As the time until Regionals ticks away, I find myself becoming more and more anxious about finding the right deck to play. Pretty much every time I log on to Magic Online, I sit in my clan chat asking people what they plan to play at Regionals, or, if they’re not playing, what they’re sending with their friends. The more that I talk to players I respect, the more I hear about Dralnu du Louvre.
I have stayed away from playing Dralnu online for a few reasons, primarily comfort. Still, when I played the deck through some queues it quickly became apparent that my friends were not just taking me for a ride; the deck was good. It took time to get used to how the deck played out, since it’s about as different from Dredge and MGA (my last two big MTGO decks) as you can get.
Future Sight has brought some cards to the table that are very strong, and they fit into the deck almost without trouble. This week, I won’t just be talking about the cards that went right into the deck, I’ll also say a few words about some cards I considered, and then left on the cutting room floor.
Delay
According to Frank Karsten’s weekly column, Dragonstorm and Dralnu are the top two decks in Standard, and together they make up slightly more than one quarter of the total metagame. Delay is incredibly strong against both of these decks. Dragonstorm does not have any interest in their Seething Song resolving in three turns, and Dralnu has a similar level of desire to see their Rewind appear in an upkeep step. Against decks like R/G Aggro, buying three turns might be enough to slow the game down to the point where that Call of the Herd is no longer relevant. Against Dredge, you can stop their Life from the Loam without giving them the chance to cast it again or Dredge it on their next turn. Finally, Delay combos with Teferi to become a hard-counter for just 1U.
River of Tears
Maneuvering your lands so that you can cast Blue spells with River of Tears is not hard at all. If it’s your turn and you need to get Blue mana out of it, simply tap it before you play your next land. The question, then, is whether or not you’ll be able to easily use this to get Black mana. I believe that many, if not most, of Dralnu’s Black spells should be cast on your own turn, which means that you can either drop the River to get your Black mana, or you can drop your land for the turn before you tap it. The capability to get both Blue and Black mana out of one land, pain-free, makes this card a shoe-in.
Slaughter Pact
This pact isn’t the most exciting, and I don’t plan on seeing more than one of them in most lists, but it does one very important thing: kill Magus of the Moon. There will be times when your opponent decides that it’s time to Cloak up his Spectral Force and swing for the fences, and those will be very good times for you, but mostly this card is there to let you get back to casting your Black spells against R/G Aggro.
Tolaria West
Coming into play tapped is a fairly big deal, but it is not as bad as you might think. Both turn 1 and turn 3 are good times to drop this onto the table, since the majority of the spells in this deck either cost two mana or four-plus mana. The tutoring ability also allows you to pull up an Urza’s Factory against control, an Urborg to fuel your Tendrils of Corruption against aggro, and even find that Slaughter Pact when all else is lost.
Nix
This is the first card from Future Sight in this article that I don’t have in my newest decklist. The applications are fairly narrow, but when this card is good, it is great. For the record, this card is good against Dredge, and fine against Dragonstorm. It lets you counter a flashed-back Dread Return, it lets you counter any of the new Pacts, and it lets you counter any Suspended spell (primarily Lotus Bloom). If you think that you’re going to play against Dredge all day long, then this card might just be the right one for you.
Epochrasite
Some people that I’ve listened to believe that this card is amazing against aggressive decks. They say that you can play it as a speed bump on turn 2, and then it comes back again and again as a 4/4 wall. I believe that your speed bump should be a little better than a vanilla 1/1, and that if you truly want an artifact wall you could just play Phyrexian Ironfoot. Still, your mileage may vary.
Pact of Negation
Much like Slaughter Pact, this pact is a silver bullet for one card. This time, that one card is Seething Song. Even when your Dragonstorm opponent successfully Gigadrowses all of your Blue mana sources, you can get their Seething Song and stop them from hitting nine mana. You can even Negate a Lotus Bloom or Rite of Flame if you have to, but they’re clearly less juicy targets than the Song.
With those cards in mind, my updated decklist:
Creatures (5)
Lands (26)
Spells (29)
Cards that you might have been expecting to see were probably mostly lands. Underground River is great for consistency, but it’s not so great for staying alive, as the damage it deals you adds up quickly. Desert is much less exciting than it once was, as Soltari Priest and Dryad Sophisticate have been replaced by Kird Ape and Scab-Clan Mauler. Dimir Aqueduct was great when you wanted to hit as many land drops as possible, but Annex and curve considerations scared me away from it.
There’s also the fact that Damnation is nowhere to be seen. In the world of today, casting Damnation is asking to get hit for four by Giant Solifuge. Since you can’t afford to let that guy through the cracks, you’ll need to wait until turn 6 or so to fire your Wrath in there, and when they’re casting 2/3s on turn 1, a sixth-turn Damnation isn’t going to save you. In its place I have more tutor targets, more Rewinds, and more lands.
Matchups
Dragonstorm
Good old Dragonstorm. If you’re planning on playing in Regionals, then you’re planning on playing against Dragonstorm. Their main tool against you is Gigadrowse, backed up by storage lands. However, before they can bring that to bear against you, they need to dig through their deck to find a collection of Rituals, a Dragonstorm, and the Gigadrowse.
Take the time that they give you to counterspell their deck manipulation. The more Telling Times you can Spell Snare, the harder it will be for them to find enough gas to power through your counter-wall. When they do eventually go for it, your weapon to fight back is Rewind. No matter how many copies of Gigadrowse they manage to play, one Rewind will leave you with enough mana to cast two more counterspells. Just make sure that you don’t walk right into a Remand.
