Welcome back!
With Future Sight discussions cooling down, it’s back to the deckbuilding workbench for me. To bring everyone up to speed, I’ve been trying my hand at scratch-building a competitive Standard deck. The latest piece of work is Walking Anthems, a midrange beatdown deck. In the forums of my last article on the deck, I brought up the idea of maindecking Temporal Isolation over Hit / Run.
Don’t let its similarities to Pacifism fool you; with Dralnu on the decline, Temporal Isolation is better than Hit / Run against practically every one of the top decks in MTGO Standard. Hit is great against Dragonstorm because it deals eight anytime they don’t have a spare Bloom lying around (and they rarely do), but Isolation fully counters a rawdogged Hellkite – Wrath effect included – when they don’t have the Storm itself. Hit is weak against Izzetron because it only ever hits a Signet, and I’d much rather counter a Hellkite and its damage than take out a mana source and deal two.
As for its strength against Gruul, I can do better than theorize. One of the great things about logging your playtest sessions is that you can rewind things and see how certain games could have panned out. Back when I tussled with the Gruul maindeck, I had Walking Anthems looking like this.
Walking Anthems
4 Blood Crypt
4 Godless Shrine
4 Boros Garrison
2 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
4 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Dark Confidant
4 Sinew Sliver
4 Cautery Sliver
4 Sedge Sliver
4 Necrotic Sliver
4 Sulfur Elemental
4 Castigate
4 Lightning Helix
3 Hit / Run
3 Worship
Because I promised I would, and to give you a feel for how the Gruul matchup plays out – and so I can keep an eye out for how much better Isolation would have been than Hit / Run – I’ll do a play-by-play of the first four games of the session.
Here we go!
Maindeck game 1 (on the play):
Mulligan a one-lander and see the following six: Blood Crypt, Terramorphic Expanse, Lightning Helix, Necrotic Sliver, Sulfur Elemental, Sedge Sliver. If I don’t know who my opponent is, having my only turn 2 play be Lightning Helix is pretty terrible… but it’s better than going to five, so I’ll keep it.
Gruul has three lands, Llanowar Elves, two Chars, and a Giant Solifuge. That curve-out (Elves, Char something, Solifuge, Char something) actually might work out on the play against Tron, Dragonstorm, or Solar Flare, but on the draw, it’s unlikely to do much against any unknown opponent. Mulligan into double Karplusan Forest, Seal of Fire, Kird Ape, Burning-Tree Shaman, Giant Solifuge. Not too bad. Keep.
Terramorphic Expanse, go.
Karplusan Forest, tap it for Kird Ape (now 20-19) and pass. End step, Expanse is cracked for Plains.
Draw Cautery Sliver; play Blood Crypt untapped (now 18-19) and the Cautery Sliver.
Draw Call of the Herd. Play Karplusan Forest and tap it (18-18) for Seal of Fire. Smoke the Cautery Sliver and attack with the 1/1 Kird Ape. (Now 17-18.)
Draw another Cautery Sliver. Shrug. Play it and pass.
Draw Giant Solifuge. Can’t very well attack a 1/1 Ape into a 2/2 Sliver, and still stuck on two lands; pass.
Draw Dark Confidant and play it. Since he’s still stuck on two Karplusan Forests and I’m holding Lightning Helix, I decide to take the offensive here, and attack with Cautery Sliver. (17-16.)
Draw another Kird Ape. Awful. Can’t really attack the Ape into Bob, as he’ll just decline to block, swing back for 4, and race me easily. Play the Ape (now 17-15) and pass.
Bob reveals Sinew Sliver (15-15). Draw Castigate and play Sinew Sliver. Here’s a question. Life totals are 15 apiece; the opponent has a pair of 1/1 Kird Apes to block, and I have a 3/3 Sliver and a Dark Confidant. Do I swing with the Confidant? Normally I’d love to take a one-for-one trade with Confidant against Gruul, just because keeping him around for too long can cost me precious life points, but is it still correct to trade for Kird Ape here? I’m about to attack the opponent down to 12 even if I don’t send in the Confidant. That means I’m so far ahead on life, I want to keep Bob around to find me some lands (I’m still stuck on two) so I can play out the rest of my hand and finish off my opponent before he can stabilize. So I attack with the 3/3 Cautery Sliver; naturally, he doesn’t chump because he’s not too low on life, and is waiting on a Forest to make the Apes into real blockers.
