Kamigawa Block PTQs have been raging since the Sunday after Regionals, but I only started testing this week. Since Pro Tour: Philadelphia, I had a vague idea that I wanted to play a deck like the incomparable Kai Budde. Kai seemed to crush all the G/x decks and only have problems with White Weenie. Assuming that hole could be plugged, his Kite Control seemed like a fine place to start.
For reference:
Creatures (5)
Lands (24)
Spells (31)
Kai started Pro Tour: Philly a triumphant 6-0 and had the whole state of Pennsylvania stamping out his “Welcome Home” banners to be hung on various bridges between the Liberty Bell…. But a three-match skid ended the grand champion’s run on Day Two with similar alacrity. Two of Kai’s losses came to fairly uninspired White Weenie decks, exposing the B/W Control’s vulnerability against certain aggressive strategies. To be fair, I was watching and Kai’s draws seemed terrible to me.
Saviors of Kamigawa gave Kai’s deck two nice lifts: Kagemaro, First to Suffer and Hand of Cruelty. Kagemaro lets the deck eschew White… Final Judgment is no longer necessary, as even indestructible creatures will bite it to a big enough Kagemaro activation. This means that the color White itself is no longer necessary. Perhaps more important than Kagemaro is the tiny two-drop that has blazed a trail to the Top 8 several dozen players wide. Plopping down Hand of Cruelty against White Weenie buys a ton of time, and in the absence of Lantern Kami or Hand of Honor, also turns off Umezawa’s Jitte.
Without getting too much into the various versions of Black Control I went through before getting to the final version, I’ll just cut to the chase:
Creatures (13)
Lands (24)
Spells (23)
The major changes (aside from removing White) involve shifting threats and answers around a bit. I started testing with four main-deck Night of Souls’ Betrayal, but as the metagame online started to progress, it became obvious to me that the threat decks of the Pro Tour – based on Sakura-Tribe Elder, Hana Kami, and Sosuke’s Summons – were not the same decks advancing at the PTQ level. With TOGIT Three-Color Creature Control as the most important Green deck and the most successful decks overall being Black and White Weenie, Night of Souls’ Betrayal seemed positively EH.
Therefore the tasks became figuring out exactly what threats and answers WERE actually right. In came all the Sickening Shoals, out went Hero’s Demise. The loss of Night of Souls’ Betrayal was shored up by the presence of Hand of Cruelty alone (in non-Gifts/non-Snakes matchups, anyway). Though he’s also a great offensive threat, the Kamigawa Black Knight serves to contain beatdown and eat 3/3s… kind of like mono-Green creature removal.
Kiku’s Shadow was the brainchild of Greg Weiss. The most important threats to answer in the short term seemed to be the proliferation of 3/3 Ogres, up to eight per deck (and twelve if you count the 3/1 nigh-unblockable/equally Black cousins); these take five mana to Shoal and can’t be hit by most of the heavily played in-color options. Greg figured out that Kiku’s Shadow was the right way to go… And with his PTQ win last weekend, I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular innovation became standard.
Based on maximizing test time against a deceptively wide field, I decided to concentrate only against the decks that seemed to matter most: TOGIT, basic Swamp, and Eight-And-A-Half-Tails. I tested against decks that did well in week one, so even one week removed they may be a wee bit out of date, but these three decks are probably still representative for real-life PTQ metagaming:
Creatures (18)
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 1 Patron of the Kitsune
- 2 Hokori, Dust Drinker
- 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
- 4 Yosei, the Morning Star
- 3 Orochi Sustainer
- 1 Myojin of Cleansing Fire
- 2 Kodama of the North Tree
Lands (22)
Spells (20)
Creatures (23)
- 4 Yukora, the Prisoner
- 4 Takenuma Bleeder
- 3 Scourge of Numai
- 4 Ogre Marauder
- 1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
- 3 Hand of Cruelty
- 4 Raving Oni-Slave
Lands (23)
Spells (14)
Creatures (23)
- 4 Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
- 4 Samurai of the Pale Curtain
- 3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
- 4 Lantern Kami
- 4 Kami of Ancient Law
- 4 Hand of Honor
Lands (23)
- 23 Plains
Spells (14)
Testing went more or less like this:
1. The Black Control deck was a slight favorite against TOGIT Three-Color Creature Control. The decks sort of traded games with neither one really dominating the early game. Prior to testing, I thought that Kodama of the North Tree would be a problem, but I usually just put Yukora in front of it and traded.
