Hello and welcome to the first installment of Eternal Conflict!
When I was asked to write an article for MTGOacademy, I was pretty excited. I already write a weekly column elsewhere, but it’s always cool to try out something sort of new. I love to see another solid Magic strategy website coming onto the scene, and hopefully I’ll be able to contribute in some way to the success of MTGOacademy.
I’ll be starting off with a bi-weekly column here, and we’ll see where things go from there. When it comes to constructed Magic I follow Standard and like Extended, but my heart truly lies with the eternal formats. In this article series I will be talking about Eternal formats on Magic Online, which right now means mostly Classic. My dream is to someday be writing about Vintage MTGO, but it remains to be seen if that’s ever going to become a reality.
The MTGO Advantage
Today I want to talk about the card Imperial Recruiter.
Imperial Recruiter was released as an uncommon in the under circulated set Portal Three Kingdoms. Due to a combination of scarcity, strength, and uniqueness the price of this little 1/1 is currently through the roof. I just checked eBay and Imperial Recruiter currently sells for somewhere around $130-$170 PER COPY. And it’s an uncommon! Imagine if this thing was a rare?
There’s a strong and cool deck in Legacy called Imperial Painter built around Imperial Recruiter that most players are completely priced out of. The majority of Legacy tournaments do not allow proxies, which creates a huge barrier to entry here. I mean, what Eternal player is going to fork out $700 for a playset of Imperial Recruiters when you could get a played Black Lotus for roughly the same amount of cash? Keep in mind that the Recruiter isn’t any sort of format staple, and only played in very focused decks. It’s no Force of Will, that’s for sure.
Not only has this barrier somewhat stifled the development of Imperial Recruiter, but it has also prevented this deck from becoming any significant percentage of the Legacy metagame. This, to me, is kind of a bummer. Magic Online players, on the other hand, don’t have to worry about taking out a second mortgage in order to shuffle up Imperial Recruiter.
eBay: $130 – $175
MTGO: Around 1.5-2 tickets.
Today I’m going to present a primer on Classic Imperial Painter. I’m going to cover strengths and weaknesses of this deck, matchups, opportunities, and threats. Personally I’m a huge fan of primers, and I love searching them out whenever I start to get interested in trying out a new deck. I’ve learned something from pretty much every primer I’ve written or read, and I’m of the opinion that there really can’t be too many quality primers out there. Same with tournament reports. Can’t have too many good tournament reports…
Time to get started.
What is Imperial Painter All About?
Before presenting any specific decklist, I want to go over the fundamental strategies brought to the table by Imperial Painter.
Painter’s Servant + Grindstone
The deck’s namesake refers to utilizing Imperial Recruiter in order to assemble the Painter’s Servant + Grindstone combination. Just about every list that you’ll find will run full playsets of these three cards. Grindstone usually must be drawn and cast the old fashioned way, but Imperial Recruiter is able to tutor up Painter’s Servant in order to complete the combo.
I’m sure you’re probably aware, but activation of Grindstone with Painter’s Servant in play will mill your opponent’s entire library. This is one of Imperial Painter’s routes to victory, although others exist as will be discussed below.
Blood Moon Disruption
Between Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon, Imperial Painter decks traditionally run somewhere between four and eight maindeck Blood Moon effects – very often capable of the full eight post-sideboard.
Due to this strong devotion to Blood Moon effects, Imperial Painter is most powerful in a metagame full of decks that push their non-basic land manabase.
Ancient Tomb + Crystal Vein + Chrome Mox + Mana Crypt + Simian Spirit Guide
Just about all Imperial Painter manabases consist roughly of playsets of Ancient Tomb, Crystal Vein, Simian Spirit Guide, and Chrome Mox alongside ten or so Mountains and a single restricted Mana Crypt. When City of Traitors hits MTGO, that will replace Crystal Vein as two mana producing lands five through eight. This configuration allows the deck to generate a large amount of mana starting right from turn one.
