It’s been a little while. I penned an article prior to Berlin, which I’m going to attach as an appendix to this behemoth, but I’ve taken the last couple of weeks off to compile what you’re reading now. The astute among you will look to the right-hand side of your screen and notice that the normally-gray rectangular slider-bar has become decidedly more square. “Bar,” indeed, is a barely-accurate term; “brick,” “sliver,” “shingle” spring to mind. Yes, this is a long’n. Like, Rizzo-long, perhaps. But I’m hoping it’ll be worth it in the end.
I’ve been told to sell this article Hard With A Capital H in the opener because the format’s like nothing we’ve done before, and it’s a long read, and everything else. I experimented with some rhetorical flourishes, a little Sanchez gallery of this kind of big-nosed Ziggy-esque cute little bug thing holding up a little sign that begged, “Read Me Pleeeeeease” with the extra “e”-s streaming off the sign and down onto the lawn. But ultimately there’s nothing else to say except that this may be the most important article I have ever written, and the most important Magic-related article I will ever write. I think it’s a landmark event, and I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed piecing it together.
Also, I want to get one thing out of the way on the front end: I know I said I’d never make anyone pay to read me, that I’d never “sell out” to Premium. Think of this as the exception to the rule. My column’s still going to run on the free side, and I don’t plan on making these broad marigold banners a habit. But given the level of labor involved, there was just no way for StarCityGames.com to justify posting it in my normal slot. Don’t worry, kids; I’ll be back in my normal spot in a fortnight, after part two airs next week.
Prior to Berlin, as has become customary, I contacted the Belgians and Frank Karsten about resuming our working relationship for this Pro Tour. Everyone said yes, and a team was formed. Typically I don’t work with the Americans because their groups tend to be large and unstable, but they do provide a valuable asset when it comes to actually sitting down and playing games. This case was unique as, in Malaysia, there wasn’t exactly a gigantic contingent of players prepping daily for the Pro Tour as you can find, say, in the American Midwest. Because of that I was placed in a much more isolated position that normal, having to salvage testing from the tremendous generosity of one or two people to whom I owe a tremendous debt. Moreover, because these players are not regular PT competitors, I had to be even more meticulous in documenting the ins and outs of the testing process to be sure that systemic errors in my understanding of a matchup were not emerging because of pilot error.
The end result was that all of my communication with my teammates took the form of long, in-depth emails about a day’s testing regimen, so that if something peculiar arose there would be enough documentation of what happened to uncover the error (in play, strategy, or theory) and thereby weight the conclusions accordingly. At first the process was tedious, but it was very enjoyable also because it forced me to think actively about every game we played and attempt to innovate technology at every turn. Eventually, this enjoyment turned into the potential for an opportunity. I realized that, maybe for the first time ever, the thinking and reasoning process of a top-level team’s Pro Tour preparation was being kept on record – every decision, every disagreement, every consensus, every massive leap, every subtle gain – everything was right here for the data-mining. To my knowledge, there has been very little discussion or analysis of how actual players actually prepare for actual Pro Tours: how ideas are created and discarded, how coalitions form within groups, how competing theories are reconciled. What percentage of results and ideas actually yield positive changes. What is assumed and what is stated outright.
This article is my attempt to contribute to that body of knowledge.
Initially, I thought such an exercise would prove valuable no matter how our team ended up performing. With Jan in the Top 8, and our testing results yielding what was potentially the best version of the best deck – as in “was claimed to be by parties less biased than myself or my teammates” – and certainly was one of the best versions of the best deck, this exercise took on entirely new levels of potential value.
I am not entirely positive what you should be looking to “get” out of this article, if anything. I may be drastically overstating its value in the first place. But I hope, above all else, that you’ve gained some insight into the minds of Pro Tour competitors and their attempts to break formats, no matter what that insight may be.
What will follow are copy-and-pasted sections of the letters we sent one another across our month-and-a-half-long testing process. Not every letter is included, and of course the contents have been edited for language, privacy, grammar, and clarity. I have tried to stay as true as possible to the original form, voice, and formatting, and have in no way edited the contents to make us look better in retrospect (altering bad decklists, etc… as you will see, there are plenty of those). All of the Magic-related content is presented, as much as possible, as it was received. Initially the plan was to organize everything chronologically. This will be maintained as extensively as clarity and record-keeping will allow, but if one of us for example replied to two different threads out of chronological sequence, the reply will be placed under the mantle of the appropriate thread. I am going to try and keep commentary to a minimum, but being that one of my goals is to try and glean information from this intense volume of correspondence, I’m also going to synthesize the data and explain why I think certain statements and conclusions are important in light of PT: Berlin’s results.
I think I’m finished with all the requisite disclaimers. Let’s jump in, shall we?
I am separating each email with a double-hyphen, and my own commentary with a double-tilde. Formatting-wise, prior to each email I list the author, e.g. “Stuart:”, “Marijn:”, “Frank:” etc., as I think the recipients should be understood.
—
From: Marijn Lybaert
To: Zac Hill
Sent: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:03 pm
Subject: Berlin
Hey Zaccum.
Wassup?!? I’m a busy man these days. Our apartment is ready and we are moving in next week. Mise.
+ tomorrow will be my first day at school.
Anyway, Berlin, right?
We are starting our testing Saturday. We are going to make a gauntlet first. However, I already know I want to play Tezzeret control.dec. Maybe with Erayo and the new guy for 1W… Arcana Lab for non-artifacts and then some WOGs, counters, thirsts, artifacts lands… only need a genius to make me a decklist because we all know I suck at building decks from scratch.
Good to hear you are coming and looking forward to some stupid ideas from your side again. Tolaria Wests in a GB deck, for example. Loved that one.
Cheers
M.
—
Me, to Marijn:
Lol. Just got a bunch of apartment stuff taken care of and sorted out myself, so I know how that goes. Look forward to pictures though! Once I get my camera working I should take some of here as well, because this place is, as we say, “retarded gas.” Maybe even the Booters.
And why you gotta bring up the T-West, I’m trying to forget about that one.
And for Hollywood I had all those awful Torrent of Souls token decks, only to hear the Italians called geniuses when they did it at Nationals. So I’m not the only one with terrible ideas… err… I wish.
You know I love me a slow control deck. However, with Affinity being one of the de-facto decks to beat, I’m concerned about getting too artifact-heavy, even with no Pernicious Deed. There is that terrible Golgari card that’s sort of like Deed, but… um no.
Tezzeret is completely ridiculous, though, and remember there is also Krark-clan Ironworks. Tezzeret/untap Gilded Lotus and something else/Savor the Moment? CLEARLY just broke the format obviously.
…but really, is there a way to loop Savor the Moment? You have Garruk too!
I do actually think Loam/Raven’s Crime is very good. It’s like loam/cycling lands only offensive, and the thing is there is no Divining Top anymore for people to hide their cards with. Either into some aggro Loam shell or some TarmoRack shell, hm.
Consensus right now seems to be GiftsRock is very good (yay more Sundering Titans from our side!) and Zoo/Affinity/Tron are the decks to beat, with Life from the Loam clearly one of the most powerful engines in the format. Multiple people have said to me that whatever that Worm retrace card from Shadowmoor is actually very good both in GiftsRock and Loam.
Potentially underappreciated cards: Countryside Crusher, Vedalken Engineer, Heartbeat of Spring, Seething Song, Counterbalance/something, Chalice of the Void, Blood Moon as always, Molten Rain as always. Faeries maybe. Bitterblossom doing something entirely different. Of course Gaddock Teeg.
More later when we have the data from Shards. Good to chat with ya, and good luck with the apartment/being a student again! I think you made a really good decision doing something that you’re much happier with, and I’m glad you’re moving forward and not stuck in that Magic-player stasis of perpetual doing-nothing.
Take care man!
