Well, when I wrote this article, many people predicted I'd be playing again. They were right. That said, with the full RAV block now released, and playing with as many colors as humanly possible always something I like to do, (see this for proof) here are the two decks I'm going to be playing my way back to a "hopefully" good sized online collection with. It also allows me to write this article like a split card.
Five color Boros
Fist, we'll start off with the easier deck. I'm sure many of you have noticed that there is quite a bit of burn available in the current Standard environment. Two new spells, Seal of Fire and Demonfire, come with Dissension.
I want to burn people, not Loxodons.
| Five color Boros or "The Roof is on Fire"Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Burn (21) 3x Guerrilla Tactics 4x Lightning Helix 4x Flames of the Blood Hand 4x Char 4x Demonfire 2x Shining Shoal Acceleration (8) 4x Sakura-Tribe Elder 4x Kodama's Reach Draw (3) 3x Compulsive Research Board Control (6) 3x Wrath of God 3x Crime//Punishment | Mana (22) 3x Stomping Ground 3x Temple Garden 2x Overgrown Tomb 4x Forest 3x Mountain 3x Plains 1x Island 1x Swamp 2x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea | Sideboard 4x Hide//Seek 4x Boros Fury Shield 4x Giant Solifuge 3x Life from the Loam |
This deck in many ways plays like more of a control deck than anything else. Use your sweepers and burn to control things while you build up cards and mana then finish your opponent off with a big Demonfire.
I'll start out by saying that 'Vore is just an absolutely horrific match for you. There's no way around it. It's just really, really, really bad. Other types of Wildfire decks are combated fairly well by Life from the Loam. To get a good 'Vore matchup you'd need to devote about seven sideboard slots to it, with four Sacred Grounds and three LftLs.
Greater Good is pretty much a race between them getting Good and Dragons online and you killing them, although this is one of those matchups where the Crime half of C&P really works as a bonus for you. Hide//Seek comes in, and, depending on their build, you can also bring in Boros Fury Shield or Giant Solifuge. Wrath is one of your worst cards in this matchup, followed by Guerrilla Tactics and Char.
Against Selesnya style decks (GhaziChord, etc.) bring in the Boros Fury Shieldss for your Guerrilla Tacticss. Hide//Seek can also come in to combat Jitte in place of the Shining Shoals and two Chars.
Heartbeat is fairly easy to sideboard for: take out the Punishments, Wraths, and two Tactics for the Hide//Seeks and Solifuges, then race them. Always Seek Maga first if you have the choice because while you can redirect the damage from Invoke, you can't do it to the life loss from Maga. Mostly this is a race, and you have the (slightly) faster horse.
Hah! I laugh at you, discard effects!
Gruul/Boros/Zoo decks are one of your better matchups. You gain card advantage from Wrath and Punishment, and use the extra burn you'll draw from Mikokoro and Research to keep any straggler creatures that are trying to get Jitte going while still throwing lots of fire at thier face. Boros Fury Shield replaces Flames of the Blood Hand here. It does the same thing - burn to thier face, but it also keeps your life up to slow down their race. You can bring in Hide//Seeks for Tactics, but you're honestly better off just burning a creature and keeping Jitte inactive than you are brining in artifact removal.
Rakdos style decks take a pretty big hit from Tactics, and the board sweeping doesn't help them either. The fact that you will naturally be able to empty your hand fast eliminates their best forms of disruption, and topdecking mass removal just kills them.
Izzet based decks are almost a bye, especially if you get Mikokoro going. They don't put pressure on you, and except for your mana acceleration, almost all of your spells are instants. Demonfire makes them pay every time they tap out, and you've got enough acceleration that Wildfire won't normally cripple you. Bring in Solifuge, take out a Wrath and the Punishments.
I'm better than you think. Lots better.
Against controllish builds, play during their endstep and use your massive mana to throw more spells than they can counter at them. Every time they tap out, Demonfire them.
There are a couple of options you can take when building this. For example, you can use painlands instead of duals with basically no loss, and it even helps out your matchup against 'Vore a little bit. Crime//Punishment can be switched out for Savage Twister. This is a metagame call. Twister is the better board-sweeper, but C&P gives you a maindeck answer to artifacts/enchantments and deals with a Firemane Angel in your opponents' graveyard. Actually, don't make this switch unless you can't get the C&Ps or you just get flooded about every third game with a rush of variable cost weenies. Punishment gets compared to Engineered Explosives, but it's so so so so so so so much better that I can't even begin to quantify it. You can run Sacred Grounds, Rain of Gores or Simic Sky Swallowers in the board in place of the Life from the Loams. In testing, LftL was by far the card I brought into the maindeck the least, although it is one of the only ways you'll have a chance against 'Vore decks. Swallower from the board is an absolute beating. Absolutely no one expects it, or can deal with it after taking out all of thier creature removal game one. Zur's Wierding is another card that probably deserves to be explored, as your opponent can't let you draw burn, but if they don't, they get burned anyway. It also helps that your probable life advantage when it comes down allows you greater control over their draws. Indrik Stomphowler and Kami of Ancient Law are your last two options to go in the board here, and might be necessary if the Dovescape decks get big.
Four Color Tron
This deck is basically an attempt to combine the greatest strengths of every legal set into one deck, and then give the whole shebang some synergy. The best two cards in Kamigawa Block, Gifts Ungiven and Sakura-Tribe Elder, are both present. The Urzatron, the most powerful effect in 9ED, is also included. From Ravnica block we pick up Life from the Loam and massive multicolor enabling, plus Remand and Spell Snare. And of course, the card that makes it all go: Research//Development.
I'm better than a stupid Judgment
Wish... Except when I'm not of course.
| Four Color Tron or "Not Quite White"Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Creatures (6) 4x Sakura-Tribe Elder 1x Grave-Shell Scarab 1x Izzet Chronarch Draw (8) 4x Gifts Ungiven 4x Research//Development Counters (8) 4x Spell Snare 4x Remand Removal (5) 3x Savage Twister 2x Putrefy Recursion (3) 1x Life from the Loam 1x Recollect 1x Reclaim Artifacts (6) 4x Sensei's Divining Top 2x Pithing Needle | Lands (16) 4x Breeding Pool 2x Yavimaya Coast 1x Overgrown Tomb 1x Watery Grave 1x Stomping Ground 1x Steam Vents 2x Urza's Mine 2x Urza's Power Plant 2x Urza's Tower Basic Lands (8) 3x Forest 3x Island 1x Mountain 1x Swamp | Sideboard 4x Voidslime 1x Exile into Darkness 1x Nourishing Shoal 1x Wear Away 1x Soulless Revival 1x Hana Kami 1x Cranial Extraction 1x Jester's Cap 1x Nightmare Void 1x Simic Sky Swallower 1x Demonfire 1x Reito Lantern |
I'll start off with the analysis of this deck by saying it is much more of an unfinished/unpolished creation than the first one. It's been tested, but hasn't really been honed to the extent that I can definitively say this is how it should be built. This is partly because this is the first true Gifts deck I've ever tried to build, so there are a lot of things I'm still working out about the archetype as a whole, and also because a deck like this offers so many different options, and the current Standard field is so diverse, that figuring out the optimal build for anything is a bit tough. So basically, this disclaimer is intended to encourage anyone interested in this deck to play with and experiment with it a bit.
I used to be an aggro lock, now I'm a
speedbump.
Reito Lantern is probably the other card that many of you are wondering about. This is for long games against other control decks. It doesn't do anything big at first, but in addition to providing your sole source of Graveyard hate, it also allows you to do things in a long game like: Gift for Recollect, Reclaim, X, X. Then put the Recollect and Reclaim back into your library for use the next time you Gifts, or to be drawn after they're randomized by one of your twelve shuffle effects. Reito Lantern, along with Research, means that over a long game, you're drawing off of a better deck than your opponent. This isn't very telling in a 7 turn brawl, but in a 27 turn war, can make quite a bit of difference.
