Some would say that last week’s article took an unnecessarily-harsh look at the Turbo Fog archetype, and worse yet that I invented some unnecessarily conflated numbers to serve the purpose of arguing against playing the deck. Performing an analysis on disparate data points such as I did more-or-less requires the invention of some yardstick against which to measure success, and a quick estimate of how many people had successful results compared to how many people played the deck was about the best yardstick I could improvise. Last week’s article did not make people happy… because it took what some considered to be an “established” deck in the metagame and totally trashed it, presumably for some personal agenda. And now this week I dare say that “playing Turbo Fog” is something that should be so very far from peoples’ minds. My, how things can change in a week!
There is something so very clever about the Cascade Swans deck. Cascade is clearly at its most powerful when it is pure tutoring instead of merely card-and-mana-advantage but with a random effect generated on top of the spell, and one of the potential answers to doing this is to just play an awful lot of lands and not a lot of spells… but this is a quirky answer and not one that is obvious and intuitive to most designers, as it is not quite what we are used to. But applying the inversion of land and spell counts to a Constructed deck works just fine if you have a design that considers a large number of lands to be a valuable resource, and thus a truly clever deck was born:
4 Swans of Bryn Argoll
4 Seismic Assault
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Deny Reality
2 Captured Sunlight
1 Primal Command
41 lands
Cascade in this case functions as pure Tutor spells, as Bloodbraid Elf and Captured Sunlight only function as tutors for Seismic Assault, while Deny Reality functions as a tutor for either Seismic Assault or Swans of Bryn Argoll, sadly without the ability to control which of the two you will get. Lands are after all invisible to Cascade, and lands in sufficient density in one’s deck will remove the need to have any other combo pieces besides Swans + Assault to deal your opponent the critical twenty damage needed to kill the opponent. Beautiful in its simplicity, we see a combo deck that attacks the metagame in a way not previously accomplished, one that doesn’t require the attack phase and is hard to disrupt with permanents that would shut down the combo, simply due to the fact that Deny Reality as a tutor also clears the way for whatever might have held back the combo, be it Pithing Needle or Everlasting Torment or Runed Halo.
This weekend was an interesting one overall, especially when we take a step back and look at the PTQ results in addition to the Grand Prix results. The Grand Prix showcased by means of discussion (if not coverage) the real Japanese technology by means of the aggressive Black/Green Elf decks they were sporting, complete with Putrid Leech beatdown technology, which carefully balanced aggression, removal and disruption to face the metagame… rather than the Turbo Fog deck that did well at one small Japanese tournament and which has recently been touted as ‘the new Japanese tech’ by early adopters looking to get ahead at Regionals. The Grand Prix also showcased the Brothers Ruel and Manuel Bucher playing Turbo Fog to some disappointment where others had begun to call the Turbo Fog metagame shift that would see two or more copies of the deck breaking Barcelona’s Top 8. If its relative failure on Day 2 in the hands of two of the top professional players in the world doesn’t warn you away from the deck, nothing will. The real standout story was Cascade Swans, but it very easily could have been about Sam Black win in Barcelona with Faeries, just one game away in the semifinals against a Five-Color Control deck that did not handle the Cascade Swans deck as neatly as Sam had with Faeries so far that day.
Grand Prix: Barcelona:
Cascade Swans: W OO
B/W Persist Tokens: OO
Five-Color Control: O
B/G Elves: O
Faeries: O
Pro Tour Qualifiers:
Cascade Swans: WOOOO
Five-Color Blood: WOOOO
Red/Black Aggro: WO
G/W Tokens: WO
Turbo Fog: W
B/W Persist Tokens: OOOOOOOOOO
Faeries: OOO
Jund Aggro: OO
B/G Elves: OO
Bloom Tender: O
Little Kid G/W: O
B/W Kithkin: O
Bant Exalted: O
Bloodbraid 3c Red Aggro: O
Bloodbraid Rock: O
Five-Color Reveillark: O
Naya Aggro: O
Breaking down these trends, you can see that Cascade Swans is here to say hi, but for this first week it mostly has to do with who knew it even existed in the first place. It clearly did quite well at the Grand Prix, winning the event and claiming three of the eight elimination slots… but only made the Top 8 of two PTQs. But where it Top 8’ed, boy did it ever have an impact! Four of its five Top 8s were from the same event, showing some clear power in the metagame in at least one other event besides Grand Prix: Barcelona. So if we want to assume that we are jumping on the bandwagon from here on out, it seems pretty clear that Cascade Swans is the big new thing to pay attention to and it’s not just hype… you’d be surprised what people can try and convince themselves of from just one event’s results.