Draw Llanowar Elves and play it. These two Karplusan Forests are killing me. (Now 15-12.)
Bob reveals Dark Confidant (now 13-12); draw Godless Shrine. Play Godless Shrine untapped (11-12) to allow for Sulfur Elemental if he doesn’t block, and attack with Cautery and Sinew Sliver. Gruul double-blocks Sinew Sliver with a pair of Kird Apes. Sweet. Because he’s double-blocked, I’m clearly going to get a two-for-one this turn, but I have two options with regard to tempo. Option one is to Helix an Ape and keep my Sinew Sliver. That way I can play Sedge Sliver next turn and have a 4/4 Cautery and 3/3 Sinew Sliver, which is attractive. Option two is to play Sulfur Elemental, keep a “normal” two-for-one because he’s blocking my 2/2 with a pair of 1/1s, and hit for an extra point with the Cautery Sliver. (That will put him at eight.) If I go that route, I’ll still be holding the Helix, meaning he’ll be effectively operating at five life. If I do that, I’ll also have a 2/1 Confidant, a 3/1 Cautery Sliver, and a 3/2 Sulfur Elemental on-table next turn to his Llanowar Elves and two Karplusan Forests, he’ll need either two blockers or a blocker and a Seal of Fire. Even if he blocks just one of the three-power guys, he’ll take five and die. However, he’ll have to take another point from a Karplusan Forest to play either a Seal or a blocker, so he’ll be at four. Since Cautery Sliver can dome him for one with damage on the stack, the only way he can survive the next turn is to immediately Seal the Cautery (while I’m still tapped out for Sulfur Elemental) or to block the Sliver and the Elemental and take two from the Confidant, dropping to an effective one after the Sliver deals its Mogg Fanatic point. The best part is, he’ll really be at four at this point, and won’t know I’m holding the Helix, so tapping a Karplusan Forest will kill him and he won’t even know it. So yeah, I’m going to play the Elemental instead of Helixing his guy.
Whew.
So I play the Elemental, the Cautery Sliver connects for four, the Sinew Sliver takes down the two Apes, and the life totals become 15-8.
Draw Rift Bolt. Can’t stop five damage from coming in next turn; die.
1-0
Maindeck game 2 (on the play):
One-lander again. Ship into Swamp, Terramorphic Expanse, Cautery Sliver, Sulfur Elemental, Necrotic Sliver, Worship. This is a risky six on the play, as I’m color screwed, but after much deliberation, I like it better than a random five. If I topdeck the correct mana source, I’m in great shape, and I’m holding cards that are excellent across all matchups. This hand illustrates a rarely-occurring problem with Terramorphic Expanse (which, come to think of it, only ever came up in this one game): it makes me pick either Mountain or Plains here, when really I’d like to have access to both… if I go get a Mountain and topdeck a Red source, I can’t play Cautery Sliver, while if I get a White source and topdeck a White source, I can’t play Sulfur Elemental or Cautery Sliver! Had I played Sacred Foundry instead, I could topdeck either a Red or a White source and be able to cast every creature in my hand.
Gruul’s opener is double Stomping Ground, Llanowar Elves, Scab-Clan Mauler, double Call of the Herd, Char. Wow. Keep.
Terramorphic Expanse, go.
Draw Char, play Stomping Ground (down to 18) and Elves. EoT opponent cracks Terramorphic Expanse for Mountain.
Draw Lightning Helix. Play Swamp; still color screwed. Pass.
Draw Stonewood Invocation. Attack with Elves (now 19-18) and play Stomping Ground untapped (19-16) for a 3/3 Scab-Clan Mauler.
Draw Sedge Sliver. Still no plays. This one’s going to be over in a hurry.
Draw Burning-Tree Shaman. Play Call of the Herd and attack for 3 (now 16-16).
Draw Sinew Sliver. If I’d had a Sacred Foundry instead of Terramorphic Expanse, I could have played this guy. Not that it would have mattered, really. I’m no longer in this.
… To make a long story short, I draw two more consecutive creatures and play no spells the entire game.
1-1
Maindeck game 3 (on the draw):
My opening hand is Terramorphic Expanse, Swamp, Blood Crypt, Dark Confidant, Cautery Sliver, Castigate, Hit / Run. Keep! (Let’s keep an eye on that Hit / Run, and consider how much better a Temporal Isolation would have been in its place.)
