Dojo Drift (Stompy 3rd ed, part 2)
This mourning, I thought I had it all figured out. Cartographer would give stompy a new lease on life, and together with Mox Diamond would allow it to become a dominant deck, since Emerald Charm would dispatch combo decks and fast LD slow down the others.
Oh boy, was I wrong!
This is going to be an attempt to document the most recent case of what I call 'Dojo Drift', although it has very little to do with the Dojo. It is the tendancy of any new and origional deck to transform itself into a standard one during testing.
I sent in the origional this mourning, and I would suggest putting it atop this article, along with my thoughts. My procedure when I have a new deck is to build it (proxies aplenty if needed) and riffle shuffle it to death with sample draws. I can tell whether what I got was a good draw, and which cards were bad. The first thing I noticed was that the deck normally didn't have extra land or an empty hand very early, so both Armageddon and Cursed Scroll were bad. In addition, the deck depended on manipulating the lands in and out of the graveyard, so I added more Harvest Wurm, Fallow Wurm and Rouge Elephant, and an extra Bird, cutting the two bad cards. Soon Rouge Elephant began being phased out, because it cost me the overall speed advantage I needed. I added more elves, going to 3 elves and 4 birds.
That, of course, is where I wanted Querion Ranger. They go very well with Birds and Elves, producing huge amounts of mana from one or two lands. In addition, I could throw returned lands to Mox Diamond. Soon, I was getting three mana almost all turn 3s, but not having a land to spare all the time for Fallow Wurm, or reliable discarding of a land for Harvest Wurm. I wanted more 2nd turn Land Destruction. So I made the critical move, adding the first Stone Rain. From there, the deck moved farther and farther away from stompy as I lost wurms for 5-color mana sources and Tradewind Rider. Tradewind Rider is just too good; if you are going to use Land Destruction and Creatures you HAVE to use him. So Gemstone Mine went in (and Political Trickery for about 15 seconds!), and then Armageddon was reintroduced because of Querion Ranger. Sylvans were cut for room (I still want them back), and more Survivals were added because of the new weenies and to get Tradewind Rider. So the deck looked like this:
Aside from the LD, this was a pretty standard 5CG deck in many ways. That was very disapointing. And though it is very good at what it does, it has one gaping hole.
Firestorm allows a player to turn uncastable cards (due to LD) into creature kill, from no permanents other than a land played this turn, including an escape from a Tradewind lock. It was the main reason I lost games.
After the tournament (I didn't play, I was trying out B5:Shadows cards), Mike Pistulnik (who won) reminded me that the deck could use Sphere of Resistance. This could get it into playable range again. I'd probably need to cut 1 Querion Ranger, 1 Survival of the Fittest and 1 Stone Rain for 3 Sphere of Resistance. That might make it work.
Right now, I feel that the Suicide Black and Null Brooch decks, which are the most popular on the Dojo, are flawed, although the Black deck is solid; I'll explain that when I'm not working in a lightning storm (literally). And many of the posted decks will almost never win a game. W/B necro is the deck with the most potential, and very few people seem to be exploring it. Whether Cartographer can push a previously flawed strategy (LD) into playable range remains to be seen.
Zvi Mowshowitz