For you, a YouTube video about new It Deck Cascade Swans. Not just a Regional Top 4 deck anymore, Cascade Swans has just taken a Grand Prix title!
I used Parth Modi’s version of Cascade Swans, as (as I mentioned in the previous blog post) I used to make this video before the deck went and won a Grand Prix. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, here is ye olde deck list:
So a lot of people have been asking why I haven’t made a video in forever.
It is actually a different answer than why I didn’t update this blog for like half a month.
Basically remember when MTGO was super slow and it was un-possible to get a game? That short spell kind of got me in the habit of not playing MTGO for a while, and then every format got super boring due to not being in step with the actual Constructed formats due to set differences. I’d say that all of that is behind us… but instead I just hope that you like this video.
Cascade Swans… Cascade Assault… Whatever you want to call it, it may be the hot new It Deck of the Standard format. We took a spin with it to give our first impressions of the team of Bloodbraid Elf, Seismic Assault, and Swans of Bryn Argoll!
Numerous people including Josh Ravitz and my man Iñigo Romero Martialay told me I should take a look at some new Cascade Swans deck. I had no idea that there was any other kind of Swans deck than the familiar control-esque Extended port as I had not looked at all the Regionals Top 8 deck lists yet. Little did I know that this deck was / is the realization of this little snippit you may have seen on Facebook…
Well Kowal, it was actually forty-two lands.
I looked up the deck lists on ye olde Mother Ship and battled out with this bit of innovation by Parth Modi:
For those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, this deck is chock full of lands (many of them functional). So it doesn’t draw much other than lands; there are four major spell slots, which stick together two-plus-two like LEGOs:
Bituminous Blast and Bloodbraid Elf
Swans of Bryn Argoll and Seismic Assault
The Cascade twins are there to flip the functional cards. Bloodbraid Elf can literally only flip over Seismic Assault; Bituminous Blast can flip any of the other three cards (the cream dream of course being Bituminous Blast into Bloodbraid Elf into Seismic Assault).
With such a dense percentage of lands, the Swans + Assault combination is generally lethal. That is, every land pointing at a Swans of Bryn Argoll is 70% likely to flip another land; a minimum of one land per cycle will at least “keep you going” more or less “forever” until such point that you have 10 lands to throw at the opponent’s noggin.
Ad Nauseum has generally less risk in this deck than most because there are lots of lands. You can pick up lots of lands to kill the opponent with a Seismic Assault, or pick up essentially any of the other cards to set up or complete the combo.
I took the deck for a spin in the Tournament Practice room last night. Here’s how it went…
ONE – Howling Mine / Fog deck
This matchup is basically un-losable. You don’t even really need “the other half” of the combo because if you set up the Assault they are giving you plenty of fodder to kill them to death.
1-0/2-0
TWO – G/R Beatdown “Red Deck”
I actually took some footage of this matchup, which time willing, will end up on the long-lost Five With Flores YouTube page this weekend.
Game One I had him dead (he was all tapped out and such) and I played Ad Nauseum. I was quite beaten up and went to five on Ad Nauseum and decided to keep rolling (I don’t know what I was thinking). Actually I do know… I was thinking my deck has Swans and Elves and I can go to one because he is tapped out. Forget about the fact that I had just played a five. So of course I killed myself.
Game Two I won easily on turn four, playing the Assault then playing the Swans; his interaction was minimal.
Game Three one of the weaknesses of this fledgling strategy was revealed. It is fast in the sense that it can win on turn five, but the Cascade Swans deck isn’t fast-fast, and can’t really defend itself very well. Plus a big chunk of the cards are these clumsy fives that you can’t even play in a lot of games. So he had a Tattermunge / Jund Hackblade draw and just raced me.
1-1/3-2 (Should have been 2-0/4-0 though, due to Game One killing myself on unfamiliarity).
THREE – Five-color Zoo
This matchup is a mess. It’s basically like it would be against Jund Mana Ramp. I don’t think that Cascade Swans has a very good chance, ever. He just went good guys, then kolded my Swans with a Cryptic Command and killed me with an Anathemancer (Jund can do the same thing with a Shriekmaw / Makeshift Mannequin). Finks, Finks, Treetop, etc.
Game Two I actually drew a lot of spells! It was kind of funny. I couldn’t cast my dumb Bituminous Blasts, of which I had four in grip. He Runed Halo’d me, which revealed that you basically have to side in the anti-permanents package every single game. I did not. I was defeated soundly; his Identity Crisis was gravy.
1-2/3-4
FOUR – Turbo Mill
Game One I beat him very tricky-like. I played an attrition / exhaustion game, and killed him in response to Jace ultimate + Hideaway lands on a tap-out. It was very late and I had already forgotten the lesson of the previous match, and neglected to side in any of my artifact kill. Embarassingly, I was kolded by lots of Pithing Needles in the second, and just got my relevant jones countered in the third (not that hard when you have almost no spells).
1-3/4-6
FIVE – Finest Hour
Game One I got the super dream:
Turn two Spinerock Knoll, imprinting Swans of Bryn Argoll.
Turn three Seismic Assault.
Turn four point eight at the opponent, activate Knoll, complete the combo. He actually had a Bant Charm for my Swans, but I had enough lands in hand at that point to win in response.
