[Development] Ionamorph

[ddominator]

Malakh how did the gargoyle castles work for you?

[KnightElite]

I played this at Zendikar Gameday yesterday. As I had surmised, the field had a lot less Jund than the MTGO metagame (only 4 decks (one budget) out of 22 people present). I made top 4 though.

Round 1: Vs. U/G Mill/Stompy

His deck is kind of random. Only thing of note is milling me for a bunch in game 1 when I crack a fetch land, and otherwise doesn't do much. The bad thing is he did have Telemin Performance in his deck, which would likely have beaten me had it resolved. I board in Mind Control, and win game 2 by Mind Controling a Grazing Gladehart and Polymorphing it.

1-0

Round 2: Vs. Jund.

Game 1: I can't remember what exactly happened in this game, but I recall that my hand didn't do enough. I think he Maelstrom Pulsed my early goblin tokens, and beat in with Putrid Leech and Sprouting Thrinax.

Game 1: I mulligan to 5 with a 1 land hand and lose quickly.

1-1

Round 3: Vs. Esper Master Transmuter deck

Game 1: His deck is also not very well tuned (only running 20 land maindeck), and some dubious card selection. I attempt to race with a Dragon Fodder, Elspeth, Knight Errant and Conqueror's Pledge. I manage to get him to 1 before he stabilizes, but I eventually draw another Elspeth (he oblivion rings the first one) to give a token flying in order to win.

Game 2: He beats me with 2 Sanctum Gargoyles and 2 Master of Etherium, as he is able to get back the master after losing it to Day of Judgment, and I don't draw more removal.

Game 3: I keep a 2 land hand on the draw, he has to mulligan down to 4 to get enough land. Neither of us draws any more land for the first 6 or 7 turns, so we just draw and discard for a while. I eventually get more land, and play Elpeth. He gets his second land, and plays Sejiri Refuge. I cast Ajani Vengeant and keep his refuge tapped for the rest of the game. I polymorph a soldier token and beat down with Iona to win.

2-1

Round 4: Vs. Bant Midrange

He doesn't have Baneslayer Angels yet, so is playing Battlegrace Angel in its place. A few other cards in his build seem like random 2-ofs and stuff, so I don't think this was the most tuned list.

Game 1: Neither of us do much for the first little while, and I eventually clear the board and get out Iona, Shield of Emeria naming white. He casts Mind Control on it, and I have no other Polymorph in hand to get rid of Iona, so I lose to the maindeck Mind Control.

Game 2: He gets out Battlegrace Angel and Akrasan Squire and I Polymorph out Iona, this time with 2 Spell Pierce and Mind Control in hand. He attemps to steal Iona on his turn and I spell pierce it. I then steal his Battlegrace Angel on my turn, and swing in a couple times with Iona, with Elspeth's Assistance to win.

Game 3: I keep what I think is a pretty good hand against him, given I have seen his deck open up pretty slow up until this point (2 DOJ, Elspeth, Spell Pierce, 3 lands). He gets his best possibly aggro draw (and is on the play) and goes turn 1 Noble Hierarch, turn 2 Akrasan Squire, Turn 3 Rafiq of the Many, attack for 8 with squire, turn 4 attack for 12 with Rafiq. All I have time to do is play 3 land before I die.

2-2

Round 5: Another Esper Deck

Game 1: This is another Esper control deck with Master Transmuter, though again it's not very well tuned. He Oblivion Rings my planeswalkers game 1, but eventually loses to Iona naming white after a Day of Judgment.

Game 2: He opens up with turn 1 and 2 Executioner's Capsule, essentially shutting down my Polymorph option. I play Goblin Assault and [card]Elspeth, and try and race him, but he Oblivion Rings both and when I am two turns away from getting my second Elspeth up to 8 counters/Ajani up to 7 so I can get out Iona without it dying to the executioner's Capsules, he resolves Sphinx Sovereign, and I have no way to kill it and lose.

Game 3: I eventually win this one, I believe with an un-contained Goblin Assault assisted with Conqueror's Pledge, and he just can't stem all the token beats.

Top 8 (I made 7th in the swiss with my 3-2 record due to the low number of people):

T8 Round 1: Same Bant deck as before. I can't remember how these games went exactly, but I did manage to win.

4-2

T8 Round 2: Same Jund player as before. We had a very bizarre sequence of games here.

Game 1: We both draw a lot of land, and I kill his board a couple times, and then we both sit there and play land for a while. He eventually gets more guys and gets me down to 6 before I DOJ, but he cycles Resounding Thunder the next turn to finish me off.