Gruul’s first seven include no lands. Mulligan into Karplusan Forest, Mountain, Llanowar Elves, Scab-Clan Mauler, double Call of the Herd. Deal!
Play Karplusan Forest and Llanowar Elves (down to 19).
Draw Castigate and play Terramorphic Expanse.
Gruul draws Forest, attacks with the Elves, and plays the Forest and Scab-Clan Mauler post-combat. Alternately, he could have tapped the Elves to play the Call of the Herd here, but this way he gets a point of damage in and a 3/3 trample instead of a vanilla 3/3. Seems better, especially when he can only get a 3/3 out of the Scab-Clan later if he continues to connect for damage every turn. Terramorphic Expanse turns into Plains on end step.
Draw Necrotic Sliver. Play Swamp and Castigate. Why Castigate? Well, I could play Cautery Sliver here, but he’s my best way to trade with the Scab-Clan Mauler (after stacking damage), and I can’t get that trade until I have three mana and can play him with one open to use his ability. Why not play him this turn and Castigate next turn, leaving a mana up for the stack-damage play? If I tap out to play him now, he can be removed before I have a chance to use his ability; by waiting to play him until I have a mana open, I can kill the Llanowar Elves in response if he gets shot at. So Castigate takes Call of the Herd (love that RFG), leaving another still in hand.
Draw Kird Ape. Attack With Scab-Clan (opponent down to 17), play Mountain and Kird Ape and Call of the Herd. That’s some good board development.
Draw Boros Garrison. Play Blood Crypt untapped and Cautery Sliver with Swamp open. Blech.
Draw Llanowar Elves. Attack with Mauler, Ape, and Elephant token. The token is blocked and shot with damage on the stack. (Naturally, I block the token instead of the Mauler so as not to take a point of Trample.) Flash the Call back.
Draw Godless Shrine. Play Necrotic Sliver and Boros Garrison, returning Plains. Pretty far behind at this point.
Draw Scorched Rusalka. Play the Rusalka and swing with Ape, Mauler, and Elephant again. Play Llanowar Elves.
I’m at two, and he has Scorched Rusalka. I’m way, way out of this one. Hit / Run would have been better as Temporal Isolation, as I could have cast that turn 2 on the 3/3 Scab-Clan Mauler, but then I wouldn’t have cast Castigate on his second Call of the Herd, and probably could not have handled four Elephants unless I topdecked a Worship. Still, at least I would have bought myself a couple extra turns in which to do so.
1-2
Maindeck game 4 (on the draw):
One land in the opener, yet again. Ship it into a zero-lander. Great! Ship that into double Terramorphic Expanse, Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author], Hit / Run, Worship. Better than four! At least it’s got Worship.
Gruul sees Mountain, Forest, Scorched Rusalka, Scab-Clan Mauler, Tin-Street Hooligan, Burning-Tree Shaman, Rift Bolt. Keep!
Mountain, Scorched Rusalka, go.
Draw Lightning Helix. Play Terramorphic Expanse (yet again).
Draw Seal of Fire. Attack for one, play Forest and Scab-Clan. End step, Expanse turns into a Plains.
Draw a spare Worship. Play Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] and Lightning Helix (main phase) on the Mauler before he gets to untap mana for Rusalka. Go up to 21.
Draw Char. Attack for one and play Tin Street Hooligan.
Draw Cautery Sliver. I can easily play him here if my other land isn’t Terramorphic Expanse, but the Expanse turns the prospect of a much-needed two-for-one into a one-for-one instead. I also would have loved to just cast Isolation here, but Hit / Run costs three. Big frowns; I’ll just play the Expanse and pass instead.
Draw Char. Swing with Hooligan and Rusalka, then play Seal of Fire. (Good thing I held that Cautery Sliver…) End step, Expanse turns into Swamp.
Draw Sedge Sliver. Ding! Play Cautery Sliver off the Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] (down to 16) with a mana open.
Draw Rift Bolt. Seal the Cautery Sliver. (Rusalka is shot in response, and is sacrificed in response to deal one to the dome.) Attack for two with Hooligan.
Draw Sulfur Elemental. Pass, with plans to Hit the Tin Street Hooligan.
Draw Tin Street Hooligan. Attack with Hooligan; it dies to Hit. Life Totals are now 13-18 in Gruul’s favor. Play the other Hooligan and pass. (Note that Temporal Isolation could have taken out the Hooligan back on turn 2, and I’d still be at 16 here even once the Pacified Hooligan was flung at my dome via Rusalka.)
