From The Lab — Road to Regionals: The Future is Black

How are things going at the pit? I threw Blue and Green in there a few weeks ago to let them “sort out their differences.” Let’s take a glance.

Oh my, it’s still pandemonium.

Look, there’s Jamie Wakefield. Green’s staunchest defender is still battling away, ripping the heads off Dralnu and Teferi. I’m not sure but he appears to be riding an Allosaurus.

Hmm, what’s that…?

A deathly still has entered the arena.

Ohmygod! It’s Buehler! Randy Buehler himself is floating down from the wall and cackling with glee!

Capsize! With buyback!

Buehler is flinging Capsize with buyback, and it’s a slaughter. Erhnam Djinn’s and Trained Armodons are being bounced all over the place. How can the forces of Green withstand this onslaught?

But wait! Wakefield still stands defiant. What’s that?

Scragnoth!

How can Buehler deal with this? The Scragnoth is unstoppable and yet Buehler is just standing there, laughing.

Oh, I see why. That’s a Nevinyrral’s Disk dangling from his wrist.

“That’s not a Blue card!” Wakefield bellows.

“Foolish Jamie, all cards are Blue cards.”

…

But anyway, onto the Black cards.

[Standard, Prof! U.S. Regionals are in a week’s time! You’re supposed to be discussing Standard! – Craig.]

Oh, okay.

Play Dragonstorm.

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What, you want more? And what, Zac Hill has already cracked that joke?

Seriously, play Dragonstorm. It’s the deck with the most raw power, and it’s fairly hard to disrupt.

Gruul, Dragonstorm, and Dralnu are the rock, paper, scissors of the format. The usual prediction is that the average Regionals player will favor Gruul out of the three, which makes Dragonstorm a good call. It’s favorable against Gruul and as a combo deck should also overpower the fourth option of any number of random decks.

To be fair, the "any number of random decks" is not necessarily a bad thing. The gap between Tier 1 and Tier 2 is no longer quite as big as it used to be. Familiarity with a deck can often overcome a bad percentage matchup. A friend of mine qualified for the UK Nationals last weekend with Blink Riders. Most other people don’t like the deck, but he’s been playing it solidly for the last couple of months and it worked for him.

If you’re uncertain though, I’d probably run Dragonstorm. The deck can be temperamental, so be sure to sacrifice a goat to the mana gods the night before.

If, however, you’re planning to hate Dragonstorm, let me point you in the direction of my article from last week. It might save you a lot of pain.

By all means have a sideboard plan, but focusing exclusively on beating one particular deck is likely to end in tears, given the open nature of the current Standard metagame.

Onto the Future Sight Black cards. Okay, I know this is a lot on the late side, but it’s sort of timely given that Future Sight has finally appeared online.

Let’s have a look at what we get to play with:

Rare
Bitter Ordeal
Bridge from Below
Gibbering Descent
Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
Magus of the Abyss
Nihilith
Shimian Specter
Slaughter Pact
Tombstalker

Uncommon
Festering March
Fleshwrither
Minions’ Murmurs
Pooling Venom
Skirk Ridge Exhumer
Snake Cult Initiation
Street Wraith
Stronghold Rats
Witch’s Mist
Yixlid Jailer

Common
Augur of Skulls
Cutthroat il-Dal
Death Rattle
Deepcavern Imp
Frenzy Sliver
Grave Peril
Grave Scrabbler
Ichor Slick
Lost Hours
Mass of Ghouls
Oblivion Crown
Putrid Cyclops

Planar Chaos Black was fairly dull. All of its points were blown on a new Wrath of God, and the rest of the article was trying to explain why Extirpate was over-hyped. To be fair, Extirpate has found a home as a fairly nasty sideboard card, and I may have initially been a little too harsh.

Staples in Black tend to be removal and usually discard spells. It used to get nasty efficient beaters with drawbacks, but these haven’t really shown up in recent times, or they have been saddled with truly unplayable drawbacks.

One of the surprises for me is that a good discard deck backed up with The Rack hasn’t really materialised from Time Spiral. Maybe we’re just better at building decks than we used to be, or the deck was only ever really a threat when it was packing the Skull.

The Discard

Gibbering Descent is a nice card as it gives a reusable source of discard to keep an opponent pinned under The Rack. The downside is the hefty casting cost. The madness option makes it a little more interesting. I’ll come back to it in a minute.

