[Article] Beating Mental Misstep Aggro Control In Legacy

[ivanpei]

I wrote an article for my local forum to promote legacy in the country. I thought sourcers might have some comments on it. Feel free to raise any thoughts. Thanks.


Mental Misstep has impacted legacy in a huge way as shown by the latest 2 Star City Games Opens. I'm not going to go on and on about how good it is as everybody is fully aware of how busted Mental Misstep is. What I'm going to write about is how the top decks fully abuse Mental Misstep and how to beat decks that run Mental Misstep. The most successful decks at the SCG Open running Mental Misstep (Hereby abbreviated as MM) were Merfolk and Team America. Both are highly disruptive decks that aim to knock the opponent of balance with a combination of cheap disruption and mana denial.

These decks also have a very fast clock to capitalize on the window of opportunity that the disruption buys. What MM has added to these already strong decks is flexibility and consistency. Previously, Merfolk ran Spell Pierce to supplement Force of Will and Daze. Spell Pierce is often not very useful against 1 drops as it misses opposing Vials/Tops on the draw while Merfolk usually prefers to drop Aether Vial/Cursecatcher while on the play. Spell Pierce was run to counter bombs later in the game that may threaten to swing the game in the opponent's favor such as Pernicious Deed or Natural Order.

However Spell Pierce is extremely narrow because basically countering mid/late game bombs is pretty much it's sole purpose. Spell Pierce is terrible against Zoo, Goblins and Affinity which are all bad match ups. Aggro decks simply have too much redundancy to be hurt badly by Spell Pierce. The most Spell Pierce does against Zoo is counter a removal spell which costs 1 mana, which is tempo parity. Zoo has plenty of removal and can just cast another removal spell. What if you kept mana open for Spell Pierce and the Zoo player proceeds to lay a creature instead of removal? You kept mana open for nothing and were punished by Spell Pierce's lack of flexibility.

MM replaces Spell Pierce in the MD nicely because it is equally effective against bomby decks as well as fast aggro decks. Missteping an opposing Vial, Necatl, Signal Pest or Lackey on the draw for free is beyond busted as everybody is already aware of. What people are not aware of is it's effectiveness against "bomby mid range/control" and combo. MM shuts down setup spells for combo/bomby decks like Brainstorm, Ponder and Sensei's Divining Top for free. Messing with the opponent's card quality is very important as you deny him his deck's main strength, that is consistency and long game dominance.

You also can catch your opponent's removal while tapping out fully every turn. This allows you to go balls to the wall with your mana without worrying about leaving mana open to protect your creatures. Some people may argue that Spell Pierce is better against bomby decks as you can counter Deed/Natural Order etc but I beg to differ. Countering their setup spells/ being able to tap out every turn is equally important. By screwing with Junk's Top/Noble/GSZ's or Bant's Noble/GSZ/Brainstorm/Ponder's, you can potentially cause mana problems especially in conjunction with Wastelands. By tapping out every turn, you can also potentially clock him faster to capitalize from the tempo gain you netted by screwing with your opponent's setup. MM can also protect your own Force of Wills from Thoughtseize so that you can answer the critical Deed.

All these arguments apply to Team America as well since MM has pretty much replaced Stifle in that list. Stifle is a different monster when compared to Spell Pierce though. Instead of being a mid-late game counter, Stifle is a Turn 1/Turn 2 hit or miss screw card which is potentially useful later in the game. What I disliked about Stifle is that it is occasionally devastating and wins me the game and also occasionally useless when the opponent is able play around it. If you are faced with the choice of going T2 Hymm or keeping mana open for Stifle, which do you choose? MM slots in and does all the things I mentioned above while addressing some very serious weaknesses of Team America, making it a much stronger deck.

Team America, like Merfolk is traditionally soft to quick aggro, but has pretty good game against decks with lots of fetches like Zoo and Goblins. However, Team America was weak to Merfolk and decks like Affinity which do not run fetches and have quicker clocks. Stifle which is near useless in those match ups is replaced by MM which has universal applications and allows Team America to tap out more aggressively in the early game without having to keep mana up for Stifle. You lose the occasional huge blow out wins through Stifle but you gain much needed consistency and flexibility with MM.

