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Kuanling's School of Mise #1
Kuan-Kuan Tian
11/17/2009  this article! - or -
[Article discussion now available to all readers!] Wow, it's been almost two years since I wrote my last article and man does it feel good to be back. For those of you who don't know me, I am a Magic player from Australia who used to write a weekly column for this site way back in the day (You can check out some of older articles by clicking here). Primarily, I am known for designing rogue combo decks and some of my creations include Aussie Storm, Seismic Swans, Bubble Hulk, Time Sieve, and Thopter Combo. I am not a “pro” player but I have attended a few Pro Tours. Also, since I had a pretty decent finish at Pro Tour: Austin, my total rating is currently amongst the top 20 in the world. So what can you expect from my articles? Honestly, a bit of everything. Magic is a great game because it has so many elements and is so diverse. I know that some of you browse articles on the internet for the sole purpose of gathering Type II technology but magic is not just about choosing a deck. Magic is also about learning to make the right play, mastering draft and sealed, and enjoying formats as diverse as Legacy and EDH. Of course, this is not to say that I won't be writing about standard. In fact, I will often be discussing the metagame and providing you guys with plenty of standard decklists that contain some sexy rogue technology. Just don't be surprised if you find me writing draft walkthroughs, theory articles and guides to other formats as well. Anyway, in the spirit of diversity, my first article will (appropriately) be a random mish-mash of thoughts on not just Standard but Extended as well. 1. Standard Standard right now is all about attacking and blocking. As Nissa's Chosens, Putrid Leeches and Plated Geopedes battle it out in the red zone, players are filling their decks with more and more cards that will take them “over the top” in the ensuing creature slugfest. For example, some players rely on Bituminous Blast, a dreaded removal spell attached to a 2-for-1 and a tempo swing, while other players rely on Baneslayer Angel, because that card wins at combat and makes racing virtually impossible. Furthermore, Eldrazi Monument, which literally takes all your creatures “over the top” by giving them evasion and making them unkillable, is also quickly gaining popularity. So what do these three cards all have in common? Firstly, they all cost 5 and five mana is pretty expensive. Secondly, these cards are only good if you let them be good. Sure, if you're playing a mono-black Vampires deck with no card advantage, then you're obviously going to lose the Attrition battle to Bituminous Blast. Similarly, if you're a Mono Red deck that tries to win by getting damage through then of course you are going to have trouble with Baneslayer Angel. By the same logic, if you're a generic good-stuff deck that is filled with quality creatures and removal spells like Jund, then Eldrazi Monument is going to stomp all over you. But why do we have to let these cards be good? Why do we have to play into our opponent's strengths? Since your opponent's deck will definitely be prepared for the war of Attrition, wouldn't it just be better to sidestep creature combat all together? Eldrazi Monument just simply isn't very good against a deck that can “prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn”.
Time Sieve is one of those decks that did not lose that much from the rotation of Lorwyn block; and most of the cards it did lose are in fact replaceable. 1) Mystic Gate The only land that the deck no longer has access to is Mystic Gate but this card is easily replaceable with Glacial Fortress. Furthermore, the addition of Marsh Flats from Zendikar is an added bonus since it helps both to fix your mana and to thin the deck, thereby reducing the chance of fizzling. 2) Pollen Lullaby The clash effect on Pollen Lullaby is effectively scry 1, which, of course, is the nuts in a combo deck. However, Angelsong is not significantly worse, since the ability to cycle any Angelsongs you topdeck whilst going off increases the consistency of your combo. 3) Cryptic Command Cryptic Command is an extremely flexible card that replaces itself, so it's never bad. However, people mainly ran the card because it feels good to know that they aren't cold against cards like Meddling Mage and Haunting Echoes, even though no-one actually plays those cards in their maindeck. In reality, Cryptic Command is not a necessary part of the deck at all. Olivier Ruel's build of the deck only had two copies while Yann Massicard only ran one. In my list, the card has been replaced by Knight of the White Orchid, which has tremendous synergy with the eight Borderposts. In the deck, Knight is very comparable to Sakura-Tribe Elder in the sense that it both accelerates you and prevents damage. Sakura-Tribe Elder, of course, is a great card for combo decks and has seen play a bunch of times in Extended in decks like Heartbeat, Tooth and Nail and Scapeshift. Furthermore, having a creature in the deck also means that you don't have to worry about random stuff like Telemin Performance that people might play out of their sideboard. 