This manabase is crucial for both powering out the Painter’s Servant/Grindstone combo and fast deployment of Imperial Painter’s control elements. Turn one Chrome Mox (or Simian Spirit Guide) plus Ancient Tomb into Magus of the Moon or Blood Moon is good game against many different decks. This manabase can also be used to deploy Trinisphere out of the sideboard on turn one to fight storm combo, aggro, or something like Elves.
Simian Spirit Guide also allows this deck to generate red mana while completely tapped out, which is not something that many players see coming while facing a mono-red deck. For example, Simian Spirit Guide could be used while tapped out to Guttural Response or Hydroblast something like Stifle or Force of Will. Let’s say you tap out for a spell and your opponent uses Daze to attempt a counter, Simian Spirit Guide can be pitched in this situation to resolve your spell.
Painter’s Servant (Usually Naming Blue)
Imperial Painter decks almost always run a playset of Pyroblast, and would also run a playset of Red Elemental Blast if it was available on MTGO. With Painter’s Servant in play naming Blue, this turns each of the ‘Blasts into a one-mana, instant-speed combination Counterspell/Vindicate. Even without Painter’s Servant in play, these spells are strong against anything blue which is always a significant portion of the metagame.
Classic Imperial Painter decks generally run a few copies of Guttural Response instead of the ideal Red Elemental Blast. This is just a one-mana Counterspell under Painter=Blue without the Vindicate functionality, but it’s the best we can do. In Legacy, Active Volcano is sometimes used for additional Vindicate effects in this situation – although this is another card that is currently available on MTGO.
Imperial Recruiter Toolbox + Equipment
Imperial Recruiter’s tutor function is primarily used to search up Painter’s Servant in order to form a win condition alongside Grindstone, but Imperial Painter decks generally run a number of alternate tutor targets for the Recruiter in order to fill out various needs. Jaya Ballard, Task Mage furthers the blue hate with Painter in play and provides Incinerate, Vexing Shusher is an uncounterable threats that can protect your win conditions, Fledgling Dragon or Dragon Whelp is a legitimate beater win condition, and Heap Doll or Faerie Macabre can control the graveyard.
Each of these creatures (along with the Recruiter) combine with powerful equipment to become win conditions. Sword of Light and Shadow is the premiere equipment of choice, able to turn even a lonely 1/1 into a reasonable threat while offsetting Ancient Tomb lifeloss and bringing threats back from the dead. Other options here include Umezawa’s Jitte and Sword of Fire and Ice.
Strategy Wrapup
Browsing through the above list of strategies that Imperial Painter brings to the table may be a bit confusing if you’re unfamiliar with the deck. For example, it’s not everyday that you run into a combo deck that also runs Sword of Light and Shadow or Sword of Fire and Ice.
Depending on the draw, matchup, and situation Imperial Painter is able to play combo, control, or beatdown. This deck can win on turn two with the Painter/Grindstone combo, lock your opponent out with Blood Moon, or beat down with Jaya Ballard and Sword of Light and Shadow. Managing this variety of gameplans definitely takes some getting used to.
One thing that you’ll notice in the previous section is the lack of any sort of card advantage. Traditional Imperial Painter decks are not able to draw additional cards or filter what’s coming in any meaningful way other than Imperial Recruiter. This means that your opening draw and mulligan decisions are extremely important, and this deck is at somewhat of a disadvantage when in a topdeck war against someone running something like Brainstorm, Sensei’s Divining Top, or Dark Confidant.
The primary way Imperial Painter is able to battle the lack of card advantage/filtering is through redundency and consistency. You’ll notice in the lists below that not only are the deck’s card selections largely redundant, but Imperial Recruiter’s tutor ability is leaned on quite heavily to smooth out the gameplan. Some versions experiment with the addition of some card drawing or filtering, but I’ll discuss those options below.