Zac
—
Marijn, to me, September 19:
Hehe. I mailed Frank Karsten about the Tezzeret that I wanted to break, and he also started talking about Krark-clan Ironworks and Savor the Moment! I’m not believer but who knows… this is the list he send me (which is obv. untested)
4 Tezzeret
2 Engineered Explosives
Om te zoeken met Gifts (7 kaarten):
1 Garruk
1 Recollect
1 Reclaim
2 Savor the Moment
2 Myr Incubator
Om specifiek te zoeken met Tezzeret (3 stuks):
1 Chromatic Star
1 Lotus Bloom
1 Krark-Clan Ironworks
Search (10 kaarten):
3 Gifts Ungiven
2 Ponder
1 Thoughtcast
1 Sleight of Hand
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Remand
1 Condescend
Mana (34, waarvan 22 land):
4 Pentad Prism
4 Chrome Mox
4 Fertile Ground
4 G artifact land
4 U artifact land
3 B artifact land
3 W artifact land
2 R artifact land
1 Island
1 Glimmervoid
2 Breeding Pool
1 Polluted Delta
1 Academy Ruins
People might play artifact hate but we can run Chalice of the Void against Ancient Grudge and counters against other big hate.
M.
~~
I selected these first few emails for a number of reasons. For one thing, it’s some of the first correspondence we sent out. But, crucially, I think you can notice a number of trends here to take away. First, notice how Marijn’s already asserting that he’s definitely going to play a certain deck over a month before a Pro Tour. You might look at this as hopelessly unrealistic, except that his R/G Big Mana deck at Hollywood (which started out as Mono-G land destruction) had also been put to paper over a month before the tournament. There is some value, in other words, in choosing your deck early, even if (as in this case) that deck contains thirty-four mana sources, which, I mean, gross. Also: yes, Frank and I both thought about Savoring the Moment with Gilded Lotus and Tezzeret. Apparently insanity is a good virtue to have on a professional Magic team. But I do think it is actually valuable to never be afraid to vocalize things that on the surface might seem like terrible ideas. You’ll find that to be a recurring pattern as you sift through these emails.
~~
Zac:
Extended: a format overview.
So I’ve done a little bit of testing, mostly Zoo versus other things, but Gerry’s article was massively helpful in terms of getting some good introductory lists. However, now that we’ve got an entire Shards spoiler I wanted to spend some time analyzing what the current metagame is probably going to look like, what the implications of the rotation/new set/bannings are for newer decks, and hopefully what we should be focusing on as a result.
I’ve put together a tentative potential Tier One that is going to look something similar to the following, probably (and note that this doesn’t mean what is actually tier one, but rather what people are going to start out working on and what could have the potential at least to be very good):
Loam variants
Zoo
Affinity – at least two or three variants
Tron
Gifts Rock
A Lotus Bloom/Ritual/Storm-based combo deck
A Graveyard-based combo deck
A two-card-combo deck (Swans/Chain seems pretty good actually, for example)
A sort of Previous-level Blue deck
I want to start talking about Blue Deck variants, both because it’s the most obviously impacted by the Top bannings, and because it’s a good segue into a number of other factors we should be thinking about.
Incidentally, it’s worth going through exactly what the banning of Top does as a whole to the format. I’m sure y’all have talked about this in depth already, but I’m in Malaysia and there’s not a whole lot of theorizing going on over here, so if I cover something obvious, please forgive.
First and foremost, you’re obviously going to have to work a lot harder to make Counterbalance happen. I want to mention though that I don’t think Counterbalance is totally dead. It’s very likely, of course, that you have to jump through too many hoops to make it happen, but cards like Ponder and Serum Visions allow you to essentially Chalice of the Void a different casting cost every turn, which for two mana is not that bad of a deal, considering you also might randomly just be able to Counterspell something off the mise.
Secondly, if you want deck manipulation you are either going to need to be casting Life from the Loam or playing blue spells. I expect to see – particularly after the printing of Worm Harvest, which seems completely terrible but is actually quite insane to Gifts for along with three lands – more of a hybridization of Loam deck and Gifts Rock now that you can’t just go balls-to-the-wall with Terravore and even Wild Mongrel, nor can you run the hard lock with Confinement. I think Loam as a deck will still have its own identity independent of Gifts Rock – you still have Assault and Crusher – but it will just be different, and it’s worth exploring Loamish elements in Gifts shells. Not that this is really anything new.
Third, even though Rock decks themselves can no longer run Top, they also tend to be the decks that play the most discard, and discard’s value has shot through the roof now that you can’t just resolve a SDT and draw gas every turn. I actually think Raven’s Crime plus Life from the Loam is extremely, extremely good, largely for this reason. In either a traditional Loam or TarmoRack shell, against any deck that isn’t Zoo or Affinity you can essentially lock the game on the third turn. It sounds bad, but think about it: storm combo doesn’t have the card density to go off. Tron is sitting there choosing either to keep its lands or its card draw, which helps to assemble the Tron, so you’re forcing them to peel both the correct combination of mana and the cards to cast with that mana, all before they are dead. Blue decks it’s obviously good, any kind of KCI deck it’s obviously good, and Gifts Rock is going to have huge problems even if they already have a Loam; chances are they’re the control deck against a deck like Crime, and because you have Loam also they’re expending time to get back the cards without really gaining any kind of advantage on you. Meanwhile you’re killing them.
Just got sidetracked by thinking about how insane Giantbaiting is in the Zoo mirror. But really, would you rather either trade a) guys or b) their guys for your Giants. It’s also good against Hierarch and as a burn spell against countermagic.
I’ll get off that track.
So yeah. Blue decks. The problem with any kind of control deck that is not Tron is that you have to divide your time between trying to beat the very aggressive decks and beating the Tron decks. Previously, while Tron was still a bad matchup, you at least had cards like Counterspell that could fight their overwhelming mana advantage, and an engine like Top/Shuffle that could compete with their extra cards. Now you don’t, really, even though you can present threats like Bob and potentially Bitterblossom that are still very bad news for them. But right now you have basically no weapons strategically to beat Tron’s long game, and I think that’s extremely problematic. You can run at most two Cryptic Commands, and even those are going to get fought by Tron’s cheaper countermagic. Most of your other counterspells they’ll just be able to pay. So to try and beat those decks, you’ve got to get a Bob or Goyf of Bitterblossom under their countermagic and just ride.
Thing is, then you’re going to have problems against the smaller decks. While you have some excellent weapons against like Zoo and mono-Red and even the pseudo-mirror and Rock and Loam with Threads of Disloyalty, Shackles if you want them, Smother, Spell Snare, and Spellstutter Sprite in concert with Blossom, you’re running in to an identity crisis. Blossom and Bob both make you pay life, meaning you can interface with Zoo’s permanents until the cows come home but they’ll just burn you. Tarmogoyf means you’re either choosing between him and Bob or playing both Black and Green, which will cost you a few life points. And most of the cards that are good at interacting with “cheaper” decks (aggro, ritual combo) are quite bad against Tron: Threads, Spell Snare, Mana Leak/Rune Snag (though fortunately Remand is still quite good). It’s worth noting that if you’re running Goyf a card like Faerie Trickery might actually very effective: it gets Loams the HELL out of there, is a hard counter against basically every other deck, and pumps your Goyf.
Still, I see this type of deck having problems. Even fully-powered with Tops and the like I always felt like NLU decks were ceding strategic advantage to anyone who chose simply to play with more mana and more expensive spells. Bant Charm may help solve a couple problems in this type of deck – a weapon against Affinity, removal, and nevertheless a card able to help fight wars over card drawing spells – but again you run into the problem of how to negotiate all that mana without taking too much damage and still playing the cards you want to be playing.
You also need to decide whether you want to run Faeries or not. Personally I think Spellstutter Sprite is almost good enough with zero other Faeries in the deck – nine thousand things cost one mana – so I’d certainly be inclined to get it there with Blossoms and Mutavaults and a Pendelhaven or two. But that’s just me. Then there is the issue of Jitte, which while truly being insane with Bitterblossom (and which gives you life to circumvent your Bobs and Blossoms) also 1) costs a lot of mana, 2) is an artifact when people are almost assuredly running artifact removal, and 3) opens you up to tempo blowouts in a deck that shouldn’t really be worried about that kind of thing.
So Zoo.
