It was Sunday morning, April 1st. I was sitting in my hotel room in Turin and looking at GP Salt Lake City coverage. The day before I’d played Modern at GP Turin to distressing 6-3 record; somehow there was no Modern side event on Sunday, so I decided to skip playing and go sightseeing instead. I was too lazy to go outside immediately after breakfast so I decided to take a quick look at Standard, mostly to fuel my thoughts about Magic during the anticipated long walk (even with great Italian city around).
I was fully dedicated to Modern during the PTQ season and hadn’t cared about Standard since PT Dark Ascension, so Standard was new to me (especially with its very quick progress caused by the weekly SCG Open Series). Now Magic World Cup Qualifiers and PTQs for amazing PT Seattle (Ravnica, Ravnica, Ravnica!) are ahead, so it’s time for me to work hard to catch the departing train full of players who played Standard while I was focused on Modern.
I played Melira during ending weeks of Modern season, so my first two thoughts about Standard were, "It would be good if Birthing Pod is a deck," and, "I just want to activate Gavony Township with Lingering Souls in exile." However, when I tweeted that I don’t know what to play in Standard, nearly all the answers were: "Just play Delver of Secrets." I tried Delver, but it soon became clear that I can’t play this deck in the near future.
Don’t get me wrong; Delver is very good and powerful (the endless variants are covered in Brad Nelson article). Sometimes you just play Delver turn 1, reveal Mana Leak (cough Temporal Mastery cough), and easily win, but Delver generally requires very good play skill and a deep understanding of the deck’s internal mechanics that are just impossible for me to achieve in ten days. Moreover, I usually dislike playing "public enemy number one"—even if it’s as good as Caw-Blade (which Delver isn’t). So I decided to dismiss Delver and to look at other possibilities.
Further testing proved this decision to be the right one. Delver decks have extremely flexible cores and the ability to adapt to nearly any environment, but any given version has many bad matchups. It’s possible to exploit this weakness, especially if metagame is at least partially predictable. The results of last weekend’s SCG Open Series: Des Moines (the finals of which were a R/G Aggro mirror) only strengthened this position.
Another goal I have in Standard is to reach 750 Planeswalker Points during the second season; the format of GP Moscow is confirmed to be M13 Sealed, so two byes would be very likely. This goal unfortunately must be reached without attending any Grand Prix, so an additional requirement for any Standard deck I play at PTQs and World Cup Qualifiers is reliability. I think I should avoid unnecessary risky decisions in order to be consistent enough to reach my goal.
Now let’s go back to my thoughts about format. I’ve rejected Delver, so what are other choices? As I said before, the first direction I wanted to search was Birthing Pod. I soon realized that there’s not many popular decks dedicated Birthing Pod, but there are two, as I call them, "R/G Huntmaster Aggro" decks. One of these is Brian Kibler "Sort-of Pod," and the other is R/G Aggro (recently highlighted by Brandon Nelson’s win at SCG Open Series: Des Moines).
Both decks are very aggressive; both rely on Stragleroot Geist, Huntmaster of the Fells and mana dorks. The key difference between the decks is the way they utilize excessive mana sources in the late game. R/G Aggro has Swords to equip its mana dorks, while the Naya deck uses Gavony Township instead.
Creatures (23)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 3 Phyrexian Metamorph
- 1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
- 2 Daybreak Ranger
- 4 Strangleroot Geist
- 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (23)
Spells (13)
Creatures (29)
- 1 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 1 Inferno Titan
- 2 Phyrexian Metamorph
- 4 Blade Splicer
- 1 Fiend Hunter
- 3 Avacyn's Pilgrim
- 1 Daybreak Ranger
- 4 Strangleroot Geist
- 2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
- 1 Vorapede
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (24)
Spells (5)
Both decks have positive matchups against the common Delver variant with Invisible Stalker and equipment, so the key to choosing one of them is the relevance of the matchup against Delver with Lingering Souls (Pod is much better here) and the matchup between these decks (R/G Aggro supposedly beats Pod). For some reason (mostly scouting) I don’t expect to see a lot of R/G Aggro in my metagame, so I’d rather play Birthing Pod, while Brandon’s win in Des Moines could cause a rise of R/G Aggro at SCG Open Series: Phoenix.
