Standard Deviations - Banging Your Head on Some Mad Bugger's Wall

"Standard counts and keeps on countin', and we knows now finding tha trick of what's rotated and lost ain't no easy ride. But that's our cypher, we gotta break it. And there ain't nobody what knows when it comes undone. Still in all, every night we does the tell, so that we 'member what it was and can still be...but most of all we 'members counting back-wise from twenty, before the Angels came. And we lights the fires, not just to remember but for all them what turn creatures sideways. 'Cause we knows there comes a night, when they see the distant light of Gatecrash and they'll be comin' home." - Nina Nix, Return to Ravnica: Beyond Thunderdome

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest edition of The Cardboard Witch. As you can tell by the above introduction I'm feeling a little "theatrical" today; don't worry I'm not crazy enough to try to write an entire article in the voice of Savannah Nix. I would however like to address the elephant in the room that nobody else seems to be talking about; the death of Aggro strategies in post-RtR Standard. Let me repeat that for those of you who weren't listening: aggro is dead in Standard. When I say "dead", I do in fact mean kaput, obsolete, roadkill, devoid of spark, promise or life. In short, if you're playing a turn 5 deck that turns creatures sideways in Standard events right now you are literally "dead money" and will be unlikely to win said tournaments. Now before you get upset at me please understand that it brings me no joy to deliver this news. I am a firm believer that a healthy Standard format revolves around having effective aggro, control and mid-range options with a few odd-ball combo decks thrown in for spice. Unfortunately it seems that lately Standard formats rarely actually achieve this sort of balance and in my opinion the post Return to Ravnica format actively discourages/hinders aggro strategies. These are bleak times for weenie rush decks folks and after several weeks of testing I am prepared to state the case against aggro before you today. It's a grim tale but I hope that in the telling I can convince at least some of you out there to stop wasting entry fees on decks that simply cannot win tournaments for you. 

The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth: Ironically, the death of aggro here in Standard was caused primarily by the most innocuous and traditionally least profitable effect in Magic: the ability to gain life. Historically the refuge of new players, casual multi-player aficionados and the truly desperate; cards that gain life do not have a long history of success in tournament Magic. There have certainly been exceptions to this rule (Kitchen Finks comes to mind) but ultimately the generally held theory that board control is more relevant than your life total has prevailed. After all, if you're trading cards for life that means you aren't trading cards for my cards and sooner or later the monsters I've cast will overwhelm you. The RtR/Innistrad Standard format turns this theory on it's ear however by being absolutely loaded with cards that both gain huge chunks of life and help you establish board control. As an aggro player it can be disheartening to watch your opponent gain 5 life from a single card; depending on the point in the game this likely undoes an entire turn of hard work and gives your opponent time to cast more expensive (and typically superior) cards to thwart you. When this life gain is combined with a kill effect or a reasonable defensive body (again see Finks) the problem becomes more serious; not only are you likely down a turn but you're probably down a card now as well in one way or another. So what happens when your opponent can gain 5 life, Flash a 3/4 flying defender into play and simultaneously create a 3/3 chump blocking token? What about when your opponent can repeatedly trade his worst creatures and tokens for your best creatures while simultaneously gaining life in 6-12 point chunks turn after turn? How exactly do you "race" against a deck that can easily gain 60+ life over the course of a single, moderately long game? These are rhetorical questions folks because the answers are as plain as day to anyone playing Standard right now: you get blown out, you lose and you can't (respectively).

Of course there are other reasons for the demise of aggro here in Standard besides the preponderance of awesome life gain effects; we'll cover some of those later in the article. For the moment however let's take a closer look at the incidental life gain cards that literally "ruinate" aggressive strategies in this format:

The Unholy Trinity:  If you've been playing aggro in Standard recently I'm willing to bet that your least favorite turn 1 play in the format is "Temple Garden into play tapped, go". The reason for this of course is that if your opponent is skipping his first turn and playing a G/W dual there's a very good chance he's playing 4 copies each of Centaur Healer, Thragtusk and Restoration Angel. Taken individually each of these cards represents a fairly formidable roadblock against aggressive strategies. At 3/3 for a converted mana cost of 3 it's probably fair to question why Centaur Healer gains a full 3 life when it enters the battlefield. In a world of 2/2 Zombies and 2/1 Knights the Healer makes a habit of undoing more than a single attack's worth of work while simultaneously threatening to devour a weenie on each subsequent swing. Moving up the curve we get to everyone's (least) favorite card in Standard; the nigh ubiquitous Thragtusk. Better writers than I have already devoted many paragraphs to detailing exactly why 'Tusk is pretty stupid in Standard so I'll skip it here. What I can say is that for an aggro deck the 5 points worth of life gain is significantly less painful than the body that trades off for one of your best creatures; twice. Finally, even without a good target for her come into play trigger Restoration Angel does a pretty good job of ambushing small dudes in the middle of combat. At 3/4 she ranks as one of the better front line blockers here in Standard and both Flash and Flying are extremely relevant to her performance in this role.  Of course when you combine these 3 cards together in the same deck, all hell breaks loose. Just 4 Healers and 4 Tusks alone represent 9 blocking bodies and 32 points worth of life gain but by adding the Angel to the mix you get free blocks/tokens, free ambush kills and double dipping rights on the lifegain effects. To say that this causes "problems" for aggro strategies would be like saying "that iceberg caused problems for the Titanic"; this isn't a mismatch, it's a massacre in favor of the G/W player. Perhaps most disturbingly the mana costs on these 3 creatures involve a total of 2 green and 2 white mana, which in turn makes it criminally easy for an absolutely huge number of decks in this format to include all 3 cards.

Punched in the Junk: While the 3 cards discussed above are certainly the most popular incidental life gain effects here in Standard they are by no means the only, or even the best such effects. As games drag on and mana/creatures become more plentiful this environment provides a whole new set of problems for aggro decks in the form of mass life gain effects. In particular, three extremely popular cards have appeared to choke the last breath from aggro strategies in post-RtR Standard: Azorius Charm, Sphinx's Revelation and Vault of the Archangel. Of these 3 cards the Charm is probably the most frustrating simply because it can be used as a removal spell in the early game against aggro strategies. As we discussed in my last article there are a number of benefits to be gained from "topping" an early aggressive creature with this card and as such it represents a legitimate obstacle to any beatdown plan in Standard. Of course, once our opponent does play a few creatures the mass-lifelink mode of this card typically puts the final nails in aggro's coffin; it's pretty hard to finish off a deck that's attacking for more damage than you can while simultaneously gaining life in 8-15 point bursts. At the other end of the spectrum is Sphinx's Revelation which is thankfully awkward and expensive if you're going to gain any significant amount of life from casting it. Unfortunately it also lets the caster draw a card for each point of life he's gaining and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that some of those cards will probably be good against aggro. It's also an Instant; just in case potential combat damage math wasn't hard enough already on aggro players in this format. Probably the worst part of facing down this card with an aggro deck however is that your opponent will typically cast it just before you are about to finish him off and right after both of your hands have drained extremely low. Let's just say that this is pretty demoralizing and significantly reduces aggro's chances of actually winning that game. While both of the above cards seem a little unfair when you're trying to beat down with weenies, they are at least Instants that must be actually cast and therefore "used up" to cause the aggro player harm. The same can not be said for our final "junk punch" card; Vault of the Archangel. I'm not a card designer by any stretch folks but a tiny part of me wonders how anyone could possibly think it was a good idea to print a land that can potentially give all of your creatures Lifelink turn after turn. Yes, it costs 5 mana to do so and that is not an insignificant investment but when you have the potential to gain upwards of 15 life per turn it seems like a relative bargain doesn't it? This is all besides the point that the silly thing actually gives out Deathtouch as well which makes it one of the premier defensive cards in the format even before you factor in gaining rivulets of life. While a mid-game Az Charm or Sphinx's Revelation probably means the aggro deck loses, an active Vault (with creatures to affect) most definitely ensures that it will.

