Peebles Primers - Time Spiral Block Constructed

With Planar Chaos legal for sanctioned play, Block Constructed is about to become much more popular, especially on Magic Online. Traditionally, many people avoid single-set Block Constructed, but there is no better way to prepare for two-set block than by looking at what the format already has to offer and then trying to improve those decks. Once you have a definite idea of the shape of the format, you can then start trying to innovate new decks to trump the metagame.

Pre-Planar Chaos, the format was fairly wide open. Decks that you could expect to see in any Premiere Event Top 8 included U/G Scryb/Force, U/r/b Teferi Control, Blink Riders, White Weenie, and a Green/White/Red deck that played all of the best cards from the three colors. There were also some smaller decks running around, such as Slivers, Mono-Red Storm, and Mono-Blue Morph. The focus of today’s article will be on Teferi Control, and White Weenie, and Scryb/Force as the big decks, and a look at Mono-Red Storm for those of you looking for something slightly different.

Teferi Control

The idea behind the build of the deck is fairly straightforward: use permission and removal to stay alive until you can start hammering out game-ending threats. Decklists vary from person to person on the numbers, but the main core of the deck is the same. The decklist I’ve been kicking around is largely based on the efforts of clan member Dan Skinner.

Teferi Control

Benjamin Peebles-Mundy

Test deck on 03-04-2007

Time Spiral Block

Creatures (9)

Lands (25)

Spells (26)

Sideboard

Against aggressive decks, your goal is to use Snapback and Cancel to stay alive until you can find either a Sulfurous Blast or a Teachings to grab one. You shouldn’t be afraid to burn your Spell Bursts if it means you’ll be able to live until you can cast a Hellkite. If you can make it into the end of the game with a decent life total, a storage land, and a Spell Burst, you can emulate the Standard Tron decks and apply a pseudo-lock long enough to attack four times with your dragon.

The midrange decks often come packing Call of the Herds and similar threats; either Mystic Enforcer from G/W/r or Sporesower Thallid from U/G. Sudden Death is included as a way to take care of the Thallid, since he is cleverly out of range of Sulfurous Blast and Strangling Soot. Lightning Angel also attempts to sidestep the usual removal spells of the format, and again, fails to accomplish that against Sudden Death. The added benefit here is that Split Second stops the Blink deck from being able to save their best threat from your removal. Draining Whelk is at its best against these decks, since they have cards like Spectral Force that are just begging to run into it.

The mirror is a little bit nerve-wracking, since both of you are fairly underpowered. Sudden Death shines again, giving you an out to an opposing Teferi that resolves. In general, if you can get a Teferi into play against someone who doesn’t have Sudden Death, you will win the game. The only outs that most Teachings decks contain are a Vesuvan Shapeshifter or two Sulfurous Blasts. Both of these should be easy to control since they are so mana-intensive.

Unfortunately, things don’t always go according to plan. In Standard, the Dralnu decks sometimes stumble on their own mana, and they are two colors and have access to all of the mana-fixing from Ravnica Block. This deck includes spells that cost UUU, RR, and BB, and the only fixers that you can get your hands on are Prismatic Lens and Terramorphic Expanse, both of which are slower than you’d like. As such, you will find that, sometimes, a White Weenie player who opens up with one or more creatures on every turn of the game will simply kill you before you can find two Red sources to cast the Plague Wind in your hand. The G/W/r deck will also look to attack your mana; they have both Wall of Roots and Search for Tomorrows to power out Mwonvuli Acid-Moss.

Planar Chaos Additions

Rough / Tumble:
There are certainly some downsides to swapping the Sulfurous Blasts for the split card, but I believe that the benefits outweigh them. The first strike against Rough / Tumble is that there are some creatures that see a lot of play that die to Sulfurous Blast but not Rough, such as Scryb Ranger, Elephant Tokens, Serra Avenger, and pre-Threshold Mystic Enforcers. The other problem is that Rough and Tumble are both sorceries, so the card can’t be fetched up by Mystical Teachings.

