Good Old G/W Megamorph

Meanwhile G/W Megamorph sits comfortably and confidently in the corner alone. George W. Megamorph doesn’t need the validation of his peers to understand
his own self-worth. He knows that deep down he’s a real badass, and he will demonstrate that when the time is right, and only then.

G/W Megamorph may be old news, but it still packs a punch. It may not be the flashiest deck or the most powerful, but what it has going for it is raw
consistency and the ability to play a strong game at all phases. From turn 1 to turn 10, G/W Megamorph is capable of advancing the gameplan. Every turn of
the game is spent maximizing mana efficiency and building a boardstate to eventually overwhelm the opponent.

The last two weekends for me were spent piloting the artist formerly known as G/W Megamorph, currently known as G/W Megamorph. First I jammed it at the Pro
Tour, and then this past weekend I jellied it at the Grand Prix in Quebec City.

I went 8-2 with it at the Pro Tour and 9-4 with it at the GP for a total of 17-6 in premier level events. Broken down by different decks, my record looks
like the following:

Atarka Red: 3-0

Jeskai Black: 4-1

Jeskai Mentor: 1-0

G/W Megamorph (mirror): 2-0

Four-Color Rally: 0-2

G/R Eldrazi Ramp: 0-1

Esper Control: 0-1

Esper Dragons: 4-0

Abzan Aggro: 0-1

Abzan Red: 1-0

Five-Color Bring to Light: 1-0

B/R Aggro: 1-0

It may seem weird to separate wins and losses by opposing deck, but it actually makes sense. By doing this, we get a good idea of the kinds of decks we are
beating and the kinds of decks we are losing to.

For example, it is clear here that I am doing very well against various blue decks. I’m a combined 9-2 against Esper and Jeskai variants. I am also doing
quite well against aggressive variants, at 4-0 versus Red Aggro decks.

When you look at various control variants, I am 6-1, meaning despite not having a very strong sideboard against these kinds of decks, it doesn’t actually
matter that much. G/W is favored.

On the other hand, I’m struggling pretty hard to beat random decks. Eldrazi Ramp tentacled me and it seemed like a nightmare matchup. I would only expect
to win this matchup 20-30% of the time.

Even worse is Four-Color Rally. The deck uses Rally the Ancestors along with Zulaport Cutthroat and a bunch of value creatures to slowly drain you out.
Matt Nass slayed me with this deck at the Pro Tour and then Pascal Maynard ran it back and slayed me baby one more time in my win-and-in for top 8 of Grand
Prix Quebec City.

This matchup is nightmarish to the point of being borderline unwinnable. After going 0-4 in games against the deck, including a game where Pascal hit zero
creatures off of a Collected Company, I would estimate my chance of winning this match to be somewhere between 10-15%.

Pascal and Matt were probably among only a handful of pilots who were actually playing Rally at these respective tournaments, so in a way it is a bit
unfortunate that I had not one but two different matches deep in these tournaments wrecked by the pairing gods. On the other hand, Rally might pick up in
popularity after Pascal’s top 8 performance, so it may be worth dedicating some sideboard slots to the deck.

Michael Majors played two copies of Hallowed Moonlight in his sideboard at the Pro Tour specifically for Rally. The man is either a complete madman or a
genius. Maybe both. Rally wasn’t even a real deck. Nobody played it in SCG Opens leading up to the Pro Tour. Nobody talked about it, and we didn’t even
test with or against it.

Somehow that didn’t deter Mr. Minors. Somehow, he was actually right. His reasoning was sound, at the very least. G/W Megamorph is a deck where your main
gameplan is pretty streamlined and straightforward. It’s also good enough to beat most decks without the need of a sideboard. You also don’t want to
sideboard in too many cards in any given matchup and end up messing up the glory that is the maindeck. As a result, you have the luxury of playing weird
and oddly specific hate cards for the rare times they become valuable.

So here we are a week later and I’m sticking Hallowed Moonlight in my sideboard because I hate this crap, that’s why. I am sick of losing to the deck, and
I want nothing more than to just once experience the satisfaction of getting them with a Hallowed Moonlight. I’m so done with losing to Rally that I am
willing to dedicate a full 13% of my sideboard to a card that is solely and utterly dedicated to this one fringe matchup alone. I am ready to fight dirty.
I am ready to hit them with a Hal-low blow. Light em up.

Anywho, I think it’s time we had a fireside chat about the list and what makes it tick and tock.

