Anything But: Into the Archives 2

Not that long ago, I had an idea to feature some classic lists from my large collection of Pauper decks. We started off with a look at a Cogs deck that found fun ways to interact with 1-mana- cost artifacts. After last week’s article, I had already had it in mind that I was going to venture back into the archives once again, but hadn’t yet decided which deck I wanted to feature. This was easily fixed when we saw a new deck appear on the rogue scene, a deck that I had seen show up as a rogue once before. As always before we get into that let’s take a look at the Competitive Corner for the week.

I hate to say it, but it would seem that the Competitive Corner is getting quite boring. Before the most recent bans were put into place, there was at least some competition amongst the top decks, and a little bit of debate could be had about the top deck. Since the bans have been put into place, the top three decks have been basically unchanged with an occasional switch at the number-three spot. At the top we’ve had FissurePost sitting on the top pretty well uncontested in its showing quantities. Even below that top tier, things have remained with little change. I guess the one thing that can be considered a win is the number of rogue decks has been doing quite well all things considered.

Daily Event Results 4/4 – 4/17

As I said, things at the top remain pretty boring. FissurePost remains on top and the only change is that Affinity and Stompy have switched places. The top three basically remain unchanged and in almost every Daily Event we still see Affinity as the most played deck whether or not it’s showing well. After those top three, we see DelverBlue and IzzetPost still rounding out the top five only having switched places. As expected the number of Eye Candy decks has been declining, and we still see Goblins as well as Burn finishing the list. The only new addition from the past week was an increased showing of MBC, which has fought hard to stay off the rogue list. I really feel anything more I say will just be filler because it has been basically the same count week in and week out.

Here’re this week’s rogues…

1. DimirTrinket – 6
2. Infect – 5
3. MUC – 5
4. Elves – 4
5. Reality Acid – 4
6. Hexproof – 3
7. UB Control – 1
8. FamiliarStorm – 1
9. SimicPost – 1
10. GreenPost – 1
11. EnchantStorm – 1
12. Stinkweed Zombies – 1
13. Cyborgs – 1
14. WatchRites – 1

Finally something to talk about. The number of rogue decks continues to increase, which leaves me feeling at least a little bit hopeful about the format. At the top we have several decks that weren’t that far off from making the list of non-rogues. What is fun about those decks that were close, but not quite there, was the showing of Infect, which I think is underplayed considering where I think it should be. We had four showings this week from a new version of Reality Acid, which is something we haven’t had on our list in quite awhile, but we’ll go into details on that in a bit. Another new member to the list would be both Cyborgs (featured in this week’s deck Spotlight) and a very odd Gr tokens-based deck being called WatchRites. I wish we could double spotlight this week, but for those interested, you can find the deck here as piloted by Surfkatt to a 3-1 finish. Also saw some other old favorites this week with Simic and GreenPost as well as a showing by DoGBiscuit who continues to single handedly show that EnchantStorm can still place.

Here’s how the undefeated odds are looking…

Things remain pretty well similar on the undefeated list this week. As expected we’ve seen Eye Candy increase in numbers, but that is how things work with an average where the deck was new to the scene. Overall the number of Eye Candy decks has been declining, however. If you’ll remember last week, MBC had fallen off our list as it had a couple bad weeks in a row, but with a nine-showing week this time around, it managed to jump its way back onto the list and did so by passing a couple other decks like Elves, Hexproof, and FamiliarStorm, which dropped slightly. With the undefeated showings, we’ve seen that the highest percentage of undefeated showings continue to come from Temporal Fissure variants, which sit just under 30%. At the other end of the scale, we see Eye Candy, which is showing up in decent numbers each week, but is going undefeated in very few events.

