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Extended Tech: Flow Deck Wins

Stuart Wright, one of the world’s finest deckbuilders, rocked the Extended portion of Worlds with a deck of his own design – Flow Deck Wins. Harnessing a powerful aggresive start, and the backbreaking Destructive Flow to nobble the control matchups, Stuart’s 6-0 perofomance took him to a lofty fifteenth-place finish at the Big Show in Paris. Today’s article breaks down the sideboarding plans and brings some interesting matchup ideas, for those eager to make their mark at their next PTQ.

Today I will be talking about the R/G/B aggro deck I played at Worlds, piloting it to a 6-0 finish. However, before I get into the deck and match advice, I’m going to go over the name. I personally call this deck Flow Deck Wins, but I can certainly see the logic behind R/G/B Flow or similar. As always it is certainly possible some has developed a similar deck to mine independently, so people might well call very similar decks by totally different names. A name isn’t really that important, and it probably best to stick to something simple. After all, it helps when most people are able to work out what deck you are talking about by the name alone. However, some people seem to be calling this deck “Rock and Flow,” which is an entirely different deck – think Gifts Rock with maindeck Destructive Flow. A completely different deck with a completely different game-plan.

But enough of my rant — let’s move on to something that people other than me (and about three readers) care about.

Here’s the deck I played.


I’m still pretty happy with this deck, and with a few minor changes I feel it is plenty good enough to win a PTQ. The changes reflect the large number of Boros decks (and similar aggro plans) out there, so you want to have a lot of sideboard cards against them even if the matchup is fine.

Changes
Maindeck: +1 Call of the Herd, -1 Firebolt.
Sideboard: +2 Deathmark, -1 Tormod’s Crypt, -1 Ancient Grudge.

In general, I feel this deck is simply a superior version of Boros. You have roughly the same number of burn spells, and replace quality creatures like Sliver Knight with creatures like Wild Mongrel. The deck is slightly slower due to having less two-power one-drops, but the Elves of Deep Shadow allow you to make multiple threats to catch back up in terms of simple goldfishing. Against control decks, Destructive Flow is generally a lot more powerful than a Molten Rain, ending some games on turn 2. After sideboard, having Cabal Therapy makes a huge difference against any combo or control deck, and you can always bring it in (unlike Pyrostatic Pillar), which can be important in a PTQ format where people play unexpected decks. Now that I’ve hopefully convinced you that this deck is a viable alternative to Boros, I’m going to go over common matchups, what the game plan is, and how to sideboard against them. It would be impossible to cover every single deck you might play against, but in general you want to take out burn spells and Call of the Herd against combo decks, and just bring in Ancient Grudges against artifacts and the like. You need to be careful not to lose the focus of the deck by bring too many cards in. It is pretty rare you want to bring more seven cards in, as you want to bring endless answer cards rather than proper threats. During Worlds I played against three Boros decks, one Gifts Rock deck, one Scepter-Chant deck, and one Psychatog deck. I feel this deck has reasonable game against any deck out there.

Matchups

Boros

I’m sure you are familiar with this deck, as it was easily the most popular deck at Worlds. It could easily be the most popular deck at PTQs too. This is basically a mirror, with both decks being reasonable similar. Their best cards are Sliver Knight and Lightning Helix, against your Wild Mongrel and Call of the Herd. Even though Wild Mongrel can block and kill a Sliver Knight, you have to be careful. First Strike plus a Lightning Helix can result in you having to pitch your whole hand. In general you are better waiting a while before trying to block like this, trading two-for-two, as the longer you wait the more excess lands you will have to pitch. The game is a war of attrition, with creatures trading off or being burnt out of the way. If you are on the defensive you want to play burn before creatures, as this will minimize the damage and give you more time to get the flashback on Call of the Herd online. Destructive Flow isn’t very good here, but you need to play it out early if you want to get any use out of it. Even when it kills quite a few of their lands, it often doesn’t really help. Dark Confidant isn’t as bad as he seems, and they will often have to kill him as most of your cards are worth their converted mana cost in life. If you want to remove some of the anti-aggro cards from the sideboard, leaving him in this matchup is fine. It’s what I did at Worlds. I’m not going to give matchup percentage because I don’t really feel they are useful. People just argue that they aren’t accurate, and it depends too much on player skill anyway.

Sideboarding
Out: 3 Destructive Flow, 3 Dark Confidant.
In: 1 Call of the Herd, 3 Umezawa’s Jitte, 2 Deathmark.

They will probably bring in some Umezawa’s Jittes of their own, and if you are sure of this you can replace the last Dark Confidant with an Ancient Grudge. If they have Umezawa’s Jitte and you don’t remember, you can block and kill your own creatures, which can be useful against Silver Knights. If they have shown Green sources you want to be prepared for Armadillo Cloak, which means holding Deathmark until they have a chance to put it on their Sliver Knights, and doing things like pitching Lava Dart to Wild Mongrel when you are tapped out, to kill Savannah Lions.

Desire

This matchup is pretty bad game 1, as they are just faster than you. You need an early Flow against a draw that needs its lands, or a lot of luck. They are at least a full turn faster than you, so if you know you are facing this deck you need to mulligan aggressively. At a PTQ level you want to keep careful track of exactly what color and type of mana they have, as it is very possible for them to screw this up and kill themselves.

