Last week I did something pretty dumb: I took a job at a software startup. Once upon a time, my summer job started at noon and went until six, and I had infinite time to sleep, play Magic, and be a lazy bum. This year, apparently, things are different. I start work a handful of hours earlier, I leave work a handful of hours later, and the whole time I’m there I’m working at full-power. When I get home, I basically go to sleep so that I can get up in the morning and fire in there again.
This has left me with the issue of finding a deck for Regionals. I don’t have the time I’m used to having to playtest like mad, and so I’ve begun talking to as many people as I possibly can. I’ve debated essentially non-stop with friends and teammates, and I’ve come to the conclusion that none of the “big three” appeals to me. I would actually love to play Dralnu, but I know that I am a slow player, and that means that I would likely finish Regionals with multiple draws.
With Dragonstorm, Gruul, and Dralnu all sitting on the sidelines, and my pet deck, G/B Dredge, fearing far too much hate, I’ve begun looking at decks that people may have forgotten about. Mono-Green Aggro, Project X, and the focus of today’s column: Solar Flare.
Solar Flare was the consensus deck-to-beat for a while a little under a year ago. Then Time Spiral rolled around and the deck started to disappear. Solar Pox replaced it first, and then everyone just seemed to move on to U/R Snow Control, various UrzaTron decks, and Dralnu-style decks. When Grand Prix: Kyoto finished up, there were a handful of people playing the deck in Day 2 with one player making it to the Top 8, before he lost to Mystic Enforcer out of Project X’s sideboard. Since then, the deck has hovered in the middle of the pack in Frank Karsten’s deck popularity statistics.
Luckily for me, one of my teammates has been enjoying a lot of success with Solar Flare recently. I spent the better part of a few nights talking to Matt Hansen about his decklist, possible Future Sight updates, and pre-FS card choices. Of course, the best place to start is his decklist:
Creatures (12)
Lands (24)
Spells (24)
- 3 Persecute
- 4 Compulsive Research
- 4 Dimir Signet
- 3 Faith's Fetters
- 4 Castigate
- 2 Orzhov Signet
- 4 Damnation
Sideboard
What’s Missing?
Remand
One of the first things that I asked when I was looking at potential Future Sight cards was “which do you think is better, Delay or Remand?” At this point I was told that the answer was an emphatic “neither,” because the whole point of the deck was to simply tap out every turn. When you’re busy casting Compulsive Research, Persecute, Skeletal Vampire, and Angel of Despair, you simply don’t have the time you need to hold back two mana to cast a Remand.
Zombify / Dread Return / Body Double
The original Solar Flare decklists packed a few copies of Zombify to take advantage of the fact that your fatties would often find themselves in the graveyard at the hands of your own Compulsive Researches or your opponent’s removal spells. When Time Spiral was released, people swapped over to Dread Return because they could feed it with the bat tokens from Skeletal Vampire. When the deck hit the Top 8 at Kyoto, the Black sorceries had been replaced by Body Double. The appeal of Body Double was that you could piggy-back your Dredge opponent’s Blazing Archon, your Tron opponent’s Bogardan Hellkite, or your Angelfire opponent’s Akroma, all while still giving you the option of bringing back an Angel of Despair.
This decklist eschews all three of those options simply because it packs more actual fatties into the deck. The Kyoto list had two Akroma and three Angel of Despair, while Matt’s list has the full four Skeletal Vampire, three Aeon Chronicler, and a single Angel of Despair. In addition to stuffing his deck with fatties, Matt has chosen cards that are less attractive to reanimate than Akroma and Angel of Despair. Finally, the hate that will be out in force, trying to keep Bridge Dredge in check, happens to hit this small aspect of traditional Solar Flare. People may not be sideboarding their hate in against Solar Flare, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t have Extirpates and Withered Wretches in their maindecks.
Being a three-color big-mana deck means that Solar Flare has more chances to use the new cards than most decks do. While I don’t think that there are very many new cards that will make the cut in the end, there are a ton that deserve consideration.
Slaughter Pact
The Pact’s function in Solar Flare is to allow the deck to kill a Magus of the Moon, just like its function in Dralnu. However, the Magus is not nearly as frightening to Solar Flare as it was to Dralnu. This deck has seven sources of Black mana that function while under a Moon, so you have a decent shot at being able to stop the suffering with Damnation or Last Gasp. You also just have six basic lands and six Signets, so a large percentage of your mana works just fine even when you can’t answer him. The other factor to consider is that you have no way of finding the Pact on-demand, given that you don’t have Mystical Teachings or Tolaria West.
