Squattup Squitties.
You can thank Lil’ Wayne for that one.
For the eight or nine of you who were wondering where I was last week, I skillfully penned an article that would be relevant to exactly sixteen people on the planet. I am completely oblivious to the world of MTGO – as my more-than-slightly frustrated PT: Yokohama testing partner Marijn Lybaert can attest – and thought that the TS-PC “Invasion Sealed Deck Qualifier” queues all had Invasion Block Top 8 drafts. Thinking this would be an opportunity to flaunt my old-school knowledge in a frenzy of Flores-like encyclopedia tenacity, I wrote up this brilliantly self-righteous draft primer based on old memories of frustrating Brian Davis with my hideous-looking five-color concoctions that featured no less than four Gray Ogres apiece.
Alas, that’s not quite how the queues worked, and Craig was not about to pay me for wasting his beloved readers’ time. That said, if you’re one of the lucky sixteen and want to know how to draft IPA, feel free to e-mail me.
I had a hard time coming up for a topic this week, though. My natural first inclination was to do one of those fun April Fools parody bits, and of course the first object of my affection would be perennial fan favorite Tim Aten. However, I realized that parodies:
- Flagrantly appropriate the style of their intended subjects,
- Generally do so without the polish and skill of said subjects, and
- Often fail to be as funny as advertised.
Sound familiar? Awkward.
Fearing that my editor / readers might hound me for “forgetting” that I was supposed to pretend to be Tim for a week, I decided to steer clear of that path entirely.
Two-Headed Giant would be an obvious subject, but Richard and I already wrote ourselves out of one PTQ season, thanks. We’ve got to keep SOME technology under wraps*. Besides, I would wager that most of y’all are vastly superior to us at that format, anyway. Keep us away from forty-card decks, please. It’s like pouring milkshakes all over fat kids or farming chia-pet coca plants in a drug rehab center: we love ‘em, but they’re not good for us. Our decks from the last tournament featured three, count ‘em three, one mana 1/1 creatures whose abilities did not affect the board. We somehow got sixth on tiebreakers at that tournament, but I’m convinced that was purely the residual effect of having JP Smee and Tim Galbiati sitting in the car with us on the ride to Little Rock. Kinda like how paper clips become magnetic when they hang out with those big red U-shaped things etc.
I could chatter about Standard, but I haven’t played a game of Type 2 since Regionals last year. I am also not of Asian descent, which probably means I’m at least three or four centuries behind the technology curve. So that’s out, and I guess I’m left with Block.
The problem here is twofold: first, based on our conversations in Geneva, Billy Moreno had probably accomplished everything I have in this format by his second week of testing, and has most likely dismissed each and every one of my ideas as awful. Second, the people I’m working with for Yokohama are already sort of scared that I’m going to “accidentally” leak the fruits of their hard labor at an opportune time – particularly since some of their groups are competing against one another – and I don’t want to piss off anyone irreconcilably. That’s not good for a man’s Magical career.
Fortunately, though, it turns out that (at least at this point) White Weenie is so unbelievably good – largely in part to Chapin’s Stonecloakers – that we were able to eschew many of our cuter ideas from the outset. This, coupled with the fact that everybody seems to know about Wild Pair (both with Whitemane and with Slivers) by now, meant that I felt comfortable enough talking about my own ideas without stepping on anyone else’s toes. So, to be clear: I’m just going to cover the ideas that I developed from the outset without (a whole lot of) input from other people. This should allay fears of tech-swiping across the board, while still allowing me to hopefully contribute some degree of originality to this format apart from the usual netdecks that I’ve seen.
