The Danger of Cool Things ∙ Chad Ellis ∙ Eldrazi Conscription
Sovereigns of Lost Alara ∙ “the stack” ∙ … and Eldrazi Conscription
Eldrazi Conscription
A new version of the Mythic deck centers around Sovereigns of Lost Alara setting up Eldrazi Conscription. You attack, the Sovereigns of Lost Alara goes and finds that normally cost prohibitive enchantment, sticks it on your guy, and all of a sudden you have a gigantic monster that should kill the opponent in just 1-2 blows. The second time you attack with such an Eldrazi-proxy, you probably get to set up Annihilator 2 as well, which is just cool (on top of being wicked deadly).
Recently my new protege Kar Yung Tom stated that the only way that King Hulk / Raka XXX can possibly lose to Mythic is to be smashed by this Eldrazi Conscription combination… So plan for it, anticipate, prevent, etc. For King Hulk — a deck with precious few ways to interact with the Sovereigns of Lost Alara combination itself — must use mass removal or Planeswalkers on its own turn to prevent getting smashed. But what about decks with actual instant speed removal, viz. Doom Blade or Path to Exile? How should they play against Eldrazi Conscription?
This is how the combination works.
The opponent attacks.
Any of the “attacks alone” text abilities go on the stack; these include both Exalted and the Eldrazi Conscription-finding ability on Sovereigns of Lost Alara. Let’s table Exalted for the moment. How do you deal with the second ability?
I think most players — acting “automatically” — will be tempted to let the ability resolve, let the opponent attach Eldrazi Conscription to the attacking creature, and then point the Doom Blade at the attacking bugger. After all this is “cool”. This is “card advantage”.
Or is it?
True, if you point a removal spell at an Aura’d-up Eldrazi wannabe, you are technically destroying two cards — both the creature and the creature enchantment. Is this card advantage? At that instant, the answer is yes. You are using one resource to remove two resources. But for practical purposes it isn’t. The Eldrazi Conscription in this case is “extra” … The opponent went and got it for free. Your “card advantage” play — your “cool” card advantage play — is really just a break even, despite the fact that at that instant, the exchange itself is card advantageous.
Let me propose a counter-automatic play:
What if we respond to all that jazz, and kill the creature before the Eldrazi Conscription hits the battlefield? Or even in response to all of it, before in many cases the Exalted triggers hit (when our removal spell is Lightning Bolt and the Eldrazi-to-be is a Noble Hierarch, this may actually be a necessity)?
I would argue that leaving the Eldrazi Conscription in the opponent’s deck is actually desirable.
First of all, if we prevent the ability from resolving, we are preventing the opponent from getting an extra card; we don’t have to make up the card on the two-for-one… because the opponent never got the Eldrazi Conscription for us to two-for-one. Grok? Good.
The reason this might be subtly better is that now the opponent can accidentally draw Eldrazi Conscription. Awesome, right? That is a card he never wants to draw. Not only is it essentially dead in hand, drawing both basically turns off Sovereigns of Lost Alara.
Now of course if the opponent has an army of little guys, and the ability to reload next turn and the turn after, you might want to pull out his Sovereigns’ teeth (especially if you have, say, two copies of Terminate). But if he isn’t long on threats on the battlefield already — as will often be the case — I think giving him the opportunity to get unlucky can be desirable.
Neither play is right all the time… But I figured presenting the opposite as a viable option might be a useful suggestion to many of you with automatic — but not necessarily automatically better — MO’s lined up.
LOVE
MIKE
P.S. For those of you who haven’t read it yet, I heartily recommend The Danger of Cool Things by my friend Chad Ellis. Chad was a former columnist at Star City and the mother ship, a Pro Tour Top 8 competitor, and a hell of a strategy writer. The Danger of Cool Things is his best work, and kind of a companion to Who’s the Beatdown if that makes any sense.
It is possible I have been a little harsh on my man Sphinx of Jwar Isle on this blog.
Here are some of the things I have said about him over the past year or so:
“I generally dislike Sphinx of Jwar Isle due to its being expensive and crappy.”