I stone fell asleep during the second game and conceded match. It was quite late and I was literally only up on account of being super pissed off at the Cavs’ losing to the dumb Orlando Magic last night, giving up a sixteen point lead, yadda yadda yadda. I’m sure I would have won the match, though 🙂
1-4/5-something
Preliminary Analysis:
The deck is actually insane in Game One situations. I won almost every Game One despite having no familiarity with the deck and actually being so unfamiliar that I killed myself with my opponent literally dead to the cards I already had set up.
However it is incredibly easy to hate out in its present configuration. Like I said already you kind of have to side in anti-Pithing Needle and anti-Runed Halo cards Every. Single. Time. Because of that I think that Maelstrom Pulse should be a sideboard four-of, specifically due to the kinds of cards you will likely see set up against you (permanents in play, often in multiples).
My preliminary testing shows that Bituminous Blast is godawful. The so-called cream dream doesn’t even set up the full combo, and five mana is a lot to ask, even from a deck that will hit five lands on turn five almost every game. This may sound stupid, but I couldn’t play the Black for Bituminous Blast more than once. Don’t get me started on playing Bituminous Blast in order to flip over Qasali Pridemage. Just embarassing.
The man lands were kind of irrelevant. I know what they are supposed to be there for, but my Encampments just got eaten by Plumeveils and Jund Charms more than once.
It has been said elsewhere and I think that I agree on switching out Bituminous Blast for Deny Reality. Deny Reality gives you a functional card in terms of being able to deal with a combo-hating permanent that can potentially set up the win.
Despite my reservations with the deck — and absolutely dismal batting average in ye olde Tournament Practice Room — I would say that this is simply the most compelling strategy in Standard other than Jund Mana Ramp. My intuition is that the deck is a dog to some of the actual decks I like, but it is also the kind of deck that many Pros automatically gravitate toward when selecting a deck. It is powerful, and you get what you get (other than the iffy swings on Bituminous Blast). The Game One capabilities alone make it a good candidate for closer review, regardless of one man’s initial W/L.
I have gotten a flurry of questions about my opinion on Luis Scott-Vargas’s most recent article on ChannelFireball.com about mid-range decks and Jund Mana Ramp in particular. Luis is a player who for a long time came out of the tradition of The Rock. Even when he was not actually B/G on his colors, Luis played with Loxodon Hierarchs, hand destruction, incremental advantage in general.
Though Luis had a great deal of success with those strategies (US National Champion and all that), he did not enjoy the kind of colossal Pro Tour success that he is riding today until he changed from playing The Rock to combo decks. You will remember his Extended win was with a combo Elves deck; he has since played all manner of Swans, Storm, and so on with peerless results.
This is great for Luis! We have always liked him and wish him every fortune in the world.
The emails and Tweets, though, come from another angle. Luis says that mid-range is an intrinsically flawed strategy, and argues quite strenuously against the strategy that Will Price and I like the best today: Jund Mana Ramp.
To wit:
This is a classic example of the midrange non-blue control deck. It can’t compete with the Cryptic Commands and Cruel Ultimatums of 5-Color Control, and has to settle for running much worse stuff like Primal Command and Garruk Wildspeaker. You may consider this as a 5-CC deck that doesn’t lose to aggro Red, but in return for a better (and not necessarily even good) Red matchup you are so much worse against Faeries or Reveillark. I’m not even convinced that Jund Ramp (or any non-blue Ramp) even beats Token decks.
Well my reaction to this part — which is really the genesis as that is what readers have been asking about specifically — is that it must not apply to us. Let’s look again at our version of Jund Mana Ramp:
Jund Mana Ramp
3 Makeshift Mannequin
3 Shriekmaw
4 Broodmate Dragon
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Cloudthresher
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
4 Rampant Growth
4 Banefire
3 Volcanic Fallout
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
8 Forest
2 Mountain
4 Savage Land
1 Swamp
4 Treetop Village
I have for some time been a vocal opponent of the Garruk Wildspeaker version of Jund Mana Ramp as slow and clunky and overly vulnerable to Faeries. Heads up I am not convinced that Garruk does anything … Though it is obvious that the potential for a Violent Ultimatum fueled by the Fertile Ground + Garruk + seven drop draw that only occurs on daytime soap operas is quite the boogeyman. Before I get into details (and what today’s title means), I will address Luis’s paragraph on Jund Mana Ramp…
I would agree that this deck probably doesn’t want to get in a Cruel Ultimatum fight with Reflecting Pool Control. However that has not historically been a problem, and I anticipate it to be less of a problem this coming weekend. At New York States last year, I handily dispatched every Reflecting Pool + Cryptic Command deck I played in that tournament, albeit with the help of Mind Shatter + Gutteral Response (which was like the simpler, faster, Cruel Ultimatum). Point being, I respect the Ultimatum, but don’t anticipate the matchup as being a huge issue. In fact I would have been very happy to play Reflecting Pool Control all day at States; it was in fact the deck I tested against the most and I felt like I had a superb understanding of how to dominate.
For Regionals I am not sure how to consider the comparison. For one, I think that Reflecting Pool Control is a disaster. Not a disaster for Jund Mana Ramp… like it’s an unplayable time bomb waiting to blow up in the face of whoever has decided to play it. I don’t have Mind Shatter + Gutteral Response any more because I don’t plan to have to have those cards. If I did, I would commit the sideboard space. Instead I have a much improved main deck that can torch the opponent out at will and a sideboard that features the card that I believe should extinct the Reflecting Pool Control strategy: Anathemancer.
