Welcome back to Untap Target Player!
Just like any kid, I loved Indiana Jones while I was growing
up. Even as adults, we love to identify
with Indiana Jones; he was like James Bond, but book smart. He still got the girl, recovered the priceless
artifact and killed Nazis (or commies, as per the new “addition.”) The pursuit of the mysterious relic always
intrigued me the most in the story; tales from all over the world describe remote
locales or invaluable trinkets that have been lost to the flow of time, never
to be seen by human eyes again. The
intrigue that surrounds these objects leaves room for speculation,
hypothesizing and the constant spur to research and discover. The mythical objects that Indiana Jones seeks
are usually religious objects (either Judeo-Christian or indigenous), and as
such, the power they hold is rooted deep in antiquated scripture sprinkled with
legend and folklore.
Although Raiders of the Lost Ark was the best one, Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade was my favorite
one. As a refresher, this is the one
where Indiana Jones and his “I’m-too-busy-for-you” father Sean Connery make an
amusingly dichotomous duo in the quest to follow archeological bread crumbs to
find the Holy Grail.
Several months ago, Dark Ascension, smack in the middle of a
heavily trope-based expansion block, brought us an analogue for this inscrutable
cup of healing and everlasting life.
When this card first came out, it kindled a bit of
discussion, but that tapered off long before Avacyn Restored was released. Sure, we all know that “casual players love
life gain,” but this card offers an actual win condition from gaining
life. Lava Axing for no mana once a turn
is pretty great, right?
Well, lifegain has always gotten a pretty bad rap. Sure, it prevents you from dying, but it
doesn’t do anything, and your card
advantages usually dwindles too quickly if you can’t actually affect the
board. Mill decks, while rarely affecting
the board as part of their win condition, at least are constantly pushing
towards finality. Lifegain doesn’t. Only rarely does having a high life total
contribute directly to winning a game.
 |
| Purrcisely. |
Chalice of Life offers another opportunity to live the
lifegain dream; it always does something,
as opposed to cards that just gain you life.
Maybe this card could be the core of a Standard lifegain deck. Woah!
Be careful! We’ve heard this
before, usually on the back of lifelink creatures and some creature based win
condition. We just have to make sure our
cards something, or else…
 |
| What happens to most lifegain pilots. |
Ok, so I don’t think it’s going to be based around one-and-done
instants, and we need to live long enough and take little enough damage that we
don’t mind grinding our life totals up.
White is naturally associated with lifelink, and upon a quick search of
lifegain in Standard, I was also pointed to several other artifacts. White provided sweeping options to kill
creatures as well as complementary spells for defense. Artifacts could then be pushed as the other
“color” to comprise the deck. Heck, I
don’t need another color, let’s just use white and artifacts.
 |
| You have chosen...wisely. |
Naturally, there are a lot of synergetic cards for this
theme in the format, and they won’t be here for long. With rotation approaching in just a few
weeks, let’s make the best of what Scars of Mirrodin has to offer!
Silver Spoon
Creatures (0)
4 Dispatch
4 Oblivion Ring
4 Day of Judgment
4 Ichor Wellspring
3 Trading Post
3 Terminus
3 Chalice of Life
3 Pristine Talisman
2 Mycosynth Wellspring
2 Staff of Nin
2 Dispense Justice
2 Gideon Jura
1 Spine of Ish Sah
Lands (23)
12 Plains
4 Glimmerpost
3 Phryexia’s Core
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Buried Ruin
Sideboard
3 Elixir of Immortality
2 Divine Offering
2 Purify the Grave
2 Witchbane Orb
3 Dismember
1 Terminus
2 Norn’s Annex
Dech Tech – Creatures
Yes, I’m still going to include a section on creatures
despite the obvious lack of them. When I
considered building this deck, I thought about including several synergetic
creatures such as Rhox Faithmender and Drogskol Reaver, splashing a bit of
blue. However, as I thought about it, it
might be better to give them absolutely NO targets for their removal. If it’s damage-based removal like burn, their
only real target is me, and I can easily slough it off. It was on that note that I decided to include
only two pseudo-creatures, described below.
