W/B BEATDOWN?
My complicated relationship with this set has only grown more complicated as I have begun playtesting new decks.
It seems every off-color combination received some fun tools for deckbuilding in Apocalypse, but W/B arguably got the lion’s share (while G/B got the jaw-dropping bombs) of truly inspiring cards.
To wit:
Death’s Grasp
Gerrard’s Verdict
Spectral Lynx
Vindicate
Putrid Warrior
Wait… Did I say Putrid Warrior?
Yes, this is my crack pipe lighting up. While most people have read the Apocalypse spoiler and immediately started working on W/B control decks, I liked the implications of a beatdown deck. I am not exactly sure why W/B beatdown became the first deck I really wanted to build with Apocalypse… But it did. Perhaps it is because I am an odd duck, or maybe it is because after several attempts I have never quite been able to make a W/B deck work, or maybe I just want us all to get along. Whatever.
What follows is the brief journey into a W/B beatdown deck, from horribly bad decklists to, eventually, something I consider genuinely playable.
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THE EVOLUTION OF GRAY SLIGH
The first deck I threw over to the Binary21 folks for consideration did not go over well. For those of you squinting at the decklist and pondering what it looks so bad… Well… I agree with you.
W/B Beatdown v.1.0
4 Glittering Lynx
4 Spectral Lynx
4 Longbow Archer
4 Putrid Warrior
4 Chimeric Idol
4 Necravolver
4 Glorious Anthem
4 Vindicate
4 Parallax Wave
2 Night/Day
4 Caves of Koilos
14 Plains
6 Swamp
I never played this deck and got very little response from my teammates (to be fair, they had just entered Indian Summer frenzy and I tend to throw… um, a lot of decks their way). Even on my own, almost immediately I saw some problems that bothered me.
First, the colors are not exactly balanced here. Favoring one color over another might not initially seem important, but it nevertheless bothered me. Access to Glorious Anthem was what originally tossed the deck more to the white side than to the black, but the heavy emphasis on white means that a) Spectral Lynx will be struggling to find its mana for regeneration, and b) a second-turn Putrid Warrior is fairly unlikely.
In addition, by restricting black I have cut off a lot of creature-kill potential. Indeed Vindicate has become the only creature removal save for Parallax Wave, and I am almost certain the Wave has no place there at all.
And where is Gerrard’s Verdict? Where is Death’s Grasp? Even as a first draft, this deck looked a little flimsy.
Scratching my head a little, I made two staunch decisions:
1) I wanted to make a deck that treated both colors evenly. Sure, this was a little limiting during deck design, but it allowed me to really look at the best spells in both colors. Balancing the colors also meant I had no excuse not to use every W/B gold spell offered to me. I could always — after some testing — decide to emphasize either white or black, but I decided not to do so until I really understood the tools with which I was working.
As a side note, I have come to think that two-color beatdown decks really work best (when they work at all) when giving equal treatment to both colors. Splashing a color is often too inconsistent for a deck designed to win quickly. This rationale was not part of my original decision; at the time, all I can say is that a balanced W/B deck felt right, and I still do not have data to support my claim. The color balance in two-color beatdown decks is something I am currently working out in my little brain.
2) I wanted to make an aggressive beatdown deck. At this point, leading up to the Apocalypse pre-release, I had already seen several W/B control decklists. Indian Summer testing on the part of Binary21 was in full swing, and Carl Jarrell had already tried a version without green. It felt like both competing with Carl and duplicating our effort if I were to wander in this direction. I had started with the idea of a beatdown deck, and I was determined to stick with this strategy and see how far it took me.
Feeling emboldened, I tried another decklist with Binary21, this time asking more explicitly for feedback.
W/B Beatdown v.2.0
4 Glittering Lynx
4 Emblazoned Golem
4 Spectral Lynx
4 Putrid Warrior
3 Knight Errant
2 Necravolver
4 Duress
4 Gerrard’s Verdict
4 Tangle Wire
4 Vindicate
3 Sinister Strength
4 Caves of Koilos
4 City of Brass
1 Brushland
1 Llanowar Wastes
5 Plains
5 Swamp
At this point I had used most of the spells I thought were significant in Apocalypse W/B, with the fairly large omission of Death’s Grasp. For some reason at the time I considered Grasp to be a control card unworthy of a beatdown deck (cough).
