This past weekend was glorious. Over 500 people ventured out to play in #SCGINDY without fear of Collected Company always hitting Reflector Mage. Red cards not only saw play for the first time in over a year, but they actually won the tournament as well. To top it all off, we saw the rebirth of aggressive strategies and with it a Chris VanMeter we haven’t seen in some time.
Creatures (21)
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 4 Selfless Spirit
- 3 Depala, Pilot Exemplar
- 2 Pia Nalaar
- 4 Toolcraft Exemplar
- 4 Veteran Motorist
Lands (24)
Spells (15)
Seriously, that man knows his aggressively slanted midrange decks. All-in-all it was a great weekend, even though my deck wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. With little luck to carry me, I found myself finishing in the Top 32, but also understanding more about this unique format.
I didn’t expect the collective to disregard Temur Emerge before the weekend. Of course the deck was still represented, but not in the numbers I had originally expected. Brian Braun-Duin and I found a deck that had a good matchup against, it which made us both happy, but didn’t realize that Temur Emerge was just losing ground across the board. So with us beating the deck, so did almost everyone else making the format much more aggressive than we thought it would be.
Here’s the deck I ended up playing this past weekend.
Creatures (22)
- 4 Sylvan Advocate
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 2 Tireless Tracker
- 4 Verdurous Gearhulk
- 4 Fairgrounds Warden
- 4 Servant of the Conduit
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (12)
Spells (22)
I was rather excited about the deck going into the event. Verdurous Gearhulk was performing far better than I expected it to in testing, and that’s mostly thanks to putting the counters on Smuggler’s Copter.
Buckle up.
Now, to play Smuggler’s Copter in a green and white deck, you have to give previous versions of the deck a complete overhaul. Nissa, Voice of Zendikar is still a great card, but the Plants she produces don’t make for great Pilots. Oath of Nissa doesn’t find Vehicles. Plenty of things had to change to make these colors do what we wanted them to.
To make Smuggler’s Copter function, you have to find its Crew. Now, we all know how good Veteran Motorist and Depala, Pilot Exemplar are at driving around the format’s new Hangarback Walker, but green and white can find some adequate test Pilots itself. The first one to stick out in my mind was Fairgrounds Warden.
Now this creature might seem underpowered, which it most certainly is, but the impact it has in the early turns makes for a fully functioning card. Being able to interact with the opponent while also Crewing for Smuggler’s Copter can slow the opponent down just long enough for the powerful Verdurous Gearhulk to make an impact on the game. Not only that, but Fairgrounds Warden comes down a turn before Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, which helps protect the powerful planeswalker from almost everything but Smuggler’s Copter.
Another unique card we played was Blossoming Defense. For those of you still in the dark, this card is just great. It protects Smuggler’s Copter whenever they hold mana up to kill it, helps kill planeswalkers, lets you attack into bigger creatures, and at the end of the day can kill the opponent. We’ve never seen a pump spell this cheap for what it does, and I would be shocked if this card doesn’t start seeing a lot of play.
Now, it seems like playing removal spells alongside “pump” spells is counter-intuitive, but Magic isn’t the way it used to be. Removal has more diminishing returns now than it has in a while, making it difficult to play a removal-based strategy. You’ll either get beaten by resilient threats, or eventually Emrakul, the Promised End will come down against your removal-heavy strategy. Standard also seems to be based around efficiency, which makes having multiple different effects good.
Last, we played four Servant of the Conduit, which gave us the unique ability to accelerate into Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Verdurous Gearhulk. Turn 3 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is really good on the play and almost wins the game all by itself. Normally the concern with this card is running out of Energy, but around that time this card can transfer over to beating down with some +1/+1 counters, especially when you have Blossoming Defense to push through more damage or protect your early threats from removal.
All-in-all I was happy with the deck, but it was missing some things. A few of the issues might be fixable, while others are inherent flaws in the strategy. For starters, I really missed instant-speed interaction. Not being able to kill Archangel Avacyn or Torrential Gearhulk when they entered the battlefield was a mistake in deckbuilding.
Even though cards like Skywhaler’s Shot are slow against cards like Smuggler’s Copter, that didn’t mean I still shouldn’t have played them. Another oversight in deckbuilding was not playing Archangel Avacyn myself. Not only is this card good on a lot of battlefield positions, it would have been a nice way to interact with opposing Smuggler’s Copters. It’s also nice how you can cast her and then Crew up Smuggler’s Copter after her indestructible ability resolves. This allows you to chump block with the Vehicle and trigger her on the following turn to potentially win the game out of nowhere.
Here’s where I’m currently at with the deck going into Pro Tour testing.
Creatures (22)
- 2 Archangel Avacyn
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 4 Selfless Spirit
- 4 Verdurous Gearhulk
- 4 Fairgrounds Warden
- 4 Servant of the Conduit
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (12)
Spells (22)
The only major change not previously discussed was the replacement of Sylvan Advocate with Selfless Spirit. Sylvan Advocate was just not that good. I thought having a large vigilance threat would be strong with Verdurous Gearhulk, but it just wasn’t as impactful. If I was ahead, my opponent couldn’t really attack anyway. Now, with Archangel Avacyn in the deck, we want to be able to protect our team from her flip side.