Here’s this week’s Daily Event breakdown…

Fast Stats!
Daily Event: 5527408
Number of Players: 67
Deck Types Represented: 20
Packs Won: 140

There were 67 players who showed up for this event. Among these 67 players, there were 20 different deck types represented with the most prevalent being Affinity… as always. Here’s the full breakdown…

Affinity – 13
IzzetPost – 8
Stompy – 7
Eye Candy – 6
FissurePost – 6
DelverBlue – 5
Burn – 5
Goblins – 4
Infect – 2
Cyborgs – 1
Boros Kitty – 1
SimicPost – 1
DimirTrinket – 1
Artifact Mill – 1
MBC – 1
OrzPest – 1
MUC – 1
UB Control – 1
Hexproof – 1
Slivers – 1

There were a significant number of rogue decks in this event, which is a good thing to see. One note I want to make is that the deck I had previously classified as OrzhovDW I’ve decided to rename as OrzPest, since it better describes the deck. By the end of the second round there had already been fourteen players eliminated as well as two players who dropped after round one losses. Another fourteen 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 307Ryan, Cgarnsay, swagwalrus, and Th3DirtStar, who all started out 2-0, but lost the last two matches, putting prizes out of reach. Here’s how the decks matched up this week…

Eliminating outliers, this week’s best performers were DelverBlue and Eye Candy, which both sat around a 70% win rate. The win rate for Eye Candy is very misleading as we see it managed to CRUSH Affinity to really buff its percentage. At the other end of the spectrum we have Burn with only a 20% win rate. This particular event is not really a great example of what the match percentages should look like as there were a significant number of single decks, and while the variety is great, it does stretch the numbers a bit.

There were a small number of undefeated showings this week, but a decent number of overall showings. The four players who went undefeated each ran different decks including Cyborgs, Eye Candy, Stompy, and Affinity. Beyond that there were an additional sixteen players who went 3-1 for a total of 140 packs won.

Cyborgs

For this week’s deck spotlight, I wanted to take a chance to look at an interesting new approach to the Mono-White Aggro concept that jphsnake managed to pilot to an undefeated showing in this Daily Event. There are two reasons behind my wanting to showcase this particular deck. The first is that we’ve seen the decline of Mono-White Aggro to the point where we see one, maybe two showings total each week. A deck that has been a classic contender in the format has fallen to the point of extinction, so when I see someone trying who is approaching it in a different way, it is quite exciting. The second reason is because I’m going to support Alex Ullman’s “campaign” to refer to this deck as Cyborgs, which is a cool name! So let’s take a look at the deck…

This particular list could just as easily be considered as Suicide White since it uses a number of creatures that have that optional mana vs. life cost. In the case of Vault Skirge the creature cannot be played without paying life and Immolating Souleater is merely a simple 1/1 for two if you don’t throw life into pumping it up. The deck can also get in a Turn 2 Porcelain Legionnaire thanks to that option to pay life instead of mana. There are a lot of great possibilities for the deck to venture into aggro strategies, but my favorite is the fact that an unblocked Immolating Souleater can win the game on Turn 3 by using Double Cleave and throwing a bunch of life into pumping it up.

If you haven’t figured it out already, for this week’s look into the archives we’re going to be diving into a deck classified as Reality Acid. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

Reality Acid is an enchantment that was printed during Planar Chaos. There are a few key things to note about this including the introduction to a new mechanic called vanishing. For those who are not familiar with the mechanic, permanents with vanishing have a number associated with them as well. In this case it’s vanishing 3. What this means is that this permanent enters the battlefield with three counters on it and at the beginning of each of your upkeeps, one of these counters is removed. When the last of these counters is removed, the permanent with vanishing is sacrificed. Now the next important thing to note about this enchantment is the fact that Reality Acid’s ability is triggered when it leaves the battlefield, and the card does not specifically specify that it has to be leaving the battlefield as a result of vanishing.

So what does this mean for the Reality Acid player? This means that if you can find a way to return or remove Reality Acid, then you can trigger its ability to force a permanent to be sacrificed. Then if you can’t find a way to do this within three turns, then you’ll still be able to destroy that permanent because the vanishing ability will trigger anyway. Ever since this has been printed, there have been many different ways that people have attempted to force an early activation of the permanent sacrificing ability. This can run from Disenchanting your own Reality Acid to finding a way to bounce it back to your hand. This idea of finding a way to abuse the ability of Reality Acid has been something that has been in the mind of casual players for awhile now, but it has managed to show up competitively as well.

