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Deconstructing Constructed — Road to Regionals: The Regionals Blowout

Get ready for Magic the Gathering Regionals!
It’s that time again. Time for Ted Knutson’s usual metagame breakdown and tho… Oh right, he doesn’t write anymore (insert sad face here). Well, then it’s time for all the Standard players to come out from their holes in the wall and actually buy physical cards. Come out into a world where Project X is actually playable, because a bunch of annoying pop-up screens won’t time you out. Time for the 2007 Regionals preview!

It’s that time again. Time for Ted Knutson usual metagame breakdown and tho… Oh right, he doesn’t write anymore (insert sad face here). Well, then it’s time for all the Standard players to come out from their holes in the wall and actually buy physical cards. Come out into a world where Project X is actually playable, because a bunch of annoying pop-up screens won’t time you out. Time for the 2007 Regionals preview!

First, let’s get the basic pre-requisites and basic knowledge junk out of the way. The top three decks at the moment going into the format are Gruul, Dralnu, and Dragonstorm. The deck that may overshadow all of them in terms of popularity, and may be in the same tier power-wise, is the B/G/U Dredge deck. After that you have a vast expanse of tier 2 decks, which just seems to be growing in size every day we get closer to Regionals.

Bringing up the forefront of the tier 2 brigade is Tron, that long forgotten behemoth of a control deck. It’s fallen out of the limelight as of late due to issues with Magus of the Moon and Gruul in general, along with Detritivore, but I’ve been very pleased with how U/R does against the rest of the field. Not only do both decks get ridiculous draws that can completely ignore the opponent and just let you bury them in cards and big stupid monster advantage (i.e. I just played Hellkite three turns before you, and can Repeal or counter anything you do). Or maybe you just take Naoki Shimizu U/G Tron deck and upgrade it. Between Wall of Roots, Serrated Arrows, and Chord of Calling, nobody can say that deck is going to auto-lose to Gruul.

My favorite of the tier 2 decks has to be Richard Feldman‘s Orzhov deck. As soon as it was introduced I threw it into the gauntlet, and was amazed at the high marks it was getting along much of the top tier. In fact, my only real complaints with the deck came when I was battling it against older or more fringe decks in the metagame. See, to me this is a great scalpel deck; it’ll cut people all up in their grill. The problem is when you can’t get the damn thing to where you need it to be, and the other guy clogs you in the side of the head with a car battery.

That colorful imagery means that the decks that ran bigger creatures, Blood Moon, or decks that were resistant to dozens of small dorks made a mockery of the deck. Korlash, Magus of the Moon, and Loxodon Warhammer on anything were probably the biggest annoyances. The deck could eventually work around these cards, and did in some games, but I had a sinking feeling the deck was just bad at dealing with simple creature decks that could make huge men. Of course, then he went and upgraded the deck, and thanks to a full set of maindeck Slaughter Pact I now have the pleasure of retesting those matches with more than four Mortify for ways to kill things.

Realistically, the big unknown in the field this year has to be Dredge. Everyone is cooking up their own lists for the archetype and I don’t think I’ve seen any list that really was a copy of one another. Everyone thinks the deck’s non-core cards should be geared towards completely different stuff. Despite all this, the deck still packs it in to Leyline of the Void even worse than the Manaless builds in Vintage. Surprisingly enough, nobody actually seems to care enough to board it or beat it citing that, "hey, we play like a whole four removal spells I can play on turn 1, I auto-win!’ Then again, a lot of people who "tested" the deck didn’t know how to play the deck in any other mode than straight combo. A 6/6 or bigger Golgari Grave-Troll is sufficient many times to beat smaller aggro like Boros or Gruul.

Now that I’ve prattled on about the most popular / seemingly best decks, let me get into the meat of the article.

