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Paul Hagan's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Casual / Type II Door to Nothingness deck - 3.08.05

Hey all, and welcome back to the Deck Garage! Throughout Magic’s history, we have been supplied with alternate win conditions – more so in recent memory than in the beginning. Some of these win conditions are better than others. Coalition Victory was a bit difficult to set off due to its strict requirements. Celestial Convergence took a long time to get rolling. Transcendence just made the game weird. Battle of Wits actually saw itself in the winner’s circle on a couple of occasions. Now, we have a new alternate win condition circulating in Type II, and it seems like it has a chance of making an impact – Door to Nothingness.

For the low, low cost of five colorless mana, you get an artifact that comes into play tapped. However, it also comes equipped with the activated ability of “WWUUGGRRBB, Tap, Sacrifice Door to Nothingness: Target player loses the game.” The card itself is relatively easy to play, but the activation cost makes it a bit of a problem. That leads me to the e-mail of the week, sent in by Eamonn…

"I have made a door to nothingness deck, which usually has a high rate of success when playing in casual play rooms. However i am not entirely convinced by it all the time. It tends to suffer to mana screw and a lack of security before i unleash the door. I want to keep this to a lowish budget, so apart from the expensive cards i already own i dont want to get to many more cards that will cost a lot. I would prefer the deck to remain in T2.

In games i try to get out a joiner adept very soon to ease the mana curve greatly whilst playing my mana acceleration. If i don't have out an adept i use the fabricates to search for my composite golems to activate the door, and if i am unable to find the door or my mana spread is poor i use the mindslavers the control the game a bit and the witness's to get back any destroyed door's or composite golems usually.

Here is the deck


CREATURES: (18)

4 COMPOSITE GOLEM
1 DUPLICANT
3 ETERNAL WITNESS
4 JOINER ADEPT
4 SAKURA-TRIBE ELDER
2 VIRIDIAN SHAMAN

OTHER SPELLS: (18)

3 CONDESCEND
4 DOOR TO NOTHINGNESS
4 FABRICATE
4 KADAMAS REACH
3 MINDSLAVER

LAND: (24)

10 FOREST
5 ISLAND
3 MOUNTAIN
3 PLAINS
3 SWAMPS"

It looks like Eamonn is off to a great start. I have to offer up major props for the way the deck is actually set up. We have multiple ways to hunt down land, a good set-up for the land (big green base with a little extra blue, followed by minimal amounts of the rest), and the deck is focused.

The first thing I would like to do is go through and cut some of the less necessary cards. The first that I see is Duplicant – I understand that this card is pretty solid against Tooth and Nail, but I can’t think of too many more match-ups that it is great against. Therefore, I tend to push it towards a sideboard slot, especially since Eamonn’s deck looks a little tight for space.

-1 Duplicant

I’m not a huge fan of Mindslaver in this deck, but I’m also not sure if it needs to be pulled altogether. Mindslaver tends to make me think of control-style decks that want to buy that one turn extra to help them find just the right card to swing the game in their favor. However, I can also see Door to Nothingness hitting, Mindslaver being used, and then Door being activated the next turn in this deck, and that seems like an amazing series of turns. I’m going to cut the Mindslaver count down to just two, but if they don’t seem like they are doing enough, I would suggest cutting them altogether.

-1 Mindslaver

Condescend bothers me slightly here. It seems like a good idea to have counter back-up, but at the same time, I’m also a bit concerned with the low amount of blue mana and the amount of land searching spells in the deck. I’d like to bring in another set of search spells, and I think Condescend is the weakest link in the deck.

-3 Condescend

I like the presence of Composite Golem, but I’m not sure the full set is absolutely necessary, especially with all of the thinning this deck is doing. I also need a little bit more room for the changes I would like to make to Eamonn’s deck, and it doesn’t seem like cutting a lone copy of Composite Golem will hurt it too much.

