I’ve not had much success at this game.
Actually, let me rephrase that. I’ve had a lot of success at this game… just not enough. I’ve made a Pro Tour Top 32, and a Grand Prix Top 8, and I’m the reigning English National Champion. Compared to some, that’s a golden resume… but compared to others, that’s strictly small fry.
I still have hopes, dreams when it comes to this game. The bright lights, the oversized check, the gleaming trophy, and the crowd’s roar. It’s the dream we all have, alongside the dream that we’ll discover an old game shop selling beta boosters at a dollar apiece, and it’s a dream that few of us will ever fulfil. Of course, some may say that, by landing this job, I’ve already won my personal Pro Tour, but that’s another story.
While Nationals was mixed format, and against the cream of England and England alone, my two strong performances against international competition came in Constructed. A PT Top 32 in Extended, with the then-unplayed Red Deck Wins, and a GP Top 8 with Mono-Black Pirates in Odyssey Block Constructed. It’s safe to say, especially after a number of Sealed failures in the IPA Qualifying tournaments, that I’m a Constructed man.
My Constructed format of choice? Block, without a doubt.
Extended is fun, as is Standard, but Block is fantastic.
I like the reduction in options, to be honest. In a way, that’s why Vintage scared the willies out of me. Too many things to consider, especially to a novice. Yeah, I know that the Vintage metagame dictates that only a core set of strategies, and by extension cards, are truly competitive, but a beginner will still struggle with the fundamentals. Even so, the tiny Block cardpool means that the decks are similar in power, and the decks we can build are created from the cards we’re playing in Limited events… they’re the cards of the moment, so to speak.
Sadly, I’m not qualified for the Block Pro Tour in Yokohama. I tried my best, but Boros lost power as the season unfurled. I grabbed the deck by the horns and rode on for far too long. I’ll not make that mistake again.
Why am I telling you this? Because this is my introduction to the article. The meat of the article will cover the Time Spiral Block Constructed metagame on Magic Online.
Look at that… Seamless.
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Since last week, there have been four Time Spiral Block Constructed Premier Events on Magic Online. Three of them were qualifiers for the IPA championship this coming weekend. I was planning on entering one or two of these, hoping to mise into the Electronic Big Show. Unfortunately, Sean McKeown Teferi and Force deck kicked my kidneys in the last Block tournament I entered, so I was twice shy (so to speak).
Here’s the Top 8 breakdowns of the four tournaments.
Time Spiral Block Premier Event (IPA QT) #932988 – Tuesday, March 27th – 108 players
1 – White Weenie with Shade of Trokair
2 – U/B Control
3 – Blink Riders
4 – U/B Pickles Control
5 – Wild Pair Combo Slivers
6 – Almost Mono-Black Control (with Red)
7 – Almost Mono-Black Control (with Red)
8 – U/B Control
White Weenie took the top spot here, which is only to be expected. Aggro wins against all manner of perceived hate, especially in the underpowered control strategies that two-set Block can produce (underpowered when compared to Standard control decks, I mean). I like White Weenie, and it does seem to have ousted the Red/White Sliver builds as the aggressive Block deck of choice, even if the burn does offer more reach.
Control decks took five slots, with two strict U/B Control decks performing well. Pickles also took a slot, with Fathom Seers supplementing Teferi beatdown. Two mono-Black control decks, albeit with a touch of the Red Menace, also placed well. It’s a strange strategy, that one… it can defeat the strict aggro strategies like White Weenie and such, but it does struggle against Blue-based control decks. As a metagame choice, I find it to be rather peculiar. Why chose a deck that suffers against half of the top tier?
Rounding out the Top 8 were two funkier decks. Blink Riders is my favorite Block deck at the moment, as it’s so much fun to play. Facing it can be a nightmare, but beating down with Riftwing Cloudskates feels simply divine. The final deck was an intriguing multicolored Sliver build involving Dormant Slivers and Wild Pair. Sadly, it didn’t win a game in its quarterfinal match, so I’m unclear on its blueprint for victory. It can beat down, and fetch uncounterable guys, and probably send a massive sliver-mana Disintegrate to the opponent’s dome. Great stuff.
Where the hell are the U/G Scryb and Force decks?