Choosing the previous week’s best deck is rarely good idea (because everyone will pack their hate for it), and choosing the deck that loses to the previous week’s best deck is always a tricky one. It’s hard to determine if that deck is actually good enough to combat the increased amount of hate (and if the hate amount will actually increase enough).
Speaking of Birthing Pod, I like Brian Kibler list, and the answer to the most popular question about the deck is, "I’m totally fine with only two Birthing Pods." The few tweaks I’d make would be cutting one Daybreak Ranger from the sideboard and trying to find a place for one Hellrider. Maybe a straight exchange is good, but maybe Hellrider deserves its own maindeck spot (Podding into Hellrider and a subsequent Gavony Township activation would be fantastically devastating in the late game).
Returning to my Modern experience, I won a bunch of games simply by attacking with two or three Noble Hierarchs with Gavony Township, but a sideboarded Lingering Souls won almost any game where I cast it on turn 2. This inspired me to check out B/W Tokens for Standard. I found some Magic Online decklists and spent some time trying to splash them with green just for Gavony Township or also for Garruk Relentless.
I even tried a green-based version with eight mana dorks, but I finally conceded. The ability to cast turn 1 Champion of the Parish or Doomed Traveler is too important to cut any Plains in favor of Sunpetal Groves. So I came to the following list (that is a take on Craig Wescoe second place deck from SCG Open Series: Salt Lake City):
Creatures (12)
Lands (24)
Spells (24)
The highlights of the deck are Midnight Haunting over Blade Splicer, maindeck Mortarpod, and Despise in the sideboard. Blade Splicer and Midnight Haunting compete for the same slots in the deck; Splicer is generally better against Mirran Crusader and other creatures while the Golem token is weak to Vapor Snag. At the same time, Midnight Haunting is very good against any sort of Delver deck and against any mass removal spells (found in control and ramp decks). So my choice is clearly Midnight Haunting.
Mortarpod is a solution to the deck’s inability to interact with the opponent. Early in the game it’s as good as any other removal (if not better because of replay-ability), and it can kill everything with the help of Vault of the Archangel. Moreover, Mortarpod’s token can block creatures equipped with Sword of War and Peace. Mortarpod is obviously doesn’t go well with Stony Silence (that is sided in for many matchups), so having a substitute for it in the sideboard is necessary.
Last but not least is Despise. During my testing, I found Wolf Run Ramp to be a nightmare and the only reason to skip playing this deck. Seriously, nearly everything else is good enough matchup for me, but Ramp is just a pain. The default sideboarding plan is to take out Champion of the Parish and put in a bunch of Angelic Destiny, but that card isn’t good enough to justify four slots.
I tried a lot of alternatives and finally came to conclusion that the best thing I could do against Ramp is turn 3 Despise to Primeval Titan. Memoricide would be more effective, but it’s often too late on the draw so I dismissed it. This plan still does nothing against Slagstorm, but it gives us some time and hope to win if the opponent doesn’t have a second one (while one sweeper is enough with a resolved Primeval Titan).
The important thing about B/W Tokens for players who have recently returned to Standard from Modern is that this deck is probably the cheapest of the good decks to acquire. The SCG Deck Builder tool showed me that the cost of the entire B/W Tokens deck is comparable to the cost of four Sword of War and Peace. That makes sense, I think.
Playing B/W Tokens against Wolf Run Ramp led me to the idea of playing Ramp myself. Sure, Ramp’s matchup against Delver is far from what I wish to have, but it plays well against decks that are built to beat Delver. Anyway, Delver decks aren’t more than a third or fourth of the field (and there even were only four Delver decks in the Top 16 of SCG Open Series: Des Moines).