Blindside Pressure: To be honest the above 6 cards alone are probably good enough reasons to avoid aggro altogether here in Standard. It's never a good idea to fight uphill battles all day during a Magic tournament and the preponderance of quality Bant, Junk and even plain old Selesnya Midrange decks in the format virtually force aggro to do just that. Sadly however there are actually a number of other, less popular life gain cards that still qualify as "playable" (or better) here in Standard. In my mind the best example of this is probably Trostani, Selesnya's Voice. While you are unlikely to find Trostani in a top tier Standard deck at this point, she's still a 2/5 body that can potentially gain massive hunks of life over the course of a single game. She's got 5 toughness, works well with tokens and makes it extremely easy to outrace other creature based decks if they can't kill her. As a result, she's at least reasonably popular with the FNM set and it's never too shocking when your opponent drops a turn 4-5 Trostani at smaller events. Another card that works well in the lifegain package and has the potential to cause aggro strategies serious grief is the casual/Comander favorite, Deadeye Navigator. On the downside the Navigator is 6 mana and doesn't actually have a printed lifegain effect. If you can Soulbond him with a Centaur Healer or a Thragtusk however, the situation quickly becomes all upside as his 1U flicker effect theoretically allows near-infinate potential life gains. Other quality cards that randomly provide some sort of life gain effect include Huntsmaster of the Fells, Vampire Nighthawk, Sorin's Vampire tokens, Tribute to Hunger, Deathrite Shaman and Griselbrand. Heck, I've even played games against cards like Nearheath Pilgrim and Gnaw to the Bone in post-RtR Standard. While these cards are certainly less popular than the previous 6, the simple truth is that they are out there and each of them represent another strike against the aspiring aggro player.

"Sweep the leg Johnny": Of course not all of aggro's problems in this Standard format revolve around life gain; it's certainly fair to say that playing in a format with two Wrath of God effects doesn't help either. For those of you clutching your Lilianna of the Dark Realms, hoping for a Mutilate revival I'm talking about the wonder-twin tandem of Supreme Verdict and Terminus. Trying to play around as many as 8 potential boardsweepers while maintaining a reasonable clock is a nightmare for aggro decks facing down Hallowed Fountains. The only real mitigating factor here is that because many decks in the format can shrug off a Supreme Verdict you might only face them in games 2 and 3 from the sideboard. There is no relief from Terminus for the aggro player however and you can firmly expect to see 3 maindeck copies and a 4th from the board if you're trying to beat down against Azorius in Standard. As if this situation wasn't miserable enough; there are also 3 key one-sided boardsweep effects that see significant play here in Standard. Of the three, Cyclonic Rift probably represents the least danger due to it's cost and because theoretically the aggro deck can just recast it's creatures. The fact that it's instant and only requires one Blue mana however is a fairly serious issue; frankly it's not that difficult to get to 7 mana against aggro if you've gained 18-25 life along the way. Mizzium Mortars is also expensive at 6 mana and has the added problem of requiring RRR to Overload; which adds potential turns to it's casting time. If your opponent does survive to cast it however, 4 damage across the board is usually more than enough to wipe out most aggressive create bases. Finally of course, the most dangerous one-sided boardsweep effect for aggro in this format is a "miracle'd" Bonfire of the Damned. With as little as four available mana a deck running Bonfire can completely wipe the aggro deck's board, throw a lightning bolt at the pilot's face and free up all of his monsters for a savage attack. Naturally of course there are ways to attack some of these cards (Gravecrawler, Vampire Aristocrat, Geralf's Messenger, Wolfir Avenger and Strangleroot Geist) but the simple truth is that no aggro deck in the format can play around all of them. In fact, I suspect you'd be hard pressed to find any aggro deck in Standard that can play around Terminus and Cyclonic Rift.