Time Spiral Block Premier Event (IPA QT) #940082 – Friday, March 30th – 93 players
1 – White Weenie
2 – White Weenie
3 – B/R Control
4 – Blink Riders
5 – White Weenie
6 – Unknown
7 – White Weenie
8 – B/R/U Control
Next up, we have a Top 8 with four White Weenie decks. I believe that once the format has matured a little, the control decks will naturally evolve into aggro beaters. After all, a control deck has more long-term options and ideas for tweaking. Aggro decks build themselves to a certain extent, and once the optimal configuration has been found, there’s little can be done to improve upon it.
The third-placed deck borrowed a lot from the Almost Mono-Black Control deck, but the Red splash was a lot bigger. And the B/R/U Control deck was exactly what you’re thinking: all the best cards from the three colors, slapped together over a shaky manabase boosted by card drawing. Lastly, there’s Blink Riders, proving that the shaky manabase is not to be feared in any way.
Again, no Spectral Forces anywhere near the Top 8. When an 8/8 trampler for five mana (with a negligible drawback) can’t cut the Block mustard, something is definitely rotten in Denmark.
Time Spiral Block Premier Event #940142 – Sunday April 1st – 68 Players
For some unexplained reason, there were no Top 4 matches to watch here. The quarterfinals were intact, as were the final standings. Nevertheless, I did my best to muddle through.
1 – U/B Control
2 – Unknown
3 – U/B Control
4 – Wild Pair Combo Slivers
5 – White Weenie
6 – U/B/R Control
7 – Unknown
8 – U/B Control
The two unknown decks were the result of a no show and timeout in the quarterfinals. I’d usually meander to the semis to scope out the second-place deck, but it wasn’t to be this time.
White Weenie did make the final table fore this tournament, but I can’t help but be saddened by the U/B control explosion that enveloped the tournament when the dust settled. Four decks that do little but put storage counters on uncommon lands… one game went for 46 minutes. No I didn’t stay until the end.
The Wild Pair Combo Sliver deck also made an appearance, running five colors and beating down with Triskelavus. It looks like a fun deck, and I’ll do my best to hunt down a decklist for next week. Watch this space!
No Scryb, no Force… no fun.
Time Spiral Block Premier Event (IPA QT) #940084 – Tuesday, April 3rd – 98 players
1 – U/B Control
2 – U/B Control
3 – U/B/R Control
4 – White Weenie
5 – Red Gargadon Aggro (and Pendelhaven)
6 – U/B/R Control
7 – Almost Mono-Black Control with Red
8 – Almost Mono-Black Control with Red and Blue (for Aeon Chronicler)
Rounding out the week, we have another control-dominated Top 8, with Gold, Silver, and Bronze belonging to the Island brigade. See… once the U/B Control deck sorts itself out, the aggro strategies have no chance (only joking… I don’t think they’re truly dominant just yet). Rounding out the other control slots are the Almost Mono-Black decks, which continue to give the lie to the word “Mono.” With Red I can understand, and forgive the mono moniker. With Red and Blue, the waters become muddier by the minute.
Finally, there’s an interesting Mono-Red build that makes loads of little men and sacrifices them to Greater Gargadon in the face of the inevitable Damnation. At least, I think it was Mono Red… in one game, the pilot dropped a Pendelhaven. I saw no Green cards in any game, so I can only assume it’s used for the pump ability and nothing more. Again, this is a quirky deck that I’m hoping to track down a list for… next week, I’ll see what I can do.
Conclusions
Block is currently developing into a largely two-horse race, even if one of the two archetypes comes in a few different flavors. U/B or U/B/x control seems to be the archetype of choice going forward, while White Weenie appears to be the only aggro option available to the discerning two-point swinger.
There are, of course, options with a little more kick. For example, Wild Pair is the archetype that the world and his mate is currently trying to break. Patrick Chapin offered his own take on the Wild Pair archetype on Friday last week, and it does appear to have picked up a few fans thus far. Most top-level folk are, I presume, looking to break the metagame for Yokohama, therefore their own particular brand of metagame-shaping decks are likely to be shrouded in secrecy.
For the next week or two, I suggest swallowing your pride and running U/B Control… or beating down for two with White Weenies. If you’re like me, and are hoping that a usual U/G strategy is currently viable, I say forget it. The way forward with that appears to be with Wild Pair, though the jury is largely out on the subject.
Until next week, remember – you can’t stop the signal.
Craig Stevenson
Scouseboy on MTGO
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