The changeover from Eighth Edition Standard to Ninth Edition Standard may not have an effect on the upcoming U.S. National Championships, but it is promising to make some waves for the World Championships. What has gone missing is every bit as important as what has come back, but I’m happy to see an impending massive change to the cards that make Standard work the way it does, and not so very sad to see some of the things lost along the way disappearing, such as Plow Under.
The obvious and most crucial change to the impending Standard format is the return of a ten-painland Standard format, making it very easy to play any two-color combination between your painland of choice and Tendo Ice Bridge and opening the doors for the possibility to play three-color decks without having to play Green. Splashing a second color is easy, painless, and very nearly free, so we may see a sudden surge in the “unexpected”, such as White Weenie with Shrapnel Blast to seal the deal or Black Control sporting a touch of Green for Naturalize to fill holes in its strategy. The doors opened by these ten lands will single-handedly revolutionize what is possible in Standard, but just because it’s possible doesn’t mean we’re seeing the whole story on the Standard format.
That said, I’ll start with the Constructed-worthy cards leaving the format and the ramifications of their absence, and continue on to the Constructed-worthy cards appearing on the scene that should shake things up. For a comprehensive list of the additions and deletions, take a look at Zvi’s Somewhere Over The Rainbow; Part One covers Blue, White, and Black, while Part Two covers Red, Green, Lands, and Artifacts.
Standard’s Losses:
White – Circles of Protection (Green, White, Blue)
Blue – Inspiration, Spiketail Hatchling, Hibernation, Intruder Alarm
Black – Mind Sludge
Red – Boil, Hammer of Bogardan, Obliterate
Green – Vine Trellis, Birds of Paradise (but not for long), Plow Under, Revive, Vernal Bloom
Artifacts – Ensnaring Bridge
Lands – City of Brass, the Invasion tap-lands
“Losing” the Invasion lands hardly counts, since we get so much back instead. Losing City of Brass doesn’t seem like it matters much to any deck currently being played, and the options we’re getting instead are well worth its sacrifice. Ensnaring Bridge wasn’t appearing save as a desperation strategy against Tooth and Nail, to get them to sit still long enough to burn out in some Red decks, and the kind of cards that support a Bridge-based control strategy just aren’t around. Black loses Mind Sludge, but by all appearances the only person who bothered to play it was me, and “having” to choose Persecute or Cranial Extraction over it shouldn’t stifle anyone’s creativity or force a deck out of existence. Likewise, the loss of three Circles of Protection should hardly have an impact; an actual White deck can use Story Circle to the same effect, while non-White decks rarely if ever splashed for these particular sideboard hosers.
That said, we have three colors where there should be some actual impact, and at least two decks disappearing entirely because of these changes. The first is Osyp’s Intruder Alarm combo deck, that relies on that particular Blue enchantment for its overpowering tricks and cannot survive the loss of it; while the skeleton of that deck remains, and the same cards can fuel a different conceptual combo, none seems to exist to step in its place in the very short time it will have before Mirrodin Block rotates out entirely come October. The second deck effectively dying is the Mono-Green Aggro deck I and many others raved about for Regionals, and without Plow Under that deck has no clear and effective way to slow down Tooth and Nail to apply beatings, or otherwise hold an opponent down for the extra few turns needed to swing with a Troll wearing a Sword. While a Green beatdown deck may come to exist with the set of Ninth Edition cards, it will not be like the one that exists at present, and likely will not surface without some help from Ravnica. The loss of Birds of Paradise is somewhat relevant, but being replaced with Llanowar Elves is not the worst fate that has befallen Mono-Green Aggro.
