Ichorid’s Weaknesses
Vintage Manaless Ichorid is invulnerable to conventional attack. It’s immune to counterspells and scoffs at prison decks. The price it pays for this power is two critical weaknesses:
Graveyard hate
Faster decks
Since Manaless Ichorid’s “clock” (the turn it wins) is somewhere between turn 3 and 4 (with an average of about 3.5), when we say “faster decks” are a weakness, we are really talking about Vintage combo decks.
Ichorid beats slower decks because they can’t slow Ichorid down through conventional means. Conventional disruption like countermagic and lock components (Smokestack, Tangle Wire, Null Rod) do nothing in the face of recurring men and free spells that are played out of the graveyard without mana costs.
Faster decks beat Ichorid because they goldfish before Ichorid wins, and Manaless Ichorid doesn’t slow them down enough to win first. Ichorid can poke holes in their game plan with spells like Chalice of the Void and Unmask, but decks like Pitch Long (Grim Tutor combo decks) are used to facing disruption of that severity on a regular basis, match in and match out. Pitch Long consistently wins on turn 2 through fierce Blue mage disruption in the form of Force of Will and Mana Drain. Why would it have much trouble winning through an Unmask or a Chalice on turn 2 when facing Ichorid?
The real problem is that Manaless Ichorid provides zero turn 2 disruption unless you discarded Ichorid on turn 2 for turn 2 Cabal Therapy, or were lucky enough to draw Strip Mine. And unless you have both Unmask and Chalice of the Void on turn 1, you probably won’t live to see turn 3 against a Grim Tutor deck. Leyline of the Void, in my experience, is of little help. Leyline of the Void may hose Dragon and stop Yawgmoth’s Will, but it really doesn’t stop the Storm decks from killing you with Draw7 chains, or Mind’s Desire, or Necro on turn 1 and turn 2 win.
Ichorid loses to hate because it is completely reliant on its graveyard and, unlike most other Vintage decks, has no tutoring and a very limited supply of mana with which it can answer said hate. The unconventional design that makes Ichorid so unique and so powerful is a weakness in the face of Leyline of the Void.
Every Ichorid player knows that they will likely face at least one of the following cards in every matchup:
Tormod’s Crypt
Pithing Needle
Leyline of the Void
The first two cards are heavily played. The last card is almost non-existent, but steadily growing in popularity as measured by Internet buzz. There is also a remote chance you might face Planar Void.
Post-board matches really devolve into a battle over those cards. Post board, Ichorid isn’t facing an opposing deck; it’s facing hate cards with a clock. Thus, you should focus all of your energy learning how to fight them without sacrificing too much of your deck’s inherent game plan.
The good news is that plenty of excellent answers have been printed over the years. Ancient Grudge is an excellent response to both Pithing Needle and Tormod’s Crypt. Chain of Vapor is a super-efficient answer to opposing Leyline of the Voids. If you Chain a Leyline, there is really no opportunity for your opponent to replay it.
It is important to understand exactly why each of these answers is so troublesome, beyond the obvious. Pithing Needle is, to a certain extent, the most frustrating card to face. Although you can Unmask it if you are on the play, and you’ll still be able to use your Bazaar once if on the play, the fact that it cuts you off of all of your Bazaars means that you can’t dig for the Chain of Vapor that would answer it.
Tormod’s Crypt is by far the least troublesome of the three to face. Tormod’s Crypt is disruptive, but it only slows you down by a turn or so. You can add sufficient pressure to the board so that your opponent will be forced to use the Crypt on you, but you’ll have plenty of resources to jump back into the game. Crypt is vulnerable not only to the fact that it doesn’t stop you from using Bazaar to search, but also the fact that it is stopped by Chalice at zero and Unmask.
Leyline, although it doesn’t shut down Bazaar, is perhaps the most devastating because it can’t be stopped; it can only be answered. It’s also an enchantment, and so only Chain of Vapor can deal with it. Ancient Grudge is of no help.
Ichorid should focus most of its energies on these two weaknesses. You need to be ready every single post board game to fight one of the cards I listed above. That kind of single-minded focus is necessary to prepare us for what has to be done.
