Oh wow, you're actually reading this. Crap, I should probably start being all professional and stuff... oh man, I screwed up already. Well, I guess I'll have to take a mulligan on this one, but I'm not scooping just yet.
Hey, I'm Bowie and this is the brand-new official page for Yo Mama: the Gathering. YM:G is... well, this. This little site is my corner of the internet, where I pay tribute to the game I love to play. Here, I'll be posting decklists and concepts I've been working on, tournament reports for everything from FNMs and saturday box splits to SCG opens, states/regionals and whatever else I happen to enter. Also, I like to play around with horrible deck concepts, like say 3+ card combos or jank interactions, so if you're looking for something fun to play around with in Type 2 or looking to take an out-of-the-blue Tier 3 deck to FNM, or even if you're a new player trying to put something together with nothing more than a couple draft pools, you're going to find what you're looking for here at Your Mom Games.
Tonight, I feel like going a more serious route, with a B/w control deck I like to call Carlton Banks, because... well, you know. Much like the character in Fresh Prince of Bel Air, this deck appears black at first, but once you spend a few turns on the other side of him/it you start to realize that he's/it's acting pretty white.
Basically, the format right now is all about control. The battle going on is whether to use Black or White to back up the Jace parade, and it seems like Black is winning. Take a look as to what each deck has to compliment the other.
Black:
- Vampire Hexmage for Jace, the Mindsculptor and possibly Quest for the Holy Relic, Ratchet Bomb or Gideon Jura
- Doom Blade as cheap removal to deal with RUG's early Frost Titan or Lotus Cobra. Also helps against White Weenie and Goblin decks, but useless against Mono-Black Vat control or Vampires. Also can't stop Ulamog, Grave Titan or Wurmcoil Engine
- Memoricide for dealing with all that stuff I just said Black can't deal with. Note that it's useless for anything already on the table.
- Duress to stop Mana Leak from interrupting what you need to do when you need to do it, in particular resolving Memoricide.
- Consume the Meek is an interesting choice for a wrath effect, it will kill any aggro deck or Wurmcoil/Elspeth tokens but does nothing against the titans or Oracle of Mul Daya. In other words, it's only good if your opponent has no big threats, so unless you're staring down some Squadron Hawks this card adds almost nothing to the control matchup.
- Grave Titan, or as I call him, Three-Way Titan, is a powerful creature if only for the fact that he can't be hit by a doom blade. The problem is that the tokens are way too easy to die to Pyroclasm/Consume/Ratchet Bomb, and as long as you're running blue Frost Titan is the one that's taking up the slot. Usually, you'll see Gravy in decks played by those afraid of a Memoricide resolving and naming Frosty the Tapman, but still only one or two copies.
- Sign in Blood is a risky draw engine that not only needs BB, but brings your total down to three titan beats away from a gameloss. However, don't forget that in a pinch you can always cast it on your opponent who foolishly let themselves take three titan swings. Of course, they've probably cracked two fetches already by that point, so it's largely irrelevant.
White:
- Baneslayer Angel is a beast. Well actually, she's an angel, not a beast, but you get the idea. The main problem with her is that without an extra point of power, she dies to any titan. But the good news is that unless she's stuck being tapped, you're only going to lose one life a turn by letting the titan go through. Plus she costs one less, letting you possibly resolve her after your opponent taps out for a Jace. What's funny is that her protection is often overlooked, but don't forget that she eats Kargan Dragonlords for breakfast.
- Journey to Nowhere may be killed by a Ratchet Bomb, but that doesn't make it a bad card. Journey still has the ability to make the normally persistent Vengevines and Bloodghasts quit the game and go rock out to some Journey. It also deals with Wurmcoils and Grave Titans that its cousin Doom Blade can't handle.
- Condemn is basically a cheaper Journey, great against the turn one Goblin Guide or turn three Frost Titan plays. Also good for getting around a Mana Leak, since white has no Duress. However, it's significantly weaker against Eldrazi ramp, not that the deck is very prevalent anymore.
- Day of Judgment does everything that Consume the Meek can't, only at sorcery speed and it kills all your stuff too. Great if you use Wurmcoil Engine, not as great if your opponent uses Wurmcoil Engine too.
- Gideon Jura is a pretty power beast, with the ability to take a hit from a Titan and then kill it the turn after, tapped by a Frosty or no. Can also work in conjunction with your Frost Titan to Assassinate whatever creature your opponent throws on the table.
- Elspeth Tirel is a downgrade from the previous Elspeth, but this version has her advantages. For one, the ability to destroy enemy planeswalkers, annoying artifacts like Ratchet Bomb, Sword of Body and Mind/Adventuring Gear or Mimic Vat, and clearing the board of Journeys at the same time. The ability to attack, Journey one of your own creatures and then boardwipe and untap your dude is very powerful indeed. By herself, she probably won't win any games like the old one did. But a WoG that kills planeswalkers? Now that has some use.
- Wall of Omens deserves to be mentioned for the sheer power this cantrip has. Not only is it great against aggro, but it can stop early beats from a Hexmage or Lotus Cobra too. Great with Mimic Vat or Sun Titan too, if you want to go that route.
- Leonin Arbiter is a Grizzly Bears that likes to piss off anyone with fetchlands, ramp, Trinket Mage, or Quest for the Holy Relic. So... every deck in the format. Nothing screws up your opponent's tempo more than turning fetchlands into even worse versions of Rupture Spire.
Anyways, the point is that both sides have a lot of options available at their disposal. But nobody's interested in combining the two. Jace, Mana Leak and Frost Titan are so well-known right now that no serious control player would consider giving them up. Luckily, I'm not serious enough to pay a hundred bucks a pop for a piece of cardboard. I don't play in enough major events to make that kind of cash worth it. However, if one cut out the middleman and built BW instead, they'd cut costs by more than half. Hence, the cheap man's deck: Jaceless Control, also known as Carlton Banks.
Creatures- 15
Spells-20
3 Duress
Lands- 25
10 Swamp
7 Plains
I know what you're thinking, four Memoricides? Four Days? Unfortunately, this is a control deck without blue, which means that to be consistent you need to have as many copies as you can of what you'll need to secure a win. Memoricide names Primeval against Valakut, Jace or Frosty against control, Argentum Armor against weenie, Basilisk Collar/Adventuring Gear/Spikeshot Elder against Boros, and Bloodghast or Kalastria Highborn against vampires. As long as you know your matchups, there's always something to name, even if you get multiples. Plus, you can always change it up after boarding.
I haven't posted a definite sideboard as of yet because honestly, it depends on your own personal meta. For players at store where there's a lot of elves, vamps, weenie, or metal red flying around, Consume the Meek is a good option, or Celestial Purge for vamps. Inquisition of Kozilek might be a good choice if there's a small number of control players, and a fourth Duress might even be added in high-density control environments. One thing's for sure though, you need to have four Leonin Arbiters. They take the slot of Vampire Hexmage whenever you don't need to worry about Jace, and they should still manage to find a home in boards against RUG as well.
I only got a chance to play a couple games with Carlton Banks so far, and it's still populated with a good amount of proxies so I won't be running it at FNM within the next couple weeks unless I can swipe some cards from a rich friend or two. However, from what I've seen it does exactly what it's supposed to do. It gets rid of counterspells early, never lets Jace stick for more than a turn, and takes turns dropping and killing bombs until one finally beats through, hopefully one you control. And that, my friends, is how Carlton Banks wins games.
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