"Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting
Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.
I will withdraw: but this intrusion shall
Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall."
- Tybalt, Act I, Scene 5, Romeo and Juliet
I know, homes. That’s
how we all feel now.
In the history of planeswalkers, each has been given due
attention for their game-changing ability and their iconic, mythic status. Each and every one of the thirty
planeswalkers to be released to date, with two more on the way in M13, has had
a part to play. Some have had effects in
a broad sense over the entire color, like Ajani Pridemane, Jace, the Mind
Sculptor, or Chandra, the Firebrand.
Some of the narrow (read: bad) ones, however, have fallen by the
wayside, collecting dust as trade fodder in binders everywhere, being
carelessly flipped past for the more pragmatic cards that Magic has to
offer.
With the release of Avacyn Restored, we received a burst of
excitement with the release of the fiery, malicious menace Tibalt, the
Fiend-Blooded.
 |
| "Have at thee, coward!" |
Tibalt is one of the most interesting planeswalkers to be
released since the supertype’s advent in the Lorwyn expansion in 2007. Tibalt has created two new landmarks for
planeswalkers: he is the cheapest to cast at just two mana but, as such, is the
most color intensive, requiring 100% colored mana. No doubt about it, he is a thoroughly red
planeswalker.
When he was released, there was a lot of speculation about
his usefulness, terror over the power creep of planeswalkers and his admittedly
aggressive cost, and hurried attempts to break him. However, except in a somewhat obscure or
obligatory (“he’s a planeswalker, he has to be good”) inclusion, he hasn’t seen
a lot of love. As is a common occurrence
with over-hyped cards, Tibalt fell out of the spotlight, his price dwindling
from well over $20 to barely on parity with a booster pack at about $4. Just like a strip mall in a failing
community, people abandoned it and let nature run its course. And
they left their Starbucks cups everywhere.
 |
| Skaab Ruinator, is that you? |
Many deck builders far beyond my skill and experience have
tried to crack the Tibalt puzzle, too, trying to find a deck that he actually helps, as opposed to promoting
idealistic synergy. I wanted to give it
a shot; I wanted to create a deck in which Tibalt played an integral
piece. What persistent problems would I
encounter, and what would I need to do to solve them?
I have a special interest in Tibalt outside of Magic, too,
which probably drives me to make this deck happen. Like his Shakespearean namesake, he is fiery,
unpredictable and aggressive at every turn.
Tybalt, the character that is, was not a terribly deep character as
Shakespeare wrote him, but rather he personified the endless, engrained
struggles of the Capulets against the Montagues, stabbing Romeo’s cohorts here
and sounding off on the death of Romeo’s house there. He represented an ideal, a loyalty and a
belief that, if one is a part of something or holds to a certain creed, that
one in and of oneself is right across all planes of thought. Shakespeare put a face, a heart, and a blade
in the hand of a doppelganger of our own fidelity. This stubborn but sympathetic fury is how I
feel about many things in my life; one should forge one’s own path, and such a
pursuit is not just a motivation but a way of travel, and I bet, if you’re
reading this, you feel this way too. In
a Magic sense, as that’s what’s at hand, I feel Tybalt’s righteous, entrenched
passion for brewing in general.
Naturally, any deck with Tibalt should be very red-centric,
though probably not mono-red. Some
library manipulation seems in order to mitigate the randomness of his +1
ability, and I believe that other colors are needed to further complement
Tibalt’s abilities and the deck that would support him. Similarly, we need things that don’t really
care if they’re discarded and, along with that, get better depending on the other
cards in the graveyard. Also, how can we
elevate Tibalt’s -4 ability into a finisher or, at best, a win condition? His -6 ability is good in and against just
about any deck, so that doesn’t take a ton of build-around brain power. Also, who would ever let him sit there for 5
turns and not try to mess with him?