By rights, Shimian Specter should be the most expensive card in Magic. It’s a Specter and it allows you to Lobotomy your opponent. Both effects are radically overvalued by general players. This time I think reality has finally started to knock the gloss off. Hypnotic Specter has become an alcoholic recluse seldom seen in daylight. One mana more makes Shimian Specter unplayable even though the effect is more powerful.

Stronghold Rats are more interesting, and versatile as they are also a madness outlet. The 2/1 for three mana is a little on the fragile side, but they might be worth keeping an eye on.

The same is true of Auger of Skulls. Let’s have a look at the current deck-o-pedia entry for Black Rack Discard.

There might be a home for the Auger in a deck like this, especially as Sato’s listing runs Call to the Netherworld to reuse the Auger. The regen isn’t too shabby either when you’re facing down Call of the Herd tokens and the like.

Lastly we have Lost Hours… you might recognize it as the last card in any booster draft. It’s not total hamster cage material, as it’s still taking a card from their hand, even if you know it might come back at some time. That in itself isn’t too bad. Putting cards in a graveyard can sometimes be a liability nowadays! I can envisage situations where you get to mess your opponent’s tempo around, but it really wanted to be one mana if we wanted a pseudo-Duress.

The Removal

We finally get an actual Terror, hallelujah! The whole Pact-iness of Slaughter Pact is of far less concern compared with the ability to make any damn non-Black creature dead. While testing for Yokohama both Stuart Wright and I remarked we’d kill for an honest-to-god make your monster dead regardless of size spell.

However, this sadly will make the Blue/Black control decks even stronger. It was bad enough for the Green/Red mana ramp decks before, I can’t see how they can possibly win when the Teachings deck can just tutor up Terrors for their Hellkites, Forces, and Akromas at will.

I suppose the Teachings deck might forget to pay the upkeep cost afterwards.

Slaughter Pact is a bigger card for block than it initially appears.

After then we’re into the lean pickings. You’ll be kissing Festering March during the triple Future Sight drafts on MTGO next week (to keep those damn Sprout Swarms in check), but I’m not sure if it has a role in Constructed just yet. Death Rattle feels too limited even if there were Green monsters worth killing. Ichor Slick is a first-pick draft card, but loses out to both Last Gasp and Sudden Death in Constructed.

Slaughter Pact or no, I guess.

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Slaughter…

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Slaughter, ah, such a nice word.

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Oops, where was I again?

That’s right, let’s get to those unsung heroes:

The Beaters

Now what we’d really like is a Sarcomancy or Carnophage or, heck just about anything, to play on turn one to give poor Plagued Rusalka a bit of time to put her feet up poor thing. Everything costs two mana, which leaves the Bad Moon decks looking a bit on the jagged side, and Future Sight isn’t about to change things either.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Putrid Cyclops.

No, don’t laugh. He’s sensitive.

Don’t laugh, I tell you!

Right, time for Slaughter…

Actually, while rightly derided in terms of Limited play, the Cyclops might be a forgotten gem for the sixty card decks. Look at the Black Rack listing above. Only four of those cards actually kill Putrid Cyclops if you reveal them (although he unfortunately clobbers himself if a second shows up). In this type of deck the actual Scry ability becomes relevant, as you can quite happily ship unneeded land to the bottom of the deck in the knowledge you’d need to be fairly unlucky for him to actually die. With Bad Moon, out the odds become much better.

People were considering playing New Benalia in White Weenie (where I think it whacks the curve completely out of shape), so Putrid Cyclops could conceivably be the top end threat of a Black aggro deck. Unfortunately there will be times when he just dies, especially as Liege of the Pit has a good case to be there, as does the most-definitely colorless Gathan Raiders.

Deepcavern Imp might find a home in a madness style deck, where his echo cost can be turned into an advantage, possibly with Grave Scrabbler. Yixlid Jailer is the other beater with a very nasty box of rules text. This guy almost reads as Kataki for Dredge, and with Dredge picking up a turbo-charge (more later) I can see a spot for the Jailer in many sideboards in the months to come.

The Finishers

Korlash, Heir to Blackblade. Wow, they printed this in the same block as Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. I can’t really think of a home for this guy in Standard. Cards like Skeletal Vampire and Angel of Despair feel like stronger win conditions. In Block it gets more interesting and I think he might replace Plague Sliver. Assuming you’re running mainly Swamps he isn’t going to be much smaller when you cast him, with the potential to get considerably larger. The biggest problem for Black control decks in Block I found in testing was the lack of card drawing.

