(Note to the readers: In last week's introductory article, I forgot to thank Ariel Jones, the woman - and babe, and friend of mine - who designed StarCityGames' new logo, the star and the city and the font. She did a bang-up job, didn't she?)

So is Onslaught really all about the bombs?

The debate is raging back and forth across the net:

Onslaught Sealed is more luck-reliant than it's ever been before. I was at this one event where a little kid threw all 105 cards into the air, plucked forty cards at random, and 5-0'd the prerelease! And the thing was, this was a child crack addict who had never played Magic before - he thought he was playing in a high-stakes poker tournament to become the Count of Monte Cristo!

No, all you need with Onslaught Limited is a dollar and a dream! It's all about the solid deckbuilding! Why, I myself opened a freak deck with nothing but forty False Cures and a Wellwisher, and I went 7-0 at the Grand Prix Trial, beating the guy who opened Visara and two Rorix Bladewings!

No, you fool! It's all luck! You have no hope!

Jane, you ignorant slut!

I hate to tell you... But you're both wrong. Onslaught is a floor wax and a dessert topping, kids.

The fact is that it is both harder and easier to pull out a win in Onslaught Sealed. I mean, let's be honest - thanks to the huge bombs, it's way easier to crack two or three ridiculously-broken rares and smash your way to the top. There aren't that many answers to a Quicksilver Dragon.

In fact, let's look at your single-card, common and uncommon answers to Quicksilver Dragon, a Rorix, or a Visara, should one hit the table:

1) Speed. You can hope to outrace them. Some decks can do this, beating the opponent into submission before turn 5 or 6 - but that's a rare deck that requires a lot of synergy to do so. You can't rely on it.

2) Gang-Blocking. They fly. A lot of colors don't have flying creatures that can gang-block it - and even if they could, that requires multiple cards. Nice try.

3) Pacifism and Sandskin. It works... But neither really stop Visara, and Rorix is going to get in a hit regardless. Furthermore, a lot of players can sideboard in enchantment destruction, thus neutralizing your card. This does not take care of the card in a lot of cases; it simply stalls it.

4) Unified Strike. This requires at least five soldiers in play. This is assuming you open five soldiers.

5) Whipcorder. ...Which works effectively until Visara kills it. It can stall a Dragon or a Rorix, but chances are that - much like Pacifism and Sandskin - you'll have used the 'Corder's ability in advance and will take a six-point hit from Rorix before you can shut it down. And then, all it takes is a Shock.

6) Aphetto Grifter. This combines the wonder of Whipcorder and Unified Strike - not only do you have to draw another Wizard, but it's a 1/1 and killed as a mere triviality to most opponents. Oops.

7) Complicate , Disruptive Pitmage, and Discombobulate. It's possible that you could prevent any of them from coming out with this, since they're all pricey... But blue is so weak in this format that you generally have to get enough strong blue cards to justify playing it. This is rare, and you certainly can't count on it.

8) Mistform Mask. All the disadvantages of Pacifism and Sandskin, with the added disadvantage that it ties up mana to do so. The Mistform's not a bad bet, but it doesn't get the creature off the board where you don't have to worry about it... And it still leaves the big critter back on defense, so now you have to smash through it. Oops.

9) Cruel Revival, Death Pulse, and Profane Prayers. Death Pulse doesn't really deal with the creature, but it's entirely possible that you could chump and finish off a Rorix with it - Visara'll just stay back until she's cleared the path, and the Dragon will shunt it elsewhere. Profane Prayers is dependent on other creatures... But if you're playing it, that's a pretty clear signal that you're playing W/B, so I'm willing to concede that you'll probably be able to ramp up to enough clerics to pull it off, given time. (Given time, he said.) Cruel Revival is the only hands-down,"Oops, you're dead" common in the format, and even though the Dragon can allemande left to deal with it, it still counts.

10) Erratic Explosion. Well, it could work if you stumble into another high casting-cost card. But it probably won't.

So let's take a look here: Of all of the common cards, there is precisely one card that removes, without question or drawback, three of the broken rares that everyone seems to have problems with.

That really seems to weight the set heavily towards the bombs.

Now, some of you may complain, saying that there are ways of dealing with the bombs. My response is that they fall into two categories:

1) Rare bombs. Sometimes, you're not so lucky. And even if you are that lucky, sometimes your bomb is the only good card in a color you can't use. So shut up.

