I didn't like this article as much as the last ones. There were a lot of omissions/errors in it.
Following the release of GTC there was some thought that frontline medic, an awkwardly and obviously designed silver bullet, would be able to slow the rampage of the massive X card draw spell down.
Skull crack was also thought of as a revelation stopper when it was first spoiled. But people realized much sooner(than medic) that this card wasn't that good since you can't main deck it. And then when people played it they usually lost to all the cards drawn by revelation.
The main thing that this gains over straight UW is a diversity of win conditions, which is important against slaughter games. The fact that Obzedat backed by counterspells can close the game out quicker than duelling 7 mana, recurring, angels can also help because straight UW mirrors can get pretty tedious.
Spacejam built this deck not because he was getting wrecked by slaughter games, it was because obzedat is a ridiculous card. Very few cards in the format can kill it. Which is part of the reason why UW died off (the other part you disscussed was slaughter games). UW's only answer to a resolved obzedat is rapid hybridization. BRW didn't come till later.
The main advantage of bant is the addition of armada wurm as another sweet alternate win-con, which is resilient to the single target removal that is good against obzedat (eg. devour flesh and grisly spectacle). You also get to play with a lot more ramp and mana fixing, as keyrunes, urban evolution and gatecreeper vine fit the deck quite nicely.
I'm not sure why other people played bant, but the reason I played it is that I thought it had the best mono red match up because you get to play centaur healer and loxodon smiter. Armada wurm still dies to supreme verdict, which every deck revelation deck plays 4 in the main. Armada wurm is also pretty awkward vs mono red in sideboard games where they have act of treason (and sometimes they have legion loyalist). So obezdat is still a better finisher. Also I think selesnya charm is one of the better cards in the deck. It answers angel and obzedat and angel loops. It can be a blocker vs mono red. And the pump lets you push through lethal damage, which can combo with azorius charm removing their blocker. Keyrunes are pretty bad. They are prime targets for azorius charm or they get detained by skynight. There's not much to ramp into in this format, and people have main deck counters to put a stop to your big drop.
Control mirrors generally come down to who draws more lands and counterspells and the least number of dead cards (which comes down to deck construction).
Another control mirror strategy is how much removal do you side out (namely verdict, azorius charm). If you side out all your verdicts, you can lose to captain and skynight beatdown.
Thx for the comments. Some of those are things I just didn't have the space for, some were things I overlooked (eg you're right that I should have mentioned skullcrack) and some I don't agree with.
I simply cannot see bants mono r matchup being better than straight uw, both because of the mana base and bc precinct captain hits the board a turn earlier than anything relevant in bant. Bant certainly has a good mono r matchup, but uw is the nuts against that deck.
My experience with control mirrors obviously isn't as extensive as yours, but I've always found keyrunes useful as a threat which comes out early in a draw-go game to put out some consistent non-wrathable pressure. Charm is fine, it doesn't cost much to replay it.
I was thinking of armada wurm vs bwr more than other uw, you're right that its just another wrath target there. Bant really is much better vs slaughter games due to threat diversity, that's what I had in mind there.
When I started playing gatecrash I thought bant would have one of the better mono red. It does, but it's not the best, UW is the best vs mono red.
Keyrunes' effectiveness vary greatly. If you're on the play and cast it turn 3, and your opponent has a grip full of wraths/jaces, then the keyrune is amazing. But if they have azorius charm/devour flesh it's pretty bad for you. If the keyrune gets charmed you just got time walked. Other times you draw a keyrune on turn 15 and want to kill yourself. Also they're terrible against aggro decks.
When I started playing gatecrash I thought bant would have one of the better mono red. It does, but it's not the best, UW is the best vs mono red.
Yup, which is why I really feel that the value of bant lies in a higher and more diverse creature threat density vs control/slaughter games. You can see how much bant is building for slaughter games navy lists with less than 4 revelations and 2-3 of multiple wincons, incl the green primordial.
IMO each variant has diff strengths vs aggro. Esper and uwrs plans are much less susceptible than bants to firefist striker and act of treason, so each has some advantages and tradeoffs.
Keyrunes' effectiveness vary greatly. If you're on the play and cast it turn 3, and your opponent has a grip full of wraths/jaces, then the keyrune is amazing. But if they have azorius charm/devour flesh it's pretty bad for you. If the keyrune gets charmed you just got time walked. Other times you draw a keyrune on turn 15 and want to kill yourself. Also they're terrible against aggro decks.
I will never argue with the 'terrible vs aggro' point, although at least they aren't completely dead if you otherwise are able to stabilise unlike some other anti-control cards.
That's another good article. I have some additional comments however.
This is the most aggressive 4-drop in either of its colours in the current block. This is the latest in a long and successful line of hasty 4-drops (hero of oxid Ridge, hellrider, falkenrath aristocrat) and while this is nowhere near the aristocrat's power level it's the best we currently have. It's also harder to deal with in-combat than any of those previous cards which isn't irrelevant. I doubt that it giving haste to other creatures is going to be relevant often, but occasionally it'll make your (ghor-house chainwalker)s run a bit faster which is a nice little upside.
