The less said about the Magic I played in Japan, the better. There wasn’t much to learn from it, and going into details would involve a lot of stories about how everything went wrong, so I’ll try to look forward this week instead.
First, of course, I’d like to congratulate Gaudenis on his third Grand Prix Top 8. Also at the GP this weekend, Michael Bernat qualified for Pro Tour: Austin with Five-Color Control. I mention this only because he did it using 72 of the exact 75 physical cards Mat Mar qualified in Bangkok with the previous week, when Bernat lent him the deck. I figure it’s probably worth sharing that list, built by John Knapp:
Creatures (6)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (27)
Spells (23)
When Mat played the deck, he had an extra Negate in the sideboard in place of the third Runed Halo, and he had 2 Duress in place of 2 Thoughtseize. This build is clearly tuned to have the advantage in the mirror, a matchup both of them won several times. As Mat put it, in one match his opponent repeatedly said, “You maindeck that!?” Presumably, this was primarily referencing Planeswalkers and Identity Crisis, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was also unhappy to see maindeck Negates… I’m honestly not sure how common those are at the moment.
The point is that Five-Color seems good enough against the rest of the field at this point that you can afford to focus very heavily on winning the mirror and still make it through a PTQ.
Of course, with the Standard format wrapping up, this may be of less interest that it once was, so again, it’s time to look ahead.
The problem with looking ahead at the moment is the lack of information on Zendikar. We’re in that awkward moment of anticipation where the game is ready for us to move on, but we haven’t been given enough information to do so.
This leads a writer to speculate about the future of Extended, since, as so many others have mentioned, it’s the format we can best predict. I think it’s natural at this point because it is correct, so I suppose it’s my turn to take a stab at it.
First, I’m impressed by the direct Patrick Chapin went in his article. That combo seems awesome, and it’s certainly not something I would have thought of. In my reimagining myself as a successful Magic player, rather than merely a competitive player, I haven’t really thought of myself as an innovative deck builder. I can’t imagine how anyone else could have gotten the impression that I might be, so I trust you won’t be too disappointed that I don’t have anything similarly groundbreaking to share.
Instead, I think my strength has been in understanding how metagames have developed, and possibly my strategic insights into how certain kinds of decks or games should play out. So, let’s try to start from the ground and work through the early evolution of the coming Extended format. I’m not going to embarrass myself or mislead my readers by providing decklists at this point, but I’ll try to mention specific cards that I consider important.
First, I expect the format to evolve some before we even have an event, which makes it a strange and hard to track evolution. Given what I’ve said above, this is honestly why I’m worried that I’ll just be in the wrong place for this Pro Tour. Still, I think I should be able to keep up, or at least figure out where we’re starting from.
Easy, obvious decks that people will want to work on right away (those that carry over intact from last season) include Faeries, Tezzeret, Tron, Affinity, and Naya Aggro.
Without cycling lands, Loam becomes much less attractive, which makes Gifts Ungiven and Death Cloud less attractive. Green/Black is forced into more of a classic Elf/Rock/aggro-disruption style and less of a late-game card advantage/grinding deck. I assume Putrid Leach is worth examining in Extended.
Obviously, I loved the Blue Faeries deck last season, but I’m less optimistic about its continued prominence than others seem to be. This might be because I love Riptide Laboratory (It’s actually become one of my favorite cards), and I think losing it is devastating to the deck. I think a lot of the changes to the format, like the loss of Mind’s Desire, make Vendilion Clique less of the Extended powerhouse that it was and more the roleplayer/filler card that it was in Standard (but dropped into Extended, where it has stiffer competition). If Vendilion Clique isn’t as good, and we can’t rebuy our Spellstutter Sprites, the whole Faerie core starts to look a lot weaker, and I’m not really sure why we’re playing it over other Blue decks.
I guess the answer is that it’s the best win condition available if we don’t want to play more of a tap-out control deck, but I feel like we’re here because it’s the best we have left of a great deck and not because the cards are actually good enough at this point. I sincerely hope I’m completely wrong about this.
The drive to play a Mono-Blue or largely Blue control deck still exists, notably fueled by an increased desire to abuse Vedalken Shackles in a format where fewer decks can splash artifact removal, so Tezzeret may be the obvious place to go fill this niche. The problem is that Tezzeret in the past may have relied heavily on Firespout, which is currently a much less realistic option. I wouldn’t be surprised to see U/W and U/B Tezzeret lists start popping up to take advantage of Wrath of God or Damnation with access Path to Exile or Doom Blade to adapt to the new mana, but this still weakens the Vedalken Shackles and leaves us wondering why we’re here in the first place.
The answer, which potentially drives us back to playing Spellstutter Sprite, is presumably fear of something like Hypergenesis, which makes us want to play a deck with countermagic.
I’m not convinced by the power of Hypergenesis. I think Patrick Chapin has opened the door for the new kind of Combo deck in the future Extended in Scapeshift, although another option is Grapeshot or Dragonstorm. I’m not sure how much there is to say about these decks, but watch out for them.
