After reading the forums last time, I was quite surprised by the amount of useful constructive criticism that I found. A lot of the ideas that you have suggested have been tested, and the Green/Black decklist has changed a bit, but not by large amounts. I feel that Green/Black is going to be a heavy hitter the current format and quite possibly into the Regionals format, which will add Saviors of Kamigawa to the field as well. Sadly, I’m not really here to discuss my favorite deck in the Standard format, but a new version of an old favorite that has stormed the Kentucky Magic scene.
Matt Pearce, the player who piloted this deck to a Top 8 finish in the monthly 1000 dollar tournament at Fun*Asylum in Richmond, Kentucky is a college student who has a stronger than average Limited game, but a really weak Constructed game. Now, don’t get me wrong, Matt is one fine player – very good at the decks that contain forty cards – but when it comes to actual playing of Constructed formats, he often lacks the cards to remain competitive in the Constructed scene. This, along with his college studies is a hindrance to his Magic playing. Enter Magic the Gathering Online. Now Matt can easily acquire all the cards that his little heart desires while making sure that his game stays as strong as an ox. He started to play around a bit for this event in Richmond on the popular Magic software, and come upon this little diddy of a deck.
Proteus Stuff.dec
1 Darksteel Colossus
4 Condescend
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Hinder
3 Echoing Truth
1 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Serum Visions
2 Fabricate
3 Guardian Idol
3 Proteus Staff
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Chrome Mox
2 Genju of the Falls
3 Mana Leak
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
20 Island
Sideboard
1 Sundering Titan
2 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Acquire
1 Hinder
4 Last Word
1 Scrabbling Claws
2 Quash
1 Echoing Truth
By Matt’s own admission the sideboard is a pile of complete utter garbage. He had a bit of a problem acquiring some of the cards at the last minute from the shop or the players there, so he just kinda had to run with what he says is “fourteen cards of randomness, and a golden Sundering Titan.” Matt occasionally has a hard time figuring out what cards to cut when finished with the construction of a new deck, so this comes as no surprise to me. There is room for improvement in this build though, as there are some glaring oversights here. If it’s just a lack of fine tuning the deck, it can be fixed – we have all the tools we need to rebuild this junked out collection and make it a finely-tuned win generating machine! For a deck that tries to win via a Staff or Charbelcher activation, there is very little room for creatures in the deck itself. Of course, Blue is not the color known for token generation, so that may be a bit a problem if the deck is to remain mono-Blue.
At first blush, this deck looks like a collection of cards that very badly wants to be a Mono-Blue Deck without the powerful rares. It looks like it would eschew Meloku for Genju of the Falls, and replace Thieving Magpies with the undercosted Serum Visions. This makes the opponent think they are playing against Mono-Blue Control with an almost identical permission package, almost identical card drawing, and the same great bounce that is Echoing Truth. When things get different though is when Fabricate is cast, or when Staff comes a windmill slammin’ into play. The very core of this deck is a redundant two-card combo, Proteus Staff, and one of the man creatures (by this I mean Genju or Nexus). The first activation will get you a beefy, hard-to-deal-with Darksteel Colossus, and the second activation will stack your deck, allowing you to draw whatever you need to defeat your quivering opponent, while setting up the one-shot Goblin Charbelcher kill.
Like I said earlier, this deck is a very rough draft, and further playtesting really proved that statement correct. Oftentimes, you would have the creature generator in play alongside the Staff, but would not have the mana needed to activate both. This made getting the Colossus into play more of a chore than it should be. What I am going to do is rebuild the deck from the ground up, focusing on several ideas of the deck, while using Matt’s original design as a nice starting point.
1. Make the combo faster and easier to accomplish.
2. Make sure the deck has game against the aggro decks of the format.
3. Refine the sideboard.
The first issue for this deck to deal with is the mana base. You obviously need Islands, but what other mana sources can you run in this build? Blinkmoth Nexus is an obvious inclusion to the deck, mainly because it can transform itself into a creature for a low cost. Four of those guys are an absolute must. Guardian Idol is another great tool to use as well as a mana accelerant, so that card can also be penciled into the lineup. Chrome Mox will be considered, but peering into my crystal ball, I believe there are going to be far to many uncolored spells to take full advantage of this artifact.
Mana
19 Island
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Guardian Idol
The next area to address is the card drawing and search engine. In order for the combo to be as redundant as possible, we need to make sure that we can jam as much search as we can into the deck. Fabricate is an automatic inclusion. The ability to just go get the Proteus Staff and Goblin Charbelcher at a whim for three mana is just too good. Serum Visions, while not a card draw spell in and of itself, is a great card to improve the quality of your draws. Thirst for Knowledge is also a cheap card drawer that makes the quality of your hand better while finding the important parts of the deck.
Search Spells
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Serum Visions
3 Fabricate
We can now move onto the permission spells in the deck. There are many cards in this format that would be a problem for this deck. Kodama of the North Tree, Death Cloud, Eradicate, Splinter and a host of other spells can be very troublesome for the deck. Hinder serves as a great hard counter while messing up with Eternal Witness as well. Condescend is also awesome for helping dig through the deck. Mana Leak is a great narrow counterspell for the early game, but I do not feel that it is good enough to actually fit into the maindeck.
