B/W Tokens Part Two

Who’s the Beatdown After Sideboarding?

For that matter, who wants to be?

It’s “B/W Tokens Part Two” and quite a mite more!

When I originally wrote Who’s the Beatdown?, the prevailing strategy in sideboarded games was to try to go more control. Here is a pretty basic example of how a deck might want to do that, Dave Price’s Top 8 deck from Grand Prix Seattle:

David Price – Negator or No?

4 Carnophage
4 Dark Ritual
4 Dauthi Horror
4 Dauthi Slayer
4 Demonic Consultation
4 Duress
3 Hatred
1 Kaervek’s Spite
4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Sarcomancy
1 Spinning Darkness
3 Unmask

16 Swamp
4 City of Traitors

SIDEBOARD
3 Cursed Scroll
4 Masticore
2 Null Rod
3 Perish
3 Sphere of Resistance

In sideboarded games against other beatdown decks, specifically the Red Decks that were so hard to beat, Dave would remove cards like Sarcomancy (almost always awful) for cards like Masticore (more expensive, but worth lots of cards). This deck could set up a second turn Masticore with Demonic Consultation and Dark Ritual; cross the old fingers. With three lands — provided one was a City of Traitors — the Black deck could play the control, with the Masticore drawing fire (but possibly surviving still due to high toughness and regeneration), generating much card advantage by being able to pick off Ball Lightning. You can call this a kind of “Tinker” scenario, but for our argument it’s jockeying into the “control” role due to the non-tenability of the “beatdown” role against Fireblast and Ball Lightning when you have all these suicidal Zombies in your deck.

Arguably 2/3 of Dave’s sideboard could be categorized as “creature suppression” … Compare with the main deck’s 1/60 (unfettered beatdown).

The same was not untrue for “control” defaulting decks. Dave’s deck was from about a year after I wrote Who’s the Beatdown?. Look at Randy Buehler’s influential World Championship deck from about a year before I wrote that fairly well received article:

Randy Buehler – CMU Blue

4 Nevinyrral’s Disk

4 Counterspell
4 Dismiss
2 Dissipate
3 Forbid
4 Force Spike
4 Impulse
3 Mana Leak
1 Memory Lapse
1 Rainbow Efreet
4 Whispers of the Muse

18 Island
4 Quicksand
4 Stalking Stones

SIDEBOARD
1 Grindstone
2 Capsize
4 Hydroblast
4 Sea Sprite
4 Wasteland

Even with 26 lands main deck Randy was willing to side in four more lands for the mirror to prolong the time until he would actually have to start tapping lands by just playing more and more of them (and in this case having something to say about how the opponent spent his mana in the case of Wasteland applied to cards like Stalking Stones)… Jockeying for more and more and more control.

Randy’s Forbidian from more-or-less the exact moment of the original Who’s the Beatdown? sided three lands as well as some glacial Whispers of the Muse that were certainly not there for the ultra-fast beatdown and combo decks of the era; played quickly, these Whispers would increase Randy’s chances of drawing early Thawing Glaciers, played late, they were even more effective in the card advantage department, especially very very long games.

Of course there are no hard-and-fast rules that are completely unbreakable… We’re talking about prevailing trends here. At the time I talked to Zvi about why this might be — players (at least sometimes correctly) positioning themselves as beatdown or control in game one, but both usually going for control sideboarded — and he remarked that it was obvious: Control has more card advantage, and it’s simply easier to win with more card advantage.

The reason this is interesting is because as time has gone on the best deck designers and players have tried more and more to go more beatdown than control sideboarded. Maybe not beatdown in the sense of “siding in Jackal Pups” (though that happens all the time when the format gives you the tools you need), but beatdown in the sense that you want to seize the initiative and force through your threats.

Think about Jund Mana Ramp v. Fae. I think Jund Mana Ramp is the control in this matchup (consider Asher ManningBot’s comment from You Make the Play, You Make the Play), which is as dodgy as it is unexpected (Game One is not exactly the most stable pillar of percentage)… But consider the specifics. Fae is the threat deck. They win not with permission but resolving Bitterblossom on turn two, and overwhelming with Mistbind Clique. Spellstutter Sprite is a pure tempo move one-for-one and Cryptic Command is usually there to get spit out of the way so that the infinite 1/1s and big old 4/4 can get in. Jund Mana Ramp is the Spartan 300 in this matchup. Jund is trying to hold the hot gates. The legions of little Fae are buzzing in… Jund wins by killing lots of them with Jund Charms and Cloudthreshers, usually wins with one big old Cloudthresher that didn’t get countered or killed… You know, how Weissman did back in the day with his one Serra Angel. That’s why getting in with a Kitchen Finks, Chameleon Colossus, or in Asher’s comment a Civic Wayfinder can change the tenor of a game: It’s like a special treat where you aren’t just taking it every turn and trying to survive until you can do something awesome.

But sideboarded, Jund can tear fingernails getting into the beatdown spot with Mind Shatter, or specifically Mind Shatter + Gutteral Response. So much more active. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. When it’s working, you either work them and they have no chance to be either beatdown or control because they now have nothing and you are about to untap and smash whatever they have left with the soon-to-be-full value Cloudthresher in the grip; when it doesn’t, you are still making active plays that are wearing on a limited screen of counterspells that will eventually buckle if they don’t, you know, execute on their plan and beatdown you to death.

During the span that made me Resident Genius a couple of years ago, many of the successful decks I put together — Josh Ravitz on Kuroda-style Red, my PTQ win with Critical Mass, and Osyp Lebedowicz with URzaTron — featured controllish decks with sideboards set up to beat controllish decks by forcing through table-shattering threats… All three of those sideboards were masterworks.

So why am I on this topic?

Here is a video I just uploaded to ye olde YouTube:

If you watched B/W Tokens Part I you can see that I had overwhelming offense in the sky with multiple Marsh Flitters and Cloudgoat Rangers while he couldn’t get through on the ground due to my little White men. However he was playing with the powerful Chameleon Colossus, which is usually medium scary for Bitterblossom players.

I mentioned in the video I sided out Glorious Anthem which just makes me even more beatdown in favor of Wrath of God and Elspeth, Knight-Errant (block one Chameleon Colossus forever and / or guarantee Wrath of God card advantage) in order to cover that side of the spectrum. In this case I am going kind of old school, siding control / card advantage cards, but you see how I cut off both beatdown [which I already had] AND control [in the case that he could get his bit threats through] roles.

You see a lot of successful decks implementing exactly this strategy, even if no commentator indicated that was what they were going for.

LOVE
MIKE

PS:

Michael Jacob’s B/W Tokens

4 Bitterblossom
3 Marsh Flitter
4 Terror
2 Thoughtseize

4 Tidehollow Sculler

3 Ajani Goldmane
4 Cloudgoat Ranger
4 Glorious Anthem
2 Knight of Meadowgrain
1 Knight of the White Orchid
4 Spectral Procession

4 Arcane Sanctum
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Fetid Heath
2 Mutavault
3 Plains
3 Reflecting Pool
1 Swamp
4 Windbrisk Heights

sb:
2 Head Games
2 Thoughtseize
3 Stillmoon Cavalier
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 Wispmare
3 Wrath of God

PPS: Reading List

UG Threshold and The Ancient Art of First Round Flores by Zvi Mowshowitz (you need Brainburst Premium to read this, but it will be in the upcoming Zvi book by Top 8 Magic)

By me:
Sullivan, Nimble Mongoose, and Sullivan
Playing with Follow-through