Post by sdfkjgh on Aug 16, 2018 20:52:56 GMT
Welcome back to Tosche Station. Today, we have a very special deck, one that’s so stuffed with goodies, it’s practically a clown car! I couldn’t get this down to 60, but that’s ok, as the deck’s versatility, synergy, and land/nonland ratio more than makes up for it.
When I first built the deck, back during Eventide Standard, it was strictly
/
, with the Devoted Druids, 3 Savage Conceptions, all 3 Tilling Treefolk, 2 Worm Harvests, and 3 Call the Skybreaker in the main. It broke down nearly into a perfect 1/3 land, 1/3 mana accelerators, and 1/3 engine cards.
I quickly learned that even with 3 Oona’s Grace & 4 River Kelpie, that STILL wasn’t enough card draw, so I added 3 Fa’adiyah Seer. I figured with all the lands, it’d be a sure thing. Boy, was I wrong. It took me until 2016 before I switched them out for the classic Merfolk Looter.
When Burning Vengeance got spoiled, I jammed a singleton copy into the deck, with no subsequent adjustment to the manabase. Hey, I was stung & youpid. Once Khans of Tarkir came out, that was the end of the deck’s 2-color life, as I quickly added Yung Peezy & his pokers, followed soon after that by the masochistic wyrm combo.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is a retrace deck, and, as demonstrated, one that has gone through a LOT of evolution. One of the most recent iterations has let me to the golden ratio of 45% land. As long as you can keep the deck at that level, or as near as possible (we’re talking the merest fractions of a percentage point), you’ll be in good shape1. The lands are probably where the greatest amount of innovation occurred, as the Theros-block temples were quite the boon to consistency, although their number in this deck has been reduced rather drastically, in favor of the buddy lands.
The name of the deck comes from H. P. Lovecraft’s tombstone, and the fact that Call the Skybreaker and its token look like Deep Ones2.
IT is Providence! (Modern-legal)
Sideboard
And that’s the deck! If you want to make any changes, always remember the 45% lands ratio, but I’d advise against making any changes before you play a few dozen matches with it. See what it’s capable of, try for some of the more extreme combos (especially ones involving your opponents’ creatures).
For the next four weeks, it’s back to the grind of No Reservations II, with Ice Age’s 50 Listed cards. Oh joy!
So, until then, thanks to Daij_Djan, Editor and GOD of this column, this is me wondering if I’d make a good Domme.
When I first built the deck, back during Eventide Standard, it was strictly
/, with the Devoted Druids, 3 Savage Conceptions, all 3 Tilling Treefolk, 2 Worm Harvests, and 3 Call the Skybreaker in the main. It broke down nearly into a perfect 1/3 land, 1/3 mana accelerators, and 1/3 engine cards.I quickly learned that even with 3 Oona’s Grace & 4 River Kelpie, that STILL wasn’t enough card draw, so I added 3 Fa’adiyah Seer. I figured with all the lands, it’d be a sure thing. Boy, was I wrong. It took me until 2016 before I switched them out for the classic Merfolk Looter.
When Burning Vengeance got spoiled, I jammed a singleton copy into the deck, with no subsequent adjustment to the manabase. Hey, I was stung & youpid. Once Khans of Tarkir came out, that was the end of the deck’s 2-color life, as I quickly added Yung Peezy & his pokers, followed soon after that by the masochistic wyrm combo.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is a retrace deck, and, as demonstrated, one that has gone through a LOT of evolution. One of the most recent iterations has let me to the golden ratio of 45% land. As long as you can keep the deck at that level, or as near as possible (we’re talking the merest fractions of a percentage point), you’ll be in good shape1. The lands are probably where the greatest amount of innovation occurred, as the Theros-block temples were quite the boon to consistency, although their number in this deck has been reduced rather drastically, in favor of the buddy lands.
The name of the deck comes from H. P. Lovecraft’s tombstone, and the fact that Call the Skybreaker and its token look like Deep Ones2.
IT is Providence! (Modern-legal)
| 1 Cascade Bluffs | |
| 5 Forest | |
| 4 Frontier Bivouac3 | |
| 3 Hinterland Harbor | |
| 5 Island | |
| 4 Mountain | |
| 3 Rootbound Crag | |
| 1 Steam Vents | |
| 1 Sulfur Falls | |
| 1 Temple of Abandon | |
| 1 Temple of Epiphany | |
| 2 Temple of Mystery | |
| 3 Flame Jab | These are the pokers about which I previously pontificated. P.S.: Poke poke poke! |
| 3 Curious Homunculus | Both cards from Eldritch Moon in this deck are capable of doing truly disgusting things when inflicted with BDSM mistreatment. |
| 3 Merfolk Looter | Here’s an interesting question for you: you have an active Looter and 5 untapped lands on the battlefield, and a land & an Oona’s Grace in hand. Do you cast Grace, then loot, or do you loot away Grace, then retrace it? I’m genuinely interested in all your opinions. |
| 3 Yung Peezy | |
| 4 Bloom Tender | Single Elf Female seeking Single Animate, Ambulatory Pile of random Junk. Interests include long walks on the beach, the works of Terry Pratchett, and the paint sploshing sexual fetish. |
| 3 Scuttlemutt | Here’s what I had to say about the Happy Couple way back in 2016, when I first wrote this decklist for The Meadery: “BESTIES! Such besties, in fact, that they’ve asked me to announce their engagement right here, right now! I was there to film it when Scuttlemutt proposed. It was so emotional. He had me take us all to the most breathtaking vista on Bant, got down on one weird bendy thing, and presented his coltish Elven lady love the most beautiful 10ct Muragandan singlet black opal ring any of us had ever seen. Then, true to their shared sploshing sub-subfetish, he inundated them both with every color of egg tempera displayed in that ring. #CargoShipForever!”4 |
| 3 Oona’s Grace | It’s fun in multiplayer when I can invent little minigames for who gets targeted with this card draw. The most frequent one is for them all to guess a number (but it’s less fun when they know why they’re guessing that number). |
| 4 Burning Vengeance | Without these, it’s quite a bit harder to win. |
| 2 Tilling Treefolk | These are the epitome of the deck’s Super Secret Tech. They are the Swiss Army Knife for a full graveyard, and oftentimes pair quite nicely with the masochistic wyrm combo. |
| 4 River Kelpie | All aboard for Valuetown, population ALL THE CARDS!!! You haven’t lived until you’ve managed to blind-retrace a Flame Jab off of a single land in hand into a value chain at least 6 or 7 iterations long. It helps when you have multiple Kelpies out. What’s even better is having only a nonland in hand, blind-looting it away for a land, then doing the massively-iterated value chain. One final note, EVERYONE forgets about the persist! Don’t be like them, use it to your advantage. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve attacked with a fresh Kelpie into a cluttered battlefield because I needed to draw some cards. Be aggressive with attacking AND blocking with your Kelpies. What are they gonna do, not block & deny you more cards?5 Another card without which this deck cannot operate. Early turns without Kelpies WILL be spent doing little else than digging for them. |
| 1 Worm Harvest | This card allows you to pivot your gameplan quite effectively, especially in the late-late game. Need LOTS of blockers? Need even MOAR attackers than that to get through? You’ve got…Worms! Good-bye. |
| 2 Mirrorwing Dragon | Hey, kids; whatever you do, DO NOT TARGET THIS WITH A KILL SPELL!!! Doesn’t matter if you control it, or an opponent controls it, it will wrath your board & wreck your shit, so DON’T DO IT!!! Not so long ago (as of this column’s writing), MTGO had a bug which caused a near-unending full replay loop that culminated with the game resetting to the very beginning after an indeterminate number of loops whenever an opponent targeted Mirrorwing Dragon, so that was even more of a disincentive to targeting it. |
| 2 Spitting Image | It is a lowly wyrm, fit only for being my personal cuspidor. It’s disgusting how happy it is being degraded so; look at it doubling all my forces! Utterly sickening. You are a loathsome spawn-hag who gets off on BDSM abasement!6 |
| 1 Call the Skybreaker | Sometimes, they have too many fliers for just one Dragon. Sometimes, you’ve managed to transform Curious Homunculus, then spit on it 5 or 6 times. And sometimes, you just wanna go RAWR in the most guttural, gravelly growl you can croak out of your throat. I’m talking Tom Waits practicing his Kargyraa! |
Sideboard
| 1 Flame Jab | For when 3 just aren’t enough. |
| 1 Yung Peezy | Also for when 3 just aren’t enough. |
| 1 Tilling Treefolk | Partly for when 2 just aren’t enough, and partly as a relic of a former build of this deck. |
| 3 Devoted Druid | These are purely here as relics of this deck’s former life. Although, I did bring them in today (8/4/18), along with the entire rest of my sideboard, against a turbo-mill player. It didn’t help. |
| 1 Call the Skybreaker | Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fthagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! |
| 1 Worm Harvest | Episode 7, season 6 of House; at the end of the episode, he yells out “And get me helminthes!” I tried finding a clip of it on YouTube, but no dice.7 |
| 1 Savage Conception | See Devoted Druid. Also, between Kelpie, Harvest, & lowly. pathetic, worthless little wyrm, my 5-slot’s already pretty full up. |
And that’s the deck! If you want to make any changes, always remember the 45% lands ratio, but I’d advise against making any changes before you play a few dozen matches with it. See what it’s capable of, try for some of the more extreme combos (especially ones involving your opponents’ creatures).
For the next four weeks, it’s back to the grind of No Reservations II, with Ice Age’s 50 Listed cards. Oh joy!
So, until then, thanks to Daij_Djan, Editor and GOD of this column, this is me wondering if I’d make a good Domme.
{Footnotes}
| 1 | For the most part. Even at this high a ratio, I have been manascrewed a surprising number of games. #SomeoneCallFrankKarsten |
| 2 | I kid, I kid. They look more like shoggoths. Ral Zarek: O R'lyeh? Yas, R’lyeh! |
| 3 | Fans of Buckaroo Banzai and fans of army ants have known about the word bivouac for years before Magic made use of it. |
| 4 | I regret absolutely nothing about this, and refuse to feel any shame for it! Why should I, when these two cards by themselves produce the full    ? |
| 5 | Well, yes, if they’re smart. But they usually only wise up after seeing it in action, so the Kelpies’ve already done their job. |
| 6 | Between spitting on the Dragon, and the Happy Couple sploshing enthusiasts, this is probably my most sexually explicit deck. |
| 7 | I tried finding a youtube clip of Homer Simpson saying “No Dice” from “Take My Wife, Sleaze”, but again, nothing! |
"When in doubt, do a common." 