Unnamed Barrenness by Lev Jasper

fredsct wrote:

Innate ranged agg damage is rare and, while I don't want to undervalue how neat that is, it won't be quite as effective against a lot of combat defense schemes.

Well that's the thing. In this deck, The Unnamed uses its inherent R2Agg strike as a deterrent to rushers and blockers rather than a reason to get into a combat it can win. Unleash Hell's Fury is also a deterrent for similar though purely defensive reasons. If your deck has reliably good combat against The Unnamed, you might just win. But block fails is strong and this deck packs quite a bit of that. Plus, if a minion gets tooled up sufficiently enough, it may just get burned by Barrenness/Scourge.

Besides, combat can largely be ignored in most metagames because it is generally so weak. If I am not mistaken, I think The Unnamed only ENTERED COMBAT ONE TIME the entire tournament, and Brandon played a Rego Motus to prevent the strike. He even had to remind me to pay for the strike late in the finals because I hadn't used it for nearly 6 hours in my first ever session playing the deck!

Dorrinal wrote:

I think what he's saying is that you need to account for ranged aggravated damage in any metagame. Which is why my response boils down to "yeah but accounting for Ivory Bow is not the same as accounting for 2R all night every night."

Huh?

#1) Ivory Bow isn't really that much like The unnamed. Ivory Bow has to be equipped - and so could (for instance) be stopped by intercepting the equip action or DIing it or something. More importantly, it's a lot easier to control your chances of getting a star vampire than a unique piece of equipment.

#2) It may be "common enough" in some sense but it's far from ubiquitous - if that's what he's trying to say. I go months without seeing an Ivory Bow. ("...all night every night...", as you say.) This leaves the possibility that one may "account for it" by simply ignoring the possibility (as Brandon is likely doing in his Bleed-and-Bruise deck) and taking your lumps when it appears. Hell, I often do this for the entire genre of political decks (supposedly one of the three main legs of the Jyhad triad) and I'm not convinced that it's the wrong thing.

#3) (Most importantly) So what? How does does contradict a thing I said? Yea, The unnamed is a bad metagame matchup for Brandon's Bleed and Bruise deck. So's an Ivory Bow. So what?

Eric was just refuting your assertion that ranged aggravated damage was rare. I also disagree with that assertion, and I think that planning to encounter the Ivory Bow is smart. But I also think that Eric's point, as you say, doesn't contradict what you said about the metagame matchup. So you see, I have been on your side all along.

Note that if this deck basically ignore combat, it does mean that either enter combat action are not reliable enough or combat is not strong enough to shut down a deck.

(since it's far from being the first deck that more or less rely on that, master-recursing deck often rely on less than 6 S:CE from what I see, and Animalism combat is also strong in part because no real combat tend to be played)

Jeff wrote:

fredsct wrote:

Innate ranged agg damage is rare and, while I don't want to undervalue how neat that is, it won't be quite as effective against a lot of combat defense schemes.

Well that's the thing. In this deck, The Unnamed uses its inherent R2Agg strike as a deterrent to rushers and blockers rather than a reason to get into a combat it can win.

Sure - I got that. I'm just saying the effect was rather more effective against Brandon's deck than it would be against a lot of other decks. My point is, to run into a deck that happens to rely on maneuver away, you got a bit lucky. Not to spit on unnamed's combat strike ability - but it won't always be quite that effective.

Jeff wrote:

Unleash Hell's Fury is also a deterrent for similar though purely defensive reasons.

Agreed - but that's where I think the table hate situation becomes relevant. Again, to go back to one of the points I started off with, guranteed torporization is a lot scarier if, say, your grand-predator is willing to take a stab at stopping the rescue of your predator's vamp so that it can ultimately get diablerized - or at least make your predator fight and spend resources to keep him on the table. If that doesn't happen, UHF is a single-action annoyance. The ability to resist table hate is a big thing to me. Without it, deck strength isn't nearly as meaningful or can even become a liability when it's well known to your opponents. If everyone sees it coming in the finals, they'll plan for it. And in most touraments, you won't be able to rely on the occasional foolish play in the finals, unlike the preliminary rounds. The fools are usually gone by the finals.

Jeff wrote:

Besides, combat can largely be ignored in most metagames because it is generally so weak.

