With the new StarCityGames.com weekly schedule, a few things have changed… including the due date of my weekly column, despite not changing days. Apparently, Craig wants some vague semblance of a normal schedule or something, and won’t wait up past midnight his-time before he even starts editing articles for the daily schedule. His selfish need for a normal human-being diurnal schedule means I have to turn in my article a full day earlier. Which means this week at least there’s one less day to schedule testing or other information-gathering sessions, and one less day to think about my topic in a leisurely fashion before I have to put virtual pen to electronic paper. Of course, all the good topics this week were taken… Craig Jones already took the “not going to talk about Block Constructed before the Grand Prix” topic, and even Talen Lee restricted my article-design space by taking the “deadline shifting means I have nothing to write about since last week” article. I’m sure by the time my article even goes live yet more time-pressured topics will have been poached, meaning my choices for originality are even fewer than I realize.
I guess I have little choice, then, to do anything but talk about Block Constructed. Patrick Chapin, also called The Innovator, of course discussed this subject on Monday… and considering how last week’s article started off basically as viciously bogarting a Mike Flores article, it’d be in truly bad form if I were to re-write his chief design partner’s articles to boot. Worse yet, Pat actually writes in English instead of a complex self-designed jargon of internal references and nonsensical lingo, so I can’t even claim to just be the translator this time. So in my quest for original content, I’m going to follow up a little bit last week on the “how formats work” theoretical point, and then show how that seems to work for Block Constructed in the full Time Spiral Block. The rules are very different from before, and the decks that we see in Montreal this weekend should look considerably different than the ones we saw in Yokohama… but we’ll build this one from the ground up, starting with a bit of theory first.
Last week, we discussed a lot of theoretical concepts about how and why to choose a deck for a tournament, and why there are a lot of “right” choices so long as one understands the rules of the format. I do apologize for the fact that a lot of the discussion came across as somewhat thick and dry; some would say it was due to lack of self-editing, when instead the opposite is true. I was trying so hard to get the conceptuals across, and editing piece after piece to check the logical flow of arguments and how they progress, that I never actually developed the thoughts and concepts to a fully realized final point. If I had reached such a point, going back and streamlining the article would have been easy… but without a clear vision of the end-point to the concepts bouncing around waiting to be translated, we didn’t have a clear vision with which to write the article, and thus a bit thick, a bit dry, and a bit incomplete.
Last week, we had a series of metaphors… Mike’s vectors, my slight theory stating that the physical concept Mike is equating decks influencing each other relates not to a vector but to a field, the untouched “web” concept, and the rather useful concept of military tactics as a means for understanding the rules of a format and thus the rules of engagement for how decks bash into each other. This week, I have a better idea of how to get the metaphor across, but little comfort for doing so; the article is written, and completing it now in a “Part Two” breaks into the intended single-serving confection for the mind that I had truly thought possible when I began the endeavor. That said, better late than never…
Let’s leave behind any metaphorical trappings or images from other articles, mine own or another’s… and let’s think of the impact a deck has on its format as a footprint. A footprint tells you a lot of things about a person, and it’s no surprise that someone who has learned how to look at such things can examine a footprint and tell you exactly how tall its owner is, their gender, and even diagnose physical problems like limping or staggering that you would presume might only be shown by a series of footprints one after another. Each deck leaves a mark, and each deck has a different weight. Some are light on their feet and leave ballerina-footprints. the lightweight decks that rarely stand up against the heaviest hitters in a format: Battle of Wits, perhaps. Some are lumbering and oafish, neither subtle nor gentle, and like the Juggernaut it’s impossible to stop them once they get moving: Skullclamp Affinity, perhaps, at its worst in that splendid heyday of free cards and gifts of damage. Most fall somewhere in between, just a normal guy walking on the sand, neither weak nor brutish: any deck in the land of Tier 2 cards, as we have been calling the modern era of deckbuilding.
