Oloro, Downshifted

I have a love / hate relationship with Oloro.

Between the powerful life gain from the Command zone, beyond the reach of the other players, to "durdle" aspect of the Esper color combination, there are things to consider when building a deck around him. Do I really want the game to last forever?

It's time to make some revisions to the deck and give this another go.

Black, White, and Blue together make up the color combination called Esper. Now that's a color combination I can get behind! And Oloro does exactly what I'd like my Commander to do. He sits back, watchful, intimidating, slowing gaining the advantage. Victory comes in time. I have all the time in the world.




The original version of the deck is over-the-top powerful. It's not fun. The first thing that has to go is (almost) all of the powerful vintage cards. Moat, The Abyss, it's back to the box for you. Yawgmoth's Will, you can stay for a while (but Argivian Find is a reasonable alternative here).




The next thing that has to go is all of the fetch lands. This isn't Legacy. Stop with all the shuffling! There's way too much durdle when I'm shuffling every turn, sometimes twice. Replacements include the check lands, pain lands, relevant tri-land, and more basics. Without the fetch lands, there's no need to keep Crucible of Worlds around. Bonus!




Finally, (almost) all of the expensive cards need to go. Forcefield, Force of Will, Mana Drain, I'm looking at you.

The result is that the deck is about $2,300 less expensive in this configuration. It's not nearly as consistent, but it also couldn't be traded straight up for a used car. The reason that matters (to me anyway) is there is nothing worse than people assuming that you won because your deck was full of money. There are thousands of different cards in Magic. Putting a less expensive, but still very effective, deck together is a completely reasonable proposition.

Of course, "expensive" is relative.

Where I play, one guy has a couple duals in his deck, but he plays penny sleeves and I think he's been at this game as long as I have. Another guy has a Jace the Mind Sculptor. I saw a Mana Crypt in a deck. That's about the limit. There are lots of planeswalkers and newer cards in most decks. Foils abound. I'd put the price tag of most decks in the $300 - $500 range where I play. So, that's what I'm shooting for with this deck revision.



The heart of the deck is still the same: it's a defensive deck (sometimes called "pillow fort") that wins with incremental advantage (Sword / Thopter, Luminarch Ascension) or a well-timed Test of Endurance. For most of the game, you are trying to gain advantage where you can, stay alive, and motivate your opponents to attack each other instead of you. When the right time comes, you take the advantage and win. It's too late for anyone to stop your clever plans. It's all over.