Losing Plow Under does wonders to the Tooth and Nail deck as well, especially since more and more often we’ve been seeing this former sideboard card crawl its way into the main-deck, to the point where for U.S. Nationals it seems beyond doubt that playing the full four copies in the main ought to be the proper way to go. Some versions of Tooth lose Birds of Paradise but gain Llanowar Elves, but the use of those was highly debated anyway and doesn’t hold a candle to the loss of Plow Under. The use of Vine Trellis was more relevant in most cases anyway, and that too is disappearing; Vernal Bloom rotates out either approximately nine months after its relevance did, with the printing of Heartbeat of Spring and the death of Skullclamp, and so can be lost at no cost despite its prior relevance in decks such as Elf and Nail. Losing Revive also has relevance, mostly to the Sunburst-based decks sporting Gifts Ungiven that used it along with Eternal Witness to ensure it always got the one card it most wanted from the split. For this purpose at least it is easily replaced with Reclaim, which is worse at what it does but is less limited while doing it.
The Red cards that are disappearing are Obliterate, Boil, and Hammer of Bogardan. Obliterate hasn’t seen common play in quite a while, disappearing when the Affinity decks did, which is a peculiar correlation in and of itself but has much to do with the fact that March of the Machines worked very well in Obliterate-based decks, and that card has lost much of its appeal without the possibility of it being Armageddon on most players. Hammer of Bogardan would have gone very nicely in a Red/Blue control deck next to Shard Phoenix, especially with Gifts Ungiven around, but we get one and not the other. With the proliferation of White Weenie in Kamigawa Block, I suspect we’re keeping the more relevant one of the pair, and Hammer of Bogardan hasn’t appeared in any mono-Red list with the current set of cards to date. And that brings us to Boil, which we get to have as a Sorcery instead. If the weakening of the hoser matches up with the weakening of the color, we won’t have any cause for complaint, as Boiling Seas won’t be needed and thus we’ll never wish it was just good old Boil. Right now, Boil is good if you’re French and bad if you’re Italian, which doesn’t tell us anything about its stock for Americans until this weekend. Until Mirrodin Block rotates and we lose some of the more relevant Blue cards, we’ll wish we had the real thing but probably not play either… and the situation will bear re-evaluating when Ravnica rears its head.
And then there was Blue. We lose Inspiration, which was a commonly-debated alternative to using Thirst for Knowledge without enough disposable Artifacts to make it painless, leaving Thirst as the last relevant instant-speed card drawer (unless you’re counting Overwhelming Intellect, which I am not). We lose Spiketail Hatchling, which was one of the early draws to a Blue-based beatdown deck, but which hasn’t even made it into the French versions running around lately. And we lose Hibernation, at the same time as we lose its present relevance, as it shifts out when Plow Under does, and so it disappears as does the Mono-Green Aggro deck. As with Boil, the situation will bear re-evaluation when Ravnica hits us, and due to the multi-color nature of the upcoming block I suspect the card that affects all Green permanents will matter quite a bit more than the card that affects all basic Islands, unless we’re seeing some serious curve-balls. Hibernation doesn’t have an easy and obvious stand-in, either… so the best hope is that it doesn’t need it, as Green decks with actual Green permanents take a nose-dive with Ravnica, or that Blue is so irrelevant anyway that Hibernation being around wouldn’t push it over the edge into the realm of colors worth playing. Right now, its loss doesn’t matter, and by the time we see Ravnica we’ll be used to living without it anyway.
Standard’s Gains:
Lands:
Adarkar Wastes, Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author], Brushland, Caves of Koilos, Karplusan Forest, Llanowar Wastes, Shivan Reef, Sulfurous Springs, Underground River, Yavimaya Coast… and Quicksand too!
