This article is going to explain something that I
think some rogue deck builders don’t seem to get.
This is something I have fallen prey to on more than
one occasion (and still do), but I’ve learned to
control it to a point.
3. Don’t try a deck or strategy that is
incredibly and totally
stupid.
I don’t have a problem with people playing their own
creations because I play my own creations
continuously. The only time this ever gets under my
skin is when they try a strategy that is so
completely strange I’d be surprised if it even won
one game. These are the decks who obviously did
absolutely no testing against the top tiers, and as
such get stomped into the dirt when they go against
those huge threats. These are the gamers who insist
that they can use
Mycosynth Golem to win their local
Pro Tour Qualifier. And these are the people who
will go to a tournament with multiple copies of
lands such as
Dimir Aqueduct and
Orzhov Basilica in
their deck when their area is heavy on Land
Disruption. I don’t care how you run it through your
head, playing those lands against people running
Annex and
Stone Rain isn’t good planning.
I will admit that I have been guilty of this before.
For about two months I used the same
Leveler/Endless
Whispers combo deck at my local tournament, even
though I knew that they expected me to be running
that deck. While it did great at first, it slowly
became worse and worse because it became so
predictable. Me, being the stubborn guy that I was,
didn’t decide to change my deck, and it became
predictable for my opponent to stop me. Eventually I
switched my deck, but not before I got crushed
multiple times beforehand. The reason I didn’t do
well later in the deck’s use was because I didn’t
pay attention to my metagame, and that cost me.
Also, and I cannot stress this enough, don’t rely on
a combo that can win you the game but will take you
far too long to assemble. I don’t care if you can
play
Confusion in the Ranks, draw into a
Phage the
Untouchable, throw it under a
Summoner’s Egg, give
the Egg to the opponent, and then destroy it with a
Rend Flesh. That requires far too many cards to pull
off, and doesn’t even work if the opponent doesn’t
control a creature. The only time a combo with a
multiple number of cards like that works is if the
combo revolves around pumping up the Storm count of
a
Tendrils of Agony or
Brain Freeze (Grim Long and
Solidarity), if it allows you to hit your opponent
with a lethal X spell (Prosperous Bloom), or you run
a ton of tutors (Maga Combo). The combo has to be
short, sweet, and painful, like
Sink into
Takenuma
with
Megrim.
Fun decks are a kick to use, and I’m not going to
say otherwise. However, if you insist on going
rogue, at least have enough common sense to be able
to determine the line between competitive rogue and
casual rogue. Your deck may seem like it’s a good
idea at first, but a good amount of the time it will
either be usable against half of the top decks, or
it won’t be usable at all.
This concludes Article 3. Stay tuned next week for
the conclusion of my Rogue deck series.