A rakdos aggro deck will probably be playing 4 cackler, 4 chainwalker, 2-4 hellhole flailer and top out at 4 for Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch. That's around 10 creatures it gives haste to, so the haste ability will come up fairly often. This card also makes azorius charm look bad. Normally an awesome play for UWx decks is to charm a chainwalker on top of the opponent's deck for a timewalk. Now that's not as backbreaking of a play if that chainwalker has haste. Haste is also good against people planning to use supreme verdict. That said, I don't see why you'd play a rakdos aggro deck over mono red. So it's probably a moot point anyway, and Exava will only see play if people are bored of mono red or someone brews a sweet jund aggro deck with corpse jack menace and scavenge.
(Advent of the Wurm) Speaking of good populate targets. This seems possibly more likely to have a home in standard, where the fact that it's a spell has good synergy with delver of secrets. We already have a 5/5 for 4 in block (deadbridge goliath) which sees only marginal play, adding flash as an upside and "dies to cyclonic rift" as a downside probably won't cause this to see play just for the body.
I don't know if this was a typo, but no one plays cyclonic rift. People do play azorius charm which takes care of the wurm. That said I think even if people play 4 azorius charm, the card is very playable. I think the flash is what makes this card strong. It's a sick combat trick for creature mirrors, and casting this on the end step of a UWx control player is a nightmare for them. They can't tap out, or they get lava axed. This card is semi immune to verdict, and makes jace look bad. I think this card being populated is the lesser part of the card. The populate cards are pretty bad, it's a win more mechanic that's vulnerable to removal. Though the scion seems decent. It's also unfortunate that advent of the wurm doesn't work with domri's +1. Though dormi decks have 4 slots for non creature cards.
I hope your BGx article discusses a midrange jund deck. Jund dominated ISD block at the end of it, and Jund is a solid deck in standard. So it's interesting to see if it's going to be a good deck in this block.
I haven't put too much thought into why there's no jund midrange deck, but it looks like it doesn't have the creature support. There's no huntmaster, olivia, thagtusk, and the planeswalkers aren't that good for this type of deck, or are underpowered (vraska and domri vs liliana and garruk). Also the format is pretty fast for you to play 1 for 1 removal without a 4 mana wrath. Jund doesn't have much card advantage like it did in ISD block with all the flash back cards.
It looks like wizards didn't want that style of jund deck dominating again.
I really enjoyed your most recent article. I am curious why you didn't cover the BUG deck updated for DGM. It seems to be fairly efficient in concept and I would like to see some opinions on an updating of it for DGM.
I really enjoyed your most recent article. I am curious why you didn't cover the BUG deck updated for DGM. It seems to be fairly efficient in concept and I would like to see some opinions on an updating of it for DGM.
He's only got so much time and space!
Get back, get back a rollin', get back, get back motha ****a. Makin' love to you...
Thanks for the feedback. You're right that excava's haste is relevant to a few more creatures than I gave it credit for, although against decks where you aren't going to just run a rakdos cackler into a blocker, the game seems likely to just be over anyway if you get to untap and attack with excava again. And against decks with blockers, most of what you haste in isn't going to have that much impact, there's no playable flying unleash guys for eg.
The list I'm currently toying with for the next article is a straight golgari midrange, featuring all of the cards I mentioned in my previous post. I feel like there's enough options in GB for a slightly agressive, grindy, resilient creature base (ex1, gyre sgae, lol troll, varolz, some number of deadbridge goliath/desecration demon and corpsejack menace) that trups aggro though being huge and beats control through regeneration (the colours also deal with enchantments easily). I can certainly see an agressive jund deck working, with varolz as a curve-topper and stuff like spike jester also making an appearence. I don't see what advantages red gives a midrange deck, excava is nice but without evasion is nowhere near as good a finisher in that deck as falkenrath aristocrat was. Also no bonfire and, as you say, nothing close to the power of huntmaster...
Re cyclonic rift, I was just referring to bounce generally but you're right ofc that azorius charm is the more relevant one to reference. If token decks do become big enough though, then cyclonic rift could see play imo.
@psychomagus
re: bug, I don't see that as being a core archetype pre-DGM (i don't think I have ever lost to a deck that's cast duskmantle seer against me if that says anything) nor one that receives any particularly good tools from DGM. Renegrade krasis seems terrible, it takes so much work to get going. It's sad that corpsejack menace is a better evolve supporter because it has an immediate effect. Apart from that, what does the deck actually get? Progenitor mimic is expensive, slow and quite frankly awful (see also: vorel of the hull clade), plasm capture and aetherling don't belong in the deck, skylasher is a sideboard card at best and can you really see anyone playing bred for the hunt? It just doesn't look very exciting to me and given that I can't cover everything, I wasn't planning on covering it.
I was thinking that bug would be good, but the more i think about it, the more i think it's still bad.
Personally I think that Golgari aggro is going to be very strong, and that's where i'm going to start when dgm hits mtgo.
Another great option will be Grixis. I was watching the SCG open saturday, and I'm very impressed with sire of insanity. Grixis was already powerful against control decks, but that card absolutely ends the game against other control decks. The only problem for grixis is obviously mono red, so that might stop it from being a tier one deck.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If MTG is a part of your life, the formats are like relationships:
Standard/Block = The on-again, off-again holiday fling
Modern/Vintage/Legacy = Stable, homely. A ***** after absence/misreading
Limited/Sealed = Heart breaking free spirit
Commander/Cube = Agreeable, needy and expensive
Pauper/Peasant = Sweet, kind, practical, but shy and boring
I was thinking that bug would be good, but the more i think about it, the more i think it's still bad.
