Fog vs. Terror
The originality (and to my way of thinking, fun part) of Maze's End is that it can win with a stalemate. Just a single Maze's End can bring victory within 10 (and more likely, 6-7) turns. It takes a lot of mana, it takes a lot of time, but it CAN win games. Thus Maze's End decks thrive on stalemate conditions, the longer the better. There are two ways to stalemate: trading cards or nullifying turns.(man the old cards were wordy. I miss that needless complexity)
Both of these stall for time using two different mechanics. Terror is straight up card for card trade. Sure your board state didn't evolve but you kept your opponent from racing too far ahead. Imagine a hypothetical where your deck was 100% terrors and they had 100% creatures. Empty board, perfect stalemate, and perfect for buying time.
Fog is kind of the opposite. It nullifies everything on the table but does not set back the opponent's board state. The knock against fog is that you effectively cancel your opponent's attack. This allows you to draw... the card that you would have drawn instead of the fogging. Imagine 100% fog vs. 100% Mons Goblin Raiders. Still a 0 damage stalemate... but instead of an empty board your opponent has 59 1/1 creatures out. Time is bought... but you're just one Fog away from 39 points of overkill.
Maze's End: Terror
| 10 Gates 4 Maze's End |
|||||
|
4 Gatecreeper Vine
|
4 Supreme Verdict
3 Far // Away
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Ground Assault
3 Dreadbore
3 Warleader's Helix
2 Treasured Find
4 Urban Evolution
1 Door to Nothingness
Maze's End: Fog
21 Gates (2 of each except 3 Simic and Seelsnya and only 1 Radkos)
4 Maze's End
4 Augur of Bolas
3 Gatecreeper Vine
4 Fog
4 Druid's Deliverance
3 Safe Passage
4 Riot Control
3 Terminus
2 Supreme Verdict
3 Urban Evolution
3 Into the Wilds
2 Think Twice
(based off Channel/Fireball's The End as We Know It)
I like the focus and clarity on the Fog end, though it sucks that a lot will be cycling out in a month. As Day9 said (with regards to starcraft) "something is complete when there is nothing left to take away, not when there is nothing more to add." Works a good rule of deckbuilding elegance too.
Thoughts?
I realized that I finished the blog post and did not explicitly state my questions
ReplyDelete1) shocklands vs. gates
The shocklands are nice because they give the option to access untapped mana. Though there is a little irony in spending two life to get three life . The MUCH lower mana curve of the fog allows playing one turn behind. I'm not sure if the plethora of high cost
2) mana-fixing in the terror deck
One of the overwhelming temptations in the terror deck is to use the digging to fearlessly go five color. The first ME or Gatecreeper allows a for-sure grab of two separate colors (either the second white or whatever color is missing). This allows the best of the best removal of all colors to be played. But it still freaks me out, especially since ME can only be used on your 4th turn (with a shock) so your missing mana is used on the 5th turn.
3) Is too much cycling out of the fog? Augur, Terminus, Think Twice... hmmm.
general) i like the spells in the fog version (except fog), and the creatures in the terror version. for my money Into the Wilds is critical.
ReplyDelete1) With the treasured find I'm not worried about only running 10 gates, so load up on those shock lands.
2) This deck is party and there aint no party like a 5 color party, cause a 5 color partay don't stomp!
3) does not compute, cycling?
Cycling = cycling out of standard in September. Isn't innistrad out or do we have longer?
ReplyDeleteonce Theros hits the stores the standard environment will shrink drastically. It goes down to
ReplyDeleteM14, Ravnica Bloc, and Theros
things that leave include: Huntmaster of the Fells, Olivia Voldaren, Thragtusk, Liliana of the Veil, and all of the M10 style duals. Basically standard is going to get about 1000000% better