The creature that was really annoying – I kid you not – was the mighty Orochi Sustainer. Embarrassingly enough, Orochi Sustainer doesn’t die to Kiku’s Shadow, and therefore works as both a consistent boost and quite an adept Aragorn when swinging Umezawa’s Jitte around the Red Zone. Yosei I can smash, but a poor Llanowar Elves? Not so much.
That said, the matchup was good, if not great. TOGIT had the better mana engine, obviously, but Black had the better long-game Tops because of the Kite engine. Any game that went to trades ultimately got avalanched by Journeyer’s Kite such that the very long games could be won by even a lowly Hand of Cruelty.
The deck lost games where TOGIT had the initiative and wouldn’t give it up. In those games, a double Yosei would buy enough time for any threat to win it, and even a single Yosei would be difficult, if not impossible, to play around. Black could trade using Yukora… but then fail to untap and lose to whatever was left over. Kagemaro was great against Meloku, and the deck in general was good, if not a blowout. There were no really key cards on the TOGIT development side – games were more about holding tempo leading into Yosei than anything else – but it is important to note that the Mono-Black deck can’t actually answer a Jitte except by stranding it without a creature (not actually that hard). The Eradicates in the sideboard are for Yosei.
2. The Black Control deck was similarly a slight favorite over Black Hand. Not too much to talk about here… Black Weenie plays creatures, Black Control kills them. Black Weenie would win on tempo – games where it started off quickly and closed with O-Naginata while Black Control stumbled on land or some such.
The breaker games for the Control deck came from the Aggro deck’s inherent weaknesses. Many games went “Ball Lightning,” with Kiku’s Shadow dispatching Oni-Slave after Raving Oni-Slave, or Yukora offering a free out to the Control deck with its back against the wall. Again, the innovations of Greg Weiss’s deck (which I talked about yesterday in the other column) may change Black Weenie construction such that this matchup gets a lot worse for the Control – but if decks stay Suicide-style, with all 3/3s and ritual self-mutilation, I would be more comfortable from the control side on a consistent basis.
3. The worst matchup of the three was White Weenie at even. I thought that Hand of Cruelty was going to be the Great White – okay, Great Black – Hope for the archetype, but I severely underestimated the effectiveness of his opposite number.
It’s not that Hand of Honor is such a great card or anything so much as if you put an Umezawa’s Jitte on it, Hand of Honor just kills a Black deck unless it is very quick with the Kagemaro. As such, White Weenie tended to win any games where it was on the play and had Hand of Honor (about 25% automatic wins), as well as its sundry “regular” victories. As in the TOGIT matchup, if the Black deck got to actually trade rather than falling behind – including tempo one-for-twos via Sickening Shoal – it would win going long. Kite would come online, Top would show up if it weren’t already there, and White Weenie would just fold.
Now, Steve Sadin narrowly missed the money in London and actually has to PTQ this weekend. Don’t worry, he will probably win. Anyway, he is very bright and therefore will be gaming with basic Swamp, either my deck or Greg’s. Therefore I had to figure out another route for Saturday.
As Tsuyoshi Fujita is quite possibly the best deck designer in the world, I decided to barn his Paddle deck, provided I couldn’t mise the proper rare Swamps. Identifying the same archetypes as the Decks to Beat, I made a very simple switch to Tsuyoshi’s deck in order to accommodate the new Legendary Spirits from Saviors of Kamigawa.
Creatures (21)
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 3 Jugan, the Rising Star
- 1 Orochi Sustainer
- 1 Kodama of the North Tree
- 4 Godo, Bandit Warlord
- 4 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
- 4 Jiwari, the Earth Aflame
Lands (23)
Spells (16)
The Blue had to go in order to fit Jiwari. Jiwari is sort of a great big house against White Weenie (and, to a lesser extent, its Black brother), and I figure that will be the most popular deck. It’s odd to think of removing a color as a Brian Kibler-esque flourish – but in this case, believe me that it is. Kibs is all about quick and mana efficient answers in his threat decks, which usually requires adding a color; in this case, RRR was just not feasible with Islands in the mix.
At the same time, no Meloku meant no need for Crusade, i.e. Konda’s Banner. Jon Becker sold me on Godo getting his own Maul, and Tenza has been pretty decent in the testing.
Without at doubt, the worst threat in this deck is Kodama of the North Tree. I’m pretty sure Tsuyoshi played his quad North Trees just to 187 the other guy’s big Craw Wurms. I am tempted to play one Fumiko the Lowblood starting in its place, which would actually help out more than a little against the dominant weenie decks.
I kind of hate Jugan and constantly wish that I had Keiga… But I can’t realistically run Ryusei. I don’t think Jugan has successfully triggered even once in all the testing that I’ve done, largely because I only have one big guy out at a time, but mostly because of Samurai of the Pale Curtain… but don’t want to risk getting my own ground-pounders killed in a bad battle involving the Falling Star.
I had to practice a lot with this deck against White Weenie – more than forty games, probably – to get the matchup better than average. Playing quite badly I was able to trade games, but slowly, I figured out how to win. You see, in Philadelphia, I watched Shuhei Nakamura and Fujita himself beat up on basic Plains against the best players, from much more difficult board positions than showed up against the Martin version of White Weenie in my testing. I knew that it was possible, therefore, especially with my brand spanking new Jiwaris…
Beating White Weenie in the current format is largely about playing correctly around their tricks. It isn’t enough to play a “no reach” attrition game against White because once they hit five, even a single Hound of Konda can go lethal via Charge Across the Araba. Therefore, selective trades (and even chump blocks) become important. Your own life total is something to watch. Otherworldly Journey is similarly devastating not because it can save a creature and give a bonus, but because it can play Falter. Believe it or not, targeting Godo is the right play some of the time, just to drive in four more damage in a pre-Charge turn.
But the worst card of all out of White Weenie was Manriki-Gusari. Godo is one of the bombs you really want against White Weenie, and Manriki-Gusari takes a lot of starch out of the Bandit Warlord. Similarly, the Manriki-Gusari mimics Godo’s own anti-Jitte capabilities, removing much of the incentive to playing the Paddle deck against other creature designs.
All of that said, the matchup is pretty favorable, even if it takes a lot of work and careful math with your back against the wall. At the end of the day, Jiwari is devastating, Arashi is hugely efficient, and Jugan blocks well, if nothing else; big clunky North Tree shines here, too, providing a nice defensive body that trumps 8.5.
TOGIT was a much easier match. I found the Three-Color Creature Control to be very much like a mirror match where I had Godo and TOGIT had Hokori… and I had Paddles and a Sustainer. In stark contrast to the previous Black Control matchup, Yosei didn’t really matter at all. I crashed into the White Dragon Spirit with Godo without a hint of fear… What did losing a turn mean? My guy untapped for free anyway!
After going up four games to none, I faced off against the mighty Clouded Mirror of Victory. It looked like I was going down to consecutive Alpha Strikes as I stared at the ineffectual Jiwari in my hand. Was this why Tsuyoshi, wise Tsuyoshi, played four copies of Morphling’s inheritor? To trade via the Legend Rule? Who was I kidding? My changes made no sense in the wake of this threat, this one test game, every other game I’d ever played be damned!
…and then I topdecked Arashi.
You can probably figure out what happened next…. It involved Godo for sixteen. Is it bad to feel like Brian Kibler after tearing the Sky Asunder? We were teammates in the Underground and on Red Bull both. I quit the matchup on 5-0.
As good as the TOGIT matchup was, that’s how bad the Reason Black matchup was. Okay, I actually took about a game in every five. The problem was that O-Naginata let the crappy little guys trade with my beautiful – and expensive – legitimate Legendary creatures. Godo was strong, but a poorly-placed Mark of the Oni would screw up turns of and turns of sculpture and careful life total management. What was ironic was that Godo for Umezawa’s Jitte, so effective against all the decks for purposes of beating a specific trump, didn’t really answer the equipment that mattered. Wasn’t Mirrodin Block supposed to have the nuts equipment? Where is Sword of Fire and Ice?
Ultimately, the Black matchup might just put the big kibosh on the G/R deck… If there is one deck you don’t want to lose to almost all the time, it’s Black. But even if it’s not the best, I can tell you that the G/R was the most fun deck to test, so I think I’m going to play it on that merit. I mean, who doesn’t’ love Godo?
Luckily, in preparation for tomorrow and figuring out a decent sideboard plan, I asked my friend Greg Weiss what cards were good against Black beatdown. He couldn’t tell me, having gone undefeated at the PTQ he won.
Love,
Mike