Personally I think that Golgari aggro is going to be very strong, and that's where i'm going to start when dgm hits mtgo.
Another great option will be Grixis. I was watching the SCG open saturday, and I'm very impressed with sire of insanity. Grixis was already powerful against control decks, but that card absolutely ends the game against other control decks. The only problem for grixis is obviously mono red, so that might stop it from being a tier one deck.
Yeah it looks like there are a lot of new cards that can help beat revelation decks. Will putrefy push obzedat's numbers down and make aetherling the choice of finisher for UWx control? Sire of insanity will probably make people play warped physique over devour flesh.
But outside of warped physique, burn, tithe drinker, there aren't any other 1-2 cmc main deckable cards to interact with mono red.
Sire of insanity looked really good at the SCG open, but people haven't tuned their decks for the new meta game. The UWR deck had searing spear and azorius charm which match up poorly against sire. Sire seems like a better card in a pro active deck where you just dump your hand of creatures. Paring sire with some scavenge cards and the resilient golgari creatures (lotleth troll can't be wrathed, deathrite can't be charmed), looks like a nice fit. I'm not sure I like sire in a blue deck, if I were to play grixis i'd probably want rakdos's return instead of sire. You don't really want counter spells if you have a sire in play.
Sire of insanity looked really good at the SCG open, but people haven't tuned their decks for the new meta game. The UWR deck had searing spear and azorius charm which match up poorly against sire. Sire seems like a better card in a pro active deck where you just dump your hand of creatures. Paring sire with some scavenge cards and the resilient golgari creatures (lotleth troll can't be wrathed, deathrite can't be charmed), looks like a nice fit. I'm not sure I like sire in a blue deck, if I were to play grixis i'd probably want rakdos's return instead of sire. You don't really want counter spells if you have a sire in play.
That is true maybe jund is the right place for it, I just think that Jund is somewhat weak in block.
WBR seems like a great deck for sire. It's even on curve, turn 5 obzedat, turn 6 sire. That's pretty brutal.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If MTG is a part of your life, the formats are like relationships:
Standard/Block = The on-again, off-again holiday fling
Modern/Vintage/Legacy = Stable, homely. A ***** after absence/misreading
Limited/Sealed = Heart breaking free spirit
Commander/Cube = Agreeable, needy and expensive
Pauper/Peasant = Sweet, kind, practical, but shy and boring
Yeah it looks like there are a lot of new cards that can help beat revelation decks. Will putrefy push obzedat's numbers down and make aetherling the choice of finisher for UWx control? Sire of insanity will probably make people play warped physique over devour flesh.
I don't understand the last staement, isn't devour much better against a 6/6 than warped physique? And it obviously allows you to topdeck an out too which physique doesn't.
But outside of warped physique, burn, tithe drinker, there aren't any other 1-2 cmc main deckable cards to interact with mono red.
I think warped physique is pretty big game. It's just a straight up upgrade for devour flesh against aggro. Devour flesh is currently the only 2 mana instant speed removal and it by definition only hits their worst threat, this gives esper colours a cheap way to hit gore-house chainwalkers and boros reckoners which they couldn't before, outside of det sphere or the painful orzhov charm.
Ugh, I forgot about warleader's helix in the new BWR list I posted in my next article, that seems like a pretty solid maindeck sub for some number of aurelia's fury and is a great way to stabilise. I'm also beginning to think that alive // well might do something out of the board for UWx decks, if you can gain 6 life off it then that should be enough to stabilise and that doesn't seem unreasonable, and the option to play it for 5 mana is still there so it's not just a pure lifegain card.
@immapwner
I think pure golgari is going to lend itself to a midrange strategy, whereas jund is where you go for aggro. Adding red gives GB so many more good aggro options (exava, spike jester, BTE for starters) while pure GB lends itself to a more grindy resilient creatures strategy, with lol troll and varolz - neither of which are inherently agressive.
I also don't think that BUG or grixis are going to be good colour pairings. Adding blue to either of those colour pairs just doesn't do what you want it to do imo and hardly any of the blue multicolour cards in those colours are actually good. All of the simic and dimir rares and mythics are basically junk (mirko vosk, really?), and izzet has ral (which I'm unconvinced about) and a bunch of zany but unplayable stuff like the champion, mercurial chemister, niv mizzit and blast of genius.
I don't understand the last staement, isn't devour much better against a 6/6 than warped physique? And it obviously allows you to topdeck an out too which physique doesn't.
They're both pretty bad. Decks with sire will be mostly creature based, which makes devour flesh pretty bad. But if sire resolves that makes warped physique pretty bad. If you let sire eat your hand a devour flesh probably won't save you. I think i'd rather just try to kill it then with warped physique.
I'm also beginning to think that alive // well might do something out of the board for UWx decks, if you can gain 6 life off it then that should be enough to stabilise and that doesn't seem unreasonable, and the option to play it for 5 mana is still there so it's not just a pure lifegain card.
I'm not sure any UWx control decks will play alive//well unless they can cast the green half.
They're both pretty bad. Decks with sire will be mostly creature based, which makes devour flesh pretty bad. But if sire resolves that makes warped physique pretty bad. If you let sire eat your hand a devour flesh probably won't save you. I think i'd rather just try to kill it then with warped physique.
