#SCGINDY has come and gone, and many Copters have been crewed.
Team MGG didn’t have the best event, with Andrew Jessup coming in 15th, me coming in 17th, and Kevin Jones and Dan Jessup missing Day 2. We ran into some walls in testing, didn’t start Crewing Smuggler’s Copter early enough in the process, and ultimately just diverged into early morning audibles that never really worked out.
Sometimes you break the format, and sometimes the format breaks you.
Creatures (16)
Lands (23)
Spells (21)
The R/B Artifact Aggro deck that Andrew and I played was fine, but definitely a Level 1 deck for the format. It had new cards and it had some good things going on, but ultimately was rather unrefined. Thankfully Smuggler’s Copter is just absurdly good and it was pretty hard to go wrong playing it backed up with aggression.
Today we are going to look at the winners and losers of #SCGINDY, along with the deck I wish I had played.
Winner: Smuggler’s Copter
Surprise!
I am tempted to just leave this section blank, as so many words in basically every article this week have been about how dominant Smuggler’s Copter was at #SCGINDY.
With a flawless performance of 32 copies in the Top 8, it’s hard to deny that Standard has a new sovereign. Smuggler’s Copter is amazing in a vacuum without any help, but it synergizes so well with so many different mechanics and decks, it’s no wonder it’s being played in everything. Madness, delirium, artifacts matter, vehicles matter, graveyard matters— the list goes on and on. On a Week 1 where not everyone was prepared for it, it’s not hard to see why it did so well.
I do think the format is going to adapt to Smuggler’s Copter, and while it will still be one of the best cards in the format, it will not be so dominating. This was already starting to happen, as Team Cardhoarder decided to play Harnessed Lightning in their deck instead of Incendiary Flow. There were no Energy synergies in their entire deck and normally an aggressive deck would want to option to go to the face, but they correctly realized how important it was to have an instant-speed answer to Smuggler’s Copter.
Speaking of Team Cardhoarder…
Winner: Team Cardhoarder
As the captain of an opposing team, all I ever want to see is my team succeed in the face of the other teams on tour. I’m friends with many players on other teams, but as a competitor I always want to be the one doing the best.
Still, I’ve got to hand it to Team Cardhoarder for the job they did at #SCGINDY.
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)
While I don’t think their deck will be a huge force in the metagame going forward, it was an excellent Week 1 deck that was perfectly tuned for a Week 1 metagame. It was fast, efficient, played all the best new cards, and was properly adapted for the decks and strategies they came to face. They were able to properly assess what the format was going to look at and attack it in the proper way.
CVM is also a very deserving champion and I’m very happy to see him in the winner’s circle once again.
Loser: The Non-Verdurous Gearhulks
It looks like nobody remembered the Titans.
Aside from a few scant sightings of Torrential Gearhulk, the non-Verdurous Gearhulks were conspicuously absent from the top tables of #SCGINDY. This is a both a product of the format and a statement about their individual power levels.
With the format being so fast, trying to get to five or six mana and cast a bomb is simply not a viable plan. Smuggler’s Copter applies a ton of pressure and is skewing any deck that plays it in a lower-curve, more creature-centric direction. This means that getting to six mana and casting Combustible Gearhulk, Noxious Gearhulk, or Torrential Gearhulk just isn’t presently viable. Noxious Gearhulk did make Top 8 in a delirium deck, but its sole purpose at the moment is a Traverse the Ulvenwald target.
But what about Cataclysmic Gearhulk? In my article about the Gearhulks, I said:
“If the format is all about getting a bunch of stuff on the battlefield, whether creatures, artifacts, or planeswalkers, Cataclysmic Gearhulk is going to be fantastic. Just imagine trying to curve out and build a battlefield against your opponent, only to watch most of it wash away and have to deal with a very respectable 4/5 body as well. But if the format is more midrange and based around large threats and card advantage, Cataclysmic Gearhulk will likely be looking on from the sideboard, much as Tragic Arrogance has for its stay in Standard.”
With aggressive decks being the name of the game, one would think that Cataclysmic Gearhulk would have a good place in the format. The issue is that keeping a reasonable creature and a Smuggler’s Copter off of the trigger is still a very solid battlefield presence that can attack right over the Gearhulk’s head. The trigger is also fairly easy to play around.
I think Cataclysmic Gearhulk has a place, but the proper shell has not been discovered yet.
Loser: Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Looks can certainly be deceiving.
Chandra, the Mind Sculptor she ain’t.
One of the first things we discovered in testing was that Chandra, Torch of Defiance was rather underwhelming. Her first ability looks like you get to draw a card each turn, but it was very often just a Shock. Missing on lands is very troublesome for midrange or control decks, as is having to play your spells on your main phase exactly when you use the ability. This can often throw you off-curve or just generally not mesh with what you had planned for the turn.
If you had plans of playing a four- or five-drop the turn after casting Chandra, Torch of Defiance, and then plus her and hit an Incendiary Flow, what are you going to do? You want to gain value off Chandra, but you need to play your five-drop on curve. Chandra creates a lot of these awkward scenarios, and as such she only really feels at home in aggressive decks.
Is Chandra, Torch of Defiance bad? No. We played two copies of her in our sideboard and she was pretty good, but she is definitely “niche planeswalker that fills a role that you play one or two of” and not “format-defining $60 planeswalker.”
Winner: Scrapheap Scrounger
Oh boy is Scrapheap Scrounger good.
