Today’s article deviates from what you’ve come to expect (and hopefully, like) from me. You see, there’s a Khans of Tarkir card out there that just doesn’t
stop tickling my fancy, but I’m realist enough to realize that it’s just too slow for Legacy and probably Modern (not that I didn’t try making it work in
Legacy for a little bit). In Standard, however, it just feels utterly busted if we can find the right shell for it. That card is Empty the Pits.
So why can’t I get a card that is just a bulk mythic so far out of my head? Well, do you remember this little guy?
When Odyssey came out, everybody was all about Shadowmage Infiltrator aka Jon Finkel(‘s invitational card). Soon however, the real A-Tog stole the
spotlight and shaped Standard for the rest of the season, probably at least as much as Faeries did in its time. What people realized was that Psychatog,
while looking puny, would take the fact that you were playing a game of Magic, thereby filling your graveyard, and turned that into a swing for lethal in
just a single turn. Empty the Pits does the same thing, only that it can be cast at instant speed, is essentially immune to spot removal and gives you a much better rate on your graveyard cards (it translates every card and additional mana into a point of damage where Tog would ask for two per
point, though it also accepted cards in hand for a full point). Yes, the casting cost is “a little” more difficult, but it being an instant easily makes up
for that.
Now, I don’t claim I’ve broken Standard. In fact, every deck I’ve built so far feels as if it’s missing that tiny piece, that key little detail to push it
over the edge. So what I’m planning to do today isn’t to present you with the new greatest deck of all time or a finished product. I don’t have those.
Instead I want to take you with me on the voyage I’ve taken so far, show you what I’ve tried, and what problems I’ve identified. Maybe somewhere in those
recollections is the key to solving the issues that are plaguing my decks and someone out there with more time, experience, or dedication to Standard can
figure out what it is I’ve missed – because given how ridiculous Empty the Pits commonly is, I’m sure there is a deck there, I just can’t put my finger on
how to build it exactly.
Starting at the Beginning
I wrote about my impressions of different Khans cards two weeks ago and already mentioned Empty
the Pits. Actually, I drew up a sample decklist:
Creatures (16)
Lands (22)
Spells (22)
I tested the list a little and rapidly learned one thing: it was terrible. It was light on land, slow, and its removal package was clunky and insufficient
to even make a reasonable dent into the opposing onslaught before it was much too late. There was one glimmer of power though: casting Empty the Pits for
three or four Zombies was often enough to take over the game on turn 5 or 6 if I wasn’t too significantly behind yet, and instances of casting it for X=8
or more weren’t infrequent and usually killed my opponents almost on the spot, either literally by dealing damage or by presenting a clock reversal that
was impossible to recover from.
So I tried to rework the list into something that would defend itself more efficiently early in the game while setting up a large graveyard to Empty asap,
giving me this:
Creatures (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (32)
This worked better than what I had started with but was still pretty bad. Between Sign in Blood and Thoughtseize, I ended up dealing far too much damage to
myself to still be alive against something like Jeskai Tempo when I was ready to zombie apocalypse them, especially given that I had no way to stop the
burn spells. Worst of all, the delve enablers were terrible in the list other than enabling me to delve.
Satyr Wayfinder was okay at finding mana, but the body was irrelevant enough to make it a lackluster investment on two mana. Sultai Ascendancy was decent
but incredibly slow, so slow in fact that I rarely found myself casting it in a timeframe where it actually mattered. Commune with the Gods finally was the
worst offender. It had four realistic targets – eight if you count Wayfinder – and all of those were already lackluster as mentioned. I was
basically playing Tome Scour for a mana more and planning to target myself.
I at least realized that last part easily enough the first time I cast it and wondered what I could actually hit. I cut it forthwith and decided to test
Taigam’s Scheming as a way to mill myself that would actually help dig into the Empty the Pits. Scheming was surprisingly decent but still not a card I was
really happy playing with. The deck also still didn’t have enough efficient defensive tools and, for some reason, didn’t fight all too well on the
battlefield (might have been the lack of creatures…). The dedicated green enabler plan just wasn’t working.
Bye Bye, Sultai!
At that point I took another critical look at the list and realized that every single card I was playing green for actually seemed bad when playing the
deck. So why the heck was I playing green in the first place?
After a little reflection, I realized I’d been ignoring what should have been staring me in the face. Do you remember what Psychatog’s best friend was in
its year of dominance? The card without which it was just a meek player in the metagame instead of the top predator?
What many of you today probably don’t realize is that, while FoF was an incredible draw-effect all on its own, one of its huge advantages in the Tog deck
was how many cards it shoveled from the library into zones where Tog could eat them up. Given that piece of historic knowledge, why was my Dr. Teeth 2.0
deck not playing the currently legal ideal enabler FoF 2.0?
No Augury isn’t Fact or Fiction, not even close. It still gets five additional cards to where you want them, your hand or your graveyard, and usually turns
a profit card-advantage wise while doing so. Playing red instead of green also conveniently would mean I’d get access to more cheap removal spells in
Lightning Strike, as well as a cheap draw-fixing effect that wouldn’t eat up my life points like Sign in Blood did.
Now, before you dismiss Tormenting Voice, hear me out. One of the most common things you need your two mana draw spell for in Standard seems to be the
ability to smooth out your draw, either making sure you have lands to play or spells to cast depending on what variance has gifted you with so far. As a
result, I’ve seen a lot of turn 2 Sign in Bloods on the draw that resulted with discarding a card. I think we can all agree that casting
Tormenting Voice in that spot would have been significantly better and probably also easier given it costs only a single colored mana. Now, later in the
game when you need to refuel, there can be no discussion that Sign in Blood is vastly superior if you can afford the life points. I’m not arguing that.
However, that’s where Steam Augury comes in again. Steam Augury’s huge weakness is that it produces some sweet big gobs of cards if you want it, but you
usually can’t split your piles in such a way that you actually get more than a single good card. Tormenting Voice helps you turn useless cardboard into
real cards at the cheap price of 1R.
Red seemed incredibly enticing, the question I had to ask myself now was if I could actually build a working manabase for something not supported by the
Khans trilands. In thinking about that manabase, I realized one of the most interesting truths about current Standard. If you take nothing else away from
this article, at least remember this:
The non-wedge colors actually get to play better manabases!
Look at the three color manabases of decks like Jeskai Tempo. With all the painlands, and even Mana Confluences, you need to often ding yourself for
upwards of four damage even in a short game. You lose games to that amount of life loss and the only way to compensate would be to run even more taplands
than the Temples and tri-lands already encourage you to use, which comes with a strong risk to put yourself too far behind tempo-wise.
Now look at this manabase:
1 Mountain
2 Swamp
2 Island
Even running a full set of Temples – clearly the best taplands in the abstract because they come into play casting half a Preordain (you don’t draw the
card but you get to keep the land) – you have 13 untapped mana sources in 25 lands with 18 black, 14 blue, and 13 red sources. And at the very worst you
take five damage from your own lands (as long as you are clever enough to figure out first if there are fetch targets left in your deck). Checking out the
winning Jeskai Tempo list (18 red – 12 blue – 12 white with fourteen
untapped lands and six painlands) or the second place Mardu Midrange
deck ( 20 black – 14 white – 13 red with fifteen untapped lands and seven painlands including two Mana Confluence) tells us that their mana isn’t
significantly better than that of a non-wedge deck as long as we don’t care too much about the additional taplands (or value the scry high enough) but much
more painful. Heck, we could cut some Temples of Epiphany for Shivan Reefs and easily catch up in untapped sources while still dealing ourselves less
damage in the long run. Just playing more lands could easily compensate for the extra Temples too.
The manabase viability issue settled, I started to craft a Grixis Empty the Pits list, finally leading to this first effort:
Lands (27)
Spells (33)
The idea was to control the board early by disrupting the opponent’s curve with Thoughtseize and Despise, dealing with stragglers with the six two mana
removal spells and Hero’s Downfall to lead into card drawing, more removal and countermagic and finally an overwhelming end of turn Empty the Pits to take
the game away. I copied the 27 lands straight from last seasons’ U/W Control decks and decided to use Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth as the additional two lands
because it did a solid job of fixing for Empty the Pits early while also turning excess fetchlands into Swamps in the lategame.
I started testing this against the winning Jeskai Tempo list and was
pleasantly surprised by how well that matchup was going. There was enough removal that I rarely lost much life to their creatures if I made sure to keep up
turn 2 removal when I had it, and I mainly lost to them assembling enough burn to kill me through Dissolve once all the creatures were dead. Dig Through
Time in particular performed admirably in the mid- to late game. I had worried that having it in addition to Empty the Pits would put too much pressure on
the graveyard to get decent amounts of Zombies out of my finisher but that turned out to rarely be a problem between all the cheap spells, Steam Augury and
the ability to simply pay more than UU for it (and more than BBBB for Empty the Pits).
One particular synergy that was just insane was flipping an Empty the Pits off of Steam Augury past turn 5 or so. By splitting the piles 4 – 1 (with EtP on
its own) I threatened to put so much power onto the board that they were pretty much forced to give me the four other cards. Drawing four for four is
pretty busted, if you couldn’t guess, especially when holding a Tormenting Voice.