I’ve come to enjoy fair graveyard-based decks (not Dredge or
Reanimator, if you’re asking.) With a
graveyard theme in mind, I gravitated towards two diametrically opposed cards
that work against each other. Although I
had originally tried to super-synergize one deck, I found that, when put
together, they were pretty underwhelming and fought each other at every turn. Let’s look at the first synergy I saw.
 |
| Who knew geists could be so hot? |
This is a card that Johnnies everywhere got excited
about. The possibilities are myriad in
Eternal formats, but in Standard, it’s pretty much limited to flashback (except
possibly Gravecrawler and Skaab Ruinator).
As much as I liked the combo potential and the possibility of achieving
Magical Christmasland™ with a billion things in the graveyard and two or three
Burning Vengeances out, I had to stable a prototype of this as I dry ran
it. Burning Vengeance might be the least
exciting turn three play in Standard.
Instead, I decided to settle on a more interesting and
powerful card that has seen a fair
amount of Standard play.
 |
| "Fetch me my rapier, boy." |
I have vaguely heard of Tibalt and the Pike being used in concert
but I hadn’t seen a decklist (I prefer to brew independently, as previously
stated.) The deck would be chock full of
cheap sorceries and instants; thus, they are easy to get into the
graveyard. The creatures to hold the Pike
would need to have special qualities to make them more attractive than just a
blunt instrument, but they wouldn’t need to be big, as the Pike will protect
them, at least in combat. There are tons
of choices for the inexpensive creature slots, but I settled on three;
Snapcaster Mage, being the most obvious, then Chandra’s Phoenix and Forge Devil.
 |
| I have to say "foh-eh-nix" aloud to spell it right. |
The Phoenix
seems perfect for this deck. Tons of non-combat ways to hit a player for
one, not the least of which being Tibalt’s -4 ability. Hitting them for 3-4 with that, getting your Phoenix back and bashing with an equipped Pike seems
like it’d feel pretty good.
The Forge Devil, I believe, is an underrated card,
especially in the current metagame.
There’s so much it kills, and
if it kills something, it’s just straight card advantage for one life. It kills Birds, Pilgrims, Champions of the
Parish, Stromkirk Nobles, Snapcaster Mages, unflipped Delvers, and Thalia (If
you know me, you know I hate Thalia).This deck doesn’t really need to go first,
and a Mountain and a Forge Devil in your opening hand is a great bet against an
opponent who snap-keeps on the play.
He’s a perfectly reasonable Piker, and he’s nice at getting rid of pesky
tokens when trying to swing through with your Piker. I’d like to try him, anyway.
In spell land, I liked Vapor Snag not only for its ability
to help you last longer, it clears the path for your Piker and fills there hand
for an extra point off Tibalt. Also,
with Reforge the Soul, permanently deal with that bounced critter! A Reforge is almost all upside for me,
filling my hand with more burn, pitching whatever instants I have in my hand
and making Tibalt’s -4 ability very live.
Finally, here’s a card I’m really excited about in the deck.
 |
| Oh no, my cereal bowl! |
This is a great risky-without-being-risky spell. Run through my hand, dumping my cheap burn,
then Dangerous Wager for a little more juice.
It itself is cheap and efficient, effectively being an Inspiration for
1R in this deck. Also, I’ve discovered
two notable uses of this card. If your
opponent lets through a fairly innocuous Pike hit, dump your hand! 2-4 more instants in the graveyard at instant
speed! Not as cool, no, but it does
work. Also, there are some neat stack
tricks you can do. If you cast a burn
spell targeting your opponent, then, while it’s still on the stack, cast a
Dangerous Wager with a Chandra’s Phoenix
in hand, the Dangerous Wager will resolve and, as your burn spell resolves, you
can return the Phoenix
to your hand. Value! AND
Snapcaster flashes it back easily (though you’d probably pick something else,
the idea of four cards for 4 mana in red
is kinda sexy.
OK, so here’s a roughly hewn list.