I also tried using Necravolver, which I essentially treated as a gold spell since it was hard to imagine getting a 2/2 for three mana when waiting a turn would give me a 3/3 Spirit-Linked creature.
Then some odd things apparently started to happen. I somehow refused to not have Necravolver’s green kicker be an option. Which led me to the idea that Emblazoned Golem would be fun. I am not exactly sure when Knight Errant poked its puny little head into the fray, but apparently I needed a white creature to balance the deck.
This decklist is fairly typical of my first drafts. I usually emphasize synergy to the point of being too cute, but eventually my decks calm down into something more reasonable-looking. This deck is no exception, as you will see.
I played a few games with this deck, mostly just to rev its engine and listen. It performed okay, largely on the strength of Duress and Verdict coupled with any creatures whatsoever.
After some discussion with my teammates, I realized that I wanted:
1) A better creature base (the Golem was — and I will use the word again — cute, but not quite leading-man material)
2) Some kind of non-discard answer to the horde of scary enchantments (Opposition, Saproling Burst, Worship, Story Circle) out there
3) Much less pain from its lands
So I tried another version of the deck, using the mana configuration suggested by Mike Mason…
W/B Beatdown v.2.1
4 Glittering Lynx
4 Spectral Lynx
4 Putrid Warrior
4 Necravolver
4 Phyrexian Scuta
4 Duress
4 Gerrard’s Verdict
4 Tangle Wire
4 Vindicate
3 Disenchant
1 Dismantling Blow
4 Caves of Koilos
6 Plains
6 Swamps
4 Dromar’s Cavern
It was with this deck that I entered the foray of playtesting. I had what I considered, at the time, a theoretically sound build of the deck; that is, there was nothing else I particularly wanted to change just by looking at it, and anything other people suggested had a legitimate counter-argument. If more changes were to be made, they were now going to be made with data to support them.
Because my other teammates were focusing on Indian Summer, it became this deck’s initial dueling partner. Much to my surprise, the little W/B beatdown deck did not roll over and die as I expected it to, despite Indian Summer’s mass removal, card-drawing, Spiritmongers, and Nether Spirits. Once again, Duress + Verdict + quick creatures held up nicely under scrutiny.
More specifically, here are some playtesting notes:
– My kill card, more often than not, was Phyrexian Scuta. Wrecking an opponent’s hand, using up their remaining removal on weenies, and then dropping a fourth-turn black 5/5 monster could quickly become a gamewinning situation.
– Necravolver just was not that great without green mana. Oh, a 3/3 life-gaining creature was nice to have in the same deck as the Scuta (who was definitely staying in the deck), but Verdict was actually more than enough compensation on its own. In a beatdown deck without mana acceleration, I wanted more than a 3/3 for four mana.
– Putrid Warrior performed… Okay. I scanned and scanned the available cards, and I failed to find something better in the two-slot. A little voice in the back of my brain whispered that Putrid Warrior probably fit very well into an Invasion Block deck, but felt slightly underpowered in July Type 2.
– Disenchants frustratingly sat useless in my hand far too often. Well, that is not entirely true; it is more accurate to say that in some games they did absolutely nothing, and in some they were critical. Thus, I vowed that Disenchants belonged in the sideboard.
– Mike Mason beat me repeatedly over the head with OTHER decks using Death’s Grasp. I decided it might be worth using a card that good in a deck that could easily support it (cough).
– Spectral Lynx really is that good.
Feeling like I had made some headway in my understanding but feeling a little stumped what to do next, I did two things simultaneously…
First, I showed the deck to Bennie Smith and Vasco da Gama. Bennie took one look at the decklist and said something like…
“Um, and why aren’t you using Rebels exactly? They are still legal, you know.”
Oh.
Shut up, Bennie.
Still, as much as I hated to admit it, Bennie was absolutely right. Save Putrid Warrior for IBC and use Rebels now.
