So is it your opinion that taking up 50% of the Pro Tour isn't a little much?
Would it change your mind if it was 50% or higher on the next Pro Tour, as well?
Yes and no respectively.
Bans "on principle" due solely to metagame share are horrible policy and long-term unhealthy for the game, which is what this argument implies.
If the higher metagame share is because the deck is doing something fundamentally unfair (whether it's "doing fair things too well" or doing unfair things), then yes, that metagame share may be cause for alarm.
Energy decks aren't doing this. They are 50/50 decks that have some flex spots which can be tuned for an expected metagame. If those flex spots are right for the weekend then yes, they'll crush the field and look OP. If those flex spots are wrong for the weekend, then you can easily scrub out of a real tournament even with tight play and decent luck. The energy decks can't be tuned to beat everything at once, so there's a ton of room both for pilots of energy decks and people who don't want to play energy decks to metagame and make good weekend calls that pay off.
That's exactly what you want out of a "best deck" format. Look at the last time Standard was truly great: Theros block and Khans of Tarkir block, especially the six months after Dragons of Tarkir came out and before Theros block rotated. You had one deck (Abzan Midrange) that was 50/50 or better against the field and was the single best deck the whole time, but you had a ton of viable other options: Esper Dragons, RG Devotion, RG or Temur Dragons/Monsters, Mono-Red/Atarka Red, GW Company, and even a couple more fringe decks like Bant Heroic, Constellation, Whip of Erebos, and OG Rally the Ancestors that all had a shot to spike a Grand Prix or at least an SCG Open on a particular weekend at some point during that season.
It gives the Spikes -- both grinders/pros and LGS-level players who just enjoy playing to win -- a single deck to master or target and a ton of metagaming room, and it gives the Johnny and Timmy players plenty of options to pursue whatever their hearts desire. Johnny in particular has an absurd number of cards that scream build-around-me: Anointed Procession, New Perspectives, Drake Haven, Aetherflux Reservoir, God-Pharoah's Gift, Metalwork ColossusMechanized Production, Metallurgic Summonings, Revel in Riches, Approach of the Second Sun, Sunbird's Invocation. And Timmy has friggin big stompin Dinosaurs.
After a couple of years of wandering in the desert, WOTC has finally made Standard great again. The only reason people are complaining right now is because the energy mechanic isn't something new. If the energy decks were replaced by some pushed Pirates or Treasures deck and had 28 cards from Ixalan in its maindeck, people would be losing their minds over how exciting and open this format is. But because it's from Kaladesh block (which in fairness had several puzzling R&D decisions, which have been worked out through the banlist already), people are complaining.
WOTC would be grotesquely irresponsible to ban a Lay of the Land variant. This is the first of its kind that's been Constructed-caliber in the history of Magic.
(EDIT: You could count Traverse the Ulvenwald here and say it's the second that's been playable, but Attune is the first one that is predominantly a Lay of the Land that's playable. Traverse's playability came from it turning into an improved Worldly Tutor when your engine is online; its mana-fixing was a minor but relevant upside to your deck tuning, not the reason for inclusion, like Attune is.)
Stop with the ban hysteria. The numbers from PT Ixalan are not a problem. The PT was much later in the season than normal, after a lot of unusual strategies were already explored and found wanting, which explains the abnormally high percentage of the field. The energy decks had a high percentage of the field and performed exactly average at all data points for measuring performance, so they're not oppressive or stifling, just very prolific. The decks themselves are very fair midrange decks whose thematic creatures are slightly below-rate on their own and above-rate with a lot of energy production, that's not an issue anymore than last season's Zombies deck was or any other 'tribal' or 'synergy' deck in recent history.
The only argument that has any amount of merit is that energy's mana is too good relative to the rest of the format, but that alone is hardly banworthy. It's less degenerate than the 4c manabases of BFZ/OGW Standard and the attempts to push it into that level (like the base-Sultai version that splashes for Virtuoso/Lightning) are fraught with manabase risks, which is exactly how it ought to be.