“But come on… Was I really going to lose to Sphinx of Jwar Isle?”
“I think Sphinx of Jwar Isle is such a fake card.”
“… boring… “
In my own defense, people have been playing him in basically atrocious decks. I mean why would you play Grixis Control when you could play Grixis Burn? Why would you — in general — play Sphinx of Jwar Isle when you could play Sphinx of Lost Truths? Especially in U/W or some kind of gassy Esper variant?
Unfortunately — and I mean really unfortunately — we may now have an answer to this question.
I was trolling around Twitter and saw a deck by Neale Talbot on his blog. This is Neale’s initial version:
Target This!
4 Deft Duelist
4 Calcite Snapper
4 Wall of Denial
3 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
3 Path to Exile
4 Treasure Hunt
2 Marshal’s Anthem
3 Oblivion Ring
4 Spreading Seas
2 Ardent Plea
I didn’t hate the deck; in fact it reminded me of “the Untouchables” — a series of decks that were played around the time of my first Pro Tour (primarily in the Juniors division), centering around cards like Autumn Willow and Deadly Insect. The concept of this deck is similar… All the creatures [thematically] have Shroud.
Looking over the deck list I decided that I didn’t want to Ardent Plea into Deft Duelist ever, and the Spreading Seas portion of the deck seemed a bit inconsistent. So I cut that and some of the creatures in favor of more defense and card advantage.
This is my take on Neal’s deck, based on several matches of testing:
sb:
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Wall of Denial
4 Celestial Purge
2 Day of Judgment
4 Kor Firewalker
1 Martial Coup
The first version I played had a third Oblivion Ring and no Marshal’s Anthem. Marshal’s Anthem clearly right in this deck… I somehow forgot to play it despite its being in Neal’s deck list. Oh well, old.
You probably understand how this deck works. The creatures all have Shroud and are therefore relatively difficult to deal with using conventional means (Terminate, Path to Exile, even creature combat).
The deck seems to perform well against a variety of decks. It has Day of Judgment to gain an advantage over reach-poor decks like Boss Naya and White Weenie, and a combination of early game mana disruption and Shroud defense against Jund. Against other U/W decks, you are the beatdown. Strangely, they have a hard time dealing with your creatures. This can lead to the opponent having to tap out at inopportune times, allowing you to deal with their Planeswalkers or just get a Planeswalker advantage yourself.
I mostly won with the deck, and I managed to do better than break even in the tournament queues.
The deck is serviceable against Allies, but you have to watch for their Haste. I found that even when I felt like I should be winning, the reload power of that deck was not to be completely overlooked. The deck is relatively weak against the card Eldrazi Monument. Eldrazi Green seems like a very easy pairing but for that card… But then again, they did name their deck after it. Jund is… Jund. You win some, you can get blown out by triple Blightning, too.
The best matchup seems to be Boss Naya.
Deft Duelist sings in the Boss Naya match, but it is the weakest card generally. I find myself siding out Deft Duelist quite a bit, when I reach for the three additional Wrath of God effects in the sideboard. Generally Calcite Snapper is the superior threat… Sometimes you just go beatdown with Calcite Snapper, and even Jund can just look on in horror as Sprouting Thrinax gets covered by Oblivion Ring, Bloodbraid Elf meets Path to Exile, and Beast tokens go flying into the aether thanks to Jace, the Mind Sculptor as the ravenous convertible turtle rumbles in for four, Four, FOUR per turn.
This is obviously not a Regionals-ready deck… yet. But I was very surprised at how its synergies could make up for the relative weakness of some of the individual cards.
Analysis of the main deck cards:
Calcite Snapper
I was hot and cold on this one; however the ability to go aggro — and put the opponent on a legitimate clock — came up several times in both practice and tournament matches. This is clearly one of the centerpiece cards of the deck.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
I won with this about 20% of the time. Many games are about setting up several Shroud creatures to surround and protect Jace… and that’s it.
Mind Spring
Very good in this deck. You need a reload in part because you are drawing, let’s be frank, motherlovin Deft Duelist.
