Anything But: Eye Exam

Posted on June 6, 2013 by JustSin

For about a month now I’ve been talking about the printing of Nivix Cyclops in Dragon’s Maze, but never have I given it more than a sentence worth of mention or discussion beyond a 140 character limit. So I figured that it was about time that I put my thoughts about the deck down in a more thought-out format. There is plenty of hype behind the deck, but we’re going to start out by taking a look at how it has performed in this past week’s metagame.

The format continues to maintain steam with decent participation and the top three decks continue to dominate. These would be the headlines we’d see on a regular basis from Pauper, which is both good and bad. With the not-so-recent bans from Wizards they were striving to make Pauper more like other formats and it would seem they were successful now that we’re looking at a format that is dominated by three decks on a weekly basis. Granted these three have changed from week to week, but there is still a significant bias in place that didn’t use to be. At least beyond that top tier, things are more even. Let’s take a look…

Daily Event Results 5/16 – 5/29


This week our top two have remained the same, but Affinity has stepped up to take DelverBlue’s place at number three. What’s more surprising about this is perhaps the fact that DelverBlue dropped way back to #5, holding only an 11% share of the metagame. Based upon a suggestion in last week’s comments I have renamed the ClopsFiend deck to Eye Candy, which takes a bit of an increase this week. One interesting thing, as the graph shifts from week to week, would be that last week we had 11 non-rogue decks, but this week it has dropped to only 8 as more people have opted to play those top-tier decks instead of branching out. This top deck list becomes quite boring actually as we have nothing really out of the ordinary showing up as non-rogue. The only cool thing to me personally is that the new 12-creature burn list has managed to stay as non-rogue for about a month plus. This was a deck that many top Pauper grinders would scoff at and put down.

Here’s this week’s rogue list…

1. DimirTrinket – 6
2. Hexproof – 5
3. Elves – 3
4. MBC – 3
5. Infect – 3
6. Boros Kitty – 3
7. UB Control – 3
8. FamiliarStorm – 1
9. MUC – 1
10. IzzetControl – 1
11. SimicPost – 1
12. Orz Extort – 1

Another cool list of rogues and another decent count at 31 total. An interesting re-occurrence of IzzetControl this week, but it was again a one-hit wonder. There were also quite a few similarities as we saw more of Boros Kitty, Dimir Trinket, etc. Interestingly enough we had three showings from UB Control decks, something that had fallen off the grid for the past few weeks. Only one new face to the game, and it will again be our feature in the deck spotlight.

Here are the undefeated standings…

Things are continuing to settle out from our large start, and with the double first-place weeks in FissurePost’s pocket, it finally jumped ahead of DelverBlue in both overall showings and undefeated showings. This week’s casualty was MBC, which fell off the list by only one. This in turn made way for Eye Candy who was able to make it onto the list after only two weeks. FissurePost remains the best option for undefeated showings, but there is an interesting note in that FamiliarStorm has gone undefeated in 25% of its showings. The deck hasn’t been played that much, but when it does it appears to have a high chance of showing and going undefeated. It’s been a bit slow, but I still have hopes for MBC to jump back in and DimirTrinket to step up, as we’ve started to see an increase in the number of non-DelverBlue control decks in the past two weeks.

Here’s this week’s Daily Event Breakdown…

Fast Stats!
Daily Event: 5492519
Number of Players: 59
Deck Types Represented: 16
Packs Won: 134

There were 59 players who showed up for this event. Among these 59 players there were 16 different deck types represented with the most prevalent being a tie between Stompy and Affinity. Here’s the full breakdown…

Stompy – 10
Affinity – 10
FissurePost – 8
DelverBlue – 7
Eye Candy – 4
Burn – 4
Goblins – 3
IzzetPost – 2
MWA – 2
DimirTrinket – 2
Hexproof – 2
Illusion Aggro – 1
GreenPost – 1
MBC – 1
Elves – 1
UB Control – 1

By the end of the second round, there had already been fourteen players eliminated. For the first time in a while we see an event where people actually stuck around until being eliminated at losing two latches. Another twelve players would be forced to drop from the tournament by the end of the third round with no hopes of ending in the money. This week’s condolences go out to Cgarnsay, deluxeicoff, and, luhferreira, who all started out 2-0, but would go on to lose their next two rounds, which would keep them from the 3-1 minimum. Here’s how the decks matched up this week…

Eliminating outliers, this week’s top performer was Goblins with just under a 67% win percentage. This is a great showing from a deck that has recently become a legitimate tier 2 deck, rising up from the rogue ranks. Other top decks included DelverBlue with a 65% win rate as well as two other decks that had a single player and went 3-1. This included GreenPost and a deck I’m simply calling Illusion Aggro. The deck was monoBlue with some countermagic, but the heavy creature base featured illusions for the big beats of Krovikan Mist. I had hopes of the deck showing up again in another Daily Event so I could track down the list, but so far no luck. At the other end of the spectrum we have MWA that had two players running the deck and only managed to win 33% of its matches. Other low performers included Eye Candy, which had only a 40% win rate and Stompy, which had quite a few players and only a 47% win rate.

