Gifts Ungiven

I found Clair's deck misleadingly labeled as a Rock build here on Star City Games. Sure, it has many Rock features, like disruption and the Deed, but it's really all about the big damn Death Cloud.

And it runs seven Planeswalkers. Seven. In Extended. Brilliant, man.

Here's the list.

Clair Bigelow's Death Cloud

There's a lot to like in this build. The basic game plan does seem to be the Rock-like approach of "disrupt, remove, and stall." As Zac Hill noted in preparing for PT Valencia, in doing all these disruptive things, you still need a way to win. As I read it, Clair's deck does the job by dropping Garruk or Liliana into play, then Death Clouding the rest of the world away. If Garruk is out, he can call some Beasts and you kill your opponent while they're struggling for land. Liliana can tutor up land, or just hammer your opponent with discard until all the little critters come back into play on your side. I was briefly wondering why the Rot Farms were in there, until I realized how very, very good they are with Garruk's untapping power. More mana for the Death Cloud, man.

Here's my version.

Budget Death Cloud (BDC)

Two big obvious changes. First, no fetchlands. I'm not paying ten bucks a pop for lands that will rotate out of Extended in half a year. No. So I'll suck up the disadvantage and deal. The mana base is also slightly off what I might choose, because that's the array of Rav duals I have available right now (largely borrowed from SSO, with one of my own thrown in).

Second, Doran. I went back and forth, but decided that I like the many effects Doran has on the game, including turning off a bunch of X/1 aggro creatures, more or less, and in terms of automatically being giant from day one. As I've gone into white here, perhaps I should change up one of the Rot Farms for a Basilica. I'll have to think about that.

Now, let's look at my other choices.

Given that I don't have a horde of fetchlands to thin my deck, I needed to put in other lands. We have some more Rav duals, and then a number of Legendary lands from Kamigawa. Basically, the three lands all let me do a little bit more with Doran. Top to bottom, they give him Fear (Shizo), prevent damage to him (Eiganjo), and make him bigger (Okina). In this vein, I'm also considering a single Pendelhaven.

Having gone into white for Doran, and not having any Baloths in the first place, I've subbed in Hierarchs (borrowed from SSO, who is my main Ravnica source). The Hierarchs also bring the life, and are otherwise perfectly good 4/4 roadblocks.

...and, since I lack Deeds, I'm going with Damnations and hoping that they'll be able to scrape away those aggro builds.

Finally, a look at the sideboard. I kept the quadruple Extirpate. I'm listening to Mr. Flores and I refuse to get run over by Dredge. Sure, the Elders take out Bridges, but the Extirpates can rock a Dredge deck, take out the one random beat-you-to-death Akroma, and can't be whisked off the board by Chain of Vapor.

I've also ditched the Smothers (well, I also own none) for Deathmarks. Smother kills lots of little things, but I think its primary goal is to kill offending Goyfs and Dorans, with perhaps the occasional Confidant thrown in. Deathmark is cheaper, and can't hit the Confidant, but it kills Goyfs and Doran, and, as a bonus, can also knock off more expensive midrange options that opposing Rock decks might pack. Neat, as they say.

I'll need to test this a bit, and make sure that I like the going-to-three-colors option, and the other changes I've made. But overall, I think this build rocks, and I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl at one or two PTQs next month.