I think 4 Champion of Wits and some number of The Scarab God are enough incremental advantage against everyone but control decks. Champion gets clunky in multiples, but you can discard extra Champions to the first one, so that's not actually a big deal. And honestly, it's possible 4 Champion of Wits and your Scarab Gods are still enough. The bigger issue in beating these control decks really lies in beating early Scarab Gods and Gearhulks more than winning a long game. You can bring in a card advantage engine like Arguel's Blood Fast or Treasure Map to give an extra oomph, but losing to a turn-5 God is probably the biggest danger with this deck against UB Control, not them grinding you out -- Duress and maybe even Spell Pierce should help you clear the way for those card advantage engines. I think in this matchup I would be looking to lose some of my tempo elements (except Hostage Taker/Duress/Spell Pierce -- Hostage Taker solves our issue with the big creatures and those two cheap spells let you clear the way in time to get things done before the creatures take over) and have some more unconditional answers. Essence Scatter is probably good here.
I really doubt that the Gearhulk package is any good if I'm being frank. I have no idea where you want it. Your deck already has a potential curve of Gifted Aetherborn, Hostage Taker, and Scarab God to punish green creature decks. Gearhulk is too slow to be useful against fast aggro or combo. And like I said in the previous paragraph, what matters against control for you is just leaning on your card advantage engines and protecting them at key points with discard or cheap countermagic while not dying to early big creatures. Gearhulk isn't really useful for that IMO. A big flash threat like Gearhulk is good if you have a more effective proactive play to force through on your next turn in these decks, but you can't really attain a critical mass of instants to make sure Gearhulk has something to do without diluting the deck's effectiveness generally.
I've shown my list to a grinder who knows the metagame pretty well. Here are some of his comments :
Siren Stormtamer may look good, but it's not. Good players will work around it, and it's worse than Blossoming Defense.
Hostage Taker is amazing in Esper Gift, because it's eternalized for free (so all lands available to cast the exiled card). It's also good in Temur Black, because it's easy to protect with Blossoming Defense. But Hostage Taker is probably more a liability than an asset in our deck, because we can't protect it effectively.
Lookout's Dispersal can be worked around by good players. If we pass the turn with two lands untapped for Dispersal, opponent can kill our Pirate EOT and then we can't cast our counterspell on Hydra or Glorybringer (or whatever). Essence Scatter is way better.
We have to assume that at any given competitive event, half the crowd is playing Temur Energy. Our maindeck should be geared toward this matchup.
Temur Energy will side out Servant of the Conduit and Whirler Virtuoso vs us. They know well that we will not win fast, and will thus side in cards that will perform in the long game. Fatal Push becomes a really bad card for us post SB. It can only target Longtusk Cub, and that is very narrowl.
Frankly, I agree with 100% of what he said. It's sad, however, because I think we may have to drop the Pirate theme and go with Jaberwocki's UB Midrange's list. I tested it a bit on XMage, and it's really not as fun as The Pirate God. Ideas? Opinions?
- Siren Stormtamer is not as good as Blossoming Defense, since the trick is telegraphed on the board, but it's not so much worse that the extra color for BD becomes worthwhile on its own. The real comparison should be to Dive Down, which in most cases is a color-shifted Blossoming Defense, but Stormtamer turning on Lookout's Dispersal and coming back with The Scarab God should put it over the top of Dive Down being disguisable.
- I have no idea how the 4x Stormtamer, 4x Kitesail Freebooter, 4x Lookout's Dispersal deck is supposed to be bad at protecting Hostage Taker. All this "good players can work around XYZ" stuff is nonsense, frankly. "Good players can work around" Reflector Mage, Thalia, Heretic Cathar, and Spell Queller too... that doesn't mean that the deck which combined those tempo elements with an absolutely devastating curve-topping bomb wasn't the best deck in Standard this time last year, and our bomb is better, and we get Dispersal which UW Flash can only dream of.
- Yes, if we have one Pirate out and keep passing with exactly 2 mana up, we're vulnerable to them killing our Pirate and turning off Dispersal. Essence Scatter is not "way better" though, since it doesn't counter Fumigate, Settle the Wreckage, any planeswalker (Chandra? Vraska?) or Approach of the Second Sun. And why are we continually putting ourselves in spots where this can happen with Dispersal? You don't think it's a little odd that this deck with all these disruptive elements is somehow magically having all of them parried cleanly by a generic energy deck with six kill spells that cost less than 5 mana?
