a happy medium between goldfishing and tournament practice. Of course, this method will never be an accurate gauge of how good your deck is in a competitive metagame, but it can be instrumental in the early phases of deckbuilding.

Game One – Blue/Black Proliferate

It's almost embarrassing how badly I wanted to keep my opening hand of two Memnite, three Ornithopter, and two land. I mean, that's basically a triple mulligan, but I really just wanted to cast five spells on turn one. My rational side took over eventually, and my six card hand of three land, Steel Overseer, Trinket Mage, and Etched Champion was much better (if less exciting).

My opponent got the ball rolling with a turn two Throne of Geth, and my turn two Overseer ate a Contagion Clasp counter. Etched Champion came down next, while my opponent played Jace Beleren and made us both draw. At that point, I had drawn a Chimeric Mass, a Memnite, and a Mox Opal, so I dropped them all (not necessarily in that order). Etched Champion brought Jace back to three.

He played a Trigon of Corruption, made us both draw again, and passed. I activated Chimeric Mass, which teamed up with Memnite to kill Jace Beleren, and I played another 5/5 Chimeric Mass.

My opponent passed the turn with five mana up and five cards in hand. I activated both Masses and swung with the team. He played Grasp of Darkness on one of them and used the Trigon to finish it off. I played Trinket Mage for a third Chimeric Mass and passed the turn.

He simply played another Contagion Clasp to Shrink my Etched Champion, and I activated Chimeric Mass and attacked all-in again. Trigon shrunk Trinket Mage, and Throne of Geth sacrificed a Clasp to kill it and Etched Champion. My opponent dropped to four, and post-combat I played a 6/6 Mass. On his turn, he dropped the bomb: Wurmcoil Engine! Luckily, I had a Dread Statuary, which allowed me to get in for lethal even after his Engine blocked my 6/6.

Chimeric Mass was simply amazing that game. I wondered if it would be that good against a more traditional control deck.

Game Two – Blue/Black Mill

I live the dream! Triple Memnite, Island, Vedalken Certarch… on the play no less! He plays a Swamp, passes, and I bash for three, giddy with the prospects of mana screwing my opponent with a draft reject.

He Disfigure my draft reject in my end step. Frown.

Still, I have a Trusty Machete to go along with my Memnite, so I'm getting in for five a turn. I cast Trinket Mage on turn three, but he has the Mana Leak. I have no hand, so I could be in trouble if he keeps playing good cards. Luckily, he stops playing good cards. Jace's Erasure is his next play, followed by Tome Scour and Renegade Doppelganger (I assume to copy Hedron Crab). I just keep swinging until he's dead.

Game Three – InfiltrationLens.dec

I play a turn one Chimeric Mass in order to get Metalcraft on turn two with Mox Opal and Ornithopter, which I follow up with Etched Champion. Meanwhile, my opponent plays back to back Infiltration Lens. Okay, I promise not to block.

I play another Etched Champion and bash with the team. He plays Golem Foundry. I thought I said that was closed! I punish him with a third Etched Champion. His Lodestone Golem Threaten to actually do something, but I win on the next attack.

Game Four – Vampires

I mulligan into Memnite, Trusty Machete, four lands. Hrm… good enough I guess. He plays Blade of the Bloodchief on one, Bloodghast on two, and Bloodthrone Vampire on three. This would be a problem, except I've drawn Cunning Sparkmage and Trinket Mage on my two draw steps. I repay the gods for the gifts they have placed on top of my deck by punting as hard as I can. I attack with a Memnite equipped with Trusted Machete, while he has Bloodthrone Vampire equipped with Blade of the Bloodchief, and a Bloodghast in play. Yeah, that's a 5/5 when he Sacrifice the ‘ghast. Whoops!

I can't assemble the Sparkmage combo fast enough, and soon he's doing lethal with a 17/17 Bloodthrone Vampire.

Game Five – Green/White Ramp

Despite being on the draw, and keeping a seven card hand, I have zero cards in hand by the end of turn two. How, you ask?

Memnite, Memnite, Ornithopter, Mox Opal, Dread Statuary, Steel Overseer, GO.

Island, Etched Champion, Ornithopter, attack with everything but Overseer and pump the team.

My opponent says that he drew the Contagion Clasp to kill the Overseer one turn too late, and indeed that would have left me with a bunch of dorks and I probably would have lost to the turn four Precursor Golem that he played. The most explosive hands with this deck are the most vulnerable to removal. Still, he didn't have it, and I win on turn four.