The Land of Bad Math: Hopefully by now you are starting to understand why it's simply not a good idea to play aggro in this format. On one hand aggro decks are forced to rapidly advance their board state to attempt to "outrun" near infinite life gain effects in Standard. On the other hand if they dump out their hand to accomplish this there are multiple boardsweep effects waiting to punish them for doing so. Further complicating matters are the sheer number of potential 2 for 1 cards aggro decks must contend with in this format. While the number of cards in Standard that match this description is somewhat staggering, the 3 most common problems for aggro decks in this format are Detention Sphere, Sever the Bloodline and Lingering Souls. Sphere is frustrating because it's an exile effect (negates regenerate, indestructible or undying) and because it actively discourages casting multiple copies of your best creatures. When your deck doesn't draw cards and wants to vomit it's hand onto the table as quickly as possible, this can easily lead to quick blowouts unless the aggro player is extremely cautious. Sever the Bloodline presents virtually all the same problems as Detention Sphere except it's all but guaranteed to provide a 2 for 1 effect in a long game due to it's flashback. On the upside for aggro, 4 mana for a kill spell isn't the greatest deal and in the absence of other answers your opponent may not survive long enough to hit 7 mana and flash it back. The most annoying card of the lot however is probably Lingering Souls, which for 5 mana mortgaged over 2 turns provides a staggering 4 flying chump blockers. The only way around this card for most aggro decks is the Trample Trait, Blood Artist or a top of the curve Thundermaw Hellkite. Naturally, when combined with Vault of the Archangel this card goes from "extremely annoying" to "legitimately game breaking" awful fast if you're trying to throw guys sideways into the spirit tokens.

Show Me the Money: I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "well that all sounds very scary Nina but people can't run all of these cards in the same deck and they can't draw them every game. I'll be fine".  Unfortunately I have bad news for you folks; yes they actually can run all these cards in one deck and until Gatecrash at least it is highly unlikely that aggro will be "fine". The existence of RtR shocklands, Innistrad buddy duals and cards like Farseek make it easy to build a variety of powerful, greedy (3 colors with lots of double mana symbols) mid-range and control decks. When Blue/White control decks have absolutely no problem selling out for Pillar of Flame and Bonfire of the Damned you know we've gone past concepts like "colors" and "mana restrictions". In an effort to highlight exactly what a good mid-range deck can do to aggro in Standard, I've built an extremely simple Junk (G/W/B) deck to share with you today. I may or may not have also heard a rumor that more people will read your article if you provide a decklist :) :

Welcome to the Machine - Junk Mid-Range w/Rites

Creatures - 18: 

4x Centaur Healer
4x Restoration Angel
3x Thragtusk
2x Sigarda, Host of Herons
2x Armada Wurm
3x Angel of Serenity

Spells - 18:

4x Grisly Salvage
4x Mulch
2x Farseek
4x Lingering Souls
4x Unburial Rites

Lands - 24:

4x Temple Garden
4x Overgrown Tomb
4x Woodland Cemetary
4x Sunpetal Grove
2x Isolated Chapel
4x Forest
2x Vault of the Archangel

Sideboard - 15:

3x Intangible Virtue
2x Sundering Growth
2x Oblivion Ring
3x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
2x Sever the Bloodline
3x Entreat the Angels

Analysis: Conceptually this deck is designed to be a G/W Midrange deck that uses it's graveyard and Unburial Rites to either accelerate towards a win or finish off a staggering opponent in the late game. In this context it becomes very important that the deck be able to reasonably "hard-cast" every creature in the deck while simultaneously looking for opportunities to take advantage of it's graveyard. This prevents the deck from ever being dependent on Unburial Rites and makes it very easy to board them out in game two if we're expecting graveyard hate. In this case I've chosen to fill the void with a more token based strategy but this is very much a personal preference. You could probably go a number of different directions with this sideboard so long as the chosen cards adequately replaced the Rites you may board out.  More to the point of our discussion however this deck absolutely steamrolls aggro and it does so without running a significant number of cards that are simply bad in other match-ups. While it's fair to say Centaur Healer doesn't shine in every game, cards like Restoration Angel, Lingering Souls, Thragtusk and Vault of the Archangels perform admirably against a wide variety of opponents. Looking back on our previous discussion it should be fairly easy to see how this build interweaves an absolutely massive number of "aggro-killing" cards effortlessly into a highly focused/structured deck design. While I haven't had the opportunity to enter a tournament with this deck a few days of online practice and a quick scan around the internet/my FNM confirms that many other people are exploring these same card combinations successfully.

Well folks, once again that's just about all the time we have for today. At this point I feel that if I haven't convinced you that aggro is just a bad deck choice by now there may be no hope. For reasons beyond my comprehension there will always be a certain segment of the Magic community who simply cannot resist the seductive allure of curving out at 3, dumping your hand and turning little dudes sideways. In these dark times I can only wish these poor unfortunate souls godspeed and the ability to topdeck multiple "threaten" effects. For those of you who can count past 3 however there remains hope; Standard is home to a number of solid mid-range, token beatdown and control decks right now. It's time to embrace your inner Timmy, break out your trade binders and release your 4, 5 and 6 drop rares and mythics. This format has become a battle of colossal monsters and earth shattering sorcery; you don't want to be the guy who shows up with a pack of 1/1 goblins. Remember gang, big monsters always need lunch.

- nina

Standard Deviations - Get Off My Lawn

"I like how you have given up on playing fair Magic" - Mark Everson, Team Dickwolf

To be completely honest with you folks, I kinda hate writing about my Standard decks. I always feel like some sort of traveling door-to-door saleswoman; practically begging someone to let me in the door so I can display my wares. Even worse; at least door-to-door saleswomen get paid for grovelling like that. In my case I'm writing for a free blog with about a thousand regular readers at most. Perhaps more germane however is the fact that if you as a reader are looking for "hawt new Standard tech" you really shouldn't be trolling random Mtg blogs but rather devouring top 8 deck lists from SCG opens, GP-level events and Pro Tours. These decks win multi-hundred person tournaments for a reason and to tell you the truth the vast majority of my successful builds aren't all that different than the decks you can find making the cut at these events. As such, I typically find myself ignoring Standard altogether here on the blog unless I feel the deck I'm playing is significantly different than the run of the mill netdeck version you can find basically anywhere. Obviously since you are reading this and I am writing it, I feel that is the case with this deck.

Genesis: Like most good ideas in Magic the original concept for this deck was savagely stolen from other, more successful players. After messing around with Jund for a couple of weeks to start the format I got tired of getting my teeth knocked in by Rakdos Zombies and decided a change was in order. After asking a few of the stronger players I know on Twitter for some advice I was eventually pointed towards this deck by none other than Seth Burn. Frankly, there is a lot to like about this build in the context of the format it was created for. Namely it has an incredibly strong game 1 against both Rakdos Zombies and Jund Mid-range; the two accepted "big bad wolves" of the early post RtR-Standard format. For the exact moment in time that it was designed this deck is literally almost perfect. The problem of course is that by the time I got my grubby little paws on it and started testing that moment in time was over; the metagame had shifted firmly towards grindy mid-range decks with Thragtusk or lightning fast aggro decks built around Geist of Saint Traft. This didn't mean that Jund and Zombies were dead per se, but they were no longer popular enough to ensure that simply beating "them" would lead to winning tournaments. More perplexing however was the fact that the deck wasn't actually all that good at winning "grindy" Thragtusk mirrors. While cards like Jace, Garruk and Sphinx's Revelation showed promise I discovered that the vast majority of the time both players would bounce non-trampling ground-pounders at each other until someone cast an Angel of Serenity that wasn't answered. Since the match hinged on such a limited number of cards there were a number of games where I simply didn't draw my "mirror breakers" and my opponents did. Finally even rock solid match-ups like Jund and Zombies were started to become more difficult post sideboard. Jund players began running Appetite for Brains and Rakdos Returns to answer Bant's card advantage while Zombies began boarding in multiple "Threaten" effects to simply steal your 5 power beasties and bash you with them. After a solid week of tinkering and losing in the top 8/top 4 of my local store's Gameday events I finally accepted that the deck as presently constructed was "yesterday's news".