Thoughtseize actually felt like the worst card in the deck by a mile just because of how much it helped them with the burn plan when cast early as I was
still forced to take the creatures while they mattered, and I found myself almost always discarding it to Tormenting Voice in the late game. Despise did
the same job and didn’t give them a free shock for the one plan that actually worked against the deck. In most games though, Empty the Pits was found and
ended things before they had slogged through all of the early defense anyway, usually easily killing them in the course of two attack steps.
Heartened by that success, I decided to start testing against a different archetype, this time Ross Meriam’s G/B Devotion. In those games, I rapidly learned that the deck seemed
to have some issues with creatures with more than three toughness. Courser of Kruphix was a pain and the devotion deck’s fatties also required me to find
two of my two mana removal spells, a Hero’s Downfall or pre-emptive Dissolve.
In spite of this, the deck did quite well, reasonably often pulling ahead of the devotion deck with card draw even while two-for-oneing itself thanks to
all the draw spells. Once the devotion deck missed a beat – and it was quite prone to flooding for a turn or two after I had dealt with the first wave – it
usually didn’t take long until Empty the Pits put enough power into play to end the game in short order.
During those games I also learned to really appreciate small – as in three to four zombies – Empty the Pits to stabilize the board against annoying
creatures such as Courser or to serve as essentially a multitude of Fogs against one larger threat.
There were a couple of things I really didn’t like in these longer games though. Mainly, I often drew dead discard spells once the early game had passed,
giving me a lot of air in the deck, especially because the two mana removal spells were so bad against them with two usually equating to just a single
card. The matchup still felt fine, but I could see that there might be trouble if they drew a higher ratio of fatties or planeswalkers instead of
additional mana accelerants.
Spotting the first likely weakness in the Grixis list, I decided to meet the problem head on and turned my eyes towards Mario Martinez’s G/R Monsters deck as my next enemy. Man was that deck trouble.
Grixis won some games by drawing enough discard, Hero’s Downfalls, and Dissolves to stabilize and fire of a lethal Empty, but more often than not I either
ended up taking enough damage from the fatties to lose to a midgame Crater’s Claws (because I’d had to spend my countermagic on their creatures) or simply
couldn’t kill their threats fast enough to stabilize. Thoughtseize damage also turned out to, once again, be a real problem.
In short, the deck was really missing access to something like Doom Blade (a cheap and efficient way to deal with high toughness creatures) or Wrath of God
(an expensive one that would take care of multiples) to complement the Hero’s Downfall. That’s the point I’m still trying to fix at this point, actually.
This is where I’ve gotten so far:
Lands (27)
Spells (33)
Silence the Believers is doing a decent, yet not amazing job as additional copies of Hero’s Downfall, and Spite of Mogis is surprisingly good, taking
advantage of how rapidly the deck is able to fill its graveyard with instants and sorceries to come online reasonably early while providing a much needed
tempo efficient answer to fatties in the mid- to late game when it routinely deals six damage. The reduced count of instant speed two mana removal has hurt
the Jeskai Tempo matchup a little, but it seems to still be in favor of the Grixis list by a noticable margin.
The fatty-decks are still somewhat problematic, sadly. When you have to actually draw into your removal instead of having it in hand already, it can be
tough to catch up with their board if your removal costs as much as their creatures do (Spite of Mogis really shines in those spots). As a result you often
end up taking a lot of damage from something that isn’t usually a big threat – say Courser of Kruphix – and because you only have four counterspells, that
means you often sit around praying they won’t draw a Crater’s Claws in the two turns it usually takes your army of the undead to swap the dynamic of the
game from you defending to them struggling to live another turn.
Replacing two Temples of Epiphany with Shivan Reefs might help with that as sometimes you only end up so far behind because your third land also enters the
battlefield tapped. Another option I want to explore is to support the Dissolves with a couple of copies of Cancel, as the countermagic has been
surprisingly good if I can ever get a foothold in the game, and running out of ways to interact with spells – also known as Blaze to the face – has been
instrumental in winning the games that I have.
I tested Aetherspouts as a way to reset the board in the mid- to late game, and while that card was just straight up game over on a couple of occasions, it
was very inconsistent when the opponent could either redeploy a threat on the same turn or started to play around it by holding back at least a single
creature, even something as innocuous-seeming as Courser of Kruphix.
Two notable cards I’ve not gotten around to testing due to theoretical concerns so far are Disdainful Stroke and Murderous Cut. Disdainful Stroke feels too
narrow for a maindeck card – with decks like Jeskai Tempo and the dedicated aggro decks having very few targets – and Murderous Cut would likely force the
deck to abandon Spite of Mogis and Dig Through Time, as I fear you’d run out of graveyard fodder at some point. Maybe I’m just being too afraid of
really committing to dealing with the most troublesome cards I’ve encountered with the deck.