Most shocking however is the fact that B/W Tokens failed to win any of the five PTQs on record this week, despite placing an absurd number of players into the Top 8: ten copies of the deck made it to the elimination rounds, with no dissenters on the fact that Murderous Redcap was critical to the deck’s success in the metagame up to this point. This week then we can point to as the sea change for the Standard season: we knew what the metagame was like up until this point, but from here on out everything has gotten just a little bit strange. What we want to look at here, then, is the fallout from Grand Prix: Barcelona, to figure out what that strange new metagame is going to look like.
The White Decks:
B/W Tokens
Previously the top dog in the metagame, it turns out this deck full of creatures and things that make creatures is just not really good at interacting with the opponent in a meaningful way when the opponent is playing an unconventional game of Magic. Already we saw this with Turbo Fog, where a weak but functional “lockdown” mechanism was used to prey upon the heavily creature-based metagame from the start of the season… but now we see it as well with Cascade Swans, which has the unfortunate habit of making life difficult and not being easy to disrupt via the combat phase.
The story is, adapt or die, and the necessary adaptation for B/W Tokens starts at the bare minimum of increasing its disruption count. Where before the B/W Tokens decks were slowing down and getting Persist-y and even adding Wrath of God to win the creature-heavy metagame war, now it needs to speed up and add the hand disruption back in. Plenty of credible lists, including PTQ Top 8 lists this weekend, had cut Tidehollow Sculler entirely from their 75… and now it needs to not only be present but preferably to have help as well, starting with Thoughtseize. Other options include playing hate cards to attack the combo like Pithing Needle or Runed Halo, but permanent-based hate cards will not be the most effective of all possible answers. While B/W Tokens has enjoyed a good romp as the best deck in the format, its crown has clearly been snatched away from it, and it just has to accept that fact and change to adjust. One of several changes is to shrink in population accordingly, and that seems almost certain to happen.
B/W Kithkin
My “pet deck,” as they call it; it is sad to see a deck appear that seems so readily prepared to non-interactively trounce the Kithkin hordes. It is quite possible to fit in a discard package to adjust as B/W Tokens must, but due to the fact that Black is only a splash color and the deck has to take an aggressive stance by deploying its cards quickly, the effectiveness of this plan will cut significantly into its success in the first place. A more proactive but less-effective answer such as Ethersworn Canonist has to at least be considered, in among the other plans such as Pithing Needles or Aura of Silence, based on the fact that it is an aggressive bear who just happens to also put the Cascade mechanic effectively on hold. While I’m tickled pink to see that the main-deck I’d advised went 9-0 on Day One with just one change (-1 Plains, +1 Swamp) that I have myself been seriously considering, it is not clear to me how the evolution of the deck needs to go in order to face the dangers inherent to a world with an effective combo deck.
G/W Tokens
This deck, unlike B/W Tokens, at least has the comfort of being fast enough to try and keep up with Cascade Swans, but this is cold comfort since it has little hope of actually interacting with them. I thought this would work out at least a bit better, when I led with Qasali Pridemage and got some beats in then traded for a Seismic Assault, but that “trade” turned out to include lands being discarded and my creatures all dying, so “trade” wasn’t really the word I wanted here… seeing how three turns later my opponent had reassembled his Assault, cast a Swans, and used the one land he’d been banking to start his engine up again. G/W Tokens may be awesome against the decks that are awesome against Swans, but it is not itself awesome against Swans. It has all the same White cards and miscellaneous permanents like Pithing Needles that it can use to fight, but the effectiveness of this plan was already suspect.
