Sorry, folks. There are no decklists in this article. Well, okay, there are some decks at the end, but I aimed to keep them simple so I doubt they’re going to revolutionize the format.
Frankly, if you haven’t decided on a decklist by now, you probably shouldn’t attend a tournament this weekend. Most people have a pretty good idea about what they’re playing, or (as in my case) they have it narrowed down to a deck or three and they just need to choose. So instead of just ordering you to play Awesome Deck #1, #2, or #3, I offer you the lessons you really need to know for this Saturday:
1) You’d better be able to beat Gruul. Yes, I’m aware that Dragonstorm makes the most Premier Event Top 8s on Magic Online, and I’m aware that StarCityGames.com is sold out of copies of Bridge From Below, and I’m sure that Insert Deck Name Here is gaining steam and no one is talking about it. I don’t care. If you don’t beat Gruul, I hope you have plans for the early afternoon.
Tip from Captain Obvious: being able to beat the best aggro deck in the format is always a good thing. However, some formats it’s not clear what the best aggro deck is, or even if there is a great aggro deck. Last year, for example, I would not have said that the number-one rule for Regionals was to beat Zoo or Ghost Husk; I would have been more concerned about Heartbeat of Spring or U/R Urzatron. This year we will not be encountering one of those formats. Gruul is quite good and everyone knows that it is quite good. It can make the Top 8 anywhere, from Friday Night Magic to the Magic Online Premiere Events to the Grand Prix.
Look at Naoki Shimuzu’s tournament report from Kyoto. I have his deck built on Magic Online, and I haven’t done badly with it; it struggles against Dragonstorm but whips the pants off of Gruul and most other creature decks. In six rounds of Day 2 play, Shimuzu faced four such decks and went 2-1-1 in those matches, drawing once with Project X (he had the Brine Elemental lock, but his opponent achieved infinite life) and losing to a G/W deck because Wall of Roots can’t block Skarrgan Pit-Skulk.
Add to this the fact that if the Dredge deck really does turn out in force, Gruul seems to be the best deck to play against it. Gruul presents a quick clock and can use its burn to remove the early Magus of the Bazaar or Drowned Rusalka that might threaten a turn 3 kill. So, if you want to metagame against both Dredge and the decks that beat Dredge, being able to beat Gruul seems like a fine strategy.
2) You are losing to more than a few decks in the room. Deal with it. By definition, a wide-open format features a lot of decks that can win more than a few matches against the rest of the format. Over the last few weeks on Magic Online, I’ve never seen a format as wide-open as this one: it was literally impossible to predict what decks I would see when I watched the final rounds of a Premiere Event replay. The rise of the Dredge decks might obviate some of those strategies, but I’m not really sure how many because they can all add Tormod’s Crypt to their sideboards, after all.
So it’s entirely possible – I would even say probable – that those of you who don’t qualify are going to get knocked out of Regionals by a deck you didn’t plan for and were hoping to avoid. You might think it’s a bad deck, I might think it’s a bad deck, everyone in the friggin’ room except the guy across the table might think it’s a bad deck. Doesn’t really matter if he beats you.
Consider, for example, the mono-Black discard deck based around The Rack. If you’re not familiar with it, Nick Eisel had a fine Premium article about it yesterday. Prior to the introduction of Future Sight on Magic Online, it seemed like there was at least one copy of this deck per 8-man queue. I was playing it so often that at one point a couple weeks back I had this PM chat with Fearless Leader:
Craig: I HATE DRAGONSTORM
Me: I HATE THE MONO BLACK RACK
The conventional wisdom on the Rack deck is that it beats many types of control, and has decent game against both kinds of U/R combo, but that it folds to just about any beatdown you could name. Personally, I would never play it for that reason – see rule 1 – but that doesn’t mean it won’t be out there. Any one of us could well lose to it.
You can’t plan for every deck out there; it’s a bad idea even to try. You plan for the format you are expecting to see, and expect that the fringe decks will stay on the fringe. This year, though, be aware that just about every deck out there loses to something, and the “something” decks out there seems to be seeing more play than in the past. In the forums of Richard Feldman tournament report from Grand Prix: Columbus, Jeroen Remie said that you need to be “insanely blessed” to win or Top 8 a tournament, and it’s definitely true. Matchups will be one of the ways you are lucky or unlucky this weekend.
3) It’s all about consistency. A reader IM’ed me late last week, asking me about which deck I thought to be “best” to play at Regionals. In response, I told him this story:
You’ll recall that U.S. Regionals two years ago was also a tournament where a third set in a block made its debut (Saviors of Kamigawa in that case). Tooth and Nail and Arc-Slogger Red appeared to be the dominant decks going in, with Beacon of Creation and Gifts Ungiven decks not far behind. Mono Blue Urzatron was on a rise similar to the one experienced by Bridge From Below this year; it didn’t dominate Regionals as much as expected but it would peak a few months later when Antonino De Rosa won U.S. Nationals with it.
If you wanted to play the best aggro deck in the format, you had a problem: most of the Red decks at the time ran too much mana. They often ran 20 or so lands, a full set of Chrome Moxen to enable Slith Firewalker on turn 1, and 3 or 4 Seething Songs to enable Arc-Slogger on turn 3. Thus, these decks were running upwards of 28 cards that didn’t actually burn the opponent. If you untapped with Arc-Slogger in play you were almost certain to win, but if the opponent was able to get rid of him then it was easy to run out of gas while you drew mana cards and your opponent drew something relevant.