Artifacts:
Fellwar Stone, Icy Manipulator
White: Gift of Estates, Peace of Mind, Blinking Spirit, Paladin en-Vec, Weathered Wayfarer, Leonin Skyhunter
Blue: Sleight of Hand, Thought Courier, Battle of Wits
Black: Blackmail, Consume Spirit, Cruel Edict, Nantuko Husk, Hypnotic Specter, Sengir Vampire
Red: Shard Phoenix, Rathi Dragon, Form of the Dragon, Kird Ape, Boiling Seas, Seething Song
Green: Verdant Force, Early Harvest, Groundskeeper, Viridian Shaman, Llanowar Elves, Reclaim
Some of these are cheating, since they are currently in Standard already, or (like Llanowar Elves replacing Birds of Paradise) haven’t had much to care about the difference. Seething Song, Leonin Skyhunter, Viridian Shaman, Consume Spirit, Icy Manipulator, and Thought Courier are all currently in Standard thanks to Mirrodin Block, but when it goes in two months’ time we get to keep these particular toys. Leonin Skyhunter has helped to keep White Weenie afloat in the most dire circumstances, Viridian Shaman and Consume Spirit are obviously very good, while Thought Courier is the latest iteration on a card that has been played in Standard and Extended before to good effect. Seething Song has proven worthwhile so long as you have something that will pay returns on the investment, which means we have to watch the five-mana Red creatures very carefully… and compare them all to Rathi Dragon, to boot. And Icy Manipulator was once a crucial part of control strategies and may yet end up being so again. Everything else is a new toy with interesting ramifications, except for Boiling Seas, which is the return of Boil in a new, fairer, form.
Artifacts: (or, as we can really call it, Fellwar Stone🙂
The return of Fellwar Stone to Standard seems to me to have potentially crucial ramifications, especially coming alongside the pain-lands and preceding a multi-colored set by a short time. Between pain lands and Tendo Ice Bridge, the likelihood of this tapping for at least one of the colors you want regardless of the opponent is quite decent, and can be useful as an accelerator and pain-free mana fixer, doing what the five Talismans did not do in promoting the growth of a multi-colored format. Alongside the Talismans, it doesn’t offer much to mono-colored decks; if all you want is a quick mana ramping that can always tap for your color of mana when needed, there are currently better options. Alongside Sakura-Tribe Elder, though, you have eight two-drops that will always accelerate you to four mana on turn 3 and encourage multi-color play, which might help advance such oddities as the Gifts Ungiven deck into Standard.
Fellwar Stone once sat very nicely in Armageddon-based decks, and Winter Orb decks, and both of these cards have recently been returned as variants of their former selves. Along with Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author], you can even play them together with greater ease, and if things start to broaden from the monochrome format it presently is to one encompassing more polychromatic strategies this may help out even more if you want to mix the two together in a general mana-denial strategy. (Propaganda’s even White now!) While it doesn’t seem to put itself cleanly in any current deck, the current decks are all one-color builds that have bowed to the narrow limitations of the format presently outlined by 8th, Kamigawa block, and Mirrodin block. The potential for this to be a key card remains, especially for non-Green decks looking to play three or more colors that would otherwise be lacking in mana-fixers.
Lands:
The pain, it hurts so good.
Standard has lately been a format whose power cards have all rewarded you for staying within one color, and whose speed has limited decks from fooling around too much with things like comes-into-play-tapped dual lands and evenly-split second colors with heavy mana requirements. All in all, there are five colors, and at least one deck for each color… more likely two, with one beatdown deck and one control deck in each color.
Throw that out the window – these lands have stood the test of time. The rules are re-written: you can do anything you can think of, and the mana will be there to make it work. White Weenie isn’t currently competitive, but that’s because there is no great danger to little white things that attack and have no reach outside of the attack phase. Imagine the following:
“Modern Jank”
4 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
1 Eiganjo Castle
7 Plains
4 Chrome Mox
4 AEther Vial
4 Bonesplitter
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Steelshaper’s Gift
4 Shrapnel Blast
4 Suntail Hawk
4 Lantern Kami
4 Leonin Skyhunter
4 Hand of Honor
3 Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
2 Samurai of the Pale Curtain
Consider as well:
“Turn Back Time”
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
1 Minamo, School at Waters’ Edge
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
2 Island
11 Forests
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Kodama’s Reach
4 Heartbeat of Spring
4 Early Harvest
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Eternal Witness
3 Tooth and Nail
1 Reclaim
1 Time Stop
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Sundering Titan
1 Duplicant
1 Myojin of Seeing Winds
Compare this to White Weenie without access to Shrapnel Blast, and consider at what cost, exactly, your four Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forges[/author] affect the deck. Clearly Tendo Ice Bridge is more difficult for a deck possessing quite a number of double-White spells, but Aether Vial is there to help you cheat out those double-White two-drops and even a used Ice Bridge has a use to the deck, playing and paying for Equipment. Consider the danger of Tooth and Nail “giving up” the Urzatron for Gifts Ungiven and a dirty combo feel, in a world without Plow Under to keep each other in check in the mirror match. This is the brave new world of Mirrodin- and Kamigawa-block Standard that we get all of two months to play around with before the powerful cards of the Mirrodin block make way for the multi-hued Ravnica expansion.