Potentially we could see something like this in Block:

There’s a lot of tension in trying to go for mono-Black. The deck really wants to maximise the Swamp count to get most benefit from Korlash and Tendrils, but I think it absolutely has to play Aeon Chronicler. Then you get dragged into Terramorphic Expanse and Islands. From there it’s not a hard step to bring in Red for Detritivore and Void and all of a sudden you’re back to Karsten’s deck. Oh, for a Jayemdae Tome.

And I’d update my snow-Black control deck from Standard to something like:

This deck might not be a horrible choice for Standard now that Scryb and Force decks aren’t really around at the moment (as they really do beat this quite horribly). There’s enough removal and life gain to make things hard for Gruul and you might be able to exhaust Dralnu out of threats (especially with Extirpate). Dragonstorm is probably still tough though, as the Persecutes invariably never land.

Continuing with the finishers we have Black’s Gargadon in the form of Nihilith. In theory he’s a 4/4 with Fear that costs two mana and probably comes in a lot faster than his suspend 7 says. Exactly how much faster is too uncertain for me.

Then we have Tombstalker. I really like Delve on this guy. One dredged Grave-Troll later and you have a two-mana dragon. If it wasn’t for Leyline being the main hate of choice I think he might make a nasty shock alternate kill in the Dredge-Bridge decks.

What Dredge-Bridge decks?

We’re just getting to that.

I think one of the things I really like about Future Sight Black are the number of interesting rares. Future Sight as a whole is Johnny’s paradise, with so many weird and wacky cards to build decks around. Black seems to be particularly blessed in that a number of these cards might actually be good.

Look at Bridge from Below. The inclusion of this card (and Narcomoeba) has almost dragged the dredge archetype kicking and screaming into the Tier 1.

This is the CromulantKeith listing Sean Mckeown looked at last Friday:

U/B NarcoBridge (SSG speed version)

3 Drowned Rusalka
4 Lore Broker
4 Magus of the Bazaar
4 Thought Courier
1 Darkblast
2 Life from the Loam
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Bridge from Below
3 Dread Return
2 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Narcomoeba
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Gemstone Caverns
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
4 Breeding Pool
4 Watery Grave

Sideboard
4 Boomerang / Wipe Away / Krosan Grip
3 Darkblast
1 Drowned Rusalka
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Underground River
1 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
1 Blazing Archon

There are other versions that are heavier Green and use Greenseekers and Llanowar Mentors and have already been talked about by both Kyle Sanchez here and Benjamin Peebles-Mundy here.

Mike Flores might want to pretend the archetype doesn’t exist, but the amount of people looking to play dredge decks at the moment makes me think Bridge from Below is a frontrunner for the card from Future Sight with the most impact (I think it might eventually be Keldon Megaliths or Molten Disaster, depending on which form of inevitability turns out to be better).

When I first saw the list my thought was this was the perfect deck to pull a smash-and-grab with. Hate such as Leyline of the Void and Tormod’s Crypt are going to hurt it a great deal, but in an unprepared field…

Well, it turned out a lot of English people had the same idea, as Bridge decks made up the most popular archetype at two of the Regionals I heard about last weekend. They didn’t do too well, as I suspect no one has found the right build yet, but I’m fairly sure they will form a part of the metagame and they will roll people if they aren’t prepared for them.

My thoughts on the deck is that it is very powerful and capable of very fast draws, but that it lacks a lot of consistency. I tested with some of the Manchester crowd just before Regionals, and the deck oscillated between ridiculous draws that saw most of the library in the graveyard within the first couple of turns, to horrible draws where it couldn’t get a dredge card to stay in the graveyard.

The combo is fairly simple. Dredge as much of your library into the graveyard as possible, revealing enough Narcomoeba’s to pay the flashback cost on Dread Return. This triggers any Bridges in the graveyard to give you an army of Zombies, which you then give haste with the Flame-Kin Zealot you just re-animated.

Flame-Kin Zealot is probably the cleanest kill, but also the most vulnerable. Should they happen to kill one of their own creatures while the Bridge triggers are on the stack then all you get is a lonely Zealot for your trouble.

Personally I think I might prefer Peebles’ Hellkite version. If they fizzle the Bridges then you still have a hefty threat in the form of a Hellkite, or even Akroma. If they just counter the Dread Return then they have to deal with your army of zombies.