Now this leads to the big question, how do you beat these 2 decks? I have 2 suggestions, Big Zoo and Tezzeret Affinity. What Mental Misstep has given Team America and Merfolk is even stronger early game dominance. Therefore, smaller Zoo lists and super fast Affinity lists which try to get in there quickly for the win becomes a weaker strategy. If you try to all in early, a single Misstep is such a huge beating as it can answer one of your threats for free and makes it easier for the MM player to stabilize. To beat Misstep decks you need to have a solid early game which does not let up pressure until the late game, where you finally exhaust your opponent's resources and run them over. In my opinion,Big Zoo and Tez Affinity are the best decks for just that.

Big Zoo, along with Tez Affinity are incredibly redundant. They both run a huge number of incredibly mana efficient bombs and can apply a ton of pressure from the start. Neither decks depend too heavily on resolving a single card so redundancy and consistency is the key here. I'd run Blake McCracken's Affinity list since it's tried and proven but Zoo lists are not set in stone and are all over the place. I'd run this:

Maindeck:
4 Wild Necatl
4 Noble Heirarch
3 Grim Lavamancer
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Qasali Pridemage

3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
2 Chain Lightning
2 Sylvan Library
2 Elspeth

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Arid Mesa
4 Windswept Heath
3 Taiga
2 Plateau
1 Savanna
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Karakas

Sideboard:
3 Choke
3 Red Elemental Blast
4 Mental Misstep (best unconditional combo hate)
1 Gaddock Teeq
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Tormod's Crypt

Having a card Missteped in this list is pretty much a non-issue as you have many many more where that came from. This list has a very efficient curve and runs a plethora of bombs. Team America and Merfolk both use their disruption to achieve board dominance in order to win the game. Big Zoo and Tez Affinity simply beat them at the board dominance game with more efficient and bigger threats in larger numbers. Basically, these 2 decks have cheaper, bigger and badder dudes. Zoo combines all the best threats in Legacy into 1 deck, with the addition of Green Sun's Zenith, the deck gained even more consistency and GSZ fills the role of a 1 drop accelerator (which Big Zoo sorely needs) and a late game bomb by fetching out a KOTR. It even fills up the 2 drop slot nicely by tutoring out a 3/3 Necatl for 2 mana, pretty good if you ask me.

Affinity has so many new toys, such as Signal Pest, Mox Opal, Etched Champion and especially Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. Affinity has such a high bomb density that it can overpower virtually any deck outside of some broken lock/combo. The bombs I mentioned are: Cranial Plating, Tezzeret, Etched Champion, Master of Etherium and Signal Pest. Affinity is no longer a 1 trick pony that depends solely on Arcbound Ravager, now Ravager does not even make the cut. Getting any 1 of these bombs answered is not a big deal as Affinity can just continue running out bombs until it overpowers you.

What are Big Zoo and Affinity weak against? Heavy control and Combo. Pernicious Deed wrecks both decks, so expect some form of Junk/Deedstill deck to make a comeback should the meta be flooded with Big Zoo/Affinity. Combo also easily preys on these 2 decks as they don't run any maindeck disruption at all. However, the Misstep decks should really keep Combo in check. So I say, let loose the Kitties and the Machines! Misstep is not the end of Legacy variety, go forth and smash face with Big dudes!

[DragoFireheart]

So what you are basically saying is to beat these tempo-style MMS decks, we need to make a mid-range deck that can crush them but loses to combo?

[troopatroop]

So what you are basically saying is to beat these tempo-style MMS decks, we need to make a mid-range deck that can crush them but loses to combo?

Midrange decks are dogs to combo, yes. You can't have everything, and the blue metagame we're seeing is very unfriendly to combo decks. Big Zoo seems like a strong choice, but I don't even like my chances against Landstill anymore. They Misstep your 1 drop, play Standstill, and you're fighting uphill against Counters and Draw the rest of the way. Traditionally Big Zoo enjoys the control matchup, but I'm not so sure anymore.

[GGoober]

So what you are basically saying is to beat these tempo-style MMS decks, we need to make a mid-range deck that can crush them but loses to combo?

