Three Decks and a Challenge

For those of us who enjoy brewing decks and building carefully crafted stacks of cards, designed to cleave through the metagame, this weekend is one of the most exciting of the year. A new set, Magic 2013, becomes legal in all formats, and the metagame crashes wide open again.

In the last three months since Avacyn Restored, we’ve seen the metagame evolve. GR Aggro adopted Wolvir Avenger, and then Bonfire of the Damned. Wolf Run decks increasingly leaned towards Naya – seeking to utilize the power of Elesh Norn. Gerry Thompson ‘broke the format’ with Angel Delver, incorporating Restoration Angel and making your own turn seem much less safe. Infect with Wild Defiance and Venser Control lists cropped up again, and somehow, Esper Control began to win again. The lack of bannings in Standard pushed forward a surge of innovation as chinks began to appear in Delver’s armor. Blood Artists came to aid the Zombie apocalypse, and Naya Pseudo-pod, championed by Brian Kibler, left dead insects strewn about for weeks, while others continued to innovate on Delver itself, trying to recapture Faeries and Caw-Blade’s dominance.

Things have been interesting, to say the least.

Now, Magic 2013 has added 249 cards to our available pool, and we have three months before Return to Ravnica lights the heavens (and our minds) aflame. We’ll lose Titans, Swords, Phyrexian Mana, and a slew of other powerful cards. That’s where we’re headed.

Here’s where we are now:

Metagame Analysis Provided by MTGPulse

Delver is still clearly the deck to beat in the format, but Kibler’s Naya Humans is coming in strong in the last few weeks. Zombies remains powerful, as does Wolf Run and RG. Looking at M13, we can see that there’s quite a few cards that are looking to find a home in decks. I wrote about a few of them HERE, last week.

Today, we’re going to take a look at three decks that my friends and I have been playing with. We’ll see what makes them powerful, what choices we have, and where they’re weak.

MONO-GREEN-BEATDOWN

As soon as I saw Rancor in the spoiler, I knew that this was going to be the deck gaining the most. Dungrove Aggro had long been a deck hovering around Tier 2. For a week or so, it broke into the metagame, boasting a good matchup against Delver. Unfortunately, Dungrove could be 10/10+, but without Trample, it could never really break through for those last points of damage, and splashing for Kessig Wolf Run damaged Dungrove Elder’s P/T too much.

Now, we have arguably the best aura ever printed to work with, and Dungrove Elder…well, he’s not happy.

(editor's note: The above list should include 2 Yeva, Nature's Herald, 2 Mwonvuli Beast Tracker, and 1 Thragtusk. Mtgpulse has not updated for M13 as of the writing of this piece.)

Marshall sent me this list, and I made only a few tweaks to it. This deck incorporates an aggressive early game plan that resists removal more effectively than any other deck on the market. It forces early spells out to try to slow us, only to have the big guns come online and crush them beneath.

Thragtusk can act as a Green Sun’s Zenith target for 5 life and extra bodies, while Yeva allows us to fight through opposing countermagic (Cast one spell on End step, and another during your main phase, overloading their available mana). Strangleroot Geist and Dungrove act as a duo that, with Rancor, can punch through anything. T1 mana dork, T2 Geist and Rancor, Swing for 4 seems like a powerful Turn 2 option.

Revenge of the Hunted is an extremely powerful card, often amounting to Plague Wind for G, but I’m not sure that we want two of them in the deck. Likewise, I’m not sure that Primeval Titan is where we want to be in a deck that isn’t running any utility lands. Perhaps splashing a single Kessig Wolf Run and Mountain as targets could be an option – or else removing the Titan in favor of a tutor target – like Silklash Spider. (Look it up, it isn’t terrible!)

 The sideboard is obviously fairly dependent on the metagame that develops, so I’ll leave that up to you. I think the addition of Rancor gives this deck the kind of legs that it needs to trample over the competition.

NAYA FLICKER, or “How I Learned To Love Summoning Sickness.”

(editor's note: Please assume there are 2 Thragtusk and 2 Thundermaw Hellkite on the above list. MTGPulse hasn't updated for M13 yet.)

