I’ve been in Alabama testing for Nationals with Ervin Tormos for the last two days, and I’m leaving for Boston/New York/Baltimore/DC tomorrow at 6:45 in the morning, so I’m wedging this into a stopgap laundry cycle in order to turn it in on time. That said, I do hope to talk about a couple of relevant things. First, I want to cover Billy Moreno’s Mono-Red-splash-Korlash list for Block Constructed, because I think it’s absurd, and second I want to address a couple of things that Tenth Edition brings to the table for Standard.
Here’s the initial list Billy shipped to me when I said I was planning on going to Montreal:
4 Ghostflame Sliver
4 Sedge Sliver
4 Rift Bolt
3 Fiery Temper
4 Ghostfire
4 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
2 Word of Seizing
2 Molten Disaster
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Molten Slagheap
5 Swamp
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
12 Mountain
I forget exactly what the sideboard was, but it featured a tight creature removal suite designed both to deal with pesky Tarmogoyfs from the G/W deck while also managing to kill opposing Korlashes.
However, I am sure that y’all are sick and tired of hearing pros talk about the decklists they were using in Montreal, because even though that’s the format they tested for, we’re now a good four weeks into the qualifier season and the metagame is entirely different. For that reason I am not going to wax poetic about the origins of the list, and instead say that the existence of Mono-Blue and Blue/Green Fish variants, along with the aggro-Slivers list – coupled with difficulties I had with Billy’s manabase – led me to the following list:
4 Sedge Sliver
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Greater Gargadon
2 Thunderblade Charge
4 Ghostfire
1 Rift Bolt
2 Slaughter Pact
4 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
4 Mogg War Marshal
2 Word of Seizing
1 Disintegrate
2 Molten Disaster
4 Swamp
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Molten Slagheap
2 Zoetic Cavern
9 Mountain
Sideboard
4 Dead/Gone
1 Death Rattle
1 Word of Seizing
3 Tendrils of Corruption
2 Damnation
4 Avalanche Riders
The Ghostflame Slivers, despite being insanely cute with Sedgy Boy, are out because they are so difficult to cast and are so mediocre without everybody’s third-favorite Time Spiral Block 3/3 creature. Also, the number of Teferi’s Moats in U/B Teachings decks has declined drastically, making the ability much less relevant. Keldon Marauders, meanwhile, is actually just a giant beating pretty much all of the time. He does so many things so well. He gives you a little bit of initiative on the turn that you cast him because nobody is willing to swing into him, and he basically always does five damage. If he IT’S COMING!!!!!-s your Gargadon in the process, all the better. I have been extremely happy with his performance in the deck, and as I told Billy, a lot of the time I would actually rather cast him on turn 2 than Ghostflame Sliver even if I have the Sedge.
Most of the other changes are self-explanatory. Thunderblade Charge is much better than Rift Bolt simply because Bolt rarely gets suspended; the one Bolt is still there just because Charge is loose in multiples, and for curve purposes you don’t want four exclusively-sorcery-speed three mana burn spells. Charge makes a late-game War Marshal topdeck an asset rather than a liability. The extra X-spell is a concession to the twenty-sixth land, especially because it’s perfectly reasonable to cast Disintegrate in the early game to deal with a problem threat. Slaughter Pact is the answer to Tarmogoyf, but is surprisingly good against almost everything. Few people ever see it coming, and the card is even more powerful in an aggressive deck because it exponentially increases the pressure you can mount in the first five turns of the game.
The sideboard, meanwhile, is designed to do several things. If anybody plays Red anymore, you have such a blowout advantage in the mirror obviously because of all the Black removal. Against basically any aggressive deck, though – from G/W to G/U to Slivers to even Kenji Pickles – it’s pretty realistic to be able to kill almost everything they drop onto the table. All the while your Gargadon is ticking down, just chomping at the bit to deal nine points.
I want to talk a bit about the manabase, though, because a lot of people don’t understand what I mean when I say it’s bad. They look at Billy’s initial list and say, “What, it’s a two-color deck with twenty-five lands. What’s the problem?”
First, in a deck with X-spells, it’s fairly dumb not to play at least three storage lands. But while these technically provide both colors of mana, they do not do so until the third turn of the game and even then only if you’ve done stone nothing on your second turn. If you’re not casting a spell on turn 2, it’s not going to be easy for you to win games. This puts you in an awkward situation of having to run the Odyssey-block twenty-two colored sources and all basic lands manabase. As you might recall, that format’s Pro Tour winner ran a land that Lightning Bolted him every turn because his deck’s mana was just such a nightmare.
At the same time, we’ve got access to Graven Cairns. Why aren’t we running it?
