Determining a deck for States each year is a difficult
challenge. Few people really know what decks are truly viable and have
any testing with or against those decks. Card availability issues can
force deck decisions or leave glaring holes in a deck’s game plan.
In previous years, this gave a huge advantage to
individuals who could correctly identify the best cards and strategies in the
format and brew a deck to properly utilize them. States would occur
before any major tournament had occurred, so net-decking was impossible and any
online information came mostly from theorizing and not actual testing.
The Star City Games circuit has changed that
slightly. While SCG has opted not to run major tournaments on prerelease
weekends, the release weekends have been considered available. For the
last two years, there has been one large scale tournament before states to help
define the metagame.
While this is somewhat of a disappointment, as 50
different tournaments are now shaped by the results of one, it would be
negligent to ignore the information it provided.
An important consideration would be the Wolf Run Ramp
deck that made its first appearance at the SCG event(s ?) preceding
states. The frame was very similar to the Valakut decks of the season
before that, but the new decks were no longer prepared to fight that variant of
deck. The deck ideally ramped into a turn 4 primeval titan that provided
two different threats that were individually capable of winning a game
(Primeval Titan with Kessig Wolf Run and then the manland Inkmoth Nexus with
Kessig Wolf Run).
This format does not appear to have any deck that attacks
the format in ways that are not really expected. Aggressive decks and
control decks are always expected, and the general deck design is both simple
to guess and has been endlessly written about. The reanimator strategy
performed well at the Star City tournament last weekend, but it had already
been identified as a strategy and has likewise been heavily discussed.
There are really only two combo cards in standard that could
possibly be built around. Burn at the
Stake combo decks have been briefly discussed, but they have been pretty firmly
in the realm of tier 3 decks or lower. Epic
Experiment is the other one, probably involving multiple copies with Increasing
Vengeance and Guttersnipe. Either one of
these would require a lot of testing and tuning with the high probability of
being flops. I wouldn’t be worried about
either one of these, as any kind of testing waste some already restricted
testing time.
These seem like the initial decks to define the metagame,
along with what makes them work and what to watch out for:
UWr Miracles
Zombies
Jund
Reanimator
Bant Control
Selesnya Midrange
UWr Miracles
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Azorius Charm
4 Think Twice
4 Detention Sphere
4 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Supreme Verdict
2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
4 Terminus
2 Syncopate
3 Entreat the Angels
2 Islands
4 Plains
4 Clifftop Retreat
1 Desolate Lighthouse
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Steam Vents
3 Sulfur Falls
Sideboard:
2 Dissipate
2 Negate
2 Purify the Grave
2 Sundering Growth
3 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Jace, Memory Adept
2 Supreme Verdict
Four Jaces stole the spotlight of the first major Return
to Ravnica tournament. Apart from that, the deck has a lot of things
going for it. A full playset of Pillar
of Flame, Detention Sphere, and Terminus is about as good as one can get
against the Zombie rush. Jace and Tamiyo
provide the board control and card advantage to make up for the minimal
permission. Lastly, Entreat the Angels
is the most potent finisher in standard
One concern about this deck is the lack of win
conditions. The deck can’t dedicate many
slots to winning, but a single Slaughter Games (normally not a very good card)
reduces the deck to winning with:
-Tamiyo ultimate plus Pillar of Flame
-Jace ultimate getting a threat from the opponent’s deck
Matchup
Zombies feels like an above average matchup. Snapcaster and Pillar do a decent job of
controlling the Gravecrawler wave, Detention Sphere deals with anything bigger,
and Jace/Tamiyo lock down whatever is left.
The red zombie deck with burn is a worse matchup, but still winnable.
Jund is probably positive, but not by a large
amount. Thragtust is obviously an issue,
but Tamiyo can keep it locked down. Rakdos’s
Return is the big trump for Jund, as it should empty the rest of the miracle player’s
hand and likely off a planeswalker in the process. However, it’s much worse in multiples and the
miracle deck has powerful draws. A Jace
should resolve any shortage of options by refilling your hand, and Entreat the
Angels is better off the top anyway. The
Miracle deck can both remove and go over the top of an Olivia with angel
tokens.
The mirror match is quite strange game one, as a lot of
the cards are sub-par. Post board, the Dissipates,
Negates, Geists, and Jaces come in to give a more proactive game plan.
The plan against Reanimator is a little more
suspect. Angel of Serenity is a good
answer to Entreat the Angels, and the deck is chocked full of Thragtusks. Jace does a good job of neutralizing
Lingering Souls, but overall the reanimator deck’s threats match up well
against the miracle deck’s answers.
B/R Zombies
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Gravecrawler
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Blood Artist
4 Geralf’s Messenger
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
3 Pillar of Flame
4 Bump in the Night
4 Searing Spear
3 Brimstone Volley
10 Swamps
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Rakdos Guildgate
Sideboard:
3 Underworld Connections
2 Tragic Slip
3 Rakdos, Lord of Riots
3 Dreadbore
1 Pillar of Flame
2 Sever the Bloodline
1 Mountain
This list probably has a better shot against the metagame
than the Golgari version. The green
cards encourage more board development, which is how people are fighting the
deck. The Rakdos version is designed to
circumvent as much of the hate as possible for zombies while still applying
heavy pressure. Terminus looses a little
luster when zombies can untap and do 6 to the dome with burn. The lack of green does remove the one good,
aggressive two drop from zombies, but this deck has more synergy with Blood
Artist.
One key innovation for the Golgari zombie deck was the inclusion
of crippling blight. Originally just a
limited card, the Falter effect is just as good as removing it
permanently.
The Underworld Connections provide the additional draw to
find more burn, but Tamiyo is quite strong against it. Rakdos, Lord of Riots is a great way of going
big against decks like Selesnya Midrange.
Sever the Bloodline is another removal spell that deals with cards like
Trostani, along with being good (if slightly awkward) against the mirror.
Matchups
The miracle matchup should be slightly favorable, as the
burn really helps push the last points of damage through board control. The Golgari version should be slightly
unfavorable. The matchup can never be
too unfavorable, as sometimes miracles will draw their cards in the wrong order
and have no answers. The mass of one
drops helps the consistency of the aggressive draws and can just steal games
from anyone.
The mirror match will likely come down to what colors are
being played. Red feels likely to be the
control deck, as the burn can act as removal and red doesn’t have a replacement
to match Rancor and Lotleth Troll.
However, each player’s opening hand and subsequent draws should really
determine who is agro and who is control.
If Golgari’s mana can support it, it has Thragtusk and possibly Garruk
Relentless in the board. Rakdos has
access to a set of Pillar of Flame. Both
can have access to Vampire Nighthawk if they want it.
Reanimator really comes down to what order they draw
their spells. The successful reanimator
deck from SCG had Centaur Healer, Lingering Souls, and Thragtusk, which are all
quite good against zombies. Rolling
Temblor is also one of the only remaining sweepers in the format, and it does a
good job at decimating all the one drops in zombies. The matchup seems quite bad for zombies, but
the reanimator deck can always lose to just drawing the wrong lands. The manabase is quite scattered.
Jund
3 Borderland Ranger
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
3 Olivia Voldaren
4 Thragtusk
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Farseek
3 Mizzium Mortars
2 Dreadbore
3 Rakdos Keyrune
1 Underworld Connections
2 Sever the Bloodline
2 Rakdos’s Return
4 Forest
2 Mountain
1 Swamp
3 Blood Crypt
1 Dragonskull Summit
2 Evolving Wilds
1 Kessig Wold Run
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Rootbound Crag
3 Woodland Cemetery
Sideboard:
1 Tormond’s Crypt
2 Deathrite Shaman
1 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Underworld Connections
2 Naturalize
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Appetite for Brains
2 Blasphemous Act
2 Duress
2 Slaughter Games
Once again, this deck is clearly built to beat
zombies. 4 Pillar of Flame is pretty
much standard in anything running red now, along with 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
and 4 Thragtusk to recoup life. This
deck beats the other midrange decks by relying on Olivia Voldaren, along with
superior removal and discard. Olivia’s
gold color and CMC of 4, along with the ability to grow past 4 toughness make
it a difficult threat to remove. This
deck also has Sever the Bloodline to deal with resistant threats such as this,
along with Dreadbore to kill anything.
Control decks, currently miracles, have answers for any
of the threats in this deck. Rakdos’s
Revenge does a lot of work here, killing planeswalkers and emptying hands. Sever’s ability to kill angel tokens from the
graveyard is another strong point.
Overall, the deck will attempt to grind down anyone and then kill them
with whatever is left. The keyrune is
quite strong here, providing both color fixing and ramp for Olivia, along with
being a difficult to kill threat.
There was a second list that made top 8 with geist and
wolfir avenger. These cards seem rather
poor to me, as the geist is likely to eat one a pillar of flame for no
value. The regenerate on avenger is
nice, but it doesn’t match up well against any of the finishers in the format except
thragtusk. The sorcery speed of this
deck doesn’t play well with 2 mana regeneration costs.
There was another list that focused on the combo of
Lotleth Troll and Veilborn Ghoul. Veilborn Ghoul triggers every time a swamp is played, and it returns to the hand. This allows every swamp to permanently pump Troll for each copy of Veilborn Ghould. Both
Lilianas work well with Ghoul too, making it a good way to grind out card
advantage. Troll seems much stronger
than geist or avenger if one wants to grind games with creatures instead of
spells.
Matchups
The matchup against zombies seems positive, considering 6
removal spells that exile and 8 spells that have resilience and incidental
lifegain. Deathrite Shaman and Vampire
Nighthawk are both good against zombies too.
The miracle matchup seems close to even. Geist can be a problem for this deck if it
can’t keep a blocker in the way or overload Mizzium Mortars. On the other hand, miracles can have a hard
time winning if Entreat gets named by Slaughter Games. This seems like a very similar matchup to
Jund against U/W tapout during Shards block, with less bloodbraid blightning shenanigans.
The versatility of the removal makes the reanimator
matchup seem positive. Both decks will
just attempt to grind out the other, with underworld connections being an all
star. The reanimator deck is filled with
dig that can give card advantage, while the jund deck is filled with removal
and an equal number of threats.
Griselbrand can be a problem if they resolve it with a high enough life
total. It may not protect itself very
well without force of will, but it will still bury jund in card advantage.
Reanimator
3 Centaur Healer
4 Thragtusk
4 Angel of Serenity
2 Griselbrand
4 Faithless Looting
4 Mulch
4 Grisly Slavage
2 Dreadbore
1 Golgari Charm
3 Lingering Souls
2 Roling Temblor
4 Unburial Rites
4 Blood Crypt
3 Clifftop Retreat
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Rootbound Crag
3 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden
2 Woodland Cemetery
Sideboard:
1 Centaur Healer
1 Elderscale Wurm
2 Rhox Faithmender
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Golgari Charm
1 Ray of Revelation
1 Vraska the Unseen
2 Bonfire of the Damned
3 Duress
1 Sever the Bloodline
This deck does a good job of filling the “combo” niche in
the format. It has 12 legitimate ways to
dump cards in the graveyard to cheat a big monster into play fast, along with the
Plan B of casting a bunch of Lingering Souls and Thragtusks. Angel of Serenity provides a threat that
immediately impacts the board, like Elesh Norn used to do, along with being
able to chain if you find multiple copies.
Griselbrand is less than optimal here, as the draw ability isn’t the
best. It is still a 7/7 flying lifelink
creature though, and that counts for something.
I haven’t been able to test this deck yet, but I’m a
little scared of the manabase. It seems
quite possible to shave the red and fill out several of the cards to the full
four copies. Rolling Temblor seems quite
weak. The true loss is faithless looting,
but Lotleth Troll can make up for that, along with Tracker’s Instinct if the
mill is really necessary.
Matchups
The matchups for this deck are more specific in terms of
what removal is present. If a deck has
poor removal spells, it is quite possible to steal games with unburial
rites. Otherwise, it is prepared for a
long grind with thragtusk and lingering souls.
Lingering souls is quite poor against Jace, so the other
threats will have to really pull their weight.
Angel is quite good there, so it is important to not lose multiples under
a detention sphere or terminus. The
massive card advantage of unburial rites should be pushed as hard as possible.
Bant Control
4 Thragtusk
2 Angel of Serenity
4 Farseek
1 Azorius Charm
1 Think Twice
2 Selesnya Charm
4 Detention Sphere
1 Selensya Keyrune
3 Supreme Verdict
3 Jace, Architect of Thought
2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
4 Terminus
3 Sphinx’s Revelation
1 Entreat the Angels
2 Forest
3 Island
2 Plains
1 Evolving Wilds
4 Glacial Fortress
2 Hallowed Fountain
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Sunpetal Grove
3 Temple Garden
Sideboard:
1 Angel of Serenity
2 Centaur Healer
3 Rest in Peace
1 Dissipate
2 Negate
1 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Garruk Relentless
1 Jace, Memory Adept
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Supreme Verdict
This is pretty much the same deck as the UWr miracle deck
with different finishers. Angel is another
strong finisher, and the deck gets to minimize the low velocity draw cards
(think twice and azorius charm) for higher impact spells. The numbers seem somewhat rough, but the pair
of Jace and Tamiyo is still quite strong, as is Thragtusk. Sphinx's Revelation obviously much more powerful than think twice, and this deck doesn't need to stretch it's draws to maximize miracle triggers.
Selsnya Midrange
4 Arbor Elf
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
4 Call of the Conclave
3 Borderland Ranger
1 Loxodon Smiter
2 Centaur Healer
3 Restoration Angel
2 Trostani, Selensya’s Voice
3 Thragtusk
3 Wolfir Silverheart
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
2 Armada Wurm
3 Selesnya Charm
2 Garruk Relentless
11 Forest
1 Plains
2 Gavony Township
1 Grove of the Guardian
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden
This was a deck I liked quite a bit as a way to
completely smash zombies. It seems that
was everyone else’s plan, and their Terminates are just as bad against this
deck. This deck has a hard time against
Olivia as well, unless it grows large enough to get Selesnya Charmed. It is quite possible to just have the threats
match up correctly against other removal though, since Mizzium Mortars and
Pillar of Flame are not very good against this deck. Wolfir Silverheart still deals a ton of
damage against sorcery speed removal.
Closing Thoughts
I’m still sad I won’t be able to play in States this year
(I was previously booked for the Team Grand Prix in San Jose).
If I had the chance to play, I would probably
start with the reanimator deck. I am
very interested in trying to fit the Lotleth Troll and Veilborn Ghoul combo
into that deck as a better Plan B. It
seems very synergistic with all of the self milling, but there might be a
problem with clogging the 2 drops.
Either way, I would want to test it first.
If that didn’t work, my fallback would probably be
Jund. I feel like it has a decent
matchup against the miracle deck and can be made much better in the board. The extreme amount of lifegain the deck has
should be enough to make the Zombie matchup positive. If the mana could support it, I’m interested
in Nighthawk in the board for zombies too.
The last fallback would be B/R zombies. I like the deck a lot, but I feel like Zombies
still has a huge target as the primer agro deck of the format. Too many people will show up with decks
designed to beat it to have a reliable shot at top 8.
I would almost definitely stay away from the miracle deck
this weekend. It will be the other deck
to beat as the winning deck from the SCG event.
It’s Rakdos zombie matchup still doesn’t feel that good, and the deck
can’t really be configured against the mirror without dramatic losses against
other decks. Slaughter Games seems very
good against the current list too.
The Bant Control deck seems like a better choice for the
controlling route. Jace and Tamiyo are
both still available (I expect the correct number of Jace is 4, not 3). Angel of Serenity, and to a lesser extent
Thragtusk, are more reliable finishers than Entreat the Angel. The deck is also still fairly anonymous,
since it didn’t make the top 8 of the SCG event (it came in 9th). If threat diversity is a concern, Armada Wurm
is available, but Angels are much better in multiples due to chaining them
together.
Selesnya Midrange is probably a bad idea right now. There are too many decks with Terminus to
really encourage that deck. It was mainly
a starting platform to beat Zombies anyway, and that is clearly manageable without
resorting to mono-creatures.
Best of luck to
everyone playing in States! I hope the
Reanimator deck with Lotleth Troll works out, as I’m super interested in
playing with it now.