This week’s article will be on Standard and how all of your favorite decks suck, much in the vein of Mike Flores article on the subject from years ago. This means the article will be basically half sarcastic and mocking and generally mean, even though a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek. So I expect maybe 30% of you to read this and not flame me about the tone. First off though, I want to give some shout outs and reflections on the Legacy Grand Prix that finished up last weekend.
Big props go out to Andy Probasco (Brassman!) for making it to the finals of the largest American Grand Prix ever held. He put a lot of work into his Legacy deck, and I was glad to see all his hard work pay off. Admittedly I wanted to brick him the week before the GP for telling us all how badly he would fail and how his deck was garbage, etc. However, that’s just how Andy is, and all of us from TMD still heart him… plus now he can buy food for a while! The ultimate kicker has to be his deck was on Myspace, Facebook, as well as other internet sites, and a variant of it was in my article… and despite the complete public knowledge, it didn’t stop him from rampaging through the Grand Prix.
I, of course, also have to give props to Rich Shay who played his own version of Dreadtill to a 12th place finish. Shay has always done well at various Grand Prix tournaments and Pro Tours over the years, not to mention his ownage of local Vintage, but I believe this is his best finish to date on the GP circuit. I chatted with him about some of the dismissals given to Dreadtill, and he quite simply said they were all 100% wrong and backed this up at the GP. Here’s the list:
Dreadtill, played by Rich Shay
GP: Chicago, 12th
3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
3 Island
4 Mishra’s Factory
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tropical Island
3 Wasteland
3 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Trinket Mage
4 Brainstorm
3 Counterbalance
2 Daze
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Force of Will
2 Sensei’s Divining Top
3 Spell Snare
3 Standstill
4 Stifle
1 Trickbind
2 Ponder
Sideboard:
2 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Hydroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Krosan Grip
2 Ancient Grudge
3 Firespout
Finally Philip Yam, LSV, Josh Utter-Leyton and David Ochoa all finished in the money Day 2, so congratulations to them for representing some of the West Coast eternal scene.
Okay, onto the actual article!
Creatures (13)
Lands (27)
Spells (21)
- 1 Terror
- 1 Pithing Needle
- 4 Broken Ambitions
- 4 Cryptic Command
- 2 Cruel Ultimatum
- 4 Esper Charm
- 1 Celestial Purge
- 4 Volcanic Fallout
Sideboard
Why This Deck Sucks: Well, it’s 61 cards for one thing.
I kid… the real reason this deck sucks is because it’s so reliant on hitting the perfect answer against every non-Red deck in the format. Against W/R Lark is probably the best example of this sort of behavior, if you have your Cryptic Command and Wall of Reverence at the ready, this match is a cakewalk. If they resolve Ajani Vengeant or Reveillark and you don’t have the immediate answer, so many of your cards are rendered irrelevant or simply weakened to the point where the match slips away. I think you could make the claim that a truly excellent player can capitalize on the deck’s strengths enough to make it suck less than everything else. However, for 99% of you, this isn’t the case, and I get to hear yet another story about how lucky the opponent was because his deck did was it was supposed too and you couldn’t Broken Ambitions it.
The other reason this deck sucks is because its supposedly good matches aren’t all that amazing. This sort of thing is backed up by the data Adrian Sullivan, Sean McKeown, and Paul Jordan all cooked up over the past week. That said, the data is partially skewed by other players not running the six-pack of Walls and other small tweaks which make this deck slightly better across the board. Of course, it isn’t necessarily encouraging to hear that the deck which boasts ‘Deck that smashes everything non-Fae!’ and actually lost more games to W/R decks than they won.
Things I like: The one-of Celestial Purge in the main. For serious. Hitting a turn 2 Bitterblossom with it game 1 must be the sickest feeling in the world, and it gives the deck an actual out to an early Ajani Vengeant or Scepter of Fugue. If you see Nassif’s board from GP: Chicago you can see the man’s love of one-ofs, and this is just adorable, even if the Pithing Needle is likely 100x better in the maindeck. Ruel’s latest list reflects this as well.
Creatures (16)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (16)
Why this deck sucks: Good lord, this is the worst deck in the Top 8. It’s a testament to LSV’s skill and own good fortune to of consistently destroyed people with this even on mulligans to five. Here’s how you get B/W Tokens: take all the good parts about Faeries, chuck them all in the river except Bitterblossom, and then add the less sucky half of a Kithkin deck. All of its amazing starts are when it hits the curve and has something to do every single turn, which is why Broken Ambitions or early Fallout can be so devastating to tempo. Without tempo, all you’ve got is a worse version of the B/R Tokens deck Stuart Wright used to play, because ultimately you’re playing with infinite 1/1 men. This gets much less appealing, even with Glorious Anthem out, when facing down Broodmate Dragons, Sower of Temptation with Reveillark, and Mistbind Clique on turn 4 is still awkward.
