As we come up on the very last weekend of Kamigawa Block Constructed, we have also passed the first weekend of Standard after the Core Set rotation and the two combine to tell interesting tales. August is always a difficult month for Magic, and worse still now that the World Championships is nowhere near summer’s end as it formerly was. We have no Pro Tour coming up soon, nor a new season beginning; the innovation we are seeing at the game dies out as one Limited format becomes so well-known that even the strategists who regularly write on the topic begin to feel that the thing has been done to death. For the common player, it’s barely relevant that Ninth Edition causes a format shift – one usually has more enthralling things to do on a summer Friday night and there’s little enough change besides to crack the format and allow for innovation. The common player’s enthusiasm is pent up waiting for the really big change, the death of Mirrodin Block and the host of new toys that are promised to us in Ravnica, City of Guilds.
With this summer slump in mind, we have a new Standard environment to look at, and the final two weekends of Kamigawa Block Constructed. By now, every reader knows the tale of KBC, formerly called Jitte Block Constructed as testing began… and I’d say that moniker is still fair, as even the Gifts Ungiven decks try to bash each other with that legendary Equipment at least some of the time. With all three sets, it was all aggro all the time, with the early weeks falling to White Weenie and Black Hand. Halfway through the season, reality interfered, or maybe it was the professional spell-slingers, saying a lot about the format as a whole rather than A Little About A Lot. The beatdown reign of terror was kicked over like an anthill, and in its wake we actually have gotten to see a variety of decks appear, with a strong control-combo deck defeating the aggressive beatdown and letting mid-range control or aggro-control decks appear and struggle freely where before they were curb-stomped and forgotten about.
The trends have continued to see the format flourish, and while it is dying out this is very important material to be looking at. We’re talking about a full half of the cards from our next Standard environment, and it is the skeletons of these decks rather than the ones we have in Standard right now that will have the greater impact on what we try to do when States rolls around. Considering how much excitement is beginning to well up for a block that promises a sort of renaissance to modern Magic, and how much enthusiasm there always is for playing with the new toys and the old in a new way when it comes time for the State Championships, I would consider it a disservice to that enthusiasm and all of the hard work put into figuring out Kamigawa Block Constructed so far to stop paying attention at the very close of the season. While there may not be any great surprises, there may still be important information to absorb.
The lesson learned here around New York City at least is that winning or losing is decided by the deck called Black Hand, rather than anything else in the format. Not that anyone is playing it in unusual quantities, or even that a particularly skilled and talented cabal of mages has taken it as their weapon of choice and must be accounted for, but instead simply that all of the New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia area Pro Tour Qualifiers have resolved with that deck on top of the pile. The thought that it deserves to have gotten there cannot be helped, and indeed I would pose the question as to what this deck does that is special so that it can be harnessed, exaggerated, or perhaps simply tuned so as to take advantage of those subtle advantages.
This Block Constructed season has been an interesting one to build decks in, as can be seen by Richard Feldman Long Road series and cards formerly dismissed as absolute and utter chaff turning up as key components to a deck’s arsenal of tools, if not necessarily to the deck itself. Seeing a card move from toilet-paper status to that of a unique tool for creating an impenetrable lock, as happened with Footsteps of the Goryo in an Arcane-based deck locking down with infinite Yosei triggers, is part of why Constructed Magic can be such a fascinating thing. Tuning and tweaking has showed us a few things we didn’t expect, like the willingness to use Sakura-Tribe Scout as a mana accelerant in a format that seems to be all about looking around to find the next big rock to clobber your opponents’ skull in with. Decks with Hondens have won qualifiers, while winning decks have added Hondens to their sideboard to win more. Celestial Kirin moved from curiosity-rare status to format wrecking ball in less than a week, and was back where it started in two weeks’ time when the real wrecking-ball had truly been found.