We’ve all seen Gerry’s list, and man. Like, it’s innovative, but Oblivion Ring just seems like the sheer and total and utter stains comparatively. I’m also known for being entirely too loyal to Red Decks, and hate creatures that don’t deal their damage early and often. Thus I’d be very partial to the following-ish list:
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Kird Ape
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
2 Figure of Destiny
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Molten Rain
3 Char
4 Lightning Helix
4 Tribal Flames
2 Rift Bolt
1 Incinerate
1 Seal of Fire
Some manabase that works.
The 1 Seal of Fire probably looks very odd but I wanted another one-drop and I didn’t want it to be a Figure of Destiny, because drawing that guy in multiples is just the worst thing of all time. See also the one Incinerate: you have sorceries in RB, TF, and Molten Rain, and only seven instants. I don’t want to run 4 Char because that is eight three-mana spells in a twenty land deck plus Figure of Destiny, which seems greedy. Thus Incinerate. I also wanted to diversify against Chalice of the Void. I’ve actually playtested this deck versus Tron and other versions of Zoo and it seems pretty promising. I think Keldon Marauders in particular is almost a necessity. The thing about him is if you’re ever in a position to attack with a two-drop more than once you’re winning anyway. In the control and combo matchups he’s a very quick five damage, and he’s also savage in the mirror because he gains you a tremendous amount of initiative: he’s either an effective fog for two turns that still deals them two damage, or they have to swing into him and lose out.
Also of note, potentially, is the new RG 2/2 Haste guy. He seems a bit underwhelming, but consider how favorably he compares to Watchwolf. Assuming you drop at least a 2 power 1-drop, the damage works out (with him vs. Watchwolf) as:
RCC:
t2: 4
t3: 8
t4: 12
WW:
t2: 2
t3: 7
t4: 12
So Haste guy gets more damage in there quicker, and is also better versus Firespouts (though obviously not versus Pyroclasm). I’m of the opinion that Goyf and Marauders, and sort of Figure, are plenty of two-drop creatures in and of themselves, but if you’re not of that opinion then this guy is worth considering. (Marauders is 11 on turn 4, but only requires one actual attack phase, and is always 2 in the mid game even if they have stabilized.)
Things you have to worry about fighting include Threads, Firespout, opposing Goyfs. I’m also choosing to omit Dark Confidant, which may be a huge huge error. The thing is you want to get damage in there as quickly as possible, and Bob doesn’t really help with doing that. He’s bad against combo and bad in the mirror. He’s good if he’s sitting there sticking around, but again, which one of your guys isn’t good if he’s sitting there sticking around? The one thing that might turn out to make him really important is if Molten Rain turns out to be extremely critical, to the point where even like Fulminator Mage might come into play. In that case, Bob could help ensure that you hit your LD spells. And once I start testing against better and better control decks, he might prove more vital there as well. Even then, though: if I want to bash on Tron and combo decks, why not Gaddock Teeg? He’ll win if he sticks, and he also helps protect himself!
Gifts or Aggro Rock:
One of the things that is exciting to me about this deck is the possibility of running both Wall of Roots and Sakura-Tribe Elder, both of which are excellent at keeping you alive. You also have a large assortment, if you want them, of early threats that also hold down the fort, chief among them Doran. If you’re more of an aggro-Rock route, that new WB Mesmeric Fiend seems totally, totally insane, and you can get your choice of a whole host of pseudo-aggressive-but-potentially-hoser creatures like Teeg, Kataki, Yixlid Jailer, and even Aven Mindcensor. I’m thinking an aggro-rock build will focus on hand disruption in the form of Thoughtseize and Fiend-guy while loading up on removal like Smother and Putrefy, finishing the game with either Hierarchs or Chameleon Colossus (with fewer Cryptic Command type cards around it becomes so much better to just eight them) or aforementioned Dorans. Losing Duress and Therapy is obviously really terrible, but again, discard in general is better so it may balance out.
I think your Gifts Rock lists are going to actually get pretty five-color-control-y. Counterspells and the like, a lot of mana. I know I mentioned this earlier but turn 3 Gifts, turn 4 Worm Harvest and people are going to have a very difficult time killing you on the ground. The challenge is going to be about making it an issue of the ground. Similarly if you can fire off a Gifts for Loam/Raven’s Crime/lands then pretty soon you are going to be able to force through whatever you want. It’s possible to incorporate an easy Reveillark combo kill thing if you want it, or just Larking for value, though I haven’t really thought about what you can go get. Eternal Witness is probably one of the more savage things. I am seeing these piles of like Body Double/Reveillark/Witness/X, and while they are obviously slow they are also obviously good. Of course making Gifts better is to sort of miss the point. And it might again just be better to make Worms until they are dead, or Mind Twist them with Crime, or just cast a Sundering Titan somehow and say “that is.” How many ways are there to infinitely recur LD? Something + Fulminator? Something + Crucible? The challenge is of course “answering” the many, many different levels of attack the Tier 1 decks I mentioned above can present to you. Still, the thing that this deck has above all else is an ability to adapt, and with some very quality mana acceleration/defense in the format (Coalition Relic even might be good enough) you I think will be able to open up more resources.
As for like Tarmo-Rack, um:
4 Life from the Loam
4 Raven’s Crime
3 The Rack
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Smother
3 Putrefy
3 Chameleon Colossus
3 Loxodon Hierarch
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
4 Twilight Mire
4 Windswept Heath
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swamp
2 Forest
1 Plains
4 B Cycling Land
1 G Cycling Land
This is probably really bad, given that it’s running like the Rack and no other discard spells but Crime. B/W Fiend Dude would probably be savage here. Colossus just to kill them fast, is probably really awkward. But you get the jist, and I think an actually good version of this deck could be a real competitor. Some ways to interface with the graveyard, really good sideboard options. If you have time, even Glittering Wish. The manabase can certainly support it, and you get things like Firespout and Teeg and Fracturing Gust and Wheel of Sun and Moon and Putrefy and Mortify and Bant Charm and whatever whatever…
Tron
As Gerry said, “quite possibly the most powerful deck in the format.” One of the first things I looked at for Tron was “Mindlock Orb,” as you don’t have to play any sac-lands or Gifts and can just machine through your deck like a champion while crippling other people. Thing is you have to actually spend a turn casting it, which could be fatal. A sideboard card maybe for when you have time.
The great thing is that unlike Blue variants you have a very easy way, in Chalice of the Void, to deal with the format’s most powerful card drawing engine. You also still have very powerful mana, very powerful spells, and a natural resistance to a lot of hate cards that are very good against other people. You get to run Remand and Condescend and even Ponder, if you want it. Decree of Justice is better than it has ever been. Ancient Grudge can be built around and again Chaliced. And you get to cast Sundering Titans. Last Breath, meanwhile, gives you answers to all kinds of cards like Teeg and Kataki and Blastminer that would otherwise be incredibly annoying, and is a very lucky reprint for this deck, saving you from awkward cards like Moonglove Extract. If you can get double White, you can also get Aura of Silence for Affinity players, in addition to the normal tools, and of course your own Katakis if you build as such around it.
There is also the possibility of a more unique kill mechanism. Exalted Angel has always been popular in some builds, and Battlegrace Angel might be even better. You can also get a very easy “lock” against some decks with like the new Knight-Captain of Eos dude and Reveillark, which could buy a lot of time — but insert the “if you’ve got that mana why aren’t you just winning” question which is as valid as ever.
Affinity
Wow oh wow, oh the places you can go. This deck is man oh man. The challenge about playing this is going to be figuring out how to optimize all your options. The Atog/Fatal Frenzy thing is still as good as ever. The one thing I am sure about is that Springleaf Drum is completely ridiculous. Heap Doll is probably a lot better than Arcbound Worker. But from there… you can drop Tog/Frenzy for newer cards. Maybe run Goyfs. People are getting high over Master of Etherium but I’d rather play Atog or Moriok Rigger, and I hate a Rigger. The Medallion guy is a lot more interesting. He makes Chromatic Star and Pyrite Spellbomb (a necessity for Kataki, and just kind of good anyway) even better, is a cheap artifact himself, makes you able to do cranial Plating and other things in the same turn, &c. On the other hand, he is a Blue card and is a two-mana 1/2, and your entire deck is already based around making things cheaper, so how much cheaper do you really want?
