My life had been really busy in the weeks leading up to Grand Prix Baltimore. With everything going on, I only had enough time to cheer on Matt Costa with a bunch of PTQ grinders while we snuck in a draft late at night. With a Pro Tour in the books it hardly felt worthwhile to work on breaking Standard as most of the decks seemed to have been discovered in Hawaii. Besides, I knew I didn’t have the time to put into testing. I talked with a lot of people about the format when we arrived, but I was already pretty set on playing Wolf Run.
I thought Delver was likely the best deck in the format, but I also knew it was very complicated and dies very easily to a pilot mistake. Perhaps a younger version of me from a few years ago would have just grabbed the presumed best take on Delver and jumped into battle with it. But after years of grinding, I have finally learned that simple decks are the way to go when you don’t know the format well. In the current Standard format it doesn’t get much simpler than Wolf Run. The deck is immensely powerful and plays out very similarly most games.
I think this is a trap a lot of players fall into; it has gotten me many times before. You shouldn’t just pick up the best deck and play in a big, meaningful event like a Grand Prix. Playing a deck that you know you can play close to perfectly is worth a lot more than playing a slightly better deck. If this means you have to play something very linear and rather boring, so be it. The goal at these events is to win, not to put as many challenging decisions in front of yourself as possible. Most games of Magic are won and lost on the plays made by the players. In poker it’s much easier to put the money in the middle and have your opponent work out whether to call or not than to have to make the decision yourself. This same theory applies to Magic as well. You don’t want to be the one screwing up, and I felt confident in my ability to play one of the simpler decks in the format.
I had managed to log seven matches on Magic Online with Brian Kibler Pro Tour-winning list. It felt very similar to playing Valakut not long ago, but instead of just winning when you cast and attacked with Primeval Titan you had to do a little bit more work. On the plus side, Huntmaster of the Fells was the real deal. Once I listened to the chatter around the site, it was fairly clear U/B Control was going to be popular with many of the pros. It didn’t seem to register with the masses however. I didn’t end up making many changes to the deck. I’ll give the SparkNotes version.
I ended up finishing in 20th place. I had two heartbreaking losses in a row to miss Top 8. It has been quite frustrating; my last handful of Grand Prix events all seemed to end with me in the Top 64 or Top 32, always just needing one or two more wins to make the coveted Top 8. Overall the weekend was a blast, and I was really happy with playing Wolf Run. The deck is more complicated than I’d thought, but not enough that I had many opportunities to throw games away. I enjoyed playing the deck more than I’d thought I would as well. For those of you that don’t know, I played Valakut for over a year at almost every Standard event during that stretch. I won thousands of dollars with the deck but hated every minute of playing it. Thankfully, Wolf Run is far more interesting to play.
Since the Grand Prix, I’ve had a little more time to play Magic Online. With season three in full swing and me planning to play in the Magic Online Championship Series (MOCS) at the end of the month, I knew I needed to get some qualification points. This led to me logging a lot of hours on Magic Online. Between all these hours, I’ve come up with two Standard decks that have been doing really well for me. Enough has already been written about Delver variants that I don’t really feel like me adding my two cents to the mix would really be worthwhile, so I’ll instead focus on the Wolf Run list:
Creatures (15)
- 3 Solemn Simulacrum
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 2 Inferno Titan
- 4 Primeval Titan
- 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (25)
Spells (19)
The deck plays out pretty simply, casting ramp spells into a Titan most games. Huntmaster of the Fells plays so nicely in the deck. Before against decks like U/B Control they had no reason to worry about tapping out until the turn you threatened to hit six lands, since none of your other spells did anything. Thankfully now you can threaten a creature good enough to win some games on his own as early as turn 3. Here’s a quick sideboard and matchup analysis.
U/W Delver (Costa-style)
This matchup is pretty straightforward. They’re trying to kill you really fast and Mana Leak your big monsters. Huntmaster is really insane as they often can’t afford to not play Geist of Saint Traft on turn 3, letting you sneak in a Huntmaster.
