Belch?

I put classic Belcher together this weekend. I built it largely by myself, knowing only the most rudimentary things to put in it: Land Grants, Elvish Spirit Guides, Tinder Walls, Dark Rituals, tutors, and of course Goblin Charbelcher.

I have to say, I’m impressed.

Plus, it’s so much fun when one of your deck’s activated abilities can be put on the stack as, “Belch?”

I like decks a lot that actually count on you never really having a viable answer to them. You know:

Control Player: What happens if I have Force of Will?
Combo Player: Yeah… What happens if you don’t?
Control Player: Bring it on!
[Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, draw, draw, draw, etc.]
Combo Player: [Makes some mana, plays some cards] Belch?
Control Player: No responses.
Combo Player: Game two?
Control Player: I hope you die.

Potentially, Two-Land Belcher rolls over to Null Rod, Chalice of the Void at one, Force of Will (or other early counterspell), Duress, Pithing Needle, and Wasteland. Even a properly placed Stifle can bring you down if you had to scrape activation mana from non-permanent mana sources. Of course, they have to get a turn first for most of those.

A deck with velocity like this is very, very fragile. It’s like throwing a 95 mph fastball. The opposing batter either swings out of his shoes and takes a 43 point belch to the face, or he turns your velocity back on you and drives it out of the yard. I realize that sports metaphors might be beyond some of you, but that’s really what it’s like. It’s so much easier to overturn something with high energy than it is to upset something with higher inertia.

There are actually two flavors of Two-Land Belcher around. The Bayou-Taiga combo runs slightly faster based on the idea that running into Taiga when you can only pull one land out of your deck is okay since it will double your Belch. The Bayou-Tropical Island build is slightly more resilient (since it runs Vintage’s favorite color, blue) but runs slower since hitting that lone Tropical Island is just a disappointment. Personally, I’d rather have resiliency and go for more blue-based brokenness with Tropical Island, but that may just be because I own Tropical Islands.

I goldfished the deck all weekend (while watching the full 28 hours of Lost Season One) and never really had any problems with hitting a land too early. Most of the time I was able to get both the Bayou and the Tropical Island out of the deck, and the rest of the time I just played the odds and found the card in the second half of my 40 or so remaining cards.

Plus—my big piece of innovation—I’m trying out Infernal Tutors. Belcher has a tendency to drop a lot of mana, so I’m hoping that most of the time that I’ll be hellbent and effectively running three copies of Demonic Tutor.

Here’s my list as it is right now. My favorite part of this list is the singleton Tendrils, but I always forget it’s there when I’m tutoring, even when I’ve played plenty of spells. I’ll tell you the changes I’m thinking of making:

4x Goblin Charbelcher
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Bayou
1x Tropical Island

4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Tinder Wall
4x Dark Ritual
4x Land Grant
3x Cabal Ritual
1x Black Lotus
5x Moxen
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Lion’s Eye Diamond
1x Lotus Petal
1x Chrome Mox
4x Chromatic Sphere

3x Infernal Tutor
2x Goblin Welder
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Tinker
1x Memory Jar
1x Windfall
1x Timetwister
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Necropotence
1x Yawgmoth’s Will
1x Channel

1x Living Wish
1x Crumble
1x Chain of Vapor

It looks pretty good, right? I mean, obviously the Crumble should be Oxidize if it’s in the deck at all, but other than that it’s pretty strong. I think the biggest missing piece is Vampiric tutor, and that easily replaces Infernal Tutor straight up.

As I see it now, I’d like to go

-1 Crumble, -1 Cabal Ritual, -1 Chromatic Sphere, -1 Infernal Tutor
+1 Vampiric Tutor, +1 Living Wish, +2 Brainstorm

The Crumble and the Chromatic Sphere are both lovely cards, I’m just tired of seeing them when I’m going off. I’ll keep the Chain of Vapor just because it does have that possibility of increasing my storm and mana count (by bouncing a Mox or three) along with protecting me from Null Rod and Chalice of the Void.

Living Wish is another card that turns up a little too often for my taste, but I have a feeling I’ll be glad to have it when I play against actual opponents. It can increase my mana by finding Tolarian Academy or Mishra’s Workshop. I can get Uktabi Orangutan or Gorilla Shaman to facilitate my explosion. I can get Goblin Welder as a threat against decks that have countered my Belcher. I can even fetch Ornithopter to enable hellbent or up my storm count.

Besides, if I don’t like Living Wish, I can always drop it back down to one in favor of a third Brainstorm or a Mystical Tutor.

Brainstorm is really, really good in a deck with lots of shuffle effects like this one. I mean, you can Land Grant and put Brainstorm on the stack! That’s awesome. I think I’m rapidly convincing myself that I should use at least three Brainstorms. We’ll see. I think that means I need to buy another one.

Playing this deck, though, makes me think that Easter Tendrils is at least as viable as Two-Land Belcher.

They’re vulnerable to the same things, but each has the ability to win before those things come online. Easter Tendrils might be different, though, in that it is so heavily reliant on the presence of Helm of Awakening. I’ve won without that in play before, but it’s rare, and it’s not like opposing Vintage decks are going to give you the chance to build a hand that will win without the Helm.

Plus, with a Helm online, it’s a whole lot easier to empty your hand, so a playset of Infernal Tutors might actually fill the slots for Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, and Timetwister.

Hmm… it’s totally possible.