Landstill doesn’t make Top 8, but still produces a respectable finish. Solidarity hated out. Suicide Black Revisited makes it to the final. Flame Vault is awesome but super-hard to play. And you all mocked me. Shame on you.
Bragging rights would be great if I had actually been able to make it to the GP, but I couldn’t, so I should be honest and explain myself. For those of you who weren’t really up on the hype of Grand Prix: Philadelphia, or who don’t really understand the dramatic consequences and ramifications of the results, sit back and let me take you through. If you know all of this, I acknowledge this is not any sort of divine revelation. I’m just here for those who want someone to take a step back and sort out the details.
First, the Top 8 was a very interesting mix. Only two Goblin decks made it, which is actually a good sign – considering that it was clearly the most popular deck at the tournament, it didn’t dominate nor did it underperform. At 25% of the field, it pulled a quarter of the top slots, including the Big Man on Campus first-place finish.
Jonathan Sonne was playing Patron of the Akki – amazing tech against a field where he probably expected to see a lot of Engineered Plagues. Hats go off to him, as he basically won the GP because he won the Sideboarding War. As to Tom Smart, it should be noted that not only did he make Top 8, but he also won a trial event with Goblins as well.
Three threshold-based decks made the Top 8 as well; two traditional U/G/w varieties (one piloted by Lam Pham, an expert on the deck) and a much more innovative U/G/r build that packed Fledgling Dragon as the fat, threshold-chomping beast. With access to both Red and Blue Elemental Blasts, Pyroclasm, Force of Will, and a host of other assorted metagame goodies, I think this deck will gain more in popularity. It’s certainly well prepared to hose Gobbos, combo and control.
The Legacy “Salvagers Oath” deck (which uses Gamekeeper to dig up Auriok Salvagers, dumping LEDs and Pyrite Spellbomb into the graveyard) also made a Top 8 spot, which I admit was very unexpected. However, looking at it, you can see that there’s a good reason to consider it a strong contender. It smells of Long.dec, where LED gets cracked in response to Living Wish, fetching either Salvagers for the win or Gamekeeper to flashback Cabal Therapy. While it may not be a premier deck in Legacy – yet – it could rise in popularity.
Lightning Rift in the Top 8 was not a shocker either – with a field full of Goblins, it’s not hard to claw your way to the top. Whether or not this deck will be viable in the future is hard to say; but right now it strikes me a simply a metagame deck. It’s still quite good, but I don’t expect it to be a consistent performer. Either way, Pasquale Ruggiero did a good job at the helm.
The big revelation of the day, though, was none of this – it was all about the color Black and Mista Pikula. The old-time spellslinger sliced and diced his way to the finals with none other than a modern SuiBlack build, splashing white for Vindicate and Swords to Plowshares – also known as Suicide Blonde.
Creatures (11)
Lands (23)
Spells (26)
In all my reading of forums and articles everywhere, I am the only person to suggest that SuiBlack might be good. So there, I’ll say it: I told you so. (True, I’m quoting from the era before Bob Maher saw his face in cardboard, but Dark Confidant is not the only reason the deck is viable.)
In order to preempt some of your objections/buts/howevers, heck yeah – Chris is an awesome player. His face is on Meddling Mage, so the guy knows what he’s doing. That doesn’t mean he simply outplayed his opponents – Chris needed a deck that would let him do that. On top of that, Chris played against a number of very talented players, and it’s hard to believe that playskill was the only factor that put him in the finals.
Why is a deck full of Sinkholes, Vindicates, Hymn to Tourachs, Duresses and Gerrard’s Verdicts so good? Well, how about this: how could it not be good? Chris walked into a field full of control aimed at overmastering Goblins, and combo intent on going off before Goblins could kill them. Control decks can’t stand repetitive discard, manabase assaults, and sideboard threats like Phyrexian Negator that eat them alive before they can get going. Combo decks need hands if they intend on going anywhere – a well-placed Duress or Hymn will put a combo player so far in the hole they would be unable to escape the jaws of Hypnotic Specter-y death.
Admittedly, I wondered where the Cabal Therapies are. On the other hand, I also acknowledge this: Cabal Therapy misses a lot when you don’t have a lot of creatures that you’re willing to sacrifice. Gerrard’s Verdict, on the other hand, gets two cards. While I definitely think there is room for discussion on Therapies somewhere in the deck (more creatures are in the sideboard, for example), I do understand ChrisP’s decision. Against a basically unknown and random metagame, a first-turn Cabal Therapy will almost always whiff unless you know what your opponent is playing. Perhaps they would be good in place of Duress (since the field has so many Goblins), but I’m very hesitant to say that he was wrong to leave them at home. GP: Lille, however, might be a totally different story – the metagame might have congealed enough to make it likely for you to make your Therapy sessions.
