Now that we’ve had more time to digest the Grand Prix: Montreal results, seeing more of the decks that weren’t in the Top 16, we’re beginning to hear about a few of the PTQ results. This means we can start testing with more refined versions of the decks we’ve been playing, or seen on MTGO, and personal gauntlets. My group’s initial testing has slowly shown, just like many others, that a B/U base with splashes is pretty much the way to go in this format.
The biggest problem with the non-Teachings decks is they have a huge vulnerability to Tendrils of Corruption. This card is the proverbial elephant in the room as far as TSP block goes. I worry more about how to deal with Tendrils than I do about Damnation at this point. Frankly, thanks to Tendrils, you can have an otherwise terrible anti-aggro set-up work against most of the field just because you can rip Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and get a nice 5-7 point life boost whenever you need it.
Tendrils also allows control decks to play this nice slow sorcery speed draw, because it doesn’t matter how badly they get punished via damage, they just need to survive to drop more Tendrils on the board. The only reason Red decks even play Greater Gargadon anymore is to dodge Tendrils and look menacing. Otherwise it could be a blank "Sacrifice a creature" card, and they would still run it to beat Tendrils.
Basically, no aggro deck in the current format has a trump to this plan except for U/G and Canali’s Crazy Pedro deck. Everyone else is just relying on the Teachings deck to stutter and stall, or just banking on overwhelming them before they get online. You see nearly no discard, save a few Ana Battlemage or Riptide Pilferer, no LD outside of people playing Ruel’s deck (more on that later), and very few "must-deal with Damnation or Temporal Isolation" creatures. Oh, and no card draw, can’t forget that. G/W isn’t exactly amazing in the Teachings match against a prepared opponent, but it wins a lot more games than the norm because of its pro: Black dragon, Griffin Guide, and Whirling Dervish; not to mention its men just live longer in the match.
Another thing I’ve noticed is many fast attack decks are just irrevocably flawed in these matches. All they can do is send more men into the grinder and hope for the best. Most Mono Red decks have crappy three mana for three damage burn spells to fall back on as "reach," along with Gargadon, which Slaughter Pact and Pull from Eternity basically makes a non-issue. The best solution for additional reach has been the slowing down of the Red deck for cards like Tarox Bladewing and Word of Seizing. These can cause real damage to control and aggro decks, because they can be used in the span of a single turn and can’t be stopped via traditional means. Tarox is 4-8 damage against a deck that just cast Careful Consideration or dropped Korlash on the field. Word of Seizing is as big a burn spell as the opponents’ finishers.
Because, in this format, ultimately the basic rules apply moreso than most. Decks really want card and mana advantage over one another, and even life advantage to some extent. Obviously aggro decks in this format aren’t going to have traditional card advantage engines ever, because there simply are no good support cards for aggressive builds. However, it is possible to have a limited card quality engine via cantrips. G/W is the best example of this, using Horizon Canopy, Edge of Autumn, and in some builds Chromatic Star, to help with Tarmogoyf food and cycle through the deck later in the game when good topdecks are needed. Still, it simply pales in comparison to the control player tapping four for Careful Consideration or Foresee. Kenji’s deck should also remind people that Ancestral Visions exists, and with Delay it’s easier to protect than ever. Perhaps we’ll see a bit more Blue spread around, considering the dearth of worthwhile one-drops in the format.
All that said, guys like Shadowmage Infiltrator and Looter Il-Kor are really overlooked by the majority, as far as inclusion in aggressive strategies goes. Sure, it doesn’t fit into every strategy, but a deck like Canali’s Crazy Pedro deck is a great example of a deck that uses a cantrip engine to not only advance it’s strategy, but to make sure the weapons keep on coming.
Speaking of the deck Canali played, the hybrid of a Reanimator and aggro strategy is quite unique and effective*. It showcases many of the traits an aggro deck would want against control strategies in TSP block. Bridge from Below provides some resilience against Damnation, and in conjunction with Dread Return it can transform a couple of weak cantrip creatures into a fresh army. Meanwhile it also puts pressure on the control deck at all times in the match via the early beaters, followed up by Bogardan Hellkite and Akroma, Angel of Wrath. The latter is the most important part, as the deck can play Hellkite and Akroma, which are just two nightmares as far as control is concerned.
*Although the manabase is quite awful. Once someone fixes that, the deck should definitely see a lot of play.
Sure, you can beat both of those creatures, but Akroma is effectively a six-point burn spell that only Damnation or Teaching up an Isolation for her. The rest of the time she’ll be mocking your opponent’s main removal spells and hanging back to beat any threat that’s still on the table. Although Hellkite isn’t quite as awesome as Akroma, the five damage you can throw in their face will offset much of the damage Tendrils will do. Basically, burn spells for five damage or more is pretty much what you want to throw at control players, because any less damage and it wasn’t even worth wasting the card on. Five damage attached to a body that may come in for another five before dying helps a great deal.
