Good morning all!

I really wanted to go to the StarCityGames.com Open in Edison, NJ this past weekend. I liked knowing what people were playing in Standard and knowing how to prepare for what they were doing. People were going to bring decks based around the combat step, decks that focused on the mid-game, and I was ready for it.

Only, my fiancé, Sarah, wasn’t ready to drop the money on the last second trip to her home state. She actually wanted to, namely because she missed the snow and is a maniac, but the trip ended up falling through.

So I spent my weekend watching coverage of the tournament and goldfishing random decks while the kids ran around me doing what kids do. And then I did what any mathemaniac like myself would do: anxiously await the posting of the top decks and upload them all to Excel for some analysis. Instead of turning this article completely into a statistical analysis, I’ll go into some numbers then start looking into ways to attack the format.

Before I start, I did my analysis based on the decks all the way down to the top 19 decks listed in coverage for a bit more information rather than just relying on the top 16.

With that, the prevalence of R/G remained this week with U/B still occupying less than 1/4th of the top decks. Here’s what I found for the top creatures and spells (only the top 20 listed for each, with the spells including more than just removal spells this week):

Creatures:

Card	Decks	% of Top 32	Total	Avg/Deck
Boros Reckoner	8	42.11	32	4
Hellrider	8	42.11	29	3.63
Burning-Tree Emissary	7	36.84	28	4
Restoration Angel	7	36.84	23	3.29
Flinthoof Boar	6	31.58	22	3.67
Avacyn’s Pilgrim	5	26.32	20	4
Lightning Mauler	5	26.32	18	3.6
Ash Zealot	4	21.05	16	4
Ghor-Clan Rampager	4	21.05	16	4
Rakdos Cackler	4	21.05	16	4
Stromkirk Noble	4	21.05	16	4
Thragtusk	4	21.05	16	4
Experiment One	4	21.05	15	3.75
Huntmaster of the Fells	4	21.05	15	3.75
Loxodon Smiter	4	21.05	15	3.75
Champion of the Parish	3	15.79	12	4
Arbor Elf	3	15.79	9	3
Deathrite Shaman	3	15.79	9	3
Silverblade Paladin	3	15.79	9	3
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben	3	15.79	9	3

Spells:

Card	Decks	% of Top 32	Total	Avg/Deck
Searing Spear	11	57.89	40	3.64
Pillar of Flame	6	31.58	18	3
Rancor	4	21.05	16	4
Farseek	4	21.05	15	3.75
Boros Charm	4	21.05	13	3.25
Azorius Charm	3	15.79	12	4
Ultimate Price	5	26.32	11	2.2
Blind Obedience	3	15.79	11	3.67
Abrupt Decay	4	21.05	8	2
Sphinx’s Revelation	2	10.53	8	4
Mizzium Mortars	4	21.05	7	1.75
Think Twice	2	10.53	7	3.5
Supreme Verdict	2	10.53	6	3
Garruk, Primal Hunter	3	15.79	5	1.67
Selesnya Charm	2	10.53	5	2.5
Bonfire of the Damned	2	10.53	4	2
Devour Flesh	2	10.53	4	2
Rakdos’s Return	2	10.53	4	2
Terminus	2	10.53	4	2
Thought Scour	1	5.26	4	4

Here we see the response to last week’s decks. You read last week that aggressive decks were stifled by the prevalence of midrange decks and Huntmaster of the Fells / Thragtusk. I said that games were won through combat and that damage was relevant. One of my two cards I pointed out was Boros Reckoner, saying basically that I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t dominate this metagame more.

Well, now is the Reckoner’s time to shine. When I say that The Reckoner is the new Thragtusk, I mean that his presence is going to shift how we build/design decks. Thragtusk set the parameters for decks; you needed to either beat that deck before turn 5 (essentially), go over the top (Thundermaw Hellkite, Falkenrath Aristocrat), or join the party and play ‘Tusk yourself.

Well, now that the format has devolved to this midrange love fest, Boros Reckoner has become Boros Wreck-on-yer-deck (yeah, I know that was bad…). When your means of winning relies on the combat step (and on the ground), Boros Reckoner creates a really awkward board state for the current group of midrange decks whose main removal spell is Searing Spear, a board state that is incredibly hard to get ahead on.

Essentially: with the way people are building their decks right now, it’s nigh impossible to not get two-for-oned by Boros Reckoner. That’s why it’s up to 18 dollars here on StarCityGames.com (and sold out) as of the writing of this article. The card is the real deal.

From last week’s article:

Boros Reckoner:

I’m truly surprised this didn’t show up more at top tables. Between the fact that games are being decided through combat more and more these days and the fact that the top removal spells are burn, I don’t see why more of these weren’t played. The prohibitive mana cost probably had something to do with it, as does the fact that aggressive decks—the ones this card is “supposed” to be in—underperformed on the day.