Creatures (9)
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Chandra’s Phoenix
2 Forge Devil
Spells (31)
4 Incinerate
4 Ponder
2 Thought Scour
3 Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded
3 Runecaster’s Pike
4 Vapor Snag
3 Dangerous Wager
2 Reforge the Soul
3 Pillar of Flame
3 Bonfire of the Damned
Lands (20)
8 Mountain
6 Island
4 Sulfur
Falls
2 Desolate Lighthouse
Sideboard (15)
4 Negate
3 Dissipate
2 Geistflame
2 Desolation Tide
2 Vexing Devil
2 Slagstorm
There are some notable exclusions from this list, some of
which I’ll mention here.
Delver of Secrets
Yes, he seems like he’d be good here. The truth is, he probably is good here, but I wanted to try
something different. If I can help it,
I’ll avoid putting him in this list. He
may replace Forge Devil if the metagame changes, but a 1/1 for 1 that would
flip less than 50% of the time (35/60 cards will NOT flip it), I don’t consider
him a good investment. This is a fairly
tailored deck, and I don’t want every U/X instant/sorcery deck to get a playset
of these guys.
Other Flashback Spells
I really noodled on including more than just Geistflame, but
after playing MiRUcle, which ends up playing like a draw-go most of the time, I
wanted to try not running Think
Twice, a card that might otherwise be good here. Also, I’ll most likely flash it back as soon
as possible, discouraging the Pike’s value.
Counterspells
This deck wants to tap out on every turn to commit threats
to the board and/or deal with their threats.
With the presence of a lot of burn and offense in this deck, I imagine
main-phasing a lot of stuff, including instants. Also, with Tibalt’s +1 ability, the counters
in my hands risk getting discarded anyway.
Burn and bounce allow me to slim my hand effectively and a counterspell
would just clog it up. I do have them in
the sideboard if the opponent’s decks come up with some hitherto unanswerable
threat, and at that point, the deck would become much more defensive. It’s hard for me to leave the safety net of
counterspells behind, but I think it’s the right decision for this deck.
More Lands
I’m not a fan of running less than 22 lands in any
Constructed deck, but I just don’t need
much more than that. My MiRUcle deck
runs 22 (down from 23), and I still flood out fairly often. Packing this deck with Pike-pumping graveyard
fodder seems perfectly fine.
Considerations
At the time that I have written the portion of the post
above this point, I had not tried this deck out, but I hope to do so this
evening. I need to do a bit of trading
to get the Phoenixes, Tibalt himself, and a couple Pikes. If I can do that…
Trial #1
Last night, Tuesday the 26th, I went to
Something2Do for their Tuesday night Standard.
I had to make some trades to pick up the last pieces. Sadly, Tibalt’s were in very short supply
and, in lieu of trading them, another player named Michael kindly allowed me to
borrow three Tibalts for the evening. I
sleeved up and shuffled, eager to see the deck in action.
Round 1
In round 1, I sat across from John, a Magic player I’ve seen
here and there for the last couple years or so.
He usually plays some sweet deck and wears a fraternity shirt, as he did
last night. We played out game one and I
had difficulty sticking anything of real value.
He whittled me down to size with some Gravecrawlers for which I could
not find my Pillars. In both rounds, a
Piked Phoenix threatened to steal the game, but he always had a Geth’s Verdict
at the ready to drain my creature and my life total. The first game, he got me with a Geralf’s
Messenger, and the second game, he got me with Stensia Bloodhall and a Zealous
Conscripts melting my 4-counter Tibalt.
0-1
Not a great start, considering I knew I could get that
matchup with a better hand. Oh well,
this is a variable card game after all.
On to round 2.
Round 2
In round 2, I was facing off against Chris, a control player
playing some kind of Esper Walkers deck.
I had absolutely no chance. In
the first game, he Tamiyo-locked me and gained a bunch of life with his
Pristine Talismans, killing me with Lingering Souls. Game two was grindier, but it was never
close; he had a Karn with 20 counters at one point, and he was just toying with
me. I literally ran out of win
conditions and frustratingly scooped.
0-2
Round 3…maybe this deck could pull of even just one game
win. 2-2 would be fine, right? I was seriously doubting my deck
construction, wondering if I had left myself too light on win conditions. Lifegain really hurt this deck, despite the
fact that it had a good amount of gas.