Sphinx of Jwar Isle
I think two is the right number; however if I fall even further out of love with Deft Duelist, I can see going to three copies. He isn’t good (still); he kept running up against either Boss Naya with Basilisk Collar online or Baneslayer Angel. However he could pull it through sometimes thanks to Marshall’s Anthem or help from Jace, the Mind Sculptor or other spot removal. I begrudgingly admit that this card is actually perfect in this deck (though I maintain that he probably isn’t optimal in most other decks).
Spreading Seas
Never side them out.
Treasure Hunt
I was much happier with the Treasure Hunt / Halimar Depths combo in this deck than I was in the more reactive Esper deck. The U/W aggro deck can play out, say, a Deft Duelist and then use Treasure Hunt to draw up; I rarely had to discard, and I usually got a little bonus (though “desperation” Treasure Hunts rarely seem profitable).
Deft Duelist
Shockingly good against Boss Naya. These did everything from running by a squad of defenders to beat up Ajani Vengeant to huddling around Elspeth, Knight-Errant and Jace Beleren so that they could do their damn jobs.
…
Most of the other main deck cards have seen heavy play in other decks discussed on this blog. They are all good… I often feel like I want another Oblivion Ring, but maybe that’s just because I lost to Eldrazi Monument.
Sideboard Cards:
Jace, the Mind Sculptor – came in most matches
Wall of Denial – I never sided more than one copy in, even against the beatdown decks where you would expect them to be good… I felt like these conflicted too much with the excess mass removal (though they seem quite useful against Jund, where you don’t want Day of Judgment)
Celestial Purge – All-star, not surprising.
Day of Judgment / Martial Coup – The next most common cards to come in after Jace, the Mind Sculptor #4. Especially backbreaking for Vampires, Boss Naya, White Weenie, and to a lesser extent, Allies.
Kor Firewalker – I never sided these in. I would like to do a ten game set or so versus Mono-Red, Red-splash-Black, and / or Barely Boros to get a feel of how necessary Kor Firewalker is. I only played versus one Mono-Red deck, and he would have no second game after his Goblins were so dominated by Deft Duelist in the first.
I think this one might be worth some time investment… Let’s see how Rise of the Eldrazi looks in a few weeks. I could see incorporating more Planeswalkers, such as Gideon Jura.
While I was doing research for another article I hit upon what, at the time, seemed like an unusual deck list. It was a hybrid beatdown deck featuring basically every card that I already like to play… Kitchen Finks (basically my favorite), Sakura-Tribe Elder (still my favorite despite what M10 did to the old boy), and Umezawa’s Jitte. I could forgive the Tarmogoyfs and so on because the deck also played the Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows combination that I so admired from Brian Kibler’s Pro Tour Austin-winning deck list.
But the coolest part?
It was also a combo deck!
So you have this angle of just good Green creatures… Literally the kind of creatures I probably like to play too much (see “The Greenest Mage of All” posts here and here over at Top8Magic), but then the deck also has a full-on Scapeshift kill!
I was used to seeing Scapeshift out of Ceta-colored decks, Blue all the way to their Cryptic Commands… but this could work, too.
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
6 Snow-Covered Forest
6 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
4 Stomping Ground
2 Treetop Village
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
This main deck is basically the default “what everyone is playing” for this archetype with no modifications from YT. The sideboard is informed from looking at a bunch of different deck lists and not resorting (for once) to Akroma, Angel of Fury.
You probably get how the main deck works already if you are reading this blog; in fact, you are probably ahead of me because I just saw this deck 🙂
… But the sideboard probably takes some explanation.
You can play a sideboard like this one a couple of different ways, including staying straight Gruul instead of going Jund. I decided to go Jund because Extirpate is just that damn good, in particular against Thopter Foundry combo decks. Ancient Grudge is about my favorite Extended card ever… So how could it not join the party? I’ve already got Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kitchen Finks, after all.
Anyway first impression of this strategy was “how can this deck compete with other combo decks,” followed by “I really don’t see how I can compete with a deck featuring Baneslayer Angel” … But after having played it for a while, I really like the feel of the deck.
My first outing was against a Living End combo deck.