Reveillark / EsperLark
Between the two, the Esper build seems as if it might do best, if for no other reason than that it includes hand disruption and countermagic. U/W Lark was already a dying strategy after the early enthusiasm of myself and others left us with the stark realization that the deck didn’t stand up in the metagame before, and this new wrinkle doesn’t exactly give it new legs. EsperLark, however, may easily be able to accommodate for the change… by becoming something else entirely, perhaps. You may have by now heard of “the Peek deck,” a reinvention of Ben Rubin winning ‘Dump Truck’ list that effectively used knowledge of your hand as a weapon against you. EsperLark is already the right colors and already includes a theme that fixates on two-power creatures, which Meddling Mage and Tidehollow Sculler both are. Further altering the design to fit its themes may give us an excellent weapon against the combo menace, while also standing up to the rest of the metagame. An example decklist might be:
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Meddling Mage
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Sower of Temptation
4 Reveillark
4 Mulldrifter
4 Path to Exile
4 Cryptic Command
4 Wrath of God
4 Island
4 Arcane Sanctum
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Mystic Gate
4 Underground River
3 Plains
2 Sunken Ruins
This is of course incredibly rough and far from tuned, but includes many of the key elements: disruption backed by a synergistic plan, one that might actually succeed against the new combo deck instead of one that is still going to be a dog to the deck. The sideboard would presumably want more effective tools against the deck, such as Thoughtseizes, and then the rest of the ‘usual’ Lark-type sideboard cards such as Kitchen Finks and Glen Elendra Archmage to face the rest of the format. Reveillark strategies at least seem to have room to grow and a potential niche to fill, which I consider to be a favorable thing.
Turbo Fog
Turbo Fog is the Whitest White deck to ever put white on rice, thus its inclusion in this section. There are two different camps on this one: people that hate it, and people that love it. Gavin Verhey speaks favorably of the deck and even gives it good chances against the new Swans deck in his recent look at Turbo Fog, but my own opinion has been one of strong dissent. Turbo Fog was by my estimation of the numbers the weakest of the archetypes at Regionals, over-hyped and over-played as if it were the savior of Magic for control players everywhere, the new Stasis for those of us who can remember back that far. Manuel Bucher revealed that he and the Ruel brothers both played Turbo-Fog at Grand Prix: Barcelona, and one would think if anyone could succeed with the archetype then it would be the Brothers Ruel. Manuel Bucher missed the cut at 6-3, going 3-3 on Day 1 with it, a record that is impressive only insofar as that it doesn’t have any draws. Both Antoine and Oliver made it comfortably into Day 2, one at 8-0-1 and one at 7-1-1, posting good Day 1 records and bringing the deck’s Day 1 record to 12-4-2 in the hands of some of the best players in the world. Day 2 was less kind; Antoine dropped at 0-3, while Olivier went from 8-0-1 to 8-2-1, rallied back to 10-2-1, then drew the last two rounds of play to end at 10-4-2 and bring the combined Win/Loss record of Ruel/Ruel/Bucher to 14-9-4, a far less compelling number.
My argument against Turbo Fog has been simple and consistent. While it may have a home in the format due to the fact that it is a functional deck, the strategy that deck espouses is fundamentally weak, and at its most functional in an inbred metagame such as what we were beginning to see circa Regionals with nothing but attack-phase decks that couldn’t disrupt or interact with the deck in a meaningful fashion. It has consistently failed even when it seems like a good deck, qualifying one person for Regionals in the U.S. and winning one PTQ. (For that last one, I’m still wondering how.) The argument for playing the deck, that it plays against the attack-phase decks on a different level than Standard usually sees, is an even better argument for playing Cascade Swans instead, as it likewise preys upon the simpleminded attack-phase decks that are Turbo Fog’s bread and butter, and has a much better game against the decks like Faeries that shall begin to emerge again and are set to make Turbo Fog’s life even more of a nightmare.
Friends don’t let friends play Turbo Fog.
The Blue Decks:
See also: Reveillark; Turbo-Fog, above.