Permission
4 Hinder
4 Condescend
Rounding out the deck we have the actually kill mechanics. Darksteel Colossus, Goblin Charbelcher, and Proteus Staff are all needed in the deck, or it would be a pretty sad Proteus Staff deck amiright? Genju of the Falls adds another creature to the deck which serves as an awesome blocker or attacker, and of course serves the main purpose of becoming an eleven powered attacker. I went ahead and replaced the Echoing Truth with Boomerang, as I feel the same way that Chad Ellis does about this great instant. Time Walking could never be so much fun!
Utility
4 Boomerang
4 Proteus Staff
4 Genju of the Falls
1 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Darksteel Colossus
So this is the finished product
Proteus Staff Redux
By Joshua Claytor based on Matt Pearce’s design
19 Island
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Guardian Idol
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Serum Visions
3 Fabricate
4 Hinder
4 Condescend
4 Boomerang
4 Proteus Staff
4 Genju of the Falls
1 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Darksteel Colossus
There, we now a finished complete rebuild of the main deck. I’m going to leave the sideboard alone for a minute, as I feel this potentially has the chance to be the most important part of the deck itself. When testing, I used around twenty different cards to try to find the best fifteen! You can go transformational, siding in some Vedalken Shackles to make the deck play more like a traditional Mono-Blue Control deck instead a slower combo control deck. You might have to side in Temporal Adepts against Tooth and Nail, but the only card that I know for certain that will gain entry into the sideboard is the now powerful Spectral Shift. I’ve never had great success with the card, but Dan Meadors, one of the best players in the Kentucky area can testify how awesome it is to watch his opponent Boil his own Mountains away! For reference, here is a list of the cards that I used to test with for sideboarding purposes.
Evacuation
Engineered Explosives
Temporal Adept
Time Stop
Vedalken Shackles
Sundering Titan
Meloku the Clouded Mirror
Spectral Shift
Annul
Quash
Bribery
Acquire
Last Word
Keiga, the Tide Star
Goblin Charbelcher
Jushi Apprentice
Thieving Magpie
Millstone
Sway of Stars
Squelch
You can bet that I eventually found a golden sideboard out of these cards that help out the matchups that are awful for this deck.
Let’s go ahead a take a look at a few opening hands. These five will give you a glimpse of how a typical game with this deck starts off, and shows what hands are acceptable, and what hands need to be pitched back. As always, the hands have been generated via Magic Workstation.
Hand one
2 Island
2 Serum Visions
1 Boomerang
1 Proteus Staff
1 Condescend
This hand has a great early game between the deck fixing power of the double Visions. You can slow down your opponent by time walking with Boomerang, which Chad Ellis spoke about last week in a very strong article. Condescend will also help slow down and better your draws, with the only downside in the hand being none of the pseudo creatures. I would keep it though, just based off of the crippling early game.
Hand two
2 Island
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
2 Serum Visions
2 Condescend
I would also keep this hand because of the early deck fixing with the Visions and Condescend, but also because it has an early guy hanging out in the grip in case you rip the Staff.
Hand three
4 Island
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Serum Visions
1 Hinder
Regardless of the early game fixing with Visions and the nice counter ability with Hinder, the hand is very weak, and would run out of gas. However, you take a chance it could turn out to be a very good hand. I would think for about thirty seconds on the mulligan decision, and probably decide it is safer to go to six.
Hand four
2 Island
1 Boomerang
1 Condescend
2 Proteus Staff
1 Goblin Charbelcher
I think if you draw Charbelcher (or for that matter Colossus) in your opening grip you should treat it like a mulligan. You have not one, but two of the decks game altering artifacts in your opening grip, and even though you can lead off with the Time Walk play, this hand really looks like a mulligan to five with the Charbelcher and the second copy of the Staff already in hand. Toss it back.
Hand five
2 Island
1 Genju of the Falls
2 Condescend
1 Fabricate
1 Hinder
If this is game one, this hand is perfectly acceptable. If it is game two, then the third turn Fabricate basically begs your opponent to cast Choke or Boil to knock you right out of the game.
Matchups
Mono-Blue Control
Preboard 30 percent
Post Board 30 percent
Frown. Game one in this matchup is highly skill intensive. If your opponent has an idea of what you are playing, they will just sit back on counterspells and knock out the threats you have to play. Genju of the Falls early is the nuts against them if they are running Echoing Truth, but as more tournaments go on and results come in, I believe every Blue deck will move to playing four Boomerangs in their main decks. You have few threats in the deck against them, but if you can ride Genju, Nexus and Idol to a lot of early beats you can stand a chance. You must counter their Meloku, as the Clouded Mirror stops your attack cold. With the low amount of creatures in the deck, Shackles is another annoying card that you must deal with or indirectly lose to. The matchup is an uphill battle all the way, and it sadly does not get any better after board. The sideboard is going to have to built with this deck in mind. I’m thinking four Millstones deserve a spot on the pine there. They are easy to slip underneath the counter magic, and gives you a solid win condition, albeit a slow one. It is easier to protect this as it is cheap and forces your opponent to waste their bounce on it, instead of the land that is enchanted with Genju!