In addition to asking my peers, I looked towards successful beatdown decks of the past for inspiration. I started to realize that building a true beatdown deck really was not my forte. I asked Scott Forster — who is Binary21’s researcher extraordinaire — if he knew or could find the”official” Sligh mana curve. Knowing how classic Sligh is built, I thought, might help give me some inspiration.
Scott replied:
“Off the top of my head…
0-1: 16-22
2: 10-14
3: 4-6
4: 2-4
X: 0-2″
Then later:
“Okay. From the Sligh-brary
For old-school, card advantage Sligh:
1 mana slot: 9-13
2 mana slot: 6-8
3 mana slot: 3-5
4 mana slot: 1-3
X spell: 2-3
Critter kills: 8-10
Mana: 23-26 (15-17 of color).”
I started to wonder at what I was doing about this time. I mean… W/B… Sligh… Rebels? Was that even possible? Well, Binary21 had patterned Indian Summer after classic Necro, I supposed there could be worse things than patterning my deck after classic Sligh.
As best as I could determine, my new mana breakdown worked something like this:
0cc
4 Snuff Out
1cc
4 Ramosian Sergeant
4 Duress
3 Unholy Strength
2cc
4 Gerrard’s Verdict
4 Fresh Volunteers
4 Spectral Lynx
1 Defiant Falcon
3cc
1 Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
4 Vindicate
4cc
3 Phyrexian Scuta
x
2 Death’s Grasp
Making the deck fit into a Sligh curve had me make some interesting decisions. The most dramatic decision was actually to remove Tangle Wire, a spell that had performed well in testing. But with so few 3-cc spells”allowed” in my mana curve, it was not a difficult choice whether to keep Vindicate or Tangle Wire.
In addition, Unholy Strength made a brief appearance into the decklist. I needed a one-mana spell, and I thought something beatdown was sure to benefit from Strength. The very idea of a 4/2 Spectral Lynx made me smile.
I started becoming fairly exciting about what had happened with the deck. By continually adhering to odd deckbuilding quirks, I felt I was actually creating a deck relatively interesting to both play and look at. Even more exciting, I had finally stumbled upon a name better than”W/B Beatdown.”
Here is the deck in the format I prefer:
GRAY SLIGH v.3.0
4 Ramosian Sergeant
4 Fresh Volunteers
4 Spectral Lynx
3 Phyrexian Scuta
1 Defiant Falcon
1 Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
4 Duress
4 Gerrard’s Verdict
4 Vindicate
4 Snuff Out
3 Unholy Strength
2 Death’s Grasp
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Dromar’s Cavern
7 Plains
7 Swamp
Some more testing ensued, this time with decks like Fires and Fat Moti Blue. The playtesting notes from these sessions, although representing nearly twice the number of games, are probably fewer:
– Killing mana-accelerating creatures is hugely important for any deck facing Fires, but Gray Sligh could hope to compete with Fires if it started quickly. At the same time, Unholy Strength did not have quite the impact I had hoped because the deck’s creatures do not have evasion. Thus I dropped the Strength for Night (and Day, but I cast Night about 80% of the time) as a way to slow Fires down.
– At some point in my tricky Sligh ideas, I forgot about the fact that Phyrexian Scuta is one of my most important cards. Somehow the deck needed to find a place for the fourth Scuta.
– Death’s Grasp is an incredible spell. Given the deck’s low mana curve and lack of Dark Ritual, it is unlikely that a Grasp for more than three or four is not going to occur often… But a three- to four-point life swing combined with added creature removal made me still want to have more than two of them in the deck.
– Rebels are noticeably better than the earlier combination of Glittering Lynx and Putrid Warrior. Once again I was reminded that Rebels absolutely wreck mono-blue.
– At the same time, however, I rarely used the recruiting chain of Sergeant-Falcon-Sivvi and I almost never recurred my Rebels via Lin Sivvi. There were simply too many times when it was either important to attack and end the game or to save mana for Spectral Lynx regeneration than to recruit. I decided eventually to keep a short Rebel chain, a la PT Junk. I also suddenly had space for both the fourth Scuta and an extra Grasp.