Against something like Faeries which preys on staying ahead on tempo and maximizing its mana investments, this match can truly be a nightmare on the draw. A good Fae hand can basically pick apart the most obnoxious threats from a good B/W hand while staying ahead the entire game. According to the data, Five-Color Control also annihilates the deck, although for that particular match there was a small sample size. For something with a larger sample size, we can look at how the deck did against White aggro decks of various sorts.
Red-White Reveillark – 46.15% Win Percentage – 26 matches.
Red-White Kithkin – 40.00% Win Percentage – 5 matches.
Mono-White Kithkin – 37.50% Win Percentage — 8 matches.
Worse still is the fact that everyone from the West Coast not named LSV basically bombed so hard with the deck that they’re still clearing out the crater. Web (David Ochoa) in particular I thought would go on a killing spree if his luck didn’t improve at Chicago after going 0-4 at the Pro Tour with the deck.
Things I like: Head Games is underrated and very good, even if Nassif pulled the unwinnable match out with Mulldrifter and possibly the best Broken Ambitions ever. Uh… that’s about it.
Creatures (21)
- 3 Mogg Fanatic
- 3 Siege-Gang Commander
- 1 Flamekin Harbinger
- 3 Reveillark
- 4 Figure of Destiny
- 4 Knight of the White Orchid
- 3 Ranger of Eos
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (22)
Spells (13)
Why This Deck Sucks: I’ll quote Cedric Phillips here, “Kevan was playing Boat Brew. Neither of our games were too close because that deck doesn’t actually do anything. It looks like they are casting spells, but they are actually just doing nothing the whole game.”
I cannot adequately express how accurate this statement is. R/W Lark is an illusion, a deck that actually is created by the metagame being filled by slow decks that try to 1 for 1 and play big flashy effects on their way to victory. Or Red aggro, because Red sucks even worse than all the decks in the Kyoto Top 8 and is easily trumped by minor boarding and Knight of Meadowgrain. No, the reason R/W Lark sucks is simple, the deck pretends to be a proactive Five-Color Control deck while retaining god-awful mana* and replacing removal and cards like Mulldrifter and Broodmate Dragon with Mogg Fanatic, Reveillark, and Ranger of Eos.
Think about it, what defense does this deck have against any non-Red aggro deck? White creatures either match or trump Knight and otherwise the plan is to play four and five mana guys that don’t have an immediate impact on the board. Sure, Siege-Gang Commander doesn’t suck quite as much as a turn 5 Figure of Destiny or Mogg Fanatic, but even that’s just a bad Cloudgoat Ranger if the other guy has been putting pressure on you the entire game. Even sucky decks like Bant can rock a turn 2 Rhox War Monk that laughs at every creature they play except Lark. Let’s go to the scoreboard:
Mono-White Kithkin – 38.18% Win Percentage – 55 matches.
Red-White Kithkin – 30.77% Win Percentage — 26 matches.
Kind of dismal, wouldn’t you say?
* Have you ever actually hit a Rugged Prairie with Fulminator Mage or Scepter of Dominance? Good luck hitting RR ever, heck even a single red in some games. Speaking of the mana, how awful is it to not hit off a Knight of the White Orchard in this build? 21 land is one less than I would run in Mono-Red Aggro, let alone a deck this top-heavy. Mind Stone doesn’t even help the colored mana or mulligan situations out.
I picked Yamamoto’s over Ruess’s, because at least Jan Ruess had the decency to run 24 land in a deck where the curve basically starts at WWW and then goes into four and five drops.
Things I like: Quad maindeck Ajani Vengeant is soooo good in a field full of slower decks, especially if everyone goes with the ‘copy Nassif’s sucky deck’ plan.
Creatures (32)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Doran, the Siege Tower
- 3 Gaddock Teeg
- 2 Kitchen Finks
- 4 Wilt-Leaf Liege
- 3 Rafiq of the Many
- 4 Rhox War Monk
- 4 Tidehollow Sculler
- 4 Noble Hierarch
Lands (22)
Spells (6)
Sideboard
Why This Deck Sucks: Another easy case to make for induction into the pantheon of suckiness: kill the turn 1 mana accelerant and this deck is a big slow clunky version of Zoo. Doran wasn’t even that scary in his own deck, but I’m supposed to care about him now? Why? Oh noes, a turn 4 Rafiq could happen and make him insane! Perhaps you’ve heard of Path to Exile, seems pretty solid against this sort of deck with no mid or late-game other than playing the next fatty. Worse still for Doran, Wall of Reverence absolutely massacres him in a fight and guess what the new hot card is? Oh, but the greatest hits of Incredibad doesn’t stop there, its answer to Sower of Temptation and Mistbind Clique is a massive three to five spells. God forbid, you play a lot of tokens either and decide to just chump block while cracking back for infinite every turn.
I could talk about the sheer instability of the mana with a deck full of triple casting cost spells, but that seems self-evident to anyone with a functioning pair of eyes. So let’s move onto something I actually like here.