Yixlid Jailer
On turns 2 and 3, the Jailer is a great card to have against Dredge. Many Dredge lists are running only one or two answers to the Jailer in the form of Darkblasts, so there’s a pretty good chance that he’ll just end the game when he shows up. However, most Dredge lists have only the tiniest chance of beating a Leyline of the Void, and since Flare can cast it as early as turn 3 as well as starting with it in play, I believe that the Leyline gets the nod over the Jailer.
Nihilith and Tombstalker
Both of these cards are fatty finishers that have built-in ways to get them into play on the cheap. Nihilith’s Suspend option is particularly exciting against Dredge decks, where a single dredged Grave-Troll gives you a 4/4 evasive attacker on turn 3. Meanwhile, Tombstalker’s Delve takes advantage of the fact that you’re planning on dumping a handful of cards into the graveyard with Compulsive Research.
Still, to make the cut in Solar Flare, these monsters have to compare favorably to the finishers already included. Both of them are large and will probably come out sooner than a Skeletal Vampire, but neither is as hard to deal with or as likely to take the game over single-handedly. Similarly, both are faster than Aeon Chronicler, but the Chronicler gives you the extra gas you need to overwhelm control decks while simultaneously providing you with a hasty fatty.
Nix
Nix is a sideboard card I keep wanting to put in decks, but every time I think about it I decide that it just isn’t worth it. The spells that Nix counters are good ones, but the fact of the matter is that the main one (Dread Return) does a boatload of damage whether it resolves or not. If I’m going to put a card in my sideboard to cheaply stop Bridge Dredge from killing me, it’s going to be Tormod’s Crypt, not a counterspell. The only reason that I keep coming back to it is that it also happens to hit Lotus Bloom, Aeon Chronicler, and Detritivore.
Delay
I find the hypothetical question of Delay versus Remand to be an interesting one, despite the fact that my expert-of-choice has roundly denounced the usage of either one. In general, I believe that Delay is the superior counterspell in the realm of “I’ll have to deal with it eventually” counterspells. This is primarily due to its amazing potency against Dredge decks of all flavors. Remanding a Life from the Loam just means that they get to cast it again next turn, while Delaying it stops the headache for three turns. Unfortunately, this deck doesn’t have Teferi to combo-kill the Delayed spell, but really the question is moot since Matt has firmly declared that he will be tapping out, every turn.
Foresee
To be honest, Foresee is the first card that I think will actually make it into the post-FS decklists. Compulsive Research is, at this point, more attractive than Foresee due solely to how much mana it costs. It doesn’t dig as deep as Foresee, and it doesn’t always draw as many cards as Foresee, but it costs three-quarters the mana that Foresee does. However, I think that the presence of Signets makes this one tilt in the favor of the new card. If you have a Signet on turn 2, then you’re going to play whichever of these two you’re running on turn 3. If it’s Research, then you’re wasting a mana. If it’s Foresee, then you’re potentially getting twice as far into your deck, and usually drawing two solid cards while setting up a draw or two.
I’ve been told that the inclusion of Foresee means that you really do need to draw a Signet, but I think that that might be an exaggeration. Yes, you would much rather cast Foresee on turn 3 than turn 4, but really you would just much rather cast all of your spells one turn earlier. It’s not as though the deck suddenly has nothing to do on its third turn: you can still cast Court Hussar, and if you have a Dimir Aqueduct or Orzhov Basilica, you can Castigate and drop your bounceland to clear the way for your Persecute or Damnation. Still, the mana curve is being raised, and so it’s not unreasonable to think about adding another Signet to compensate.
Aven Mindcensor
If you play this card, then you have to see it for what it is: hate against Dragonstorm, and Dragonstorm alone. While the Mindcensor is annoying for a Dragonstorm player, they are certainly not dead to it. Many Dragonstorm hands involve simply hard-casting a Hellkite, and these hands do not care one bit about a 2/1 flyer. Many Dragonstorm hands storm up to five, six, or seven copies, so even if the first one or two miss on a Hellkite, the next one always has the chance of spitting out a dragon and allowing the remaining copies to search unhindered. This is all a long way of saying that I think the Mindcensor is worse than both Riptide Pilferer and Circle of Protection: Red. Yes, the CoP can be beaten by Gigadrowse, but they’re just as likely to draw an actual Hellkite, and with no Remands to stop it, it will kill the Aven.
