In a week following two Grand Prix, in two different formats, I’ve got a pretty easy job for once. Instead of struggling about aimlessly, trying to cover everything by thinking about all aspects of the metagame at the same time, I get to sit back, open a pile of web-pages, and present my take on reality from the recent events we’ve seen. One of these two Grand Prix, the Welsh one, is almost immediately trivialized by the fact that we’ll be seeing a brand new expansion to finish up the puzzle of the multicolored Ravnica block in just a few weeks’ time. Aside from one last European Grand Prix, the next major tournament using this format (Pro Tour Prague) will be using the full block for drafting rather than Ravnica-Ravnica-Guildpact.
What seems trivial may nonetheless provide interesting information, because drafting with Ravnica block changed considerably with the release of Guildpact… but not entirely. The Draft format we are using right now will lay a solid groundwork for Ravnica-Guildpact-Dissension Draft, because two-thirds of those packs require depth of knowledge on a bunch of cards we’re already allowed to play with. Sure, things get thrown on their ear when the third set is released, and the dance begins to ensure you get good picks through all three packs despite their wildly varying color groupings. Sure, drafting those same packs in reverse order and starting with Dissension, proceeding to Guildpact, and finishing with Ravnica might very well seem like taking that first step out of the moon-lander and realizing that nice, comfortable, warm, air-filled world you once knew is floating a couple thousand miles above your head. Disorientation is going to be the norm, and anyone who doesn’t expect to get thoroughly confused trying to fit another thing that doesn’t work nicely with one’s world-view must have missed the schizophrenic transition between triple Ravnica and Ravnica-Ravnica-Guildpact.
Just remember: The enemy’s gate is down.
The two 8-0 decks from Cardiff were Green-White-Black monstrosities, laden with the kind of Rare creatures you often look to open if you get a choice (Tolsimir Wolfblood, Vulturous Zombie, Rumbling Slum), and the occasional ridiculous non-creature card (Debtor’s Knell, anyone?) that can win games all on its lonesome. More importantly, both had some element of recursion or repeating effects, with one deck featuring Golgari Guildmage into Belfry Spirit, Selesnya Evangel, Elvish Skysweeper, and Woodwraith Corrupter, generating extra creatures or extra creature removal almost as a matter of course. The other featured Golgari Guildmage (I guess that guy sure gets around!) into Tolsimir Wolfblood, Mausoleum Turnkey, Elvish Skysweeper, Shambling Shell, Belfry Spirit, and Plagued Rusalka. Bombs are all well and good, but I suspect instead that there is no coincidence that the two best decks in the room were the ones best able to pump out overwhelming forces and use those forces to amass a better army than the opponents’ blockers could contain. There were bombs, too, and enough creature removal to suit most players who know to budget their removal carefully rather than to waste it answering the first question asked.
One of those two decks was four colors, splashing the Red for an Arc and Rumbling Slum, because he had more than enough mana fixing to support pretty much anything that struck his fancy, while the other tried the safer route of two colors with one splash that most consider to be the sane response to an overwhelming amount of choices.
In the end, a deck not too dissimilar to those won the tournament, with some token production and some nonsensical Gleancrawler tricks thrown in for good measure, as Gleancrawler plus triple Transluminant can make quite a lot of flying Spirit tokens in addition to doing other useful things. The Top 8 draft decks that played four colors didn’t win, suggesting that it is quite possible to try and do too much with your mana and get stuck with all of these beautiful cards stranded in your hand. An Englishman started the day at 8-0, and an Englishman won the tournament, but while Quentin Martin may have broken the English curse of undefeated Day 1s leading to sad, sad Day 2s, by making the Top 8 here… he didn’t break it as far as it could be broken, for he was not the Englishman who walked away with the top honors at Cardiff.
The rules seem to be about what we have expected: craft a plan for the Draft, limiting the number of colors you can and will play in your deck; draft mana-fixers as high as you can afford to, and be willing to sometimes take them over seemingly superior cards because you will need to have some; draft a deck with synergy and a focus on its plan for winning the game, whatever means that may happen to be. Knowing what cards are good in Limited is a key thing, but being willing to break outside of that mould if the situation calls for it is every bit as important. Recently, I’ve been drafting Dark Confidants pretty highly, and not because he’s worth seven dollars or three tickets or whatever. I’ve been drafting Dark Confidants pretty highly because I know a card that is ridiculous in Constructed will probably be pretty good in Limited. If Ghost Dad is the best Draft deck of all time (and we’re not sure, as that title may still belong to Bennie Smith Virginia State Championships Black/Green Dredge deck), then all of the cards in it are probably pretty good in Draft… including Bob Confidant, the man no one will touch.
By challenging the assumed norm that Bob is bad in Draft, I’ve drafted him twice now for Black/White decks, and twice enjoyed the luxury of starting Drafts where Bob made the opening lineup by going 3-0 in matches. Pretty good for a bad card… and it wasn’t because I didn’t draw the Confidant; he was often in play on turn 2.
