You may remember this article from my recent back catalog. You may also remember the flack I caught in the forums that week for posting a bunch of untested brews. You may also remember a couple weeks ago when Turboland won back to back Magic Online PTQs.
In case you didn’t figure it out by now, Adam Prosak baby, a.k.a. Turboland, is for real.
UW and NLB are excellent matchups, despite what some others may think. Elspeth and Colonnade are their only real threats, and that’s only because they fly. Baneslayer is easy to beat because it’s pretty simple to use that window to play Mind Spring, Avenger of Zendikar, or Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
You should be patient when playing against UW decks, especially post board, or post M11. They’re going to have Mana Leak, Negate, and/or Flashfreeze post board. Tapping out to play a threat into their open mana is typically a poor choice. Eventually, they will have to produce a threat, at which point you can start unloading your big guns.
Sometimes, it’s correct to just start throwing threats out there and force them to react, but that’s only if you have an excess of threats in hand. Even then, I would still probably sit back unless I was about to miss land drops.
The last few weeks have been incredibly interesting. Instead of there being three big decks occupying 75% of the metagame, now everything seems to be about 10%. Just when the format got stable and somewhat interesting, M11 is on the horizon. Naturally, as a new set, it’s going to shake things up, which is somewhat disappointing.
I had just started thinking that I was onto something with my new Turboland list. Overgrown Battlements instead of Lotus Cobras helped the Jund and RDW matchups. Divination and later Jace Beleren allowed you to keep up with Blightning.
Avenger was no longer the be all and end all, especially against Jund. Sphinx of Jwar Isle was the perfect answer to Jund. Control decks have been siding Jwar against Jund for a long time, and it’s even better when you can accelerate to it as early as turn 4. The giant shroud animal is much better against Jund than any number of Avengers, Rampaging Baloths, or Pelakka Wurms.
Here is what I was winning the most with:
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (8)
Lands (28)
Spells (12)
Sideboard
Time Warp’s value drastically increases with a list like this, which led me to believe that maybe instead of loose stuff like Oracle of Mul Daya, I should just be playing more colors and more Planeswalkers. Cultivate, and Mana Leak certainly make that option more appealing, but with no M11 on Magic Online, I couldn’t get any work done. Instead, I had to grind out games with the old list.
Cutting Cobra and Ponder take away from the overall synergy of the deck, but the Planeswalkers increase the power and your average draw. I’m not sure which is better overall, but the raw power definitely helps in the Jund matchup.
I liked the one maindeck All is Dust, since you were always drawing live. Sometimes UW would Oblivion Ring your first threat and overwhelm you with Planeswalkers. Meanwhile, you’d be scrambling for an answer. Sometimes, such an answer didn’t exist. At least with a maindeck Dust, you were always drawing live.
The Rampant Growth in the sideboard might look weird, but it was really good in matchups where you’d want to replace the Battlements. In some matchups, you wanted all the ramp you could get your hands on in order to play out quick Roils or Sphinxes. It made sense to me then, to have another Rampant Growth in the board.
Jund
Obviously Putrid Leech is a problem, to the point where you want to sideboard crap like Narcolepsy. Blightning is the other problem, especially with the Ponders and no real card drawing. Mind Spring is solid, but if you’re on the draw, or facing down a lot of Bloodbraids or Leeches, you often won’t even have time to cast it.
Players might be overly scared of Obstinate Baloth, even though it’s not a very good maindeck card, and play fewer Blightnings. That’s great if it actually happens, but I highly doubt it. Blightning is so good against the majority of decks that you really want to keep them main, at least for the time being.
With the old list, initially I was taking out Jace and Time Warp, but I think you need to keep in some amount of Jaces. Time Warps are still pretty loose, since it’s very rare that you get to use it with Jace or Oracle in play. Having Warp as Explores 5-8 is fine, especially once you’re boarding into four Sphinxes, but that just isn’t good enough. You can do better.
+ 3 Narcolepsy, 2 Sphinx of Jwar Isle, 2 Pelakka Wurm, 1 Rampant Growth
– 1 All is Dust, 4 Time Warp, 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, 2 Oracle of Mul Daya
Mythic
This was always the matchup that presented the most difficulty, at least out of the popular decks. They could be attacking for fourteen as early as turn 3, or they could slow it down, play cautiously, and leave mana open for counterspells.
Both of those plans are nightmares. Cedric Phillips devised a plan where he would board in All is Dust and Roil Elemental to keep them on their toes. Mythic players tend to snap side in Negates, regardless of whether or not it was actually good against Turboland or not, which meant that All is Dust wasn’t the best answer overall. You needed something different, or something in addition to Dusts.
If they brought in Negates, chances were they left their Paths on the bench. If they knew about Roil Elemental, and the “correct” composition of the Turboland decks, they would probably leave Negates in the sideboard, since there aren’t many non-creatures worth countering anyway. If they were prepared for both plans, and brought in Path and Negate, hopefully that would dilute their deck enough that their draws would be slower on average, and you could capitalize on it.
Overall, it wasn’t the best plan, but it was better than nothing. Turboland should be able to win a game per match, two if you were lucky. Typically, the plan was to try and steal an extra game with your sideboard bombs.
I was siding out Oracle of Mul Daya against Mythic and RDW. Spending turn 3 or 4 for a card that didn’t affect the board wasn’t what you wanted. Those decks were simply too fast for you to be screwing around like that. Once I realized the Oracles had to go against those decks, my matchup percentage against them went up quite a bit.