Alright. Disclaimers aside, I’ve got two decks for you this week. Everything’s designed under the assumption that it has to have some sort of game against:
White Weenie
Mono-Red
Counterspell-based Mystical Teachings decks
Wild Pair
Mono-Black control
Big Green things
The first is an evolution of Billy’s Geneva-era Mono-Black control list. The format’s color-fixing is actually pretty good, so I started to add better finishers and powerful sorceries a la BDavis’ 2001-era Nationals deck, and wound up with this:
Creatures (8)
Lands (24)
Spells (28)
- 4 Stupor
- 3 Void
- 4 Foriysian Totem
- 4 Prismatic Lens
- 4 Sudden Death
- 3 Tendrils of Corruption
- 4 Damnation
- 2 Shrouded Lore
Sideboard
Losing Desert is annoying, but Hellkite and Void are worth it. The deck might actually need another land, but I’m not entirely sure about that.
The plan against WW is to bring in Nosferatus, Void, and Tendrils for the Aeon Chroniclers, to mitigate their Pulls from Eternity. You have to keep in Stupor because you really, really want to get rid of Calciderm and Mana Tithes, which are ridiculous. Discard and Mischiefs are for control decks and counterspells, and Mischief can randomly be really good against a Haunting Hymn, for example. Pull is for other Aeon Chroniclers as well as any cute Suspend decks that might emerge at some point or another.
It may be tempting not to suspend Mindstab on turn 1 because your accelerants would let you hard cast it on turn 4. Usually, though, you’ll be spending your mana on Stupors and Voids in those matchups, and if you don’t have any of those cards then you probably should have mulliganed the hand.
Against White Weenie, you want to cast a Stupor early to try and hit some of their disruption. They’re going to be aware of Damnation, and are going to try and engineer this cute turn where you have to Damnation and then they drop a Calciderm and an Avenger or something. You therefore want to do everything in your power to prevent this from happening, and / or you want to stay at a high enough life total where everything they do becomes irrelevant. Because of this, don’t be afraid to Damn away two irrelevant-looking threats because they’re tapped out and can’t Mana Tithe you. Similarly, it’s okay to use Sudden Deaths even when you’re holding Damnation to give yourself time to suspend an Aeon Chronicler.
The matchup is very skill-intensive. You’ve got to be able to read what answers they have in their hand, and if either of you plays a turn out incorrectly you’re probably going to lose. It’s difficult to gauge when to deploy an Avenger, for example, and there’s always this psychological rock-paper-scissors that comes about when resolving a Void to try and determine what you’re most scared of in the opponent’s hand versus what you need to immediately take off the board.
Most Blue-or-Black-based control matchups are fairly straightforward, as you try and draw two or so cards off a Chronicler, make them deal with it, try to bury them in discard (a.k.a. “don’t miss with Void”) and Hellkites before you get Teachings locked.
Mono-R or R/G are much harder because they’re blowing up your lands. You don’t really care about Blood Knight or Sulfur Elemental, and they can’t do anything about Tendrils that you’re obviously pumping the fist over. Chances are their LD is not hitting your Swamps. However, you have to make sure not to get very greedy with Aeon Chronicler because 1) you’re probably not going to suspend it for much and 2) your Island might die real, real quickly. It’s fine as a 4/4 Kavu Climber. Once you start slinging Hellkites you’re probably going to win that one, but it’s extremely likely that they are going to get to their Hellkites first. You can’t do anything about a ripped Disintegrate, so there are going to be times where you have to Sudden Death a monster just to gain four life.
After boarding it’s real rough if they have Ancient Grudge, but I don’t see a lot of people running that yet. Nosferatu is a hot little threat, and your discard is very good against them. Mindstab’s nice as they’re not going to be able to do a lot about the card loss, and the more LD and mana-ramping they cast the gassier the cards they’re going lose. From the decks with Green, be aware of Weatherseed Totem and keep some Voids on hold for that purpose. Being able to Mischief an Ancient Grudge onto one of those boys feels pretty good, too. The main thing to bear in mind is that you want to deploy Blue and Red spells from your hand as quickly as you can so that they are not hanging out while their respective basic lands are in the graveyard.
I haven’t tested against mono-G aggro decks, but I also haven’t seen any of those decks that have turned out to be good. If anyone has such a list, please let me know.