“Traditional wisdom,” or “what everyone else believes is true,” is not necessarily the key to success in Ravnica-block Draft, because I for one find it difficult to believe that Cry of Contrition is “pretty good” in Standard (9th in Honolulu) and yet deserves its frequent fifteenth-pick status in Limited. “Challenging the consensus” will likely become even more important in just a few weeks, as the third set is unveiled and the world gets turned on its ear.
The lesson from Cardiff is that the previous lessons have remained true; don’t get greedy, build your deck to maximize its synergy with itself, and if you try to coast along without a plan you’ll end up in over your head (see: don’t get greedy).
That said, the events of this past weekend’s Grand Prix in Madison, Wisconsin are the ones that really interest me, as it coincides with the opening week of a new Pro Tour Qualifier season, and the most complex Constructed format we’ve ever seen for such a season… the one where you have to build three decks instead of one. In some ways at least, the result is to be expected: the winning decks included one copy of Ghost Dad, the latest creation that’s rocking the nation as far as Orzhov-based decks go. When one expects that the most likely target is going to be beatdown decks with Red and Green (and maybe White), a deck that smashes them handily is a solid first choice to put on your team. Following that same train of thought, Ghost Dad‘s worst matchup is the Heartbeat deck, and if you expect a lot of people (besides just yourselves) are going to bring Ghost Dad decks, Heartbeat is an excellent second deck to put on your team. It’s also one of the most powerful decks in the format, and the only one that is both viable in a varied metagame and has the ability to win its own game its own way by non-interactive means. Playing fair, after all, is for chumps.
Deck number three from the Grand Prix-winning team, Team Faddy Josh, was “only” the Pro Tour Honolulu-winning deck, Heezy Street.
Ghost Dad is a deck that is now able to branch out in a wide variety of directions. There are numerous reasonable options for facing off against the mirror match, as well as a dedicated plan that has to be in place to square off against Heartbeat decks, as those were a reasonably solid choice by many teams. Some teams went so far as to sideboard for game 2 of the mirror as their game 1 plan, with the Hands of Honor and Umezawa’s Jitte in the main, incidentally making them even better against other Orzhov-based decks, giving even more potential to break away from a Red/Green deck’s attack and just dominate the game. Others had subtler changes, like my teammates’ deck, which removed a single Pillory of the Sleepless from the main-deck to add a single Cage of Hands, to have a main-deck answer to that kind of nonsense besides Shining Shoal to reflect the White damage back to the pro-Black creature.
No few of these decks came to the conclusion that the key card to fight over was Plagued Rusalka, in both the mirror and the Rat deck semi-mirror, as the Rusalka is the key impediment to keeping your creatures in play and your Pillories on their creatures. While in many cases this is an obvious and small change – such as adding the fourth Plagued Rusalka to the deck – others went further in the maindeck or the sideboard to respect the large number of powerful one-toughness creatures in the format (Dark Confidant, Plagued and Scorched Rusalka, Giant Solifuge, Frenzied Goblin, Savannah Lions, Shrieking Grotesque) and tried to increase their synergy with Plagued Rusalka at the same time by trying out this “Orzhov Pontiff” card.
Most sideboarded this card if they played it at all; some few played it maindeck, under the logic that its worst use could still be pretty relevant to the game by potentially upping your damage count in a way Ghost Dad decks usually can’t. To be honest, most players didn’t play this card at all… but don’t be surprised if you see it in coming weeks, as it is one of those cards that has a perfect home in the environment as we see it now. It will begin to prey upon the unwary even before you account for Haunt, Infesting your opponents’ board and killing Hands of Honor or Hands of Cruelty regardless of their protection. I know I wasn’t the only one looking at the card for week one of the Team Standard metagame, and I certainly wasn’t the only one pleased by the outcome of giving him a try.
The Heartbeat deck seems to be the Pokemon from Hell, because every time you turn your back on it it’s gone off and evolved again to compensate for the latest shenanigans facing off against it. The Heartbeat deck on the team that won the Grand Prix in Madison had such features as main-deck Savage Twister, just one Weird Harvest to Tutor for to streamline the numbers even more fully, and a main-deck catch-all answer to the cards that ail ye, whether it be Pithing Needle on Drift of Phantasms or Ivory Mask to save an opponent from your kill spell of choice. Compare the following two decks and you’ll see what happens when Heartbeat decks reach Stage Two of their evolution:
Creatures (9)
Lands (22)
Spells (29)
Creatures (9)
Lands (22)
Spells (29)
+1 Maindeck Savage Twister, -1 Maindeck Kodama’s Reach.
+1 SB Keiga the Tide Star, -1 SB Savage Twister (in maindeck instead).