My current deck, then, looks like this:
GRAY SLIGH v.3.2
4 Ramosian Sergeant
4 Fresh Volunteers
4 Spectral Lynx
4 Phyrexian Scuta
4 Duress
4 Gerrard’s Verdict
4 Vindicate
4 Snuff Out
3 Night/Day
3 Death’s Grasp
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Dromar’s Cavern
7 Plains
7 Swamp
Although it only possesses sixteen creatures, Gray Sligh still wins most consistently when played like a beatdown deck. Drop a creature, disrupt your opponent’s hand, and kill any blockers in the way. When you have reduced an opponent to a top-decking war, either Spectral Lynx or Phyrexian Scuta will deal the remaining damage.
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SIDEBOARDING THOUGHTS
The environment in July is more uncertain than any Type 2 environment we have seen in a long time. It certainly the most uncertain than after any previous small set, that much is certain.
That said, I have found a sideboard that, for now at least, I consider to help the deck tremendously in Games 2 and 3.
4 Cremate
Cremate is cheap, a cantrip, and combats both Rebels and the deck’s most dreaded opponent: Nether Spirit.
4 Crimson Acolyte
Against red decks, Crimson Acolyte and any beatdown creature wins the game. Providing, that is, that you can make your opponent discard that Obliterate she is holding. Crimson Acolyte went from two copies in the sideboard, to three, to eventually four.
3 Disenchant
As I said, sometimes Disenchant is the difference between winning and getting smeared all over the wall. Especially when decks can sideboard Worship and Story Circle.
3 Dodecapod
Because everyone else wants to use Gerrard’s Verdict, too, there is Dodecapod. Mike Mason conceded after my first turn one game with him playing Indian Summer. Here was the game in its entirety:
Him: Plains.
Me: Plains, Sergeant.
Him: Caves of Koilos, Gerrard’s Verdict. I drop two 5/5 Dodecapods, meaning he will face eleven damage on Turn 2. Concede.
Holy crap.
1 Night/Day
Because Fires is still king, and killing mana creatures on Turn 1 is still important.
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OTHER THOUGHTS
After a lot of playtesting, this deck has drifted towards a lot of the W/B control decks I have seen. Get rid of the Rebels and Snuff Out, add Wrath of God Phyrexian Arena and Desolation Angel, and you have almost the same decks. And that control deck is awfully scary to face, too.
But at the same time, I think what I have found most successful about this deck —as I have said repeatedly above — is the combination of discard, removal, and quick creatures. Even though it looks fairly beatable on paper, in playtesting a variety of opponents have fallen to Gray Sligh using some awfully polished decks.
I do sometimes wonder about whether keeping the mana balanced between white and black is the correct plan. Below are some examples of the ways in which I think extra white or black might make a difference.
Leaning towards white allows for:
– A more sophisticated Rebel chain
– Glorious Anthem
– Longbow Archer
Leaning towards black allows for:
– Phyrexian Arena
– Dark Ritual
– Foul Imp
Would these push the deck into a REAL beating? Maybe, but I have yet to try them. So far the balance of the colors has worked out remarkably well for me, and I have rarely experienced mana-screw with Gray Sligh.
And yes, the deck uses a lot of Invasion block cards. Which means that, yes, it translates fairly easily into IBC. I have done absolutely no playtesting in IBC with Apocalypse, but I might start with something like:
4 Crimson Acolyte
4 Spectral Lynx
4 Putrid Warrior
4 Phyrexian Scuta
4 Addle
4 Gerrard’s Verdict
4 Death’s Grasp
4 Vindicate
4 Night/Day
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Dromar’s Cavern
7 Plains
7 Swamp
It is a slower deck, but IBC in general is slower. Again, this is just how I would begin my IBC version of the deck. As you can see, I allow playtesting to change my decks pretty dramatically.
I am sure you have your own pet creations for July that you are chomping at the bit to test out in a Friday Night Magic tournament. But if you are feeling a little overwhelmed by the options and have loads of rares lying around, consider giving Gray Sligh a try. Everyone will say how cool you are.
“Everyone” meaning me, of course.
Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar, Ph.D.
[email protected]
“doctorjay” in IRC
00010101 Binary21 is broken