Subject: article for dojo Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 20:16:58 -0700 (PDT) From: "Mike Donais." To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com U5C Analysis: (long) Well since I was recently informed of my promotion to level 4 judge I will no longer be playing in nationals. I have however been working on decks for a while and have no reason not to share them now. First I want to analyze 'donais U5C' because it won so consistently when I was playing it. In a seperate article I will bulk post some decks I built and tuned that may or may not have done well. I tried a lot of different ideas. 'donais U5C' This deck was the first that I came up with when Tempest came out. It contains the best _control_ _spells_ from each colour. White has wrath, wisdom and disenchant. Blue has counters impulse and whispers. Red has fireball, incinerate, searing touch. Black has lobotomy. You can see the very best control spells from all 4 colours (oh is there a 5th colour in magic?) ah yes, gaea's blessing and uktabi orangutang from green. In addition to having the very best control cards from each colour it has a lot of card advantage spells and cantrips. Almost every card in fact. Finally the deck has no permanents. This can make a huge difference against many decks. Red burn is the least affected by the lack of permanents because the permanent removal in red burn can be pointed at the opponent as direct damage instead (scroll and kindle and incinerate). Gerrards Wisdom makes cards like kindle and incinerate very weak though. Scroll on the other hand is always strong. With the invent of buyback permanents were not needed to do what control decks normally do. For example: Whispers will draw cards instead of tome or browse. Searing touch kills weenies instead of serrated arrows. Gaea's blessings keeps your deck full of good cards instead of soldevi digger. Fireball replaces millstone. If you have the willpower to resist using sylvan and diamonds and humility then you can obtain serious card advantage just from dead cards. The deck does however really need mana. I needed mana of many colours and I needed lots of it. Cantrips like impulse, whispers and gaea's helped to make sure I kept drawing more lands as the game progressed. There are 15 cantrips total in the main deck. Impulse especially helps the land ratio because it can be used to control the amount and colour of land obtained. Impulse is the best blue card in type 2. Here is how the deck looked before stronghold came out: 'donais u5c' 2 lobotomy 4 wrath 2 gerrards wisdom 2 disenchant 1 uktabi orangutang 1 dissipate 4 counterspell 4 dismiss 4 impulse 4 whispers 3 gaea's blessing 2 fireball 2 incinerate 2 searing touch =37 2 undicovered paradise 3 city of brass 4 reflecting pools 3 gemstone mines 2 svyelunite temples 5 islands 2 plains 2 thalakos lowlands =23 lands The deck was played and adjusted by a lot of people. People added permanents which helped against decks with no board control but were basically dead cards versus decks with board control. Adding 2 things to disenchant against a deck that has 3 disenchants basically just means that instead of his disenchants sitting in his hand they are casted and useful versus you. A lot of people tried to remove a colour. Often red was removed and edicts or terrors were used for creature removal and a rainbow or blinky was used for the kill. I even saw a version with red and black removed with white for creature removal (spirit link and such). This made the mana base strong so you could whisper sooner and more often. Unfortunately red was the best way to kill the opponent and red was the best cheap creature removal. Lobotomy was the best card against other decks that don't empty their hand right away (like necro or any kind of control). The deck still had a weakness against fast burn with scrolls. The sideboard seemed to take care of this though with warmth, cop red and uktabi orangutang. - Then stronghold came out. - Before Green/Blue/White had no really strong and cheap answer to first turn pup second turn mogg etc. Now green gets wall of blossoms. There are a few good cards in stronghold but this one is the strongest. That's right I just called wall of blossoms the strongest card in stronghold. The slivers were strong alone and in groups, mana leak was ok, and black had some interesting new enchantments. Wall of blossoms was the G/U/W creature removal I was looking for. I was surprised to find it in the colour with no creature removal. Before against a creatureless deck edicts and incinerates were dead cards. Now instead of 4 edicts or 4 red removal I use 4 wall of blossoms. This has many advantages: 1. Can whisper more without so many 5 colour lands 2. Get correct colours since it is 3 colours 3. Not dead cards versus creatureless 4. Gets me to my other cards sooner 5. Combos great with wrath 6. Keeps the hand size full so you can wisdom on turn 5. 7. Great versus man-o-war, tradewind, steel golem. Now to keep consistent mana with 3 colours I played a few rainbow lands still. This let me keep fireball as a finisher in the stronghold version. Fireball is not only the best finisher it is removal and card advantage and keeps people from necroing and sylvaning too much. Fireball being able to split is just barely better than disintegrate and far better than torch. I removed all the lobotomies. Lobotomy has single handedly won many games against many decks, like necro prison, bloom, maro-geddon and really any slow control deck. The environment has changed though. People use scroll instead of orb or geddon and lobotomy is not usefull for stopping cursed scroll and useless in general against cursed scroll decks. Lobotomy will have to stay in the sideboard. Versus control decks it is good but so is another counter. I have a very strong deck versus control because I have no permanents lots of counters, 4 whispers and half of my anti creature spells are cantrips (wall of blossoms). Here is the deck after stronghold: 'donais U5C' (After Stronghold) 4 wall of blossoms 3 gaea's blessing 2 uktabi orangutang =9 green 4 wrath of god 1 disenchant 3 gerrard's wisdom =8 white 4 impulse 4 whispers of the muse 4 counterspell 3 dissipate 4 dismiss =19 blue 2 fireball =2 red Mana: 1 wasteland (volrath's stronghold) 1 quicksand 2 thalakos lowlands 1 flood plains 1 adarkar wastes 1 vec township 1 plains 1 svyelunite temple 3 islands 1 forests 4 reflecting pools 1 undiscovered paradise 1 city of brass 3 gemstone mine =22 lands sideboard: 1 phyrexian furnace (gaea's,living death,hammer,disco,volrath's stronghold) 2 warmth 2 cop red 1 null rod (scroll, gnome, disk) 2 hydroblasts 2 teferi's realm (bottomless pit) 1 mangara's blessing (funeral charm, stupor, sceptre, spectre) 2 pyroblast 2 lobotomy With 19 cantrips it is actually difficult not to have more cards than your opponent and always find the card you are searching for. Having 19 cantrips also helps to ensure you lay a land every turn until most of your lands are in play. I have played the deck many times with great success. The old U5C had some troubles with red burn but with removal of lobotomy and the addition of the wall of blossoms and 2 monkeys in the main deck, there is no longer a big problem. Generally against red turn 2-3 involves an impulse and a wall of blossoms. Turn 4 (wall of blossoms is dead) is wrath. Turn 5 or 6 is wisdom for 12 and that is game. I have seen people copying the deck and not doing as well as me. I am not sure why, but I figure there are 5 possible reasons. 1 - Changing the deck. The deck is tuned already, play it as is first. There is a reason for every card ask me if you think you have a better idea about something. 2 - Not sideboarding the best possible way or not having the same sideboard as I use. 3 - No experience with the deck. With so much card manipulation and such long games experience with the deck can be very useful. 4 - Not patient enough. It is a blue deck it requires lots of patience. 5 - Lhurgoyf. Always fear the Goyf. In a recent article Eric Taylor mentioned that the environment contains a lot of fast small creature decks and a fair amount of combo decks. This deck works great against both of these deck types. Eric also mentioned that control decks are fairly weak in the current environment. I agree because they need to be able to deal with swarms and gain life and kill cursed scroll. And they need to be able to do all 3 consistently. This deck does all 3 and that is why it is such a strong control deck. Please send comments and criticism to me at mike_donais@yahoo.com I will be posting a bunch of other deck in a seperate message when I have time. Mike Donais. Ontario Champion Canadian Nationals Finalist World's Team Champion Level 4 judge Creator of Ertog, donais U5C Lhurgoyf. == Mike Donais (Mike_Donais@yahoo.com) _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com