The Top 5 Things You Absolutely Must Know About 2007 Regionals

5. Discard will be the most prominent type of disruption
As much as I love counters, the fact is people are just drawn to Green and B/W decks. People playing all three colors? Oh, you know there’ll be a lot of Castigate and Persecute flying around. Feldman has provided the latter, and Evan Erwin last Magic Show gave anyone who had learned to erase the memory of Beach House from their minds a reminder of the former.

In addition, Pact of Negation and Rewind only go so far against the Dragonstorm or Hatching Plans storm decks. As a result many control decks are still packing a number of Persecute against the beast. Basically this is not the year you want to play a deck relying on any specific one or two cards, because half the field is going to be packing discard in spades.

Additionally, this creates an issue where control can’t really sit on its laurels for the entire match.

4. Black will be the most popular color at Regionals
Dredge, Dralnu, Project X, MBC, Rack decks, Orzhov, some Tron, Solar Flare, and Beach House / Shiny Rock all contain significant portions of Black. This means other than the aforementioned discard you can expect to deal with Damnation, Sudden Death, Funeral Charm, Darkblast, and Tendrils of Corruption as the weapons of choice against the majority of decks showing up.

It also means cards like the Rusalkas, Keldon Marauders, Calciderm, and other Shroud cards tend to go up in value, because they aren’t actively working against you when they get killed off thanks to Tendrils and co. This also means the most annoying creatures you’ll be dealing with all day (that aren’t Bogardan Hellkite or Kird Ape) are going to be the ones that regenerate (Augur of Skulls and Korlash) or Skeletal Vampire. Having ways to take these guys down that don’t involve waiting for your opponent to tap out is probably a Good Plan.

There’s too much variety in the Black decks this year to mark down a single strategy or tactic that wrecks the majority, but if you got a few spare board slots you may want to consider boarding against Black in general, or at least some early removal to hit Dark Confidant.

3. Play, or be able to beat, Detritivore
I had something written up here, but then Feldman summed up why this is true in about half the words, so I’m just going to quote him.

Everything I Needed to Know About The Regionals Metagame, I Learned From Detritivore

The heading says it all.

Why is Detritivore good in this environment?

The top three decks are Dragonstorm, Gruul, and Dralnu, in that order.

Detritivore is crap against Dragonstorm. It is also crap against Gruul. It’s strong against Dralnu, but why is everyone so eager to play a card that sucks against the two best decks?

Simple: it’s because the two best decks, together, will be piloted by maybe a quarter of the room.

Every year at Regionals, 5-10% of the field will be casual or semi-competitive players whose homebrew decks you will love to get paired against round 1. This year, another 10-15% will have Dredge, Hatching Plans, Splitting Headache, Tron, Pickles, or some other fringe deck. Dragonstorm and Gruul should account for another 25%, and the remaining 50-60% will have slow, three-color decks that get violated by Detritivore. (And yeah, I pulled those numbers out of thin air. Anyone with lots of free time can have the last laugh on me by doing a manual archetype breakdown on June 9th.)”

Richard FeldmanTuning the Suicide Squad

I completely agree with this analysis. Literally every other deck I see outside of the big three that isn’t a beatdown deck is some sort of three-color control or midrange deck. Since not all of them are Green, needless to say they can’t easily find their basics nor find and play Pull from Eternity consistently and proceed to get wrecked by the Vore.

2. Life gain has become a very viable tactic this year
A small amount of life gain has rarely been as effective as it is in the current metagame. Even a single copy of Loxodon Hierarch, Lightning Helix, and Martyr of Sands can completely turn a game around against Gruul by buying you an extra turn to clear the board or fly in for the win. Many aggro aren’t decks to go 10 rounds with midrange decks or control, they want to win within the first seven or eight turns, and their ability to win after that is ultimately coming down to the number of Char and Giant Solifuge in the deck. I’ve seen Loxodon Warhammer used for this very reason in various Black decks, to wipe out Gruul players with a swing or two or make one side’s Urza’s Factory tokens a bit scarier than the other.