4) Elsewhere Flask Losing Elsewhere Flask really hurts the deck since the card is really synergistic with the combo. Not only does the cantrip add to your artifact count for Time Sieve without costing you a card, but it also generates card advantage when it is returned to the battlefield from the graveyard via Open the Vaults. There is, unfortunately, no card in the current standard format which can be used to replace Elsewhere Flask. Artifacts such as Courier's Capsule and Armillary Sphere are terrible choices since testing has shown that you almost always want to keep them in play for Time Sieve rather than sacrificing them for card advantage. As such, a better option would be to simply play a generic cheap-to-cast artifact that does nothing other than add to your artifact count. The card that I eventually settled on was Pithing Needle, since the card can be occasionally useful. Most decks will run a planeswalker or two that can be named while some decks may run annoying cards like Qasali Pridemage. At the very least, you can Needle Verdant Catacombs or Arid Mesa in an attempt to manascrew your opponent. In the end, while the loss of Elsewhere Flask really hurts, it does not seem to be enough to kill the deck. Indeed, the outlook for the deck is really quite bright once you put everything into perspective. Of course, it is quite annoying that this deck can no longer run Elsewhere Flask but guess what? People who play this current format can no longer run Faeries, Merfolk or Elfball, which are three decks that just simply defecate on Time Sieve. Instead, the metagame is filled with decks that Time Sieve can beat. Most of the tier two decks, for example, have no chance against Time Sieve. Control decks based around either Cruel Ultimatum or Planeswalkers are unable to interact with your deck in any significant way, since resolving a Cruel Ultimatum does nothing, and any deck with less than ten Counterspells can easily be overloaded. Remember that the excellent matchup that Time Sieve had against 5-color control was one of the main reasons why people played the deck in the first place. 5-color cascade is an even better matchup for Time Sieve since that deck doesn't run any permission at all. Sure, any spell they play from turn 3-4 onwards will cause you to discard two cards but seriously, discard is a terrible strategy to employ against a deck that can return everything they discarded from the graveyard onto the battlefield with a single Open the Vaults. Just play out as many artifacts as you can and let them attack your hand. Eventually, you'll be able to topdeck an Open the Vaults with the help of your Howling Mines and simply win the game from there. They cannot stop you at all. BWG rock style decks are also a great matchup for Time Sieve. Maelstrom Pulse is the only relevant card in their entire deck, and most builds only run two or three copies. The rest of their deck is filled with cards which are not very good at beating down, such as Scute Mob, Borderland Ranger and Baneslayer Angel. The odds of that deck assembling lethal damage before you go off are extremely slim, but even if they do somehow manage to piece an aggressive draw together (usually with the help of a few Putrid Leeches or a fast Garruk ultimate), Angelsong is just straight up Time Walk against them. The new Crypt of Agadeem deck is really cool and really fun to play but unfortunately, that deck is not very good at all. Not only is it simply a turn slower than Time Sieve but Angelsong is also just completely unfair. Furthermore, the Pithing Needles happen to be randomly good since it shuts off Kederekt Leviathan, which is their best card against you. Of the tier 1 decks, the Eldrazi Green matchup is an absolute joke. Seriously, no matter how you try to dress it up, every Mono Green Aggro deck in the history of standard magic has been an “Overrun” deck, whether the “Overrun” card is Overrun itself, Garruk Wildspeaker, or even Berserk. Granted, Eldrazi Monument is probably one of the better “Overruns” in the history of Magic since it also happens to make all your creatures immune to removal, but in the end, the card is still an “Overrun”, and “Overrun” is epic fail against Fog. Indeed, Angelsong is effectively Time Walk against that deck, which, by the way, isn't even very fast to begin with. Cards like Elvish Visionary, Nissa's Chosen, Master of the Wild Hunt and Ant Queen aren't particularly adept at dealing twenty damage very quickly and can easily be raced even if you do not draw an Angelsong. In fact, the matchup is so lop-sided that the worst card in your deck, Pithing Needle, is actually quite good against them! Garruk Wildspeaker and Nissa Revane, or even Oran-Rief, the Vastwood and Ant Queen, are all perfectly valid targets. Jund, on the other hand, is a much rougher matchup, because the Jund player can actually interact with you by attacking your hand, destroying your