|
MagicAdvisor.com |
| Home | Judge! | Test yourself | What? | Vendors | Decks | Contact me |
| Worship Decks |
| Worship - The development of a Worship Deck by Jim Auwaerter |
|
Worship is good at keeping you alive through massive amounts of damage. It requires one creature in play to use it, and since it is an enchantment, it can only be killed by white, and green. Red and black of course can simply eliminate my creatures. Since the deck has to revolve around Worship, simply throwing it in a Rebel deck won't work. Worship also favors a passive deck strategy, since your creatures are more vulnerable if they attack, and you need to keep your creatures in play. This means the deck has to be a combo deck, or win through something other than damage. Other than damage, there are three ways to win:
I began the deck by putting in the 4 Worship. Worship is difficult to use for two major reasons. Against fast decks, you need to have it out early. Many Stompy decks win by turn 5 when the opponent doesn't block. The other problem is, as I said before, that every color has a way to stop the combo of Worship + creature. The first problem I address is mana acceleration. White can't accelerate mana very well, except maybe with Serra's Sanctum (more about that later). That means a second color has to be added, since Terrain Generator is very conditional, and artifact mana helps by turn 3 at best. Green is the color for mana acceleration. By using mana creatures, I kill two birds with one stone. I have a creature in play quickly, and I have Worship in play quickly. Another card that can accelerate mana in green is Exploration. It only costs one green mana as well, so it will get mana quickly. The question is how many that you want to use. Birds of Paradise can produce white mana, but are rare. At first go, I used! 3 Birds and 4 Llanowar Elves. I then decided that since I would have to trade for a number of cards, I might as well use the best. Exploration is also good, and if you have a high land count, you can have a turn 2 Worship. Next, you should put in card accelerants. If you are trying to deck a person, you want him drawing cards as well. This makes symmetric card drawers especially valuable. Howling Mine is good in this case. To increase the consistency of this deck, you want to have Enlightened Tutors. As long as you are searching for an enchantment or an artifact, it's like a delayed Demonic Tutor. It also means that you have 4 more copies of any enchantment or artifact in your deck for the purpose of finding cards. Another thing that would help me to draw cards is Argothian Enchantress. It works well for three different reasons. First, it will occasionally get you one or two cards before you get out a Worship. Two, it is an untargetable creature. This will help against black creature destruction, Masticore, and red direct damage. Third, it is cheap. It only costs 2 mana, so can be put out the turn before you bring out the Worship. Next, we need a way to prevent decking ourselves as we deck our opponent. These should be cards, which allow us to avoid drawing cards after a certain point. They should also be in green, white, or artifact. If green or white, it's best if they are enchantments, since we can search for enchantments with the Enlightened Tutors. I went to Apprentice, and the first card alphabetically was Abundance. This is the ideal card to use, because it prevents you from decking yourself no matter how many turns it takes, and it also allows you to run a higher mana ratio, and not be stuck drawing land when you need to find something else. 2 Abundance are all that are needed, because of the Enlightened Tutors. For general purposes, it's good to have spot enchantment and artifact removal. Green has Creeping Mold, but that's a little expensive. Seal of Cleansing costs half as much, can be used against two major card types, and can sit in play if you don't have a need for it immediately. The deck is also weak against Seal of Cleansing/Disenchant. To protect against that, we can use Fountain Watch, a good, rarely used card. It also keeps the Worship effective. Finally, in the 2 cc range, a Vine Trellis will help with mana acceleration, and can be used to block if you don't have out a Worship yet, and would otherwise die from an attack. The last thing to add is land. You want to have a high concentration of land so that you get everything out early. It also makes the Explorations more effective. You only need one white mana to get out Worship, and the only double white card in your deck is Fountain Watch. You also have a number of 1 cc green cards that help accelerate your mana. Therefore, it makes more sense to have more green mana than white. I originally used Serra's Sanctum for white mana, but I too often didn't have an enchantment in play early, so it was less than effective than a plains. Brushland and City of Brass should be included. Playing versus the main deck types - This is good for a main deck, and has usually won against Stompy and WWeenie, since they have no creature elimination, and my Fountain Watch protects against Disenchant. Against Suicide black, the percentage isn't quite so high. It depends on how quickly I get one of the enchantresses. Against Ponza, there are two problems. They can eliminate my creatures, and my lands. The lands are more of a problem in the early game, so I use Sheltering Prayers in the early game, until I can bring a Spiritual Asylum into play. Since I don't attack, there is no disadvantage, and it protects my creatures against black creature destruction, red burn, blue bounce, Masticore, and even Parallaxes. I also throw in a single copy of Absolute Law and Absolute Grace, since I can search for all of them with an Enlightened Tutor. This left me with three decks as major threats, Bargain, Replenish, and Accelerated Blue. As always, Replenish is a devil to beat if your deck also revolves around enchantments. My only solution was to include two copies of Reverent Silence. Against Replenish, I need a Fountain Watch, a Worship, and a Spiritual Asylum in play to win. It's one of the deck's hardest match-ups. Against Bargain, Worship is useless. Bargain doesn't kill people by attacking with a Skirge Familiar. Therefore, you use Ivory Mask. You might also need a Fountain Watch, if they aren't playing an aggressive version of it. You can also use Cursed Totem. While it prevents you from using your mana creatures, it also prevents the Skirge Familiar, the omnipresent Masticore (not in Bargain, but everywhere else), Morphling, and Rebels. Finally, Accelerated Blue. There isn't much you can do against them. The best that I could come up with is Grinning Totem. It can pull out one of their sources of damage, and Acc. Blue doesn't have that much when it comes to damage. If you've also included the Cursed Totem, you can block Morphlings with Fountain Watches, so you only need to get out the flying things, like Palinchrons. It also helps against cards sideboarded against you, like untargeted removal (your worst fear). |