So, judging from the contents of my inbox, U.S. Regionals is right around the corner. I mean, if you’re reading this column, you surely already knew that. I’m just saying that the interest in what writers think about decks always seems to go up at this time of year.
Actually, I’m not too much for original design. My States Top 8 came with an original Greater Good deck, but my build was based on someone else’s take on the same idea. A couple of Extended seasons back, I had a great run with Goblins (PTQ Top 4, multiple Grand Prix Trial Top 4s) where I innovated with Goblin Cohort, but let’s face it, all of the Goblin decks of the Aether Vial era were otherwise pretty much the same. Another PTQ Top 4 came with a 74-card replica of a U/G Control decklist with which Brad Taulbee had already won a PTQ.
Having said that, I do think those results indicate that I know a thing or two about picking the right deck at the right time. Had I played the Greater Good deck a few weeks later, after the word had gotten out about Mike Flores Mono-Blue, my results would have no doubt been worse. The Blue/Green deck in Mirrodin Block came at the end of the season, and playing it at the beginning of the season, when many players were devoted to the U/G Tooth and Nail deck, would have been dicey. In my experience, Constructed Magic is not so much about having “the best deck,” it’s about having the right deck at the right time.
The Right Deck
Used to be, the issue of the “right” deck was pretty clear-cut. Older formats were defined by cards so powerful that the “right” deck either played them, or was designed specifically to beat them. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine that any of us played in formats where Necropotence was legal and we didn’t play it.
(Aside: You did, though, didn’t you? You played White Weenie or Sligh or Stasis or something. I did it too. There’s no shame in it. Admitting to yourself is always the first step.)
As you may have read if you’re a fan of Mark Rosewater and Aaron Forsythe columns over at MagictheGathering.com, this is changing. Moreover, it is changing as a direct result of a concerted effort by Magic’s Design and Development teams. They are attempting to design fewer format-defining cards, so that the resulting formats become full of so-called “Tier 2” decks, rather than being owned by a few so-called “Tier 1” decks.
(Another aside: I actually hate it when people use the phrases “Tier 1” and “Tier 2” to classify decks in a format. Then you’ll go to a store or to Magic Online and hear people arguing about which tier some guy’s favorite deck belongs in, Tier 1 or Tier 2. Then, if they can’t agree, they’ll say it’s “Tier 1.5” or some more obscure decimal. Look, nobody cares. All that will matter a month from now is if your deck can win five or six rounds in a row, draw once or twice, and then win one more for all the marbles. The “tier” discussion is just a lame shorthand for claiming you have some odds of doing that.)
For the most part, the Wizards have succeeded in their goal. Yes, Time Spiral Block Constructed might be defined a little too much by Mystical Teachings and Teferi, but Standard has shown that ports of those decks (Dralnu du Louvre, U/B “Pickles” combo) are not overwhelming. Occasionally on Magic Online I’ll have a match where Dragonstorm leaves me thinking it’s a little too good … but that’s more of a result of an intersection of several cards which might not have seemed Constructed-playable in design, including Dragonstorm itself.
So you have a bunch of pretty-good cards in the format, which together give you a bunch of pretty-good decks. No one deck solidly beats all others; there’s at least one pretty-good deck that foils you. Thus, you can’t let any one deck or card influence your thinking too much. There are and always will be freak cases – Umezawa’s Jitte, say – but for the most part simply knowing that there is a card out there that is bad (or good) to see across the table should not drive you crazy. It’s only one card, and in a wide-open format you cannot be expected to see it too often.
A classic example is Circle of Protection: Red. There will surely be some games where your opponent boards it in versus your Red deck and beats you, and those games will suck. However, unless you are expecting a vast majority of decks in the format to be White, you can’t live in fear of it. Your Red deck may be a fine choice for the format, regardless of the Circle’s existence or not.
It’s only when a number of cards accumulate, all of which are bad news for your deck, that you have reason to be concerned. For this reason, another thing to keep in mind is that you can’t let yourself get emotionally attached to your creation – or, more accurately, if you are emotionally attached then you have to be ready for bad things to happen.
