With the heat of summer upon us, Standard is taking some interesting twists and turns as we explore the format more and get a feel for how the metagame plays through. Boston and now Brighton are behind us, and unfortunately it seems that even if people feel as if they can control their destiny in M10 Sealed Deck, I have yet to really hear of anyone who said they had fun, so I am looking forward to Zendikar now that M10 is online and able to be played with there. It has been a long season qualifying for Pro Tour: Austin, and for me at least it seems that season has come to an end, so I was hoping to take a look at Standard as it has developed to see where else it may yet go.
My personal deck of choice for the past weekend was perhaps not chosen ideally, but was a very reasonable choice for me. It doesn’t exactly take a lot to convince me to play Merfolk, historically speaking, and with Nick Spagnolo win in the Day 2 PTQ at Boston playing those fishy folk I decided that was to be my weapon of choice for a double PTQ weekend. The first day started very quickly on a down note, nine rounds of PTQ with a round one loss, and with the intention of playing the same deck the next day I considered it my long and drawn-out mission to figure out how the deck worked and discover if any changes needed to be made before shuffling it up again the next day. Nine rounds and four losses almost solely due to mana issues and excessive mulliganing later and I realized that Nick won his PTQ with one fewer land in his deck than he really needed to work, and I sleeved up the following for the second day of play:
Creatures (21)
- 4 Merrow Reejerey
- 4 Silvergill Adept
- 3 Sygg, River Guide
- 4 Stonybrook Banneret
- 2 Vendilion Clique
- 4 Merfolk Sovereign
Lands (25)
Spells (14)
Sideboard
For the second day of play, I got off to an excellent start, rattling off three wins in a row despite feeling as if I could have very easily lost both round 2 and round 3. For round 2, I was down a game and at four life against a Reveillark that I very clearly could not block, needing to draw a Path to Exile to get back into this game or a Cryptic Command to stall the decision for a turn, and drew the Path at the exact last possible moment to take out the Reveillark and climb back into the game, then win the match 2-1 on the broad shoulders of Chris Pikula with a little help from the opponent’s Flamekin Harbinger.
After three rounds, however, the winning streak began to deteriorate. I lost round 4 to a bizarre R/G Ramp deck, and can mostly chalk that up to playing one mana-flood game (with twelve lands in play, it’s no big surprise I couldn’t get sustainable action going) and one mana-screw game (stuck on Glacial Fortress, Island, 2x Mutavault with two each of Cryptic Command and Baneslayer Angel in hand), and that was the match. Despite fixing the mana, I felt it was still just unstable enough that this might happen once in a while, so if that was my one match to lose that way for the PTQ then I can be content with that, especially since my opponent ended up making it to the finals (though I don’t know who won, as I finally got to leave before they finished). I even made a game-losing mistake in the first game, forgetting as the game grew late that one of his lands was a Gargoyle Castle, so my last aggressive push was too aggressive as I ran the Sygg that was going to win me the game into a colorless 3/4 creature. I can live with losing because I make mistakes, and just tried to steel my resolve to make that the last mistake I made.
Round 5 was mine to lose, however, playing against Five-Color Control and somehow blowing one of the deck’s best matchups by failing to remember the tenets of Fish: we’re not a control deck, so card advantage doesn’t matter, it’s only cards-that-resolve advantage that matters. I picked a counter-war over my opponent’s Esper Charm at the end of one of his turns, then two turns later ate hot Cruel Ultimatum, reminding me that about the only way I could lose was if I forgot my role, even if he did have two Great Sable Stags that were making the game all sorts of complicated.
With fourteen rounds of Merfolk under my belt, I can say with reasonable confidence that it definitely has a home in the metagame, as it fills a very particular niche by being a Kithkin-like deck that can actually play control cards to make non-interactive matchups interactive. I didn’t give the finny folk any credit as a beatdown deck, but then I got the Banneret / Reejerey / three more Lords turn four draw a couple of times, attacking for ten on turn four with thirty total power in play and counterspell mana up. Some matchups are a cakewalk: you have to seriously screw up to lose to Five-Color Control, and you basically can’t lose to Time Sieve. Against the various Jund decks you play like a Kithkin deck with Cryptic Command, just trying to find the opportunity to grow your team and work on taking advantage of your tribal synergies, and eventually this makes their life very difficult.