Tuning Black Hand to beat itself, White Weenie, miscellaneous control decks, and Gifts Ungiven has been a tiresome task, especially since my really interesting twist on innovation came not long before the decision to play Black Hand at the last qualifier. Having started the season one match out of the Top Eight at the first PTQ, and searching up Godo and legendary Snakes and busting the world with Sway of the Stars, I’d resolved to work on the deck more when I realized it could approach the game similarly to how the Gifts mirror does and start struggling for rocks to bash each other with. The cut to put Sway of the Stars out of the deck (and then eventually back into the sideboard), in favor of Black legends that did snazzy things and an improved outlook on beating the best deck at the tournament was one I didn’t like to make, but that’s the sign of a true pet deck. Saying, “But I want to win that way” is a sign that you aren’t paying attention to valuable information; you can’t always have what you want, and such proved to be the case with Sway of the Stars. The deck definitely possessed incredible strength, and the fastest asymmetrical mana acceleration in the format, thus doing the largest number of unfair things the fastest.
What it considered to be unfair, and what actually proved to be so, happen to be different things. Resetting the board and having the first crack at the sub-game was good, and won me quite a few games, but it wasn’t necessary and playing less fair would be better. Against control decks, that means busting Myojin of Night’s Reach first, and the Snake deck can do it as early as turn 4 with the God draw, and doesn’t sacrifice too much to get there: the mana acceleration is already good, and one Myojin plus four Time of Need isn’t an investment of more than a single card. Ideally, this is what I would be very happy to end the season with: a deck that is very good against a lot of decks, doesn’t have a lot of exploitable weaknesses, and plays some of the swingiest and most powerful effects in the format. Being great fun doesn’t hurt either. If you like playing Godo Gifts in the mirror, this is sort of what it presents to you all of the time as your method of winning the game, just with aggressive cards instead of land-searchers and Tops and Gifts Ungiven.
Creatures (26)
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
- 1 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
- 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
- 1 Seshiro the Anointed
- 1 Sosuke, Son of Seshiro
- 4 Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro
- 4 Orochi Sustainer
- 4 Orochi Leafcaller
- 1 Myojin of Night's Reach
- 1 Kodama of the North Tree
- 2 Godo, Bandit Warlord
- 1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
Lands (23)
Spells (11)
Sideboard
Unfortunately, as much as I’ve bled to figure out what needed to be done to the deck to make it work finally, my suspicion is that over the course of the upcoming PTQ events are going to develop similarly to how they have in the previous events in this area. There hasn’t been a large enough shift in the metagame of the NYC area to dislodge the niche Black Hand seems to have fallen into as the deck that beats the field, as that role was its both before and after the Gifts deck broke open the format again. I’ve worked on this deck carefully, and pushed through the changes needed to make it a good deck instead of just a deck I like, but after all of that I can’t make myself go against the precedent I have seen in this area throughout the season and its various shifts towards and then away from the dominance of beatdown. Doing the right thing can often mean sacrificing an awful lot of work, and doing so early enough that you can still put enough work into the deck you should be playing too.
That said, in one of my prior articles (Running With Numbers) I did a fairly exhaustive analysis of White Weenie, which said a lot about the drift and trends that were being shown in the successful decks in PTQ Top 8s around the U.S. While that showed a fair trend of what was going on before the Gifts Ungiven deck “went public” at the first Grand Prix of the season, the more relevant fact is that if you pored over the numbers enough, it taught quite a bit about the make-up of the two decks it looked at, White Weenie and Black Hand. What was learned about White Weenie hardly seems relevant to where I’m going with this, as the decision has effectively been made already to choose Black Hand for this last PTQ. What I learned about Black Hand was that you saw two distinct types having success, and very little success for those who walked the middle ground. Either you tweaked out your attackers for speed and aggression, or you fattened up your curve to run a small horde of Demons that are larger than your average bear. Neither necessarily went too far on these extremes, with the full (or at least nearly so) complement of Raving Oni-Slave, Hand of Cruelty, Takenuma Bleeder and Ogre Marauder.