Hmm, I was thinking of sire in a BRW shell which won't be playing that many creatures but yeah, that's certainly true if he's mainly played in creature based midrange decks. Even so, shouldn't the UW deck be able to keep the field reasonably empty and/or have counterspells up by the time the opposing deck gets to 6 mana? Somehow I feel like sire is going to hit the field on an empty board a fair bit of the time - how often is an armada wurm played into anything other than an empty board against control right now?
I'm not sure any UWx control decks will play alive//well unless they can cast the green half.
I'm thinking from a broader meta perspective not just the narrow view of a UW control deck (which, obviously, would never play "well" as a spell on its own - I'm not even sure it belongs in bant control, although it may). If the meta supports a solid GW midrange deck with big creatures and a powerful stabilsing lifegain spell then that will be a powerful moderating force on the viability of mono red. I'm not sure alive // well is that, just considering the posbility. Right now Trostani is way too slow against mono red to fill that role; as I've said before - do you EVER block with trostani as the GW player if they attack into her? if you do, then you're opening yourself up to mortars and/or dynacharge, if you don't then you've just taken turn 4 off against a turn 4 kill deck.
Hmm, I was thinking of sire in a BRW shell which won't be playing that many creatures but yeah, that's certainly true if he's mainly played in creature based midrange decks. Even so, shouldn't the UW deck be able to keep the field reasonably empty and/or have counterspells up by the time the opposing deck gets to 6 mana? Somehow I feel like sire is going to hit the field on an empty board a fair bit of the time - how often is an armada wurm played into anything other than an empty board against control right now?
How the current UWx vs BRW match up plays out is that the BRW player keeps cards in his hand for the first 6-10 turns. The BRW player doesn't have enough cheap creatures or spells to empty his hand by the time he could cast sire of insanity. Plus the BRW player doesn't want to extend into wrath. The deck has to be reworked a lot to build around sire.
if BRW can resolve a sire against a control deck, they want to. period. The reason the BRW currently sits around doing nothing is either because their hand is full of useless spot removal, or a rakdos's return that's not going to do anything because they don't have enough mana to empty the hand, or an aurelia's fury that's just a do nothing x-burn spell at that time. There's nothing in the deck that they actually want to hold in their hand (like a counterspell), and everything that they might want to play or commit to the board like a keyrune, slaughter games obzedat or (in the future) sin collector will quite happily get played out before turn 6. BWR is 100% happy to be in topdeck mode with a 6/6 in play vs a control deck, every time.
I go into this in more detail in my next column, but sire seems PERFECT for the deck. It even deals with the "sandbagging smiters" problem because hey, you have a 6/6 and they have 4/4s.
Haha, lucky I didn't mention the "good vs smiter" point in my article review too, I just thought of it after being on the wrong end of a rakdos' return/smiter blowout last night. That makes one situation where you want to think very hard if this is what you want to do though. You usually side out rakdos's return against bant, I guess that's probably going to be the same with this guy then.
I've really enjoyed your articles so far, and thought I might share some insight into the post DGM meta. I've just spent about 30 hours in the last 3 days testing Block with DGM with my team in preparation for the Pro Tour, and our conclusion so far is that there is essentially a 4-deck metagame: Rakdos aggro, Esper Control, RBW control, and Selesnya Populate.
Rakdos is now the default aggro deck because spike jester and Exava are just that good. Getting hasty guys lets the deck recover from wrath quickly, and we haven't really been able to make a verdict/revelation deck yet that beats rakdos consistently. However, rakdos tends to lose to the other creature decks.
Esper is now the default UWx control deck, because its better against BRW than straight UW, and it wins the Blue mirror. Far/Away is excellent. The only card that matters in the blue mirror is now Aetherling: resolve that card with mana up and you win, period.
RWB is still a tier one deck, but it didn't gain a ton from DGM. Sire of Insanity is definitely great against UW (much better than return), but it's worse against Esper because they have so many edict effects to deal with it. Sin Collector is fine and good enough to run some main deck, with the rest in the board. We built the deck sort of rampy with key runes, trying to hit a big turn 4 5-drop, either obzedat, assemble the legions, or blood baron.
The big new deck is Selesnya Populate. Voice, Advent, and Scion take this deck from zero to hero really effectively. You can puke a ton of power into play really fast, you have life-gain to help fight aggro decks, and rootborn defenses along with Voice and Experiment One, or just sandbagging an advent or scion gives you a legitimate plan against Verdict. Oh, and Selesnya Charm kills Obzedat dead. This deck is for real, and if the PT were tomorrow it is probably what I would play.
Hope that's all been helpful, I don't think I've spilled too many of my teams secrets that wouldn't have been discovered by anyone seriously testing this format on their own anyway. GL and happy Block testing!
I've really enjoyed your articles so far, and thought I might share some insight into the post DGM meta. I've just spent about 30 hours in the last 3 days testing Block with DGM with my team in preparation for the Pro Tour, and our conclusion so far is that there is essentially a 4-deck metagame: Rakdos aggro, Esper Control, RBW control, and Selesnya Populate.
You forgot about mono red. I'd be absolutely floored if that deck disappeared (not that i don't want it to).
But mono red is what makes populate unplayable, specifically because of legion loyalist not to mention it's just way faster and it will beat that deck before it sets up populate. This is why people have been playing selesnya aggro. That deck will probably be tier one or very close to it if it isn't (almost is now). Populate also gets completely blown out by verdict, it's just unplayable. Maybe a deck that just happens to be populating will be great, but not one that's completely built around the mechanic.
