Translated by Edoardo Vitale,
Intro
Last March, a couple of weeks after having won Paupergeddon Lecco, I changed jobs. This made it impossible to balance weekend work duties with attending local tournaments and leagues.
Since I didn’t play much on MTGO, a great deal of my knowledge of the metagame came from videos, streams and calls with other members of the Goldenpigs, who streamed their leagues on our discord channel.
The recent addition of seasonofmist aka Lorenzo Aldegheri in the team, along with the recent good performances of some friends, but above all the thriving of the Pauper environment around Padova and Vicenza, rekindled in me the flame that had lain dormant for months and I started to crunch leagues on MTGO regularly, in spite of my friend and sparring partner on BG Enrico Busso.
Sorry Enrico, I hope that one day you will understand and forgive me.
I am willing to participate in some IPTs and to Paupergeddon Lecco in the next months, looking for the fun of in person events that I have been missing recently.
All this introduction has the purpose to let you know that I am playing on MTGO quite often right now and I have finally made my own opinion on the “Deadly Dispute & Writhing Chrysalis affaire” around which there is a lot of dissension.
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Purple eggplant
The title of the paragraph is a quote to a track of the “Il Grimorio del Maestro” (literally “the Deck of the Master”), written by the Master Elia Morgese, an album that you should listen.
All considered, I am a supporter of the purple eggplant.
In recent years, casting a creature card with mana value greater or equal than 4, unless it was endowed with an emblem (eg Thorn of the Black Rose and Avenging Hunter ) or it could be discounted (eg Tolarian Terror and Kitchen Imp), was a taboo in Pauper
The only exceptions were creatures with cascade (Boarding Party and Annoyed Altisaur) that gave a reliable top-curve play to decks like RG ramp and ponza.
Recently, the printing of creatures with landcycling (eg Troll of Khazad-dum and Generous Ant) and Murmuring Mystic increased the amount of viable alternatives and brought innovations in the competitive panorama, making decks like izzet control and dredge a thing.
Chrysalis is the latest addition to this family. It is very interesting since it embodies contemporary Magic’s design philosophy featuring much more line of text than the usual standard we are suited and thus “doing more things”.
It is a 4 drop that tries to address the historical weaknesses of RG decks in Pauper: flyers, board wipes for big creatures, counterspells and Prismatic Strands.
It is a really powerful creature and I appreciate the contribution it gives to the format, boosting RG monsters, presenting to the opponent a huge defensive barrier that stalls boards and becomes bigger the longer the game goes.
The problem is not in the board states it brings, especially when a chrysalis is followed by another one, but in the synergy that eldrazi spawns have with the dispute package.
I am fine with reducing the hegemony of this creature, which weakens iconic cards like counterspell, galvanic blast and prismatic strands.
I am not fine with the fact that if my opponent untaps with two spawns tokens I will be constantly under the check of plays like double dispute, something that even double counter cannot prevent.
The outcome of this degenerate scenario is a situation in which a player draws three a turn and is ahead on mana, resources and game goals.
I am not claiming that chrysalis is a problem, something that a great part of the community claims, but I am deprecating its pairing with dispute-like effects that makes Jund’s engine better than the one of every other deck in the format.
I would not ban Chrysalis without having first cancelled from the equation a card like deadly dispute. Nonetheless, I am aware of the power of this new four drop.
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A moral dispute
By far my favorite track of the “Il Grimorio del Maestro” (this is a pun that cannot be translated in English between the Italian Disputa Mortale (Deadly Dispute) and Disputa Morale (Moral Dispute)).
In the song is expressed all the frustration that comes from being forced to include the namesake card in almost every deck.
The musician’s anger is cried in the refrain “dear dispute you are a pain the ass/ without you it would be a bless”.
While I was sleeping like a dormant volcano I was claiming that banning deadly dispute was useless since there are viable alternatives that could allow players to include 6 or more similar effects in their decks.