Things I like: Gaddock Teeg! Despite the ineptitude of the maindeck to really do much to interact with the other player, this guy almost salvages it single-handedly. Yes, Volcanic Fallout blows him up better than ever before and Path to Exile does exist. But you know, it doesn’t really matter, if he cracks for some damage while shutting off Cryptic Command or Wrath of God for a few turns Teeg has done his job. He may not be perfect, but as the field gets slower and Planeswalkers get more popular, this guy’s value just goes up.
Creatures (20)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (11)
Sideboard
Why This Deck Sucks: Because…. You know…
Actually this is probably the least sucky deck in the entire Top 8, and possibly the whole tournament. Right now it seems to have great matches against nearly everything. Sure, the Faeries match isn’t the best, but whose is? Otherwise you’ve got the kind of clock that makes R/W Terrible Name weep, you have the same sort of curve-out possibilities as B/W Tokens, but with a better mana base and the speed and resilience to devastate most other decks in the format. Even Five-Color Control has to worry, because if it misses a step, this deck is all over it pushing through early damage and punishing land drops with Vengeant. Plus despite having a billion sweepers and removal spells, the deck still has to trump Planeswalkers, Reveillark, Cloudgoat Ranger and Ranger of Eos which probably means R/W Kithkin has the most card advantage in the format after boarding.
Oh, but Faeries can still beat it. So you know; deck sucks. Plus the Kithkin cards have terrible art.
Things I like: Read the above.
Creatures (13)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (19)
Sideboard
Why This Deck Sucks: Interestingly enough, this deck was believed to suck, then believed to not suck and merely being accused of sucking, but then the Pro Tour rolled around and people are firmly entrenched in the ‘Fae sucks’ camp again; sort of. Nobody really knows what to make of the deck at this point, sure the Red match sucks, but Red itself is getting hosed by every deck bringing in six to eight cards against it or playing against Wall of Reverence. Actually the reason nobody knows what to make of Fae is because Fae is the worst kind of suck, the middling kind. The kind that makes you believe all is great and right with the world and how stupid everyone else is and then you lose to Five-Color control and play little Johnny with Kithkin and you go home, enter the fetal position and weep.
Faeries is Rock. Not The Rock, but Rock in the sense that it isn’t particularly bad against anything, nor is it particularly good against anything. Every single match except Esper Lark and Blightning basically fall into the pit range of 45-55% depending on the exact builds, player skill and way the wind is blowing. For most people this makes the deck a terrible choice, because they simply don’t have the patience or skill to take advantage of this over a long tournament. For most people it’s simply better to take a deck with favorable matches and hope to hit them on pairings rather than try to tough out every single match.
Plus Volcanic Fallout crushes face, obvobvobovbobvobvobv.
Things I like: The deck still has a number of openings that are nearly impossible for many decks to beat. Peppersmoke is such a blowout in some matches.
Creatures (21)
- 4 Mogg Fanatic
- 4 Boggart Ram-Gang
- 4 Figure of Destiny
- 2 Stigma Lasher
- 4 Hellspark Elemental
- 3 Shambling Remains
Lands (23)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
Why This Deck Sucks: Have you read the other ones yet? No? I’ll wait.
Done?
Yeah then you know why this deck sucks right now. It has this problem of losing to everything that isn’t Faeries. Sure the deck can be modified to suck less and not get crushed by Wall of Reverence and the reemergence of Kithkin decks, but is it a good choice? Not even close anymore and I actually liked the deck right after Conflux came out.
Again, if you need a statistical standpoint to look at:
Other – 45.16% Win Percentage – 31 matches.
Black-White Tokens – 42.86% Win Percentage – 14 matches.
Five-Color Control – 37.50% Win Percentage – 32 matches.
Esper ‘Lark – 33.33% Win Percentage – 6 matches.
Red-White Reveillark – 30.95% Win Percentage – 42 matches.
Red-White Kithkin – 16.67% Win Percentage — 6 matches.
There, statistical proof that Red decks suck.
If you want a better reason, think of it like this, why would the deck that everyone can and will board against in notable numbers and has a terrible game 1 plan against Five-Color Control, Kithkin and R/W Really This Name Sucks. Mind you, the game 2 plan isn’t much better, but at least you either get Everlasting Torment and Terror or Banefire and Bitterblossom. Maybe Stigma Lasher and maindeck Terror will make a comeback to help trump the six-pack of Walls Five-Color Control is playing, and a late-game plan of Siege-Gang Command and Demigod of Revenge together to emulate the RW plan of continually throwing more large threats at them.
If I missed your deck, you’re either David Irvine or playing some terrible Green deck which sucks so badly I won’t waste words on it. What do Green decks even have? Oh good, I get Noble Hierarch! Too bad every other color has something ridiculously better, whether it be Bitterblossom, Mistbind, Thoughtseize, Cryptic Command, Banefire, Volcanic Fallout…. You get the idea.
See you next week!
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
Email me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom
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