Black And Green All Over: New Standard Snakes And Spiders

Now that Aetherworks Marvel is banned in Standard, the metagame is finally free to take a much-needed breath and begin to open up.

Hour of Devastation is just around the corner, but Standard as it stands feels fairly fresh already.

One of the archetypes that actually stood a chance against Aetherworks Marvel in a fair fight was B/G, and it makes sense that B/G is going to be a strong deck choice going forward. It’s probably even right at the top of a short list of decks to beat right now.

The initial format appears to consist of B/G decks of various forms, Temur Energy decks of various forms, Zombies decks of various forms, Vehicle decks of various forms, and Control decks of various forms.

The big archetypes might be pretty clear and recognizable at the moment, which makes sense, since there hasn’t been much time to explore new strategies, but how to build them is up in the air.

Today I’ll look at some updates to my previous deck of choice, B/G Constrictor, as well as some new directions B/G can take now that a turn 4 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is off the table.

First, let’s take a look at how B/G was before Aetherworks Marvel was banned and discuss what cards are no longer as important going forward before we look at the directions B/G will likely take now.

B/G Constrictor

Shaun McLaren

6th Place at Grand Prix on 05-20-2017

Standard

Creatures (19)

Planeswalkers (6)

Lands (22)

Spells (13)

Sideboard

Speed used to be the name of the game, trying to end things before your opponent could activate Aetherworks Marvel with a little bit of disruption thrown in.

Now we might be able to slow down a little.

Odd as it may sound, this type of B/G deck may have gotten worse, at least compared to the rest of the format, because of Aetherworks Marvel being banned.

One of the big reasons for that was the focus around Dissenter’s Deliverance, and now, with no Marvels to blow up, Dissenter’s Deliverance just isn’t that necessary anymore.

Dissenter’s Deliverance secretly made the deck run very smoothly, acting as solid removal and card draw.

Dispossess is obviously going to be getting the boot entirely. It was strange having a card that was Cranial Extraction specifically for Aetherworks Marvel or Torrential Gearhulk 95% of the time, but that was what we had to work with.

So what does the updated version of this deck look like?

B/G Constrictor

Shaun McLaren

Test deck on 06-23-2017

Standard

Creatures (19)

Planeswalkers (6)

Lands (22)

Spells (13)

Sideboard

Without a playset of Dissenter’s Deliverance, it’s harder to enable Delirium, which makes Grim Flayer and Traverse the Ulvenwald a little worse.

I don’t mind the idea of a single Vessel of Nascency to try to enable delirium and give you a bit more card selection and flexibility at the cost of speed.

Ob Nixilis Reignited was previously forced to stay banished to the sideboard since it was too ineffective against Marvel Game 1, but now it can be moved back into the maindeck.

Similar story for Gonti, Lord of Luxury: too slow and low-impact against Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, but excellent for all the midrange attrition battles you’ll see now. Bristling Hydra and Longtusk Cub are cards you can expect to face more often now, so deathtouch is going to be nice to have access to, and Gonti is a nice Traverse the Ulvenwald target as well. Gonti is also a luxurious card to return with Liliana, the Last Hope.

Never//Return and Liliana, the Last Hope are more important now as well, especially for fighting off swarms of Zombies. There are plenty of decks sporting creatures that die immediately to Liliana, the Last Hope, and she may become more and more important as the metagame shakes out.

Previously Transgress the Mind was the main option for flexible discard, but now Lay Bare the Heart and Pick the Brain are looking a lot more appealing. Lay Bare the Heart’s inability to hit Aetherworks Marvel and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is no longer a relevant disqualifier.

Lay Bare the Heart is quite a bit better than Transgress the Mind against Control in particular. Being able to hit Thing in the Ice, Pull from Tomorrow, Negate, Harnessed Lightning, and Essence Scatter is a big upgrade. Of course, there are tradeoffs, since Transgress is able to exile cards like Glimmer of Genius to deny Torrential Gearhulk and hit legendary cards like Archangel Avacyn.