The Basic Deck
Here’s a example Classic Imperial Painter deck:
Grindstone Combo
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Taking a look at this list, you’ll see the strategies discussed above implemented. I’ll break it down a little bit:
Playsets of Imperial Recruiter, Painter’s Servant, and Grindstone form the core combo of this deck. The manabase consists of 4 Ancient Tomb, 4 Crystal Vein, 4 Chrome Mox, 4 Simian Spirit Guide, 10 Mountain, and 1 Mana Crypt. This manabase easily allows access to three mana on the first turn in order to play out a strong control element such as one of the six Blood Moon effects (4 Magus of the Moon, 2 Blood Moon).
Against blue decks or with Painter’s Servant in play, six ‘Blast effects (4 Pyroblast, 2 Guttural Response) provide strong effects for just a single mana. Speaking of ‘just a single mana’, two copies of Lightning Bolt provide a bit of reach along with creature control.
This deck runs two other creatures that are searchable via Imperial Recruiter in addition to Painter’s Servant, Magus of the Moon, Simian Spirit Guide, and other Imperial Recruiters: Jaya Ballard, Task Mage and Vexing Shusher. Three copies of Sword of Light and Shadow equip up any of these guys in order to create a strong threat.
I’ll get more into the sideboard below during matchup analysis, but I’ll just give a quick idea here of what we’re working with. Relic of Progenitus comes in to fight anything that relies on the graveyard, as does Heap Doll which is searchable via Imperial Recruiter. Trinisphere is here to fight combo and aggro, and some people even like to run this artifact in the main deck – it depends on the metagame you’re expecting. Pithing Needle shuts off lots of strong Classic cards: Goblin Charbelcher, Engineered Explosives, Pernicious Deed, Aether Vial, Earthcraft, etc. Pyrokinesis is strong against any sort of deck running small guys, and can be cast for zero mana. We’re also able to go up to two Vexing Shushers against control decks post-board.
Matchup Analysis
Hopefully this breakdown gives you a decent idea of how each of these matchups plays out. I know I haven’t covered every deck in the field, but hopefully this is a decent amount of data that allows you to form a basic metagame plan. Also, these are only suggested sideboard plans, there’s plenty of room for further configuration here if you are expecting a specific metagame or you come up with different/better solutions.
Merfolk
I want to start off with, in my opinion, the current grand daddy of Classic decks: Merfolk. I personally believe that Merfolk is the best deck in the format, and any deck that you want to play should have game against the little blue dudes. One argument to play Imperial Painter in the current Classic metagame is that it has a big advantage over Merfolk.
Game one is very strong, since Imperial Painter starts off with maindeck Pyroblast, Guttural Response, and Jaya Ballard, Task Mage. Lightning Bolt can be used to take out their Lords and weaken their tribal synergy.
Sideboard: -2 Blood Moon, -4 Magus of the Moon, +3 Pithing Needle, +1 Vexing Shusher, +2 Pyrokinesis
After sideboard the Moon effects come out, and Pithing Needles come in to handle Aether Vial, Wasteland, and Mutavault. Merfolk is going to bring in Hydroblast, so be ready for that. Shushers come in to handle Merfolk’s countermagic ability and protect your win conditions. Pyrokinesis is extremely strong in this matchup, you can use it to pinpoint take out the important Merfolk.
Merfolk sometimes runs Chalice of the Void from the sideboard, which is also run by lots of other decks so I’ll cover this one here. Chalice at one is a bad thing for Imperial Painter. It shuts down Grindstone, all of your Blasts, Lightning Bolt, and then Relic of Progenitus, Pithing Needle, and Heap Doll out of the sideboard. Thankfully Imperial Painter runs a pretty varied curve so it’s not like this totally shuts your deck off, but it can still be tough. Vexing Shusher helps a lot, but if this turns out to be a major problem for you then something like Hearth Kami could be added into the sideboard.
Goblins
On the surface Goblins seems like a similar strategy to Merfolk (small guys, tribal synergy, Aether Vial, etc.) but it’s actually very different. This is not a good matchup. Your blasts are weaker, and Jaya Ballard is no longer a ridiculously powerful 2/2.
