Type 1.5

Here we have it, the long awaited (mentioned back in Testing a New Deck) Island of Pain. I built this deck based on a question in one of the magic books I bought, "What will the deck do against nasty environmental spells like Blood Moon and Energy Flux?" I could answer the question in theory, but I couldn't test my answers unless I had a good deck with one or both of those cards in it. Lightning Sprites was an attempt at a decent deck with Blood Moon, but that deck really doesn't have much in the way of staying power or consistency. So I built this deck originally to test other decks against, but it's so much fun to play (if a bit self-destructive) that I think it'll stick around as more than just a deck development tool.

This is a very aggressive deck. It will generally attack every turn that it has any creatures out. The creatures in this deck are very hard to block. Of the four different creatures in the deck, three of them fly, and the last has mountainwalk. The creatures are also fairly fast, Two of them only cost 1, the others cost 3 and 4. The deck also has considerable and versatile direct damage in the form of Lightning Bolts, Psionic Blasts and Fireballs. The low cost, high damage and fast-effect nature of all this damage capacity means that once the opponent's life is down in the single digits they can often be finished off instantly.

Since I knew from the start the deck would be using Blood Moon I found cards that would work well in that environment. Some were intentional; use Blood Moon to make sure they have a Mountain and Goblin of the Flarg can't be blocked. Others were by trial and error; when you have a Serendib Djinn in play having just a Mountain rather than a Volcanic Island can save your life.

Now if you've looked at the deck you may have a question about the mana distribution, namely, "Why are you playing so many freakin' land when you only have 3 cards that require more than 3 mana?" Honestly, I never intended to play 24 land in a relatively simple two color deck with a single primary* color (*color with spells requiring more than one mana of that color to cast). It was simply trial and error, playtesting, not pulling enough mana and adding some more.

Ok, so I side-stepped the question of why I'm playing so much land in this deck, but now the question becomes, "Why does this deck need so much land?" It's got Counterspells, but it's hardly a counterspell deck. I guess the easiest way to make sense of it is to look at the number of mana sources in most of the decks that I build. I usually play 20 land and then one or two fast-mana spells such as Birds of Paradise, Dark Ritual or Mana Vault. That's 24 to 28 (40-47%) mana sources. I play with that much mana because I require my decks to be both fast and consistent. It also helps out against land destruction and other anti-mana environs. With less mana it's true that later in the game you'll pull more spells, but if the deck doesn't consistently have working opening hands the deck won't survive until later game. Better to find some late game use for extra mana (in this case Fireballs and Serendib Djinns) than to stall out and not be able to play through your opening hand.

Earlier versions of this deck had Black Vise and Ball Lightning instead of all the Serendibs. While these cards made it quite brutal against your average deck that ships with this game, against a quality Type I or Type 1.5 deck they weren't as effective. Also, playtesting against the various deck types the deck was fizzling against fast large creature and burn decks. Now, as with most good decks, Island of Pain contains aspects of a variety of the deck archetypes or categories. In fact, of the 6 types (counterspell, land destruction, fast large creature, fast small creature, burn, environment/lock) the only one it doesn't have is land destruction. Anybody want to try swapping out some of the direct damage spells for some Strip Mines?

posted by Nils T. Devine  # Sunday, June 26, 2005