I think it may have been the global warming. Or maybe the water. (Or maybe the M10). Whatever the case may be, this has definitely been a season for a lot of interesting decks. This second half of the Austin-qualifying Standard season is just chock full of them.
I’m pretty excited about the contributions from here in Wisconsin. Brian Kowal churned out a deck on a pad of paper on the way to U.S. Nationals that Jacob Van Lunen took to a 7-1 record and 9th place at U.S. Nationals. For reference, here is Kowal’s Zoo list:
Creatures (24)
Lands (24)
Spells (12)
Now, I’ve always been a little bit perturbed by Kowal’s propensity to make the last-minute deck. The thing about it that bothers me is that sometimes you end up with a deck that is just not particularly great. I still vividly recall two Pro Tours, Pro Tour: New Orleans 2001 and Pro Tour: Philadelphia 2005, where the last-minute brewing just drove me bonkers. For every Iron Giant (Maher’s Pro Tour: Chicago Tinker deck, made with Lan Ho, Brian Schneider, and a few others) that got brewed right before the event, there are far more situations like in New Orleans, where a fantastic deck (like Instant.dec) that had actually been tested gets tossed aside by a number of people at the last minute, and a Song of Blood Threshold deck gets played instead.
Despite this frustration, Kowal’s natural talent at deckbuilding often just creates these decks that can be a shock to the metagame in their approach. Boat Brew is only the most famous of these decks, but this Zoo deck has a similar kind of potency. It just has a constant pressure that it can continue and continue to apply, and it rarely feels like it runs out of gas. I remember watching the coverage of Aaron Dettman’s performance with the deck in the PTQ in Madison and realizing, “Wow, he should have won this match.” Aaron gave me my first loss in the Swiss, and I kept checking in to see how he was doing, and there he was, at the top of the standings again and again, just propelled forward by a deck that didn’t seem to run out of gas unless fighting against a ton of Bituminous Blasts.
Two weeks ago, I covered another awesome rogue deck out of Wisconsin: Bob Baker and Seth Hellenbrand’s Giantbaiting deck. They had already seen some modicum of success with an early version of the deck at the Minnesota $5k, but things really came together for them with the later versions of the deck, and the ascension of Vivid-land decks after Japanese Nationals.
Creatures (24)
- 2 Imperious Perfect
- 4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
- 4 Bramblewood Paragon
- 4 Boggart Ram-Gang
- 4 Nettle Sentinel
- 2 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
Lands (24)
Spells (12)
Sideboard
It was in that same PTQ Top 8, against the same opponent (Matt Grandgeorge, piloting Naya-Jund Cascade), that Bob Baker also lost his match do to a play error. In Bob’s case, he forgot that he would have sufficient Red to be able to cast his Javelin and have Red for a Bolt for the win.
Where Kowal’s deck garners most of its power from its sheer staying power, the Seth and Bob’s Giantbaiting deck instead gets it strength out of sheer speed. In a way, this is the current incarnation of the Blitzy-Red decks we used to see back in the day. It accomplishes the same goals as those decks always did, and are able to supply the proper amount of burn by virtue of the 15 to 17 Red sources that it usually has available (depending on the build). I’ve always been a big fan of decks that didn’t mess around, and instead just worked on killing you, and this deck is one of those. Another player, Ben Rasmussen, who top eighted a different PTQ with the list said, “Yeah, if they put a Vivid land into play in the first three turns, they’re probably dead”. That’s something to pay attention to and respect.
And, of course, there is Ivan Drago.
Creatures (20)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (23)
Spells (15)
Sideboard
Lissa Jensen’s proto-Drago deck, “Balls to the Walls,” was a real shock to my system. Kowal and I plugged away at the deck, adding in more consistent cards over the Bogardan Hellkites and Soul’s Fires. The result was a deck that seemed better than I could have expected. Kowal started working on other decks, but I kept plugging away. It was at U.S. Nationals that I finalized the list that was essentially played by Scott Bielick. He and the Iowa crew with him added in access to White for Gaddock Teeg, and two players took it to the Top 16 of the PTQ where they played it. I’ve heard rumors of other Top 8s, but sadly no confirmation.
Where Giantbaiting is exciting for speed, and Kowal Zoo for its consistent pressure, Ivan Drago is exciting for sheer ridiculousness. It’s honestly pretty insane to drop a 10/10 trampler for only 6 mana, and then to use your Mosswort Bridges to suddenly rip it up into a 20/20 or more. Ivan Drago has a depressing weakness to Five-Color Control and a Faerie-dependent Faeries matchup (if they draw enough Mistbind Cliques, they will win, otherwise, you will), but that seems to be getting to be less and less of a problem as the metagame develops. Much like the Giantbaiting deck, one of the things that this deck has going for it is its sheer joy — it is a fantastically fun deck to play, particularly against a player who is unfamiliar with what you can do.