There were a small number of undefeated showings this week, but a decent number of overall showings. Only four players managed to reach that 4-0 mark with no specific front runner. These decks included Stompy, Affinity, FissurePost, and Goblins. Beyond that there were fifteen decks ending up at a 3-1 record for a total of 134 packs won in this event.

OrzExtort

This week’s feature deck is going to be another deluxeicoff special. I would have loved to instead focus on that Illusions deck, but it’s perhaps more important to be giving this spotlight to a player who is constantly willing to step out and bring something different onto the field. Deluxeicoff is a known grinder in the Pauper community and is a player who 9 times out of 10 is going to be running a rogue-ish deck as he looks to take advantage of the current metagame. Frankly, in my opinion, every format in the game needs more people like that. This time around it was an Orzhov deck that had a focus on the new extort mechanic that we were introduced to in Return to Ravnica block. Let’s take a look…

The deck runs very similarly to a traditional MBC deck with a large number of creature kill spells. The deck runs sixteen kill spells alongside three Crypt Rats for board sweeping and three Quicksands as well. This becomes a great deck choice for tackling a metagame that was currently being flooded by the popularity of Eye Candy, which can fall flat against such a heavy anti-creature base. Even beyond Eye Candy’s popularity, the format is very aggro-heavy with Stompy now in the top three and Affinity not far behind. Alongside this heavy removal base, the deck runs 13 creatures with the new extort ability. With the release of Dragon’s Maze we were introduced to Tithe Drinker, which many in the community thought was a great little card. The combination of lifegain, removal, and even evasion makes this quite a nasty control option.

With the impending release of Dragon’s Maze we were introduced to a familiar scene of people making the usual predictions over what cards would have impact. There were murmurs about things like Boros Mastiff, which may have had impact if MWA were still around, and Tithe Drinker, but ultimately there has been only one card that has made regular appearances. With all the speculation aside there was one card that everyone in the Pauper community knew was going to be a regular.

Long before we even knew Nivix Cyclops was going to be printed, there was a fringe deck that had a bit of a cult following in Pauper. The deck I had titled WeeFiend looked to capitalize on the similar abilities in both Kiln Fiend and Wee Dragonauts, which increased their power with each instant or sorcery that was cast by the creature’s controller. The idea was simple, pair these guys up alongside a number of cheap instants and sorceries so that you could pump them up for fatal damage on the first opportunity that you could attack.

When the deck had first made an appearance it was overlooked by combo players in favor of the significantly better options in Grapeshot/Empty the Warrens Storm and Infect. Even after these decks were banned out of the metagame, the deck still had stiff competition from the new combo master in Temporal Fissure Storm. The deck really never moved beyond fringe-playable because it had some significant weaknesses and there were other options out there that provided a better chance to win. In fact, before the printing of Nivix Cyclops the deck was only managing to show up in Daily Events one to two times in a two-week period. Now, with the addition of Nivix Cyclops to deck is showing up approximately 14 times in a single week’s time.

Now as Dragon’s Maze was quickly approaching, I didn’t think anyone would have denied that Nivix Cyclops would be added to the deck in some way, but there were varied opinions as to how that would change the power level of the deck. If my personal opinion hadn’t been known until now, let me enlighten you. I was of a mind that people would try running Nivix Cyclops in place of Wee Dragonauts, but that if they really wanted the deck to be optimized, they should simply add the Cyclops and perhaps alter the count of them both. No matter which was chosen, I didn’t (and still don’t) think it really increased the power of the deck.

To me, the increase in popularity is not a result of a significant increase in the powerlevel of the deck, but instead it was more a result of other factors. In many cases Temporal Fissure combo decks are incredibly boring to play and some players would want to try something different. Add that to the relative low cost, fast pace, and shiny-new-toy syndrome, and it’s not hard to understand the new jump in results. Now I’ve expressed this thought before, and there are several people who disagree, so I wanted to take this opportunity to explain myself a bit more. As I said earlier, I have discussed it a few times, but never beyond small comments and whether someone is right or wrong I always believe respect for an opinion is to be made when it is at least well-explained. In other words you don’t have to agree with an opinion; that’s why it’s an opinion. So let’s get into things by taking a look at the deck before and after the printing of Nivix Cyclops.