Tooth and Nail
Preboard 40 percent
Postboard 60 percent
Staff is at a disadvantage here in game one because really your only way to win is Fabricating for Goblin Charbelcher backed up with early creature beatdown via the enchant land and artifact guys. Darksteel Colossus is a suboptimal win condition here, because all they have to do is put Duplicant into play, and now your only out is Charbelcher, which gets Shamaned away. Game one is rather simple to actually play out though. Put Staff into play, use it to put Colossus into play, then use the Staff again to stack your deck and put all the lands onto the bottom of the deck. Finally you have to cast Goblin Charbelcher, and hope that you can hit them for lethal with the artifact’s activation. Yeah it sucks that there is a lot of work to do to actually win game one, but it is possible to pull this off. This is another matchup where you seriously have to sideboard to be able to take full advantage of the deck. Temporal Adept and Bribery did pretty well against this deck, as did Quash. Sigh, this is going to be a hard sideboard to perfect.
White Weenie
Preboard 30 percent
Postboard 50 percent
God, Jitte is such a good card. You have to keep the legendary equipment off the table at all costs because you pretty much have to race this fast deck, using your bounce spells to defend against a quick onslaught of small guys. I’m fairly certain that you are not going to win game one against this deck just because of its blazing speed. I used Evacuations for the late game in the board, and Engineered Explosives for the early game and to get rid of the what I feel is the best card in the deck, Aether Vial. Hokori, Dust Drinker is a guy that gets bounced or countered, as he presents a huge problem to the goal of your deck. Vedalken Shackles is also pretty good against the deck as well.
You know, I just got to thinking and I have told you all about three of the decks worst matchups. You see what I mean when I said that the sideboard was going to be the most important part of this build?
Green/Red
Preboard 60 percent
Postboard 60 percent
This deck is very slow, and you get to play the game you want to pretty much unimpeded. Counter the spells that destroy lands and your Staff, and it should be smooth sailing from there. This is one of the better matchups for the deck in all reality, so I think devoting too many sideboard slots to this would be the wrong idea. You pretty much get to ride an early Colossus or a late Charbelcher to victory in this matchup, be careful for Shaman, Oxidize, and Grab the Reins in the case of the iron giant.
Black/Green
Preboard 60 percent
Postboard 60 percent
This is pretty much the same match as the Red/Green, with the addition of more removal, and the awesome Death Cloud. You have to play around that gamebreaker, but because of the speed of the deck, you can allow a lot of time to go by. I would recommend countering the Kodama’s Reach in the deck as you really want to keep them from getting a huge Death Cloud off early.
Ponza
Preboard 50 percent
Postboard 50 percent
This is the deck’s true coinflip matchup. If you can keep up with the early Firewalker beatdown and mana disruption you should be just fine. Demolish is a bit troublesome, and of course, Ponza will sometimes just get those random waterhead draws that almost no deck can beat. Spectral Shift out of the side is pretty good (read: awesome) against the Boil that is sure to be sided in.
Okay, I’ve covered the most important matchups (or at least the matchups that are the most prevelant in the local metagame.) After pouring over the deck and a bevy of testing, I decided that this is how the sideboard should look.
Sideboard
3 Spectral Shift
Just golden against Ponza, and the Green decks that side in Choke. This card turns sure fire auto lose situations around and takes it to the opponent instead.
3 Millstone
This is one of the few ways that I could find to consistently beat Mono Blue Control. Be aware that this win condition does take a longer time to actually achieve, so pick up the pace of your play in the second and third games.
4 Temporal Adept
One of the best weapons you can have to beat up on Tooth and Nail, and one of the most reliable.
3 Vedalken Shackles
The greatest tool against White Weenie, well that is until that deck starts to main deck Lightning Greaves!
2 Engineered Explosives
Again, this card is one of the better tools against the quick mono white weenie deck.
Let me be completely honest – this deck has a lot of good going for it, it’s a blast to play, it’s unexpected, and it sure is cool to get Darksteel Colossus into play using a method that is not Tooth and Nail. However, the bad really outweighs the good here, and it is going to have to undergo a lot of work to make sure that it can be a player in the Last Chance Qualifier next month or American Regionals in June. Maybe Saviors of Kamigawa will offer something incredible to push it over the top, but if it doesn’t this probably won’t be a major metagame player.
Final Verdict: Although the deck is a blast to play, it is going to be better suited to actually play at a Friday Night Magic or other small local event. It is a very fine deck, but with the way the metagame is shaping up, I feel it is going to face an uphill battle anywhere you take it. Maybe someone out there can prove me wrong.
Thanks for reading, and I hope that you enjoyed the article this very entertaining Standard deck!
Thanks to The Killers for providing the music that this article was written to. Great stuff there.