One card that has yet to disappoint me is Nissa, Vital Force. I’ve now played this card in numerous decks, and even though many of them weren’t good enough, Nissa, Vital Force was always an all-star. The card is just great at dealing with black-based midrange decks, and as long as they are a part of the format, I believe this card will have a home somewhere.
As for the tournament itself, things went how I would have expected them to for the most part. Emerge strategies like Temur Emerge and Jund Delirium struggled to deal with aggressive decks that attacked from multiple angles. We saw both R/B Aggro and W/R Vehicles overperform, which was kind of upsetting, since I initially wanted to play one of these decks before getting distracted by G/W Aggro and Blossoming Defense. One of the only things that stood out to me was how well all the G/B variants did, starting with Abe Schnake’s version that took him all the way to the semifinals.
Creatures (19)
- 4 Sylvan Advocate
- 2 Tireless Tracker
- 4 Gnarlwood Dryad
- 2 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
- 4 Grim Flayer
- 2 Verdurous Gearhulk
- 1 Noxious Gearhulk
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (16)
Spells (22)
I played against Abe in Round 7 of the event. I won the die roll, had great hands, and got absolutely destroyed. It was brutally refreshing to be beaten that badly in Week 1 of new Standard. It’s not even like he did anything special or had great hands. His deck just did what he built it to do: early threats backed up by Smuggler’s Copter enabling delirium. Soon enough his creatures grew through delirium, Traverse the Ulvenwald found him Verdurous Gearhulk, and it was game over.
Now, G/B Delirium as a whole did well this weekend, and Abe finished best out of all of them. What this tells me is that Liliana, the Last Hope and Grasp of Darkness are great at dealing with early pressure presented in the format, but the addition of Smuggler’s Copter and early threats pushed Abe’s version over the edge.
Many of the other variants were still playing cards used in previous versions that have lost some of their luster. Ruinous Path is great at dealing with planeswalker-heavy formats, but why invest slots into slow sorcery-speed removal when you can simply attack the planeswalkers with early creatures? Not only is Smuggler’s Copter great at early pressure, but its ability and body are both great at helping turn on early delirium, making these threats capable of attacking through early battlefields and into planeswalkers.
I’m not a fan of Sylvan Advocate in the deck, but at the same time don’t know what to replace it with. It’s great in the later turns, but I don’t feel this deck has enough removal to force it through. Maybe Sylvan Advocate is still good enough when you account for Hissing Quagmire and Verdurous Gearhulk, but I’m not going to concede just yet that there isn’t something better. I just don’t know what that is yet.
I would love to try Blossoming Defense in Abe’s deck. It protects a creature from removal, which can help keep the pressure on, but most importantly it can help Grim Flayer in the early turns to get through an opponent’s first threat for cheap. Getting Grim Flayer active is very important for the card’s relevancy in the game and Blossoming Defense can help the card do it all by itself.
One of the decks that I didn’t think would do that well in Indianapolis was R/B Aggro. My opinion was biased towards the deck’s matchup against G/W, which wasn’t that great thanks to so many one-mana interactive spells, but the deck as a whole did much better than I expected it to. Mainly that was thanks to Key to the City doing much more work than I thought it would, backed up with the resiliency of Scrapheap Scrounger.
Usually you will find it easy to brick-wall an aggressive deck or simply run them out of fuel. These two cards don’t play by previous rules and would force the opponent to always have additional answers or to have to race the aggressively slanted deck. That wasn’t always possible, which gave this deck a significant edge over the weekend.
You would think R/B Aggro would be the aggressive deck of the weekend, but Team Cardhorder one-upped everyone with a rather obvious strategy. They identified Smuggler’s Copter to be the best card and chose to play a deck that gave you Smuggler’s Copter superiority thanks to Veteran Motorist and Depala, Pilot Exemplar giving the artifact boosts. Not only that, they continued to provide leverage against other Copter decks with Weaver of Lightning out of the sideboard. This mini-Giant Spider not only blocks Smuggler’s Copter but also can easily pick off the opposing Crew.
Creatures (21)
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 4 Selfless Spirit
- 3 Depala, Pilot Exemplar
- 2 Pia Nalaar
- 4 Toolcraft Exemplar
- 4 Veteran Motorist
Lands (24)
Spells (15)
One could easily dismiss this deck as the “Week 1 aggressive” strategy, but I feel it will have some staying power in the format. It’s aggressive, resilient, and arguably the best Smuggler’s Copter deck. Not only that, though the deck might look weak to Liliana, the Last Hope given all the X/1s in the deck, I’ve found in my testing that it’s easy to trade one-for-one with the mythic planeswalker. It’s sad to think that Liliana, the Last Hope can’t even prey on the best aggressive deck, but it’s somewhat true. G/B Delirium decks will need much more than just a Liliana in the early turns to turn off W/R Vehicles.
I’ve now made it to beautiful Hawaii to explore these ideas and begin my testing for #PTKLD. Instead of testing in Honolulu for the fourth time, Team EUreka has decided to venture to the Big Island to do our testing. It’s beautiful, warm, peaceful, and some much-needed rest and relaxation before Wizards puts on its Inventors’ Fair. I’m sure hoping we can show up with something exciting to bring to the table. The last two decks I’ve played on this team were something for the history books, and I expect nothing else to come out of this team for this event. I hope your exploration is as good as ours as we continue to understand this unique and amazing Standard format.