-1 Composite Golem

The last cut I want to make is one copy of Door to Nothingness. Drawing up multiple copies does absolutely nothing for Eamonn’s cause, and with Fabricate and Eternal Witness in the deck, I think he can afford one fewer Door.

-1 Door to Nothingness

Now that we’ve cleared up some space in Eamonn’s deck, we can throw in a few extra cards. The first thing I would like to do is add a fourth copy of Eternal Witness. It really is *that* good, and with Eamonn’s primary win condition being an artifact that takes a turn to go off, it can’t hurt being able to pull it out of the graveyard.

+1 Eternal Witness

The next addition I would like to make is to throw in, as discussed above, another set of land search cards. I’m not sure how far Eamonn’s budget stretches, so I’m going to give two alternatives here. The first card that jumps to mind is Solemn Simulacrum – not only does it hunt down a land, but it comes with a body that will help hold off creatures that Eamonn’s opponent is throwing at him. The second choice is Rampant Growth. It is a lesser card, but also well within a more reasonable budget.

+4 Solemn Simulacrum / Rampant Growth

The last addition to Eamonn’s maindeck that I would like to make is Rude Awakening. As long as he is searching down a ton of land, he might as well have an extra win condition hiding out in the deck that works off of that. I can’t count the number of games I have played or seen played that involved one player getting beat down almost the entire time, then playing Rude Awakening for the win.

+2 Rude Awakening

Since Eamonn wanted to keep his deck Type II legal, I thought I would put in a little extra work and add a sideboard to the deck. The first card that jumps to mind as a must-have sideboard card is Sacred Ground. If Eamonn goes up against any form of land destruction, he can’t afford to have more than one or two of his lands blown up before he begins to struggle in getting set up for the win.

+3 Sacred Ground [SB]

I said a little ways up that Duplicant seemed like more of a sideboard card in this deck, since it seems great against Tooth and Nail and only OK against most other matches. Since Eamonn is running a full set of Fabricate, I think we can get away with just a couple copies of Duplicant.

+2 Duplicant [SB]

Don’t think that artifacts will disappear from the face of the earth once the Type II bannings take effect. I’ve also noticed that there are a few enchantments hanging out that might find their way into decks over the next couple of months. With these two things in mind, it can’t hurt to run a set of Naturalize in the ‘board, right?

+4 Naturalize [SB]

As I sat and tried to visualize what the worst match-ups would be for Eamonn’s deck, and the one that came up most prominently was anything resembling Sligh. A turn one or two Slith Firewalker could be the end of the game easily, and none of Eamonn’s creatures are exactly “big”, so they can easily be burned away. Troll Ascetic gets around both of these issues – it regenerates and it is untargetable by opponents, meaning it could stall Eamonn’s opponent long enough for him to set up the win.

+4 Troll Ascetic [SB]

I was looking at a decklist earlier in the week and I spotted Choke sitting in the sideboard. At first, I questioned it, but then it was pointed out to me that with Affinity on its way out, the slower blue-based control decks had a better shot at making it. Eamonn’s deck looks particularly weak against counters, as they only have to counter a few spells. When you look at it that way, Choke seems like a decent option.

+2 Choke [SB]

I think that about wraps up work on Eamonn’s deck; let’s see how it turned out…

CREATURES (21):
3 Composite Golem
4 Eternal Witness
4 Joiner Adept
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Solemn Simulacrum *OR* Rampant Growth
2 Viridian Shaman

NON-CREATURE SPELLS (15):
3 Door to Nothingness
4 Fabricate
4 Kodama’s Reach
2 Mindslaver
2 Rude Awakening

LAND (24):
10 Forest
5 Island
3 Mountain
3 Plains
3 Swamp

SIDEBOARD (15):
2 Choke
2 Duplicant
4 Naturalize
3 Sacred Ground
4 Troll Ascetic

I hope that helps, Eamonn, and good luck! I’ll see y’all next week.

-Paul Hagan