I already said I don’t like Garruk Wildspeaker… but I grandly disagree that Cryptic Command is in any way better than Primal Command. Remember I have included Primal Command as a four-of… but a sideboard four-of that only comes in when it is an appropriate tool. I have steadily increased the number of Primal Commands in my sideboard because I really want to draw them in these matchups where I want to draw them (beatdown decks, Sanity Grinding, and the mirror). When I played Blightning Beatdown, there was nothing I wanted to play against more than a deck with Cryptic Command, whether it was Reflecting Pool Control or Fae. In both cases I felt like I was a heavy favorite, and I got to play with Gutteral Response to force mana commitments while I still resolved my threats.
Perhaps in agreement with Luis, I actually don’t think Red Decks are that easy for at least my version of Jund Mana Ramp. I feel like I have a good chance, but I would much rather play Fae or Reflecting Pool Control or certainly G/W Tokens than a Red Deck. That is why I have Primal Command. I want to grind the Red Deck into the floor, and gaining seven life while loading up on Kitchen Finks and Broodmate Dragons is the most appropriate way to do that in this format. Against Sanity Grinding, a Primal Command is actual card advantage, trading for multiple spells the opponent has played, and hwen it resolves, demoralizing the Millstone strategy. And of course in the mirror Primal Command is arguably the single strongest card, setting the opponent back on a comes into play tapped land and putting Karrthus into my hand.
I don’t look forward to playing Reveillark, but I actually think Fae is a very easy matchup for this version of Jund Mana Ramp. I lost to Fae to miss Top 8 of States, but I think that that deck — and even more this deck — were and are heavy favorites against Faeries. In fact, I think that my version of Jund Mana Ramp is a nightmare for most Faeries players. I side into eight copies of Volcanic Fallout and Cloudthresher (seven starting) and I have very little dead weight (only Shriekmaw) and no obvious targets. The paths to losing are being manascrewed or the opponent drawing multiple uncontesed Mistbind Cliques. I respect the latter, though, and am considering playing a second Terror in the sideboard specifically to help deal with this draw.
But Tokens? In our testing B/W Tokens can be competitive but Jund is the favorite; I don’t think G/W Tokens has very much of a shot. Testing online (where admittedly G/W Tokens doesn’t have Dauntless Escort yet we have yet to drop a game. Will Dauntless Escort matter? Sure! It will have a non-zero impact but we don’t tend to rely on sweeping the opponent to win, more dominating with tempo plays until we can get the opponent to concede with Broodmate Dragons.
So we’ve already decided that Luis must have not been talking about us when he made his comment. After all, he invoked the name of Garruk Wildspeaker. But would he dislike our deck anyway? I think maybe not.
You see our version of Jund Mana Ramp isn’t a mid-range control deck. I think that that is the source of the misunderstanding. Jund Mana Ramp — ours anyway — is a Tinker deck (in the sense of “Finding the Tinker Deck”). This is a deck that is full of mana and bombs. It doesn’t really seek to interact with the opponent’s cards like most mid-range control decks so much as to dominate them. I don’t want to get a one-for-one on a Thoughtseize; I want you to commit four mana to your Wilt-Leaf Liege so that I can get a two-for-one on you with my Makeshift Mannequin. Once I hit turn five or six I am going to tap out for a card every turn, each copy being more dramatically powerful (not necessarily “better”) than any card in your deck.
That is not a “mid-range” strategy. That is a power strategy.
Is interesting because Luis’s passion in argumentation comes as someone who sees himself as having “recovered” from the plague of mid-range mediocrity. I would reiterate that I very much respect his opinion and recent accomplishments, but would argue that his stiff-backed model may ultimately lead down a path of inflexibility. Mid-range can be sub-optimal in some rooms (especially formats with good Extended options), but be the absolute best deck to play in other rooms. It might tend to be wrong, but removing mid-range from our palettes in its entirety teaches us essentially nothing. Magic is a game of options, and the players who preserve their options tend to be the most successful. Mid-range (even if the deck at hand is not necessarily mid-range) is just another tool to be used or left in the drawer. I see no reason to remove it entirely.
You probably know that Will Price (aka @sloppystack), Brian David-Marshall (aka BDM aka @Top8Games), and I did some playtesting with Jund Mana Ramp earlier this week. This post is going to be relatively detailed information on that testing, but you can get more information on what we have published so far by…
Listening to the most recent batch of Magic Podcasts at Top 8 Magic, or
Checking on the Jund Mana Ramp post I made there yesterday or thereabouts
To make a long story short, I tested out a couple of different decks, including the more Cascade-centric Ramp deck I talked about here last week, Borderpost Tezzerator, and good old Reflecting Pool Control; Will liked the Jund Mana Ramp deck we talked about during the BBQ Podcasts from two weeks ago best and convinced me to spend more time on that deck, particularly as we were having a hard time going Ultimate on Tezzeret due to the cheap damage sources available in Standard.
That deck originally had Bloodbraid Elf… but I cut it the night before live / live Twitter testing after I had flipped one of the two main deck Banefires.
“Never again.”
Banefire was like the best card in the deck!