Sideboard: -2 Gutteral Response, -4 Pyroblast, -1 Vexing Shusher, +3 Pithing Needle, +2 Pyrokinesis, +2 Trinisphere
The best you can hope for in this matchup is to use Pithing Needle to shut down their Vials and Pyrokinesis away some key Goblins. Trinisphere can slow them down a bit, although this is a tough play since they are very capable of Wastelanding away one of your two-mana lands and then recovering before you do. This is just a bad matchup.
CounterTop Variations
There are a million different versions of CounterTop, but many of them rely on complicated manabases and are beaten up by Blood Moon effects. Decks of this style are also based in blue, which strengthens your maindeck Pyroblasts and Guttural Responses.
In addition to this mana denial, Imperial Painter is naturally resiliant to the CounterTop soft lock. The mana curve is fairly varied and there’s plenty of blue hate (Pyroblast, Guttural Response, Jaya, etc) to stop Counterbalance from making an appearence. Vexing Shusher also helps to get around the soft lock.
Sideboard: -1 Lightning Bolt, +1 Vexing Shusher
The only card to bring in from the sideboard is an additional Vexing Shusher, although you may want to bring in Pithing Needle depending on what exactly you’re facing. The reason there aren’t many changes to make here is that Imperial Painter is basically pre-sideboarded against most Counterbalance + Sensei’s Divining Top strategies.
Elves
Elves is a ridiculously explosive deck, and always a tough one to battle. Lightning Bolt can be used to take out important Elves at instant speed, but this is a tough game one. The Moon effects do nothing at all against Elves, and I think the best hope is to just do your best to race.
Sideboard: -2 Blood Moon, -4 Magus of the Moon, -2 Guttural Response, -1 Pyroblast, +3 Pithing Needle, +4 Trinisphere, +2 Pyrokinesis
Thankfully we have a lot of cards to bring in against Elves and the matchup gets better. If you’re able to land turn one Trinisphere then it seriously screws up their combo gameplan. Viridian Shaman will likely come in to fight cards like Trinisphere, so watch out for that one. Pithing Needle shuts down Earthcraft, Birchlore Rangers, Heritage Druid, Wirewood Symbiote, and Skullclamp. Pyrokinesis comes in to pinpoint remove the important Elves, just like against Merfolk.
Aggro Loam
Pre-board this is a very tough matchup. Your Moon effects obviously aren’t great for the Aggro Loam player, but they don’t totally shut down his game due to cards like Countryside Crusher, Seismic Assault, and Burning Wish. Your ‘Blasts are dead without Painter’s Servant, and there’s nothing you can do to stop their graveyard power. If you manage to get Painter in play and have the opportunity, then do your best to blast Devestating Dreams – this card is a nightmare for you if it resolves.
Sideboard: -2 Blood Moon, -2 Magus of the Moon, -2 Guttural Response, +4 Relic of Progenitus, +2 Pyrokinesis
Post board Aggro Loam brings in Chalice of the Void which is kind of a pain, but can be dealt with as discussed above. You get to bring in Relic of Progenitus to prevent their graveyard tricks from running all over you while shrinking Tarmogoyf and Terravore. Pyrokinesis can come in to kill off Dark Confidant (if they have it) in order to prevent yourself from being buried undernearth card advantage. This is a tough matchup.
Burn
Burn is a tough matchup both pre and post-board. They have lots of ammunition to eliminate your win conditions and Blood Moon effects don’t do much of anything to this deck, other than possibly screwing up their splash color.
Sideboard: -2 Blood Moon, -2 Guttural Response, -1 Hydroblast, +4 Trinisphere, +1 Vexing Shusher, +1 Heap Doll
The best you can do here is hope that an early Trinisphere slows them down enough for you to get Sword of Light and Shadow going on a creature and race with beatdown. This is not a good matchup, and you shouldn’t play Imperial Painter if you expect to face a lot of Burn. If you can get the lifegain going on Sword of Light and Shadow then you may have a chance, but it’s just not a good matchup.
Landstill
Like CounterTop, there are a million different versions of Landstill. The more colors they run, the better the matchup is due to the strength of Imperial Painter’s Blood Moon effects. There’s not a ton to sideboard in specifically for this archetype, although the always-versatile Pithing Needle can make an appearance depending on what exactly you’re up against.
In general, Landstill is a better matchup the more colors they are running and the individual games go worse the longer they last.
Dredge
Dredge is a pretty bad matchup pre-board, but gets better after sideboarding.
Sideboard: -2 Lightning Bolt, -2 Jaya Ballard, -2 Sword of Light and Shadow, -1 Vexing Shusher, -1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, +4 Relic of Progenitus, +4 Trinisphere
At first glance it may seem to make sense to take out the Pyroblast and Gutteral Response, but these are crucial spells in the matchup to counter early discard outlets like Breakthrough, Careful Study, and Tolarian Winds.
Trinisphere is also super important in this matchup. If you get this artifact into play, then the Dredge player will have very little ability to play any of their spells. Speaking of important artifacts, Relic of Progenitus is the ultimate hoser against Dredge. Imperial Painter can easily cast and activate the Relic on turn one, which is strong against any deck that relies on the graveyard.
Zoo
Zoo is not a great matchup with this particular deck configuration, but there is one main angle that Imperial Painter can exploit: Zoo’s manabase. Zoo is infamous for stretching their manabase to the limit, and generally only runs a couple of basic lands. This makes much of the Zoo deck vulnerable to Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon, except for the fact that they do run a bunch of red cards.
Much of the time Magus of the Moon is superior to Blood Moon, but definitely not in this matchup. Zoo runs a bunch of burn cards, and thus has a much easier time dealing with Magus of the Moon than they do with Blood Moon. If you are worried about lots of Zoo decks in the metagame (which seems to be the case in current day Classic), then you may want to consider adjusting the maindeck Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon balance – or maybe adjusting the sideboard instead. More Blood Moon copies along with maybe something like Ensnaring Bridge?
Sideboard: -2 Guttural Response, -2 Pyroblast, -1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, -1 Vexing Shusher, +4 Trinisphere, +2 Pyrokinesis
Lots of the time Zoo lives and thrives on just two lands. Post-board Imperial Painter can bring in Trinisphere, which slows down Zoo’s game quite a bit. One problem here is that they’re like to have cards post-board like Qasali Pridemage or Tin Street Hooligan. Pyrokinesis also comes in after board, but it’s not as good as it is against tribal decks. Between Tarmogoyf, Wild Nacatl, Kird Ape, and Woolly Thoctar there’s a lot of toughness running around in Zoo.
Pox
I have found Pox to be a tough matchup. They generally run plenty of basic Swamps to avoid Blood Moon Issues and have Duress and Thoughtseize to remove your business spells. It may seem like Sword of Light and Shadow is awesome if you can get it online here (and it is), but they run so much non-targeted black removal (Pox, Smallpox, Innocent Blood) that they can still often remove your creature even if it has protection from black.
Assembling the Painter/Grindstone combo is tough with so much hand disruption against you, so I’ve found that the beatdown plan is the best way to victory – although even that is totally difficult with so many sacrifice effects going around. This particular sideboard doesn’t help in this matchup much, and to be honest I’m not really sure what to do to improve it.
Affinity
Pre-board Affinity has some trouble with Moon effects, although the artifact density and presence of Springleaf Drum makes this not as bad as you’d think it would be for a deck with such a ridiculous number of non-basics. Lightning Bolt can be used to take down most of their creatures, although modular can be a pain in the ass here – but stopping something with Cranial Plating or about to grab a Skullclamp can often be worth it.
Sideboard: -2 Guttural Response, -1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, -1 Vexing Shusher, +4 Trinisphere
Adding Trinisphere post-board obviously makes life easier for you, assuming that you can get this artifact down early. Affinity relies so much on casting spells for zero or one, turning all of these into threes isn’t exactly Affinity’s idea of a great day. They don’t typically have anything great to bring into this matchup post-board, so things should get better for you.
