The Star City Games New Jersey Open is upon us… yep, I guess you can say I failed in my quest to reach 15 Open Series points in time for this weekend, otherwise, I would have said, “Invitational,” instead of, “Open,” but in any case, there is a lot of cash being handed in my home state, this weekend, for (metaphorically) killing people with cardboard. It also marks the second weekend that we have M14 cards and M14 rules to work with. I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to Standard brewing since the format changed, particularly since I do most of my testing and brewing on MODO, and M14 has yet to make any digital waves.
When we last left our hero (that’s ME, by the wa—Oh, shut it! I can be evil and still refer to myself in third person as “our hero”), he was going to attempt to grind the last four Open Series points he needed to qualify for the SCG Invitational. Well, I already told you the end result, without going into any detail, but to give you the short version of what happened, I decided to play Bant Hexproof (again), made a poor play decision here and there, a bad deck construction decision (results are in: Gladecover Scout is more important than Witchstalker), and scrubbed out by the fourth round. Having picked up no Open Series points, I decided to skip on Sunday, since I would need to spike the event to qualify, which I decided made the event pretty low EV, especially after finding out that SCG IQs have no PWP multiplier. One thing of note is that unlike the previous two times I brought this deck out, it was not because I was lazy and didn’t feel like playing long matches; it was because I actually thought the deck was well-positioned and believed it received some very relevant new toys from M14. I still think my reasoning was valid, but I don’t think Hexproof is the deck for me. It just isn’t… I don’t know… it’s not EVIL enough (although some might argue that swinging for 10 hexproof power in the air on turn four is pretty evil).
So what does it mean to be evil? The whole “Evil Tim” thing kind of started as a joke, by our very own Matt Jones, because all of my decks are evil. As you may or may not know, Matt is a big fan of that little box that appears in the bottom right-hand corner of certain Magic cards, and no, I’m not talking about the Planeswalker loyalty box. My decks typically have a gameplan that goes somewhat like this: eliminate or neutralize all of your creatures, counter any relevant spells you try to play, and then watch your eyes glaze over as I start drowning you or upticking several Planeswalker. There’s also generally a decent amount of ancillary card-drawing (for me) that goes on in my matches. After the “Evil Tim” moniker took hold in our local group, someone hearing it for the first time once asked me what being evil means. My aloof response was something like, “I dunno, drawing and wrathing a lot?” As regular readers know (because I’ve probably mentioned it too many times, now), I haven’t played much Standard since Dragon’s Maze, and in the few events where I have, I ended up playing some flavor of Hexproof to mediocre results. The big problem with Hexproof, aside from edicts, is that the deck just doesn’t resonate with me. My deck has Hallowed Fountain and Glacial Fortress.. where the hell are my Supreme Verdicts and Sphinx’s Revelations? Gladecover Scout and Witchstalker are fine cards, but they shouldn’t be the M14 cards that excite me, on a personal level. This card, however, gives us some interesting deck-building… Opportunities!
Remember that one big knock you heard all the time for the last eight or nine months about every blue deck that didn’t also run white? “The list looks pretty good, but I think it has the glaring weakness of not being able to keep up with the Sphinx’s Revelation decks.” We’ve heard it most about Grixis. It seemed like many-a control mage wanted desperately to make Grixis work, but they couldn’t keep up with the card advantage of Revelation. Sure, you could try to catch them with Slaughter Games. Sure, you could play Sire of Insanity off of Caverns to make Revelation worse. But none of these measure really were enough to give the masses a reason to play non-Azorius blue decks. Opportunity changes all of that! It’s not the powerhouse that Revelation is, but it fills a major hole that all of the decks that can’t play Revelation previously had. While I think Grixis is the most obvious deck to benefit from the exciting new Opportunity that M14 has provided for us, I’m going to eschew that shard, today, in favor of a pair of wedges that stand to benefit. If you want Grixis brews that capitalize on Opportunity, I’m sure the Chapins and Fabianos of the world have you covered, since they’ve been talking about how much Grixis will benefit from the new BIG instant speed card draw spell before M14 was completely spoiled. I’ve brewed up some rough drafts for RUG and BUG control decks.
Standard BUG Control
| Creatures (7) 1 Aetherling 3 Snapcaster Mage 3 Thragtusk Planeswalkers (6) 1 Garruk Relentless 2 Jace, Architect of Thought 1 Jace, Memory Adept 1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage 1 Vraska, the Unseen Spells (21) 1 Curse of Death’s Hold 2 Abrupt Decay 1 Cyclonic Rift 2 Dissipate 3 Far 2 Opportunity 1 Golgari Charm 1 Putrefy 2 Think Twice 1 Barter in Blood 4 Farseek 1 Gaze of Granite | Lands (26) 4 Breeding Pool 2 Cavern of Souls 4 Drowned Catacombs 4 Hinterland Harbor 2 Nephalia Drownyard 3 Overgrown Tomb 3 Watery Grave 4 Woodland Cemetary Sideboard (15) 1 Aetherling 1 Curse of Death’s Hold 1 Dissipate 1 Doom Blade 1 Evil Twin 1 Golgari Charm 3 Lifebane Zombie 2 Negate 1 Pithing Needle 1 Progenitor Mimic 1 Ratchet Bomb 1 Tragic Slip |
Standard RUG Control
| Creatures (11) 1 Aetherling 3 Izzet Staticaster 1 Progenitor Mimic 3 Snapcaster Mage 3 Thragtusk Planeswalkers (5) 2 Jace, Architect of Thought 2 Ral Zarek 1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage Spells (18) 2 Dissipate 2 Opportunity 2 Turn 2 Think Twice 4 Farseek 2 Mizzium Mortars 4 Pillar of Flame | Lands (26) 4 Breeding Pool 2 Cavern of Souls 3 Hinterland Harbor 2 Kessig Wolfrun 4 Rootbound Crag 4 Steam Vents 4 Stomping Ground 3 Sulfur Falls Sideboard (15) 1 Aetherling 1 Dissipate 1 Izzet Charm 1 Garruk Relentless 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter 1 Mizzium Mortars 2 Negate 2 Nightshade Peddler 1 Pithing Needle 2 Ratchet Bomb 1 Thragtusk 1 Turn |
These are hardly tuned or finalized lists, but if you were to ask me to show you a mock-up of a blue deck that doesn’t play white, I think these are two pretty valid examples.
As for Legacy, EVERYONE REMEMBER THE NEW LEGEND RULE THIS WEEKEND! That aside, I went through a thought exercise where I made a list of my Miracles deck, but I cut red for black, because: Vindicate. I also added in a Sorin and Souls, though that might be too cute, to pressure opposing planeswalkers. After looking at how viable the curve was for Counterbalance, I was less than happy. After reminding myself that the red splash is easier on the manabase because the important red cards (REB) are reactive, while the important black cards you may want to use (discard) are proactive, so you have more of a need to fetch your black source early, and more of a chance to have that source blown up by Wasteland before you get to Vindicate their Jace. I also did some streams on MODO, after discovering that my iPhone headset has a microphone. The sound quality isn’t the greatest, but you can feel free to check em out at on Twitch (efil4zaknupome). It’s mostly my run-of-the-mill Miracles list, but I also played a few matches with MiracleBlade, the deck I rode to an 8-1 day one in GP Atlanta, last summer. Best of luck to everyone playing in the Invitational this weekend! And best of luck if you fell short like me (or just didn’t care) and are playing in the Open(s).