Now there are a few variations that, as I referred to earlier, decide to bring in a copy of Wee Dragonauts still. In most cases this is a +1 creature for a -1 instant/sorcery, so the deck’s core remains the same. As always there are other variations, but these are the most popular build types. Now, that aside, when we take a look at these two different decks, you may notice a few things. First off, the counts are still the same; they did simply replace Wee Dragonauts with Nivix Cyclops and keep the land and instant/sorcery count the same. That aside, the people running the deck have learned a few things, which is good and I’ll get into some of those thoughts in a second, but first there is one very important thing I want you to notice about these two decks: The only new card added to the deck with the printing of Dragon’s Maze has been Nivix Cyclops. What that is implying is that this one card is SO MUCH more powerful than Wee Dragonauts that it propelled the deck from fringe to a regular non-rogue. When we look at these two creatures, it would seem to me that this would be an exaggeration of Nivix Cyclops’ power.

Take a look at the abilities, power, and cost of these two creatures. The cost is the same. Both have a starting power of 1. The differences between these two creatures are that Wee Dragonauts has flying and increases power by 2 while Nivix Cyclops has one toughness more and increases power by 3. This isn’t an unfamiliar concept to Magic players, as we’re used to creatures trading one power for some sort of evasion, but is this trade really enough to increase the deck’s showings from once a week to fourteen times a week? Well yes and no. Obviously it has to be part of the solution since the numbers show the increase. While the Wee Dragonauts can attack through the air and bring their own evasion to the table, the deck has no problem running additional evasion spells especially when they come in the form of things like Shadow Rift, which acts as a cantrip as well.

The one toughness does work pretty well also, as it puts it at that magical 4 mark. At 4 toughness we see that a creature is now strong enough to block a majority of the creatures in the format while at the same time being out of range for some of the most popular creature kill, with things like Lightning Bolt and Disfigure. The real focus should be that additional +1 to power with each instant or sorcery that is cast.

If we look back to the days of combo, where Storm and Infect were still on top of their games, these were decks that could win a game consistently on Turn 2. This blistering speed also inspired the popularity of 8-post since it had lifegain and could delay that early win. If we look at Eye Candy, we’re looking at a deck that can only win on turn 3 at its earliest. This is what happens when your combo is reliant on a creature because you have to wait for the creature to lose summoning sickness so you can attack for the win. This is why Infect became some much better when Glistener Elf was printed since it could attack as early as Turn 2. When your win condition creature costs 3 mana, then you’re waiting until Turn 4 until you can finally attack with it. Even then, you may be relying on having to draw an evasion spell like Shadow Rift, an increased damage spell like Assault Strobe, and/or a free-to-play spell like Gitaxian Probe to get that creature big enough to win the game in one attack.

Now, in addition to the stability that Nivix Cyclops brings to the deck as a defending creature in an aggro-focused metagame, you can see that Eye Candy players have gotten smarter about some of their other card choices as well. Things like moving Electrickery to the sideboard now that Empty the Warrens is no longer a threat, provide the deck with more stability. You’ll also see that the deck choices tend to focus more on adding evasion. Since you’re getting rid of the built-in evasion of Wee Dragonauts, the deck has to make up for that through a full set of Shadow Rift or even the addition of Chain Lightning to give you more options to clear the path and attack free of any potential blockers. So you can see that the players are learning and the deck has slightly improved, but ultimately I’m still of a mind that this is temporary popularity and that the deck is not a tier 1 as many started claiming the second it hit the scene. I won’t throw names out there, but when Eye Candy was first possible, I had a regular grinder messaging me saying that it was “the real thing” and “so powerful!” but within only days of saying this he was back to running something else.

So I’ve admitted that the use of Nivix Cyclops has made the deck better, but then why do I keep hating on it? What is it about this deck that really has me tired of seeing it? Why do I deny all the hype?

The basic rule behind any combo deck is that you need to find your combo pieces and then do everything you can to protect them until they win you the game. In this deck, the combo pieces are basically centered on four copies of Kiln Fiend and four copies of Nivix Cyclops. That alone leaves you with 2 in 15 chance of finding one in single draw. So not only do you have to find them, but you have to then protect them. Infect has a relatable issue based on the fact that its combo condition was also creature- and creature damage-based, but the decks ran a larger number of infect-based creatures and had access to not only the Apostle’s Blessings, but Vines of Vastwood as well. On a good day any deck playing against Eye Candy only needs to find 12 kill spells in 60 cards to win. Obviously this is oversimplified because finding four Apostle’s Blessings and no creatures isn’t helpful and there are other ways to avoid a creature’s death such as the use of Mutagenic Growth to put a creature out of range.

