Almost a year ago, Max McCall wrote an article called That Deck Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad that was a good introduction into a new Extended format. Not only did it point out the holes in all of the decks to come out of Worlds for new designers to exploit, but it let tuners find what they needed to patch up moving forward. Gavin Verhey recently brought up the idea of the reverse article praising the strengths of each deck in a format.
Right now, Standard is much more along the Max curve than the Gavin one, but what do you honestly expect from a post-rotation format? The card pool is severely limited compared to what we just came from, and people are making do with what they can. I personally really like these formats, as your wins more often come from maximizing the value of what you have rather than someone having the nuts, as there isn’t enough redundancy for any deck to do the same absurd thing every game.
So, everyone’s deck sucks. Guess what the key to what the best deck is? Which one sucks in the least obnoxious ways.
Here is where the top end of the format stands as of now.
U/B-Based Control
Creatures (9)
Lands (27)
Spells (24)
Creatures (9)
Lands (26)
Spells (25)
What You Are Supposed to Be Doing:
I’m grouping these together because in my mind they have the same game plan: Answers up the curve into a Titan, with blue card selection to help piece things together. U/B has a bit more on the answers side, Solar Flare more on the Titans, but it’s all the same.
The Flaw:
Notice how I said blue card selection. Neither Think Twice nor Forbidden Alchemy is real card draw. The other thing is they are more expensive than the card selection we have used in the past. Put this together, and you have a real issue with tempo. If your opponent just curves out on threats, you likely won’t have time to cast your card draw, and from there your deck starts to look like The Rock. Ask Kyle Boggemes what happened when he tried this deck in Block without the cantrips. You would regularly just miss land drops and die without playing your bomb or not hit the removal you needed. Without real card draw, you have to continuously invest mana into getting velocity as opposed to being able to stagger a few Compulsive Researches with free turns in between.
You are also operating heavily under the assumption that a Grave Titan/Sun Titan/Consecrated Sphinx is enough. What if it isn’t? As we saw in Nashville, what happens if they just go over the top of your threat when you cast it?
Summarized, your deck has a real issue with mana availability.
Why This Is OK and How to Fix It:
There aren’t really that many decks that just jam a ton of threats down your throat in a short time span. Mono Red is quick but notably threat light. G/W Tokens is threat heavy, but more on the midrange side. As of right now, this is just a weakness of the deck that is relatively unexploited. However, Jeremy Neeman deck tries to address some of this. Wring Flesh is a huge step in the right direction by letting you play card draw and removal in the same turn early on. While it doesn’t kill a Titan, it teams up with Doom Blade to beat a Primeval Titan and Nexus as well as taking out mana guys, Red dudes, and even bigger threats with a Snapcaster Mage to block with. This also makes me want to move towards Divination like Caleb Durward to have real card draw, but I’m not sure that is viable with the current Titan metagame requiring you to have Dissipate to fight.
The issue is easily resolved by shifting the answer base, as seen in Neeman’s list with Dissipate. This is just control decks aiming to shoot down a moving target of threats.
Wolf Run Ramp
Creatures (20)
- 2 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Solemn Simulacrum
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 4 Primeval Titan
- 1 Wurmcoil Engine
- 4 Dungrove Elder
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (12)
Creatures (15)
- 2 Solemn Simulacrum
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 4 Primeval Titan
- 2 Wurmcoil Engine
- 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
- 4 Viridian Emissary
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (15)
What You Are Supposed to Be Doing:
Remember Valakut? Yeah, that, only you have a bit broader range of play thanks to things like Garruks and Dungrove Elder.
The Flaw:
Remember Valakut? Yeah, that, only you don’t have as many ways to slam down a lethal Titan on turn four. Owen’s list is approaching the same number of ramp spells with ten that cost two or less and four Solemn Simulacrums, but six of those are mana guys.
Your Titans are also much less lethal. Valakut was immediately lethal if Primeval Titan attacked and dead very soon if it just hit play and died. Compare to Wolf Run, which is lethal in two if Titan enters play but involves you using all of your mana. Killing all of their guys is much easier than fighting all of their land drops, and if you just kill their Titan and the Nexus it gets, you are still in fine shape with a control deck.
Summarized, your deck is trying to be the big bombs deck but doesn’t have quite the power to back it up.
Why This Is OK and How to Fix It:
The power curve has dropped a lot since Valakut. No longer are the non-Titan decks starting on Goblin Guides and Bolting you. They are starting on Stromkirk Nobles and Shocking you. Titan on turn five is perfectly reasonable against those decks. Add to that the fact Valakut often just wanted to hang around against control and battle through Mana Leaks, and the loss of speed isn’t that huge of an issue.