In addition the two strongest combo decks in the format, DS and HP Storm, are vulnerable to life gain and creature removal. A single Hide/Seek can cripple the Dragonstorm player, taking away its all-in kill turn and forcing it to do battle on fair terms. Meanwhile, Ignite Memories is an iffy win at best against certain decks and hands (see the game log of Feldman’s six-land one-spell opener for some amusement).

If you can safely add a few cards that are useful in general and can gain you four or more life in the process, it’s probably worth considering.

1. You have to be able to affect the board or graveyard in the first two turns.
Dredge basically dictates this to be true. I know people like to throw exaggerations both ways as far as Dredge versus anything goes, but the deck will destroy you quickly if your first real board control spells comes online on turn 3. Even aggro decks like Gruul and Rack decks can get crushed by an early 6/6 or bigger Golgari Grave-Troll if you aren’t prepared to take out the first Drowned Rusalka or Magus of the Bazaar that hits the table to buy some time.

DS and HP decks can’t really do this at all, and it’s actually a decent reason to consider bailing on them or heavily skewing your board towards the Dredge match. At the moment the popular card seems to by Martyr of Ashes to disrupt Dredge and buy time versus other aggro. I’d go even further though, and just add a set of Leyline of the Void to the sideboard to slow them down… until you can go off or win with your gigantic army of Goblin tokens.

Even if you don’t think Dredge is that big a deal, Gruul, Boros, and Rack decks still all demand attention in the early game. People with great matches against any or all of these decks typically are going to drop games to them when they give them a free pass to knock off seven or eight life early on while investing few resources. Waiting to cast Damnation or a large creature isn’t really an option, unless it happens to be Loxodon Hierarch. The format is simply too fast for the traditional damage absorbing and long-term investment strategies many people are accustomed to using with control. The games may not be over quickly, but not being able to fight back early and often puts you in a losing position many times, and unless you play near perfectly you can’t dig yourself back out.

General Metagame Breakdown
This is the part where I pull numbers out of the air based on the MTGO metagame (within reason, considering Future Sight hasn’t been on there until very recently) and general sentiment floating around.

20% Storm (15% DS, 5% HP)
15% Gruul
12-20% Dredge
10-12% Dralnu
7-12% Shiny Rock / Project X (G/W/B)
5-8% Mono Black
3-8% Tron
3-6% Orzhov (SS)
3-5% Solar Flare
20-30% Everything else (So good with catch-alls)

Like I said earlier, I think the Top 4 decks here will actually be the lion’s share of the tournament. You’ll probably agree if you think / hear that the wide-open metagame we keep hearing about will push people towards decks that just don’t care about what the other guy is playing. The same with that frustrated control player who can’t understand why everyone plays Detritivore when they’re still losing to combo decks based around creatures.

Dragonstorm is going to mash most fringe decks into dirt, along with Gruul. Dredge seems to be getting the most buzz online, and card sales generally back up that this is going to be a deck to watch out for. Gruul… everyone who didn’t want to play the three-color control deck that gets wrecked by Detritivore is going to fall back on Gruul. The same with those who thought they’d be really cute and make a non-R/G deck* that beats down. Dralnu is actually the most fundamentally sound of all the decks I’ve tested, plays the two best colors in Magic, plays a million counters so you no opposing deck can play its game, and has some of the best end-game threats. Of course, all this means squat when you’re mentally exhausted by the end of round 8 and still have a couple left to go.

Everything else I figure people will come up with justifiable reasons to play, even though they really shouldn’t. If you had to pick a deck not in the Top 4 or so, I’d have to go with Boros or Orzhov. Both are consistent decks with good mana and draws that certain decks can never beat. The decks are consistent and have back-up plans for attrition wars.

If you play control? Well then, your only real option is to come to the dance with some rogue homebrew, or a Damnation deck like Solar Flare or MBC. Nothing new that’s known about is really any better than what is already in place.

* I’m guilty of that as well, see my Glare deck which could only beat two of the Top 4 consistently game 1, but Boros is the real deal.