Quicksand is no slouch, either, serving as efficient, uncounterable, colorless creature removal for some of the most important creatures out there. The last time it was there to be used, it helped convince Randy Buehler (now of Research and Development fame) that a deck with 50% Lands (at least some of the time) was the right thing to play. Where before any deck that could conceivably fit a colorless land or four into their mana base had Stalking Stones and Blinkmoth Nexus as potential attackers, you now have creature removal in your Land slots as well. Its relevance should be immediately apparent to decks like Mono-Blue Control, who already routinely plays somewhere near 26 Lands, and can probably survive with fewer actual Islands than they currently run to add an additional creature-control card.
I for one am quite happy with the Lands we have to play with, though I’ll admit I would have preferred something more of a change and saying good-bye to the Urza’s lands for another potentially drastic change. The impending growth in decks using Sensei’s Divining Top and shuffle effects as Kamigawa Block takes over for Mirrodin Block makes me wary of these seemingly-innocent three, while Cloudpost would have been an interesting change without advancing the “ridiculous-or-awful” aspect of the UrzaTron.
Blue:
Blue is easy. Blue gets Sleight of Hand, and for two months gets to use it alongside Serum Visions, and enjoy the both of them with Erayo, if only briefly. Blue also gets Battle of Wits, which it won’t play unless some serious Tutor-power or otherwise redundancy-assuring cards miraculously appear – when the Right Reverend Toby Wachter decided to play Battle of Wits in Standard, he had a lot more to work with, like a full set of Mirage Tutors plus a few Wishes and some other things besides to make the math work out so that you could actually expect to see Battle of Wits in a 240-card deck as often as most people see their key card in a 60-carder. We’ll go back to not paying attention to Battle of Wits, until something silly happens to make us do otherwise.
Sleight of Hand is kind of sad when it’s being touted as the best and most efficient Blue card drawing in the format, but at least for the moment it’s a lie. Later it may be true, and that may be a scary thing for people with Islands. You have the benefit of a second cheap, card-browsing spell for just one Blue mana, which can help advance a combo-Erayo deck (glad to have Adarkar Wastes, I’d bet), a more aggressive Blue deck like that seen recently at the French National Championships, and to turn Mono-Blue Control onto a slightly more Turbo-Xerox bent than previously seen… especially with three out of four French Blue decks sporting the maximum number of Serum Visions already.
“I Am The Law”
4 Adarkar Wastes
3 Tendo Ice Bridge
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
2 Plains
7 Islands
4 Chrome Mox
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Aether Spellbomb
1 Sunbeam Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Rule of Law
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Serum Visions
2 Echoing Truth
4 Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
4 Trinket Mage
2 Auriok Salvagers
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
Black:
Black offers us some interesting choices, with Blackmail coming back (and ready to sit next to Distress, giving us eight good and cheap discard spells) and the unexpected return of Hypnotic Specter, the man who was once too good for Extended… when they had dual lands. With the impending arrival of Dark Confidant, I think we’ll be seeing some good card-advantage-oriented Black beatdown decks in a few months, but in the meantime we’ve got Hypnotic Specter to contend with… and if that’s not a reason to run Chrome Mox, nothing is. Rats will of course love him to death, but the question remains whether Black Control will modify their strategy to fit him in as well, and if he’s not coming in out of the sideboard, something’s gone horribly wrong. Sengir Vampire returns as well in case he turns out to be useful; neither Sengir nor Serra are quite what they used to be, especially when as crowded out of the format as they currently are by the Legends of Kamigawa Block. Nantuko Husk doesn’t seem very impressive and usually he’s not particularly relevant, but other times he’s fed enough creatures by Pattern of Rebirth to kill you in one swing and so for that reason alone he’s worth noting for his combo potential. And Cruel Edict can sit with Kiku’s Shadow, Sickening Shoal, and the rest of the excellent Black removal, to be used as we need it.
