Magic the Gathering

Constructed

Off the Beaten Path – The Three Pyromancers

By Sam Feeley ⋅ November 19, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

In Zendikar, the Ascen­sion enchant­ments take you on an “occu­pa­tional” jour­ney rather than the mate­r­ial jour­ney you take on with the com­mon and uncom­mon quests. Com­plet­ing com­plex tasks ele­vate you to some glo­ri­fied title, be it Lumi­narch, Arch­mage, Blood­chief, Beast­mas­ter, or in the case of the red mage and this week’s arti­cle, Pyromancer.

Pyro­mancer Ascen­sion is a well designed card in the sense that it can appeal to Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. It has explo­sive pos­si­bil­i­ties for Timmy, combo appeal for Johnny, and effi­ciency and con­sis­tency for Spike. Finally, there’s some­thing that the three bick­er­ing broth­ers can agree on. Today we’ll look at three dif­fer­ent ways to build around Pyro­mancer Ascen­sion, one for each of our psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­file friends, as well as how they win and where they could use some work. Let’s start with Timmy’s explo­sive num­ber, Pyro-Go.

We talk about effi­ciency and con­sis­tency being Spike val­ues, but Timmy gets a piece of the tour­na­ment pie in this FNM-viable deck. Of course, Timmy is Timmy, so he also gets what every Timmy dreams of. One of the most hel­la­cious knock­outs I have ever seen in the form of Chan­dra Ablaze’s ulti­mate and Pyro­mancer Ascen­sion. Your head asplode, indeed.

This deck wins by recur­ring any­thing and every­thing over and over with copies of Naya Charm. To com­plete the Ascen­sion, Lan cas­cades into his spells rather than cast­ing a bunch of cheap ones. He also has eight shots at Pyro­mancer Ascen­sion with Vio­lent Out­burst. (Pray you don’t hit Light­ning Bolt instead.) There’s also been talk of putting together a mana base that can get infi­nite turns by recur­ring Time Warp with Naya Charm. While explo­sive, again remem­ber that it’s very dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, to pull off con­sid­er­ing what our mana options are in today’s Stan­dard. Once again I point to the lack of Vivids and Reflect­ing Pool in this for­mat as some­thing hin­der­ing this deck concept.

Of course, we save the tour­na­ment win­ner for Spike. This list cap­tures what I believe is the core idea of a Pyro­mancer Ascen­sion deck: Get two coun­ters on the enchant­ment as quickly as pos­si­ble with cheap spells, then lower the boom with Cruel Ulti­ma­tum and Light­ning Bolt, while tak­ing all the time in the world (quite lit­er­ally) with Time Warp. You also have effi­cient dig­ging with Jace, Pon­der, and a sur­prise addi­tion in Worldly Coun­sel. The side­board also sets up quite nicely with Bog­a­r­dan Hel­lkite as extra pro­tec­tion from things like those pesky Vam­pires. I just don’t know abut Grixis Charm, though. Remem­ber that if you copy it with Pyromancer’s Ascen­sion, the copy is locked into the same mode as the orig­i­nal. I would add an extra win con­di­tion, such as Bane­fire, Burst Light­ning, and/or Bog­a­r­dan Hellkite.

Other cards to con­sider
Sphinx of Lost Truths
The great part about not kick­ing Sphinx this deck is that if you’re short on quest coun­ters, you can dis­card cards from the Comes into Play – I mean Enters the Bat­tle­field – trig­ger to fill up your grave­yard and give you more options to level up.

Sphinx of Jwar Isle
I didn’t know a 5/5 untar­getable flyer that gives you valu­able infor­ma­tion would have such a hard time find­ing a home in this for­mat. This, along with Guardian Ser­aph, is one of the most under­rated cards in Stan­dard. Respect the peeker.

If you’re going to build one of these lists for States or FNM, I would sug­gest Karl’s Grixis list. It does every­thing you want Pyromancer’s Ascen­sion to do – and every­thing it should do – with no extra­ne­ous bells and/or whis­tles. It’s con­sis­tent, it’s fun, and most impor­tantly, it’s good. Make tweaks if you must, but give it a shot.

Next week, while you recover from the tryp­to­phan in your Thanks­giv­ing turkey, I’ll take a break from deck­lists and give you a PTQ report. Hope­fully it’ll con­sist of more than two rounds of thoughts. *cough*

Until next time, dou­ble your plea­sure.
–Sam

Sam Fee­ley is a Timmy-Spike and PTQ semi-regular orig­i­nally from Con­cord, Mass­a­chu­setts. He enjoys Magic, sports, cook­ing, and writ­ing. He maintains two blogs, Samurai Entertainment on news, games, and nonsense; and Samurai Sports, about interior decorating. And by interior decorating he means sports.

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