Belching from the Bowels of Hell

I’m not sure I know how to play Vintage 2-Land Belcher.

It’s probably just because I’ve made some unrecommended changes to the deck, but I have terrible luck with even goldfishing it. Of course, to the untrained eye—a group that includes me, I think—it looks like a pile of random combo pieces and a janky artifact that really doesn’t stand a chance of winning if it were used in a deck that, say, also used land.

And I guess that’s where 2-Land Belcher comes in, it avoids that whole messy land thing by using Land Grants and a whole bunch of rituals and other free mana.

In its previous (winning) incarnations, the deck ran four Tinder Walls for accelerated red mana, and then used Goblin Welders to work around countermagic and the really painful artifacts like Null Rod and Chalice of the Void. Those seemed slow to me, though, more like sideboard cards. Goblin Welder doesn’t let you win first turn because it doesn’t do anything first turn and is a dead card.

I’d rather run things that are even more broken, you know, like blue things. Apparently this has already been tried, but I’m going to try it again, with a furious infernal passion for getting what I need. This is what I have Apprenticed up:

1x Black Lotus
2x Cabal Ritual
4x Dark Ritual
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Emerald
1x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Channel
1x Grim Monolith
1x Mana Vault
1x Sol Ring
1x Tropical Island
1x Bayou
4x Land Grant
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
1x Mana Crypt

4x Duress
1x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Oxidize

1x Time Walk
4x Chromatic Sphere
2x Living Wish

1x Yawgmoth's Bargain
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Timetwister
1x Memory Jar
1x Tinker
1x Windfall
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Necropotence
1x Regrowth
1x Demonic Tutor
3x Infernal Tutor
1x Yawgmoth's Will

1x Tendrils of Agony
4x Goblin Charbelcher

I think one of the problems is that I keep forgetting about the Tendrils in there, since there are a lot of times when I can tutor for something and would rather just win the game with that than try to get Belcher active. In other words, I’m trying too hard.

The really good hands just start off with two sources of green, Channel, and Charbelcher.

Having more, cheaper cards is really good with Infernal Tutor because of its weakness. This is another reason why Goblin Welder wasn’t working so well; there were so many times where I didn’t get the red needed to cast him and could therefore only I-Tutor for another Goblin Welder. Boo. Now, a lot of times I can tutor for Dark Rituals if I need the mana, or I can empty my hand and get something completely broken like Yawgmoth’s Will or Black Lotus, or Yawgmoth’s Will and then Black Lotus and then Charbelcher for the win.

Plus, Lion’s Eye Diamond and Infernal Tutor is freakin’ huge! Infernal Tutor, and sac the Diamond in response. Good times, good times.

Lion’s Eye Diamond also combos with Regrowth.

In fact, there are a lot of times when the Diamond is better than Lotus to find or have in hand. I mean, need I point out that Goblin Charbelcher takes 3 mana to activate and Lion’s Eye Diamond produces exactly three mana? Coincidence!?

Okay, probably.

Anyway, I think I’m getting better at this deck, mostly because I’m mulliganing a little more aggressively than I usually would, which is I think a skill I need to learn anyway.

It’s important.

With Belcher I need to see a lot of mana in my opening hand. Belcher needs seven mana to cast and go off in the same turn, and that’s actually a lot when you come right down to it. Once, after popping a Memory Jar, I pulled up a Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Black Lotus, Infernal Tutor, Goblin Charbelcher with one black mana floating. I figured I won that one, and I like to imagine that I would have won with an opening hand like that too.

However, I’m probably also a bit impatient with it. I hear stories about Belcher going off first or second turn, and I really want mine to do that too, gol’durn it!

One of my favorite Magic strategy exchanges goes something like this (it can be customized to fit almost any situation):

Player 1: … So then I cast Belcher and go off in their face.
Player 2: What happens if they cast Force of Will, or drop a Null Rod on you?
Player 1: What happens if they don’t?

Yeah, that’s right. I’m going to put all my effort into doing this one thing, you’d better have an answer because once I do that thing, you lose. There’s multiple answers within the Vintage canon, but you’d better have the ability to draw and play one of them within two, three turns at the most, if I’m feeling nice. Plus, if I have a Duress, you’ll have to be able to draw two of those answers and play the one I leave you.

Good luck.

Well, that’s my feeling anyway. It’s a deck I’m considering taking to that tournament in Columbus.

Because I traditionally take substandard decks to tournaments.

I think that’s what I’ll be doing this week, looking at possible deck choices to take to a 75 proxy tournament. I leave you to imagine what other decks I might discuss.