While it does die to Searing Spear, you don’t lose value. Only Abrupt Decay truly “gets it.” I expect to see more of these and wouldn’t be opposed to trying to jam it in a white-based control deck as a way to clog up the ground.

How about that prohibitive mana cost? How about the shocklands making mana bases super greedy and able to get away with it, eh?

I’m not surprised whatsoever by this development. If the body on High Priest of Penance wasn’t so pedestrian, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him either. He’s essentially a smaller version of Boros Reckoner with a slightly worse mana cost (since black is so underplayed right now).

With that, as with last week, I’m going to see if I can peer into my crystal ball and come up with some new prediction I can look back on in a year and declare how smart I was (or have the pick go incredibly wrong and completely ignore that I ever made the pick and hope you do the same, a la ESPN and their coverage of pretty much every sport). I’m going to give some tips/pointers on deck development for this week and give some tips on what creatures/spells you’ll want to look into for the upcoming week. Remember, regardless of your stance on “netdecking” (and last week’s article comments got into that a bit), people are going to gravitate towards “what works.”

So what can we do against Boros Reckoner? Is he unbeatable?

By no means whatsoever!

He’s very “beatable.” Just not the way the decks are built now. We’re going to have to switch it up a bit. What kills the Reckoner but doesn’t two-for-one us in Standard right now?

Abrupt Decay. Yeah, that’s a real card. And look, by no coincidence, look at what the winning deck was playing!

Obviously there’s more to it than that (especially considering he only played one), but Abrupt Decay is probably the cleanest kill you’ll get against a Boros Reckoner in Standard right now. While it doesn’t hit some of his contemporaries (Hellrider, Thragtusk, Restoration Angel, to name a few), it does take down a problematic permanent so you can keep crashing through. Jund Aggro has been a deck these past couple of weeks to keep an eye out for. For reference:

Jund Aggro

Tyler Lindsey

4th Place at Star City Games Standard Open on 02-03-2013

Standard

Creatures (28)

Lands (24)

Spells (8)

Sideboard

Jund Aggro

Ty Holden

5th Place at Star City Games Standard Open on 02-10-2013

Standard

Creatures (28)

Lands (24)

Spells (8)

Sideboard

The exact same decklist placing in the Top 8 two weeks in a row. There must be something “right” about this list. Look at the amount of Abrupt Decays between the main and sideboard: the full eight copies are there, ready to bring an abrupt end to the Reckoning. Tragic Slip is another situational clean answer to Boros Reckoner as well.

I think that some of those Abrupt Decays can move to the maindeck for this week, probably upwards of three, possibly even the full four if you want to completely prepare for the Reckoners. I’d try running some number of Reckoners myself even, if only it wasn’t so constricting on our mana requirements (turn-one Experiment One and turn-three Reckoner require a very specific sequence of land drops). Dreadbore could probably make some appearances as well, since Thundermaw Hellkite isn’t such a huge deal anymore, and the sorcery speed isn’t the end of the world. Sure, it doesn’t hit Hellrider, but you still have all those Searing Spears that you didn’t want to point at that Reckoner sitting in your hand.

If we’re in the aggro camp but not playing green/black, there are other places to look. Boros Charm makes for a really great way to counter the activation of a Reckoner (even getting through ones with first strike), so if you’re playing a Boros or “Barely Boros” deck, I’d definitely look into having the full four copies of Boros Charm this week. Frontline Medic also makes attacking into the Reckoner much better, as even if it blocks all it’s doing is redirecting some damage to your dome, and—if the player with the Reckoner is leaving it back on defense—that probably means your life total is high enough to take such a hit.

You can also just run Reckoners yourself. Novel thought there…

Another way to handle Boros Reckoner is to build your deck so that you can simply ignore its presence. How, then, can we invalidate all that is great about Boros Reckoner?

1. We can remove it without burning it (we’ve already covered this a bit, but this also includes Wrath effects that don’t contain “mortars” or “bonfire” in the title)

2. We can go over the top

3. We can tap/bounce

The last two are the ones I want to address now.

One method is to simply ignore it and go over the top. This can either mean through the air with creatures such as Falkenrath Aristocrat or Thundermaw Hellkite or it can mean doing broken things that don’t care about a super awesome creature, like comboing out (Humanimator, Primal Surge) or just winning on the spot (Door to Nothingness). None of those decks are likely to care about a 3/3 damage reflector.

On the last point, Boros Reckoner is just a 3/3 for three that doesn’t have any “enters the battlefield” triggers. The perfect card to get “tempoed out” on, since, well, if it’s tapped it doesn’t tend to do anything of relevance. People have shied away from pure tempo decks at this point in the new Standard, but part of me feels we could get back to that strategy a bit if the focus of the format truly shifts from Thragtusk fights to Boros Reckoner fights.