Isn’t it just time for The Basic Test of Metagaming Competence? Maybe, but the more important factor is that I know the Wolf Run Ramp deck inside and out, and avoiding small mistakes will be better for me than poorly playing a better-positioned deck.
Right now, Wolf Run with white is far more appealing to me than the one without. I also looked at the Wolf Run Black version, but it’s so bad against Thalia, Guardian of Thraben that I was forced to reject this idea. Humans is almost extinct on the SCG Open Series, but World Cup Qualifiers (like Nationals in previous years) are tournaments where I expect to see a lot of slightly outdated decks. There are many "one deck players" around, and I remember Humans was fairly popular here in Russia some time ago. Moreover, Thalia is currently a staple of Naya Pod, and I don’t want to lose presumably good matchup because of playing the wrong version of Wolf Run Ramp.
But let’s go back to Wolf Run White. There are two ways to build it. The first one is to splash a regular Wolf Run deck with Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and sideboard Ray of Revelation (like Conley Woods and Eric Froehlich did at PT Dark Ascension). The second way is to build G/W Ramp with a splash for Kessig Wolf Run. Both approaches are interesting, so take a look at my decklists.
Creatures (17)
- 4 Solemn Simulacrum
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 4 Primeval Titan
- 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
- 2 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
- 3 Huntmaster of the Fells
- 1 Dawntreader Elk
Lands (26)
Spells (18)
The main difference from Woods’ PT Dark Ascension deck and mine is an increased amount of mana acceleration. I decided to run the full four Solemn Simulacrums and even Dawntreader Elk; some amount of mirror matches is to be expected, and Huntmaster of the Fells is frustratingly bad there. Moreover, Huntmaster isn’t as good against Lingering Souls decks (because they either have a lot of Anthems or Cloned Drogskol Captain), and the ability to play Grand Cenobite as early as possible is always crucial.
Dawntreader Elk is also sweet target for Green Sun’s Zenith—sometimes something better than Birds of Paradise is needed for acceleration. I’m not sure about the card, but it looks good enough to see the light of the day as an experiment. The rest of the deck is pretty obvious, except for Day of Judgment in the board, but Wrath effects are better sweepers against Sword of War and Peace than Whipflare, so this part of the deck should be considered obvious as well.
Wolf Run with deep white is far trickier, mostly because of the lack of Galvanic Blast. It’s better armed against hexproof creatures (Oblivion Ring, our removal of choice, takes care of equipment too), but sometimes it’s just crucial to kill the first creature (for example, Birds of Paradise). By the way, the meager amount of cheap removal forced me to reject idea of playing the only Standard deck that can actually pump Lingering Souls with Gavony Township.
Creatures (14)
- 4 Solemn Simulacrum
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 4 Primeval Titan
- 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
- 2 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
- 1 Huntmaster of the Fells
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (26)
Spells (18)
This deck fits between Wolf Run Ramp and G/W/B planeswalker-heavy control decks that are relatively popular in the USA but nonexistent in Russia. Gideon Jura is good against very aggressive decks where Huntmaster of the Fells doesn’t do much, so it was easy exchange. Our removal is more expensive but generally better. A pair of Dismembers is a kind of surrender and the first candidates for replacement; maybe they should just be Timely Reinforcements or Ratchet Bombs. I still have no idea and would appreciate any feedback regarding these last slots.
That’s probably all for today. I still don’t know what deck I’ll sleeve up for Saturday’s Magic World Cup Qualifier, but all four lists are solid choices and good enough to play at SCG Open Series: Phoenix. It’s Tuesday evening for me and Friday for you; it’s unlikely that I’ll have no final choice by Friday, but I’ll be happy to spend a part of my last pre-tournament evening discussing the pros and cons with you in the comments.
Good luck to everyone playing this weekend!