As the season has dragged onward, chronicled weekly by Michael J. Flores on Magicthegathering.com (thanks to the high-disclosure policy for decklists that has developed in the past year), Black Hand decks that have continued to do well have done so with a fair variety of choices made, with the main one being inclusion of discard elements. Distress is pretty much a given, and makes sense as such in a format that strives so hard for Jitte advantage when everyone is playing “fair”, while Psychic Spear often complements it and Sink Into Takenuma can kill a control deck that otherwise might have your number. Noting all of these things, I’ve tried assembling a version that favors the low-end creatures to streamline the fast aggressive nature of the deck, and worked towards getting a deck that didn’t mind playing its fourth Swamp and Sinking for four. This more or less meant cutting out the shenanigans, anything that cost more than three, including the Demons that once filled the deck and who sometimes took disastrous Otherworldly Journeys at the most inopportune times. Having played the Gifts deck, I felt if nothing else I was prepared to beat it with the right tools.
22 Swamp
1 Tomb of Urami
4 Distress
4 Kiku’s Shadow
4 Umezawa’s Jitte
3 Manriki-Gusari
3 Sink Into Takenuma
4 Nezumi Graverobber
4 Hand of Cruelty
4 Raving Oni-Slave
4 Takenuma Bleeder
3 Ogre Marauder
Sideboard:
4 Hero’s Demise
4 Nezumi Cutthroat
4 Razorjaw Oni
1 Ogre Marauder
1 Manriki-Gusari
1 Sink Into Takenuma
It fights the important fights and packs enough disruptive elements to push past the Gifts deck in the main. Admittedly, it does all of this while opening up to being locked under Exile into Darkness, but between Sink Into Takenuma and Nezumi Graverobber, there are enough ways to get past the cards that tend to be responsible for winning that particular matchup: Kagemaro and Exile Into Darkness. Lowering the mana curve necessitates the removal of Sickening Shoal, which never really hits things for enough unless you pitch a Demon, and rewards the play of Armageddon Me, Mind Twist You. There’s nothing expensive you’re holding out on committing to play, not even the one- or two-of Ink-Eyes, so bouncing all of your Lands can happen early and with less of an impact on your game-plan than tends to be the case elsewhere.
The close of this season has seen some interesting decks appear, and astounding room for innovation, as an obvious end to the reign of White Weenie was supplanted by a strong, but not equally crushing, reign of Gifts decks. Other control decks have proven capable of beating Gifts – if not outright destroying it as most versions of mono-Blue do – and this has led to a wealth of variety that speaks well of what we can expect when we leave Mirrodin Block behind. The rotation to Ninth Edition in Standard didn’t see any great changes to the environment in its first week, as can be seen by the Top Eight decks at Australian Nationals this past weekend. (Presumably this has been backed up by the other Nationals events this weekend, but as of the time of this writing those results were not available.) The change from Mirrodin to Ravnica is promising to be quite a bit more earth-shattering, and that’s without having seen (m)any of the Ravnica cards yet.
John Paul-Kelly
Australian Nationals Top Eight
Mirrodin Block cards: Annul, Thirst for Knowledge, Echoing Truth, Serum Visions, Condescend, Solemn Simulacrum, Triskelion, Mindslaver, Memnarch, Oblivion Stone, Chrome Mox. Sideboard: Steel Wall, Sun Droplet, Mindslaver, Annul.
Percentage of Mirrodin Block cards maindeck: 51.66 (31/60) … and none of them were Lands.
Chris Allen
Australian Nationals Top Eight
Mirrodin Block cards: Talisman of Dominance, Thirst for Knowledge, Echoing Truth, Serum Visions, Condescend, Solemn Simulacrum, Triskelion, Mindslaver, Memnarch, Oblivion Stone, Chrome Mox. Sideboard: Sun Droplet, Annul.
Percentage of Mirrodin Block cards maindeck: 53.33 (32/60) … again, none of them Lands.
James Pirie
Australian Nationals Top Eight
Mirrodin Block cards: Vedalken Shackles, Spire Golem, Annul, Thirst for Knowledge, Condescend, Oblivion Stone, Stalking Stones. Sideboard: Annul, Echoing Truth, Mephidross Vampire, Triskelion.
Percentage of Mirrodin Block cards maindeck: 35% , four of them Lands.
