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Space for Rent!

Paul Hagan's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
 Type II Kiki-Alarm - 5.20.05

Hey all, and welcome back to the deck garage! For those who are out of school -- I hope you are enjoying your summer break. For those aren’t out of school yet -- good luck on your finals! For those who don’t get summers off – LOL @ you.

OK, all mean-spirited kidding aside, let’s jump right into the e-mail…

I've recently been experimenting with Combo in T2, and I think I've found a
winner. Combining Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker with Intruder Alarm to overwhelm
my opponent. I also want to make a second version for casual when this deck
invariably rotates out. So far, I've only been working on the T2 version,
and I'm having trouble finding answers to the major players in T2 right now.
Here's the decklist:

Kiki-Jiki Combo
Lands
7 Island
3 Mountain
4 City of Brass
6 Forest

Creatures
4 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Merchant of Secrets

Spells
4 Intruder Alarm
4 Mana Leak
4 Oxidize
4 Splinter
4 Quash
4 Echoing Truth

Sideboard
4 Sowing Salt
4 Vulshok Sorcerer

Card Choices:
Mana Fixers:
City of Brass, Birds of Paradise, and Sakura-Tribe Elder

Combo Pieces:
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Intruder Alarm, and _______ (I haven't found a
good creature for this except Vulshok Sorcerer for the Tim ability)

Counters:
Quash, Mana Leak (Quash is for the main spells of the deck, making sure I
don't have to face them again)

Artifact Destruction:
Splinter, Qxidize (Splinter, see Quash)

Delay:
Echoing Truth

SideBoard:
Sowing Salt-Permanently wreaks the Urzatron in T&N and any other deck that
uses it.
Vulshok Sorcerer-Possible MD card for the Kiki-Alarm Combo.

I really need some help with this. I'm not really sure what I should use.

Cards that stay: Intruder Alarm, Kiki-Jiki, Quash, Splinter, and Sowing Salt
Cards that can go: Everything else.

Budget: $100 and under.

Please help me with this deck. I need to finish it soon. It has to be ready
for a T2 tourney next Saturday.


Ok, looking over the deck, it looks like our contributor is off to a good start, but there are a few issues that immediately jump out at me. First, I definitely don’t like the high amount of artifact removal in the deck – I realize that there are still a number of artifacts floating around out there, but I don’t think we need eight ways to get rid of them. I think Oxidize is a decent enough call, so lets get rid of Splinter.

-4 Splinter

When I was typing this up, I had a small revelation. We definitely need more creatures in this deck, so why don’t I sneak in a creature that destroys artifacts over Oxidize. Viridian Shaman seems pretty good, especially since it provides a 2/2 body to along with its destruction.

-4 Oxidize
+4 Viridian Shaman

My next point is one a lot of people aren’t going to like, but I really think its true – you don’t need a lot of counter-magic in this type of deck. I’ll keep Mana Leak, if only because it is cheap and has a single blue in its casting cost, but Quash has to go. You want to be spending your mana on something infinitely more useful *every turn*. Believe me, I’ve played a deck similar to this one, and more often than not, I actually don’t want to see a counter in my hand.

-4 Quash

So now we have at least eight slots with which to play. My next big goal is finding another creature or two to go into the deck. Having Kiki-Jiki is great and all, but if you don’t have anything worthwhile to copy, then he’s pretty worthless.

Looking over the good green, blue, and red creatures available in Type II, I notice a card that absolutely must be in your deck is missing – Eternal Witness. The ability to pick up a dead Kiki-Jiki or a Naturalized Intruder Alarm seems fairly important. It also can’t hurt to make copies of Witness with Kiki-Jiki to loot the graveyard every turn. It’s even good if there isn’t an Alarm on the table!

+4 Eternal Witness

I’m a huge fan of Meloku the Clouded Mirror. I realize that she probably doesn’t have a home in every deck, but I think this deck could probably use her, especially since she has the ability to create a ton of creatures, which combines well with Intruder Alarm. She can also serve as an alternate win condition if the combo doesn’t show up.

+2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror

I wouldn’t be a huge fan of including a full set of the next card, but I also couldn’t complain about the addition of at least two Solemn Simulacrum. Not only do they work well with Kiki-Jiki, but they help get all of the necessary colors of mana on the table.

+2 Solemn Simulacrum

The last *major* change I want to make to the deck itself is the addition of Aether Vial. With the changes made here, we now have Eternal Witness, Virdian Shaman, and Merchant of Secrets sitting at a converted mana cost of three, and we have Meloku and Kiki-Jiki at a converted mana cost of five. Both are enough to justification to include Aether Vial in the deck, especially if it will allow us to set of the combo that much faster. To make room, I’m going to cut a copy of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker (you only need to find one during the game) and a copy of Intruder Alarm (ditto).

-1 Intruder Alarm
-1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
+4 Aether Vial

The only other thing I want to do with the deck is fix the mana up a little bit. Green is obviously the most important color with its mana fixers, so why don’t we run with seven Forests and one Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers. If we include two Mountains to be fetched with Simulacrum and Elder, we should be set for red mana. If we run a full set of City of Brass and two copies of Forbidden Orchard (it really is good with Intruder Alarm on the table), then that leaves enough room for five Islands and one Minamo, School at Water’s Edge. This makes the land set-up look like…

4 City of Brass
2 Forbidden Orchard
7 Forests
5 Islands
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
2 Mountains
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers

As far as the sideboard is concerned, I agree completely with Vulshok Sorcerer and Sowing Salt, so those can both hang out, leaving us with seven slots to fill.

Bribery has come to many people’s attention again with the emergence of Tooth and Nail decks, as well as the five legendary dragons out of Champions. I suppose the population-at-large can’t be wrong, so let’s include three copies.

+3 Bribery

Now that we are looking at sideboard, I can justify including another copy of a card that destroys artifacts. Sticking with our theme from earlier (you know – creatures!), a full set of Hearth Kami would fill both our creature requirement and the need for artifact destruction.

+4 Hearth Kami

With the last change done, the final deck looks like this…

LANDS (22):
4 City of Brass
2 Forbidden Orchard
7 Forests
5 Islands
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
2 Mountains
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers

CREATURES (27):
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Eternal Witness
3 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
4 Merchant of Secrets
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Solemn Simulacrum
4 Viridian Shaman

NON-CREATURE SPELLS (11):
4 Echoing Truth
3 Intruder Alarm
4 Mana Leak

SIDEBOARD (15):
3 Bribery
4 Hearth Kami
4 Sowing Salt
4 Vulshok Sorcerer

Hope that helps, and good luck in the Type II tourney this Saturday!

I’ll see y’all next week.