Durdle, Durdle

For weeks, I've been playing the same deck: Dark Eldrazi. For weeks, I've been losing in a sad, sorry way. I don't mind losing if the game is close. I don't mind losing if I'm a threat. But, too many times the deck just wasn't doing what it needed to do. So, I decided to switch things up.


Oloro, Ageless Ascetic is a powerhouse. Every week at my friendly local gaming store, at least a few players bring the Giant Soldier to the table. Usually, they get hated out of the game first. We are all used to what Oloro can do if left unchecked. Knowing this, I decided to really amp up my game.

Oloro is like the "mall cop" of the table. Look at him, sitting there, biding his time, gaining life. Building a (mostly) creatureless deck with lots of ways to protect itself isn't difficult. (But it is expensive. Yowza.) You can check out my deck list here: All the Time in the World.



I realize that my deck is named after a Spy Kids movie, but it seemed to fit. With Oloro in the command zone and the cards in the deck, it really feels like I have all the time in the world to find my win conditions. The deck is the opposite of what this format should be. It's almost entirely without creatures. There are so many tutors and library manipulation spells that it feels like playing a much, much smaller deck. And, it drags the game out. It's horrible.

I played a total of three games with this deck before I took it apart. It's that bad. In the last game, I found myself apologizing and offering to concede so that the other guys could play out the game. With Humility / Moat out, there wasn't much that anyone could do to stop me from taking... all the time in the world. If they tried anything, I could counter it, several times over for good measure.



This is where the word "durdle" comes from. Maybe it's slang where I'm from, but when someone is durdling, they are going through the motions, not interacting with anyone, and probably not even winning that turn. There's nothing as frustrating for the rest of the table as a 5 (or even 10) minute turn where nothing happens. Sure, the durdle guy has a few more permanents on the table, a few more cards in hand, but nothing much actually changed for wasting all that time.



This deck is the epitome of durdle. With Future Sight out, it becomes a wacky process of reordering your library in as many ways as you can to get to the cards you can cast. Fetchlands let you reshuffle to see a new card on top. All of the library manipulation spells do the same. Sensei's Diving Top can rip the top card and then recast for 1, effectively digging over and over for almost no mana. Throw some tutors into the mix and you're often shuffling your library several times each turn.



To stay alive, the deck plays an unbelievable amount of sweepers and prison cards. Hallowed Burial and Terminus are particularly powerful in this format as they sweep commanders to the bottom of your opponents' libraries. For certain commanders (Uril, Zur), this can put them so far behind that there is no way to catch up. Not bad for one card. Humility alone will shut down entire tables. It's a control deck that feels like a control deck.

The scariest part of deck like this is how far down the curve you can push the converted casting costs of the spells. This makes for a very effective and resilient deck that can find answers and cast them immediately. There a plenty of cards that do similar enough effects to run what feels like a consistent and familiar deck, every game.



In the game I played yesterday, with my new(ish) mono-black deck, I was on the receiving end of the Oloro durdle. Two hours into the game, I had to concede because I had places to be. Oloro was at 60+ life when I left. He was keeping everyone alive the entire time. When he started to, "end this game," it took him another half hour to kill the first guy. He said, "it's time for me to start ending this game." Great! That translated to slowly bouncing all of the threats, casting Identity Crisis on me to put me in topdeck mode, and pinging people with Staff of Nin for the win. I'm not against a long game, but this wasn't interactive or fun.



The sad thing is that Oloro is pretty cool. On paper, this deck pushes all of my buttons. Gaining life from the Command zone is a neat idea. Not being able to interact with the card while it's in the Command zone is a problem, though. But, the real problem is that even if you build a "fun" Oloro deck, everyone is going to come gunning for you because of what typically gets thrown into an Oloro build. Ten turns into the game, the Oloro player has gained 20 life. That's half of what he started with added to the top. That's a lot. In a game where life is a resource, 20 more life than everyone else has is a huge advantage. This advantage tends to attract a certain type of player. Are you that guy?