Rat Deck Wins!
1 Tomb of Urami
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
4 Quicksand
14 Swamps
4 Chrome Mox
4 Aether Vial
4 Blackmail
4 Distress
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Nezumi Shortfang
4 Chittering Rats
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Skull Collector
3 Nekrataal
2 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
And this is only accounting for the Black aggro decks that would already clearly want Hypnotic Specter; with a full spectrum of second colors available, the sky’s the limit as far as the Hypnotic Specter appearing (or creating entirely new decks) in the future. And the sheer brutal power of the card reminds you, if nothing else, that you had better not leave your creature kill at home on tournament days.
Red:
Red is currently the de-facto best non-Tooth-and-Nail deck in Standard right now. It has the tools and the speed to face down against anything that thinks it can put up game against the nine-mana monster, and it’s no slouch against the Tooth decks either. Red’s gains favor both controlling and aggressive strategies, with Kird Ape returning alongside Hypnotic Specter at the same time as Juggernaut is currently legal to form a trifecta of creatures that laugh at their former banning in a format with Necropotence, Force of Will, dual lands, and Swords to Plowshares. With the multi-colored Ravnica block coming soon, Kird Ape will likely be quite relevant, as it’s so hard to get a two-power creature for one mana nowadays. It also lends credence to the revival of Red/Green decks, which had stepped into the shoes left vacant by “Freshmaker” when Affinity rotated out prematurely and which would presumably be content to add Karplusan Forest and Kird Ape to their arsenal. And for the other aggressive creature, we have… Rathi Dragon.
Rathi Dragon was last seen effectively dominating Tempest Block Constructed – it was the top end creature of the best deck in the format. For two months, he will have to fight with Arc-Slogger for the title of Best Red Creature, and afterwards it isn’t even close. This should help fragment the Red decks even more than before, as there are beatdown decks that might drop their Seething Songs and Arc-Sloggers for Rathi Dragons, a consideration already made by no few for Regionals when trying to solve the puzzle of making the Red beatdown deck more reliable. Some will play Rathi Dragon, while others will play Seething Song and Arc-Slogger, and some will play all three. This is one hell of a monster to begin with, and seeing it faster (and possibly with a Sword or Jitte) has to be problematic.
“Enter the Dragon”
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
17 Mountain
4 Chrome Mox
4 Magma Jet
4 Molten Rain
3 Genju of the Spires
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Stone Rain
4 Slith Firewalker
4 Hearth Kami
4 Vulshok Sorcerer
3 Zo-Zu, the Punisher
4 Rathi Dragon
On the other side of the color Red, we have Shard Phoenix and Form of the Dragon, a pair of control cards waiting for the opportunity to shine. Compared to Standard, neither is impressive, though it is worth noting that most Tooth and Nail decks aren’t currently able to kill a player who has turned into a dragon or remove the enchantment from play. Compared to Block Constructed, where White Weenie and Black Hand are king (in terms of sheer numbers), Shard Phoenix sits nicely with Pyroclasm to make sure that the tradition of Block Constructed overshadowing the upcoming Standard format to follow will be broken at least as far as Black Hand and White Weenie are concerned; the cards are good, but the control cards are plentiful, and plenty good. Shard Phoenix suggests a Red/Blue control deck to me, as it had back in the days of Counter-Phoenix, especially since it is good with Gifts Ungiven. I’ve advocated thoughts along this line before, but with little effect; Shivan Reef can help that argument more now than before, adding your Red mana without denying you access to Blue mana consistently as well. I see a Blue/Red control deck as having some excellent tools, and access to Blood Moon to break up the UrzaTron and Boseiju problems that make Tooth and Nail so difficult to beat. I’ll be the first to admit that it doesn’t look promising, but neither is it impossible… the card quality is quite high, and Shard Phoenix pushed Red/Blue Control over the top single-handedly in the past. If Blue control can be good, a Counter-Phoenix strategy can be quite effective as well, when played with the proper tools.