The answer has to be found in playing with Mana.
Mana does two things:
- It enables you to interact more regularly on turn 2 (hardcast Cabal Therapy or Duress).
- It enables you to cast efficient solutions to graveyard hate.
After quite a bit of tuning and a lot of testing, I’m proud to present my personal Ichorid list, sideboard and all:
Creatures (22)
Lands (13)
Spells (25)
- 2 Duress
- 4 Unmask
- 4 Cabal Therapy
- 4 Serum Powder
- 2 Dragon Breath
- 1 Black Lotus
- 1 Lotus Petal
- 1 Mox Jet
- 4 Chalice of the Void
- 2 Dread Return
Sideboard
Understanding Ichorid
The Ichorid deck exists on a continuum. Every single Ichorid list exists as a series of trade-offs. Some great, some small.
Let me show you what I mean.
You know that Ichorid is pretty fast, even by Vintage standards. But how fast could we make it? Just as a theoretical exercise, what would the fastest Ichorid list look like? Here’s my answer:
Ichorid Blitz List 1.0
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Serum Powder
4 Sutured Ghoul
4 Dragon Breath
4 Dread Return
4 Devouring Strossus
4 Nether Shadow
4 Ichorid
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
4 Shambling Shell
4 Unmask
4 Cabal Therapy
That list was designed with one objective in mind: make the deck as fast as you possibly can. In other words, make a consistent turn 3 kill.
This deck goldfishes almost every game on turn 3.
- The Mishra’s Factories give you creatures 9-12 to sacrifice to Dread Return on turn 3.
- You have four copies of all of the major combo parts – Dread Return, Ghoul, Strossus, and Dragon Breath – to ensure that you combo even if you’ve only seen half of your deck or less.
- The trade-off is that you don’t get to run Petrified Fields, Chalice of the Voids, or Strip Mine.
Now, to illustrate my point, let’s shave off the top layer of chaff:
Ichorid Blitz 2.0
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Serum Powder
3 Sutured Ghoul
3 Dragon Breath
3 Dread Return
3 Devouring Strossus
4 Nether Shadow
4 Ichorid
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
4 Shambling Shell
4 Unmask
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Chalice of the Void
See what I did? All I did was cut the fourth copy of the primary combo parts and was able to add Chalice of the Void. What’s the trade-off?
I get to add a major disruption card (Chalice), in exchange for the very remote chance that I won’t see the needed combo part as a three-of that I would see as a four-of when I want to combo out on turn 3.
Now, that design change just makes sense. The costs are quite low and the benefits are obvious. But once you start moving away from the margins, once the decklists are moderated with a mixture of various elements, the trade-offs become ambiguous.
Consider the difference between Sutured Ghoul lists and those without. By cutting Sutured Ghoul combo, you get to cut the Ghouls and the Dragon Breath and get to add two other win conditions (let’s say two Sundering Titan) but free up two slots you can devote to more disruption.
Once you add mana to the maindeck, the trade-offs becomes even more pronounced, but the precise configurations are hard to evaluate. You are trading some measure of stability and some number of dredgers for more disruption. The further you tread down that path, the slower you make the deck. The trick is to find the right mixture that has the speed of Manaless Ichorid but the interactive capabilities and sideboard resilience of Mana Ichorid. My list attempts to strike that balance.
Mana Ichorid
I realize that I’ve been writing about Manaless Ichorid for the last two weeks. There are several reasons for that. First, I think that every serious Ichorid player should start with Manaless Ichorid. The design innovations that Manaless Ichorid gave are tremendous and inform any good Ichorid list. I wanted you all to get a sense for that deck’s flow and general game plan.
Second, since Manaless Ichorid doesn’t involve that many difficult decisions, it provided a perfect pedagogical entry point to teach the uninitiated how to play Ichorid.
Third, I wanted to build up to this. I think starting with Mana Ichorid would have caused you to miss some of the reasoning and understanding that is so important. Understanding the precise trade-offs is critical.
