Magic the Gathering

Constructed

Magic the Classroom : Zoo’s 12 Step

By Dan Eckstein ⋅ September 30, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

“Beige is the new black.” At least that’s what they say when they’re try­ing to sell you a beige out­fit. The idea is that every­one looks good in black and if you can make them think your beige idea is just as cool then you’re in. This type of phrase has become so cliché.

Some oth­ers like it are:

• “40 is the new 30.” Mean­ing every­one who is now 40 acts like 30 year olds used to act. I’m almost there. I can’t wait to act like I’m 30. What­ever that means.
• “16 is the new 6.” This is one we teach­ers throw around the staff room. No offense if you’re 16 but some­times matu­rity doesn’t come with age. For the record I’ve had 16 year olds act 26 so go figure.
• “14 is the new 20.” Finally a Magic related one for today’s class. Pre-Elfball dur­ing the last PTQ Extended sea­son I heard this phrase bat­ted around a lot. It stemmed from Zoo decks being so pop­u­lar and their con­sis­tent use of Fetch Land into a Shock Land untapped. Turn 1 going to 17 life and turn 2 hit­ting 14 life before the game really even got started. Basi­cally mak­ing their total life 14 to start the game.

If you’re new to the game or you missed the last year, Zoo decks are very sim­ple. You fill a major por­tion of your deck with cheap effi­cient beat­ers, add in some burn cards and maybe throw in some removal and/or pump spells and you have your­self the basic gar­den vari­ety Zoo deck. The idea is to get the early dam­age going fast and fin­ish them off with the direct burn to the dome. Or you can choose to burn and remove the block­ers to allow your guys to con­tinue the red zone win.

For the old school play­ers Zoo plays a lot like Sligh decks of old, only the above men­tioned Fetch/Shock lands allow you to play the best crit­ters of all col­ors and not be lim­ited to just red. Also many Zoo decks actu­ally curve out cheaper than clas­sic Sligh could of.

Many peo­ple thought that Onslaught block rotat­ing out of Extended would be the down­fall of Zoo. Mostly because of the loss of the Fetch­lands. But with Zendikar came the rebirth with the Enemy fetch lands. Mean­ing now the fetch­lands are made to get two one of two enemy col­ored lands (red and white or green and blue for exam­ple) instead of allied col­ors (red and black or green and white). Of course this means lit­tle to noth­ing for Zoo decks. It may take a good Zoo player all of 15 min­utes to con­fig­ure his new land base.

The real debate for the Zoo player is what cards to run. Zoo always had some debat­able slots but the addi­tions to the poten­tial Zoo deck have been tremen­dous. For today’s les­son I am hop­ing to give you a plan for han­dling dilemma’s like these.

If you’ve been a reg­u­lar reader of mine you know of my love for the Rule of Nine. It’s how I first think of a deck and the very first build I use when try­ing out a new idea. For those unfa­mil­iar with the Rule it basi­cally runs a play­set of 9 cards and 24 lands to make the deck.

But what hap­pens if you’re a Zoo player and your list is longer than just the nine cards? First of all we need to under­stand that Zoo can actu­ally be ham­pered by too many lands so your list of the non-land cards will be longer. So for right now the list is a lot longer than 9 or even 10. I’m not going to show you the per­fect 10 for your Zoo but I have a sug­ges­tion for how the fig­ure it out for yourself.

When­ever I’m pre­sented with the too many choices prob­lem I run what I call the “12 step pro­gram.” I named it that as joke since many of my stu­dents can’t force them­selves to focus their decks down to just nine cards. I mean no offense to any­one who is actu­ally par­tic­i­pat­ing in a 12 step pro­gram, I think it is a won­der­fully effec­tive and ful­fill­ing process. “Hi my name is Timmy and I put to many cards in my decks.”

What I do with the ’12 step’ is sim­i­lar to the Rule of Nine only instead of 9 cards I use 12. But 12 play­sets with proper mana would be way too thick of deck so we will use 3 of each card instead of 4. That gives us the same 36 card slots and 24 lands for the deck. Then I will play the deck out keep­ing note of the MVCs (Most Valu­able Cards) of each game. It is impor­tant to have a large as pos­si­ble sam­ple from test­ing so you can make bet­ter decisions.

After some early test­ing it will usu­ally become appar­ent which cards stand out and which should be cut. I actu­ally focus more on the weak­est links. If I can decide on a card to cut it allows me to bump 3 MVCs up to their full play­set poten­tial. Then with this new con­fig­u­ra­tion of 3 full sets and 8 triple sets I’ll repeat the process. Some­times a card that went up to 4 will slide back but not always.

At each stage in devel­op­ment I’ll look to do the same. Find a card that isn’t doing its job and trim it out. Which then allows for 3 more full sets. If I can do this cleanly I’ll have a Rule of Nine list in 3 iterations.

Zoo’s mana curve actu­ally allows it to go beyond the Rule of Nine and put more cards in place of lands. So I’m actu­ally going to do a 13 step pro­gram. WARNING: The 13 cards that I’m and using are not the only cards that Zoo should con­sider. They are hon­estly just the first 13 that came to my mind.

I’ll cover my burn choices first. The first mis­take I see a lot of play­ers do with Zoo is to for­get the burn com­po­nent of the deck. Even with the best beat­ers you will even­tu­ally stall out and lose the card-attrition war if you can’t keep the con­stant pres­sure on.

• Light­ning Bolt – Our most effi­cient burn available.
• Rift Bolt – Through the sus­pend mechanic it is the same as Light­ning Bolt and in late game we’ll have the 3 mana avail­able to hard cast.
• Light­ning Helix – Same dam­age as above plus life gain to off­set our Fetch/Shock lands.
• Tribal Flames – The Domain ele­ment is easy to achieve in Zoo and 5 dam­age for 2 mana is pretty solid.

For the Crit­ter choices I will list.

• Wild Nacatl — 3/3 attack­ing on turn 2. Sur­vives Fall­out as well
• Kird Ape – A clas­sic Zoo card. Though I fear he may be replaced come Austin. I mean he “only hits for 2”.
• Tar­mogoyf – Mana effi­cient and a beat stick. The only real bum­mer is when both sides of the table have one. Boring.
• Wooly Thoc­tar – Clas­sic beasty beater. While most times he is a light­ning rod for your opponent’s removal he can win games if left unchecked. Remem­ber you have some good burn for chump blockers.
• Matca Raiders — While we’re look­ing for 5 power for 3 mana we might as well load up on the Domain ability.
• Steppe Lynx – When using a Fetch this guy turn into a 4/5 which could be swing on turn 2. Can’t keep it going though so I’m unsure but I fig­ure it’s just for test­ing right.

The rest of the list is Mis­cel­la­neous stuff that just helps.

• Might of Alara – if we achieve domain this is as good a 5 bonus damage.
• Path to Exile – Removal of pesky blockers.
• Umezawa’s Jitte – If this is active we are assured of stay­ing in the Beat­down role.

Well that’s my 13 cards for you to dis­sect. What I want you to do for your home­work is to cut 2 cards com­pletely and give the 6 that you would make into full play­sets. I real­ize that there are cards out there that can make a Zoo bet­ter but I want you to focus on these ones for now.

Please note I didn’t use any of the “techy” choices like Ranger of Eos, Blood­braid Elf, or Qasali Pridemage.

Wow, Bell rang fast today. Good luck with your list!

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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