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Filling out the Gauntlet: Aggro-Control and Midrange
Josh Silvestri
11/3/2009  this article! - or -
[Article discussion now available to all readers!] Bant For aggro-control you can look up to, you need not go further than the Bant deck. I'm not talking about the traditional Exalted creature base deck though. No, the new breeds of Bant need to be midrange-based and have many more self-contained threats to help offset the power of Jund's removal suite. Of course half the fun is debating about what creature suite you want to run for these types of decks. There are a couple of valid options depending on what creatures you prefer and how many you want to actually run. There are two main approaches as I see it. 1: Large creatures backed by life-gain and counters Creatures like Sphinx of Jwar Isle and Baneslayer Angel would be the most common creatures to fit into this category. You look to drag the game into the same midgame Jund usually enjoys, but beat them anyway because your creature are so much better. They literally can't touch Sphinx of Jwar Isle and if Jund doesn't have the Terminate or Maelstrom Pulse when Baneslayer hits, it'll be a short game. In addition, since this version is typically more defensive, it has a reasonable chance of going to seven mana and backing Baneslayer up with Negate or Hindering Light. The most common early game creatures are still going to be Noble Hierarch and Rhox War Monk, as they present the best use to cost ratio at their respective mana slots. Sure, War Monk ‘dies to everything', but it beats the crud out of Red decks and if Jund doesn't kill it immediately it can become a major impediment. Noble Hierarch is miles better than Lotus Cobra since you can actually miss a land drop and not be mana screwed out of the game. Plus more often than not, you'll get the same value out of Hierarch that you would with Cobra. Any attacking you happen to do that gets buffed by Exalted is just gravy. After those picks, you want to look at the remaining creatures that don't easily die and can really deal damage to the opponent. Knight of the Reliquary is a bit of a no-brainer for self contained threat, but just like Baneslayer, it dies to a ton of the common removal in the format. Accepting this and running it anyway is what you have to do or you end up with decks filled with protection bears and Wall of Denial. Besides, Knight becomes absurd with Behemoth Sledge and against non-Jund that combination is pretty much always game. Of course Great Sable Stag is the one protection guy big enough to actually fight with other people in combat and present a decent clock. Sure three power may not look like much, but combined with Sledge or Elspeth, Knight Errant, it can become a clock your opponent needs to deal with ASAP. Valeron and Vedalken Outlander are also worth consideration due to the difficult Jund and Red have killing them. Sure they might not do much outside of playing some early defense and they can still die to the right removal spell, but they sit on a good spot in the curve and are Behemoth Sledge equip-able. This allows for a lot more offense to occur than you'd get out of a creature like Deft Duelist, but the Duelist also has some cool qualities. Duelist can take down Ball Lightning and Elite Vanguard for free while not being blown to tiny bits. I like the Duelist as a sideboard option against Soldiers and Red decks, but it just never did enough in the maindeck for my taste. There are a couple of other possibilities like Jenara, Asura of War or Rafiq of the Many, but they tend to Falter in the face of simple things like Lightning Bolt or being horrific on defense. I actually don't mind Jenara for other green decks or against control, but against Red and Jund (Which seems to be the bulk of the metagame) she dies very quicky and requires too much investment to be maindeck playable. This leads me to the second approach that could be taken for a Bant creature base. 2: Making use of Ranger of Eos Now you don't want to go and cut all the big creatures like Sphinx and Baneslayer just yet, but if you want a valid option for late-game card advantage and big guys, look no further. Think of it like this, you only need to spend 3W and you get two Scute Mob which are creatures Jund and control decks absolutely hate to see. Now throw in the fact that you have a deck packing Elspeth, Behemoth Sledge and at least Negate or Hindering Light along with Bant Charm. That seems strong right? I don't particularly like Scute Mob in most decks and I'd still not recommend running more than two of the buggers, but in this deck they can serve as an important late-game option. After you hit that fifth land drop, the game risks getting out of hand in a hurry against non-Red decks, Jund has to use up a huge chunk of its colored mana every turn to play removal which may not even resolve. Once Mob jumps up a notch and becomes a 5/5, suddenly it outclasses everything in Jund that isn't Broodmate Dragon plus its brother. After it hits a 9/9, the Jund player better have a very good plan or they'll be dead in a turn or two. Of course Ranger of Eos only fetching Scute Mob and Noble Hierarch is a little limited in use, so what if we take it a step further and add Wild Nacatl to the mix? Fetching a Mountain isn't difficult with access to on-color fetches like Arid Mesa and Scalding Tarn, many of which you'd run anyway to help pump Knight of the Reliquary and accelerate with Cobra (if you ran it). The biggest drawback of this type of package though is the amount of space it takes up. If you're willing to make the Leap, you have to dedicate at least ten one-drop slots and three Ranger of Eos in the Bant deck. That only leaves room for Rhox War Monk, Knight or the Reliquary or Baneslayer Angel; unless you want to start cutting into the number of spells and non-creature permanents you run. At that point, it might be better just to stick with a Naya deck for this type of abuse. Here are two lists illustrating potential versions of each deck.