A basic point about the Teaching decks in this format is that about half of them can’t stop spells at all, and the other half is relying on a couple of Cancel or a Pact of Negation to do the job. This means abusing non-creature spells is a pretty good avenue of attack, and people aren’t taking enough advantage of that. Failing that, giving creatures plus-marks for being untargetable or regenerative is probably a good idea. The idea isn’t to outlast control; rather, it’s to keep your damage sources alive long enough so you can finish the opponent.
What I’m getting at is that many threats people are playing are only being played because they did well in somebody else’s deck. Look at Mono Red. Nobody agrees on what cards are actually good in the deck because they’re all so weak power-wise, and they have a huge variation in usefulness depending on the match. This is pretty awkward when you’ve just come from playing Gruul or Zoo in Standard, where your 1-2-3 drops all provided some modicum of usefulness no matter which match-up it was. Meanwhile you stare at G/W creatures, and they’re all picked on the basis that they happen to have evasion or a cute ability of some sort. I mean really now, let’s list some of the creatures G/W isn’t playing at the moment.
Spectral Force
Calciderm
Timbermare
Hedge Troll
Mire Boa (Some builds)
Remember when Spectral Force was pretty much the card to play if you weren’t playing WW or Teachings decks? I mean, really, a freaking 8/8 for 3GG isn’t seeing play while all of his buddies are still around. That ain’t right. The funny part has to be that Specs isn’t even that bad at the moment: the biggest guy on the block in the G/W mirror, a monster against Red decks, and he can survive Tendrils from Teachings. The obvious downside is Slaughter Pact got printed, and that he doesn’t fly to stop Mystic Enforcer. Still, you’d think a guy that has had so much press and play in some very powerful formats would get a little more love in the block. Temporal Isolation is not a big deal as long as you run Disenchant in your deck. If anything, it just makes him unblockable for a turn.
Calciderm is another guy whose stock has fallen into oblivion. On one hand he dies after a couple of turns, and he can be completely shut down by Mogg War Marshall, regenerators, and Factory or Kher Keep tokens. On the other hand he’s Tendrils-proof , and if you graft a +1/+1 counter onto him he’s bigger than everything except a Mystic Enforcer with thresh. Even in the G/W mirror, where I hear a lot of complaints about him, only Goyf and Enforcer can actually take him down and live with the help of Thrill of the Hunt. Everybody else still dies and leaves Derm as the last one standing. I can understand why Calciderm isn’t seeing much play, but considering Teachings is the deck to beat and it’s not terrible in the G/W mirror, I would expect more of them.
Timbermare was played in Osyp’s build, and that’s it. The biggest strike here is that Mare isn’t Tendrils proof, and costs extra if you want to keep it around. Considering you should be treating the card like a five-point Green burn spell that can’t be blocked, the latter should only be coming up when in topdeck mode anyway. Hedge Troll and Mire Boa are ultra-efficient creatures that can survive Slaughter Pact and Tendrils, ruin Red decks, and are solid blockers in the G/W mirror. Obviously, they have certain downsides, but it makes you stop and wonder about why every G/W deck looks nearly the same. There are a surprising amount of options, and some are just much better in certain metagames if you expect more Teachings or more Korlash, etc.
I’m surprised by the snubs the big men and other resilient creatures get, when the format is so unfriendly to their smaller brethren thanks to Tendrils and Korlash. Just a note, but you do realize the Teachings deck isn’t always going to rip Urborg to wreck you with, right? Anyway, we’ll move onto mana advantage now. This is where I tend to believe Teachings can be trumped without too much trouble. Consider the following:
Most Teachings decks run 6-8 artifact accelerants and 26-28 lands, only some run storage lands.
Their entire set of draw is four or more mana, save Finkel.
None of their removal is under three mana, and realistically they aren’t going to Slaughter Pact you until later in the game.
This gives you two solid early game ways to gain mana advantage, and a late-game option to sidestep playing a real game against control. The first way to trump a B/U Teachings deck is simply to play 6-8 storage lands and be willing to do absolutely nothing for your first couple of turns. If you do that, you can literally just sit on a 4-6 mana reserve you can use on turns 5 to 7, the turns control will actually begin to do something relevant as far as you’re concerned. At this point you’ll have roughly 9-12 mana, depending if you run other mana accelerants like Search for Tomorrow or Coalition Relic.
From that setup can either go nuts and lay a huge threat like an Akroma or Hellkite, something to deal 5-7 damage immediately, and then follow it up with another huge threat. Or you can play a huge non-creature threat and follow it up with something tough to kill on the board, say Haunting Hymn into Korlash, or going for the prize with floating eight mana – Bust – Tarmogoyf. The idea is that you can use all that dead time to turn your storage lands into Dark Rituals to power up the rest of your deck.
