So Grand Prix Chicago took place this past weekend, and my team’s dismal performance meant I had a lot of free time on my hands. After a Saturday night of excessive drinking, I managed (too my surprise) to actually wake up before 1 p.m. and decided that I might as well enter the Grand Prix: Boston trial so that I could learn some more about the current Extended environment. I didn’t have any cards on me, so I had to borrow a Type Two Affinity deck and just added some Flings to it.
The bad news is I went 2-2. The good news is that I did learn a lot about the environment. First of all, as I mentioned in my last article, I don’t think that Affinity is a wise choice for the first few PTQs. Despite winning the Pro Tour and certainly being able to fight off some of the hate, the amount of close matchups Affinity has gained since Canali’s win makes it unwise to go with Ravager.
My two wins were against Goblins and Aluren and my two losses were against U/G Madness. I must say that I greatly underestimated how popular U/G would actually be. I knew that U/G was a good deck and a solid choice; however I didn’t realize that it would be played by so many people. I think it was the most played deck in the trial, with four of that archetype making it to the Top 8. With that in mind, I think it’s important that I go over Life today as well as U/G Madness instead of Reanimator (which I feel is not really a good choice for the PTQs).
U/G Madness
Before people complained about Arcbound Ravager, they complained about Wild Mongrel. Madness used to be the hot mechanic on the block before Affinity came around. Wild Mongrel is the best two-drop ever made, and it’s one of the primary reasons the deck is so good. Through redundant drops and a decent amount of card drawing, the deck is consistent and powerful. Combine that with the fact that it’s comprised mostly of commons and you can understand why it is so popular in every format where it’s legal. So to begin, I think we should look at the U/G list which made Top 8 in Columbus.
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Aquamoeba
4 Arrogant Wurm
2 Wonder
1 Merfolk Looter
1 Thought Courier
4 Careful Study
4 Circular Logic
3 Daze
3 Deep Analysis
2 Intuition
2 Roar of the Wurm
2 Chrome Mox
9 Islands
7 Forests
4 Yavimaya Coasts
Sideboard:
4 Chill
3 Oxidize
3 Submerge
2 Waterfront Bouncer
2 Masticore
1 Ray of Revelation
The deck is fairly straightforward and not much different from your standard U/G lists. Three Deep Analysis main makes sense prior to the PT, as you must have expected a decent amount of the Rock, which can be a great matchup or a bad matchup, depending on the build. Since having a Madness outlet on turn 2 is so important, the Thought Courier/Merfolk Looter act as 9th and 10th Madness outlets to maximize the chances of playing one on the critical turn. Now we felt the same way before the PT with our U/G lists, however we quickly dismissed it the second we realized how bad the Looters are. I mean, it’s great to have a Madness outlet on turn 2, however if it’s not an Aquamoeba or a Wild Mongrel, your odds of winning are not very good in this format.
Every U/G deck plays pretty much the same 30 or so cards, which is the core of the deck. The last few cards are just there for you to be creative with and adjust to your metagame. The main thing I would warn against, however, is adding Red to the deck for Flametongue Kavu and Fire / Ice. My good friend Antonio De Rosa is a fan of this strategy, and I don’t blame him – I mean, it is tempting. However I’ve found that the third color is simply not worth it. For one, in order to execute this strategy, you have to cut Daze, a card I’ve found to be too awesome not to play. By adding Red, you make your matchups against combo and control ten times worse without improving your matchup against the Rock. Your matchup against RDW and Goblins will improve slightly, but not by a large margin. All in all, I think that straight U/G is a much better deck than U/G splash Red.
This is a list I’ll be testing for GP: Boston. It’s similar to the Top 8 list with most of the changes made in the sideboard due to metagame changes.
