Red-White Imperial Painter in Legacy
By now most of you are probably slightly familiar with the deck known as Strawberry Shortcake, which is part of the continued evolution of the various Imperial Painter builds. If you aren’t familiar with the deck, I will give a short overview. Imperial Painter was created shortly after the printing of Painter’s Servant in Shadowmoor back in May 2008. The deck slowly gained traction and become a viable meta-contender, albeit very rarely seen because of the scarcity of Imperial Recruiter, formerly only available in Portal Three Kingdoms. Its evolution was slow and if you want a more in-depth history, it is still available on The Source. Throughout the testing of Imperial Painter, various people began testing out splash colors. However, due to relatively few pilots, fleshing out the colors was slow.
Going over old deck lists, it was around February 2012 when I posted my first version of what would become Strawberry Shortcake. Before that builds had some card selection, but Painter lists all had strong aggro components along with a general deck design that was build around grindy board control games. Remember early Legacy was a format where Goblin Lackey was so strong many people thought it should be banned, so addressing it was key. For reasons long forgotten (most likely due to meta game issues with a high prevalence of BGx rock style decks in the Maryland area at the time), the first list used 4 Faithless Lootings. Looting allowed better card selection/advantage when paired with SDT in a discard heavy meta, but this also required a fairly slow meta which Delver variants helped to make antiquated. This list looks funny in a vacuum because some of the earliest iterations were still using the white splash mana base with an outdated Stoneforge package in the sideboard. From combing through old threads, it seems the Stoneforge and lands split were kept mainly out of laziness and previous positive results rather than any strategic goal.
Around March 2012 I would end up piloting this list to a 5th of 66 at the Grand Prix Baltimore Legacy side event after winning a smaller side event the day before . Over the next month I realized the deck needed to increase its consistency while becoming faster. It is from this that the Faithless Lootings became Enlightened Tutors. By this time the core of the deck was solidified. I would then take the Enlightened Tutor build to a top 4 finish at a GPT at Tales of Adventure in PA, winning a Juzzam Djinn. My friend and deck building partner Jack Kitchen eventually came around to the white splash around the summer 2012. Below is his account:
“After these months of testing, I switched over to playing the white splash at Seth's behest. We refined for a few months and GP Washington DC was the debut event for this new white-splash Painter build. I managed to end 6-3, not a terrible showing for a new build. From there, more tweaking and testing led up to the Starcity Baltimore Open in January 2014, where I finished 5th of 402 and Seth finished 36th of 402, an insanely good showing for Shortcake considering we probably were the only two players in the field on the white splash. It was after that finish for the deck that Shortcake put up the best finish in any tournament for any variant of Painter, when Jean-Mary Accart (Lejay) took it to 5th place out of 1,587 people in Grand Prix Paris in February. After that finish, Shortcake gained many followers and from that point up until Sensei’s Top was banned in April 2017 it was the premier toolbox-combo deck of the format, able to adjust to any meta changes through small additions or subtractions of one or two cards between main and side. The pure power and synergy of Shortcake was evident, especially as very few cards wizards printed from 2013-2017 ever made their way into the deck.”
There were slight adjustments to the deck over the next 4 years, but at its’ core, it stayed fairly static. Unfortunately I rarely played competitive Legacy from about the end of 2015 till the banning of Sensei's Divining Top (SDT) . While a lot of players point to the banning as the death kneel of the deck, it had been on the decline for months leading up to it. I will go into this fact later in the series, but I wanted to mention it here for completeness. With the banning of SDT, the deck really struggled. I know people tried different approaches, but none had much success. I know I looked at reviewing Faithless Looting and Gitaxian Probe and increased Goblin Welder counts but could never get the same consistency.
Introduction/Overview
It is a deck built upon a stompy mana base (Sol Lands in Legacy) that works to resolve the two card combo, Painter’s Servant and Grindstone. The combination works by having Painter Servant make everything one color, even lands, and then on Grindstone activation the entire library will be milled into the graveyard as each check will see two of the same colored cards. It’s a compact 2 card, 6 mana combo for Legacy. Due to its compact nature the deck can by filled with fast mana, tutors, and your disruption of choice allowing for a creature-based combo deck that is resilient, even in the creature heavy format of current Legacy.