Now that I’ve started playing again on MTGO, I’ve realized how crucial the treasure token generated by Deadly Dispute is, especially for decks like Jund or Grixis.
This treasure brings three key benefits: color fixing, mana ramp and fodder for further “draw two”.
In the aforementioned tricolor decks the manabase is often rich in taplands and must focus on one or at most one pair of colors at the time: black if we are speaking of Grixis affinity and black-green if we are speaking of Golgari Glee.
Instead the treasure unlock the red color and the possibility to cast Krark-Clan Shaman and Writhing Chrysalis despite of correct land sequencing, a crucial thing in this environment divided in mono color decks and dispute decks.
Moreover this one-shot extra mana often tips the balance in favor of one player.
This shouldn’t be paired with a card that draws two at instant speed, with a negligible downside that could be easily turned in an upside with a suitable deck building, using cards like Ichor Wellspring (or also creatures targeted by removal, making it a natural counter to spells like cast down).
The treasure opens also to busted plays like third turn Thorn of the Black Rose or Writhing Chrysalis and consider the fact that they are not as unusual as one could think (eg T1 Khalni Garden/ T2 Deadly Dispute/ T3 monarch). This sounds sick!
Furthermore, there is a great amount of consensus on the fact that Deadly Dispute on Ichor Wellspring is a “do it yourself” black and common Ancestral Recall, because of the fact that the 2 mana spent to cast it are virtually discounted by the treasure token generated in the process.
This is just an exaggeration, since costing one less mana is very different from a theoretical discount that depends on the sacrificed card.
Nonetheless, consider this: Ancestral Recall is very strong since costing one mana allows you to play another spell after that (a 1 mana value spell if we have just two mana available).
But if I do not have any advantage in casting another spell and that extra mana would be wasted, the fact that I have a treasure becomes much more relevant the longer the game goes. I am trading the theoretic possibility to cast another spell with the certainty of a new mana after.
Thus, casting Deadly Dispute in the opponent’s end step is stronger than casting Ancestral Recall in opponent’s end step!
This could be called the “Deadly Dispute Paradox”.
After having experienced the relevance of the treasure token while playing glee combo, which enabled me to go off protected by that one providential extra mana (Duress and Tamiyo Safekeeping both costs one mana) I spent some time to think about the issue with chains of multiple disputes in a single game, faced many times during online leagues
The fact that one could only focus on chaining the maximum number of dispute-like effects while rarely doing anything else or simply stocking resources for a protected combo creates the least interesting and skill intensive play patterns that I have ever played.
The games are missing the decisional and “risk-reward” element that comes with casting Ponder, Preordain and Brainstorm and deciding whether or not to tap out for a game changing play like Avenging Hunter or Lorien revealed to “turn the corner” and break the ties in our favor.
Instead we just amass fodders that will be sacrificed to draw two cards in our turn if we are looking for a landrop, otherwise in the opponent end step.
This is easy and straightforward to execute.
Maybe some skill is involved in this simple and risk free play pattern, but I can ensure you that it is not that big.
Shells with Deadly Dispute and Eviscerator’s Insight exploit the advantage of the chain effect by including an higher number of copies, enlarging the gap between those strategies and the one of the classic blue-based midrange decks.
All the effort spent to stop the chain with multiple counters is nullified by a simple flashback of Eviscerator’s Insight or by a copy that escapes from the web.
Banning Deadly Dispute would make the inclusion of the whole engine riskier by decreasing the likelihood of a chain of draw-two and would make black-based midrange piles clunkier by eliminating the precious treasure token.
Fanatical Offering would be the only card left in the format able to generate expendable tokens while Reckoner’s Bargain and Eviscerator’s Insight would stay as card draw tool, but without the “break free from jail” effect that deadly dispute and the treasure gives.
I am fine with writhing Writhing Chrysalis decreasing the power of the blue color in Pauper, even though it should be kept under observation, but the dispute-package must be weakened at any cost, sacrificing the first born.
