Interlude:
stevesadin: Can you double up this week?
YT: I dunno. I suppose. But if you want me to write twice, I am going to need another topic.
stevesadin: Don’t you have something to say? Haven’t you been gaming?
YT: About two hours a day, actually, on average.
stevesadin: What’s the problem, then?
YT: About two hours of Street Fighter. BTW my rating should be about twice as high as it is. Half these guys disconnect right before I am
about to beat them. I have only ever disconnected once, and it was when some guy I had beaten like three times in a row took Akuma and then won in a
really cheap…
stevesadin: I am sure our readers would be fascinated by your personal Street Fighter fighter’s journey; anyway, I assumed you would just write about
U/R Satchel again.
YT: I dunno. Some of the community didn’t really like the first one.
stevesadin: Well 99% of the Internet thought it was great, and you managed to sell us out of Druidic Satchel (a little warning next time?). Do as I
say, don’t do as I do, etc.
YT: I agree I’m pretty great at… well, life. I ordered about 20 before they went up :) I wasn’t really interested in speculation, but the
shipping is onerous on like $1.60 in cards.
stevesadin: Regardless, it’s pretty clear that half of what you say is just a childish attempt to get attention (be it positive or negative).
YT: More like 3/4… But sure. Keeps it fun! Anyway, I’m going to need that other topic.
stevesadin: (three days later) How about Poison decks in Standard?
YT: U/R Satchel Strikes Again it is!
Instead of a straight, boring article, I am going to couch this one in terms of asking good questions. Well, actually some of the questions aren’t that
great, but people literally wanted to know the answers to those. So mise.
What is this format really about?
The best cards in the format are Snapcaster Mage and Mana Leak; the next best strategy is probably based on Primeval Titan. However I see those kind of
how I once saw Spreading Seas and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. They are just the price of admission for certain types of decks. What is actually
interesting is everything else you do.
I think we can all agree that most of the best decks are Snapcaster Mage-based, with most of the rest of the good decks being Primeval Titan
[presumably into Inkmoth Nexus and Kessig Wolf Run at this point]… So really the question is what are you going to do with your non-blue cards? Previously the default was Solar Flare, but we see lots of very good deck designers /
writers / columnists all saying the same thing (Patrick Chapin used the word “toxic”); simultaneously we see good players moving to straight U/B
Control (not Solar Flare colors or strategy… often going to Tezzeret even). I really don’t know that you want to be Solar Flare colors. Solar Flare
sans Mana Leak is actually embarrassing against Wolf Run Ramp and erratic in general even though it has generally powerful cards because of its land
base.
So if Snapcaster Mage and Mana Leak (versus Primeval Titan) are held as presuppositions, then what is the format actually about? I would argue
that it is about three three-mana cards, even if it doesn’t look like that yet:
- Brimstone Volley, and
I have said before that Snapcaster Mage + Brimstone Volley is the best thing you can do in the format, and most people who have bothered to try
probably agree at this point. You just win so quickly using so few resources. I do think you want to be red with your blue deck (having put quite a bit
of thought into the other two colors) for two reasons: 1) you get Brimstone Volley, but more importantly 2) you get Ancient Grudge.
Druidic Satchel is the real deal. It invalidates quite a few beatdown decks and can be even better against control decks. I would tend, in fact, to
side out my Brimstone Volleys against another control deck with Druidic Satchel because it is pretty difficult to put a man down with Brimstone Volley
who has been gaining two life every other turn or whatever. Overall, red access lets you overpower the opponent by having more Druidic Satchels than
they do.
The format from my perspective was threatening to devolve into a narrow point of, ultimately, boring sameness (especially when you get to the point
that no, the Geist / Thrun hate deck is not actually good enough when you figure out Phantasmal Image)… However Owen Turtenwald won
Wisconsin States with a Dungrove Elder build of Wolf Run Ramp, and that looks to be even more of a game-changer than the Sondag forerunner. More on
this in a bit.
Did you just say Druidic Satchel is 1/3rd of the format? WTF Druidic Satchel? Isn’t it just a life-gain card against control?
