BSB Presents-The Metagame Check!

The Metagame Check -Week One

with Samuel Wells

Hey all! This is Samuel Wells and I am going to be going over the recent shifts in the standard metagame. What caused it, how people have adapted, what it is all about. Then, I will show you some of the tools that you have in the current standard to combat the tier 1 decks du jour.

First things first. The recent scg opens have experienced an unprecedented amount of success from mono red strategies in several forms. Most notably from Tom Ross at the invitational. Mono red aggro decks have been fairly non-existent in standard since about Born of the Gods. This all changed in the last month and three straight opens were taken down by the red aggressive decks. Before that, a mono blue devotion deck took the tournament down. Which is almost as surprising because the once powerhouse mono blue has seen next to no love since Journey to Nyx. This surge marks a massive shift in the format back to hyper aggressive decks, but what made this the right time for these decks to blow up.

That requires looking at what decks were popular just prior to this surge. Three decks were ruling most of the top tables at this time. Jund monsters, Black devotion, and UW control. But Samuel, you might ask, haven’t these decks been popular for quite awhile now and were strong when mono red was losing popularity. You would be right, to a degree. The green based ramp/midrange deck to a lesser extent, but all three decks have existed since about the beginning of this standard. But there is a key difference to all of these decks that wasn’t true a month or so earlier. They are slowing down. They are all trying to play for a longer game.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=68882

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=68888

Jund monsters in it’s name shows the addition of a third color slowing it down drastically and forcing it to take damage from its lands. Black devotion is guilty of a similar slow down, adding either white but more commonly green to fight the control decks better. But that hedge slows it down and once again opens it up to the hyper aggressive decks.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=68668

No deck is more guilty than the UW controls decks though. Jim Davis championing a subtle but drastically different shell of the control deck. The recent shift in these control decks was to seemingly forgo all forms of spot removal, rely almost completely on 4 and 6 mana sweepers, and add a critical mass of tapped lands to best improve draws. This shift makes the deck painfully soft to any aggressive deck and mono red has seized the moment.

Tom Ross ran only 17 lands and a wall of one drops that almost assured a triple one drop start allowed him to bowl over any strategy that even resembled these new control shells. This Boss sligh deck, didn’t just win, it crushed the competition. All three of the popular decks just had next to no tools to combat this level of speed.

But that is not due to a lack of tools in the current card pool. In fact there is more than enough for these decks to stay viable against the red aggro decks. One of the easiest modifications is for the black devotion decks to go to a BW midrange shell.

The Expected:

3 Blood Baron of Vizkopa 4 Nightveil Specter 2 Gray Merchant of Asphodel 2 Pack Rats 2 Desecration Demon

2 Banishing Light 4 Devour Flesh 4 Hero’s Downfall 4 Thoughtseize 3 Ultimate Price 4 Underworld Connections 4 Temple of Deceit 2 Temples of Enlightenment 4 Godless Shrine 4 Mutavault 2 Plains 10 Swamps

Sideboard:

2 Nyx Fleece Ram

2 Drown in Sorrow

3 Pharika’s Cure

4 Duress

2 Sin Collector

2 Erebos, God of the dead

Yes. You are right that I am guilty of adding another color to my deck and am playing a whopping 6 temples because of it. But there is a good reason for this. White gives you some of the best tools to combat the slowest and combat the fastest decks in the format.

For the faster decks, no card stands out to me as designed to stop it as Nyx Fleece Ram. Having five toughness means it will block almost everything that the sligh deck can throw at you and what it can’t, the mass of two mana removal in the deck will happily sweep up. Besides that there is a surprising amount of incremental life gain that goes on in the deck due to the white splash. This gives just that much more time to stabilize. This pairing of efficient responses and cards to buy time gives this deck a solid game plan to stop the beats.

On the other end, this deck still doesn’t fold to the control decks, threatening siding into a full 10 discard spells and more draw power that let’s it stay even with Sphinx’s revelation. This combination means you get to have the best of both worlds for the deck.

The Unexpected:

If you don’t like the idea of doing something that people can be prepared for because the cards are seeing too much play, such as the cards in black devotion decks. You could go with another popular deck that was around at the time of the mono red aggro decks that was well positioned then and is well positioned now. GW aggro plans on beating mono red with just superior creatures and wearing the red player out of gas. GW benefits from some of the best creatures at matching up against rackdos cacklers and firedrinker satyrs. There is a number of directions to go in this color combination. Starting with do you want to go base white or base green. White gives you some of the best hate cards for aggro with nyx fleece ram as I said before. This goes with Precinct Captain and Fiend Slayer Paladin, who just by the nature of having first strike stone wall the red aggro decks. While this is valid, I chose to go base green because of the increased explosiveness and game against the control decks. You could easily go for a ramp strategy with Sylvan Caryatid, which can be very strong against a bunch of 2 power weenies. Or try to go one for one against sligh, committing to cards like experiment one. I do not think either of these plans have the consistency to run with the aggro strategies in the format.

3 Archangel of Thune 4 Boon Satyr 3 Elvish Mystic 4 Fleecemane Lion 4 Loxodon Smiter 2 Polukranos, World Eater 2 Scavenging Ooze 3 Voice of Resurgence

2 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes 4 Advent of the Wurm 2 Selesnya Charm 10 Forest 5 Plains 2 Mana Confluence 4 Temple Garden 4 Temple of Plenty

Sideboard:

1 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes

2 Nyx Fleece Ram

4 Courser of Kruphix

1 Deicide

3 Last Breath

4 Mistcutter Hydra

Once again this deck gets the best of both world in that it is amazingly well set up against the new UW control lists that lean so heavily on sweepers. This deck is never having to commit too much to the board because it has the ability to flash in threats like boon satyr or advent of the wurm or just haste out a bomb like mistcutter hydra. This deck does not need help in that matchup.

As for the aggro matchups, this deck is planning on throwing better guys in the way as it keeps playing lands until it can drop an unstoppable threat, of which, this deck has plenty. The side board holds a good number of high toughness dudes that love to get in the way all day and gain life while doing it. That alongside a remarkably underplayed card like last breath to clear out one of the first threats to hit the board give games 2 or 3 a solid plan. But the main doesn’t look too poorly set up either with cards like scavenging ooze which is good at almost any point in the game in creature mirrors. And Voice of Resurgence, which gets to block and gets to do it again. Which can be good enough by itself to wear an opponent into the ground. This all, plus a neater mana base than the three color specials or the two color infinite tap lands, makes aggro decks much less imposing of a battle to fight.

The Last Resort:

If all else fails, there is always the valid strategy of joining them. Mono Blue devotion is amazing against red decks in general and is happy to run with any deck trying to curve out. And you get to run main deck hate that requires the red decks to jump through so many hoops. Frostburn Weird, Master of Waves, and Tidebinder Mage all threaten to either stop the deck cold in its tracks or get X for that ices the beats for any number of turns. The success of mono blue devotion is what pushed these strategies out in the past and it could easily happen again. Look to see a lot more Thassas hitting the top tables if mono red keeps its popularity for much longer.

We are fully in spoiler season and M15 looks like one of the best core sets to come out in recent memory. My personal pick for the card to look out for is Chord of Calling. Getting the reprint may have been to drop the price for modern birthing pod, but I think there are some decks poised to abuse Chord of Calling in standard. We will see this card be relevant for its entire run in this standard. I will show you the decks ready to jump up to tier one with the addition of chord of calling as well as some other new cards from M15 next week.

Until then, I’m Samuel Wells. And this is The Metagame Check.

Thanks for reading.

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