The first list here has definitely seen more testing than the Ranger of Eos version of the Bant deck. I even play Bant off and on MODO, albeit minus the Baneslayer Angel's due to the ridiculous cost. Right now the deck has been performing admirably against Jund, but sadly can't seem to break a 60ish% win-rate for full matches. Unfortunately for Bant, there's still no good answer to the Cascade lottery the Jund deck can present. If Jund is firing all cylinders and you don't have a very strong start or Sphinx facing them down at a low life total, you'll still just get run over. There have been other Bant lists floating around, but rather than just have 700 lists in the article, I'll just point out that the traditional way to build Bant is dead and it needs to be more controlling to survive. Midrange Bant can battle decks like Jund and Red at every stage of the game without over-commitment to the board. Against control decks, you still have a variety of counters and must-deal with threats to beat opponents down with. Post-board you can also pack a variety of Planeswalkers (Combination of Garruk Wildspeaker and Elspeth) along with Luminarch Ascension if control gets their act together. 4c Midrange / Cascade Control Speaking of having a more controlling deck, there's a new ‘bigger' Jund deck that feels a lot like Jund with even more control cards stuffed in there. The addition of White gives the deck a new beast to dominate the board with and another obnoxious Planeswalker in Ajani Vengeant. If you want, you can also replace Broodmate Dragon with Enlisted Wurm and likely get more value out of the switch.
Look at the weapons this midrange deck brings against Jund, which has a similar plan. It has all of the cards good in the Jund mirror along with Uril, the Miststalker and Ajani Vengeant for added support. Post-board you even have a superior plan to most Jund decks by taking the LD plan a step further with Acidic Slime to help Ruinblaster out. Meanwhile against quick attack Red or Boros decks, you have Jund Charm's against swarm attacks and Malakir Bloodwitch can trump any White deck in a long game. Of course this isn't the only way to build this type of Naya Jund hybrid. You could choose to go for a stronger Cascade element like I talked about in my last article and trim down your three-drop choices. Or you can go the whole hog and go the Cascade Control route which Mike Flores has.
As you can see post-board, the deck can take a much more aggressive stance than my build and chooses a heavy discard element over the land destruction avenue I chose. This is made easier because he runs the blue for Esper Charm, which can also refill his hand in a pinch. Point is though; in many matches these decks are playing the role of bigger Jund that have a better chance of winning the Cascade lottery. Sure they'll be more awkward against the fastest of aggro decks, but those are also the easiest decks to beat with a sideboard. Take note of these types of decks as they may become the next evolution of control instead of the more passive 5cc decks of Lorwyn Standard. Finally I just want to point out the BGW Midrange list that came in 2nd at the Last Chance Qualifier at Pro Tour: Austin. I'll be honest, I have no idea how the deck does against the field since I've only played a dozen or so matches with it. What I can tell you is that the deck has some incredibly strong cards and a very potent game plan. Practically all of the creature it plays will require more of a response than a simple Lightning Bolt. The use of Behemoth Sledge and two different Planeswalkers also increases the variety of threats the deck has access too against Cascade based decks and control in general. I'm not sold on Thornling, but the rest of the deck played at a respectable level.
That's all for this week, in the future, I hope to have something a bit more original than the usual X-color control, Jund and Red decks to show off. With any luck the quickly advancing metagame on Magic Online will help point the way of where decks will be headed in the future. Since there are no major Standard events for pro-level players, this means it falls to the ambitious amateurs to find an edge and run away with a 5k. Josh Silvestri |
  
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