Today, I bring you some thoughts that you can put to good use in your own PTQs, based on my experiences at Neutral Ground in New York last Saturday:
Green/White — Beatdown Deck to Beat
“God, what a s***ty deck!”
Phil Napoli, referring to G/W
As you might expect, Griffin Guides and Tarmogoyfs were in Phil’s deck.
As you might not expect, Phil said that shortly after winning the tournament.
Lots of people think Green/White is a poor beatdown deck, because it has no one-drops and runs only-slightly-relevant cards like Edge of Autumn. Lots of people point out that a beatdown deck will often win a big event, but a control deck proves to be the best choice for the PTQ field. Lots of people think they beat Green/White, which was described by Richard Feldman last week as “the bye” for a Blue/Black deck with Mystical Teachings.
Lots of people are wrong. Ironic that a Green deck would get this good right after Jamie Wakefield stopped writing, isn’t it?
Now, I’m not trying to insult Feldman — or Gerry Thompson, to whom Richard attributes the “bye” quote — but I think that statement grossly underestimates the staying power of the format’s premiere beatdown deck. This is a clear case of Dave Price being proven right all over again: the G/W deck doesn’t have any “wrong” threats, but your control deck is certainly capable of delivering the wrong answers to fight them.
When I mentioned in the forums of Richard’s article that I thought he was doing a disservice to PTQ players by making his claims, and used as my evidence the fact that G/W won Grand Prix: Montreal, Richard dismissed me by pointing out that “Magic is still Magic; you can always lose the great matchup.” I definitely agree that is true, but generally one does not lose the great matchup when one plays one’s best cards. Look at the match coverage of the Montreal final. Paul Cheon — no stranger to winning tough tournaments with control decks — resolved the following cards in order against Celso:
* Psychotic Episode (the coverage doesn’t say what Cheon got with it)
* Careful Consideration
* Damnation (killed a Griffin Guide-wearing Mr. T)
* Damnation #2 (very next turn, killing the Griffin Guide token and a Call of the Herd token)
* Triskelavus (best creature he could have at this point, since Celso had just summoned a thresholded Mystic Enforcer)
* Tendrils of Corruption (combined with a Trike token to trade with Tarmogoyf + Thrill of the Hunt)
* Careful Consideration
* Psychotic Episode (madnessed off of the CareCon, getting another Mystic Enforcer off the top of Celso’s deck)
* Temporal Isolation (on the thresholded Enforcer)
* Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
* Transmute for Slaughter Pact
That seems like a great draw. If you can’t beat an aggro deck with two Damnations, Tendrils, Temporal Isolation, and your best flying and ground-pounding creatures, then you’re going to have problems. Now, I’ll admit Cheon had a bad draw in game 3 — not a single Damnation, despite playing Careful Consideration and buying time with Aven Riftwatcher plus Momentary Blink — but still, the fact that he had all that gas in game 1 and lost is a bit troubling.
In fact, Cheon’s problems in that game are symptomatic of the matchup. The G/W deck usually leads with either a two-drop, either Tarmogoyf or Saffi Eriksdotter. They’ll often follow with either Griffin Guide, Call of the Herd, or whichever two-drop that they didn’t hit on turn 2. So they have a clock that runs anywhere from two to four turns, depending upon the presence of Tarmogoyf and how big it might be, and Damnation does not solve your problems even if your opponent is out of gas in hand. You’ll still have to deal with the Griffin token, or the Call flashback, or the creature that was saved by Saffi, or some combination of any of those. That means you’ll have to use Damnation #2 in a hurry, if you’re lucky enough to have drawn it. Then the Mystic Enforcers come down with threshold and clean house.
No, the G/W decks don’t get those sorts of draws in every single game. Yes, U/B can still beat those kinds of draws, usually by using a Temporal Isolation or Take Possession. I’m sure that Gerry Thompson thinks G/W is the bye precisely because he has his U/B deck built to manage such draws, and he’s a good enough player to keep hands that will do so. However, I have not seen this happen often enough in the average PTQ that the G/W matchup could be called a bye. The average control player will have to work for his wins.
This is why the G/W deck won the Grand Prix: not because Cheon had crappy draws, but because its threats are nasty even if opposing Black decks get good draws. And I haven’t even gotten to Sean McKeown’s annoying sideboard technology of boarding in Extirpates, to piggyback off of Urborg to steal the opponent’s ability to play more than one Tendrils or Damnation. It’s hard enough to use your spot removal in the right order to beat G/W without having to worry that your ability to draw another copy of each card might go away after you play it.
Blue — Still Good
Yeah, I’m sure that’s shocking to everyone.
The finals were not contested in the PTQ; Josh Ravitz scooped to Napoli, presumably after making some sort of deal under the judges’ watchful eye. Ravitz was playing a Mono-Blue deck given to him by Kenji Tsumura (must be nice to have the best player in the world on MTGO speed-dial). I didn’t get the list, but even if it doesn’t turn up on the Wizards website I think you can assume that it’s not far from Kenji’s Montreal build:
Creatures (19)
- 2 Willbender
- 3 Brine Elemental
- 1 Fathom Seer
- 4 Riftwing Cloudskate
- 3 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
- 4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
- 2 Venser, Shaper Savant
Lands (28)
Spells (13)
Personally I would probably move those Serrated Arrows to the sideboard in favor of something else — the fourth Cancel and third Venser, say — but that’s just me.