+ 2 Deprive, 2 All is Dust, 3 Roil Elemental, 1 Rampant Growth
– 4 Oracle of Mul Daya, 2 Time Warp, 2 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
UW/NLB
Overall, very similar matchups. They have very few threats, close to no disruption, and are probably kold to anything resembling a good draw on the Turboland player’s part. Not much needed to be done to address these matchups. These were the ones you were hoping to play against.
But now there’s M11, and everything changes. Primeval Titan, Mana Leak, and Cultivate are all great tools, but there’s also Destructive Force if you want to go in a different route.
Overall, I feel like the classic Turboland strategy is no longer worth it. Since it’s a known quantity, the surprise factor goes out the window. People have also gotten a chance to test against it, so they know what to expect, and how to sideboard.
+ 2 All is Dust, 2 Deprive, 1 Rampant Growth
– 4 Overgrown Battlement, 1 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
Since M11 isn’t on Magic Online quite yet, I haven’t gotten a chance to test straight UG more thoroughly, but thankfully, there have been a few tournaments showcasing M11 already, with more than a few different ramp decks to compare.
The first results that came in were from a Magic-League trial, where a UGR Destructive Force deck got first place in the hands of mr_thompsom (no relation).
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (25)
Spells (24)
- 3 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Mana Leak
- 3 Rampant Growth
- 2 Mind Spring
- 2 Into the Roil
- 3 Explore
- 2 Awakening Zone
- 2 Cultivate
- 3 Destructive Force
Sideboard
This list was basically what I was expecting people to brew up. It looks solid, but could clearly use a little fine tuning. While I don’t feel like Primeval Titan is all that good in a regular UG deck, Titan is at its best when followed up with a Destructive Force. In the old Turboland decks, Titan just isn’t a big enough threat, and doesn’t really do anything that the deck didn’t already do on its own. A single Tectonic Edge and Mystifying Maze would probably be good in here.
The next results I saw were provided by Professional Event Services, found here and here. There was one Ramp deck, and a lot of Fauna Shamans.
The most recent results came from a Japanese PTQ. Six (!) Primeval Titan decks made the top eight, each more interesting than the last.
Creatures (12)
Lands (28)
Spells (20)
Sideboard
This return of the Valakut strategy is highlighted by 20 ramp spells! With Oracle of Mul Daya in the sideboard, I can’t help but think that maybe some of the weaker ramp spells like Harrow or Khalni Heart Expedition are better off as Oracles, but other than that, the list looks incredibly solid. I’m pretty surprised to not see any Destructive Forces in the 75.
Another interesting list, by sixth place finisher Jun Ishihara:
Creatures (9)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (27)
Spells (22)
Sideboard
The White splash seems awesome if you don’t want to go the Destructive Force route. I still think that Jwar Isle is more impressive against Jund than Primeval Titan, but if D-Force decks are more popular than Jund, Titan is definitely a good man to have.
Fewer and fewer Oracles was the route that I wanted to go down as well, so it’s nice to see that the Japanese masters agree.
Before I go, a few sample hands:
Avenger of Zendikar
Explore
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Halimar Depths
Khalni Garden
Forest
Island
Possibly the nuts. That aside, how do you play this hand?
I’ve seen a lot of players lead with Halimar Depths here, but that’s a mistake. You have your first two turns scripted already, and basically nothing you draw is going to change that. What you want to do is lead with Garden, Explore on turn 2, and then Halimar Depths. You see more cards this way, and therefore gain way more information about how to sculpt your next few turns.
What about this one?
Halimar Depths
Khalni Garden
Misty Rainforest
Avenger of Zendikar
Avenger of Zendikar
Oracle of Mul Daya
Explore
Sketchy, but good enough. This one is a lot closer. If you lead with Halimar Depths, you can try to find a land, and then fetch away the garbage. If you lead with Khalni, then fetch, then Halimar, you could be caught drawing dead cards for a while.
There are a lot of opportunities for you brick off here, which is the part of this deck that I don’t like, and exactly why I liked Ponder. Still, it’s very keepable, and exactly the type of hand you would be grateful to mulligan into.
Against Jund, they led with turn 2 Leech. Your board after untapping is
And your hand is
Oracle of Mul Daya
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Forest
Halimar Depths
All is Dust
Kind of unlucky to draw the one-of All is Dust in the matchup that it sucks in, but whatcha gonna do? Basically, your options are play Oracle and then set it up next turn with Jace, or play Jace this turn.
Playing Oracle here will set you up for the long game, and your overall plan of accumulating lands, but that doesn’t seem relevant here. Right now, you have no action, so accelerating doesn’t accomplish anything. What are you accelerating to? In a few turns, you’ll have as many lands in play as you want anyway.
Here, I would lead with Jace and bounce the Leech. Chances are, they won’t have untapped land and Lightning Bolt. Most likely, they’ll use Bolt, Blightning, or Pulse in order to kill your Jace. You’ve gained several turns there, which you desperately need. The turn after, you can play Oracle, and if you don’t reveal a land, can play Halimar Depths and hopefully another land.
Winning the game seems much easier from that point.
I’ve got more than a few Standard tournaments coming up, including the GenCon “PT” and Nationals, and Cultivate/Mana Leak decks are definitely my forerunners at the moment. No matter which version you decide to play, it seems like you’re going to have a good chance to succeed.
GerryT