Except this is a good time for mid-range decks e.g. Aggro Loam (in particular), the Rock to exist because there hasn't been a lot of combo decks with the huge uprise of blue-based decks.

[Mr. Safety]

I think that decks with mid-range card advantage coupled with early game tempo elements will do well. A good example is Tempo Faeries. It has the same weapons as the other decks, but can ride Bitterblossom as a card advantage engine.

There are quite a few non-blue tempo oriented decks out there (Stompy variants, Deadguy Ale, Eva Green) that will be doing just fine against MM-slinging blue decks. If a Thoughtsieze baits out a Mental Misstep, that's fine! Targeted discard has always been strong against tempo/control decks.

I think combo will adapt...you'll see more of them sporting cards like Silence and Orim's Chant for protection. They are counterable with MM...but playing them alongside Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Thoughtsieze will give them better protection. I have to remind myself that MM is just another counterspell...same old challenge, most likely the same old solutions.

You may even see some decks packing sideboard choices maindeck because of MM...cards like Vexing Shusher will get shoe-horned into decks with Green Sun's Zenith. I also predict that a lot more decks are going to play the Chalice of the Void razor-edge game (side out 1-drop spells for Chalice...risky, but possible) and some decks that curve out well enough (Bant Aggro, Big Zoo) might even start playing Trinisphere in the sideboard. GSZ usually ends up costing 3 mana anyways, and post-Trini you can cast your 1-drops for 3 (not ideal...but it gets past MM and CounterTop to a degree)

Overall, not a bad analysis. I think Mental Misstep will be a great weapon in Legacy, along with opening up higher costed options to the field. Remember Garruk Wildspeaker? Remember Wrath of God? You may see them again in greater numbers.

[troopatroop]

I think that decks with mid-range card advantage coupled with early game tempo elements will do well. A good example is Tempo Faeries. It has the same weapons as the other decks, but can ride Bitterblossom as a card advantage engine.

Tempo Faeries is a good deck, and it plays good cards. Bitterblossom is, imo, one of the worst cards it plays. It's good against Controlesque decks, and with Jitte, but it sucks royal balls against Combo and quick Aggro. Stifle into Bitterblossom was Faeries' angle, but Mental Misstep into Standstill is just more reliable, versatile, and strong.

There are quite a few non-blue tempo oriented decks out there (Stompy variants, Deadguy Ale, Eva Green) that will be doing just fine against MM-slinging blue decks. If a Thoughtsieze baits out a Mental Misstep, that's fine! Targeted discard has always been strong against tempo/control decks.

Chalice Stompy I will agree with. Deadguy and Eva Green are outclassed by Team America and Merfolk imo.

I think combo will adapt...you'll see more of them sporting cards like Silence and Orim's Chant for protection. They are counterable with MM...but playing them alongside Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Thoughtsieze will give them better protection. I have to remind myself that MM is just another counterspell...same old challenge, most likely the same old solutions.

T.E.S already played Chant and Thoughtseize, and there's no room for more protection. You only get a 7 card hand, and often you keep with only 1 protection spell. If they stop that spell for 0cc, not only can they have more shit to disrupt you, but you're totally in the dark. This is an entirely new challenge, one that the Misstep player should be happy to be playing. Landstill has a much better combo matchup now, for instance.

[ns2973]

Sort of anyway. Landstill still has no clock, and realistically mm doesn't crush tes like many think. Tes just adapts and goes for goblins early instead of ad nauseum, sculpt a couple protection spell hand etc. In the end, when they do go off on like turn 5-6 in the match, your counters pretty much say "pay blue mana, give your opponent" 2 goblins.

Still, mm does help them.

[jjjoness']

For Combo there also is good old Abeyance. It does cost one more and doesn't timewalk but it cantrips and with the format slowing down a bit, it might just be worth a try.

Plus as already has been pointed out MM isn't really that good against combo. Sure it can be a pain in the ass, but so is every other disruptionspell. It just forces the comboplayer to develop new strategies of fighting hate.

[dahcmai]

The biggest problem I have been running into playing combo is the addition of Wastelands and Hymns to some of these decks. It stops you from just sitting back and sculpting a good hand to punch through the counter wall. It's almost as bad as hitting a counterbalance having Hymns tossed at you while trying to set up a hand good enough to win with.