One deck I’m oddly optimistic about is Five-Color Control. I think it might be time for Vivid lands and Reflecting Pool to make the transition to Extended. The format is presumably a little slower because other people have worse mana, and this may be the best way to take advantage of all the powerful cards Extended has to offer. Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, and potentially cards like Wall of Roots make getting to the late game sound reasonably easy. This might become the best way to play Blue while being able to efficiently sideboard to deal with a wide range of possible decks. Maintaining access to Ancient Grudge, for instance, is rather appealing. Honestly, so is casting Baneslayer Angel.
The desire to cast Ancient Grudge is of course inspired largely by the expected prevalence of Affinity as one of the go-to aggro decks (possibly just the best aggro deck) of the format. Honestly, I expect this deck to get overhyped before the PT, and for everyone to build to beat it, and for it to not be heavily played or do that well by the time the PT comes around. This is much like White Weenie in most Block or early Standard formats, although if this was to be a PTQ season rather than a PT season I’d expect more early success. Still, it’s important to go through the process of building that hype so that it doesn’t beat a bunch of unprepared opponents and win the PT.
I have a little more respect for the Green-based aggro deck, and I’ve heard good things about Bloodbraid Elf and Lightning Bolt in Zoo-style decks. I’m not sure if they should be R/G, R/G/W, or R/G/B, and I don’t plan to play the deck myself, but I certainly think Kird Ape will continue to see play even if it only has 4 Stomping Grounds to make it a 2/3 on turn 1.
Getting back to Blue decks, which I feel much more comfortable discussing, Tron is alive and well, though it is probably limited to 2 colors (unless you want to try a Vivid Tron manabase, but Reflecting Pool doesn’t play well with Urza’s Tower). The two colors are probably Blue and Black or White, again because Life from the Loam isn’t as good as it was as a card, even if it can still set up Tron admirably. I’m not sure which is better. Black has a very nice assortment of disruption cards to sideboard, but I really think casting Baneslayer Angel in this format might be awesome. On the other hand, if you’re playing Tron you can probably just win with Artifact creatures, and losing Decree of Justice makes White quite a bit less appealing, so let’s assume that leaves us looking at black. Besides, Doom Blade is probably better than Path to Exile when we’re never going to be hitting our own creatures.
Between Doom Blade, Damnation, Slaughter Pact, and Death Mark, the deck should reasonably be able to deal with creatures. Chalice of the Void is still a large part of this deck’s game plan (and the reason you don’t just lose to anyone who is so excited by the return of Lightning Bolt that they just play the Lightning Bolt deck with its namesake). That deck, by the way, may ironically be among the decks most hurt by removal of fetch lands from the format. With everyone starting the game with a few extra points of life, I would actually expect that deck to be substantially worse. Black disruption and countermagic give the deck game against combo, mana advantage give it game against control. In general, as always, the deck should be able to beat anything. The problem with the deck is less a specific matchup and more the deck’s potential to hit particularly awkward draws, due to the number of colorless lands in the deck and the occasional reliance on actually assembling Tron.
Merfolk is another deck I would consider if I was dead set on playing Blue (and I might be). Lord of Atlantis is pretty sweet, and so is Wanderwine Hub if good mana is harder to come by. I love Adrian’s inclusion of Harm’s Way in the standard Merfolk deck, where it’s so important to be able to protect your lords with your removal spell. Sadly, the fact that Extended decks often won’t plan on dealing any damage during the majority of a game probably forces Harm’s Way to relegation to the sideboard, if it can see play at all. The deck is an excellent place for Path to Exile, though. I’m not sure how aggressive the deck wants to be (Wake Thrasher versus Merfolk Looter is one way to think about this), but in a world where Bitterblossom is too slow and Faeries lose their Riptide tricks, Merfolk may be the aggro deck of choice, particularly since it’s an ideal home for potential sideboard Katakis and Meddling Mages.
It should be noted that, at the moment, I want to play 4 Cryptic Commands in my Blue decks (not Tron, of course). This may prove wrong for the format, but I’ll certainly start with them and only move away if they prove too awkward… I’ll definitely give them a chance.
If I were the sort who liked casting Lightning Bolts targeting my opponent, I might try to make a Red/Black Dark Confidant plus Sygg deck with Lightning Bolt and Incinerate, maybe some Shrapnel Blasts, possibly even Sign in Blood (but probably not). I’m not sure if this deck would want any other creatures. Maybe Hellspark Elemental, Maybe Figure of Destiny if the mana can work, but it doesn’t exactly play well with Sygg. Alternatively, it’s possible that Mogg Fanatic is still good enough. This deck is probably too slow to beat the combo decks in the format, but it does have an impressive amount of card draw if the creatures can stay in play.
So this is where I’ll be starting: playing Blue decks against each other, and against those combo and aggro decks. But of course I won’t actually be able to start doing that until next week, as I fly to Prague tomorrow. I hope I open some playable rares this time.
Thanks for reading…