I don't know if I agree with that. Decks that rely purely on combat, Enkidu and Assamite star vampire decks and so forth, may well be rare nowadays. But I've seen too many good decks that rely on at least some element of offensive combat to make me think it's fair to say, "combat can largely be ignored". I'll leave that to smarter people than me but it sounds a bit off to my ear.

Jeff wrote:

If I am not mistaken, I think The Unnamed only ENTERED COMBAT ONE TIME the entire tournament, and Brandon played a Rego Motus to prevent the strike. He even had to remind me to pay for the strike late in the finals because I hadn't used it for nearly 6 hours in my first ever session playing the deck!

This particular anecdote is another thing that makes me think you got lucky and not that the deck's so wonderfully good. It should have run into more combat in a common metagame. If your point is that your opponents were avoiding combat, that may well be true - but even so, that you would run into all opponents that can't do much about innate ranged agg damage seems explainable as luck to me. Time will tell.

Jeff wrote:

Creator: Lev Jasper (Berkeley, CA)
Debut: Alastor - San Jose Qualifier
Date: Saturday, December 17, 2011
Played by: Jeff Kuta
Prelims: 2 GW, 7 VPs, top seed
Finals: 0 VPs (though it was strong enough to win)

So, I have to tell everyone about this deck. IT IS FREAKING AMAZING. If only I had been able to play with it--at all--before this tournament, I think the result would have been better. It is so strong that I was able to gather 2 GWs and 7 VPs without having played the deck every before (though my friend Lev tuned it well).

Here's the deck I recently played (pardon the lame formatting):

UNNAMED BARRENNESS

Crypt (12)
4x The Unnamed
8x The Horde

Library (60)
Masters (21)
6x Ashur Tablets
5x Maleficia
2x Wider View
1x The Barrens
1x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Fragment of the Book of Nod
1x Jake Washington
1x Metro Underground
1x Pentex(tm) Subversion
1x Perfectionist
1x Secure Haven

Actions (17)
12x Barrenness (burn option)
3x Unleash Hell's Fury (burn option)
1x Homunculus
1x Veneficti (burn option)

Action Modifiers (17)
4x Lost in Crowds
4x Psalm of the Damned
3x Psychomachia
2x Elder Impersonation
2x Enkil Cog
1x Earth Control
1x Forgotten Labyrinth

Combo (4)
4x Evil Eye (burn option)

Event (1)
1x Scourge of the Enochians


I can't say enough about how good this deck is. How potentially broken it is.

The setup is pretty obvious. Get an Unnamed in play with Maleficia and either a Homunculus or Metro Underground, then wreck the table while gaining 4 pool every round trip. There are 20 (!!) burn option cards in this 60 card deck, *all of which are playable later after Ashur Tablets recursion*. This is crucial. You can pitch any Maleficia cards until you get Maleficia on a minion. Feel free to discard Barrenness (burn option), Unleash Hell's Fury (burn option), Evil Eye (so strong...burn option) and Psalm of the Damned (regular discard or Barrens/Fragment) until you're ready to setup.

Get Maleficia, or superior Maleficia and get to work. Barrenness provides a free untap, AT INFERIOR MALEFICIA. Make sure every other vampire on the table is smaller than 10-cap. Unleash Hell's Fury and your defense is complete. Evil Eye takes care of nasty actions, AND LEAVES THE ACTING VAMPIRE TAPPED!

The biggest weakness of this deck is against stealth bleed. I was ousted in the finals when the two other remaining players ganged up on me and bounced a stealth bleed for 7 followed by a stealth bleed for 6. That was coupled with the fact that I never got superior Maleficia in the entire game due by my own recklessness (I had discarded 2 early), plus *TWO* Sudden Reversals of the first 2 I tried to play.

Having played it, this deck needs either 1x Archon Investigation or 1x Lost in Translation to deal with heavy bleeds. AI is probably the better choice since this deck will (eventually) burn minions. I burned two Inner Circle members the first game I played and took that game 3 VPs to 2. In fact, the tournament winner, Michael Courtois, played that deck and won the whole thing in the finals, as my prey.

Good luck trying to be the first to win a tournament with this monstrosity, and congrats to whoever pulls off that feat.

you could put some flurry of actions to bleed and untap