It’s so much better for deckbuilding when you have a choice between similarly powered cards rather than one obvious choice.

Lifecrafter’s Bestiary will be a great way to get an advantage in B/G mirrors. The incremental advantage you gain if it sticks around for a few turns is hard to beat.

Root Out makes a bit of a comeback as well, since you’ll be facing more random enchantments occasionally and don’t have Dissenter’s Deliverance for the artifacts.

As you can see, a lot of cards in the deck now were much less playable, considering how heavily you needed to be slanted towards beating Temur Marvel.

Here’s a more aggressive build of B/G Constrictor.

B/G Constrictor

Shaun McLaren

Test deck on 06-23-2017

Standard

Creatures (22)

Planeswalkers (5)

Lands (22)

Spells (11)

Sideboard

By just running one copy of Verdurous Gearhulk, the deck used to have virtual access to five Verdurous Gearhulks thanks to Traverse the Ulvenwald.

Strange as it may sound, Verdurous Gearhulk was too slow against Marvel decks to run a bunch of copies.

Dropping eight power on turn 5 was not fast enough or effective enough against Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger.

Verdurous Gearhulk is due for a comeback.

The strength of Verdurous Gearhulk is that it often puts you in a position that your opponent can’t recover from by growing your creatures out of removal range and making them too large to take down in combat. It was easy to thwart your massive creatures by exiling them and dropping a 10/10 with indestructible, but now Verdurous Gearhulk might just be the biggest, baddest, and best beater on the battlefield.

Glorybringer has been making a comeback, but it’s not hard to grow your relevant creatures out of Glorybringer range.

B/G Energy

Shaun McLaren

Test deck on 06-23-2017

Standard

Creatures (23)

Planeswalkers (5)

Lands (21)

Spells (11)

Sideboard

B/G Energy has been around for some time and is heavily played online. This particular list doesn’t have too much spice, just kind of a hybrid between my B/G Constrictor and normal Energy versions.

One card I’m not a fan of is Greenbelt Rampager. A cheap vanilla 3/4 is a fine card, but it’s just too low-impact for my tastes.

B/G Energy

Shaun McLaren

Test deck on 06-23-2017

Standard

Creatures (27)

Planeswalkers (3)

3 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar

Lands (21)

Spells (9)

Sideboard

Here’s a spicier Energy version of B/G.

Bristling Hydra and Rhonas the Indomitable are a match made in heaven. Bristling Hydra is nearly impossible to remove from the battlefield and fully activates Rhonas the Indomitable.

Rhonas the Indomitable is an exciting card that never got a chance to shine because of Marvel as well. It’s nearly impossible to remove, hits hard, and even gets better as the game goes on and you have more mana to sink into it.

Rhonas is at its best in the B/G mirror matches, which you can expect lots of, so it will probably start seeing more play now.

B/G Delirium

Shaun McLaren

Test deck on 06-23-2017

Standard

Creatures (13)

Planeswalkers (5)

Lands (22)

Spells (20)

Sideboard

Big B/G Delirium gets the biggest boost from Aetherworks Marvel leaving the format.

It wasn’t a viable strategy to sit behind a wall of Spiders when Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger would eventually come and consume everything. Now it might be.

Ishkanah, Grafwidow was almost entirely pushed out of the format due to Ulamog but is poised to make a comeback as well. While Ishkanah is great at buying time in midrange matches, there are plenty of ways to push through it, and Ishkanah can also be surprisingly ineffective against Zombies decks a lot of the time. If you’re not being proactive, it won’t take long for Zombies to either draw a bunch of cards with Cryptbreaker or build up a battlefield much bigger than yours with Lord of the Accursed and Diregraf Colossus.

The nice thing is that Yahenni’s Expertise and Liliana, the Last Hope do really good work against Zombies decks, and B/G usually doesn’t have such a high density of such excellent removal against Zombies.

B/G is back and might very well be better than ever.

What do you think the best version of B/G is? Are there any other cards that could fit in the deck to make it better? Does the rest of Standard stand a chance against the deck? Let me know in the comments.