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Thread: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

  1. #1

    [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    First off, let me say that this article is necessarily speculative. There won’t be very many major tournaments between when the Mystical Tutor ban takes effect and Columbus, which means the metagame will still be in a state of upheaval. Columbus is likely to be both the flagship tournament and closing chapter for the initial post-ban redevelopment of the format, although MTGO players will probably have a leg up in this regard. It may be worth tracking trends from the Legacy tournaments online to get a better picture of what Columbus will be like. Also, I realize lots of authors with investments in the format have already talked about this subject, but most of them have said the same thing, which is something easily deduced by most players. The goal here is to give you a bit more practical take on the upcoming format, or at least jump-start a constructive discussion.

    One final thing: a lot has been said about Reanimator, both by people who think it's dead and those trying to make it rise from the ashes of No More Mystical. I'm not going to discuss it again here, other than to say that I think Reanimator is a fine Tier II strategy at this point, but the loss in consistency probably makes it not good enough anymore against a Zoo deck with graveyard hate.

    Getting back to what I want to talk about, we know a couple things right now: first, that Mystical Tutor’s departure is going to cause a major re-alignment of the format; second, that (for the time being, at least) combo is dead as a major metagame force; and third, that Grim Monolith coming off the list is likely to cause a small uptick in “big mana” decks. I’ll discuss the last two first, and then the first one.

    Goodnight, Sweet Prince

    Mystical Tutor going away doesn’t kill combo, but it does kill Ad Nauseum – which might as well be the same thing. ANT was the format’s premiere combo deck for a number of reasons, chief among them that it was very easy to play relative to other combo decks. Your goal in basically every matchup was to ramp into AdN and flip cards until you had a way to generate lethal storm count with Tendrils. That meant that you didn’t really have to know a whole lot of tricks to generate storm count, and your biggest mulligan decisions were, “Can this hand beat blue?” and “How fast can I find and play AdN?” That’s not tremendously complex, so it’s kind of amusing that the storm deck for dummies still managed to underperform heavily in the American metagame.

    ANT dying now opens up the format to a host of other possible combo decks, the most important of which are TES and Belcher. Belcher is likely to see a spike in popularity due to both that fact and the unbanning of Grim Monolith (which helps Belcher generate storm or store mana). Builds of Belcher substituting in Monolith for some number of weaker mana rituals, or perhaps using Goblin Welder to turn Lotus Petals into (colorless) Black Loti, will be the best versions of the deck in the coming months. I say “best” because Belcher as a deck is pretty bad; you’re playing the format’s flagship example of a high-risk, high-reward deck. Sometimes, you’ll live the dream and get there on turn one with Belcher, but sometimes your opponent will have the Force and screw you over, and sometimes the opponent will have sided in Needle or Pyroclasm and prevent you from winning, even if you “successfully” go off. Given that, Belcher is unlikely to take up ANT’s mantle as the format’s combo pillar.

    TES is your other option (along with SI and a host of fringe TES-like decks) for combo. The deck is relatively stable and less susceptible to permission, and reasonably fast. That said, the deck is a far cry from the combo juggernaut of ANT; hate bears slow you down, the deck has a much higher learning curve, and it requires a much more intimate knowledge of both the format and the matchups to do well. American ANT players were not tremendously good at navigating the relatively narrow decision trees of their own decks, so it’s probably reasonable to say that most of them aren’t going to be able to make the switch and get in the practice necessary to do well prior to Columbus.

    This relegates storm combo decks to regional phenomena that will sink or swim based solely on the skill of the pilot and not metagame saturation (as ANT might have done in Europe). In time, these decks may become more popular, but even then I do not think they will reach ANT levels of popularity. As far as the next month is concerned, storm combo is basically dead.

    That brings me to the other item of note, Grim Monolith. Yes, this card is for realz legal in the format now. People who like X Stompy or Stax decks, and the few perverse members of the community who liked Urza’s-block Standard, will be overjoyed. The rest of us are probably right to be skeptical regarding the card’s impact.

    First, what does this card do? By itself, it’s a mostly one-off +1 mana boost for base cost of two and one card; with Voltaic Key, it’s a +5 mana boost every turn for base cost of three and two cards. Combined with Tempest-era multi-mana lands, it allows for turn one Trinisphere or, when further combined with Mox Diamond, turn one Sneak Attack. That said, turn one Trinisphere was already possible in the format, and turn one Sneak Attack was also possible (and equally as much of a stretch as the Monolith scenario). Belcher might be happy now that it has access to another “delayed ritual,” and Big Blue or blue Stax decks using Tezzeret are probably salivating at the possibilities, but is this card really doing anything for them?

    Monolith fills a role in Tezzeret decks that didn’t have a clear analogue before: namely, allowing your namesake card to do a pretty damn good impression of Garruk Wildspeaker. Not only does it allow a turn two or three Tezz, it generates six mana per turn for free (!) with Tezz in play. The question is, what to do with all that mana? Staff of Domination is the easiest answer: you basically turn Tezzeret into “+1: Draw a card and untap up to one target non-Monolith artifact.” That’s pretty snazzy in the abstract, especially when you flesh out the deck’s skeleton a little bit with Chalice, Trinisphere, Karn, Lodestone Golem, and the like.

    However, there are two problems here, which are applicable to the Stompy and Stax builds as well: lack of consistency, and varying levels of power. One could make a compelling argument that a type of “big blue” deck already existed in the format, in the form of Eldariel’s Faerie Stompy; that deck, despite having Mulldrifter and perhaps TfK, is pretty inconsistent, with high mulligan rates, bad topdeck modes, and the virtual requirement of having to go all-in on its opener. Stax and Stompy are decks that basically give you all the bad news up front, and if you can weather it with fast beats or simple patience, it’s likely that these decks won’t be able to find what they need to win in time (although Stax is much worse for this than Stompy is). Yes, these decks can now consistently aim for turn one Trinisphere; the trade-off is that they now have more dead cards to draw in the mid- to late-game without really any gains in consistency (with the probable exception of a slightly lower mulligan rate). Stax and Stompy have both existed on the fringes of the format for a while, but more fast mana was not what they needed to be competitive. However, it’s likely that these two decks will see a spike in popularity leading up to Columbus as players first forget this fact, and then rediscover it by losing a bunch.

    Okay, so with that out of the way, the take-home message is: combo is not a problem anymore, Stax and Stompy still suck, and apparently some other card that doesn’t matter got unbanned. Moving right along…

    Charging Your Lazers

    Pulling the rug out from underneath combo has created a bunch of big winners and a bunch of big losers in the lead up to the GP. Months of prior testing and tournament results aren’t completely invalidated, but the metagame will shift in such a way that you should hit the drawing board again and reshape your gauntlet if you want to be prepared. It also opens up a bunch of room for brewing, as a realigning format is perfect for rogue deckbuilders to do their thing. Regardless of your intentions, these are your top testing priorities:

    Zoo
    Counterbalance with Thopter Foundry
    Lands
    Aggro Loam
    New Horizons

    If you have more time or want to get a better picture of how your deck will perform, add the following to the queue:

    Jace, the Mind Sculptor Landstill
    Merfolk
    TES
    Dredge

    These are likely to be the major players for the foreseeable future. I’ll discuss each in turn.

    Zoo

    King of the recent SCG 5ks, Zoo is the most obvious deck to beat going forward. Zoo loses one of its worst matchups (combo), sees one of its other weak matchups crippled (Reanimator), and now doesn’t have to bog down its sideboard with hate bears and Mindbreak Traps. That said, you should probably be prepared to make adjustments to your deck to reflect the new realities of the meta.

    Zoo now needs to concentrate on two things: beating the mirror, and beating the hate. The hate will most often crop up in the form of Firespout or some sort of recurring life gain like Thopter Foundry, Zuran Orb, Jitte, and lifelink dudes. Each of these shows up in different decks, and the answers don’t cross over tremendously well. Needle and Null Rod can handle everything but the guys; the problem is that most decks that play permanents with activated abilities have ways to get rid of Needle and Null Rod, and you have no ways to protect them. Artifact destruction also works, but Foundry and Orb show up in decks packing Academy Ruins, so that would suggest some combination of Needle and Grip. Speaking of which, Grip may now be good enough to maindeck because of all the artifacts and enchantments you don’t want to see; Zoo’s biggest strength is consistency, and you don’t want to leave all the “bad stuff go away” heavy lifting to Pridemage. Of course, Grip is pretty shitty in the mirror, so…

    There are a couple of options here. The blazing speed of Elias Zoo comes at the expense of long-term stability, which is more important now that many of your non-mirror matches are likely to be able to sweep you repeatedly. Burn is still important, but Lightning Helix is better than Fireblast in a world full of the mirror. Zoo now needs to find a balance between aggression and staying power that it hasn’t needed to focus on in a while; I’d suggest the following as a starting point:

    4 Wild Nacatl
    3 Grim Lavamancer
    3 Steppe Lynx
    4 Tarmogoyf
    4 Qasali Pridemage
    4 Knight of the Reliquary

    4 Lightning Bolt
    3 Chain Lightning
    3 Lightning Helix
    2 Price of Progress

    3 Path to Exile
    2 Sylvan Library
    1 Umezawa’s Jitte

    4 Wooded Foothills
    4 Windswept Heath
    3 Taiga
    2 Plateau
    1 Savannah
    2 Horizon Canopy
    1 Forest
    1 Mountain
    1 Plains
    1 Treetop Village

    Remember, this is a pretty rough sketch. The Village and Jitte both give you partial immunity to sorcery-speed sweepers, while Library and an increased emphasis on big guys give you a better midgame. The mana is pretty shoddy and could use some work, but the basic idea is that it pays to go big in the mirror, and to overload the other guy’s removal with a steady stream of dorks in control matchups. The sideboard would likely consist of hosers for combo engines like Thopter-Sword, graveyard hate, and possibly a land toolbox to put your Knights to work. Extra Jittes for the mirror seem okay as well. Wasteland may be a card to consider because of all of the random good land cards in the format (Maze, Ruins, Chasm, etc).

    Zoo is very strong going forward, but it’s also the deck everyone is gunning for. The builds that do best will be the ones that can balance answers to control against answers to the mirror.

    Counterbalance with Thopter Foundry

    Now that Mystical Tutor is banned, Enlightened Tutor is the best non-storm-deck tutor in the format – and you’re going to be constantly reminded of that. Other Counterbalance builds will continue to exist in the same way that Supreme Blue “exists” right now, but the best one going forward is likely to be Esper-colored Thopterbalance (with or without a splash for Firespout).

    Why? Well, Thopter Foundry is just an enormous beating against Zoo, and Counterbalance is an enormous beating against Loam decks (also huge beneficiaries of MT’s loss). Both of these cards can be found with Enlightened Tutor. Furthermore, E-Tutor can find random singleton cards that hose certain decks pretty hard: Humility for aggro, Wheel of Sun and Moon for Lands, Aura of Silence for decks like Enchantress, etc. You obviously don’t want all of those in the main, but it sure does save sideboard space.

    Consider the following 3rd-place list from a recent 42-person event in Germany:

    4 Dark Confidant
    2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

    4 Brainstorm
    4 Enlightened Tutor
    4 Sensei’s Divining Top

    2 Counterspell
    3 Daze
    4 Counterbalance
    4 Force of Will

    4 Swords to Plowshares
    1 Engineered Explosives
    1 Vedalken Shackles

    2 Thopter Foundry
    1 Sword of the Meek

    4 Flooded Strand
    3 Polluted Delta
    3 Tundra
    3 Underground Sea
    1 Tropical Island
    2 Island
    1 Plains
    1 Seat of the Synod
    2 Academy Ruins

    There are a couple of things to note here: (1) there’s almost no creatures, (2) Thopter Foundry is the main kill condition but is backed up by Jace, and (3) the deck is softer to Fast Zoo than Big Zoo. This deck is obviously built with a nod towards combo being a problem; in the future Zoo-infested metagame, the deck is likely to lose some of its counters and slower board control cards and pick up more Plow effects and/or silver bullet aggro hosers a la Humility.

    That said, you’re still a blue deck, and Zoo decks prey on blue decks almost as a byproduct of their design. Your gains in consistency still won’t put you anywhere close to Zoo’s consistency levels unless you go out of your way to run tons of filtration effects, but that means you’ll spend most of the early game not really doing anything while Zoo plays guy after guy and gets busy. With enough targeted removal in the main, you may be able to aim tons of one-for-ones at the Zoo player to stay alive long enough to get Thopter Foundry rolling. That basically ends the game on the spot unless the Zoo player has Grip and/or enough burn to kill you in response to the first activation. Still, there’s a lot of things that need to go right (or go wrong for the Zoo player) in this matchup.

    That said: you really beat the crap out of anything that’s not Zoo.

    Your sideboard is likely to consist of a bunch of anti-aggro cards, silver bullet answers to problem decks like Lands that you can fetch with E-Tutor, and additional cheap counters to fight tempo decks. Taking the previous list as a starting point, Dark Confidant, Shackles, and Counterspell are all potential “flex slots” when trying to adjust the deck to a post-ban metagame. I’d recommend trying 2-3 Path to Exiles, a Humility, another EE, and maybe another Foundry, but I say that with the caveat that I haven’t tested this deck much.

    Lands

    Ah, the days when this deck used to run forty-three lands and was a total “WTF” deck. Now Lands is “mainstream,” thanks to its continued success in the 5ks and its inherent power against the field. Previously, two things were holding it back: the obscene cost of building the deck (Tabernacle really is a $300 card), and combo. One of these is no longer a problem.

    Because of the neutering of combo, Lands stands to gain in a big way, and most people are aware of that. There are three big questions now: how many Lands decks will there actually be, how much of an impact will they have if they’re only present in low numbers, and how successful will they be in a field full of graveyard hate? The last question is perhaps the most important in terms of testing because, at the end of the day, the heart and soul of the Lands deck is still Life from the Loam; incapacitating that makes the Lands deck much, much worse. How you go about doing that, however, will have a big impact on how the matchup goes.

    Consider this build from the Seattle 5k, piloted by Matt Gargiulo:

    4 Exploration
    4 Manabond

    4 Intuition
    4 Life from the Loam

    4 Mox Diamond
    1 Ensnaring Bridge
    1 Tormod’s Crypt
    1 Zuran Orb

    1 Misty Rainforest
    1 Verdant Catacombs
    1 Wooded Foothills
    1 Winswept Heath
    1 Forest
    1 Bayou
    3 Tropical Island

    4 Wasteland
    4 Rishadan Port
    1 Ghost Quarter

    3 Tolaria West
    3 Tranquil Thicket

    4 Mishra’s Factory
    3 Maze of Ith
    1 Glacial Chasm
    1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
    1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
    1 Academy Ruins
    1 Riftstone Portal

    For those of you who haven’t been following the developments in Lands lately, the deck’s designers realized that blue has a lot more to offer the deck than red, which was in the early incarnations. It also gives you a much better game against blue decks, since Tolaria West is an uncounterable tutor for the Counterbalance-slaying EE, and Intuition is an amazing setup card. Against Zoo, you have Maze of Ith, Tabernacle, Zuran Orb, Ensnaring Bridge, and Glacial Chasm to make attacking impossible and burn weak. Most of the rest of the decks in the field tend to fold to you because they can’t really profitably interact with you, and most of them try to win by attacking.

    Going forward, the deck could use some work. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a pretty amazing card against Lands, and blue control decks running him are going to use him to full effect to kill you. EE wipes out Counterbalance, but short of heavy mana denial, many blue decks will keep you busy by repeatedly countering the EE and trying to overload your board control elements until they can completely lock you. Zoo is, well, Zoo, so you can’t drop too many anti-burn cards if you want to keep game one good.

    The solutions? Well, there are a couple. The best is to add Volrath’s Stronghold somewhere in your 75 and take advantage of Vampire Hexmage and Meloku, the Clouded Mirror. Meloku is a total baller with Manabond and will force concessions on the spot. Hexmage gets Jace and, oh, did I mention that Dark Depths is a land? Yeah, recurring 20/20 flying guys seem pretty good. Beyond that, you want to keep Chalice to stop niche cards like Extirpate, Grips to stop Leylines and Wheels, and maybe a Crucible or two just to play it safe. As it is, a meta with insufficient graveyard hate and enough aggro is ripe for the taking, so even if you’re not packing Lands, you should be packing answers to it.

    Aggro Loam

    I mention Aggro Loam specifically here because it’s probably the best-known Legacy midrange control deck (and the deck I’m most familiar with), but decks like The Rock fall into this category too. Basically, these decks were underplayed because, despite being good against aggro and passable against blue, they rolled over and died to combo and struggled against tempo. Tempo and combo are major elements of the pre-ban format, so you can see why few people would play these decks, and even fewer do well with them.

    Basically, Aggro Loam is great against aggro strategies because you play sweepers and big guys. That’s it. You have more big guys than they have removal, so you sweep and smash, rinse and repeat, round after round. There are no tricks and there’s very little thinking involved in most of your matchups. These sorts of decks will see a rise in popularity because they are relatively inexpensive and offer an alternative to Zoo for players who decide they don’t want to play the best deck, or don’t want to have to fight through the hate. That said, there’s some important limitations to consider here.

