This weekend we had a lot of big tournaments. We suddenly went from having no real knowledge as to what the Nationals metagame would look like to having several large tournaments worth of data. It’s almost like a new set has finally been fully spoiled. I’m looking at the Kentucky $5k and Japan, Spain, Singapore, and Australia’s Nationals. From there, I’m seeing some pretty clear patterns.
The “breakout decks” of the tournaments seem to be forgotten Five-Color Control, and previously underappreciated Combo Elves. These and the expected Faeries and Kithkin put up the best numbers. Kithkin had 6 Top 8s, Faeries had 7, Combo Elves had 6, and Five-Color Control had 11 if you count all styles of Five-Color together, with a roughly even split if you try to break them up between Bloodbraid and old school control. Singapore had 3 decks that were not one of those in the top 8; the others all had only 1-2. That almost makes it look like the format is getting a little less diverse. If nothing else, I would want to be absolutely sure I knew how to play my deck against all four of those strategies, regardless of whether I could consistently beat them. Having experience actually playing each of the expected matches is a lot more important than most people give it credit for, as my personal experiment with the WoW Minis game this weekend taught me.
The next step in processing these results is examining where each of the major players stand at the moment.
Kithkin’s main deck has been “fairly well established,” by which I mean every list played the exact same 35 spells. One player cut a land for a Harm’s Way. Beyond that the debate was simply on whether to play 2 Mutavaults and how many Rustic Clachans should be played. I don’t know a lot about Kithkin, but I know that my opponents often get screwed by their own Mutavaults, it was considered bad in Block, and it doesn’t cast any spells before turn 4 except Honor of the Pure. I assume people tolerated it in Standard only because they needed it to beat Wrath of God, and that it no longer has a place in the deck. I also think I prefer erring toward fewer Rustic Clachans.
The more interesting question about Kithkin was how people would build their sideboard. Ethersworn Canonist was a four-of in every Kithkin deck to combat Cascade and Combo Elves, and I probably wouldn’t be comfortable cutting any of them. Unmake has been a three-of, and they also look correct and important. Stillmoon Cavalier is another automatic four-of for the mirror (except for one player who cut two for Rise of the Hobgoblins, and honestly, first strike seems pretty good, but I’m not particularly convinced that it can be better than pro White). That’s 11 sideboard cards, and the last 4 were almost always Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tenders, but I’m somewhat inclined to trust Cedric that they may not be necessary, particularly given that Red hasn’t done well. Personally, I would probably want to cut at least 1-2 for something like Harm’s Way or Baneslayer Angel, but I’d also say you should listen to people who actually play Kithkin rather than me (except on the Mutavault thing).
If you don’t want to have to put any work at all into choosing exactly what cards to play in your deck, Kithkin appears to be an excellent choice.
My favorite of the Kithkin decks played is probably:
Creatures (20)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (12)
Sideboard
Combo Elves has 9 automatic four-ofs and wants something like 18-20 land, so that leaves about five slots to play with. Options that were played this weekend included 2-3 Manamorphose, 1 Coat of Arms, 1 Mirror Entity, 1 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender, 1 Cloudthresher, 1-2 Noble Hierarch, 3 Path to Exile (which Yuuma Shiota of Japan cut into his “locked” 36 to make room for), 4 Mirror Entity (mentioned separately from 1 Mirror Entity because it represents an entirely different plan. Tomomi Shiraishi dropped 2 Regal Force to play 4 Mirror Entity, indicating that he was less concerned with “going off” and happy to just play Mirror Entity and attack and kill people), and 1 Scattershot Archer. There is also some debate about the manabase. The primary question is which and how many hideaway lands, but some decks also cut one Sunpetal Grove for a Forest to increase their ability to play an elf on turn 1/allow them to plan an extra hideaway land instead. Personally, I like Kenji Tsumura 5 hideaway, 7 dual, 8 Forests manabase.
As for the sideboard, Great Sable Stag is an obvious four-of, but from there the options open up a bit. Cards seen include 1 Platinum Angel, 3 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender, 4 Cloudthresher, 3 Oversoul of Dusk, 2 Qasali Pridemage, 4 Path to Exile, 2 Chameleon Colossus, 2 Vexing Shusher, 2 Gleeful Sabotage, 1 Snakeform, 2 Silence, 3 Guttural Response, 2 Mark of Asylum, (missing maindeck cards from Yuuma), 3 Reveillark, 3 Last Breath, and 3 Scattershot Archer (those last 9 come from Tomomi, who included 0 Great Sable Stag).