Every deck leaves a footprint, and some are small while others are big. The more powerful decks leave a bigger footprint, and by looking at a footprint you can tell whether a deck is built for power, speed, or finesse. By examining how a pair of footprints compare to each other, you can presumably figure out who would win in a fight; the lumbering oaf can bowl over the ballerina, but the big bully has met his match when the graceful walk of the opponent comes not from dancing but from martial arts training instead, a subtle difference: that person wields power all their own, but directs it to a specific purpose instead of flexing its muscles and battering the opposition. Like a footprint in the sand, it will erode over time; when a deck is no longer being played, its impact on a format begins to vanish. Look at White Weenie in Block Constructed and the difference seen in the noteworthy decks between the Pro Tour and the subsequent Grand Prix, where Sulfur Elementals and Blood Knights became scarce as the stressor that caused them to appear in the first place ceased to be present in significant quantities. As the waves of time flow in and out with the tides, the footprints that remain are just the ones that still have feet in them; the present is far deeper and far more noteworthy than the past, and the future is only so relevant as it’s a good thing to be with the future rather than against the future. The simple concept of evolution (or a “theory,” if you’re reading this in a town that favors teaching Creationism and requires warning labels on biology textbooks) is just as true for Magic decks as it is for any other system of organisms; that which succeeds thrives, and that which is better than the present edition shall survive to become the future edition.
Here is where the metaphor gets a little bit difficult: examine a footprint not on the sandy beach but instead upon a nice soft mattress, and you’ll note that the same foot has a different effect on the different mediums. A footprint on the sand is a lasting thing, but it doesn’t affect anything further away than the next few grains… a footprint on a bed presses the mattress down and you’ll notice a change on the otherwise flat surface from rather a significant distance away. The same foot is the actor of these changes, however, and it is the deck whose “footprint” we are examining. A footprint in the sand will let you examine a deck in a vacuum, for all of its vital statistics like height, weight, and power… last week’s still-untouched “webs,” as a theoretical means of visually representing a deck’s strengths and weaknesses. A footprint on a mattress will let you examine that same deck in context, because the pliant and interactive surface of the mattress is the metagame.
Put a hundred-pound ballerina on a mattress, balanced precisely on the toes of but one foot, and you’ll note that the mattress beneath her foot sinks in a very specific way… the curve is so-and-so deep and so-and-so far around as the impact of her force ripples out around her, going only so far before the surface of the mattress retains its neutral state. Put a three-hundred-pound football player on a mattress, and tell him to stand on one foot, and you’ll see the not-so-jolly Giant deforms the mattress in quite a different way, deeper and with a much further impact than his ballerina girlfriend, the would-be cheerleader he promised a “private word” with the management about if she’d but sleep with famous, desirable him. Now we have some means of mentally measuring the impact a deck has on a metagame, where last week we were discussing the Hatfields and McCoy’s and why you shouldn’t cross the field of battle when there are shots being fired every five seconds. After all, plenty of decks have succeeded when “the metagame” would seem to dictate that they fail; in any metagame, it’s just a numbers game and nothing is a concrete promise, so you can ignore decks of a certain impact because you can reasonably expect that your weakness against them won’t catch up with you over a set number of rounds.
Let’s take a plain, bare mattress… that’s our metagame. Let’s take a variety of balls – our “actors,” per se – whose weights will leave virtual “footprints” in the pliant surface of the mattress… these are our decks, with weight equivalent to some combination of power, speed, and flexibility, whatever “thing” you want to examine at any given moment. You can place these decks and/or balls anywhere you want on the flat surface, but things will make a lot more sense if you choose an order instead of just lobbing balls. No one’s saying that the bed has to be rectangular, so the mattress is not limited to just two cardinal axes, lengthwise and width-wise; it can be big and circular and have three hundred and sixty axes of possible interest, one for each degree in its circumference if you really need all of them. All that really matters is that you define your axes and place accordingly, such as a nice big “Aggressive Power” axis… where presumably one end will have Tarmogoyf Gruul, and the other end some depressingly weak control deck, maybe mono-White Martyr or something. Place the balls as you will and you’ll notice their weights are different, and have a different impact on that pliant material as they sink into the surface: the heaviest weights, i.e. the decks with the biggest footprint, sink deeper into the firmament and have a bigger sphere of influence, while the lightweights barely sink beneath the level plane at all.