I think I am just going to move to one of those old fashioned decks that destroy control the old way with Genesis and such. Vengevine is sure looking better also. That or play MM yourself.

[troopatroop]

The biggest problem I have been running into playing combo is the addition of Wastelands and Hymns to some of these decks. It stops you from just sitting back and sculpting a good hand to punch through the counter wall. It's almost as bad as hitting a counterbalance having Hymns tossed at you while trying to set up a hand good enough to win with.

I think I am just going to move to one of those old fashioned decks that destroy control the old way with Genesis and such. Vengevine is sure looking better also. That or play MM yourself.

Exactly. Hymn from the Blue "Jace" decks is just brutal.

[ivanpei]

Exactly. Hymn from the Blue "Jace" decks is just brutal.

Actually the combo deck I'm having the most success with is Painter Stone, simply because of a playset of Top and Welder. It's the only combo deck that can play 4 top and has the gas to survive a barrage of discard and counters. Having tutors that aren't card disadvantage is great too.

Anyway I'll probably write one of these analysis after each scg open. I have time at work since I am currently under utilized lol. I also just read in the coverage that the hatfields were running Zoo and they are pretty sensitive to the meta. It's good to know we share the same opinion on deck choices.

I don't think junk or bant are good decks to fight misstep aggro at all. Even though they are midrange slugfest kings, they don't apply pressure quickly enough. Those decks don't drop their bombs that fast and this gives misstep decks the opportunity to rape them with Jace/Hymms or to outtempo them with a swarm of folk.

You need to apply pressure early and that pressure has to continue well into the midgame.

[Mr. Safety]

Tempo Faeries is a good deck, and it plays good cards. Bitterblossom is, imo, one of the worst cards it plays. It's good against Controlesque decks, and with Jitte, but it sucks royal balls against Combo and quick Aggro. Stifle into Bitterblossom was Faeries' angle, but Mental Misstep into Standstill is just more reliable, versatile, and strong.

Agreed...Bitterblossom is the nuts vs. control but is just too damn slow vs. combo, and is sub par vs. fast aggro (it's actually not bad vs. mid-range aggro, but it isn't great either...) I usually sideboard my BB's out vs. aggro for extra removal (currently testing Deathmark) and some wiper options (currently testing Perish.) VS. combo my plan is actually to sideboard out BB and Mistbind Clique for Standstills and Spell Pierces.

Chalice Stompy I will agree with. Deadguy and Eva Green are outclassed by Team America and Merfolk imo.

Agreed...I think Team America is one of the strongest decks in legacy ATM. Fish is well placed, too...but the availability of Goyf and Hymn is just INSANE when built into a blue shell with Brainstorm, Force, and MM right now.

T.E.S already played Chant and Thoughtseize, and there's no room for more protection. You only get a 7 card hand, and often you keep with only 1 protection spell. If they stop that spell for 0cc, not only can they have more shit to disrupt you, but you're totally in the dark. This is an entirely new challenge, one that the Misstep player should be happy to be playing. Landstill has a much better combo matchup now, for instance.

I think I didn't explain myself well...I'm guessing you'll see higher #'s in the main/side of these protections so they can reliably draw into multiple protections. I may be wrong on this front (I'm not a TES player) but jeesh, TES is just a freakin' powerful deck. I don't see it going away or even falling out of favor really. I think we agree that it may be more challenging for the TES player, but my experience is that TES players are some of the best pilots, period, out of neccessity because it's such a tough deck to run. They'll work around counterspells like they always have.

Thanks for the discussion! Fun stuff...

[Hanni]

Fast Zoo is a better way to answer the current metagame than Big Zoo is. It has a much better matchup against all of the Mental Misstep aggro/control. It runs so many 1 drops that it could really care less about Mental Misstep because of its redundancy, and it has the ability to finish the opponent before they can stabilize. It has a much better control matchup, as well.

Most of these Mental Misstep aggro/control decks are not midgame decks, they are early tempo decks. Big Zoo is better in a more midrangey environment.