There’s clearly less agreement here than with Kithkin. The Platinum Angel is cute, but I’m not really sure who it beats or why it’s necessary. I like Forge-Tenders, but I also like Mark of Asylum and I’m not sure you need five total. Qasali Pridemage allows you to tutor for a disenchant and recycle it with Primal Command. This deals with Ethersworn Canonist and, “whatever else.” I wish I knew exactly what people were hoping to blow up, but for one card, it adds enough random flexibility to beat things you don’t predict that I think it’s probably worth playing one. Also, I feel like I might be missing something important to kill if someone is going to the trouble of playing 2 Gleeful Sabotages. I think you need at least 2 Path to Exile to deal with stuff like Meddling Mage and Ethersworn Canonist. I would feel much better with 3. Oversoul of Dusk looks more interesting to me than Chameleon Colossus, but I’m not entirely sure how good each is. You need a plan against Faeries, and Cloudthresher is one possible plan. I haven’t tested that matchup enough to know exactly what you want to be doing yet, so I’m not sure which of that, Scattershot Archer, Guttural Response, Silence, and Vexing Shusher is best. Gleeful Sabotage looks worse than Qasali Pridemage, Snakeform looks worse than Path to Exile or Last Breath. Reveillark is really interesting. I haven’t tried it, but at a glance it looks pretty awesome. Last Breath might be better than Path to Exile, since you’re primarily interested in killing small creatures and you don’t care about your opponent’s life total. Still, I’m not sure that I want to give up the ability to Kill a Horde of Notions or something. I might split the difference, personally. Scattershot Archer is interesting, but it’s hard for me to believe it’s better than Great Sable Stag (but not impossible, oddly).
Overall, if you’re just looking to copy a list to try the deck out, I recommend Kenji’s straightforward, streamlined version:
Creatures (36)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
- 1 Cloudthresher
- 4 Heritage Druid
- 4 Devoted Druid
- 4 Nettle Sentinel
- 4 Regal Force
- 4 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Elvish Visionary
- 2 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Elvish Archdruid
Lands (20)
Spells (4)
Faeries. I’d given up on them, as I have a lot of fear and respect for the Great Sable Stag, but others pursued the deck, since it’s basically the best thing ever aside from that, and they seem to have been able to successfully navigate the field as a whole. Maybe I’ll get to play Faeries at Nationals after all. That would make me very happy.
I think I respect Faeries too much to give it the same treatment I gave the two above decks. I’ll just talk about what I think is going on with the deck right now. I believe I’ve written about my plan for any given match with Faeries in which you try to play a generally aggro control deck game 1 and then switch to a more controlling role in games 2 and 3 once you have tune your deck to have the exact right answers to your opponent’s deck. For this reason, Jace is excellent against everyone in games 2 and 3, but not so hot against anyone in game 1. This leads to some weird looking sideboard plans and decklists like Hugh Glanville of Australia’s with 1 maindeck Jace and 2 in the sideboard. The maindeck Jaces are replaced by the substantially more aggressive Vendilion Clique.
This is the primary maindeck development. I still love Peppersmoke as long as the field is not too Jund heavy (in which case I don’t like Peppersmoke or Faeries), and given the prevalence of Combo Elves and Faeries I’m pretty sure I want them in the maindeck still.
The big question that has to be answered is how to deal with Great Sable Stag. Sower of Temptation has been a popular plan, and it’s really excellent against both Elves and Kithkin. The problem with it is that it’s terrible against Jund, where they just kill it. To fix this problem, Japanese Standard master Yuuya Watanabe went to Warren Weirding, which can get the job done, even if it’s sometimes a little awkward. It doesn’t really work against Elves without Infest, which seems to have fallen out of favor, but that’s where Sower of Temptation comes in (Elves players, bring in your removal, obviously).
With Zealous Persecution no longer a threat, Stillmoon Cavalier is on the rise as an excellent answer to Kithkin and a possible plan for the mirror match. It will be hard for me to decide between this and Infest, which seems extremely important against Combo Elves.