Well, I guess you could take it that way, but what I actually said was that Snapcaster Mage is the best card. But sure, we can go your way if that
makes it easier for you to understand.
Druidic Satchel is for sure a Top 10 card in Standard and was severely undervalued at the $.44 I bought them at. Now as to it being “just a life gain
card” against control, you need to evaluate a couple of things.
- Competitive control matches often come down to just a couple of life points, and
- If you are gaining life, that means you are flipping spells. Flipping spells is awesome. Now if
you don’t have the life / spells, that means you are either drawing extra cards or about to stick Snapcaster Mage, both of which are good, one of which
is devastating. You simply shouldn’t flood out, and that is good enough.
Who is actually on The Next Level?
As much as it pains me to say this, I think the Dungrove Elder Wolf Run Green deck might be on the higher level.
Previously I was pretty sure U/R was just “better than all” (we crush fast beatdown, and we generally crush six-drop-based decks whether they are blue
or green), but the combination of speed and redundancy and long-game power of the Dungrove Elder version rewrites the landscape of the metagame.
Against “regular” Wolf Run Ramp… whatever. You have just as many counterspells as they have legitimate threats, plus you have card drawing
and Snapcaster Mage. They should not really be able to compete. They just shouldn’t be able to do anything. You can let them have Viridian Emissary or
even Thrun, the Last Troll and sit behind sometimes multiple Satchels, ho hum, not dying, drawing three cards a turn, until you win in some big and
flashy way. Their Inkmoth Nexus squad is all dead, of course, spoken for by Blasts and Grudges.
However when you mix in Dungrove Elder, it’s a different story. That is, they can lead off on a Birds of Paradise and play Dungrove Elder on the second
turn, which could be a disaster for you. You might be able to Slagstorm early, but at the point, it is 4/4 to 6/6; you almost need two Slagstorms to be
able to deal with one Dungrove Elder, and a 7/7 one is basically unstoppable.
Because you don’t win many Magic tournaments just pretending that a problem doesn’t exist, now the onus is on us to be able to stop Dungrove Elder
before it hits (not impossible) or get rid of it after it hits. The latter is actually challenging for every non-white deck. Not “un-possible” but
legitimately challenging. It’s not just a limitation of Slagstorm… imagine sweeping Dungrove Elder with Black Sun’s Zenith; you need more
lands than the green deck, and you need to tap them all. Birds and Elves (and random Wolves) give Owen’s deck Edict margin, so even
if we were black, there would be some wrinkles in our finely laid plan… Lots of things going on with the Dungrove Elder deck.
So what’s the big deal? Haven’t there been Dungrove Elders for months? Well, kind of. The thing that is important to remember here is that these
creatures exist in the context of the Wolf Run Ramp deck. Wolf Run Ramp was already meant to be a breakout deck. It won an Open, and it should
continue in some form as a pillar of this metagame. You can make arguments for either style (and certainly, the Starstorm version can “do things” the
four-Elder / 20-Forest style can’t), but from my perspective, Owen’s win looks very much like a Level Up, but maybe that is because I wouldn’t consider
lower level strategies to begin with.
What about Geistflame?
There has been some chatter around Geistflame in the comments, and I thought I would give my response to that…
I don’t like it.
Geistflame is vastly worse than Galvanic Blast in this deck (up to and including as a metalcraft finisher), and I don’t think I would side it over
Shock. The Geistflame crowd makes the argument that Geistflame can kill almost anything that Shock / Galvanic Blast can kill but gives you the card
advantage flashback option.
I would counter with 1) no it doesn’t, and 2) doesn’t matter.
No it doesn’t:
First and foremost, I played the instant slot (over Arc Trail) for one reason: Because I wanted to be able to kill a first-turn Stromkirk Noble. When
you are on the draw and the opponent has Stromkirk Noble and your first land is anything but Mountain (three things we can easily imagine, none of
which are 100% under our control)… Probably dead. Maybe not dead-dead, but in a bit of trouble. There aren’t a whole lot of ways the U/R
Satchel deck can lose, and that is one of them, and we could have prevented it.