He got all kinds of cycling and so forth, but my deck was a bit shy for threats. Anyway he cycled Street Wraith a couple of times but otherwise evoked Shriekmaw to kill my Tarmogoyf… stuff like that. Fulminator Mage kept me off of seven for a while, but he just didn’t kill me. I played two or three copies of Search for Tomorrow and a pair of Sakura-Tribe Elders (the second one was actually Samwise Gamgee at the end of The Two Towers, Umezawa’s Jitte in one slithery hand, ruling the board.
Oh well, you can be 7/7 some other day. What I really want is a basic Swamp.
Kill ya. [Before you kill me, you filthy combo deck!]
I wouldn’t have needed his Street Wraiths because of my Sakura-Tribe Elder beatdown and some Punishing Fire action, but I can’t complain.
Game Two he just drew no Cascade spells. He cycled and cycled and I just played Thought Hemmorhage for Livinig End and he was pretty kold.
I played against a couple of men running the Lightning Bolt Deck… Not surprising, especially for online.
The frustrating part was being essentially unable to sideboard despite losing Game One in the first outing.
I just hit my Kitchen Finks on turn three and it was really easy to win.
I also played against some “rogue” (ahem) type decks and another combo deck (though which kind escapes me). All dubyas so far.
I do think this deck lacks a little bit of “I win” flexibility (for instance, it has no way to disrupt the fastest Dark Depths draw), but all-in-all I was very pleased and I think I will sleeve up a version of this for my next Extended PTQ, provided I play in another one.
Firestarter:
What do you guys think about Dead // Gone? It seems like maybe I should sideboard that; just another card that you can bring in against beatdown (though this deck seems generally advantaged), but also the three mana side can fight 20/20 Coldsnap guys better than, you know, the nothing we have right now.
So a couple of weeks ago, I presented the following You Make the Play:
This is a seven card hand. You lost the flip so there are 53 cards in your deck and you are playing second. The deck list is the one we have been bandying about the past week or two — Jund Mana Ramp.
So… Keep or no?
The responses were interesting and varied. I was using this You Make the Play as a lead-in for some basic statistics (which we will get to) but my intrepid readership took typically galvanized positions as well as the opportunity to stand on soap boxes.
When the dust cleared (out of nineteen responses), we had a little under 2:1 ratio in favor of keeping the hand… and a handful of people who just don’t like Gift of the Gargantuan 🙂
* Zvi, by the way, said that he didn’t have to look at the hand, and if I were asking, I should mulligan it.
However, like I said, I wanted to use this as a lead-in for some basic statistics rather than a critique of the deck.
When we make plays we often do things on “gut” or fear that end up being terrible decisions. One of the worst mistakes in my entire career was in a Feature Match at US Nationals 2000.
I was playing trusty Napster in its best tournament, and riding a 2-0 open on the day, I found myself in the Feature Match area in a semi-mirror against Donnie Gallitz.
I opened on Swamp, Dark Ritual, Phyrexian Negator and Donnie started with a Duress for my Vicious Hunger. I Duressed Donnie back; his hand was all garbage – Unmask, Stupor, Masticore, and Skittering Skirge. Skittering Skirge was the best card in the hand but I couldn’t take it; Masticore was borderline unplayble in the matchup but happened to be good against my Phyrexian Negator (again I couldn’t take it), so I decided to take the Unmask.
Donnie dropped the Skirge to defend, then mized into Ritual + Persecute. I responded with Vampiric Tutor for Vicious Hunger and got in more and more.
Donnie played his unplayable Masticore (which nevertheless prompted me to sacrifice my Phyrexian Negator). Then I Eradicated the Masticore via Vampiric Tutor, then Tutored again to set up Yawgmoth’s Will.
Ritual + Vicious Hunger to start, smashing Donnie’s fresh Skitting Skirge, then I set up a Phyrexian Negator. Donnie mized into a Yawgmoth’s Will of his own, but if you go back and read the cards they were pretty pointless so all he did was make a dude.
Okay here’s my mistake.
I topdecked a Skittering Horror.
Now of course I played it pre-combat.