- I could see Fatal Push being bad postboard. Walk the Plank is awkward with our desire to hold up Dispersal but is probably what we need here. Luckily Walk the Plank is probably excellent.
Finally, I do think there's probably a midway point between Jaberwocki's UB deck and this one. Gifted Aetherborn is superb right now.
I am probably not going to play a version of this deck, but UB seem like the best color duo outside of green. Just great tools all the way up and down the curve, and for all situations. Y'all have potential with this idea here.
Current list. I decided to get more aggressive, because my experience testing Temur Energy led me to want an early game that scales better into the lategame. Winding Constrictor is the ticket.
I wanted to get more aggressive and not have to hold up mana to develop the board. That meant Essence Scatter had to go and that I wanted to go down on removal generally. Vraska's Contempt is great all-purpose removal, which you want for the 4-5 mana bombs that everyone likes to play, and a couple of Fatal Push give you the ability to tag something on turn 1 or turn 3 and either break serve or push your advantage further, but I don't think I really want a lot of removal. I want to use my big Longtusk Cubs to invalidate the smaller stuff, Verdurous Gearhulk to make my attacks frightening and dangerous, and Aethersphere Harvester to close out in the air.
I cut Walking Ballista because I didn't want to play it as badly as I wanted to play the other cards. It's only really good against Ramunap Red anyway. I decided it wasn't worth sideboarding because you don't lose to the smallball stuff against red postboard, in fact they usually cut 1-toughness guys to mitigate their weakness to Ballista. Why not just not have Ballista and focus on Hazoret, Chandra, and Glorybringer? I am trying out a Cartouche of Ambition despite that argument, though, because extra lifegain is great.
I goofed and I'm not sure exactly where the mistake is in the decklist. I have 4 Fatal Pushes MD. I want to say I had 1 Blossoming Defense but I'm not sure what the errant card is. You can probably cut the 4th Opt, the 1st Defense or one of the other one-ofs.
There's a lot of great discussion here on pg 5. I'm going to make some comments on individual cards under discussion.
- Hostage Taker doesn't interest me. I tested a bit with it in early iterations of this deck, but for whatever reason, I couldn't manage to get the dream team of Taker + Blossoming Defense assembled in a decisive or significant way. It's slow against red, anemic against control, and Temur has ways to mitigate its impact, especially the disciplined builds that don't splash The Scarab God (which is by far the best target); Glorybringer trumps Taker on-curve if you don't also have Defense backup, Bristling Hydra trumps Taker on-curve regardless of whether you have Defense or not, and the tempo you lose from being down two cards trying to pick a spot for Taker + Defense is a big deal against Temur, which is very capable of punishing slow draws.
- Prowling Serpopard might be worth trying out. I'm not personally interested, because I don't really like having dedicated anti-control cards. I don't think Serpopard changes the game so drastically as to merit including it over, say, Champion of Wits, which is a very good anti-control card that also comes in postboard against a variety of other decks (essentially anything but mono-red).
- Drowned Catacomb is substantially better than Fetid Pools. It's been my experience both during HOU Standard and now that cycling Pools comes up very rarely, while Catacombs seems to come in untapped reliably on turn 4-5, and the extra mana from that is rather important. This deck also has use for land drops well beyond the 5th or even 6th one due to Walking Ballista and Scarab God.
- Rhonas the Indomitable is probably a fine 1-of if you shift toward all Bristling Hydras at the 4 spot and cut Hostage Taker completely. I have never been big on Rhonas because I constantly seem to get served the floor with him instead of the ceiling (I don't think I've ever assembled Rhonas and Bristling Hydra in a game I wasn't already destroying). But there's no denying the card is very good.
- Aethersphere Harvester and Verdurous Gearhulk: I like the 1-of Gearhulk that I have here. I'm not a very big fan of Harvester without 2x or more Gearhulks, but once you have that many, I love Harvester. Harvester "doesn't need" Gearhulk but it doesn't really decide games like it used to do without Gearhulk. I felt like I lost to red more because I either stumbled out of the gates early (variance essentially) or I had trouble dealing with Hazoratti, Chandra, and Glorybringer postboard, since respecting their 1-drop rush and respecting that trio of top-end cards stretches you thin.
- Vraska's Contempt is an awesome card. I wish it sniped enchantments and artifacts too, but that might be too good. It's excellent as-is I think. I don't mind the 4th mana very much because the premier threats for which you really want Contempt cost a decent chunk of change themselves... usually these 4-mana spells are too clunky to be played significantly, but the threats are not very redundant in Standard decks, so mana efficiency takes a backseat to matching up cleanly with the low number of very high-impact threats that drive these decks.
All in all, I think this build is in the same space as Temur, but has a higher ceiling (and perhaps lower floor) due to Constrictor synergies. The higher ceiling in this case is probably worth it.
This is testing well, albeit it's early. Green splash isn't very difficult and gives you a couple of new wrinkles in UB:
- The planeswalkers are really good, or at least Nissa VF and Vraska are. Verdict is out on Nissa SOE for now. But the planeswalkers give you win conditions you can find off of Azcanta, and they're all really strong.
- Longtusk Cub + Duress + Negate + Bristling Hydra give you a sideboard transformative plan for the mirror and various combo/combo-ish decks, like WB/WBx Tokens and God-Pharoah's Gift.
- Dynavolt Tower gives you enough removal spells to stabilize against a lot of moderate-sized creatures, like what Ramunap Red and Temur Energy tend to like to leave you with. Tower is technically playable in UB but you don't have the energy production without Attune with Aether (which also plays nicely with Azcanta).
I don't own any Scarab Gods anymore and they're $50 so I didn't test them yet. Probably one should be in here somewhere. You can cut Nissa SOE from the maindeck or River's Rebuke from the SB for it if you want.
Mono-red crushing the PT isn't an indicator of something being broken. Mono-red nukes the untuned, slow, durdly decks like the early versions of UW God-Pharoah's Gift and the somewhat mopey midrange decks like Oketra's Monument that people expected would be big players this weekend, as well as UR Control. If this were a major Grand Prix and the Pro Tour were in 2 weeks, you could probably expect a lot of Zombies and BG Constrictor.
This is part of the cycle of a healthy metagame. Mono-red wasn't in the gauntlet as a major threat until after the Atlanta Open, so the pros didn't have enough time to test extensively against it -- just enough time to realize that their over-the-top decks they were planning on playing weren't gonna cut it and to audible to red themselves. The next two highest performers, Zombies and Constrictor, both beat red.
Thank God red aggro destroyed this PT. The last healthy Standard formats were Dragons of Tarkir and Magic Origins Standard and both had red aggro as PT champions. Red aggro is the fun police you need to keep people from the arms race into degeneracy that's plagued Standard for the last year. If there's no aggro to respect you just get to level people with more over the top stuff until only the most degenerate thing remains.
Attune with Aether is functionally very similar to a fetchland. Thinning out your deck with lands doesn't really impact your land count all that much. Not enough that people run "extra" lands in other formats with a prevalence of fetchlands, for instance.
What it does do that can set you up for mana screw, which is demonstrably different from fetchlands, is that it costs one green mana instead of no mana. So there's a higher fail rate, particularly in tricolor decks that dabble to a nontrivial extent in their non-green colors, where you end up drawing Attune and no green mana.
Additionally, fetches can get duals, where Attune can get only a basic land. Attune certainly can't be considered a full source of every color in a tricolor deck, because you can end up with Bristling Hydra, Glorybringer, Ob Nixilis Reignited hands where you have a Game Trail, a Canyon Slough, and an Attune, and not be able to cast everything.
Of course, both of these things are color screw and not merely being stuck on lands. Are you having trouble with colors or land drops?
If it's land drops, play another land. No joke. I can only really speak experientially because I haven't done any formal observations in my games. But I just kept getting stuck on lands with 20-21 lands. That extends to the Delirium decks with Traverse the Ulvenwald, btw. I've honestly found that 23 lands is the right place to be with 4 Attune and/or 4 Traverse in those styles of decks, if you're counting on making land drops through turn 5 and don't operate very well if you stall out on 3 mana.
My extrapolation from that is that 4x Attune is really more like three lands instead of four, despite giving you four mana sources. I'm not sure why that would be the case.
I think I'm going to echo the sentiment that they need to have staple cards reprinted into standard every set and maybe define a cycle of cards that will always be in rotation at all times. Doom blade, Mana Leak, Lightning Strike, Giant Growth, and I have no idea what would be good for white. I think Giant Growth is fine in standard even though it is a one mana instant.
Green should have a decent Rampant Growth, not Giant Growth.
White is probably fine at the moment. Though for argument's sake, their signature effect would seem to be Oblivion Ring and they have plenty of those currently.
White's signature effect is obviously Wrath of God.
Yes and no respectively.
Bans "on principle" due solely to metagame share are horrible policy and long-term unhealthy for the game, which is what this argument implies.
If the higher metagame share is because the deck is doing something fundamentally unfair (whether it's "doing fair things too well" or doing unfair things), then yes, that metagame share may be cause for alarm.
Energy decks aren't doing this. They are 50/50 decks that have some flex spots which can be tuned for an expected metagame. If those flex spots are right for the weekend then yes, they'll crush the field and look OP. If those flex spots are wrong for the weekend, then you can easily scrub out of a real tournament even with tight play and decent luck. The energy decks can't be tuned to beat everything at once, so there's a ton of room both for pilots of energy decks and people who don't want to play energy decks to metagame and make good weekend calls that pay off.
That's exactly what you want out of a "best deck" format. Look at the last time Standard was truly great: Theros block and Khans of Tarkir block, especially the six months after Dragons of Tarkir came out and before Theros block rotated. You had one deck (Abzan Midrange) that was 50/50 or better against the field and was the single best deck the whole time, but you had a ton of viable other options: Esper Dragons, RG Devotion, RG or Temur Dragons/Monsters, Mono-Red/Atarka Red, GW Company, and even a couple more fringe decks like Bant Heroic, Constellation, Whip of Erebos, and OG Rally the Ancestors that all had a shot to spike a Grand Prix or at least an SCG Open on a particular weekend at some point during that season.
It gives the Spikes -- both grinders/pros and LGS-level players who just enjoy playing to win -- a single deck to master or target and a ton of metagaming room, and it gives the Johnny and Timmy players plenty of options to pursue whatever their hearts desire. Johnny in particular has an absurd number of cards that scream build-around-me: Anointed Procession, New Perspectives, Drake Haven, Aetherflux Reservoir, God-Pharoah's Gift, Metalwork Colossus Mechanized Production, Metallurgic Summonings, Revel in Riches, Approach of the Second Sun, Sunbird's Invocation. And Timmy has friggin big stompin Dinosaurs.
After a couple of years of wandering in the desert, WOTC has finally made Standard great again. The only reason people are complaining right now is because the energy mechanic isn't something new. If the energy decks were replaced by some pushed Pirates or Treasures deck and had 28 cards from Ixalan in its maindeck, people would be losing their minds over how exciting and open this format is. But because it's from Kaladesh block (which in fairness had several puzzling R&D decisions, which have been worked out through the banlist already), people are complaining.
(EDIT: You could count Traverse the Ulvenwald here and say it's the second that's been playable, but Attune is the first one that is predominantly a Lay of the Land that's playable. Traverse's playability came from it turning into an improved Worldly Tutor when your engine is online; its mana-fixing was a minor but relevant upside to your deck tuning, not the reason for inclusion, like Attune is.)
Stop with the ban hysteria. The numbers from PT Ixalan are not a problem. The PT was much later in the season than normal, after a lot of unusual strategies were already explored and found wanting, which explains the abnormally high percentage of the field. The energy decks had a high percentage of the field and performed exactly average at all data points for measuring performance, so they're not oppressive or stifling, just very prolific. The decks themselves are very fair midrange decks whose thematic creatures are slightly below-rate on their own and above-rate with a lot of energy production, that's not an issue anymore than last season's Zombies deck was or any other 'tribal' or 'synergy' deck in recent history.
The only argument that has any amount of merit is that energy's mana is too good relative to the rest of the format, but that alone is hardly banworthy. It's less degenerate than the 4c manabases of BFZ/OGW Standard and the attempts to push it into that level (like the base-Sultai version that splashes for Virtuoso/Lightning) are fraught with manabase risks, which is exactly how it ought to be.
Hot.
I really doubt that the Gearhulk package is any good if I'm being frank. I have no idea where you want it. Your deck already has a potential curve of Gifted Aetherborn, Hostage Taker, and Scarab God to punish green creature decks. Gearhulk is too slow to be useful against fast aggro or combo. And like I said in the previous paragraph, what matters against control for you is just leaning on your card advantage engines and protecting them at key points with discard or cheap countermagic while not dying to early big creatures. Gearhulk isn't really useful for that IMO. A big flash threat like Gearhulk is good if you have a more effective proactive play to force through on your next turn in these decks, but you can't really attain a critical mass of instants to make sure Gearhulk has something to do without diluting the deck's effectiveness generally.
- Siren Stormtamer is not as good as Blossoming Defense, since the trick is telegraphed on the board, but it's not so much worse that the extra color for BD becomes worthwhile on its own. The real comparison should be to Dive Down, which in most cases is a color-shifted Blossoming Defense, but Stormtamer turning on Lookout's Dispersal and coming back with The Scarab God should put it over the top of Dive Down being disguisable.
- I have no idea how the 4x Stormtamer, 4x Kitesail Freebooter, 4x Lookout's Dispersal deck is supposed to be bad at protecting Hostage Taker. All this "good players can work around XYZ" stuff is nonsense, frankly. "Good players can work around" Reflector Mage, Thalia, Heretic Cathar, and Spell Queller too... that doesn't mean that the deck which combined those tempo elements with an absolutely devastating curve-topping bomb wasn't the best deck in Standard this time last year, and our bomb is better, and we get Dispersal which UW Flash can only dream of.
- Yes, if we have one Pirate out and keep passing with exactly 2 mana up, we're vulnerable to them killing our Pirate and turning off Dispersal. Essence Scatter is not "way better" though, since it doesn't counter Fumigate, Settle the Wreckage, any planeswalker (Chandra? Vraska?) or Approach of the Second Sun. And why are we continually putting ourselves in spots where this can happen with Dispersal? You don't think it's a little odd that this deck with all these disruptive elements is somehow magically having all of them parried cleanly by a generic energy deck with six kill spells that cost less than 5 mana?
- I could see Fatal Push being bad postboard. Walk the Plank is awkward with our desire to hold up Dispersal but is probably what we need here. Luckily Walk the Plank is probably excellent.
Finally, I do think there's probably a midway point between Jaberwocki's UB deck and this one. Gifted Aetherborn is superb right now.
I am probably not going to play a version of this deck, but UB seem like the best color duo outside of green. Just great tools all the way up and down the curve, and for all situations. Y'all have potential with this idea here.
4 Kitesail Freebooter
4 Longtusk Cub
4 Servant of the Conduit
4 Electrostatic Pummeler
1 Rhonas the Indomitable
1 Trophy Mage
3 Bristling Hyra
Spells (18)
4 Attune with Aether
4 Blossoming Defense
4 Opt
4 Larger than Life
2 Nissa, Steward of Elements
4 Aether Hub
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Botanical Sanctum
1 Drowned Catacomb
2 Forest
4 Island
2 Swamp
2 Duress
3 Spell Pierce
1 Aethersphere Harvester
3 Cartouche of Ambition
3 Dreamstealer
1 Lifecrafter's Bestiary
2 Trophy Mage
4 Winding Constrictor
4 Longtusk Cub
3 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
4 Rogue Refiner
2 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
1 Rhonas the Indomitable
4 Bristling Hydra
3 Verdurous Gearhulk
1 The Scarab God
Spells (12)
4 Attune with Aether
2 Blossoming Defense
2 Fatal Push
2 Aethersphere Harvester
2 Vraska's Contempt
4 Aether Hub
4 Blooming Marsh
3 Botanical Sanctum
2 Drowned Catacomb
3 Forest
2 Island
4 Swamp
3 Duress
3 Spell Pierce
1 Cartouche of Ambition
2 Champion of Wits
2 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Lifecrafter's Bestiary
1 Vraska's Contempt
1 Vraska, Relic Seeker
1 Nissa, Vital Force
I wanted to get more aggressive and not have to hold up mana to develop the board. That meant Essence Scatter had to go and that I wanted to go down on removal generally. Vraska's Contempt is great all-purpose removal, which you want for the 4-5 mana bombs that everyone likes to play, and a couple of Fatal Push give you the ability to tag something on turn 1 or turn 3 and either break serve or push your advantage further, but I don't think I really want a lot of removal. I want to use my big Longtusk Cubs to invalidate the smaller stuff, Verdurous Gearhulk to make my attacks frightening and dangerous, and Aethersphere Harvester to close out in the air.
I cut Walking Ballista because I didn't want to play it as badly as I wanted to play the other cards. It's only really good against Ramunap Red anyway. I decided it wasn't worth sideboarding because you don't lose to the smallball stuff against red postboard, in fact they usually cut 1-toughness guys to mitigate their weakness to Ballista. Why not just not have Ballista and focus on Hazoret, Chandra, and Glorybringer? I am trying out a Cartouche of Ambition despite that argument, though, because extra lifegain is great.
4 Winding Constrictor
4 Longtusk Cub
3 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
4 Rogue Refiner
3 Bristling Hydra
1 The Scarab God
1 Verdurous Gearhulk
3 Walking Ballista
Spells (16)
4 Attune with Aether
4 Blossoming Defense
4 Opt
2 Vraska's Contempt
1 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Vraska, Relic Seeker
4 Aether Hub
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Botanical Sanctum
2 Drowned Catacomb
2 Forest
3 Island
2 Swamp
4 Duress
1 Spell Pierce
2 Negate
1 Appetite for the Unnatural
2 Champion of Wits
3 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Bristling Hydra
1 Vraska's Contempt
There's a lot of great discussion here on pg 5. I'm going to make some comments on individual cards under discussion.
- Hostage Taker doesn't interest me. I tested a bit with it in early iterations of this deck, but for whatever reason, I couldn't manage to get the dream team of Taker + Blossoming Defense assembled in a decisive or significant way. It's slow against red, anemic against control, and Temur has ways to mitigate its impact, especially the disciplined builds that don't splash The Scarab God (which is by far the best target); Glorybringer trumps Taker on-curve if you don't also have Defense backup, Bristling Hydra trumps Taker on-curve regardless of whether you have Defense or not, and the tempo you lose from being down two cards trying to pick a spot for Taker + Defense is a big deal against Temur, which is very capable of punishing slow draws.
- Prowling Serpopard might be worth trying out. I'm not personally interested, because I don't really like having dedicated anti-control cards. I don't think Serpopard changes the game so drastically as to merit including it over, say, Champion of Wits, which is a very good anti-control card that also comes in postboard against a variety of other decks (essentially anything but mono-red).
- Drowned Catacomb is substantially better than Fetid Pools. It's been my experience both during HOU Standard and now that cycling Pools comes up very rarely, while Catacombs seems to come in untapped reliably on turn 4-5, and the extra mana from that is rather important. This deck also has use for land drops well beyond the 5th or even 6th one due to Walking Ballista and Scarab God.
- Rhonas the Indomitable is probably a fine 1-of if you shift toward all Bristling Hydras at the 4 spot and cut Hostage Taker completely. I have never been big on Rhonas because I constantly seem to get served the floor with him instead of the ceiling (I don't think I've ever assembled Rhonas and Bristling Hydra in a game I wasn't already destroying). But there's no denying the card is very good.
- Aethersphere Harvester and Verdurous Gearhulk: I like the 1-of Gearhulk that I have here. I'm not a very big fan of Harvester without 2x or more Gearhulks, but once you have that many, I love Harvester. Harvester "doesn't need" Gearhulk but it doesn't really decide games like it used to do without Gearhulk. I felt like I lost to red more because I either stumbled out of the gates early (variance essentially) or I had trouble dealing with Hazoratti, Chandra, and Glorybringer postboard, since respecting their 1-drop rush and respecting that trio of top-end cards stretches you thin.
- Vraska's Contempt is an awesome card. I wish it sniped enchantments and artifacts too, but that might be too good. It's excellent as-is I think. I don't mind the 4th mana very much because the premier threats for which you really want Contempt cost a decent chunk of change themselves... usually these 4-mana spells are too clunky to be played significantly, but the threats are not very redundant in Standard decks, so mana efficiency takes a backseat to matching up cleanly with the low number of very high-impact threats that drive these decks.
All in all, I think this build is in the same space as Temur, but has a higher ceiling (and perhaps lower floor) due to Constrictor synergies. The higher ceiling in this case is probably worth it.
2 Torrential Gearhulk
Planeswalkers (3)
1 Nissa, Steward of Elements
1 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Vraska, Relic Seeker
Artifacts (2)
2 Dynavolt Tower
Enchantments (4)
4 Search for Azcanta
Sorceries (4)
4 Attune with Aether
Instants (22)
4 Fatal Push
4 Censor
3 Essence Scatter
4 Disallow
2 Essence Extraction
2 Glimmer of Genius
3 Vraska's Contempt
4 Aether Hub
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Botanical Sanctum
3 Drowned Catacombs
1 Forest
5 Island
2 Swamp
3 Duress
3 Longtusk Cub
3 Negate
1 Appetite for the Unnatural
2 Bristling Hydra
2 Hostage Taker
1 River's Rebuke
This is testing well, albeit it's early. Green splash isn't very difficult and gives you a couple of new wrinkles in UB:
- The planeswalkers are really good, or at least Nissa VF and Vraska are. Verdict is out on Nissa SOE for now. But the planeswalkers give you win conditions you can find off of Azcanta, and they're all really strong.
- Longtusk Cub + Duress + Negate + Bristling Hydra give you a sideboard transformative plan for the mirror and various combo/combo-ish decks, like WB/WBx Tokens and God-Pharoah's Gift.
- Dynavolt Tower gives you enough removal spells to stabilize against a lot of moderate-sized creatures, like what Ramunap Red and Temur Energy tend to like to leave you with. Tower is technically playable in UB but you don't have the energy production without Attune with Aether (which also plays nicely with Azcanta).
I don't own any Scarab Gods anymore and they're $50 so I didn't test them yet. Probably one should be in here somewhere. You can cut Nissa SOE from the maindeck or River's Rebuke from the SB for it if you want.
This is part of the cycle of a healthy metagame. Mono-red wasn't in the gauntlet as a major threat until after the Atlanta Open, so the pros didn't have enough time to test extensively against it -- just enough time to realize that their over-the-top decks they were planning on playing weren't gonna cut it and to audible to red themselves. The next two highest performers, Zombies and Constrictor, both beat red.
Things are fine.
What it does do that can set you up for mana screw, which is demonstrably different from fetchlands, is that it costs one green mana instead of no mana. So there's a higher fail rate, particularly in tricolor decks that dabble to a nontrivial extent in their non-green colors, where you end up drawing Attune and no green mana.
Additionally, fetches can get duals, where Attune can get only a basic land. Attune certainly can't be considered a full source of every color in a tricolor deck, because you can end up with Bristling Hydra, Glorybringer, Ob Nixilis Reignited hands where you have a Game Trail, a Canyon Slough, and an Attune, and not be able to cast everything.
Of course, both of these things are color screw and not merely being stuck on lands. Are you having trouble with colors or land drops?
If it's land drops, play another land. No joke. I can only really speak experientially because I haven't done any formal observations in my games. But I just kept getting stuck on lands with 20-21 lands. That extends to the Delirium decks with Traverse the Ulvenwald, btw. I've honestly found that 23 lands is the right place to be with 4 Attune and/or 4 Traverse in those styles of decks, if you're counting on making land drops through turn 5 and don't operate very well if you stall out on 3 mana.
My extrapolation from that is that 4x Attune is really more like three lands instead of four, despite giving you four mana sources. I'm not sure why that would be the case.
White's signature effect is obviously Wrath of God.
[[walks calmly away from impending firestorm]]