The second point is easy to address in deck construction. The reason that you don’t run four Sulfurous Blasts right now is that they are difficult to cast and fairly slow, so drawing two early might actually be worse than drawing zero. Rough, on the other hand, is very easy to cast, and drawing two will let you put a big dent in your opponent’s development very early on, letting the second one clean up. Running three or four seems like a very good idea to me.

The first point is a little bit harder to dispute, since those creatures are some of the most defining elements in Block Constructed. Fortunately, Tumble kills three of the four I’ve mentioned, whether or not the Enforcer has Threshold. In addition, Tumble takes out plenty of guys that Sulfurous Blast never could, from Hellkites and Whelks to Lightning Angels. Still, Elephants are untouchable by Rough / Tumble, and they tend to come in pairs. If you expect your opponents to be cranking out 3/3 tokens all tournament long, you might be better served by Sulfurous Blast, but I believe that you are less likely to lose a match to being unable to handle 3/3s than to being unable to kill a horde of 1/1s and 2/2s while it still matters.

Piracy Charm:
This card is especially potent against White Weenie. It kills any one-drops that they might be running (and many builds run eight or more), and it takes care of the Soltari Priest that your Pyroclasm can’t. There aren’t a ton of other matchups where it’s relevant, which makes the Charm the perfect sideboard card against WW to allow your slower responses, such as Serrated Arrows, to come online.

Midnight Charm:
Midnight Charm does everything to White Weenie that Piracy Charm does. The tradeoff is that, in exchange for the extra point of life you gain, the card is dramatically more difficult to cast. On the other hand, this card takes out Scryb Ranger, which Piracy Charm simply can’t.

Damnation:
The cards I’ve listed previously simply go into the deck as it exists right now, but this one changes the face of everything dramatically. Instead of being a Blue deck that splashes for Red and Black, this card is going to turn Teferi Control into a regular Blue/Black deck that may or may not even bother with Hellkites. You run four, and then you don’t have to worry about whether the weenie has flying, whether your Pyroclasm is going to Lightning Bolt you, or if you’ll get to enough mana to kill that giant flyer before it kills you. If you want to just port over to Post-PC, fit in the other three cards. If you want the power, run Damnation.

White Weenie

White Weenie in Block Constructed is about as simple as it has ever been. You play guys and just ram them into your opponent until they die. The main choice to be made is in deckbuilding, and that’s whether you want to run Rebels or not. The Rebels versions are inherently slower, since you need to cut one-drops to fit your squadron in. On the other hand, getting to toss an evasion creature into play every turn is a fairly strong attraction. Due to this, I’ve been playing with the Rebel chain.

White Weenie

Benjamin Peebles-Mundy

Test deck on 03-04-2007

Time Spiral Block

Creatures (30)

Lands (22)

Spells (8)

Sideboard

There is no trickiness here. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing against the mirror, against a goldfish, against U/G, or against Teferi. You just put guys into play and then you attack with them. I guess things are a little tricky against Teferi because you don’t want to get owned by Sulfurous Blast, but usually there’s not much you can do about that. Even if you do think that they have it, Knight of the Holy Nimbus, Soltari Priest, and Outrider en-Kor will all survive it.

The sideboard package of Bodyguards + Pentarch Ward is for Green decks everywhere. The G/W/r decks might be able to Wrath the board with Desolation Giant, and the U/G decks could point two Psionic Blasts at your guy or bounce it with Cloudskate, but he will certainly buy you time, and that time is usually enough to attack in the air for the win.

Planar Chaos Additions

Stonecloaker:
Passing the turn with mana up is pretty standard when you’re just planning on pulling a dork out of your deck instead of playing one from your hand. Stonecloaker shines in this situation, because they will either go to kill your Scout, at which point you can upgrade to a 3/2 flyer, or because they will fear it, leaving you free to abuse the Rebel mechanic. He will also let you reuse any Javelineers to kill something like a Fortune Thief you didn’t expect.

