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The Forgotten Shard
Greg McCleery
11/16/2009 10:30:00 AM  this article! - or -
[Article discussion now available to all readers!] When Zendikar first broke, I had an inkling to watch both Jund and Bant as possibilities for the new metagame. While Jund's cascade potential and the crippling loss of Gaddock Teeg put a serious damper on the Bant option, there was still a considerable amount of infrastructure underlying the possible archetype. The land-base was there, Rhox War Monk and Bant Charm, Baneslayer Angel, and Zendikar appeared to put a few new options into the realm of possibility as well. There were just a couple of problems. While my aggro version could use evasion, Lifelink, spot removal, resilient regenerating dorks, and superior creature quality to batter aggro, midrange, and Jund into submission, it was completely hopeless against control. And as for a control version, blue's countermagic is in the worst shape of any Type 2 format I can recall since 1995. Nevertheless, as a parallel to my efforts to find mirror-beating Jund builds, and later to find Eldrazi-beating Jund builds, I was on a Crusade find a superior alternative to playing Jund altogether. After playing on the Jund side of the board and rinsing the taste of vomit from my mouth a few hundred times, I came to a few conclusions about the deck's MO. Against most decks, its primary path to victory is or ought to be burning its opponents out. When it opts for a slower build with less burn-out potential and fewer Nighthawks it becomes much less of a threat. The other conclusion I came to was that as a control medium, Jund suffers greatly from a lack of card draw. It was forced to run a 25-26 land manabase, but without card draw or mana fixing it had to contend with both Droughts of land in the early game and gluts of land in the late-game. I decided to aim for a deck that could exploit each of those characteristics while retaining an arsenal that could wipe Eldrazi Elves off the face of the earth. I took a few object lessons from my previous attempt to build Bant control, and cut every last miserable excuse for a Counterspell from the main deck. While it leaves the deck naked in the wind against Cruel Ultimatum and Mind Sludge first game, neither of those cards is in the arsenal of the tier one, and none of the countermeasures that exist in the current format are worth putting in the main. Instead, the blue splash served primarily to keep the deck churning through its library to draw cards and remain fueled up. I included a healthy supply of white removal, and quickly learned to ratchet up the number of slots that could be turned against enemy planeswalkers, artifacts, and enchantments. Finally, to counter Boros, Jund, and mono-red, I included Captured Sunlight in addition to the deck's Rhox War Monks and Baneslayer Angels.
While the list isn't flashy or eyecatching, it's the first control offering in my testing that can consistently dispatch the format's triumvirate of aggressive menaces, while retaining enough versatile answers and brute-force card draw to consistently dispatch other aggro-focused control decks. Against Jund, the deck has enough draw to Recover from Blightning, removal options that nullify their creature base's natural advantages, and sufficient lifegain recovery to keep itself well out of burn range. Against Eldrazi, you have a wide selection of answers against their planeswalkers and monument. Oblivion Ring, Bant Charm, 4 Pithing Needle (yes, 4), cascading into any of those options, and the ability to plunk down evasion to Assassinate the ‘walkers from above keeps their resiliency from removal under control, and Day of Judgment is a death-blow. Although Acidic Slime can sometimes knock out your Pithing Needles and Oblivion Rings once they climb to 5 mana, your answers still outnumber their Slimes considerably, and Slime is often too slow to make much of a contribution if you nail Elvish Archdruid with a vengeance as soon as it appears. One valid criticism of the deck is that it has its work cut out for it against 5 color cascade, and its first game against decks packing Cruel Control isn't enviable either. On the other hand, Cascade still has to figure out how to survive against Boros and Eldrazi without any main deck wrath effects and without affecting the board until turn three at the soonest. Cruel Control will having increasing problems in that department as well, and its chances of resolving its signature spell on you post-board drop precipitously. With neither deck putting up much substantial numbers of players, or substantial success against the top aggressive decks, it's a good time to be the control deck that concentrates on ruthlessly destroying aggro all day, but can still deal with other players who have the same idea. As an added bonus, the following is the latest build of my aggressive version of Bant.
If slaying aggro is the objective, then this version of Bant also delivers in that department. The deck is deceptively fast, and passes the “turn four or five goldfish” test without much difficulty. With a 2nd turn Jenara into a third turn Rafiq or fifth turn Finest Hour, even Eldrazi Elves will be going cross-eyed before it has a chance to react. But beyond its ability to step a turn ahead of most of the format's aggro decks with acceleration, the deck has an exceptional ability to control the combat step. With exalted pumps stacking onto already efficient threats, and Pacifism and Journey to Nowhere knocking out early blockers such as Putrid Leech and Sprouting Thrinax, the deck tends to attack with impunity, and leave opponents playing catch-up with their removal spells and chump-blocking by necessity with their surviving creatures. In particular, River Boa has been a surprise powerhouse within the deck. Powered up by exalted, the lowly snake frequently becomes a relentless attacker against a format that slants heavily towards red-based removal, and can virtually lock down Jund's attacks on the ground. The must-kill nature of most of the deck's plays also strains many aggressive player's removal bases to the Breaking Point. Jund players who direct Lightning Bolts at vulnerable Jenaras find Rafiq sending an attacker into the red zone for 8 a turn or two later, and a Maelstrom Pulse to put an end to Rhox War Monk's lifegain can result in a Baneslayer Angel or Finest Hour coming down unopposed. The main difficulties with the deck are that it folds game one to Day of Judgment, and against Eldrazi, it needs to find a flyer before the mid-game rolls around, or it will eventually be overwhelmed. Against 5 color cascade, it can practically kill them before they can play anything, but most other forms of control will dismantle it in short order if they can use instant speed removal to stop Rafiq from putting a dent in their skull early on. Although this version is still too vulnerable against control to be a reliable choice, the frame comes much closer to the mark than other experiments at making Bant competitive, such as the one featured by Conley Woods a few weeks ago. But if you've been itching to wreak some havoc on Jund, don't expect a serious control presence, and would like to see Rafiq do some damage outside of EDH, this deck is capable of standing toe to toe with the format's best aggro decks. Whichever flavor of Bant you prefer, both versions of the deck have the tools to do serious damage to the format's top contenders. The bar to entry in the current format is the ability to consistently lock out each of the format's aggressive offerings. It may be that one of the format's least-used shards, if properly built, offers the tools to accomplish that. -Greg McCleery |
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