For those of you who just occasionally read me, or those of you who are here for the first time, apologies for this first segment. I’m writing this for my regulars…
Just imagine how I feel, walk with me…
So this past Monday morning, I was groggy, trying to get my day started. I come to StarCityGames.com…
(– get in the shower– )
And see that this past weekend’s StarCityGames.com $1K Top 8 decks are posted. I click on the link to check it out, and am surprised to see the archetypes listed:
Blightning Aggro (1st place, by Justin Warbington)
G/W Overrun (2nd place, by Hai Li)
G/W Overrun (3rd place, by Matt Nash)
Faeries (4th place, by Chris Owens)
Bloom Tender Control (5th place, by Chris Woltereck)
Domain Aggro (6th place, by William Bingham)
Doran Aggro (7th place, by Shaun Mack)
Five-Color Control (8th place, by James Hess)
Yes, pleasantly surprised!
(– cue the ominous music– )
Just one Faeries, just one Five-Color Control, and just one Reveillark (the Bloom Tender) deck? Blightning wins the whole thing and two Green/White decks round out the top 3? Have all my worries, all the hand-wringing and b*tching and complaining been an overreaction? Has the metagame truly shifted away from the same ol’ dominant Lorwyn power centers into something more interesting?
I click on the first G/W deck…
(– shower curtain gets pulled back– )
And I see…
(– Knife slashes down, screams!– )
(– Knife slashes down again, screams!– )
(– Knife slashes down again and again, screams!– )
NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooo………
Once again the metagame strikes like a lunatic Norman Bates, stabbing me through my Magic-loving heart and leaving me bleeding out and expiring in the bathtub.
Creatures (21)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
- 4 Cloudgoat Ranger
- 2 Kitchen Finks
- 3 Figure of Destiny
- 2 Stillmoon Cavalier
- 3 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Noble Hierarch
Lands (17)
Spells (22)
So instead of B/W or R/W, we drop the Black or Red and add Green – hey Wizards, look! We have a brand new archetype diving into the ocean of deck diversity, right?
Okay, okay… before y’all start jumping to the forums to give me a hard time, let me confess that I do have my tongue more or less firmly in my cheek. There are some really big differences between this token-centric deck and the other ones that are seeing such heavy play in the metagame, differences that I have to admit to being intrigued by. It’s got Green in it, so how could I not be mesmerized? I just have to admit to a mixture of shock and disappointment that this deck is more or less just another configuration of the White tokens/Windbrisk heights Lorwyn engine.
Matt Nash’s third place deck is a little different:
Creatures (14)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (18)
Spells (25)
His deck tiptoes away from the Processions, and instead dips more heavily into utilizing the Planeswalkers Garruk (with Fertile Ground goodness) and Elspeth. And with 6 virtual Overruns! That’s some serious beatings.
Speaking of Planeswalkers, that segues nicely into what I mainly wanted to discuss this week, and that is Planeswalker Control. A couple weeks back I decided to “cleanse the palette” from my typically creature-heavy decks and go creatureless. I’d been very curious about how the various Planeswalker Control decks played that I’d seen pop up here and there over the past months. The first Planeswalker deck that really caught my eye was this one from Pro Tour: Berlin…
Fellowship of the Ring
By Erik Ryding and Wilhelm Dubber (Pro Tour: Berlin)
4 Chandra Nalaar
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Ajani Vengeant
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Sarkhan Vol
4 Condemn
4 Wrath of God
2 Naya Charm
4 Fertile Ground
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Mind Stone
2 Rings of Brighthearth
3 Murderous Redcap
4 Treetop Village
4 Jungle Shrine
3 Reflecting Pool
3 Wooded Bastion
3 Fire-lit Thicket
2 Karplusan Forest
2 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
2 Brushland
Sideboard
1 Flameblast Dragon
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
1 Hallowed Burial
2 Guttural Response
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Raking Canopy
What was particularly cool about this deck was using Rings of Brighthearth to double the effects from the Planeswalker abilities. I never got around to trying it out, unfortunately.
Then, at Pro Tour: Kyoto, AJ Sacher made some noise with a new version of the deck, taking many of the same principles but stapling into the framework of a Cruel Control deck, complete with Reflecting Pools and Cryptic Commands.
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (23)
Spells (33)
- 4 Wrath of God
- 1 Island
- 2 Terror
- 4 Condemn
- 4 Cryptic Command
- 4 Garruk Wildspeaker
- 4 Jace Beleren
- 2 Liliana Vess
- 1 Cruel Ultimatum
- 4 Esper Charm
- 3 Volcanic Fallout
Sideboard
(Video Deck Tech: Five-Color Planeswalkers with A.J. Sacher)
Chris Anderson took 13th place at a recent StarCityGames.com $5,000 Standard Open with a very similar version.
Now, I am loathe to playing a Five-Color Control deck for reasons I’ve gone over time and time again, and I don’t want to sidestep into yet another rant against Standard (much, I’m sure, to my Esteemed Editor’s relief). Yet, I am very intrigued by the idea playing a deck chock full of Planeswalkers. In a lot of ways, Planeswalkers are like creatures – they’re permanents that sit out there on the board and do stuff for you. See, at heart I love having cards sit out on the board to do stuff, and so the old school control decks that nuke the board – the old Disk decks on through today’s Cruel Control – the “open board” control decks I just hate. Which is why I tend to enjoy playing creatures that do nifty things as opposed to strictly aggro creature decks.
Planeswalkers are like incredibly cool creatures that do incredibly cool things without being vulnerable to a top-decked Terror or Wrath of God. I really wanted to give it a try.
Looking over AJ’s list, I came across a few things I didn’t like about it. First was how half-assed Garruk was in his deck. Garruk is normally fantastic, especially if you play with cards to make him good. With zero creatures, his ultimate ability is pretty tame, and without Fertile Ground, his loyalty buff ability is weak sauce. Making beast tokens is still pretty good, but not as good as in other decks because suddenly you’re giving all those dead creature removal spells that have been choking your opponent’s hand something to target. I decided that my Planeswalker Control deck would at the least run Fertile Ground – it’s an accelerator, a mana fixer, and completely nuts with Garruk. Also, since I’d love to go turn 2 Fertile Ground into turn 3 Garruk, I’d need to make the deck much more “Green-centric” (considering AJ can’t even cast Garruk except off two Vivid tokens or a Vivid token and Reflecting Pool).
Next, Cruel Ultimatum bugged me. Sure, it’s just one copy and sure, the Cruel Control decks swear by it. It’s about the closest thing you can get to an “I Win” card in Magic right now. Yet… AJ’s Cruel is only 5/6’s as good as Cruel normally is, since there are no creatures in the maindeck! Part of why Cruel Ultimatum is so nuts is that you’re typically able to follow it up with a Broodmate Dragon the following turn. And while running the Fertile Ground/Garruk combo would do wonders for acceleration, I also foresaw some issues with Green mana getting in the way of casting a seven-mana spell that requires all colored mana, none of it Green. I’d hate to have seven or eight mana available and yet not be able to cast my Cruel.
Then it hit me – you’re playing a Planeswalker deck, Smith! Why fool around with his Ultimatum when you could be playing The Man Himself… Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker!
Hit the bench, Cruel.
The last issue I had – AJ ran 4 Cryptic Commands. It’s no secret that this card annoys the living hell out of me; it’s Blue, it’s broken, and even at 1UUU it’s “splashed” into every deck possible. That’s not to say I won’t ever play the card – after I got my MPR foily version, I now have three of them, and when it comes to the upcoming PTQs and Regionals, if I find that the deck I’m most comfortable with that’s got a good chance of winning happens to run Cryptics, then I’ll run Cryptics. But for Friday Night Magic… well, let’s just say something needed to be cut to make room for those Fertile Grounds.
As far as I can remember, this might have been the first time in well over 10 years that I went to play in a tournament without a single creature card in my maindeck*. Needless to say, it shocked some people. I ended up going 2-2-1, missing the cut for the Top 4. I actually had a pretty good time with the deck, and actually managed to go ultimate with Nicol Bolas – which is, if you’ve never done it before, pretty much the most ridiculous ability on a Magic card. He was left with zero permanents and zero cards in hand. Thankfully, he was a good sport about it, having never been dragon-handled by Nicol Bolas before either.
My two losses were to a Blightning deck and a Red Deck Wins deck, basically getting chewed up by Hellspark Elementals and fists full of burn spells.
I didn’t write about the deck before because I played it the same weekend as the last EDH, and I pretty much dedicated all my column inches that following week to the EDH game. So, this Friday we’ve got another Standard FNM, and I’m not really up for playing Ziggy Hierarch again; I’m pretty convinced that the deck will be shaken up by Alara Reborn and so my desire to play the deck has dwindled to zero until I see the full spoiler. I think I want to give my Planeswalker Control deck another run this weekend – it’s fresh, it’s different, and it probably won’t change too much with Alara Reborn since it’s pretty much a bunch of Planeswalkers and removal spells. Here’s what it looks like as I write this:
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (22)
Spells (32)
I definitely wouldn’t call this an ideal configuration, since I’ve pretty much built this for what I expect up at Richmond Comix – lots and lots and lots of creatures, tokens and otherwise. That’s why I’m packing 8 maindeck sweepers and 2 more in the sideboard. The sideboard shows I’m still smarting from the absolute beatings I got from the burn decks with the Forge-Tenders and War Monks. The Responses, Ricochet, and Exotic Orchards come in against slower control decks. I still have yet to Ricochet a Cryptic Command, but I am definitely looking forward to it. One day.
I didn’t have the Elspeth in the version before, but I recently picked one up so I figured I’d toss her in there. And I strongly believe in the miser’s Rings of Brighthearth; I ran just one in the version last time and the few times I drew it was a blowout. Doubling those Planeswalker abilities are simply amazing.
Since I’m so new to this archetype, I’m extremely curious to hear from anyone with experience playing Planeswalker control – tips, tricks, things to keep in mind. Hit us up in the forums or email me.
And wish me luck!
Take care,
Janet… er, I mean Bennie
starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com
* This may lead some of you to wonder – what was the creatureless deck you played in a tournament 10+ years ago? Back then, Blue/White Counterpost was the dominant deck – it was chock full of Nevinyrral’s Disks, Wraths, Swords to Plowshares, counterspells, and Kjeldoran Outpost. I tried desperately week after week to cook up a creature deck that could beat that control machine, and failed. One day I came oh so close, and after everyone else had left and I was moping around the game shop, my friend Pat (who co-owned the shop) said “Bennie, why don’t you just build a Counterpost deck and beat everyone’s ass for once?” So I did – but of course I couldn’t just build one like everyone else’s… I had to make it my own. My “tech” was to replace the Disks with Icy Manipulator, and I even had one Copy Artifact for a virtual 5th one. Icy’s did a nice job of getting extra mileage out of your Wraths, but they were also great at winning Outpost wars. See, back then, blocking creatures that became tapped didn’t deal damage to the attacker they blocked. So if my soldier token attacked you and you blocked with a soldier token, I could tap it and my soldier would live while yours would die. Not exactly exciting, but that sort of advantage would eventually give you the game. Icy’s could also force your opponent into “use it or lose it for the turn” by tapping their Outpost during their own upkeep, tying up multiple mana sources with just one of yours. Basically, if you could stick an Icy while keeping them off a Disk you’d win.
Anyway, I was one of five people playing Counterpost, and we tore through the Swiss and eventually me and another Counterpost deck met in the finals. I swept him in two games straight. Pat smiled at me, I shook my head… and I never played a creatureless deck again.
Until a few weeks ago. But I’m kinda counting Planeswalkers as neo-creatures, so…