As you read this article, I’m probably already competing in my Nationals. Let’s go back ten days, when my brother Antoine came to my place to start playtesting.
I could give you a classic walkthrough of the format, but you’ve probably read many of those already. Good news! I’m not a huge fan of the “standard Standard metagame choices,” so I’m going to tell you about the best decks out of the original ones my brother and I came up with.
Antoine arrived in Lille last Friday. As the first Nationals results, including the Japanese, were coming up, we didn’t focus much on building sparring partners. Good decklists for Faeries, Burn, Elves etc would come up soon enough.
At first, we tried to build decks in which Time Warp would fit. Antoine had a pretty interesting Elves deck featuring Manamorphoses and Time Warp, as he wanted to be sure to win without passing the turn when he would combo off. The deck was pretty interesting, but in the end, the classic WG build was just good enough, as you still kill when you pass 95% of the time.
In the meantime, I built a UWG Fog deck. It was pretty nice, but a deck which loses to Elves and Faeries absolutely all the time is not such a great idea. Actually, the same applies to most decks running Time Warp. Too bad, as the Savor the Moment/Garruk combo was pretty nice.
Antoine had a pretty nice build of White Weenie, which had much better results that the classic Kithkin build.
Creatures (32)
- 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
- 4 Ballyrush Banneret
- 1 Mosquito Guard
- 4 Preeminent Captain
- 3 Figure of Destiny
- 4 Ranger of Eos
- 3 Captain of the Watch
- 4 Elite Vanguard
- 4 Veteran Armorsmith
- 4 Veteran Swordsmith
Lands (24)
Spells (4)
The deck is pretty good, but Antoine and I are not into playing aggro, so we start playtesting our good old Five-Color Control deck, a.k.a. Quick ‘n Toast. Also, Antoine didn’t want to play a deck that would just lose to Elves.
My first deck is, as usual, built around Time Warp. This time, the deck has a very satisfying synergy with it, as the Time Walk/Planeswalker combo is very efficient.
Creatures (3)
Planeswalkers (8)
Lands (24)
Spells (26)
- 3 Time Warp
- 4 Fertile Ground
- 4 Broken Ambitions
- 4 Cryptic Command
- 2 Firespout
- 2 Hallowed Burial
- 3 Agony Warp
- 3 Esper Charm
- 1 Volcanic Fallout
Sideboard
I liked this deck, but it is not good enough versus Mono Red. As that deck is very popular in France, I don’t think it’s a good enough choice for the metagame.
After the first two days of testing, the first Nationals results came. With them, we had a few interesting pieces of information.
– Elves combo was extremely popular
– Great Sable Stag was in every Green sideboard
– Faeries is still very popular
– Time Warp had won in a combo deck we hadn’t seen before
That final point is what I’ll talk about now. Mikko Airaksinen won the Finnish National Championship with a super cool artifact Time Walk build. From the moment I saw his deck, I left most of the testing to Antoine while I focused on it. It was about as cool as it seemed, and the chance to have fifteen artifacts hitting the battlefield at the same time was just so tempting.
Two days later, I had made a few adjustments to his deck.
7 Island
3 Swamp
2 Plains
3 Mystic Gate
4 Elsewhere Flask
4 Kaleidostone
4 Howling Mine
3 Time Sieve
2 Ethersworn Canonist
4 Pollen Lullaby
4 Fieldmist Borderpost
4 Mistvein Borderpost
1 Wildfield Borderpost
2 Jace Beleren
1 Font of Mythos
3 Cryptic Command
3 Time Warp
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
3 Open the Vault
Sideboard
3 Thoughtseize/Meddling Mage/Path to Exile
3 Flashfreeze
3 Negate
2 Angelsong
2 Ethersorn Canonist
1 Jace Beleren
1 Cryptic Command
The deck is amazing against Five-Color Control, which can’t counter everything and always ends up crawling under the artifacts until Time Sieve enters the action. Whenever they try a big spell for the win, you Cryptic and kill them on the next turn. Things get a little worse after boarding, as Stag brings in some pressure and pushes you to hurry a little more, but the matchup is still highly favorable.
Same applies to Kithkins. Usually you kill on turn 6, Kithkin on turn 5. If you cast Lullaby or Command you should be good. After boarding, you have more Fog effects and things get even better.