My plan was to smash Donnie with my Negator and sacrifice down to just the Negator, and then just kill him the next turn. But the Horror gave me another permanent and another option. So because I drew the Horror and correctly played it, I smashed in and sacrificed down to the Horror and one land instead. I figured if Donnie drew a Vicious Hunger he could make me sacrifice down to nothing, but the same wouldn’t be true of a Horror.
Instead Donnie — no cards in hand — picked up a Skittering Skirge that held me (down to essentially no permanents) off until he came back to win the game… From about three life.
In the same spot I would have just trampled him to death.
I had what Dan Paskins calls The Fear, and made a terrible decision.
I should probably have sacrificed down to double guys; next best would have been Negator and land (which was my original plan).
Dave Price described this as bad because of probability. Donnie had what? Forty cards or more in his deck? What were the chances of his drawing a Vicious Hunger (bad for two permanents if one is a Negator) versus any creature that could stop a Skittering Horror?
It gets worse.
Donnie played his unplayable Masticore (which nevertheless prompted me to sacrifice my Phyrexian Negator). Then I Eradicated the Masticore via Vampiric Tutor, then Tutored again to set up Yawgmoth’s Will.
Eradicate allows you to look through the opponent’s entire deck.
… Where I could have seen that he played no Vicious Hungers at all main deck!
I won Game Two in dramatic fashion, but just had no resources in Game Three whereas Donnie got the fast Persecute. But the fact is: It shouldn’t have gone three games.
So how does this come back to our discussion of whether or not to mulligan this hand on the draw?
The deck plays 23 lands and four Rampant Growths. I was operating under the idea “If I have three lands untapped on my third turn, I can basically make my land drops all the way to six without interruption” (six land being Broodmate range). I understand some of you think this hand is not strong v. Tokens, but you probably haven’t played the matchup as much as I have. Tokens is often a Batman / Vs. System battle where you just play something better than what they play, top up on your six, and then play sixes every turn while they are still piddling around with three 1/1 creatures (which actually get soundly stomped by some of your sixes).
So…
How do we get to three untapped lands on turn three?
1) We can draw any land on turn one or turn two.
2) We can draw Rampant Growth on turn one or turn two.
3) We can topdeck one of 13 comes into play untapped lands on turn three.
So here are our probabilities.
Turn One – 25/53
Turn Two – 25/52
Turn Three – 13/51
You have twenty-five options on turn one – any of the twenty-one remaining lands, plus any of the Rampant Growths.
You have twenty-five options on turn two (assuming you did not already fulfill your minimal requirement on the first turn) – the same twenty-one lands and the same Rampant Growths. Note that this only works because you have two lands that come into play untapped in your opening hand; the math changes dramatically if you have a different land configuration… For example if both lands came into play tapped, you could not count Rampant Growth without an intervening untapped land pull (which itself would have fulfilled what we need fulfilled).
Turn three you still have options but they decline sharply. You lose eight of your lands (Treetop Village and Savage Lands come into play tapped, so drawing them on turn three is useless in the short term; ditto on Rampant Growth).
Most players can evaluate a situation like this one and look at the first turn. You are under 50% likely to pull a relevant piece of mana on turn one.
You are similarly less than 50% likely to pull a relevant land on turn two. But what about the fact that you get turn one and turn two both?
Turn three is much less likely than turn one or two, but you still have a nice lift… That is an “advantage” of going second in this hypothetical.
So how likely are you to pull the right land?
You start with 25/53, or about 47%… That’s yours, that slight dog / coin flip.
Of the remaining 53%, you get 25/52 (or about 48%), an addition 25%.
So here is the super tricky part. Of the 75% of that lost 53%, you get there another 13/51 (~25%) of the time… about 7%.
Ultimately you’re in at about 79-80% likely to have three untapped lands on turn three.
A faster and arguably easier way to come to the same conclusion is to figure it out in the negative. How unlikely are you to have the land you need on turn three? Your likelyhood of actually having the goods is whatever is left.
Relative likelihoods of drawing non-relevant cards:
28/53
27/52
38/51
Multiply all those together and you’re a hair over 20% not likely to get there… Or 79-80% to have the mana you need (just like we said).