The issue is that you need too many actual Swamps. Billy wasn’t playing it because he cared a whole lot about suspending a Gargadon on turn 1. That’s obviously less of a priority for me – I am running four Terramorphic Expanses, after all – but it’s still a valid point that Cairns sure cannot do that for you. The problem is that Cairns only actually fixes your mana for Ghostflame Sliver in the initial list and Slaughter Pact in the second one. Expanse, meanwhile, activates Sedge Sliver, allows you to regenerate it without being awkward, and grows your Korlash. To me, that was enough to balance the very severe drawback of coming into play tapped, particularly since Expanse can tap for mana with an Urborg out.
The Dead/Gones are for Morphs and Slivers, the Word of Seizing is for big dumb Green guys or opposing Korlashes, the Death Rattle is for other Korlashes, the Tendrils and Damnations are self-explanatory, and the Avalanche Riders are in because according to GerryT “The only thing this U/B deck loses to is Avalanche Riders.” It’s probably possible to take out a Tendrils for a Fury Charm or some other way to kill Coalition Relic, since the decks that run that card are fairly reliant upon it.
Right, so Tenth Edition.
Why Not To Run Goblin Lore in Your Dredge Deck in 200 Words or Less
“But it’s retarded gas, right? If you have a Dredge outlet in the graveyard then you’re probably going to mill something like half of your deck.”
Um, sort of.
Let’s be clear for a second. First, Lore costs Red mana, which the Dredge deck does not exactly play. We can fix this either by running Mountains in the Greenseeker version, or by coming full circle and playing Simian Spirit Guides in the U/B version.
Wait a second.
If you’re Greenseekering for a Mountain, then that means you have an active Dredge outlet and you’re probably not losing that game. If you’re using Simian Spirit Guide, then that probably means you’re accelerating out the Goblin Lore, right? There’s a problem with that, though. Turn 1 Lore is not all that tight, because you don’t have a Dredge card in the yard at that point, and so all you’re doing is looking at four cards and putting some random ones in the bin. Now, if one of those three random cards happens to be a Dredge spell and you have another Lore (and another Spirit Guide or red mana source), then congratulations, you’re probably not losing. That’s a lot of “ifs,” though.
“But I can just play a bunch of dual lands that produce Red and not accelerate into Lore, but accelerate into an outlet and then Lore later.”
Oh, so you have to have an active outlet first for Lore to be good? Interesting.
What it comes down to is that Dredge’s biggest problem is not being able to keep a discard outlet on the table. That’s its greatest weakness; it’s already a fast enough deck without Lore anywhere in its sixty cards. Lore does not solve that problem. Meanwhile, you’ve already got Drowned Rusalka, who turns any of your random guys into a Dredge for the low, low cost of a Blue mana – and lets you discard before the draw, and can often win the game by himself anyway if you have around three Blue mana open. You’ve already got a cheap, multi-purpose “win the game in one fell swoop” spell, but it also doubles as a discard outlet and as a man to activate Bridge or sack to Dread Return.
I am pretty sure that was more than two hundred words.
Other things about Tenth:
We lost Persecute, but we got Head Games. We can’t House Guard or Clutch for that card, but it’s still incredibly good in pseudo-control mirrors, and nobody is going to be prepared for it.
Fanatic, Incinerate, Treetop Village, blah blah.
I think we’re going to see, on average, games that take about a turn or two longer. It’s not just Seething Song, either; both Kird Ape and Savannah Lions are out. This in turn makes Scab-Clan Mauler worse, meaning there are also fewer three mana 3/3s, and one can easily see how the amount of damage creatures can deal in the early turns of the game has exponentially decreased. It’s important not to forget about Boros Swiftblade, though, as that card has been extremely underutilized and there’s very few things to do about that guy with a Moldervine Cloak on him.
There are tools out there for a successful mana denial strategy, and it’s not just the usual suspects. Venser and Riftwing Cloudskate combine with Cryoclasm, Spiketail Hatchling, Grand Arbiter, and maybe even Avalanche Riders to make life very difficult for control strategies.
For some reason I recall Llanowar Sentinel being a huge house back in the day. I might be going crazy, but there’s got to be something to do with that guy.
Denizen of the Deep brings out the Timmy in me.
Mind Stone is crazy good. I have been playing with that little gem in Five-Color for the last several years, and I can tell you with confidence it’s one of the best tools control decks have received in some time. It actually just does everything. I would almost go so far as to recommend throwing it in every deck that does not cast a creature on turn 2, and seeing how the results turn out. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
I’ll close with a Seismic Assault deck. Yes, I know everybody has one already, but what the hell. It’s even been testing pretty well, too. Yay.
Creatures (8)
Lands (25)
Spells (27)
Next week, I’ll be writing you either from Jackie Douglass’ humble abode in MIT’s Sigma Kappa house – sorority girls, gross – or from somewhere in transit close to New York as I pretend to prep for Nationals by getting Steve Sadin increasing amounts of drunk.
Zac