G/W Megamorph

Brian Braun-Duin

Test deck on 10-30-2015

Standard

Creatures (22)

• 2 Wingmate Roc
• 2 Warden of the First Tree
• 4 Den Protector
• 4 Deathmist Raptor
• 4 Avatar of the Resolute
• 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
• 4 Hangarback Walker

Planeswalkers (4)

• 4 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

Lands (25)

• 6 Forest
• 4 Wooded Foothills
• 4 Plains
• 4 Windswept Heath
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 3 Canopy Vista

Spells (9)

• 3 Silkwrap
• 4 Dromoka's Command
• 2 Stasis Snare

Sideboard

• 2 Become Immense
• 4 Valorous Stance
• 2 Mastery of the Unseen
• 3 Surge of Righteousness
• 1 Silkwrap
• 2 Hallowed Moonlight
• 1 Quarantine Field

This is my most recent list. Some of the choices might be a bit of a loose goose, but just because I’m on Team Tight Goose doesn’t mean that I’m always
going to make the tight plays. Let’s break down why I’ve chosen the cards I have.

To start with, I’m still jamming four copies of Avatar of the Resolute. I’m not sure why this card hasn’t really picked up in popularity yet. If I had to
guess, I’d say it’s the classic list copying fallacies we see in Magic all the time. Someone wins with a list of an archetype, and then everyone else
copies that deck, and suddenly the choices that first person made become the consensus right card choices for the deck. Nobody bothers to explore those
card choices and examine whether they actually are correct. Everyone just blindly plays follow the leader.

The first list Michael Majors played to second place at #SCGINDY played two Hidden Dragonslayers. The lists from the next weekend also had two Hidden
Dragonslayers. Most of my opponents playing G/W at the Pro Tour were playing that same list with two Hidden Dragonslayers. I was walking around at GP
Quebec City and people are still playing that same list. Are we under the impression that Michael Majors just had the perfect list the first time around
and there weren’t any upgrades that could be made to it?

Personally, I think Hidden Dragonslayer sucks. What deck is it actually good against? It barely kills anything out of any of the major decks, and the body
is extremely underwhelming. I think it’s time we can go ahead and just get that out of our decks.

As for Avatar, it does two things extremely well. It pressures Gideon, especially when backed up by Dromoka’s Command thanks to trample, and it blocks
Mantis Rider. Those are two very important things for this deck. The easiest way to lose to Jeskai is to just be cold to an early Mantis Rider. Avatar
helps out. The card is pretty good against everything except Abzan, where it just gets outwitted, outplayed, and outclassed by the likes of Anafenza, the
Foremost and Siege Rhinoceros.

The next point of difference is that I have three Silkwrap, two Stasis Snare, and zero Valorous Stance. Valorous Stance is really bad against basically
every deck in the format except for Abzan and Esper Dragons. Even the ramp decks only exile your creatures, so the indestructible mode blows, and their
only targets for the kill mode are Ulamog, which laughs in the face of V. Stance.

Silkwrap is great against nearly every deck. The key way to beat Jeskai is to exile their creatures. WIthout them pressuring you, you can generally grind
them out with the power of cards like Den Protector. Exiling is important because it slows down their delve, and it also prevents cards like Ojutai’s
Command and Kolaghan’s Command from getting maximum value by being able to rebuy Jace, Soulfire Grand Master, and Dragonmaster Outcast.

Stasis Snare isn’t a great card, but it is a concession. It serves a similar role to Valorous Stance in that it deals with big things, although slightly
more inefficiently. Unlike Valorous Stance, it can also hit things like Mantis Riders and Hangarback Walkers and even Gideon if he goes active.

With that being said, Valorous Stance is really great against Abzan and Esper Dragons. It’s so good against those decks that I’m playing a full set in the
sideboard. Being able to side up to four copies against those decks gives you a huge edge in sideboard games.

Hallowed Moonlight I already talked about as a way to combat Rally. The other weird card in the sideboard is Become Immense. I went through every single
G/W card in Standard, and I’m pretty sure this is just the best possible card you can sideboard against the Eldrazi Ramp decks. In testing, I haven’t drawn
it yet against those decks, but I keep getting into these boardstates where they are at like 7-8 life, and I can punch through one attacking creature and
they would just die if I drew the nut high B.I.

Andele andele mama, BI BI uh OH…what’s happening now? You’re dead. That’s what.

This is the version of G/W I like most, but that’s not to necessarily say that it’s the best version of the deck. I personally am not on board with
splashing a third color, but you could conceivably splash either red or blue off of Cinder Glade or Prairie Stream.

I don’t like the red splash at all. The red splash is basically for cards like Radiant Flames and Dragonmaster Outcast. I think it’s pretty unnecessary to
have these cards. What matchups do these cards solve? The bad matchups for G/W are the decks that go over the top of you–decks like Rally, Eldrazi Ramp,
and some control decks with Ugin. Having access to Radiant Flames and Dragonmaster Outcast are just making already good matchups slightly better, which is
a pretty inefficient use of sideboard space, especially when you have to alter your manabase and make it significantly weaker just to facilitate a third
color.

