Magical Hack – Road To Regionals: Setting The Stage

Apparently, last week’s Magical Hack, Dredging Up The Past, was quite a popular read… apparently Bridge / Dredge strategies had somehow evaded the public eye, despite being mentioned previously by myself and a few other of the StarCityGames.com writers’ stable, and last week’s article helped to set the deck in peoples’ awareness at last. Before we kick off where we left off, an addition is required to last week’s look at Dredge: the Dredge decks listed as “doing well online” came from a Magic-League tournament, and having taken their decklists (albeit second- or third-hand) it is only right for me to note exactly that and provide a link to their website, which didn’t make it into the article by the time of posting due to laziness and a complete inability to navigate their site to find the information I desired.

And while we’re doing shout-outs, let’s also thank last week’s guest-writer Keith St. Jean, for writing two-thirds of my article for me… oh, wait, if I remind him of that he might want two-thirds of my pay for the article. So, hush-hush… okay, the moment has passed.

With a little bit of Standard play under our belt, I presented a deck apparently most people hadn’t seen. With a full weekend of sanctioned Standard play under our belts, we’ve got quite a bit more to look at… both StarCityGames.com $1000 Standard tournament, and the German Regional Qualifiers. One by itself might be interesting but not necessarily informative of any trends that are going on; take all of them together and you start to get a solid feel for what the “Week 1” metagame is going into the Regional Championships here in the States in eight days. Planet MTG of Germany seems to be compiling the decklists, and considering all the talk and all the hype we saw last week we can see some unexpected trends in motion… like the first hint at the return of Solar Flare to the spotlight, as it seems to be breaking past large chunks of the metagame to take a disproportionate number of slots in the events seen so far.

As listed, there were two National Qualifiers… National Qualifier NRW, and National Qualifier Bremen. Stacking the metagame breakdowns together, we see the following:

Both had somewhat unique metagames — Dredge was all but unseen at one, and had a 10% metagame share at the other; quite a few decks were seen in NRW that didn’t show up at Bremen, and other fun toggles change as well including the number of Dralnu control decks and the absence of Project X from one of the two tournaments. These German National Qualifiers seem to have been run as straight Swiss tournaments, with a cut at the end to qualify players without a Top 8 playoff. Looking at these top-cut decks, we see the Week 1 metagame results as the following, using the German information as well as the StarCityGames.com $1K tournament Top 8:

With a total of 29 decks, thanks to the strange numbers of decks from the two German tournaments, we see the following strong trends among decks that repeated their presence with a second copy somewhere in a Top 8:

As far as Top 8 appearances go, these six decks locked up 60% of the slots, whether for a share of $1000 from StarCityGames or an invite to German Nationals. Note a key trend: StarCityGames’ tournament had a somewhat populous Dredge metagame, I’m told, with maybe as much as 10% of the room playing Dredge decks… and yet none penetrated into the Top 8. In Bremen, three players played Dredge and none of them qualified, out of about a hundred players; in NRW a whopping 15 players played it out of about 200… and all of one made Top 8, playing not the “faster” U/B Dredge deck spotlighted here on Magical Hack last week but the “fairer” B/G Dredge take mixing the power combo ending of Bridge-with-Zealot with the G/B reanimator-style strategy presented weeks ago by Ben Peebles-Mundy. Looking at the sideboards, however, we get the following counts:

Leyline of the Void: 4, 4, 4, 2, 4, 3 = 21
Leyline of the Void (can’t cast it): 3 = 3
Tormod’s Crypt: 2, 3, 3, 3, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 2 = 39
Extirpate: 2, 4, 2, 1, 3, 4 = 16
Yixlid Jailer: 2, 3 = 5

Add all of these together and we get a mighty 84 of a possible 435 sideboard slots spent on beating the crap out of Dredge decks, or 19.3% of all sideboard slots destroying Dredge decks often in multiples. But we get a dirty, dirty secret: more than a few decks didn’t hate on Dredge at all, and they still did well! Some decks perform naturally well against Dredge decks, like Gruul with its now-standard Seals of Fire, and slight alterations improve your ability to handle troublesome matchups as well… two of the three Zoo decks played Scorched Rusalka as one of their one-drops, and some of the trends I have seen are starting to replace Llanowar Elves with Scorched Rusalka in some Gruul decks to face the fact that self-sacrificing creatures that deal damage, destroy Bridges and fizzle Tendrils are “pretty good” in the current format. Properly pointing your deck at the format in general improves your deck hopefully to the point where sideboard cards are less necessary; weeks ago, I’d suggested a mono-Red aggro deck featuring twelve self-destructive creatures in the cheap slots (Scorched Rusalka and his buddies Keldon Marauder and Emberwilde Augur) and plenty of one-mana Shocks.

However, there is more than just one surprise here… in addition to Dredge falling flat on its face and the “real” decks wondering where all their sideboard slots went after a round or two, the real winners follow somewhat expected patterns… Gruul and its cousin Zoo, from the aggro decks, both put up solid performances. Dragonstorm is again sneaking in there in each event as a very strong deck, and representing the combo decks after Dredge Combo got painfully disassembled. And representing the control decks we have…

… Beach House Control, Project X, and Solar Flare? What in the holy hell?