This Marshall deck is in a similar vein, taking a riff off of Kibler’s Naya list. We’ve removed the Pod plan in favor of a more removal-resistant Cloudshift suite, and we’ve added in a number of new creatures to take advantage of it. Zealous Conscripts combos with Cloudshift to be a full-on endless theft (that works on Gideon, if you use his ultimate after stealing him). Thragtusk might as well be called the Value Cow, because I can’t think of any profitable way to deal with him. Casting him is guaranteed to get you ahead, and blinking him only makes it worse.

Let’s look for a second at a situation where your opponent casts a removal spell on Thragtusk, and you flash in a Restoration Angel to save it. On this exchange, you get the following:

You lose a card; your opponent loses a card. Then, for 4 mana, you gain a 3/4 flying, a 3/3, and 5 life.

You thought Blade Splicer was good because it was 4 power for 3 mana? Get real. Casting Restoration Angel on anything in this deck feels like cheating. The biggest weakness is the mana base, and four cavern of souls will go a long way to fixing that. If colors are becoming an issue, I could be convinced to cut a single Gavony Township for more colored sources.

Your goal is to grind them out and end the day with superior board presence, which only gets better as you activate Gavony Township and let your huntmasters flip back and forth.

I asked Marshall why he chose to go this route, maximizing flicker rather than getting more value with a Pod plan, such as Kiblers. He responded, simply, that he wanted to see how powerful the mechanic is. Many of his decks operate on this principle – he’ll test a mechanic or an interaction, and after playing for a while, he’ll see the things that worked, the things that didn’t, and be able to use those components modularly in future decks. It takes time and a devoted test-team, but it gives you an idea of the power between specific interactions.

Finally, we’ve got something a little spicier for today. I’ll preface this with the statement that I have no idea how viable it would be. This list was (lovingly) borrowed and edited slightly from a SCG Top 8 competitor – Jake Moldowsky.

NON-MIRACLE GRO

For those of you who don’t know, Quirion Dryad was Tarmagoyf before we had Tarmagoyf. Given the high level of cantrips in Standard, we have a situation where a single Dryad could become huge and start crushing in very early for a ton of damage. Such a deck would ideally have a large number of instants and sorceries, which tends to point towards some other cards that also benefit from that style of deck construction. Luckily, Standard has no lack of powerful effects that care about spells.

(editor's note: The maindeck should also include 2 Augur of Bolas, and the sideboard should include 3 Talrand, Sky Summoner, and 1 Augur of Bolas. MTGPulse has not updated for M13 at the time of this article.)

While this deck could effectively be called UG Delver, it really plays subtly differently. It churns through its deck, firing off spells to sculpt the perfect hand and get enough protection for Dryad to go off. With the possibility of every cantrip drawing you into an Apostle’s Blessing, Delver is forced to cast preemptively or deal with a 10/10+ Dryad. Snapcaster lets you re-use your spells, Augur gets you more, Dryad grows, and Delver is Delver. Runechanter’s Pike ties it all together, and makes every card into a game-ending threat.

This deck was played at a very competitive shop’s testing session, and made the finals (where they drew). This isn’t the style of deck that I’d personally choose for my playstyle, but it’s certainly something that I’ll be accounting for in my mental testing. It looks like it has some significant power behind it, and if you’re not ready for it, you might just get destroyed.

Plus, you get to run Talrand and play 18 lands in the same deck. How often do you get to play with a legacy-style manabase in Standard?

THE CHALLENGE

Finally, today, I’m going to issue each of you a challenge. That means you, /r/MagicTCG and /r/Magicdeckbuilding! I want you to come up with a new archetype based on a card (or cards) in M13. Don’t build a deck around it, but try to find some of the core cards that would interact with each other. Think of it like a thought exercise. We’re trying to reduce the echo chamber effect here and come up with some innovation that leads to a varied and awesome metagame.

This Friday, I’ll be traveling to Hartford, Connecticut for Connecticon. There’s going to be a ton of Magic related events there, and I fully plan on entering at least the Star City Elite Qualifier there on Saturday. For anyone else who’s going to be attending, drop me a line and I’ll swing by and say hey.

Happy Brewing,

Andrew