The blue splash is more defensible. For one, it’s easier to make the mana work because if you’re going to splash blue, I’m fairly sure you should be
playing Knight of the White Orchid to facilitate it. Knight of the White Orchid can fetch up Prairie Stream to give you access to blue mana. Knight can’t
find a red source, so it doesn’t make sense in the Naya versions. Having access to Knight gives you effectively more blue sources, making the splash less
of a strain on your manabase.

The other reason the blue splash is better is that Disdainful Stroke is actually a really good card against all of the bad matchups for G/W. It’s probably
the best card in the format for fighting decks like Rally, ramp, and control strategies. Splashing for this makes perfect sense and is a completely
defensible option.

The reason I don’t like it is twofold. One, I just want to curve out and beat my opponents’ faces in some percentage of the time, and having access to a
worse manabase is going to really stifle how often I can do this. Secondly, I actually think Disdainful Stroke is a trap card a lot of the time, and it’s
also a fairly high variance card.

When you draw Disdainful Stroke after your opponent has already resolved a big thing, it sucks. When you hold open mana for Disdainful Stroke and your
opponent just doesn’t play a big thing and you end up being really inefficient with mana as a result, it sucks. I also hate having to decide whether to
play a threat or hold mana open for Disdainful Stroke, and I feel like I am really bad at figuring out how to do that. If I hold open for Disdainful Stroke
instead of playing Gideon and I lose, it feels bad; and if I play Gideon and then die to a spell I could have dealt with if I had just held open Stroke, it
feels bad.

Worse is when your opponent sniffs out the Disdainful Stroke and can punish you for whichever option you choose. Worst yet is when you draw multiple
Strokes and don’t find a blue source to cast it, or it enters the battlefield tapped because you don’t have enough basics on the battlefield for Prairie
Stream to enter untapped. With four Flooded Strand, four Windswept Heath, and one Prairie Stream, there are going to be a nonzero number of times where you
simply don’t find the blue source.

All told, this is why I’m sticking to just straight G/W. I’m probably losing some percentage points in some bad matchups as a result, but that’s something
I’m willing to sacrifice in order to be better elsewhere. I’ll take my lickings against the ramp decks and focus on just being a smoother, cleaner, more
efficient machine against decks like Atarka Red and Jeskai Black.

Now that I’ve gone over a lot of the card choices and theory behind the deck, let’s talk actual practical advice and sideboarding for the various matchups
you’re likely to face at a tournament.

VS Jeskai Black

This is the deck you’ll probably play the most against. The key here is to focus on exiling their creatures, focus on making Ojutai’s Command bad against
you, and in general just try to avoid getting blown out as much as you can. They have so many instants and so many ways to generate advantages against you,
but they also suffer from a slow, painful, and awkward manabase, and it’s easy to punish them for that as well.

Sometimes I ignore Jace. If I only have one piece of removal, say a singular Silkwrap, and I’m just stone dead to Mantis Rider, I’m probably not going to
Silkwrap Jace. It really depends though. If I can curve out and use my mana efficiently to add to the board instead of killing the Jace, I’m going to do
that and save the Silkwrap for Mantis Rider, the card that literally and actually kills you. If my options are to pass the turn doing nothing or Silkwrap
the Jace, I’m going to wrap that up and hope they either don’t have Mantis Rider or their mana is too awkward to curve into it.

For sideboarding, I go:

Out:

In:

I’m actually not sure that sideboarding out Warden is correct. Warden can provide some early pressure and makes Dromoka’s Command way better. On the flip
side, it can soak up a lot of mana to do nothing and bites it to Fiery Impulse and Wild Slash, meaning it is often ineffective at best. I’m also not sure
that Hangarback is great against them, but for every game where it’s weak, there are so many other games where it pressures them in a way no other card
can.

This sideboarding plan is also loose to a bunch of small cats. By that, I mean Felidar Cub. This cub scout eats a steady diet of ‘wraps, and it’s also a
pain with Ojutai’s Command being able to rebuy it to do it again. If they have a lot of Felidar Cubs, you can cut some enchantments and rely on Surge of
Righteousness to get the job done against Mantis Rider and Tasigur.

VS Atarka Red

This is actually a really interesting and skill-intensive matchup. If you want to see a pretty epic matchup of G/W versus Atarka Red, go back and watch
footage of my match versus Alexander Hayne in round 13 of GP Quebec City. Hayne pilots Atarka Red flawlessly, and it was all I could do to hang in there.
The commentators kept suggesting that I was missing lines of play, but in reality, I was just viewing the game through a different lens than they were. For
example, I skipped leveling up my Hangarback Walker about 3-4 times throughout the game when it was on three counters. I did this on purpose, because Hayne
was going wide against me. If I level up Hangarback Walker too much, I will never be able to crack the Walker and get a bunch of Thopters out of it,
because it will never die in combat. If I keep it a 3/3, I can block Zurgo Bellstriker, Monastery Swiftspear, and Abbot of Don’t Care-al Keep and know that
I will always cash it in on an Atarka’s Command.

