A brave new Standard has risen, and it’s time to talk about it. Everything changed, but we witnessed the return of the king, and Sword of Feast and Famine has seen play again amongst other sorts of Steel. Aggressive decks tend to be a solid choice in the transforming metagame, so my article is devoted to the brotherhood of steel in its three guises: Tempered Steel, Puresteel, and Spliced Steel.
The return of the king means that nothing has changed after Jace, the Mind Sculptor’s ban (even Jace’s cost): Caw-Blade won the match against Vampires in the finals of SCG Open: Cincinnati. So, why did they ban Jace? In fact, my opinion was strongly against the ban, but now I admit that the format has become healthier. Beating Caw was an interesting task, but evaluating the completely new format is far better.
Nevertheless, Caw-Blade the Second is here, but he’s in fact nothing but a mere shadow of his father, and the new king does not force aggressive decks to devote themselves to the exciting task of beating Batterskull on turn three. What Caw-Blade has become now is both a fair deck to play against and still a powerful choice for a skilled pilot—and far more attractive to me.
I understand that today is probably not the best moment to start playing Caw-Blade, but it’s better late than never. The previous Caw-Blade was equally competitive in control and beatdown mode, but now it’s time to choose one, so there are two major sub-archetypes: the first one is “heavy metal”—with creatures like Consecrated Sphinx and Emeria Angel. The second one (more aggressive) can be defined by the presence of Blade Splicer.
The lack of the powerful Stoneforge Mystic engine forces us to play “army in a card” creatures, ensuring that the deck can beat an opponent relying on removal. The best available creatures of this kind are Squadron Hawk in the two-mana slot, Blade Splicer (the poor man’s Stoneforge Mystic—a 1/1 and vanilla 3/3 instead of a 1/2 and powerful Germ), Timely Reinforcements for three mana (the poor man’s Spectral Procession), and, finally, Hero of Bladehold and Emeria Angel for the fourth turn.
So, our creature pack is the mix of all those mentioned with possible additions of strong finishers (Gideon Jura, Sun Titan etc.). Going further, our creatures clearly define our strategy: Blade Splicer and Hero of Bladehold are quite aggressive while Timely Reinforcements and Emeria Angel shine in control decks. Some mixes are possible, especially if you expect a lot of matches where you would like to play control after sideboarding; it’s a strong reason for splitting Emeria Angel and Hero of Bladehold in the aggressive version of the deck.
“Heavy Metal” (presented by Edgar Flores and Gavin Verhey) looks like an attempt to reanimate Caw-Go in its Worlds’ form. The thing I’m really attracted to is a playset of Timely Reinforcements in the maindeck. The deck has not much early defense, so Reinforcements come in handy almost anytime except the turn of your win. My love to this card goes as far as thinking that Timely Reinforcements will determine Mono Red’s poor position in the current environment. And, finally, Timely Reinforcements is sweet with Dismember.
Another attempt is the deck that I call “Spliced Steel”—more aggression and early action backed with some counterspells. Tim Pskowski used this deck to win the first M12 SCG Open, and his list is a great starting point. The things I dislike in Tim’s maindeck are the two Sword of Feast and Famine and only a pair Oblivion Rings. And, of course, I think that Spell Pierce is overrated right now. There are much fewer crucial noncreature targets to counter: you’d like to counter a good creature, not Jace, the Mind Sculptor in the mirror match. So, my attempt for Caw-Blade looks like this:
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (27)
Spells (18)
Sideboard
I really like the exact seventy-five, including a singleton of Elspeth Tirel (I believe that it is she who calls Timely Reinforcements with her two abilities) and a pair of Stave Off. By the way, there is a huge difference between Stave Off and other similar cards: it can target your opponent’s Deceiver Exarch to prevent the mortal enchanting, or, going far, it can target the opponent’s Spellskite to forbid them from stealing your own Splinter Twin.
Of course, there is no Caw-Twin right now, but it can easily emerge in Extended. The deck has been surprisingly good for me, as far as I imagine myself playing Caw-Blade at a PTQ (I’d probably laugh in your face if you said something similar to me a month ago), but there are still other options to consider, so let’s go deeper.
Puresteel is another sort of steel, created by Mark Herberholz (hope he’ll get in the Hall of Fame this year, just because of his awesome writings) for PT Nagoya and then turned into “Equipster” by Caleb Durward. By the way, I hate the name “Equipster,” so I’ll call it “Puresteel.” The deck looks very interesting and promising in a post-rotation metagame, but is it time for Paladins right now?
There is a good primer in the SCG Open Cincinnati coverage that perfectly describes two main weaknesses of the deck: it relies on the single card, Puresteel Paladin, and it contains a lot of cards that are dead in any given matchup. My teammate said a wonderful thing during testing: “I had a Mindslaver against Puresteel, but it can’t even be killed by Slaver; his hand is always full of crap.” And, finally, the deck is not aggressive enough and requires super-tight play (that is, obviously bad news).
Aside on teamwork
The fresh format, the first major tournaments showcasing the format’s real trends, all these expectations, forecasts, and hopes—an exciting moment for every Spike, surely, but also a challenging one. I mean, there’s so much data to digest, so many decklists and so much tech to investigate… Honestly, even for a seasoned data miner like myself, it seems almost impossible to do it alone. Yet, once again, teamwork makes everything affordable. As I sat down to write this piece, I knew that two of the three decks I wanted to focus on have been already extensively tested by my teammates, so I had the luxury of being provided with the lists already tuned and proven tournament-worthy. So here’s a big “Thank You!” to my teammates, without whom nothing could’ve been done.