The other thing is that against the Titan decks where the relative power loss from Valakut is an issue, the power of the alternate win conditions really shines. Dungrove Elder and creature tokens match up very well against the Doom Blades that are good against Nexus and Titans. Often the issue against control decks last year was that they could legitimately just run you out of ways to win, something that is no longer viable.
You can’t make up the raw power on a resolved Titan since the loss of Valakut, but you can choose backup plans that make what you have enough.
U/W Blade
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (26)
Spells (20)
What You Are Supposed to Be Doing:
See Caw-Blade. Cheap threats and answers combine to let you maximize your mana every turn both on offense and defense. Your few tap-out cards are complete game breakers like Gideon Jura and Consecrated Sphinx.
The Flaw:
The loss of Squadron Hawks is a big one. No longer do you have the stream of free, cheap threats provided by the card. Blade Splicer and Snapcaster Mage try to make up the value, but it is suddenly much more reasonable for bigger control to run you out of bodies to put Swords on.
Squadron Hawks also played a huge role in stemming the bleeding against aggressive decks and forcing them to overextend into your sweepers. Without it, your lack of Doom Blade effects means you are going to take a lot more damage early, and your opponents will be able to hold many more threats back from a second wave. From the view of a Tempered Steel player, I can tell you the added value from being able to pressure with Vault Skirges and Signal Pests early is massive.
Summarized, your deck is be a pile of Mulldrifters and blank their removal, but you are looking at a stack of creatures that are a card and a half of value instead of actual two for ones.
Why This Is OK and How to Fix It:
The removal suite of decks right now is heavily skewed towards stopping a Titan as opposed to any kind of value, meaning your opponent is likely to have to accept the two for one against Blade Splicer. There are also fewer medium bodies around to immediately obsolete the 1/1, so that side of the card is going to be much better.
There also are fewer random 1/1s flying around than in the day of Hawks that you need to block. True aggro has really fallen back in the last few events, leaving room for an aggro-control strategy to come in and prey on the tap-out style of the format. Even if this shifts back, you have Midnight Haunting to fill some of Hawk’s shoes.
Going forward, I expect this deck to play a larger role in the format. I would look for builds that are closer to the Faeries vein, eschewing the less draw-go style spells for Dissipates and Midnight Hauntings.
Red
Creatures (18)
- 2 Grim Lavamancer
- 3 Spikeshot Elder
- 2 Hero of Oxid Ridge
- 3 Chandra's Phoenix
- 4 Stormblood Berserker
- 4 Stromkirk Noble
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (23)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
Creatures (20)
- 3 Grim Lavamancer
- 2 Goblin Arsonist
- 2 Spikeshot Elder
- 2 Hero of Oxid Ridge
- 3 Chandra's Phoenix
- 4 Stormblood Berserker
- 4 Stromkirk Noble
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (23)
- 23 Mountain
Spells (14)
What You Are Supposed to Be Doing:
Light people on fire and make Pat Sullivan proud.
The Flaw:
You are trying to maximize damage per card with mono-Dwarven Pony beats. In terms of actual clocks, none of your one-drops is really that great, and Stormblood Berserker is only marginally better than Plated Geopede was last year (for those who don’t remember, he was actually miserable). Your burn suite is also very stunted with only two real spells and a bunch of Shocks.
Why This Is OK and How to Fix It:
Shrine of Burning Rage is worth approximately a million damage on its own. It lets you make all these mediocre exchanges with your bad cards then cleans up the rest.
That’s about it. This is not the Red deck you remember from years past. I expect it will get significantly better with another set or two of burn and threats, but for now I wouldn’t expect great things from it.
Mono-Black Infect
What You Are Supposed to Be Doing:
Hook up a poison threat with an equipment. Standard double strike plus pump spells is a good combo.
The Flaw:
1B. 1/1.
3BB. 4/4.
See the issue? Your guys are fairly clunky and inefficient on raw stats. When they aren’t connecting for damage, they are very fragile and prone to poor trades.
Why This Is OK and How to Fix It:
The best cheap removal sucks right now. Dismember and Shocks don’t kill Titans. Doom Blade doesn’t kill any of your guys, and Go for the Throat is excluded, as it doesn’t kill Inkmoth Nexus. Even Victim of Night incidentally doesn’t hit your two big threats.
While there isn’t much to do here to fight this besides situational cards like Apostle’s Blessing, as of now Titans will still rule the answer selection process, and poison can capitalize. This will change if it ever gets too big, but for now it has a nice little niche carved out for it.
Tempered Steel
What You Are Supposed to Be Doing:
See deck name. Cast Tempered Steel and play some zero-mana 3/3s.
The Flaw:
See deck name. Don’t cast Tempered Steel and play some zero-mana 1/1s. It is very easy to flood out on blanks if you don’t have your actually powerful cards.
Ancient Grudge is also a card. As is Creeping Corrosion. Double Vindicate and kill your everything are not the cards you want to face down as an aggressive deck.
You also can be put into scenarios where your deck is full of a lot of blanks. You need twenty-four lands to cast your high end but want to draw as few as possible. With no way to control the natural variance of drawing lands other than Nexus to help on the flood side, you can often just die with spells or lands stranded in hand.
Why This Is OK and How to Fix It:
See “What You Are Supposed to Be Doing.” Casting Tempered Steel is unreal and puts your deck into a whole new power tier compared to the rest of the format.
Hero of Bladehold lets you capitalize on a lot of the same things Mono-Black Infect is trying to. The red-green decks fold to that card, and it ends games against anything if not answered immediately. It also gives you a route to victory in the face of endless streams of Shatters.
Even when you don’t draw either of those cards, most of the other decks have an inherent flaw of clunkiness, which means even your mediocre beats are good enough. Flying is a huge ability. The main thing that sets this deck in my mind a step above Mono Red is that your creatures don’t get caught up in fights when you are attacking. Notice how every real attacker in the deck has flying (sorry Memnite) or is Hero of Bladehold and just crashes hard regardless. Chipping away with a few Wind Drakes is good enough if at any point you can rip a single spell to just end it, and they are Wrath-resistant.
Finally, the answer I’ve found to the mana issues is to mulligan threat-light hands aggressively and keep more land-light hands than you would normally. Land-heavy hands mean you are essentially drawing one-third or more of a card less per turn than you should be due to all of your lands and blanks and are therefore much worse than they look, while land-light hands are often fine if you draw the land a turn later, as everyone else is so clunky. Understand how your bad cards aren’t going to win by themselves most of the time and how your good ones will immediately bail you out, and have less fear.
The deck definitely has some rough draws, but the raw power is not to be dismissed. It isn’t automatically the best deck like everyone thought, but it is better than current results seem to show.
Tokens
Creatures (7)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (25)
Creatures (22)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Wurmcoil Engine
- 4 Hero of Bladehold
- 2 Viridian Emissary
- 4 Blade Splicer
- 2 Mikaeus, the Lunarch
- 3 Avacyn's Pilgrim
- 2 Geist-Honored Monk
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (24)
Spells (8)
What You Are Supposed to Be Doing:
Use pump effects to fill your deck with single-card armies and effortlessly run your opponent out of options.
The Flaw:
First, your deck is a bunch of clunky midrange threats. Your first card that can actually attack for a significant amount is Blade Splicer on three. This does not mesh well when trying to cast Mana Leak in U/W.
In general though, this doesn’t stack up that well against Titans. To steal a phrase from Gavin Verhey, “G/W Tokens is a deck that makes your average expensive threats into complete game-ending bombs. Titans are expensive threats that are complete game-ending bombs.” You are fighting an uphill battle to match your threats to the level of the current selection of six-drops.
Why This Is OK and How to Fix It:
Mana Leak still works if you can tap out until they have six mana and not care. Your threats incidentally stop before six in U/W Tokens. Cute concept of mana curves, Cedric.
In G/W, you can legitimately make a big enough board state that some of the Titans aren’t enough and just grow better and faster than they do. If your current army is bricking their Grave Titan, they only have so many more Titans while your whole deck upgrades your team further.
I think the viability of this deck largely depends on what Titans are the flavor of the week. If it is Primevals and Consecrated Sphinxes, I expect Tokens to fall behind. If it is Titans you can legitimately win fights against in combat, like Grave Titan, G/W will be better positioned.
As a note, I really like where U/W Tokens is headed right now. Play some threats, counter their high end, and kill quickly. I mentioned this with U/W Blade as well. One deck that kind of fell to the way side after States is W/U Humans, and I think that deck might be the way to play this Fish-style deck, as it provides the most aggressive options that prevent them from just chilling and assembling what they need to beat one counter.
One overarching point: this format is very much about your mana and having things to do when flooded and screwed. We were spoiled by Preordains and manlands making this easy last year. Look for decks that are high in cheap spells that let you efficiently burn mana going late. The two big ones in my mind are Desperate Ravings and Green Sun’s Zenith, but I’m sure there are more.
This list also isn’t comprehensive. For example, the weakness of control decks having Titan-centric removal didn’t even come up until I started talking about Infect. There are more angles to attack from than just exploiting where the current decks come up short. Lining up your deck’s weakness with what doesn’t exist in the format is just as legitimate.
Finally, things will change. Don’t expect some of the problems from today to exist in a couple weeks once things tighten up. Some things will stay, but there will be constant level ups across the board. Stay a step ahead of the field in design, and you will end up a step ahead in results.