Some people only play certain types of decks, or certain colors; some of the people who do this might even write for StarCityGames.com, and appear on Tuesday mornings. There’s nothing wrong with that… except the format is not always going to be kind to your favorite color or strategy. That’s just the way formats are; the colors are almost never on equal footing, and the creatures are not always as good as the counterspells (before it seems like I’m slamming Jamie, I should note that the reverse can be true also; the most recent Extended is an example of when the counterspells seemed outclassed by the creatures and the combo decks).
At the end of the day, your deck is the right deck if it has a reasonable goal against the format. That’s the question I always ask myself when I first see a deck: What’s the goal? So you might ask, how does one find out if a goal is “reasonable”? Testing, obv. In the 8-man queues on Magic Online the other day, I played against somebody who was running a Stuffy Doll / Shivan Meteor deck. It seems to me that is a pretty silly goal to try to accomplish against this format, but I did not mock my opponent: testing like that against people like me is the only way he’ll find out for himself if it works or not (Actually, I won a very close match, and I felt like I should have lost. So maybe it’s not that ridiculous a goal after all).
The Right Time
"I’ll tell you what’ll happen to [Randy] Moss early on in New England," [an NFL scout] said. "Two or three safeties, early in the season, are going to come and try to knock Moss’ block off. He doesn’t like to get hit, you know.”
From Monday Morning Quarterback on SportsIllustrated.com
Even if your deck can work against many of the matchups out there, it might not work right now. The format could have shifted against you, and most decks built around non-broken cards are like Randy Moss: they get a lot less effective when everybody is trying to pound them into last week.
Often, the shift will happen because of major tournaments. As Dralnu du Louvre first began to assert itself as a strong Standard deck on Magic Online, a mono-Black discard deck based around The Rack rose up to match it. Take it from someone who has played the matchup from the Dralnu side… the mono-Black deck was the perfect choice to destroy Dralnu. I actually sold my online Watery Graves because that Black deck was so good (well, that and I needed the tickets). If you look at Frank Karsten’s column two weeks ago, however, you’ll see that the mono-Black deck has gone back to being just another player in the format, with just 2% of Premiere Event Top 8s.
Determining if your deck is coming at the right time is really just a case of figuring out the format. That’s the second thing I ask myself when I see a deck: what features of the format does it take advantage of? Formats are just like decks and players: even the toughest ones have soft spots where they can be attacked.
Conversely, if you are playing a well-known deck then you have to be concerned that the format might be out to get you. Like I said before, one problem card or matchup isn’t much, but even a powerhouse deck can be felled if the hate comes out of the woodwork at the wrong time. That’s the third thing I ask myself when I see a deck: what cards is it afraid of? Then, if I expect those cards to turn out in large numbers, I may not want to run it.
For example, a reader recently contacted me with an idea for a Blue control deck, rather like Dralnu du Louvre but with a combo finish supported by Pact of Negation. Sounds good; however, the format is already geared up to go after Dralnu-type decks. Dragonstorm, Gruul, even Angelfire: none of them are afraid of a deck that wants to counter everything and has only Repeal for board control. That’s not to say the deck can’t work; I think it’s a fine idea and if it were tested well enough I could see somebody qualifying with it. I just don’t know if I would want to attack the format that way next month.
Deck Selection in Action
Given all of this, let’s look at some of my favorite examples of the right deck at the right time:
Dump Truck
Ben Rubin, 1st Place GP: Anaheim 2003
2 Underground River
2 Skycloud Expanse
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Island
2 Plains
2 Swamp
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Meddling Mage
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
3 Exalted Angel
4 Duress
3 Seal of Cleansing
4 Brainstorm
1 Smother
3 Diabolic Edict
1 Disenchant
3 Deep Analysis
4 Vindicate
2 Peek
1 Tsabo’s Web
Sideboard:
1 Energy Flux
1 Upheaval
1 Lobotomy
1 Damping Matrix
4 Chill
3 Chrome Mox
3 Vampiric Tutor
1 Sphere of Resistance
You might argue that this was more of a case of original design than picking the right deck, and I wouldn’t argue with you. However, it seems to me that so-called Finkula decks have been in Extended as long as the Sixth Edition rules, usually with the help of Vindicate and Duress. If there was one format in which no one would have expected Jon and Chris to make an appearance, it was Grand Prix: Anaheim, which came a few weeks before the banning of Tinker. All of the turn 1 and turn 2 kills of Pro Tour: New Orleans were legal in this tournament, and all of the non-Tinker decks had maindeck artifact hate.
