I wish I had something constructive to say to you about the current PTQ format, but I like Two-Headed Giant less and less the more I play it. At the Grand Prix trial last weekend, our team got a three-for-one off Reality Acid plus Dream Stalker, and assembled 18 points of attacking damage per turn against an empty board … only to lose to the sequence Pyrohemia – Dawn Charm – Midnight Charm – Disintegrate. A loss like that will be enough to put one off of a format for awhile.
Instead, I thought I’d mix it up, bringing you a little bit of everything that I’ve been thinking about Magic recently.
Calendar
The day after my last PTQ of the Extended season, I got to taking notes about what Constructed formats I need to be ready for next. I guess most of this is only of use for U.S. readers; sorry, foreign folks.
April 20-22 – Pro Tour: Yokohama. The end of the PT is the unofficial start of the Time Spiral Block Constructed PTQ season, but the “real” season probably won’t be in full swing until after…
May 4 – Release of Future Sight. It will become legal in Standard and Block Constructed on May 20. This Would Be A Shameless Plug, If They Were Paying Me: I always use MTG Salvation for my spoiler info.
May 12-27 – City Championships finals will be happening on certain dates during this period. I mention this because the exact date of U.S. Regionals is not available on the Wizards web site. Presumably Regionals will be early in June or July, since City Champs (which award byes to Regionals) end the last weekend of May, late June is occupied with Grand Prix and the Pro Tour, and Nationals are on the last weekend of July.
May 19-20 – Grand Prix: Columbus. I’m not all that hot for Legacy, but I’m sure that format’s fanatics would be sticking pins in mm_young-shaped voodoo dolls if I didn’t point this one out. It’s worth mentioning that this GP is on the same weekend as the Block Constructed GP: Strasbourg. That makes me a little curious about what attendance at Columbus will be, since it’s probably easier for most non-U.S. pros to get to Strasbourg.
June 23-24 – Grand Prix: Montreal. I’ve never actually traveled outside the U.S. before; I came closest at GP: Detroit a couple of years ago, when the hotel window looked out over the border to Canada. This Block Constructed event might be my first chance.
June 29-July 1 – Pro Tour: San Diego. I like how Two-Headed Giant State Champs was the start of the 2HG PTQ season. If other players agree, this may well become an annual thing.
July 27-29 – U.S. Nationals in Baltimore, Maryland. As far as U.S. Nationals locations go, you could do a lot worse than downtown Baltimore. Camden Yards – home of the Baltimore Orioles and one of the most beautiful baseball stadiums in the world – is right across the street, and as a result there are some decent sports bars and restaurants in the area.
On the Magic side, it’s unlikely that Tenth Edition will be legal for the Constructed portion of this event. The current Floor Rules do not have a date listed for when XE becomes legal, but when Ninth Edition was released it did not become legal until Grand Prix: Atlanta on Labor Day weekend. The release of XE will probably follow the same pattern as the release of Coldsnap: it will come out in July, such that there may even be an XXX draft at Nationals (maybe Dave Williams will be involved*), but it won’t be Constructed-legal until August.
Block Constructed: You Rebel Scum
The thing about Block is that the countermagic is just straight-up awful. Sure, Dismal Failure and Mystic Snake have some nice effects attached to their countering, but they cost four! By the time the opponent is able to play those cards, I’d like to be putting my creatures into play in uncounterable fashion…
Creatures (28)
- 2 Defiant Vanguard
- 4 Amrou Scout
- 4 Amrou Seekers
- 4 Duskrider Peregrine
- 4 Knight of the Holy Nimbus
- 4 Aven Riftwatcher
- 1 Big Game Hunter
- 4 Blightspeaker
- 1 Rathi Trapper
Lands (24)
Spells (8)
The intention is to replicate Kai’s winning deck from PT: Chicago, which you can find here; reproducing his mana curve led to the seemingly random two-ofs and one-ofs in my deck. However, there necessarily had to be some differences, since 26 land wasn’t quite necessary here (Kai had Dust Bowl) and there is no card in Time Spiral Block that is quite as good as Parallax Wave. Considering that this deck isn’t quite as good if it doesn’t have four mana up, it may be that Thunder Totem should replace Duskrider Peregrine in the build.
While we’re mentioning Rebel decks from the past, it’s worth mentioning Kamiel Cornelissen’s W/U Counter-Rebel deck that Kai defeated in the finals of that same event. It’s possible to replicate this deck also, with four each of Amrou Scout and Defiant Vanguard as the searchers and Cancel / Mana Tithe as the counters.
It’s all just food for thought here, as I’ve been playing strictly Extended for the last month or two, but every good deck was an untested idea once.
