Remember The Fallen: UL's Deck Flops of 2014

One of the many things that has kept me "away from the TGZ phone" so to speak is that I haven't had much to talk about along the usual routes- tech, decks, etc. I've made-and-barely-played more decks than I've let out of the works, and that's supposed to happen. I've built too many bad decks to really be afraid of failure, and that's kind of what today's chat is about. My bad ideas, what to learn, and how to be better.

The point of this exercise is to show you I'm not the deckbuilding master. I build a lot of nonsense, and have a metagame that supports the new and the weird, not the insanely competitive. So decks that aren't optimal have a chance to exist- and decks that are actually not going to work, don't. It's a nice environment and equilibrium, and since some of you don't have the time nor the playgroup to test and play in the sandbox, here's the latest on mine:

XENAGOS, GOD OF REVELS

The idea for this deck was to play "Ball Lightning.dec." Gather up all the cards that give "Trample, Haste, sac at end of turn," play Xenny, and go to work. We'd been talking about it during a game, and so I looked up the design space.

In terms of creatures, there's quite a bit of sweet tech. Almost unanimous, my playgroup and I all thought of Blitz Hellion, which was pretty funny because no one thinks or uses this card at all.

Even now, the prospect of this deck is still exciting.

Theoretically though, it was terrible. On top of the fundamental problems I'll talk about in a minute, I severely miscounted my lands, forgot ramp- something, which stalled this deck out really hard in the few 1v1 matchups I played with the party god.

However, the biggest problem with the deck is its speed, and lack of Hexproof. The best reason Red Deck Wins worked was because it was fast, and predicated on the size and percentage control decks dedicated to removal. Because I'm a fool, and sometimes forget about the rules of Commander, this obviously made it a bad idea. The additional requirement of Xenagos means that even if your creature gets through with extra pumps, the time it takes to produce the combos gives a good opponent with a decent deck way too much time to find an answer.

Recently, I've "uncovered" (obviously, I mean search for and remembered) a couple of nice cards that would drastically improve this deck along side an obligatory Asceticism- City of Solitude and Dosan the Falling Leaf. Still, two of these are in colors that make them completely untutorable, not to mention that they're all going to be hated out in such a short time they're probably not even worth playing. Short of being allowed to play another deck that Wraths every turn, or having an opponent in your meta who thinks it'd be a good idea to play this deck against Xenagos, this design really didn't have a lot of opportunity for success, and was dismantled quickly after it got to the table.

TAJIC, BLADE OF THE LEGION

Speaking of which, I've also tried my hand at Wrath.dec twice now.

The first time I made it creatureless, with just equipment, Instants, and Wraths. It was as basic and flat as it sounds, and because it was such an obvious strategy, it was easy for my opponents to prevent damage.

The second time I visited the deck, I dedicated some more resources to defense. Creatures and characters that had Pariah-style effects allowed me to create some neat combos and ensure that Tajic didn't get Withered to death.

In my quest to make Boros work, what I've noticed is that unlike most of the enemy colors, the problem is in the rigid shape the design has taken.

When you look at Golgari (Green/Black), for example, Green has access to ramp, noncreature permanent removal, life gain, and big creatures. Black has access to creature removal, drawing cards, reanimate spells, and a general theme of paying life to power up your stuff. They foil nicely.

Yet when you look at Red/White, everything is basically the same, and the cards that have both color identity don't provide any room for advantage. It's a frustrating institutional problem that we Commander players can't really solve. Hence the reason I've now tried to make every single RW Legend a Commander except Iroas, and I haven't had a whole lot of solid success.

SYGG, RIVER CUTTHROAT II

The Merfolk from the Dark Lagoon was once a deck I'd made to battle 1v1 against the forces of Grandpa Growth. The first time Sygg was fortified with quality stuff, but that got boring, so I took it apart.

This last time I decided to do something different- Go Rogue. As in, Rogue Tribal. I may have mentioned this before, but the deck was fortified with all the aggressive, cheap little Rogues I could find, and a sweet little theme- Steal Stuff. Interested in playing an aggressive-yet-entirely-opponent-contingent strategy, I played the Mind Control sweet, and a few cards GG used to demolish me with: Bribery and Desertion.

Overall, the design was neat, but drew inherent, unnecessary hate. No one was going to let me draw cards in multiplayer, so I got attacked, even when I wasn't the actual threat.

I made the joke that this deck was essentially a "Bad Edric" deck, mostly because it played little dudes, lacked a serious politicality, and a decent draw engine, but I think that's exactly right. The design was fine, the deck worked, but it wasn't enough to be consistent, and that was enough to take it apart, and never play again. I even sold my copy of Sygg, which was somehow $6.

Having been around a while, and knowing a decent amount of what I want to do in a given game, I'm not afraid to listen or get discouraged when a fun or exciting deck idea goes so terribly wrong. It's never fun, but it is part of the challenge.

Like movies, novels, music, art- not everything can be great. In fact, I watch a lot of movies I know aren't going to be close to what I think great films are (The Big Lebowski, Donnie Darko, The Lego Movie, even). Still, if you weather through the bad, even things you don't like, you're guaranteed to find the right kinds of decks as well as the other nonsense you will enjoy in this world. It's all about the search. So if you're on the strugglebus, keep going. Keep failing. You'll find what you're looking for.

Pass Turn.
-UL