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Worlds Updates and Technology
Josh Silvestri
11/20/2009  this article! - or -
[Article discussion now available to all readers!] As you may have noticed, the World Championships are going on at the moment and by the time this goes up they should just be finishing up the draft portion of the day. Since all of the Standard play was a Thursday affair, this means we can go over the large number of deck tech's and metagame breakdown that are available. Let's get to it! Since there were 143 people (35%) of the field playing the Jund deck, it seems reasonable to start there. Interestingly enough, there were a number of Jund decks that differed from the pack and adopted entirely different outlooks on what were core cards in the deck. For such an obvious deck that almost every internet writer chose to eschew talking about it, a lot of people certainly felt Jund could be done better. LSV and company decided to cut Putrid Leech from the deck, citing general sucktitude against Boros, the mirror and Eldrazi Green. Many of the decks Putrid Leech excelled against were pushed out of the metagame by Jund itself and as a result a number of American and Japanese players cut the bugger. What they replaced it with generally differed though. Many of the American players opted to go with Master of the Wild Hunt along with extra Broodmate Dragon and Terminate to help with all the midrange floating around. The Japanese on the other hand largely went with the dual combination of Lotus Cobra and Siege-Gang Commander to help power our their late drops, as well as having a creature that didn't have to enter combat to take over the board. The most extreme version I heard about being played cut Lightning Bolt in addition to Putrid Leech, instead choosing to run Rampant Growth to help accelerate out five and six-drops against the competition. For its removal suite, it simply used full sets of Terminate, Bituminous Blast and Maelstrom Pulse along with a little help from Chandra Nalaar. If accurate I think it'd be safe to assume this was a response to the vast numbers of decks trying to one-up Jund on the creature front as well as the Diminishing Returns Lightning Bolt gives as of late. For those of you completely sick of the Jund Shard though, the card you ought to be shopping for is....
Going into to Worlds there were a number of W/G and Bant decks on Magic Online turning to this card for it's army producing capabilities as it could provide a very useful ‘instant defense'. At first blush, the card seems underpowered in this type of metagame. Creating 1/1 Flying tokens isn't as big a deal as it once was with Bitterblossom, but the Fetchlands and Knight of the Reliquary provide some incentives for playing the Angel's by getting two Birds per land drop / Knight activation. This force can quickly add up and if played with Honor of the Pure or other pump abilities they can become quite lethal. I mentioned defense as a prime reason you'd want to play Emeria Angel and while that may seem silly when she dies to just about everything, she can create multiple blockers before the opponent can kill her. In addition, if she isn't dealt with, she can usually bash in for some evasion damage while stopping opposing ground pounders from crushing you. She's been a big deal at Worlds so far and fits in well with the new theme of the metagame; that your creatures need to do more than attack. If you can, pick them up while their cheap as they should be a big part of most White decks from now on. Speaking of White decks, here's the list for Rob Dougherty's WW deck, the deck tech you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C8AGAlLGDw
Note that Dougherty only went 3-3 in the Standard section of the tournament, however his deck is such an extreme that I really wanted to take a look at it. Not only does it go with the old tradition of low-curve WW decks instead of newer Kithkin curve-out builds, but it completely eschews the traditional aggro low count. Sixteen total lands is low by any stretch and even lower when you consider half of those land take other land out of your deck. Even more insane is that Steppe Lynx is being used in a deck that has to be lucky to pump it off a Landfall trigger more than twice over the first four turns. For a WW deck I like how it's set-up and can't really argue with many of the inclusions. Almost all of them are cost efficient and have power equal to or more than what they cost along with some ability that makes them more useful in combat. In addition, this deck can make full use of Honor of the Pure and Brave the Elements, both very strong cards in this environment which only saw play in a few WU weenie versions online. The one creature I'll disagree with is the use of Soul Warden[FONT=Tahoma]?which seems out of place in this type of aggressive build. I much rather see a split including Akrasan Squire or as a full-on replacement. People might consider is odd in a swarm type of aggro deck, but when this deck does get bogged down, the ability for the Pro-Black White Knight or flying Kor Skyfisher to bash for three can becomes game winning. After that small detail; comes the obvious objection… The deck only runs sixteen lands! This means in practically a quarter of its games this deck won't have a 2nd land drop on turn two. Of course this can somewhat offset by proper mulligans, but you only have roughly 60ish% to see two land in your opener, which can mean keeping one-landers is just how you'll have to roll sometimes. I understand how great it'll be when you hit the two lands into Knight of the White Orchid or Kor Skyfisher which buy you another land drop, but the variance seems rather staggering for such a straightforward deck. I'd really like to see the deck have a few more mana sources to help with opening hands and the sideboard especially. This sideboard in particular is a good example of building the maindeck and sideboard completely separate from one another. There's no way the deck can support four-drops outside of a miser 1-of in the deck with the current mana it runs. Even three mana drops shouldn't be expected to be cast until at least turn five and more realistically turn six if you don't hit KOTWO. I'd be far more focused with brining in additional Celestial Purge or Harm's Way against the inevitable sweeper Backlash than trying to use Devout Lightcaster or Oblivion Ring against more varied threats. That or boarding in a few more land in the place of normally dead 4-drops to help make the curve look better post-board. As for the popular non-Jund decks of the weekend, Bant and Junk variants seemed to have some popularity and success over the weekend, being the 3rd and 4th most played archetypes. Both have been touted as having favorable Jund matches and have had some success on Magic Online, but this was the first they've shown up and had a larger impact on a real life tournament. Martin Juza had a solid 5-1 record to go with his Junk build, shown below. This deck, much like the one above, cheats on the number of lands it runs to improve the spell density of it. Mana accelerants like Noble Hierarch and Lotus Cobra can also turn guys like Knight of the Reliquary and Emeria Angel into much larger threats by getting them down a turn earlier, allowing Fetchlands to be sandbagged to get even more use from them. In addition, the number of Elspeth and Behemoth Sledge give the deck's smaller creatures that added boost if they need to fight against the Putrid Leeches and Sprouting Thrinax of the world. Even though the deck seems like one big ‘good cards' deck, Juza takes it a step further in his post-board game. He has the capability to play a solid midrange deck and then transform into a control deck with Martial Coup trumps post-board. Clearing the board and gaining five tokens is just as devastating in this format as it was in Alara Block, especially against decks like Eldrazi Green and other Junk decks. They have no real ways to stop it past Eldrazi Monument and simply have to hope that the post-board games don't go long. Sadly for them, Wall of Reverence combined with all of the larger creatures in the deck being solid on defense basically dooms that idea. It may not be the two-for-one factory that Jund is, but it can produce a lot of threats that absolutely must be dealt with along with cards that can create their own types of card and mana advantage. It'll be interesting to see if the future versions of the Junk deck adapt Juza's approach or stick with the more spread out curve you see on Magic Online. In the end, none of these decks really compare to the Fog combo deck that Joel Calafell played. What may end up being the breakout deck of the tournament is Jacerator played to a 6-0 record by Joel (who had help designing it with Kenny Oberg from Tezzerator notoriety), listed below is his deck from the deck tech seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JfjcmRwt5U
At first glance it looks like your standard Turbo-Fog deck, but this one is interesting in that all the fat has been trimmed away. Not only does the deck max out on card drawing engines, but the actual kill has been reduced to a piddly two Archive Trap combined with Jace and the normal sets of Fog complimented by Day of Judgment and Sunspring Expedition as extra ways to stay alive. Also notable is the usage of a full set of maindeck Flashfreeze, which are great in the current field, stopping Blightning, Maelstrom Pulse, Thought Hemorrhage and the majority of obnoxious spells played in the format. This deck just feels like a combo deck, even though some may consider it control deck since all it really wants to do is stay alive until it eventually gets a Jace ultimate activation. It runs so many ways to draw extra cards and so many cheap cards that simply Negate all the damage over the course of a turn instead of actually trying to deal with threats in a mana and card inefficient way. To top it off, the sideboard strategy it uses just seems ridiculously strong. It uses the classic Baneslayer post-board switcheroo when the opponent has typically unloaded his removal, but can take it a step further with Tezzeret the Seeker. See normally Tezzeret is just a good answer card, it simply fetches out something like Relic or Pithing Needle with something like Howling Mine being fetchable in case the deck is having issues staying afloat. However it can also set-up a potential early kill turn via its ultimate ability if you protect it with an Angelsong or Safe Passage. The deck may only run one in the board, but with so much card-drawing it isn't unreasonable to see it by the midpoint or so every other game. To top it off, people could run multiples in the future and the Plan B can simply be to get Baneslayer or Tez online and just crush the opponent or run shifty board in 15 cards and board out 15 card shenanigans. Even the manabase deserves some praise for running the bare minimum of non-basics, only using the two that most impact the deck's mana and life-total. By only running eight non-basic lands the deck reduces any vulnerability to Goblin Ruinblaster and almost never has to play a comes-into-play-tapped land unless it wants too. Considering how the deck actually likes hitting its two and four drops, this is a pretty nice thing to have going for it. Without a true control deck around, as long as this deck honestly mashes Jund it could easily take the number two slot in the metagame. This could be the scissors deck to help diversify the metagame and open it up again. If it runs as well as Calafell says it does, then we could be looking toward the future metagame of Jund / Jacerator / Dredge or a legitimate control deck being the three main focal points with a few decks sitting in-between. Many people were hoping Worlds would bring some tech to get rid of the Jund infested metagame. There are definitely some gems here that deserve to be tested and further Exploration, but Jund wasn't crushed as some people had hoped. It still boasted four undefeated pilots and a huge portion of pros still chose it as their weapon of choice. For my money, both Juza and Calafell's decks could be the new second-fiddle in the field with the potential to overtake Jund eventually. Go out and grab some of the key cards while they still are considered casual only and enjoy your newfound diversity. ~ Josh Silvestri |
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