So, a group of Maryland players including John Moore and Tommy Ashton came up with this solution: cut Arc-Slogger. They replaced it with Jinxed Choker, which served a similar role to Cursed Scroll in older Red decks: 2 damage per turn to finish off in the late game. They were able to cut down to 19 land and four Moxes as a result, filling the freed-up slots with maindeck Shatter to blow up opposing Moxen and equipments. You can see their deck list in this article, where I review the deck’s matchup with Tooth and Nail. Tommy and John both made Top 8, and probably would have both qualified if they had not had to play each other in the round of 8 (Tommy won).
Also note that you could solve the Arc Slogger versus Cheap Creatures problem in the opposite direction. Mike Flores cut the Sliths, Frostlings, and other cheap creatures; he replaced them with Sensei’s Divining Tops, Shrapnel Blasts, and more burn. Arc-Slogger and Solemn Simulacrum were the only creatures in his deck. You can find the deck, which Mike called “Kuroda-Style Red” and which most other people called “Flores Red” in this article. His deck qualified a couple of people – although not Mike himself, because he did not learn the Lessons From Bob Maher – and placed Josh Ravitz in the Top 8 of U.S. Nationals.
Here’s my point: it’s not about having the “best” deck, it’s about having the most consistently good deck against the format. Going into that Regionals, most people would have said Tooth and Nail was the best deck, or possibly a deck with both Slith Firewalker and Arc-Slogger in it. However, could those decks consistently beat the format over the course of 7-9 rounds, when less popular decks like Mono-Blue, Beacon Green, and Mono-Black Rats were considered? Maybe not. In the cases of Tommy, John, and Mike, they could have played a stock Red deck, but would it be consistent enough against the mirror? Again, maybe not. Their own builds of the Red deck, tuned for extra consistency, gave better chances to accomplish their goals. You should strive for the same consistency.
With that in mind, here are a couple decks to consider this weekend:
Creatures (23)
Lands (22)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
I took Peter Akeley’s deck from the StarCityGames.com $1,000 tournament, and made certain changes to correct things that I just don’t like in a lot of Gruul lists I see. Llanowar Elves, for example, just don’t impress me that much. I’ll happily wait until turn 3 for my Call of the Herd if it means I don’t have to play a guy who doesn’t burn the opponent and dies to everything. Giant Solifuge is moved to the sideboard for the same “dies to everything” reason; it comes in (along with the Forest, to make sure you can cast it) against opposing control decks to punish them for tapping low to Wrath your squad.
As for the sideboard, I just don’t know about the Leylines of Lifeforce that I see in many Gruul boards. Obviously it’s useful to have a Solifuge be uncounterable against Blue decks, but … bringing in four cards that don’t affect the board or deal any damage? That goes against everything I have ever learned about Red decks, and I think Patrick Sullivan would find some way to reach through the Internet connection and strangle me if he ever caught me doing it. (By the way, I think Sullivan’s Red deck is twenty times better than either Akeley’s list or this one, but it’s not mine to give.)
Creatures (11)
Lands (23)
Spells (26)
- 3 Persecute
- 4 Compulsive Research
- 4 Dimir Signet
- 2 Faith's Fetters
- 4 Remand
- 3 Castigate
- 2 Orzhov Signet
- 4 Damnation
Sideboard
I don’t have much new to say about Solar Flare that wasn’t already said in Ben Peebles-Mundy’s excellent Solar Flare primer last week; in fact you’ll note that my sideboard is exactly identical to his. (I’m sorry if you don’t have premium to read his article, but you should have some reason to actually want premium, right?) As I mentioned in the forums of that article, I prefer to have Compulsive Research over any other card drawing spell because a typical Solar Flare curve is “turn 2 Signet, turn 3 Research/Hussar and play a bounceland.” I also like to have Remand available because sometimes you just have to say “no” to your opponent’s plays; Delay might also be good, but in that case you don’t get the option of Remanding a card, and then Persecuting the color of that card.
The reason you run Solar Flare is simple: you’re running most of the best creatures, removal, disruption, and card drawing in the format. As Ben mentioned, you give up game 1 to Dredge, but you can bring in lots of hate against them and you have a very solid game plan against the remainder of the format. You clean up against Gruul with your Wrath effects, Faith’s Fetters, Circles of Protection, and the near-unstoppable Skeletal Vampire in the late game.
If you like Solar Flare but are concerned about playing against Dralnu and other countermagic-heavy decks, then you could alternatively run the U/B/R Go-Sis deck designed by Mike Flores. Go-Sis plays just like Solar Flare but is stronger against countermagic-heavy decks because the “nuke your lands with Detritivore” and “transmute Tolaria West for Urza’s Factory” plays are not counterable. Like Solar Flare, Flores’s deck has problems in game 1 with Dredge, but like Solar Flare it can easily run four Leyline of the Void and four Extirpate after sideboarding (and it runs Mystical Teachings to find the Extirpate).
Yeah, like I said at the beginning of this article, neither of these decks has any super-original ideas that are going to revolutionize the format. However, if you’re reading this column I figure you are the sort of person who will have had such ideas on your own already. Hopefully, the lessons from the pre-decklist part of this article will be much more helpful for you.
This article written while reading the Eisner Award-winning “All-Star Superman Vol. 1,” written by Grant Morrison with art from Frank Quitely. I have always been a Morrison fan, but after reading this unbelievably good series – which I had avoided the last couple weeks because I hate Superman, so the fact that I’m even reading it should tell you how good it is – I think he might well be the greatest comic author alive today.
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