Game 2: I keep a hand with lots of removal, but nothing to really advance my game plan. He stalls on 3 land for a bit, with only red and black mana, while I play out lands regularly. He gets a fourth land eventually (another Forest) and plays out BBE into Putrid Leech. I DOJ. He does the same next turn, and I DOJ again. I get up to 9 mana before he has cast anything else, and hardcast Iona naming black the turn before he drew his Verdant Catacombs. I attack him twice, and then go for Earthquake to finish him off. He casts Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Resounding Thunder in response (he just got the 3rd red to do this the turn before, and had been planning to kill Iona) to hit me, so the game will be a draw, but I Swerve one bolt back at him so that I end the game at 1 life after Earthquake resolves.

Game 3: He Thought Hemorrhages away my Polymorph and beats in with Putrid Leech, which I eventually have to Celestial Purge, and he casts a Sprouting Thrinax. I try and stall with Dragon Fodder, but he Maelstrom Pulses the tokens, and I draw no other way to get rid of both Thrinax and its tokens.

4-3

Overall the deck did decent, and I think my losses in the swiss were both reasonable ones. The bant deck really surprised me with its super fast kill (and maindeck Mind Control, since he had had glacially slow starts the other games (he claimed that was the first time the deck had done that), so I don't consider this loss to be the fault of the deck. The Jund matchup is definitely much better with the maindeck Celestial Purge instead of the two Swerve I played in that slot (Swerve wasn't overly fantastic in most matchups either, so maybe this should have been Martial Coup or something), but it's still not terribly awful, and the deck did okay the second time we played. So yeah, list still seems to work well for the most part, but I think I'm starting to get bored of this deck and might play something else next week, we'll see how I feel then.

[ShaolinDolemite]

Ok, time to clarify! I ran a decklist very similar to Knight, with a few minor changes. I'll post my decklist later... don't have it on me.

There were 17 players in our event. I looked around and playtested a bit over the last week, and decided to only MD 1 Swerve, and to MD 2 Celestial Purges. Just about every deck played black, there were 3 Vampire decks, and 4 Jund decks (roughly).

I took no notes, so I'm going off memory. Apologies if my recap sucks.

Round 1
Janky Jund deck. He played weird stuff which actually gave me quite a bit of trouble - he was main decking 4 Sadistic Sacrament and 4 Vines of Vastwood. I effectively ended up playing token gen/planeswalker control against him, which was fine. Hardcast Iona once when I was badly flooded. I won 2-1.

1-0

Round 2
Not so janky Jund deck. I mull to 6 first game, 5 the second game. He didn't have the best hand either game one, but I could not field anything to attack him before he could stabilize. Game two, I actually manage to get tokens out and am ready to Polymorph into Iona... he casts Bloodbraid Elf, and hits Malestrom Pulse on my board. I cry.

1-1

Round 3
Monoblack Vampires. No problems at all here, just kept the board clean repeatedly until I could combo out or punish with tokens. I got manascrewed and lost one game, but honestly, this matchup seems outright easy.

2-1

Round 4
Some guy playing a very odd WB deck, running strong beats out of each color and removal. This works poorly for him as I keep goading him into overextending, then using Day of Judgement or Earthquake. Only frustrating thing was Polymorphing into Iona, Shield of Emeria and having to name black because I saw a Doom Blade. He immediately cast Path to Exile. Think I sided in Swerve here.

3-1

Round 5
I'd played with this guy a bit before and he didn't want to get knocked out of T8, and asked for a draw. He was playing a Monoblack Vampires deck but I accepted. We played anyhow and, though his deck was pretty textbook MB Vampires and strong, I beat up on deck pretty hard. Vampires really seems to be the easiest matchup.

3-1-1

Top 8
Deck registration and all that! Pretty interesting - I don't play anything but draft really, so this is my first T8. Yes, my constructed rating blows. Single Elimination.

Quarterfinals
Jund w/Mana Ramp. This deck was scary to face, I knew he had an advantage, Jund has always been a problem for me. My opponent was a friend who's pretty good (1800 range), which doesn't help either.

Game 1 - He mulls (yay!), then mulls again (yay!). I keep a decent hand... 3 lands, Spell Pierce, Ajani Vengeant, Dragon Fodder, Conqueror's Pledge. He plays a Forest, then another Forest and attempts to cast Rampant Growth. Clearly he's color-screwed, so I pierce it. He finally draws a Mountain turn 4, but I play Ajani Vengeant the same turn, going up on his Mountain. He scoops, having only red/black spells and taking beatings from my fodder.