Admittedly in one of these tournaments it is known that Dralnu decks were literally unplayed, with a minimal share in the field, so seeing it fail to rise above its 3% starting percentage to pick up a 12.5% market-share in the Top 8 isn’t necessarily newsworthy. But in one of these tournaments it was close to 10% of the population… and still failed to qualify even a single player. The metagame is starting to swing to a new place, as the early crash of Dredge decks fades back towards obscurity as it turns out they are incidentally smashed quite hard by the right kinds of beatdown decks, ones able to put their own creatures in the graveyard and packing the quite-good Seal of Fire. With the rise of these beatdown decks, control decks slowly but surely sputter out, and as you can see the “traditional” control deck of the last six months cannot afford the time to Mystical Teachings for Mystical Teachings in the face of hot Tarmogoyf beatdown. That particular spicy number is starting to show up quite frequently in the Gruul and Zoo beatdown decks, taking advantage of the fact that a) creatures die, and b) their best burn spells are Instants, Sorceries, and Enchantments, all helping to mark Tarmogoyf as a somewhat consistent 3/4 or 4/5 for 2. Add the ability to put a land in the graveyard (hello Zoo decks, nice Horizon Canopies!) and the ‘Goyf can grow quite large, meaning your Zoo and Gruul decks are starting to hit a critical mass of three-power-for-two-mana creatures to amp up the power of their aggressive speed.

In the face of this withering hail of fast and painful beatings, Dralnu has to evolve or die; Solar Flare and Beach House decks are actually quite solid against “conventional” beatdown decks while Project X has the nasty habit of going to eleventy billion if it sets it up right. Between its failings against the now-receding Dredge deck and the seemingly best choice to face the Dredge deck, Gruul, Dralnu seems to be on the eclipse as we instead begin to favor controlling decks that are actually pointed at beating early creature rushes. Of the four Solar Flare lists, two happened to have some interesting technology vis-à-vis Tolaria West, using this mighty would-be Island to fetch up not just Urborg or Urza’s Factory but also Slaughter Pact and Pact of Negation… allowing the Flare decks to take advantage of their plentiful mana supply by having early mana when they need it and spells later in the game if they want it, or even both if they pick up Tolaria with their bounceland. Facing down a metagame that happens to focus quite neatly on playing early creatures, however, it seems the next logical progression will be to return to Solar Pox, which is devastating against Stomping Grounds — Kird Ape and Watery Grave — Simian Spirit Guide — Magus of the Bazaar alike, as well as a powerful resource-snatching tool against fellow control decks.

That said, let’s learn us some lessons by transmuting the known list into the very unfriendly Solar Pox version and see where that gets us…

Lands

Tolaria West is a given, and if we can fit more we’ll be the merrier. Two of the four lists had 23 lands as their starting number, while one had 24 and one had 17… and six cards missing from the decklist, presumably all lands to get us up to the Solar Flare standard of 23 from these decklists. I am aiming at using four Tolarias, as we can benefit from the extra land and turn it into the right land or extra spells on command if we include the right cards. Among the utility lands I’d want to see included, Urborg is a necessity (and probably present in 2-3 copies, as should be Flagstones of Trokair) and we’ll also want Urza’s Factory as a kill condition, Ghost Quarter as a faux Strip Mine (… that happens to combine nicely with Flagstones of Trokair, natch) and (not seen in the German lists) one copy of Horizon Canopy to turn Tolaria West into a potential “draw a card” spell if we get flooded.

The best possible opening would be two Legendary lands on the first two turns, one each of Flagstones and Urborg, plus Smallpox munching the Flagstones and wiping the opponent’s first-turn land plus creature. To do that, we’ll need multiple Urborg, probably two and a sideboard third if we pack some Tendrils of Corruption… and probably four Flagstones, which can work with Ghost Quarter as well to fix mana perfectly and thus we can likely squeeze two Quarters in as well.

So far, then, we have:

2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Tolaria West
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Urza’s Factory

… thirteen of 24 lands. Time to add dual lands… and pick the right bounceland. We’ll want one each of Island, Swamp and Plains, to work with Ghost Quarter; we’ll also want at least one each of Godless Shrine and Hallowed Fountain, to work with Flagstones of Trokair, and preferably more than one of one of ‘em. To get there from here, though, let’s count the traditional lands of a Solar Flare deck, and see if we can reach that solution:

Black: 12 sources. (We have 2, in our 13.)
Blue: 9 sources. (We have 4, in our 13.)
White: 12 sources. (We have 4, in our 13.)