The deck is functioning quite well. I played a few more games, and a theme kept occurring: I was consistently happy with the artifact half of the deck, and the Sparkmage was awesome, but the blue just wasn't pulling its weight. The Vedalkan Certarchs were about as bad as you'd expect; when I needed removal, he was often turned off or just too slow, and when I needed a beater, he wasn't beefy enough. I never had a chance to use him in the Rishadan Port capacity that I had imagined. The odds of a hand containing three 0-cost artifacts, an Island, and a Certarch are quite slim, so tapping down your opponent's first land is rarely going to happen. Even then, with your board of Ornithopter and practically no hand, you won't have the Aggression required to capitalize on the mana denial. Or it's like game three, and they have the Disfigure (see also: Lightning Bolt).

Trinket Mage was a good man, don't get me wrong. Grabbing a Basilisk Collar against aggro or a Chimeric Mass against control is great, and he opens up sideboard options galore. He's just more suited for a control deck, where playing a Gray Ogre-slash-tutor on turn three doesn't slow down your tempo. Still, if I were to stick with the blue, Trinket Mage would likely stay in the deck.

But I wanted to branch out. I felt like I wasn't getting rewarded enough for filling my deck with suboptimal artifacts. Ornithopter was like the mother of a teenage boy with no lock on his door, always showing up at the most awkward times.

[caption id="attachment_12054" align="aligncenter" width="631" caption="Left to right: My son Bryson, Momithopter."]

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How do we make Ornithopters and Memnites relevant, even without metalcraft cards? Well, I know the perfect card for that. Tempered Steel!

I know what you’re thinking. Yuck, white metalcraft. Brings to mind all those Quest for the Holy Relic decks you crush in two-mans, right? Well I’m not playing that card. And I’m certainly not playing Squadron Hawks. Instead, I’m looking back to The Smiths for the Basilisk Collar/Cunning Sparkmage combo, and playing all the greatest artifact hits of yesterday and today.

Most of the artifacts get copy-pasted from Memnite Shamanlan. 4 Chimeric Mass, 4 Memnite, 4 Ornithopter, 3 Mox Opal (we have no way to get rid of multiples, so I decided against 4). Steel Overseer of course. Trusty Machete isn’t necessary now that Tempered Steel is in the deck, but that leaves me in need of some metal in the first couple turns. My experience with Scars of Mirrodin limited gives me the answer. Early in the format, when it was possible to get three or more Glint Hawk Idols every draft, I fell in love with the Rock Hawk.

[caption id="attachment_12055" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="A more dignified role than the Tooth Fairy, at least."]

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I should be able to activate it for free every turn until the late game, when we can spare the white mana, making it essentially a 2-mana, evasive Chimeric Idol. With a Tempered Steel on the board, they turn into serious threats that are very difficult to deal with.

I rounded out the artifacts with a Sword of Body and Mind and a trio of Lodestone Golem. The Golem may be a little hard to cast some games, but it can buy us just enough time to get the last few points of damage through against slower decks.

Arid Mesa and Mox Opal gave me 7 sources of red mana already, so I figured three Mountain would be enough to splash Cunning Sparkmage. Tectonic Edge plays nicely with Lodestone Golem, so it makes the cut. Statuary is even better now with Tempered Steel in our deck. Here is what the brew looked like when it was done cooking (named after my Idol).

"Glint Eastwood"

It seemed good enough for the tournament practice room, so I put together a sideboard.

4 Celestial Purge – Pyromancer's Ascension, Vampires, Red decks

4 Leonin Arbiter – Seems custom-built to beat ramp decks. Easy swap for three Stoneforge Mystic and the Sword.

4 Etched Champion – For mono-colored aggro decks like Red Deck Wins and Vampires

1 Cunning Sparkmage, 1 Stoneforge Mystic – The combo isn't great against control but is backbreaking against aggro, so I hedged my bets a little and stuck one of each in the sideboard.

1 Lodestone Golem – Similar to above, except good against control and combo and not so good against aggro.

Game One – Vampires

For the first few games, I was running Origin Spellbomb over Chimeric Mass, as I completely forgot to add the Masses when I rebuilt the deck. The two are quite similar in the first few turns, but the Mass turns into a monster late game, so it got the nod once I remembered.

My opening hand is Arid Mesa, Arid Mesa, Mox Opal, Origin Spellbomb, Steel Overseer, Basilisk Collar, Cunning Sparkmage. My opponent leads with Swamp. I draw a Glint Hawk Idol, play Arid Mesa (crack for Plains), and Origin Spellbomb. He plays a Bloodghast, then we summon Steel Overseer, play Mox Opal, and tap it for a Basilisk Collar. Unfortunately, a kicked Gatekeeper of Malakir takes out my Overseer, and Bloodghast gets in for two.

