After Honolulu I was looking forward to playing in a Standard Grand Prix. I could make some small changes to my deck that would make it better against the field at Baltimore, and I’d be ready to go. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that the field in Baltimore wouldn’t look like the field in Honolulu. Aside from a substantially different mixture of decks being played, the discovery of Corrosive Gale made Spirits highly unappealing. Assembling a pair of Drogskol Captains and a Dungeon Geists is not nearly as impressive if they can all be killed for three mana, and any deck is likely to be able to do that.
Really, I’d decided to move away from Spirits before I fully appreciated the significance of Corrosive Gale. In Honolulu, Andrew Cuneo brought his update of the U/W Control deck he played at Worlds, and we played some games with that. He said he liked its matchup against everything but Delver, but couldn’t play it in Honolulu because he couldn’t find a way to beat Delver with it. After Honolulu, I hoped that many Delver players would play Spirits instead of playing traditional Delver decks, and maybe those that didn’t switch would lose to Spirits (note that I only think Spirits is slightly favored against traditional Delver, unfortunately).
If this happened, U/W would be an excellent choice because Day of Judgment is one of the best cards in the format (short of Corrosive Gale) against Spirits. If players who would play Delver play Spirits over Geist of Saint Traft and equipment, instead of playing someone who is very likely to beat you you’ll play against someone who is very bad against you.
Shortly before the GP, I realized that Corrosive Gale had become well known enough that most people probably wouldn’t even try to play Spirits, which negated my original reason for wanting to play U/W Control. At the same time, Zombies, an excellent matchup for U/W, had been getting very popular on Magic Online, and several articles advocated U/B Control, a deck that, surprisingly, Cuneo said he never had a problem with.
Before I left for New York, where I was going to visit Gaudenis Vidugiris and explore the city with Nadja, a friend who’s visiting and traveling with me to GPs this season, I streamed some Standard Daily events with U/W Control to get a feel for the deck and make sure I liked it. Between some exceptionally sloppy play and some very lucky draws, I ended up going 3-1 in each of the Daily Events I played—nothing special, but I liked the way the deck was playing well enough.
After talking to Cuneo again, first on my stream, then at the Grand Prix, I ended up at the following list:
Creatures (3)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (26)
Spells (28)
The last changes I made were to cut the second Gideon Jura and Snapcaster Mage from the maindeck to add Sun Titan and Phantasmal Image (and cut Buried Ruin for Haunted Fengraf) so that I’d have answers to Thrun, the last Troll. Phantasmal Image and Sun Titan were pretty bad, so I’m not sure the change was worth it. It might actually be better to just not have any good answers to Thrun and hope it doesn’t come up too often. I sided Sun Titan and Image out against everyone who didn’t have Thrun.
If I’d realized exactly how popular U/B Control was going to be, I might have played Buried Ruin over Haunted Fengraf and one Elixir of Immortality in my sideboard, but I’m not sure how good that would’ve been. I only played against U/B Control once, against Patrick Chapin, and he Nihil Spellbombed me a lot after sideboarding anyway, and I won the match. Still, going forward, it’s probably worth including if U/B Control stays popular, which I think it will at least until there’s another Premier-level event. (Buried Ruin + Elixir of Immortality is also a reasonable option for the U/B mirror, but remember that it’s not quite as good as you want it to be because of Nihil Spellbomb.)
Overall, playing this deck in the tournament felt great but a little weird. I played against several decks, especially on day 2, that I didn’t feel like there was any chance I could lose to, but I didn’t like that I just had to hope not to play against Delver, which might have been the most popular deck. (I don’t have the metagame breakdown available at the moment. I’m writing this on a plane to Seattle.)
Other control decks, like Michael Jacob Five-Color Control and Esper Planeswalkers were forced to play like aggressive decks against me, since I have much better late game with two Karn, two Blue Sun’s Zenith, and so many hard counters, but they’re not positioned to do that since their threats are, for the most part, so easy to answer.
I’d been a little worried about Zombies earlier in the week, but after adding a few graveyard hate cards on top of everything else the games are almost impossible to lose after sideboarding. Game 1 can be hard if they draw a lot of Gravecrawlers and Geralf’s Messengers, but almost all of their other cards are horrible against U/W so game 1 is often pretty easy as well.
I beat Birthing Pod twice. I lost a game where he cast Birthing Pod on turn 2 on the play and was able to kill my lands every turn before I could really do anything, but any time that doesn’t happen the games are pretty easy. Day of Judgment is very good against decks with that many creatures.