White:
White is in a tough place right now, not really being a color and all. Sure, there’s White Weenie, but how well is that working out in Standard? It’s great in Block Constructed, but if Block Constructed had Wrath of God for four mana it might not be worth thinking about at all, never mind a deck like Tooth and Nail to square off against. White in Ninth Edition seems to care a lot about going second, and having fewer lands than your opponent to get card advantage, like Land Tax, but more fair. This doesn’t sound like much, but it does recall to my mind the fact that cards in hand + Saviors of Kamigawa cards might be “good”, and so things that search out Lands (notably Gift of Estates and Weathered Wayfarer) might be quite reasonable. Weathered Wayfarer could work with other “hand size” cards from Saviors, and be used to enable Descendant of Kiyomaro. The Descendant has already begun sneaking into Block Constructed decks on the merit of being a 3/5 for 3 often enough to be good, with the crucial three toughness needed to survive Hideous Laughter. White Weenie also tends to play fewer lands than the opponent, and so making up the difference with Weathered Wayfarer can be quite nice, especially if these lands can be made to do something.
The White Weenie deck listed above strikes me as the best way to look at it for the next two months, taking advantage of all the things Mirrodin Block gives it, before having to work more nearly like the Kamigawa Block versions we’ve seen. After those two months are gone, and we don’t have Chrome Mox and Aether Vial to cheat with, a more traditional version will have to be played… and Weathered Wayfarer helped those decks along in its first run, and can’t hurt for the second time along. Being able to fetch Eiganjo Castle, Quicksand, and such on demand seems like a good thing, and playing with the Wayfarer can help expensive plays like Patron of the Kitsune and Charge Across The Araba if they make the conversion too. And the Wayfarer’s appearance in Astral Slide decks can foretell how ridiculous it can be in control-on-control matches, if allowed to do its thing unchecked.
White Weenie in Kamigawa Block is really liking its Hands of Honor, with many proponents of the card thinking it’s even better than Samurai of the Pale Curtain against the problem matchup of Gifts Ungiven, being immune to Sickening Shoal and attacking while the Pale Curtain needs to be present, and unanswered, at exactly the right time to have an impact. If Protection from Black is good, and if things like Kitsune Blademaster are slowly sneaking into the deck, it may be reasonable to think that Paladin en-Vec might be an alternative that will see play.
Peace of Mind isn’t exactly what we’d call a good card, but it has been played before in winning decks, and even in winning decks that proved to be good in the strangest formats. A Peace of Mind deck was circulating at the heyday of Trix’s dark reign in Extended, based on discarding everything you didn’t need immediately to pump your life and hide behind Ensnaring Bridge while Cursed Scroll did its job. While the Bridge didn’t make the cut and we’ll never see something quite like Cursed Scroll again, Peace of Mind still has untapped potential waiting to be used. “Lifegain is bad,” they tell you… and trust me, I’m one to agree with that. But this is a card that has beaten that rule on more than one occasion, and may do so again: turning on Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant, repeating with Shard Phoenix, making use of Weathered Wayfarer’s activation for a tangible profit. I wouldn’t be the one to make a deck around it, but someone will, and that deck may even work out if the rest of the support manifests or things pan out just right. While the same can be said of any card, it’s already happened in tense Constructed formats with this card before, and the conditions could always repeat themselves unexpectedly.
Lastly, at least for the White cards, we have Blinking Spirit. When last we had Blinking Spirit, it was one of the most relevant creatures in Ice Age Block Constructed, living in a format about resource exhaustion and global mass destruction effects. Also when last we saw Blinking Spirit, we didn’t have Sixth Edition Rules, where you could put damage “on the stack” and still live in miraculous fashion while the other creature died. A 2/2 for four is at best a mediocre deal, and usually they’re good at half that price if they have some relevant ability to boot. Blinking Spirit, though, is more indestructible than cards with that keyword, with only Pithing Needle and carefully timed point discard changing that fact. That it is now a Spirit, and can interact with all of the Spiritcraft cards from Kamigawa Block, may not be worth ignoring either. “Blinkie” is great in control decks with Wrath of God, and proved that in the very first Pro Tour with its appearance in the winning deck. Things have only gotten better in favor of Blinking Spirit, and while it’s not the most offensive creature in the game it is one of the most rugged.
