Limited Lessons — Wild Pair in Block Constructed

There will be no Limited Lessons this week.

This is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view. One thing that’s certain is that when I decide to write about Constructed, you can be sure I have something special to share because I don’t do it very often. This week I want to talk about Block Constructed, and the deck that got me interested in the format. It all started last Tuesday night at CMU, while we were drafting. Various people were talking about how to break Wild Pair in Block, and the cool interactions it has with Mindless Automaton. If you weren’t already aware, Wild Pair stacks when the creature comes into play and relies on last known information. It’s because of this that you can adjust the Automaton to search for whatever you’d like, even a 0/0 like Spike Feeder or Vesuvan Shapeshifter. When I heard some of these conversations, the wheels started turning in my head… and after we were done drafting, four of us headed over to my friend’s house to scour the card pool on Magic Online and build up a list to play. It was already 4am, but that wasn’t about to get in the way of the mission ahead of us.

After some chatting and flipping through the cards, it became clear that there were better things to do with Wild Pair than mess around with Mindless Automaton. We decided on a G/R build because of the synergy between Timbermare and Bogardan Hellkite with Wild Pair in play. Here’s the first list we came up with.

1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
4 Wall of Roots
3 Akroma, Angel of Fury
4 Bogardan Hellkite
4 Hunting Wilds
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
4 Radha, Heir to Keld
2 Spectral Force
4 Timbermare
4 Wild Pair
4 Shivan Wumpus
3 Pandemonium
4 Fungal Reaches
9 Forest
9 Mountain

Sideboard
4 Scragnoth
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Groundbreaker
2 Rough / Tumble
3 Seal of Primordium
1 Akroma, Angel of Fury
1 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
1 Pandemonium
1 Blood Knight

Where do I even start? This deck has a lot of things going on, and you wouldn’t be able to comprehend all of them just by skimming it really quickly. Since this was our first attempt at the format, the deck was aimed at just seeing how fast we could kill someone. This explains the maindeck Pandemoniums.

First of all, let me go over the Wild Pair synergies in this build. Shivan Wumpus gets either Akroma, and Red Akroma also fetches her White sister while being uncounterable in the process. There are two copies of Spectral Force so that you can fetch another, and I wouldn’t recommend more in this deck because there are better things to do. Wall of Roots can fetch another Wall, or add a mana with Wild Pair on the stack and fetch Radha or Jaya Ballard. If you end up building the deck and tuning it, one thing I stress is not to remove the one Jaya even if it seems random. You will want to be able to tutor something up, and there aren’t many better options except for the Blood Knight in the board. Don’t forget you can also search Jaya with a Morphed Red Akroma. Obviously the main synergy in this deck is casting Timbermare and fetching Hellkite, or Hellkite fetching Hellkite, and if you also have Pandemonium in play alongside Wild Pair, that’s a full twenty damage right there. Taking a quick glance at the sideboard, which was very untuned at this point: we wanted to try out Scragnoth against counter decks, and we also put Teferi and Groundbreaker in as bullets to search up with the Scrag. Some opponents would let Wild Pair resolve and plan to counter every creature, so our idea was to board up to eight uncounterable men.

We were pretty excited about the possibilities here and eager to test the deck. It did pretty well at first, but there were some glaring problems after we’d played a few matches. One of the biggest problems was that a lot of the cards in the deck weren’t nearly as good if Wild Pair didn’t resolve. If you’ve played any amount of this format you should be aware that the countermagic is actually pretty good and very popular, so we obviously needed to make some changes.

I went home later that day and played about ten queues on Magic Online and also a bunch of games in the casual room before deciding on the build I’m running now. Take a look and I’ll explain some of the changes.

G/R Wild Pair

Nick Eisel

Test deck on 04-01-2007

Time Spiral Block

Creatures (28)

Lands (23)

Spells (9)

Sideboard

I know I haven’t said this yet because it’s obvious, but I will say it anyway just so we’re on the same page. The plan with this deck is to play either Wall of Roots or Radha and then hopefully Hunting Wilds on turn 3. Hunting Wilds is just amazing in the format, and it’s nice that you can turn it into a threat in the late game if you’re mana-flooded. There are plenty of tricks with Radha, such as using the mana to unmorph Akroma on turn 4, cast Bogardan Hellkite in the attack step cheaply, or even just charge a Fungal Reaches. Another thing to keep in mind when playing the deck is that Wall of Roots does double duty, casting a spell on your turn and then another on the opponent’s turn (or to place a charge on a Fungal Reaches). Make sure you charge those Reaches, as every counter will matter with so many eight mana spells in the deck.

Pandemonium
The first thing we noticed during the matches is that this card is not very good against opponents that play a lot of creatures. It’s still fine in the late game when they’ve exhausted most of their hand, or if you can play it and Timbermare in the same turn, but it was getting sideboarded out a lot. The only matchups I really wanted the card in for were U/B Teferi decks, and other similar archetypes without many creatures, that would have to counter Pandemonium or lose to it. As such, it now resides in the board, and may eventually leave the deck altogether if I can figure out a better plan.

