We tend to classify decks according to their default strategies for finishing the game: aggro (deal damage as quickly as possible), combo (assemble a group of cards that win the game), and control (keep the opponent in check until one or two large threats are enough to win). Pretend, for a moment, that aggro and control both branch off from an archetype called “decks that win by attacking.” (Yes, something like 2% of all successful control decks in history have used win conditions besides the attack step, but let’s set those aside for the moment.)
Now imagine an aggression spectrum that runs from “no control elements, lots of dedicated attackers” (i.e. Sligh) to “lots of control elements, no dedicated attackers” (i.e. Landstill). At the former end, we see lots of Red beatdown decks playing cards like Slith Firewalker, Blistering Firecat, and Char, and whose only interactive elements are burn spells that happen to be able to target creatures. At the opposite end we see control decks that counter everything, manage the board, and only win with cards that both further the control strategy and attack — Draining Whelk, Urza’s Factory, Teferi, and so forth.
Somewhere in between these two extremes of attacking-for-the-win strategies are the midrange decks, which get much less attention in the world of theory than their more “pure” brethren.
I’d say once you get more controllish than Red Deck Wins from Pro Tour: Columbus (which contained only Pillage, Rishadan Port, Wasteland, and burn as interactive elements) you’ve moved away from pure beatdown strategy and have become a midrange beatdown deck of some sort. I’d also say that once you get more aggressive than Psychatog from Pro Tour: Los Angeles, you’re no longer a pure control deck and have become midrange control.
So what do I mean by “midrange control” and “midrange beatdown” — and what separates their strategies from those of pure aggro and pure control decks?
Midrange Control
For the past two years, Mike Flores has been the veritable king of midrange control. From his tap-out-for-Keiga build of Mono Blue Control for States two years ago, to his Gnarled Mass-fueled build of the Japanese U/G Control deck from GP: Taipei in Kamigawa Block, to his build of Izzetron that put Osyp in the Top 8 of PT: Honolulu, to the scratch-built Go-sis for Regionals this year, Mike has consistently demonstrated a fearlessness to tap out with his Blue cards.
Compare these decks to the recent Dralnu du Louvre. While Dralnu’s ideal endgame involves near-total control of the game, with Mystical Teachings chains and enough Rewinds to choke a horse, the aforementioned midrange control decks only control the game to the point where they can tap out for a fatty and reasonably expect it to go the distance. Mike’s mono-Blue deck, for example, only used countermagic to disrupt the opponent’s game plan until the Blue player had played enough lands to enable Keiga or Meloku. At that point he would just throw down the Kamigawa legend and defy the opponent to resolve a spell that could compete with it. Generally speaking, they couldn’t, and the deck took down many an opponent at States that year.
Really, since Ravnica came out (or — let’s be honest here — since Remand came out), midrange control has been all the rage in Standard. Solar Flare, Angelfire, and the many flavors of Urzatron, have all followed the same gameplan: only control the opponent to the point where he can’t deal with one of your massive effects. One of the (many) reasons these decks love Remand so much is that preserving the same board position for an extra turn without losing card advantage is a great way to help propel you towards the game state where your fatty is enough to carry the game. If I’m playing a turn 6 Angel of Despair off a Signet, casting Remand on your turn 2 Scab Clan Mauler and repeating that sequence on turn 3 means you’ve only got turns 1, 4, and 5 to develop the board before you have my Angel to compete with. Repeal has been strong in these decks for largely the same reason: maintaining the same board position and card advantage levels favors the guy with the powerful late-game effects.
As such, if you’re playing a midrange control deck against aggro, your focus will usually be more on managing the opponent’s damage than on gaining card advantage as a more pure control deck might. You don’t have to care how many extra cards are in the opponent’s hand if your reanimated Akroma is going to kill him before he can play them. Whereas it might be correct for a more pure control deck to eat some extra damage from attackers in order to draw cards and better take control of the game post-Wrath, midrange control decks use Wraths more as a speed bump against aggro than anything else. The goal is not to cripple them, but rather to slow them down to the point where the game state sees both of us having mainly lands out, while my hand is full of big things and the opponent’s is full of small things.
