Last week, we took a look at the history of B/G Energy in the time since the printing of Winding Constrictor. Then I went and won the Standard Classic at the #SCGINVI.
Creatures (24)
- 4 Catacomb Sifter
- 3 Verdurous Gearhulk
- 3 Longtusk Cub
- 4 Winding Constrictor
- 2 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
- 4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
- 4 Walking Ballista
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (15)
Spells (17)
My list was cool and served me well, but as much as I would like to, I’m not going to go too into depth on the details. In brief, my list was designed to maximize Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. Nissa just kept being the best card in every matchup, and Nissa plays very well with Catacomb Sifter. Tireless Tracker underperformed consistently in a 21-land deck, even with four Attune to Aether, and I did not miss it.
Hour of Devastation is almost here, though, and this current Standard format isn’t going to be relevant for very much longer. #SCGCIN is somehow only two weeks away, and I mean to be prepared.
But it’s naive to expect Hour of Devastation to turn Standard completely on its head. It is the last set that will be added to this Standard format before the Battle for Zendikar and Shadows over Innistrad blocks leave the format, and the last set to be added to a format always has the least chance to impact it. It’s just momentum: the more cards in a format, the more resistant it is to change.
Of Expectations and the Enemy
That’s not to say that Hour of Devastation won’t be important. To the contrary, I expect Hour of Devastation to be a very important player to the shape of Standard. But there’s a difference between new sets that create tons of new archetypes and invalidate several old ones and sets that reinforce the existing archetypes and give them new tools to jockey for position against each other with, and I think it’s quite likely that Hour of Devastation will fall into the latter camp.
Similarly, B/G Energy isn’t really looking to add much raw power from Hour of Devastation. +1/+1 counters and energy are not mechanics in Amonkhet block, so the main themes of B/G Energy won’t be receiving any reinforcements. Instead, we should be looking at the Hour of Devastation card list with an eye for niche players, ways to give the deck a new post-sideboard dimension or answer a particularly troubling card from other strategies.
But before we dive into the cards that might be helping B/G Energy out in the near future, I want to make sure we understand what we’re up against. Right now, B/G Energy occupies an interesting spot in the format. In many ways, it is capitalizing on a Standard environment that is low on removal. Much of the power of B/G Energy is that it plays twenty or so creatures that all demand one of the opponent’s four Harnessed Lightnings or Fatal Pushes. In large part, this strategy is possible because of how few sweepers are in this Standard format. White has Fumigate and Dusk, but that’s about it.
Well, that’s about to change.
If I had to pick one element of Hour of Devastation as the most important to Standard, I would pick the abundance of new sweeper effects it’s introducing to the format. Of them, Hour of Revelation is likely the least important, as white already had access to Fumigate. Of course, if Hour of Revelation starts to see play, it will make planeswalkers less effective anti-control weapons.
Bontu’s Last Reckoning and Hour of Devastation expand powerful sweeper effects to colors besides white. Red already has Sweltering Suns and Radiant Flames and black has Yahenni’s Expertise, but B/G Energy can grow out of range of those cards without much difficulty. Growing out of range of an Hour of Devastation is much more difficult, and growing out of range of a Bontu’s Last Reckoning is, of course, not a thing.
All right, so increased resiliency to sweeper effects is absolutely something B/G Energy should be interested in for Hour of Devastation Standard. Further, that resiliency should come from sources other than planeswalkers if at all possible thanks to the Hours of Devastation and Revelation. But what else is there to be worried about?
I think Solemnity is kind of the elephant in the room when it comes to Hour of Devastation Standard. I’m sure the brewers out there are busy churning out Solemnity combo decks (Thing in the Ice?), but I’m more interested in its role as the most powerful hate card Standard has seen in a bit. Just six months ago, tournaments were being dominated by B/G Delirium while the format had zero ways to interact with the opponent’s graveyard, and now there is about to be a card that can delete the text box of a third of your opponent’s deck. What a stark contrast.
So, how scary is Solemnity? Good question.
These three cards are all vanilla creatures with a Solemnity on the battlefield, and while that’s certainly not great, it’s also not the end of the world. They can still attack and block, albeit not nearly as well as they would be able to without a Solemnity. Winning with these cards through a Solemnity is doable; after all, your opponent is down a card.
This is the one that scares me. Solemnity actually renders all copies of Walking Ballista that you have yet to cast completely dead. There was a point when people thought about Dispossessing Walking Ballista against B/G Energy; how much better is a card that deals with all the Walking Ballistas and much of the rest of the deck at the same time? If you have a Walking Ballista in your hand, their Solemnity effectively traded for it, and the Solemnity still gets to stick around and make most of your other cards much less effective. This is starting to look like a problem.
Having ways to remove an enchantment is a start, but it can’t be your whole plan against Solemnity. Winning through a Solemnity needs to be a very real possibility, so finding ways to give the deck a game plan that is less synergy -dependent is a necessity.
New Allies
Now that we know what it is we’re looking for, it’s time for what you’ve all been waiting for: the Hour of Devastation cards that stand poised to make it into a B/G Energy 75 in the not-so-distant future.
