I enjoyed Cory Braiterman's article "For God's Sake, Stop Sucking!" His Article was entertaining and he certainly made some good points. In the article Cory discusses a player named Jim who opens pretty good stuff at an Onslaught sealed deck tournament and then proceeds to build a pile of crap.

Along the way, Cory gives us the deck that he would build with the same set of cards. Unfortunately, Cory commits one of gravest, yet most common, errors in Limited deck construction.

As a reminder, here is the stuff that Jim opened:

White
Astral Slide
Battlefield Medic
Catapult Squad
Daru Lancer
Daunting Defender x2
Dawning Purist
Disciple of Grace
Gustcloak Runner
Pacifism
Piety Charm
Renewed Faith

Blue
Aphetto Grifter
Backslide
Choking Tethers
Disruptive Pitmage
Ghosthelm Courier
Mistform Wall
Riptide Biologist
Rummaging Wizard
Sage Aven
Screaming Seahawk
Spy Network x2
Trickery Charm x2

Black
Accursed Centaur
Boneknitter
Fallen Cleric
Headhunter
Infest
Rotlung Reanimator
Screeching Buzzard x2
Severed Legion x2
Spined Basher
Thrashing Mudspawn

Red
Charging Slateback
Crown of Fury x2
Custody Battle
Fever Charm x2
Goblin Taskmaster
Pinpoint Avalanche
Risky Move
Shock
Slice and Dice
Solar Blast
Sparksmith
Spurred Wolverine x2
Threaten
Wave of Indifference

Green
"Absolutely nothing good."

Cory quickly notes that the red is "nuts." And he's dead-on; with one copy of just about every removal spell you could ask for, the red is nuts. Slice and Dice is a commonly-accepted bomb in Onslaught Limited, and I have dreams about opening that much removal in a single color!

Cory then states, "black is very solid and the white isn't bad, either." Once again, Cory is dead on. Black includes four evasion creatures and the demi-bomb Infest.

So far so good; Cory has obviously identified which colors are the strongest. But now Cory commits the greatest sin of limited deck construction:

Sacrificing consistency for power.

I won't bore you with the deck that Jim built, but I do think it is important to look at the deck that Cory would have played:

Rotlung Reanimator
Screeching Buzzard x2
Severed Legion x2
Infest
Fallen Cleric
Boneknitter
Goblin Taskmaster
Charging Slateback
Pinpoint Avalanche
Shock
Solar Blast
Slice and Dice
Threaten
Battlefield Medic
Daru Lancer
Daunting Defender x2
Disciple of Grace
Pacifism
Astral Slide
6 Swamp
5 Mountain
3 Plains
2 Secluded Steppe
1 Unholy Grotto
1 Starlit Sanctum

I see some serious issues with this build. Cory has eight black spells, three of them with double-black casting costs. All three of these are important spells. The two Severed Legions are his cheapest evasion creatures, and Infest is a potential bomb. I would want to be able to play the Legions on turn 3 - and I would want to be able to play Infest early as well, before my opponent starts to unmorph guys. Yet Cory has only six sources of black mana!

The problem continues when you look at red. Red is clearly a very important color in the deck, yet Cory only has five red mana sources. In his forty-card deck, that's only one card in eight. Cory has decided to play a third color, white, and has devoted five of his eighteen lands to this third color. He further aggravates the problem by playing two lands that don't provide colored mana.

I'm not a mind reader, but I presume that Cory wants to play white because of the potentially-powerful synergy between the white Clerics, the Rotlung Reanimator, and Starlit Sanctum. At the same time, he doesn't want to give up the red because it's really good. He may have felt that what was left in Black and Red was not as good as some of the white cards. Again, Cory would certainly be correct on both counts. The synergy between the Sanctum, the Reanimator, and the Clerics is awesome and potentially game winning if it all comes together.

The White cards that he would play are, on the whole, better than the Red and Black cards that he would leave out... But what Cory has done is severely weaken the mana base by going into a third color. I think he is sacrificing consistency for potential power.

In my opinion, the correct build would be Black/Red. Eliminating the obviously horrible, Let's look at the cards in black and red that Corey isn't playing:

Black
Headhunter
Spined Basher
Thrashing Mudspawn

Red
Crown of Fury x 2
Fever Charm x 2
Sparksmith
Spurred Wolverine x 2
Wave of Indifference

Sparksmith leaps out as a card that should be played. Even with only one other Goblin Sparksmith is good. By himself he still shoots Wellwisher, Mistform Dreamer, and a host of other one toughness creatures that may be played. While active, he really tilts combat math in your favor, even with no other goblins. In an absolute emergency, he's a cheap chump blocker and will trade even with morphs.

Thrashing Mudspawn and Spined Basher strike me as very solid Morph creatures in black. Mudspawn is about as beefy as this collection of cards has to offer, even with a sizable drawback, and Basher is very playable. Headhunter is pretty mediocre, but I'd play him as a morph anyway. If my opponent only has one card and Headhunter is dealing combat damage, I'd be inclined to flip him over.

In Red, lets start with the Spurred Wolverines. A 3/2 creature for five mana with an ability we'll probably never use is nothing to get excited about, but it's serviceable. Daunting Defender is probably better, but it's not better enough to go into a third color.

Now we have only one card to replace: Crown of Fury can be good in a tribal deck, in this deck I don't like it. While Fever Charm is never a completely dead card, it's not usually a very good one. This deck has enough removal that I don't see the need for combat tricks. I would certainly keep the Charms in mind when going to the sideboard.

Wave of Indifference looks good in this deck; our creatures are on the whole unspectacular, and our evasion is limited to the two Buzzards and two Legions. I'm inclined to play Wave of Indifference because of the possibility of it winning a game or two during the course of a tournament

Here's what I'd play:

Black:
Rotlung Reanimator
Screeching Buzzard x2
Severed Legion x2
Infest
Fallen Cleric
Boneknitter
Thrashing Mudspawn
Spined Basher
Headhunter

Red 11
Goblin Taskmaster
Charging Slateback
Pinpoint Avalanche
Shock
Solar Blast
Slice and Dice
Threaten
Sparksmith
Spurred Wolverine x 2
Wave of Indifference

Land 18
10 Swamp
8 Mountain

We can argue about the last couple of cards - but the point is that you will typically have enough cards in two colors to keep your deck two colors. I want to play a deck that won't "suck up one round to mana screw," as Cory puts it. I'm still running eighteen lands, going with ten swamps and eight mountains. I have an even number of cards in each color but I'm going to want two black before I want two red.

No offense intended to Cory; he's written a fine article and makes a good point. Jim built a horrible deck by playing "every single black and white card he had that didn't have a double casting cost in it"; Jim ignored Cory's best color and played horrible cards. Jim probably avoided color screw, but he didn't build a good deck. Jim is clearly not a good player.

Cory is a good player, but I think he erred in the other direction. Corey is playing his powerful synergies and his best cards - but he has left himself wide open to color screw. In my opinion, this is still the most frequent mistake made in Limited deck construction. Don't do it!

Rich Ary
arymr@email.msn.com