Blazing Saddles

Brian Kibler

Prior to Pro Tour Chicago, one decktype that received a great deal of attention was R-B control. Termed "Machine Head" after the art on the powerful Invasion cards the deck was designed to exploit, various incarnations of the design have popped up since, but have met with little success due to their inability to deal with the ubiquitous Fires of Yavimaya decks that are dominating Standard, in particular the card Saproling Burst. In the wake of a new set, however, all preconceptions must be set aside and the format examined anew, both in the face of the new cards introduced and the knowledge one has obtained about the metagame of the format.

One of the problems Machine Head style decks faced was their inability to gain total control of a game. While cards like Void, Pyre Zombie, and Hammer of Bogardan can provide powerful card advantage and board control, there is nothing Machine Head decks can do about an opponent's draws. Even an opponent with no creatures and no cards can still rip a Saproling Burst off the top for the win, and the slow clock cards like Pyre Zombie and Blazing Specter provide is generally insufficient to reduce the opponent to zero life before they are able to draw some kind of dangerous threat.

Because of this vulnerability to topdecking in the long game, and because of the potentially very powerful cards Planeshift has to offer this archetype, it seems like the way to build R-B in the current Standard environment is not as a control deck, but as an aggressive one. My initial build for this deck was based around abusing Plague Spitter as a means to punish the heavy reliance on one toughness creatures in the current metagame, but I found that at three casting cost, the Spitter was simply too slow. Without a Dark Ritual, it didn't come into play soon enough to have an impact against Fires, and even then their mana creatures had a turn to live before they were spit into oblivion. Similarly, against Rebel decks, a turn three Plague Spitter often does nothing more than kill the Defiant Falcon who searched for Lin Sivvi, gaining little ground without another removal spell to back it up. Additionally, Plague Spitter discouraged the use of Nightscape Familiar in the deck, which shores up a number of holes in the deck as well as providing much-welcome acceleration. Thus, without further ado - Blazing Saddles.

4 Rishadan Port
4 Sulfurous Springs
8 Swamps
8 Mountains
	
4 Nightscape Familiar
4 Chimeric Idol
2 Pyre Zombie
4 Blazing Specter
3 Flametongue Kavu
4 Skizzik
2 Ancient Hydra
	

4 Addle
2 Ghitu Fire
3 Terminate
4 Dark Ritual
	

4 Perish
3 Tsabo's Decree
3 Urza's Rage
3 Boil
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Terminate
	

Thundercats was designed to exploit one of the characteristic weaknesses of the current Standard metagame, that being a reliance on high casting cost spells. It did so by employing a large amount of land destruction to render Saproling Burst and Shivan Wurm-playing opponents helpless while large board control oriented creatures like Scoria Cat came in for the kill. The R-B deck in this article is a departure from this kind of specific strategy, but is still designed as a foil deck for the current Standard metagame. The precise applications of each of the cards against the popular decktypes will be explained in detail.

The first thing to look at in this deck is the mana, and, more importantly, the mana acceleration. Any aggressive black deck ought to be designed specifically to take advantage of Dark Ritual, as it is generally the most powerful argument for playing the strategy. With this in mind, the creature selection of the deck must be constructed in such a way that it can put the burst of black mana to good use in the early game, and it is also often a good idea to have a sink for extra Rituals in the late game. A cursory examination of the cards in Blazing Saddles will show that the creatures have, for the most part, either a significant black or colorless component in their casting cost, making them optimal candidates to be Ritualed out in the early game.

On the other hand, the deck must be able to operate effectively when it does NOT draw a Ritual, and as such should include a reasonable non-Ritual-inclusive mana curve for these unfortunate situations. Blazing Saddles includes Nightscape Familiar to mitigate these situations even further (not to mention blocking Blastoderms while he's at it!), and while the Familiar only reduces the cost of red and blue spells, this isn't a particularly limiting factor, as the majority of creatures you want to play are red to begin with. This limitation is, however, a contributing factor to the conspicuous absence of Phyrexian Scuta from the decklist, one which will be further elaborated upon in the next section - creatures.

As an aggressive deck, the creature selection is what defines how Blazing Saddles works. Indeed, the name of the deck suggests the primary function of many of the creatures - tempo, tempo, tempo. The reason Blazing Saddles is effective where Machine Head is not is because the former seizes tempo with mana acceleration, as outlined above, and refuses to relinquish it, maintaining pressure with haste creatures and removal. The deck's namesake, Blazing Specter, is an extremely powerful creature, providing a source of both damage and disruption, forcing an opponent to remove it quickly or find their hand stripped of valuable resources and their life total dropping at an unhealthy clip. Between Dark Ritual and Nightscape Familiar, the deck has eight ways to play a Specter by turn three. In an environment defined by four casting cost removal, in Wrath of God and Flametongue Kavu (which has replaced Assault/Battery in many Fires builds), the amount of damage an early Specter inflicts can be devastating.

Once the Specter is cleared out of the way, it's time to bring in the big guns. Invasion block Constructed showed us the power of haste, and there's no more devastating haste creature than Skizzik. I cannot recount how many times over the course of Pro Tour-Tokyo I heard the words "I had him next turn, but he ripped a Skizzik off the top for the win." Haste creatures completely throw off an opponent's math, and turn sorcery speed removal into little more than damage control. When an opponent taps out to Wrath your early assault, there's little he will like less than seeing a Skizzik come down to immediately replace it, hitting for five in the process. Even more deadly is the potential for a Ritual-Skizzik draw, putting your opponent on a four turn clock starting on turn three. Backed up by removal, such a draw ends games very quickly.

What better removal spell to follow up a Skizzik with than one that comes attatched to a 4/2 body. The most played card of Pro Tour-Tokyo, Flametongue Kavu earns its keep in Blazing Saddles by maintaining the tempo the mana acceleration and haste creatures get started. Invasion block Constructed often degenerated into Nekrataal duels, with "Flametongue your Flametongue" probably as ubiquitous a phrase in Tokyo as "Port your Port" was at PT New York 00. The state of Standard may not be quite as bad, but there are sufficient appealing targets for this Kavu as to warrant his inclusion.

The suspicion that other players will come to similar conclusions about Flametongue Kavu is one of the powerful arguments for the inclusion of Chimeric Idol as the only target for artifact or enchantment removal in the deck. Immune to sorcery-speed removal, Chimeric Idol's primary purpose is dodging Wrath of God, keeping up pressure on the opponent while the rest of the team is swept away. One of the best cards to Ritual out against a control deck, Chimeric Idol is especially dangerous because of the deck's many haste creatures - opponents rarely have a window in which they can safely destroy the Idol because they are faced with the more pressing concern of a Skizzik breathing down their necks.

The last two creatures in the deck are what one might call the utility creatures, and are perhaps the most debatable choices of the lot. Pyre Zombie is capable of dominating long games against U-W control and Counter-Rebels much in the way Hammer of Bogardan is, and it also provides a reasonable early game threat with good placement in the mana curve. Ancient Hydra is, quite simply, one of the best creatures in the environment, with the ability to mow down opposing mana creatures and Rebel hordes while trading with Blastoderms or swinging for five. Ancient Hydra is almost strictly superior to Flametongue Kavu in so many situations that I'm tempted to play four of the former before including any of the latter, but the tempo swing Flametongue Kavu provides - and the threat of opponents using their Flametongues on my Ancient Hydras before I can activate them - is just enough to put the Kavu over the edge.

As far as Phyrexian Scuta is concerned, I've found that it simply does too little for its price. Without a Ritual, it doesn't come out until turn four (because it is unaffected by Nightscape Familiar), which is ample time for an opponent to either find an answer or pose a bigger threat of their own. Trading a card and three life for a Blastoderm against Fires doesn't seem to be a great deal, and the potential for the Scuta to be bounced and/or countered against Skies or Counterrebels seems like a big risk without a good enough payoff in the event that it does get through.

The remaining few cards in the deck are support for the creatures, both in terms of making sure they get through and finishing up what they started. Addle is much more powerful in this style of deck than it is in a more controlling design, as it can be used to strip the opponent of answers rather than threats, and there is also less likelihood that it is drawn in the late game against an opponent with an empty hand, because the hope is that there won't BE a late game with Blazing Saddles. Terminate is an all-purpose kill spell, clearing the way of pesky blockers at instant speed - an important consideration against cards like Defiant Vanguard. The mana efficiency of Terminate is important, as it allows you to quickly dispose of your opponent's searchers and mana accelerators early on, as well as to keep up your attack and kill a creature in the same turn in the midgame. Finally, Ghitu Fire provides additional removal as well as a finisher and sink for late game Dark Rituals - often providing just enough punch to end the game.

Sideboarding with Blazing Saddles is a tricky proposition, as there are many options and only fifteen sideboard slots. Perish is an obvious choice, particularly because of how much more powerful it is in an aggressive deck against Fires than in a reactive strategy, as it sweeps away both your opponent's offense and defense at the same time. Dread of Night as compared to Tsabo's Decree is a judgment call, but the effectiveness of Dread of Night at slipping underneath counterspells puts it over the edge, particularly when backed up with so much removal for Lin Sivvi. Urza's Rage is just for that purpose - killing Lin Sivvi with no questions asked. The remainder of the sideboard is fairly self-explanatory, with Boils to shore up holes against control decks where your removal overload is less effective and the fourth Terminate and Flametongue Kavu for all the others.

Keep in mind that this is, like Thundercats, an unrefined decklist meant primarily to encourage deckbuilding along the lines of this underexplored archetype. There are many possibilities to explore within this basic framework, and I hope I've given you a jumpstart into the process. Take a look at the successful B-R decks from this past weekend's Regional Championships in New Zealand for further insights. Next week I'll finish my series on foil decks for Regionals with the latest take on The Red Zone, a personal favorite, to see if Rith still has what it takes to compete in the current environment. In the meantime, direct questions and comments to majesk@aol.com. I read and reply to every email, but can't promise to do so quickly, as I'm very busy with school, Magic, and other projects. Regardless, I hope to hear from you, and good luck!