I lost to Wolf Run, which is an interesting matchup. For the most part, I think I’m well positioned, but sometimes you can’t deal with an Inkmoth Nexus or Thrun. Game one I misplayed—I randomly said "OK" for no reason when he played an accelerator that I should’ve countered on turn two when I had two Negates, and then I couldn’t get value out of them. Game 2 he played a Thrun so I had to play Sun Titan with two mana up to cast Flashfreeze, but his follow up spell was Karn instead of a Titan.
My other losses were to Delver, but again, it was partially my fault though the match can be tricky to play. I played Blue Sun’s Zeniths too aggressively in one game where he tapped out and I thought it would be safe to use it to draw five on my turn with four mana up, but he was able to force through a lethal Sword of War and Peace + Gut Shot. The other time I played it for two because I didn’t know I’d have another good chance to play it, but I was extremely flooded so I probably needed to get more value out of it than that. I think the matchup is around 40%, but the problem is that there’s really no way to make it much better than that.
The U/B Control matchup doesn’t really seem to go the way one might expect. Everyone talks about U/B Control as if it’s just assumed to beat every other control deck because Nephalia Drownyard is the only card that matters in control mirrors. With this deck, that doesn’t really seem true. Karn and Blue Sun’s Zenith matter, and playing so many hard counters instead of Mana Leak lets you force them through in the late game. None of their cards do anything except Nephalia Drownyard and Dissipate, and Ghost Quarter and Karn answer Drownyard. If I expected the format to continue to look the way it did for this tournament, I’d probably cut the one Mana Leak for a third Negate. Mana Leak really isn’t that important.
The big question to ask if you’re trying to figure out whether this deck is a good choice is whether Delver will be a popular deck. My first reaction might be to think that Delver should go down in popularity because it’s historically weak against U/B Control, which is likely to gain popularity after this weekend since it’s a deck people are pretty comfortable with and it did well this weekend. It’s also the best deck against Frites, another great deck in this format, and it might be the best deck against Delver.
On the other hand, Matt Costa demonstrated that Delver can beat U/B, but I’m not sure how much credit the average player should give Delver as a deck based on Matt Costa performance with it. Costa’s the real deal. He only lost one match at the Pro Tour and it was to Jon Finkel, and then he won a Grand Prix with essentially the same deck. Does that mean most people could beat U/B Control with Delver often enough to do the same? Probably not, but I’m not sure people will have the humility to admit that they can’t play the deck as well and may just look at the results, see that it can win, and pick it up.
Until I see some results after this weekend, I’m not entirely sure if the public’s takeaway from this tournament will be that U/B was the real winner with so many in the Top 8, or if Delver’s first place was enough that it will be seen as the real winner. Also, what is the future of Zombies? While horrible against U/W, I think Zombies can be built to be very strong against both U/B Control and Delver, which is exactly what it needs to do to continue gaining popularity.
Wolf Run should be on the decline—there aren’t a lot of midrange creature decks for it to prey on, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t want to play in a field of U/B Control.
The decline of Wolf Run would be good for decks like Jackie Lee R/G Aggro deck or other Strangleroot Geist strategies, which can sometimes be difficult for U/B Control to deal with. Jackie did lose to U/B Control, but I know Shiels felt lucky to escape that match.
At this point my advice about what to play in Standard would be that Delver is the best deck; it’s playing all the best cards and all the best synergies. The metagame may be hostile to it and it may not be the best choice for every tournament, but it’s the "best deck" in the format by a significant margin, which means everything else has to revolve around it no matter what. If you can play the best deck exceptionally well, you’ll always have a reasonable chance in any tournament; if you want to commit to one deck for the season, just play that.
If you’re looking to metagame each week, answer the questions above. Undying aggro (Geralf’s Messenger decks or Strangleroot Geist decks) should be well positioned in a format full of U/B Control and Delver, so ask yourself if you want to be the guy playing undying aggro or the guy beating undying aggro. If you want to be beating them, I think your best options are U/W Control, Wolf Run, Pod, or Frites. I would personally avoid Frites and Wolf Run until I have better information that there will be less U/B Control rather than more.
Also, note that Corrosive Gale is pretty bad against traditional Delver and every other deck I’ve mentioned. I can’t imagine that people will continue sideboarding it for long, especially if Spirits lays low for another week, so Spirits could easily be in a position to win another tournament with people less prepared for it. Baltimore was just the worst possible week for the deck.
Also, take my analysis with the following grain of salt: there are a lot of decks I would never consider playing that don’t really factor into my thought process unless they make themselves known by having a dominate showing at some point. I can’t tell you when it would be right to play something like Mono Red, Mono Green, or Tempered Steel because I don’t really know what their matchups are like. If you have a pet deck that you’ve been working on and winning with, by all means stick with it.
That’s all the advice I can really offer for Standard right now. It’s been fun to do another metagame prediction style article like I used to write more often. I hope you enjoyed it as well.
Thanks for reading,
@samuelhblack on Twitter