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?

Library Manipulation in Commander

In an earlier post, I talked about the difference between tutor, draw, and manipulate. In this post, I'm taking a closer look at library manipulation


Hey, what is library manipulation?

For my purposes, library manipulation is something that lets you choose which card to draw out of several cards, usually on top of your library. This differs from tutoring where you look for the exact card you want from your entire deck and put it in your hand or on top of your library. It also differs from raw card drawing where you replace the card you cast with several cards sight unseen. Let's compare.



Personal Tutor is a tutoring spell. Surprise! You can only look for sorceries with it, but you can look through your entire deck for exactly the sorcery you want and put it on top. Powerful stuff, but not library manipulation by my definition.



Divination is a card drawing spell. You cast it, giving up one card, to draw two cards off the top. Doesn't matter what they are, you just draw them. Also powerful, but not library manipulation by my definition.



Ponder is a library manipulation spell. You cast it, look at three cards, decide in what order you want to draw them, or even decide to put them on the bottom of your library if you don't want to draw any of them. For your trouble, you immediately replace Ponder by drawing a card. Really powerful stuff.


Great! What do I do with it?

Tutors add a lot of consistency to a deck, especially in the Commander format where you are only allowed to run a single copy of any given card except basic lands. Demonic Tutor is incredibly powerful for this reason. For a measly 1B, it can "become" any card in your deck. So, if you really need to cast Wrath of God this turn but you don't have it, pretend you have a second copy in your deck that costs 3BWW instead of the usual 2WW casting cost. Nifty, right?



Library manipulation spells also add a lot of consistency to a deck. Although they don't give you the exact card you need right away, they give you the best of a selection of cards and create better draws. What you end up doing is drawing the card you need more often than you would otherwise. A good example of this is Sensei's Diving Top. Turn after turn, for a 1 mana activation cost, you get to draw the best card out of the next three on top of your library. Even if there weren't a bazillion different tricks you can do to make this card even better (fetchlands, Future Sight, etc), that would be pretty darn good on its own in this format.



I want to point out that there are a lot of spells that are considered "cantrips." These are spells that typically have a small effect on the game and then replace themselves. The net effect is library thinning rather than library manipulation. A blue example of this is Gitaxian Probe, which can even be cast without using up your mana by paying life. It lets you look at an opponent's hand and then draw a card. With such a large starting life total in the Commander format, playing this card is like playing with a 98 card deck. A non-blue example is Urza's Bauble. It costs no mana to cast, you get to see only one card instead of the entire hand, and you have to wait to draw the replacement card. For this post, I'm not looking at cantrips since they don't fit the definition above.

The bottom line is that including library manipulation in your deck increases consistency in an otherwise very random format. The tradeoff is that it eats up slots in your deck for cards that would otherwise do something that affects the game directly. It also uses up some of the mana you would be using for those very same spells. Think of it like a tax on the spells you are playing.


Instant vs. Sorcery

Instant library manipulation spells play a special role. If you are playing blue, you probably have counterspells. If you have counterspells, you probably want to leave mana open to cast them on your opponents' turns. If your library manipulation spells are at instant speed, you can cast them immediately before your turn (at the end of your opponent's turn). This allows you to leave mana open for the longest possible amount of time in case something particularly nasty tries to ruin your day.



Sorcery speed spells must be cast on your own turn during the main phase(s). They are "slower" in the sense that they use up mana on your own turn so that you have less mana open for countering spells on your opponents' turns. If you are playing defensively, that means you will cast sorcery speed spells on later turns when you have developed your mana more. Which one is better? In general, instant speed spells that you can cast sooner with a smaller window of opportunity for opponents' to swoop in and take advantage of the situation where you are tapped out are going to serve you better. But it's never that simple. You have to also consider the mana cost of the library manipulation spells and the curve of the costs in your deck.


How much do my spells cost?

