Last weekend, Matthew Costa and his U/W Delver deck won Grand Prix Baltimore.
Creatures (15)
Lands (21)
Spells (24)
I feel no need to go over the first seventy-four cards in Mr. Costa’s list, as by now we know U/W Delver to be Standard’s most popular and successful deck. It also happens to be quite close to the decklist he used to Top 8 Pro Tour Dark Ascension only two weeks before. No, more than anything it’s that seventy-fifth card that interests me in Matt Costa’s sideboard: Jace, Memory Adept.
At a glance, Jace looks out of place in U/W Delver and doesn’t seem to contribute much to the strategy. After all, Matt’s maindeck features only twenty-one lands and not a single spell that costs more than three mana. He wins by damage and would never mill an opponent to death in a thousand years. His gameplan is to assemble and protect a difficult-to-answer threat and ride it to victory. He seems to have little use for a late game card-drawing engine either.
The secret is that Jace, Memory Adept contributes nothing to U/W Delver’s gameplan. He earned his slot because he doesn’t have the slightest connection with the rest of the Delver deck, and therefore attacks from an unexpected and undefended angle. Jace, Memory Adept, even with zero support (particularly with zero support), can potentially beat a control opponent on his own regardless of what else is going on in the game.
U/W Delver vs. U/B Control
From the U/B Control side, there are a handful of ways to approach this matchup, but I’d like to focus on one in particular: the bare-bones approach. In the bare-bones approach, the U/B player leaves all of his or her finisher cards in the sideboard in order to maximize the number of removal spells and defensive cards and to neuter Vapor Snag and Phantasmal Image. They lock up the game with Curse of Death’s Hold, card advantage, other sweepers, and finish things patiently with Nephalia Drownyard. Whether they employ the bare-bones approach or not, it’s common among U/B Control players to trim their permission post-sideboard against Delver, or to cut it entirely. Many U/B players at the GP last weekend would’ve had no win conditions and no hard counters in their whole decks post-board against Delver.
If this seems extreme and unrealistic, I’ll be specific about how I personally was sideboarding in this matchup as a U/B player. My only ways to damage my opponent were one Snapcaster Mage and one Sorin Markov, which would typically get Celestial Purged at some point. I always left in Dissipate on the play (when it can answer their turn 3 play), but when I was on the draw all of my permission was fair game to sideboard out. This is a longwinded way of saying that, while I normally considered myself a significant favorite in the matchup, I would have had very near to a 0% chance to win if my opponent’s deck contained a single copy of Jace, Memory Adept.
How did it come to this? How did I, and many others, allow ourselves the possibility of being beaten before the game even started?
Inbreeding
But not in the way you’re thinking! I’m talking about inbreeding in the metagame, which always occurs, but to a much greater extent at some times than at others.
The clearest example would be a small group of people who play only amongst themselves and never branch out or use the Internet. When I was seven years old, my brother had a mono-red deck that dramatically outclassed anything I could have built from scratch. All of my decks came to have Circle of Protection: Red, Chill, or tons of life gain cards so that I felt like I had a chance. When a few of our friends learned the game, a U/W fliers deck and a mono-green beatdown deck made me realize that maindeck Circle of Protection: Red was not a good or realistic choice to make.
In more modern times, our testing for Pro Tour Dark Ascension could’ve suffered from inbreeding. We had a realistic, projected metagame that featured Delver and Humans as the decks to beat, but a disproportionate number of us wanted to brew and test blue control decks. When you’re getting crushed by control game after game, day after day, it’s hard to keep in mind that control will be a small portion of the field, and it’s easy to give up on Wolf Run and non-blue midrange decks despite how good they may have been against the format’s top dogs.
Inbreeding occurs in the large scale as well. After all, we’re all looking at the same small set of tournaments at any given time: the Pro Tour, a Grand Prix or two, and the StarCityGames.com Open Series. Everyone attending Grand Prix Baltimore knew they had to beat the Delver, Spirits, and Wolf Run lists from the Top 8 of Pro Tour Dark Ascension. They likely thought much less about how they would handle obscure situations like an opponent dropping a Jace, Memory Adept.
Today’s Standard
Inbreeding is most noticeable when the metagame puts extreme constraints on deck construction. In today’s Standard, the most popular deck is frustratingly fast and plays four Vapor Snags, four Mana Leaks, and four Snapcaster Mages. That’s quite a lot to steer you away from playing with expensive creatures unless they have game changing enters the battlefield abilities like Primeval Titan and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. On the other end of the spectrum, the most popular control deck features a free, uncounterable, virtually unkillable win condition that never requires spending mana at sorcery speed. That’s quite a lot to steer you away from playing any other deck that attempts to control the game by the traditional means of permission and creature-control.
Looking back on the timeline of this Standard format, things have been changing constantly and dramatically. Just to name a few changes, Mono-Red, W/G Tokens, Solar Flare, Tempered Steel, and Illusions all have numerous top finishes to their name but saw almost no play in Baltimore. It’s not because we, as a community, made a mistake playing those decks back then and now we know better; those decks are comparable in terms of speed and raw power to what’s being played now. Their fall from grace is simply a result of shifts in the metagame and the states of mind of tournament Magic players.