Luckily I draw a Tectonic Edge, which allows me to play Cunning Sparkmage and keep a mana up to use a Spellbomb if he has another Gatekeeper. Instead, he has Consuming Vapors, so I go ahead and Sacrifice the Myr Token. On his attack, I ping the Bloodghast, and fall to 14.

I draw another Origin Spellbomb, and play that along with the Glink Hawk Idol sitting idle in my hand. When the Vapors bounces back, I activate the ‘bomb, which activates the Glink Hawk. I Sacrifice another Myr. He plays Kalastria Highborn, attacks for two, and passes.

Another Steel Overseer greets me on my draw step. I play him, attack for two with Glint Hawk Idol, equip Basilisk Collar on Sparkmage, and take out his Highborn. He drains me for two, and (including the Sparkmage Lifelink) I fall to 11. My opponent can only muster a Pulse Tracker, and brings back his Bloodghast for good measure. We untap, drop a freshly drawn Lodestone Golem (activating Glint Hawk Idol), pump our team with Steel Overseer, and attack with the Hawk. I pass with the intention of killing whatever he plays with Sparkmage, but he concedes after drawing presumably another blank.

The deck felt really powerful this game. I'd experimented with a mono-white build and always lost to Vampires, because I had no way to slow them down. The Baslisk Collar/Cunning Sparkmage combo is exactly what I was missing.

Games Two, Three, Four – Vampires (yes, everyone plays Vampires online)

Game one got swallowed by MTGO's replay monster. Can nobody put down the savage beast?

[caption id="attachment_12056" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="And for dessert, your soul."]

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I know I won on the back of Collar, Sparkmage, and Tempered Steel with lots of Ornithopter in play. I side in the Celestial Purge, the Sparkmage and Stoneforge Mystic, and the set of Etched Champion. Worried about my artifact count, I take out four Tempered Steel, as well as the Lodestone Golem (I figure they are too slow and my opponent's cards are too cheap). I hem and haw over the last few cards, and decide on the Origin Spellbomb, for lack of a better option.

Note that this was probably wrong. Celestial Purge isn't very good against Vampires, as they usually have a Sacrifice outlet when you want to kill Bloodghast, and targeting anything else is pretty bad value because their creatures are cheap and plentiful. If I had dead cards, the Purge would be fine to bring in, but the Tempered Steel are just too important for my deck, and I should have left them in.

Game two I mulligan into three land, Purge, Sparkmage, and Stoneforge Mystic. My opponent plays Lacerator, which I decide to Celestial Purge, as I figure I just need to survive until Sparkmage comes online. My opponent plays Viscera Seer and equips it with a Blade of the Bloodchief, and I cast Stoneforge Mystic, fetching Basilisk Collar. He plays Bloodghast and gets in with the Seer, sacrificing the ‘ghast to get a couple extra damage. I decide to wait a turn to play Sparkmage so I can equip in the same turn, and instead cast Glint Hawk Idol and give my Mystic the Collar.

He plays Highborn, returns Bloodghast with a fetch land, Sacrifice it for counters, brings it back by sacking the fetch, and Sacrifice it again. He doesn't drain me, and instead Doomblades my creature and attacks for 9. I play Sparkmage and Mox Opal, equip the Mage and kill the Highborn, and leave the Opal up to activate Glint Hawk Idol to chump block. He has the Doomblade, though, and that's game.

Game three I keep a marginal hand of Memnite, Ornithopter, Stoneforge Mystic, Celestial Purge, and three land. He gets a couple of Sacrifice outlets going, along with a Blade of the Bloodchief and a Pawn of Ulamog. All I can do is play a bunch of Ornithopter (not so good without Tempered Steel). When he drops a Highborn and a Bloodghast, it's all over but the crying.

I think my sideboarding decisions were critical in this loss. Vampires can be tough to beat when they get their nut draw, but I felt like I was at least in the games. The Etched Champion would have been nice to draw, if only to try them out.

Games Five, Six, and Seven - Blue/White Proliferate

My opponent is playing an interesting deck that tries to power up a Quest for the Holy Relic by playing Memnite, Ornithopter, Wall of Omens, and Trinket Mage, all while proliferating with Thrummingbird and Contagion Clasp. In game one, he does precisely that, and has the Clasp for my Sparkmage when I try to get the combo together. I think I'm good and dead when he cracks his Quest, but he merely searched up a Basilisk Collar. His frowny face in the chat box tells me he must have drawn all of his Argentum Armor. I'll take it!

Meanwhile, I have two Glint Hawk getting bigger every turn with the help of two Steel Overseer. He has to start chumping with Thrummingbird, and eventually 9/9 and 7/7 Rock Hawks take him down.

