The Apprentice's Workshop - Episode 12

The Apprentice's Workshop

KrazyCaley

8 March 2013

1754 views

Welcome.

Today's subject is a Standard deck.

Simic Bio-Shenanigans

Standard* TimmehKitteh

SCORE: 2 | 2 COMMENTS | 2057 VIEWS

Decklist (62)

Creatures (25)

3x Cloudfin Raptor

2x Fathom Mage

3x Gyre Sage

2x Master Biomancer

2x Primordial Hydra

3x Strangleroot Geist

2x Thragtusk

2x Vorapede

3x Young Wolf

3x Zameck Guildmage

Land (22)

2x Alchemist's Refuge

3x Breeding Pool

8x Forest

2x [[Hinterland Harbor

7x Island

Instant (9)

2x AEtherize

3x Bioshift

4x Rapid Hybridization

Sorcery (3)

3x Increasing Savagery

Enchantment (3)

3x Rancor

Sideboard (15)

2x Acidic Slime

2x Cyclonic Rift

2x Glaring Spotlight

2x Pithing Needle

1x Silklash Spider

2x Tormod's Crypt

2x Ulvenwald Tracker

2x Yeva, Nature's Herald

Thoughts

All right, so this deck has a clear idea and goal, which is the first thing every good deck needs. This deck wants to put +1/+1 counters on all its stuff and be able to mess with them once present, giving it flexibility and giving its Undying creatures a bunch of extra lives. With the exceptions of AEtherize, Rapid Hybridization, Thragtusk, and Rancor, every card currently in the deck cares about +1/+1 counters in one way or another! This is good dedication to the idea. Still, the deck has some problem spots.

Issues

1 - 62 cards

In a deck with 62 cards, the 2 worst cards in the deck don't need to be there and are only going to drag you down. Unless you can say with certainty that EVERY CARD IN THE DECK is of absolutely equal value to all the others across all situations, or unless you are playing with Battle of Wits, you should run a 60-card deck. This deck, too, should have 60 cards.

2 - 22 lands

22 lands is insufficient lands except for decks that top out at around 3 or 4 CMC spells. It's ESPECIALLY insufficient given that we have 62 cards. We'll need to fix this.

3 - The Mana Curve

We are heavily, heavily frontloaded in this deck. 27 of the deck's 40 spells cost 2 or less, and an astonishing 16 of those are in the 1 CMC slot. We have ZERO three-cost spells. This is somewhat worrisome, because a- We're going to have huge mana curve traffic jams, and b- We're relying entirely on +1/+1 counters to give us a decent late game; the most serious late-game bomb we have is Primordial Hydra, and to a lesser extent, Vorapede. These are fine cards, of course, but we do need to fix the mana curve. To some extent, we can get away with a wonky curve in this deck because the whole point is to evolve stuff, so we care more about a sort of "power/toughness curve" (which the deckbuilder has obviously paid careful attention to) than the mana curve, but the two are not mutually inconsistent. I think we can do better.

Worrisome Matchups

This deck does not like removal. To some extent it can live with it, because it can Rapid Hybridization its own stuff in response to removal, and of course Bioshift lets us transfer the precious +1/+1 counters from a dying creature to a healthy one. There are also plenty of nice, hardy Undying creatures. Still, wrath doesn't care about +1/+1 counters being moved or Rapid Hybridization, nor do the sacrifice spells which constitute so much removal in standard right now. We would like to find a way to protect ourselves a little bit more against our opponents' answers, if possible.

Now, with all these considerations in mind, let's consider specifics.

Trouble Cards

I consider the following cards to be suspicious.

AEtherize

This is an aggro deck. It has 25 creatures. If it finds itself in a situation where the opponent is swinging in with lots of attackers, AND it left four mana open the previous turn, the deck is probably not doing too well. This card is almost always either going to be a- useless because we have enough creatures on the board to deter our opponents from attacking entirely, or b- futile, because we are losing with or without it. Cut.

Increasing Savagery

This card isn't bad, but I'd also say that it's not sufficiently GOOD with our deck to merit a place. Strikes against it include:

a - It is begging for a kill spell to be used against its target; it invites a two-for-one. This is its primary deficiency. The fact that it is sorcery speed exacerbates this badly.

b - It's obviously good for creatures to have +1/+1 counters in this deck, and if we resolve this spell on, say, a Fathom Mage we'll be pretty psyched, but in a strange way it has a negative synergy with our deck. The target of the spell, if it's Undying, will lose its extra life, if it hasn't already, and the target of the spell, if it has evolve, will most likely never evolve again. Of course, it won't really NEED to, but if Increasing Savagery were, for instance, another creature, then it could trigger evolve, granting at least 1/5 the benefit of Increasing Savagery, while still being an additional creature. I think that's the better value.

c - This is a deck that will, hopefully, not have many opportunities to cast this card from the graveyard. Seven mana is a LOT of mana for this deck, Gyre Sage or no.

Thus, I'm cutting Increasing Savagery.

Rapid Hybridization

This is another good card that isn't good enough. We get to answer targeted removal with it, sure. We get to turn our opponents' fatties into frog lizards, and if you don't like that, you don't like Magic. And, of course, it gives us an extra opportunity to trigger evolve when used on our own stuff. But, alas, it has some problems.

1 - It is useless against wrath effects and sacrifice effects.

2 - It is filling an EXTREMELY crowded spot in the mana curve, although it will always be cast later on in a turn.

3 - It is not a firm answer for our opponents' stuff, as it gives them a 3/3, and of course is no answer for hexproof, etc., although that's hardly a major concern.

