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{From Right Field is a column for Magic players on a budget or players who don't want to play netdecks. The decks are designed to let the budget-conscious player be competitive in local, Saturday tournaments. They are not decks that will qualify a player for The Pro Tour. As such, the decks written about in this column are, almost by necessity, rogue decks. They contain, at most, eight to twelve rares. When they do contain rares, those cards will either be cheap rares or staples of which new players should be trying to collect a set of four, such as Wrath of God, City of Brass, or Birds of Paradise. The decks are also tested by the author, who isn't very good at playing Magic. His playtest partners, however, are excellent. He will never claim that a deck has an 85% winning percentage against the entire field. He will also let you know when the decks are just plain lousy. Readers should never consider these decks "set in stone" or "done." If you think you can change some cards to make them better, well, you probably can, and the author encourages you to do so.}
According to Dictionary.com, a pilgrimage is “[a] journey to a sacred place or shrine.” Today, I am on a Magic pilgrimage. I’m returning to a place — places, really - to which I’ve journeyed before. I’d like you to come with me. Let us return to those Legendary Shrines called Hondens.
Follow the Yellow-Brick Road
A lot of players still can’t fathom why I’m so high on Shrines. I think a lot of their reaction is based purely on prejudice. In the history of Magic, winning with enchantments has typically meant some sort of slow, janky, combo deck that’s really annoying. Just like Shrines. Even with my success using the Shrines (and if I can win with them they must be good), people still are not convinced that Shrines is a good deck. I understand. A deck that revolves around five uncommon, Legendary enchantments just screams “Scrub!” The thing is I’ve won with them. Yes, they’re janky, but, with the right support spells, they’re extremely powerful, generating continuing effects.
The problem, of course, is finding the right support spells. Right off the bat, we know that we need KBC’s Big Eight:
After all, Shrines is a five-color deck. These shouldn’t shock anyone. Heck, they’re pretty much required in any Standard deck that runs Green today. You know you gotta have ‘em in Block Constructed. However, the mana base itself is one tricky puppy. Because of that, I’m leaving it until the end. The mana will depend mostly on what support spells you choose. For example, I’ve found that treating this as a G/W deck with splashed for the other three colors is best. However, that can end up hosing us because the cheapest Shrine is the Honden of Infinite Rage, which is Red. In other words, we want Red mana ASAP but, with no Red support spells, we have no need or desire for a fistful of Mountains. See what I mean about tricky?
My personal experience with the deck (i.e. MTGO testing and “IRL,” as people are wont to say online now) is that it’s best to load up with White support spells thusly:
I used to run Hisoka’s Defiance in the main deck, and I would not argue with anyone who says that they would put it in there. Most of the punishing spells in KBC are stopped by the Defiance. Cranial Extraction, for one. Kokusho, for another. Even Cleanfall is Arcane. However, I kept finding myself with either too much Blue mana and no Defiance or two Defiances and no Blue mana. There are four Defiances in the sideboard, though.
Now, if you’re one a them math jeniuses, you’ll notice that we only have room for eighteen lands if we add in four copies of each Shrine. Clearly, then, we won’t be using four of each Shrine:
Voila! We can run twenty-three lands. Of course, you want to know why I dropped the Shrines that I dropped. Fair enough.
First, we keep four of the Red and White Shrines because those are the protection (and, later, the win condition). It was hard to cut one of the Blue Shrines. The card drawing is phenomenal. The drawback is that it costs five mana. Ditto with the Green Shrine. At five mana each, we can afford to go with three-ofs and wait to draw into them. You really don’t want either of those clogging up your opening hand.
Why only one of the Honden of Wrecking Your Opponent’s Hand? Because it’s the Honden that is least useful the mid- and late-game (other than powering the other Shrines). At some point, your opponent will have no cards in his or her hand during your upkeep. Honden of Night’s Reach does nothing at that point. Sure, we could go more gung ho toward the “hit ‘em with all we got” version. If you want to drop a Kami of False Hope and a Ghostly Prison to up the Black Shrine count to three, go for it. I can’t say that having the Shrine of Major Discard hitting on turn three is anything but A Good Thing.
All that’s left is the mana, and, as I said above, it’s tricky. It’s almost best to sneak up on it from behind. With only one Black spell in the entire deck, we’re only gonna run one Swamp. If we need to complete our domain and cast the Honden of Night’s Reach, we have eight spells that grab land. For the Red and Blue Shrines we’re only going to run two each of Island and Mountain. It seems risky to run that few Mountains when you’d really like on by turn three, but, like I said, you don’t want to hose the White and Green spells. Besides, you’ll get the Mountain soon enough. That leaves us eighteen land slots. I’ve been running nine Forests and seven Plains. Since Green is needed to get the other land, it has to be a plurality of the lands. That leaves two slots.
“Tendo Ice Bridge? Now, that’s how I’d like to cross the Nile! I’m Tony Sinclair.”
So, this is what I was playing online last week:
23 Lands
9 Forest
7 Plains
2 Island
2 Mountain
1 Swamp
2 Tendo Ice Bridge
7 Creatures
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
3 Kami of False Hope
30 Other Spells
4 Ethereal Haze
4 Candle’s Glow
3 Ghostly Prison
4 Kodama’s Reach
4 Honden of Infinite Rage
4 Honden of Cleansing Fire
3 Honden of Seeing Winds
3 Honden of Life’s Web
1 Honden of Night’s Reach
Actually, I don’t have any Ice Bridges online. They were actually *ugh* Forbidden Orchards. Anyway, this is what I was mopping people up with in the Tourney Practice room when my match was joined by someone with the implausible handle of “Ben Bleiweiss.” This “Ben” person had a tight B/W aggro-control Rat/Samurai/Spirit (Dear Ben, What should I call your deck? — Yours Truly, Chris) deck, and he taught me a few things about my Shrine deck. First, Distress and Cranial Extraction can be A Very Bad Thing. Second, a flipped Nezumi Graverobber recurring Kami of Ancient Law is A Very bad Thing. (Actually, someone else taught me that, but I thought I’d credit Ben.) Third, Night of Soul’s Betrayal is horrendous when every creature you have is a 1/1. (On the flip side, Ink-Eyes can’t use anything she might steal.) The nice thing was that it took him three long games to beat me. That made me feel kinda warm.