Nimbus Maze
The decklist above has nine Islands and six Plains in it, which means that the Nimbus Maze won’t be as wonderful as you might hope. Unlike in a straight U/W deck, the Maze will not always find you your missing color in Solar Flare, and if you lead with a Swamp, a pain land, or an Urza’s Factory, then it won’t be switched on at all on turn 2. Given that the deck’s only two-drop is a spell that costs B/W, and given that this land does not always give you access to both Blue and White mana, I believe that Nimbus Maze is not as good as Adarkar Wastes (in Solar Flare).
River of Tears
The River, on the other hand, is suited very nicely to Solar Flare. Since the deck requires more Black sources than any other color, it is handy that the River will always give you Black mana the turn that you drop it into play. On each turn after that, you get to choose whether it gives you Blue (your second heaviest color) or Black mana, until you simply run out of lands. This card takes advantage of the fact that Solar Flare plans on playing its spells in its main-phase, since the drawback to the River is that you can’t control what color mana it provides on your opponent’s turn.
Pre-FS Cards to Think About
Extirpate
This is the big one that I think Matt’s deck might really be missing. Extirpate is worse than Leyline of the Void against Bridge Dredge, but it is better against a large number of other decks. Either way, having just four cards in the sideboard and hoping that that’s enough to swing the matchup over to winnable is not a good idea, and I believe that any deck that hopes to beat Bridge Dredge after boarding needs to have at least two cards in its Sideboard to do the job. Extirpate is fine against Dralnu, where you will be able to hit their Teachings and even their Think Twices if you have the shot. If you are given the chance to fire a large number of Extirpates in there, then you might even be able to strip all of their win conditions out.
Pull from Eternity
Solar Flare might not worry about Blood Moon as much as other decks that play eighteen non-basic lands, but Detritivore is a real threat. Even if you have two Signets and a basic land in play, the Dirt Vore will still kill a land every turn, keeping you off of the mana you need to Suspend your Chroniclers and cast your Vampires. It also has its uses against the mirror and decks like Mike Flores Go-Sis that hope to abuse Aeon Chronicler to overwhelm the opponent. Finally, it has marginal application against Dragonstorm, allowing you to kill a suspended Lotus Bloom before it gives them three mana or even adds to the storm count.
Mortify
Mortify is a nearly universal choice in Solar Flare decks. It kills creatures, it kills enchantments, and it basically just makes sure that you have all of your bases covered when it’s time to go to the sideboard for answers. Last Gasp is so strong because it lets you kill a Kird Ape before it can spawn a Bloodthirsted Mauler, but you have to ask yourself whether that is worth the inability to easily deal with an enchantment such as Phyrexian Arena or a creature such as Bogardan Hellkite.
All of this brings us to the not-drastically-different yet still shiny and new:
Creatures (12)
Lands (23)
Spells (25)
Sideboard
The changes are small, but they have their desired effects. The swap over to Foresee gives the deck more gas in the middle of the game, mirroring the effect of Tidings in the GP: Kyoto decklist. The swap over to Foresees also suggested that we wanted an additional Signet, without really wanting more mana sources overall. That meant that a Caves of Koilos turned into its Signet form. Meanwhile, one basic Island and one painful Watery Grave turned into the two River of Tears. My only sideboard change was to take out the Pilferers for Extirpates. I did this because I believe that my sideboard space is better used on Dredge decks than on Dragonstorm.
There are a number of cards that I did not include that I very well could have. The Last Gasps could easily become Mortifies, if you believe that that’s the right call to make for your specific Regionals. You might also decide that you don’t need to spend over half of your sideboard on graveyard decks, and take out the Extirpates in favor of Detritivore-killing Pull from Eternities. The possibilities are vast, and the deck’s manabase is adaptable enough to handle anything that you feel is right for the big day.
The Matchups
Dragonstorm
Your plan against Dragonstorm is simply to hassle them in game 1. You have a handful of cards that are good against them, including Castigate and Persecute, but there is a decent chance that they’ll be able to fight through them. If you resolve a Castigate, then you may well be able to take their Dragonstorm and leave them with a bunch of Rituals, and if you manage to stick a Persecute then you’ve probably won the game. However, Dragonstorm does have Remand and it does have Gigadrowse, so a Persecute is not an automatic game win. Under the best circumstances, you’ll be able to play a Persecute on turn 3, while your opponent tapped out for a Telling Time they didn’t want to lose to a counterspell.
You also have the ability to potentially weather a Dragonstorm for four if you have a Faith’s Fetters. If you go up to 24 life, then the Dragonstorm player will need to go off for five copies to kill you. If they don’t, you can simply untap and Damnation away all of their dragons. While this isn’t your primary plan of victory, and certainly it is not foolproof, it is something to keep in mind.