End aside
Getting back to our steelworks, here’s an unusual take on the Puresteel Paladin strategy, attempting to solve the deck’s principal weaknesses by adding a solid Plan B and slightly upgrading average card quality. Ladies and gentlemen, Quest for the Pure Steel, used by Sphynxx (member of Russian National team in Worlds 2007) to some success in MTGO Dailies.
Creatures (24)
Lands (21)
Spells (15)
- 4 Quest for the Holy Relic
- 1 Sword of Body and Mind
- 2 Mox Opal
- 1 Argentum Armor
- 3 Flayer Husk
- 1 Bonehoard
- 1 Sword of Feast and Famine
- 1 Mortarpod
- 1 Sword of War and Peace
Sideboard
So, what’s the story here? Deviating from the usual Puresteel Paladin deck route, this list includes Quest for the Holy Relic instead of Preordain. Yes, instead of Preordain. Normally, card drawing and filtering are needed to dig for the key parts of the engine. Here, you just need to draw one out of eight key cards instead of one out of four, which is a much more realistic assumption.
True, these two plans (the Paladin plan and the Quest plan) may look as though they do not synergize with each other all that perfectly (with the Paladin, you want to max on Equipments, and with the Quest, you want to max on cheap Quest-charging creatures), but having two legitimate plans at the same time is better than seeing hand full of bad cards every single game. And, believe me, you’ll never be able to claim you’ve truly lived until you drop Argentum Armor for mana and then equip it for free. Sheer brutal excitement: priceless. And, Stoneforge Mystic is not banned in Extended…
The creature suite is more or less obvious.
If you want to experiment with the list, the first thing to consider is adding a Trinket Mage package (mostly for Basilisk Collar). Actually, you may also want to change the swords package (obviously, Sphynxx has played all three different ones for testing purposes). I think that the best combination is two Sword of Feast and Famine and two Sword of War and Peace (I’d cut one Ornithopter to fit all those blades). I like to play aggressive decks with combo elements (Eldrazi Conscription turn three, please), so this list is exactly what I want my pile of seventy-five cards to look like. The deck is still a little unstable, but with its worst matchup (Mono Red) expected to be on the decline, Puresteel Quest should be a solid choice.
But it is not the last available sort of steel for now, so let’s go check out some sick Japanese tech. Ahh, Japan… They play the same game as we do, but their take on it is always oh-so-special! We can always expect the metagame of Japanese Nationals to be, well, unexpected, and this year was not an exception. On one side of the Pacific, the SCG Open was dominated by Caw-Blade, while on the other side, there was mainly Valakut and Tempered Steel action going on in the land of the rising sun. Today, I don’t plan on saying anything about R/G decks (even PV said that Mihara’s deck is too techy for him). As big of a Valakut fan as I am, Tempered Steel Weenie is the deck I’m actually testing now, so I have some ideas to share.
Despite Japanese Nationals being won by Ishida, U/W Tempered Steel is actually far better than mono-white. For one simple reason, the same reason Puresteel Paladin packs blue too: the deck relies on a single card to really trump its opponents and therefore wants to draw that card every game, so you need Preordain. But the good news (and the actual reason to play U/W Tempered Steel over U/W Puresteel) is that deck can actually win without Tempered Steel itself: Signal Pest and, surprisingly, Glint Hawk Idol provide enough reliability.
Sure, the most dangerous draws involve sticking Tempered Steel on turn 3 (or even turn 2), but, honestly, almost any competitive deck in modern Standard can present a devastating goldfish; the real key to tournament success is reliability.
Creatures (21)
Lands (19)
Spells (20)
Seems like a nice list, but there are some things I want to change. First of all, having access to the third Preordain is crucial.
Second, I actively dislike Origin Spellbomb. It is the worst card in the entire deck (the little bit more explosive mono-white version never ever uses it). Honestly, why do we ever consider playing it? This is not Block, people! The card is slow, clunky, and never really good (a do-nothing cantrip somehow thought to be helpful in a hi-octane aggro deck? …Please!).
The third thing to consider is adding more countermagic to the board. Creeping Corrosion is for real now, so it would be good to pack a two Flashfreeze, at the very least. So, the updated version of the deck will look as follows:
Creatures (23)
- 4 Steel Overseer
- 4 Memnite
- 2 Glint Hawk
- 1 Hero of Bladehold
- 4 Signal Pest
- 3 Spellskite
- 1 Hex Parasite
- 4 Vault Skirge
Lands (19)
Spells (18)
I’ve added a pair of Glint Hawks in order to have additional tools to beat through Creeping Corrosion. Don’t be fooled; the primary function of Hex Parasite is to keep our mana curve low and nice; having an antidote to Gideon Jura is, well, just gravy. I’ve also cut Celestial Purges because I don’t expect to see a lot of Mono Red decks in the near future; red is just a bad color to play right now. Some minor metagame-dependent changes are possible, but right now I am pleased with the deck as it is, so this will probably be my seventy-five of choice for any upcoming tournaments.
Still, feel free to choose any sort of steel you think is right—actually, they are all pretty good, and, my choice of Tempered Steel over Spliced Steel might just result from my long-cherished bias against Caw-Blade. I expect to see different breeds of U/W claiming top positions at the next SCG Opens. So, whatever you choose, join the brotherhood of steel!
Valeriy Shunkov
@amartology in Twitter
valeriy dot shunkov at gmail dot com—for any questions. I’ll be glad to help.