Against a pure control deck, the midrange control deck wants to milk its threats for as much damage as possible. While it is practically impossible for Gruul to deal with a hardcast Akroma, Dralnu can counter it or kill it off with Damnation. Since you can no longer expect your finisher to go the distance simply by casting it, you have to set each one up to do as much damage as possible. There’s easily an article’s worth of discussion to be had on the subject of how to actually do this — baiting counterspells, sculpting a big turn, being mindful of inevitability, etc. — but unless the opponent has recurring life gain or something along those lines, the general strategy is to place more importance on connecting multiple times with your threats than connecting early with them (that is, racing). Obviously if you want to opportunistically deviate from this — say, if your hand is heavy on threats and you think you can stick one of them and have it go the distance if you start casting them all right away, so the opponent doesn’t have time to cast his draw spells and find answers — then go for it, but in general that’s not the default strategy you should go with.
As a side note, it is in these matchups that minor threats like Court Hussar and Urza’s Factory, and Haste creatures like Akroma and Giant Solifuge, become of greater value. If you can resolve a generic 5/5 flying against a permission deck, connecting three times instead of two can make a huge difference. With the opponent at only five life (give or take painlands), anything that can close the deal on those last few life points — Court Hussar, a resolved Akroma that’s about to die to Damnation, you name it — becomes leaps and bounds more dangerous than normal. The Rock, which is often built as a midrange control deck, can be surprisingly threat-dense against permission decks because the nickel-and-dime points of damage dealt by its Llanowar Elves, Sakura-Tribe Elders, and Eternal Witnesses mean that its larger creatures sometimes need only connect once or twice to seal the deal.
As with more pure control decks, the success of midrange control against combo decks depends entirely on how effective your control elements are at disrupting the opponent. However, since pure control decks revolve around their control elements and midrange control decks use them only to support their heavy hitters, it’s much more likely that the midrange deck will not be able to disrupt the combo deck in any relevant way.
Osyp Lebedowicz won Pro Tour: Venice (Onslaught Block) with a Lightning Rift/Astral Slide/cycling cards deck that was absolutely amazing at controlling the board… but with not a single permission or discard spell in the maindeck or sideboard, it would have been eaten alive if there had been any combo decks in that format to fight it. For a more modern example, compare Angefire’s suite of interactive cards — like Lightning Helix, Wrath, and Boom/Bust — to Solar Flare’s Castigates, Persecutes, and Wraths, and it’s pretty easy to guess which deck is more likely to survive a Dragonstorm pairing. On the other hand, while a Helix from Angelfire is pretty pathetic against DStorm, Solar Flare rarely has any ways to kill a Dredge deck’s enabler on the second turn; the relevant cards are what matters.
Midrange Beatdown
Moving back towards the aggressive end of the spectrum, we have midrange beatdown decks. These decks’ primary plan is to attack with small guys, but they do more to control the game than a regular aggro deck does. Orzhov and Rakdos aggro decks are great examples of this, playing hand disruption spells, dedicated creature removal, and often choosing more expensive — but more powerful — creatures over speedier clocks. A strictly aggressive Orzhov or Rakdos build might play Drekavac instead of Dark Confidant, as it deals more damage for the same cost, but the 2/1 card advantage machine is far superior when a significant part of your strategy is controlling the game. Other examples include Paladin en-Vec over Knight of the Holy Nimbus or White Shield Crusader, and Shadow Guildmage over Seal of Fire or Raging Goblin.
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again — the most important thing to know about midrange beatdown is this: “Against combo and control, you attack. Against aggro, you block.” It’s classic Who’s The Beatdown.
Because you’re playing so many creatures that do more than just combat, you’re paying more for them. Gruul opens with Kird Ape and Scab-Clan Mauler, while you open with a turn 2 Dark Confidant. With your curve so far behind theirs — and especially if they’re playing burn spells and you aren’t — a default plan of racing them is bound to fail. Instead, you have to take control of the game.
First, you have to negate their aggression. Blockers are the easiest way to do this, and creatures that are difficult to remove — such as Ghost Council, Ravenous Baloth, Sedge Sliver, and of course Paladin en-Vec — tend to be the best blockers. The other way to blunt the opponent’s offense is to gain life by attacking with such creatures as Descendant of Kiyomaro and Exalted Angel.
The next step is to break the stalemate by coming over the top with aggression that the opponent cannot handle. Ghost Council and Exalted Angel are both excellent at this, as is the classic destroyer of creature decks, Umezawa’s Jitte. Midrange beatdown decks that hope to defeat regular aggro decks must have both a way to stall the board and also a way to come back and dominate it.
