PaleoBelcher.
This is probably the toughest creation yet.
Goblin Charbelcher has the possibility of dealing lethal damage for the low, low price of only seven mana. Since lands are the limiting factor, 2-Land Belcher tries to maximize that possibility by running, uh, two lands. The rest of the deck is draw, search, and spells that net mana.
Doesn’t sound too hard, right? Magic had all of those things in 1995. I mean, moxes and Dark Ritual were in Alpha!
Yeah, well, first off, I’m just going to ignore that two-land thing.
I’m able to do that because (this is good) my chosen Goblin Charbelcher (heh heh) from a decade ago (are you ready?) is Rocket Launcher.
Rocket LauncherHow good is this thing? Good question.
4
Artifact
2: Rocket Launcher deals one damage to target creature or player. Sacrifice Rocket Launcher at end of turn. Play this ability only if you’ve controlled Rocket Launcher continuously since the most recent beginning of your turn.
Suddenly, instead of making seven mana and winning first turn, I have to make 44 mana and win on second turn at the earliest. That means this has to make more mana than PaleoGifts and PaleoSlaver combined.
There aren’t really a lot of equivalent cards except for the cards you’d use anyway, so lets start with those:
4x Rocket Launcher
4x Dark Ritual
5x Moxen
1x Black Lotus
1x Mana Vault
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Crypt
Look at that—we’re almost a third of the way there.
Most of the broken cards still exist, so we should probably use those too. Modern Belcher decks are three colors, edging towards two colors, but this one will probably be four: green, black, blue and red in that order.
1x Time Twister
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Regrowth
1x Channel
1x Fastbond
I’m pretty sure the last time all these cards were in a deck together was in one of my worse five-proxy Easter Tendrils decks.
Anyway, I’m hoping to be able to find a bunch of lands with the Twister, Wheel and Recall, play them with the Fastbond, and then multiply the mana with:
4x Mana Flare
3x Drain Power
I’ve used Drain Power before as a proxy Mana Drain and haven’t found it lacking. I’m hoping in this deck I won’t need four—it’s good, but it’s no Mana Drain. The benefit is that in this deck, it should work with my Mana Flares to multiply the mana they give me as well.
Hopefully in that time I’ll be able to get a Rocket Launcher into play. And activated.
One of the problems with building “fair” combo decks in Magic circa 1995 is that there really wasn’t a good draw engine to use. Your choices were Jayemdae Tome (which got used in PaleoGifts and PaleoSlaver), Library of Alexandria (which has been used in almost everything I’ve built), and Howling Mine (which has been used in everything else). Obviously, the Library’s in; it’s free and not hard to get running.
The other one is going to be Howling Mine. It’s free to draw and cheap to play, which is good when you’re looking to make 40 mana in one turn. Its drawback of working for the opponent too is easily surmounted by the fact that the computer sucks and its decks are, for the most part, terrible.
Regardless:
1x Library of Alexandria
4x Howling Mine
Now, this deck clearly needs some mana fixing and acceleration:
4x Birds of Paradise
4x City of Brass
4x Wild Growth
All of that leaves me 11 slots for land (not including the Cities and Library from before). Counting up my mana symbols gives me 12 green, 9 blue, 5 black, and 5 red. That sounds like:
4x Tropical Island
1x Underground Sea
3x Taiga
3x Bayou
Yuck. Really makes you appreciate those fetchland mana-bases, huh? The Birds and Cities will really improve that, though. I have 32 mana sources total, adjusting the count for the utility of Birds and Rituals and stuff, and that’s not counting the Mana Flares.
Jeez, saying that makes it sound like I have to get my entire deck into play. Hopefully my opponent manaburns a lot.
Right now, the weakest card in there is Dark Ritual since it’s completely colorless mana except for the one use on Demonic Tutor. You could probably take them out for one Volcanic Island, one Strip Mine, and two Mana Batteries (am I kidding?) of the Green and Blue varieties.