Ultimately, this was the list I ran in testing:
Jund Mana Ramp
3 Makeshift Mannequin
3 Shriekmaw
4 Broodmate Dragon
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Cloudthresher
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
4 Rampant Growth
4 Banefire
3 Volcanic Fallout
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
8 Forest
2 Mountain
4 Savage Land
1 Swamp
4 Treetop Village
We didn’t test sideboards, but if I were to play Regionals tomorrow, 1) I would definitely play this deck, and 2) this is the sideboard I would play:
I decided to play Primal Command over any Mind Shatters. With eight Cloudthreshers and Volcanic Fallouts, you simply don’t need to max out on Mind Shatter and Gutteral Response to beat Faeries like you had to for the States-era version of Jund Mana Ramp. Anathemancer does the same duty against Reflecting Pool Control. Anathemancer is simply irresistible in a long game, especially in concert with Banefire, another tool we did not have at States. Moreover you kind of need two Swamps to run Mind Shatter (I tested tonight on MTGO with no new cards to confirm this)… and I don’t really want to play another Swamp.
The bigger shift was to remove most of the Terminates in favor of Caldera Hellion. The reasons are twofold. First of all, while it is pretty easy to play Shriekmaw or Banefire, and you usually have the mana for Broodmate Dragon… Terminate under pressure is another matter entirely at BR. I might cut them all and play a Lash Out, Terror, or even Murderous Redcap (RR being pretty easy to play thanks to Fire-Lit Thicket). You can’t play a filter land to get BR because Graven Cairns doesn’t filter Green mana. Caldera Hellion is pretty exciting, and should help give the deck a nice lift against G/W Tokens.
Anyway, back to real-life testing.
The first matchup was me on Jund Mana Ramp, Will on B/W Tokens. I am not 100% sure on the version, but I believe it was either a deck that Luis Scott-Vargas posted or the PTQ winner from the first week of the current Standard season. In either case, the deck was an evolution from “regular old” B/W tokens to incorporate Ajani Goldmane + Persist (Murderous Redcap and Kitchen Finks).
For reference:
3 Glorious Anthem
3 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Zealous Persecution
3 Caves of Koilos
3 Path to Exile
4 Fetid Heath
3 Cloudgoat Ranger
2 Marsh Flitter
3 Ajani Goldmane
4 Windbrisk Heights
4 Bitterblossom
2 Mutavault
4 Knight of the White Orchid
4 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Arcane Sanctum
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Spectral Procession
4 Reflecting Pool
Sideboard
2 Wrath of God
2 Identity Crisis
3 Mark of Asylum
2 Celestial Purge
3 Thoughtseize
3 Wispmare
Will and I traded the first four games, with the player going first winning each one. I felt like I could have won either of the games that I didn’t win in the first four, and Will felt like he definitely should have won the first game I won (it was a lethal Banefire off the top). I eventually broke serve on a game where Will had both lands and spells but where B/W as a non-Blue, non-Green, yet reasonably mana-intensive deck (WWW, BB, etc.) showed one of its vulnerabilities… Will hit his first four land drops but did not do anything to make me care. Meanwhile I kept a one-land six-card hand on the draw, but with a Rampant Growth and two Civic Wayfinders. These cards vastly improved my board position (especially with Will doing nothing) until I was dropping Dragons. I won the other two games on the play in the first seven, and we called the match at 5-2 in favor of Jund Mana Ramp.
Why did we call it at 5-2? This is something I got from playtesting with Zvi for Worlds last year. This was a matchup where both of us were enamored of one of the decks, and where the opposite deck did nothing to shake our interest. Since we didn’t really care about the performance of B/W as it was not dramatic, it was more efficient to move on.
The B/W matchup is a pure “Trish” matchup. Basically from Jund side you want to survive and get lots of two-for-ones. Your cards are so vastly superior to the B/W cards that they can’t possibly win outside of early Stage Two unless they lock you with Ajani. So the goal is just to trade. Eventually you will crush them with Cloudthreshers and Broodmate Dragons and Banefire for nine. So basically it is a default for Jund to win. The two games Will won were:
Thoughtseize-into-Tidehollow Sculler: He correctly ignored my early game acceleration and just took my bombs. So when I got to six lands, I had nothing to do.
Double Tidehollow Sculler: He slowed me down and got super duper Spectral Processions. My Broodmate Dragons were too small!
My favorite kill was probably when Will took my Cloudthresher with Tidehollow Sculler, I drew and passed against his Cloudgoat Ranger and Spectral Procession tokens. He attacked with all and I revealed that I had drawn another Cloudthresher, cleared the board, and followed up with a big Banefire. This was particularly super awesome as I also neutered Ajani
The next matchup was against B/G Elves, which was a Top 8 finisher in the first PTQ; according to Will and his partner in crime @zielend B/G Elves is also one of the top finishers in big MTGO events.
We tried to analyze why this might be (I mean other than my being super awesome); but I actually won one of the B/G games on a mulligan to four, and I shipped to Paris five times in the three games I played from Jund side! This is actually quite telling as I realized what was going on from playing both sides and consistently shipped not just to land and spells, but any Shriekmaw. Basically if you draw a Shriekmaw it is quite easy to beat B/G Elves from Jund side.
From B/G Elves side I elected to play B/G as a singular big threat deck rather than as a swarming deck. That is, I would attack with one Chameleon Colossus or Lord of Extinction rather than exposing myself to getting blown out by Volcanic Fallout.