This goes back to the discussion above about Ichorid’s key weaknesses. It is my belief that both of the weaknesses – Combo and Hate – are very effectively addressed by mana.
Consider even just this list:
Mana Ichorid, Iteration 1
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
3 Petrified Field
1 Strip Mine
4 Serum Powder
2 Sutured Ghoul
2 Dragon Breath
2 Dread Return
4 Nether Shadow
4 Ichorid
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Lotus Petal
3 City of Brass
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
4 Shambling Shell
4 Unmask
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Chalice of the Void
I assert that cutting:
4 Wasteland / Leyline
1 Petrified Field
1 Maze of Ith
for:
6 mana-producers
Will actually make Ichorid a better deck.
How?
The primary weakness of Manaless Ichorid is the fact that it only has one way to interact on turn 2 aside from Strip Mine: flashing back Cabal Therapy.
With six mana maindeck, you have a lot more ability to interact by actually hardcasting Cabal Therapies. This gives you a lot more interactive power. Wasteland and Leyline I don’t think actually help those matchups as much as you might think. I’m adding interactive power without really reducing the strength of the deck that much.
With my decklist, things get much trickier. The trade-offs I make are stark.
Now, my list is only four cards different from the previous list I just showed you:
+ 2 Duress
+ fourth City of Brass
+ 1 Gemstone Mine
– 4 Golgari Thug
Why?
The fundamental constraint I’ve placed on this deck is that I want to retain the Sutured Ghoul Combo. That means I have to keep Shambling Shell over Golgari Thug. Thug is a much better dredger, but with a power of one can’t really feed the Ghoul.
A lot of players will undoubtedly argue, with persuasive force, that it is just better to run Titan in lieu of Ghoul and not make that maindeck sacrifice. It’s tempting. Cutting Ghoul would free up the two Dragon Breaths for Duress three and four.
But I think that cutting Sutured Ghoul combo in favor of a “virtual” kill of Sundering Titan is a trade off. Giving your opponent time, no matter how favorable it would appear to be to you, is never a good idea in Vintage.
In my list I have included seven cards that interact on turn 2:
Strip Mine
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Duress
Chances are I’ll see at least one of those most games.
I’ve also tried to keep the resilience of Petrified Field in this list.
My list is a careful balance of compromises and trade-offs made to achieve a particular end.
Now, we will turn to the subject you’ve all been waiting for: The Sideboard
Sideboarding With Ichorid
Take a look at this card:
There are four drawbacks:
1) It has to be in your opening hand to make good use of it
2) You have to pitch a card to play it
3) It is legendary
4) It is only good on the draw
Now for Ichorid, the first doesn’t matter. Generally Ichorid doesn’t play cards that aren’t in its opening hand or drawn on the first turn. That’s why Leyline of the Void is an arguable maindeck inclusion into Ichorid variants.
The second is equally irrelevant. Ichorid is used to pitching cards. Most of its cards end up in the graveyard. It is also used to removing its cards to Unmask and the like. Ichorid is full of bad cards it loves to remove when called to do so.
The third is not problematic either. Even if Ichorid had two Caverns in its opening hand, there is really no reason it would want to pitch another card to put another Caverns into play, even if it could.
That narrows our focus to one question: What percentage of the time would you have to be on the draw to make this card worthwhile to run? Certainly, if you were on the draw 100% of the time, then there would be no drawback in running it in the maindeck assuming the two other drawbacks we mentioned are an issue.
But what if it were a sideboard card?
That narrows the question even further:
What percentage of game 1s would you have to win to make Gemstone Caverns good?
Ichorid wins about 80%+ of its game 1s.
If ever Gemstone Caverns would have a home, it is in this deck. Thanks to Patrick Chapin for the idea.
Gemstone Caverns is a helpful sideboard cards. The plan goes like this:
Turn 0
Your opponent: Put Leyline of the Void into play.
You put Gemstone Caverns into play.
Turn 1
You play Chain of Vapor on the Leyline.
On your turn, you play Bazaar of Baghdad and activate it. You tap your Caverns to play Duress / Cabal Therapy.
You proceed to win the game.