Game 2 - He crushed me pretty bad this one. Cascade is such a crazy effect. He pulsed my tokens too. Well, whatever, fml.

Game 3 - He mulled again to 6, but I think he was ok with his hand. I drop some fodder, he casts Rampant t2. He then casts Harrow on my t4 (I'm not quite sure why he did this at that time), saccing one of his forests to get another Forest and a Swamp. I'm pretty sure I know his deck, and I'm pretty sure he's not running Disfigure or Doom Blade, so with no red open I go for Polymorph, naming black. I cast Elspeth t5, and swing twice for the match.

Semifinals
Oddly enough, the previous guy's old roommate. Also a friend. He's playing Luminarch Control. Weird matchup, since we use the same Planeswalkers. I don't remember this match well.

Game 1 - We dance around each other quite a bit. He plays two Luminarch Ascensions, but I get lots of tokens, especially Conqueror's Pledge after casting a few early Dragon Fodders. He's pretty unable to protect his Planeswalkers.

Game 2 - Everything that could go wrong for him did, it felt like I always had the right answer to everything he did. Spell Pierce? Check. Swerve? Check. Goblin Assault? Check. Polymorph into Iona? Check. (this might have been game 3 actually... like I said, memory is fuzzy here)

Finals
Valakut Control. This was not a matchup I was looking forward to, this guy crushed me maybe 6 games straight earlier in the day while testing. Main deck Pyroclasms, spot removal of tokens in response to Polymorph, Chandra Nalaar, etc. However, I didn't sideboard in the practice games, and I knew my Sideboard wasn't bad against him.

Game 1 - He beats me up and controls things until he can get Valakut online. I have 7 cards in my hand when the game finishes, including a Polymorph, 3 Path to Exile, Iona, Shield of Emeria and 2 Day of Judgement. I also had simply discarded 2 Day of Judgements already. FML.

OUT: -4 Day of Judgement, -2 Path to Exile (I know he has Baneslayers in SB and I rather like Pathing my own tokens as needed), -1 Spell Pierce. IN: +1 Celestial Purge, +3 Goblin Assault, +2 Luminarch Ascension, +1 Swerve

Game 2 - I keep a questionable hand, 2 land but I have 2 Luminarchs. This seems quite strong for the matchup, I keep, and turn 2 I say "This is me giving your deck the finger," (we were joking around and laughing quite casually), and I drop Luminarch. He top decks Pithing Needle and plays it on my Ascension. Wow. Surprisingly though, I end up winning this game. Turn 3 I get a land and Goblin Assault into play. I play a second one, and it gives me enough of a push to win.

Game 3 - I kept another questionable hand, he got a good one. I couldn't get much going, just had Dragon Fodder, Polymorph, and some planeswalkers. He kept me off 4 mana for a long time, playing two of those LD goblins (ruinblasters?) on my shardlands. Ouch.

Game 4 - I don't remember this one too well, just that I won. Goblin Assault and Conqueror's Pledge were amazing on him, I zerged hard.

Game 5 - I was surprised this matchup lasted so long. I really think he had the upper hand on me, but at the same time, my SB was pretty strong vs his. We went back and forth a LONG time on this one... but ultimately got to top deck mode while I had tokens active. Polymorph while in top deck mode = win.


Thoughts
Fun deck to play, think I got lucky a lot. Mind Control felt like a waste in SB. People playing MD Pyroclasm in this format is hard on the deck. I'm not quite sure what to do about WB decks - in fact, I sided out 2 of my Polymorphs against it. Jund/Cascade will make you cry. Wish there was some other way of protecting cards for Poly. Vines of Vastwood was hard to play against. I'll still play it more!

Last Edit
Bonus: pic of me playing Iona Your Face for Halloween Zendikar Game day.

[Tatsumaru369]

Swerve: Situationally better than Negate. This one is a metagame call if you're running red. If the metagame is mostly aggressive decks, this is almost always better than Negate. It can redirect Blightning, Lighting Bolt and other removal, and still protects your Polymorph from other counterspells (make their counter target itself). You might get lucky an get to hit your opponent with their own Mind Sludge too .

10/1/2008: If you play Swerve on a spell that targets a spell on the stack (like Cancel does, for example), you can't change that spell's target to itself. You can, however, change that spell's target to Swerve. If you do, that spell will be countered when it tries to resolve because Swerve will have left the stack by then.

You have to Swerve a Counter onto Swerve, still same result but now it is a legal move.

[ShaolinDolemite]

Tatsu: Thanks for the clarification, I was wondering about that.

