All right kiddies, shut up and pay attention, class is in session. Here's a quick recap of what we've already gone over for you slackers too busy playing your darned PSP, watching Robot Chicken and listening to crazy music.
Learning From The Flaws Of Aggro Decks In Vintage
Learning From The Flaws Of Aggro Decks In Vintage - What They Did Right
Done reading those two articles? Excellent. Now we can get on with breaking down one of the most interesting aggro decks I've seen for Vintage play in quite a while. Bird Sh*t (basically it's U/G/w Threshold for those not in the know).
Bird Sh*t - By Lam Phan, 3rd place at SCG Syracuse
Creatures - 10
4 Meddling Mage
3 Werebear
3 Nimble Mongoose
Draw / Search - 11
4 Brainstorm
3 Mental Note
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Gush
Utility - 9
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Null Rod
1 Rushing River
1 Regrowth
Counters - 13
3 Stifle
3 Daze
3 Misdirection
4 Force of Will
Mana - 17
4 Flooded Strand
3 Tundra
3 Tropical Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
Sideboard
4 Energy Flux
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Serenity
2 Old Man of the Sea
2 Seasinger
B.S. deck breakdown
Mana denial effects: 5 (Stifle doesn't technically count, it goes under counters.)
Counterspells or creatures that double as a counterspell effect: 13
Global lock effects: 7 (Go go, Meddling Mage! No, not you Lydon.)
Removal: 4
Discard: 0
Draw effects: 10
Tutors: 1
Creatures total: 10
Mana: 17 - 16 lands, 1 artifact source
There are a large number of things that stick out with this deck, but the first one of importance to me is the mana base. Look at those numbers, 17 total mana sources, no Black Lotus and not a single basic land to be found. Let me just say, for the possibility of playing against 5/3 decks with Trinisphere and Wasteland all day, that takes some balls. Huge props to Lam for taking that sort of risk and allowing the deck to be stuffed with far more counters, utility and draw as a result. The number of zero-mana counters is staggering and allows you to effectively win nearly any early game counter war while playing goons.
Of course then came the testing and I realized with almost every single card being two mana or less, the deck could reasonably support this all the time with the number of cantrips and the occasional mulligans. Playtesting proved this number to be adequate, but caused me no end of trouble at times. Keeping single-land hands or two-land hands with a Wasteland, but small drawing potential was a reasonably risky proposition even with a Brainstorm or Mental Note sometimes. As result, I caved in to the healthy fear of losing to myself and added two mana sources. Sue me - Black Lotus should've been in the deck anyway. Anything that helps accelerate into threat + cantrip or threat + Null Rod on the same turn is good times (You can see the concept in work, note the boarded Ancient Tomb to help against Trinisphere).
I'll sum up the three reasons why I believe the deck did so damn well, despite looking like the namesake suggests.
1. Lam Phan is a good player and a topdeck machine.
Self-explanatory here.
2. The deck itself was unexpected and the disruption configuration was different from the usual strips + Trinisphere that were usually showing up at the time.
The counter base is downright 4-Gush-GAT-like and when combined with the standard Fish mana disruption of Null Rod, Stifle and Strip effects, the deck has a huge amount of disruption for any deck to overcome. The fact that few had played against decks that boasted that much disruption and didn't automatically lose to Lava Dart also contributed to the deck's success.
3. The mana curve was incredibly low and the deck had a lower average spell cost than every other deck.
Let's take a look at the curve, shall we? (And no, this doesn't count land)
12 cards at 0 mana (Yes this counts the Force of Will and other alternate cost stuff at 0, since that's what it'll be cast at 90% of the time)
19 cards at 1
15 cards at 2
1 card at 3
0 cards at 4
8 cards at 5
So Bird Sh*t's average mana per spell is... about 2.09 per spell.
Now if we count Force of Will, Misdirection, Gush and Daze the way the deck normally plays them (Alternate costs), then we get a lower number of 1.07, which as far as I'm concerned, far more accurately describes how the deck works.
BS Average mana cost per spell: 2.09 or 1.07 Take your pick - either way, they're both low.
Let's compare this to a Control Slaver deck for example.
CS average mana cost per spell: 2.2-2.5 depending on the build
And just for a fairer comparison, RDW in Extended has an average mana curve of 1.4-1.5 depending on the build
So if we take the accurate number, you can basically see that BS has a curve of literally half of one of the most played control decks around. That's what helps give it an edge against other decks. The ability to easily win counter wars or disrupt the opponent while not interrupting its card drawing or creature plays. Summary for those who don't care at all: BS plays two cards a turn for your one and hence it owns your soul.
As for matches... in fact, despite my complete confidence that 5/3 would be a hard match, it really was rather easy. All the cheap threats and counters meant going first was a huge boon, but even going second with 5 Strips and 4 Force of Will it was a reasonable game to win. Of course with Trinisphere gone, Workshop aggro is far less worrisome than before. Despite doing rather well against Control Slaver and Meandeck Oath, I found myself practically relying on drawing Null Rod and certain card combinations more often than I liked. Also in certain control matches (3-color Oath and 3c Control specifically) I found it wasn't too unlikely a possibility to be ground down over an attrition war. In these cases it was usually your 3-5 power worth of guys against them drawing a broken spell and getting themselves out of the mess. I didn't mind this so much because it wasn't always happening, but letting a close game slip away by running out of resources is a major downer. Slower combo like Sensei and Dragon was actually pretty simple to beat. The key to these matchups was just making them use all their mana early on to survive instead of giving them time to setup the bomb. Against fast combo... um... do what everyone does, mulligan to Force of Will, then follow it up with Meddling Mage or Null Rod.
Finally, let's see how it holds up to the standard "Flaw Test".
Flaw #1: The aggro deck is too slow or lacks significant threats.
Every threat has 2-4 power and you have enough draw that it's not unreasonable to see two or three threats in the first six turns or so. It's a bit slow, but with the huge amount of disruption, you have enough time for it to matter. So no, it's not particularly slow within the concept of the deck.
Flaw #2: Lack of disruption and mis-assignment of what is useful disruption.
The easiest flaw to overcome for this deck, as it runs a huge number of counters and mana denial effects in the maindeck. Passed.
Flaw #3: Lack of threat density or the ability to find threats.
Sort of. The deck does lack a number of threats, but it runs a decent amount of draw. Is it enough? Usually it is, I'll give the deck a C+ here for effort though. It's a concern in some matches, but not a major failing of the deck.
Flaw #4: Making sure you don't do something another deck already does better
Nope, BS is clearly unique onto itself. If anything Fish and U/G Madness are inferior versions of this deck!
What has all this led me to conclude? The deck needed someway other than a single freaking Gush and Ancestral Recall to do more than gain card parity. Another major pain for the deck was losing threats once they hit the table. Ten somewhat hard to kill threats is awesome and all, right up until you run into a Balance or a few Fire/Ice with Swords to Plowshares. If you actually are forced to trade men or lose a few to removal, it's difficult to find more. This wasn't a problem against decks without too much creature kill, but was a issue with Stax which could usually find Balance or 3cc which had Swords and Balance. The final nitpick was all those cool one-of cards aren't that cool when you draw them at the wrong time. You don't want to waste time screwing around and drawing Mystical when you need a threat right then, the same with Regrowth, though to a lesser extent. Don't get me wrong, I like the cards, but I rather just have the extra redundancy built in to save time. Meh, screw it; here's a listing for my version of BS.
NAME: Bird Sh*t Redux
Critters
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Meddling Mage
4 Werebear
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
Counters
4 Force of Will
3 Stifle
3 Daze
2 Misdirection
Draw
4 Brainstorm
2 Mental Note
1 Gush
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
Utility
3 Null Rod
2 Swords to Plowshares
Mana
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
Land
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
Sideboard
3 Ground Seal
3 Energy Flux
3 Oxidize
2 Seasinger
2 Old Man of the Sea
2 Swords to Plowshares
What have I gained out of this revision? I now have more threats, a draw engine that can actually do more than cantrip and a slightly better mana base. Am I saying it's clearly better or something? No, I'm not that arrogant. Especially since I'm not sure dropping some of the STP was actually worth it... but I digress.
The two big changes I made were adding threats to help out the control matches where you are drawn into an attrition war. I've increased Mongeese and Werebears to the maximum amount and as a result could safely run Ninja of the Deep Hours as an Ophidian. Here's a secret, some games threshold wouldn't be satisfied until turn 4/5, meanwhile I'd be hitting them with a 1/1 until then. This doesn't please me. I far rather take the 1/1 back into hand and recast him to activate a 2/2 hasted Ophidian. Really if you take into account the fact that you usually recast the threshold guy, it really only costs as much as Phid normally did anyway. Ninja also gives you a way to bounce Meddling Mage back to hand for renaming in the chance you were off in what to name. More chances for you to not suck, woo-hoo!
The other change was more of a metagame decision. There was less to Plow before with Workshop Aggro on the decline after Trinisphere was restricted. Thus I reduced the number from 4 to 2 (you can insert a sad face here), but it had to be done. Cutting all the one-of's on the other hand I think was the right call purely because you couldn't count on drawing them at any given time.
Fish was Fish
GAT was Gro, which was Xerox back in the day
Essentially Bird Sh*t is the Red Deck Wins of Vintage.
The deck has a finite amount of resources, is horribly underpowered, but runs a bunch of efficient cards and mana denial to make up for it. It also gets far better the more matches you understand and the more skill you have with the deck and in general. In conclusion, Go Canuckland, J00 Guys Rule. This is the first time in a while an aggro deck has actually interested me and it should pique your interest as well.
To end this article with my new favorite thing ever, a list, here you go: Mega Man games.
All the Mega Man's in order of fun
1. Mega Man 3
2. Mega Man 2
3. Mega Man 1
4. Mega Man 7
5. Mega Man 8
6. Mega Man 5
7. Mega Man 4
8. Mega Man 6
Next time: Concept decks, finally.
-Joshua Silvestri
Team Reflection
Josh.Silvestri at gmail.com
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