What makes a card powerful in constructed? This is the sort of question I find myself pondering now that I’ve qualified for the Pro Tour. That’s not the sort of question that being a draft-o-holic gives you much insight into answering. Or does it? This week I will discuss how to scout All Stars of constructed by playing with them in limited.
Over the last year I have played many hundreds of competitive limited matches. Competitive Standard? Maybe ten matches. My first foray of the year came with Mono-Black Devotion. Why did I choose that deck? I like black control decks, but usually they aren’t that powerful. This one was different, though. Thoughtseize and Mutavault were probably the real powerhouses of the deck, but I was drawn to the strategy by two cards that had jumped out at me when playing limited: Pack Rat and Gray Merchant of Asphodel.
I can get you a toe.
What makes those cards stand out? Both Pack Rat and Gray Merchant completely dominate a game of limited, warping the flow of the game around them. Obviously Pack Rat is absurdly broken in limited, while Gray Merchant at least pretends to be a fair card. But think back to draft games in triple-Theros a year ago. If your opponent was playing a lot of swamps, you absolutely had to keep their board presence under control. Every turn you’d count their black mana symbols in play, add two, and compare it to your life total. Staying out of Lightning Bolt range is one thing. You could stabilize the board with a ground stall at nine life and still be stone dead to a visit from Uncle Gary.
When a card seems overpowered in limited, like it’s changing the nature of the game, that’s a sign the card might be powerful in Standard. I’m not talking about cards like Thoughtseize or Mutavault that are obviously Standard powerhouses because they or their analogues have proven powerful in the past. I mean the cards that aren’t so obvious. Like Pack Rat. It took a while for people to uncover how strong it could be in Standard. Even if we start the clock on Pack Rat in the fall of 2013, with the printing of Thoughtseize, rather than the fall of 2012 when the rat itself debuted, a month or two still passed before Pack Rat became a four-of staple in the mono-black deck.
I’m not here to extol the greatness of Pack Rat. My point is this: when a card absolutely dominates games of limited whenever it is played, or wins on the spot, or makes victory inevitable, then it is likely to be a powerhouse in Standard as well.
EOT SR YL
So. Last month at Grand Prix New Jersey when I picked up cards for my Scapeshift Modern deck, I also filled out a Standard deck. What deck did I build? I decided to go with one that plays three limited powerhouses that I could tell were also among the best things one can do in Standard.
One of those cards is Hornet Queen. I actually never got the chance to play with that one in limited. I’m not a master of opening insane bombs at high stakes drafts like some other hipsters. But the queen’s reputation precedes her. No big surprise that Hornet Queen is a Standard all star.
The second card is Whip of Erebos. I mean, have you ever won a game of Theros limited after your opponent resolved a Whip? Yeah, I’ve won on a mull to four and lost after resolving Sphinx’s Revelation, but these things are, shall we say, rare. Whip had already proved itself quite strong in combination with Obzedat, Ghost Council and any other number of cards that have rotated out of Standard. And what do you know, whipping back a Hornet Queen is also pretty good.
The third card might not be so obvious. I first met Sidisi, Brood Tyrant at the sealed PTQ in Selden, New York. While Richard Tan was busy winning that one for Team Draft League, I was struggling in round one to beat turn four Sidisi in all three games. Somehow I managed to win two of those games. I wouldn’t win much more in that tournament, but I walked away with a new appreciation of how ridiculous Sidisi can be. If you can’t answer her, she will make an army that beats down for the win. But what if the game goes long and grindy? Well it turns out that a self-mill deck can grind out a metric shit-ton of value with Sidisi on board. Especially if you whip her back after your opponent kills her.
Siege Rhino is the biggest all star of this Standard format, but in a deck with Whip of Erebos, Sidisi isn’t far behind. Here’s what I took to the first ever Preliminary PTQ in Colorado, at Game Heroes in Arvada.
Whip It
| Creatures (24) 4 Satyr Wayfinder 4 Sylvan Caryatid 4 Courser of Kruphix 4 Sidisi, Brood Tyrant 3 Hornet Queen 2 Sagu Mauler 2 Doomwake Giant 1 Soul of Innistrad Spells (13) 4 Murderous Cut 3 Hero’s Downfall 3 Thoughtseize 3 Whip of Erebos | Lands (23) 1 Island 2 Swamp 3 Forest 4 Opulent Palace 4 Llanowar Wastes 2 Yavimaya Coast 2 Temple of Malady 1 Temple of Mystery 1 Mana Confluence 3 Polluted Delta Sideboard (15) 3 Disdainful Stroke 2 Bile Blight 2 Drown in Sorrow 2 Sultai Charm 3 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver 1 Nylea’s Disciple 1 Reclamation Sage 1 Pharika, God of Affliction |
It turns out this deck is pretty good. I only went 3-3 with it, but I am still learning how to sideboard (and how to write the correct number of Disdainful Strokes in my sideboard on my deck registration sheet). I never felt like the deck was outclassed, and it is a ton of fun to play. Oh yeah, it also happened to win the World Championship last week. Sure it helps to have Shahar freaking Shenhar piloting the deck, but the deck is the real deal.
It’s not like I’ve broken Standard or anything. All I did was copy a deck Willy Edel took to the top 8 of Grand Prix Santiago and make some minor tweaks. I plan to tweak some more before the actual PTQ coming up this weekend. (It sure is weird to have PTQs and PPTQs running simultaneously, but so it goes.) The key is, however, that Magic cards can reveal their powers in numerous ways. When a card blows you away in limited, think about what it could do in constructed. All Stars could be anywhere.
Carrie O’Hara is Editor-in-Chief of Hipsters of the Coast.