What is the goal? Disrupt the Tinker decks while not giving up too much against, say, Red Deck Wins or Psychatog (which put two players each into the Anaheim Top 8).
What features of the format does it take advantage of? Its static nature. The New Orleans Top 8 had twenty-eight copies of Tinker, and it seemed like the only real issue was which artifacts one ought to be Tinkering up. The anti-Tinker deck of choice for many was Red Deck Wins, which placed ninth in New Orleans. Some others tried the Rock, but most believed that a board control deck had a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping Tinker under wraps. That made it was the perfect time to choose a board control deck: a judicious balance all-around good cards like Vindicate and specific silver bullets like Tsabo’s Web.
What cards is it afraid of? The unknown ones. If the format were a little more wide open, the maindeck would look terrible. For example, there’s precious little creature hate in there, so if a Goblin deck like the ones in today’s Extended format were around, that could be a big problem. However, Rubin knew that decks like those were unlikely to show up, and if they did show up they likely would not last long against the Tinker decks. Thus, his Dump Truck turned out to be a high-octane vehicle.
G/W Control
Brian Kibler, 6th place, U.S. Nationals 2004
12 Plains
3 Forest
4 Elfhame Palace
4 Temple of the False God
4 Windswept Heath
4 Eternal Dragon
4 Wrath of God
4 Akroma’s Vengeance
4 Wing Shards
4 Pulse of the Fields
4 Renewed Faith
4 Oxidize
3 Decree of Justice
2 Gilded Light
Sideboard:
2 Mindslaver
2 Reap and Sow
2 Darksteel Colossus
2 Duplicant
3 Tooth and Nail
4 Purge
(Yet another aside: I don’t know Kibler, but I have LiveJournal friends who have friended him, so I usually see it when he updates his journal. If you’re reading, Brian: my condolences.)
The Green/White deck was not completely unknown: both Mike Flores and then-StarCityGames.com editor Ted Knutson played it at Regionals that year, and wrote about it later. However, it was not considered a serious player in the format, which allowed Kibler to prey on unsuspecting aggro decks at U.S. Nationals. My friend Rick Rust won a qualifier with a similar build; Bill Stead played the same maindeck as Rick’s with a revised sideboard to a Top 2 finish in Nationals.
What is the goal? Crush Goblins and Affinity, the consensus two best decks of the format. It did so without much problem, although Kibler lost to William Postlethewait’s Affinity deck in the quarterfinals.
What features of the format does it take advantage of? Again, a static nature brought about by a broken card. This was the last tournament in the world where Skullclamp would be legal, and many Regionals that year featured twenty-four or more copies of the card in their Top 8. The end result: a beatdown format, creatures all the way and not a counterspell to be seen.
What cards is it afraid of? Turn 1 Wirewood Symbiote. I also played the deck in a qualifier, but the so-called Elf and Nail deck destroyed me. Elf and Nail simply drew more cards than the G/W deck could possibly keep up with, and then finished the game with Darksteel Colossus, which the G/W deck could not permanently remove. However, the matchup is not completely unwinnable; Rick beat an Elf and Nail deck in his qualifier run. So, this is a classic example of trying to prey on most of the format, even if there is one deck that poses a problem for you.