Draw Godless Shrine. Nice. Play Sedge Sliver, and the Shrine untapped to allow for regeneration.
Draw Llanowar Elves. Play them, and suspend Rift Bolt.
Draw Boros Garrison. At this point I am all-in on my Sedge Sliver plus Worship plan, so I need to make sure the Sedge Sliver survives the next turn. If I play Sulfur Elemental here, I’ll have only one Black to regenerate, so if he has another Rift Bolt (decently likely; he’s probably got three left) or a Char (still quite likely; I’m sure he has four), he’ll use the Suspended Bolt to force a regeneration and then finish off the Sliver with the other burn spell in his hand. Instead, I can just play Boros Garrison and pass with two Black open, and next turn play Worship with two black open. This is the safest option, so I just play Boros Garrison, returning Plains, and pass.
Rift Bolt the dome (down to 10). Draw Mountain. Play Burning-Tree Shaman and pass, with plans to swarm and then burn the opponent out.
Draw Dark Confidant. Play Plains and Worship, leaving Swamp and Godless Shrine open. Gruul doesn’t come up with enough damage to kill the Sliver three times in one turn before I draw into two Sinew Slivers and victory becomes inevitable.
2-2
Both times I drew Hit / Run, I wished it was Isolation. The fact that it’s cheaper and targeted is a very big deal, and the fact that it can’t touch Giant Solifuge is not. Besides, Hit isn’t often in a position to kill a Solifuge anyway; there’s always an Elf or something hanging around to soak it up.
For the remaining six games, I’ll just summarize. (By the way, whenever I want to keep a quick record of playtest games, I use this format. I’ve got several Word documents lying around full of logs like these.)
Game 5: on the play, (no mulls), win. I’m about to get crushed when I topdeck Worship. Then he kills all my guys but one and I’m about to lose again… and I topdeck Sedge Sliver! Good playskill, Feldman.
Game 6: on the play, (Gruul mulls a one-lander and a five-lander down to five cards), win. I trade early on and then stick a Cautery Sliver. I follow it up with multiple Sedge Slivers and the game’s not close.
Game 7: on the play, (Walking Anthems mulls a one-lander), lose. He has two Calls, and enough burn to kill my Sedge Sliver. I stabilize with him having just a Llanowar Elf and me having nothing; I rip Castigate, he rips Tin Street Hooligan, and I die a few turns later.
Game 8: on the draw, (WA mulls color screw and a one-lander and keeps at five), lose. I stabilize at five life, but he has more gas and I don’t. All I can do is hit for three with Sedge Sliver to keep from dying to a counterattack. Eventually he draws a burn spell, alpha strikes, and finishes me.
Game 9: on the draw, (no mulls),lose. He has turn-one Kird Ape, turn-two Mauler, and so forth. I draw two Confidants (ouch) and Terramorphic Expanse prohibits turn-two Helix, which I really wanted to play. I don’t stabilize in time, and get burned out.
Game 10: on the draw, (Gruul mulls a no-lander), win. His draw isn’t terribly fast. I Lightning Helix an Elves so I can Hit a Burning-Tree Shaman. He then plays Solifuge, which is Hit as well. Then I play Sinew Sliver and Sedge Sliver. He doesn’t recover.
This brings us to a maindeck record of 5-5. I’ve also got some post-board games written out in play-by-play form, but they were done when both sides were boarding incorrectly. Gruul was bringing in Blood Moon, which is ineffective overall, and I hadn’t added Sunlance or Temporal Isolation to the deck yet.
As Solar Flare has surged in popularity on MTGO recently, I felt duty-bound to battle it. I tried out the Temporal Isolations main over Hit / Run, to see how good or bad they would be against a deck with Angel of Despair to remove them. As with most everything this deck has faced, I went 5-5 in game 1. Surprise, surprise.
I had Solar Flare boarding like this:
+3 Mortify, +3 Circle of Protection: Red
-3 Castigate, -2 Persecute, -1 Body Double
Walking Anthems (that is, the latest list with Blood Moon in the board) went like this:
+4 Rise / Fall, +3 Blood Moon
-4 Lightning Helix, -3 Worship
Rise / Fall was decent. Like Izzetron, Solar Flare cantrips its way into a lot of lands, so it wasn’t as powerful as it is against Dralnu or Dragonstorm, but I was still happy to see it most of the time.
