I traveled to Philadelphia this weekend to play in both sides of the StarCityGames.com Open Series: the Standard event on Saturday and the Legacy event on Sunday. I went into both tournaments with a deck with which I was unfamiliar, and the main goal was to gain experience and knowledge of each. I was letting people take back plays, joking around during my matches, and in general not in the mindset of “I’m here to win this tournament.” It was basically a weekend of practice tournaments for me, trying to take a step back from the grind that was Grand Prix: DC followed by Pro Tour: San Juan. I did, however, succeed in gaining lots of knowledge and experience in both formats. In this article I will impart to you the knowledge I gained.
Standard
I finally decided to put down Polymorph and to start working on other decks instead. Polymorph was a great deck when Rise of Eldrazi first became legal, for a few reasons: not many players knew how to play against it or how to properly prepare for it, Jund decks were skimping on removal, Blue-White decks were mostly of the tap-out variety, and the Bant decks tried to win via Rafiq of the Many. Now that the metagame has shifted, Bant decks are winning via the Sovereigns — Conscription combo, Jund decks are packing more removal (including Sarkan the Mad), Blue-White decks are playing more instants, and now Next Level Bant and all its Oblivion Rings, Bant Charms, Path to Exiles, and Jace, the Mind Sculptors is rising in popularity. Considering all this in addition to the fact that people now know what Polymorph decks are up to, the deck is really fighting a steep uphill battle.
So for the StarCityGames.com Standard Open in Philadelphia this past Saturday, I played Gerard Fabiano Esper Control deck, a deck he assured me was great:
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (20)
Spells (25)
- 3 Plains
- 3 Island
- 2 Smother
- 1 Liliana Vess
- 4 Esper Charm
- 4 Path to Exile
- 1 Identity Crisis
- 3 Day of Judgment
- 2 Into the Roil
- 2 Deprive
Sideboard
I did not do well with the deck, but I learned a lot about the format and about the archetype during the ten rounds of Swiss that I played. To make life easier for readers, I’ll number the various things I learned about the format. They are applicable in a general sense — not just to the Esper deck.
1. You must have a good plan against Blightning if you expect to succeed in this format.
Back when Lorwyn Block was in Standard, Wilt-Leaf Liege was probably the best answer to Blightning, and then when the block rotated out, Jund decks began to dominate. A lot of decks are running Vengevine to combat Blightning, and that is a really good strategy if you can consistently cast two creatures to bring the Vengevine back. This deck, however, not only has no way to gain an advantage from an opposing Blightning but actually has numerous cards that amplify the effect of an opposing Blightning. I felt helpless against most Jund opponents because they could wreck my hand with Blightning while redirecting the three damage to a Planeswalker and thereby also wreck my board presence. I’m not sure how to remedy this problem, but relying on 5-6 casting cost spells to win the game does not seem like a solid answer. Being able to operate off a few lands would help this cause.
2. If you are a three-color deck, you have to be able to fix your mana while still keeping up with opposing tempo.
This is another problem that the Esper deck has. It can only play one land per turn and has to naturally draw all of its mana. It doesn’t run Explore, or Rampant Growth, so when the opponent accelerates, they basically Time Walk the Esper deck. On top of that, in order to consistently cast all its spells, the Esper deck has to run a lot of lands that enter the battlefield tapped. This further complicates the deck’s ability to keep up with opposing tempo. If you are looking to play three colors in this format, I would recommend playing a Green base that takes advantage of some combination of Noble Hierarch, Birds of Paradise, Lotus Cobra, Rampant Growth. Each of these cards fixes your mana while also accelerating you into higher casting cost spells. Playing a control deck with more than two colors basically spots the opponent two Time Walks, and the power gained by the third color does not adequately compensate for this concession. Wall of Omens and Day of Judgment can only do so much. If you want to play Blue-White Control, play Blue-White Control; do not play Esper or Blue-White-Red. The third color just is not worth it.
3. If you are the Control deck, you need instant speed removal combined with mass removal.
This was one aspect of the Esper deck that I was very happy with. Having played Polymorph for so long, I began to dread the Mythic matchup. But from the Esper side, I felt in command of the game. I had instead speed removal in the form of Path to Exile and Smother, and mass removal in the form of Day of Judgment. I would like to have had a bit more counter-magic, but this combination really makes it hard for Mythic to beat you. If they rely on Dauntless Escort too heavily and overextend their board, you just kill their Escort on their turn and then wipe the board on your turn. And if they try to go for it with Knight of the Reliquary or Sovereigns of Lost Alara, you have Path to Exile to keep their plan from going off. It is still frustrating that with their mana acceleration they can land a Jace before we can, even if they’re on the draw, which brings us to my next point.
4. Having Jace advantage is crucial in any matchup where both players are playing Jace.
This is one of the reasons I want more counter-magic in the Esper deck, or in any Blue-White Control deck for that matter. The Green decks have a solid plan for winning the Jace War — ramping into theirs before you can get your down. Since the non-Green decks cannot win the Jace War by speed, they have to win it via counter-magic. If the Green deck ramps into a turn 3 Jace, I need to have Negate ready so that I can untap and cast my own Jace. This often requires that my second land enter the battlefield untapped so I can have two mana open for the counter, which is another reason to only play two colors in your control deck. The other way to gain Jace advantage is to kill theirs the turn after they play it so you can untap and cast yours. Control decks have trouble accomplishing this task, and don’t think Lightning Bolt is an answer because if you’re running Lightning Bolt, they’ll just +2 Jace to 5 the first time and you’re in the same predicament. The best strategy to winning the Jace War is to have acceleration so you can cast your own, counter-magic to counter theirs, and pressure to attack into Jace after it is cast. Mythic and Next Level Bant have all of these things so they are best equipped to winning the Jace War, but as long as Blue-White has counter-magic and its own Jaces, it can recoup what is lost on the Jace War front with other cards such as Path to Exile and Day of Judgment.
5. You have to be able to deal with multiple Planeswalkers. Pretty much every deck in the format is running Planeswalkers. Jund has Garruk Wildspeaker and Sarkan the Mad. Blue-White has Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Elspeth, Knight-Errant; and Gideon Jura. Mythic has Jace, the Mind Sculptor and either Elspeth or Gideon. Even Naya decks are moving toward a Planeswalker theme. In Gerry Thompson article earlier this week he suggested that in order to compete you have to either deal with Planeswalkers or ignore Planeswalkers. Aside from Mono Red decks, I find it very difficult to win via the ‘ignore Planeswalkers’ route. This means most of the time you’ll have to just deal with the Planeswalkers. Counter-magic is a good solution as long as you are not already behind and their Planeswalker is on the board. Pressure, especially hasted pressure in the form of Bloodbraid Elf or Vengevine, is a good solution. Also good old fashioned Blightning still seems to be the dagger that thwarts the control deck’s plans of establishing inevitability in the late game while neutering their on-board Planeswalker in the process.
Taking what I have learned this weekend, I think the best control deck is Blue-White, something similar to the deck with which Brad Nelson won Grand Prix: DC a few weeks ago. I might play more counter-magic combined with a full complement of Path to Exiles and Day of Judgments though, at least out of the sideboard. Adding Red or Black just makes the deck unnecessarily clunky and really amplifies its weaknesses. Jund is also a good choice, as long as you are the version with 4 Blightning, because you can generate enough pressure to handle opposing Planeswalkers while keeping control decks on the back foot. Just make sure you have access to 4 Maelstrom Pulses after sideboard when everyone brings in their Kor Firewalkers against you. Also bring in extra instant speed removal against Mythic. Speaking of which, Mythic Conscription is still putting up results and has all the pieces necessary to succeed. I’m not quite sold on Next Level Bant yet, though its results this weekend are undeniable. I talked to Kibler after Grand Prix: DC, and he said the deck will likely lose a lot of its edge once people know about the deck, but evidently whatever edge was lost was compensated for by the changes that he made going into Sendai. One thing seems certain about Next Level Bant, however — if it continues to succeed, it will do so largely because of its ability to continue to adapt and take on new and unexpected configurations.
Legacy
On Sunday I played in the StarCityGames.com Legacy Open, and I sleeved up Reanimator. I had not played Legacy since Grand Prix: Chicago last year, so I was a bit out of touch with the format. And considering Entomb was not legal for that tournament, I was playing a deck I had never played before and in a format that looked very different from the one I had last played in. One of the first things I noticed about the format is how important in-game decisions are. Since everyone’s deck is trying to do something absurdly powerful, each game typically comes down to a pivotal decision that determines who wins the game. Given my unfamiliarity with the format, I unfortunately found myself on the losing end of a couple of those types of decisions. By the end of the day, however, I felt a lot more comfortable with the format, and I now feel like I can say something meaningful about Legacy and about Reanimator.
I played 74 of the 75 cards used to get second place in the last StarCityGames.com Legacy Open found here. I would have played all 75 but could not find a Minamo, School at Water’s Edge. It only untaps Iona, Shield of Emeria, so I figured the deck is not much worse without it. I ended up going 5-3-1 in the nine rounds of Swiss, with the draw coming against the mirror where I misplayed by thinking that I would deck him when we both had only a handful of cards left. As it turns out, he was actually just setting up for a big counter war to fight over his singleton Echoing Truth. One of my losses came against Zoo when I had a Sphinx of the Steel Wind in play, at 18. He was at 2 with no cards in hand and only a Wild Nacatl and a few lands in play. He topdecked Path to Exile and I drew blanks for the next five turns. That match felt more the result of variance than poor decisions or poor deck construction.
My other two losses came against Chris Woltereck 43 land deck — once in the hands of Chris and again at the hands of Ken Adams. Both times I won game 1 and then got hated out in games 2 and 3. I feel like this match would drastically improve if my list were just a few cards different. Daze in general is pretty terrible in this matchup, and the primary hate they brought in was Fleshbag Marauder and Faerie Macabre, along with a Chalice of the Void, Tormod’s Crypt, and Karakas to transmute for when needed. So Pithing Needle stops everything except Fleshbag Marauder. One game he Fleshbagged my Inkwell Leviathan and I was sitting there holding two Exhumes, which obviously do nothing when your opponent has a Fleshbag Marauder in the graveyard. If I had a Bloodghast to Entomb for and/or a Dryad Arbor to fetch into play, Fleshbag Marauder would not have been the problem that it was, and Pithing Needle would have taken care of everything else that needed handling.
In the last round I played against White Weenie, a deck that is dear to my heart, though admittedly underpowered when it comes to Legacy. In the first game I Thoughtseized him and saw two Plains, a Stoneforge Mystic, a Mother of Runes, and the rest were virtual blanks. So I take the Mystic, and the following turn I Entomb for Iona, Shield of Emeria and Reanimate it naming White, figuring his only out is Path to Exile. On the ensuing turn he showed me my error by playing Karakas and bouncing my Legend. I momentarily forgot that card existed and would obviously be included in a Mono White deck. So I lost that game and played tighter for the next two and won the match. Each of these lessons just go to show how important it is to be well-versed in the format, and to know exactly what cards the opponent might play against you. With such a vast pool of cards in the format, it’s nearly impossible to consider every card the opponent could have, but the amount of likely cards is somewhat more narrow and just studying all the deck lists from recent tournaments will go a long way toward know what cards to play around.
If I were to play a Legacy tournament tomorrow, I would probably play this:
Creatures (7)
- 1 Blazing Archon
- 2 Inkwell Leviathan
- 1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
- 1 Bloodghast
- 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
- 1 Terastodon
Lands (16)
Spells (37)
As you can see, the changes are pretty minimal. I’m also not convinced that Daze is good enough for the deck since most of the spells you need to counter are not stopped by Daze (i.e. Path to Exile or Force of Will). I suppose I have not played enough matches with the deck to say for certain that Daze should be something else, but Stifle and Thoughtseize each feel more powerful than Daze and accomplish most of the same things, especially after sideboard. The deck also felt like it wanted a couple more card access spells. I don’t know whether Ponder, Sleight of Hand, or Strategic Planning is better, but a couple of those seem like they would improve the deck’s consistency. Sometimes you really need an Entomb, a reanimation spell, and either a counter or a Thoughtsieze, and having more ways in the deck to find the trifecta seems good. I felt like I usually had more time to set up and didn’t just need to go balls to the wall, so spending an extra turn setting up with a card draw spell was often affordable for me. Then again, I spent most of the day in the loser’s bracket, so my results may be skewed in that regard.
I’m also interested in the prospect of adding Red. A single Volcanic Island or Badlands is not too hard to include, though if I include the Dryad Arbor plan, it makes the fetchland configuration awkward for the Red. Red would give me access to a singleton Price of Progress to Mystical Tutor for against the 43 Lands deck, and it would also give me access to Pyroblast against all the Blue decks. The deck felt very Your-Move-Games-esque, somewhere between their Entomb deck and their Necro Donate deck, and splashing Red for Pyroblast put the Donate deck over the top. Perhaps that would be the defining change for this deck. Then again, it might just not be necessary.
Now that I’m more experienced with Standard and Legacy, I’ll be ready for the StarCityGames.com Open Series when it comes to St. Louis. There I’ll be looking to bring home more than just knowledge and experience. Good luck in Seattle this weekend!