Becoming a sad man

Becoming a sad man

First – The prequel

This is the prequel of the sequel. A sad story about a man and his beloved deck. A deck that was recently ripped apart and sold. This is a obituary of my beloved BW Eldrazi Processor Deck and the Last words that I’m going to write about it.

Second – what has happened

I was piloting BW Eldrazi Processor for about 9 months. I instantly knew when I saw the deck that I was onto something. Playing Thoughtseize, Lingering Souls and Path to Exile along Wasteland Strangler and Reality Smasher got me. I was teching the deck, tweaking it, investing a bunch of money into it and now it’s time to abandon it.

Like I has written in my last blog, every Brew has something to pick up and learn from. And I’ve learnt a lot from this deck. Wether it’s sideboarding, playing crazy 1-ofs, decisions that were made and won games, understanding Modern as a format at a higher level, all these things and much more.

But it’s not only about learning and adapting, Magic is also about change – a chapter I’ve learned the frustrating way as I was struggling to came out of my “It’s all about bolting you - Mantra” (all decks I’ve played earlier needed Lightning Bolt).

Third – what has changed

In 3 words: The Modern Format. 

Not that this uncommon in any way, but the last Bannings pissed me off. I instantly knew that banning Troll and Gitaxian Probe punted my Brew out of competitive Modern.

Not only because 2 great Matchups vanished, a bunch of other bad Matchups popped up. Wether it was Storm Combo, Titanshift or Eldrazi Tron, the winds of Change left me broken (just kidding).

Afterwards I chipped in a bunch of even more win-Streaks, but that wasn’t enough to change my mind. Fighting uphill is a challenge I’ll accept every day and night, but this is not supposed to be an uphill battle – it’s a slaughter, a total mess. Literally racing every Deck in the format is no joke – this task is up to another Deck.

So changes are good, but when I settled down and rage started fading away I summarized what needed to be done. There’s one big hole in the Deck – a problem I was very aware of from the beginning on.

Fourth – the Hole

There’s one Card in the deck that lost a lot of it’s power along the last bannings.

Relic of Progenitus.

Look at it. Dredge was dropping instantly. Jund was fading away because it couldn’t keep up with Eldrazi’s sheer Power and Tron’s Resurgence. Infect kept many decks in check. It has gone too. A bunch of more things changed in the Meta leading towards the point that BW Eldrazi was positioned quite bad.

The disruption was lacking (the other problem).

A single Thoughtseize couldn’t keep up with a deck full of 5/5 Monsters and Ulamog’s and what not. Pair this with the problem that this deck wasn’t able to present a fast clock – there were exceptions to this rule, but they had been rare.

Finally Lingering Souls was lackluster. 

This is tough, but Souls lost a lot of it’s impact. Most of the time I was in need of a real clock. Instead I had a 3-Mana 2/2 or 5-Mana 4/4 – that is not enough to keep up with the format’s power level and speed. In Fact I was able to fight through all this problems and had a “fighting chance”, but the amount of problems was increasing constantly.

I battled through Wurmcoil Engines, Ulamog’s, Primeval Titan and so forth, but the point in time that these Matchup’s become the Format’s Tier-1-Section is the point in time that is worth a recap, and this recap wasn’t great.

There are a bunch more reasons to mention, but I won’t get into detail because I want to motivate (not de-motivate) people to pick up this deck.

Fifth – The Good things

Every loss is a win. I try to look at it this way and learnt my lesson.

I’ll give some more hints, tips whatever you’ll call it for future Reality Smasher’s. 

The deck accels in Meta’s with classic Midrange-Decks (everything that runs Tarmogoyf), Aggro (Affinity, Burn to some extent, Dredge, Zoo, Living End to some extent) and Control (with the exception of UW Control – this one packs so much removal, it isn’t even funny).

It’s weaknesses are the fast / resilient Combo-Decks (Storm, Ad Nauseam) and Ramp (Eldrazi, Tron).

There are a couple of differences in some builds, most notably the switch from Matter Reshaper to Tidehollow Sculler. I don’t intend to piss my reader’s off, but Tidehollow Sculler is a plain bad Card.

The advocates of Sculler Always highlight that it’s disruption with legs. A 2/2 attached to a Thoughtseize (or vice versa). The bad news (and this one is the critical point on this one): It costs Black-White Mana.

To be able to put him down Turn 2 (Turn 4+ he becomes a bad joke in my opinion) someone need to tweak the manabase this way, that a couple of utility lands must be cut (Ghost Quarter, Mutavault, Sea Gate Wreckage, etc.). That is a huge downside – the utility lands always provide a way of putting useless Mana into something (Cards, Creatures and so on).

The next problem: It is a horrendous Topdeck. 

In your opener you’ll like him. Really like him. It’s nothing better than curving Thoughtseize into Sculler into Thought-Knot Seer. But dumping your hand, than getting handled by Abrupt Decay and drawing the next one feels bad.

A Reshaper instead stalls, attacks with 1 more power and nets you a card when killed. I may be wrong on this one, but I’ve tested Sculler and abandoned it quickly. It’s just too much deck-warping necessary to put this to work.

Last Words

As always, my last words. 

This deck was (and is still) great. It rewards good knowledge of the Format, a tight playstyle and good sideboarding. Smashing Faces is always great and the Value-Town Relic / Souls / Reshaper is nothing your opponent has to joke about.

I wish I could have done more to present kinda-like “the new hot tech”, but I must regret – I can’t, which makes me feel sad. I hope that more people pick this deck up as it’s quite cheap and runs a bunch of Modern-Staples that still stands on it’s own. The investment is worth it because literally all cards are part of other competitive Decks.

Hope you enjoyed the article and the next week (I hope so) an article about my transition deck Vengevine Aggro will be released.