Time Sieve is one of those decks that has been getting more and more on the radar as of late. Here is one of the more recent lists with a high placement:
I know that one player was asking me my opinions on the deck, trying to figure out what they wanted to do to solve the problem of Faeries for Time Sieve. The real issue for the combo deck is that a Faeries player is just situated quite well, able to stay untapped with an instant threat, and if it is a Mistbind Clique or Vendilion Clique, disrupt the Sieve deck in a significant way. Even if it isn’t running these cards, a Bitterblossom is all it take to have the deck able to supply a force that can win the game, with a Scion to really drive it home. With Stutter and Cryptic and Ambitions (and the potential for Vendilion Clique and boarded Thoughtseize), it is just a grossly antagonistic matchup.
So what is a poor Time Sieve player to do? You really are usually counting on the ability for an Open the Vaults to lock the game out, and running a six mana sorcery into Faeries when you haven’t been asking them to do much else seems like an exercise in probable failure.
My answer to the question?
Ignore it.
That’s right, ignore it. It won’t go away, but there really is only so much that you can do in a metagame this diverse. How many different archetypes have made the Top 8 of PTQs? I’ve lost count, it’s so many.
What is your alternative? You can contort outlandishly to try to make the matchup maybe 10% better, maybe 20%? With Faeries only 15% of most metagames right now (at best), a 20% matchup improvement (which seems incredible generous to allow) will only give you a +3% EV for a random match. If you’re losing, on average even 4% of what you could have had against the rest of your matchups, your collective EV is down. If it’s closer to a 10% improvement (as I suspect it is), winning the Faeries matchup only has to cost you 2% for the rest of the matchups to be a losing proposition. This is significant.
Time Sieve is one of those decks that picks up the same crowd of players as Turbo-Fog. I’ve always loved Turbo-Fog since I saw the first competitive Turbo-Fog deck built back in the Oath and Rec-Sur days. Card dealer extraordinaire Dan Bock (perhaps most famous for his secret tech deck for PT: Tokyo) built a Turbo-Fog deck filled with Spike Weaver, Constant Mists, and Respite. Ever since then, there is just something deeply exciting to me about shutting down an entire avenue of attack. A Turbo-Fog player can often just completely ignore certain decks. Time Sieve can do the same thing, but also has this way of making control players who are reactive just not have enough to do to control the table.
Where Cedric Phillips gave you permission to punch a Turbo-Fog player in the face, a Time Sieve player is just different enough to not be a justifiable punching bag. Solving the Faeries problem is quite a pickle, and I’m really not sure if there is a better answer than ignoring it (i.e., win the other matchups more often).
The deck that just seemed to jump out of nowhere, and fill me full of excitement in a way that the Time Sieve deck can’t (shocking, given how much I enjoy Turbo-Fog), is Hohn Mahon’s U/G Time Warp. I was so excited when I saw this list, I just had to play it a bunch:
Planeswalkers (8)
Lands (24)
Spells (29)
- 4 Time Warp
- 4 Howling Mine
- 4 Fertile Ground
- 3 Twincast
- 4 Cryptic Command
- 3 Primal Command
- 3 Firespout
- 3 Savor the Moment
- 1 Mirror Sheen
Sideboard
Wowowow.
This is an incredibly cool deck. One of the things that a lot of people have done since the printing of Savor the Moment is start pairing it with cards that can make it effective. Garruk Wildspeaker was the big Planeswalker to see use, but all of them had their fair share. Howling Mine was another use, but without extra Walks, the deck was not so exciting.
And then, of course, M10 came along and brought us Time Warp.
Time Warp, along with Savor the Moment and Primal Command, gives the deck access to 10 quasi-Time Walks. Time Walk, of course, is one of the most powerful spells of all time. In some formats (Five Color comes to mind), it is the most powerful spell in the format, more so than even Ancestral. None of those 10 from your 60 main deck cards are actually Time Walk, of course, but they all do some good work.
One of the things that is most exciting about the deck is the use of the various Fork effects in the deck. Twincast, in and of itself, is a fine Fork, potentially doubling your effect, if you don’t fear running into a counterspell. For the less greedy player, though, Twincast functions quite fantastically well as a counter on its own. You can always “effectively” counter a counterspell by copying the original spell, but in some cases it is actually far more beneficial to copy the counter targeting your spell; take those moments when you’re copying a Cryptic Command, for example.
The other copy spell, Mirror Sheen, can be simply ridiculous. We have our beloved stack to thank for it. If you cast a Primal Command, for example, targeting yourself for 7 life gain and, say, the opponent’s land, to put it back on top of their library, for every 3 mana you have open, you can create another copy. I was playing one game against Demigod Red, and I was totally on the ropes. They had just dropped me to two. I had out a Garruk (they went for my throat rather than expend their Demigod’s damage to simply reduce the Garruk to a 1), a Fertile Ground, and the Sheen. With the Garruk, I had a total of eleven mana. Eleven mana meant a Primal Command and two copies, to put me up to 23, and to triple Fallow Earth them. I didn’t need much after that to be able to take the game over (a Jace into a Savor got me there).
This is one of the truly beautiful things about the deck. If you get out a Garruk, you can absolutely mitigate the problems that the Savor the Moment implies. When you get a Sheen out, though, even the crappy Savor the Moment becomes something potentially degenerate when combined with a single Planeswalker. Taking three or four turns in a row, even if you can’t untap, is crazy with, say, a Jace.
