I hear Duskmantle is nice this time of year.
According to my notes, it's been over a year since I put Mirko in charge of Lazav's deck, but the deck is much older than that. Things have changed since then. New cards are available, notably Nekusar and Phenax, but more on that later.
There's something darkly appealing about the color combination of Blue / Black, so I decided to take another look at the deck. I'm really digging the 75% approach to Commander, so that's in the deckbuilding mix now.
The original concept for the deck was to win the way that Nekusar now wins: it looks like I'm trying to mill you, but really I'm going to kill you with draw or discard damage. Cards like Liliana's Caress coupled with cards like Windfall can create some major and sudden damage at the table. It felt like a very Dimir thing to do, misdirecting attention and then unleashing sudden death. Turns out that Nekusar does it better. He is a mini-combo all by himself, plus the addition of Red gives us access to even more "wheels," including the original Draw 7.
The original back-up concept for the deck was to win the way that Phenax now wins: mill your opponents out of cards. It's a long way to go in a 100 card format, especially with multiple opponents. Phenax is much better at this plan. You can play a defensive game around creatures with high toughness and then drop the Phenax bomb for big milling. Eater of the Dead breaks Phenax wide open.
In other words, the two main themes of the original deck are now outclassed by newer cards. What to do?
Before we get to that, let's take a quick look at the color pie.
Mmm, pie.
Magic is brilliant, in part, because of the idea that not every color can do everything that every color can do. Because the colors have a different "feel," the game not only maintains a thematic elegance, but it also forces deckbuilders and players to make difficult choices. It's those choices that keeps the game interesting.
The color pie is a way of describing the differences between the colors. In this case, take a look at how the colors deal with the graveyard. In general, every color does something with the graveyard, but each with its own flavor or perspective.
White brings back enchantments.
Red swaps artifacts.
Green brings back anything.
Black brings back creatures.
Blue brings back spells.
There are exceptions of course, but that's the general feel for each color. Things get interesting when two colors combine. The two-color combinations have a different flavor or perspective on the graveyard. Here are two examples.
The Golgari guild is Green / Black. This color combination has a strong preference for using its own graveyard. When the Golgari graveyard fills up, it's a scary thing.
The Dimir guild is Blue / Black. This color combination has a strong preference for using its opponents' graveyards. The more cards you have in the graveyards across the table from you, the more options you have to wreak havoc.
In other words, Golgari wants to run cards like Grisly Salvage to fill up its own graveyard. Dimir wants to run cards like Mind Grind to fill up its opponents' graveyards.
Dimir is all about secrets and misdirection. The ruse is that it seems like Dimir wants to mill you out of cards. The truth is, Dimir just wants to fill your graveyard up to start using it against you.
This is the new concept for my Dimir State of Mind Deck. I'm still working on the card choices, but the theme is there. Milling to get the ball rolling is usually enough to give me something to work with. From there, we'll see what kinds of tricks I can pull out of my hat (and out of your graveyard).
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