Sideboarding
Out: 3 Call of the Herd, 3 Sudden Shock, 3 Lava Dart.
In: 4 Cabal Therapy, 3 Ancient Grudge, 2 Tormod’s Crypt.

Luckily, this matchup gets a lot better for you after sideboarding. You mostly want to name Burning Wish with Cabal Therapy, as it finds their win condition and they have four Wish against three Mind’s Desire. With Ancient Grudge remember that you can destroy Chrome Mox with the imprint on the stack, to stop them getting mana from it. You still need to get on with it and kill them, so don’t lead with turn 1 Cabal Therapy. The first turn they can realistically go off is turn 3, so you to cast Cabal Therapy the turn before that to see the maximum number of cards. This plan works pretty much the same against other combo decks, such as the Eggs deck and similar.

Ichorid

This deck is surprisingly under the radar, but much like Affinity it can pop up for unexpected wins, so you still need to be ready for it. You want to lay quite aggressively against them, as in the long game they will be getting back four Ichorids a turn. Although they might run out eventually, you will probably run out of burn spells to stop them first. There is also the possibility of them having Dread Return and something huge. Remember that if they flip all these cards over while dredging, you can kill some of their creatures in their upkeep before they have a chance to flashback Dread Return. This deck does have a lot of pinging effects, so you should be able to control the 3/1 beats, at least to start with. Psychatog is probably their biggest threat, so applying early pressure is the best way to get them to play it out, so you can Sudden Shock it before they strip your hand.

Sideboarding
Out: 2 Call of the Herd, 3 Destructive Flow.
In: 3 Umezawa’s Jitte, 2 Tormod’s Crypt.

The Flows kill all their lands, but doesn’t really have any effect on them. They come out, along with a few slow cards. The plan is pretty much the same, with the added bonus of being able to wreak them with Crypt. You want to play it to prevent them taking it with Therapy, and then hold it off until you need to. They can play around it with it on the table, but it will massively slow them down, and removing half their deck is pretty hard to recover from anyway.

Trinket Angel

Again you need to be on the offensive, because later on they will be able to assemble the Counterbalance / Sensei’s Divining Top lockdown, with Exalted Angels to finish if the game goes that long. However, they do have a number of cards maindeck made for other matchups, and this can make them a bit slow. You can’t afford to give them time to use Top to sort out their draw. While they do have plenty of answers to your creature rush, they don’t have much of an answer to Destructive Flow, with Trinket Mage for Engineered Explosives being rather slow. You have to watch out for Umezawa’s Jitte again, and be ready to burn your own creatures again.

Sideboarding
Out: 4 Lava Dart, 2 Shadow Guildmage.
In: 1 Call of the Herd, 3 Umezawa’s Jitte, 2 Deathmark.

While you do have some answers after sideboarding, you still can’t really stop Counterbalance, so you still need to focus on attack. You do now have a number of cards that deal with Sliver Knight, so he is less of a problem. They don’t really have much to bring in against you that makes much different, and this is a definite advantage over playing Boros, where their Pyrite Spellbombs would be a lot more relevant.

U/W Tron

There is also U/R Tron, but I feel the Blue/White version is more popular, and they play out in a similar fashion, with Red providing more burn while White adds Wrath of God. This sort of deck seems a bit slow to handle a rush of cheap creatures, and if they tap out for Wrath, you can punish them with a Flow — it kills almost all of their lands. Of course, they can just draw full Tron and drop huge threats, which is pretty bad for you. If they Mindslaver you then you want pitch your whole hand to a Wild Mongrel if possible, to try and minimize the damage.

Sideboarding
Out: 4 Lava Dart, 1 Sudden Shock, 2 Shadow Guildmage.
In: 4 Cabal Therapy, 3 Ancient Grudge.

Stripping their hand with Therapy is very powerful, and if you draw it and a Flow, forcing the Flow into play is pretty hard for them to ever beat. If you are uncertain what to name with Therapy, you probably want to name Wrath of God or Fact or Fiction to have a reasonable chance of hitting. Destroying Signets with Ancient Grudge slows them down, and if they bring in Sun Droplet, you have a lot of targets.

Aggro Loam

This is pretty good at beating aggressive decks, so you are in for a rough time. If they have Lightning Helix this is pretty close to auto loss. Luckily, most versions have Cabal Therapy instead to give them a chance against combo decks. You want to always remove lands with your Grim Lavamancer, to shrink future Terravores. You need to be aware of Devastating Dreams when considering how many creature to play out, but most of the time all you can really do it hold back cards so you can pump Wild Mongrel.

Sideboarding
Out: 3 Destructive Flow, 2 Tin Street Hooligan, 2 Sudden Shock.
In: 2 Tormod’s Crypt, 2 Deathmark, 3 Umezawa’s Jitte.

The Flows aren’t that good, as they have a number of basic lands, and even less so when they know you have them. If they are playing four colors then you want to leave them in, but most decks of this type only play three colors. They will probably have something like Ravenous Baloth to slow you down even further, so you only make small gain but you have more of a chance if you can draw the right disruptive elements.

Conclusion

I feel this deck is a viable choice to play at a PTQ, and would recommend it to anyone. You have a good chance against most of the popular decks, and aggro decks always have a chance in any matchup. At the very least I would advise you to test against this deck.

Good luck at the PTQs.

Stuart