This round, I played against Chrissy, an opponent I had
played a couple times before; I’d seen her play red-green and thought that
might be what she’d have. I felt it
would be my best match-up. Turns out
that she was playing Naya Pod and this deck finally got to shine. The deck got a solid draw, resolving and
sticking a Tibalt and flooding her with direct damage. A pair of Incinerates wrapped up game 1. In game two, she made a stronger offense,
especially with a Zealous Conscripts stealing my Piked Phoenix; the Pike still
got the benefit of my instant/sorcery-filled graveyard. She smacked me from a healthy life total down
to 4. I untapped and went into the tank
for a minute. She was at 20, and I had a
Geistflame, a Pillar of Flame and a Ponder in hand, and a fully charged Tibalt
out. She was fully tapped out. I Pillared her to 18, Pondered, drawing a
Geistflame, Geistflamed her twice, popped Tibalt’s ultimate and stole her squad
and hit her for exactly 16 (9 from
the Piked Phoenix, 3 from her Conscripts and 4 from her Huntmaster and Wolf
pal.)
1-2
Ok, so that was certainly the most fun match so far; Pod and
swarm tactics seem to be very solid matchups for my deck to beat. Although out of prize range now, I still
wanted to test the deck in one more match.
Round 4
My final opponent, whose name sadly escapes me, had
originally started at the high tables.
He was very nice and we enjoyed a moment of chatting; this was a nice
round, as both of us were out of prize range and this was therefore just a fun
round. His deck turned out to be a
clever and synergetic brew utilizing Quicksilver Amulet and mana-ramping
creatures to throw huge fatties into the field.
His fatties, many of which came from the Chancellor cycle of New
Phyrexia, did powerful things for him if he had them in his opener, such as the
Chancellor of the Annex, which Force Spiked my first spell and Chancellor of
the Tangle, which provided him an Elvish Spirit Guide on turn one.
In game one, I did fine, eliminating his mana dorks and
pushing through a bit of damage. He
resolved his Quicksilver Amulet though and, with literally no way to deal with once it resolved even post-board, it quickly
dominated the game.
Game two saw a much more explosive and effective start from
me. Everything worked, and I got him
down to dead, keeping his board clear of mana dorks while his deck kept his
board clear of lands.
Game three was a little more contested. I had a solid lead, putting him to a
precarious 7 with creatures to support lethal damage. However, another resolved Amulet promised to complicate
things. Although I’d boarded in counter
magic, I didn’t draw any until about two turns after he cast the amulet. Then, that’s all I drew.
1-3
This deck disappointed me, but not so much so that I’m not
willing to give it another go. I learned
a lot about the deck; it plays much differently than my MiRUcle deck, but
that’s to be expected, and that’s part of the fun. There can be a lot of diversity in Standard,
even within the same colors. You just
have to go and find it.
When I got home, I laid the deck out (proxying the Tibalts I
returned) and contemplated what needed to be done. The deck, although different than MiRUcle at
the core, was still a narrow win-condition kind of deck, and a lot of draws
were fairly situational. There were
cards that stood out both for their fun and their practicality.
Of the cards that shone, Chandra’s Phoenix shined the brightest. This card did a lot of work every time I cast
it. It came back often and was the most
exciting pitch for Tibalt. A fourth Phoenix could most
certainly make this deck better in every way.
Dangerous Wager was also a star, helping give me extra juice while
filling my graveyard with instants and sorceries. Most of the time, it was a sweet topdeck with
an empty hand, but there were times where my hands wouldn’t win me the game and
a Dangerous Wager would exchange my hand for two random cards. Most of the time, this was just fine. Finally, Forge Devil turned out to be a great
choice. I always had it when I needed it
and it always had targets. Hitting a
mana dork with this guy is the bee’s knees, and it was fine to pick off a token
or two. He was also a fine discard
option for Tibalt’s +1 ability later in game.