In general, you want to run spells that have the biggest effect for the least cost. Which one of those two things you prioritize will depend on your deck and what you are trying to accomplish. For example, Lightning Bolt does three damage for only 1 mana. That's about as good as it gets. Yet, I've never actually seen Lightning Bolt in a Commander deck (YMMV). Why? Because three damage isn't all that great in this format, even if it does only cost 1 mana. In that same deck slot, you could run a card like Fireball or Earthquake that is way more flexible and scales with the amount of mana you have available.


 
Library manipulation goes hand-in-hand with control decks that tend to sit back and influence how the game develops. It's not always the case, but it's often true. These decks have the time to worry about drawing the best card for the situation. Library manipulation also tends to support combo strategies where putting the right combination of cards together wins the game. By running more library manipulation, you increase consistency, which means you can put the combo together more often and increase your win percentage. Library manipulation is a friend to combo and control.



What does this have to do with how much my spells cost? In a combo deck, the combo pieces cost whatever they cost. You don't have much of a choice about it if you want to run that particular combo. For example, Mind Over Matter + Temple Bell costs X + Y. But the other spells you run, you do have a choice over. How you choose to get to that combo (and how quickly, with how much protection) is up to you.



With control decks, the further you can push your deck down the curve the better, almost always. For example, Swords to Plowshares is an awesome spell for dealing with one creature. Unless that creature has shroud or hexproof, Swords will almost certainly deal with the problem. At one white mana and instant speed, Swords is the go-to spell for spot removal. Path to Exile is also a contender. In other words, if you are looking for ways to deal with creatures in your control deck, these spells are your benchmark. Anything that costs more mana will put a strain on your available mana in any given turn, no matter how much "bigger" the effect is.



Want another example? Take a look at Counterspell vs. Cancel. They both do the same thing, but Cancel costs 1 mana more than Counterspell. Which one is better? Counterspell is almost always the better choice. But what about Render Silent? Is that better? Like Cancel, it also costs 1 mana more than Counterspell, in this case one more W mana. Plus, it has a nifty additional effect that the controller of the spell it counters can't cast anymore spells this turn. The question is, how often does that additional effect actually impact the game? How often are you not able to counter an important spell because you don't have the mana you need open (or in the right combination of colors)? Most of the time, good ol' Counterspell gets the job done with less problems.




It's up to you!

Take a look at your deck, especially if you are playing combo or control. Are you running library manipulation spells? Are they the most efficient versions of those spells (furthest down the curve), showing you the most cards (options) for the least mana? Especially if you are playing control, how many of your spells are at instant vs. sorcery speed?

Cleaning Card Sleeves

I have some really old card sleeves. They are Ultra PRO, black sleeves from at least 15 years ago. I ended up buying 600+ matching sleeves for all of my decks back in the day and they've been with me ever since.

Maybe the old Ultra PRO sleeves were made better than they are today, but all the complaints I hear about this brand of sleeves splitting are unfounded in my experience. I've had the odd sleeve split over the years, but not more than once in a while and usually because I did something stupid. Maybe five splits. Not bad for 15 years. I pile shuffle once in a while between games, but I mostly rifle shuffle the cards together against the long edges. I recently switched to hand-over-hand shuffling for Commander since the deck is so much larger. As long as you avoid the open top edge, it's all good.

Did I mention that I'm a recent double-sleeve convert? Those perfect fit sleeves do indeed fit perfectly inside the outer sleeve and protect the top edge of the card. Even though I'm careful with my cards, my oldest cards do have slightly more wear along the top edge. The double-sleeve idea takes care of that problem. Many cards go up in value. I encourage you to play with the cards (I do!), but protect them. It's worth it.

My sleeves are so old that the new Ultra PRO black sleeves are slightly longer than they are and I can't mix them together. Of course, the old sleeves are worn in so badly that I couldn't mix them together even if I wanted to. Officially, my sleeves would be counted as "marked" in a tournament, but I play mostly around the kitchen table. The wear pattern is fairly even between the sleeves, so I can't really tell which card is which anyway. But hey, I wouldn't expect a stranger to trust me on that.