When they do decide to go off, the best point to attack is Seething Song. Seething Song only gives them two extra mana, but it costs enough to play that one Delay on a Song can completely ruin their combo turn. Lotus Bloom is similarly attractive, though it is easier for them to continue playing rituals after you Remand a Bloom than it is when you Delay a Seething Song. Still, hitting a Bloom might mean that they need to wait another three turns before they can attempt to go off again.
Your sideboard has a handful of cards that you want to bring in: three Persecutes, one Shadow of Doubt, and one Commandeer, if you want it. The three creature-kill bullets are easy cuts to make for the Persecutes, and Skeletal Vampire is not necessary to win a game, as your win condition will almost always be Teferi
R/G Aggro
Without Damnation in the maindeck, the R/G Aggro matchup is tougher than it would otherwise be. You need to make sure that you keep only the fastest of hands, hands that will let you live until you can start to leverage Teachings to claw back into the game. Spell Snare will break up the dreaded Kird Ape plus Scab-Clan Mauler draw, while Delay and Remand just try to buy you time. The majority of game 1s that you win will be on the back of rawdogged Teachings targets, though some games you will just be able to take over from the start.
Most of your hope for winning the match comes from your ability to win games 2 and 3. Your sideboard includes three Tendrils, two Last Gasp, one Seize the Soul, and one Slaughter Pact. In other words, your sideboard includes seven removal spells to replace the clunky maindeck spells. Cut all four Rewinds, the Shadow of Doubt, and two Think Twices to fit all of these killers into the deck. You also have two Skeletal Vampires that you can use to try to put games away quickly, but also use to simply stem the bleeding. These come in for the last two Think Twices; after all, you never have the time to do more than cycle them.
After sideboarding, instead of hoping to use Delay and Remand to buy time, you can just use Last Gasp and Tendrils to stop their assault. Last Gasp on Kird Ape completely deflates the god-draw opener, and an Urborg-powered Tendrils can instantly turn a game around. Remember that, ideally, you’ll want to save the Slaughter Pact to stop a Magus of the Moon, but if you have mana up for Last Gasp then you can just float the Black mana through the Magus.
U/x Tron
If they don’t assemble the Urzatron in the early stages of the game, they will be hard-pressed to win. They are a control deck that tries to bury people under mana and cards, but without the mana they can’t do a whole lot. The mana and the card-draw reinforce each other, so stopping any Compulsive Researches that you can will go a long way towards winning you the game. Similarly, any Signets you can afford to stop will make it harder for them to fight over their Tidings and find their Tron.
If you can get to the mid-to-late stages of the game, it won’t matter if they rip the last Tron piece off the top. At this point, you should have enough control over the game, and potentially even a Teferi in play, that you can completely dictate how the game plays out. Rewind becomes a true threat at this point, allowing you to stop something like Tidings and then spit out a Teferi, or even better, Dralnu. If you get to that point, actually winning is simply a formality.
Your sideboard has three Persecute and one Commandeer for you to bring in. Darkblast, Shadow of Doubt, and Repeal are all easy cuts. Sudden Death stays in to kill any opposing Teferis, and Seize the Soul can let you stop anything like a Hellkite that slips through the cracks. You’re going to have to shave something to find room for the Commandeer, and that’s up to personal preference. I like to cut one Think Twice, but it is certainly fine to cut something else if you’d prefer.
Dredge
Something that many players on Magic Online do not realize is that Life from the Loam is the most dangerous card the Dredge player is packing. Loam is so scary because it enables them to hit land drops until they can start casting Trolls every turn, and because it lets them dig up Svogthos. In both cases, the only answer that you have to these large men is to chump-block with Skeletal Vampire. If you can control the Loam, you are most of your way towards winning.
The Dredge decks that pack the Bridge from Below combo-kill are a different animal. Many of them aren’t packing Life from the Loam, and therefore aren’t planning on killing you with Svogthos or Grave-Trolls. Against these decks, aim your Extirpate directly at Bridge from Below, and do whatever you can to kill your own creatures when the Extirpate is nowhere to be found.
Delay is a masterpiece against Dredge. The problem with this matchup in the Planar Chaos world was that you would eventually run out of counterspells. You might have all four of your Rewinds and a handful of Remands, but eventually that Grave-Troll was going to resolve and your only way to hold it off was to find your Vampire. With Delay, this is no longer the case. Delay a Troll while Teferi is in play, and it’s gone for good. Delay a Troll without Teferi, and at least they can’t replay it or re-Dredge it for three turns.
Your relevant sideboard cards are the two Last Gasps and the Extirpate. The Gasps give you more ways to kill a first turn Greenseeker or Llanowar Mentor when you’re on the play, and Extirpate has obvious applications. To fit these in, you can easily lose the Shadow of Doubt, the Seize the Soul, and the Repeal. You might think that Repeal also lets you answer a spellshaper, but they will simply replay it and get ready to discard on their next upkeep.
Dralnu du Louvre is certainly a Tier 1 deck, and in my opinion is stronger than even Dragonstorm. However, it requires a large amount of planning ahead, and it also requires that you think on your feet. This skill-level barrier is, I believe, what keeps its numbers down on Magic Online. There are a few very scary things out there for Dralnu, but you have so much control over the progression of the game that personal customizations can answer any problem you may come up against.
If you decide that storm decks are going to be all over the place on the day of Regionals, then you can run extra Shadow of Doubts and a handful of Trickbinds. If you think that Dredge will be everywhere, you can start an Extirpate in the main and board up to the full four, as well as augment them with any number of other hate cards. If everyone is looking for Scab-Clan Maulers, then you can either find room for Damnation or bring some Tendrils into the maindeck. The possibilities are endless.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me in the forums, via email, or on AIM.
Benjamin Peebles-Mundy
ben at mundy dot net
SlickPeebles on AIM