Regionals has come and gone for the United States and Canada, leaving a huge pile of decklists for us all to examine. The new Standard has brought with it many new cards. We have some degree of proof, now, that these cards can do something. I don’t know about you, but when I walked around the tables, I saw more than a few of the new cards.
This list isn’t entirely exhaustive, but I know I saw each of these cards at least once: Tarmogoyf; Korlash, Heir to Blackblade; Augur of Skulls; Dakmor Salvage; Dryad Arbor; Mystic Speculation; Graven Cairns; Blade of the Sixth Pride; Bridge from Below; Grove of the Burnwillows; Ghostfire; Grinning Ignus; Magus of the Moon; Foresee; Keldon Megalith; Delay; Shimian Specter; Tarox Bladewing; Edge of Autumn; Epochrasite; Nimbus Maze; Glittering Wish; Take Possession; Tombstalker; River of Tears; Logic Knot; Narcomoeba; Tolaria West; Riftsweeper; Yixlid Jailer; Bonded Fetch; Gathan Raiders; and Street Wraith. I’m sure that there were more cards from Future Sight being played than that; those were just the list of cards that I wrote down and noted more than once. There are 180 cards in Future Sight, and that cursory list include over 30 cards. As far as a density of utility, that’s an incredibly dense set of cards. I’m sure that by the time Standard winds down with Future Sight, we’ll see even more of the new cards.
I was quite pleased with the deck that I took to Regionals, but I certainly wasn’t a big winner (though I’d play the same deck again in a heartbeat). It included its own little smattering of Future Sight cards (seven, between the main and the board), which is pretty reasonable. All of these winnings decks include new Future Sight cards – something that shouldn’t be too particularly surprising. New cards tend to change what is possible for a deck in such a way that there is usually some way in which a deck can be improved by a new card, though there are some rare exceptions.
While I didn’t see a decklist that would make me interested in changing decks if I were to do Regionals all over, there were several Regionals winners that were quite exciting to me for various reasons. I’m going to look at those decklists, and give a little bit of perspective on what makes the deck so noteworthy to me, why I like the way that the deck was adapted for Future Sight cards, what the deck is all about, and finally, what changes I might make to the deck. Obviously, some of those changes must be exercised in caution, as I’m speaking without having played these specific decklists, but rather, lists that share things in common with these lists.
To begin, I’ll start with the tournament winner from Chicago’s Regionals, Bob Havlovic’s Mono-Black Rack deck, which is eerily similar to the deck I chose to play for the event. Bob steals the Regionals Champion crown from Madison’s own Sam Black, whose brilliant (if incredibly misunderstood) deck from last year was a real joy.
Creatures (18)
- 4 Ravenous Rats
- 4 Dark Confidant
- 2 Garza's Assassin
- 2 Stromgald Crusader
- 4 Mindlash Sliver
- 2 Augur of Skulls
Lands (22)
- 20 Swamp
- 2 Ghost Quarter
Spells (20)
The Black Rack decks that have been running around online are doing so, partly, because they are incredibly cheap to build. A quick examination of the deck shows that there are only 11 cards that are incredibly “chase” worthy (the Bobs, Damns, and Extirpate), and they include an unusually high number of non-rare cards. The essential concept of these Rack decks is to overload the opponent with discard to cripple them, while the card advantage afforded by Bob and the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t nature of the Rack musses up their life total.
I find this particular list noteworthy because of his decision to include Garza’s Assassin into the main deck, as well as his ability to sideboard, via Damnation and point-and-click creature kill, into a much more controlling deck. His sideboard also includes Extirpate, which works spectacularly well when combined with such abundant and aggressive discard. Many decks could formerly escape the clutches of the Rack by using card draw to escape, or controlling the situation by sitting behind counterspells on relevant spells. Combo decks could try to mitigate the damage of the discard spells by discarding extraneous combo pieces. Extirpate does a number on both of these plans.
Sadly, the only real card he chooses to bring over from Future Sight also happens to be one of the most powerful cards in his deck. Augur of Skulls is shockingly strong, and his decision to include only two feels very wrong to me, especially after playing decks with four of them. The Stromgald Crusader might be a strong choice in a field full of White creatures, but I don’t think that that was the primary concern at the event. If the Crusader is merely there to provide a fast kill, there are probably much better options out there, and I’m not convinced that the deck is really hungry for a fast kill anyway. I’d immediately switch that card over to the third and fourth Augur.
This leads me to the next deck, another Mono-Black deck, though this one dipped much further into Future Sight.
Creatures (24)
- 4 Hypnotic Specter
- 4 Dark Confidant
- 4 Plagued Rusalka
- 4 Rakdos Guildmage
- 4 Augur of Skulls
- 4 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
Lands (22)
Spells (14)
Sideboard
Stephen Wong’s decklist is a really interesting mid-range Black beatdown deck. While the Rusalkas and the Augurs don’t make particularly satisfying beatdown cards, they do help to stymie opposing aggressive decks and can be used to shut down any Bridge from Below sitting around in a graveyard.