You really couldn’t ask for more when it comes to Scrapheap Scrounger. Well, I guess you could ask to be able to block, but aside from that, Scrapheap Scrounger is the perfect aggressive artifact card. I returned Scrapheap Scrounger dozens of times over the course of #SCGINDY, and many times it was initially discarded to Key to the City or Smuggler’s Copter for maximum value. It turns on your artifact and graveyard synergies, it attacks for three while trading with many of the format’s early drops, and it is just a great all-around beater. It’s also fantastic that it comes back untapped, allowing you to use it to Crew immediately.
Scrapheap Scrounger was obviously a fixture in my R/B Aggro deck, but was also played in many other aggressive artifact decks of various colors. Even U/W and W/R decks were playing it, just splashing the activation off a few fastlands and Aether Hub. It also provided Zach Voss’s Grixis Emerge deck with another way to return Prized Amalgam.
Scrapheap Scrounger is everything I hoped it would be and is even a top-notch Cube card as well. What more could you want!
Loser: The Color Blue
One consistent theme of #SCGINDY was that, for the most part, blue was largely absent from the top tables.
When blue was present, it was very often on a card with another color in its cost as well. In fact, there were no actual mono-blue cards present in any maindeck of the Top 16 of #SCGINDY. There were a number of blue cards, but they were either gold cards like Prized Amalgam and Reflector Mage or had a blue emerge cost like Elder Deep-Fiend.
This makes sense in a lot of ways. Blue wasn’t exactly dominating the prior format, and most of the new tools from Kaladesh that are most obvious to use are very proactive. Finding the good blue deck is often more difficult than finding the good red deck, as good answers are always more difficult to find than good questions at the apex of a format.
How blue approaches the format is likely going to need to change. Maybe Ceremonious Rejection is a maindeckable card? What is the best shell for Torrential Gearhulk? Is blue a control color or a tempo color with cards like Reflector Mage and Spell Queller?
These are questions that will need to be answered.
Winner: Blossoming Defense
An innocent-looking trick that looked like it was made for Modern Infect, Blossoming Defense popped up in a number of places at #SCGINDY. It makes a lot of sense, really, as Blossoming Defense is an excellent trick.
The usual issue with combat tricks in Constructed is that they don’t always line up well with what your opponent is bringing to the table.
If your trick is a power/toughness boost, it’s going to be very ineffective against decks with few creatures and a lot of removal. You won’t be able to use it proactively well and will be putting yourself at risk for card disadvantage if you want to use it most of the time. A Giant Growth against a control deck is usually a very bad Lava Spike.
Conversely, if you have a trick like Turn Aside or other creature protection spell, it’s going to be great against the removal-heavy control decks that are trying to interact with your things via the stack but almost useless against other creature heavy decks. If a deck’s main method of defense is blocking, you are going to be left with an almost-worthless card.
Blossoming Defense is able to play both sides of the ball, making it useful against both decks. Add in that it only costs a single mana and that there are a lot of great creatures to protect in Standard, and you’ve got yourself a very reasonable Magic card.
What Might Have Been
When we started testing for #SCGINDY, the first deck I put together was a Jeskai Planeswalker deck that looked something like this:
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (11)
- 3 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- 2 Nahiri, the Harbinger
- 1 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
- 2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
- 3 Dovin Baan
Lands (26)
Spells (18)
It wasn’t long before the rest of the team told me I should probably move on to something else.
The prevailing thought that I eventually agreed with was that the deck couldn’t compete with the late-game of all the Emrakul, the Promised End / Traverse the Ulvenwald decks, which we assumed would be extremely popular.
Amusingly enough, I think if I had played a tuned version of this deck in #SCGINDY, I would have actually done quite well. Aggressive decks were everywhere, with very few Emrakul, the Promised Ends or Elder Deep-Fiends to be found. All of the deck’s spot removal would have been excellent against the very aggressive field, and while the removal suite would have needed to be adapted to the Smuggler’s Copter decks, that doesn’t seem too difficult.
This is a deck I will be working on for the future.
Looking Forward
Despite the dominance of Smuggler’s Copter, Kaladesh Standard was a breath of fresh air. There’s still a ton of decks I want to try, and I am very excited to see what the Pro Tour brings.
There is a lot of power in this format, and a lot of cards begging to be built around. It doesn’t end at Smuggler’s Copter… this is definitely only the beginning.
A Moment of Silence
If you’ve ever tuned in to my stream, you’ve likely seen my pet and stream mascot Giroux before. Giroux used to hang out in the background of my webcam, and was so well liked by my viewers I actually got him his own camera for GirouxCam.
Sadly, while I was at #SCGINDY, Giroux passed away.
I had a twelve=hour memorial stream on Tuesday for him and I want to thank everyone who tuned in and had kind words to say. Sure, he was just a little gerbil, but he was the most famous gerbil in the world and a part of our stream. His emote will forever live on, and I’m happy to know he had a good life and was loved by many.
Challenge Thursday
There was no Challenge Thursday last week, as I was travelling to #SCGINDY, but we are back this week for another go!
We have these challenges to choose from:
As always, the poll will end at 7:00pm Eastern time, which will give me one hour to construct my deck. Then you can tune in at 8:00pm for the start of the stream. I will be playing an entire League with the challenge deck, tweaking it a bit, and then playing another League right after.
How many wins can I get? Cast your vote and tune in to my stream at 8:00pm Eastern tonight to see how it goes!