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Aquamoeba
4 Arrogant Wurm
2 Wonder
1 Thought Courier
1 Genesis
4 Careful Study
4 Circular Logic
3 Daze
2 Intuition
2 Deep Analysis
2 Roar of the Wurm
2 Chrome Mox
1 Wordly Tutor
9 Islands
6 Forests
4 Yavimaya Coasts
1 City of Brass
Sideboard:
4 Chill
3 Oxidize
3 Powder Keg
2 Rushing River
2 Gilded Drake
1 Deep Analysis
The Worldly Tutor is probably the strangest card in the deck, but it serves several roles. For one, it can act as a tenth Madness outlet on turn 2 if needed. It can withstand the standard turn 1 Cabal Therapy on Mongrel, and even a flashbacked Therapy on turn 2 means you cans till have a madness outlet in play by your turn 2. You can also search up Genesis or Wonder when you need it, and I think the card drawing you have in your deck can make up for the inherent card disadvantage of Worldly Tutor.
The rest of the major changes were made to the sideboard. Powder Keg was added because it will help seal the deal for you against Affinity, and it improves your RDW matchup significantly. The Rushing River is a new card I added based on past experiences. A couple of seasons ago I used to play U/G Madness non stop, and I remember that Rushing River was the nut high card in the mirror match, giving me a huge tempo swing. Since I expect a lot of U/G, I think you have to have at least four cards in your sideboard devoted to the mirror.
Like I said earlier though, the U/G deck will almost always look similar to every other list out there. The only real rules you should have in the back of your mind when building a list is that splashing Red isn’t a good idea and Daze is very good. Also, if you expect a lot of Life in your area, you might want to consider Crumbling Sanctuary for your sideboard, a card a kid told me about at the trial.
Speaking of Life, let’s take a look at that deck shall we.
4 Task Force
3 Daru Spiritualist
4 Shaman En-Kor
3 Nomads En-Kor
1 Eternal Witness
1 Academy Rector
4 Eladamri’s Call
4 Worthy Cause
4 Living Wish
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Test of Endurance
1 Animal Boneyard
1 Parallax Wave
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Rule of Law
1 Sterling Grove
4 City of Brass
4 Brushland
4 Windswept Heath
3 Starlit Sanctum
Sideboard
4 Orim’s Chant
1 Daru Spiritualist
1 Eternal Witness
1 Nomads en-Kor
1 Starlit Sanctum
1 Academy Rector
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Energy Flux
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Engineered Plague
1 Genesis
1 Isochron Scepter
This deck has been around for a while now, but hadn’t really had a big finish until recently. The whole concept is to get one of the En-Kor creatures out along with either a Daru Spiritualist or a Task Force. Then you just target them with the En-Kor’s ability to boost up their toughness by a million and gain that much life through Starlit Sanctum or Worthy Cause. The reason this deck is a good choice right now is because it has a good matchup against the two decks that made the finals of the PT: RDW and Affinity. Your matchup against any beatdown deck is fairly good, considering your creatures can hold the ground pretty well until you draw one of your combo enablers. Your bad matchups are any combo deck or control deck.
But let’s break it down some more to get a better idea how good a choice Life is in this metagame.
Good Matchups
RDW
Goblins
Affinity
Reanimator
Bad Matchups
Scepter Chant
The Rock
Aluren
Desire
Even Matchup
U/G Madness (Draw Dependent)
Now obviously there are many other decks you can add to the list, but I just want to look at the decks matchups in the current metagame, and as of right now, those are the only decks you really have to consider. As you can see, the deck pretty much is split between good matchups and bad matchups, which generally makes it a reasonable-though-not-spectacular choice. The main benefit of playing this deck would be that your good matchups would in all likelihood comprise a larger section of the field than your bad matchups. Another consideration is that all of your bad matchups are difficult decks to play, so it’s more likely that your opponent will misplay his way to a loss.
In conclusion, I think Life is a solid choice for the early PTQ’s since that is the time aggressive decks generally get played the most. However, U/G Madness seems like a better option for those players interested in winning the PTQ rather than just making Top 8.
Next time on The Black Perspective . . .
The combo decks, Desire and Aluren
See you then,
Osyp “Joe Black” Lebedowicz