The typical weakness of Suicide decks is the atrocious matchup against Red decks, particularly burn decks like Sligh. However, the real Red threat this past weekend was the Red Army That Hates Engineered Plague. With two main and two more in the board, Brahm Stoker’s Pikula was ready to feast on Skirk juice. A playset of Withered Wretch in the board also gave him some chumping fodder to hold back the threats, while serving double duty against decks that relied on graveyard recursion (read: Life from the Loam). On top of that, he had Swords to Plowshares in the board along with the recurring Darkblast – great tools against the Goblin hordes and other weenie decks as well. Without the real Red problems against it, it’s not hard for SuiBlack variants to do well.
Other interesting news for the color Black was the relative success of U/B Iggy-Pop (Ill-Gotten Gains, which is basically the core of the Storm Tendrils variant in Legacy), which came extremely close to making the Top 8. Nassim Ketita ran 62 cards, though; perhaps a trimmer decklist could have gone all the way. Nonetheless, combined with the Meddling Mage Incarnate’s finish, Black may start to get better scrutiny.
Coming into the GP, it seemed like it would be a Red-vs.-Blue format – Goblins on one side, Brainstorm/FoW on the other. Under this worldview, Black-based decks had a good reason to come into the limelight. Dodging most of the Pyro/Hydro-boards, black has the aforementioned Genetically-Tuned Diseases for the Little Green Punkballs and the disruption against blue. As the format continues to grow and expand, I think Black will become a more important part of the metagame.
As for the expected metagame-breaker – Flame Vault – what can I say? The deck is amazing, but it’s not a factor in a large event like this one since few actually have Time Vaults to make the build; so the chances that you’ll play against one aren’t likely. Even if you do, Flame Vault is a ridiculously hard deck to play. The U/R combo-oriented builds don’t take advantage of Time Vault’s turn-skip, so you need to deploy them carefully. It also renders them a dead card if you draw multiples.
The Stax variants are probably better, but they involve incredibly complex decision making and lots of planning ahead. You have to be able to anticipate what your opponent will play, how they will play around various lock parts, which lock parts you need to play now and in what order, etc. The Vintage variants aren’t easy to play well at the competitive level, it’s no surprise that it takes a lot of experience with both the deck and the metagame to do close out an opponent consistently over eleven rounds. Worthy of mention: there was a good piece of tech that was noted in the Wizards coverage: the addition of Stasis. Stasis + Time Vault + Tangle Wire = Screwed Opponent. While the combo is nothing new, it does give Flame Vault decks an alternate win condition as well as a means of locking down the opponent in preparation for going off.
Paul Mastriano did win a GP Trial event with the combo version, though; so it’s definitely a strong contender. Flame Vault will certainly not disappear despite its performance at Philly, you can count on it. On the other hand, what didn’t do so hot? Landstill and Solidarity. The most anticipated decks next to Goblins, neither of them seemed to bring enough solid finishes relative to the number of players who piloted them.
Solidarity was probably hated out. This is due to the amount of hate aimed at them – players were packing Rule of Law, Arcane Lab, Tsunami and Boil in their boards in anticipation of the High Tide/Reset engine. High Tide is a good deck, but it’s very easy to interfere with; in a U-v.-R meta, REB is sitting in just about every sideboard. As a result, Solidarity may die out for a while and then make a resurgence when it’s least expected.
I know the old-time Legacy players have trouble admitting it sometimes, but Landstill is on its way out. However, it’s not as bad as the opposite camp has been portraying it. Landstill has a comfortable seat in the meta, and it can do well, but I think it will continue to slide down in viability as the field begins to address the recent success of aggro-control, which made up 50% of the Big Octagon. (Yeah, I made that term up. Cut me some slack, will ya? How many synonyms for Top 8 can you find before they get overly repetitive?)
So what was the best deck that went completely under the radar? Honestly, I think it is Solitaire; or for those who hate the Legacy naming conventions (myself included), Enchantress. Like Aluren towards the beginning of last year’s Extended, Enchantress wasn’t really talked about and was not assumed to be a solid deck. However, it can go really broken and utterly dominate when played well. It also has a lot of options, with efficient tutoring via Enlightened Tutor. Wizards had a “feature match” description that demonstrates this, and I think people should consider this deck in their gauntlet more often, even if it’s just because of Elephant Grass.
GP: Lille is coming up in December, and it will be interesting to see how much changes and how much stays the same. Goblins will still be the deck to beat, but I think Gro decks will face more hate this time around. I expect Pikula’s deck to become quite popular, but I honestly do not think it will pull many top slots. While I don’t think the deck is a flash-in-the-pan, I think it takes really tight play to win with a deck that doesn’t go broken. If you’re not super-tight with a deck like that, you’ll probably lose to Goblins a lot; and some control matches will slip away when they really should have been yours.
So soak it all in and prepare – the next Legacy event is just around the corner.
Cheers!
-Nathan J
Props: Chris Pikula, for doing so well – and for letting me crack a Dracula reference.
Slops: Massive slops to my friend RajMahal, who asked me to keep the lid on his super-secret Burning Dredgatog deck, and then not going to the GP. Sorry Raj, I’m publishing the damn list. See if I care.
This article brought to you by my daughter. Because two-year olds always give you plenty of leisure time.