The Catholic Church has been in the news a lot lately so I thought it would be fun to write an article with not just one Martyr, but six. The deck is my baby, and six babies, I hear, is a good number for a single man eschewing contraception. Today my babies come in all sorts of different colors - the only constant is their primal Whiteness, which, considering my own Northwestern pallor, is appropriate. Let's start with our own mitochondrial Eve (for a primer, start here), the Monowhite version of Martyr that was tearing up MTGO, before people realized they should stop playing Zoo and Affinity and start playing, um, other things:
Saint Stephen was an Israeli 1,950 years before Israel existed! He was taken to a Ghostly Prison and stoned to death around 34 C.E. for his proclamation of Jesus' divinity. To this day, he is honored in several different traditions within Christianity. Like this build, he is most notable for being the first, the forebearer of other Martyrs; unlike this build, his reputation has aged well. This is the best build for Monowhite Martyr I can come up with, and it is not so good in the current meta. Let's take a look at the current tier one in Modern:
Melira Pod LSV UW Tron Aggro Loam Traditional Jund (maybe) Affinity Splinter Twin
OK, so we clobber Affinity - their only winning plan is to stick Cranial Plating + Etched Champion - but nothing else here is really “aggro.” Bronson Magnan's sweet deck, which I want to call “Life of Crime,” is saddled with a misnomer - and everything else can either disrupt Monowhite Martyr or ignore it and go over the top. There is neither enough removal, nor a fast enough clock, for the creature-based combo decks, Twin and Melira. Tron can stall you until it casts a giant Eldrazi. And Aggro Loam simply plays Raven's CrimeAd Nauseam, Flame Jabs your 1/1's, and laughs as you do nothing. My sideboard is evenly distributed across these menaces, and none of it is ever really enough for each particular matchup.
It's clear to me that Monowhite Martyr, though abstractly powerful and synergistic, is not going to cut it right now. So the rest of this article will be an exercise in deck-building, exploring various options - all involving splashes - by which a Martyr deck can adapt to today's metagame. In other words, we'll proceed around the color Wheel of Torture. In order to do this, I looked at every multi-colored card in Modern that was also White, made a list of cards in which I was interested from each color, and built five new decks. First up is UW:
Joan of Arc was born a peasant and rose, claiming divine guidance and Clairvoyance, to the very highest echelons of the 15th-century French military; later, she was captured, sold to the English, and Combusted at the age of 19. She is a Catholic saint.
Blue offers the Martyr player a few options, the strongest of which is Meddling Mage. Mage is strong enough against Twin and Melira (and terrific against Storm), but he can be ignored by decks with several avenues of attack - namely, all the rest of them. The other UW cards (Pride of the Clouds, Moorland Haunt, Augury Adept) are all cool, but none of them do nearly enough to address bad matchups - while the blue card that does, Spell Pierce, is unfortunately not a White card for Martyr activations. Blue, oddly enough, also offers very little in the way of draw - unless you want to play Kiss of the Amesha, and I don't.
I tried this deck in a Daily and some two-mans and met with no more success than I'd had with the proto-Martyr. So let's give black a shot:
King Charles I was a 17th-century monarch of England, most famous for provoking uprisings by means of heavy-handed persecutions, then losing to Oliver Cromwell's Cavaliers in the English Civil War. He is honored by the Church of England.
All of this already seems to justify the occasional pain from fetch, crack, take two. I want to spend most of this space, though, talking about the inclusion of Dark Confidant, since the loss of life and lack of Whiteness may seem to constitute dissynergies with Martyr. They really don't. Here's why:
There are typically two points in the game when a Serra Ascendant gets powered up. The first is on turn two with a lucky draw; sure, Bob lessens the frequency of that nut draw a little. The second is in the late stages, and Bob actually does a huge amount of work to help get you there. The average Bob flip will lose you around 1.3 life and draw you a little over half a White card, making his triggers actually a net gain of life (if a White card is worth 3 life) - and this isn't even considering how good it is for you to draw into one of numerous sources of card advantage. One of the problems with the proto-Martyr is that it sometimes ran out of gas, and, when it was not at a minimum of 30 life, that was very bad. A stuck Bob singlehandedly alleviates this issue, enabling you to live at below thirty life, and then eventually break that threshold, resulting in an easy win.
At this point in my search, I definitely wanted to splash black, but I examined red as well, to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything important. I was:
Joseph Smith was the prophet of the Latter-Day Saint movement, murdered in 1844 in Illinois by a group of vengeant traditionalists. He is honored by today's 14 million practicing Mormons, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney. I feel like now is a good time to make a Mana Tithe joke, though one mana doesn't seem like a fair corporate tax rate.