artifacts and exiling your graveyard while beating you down with aggressive creatures and efficient burn. In the end, the matchup is close to 50-50 but let me warn you right now, if you are not experienced with playing the matchup, your results will be a lot worse. This is because the matchup is very hard to play for the Time Sieve player. Not only do you have to set yourself up to combo off in a few turns by playing your lands and accelerating yourself in a way that allows you to efficiently cast your awkwardly costed spells, but you have to do this while taking into account plays like Maelstrom Pulse on your Borderpost and Goblin Ruinblaster on your Glacial Fortress. Furthermore, you have to play in a way so that you will not be forced to discard your key cards to Blightning. All this is not easy to do but if you're willing to put in the time and effort to learn the matchup then you will not only be rewarded with a better matchup percentage against Jund but your gameplay generally will become tighter as well. If there are any decks in the format that are capable of keeping Time Sieve in check, it would be Boros Bushwacker and Mono-Red. These decks simply play so many aggressive creatures (Goblin Guide, Steppe Lynx, Ball Lightning etc.) that it is hard to race, especially since our deck doesn't interact with their's outside of blocking with Knight of the White Orchid and fogging with Angelsong. However, even these matchups are very winnable for Time Sieve since both of these decks rely more heavily on combat damage than direct damage when compared with red decks of the past (just look at cards like Goblin Bushwacker, and compare Hell's Thunder with Flame Javelin), which increases the effectiveness of Angelsong. Although it is true that both Boros and Mono-Red have a massive advantage when they are on the play, this advantage shifts to Time Sieve when those decks are on the draw. Granted, Time Sieve has a higher chance of losing on the play than Boros or Mono-Red does, but even still, the matchup is so coin-flip dependant that it would not be accurate to describe the matchup as especially bad. 2. Extended Extended is the format for next PTQ season. It is also a format at Worlds. As such, mastering the format will be relevant for both pros and PTQers alike. Unfortunately, I do not know what the best deck in extended is but I do know that it is NOT Rubin Zoo. Rubin Zoo was the best deck in Austin because it was an unexpected build that was well-positioned for the metagame. However, at worlds, Rubin Zoo will probably be the default version of zoo, which means that it will not be able to favorably prey on all the bad versions that run Kird Apes and Steppe Lynxes. Instead, the deck will just face mirrors all day, which is a terrible position to be in since the cards that are supposed to put you “over the top” (Baneslayer Angel and Punishing Fire) aren't going to do diddly-squat since your opponent has them as well. Perhaps the deck I ran at Pro Tour: Austin would be a better choice for worlds. This deck is basically a blue-based permission control deck analogous to Next Level Blue and Faeries but instead uses Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek as a combo win condition. This should be seen as a strict improvement for three reasons. 1) Vedalken Shackles, which is traditionally the card used to break the blue mirror, is no longer good against you 2) Your win condition is immune to Punishing Fire/Grove of the Burnwillows 3) Because the deck can simply draw the combo naturally, the matchup against Affinity, traditionally the worst matchup for blue control, is drastically improved. My score in the extended portion of Austin was 5-2-3, which is pretty respectable considering that this is possibly the worst deck I have ever designed. Let's take some time out to laugh at all the glaring errors. 1) 2x Wrath of God Running 1x Wrath of God and 1x Day of Judgment for the purposes of Gifts Ungiven simply did not occur to me (curiously, it didn't occur to either of the Aussies I was staying with either, even though both of them are former National Champions!). This was a pretty bad error and it directly contributed to me losing a super-easy matchup against zoo since I was not able to Gifts for Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, Engineered Explosives + X to stabilize the board. 2) 1x Oblivion Stone I blame Aaron Nicastri, who suggested this card as a way of dealing with a Tezzeret player who was able to set up a Chalice for 2 and a Pithing Needle on Engineered Explosives. Cute idea, but no-one ran Tezzeret at the Pro Tour and the card was just completely useless. A fourth Path to Exile would have been much more useful. 3) 0x Ghost Quarter There is simply no reason to not run 1x Ghost Quarter in the main since the deck has access to Tolaria West, Gifts Ungiven and Life from the Loam. Running a few extra copies in the SB probably doesn't hurt either. 