I’m writing now from the Tulip Inn, a small hotel right along one of the main
tourist areas in Amsterdam. I’ve been in Europe for the past week, and while I’ll be going to the Grand Prix in Bochum this coming weekend, the purpose of
this trip wasn’t Magic related.
The first leg of my trip was spent in Germany, working at the Spiel Essen game fair
demoing and selling Ascension. It was my first trip to Essen, and the event really is something else. Essen is pretty much the Mecca of board gaming, with
over one-hundred thousand attendees over the course of the four-day event. Unlike Gen Con, Essen isn’t really about playing games so much as
it is about showing them off. It’s probably more comparable to Comic Con in that it’s pretty much a huge exhibition.
To give you a sense of the scale of this thing, imagine the exhibit hall at Gen Con.
Essen has
twelve
halls, each of which is probably about half that size. All of them are packed with booths, which are packed with games,
which are constantly being played by gamers. On Saturday, the busiest day, the walkways between the booths were so full that it could take upwards of
half an hour just to walk from one side of a hall to another. Those Germans sure love their board games.
It was interesting to see the difference in the crowd at Essen compared to the one at Gen
Con. Gaming seems to be much more mainstream in Europe. A huge percentage of the attendees were families with young children. While American
families tend to just buy the classic games they played as children for their own kids, Europeans seem to be much more receptive to new games. It’s
rather telling that the show has a Hasbro booth, but no booth for Wizards of the Coast.
I was so busy that I only got a chance to try out one game at the show, called Fresco,
which was, amusingly enough, a game about painting a cathedral, complete with buying paints at the marketplace and mixing them to get the appropriate
colors you need. Yeah, about that – I’m colorblind.
It was pretty exciting to see just how big gaming is out here, even if it’s very
different from the sorts of games I’m used to playing and working on. I’m excited to come back next year, and recommend that anyone who has a
major interest in gaming try to make it out at least once in their lives. It’s not the same kind of experience as Gen Con or the like, but
it’s an impressive sight, to say the least. The hall our booth was setup in was the fantasy games hall, which meant that there were all kinds of
booths full of armor and latex weapons and crazy costume stuff of all kinds. I kind of wished I still played in LARP events so I would’ve had an excuse
to pick some of it up. Yes, I’m a huge geek.
I did have to miss GP Toronto for Essen, but I managed to convince the rest of the team
to stick around in Europe for the following week to hang out and play in GP Bochum the following weekend. At first they were hesitant, since they
haven’t really played competitive Magic in years, but after I got them to play one Scars draft, they were convinced. So keep an eye out for Justin
Gary, John Fiorillo, and Jeff Liu in the Bochum standings – I’ll have to work to get them in playing shape over the next few days.
Justin and John have only a single draft under their belts so far, but Jeff (who happens to be my roommate) made Top 8 of the Magic Online PTQ right before
we left for Europe, though he sadly lost in the first round with his sick W/R deck.
I was playing a good amount of Magic Online before we left, myself, including both the
massively overpriced release events as well as two-man Standard queues. I managed to scrounge together all of the cards I needed to make the B/U Scroll
Thief deck that I was really excited about trying, thanks in part to generous donations of Skinrenders from SCG’s own Jonathan Medina.
Here’s what that deck looked like:
Creatures (22)
- 4 Nantuko Shade
- 4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
- 4 Vampire Hexmage
- 4 Scroll Thief
- 4 Molten-Tail Masticore
- 2 Skinrender
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (9)
I mentioned this deck in my
Scroll Thief article
a few weeks ago. I was thinking the deck needed another cheap, sizable threat, and
stumbled upon Nantuko Shade in a draft and realized it could be the perfect fit. This deck is obviously built around Scroll Thief, attempting to maximize the
value the new Ophidian provides by clearing all opposing creatures out of the way with efficient removal. Scroll Thief and Jace provide the fuel
for Molten-Tail Masticore, which I thought would be an incredibly powerful threat as well as a way to control the board.
Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go according to my expectations. The Standard
format right now isn’t one in which creatures like Vampire Hexmage or Gatekeeper of Malakir have a meaningful impact on the board. It isn’t
one in which the incremental advantage of drawing a few extra cards with Scroll Thief swings the game. The current Standard environment is one ruled by
enormous monsters, many of which don’t even have to live long enough to attack to win the game.