Spells
Removal Suite
Dispatch, Day of Judgment, Terminus, Oblivion Ring and
Dispense Justice
With these cards the deck can handle any creature-based
threat; seven sweepers are necessary to reliably maintain a clean board. Maybe even a fourth Terminus is advisable
mainboard, but these seventeen spells are designed to give you the valuable
time you need to not only reach your goal life total, but also to gain card
advantage as you hit multiple threats in one sweep. Remember, we’re hoping that they will be
holding multiple kill spells, wasting precious draw step real estate drawing
dead cards and ineffective spells.
Therefore, these removal spells give you answers for everything else.
The Wellsprings
On par with the artifact theme, these increase your artifact
count while also providing you essential hand elements such as colored mana and
additional spells and artifacts. There are several sacrifice outlets in this
deck that can maximize their value. This
deck doesn’t have much to do on turn two, and this at least you do something
relevant and provide yourself deck thinning later down the line.
Chalice of Life and Pristine Talisman
 |
| Marble Chalice, but good. |
Our life gaining tools and win conditions, I wanted our life
gain to also do something else. Pristine
Talisman is a nice card for this deck because of its artifact-ness, its ramp
and its lifegain. Although the Talismans
are somewhat awkward, being the same cost as our win condition, I’m not
terribly concerned with it and feel fine with its synergetically motivated
inclusion.
Trading Post
CRAP, I NEED TO STOP INCLUDING THIS CARD
IN EVERYTHING!
Ok, so my last billion Standard decks have played this guy,
but bear with me. Casting the Post with
a spare mana will put you on cloud nine in this deck. Nearly every ability is relevant. Making a Goat to chump your opponent’s errant
dude, sacrificing an artifact (its main application), or discarding a card to
gain four life will each put you on the path to success. Sacrificing either Wellspring to put two
cards in your hand is a great feeling, this deck’s cogs really turn when the
Post is online, so I made sure to include three to guarantee a hit.
Staff of Nin
 |
| Dude, just cast a Wurmcoil Engine. |
Casting this card puts your deck in overdrive; although pinging
them for one a turn is not going to be great considering you have few other
ways to kill them, but the one-sided Howling Mine puts you firmly in the driver’s
seat when it’s time to untap. Picking
off Moorland Haunt Tokens or freshly-drawn Birds of Paradise is just a
bonus. That being said, this card is
very slow, so there are some matches where it will be inappropriate.
Gideon Jura
 |
| Come at me, Midianites. |
Gideon Jura is a repeatable Fog, repeatable removal, or an
alternate win condition all wrapped into one on-curve planeswalker. As he gets ready to move on to bigger and better things, he has time to offer a
little bit more utility. He is ideal for
this deck, providing absolutely everything it needs. Resolving Gideon puts this deck in a great
position even if you’re behind. As the
only target for creature-based removal, he seems like the best possible
one. He even dodges sweepers, Bonfires
and other blanket spells that both you and your opponent will be casting.
Spine of Ish Sah
 |
| Where Angel of Despair lives. |
This glacially slow artifact provides an undeniable answer
and inevitability in a deck that can easily recur it for profit. This thing can be very bricky, and there are
probably better selections, but being able to use this again and again will
grind you to victory. This is a highly
situational card, as some decks will be too blazingly fast. Even with stalling, some decks will prevent
you from ever reaching seven mana.
Lands
Glimmerpost
 |
| Every morning there’s a halo hangin’ from the corner of my deck’s Glimmerpost bed… |
Phryexia’s Core
 |
| Thump thump... |
A necessary part of the machine, this will help you sack
your “blow me up!” artifacts while giving you a little bit of life in the
process. I’d play them even if I didn’t
gain life, but it also goes along with the theme pretty well.
Ghost Quarter
 |
| Possibly the best reprint art ever. |
As you can see, color is not very important to this deck,
and about half the lands produce colorless mana. The Quarter allows me to deal with problem
lands, such as Inkmoth Nexus, Gavony
Township and Kessig Wolf
Run. In a pinch, you can also destroy
your own land for a ready-to-go Plains. You
don’t think you’ll ever do it, then you do it and you feel bad.