Sideboard in +2 Autumn’s Veil, +1 Whipflare +1 Thrun, the Last Troll for -1 Acidic Slime, -1 Karn Liberated, -2 Green Sun’s Zenith.
You become a little bit more streamlined by cutting the clunky Zenith and Karn after board but the matchup is pretty similar both games.
Esper Delver
I prefer this matchup quite a bit to the Costa-style version. They have a lot more expensive cards, and your Slagstorm/Whipflares are generally a lot more effective against them than U/W Delver. They also don’t have Geist of Saint Traft generally which is one of the scarier cards for Wolf Run to play against.
Sideboard in +2 Autumn’s Veil, +1 Whipflare, +1 Inferno Titan for -1 Acidic Slime, -1 Karn Liberated, -2 Green Sun’s Zenith.
Zombies
The Slagstorm suite again shines, but a little bit less than against other aggro decks because of Geralf’s Messenger and Gravecrawler. Huntmaster of the Fells and Inferno Titan are both all-stars and can swing the game pretty quickly in your favor. Overall this matchup is not the best, but it’s very winnable game 1. You want to protect your life total pretty aggressively as they can burn you out with Geralf’s Messengers and Mortarpod fairly easily if they have time.
Sideboard in +1 Inferno Titan, +1 Tree of Redemption, +1 Whipflare for -1 Acidic Slime, -1 Karn Liberated, -1 Primeval Titan.
Boarding out Primeval might seem a bit weird, but he’s not all that important in the matchup. You end up winning or losing most games in the early turns, and Primeval Titan does very little to affect the board until the turn after he’s hit play.
R/G Aggro
This matchup is quite favorable. They have very few cards that interact with you. The few games I’ve lost generally involve them connecting with a Sword once or twice. If they don’t do that, it’s pretty difficult to lose. Sideboarding is a little weird since the builds of these decks vary quite a bit. Inferno Titan and Tree of Redemption are both really good. If they’re running Swords you want Ancient Grudge. Karn is not ideal against them; Whipflare can be really good or bad depending on if they’re running a bunch of mana Elves. Acidic Slime is only reasonable if they have Swords. Generally assuming they have Swords is a little bit safer after board since it’s fairly hard to lose any other way.
U/B Control
This matchup is the most interesting in my opinion. Game 1 you often want to be playing around Mana Leak with any of your threats. They usually don’t have a lot of Dissipates in the maindeck, so if you can blank most of their Mana Leaks by keeping up three mana when you cast a threat. That being said, if they start chaining their flashback spells really early this can be impossible as you’re forced to start jamming your spells or become buried by their card advantage engine. It’s really hard to know when you want to jam a Titan and when to wait. There’s no hard rule, so just think it over each time and go from there.
After board things get a bit better. You bring in +2 Autumn’s Veil, +1 Karn Liberated, +2 Garruk, Primal Hunter + 1 Thrun, the Last Troll, +2 Beast Within, +1 Inferno Titan for -4 Galvanic Blast, -1 Whipflare, -4 Slagstorm.
Now you don’t have to play around Mana Leak as much. They have more hard counters, but you don’t have any blanks in your deck besides your eight ramp spells and lands. Even Birds of Paradise can beat down with a Kessig Wolf Run! My matches against Dave Shiels and Max Tietze at Grand Prix Baltimore were by far the most interesting games of Magic I got to play on the weekend. Both played really well, and the games where quite interesting for the most part.
I think that covers the big decks in the format. There are a bunch of other fringe decks that people are playing online, but they all seem to be tier 2. After another failed Grand Prix and seeing so many of my good friends in Top 8, I think I have the fire again. Grand Prix Baltimore was only my second tournament of the year, and I didn’t realize how much I have missed battling. Hopefully this fire leads to another good finish at some of the upcoming trips I have planned for Magic. With any luck I will be writing a bit more in the future.
-Tim