As mentioned in the introduction already though, it feels like the deck is missing a little more than just that. I’m pretty sure there’s some tweak or card
I’m just blanking on due to my unfamiliarity with playing Standard that could give this the early to midgame resilience it is missing because its endgame
definitely is absurd enough to take it home once you get there. One or two cards that gain life would be particularly appreciated given the weakness to
direct damage that comes up again and again in my testing, but there doesn’t seem to be any decent option whatsoever in these colors.
I’ve been tempted to try out an Esper list along these lines just so I could get access to End Hostilities and Resolute Archangel:
Creatures (1)
Lands (26)
Spells (33)
However, I rapidly abandoned that approach after only a couple of games (too rapidly?) because it felt incredibly clunky, and paying an additional mana for
each of my draw-spells turned out to be even worse than not having efficient removal for medium-to-large creatures. I also missed the awesomeness that is
Steam Augury much more than one would first expect when reading that card. Maybe there’s some way to go an actual four colors?
Caught Up
Well, now you know where I’ve gotten to so far. As you all know, I’m usually not a Standard player so I’m not sure for how long Empty the Pits will really
manage to keep my attention. Playing something that feels so much like an improved version of Psychatog (the card, not the deck) is pretty sweet though, so
I might keep at it.
I still have to test against the format’s dedicated aggro-decks – something I’ve neglected so far under the assumption that boarding a sufficient number of
copies of a combination of Drown in Sorrow, Anger of the Gods, Pharika’s Cure, and Magma Spray should be able to solve that matchup even if the maindeck
should turn out to be behind. Similarly, I’ve so far neglected dedicated control decks on the reasoning that a) there doesn’t seem to be much control in
the first place and b) that having a sideboard with Negates and the missing Thoughtseizes should put the deck quite a bit ahead given that its win
condition is so much better than theirs (instant speed mass zombies seem much better than random planeswalkers – or anything permanent-based, really – in
the control mirror).
So here you have it. A control deck with by far the most potent win condition in the format, one that is often awesome on turn 6 already but with troubles
to get to that point without falling too far behind to recover. If you play a lot of Standard, don’t sleep on Empty the Pits.
The card is bonkers, it just needs someone who can find a way to deal with the issues I’ve described. So far that hasn’t been me, and given that I have no
reason to try and keep it secret – it isn’t like I’ll be playing in any relevant Standard events soon – I’ve decided to share what I’ve learned so far in
hopes that the hivemind (a.k.a all of you), or someone among the much more experienced pros testing for PT Khans, takes the information and figures out
what it is I’ve been missing.
Psychatog is among the sweetest and most powerful Standard decks ever built, and I’d love to see a secret heir coming to claim its crown, so I really hope
I’ll be seeing an army of Zombies arriving during the end step and taking home the game on coverage come PT Sunday. That much power just mustn’t go
unharnessed!
P.S: A couple of paragraphs for those that are disappointed to not find a Legacy article today, I had the chance to take Bob Huang’s U/R Delver deck to a
small local event yesterday. I went 3-1 in the event, dropping my only match and my only two games to Burn (not unsurprisingly, as they’re doing almost the
same thing without having to spend mana on cantrips). I swept every other matchup 2-0 with reasonable ease, even against Miracles and ANT. The deck is
pretty bonkers as it easily puts on a clock similar to that of a dedicated Zoo deck in almost every game while also having access to eight pieces of
disruption and drawing a ton of extra cards. Good job finding something nutty, Bob!
One thing I’d like to note in particular is that we spent some time after the event testing, and it really drove home how absurd Treasure Cruise is in fair
matchups. I played a couple of games against someone with Sultai who hadn’t bought into the Treasure Cruise hype and didn’t run any copies of his own.
After I think the fifth game he just said “alright, this is pointless, let’s try something else.”
In those five games, I had taken the aggro-role and overran him with multiple creature-draws and Young Pyromancer going nuts. I had taken the full control
role once or twice, keeping a hand with Bolts, cantrips, and countermagic; and I had played the role of a tempo deck, riding a creature or two while
stopping him from catching up. Every game in which I didn’t just crush through him with aggression fueled by Treasure Cruise, I ended the game with four or
five cards in hand after trading with everything he was trying to do and he ended in topdeck mode. He resolved Tarmogoyfs, Deathrite Shamans, Abrupt
Decays, you name it. He definitely had decent draws for a traditional Sultai deck. None of that mattered as soon as I managed to find my first Treasure
Cruise. The card advantage just buried him easily no matter how I approached the game.