Buried Ruin
A complementary, but not necessary, piece of the mana
puzzle. Buried Ruin is a great late game
draw without hampering the early game, and the ability to recur an important
artifact or even just a Wellspring, this can help provide the tailored answer
you need.
Sideboard
I feel like this sideboard is very synergetic to this deck,
providing utility in a wide variety of situations. Elixirs of Immortality protect you from
20-to-0 decks while also providing artifacts for metalcraft, an extra push
towards active Chalices and refueling a spent library due to a drawn out game
or a mill-happy opponent. Jace, Memory
Adept is a real card, and this deck draws a lot. Divine Offering lets you deal with their
artifacts at instant speed and on the cheap.
White doesn’t get a lot of artifact removal at this cost and utility,
and you can also smash one of your own for profit if your opponent hasn’t drawn
the offending artifact.
Purify the Grave is a good answer for cute graveyard decks
and even graveyard hate; exiling your own Chalice of Life to protect the rest
inside your deck from a Surgical Extraction may mean the difference between 0-2
and 1-1. Being an instant allows
precision and surprise, foiling Snapcaster Mages and Geralf’s Messengers
alike. Witchbane Orb will completely
shut down some decks, providing answers for Blood Artist-type drain decks, burn
and mill decks.
Dismember is a necessary inclusion due to the resurgence of
infect decks. As lifegain doesn’t matter
at all to infect decks, you need an answer to deal with their
mutagenically-grown squad. It’s also
helpful for providing additional spot removal as needed. The life loss is not a problem for this deck,
which can gain it back over the course of a couple turns without even
trying. I placed an additional Terminus
in the sideboard, just in case you just have
to have four, most likely against the 25+ creature decks. Finally, Norn’s Annex is a great secondary
option for a high-count creature deck.
For decks that can’t pay W, this card will just about single-handedly
shut down their offense. Goblins,
Zombies and Mono-Green will have trouble dealing with this thing’s heavy toll,
and even if they can pay W, it does slow them down.
Playtesting and Analysis
So, how does the deck do in practice?
I’ve dry run it against other decks I’ve made to test its
best and worst matchups. It does very
well against all but the most creature-heavy decks. If they have 16 or less creatures, you’ll
probably win without even trying; the effectiveness of this deck is fairly
complex and technical, but it maintained healthy life totals even under heavy
fire. However, it was also much harder to hit 30 life then you
might think. Without actual creatures to
block the opponents relentless attacks, you were rarely getting ahead until the
board was clear or until you resolved a Trading Post and started tossing stuff.
I did get a chance to playtest it once against my good friend
Danny in a recent Magic night with him and the Magic crew. He was playing his
B/W Exalted deck. He got an aggressive
start, plugging me down with a big Knight of Glory. Resolving Sublime Archangel put me at a
precarious 8, even after some fairly aggressive life gain on my side. I cast Day of Judgment and stabilized. Even with some new additions to Danny’s board,
Terminus after Terminus put me firmly ahead.
I resolved Gideon and smashed him on an empty board despite him going to
25 from a Vault of the Archangel
activation. The final turn consisted of
an unprotected Duty-Bound Dead getting Day’ed and me smashing for exactsies
with a Gideon and a Staff of Nin tap.
For the record, I do not plan to play this at Friday Night
Magic. It’s not because I don’t have the
cards (though I’m missing a few key ones) or because I don’t think the deck is
good. I just don’t think I’ll have time to.
This deck is very, very slow,
and I feel like we’ll have a lot of 1-0’s and 0-1’s as opposed to full
matches. At Something2Do, where I
normally play, rounds are only 40 minutes, and a lot of fairly regularly paced
games go to time there. In a more casual
environment like I’m used to, this deck may also be fairly irritating to play
against, so I’ll opt for another for now.
Regardless, the success level of this deck is pretty high given the time
it takes to get you there.
This week we looked into the past at what will soon be
gone. Next week, I want to take a look at
the future with a deck that will not only be ready post-rotation, but will welcome rotation.
Until next time, don’t forget to untap!
- Matt H
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