My goal in writing this overview is to help increase player’s exposure to an off beat deck in Legacy while helping to ensure proper magic theory is applied to its discussion. I will cover a brief history of the deck, but most of what I want to discuss in this series is Shortcake’s current construction, how we came to that list and how the recent banning of Deathrite Shaman (DRS), and a lesser extend Gitaxian Probe, will impact the deck and its future within the Legacy format. I have posted a lot of this information on The Source in various forms, and recently rewrote the entire Primer of the deck, but this should help aggregate it while helping a larger audience find out about a unique deck.
A Brief Note: I will also be strictly talking about the Strawberry Shortcake variant of Imperial Painter. Back around Spring 2012, I realized that the meta had sufficiently changed from the time when Imperial Painter was initially created. I realized that the meta was seeing storm based combo decks becoming faster, a proliferation of stronger Rock (GBx variants) decks, and the improvement in the creatures that tempo shells could run, and as a result we needed to innovate the deck’s construction. We needed to trim off much of the decks versatility and creature beat down cards, to focus on what the deck did best, either resolve its combo or use a Blood Moon to prematurely lock out the game. With that mindset, we set about increasing the decks consistently (through cards like Enlightened Tutor), while taking advantage of the strength of the stompy mana base by building around a mana base to utilize colorless mana counts of 3 and 5. From this, I think Imperial Painter had approximately its best run for about the next 3.5 years where it was a serious Tier 1.5 deck in the format. Others would take the deck in a more Dragon Stompy direction during this time, utilizing more lock pieces such as Trinisphere or big finishers, but those lists had various levels of success without the same consistency.
Deck Construction and Strategy Overview
Strawberry Shortcake is a red based combo deck that utilizes Sol Lands to gain tempo and resolve its key cards. If you read over the history of the deck it has used cards such as Anarchy, Figure of Destiny, Koth of the Hammer, and Vexing Shusher at various times, but at its heart its always been a deck about a weird little Scarecrow. Being a red based deck has advantages and disadvantages in a meta were its “normal” to have 65% of the decks you face playing 4 Brainstorm. Red is a natural foil to blue and the ability to counter some of their best cards at even or better tempo is huge.
Below is my current decklist. I want to lead with the deck, then discuss the cards, then provide a brief discussion on the plays you may experience. Needless to say, the reason that this deck is a thing again is because we found a way to address the loss of SDT. I detail how throughout the card discussion and plays section.
Current Maindeck:
Card Choices:
Creatures
4 Painter’s Servant - One half of the combo. He can turn the various blast effects into Counterspells and instant speed Vindicates when you name blue. His stats allow him to be a decent blocker at various points in the game and he can crew a Smuggler’s Copter which is critical.
4 Imperial Recruiter - There is a reason the deck is also known as Imperial Painter. With the way the deck is constructed and its current mana base he functions as a pseudo Demonic Tutor that leaves behind a body. The deck is built with Recruiter in mind, as the answers we pick are often tutorable, and his ability to crew the Smuggler’s Copter and block when needed, can allow you find the extra cards or save a critical amount of life that will open a window for victory. Any number other than 4 is wrong. End of story, and now with the reprint he has really become affordable.
4 Ethersworn Canonist - This slot was occupied by Blood Moon for the longest time. The continued proliferation of DRS forced us to rethink Blood Moon, and the counts of Canonist slowly went up in testing. While always strong as a singleton, it was the added utility with Smuggler’s Copter that made Canonist our disruption of choice. When Sensei’s Divining Top (SDT) was part of the format we could float cards on the top of our library and interact as needed. Unfortunately, our draw engine is more sorcery speed these days and gives us slightly less card selection at any one time making those old lines of play impossible. But controlling the stack is still strong. Canonists slow down your opponent’s game plan, prevent multiple counters or counter protection on removal, while allowing us to control how spells resolve. It also helps to up the creature count for crewing along with stealing more free wins against Storm.