One of the worst habits in deck design—and we see this much more commonly with sideboards than maindecks, admittedly—is playing the cards
“we like” or “we want to play” rather than the cards that actually do the jobs we need. A great example might be last weekend, where I decided I needed
four Shocks. In my imagination, Shock / Galvanic Blast with Snapcaster Mage was awesome against beatdown (turns out that was true). I had too many
cards to side in against U/W Humans (I had excess Shock in my sideboard due to last-minute changes not fixing things)… But I lacked the basic cards
necessary to beat his Geist (Phantasmal Image, aka Hero’s Demise). I think right now people are just enamored of Geistflame, rather than thinking about
its actual application (especially when we would be playing a completely different card if not for Stromkirk Noble).
Doesn’t matter:
A fair number of games come down to braining the opponent with 100 burn spells (okay, most of them), and Geistflame is a pretty unexciting point of
damage for infinite mana when counted that way; Galvanic Blast in a long game will generally do four points, which is great tied up with the elegance
of Snapcaster Mage.
Additionally there are just lots of times you want two instead of one… Versus Humans and an Honor of the Pure, for instance… That is a 3/2 Elite
Vanguard! Can’t Geistflame that! Or even an unenhanced Mirran Crusader… Are you going to let that guy hit you?
Geistflame is obviously a playable card in Constructed. I personally don’t like it here.
How would you sideboard in Baltimore, and why?
That’s really the big question, isn’t it?
First off, I would probably make a slight change to the maindeck, which is simply -1 Mountain for +1 Rootbound Crag. I had a fair number of games where
I wanted a green to Grudge but didn’t have it. The deck still has 15 lands that come into play untapped, and because we have Galvanic Blast over
Geistflame, we are less likely to be boned by a first-turn Stromkirk Noble, anyway.
1 Batterskull
1 Druidic Satchel
1 Dissipate
2 Flashfreeze
2 Frost Titan
3 Phantasmal Image
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Arc Trail
1 Shock
1 Slagstorm
I would have thought the fourth Ancient Grudge inviolate, but Jonny told me that four is probably too many with all our card drawing (my frame of
reference is generally green decks, and this is a blue deck). I would have also played two Shocks and no Arc Trail, but I am probably unnecessarily
gruff at Arc Trail (not his fault he was in the room / my hand when I cut Slagstorm #4); anyway Jon said “the first Arc Trail should be
awesome,” so I nodded my head and pretended to understand.
I hated to see the Azure Mages go, but Druidic Satchel picks up a lot of slack and is more powerful against beatdown and harder to deal with for
control. We lose the ability to go aggro against control, meaning we are really going to have to do what we do well. Luckily we are much better set up
to win a long game.
New additions include Phantasmal Image and Flashfreeze. We have three Phantasmal Images because the bad guys typically have ~3 Thruns or Geists. On
Saturday we were actually trying to brew the Next Level deck for after “everyone” had “gone Satchel,” and it was Birds, Geist, Thrun… Kind of a Bant
Midrange Legendary Hexproof threats deck. Well when you have a bunch of Phantasmal Images, their nuts get less nutty.
For those of you touting the Last Troll, I actually had an opponent resolve Thrun on the play (on the fourth turn) and follow it up successfully with
small Garruk and was able to win the game (though it looked scary for a while). Not saying that is the board I want to fight every game, but Thrun in
and of itself isn’t exactly game-ending.
Flashfreeze is there to help deal with the Dungrove Elder problem. I don’t think that we are going to see massive Elder adoption this week,
but I did think we needed to at least give it a second look. Depending on how bad it gets, I could see four Flashfreeze and four Ratchet Bombs… But I
don’t know that we are there yet. The reason I didn’t go Ratchet Bomb this week is that all the cards we want to bomb (Dungrove Elder, Geist of Saint
Traft) share a mana cost with Druidic Satchel.
Swaps:
RDW
-1 Dissipate
-3 Forbidden Alchemy
-2 Slagstorm
+1 Batterskull
+1 Druidic Satchel
+2 Flashfreeze
+1 Arc Trail
+1 Shock
I think you don’t want too many Slagstorms or Alchemies against RDW (but enough to mise at some point), and you want enough counterspells to handle
Koth (plus maybe Shrine of Burning Rage). With six Satchels and ‘skulls, their burn is going to be pretty not-lethal. I would be happy playing RDW all
day.
