I’m heading down to LA in a couple of days along with a horde of other Northern Californians to rock some Extended. Over the past few weeks, I’ve written about the decks I’m considering taking down to the Grand Prix. Instead of writing about my deck of choice (since I don’t actually know yet), or the best choice for the field, I’m going to share what I personally learned from testing, and some of my predictions / insights into the format.
First, let me say this field is incredibly diverse deck-wise, and that trying to beat every single deck is a defeatist proposition. However, beating every strategy in the format is closer to being doable, and I could see someone actually accomplishing this some time into the format’s life-span, even if it isn’t at the Grand Prix. In essence, every valid deck is trying to do one of four main things.
1. Drain your life from 20 to 0 using aggression, tempo, and mana curve: Zoo, Burn, Affinity, etc.
2. Set-up a turn where a deck ‘goes off’ and does its own little tricks that lead to it winning the game: Elves, Dredge, Swans, TEPS
3. Disrupt your main game-plan and then mop up before you can recover: MUC, Faeries, Doran.
4. Grind you down in an attrition fight using recursive elements and then eventually win: Loam Cloud and Martyr-Proclamation
In some formats you don’t get this many valid core strategies. In the current Standard, for example, you really don’t have the combo element, and you can argue that Five-Color Control isn’t really trying to grind the opponent down moreso than just staying alive to play some huge threat.
Regardless of that, the point is each strategy has certain weaknesses of which we can take advantage; it simply becomes difficult to do so against every key strategy. The same can be said for each deck in each strategy, because some can have vastly different results despite relying on the same type of plan. Loam Cloud or Martyr-Proclamation against Burn is a good example of this. The former has some problems game 1, and even post-board needs to devote a good plan (Circle of Protection: Red) instead of just throwing in more random life-gain. On the other hand, Martyr-Proclamation against Burn is the closest thing to a bye match there is in the format.
So if the decks have different results despite using the same generalized strategy, what’s the point of grouping them like this? It’s to get a quick idea of what cards are probably useful against each. For example, against the attrition decks, we can see that graveyard hate will be a big deal, because the way it stays ahead of the opponent is by reusing key abilities over and over again. A Leyline of the Void against Loam Cloud severely depletes its options for a late-game fight, and against Martyr-Proclamation it shuts down the namesake of the deck, making it vulnerable to normal aggression again. Against aggressive decks, we see that no singular card can deal with each deck under the main stratagem, but that in general life-gain is useful, and larger creatures with secondary effects like Kitchen Finks and Ravenous Baloth can put a dent in these types of strategies.
By separating things this way, you can also easily see what kind of sideboard cards overlap against multiple strategies. Thoughtseize in a Zoo deck, for example, is useful against two of the four strategies and possibly a third; while the previous mention of Leyline of the Void is only good against the recursive attrition strategy with very little overlap. For those who are already familiar with the format and all of the decks, this type of planning probably isn’t the most shocking or helpful stuff in the universe. For those who were trying to quickly come up with how many decks each board card is good – or at least usable – against, then this was a pretty easy way of doing so.
Popularity-wise at the Grand Prix, I’d be surprised if Burn or Zoo wasn’t the number one deck in the field. Both decks aren’t amazingly taxing on the mind over a long day, and both have the ability to Just Win out of certain spots. MUC will probably be the most popular ‘good player’ deck, due to it being Blue and generally having a shot against every strategy outlined above. Of course, being the only true Counterspell control deck in the field means that everyone will be prepared for it, and try to have at least some method of hating on it directly. Whether that means Choke, Boil, or Raven’s Crime, there will be quite a few slots aimed at improving the Blue matchup for most decks.
After the Big 3, the next set of decks I expect to see en masse will be Elves, Loam Cloud, and Affinity. Elves and Affinity share a niche in people’s mindset as being very powerful decks that people supposedly aren’t packing hate for. Personally I think this is bull for Affinity, as I still see Ancient Grudge everywhere; most Burn online still packs Shattering Spree or Shatterstorm, and it still has a sub-par matchup against Elves in general. Elves, on the other hand…. there’s still hate around, but will there be enough to dissuade everyone from playing the deck? I doubt it. Stuff like Darkblast and Persecute is great against Elves, but it can still have hands where, with careful play, they can simply overload removal or go off before slower hate cards come online.
Sure, the Blue match isn’t great, which is why people are trying cards like Vexing Shusher and Leyline of Lifeforce in addition to a set of Thoughtseize. Still, you only need them to not draw exactly what they need to wreck you, and sometimes you win games simply by beating down with a horde of 1/1 Green men. In fact, my biggest suggestion for Elves players, other than sticking with the Weird Harvest build, is to run multiple Pendelhaven in the maindeck to help deal with the increase in removal. Forcing people to double up with certain removal spells or making blocks unfavorable can be the small edge needed to win against certain hands against G/B, Blue, and Zoo.