Blood Moon was a mixed bag. I always had a Swamp or a Plains to go with it, but rarely both, so it would shut down a bunch of cards for both me and for my opponent. However, Solar Flare can still cast Court Hussar, Compulsive Research, and Remand off Azorius Signet just fine, which helps them draw out of the predicament I’ve put them in. Locating three White sources for Akroma (ironically the easiest finisher for them to cast under a Moon, compared to Angel of Despair’s WWBB requirement) isn’t as tough as it looks when they still get to play at least one draw spell per turn.
Solar Flare’s mana development is slow, but critical to them. Every time Necrotic Sliver blew up a bounceland on turn 4, I felt I couldn’t lose even though I’d paid an arm and a leg for the effect. I actually wished several times that I could have had access to Hit / Run merely to blow up Signets and put them back on development.
Along those lines, you know what card I would just love to have against Solar Flare and Tron deck? Shattering Spree. Sure, I don’t have all that many Red sources unless a Blood Moon is in play… but who cares about Replicate? Hell, I just want to Stone Rain them for one mana and make my topdecked Blood Moons more dangerous!
I ended up… say it with me… 5-5 post board. Man, at least in my last article I could report some 6-4 and 4-6 results!
Speaking of which, I expressed concern last time that winning 50% of your matches is not good enough for Top 8, and said that these results needed work. Midrange expert Jeroen Remie echoed this sentiment in the forums: “It also seems that you do not really have any ‘Great’ matchups that would warrant playing this deck, like decks that you absolutely crush when you play them, and all you really do have is a bunch of 50/50 matchups. That usually points out the deck is not good enough…”
It’s a natural reaction to get defensive when people criticize you, but there’s a lot of benefit to be had in getting argumentative instead. When someone tells me that I’m wrong, that I screwed up, or that I’m on the wrong track, I argue back to test the strength of the criticism – not because I’m angry that they called me out on it. After all, what if they’re right? Wouldn’t it benefit me to know that I was wrong, or screwed up, or am on the wrong track, so I can stop making the mistake?
My most recent build had Blood Moons in the board, but both Remie and Red Mage extraordinaire Pat Sullivan warned against this. I emailed them to get some more specifics, and part of Jeroen’s feedback involved Blood Moon:
“I never really liked Blood Moon in aggressive decks as it is, because it only works against really vulnerable decks. If you ever draw two you are screwed, and most decks have a decent plan against it anyway… your deck is already very three-drop heavy with no acceleration, so I would like to know against what you plan on bringing in the Blood Moons. I don’t feel they are very good right now… they only seem good versus your own deck.”
Jeroen went on to say that it’s difficult to get a tournament-viable deck without absolutely crushing one or two of the popular decks, and that losing ground in other matchups in exchange for gaining a couple of “crush-ya” matchups would be preferable to going 50-50 against everything. He pointed out that although Rock is usually such a 50-50 deck, it is only ever good when it also happens to crush some of the field’s contenders.
Solid advice, all around. Even before I got his response, I was interested in focusing the deck on a couple of matchups, and now I’m sold on the idea. Lopsided is better than balanced as long as you’re lopsided against the right decks. (That is, the ones you get paired against.)
Jeroen cautioned that it’s tough to change a few cards around in a 50-50 deck to get it to crush certain decks, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. I put Temporal Isolation main over Hit / Run, and ran Shattering Spree (for Signets) in the board over Tormod’s Crypt. Then I played the deck in an 8-man queue on MTGO.
Round 1 was against Angelfire, which wasn’t part of my initial gauntlet. (There are how many viable Standard decks again? Man.) I punted game 1 because I threw down a Sedge Sliver on turn 3 while he was tapped out for a Signet, and he Helixed it. Having never looked at an Angelfire decklist, believe it or not, it didn’t even occur to me that they might play that card. Awkward. I then punted game 3 because I had no idea they played Boom/Bust and just played out all my lands. There’s really no excuse for this, as I could have just paused to look up the list once I figured out what I was up against, but I didn’t, and lost 1-2.
I started up another 8-man and encountered another deck I hadn’t tested against yet, U/B Pickles. Game 1, he played a Shadowmage Infiltrator, and I had no removal for it. I kept playing out threats as quickly as I could, but with a one-sided Howling Mine, he had all the answers. Eventually I ran out of gas and he played a Skeletal Vampire on an empty board for the win. Game 2 he literally killed me with an Infiltrator and a Shapeshiftered copy (which I, again, drew no removal for) and beat me to death with the two Finkels; he never even had to combo me out. Another first-round loss… even more awkward.