There were some cards that vastly underperformed, both of
which are blue cards; Vapor Snag and Thought Scour. Vapor Snag was a bit better, but I lacked
enough creatures to give it much more use beyond being a Time Walk. It never cleared the path for an attack,
which is where I think Vapor Snag is strongest, and the loss of life is a
pretty small incentive. Would I play
Unsummons? No, probably not. Is Vapor Snag better, especially if I have to
bounce my own creature and take a life loss?
Thought Scour was even worse. Not
only did I get unlucky a lot with it, it just doesn’t do anything. I’d rather cast the instants I’m milling; a
single Ponder + Thought Scour combo in round 4 was its only moment of
value. Otherwise, just give me a burn
spell.
Another surprising underperformer was Bonfire of the
Damned. This $30 spell seems good in any
deck that can play it, but I’m not so convinced. It was great in MiRUcle, but suffered from
the need to keep counterspell mana up.
As it is, I like it in the sideboard, but not in the main, so it’ll stay
there for now. In a deck with 20 lands,
I’m just not going to get a ton of value out of it unless I’m way behind.
Tibalt RU Pike 2.0
In its next incarnation, I added more creatures, removed
some of the pointless spells and tightened up the burn package. In dry testing, it played much better,
offering more threats and forcing the opponent to play more defensively, buying
me even more time for Tibalt.
-2 Thought Scour
-1 Vapor Snag
-3 Bonfire of the Damned
+3 Delver of Secrets
+1 Forge Devil
+2 Brimstone Volley
SB:
-2 Vexing Devil
-3 Dissipate
-2 Devastation Tide
+3 Bonfire of the Damned
+3 Thunderbolt
+1 Pillar of Flame
Now up to 13 creatures, Brimstone Volley seemed like a slam
dunk. It’s a Thunderous Wrath for half
the cost that doubles as Incinerate in a pinch.
It may come out, but I really like it at the moment.
Other Considerations
Stormblood Berserker
I love this guy,
and he holds a Pike SO well. There may
come a point where I realize this is not a good deck for Snapcaster, in which
case, 4 of these come in. Even without
bloodthirst, he is tough for your opponent to block effectively, and
semi-evasion plus being powerful on his own seems like a winning combination.
Krenko’s Command
Never heard of this card?
No problem; here it is!
 |
| Ravnica fodder. |
Temporal Mastery
A card, probably a singleton, that can just about give me
extreme value every time. Even if I mill it, it’s Piker fodder, and in
uber-mana situations, Snap it back!
Phyrexian Metamorph (sideboard)
I borrowed some for a tournament one day for my MiRUcle
sideboard and I was not disappointed.
They are just financially unviable for me, considering they rotate out
in three months.
Invisible Stalker
A great Piker, he’s just unimpressive by himself, which
merits his absence. After you resolve
one, though, he’d be perfectly fine to throw away, and he’d go nicely with
Stormblood Berserker. His inclusion
would almost certainly directly replace Vapor Snags.
Arc Trail
I have considered Arc Trail instead of Geistflame in the
sideboard as it kills a large number of creatures while still pinging the
opponent to recover lost Phoenixes.
…I miss Searing Blaze.
If you can’t tell, this deck is drifting much more red than
it is blue. I like the few options that
being blue brings to this deck, namely Ponder, Snapcaster and the newly
inducted (and equally busted) Delver of Secrets. What this means is that, with some tweaking,
the shell of the deck could be color shifted to fit new metagames as well as to
try different playstyles. I’d toyed with
a R/G Pike, or even R/W Pike using Timely Reinforcements and Fiend Hunters to
keep the board clear for a Pikebearer.
Time will tell if the newest iteration of this Tibalt Pike
can get there. I’ll most likely be
trying it again this weekend, hoping to tweak it into a more consistent and
formidable deck. Despite the inherent
weaknesses of this deck, it’s a blast
to play. It blends the fun of burn to
the controlled chaos of a reckless red draw engine.
No movement on the Pack to Power lately. I haven’t time to just sit down and trade
when I’ve played. It’ll take a while to
get going, I’m sure…Hopefully I'll be able to push it forward today.
Thanks again for reading!
Until next time, don’t forget to untap!
- Matt
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