Conley Woods
7/30/2012 11:20:00 AM
“A Primeval Titan was the next elbow to come from Iyanaga, leaving Woods drawing slim to stay in the game. After a little thought, Woods scooped up his cards.”

“Woods had worked his way up to Grave Titan, and things began looking very bleak for Friedman. A land and Hero of Bladehold presented a strong board presence, but Grave Titan still trumped everything Friedman could muster.”


“He cracked the Shrine of Loyal Legions to make some token blockers, but when a second Inferno Titan came along there was nothing he could do. Woods extended his hand, gracious in defeat. That second Inferno Titan had got him.”

“Conley bashed for 6 with his Titan and coolly landed a second Frost Titan, locking down the other. Gerry drew Bloodghast, considered his board of tapped creatures, and decided it was no longer possible for him to win this game. “

You could say I know my way around a Titan these days. For the past two years, the Titan cycle has been the most dominant cycle in Standard and has played big roles elsewhere as well. During their time in Standard, there was never a moment where at least one Titan was not in the top five cards in Standard, and most of those times there were several Titans found there. The Titans were powerful, and when you play competitive Magic, you play with powerful cards.

The Titans were not just self-contained though, their presence impacted the entire format, shaping what could and couldn't be, playing gatekeepers of the format. First of all, every single creature was compared to them. As I have been told before; in Magic, there are two kinds of creatures. You have your Baneslayer Angels, and your Mulldrifters. The former are big beefy creatures, intended to impress on stats. The later are spell-like creatures, that are played for their immediate impact on the game. The Titan cycle incorporated both of these types into a single cycle, outclassing so many things in their path.

Meanwhile, their casting cost came back to alter Standard so long as they remained as well. Because Titans were so good, it was very difficult to justify not running them. Once you have made the decision to run the 6-drops, and others agree, the format begins to slow down to a 6-drop format. Maybe you are trying to accelerate out that 6-drop, but the 6-drop quickly became the best weapon against other people's 6-drops, which turned the format into one of hay makers.

And all of this is not even taking into account the impact that specific strategies involving Titans had on the format. Valakut was a miserable deck to play against, as you were forced to either beat a turn 4 win when playing the aggressive deck, or do everything possible to keep a Titan from resolving if you were control. Oh, and did I mention that Summoner's Trap was legal? Yea...

When we evaluate a card these days, we immediately judge it based on relatively similar cards. Well, ever since the Titan cycle has been printed, every card that costs more than 4 mana is getting critiqued with questions of whether it stands up to a Titan. Does it have an immediate impact on the game? And does it win the game by itself when left unchecked? Titans have spoiled us, and immensely so. Getting into the mind set of a Standard without Titans forces us to evaluate a lot more than just surface level changes. Thinking about the way the format currently exists, there needs to fundamental shifts in thinking.

To begin on this little journey, let us draw the example out to an extreme. When Necropotence was the best deck in the World, would Titans have thrived? Chances are they would have seen fringe play as reanimation targets or things of that nature, but in general, the format was too unkind to big clunky 6-drops. If you were playing expensive spells like that, you were probably cheating them out in one way or another. What about when Faeries was the best deck? Chances are Titans would have filled the same role Broodmate Dragon or Cloudthresher did. Big finishers, but each easily replaceable with some other finisher.

So, we are once again on the verge of not having Titans in Standard, so what will that do to the format? Well, besides the obvious, there are tons of implications from losing the big guys.

Six Drops for Life?

The first thing that I think needs reevaluation is simply the idea of whether 6-drops are even good in Standard now. Sure, Titans made it through because of raw power level, but are there other 6-drops with that type of influence on the metagame and will they exist after rotation? Consecrated Sphinx and Wurmcoil Engine are the closest relatives to the Titans, but they will also be getting the boot. Once those 7 creatures leave, the number of tier 1 six drops goes down to nearly nothing. However, that can all be an illusion given to us through opportunity cost.

In this case, if you are not running one of the above six-drops, what six-drop are you running? If you are running Inferno Titan, chances are you didn't have room for Charmbreaker Devils too. In this example, Charmbreaker Devils has an opportunity cost that includes Inferno Titan. By choosing to play the Devils, you are acknowledging that you will not be playing Inferno Titan. If you are OK with that cost, so be it. (Note that you can obviously run both, but in a traditional metagame, that would be a disaster.)