And if all else fails then you beat them to death with either Golgari Grave-Trolls or Svogthos.

The main problem with the strategy is that Leyline of the Void is an utter beating against it. I’m not sure whether it can be easily ducked either. It’s not as if you can turn to alternate threats like Tarmogoyf or Tombstalker, as they rely on a fully stocked graveyard as well. Dealing with the Bridge fizzling is probably tractable, but I can’t see any way around Leyline other than hoping they don’t draw it.

Bizarrely, another problem in Standard is actually getting the damn dredge cards into the graveyard, especially when some pyromaniac Red mage is throwing burn spells at all of your enablers. For that reason I think I’d really want some combination of Delirium Skeins, Compulsive Research, or Bonded Fetch as ways to make absolutely sure a dredge card is hitting the bin, although there’s nothing wrong with just casting Life from the Loam with no targets some times.

Bridge is not just restricted to Standard. Nick Eisel has already posted a Block listing. Personally I think it might be a little awkward to use properly because, unless you’re combo killing them, you will have to kill their creatures at some point, then the Bridge goes away. Maybe it’s one of those cards that complements an existing strategy rather than being the focus.

Either way it’s an excellently designed card, and a good example that the fellows in R&D haven’t run out of steam just yet.

The other card that impressed me when I saw it in action was Gibbering Descent. In Future Sight, Black got a bunch of madness cards and enablers. It might actually be possible now to build some combination of Blue, Black, and Red madness deck. Like Stronghold Rats, Gibbering Descent is both disruption and enabler. Another dual purpose card that complements this kind of strategy is Gathan Raiders. I think there’s probably a fairly decent Black/Red hell-bent / madness deck, but the main problem is trying to decide whether it’s a discard deck (with The Rack) or just straight aggro.

Let’s look at Satanic Sligh, a deck that has fallen a little by the wayside in recent times:

Off the top of my head we could potentially upgrade our Black/Red aggro deck into something like:

There are a lot of options around this archetype both in Block and Standard. Deepcavern Imp is a hasty beater that can also throw out Reckless Wurms as the “downside” to its echo cost.

As much as this is the Black article, I’m fairly sure these hell-bent decks will all start with:

4 Keldon Megaliths
4 Gathan Raiders

While I’d like someone to make full use of Gibbering Descent I suspect the Hell-Bent deck will end up being the new incarnation of red deck.

Returning to the rares we get another Lobotomy / Extract card in Bitter Ordeal. Normally I’d pounce on this card with the usual “doesn’t affect the board state, stupid!” but Standard is in a weird place at the moment. Removing five cards of your choice from a deck is actually fairly brutal against both Dragonstorm and Dralnu. It won’t leave them with a lot to kill you with. How to actually set this up is the tricky part, as is the whole question of what am I going to do about the horde of Green and Red monsters Gruul is kicking my face in with?

For Project X, it’s easy. I’ll just run my combo thirty times and then Bitter Ordeal you for your Library, sideboard and while we’re at it, your trade folder as well. We should be thankful it’s neither a creature nor multi-colored so it’s not exactly easy to find.

The other option is to board it into Red decks. Turn 1 suspend Gargadon, turn 2 Mogg War Marshal, turn 3 feed the Gargadon and cast Bitter Ordeal might be enough to hurt some decks a lot. It might be an option for the crazy Restore Balance Block decks anyway.

The last rare I haven’t talked about is Magus of the Abyss. He’s sort of like an Abyss, but with a body. Don’t know where to put this guy. His stats are fairly aggressive as a 4/3 for four mana, but this currently doesn’t seem the right format for him.

Which finally leaves me with Street Wraith. For two (or more) life you too can play a 56-card deck. Except you aren’t, because while he’s in your opening hand you’re never quite sure exactly what he is. As not all of us have the X-ray vision of Olle Rade, that plays hell with mulliganing decisions. Some decks will want him, others won’t. Originally I thought he’d be fantastic in the Bridge-Dredge deck. But then I quickly realised the main problem was getting a dredge card into the graveyard in the first place. Street Wraith didn’t really help with that and wasn’t really that exciting if you just cycled him. In Extended however, with both Putrid Imp and Careful Study…

I have to say I’m impressed with Future Sight Black. Even if the cards are not all Constructed powerhouses, they’re at least interesting, and that’s by no means a bad thing.

Thanks for reading,

Prof