    First, Aggro Loam relies heavily on Life from the Loam. Removing Loam makes the deck weaker, although it can compensate with Dark Confidant. However, Dark Confidant has a battlefield life expectancy of basically zero against Zoo, and if he does survive, the life loss is actually extremely relevant, as is the fact that he basically can’t kill any of Zoo’s guys on defense. That means that it may be time to reconsider Bob’s role in the deck, especially if Zoo’s metagame share pushes past 25%.

    Second, Aggro Loam is soft to both tempo and control decks. Midrange decks tend to beat aggro because they go big and pack just enough disruption to stop the aggro deck from pulling together in time, but they don’t run enough guys (and have the wrong disruption) when faced with control – and thus they don’t do very well. Control decks like Thopterbalance will ruin your day with a combination of tons of removal, tons of chump blockers, and infinite counters. Furthermore, tempo (Daze) decks tend to beat you by being faster – midrange decks tend to be kind of ponderous, and well-timed counters and Wastelands can keep you on the back foot long enough to die to hordes of Merfolk or Knight + Terravore. Thankfully, tempo decks are generally soft to Zoo, so the metagame may work in your favor there.

    With all of this in mind, Aggro Loam needs to make some major revisions to stay relevant. Burning Wish is basically too slow or too irrelevant in most of your matchups, so it should be cut. Dreams is a very hit-or-miss card against Zoo (and basically never kills Tarmogoyf or Knight), and is downright awful against blue and Lands. Firespout is much better as an anti-aggro sweeper and is basically a no-brainer sideboarding switch against non-creature decks. Maelstrom Pulse and EE are both decent at controlling Zoo and very, very good against blue, so they should stay. Chalice at one is of questionable value in a format now chock full of awesome two-drops (Counterbalance, Loam, Thopter Foundry, Jitte, etc), so it may be worth moving to the board.

    This is not to say that Aggro Loam is bad – it’s a very strong deck. It places high emphasis on redundancy and power, and as such can go toe-to-toe with Zoo in terms of consistency while offering trumps in the form of bigger guys and better removal.

    So, if you’re looking to test against Aggro Loam, you may wish to start with this riff on Pat McGregor’s list from last year:

    4 Dark Confidant
    4 Tarmogoyf
    3 Countryside Crusher
    3 Terravore

    4 Life from the Loam
    3 Firespout
    2 Maelstrom Pulse
    4 Lightning Bolt
    2 Engineered Explosives
    4 Mox Diamond

    4 Wooded Foothills
    4 Verdant Catacombs
    2 Taiga
    1 Bayou
    1 Badlands
    2 Forest
    1 Mountain

    3 Tranquil Thicket
    2 Forgotten Cave
    1 Volrath’s Stronghold
    4 Wasteland

    Mmm, how I love me some rock-solid mana bases. You may also wish to note that an alternative, four color build of this deck exists, swapping Terravore for the (arguably) stronger Knight of the Reliquary. These builds are fine against most decks but have a softer tempo matchup than normal due to a more unstable mana base. One other thing: Aggro Loam is very customizable, and is more a strategy than a deck. As such, I'm going to toot my horn and suggest trying the Naya build with NO posted in the Aggro Loam thread (no, I will not link you, and yes, I am trying to generate traffic for my own thread).

    Sideboard options include Seismic Assault (always kind of awkward for your mana, and not so good anymore), graveyard hate, Grips, and something to deal with blue decks. Mass land destruction can shore up weaknesses against oddball decks like Lands and Enchantress, which aren’t fazed by most of your removal.

    New Horizons

    At Chicago last year, Canadian Threshold proved itself to be the format’s most potent tempo deck. Tempo strategies were very powerful answers to the slower, more controlling builds of Counterbalance that were popular at the time, and so it seemed like a fine solution. However, since then the deck has gone into a slow decline and has now become an outdated relic in the format. Enter New Horizons.

    This deck has been on an absolute streak lately, both in the hands of creator Dave Price (no, not that Dave Price) and, most recently, in Seattle 5k winner Kyle Boddy’s hands. It’s easy to see why when you look at it: the deck combines Canadian’s tempo control elements – designed to keep an opponent off-balance in the early game – with a brutal clock that is very capable of finishing him off before he can recover. One of Canadian’s faults is that a game will often slip away from you because you would come out of the gates with tempo guns blazing, but be unable to put enough pressure on your opponent to stop him from recovering and kicking your ass. Price and co. realized that red doesn’t do much for the deck and so swapped it out for white, which gives them access to both the best removal in the format and the biggest monsters in the format – at least, the biggest you’ll actually cast.

    However, combo’s disappearance and Zoo’s ascension makes tempo a less attractive. For starters, 50% or more of a typical Zoo deck costs only a single mana to play, making the mana denial pretty weak. You don’t have many ways to keep yourself from getting burned out, and if Zoo builds up enough little guys, it’s fully conceivable that the deck can race you even if you execute your game plan. Furthermore, you were heavily favored against the sort of blue Counterbalance decks that beat combo; without combo to keep those decks relevant, some of your choice prey will be exiting stage left.

    That’s not to say that Zoo is totally hopeless (it’s not), and even if it were, it’s nothing a good retooling can’t fix. Take the following tweaks on Boddy’s Seattle list:

    4 Tarmogoyf
    4 Knight of the Reliquary
    3 Rhox War Monk
    1 Terravore

    4 Brainstorm
    3 Ponder

    4 Stifle
    4 Daze
    4 Force of Will

    4 Swords to Plowshares
    2 Engineered Explosives

    4 Misty Rainforest
    4 Windswept Heath
    3 Tropical Island
    3 Tundra
    3 Horizon Canopy
    1 Forest
    1 Island
    4 Wasteland

    RWM in the main gives you a better shot against Zoo if that deck manages to recover from the tempo assault. Some of the cuter interactions – Vendillion Clique and Karakas, for example – are moved to the sideboard since they’re better against control decks. Speaking of sideboarding, you want graveyard hate, Merfolk hate, and Counterbalance hate in the board. Some more Plow effects might be good against Zoo, but Oust is better than PtE because of how awkward Path is with the mana denial plan.

    There are certainly other options available, but current builds of New Horizons have a hard matchup against Zoo – not unwinnable, but not easy, either. If Zoo explodes in popularity, changes to the main will have to be made to reflect that.
    Last edited by frogboy; 06-24-2010 at 11:00 PM.

  2. #2

    Re: [Pseudo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Other Decks

    These include Landstill, Merfolk, TES, and Dredge – decks you don’t necessarily need to test against, but which are good gauntlet additions anyway. Since these decks are more likely to be fringe decks, I won’t provide lists, but I will talk about them briefly here.

    Laskin Landstill – A Landstill deck that uses Jace, the Mind Sculptor as its kill card. In many ways, it’s similar to Thopterbalance, but instead of using Counterbalance to generate card advantage, it uses more traditional methods like draw spells. These decks will often feature a removal suite spread across white, green, and black, with blue making up the backbone of the deck. Cunning Wish may or may not also be part of the equation.

    There are two things you need to know here: one, these decks get wrecked by Lands, and two, these decks get wrecked by fast Zoo decks. The deck doesn’t have enough ways to interact with Lands outside of Pernicious Deed (to clear the enchantments) and Jace – but both of those can be answered by the Lands player, and anyway Landstill can’t win fast enough to avoid draws (also, Mindslaver lock from Lands). Your most relevant removal spells against Zoo are your 4 Swords; Edict effects in black aren’t very good (take one for the team, Pridemage! Swing with two Tarmogoyfs), and Pernicious Deed is glacially slow against a deck that can have you at ten life or less by the time you could fire it off. Still, if you’re rocking a slower control strategy, it might be worth it to test against this deck, as it will gain popularity after the ban.

    Merfolk – Yes, this deck will still exist. The 16 lord versions with LoA, Coralhelm, Reejerey, and Sovereign will be the best since they don’t autolose to Zoo, and the deck is likely to dip into white more often now for Absolute Law and other protection measures. That said, it will never be a clearly favorable matchup for you, and this deck’s share of the metagame will be almost entirely dependent on blue control decks being good enough. If you’re working on such a deck, you should definitely test it against Merfolk, as Merfolk requires different answers than Zoo does thanks to both the tempo elements and to how well its creatures scale; otherwise, it’s probably not worth it.

    TES – No, combo isn’t completely dead, and this is most likely to be the new face of it. However, this isn’t worth testing against if either of the following are true: (1) you don’t know a good TES pilot, and/or (2) your deck has a bad combo matchup currently. The most important of these is (1) because the difference between Joe Shmoe, “What’s this deck do?” TES pilot and a Bryant Cook TES pilot is enormous and will greatly affect how good the matchup seems to be in testing. Of course, you’re more likely to face the former than the latter at the GP – but TES is pretty rare, and probably won’t become popular enough to warrant sideboard slots in Zoo, for example.

    Dredge – Hi, Max McCall. Yes, I see you. What, you’re not going to wave back at me? What a jerk. Anyway: yeah, Dredge exists. Now that Reanimator is no longer poised to wreck the format, Dredge might make a comeback as people ease up on their graveyard hate…or will it?

    The short answer: no. The long answer: no, because Lands exists. Basically, Lands is the best anti-Zoo deck in the format right now, and may be the best all-around deck; as such, it would be unwise to remove graveyard hate from your sideboard. Even if you don’t expect to see Lands, many of the other control and midrange decks gunning for Zoo have some sort of recursive element to give them superior late-games. Dredge is probably the worst “best deck” in the format, and even when it was extremely popular at the end of last year, it failed to put up the sort of numbers you’d expect a popular deck to put up. Assuming relatively constant levels of graveyard hate after the ban takes effect (perhaps switching to be in favor of cards like Crypt that get rid of entire graveyards), Dredge is still going to be suffering enormous collateral damage. So, if you have absolutely nothing better to do, test against Dredge just so you can totally smash the bad Dredge pilots who will inevitably show up to Columbus.

    Conclusions / TL;DR

    Combo is certainly diminished and most likely a complete non-issue for Columbus, which changes the landscape of the format a lot. In order to cope, you need to do two things: (1) have a plan to beat Zoo, and (2) have a plan to beat most of the decks that try to beat Zoo. That is a tall order in this format.

    Most of the decks that try to beat Zoo do so by making attacking unprofitable in various ways, either through life gain, preventing attacks altogether, or sweeping repeatedly. Different anti-Zoo decks will focus on different methods, which makes your life easier when deciding how to sideboard. You want to keep a couple of things handy: a varied mix of graveyard hate (to dodge Needle), Krosan Grips or some other way to destroy artifacts (there aren’t as many good enchantments as there are artifacts), and anti-aggro cards to keep Zoo from turning the match around after boarding.

    If you’re playing Zoo, you need to be mindful that everyone in the room is trying to beat you. First, you need to address the mirror; second, you need to have outs to Thopter Foundry and Tabernacle/Chasm in particular. If you’re running enough Knights of the Reliquary, Wasteland may be an unexpected option against Lands, while Krosan Grip and Null Rod answer Thopterbalance pretty well. The best way to beat the mirror is probably to go large by stocking up on Knights and maybe Terravores, and to include some amount of life gain in the form of Lightning Helix.

    I’m not sure where the format will go after Columbus, mostly because the results of that tournament will largely dictate what non-Zoo decks are good. Combo will likely creep back into the format as people make the switch to TES and/or Belcher, but it won’t be anywhere near ANT in terms of prevalence or obnoxiousness. Grim Monolith will most likely fail to live up to the hype, but the next block is an artifact block, so it may yet prove itself to be good. Either way, the format is likely to remain aggro versus a variety of anti-aggro strategies for a while yet, so deckbuilding and tuning should be much easier now.

    Anyway, I hope this was more practical than the never-ending stream of “ZOMG BANZ” articles that have come out recently. Even if I’m wrong about the format, this is probably a useful starting point. It would be a good idea over the next few weeks to keep a close eye on MTGO, as many of the most prepared people at the GP will be calibrating their expectations by the metagame that evolves there.

  3. #3

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Zoo
    Counterbalance with Thopter Foundry
    Lands
    Aggro Loam
    New Horizons

    If this is your test metagame maybe start working on a decent Helm/Line list? Leyline alone beats 4 out of those 5 decks.
    Needs more goyfs.

  4. #4
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    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Thank you very much for making this. I've been working on testing lately and was thinking about many of the same things for the gauntlet to test. I am especially grateful for the inclusion of lists of the decks to test against, because trying to find a "current good build" of a deck that you're not familiar with can be pretty difficult.
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  5. #5

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Quote Originally Posted by Valtrix View Post
    Thank you very much for making this. I've been working on testing lately and was thinking about many of the same things for the gauntlet to test. I am especially grateful for the inclusion of lists of the decks to test against, because trying to find a "current good build" of a deck that you're not familiar with can be pretty difficult.
    Well, some of these lists I'm not certain about. The Zoo list, for example, was something I put together when writing as a thought experiment. They aren't optimized, but they're probably a good place to start for a first round of testing.

    The deck I'm most iffy on here is actually New Horizons. I think it's poorly positioned in the new metagame, but it will be popular because of how well it's done recently, so I included it anyway. The RWM in the main are kind of awkward, so you may want to take the winning list from Seattle and just tweak the sideboard to be heavily anti-Zoo (blue Blasts, RWM, etc).

  6. #6
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    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Awesome work AZ! I enjoy articles like this.

    But where the flying fuck is Bant Survival. Just kidding, but seriously.

  7. #7
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    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Fucking excellent. Best MTG article I've read in a very long time.

    But where the flying fuck is Bant Survival. Just kidding, but seriously.
    I agree, this was the major omission of the article, imho. I believe the explanation of increased viability of mid-range control decks suggests it though.



    Thanks,
    4eak

  8. #8

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Quote Originally Posted by Jak. View Post
    Awesome work AZ! I enjoy articles like this.

    But where the flying fuck is Bant Survival. Just kidding, but seriously.
    Well, Survival may or may not be a fine Tier 1.5 strategy.

    The issue here is that the deck is generally soft to Zoo and Merfolk and better at outmaneuvering a field of midrange blue decks. Zoo is now the format's top dog, which means that Merfolk is not going to be an issue until the metagame settles down. You could potentially build the deck to beat Zoo, but you're losing ground against more dedicated control decks like Thopterbalance then - especially dedicated control decks capable of answering your engine or fielding an engine of the same power. You could increase the number of bullet slots to try to hold your ground against control decks attacking from diffferent angles (Thopterbalance with permission, Lands with mana denial and inevitability), but then you risk spreading yourself too thin.

    In short, Survival suffers from the classic "midrange deck problem," but has the advantage of a superior ability to switch roles thanks to its namesake card. In the near term, I think the deck is a weak choice; in the middle and long terms, the deck may be fine, but you need the metagame to quiet down first so that you have a better idea of how to tune your hate slots. Generic hate cards like Meddling Mage may be okay to tide you over, but they're not great, and in this format it's better to excel at one thing than to be mediocre at a bunch of things.

    EDIT: Also, thanks for the thanks. As for myself, I don't have the ability to do adequate testing because there's almost no one playing Legacy around here, and my desktop - which I needed to run MWS - died on me. Well, even then, MWS is a pretty shitty way to do anything other than familiarize yourself with your deck, so like...my hope was that I could help other people who have a better shot at doing well in the tournament than I do. I probably won't come at this rate (sad_face.jpg), but I did get top 16 at the Dallas 5k despite having played almost no Legacy in over a year, so I might still make it if I can find a way to make the trip cheaper.

  9. #9

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    I feel like this whole "combo is gone" attitude will more likely lose you a tournament then prepare you well for it. Combo is always an issue, and always preys on meta's that don't expect it. Right now is exactly the best time to bring out a combo deck, maybe even balls to the wall belcher, or pseudo combo like enchantress (whose weakest matchup was combo). I don't feel like you did any speculation at all, instead you took the meta pre-combo, took out the combo and left the other decks intact.

    I might agree that people typically don't test new decks on a big tourney like Columbus, they usually net-deck the best next thing. But if you truly want to predict the most effective deck now Storm has been nerfed you'll need to think this through a little more, I'd say.

    Other sidenote is that I miss Goblins. Which might surpass everything you wrote down, considering being able to deal with Goblins is pretty much the first thing a legacy deck should be capable of doing. It's still one of the pillars in Legacy and less combo didn't hurt nor help Goblins.

  10. #10
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    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Very well done. I hope thopter-sword does start picking up its game in the meta, as I feel it has potential. Though i am unsure how poorly New horizons is in the scheme of things. From my limited testing, it would do well enough vs folk/zoo pre-board just by EE, swords, and having the biggest creatures around. Should be interesting to see how it develops

  11. #11

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    I thought it was interesting you mentioned Hex/Depths in regards to Lands as a potential addition. I recently added it to Slide (which shares many elements of Lands.dec's gameplan, strengths, and weaknesses) for a lot of the same reasons. i.e. Kill Jace (and in smaller doses Redjani and Elspeth), and provide an out to problematic situations or to just provide a quick kill method.

    I think Entomb may begin to see some play in non-Reanimator decks as a tutor, grabbing stuff like Life from the Loam, various specialty lands, and creatures and artifacts for Ruins/Stronghold/Witness/Unearth. I haven't experimented with it myself yet, but I definitely have an eye on it.

    -Note: Hexmage has been good, providing a lot of utility in addition to killing walkers and making Marit Lage tokens.

    EDIT: Also, doesn't the newly spoiled Crystal Ball solve like, all of Stax's problems? Or at least put a big dent in them? I mean lets review:

    -Works with 3Sphere? Check.
    -Works with Chalice@1 and 2? Check.
    -Actually gets rid of cards you don't want to draw without shuffle effects? Check.
    -Reusable and colorless? Check.

    One card, even as a 4x probably isn't enough to fix Stax's consistency issues, but this sure seems to go a long way towards helping them.

    EDIT2: Also, since I didn't say it earlier, great job, very nice piece, thanks for putting the time in on this.

  12. #12

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Quote Originally Posted by Nessaja View Post
    I feel like this whole "combo is gone" attitude will more likely lose you a tournament then prepare you well for it. Combo is always an issue, and always preys on meta's that don't expect it. Right now is exactly the best time to bring out a combo deck, maybe even balls to the wall belcher, or pseudo combo like enchantress (whose weakest matchup was combo). I don't feel like you did any speculation at all, instead you took the meta pre-combo, took out the combo and left the other decks intact.

    I might agree that people typically don't test new decks on a big tourney like Columbus, they usually net-deck the best next thing. But if you truly want to predict the most effective deck now Storm has been nerfed you'll need to think this through a little more, I'd say.

    Other sidenote is that I miss Goblins. Which might surpass everything you wrote down, considering being able to deal with Goblins is pretty much the first thing a legacy deck should be capable of doing. It's still one of the pillars in Legacy and less combo didn't hurt nor help Goblins.
    Goblins is a relic. It is outclassed by Zoo in the aggro department and outgunned by control decks built to beat Zoo. People will continue to play the deck, but it is pretty solidly Tier II at this point.

    Combo is, effectively, gone. ANT players who just lost their pet deck will do one of three things: replace Mystical with cantrips and get rolled by blue, switch to a different combo deck, or switch to a different non-combo deck. Regardless, the number of combo players will be decreased at Columbus. Some pros might play combo because pros are usually obsessed with finding and playing whatever the "best" deck is in a format, but the best pros (LSV or Chapin-caliber, here) could show up with a precon and make day two.

    Because of the decreased number of combo players, it becomes realistic to rely on the blue decks in the room to take out those who remain. Yes, it is possible that some combo players could luck out in the opening rounds, let Zoo kill off all the blue players, and then cruise control into the Top 8. This is more a function of pairings than of the inherent strength of their decks, and it is perfectly possible to imagine scenarios where this doesn't happen because they get paired against blue, get crushed, and never escape the middle tables. In fact, we know this happens quite often at the SCG 5ks, where combo is a perennial ne'er-do-well despite how awesome and format-wrecking it's supposed to be.

    Does this potentially create a lazy metagame for combo to prey on? Maybe. However, one notable feature of the American metagame is how well decks like Zoo do despite combo being a viable strategy. It's not immediately clear to me that combo will show up in enough frequency, with enough good pilots, to make not sideboarding hate any more risky than Zoo's current plan, which is "Have some token hate bears which don't do enough, but mostly just pray for favorable pairings."

    EDIT: If it seems like I left all the other decks intact, it's because they haven't lost much. What does change is their representation, relative power, and the strategies they need to focus most on beating. Banning MT doesn't nuke the format in the same way Flash did, but it does make some decks worse and other decks better, and the number of people playing those decks in the tournament will reflect this. Consequently, you need to modify your deck to beat the expected metagame, which is basically aggro versus anti-aggro. This metagame already exists in some form, but that's because the aggro and some of the anti-aggro decks are very good at suppressing blue, which suppresses combo. Blue decks were basically only a defensible choice because of fears over combo. Now that combo is a shadow of its former self, do you really want to spend all day losing to Zoo?

    EDIT 2: @morgan: If the card had Scry 3, maybe. But Scry 2 doesn't seem like it does enough. There's a big difference between seeing the top two and the top three - for example, if Sensei's Divining Top only showed you the top two cards, would it be anywhere nearly as good as it is now? You'd have a much harder time maintaining soft locks or digging for specific cards.

  13. #13
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    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    I really think the Planeswalker Landstill is a force to be reckoned with. Good analysis overall, but the Zoo match up can often be not as close as you say. Think of it this way, Zoo probably draws in its opening 7, 2-3 creatures and then over the next five turns, maybe another 3 creatures... that's all on average. That means about 6 threats to deal with in the first five turns, which isn't as difficult as you'd think when you consider their counter package and spot removal for the first few turns while they get the mana ready for a sweeper. I watch a lot of MODO (yeah, watch) and I see a lot of Engineered Explosives in these Landstill builds, which is strictly faster than Deed. Also, a lot of decks run more Planeswalkers than just Jace. Lastly, I have seen quite a few tricks, like the old Crucible-Wasteland lock or even Crucible-Mishra's Factory for a recurring blocker. The Steppe Lynx version that is more explosive can probably race a little better, but those decks have a harder time going toe to toe in the mirror and may drop out of favour. Not sure. Anyway, this rambling is just to say people should pay attention to this match up because at least from what I've seen on MODO, it can be very effective, especially after Jace hits ... fate sealing your opponent on its way to ultimate is pretty certain.
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  14. #14

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Zom,

    Scry 2 doesn't seem like much when compared to Top's 3 cards, or Sylvans 3 cards, but really, Scry 2 IS 3 cards. Let's say you Scry 2 during your opponents' EoT. Both cards are junk, so you send them both to the bottom. Now you draw an entirely new card. You've "seen" three cards, and unlike with Top or Library, you will see up to 3 new cards next turn again, whereas after the initial burst from the other two, you're stuck with the junk until you find a shuffle effect.

    I'll need testing, and I could be way off on this, but I think that recurring Scry 2 is actually going to be pretty significant. I know I plan on using the ever living heck out of it in Standard w/Green midrange decks (which admittedly, are probably horrible right now - thanks Jace).

  15. #15

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Quote Originally Posted by morgan_coke View Post
    Zom,

    Scry 2 doesn't seem like much when compared to Top's 3 cards, or Sylvans 3 cards, but really, Scry 2 IS 3 cards. Let's say you Scry 2 during your opponents' EoT. Both cards are junk, so you send them both to the bottom. Now you draw an entirely new card. You've "seen" three cards, and unlike with Top or Library, you will see up to 3 new cards next turn again, whereas after the initial burst from the other two, you're stuck with the junk until you find a shuffle effect.

    I'll need testing, and I could be way off on this, but I think that recurring Scry 2 is actually going to be pretty significant. I know I plan on using the ever living heck out of it in Standard w/Green midrange decks (which admittedly, are probably horrible right now - thanks Jace).
    Well, these are many of the same arguments that were made when Preordain was spoiled, and the consensus there was that it was still worse than Ponder, but only just. I'm not sure if this is necessarily the card Stax is looking for (it would be auto-in if it had a body attached), but it could be a start. You'd have to cut lock pieces for it, though, which can get tricky.

    One thing I think I should clarify (not related to morgan's post) - I expect that Columbus will be combo's "throw things at the wall and see what sticks" phase. If a good combo deck breaks out there, then people will pick it up, everyone else will have to start siding hate again, and the format will likely shift back to something similar to what it is now. But, for the next month at least, combo is in a state of disarray, so we don't really have to prepare for tons of it like we would if MT were still around for the GP.

    EDIT: @MMogg - if that's the case, Zoo pilots who are MTGO-savvy will likely be packing some number of red Blasts post-board. It would be nice if there were more cheap ways to kill planeswalkers in each of the colors, but for now it's better to just fight it out. Also, more midrange-ish Zoo decks running something like Sylvan Library or their own manlands can fight back pretty effectively by ensuring consistent attackers. I'd expect Zoo to shift in that direction anyway since Library can actually be okay in the mirror.

  16. #16

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    With the rising popularity and power of Zoo... why is there talk of Merfolk? Merfolk get crushed by Zoo (arguably more than Goblins against Zoo) due to Zoo:

    1. Not having Islands.

    2. Not caring about vial.

    3. Superior stand-alone creatures and massive removal.


    I'm well aware that Merfolk decks are good against other blue.deck, but then again why bother when Zoo is also good against blue.deck?

  17. #17

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Quote Originally Posted by DragoFireheart View Post
    With the rising popularity and power of Zoo... why is there talk of Merfolk? Merfolk get crushed by Zoo (arguably more than Goblins against Zoo) due to Zoo:

    1. Not having Islands.

    2. Not caring about vial.

    3. Superior stand-alone creatures and massive removal.


    I'm well aware that Merfolk decks are good against other blue.deck, but then again why bother when Zoo is also good against blue.deck?
    Because:

    1) Lots of people have Merfolk built already.

    2) Merfolk is still cheaper to build than Zoo.

    3) Players who want to beat blue decks but who also want to have insurance against random crap will be attracted to Merfolk.

    4) Merfolk has better game against blue control decks because it is able to fight the sweepers while presenting a similar clock to Zoo's.

  18. #18

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Quote Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies View Post
    Because:

    1) Lots of people have Merfolk built already.

    2) Merfolk is still cheaper to build than Zoo.
    -That's a pretty good point. Merfolk is much cheaper than Zoo.



    3) Players who want to beat blue decks but who also want to have insurance against random crap will be attracted to Merfolk.
    -Wait, are you saying Zoo is bad against random crap? Isn't Zoo just as good if not better against random crap?



    4) Merfolk has better game against blue control decks because it is able to fight the sweepers while presenting a similar clock to Zoo's.
    - But that still leaves Merfolk players gambling on the frequency of blue decks. If what your analysis is saying is accruate, Lands! and Zoo will be the meta since Lands crushes other control decks and Zoo crushes most everything else. That means there will likely be less blue decks, which means Merfolk decks will suck more.

  19. #19

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Quote Originally Posted by DragoFireheart View Post
    Wait, are you saying Zoo is bad against random crap? Isn't Zoo just as good if not better against random crap?
    Zoo is pretty good against random crap decks, but it's not so hot against "Whoops, I win" plays. Granted, there aren't many of those, but there are plenty of players out there who love them some Force of Wills.

    Quote Originally Posted by DragoFireheart View Post
    - But that still leaves Merfolk players gambling on the frequency of blue decks. If what your analysis is saying is accruate, Lands! and Zoo will be the meta since Lands crushes other control decks and Zoo crushes most everything else. That means there will likely be less blue decks, which means Merfolk decks will suck more.
    Yeah, that was exactly my point. You only want to test against Merfolk if you're a blue control deck; otherwise, you're probably fine letting Zoo and Lands knock them out of contention.

    If blue decks turn out to be good, Merfolk is a perfectly reasonable metagame deck.

  20. #20

    Re: [Psuedo-Article] Your Gauntlet for Columbus

    Quote Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies View Post
    Yeah, that was exactly my point. You only want to test against Merfolk if you're a blue control deck; otherwise, you're probably fine letting Zoo and Lands knock them out of contention.

    If blue decks turn out to be good, Merfolk is a perfectly reasonable metagame deck.
    Oh, my bad. I misunderstood you and thought you were suggesting that Merfolk was the meta to test against (besides you playing a blue deck obviously).

    I agree, merfolk is now a meta-game deck. Also, I love your Article and I believe it is extremely accurate.

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