The influence each deck has on the metagame is already apparent, as its footprint warps the fabric of the whole in a specific way for a specific distance, and thus you’ll note the lighter balls will roll into the depressions of the heavier balls, like the Wiffle ball sinking into the trough of the bowling ball. The heaviest footprints are the best arguments, I guess you could say… place Green-Red Tarmogoyf, the bowling-ball of the aggressive decks, in its proper place on the deck-aggressiveness axis, and you’ll find the Wiffle-ball neighbor Mono-White Weenie rolls into its sphere of influence because they are occupying the same space, and Mono-White Weenie can’t sink far enough into the firmament to make a stable home for itself, finding itself a mere transient as it rolls into the depression of the deck with the bigger footprint.
This metaphor provides us with both a way of thinking about the metagame, in a visual sense, and a way of understanding its evolution: at its starting point, the Big Bang of a format change, there’s a wide variety of potential options available as everyone’s creativity goes wild and experiments with new things. As the format evolves, the more massive objects start to crowd out the competition; they’re better for a reason, and as people start to understand this they start to narrow the field of options, and only the strong survive. In time the options narrow, until there are no longer really any loose stray balls floating around out there, just a finite number of weighty things pressing down on the mattress of the metagame after having carved out their unique niche. These are effectively the “good” choices in the metagame, our Tier 1… decks that beat out their neighboring competition in a real-life game of Hungry Hungry Hippos, being the best and strongest of the decks trying to do “their” thing. Sometimes these acts of deck evolution may seem surprising, as the too-popular Ghost Dad slowly ceded territory to the Ghost Husk archetype, where sheer weight of numbers was giving a false footprint to the Ghost Dad deck. The true “footprint” of that neighborhood was the Husk deck, which slowly but surely sucked Dad players over to its competing brand in sheer displays of power that devoured the prior metagame staple whole in the short matter of a month or two.
After you identify all of the actors and let deck evolution do its thing, you have a map of the metagame: this deck in this location with this much of a footprint, and your mission should you choose to accept it is to navigate this space-map by making the right tactical choice, as discussed last week. Everything is locked in place and you won’t have to worry about weaknesses to nearby competitors so long as you are making an effectively powerful choice of your own, picking the “ninja” deck instead of the “sniper” deck. Having a deck with its own active game-plan, rather than a deck whose active game-plan is actively negating the game-plan of a set number of specific decks with carefully-chosen cards solely for that reason.
There are a variety of fights you can choose to pick, such as “beatdown or control” or “combo-win or normal win.” These aren’t necessarily exclusive, as Food Chain Goblins would remind you, especially since many combo decks seem to take the controlling role up until the flash-point where they kill you, even if that “controlling” role is nothing more than a few Remands to disrupt your early speed and a Gigadrowse or two to push back the necessary fundamental turn. The best deck is the deck that has the biggest footprint, the one that does the specified task the most reliably / with the smallest chink in its armor / with the simplest game-plan. Something gives it its edge over the competition, and the job of the deckbuilder is to recognize these edges and capitalize on them… to realize the weight of a specific influence and properly assess them. It’s possible a weaker option may still be reasonable, but only if you’re looking at a different axis… and you have to understand all of the different axes upon which the metagame might hinge, similarly to last week’s example of knowing the different fields of battle. It’s good to know that a certain deck on the Aggro — anti-Aggro continuum is “the best,” but take that same deck on a different axis and you’ll see that it’s perhaps outclassed despite its weighty footprint, for there is a still more massive object waiting to catch the would-be bowling ball and draw it down into the well of a wrecking ball.
Congratulations, the metagame in motion and the evolution of decks in a metagame is the same as the Einsteinian theory of gravity. And just as inexorably, you’ll find that fighting with the physical constants of the universe instead of learning them and applying them skillfully is much more likely to send you careening into the big massive thing in the center (we’ll call him Mister Sun) than somehow navigating a complicated series of satellites to land exactly where you intended to (we’ll call that Getting Home Safe). Some decks are just better than others, on all the vital statistics… and some decks can take advantage of the known layout to zoom past Mars, zing in around Jupiter, and take a long spin around Saturn to rocket off into the Cosmos at unimaginable speeds, to get to their exact destination and win the tournament. Once you understand the layout of the cosmos, then you can start trying to dodge the gravity wells in a specific and calculated fashion, to design the “ninja” decks that destroy the big guns and cut down stray passerby with lethal precision.