4) Transformative Sideboard The whole point of the transformative sideboard is to turn into a more traditional Tarmogoyf control deck against a Zoo player who sideboarded in 4x Ancient Grudge. Again, this was a cute idea but the Zoo decks at the tournament were simply not running 4x Ancient Grudge. Indeed, the printing of Qasali Pridemage and Path of Exile, along with introduction of M10 rules, meant that zoo could have a favorable matchup against affinity with only 1 or 2 Ancient Grudges in the board. 5) 0x Tormod's Crypt I simply did not think that dredge would be as popular as it was. Boy was I wrong. However, even though the list I ran was far from ideal, the whole Thopter Combo concept is a very solid one. Indeed, according to Paul Jordan's metagame analysis, Thopter Combo was actually the second best performing deck at the Pro Tour after Rubin Zoo. Honestly, I am not at all surprised by this data since the deck has no bad matchups. Indeed, the deck is great against aggressive strategies because it combines removal in the form of Wrath of God, Engineered Explosives and Path to Exile with a difficult to remove combo kill that not only blanks out your opponent's creature attacks but also takes you out of burn range. The deck is great against other control decks as well since you have inevitability due to Gifts Ungiven + Life from the Loam + Academy Ruins while your permission suite gives you game against other combo decks such as Hypergenesis. Furthermore, the deck is more or less unaffected by hate since the only card that hurts you is Ancient Grudge, which no-one is playing more than 2 copies of. Qasali Pridemage is a minor annoyance but unlike Grudge, it can easily be countered or dealt with using Wrath/Path/Explosives or simply ignored if you have a second copy of Thopter Foundry in hand. Most of the anti-graveyard cards used to combat dredge, such as Tormod's Crypt and Relic of Progenitus, don't affect you in any way at all since you can simply respond to their Crypt activation by sacrificing a Seat of the Synod to return your Sword of the Meek to the battlefield, which will prevent it from being exiled. Extirpate, of course, is a much larger problem but luckily, it isn't played in as many decks due to its color requirement. In any case, the card can still be answered by Meddling Mage/Chalice of the Void off the board. Here is an updated version of the deck that fixes some of the errors I noted above.
As you can see, the transformative sideboard has now been replaced by cards that actually do stuff. Tormod's Crypt is the best option against dredge because it is both transmutable and recurable. Meddling Mage and Chalice of the Void are both obviously useful against Hypergenesis. Meddling Mage is the slightly better card because it is unaffected by both Ingot Chewer and Vexing Shusher. However, running a singleton copy of Chalice is a good idea because it effectively increases the amount of hate in the deck since you can transmute for it with your one Tolaria West. Threads and Kataki are there for the Zoo and Affinity matchups respectively. Ghost Quarter is obviously great against Dark Depths but you can also side it in against Emeria decks and Hypergenesis. The Consign to Dreams and Echoing Truths are there specifically to deal with Blood Moon out of the Rubin Zoo sideboard. Consign is a better card because simply casting it on a Tarmogoyf or a Knight of the Reliquary is a fine play in and of itself. However, Echoing Truth is transmutable so it is nice to have one copy somewhere. These bounce spells, of course, are also pretty useful against 20/20 Marit Lage Tokens. A note on Mana Tithe vs. Spell Snare: I'm pretty that Spell Snare was actually the better choice for the Pro Tour since Dark Depths was so prevalent. In fact, running Mana Tithe over Spell Snare actually cost me a game against Robert Jurkovic in the 2nd last round playing for Top8 since I couldn't use it to counter his Vampire Hexmage. However, I feel that Tithe will be a better choice for Worlds since I don't think that Dark Depths will be as popular a deck as it was at Austin for the simple reason that everyone now knows how to combat the deck (with cards like Ghost Quarter and with two mana instant speed removal spells like Otherworldly Journey and Echoing Truth). Indeed, Tithe seems to be better than Spell Snare against most of the other decks of the format. Rubin Zoo is pretty mana intensive and curve-centric so it's not uncommon to counter cards like Knight of the Reliquary, Blood Moon or even Baneslayer Angel in that matchup. The card is also great against cards like Molten Rain and Hypergenesis and is slightly better than Snare against dredge because it can be used to counter Hedron Crab, which is a card that the dredge player would ideally want to cast before making his land drop for the turn. Tithe is also better against the Yasooka Gifts Control deck if that deck should become popular. I actually played and beat Shouta in Round 13 of Austin, using Mana Tithe to counter both a Gifts Ungiven and a post-board Cranial Extraction. It was pretty sick. Anyway, I hope you've all enjoyed this article. Until Next Week Kuanling, Signing Out |
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