Shivan Wumpus
You’d assume this guy would be awesome on turn 3 and also great with Wild Pair in play. Sometimes though this just isn’t the case, as lots of decks play Prismatic Lens, Search for Tomorrow, Totems, and other various accelerators. There are times when he’s still good on turn 3, and nothing feels more wrong than tutoring up a White Akroma that you couldn’t ever cast to begin with, but I really didn’t like having this guy in the maindeck. We started with four copies main and kept removing them every time the deck changed, until it got to the point where it is now with only one copy in the sideboard to come in with the Pandemonium plan. The reason he’s good with Pandemonium is that you can sacrifice the land yourself in the late game and have a reusable six point burn spell as well as an Akroma tutor. Feel free to try these out in the maindeck yourself if you don’t believe me, but they were pretty marginal.

Spike Feeder / Triskelavus
The Feeders were added to the maindeck to make the matchups against aggressive decks extremely good for Wild Pair. It’s nice too that Feeder is an awesome card in its own right, and has some tricks with Wild Pair in play. The one Trisk is there to tutor up by simply gaining two life from a Feeder with Wild Pair on the stack, or moving a counter to another creature. You can also play a Feeder, gain four life and then search up another Feeder thanks to last known information. As the deck was going through different iterations, the Feeders started out in the board and eventually came into the maindeck replacing the remaining copies of Pandemonium and Shivan Wumpus.

Scragnoth / Sulfur Elemental
Maybe the desire to use Scragnoth in a competitive deck was fueled partially by the consumption of alcohol. Maybe it just seemed like a good idea at the time. Whatever the case, Scragnoth got dropped like last week’s trend and was quickly replaced by a sleeker model.

We considered Sulfurs for the board initially but decided not to run them because we were all like little kids in a toy store and wanted to run Scraggy instead. When it became evident that searching up Teferi, while cute, didn’t really do anything since he just got Sudden Deathed, we went back to the drawing board. The Sulfur Elemental plan is a million times better for a couple of reasons. First of all, if you resolve Wild Pair against control, you can end step Sulfur Elemental searching up Sulfur Elemental and force the control player to deal with them on your turn when you can follow up with another threat. Don’t forget that Elemental is also uncounterable so they’ll have to find other means of dispatching it. At least if their answer is Damnation, you’ll be able to crack in for six damage before they can Wrath. With Scragnoth, sure you could search up the one Groundbreaker which usually met Strangling Soot, but usually what happened is that they just untapped and Damnationed, or killed one of the guys on our turn and then untapped and killed the other. Sulfur Elemental makes life much harder for the control deck. The second reason Elemental is better is that it also doubles as an instant win against most White decks when you search up a second copy or more. I’ve played multiple games where I got all four Elementals in play via Wild Pair and my opponent could only play his 9/1 Calciderm. The only thing that’s unfortunate is that there aren’t any good “5s” to search up with Sulfur Elemental and Wild Pair, except for another copy of the same card. We considered Hunting Moa but decided it wasn’t worth the slot, and we weren’t willing to run a marginal off-color Faceless Butcher.

Blood Knight
This definitely looks very random, and if I just picked up the deck and didn’t understand why it was necessary, I’d be looking to cut it. Calciderm is very annoying for this deck, as are Cautery Slivers. One problem I’ve been trying to fix is that there are a lot of “4s” in the deck, and nothing really good to search up except Jaya or Radha since you can’t search for Spike Feeder with a 2/2 or 0/4. This guy comes in against anyone with White creatures, and is much better than it looks on paper.

Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
This comes in against anyone with Forests and is much better than I thought it’d be initially. It’s nice that it also tutors up Hellkite.

Rough / Tumble
I usually don’t bring these in against the White decks or the W/R/b Sliver archetype. The main reason is that the White decks have guys with Protection from Red as well as Calciderm, and the Sliver deck has Cautery Sliver, which makes life difficult. I’m content with four Sulfur Elemental and Blood Knight in those matchups. This card is for decks with lots of guys in its range. While that may sound stupid, you should know almost immediately if it will be good in the matchup or not. I mainly bring it in against mono-Red aggro and the Reanimator build that runs Greenseeker, Looter, and Magus of the Bazaar, but it can be good in other matchups as well.