2) Multiple card interaction. Now I grant you, this is what makes Onslaught Limited so cool; you really have to work for it. I admit that there are plenty of cool ways to really take care of one of the big, facesmashing legends - and it feels so cool when you do them.

However, a lot of these tricks are sorcery-speed, meaning that you have to count on the big guys to block - which means that he has to be on the defensive in the first place, and most good players won't block with the big guy until they have no other option.

Still more require using creatures to block, then lowering the ax with another card. That's problematic for two other reasons: One, it involves having both cards out at the same time - which means that mathematically, you're at a real disadvantage to the guy who can cast his one-card combo of Rorix. You may have the blocker, but what if you don't ever see your Wirewood Pride?

Secondly, it involves some bad play on the guy's part; he has to send the bomb in unprotected. Granted, he may be happy to watch you burn three cards to take care of his one, but usually a good player will feel it out to make sure it's safe. A good player may not risk his bomb at all.

So the bombs do rule. Don't kid yourself. There are several large, ugly creatures out there, and only one card deals with anything over 4/4 unquestioningly, on its own.

One. Card.

What happens if you don't get Cruel Revival? You may be boned.

But that said, I was hanging around watching the latest episode of Buffy this week... And while I did, I was flipping through the deck that I got at the prerelease, looking over the art and the flavor text and whatnot. And it was then I had a realization:

I had built my deck entirely wrong.

I went with blue and white, and in doing so I had screwed the pooch so fierce that Rover woulda bit me if he could; I undervalued the removal, I overvalued certain tricks that weren't helpful in this environment, and in general I screwed up.

So let me tell you something, kiddies: The bombs rule, but that's no excuse for poor deckbuilding. And I had no excuse for the pile I built when I had better cards.

Here's my deck:

Black:
Dirge of Dread
Withering Hex
Words of Waste
Syphon Mind
Syphon Soul
Shepherd of Rot
Swat
Crown of Suspicion
Gravespawn Sovereign
Aphetto Vulture
2 Screeching Buzzard
Profane Prayers
Festering Goblin
Disciple of Malice
Blackmail

Blue:
Dispersing Orb
Screaming Seahawk
Airborne Aid
Rummaging Wizard....
Crown of Ascension
Choking Tethers
Meddle
Information Dealer
Sage Aven
Disruptive Pitmage
Backslide
Mistform Dreamer
Choking Tethers
Mistform Wall
Graxiplon
Mistform Shrieker

White:
Words of Worship
Defensive Maneuvers...
Pacifism
Aven Soulgazer
Daunting Defender
Demystify
Glory Seeker
Gustcloak Harrier
2 Daru Cavalier
Grassland Crusader
Disciple of Grace
2 Dive Bomber
Ironfist Crusher

Green:
Crown of Vigor
Wellwisher
Birchlore Rangers
Animal Magnetism
Wirewood Pride
Naturalize
Explosive Vegetation
Snarling Undorak
2 Elvish Warriors
Elvish Pathcutter
Barkhide Mauler
Crown of Vigor

Red:
Break Open
Dwarven Blastminer
Solar Blast
Avarax
Battering Craghorn
Goblin Sledder
Goblin Taskmaster
Nosy Goblin
Shaleskin Bruiser
2 Skirk Commando
Fever Charm
Skittish Valek

Land:
Barren Moor...
Windswept Heath
Seaside Haven

So Are You Really That Stupid?
Yes. Yes, I am.

As stated, last week I went with blue/white. Wanna see what I used? Pretty much look for the ellipses (...) in the card text; anything below that is what went in. The sole exception was the Demystify, which I should have started with - there are a lot of killer enchantments around.

Let's start with white: White is not a question. None of my rares are bombtastic, which means that I must look to the rest of the set to create my deck - and two Daru Cavaliers and two Dive Bombers, along with an Ironfist Crusher and a Grassland Crusader, pretty much said,"Go white." I had three fairly solid fliers (if you included the Gustcloak Harrier) and one great one in Aven Soulgazer, so I could rule the air. Pacifism was a nice trick as well.

But there's where I got greedy.

I looked at blue, and remembered the times I lost to the all-air defense... And look at how many of blue's creatures have flying! I could fly over with everything!

Furthermore, the all-flying dream was further supplemented with Crown of Ascension - a damn fine finisher. I could also blitz past defenses with Choking Tethers, a bomb card in its own right... And I thought that the Mistform Creatures would allow me to play a lot of tricks in this environment.