When I say that today’s Standard is inbred, I say it with no malice or disdain towards anyone for their deck choices; we can only work with what we’re given. What I mean is that things have simply taken a (natural) turn towards the extreme. Delver decks and U/B Control give people a great disincentive to play a small number of creatures because doing so simply turns on removal, Vapor Snags, and Phantasmal Images. Consequently, we see people with no win conditions other than Nephalia Drownyard, which is something that could never happen in the first week of a new format.
The result of these extreme circumstances was Grand Prix Baltimore, where the Top 8 featured a deck with unmetalcrafted Galvanic Blasts, a deck that split six slots between Mortarpod and Fume Spitter, three control decks that can’t win before turn 20, and a beatdown deck sporting Jace, Memory Adept to beat them.
If I make fun of the decks from Grand Prix Baltimore, I only compliment their pilots on their skill and understanding of the metagame. Playing a fragile deck in an inbred metagame is not necessarily a bad thing; it can be a calculated risk. Perhaps the U/B players from Grand Prix Baltimore were perfectly willing to accept their vulnerability to planeswalkers in exchange for added strength against the decklists they expected to face. My advice is simply to recognize your vulnerabilities and understand what you’re getting into when you register a fragile deck. Â
How to Avoid Inbreeding
It’s all too easy to get carried away in the latest trends and the results of the most recent tournament. Here’s a test I recommend using before every tournament as a reality check:
Imagine taking a time machine back to the first weekend after the format’s rotation and playing a two-hundred player PTQ with a clean slate. How well would your deck perform relative to the alternatives?
Matt Costa U/W Delver deck would likely do quite well, although that sideboard Memory Adept wouldn’t do a whole lot for him. Something like Wolf Run would probably do even better, as it’s straightforward, difficult to hate out, and through the roof in raw power. U/B Control with two Nephalia Drownyards as the only win conditions would certainly not be your best bet. You wouldn’t be able to handle the kid playing his W/G Mirran Crusader plus Thrun, the Last Troll deck, which he hasn’t yet learned loses to Wolf Run and Delver.
Fragility
A fragile deck is one that has a very hard time handling particular cards, combinations, or sequences. It has little to do with how "good" or "bad" a deck is in terms of win percentage against the testing gauntlet, but it’s certainly something to consider before you enter a tournament. In very predictable fields, it can be okay to play a fragile deck, accepting an obscure vulnerability in exchange for extra percentage points against the top decks. However, in an open field, it’s much better to look for a robust deck.
Drownyard Control is fragile by nature because it’s a reactive deck whose answers are geared for today’s very specific (inbred) metagame. More importantly, its inability to quickly close a game means that it has to answer every threat the opponent presents or lose to it.
French Rites is fragile because it has a single-minded and gimmicky gameplan. You’re in trouble if you face an opponent playing Grafdigger’s Cage and Nihil Spellbomb in his or her Tezzeret deck. You have no answers to what the opponent is doing, so you can have a very hard time turning around a losing situation.
Something like Humans is robust because it has a modest number of catchall answers (Oblivion Ring and Mana Leak) and a gameplan that’s difficult to hate out. If you run into a matchup or situation that you can’t handle, you can still stick a Geist of Saint Traft or Hero of Bladehold and try to close the game as quickly as possible.
How to Avoid Fragility
At Grand Prix Orlando, I registered an especially fragile build of U/B Control. Predictably, the deck performed well in the matchups I was most prepared for, but my losses came in part because of a lack of powerful cards and my inability to end a game. In one, I stabilized at one life but eventually died to a topdecked Gut Shot because I gave my opponent too many draw steps after I’d taken control. In another, I drew twenty cards off Jace, Memory Adept’s ultimate, but I simply had no card in my deck that could get me out of the situation (though plenty of such cards were legal).
My solution for Grand Prix Baltimore was to add a couple of powerful finishers to the deck: one Grave Titan, one Consecrated Sphinx, and one Sorin Markov. Though I didn’t feel they were necessary against the most popular decks, I felt having them was well worth a couple of slots for the purpose of a long tournament. When something snuck through permission like a Thrun or a Birthing Pod, I could still hope to overpower it if I could find my Grave Titan. I would’ve been taken off guard if I’d faced down Mr. Costa’s Jace, but I like to think I would’ve had the tools to re-sideboard and beat it in game 3 once I knew what was what.
I’d like to close with a few words on balance—which in many ways is opposite to inbreeding and fragility in Magic. I gave my U/B list to a handful of friends before the GP with the advice that they should always leave at least six removal spells in their deck after sideboard, no matter what. Expect the unexpected! You may not think your opponent will leave in Consecrated Sphinx, but you can’t be sure that he’s thinking the same way as you. What’s more, he may be thinking exactly the same way as you and know that you’ll take out your Doom Blades. During sideboarding, when you’re looking at that Go for the Throat in a control mirror or that Consecrated Sphinx against Delver, the question is not just, "Is this a good card for the matchup?" it’s also, "Where am I becoming vulnerable if I cut this?"
Look for where your deck is vulnerable. You may find that you’ll benefit from a more balanced approach. If not, you may make a calculated risk to play a fragile deck, but at least you won’t be caught off guard as easily.
Look for the extremes in a format. Be like Matt Costa, think outside the box, and see if there’s a card that can shatter the fragile gameplans of your opponents. There may be one, two, or fifty cards not seeing play right now that players would be completely unprepared for. Among others, Shrine of Burning Rage comes to mind….