Standard: It’s Not All Dralnu
I haven’t played Standard in some time, in part because I’ve been on Magic Online a lot (where a lack of Ravnica Block dual lands is annoying), and in part because what little Standard I have played has been tainted with beatings received at the hands of the Dralnu deck. If you’ve played any competitive Standard over the last few months, then you know the one I mean, with the pre-Planar Chaos version described by Frank Karsten here.
I’ve played more than a few slow Blue control decks in my time, and had fun doing so, and even I think that this deck is a notorious fun killer. Your opponent just sits there and does nothing until he plays Teferi. After that point, you transform into a little kid playing Magic with your cheaty-faced older brother. He does stuff during your turn that doesn’t seem like it’s legal, and when you turn around and try to do the same to him he tells you that you aren’t allowed to do it. Nobody likes being cheated, right? Well, this deck is legalized cheating.
Fortunately, there are answers. Prior to the introduction of Planar Chaos, one such answer was to play a bunch of unblockable, untargetable Green men and target them with Stonewood Invocation and Might of Old Krosa, but Damnation has shot some holes in that plan. I’m not saying the mono-Green beatdown decks are bad, I’m just saying that I don’t really want to play them against Damnation.
A second plan is the ultimate in uncounterability: the storm mechanic. I’ve heard rumblings about the mono-Red storm deck on Magic Online for some time:
Spells (36)
This list is just my rough pass at how I’d build the deck; I’ve seen other lists with cards like Keldon Halberdier, Ornithopter, and others. The sideboard would start with four Blood Moon and go from there. The Gargadons might seem a little bizarre, but they do enable some pretty sick plays. I recently saw a game where the following happened on the play:
Turn 1: Mountain, suspend Rift Bolt.
Turn 2: Rift Bolt resolves, Mountain, suspend Gargadon, Rite of Flame, Rite of Flame, Empty the Warrens for eight tokens, sacrifice the entire board to play Gargadon, attack for nine.
Of course, that’s a pretty specific draw: it required the storm player to have two Mountain, two Rite of Flame, Rift Bolt, Empty the Warrens, Gargadon, and a blank in his first eight cards. I did some quick-and-dirty math, which suggests that the decklist above will generate that hand approximately 0.1% of the time. Without Blue hand-fixing spells like Sleight of Hand or Telling Time, this deck doesn’t have much of a plan for the other 99.9%, and you can’t wait around because if Teferi comes down he turns a large chunk of your deck into blank cards.
For this reason, Alex Majlaton suggested that a better way to play this strategy is to take the Dragonstorm deck that won Worlds last year, and simply replace the Dragonstorms and dragons with some package of Empty the Warrens, Grapeshot, and Ignite Memories. You lose the sick Gargadon-Empty the Warrens interaction with that build, but considering how easy it is to simply swarm someone with Empty the Warrens tokens, I don’t think that’s a big loss.
Between Desert and Serrated Arrows, just about any deck out there can remove creatures of any color at any time, and the addition of Damnation to the format seems to have put beatdown strategies in a serious hole. Nonetheless, I have been experimenting with the following deck for my local City Champs Standard events. It’s based on an idea that Sean McKeown pioneered in the pre-Planar Chaos format for his own City Champs:
Creatures (24)
- 4 Shadow Guildmage
- 4 Scorched Rusalka
- 4 Rakdos Guildmage
- 4 Greater Gargadon
- 4 Mogg War Marshal
- 4 Keldon Marauders
Lands (22)
Spells (14)
Sideboard
This is not as much a beatdown deck, as it’s a combo deck with burn in it. This deck is full of all sorts of mini-combos that are intended to either (a) bleed the opponent to death, or (b) resolve a Gargadon to smash them over the head. Keldon Marauders are a good example: personally I despise them, especially in Limited. They don’t stay in play long enough for the 3/3 body to be relevant beatdown. In this deck, however, they’re guaranteed to be a Shock if they resolve … if they connect even once they become a Shrapnel Blast … you can sacrifice them to Scorched Rusalka for another point … and then recur them with Shadow Guildmage or Rise / Fall to start the whole process over again.
In the meantime, Gargadon is a useful threat that lets you commit as many creatures to the board that you like, and still have a Plan B in case of Damnation. Meanwhile, you have Damnations in your own board for the mono-Green control matchup, which can be painful in game 1 since you have no outs to a Silhana Ledgewalker wearing a large Blanchwood Armor.
It was my full intention to take this deck to a City Champs event last Sunday, and devote this entire article to the results, be they good or bad. Sadly, real life intervened, as a plumbing disaster in my apartment ensured that I would be staying home on Sunday – and, truth be told, with Saturday being St. Patrick’s Day I might not have been able to get out of bed on Sunday anyway. So I hope you’ve enjoyed the dash of potpourri I’ve given you instead.
This article written while watching Kansas destroy Kentucky in the NCA basketball championship tournament. Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
mmyoungster at aim dot com
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*Before you say, “he’s just jealous” … actually, yeah, I am.