Then, I found out that he was only online waiting for Jamie Wakefield, who needed someone to test with. What? I’m not good enough to test with? Oh, sure, you can use the foil Elvish Pioneer I sent you for your new Joshie Green, but I’m not good enough to play online?
Actually, I’m not, and I know it.
Sorry about that, Jamie. The washing machine just blew, and we need to find $350 or wear dirty undies and go to the local Clean-O-Mat. Sadly, I don’t have enough Boone’s Farm Wine to fit in there.
Okay, back to the deck. While we were playing, Ben said “Will you be adding Enduring Ideal once Saviors is out?”
“Of course,” I said. “It’ll be Da Bomb!”
So, naturally, I had to look up Enduring Ideal.
Sweet Loretta in the morning! Yeah, that’s gonna be kinda good in here. The very next day, I started working on a paper-proxy version of Shrines with Enduring Ideal. This is where I ended up after a bit of testing:
The Pilgrimage (KBC Shrine Deck)
| Shrines Featured by Chris Romeo on 2005-06-26 (Kamigawa Block) | ||
Creatures 3 Kami of False Hope 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder Enchantments 4 Ghostly Prison Instants 4 Candles' Glow 4 Ethereal Haze |
Legendary Enchantments 3 Honden of Cleansing Fire 3 Honden of Infinite Rage 2 Honden of Life's Web 1 Honden of Night's Reach 2 Honden of Seeing Winds 1 Meishin, the Mind Cage Sorceries 3 Enduring Ideal 4 Kodama's Reach Basic Lands 8 Forest 2 Island 2 Mountain 7 Plains 1 Swamp Lands 2 Tendo Ice Bridge | Stats: Average mana: 2.00 Average creature mana cost: 1.57 Average creature power: 1.00 Average creature toughness: 1.00 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 33.33% Lands: 3.33% Creatures: 11.67% Enchantments: 6.67% Legendary Enchantments: 20.00% Instants: 13.33% Sorceries: 11.67% |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
I know. Can you believe it? Only twenty-two lands in a deck that has a seven-cc sorcery? Trust me, land is not an issue. Just ask “Ben.”
Playing The Shrine
First, things first. Save the Fog effects until you need them. Don’t cast Ethereal Haze or pop off a Kami for one or two damage unless that damage kills you. The Fog effects are for the major damage. Use Candle’s Glow first whenever possible. For example, if your opponent attacks with Rushwood Dryad and Elvish Pioneer, Candle’s Glow stops all of that as well as the Haze and gains you life.
I’ve read lot of posts, articles, and rants have poo-poo’ed using Enduring Ideal in a Honden deck. (It does seem more suited for Extended hijinx, don’t it?) “You’ll have to get another Legendary Enchantment and kill what you’ve got. It’s horrible.”
Looks like someone needs a rules refresher.
Ask the Doctor (with Apologies to Chris Richter and Ask the Judge)
Dear Dr. Romeo,
My Enduring Ideal resolved, but I already have all five Shrines out and no other enchantments in my deck. I don’t want to drop another Shrine during my next upkeep ‘cause it’ll kill the one I have out, but my opponent says I have to. What do I do?!?
Dear Keira,
By the way, loved you in Doctor Zhivago. Anyway, the good thing is that you don’t have to get any enchantment if you don’t want to. You see, when a spell or ability tells you to search your library for a specific type of card, you can “fail” to find it. This was done as a way to save judges time and sanity. You can’t imagine how frazzled a judge might get if s/he was called over to search a player’s deck to make sure that there weren’t any of a land card (a la Rampant Growth), for example. Why, there could be postal worker-type implications. (This is only true for spells and abilities that have you search for a specific card or type of card. Others like Diabolic Tutor that say find “a card” you have to obey if you have a card in your deck. If you don’t, you’re probably gonna lose anyway.)
So, here’s what you do. During your upkeep, search your library, find nothing, shuffle you deck, and move on. And tell your opponent that Dr. Christopher B. Romeo, J.D., said it was okay!
Yours back atcha,
Chris
Of course, there may indeed be an enchantment that you want to get. Ghostly Prisons add up. I’ve also grabbed Meishin, the Mind Cage a few times. Remember that you won’t be casting any spells once an Ideal resolves. So, your hand will be full except for lands that you might wish to play. (Dunno why, though.) Giving everything -7/-0 is very good in this Block. It makes, well, almost every creature in the Block a zero-something. Sure, there’s Kuro, Iname as One, Body of Jukai, and Myojin of Life’s Web. If those are your opponent’s sideboard answers, you’re golden.
One more thing to remember. Since you can’t cast anything after the Ideal resolves, you might not want to be drawing five cards per turn. At some point, you might want to use your Ideal ability to get that second Blue Shrine. You don’t want to deck yourself.
Join me next week when I finally tackle some decks that people expected me to lead with: White Beatdown Stuff.
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. Does anyone have tickets to next weeks WWE Smackdown that they can give me?
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-AOL-dot-com
