That thing you feel that is missing is Adamaro, First to Desire. He definetly needs to be in this deck. I'm not sure what you would take out for him but it would probably be the Sensei's Divining Top they really have no use in this deck since you have no way to shuffle the deck.
I don't think either of you guys read the article. The idea here is to side-step gifts. Gifts deals with permanents rather easily. You throw burn at their head and you can outrun their threats. the ghostly prison is there to deal with WW and Hand. Adding creatures is a no-no. The only reason that Ishi and Zo-Zu make it in is to punish gifts and spirits/arcane spells. (which run rampant in block). I did come up with a good change for the sideboard. I am taking out 1 Ishi-Ishi and adding 2 Sowing Salts and moving 1 pithing needle to the maindeck and removing 1 top completely. New decklist looks like this...
Oh ok! now I get it!the only problem I forsee is the WW matchup.
ghostly prison is good but what happens when they drop kami of ancient law or even worse what happens if it gets grasped! it seems like a good idea though! I know as a former WW CBS Block player I had a lot of trouble R/U Arcane A.K.A. "Ire".
don't get me wrong I know there too diffent decks but it's hard to win when all your creatures get bounced and your opponant drops ire of kaminari splicing glacial ray than twincast! and me playing white weenie not having any anser to direct damage!
I'm just not sure if this will be top tier deck as I havn't seen it Top 8 Yet!
Zo-Zu should be maxed up to 4. You want to draw him consistently so he can take out nearly 1/2 your opponent's life when they keep using tribe-elder and reach.
I think, IMO, the deck needs more creatures. I'm not really a fan about going nearly straight burn; since I use some super-secret tech when playing Gifts vs. burn decks. Guys like Adamaro and Genju of the Spires can chisel huge chunks out of people's life totals many times while a bit of burn finishes them off.
Oh ok! now I get it!the only problem I forsee is the WW matchup.
ghostly prison is good but what happens when they drop kami of ancient law or even worse what happens if it gets grasped! it seems like a good idea though! I know as a former WW CBS Block player I had a lot of trouble R/U Arcane A.K.A. "Ire".
don't get me wrong I know there too diffent decks but it's hard to win when all your creatures get bounced and your opponant drops ire of kaminari splicing glacial ray than twincast! and me playing white weenie not having any anser to direct damage!
I'm just not sure if this will be top tier deck as I havn't seen it Top 8 Yet!
WW usually Ghetto-Stomps Ire pretty handily. WW runs too many creatures for Ire to easily deal with.
The only aggro deck that Ire has a reasonable matchup vs. is Black Hand, due ot the fact that thye utilize only a few creatures at a time.
Jace on the other hand gives you card advantage for no life cost. On the contrary, Jace can actually take some damage for you. I'd think that makes him better than Arena.
Its tough to really claim much better than 60/40 against aggro when you play two colours without green. Why? Because there are many scenerios where you have to mulligan, get mana screwed, mana flooded, draw red mana and white spells, white mana and red spells, etc. Not to mention the useful parts in this deck against aggro are the hondens, the removal, and the prisons. That means the other 45 cards in your deck (75%) is putting up very little resistence against an aggressive deck. There is no way a claim like the deck can't possible lose to black hand is valid. (That wasn't the exact words from the article, but its a pretty accurate summary) I definitely agree that the deck is tooled nicely to address the gifts match ups, but it doesn't seem to do much against newly emerging mono-red lists and Deck-X. It clearly has trouble with white weenie and I am starting to believe that black hand matchup might only be 50/50.
I think the deck needs to gain focus. Right now it looks like its pre-sideboarded against both aggro and control which means if you draw the wrong 25% of your deck for these matchups you are in for a world of hurt. A better strategy in my opinion would be to re-focus this deck towards whatever deck styles are popular in your area. (Probably aggro)
The only big red flag that comes up when I look at in the list is the Flames of the Blood Hand. In a control deck, this seems really weak. It is mentioned that it can prevent the life gain from a Jitte. Lets consider that statement. If your opponent is using the counters on Jitte to gain life, that is fine. That means you are winning, or you have successful addressed a scary situation. You are the control deck, who cares if they gain another 2 or 4 life.
Finally, adding Sowing Salt to the sideboard is really odd. What does this target? There bridges? Am I missing something? Bring in 2 land destruction spells is really only correct if you had problems with something that completely destroyed your deck like Maze of Ith used to do or Boseju does do blue lists.
Really lets take this lists for what it is. Something thrown together in a couple days of testing against not up to date decks so some writer could make an interesting column. I think this list can vastly be improved and we really have to be skeptical of anything that is stated in the article since he is trying to make his deck sound good.
UR Ire's best match was WW. Thanks to a little card called Psychic Puppetry you could nullify Jitte and still Glacial Ray their creatures to minimalize their boards of threats.
Here's the article, I have played it against a Gifts deck and it rocked.
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?id=5540
H/W List ABOVE
That thing you feel that is missing is Adamaro, First to Desire. He definetly needs to be in this deck. I'm not sure what you would take out for him but it would probably be the Sensei's Divining Top they really have no use in this deck since you have no way to shuffle the deck.
Free Cards!!!
I' так смущенный m
3 Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot
3 Zo-Zu the Punisher
4 Flames of the Blood Hand
4 Ghostly Prison
4 Glacial Ray
3 Honden of Cleansing Fire
3 Honden of Infinite Rage
4 Lava Spike
3 Pithing Needle
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Yamabushi's Flame
12 Mountain
6 Plains
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
Sideboard
4 Gaze of Adamaro
2 Sowing Salt
3 Journeyer's Kite
2 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
2 Mindblaze
1 Mountain
1 Pithing Needle
while it is true that I have no shuffle effects for the deck, the top lets me dig 3 cards down for that tiny bit of extra burn when i need it.
ghostly prison is good but what happens when they drop kami of ancient law or even worse what happens if it gets grasped! it seems like a good idea though! I know as a former WW CBS Block player I had a lot of trouble R/U Arcane A.K.A. "Ire".
don't get me wrong I know there too diffent decks but it's hard to win when all your creatures get bounced and your opponant drops ire of kaminari splicing glacial ray than twincast! and me playing white weenie not having any anser to direct damage!
I'm just not sure if this will be top tier deck as I havn't seen it Top 8 Yet!
H/W List ABOVE
I think, IMO, the deck needs more creatures. I'm not really a fan about going nearly straight burn; since I use some super-secret tech when playing Gifts vs. burn decks. Guys like Adamaro and Genju of the Spires can chisel huge chunks out of people's life totals many times while a bit of burn finishes them off.
S_C
WW usually Ghetto-Stomps Ire pretty handily. WW runs too many creatures for Ire to easily deal with.
The only aggro deck that Ire has a reasonable matchup vs. is Black Hand, due ot the fact that thye utilize only a few creatures at a time.
I think the deck needs to gain focus. Right now it looks like its pre-sideboarded against both aggro and control which means if you draw the wrong 25% of your deck for these matchups you are in for a world of hurt. A better strategy in my opinion would be to re-focus this deck towards whatever deck styles are popular in your area. (Probably aggro)
The only big red flag that comes up when I look at in the list is the Flames of the Blood Hand. In a control deck, this seems really weak. It is mentioned that it can prevent the life gain from a Jitte. Lets consider that statement. If your opponent is using the counters on Jitte to gain life, that is fine. That means you are winning, or you have successful addressed a scary situation. You are the control deck, who cares if they gain another 2 or 4 life.
Finally, adding Sowing Salt to the sideboard is really odd. What does this target? There bridges? Am I missing something? Bring in 2 land destruction spells is really only correct if you had problems with something that completely destroyed your deck like Maze of Ith used to do or Boseju does do blue lists.
Really lets take this lists for what it is. Something thrown together in a couple days of testing against not up to date decks so some writer could make an interesting column. I think this list can vastly be improved and we really have to be skeptical of anything that is stated in the article since he is trying to make his deck sound good.
UR Ire's best match was WW. Thanks to a little card called Psychic Puppetry you could nullify Jitte and still Glacial Ray their creatures to minimalize their boards of threats.
The Real Best Legacy Poster of 2005 poll
16 Mountain
4 Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai
3 Adamaro, First to Desire
4 Akki Blizzard-Herder
3 Glitterfang
4 Frostling
4 Glacial Ray
4 Lava Spike
4 Crack the Earth
2 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
3 First Volley
3 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Long-Forgotten Gohei
2 Cunning Bandit
4 Pithing Needle
4 Hearth Kami
4 Pain Kami
3 Ire of Kaminari