Red doesn't offer nearly as much as black for depth, but this consideration is is far superseded by the numinous quality of the splash cards. With the primacy of creature combo, more removal is very good right now, and efficient removal that gains you life is insane; hence, Lightning Helix. Blood Moon does a good job of hosing Tron and any ‘surprise' deck (including Zoo and kinda Red Bant) with a greedy mana-base. And then there is Ajani Vengeant, all of whose abilities are relevant. The +1 deals with problem permanents like Birthing Pod and Isochron Scepter. The -2 is terrific in a deck looking to gain a lot of life and deal with annoying creatures. The one-sided Armageddon ultimate is about as easily achieved as Elspeth, Knight-Errant's, and equally devastating.
I promise I am going to have a strong list somewhere in this article, but before that, let's briefly visit our last stop on the color wheel, WG:
Jan Hus was a rogue theologian from 15th-century Bohemia who trafficked in things the Church considered heresy. For this contribution, he was burned at the stake. He is venerated by American Episcopalians and everyone Czech.
Green is a weak splash color, so I think we can just dismiss it out of hand. I would, however, like to point out that Choke is in the format and is really good right now - all the better for being Jan Hus' cause of death (victims of burning are usually asphyxiated before they're combusted).
So, after a skull-smashing, pelvis-puncturing, torso-twisting trip around the Rota Fortunae, we arrive back at white and are forced to enumerate our options. Green and blue offer too little and are no fun. Black offers far and away the most utility towards addressing bad matchups, while red has the most powerful splashable cards. So the final list, which I submit to you is tested and viable, is Wrb:
Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were trail-blazers and evangelists in the first half of the 1800s, bringing to Oregon Country old-time religion, cholera epidemics, and their own deaths. They are honored in the name of the college my little brother attends.
In this deck, I sought to hybridize the excellent parts of the Red and Black splashes, so most of the cards I've already talked about at some length. There is one new card, though, and it's a beautiful one: Hide // Seek, from my favorite set of all time. Hide is a superior Disenchant, and with Isochron Scepter and friends gaining some popularity, and Pyromancer Ascension and Cranial Plating still being cards, I would be happy to have only this side of the split in my sideboard. Seek is a little narrower, but can be cast, say, in response to Gifts, to at once get rid of Iona while powering up an Ascendant. Or it can wax a singleton Emrakul, greatly worsening the late game of that sort of deck, and netting you 15. Hide // Seek is a versatile card with many applications in this kind of beatdown-light metagame - a metagame that, if handled properly, is surprisingly good for Martyr of Sands.
I would be remiss if I didn't include a sideboarding guide and some sample matches, so here they are:
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MATCHES
VS UR STORM
Game one: He wins the die roll and mulligans to five. I keep Mesa, Flats, Heights, Ascendant, Ranger, Proc, Path. He starts with Island, Serum Visions. I start with Mesa, Plains, Ascendant. Eventually he gets an active Ascension and, with my Ascendant too slow and my discard not drawn, I lose.
Game two: I start with turn-zero Leyline of Sanctity and he scoops immediately. Um, OK?
Game three: I keep a hand with three land, two Martyrs, a Hide/Seek, and a Ranger. He opens with a cantrip into Ascension but I hide it. I continue to beat for one with the Martyr while carving up his hand with a pair of freshly drawn Scullers, and, after flashing back Past in Flames with only a single ritual in the graveyard and none in hand, he concedes.
VS MELIRA POD
Game one: I win the die roll and forced to watch him lead off with fetch, Temple Garden, Birds after I mull to six. My Lingering Souls, two Rangers, and three lands are looking pretty terrible, but I rip a Sculler and take away his Kitchen Finks. He plays a Canonist, then an Inquisition of Kozilek, discarding the Lingering Souls. Awesome. Eventually he's able to assemble all three combo pieces, but I have the Path for his Viscera Seer. At six life and with seven Spirits / Hawks about to beat him into oblivion, he concedes.
Game two: He starts with a Birds and a Finks, while I lead with a Sculler, taking away a Birthing Pod. He beats with the Finks, and I counterattack with the Sculler, but he sacrifices it to a new Viscera Seer and trades. On the next turn he Pods away his Seer for a Wall of Roots, and I counter with Ajani Vengeant, tapping the Pod. At a comfortable life total I land a Bob, and he's playing off the top of his deck - it produces a Sun Titan, but that gets Pathed. Eventually Ajani's ultimate is inexorable, and he quits in disgust.
I hope the process laid out in this article, where I identify weaknesses, propose fixes, come up with constraints, and then Explore Exhaustively my options, was helpful to everyone brewing out there. Any suggestions on how to improve the deck would be greatly appreciated! And, if you're coming to the Pacific Northwest for GP Seattle (another misnomer - it is being held in Tacoma), I'll see you next weekend. Thanks for reading!
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