One thorn I did find in my side in particular was the presence of Red decks, whom I faced four times over the weekend and who beat me three out of those four times. To be fair, three of those losses were mana-related before I added a land for the second day, but the overall issue remains, and is why I push myself away from just Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender as my sideboard card of choice and lean on some Baneslayer Angels. Baneslayer Angel was awesome, but literally the two times I got to play it in what looked like a dominant position my opponent then untapped and killed me, so the moral of the story may be no matter how awesome the card is, whether you’re doing the right thing by playing it. I felt like I was, and was merely very unlucky to have my opponent draw exactly the right burn spell to kill me (not my Baneslayer Angel!) the turn after I played her, or ripped a Path to Exile with no cards in hand when all I needed was a one-turn window of “no Path to Exile” to untap with Baneslayer in play and Cryptic in hand.
I’d been asked at least once for a sideboard guide to this deck, so here is what I would suggest for the following major matchups:
Five-Color Control: -1 Stonybrook Banneret, -2 Merfolk Sovereign, +3 Reveillark
Faeries (UB): -2 Harm’s Way, -2 Vendilion Clique, +4 Meddling Mage
Faeries (UBr): -1 Path to Exile, -2 Vendilion Clique, +1 Harm’s Way, +2 Reveillark
Kithkin: -4 Sage’s Dousing, -2 Harm’s Way, -2 Vendilion Clique, -2 Merfolk Sovereign, +4 Meddling Mage, +3 Sleep, +3 Baneslayer Angel
Time Sieve: -2 Harm’s Way, -2 Path to Exile, +4 Meddling Mage
Elves Combo: -2 Harm’s Way, -2 Merfolk Sovereign, +4 Meddling Mage
B/R: -4 Sage’s Dousing, -1 Vendilion Clique, +2 Harm’s Way, +3 Baneslayer Angel
Jund (Aggro): -2 Vendilion Clique, +2 Harm’s Way
Jund (Cascade Control/Jund Mannequin): -1 Stonybrook Banneret, -4 Merfolk Sovereign, +3 Reveillark, +2 Harm’s Way
Reveillark: -2 Harm’s Way, -2 Merfolk Sovereign, +4 Meddling Mage
It’s something of a peculiar choice for the moment, but Standard right now seems to be flourishing under its peculiar choices. Impressively enough, Baneslayer Angel x4 won the Great Britain National Championships, pairing Baneslayer with an intriguing control mechanism that has not been explored nearly enough in its time in Standard, Glen Elendra Archmage x4. Effectively the deck takes the basic shell of a U/W Reveillark deck, and just ended up cutting the Reveillarks to play the maximum number of Baneslayers:
Creatures (24)
- 3 Meddling Mage
- 4 Mulldrifter
- 1 Reveillark
- 4 Vendilion Clique
- 4 Glen Elendra Archmage
- 4 Knight of the White Orchid
- 4 Baneslayer Angel
Lands (21)
Spells (15)
Since it’s my pet card and all, I was pleased to note that there were a total of ten Baneslayers out of the possible 32 present, and only expect those numbers to increase over time as people begin really playing the nuttiest control creature we’ve seen since back when Morphling was still Morphling. This deck hit the radar just before this past weekend’s PTQ season, and no sooner did it appear than it started hitting Top 8s, with Randy Williams racking up back-to-back Top 8s at the Philadelphia and Rockville, Maryland PTQs this past Saturday and Sunday while rocking two less Cliques and two copies of Harm’s Way in the deck to help protect against Fallouts and, well, things that target Baneslayer Angel. Watching the metagame in motion also gives us Kyle Sanchez diamond in the rough:
Creatures (1)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (25)
Spells (32)
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 1 Austere Command
- 4 Colfenor's Plans
- 4 Cryptic Command
- 1 Puca's Mischief
- 2 Hallowed Burial
- 2 Cruel Ultimatum
- 4 Esper Charm
- 2 Jund Charm
- 4 Path to Exile
- 1 Obelisk of Alara
- 1 Maelstrom Pulse
- 1 Thought Hemorrhage
- 1 Identity Crisis
Sideboard
But Colfenor’s Plans is not the only Lorwyn block coaster rocking it with a PTQ Top 8 to show for it… the most amusing to see might just be the giant beating that is Giantbaiting, as it plays out in this deck with Warrior synergy and accidental bonus Conspire/Untap synergy as your Nettle Sentinels cast Giantbaiting and untap to attack as well!