Seal of Primordium
If enough people start playing this deck or other iterations (there are currently two other Wild Pair builds that I know of), this should probably increase to three copies in the board. As of now it’s been fine but unexciting, so I’ve lowered it to two. The other Wild Pair decks, if you’re curious, are a Sliver build and a U/G/w build featuring Mystic Snakes, Draining Whelk, Whitemane Lion, and other combos. Personally I think G/R is the best choice for Wild Pair for two reasons. First off, the combo in G/R just kills people instead of screwing around. Timbermare into Hellkite is ten damage, and end step Hellkite into Hellkite is the full twenty if they happen to tap out (which has occurred multiple times online). Second, the G/R deck is very good when it doesn’t get Wild Pair into play. The Sliver build and U/G/w are awesome with Pair out, but tend to stumble if it gets countered. If there were no countermagic in the format this could be different, but I like playing with cards that are very powerful on their own, especially when Akroma is also uncounterable.

Prismatic Lens / Search for Tomorrow / Terramorphic Expanse
These cards have caused some debate lately. I’ve shared the list with a few of my friends who are qualified for the PT, and done a lot of discussion as to how to improve on the deck. If you didn’t notice, I added another land to the new build, as well as one Prismatic Lens as a ninth accelerator. I chose Lens over Search for Tomorrow because you can always cast Lens on turn 2, and Search could suck if you fumble on mana. I’m still not sure I’m entirely right on this issue, and it’s possible that another Lens should be in there somewhere, or maybe just two copies of Search.

Another issue entirely is Terramorphic Expanse. I didn’t include it in the deck up to this point because there are so many times you are hoping to topdeck a land to play a Hellkite or something else huge, and I would hate to draw an Expanse in those situations. The argument for Expanse by some others who are testing this deck is that you have to mulligan more than you’d like to due to color issues. I’m not sure how to solve this problem really, since adding Expanses could cripple some of your key turns but also help out in other games where you need the color fixing. What I wouldn’t give for a Stomping Ground or Karplusan Forest!

Other Thoughts
While I consider the deck far along in the building process at this point, it is by no means the optimal list. A lot of testing has to be done to determine whether or not Terramorphic Expanse is worthwhile (you’re basically trading speed for consistency here) as well as the right mix of acceleration. It’s been suggested that White Akroma shouldn’t even be in the deck, since the times you draw it are very annoying and sometimes Wild Pair gets countered anyway. My argument is that I’ve won a lot of games off casting Red Akroma into White Akroma, and getting that six points of haste in there, and there are not really any other good “12s” to search up in Green or Red. For now I’m keeping her maindeck, while also considering moving the fourth copy of Red Akroma from the sideboard into the main, as she gets boarded in a lot.

As far as sideboarding with the deck goes, I pretty much do it on the fly since I’m still learning the format and it’s still very new. I’ve already given some advice such as not to bring in Rough / Tumbles against White (usually). I would also recommend taking out the Feeders / Triskelion in most control matchups and bringing in better cards. Red Akroma comes in a lot. Remember in the G/R mirror that you can play Red Akroma when they have theirs out, they will both die to the legend rule, and you can then search up another copy. It’s because of this that I board out the White Akroma here and in some other matchups as well. Definitely leave the White version in for the control matches though, as you can set it up with an uncounterable sister. Finally, I’d try to bring in the Sulfur Elementals in most Teferi matchups, and take out the Feeder package as well as Spectral Forces.

As far as results have gone so far, I’ve won a bunch of 8man queues online as well as finishing tenth in a Premier Event where I went 5-2. The truth about the Premiere Event is that I should’ve easily top 8ed but lost both matches due to close decisions which, I believe, were mistakes on my part after I thought more about them. The deck may seem easy to play on paper, but there is plenty more going on, and playing around countermagic is never easy. One other thing I should mention is that one of the biggest problem cards for this deck is Draining Whelk, since you’re playing so many expensive spells, and the only way you can really deal with the giant flier is to hold back a Red Akroma to block until you can “combo off.” This is another reason Pandemonium may be leaving the board, because it’s no good against Draining Whelk either, and people are starting to play them more. This is yet another problem waiting to be solved for this deck.

As with all toolbox decks, there is plenty of room to wiggle here, and I leave it up to you the reader to see if you can figure out anything to improve the current list. I know I’ll be testing the deck and working on it since I enjoy it, but if more people get involved then maybe someone will figure out how to fix the holes the deck has now.

For anyone interested, here is the Sliver version of Wild Pair. This list was given to me by Mike McGlinchey.

1 Mindlash Sliver
4 Wall of Roots
4 Darkheart Sliver
4 Gemhide Sliver
1 Riftwing Cloudskate
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
1 Basal Sliver
1 Necrotic Sliver
4 Dormant Sliver
1 Reflex Sliver
4 Telekinetic Sliver
1 Might Sliver
1 Triskelavus

4 Evolution Charm
4 Wild Pair

7 Forest
6 Island
5 Swamp
4 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Plains
1 Pendelhaven

Sideboard
1 Harmonic Sliver
3 Spell Burst
4 Serrated Arrows
2 Haunting Hymn
3 Might Sliver
2 Tromp the Domains

Nick Eisel
Soooooo on MTGO
[email protected]