Faeries
Faeries have seen the metagame sway towards a place it didn’t want to compete, with Red decks all over the place and unfavorable matchups appearing thanks to Alara Reborn cards where before things seemed nicely in its favor. With this most recent metagame sway, however, the decks that were gunning for Faeries find themselves munched upon by a new predator instead, and Faeries is well-poised to devour the combo deck of the format. While it is far from a cakewalk, Faeries presents some powerful tools to bear against the Swans deck, which plays Sorcery-speed Magic against the Mistbind Clique deck to its detriment and which relies on a few key spells resolving even if other stuff is also going on with Cascade. You can expect to have to counter multiple copies of Seismic Assault and to have to deal with Swans of Bryn Argoll at some point as well, and if you can deal with these things and not die to man-lands and stray Bloodbraid Elves you will find yourself the victor. Things favor the Fae before sideboarding, and return more towards 50/50 after sideboarding where their threat density returns to a more normal high level instead of their deck being mostly lands. Their increase in threat density comes at a price however, and that price is the self-neutering of their combo engine, which will now function as a card advantage engine only rather than card advantage engine plus kill mechanism… it is just as dangerous to allow to resolve, and now there are more other threats you have to worry about as well.
Faeries doesn’t require adaptation so much as it does proper design. Sam Black recently made the Top 4 at GP: Barcelona with a list he now feels is inadequately tuned, and some of his thoughts on the deck can be seen here in this week’s Black Magic. What the deck needs more than anything is streamlining, to find the right build that works for the current metagame, and it will need to face those same decks that had previously made it uncomfortable in their application of Zealous Persecution along the way… the prior metagame doesn’t disappear, it is instead overwritten by the inclusion of a new top dog appearing from the void. At a bare minimum this will require choosing the proper Faerie lineup to face the metagame with… I for one had found myself loathe to play all four Mistbind Cliques for the past six months, and even I have to end my dissent and say there is no time like the present for Mistbind Clique #4. Vendilion Clique may be an acceptable compromise in the field as a multi-purpose creature that is both threat and disruption, in this case due to the fact that it allows you to line your plays up to your opponent’s plans while also potentially breaking up a combo. I find I like Vendilion Clique more and more as more Treetop Villages and Wren’s Run Vanquishers appear, and thus this may be the ideal time for the Clique. Faeries has to answer a lot of questions right now, mostly about its own identity thanks to the shift in the metagame, but the metagame shift is in its favor as it greatly increases in playability as the format changed to include Cascade Swans.
The Black Decks:
Gotcha! At the moment there are plenty of decks that play Black due to tribal ties or synergistic benefits, but there is really nothing I would call ‘a Black deck’ as part of its identity. Faeries, Elves, both flavors of B/W decks, even Red/Black Aggro… all are their primary color much more than they are Black.
The Red Decks:
Red Aggro
Red beatdown is in a pickle, as it has no realistic way to interact with the combo deck in the format as part of its Red identity, so it has to either try and play hate permanents and hope it’s enough or lean more heavily on its nearby associate Black and try to mix disruption with fiery pressure, Thoughtseize and Thought Hemorrhage alongside Anathemancer and the Red spells du jour to actually try and kill the opponent.
Red is in the doghouse already going into this metagame change, and its lot does not greatly improve. It has one of the most powerful cards in the format, Anathemancer, but even still can’t leverage the win percentage it takes to really garner attention. Red may very well need to mix with Black more thoroughly to find a disruptive-but-aggressive package that works for this metagame, which to my mind requires the adoption of Terminate as a spell that can actually kill Swans of Bryn Argoll and likely Thoughtseize as well to keep the opponent on the back foot long enough to close the deal. Unfortunately, this means many of the best reasons there are for playing this sort of deck are already overshadowed by B/G Elves, which can even lean on Profane Command for the game-ending burn spell we usually need Red for.
Boat Brew
I categorize Boat Brew as a Red deck rather than a White deck because it at best poorly uses Windbrisk Heights and Spectral Procession, and its Red character from Siege-Gang Commander and Murderous Redcap is accentuated by the White for Reveillark and Ranger of Eos, not an ‘also-ran’ alongside it.