Quick Hits
And now comes the part of the article where I give brief thoughts on certain decks.

Evan Erwin Glittering Wish Control (Shiny Rock):
This is actually one of the better decks to receive a lot of press lately. This Glittering Wish midrange deck can match up against decks with nearly all of the same weapons as Solar Flare, and replaces a slower draw engine with a very fast and versatile Wish sideboard. The deck can also completely roll aggro with the simple compliment of Wall of Roots and Loxodon Hierarch, to say nothing of the Wraths or turn 4/5 Teneb, the Harvester starts.

Meanwhile it retains the tools every non-Dralnu deck is using to fight Dragonstorm, i.e. pounding it into oblivion with Castigate and Persecute. Not to mention the deck can easily support a Hide / Seek in the board which, if it resolves, is disastrous for DS. The match against the Ignite Memories deck is a lost cause as far as I’m concerned. If they get off a significant Ignite on turn 3 or 4, the odds of survival are quite low. If you can pound them with an early discard barrage, you’ve got a shot if you immediately follow it up with Teneb, otherwise its game over.

The other poor matches from my experience are with Dralnu players that are willing to go all day with you. As long as they make a conscious effort to stop Glittering Wish so you can’t get Grave-Shell Scarab as a recurring threat, you’ve got major pressure issues. I’ve also considered replacing Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree with Urza’s Factory for some help as well. Often, by the time you start really using City-Tree you’ll be around the same mana mark where you can begin making Factory tokens. Not to mention when going up against an opposing Factory, 1/1s don’t look quite as intimidating. However, it’s not something I’m going to scream at someone about one way or the other, merely noting that it may be worthwhile if you expect a significant control presence.

This is my current build:


As you can see, I took some of Feldman’s advice from the forums when constructing this revision of the deck.

The manabase breaks down (counting Search) as follows:

13 White
14 Black
17 Green

Sideboard-wise I tried to cut back on some of the cuter cards and focused purely on Wish targets that could either answer a problem ASAP or provided a huge monster. The rest of the board was to help shore up the match against Dredge, while providing a little more oomph against creatures if needed.

Boros
I mentioned this in my last article and I’ll say it again, the deck is not bad. If you try to play it in the olden 20/20/20 style configuration you’ll more than likely end up with a deck that’s just worse than Gruul. If you update the creature base with men that don’t die to Sulfur Elemental and can get around or match Wall of Roots and Tarmogoyf on the ground, then your results will greatly improve.

Remember that Savannah Lions are the only one drop you really need in the deck for clock purposes, after that the skies the limit with the manabase. I find that biggest issue is people are too scared of not running slightly slower three- and four-drops which could give them an edge after the first swarm dies. The plan of just burning the opponent out is okay, but people should really focus on the creatures they play. Remember that no matter how many Char you run, you have to put significant pressure on the opponent to force past a Hierarch or Martyr of Sands, not just a Char to the dome.

The guys that have been the best for me in the deck are Serra Avenger, Keldon Marauders, Calciderm, and Leonin Skyhunter. You’d be amazed how much damage the Avenger and Skyhunter actually get in for in most games. Even with all the burn and removal running around, sometimes it’s just a real pain to kill a flyer constantly taking chunks of life away. Scorched Rusalka is good, but heavily overrated from what I found. Great against Dredge and Dralnu, but pretty mediocre everywhere else, you usually have better things to do with your mana.

Finally remember that DS is not the turn 4 combo machine it sounds like. It does stutter at times, it will have draws where it needs to hardcast Hellkite to live, and if you can buy even a turn or two, often that’s enough to win. This is the worst match while playing the deck, but it’s still winnable.

Mono Black Control
Now this is a deck that has stayed mostly under the radar, but MBC and MBC/r and MBC/w have put up results at the German Nationals Qualifiers. There are three good reasons to consider playing this deck over something like Dralnu.

Detritivore is a joke
Tendrils of Corruption and Korlash can beat aggro
Augur of Skulls**, Stupor and Persecute are sort of good against everything, I hear.