(As it turns out, the Mistform creatures are only good if you have effects that benefit from it. There are a couple of rare spells that the Mistforms can dodge - Harsh Mercy, for example - but mostly, if you don't have spells like Wirewood Pride, you can leave them behind.)

Meddle seemed like a fine combat trick, but I forgot that there's not a lot of targeted removal in this environment - most of them are on creatures or come at the tail end of cycling. (I did, however, Meddle a Lavamancer's Skill once for the game, which didn't hurt.) Also, as noted in last week's article, I thought Backslide was good... And it wasn't.

(Dave Meeson asked me an obvious question about Backslide, incidentally: If you didn't like it, why not cycle it? The answer is, of course, that Backslide was going to be good! Eventually! Sometime it would turn out to be useful! What if I cycled it away and then lost to a morph?)

(Incidentally to the Incidentally, why did I play the pathetic Information Dealer over Rummaging Wizard? Mainly because I noticed Rummaging Wizard later, and I thought I could pull off some cool Mistform tricks. I am an idiot, thanks.)

So all in all, my blue cards were a lot weaker than I thought they were... And the tricks that I was splashing for, Crown and Tethers aside, were weak.

I didn't have any bombs, but I built my deck wrong.

Listen to that, because that's honesty. I spent an absolutely delightful half an hour listening to Geordie Tait drive spikes into my ears - and fortunately, Geordie passed the whining directly along to you! He claimed repeatedly that his deck sucked, his deck sucked, his deck sucked.

Maybe it did, Geordie. But as Laura Mills said,"If Geordie didn't even splash for Wave of Indifference, he should be subjected to a series of papercuts under the nail of his little toe."

Your card pool might have been weak... But you certainly didn't build the deck out of the best cards you had. Be a man.

You screwed up, chief.

The bombs rule this format, but that's no excuse to knuckle under to them. As stated, it requires at least two cards to get rid of a Rorix... But if you're not even playing with those two cards, you deserve to lose.

Finding the best cards and building the best deck is what you need to do, more than ever. In that sense, Onslaught does allow the idiots to win, and win with ease; sometimes you'll just crack a Mills and be done with it. But that means the rest of the time, there is no slackness allowed in your deck; you can't use"sort of" bombs like you found in Invasion or Odyssey. All of your cards have to work together in one army...

And isn't that what they really wanted?

Here's how I should have built the deck:

White:
Pacifism
Aven Soulgazer
Daunting Defender
Glory Seeker
Gustcloak Harrier
2 Daru Cavalier
Grassland Crusader
Disciple of Grace
2 Dive Bomber
Ironfist Crusher

Black:
Shepherd of Rot
Swat
Crown of Suspicion
Gravespawn Sovereign
Aphetto Vulture
2 Screeching Buzzard
Profane Prayers
Festering Goblin
Disciple of Malice

Land:
Barren Moor
Windswept Heath

Ah, this is more like it.

Not only do I have a more cleric-centric deck - making the Profane Prayers and the Daunting Defender about a thousand times more effective - but I keep most of the air force, with Screeching Buzzard and Aphetto Vulture, but I also get the possibility of using the Gravespawn Sovereign - who is overcosted, but could occasionally just win me one at random.

Furthermore, this gives me access to Swat, Profane Prayers, Crown of Suspicion, and Festering Goblin, all of which could remove creatures... And Dirge of Dread is equally as good as Choking Tethers against many decks, and this gives me more offensive capability.

(Well, my creatures actually decrease slightly in power, but the ability to kill off opposing blockers goes up about 300%.)

If I need disruption, I can always try Blackmail in the late game - no Visara for you, my friend! - and the zombies help minimize the worry of a random Cruel Revival.

Now. Is this a great deck? No. It's not bomb-tastic, nor is it an autowin. I'd have to fight hard against bomb.dec. But would I have gone 2-2 drop, like I did at the prerelease?

No.

So learn your lesson, my friends; Onslaught is about the bombs. That means your deck is either a bomb or a bomb shelter. Now more than ever, you have to optimize your deck before you step into the area.

The question is, did I?

Much like Iain Telfer, I encourage you to scroll to the top of the article and leave some feedback in the forum. Did I build this deck wrong? What else could I have used? Would you have a built it?

I want to know. Tell me.

Signing off,
The Ferrett
TheFerrett@TheFerrett.com
The Here Edits This Here Site Here Guy