Riftmarked Knight:
Outrider en-Kor is already a 2/2 Flanker for three mana, so the question is whether or not Protection from Black and the Suspend option are better than the en-Kor ability. Against a Mono-Red deck the en-Kor ability can tag-team with Soltari Priest to extraordinary effect, and the same thing can be done against Sulfurous Blast and / or Rough / Tumble. However, I think that the deck that used to pack Pyroclasm will move to Damnation, which simultaneously removes one of the benefits of the en-Kor ability and implies a greater Black presence in the metagame. Lastly, the Suspend option is very strong if you suspect that there’s a mass removal spell in your future.

Calciderm:
A pre-PC build of WW really doesn’t have a lot of great options after a Damnation. If you were lucky, the creatures that all got Wrathed came out of your deck, but even so, dropping two 2/2s onto the table against a Teferi deck isn’t too exciting. Calciderm is the perfect solution to this problem. He is also even better with Stonecloaker in your deck, since you can just save him before he disappears the next turn. Even in the mirror, he provides a body that can block for a turn, and then just barrel across the red zone.

Scryb / Force

This deck may not have any draws that can produce a third-turn Spectral Force, but it is still capable of powering out extremely strong openers that can run over both WW and Teferi decks. At the same time, it has a much better long-game than WW does, at the expense of one- and two-drops.

Scryb & Force

Benjamin Peebles-Mundy

Test deck on 03-04-2007

Time Spiral Block

Creatures (28)

Lands (22)

Spells (10)

Sideboard

Your aggro gameplan is to use Wall of Roots, Call of the Herd, and Sporesower Thallid to buy a little bit of time, and then to start cracking back for massive amounts of damage with Spectral Force or a flyer plus Stonewood Invocation. Shapeshifter can assume the form of Soltari Priest in dire straits, but it usually doubles up on Spectral Force so that you can come across for sixteen damage in one turn.

Midrange battles are going to be long and drawn out. If you can get Riftwing advantage, that certainly makes things easier, but in general your cards line up evenly so it’s going to come down to draw steps. Another good advantage to get is Thallid advantage. If you’re lucky enough to stick two or more Sporesowers / Shapeshifters, the tokens you crank out will eventually swing the tide to your side.

Your strongest weapons against control are Cloudskate and Invocation. Block Constructed is very similar to Standard in that you will find it nearly impossible to lose to a control deck any time you draw two Invocations. Psionic Blast also gives you the little bit of reach that you might need to finish them off. Vesuvan Shapeshifter is also extremely strong, both as out to Teferi and as a reply to Bogardan Hellkite.

Planar Chaos Additions

Magus of the Library:
The Magus is a dream card for this deck, primarily because it is best set up to abuse it. First and foremost, this is another mana accelerator that will allow you to pump out Sporesowers on turn 3, and can produce an obscene amount of mana with a Scryb Ranger alongside it. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and have him on turn 2 on the draw and he’ll start to draw you two cards a turn, but the real attraction is when you draw him and Scryb Ranger and don’t need to use the extra mana. Both untapping and land-bouncing are synergistic with an ability that taps to draw cards and requires you to have a lot of cards in the grip. Scryb Ranger will fix those times when the Magus comes off the top and you only have a few random cards in hand and are flooding on mana.

Timbermare:
This deck is again set up very well for Timbermare. A common play with this card will be to cast a Sporesower or Spectral Force, and then next turn play the Timbermare, untap your other heavy-hitter with Scryb Ranger, and start to smash for obscene amounts of damage. Like Calciderm in WW, Timbermare in U/G gives you a good option for the turn after your Teferi opponent resets the board with Damnation. They get your side, and you immediately smash them for five.