Green:
And so the real question about the Standard changeover is raised… what will Tooth and Nail do without Plow Under? This is the key card that has put the deck over the top at least on the scale of “interactivity”, with this weapon of choice dictating the tempo of the game and allowing for an interactive battle for control rather than merely racing to your combo. The decklist posted above, “Turn Back Time”, is one example of what could happen if Tooth and Nail is dedicated to the pure speed of the combo, combining Heartbeat of Spring with Early Harvest, a deadly duo that will have to be watched carefully in coming months for degenerate interactions.
In this example, the Tooth deck above can Gifts Ungiven for Eternal Witness, Reclaim, Tooth and Nail, and Time Stop to set up its combo. With six lands, not hard to do in a deck with Elders and Reaches supporting Sensei’s Divining Top, it then plays Heartbeat of Spring and follows it up the same turn with Early Harvest into Tooth and Nail for Eternal Witness and Kiki-Jiki, returning Early Harvest and Tooth and Nail. The second time these two are cast you go for Eternal Witness, getting back Time Stop, and the kill-creature of your choice, presumably Sundering Titan. Stop time during your opponents’ upkeep for the rest of the game as needed.
The UrzaTron version of Tooth and Nail is “good”, but without Plow Under it’s more or less grabbing its ankles and hoping it’s still there the following turn, relying on just Reap and Sow to regulate the opponents’ ability to cast their own nine-mana Sorcery. Spreading out into another color seems necessary for interactivity’s sake, or spreading out into Heartbeat of Spring and Early Harvest (and therefore not really caring about assembling the UrzaTron) to be faster than “just” UrzaTron-powered Tooth and Nail. Without adding a second color, you can work off of Mindslaver, but it’s not necessarily fast enough to force interactivity when the Tooth decks butt heads.
What else can be done, if anything? Llanowar Elves can be used to speed the deck up, as can Chrome Mox, but without Plow Under we’re not interacting with the opponent: trying to combo faster, rather than force them to slow down. Countermagic and Cranial Extraction seem like the only options, both of which rely on a second color, and either can be matched with the Heartbeat/Harvest plan since we can’t use the Urza lands and a second color effectively. So we seem to be moving into a purer form of combo deck, losing the control aspects, at least against the decks that you’d currently put Plow Under in against because you needed strict control elements. Reap and Sow plus Creeping Mold is not the kind of interactive control elements we’re looking for, because neither does the job Plow Under accomplished, and a few Stone Rains don’t hurt nearly as much as the tempo gained by murdering your opponent beneath a Plow Under or two.
I’m figuring we’ll see one of three things, some of which can be streamlined together: branching out into a second color (Blue or Black) to help control the nine-mana sorcery, adding Heartbeat of Spring and Early Harvest to out-accelerate the opponent, or upping the Land Destruction available (Creeping Mold) while also adding Mindslaver back into the mix. Personally I think we’ll see more of that dirty combo feel appearing, as the deck is just more powerful and able to absolutely ignore the opponent, like you’d expect from any deck that expected to take every turn for the rest of the game.
There really isn’t a replacement for Plow Under in Mono-Green Aggro, and that was the card that made the deck… so we are lacking in a good Green beatdown deck, unless you want to Blanchwood Armor up your Zodiac Monkey, but I have a feeling that Wakefield is looking forward to States instead of fixing up Joshie Green, so he can play The Best Fattie Ever Printed again.
— Sean McKeown
— [email protected]
“There are places I remember, all my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better; some have gone, and some remain
All these places have their moments, of lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living; in my life, I loved them all…”
–The Beatles, “There Are Places I Remember”