Mafia King for Regionals!
**Mafia King, by Nate Heiss
Whata ya know? This deck is brilliant!* Note, of course, that being brilliant doesn't mean that it's any good, but it does mean it's worth a look. Still, everyone except Nate himself seems to think that this is the best way not to qualify for US Nationals tomorrow. They may well be right, but what Nate has to offer is the following theory: You have all let yourselves get too predictable, and no matter how bad this deck looks right now, I'm going to beat you because of it, have fun doing it and write it about it on Mindripper. You know what? There's a nonzero chance he's right, although his deck could probably be tuned better. I'll go over the matchups as he does.
The one thing that bothered me the most about playing Fires was that it was 'just a bunch of guys.' That's normal for a Magic deck, but it is the kind of thing I tend to lose sleep over when I shouldn't. By being 'just a bunch of guys,' Fires makes itself vulnerable to cards that stop that bunch of guys, and here are some good ones: Teferi's Moat and Story Circle. If both of those come out, Fires is pretty much toast - the only green flyer is Birds of Paradise, and all the direct damage is red, Chimeric Idol can be killed by Seal of Cleansing, and there's no enchantment removal. That should just about cover every way out.
For argument's sake, he could in fact deck Fires with Elfhame Sanctuary if he really wanted to. The other concern is that he uses City of Brass but Tsabo's Web will stop that from killing him off prematurely. That's the principle, anyway. The second game is going to be harder, because Fires might have enchantment removal in some form. This is definitely an annoyance. The good solutions to that are to counter the removal (which requires waiting for the mana to protect it, and therefore stopping Armageddon and similar cards) or to nullify it before it can get off the ground or play the key cards in multiples. Things would definitely be helped out by additional doses of Story Circle and Teferi's Moat out of the sideboard, which I would recommend. There isn't really time for Yawgmoth's Agenda. Then there's the issue of protection in time, which could be solved with the addition of Sterling Grove if the green was reliable enough for it, but it pretty much isn't, so the more likely solution is going to be using temporary solutions to gain time. If they don't have enchantment removal waiting in the wings, the matchup should remain simple.
Counter-Rebels
He doesn't lie to you, and admits this one will be tough. He's right. Dread of Night is a good start, but probably not enough. Gainsay helps protect it, but again things are on shaky ground. Even worse is when they take out the creatures for Millstones and Counter-Rebel is suddenly a better control deck than this one, which isn't that hard since this one isn't that good at fighting control wars. OK, so you lose one. No big deal. Can't win them all, can you?
Nether-Go / Probe-Go (and probably W/U control)
He makes the claim here that Mafia King is set up better for the control battle that will ensue. That's basically the same as saying that Tutors are good in the matchup, since that's pretty much the only useful thing this deck is going to have an advantage on. Generally Tutors are bad in these types of battles, so either there's something really powerful to Tutor for or a counter war to win that will dominate the game. Alternate casting cost counters make forcing the counter war through tempo unlikely, so it has to be by counter mass and this deck starts about four behind. In addition, the first Tutor is likely to be busy getting the Nether Spirit. Yawgmoth's Agenda looks like a good route to victory, but Recoil can break it up and the only Nether Spirit will probably bite the dust first. In general, saying this matchup is good first game is like saying that the Nether-Go deck doesn't have enough counters to deal with this situation. It does. But game two has to be better, right? All the junk comes out and good stuff comes in. At this point, the two decks are similar both in cards and in spirit (and Spirit), so how much the opposing deck cared about the mirror and how much skill each side has should determine who has the edge. Still, this should be acceptable, right? For W/U control, which he doesn't mention, assuming they're still foolish enough to rely on Blinding Angel this deck should be fine and deck them. If they rely on Millstone there could be problems, but I haven't told that many people that this is the right deck and no one listens to Alex.
Red Decks and Haups decks
Tutoring for Elfhame Sanctuary and then for Story Circle, what a concept! Having only three plains could become an issue. Still, there won't be a problem getting lands out of the deck, and land destruction becomes a one time card advantage of two and then a tempo issue, and maybe a color issue. Can they get around Story Circle? Not without blowing up all the land, and they can't blow up one a turn for life.
Skies
He admits that Skies is a tough matchup, but thinks the deck is unlikely to show up. I mean, hell, it even loses to Fires, what would people be thinking?
That leads to some tuning issues. One, the second Yawgmoth's Agenda has got to be a misuse of space in a deck with so many key cards to go get. Two, not having a two mana artifact of some kind that produces mana is probably an oversight, since the acceleration will be necessary. The next issue is, what will Wrath of God and Rout do that Story Circle and Teferi's Moat won't? Right now the answer seems to be a big 'not much' except against Skies (which is a lost cause). That doesn't make them bad, but it does make them worth questioning. There are very few creatures out there right now that threaten to ruin someone's day and aren't attacking to do it. Keeping one Wrath of God on hand for ceremonial, religious and Tutor purposes is still a good idea, of course, but that should be enough. Hurrah, three free slots!