At this point BDM sat down with us and helped play Jund from Will’s side. The main contribution he made was to torch any and every mana accelerator I played; with Brian’s help Will won the last three games 2-1. This led to a 5-4 lead for Jund Mana Ramp over nine games, with essentially no pattern based on who went first. However from playing both sides I think that Jund should be the heavy favorite.
Just look at the sideboards. Jund gets the fourth Shriekmaw and as much removal as it likes. It would be a complete blowout if Jund actually got ahold of more Terminates, but you can only do what you can.
Tonight I played several matches with Jund (albeit with no new cards in the sideboard) and finished my session at 4-1 or 5-1 with the only loss being to Faeries. I might have won actually. I kept a one-land six-card hand on the draw in Game One and conceded in frustration when my opponent hit Bitterblossom, Jace Beleren and I still hadn’t played my second land. It turns out I had multiple lands and a Volcanic Fallout on top (I obviously kept a hand full of acceleration and two-for-ones)… I actually think I could have gotten out of it. I took Game Two, and lost Game Three on a judgment call. Basically my opponent passed with three mana up and I had six mana on my turn with Cloudthresher and Broodmate Dragon in hand. I was annoyed at his double Vendilion Clique draw, which had robbed me of a ‘Thresher and Makeshift Mannequin and thought I could resolve my ‘Thresher main. He had not shown me Broken Ambitions in the first two games, so I decided if he had Remove Soul there was nothing I could do about it. Of course my original plan was to test-spell the ‘Thresher at the end of his turn and untap into the Broodmate, but like I said, I hadn’t seen Broken Ambitions.
He had Broken Ambitions.
The game took a bit longer, and I was one turn off of winning with Banefire, but he ended up having me to -2 as I failed to draw either a third Cloudthresher or a Volcanic Fallout to stall. All that said, I feel like Faeries has to be a winnable matchup with the package we plan to present.
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.
In Part Two, we continue our thoughts on Captured Sunlight with more detailed discussions on longtime favorite Loxodon Hierarch!
First of all, great discussion from everyone. My favorite comment has to be from hudnall56:
Captured Sunlight into Kitchen Finks is the most mid-rangey thing I’ve heard of for a long, long time.
Which battles that of KZipple in a seething firestorm of violent controversy:
That isn’t nearly as midrangy as Foolkillers.
(If by “seething firestorm” we mean “soothing balm” given the subject matter).
So before we get into the specifics of what the most ridiculous thing that we can do with a Captured Sunlight is, I would just like to address the most mid-rangey thing hudnall56 could imagine:
So… four mana, six (really eight) life, and a 3/2 body… followed by a 2/1 body.
How does this compare to four mana for four life and a single 4/4 body?
On its face Loxodon Hierarch doesn’t generate any card advantage. Now if we move from on-its-face traditional counting to the more accurate world of interactive Magic, Loxodon sometimes generates card advantage. For example against a Black deck it isn’t going to generate any card advantage drawing a Terror, but against a Red Deck it can pickpocket an extra card when someone has to spend, say, a Tarfire and a Seal of Fire.
… Or is it just one more card?
The reason Red Decks hate Hierarchs is that they are fundamentally card advantage against Red Decks. Life gain is not advantageous in general, but against a Red Deck that has scads of different cards that do nothing but nug the brains for two… Life gain atually looks like card advantage; on top of any actual exchanges that take place on the board, a Loxodon Hierarch will undo a Red Deck’s next two Shocks.
Loxodon Hierarch… The Best Card or Constructed Unplayable?
At the time of the last Pro Tour Honolulu, chatter around the top of the game was that Loxodon Hierarch was the best card in Standard. A quick glance at the actual Top 8 decks from that tournament reveals… not a single Hierarch!
For the next Constructed Pro Tour that year, Charleston (the often discussed team Pro Tour), we approached the format with the notion that Loxodon Hierarch was the best card in the format. It was a warping card from our deck design perspective, more influential than any other single card in our crafting of our three individual decks. Interestingly, while almost every team played four Hierarchs… the winning team didn’t. Just sayin’.
Now recently Luis Scott-Vargas — a player who has recently transformed himself from a The Rock / Solar Flare kind of guy into a Pro Tour winner with Elves, then followed up with standout performances on the backs of decks like Swans and Storm, recently posted something I found quite controversial and thought provoking on his new site ChannelFireball.com:
I used to be a fan of Loxodon Hierarch type decks myself, and guess what? I didn’t win at the Pro Tour level. Midrange decks designed to pummel aggro may work during the Swiss at a PTQ, but you will usually meet your demise during the Top 8 to someone playing a real control deck. I learned my lesson the hard way, playing these sorts of midrange decks as recently as PT Hollywood in 2008. My Loxodon Warhammer plus Chameleon Colossus deck did well enough until I played against a bunch of Reveillark decks, which completely annihilated me. Turns out that a control deck with Cryptic Command and Reveillark is better than a control deck with Cloudthresher and Primal Command. I understand why people are drawn to decks like this, but all I can offer is my advice to put down the Finks and pick up Vendilion Cliques while there is still time.
As you can see, Luis writes almost like a religious convert!
Which poses the question… Do we even (ever?) want a Loxodon Hierarch?
