What, colorless, painless mana acceleration isn’t good enough for Vintage anymore?
I’ve gotten several inquiries from people about how I would be working Grim Monolith into RG 0-Land Belcher, now that I can run the full playset. The answer is always that I’m not. It wasn’t even really a consideration. One of the benefits of RG Belcher is that all of the acceleration costs zero or one mana and can all be played off of one Spirit Guide or another. Grimmy doesn’t fit that profile. It’s awkward to play, and I’ve never wanted the extra mana source anyway.
However, Grim Monolith will likely find a place in the sideboard:
4x Goblin Charbelcher
4x Empty the Warrens
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Memory Jar
1x Timetwister
1x Tinker
4x Rite of Flame
4x Chrome Mox
4x Manamorphose
4x Tinder Wall
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Simian Spirit Guide
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Emerald
1x Black Lotus
1x Lion’s Eye Diamond
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Sol Ring
1x Channel
4x Goblin Welder
4x Street Wraith
3x Guttural Response
1x Pyroblast
Sideboard:
1x Gaea’s Blessing
2x Pyroblast
4x Tormod’s Crypt
4x Storm Entity
4x Grim Monolith
The previous sideboards were either 4x Storm Entity and 4x Desperate Ritual or 4x Deus of Calamity and 4x Seething Song.
Since the maindeck is already prepared for a blue-based metagame with four red blasts and four Goblin Welders, the sideboard is mainly meant to get dead cards out against other opponents. Tormod’s Crypts are obviously for Ichorid (removing the red blasts). The Storm Entity and Grim Monoliths are for Stax, Ad Nauseam, and other decks that don’t play Force of Will. Against Stax, red blasts come out because they’re dead cards, and Manamorphoses come out because they’re terrible under Sphere of Resistance. Against Ad Nauseam, blasts come out again, but so does Goblin Welder because it’s slow.
Grim Monolith will be especially effective against Stax as it has a several advantages over the red acceleration spells that previously held the spot:
- It is a permanent – Grimmy can be put into play and saved for later, and once used it can be sacrificed to Smokestack. Unfortunately, this also makes it weaker against Tangle Wire.
- It is an artifact – Welder is already primo against Stax, and Welder works particularly well with Grim Monolith. Having another thing to Weld in for three mana is big.
- It is, uh, grim – Opponents, uh, don’t like to look at unhappy scenes. I’ve had people scoop to resolved Grim Monolith because it’s so dang grim.
Okay, well, it’s got two advantages anyway. And those advantages shouldn’t be discounted. For the Stax matchup, Grim Monolith, as a permanent artifact that makes three mana, is better than any one-shot red acceleration. It’s certainly a better sideboard option than running artifact destruction.
Brainstorming about Grim Monolith also made me wonder about a mostly mono-black version of Belcher.
Three-color Belcher lists with black have usually be more explosive but much more fragile than the two-color versions I normally use. At the same time, it’s hard to argue that Dark Ritual and Rite of Flame are even comparable as foundation acceleration spells. Dark Ritual just produces better results; one mana gets you three that can be used for some of the most broken spells in the game. Unfortunately, Rites and Rituals rarely played well together.
With unrestricted Grim Monolith, though, we can skip running red rituals and go with a pared-down two-color manabase that focuses on black and brokenness.
4x Goblin Charbelcher
1x Time Vault
1x Voltaic Key
1x Necropotence
1x Yawgmoth’s Bargain
1x Yawgmoth’s Will
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Memory Jar
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Demonic Consultation
1x Imperial Seal
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Spoils of the Vault
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Grim Monolith
4x Chrome Mox
4x Simian Spirit Guide
2x Elvish Spirit Guide
2x Manamorphose
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Lotus Petal
1x Black Lotus
1x Lion’s Eye Diamond
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
4x Goblin Welder
4x Street Wraith
This deck is about as fast as the RG version and is more consistent than other black-based and black-containing Belcher lists I’ve tried. I feel like you can still mulligan aggressively and hope to come up with a winning hand.
Counting Time Vault and Key as one win condition, the deck has 16 win conditions. Unfortunately five of those are tutors. I’ve never really liked this aspect of Black Belcher as it’s one more hurdle before winning—at best, my win condition costs more; at worst, my opponent counters my tutor, making me waste resources. Still, it is nice having more access to Black Lotus and to be able to put the Vault kill together pretty regularly.
Two other new win conditions, Necropotence and Yawgmoth’s Bargain, are great. I feel like I can play them fairly easily, and when I do, they win the game. This is not the feeling I get from Yawgmoth’s Will or Tendrils of Agony, however. Will has always been a dog in Belcher because it’s harder to maximize the card’s power here than in Grim Long, for example. It functions best in decks that combine lots of tutors and draw and can play all of those early with mana acceleration. This list of Belcher has tutors and acceleration, but not a lot of draw, so it can’t refill its hand to play more cards. That means Yawgmoth’s Will is more of a backup win for when Belcher or another big threat gets countered, which is less than optimal.
Tendrils of Agony runs into the same problem; without draw spells, a good Belcher hand can storm up to, well, seven. Not quite enough to get the job done. It’s nice to have for the times it is the easier win condition, like after a Wheel of Fortune or Memory Jar or during Yawgmoth’s Will, but I feel like I wouldn’t miss it.
As for Time Vault and Voltaic Key—well, obviously! They’re like bread and butter! Peas and carrots! Sex and grape jelly!
Seriously though, you can look at it this way: Goblin Charbelcher is one card and seven mana; Vault-Key is two cards and four mana, and I’m running five tutors. Does that compare? I think so. Plus, since the unrestriction of Grim Monolith, Key has additional benefits, functioning now as an additional mana spell when combined with Mana Vault or the four Monoliths.
Really, I think if you’re running a bunch of tutors but not Vault-Key, you’re doing it wrong.
There are still some other questions about the last group of cards, the ones that seem out of place because they’re the wrong color:
4x Goblin Welder
4x Simian Spirit Guide
2x Elvish Spirit Guide
2x Manamorphose
I’m unsure of these in the long term, but I’ll share my reasoning now.
First Goblin Welder is amazing in Belcher. When I played RGB Belcher in tournaments, I had Welders in the sideboard and was bringing them in for every matchup. When that happens, it seems like they’re probably a maindeck card. They answer counterspells from blue decks and Stax’s lock pieces, and they work within the deck alongside Black Lotus, Memory Jar, Wheel of Fortune, and Lion’s Eye Diamond. I made it a point to keep them in this build of the deck.
Of course, after deciding to keep Welder, Simian Spirit Guide was a no-brainer. Not only do they allow me to keep Welder and Wheel of Fortune, they’re uncounterable free mana that helps cast Grim Monolith. Keep!
Elvish Spirit Guide and Manamorphose are there mostly in support of each other, oddly enough—once you have one you need the other. Elvish Spirit Guide is necessary as an extra free, uncounterable mana source and because it helps play Manamorphose to get black mana. Manamorphose is necessary as a cantrip mana converter and helps get utility out of Elvish Spirit Guide. They do their jobs well and screw nothing up too badly, so for now, they’re staying.
I look forward to testing this deck more, perhaps putting it through the paces for real at the ICBM Xtreme Open in Chicago next weekend: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37870.0. I’ve already gotten my ticket and ready to dominate the dojo, eat some deepdish pizza and steak sandwich, and hang out with the Ohio crew. It should be a blast. You should come too.
Until then, think about this: Does Yawgmoth’s Will’s underperformance in Belcher automatically make Belcher a bad deck?
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