Also, I second the fact that Aggro Loam is prime for this metagame, only if Mental Misstep aggro/control decks continue to play a tempo role and are not combining it with Counterbalance. Aggro Loam is a dog to Counterbalance.

Also, I wouldn't be concerned about the combo matchup. With so much focus on blue in the current metagame, your chances of seeing it are slim. A) Few people will be playing it, and B) All of the blue will keep it in the lower tables.

I think I didn't explain myself well...I'm guessing you'll see higher #'s in the main/side of these protections so they can reliably draw into multiple protections. I may be wrong on this front (I'm not a TES player) but jeesh, TES is just a freakin' powerful deck. I don't see it going away or even falling out of favor really. I think we agree that it may be more challenging for the TES player, but my experience is that TES players are some of the best pilots, period, out of neccessity because it's such a tough deck to run. They'll work around counterspells like they always have.

TES can sometimes win blue matchups, for sure. With tight play, it has the ability to win difficult matchups. However, you'd much rather be playing against decks with bad combo matchups all day. This is a very hostile environment for combo right now, and playing TES in a field of blue is not the best deck choice right now.

[morgan_coke]

I can't help but think that madness is really well positioned right now.

[Nidd]

Actually the combo deck I'm having the most success with is Painter Stone, simply because of a playset of Top and Welder. It's the only combo deck that can play 4 top and has the gas to survive a barrage of discard and counters. Having tutors that aren't card disadvantage is great too.

FT wants to have a word with you. From what I know, that deck actually runs a playset SDT.

[Occam]

FT wants to have a word with you. From what I know, that deck actually runs a playset SDT.

Correct. There are other combo/pseudo-combo decks that run top, Sneak/Show, certain DD-Emrakul decks, MUD etc, but DDFT runs a set by default. There have been some people who have been thinking of cutting a pair in DDFT, but this is almost always wrong, especially as the format tends towards being slower.

I don't think Painter has been improved by MMS being printed either, as it essentially means that its best weapon against blue, Welder, is answered by at least 12 cards in your typical blue deck that plays MMS on the stack or for the same mana cost. Painter can play MMS and FoW, but it comfortably isn't the case that Painter consistently has Welder + a spell that protects Welder. The reason why Painter is actually better right now is because Small Zoo is going to get better right now, and Spellskite in Painter's board is ridiculous against a lot of the hate that plagues that deck.

The problem that MMS poses combo in general is that it can trade for the two most important combo enablers, being brainstorm and dark ritual, as well as stopping all commonly played protection from combo. TES is hurt by MMS because its ethos revolves around doing something proactive in its first two turns (cantripping and discard/chant efect), which makes the value MMS extracts in that matchup a lot higher as compared to the ANT matchup, which contains a lot more redundancy. That’s the reason why small zoo is theorized to ignore MMS, because it simply overloads MMS for the most part. TES can make up for it by playing more EtWs, but that's another story.

DDFT isn't necessarily hurt badly by MMS either. It answers SDT, which is comfortably the best card in the deck, and poses the german lists issues because those decks are closer to TES in their function and form and lack the redundancy that 4c DDFT has when it adopts an approach closer to ANT. That MMS is printed is also paradoxically a good thing for DDFT, because it replaces and invalidates Spell Snares and Stifles in a lot of lists. One of the advantages of playing TES/ANT over DDFT is simply that DDFT is worse against Stifle a lot of the time, not just because DDFT plays a lot of fetches, but because it is the least equipped to deal with Stifle when going off. It CAN, but not as easily as the other storm decks post AdN. Spell Snare is less of an issue, but its prevalance forces DDFT towards Meditate (as does Stifle), which is in a lot of situations worse than Ideas Unbound when you play against aggro-control, as well as the latter opening piles that Meditate doesn't allow access to. MMS replacing those cards allows DDFT to not just go back to IU, but allows DDFT to overload on cantrips so that the combo turn ignores MMS, while being redundant on combo pieces (cantrips with IU are combo pieces which allow for extremely mana-efficient piles especially with Probe). MMS replacing Stifle in a lot of tempo lists also makes the Emrakul plan a better possibility as well, which makes the Team America matchup better post board. Paradoxical in a sense, but MMS being printed actually isn't bad for DDFT.