Anyway, Ravitz was generally considered to be the favorite in the finals. He had already dismantled a similar G/W build in the Top 4, in addition to however many G/W decks he whipped during the Swiss. The Magic Online Premiere Events I’ve seen since then suggest that the deck is not merely a function of its pliot’s playskill, either: there’s been at least one Mono-Blue in each Top 4 I’ve seen, and one outright win.
The really nice thing that Mono-U gives you is the ability to switch gears as needed. Sometimes you’ll beat G/W with a control game, dropping Delay on their threats and then having Teferi at the perfect time to turn those Delays into hard counters. Sometimes you’ll beat them with a tempo draw, bouncing opposing creatures just long enough for you to buy twenty points of damage. As you might imagine, Ravitz is pretty skilled at changing gears like this, so it should not be surprising that he enjoyed success with the deck.
Also — and if you go back, you’ll see this is true in Block Constructed formats as far back as I can remember — having countermagic on the team is simply a good thing. Trial/Error in Ravnica Block, Hinder in Kamigawa Block, Last Word in Mirrodin Block, Discombobulate in Onslaught Block, Envelop in Odyssey Block … no matter how narrow or expensive the cards may be, it always seems that saying “no” proves to be a powerful effect in Block Constructed. Since many of the U/B decks have a very limited number of threats, it’s not so tough to completely nullify their offense. You basically have to withstand the Haunting Hymn (or Willbender it OMG!) and you’re golden.
The drawback is that just about every deck can challenge you. Sometimes the control decks accelerate with Coalition Relic and just overwhelm you, or they Extirpate a key card and sculpt the perfect hand for a win. The G/W decks can blow out your Cloudskates with Riftsweeper and evade the Pickles lock with Serra Avenger; that’s how Kenji got knocked out of the GP. Wild Pair Slivers (yes, yes, I’m getting there) can get a hot Telekinetic Sliver draw and lock up all of your mana. You don’t have a lot of margin for error with Mono-Blue. It is a good deck for good players.
Slivers: The Other Gold Meat
The Top 8 of the PTQ consisted of two G/W decks, Ravitz’s Mono-Blue, one U/B Teachings deck, two Blue/Green decks (one was definitely beatdown with Looter il-Kor, Psionic Blast, etc.; I have received conflicting reports about the other, with some saying it was also U/G Beatdown and others saying it was U/G Morphs) … and two copies of Wild Pair Slivers. You have to hand it to Guillaume Wafo-Tapa: the Resident Genius knows how to unleash a beast on a format.
The appeal of WPS has many facets. For one thing, people just like playing Slivers, and people just like playing combo decks, so a combination of the two is sure to be a winner. Also, the deck has a lot of staying power, thanks to the Dormant Sliver plus Frenetic Sliver card-drawing engine. The deck also claims a solid matchup against Green/White; prior to the Top 8 Napoli complained, “why did I even bother winning? There are two Sliver decks in the Top 8!”
There are all sorts of ways to customize your Sliver deck for the format. Some people have now focused on Homing Sliver and Virulent Sliver as improvements to Wafo-Tapa’s maindeck. Summoner’s Pact is not unheard of, as is Screeching Sliver or some other non-attacking win condition. At the PTQ there was a buzz after round 1 about the Sliver deck that used Glittering Wish to find Coalition Victory for the win (no, I don’t know who it was or how he finished in the event). Here’s Wafo-Tapa’s list, as a starting point:
Creatures (24)
- 1 Mystic Snake
- 4 Wall of Roots
- 4 Gemhide Sliver
- 1 Might Sliver
- 3 Telekinetic Sliver
- 1 Darkheart Sliver
- 4 Dormant Sliver
- 3 Frenetic Sliver
- 1 Reflex Sliver
- 1 Whitemane Lion
- 1 Venser, Shaper Savant
Lands (22)
Spells (14)
I hate Whitemane Lion and Take Possession in this deck, but I recognize their usefulness. Trying to chain Wild Pair activations via Venser bouncing himself is very awkward; it’s cheaper and easier to use the Lion. As for Take Possession, I can’t imagine a bigger blowout than having it in a mirror where the opponent doesn’t.
A lot of what I wrote in Grow a Pair still applies. You are a slight favorite against Teachings.dec, and the degree by which you are favored grows as the number of Draining Whelks at their disposal shrinks. You have to try and overwhelm Mono-Red decks with Dormant Sliver. You pretty much scoop the cards to White Aggro*.
Of course, there is a drawback, and its name is mana. Sometimes you just get such an ugly mana draw that a little bit of disruption completely throws you off your game. Napoli is again the example: in the Top 8 he got paired against one of the Sliver decks he feared. I missed the match, but according to onlookers all Phil needed to do was draw Sunlance for the Telekinetic Sliver… his opponent had no outs to fliers. You get draws like that sometimes. Slivers are like women: if they loved you 100% every second of the day, then the relationship would be no fun.
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* Although I did see one nice game online, where the White player at twenty life attacked with everyone, and the Sliver player desperately blocked with all but his Firewake Sliver to stay alive. Then, on his own turn the Sliver player used three (!) copies of Summoner’s Pact to find Virulent Slivers, and attacked for 12 poison counters and the win.