Homepage:sparetime:mtg:thedeck

The Deck

This article by Brian Weismann was a relevation for Magic, by introducing the concept of card advantage to the masses. It also is responsible for the fame of the "The Deck", or "Keeper" archtype. Who wouldn't want to let a lone Serra Angel fly over the shambles of their opponent's failed deck? May 1995.

My original intent behind the construction of "the deck" was to build
something that I could never cease to improve on playing, and that
would win in direct proportion to how skillfully it was played. What
began originally as a standard blue/white permission- big creature
deck, gradually evolved into an entirely defensive/retroactive card
efficiency/advantage machine. I argue incessantly with people on the
net that despite their experience, speed is not what wins the game of
magic; that is pure time-tested fact. What wins the game is simply
more options and more cards. Since, under normal circumstances, the
most important thing you do every turn is draw another card, every
time that balance is offset, you gain the equivalent of a one turn
advantage over your opponent. For this reason, ancestral recall in
most circumstances is three times as powerful as timewalk: the former
gives you three more cards, the latter only one. When you examine the
contents of "the deck", you can see that nearly every card exploits
the efficiency or card advantage principle to the fullest. If you can
swords to plowshare a creature when your opponent has invested an
enchantment or a giant growth or a blood lust in it, you have gained a
two for one; the equivalent of an extra turn. When you cast a moat and
nullify the attacking power of three creatures already in play as well
as innumerable creatures still to be drawn, you have taken potentially
dozens of extra turns. When you have nullified their draw for the turn
by making them discard counterspell with the scepter, you have taken
an extra turn. When you permission their wheel of fortune, mindtwist,
braingeyser, or balance, you have saved numerous cards out of your
hand or prevented their drawing numerous cards; many turns gained in
the process. When you draw an extra card with the jayemdae tome, or
prevent the attack of two of their creatures with your serra angel,
you have taken an extra turn. And so on.

You get the idea; any non-rookie player would. Every card in the deck,
provided it is used carefully and at a prudent time, has the potential
to gain a many-to-one card advantage on your opponent. Since the
entire focus of the deck is to do only this: not kill them quickly,
not deplete their hand in three turns and do rack damage, not run them
out of cards, not burn them to death with X spells or attack them with
hordes of little creatures, etc. etc., it wins and wins. In its
complete reactive passivity, it stands unique in the grand scope of
competitive tournament decks. And unlike almost any deck in existence,
it wins in direct proportion to how well it is played. When you
examine the most commonly played and competitive decks in type I, the
same theme reoccurs. All these decks are so straightforward in their
means of attack that they leave their controller with almost no
options during the course of the game. What does a land destruction
deck do besides destroy your land? What does a card-denial deck do
besides make you discard, what does a weenie deck do besides attack
you with little creatures? All these decks could be played by trained
chimpanzees, and all of these decks completely collapse if their cheap
narrow tricks don't work right. "the deck" is a complete exception to
this rule. Since it fundamentally doesn't do anything at all, their is
nothing to go wrong. All I have to make sure is that I don't get
killed, the rest is just a matter of time. Since so many of my cards
gain an advantage on my opponent, they will pretty soon exhaust all
their resources, and at that point, one serra will fly on over to
clean up the shambles of their failed deck. Whenever I play the deck
in tournaments, I always hear the same thing from people who lose to
it "well, my friend's X (insert some standard type of deck here) would
kill it." People swear up and down that their is no way I could beat a
weenie deck, or a land destroyer, or a juzam/permission deck, and so
on. The thing is, they say this because they have never really seen a
deck like mine. In its absolute and fundamental passivity, it is a
counter to everything. True it is not the best deck one can play
against a weenie deck, or a land destroyer, or a fast juzam deck, or
whatever. What it is is the best thing that one can play against
EVERYTHING. And it is versatility and consistency that really wins a
lot of tournaments, not much else. Though countless people in the bay
area play with a near or exact copy of my deck, only I have been able
to play it to the level where it truly can beat everything. I have won
three sanctioned tournaments with it in the last eight months, and
dozens of smaller ones. The only decks that I have lost to with it in
type I competition in the last year or so have been copies of it
played by friends of mine who learned from me. It completely dominates
the Bay Area playing environment, as elite an environment as I have
ever seen or heard of. Anyway, enough preaching and braggadocio, I am
sure you are getting bored.