The metagame defines the axes, the different fights that are being picked in each tournament match, and the metagame is defined by the possibilities within the cards themselves. A deck’s footprint can be a combination of any of a number of things, such as the deck’s power, or its speed at winning the game, or even just sheer numerical advantage; you can try dodging the Gruul matchup if you’re playing the Dredge deck, but you should do so knowing full well that you are the Wiffle ball and they the bowling ball. You may carefully craft a plan and zoom to your destination, but there’s still that inexorable gravity well of several million degrees Farenheit looking to turn you into a fine plasma mist stripped of any semblance of its former existence. You’re firing the glass cannon, when one of the most popular decks in the room is the sniper up on the hill half a klick behind you, so you’re relying on sheer luck alone to not get shot. If a good amount of that footprint is sheer numbers, then it becomes suicide to try and ignore it… anyone going on a manned space-flight would have to be suicidal, idiotic, or both to try and just “get lucky” and not fly into the Sun. You plan for these things in your calculations or you get to have your electrons stripped from your atoms as you disintegrate into said fine plasma mist, but I’m sure it’s painless because you die too fast to feel the burning sensation. Sheer numbers dictate a battlefield, and you need tactics, not luck, to navigate it… and those who are unaware of that fact will find they get shot at an awful lot, until they learn their lesson and step gingerly around battlefields instead of walking through like it’s just another day in the park.
Now, applying this to our previous subject, the Block Constructed metagame… how do you tell the bowling balls from the Wiffle balls, and how do you determine what the cardinal axes of the metagame are, so you know what battles are worth fighting? Decks are combinations of cards applied to a purpose, and the best combinations and/or the best purposes survive while their neighbors fall into their gravity well and are absorbed by those who do it better/longer/faster. Some of the most powerful cards in the format help to define that gravity well… as it’s powerful cards rather than “just” powerful synergy that tends to lend an impressive weight to a deck’s overall “footprint.” This is why you’re more afraid of fighting an eight hundred pound gorilla in the room than taking on the cute little girl with her foil Fairy deck even if Scryb Ranger happens to be a beating and a half to your Blue-based flying beatdown deck.
One such powerful card that has been having quite a footprint is Tarmogoyf, and this is quite understandable. Your average Tarmogoyf tends to weigh in as an impressive 4/5 for two, and with a little more concentrated effort can surpass that by a fair margin to reach 5/6 or even 6/7, all without even a single copy of Bound with Silence. Tarmogoyf is the cutting edge of modern aggressive technology, because as far as blunt objects go this one is extra big and extra heavy, the better for caving in skulls. It seems everybody and their mother is working on a Tarmogoyf deck somewhere in their noggins, so we can look at a variety of flavors of Tarmogoyf decks to see what coagulates into the bowling ball and what happens to merely be a competing satellite. Patrick Chapin innovative article on Block Constructed showed two avenues of approaching the Tarmogoyf “problem,” a R/G/w beatdown deck and a B/G deck that seems to be a porting-over of the B/G Tarmogoyf Rack decks that did well in Regionals.
As soon as I’d heard about the B/G Rack decks in Standard, the day after finishing 6-2 at my own attempt, I knew that some crossover into Block Constructed was possible, if not necessarily profitable, as the “best” Tarmogoyf deck. You can get an impressive bit of card-flow out of decks of this sort, with plenty of cards hitting the graveyard to super-size your Tarmogoyf or perhaps serve as other fuel… for Tombstalker, perhaps. This deck takes on something of an aggro-control route, seeking to disrupt the opponent and then close with large finishers, and since everyone loves The Rock in every format for some completely inexplicable reason, players may or may not be thinking along similar lines to this deck here:
Creatures (12)
Lands (23)
Spells (25)
Sideboard
Others will perhaps wonder at the benefits of Black cards if you’re trying so hard to just play Tarmogoyf and Mystic Enforcer together, and cede any “disruption” for what more or less amounts to just being a better beatdown deck. Asking questions can be a lot more profitable than providing answers, just ask Ken Jennings. (“What is H&R Block” would have been a question he’d have loved to ask, just read Braniac if you don’t already know.) You can take parts of the White Weenie deck and add parts of the Tarmogoyf design and end up somewhere interesting indeed, though it’s always difficult to pick and choose when trying to assemble the “right” beatdown deck on the fly… as White Weenie players learned when they’d probably wanted to mulligan their decisions in favor of cards that are less vulnerable to Sulfur Elemental, such as Icatian Javelineers. Taken out of context, imagine assembling a deck with some or all of the following:
1cc: Chromatic Star, perhaps?
2cc: Saffi Eriksdotter, Riftsweeper, Tarmogoyf, Serra Avenger, Soltari Priest, Edge of Autumn
3cc: Call of the Herd, Stonecloaker, Griffin Guide
4cc: Mystic Enforcer
Lands: Terramorphic Expanse, Gemstone Mine, Horizon Canopy, miscellaneous Basics.
I’d expect those looking at a Green/White beatdown deck to be very few and far between, starting with and possibly ending at our esteemed editor at this here site, who may look at this deck and suddenly see a means to win his Nationals if there’s a Block Constructed format included at all [Don’t flatter yourself. — Craig, amused]. However, seeing how basically every other deck is going to try playing Mystic Enforcer with their Tarmogoyfs anyway, there’s probably at least some benefit to trying to do so, especially if you are going to play Edge of Autumn and can actually do so at minimal loss with four Flagstones.
There’s also the somewhat crazy notion of playing Bound in Silence to get your ‘Goyf up to super-duper size, and once you start down that road it’s not long before you’re swapping Amrou Scouts into the two-drop and maybe a Defiant Vanguard or two as a three-drop. But it’s still a Green-White deck, so the best kind of interaction is probably just to beat down harder, because Green and White together are not exactly the “tricky” colors.
You can also consider a Green/Blue Tarmogoyf deck, because Vesuvan Shapeshifter is still pretty ridiculous and might happen to be accidentally awesome at pretending to be Tarmogoyf, even if three and then 1U is quite a bit more than 1G. A Tarmogoyf at twice the price is still basically above the curve, as a Tarmogoyf is usually a 4/5 with just a little bit of investment to get you there.
Creatures (20)
Lands (22)
Spells (18)
Some of these choices may seem peculiar, but I have seen more games lost to a single Willbender in Block Constructed than I care to mention. The beatdown potential is solid and the monsters downright under-costed, utilizing many of the top stars in the format… Tarmogoyf, Shapeshifter, and Wall of Roots have all been on various peoples’ top lists in prior months, and there is definitely a lot of power here if we’re going to riff on this.
This one, at least, has the potential to go in an interesting and unique direction, of the Tarmogoyf decks listed… it’s presented here as the aggressor, and it is presumably a weak aggressor indeed. Replace the ineffective slots with more controlling cards and you’ll see that you can “just” use Tarmogoyf as a cheap win condition, letting you cast it for two mana and keep up countermagic at the same time… more like the following:
Creatures (20)
Lands (24)
Spells (16)
A listing like this one can choose its role as appropriate, whether beatdown or control, using the same cards in a different fashion. Tarmogoyf on turn 2 can lead to an aggressive push, while Wall of Roots instead lets you take the controlling role. Careful Consideration can be played early to feed the attacking Goyf(s), or held in reserve until later in the game to reload on ammunition on the same turn as you’d want to play countermagic as well. Cutting Mystic Enforcer takes away the aggressive stance overall, making room for cards that modulate your approach to suit your needs… and taking a more controlling role in your Tarmogoyf deck causes one to stand up and take notice at the change, as it specifically sets it apart from other deck. Unlike the others we’ll see here, it’s not truly competing for the same space as an aggressive deck, and thus the characteristics of its footprint set it perhaps far enough away on the different axes to distinguish itself even after the different aggressive Tarmogoyf designs finish eating each other. (The Black/Green deck does not really distinguish itself, however, as its overall plan is more or less the same with just some disruption thrown in the works… while this can be a control deck if only you’ll let it distinguish itself as such.)