WW / Humans
-2 Forbidden Alchemy
-3 Mana Leak
-3 Brimstone Volley
-1 Ancient Grudge
+1 Batterskull
+2 Frost Titan
+3 Phantasmal Image
+1 Arc Trail
+1 Shock
+1 Slagstorm
You want enough Alchemy action to dig to your good cards but don’t want to rely over much on it; games are going to go very long, so Mana Leak is
mostly going to be worse than Dissipate; on balance you have now four big threats that help control the board while winning the game, and Phantasmal
Image really helps out against what might kill you. Huge issue here: don’t let them get too many Honor of the Pure in play.
Hawkward
-4 Forbidden Alchemy
-2 Brimstone Volley
-1 Slagstorm
+1 Batterskull
+1 Frost Titan
+2 Ancient Grudge
+1 Arc Trail
+1 Shock
+1 Slagstorm
Probably your best matchup. Just try to keep Tempered Steel resolutions to a minimum, i.e. counterspell those, and remove creatures with red stuff.
Wolf Run Ramp
-2 Forbidden Alchemy
-1 Think Twice
-2 Brimstone Volley
-2 Galvanic Blast
-2 Slagstorm
+1 Dissipate
+2 Flashfreeze
+2 Frost Titan
+3 Phantasmal Image
+1 Ancient Grudge
I am a bit dicey on the Elder version, but we can still slow down Birds draws with our now two copies of Galvanic Blast. One Ancient Grudge makes up
for two Blasts against Nexus, though our main goal is to counterspell all their big plays. Remember that Phantasmal Image makes a hell of a Viridian
Emissary, and Frost Titan cures all ills.
Control
-2 Galvanic Blast
-2 Slagstorm
+1 Druidic Satchel
+1 Dissipate
+2 Frost Titan
Counterspell in such a way that you can counterspell the sixes and seven. I lost one game to U/W at States, and it was a game I discarded twice on
three and four. You are massively ahead at this stage in the metagame. Obviously at the point control opponents go Satchel, you will want to up
Slagstorm, probably at the cost of two burn spells; other U/R opponents demand Batterskull #2… just look alive and don’t die to an Azure Mage!
I picked the red side-outs I did out of respect for Grave Titan (if the worst happens), while leaving some fast burn for Liliana, Azure Mage, or
opposing Snapcasters.
Infect (presumably mono-black)
-3 Druidic Satchel
-4 Forbidden Alchemy
-2 Slagstorm
+2 Frost Titan
+3 Phantasmal Image
+2 Ancient Grudge
+1 Arc Trail
+1 Shock
Most infect guys are soft to your red spells, but you want Dissipate and Mana Leak to lock down potential three, four, and Blight Dragon threats.
Phantasmal Image’s job is to block Phyrexian Crusader, natch.
Good luck to anyone competing in Baltimore this weekend, or crushing PWPs at FNM tonight.
LOVE
MIKE
Firestarter: Grixis or Raka?
As B/U Control decks go more “control” and less “removal” based, the inherent advantage U/R once had (way back “last week”) will eventually recede (the
opponent can play to actually cover his win condition, say). That said, you still want red to fight Druidic Satchel (presumably), which would put you
on Grixis (splashing green for flashback?). Black “Edict” style removal gives you some play against Dungrove Elder, presuming you kill everything else
(which isn’t that hard).
… Or is white better?
Interesting point brought up by further explorations: Sun Titan can rebuy lost Druidic Satchels, and Day of Judgment is the best solution to Dungrove
Elder if it actually resolves. Which would put you on U/r/W? Ponder tags in for Forbidden Alchemy, making Druidic Satchel even better and Think Twice
strategic rather than opportunistic (it was pretty good at being opportunistic).
In both cases we will have Brimstone Volley access, if we want it.
Thoughts?
These are the directions I am going to move next. TGI-MTGO!