As far as sweeper resistance is concerned, it’s hard to ask for much more than Uncage the Menagerie. There are two values of X I’m interested in with this card. Imagine this scenario: you’ve curved out fairly well against U/W control, Winding Constrictor into Rishkar, Peema Renegade. Your turn 4 attack goes through without a problem, and you just know there’s a Fumigate waiting for you next turn. Instead of developing a threat in the face of a sweeper, you cast Uncage the Menagerie for X=2 and go find a Winding Constrictor and a Glint-Sleeve Siphoner. Talk about a rock-solid post-sweeper reload.
Later in the game, casting Uncage for X=3 represents an imposing battlefield. Rishkar, Peema Renegade; Catacomb Sifter; and Tireless Tracker are a powerful three cards to grab and ensure that you won’t be running out of gas any time soon. This is obviously great as sweeper insurance, but it’s even fairly good in the face of a Solemnity. Rishkar doesn’t do much and Tireless Tracker is slightly worse, true, but that Uncage still represents the ability to power through a Solemnity with card advantage.
I see Uncage the Menagerie competing with Gonti, Lord of Luxury for slots in the B/G Energy sideboard. Both of these cards offer insulation against sweeper effects. Uncage the Menagerie has more raw power, but Gonti, Lord of Luxury matches up well against the large creatures that B/G sometimes has trouble with, like Bristling Hydra. Time will tell which wins in the end, but my #SCGCIN testing will be starting with Uncage the Menagerie.
I am really excited for this card. Maybe too excited. You see, I am sick and tired of control decks swerving into Thing in the Ice in post-sideboard games. It just creates such miserable tension in sideboarding. How many removal spells do you have to leave in? Grasp of Darkness kills Thing in the Ice and can beat a Torrential Gearhulk in combat, but if you draw it after Thing in the Ice has already transformed, you’re really going to wish it was a Fatal Push instead. And what if you leave in all this removal and they level you by not even playing Thing in the Ice?
Enter Doomfall. It deals with Thing in the Ice or Awakened Horror as well as Torrential Gearhulk, and most importantly, it isn’t dead if they don’t play a must-remove creature. Not just “not dead,” Doomfall’s fallback plan is a Thoughtseize effect, my pick for the best possible effect against control strategies. It even exiles the card to avoid Torrential Gearhulk shenanigans. How perfect.
As great as Doomfall is against dedicated control strategies, it’s also pretty excellent against controlling midrange strategies. These are the decks that often sideboard into control decks against B/G Energy, like last season’s Mardu Vehicles, with lots of planeswalkers to dominate the game and sweepers to back them up. Discard is very good against these decks early in the game, but late in the game, discard spells become useless, as the game will often devolve into a topdeck battle. A discard spell that isn’t dead after discard stops being relevant is an invaluable resource and will probably do some excellent work in fighting the sweeper effects out of these decks.
This last Hour of Devastation card is a little more out there. The idea is to use Mirage Mirror to play around sweeper effects by effectively having a creature that isn’t a creature and that won’t get destroyed by a sweeper effect. After casting Mirage Mirror, for the rest of the game you can spend two mana to give any creature you control haste. That’s a powerful emblem to have against a sweeper deck.
Normally, this is the kind of plan I would not at all be interested in for a midrange deck against a control deck. It does a lot of neat things, true, but it’s unclear that they add up to being worth a whole card. However, the synergy elements of B/G Energy have me thinking that it might be better here. Copying your Winding Constrictor before using your Nissa, Voice of Zendikar’s -2 ability is a big game, and lots of interactions like that are possible in the B/G Energy deck. Further, it should be easy to get a few +1/+1 counters onto the Mirage Mirror, letting your permanent that lives through sweepers always be your most threatening one.
Nor can you be left with a Mirage Mirror with nothing to copy. The ability to copy your opponent’s creatures is huge. You can’t be stuck with only a Mirage Mirror left after a sweeper while your opponent attacks you down with a Torrential Gearhulk. Not only do you effectively have a Torrential Gearhulk of your own to attack and block with, if you snuck a counter onto the Mirror at any point, yours will even be better.
Mirage Mirror has a lot of small things going for it, but I still think I’m going to leave it on the sidelines for now. At the end of the day, it’s still a three-mana artifact that needs two more mana to do anything on any turn. That’s a heavy mana investment for a deck that already has an excellent mana sink in Walking Ballista. However, if the metagame ends up being dominated by sweeper effects, I will come back to Mirage Mirror.
Here’s the list I plan to start with in testing for #SCGCIN:
Creatures (24)
- 3 Catacomb Sifter
- 2 Tireless Tracker
- 3 Verdurous Gearhulk
- 2 Longtusk Cub
- 4 Winding Constrictor
- 2 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
- 4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
- 4 Walking Ballista
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (15)
Spells (17)
The Hour of Devastation cards we talked about make an appearance in the sideboard, as discussed. Aside from that, the changes from my Classic list involve the reappearance of Tireless Tracker. The addition of Uncage the Menagerie to the sideboard necessitates that, but Tireless Tracker is also a good card to have access to when you’re worried about sweepers, and goes a long way towards beating a resolved Solemnity.
Hour of Devastation poses some interesting challenges to B/G Energy, but I for one am confident the archetype will find a way to survive and thrive. Solemnity and sweepers won’t keep a good deck down for long.