So what happened?
80% is a pretty good bet, so I kept.
It turned out that my opponent was Reflecting Pool Control, one of the deck’s best matchups, and of all the matchups in Standard, the most vulnerable to this type of hand (incremental card advantage via small threats).
So of course I missed my third three times, discarded, and lost one of my best matchups 🙂
That’s right FiveWithFlores fans… a possible payoff! Here comes a legitimately exciting Standard Tezzerator sketch featuring Tezzeret the Seeker plus new Alara Reborn weapons Fieldmist Borderpost and Mistvein Borderpost.
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To begin with, here’s the deck:
Borderpost Tezzerator
4 Fieldmist Borderpost
4 Mind Stone
4 Mistvein Borderpost
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Rings of Brighthearth
sideboard:
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Scepter of Dominance
2 Negate
1 Plumeveil
2 Austere Command
1 Ajani Goldmane
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Path to Exile
2 Wall of Reverence
The main deck still needs to be tuned (obviously… it’s 61 cards). I am a little skeptical of the Black component because there isn’t enough Black to support Scepter of Fugue, which is the best kind of card in this strategy for fighting decks like Jund Ramp or Reflecting Pool Control.
Right now the only Black is Esper Charm, which is admittedly a superb spell (though it could be replaced with some combination of Courier’s Capsules and Armillary Spheres. I am guessing that the Black will remain, though, because Mistvein Borderpost is an essential part of this deck and it would be a shame to waste that Black splash (though the mana would be improved going down to two colors and replacing some Arcane Sanctums with the last two Mystic Gates).
The idea of this deck came to me due to the Borderpost cycle. The Borderposts just give us more cheap, high utility, artifacts that can help add loyalty to Tezzeret the Seeker; previously the format really only had only Mind Stone. The Borderposts give us not acceleration but “power” mana once Tezzeret is already in play, plus “bodies” for Tezzeret’s ultimate ability. Hi-ya!
No one has produced a proven deck using the Borderposts yet so there is no great model on how to build a mana base. Remember the Borderposts aren’t lands. They function like Coastal Towers and Salt Marshes… but only when you have already got a basic land. So I loaded this deck with basic lands! The lucky side is that this deck seems relatively resilient against Anathemancer, which looks to be next to unique in the current format.
So how does this deck work?
The primary threats in Borderpost Tezzerator are the three of the four Planeswalkers. I have never ended a game with Jace’s ultimate ability, but there is no reason why you wouldn’t be able to (especially as this is a Rings of Brighthearth deck). Of course you can hassle with Elspeth’s microscopic army. The sexiest kill — especially when you’ve capitalized on Rings of Brighthearth — is an Avatar or double-Avatar strike set up by Ajani Goldmane.
But the most common kill is of course having four artifacts in play and killing the opponent with Tezzeret the Seeker. It’s pretty easy to have four artifacts out, and it’s not very difficult to get your guys through. Here are some kills you may not have seen at first glance:
Any big kill – Cryptic Command the opponent’s creatures at the end of the opponent’s turn, untap and swing for the kill (easiest with Tezzeret kill, but fine with Ajani kill).
Avatar kill – Pre-combat use Elspeth’s ultimate ability to make the Avatar(s) immortal. Wrath of God pre-combat… Your guy lives, the opponent dies.
Avatar kill – Elspeth sends the Avatar “to the air” to circumvent blockers! Obvious?
Tezzeret kill – Wrath of God pre-combat. This is kind of hideous… All of their guys die, your guys aren’t even guys yet when the Wrath goes off.. They probably die.
Card rundown…
Fieldmist Borderpost Obviously a defining card of this deck; its existence is fundamental to the viability of the Tezzeret deck in Standard… In this deck it’s a decent land, but because it’s an artifact, it plays nicely with the most powerful Planeswalker.
