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Main » Articles » Deck Building with Scars of Mirrodin

Deck Building with Scars of Mirrodin

Chingsung Chang
Posted on September 29, 2010
 Reddit

I want to walk you through a build using my methodology from last week, while demonstrating how to build around cards from a new set. I could do this to update an existing deck like UW or Mono-red, but I think it'll be more instructive to see a "from the ground up" approach. I will provide an appendix at the end listing a bunch of decks that you can use as starting points for your own testing, either as a gauntlet or as ideas. If you run anything close to them at States I would be interested in hearing your results.

The deck I'm going to do here is UB Proliferate/Infect. As I said in my set review I think this isn't an optimal choice, but it is a good exercise and should be in your gauntlet, as other people will try it. Perhaps this deck can be improved to the point where it becomes a good choice, but I don't see enough potential to work on it myself. Still, on with the exercise.

Step 1: Build a framework

For our framework we are going to need two things – Infect guys and proliferate. I think the best candidates are Thrummingbird, Steady Progress, Ichor Rats, Plague Stinger, and Vector Asp (Hand of Praetors is just too slow and fragile). I'm not sure on the numbers of Progress, Stinger, or Asp, but I know I want four of each of the others. I think 2 is a good number to try for Steady Progress, and I'll split the difference between Asp and Stinger. Asp is faster, but it is also pretty easy to stop.

4 Thrummingbird

4 Ichor Rats

3 Vector Asp

3 Plague Stinger

2 Steady Progress

This uses up 16 slots. Given that I will want 24 or 25 lands that leaves us with 19 or 20 slots for role-players.

Step 2: Selecting critical role-players

There are two roles that I think are important for the deck – getting your infect guys through and protecting them. To protect them, I want to run countermagic, which is the main incentive to run this deck. Mana Leak seems like the prime contender, and I will back it up with two copies of Negate for 6 pieces of countermagic, which seems like the right number. That leaves us at:

4 Thrummingbird

4 Ichor Rats

3 Vector Asp

3 Plague Stinger

2 Steady Progress

4 Mana Leak

2 Negate

We have 13 or 14 slots left. I think some of these remaining slots go to Tainted Strike and Distortion Strike. Tainted Strike allows Thrummingbird to hit for Infect as well as giving Vector Asp a point of power in addition to Infect. It also is just worth one poison counter on other men. I think I want two copies again, just to try it out. Distortion Strike just gets my guys through. There are other options to do that (Neurok Invisimancer and Whispersilk Cloak spring to mind), but I think Distortion Strike is the best of the bunch, although the Invisimancer does make Tainted Strike better. This puts our deck at

4 Thrummingbird

4 Ichor Rats

3 Vector Asp

3 Plague Stinger

2 Steady Progress

4 Mana Leak

2 Negate

4 Distortion Strike

2 Tainted Strike

We have 7-8 slots left. That's quite a bit of space, which means we have some room to play with.

Step 3: Tweaking

I like all the slots as is, and this is an aggro-control deck. We have 7-8 slots left and options to fill them. I know Creeping Tar Pit will be part of our manabase, and perhaps a third copy of Tainted Strike will be good, since it interacts profitably with that card. Other options include more countermagic or more Steady Progress. The final option is a pump spell like Virulent Swipe or Vampire's Bite, to make our draws a bit more explosive. Given the curve of this deck is very light, I think 24 land is fine, and I might even be able to get away with 23.

This deck is designed to apply fairly consistent pressure through poison and the Distortion Strikes and Tainted Strikes give it some explosiveness. I would like to make it more explosive by adding a pump spell. Thus, I'm going to add 1 Tainted Strike and 3 Vampire's Bite to the deck:

4 Thrummingbird

4 Ichor Rats

3 Vector Asp

3 Plague Stinger

2 Steady Progress

4 Mana Leak

2 Negate

4 Distortion Strike

3 Tainted Strike

3 Vampire's Bite

There are still 4 unused slots. I think with the addition of the third Tainted Strike Neurok Invisimancer becomes an interesting option. I like Whispersilk Cloak as well. The cloak is still a bit slow though, so I will only add one copy of it. I also want to try the third Steady Progress. Thus, here is the final decklist:

4 Thrummingbird

4 Ichor Rats

3 Vector Asp

3 Plague Stinger

3 Steady Progress

4 Mana Leak

2 Negate

4 Distortion Strike

3 Tainted Strike

3 Vampire's Bite

2 Neurok Invisimancer

1 Whispersilk Cloak

Now we have a full deck list it is time to build the manabase. The auto-includes are Creeping Tar Pit and the new UB dual, Darkslick Shores. We care more about the land coming in untapped in the first three turns, so Shores is better than Drowned Catacomb in this respect. Thus our manabase is:

4 Creeping Tar Pit

4 Darkslick Shores

Now let's take a look at our deck to see how we should balance out the rest of the lands. There are 21 blue and 20 black mana symbols in the deck (counting Vector Asp as a black card). This means we are basically right down the middle, which makes life easy:

4 Creeping Tar Pit

4 Darkslick Shores

2 Drowned Catacomb

7 Swamp

7 Island

I'm only choosing to run 2 Catacombs because I feel like with the other duals I don't need the fixing that much. Our deck does not have very heavy mana requirements and I want to minimize the chances we stumble on mana early by drawing too many Tar Pits/Catacombs. I certainly wouldn't fault you for running the full 4 and 6 of each basic though.

In summary, after everything this is our deck:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

4 Thrummingbird

4 Ichor Rats

3 Vector Asp

3 Plague Stinger

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

3 Steady Progress

4 Mana Leak

2 Negate

4 Distortion Strike

3 Tainted Strike

3 Vampire's Bite

2 Neurok Invisimancer

1 Whispersilk Cloak

[/Spells]

[Lands]

4 Creeping Tar Pit

4 Darkslick Shores

2 Drowned Catacomb

7 Swamp

7 Island

[/Lands]

[/cardlist]

I hope this walk through a build gives you a better idea of how I approach deck building and will hopefully help you construct your own decks.

Chingsung Chang

Conelead most everywhere and on MTGO

Khan32k5@gmail.com

Added information – Scars deck lists

"Mono-red Goblins"

"Next Level Bant"

"Sligh"

"Dredgevine"

"Titan Ramp"

"Elf-drazi"

"GB Infect"

"UWr Tap-Out Control"

"Liquimetal Control"

"UWr Weissman-style control"

"Monochrome Control"

"Mono-white Metalcraft"

"Mono-white Monument"

"GW Eldrazi Ramp"

"Genesis Wave"

"Venser Rock"

"Landfall Aggro"

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