My opening hand for the third 8-man was great against anything but Dragonstorm, and seeing as how my last two opponents were fringe decks and… oh, you know where this is going. I kept, and he was Dragonstorm. I won game 2, but game 3 was a slideshow. I cast Castigate turn 2, he responded with Ignorant Bliss, I cast another turn 3, and he Remanded it. Next turn I was dead.
So, 0-3? That’s not 50-50… we’re coming up on super –awkward territory here.
Okay, one more eight-man. Then I’m going to bed.
Round 1 I beat Gruul 2-0.
Round 2 I beat Dragonstorm 2-1.
Round 3 I beat Gruul 2-1.
Winner.
So I went 0-3, then 3-0.
50-50.
Sigh.
Clearly, simple tweaks are not doing it. I need to make some bigger changes if I’m going to take this thing to the next level. So what cards can I change?
Unless I want to scrap the entire deck and start over, the whole reason to play Walking Anthems in the first place is the interactions of its beaters. Although Cautery Sliver and Sinew Sliver look a lot like Grizzly Bears, they do a good deal of attacking for three in this deck because of Sinew Sliver, Sedge Sliver, and Sulfur Elemental. When Sedge Sliver in particular resolves, he makes the whole team immediately threatening to any Gruul or Izzetron deck.
The other reason to play this deck is Worship. Believe it or not, you can’t just slap Worship into any midrange deck and expect it to beat Gruul whenever you draw it. Any time you draw it without its “lock” counterpart, you still have to come up with a way to defeat the opponent before your topdecks stop being equal (say, he hits a pocket of burn while you hit a pocket of lands) and he just clears your creatures out and kills you. Worship works in this deck because all you have to do is keep a man on the table until you draw a Sedge Sliver for the lock, and this deck plays a lot of men. Sedge Sliver also stops the “defend until I draw Krosan Grip” strategy by immediately turning your team into large, regenerating beasts, so you can put the game away in a hurry by turning everyone sideways a few times.
So what’s the core of the deck? If you ask me, it’s just Cautery Sliver, Sinew Sliver, Sedge Sliver, and Worship. The rest of the deck – Necrotic Sliver included – is just support. Although not technically part of the core, Sulfur Elemental is amazing and interacts well with the White creatures, I don’t board out Castigate against anything, and Dark Confidant is phenomenal in every matchup but Gruul, so the card choices I absolutely want to keep are as follows.
4 Castigate
4 Dark Confidant
4 Cautery Sliver
4 Sinew Sliver
4 Sedge Sliver
4 Sulfur Elemental
3 Worship
In addition to these 27 accepted cards, I want to play 22 lands, which leaves me with eleven remaining maindeck slots to fill with disruption. My most recent list had these eleven:
4 Necrotic Sliver
4 Lightning Helix
3 Hit / Run
It’s always, always, always a good idea to revisit your card choices when your deck isn’t performing as you’d like. I’m focusing on these fifteen slots because if the core of the deck has to be replaced, I might as well just write the deck off as a learning experience and start over with a new idea. I’m not convinced of that yet, though, so instead I’ll do a card-by-card review of the cards that I’m looking at changing.
Most of the time if I play this guy with less than six mana out, he just dies right away. So if he costs “de facto six”, why not just play a Dragon or something? Obviously it’s not that simple, as there are plenty of games where I’ve played him with three or four lands, untapped, and won the game by activating him on the critical permanent. However, playtesting has led me to the conclusion that four is just too many considering how mana-intensive he is. I’ll trim this guy down to two copies, and possibly zero if I find a full replacement.
Mike Flores had this to say about Lightning Helix when explaining its inclusion in his Boros list: “LOL. This is like the best card ever.” Whether a sad joke or closed-minded drivel, the line accurately sums up the card’s inclusion in most decks. If you’re Red and White, it is assumed that there will be four copies of Lightning Helix in your list. If they’re not there, you’re asked where they are, and if, perhaps, you’d forgotten them. After all, like, it’s three damage to a target and you gain three life! For two mana! Duh!
In a midrange deck, I’ve learned that this card sucks in most matchups.
Three damage and three life is only the difference between racing Dragonstorm and not racing Dragonstorm when (A) you have a lot of burn in your deck or (B) when you’re making up some fantastically improbable story to prove that Lightning Helix is good. If it’s only good once in a blue moon, then it’s crap. I want to win more than once in a blue moon, savvy?
Gaining three life is similarly irrelevant under most circumstances against Izzetron, Dralnu, Solar Flare (regarding Akroma math, I refer you to the paragraph on adorable, cooked-up Dragonstorm situations), Pickles, and AngelFire. As for the three damage, it will kills Pickles’s morphs and Infiltrators and Izzetron’s Sulfur Elementals, but shooting a Court Hussar with it nets the opponent a consistently awesome two-for-one. Killing morphs and Finkels is good, but killing Sulfur Elementals is extremely unexciting; the guy would have just blocked and traded with an attacker otherwise, and the main reason you always Helix it is that otherwise the Helix will sit in your hand and be a Lava Spike.
It’s great against Gruul, naturally, but that’s not a good enough reason to overcome its shortcomings as a maindeck card. If it’s only good against Gruul and Pickles, decent against Izzetron, and a damn Lava Spike against everything else, why don’t I just board it in against the few decks where I want it?
Why indeed? Strange as it may sound, I’m booting Helix out of the maindeck.
Hit / Run
Great against Dragonstorm, solid against Dralnu, decent against Solar Flare, weak against Gruul, and crap against Tron. Doesn’t seem consistent enough for the maindeck, if you ask me.
I decided to move Lightning Helix to the board, cut Necrotic Sliver, and replace Hit / Run with the excellent Temporal Isolation once and for all. I then spelunked around the internet in search of a replacement beater for Necrotic Sliver. I really wanted something to nullify Court Hussar, and which had late-game punch but which wasn’t a three-drop. (Jeroen astutely pointed out that I had an excess of three-mana creatures in my deck.) I settled on Rakdos Guildmage, which led me to the following build:
Creatures (23)
Lands (20)
Notice the maindeck Rise / Fall action. If a lopsided deck is your goal, eight maindeck discard spells is a good place to start.
I still haven’t had enough experience with Blood Moon to tell if it should stay or not. On the one hand, Jeroen and Pat seem to have experience with it and think it’s weak (if tempting), but on the other hand, it’s hard to ignore the power of having Shattering Spree and Blood Moon in your deck for a long, drawn-out attrition war. In any case, I don’t know what card would be a better fit for the Blood Moon slot at this point, so I’ll leave it there for now, with a Buyer Beware warning label.
I played ten games against the Gruul maindeck with the eight-discard-spells version, to see how badly they’d cripple me, and went 4-6. It’s interesting; most of my losses still come from Gruul getting a start that’s too fast (unless I draw Worship), and whenever they don’t have a super-speedy draw, Rise / Fall really isn’t all that bad.
I also re-did the post-board Gruul matchup with the new sideboard. This time I had them boarding like this:
+2 Krosan Grip, +2 Moldervine Cloak, +1 Call of the Herd
-3 Tin Street Hooligan, -2 Stonewood Invocation
While I got to do this:
+4 Lightning Helix, +4 Sunlance
-4 Rise/Fall, -4 Dark Confidant
This led me to a 6-4 post-board record. That’s still in 50-50 territory, but I had two mulligans to four in those ten games, and feel the matchups is more like 70% in my favor. Considering the only card I’m boarding strictly for the Gruul matchup is Sunlance (Helix comes in against other things), I’m fine with those numbers. Hopefully the maindeck Isolations, Rise / Falls, and Rakdos Guildmages will give me better numbers against the rest of the field.
I ran another 8-man and beat Gruul 2-0 in the first round, then lost to Gruul 1-2 in the second round when I was forced to tap out for a critical Sedge Sliver against an empty hand and he topdecked the burn spell for it. That was my first loss to Gruul in a queue, putting me at a 3-1 match advantage against them in sanctioned play. Not bad.
Working on this deck has been an interesting experience. My stated goal for this Limited PTQ season was to scratch-build a competitive Standard deck, and although I didn’t end up with a format-dominating beast of a deck, I think I did all right for a format as diverse as this one.
That said, I think I’ve learned as much as I can from this deck. If anyone is still interested in Walking Anthems, I’ll be more than happy to respond to forum posts and emails about it, but I’ve moved past the “scratch-building” phase and entered into the “tuning” phase, so it’s time to move on.
Next week: an entirely new deck!
Richard Feldman
Team :S
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