Anyway, you know how your sleeves get grime on them after a few games? I'm pretty careful with my cards, but the grime happens to me too. For years, I would simply slide one edge of a sleeve against the face / back of the other sleeve to clear off the crud. Satisfying and gross at the same time. But, I figured I'd sit down one afternoon and actually clean (with water!) the sleeves on my favorite Commander deck.

Here's the thing: it took a long time. North of an hour. Between desleeving my cards, cleaning each sleeve, making sure it was dry, and resleeving the deck, I think I made pretty good time. Economically, it's not worth it. But, it was a sunny afternoon and I had the music cranked up. There was something therapeutic about cleaning the sleeves. I'm not saying that I'd never do it again, but maybe I'd wait another 15 years.

The process was as simple as it sounds. Once I got all of my cards out of the sleeves, I took a damp towel and wiped the face and back of each sleeve. After wiping the sleeve, I set it aside to dry. I didn't use soap because I didn't want to deal with rinsing the sleeves. A dry soap film on each sleeve is asking for trouble. The trick is to wipe away from the center so the sleeve doesn't bend and so that you avoid getting water into the open top edge. If you get water inside the actual sleeve, you're going to be waiting forever for it to dry. Don't go there.

The towel was filthy by the time I finished, so it looked like it really worked. The sleeves felt "smooth" again and shuffled really well after they were cleaned, too. That was cool. But, like I said before, it's probably worth getting new sleeves once in a while and keeping the old ones to sleeve up your collection or trades.

This Time It Will Work

Does this sound familiar?

This time it will work. I've got a system. It can't fail. It will work.

Listen to a gambler long enough and you'll hear something like this. You'll also hear something like this if you listen to someone building a Commander deck.

I've got a serious case of "it will work"-itis. The games at the friendly local gaming store where I play are speeding up, big time. In addition to combo, where I lost to a turn 5 Azami last weekend, the fairer decks are also speeding up. In a quick follow-up game, a guy cast Prime Speaker Zegana to draw 21 cards on turn 5. It was a lucky Dark Depths with Thespian's Stage that set things in motion, but it happened. A few new Xenagos decks at the shop are insanely fast.



The Dark Eldrazi deck is capable of explosive starts. A hasted / shrouded Pathrazer of Ulamog on turn 5? Sure, that can happen. You know what else can happen by turn 5? A whole lotta nuthin. Since I only get a play a couple of games a week, sitting on a weak opening for 5 turns is like torture - and not the good kind either.

So, I go back home and tinker with the deck during the week. I test the draws. Practice mulligans. Looks for lines of play. All that. But with 99 cards in the deck, sitting at 4 lands with a handful of 6+ casting cost cards is a painful reality. This is where the craziness sets in.

Maybe if I just swap out this card and this card, it will work. It has to work. I can make this work.

It's not that the deck doesn't work. It does just fine. But, with the game speeding up, not throwing threats out onto the board (or at least something!) by turn 5 or 6 means that I'm not really in the game. I'm not holding up my end of the deal. It's not fun for me and it's not fun for my opponent(s) either.

We all know the feeling of needing to rip a land off the top to get things started. You wait, wait, wait for your turn to come around, watching all of the awesome things happening around you, only to draw... not a land. "I'll be discarding for my turn. Go."

What I'm trying to do is to minimize the possibility of getting stuck in a deck that is trying to cast some of the highest casting cost creatures in the game: the Eldrazi legends. It's a tough row to hoe. I keep replacing cards to focus more on ramping, making land drops, and drawing cards. The deck is about the creatures. All of the other stuff is a means to that end. Most of the traditional black control elements are gone at this point.

I'll give it one more week. It'll work this time. I'm sure of it.