But inevitably, so far most players have been pinning Tarmogoyf (the two mana 4/5) with Greater Gargadon (the one-mana 9/7) and it seems two ridiculously powerful, super-undercosted men are better than one, especially when they have at least some element of synergy together:
Creatures (22)
Lands (23)
Spells (15)
Sideboard
Consider this to be the meshing of Red-deck technology and Tarmogoyf technology, though some purists will rebel against the idea of using Grove of the Burnwillows in a beatdown deck despite the fact that it will only rarely need to tap for mana of a specific color in a game where that one life will truly matter. At least in concept the land seems fine, even if you have to give the opponent two or three life in a game… Gargadons take life off in nine-point chunks, and most Red decks can already beat an opponent who puts themselves up over twenty. While it is by no means readily aligned with what Red decks try to accomplish, giving the opponent a life or two is not much worse than taking some damage yourself to get good mana.
Tarmogoyf and Thick-Skinned Goblin conspire to beat the other Red deck two-drops, as does Mogg War Marshal as he laughs and births a prodigious amount of goblins into play over his short life-span, serving to beat down, summon Gargadons, or just block really effectively early in the game. And don’t even get me started on the sexiness that is Riftsweeper, who can help turn the Gargadon fights into completely one-sided affairs, and Dead/Gone to return Gargadons to the aether from whence they came.
And to be honest, this is where I expect Tarmogoyf will find a home… although I would not be especially surprised to see Terramorphic Expanse in the lineup “just” to feed Tarmogoyf, because in actuality people tend to be wimps and are scared by tapping for Red mana and giving the opponent a life, as if they can’t ever possibly win the game because they have the right color of mana at their fingertips. Many of these same people who scoff at poor little Burnwillows called Horizon Canopy “downright unplayable,” only to learn that at least as far as MTGO ticket prices are concerned, it’s the best of the dual lands from the new set… by a considerable margin.
We have a confluence of Tarmogoyf decks, and they are slowly but surely eating up the aggressive-deck competition. The mono-Red deck is probably better with Tarmogoyf, and the mono-White deck is probably better with Tarmogoyf, so when it comes to beating down it’s Tarmogoyf, Tarmogoyf, Tarmogoyf. And you wonder why they’re now in the ten-ticket range on MTGO. Of all of them, it’s probably the Red/Green deck that Tarmogoyfs best, and thus its deeper footprint will likely gobble up competing brands of Tarmogoyf beatdown because of the inherent synergy between Greater Gargadon and Tarmogoyf.
On other fronts in this metagame “solar system,” we see many of the same competitors… Big Mana Green decks of a variety of flavors, Black-based control decks sporting Damnation and Void, and Blue-based control deck dipping into a variety of colors for their tools of interest on demand with Mystical Teachings. They at least have not been changed too significantly by the impact of new cards, as for the most part it is the inclusion of dual lands that is powering changes to their current design… they have some new toys, like Delay, but nothing nearly as earth-shattering as the “kaboom!” set off by beating down with Tarmogoyf early and for lots. Korlash is quite strong but obviously not quite as ridiculous as in a format where “two Swamps” can also count as a Mountain and an Island. While Tolaria West does make control decks better, it’s still not going to cause a sea change other than perhaps to reduce the numbers of Urborg played from “four” to a slightly more sane “two” or “three” copies of the legendary Land.