To me, the card counts in this main deck looked absolutely fantastically done. This deck looks like it could be a real monster in the metagame, and it’s a shame it only placed second in the Cruise Qualifier where it was ran.
The last deck I’d like to share definitely doesn’t have the pedigree of these other decks. It hasn’t been in the Top 8 of any tournaments, yet, but at the same time, I’m really excited by it. The deck is my monoblack control deck, which, in an homage to Jamie Wakefield, I’m calling Sisters’ Grimm.
Creatures (13)
Lands (25)
Spells (22)
For the Lorwyn-Block metagame, I shared a deck much like this, and I was pretty excited about how it performed against creature decks and Five-Color Control. Faeries, of course, was a monster of a problem. In this diverse metagame, though, I feel like that is much less of a problem.
The way that this deck works is much like the way it worked for the Lorwyn-block deck: as Chapin put it, “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.” How are you against Bitterblossom? Pretty good? Okay, how about an Ashling? Fine? How about a Demigod? Fine? An Oona? Answered that one? How about another Demigod? Are you dead? Good.
I played a 10-set against a couple of the aggressive decks (Giantbaiting, Kowal Zoo, and Jund Cascade) and found myself up in the win column with 7 or 8 wins per ten-set. A crazily rogue Red/Green deck was able to constantly tear me up, but unless you expect Uril/Runes to be a huge part of your metagame, tearing up the decks that attack will tend to be par for course. On of the key elements to this is the Ashling/Noose, combo. Getting a creature out of the way so that Ashling can assassinate it or another one can just be devastating for an aggressive deck. While you don’t need the Noose, it can lock out games where your opponent is just stuck without really good options.
Against the controlling decks, the way that you play is to only put out enough to require them to answer it. Unlike a Faerie deck, the Leechridden Swamps give you a constant damage source for your opponent, even if you aren’t really excited about attacking them. Essentially, nearly every single card can pull you ahead, so you don’t want to put yourself out there so thinly that they can just take you out with well-timed sweepers. About the only card you want to be aggressive with is Demigod. When you pair Demigod with Beseech the Queen (and to a lesser extent Sign in Blood), it becomes so much more common to draw multiples, and really punish an opponent for working to suppress them.
The sideboard is one of the places that the deck can really shine. The creature-kill cards all come in against the more aggressive decks. This is just to help keep your life total up at a safe level. Corrupt, on top of your Tendrils, can really make the aggressive decks squirm. At a certain point in the game, you can even begin to go to the head. Platinum Angel makes a great answer for those decks that might potentially be able to go over the top; even if it is only a speed bump, it can really pull your bacon out of the fire against decks that might potentially reduce their creature kill, or simply not have the appropriate one at the right moment.
Platinum Angel is also a good card to consider dropping against many combo decks, many of which (like Time Sieve) become forced to find a Cryptic Command to complete the win. When you package this with the remainder of the anti-Control package (2 Memory Plunder, 2 Haunting Echoes, 3 Scepter of Fugue), you have a good chance of fighting back against what would otherwise be one of the hardest categories of decks for you to beat.
Memory Plunder is one of those bizarre cards that continues to impress me, much like Wild Ricochet. With a Scepter or a Duress often knocking out a Cryptic Command or Cruel Ultimatum, the ability to cast that spell out of your opponent’s yard as an instant is just phenomenal. I had one ridiculous game where my opponent felt pretty in control, with a full hand against my lowly single card, so they tapped nearly the way down to cast their Broodmate Dragon rather than discard. My card was a Memory Plunder, so I hit them for half of their hand, and refilled up, finding a Duress (seeing a Broken Ambitions, which I took), and a Beseech, which found me another Plunder to empty their hand and board. It was pretty awesome.
Haunting Echoes isn’t just for Reveillark strategies, but is also for any deck where the games go long. If they aren’t a dedicated control/combo deck, a single Echoes can be a great tutor target to really rip their deck into tatters. Against decks where you want both (any control/graveyard/combo deck), casting one at any time after the midgame can be absolutely devastating, particularly if you’ve been wrecking their hand with Scepter of Fugue.
The card that people invariably ask about has to be Great Sable Stag. How can a Mono-Black deck possibly handle that card? Well, while there are Trip Noose and access to two Warren Weirding, the card I really love for this is in the board:
Holy crap, this card does a number on the Stag. It’s actually a complete laugh. The thing that is super exciting about this is also the way that the Fendeep Summoner can turn into an aggressive deck after playing defense for some element of the game. Even against something more difficult to deal with, like Chameleon Colossus, the Summoner all but turns off the Colossus by forcing the Colossus player to spend four of their mana if they want to attack, all for the ability to kill one of your Swamps. Ooooooh!
Right now, there isn’t much time left for the current Standard… With all of the deck choices out there, it is exciting to see that there are continue to be all manner of decks that are a reasonable choice. I’m going to try to finally convert one of these PTQs into an invitation. Wish me luck in this final week for me!