Against control, these decks must compensate for their lack of speed by disrupting the control deck’s gameplan. Dark Confidant fights the opponent’s plan to run you out of threats by keeping your hand stocked and forcing a preemptive Wrath. Magus of the Moon (which I was extremely surprised to see no mention of in Mike’s article on Rakdos last Friday) attacks both the opponent’s life total and his ability to produce mana. Putting the opponent on a clock like this makes good use of the disruption, by allowing you to kill him before he recovers from the disruption.
The advantage, then, that midrange beatdown enjoys over midrange control (against pure control decks, that is) is that they have a much higher threat density. It is difficult for a control deck to run a midrange beatdown deck completely out of threats, though it should be noted that it is much easier to trump several smaller threats with one big finisher like Skeletal Vampire or Meloku. While a Bogardan Hellkite in hand would turn these finishers into mere speed bumps, a triplet of Withered Wretches would likely find them insurmountable obstacles.
Midrange beatdown tends to have a better combo matchup than does regular aggro. Pure aggro decks have to try and race combo with minimal disruption for backup. Needless to say, this is a losing proposition against any combo deck worth its salt. Aggro-control decks like Sea Stompy, Counter-Sliver, and Fish, tend to be the best combo-killers because they play very aggressive early drops and very focused control spells (often tempo-oriented permission) in place of less aggressive, more powerful — or versatile —versions of these cards. Randy Buehler has criticized these decks for being so polarized; they tend to fall apart when they draw their permission spells early and their speed-oriented creatures late.
As with midrange control, the more “balanced” midrange beatdown decks’ matchups against combo depend on how many cards they play that effectively disrupt the opponent. A Rakdos deck without Rise/Fall, for example, or an Orzhov deck without Castigate, will be reduced to racing Dragonstorm… again, hardly a winning proposition. Still, although Castigate and Rise/Fall are hardly the most exciting cards to draw against aggro, they are vastly preferred better than the aggro-control alternatives of Mana Leak, Rewind, and so forth.
In a midrange-on-midrange fight of any sort, an attrition war is pretty much inevitable. One large threat from either side is unlikely to carry the game as it could against a pure aggro deck, because there’s a good chance that both decks are equipped to remove such a threat. If either deck is ill-equipped to do so — for example, if a Rakdos deck has a lot of small burn spells like Seal of Fire and Volcanic Hammer, and only Hit/Run to deal with an Angel against a deck filled with Signets — the other deck immediately becomes the favorite to win. Otherwise, the goal of the game becomes to either have more relevant threats than the opponent has answers, or to stick a threat so large it trumps all the opponent’s threats.
My Midrange Orzhov beatdown deck for Regionals, for example, had a much higher threat density than a deck like Solar Flare – but Flare had individual threats that could trump my whole offense. I could quite consistently keep two-to-four power worth of attackers on the table, despite their Wraths, Mortifies, and draw spells, but if I used up all my Temporal Isolations and Faith’s Fetters on early Angels of Despair and Aeon Chroniclers, one Akroma would simultaneously get to killing me in a big hurry and shut down my entire offense to make racing impossible.
The Attraction of Midrange
When is it correct to move from a pure control or pure beatdown strategy to a midrange strategy instead? That depends on both the card pool and the metagame.
Look at Foresee: a fantastically priced Blue card draw spell. If you think the card is powerful and want to play it, what kind of deck do you put it in? It’s too expensive for a pure beatdown deck and its Sorcery speed makes it a lot less attractive for a pure control deck, but midrange decks on either end of the spectrum are in a good position to make use of this powerful card. A midrange control deck that doesn’t care about tapping out can use it to power up its late game, and a midrange beatdown deck can sideboard it in to serve up an extra helping of relevant threats in an attrition war.
As you gear up for Time Spiral Block PTQ season, keep the midrange decks in mind. They’re only “bad” control decks and “slow” beatdown decks if you’re incorrectly trying to play them like pure control or pure beatdown decks. There’s a lot more to them than that, and I don’t think a lot of players have a firm grasp on that. If you acknowledge that their strategies are unique, though, and know how to work their angles properly, you can get a lot more mileage out of the midrange strategy than can Joe Q. Magic Player.
So think about that. Let it sink in, keep it in mind, and even if you don’t choose to play a midrange deck, consider the different angles that a midrange opponent will be using to attack you. It just might save you a match!
Until next time,
Richard Feldman
Team :S
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