Loam Cloud’s popularity, on the other hand, I blame on a completely different reason. It happens to be a G/B deck, which means it’ll be absurdly overrepresented no matter how good or bad it actually is. Although, if you chose to play it this year, you actually have a legitimate chance of doing well, because the deck is quite good (albeit inconsistent at times). Probably the best argument against it is that, other than losing to itself, the biggest problem it faces comes from Burn decks. You could say just throwing in Sun Droplet is good enough, but honestly, it just helps stall the inevitable. Unless you have a full-blown plan against Burn, you’ll likely just end up crying to your friends afterwards about how lucky and terrible all these scrubs with burn are for beating your ‘real deck.’
After that, I have no idea what others decks numbers are going to look like. The field will likely end up all over the place after those main six decks are taken into account. Here are some notes from of testing of the various decks; how good / horrible these observations are is certainly debatable, but I guess we’ll see in a few days.
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The Goblins deck is actually terrible. I don’t know why people think Empty the Warrens is actually good, because it ranges somewhere between god-awful and horrendous, considering how many decks don’t care about it when you do it on turn 3 or 4. Too bad you don’t have actual manipulation to combo off most of the time, as you would with Food Chain Goblins. I might as well add Black for Thoughtseize and Goblin Deathraiders, and just hope to beat the opponent down the old-fashioned way.
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Faeries mirrors may be some of the stupidest I’ve ever played. I have no idea who’s actually winning until the final lethal attack, although it seems to be connected directly to how many utility lands I draw. That and assuming I have at least UU open, because the hands where I don’t manage to Thirst into any are pretty much the most miserable in existence. I prefer the UB version just so I can use Darkblast to mock Riptide Laboratory and make Shackles worthless.
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AIR seems like Oath in Vintage: you are totally at the mercy of your opening seven, and if you hit the right five of seven, you can’t lose. You have a few mild disruptive elements which will sometimes steal a game, but the rest of the deck is basically a steaming turd. I would actually be mildly interested in taking this to a PTQ-level tournament just because of how often you can win for free. A hot streak, and you pretty much auto Top 8. Seems miserable for trying it at the GP… just too much variance to work through, but I could be wrong.
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Loam Cloud needs a Green Ancestral Visions. Loam itself is great, but the amount of effort it takes to set up makes it a downer, as I often come up one mana short to do what I need for the turn plus something else fun like Loam and cycle some lands. As a result, I need the other guy to go slower, and Death Cloud and Smallpox are amazing at blowing out Zoo, AIR, Burn, and Elves. I would definitely want full sets of both between the main and board if I run this, although the fourth Smallpox is probably the most questionable. They aren’t great to topdeck, and they lose value after the first three turns go by, while Cloud gains value.
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Elves is still stone-cold amazing. You add Skullclamp and the deck is Vintage playable, the base acceleration and searching is that good. I suspect what needs to happen for the deck to become successful is to just focus on being the leanest killing machine possible for game 1, and just go overboard to smash the blue match. I really want Boil in the board so I can actually have responses to Engineered Explosives activation, but that would require a major overhaul of the mana. Still, the idea of just attacking their mana directly post-board with Choke and Boil seems decent on the whole, since otherwise our post-board options boil down to going off when they tap down, or getting Fecundity into play and bumrushing.
Zoo is weird. Game 1, if they have a removal-heavy hand, they usually win. Games post-board are solved by being on the play or resolving Fecundity, Mycoloth or Steely Resolve. Unless they run Jund Charm, the Resolve does everything the former does, but better. Then again, Mycoloth is better from a topdecking perspective, so maybe that’s the call, regardless of the Oblivion Ring numbers.
Darkblast is also an issue, since it becomes very difficult to win if the opponent isn’t greedy and doesn’t overextend on his Black mana. We also can’t afford to wait all day to go off, because a resolved Death Cloud basically KO’s the deck; the same goes for Persecute. I think we need to aggressively mulligan into Leyline of the Void, or only keep a turn 2 kill (can be turn 3 on the play), otherwise we risk letting them get a slight edge on us which will end up being a big edge over time.
This was is my listing if we go the Red route:
2 Horizon Canopy
2 Pendelhaven
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Stomping Ground
5 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Regal Force
1 Eternal Witness
2 Viridian Shaman
3 Elvish Visionary
3 Boreal Druid
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Grapeshot
4 Summoner’s Pact
4 Weird Harvest (4th in, I’m tired of losing to discard taking this before I go off.)
Sideboard:
3 Sundering Vitae (This could also become Ancient Grudge, but the flip-side is increased non-basics make Blood Moon a factor. Plus, with Convoke, this card is usually free… still, Grudge might be better. It depends on the metagame)
3 Mycoloth (Meh. Could be any of the aforementioned)
3 Umezawa’s Jitte (Not sure if this is necessarily needed, but still pretty good)
2 Choke
4 Boil (Finally something to do on end-step)
I’m still wary of running Elves because I don’t think everyone is going to let another PT: Berlin happen, and the time constraints the deck put you under are significant.
That’s it for now, and I’ll see you at the GP. Good luck!
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
Email me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom