Current Cookie Cutters

By Jeff Lore
Friday, December 19, 2008

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Welcome to Dusty Binder Innovations! I’m Jeff “Atma” Lore. I’m an 18 year old bum, living with mom and going to county college. For those of you who are curious, this column is a combination of Kevin’s Rogue Deck Wins (which you should totally read), and 2 other things. The first will always appear in the article, which is a Johnny-riffic deck. The other, deck-building skills and tips for Johnny, may not always appear, as I am not an infinite well of knowledge. Those aside, let’s get to my tip for Johnny.

The Cookie Cutters:

Tribes are one of two ideas that currently define our T2 design cookie cutters. Timmy doesn’t mind, Giants and Treefolk are awesome. Spike doesn’t mind, Faeries, Kithkin, and Elves are all-star decks. Johnny however, is bored stiff. “Tribes are so linear,” he says “they leave no room for creativity”. Storming off in disgust, he tries to make a combo, and loses to Spike’s disruption, speed and control. So he goes against Timmy. He combo is burned or somehow neutralized from the fact that it’s so slow. Johnny looks around and finds that there is another design he can use, color. Almost any 2 color combination is possible, though allied colors are easier. This may not sit well with Johnny, since enemy colors are just that much cooler and have a broader area of options. Well enemy colors are possible, but hard to do. Then Johnny finds the shiny cooker cutters, the shard colored cookie cutters.

Johnny has 5 cookie cutters. Each one is labeled as “Bant”, “Esper”, “Grixis”, “Jund”, or “Naya”. Johnny puts away the Naya cutter (he remembers both Spike and Timmy used it earlier, and they probably forgot to clean it). He looks at the Bant cutter and is instantly reminded of Spike’s Five Color Control and puts that down. Johnny repeats the process until he has no cookie cutters left. Tearing up, he starts to cry. “Is there no room left for creativity?” This is where Johnny has lost himself on the journey.

All Johnnies start on a journey. It’s long, arduous, and sometime downright evil. At some point, Johnny hits a fork in the road. Fortunately for him, there are signs for each path, one marked “Less traveled by” and another marked “More traveled by”. If Johnny takes the one “Less traveled by” his skills will really be put to the test, probably more than he can handle. What Johnny forgot in that Robert Frost poem is the line “Yet knowing how way leads on to way,” which does truly, make all the difference.

Know that way leads onto way and that as long as you go on the less traveled path somewhere along the way that you’re going to make a unique deck. (Unless it’s really late along this metaphorical path) Johnny seems to forget this so often, possibly because when Johnny posts the deck to receive credit for it, people cross it off as a defined deck archetype. A deck can be very unique with only a few card changes.

Joe "Lylac" Indelicato covers Vintage for a reason: We all know that the most expensive (and intense) format of magic is Vintage. This is because it involves the most powerful cards in the 15 year old game of magic. Very few cards are banned in this massive format, including cards that haven’t seen printing since the second edition, Unlimited. The card Black Lotus can go for a cool grand easily. The point to all this is, money does matter to people. This should seem obvious, but all too often I hear people complain about the expense of a deck I make. This can get ugly sometimes too, as people argue about budget against playabilty. Well that’s why I included two decks, one for Johnny without bounds, and one for anyone on a tight green leash.

Yea, this isn’t fun for the poor players.

Jund Goes Nom Nom Nom:

Well, now that we’ve gotten those issues covered, let’s get to the meat, a budget deck that will outshine the all others. For this column, I’m going to use Magic Online as my source for card prices. While the deck will probably be more expensive on paper, it should give you an idea about the deck’s price. So without further delay, I present, “Jund Goes Nom Nom Nom”

Card Prices (In Tickets):
Card Name: Price * copies = total price
Caldera Hellion: .15 * 2 = .3
Heartmender: .35 * 4 = 1.4
Jund Charm: .25 * 4 = 1
Jund Panorama: .08 * 3 = .24
Kitchen Finks: .65 * 4 = 2.6
Magma Spray: .12 * 3 = .36
Murderous Redcap: .5 * 3 = 1.5
Ooze Garden: .15 * 3 = .45
Predator Dragon: .8 * 2 = 1.6
Puppeteer Clique: .5 * 3 = 1.5
Resounding Thunder: .05 * 3 = .15
Safehold Elite: .12 * 3 = .36
Savage Lands: .75 * 4 = 3
Sprouting Thrinax: .5 * 3 = 1.4
Karplusan Forest: 2.25 * 4 = 10
Forest, Mountain, Swamp: Free * 4 each = Free
Total = 25.96

For those of you who can’t read that for my deck list, here’s what it comes out to look like:

This deck has some really good synergies for being so cheap. Heartmender with a way to sacrifice it leads you to have a free sacrifice per turn. However, this is best when you have another persist creature out to sacrifice instead, so that the Heartmender may take a shot from removal. You get an added bonus if the persist creature has a cip ability to abuse. It is resilient to mass removal spells, allowing for you to be more reckless. One thing to watch out for however is that Magma Spray will remove a creature from play, which works against the Puppeteer Clique. However, don’t let this scare you into removing the spray from the deck. Magma Spray is useful against many cards such as Demigod of Revenge, Mulldrifter, Kitchen Finks, and Viscera Dragger.

This deck does have a weakness: Flying fatties. Demigods, Mistbind Cliques, and Broodmate Dragons are very hard for the deck to handle. Cloudthresher is a possible answer, and is one that I’d use in a less budget deck (getting 4 green is rather hard without a fancy manabase). Overall, the deck was a blast to play and I can see it tearing through a FNM with a good pilot behind it.

For my non budget project, I had a much harder time deciding what to start with. My Dolmen Gate deck didn’t turn out as planned and my Reaper King deck failed on many levels. Thousand-year Elixir turned into a bad Sonic Boom and Plague of Vermin was just plain awful. Taking a poll of several of my forum going friends, I heard the suggestion Ward of Bones. So Beanman1000 and I went to work on building a Bant Prison deck. We came out with this.

The deck is a slow but steady deck, capable of locking your opponent out of any moves. It can quickly amass mana to allow the pilot a powerful spell per turn with counter spells to back up the deck. From the little testing I managed, I can say that Tidings, Elspeth, and Ward have been all stars. When playing the deck however, avoid making tokens when the board is empty and Ward of Bones is in play. You want to be able to prevent your opponent from building up an army of their own when you have Ward of Bones out. This deck does not deal well with opposing Planeswalkers however, so play around them carefully.

As always feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, concerns, ideas, et c. My subsyn e-mail is jlore@subsyn.com. However you can also reach me over AIM (Atmapalazzo) or MSN (atmapalazzo@subsyn.com). Now, go out there and kick bubblegum!