You can substitute Leyline here for any hate card and you can achieve a similar effect. There are a number of permutations of this basic line of play, but the advantages of Caverns over regular land are fairly substantial.
Magic Theory Aside
Whether you think about it or not, every card that is selected into a deck is chosen on the basis of cost / benefit decision-making.
In economic terms, each card has an opportunity cost. The opportunity cost is the cost of the next best card. Let’s say you want to run Counterspell in your mono-Blue control deck. The opportunity cost of running that Counterspell is that you could be running Mana Drain that slot. Since Mana Drain is a better card and would do all of the work of Counterspell, Counterspell will be substituted for Mana Drain. Another way of putting it is that the opportunity cost of running Counterspell in lieu of Mana Drain is too high. Why run Counterspell when you could have Mana Drain?
Constructed Magic is defined by sixty available card slots. When designing decks, we typically begin by putting in the most powerful cards. Most Vintage decks begin with Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall because they contribute so powerfully to winning the game.
That is essentially the bare measure of utility that goes into deck construction.
The utility of a card is equal to the amount by which it contributes to game wins:
U(card)=contribution to game wins
The goal of deck construction is to maximize the summative value of U(card) for all sixty cards. That is, by definition, what is meant by “optimal decks.”
Sometimes this can’t be clearly measured since synergies are such a powerful element of deck construction. For example, the value Animate Dead is virtually nil without a target for you to Animate. Thus, one without the other has a utility approaching zero. But together, they have very high utilities. So you can make some assumptions about synergies when calculating card utility, and we do.
The bold point I want to make is that deck construction is cost / benefit decision-making with the goal to maximize your game wins.
End Theory Aside
Ichorid inverts many of these assumptions in ways that have never been seen in Vintage before. The assumption that Mox Sapphire is a good card cannot be made because it doesn’t contribute to the game win. Thus, it inverts a basic assumption of the format. And in doing so, normal deck construction rules go out the window.
Take Unmask. Unmask is an insanely powerful card. Yet it sees virtually no play in Vintage. Why?
Going back to the utility view of deck design, the opportunity cost of running Unmask is quite high. Duress exists. For one mana, you get most of the effect of Unmask without having to pitch a good Black card. Thus, Grim Long and most other Vintage decks, would never run Unmask over Duress. They don’t run Unmask because there are other cards that could be run in that slot. Unmask has a super high opportunity cost. The benefits don’t outweigh the costs.
In Ichorid, at least Manaless Ichorid, the costs are super small. Removing a Black card from your hand that you weren’t going to cast from your hand anyway isn’t a cost that matters most of the time. The fact that it is free makes all the difference. The utility of Duress is zero since you can’t even play it. It doesn’t contribute one whit to your ability to win the game.
Take Leyline of the Void.
Leyline of the Void is not an objectively good card. It has to be in your opening hand to be of any use in most decks. One of the most brutal costs of Leyline is that you need to run four to maximize your chances of seeing it. This means that if you run one, you’ll likely run four. And you’ll have to see multiple, redundant, and useless Leylines throughout the course of the game. If it cost what Tormod’s Crypt cost, this might not be a problem. But casting it is a pain in the butt and requires major resources.
In Ichorid, there is virtually no cost to running this card. The cost that other decks face with Leyline — that they’ll draw a redundant Leyline in the midgame — doesn’t exist for Ichorid as it never draws cards past the first turn unless it is intentionally digging for some sideboard card.
The same rules of deck construction apply to Ichorid, but what goes out the window — what makes Ichorid so unique — is that we can’t make assumptions about “good” and “bad” cards based upon well-worn format knowledge. We have to evaluate each and every card within the context of Ichorid itself and not based upon what we know about Vintage generally. And the touchstone question, as it is in every case, is does this help Ichorid win more than the alternative card that could go in this slot?
My hope is that my Mana Ichorid list reaches (or at least approximates) a list that optimizes its efficiency as a fast, unstoppable clock, while adding a sizable dose of resilience and flexibility. In the process I’ve plugged the two large holes that Ichorid decks face as best I know how.
Until next time,