The Rock
Ernie Marchesano, 1st Place Grand Prix: Seattle 2005
3 Treetop Village
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
4 Llanowar Wastes
8 Forest
6 Swamp
1 Dust Bowl
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Sakura-Tribe Elder
3 Ravenous Baloth
3 Eternal Witness
2 Troll Ascetic
4 Wall of Blossoms
1 Withered Wretch
3 Vampiric Tutor
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Recurring Nightmare
1 Cranial Extraction
4 Pernicious Deed
3 Smother
1 Chainer’s Edict
Sideboard:
3 Duress
3 Naturalize
4 Engineered Plague
1 Rude Awakening
2 Chainer’s Edict
2 Coffin Purge
I hate on the Rock so often, I guess I need to give it respect when it comes through at the right time. Seattle came about a month after GP: Boston, whose Top 8 suggested that it was GP: Combo. Masashi Oiso won Boston with Aluren, he defeated Lucas Glavin’s innovative Cephalid Life deck in the finals, Osyp Lebedowicz went undefeated in the swiss with Mind’s Desire, and this tournament was the coming-out party for the so-called Teen Titans combo (Goblin Welder + artifact lands + Sundering Titan).
What is the goal? Beat the real format. Yes, the Top 8 of Boston was combo-heavy, but the event itself had a lot of Goblins, Red Deck Wins, Psychatog, lots of random tricky decks… it was a typical format, in other words. That Extended was every bit as wide open as the current Standard, with a lot of decks at the top and several more lesser-known decks (Gro-a-tog, Opposition, Enchantress, etc.) which, on a good day, could take out the well-known archetypes.
What features of the format does it take advantage of? It has a shot against just about anybody. The Rock may not blow out anyone (which is why people like myself don’t like it much), but it will rarely lose in a blowout. Older versions of the Rock, with Vampiric Tutor, were especially good in this area: the popular saying at the time was that Rock goes 50% against just about everything. In a wide-open format, that’s not a bad thing to have.
What cards is it afraid of? This is an important fact about The Rock: there just aren’t many cards it is afraid of. In this particular case, Cephalid Life was a bit scary for the Rock because it could go off very fast, but that’s a nut draw: if the Life deck didn’t draw the nuts, Pernicious Deed could easily decide the game.
Magnivore
Mark Young, 2006
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Eye of Nowhere
3 Pyroclasm
4 Remand
4 Stone Rain
4 Compulsive Research
4 Demolish
3 Tidings
3 Wildfire
3 Magnivore
7 Island
7 Mountain
4 Steam Vents
4 Shivan Reef
2 Ghost Quarter
The sideboard has been lost to the mists of time, but it was not too much different than most Magnivore boards of the time (Volcanic Hammer and Steamcore Weirds to beat aggro, Genju of the Spires for control, etc).
This is a case of the road not taken. I had Magnivore all sleeved up and ready to go the night before U.S. Nationals qualifiers last year. I had tons of practice, and I was whipping Zoo like a mule. I was ready. Then I heard about this mysterious three-color deck that Kenji Tsumura had been using to good effect on Magic Online, which later became known as Solar Flare. I had no idea how well Magnivore did against this mystery deck, but word on the street was that many people would be switching to R/U Wildfire Tron because of it. I played ten games against Tommy Ashton’s Tron deck and he thoroughly smashed me, which sent me into a tailspin. I abandoned the Vore deck, loaned the cards to someone else, and was thoroughly trounced in the qualifiers with a U/B Reanimator-type deck that I had barely tested.
What is the goal? The reality was that the Magnivore deck was just fine against Solar Flare, and would have been a perfectly safe choice against the format I faced in the qualifiers (Heartbeat of Spring, three-color Urzatron, Solar Flare, and all three-color beatdown decks). Rather like the Rock, Magnivore rarely lost in a blowout, plus it had the advantage that it could blow people out with its hot Eye of Nowhere draws on the play.
What features of the format does it take advantage of? Not many hard-core control decks. There were no Dralnu-type decks in the format at the time, filled with countermagic and perfectly capable of stopping every Magnivore I might throw onto the table. Testing suggested I could force down a Vore against just about every deck in the format.
What cards is it afraid of? As I mentioned, I got beaten pretty badly by Wildfire Tron; they ran a lot of signets and their creatures were near impossible to remove. Even then, the matchup can be won if you win the die roll and you have a hot draw, so I didn’t need to trash my practice over one bad string of playtest games.
That bears repeating: I didn’t need to trash my practice! Switching decks at the last minute is a terrible idea and I would recommend that all readers avoid it. You’ll occasionally hear a story about how it worked out well for someone, but on average it leads to disaster. I learned that one the hard way.
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