Going over what you need to be prepared for when the PTQs roll around doesn’t seem too difficult… at first glance. The Worlds metagame breakdown made it clear to everyone that Boros Deck Wins and U/W Urzatron were going to continue to be very popular. That being said, there were a few decks that simply flew under the radar for many, but ended up being either great metagame choices or are simply more powerful than everything else.
As I see it, the metagame’s most popular contributors are going to be in the aggro category. BDW looks like it’ll be taking up anywhere from a fifth to a third of any given metagame, simply due to the low cost of the deck, people who haven’t tested deciding to run old reliable (much like RDW, U/G Madness, and Affinity players did for a time), and the overall good matches it holds across the field. Don’t get me wrong, the deck is certainly beatable… but the deck is quite good, and the high-point markers when matched with how many were played at Worlds tells that tale.
As a result, I believe these are the main questions you need to ask yourself when picking a PTQ deck.
1: Can your deck beat Boros Deck Wins?
The deck mixes a solid set of quick creatures with a non-attacking victory method, along with a bit of disruption. Not only is it popular, but its own design also makes it a great way to test multiple pressure points at once. BDW questions if you can stop a diversified turn 5 win, survive against mana disruption, and actually beat a burn deck (which should always be answered with a hardy “Yes”).
If your answer to the question is no, then remind me why you want to play Extended? Playing against Boros is the ultimate litmus test for a deck in the environment. If you can consistently beat a competent BDW player, then whatever your choice is, it may have some real merit. If not, you seriously need to contemplate going back to the drawing board.
2: Does your deck win on turn 4, or can it consistently stop an opponent from winning on turn 4?
Think about all the combo decks that look to be more than a niche of the metagame: Ritual Desire, Dirty Kitty, and Sunrise (Sunny Side Up). All of these decks win on turn 4 with a high degree of consistency without falling to pieces due to one piece of disruption. If you aren’t planning to race you actually need a *gasp* plan to deal with the mongrel hordes of combo players. Especially once you realize that Sunrise and Ritual Desire cost less than almost every other deck in Extended to build, hence making them the budget choice for players who just want to show up and give it a go.
…
I gave up around this point because I couldn’t specify what else to ask. Following that little disaster I searched the archives for inspiration; because I knew such “questioning you and your deck” articles had been done before. I then came across a golden oldie from the dark ages (2001). That article can be found here, and was written by Mike Mason as an update on an old Zvi set of deckbuilding adages for IBC.
From an old Zvi deck clinic article:
Numbers to Keep in Mind:
1. Number of cards useless against a creatureless deck
2. Number of cards a counter deck has to stop to break up your deck
3. Number of turns you need for the goldfish kill
4. Number of cards useful if you can’t attack
5. Number of ways to break up Worship or Pariah
6. Number of ways to break up a Spike Weaver, Wall of Blossoms, and Tradewind Rider
7. Number of lands you need to operate properly
8. Number of cards your deck effectively has (not counting cheap cantrips)
9. Number of first-turn plays
10. Number of Tolarian Academy decks you’ll be playing in the next tournament
I was impressed by the simplicity, and the almost deadpan way you had to answer these questions. Usually, if you ask somebody whose put some work into a deck a question like this, they tip-toe around it or spin it to sound much better than it really is. By breaking it down into just data points, you get a cold hard look at reality staring back at you.
So how many of these points still apply today? Obviously, some of these questions were based around the popular / dominant strategies at the time; however, some of the others are just good all-time ones. Let’s start over with this, shall we?
1.Number of cards useless against a creatureless deck?
We get off easy with a question that will probably be asked about every format in Magic. Now, in this Extended season we a have a number of strong decks that either have very good overarching strategies or are great metagame choices. This means most of the reasonable deck choices in the field are going to have significant space dedicated to stomping on creatures.
All in all, a lot of decks are actually much closer to covering all of their bases than before as far as completely dead cards go. However, since the phrasing used is useless we’ll be taking a closer look. For example, a lot of people reference cards like Lightning Helix and company as not being dead against creatureless stuff. Obviously this is true in the abstract, but for decks that can’t consistently make use of the three damage, isn’t the card basically useless?
That, of course, is what I mean when deck designers want to sound a wee bit better against the field. Yeah, that burn isn’t 100% dead… but how many times is it going to help a Scepter deck win? Not all that often, I’m afraid.
2. Number of cards a control deck has to stop to disrupt your deck?
I changed the question slightly to include the alternative ways of stopping opposing control or combo decks. It’s easy to see that, in Extended, there are far more ways than just countermagic to nullify an opponent. Orim’s Chant, Stifle, Duress, and others don’t “counter” cards in the strictest sense, but can significantly blow out an opponent’s plan.
So, how resilient is combo nowadays? Ask yourself how many cards a control deck will typically need to nullify or counter to significantly disrupt you. For decks that revolve around resolving a single type of win (I’m looking at you, Second Sunrise), then you’ve probably got issues.