Now consider for a minute the deck’s biggest nemesis, black-based control, which easily runs up to 13 creature kill spells, not to mention the use of a couple of Crypt Rats. Add to that the different ways that black-based control decks have to manipulate their opponents’ hands as well. Things like Ravenous Rats, Chittering Rats, Duress, Augur of Skulls, and so on, all can remove instants and sorceries from their opponent’s grip, which makes it harder for them to combo out for fatal damage in one swing. Consider another popular tier 1 deck for this match in DelverBlue. While DelverBlue does not have a lot of opportunity to interact with the creatures once they hit the table, they do have the ability to counter a Nivix Cyclops before it hits the table, which allows it to avoid the Apostle’s Blessings and decreases the pieces from 12 to 8, and we all know how easy DelverBlue can find eight Counterspells. Anyone playing against Eye Candy knows that they simply have to take out the Kiln Fiends and Nivix Cyclops to really gimp the deck. Granted, a flipped Delver of Secrets can win a game, but it doesn’t have the same firepower and is easier to shut down.

If you’re looking for other ways to hose the deck, consider anything in white using Standard Bearer. This would force your opponent to use targeted spells on your Standard Bearer and not their own guys. That being said, keep in mind that it’s only a helper in the match, not an instant shut-down like it is against Hexproof. The Eye Candy player can give it shadow to keep it from blocking, and the triggers on the Kiln Fiend and Nivix Cyclops are based on simply casting the spell and not having it resolving or targeting your own creatures. Also consider the recent jump in popularity of Stompy and other green decks including Elves. These decks can easily bring in a variety of Fog options like Moment’s Peace, which is a two for one thanks to its flashback ability.

With so many ways to hose the deck, I find it hard to ever consider the deck tier 1. I will concede to the idea that the deck has gotten better and that players are making better card choices with the addition of Nivix Cyclops as well. I even refer back to Daily Events that I’ve looked at. If we just take this week’s Spotlight event for an example, we saw Eye Candy being played by four different players. Of these four players only one of them managed to end up “in the money” and that player only went 3-1. Having 75% of the attempts end in failure is nothing to ignore, but it gets worse. If you eliminate the 3-1 player, then Eye Candy players only managed to win one additional match. This is a similar thing I’ve seen in other events. The popularity of the deck seems to be similar to what we’ve seen in other decks before where there are a lot of people showing with it, but it can be related in many cases to the concept that with a large enough number playing the deck, you may not get a lot through to win, but those that do will be increased due to the increase in simple number of people playing it. We see events still where Eye Candy doesn’t show up at all, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the number decrease as the popularity wanes. Don’t get me wrong here. Am I saying the deck is terrible and not to play it!? No. In fact I’m saying that the deck is heavily played, and be prepared to face it; however, in its current state I don’t see it as a significantly bigger threat than its previous version.

Now I’m sure many of you will care to disagree with this, so feel free to leave your own thoughts on the deck below or argue with me on Twitter @MTGOJustSin!

 

  1. I am running my grixis version of this using manamorphose and tainted strikes for 1 turn kills basically being a free spell that people don’t see coming. Thoughts

  2. I, on the other hand is pondering which of

    a) Shadow rift

    b) Distortion strike

    c) Artful dodge

    Is best. They all have their merits.

  5. In order shadow rift is first because it allows the draw, which increases the odds of you finding yet another spell you can cast to increase the size of the fiend/clops, second and third are probably a bit more debatable, but I’d think artful dodge gets second because you get to choose when you use it a second time whereas with distortion strike it will be replayed last turn even if you no longer have a creature to use it on

  6. ST.Bearer vs. this is bad imo – as for both your points, as well as ap.blessing still works on fiend/clops.

    I’ve won quite a bit with it but my version has no burn, heavy blue base/evasion and crimson wisps from my old d.red days – really adds a surprise value to midgame, and in a pinch, you just turn an opps critter red at the end of turn :)

    Deck tinkerers – Don’t overlook lavadart/gush either

    Great article as always – and thanks for the props :)

  7. perhaps bearer wasn’t the best example, but I even stated why it wasn’t a great answer vs. Eye Candy, was just trying to make a point about how there are plenty of options to hose the deck :P

  8. @smolensk and @JustSin

    I’m running Artful Dodge (with great succes) because i feel the flashbacks benefits the deck more.
    Shadow rift is great to draw a card, but I feel is looses some of it’s benefits in the mirror.
    I haven’t played with distortion strike yet but I feel it is inferior to both Shadow Rift and Artful Dodge, because the rebound condition can be taken away. SR draws you a card and AD can still be flashbacked.

    Just my two cents

  9. I would like to give credits to inventor of deck which dominates meta these days: MonoBlue TemporalFissure post. Inventor: Milan Nižňanský alias “reboorn” on modo; “kukuricak” – streaming nick on twitch. He made Top 16 on GP Bochum, several other national success.
    I’m not sure if this is a proof http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/46805 – this is his decklist from january 29th. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find older decklist but the deck was constructed before bans.
    I’m just…It’s pity that many people play many different decks and don’t have a clue and are not interested in fact who has invented their deck. This way I would also like to give my best regards to invetor of DelverBlue and Izzet”banned”Storm. :)

  11. Excellent! I like the deck, it is fun, but I couldn’t agree more with your text