I think I like Negate better btw. Swerve was dead too much for me. On the other hand, Swerve did win me a game by changing directions on a lethal Banefire. =)

The guy was not happy.

[iamspartacus22]

I'm glad everyone had a good weekend. Sorry for not posting in a bit. I worked 48 hours in 3 days. It's been kinda rough. I do have an updated build i will post later. Cool spiderman outfit Shaolin

[KnightElite]

Originally Posted by Tatsumaru369

You have to Swerve a Counter onto Swerve, still same result but now it is a legal move.

Thanks indeed. Iamspartacus22, if you could update that part of the OP, that would be cool .

Congrats on your win ShaolinDolemite. I'll have to say that I also found swerve fairly underwhelming over the weekend, and I might switch it to something else soon. Spell Pierce was generally good, unless the game went long, in which case it was generally useless .

[ShaolinDolemite]

I was also going to say, I ended up using Path quite a bit on my own fodder to accelerate into Polymorph, especially after chump blocking or in response to removal. Not what I would have expected or how i'd like to do it but... hey, 1.5 cards to put an extra land into play for one mana isn't the worst thing that ever happened.

I played one maindeck swerve. I know that's weird, but I wanted to have the versatility around. Again... not sure how that'll change. Looking forward to your new list Spartacus.

Edit: After serious consideration, I'm going to be playing Double Negative, possibly maindeck. The one thing that absolutely wrecked me was Cascade, and I need a serious counter that can deal with that.

[Twilight Seraph]

I ended up 3-2 (grabbing 5th-8th for the Angel) with WUR version with 2 Main Deck swerves. I enjoyed swerving a Traumatize, Mind Sludge, and Path (While polymorphing, swerving into my other token). Infact, swerving the Traumatize saved me a great deal since it knocked out 3/4 of lands so his crabs lost fuel and Spell Pierce became a 1cc Negate. lol

[Scrapjack]

I just put this together on MTGO and entered an eight player tournament going 3-0.

First Round, I was playing a slow jund deck (never saw any putrid leeches). Won round one after resolving Ajani, Elspeth and Jace all in a row. Second round, I got Iona out, but attacked at the wrong time, letting him alpha strike me. Third game I got Iona fourth turn, and he was shut out with no board presence.

Second round was Monored with Valakut. First round I tie him with an earthquake despite him having lethal in his yard from hellsparks. He only unearthed one, I'm not entirely sure why - maybe he anticipated a fallout or something?. Second game, he gets me down to 10 before I dump Iona for the win. Third game, he concedes on turn six when I polymorph than negate his only removal in hand.

Third round was Vampires. This guy tried to split with me, but I wanted to play it out. Get Iona out turn 5, then play 2 ajanis over the next turns to clear the skies of his nighthawks and clean up quickly. Second game, I think i'm going to lose when he gets out 2 bloodwitches, but I go into topdeck mode, hit a day of judgement then a polymorph making him concede.

All in all, I like the deck, but my list has no instant speed removal which can be very frustrating against aggro.

Deck
Token Makers 3 Dragon Fodder 4 Goblin Assault 2 Conqueror's Pledge 1 Martial Coup Walkers 4 Ajani Vengeant 3 Elspeth, Knight-Errant 2 Jace Beleren Wincon 4 Polymorph 2 Iona, Shield of Emeria Defense 4 Earthquake 4 Wrath of God 2 Swerve	Land Base 4 Arid Mesa 3 Scalding Tarn 1 Arcane Sanctum 4 Glacial Fortress 4 Mountain 5 Plains 4 Island

Sideboard
4 Luminarch Ascension 2 Mind Control 3 Negate 3 Oblivion Ring 3 Volcanic Fallout

Also, not a huge fan of swerve. Thinking of maindecking Essence Scatter instead to slow down the opponent and see how well that works.

[ddominator]

Originally Posted by Scrapjack

I just put this together on MTGO and entered an eight player tournament going 3-0.

First Round, I was playing a slow jund deck (never saw any putrid leeches). Won round one after resolving Ajani, Elspeth and Jace all in a row. Second round, I got Iona out, but attacked at the wrong time, letting him alpha strike me. Third game I got Iona fourth turn, and he was shut out with no board presence.

Second round was Monored with Valakut. First round I tie him with an earthquake despite him having lethal in his yard from hellsparks. He only unearthed one, I'm not entirely sure why - maybe he anticipated a fallout or something?. Second game, he gets me down to 10 before I dump Iona for the win. Third game, he concedes on turn six when I polymorph than negate his only removal in hand.

Third round was Vampires. This guy tried to split with me, but I wanted to play it out. Get Iona out turn 5, then play 2 ajanis over the next turns to clear the skies of his nighthawks and clean up quickly. Second game, I think i'm going to lose when he gets out 2 bloodwitches, but I go into topdeck mode, hit a day of judgement then a polymorph making him concede.

All in all, I like the deck, but my list has no instant speed removal which can be very frustrating against aggro.



Also, not a huge fan of swerve. Thinking of maindecking Essence Scatter instead to slow down the opponent and see how well that works.

Have you tried path for instant removal? I think negate MD would be better than MD essence scatter but that depends if you're against a creature meta.

[Scrapjack]

Originally Posted by ddominator

Have you tried path for instant removal? I think negate MD would be better than MD essence scatter but that depends if you're against a creature meta.

Well, bolstered with confidence from my 3-0, I promptly lost all my winnings in subsequent tournaments, losing 1-2 against MWC and Jund (twice). Trying path and it looks promising. Also, double negative seems better than negate, it hard counters everything and hits cascade hard. I'll need to tweak the manabase around for more blue.

[ShaolinDolemite]

4 Wrath of God

I lol'ed. That habit is so hard to break, I do it too!

Anyhow, yeah... we need to try this Double Negative thing. I playtested this deck some more last night and absolutely crushed some WU control deck. Went against textbook Jund and it was considerably harder but... I actually was beating it. I sided out Earthquake x2 and Path to Exile x1 for a second Swerve and two more Celestial Purges. I did well and beat it several times, but lost once and almost lost a couple others when he'd play Bloodbraid Elf. Honestly, I'm pretty over Swerve, while it's amazing against Banefire and Blightning, it's terrible in other situations, and holding open mana for Swerve rather than playing a spell is really, really bad when they drop a creature on you instead.

Again, I have to say - Path is good in particular because if you need mana rather than removal, you can hit your own tokens in response to removal/blocking. I understand it's TOTALLY not the ideal use of Path, but the versatility is awesome. 1 mana instant-speed Rampant Growth is good. I've hardcast Iona or accelerated into planeswalkers/day/etc to win quite a few matches because I pathed my own tokens.

[Scrapjack]

Originally Posted by ShaolinDolemite

I lol'ed. That habit is so hard to break, I do it too!

Anyhow, yeah... we need to try this Double Negative thing. I playtested this deck some more last night and absolutely crushed some WU control deck. Went against textbook Jund and it was considerably harder but... I actually was beating it. I sided out Earthquake x2 and Path to Exile x1 for a second Swerve and two more Celestial Purges. I did well and beat it several times, but lost once and almost lost a couple others when he'd play Bloodbraid Elf. Honestly, I'm pretty over Swerve, while it's amazing against Banefire and Blightning, it's terrible in other situations, and holding open mana for Swerve rather than playing a spell is really, really bad when they drop a creature on you instead.

Again, I have to say - Path is good in particular because if you need mana rather than removal, you can hit your own tokens in response to removal/blocking. I understand it's TOTALLY not the ideal use of Path, but the versatility is awesome. 1 mana instant-speed Rampant Growth is good. I've hardcast Iona or accelerated into planeswalkers/day/etc to win quite a few matches because I pathed my own tokens.

Yeah, the swerve in my MD is gone now, and I'll probably replace it with double negative. I don't like Earthquake because in the matchup against jund, I'm constantly backpedalling and makes it much harder for me to stabilize. -1 Swerve -4 Earthquake for +4 Double Negative +1 Martial coup seems like the next thing to test for me.

Also, how do people like jace? I understand he can be huge card advantage, but at most he draws me 1 card because the majority of my tokens (goblin assault) are forced into the red zone every turn. Honestly, I'd rather have +2 sweepers than jace, so I'm gonna try -2 Jace +2 Martial Coup on top of my other stuff.

[KnightElite]

Originally Posted by Scrapjack

Yeah, the swerve in my MD is gone now, and I'll probably replace it with double negative. I don't like Earthquake because in the matchup against jund, I'm constantly backpedalling and makes it much harder for me to stabilize. -1 Swerve -4 Earthquake for +4 Double Negative +1 Martial coup seems like the next thing to test for me.

Also, how do people like jace? I understand he can be huge card advantage, but at most he draws me 1 card because the majority of my tokens (goblin assault) are forced into the red zone every turn. Honestly, I'd rather have +2 sweepers than jace, so I'm gonna try -2 Jace +2 Martial Coup on top of my other stuff.

I moved Goblin Assault to the sideboard for exactly that reason, I found that against aggressive decks being able to block was much stronger than a never ending token stream.