So, out of 11 remaining lands, we have to get 10 Black, 5 Blue, and 8 White… and we’re talking 8 dual lands, dropping us to 8 dual lands and thus 16 color pips to satisfy 9+4+7 = 20 color pips to meet traditional needs. We can’t quite get there from here, especially since we still want to add in a Horizon Canopy as well. We can, however, start shedding… drop one Flagstones (three is still “okay”) and one of the two Ghost Quarters (now a tutor target only!) to give us 13 lands remaining, giving us 20 pips to meet 20 needs. Easy peasy, sort of. We end up with:

4 Tolaria West
3 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Godless Shrine
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Dimir Aqueduct
2 Underground River
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Watery Grave
1 Orzhov Basilica
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Urza’s Factory
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Horizon Canopy

It doesn’t come up exact… we’re “over” on Blue (this is a “good thing,” when we’re hoping to transmute one of these lands for spells later) and a dab short on Black, which is going to be inevitable because we have thirteen non-Black lands, meaning even if everything else taps for Black we’re still bound to come up short a pip of Black mana… but we get there close enough, and can slightly alter the requirements to match. We’ll end up at 31 sources anyway and can correct the color towards Black more heavily with the Signets, which seem to be favoring 4 Azorius / 2 Dimir in the lists and can easily switch around to favor even up, repairing the Black mana needs (as does Urborg, mind you). We’re also short on White, but then we’re favoring Damnation over Wrath of God so as not to notice the lessened early-game White mana off the Signets and as you’ll soon see there is a second White casualty in the maindeck. We have 24 Lands and want to include the Signet action now, and universally we’re seeing seven: six plus one Phyrexian Totem, good for accidentally winning the game sometimes. This totals 31 cards, leaving us 29 slots to do stuff with:

4 Tolaria West
3 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Godless Shrine
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Dimir Aqueduct
2 Underground River
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Watery Grave
1 Orzhov Basilica
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Urza’s Factory
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Horizon Canopy

3 Dimir Signet
3 Azorius Signet
1 Phyrexian Totem

4 Remand
4 Court Hussar
4 Compulsive Research
4 Smallpox
4 Damnation
3 Angel of Despair
2 Aeon Chronicler
2 Persecute
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Pact of Negation

This effectively cuts four win conditions for four Smallpox, but we’re improving our number of victory conditions against control decks anyway with five effective copies of the uncounterable Urza’s Factory. It is worth noting that we lose Castigate here, as the deck ends up skimping somewhere, but this came alongside the lessened importance of White mana overall and so long as we create an effective sideboard including those Castigates we can begin working on the deck to see how well we like it. In short, we can live with this “60,” and need White mana for so little out of the main-deck it’s basically laughable: we’re playing White for the ability of Flagstones of Trokair and to use Angel of Despair as our kill condition, plus to keep our Court Hussars alive. Awesome.

Looking to the sideboard, we know we want 4 Castigates, and probably an additional Persecute as it is Castigate into Persecute that is the biggest threat to Dragonstorm decks. Detritivore is a clutch card and worth noting as an opposing control strategy, as it should be used by both Flores-style polychromatic control decks and U/R Tron decks (after sideboarding at least). This means Pull from Eternity is all but a necessity, and we may want to consider Mystical Teachings if we’re going to use a lot of these sorts of “instant” cards to help improve the silver bullet style strategy. A total of two Crypts should work wonders against your average Bridge deck, what with four copies of Tolaria to search for them and the Smallpox opening play that may just cripple speedier versions, leaving them forced to rely on dredging that discarded card if they want to recover and make forward progress… which pretty much never works.

Barring the addition of more threats out of the sideboard, such as Skeletal Vampire to lock up the ground against creature decks, I’d try running the following sideboard:

4 Castigate
3 Tendrils of Corruption
2 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Pull from Eternity
2 Mystical Teachings
1 Persecute
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

The one glaring omission is Circle of Protection: Red, to answer Dragonstorm as well as Gruul’s burn, but I can live with that a lot more comfortably than I do with the Castigates only in the sideboard… a Tendrils of Corruption package is much more powerful against aggressive decks to complement the Damnation / Smallpox “package”, and the Dragonstorm matchup should rarely hinge upon getting Circle of Protection: Red into play as it’s just another card that walks into Gigadrowse, where the real problems are solved on your turn at sorcery speed to begin with.

Whether each of these small individual choices stack up neatly together or merely label me as an innovative idiot, if the aggressive decks are what starts to charge to the fore then the correct version of Solar Flare will likely be Solar Pox. Whether the losses seen here to accommodate Tolaria West and all the rest is too complex of a question to answer with as few games as I’ve played with this deck so far. Brainstorming after the German results became apparent didn’t really give me time to run “my” list against the gamut of decks in the format, and bashing it against Dragonstorm and other control decks didn’t effectively tell me whether I really missed the Castigates or not yet. One lucky Persecute against Dragonstorm can skew how the results feel even more than it skews how the games play out, after all, and I got more than one lucky game-one Persecute off so I can’t tell whether the deck is a genius or I am an idiot. But I know which one to bet on… in the meantime, we’ll come back to this topic next week as we get a final wrap-up on Standard for Regionals, hopefully with more metagame results as the Regional Championships storm across the globe one after another.

Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com