For game two I side in the extra Sparkmage and Stoneforge Mystic, as it is my only answer to an Argentum Armor. I'm happy to see that I have one of each in my opening hand, but not so happy when he casts Revoke Existence targeting my one and only Basilisk Collar. Whoops!

He has plenty of time to get his Quest active, and this time the Argentum Armor is in his deck. He starts taking out my permanent one by one. I try to make a race of it with a Tempered Steel and some Glint Hawk Idol, but he has a Basilisk Collar to give his 7/8 Annihilator 1 Stoneforge Mystic Lifelink.

I decide to sideboard differently, opting to put in the Leonin Arbiter and take out the Stoneforge Mystic. If he has a Revoke, the whole Sparkmage plan blows up in my face and I waste the critical early turns doing basically nothing. Instead, I want to be as aggressive as possible and try to kill him before he can search up the Armor. The Arbiters should help with that plan.

My hand is as explosive as I could ask for: Turn one Memnite, Ornithopter, Mox Opal, land. Turn two land, Sword of Body and Mind.

He seems to be struggling with mana, playing only Island. Still, he can cast Thrummingbird, Chimeric Mass, and Contagion Clasp. None of those save him from the swarm of wolves brought on from my equipped Ornithopter. As I mill him for ten cards I turn, I see Day of Judgment that would turn the game around at any time; too bad he couldn't cast them.

There's an important lesson here: Sideboarding answers into an aggressive deck is not something one should do lightly. The whole point of being aggro is to finish the game before the opponent has time to enact his gameplan, and putting in cards that react to said gameplan is playing right into his hands.

Also, draw really well.

Game Eight – Mono-blue Architect

Sweet deck. Cosi's Trickster, Corralhelm Commander, Grand Architect, Sea Gate Oracle, backed up by all the counters you could ask for. Still, I thought I had it locked up when I resolved Stoneforge Mystic for Sword of Body and Mind, and put it into play with her ability. I mean, how could he answer the 3/3 Memnite with protection from blue?

Oh. Molten-Tail Masticore. With twelve mana from Grand Architect. Good game!

Games Nine, Ten, Eleven – Red Deck Wins

Game one, I keep a slower hand with the Sparkmage/Collar combo, while he comes out of the gates with Goblin Guide, Plated Geopede, and three Searing Blaze. Ouch. Not close.

I board in the Celestial Purge and the Etched Champion for the Sparkmages, Stoneforge Mystic, and the Sword of Fire and Ice. I have a great start with a turn two Tempered Steel off of Memnite, Mox Opal, and Chimeric Mass. That made it difficult for him to burn out any of my creatures, and I soon over ran his double Kargan Dragonlord with Steel Overseer-pumped Glint Hawk Idol.

Game three is much more like the first. He has a burn spell or a Shatter for each of my first seven plays. I don't have any plays after that.

Game Twelve – Poison!!!

My opponent leads with Necropede, and the two Cunning Sparkmage in my opening hand giggle a little. Soon, I have a Basilisk Collar and a Sword of Body and Mind, and my Sparkmages are playing target practice with random infect creatures.

I was starting to doubt the efficacy of the Sparkmages, so this win helped bolster my confidence. Still, I suspect that they would be better out of the board, as the number of match-ups where they are truly great is small. I'm going to move the whole package to the sideboard, in fact.

Not only will this give us fewer dead cards against control and ramp and mono-red, the combo as a whole will be more effective, as my opponents won't be prepared for it. In place of all those cards, I want to play the Origin Spellbomb that I got to use in the first few games. They really impressed me with their utility. They are cheap, so they help us explode out of the gates with metalcraft, and they cycle when we draw them late. There's very little downside here. I'll also put the Etched Champion back in the main where they belong, as both an unstoppable threat with an active Overseer or Tempered Steel, and a defensive measure against Vampires and red.

"Glint Eastwood 2.0"

At 6 and 6, the deck doesn't appear to be as competitive as I'd like it to be. The twelve games I played weren't exactly a large sample size, though, and I didn't play against ramp or true control decks at all. Maybe Glint Eastwood is just weak to other aggro decks with lots of removal.

I'm going to continue working on the deck in the coming weeks, and I'll revisit it when Mirrodin Besieged comes out with more tools to play with. I hope you found the list or the process interesting, even if I didn't get to break Standard in half (yet!). At the very least, the deck is a blast to play.

Until next week,

Brad Wojceshonek

BradWoj at Gmail dot com

BJWoj on Twitter

TAGS articles, constructed

Under Preconstruction - Hawk and Awe

"The Smiths 3.0"

"Memnite Shamanlan"

"Glint Eastwood"

"Glint Eastwood 2.0"

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