The second way is the traditional LD aspect of slowing the opponent down. Other than the obvious, like Avalanche Riders and Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, Ancient Grudge is actually a viable option right now, purely to take out Prismatic Lens and Relic all day. In addition, Pickles decks can play a pseudo-LD strategy by using Riftwing Cloudskate, Venser, and Take Possession to keep knocking back lands in the control mirror. Some even have gone and added Momentary Blink in the board to re-use their abilities over and over and gain a huge tempo advantage.
Creatures (20)
- 2 Draining Whelk
- 4 Riftwing Cloudskate
- 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
- 4 Epochrasite
- 3 Maelstrom Djinn
- 3 Seht's Tiger
- 3 Venser, Shaper Savant
Lands (24)
Spells (16)
This U/W Blink deck piloted by Zach Jesse is a bit like what I’m talking about here. It can along the lines of a normal Blink deck, building up tempo the whole way, but it can also hold off aggro with Epochrasite and Seht’s Tiger, Blink or no. It’s still a little too cute for its own good in the G/W match, from what I can tell when I tested against it. Still, Aven Riftwatcher and company make it a winnable match, especially if they try to play an attrition war instead of swarming. The only thing I really disliked was Maelstrom Djinn, but I’ll admit it’s a quick way to kill an opponent. Anyway, from that base I worked on my own variation
Creatures (18)
Lands (24)
Spells (18)
Sideboard
You might think that adding Black purely for Merieke Ri Berit and possibly Shadowmage Infiltrator (over Serra Avenger) is a bit overkill. I assure you it’s one of the easiest ways I know in which to completely destroy G/W decks. First off, even as a straight Treachery, the card will at least go one-for-one, and odds are they’ll need to waste a pump spell to not lose two creatures. Second, Berit combined with Momentary Blink can allow for the complete destruction of the G/W board other than Mystic Enforcer. Think you can keep one Enforcer off the table long enough to win with the rest of your deck?
Anyway, the only other major change from that was the addition of Ancestral Vision. The reason for this was because you typically don’t have any plays on turn 1 or 2, and the extra cards are huge. Plus post-board it’s easy to protect with what amounts to eleven counters. The sideboard has also been retooled to stomp on Teachings decks with the idea of laying a huge threat and then just protecting it from Damnation the rest of the game. Not the most original of ideas, but one that’s proven effective thanks to the number of bounce effects and counters you have in the deck.
So now that we’ve explored the tempo / LD side of it, we’ll move onto the final point, side-stepping playing a game against control decks. The best example of this strategy is probably Oliver Ruel’s deck from GP: Montreal. For reference, here’s the deck.
Creatures (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (30)
- 4 Careful Consideration
- 1 Haunting Hymn
- 2 Mystical Teachings
- 4 Prismatic Lens
- 2 Tendrils of Corruption
- 4 Damnation
- 1 Imp's Mischief
- 4 Coalition Relic
- 2 Foresee
- 3 Slaughter Pact
- 3 Take Possession
Sideboard
Now you’ll notice in the sideboard he has one weapon no other control deck around the top tables had in its arsenal, Boom/Bust. This deck can simply ruin the opponent and not play a real game of Magic against Teachings decks by simply building up enough mana to drop Tarmogoyf and Bust down the opponent’s throat. Plus Ruel himself has mentioned that he was killing opponents sloppy plays with Pacts simply by dropping Bust on them. That’s the thing, there’s no out to Bust in some control decks, while in others they have a whole 3-4 Cancel and maybe a Pact of Negation or Delay to back it up. Ruel’s deck can still go the long game with control even without the trick, with 3 Take Possession along with Haunting Hymn and Imp’s Mischief.
This was probably the most impressive deck we saw in the top sixteen, though the sideboard was a bit of a mess. I would fully recommend this deck to anyone after putting some significant practice time in with it. The only real changes I’d consider is moving the Boom/Bust to the maindeck just because it’s so powerful, and possibly the 4th Urborg. After that, you’ve got a control deck that can shift gears in how aggressive it wants to be, plays a cheaper huge threat than everyone else and has a trump that can just end the game if you’re not careful.
Before I go though, there’s a bonus deck I’ve been working on which I feel kind of silly about posting now that Moreno’s deck has been released, but I’ll share anyway.
Creatures (16)
Lands (25)
Spells (19)
Essentially, I was trying to make R/B aggro deck that replaced the awful smaller Red dorks with much larger creatures and adding bigger and better burn. With this version you wanted to just be able to play a man and let G/W overextend so you could Wrath them to death. Then you drop a huge guy and laugh at their small dorks while playing Word of Seizing on Mystic Enforcer if it comes up. Against control you have Riddle of Lightning, Word, Hellkite, and Disaster as huge burn spells. Meanwhile you can match Korlash with your own, and your men aren’t going to die as easily to Pact or Tendrils. Alternatively, you could not go with the Bust plan and then go along with Hellkite and Disintegrate and just go for the burn to the dome plan.
Next week I’ll be taking a look at some of the other decks that made Day 2 at Montreal in a more in-depth fashion, and focus on some of the Reanimator decks we’re seeing.
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
E-mail: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom