Worlds 2011

Last week I basically admitted I had no idea how to take on the Standard format. I was thinking about just running G/W Tokens—something consistent and powerful, even though it doesn’t exactly break anything. Luckily Dan Unwin did figure out how to take on the format and messaged me the following deck two days before the tournament:

Esper Control

Jeremy Neeman

Test deck on 11-27-2011

Standard

Creatures (6)

• 2 Consecrated Sphinx
• 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 3 Snapcaster Mage

Planeswalkers (1)

• 1 Gideon Jura

Lands (27)

• 4 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 4 Island
• 3 Ghost Quarter
• 3 Drowned Catacomb
• 4 Glacial Fortress
• 4 Seachrome Coast
• 2 Darkslick Shores
• 2 Isolated Chapel

Spells (26)

• 3 Dissipate
• 4 Mana Leak
• 4 Think Twice
• 2 Oblivion Ring
• 4 Doom Blade
• 3 Day of Judgment
• 2 White Sun's Zenith
• 4 Forbidden Alchemy

Sideboard

• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Negate
• 1 Day of Judgment
• 2 Ratchet Bomb
• 3 Surgical Extraction
• 3 Phantasmal Image
• 4 Timely Reinforcements

Honestly, my first impression was that it looked kinda loose. Despite being the right colors, it’s not really a Solar Flare deck at all. Instead it’s a lot like the U/B Control deck I used to win GP Brisbane, but with Day of Judgment and Oblivion Ring to fight the two kinds of permanents that deck really struggles to deal with—hexproof creatures and planeswalkers. But it seemed highly improbable that U/W/b would just work. As any good deckbuilder knows, solving a deck’s problems by just adding answers to them is rarely as easy as that, especially if you have to add a whole extra color to accommodate them.

With the changes come a whole host of associated issues. I was skeptical the mana in U/W/b would be good enough, and Snapcaster Mage looked to be a lot worse, and the loss of Nephalia Drownyard surely made for an untenable control mirror. The lack of early removal weakened your matchup with aggressive decks along the lines of Mono Red or Delver, as those decks aren’t nearly as worried about Day of Judgment on turn 4 as G/W Tokens or U/W Humans.

As it turned out, I was right about the weaknesses but overestimated their severity. The mana can be awkward, but less often than you’d think. Black is just a splash, and Think Twice/Forbidden Alchemy do a lot to smooth difficult mana draws. Snapcaster Mage certainly becomes worse and has correspondingly been trimmed down to three, but four Mana Leak + four Doom Blade still make him reasonable, and he’s always an excellent late-game topdeck.

The loss of Nephalia Drownyard is amply made up for by the addition of White Sun’s Zenith, which is actually much better against Solar Flare. Drownyard was always a fairly slow clock in that matchup, and you ran the risk of milling so much good stuff into their yard that they actually managed to kill you before their deck ran out. Zenith kills them very quickly and is not too difficult to resolve—Flare will usually tap low at some point; their deck doesn’t operate at instant speed nearly as well as yours, and they will generally have less permission.

Mono Red and Delver are bad matchups game 1, but Timely Reinforcements is really that good. Every Mono Red pilot has known the frustration of battling through a copy of this, only to have their dreams crushed once again when a timely Snapcaster Mage comes down. When both players have six mana and are at twenty life, Consecrated Sphinx is a lot better than Incinerate.

Meanwhile the deck has some very strong points. Day of Judgment is a necessity for control these days, giving you a great matchup against G/W Tokens and a solid one against U/W Humans. Black Sun’s Zenith is all well and good, but not killing Hero of Bladehold, Dungrove Elder, Titans, or Angelic Destiny’d creatures is a pretty big mark against it. With Day and O-Ring, U/W/b can compete with Mirran Crusader, Dungrove Elder, and Thrun far more effectively than its predecessor. In response to U/B Control becoming a major player, aggressive decks have slowed down and become more resilient, and this is the perfect deck to take advantage of that, being a lot slower and more resilient itself.

One card that a lot of people expressed surprise about (including Brian David-Marshall in the deck tech) was the one-of Elesh Norn. At the start I was skeptical too, but the card was insane for me all day, devouring Mirran Crusaders, Spirits, robots, mana dorks, Wolves, Soldiers, you name it. I won three of my rounds basically off the back of resolving Elesh Norn. The card is incredibly well placed right now, between the popularity of white token decks and the sudden revival of Tempered Steel, and there should probably be a second copy in the board.

I ended up 5-1 with this list, beating Solar Flare, two Tempered Steel, Mono Red, and G/W, and losing to Craig Wescoe with U/W Humans. As mentioned, I don’t think it’s a bad matchup, but screw followed by flood punctuated by a couple play mistakes cost me this one. If you’re looking for something to play in Standard in the next couple weeks, run this! It’s very good and even more so if lots of people copy the ChannelFireball Tempered Steel decklist at your local FNM.

Draft

In my first draft on day 2, I opened up Prey Upon and Spectral Rider. I think Prey Upon is a little better, but Spectral Rider puts me into white, which is in my opinion the best color in Innistrad Limited. It’s very deep, has both fliers and removal, and almost all the commons are good—even Selfless Cathar is (sort of) playable. However, there was also a Voiceless Spirit in the pack and no other good green card, so taking the Prey Upon was better for signaling purposes. Perhaps more importantly, the two players to my right both opened good green Werewolves—a Gatstaf Shepherd and a Villagers of Estwald—so I knew I could take green cards for the next couple picks and send a strong signal, unless Raphael Levy took Gatstaf Shepherd first, which seemed unlikely.

It all worked according to plan, and after pack 1, I had eight good green cards with the option of pairing it with whatever color I saw fit. I didn’t open anything amazing, but Josh Utter-Leyton to my left passed me a Bloodgift Demon, so I took it. Then he took a Villagers of Estwald with an early pick, which made me very confused. Surely he was aware I was cutting green hard throughout pack 1 and would continue to do so in pack 3? What green card could he have opened to justify moving in? I’m still not sure what the answer to these questions is, but as it happened, pack 2 didn’t go nearly so well for me. Pack 3 was better, but I didn’t see anything in the way of cheap removal—Prey Upons, Blazing Torches, and Dead Weights—that make G/B decks good. The end result was fine but a bit creature-heavy, and I actually would have loved a Moonmist:

Typhoid Rats
2 Gatstaf Shepherd
2 Ambush Viper
2 Markov Patrician
3 Villagers of Estwald
2 Orchard Spirit
2 Ulvenwald Mystics
Lumberknot
Bloodgift Demon
Grizzled Outcasts
Morkrut Banshee

Prey Upon
Cobbled Wings
Corpse Lunge
Spidery Grasp
Spider Spawning

10 Forest
7 Swamp

I managed a sweet 1-2 with this deck, which was pretty unfortunate. I mulliganed a lot, missed land drops, and got flooded; my opponents had excellent draws, etc., etc. I did actually mulligan five times in three rounds while my opponents mulliganed a total of once, and I didn’t really feel like there was a lot I could have done in either of the rounds I lost.

Draft two went a little better. For starters, I opened Heretic’s Punishment, which is in my opinion one of the biggest bombs in the set, easily in the top 5. I took a Darkthicket Wolf second out of a weak pack, and green ended up flowing again. I really like the green Werewolves; it’s possible I overrate them, but they’re always at least passable and sometimes amazing, particularly later on. Pack two I opened Bloodline Keeper and Brimstone Volley and faced a tough decision. I didn’t have much red at this point, so it’s reasonable to just take Keeper and splash Punishment, but I didn’t have any fixers at that point, and black hadn’t seemed open at all, so I stayed the course with Brimstone Volley. I picked up a lot more removal this time, and the final product was pretty nice:

Stromkirk Noble
2 Darkthicket Wolf
Gatstaf Shepherd
Ashmouth Hound
Ambush Viper
2 Crossway Vampire
Orchard Spirit
Villagers of Estwald
Ulvenwald Mystics
Grizzled Outcasts
Pitchburn Devils
Scourge of Geier Reach
Rage Thrower

Prey Upon
2 Geistflame
Blazing Torch
Brimstone Volley
Spidery Grasp
Heretic’s Punishment
Into the Maw of Hell

9 Mountain
8 Forest

I ended up 2-1, losing to the guy who picked up my Bloodline Keeper third and also had a Bloodgift Demon (and I mulliganed to five, etc.). It was actually a pretty tight match because Blazing Torch was insane against his mono-Vampires and Zombies brew, but he narrowly pulled out game 3 on the back of the Demon. In retrospect, I think playing Rage Thrower was a mistake. I already have a ton of expensive stuff and not much that synergizes with it. I sided it out frequently, and if it had been a cheaper spell, I probably would’ve won that game 3 against the Demon.

Modern

We didn’t have nearly as good a deck for Modern as for Standard, and I wouldn’t really recommend anyone copy the Pyromancer Ascension deck I ended up playing. The list was:

Pyromancer Ascension

Jeremy Neeman

Test deck on 11-27-2011

Modern

Lands (20)

• 1 Mountain
• 3 Island
• 2 Steam Vents
• 4 Grove of the Burnwillows
• 2 Cascade Bluffs
• 3 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Sulfur Falls

Spells (39)

• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Sleight of Hand
• 3 Mana Leak
• 4 Serum Visions
• 4 Remand
• 4 Cryptic Command
• 4 Manamorphose
• 4 Punishing Fire
• 4 Pyromancer Ascension
• 4 Gitaxian Probe

Sideboard

• 3 Ancient Grudge
• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 2 Vendilion Clique
• 3 Spell Pierce
• 3 Flame Slash

The deck was fine, but it had a significant problem: it struggles with Tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary in general, and with Zoo in particular. Given that Zoo was by far the most represented deck in the field and that many of the best players in the room were running it, that’s not really something you can brush aside. I think the board should’ve had Threads of Disloyalty, which helps, but they’re siding in enchantment removal anyway, and it doesn’t deal with Knight.

The non-Zoo matchups do seem very good from the limited experience I had with the deck. Pyromancer really gets rolling around turn 4 or 5, so if you’re not dead by then, you’re probably winning the game. For example, Twin is an excellent matchup; you have lots of counters and removal to stop them going off, while they have almost nothing to stop you playing and triggering an Ascension, at which point you almost can’t lose. Conventional wisdom said that Pyro lost more from the bannings than Twin did because it leant more heavily on its cantrips, but I think that is actually not true. Twin needed its cantrips to do more work because it was digging for two combo pieces. Pyro only needs to find a single piece, so it doesn’t matter as much if your cantrips don’t dig as deep—what’s important is that they cantrip, end up in the graveyard, and trigger Pyro later.

I went 3-2 in Modern, beating Melira combo, Mono Red, and Twin and losing to Zoo twice. I also got a totally unexpected concession from Gerry Thompson in the last round, which was pretty awesome, so thanks a lot, Gerry. Going forward in Modern, I don’t know exactly what to think. It seems like the person who figures out how to beat Zoo with an overall solid list will have a huge edge on the field, which surely can’t be too hard; it is just a bunch of creatures and burn spells after all. It’s possible Storm is good enough still, but I don’t know—losing Rite of Flame is a huge hit and makes you much more vulnerable to counterspells than you were in Philadelphia. Even a Remand is tough, especially if you’re planning on casting Past in Flames, and twelve rituals isn’t quite enough.

I’ll leave it there for this week. Until next time,

Jeremy