3 Goblin Welder - He does everything. Negates counter magic, fights against removal and exile effects, while also disrupting some of your opponent’s cards. He is on curve and serves as a great crew target. He synergizes with Smuggler’s Copter in more ways than just being able to easily crew it. First it helps fill up the graveyard, serving as a virtual hand with an active Welder on the table. Second, in the past, Painter was always full of creatures that could do important things, but not much in the red zone. Smuggler’s Copter also turns the Welders into legitimate threats. There are also some crazy things Welder’s can do with two Copter’s on the table, but I will leave that for another day.
1 Grim Lavamancer - We had more when we first restructured the list, but the count has dropped to a singleton at this time. While his utility was highest when DRS was running around, he still can do some damage. The key is for 2-3 activations at most in a game. Being able to get rid of a critical creature or planeswalker is all he needs to do. His ability to be on curve and crew the Smuggler’s Copter is huge.
1 Walking Ballista - It started off as a Lavaman but transitioned to something more versatile. It is more mana intensive but allows us to go big, either through the red zone or without combat under an Ensnaring Bridge. The utility of turning 6 mana into 3 damage can often times swing a game. Being easily tutorable by both tutors is also very handy.
1 Simian Spirit Guide - You really want 5 fast mana sources. 4 Lotus Petals are a must with two colors and all the Welder interactions we anticipate. So the last one is the lone Simian Spirit Guide. He is a tutorable source of mana that speeds up the ability to activate the combo. He can be hard cast later in the game, serving to crew as needed.
1 Viashino Heretic - Probably the most debatable card. You need a reliable way to kill artifacts in the maindeck. I prefer the repeatable ability of the Heretic to the Maniac Vandal’s one shot. His power/toughness splits are also slightly more favorable for us. Creatures having a back side of 3 can just block better which we want, while he still can crew the Copter. This spot could easily be the Engineered Explosive in the board and I don’t think either choice is right or wrong. Personally I want to be able to beta a Chalice of the Void at anytime. Engineered Explosives has some added utility, it just can’t be tutored for after Chalice of the Void resolves.
Spells
4 Grindstone - The other half of the combo. It’s a cheap artifact that plays nicely with Goblin Welder and can favorably interact with cards like Jace and Portent in the right situations. A note, blind milling against your opponent is probably always wrong, while it is often correct to do it to yourself due to the way that Goblin Welder turns it in to virtual card advantage.
5 blast effects-A 4/1 Pyroblast/REB split is correct, but to be honest I usually use 3/2 split. Cabal Therapy may be on the down swing, and Pyroblasts ability to be cast and target anything is sometimes important, making the 4/1 appear better. Beta REB is a cooler card. So sometimes you have tough choices. In general, these cards are really versatile options for us. Yes, with Painter on Blue we can blow most things up, and you will often do that, but these cards also allow us to control the stack. In the past, when SDT was legal, we could float a blast effect on the top of our library and use it when the time called. Now our draw engine is Smuggler’s Copter, which is essentially a sorcery speed draw, so it changes the way the card plays. Canonist allows you to control the stack in a similar way to the old SDT lists, although I will say at this time you often use the blast effect at sorcery speed.
3 Enlightened Tutor - It took a while to get people to buy into a card disadvantage tutor. This card is critical to adding consistency to the deck by finding the combo piece you need while also serving as an out to get some of the specific hate pieces we play. Its inclusion serves as a sort of critical mass of tutors and combo pieces in the deck. You might be asking if the card is so strong why we don’t we play four. Well the easy answer is we tested it and three is a better number, but from a theory perspective you really only every want to see one every game, and when you do the math it gives you 3 copies as optimal, and testing has borne that out. While it doesn’t place the card into hand you can easily cast it with the Smuggler’s Copter trigger on the stack.
1 Blood Moon - The card is great. At times we ran 6 plus of these effects. DRS changed its effectiveness. We worked to adapt the deck and the increased downside of the card started to weigh on the deck. Yes it can turn off your opponent’s lands, but it also stops our sol lands which is a very high price to pay. Often times you need to deploy it early, but that can cost resources for little gain if your opponent has ample basics or artifact mana. It doesn’t crew, and the Magus of the Moon is so fragile. With all this, sometimes the card still crushes your opponent. So a singleton seemed correct and the Enlightened Tutor allows you to find it if the match up calls for it.
1 Ensnaring Bridge - We want to buy time. This can work wonders against the random creature hordes you will face. The main reason this is part of the deck though is due to Show and Tell Variants. Due to Emrakul’s shuffle effect, those match ups are notoriously hard. Having something that can stop the attack for a couple turns is sometimes all we need to figure out an additional way to win.
4 Smuggler’s Copter- This is the card that allows Painter to be a deck again. While people will say that the banning of SDT killed Painter, they are only partially correct. As Shortcake was previously built, the meta had become increasingly hostile. The 6 months leading up to the SDT banning were brutal for the deck. The deck was on the downturn, and the SDT banning was just a mercy killing at that point. Smuggler’s Copter required a massive reevaluation of the deck and its cards. We needed to increase the creature count and rework lines of play as sequencing changed drastically. As it stands this is often the best card you can cast off an Ancient Tomb in a blind match up.
This card is so important for the new version of Shortcake that I want to lay out a little more info here. The card’s ability to filter draws while putting pressure on your opponent’s life total is amazing. For the first time, we can reliably attack our opponent’s life total. By attacking this resource, we can often times make our opponent play spells they would otherwise wait to cast. In a normal game it is reasonable to have an opponent fetch twice. Now say we attack turns 2 and 3. We have already taken our opponent to 12 life. While we aren’t a true aggro deck, it is easy to see that dropping life total may force them to deal with the Smuggler’s Copter even though it has already done its job by getting rid of the two worst cards in our hand. Similar situations occur with Storm decks. And its ability to block Marit Lage and still filter cards can buy critical turns to assembly the combo. It also pairs well with Recruiters and Painters, working to add offensive power to the cards that serve our main mission. Its further interactions with Goblin Welder and Grim Lavamancer are just icing on the cake.
Mana
4 Ancient Tomb - The best land in the deck. Allows us to cheat on mana. Vital piece of all stompy mana bases
3 City of Traitors - At times I have run 4, but three feels better with the current list. Once we cut the Blood Moon effects, the drawback on the card started to add when they are drawn in multiples. But its acceleration is amazing, so you love seeing one each game.
5 Fetch Lands - They allow the white splash and have some graveyard filing effects for our Lavaman. The shuffle effect was important when we used SDT, now that isn’t needed. They are not here to thin out the library. The life loss starts to add up quickly. I play Onslaught ones because I like old boarders. You just need to fetch a Mountain. Arid Mesa is often time played. But we don’t need to fetch Plains nor should we run a Plains in our deck.
3 Plateau - They provide both colors of mana. That is all
3 Mountain - I would love to add a fourth but really this is all we can run. Allows you to play around Wasteland and to a lesser extent Ghost Quarter for a turn or two.
1 Great Furnace - We wanted some additional red sources. We wanted an uncounterable artifact to feed Welder. We wanted a repeatable mana source that Enlightened Tutor could find. This does all of that.
4 Lotus Petal - As mentioned before you want at least 5 fast mana. The Petals allow for color fixing and food for Welder. I heard he was a good card at one time.
Over the last 3 months the sideboard was in constant flux. It took us a while just to get the games in to figure out how the deck should play in each match up. It was only then that we could talk about sideboarding options. The big issue of concern was how to tackle Delver variants, BR Reanimator, Miracles and Elves. So while the boarding strategy we ended up with no longer works with the recent bannings, it helped lay the groundwork for the next stage.
Tips on how to play the deck and the current sideboard configuration will come in part 2, which you can find here!
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