2 Serra Angel
4 Disenchant
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Moat

4 Mana Drain
2 Counterspell
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Braingeyser
1 Recall

1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mind Twist

1 Regrowth

2 Red Elemental Blast

2 Disrupting Scepter
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Ivory Tower

5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
2 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria
3 City of Brass
1 Plateau
1 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
3 Plains
4 Island

Sideboard:

1 Plains
1 Disrupting Scepter
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Control Magic
1 Counterspell
2 Blood Moon
3 COP:Red
2 Divine Offering
1 Moat

One of the most important things in the deck is its high(potentially
47%) mana percentage. This is to allow you to continue to do nothing
as long as possible. It is invariably the high mana percentage that
allows me to destroy other permission decks when I play them. I can
continue to play a land or mox sometimes 15 turns into the match. They
on the other hand, playing between 33 and 40% mana usually run out of
land to play after five or six turns and have to do something. It's
then when my deck has to deal with the threat, sometimes through a
mana drain. Then in the interim, I play one of my key artifacts, a
tome or scepter, and go back to waiting; only now, the waiting game is
costing my opponent cards and is severely disrupting the balance
between the two of us. Under this pressure, my opponent will begin to
take action, and I will be able to counter it due to the extra card
advantage I am gaining. All this time, their hand gradually
disappears, and their position grows gradually weaker. Finally, when
their resources are exhausted, it's as if they have just been
mindtwisted for 7. They have no defense, and die from the single angel
that comes for them. The cards in the sideboard are very strategy
specific, and can be rotated in for very predetermined cards in the
deck itself. I lost probably 5% of my duels following the use of the
sideboard, and I believe it to be the strongest aspect of the deck in
competition. Since playing the deck is much about decision making, it
is something that you can always get better at doing. Counterspell
decisions comprise only a small part of its overall playing,
especially because you only have 6. Since you really don't have enough
resources usually to deal with everything your opponent might be up
to, you have to always pretend that you do. To make them believe you,
it is of utmost importance to play in a totally unpredictable fashion,
and to pay extremely close attention to every little thing they do. I
used to play with glasses of urza a long time ago, but abandoned them
because I realized that I had come to the point where I paid so much
attention to my opponent's play habits and more importantly, their
draw phase, that I could usually figure out what they had in hand. The
bluffing involved in playing this deck goes eons beyond always keeping
blue mana untapped. A great deal of the time it is important to let
your opponent know things: that you don't have permission, that you
just drew a land and did the turn before also, etc. All to make your
play style unpredictable. That way, when you don't make this things
obvious to your opponent, they really do have something to fear. It's
of utmost importance that you don't always try to play the poker face:
eventually your opponent will get bored of being fearful, and will
kill you. I could go on forever about the subtleties of play that I
incorporate when playing the deck; but I won't. It just has to be seen
and played to be understood.  

-weissman

Here an update to the orignal work, November 1995.

When examining the contents of this deck, remember one very important
thing: it is PLAY SKILL that allows one to win consistantly with this
deck. In the course of its play, one has to make many game-determining
decisions, and if enough of these situations are made correctly, it is
almost impossible to lose. I have been playing this deck competitively
and have won five sanctioned tournaments with it along with countless
lesser ones. Obviously, like any deck in magic, it has weaknesses, but
its great strength lies in its tremendous versatility, making it the
best option to take into a type I tourney where one is certain to
encounter the stereotypical variety of that environment's decks. The
sideboard is very carefully set up to help against the nemisis of this
deck. The Blood Moons alone are enough to destroy most land
destruction and red/green/blue speed effeciency decks. The Deck's
sideboard generates a lock I call the "Triple Threat" This lock
consisting of blood moon/COP Red/Moat will reduce probably 80% of type
I decks to nothing but moxes. The extra scepter and tome are vital
against other slow decks, and the latter can be a savior against card
denial as can that third counterspell. The basic plains gets switched
for some other land when blood moon is added, and it is put in against
land destruction to boost the mana ratio of the deck to 49% with 22
color-producing lands. The tormod's crypt is primarily included to
destroy other versions of "The Deck", as these duals usually involve a
large amount of positional Timetwisting. The extra artifact defense is
extremely useful against a whole myriad of type I decks, escpecially
"The Deck" itself, and can be switched for disenchant when facing a
deck with no enchantments. Finally, the control magics are employed
against decks with numerous flyers, where the quantity of creatures
cannot be controlled by moat alone. Take care.

-weissman

Top