My second creation looks a lot more like the decks I am prone to salivate over:
Creatures (15)
Lands (24)
Spells (21)
Sideboard
I want to call attention to a few of these card choices, as I haven’t been seeing a lot of them in action:
Rough / Tumble: You’ve got basically a Pyroclasm that can kill red Akromas, Serra Avengers, Hellkites, Nosferatus, and Dragons. Sign me up. For whatever reason I haven’t had a single one of these cast against me, and I have no idea why.
Wurmcalling: This is mainly for use against Black decks, as even if they have discard you’re likely to get a couple of uses out of it. It’s also fine to rawdog as an Ivy Elemental against Red or Green decks.
Sulfurous Blast: It might actually be a wrong call to play these, and just run another Wurmcalling and some more Spectral Forces. The idea is to have more Wraths against WW and other aggressive decks, but this card sure doesn’t kill Timbermares. Between Desert, Sulfur Sulfs, and Rough / Tumble you have a lot of Wraths as it is. Dead / Gone might also be the correct choice, as it also deals with Griffin Guide. Currently the Griffin Guide plan is just to accelerate to Hellkite, or use Disintegrate to prevent the trigger. Even then, though, without an early Sulfur Elemental there’s no real way to beat Guide plus Soltari Avenger, suggesting that the Ancient Grudges (or this slot, again) might need to become Molders or Seals of Primordium. It all depends on how much White Weenie is in the metagame.
Spectral Force: It’s absolutely okay to run this guy without Scryb Ranger. He’s still a five mana 8/8.
The random Prismatic Lens ensures an early mana accelerant, and also ensures that we can run Deserts, which in addition to being great by themselves are also extra-nasty with Sulfur Elemental.
The plans for this deck against the field should be relatively straightforward. You want to blow up lands and start casting fat creatures. Hunting Wilds reminds me a lot of Explosive Vegetation from the Onslaught Block days, except it can also dome for six. I’d run more but for Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, which is probably the best thing a Green mage can do for four mana without drawing three cards. Pyroclasm early and often. You have natural resistance to Damnation with all the Split Second and Haste, but make sure to keep enough irrelevant cards in your hand to potentially survive a Stupor. It’s not always correct to chuck a Sulfur Elemental onto the board and start going to town, particularly if you think it’s going to eat a Tendrils. Make sure you can follow it up with something if that’s the plan.
Also, there’s another possible sideboard plan that involves four Weatherseed Totems against the Blue and Black decks. This is sort of contingent upon them not running Voids, as Totem is really easy to answer with that card in the deck, but aside from it there’s not a whole lot those decks can do against a 5/3 trampler that never dies. It’s not even entirely like you Time Walk yourself every time you cast it, because this deck is capable of amassing so much mana very quickly. The other advantage of this plan is that it lets you take out Walls of Roots, which are pretty terrible when they’re going to die to some form of Wrath anyway.
A few secondary notes that have probably become obvious from these lists and my comments on the environment by now:
The defining cards of the format are going to be Mana Tithe, Calciderm, Griffin Guide, Damnation, Aeon Chronicler, Bogardan Hellkite, Sulfur Elemental, Teferi, and Desert. You have to figure out a way to deal with these big boys, and more importantly you can’t build a list that packs it to any of them.
Stuffy Doll could randomly be a house if people stop running the Flanking guys to get an edge in the mirror by “going big.” Remember, in Block formats the sideboard plans from the aggressive decks usually involve bringing in more lands and casting bigger creatures. While I don’t see many of the WW decks rocking Akroma, Angel of Wrath, it is very possible for smaller green decks to bring in Spectral Force.
There’s got to be a good Blink deck somewhere.
With eight Sindbads, a Looter, and Greenseeker, someone’s probably going to try for a Madness deck. I have no idea if it can work out, but the engine defined one block season and it’s worth at least giving a run at now – particularly as aforementioned Sindbads and Greenseekers go a long way to fixing your mana.
Beware Primal Forcemage.
Alright, that’s enough for one day. Take care, y’all.
Zac