The downsides? Your draw engine is easily countered, unlike Aeon Chronicler, and you have no forms of stack control, which means you can only deal with threats once they’ve hit the board and possibly already done damage to you. This means matches against oh… something that uses the graveyard for some reason… is an issue for you.

** Augur of Skulls is one of the best reasons to play any sort of Black deck at the moment. I’m amazed at how little hype he’s gotten. Against control or combo he comes down on turn 2 and gives you a nice start to your discard package. Against aggro he either: A. Eats a burn spell on turn 2 B. Forces them to deplete the remainder of their hand C. Sits around as a regenerating wall. He pretty much does it all.

Here’s my current list:


Against smaller aggro decks like Gruul and company, you basically want to ramp up to four mana as quickly as possible and then just proceed to clean the board using Tendrils and Damnation. Korlash then comes down and pretty much seals the game up, because anything smaller than a 5/5 isn’t going to get by in one piece. This type of deck still gets abused by Dralnu to some degree, because of the smaller number of threats, but even they can be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of discard you can run.

The sideboard has been constructed to help out the other really weak match, Dredge. Withered Wretch and Funeral Charm can do wonders for slowing the deck down until you can hardcast Leyline; and of course the games you start with it in play will be over quite quickly. White is in the maindeck purely for Hide / Seek, which I feel is a superior anti-DS option than Shadow of Doubt, which a number of MBC decks were playing.

You can also see a more traditional version that was successful here.

Finally, I leave you with a few decks that have done well at foreign NQ’s. When going through the results at germagic.de (Great site for foreign results by the way) you’ll find a number of decks that just look… odd. It leads me to believe there’s a significant slant in certain metagames across the sea, so take the lists with a grain of salt in some cases, especially if you go poking around the site for tech.

Engel und Drache
Marian Will

4 Sacred Foundry
4 Blood Crypt
4 Godless Shrine
2 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Orzhov Basilica
1 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
1 Rakdos Carnarium
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Urza’s Factory
1 Boros Garrison
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Orzhova, the Church of Deals
4 Firemane Angel
2 Angel of Despair
1 Bogardan Hellkite
4 Lightning Helix
4 Castigate
4 Phyrexian Arena
3 Wrath of God
2 Damnation
2 Demonfire
3 Mortify
2 Boros Signet
2 Orzhov Signet
1 Sacred Mesa
3 Faith’s Fetters

Sideboard:
2 Detritivore
4 Hide / Seek
3 Temporal Isolation
2 Persecute
2 Moratorium Stone
2 Seize the Soul

Idiot Life
Felix Schulmerich

4 Coldsteel Heart
2 Sacred Mesa
3 Defense Grid
3 Story Circle
1 Evangelize
2 Debtors’ Knell
4 Proclamation of Rebirth
3 Gelid Shackles
4 Faith’s Fetters
2 Sunscour
4 Wrath of God
4 Martyr of Sands
1 Chronosavant
2 Urza’s Factory
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Mouth of Ronom
4 Scrying Sheets
11 Snow-Covered Plains

Sideboard:
3 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Sunscour
3 Bottled Cloister
3 Condemn
2 Disenchant
3 Pull from Eternity

U/R Tron
Takeshi Miyasaka

2 Island
4 Shivan Reef
4 Urza’s Mine
4 Urza’s Power Plant
4 Urza’s Tower
4 Steam Vents
1 Urza’s Factory
3 Bogardan Hellkite
3 Sulfur Elemental
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
2 Dimir Signet
4 Izzet Signet
4 Compulsive Research
2 Demonfire
2 Foresee
4 Mana Leak
4 Remand
3 Electrolyze
3 Repeal
1 Mystical Teachings
1 Spell Burst

Sideboard:
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
3 Willbender
3 Annex
4 Volcanic Hammer
3 Wildfire
1 Repeal

Good luck at Regionals and have fun!

Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
E-mail me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom