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Magic the Classroom – Rule of Nine Refined

By Dan Eckstein ⋅ December 16, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Today for class I would like to revisit a pre­vi­ous class dis­cus­sion. My very first piece here on Man­a­na­tion was over a con­cept I called the “Rule of Nine.”

In a nut­shell the idea is to build a deck with just nine cards. That’s right only nine. It’s all we really need. We play 4 copies of each of course and then add 24 lands to make a total of 60. Decks of this type are a model of con­sis­tency and are very reli­able but lack flex­i­bil­ity. I ALWAYS start with this skele­ton struc­ture in every deck I build. In fact you’ll rarely see me using only 3 copies of a card. Let alone 2 or the misers 1 copy.

But that has already been done and you can feel free to reread it here.

What I want to do today is refine this basic con­cept for dif­fer­ent deck arche­types. For each type we will look at not only look­ing for nine cards but also look­ing at their mana cost and card type. The mana cost skele­ton makes sure that we fit a good mana curve while the card type helps to focus our direction.

We will start by look­ing at Agro type decks. When I have a stu­dent that knows how to play but is just start­ing to design their own decks I always sug­gest start­ing with Agro. Not because it’s eas­i­est to play but because it has the most options. Every expan­sion that I can think of has more choices for crea­tures than any other card type. And Agro decks heart­beat comes from crea­tures there­fore yield­ing the most flex­i­bil­ity for Agro deck design­ers. CC stands for Con­verted Costs. So a card that cost GGG would be a 3 cc.

A basic Agro build would go like this

• 2 slots for 1cc creatures
• 2 slots for 2 cc creatures
• 2 slots for 3 cc (or greater) creatures
• 2 slots for 1 to 3 cc Spells
• 1 slot for Any­thing Else

Of course the mana curve for this deck is very low and quick. In most builds you could eas­ily slip in an extra ½ slot of cards and decrease your total land count but we are going to stick with 9 for all of today’s list.

With this list we’ll have at least 8 pos­si­ble plays on turn 1 and at least 16 for turn 2. That’s a lot of early play. Let’s say I’m mak­ing my focus Gob­lins. As a tribe Gob­lins are some of the best crea­tures to fit this sim­ple curve.

In the 1cc crea­ture slot I’m putting Gob­lin Guide first and fore­most fol­lowed by Gob­lin Bush­whacker. Under­stand that Bush­whacker plays more like a 2cc since you really want it’s kicker as well.

The 2 cc slots for Gob­lins in Stan­dard only yields 6 options. I per­son­ally found that amaz­ing but at least there will be at least one more in World­wake. (That is if you pushed the right but­ton in MaRo’s arti­cle on the mother ship Mon­day). From the short list I only took one actual crea­ture spell. War­ren Insti­ga­tor. For my other 2cc crea­ture I used a spell that cre­ates crea­tures. Dragon Fod­der while not tech­ni­cally a crea­ture it does serve the job. And when I get to my “other” card you may see its value.

For the 3+ cc crea­tures I’m going to run with the Gob­lin pumper of Gob­lin Chief­tain. The addi­tional Hasty-ness can also serve some ben­e­fit. The addi­tion of War­ren Insti­ga­tor really begs for Siege-Gang com­man­der to be added to the list. Just the idea of see­ing an unblocked Insti­ga­tor hit for two and putting two Siege-gangs in play makes me smile.

Our extra low cc spells we’ll reg­u­late to sim­ple burn. Light­ning Bolt and Burst Light­ning fill that role rather well and easy. For the “other” slot I’m putting in Eldrazi Mon­u­ment. For some of you this may be a sur­prise but a more focused ver­sion of this deck has been out there for awhile. It might even pre­date Eldrazi Green. I men­tion this because I don’t want any­one think­ing that I’m tak­ing credit for its cre­ation. I just used it because it is so close to the ‘Rule of Nine’ ver­sion.

The next deck type that we can design is Agro Con­trol. While agro con­trol still gets is win by pound­ing crea­tures in the Red Zone it also looks to cap­i­tal­ize on con­trol­ling the board so its pounders can con­tinue unmo­lested. Basi­cally the only shift in the rule of nine is an increase in Cast­ing cost for our crit­ters and an increase in spells slots so we can have a larger con­trol selection.

Agro Con­trol slots would go like this.

• 2 slots for 1 or 2 cc creatures
• 2 slots for 3 or 4 cc creatures
• ½ slot for 5+ crea­tures. (Note: ½ slot would denote two cards in a deck of 60.)
• 2 slots for 0-2cc spells
• 2 slots for 2–4 cc spells
• ½ slot for 5+ cc spells

The most pop­u­lar exam­ple of Agro Con­trol being used right now is Jund. While a good Jund deck has been refined well past the Rule of Nine skele­ton above I will still use if for my focus.

In nor­mal Jund there are barely any 1 or 2 cc crea­tures other than Putrid Leach. Keep­ing the Leach as my first slot I’ll also add Birds of Par­adise as my sec­ond. Jund can often have mana issues and the accel­er­a­tion could prove use­ful. The big delimma is the fact that so many lands have to enter the bat­tle field tapped so the Birds won’t often see play on turn 1 like you would want them to. I also debated Elvish Vision­ary since it does add to the card advan­tage engine that Jund thrives on.

In the 3 or 4 cc crea­ture slot most Jund decks have 3 slots full (the extra com­ing from only hav­ing 1 slot used for 1 or 2 cc). I’m going to slip in the two most pop­u­lar from the Jund list that I have seen. Blood­braid Elf and Sprout­ing Thri­nax go on my list.

The ½ of a slot for a big crea­ture goes eas­ily to Brood­mate Dragon though I have also seen SGC in this slot as well.

For the 0-2cc spells we have Light­ning Bolt and Ter­mi­nate. Doom Blade gets an hon­or­able men­tion since it is a lit­tle eas­ier on the mana require­ments but it stinks in the mirror.

The Two slots for 2–4 cc spells are greatly con­tested. Many a forum is full of argu­ments about which card is bet­ter and why for Jund to play. Most of these argu­ments are cor­rect and should be resolved by using 3 or 2 copies in a deck for ver­sa­til­ity in dif­fer­ent game sce­nar­ios. Since the Rule of Nine only allows for 4 of’s we’ll select Blight­ning and Mael­strom Pulse.

The final ½ slot will go to Bitu­mi­nous Blast. A close run­ner up is Gar­ruk but being forced to use 4 of by the Rule makes Gar­ruk a poten­tial headache.

The Final Agro type of deck we’ll look at today is Agro-Ramp. With this arche­type our goal is not to make small incre­ments of Red Zone dam­age early but instead make large incre­ments sooner than expected by accel­er­at­ing our mana base.

The Agro –Ramp Skele­ton would go some­thing like this.

• 2 Slots 0-2cc mana acceleration
• 3 Slots 3-5cc crea­tures with extra abilities
• 3 Slots 1 – 4cc spells
• 1 Slot Mana fun­nel. A card which we can chan­nel our high amount of lategame mana into.

Naya Lightsaber is prob­a­bly the clos­est deck to this con­cept though it is so far from the Rule of Nine our list won’t even com­pare. In fact the Cal­i­for­nia State win­ners deck only carry 4 cards that were 4 of’s and had just as many cards that were just sin­gle­tons. Go figure.

For our build I’ll begin with Noble Hier­arch as my first accel­er­ant. Her extra Exalted abil­ity is a real bonus when our crea­tures hit. The sec­ond slot is a tough choice. I looked hard at both Birds and Trace of Abun­dance. I like the Abun­dance because there is less removal choices and the fact that it can pro­tect a non-basic land from a Gob­lin Ruin­blaster (a card spoiled by Man­a­na­tion) that every red deck seems to run nowa­days. In the end I went with the Birds for the quick­ness aspect. Going from 1 to 3 mana seemed more valu­able in the build than going from 2 to 4.

In the Beat­down depart­ment that is the 3-5cc crea­ture slots I’ll start with the Wal­let­slayer (not my nick­name but it sounds cool). The next slot I’ll use Knight of the Reli­quary with the idea of run a mul­ti­tude of fetch­lands which should cause him to be fairly large fairly fast. In many Naya decks the last slot goes to Ranger of Eos with a pack­age of 1cc’s for him to fetch. The Rule of Nine makes this a hard case to swal­low so I like drop­ping Woolly Thoc­tar in this slot. Note that if I had ran with Trace ear­lier I prob­a­bly would have used Spell­breaker Behe­moth or Cliffrun­ner Behe­moth instead of Woolly.

For the Spell slots I start with Gar­ruk. As a Planeswalker he counts as a “spell.” His plus abil­ity helps us ramp and the Beast maker sup­ple­ments our beat­down. Rarely but some­times none the less his Over­run will break stale­mates. The name­sake card Naya Charm has to go in. Finally the Path to Exile takes the final slot though Obliv­ion Ring may be more use­ful in some Meta’s.

For our fun­nel card I went with Thorn­ling. There are just so many exquis­ite plays that you can make if you have the mana avail­able. And this deck should often have mana to spare.

Next week we’ll look at Con­trol and Combo Skele­tons. Finals are soon approach­ing so pre­pare yourself.

Dan is a High School Teacher who does everything he can to squeeze Magic into his schedule. Between being a Father, Husband, and Coach it’s pretty hard. Articles by Dan focus on tips and lessons for beginners that he has learned while teaching his students how to play their best. As a player Dan has a propensity to go Crazy For Combos so occasionally these articles happen as well.

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