LA Conflux-Dential: My First Conflux Deck
bdm | January 31, 2009 | 3:18 pmI just finished building my first Shards-Conflux Sealed Deck pool and I am really confounded as to the viability of a number of the commons. Ruptured Spire is the one giving me the most fits — as it seems to be doing for many of the players here.
It basically eats a whole turn to come online since you have to play it tapped and pay 1 when you do. I have no problem playing Rampant Growth on turn two and even though this does not ramp you mana the Spire seems like a reasonable play both early and late. It’s those pesky turns three through five that are the bitch.
It looks like my deck is going to be solidly Naya with only the slightest hint of blue to accomodate Bant Charm and I am worried about the Spire disrupting my curve but I think I will have to see it in action before I pass judgement.
I also have Ancient Ziggurat to fix mana and it also seems like a it can create some clumsy situations. You can’t use that mana to cycle, activate a Panaroma, or anything else that is not a creature. I am very curious what other players experiences were with these two cards.
Another card that I have been wrestling with is the aptly named Lapse of Certainty. Basically an off-color, slightly more expensive Memory Lapse — and old favorite in Limited and Constructed. In the end I decided not to play them since my deck was quite mana hungry. Had I been Bant I would have definitely given them a try.
I played with Rupture Spire yesterday while using a 5c deck. I was pretty much splashing for Ethersworn Adjudicator, forcing me to splash blue and white. That card, by the way, is so broken in limited. But back to Rupture Spire… I found it to be great, but as you said, you are basically Time Walking yourself by playing it. The 4 times I drew it opening hand, it was a HUGE help. If you get one or two in your card pool, I think there’s not much reason to not play them, considering you’re going 3-4c most likely. I did hear of a guy playing with 3 Rupture Spire’s yesterday and had all of them in his hand at one point. That situation is obviously not good.
It’s obviously going to be deck dependent, but even assuming a three-color deck, Rupture Spire seems a little better than the Panoramas and worse than the tri-lands. Panoramas also effectively use up two mana to use, but they have the benefit of being able to be colorless lands the turn they come into play. That is a definite plus, but the Spire fixes every color ongoing instead of forcing you to pick one color to fix.
My sense is that fixing all colors outweighs the benefit of the Panoramas to produce colorless when needed, but if you have a heavy domain theme, being able to fetch an actual basic is obviously important.
Seems to me that, like the Panoramas, the Spire will become a limited staple that is frustratingly slow. A necessary evil.