It’s funny that Wizards described Rise of the Eldrazi as “Battlecruiser
Magic,” because the real battlecruisers are the M11 Titans, only they don’t require nearly the buildup of the Eldrazi. Resolving a single
Primeval Titan can be game-winning by itself, and let’s not even talk about what happens if it gets a chance to attack! I derisively referred to
Frosty as “Twiddle Titan” in my M11 preview, but in the new world order where massive creatures are central to every deck, an effect that can
lock down your opponent’s one best threat every turn rules the roost. Interestingly, I actually think the loss of Elspeth also has a lot to do
with just how powerful Frost Titan is right now. Without the ability to power up smaller attackers, decks with creatures like Vengevine can have as
much trouble pushing past Frosty as other Titan decks.
In general, I just think the general direction of this deck is fundamentally flawed.
It’s trying to be an aggro-control deck without enough controlling elements. Duress doesn’t cut it for disruption when the key spells for
most decks are creatures. The deck also just doesn’t apply enough pressure. Many of the creatures aren’t threatening enough. Hexmage is
nice to have to kill Jace and company, but it’s just so low impact in play that it seems like it’s not worth the slots, at least not in the
maindeck. Perhaps saddest of all, Scroll Thief just doesn’t cut it right now. Pretty much every deck out there has efficient removal to stop him, and
he feels really silly when he runs into an Overgrown Battlement or something. Sorry, old friend – it’s not quite yet your time to shine.
I did feel like the deck had some powerful elements, but those were mostly the same
things that U/B Control could play. Molten-Tail Masticore wasn’t as strong as I thought he would be, which dramatically reduces the incentive
to play a creature-heavy build. I still think Masticore is one of the strongest cards in the new set, but I think he needs a different shell to make
him effective. My inclination is that some kind of Squadron Hawk/Fauna Shaman/Masticore deck could prove very powerful, and it’s already
clearly a very powerful card in Mono-Red, but this just isn’t the place for it right now.
The cards in the Scroll Thief deck that did impress me were Skinrender and Nantuko Shade.
Skinrender was just an absolute beating against any kind of creature deck, which isn’t terribly surprising since it’s the second coming
of Flametongue Kavu. Its body is substantial enough that it provides a reasonable blocker that can also serve as a clock. I probably wouldn’t
maindeck it, since it’s too slow to disrupt the mana production creatures of the ramp decks and can be largely dead against control, but
it’s a card that I think more people should consider for their sideboards.
Nantuko Shade, similarly, feels like a sideboard card for a more controlling U/B deck.
While the rest of the creatures in the deck barely produced any pressure at all, Nantuko Shade was enormously threatening right away. Against control and
ramp decks, I’d sideboard in countermagic and often just land a turn 2 Nantuko Shade and ride it to victory, leaving up mana to protect it
against removal. Ramp decks will generally sideboard out their Lightning Bolts against you, so it’s not unreasonable to expect that a Nantuko
Shade will be virtually impossible for them to kill before it kills them. Shade can threaten to have a similar impact on the U/B mirror, where removal
that can actually kill black creatures is at a premium, and as a two-drop it can come down before Mana Leak is online and keep opposing Jaces off the
board.
I’ve seen a lot of U/B lists around the net that I like, and I feel like
that’s the direction I want to pursue right now in Standard. With the lessons I learned playing the Scroll Thief deck, I think I’d try something like
this:
Creatures (6)
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (26)
Spells (22)
- 4 Mana Leak
- 4 Doom Blade
- 2 Mindbreak Trap
- 2 Spell Pierce
- 2 Everflowing Chalice
- 2 Consuming Vapors
- 4 Preordain
- 2 Stoic Rebuttal
Sideboard
This is very rough, but follows the general principles of what I learned from playing the
Scroll Thief deck. The key to the format seems to be the ability to present powerful, hard-to-deal-with threats and have the ability to stop the
powerful, hard-to-deal-with threats that your opponents play. Abyssal Persecutor is the cheapest, most threatening clock around and seems like the best
way to go when your opponents are all trying to kill you with 6/6s that cost 50% more mana. I’ve seen a lot of lists with Memoricide to fight
against ramp decks, but I feel like you’d rather go the more aggro-control route with Nantuko Shade and Persecutor to just flat out kill them
rather than strip their deck of Titans.
I think this list is a good starting point if you’re looking for something to try
this weekend at the StarCityGames.com Open in Charlotte, and it’s certainly what I’m going to try to put together on Magic Online when I
get home. I’ve been super excited to play Standard since Scars came out, and I’m kind of in withdrawal over here in Europe without a good
connection to play on. I guess I’ll just have to settle for a Grand Prix this weekend for my gaming fix…