Creatures (24)
- 2 Imperious Perfect
- 4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
- 4 Bramblewood Paragon
- 4 Boggart Ram-Gang
- 4 Nettle Sentinel
- 2 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
Lands (24)
Spells (12)
Sideboard
This deck didn’t really have a sideboard, as its pilot discussed in his tournament report on TheStarkingtonPost.com, and would greatly benefit from having fifteen cards that actually advance its strategy stapled to the main-deck 60. It seems to be the end of the season is giving us unexpected fits, as all the ‘ugly’ decks are coming and succeeding just when we thought the metagame was a stagnant mix of Kithkin, Faeries, Jund and Five-Color Control with no breath of life left in it anywhere. Did we mention that Primalcrux has been showing up in Top 8s lately? It’s a crazy world out there, as our PTQ Top 8 count can attest:
| Five-Color Control: | WW | OOOOO OOOOO |
| Kithkin: | WW | OOOOO O |
| UBr Faeries: | WW | OO |
| Time Sieve: | W | OOOO |
| Merfolk: | W | OO |
| Sanity Grinding: | W | |
| R/B Blightning: | OOOOO O | |
| Aggro Jund: | OOOOO | |
| Mannequin Jund: | OOOOO | |
| UB Faeries: | OOOO | |
| UW Reveillark: | OOO | |
| Five-Color Blood: | OO | |
| UW Baneslayer: | OO | |
| B/G Elves: | OO | |
| R/G Mana Ramp: | O | |
| R/G Elves: | O | |
| Zigurrat Aggro: | O | |
| R/B Giantbaiting: | O | |
| Jund Blightning: | O | |
| Thoctar.dec: | O | |
| Primalcrux: | O | |
| Five-Color Cascade: | O | |
| Jund splash White: | O | |
| Naya Ramp: | O |
Decks with Spitting Image and Dragon Broodmother played in the finals of a PTQ! Jacob Van Lunen and Brian Kowal’s Naya deck that defies simple classification, as a quiet deck starting to put up good results! People casting Primalcrux with a straight face! Cats and dogs, living together! It’s the end of the summer and we have a vibrant metagame with all sorts of different styles of play showing up, even old forgotten goodies like Sanity Grinding showing up for a surprise victory just when everyone had forgotten all about it.
Sticking to just the established archetypes we’ve been looking at for the past month of National Championships, we see the tally simplified like this:
Five-Color Control — 2 Wins, 12 Total Top 8s
Kithkin — 2 Wins, 8 Total Top 8s
Faeries — 2 Wins, 8 Total Top 8s
Time Sieve — 1 Win, 5 Total Top 8s
Red/Black Blightning — 8 Total Top 8s
Jund — 13 Total Top 8s
The Rest — 18 Total Top 8s
This only tallies the results that are known, and other events such as the one starring an almost-win by Giantbaiting were not among the tally. As exciting as it is to see all sorts of new things — Merfolk and Giantbaiting and Primalcrux, oh my! — we still have a large chunk of the same old decks crunching a lot of the same slots. But where two or three weeks ago we expected everything to be coming up Vivid lands, the chokehold of Five-Color Control has by all appearances been broken and the metagame returned to a more dynamic state, to the point where the so-called ‘dead’ decks of Faeries and Kithkin both claimed as many qualifier slots as Five-Color Control did, and other contenders have pushed to the forefront to fill out the metagame as the various stripes of Jund decks and the appearance of aggressive Red strategies keep Five-Color Control honest.