You know what card seems straight bonkers in a tempo deck?

Blind Obedience.

Reach AND tempo? Why yes, yes I would like that.

Something else of note before I post a Delver decklist for consideration; look at the number of basic lands people are running nowadays. With the exception of decks like Gruul Aggro, Mono Red, Boros, and mono-white, people are getting more and more greedy with their manabases. Watching the coverage from this past weekend, on more than one occasion I watched as the commentators blasted competitors for the basics they were running, the amount, and questioning whether including basics is necessary or correct in the deck they were playing. People are simply moving away from basic lands right now, and I think I know who the beneficiary is of such a line of thought.

Ghost Quarter.

Do you know how close Ghost Quarter is to becoming Wasteland in Standard right now? It exists in this weird place where, you can’t really get away with just Ghost Quartering their first land drop (as most lists run 1-2 basics), but if you see a fourth color, you can start Quartering away rather freely, as none of the decks that used a fourth color used any basics. Another trick is, at the end of game one, Ghost Quarter a land to see if they can actually find a basic land; take note of how many basics are on the board when doing this. If they have one and fail to find, there’s a chance it could be in hand, so be wary. If there are none and they fail to find, then game two you’ll be ready to quarter away.

You may be thinking “but with Farseek, doesn’t that put you too far back?” Remember, I’m talking about tempo decks with this, and if my land is countering their spell that was supposed to jump them forward a turn, I’m completely OK with that.

So here we go with a Delver list. Yes, another Standard Delver list…

Obedient Delver

Michael Martin

Test deck on 02-17-2013

Standard

Creatures (15)

Lands (21)

Spells (24)

Sideboard

The numbers could probably all use some tweaking, but this is what I’ve been thinking (based purely on conjecture looking at the top decks). While countermagic is unreliable still due to the presence of Cavern of Souls, we still have Dimir Charm to counter a Bonfire/Mortars/Terminus/Pillar/Dreadbore in a pinch. Dispel in the board allows us to hedge against opposing counterspells as well as Sphinx’s Revelation and other removal spells. We’re still a bit weak to Supreme Verdict, but we have Lingering Souls for that. I want to up the spell count, but I really like all the creatures as well. I could maybe see cutting back on some Deathrite Shamans, as we only get to use two modes, but that card just synergizes too well with what we’re doing. Remember, Orzhov Charm isn’t just great at killing Boros Reckoners, it can also reanimate our Delvers and Shamans for value (again, another great synergy with the graveyard).

Another route could be cutting Delvers and moving towards Syndic of Tithes and Faerie Imposter (to bounce the Snapcasters we have for reuse and the ability to resurrect them with Charm so we can bounce our Snapcasters again…so much value!). This allows us to not rely on randomness and chance (with Delver, as without Dimir Charm we’re not really able to set up flips) but could be getting too far away from the concept of tempo and more towards aggro. This may be a decent route, but I haven’t looked into it myself.

The deck runs based on the synergy of Dimir Charm and Flashback/Delver. While the downside on Dimir Charm’s third ability is usually the card disadvantage, in this deck we can use the spell to both stack the deck for Delver and fill the graveyard for Snapcaster Mage, Deathrite Shaman, and the flashback goodness. Liliana out of the board feeds on those same synergies. Remember, if you know you can get away with using Ghost Quarter as a Wasteland, you can still Quarter their land then exile Quarter with Deathrite to not fall behind on mana that turn. Ghost Quarter also does double duty on value lands like Kessig Wolf Run and Gavony Township.

Another thought: “barely Boros” doesn’t run any Plains. Think about it…

I’m sure there are a billion ways to fine-tune this deck, but I like the synergies behind it. Geist of Saint Traft is still ridiculous if you can attack freely with it. This deck allows you to continue attacking with Geist with the tap effects and two different Charms. Post-board, against aggressive decks, we get to bring in Gift of Orzhova to drop on Geist as well.

A few other ideas have been floating around the ol’ noggin this week, though I don’t know how well they fit into the metagame right now. One thought is a U/W/R Hellrider deck playing Goblin Electromancer and the two-mana token producing spells in white and red with Snapcaster Mage. When playing Burn at the Stake, some games are won on the back of dropping a turn-two Electromancer followed up with three token spells for six tokens. Imagine if you follow that up with a Hellrider!

Also, Grixis Control may warrant a look this week due to the lack of need for instant-speed removal right now (Dreadbore may be the removal spell du jour). Again, I haven’t put any thought/testing into a developed list, but again, just theorizing based on the metagame.

Until next week/the week after, when I’ll come back with an analysis of both Cincinnati and Pro Tour Gatecrash!

Thanks for reading!

Michael Martin