Boat Brew is on the list of decks waiting to die that people still keep playing. A combo deck that it basically can’t ever beat, because it tries so hard to play fair Magic, ought to dissuade those last few holdouts from playing Boat Brew… its good matchups have steadily disappeared with the format change, and instead even some of the less-relevant decks of the moment consider Boat Brew to be one of their best matchups. I see no ready means for Boat Brew to adapt and fit the metagame without changing its character entirely, and while some of the cards may find they re-form into another deck that also still works, this boat has sailed.
The Green Decks:
See also: G/W Tokens, above.
Jund Ramp
Another deck doomed to die. Where before this deck could actually argue it competed in the metagame, we have a fair non-Blue control deck squaring off against a potent combo deck and a format that is bound to see the resurgence of Faeries to more common play. If even Mike Flores is finding he has to consider casting Seismic Assault on three instead of his beloved Civic Wayfinders, it’s fair to say this deck will likely start to dry up and disappear. As a control deck, it fares poorly… and as a beatdown deck it is either too few or too many colors, depending on whether you want to cut the Red or squeeze in Cryptic Command.
G/B Elves
While I had hoped to see the new Japanese lists that were played at Grand Prix: Barcelona, so far I find I cannot see them anywhere in the coverage, and I don’t know who to ask to provide those decklists instead (especially if I’m then going to turn around and publish them, or even might be presumed to want to do so). The Japanese lists were presumably very much like the one with which Sean Murphy made Top 8 at GP Barcelona, as the most far-reaching change I’ve seen or heard of anywhere was simply that they took advantage of the power of Putrid Leech as a two-drop.
Elves is well-positioned in this current metagame, able to use potent removal like Maelstrom Pulse that hits any side of the Swans combo with equal aplomb alongside an aggressive beatdown curve that includes disruption via Thoughtseize, which is meant to disrupt ‘long enough’ rather than truly disrupt. Where previously G/B Elves wasn’t considered a real competitor, again it is one that is benefited by the format changing around our ears, as it is an excellent aggression deck that can actually face the combo deck as well as Faeries. It was never truly terrible against the tokens decks, just an underdog due to the fact that they played entirely too many threats with just one card at a time, and the sort of deck you’d least like to face off against with Putrid Leech and Thoughtseize is falling off the radar slowly but surely as Red goes into eclipse.
Combo Elves
A deck that didn’t really exist on anyone’s radar, it is one that may benefit from the format changing around it due to the fact that it’s already a resilient deck in and of itself, and the focus of the format on a different public enemy may give it room to flourish. It doesn’t really need to change to survive, though I imagine adjusting the numbers to fit in a full four Thoughtseizes would help make sure you get to the critical turn you need before you can combo off, as once you’re there it is far too easy to use enough disruption through repetitive Primal Command on their manabase to provide the disruption necessary to keep your newfound army in play for the next turn’s attack phase.
For those who didn’t read the coverage in enough detail to catch David Sutcliffe’s interview with Kenny Oberg on the Day 2 Coverage of GP: Barcelona, here’s the deck:
4 Brushland
1 Forest
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
2 Llanowar Wastes
2 Mosswort Bridge
2 Windbrisk Heights
4 Wooded Bastion
1 Cloudthresher
1 Dauntless Escort
4 Devoted Druid
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Ranger of Eos
4 Regal Force
4 Commune with Nature
1 Manamorphose
4 Primal Command
2 Thoughtseize
Sideboard:
3 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
2 Chameleon Colossus
3 Cloudthresher
1 Dauntless Escort
3 Guttural Response
1 Mycoloth
1 Shriekmaw
1 Thoughtseize
The Polychromatic Decks:
Cascade Swans
It’s good to be the King. As the newest player on the metagame, Cascade Swans has proven itself to be a formidable combo deck, taking down the Grand Prix in which it effectively debuted and going from ~4% of the metagame to three copies in the Top 8 to winning the event. While those who read for signal in amongst the noise were aware of the deck, it was really Barcelona that hammered home that this was for real, and suddenly the metagame that seemed so inbred on Windbrisk Heights and the attack phase is slammed on its ear.