So by shaving one card out of the main, dropping the numbers on the excellent support card Kodama’s Reach from four to three, room was found for a maindeck answer to numerous problem creatures in play, and this extra slot found room for a second monstrous Dragon for when the Man Plan goes large, adding another Keiga to the lineup when attacking with 5/5’s is the proper plan for games 2 or 3. Will the fourth Kodama’s Reach be truly missed, in a deck with a lot of accelerants and Sensei’s Divining Top? No, probably not. Will the maindeck Twister get searched for often enough to make the one card difference matter? More than likely, as that can be all the difference in the world between beating an aggro deck and just… getting beaten.
Looking at the sideboard, I seem to be learning a lesson I incidentally learned only this weekend… a lesson about having transformational sideboards that can only accomplish one thing, ever. If the Heartbeat deck has fifteen cards for when it wants to go with the Man Plan to win the game, that means it has zero cards for when it wants to keep with what worked in game 1. If you can’t be certain your game 1 plan will work again, and you can’t be certain that your post-sideboard Man Plan is going to work (such as in the case of facing off against Ghost Dad, which makes switching to an aggressive strategy a futile effort as you switch a plan they can’t stop for one they can)… you need to have something to address the problems inherent in the game 1 plan, and shore up those weaknesses.
Twelve cards towards the Man Plan, three cards for your regular plan, maybe three counterspells to help make sure Extraction on Early Harvest doesn’t happen when you don’t want it to. Perhaps this is wiser than trying to fit in every Legend, Dragon, and legendary equipment – plus four Kudzu, and the rest of the fixings for a post-board beatdown salad. My lesson learned was with the Counter-Angel deck, where I tried to be clever and shore up the control and combo matchups at the expense of having a sideboard to bring in against Ghost Dad and Heezy Street.
Creatures (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (32)
To say the least, this sideboard was a complete surprise against everyone who faced it… but not, necessarily, in the way that wins you matches. The plan works against Heartbeat decks, even against their Man Plan so long as they don’t just answer your one-drop with their Vinelasher Kudzu. If they keep to the game 1 strategy because it worked well enough against you the first time, the sideboard into a Ninja Fish deck can be a beautiful thing, especially if this means for game 3 they go for the Man Plan while you go back to your dedicated anti-creature strategy from game 1. The plan against Owling Mine allows for a winnable matchup, and in fact I did get the nightmare pairing of pulling a Mine deck and walking away with the match win thanks to my kooky fifteen card sideboard. I even beat him 2-0, because we had one of those astronomically improbable games where I am able to resolve Zur’s Weirding before he has been able to find his fourth land, and a Weirding in play prevents the opponent from ever drawing another mana source and thus prevents him from ever actually becoming a problem.
However, when playing against Ghost Dad, what was an easy matchup in testing due to my experience with both of these decks became much more difficult, as I started having to face off against discard spells and Cranial Extraction. The matchup against Zoo-style decks is initially pretty good, but without the four copies of Descendant of Kiyomaro usually sideboarded in this deck I found I just couldn’t win a three-game set, and so the lack of a sideboard that was flexible turned even good matchups into difficult struggles.
My folly with an unrelated deck still has the weight of a simple truth when talking about the Heartbeat deck: a sideboard that does not address the changes, in even simple matchups, is one that will force you down a poor decision tree in all matchups. It starts to get to the point where you have to use your sideboarded “trick” or else you will just be leaving yourself open to the opponents’ sideboard, so something even so simple as Shadow of Doubt in the sideboard to prevent your opponent from destroying you with Cranial Extraction may go a long way towards improving your post-sideboard plan against even favorable matchups… including your best matchup, Ghost Dad, which can evolve in such a way after sideboarding to threaten you, while you’re left twiddling your thumbs with the Man Plan if you want to dodge the Extraction.
Replacing my “easiest to cast Bear,” Izzet Guildmage, for the card most needed after sideboarding to hold the attackers at bay, Descendant of Kiyomaro, would leave me with a creature that could contribute meaningfully to the beatdown even if it does so slower than a Bear does. It would also leave me with a card to sideboard in against the easy matchups that will become suddenly much harder if I have fifteen cards dedicated to other issues, while they have tools to tune their deck towards beating mine.
As much as I like the plan for the Heartbeat deck, I think there is such a thing as too many cards dedicated to that plan. I wonder if perhaps a few spots might be shaved out of the sideboard in order to find room to fit something else, for the games when you don’t want to transform into a deck that bashes with 5/5’s.
It’s the beginning of a brand-new season, one that will likely shift wildly with the impending release of Dissension… and not just because we’ll be seeing three new guilds for the remaining color combinations of Black/Red, Green/Blue, and Blue/White. The first card previewed can be seen here, and is quite a doozy.
It’s week one; there are a lot of decisions to be made. A new way of looking at Standard is needed, if you are going to try and assemble not just a “best one” deck but a “best three” decks, and do so without overlapping on cards… and with a “best” fifteen-card sideboard for each deck, which may or may not be exactly the same plan as dictated at the Pro Tour and the week one Grand Prix for the season.