Yuuya played 2 Puppeteer Cliques, and I think they’re probably absolutely necessary now. In the past, you didn’t have to worry too much about Five-Color Control because it was a good matchup and it was falling out of favor anyway, but now that they have access to Great Sable Stag, the matchup is a lot worse (though Warren Weirding is an excellent answer to it out of that deck specifically), so you need a little more help. Puppeteer Clique is amazing against most Five-Color Control decks, and in Barcelona one of them more or less singlehandedly beat multiple resolved Cruel Ultimatums for me.
My favorite of the Faeries decks is not Yuuya’s, but Hugh’s:
Creatures (15)
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (25)
Spells (19)
Sideboard
I would probably cut 2 Islands for a Swamp, and I’d probably want to try Yuuya’s Gargoyle Castle (in other words, I’d switch to Yuuya’s manabase). Note that this deck is only 3 cards off of Yuuya’s (-2 Sower, -1 Jace +1 Broken Ambitions, +1 Vendilion Clique, +1 Scion of Oona), but I like that a lot more. I don’t like this exact sideboard. I like the 3 Warren Weirdings and the Puppeteer Clique from Yuuya, and I think you need Stillmoon Cavalier or Infest. There are a lot more cards I want than I can fit, but I think I’d want to be on something like 3 Thoughtseize, 2 Flashfreeze, 2 Deathmark, 3 Warren Weirding, 2 Puppeteer Clique, 1 Infest, 2 Jace, but I hate that that doesn’t have Stillmoon Cavalier and only has 1 Infest, so I might have to cut some number of Deathmark and Flashfreezes for those. It’s hard. Maybe I’d have to maindeck another Jace to make room in the sideboard while still having access to 3 after board and becoming more like Yuuya’s deck. Actually, Broken Ambitions is a lot worse in the current metagame than it was, so I’d probably cut one of those.
Five-Color Control is a lot trickier to talk about, since it has so many options and variations. For a Kyoto style Five-Color deck, Shuhei’s Five-Color looks pretty hot to me, even if 3 Mulldrifters seems off. I’d say you should just start there and consider tweaking a couple cards if you want to play that archetype; I mean, it is Shuhei after all (he writes his name with only one u, so I’m going with that despite the fact that it seems to be reported with 2 about half the time):
Creatures (9)
Lands (26)
Spells (25)
Looking over the rest of the Five-Color Control decks, I just can’t bring myself to talk more about the archetype. I’m going to leave that to writers who don’t hate it. Note that I think Five-Color Cascade is probably a pretty good deck.
If I had to choose one of these 4 decks and I knew that the tournament was going to consist entirely of these, it would still be really hard for me. All of them have strengths and weaknesses against each other. Elves beats Kithkin game 1, but Ethersworn Canonist probably helps more than spot removal for Canonist, so Kithkin might be okay in games 2 and 3. Faeries probably beats Elves in game 1, but Stag helps Elves in games 2 and 3. Elves versus Five-Color seems like a pretty close matchup. I’m not really sure who wins, and I think it depends a lot on the Five-Color deck (the more counters, the better their chances); in general, Five-Color is favored, but I really like the idea of Reveillark to help there. Kithkin against Faeries is extremely close, as has been discussed. I still think it favors Faeries, but Honor of the Pure certainly helps Kithkin a lot. Kithkin against Five-Color is similar, again, probably worse the more controlling the Five-Color deck is. Faeries against Five-Color is another match that’s probably a lot closer than I’d like it to be now that Stag’s around. Faeries is the deck that pulls Five-Color to be more aggressive, while Elves and Kithkin pull it to be more controlling. The more Five-Color looks like a Jund deck, the worse it is for Faeries. In general the decks all look very close, so I’d say knowing your deck and the matchups is going to be a lot more important than choosing the right deck for this event, so pick something now and stick with it if you haven’t.
Thanks for reading…
Sam
PS: Last week, there was some kind of technical issue and a forum was never created for my article. I personally was pretty happy with the approach I took to the set, in terms of understanding what the reduced number of uncommons does, and looking at depth of colors by trying to roughly count unplayables. I’m still interested in feedback, so if you remember any thoughts from last week, feel free to mention them here. Thanks.