You are going to bring in Circle of Protection: Red for sure. This card demands that your opponent have a Gigadrowse to tap you out, otherwise they will not be able to kill you. The time that you buy while they search for and set up their Drowse will often be enough to allow your hand disruption to actually make it through. For the CoPs, you should cut the Fetters. The Fetters plan may have been an option in game 1, but it was not a great one. Another thing to think about is whether or not you want to bring in Extirpates. Extirpate is not the greatest card in the world, but it has a couple of fringe functions that might be good enough in your mind.
If you can get your opponent to Remand something like a Signet or a Castigate, then you can Extirpate away their defenses and Persecute away their hand. If they plan on going off with a series of Rite of Flames, you can at least mess up the math by Extirpating the first in response to the second, and potentially turn the seven mana they would get from three Rites into a paltry three mana. Finally, if you decide on Mortifies, then you can sideboard in a combination of Mortifies and Extirpates, and hope to get the miser’s win of allowing one Dragonstorm to resolve, killing the Hellkite, and then Extirpating the rest. To make room for these cards, if you decide that you want to bring them in, you should cut a combination of Skeletal Vampires, Aeon Chroniclers, and Court Hussars. You don’t want to simply cut all four Skeletal Vampires, but you certainly don’t want to draw two of them in your opening hand. The same goes for Aeon Chronicler, and while Court Hussar will dig for your hate, it is not the most efficient.
R/G Aggro
Gruul is faster than you are, but their spells don’t do as much if you can live to the end of the game. In an ideal world, you’ll have a Signet on turn 2 and a Court Hussar on turn 3. The idea here is that you want to get up to your big spells quickly, and you want to make sure that you can cast them as soon as possible. When you’re considering playing a Damnation, make sure that you can handle a Solifuge if they untap and put one into play. This isn’t a deck where you can wait until six mana to Remand the insect; you have to wait until seven mana so that you can follow up with a Hussar to block.
However, you won’t be nearly as much on the back foot as other control decks. Maindeck Faith’s Fetters give you quite a bit of breathing room against all the 3/3s, and your Wraths can clean up what slips through. Skeletal Vampire will stop them dead in their tracks if you have played a Damnation earlier in the game, and can stem the bleeding if you haven’t. One of the best things that you can do is play a Vampire to block and then follow him up with another Vampire. At that point it will be very difficult for any creatures to get through and kill you, and the R/G player will have to fall back on their array of Chars and Rift Bolts to kill you. This is where Persecute comes in. Persecute is not a great draw, though there will be games where you play it on turn 3 on the play and hit four cards. However, once you have the game slowed down with Damnations or Vampires, Persecuting away the burn spells your opponent had been planning on winning with can often give you the edge you need to win the game.
Sideboarding gives you access to an efficient removal spell and an answer to both burn and creatures. Burning-Tree Shaman will make the Circle less effective than you might like, but taking one damage from a Char is much better than taking four. Last Gasp will let you get up to your Fetters, Damnations, and Vampires on a much higher life total than before, and in conjunction with any of those cards is often a game-winner. To make room for those seven cards, you’re going to want to take out Castigates and Persecutes. You no longer want to use a Persecute to pull a few burn spells out of your opponent’s hand, as the Circle does the same thing while being a much better early draw. The Castigates are simply too slow to affect the game; if you play them on turn 2 then you’ll get run over, and if you play them on turn 6 then they aren’t usually worth it.
Dralnu
The portion of the Dralnu deck that you’re concerned with is the counterspells. Teferi is mostly irrelevant as a lock card; you’re not planning on playing any instants anyway, so its primary use against you is to allow the Dralnu player to get a Skeletal Vampire into play without worrying about running into Damnation. Your goal in this matchup is to eventually break through the wall of Remands, Delays, Rewinds, and Damnations to get something like Skeletal Vampire into play, and then keep him there.
You’ll use your hand disruption to help you out in this quest, but you will mostly rely on your Aeon Chroniclers to give you the gas you need. Signets and bouncelands will give you the mana that Chronicler requires to be suspended for more than just a turn or two. For the next few turns you can draw out counterspells before you go for a turn that involves a de-suspending Chronicler, a Castigate, a Persecute, and another threat. When all else fails, you can fall back on your two Urza’s Factories to start pumping out Assembly-Worker tokens until the Dralnu player runs out of ways to kill them.
