For the past two months I have been utterly demoralizing my local playgroup with the following stack of cards, and up until the banning of Mourning the Lost it was my go to deck for the Scotts Valley PTC:
1 Duo
4 Templar
2 Cossack Citadel
2 Couronne Des Fleurs
1 Zealot Rush
1 Red Triangle Green Triangle
1 Nailed it!
4 Templar
4 Etoile-Filante
4 Mistral
4 Etincelles
4 Seeking Information
4 Fool Me Twice
4 Mourning the Lost
4 Champion of Muay Thai
4 Koppouken Training
4 Scorned Beauty
2 Protector of the Innocent
4 Sight Seeing
1 Relinquishing the Championship
2 Astute Observer
4 Getting a Ride
1 Trained by the Streets
1 Making a Killing
Total 66+1 Character (a sideboard was never constructed)
The basic premise of the deck is very simple, and Garett Brett has already demonstrated that the concept had(has?) legs with his Elisabeth deck. Wall up behind the All symbol, draw a bucket of cards, and then mill them out+occasionally use a stack of Mourning the Lost if you catch your opponent with their pants down. This article isn't going to compare and contrast the two decks though.
This is an article about how I do not think this deck is a good choice anymore, and why that entire decision is because they banned Mourning the Lost.
Before I begin, I will say that I am happy that Mourning the Lost is banned. This isn't an article for me to bitch about me no longer being able to play a deck. Duo was sometimes miserable to play and ALWAYS miserable for all but the most masochist to play against, but was also so incredibly powerful and approached the format from such a different angle that I saw little point to playing anything else if I wanted to win.
To start making sense, I guess I should break down how Mill Duo wants to play the game, as well as how Mourning the Lost factored in:
Early Game (turn 1-2): Establish a massive board presence any way possible. You're going to be drawing a LOT of cards later in the game, so you'll need foundations to leverage all the extra cards in your hand. Use Duo to block when necessary, use your life total semi-liberally. Draw all the cards you possibly can without expending too many resources.
Mourning the Lost gave you that board presence while also either giving you an extra card to either continue building or to defend with. Aggressive decks prey on control decks in the early game when the number of cards in their hand and on board is low. Control decks are basically attempting to establish a bigger board. Mourning maintains your hand and board against the aggressive decks and helps you out-build the control decks. It maintains your forward velocity, allowing you to comfortably start taking over the game.
Mid Game (turn 3-4): Start drawing/recurring cards in every way you possibly can. Conservatively mill the opponent through small Etincelles->Mistral loops. Continue to maintain board dominance. You're going to be sitting around on your ass a lot, but you're going to be doing it with 5 cards in hand and +15 on board.
Here, Mourning the Lost is focusing on two things: Drawing you to more card draw, and then maintaing the status quo. You'll always have a bigger board, you'll always have more cards in hand.
End/Late game (every other turn): Do not lose, and eventually you will win! Combo'ing an Etoile once or twice at the end of the game is an easy way to end it all, and occasionally you'll just dump +20 onto a 9 high Etoile and the opponent will scoop 'em up.
Aside from a very small percentage of corner cases, Mourning the Lost is never not relevant. Wall decks like this, with their pile of assets, actions, and situation specific foundations, can sometimes have clunky draws. Mourning smooths those draws out while digging you to the pieces you need to see for a specific matchup.
Then, Jasco went and banned Mourning the Lost (huzzah)! At first I thought Duo would continue to perform, all I had to do was take out Mourning and let the rest of the deck continue as normal. I mean, it's STILL a pile of card draw and defensive pieces, just let everything else pick up the slack right?
As of writing this article I haven't won a single relevant testing match, and the only thing that has changed is the loss of Mourning. As I lost more and more games, I started to see why.
1) I didn't have a backup way to kill the opponent: Even if I only won about 5% of my games through damage, the opponent still has to respect the threat of such a win, and play accordingly. Without that snake lurking in the grass the opponent was free to extend as far as they wanted to without fear of a back swing. It was much easier for aggressive decks to overwhelm my defenses, and for control decks to maintain board equality.
2) I was now a turn too slow transitioning into the later stages of the game: Without Mourning providing free cards and board presence in the early game I became much more susceptible to a few things. Clunky draws could no longer be smoothed out, and aggressive decks became much more difficult to deal with. If I tried to build a big board I wouldn't have any cards in hand to block with, and if I tried to keep cards in hand I could fall behind on the board.
3) The meta is evolving: With Mourning the Lost in standard the dominate decks were 6 handsize characters. They got to leverage every piece of the card, while also not immediately dying to their opponents copies. Games tended to go a bit longer, which is exactly what a deck like this preyed upon. With Mourning banned it feels like everything is speeding up while the 7 handsize characters get to come out and play for real.
Things, I hope, are returning to a more natural equilibrium. I know a lot of what I said was common knowledge, but I wanted to try and frame it differently, or at least reinforce how good of a move it was that these bannings took place. I really enjoyed doing this deck post-mortem, and I thank you for taking the time to read it. I am looking forward to two things:
1) Talking with all you wonderful people. Any discussion this post generates will hopefully be constructive. Let's get to that next level!
2) The future: Darkstalkers has me stupidly excited. That is all.
~Arch (orangecardbluecard@gmail.com)
PS: Hi guys, I'm writing for Total Justice now! I'll be primarily focusing on decks. Tuning, Doctoring, Tweaking, Creating, if it can be done with a deck I HAVE DONE IT AND WANT TO DO IT SOME MORE BUT I NEED YOUR HELP! If you have a deck that needs tweaking or a concept you need help executing and don't mind me maybe writing about for the blog then email me/get at me on the forums or facebook!
Cover image provided by deviantartist digital ninja (http://digitalninja.deviantart.com/)
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