I really, really, really like the Rule of Law guy, though. The challenge is White mana, but you can solve that problem. The thing is Extended is not a format about One Big Spell, it’s about a lot of things adding up to something broken, and Rule of Law guy stops those things from, um, adding up. Plus you can always get behind a grizzly bear. Mainly, though, Springleaf Drum (and medallion guy if you play him) makes it easier than ever to flip an Erayo, and that, boys is a very very good hard lock.
I chatted with y’all very briefly about another way to go with artifacts, the direction of kind of a Tezzerret control deck. I don’t know exactly yet how to go about doing that but you have a number of advantages. Firstly, you have (with Thoughtcast, Thirst for Knowledge, and Capsule assuming you can either make it cheaper or do something useful with it) the best card drawing in the format. Secondly, unlike Affinity, who just has to bend over and take it to any hate card people want to throw at you, this type of deck could play removal and countermagic to deal with all of that. Third, Tezzeret himself is one of the most powerful cards printed in recent memory. Recurring Demonic Tutor medallions: sweet. Off the top of my head, cards I wouldn’t really mind getting with him include:
–Tormod’s Crypt
–Lotus Bloom
–Umezawa’s Jitte
–Pithing Needle
–Relic of Progenitus
-Krark Clan Ironworks
–Epochrasite
–Arcbound Ravager
-Messenger’s Capsule
–Executioner’s Capsule
-Spellbombs
–Ethersworn Canonist
-Medallion Guy
–Chromatic Star
–Mind Stone
–Coalition Relic
–Phyrexian Ironfoot
–Phyrexian Snowcrusher (Tezz can feed the fire)
Or just untapping Gilded Lotuses, or just untapping signets and Mind Stones and killing them. Or getting a Lotus Bloom and Savoring the Moment, then untapping some multiple-mana-producers and playing a land and getting a KCI and Myr Incubating. But that just might be greedy. What might be less greedy is going Tezz, untapping some counterspell lands, and next turn just tutoring up one-spell-a-turn guy with an untapped board. There is no way you’re not going to be able to just fight one spell per turn from their side. Also is there anything like Static Orb still around? There could be some prison style deck with like Orb of Dreams off this guy and just prisoning someone to death.
In this type of deck you could still get Remands and Condescends maybe and Mana Leaks and a Cryptic Command or two and um. Assert Authority? That seems loose. Master of Etherium might even have more of a home in this type of deck because you could protect him and he’d actually stick around. And he gets put into play off Tezzeret, yay.
Storage Matrix is too narrow to be real good, right? Does it work the way I want it to with Savor the Moment? I don’t have internet access right now so I can’t look up wordings.
Dredge
In short, I still think this is going to be a real deck. The deck was hideously overpowered in Standard, and the only reason it didn’t completely dominate everything was that the format warped tremendously around it. You lose Breakthrough/Coliseum/Study and the good dredgers, but you still have things like Llanowar Mentor, Greenseeker, Oona’s Prowler, Drowned Rusalka, and Magus of the Bazaar – and several of those allow you to actually cast your Grave Trolls against decks like Rock that might have a way to stop your combo but probably cannot stop giant regenerating 19/19s. Particularly if the Zoo decks aren’t running Mogg Fanatics, it’s still very feasible to kill someone or at least do myriad ridiculous things very very quickly, even without Odyssey.
Without more testing I don’t really feel qualified to start talking about Swans or Storm, only that I think both of them will be pretty good. Swans/Chain costs less than Illusions/Donate, and very significantly there just aren’t that many removal spells that can kill Swans right now. It dodges Smother and each and every burn spell, and even if you Shackles it I can still just Chain it and kill you anyway.
Okay, that was long, but hopefully there was some food for thought there for the deck design process. I’ll be testing like crazy (for a change) after the prerelease, so let’s get some dialogue going so we can all put together lists.
Zac
—
Marijn:
Wow. I actually read completely through this thing. Just some thoughts:
To me it seems that Gifts Ungiven is going to be the best card in the format. It can do so many powerful things so a deck that can protect this card while not spending too many resources seems the way to go.
You’ve mentioned them but just to make everything clear a list of powerful things it can do
1. Worm Harvest + Life from the Loam
2. Raven’s Crime + Life from the Loam (combine 1. and 2. + a cycle land and boy, are we having fun?)
3. Reveillark, Body Double, Witness and Mirror Entity. You need or a bouncer, a card drawer, or even a Kitchen Finks to combo out here
4. Sundering Titan, Life from the Loam, Academy Ruins, Mindslaver
5. …
Raven’s Crime is obv. the nuts but if we are looking for the perfect answer we’re probably looking at Chalice of the Void (which also happens to be the nuts vs. Zoo and Life from the Loam). Ux Tron with Chalice and Gifts seems pretty nuts.
I like me a Zoo deck with 8 LD spells on turn 3 (Fulminator + Molten Rain) and some Katakis main against Signets / Mox / Affinity.
Dredge: not sure. I think people will still run Extirpates against Loam and Raven’s Crime and Sakura is still around and affinity will have Heap Doll / Ravager and potentially + Tormod’s Crypt.
Tezzeret: second best card in the format? And he also happens to be Blue! U/x control deck that can survive the early game and with Gifts / Tezzeret for the late game. Gifts / Tezzeret are both also very good with singleton artifact tutor targets. Tron + Gifts + Tezzeret UME?
That’s it for now. I don’t have internet at the new apartment yet so I haven’t read the full Shards spoiler.
M.
—
Hey,
Zac: I do not have a seperate group for testing. I’ll test a bit with Rogier Maaten and Ruud Warmenhoven, and also a bit with the Belgians.
Regarding your article, some random thoughts:
– I think your Tier One list is solid. I would combine Gifts Rock and Loam variants in one archetype (something you also allude to), although Astral Slide with Loam may also be playable if enough aggro decks show up. I think that a Doran mid-range deck is also still fine; something like the Doran decks from the previous season, with Duress replaced by the new WB Mesmeric Fiend and Vindicate replaced by Oblivion Ring or Putrefy.
– I do think that Counterbalance is dead. I do not think that Ponder nonsense is good enough.
– Giantbaiting in the Zoo mirror: don’t all your creatures just die in the mirror to opposing burn? I think conspiring this can be hard or “win-more”.
– 4 Keldon Marauders? Hate that card! I understand why you put him in, but I still prefer to have a creature that sticks. Perhaps I just don’t like card disadvantage like the Marauders. I personally do not play Confidant or Tribal Flames; I think you take too much damage from your lands that way or you get draws with the wrong lands (like Godless Shrine and Overgrown Tomb and no Red mana) by playing Black. I play Incinerates instead of Tribal Flames and Kataki and Gaddock Teeg instead of your two-drop creature. Kataki and Teeg may be a bit loose and whether it is good highly depends on the metagame, but it already frees up sideboard slots and in preliminary testing they have been good against every deck (Teeg has stranded Affinity’s Thoughtcasts, and Kataki has annoyed Chrome Moxes). If you don’t play an awkward manabase with Black, you can run Flame Javelin instead of Char.
– I like Master of Etherium in Affinity. Much better than Atog/Moriok Rigger/whatever because it is an artifact. I absolutely hate hate hate playing any Affinity deck with less than 52 artifacts, and right now I have a deck with only 4 Thoughtcast, 3 Nexus, and 1 Glimmervoid. Master has been good. Erayo/Rule of Law guy seems cool, but I think it is just too inconsistent or clunky.
Frank
~~
It’s amazing just how simultaneously wrong and right you can be at the same time. Looking back, we had a decent Tezzeret shell started but completely missed the simultaneous interactions with Trinket Mage. We also very evidently thought the format would be much slower than it turned out to be – though, as you’ll see, we revised that conclusion very quickly – but had inklings (like with the Keldon Marauders example) that the format wouldn’t be as slow as people may have initially thought. Also, our tremendous dislike of Dark Confidant started here, and carried over into our final lists, especially once we discovered Tidehollow Sculler. We recognized the value of Ethersworn Canonist, even before Elves, while at the same time drastically overestimating the import of Gifts as both a card and an archetype.
