Getting the Most Out of Mystifying Maze

This week on TCGPlayer I presented Seven Traits of The Best Deck. If you haven’t read it, you should. I know I have a tendency to toot my own horn at times, but I quite liked this one:
Seven Traits of The Best Deck

Tim Landale recently got the most out of Mystifying Maze

Per usual (for me lately… apparently I am getting old), I have more and more to say about even the topics that spawn 3,000+ word full-length articles.

Luckily I have a highly trafficked and much-beloved blog with which I can expand and expound (as opposed to my not-yet-highly-trafficked, if even more beloved blog http://FloresRewards.com).

Today I am going to talk a bit [more] about point 3, “They Get the Most Out of Their Mana”.

One thing to remember when working on a mana base is that lands are a double-edged sword. Yes, you ultimately want consistent lands that come into play untapped and produce the colors you need to, you know, help you present that unbeatable opening hand. But in addition, lands can be a very low-cost source of additional value, particularly in one-color decks.

Back at the end of the 1990s, at the World Championships, seemingly all the successful decks were one color. Why? They let us play Wasteland. And the next year, they let us play Rishadan Port! All these lands are good examples of:

1. How one-color decks could be successful by playing such “colorless” lands (you could add a tool to manascrew your opponent without overly disrupting your own mana base), and
2. Why one-color decks did so much better than multicolor decks (the multicolored decks were getting their splashes, off-colors, and even first big plays pre-empted and screwed by the damn Wastelands and Rishadan Ports!)

I am a big believer in maximizing the consistency of the mana base in terms of performing what I want, when I want… With “when I want” defined as “immediately.” To with, when Kamigawa Block was legal, like all my decks that were two or more colors played four copies of Tendo Ice Bridge. If you needed a color — any color — and you needed it now, there was no better land than Tendo Ice Bridge (especially since so many of my teams were built with four copies of Meloku the Clouded Mirror).

Here are some then-and-now examples of how some of the best decks (though in these cases, the second best decks, both times) made subtle changes to existing mana bases to gain value:

Kuroda-style Red, Josh Ravitz

1 Swamp
15 Mountain
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Pulse of the Forge
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Magma Jet
3 Beacon of Destruction
4 Wayfarer’s Bauble
4 Solemn Simulacrum
4 Shrapnel Blast
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Molten Rain
1 Sowing Salt

Sideboard
3 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3 Cranial Extraction
4 Culling Scales
4 Fireball
1 Sowing Salt

… There’s that Tendo Ice Bridge again!

Tendo Ice Bridge was an addition over the straight Red version we played at Regionals (where my sideboard was:

4 Culling Scales
3 Fireball
1 Hidetsugu’s Second Rite
2 Sowing Salt
4 Unforge
1 Stalking Stones

That sideboard of course had elements of one of the best sideboards of all time, but was not the true work of poetry that Josh used to eventually battle to the Top 8 of US Nationals.

I am just going to pause for a second to think about how great Josh’s sideboard was. It was clearly one of the best sidebaords I ever built, but more than that, was probably one of the best sideboards of all time.

I mean we were able to fit both a full transformation and a solid repositioning in those fifteen cards!

For purposes of this blog post, the etra value came from just running Tendo Ice Bridge. In a de facto one color deck, Tendo Ice Bridge was free. It came into play untapped, it tapped for Red if you needed it to… But along with the one Swamp (and eight artifact searchers), Tendo Ice Bridge allowed Kuroda-style Red to flatten Tooth and Nail with Cranial Extraction.

Any guesses on what we would name?

Eldrazi Ramp, Tim Landale

2 Cultivate
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Everflowing Chalice
4 Explore
1 Eye of Ugin
11 Forest
4 Growth Spasm
4 Joraga Treespeaker
4 Khalni Garden
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
2 Mystifying Maze
4 Overgrown Battlement
4 Primeval Titan
4 Summoning Trap
4 Tectonic Edge
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
3 Wurmcoil Engine
Sideboard
2 All Is Dust
1 Eye of Ugin
2 Nature’s Claim
3 Obstinate Baloth
2 Pelakka Wurm
4 Terastodon
1 Wurmcoil Engine

For those of you who want me to use more recent deck lists, here is one from just last weekend.

The one thing I was really impressed with talking to Tim at the $5K was his use of two Mystifying Mazes. Some mono-Green players didn’t use it at all!

Tim talked about how it was good quite often and they added a second copy because it was so low cost (there is that “one color deck” bonus again)… He recounted that even with his Eye of Ugin stripped, he was able to win a race with a single Primeval Titan purely because he played two copies of the mighty Eye.

Tim’s mana in general was extremely impressive, though. One thing that struck me was his play of Growth Spasm, cutting darling Cultivate (he said he might cut them all if he had it over again). Growth Spasm gets you to a faster Primeval Titan than Cultivate, and he focused getting the most out of his mana on getting the most powerful card, most quickly.

Like I said, impressive.

You’ve probably already seen this, but here is a video that I (with BDM) did with Tim a couple of days ago. If you haven’t already seen it, it was at least nominally done for Top Decks, but I have to have all these ducks lined up ahead of time in order to submit them to the mother ship. Enjoy!

LOVE
MIKE