“Two Decklists and an Idea.” It’s not as alluring as “Two Men and a Baby,” but then again, what is?
Congratulations to our esteemed Big Cheese Mr. Craig Stevenson for qualifying with a modified build of Kowalash, featuring fewer tutor targets, Logic Knots (the Richard Feldman tech) and an admittedly awkward sideboard. He talked about his win here, but aside from the Shadowmages in the main it’s probably the best list I’ve seen. [Cheers Zac! — Craig, Valencia-bound.]
I’ve been really theory-intensive for the last several weeks, so I’m going to shift gears today and simply talk about decks. We’ve got two rogue lists to look at – both of which were designed by other people—and a concept I’ve been toying with that I bet some of y’all could make work if you put the time and effort into it. With Nationals on the horizon I’ve been concentrating primarily on Standard and on being less awful at the combat phase, but that doesn’t mean the cogs in my brain have stopped turning*.
The first list I inferred from two back-to-back premier event wins where the pilot absolutely blew through the Swiss and elimination rounds as if he was facing no opposition whatsoever. This may not be the exact list, but it seems like something close:
Creatures (31)
- 4 Firewake Sliver
- 4 Gemhide Sliver
- 4 Screeching Sliver
- 1 Telekinetic Sliver
- 2 Two-Headed Sliver
- 4 Dormant Sliver
- 4 Frenetic Sliver
- 4 Homing Sliver
- 4 Virulent Sliver
Lands (25)
Spells (4)
I have no idea what was specifically in the sideboard, but the following sure doesn’t seem very bad:
4 Boom/Bust
4 Coalition Relic
4 Wild Pair
1 Telekinetic Sliver
1 Shadow Sliver
1 Might Sliver
Basically, game ‘ you just have an enormous advantage versus the format, as the only aggressive deck that gets to play quality one-drop creatures. The control decks aren’t usually doing very much on turns 1-3, so you can exploit that by committing a billion difficult-to-deal-with threats to the table. Because of Dormant and Frenetic Slivers, you’re actually in a fairly realistic position of making them show you an unlikely combination of cards – either Slaughter Pact plus Wrath, or a way to deal with your second Dormant-Sliver-fueled wave. The reason this is different from Wafo-Tapa’s list is because that deck, like the U/B control strategies, also spends the first several turns of the game setting up, and is thus competing on relatively fair territory. This deck, by contrast, has the U/B deck up against the ropes from the first turn of the game, so they don’t have as much time to set up Pact/Wrath, or chains of Teachings, or countermagic, or whatever.
Against aggressive decks, by contrast, you’re capable of generating huge swings in initiative. You’re playing twelve Virulent Slivers, so assuming you get a small edge you can win games out of absolutely nowhere. What this means is that it’s very difficult for your opponent to properly assign himself to the proper role (a.k.a. answer who is in fact the beatdown). The reason is that Dormant Sliver complicates matters on both sides of the coin. If your opponent says, “I’m just going to beat him as fast as I possibly can,” then you either sit and trade men using your Dormant to get ahead, or you wait until he taps most of his guys, Pact up a Virulent, Homing Sliver for another one, and all of the sudden he’s dead or can’t race. If on the other hand he wants to sit back and chill, you just draw a ton of cards off Dormy Dorms, play Opposition or Two-Headed, and win in a couple of big swings. Griffin Guide and Mystic Enforcer both seem like they would be a problem, but you’ve got Telekinetic Sliver as a trump and poison counters/Firewake Slivers to race.
My sideboard plan is sort of bold, but you don’t want to just add a couple of cards here and there because you’d dilute the deck and thus hinder its effectiveness as a whole. Instead you sit back and gauge how much time you’re going to have. If it’s going to be a quick game, then you can sideboard in either a Shadow or a Telekinetic to help you race and rely upon your deck to do the work. If, on the other hand, you think they’ve got access to early-game removal (either Sunlances or Piracy Charms, etc) but can’t kill you quickly, you can take out Pacts, Screeching Slivers, a land, and some combination of Two-Headed, Homing, and Firewake Slivers for the 13-card transformational sideboard package. At this point, you’re not turning into Wafo-Tapa’s Wild Pair combination deck even though you’ve got Slivers and Wild Pairs. Instead, you’re saying “have fun fighting an attrition war against a deck with 4 Dormant Slivers and 4 Wild Pairs.” You don’t even care all that much about Tendrils lifegain because of Virulent Sliver, and even against Damnation playing any 2/2 into a Frenetic Sliver, or even better a Frenetic Sliver into a Might Sliver, is fairly insane. Meanwhile, resolving an Armageddon with a Gemhide or Relic on the board is almost always game, and don’t forget how effective Boom can be in a few narrow situations (incidentally, is it possible to announce Boom targeting a Gemstone Mine with one counter on it and an opponent’s land, then use the Mine to pay for Boom?)
The other deck I want to talk about comes courtesy of perennial good man Bill Stark, and made Top 8 at the PTQ I won in Alabama. BStark wanted to debut it at the GP, but extraneous circumstances prevented him from attending. Frowny Face.
Creatures (23)
Lands (23)
Spells (14)
Sideboard
Bill gave up on the deck because against the early Korlash lists (e.g. mine) he had an un-winnable matchup, assuming the player knew what they were doing. All you have to do is hold Extirpate for Deadwood Treefolk and then kill each of their guys individually. He usually crushed Teferi builds, though, because they didn’t have anything big enough to block and kill the four maindeck Quagnoth (Vow can buy you time against an actual Korlash, but they’ve all got ways to deal with it) and this deck couldn’t possibly care less about Tendrils. Meanwhile, against Mono-Red, you’ve got Epochrasites and the insane Spike Feeder/Llanowar Reborn combo to buy you nearly infinite time. The thing is that most Korlash builds don’t maindeck Extirpate anymore, so you can chain Deadwood Treefolks until the cows come home and they’re going to succumb to your never-ending tide of Spectral Forces and Quagnoths sooner or later. Against Goyf, you have the insane Utopia Vow for Enforcer and Griffin Guide, and all of your ground-pounders are bigger than all of theirs. Cool how that works, huh?
Against Mono-Red you sideboard out Spectral Forces (Word of Seizing) for Akroma’s Memorial and a Thornweald Archer, and it becomes very hard for you to lose. Their only real trump is Gargles, but you can chump/Vow it, or just play Akroma’s Memorial and block it all day long. Meanwhile, they cannot actually deal with that seven mana artifact (and, to be fair, neither can most decks). Against Goyf you’ve got Archers and the Memorial, both of which are insane, taking out some combination of Quaggles, Deadwood Treefolk, Epochrasite, and Spike Feeder depending on what your Feeder or Epochrasite can actually block and kill. Against U/B control decks, you bring in Dervish, Vore, Mountain, and Memorial for Feeders, Walls, potentially Epochrasite depending on their number of Teferis, and 1-2 Utopia Vows. It’s worth noting that you only really need Memorial as an answer to Teferi’s Moat, and if you don’t fear that card oftentimes it can be better to leave in all the Epochrasites and Vows and just take out Spectral Force so that Take Possession becomes hideously bad against you.
Also, people question the Deserts. Those are good against Red, obviously, and also against the Sliver deck. Usually, though, the games can go very long, and it’s not hard to get three of them on the table to stop Shadowmage in the midgame because of Vesuva.
Finally, the “idea.” Now that everybody isn’t running Teferi, it seems like some sort of Suspend deck could be the bk** and could surprise people out of nowhere. Mainly, I’m intrigued about being able to play 4 Ancestral Visions, 4 Lotus Bloom, and 4 Tolaria West while also running cards like Shivan Sand-Mage, Fury Charm, and Rift Elemental to enable them. The way I see it, a one-mana 1/1 that pumped +2+0 for 1R would be a fine creature, so when you’re actually doing something constructive with that ability as well it seems like you’re getting a bargain. This suspend deck could go one of two directions. You’re probably running Pardic Dragon anyway, so throw in some Hellkites and Dragonstorms, as well as Coalition Relics to enable them, and you’ve got some ridiculous possibilities. While there are potential fairly realistic turn 4 kills, I suppose (turn 1 suspend Sand Mage and Lotus Bloom, turn 3 Tolaria West for Lotus Bloom, turn 4 Clockspinning the Sand Mage, play both Blooms, Dragonstorm) I’m much more interested in the fairly powerful midgame where you can set up multiple Blooms/Sand Mages/Fury Charms after, say, turn 2 suspending Pardic Dragon, turn 3 Fury Charming it and swinging to get their life low, and then around turn 6 or 7 using Sand Mage/Lotus Bloom to fire off a Storm for two or three. Clockspinning, for example, is probably not worth it – but Rift Elemental might be. I know I said this wouldn’t be a list, but what the heck, I’m brainstorming. Just bear in mind that it is probably garbage:
4 Shivan Sand-Mage
4 Ancestral Visions
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Bogardan Hellkite
4 Coalition Relic
4 Pardic Dragon
4 Fury Charm
4 Dragonstorm
4 Grinning Ignus
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Tolaria West
4 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Molten Slagheap
4 Island
6 Mountain
Alternatively, instead of Dragonstorm, you can just go for big storm/suspend turns and try to abuse the time mechanic itself:
4 Rift Elemental
4 Pardic Dragon
4 Ancestral Visions
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Shivan Sand-Mage
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Storm Entity
4 Fury Charm
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Tolaria West
8 Mountain
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Island
You could also run Errant Ephemeron, and Delay out of the sideboard to try and combat Teferi. Alternatively, rather than ruin your manabase for Tolaria West and Ancestral Visions, you could just take it the straight Mono-Red route:
4 Grinning Ignus
4 Rift Elemental
4 Shivan Sand-Mage
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Pardic Dragon
4 Epochrasite
4 Fury Charm
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Storm Entity
1 Keldon Halberdier
4 Keldon Megaliths
19 Mountain
There’s maybe a sideboard plan to turn into more conventional red in there somewhere. I also am not entirely sold on Shivan Sand-Mage, but he seems like he could create insanely broken turns. Also, I love the Epochrasite/Gargadon interaction in this deck. Finally, against U/B control you could bring in Volcanic Awakening and Lotus Bloom (?) which doesn’t seem beatable by any conventional means, and fill out the sideboard with like Mogg War Marshals versus Slivers and maybe, I don’t know, Word of Seizings against G/W.
Okay, that’s a lot of hammering out decklists. Now somebody from the forums go ahead and make them good!
Until next week,
Zac
* e.g. I have still spurned Merideth in medias res to talk with Richard on the phone about Magic, meaning I have my priorities straight.
* bee’s knees, which I am unsuccessfully trying to bring back. It sounds tight when said aloud, though – “bee kay,” I mean – and evokes Kowal, which is always a net positive.