I'm not sure that Rakdos is as good a deck as mono red is, it's not as fast and rakdos doesn't have combat tricks printed on their creatures like mono red does with firefist and legion loyalist (although I understand those creatures can be played by rakdos, they currently aren't to my knowledge), rakdos also doesn't have BTE which is the main reason why mono red is viable. My point is that rakdos hasn't been a big player in the meta pre dgm and i don't think they will be just because of exava and spike jester. Spike jester just let's them get hurt by electrickery and golgari charm more. And exava is a 4/4 haster which is great and her haste giving ability might be relevant, but I don't think it's enough to push that deck back into tier one.
Personally I think golgari aggro (or wgb aggro) is going to be very strong. That's one that I could see being tier one, especially because it's close to being tier one now.
Esper is now the default UWx control deck, because its better against BRW than straight UW, and it wins the Blue mirror.
I don't know about that. I'm not sure if you were around when gatecrash frist came out, but U/W was the best deck at one point. The only reason it stoped being the best was because of slaughter games. So they splashed black for obzedat to diversify threats. They no longer need to splash black for another game-ending threat, they can just play aetherling. Nobody wanted to splash black, they had to and now they don't have to. U/W will probably be one of the best decks in the format, it might even hate out mono red (almost did at one point). I think control will be WBR, U/W, or UWR mostly (of course bant is there, but I don't really consider them control). A few people will play esper but U/W will probably beat them since they are more consistent, it's not like the U/W decks that are played now can't deal with obzedat or anything, they still 3-1 tournaments.
If MTG is a part of your life, the formats are like relationships:
Standard/Block = The on-again, off-again holiday fling
Modern/Vintage/Legacy = Stable, homely. A ***** after absence/misreading
Limited/Sealed = Heart breaking free spirit
Commander/Cube = Agreeable, needy and expensive
Pauper/Peasant = Sweet, kind, practical, but shy and boring
I'm not trying to make it sound like there are no other decks in the format, just that I think these 4 are the best decks in the format. Red Deck Wins has a significantly worse matchup against the control decks than Rakdos because of the lack of haste creatures, as well as Rakdos getting Slaughter Games after board. This alone makes Rakdos the better red aggro deck, IMO, since it actually beats the snot out of the blue decks.
The reason I think Esper is the better control deck is because it is able to play on its opponents turn much more effectively than straight UW. Instead of clunking up the deck with skyknights and precinct captain to answer aggro, the deck gets devour flesh, charm, and far/away as instant speed removal, and is able to play more counterspells as a result: our list has 6 main with a mixture of syncopates and psychic strikes, and it might even want more. Perhaps most importantly, all this instant-speed interaction means Esper can reliably beat Sire of Insanity, whereas if UW doesn't have the counter for it immediately, they just lose to that card.
Thanks for the insights drjester, I've just been spitballing in my articles so It's nice to get thoughts from someone playing and testing with the cards.
I'm very excited to hear that re gw populate. Idk if you saw my first set review article but it sounds like I was on the right track there, the gw list I posted uses all the cards you mention. One card I started thinkingbout after posting that is alive / well which could well be the final piece which puts the mono r matchup to bed.
I actually didn't consider alive/well, that does seem like an interesting choice. Congregate used to be bonkers in certain situations, and getting 1/2 a congregate for 1/4 the cost, with potential applications as a 3/3 or both later on seems quite strong. Worth thinking about, for sure.
EDIT: With a change in the opinion of our team, we've decided to pull this list from forums. Sorry.
Skull crack was also thought of as a revelation stopper when it was first spoiled. But people realized much sooner(than medic) that this card wasn't that good since you can't main deck it. And then when people played it they usually lost to all the cards drawn by revelation.
Spacejam built this deck not because he was getting wrecked by slaughter games, it was because obzedat is a ridiculous card. Very few cards in the format can kill it. Which is part of the reason why UW died off (the other part you disscussed was slaughter games). UW's only answer to a resolved obzedat is rapid hybridization. BRW didn't come till later.
I'm not sure why other people played bant, but the reason I played it is that I thought it had the best mono red match up because you get to play centaur healer and loxodon smiter. Armada wurm still dies to supreme verdict, which every deck revelation deck plays 4 in the main. Armada wurm is also pretty awkward vs mono red in sideboard games where they have act of treason (and sometimes they have legion loyalist). So obezdat is still a better finisher. Also I think selesnya charm is one of the better cards in the deck. It answers angel and obzedat and angel loops. It can be a blocker vs mono red. And the pump lets you push through lethal damage, which can combo with azorius charm removing their blocker. Keyrunes are pretty bad. They are prime targets for azorius charm or they get detained by skynight. There's not much to ramp into in this format, and people have main deck counters to put a stop to your big drop.
Another control mirror strategy is how much removal do you side out (namely verdict, azorius charm). If you side out all your verdicts, you can lose to captain and skynight beatdown.
I simply cannot see bants mono r matchup being better than straight uw, both because of the mana base and bc precinct captain hits the board a turn earlier than anything relevant in bant. Bant certainly has a good mono r matchup, but uw is the nuts against that deck.
My experience with control mirrors obviously isn't as extensive as yours, but I've always found keyrunes useful as a threat which comes out early in a draw-go game to put out some consistent non-wrathable pressure. Charm is fine, it doesn't cost much to replay it.
I was thinking of armada wurm vs bwr more than other uw, you're right that its just another wrath target there. Bant really is much better vs slaughter games due to threat diversity, that's what I had in mind there.
Keyrunes' effectiveness vary greatly. If you're on the play and cast it turn 3, and your opponent has a grip full of wraths/jaces, then the keyrune is amazing. But if they have azorius charm/devour flesh it's pretty bad for you. If the keyrune gets charmed you just got time walked. Other times you draw a keyrune on turn 15 and want to kill yourself. Also they're terrible against aggro decks.
Yup, which is why I really feel that the value of bant lies in a higher and more diverse creature threat density vs control/slaughter games. You can see how much bant is building for slaughter games navy lists with less than 4 revelations and 2-3 of multiple wincons, incl the green primordial.
IMO each variant has diff strengths vs aggro. Esper and uwrs plans are much less susceptible than bants to firefist striker and act of treason, so each has some advantages and tradeoffs.
I will never argue with the 'terrible vs aggro' point, although at least they aren't completely dead if you otherwise are able to stabilise unlike some other anti-control cards.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/around-block-6-dgm-set-review-part-1#comment-43058
I'll try to get the second half published ASAP because I'd also like to do a timely review of the pro tour.
A rakdos aggro deck will probably be playing 4 cackler, 4 chainwalker, 2-4 hellhole flailer and top out at 4 for Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch. That's around 10 creatures it gives haste to, so the haste ability will come up fairly often. This card also makes azorius charm look bad. Normally an awesome play for UWx decks is to charm a chainwalker on top of the opponent's deck for a timewalk. Now that's not as backbreaking of a play if that chainwalker has haste. Haste is also good against people planning to use supreme verdict. That said, I don't see why you'd play a rakdos aggro deck over mono red. So it's probably a moot point anyway, and Exava will only see play if people are bored of mono red or someone brews a sweet jund aggro deck with corpse jack menace and scavenge.
I don't know if this was a typo, but no one plays cyclonic rift. People do play azorius charm which takes care of the wurm. That said I think even if people play 4 azorius charm, the card is very playable. I think the flash is what makes this card strong. It's a sick combat trick for creature mirrors, and casting this on the end step of a UWx control player is a nightmare for them. They can't tap out, or they get lava axed. This card is semi immune to verdict, and makes jace look bad. I think this card being populated is the lesser part of the card. The populate cards are pretty bad, it's a win more mechanic that's vulnerable to removal. Though the scion seems decent. It's also unfortunate that advent of the wurm doesn't work with domri's +1. Though dormi decks have 4 slots for non creature cards.
I hope your BGx article discusses a midrange jund deck. Jund dominated ISD block at the end of it, and Jund is a solid deck in standard. So it's interesting to see if it's going to be a good deck in this block.
I haven't put too much thought into why there's no jund midrange deck, but it looks like it doesn't have the creature support. There's no huntmaster, olivia, thagtusk, and the planeswalkers aren't that good for this type of deck, or are underpowered (vraska and domri vs liliana and garruk). Also the format is pretty fast for you to play 1 for 1 removal without a 4 mana wrath. Jund doesn't have much card advantage like it did in ISD block with all the flash back cards.
It looks like wizards didn't want that style of jund deck dominating again.
New to Commander? Read the Above article.
He's only got so much time and space!
Get back, get back a rollin', get back, get back motha ****a. Makin' love to you...
Thanks for the feedback. You're right that excava's haste is relevant to a few more creatures than I gave it credit for, although against decks where you aren't going to just run a rakdos cackler into a blocker, the game seems likely to just be over anyway if you get to untap and attack with excava again. And against decks with blockers, most of what you haste in isn't going to have that much impact, there's no playable flying unleash guys for eg.
The list I'm currently toying with for the next article is a straight golgari midrange, featuring all of the cards I mentioned in my previous post. I feel like there's enough options in GB for a slightly agressive, grindy, resilient creature base (ex1, gyre sgae, lol troll, varolz, some number of deadbridge goliath/desecration demon and corpsejack menace) that trups aggro though being huge and beats control through regeneration (the colours also deal with enchantments easily). I can certainly see an agressive jund deck working, with varolz as a curve-topper and stuff like spike jester also making an appearence. I don't see what advantages red gives a midrange deck, excava is nice but without evasion is nowhere near as good a finisher in that deck as falkenrath aristocrat was. Also no bonfire and, as you say, nothing close to the power of huntmaster...
Re cyclonic rift, I was just referring to bounce generally but you're right ofc that azorius charm is the more relevant one to reference. If token decks do become big enough though, then cyclonic rift could see play imo.
@psychomagus
re: bug, I don't see that as being a core archetype pre-DGM (i don't think I have ever lost to a deck that's cast duskmantle seer against me if that says anything) nor one that receives any particularly good tools from DGM. Renegrade krasis seems terrible, it takes so much work to get going. It's sad that corpsejack menace is a better evolve supporter because it has an immediate effect. Apart from that, what does the deck actually get? Progenitor mimic is expensive, slow and quite frankly awful (see also: vorel of the hull clade), plasm capture and aetherling don't belong in the deck, skylasher is a sideboard card at best and can you really see anyone playing bred for the hunt? It just doesn't look very exciting to me and given that I can't cover everything, I wasn't planning on covering it.
Personally I think that Golgari aggro is going to be very strong, and that's where i'm going to start when dgm hits mtgo.
Another great option will be Grixis. I was watching the SCG open saturday, and I'm very impressed with sire of insanity. Grixis was already powerful against control decks, but that card absolutely ends the game against other control decks. The only problem for grixis is obviously mono red, so that might stop it from being a tier one deck.
Standard/Block = The on-again, off-again holiday fling
Modern/Vintage/Legacy = Stable, homely. A ***** after absence/misreading
Limited/Sealed = Heart breaking free spirit
Commander/Cube = Agreeable, needy and expensive
Pauper/Peasant = Sweet, kind, practical, but shy and boring
Yeah it looks like there are a lot of new cards that can help beat revelation decks. Will putrefy push obzedat's numbers down and make aetherling the choice of finisher for UWx control? Sire of insanity will probably make people play warped physique over devour flesh.
But outside of warped physique, burn, tithe drinker, there aren't any other 1-2 cmc main deckable cards to interact with mono red.
Also there aren't that many good life gain cards you can main deck. There's warleader's helix, alive//well, and i guess you can include tithe drinker as well.
Sire of insanity looked really good at the SCG open, but people haven't tuned their decks for the new meta game. The UWR deck had searing spear and azorius charm which match up poorly against sire. Sire seems like a better card in a pro active deck where you just dump your hand of creatures. Paring sire with some scavenge cards and the resilient golgari creatures (lotleth troll can't be wrathed, deathrite can't be charmed), looks like a nice fit. I'm not sure I like sire in a blue deck, if I were to play grixis i'd probably want rakdos's return instead of sire. You don't really want counter spells if you have a sire in play.
That is true maybe jund is the right place for it, I just think that Jund is somewhat weak in block.
WBR seems like a great deck for sire. It's even on curve, turn 5 obzedat, turn 6 sire. That's pretty brutal.
Standard/Block = The on-again, off-again holiday fling
Modern/Vintage/Legacy = Stable, homely. A ***** after absence/misreading
Limited/Sealed = Heart breaking free spirit
Commander/Cube = Agreeable, needy and expensive
Pauper/Peasant = Sweet, kind, practical, but shy and boring
I don't understand the last staement, isn't devour much better against a 6/6 than warped physique? And it obviously allows you to topdeck an out too which physique doesn't.
I think warped physique is pretty big game. It's just a straight up upgrade for devour flesh against aggro. Devour flesh is currently the only 2 mana instant speed removal and it by definition only hits their worst threat, this gives esper colours a cheap way to hit gore-house chainwalkers and boros reckoners which they couldn't before, outside of det sphere or the painful orzhov charm.
Ugh, I forgot about warleader's helix in the new BWR list I posted in my next article, that seems like a pretty solid maindeck sub for some number of aurelia's fury and is a great way to stabilise. I'm also beginning to think that alive // well might do something out of the board for UWx decks, if you can gain 6 life off it then that should be enough to stabilise and that doesn't seem unreasonable, and the option to play it for 5 mana is still there so it's not just a pure lifegain card.
@immapwner
I think pure golgari is going to lend itself to a midrange strategy, whereas jund is where you go for aggro. Adding red gives GB so many more good aggro options (exava, spike jester, BTE for starters) while pure GB lends itself to a more grindy resilient creatures strategy, with lol troll and varolz - neither of which are inherently agressive.
I also don't think that BUG or grixis are going to be good colour pairings. Adding blue to either of those colour pairs just doesn't do what you want it to do imo and hardly any of the blue multicolour cards in those colours are actually good. All of the simic and dimir rares and mythics are basically junk (mirko vosk, really?), and izzet has ral (which I'm unconvinced about) and a bunch of zany but unplayable stuff like the champion, mercurial chemister, niv mizzit and blast of genius.
They're both pretty bad. Decks with sire will be mostly creature based, which makes devour flesh pretty bad. But if sire resolves that makes warped physique pretty bad. If you let sire eat your hand a devour flesh probably won't save you. I think i'd rather just try to kill it then with warped physique.
I'm not sure any UWx control decks will play alive//well unless they can cast the green half.
Hmm, I was thinking of sire in a BRW shell which won't be playing that many creatures but yeah, that's certainly true if he's mainly played in creature based midrange decks. Even so, shouldn't the UW deck be able to keep the field reasonably empty and/or have counterspells up by the time the opposing deck gets to 6 mana? Somehow I feel like sire is going to hit the field on an empty board a fair bit of the time - how often is an armada wurm played into anything other than an empty board against control right now?
I'm thinking from a broader meta perspective not just the narrow view of a UW control deck (which, obviously, would never play "well" as a spell on its own - I'm not even sure it belongs in bant control, although it may). If the meta supports a solid GW midrange deck with big creatures and a powerful stabilsing lifegain spell then that will be a powerful moderating force on the viability of mono red. I'm not sure alive // well is that, just considering the posbility. Right now Trostani is way too slow against mono red to fill that role; as I've said before - do you EVER block with trostani as the GW player if they attack into her? if you do, then you're opening yourself up to mortars and/or dynacharge, if you don't then you've just taken turn 4 off against a turn 4 kill deck.
How the current UWx vs BRW match up plays out is that the BRW player keeps cards in his hand for the first 6-10 turns. The BRW player doesn't have enough cheap creatures or spells to empty his hand by the time he could cast sire of insanity. Plus the BRW player doesn't want to extend into wrath. The deck has to be reworked a lot to build around sire.
I go into this in more detail in my next column, but sire seems PERFECT for the deck. It even deals with the "sandbagging smiters" problem because hey, you have a 6/6 and they have 4/4s.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/around-block-7-dgm-set-review-part-2
It got published a day earlier than all my previous ones (same submission time), hopefully that continues in the future.
Rakdos is now the default aggro deck because spike jester and Exava are just that good. Getting hasty guys lets the deck recover from wrath quickly, and we haven't really been able to make a verdict/revelation deck yet that beats rakdos consistently. However, rakdos tends to lose to the other creature decks.
Esper is now the default UWx control deck, because its better against BRW than straight UW, and it wins the Blue mirror. Far/Away is excellent. The only card that matters in the blue mirror is now Aetherling: resolve that card with mana up and you win, period.
RWB is still a tier one deck, but it didn't gain a ton from DGM. Sire of Insanity is definitely great against UW (much better than return), but it's worse against Esper because they have so many edict effects to deal with it. Sin Collector is fine and good enough to run some main deck, with the rest in the board. We built the deck sort of rampy with key runes, trying to hit a big turn 4 5-drop, either obzedat, assemble the legions, or blood baron.
The big new deck is Selesnya Populate. Voice, Advent, and Scion take this deck from zero to hero really effectively. You can puke a ton of power into play really fast, you have life-gain to help fight aggro decks, and rootborn defenses along with Voice and Experiment One, or just sandbagging an advent or scion gives you a legitimate plan against Verdict. Oh, and Selesnya Charm kills Obzedat dead. This deck is for real, and if the PT were tomorrow it is probably what I would play.
Hope that's all been helpful, I don't think I've spilled too many of my teams secrets that wouldn't have been discovered by anyone seriously testing this format on their own anyway. GL and happy Block testing!
Thanks to Avatar for the rockin' Sig and Avvy!
You forgot about mono red. I'd be absolutely floored if that deck disappeared (not that i don't want it to).
But mono red is what makes populate unplayable, specifically because of legion loyalist not to mention it's just way faster and it will beat that deck before it sets up populate. This is why people have been playing selesnya aggro. That deck will probably be tier one or very close to it if it isn't (almost is now). Populate also gets completely blown out by verdict, it's just unplayable. Maybe a deck that just happens to be populating will be great, but not one that's completely built around the mechanic.
I'm not sure that Rakdos is as good a deck as mono red is, it's not as fast and rakdos doesn't have combat tricks printed on their creatures like mono red does with firefist and legion loyalist (although I understand those creatures can be played by rakdos, they currently aren't to my knowledge), rakdos also doesn't have BTE which is the main reason why mono red is viable. My point is that rakdos hasn't been a big player in the meta pre dgm and i don't think they will be just because of exava and spike jester. Spike jester just let's them get hurt by electrickery and golgari charm more. And exava is a 4/4 haster which is great and her haste giving ability might be relevant, but I don't think it's enough to push that deck back into tier one.
Personally I think golgari aggro (or wgb aggro) is going to be very strong. That's one that I could see being tier one, especially because it's close to being tier one now.
EDIT:
I don't know about that. I'm not sure if you were around when gatecrash frist came out, but U/W was the best deck at one point. The only reason it stoped being the best was because of slaughter games. So they splashed black for obzedat to diversify threats. They no longer need to splash black for another game-ending threat, they can just play aetherling. Nobody wanted to splash black, they had to and now they don't have to. U/W will probably be one of the best decks in the format, it might even hate out mono red (almost did at one point). I think control will be WBR, U/W, or UWR mostly (of course bant is there, but I don't really consider them control). A few people will play esper but U/W will probably beat them since they are more consistent, it's not like the U/W decks that are played now can't deal with obzedat or anything, they still 3-1 tournaments.
Standard/Block = The on-again, off-again holiday fling
Modern/Vintage/Legacy = Stable, homely. A ***** after absence/misreading
Limited/Sealed = Heart breaking free spirit
Commander/Cube = Agreeable, needy and expensive
Pauper/Peasant = Sweet, kind, practical, but shy and boring
The reason I think Esper is the better control deck is because it is able to play on its opponents turn much more effectively than straight UW. Instead of clunking up the deck with skyknights and precinct captain to answer aggro, the deck gets devour flesh, charm, and far/away as instant speed removal, and is able to play more counterspells as a result: our list has 6 main with a mixture of syncopates and psychic strikes, and it might even want more. Perhaps most importantly, all this instant-speed interaction means Esper can reliably beat Sire of Insanity, whereas if UW doesn't have the counter for it immediately, they just lose to that card.
Thanks to Avatar for the rockin' Sig and Avvy!
I'm very excited to hear that re gw populate. Idk if you saw my first set review article but it sounds like I was on the right track there, the gw list I posted uses all the cards you mention. One card I started thinkingbout after posting that is alive / well which could well be the final piece which puts the mono r matchup to bed.
EDIT: With a change in the opinion of our team, we've decided to pull this list from forums. Sorry.
Thanks to Avatar for the rockin' Sig and Avvy!