You could even bring in Pyrokinesus for more Lightning Bolt-ish effects, although be careful with this if they are playing Welding Jar.
Storm Combo
Once again there are a bunch of different builds here, but the basic strategy is largely the same. For the purposes of this section we’re talking about something like Mind’s Desire storm or Ad Nauseum. Game one is way easier if you’re on the play, since this gives you the ability to resolve an early Blood Moon and mess up their typically fragile mana base. Maindeck Pyroblast and Guttural Response are strong against spells like Brainstorm, Ponder, and Mystical Tutor.
Sideboard: -2 Lightning Bolt, -1 Vexing Shusher, -1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, +4 Trinisphere
After sideboarding, Trinisphere is the main tool to bring in and make life difficult for storm combo decks.
Charbelcher Combo
Charbelcher is a lot like storm combo with two important differences: Pithing Needle can shut down one of their main win conditions (Goblin Charbelcher), and they don’t rely on blue instants maindeck. This matchup is harder than storm combo pre-board, but ok post-board.
Sideboard: -4 Pyroblast, -2 Guttural Response, -1 Vexing Shusher, +4 Trinisphere, +3 Pithing Needle
So that just about does it for the matchup analysis section. I know that I didn’t cover every deck in the metagame, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what to do against a majority of the decks that you’ll face. If you’re interested in increasing your chances against particular decks, then hopefully this section will give you an idea of how to adjust your maindeck/sideboard.
Other Options
Speaking of adjustments to the maindeck and sideboard, I want to take a few paragraphs here to discuss some different directions that you could consider taking this standard version of Imperial Painter.
As discussed above, one of the main weaknesses of playing Imperial Painter is the inability to filter your draws in any way. After your opening seven, you’re pretty much just drawing off the top unless you’re tutoring creatures up with Imperial Painter. One way to increase the amount of looks that you get at the top of your deck is by swapping out Lightning Bolt for Magma Jet. Magma Jet isn’t as powerful when it comes to pure damage, but it gives you a look at the top of your library.
In addition to the Magma Jet switch, you can also find room for a few copies of Sensei’s Divining Top. If you make this switch, then it’s also important to swap out a few Mountains for fetlands. Maybe something like -2 Mountain, +1 Bloodstained Mire, +1 Wooded Foothills. This gives you a way to shuffle away the top of your library if you don’t like what you see.
Another card that has been seeing play in Imperial Painter is Standard superman Figure of Destiny. Due to the explosive manabase of Imperial Painter, the Figure can very quickly become a 4/4 creature – often on turn two. This accomplishes three major things: puts up a solid roadblock in front of aggro, tunes up your beatdown plan, and gives your creaturebase SOME chance against the ever-present Tarmogoyf. The only hope that the list presented above has of defeating a Tarmogoyf is to Relic of Progenitus to clear out graveyards or just win despite it.
There are a few cards that see play in Imperial Painter in Legacy, but aren’t released yet on Magic Online so they are out of the question for Classic. You obviously can’t play these options in Classic today, but someday you’ll be able to so I want to cover this briefly.
The most important missing pieces in Classic are probably Red Elemental Blast and Active Volcano, which I’ve discussed above. Guttural Response really is a fairly poor replacement. Goblin Welder is another popular Legacy option, this little 1/1 lets you return powerful artifacts to play and does a decent job of swinging a Sword of Light and Shadow. Gamble is also occasionally used as a way to add some further card selection to the deck, although this one is obviously kind of a loose cannon. Viashino Heretic is sometimes run as a singleton Imperial Recruiter target in order to fight decks with large artifact components.
Conclusion
Well, that about wraps it up for this one. Hopefully this article has given you an idea of what Imperial Painter is all about. If this deck interests you at all then I’d recommend shuffling it up in Classic. Not only is it a blast to play, but it also is something that’s difficult to play in paper Magic due to the ridiculous dollar amount tagged next to Imperial Recruiter. I’ll see you guys in two weeks.
Thanks for reading!
Steve Gargolinski
spgmtg@gmail.com
twitter.com/spgmtg
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