This week I’m going to go over the two Standard decks, B/U/G Control and R/U/G Control, which I think are the best decks in this current Standard format. They each contain, hands down, the best cards in the format and execute perfect game plans in order to win.
Before I talk about the Standard format anymore, I’d like to thank the people that made GP Nashville so special. In my personal experience of playing competitive Magic, I’ve never seen a Grand Prix run so smoothly. The event started more promptly than any Grand Prix that I’ve ever attended and finished in a timely fashion. Donnie Noland, the Tournament Organizer, and Adam Shaw, the Head Judge, definitely deserve all the positive feedback that they get for this event, and I wish them nothing but the best for their futures in their careers.
If I had to pick the best deck right now, I’d have to go with R/U/G Control. My reasoning behind that is it has all the best cards in the format along with ways to beat your worst matchups. The biggest problems that the B/U/G and R/U/G decks come in contact with are not being able to handle all the early aggression from the creature-based decks.
Now, while I feel that R/U/G is currently the best choice in the metagame, it still does have weaknesses in certain matchups where the B/U/G deck doesn’t. The B/U/G deck has Doom Blade over Lightning Bolt, which makes it far easier to beat a Frost Titan. So in the control matchups, the B/U/G deck is going to have the same speed as R/U/G while being able to deal with a resolved Frost Titan. If you expect to be playing in a control-heavy format, I would strongly recommend you play Donnie Noland B/U/G Control.
The worst thing for the B/U/G deck to play against is an aggro deck such as Elves, Mono-Red, or a Fauna Shaman deck. These matchups are tough because the best thing that you can do early on is to kill one random creature at the cost of two mana and your entire turn 2. You have no cheap mass removal effect to kill multiple creatures, so once you see a mass amount of creatures you’re going to lose a majority of the time. B/U/G Control’s best board sweeper comes in the form of Consume the Meek, which you can’t play until turn 4 on average unless you have Lotus Cobra, which puts you in a very tough situation. By that time, you’ve already taken multiple attacks from their creatures and are soon to be facing lethal damage.
R/U/G’s worst matchups are the same as B/U/G Control’s. However, the R/U/G deck shows its true colors in its capacity to have a mana-efficient, board-sweeping effect in Pyroclasm. Pyroclasm is by far the best card to have against the aggro decks in this format. A lot of decks rarely have a good way to beat it, and you can constantly represent it in your hand; while if your opponent doesn’t play around the Pyroclasm and you do have it, then they basically just lost the match.
Now let’s go over the positives and negatives of each deck and what differentiates one from the other.
Here’s Donnie Noland deck with which he won the Kentucky Open.
Standard
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (18)
Spells (26)
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (18)
Spells (26)
Positives for Playing B/U/G Control:
With Doom Blade, you’re allowed to kill any of the important cards in this format such as Primeval Titan or Frost Titan. The decks that play either Frost Titan or Primeval Titan revolve around these cards to win. So by killing their best win conditions you leave them without many options to close out the game in their favor.
Memoricide is hands down the best way to deal with a deck that revolves around the resolution of Primeval Titan. By playing Memoricide, you no longer have to use a counterspell to deal with their Primeval Titan while praying to God that they don’t play a Summoning Trap. Without Primeval Titan, decks like Valakut Ramp and Eldrazi Green become awkward mana ramp decks with very few good ways to win the game. This is one of the few reasons I’ve thought about playing B/U/G in the near future, because of the extremely easy time you have dealing with a Primeval Titan.
This is one of my absolute favorite cards in the B/U/G deck played by Donnie Noland. It forces your opponents, who play Jace, the Mind Sculptor, into positions where they have to fateseal instead of use the normal Brainstorm ability off of a freshly cast Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Creeping Tar Pit in a way gains you card advantage by disallowing your opponent from gaining max card advantage from their own Jace.
This is a card that honestly either deck could play. I’m not quite sure about the reasoning behind this card, but I think it’s a bit clunky.
This is just another one of the deck’s one-of cards within the 75-card decklist. Although, I have to admit that I definitely approve of this card 100%. It’s a creature that can kill a Jace, the Mind Sculptor in one attack and lets you get better cards in exchange for worse cards when Sphinx of Lost Truths enters the battlefield.
