Card of the Week – Heist Planner

by Bernie Makino a.k.a. La_Sin_Grail of Team Strike

We all know heist planner is good.  In fact, we all know he’s very good.  But just how can you really get the maximum potential out of him? There are many ways you can choose to approach heist planner, and from many perspectives.  First, I’ll explore limited.

Limited:

1. The first way you can heist planner is to just take the best cards out of their deck.  Sounds easy enough, you see anything you can’t stand facing and remove it.  This is what I used to do, and it is pretty effective for starting players.

2. Resource screw them.  If they mulliganned a bunch of cards and you see a three-trade deck, count the resources.  Figure out their resource base, counting their starters, and see if maybe they’re missing a color.  If you think they are or need the second thresh of a color, use that as one of your picks.

3. Take out their three biggest creatures.  The idea here is you do that and then play a stall game.  When you have your arena-quarter finalist staring down a stalwart soldier, you’re at good odds.  Try this especially in creatures with good match ups: Dock Sentinel against a gearsmith deck, union leader against warlord, etc.

4. Remove their best creatures.  This is more an issue if you’re going to play aggressively.  Take out those swarm of gnats, scouts etc. that may not be the best creatures at the end of the game, but they’re efficient and will stop any aggressive beat-down.

5. Remove removal.  This is the course I took in a draft deck of mine when I had heist planner into ferret + skimping ecto-manipulator turn two.  This route is good if you have a relatively unstoppable creature except by spells (ferret), or if you’re not good at guessing combat tricks.  This option limits their choices drastically in the game.

6. Remove specific cards for the match up.  Oftentimes, they’ll have a martial artist you can’t deal with, or a rabid sarume against your micromajig army, or other specific match ups you’d like to avoid.  So avoid them!  Other times, you’ll want to take their best two removal spells plus a big target for catastrophic betrayal later on.

Important things to keep in mind with heist planner are that he’s only good starting with rogue, and to only pick him when you expect to start rogue.  A heist planner late game is all right, but in limited, you can almost end the game first turn- they’re denied access to their best removal and creatures, while you have reanimation targets and information about their deck.  I’m happy to first-pick a heist planner

In general, heist planner is not a great creature after the initial shock, so here are some fun things to do with him.  These apply in both limited and constructed.

1.    Rapine.  Obviously, your primary use of heist planner is done with, so swap him for that steamwork over there for some power!
2.    Play banker.  Let him die.  Replay.  Repeat.
3.    Chump Block (stop a huge attacker from wiping out a third of your life)
4.    Chump Attack (make them waste a big blocker to stop him and swarm in with other creatures)
5.    Use him as a three speed in strength in numbers.
6.    Throw him behind a hasty and a bipolar sarcophyle for some free damage.

Constructed:

In constructed, there’s much more to be learned from heist planner.  The first thing you have to do is check their deck.  Quickly take an inventory of their list and write down some important cards, especially tricks and bombs.  Then, count how many of each of those important cards there are.  If there’s three rapines, I’ll bet dollars to donuts there’s another one in their hand.  Of course, some people like to play 2-3 ofs, but that should be pretty obvious from their list.  Write down the cards you suspect are in their hand, as well as anything important to keep in mind for later- grand theft all, downsizing, shriever attack etc.  Remember that planning a heist properly can seldom be accomplished without writing down anything, so keep notes on everything.  If you think some bit of knowledge or thought during your heisting, write it.  Don’t forget to refer to these notes that say what combat tricks they probably have and play around them.

Also, by seeing their deck, you should be able to predict some of their deck – is it very slow?  Is it completely aggressive?  You can now change your play style to combat the specific deck you’re facing.  If it’s mono warlord agro, use this knowledge to accelerate into a union leader, or save a sarume to take out their tons and tons of 1-life guys.  Are they playing arcanist recursion or banker?  Should you not remove any tactics or not remove creatures because their recursion count is so high?

Other things to investigate are the bottom however many cards of their library they mulliganned away.  This could tell you any number of things- they could be lacking the necessary resources to play well, or they could be pitching away aggression for stability or the other way around.  This can tell you the best way to deal with them.  If they’re playing agro, keep a board presence while you gain resources, then stabilize.  If they’re playing strength in numbers, you should keep ambuscades handy, if they’re playing equipment, keep Yoinks in your hand and not as resources.  Maybe there’s something of theirs you’d really like to forced recruitment for which you should play differently.  The possibilities are endless.

For those of you who want a way to beat control decks for your next constructed event, here’s my obscene offering- Deck of a Hundred Heists:

4 Heist Planner
4 Postmorder Debenture
4 Resurrection Technician
4 Revivitate
4 Downsizing
4 Bipolar Sarcophyle
4 Shocking Reappearance
4 Free Trade Agreement
4 Blanching Butcher
3 Rapine
4 Scrag
4 Hasty Sarcophyle
4 Brummagem Jewelry
3 Gold Summit
2 Grand Theft All
12 Greed (1 start)
7 Deception (1 start)

This deck operates on the premise that you can remove the best cards from their deck with heist planner.  Here’s a simulated hand (not quite ideal):

Turn one: Heist Planner
Turn two: Free Trade Agreement, Blanching Butcher
Turn three: dumping resources into more resources
Turn four: Dump, dump, hide behind butcher,
Turn Five: Downsizing
Turn six: Technician for heist planner
Turn seven: Another heist planner, rapine sacrificing it
Turn eight: Debenture for heist planner, if necessary revivatate two heist planners
Turn nine: Heist planner (from hand), after downsizing again

I think you get the picture.  Basically, FTA (Free Trade Agreement) means you’ll both be getting much of your decks.  FTA with gold summit and downsizing means you’re quite possibly going to draw the whole deck.  The ability to play heist planner potentially 24 times means that they’ll be missing their top cards in this fight.  When you let them overextend into downsizing, they’ll “wisen up” and play just a couple men.  End of turn, Grand Theft All, for your turn removal them/steam them/etc. and kill them with their own heist planner-ed beat sticks.

Hopefully, you can use FTA to accelerate resources quickly to a downsizing.  Make sure you choose resources for the FTA as many times as you can against agro, and cards as much as you can against control.  Against an aggressive deck like mono warlord, play resources so they slow the rate of acceleration and you buy time to blast their board with downsizing.  If they chose to play resources when you opted both resources, they’ll rely on top-decking every turn, but if they didn’t, they’ll be behind in developing the resource aspect of their board, and when you downsizing, they can’t recover.  This is not an optimal matchup- fighting agro with this deck- because you rely on Free Trade Agreement to win you the game.  If you don’t get it, or if they’re smart enough to blow it up immediately, you’re in for some trouble.  If you face control, you should be fine- remove all their best cards from their library, count their deck to find their hand, and play with more information and better top decks to win.

Until next time, remember to really think when you’re dropping that turn one heist planner.  There’s plenty of knowledge out there for the taking, now go and get it.