It’s almost funny that with just a very few weeks left to play with Lorwyn cards in Standard we are finally seeing oddballs like Colfenor’s Plans and Giantbaiting being put to use, after being overlooked for so very long. It makes me wonder just what other gems might be waiting to be played with, as we explore one last time with Lorwyn in the mix and fully explore some of the M10 cards that are as of yet still underplayed… I saw quite a few Baneslayer Angels among the lists, despite being a creature that ‘dies to everything.’ For example, we just recently saw a win for Merfolk by ditching Wake Thrasher and playing with eight Lords… I have to wonder whether a similarly successful design might not exist for the Goblin tribe, and wanted to poke around and explore the deck, trying to make it fit this format. Of the currently legal Goblins, I would give consideration to playing any of the following:
1cc: Knucklebone Witch
2cc: Goblin Outlander, Frogtosser Banneret, Squeaking Pie Sneak, Vexing Shusher
3cc: Boggart Ram-Gang, Mad Auntie, Goblin Chieftan
4cc: Boggart Mob, Murderous Redcap, Wort, Boggart Auntie
5cc: Earwig Squad, Siege-Gang Commander
Spells: Rise of the Hobgoblins, Goblin Assault, Fodder Launch, Duress, Lightning Bolt
Presumably if we are being Goblin-y, we want as many Goblins in the deck as possible, though I find I cannot make myself play Tarfire over Lightning Bolt ‘just because’. Keeping to tribal themes and a mana curve, I’d try the following:
Creatures (28)
- 4 Siege-Gang Commander
- 4 Knucklebone Witch
- 4 Mad Auntie
- 4 Frogtosser Banneret
- 4 Murderous Redcap
- 4 Goblin Outlander
- 4 Goblin Chieftain
Lands (24)
Spells (8)
Getting in a few test games, it’s not a deck I’d want to play against Five-Color Control, but it seemed to show a surprising amount of promise since it has some Persist and a little bit of a token theme, the latter of which could be explores some more with either Rise of the Hobgoblins or Goblin Assault. But a few short months ago we’d have been hard pressed to take the Elemental tribe seriously, and now Manuel Bucher is advocating exactly such a deck as that with the full-on five color spread and leaning hard on Horde of Notions. The Merfolk are usually just compared negatively to Faeries, and even they have finished in the finals of a Pro Tour within recent memory, and just had a resurgence at the PTQ level. While there is a lot of the ‘same old same old’ going on, there has been some shocking doses of innovation finding new angles of attack on the format, such as this little-known deck that has so far sneaked by much of the public attention:
Creatures (24)
Lands (24)
Spells (12)
Jacob went 6-1 with this deck (and only 4-3 in Limited), ending up just one point shy of a Nationals Top 8 berth with a deck that has the most curious notion of a mana curve that I have seen in some time; it has aggressive one-drops that it doesn’t really use as one-drops, as there is literally no way to cast Wild Nacatl on turn 1, but four Nacatl to be played. It’s a deck designed to put a lot of pressure on in the mid- and late-game, keeping a full tank of gas through Ranger of Eos’s card advantage and the huge size of its monsters while keeping blocking forces off kilter with Path, Bolt and Fallout long enough for Woolly Thoctar et al. to kill the opponent. I underrated the deck immediately at first, but have since seen it in action during playtesting sessions and at PTQs and find the deck quite potent in much the same way that Ranger Zoo was potent at the end of the Extended PTQ season, and using many of the same cards at that. It’s high on my list of decks to keep an eye out for, as I suspect its very few Top 8s the past two weeks (just one to its credit) is due far more to general obscurity than it is to any weaknesses of the deck as designed.
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com