Burn is not great, but the matchup is still positive. You don’t have much sideboard, neither do they, but many of their cards (Magma Spray, Demigod, Blightning, Fallout) have not much impact on the game. I’d say the matchup should be 50/50, but I went 4-1 main deck and 6-2 after board when playtesting against the version that made Top 8 in Japan.
The deck actually beats most decks in the metagame, and if it can beat either Elves or Faeries it will be my deck for nationals. Faeries is not as bad for the deck as it was for good old Turbo Fog, but it’s still not a matchup you’re supposed to win. Therefore, I’ll focus on the Elves matchup.
At first, Canonist wins games after boarding, but I usually lose game 1. Also, if people know the deck, or if they think of what should logically be in the sideboard, the presence of the Canonist is quite obvious. That’s why they should always board in Path to Exile. As a result, you go from “must draw Canonist” to “must draw Canonist and not face Path.” If you don’t have the Arcane Lab guy, you’re just way too slow and you only win when they draw horribly, which usually doesn’t happen as you give them extra draws. That’s why I ended putting up a pair of Canonists in the main. The matchup became fine main deck, but I still had to work on the sideboard. I’ve tried nearly everything: Thoughtseize, Meddling Mage to stop Path when I’ve Canonist or Primal Command when you don’t have anything, Path to remove his guys, Infest to clean his board when he doesn’t draw great, and… none of those actually worked.
Results of the testing: Main deck 5-0 (drawing Canonist4 times, which was an aberration), Sideboard 1-9 (despite drawing okay). Unfortunately, the deck was not convincing enough and I had to move to something else.
In the meantime, Antoine had advanced with the Toast deck, and I decided I’d try to build one final deck: a Grixis Faeries build. If the results were not convincing, I’d just follow Antoine’s decision.
You won’t find Time Warp or Notorious Throng for once. They are both tempting, but Throng is just too expensive, and such a version would never win the mirror. The idea would be to run Lighting Bolt so Great Sable Stag wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
Antoine told me he liked the idea, but I apparently did not innovate it as Sergio Garcia had made it to Spanish Top 8 with the same deck. 48 hours before my Nationals, it was great to have a starting point.
Ten hours of testing or so later, I had came up with this version:
Creatures (11)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (25)
Spells (22)
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Broken Ambitions
- 4 Cryptic Command
- 2 Peppersmoke
- 4 Bitterblossom
- 2 Firespout
- 1 Agony Warp
- 1 Doom Blade
Sideboard
The deck is pretty good, and sideboard Anathemancers destroy five-Color Control, and can win games in the mirror. Elves is pretty good too, but the deck has two major problems.
The first is a thing I understood after doing some testing: Faeries decks who want to defeat Elves don’t beat Toast anymore. You just have too many dead cards in the matchup. Being 40/60 against Five-Color Control isn’t that problematic. The worst problem is actually called Burn. You don’t win that matchup. Ever. After losing seven straight games in the matchup, I tried several sideboard plans but couldn’t find anything to fight decently with them. That’s why my original Duress in the board became Thoughtseize. Duress may deal with Fallout sometimes, but you need to deal not only with the instant Pyroclasm but also with Anathemancer to make a win possible. I think this deck would be very good in some metagames, but it’s not good in the French Nationals.
It’s Thursday at 6pm, and most of my builds have failed, so I’ll just rely on Antoine. He has been playtesting the deck non-stop for five days, and he’s convinced he has created a pretty good build.
Elves could be an option, but I never actually considered running it. At first, I like playing control more than aggro or combo, and I don’t like combo decks which rely on creatures, as they are just easy to stop when they are expected. If you watch the Five-Color decks or the latest Faerie decklists (Watanabe in Japan National, Garcia and Arevalo in Spain), it seems quite obvious that the players who actually wanted to beat Elves did so. Now that Elves still did well and that the best tech has been exposed, I don’t expect Elven mages to have an easy time at my Nationals.
Concerning the Quick n’ Toast list: I apologize, but I can’t give a decklist I haven’t built before the tournament has actually started. I hope you’ll understand my decision, and excuse me for it. Anyway, the decklist will definitely be in my next column, hopefully with a winning report!
Until then, have a great weekend and a superb week!
Oli