Sideboarding gives you Extirpates for the traditional Dralnu list. You don’t need all four, so swapping them in for Faith’s Fetters makes the most sense. If your opponent is more of a Pickles-variety U/B deck, then it is a good idea to board the Last Gasps in as well. This will give you an easy way of breaking up their Morphs, and can even buy you a turn of freedom in response to the Shapeshifter’s flip trigger. To make room for the Last Gasps you should take out Court Hussars. They do block Morphs well, but they don’t stop Shadowmage Infiltrator and they cost a large amount of mana for the small effect in this matchup.
Dredge
If they are playing the turbo-Bridge version of the deck, then you basically start off down a game. However, there are some tricks you can use to try to pull a few of these games out. If they are threatening to go off next turn, you can play your Court Hussars without any White mana, which will kill them so that they clear out your opponent’s Bridge from Belows. You can also try to keep hands that allow you to cast Damnation on turn 3, giving them one chance to activate their enabler if they’re on the play, and no chance to activate if you’re on the play. If you make it to turn 6 without being dead, then Skeletal Vampire gives you two sacrificial lambs to feed to your opponent’s Bridges.
If they are playing the regular Green/Black version, then you are in better shape. Despite being in “better shape”, things are still not great for you. G/B Dredge is much better at getting things started on turn 1, so Greenseeker and Llanowar Mentor will have caused all the damage they need to by the time Damnation can be cast. If they go for a Dread Return win, then you can break that up with Damnation or Faith’s Fetters, which will ensure that they can’t just re-Dread Return their fatty. If they go for a Troll win, then you can use your Hussars and your Vampires to clog up the ground until you can just rumble across for the win. However, when they have their deck running smoothly, they’ll be able to present fights on multiple fronts at one time, such as reanimating Akroma with a Svogthos on the table. At this point, the only acceptable answer is Faith’s Fetters, since a Damnation would just let the Svogthos kill you.
Against both decks, you’ll sideboard in the full eight hate cards. Against Bridge Dredge, you should take out three Aeon Chroniclers, the Angel of Despair, three Persecutes, and one Faith’s Fetters. Against G/B Dredge, you should take out the three Persecutes, three Aeon Chroniclers, one Foresee, and one Angel of Despair. The extra Faith’s Fetters will help you combat Svogthos. In games 2 and 3, a turn 0 Leyline is almost always game over.
Your Extirpate, however, may be a little more complicated to play than you originally thought. Against Bridge Dredge, you have to determine how fast you think their deck is. If they are playing the Blue/Black Turbo version, then you may be able to completely win the game by casting an Extirpate on Bridge from Below. However, you should strongly consider targeting Dread Return with the first copy of Extirpate. Many Bridge Dredge lists do not include Life from the Loam, and without that card they can’t win with Trolls or Svogthos. In other words, their only plan is to reanimate a Zealot or loop Hellkites. While some versions may have Drowned Rusalka to make twenty zombie tokens, you can handle that with Damnation. You can even use the time you’ve bought to clear the bridges out with a Hussar or Vampire. Against Bridge Dredge, it is rarely correct to Extirpate Golgari Grave-Troll on first sight.
Against the non-Bridge, Green/Black versions of Dredge, the scariest card for you is almost certainly Life from the Loam. Loam is what allows them to fight their battle on two fronts at once. It is often the only way that they can even dream of casting Grave-Trolls or attacking with Svogthos at all. Leaving them without Life from the Loam essentially leaves them sitting on Akroma and non-combo Hellkites. With four Damnations and three Fetters, you’re well equipped to fight against four Dread Returns. However, unlike against Bridge Dredge, it can often be right to hit Golgari Grave-Troll with Extirpate. In addition to stopping them from dredging for at least a turn, you’ll be cutting out one of their routes to victory. Slowing them down at the same time you weaken their long game is a great way to win this matchup.
The Deck in Action
I know that Future Sight was just released on Magic Online this past Tuesday, but there is still plenty to see for those of you who have MTGO. Standard 2x PE #970114 featured two Solar Flare decks in the Top 8. One of them conceded to the other in the semi finals when the two friends were paired, and the other went on to beat Dragonstorm in the finals.
The two decks showcased different ways to go with the deck. The player who got the scoop in the semifinals had Phyrexian Totem, Remand, and Extirpate in his deck, and even pulled off the Extirpate + Persecute trick in the finals. With decisive wins in the quarterfinals and finals, this deck is clearly a legitimate choice for Regionals. Add to this the fact that you can easily add your own personal choices to make playing the deck more comfortable for you, and you may well have a winner on your hands.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me in the forums, via email, or on AIM.
Benjamin Peebles-Mundy
ben at mundy dot net
SlickPeebles on AIM