My old Two-Headed Giant teammate Steve Sadin likes to talk about the time that he beat me in an Extended PTQ. Any kind of Magic friendships typically ultimately come down to bragging rights, but this was a special case (it’s not like he is still bragging about beating me in the finals of a mock tournament, Loam v. Haterator)… In the future PTQ he beat me Boros v. Haterator, in a matchup where I drew Loxodon Hierarch. The fact is, Steve won the flip, had the tempo, burned the right Birds, and minimized the awfulness of Loxodon Hierarch when it showed up. As a former Boros player myself, I can recall dozens of games where I just got by the Hierarchs with Manriki-Gusari, Boros Garrison, and Eight-And-A-Half-Tails… And that was Standard.
The point of Luis’s piece on ChannelFireball seems to be that we shouldn’t want to want Loxodon Hierarchs… Which is a different question than we are trying to answer when we talk about Captured Sunlight.
Because ultimately I think we can all agree that a Captured Sunlight into a Wooly Thoctar in Standard is probably pretty good (and generally better than a “real” Loxodon Hierarch). So what are some of the other scenarios we can project?
Kitchen Finks – I have never done this yet. But according to hudnall56, this is quite mid-rangey
Civic Wayfinder – This offers a fair amount of card advantage; I would not typically want to play an Exploding Borders… This effect is pretty similar (and probably generally better as you get a body out of it, and all things considered, gaining four life with no effect on the board is probably better than dealing four damage with no effect on the board). But like I said, I wouldn’t typically consider playing Exploding Borders.
Rampant Growth – Kind of miserable, actually. Worse in almost every way than the previous.
Lash Out – (and substitute any Terminates, Nameless Inversions, and so on that you like)… Could be pretty good depending on the board. If you have the only guy this is kind of miserable.
Most of the time this card seems underwhelming given its flip capability (I wouldn’t make the same statement talking about Bloodbraid Elf, which will often be flipping cards like Hell’s Thunder, Boggart Ram-Gang, and the like in an offensive haste deck. On balance, I have Captured Sunlight in a deck like this:
Testing is super preliminary at this point, but the deck follows many of the same principles as previous Jund Ramp decks. Against Reflecting Pool control you have to rely on the extreme amount of card advantage to keep pace, then side in Anathemancer as a tremendous threat.
Faeries is a deck that seems like it has to be solved with the sideboard; those Volcanic Blowouts are also there for Boat Brew, B/W Tokens, and other decks that employ Spectral Procession.
… Which all together is a big chunk of the metagame.
That said, this deck can play pretty powerfully, the Standard Storm, kind of. I wasn’t initially a fan of Enlisted Wurm, but in this deck it can play like Mind’s Desire. The bonus on this card has been about 2.5 for me so far… You know, Enlisted Wurm flipping Bituminous Blast flipping Civic Wayfinder.
Just a jumping-off point, to be sure, but I think Loxodon Hierarch would be proud.
The latest in a long line of great two drops — in a game largely defined by great two drops — is Alara Reborn COMMON Putrid Leech!
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Aesthetics:
Just want to shout out to @burgessm on Twitter (Matt Burgess) for ye ole Tweet:
Without it I may have overlooked Putrid Leech for immediate examination. Sure. How? Okay. Probably not.
Putrid Leech is one of the best [offensive?] two drops we have seen in some time!
The baseline stats are what we would typically expect for any two drop: 2/2 for two mana. But it plays like a 4/4… if you want it to.
One of the things that might not be immediately obvious (I know I had to go back and read the card a couple of times) is that Putrid Leech is a functional (optional) 4/4 on both your turn and the opponent’s turn (if you so desire). That is, it isn’t a “disadvantage” that you can use the pumping ability only once per turn. Don’t think of it as Firebreathing so much as a swap upgrade from 2/2 to 4/4 with no mana cost.
So if you want to attack and the opponent wants to put a 2/2 in front of your Putrid Leech, you can pay two life for his card. Or if you want to attack and he doesn’t do anything you have the option of a 2-to-0 or 4-to-2 life point delta (a two point differential in either case). Subtly when you are on the draw in a matchup where both players are running two drops (or say the opponent is planning on two drop followed by Jund Hackblade), you can just tap out for Putrid Leech on turn two and turn off his third turn, theoretically even an “optimal” offensive one in the abstract.
One card you may want to compare this to is Flesh Reaver. Many of you probably know that I was lucky enough to win an Extended PTQ a few years back with a beatdown deck featuring Flesh Reaver (designed by all time great Brian Schneider)… Putrid Leech is practically quite similar, and excepting the second color functionally superior to Flesh Reaver (you only need to pay two life to deal four damage); the corner case being that Flesh Reaver can “kill both players” but you will win because the opponent dies before the collateral trigger occurs (like I said, a corner case).
How much does it matter that Putrid Leech is a Zombie?
At this stage I don’t see it mattering very much. Most of the Zombie decks we have seen in the past have been straight Black or Black/Red… But that doesn’t mean that — especially with the greater variety of playable B/G dual lands — that we couldn’t see Putrid Leech in a Zombie deck; remember that Shepherd of Rot has seen non-zero Constructed adoption; in my snap judgment opinion Putrid Leech seems like the stronger individual card.
Where can I see this fitting in?
Putrid Leech seems like an awesome offensive card in a deck that can manage the mana. Maybe the same deck as Jund Hackblade or one of its cycle?
Putrid Leech also seems like it can be a decent flex card on two in a progressive board advantage deck (like it can be an offensive two drop or hold off the attack while you get further along to your Lord of Extinction and such.
We both know I always make decks like this one so here is a sketch that crosses my first pass Lord of Extinction deck from Top 8 Magic with my Bloodbraid Elf ideas, crossed with my Jund Ramp deck from 2008 States, inspired by my Charleston Batman deck:
2 Makeshift Mannequin
2 Shriekmaw
4 Bituminous Blast
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Broodmate Dragon
4 Lord of Extinction
4 Putrid Leech
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Rampant Growth
4 Lash Out
6 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Reflecting Pool
4 Savage Lands
3 Swamp
4 Treetop Village
4 Vivid Grove
What I really want for this deck is a third Makeshift Mannequin and four currently non-existant copies of Gift of the Gargantuan… um and Volcanic Blowout as well. How greedy am I?
Bituminious Blast into Bloodbraid Elf into Gift of the Gargantuan? Ka-pow! I guess I’ll have to settle for Civic Wayfinder.
With all the stuff I want, it kind of marginalizes the topical Putrid Leech, huh? 🙂
The fact of the matter is that I got a lot of experience playing decks like Batman and This Girl, and with those decks, which are powerful creature decks that largely play their games on the board, you want to get something down as early as possible to start hassling control decks. On that note the eventual list may require a Banefire or four.
How is Alara Reborn Mythic Rare Lord of Extinction an Elemental and not a Lhurgoyf? Plus: The story of the amazing disappearing Mortivore.
Aesthetics: I think you’re supposed to be reminded of a Lhurgoyf on this one. It’s one more mana than the classic Lhurgoyf but Pow! … How many times more powerful than the original Lhurgoyf (which back in the day I loved by the way) is Lord of Extinction?
The main deck I played Lhurgoyf in was one of the few that actually played Lhurgoyf in the main deck. I had rarely been so confident in a deck as this one, which I had used to win two tournaments immediately prior to Regionals 1998:
I don’t know if that was my Regionals list (I actually think I played four Uktabi Orangutans main and cut a Centaur), but it was the more recent of the two tournament report deck lists that I found. Yeah, now that I think of it I played Hall of Gemstones which was like a City of Solitude against Blue and also foiled the main combo deck of the day (Cadaverous Bloom).
This deck was exceptional against the Red Decks and the Blue Draw-Go / Rainbow / Big Blue decks of the era, plus it always seemed to pull it out against Tradewind decks; weaker against Living Death and combo. So of course at Regionals I lost in the first round to Sligh, drawing two lands in two games (though to be fair my opponent correctly just killed all my Elves). Speaking of Lhurgoyf, I just remember drawing that alleged monster against Tradewind and doing nothing as there were no creatures in the graveyard. Lhurgoyf just sat there against — if you can believe it — Trained Armodon as I was eliminated from Top 8 contention with a deck that I had tested more than probably anything else in my life at that point.
The Lhurgoyf strategy resurfaced about five years later for Regionals 2003. Our weapon of choice was Mono-Black Control. The main deck was superb, being the favorite against basically every deck in the metagame (we had not tested against Wake for Regionals); the issue was Compost in sideboarded games. Osyp suggested we side in Mortivore, which would be very big in attrition games (like Lhurgoyf was against the Sligh decks back in 1998), hoping to circumvent the Compost card advantage.
I ran with Osyp’s idea and ultimately produced I think the best sideboard strategy of my career.
Osyp figured that having a large regenerating monster like Mortivore could simultaneously hold down the fort and make up for Compost card advantage; I realized that we could upgrade our regenerating creature with a little more mana and actually change how the game was played.
By changing our mindset and looking at our Black one-for-one removal as “Blue” “removal” (basically Unsummon et al) once a Compost was in play, we just used our one-for-ones to buy time while we set up a Black burn plan. Laquatus’s Champion was not just a regenerating creature set to hold down the fort but an efficient Fireball. With his 187 effect and one swing, we could easily “two-card-combo” the opposing G/R deck out with just one Corrupt, Compost or no.
I ultimately lost to Astral Slide playing for Top 8 (a nearly un-losable matchup, sadly), but to this day am very proud of the sideboard plan (especially given the Tutor nature of the deck), and consider this build, which put Paul, Josh, and myself all in prize position, even if none of us qualified, a triumph of deck design and metagaming.
Oh, but this blog post was supposed to be about Lord of Extinction, or Lhurgoyf 2K9.
Lord of Extinction is just plain awesome I don’t know what else to say. Yes he is a little bit more expensive than Lhurgoyf, but the upgrade to all cards in all graveyards rather than just creatures is huge, especially in Black. For instance you just keep killing guys with one-for-ones, you get +2/+2 with every Terror effect.
All that said, “aesthetically” I don’t get not just the not-Lhurgoyf thing, but given the name and power level, a not-Lord (or even not-Legend) byline.
Where can I see this card fitting in?
While I find Lord of Extinction to be a stronger card than Lhurgoyf, I also feel like it might be a little less applicable. A four mana spell can fit into a twenty land deck as we saw with TDC Heat, when that deck is poised either to win attrition wars with Red Decks or to “recover” when an opposing U/W deck taps out for Wrath of God; in both cases the G/R deck is supposing it will draw into sufficient lands to play its powerful four drop. This doesn’t really work for Lord of Extinction; the kinds of decks that can play it don’t really want to play Lhurgoyf as it was played in TDC Heat.
Instead, the card is just simply good. It should easily be 5/5 or greater on turn five, just from everyday actions. Therefore in addition to being a cleanup card, a Wrath of God recovery card, or the nail in the coffin of an attrition fight, it can just be played, as in Reflecting Pool Control. Can you play Lord of Extinction? That is, can you produce one Black and one Green mana? If so, it is probably pretty good.
The only question is if it is good enough, that is, will it take the place of a Broodmate Dragon, Chameleon Colossus, or Nath of the Gilt-Leaf?
The answer is, Sometimes Lord of Extinction will be, but not always.
P.S. Both of the TDC Heat tournament reports and my Mono-Black Regionals report which includes the arduous development of the Laquatus’s Champion sideboarding strategy are detailed in Deckade. These are tough reports to find (and in the Mono-Black report’s case, basically impossible unless you still have Brainburst Premium). But they and close to 700 more pages of great Magic strategy await you over at Top 8 Magic!
We bring you a look at a much improved Woebringer Demon, Alara Reborn Mythic Rare Defiler of Souls!
Aesthetics: As I mentioned in the excerpt, the card that this makes me think of is Woebringer Demon.
When I originally wrote about Woebringer Demon, it was I believe my first attempt at a set review. I went back and looked it up… I had Woebringer Demon on Flagship originally.
Interesting.
No, that one never made Flagship.
However that 4/4 flying Abyss for five mana was actually pretty good. I will refresh your memory if you didn’t recall: I personally played Woebringer Demon in a deck; arguably one of my best performances ever, my Charleston Batman deck:
If I recall correctly, I won every single time I sided Woebringer Demon in. I usually brought it in when I was playing against Simic Sky Swallower; it was a 4/4 Diabolic Edict that generally struck their mighty 7/7 and locked the opponent out of ever being able to have a board presence before I did them in.
… And Woebringer Demon was not half the card that Defiler of Souls will be.
Defiler of Souls costs exactly one Red mana more than Woebringer Demon. In return you get two key differences between the cards:
+1/+1 (not bad)
A slightly different take at The Abyss
While the size difference looks to be a perfect upgrade, the sacrifice line is different on these cards, neither one being strictly better than the other. Defiler of Souls is the more flexible card: If you simply don’t play any monocolored creatures, Defiler of Souls has zero downside. You can play him whenever you want and he will generally just be annoying for the other guy.
On balance — and this is kind of obvious and silly and at the same time irrelevant — you could never side in Defiler of Souls in the spots where Woebringer Demon was useful for me in Charleston; basically Defiler of Souls don’t eat no Simic Sky Swallowers. Not that that matters of course; for Charleston we would be talking about a very specific metagame, and it is unlikely Simic Sky Swallower and Defiler of Souls will ever be facing off anyway… But it was still something I wanted to mention.
Basically on Defiler of Souls you get decent Dragon stats and a body that can chomp on some — even “most” — decks on the bonus.
Where can I see this fitting in: Defiler of Souls would be a fine killer in a Reflecting Pool Control style of deck; he has no interaction with Plumeveil but chews on the creatures in most of the obvious decks. If some kind of progressive creature deck like I played in Charleston were viable, he could top up there as well (usually you just want a body to step up, this is a pretty good one). Or you could build around the Defiler of Souls as a Flagship; that won’t be popular but some players will try it. I would expect one of the first two options as the most likely paths for serious play.
At the risk of stating the obvious, Alara Reborn mythic rare Sphinx of the Steel Wind is the Esper answer to Akroma, Angel of Wrath.
Aesthetics:
Same converted mana cost.
Same size.
Slightly changed — but appropriately flavorful — double “protection from” at the end (Red and Green being the enemies of Esper, natch).
The big differences are lifelink over haste and trample (kind of a big one), and the fact that this is a colored artifact rather than a triple white Legendary Angel.
As for the cost in total… There is basically no difference beyond flavor; when Akroma was new, White was the dominating color of its Block, and had Eternal Dragon and so on to incentivize and ultimately find the necessary WWW. Present day in-set Magic is about the Shards; Sphinx of the Steel Wind commensurately an Esper billboard.
6/6 for eight mana served Akroma well enough size-wize, to the point that she was the preferred kill card for reanimation strategies for some time (and still holds a reasonable amount of one-of and sideboard space). Akroma uses Sphinx of the Steel Wind as a toilet heads up, of course (one having protection from the other and all).
Protection from Black is generally more useful than protection from Green but you can at least make a Cloudthresher argument in 2009.
The big difference between this card and its thematic acestor is the lack of haste and trample (racing being one of the main reasons Akroma was so popular in tournament decks), replaced with lifelink.
Now for a U/W-ish deck lifelink is probably more exciting, but Akroma was (out of Block Constructed anyway) not generally played by control decks but combo decks. Even if Sphinx of the Steel Wind is pretty good (and it looks to be pretty god), she is not going to hold up in that pure racing department.
Where can I see this fitting in?
I mean tossing Sphinx of the Steel Wind to Spellbound Dragon and immediately popping her back into play with Makeshift Mannequin is the dream… But that will probably never happen outside the kitchen table.
To be honest, I don’t really know. For the mana I would sooner explore Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, and I’m not exactly getting in line on that one.
But what do I know? Sphinx of the Steel Wind may be the great liberator or something.
  
 
All Alara Reborn
