“Buy every single Torrential Gearhulk you can!” I shouted at the people drafting at my LGS. I let them know I was playing four of them. In fact, all members of Team Nexus were packing the full set at #SCGRegionals in Orlando, Florida.
“It’s the best Gearhulk and it’s not even close!” They were looking at me funny. Whatever. Steven Charles nodded approvingly and later sent me a PM of the eight he just purchased. That’s what’s up. Believe in me as I believe in you.
Tonight. Tonight.
As I write this, and as I live and breathe, Torrential Gearhulk is involved in a mirror match in the finals of Pro Tour Kaladesh. This isn’t a drill. It’s sold out on SCG and is around $35 elsewhere, which means if you preordered them like I did, you’re up over $100 on your purchase. Congratulations!
About a week prior to Regionals I discussed decks with a friend Team Nexus had integrated into testing, Josh Martinez, in order to help him best prepare for Honolulu’s Pro Tour. He had mentioned a Jeskai Flash build that was supposedly impressive beyond belief against the aggressive decks. With CVM taking down Kaladesh’s inaugural SCG Tour stop piloting (sick pun) R/W Vehicles, we knew that this deck would be at the forefront of everyone’s Big Bad list. Smuggler’s Copter put 32 copies in the Top 8 of Indianapolis, so that put the target firmly on that card’s head. Josh went with the Aetherworks Marvel deck…whoops!
The original list had rough mana, four copies of Archangel Avacyn, and felt a little too top-heavy.
What it did have was four maindeck Torrential Gearhulks.
Team Nexus went to work and began to refine the deck. We had a few differences among lists: Aaron Sorrells played Nahiri, the Harbinger in the sideboard, while Brad Carpenter chose a Jace, Unraveler of Secrets. I went with Confirm Suspicions. It was more an experiment to see what cards would work in the long-term. Make no mistake: even though this deck was at the Pro Tour in the hands of Carlos Ramao in a different incarnation, I am confident when I say the Nexus version feels just as good, if not somewhat better.
A few 5-0 Leagues on Magic Online along with some strong finishes from the team this weekend, and I have a decklist for you!
Creatures (10)
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (26)
Spells (23)
I’d like to go over the card selections a little more at length and discuss why each is necessary in the deck at this time. I abhor sideboard guides because everyone does things differently, but I will tell you what cards overperformed and which ones were less than impressive. That’ll give you an idea of what you should potentially be adding and removing, which will be more valuable down the line if you choose to play this deck going forward.
First and foremost, each member of Nexus piloting this deck finished between 16th and 25th out of 200-ish people. I took some mulligans and lost in the early rounds, while Aaron and Brad both admitted that the deck is far more complicated than it seems on its face. I know I didn’t play it close to optimally, but the three of us went 6-2 for a combined record of 18-6. If we spent more time playing this deck, I’m certain we’d have done better, but all of us left the event feeling like we had the best deck in the room.
The Creatures
These are the two cards I was most skeptical of when it came to playing Jeskai Flash. One of them panned out. The other one didn’t.
Spell Queller seemed like the worst card in the deck to me until I realized that countering a spell in this format is a liability some of the time but having a 2/3 flash blocker with flying is extremely powerful. With the varying amount of threats in your deck along with control elements, Spell Queller can trade for a creature or begin applying pressure early. One boon to Jeskai Flash is that it has ridiculous closing speed that rivals the old U/W Control decks packing Aetherling, but in a broader way that allows for a wider approach. Spell Queller left a great impression on me as the tournament pressed onward, and by the end of it I was apologizing to Brad and Aaron for even questioning how excellent it was.
Archangel Avacyn, on the other hand, was not the flash threat I was looking for most of the time. At five mana, Avacyn was included because we postulated she’d be incredible in this format. Her ability to ambush almost everything in the format and trade favorably made her originally a four-of, but when the G/R Energy deck started to emerge along with Standard proving that it could be a very fast place for five-drops that may only eat one creature, the number began to shrink. As a two, she was completely serviceable and may be a necessary card going forward. However, if you’re looking for a flash threat that handles business…look no further.
The first time I cast this card is basically like the first time I heard Kendrick Lamar. Jaw dropped. “Whoa. This is real?” Yeah, baby. It’s real.
Torrential Gearhulk is one of the best finishers control players have had in years, and I mean years. It’s not even close either. We’re used to six mana being the sweet spot for creatures to kill with: Aetherling, Sphinx of Jwar Isle, and now Torrential Gearhulk.
As a 5/6 with flash, the blue Gearhulk is grossly undercosted and eats pretty much everything when it blocks. This puts aggressive or creature-based decks in a terrible position, because when they move to attacks and you have six mana available, literally everything can go wrong for them, and if you have the Gearhulk, they’re in serious trouble. There were instances where my opponent had to use Negate on the free spell but still lost an attacking creature.
When you’re behind, Torrential Gearhulk will pick up Glimmer of Genius and let you go four cards deep, and if you start chaining them, the game is sealed up pretty easily. In control mirrors it buys back your used counters to fight additional wars over spells. The thing blocks an animated Gideon, Ally of Zendikar.
It does everything and without a doubt is the best card in the deck. The amount of times I was floored by how overtly powerful it was is unlike anything I’ve felt since the Titans years ago, much more than its brethren.
The Spells
We knew going into the weekend that we needed spells that would interact with Smuggler’s Copter before they were capable of getting the draw and discard out of it. For that we turned to these:
Eight cards gave us a lot of early game against creatures and a Crewed Copter before it could get off the ground. One of the ways Copter-based decks get the ball rolling is filtering their hand or filling their graveyard with Prized Amalgams or Haunted Dead, so we sought to end that before it even starts. These removal spells also pull double duty across other matchups. Stasis Snare is wonderful nowadays because opponents can’t blow it up with Dromoka’s Command and are forced to use depressing removal like Natural State that isn’t cross-applicable. Skywhaler’s Shot was originally a three-of, and then it became a two. It was pretty good throughout the day, but I wasn’t blown away by it.
Harnessed Lighting was much better than I expected and was able to keep the ground clean in the early turns and then use the Energy banked from Glimmer of Genius to take out much bigger creatures for only two mana.
Instant-speed Read the Bones might seem clunky, but it’s a perfect bridge for what the deck wants to do. Given that we overload on aggressive and midrange control tactics for the early-game, having a card that lets us find our late-game threats or dig deeper to hit countermagic or removal is incredible. It also ensures our Aether Hubs are painless Cities of Brass throughout the game, and it can’t be overstated how important that is.
We might have overlooked a couple of cards for this deck, but we didn’t miss Brutal Expulsion. As an easy-to-write-off bulk rare, Brutal Expulsion with Torrential Gearhulk is just disgusting. I used it multiple times over the weekend to bounce and kill a threat or to bounce my Gearhulk and take out an attacker. The tempo gained from Time Walking your opponent’s bomb while you maintain the battlefield and put a 5/6 onto the battlefield can’t be measured until you do it. This card was by far the biggest surprise of the weekend.
We knew Electrostatic Pummeler was going to be everywhere, so rather than just lose to 160 damage on turn 4, we opted to do something about it. Blessed Alliance is a very powerful Magic card, and when you can have them sacrifice an attacking creature and pad your life total or swing with a couple of creatures and then untap then for blocking duties, you’re talking about game-breaking. It’s one of your few ways to deal with Bristling Hydra as well. It’s a great trick and kill spell, and I strongly suggest keeping at least two of them live and in the chamber at all times.
Negate in the maindeck isn’t a novel concept, but for the coming weeks of Standard it’s just getting better and better. Negate will handle Vehicles, Aetherworks Marvel, and any planeswalker. Scatter to the Winds is a counter that can go long and gain some measure of value in the form of a 3/3 land. Void Shatter is almost certainly better, but we also knew that Ceremonious Rejection was prevalent, so we tried Scatter instead. Void Shatter will probably take its place going forward.
If Brutal Expulsion was the biggest surprise of the weekend for me, Jace certainly was the second-biggest. At multiple times Brad and I just kind of looked at each other and commented how ridiculous Jace, Unraveler of Secrets was. I was jealous he had the second copy in his sideboard. The ultimate, in this format at least, is a very real possibility. Seeing up to two cards per activation is also big game, and against the G/B Delirium decks the bounce is often really good. I was glad to see the Pro Tour had caught onto this card. Essentially it was a replacement for one of the Avacyns, and it gave the deck a ton more power.
The Sideboard
Most of the cards had their set place. Summary Dismissal acts as a stop button on Eldrazi like Emrakul, the Promised End or World Breaker. Ceremonious Rejection is excellent against other artifacts and some Eldrazi. We wanted four Blessed Alliance to make sure we were as great against G/R Energy as we could possibly be. Quarantine Field was a great answer against a lot of R/B decks since they have so few ways to interact with it. Fumigate was our sweeper of choice, but that was probably a mistake. At eight different points during Regionals I had Fumigate in my hand and didn’t cast it because I was always doing better things. Radiant Flames would have been much better, so I’d be happy to make that switch.
In terms of matchups, I felt favored against almost the entire field. Aetherworks Marvel decks are as close to a bye as you can get, since your wealth of counterspells and Spell Quellers can sit back and dictate the pace of the game. G/R Energy is also a wildly easy matchup, since your sweepers and Blessed Alliance / Torrential Gearhulk package makes attacking miserable for them. Most aggressive decks fold like the Bills in a Super Bowl since you have so much removal and a six-drop that puts them on ice early in the game.
I’m still learning what the bad matchups are. My tournament losses were to mulligans, but even then my draws were competitive, and I’m 100% sure that if I’d played differently in a couple of those games, the mulligans wouldn’t have mattered and I might have been able to win. This deck has a lot of interesting lines in terms of land sequencing, spell hierarchy, and understanding when to turn the corner and start getting aggressive with your Gearhulks.
I can say this much for sure: I haven’t had as much fun playing a deck as I had with this one in years. I look forward to working on it more and more, because once we get it just right, I think it’s going to be one of the best decks in Standard until it rotates.
Should you run out and get your Gearhulks now? That’s hard to say. I think it’s going to be a powerhouse going forward, and it can only get better if Aether Revolt has a few marquee instants that it can cast for free.
Just be leery when your opponent leaves up six mana and passes the turn.
Chances are they have it.
I know I always did.