I have a feeling this can beat anything in the game as long as it’s not aggro and as long as the opponent get a slow start. In other words, it should be only slightly worse than Ichorid circa 1995, which is a terribly huge pile of terrible terribility.
Now for the real deal…
If any of you follow the spoilers like I do, you may be aware that Elvish Spirit Guide is being reprinted as Simian Spirit Guide:
Simian Spirit GuideElvish Spirit Guide is a staple in Vintage 2-Land Belcher because it’s free, uncounterable, and produces mana. It produces green mana, though, which isn’t the most useful, judging by the number of decks with green that don’t swing with angels and rely more on Forbidden Orchard than basic Forest or even Tropical Island.
2R
Creature – Spirit
Remove Simian Spirit Guide in your hand from the game: Add R to your mana pool.
2/2
Simian Spirit Guide produces red mana, far more useful just as a utility color, but also the new color of mana acceleration.
This means that 2-Land Belcher, which used to be three colors (black, red, and green) can realistically be scaled back to just two (black and red). I already had a mostly red and black list drawn up after Coldsnap and Rite of Flame came out, but I’ve made some changes. You can see the discussion going on at The Mana Drain so I won’t go into it much here, except for the list:
4x Land Grant
1x Bayou
1x Taiga
5x Moxes
1x Black Lotus
1x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Chrome Mox
1x Lotus Petal
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Crypt
1x Grim Monolith
1x Channel
4x Dark Ritual
4x Rite of Flame
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Simian Spirit Guide
3x Seething Song
4x Chromatic Star
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Demonic Consultation
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Yawgmoth’s Bargain
1x Necropotence
1x Memory Jar
3x Goblin Welder
1x Burning Wish
1x Empty the Warrens
4x Goblin Charbelcher
I’d really like to fit some Duresses (at least three) in there somewhere, but I’m not sure where they go. Bargain, Jar, and Channel are hard to cast. Grim Monolith is only good with Goblin Welder. Demonic Consultation can make it hard to win because I tend to use it stupidly, and there’s not enough draw to support Vampiric Tutor.
Plus, Duress is one of those cards that seems to suck in goldfishing because there’s no one to Duress. I never think I need it.
Anyway, the stand-out new cards in there are Empty the Warrens, Burning Wish, Seething Song, Simian Spirit Guide, Rite of Flame, and Chromatic Star. Empty the Warrens is really good against a lot of decks as an alternate win condition and blocker maker. Burning Wish replaces Living Wish because I hate it and because it can get Tendrils for the full-on combo win. Seething Song is still in testing but has proven to be an able replacement for Cabal Ritual. Simian Spirit Guide and Rite of Flame are the hot new tech, and Chromatic Star is better with Goblin Welder than Chromatic Sphere.
It definitely wins faster than it used to, and Empty the Warrens gives it five maindeck win-conditions to mulligan towards. It’s Goblins, it’s belching, it’s fun!
Got it?
Now go forth and playtest. I command you!
2 comments:
I am fairly new to the Vintage stuff (I even need to proxy up "The Mountains win Again") but if the main-win-condition of the deck is an artifact and we have to tutor for it, why not play Tinker?
And I think with all the red mana acceleration instead of the Cabal Rituals it could be more complicated to put the Bargain on the table.
Perhaps Recoup is a good card as well.
As for the Rocket Launcher.dec, creative stuff btw, try Transmute Artifact, to tinker for the Launcher ;-)
It's hard to play Tinker since the only blue sources in the deck are Sapphire, Lotus, Petal, and the four Chromatic Stars. There was an earlier version of the deck (the original, created by Michael Simister) that ran Tropical Island instead of Taiga and had all of the broken blue cards (Twister, Tinker, Ancestral, etc.). I've played that version as well and enjoyed it, especially the outs it had (Hurkyl's Recall) against Null Rod and its friends, but in the end, mana acceleration is the way to go, so now we do red and black.
Bargain is a rough play, but it does win when it hits. In my real-life deck, it's not in there. I have Duresses instead.
Thanks for the interest, though. Comments are always appreciated!
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