This past weekend, I attended our local big Conflux Prerelease, although I didn’t actually play in it since the flight was going to end long after I had to be at work. However, I still had fun showing up and talking to my friends and such, plus I got a taste of how the new Limited will play out. It seemed very vanilla with a dash of overcosted spells blowing you out pretty consistently, although in draft I doubt this will be quite the same level of concern. The other awesome part of the prerelease was getting to meet Mark Hyzer (Corpse Connoisseur, Kederekt Creeper, and Kederekt Leviathan from Shards) and his companion Ellen, who were very pleasant to talk with, and it was fun seeing him do his sketching. It was a bit of a contrast from most of the work he brought, which was well done, but quite dark. So instead of that sort of art, I ended up getting a kick-ass sketch of Cammy (Street Fighter) by him, and that was my prize from the tournament this time around. Here’s hoping we get Mark and other artists at our prereleases in the future.
This week, I’ll again be discussing Standard and the additions Conflux brings to the table, in more detail now that we’ve had some time to go over what makes the set tick. For Extended folks, you’ll once again be getting the shaft here, since we have yet another week of zero qualifiers ahead of us, which doesn’t inspire me to talk more about Extended. If you want the summary of where I think Extended is at the moment, here’s a rough idea of the metagame and what I think the ‘best’ decks are at the moment.
Five most important decks: Faeries, G/R/W Zoo Burn, Aggro Loam (G/B), Affinity, and TEPS.
The three default best choices for a qualifier, depending on metagame positioning: Faeries, Elves, and Aggro Loam. Honorable mention to TEPS, since even though the surprise is gone and hate is being run, TEPS still went and made a bunch of Top 8s over the PTQ weekend directly after the Grand Prix.
Amount of decks you could run into at a given tournament: About twelve.
Most obnoxious and disease-riddled decks that will have you cursing at DCI Reporter or cheering openly: Martyr-Proclamation, Slide, and anything running Chalice of the Void.
There you go, some amount of Extended material; we’ll get back to the meat and potatoes of the format next week. For now, onto Standard and a look at some updates of older decks, and an entirely new deck based heavily around what Conflux has given us. Starting us off is one of my favorite strategies: accelerating out huge Elementals to crush opponents, now with a much cleaner manabase thanks to Ancient Ziggurat.
Blooming Elementals
3 Cloudthresher
2 Thornling
3 Horde of Notions
3 Reveillark
4 Mulldrifter
1 Shriekmaw
3 Fulminator Mage
3 Kitchen Finks
3 Bloom Tender
4 Smokebraider
4 Flamekin Harbinger
4 Makeshift Mannequin
1 Torrent of Souls
2 Fire-Lit Thicket
2 Sulfurous Springs
2 Vivid Grove
4 Vivid Crag
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Primal Beyond
4 Ancient Ziggurat
Sideboard
4 Nyxathid
3 Celestial Purge
3 Guttural Response
2 Soul Snuffers
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Cloudthresher
As you can see, not a lot has changed strategy-wise. Rather, the deck gained a few tools to help the mana out, and a few interesting new threats to play with. The biggest addition to the deck is Ancient Ziggurat, which now gives the deck 8 untapped lands that can make any color, going up to 14 with the Vivids and a full 18 if you count the Reflecting Pools as making any color. Considering the previous numbers, that’s not much of a stretch. For other maindeck adjustments, Kitchen Finks gets the nod to help against Red and be a blocker against anything attempting to win via the ground. Cloudthresher also makes an appearance in his usual role against Faeries, but also against W/B Tokens, which is a pain if you don’t have a cheap way of handling a bunch of flying tokens in a hurry.
Thornling is a borderline addition to the deck, and I wanted to try him out as a major threat. Simply put, Horde of Notions is better, but you just can’t run the fourth copy and Thornling can end a game in just as many swings. You have a ton of excess mana if any of your accelerants live, and Thornling is obviously much better when he has mana backing him, smashing through token chump blockers and clocking for six or seven a turn. A turn 4 Thornling can be bad news for control, and other decks don’t exactly have an easy time against a three-turn clock who can just run over any blockers with no ill effects. I tried Fusion Elemental, but the ability for Thornling to Trample just was too important to lose, moreso than even indestructibility.
This deck has some major issues with Red, especially pre-boarded. Conflux comes to the rescue here with Nyxathid and Celestial Purge, giving you a giant threat and a great answer to the opponent’s Figure of Destiny and Demigod of Revenge. If they want to kill off your accelerants and put any pressure on you, they have to drop to 2-4 cards early, playing straight into Nyxathid. Even if they save a Flame Javelin to take care of him, that’s a major burn spell not aimed at you.
Since Faeries is the one major deck that sees almost no changes, I tested twenty pre-board games against it. Surprisingly, the deck ended up going 10-10, and many of the games felt winnable. Fae simply didn’t have the consistent removal package for my early accelerants, and if I was allowed to keep throwing down hugeness or get Fulminator Mage or Mulldrifter recursion going, the game ended in a hurry. Bitterblossom was probably a larger liability to the Fae deck, since it meant tapping out or tapping down to one mana to play it early, leaving me opportunities to resolve huge guys. After that was adjusted for, then the games were significantly rougher, as I’d lose my three- and five-drops to counters, and unless I had Makeshift Mannequin, both Cliques were major issues.
Other than Fae, I got pick-up games against other aggro strategies like Elves, old Red, and B/W Tokens, and the deck largely succeeded against those off the strength of huge monsters. Kitchen Finks was a big help against ground-pounders, and the extra life usually gained me an extra turn to race with. Games involving early Horde of Notions and Thornling usually were over in a matter of turns, while the rest went long and either I’d lose to a Bitterblossom swarm or get recursion going and eventually wipe them out.
Against the older Red deck, I usually lose game 1, but the board games were a bit more equal. Celestial Purge definitely helped keep me alive for longer, but might be better as Path to Exile simply for the cheaper cost. Nyxathid was more questionable, as some games it would come down and force the Red opponent to stifle his offense for a few turns, or I would play him and he would just be ignored while I got pelted by burn spells, unable to race even with a 5/5 and change. He was never quite the dangerous threat I was looking for, but he could be good as a one-of against Red to tutor up if Elementals got Red down to topdeck mode.
The biggest improvement to the deck was definitely the manabase. There were so many fewer double Vivid draws which stifled the early game, and I pretty much never ran out of colored mana even if spread out over every color. Sure, there was the occasional awkwardness where Ziggurat wouldn’t let me cast a Makeshift Mannequin, but those times are few and far between, considering how many creature spells and mana sources the deck has. Elemental beatdown may not be ready for primetime, but a major annoyance in the mana has been overcome with Conflux, as well as more ways to help stall the Red deck out, so this could become something to look for in the future.
Knight of the Reliquary is quite the hyped-up gem, so I wanted to see how it would produce in a midrange deck that could pump him up. The main problem I had was building a deck with him as the centerpiece basically meant you needed Retrace cards, as that was the only way to really grow him in a short period of time. The upside about that strategy was you could then use Shards Convergence to fill your hand and hit your next two land drops. Raven’s Crime and Knight of the Reliquary ended up being a powerful combination, but the mana was just awful. Here’s what I ended up with for such a build:
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Doran, The Siege Tower
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Raven’s Crime
3 Shard Convergence
4 Nameless Inversion
3 Path to Exile
2 Worm Harvest
2 Profane Command
1 Island
1 Mountain
3 Plains
4 Swamp
5 Forest
4 Murmuring Bosk
2 Fetid Heath
2 Twilight Mire
4 Treetop Village
Don’t get me wrong, I like where this is going; sort of a Standard Aggro Loam build. Unfortunately, going triple colored with enough Forest and Plains to really make use of Knight isn’t a great option. You end up trying to balance triple-colored off a bunch of basics, which just doesn’t work all that well. Terramorphic Expanse is also pretty awful, simply because fetching a basic land isn’t really that impressive in these builds.
Shard Convergence basically turns Worm Harvest and Raven’s Crime into winning engines, and powering up Profane Command is also a valid decision if you happen to have one in hand. Other than that, it also slightly improves your topdecks, as instead of having 21-22 land left in the deck, now you have 16-18 after a Convergence. Worm Harvest in the late-game is one of your main trumps; get it working with 3 or 4 land in the graveyard, and after a few turns the opponent simply can’t deal with all your men.
This build is still a way off from being completed, but it gives you an example of what you can do outside of Knight in a Naya deck. Oh, and if you do go that route and like Shards Convergence, remember that Seismic Assault is still legal.
Finally, we come to the classic RDW. I understand that W/R Boat Brew have largely supplanted the former heavyweight, but a few of the cards from Conflux give us reason to look at the deck again, although it seems to be moving toward the B/R configuration. Creating an updated version of the Blightning deck, it looked like so:
Blighting
4 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Shambling Remains
3 Goblin Outlander
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Banefire
4 Flame Javelin
4 Blightning
4 Incinerate
6 Mountain
3 Reflecting Pool
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Auntie’s Hovel
4 Graven Cairns
4 Ghitu Encampment
Sideboard
4 Quenchable Fire
4 Vithian Stinger
4 Infest
3 Vexing Shusher
As you can see, the main changes are the addition of Shambling Remains, which have shown in initial testing to take the best part of Gouger and Hell’s Thunder and basically combine the two. Kitchen Finks may still take him down, but he defeats most men in combat, survives two damage sweepers, and even when countered can come back and deal four. Goblin Outlander is a role-player, I expect a lot of White updates to be popping up in various forms, and a creature that can swing by Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender, Figure of Destiny, Finks, and Spectral Procession tokens is a solid start.
Spell-wise, Profane Command was something that always felt slow and terrible, since many decks would simply counter it if you ever cast it on an X that mattered against half the field. Banefire, on the other hand, excels in those situations and fits well into the late-game pressure angle the deck brings with its increased burn suite, Bitterblossom reach, and Siege-Gang Commander. In the board, you’ll notice Quenchable Fire; that’s still experimental, but I feel its worth trying out. Against non-Blue decks, four mana for six damage is significant, and this deck has sixteen other burn spells that can go straight to the dome. This is the update I feel most comfortable with, since I played the Japanese versions of Blightning on Magic Online a lot, and always felt they were good but missing something. I think Banefire gives it that late-game push that can’t be easily stopped, and that Outlander is helpful for a match-up this deck was having problems in previously.
If you wanted, you could take it a step further and use Hellspark Elemental and another burn spell over the other creatures, while re-adding Mogg Fanatic and having a very burn-heavy deck that places zero reliance on creatures. I wouldn’t recommend that while a number of decks have easy access to life-gain or Forge-Tender game 1, but it could be something to crop up down the line depending on how the metagame flourishes.
That’s all for this week, and the last piece directly dealing with Conflux additions… back to the Extended grind next time.
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
Email me at joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom
My own art gallery
PS: If you want to check out more of Mark’s stuff, try here.