Mind Stone Basically the only sort of mana acceleration available in a deck like this in Standard. I ran it in some Grixis and Reflecting Pool Control decks pre-Conflux, but they were never good enough… This deck has a fair number of important four mana spells — Ajani Goldmane, Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Wrath of God — and Mind Stone can help put those cards out more quickly. Subtly, the card is also useful for playing cards like Jace Beleren because there are so many “lands” in Borderpost Tezzerator that come into play tapped (you know, like the Borderposts themselves). Mind Stone works pretty well with Tezzeret the Seeker and Rings of Brighthearth in long Stage Two games. You can use Tezzeret and Rings to search up two Mind Stones for “free” (you pay two mana but the Mind Stones in play); the Mind Stones provide not only a long term mana advantage, but with sufficient mana the above play is basically an Opportunity (with Rings of Brighthearth, each of the Mind Stones represents two cards).
Mistvein Borderpost See Fieldmist Borderpost, above, except Mistvein Borderpost is less important to this deck in particular because Borderpost Tezzerator is a White deck and not really a Black deck.
Relic of Progenitus Card number sixty-one. I always under-prepare for Reveillark decks. There also used to be a Pithing Needle.
Rings of Brighthearth The deck doesn’t need the Rings in play to win; in a sense this is “win more” … but really it’s win way more. It seems pretty difficult to beat this deck if you let it play a few turns with Rings and any one of the Planeswalkers. Remember Mind Stone works well with Rings as well… I was thinking of adding Esper Panorama and maybe Mistveil Plains (which both have nice synergy with the Rings), but like I said before we have no real data on the Borderposts and I don’t just want to manascrew myself.
Cryptic Command LOL.
Jace Beleren This is the only four-of Planeswalker in the deck. Strictly a curve issue. You want to hit three, play Jace, draw some cards, get out and get going.
Mulldrifter This deck actually started out as a B/U Mannequin hybrid deck! Shriekmaw, Soul Manipulation… Sexy, right? Mulldrifter is the only card that made the cuts; I felt like Planeswalkers was a more powerful theme than Mannequin. I don’t see ever cutting this card… It’s not a lot worse than Compulsive Research on three, and the five mana version can attack and block.
Tezzeret the Seeker The crown jewel – The Borderposts make Tezzeret frankly playable in Standard; going even a little bit long, Tezzeret doesn’t offer the lockdown of the Extended version, but it is still a heck of a lot stronger than Garruk Wildspeaker!
Esper Charm The only Black card in the deck at this point… See the above discussions.
Ajani Goldmane I added this in about the third version in place of the third Elspeth. The games with this deck can sometimes go quite long even if you’re not getting killed… I was just drawing a lot of Elspeths when I was already working the board with Elspeth; I wanted something different that could also gain life as this deck has no main deck Wall of Reverence or Kitchen Finks.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant One of the best cards in Standard. It’s basically Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker for half the mana 🙂
Path to Exile Do I really have to explain this one?
Wrath of God See “Path to Exile” above.
Sideboard cards…
I sketched out the initial version of the sideboard very loosely because of Meddling Mage.
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Scepter of Dominance
2 Negate
1 Plumeveil
2 Austere Command
1 Ajani Goldmane
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Path to Exile
2 Wall of Reverence
I really like Scepter of Dominance. If I cut Esper Charm I think I would play two Scepters. Remember Scepter of Dominance forces a creature deck to over-commit so that you can get extra value with Wrath of God. Against control decks it can also help you resolve your spells. Plus, you can screw up the opponent’s mana so it is harder for him to play a Broodmate Dragon, Cruel Ultimatum, you know.
Two updated Extended decks, plus about eight matches of additional Extended testing. Enjoy!
I started out playing the Mono-White Control deck from last night again. For those of you who got the wrong deck list looking at it (which is everyone… it wasn’t even sixty cards*), here is the proper deck list:
3 Chalice of the Void
4 Akroma’s Vengeance
2 Crovax, Ascendent Hero
2 Decree of Justice
4 Eternal Dragon
4 Mana Tithe
4 Martyr of Sands
3 Oblivion Ring
4 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Wrath of GodÂ
20 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Temple of the False God
2 Urza’s Factory
sb:
1 Chalice of the Void
4 Unmake
1 Crovax, Ascendent Hero
4 Kataki, War’s Wage
4 Condemn
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Urza’s Factory is new, obviously. I have to admit I didn’t actually produce any tokens with those tonight… But I’m sure something like those might come up someday… And the deck doesn’t need 22 Plains.