Jason Whitby
Australian Nationals Top Eight
Mirrodin Block cards: Oblivion Stone, Spire Golem, Thirst for Knowledge, Annul, Vedalken Shackles, Stalking Stones. Sideboard: Sun Droplet, Triskelion, Mephidross Vampire.
Percentage of Mirrodin Block cards maindeck: 35%, four of them Lands.
Will Copeman
Australian Nationals Top Eight
Mirrodin Block cards: Vedalken Shackles, Condescend, Spire Golem, Annul, Oblivion Stone, Thirst for Knowledge, Stalking Stones. Sideboard: Annul, Echoing Truth, Mephidross Vampire, Triskelion.
Percentage of Mirrodin Block cards maindeck: 33.33%, four of them Lands.
Richard Johnston
Australian Nationals Top Eight
Mirrodin Block cards: Chittering Rats, Night’s Whisper, Aether Vial. Sideboard: Sword of Light and Shadow.
Percentage of Mirrodin Block cards maindeck: 20%, none of which were Lands.
Justin Cheung
Australian Nationals Top Eight
Mirrodin Block cards: Chrome Mox, Auriok Champion, Raise the Alarm, Damping Matrix, Blinkmoth Nexus. Sideboard: Jinxed Choker, Auriok Champion.
Percentage of Mirrodin Block cards maindeck: 26.66%, three of them Lands.
David Zhao
Australian Nationals Top Eight
Mirrodin Block cards: Chrome Mox, Blinkmoth Nexus, Auriok Champion, Raise the Alarm, Damping Matrix. Sideboard: None.
Percentage of Mirrodin Block cards maindeck: 30%, four of them Lands.
With an average of 2.3 lands from Mirrodin Block and a whopping 19 spells in each deck, that’s a lot going out the window when things change around. And things have changed drastically in the last few months to begin with… just not because of any card rotations, simply due to the force of the metagame in action. White Weenie and Mono-Blue Control were abysmal at the start of the season, squaring off against Tooth and Nail at a significant disadvantage, but now at the end those two are among the top three decks consistently posting results at Nationals around the world.
I’d discussed the potential for change with the coming of Ninth Edition, and as is only to be expected in the first week of a new card set we are seeing very little penetration of Ninth Edition cards into the format. Jester’s Cap, Annex, Llanowar Wastes, Hypnotic Specter, Blackmail and Tidings were the sum total of new cards showing up in the elimination rounds of at least at this particular tournament, and there is little reason to think that many others will have appeared elsewhere. The last year of Standard has been a roller-coaster of changes all within the same set of cards. The banning of Skullclamp was followed with the banning of Affinity’s power cards, freeing up an otherwise obsolete set of cards from within the same block, and more recently the eventual drift away from the assumption that Tooth and Nail is the best deck to see a different set of a small number of decks flourishing. The nail in the coffin for Tooth and Nail was most likely Twincast, and the Uyo technology, allowing Blue decks to turn their signature power spell into a combo-kill death for themselves when facing off against just 2UU.
I, for one, expect interesting innovations as Standard marches on from country to country on the long road to Worlds, but not as interesting as are possible with the Ninth Edition cards. From the White Weenie decks with Damping Matrix to the Twincast technology in Blue sideboards, it seems like every interesting twist we can expect to see has happened already, and the promise that Ninth Edition brings for widening the format lies dormant, hidden beneath the piles of Mirrodin-block cards as so often has been the problem with cards from that set. For that, I look a month into the future at Ravnica, City of Guilds and the multi-color theme that it promises, which hopefully will promote the ten good lands from Ninth Edition rather than continue the reign of decks enabling the three bad lands from Antiquities.
It’s the dog days of summer, but peeking onto the rumor mills and discussions about Ravnica is already starting to make Magic feel more refreshing, as we leave the weight of a world of metal for a new place that reminds us very viscerally of the “good old days” of Invasion block. While Ninth Edition may lead to a swarm of interesting innovations, I suspect that most of them will play out solely on Magic Online until we see the whole thing switched over entirely.