One of the things I enjoy about testing with Frank and Marijn is that, although we are all very much able to think outside of the box, they (and Frank in particular) are extremely good at getting me away from my bad ideas quickly and painlessly. Frequently I conceive of something that could be good – Counterbalance off exclusively Ponder and Serum Visions, for example – but that would require, even if good, a disproportionate amount of labor to make it work. Frank can get me off those ideas without being abrasive or ignorant, and that’s a valuable attribute to have in a testing partner. Also, it’s interesting to see how our preconceptions about Zoo evolved over time, from “don’t play Black at all, it’s terrible,” to “Tidehollow Sculler is the best card in the deck.”
~~
From: Stijn Van Goethem
To: Christophe Gregoir
Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 10:53 AM
Subject: gifts rock
4 Thoughtseize
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Wall of Roots
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Death Cloud
3 Garruk
3 Kitchen Finks
2 Putrefy
2 Damnation
1 Raven’s Crime
1 Life from the Loam
1 Worm’s Harvest
1 Ravenous Baloth
1 Eternal Witness
Sideboard:
Hate for affinity
4 Bitterblossom
“It’s better to die trying than to live in vain”
—
Marijn:
Mail van onze beste vriend Zac Hill. Reply maar even lekker [This is re: my “Format Overview” mail above]
I’d add 1 Engineered Explosives, 1 Recollect, 1 Smother, 1 Remand, 1 Condescend, and 1 land (you need some cycling lands for Loam to work well) and cut 1 Putrefy, 1 Damnation, 1 Death Cloud, 1 Garruk, 2 Tarmogoyf or something like that. I like to have more one-ofs for Gifts.
Anyhow, Gifts with Raven’s Crime, Life from the Loam and Worm Harvest does seem interesting, and I think this type of deck is certainly worth testing (also after sideboard, since you can tweak it well for every matchup).
—
Zac:
I personally think 4 Finks would be absolutely savage, probably cutting a Death Cloud. I can’t really think of a deck Finks is actively bad against. I mean combo, kind of, but it’s a clock, and it combos insanely well with Death Cloud (obviously) which is the only real reason to run three-drops, as we have so much turn 4 acceleration.
I also think it’s worth exploring Countermagic in this type of deck. I know it sort of goes against history and the proactive nature of the Rock deck, but at the same time all of the sudden you have enablers like Garruk and Wall of Roots and Gifts itself that allow you to sit with mana open on your opponent’s turn, and a card like Remand or Mana Leak or even Condescend could conceivably be very powerful.
~~
I include this string of emails just because this Rock deck was the first deck I was particularly excited to play. Unfortunately, it didn’t cut the mustard, but I enjoyed the innovation of a limited countermagic suite that Marijn also mentioned above. Also, it’s worth mentioning that the label “Gifts Rock” is a misnomer and should definitely be revised, especially if the deck isn’t particularly proactive.
~~
Marijn:
I’ll try to get you the NLU list tomorrow. It’s the one with UGW charm… should look something like this: (this is from my head so it is probably missing something)
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Spell Snare
4 Stifle
(Might be a bit too much but I like to have a Stifle on the play and a Spell Snare on the draw)
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Chrome Mox (if only there would be a way where Wall of Roots was better… because Wall of Roots changes the Zoo matchup A LOT)
3 UGW charm
4 Rune Snag
2 Cryptic Command
2 Loxodon Hierarch
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Threads of Disloyalty
2 Venser
(All those two-offs are to see what is better… I could easily see myself running 3 Vendilion Clique 3 Command instead of 2 Venser)
21 lands (might be too much with 4 Chrome Mox)
So if you are battling pick this or the Loam deck and keep me updated.
Going to school now… Won’t be online for a day or two. Cya!
~~
This was the first NLU deck we were excited about—or, at least, the Belgians were, anyway. Jan apparently could not lose with this deck until Elves became a reality, but I on the other hand could not win a single game. Ancestral Vision in particular seemed like the worst card of all time. Like we’re playing the fastest format in recent memory and we’re going to go -1 card on turn 1 and leave ourselves unable to Snare or Stifle. Seems strong. But it’s interesting how different decks maintain different levels of performance across playtest groups. What’s working out phenomenally well for one cell might not even be on the radar of the other—which is why communication is so critically important.
~~
Frank:
Yeah, I already made some basic lists (without sideboards) of the obvious decks. I already took a box of useless commons plus a marker pen and set out to make 3 combo decks, 3 control decks, and 3 aggro decks. These are my lists:
AGGRO DECKS
AFFINITY (I think versions with Erayo and Ethersworn Canonist are too inconsistent and clunky, and I hate any Affinity deck with less than 52 artifacts. This deck should win very often on turn 4-5 in game 1, but needs a good sideboard plan versus the hate.)
3 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Glimmervoid
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Great Furnace
4 Seat of Synod
(20 land)
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
4 Ornithopter
4 Master of Etherium
(24 creature)
4 Chromatic Star
4 Cranial Plating
4 Thoughtcast
4 Springleaf Drum
(16 spells)
DORAN
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
2 Polluted Delta
2 Godless Shrine
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Temple Garden
2 Forest
1 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Treetop Village
1 Murmuring Bosk
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
2 Chrome Mox
(24 land)
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Doran, the Siege Tower
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Loxodon Hierarch
3 Tidehollow Sculler
(23 creatures)
4 Thoughtseize
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
3 Smother
3 Putrefy
(13 spells)
ZOO (I don’t like to play Black just for Confidant and Tribal Flames; because you take too much damage from your lands, sometimes you are color screwed, and I don’t think Confidant is significantly better than the alternative two-drops in G/W/R. I added 1 Oblivion Ring because I noticed GerryT praising it, so I figured it may be worth trying.)
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
3 Sacred Foundry
3 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
2 Mountain
1 Forest
(21 land)
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Kird Ape
2 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
2 Mogg Fanatic
2 Figure of Destiny
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Kataki, War’s Wage
2 Gaddock Teeg
(22 creatures)
4 Lightning Helix
4 Molten Rain
4 Incinerate
2 Seal of Fire
2 Rift Bolt
1 Oblivion Ring
(16 spells)
COMBO DECKS
DESIRE COMBO (the many one-ofs and two-ofs appear random and they are, but in the few games I played with this deck so far the numbers appear approximately correct, i.e. you wouldn’t want to play 4 Infernal Tutor or 4 Chrome Mox, but a couple is okay. I would also want to try a Dragonstorm deck, but so far in 20 games of testing with this Desire deck a Desire has never fizzled, and Dragonstorm is 3 mana more than Desire, which may prove difficult.)
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Steam Vents
3 Island
2 Cascade Bluffs
2 Dreadship Reef
1 Watery Grave
(19 land)
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Rite of Flame
4 Seething Song
4 Manamorphose
1 Chrome Mox
1 Chromatic Star
(22 mana)
4 Mind’s Desire
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Ponder2 Remand
2 Infernal Tutor
2 Grapeshot
1 Sins of the Past
(19 combo/search)
PROTEAN HULK+THROUGH THE BREACH COMBO (Tried this deck out, but I think it is less consistent than the other combo decks and has too many dead draws like Body Double or Carrion Feeder, which by the way are the first 2 creatures to search with Hulk, after which you sacrifice Body Double/Hulk for Reveillark and Mogg Fanatic and infinite damage)
4 Protean Hulk
4 Through the Breach
4 Summoner’s Pact
4 Eerie Procession
4 Seething Song
4 Ponder
2 Reveillark
2 Body Double
2 Carrion Feeder
1 Mogg Fanatic
1 Glacial Ray
1 Kodama’s Reach
1 Ideas Unbound
2 Pentad Prism
(36 spells)
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
3 Steam Vents
2 Breeding Pool
1 Watery Grave
1 Hallowed Fountain
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Chrome Mox
1 Gemstone Caverns
(24 mana sources)
SWANS/CHAINS COMBO (With Gifts and some extra Gifts targets; can also occasionally just win on Goyf+Swans beatdown)
4 Chrome Mox
2 Island
1 Forest
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Snow-covered Forest
2 Snow-covered Island
1 Mountain
2 Breeding Pool
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
4 Wooded Foothills
(24 mana sources)
4 Ponder
4 Chain Of Plasma
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Remand
3 Condescend
2 Sleight of Hand
1 Repeal
1 Conflagrate
1 Firespout
1 Recollect
1 Engineered Explosives
(26 spells)
1 Eternal Witness
1 Tarmogoyf
4 Swans Of Bryn Argoll
4 Wall of Roots
(10 creature)
CONTROL DECKS
UW TRON (with Gifts, since I still love that card.)
4 Urza’s Mine
4 Urza’s Tower
4 Urza’s Power Plant
2 Academy Ruins
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
3 Tolaria West
1 Island
3 Azorius Signet
1 Talisman of Progress
1 Chrome Mox
(29 mana)
1 Sundering Titan
1 Triskelion
1 Platinum Angel
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Decree of Justice
2 Mindslaver
(8 big spells)
4 Wrath of God
1 Repeal
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Engineered Explosives
(8 anti-creature)
4 Condescend
4 Remand
(8 counter)
3 Gifts Ungiven
4 Thirst for Knowledge
(7 card draw)
FAERIES (Haven’t played a game with this yet…)
3 Spell Snare
2 Stifle
2 Cryptic Command
2 Remand
4 Ancestral Vision
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Threads of Disloyalty
2 Smother
(20 spells)
4 Bitterblossom
4 Dark Confidant
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendilion Clique
(15 creature)
3 Chrome Mox
4 Mutavault
1 Riptide Laboratory
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Watery Grave
3 Island
1 Swamp
3 Underground River
(25 mana)
ASTRAL SLIDE (with Black mainly for sideboard cards, like discard to have a chance versus control or combo in games 2/3)
4 Secluded Steppe
4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Windswept Heath
1 W/U fetch land
1 G/R fetch land
3 Temple Garden
1 Forest
3 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Barren Moor
1 W/B dual
1 G/B dual
(25 land)
4 Eternal Witness
2 Loxodon Hierarch
2 Kitchen Finks
4 Astral Slide
3 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Renewed Faith
4 Wrath of God
2 Eternal Dragon
2 Decree of Justice
3 Life from the Loam
3 Glittering Wish
2 Edge of Autumn
(35 non-land)
Hope this helps!
Frank
~~
This is exactly the type of email you desperately want to receive in a playtest group. It always seems like everyone is spouting off isolated ideas, but nobody is actually building decks. This Swans list is particularly innovative and was miles ahead of where it seemed most other people were looking. I credit this post with kickstarting most of the good discussion we’d have going from there on out, even though we rejected several of the decks almost immediately as being either too narrow or too “cute.” Also note the pre-emptive defenses of some of the more peculiar card choices. This is important because the impulse, when testing, is to immediately switch some cards around to try your own ideas, and the first things to go are the things which your teammates don’t seem to have thought through all the way or are including “just to try them out.” Obviously, excluding these things before they are tested is sub-par, because you’re killing ideas before they have a chance to hatch, but it’s a natural human tendency. Therefore it’s extremely wise to preempt these bad habits with just a couple sentences of descriptive reasoning.
~~
From Me:
So, the beauty of living in Malaysia, halfway across the world from any girl whose name I can actually pronounce, much less with whom I could have a conversation, is that I do awesome things with my Friday nights like play Magic. I worked for a good eight and a half hours today on a Freedom of Information presentation for the government of Selangor, will definitely be working at least 60 of the next 72 hours on aforementioned project, so what else could be better than devoting the rest of that time to the oh-so-enjoyable process of testing?!
I managed to get in a good number of matchups, actually, so I wanted to go ahead and talk about those.
The first thing I ran was straight up Frank’s Zoo versus Affinity, and after a fifteen game set the results were… disappointingly straightforward. Master of Etherium was actually much better than I gave it credit for – the Anthem affect actually matters – and turned the tide of every game in which it was cast. The disadvantage about not running cards like Atog/Frenzy or Shrapnel Blast – even though running 52ish artifacts does wonders for your consistency and overall raw power – is that you basically have no outs against Kataki, and true to form I lost every game where the little wonder spirit hit play. Aside from Kataki-games, though, I lost only once, and that was due to an abundance of Cranial Platings without good targets, coupled with a decided lack of lands. It’s worth noting that I ran Heap Dolls in the Arcbound Worker slot, and though Worker is obviously superior in this matchup, having him instead of the Dolls would have never made the difference between a game and a loss.
The thing about this matchup is that a) Zoo is much more reliant upon its guys now than it ever was before, and b) Master of Etherium is positively giant. Even if they have an Oblivion Ring for him specifically, your Ravagers and Enforcers set up a perimeter that is incredibly difficult to deal with, and you can always just drop another Master. But it’s not nearly as easy for them to burn you out from like 14 as it used to be, even if they have Tribal Flames, and they are dealing themselves damage whereas you are not. The only problem comes if you just draw a bunch of do-nothings. Even the Ornithopter/Plating plan is much better against them than it used to be, because there is no Lavamancer to sit there machine gunning you.
I then ran Affinity against the new Footsteps deck, and the results were again promising for Affinity – somewhat. On one hand, your kill is remarkably fast if nobody is interfacing with you, and Heap Doll is a huge beating. Even if people are running things like Chain of Vapor, Darkblast, or my suggestion of Pull From Eternity (also is good against Extirpate, Cranial Extraction (if that gets played) making those card in a sense like a kind of tutor for you, when people are rushing to cast them ASAP) Doll makes them find those cards at very little opportunity cost to you. I will say that I think 20 lands and 4 Drum is entirely too many mana sources. I was running the miser’s Fatal Frenzy for awhile, which isn’t actually all that bad – helps your goldfish versus control, garners surprise wins against Zoo when they just leave one guy back, and you never have to worry about drawing multiples – but I think an even better solution than 19-plus-a-random-card might be to go to eighteen lands/4 Drums and run two Terrarions. Some preliminary test draws with that configuration seem to indicate that you solve the colored mana problem (which is now very pronounced with two Masters) while at the same time not losing that many virtual lands. Because casting and cycling mana-development spells like Chromatic Star and Terrarion doesn’t harm Affinity nearly as much as it does other decks, by virtue of the whole “locking-in-the-costs” trick, you can get by with things you couldn’t in other decks.
Also, even though it was perfectly acceptable in these matchups, we might consider cutting a Cranial Plating. There are just so many situations where multiples are awful, and it’s definitely a hand-clogger. Thing is Master of Etherium frequently does the same thing but better, as you don’t need a flyer for him to push damage through. I mean you definitely are going to want three, but against non-combo decks it’s frequently redundant. I don’t think I ever needed two in any of the games I played, and it’s certainly not the most important card to draw a single copy of either.
Maybe some Pyrite Spellbombs for Kataki?
I then tested Footsteps against Marijn’s Next Level Blue deck. M, you’re one of my favorite Magicians, Harry Potter garb or no, but man does that deck seem loose. It’s like Standard plus marginal cards, and exactly like the Rock problem we’ve talked about, you’ve got so many situational spells. Threads/Stifle/Snare/Wall of Roots etc. Plus, Visions just isn’t my idea of a business spell in this format. Like turn 5… wow, I think I dreamed of seeing turn 5 once. I mean it can happen in this format, but to get there it usually means not going down -1 for the most important turns of the game. All of which is to say that even though the Footsteps matchup is bad, I don’t think that is why I was disliking the deck. Nothing seemed powerful enough, and you’ve got a strategic disadvantage against the other control decks (Tron they have more mana, and Gifts Rock how do you deal with Loam?)
I was only able to get in a triple-set with 8 LD Zoo, but the results were promising. Because of the increased focus on disruption, I went for the Confidants over the 2/2 silver-bullet-bear package, just to help you chain more LD spells. Because I was at 4 land types already, the Incinerates became Flames again. My synthesis of the situation is that you lose out slightly in the mirror (because you take more damage) but on the other hand neither Kataki or Teeg is that exciting. You sacrifice major points in the Affinity matchup (Kataki obviously) but have a net gain versus the decks against which Teeg is good. I also won one of the mirror games by just randomly Fulminatoring a Temple Garden that left my opponent’s spells stranded, so there is the blowout factor.
That Footsteps deck is utter nuts, by the way. The thing is it’s so easy to disrupt. I think Pull out of the board is solid, as is Darkblast if specifically Heap Doll is a problem, or Pithing Needle for Crypt, etc., and the advantage over Dredge is that you actually have card drawing to dig for your answers. Against any deck that doesn’t clock you, you can just sculpt the uber hand, and the decks that do clock you… well, your clock is faster. If we can figure out a way to bust the hate, that is the deck to play.
Maybe like Goyfs in the main?
The thing about those Gifts Rock decks was that they could never beat anyone that wanted to beat them. Like, half the thing about Rock and Nail at Valencia was that there was literally nothing Gifts Rock could do against Sundering Titan. Now, Thoughtseize etc. are much better now that there is not Top, but I really do not want to run Thoughtseize unless I’m being very aggressive or I have real ways of recouping the life.
Things like Kitchen Finks get a lot worse of people adopt GerryT’s Oblivion Ring technology, but they are still good cards.
I just hate trying to control the game without being able to say “no!” Countermagic is also really good with Wall of Roots, obviously.
I’m going to test that Gifts deck and see if anything happens. The other decks were in fact awful, hehe.
—
From Me:
Alright, spent all day testing both our standard and experimental versions of lists. I only got to play against a fraction of the metagame – Footsteps, Desire, Tron, Oblivion Ring Zoo, and Affinity – but that was better than nothing. There were the gauntlet decks, and then the decks with “modifications,” a.k.a. “Things worth trying out,” which turned out to be:
8-LD Zoo
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Kird Ape
3 Isamaru
2 Figure of Destiny
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Molten Rain
4 Fulminator Mage
4 Lightning Helix
4 Tribal Flames
1 Seal of Fire
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
3 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
2 Stomping Ground
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Mountain
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
1 Blood Crypt
1 Steam Vents
1 Overgrown Tomb
Linear Affinity
4 Master of Etherium
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
4 Cranial Plating
4 Thoughtcast
4 Chromatic Star
2 Terrarion
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Ornithopter
4 Heap Doll
4 Springleaf Drum
2 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Glimmervoid
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Darksteel Citadel
3 Great Furnace
Desire
4 Seething Song
4 Rite of Flame
3 Desperate Ritual
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Ponder
1 Esper Ultimatum
1 Sins of the Past
4 Mind’s Desire
3 Chromatic Sphere
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Manamorphose
4 Remand
2 Chrome Mox
2 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Steam Vents
3 Cascade Bluffs
Here are my notes about the lists, and comments on the matchups.
The Dark Confidants in the Zoo list were an attempt to reinforce the LD theme by, ostensibly, helping ensure that you have an LD spell on turn 3. I figured it was worth trying. Once Black was added, it wasn’t too big a stretch to switch Incinerates to Tribal Flames and throw in the Steam Vents to get the full five sometimes, which happened occasionally (maybe 1/3 of the time without trouble). Flames was almost always at least for four, and it was good in every matchup all things considering. Certainly better than Incinerate in the abstract. The Confidants, though – as we’ve already decided, to be fair – sucked. They are not fast enough and rarely is card advantage your problem; in a deck like this, cards ought to be measured in terms of damage, anyway. The matchup against Footsteps was a hell of a lot closer than I expected; you have a fast goldfish, and if they don’t have a Mox, your LD is really good against them. Fulminator Mage specifically was actually getting me pretty excited; he was never ever “bad” any time I drew him. Sometimes he is unexciting, sure, but I can deal with unexciting as long as he gets the job done. Chumping a Master of Etherium and kolding a colored source won me at least a game. A lot of the time you’d rather have O-Ring, but a lot of the time O-Ring is a blank and I HATE having stone dead cards ever in beatdown decks. So anyway, yeah. Mox is the single greatest determinant factor re: whether Footsteps wins or not, and it’s actually this matchup, not Affinity, that convinces me you want three Katakis in the maindeck to support the LD theme. Thing is, in the decks that do have Chrome Mox, the Mox is one of those decks’ best weapons against you. Shutting it down as a part of a greater mana denial contingency plan – as well as having a turn-2 auto win against a good chunk of the format – is enough to get me excited. I also like the Keldon Marauders a good deal, but I know Frank can’t stand that card. The difference is, in a deck like this it is not “card disadvantage,” really, because you’ve got enough burn that your cards and damage can frequently be measured along the same metric.
Against Affinity, the matchup was rough if they had a Master. Your best bet was either to mise a Jitte (I love having a single copy of that card) or to get a big Goyf in early. Confidant was even more terrible than normal (and I hate saying this because Confidant is my favorite Magic card). You’d win a fair share of games, of course, because sometimes Affinity just gets the like little-guy draw and doesn’t really get anywhere, but that is how it goes.
Against Tron the LD really shined. You can usually tell when they are telegraphing Remands and Condescends so you just hit them with damage in the interim and force them to deal with your men. You LD them when you don’t care if it gets countered or if you can keep them off a critical threshold. Still, the LD was predictably very good in this slot and certainly better than whatever else would be there. Fulminator is absolutely solid gold, because you can just let him stick around and beat until they are in danger of assembling the Tron. Or, like, he really messes with their ability to do stuff on their main phase because suddenly you might destroy their blue source and be free to cast whatever you want. I was very surprised by this guy. Confidant was good against Tron but again Kataki would probably be even better. So many decks are just not prepared for their manabase to be attacked from a diversity of angles. The Desire matchup was bad but not unwinnable. They are of course faster than you, but I don’t really feel this matchup needs much explaining. Teeg would add percentage points, but his effectiveness varies depending on the opponent’s exact build. If it’s my list above, well he’s game boys. Other guys just Grapeshot him. I’d rather just kill them faster. It is important to realize that sometimes you have 3 mana and they have a nonbasic and they can’t Remand, but it’s still nevertheless better to cast a non-LD spell anyway. This usually requires you to actually count the mana he’s likely to have access to and seeing if LD is more productive than, say, casting Flames on him now so he’s dead to a Helix or another Flames plus your attack next turn.
Now, the Zoo mirror was really interesting. You are at a disadvantage because a) you take more damage, b) Confidant sucks (though we’ll remedy this), and c) you have less burn. Your advantages are the miser’s Jitte (which you might admittedly cut when you’re running Kataki) and the fact that sometimes you just manascrew them right out of the game, which happens more often than you might expect but not often enough to surmount your natural disadvantage in the mirror. What I noticed, though, was that your strategic disadvantage in the mirror falls more or less within the realm of variance; like,, most of the time, one person just has a nut draw and wins. So tweaking much either way is not frequently going to get you there. Also, Figure of Destiny was really, really unimpressive. I found myself frequently wanting either Savannah Lions or even Tattermunge Maniac just for ease-of-castability purposes, but with Maniac you of course have Fanatic and STE problems. Maybe like Mogg Fanatic just to have a one drop is fine; like, Fanatic is gasoline obviously, but there are no longer any Lavamancers to kill, or many Birds, or many Bridges, and he is so “meh.” Still, he might be good enough.
This is really random but a good card out of the board in that Goryo deck might be Pull from Eternity, as it mitigates Heap Dolls and Extirpates and Cremates and Crypts and Relics of Progenitus and Faerie Macabres and everything else, while also letting you cak, I don’t know, Ancestral Visions if you really want to.
