A Close Up Look at: The Crafter

What makes this deck tick?

Well first I had to acquire a playset of Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas because he really has some great mechanics to work with.

Next I had to decide on my mana base. What colors did I want? Should I go U/B with a solid control scheme, or should I go esper (U/B/W) to allow for more stall and some solid protection?

In the end, and after some playtesting, I came to the conclusion that U/B control built around this would be best, so I need have blue and black lands. I set aside a play set of Darkslick shores and a playset of Drowned Catacombs. I also set aside 10 swamps and 10 islands. I know that is more land than I needed but it would allow me to tweak my land base as I added and subtracted cards.

Next I had to look at what control cards I wanted. There are a lot of options available in both blue and black, but the bottom line is to keep a scheme that works well for what you feel like you will be playing against, which sometimes boils down to trial and errorl; winning and losing. This deck has seen many iterations in its lifetime, and may see more as cards because more or less useful. There is no right or wrong way, but keeping a consistency is something to always keep in mind. Also choice like Mana Leak over Stoic Rebuttal will have to be made, and ultimately those choices can boil down to preference, as well as imagined situations of usefulness. I chose Mana Leak here because it allows for more flexibility in a duel color deck, and for early game counters, when I need them.

Why not doom blade, or Go for the throat? Also preference. I could easily use those cards, and likely would have 2-4 of those in a sideboard for extra removal options.

I chose:

3x Despise

3x Dismember

1x Duress

3x Preordain

2x Tezzeret's Gambit

4x Mana leak

2x Contagion Clasp

4x Tumble Magnet

Next I needed My creature base, and I had one thing to keep in mind. I needed artifacts. It is not a lot of creatures, but keep in mind this is a control deck, and the main concept is to control the game until I can drop the hammer. The permission style of the early game should allow for that to happen as long as I can keep up with what the opponent is throwing at me. Keeping in mind that life is not a focal point for this deck. If I lose life early I should just let it happen and focus on my moves as they come to me. If everything is working as planned, I should likely be gaining life back as the game turns in my favor in the later stages of the match.

I chose:

4x Vault Skirge

3x Wurmcoil Engine

3x Phyrexian Metamorph

I also have:

4x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

For land I favored swamp mana and selected:

2x Darkslick Shores

4x Drowned Catacombs

6x Island

12x Swamp

(totally 24) Some may argue that it isn't enough for a true control deck, but this really doesn't need to hit wurmcoil titans to win, as I can pump out 5/5's with Tezz if I need to. Also, my mana curve hits a peak at 3-4 CMC (coverted-mana-cost), so I can't really see the need for more.

I took 6 true islands, just to ensure that in my opening hand I get some blue mana consistently for preordain (or maybe ponder) and mana leaks. As that is a key to being able to keep the game in my favor early.

Depending on how changes to this deck are made in the future I may have to slightly alter the mana base by the number of island, or swamps I am playing, but aside from that nothing should need to change for total count.

The control scheme works like this. I plan on being able to open most games with a preordain, duress or despise. I don't have a particular preference as long as I am either gaining a slight card advantage in some capacity. That seems like a miniscule distinction to harp on, but I can overstate enough how important getting those cards opening hand can be.

The rest of the game is going to hinge on countering or removal for the first few turns if necessary. Keep in mind, that playing creatures at this point is completely unnecessary, and I would only do it if I had satisfied my ability to control the game as much as I could, or I had no better play and I needed board presence. Ideally I would like to wait until I can board at least 1 tumble magnet, and hopefully a contagion clasp (in an ideal situation). That can keep me rolling.

The idea is to create a board state that favors me being able to play Tezzeret and start using him to dig through my deck for Wurmcoil engines. I have other options of course, but that is the favored. Vault skirge is a great tool with Tezz, as are tumble magnets if they loose their juice.

Once the board is controlled and wurmcoils rain down, it should be game over. If it is not stalling out until at least 5-6 artifacts are on the board to use Tezzeret's [-4] ability is a nice way to say "I'm winning now".

Also with regard to Tezzeret it is important to keep in mind that the 2 most important things I can do with him are [+1] to dig for artifacts such as Wurmcoils, or [-1] to transform a card like a used up tumble magnet into a useful 5/5 creature. Also...with proliferation in the deck...I can keep adding 5/5 creatures to the field if I have artifacts. His final ability is useful, but not something to focus on or play towards.

There isn't much more to it. You may wonder about Phyrexian Metamorph and that is simply used as a utility card to produce whatever it is I may need. More tumble magnet? Done. More wurmcoil to add insult to injury? Hell yeah. Emergency chump blocker? I guess. :(

Each card fits into the overall scheme, but some flexibility is allowed with Tezzeret and his ability to turn any static artifact into a beast, and phyrexian metamorph for being able to add more than 4 copies of a card in my deck. Nice.

So why only 3 preordains? Why 3 despise and 1 duress? Well, that's actually just trial and error, as well as knowing my opponents. Despise tends to have much more of a chance to successfully hit something in their hand and duress can hit anything that else that despise misses but it has less overall targets so having it is nice, but I don't want to dead draw any. 1 is a safe number, and together they essentially form a "playset". the 3 preordains simply indicates that I needed to strip down something to make room for another utility card and 4 preordains was not absolutely essential. In this case I had needed space for the 2 contagion clasps. Cutting 1 phyrexian metamorph and 1 preordain were easy choices.

What Efs this deck up? Well anything that hates black can screw me. Celestial purge is not a friend of mine. Artifact hate is terrible, and very quick, very aggressive decks can put me down if they are firing on all cylinders. Also, flying tends to be a bit troublesome as well, but not an outright weakness like artifact hate is. There you go, haters. :)

I have mentioned this before to all new deck builders. Start safe. Build a deck with only 9 cards (full playsets of each; totally 36) and then add 24 lands for a 60 card deck. This will give you a great starting place for a new deck-in-progress. I often times start losing lands to add more functional cards, but always keep in mind you mana-curve. If you have heavy costing cards, keep your land count up to ensure that you don't miss many land drops early in games. It can make or break a game.

I live a little bit on the edge sometimes, but that is only after many games of testing builds with a deck.

(9x4)+24 is a great stepping stone. Use it wisely or get tied up with the mana-screw.

Maybe this was enlightening?

Xiao had previously commented on wondering how it is I come out victorious so often. I would think a lot of careful planning is part of it, but in the end the games themselves often boil down to quick thinking, on the spot decisions, and a hefty helping of luck.

I will makes plans on doing this for other decks, in the near-future. If someone wants to hear insight on a particular deck. Let me know, and I will take that deck on the next blog tour.

Until next we duel.