Let’s presume for a second that Tarmogoyf does bring two actual new decks to the format, a Red/Green beatdown Goyf deck and a Blue/Green controlling tempo Goyf deck. This gives us one new aggressive deck and one new controlling deck, and finally gives us a reasonable aggro-control deck besides the not really terribly aggro Pickles deck. This gives us more or less the following constellations:
Mono-Red Aggro
Mono-White Aggro
Red-Green Tarmogoyf Aggro
Blue-Green Tempo
Mono-Blue Pickles
Big Mana Green Decks
U/B/w/r Wafo-Tapa Herberholz Winner Winner Chicken Dinner
B/r/u Korlash Control
There will of course be other oddities and innovations… some will probably try G/W Aggro-Goyf, while other White Weenie players will think of Nimbus Maze as the second coming of Hallowed Fountain and put Psionic Blast in their White Weenie deck only to learn that they still have to play Terramorphic Expanse for it to have the effect they really wanted. Aggro Black decks are also apparently starting to get popular on MTGO, though frankly I’m not entirely sure why. Slaughter Pact is probably a decent chunk of the answer, as you can play out your threats aggressively and pay tomorrow for a removal spell today… and Dauthi Slayer likewise helps to explain what “power” cards might draw someone to playing only Swamps in their deck. You still however have most of the decks in the format mapped out, and can start to draw up the Rules of Engagement:
1. Aggressive decks have improved in beatdown power, weakening the stranglehold White Weenie originally had on the beatdown franchise; similarly, post-Yokohama beatdown front-runner “Mono-Red” likewise has enough of an incentive to change into something with Tarmogoyf that it seems unusual to expect to see a mono-colored beatdown deck. In some cases, it’s the existence of a playable dual land that makes the difference; for others, it’s the existence of Tarmogoyf that tempts them to play a second color even if they’re not particularly in love with their dual land (hi, R/G!).
2. Control decks remain excellent choices, as prior to the reign of Tarmogoyf it was pretty clear that the best cards were all control cards: Teferi, Mystical Teachings, Damnation, Aeon Chronicler… all things you won’t usually find in a beatdown deck. Building a control deck effectively is much harder than building an aggressive deck, and playing it patiently and properly is something that fifty-minute rounds may not always support. Overall, the control decks will likely be less populous than the beatdown decks, especially in a Week 1 metagame likely to be flush with Tarmogoyf decks, especially when the formerly laughed-at rare is now sold out pretty much anywhere even at costs over $10. The ticket price on MTGO should be pretty indicative of how things are going to stand, and considering that we’ll be seeing Tarmogoyf beatdown as the front-runner in Standard for probably as long as he’s legal you might want to consider picking him up, either your “real” copies or mere “virtual” ones, before the prices drive even higher. Dissension’s dual lands and “best rare” Demonfire both seem to suggest that Tarmogoyf is destined to have a high price tag for his entire life in Standard, so waffling and waiting for the price to go down might just not happen.
3. Combo decks more or less don’t exist, with Wild Pair Slivers more or less being a laughable concept and the Gargadon-Balance decks remaining effectively hosed by the Suspend-murdering Teferi. Semi-combo decks do exist, in the form of mid-range-ish decks that neither fit the control nor the aggro role, such as Big Mana G/R – some lists have Dragonstorm and Lotus Bloom, after all – or the Pickles lock decks. Finding a deck that sits more in the middle is likely to be harder nowadays, however, given that the control decks were already rather powerful with cards like Teferi and Damnation, and now the aggro decks are sporting equally dangerous cards like Tarmogoyf and Greater Gargadon. Sitting on the fence in the spectrum between actual aggro and actual control may be a difficult prospect to put into effect, as you likely can tune your deck to handle either the control decks or the aggro decks but not both. Choosing one of the two camps is likely to be more profitable overall, as you can aim to take pot-shots at the other side and try and tune your tools (or sideboard) for decks on the same side of the Hatfield-versus-McCoy beatdown-versus-control shoot-out. Being in the middle of the battlefield trying to work on a compromise might have about as successful a result as it sounds, if the middle-road tools haven’t significantly improved when I wasn’t paying attention. Even if the concept is strategically sound, the power level is just lower than the other two options and thus you are not a ninja, merely a sniper, and prone to being bowled over in a few matches by those whose cards just flat-out overpower you.
This seems to me to sum up Time Spiral Block Constructed in a neat little nutshell… beat down well, or control well, but whatever you do don’t sit on the fence while you think about it. Some compromises may be available, so long as you are compromising with powerful cards; if you try and find a middle path without powerful cards you had better be a ninja.
Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com
* No musical quote this week. Find something else to hold against me in the forums this time.