This deck really makes me sit up and take notice of it in the way that it manages to fit in a large amount of its controlling characteristics into its creatures. The Rusalkas and the Guildmages double as creature control, the Augurs and Hippies can give fits to slower decks or combo decks, and Korlash and Bob show up to punch the deck’s power level up another notch. Stupor, Extirpate, and Tendrils are probably the cards that are likely to be the most sideboarded out, depending on the matchup, but any of them can be incredibly potent against the right deck. Extirpate is especially impressive in this deck, seeing as it includes eight cards that provide some random discard to mess with the opponent. One of the most exciting inclusions in the deck, in my mind, is the three Loxodon Warhammer. One of the classic maxims from Jamie Wakefield (King of the Midrange, in addition to his crown of King of the Fatties) is, “The last fattie that they can’t deal with kills them.” The Warhammer provides the ability to make a limitless supply of “fatties” out of any of the random dorks that might walk around and pick it up. In some matchups (Plans-combo, Dragonstorm, Zoo/Gruul, the Rack), any Warhammer that remains active for more than a turn or two is going to make the game completely run away.
Korlash and Augur are the only two cards that Stephen Brings in from Future Sight, but they are enough. Each of these cards is so incredibly powerful and effective that if you’ve had any experience playing them, you’re almost guaranteed to like them. His main deck looks so good to me that the only thing that I can actually say that I would strongly recommend doing is finding a way to add in some land. 22 land feels like it is at least one land too shy, and maybe more. Perhaps this point to running one or two Rakdos Carnarium, but I’m thinking it is more likely that an extra Swamp would be the right bet.
Finally, we go to my favorite winning deck of last weekend, Nathaniel Kader’s nearly Mono-Green “Elf/Ledgewalker” deck.
Creatures (32)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 2 Spike Feeder
- 3 Wood Elves
- 3 Giant Solifuge
- 4 Silhana Ledgewalker
- 3 Boreal Druid
- 4 Scryb Ranger
- 3 Spectral Force
- 3 Groundbreaker
- 3 Magus of the Moon
Lands (18)
Spells (10)
Sideboard
This deck is, in many ways, a hybrid between old school elf decks from the far past and the more new Ledgewalker/Cloak decks that have been occasionally popping up in Standard. That deck was full of very aggressive Green creatures pumped up by Blanchwood Armor. This deck foregoes that plan in favor of a great deal more mana acceleration, and then something big (Spectral Force), with main deck Magus of the Moon as a means to mess with virtually every opponent that it might have to deal with. While the deck runs a lot less creature pump (nine, as opposed to the common fourteen to sixteen of the aggressive builds), it plays more “pre-pumped” creatures – aside from the huge Spectral Force (which can hit as early as turn 3), it also run six hasty Ball Lightnings (three of each type, Solifuge and Groundbreaker). I’ve never played in the Orlando PTQ scene, so I can’t speak for how strong the field is in that area, but I can say that I expect that this deck very perfectly dodged a lot of the random hate that was directed at all of the other decks that everyone knew was going to show up. Congratulations to Nathaniel (or his deckbuilding friend) for so cleverly choosing a deck.
With all of that said, there are a few things that I definitely would want to change. The first thing that I would probably make sure that I were to include in this deck is the movement of the Loxodon Warhammer from the sideboard into the maindeck. With 29 creatures in the main that can carry the Hammer, it just seems worthwhile to up the count here. As far as cards go, this is one of those cards that you might not want to get over inundated with, but that could have a massive impact on the game state. Demonfire is a card that might be okay to randomly draw off the top and rip away a game, but it’s not generally a card that a deck like this is hoping to rip like a pro.
To fit in the extra Warhammer, I’d probably cut both of the Spike Feeders, leaving me with one extra slot, which likely belongs to a creature. In this case, I’d choose Wood Elves. While many of the other unusually numbered cards in this list have analogs (3 Groundbreaker and 3 Solifuge are, in many ways, the same card, for example) or are cards you probably wouldn’t want to see in an opening hand, Wood Elves seems like a card without equivalent in the deck, and also a card that you’d like want to see in the opening hand, particularly if you’ve also drawn a one-mana mana producer. About the only role that I feel that the Spike Feeder uniquely fills in the deck is as a means of eliminating Bridge from Below. While this might be something very worthwhile to preserve, you could also create that effect from the sideboard by, perhaps, moving up to a full complement of Serrated Arrows (which could not only be used to rip up a Bridge from Below, but also destroy all of the draw outlets available to the deck.)
As far as Future Sight’s impact on the deck goes, some might call it minimal (only 3 Magus of the Moon represent Future Sight in the main deck), but I would have to disagree. If you take a quick glance at a lot of the decklists from Regionals, you can see that many of them would be thrown into fits if a Magus were around to ruin their day. In many ways, the Magus functions a lot like a Tangle Wire or Winter Orb of old, keeping the opponent off their feet while you go about the business of killing them. I am a little mystified by the inclusion of Riftsweeper in the board. I’m just not sure that this deck really can afford the space to include three Riftsweeper, or that they can make a sufficient impact in the games that they actually show up in. This is a good example of a decision I’d really need to see played out to evaluate. If Nathaniel is out there reading this, I’d love to hear from you about how the Riftsweeper worked, and what you did with it.
…
Next week, I’m excited to see what our first big post-Future Sight event is going to show us about the Block Constructed world. I’ll be playing my super-secret tech deck in a PTQ in Chicago, so maybe I’ll give you all an overview of my tournament winning deck, or perhaps I’ll be giving you an overview of one or more of the decks from the Grand Prix that are worth your notice. On the other hand, if enough of you speak up, maybe I’ll write about the Standard deck I took to Regionals. You all just need to let me know.
Wish me luck in Chicago!