3. Number of turns you need for the goldfish kill?
The general rule when it comes to the speed of winning the game in current Extended is on about turn 5 or 6 (So let’s say 5.5). Of course, this is assuming you care about decks other than combo. If you just want to know the absolute fastest you have to win by, it would be turn 4 without disruption and turn 5 if you have some sort of disruptive or interactive game plan.
The slower you are, the more your plan needs to have a quick fundamental turn to keep the game in line. This leads us too…
4. Your Fundamental Turn?
If you can’t set your deck up by turn 4 at the latest, you probably are going to have a lot of issues dealing with faster decks. Take, for example, U/W Tron and its putrid matches against decks whose fundamental turns are faster than it. Tron has, at best, a turn 6 fundamental turn in my mind. Against a deck in Extended, what can Tron truly do to shift the game in its favor until it can win the game? Setting up the Tron pieces and playing an overcosted trump is so crucial to its game plan that it really can’t do anything important until it hits the mana flashpoint.
As a result, decks like Boros and Ritual Desire – with quicker fundamental turns – make Tron into a punching bag. Desire literally just sit there, ignores everything Tron does, and decides when to beat the crud out of it. Why? Because Tron can’t do jack – casting Wrath is the one big effect is can pull out on turn 4, barring a miraculous early Tron draw (which doesn’t even affect half the field).
5. Number of ways to break up a Destructive Flow lock?
I guess I shouldn’t necessarily call this a lock per se, but an early Flow shuts or stunts so many decks it needs its own parameters. As I showed in one of my previous articles, few decks actually run enough basics to not take this into account. Even decks that normally would ignore Flow by simply laying men down and sacking the lands can’t do that against the two decks you may see the card in.
As a result, this is a plan you need to come prepared to beat… or at least not be blindsided by.
6A. Number of cards that are playable under a Scepter-Chant lock?
At the moment, Scepter-Chant is the best control deck in the format. Hence your deck must be able to deal with its namesake lockdown or be able to play around it in a meaningful fashion. If you can’t, you’re accepting losses to every turn 2-3 Scepter they play that ends up with an Orim’s Chant imprinted on it. In addition, it means you’ll more than likely end up losing any number of long games to the deck if your deck cannot sufficiently operate under Chant.
6B Counterbalance lock?
For some decks, like Boros, functioning under the Sensei’s Divining Top plus Counterbalance lock is nearly impossible. Others have an easier time due to higher casting costs or even just a better-spread mana curve. Just as when dealing with Chant, though, you should know how well you can function when a deck like Trinket Angel gets the pieces down early.
6C. Teferi?
Same as the above two, but to a lesser extent; Teferi essentially reads: “How bad is your control deck now?”
7. Number of lands your deck needs to effectively operate?
This is actually quite an interesting question simply because of all the different archetypes available to us. For example, BDW can function fine off two lands, but it prefers three and preferably at least two sources of mana for each color. This leads to manabases based around 10-12 fetchlands so it can nearly always hit the colors a hand requires to function, not just the number.
Meanwhile, a deck like Desire can go off with only one land in play, but prefers having almost as many as it can for ease. You have to ask yourself how to balance those types of numbers out for relevant and “real” cards versus mana consistency. Against control it maybe has ten truly relevant cards in the entire deck they have to worry about.
These land questions leads us to question of: At what point do additional lands become a major detriment to the deck? Something like Scepter-Chant, although it wants to hit four mana in its first four turns, has to skimp on mana or risk having too few real spells in the deck. This situation ties into number 8, which is…
8. Number of cards your deck effectively has?
Scepter-Chant, U/W Tron, and other controls decks are all about hitting a fine line between cards that are solid in each match-up in the general and specific sense. In combo, you want the amount of land that gives you around three land drops in your first four turns, while keeping the overall land count low enough to squeeze a few more drawing or “real” cards in.
Aggressive decks in the environment typically don’t care so much, simply because every single non-land card is usually relevant. The more your deck relies on specific card combinations, the lower this count will normally be. It’s also one of the most important numbers to keep in mind for various matches, because you can gain a much better grasp of hand strength and drawing possibilities if you do.
And that’s it from me. I actually gained a lot of useful information from this seemingly simple data analysis. It helped explain why certain decks in the same classification or utilizing the same strategy were losing seemingly good matches. It backed up a lot of the testing results I was getting, in the control and combo matches specifically. The linear nature of Ritual Desire and Scepter-Chant against aggro makes the data particularly relevant.
Hopefully you learned something, and I’ll see you next time when I finish my aggro overview! Until then, here’s what I’ve been listening to this holiday season.
Lia — The Force of Love (It’s mostly all English you pansies)
Various (Force of Nature, Azzurro, Fat Jon, etc.) — Listening is Believing
Various – DDR Supernova Track Listing (Faves include Seduction and Happy Angel)
Dancemania Speed — Trance Ravers
DJ Sharpnel — Brain Violation
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
Email me at: JoshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom