It is about time for me to get back into the thick of another metagame – I held off this article until after the bannings because I had a hunch the Block Constructed environment was going to chance drastically. A single card got banned and now a whole slew of decks became potentially viable. The PTQ season is coming up soon, and there are a lot of hopeful people looking to qualify. The tricky part is that this is essentially a brand new metagame with the banning and the introduction of Fifth Dawn.
In this article I am going to give a few opinions on what I think the metagame might look like, but what I really want are your responses. Respond via the forums or email, just give your two cents. I want to know what you will be playing or what you think will be viable – after all, that is how metagames are created in the first place.
If you haven’t even begun to think about Block Constructed – here is a rundown of what is going on…
Affinity
Lord kahuna and biggest abuser of Skullclamp is no more. Who are we kidding – the truth is that Affinity is still one of the best decks in the environment, but it is not nearly as degenerate as it was before. Lots of people will play it, simply replacing the Skullclamps with something else, probably from Fifth Dawn. It might be Myr Servitor, or it might be some other creature. Cranial Plating also makes an excellent replacement to Skullclamp – it is quite aggressive. I doubt there will be many more Affinity decks with Myr Retriever, since they were mostly good because of Clamp in the first place. I think the best build was the one with Shrapnel Blasts and Disciple or the Vault. The real question is what is Blue’s place in Affinity? Are there Sunburst cards worth playing? Does Vedalken Engineer become playable? Engineered Explosives?
Big Red
Also known as the Dragon deck – this deck was successful because it was good at fighting Affinity decks. With Affinity taking a hit, these decks might become scarcer, but once a deck takes hold in an environment they don’t die as easily as one might think. This act like a basic control deck with a combination of burn and artifact kill spells. As long as the Environment stays full of creatures that can be killed with burn, Big Red and the horde of Solemn Simulacrums should fare well.
Tooth and Nail
Second place in the Pro Tour for this once rogue deck will keep it as a popular choice. The Skullclamp banning can only make life better for this deck. Fifth Dawn also brings more one-shot mana accelerators to the table, like Pentad Prism. I expect this deck to be a very popular choice. It isn’t easy to beat Platinum Angel and Leonin Abunas or two Darksteel Colossuses, no matter what you are playing.
Mono-Green/Red/Green
Red/Green was a good deck – it was good game vs. Affinity and solid cards vs. everyone else. Mono-Green was a very subpar deck that no one should play but some people do anyhow. These decks were played more because of the large amount of artifact hate they had available, but that might not be as necessary as it used to be. I suspect that some of these will linger in the environment, but they won’t play a large role.
Death Cloud and March of the Machines
There were some Death Cloud and March of the Machine control decks running around, but they couldn’t really compete with Skullclamp. These decks will be back with the loss of Clamp, I am almost 100% sure about this. They may disappear again however, once something else pops up that they cant beat (perhaps a combo deck).
That is basically everything from the Kobe format, but that was pre-bannings and pre-Fifth Dawn. Here are some new types of decks to consider:
5colorX
I am unsure of what this deck would look like, but it would probably have Sunburst spells, Bringers, and Pentad Prisms to start. I think the Bringers are probably Constructed playable considering cards like Pentad Prism make them very easy to cast for the reduced rate. I’m sure the five color deck will develop as the metagame forms – they can be very flexible, thus very strong.
Combo
Here is the one that everyone is talking about in hushed whispers. Some people have come right out and said that Krark-Clan Ironworks is a broken piece of combo goodness. I think the card is probably too good, but that doesn’t mean it is anywhere near as good as Skullclamp ever was. The Ironworks is a combo piece, so it cannot go into every deck (unless everyone is playing the same combo deck… this happens sometimes). That being said I am sure there is at least one combo deck, but probably closer to three different combo decks. Wizards designed Fifth Dawn to be a combo set, so I doubt the combo players will be disappointed.
Today I am going to talk about one of these combo decks. I am not sure if this deck has been posted anywhere else, but I’m sure plenty of people have been talking about it. For now I will dub the deck”Iron Incubator.”
Iron Incubator
4 Tree of Tales
4 Ancient Den
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Great Furnace
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Serum Visions
1 Fireball
4 Staff of Domination
4 Guardian Idol
4 Pentad Prism
4 Krark-Clan Ironworks
3 Grinding Station
4 Doubling Cube
4 Clock of Omens
4 Myr Incubator
4 Fabricate
This is a rather rough decklist with not-so-extensive testing. I am putting it here to illustrate the point of what the combo deck can do. There are two distinct combos in this deck and they could be separated into two different decks, but I am unsure if that is the best course of action without knowing more about the yet undetermined metagame.
The first combo is to cast Myr Incubator and activate it for twenty (or more) on turn 3. You might have to wait a turn to attack with your tokens (or wait until end of turn to create them), but you could also get a Grinding Station into play and mill away their library ASAP. This combo is rather easy to pull off with Ironworks – just use a Pentad Prism or two and play the Ironworks out – sacrifice six artifacts (lands and the Ironworks included) to get twelve mana and do your thing. This deck could be a strong combo deck all on its own with more dedicated cards to the combo like Moxen and Welding Jars that could easily make mana with the Ironworks.
The second combo uses Krark-Clan Ironworks to get it started, but it is not vital to the combo. The combo is essentially to reuse Doubling Cube several times to create large quantities of mana. You can do this with Clock of Omens, and either Grinding Station and/or Staff of Domination. This means for a small amount of mana (probably three) you can have two untapped artifacts and then untap the Doubling Cube for reuse. You can keep doubling your mana an infinite amount of times of you are doing it with two Staff of Dominations, but if you are using Grinding Stations (also your victory condition) then you are limited by the number of untapped artifacts you can play. Usually you at least need one Staff of Domination.
The amount of mana you need to get this combo started depends completely on what parts you are using, but it is essentially a three card combo – Doubling Cube, Clock of Omens, and Staff of Domination. This second combo is far more difficult to pull of than the first, but it illustrates the point that these things can be done… Oh you think this might take awhile to set up? Well, you can reliably pull this second combo off reliably by turn 5. It may not be turn 3, but it is still rather good. Draw your deck, get as much mana as you want, deck your opponent, then Fireball them.
How does a deck like this fare in an environment like I described above? Rather well I would think. It might have trouble against a Platinum Angel/Abunas, but it might be too fast all the same. Against Affinity it should be able to win the race much of the time, but I don’t want to discount this because Affinity tends to redefine how we think about the term”racing.”
Racing in 1998
Jackal Pup, go.
Three turns later…
I killed you yay!
Racing in 2004
Arcbound Ravager, Disciple, Frogmite, Frogmite, Myr Enforcer, Cranial Plating…Go? Hah, you don’t get to go. The race ended before you finished shuffling.
Never underestimate the speed of Affinity.
There is the argument that the plethora of artifact hate in the metagame will help keep the Combo decks at bay. I never heard a better argument for printing a card like Oxidize. It is possible that this will be the case, but in the Incubator Combo, Oxidize would not even put a hitch in the combo unless you were killing an artifact in response to the playing of Ironworks… and that will only buy you a turn unless you have more artifact removal where that came from. I’m not saying that artifact removal doesn’t hurt the combo decks, but it sure doesn’t hurt them as much as many would prefer.
So, I pose the question again, given the things that I have said: What do you see happening in your metagame? I will be basing the next several articles on this format on your responses.
Poll: What Deck do you want to play?
Affinity
Tooth and Nail
Big Red
Death Cloud
Combo
5 Color
March of the Machines
Mono-Green
Red/Green