Now as I said I was looking for a deck that I wanted to feature for the archive piece, but was unsure where to go with it. Then as I was working through tracking this week’s Daily Events, I came across this showing from Shaffawaffa5. Now because I don’t know any better, I won’t completely credit Shaffawaffa5 with the creation of the deck, but it was this showing that put it in my mind to talk about it. For those of you who are not interested in clicking the link and scrolling down, here is a look at what he was running…

When it comes to the efficiency of abusing the ability of Reality Acid, you cannot beat the idea of returning it to your hand. Many times in casual games I’ve come across Reality Acid decks that look to use Naturalize to destroy the enchantment, and this is a waste. By killing the enchantment instead of returning it to your hand, you’re now forcing yourself to rely on abilities such as that of Auramancer to be able to use that Reality Acid more than once. This is not to mention the fact that this becomes incredibly inefficient in terms of card advantage, as you’re spending mana and casting two spells in order to destroy one permanent. In contrast the focus of returning it through an ability such as that of Kor Skyfisher is leaving you with another use of Reality Acid and you’re left with a 2/3 flier on the field.

Consider that for a second if you will. Each time you return Reality Acid to your hand, you’re essentially providing yourself and your deck with an additional copy of the spell that you don’t have to search for. On its own Kor Skyfisher is a great card and several white-based decks look to it for its aggressive size and evasive nature. When it is working alongside Reality Acid, you’re providing yourself with an additional four uses. However, the decks don’t stop there. White and blue are obviously the right choices to pair with Reality Acid because you get two more creature-based options to reuse Reality Acid in Dream Stalker and Drake Familiar. As clumsy as it looks, the five toughness on Dream Stalker makes it hard to kill and provides a great blocker for the format. These guys add to the deck another six uses of Reality Acid, but it still doesn’t stop there! Now add in the use of Momentary Blink to reactivate the “enters the battlefield” ability on any of these creatures and providing you with more uses on Reality Acid including flashback. With this particular list you’re now looking at fourteen additional uses of Reality Acid and that’s not including the use of Auramancer, which can save a copy if you can’t find a way to return it to hand.

This combination can be very mana-intensive as you’ll need 3 mana to play a Reality Acid and then an additional 2 for the return spell for a total of 5 available mana. If you’re going to be using a flashbacked version of Momentary Blink to return the Reality Acid then you’re looking at a total of 7 mana required to destroy a permanent of your choice. However, even with so many cards devoted to this combination, you’re still going to be able to maintain solid board presence. There is a decent amount of metagaming going on in this deck thanks to maindeck choices such as Spreading Seas and Kor Sanctifiers, which target the two most-played decks in the format in Affinity and 8-post. This deck focuses on the concept that every combo-based deck needs to remember, that while the combo is the backbone of your deck, you need to be able still to stand when that combo is removed from the equation.

Since this first showing of the week, the deck has been picked up and played to a total of four showings, not all run by Shaffawaffa5. However, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Reality Acid push its way into the competitive scene. There was another single showing by a very interesting approach to the deck. I’m not entirely sure when it showed up (I could look it up, but frankly don’t have the time it’ll take), but it was at least sometime after the printing of Abundant Growth. There is a lot to say about this creative approach to the deck type, but let me show it to you first…

This deck is a deckbuilder’s dream come true. There are so many creative ideas behind the deck that I feel in love instantly. Even if this deck isn’t a tier 1 competitor there should be significant appreciation given to the deck’s creator.

Like the new UW version of the deck this deck relies heavily on blue and white in order to take advantage of the variety of options that are available in those colors to return Reality Acids to your hand. The odd part about this is that we already discussed how efficient it is to focus on this when playing blue and white. It has been mentioned many times by myself and other Pauper writers that the format really struggles when you approach three colors. Before the release of Return to Ravnica Block, the choices for color fixing lands was incredibly limited, and even now the gates only provide us with limited color fixing. Running three colors poses an incredible risk when it comes to finding the colors you need. Well, this deck solves that problem by not running any lands for two of the three colors.

Yep, that’s right: take a look at that manabase. The deck is running not only just Forests, but it is only running 14 lands. It’s crazy. I don’t think many people would consider the use of only 14 lands in a deck that relies on a minimum of 5 mana to play and return Reality Acid. What allows this deck to get away with not running any Islands or Plains is the use of land enchantments to change colors and add additional mana. The real backbone of the deck’s manabase is going to be the set of Utopia Sprawls that allow you to both produce those additional colors as well as double the mana a single land produces. Another important card here is that Prophetic Prism, which I love more with every play. Changing colors is going to be essential to the deck in order to play basically any card in its deck. In a similar way the Elvish Visionarys become incredibly important even though they seem so week since they allow you an opportunity to draw into the color fixing required.

Beyond the creative manabase, the rest of the deck is pretty self-explanatory. If you take a comparison between this version and the newer version we’re seeing in today’s events, you’ll note the similar counts on return-to-hand spells. This version does drop Drake Familiar by one, but makes up for that with the additional uses of Momentary Blink. The full set of Blinks is working to provide the pilot with several choices, as all of the creatures are focused on “enters the battlefield” abilities. The one thing shared by a Reality Acid deck is the fact that the deck tends to be able to reuse Reality Acid, but it cannot find them since Pauper has no specific tutors for the situation. This means that the deck needs to be able to perform on its own if you haven’t yet found a Reality Acid. This deck tries to make up for this flaw in a few minor ways. The first is by bringing in an old favorite…

If you weren’t around for the releases of the Time Spiral sets, then you may not truly understand how epic they were. For some of us players who had been around for years, it was a great opportunity to revisit some long lost mechanics and get to see cards in new forms/colors/approaches/etc. Parallax Dementia is probably the direct inspiration for the printing of Reality Acid in Planar Chaos. The difference between the vanishing and fading mechanics are a bit awkward and were seen in other effective reworkings such as Calciderm. The easiest way to remember the difference between these two mechanics is that it is a difference of one turn. With vanishing, when the last counter is removed then the card dies; however, with fading the permanent is sacrificed when you can no longer remove a counter. So consider the two for a minute here, and you’ll see that this particular enchantment sticks around for only two turns and costs less mana to put into play; however, it (like Drake Familiar) has a restriction. Where Reality Acid can target any permanent, the use of Parallax Dementia is limited to creatures.

Being limited to targeting only creatures isn’t a huge drawback in the current metagame, but the real reason for the card’s inclusion is to grant you even more opportunities to find a combo piece. As I said earlier, we don’t have access to a direct tutor for Reality Acid so by including cards that are functionally similar, we’re increasing the chance that we can find that piece of the puzzle. This particular version even went as far as to include additional copies in the sideboard for those aggro-heavy matches.

Beyond the core, the remaining cards provide us with some basic utility. As mentioned earlier, the deck is refusing to run anything that is not benefiting from “enters the battlefield” effects to pair with Momentary Blink and you get some great choices in things like Lone Missionary. Obviously the deck focuses a lot on card draw in Mulldrifter and Sea Gate Oracle, but when playing the deck it feels a bit clunky. I think the benefit that the newer version of the deck has is not relying so much on the heavy 5-cost of a Mulldrifter. It is important to draw cards so you can find your combo pieces, but even when evoking a Mulldrifter, you’re spending a lot of mana and the count could probably be reduced. With the Sea Gate Oracle, the creature is providing you with a similar function, but it’s possible that I just have a bias against singletons. The same can be said for the single copy of Aura Gnarlid, but that is something I would probably want to stretch to two because it can be such a beast when paired with all of those land enchantments.

If you would rather listen to me talk about the deck, feel free to check the video below. I record these before writing the article, so who knows?: maybe I said something there that I forgot to mention here!

Now usually with these “Into the Archive” pieces I would go into what cards I think could be used to update the deck. Well, the “old” deck here isn’t really that old, and I think we’ve kind of covered that by taking a look at what people are running in today’s metagame. I think that the UW list shows what a more efficient build would look like for Reality Acid, and while this older version shows boundless creativity, there is sometimes a conflict between creativity and success. If you want to take a minute and check out how the older deck plays, then watch these videos…

I hope you guys enjoyed this look into the past of Reality Acid! Until next time, don’t forget to check me out on Twitter for regular complaining and speculating @MTGOJustSin!