However, I know a card that 1 - stops wrath effects and sacrifice effects, 2 - Would fill a spot in the mana curve that currently has NO OTHER OCCUPANTS, and 3 - Stops any one opposing card cold, even if he has hexproof. It's called Dissipate, and it will help us BIG TIME against enemy control decks by providing just enough defense against their board sweepers to keep us going.

Cutting the Rapid Hybridization, which will eventually be replaced with Dissipate in some number.

Adding Stuff

Ok, so now that we've cut 9 cards, we have 7 slots to get to 60. 2 of these will be lands. (Adding 1 Breeding Pool and 2 Hinterland Harbor, cutting 1 Forest; reliable fixing is very important for this deck). 24 lands seem about right for this deck. 3 of these will be Dissipate.

And 2 of them I am going to use on a very interesting specimen, namely Predator Ooze, who's hard to cast and isn't particularly good at evolving us, but who keeps us nicely wrath-proof and who also provides us with a never-ending stream of +1/+1 tokens. Another possible choice for this slot would be the very-interesting Simic Manipulator, who works particularly well in this deck. Ulvenwald Bear would be an easier-to-cast, if blander choice.

Let's take a quick look at our creatures.

The Creatures

The only problem I can really see here is that everything's kind of small and we don't have TOO many big things to guarantee later evolutions. Here's a quick fix:

-3x Gyre Sage (the extra mana IS nice, but not THAT nice)

+1x Zameck Guildmage (absolutely the best creature in the deck; this one makes the rest of it REALLY dangerous)

+1x Master Biomancer (Always evolves our stuff, is really dangerous in his own right)

+1x Thragtusk (Arguably the best creature in standard).

This also has the benefit of tightening up our deck and making it run a bit more reliably.

A LOT of possible combinations of creature quantities are possible with this deck. Most likely the deckbuilder will need to playtest it a lot and add a pinch of this and subtract a dash of that until it's running perfectly. The above is just my best guess as to what might lead to smoother running.

The Sideboard

I have problems with a lot of the sideboard choices.

Remember, when you build a sideboard, for every card you put there there should be a REALLY OBVIOUS ANSWER to this question - "When do I board this in?"

Acidic Slime

Against Planeswalker-heavy decks, or decks that rely on particular permanents. Against decks with annoying lands. Keep.

Cyclonic Rift

Against tokens. Against other creature-heavy decks and reanimator decks, where we can end stalemates and board clog with this wrathish effect. Keep.

Glaring Spotlight

Against decks with a lot of removal and again, to end stalemates, but the actual primary effect isn't too important for us because now that we've cut Rapid Hybridization we don't have anything that targets our opponents' creatures. Might therefore merit cutting.

Pithing Needle

Against Planeswalkers and other activates ability nonsense. Keep.

Silklash Spider

Against fliers, I suppose? But we already have 3x Cloudfin Raptor and it's unclear that one spider, however meaty, will be enough to stop an airborne army, which we're most likely to see in a token deck, in which case, see Cyclonic Rift, which costs only two more than the spider and is dramatically more effective. Cut.

Tormod's Crypt

Against reanimator. Makes sense.

Ulvenwald Tracker

I don't know WHEN this will be particularly useful. Cut.

Yeva, Nature's Herald

Again, I'm not sure against what particular matchup this will be good. It has SOME value against control decks, against which we can flash stuff down when they're not ready, but it's a bit mana-heavy for that small benefit, although it does evolve our stuff reliably. Again, not particularly good against any matchup. Cut.

So now we have five spots if we leave Glaring Spotlight, which I view with suspicion, in. I would urge the deckbuilder to see how often he actually uses the spotlight and what value he gets out of it when he does; I am very suspicious that it won't pull its weight.

For now, though, let's fill those five slots.

What do we need help against? Control. Control kicks the crap out of us because it has wrath and counterspells and removal, all of which are things we do not like. What is good against control? Well, there's control-proof creatures, but we kind of have those already with our undying and our Predator Ooze, etc. Better is Negate. We set up a nice pretty board on our first two or three turns, then on turn 4 we sit back with our Dissipates and our Negates and we fry their Supreme Verdicts and Planeswalkers and what not. (Ed. - Yes, I know, that doesn't work against Supreme Verdict in particular. I forgot.) Then we keep building up, building up, slowly but surely, while still reserving enough mana for counterspells to protect our board. This isn't just me being me and recommending counterspells as the solution to every problem (WHICH THEY ARE), but it makes a lot of sense for a deck so sensitive to interference. +4x Negate.

This leaves 1 slot, which I allocate to another Acidic Slime. You really can never have enough Acidic Slime. I was tempted for a second to mainboard it over Thragtusk just because I resent Thragtusk's popularity so much, but then I remembered that I'm not stupid, and that Thragtusk is amazing and PARTICULARLY nasty when placed in this deck.

So now we're done! What do we look like now?

KrazyCaley's Recommended Build (60)

Creatures (27)

3x Cloudfin Raptor

2x Fathom Mage

3x Master Biomancer

2x Primordial Hydra

2x Predator Ooze

3x Strangleroot Geist

3x Thragtusk

2x Vorapede

3x Young Wolf

4x Zameck Guildmage

Land (24)

2x Alchemist's Refuge

4x Breeding Pool

7x Forest

4x Hinterland Harbor

7x Island

Instants (6)

3x Bioshift

3x Dissipate

Enchantment (3)

3x Rancor

Sideboard (15)

4x Negate

3x Acidic Slime

2x Cyclonic Rift

2x Glaring Spotlight

2x Pithing Needle

2x Tormod's Crypt

That's what I think, how about you? Help our deckbuilder in the comments, if you are so inclined, or at his original deck page, here:

Simic Bio-Shenanigans

Standard* TimmehKitteh

SCORE: 2 | 2 COMMENTS | 2057 VIEWS