Chronozoa:
White Weenie has no way to actually kill a creature bigger than x/1; they rely on Temporal Isolation to deal with problems. In the underpowered world of Block Constructed, following a Wall of Roots with a 3/3 flyer would be pretty good on its own. However, playing an evasive threat on turn three that threatens to swarm the board is powerful in any format. There’s something else though: Chronozoa and Vesuvan Shapeshifter combine extraordinarily well. If you flip the Shapeshifter into a Chronozoa when it’s already on the way out, you’ll be left with two Chronozoa tokens, since the Shapeshifter had no time counters on it. The only difference is that these Chronozoas, and any they make in the future, will have the Shapeshifter’s flip face-down ability. If you decide that you’d rather have a 2/2 than a dividing flyer, you can flip it before the last counter is removed and it will stick around forever.

Note: This is currently not what Magic Online does. When the Shapeshifter-turned-Chronozoa dies, you are left with two play Chronozoa tokens. In other words, the tokens that the Shapeshifter leaves behind won’t be able to flip back down. The reason that I know this to be incorrect is a ruling by Scott Marshal, a Level 4 judge and NetRep for the DCI mailing lists.

Mono-Red Storm

And now for something completely different. Powerglove.dec doesn’t have the same tried-and-true power of the above three decks, but at the same time it’s a blast to play. You use Suspended Lotus Blooms and Rift Bolts to fuel an Empty the Warrens, and Gauntlet of Power turns your swarm of idiots into a serious attack force.

Powerglove.dec

Benjamin Peebles-Mundy

Test deck on 03-04-2007

Time Spiral Block

Creatures (16)

Lands (22)

Spells (22)

Sideboard

This deck doesn’t have extremely different strategies against various other decks. Mogg War Marshal will let you stall until you can get your combo online, and Thick-Skinned Goblin can survive through the Pyroclasm of your opponent’s choice. Ib Halfheart makes it fairly difficult for your opponent to effectively stymie your squadron of 1/1s, and he even allows you to complete your all-in plan. Greater Gargadon is a gigantic threat that can come out at any time, but most decks have some way of handling him. No matter what’s going on, you always have the option of dropping a Power Glove or two and then doming your opponent out of the game with Disintegrate.

Planar Chaos Additions

Blood Knight:
An efficient creature simply on the merits of being a 2/2 First Striker for two instead of a 2/1 for two, the Blood Knight is also going to be very strong against White Weenie. It may not be able to block and kill a Knight of the Holy Nimbus, but it can certainly stand in the way of their team for a couple of turns. Its two toughness also avoids splash damage from cards like Piracy Charm.

Fury Charm:
The Charm will allow you to combo off on turn 3 instead of turn 4. If you open up with a Bloom on turn 1, a Bolt on turn 2, and then one of these two on turn 3, you’ll be in for 8 power on your third turn. Fury Charm also makes late-game Lotus Blooms un-Suspend on the next turn. Finally, it can blow up a Prismatic Lens to color-screw your opponent or give your Gargadon a way through the stream of chump-blockers your opponent is throwing in its way.

Sulfur Elemental:
This guy out of the board is going to be very strong against White Weenie. One of them will completely shut down Icatian Javelineers, Sidewinder Sliver (if they have them), Amrou Scout, and Soltari Priest. Two will get their entire team, minus Serra Avenger, which you should be able to handle with a Rift Bolt or Disintegrate.

Conclusion

Block Constructed is going to be shaken up dramatically by the release of Planar Chaos. Every existing archetype has something to gain from the second set, and some strategies will finally get the cards they need to become real contenders. I have no doubt that Sinew Sliver and Cautery Sliver will immediately join up with Sedge and friends to try and build an unstoppable onslaught. White Weenie is probably going to be hated out of the format by the sheer number of new cards that are effective against it. Meanwhile, something that I haven’t listed or even thought of will probably rear its head on MTGO in the weeks following the online release of Planar Chaos.

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