Here’s my R/U/G deck
Standard
Creatures (13)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (27)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
Creatures (13)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (27)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
Positives for Playing R/U/G Control:
Goblin Ruinblaster gives you an enormous edge in any control deck that you’re matched to play against. You have eight cards that allow you to play Goblin Ruinblaster on turn 3 which can leave your opponent on one land going into their third turn if you won the die roll. Any start where a Goblin Ruinblaster resolves on turn 3 is as good a draw as you can hope for.
You must have Lightning Bolt in this current Standard format. In almost every matchup you have a valid target in the forms of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Creeping Tar Pit, Goblin Guide, and so on. In your aggro matchups, your life total is so precious that even the two points of damage that you take from a turn 1 Goblin Guide can cost you the match. When playing against aggro decks you have to value every point of damage like it could be your last because it usually ends up coming down to the wire.
There’s really not much to say here about this card. It’s just a good land for your mana base and is a creature when you need it. Besides that, it’s really just second best to a Creeping Tar Pit.
This is one of my top reasons to play R/U/G. This is the best way to deal with more than one creature in a quick fashion. Something every aggro player needs to learn is when it’s appropriate to go all-in and risk losing to a Pyroclasm or when they should hold back and try to bait it out. The value of Pyroclasm’s stock can go up or down based on how good the player playing against it is.
Negatives of Playing Donnie’s B/U/G Control:
I’d say the biggest negative about playing this deck is that you don’t have red in your deck!!! Once creatures resolve, you just have to race them. Consume the Meek is just not fast enough to stop all the damage from the aggro decks. You also have other cards such as the one Wurmcoil Engine and the one Molten-Tail Masticore that are just completely random. I also think that the Garruk Wildspeaker doesn’t have great synergy with the deck. It’s just there to prevent three damage and make a 3/3 token. I personally think that I’d rather spend my turn 3 doing something that’s going to put my opponent in a tougher position than just Time Walking myself and getting my newly found creature Lightning Bolted.
Negatives of Playing My R/U/G Control:
The toughest problem that this deck faces, besides going against aggro decks game 1, is an uncountered Frost Titan. If you don’t draw your own Frost Titan, then you’re soon going to be in a world of hurt. You’re going to have to devote one turn and six mana to try to kill a Frost Titan and hope that after all the cantrips he has used, he hasn’t found a Mana Leak.
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So what have we learned? We’ve learned that if you want to beat the control decks, then B/U/G is the way to go, and if you want to the beat the aggro decks, R/U/G is the way to go. In the long run you’re probably not going to notice too much of a difference because you’re still playing all the best cards in the same deck. Your win percentages will probably only fluctuate five to ten percent depending upon what matchups you go against throughout your tournaments.
I’d like to end this article on a little side note of my own. Something I’ve noticed about Magic is that too often people feel like they
have
to go to a Magic tournament or the world is going to end. Sometimes you really need to step back and just realize that you play Magic because it’s fun and not because it’s a job. Realistically a very small percentage of the Magic community is really going to be able to make a job out of playing Magic that’s better than working at McDonald’s. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t play to win, but there’s a huge difference from playing to win and doing everything humanly possible to win your match. I play Magic because I truly love the game, and I love traveling all over the world in order to keep playing the game at a high level. Although for the past three months I have not had a weekend to myself because I’ve been constantly going to Magic tournaments all over the place, and I’m looking forward to a good month break from the constant
traveling. The point is to go to tournaments because you love Magic, and you
want
to go not because you feel that you
have
to go. Go to a Magic tournament because you feel in love with this game the same way you did the first time you played your best rare!
I hope this gives people a better perspective on what Magic should really be seen as instead of what your average PTQ grinder is seeing it as.
For the next week I’m going to be hardcore grinding Standard games with fellow Magic gamers in Virginia leading up to the StarCityGames.com Invitational in Richmond. I wish everyone the best of luck there, and I think it’s going to be one of the best tournaments of the whole year.
Let me know what you think in the forums.
See ya later…