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Primeval Titan

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Removal Reset

As a result of us losing the Titans, all of the removal that we have ideas of on power level need to be reevaluated as well. Dismember has been notably absent for some time now as a key player in most removal suites, and there is no chance that it is just coincidence that you cannot kill a Titan with it. Essentially, all removal that was seeing play specifically because it dealt with Titans, can not be reentered into the system with a fresh start. Removal gets to be played due to factors like versatility, mana cost, and application, and no longer has to pass the “Titan test” to make it in the door.

This also means that fringe removal, things you may not even see as removal, are going to get worse. Phantasmal Image is a good example here. It is rotating, but Clones in general have been much more of a force in Standard while the Titans roamed. Spending 2 to 4 mana on a Titan is just absurd and people have been putting that to good use for some time now. Outside of Legend-Rule shenanigans, I would expect Clone effects to drop off dramatically, partially because the two best Clones ever are about to rotate out as well.

The New 6?

The thing about all of this is, Magic is still Magic. Just because Titans won't be rocking out at the top of the charts does not mean no one will. Figuring out where that sweet spot lies is tough though. The Praetor cycle will also be rotating, so incentives to hit 7 mana also drop a ton. Between that and some cards from M13, along with Avacyn Restored, I think five mana will be the new six mana for a while.

This does not mean you have to be running 5-drops to succeed, but it means you must build with them in mind and avoid direct conflicts with them. Things like Thragtusk, Wolfir Silverheart, Zealous Conscripts, Angelic Overseer, and Bloodgift Demon could be the new class of fatties. This spells out for a slightly faster format, but also means we don't have to expect every fatty our opponent plays to come with an inherent draw-2 attached to it like we do now. Our definition for what is acceptable as a finisher changes and we learn to rely less on the most powerful of cards to carry us to victory. Maybe it is just me, but winning games of Magic without playing a 6/6 Mulldrifter first sounds a lot more interesting...

Losing Hand Holds

So one of the coolest things about the Titans hitting the road, is the diversity it brings to the top of everyone's curve. Before, if you played a White deck with expensive creatures, it probably had Sun Titan, and a Green deck with expensive creatures probably had Primeval Titan etc. Sure, each Titan was technically different, but we all knew better. Without an obvious handhold in place now though, it will be interesting to see the variation in finishers from list to list. People will be much more likely to experiment now that there isn't a loud cycle of dominating finishers demanding to be played.

New Gauntlet

Which transitions nicely into talking about new archetypes and strategies that might form without the Titans around. Because the Titans were so powerful and were around so long, deck archetypes would be built up around them and then rehashed even later on when key pieces were missing to what we thought was the core of the deck. A good example of this is Valakut.

Valakut was a dominant deck for over a year and that was in no small part thanks to Primeval Titan. Well, once Valakut rotated, everyone assumed it was also dead. Turns out, the Titan once again tricked us, as Valakut was secretly all about Primeval Titan in the first place, and not some volcano land. You see, once Valakut rotated, people were itching to continue to abuse Primeval Titan, and that was achieved with Kessig Wolf-Run. While the deck is technically different than Valakut, it does have many of the same qualities, and really showcases that Primeval Titan was running the show all along.

Once Primeval Titan is removed from the equation though, people do not have “how to” guides on what to build around anymore. You cannot just sit by and wait for the new sick land or permanent that costs 3 or less and build around the same cards you always have. Now you need to start over again, which is certainly refreshing!

Wrap Up

When the Titans take off, Standard will change more as a result than almost any single cycle should be allowed to claim. It will new and different, but I think most of us are ready for that sort of thing. When cards like Bloodgift Demon and Flayer of the Hatebound become played cards, I think we all smirk a little bit and that will be a cool feeling to get back to for a while.

As of right now, I do not see an obvious heir to the throne of the Titans. There are some individual stand outs of course, but nothing in cyclical form. This is important because as we mentioned earlier, that sort of cycle really brings a stale atmosphere to Standard as every deck is winning with the same card (or at least close to it). It feels good when every color is defined by its own strategy and its own finishers and not a generic cycle of awesome guys, like Dragons or Titans.

Without knowing what is in Return to Ravnica, we cannot truly predict what the format will look like, but we can use these contextual clues and recent trends to make a prediction at least. That said, there could just as easily be some cycle of new bad boys in town that just renders all of this moot. I would hope we get a little break before that happens, but these days, ya never know! Thanks for reading!

--Conley Woods--