Next up is Zur's Weirding. While I really do admire this kind of thinking and anyone brave enough to use this card, the question is where it's worth playing or more importantly, Tutoring for it. Any matchup where this is worth getting it shouldn't be needed, since there's too much risk the other deck already has what it needs. Love the card to death, but it's just too risky to use it maindeck. That gets five slots free. Next I'm going to axe Probe, because this deck is going to leave the opponent plenty that isn't painful to lose. Naturally, that means adding the fourth Fact or Fiction to make up for a little of that.
All right, that means there are seven slots free. Now what? First, devote three of those to two additional copies of Story Circle and one more of Teferi's Moat. Since in this day of Nether Spirits Wrath is unlikely to be very good against control, so this switch helps against everything except for Skies which as already noted several times isn't worth bothering against anyway. There's also the whole Counter-Rebel issue, but Story Circle will help out after sideboarding when Dread of Night becomes the plan and game one was lost anyway so no harm done there. A second step will be to remove an Adarkar Wastes for a Marble Diamond and a Sky Diamond, so the tutors can get mana acceleration and Enlightened can get mana without City of Brass. Also note that four Swamps is certainly too many, so swap two out for Underground River. Don't sweat the Sanctuary, it's still doing its job and there's only one. Also, the mana acceleration should help blunt the 4 Dromar's Cavern issue a little and it ups the land ratio, which is something the deck needed a little of.
Next is the replacement for Probe, and here I think it's pretty obvious. How can it not be Jayemade Tome? Browse is neat but clearly too risky. So that's five slots spent, two to go. One of them almost certainly goes to Millstone, since dropping it turn two is great against control. Then again, Aladdin's Ring can probably go in that case, especially since it wasn't mentioned as important in any of the matchups and Millstone kills mages just as dead. So still two slots left. One should go to a counter that isn't so blue intensive, so add one Power Sink. More counters are always good. The last slot I'm going to give over to a second Tsabo's Web, since the lock in many cases involves getting this in play to stop Rishadan Port. Finally, I bought some extra blue with those Rivers, so I can give up an Island and the other Adarkar for two Plains so we can support Story Circle better. Lastly, swamp the fourth Vampiric for an Enlightened because white is easier than black and pain is bad, since the enchantments are all the likely targets.
The sideboard could use a little work too. The basic concept is Lobotomy/Gainsay as an anti-control strategy. That brings up the obvious question of whether this is the best spell to force through. Does Lobotomy win the game against the control decks? Against Counter-Rebel it really only takes out a counter, or maybe their enchantment removal. That's non-horrible but not amazing either. Against Nether-Go it has the potential to win outright if there's no Spirit on the table, otherwise it's only OK. Taking out Obliterate is nice but this isn't supposed to be doing that. Ultimate conclusion therefore is that this is the wrong approach. The last thing the deck needs is a main phase semi-threat. Because of its unique uses one is still worth it, but I'll stop there. Gainsay was a better thought, so I'll up that to four. Tsabo's Decree should definitely be a 1-of at least, so that can replace the last slot. The third Seal isn't really necessary against anyone, so swap that out for a second Millstone.
Which leaves us with:
By the way, for those of you who are thinking they'll just cut the black out since it doesn't really give anything important except Dread of Night and turn this into an Enlightened Tutor based W/U control deck are good enough deckbuilders to not be reading an article on Mafia King the day before Regionals, so hopefully they've all left the room or are sufficiently tired from testing that they don't notice. I didn't write this so you could go play a normal deck! Just so we're clear on that.
*By the way, just in case any of you are considering switching your Regionals strategies we need to establish who can and cannot play this deck. So here are The Four Disclaimers (apologies to Michael Feldman)
1. All metagames analyzed in this article have been thoroughly researched although the answers have not. Ambiguous, misleading or poorly thought out decklists are par for the course. Readers who are sticklers for good strategy should build their own decks.
2. All your base are belong to us.
3. Persons working with Team Godzilla or its affiliates are lucky to be playing Magic at all, let alone tying up IRC trying to test Type 2. People who have bugged me on IRC recently should sit on their hands and let someone else have a chance for a change.
4. Needless to say, opinions expressed in this article are not those of Zvi Mowshowitz, Mindripper or Lackeys'. Anyone who says otherwise is itching for a fight.
- Zvi Mowshowitz
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