Mostly, Cascade Swans needs to do two things: settle on the best build to weather the inevitable torrent of hate cards since even something so simple as a Pithing Needle can shut the combo down (and go in any deck!), and devise the proper sideboard configuration to face the field but also the mirror match. It seems very obvious to me that the deck would benefit by shifting to the design model put forward by LSV which uses Deny Reality instead of Bituminous Blast, as this gives built-in Game 1 resilience to hate cards… and if you don’t think there will be game 1 hate cards, you don’t know Magic players very well. A shocking percentage of us see nothing wrong with taking whatever deck we used to love, throwing in four Pithing Needles, and saying we’re ready.
The Deny Reality version seems the most robust of the lists out there, both because Bituminous Blast requires a target and because Deny Reality fills a critical role. As to sideboarding, well… my experiences so far seem to show that in the Five-Color Blood versus Cascade Swans matchup, it is the Chapin deck that comes out at least incrementally ahead… so one reasonable consideration might be to try to be Five-Color Blood after sideboarding in some games, as so many of the cards otherwise being used are common between the two decks, and the main change would thus be to the land-base of the Swans deck, making it into the land-base that already is intent on casting spells for BG on turn two and UUU1 on turn four, but +15 lands or so (some of which are man-lands). This would be at least one promising road to travel down in the attempts to figure out the deck’s proper sideboard, and already it’s looking very much like whomever figures out the best sideboard for the deck should be the GP: Seattle champion. While things may not actually be that dismal for everyone else, now that the format is informed by the deck’s existence rather than largely blindsided by it, the deck is just playing on the next level.
Five-Color Blood
Chapin’s Five-Color Blood deck is so good, even Kyle Sanchez can make the Top 8 with it! While I kid, and am not actually trying to be hard on StarCityGames.com resident MS Paint expert, Five-Color Blood is well-pointed to deal with the metagame at present, an explosively powerful deck that plays Bloodbraid Elf to a ‘fair’ end but doesn’t really feel fair thanks to its explosive potential. It’s not exactly a Five-Color Control deck, though games can play out that way if you see it profitable to do so… and not exactly a beatdown deck, with gems like Cruel Ultimatum up at the top of the curve in the seven-mana spot. Five-Color Blood is one of the decks to watch as we go forward into the new Standard, and one that already sports a favorable matchup against the new deck of interest in among its other favorable matchups against everyone else that was already enough to see it begin to flourish on the metagame stage.
Five-Color Control
And then we have our last deck to discuss, Five-Color Control. Five-Color Control is the amorphous deck of the format, one that can play anything it wants to and thus tries to shape itself based on what everyone else is doing. We recently saw a Planeswalker-heavy Five-Color Control list make the finals in the hands of Riccardo Neri, sporting eight Planeswalkers and including Nicol Bolas himself in his first professional appearance, and as a counter-heavy control deck bursting with creature removal it is a very reasonable choice. More traditional Five-Color may also find it has a home, one that tries to attack with creatures for the kill rather than use Planeswalkers, as I fear the Planeswalker version is even softer on Faeries than it needs to be and unfortunately a bit weak against the Cascade Swans deck simply due to how long it takes to actually win the game. I’d expect more creature-based Five-Color Control decks, the usuals with Kitchen Finks and Broodmate Dragons, harnessing hate cards like Thought Hemorrhage as part of their overall plan alongside Neri’s well-aimed Vendilion Cliques and Meddling Mages. Over-preparation is a sin, but it is a sin of excess… and if it wins you the match and your other pairings are favorable, why not?
To sum up neatly, then, I would expect to see the beatdown decks lose diversity as they have to face a reality in which they must disrupt the opponent, not just attack him, and this creature-oriented metagame that brought us to the point where B/W Persist Tokens was openly regarded the best deck has waned to the point where both control and combo are excellent options while the decks that sought to prey upon a feast of good matchups with one-dimensional creature decks may find they’ve been starved out of existence… not just Turbo Fog but including the previous king of the Standard season, B/W Tokens. The rule of the moment is change or die, and I expect we will see something quite interesting indeed out of GP Seattle.
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com