I also swapped in the fourth Kataki, War’s Wage over the solo Ethersworn Canonist; the deck is super good against Affinity already, but the Time Walk aspect against Lightning Bolt Red has just been so good. Plus, it gives you a body that they almost have to answer, which doubles up as life gain, kind of.
Mono-White testing was pretty unspectacular tonight. I broke even in four matches. Ironically the first three were against various Lightning Bolt Red… a nigh bye.
I lost the first match L-W-L… I randomly Condemned a Mogg Fanatic in Game three not realizing his Morph was, um, not a Gathan Raiders. I was planning to kind of ignore it and jump around with chumps and whatnot, but it was a Blistering Firecat! Then he paid retail for another one and I took a million… I really wish I had not blown that Condemn.
I played against the same player later, and played around his Morphs and easily won.
Next match was against another Lightning Bolt Red; Game One he ripped a second Sulfuric Vortex right before I found my first Martyr of Ashes and he got me for just enough, even though I actually had two Eternal Dragons and the Martyr on board. Only Flames of the Blood Hand or Shrapnel Blast would have been relevant in that spot (I had the Proclamation). Game Two I drew four spells, eleven lands. Shrug. I was able to fight off two Sulfurics with Oblivion Rings (obviously not profitable) but with almost no spells otherwise, I couldn’t race or gain life effectively.
The last match was against a kind of poor Black deck… So 2-2 almost doesn’t even count.
In the interim I worked on a Beasts deck. Michael Le (won with my Beasts two Extended PTQ seasons ago) told me to work on it, pointing out Mutavault + Contested Cliffs is a combo against a 1/1… But I realized the strategy is probably not good enough against the metagame. So I scrapped the Boreal Druids to work on a Mono-Blue deck (that turned into a U/R deck).
I started with the Spire Golem deck I made with Andre Coimbra and ended up with this, which is part way between my deck, Tezzerator, and Gabriel Nassif’s deck:
1 Aether Spellbomb
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Chrome Mox
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Vedalken Shackles
I beat regular Faeries, earning a quick concession in Game Two after showing a couple of Ancestral Visions (Osyp mentioned sideboarding these to me).
After that the Tournament Practice metagame switched from Red Decks to Rock decks. I beat The Rock / Death Cloud and Storm combo; got crushed by Slide. I actually shouldn’t have lost to the Slide deck. He gave me a wide open turn by not flipping his Exalted Angel that I had bounced three times, but then he played a second Angel and there was no way to get around both with my Trinket Mage, Riptide Laboratory, and choice of Spellbombs (I was at one). Game Two I mulled to four and saw a total of two lands in the four hands I looked at and bowed out.
The Rock deck was another super easy victory thanks to siding in Ancestral Visions. The Rock works so hard to get an advantage with Raven’s Crime and so on and I just managed time and drew a bunch, then started dancing around his Worm Harvests with Relic of Progenitus and Tormod’s Crypt. I actually forgot there is a free ability on Relic of Progenitus for about three turns. Embarassing. But I had so many cards it didn’t matter.
Glen Elendra Archmage was pretty good against The Rock.
Storm combo he had such enormous Storm in Game One! He showed his whole hand, made a giant Mind’s Desire, showed so many Goblins that they didn’t fit on the board… I was ready to spoil his fun with the Trinket Mage I had in hand… But he had also ye olde Tendrils. No fun! Games Two and Three I made Chalice of the Void for one about as quickly as I could (Ponder, Rite of Flame, etc.) and just got some light countering going. Ho hum.
This seems like it could be a good deck for a few weeks into the PTQ season, as it seems to have the advantage versus some combo, The Rock, and other Blue decks. Then again the advantage-getting strategies can probably be spliced onto other Blue decks successfully.
I just realize there are 61 cards in the second deck. I’ll fix this if we decide to move forward with the deck list (which, again, seems reasonable for a few weeks into the season).
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:
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
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
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
  