The Desire deck I switched around quite a bit from “Gerry’s” version. The Grapeshot/Pyromancer’s Swath is seriously only better against Gaddock Teeg – the present list has no way to deal with that card – but even against Zoo with Teeg I won more games because I was Tendrilsing and Sinsing and had another Sphere to filter Red mana than I lost because of Teeg. That said, having an answer to that guy in the maindeck is of course not a bad idea. But I was actually pretty happy with the fortitude of this list. The Brilliant Ultimatum was an experiment to replace the second Sins. Clearly Sins is almost always better to hit off a Desire than the Ultimatum, because you can just Desire again. The one exception is when they have a way to interact with your graveyard. Thing is, I expect Heap Dolls in Affinity to be pretty run of the mill by now, and I wanted to see how effectively you could run a version of Desire that didn’t have to worry about the graveyard at all. Sure enough, Ultimatum is quite a bit less impressive off a Desire than a Sins is – but it is still good enough to get the job done most of the time. I also — randomly – won the very second game I played, even though I totally did not expect it all, by discarding Ultimatum on my second turn and then Sins of the Pasting it after a bunch of rituals and a Bloom in lieu of having access to an actual storm spell, and I hit enough to go the distance. No idea if it’s correct, but happy to report it’s not awful. I would also like to find a way to have a fourth Chromatic Sphere. It’s good to jack your storm count by Remanding, and given how limited your actual search is, it’s good to be able to cantrip as much as possible. It may be that 1 Sins is enough and you can cut Ultimatum; the problem is, though, you really want every Mind’s Desire to be a that’s-game-boys type spell, and with modern TEPS being quite a bit less explosive than old-school “sweet there’s Burning Wish” TEPS, you basically have to have a good expectation to chain Desires in order to guarantee that a desire for like 6 is good enough to win.
I have less to say about this deck even though I playtested a comparable number of games, just because it’s straightforward. It’s not at all easy to play; getting Tendrils mana and lethal damage can often be tricky, and I had to frequently make counterintuitive plays involving the Remanding of my random spells and the non-Remanding of potentially-juicy-Remandable-targets like my opponents’ Molten Rain just to ensure I had lethal next turn, but that’s all stuff you figure out when you’re playing the deck. Also, make sure to get good at on-the-fly probability math. Frequently this situation or something similar would come up: I’d need, like, two Black mana to Tendrils or Sins. Would it be more likely that I’d get it by hitting a Manamorphose specifically from a Peer after putting 2 cards back from Ponder (4-outer, effectively 3 opportunities), or a Morphose/Sphere/Mox/Blue land to cast the Peer anyway on shuffling from Ponder and drawing a random 1 (something like a 20 outer, 1 opportunity). Or more generally the Ponder (3 opportunity no restrictions) versus the Peer (5 opportunity with restrictions) depending on your outs.
The Affinity I credit to Frank, the only change being the replacement of two lands (20 and 4 Springleaf is certainly too many; 19 lands felt slightly too much and I’ve been having really good luck with 18, but I can see 19 being correct if 18 makes you too uncomfortable etc.) with two Terrarions. I’ve found the Terry to be absolutely incredible. The thing is that you’re such a high-velocity deck. You’re explosive, and Master of Etherium – far from being the moderate, win-more, semi-loose card I expected it to be – was actually a tremendous beating. One-mana artifacts that stick on the table to make him huge, and then when you have mana development around turn 3 or so replace themselves with actual threats that make him even more huge, while facilitating casting him in the first place – these artifacts are unsurprisingly very good cards. Cutting a Blinkmoth may be too greedy, but I absolutely hate drawing it against every single deck but Tron, because all you want are artifacts. Those of you that have tested with other Affinity lists containing things like Atogs, Frenzies, Shrapnel Blasts, Confidants, Tarmogoyfs, etc., I strongly urge you to give this list a spin. With the Terrarions especially this felt like one of the best Extended decks I have ever played, and I love an Extended format. You are so much better at being both the aggro and control deck in a whole host of matchups.
Against Zoo, they have to show you an Oblivion Ring or have a fistful of Tribal Flames backed by blockers or you’re just going to out-monster them. Master’s “Anthem” effect is so incredibly good in this matchup, making your Frogmites and Ornithopters both relevant in combat. And you draw so many cards that just as they think they have exhausted all of your resources, you drop some more Enforcers. Or you smack them upside the head with a Plating, either equipped at instant speed or attached to a flyer. Seriously the only games Zoo won were either the games where your deck served up nothing early in the way of fat and you sort of “fizzled” despite a Thoughtseize or two – Mana-flood, mostly, since proper “screw” rarely happens; it does, of course, you just have to recognize it as such, because it’s so atypical. Rather than just sit there unable to cast anything, it’s more like you have to piss about drawing cards for a turn or so, or spend a turn casting a Star to get colored mana, and then move on, only to lose occasionally to the tempo loss – or they get an early Kataki. Rather than try and solve the problem immediately I wanted to just play as many games with this ultra-streamlined deck and figured out what can be done to beat the Kats without changing too much. Thing is I like all the artifacts, but it’s the cards like Atog and Frenzy that make beating Kataki easier. Pyrite Spellbomb is not too far off from Terrarion, but it really bothers me to replace it because colored mana is such an issue with this deck even at twenty lands. And I don’t want to warp my maindeck around Kataki when a) not every archetype runs it, b) some archetypes that could choose not to, c) the archetypes that do run it usually play two or so in the main maximum, and d) occasionally when they do draw it it’s too late to matter. Still, if they play a turn 2 Kataki there is literally no way you are winning. Suggestions? I could go back to 4 Blinkmoth Nexus; that way it’s easier to keep some of your guys around. But MAN does it suck to draw that card early.
Against Tron, of course Wrath is bad for you. However, again, you draw a TON of cards. Moreover, because say you get Wrathed, you immediately get a draw step, and can then crack a Terrarion for net 0 mana, you can immediately deploy what you draw – and what you usually draw is gas in a deck with this few lands. Thoughtcast is obviously just the nuts. Blinkmoth Nexus is one of your best cards against them, of course, but it’s important to curve out early enough that they’re forced to dig for a Wrath instead of developing – and, of course, sometimes they have it and you just kill them first. The games you lose – and there are a lot of them – are the games where they stunt your growth with a Counterspell of some sort and you never really get off the ground. I found I started winning more when I stopped playing around Wrath, really. You have no range beyond your speed and your Nexus. The thing is, 2WW is actually not that easy for them, and you’re so fast that they really can’t hiccup. Your percentage against the Gifts versions, by the way, are a lot higher, because Heap Doll is such a tremendous beating and frequently they can’t just Decree you out. Still, this is the only matchup where I want three Blinkmoth Nexus, because even if you have a nut draw a single Repeal (though that card is rather archaic) or a single Condescend can just screw everything over to a truly epic degree. They have no good answers to Plating/Nexus though.
Against Footsteps, it really was all about whether you had Heap Doll or not. Thing is, between them just fizzling, or you having Doll, or you just killing them, you actually have an advantage in that matchup. The problem is that I’m sure the people who choose to play that deck at the Pro Tour will have good, creative answers to cards like Heap Doll that are so obviously maindeck-able, so I don’t want to have to try and rely upon that exclusively as an answer. Still, as it stands most of the Footsteps lists I’ve seen are very kold to that card, and the more answers to it they try to back in the more you can just kill them. Seriously, uninhibited this deck goldfishes turn 4 with unreal consistency, although without Master or Plating you frequently have to go all-in on a Ravager to do so – but that’s fine against most combo builds. Still, the matchups against Footsteps are better than those against Desire because of precisely that, and because Footsteps takes more damage from its lands. Desire is basically a goldfish, at which they are better than you, but not so much that they just scare me too much.
The most important thing to take away from all this overall, though, is that we really need to work on resilience now that we have a feel for how the “raw-powered” versions of the decks compare against one another. Where can we squeeze in answers to graveyard removal in Footsteps, or answers to Teeg in Desire, or answers to Kataki in Affinity while still managing to balance consistency with resilience (a reworking of the traditional “power versus consistency” debate)? It’s time, in short, to get creative, and this is where our decks are made or broken. I really like Affinity and LD Zoo at this point. Of course, I still have all the Rock builds, all the Zoo builds, other Affinity builds, and Tron, and Doran, and Gifts, all of these decks to test – but that is the peril of a wide open format.
LET ME KNOW PLEASE how y’all’s testing has gone, because it’s hard to get people together for games here and so I need to know what we need data for the most. I have MWS now, so shoot me an email when you can. Take care, and I look forward to hearing from y’all!
Zac
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