Side note: I try to crack Hangarback Walker as often as I feasibly can. Every time I can trade with it or Dromoka’s Command to kill something and have
Hangarback Walker die in the process, I almost always do it. Having three Thopters on the battlefield is insane in a deck with Wingmate Roc and Gideon
emblems.

Anyway, the point I was going for is that there is actually a lot to the matchup. Atarka Red is not a mindless deck, nor is playing against it a mindless
affair. In fact, it may be the hardest deck to pilot optimally and likewise one of the hardest to play perfectly against.

The key to this matchup is to avoid leaving yourself vulnerable to the Become Immense + Temur Battle Rage combo as much as you possibly can. That is their
main way to beat you, and it happens to be extremely effective as a tool against G/W. The easiest way to beat this is to hold up Dromoka’s Command +
Deathmist Raptor. Fighting with Raptor is guaranteed to disrupt their combo unless they have Fiery Impulse to kill Deathmist.

You don’t always have the luxury of doing this, however. Sometimes you just have to add the board and hope you’re not dead, because if you just sit around
and hold open mana on the early turns of the game, they can just pull too far ahead and kill you anyway.

One of the things about playing this match, however, is that you should really be conservative with how you choose to use your instant speed removal. If
they Atarka’s Command, and that prompts you to blow a Dromoka’s Command to “get them” and they just kill you afterward with the Become Immense + Temur
Battle Rage combo…well…you deserved it. Instead, you should probably just take the giant hit from their Atarka’s Command turn, even if you end up
stabilizing at a really low life total afterward. They have very few burn spells to punish you, and the Become Immense + Temur Battle Rage combo deals an
absurd amount of damage. If you leave yourself vulnerable to the combo and they have it, you cannot block it. Those two spells alone on an Abbot of Keral
Keep represents twenty trample damage. If they also have something like Titan’s Strength, it’s 28. That’s not including their other creatures or that they
are an aggressive deck and you’re probably at like ten or eleven life anyway.

Out:

In:

It may seem weird to bring in Valorous Stance versus a Mono-Red deck, but it prevents you from dying to the combo, and it’s generally pretty easy to beat
them if they don’t combo kill you.

VS Abzan

This matchup is kind of hard. I think Abzan is favored in this matchup, but not by a huge amount. If the game goes pretty long, you can usually grind them
out with Den Protectors and Deathmist Raptors, but sometimes they just get out too fast with Warden and Anafenza and Gideon, and you just can’t keep up.

Out:

In:

Avatar is at its worst in this matchup. It doesn’t brawl with their creatures and neither ability is particularly relevant. Hangarback is still a good card
against them, even if they do have Abzan Charm and Anafenza. You have to keep Anafenza off the table to win anyway, and Hangarback Walker is great in
non-Anafenza games. If you can crack Hangarback Walker for two or three and get some Thopters, that’s usually going to be really effective against them.

VS Eldrazi Ramp

Mulligan any hand that isn’t aggressive. Seriously. Silkwrap, Nissa, Gideon, and four lands is a good hand against most decks, but I’d throw that back
here. You can’t play a 2/2 on turn 3 as your first play of the game and ever hope to race a deck that can play Ugin on turn 5.

Other than that, just try to get in as much damage as possible. I don’t really play around anything because you can’t really beat it anyway.

Out:

In:

Silkwrap is actually good against them, because it deals with Hangarback Walker and Jaddi Offshoot.

VS Four-Color Rally

Out:

In:

Not sold on siding out Hangarback Walkers, but they are really slow. It’s hard to crack them with the fight mode of Dromoka’s Command because their
creatures are so small, and they don’t apply enough pressure to adequately race.

Enchantment removal is great versus them.

VS Mirror

This match just doesn’t happen that much anymore, as this deck isn’t seeing much play right now. Most people have moved on to playing Abzan instead of G/W
Megamorph.

Out:

In:

Warden isn’t great because it gets outclassed so hard by Deathmist Raptor. You invest a lot of mana into it and it still doesn’t swing past big pappa
Deathmist.

The best card in the mirror match isn’t Wingmate Roc. It’s actually Tragic Arrogance. However, with the mirror declining so much to where I didn’t even
play against it a single time at GP Quebec City, I feel like Tragic Arrogance is just a wasted slot right now. Still, it’s a card people might have, and
it’s worth playing around it.

It’s possible that G/W Megamorph isn’t seeing that much play anymore because it’s a deck on the decline. There is always that deck that you love and you
play it one more tournament than you’re supposed to and you get smashed and burned as a result. I’m hoping that GP Indy isn’t that weekend for G/W
Megamorph, but based on how consistent, powerful, and great the deck feels, I don’t think it will be. I guess we’ll see.