Yay! I get to eat something besides
Wurm Tokens!
First up, the best deck in Standard: Heartbeat Combo. Game one you want to find your Needles as soon as possible and stop their transmuting antics, your Spell Snares do a nice job of slowing down their mana and stop both Muddle and Remand. Your first Research should be for Nightmare Void, Cranial Extraction, Jester's Cap, and Wear Away. Your second Research should grab the Voidslimes. Game one can be tight given that you have a lot of dead cards against them. Games two and three, however, improve significantly for you as you take out the Scarab, Twisters, and Putrefys for two Voidslimes and your disruption package. This is a situation where being able to Research your creature kill back into the deck can make things exceptionally hard for them since the transformational sideboard no longer really works, and the counter sideboard doesn't have as many counters as you do. You'll lose games here, but win matches.
Next we have the Gruul. They've got early creatures that keep getting bigger and burn to finish the job. You've got chump blockers, board sweepers, counterspells, and lifegain. Advantage: You. Ribbons of Night is an exceptionally brutal spell against most aggro decks, combining lifegain, removal, and card drawing, so you might want to think about including some if your area is heavy in creature based aggro decks, but it's honestly not that needed.
The U/R mana denial decks ('Vore, Owling Mine, Wildfire) have an awful lot of trouble with Spell Snare, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Life from the Loam. You pack all three. Owling Mine is the worst of these three matchups, but can be beaten with enough early counters and acceleration. If the 'Vore deck has a strong opening and you're not able to protect your early mana, they can steamroll you before you manage to get going again.
Aggressive discard decks (Rats, Rakdos, Orzhov, Hand in Hand, etc.) can be very difficult matchups. Hellhole Rats in particular is a difficult card to fend off, as it combines a Haste body, discard, and direct damage in one four mana package. Paladin En-Vec is another big problem card, since the only removal spell you have which kills him is Exile, and Simic Sky Swallower is your only creature that can kill him. Basically, you've got to counter what you can until you can stabilize with a boardsweeper. Development isn't great in this game as most of these decks have enough first strikers or pro-red creatures that they can simply give you the 3/1's then ignore them. Rix Maadi and Orzhova can be trouble, but Pithing Needle provides a nice answer.
Yeah, I'm savage, but I've also got a
softer side after I picked up a mattress
store last week.
Control decks require a slightly different strategy: mainly, counter as much of their card drawing as possible while building up as much mana as possible, then simply have a couple of "big turns" which they can't match. The fact that you have Instant speed card drawing while most other control decks are stuck at Sorcery speed is a huge advantage.
In general, never be afraid to Gift for lands and Life from the Loam. When in doubt, counter, and always chump block.
I'd like to take a moment here to point out some of the different ways to build the Researched Gifts deck that I mentioned earlier. You can use White instead of Black with Proclamation of Rebirth, Firemane Angel, and Condemn replacing Soulless Revival, Grave-Shell Scarab, and Putrefy. Overrules replace the Void, Shoal and Extraction, while Kami of False Hope goes in for Exile into Darkness. In Black, Ribbons of Night and Seize the Soul are excellent options to supplement your removal suite against aggro. You can also go five color by ditching the Urzatron, or cutting it down to a singleton copy and adding a Temple Garden, Hallowed Fountain, and Plains, or you can pull the Tron in favor of bounce duals. Muddle the Mixture is a useful spell and tutor in this deck, able to find things such as Savage Twister, Wear Away, Research//Development, and Life from the Loam.
In closing, I'd like to say that the first deck presented here is easier to play and build, but the second one, if tweaked correctly, is probably slightly more powerful. Here's hoping everyone enjoys Ravnica Block, I know I plan to.
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