Enter the Pod-Father:  Unable to solve the problem myself I quickly sought outside council while preparing to trade for yet another new deck. Fortunately heaven sent me an angel in the form of sharp dressed, fast talking podcast host Scott MacCallum. In a moment of sheer serendipity Scott happened to stop by my office for a random friendly visit and before long we got to talking about Bant decks. Naturally he had a more recent list in mind and showed me this article on Manadeprived.com. To be completely fair this deck was much more in line with how I felt a good Bant deck should look as the format evolved. It's much faster than the previous deck, maindecks 4 copies of the cheapest mirror-breaking card in Standard (Geist of Saint Traft) and is generally less confused than the Montana build. In short rather than jamming half of a control deck with half of a beatdown deck, Bianchi has chosen to be a strong beatdown deck with "some control elements". This strategy is basically right up Scott's alley and after some minor threats he convinced me to read all of Alex's well-written article there on the spot. As I read through the article and poured over the card choices it suddenly dawned on me why I disliked virtually every Bant deck I'd seen online. I turned towards Scott and said simply "it's too confused sir." Scott demanded an explanation and by way of careful interrogation helped me verbalize my issues with "traditional" Bant midrange:

• Too many of the cards argue with each other. If this deck were a high school student, she'd be the emo chick who listens to Dead Can Dance while cutting herself. Whether we're talking about the inclusion of counterspells in a ramp deck full of 4, 5 and 7 casting cost cards, the general inability of it's big finishers to actually finish or the sheer insanity of running 3-6 sweepers in a deck trying to beat down with 5/3's these builds have serious "focus" problems.
• Depending on the build, the mana base for this deck is genuinely horrible. Either you're trying to run Jace, Garruk and Angel of Serenity in the same deck or you're dropping Cavern of Souls/Gavony Townships into builds with multiple greedy non-creature spells that all want to come down as soon as possible on the curve. This is literally a recipe for disaster in the current "go over the top" Standard.
• The decks generally lack a clearly defined path to victory. This once again speaks to the lack of synergy in the build to some degree but it's actually much deeper than that. It's hard to win games when you're tucking your own finishers under your library or drawing dead Sweepers/Counters when all you need is some more "action". This deck wants to see it's cards in a very specific order and when they come out of sequence you generally sit around sulking about it until you die.
• 40 minute game 1s. I really don't feel this bears much explaining. This deck's finishers are traditionally pretty horrible at actually finishing; you've got 5-6 flyers and a bunch of guys who don't trample. It's virtually impossible to finish 3 games in 50 minutes versus a competent mid-range opponent with the Montana States build for example.

As Scott and I debated back and forth the road to enlightenment became clear; we would take the stronger parts of Bianchi's deck, combine it with the genuinely superior manabase of the Montana States build and staple both elements to a clearly defined endgame. With Scott's help I threw down some preliminary numbers and we continued tweaking the deck through the night over email until we'd settled on the ideal "core" of the build. The only question then of course was how to actually end the game before minute 40 and thanks to some test games against Jeremy Skelton (@peeps_champ) I had the perfect idea in mind :

"Sandy"Bant

Creatures - 16:

4x Centaur Healer
3x Geist of Saint Traft
3x Restoration Angel
2x Thragtusk
2x Sigarda, Host of Herons
2x Armada Wurm

Spells - 19:

4x Farseek
4x Azorius Charm
3x Cyclonic Rift
2x Selesnya Charm
3x Detention Sphere
3x Jace, Architect of Thought

Lands - 25:

4x Hallowed Fountain
4x Temple Garden
4x Hinterland Harbor
4x Glacial Fortress
3x Sunpetal Grove
3x Forest
2x Island
1x Plains

Analysis: Before we talk about what this deck is and how it works, I'd like to take a moment to discuss what this deck isn't. For starters, this isn't a control deck. There are no counterspells, no sweepers and no "win the long game" Planeswalkers in this build. Jace is included primarily because drawing cards is freaking amazing and while I have used his -8 ability it's exceptionally rare that games will go long enough to actually do so. This also isn't a "grindy" mid-range deck either; you win games by keeping your creatures alive rather than trading monsters and milking marginal card advantage effects for 15 some odd turns. Finally, only a fool would call a deck who's creature curve starts at 3 and finishes at 6 "aggressive" so it certainly isn't an aggro deck either. No folks, this is a sledgehammer; a big ole, super-mean junkyard dog that simply refuses to interact with other decks until it finally goes over the top for the immediate win. In fact, if anything Sandy Bant plays like a combo deck where the combo is "Cyclonic Rift and 12-24 power worth of broken creatures". If you don't believe me let's take a basic look at how this deck wins games in Standard:

1. Play lands while simultaneously "Time-walking" your opponents with Az Charm and/or Centaur Healer/Restoration Angel if he attacks before you're ready to allow it.
2. Cast the best creatures in the entire Standard format for 2-4 turns; pausing only to play a Jace, Architect of Thought if necessary.
3. If cards like Traft, Sigarda and Armada Wurm haven't already killed your opponent play your 7th land and bounce all of his permanents back into his hand; sometimes at Instant speed!
4. Turn your guys sideways into his empty board and kill him

Sound easy enough folks? No more confusion, no more questions and especially no more agonizing over potential combat damage math for 3 minutes at a time as you decide whether or not to "miracle" your freshly drawn Terminus. Your game plans against aggro, control and mid-range decks are virtually identical; give or take playing around the occasional counterspell and/or Thundermaw Hellkite. Frankly half the time this deck doesn't even have to block; if you curve naturally from Centaur Healer into Restoration Angel and then into Tusk/Azorius Charm it's literally impossible for aggro decks to outrace the Cyclonic Rift. Even decks with heavy "burn" elements will struggle to do so and I personally take great delight in telling Zombie players "no, I will not interact with your Messengers, Grave Crawlers or Blood Artists in any meaningful way sir." Against control decks you simply present must counter threats turn after turn while daring him to tap out to cast sweepers/answers or to counter flashed in Restoration Angels. Finally a simple re-reading of Cyclonic Rift should make it clear why you aren't overtly worried about the mid-range mirror; just save the Rift until endstep and then Detention Sphere his Beast tokens if absolutely necessary. Even if you don't kill him in one shot (say because he's been casting Thragtusks too?) there's little chance he will be able to establish board presence quickly enough to stop you from killing him on the next turn in my experience.

Questions, Answers and Advice: Traditionally in this type of article the author will chew through a few pages describing the usage, corner case applications and selection rationale for each and every single card in the deck. In virtually every single case this will be terminally boring unless the deck designer is supernaturally talented or the reader is an absolute rank beginner. I am not a brilliant writer and you aren't a rank beginner so why is this necessary? You don't need me to tell you that Geist of St Traft closes out games, Restoration Angel works well with "187" triggers or that Farseek lets you play Jace on turn 3 into an empty board. In lieu of this tired old trope I'd like to take a few moments to answer some of the questions I am most commonly asked when I share this deck list.

• "Why haven't you included a sideboard?"  

This is actually a really simple answer. We built the deck roughly 4 days ago and as such the sideboard is not completely settled. What's more I generally feel that a good sideboard will be specifically tailored towards the tournament the pilot is trying to win. In other words the sideboard that's good for my FNM may not be acceptable for a SCG Open in Florida. For the sake of completeness here is the current sideboard I am using for this deck:

3x Cavern of Souls
3x Loxodon Smiter
1x Geist of Saint Traft
2x Thragtusk
2x Acidic Slime
2x Rest in Peace
2x Sphinx's Revelation

The Caverns, Smiters, Geist and Tusks are for control decks that run counters and sweepers. The Acidic Slimes are there to kill Kessig Wolf's Run. Rest in Peace attacks both Snapcaster control decks and Reanimator. Finally Sphinx's Revelation is there to win mid-range mirror matches that drag too long; think of them as Cyclonic Rifts #4-5. I should also mention that there are no SB cards for aggro decks in here because your deck should already beat the holy crap out of aggro. You can always bring in the 2 bonus Tusks if you absolutely must have additional answers.

• "Why are you only running 2 Thragtusks in the main? Isn't it the best card in Standard?"

Well for starters Alex Bianchi and Phil Blechman were right. The correct natural progression for this type of deck is Centaur Healer into Restoration Angel followed by a 5 drop of some kind. Sandbagging the Angel until you've had time to cast a Thragtusk is both greedy and extremely clunky. That isn't to say that you won't profit by targeting a Tusk with a freshly drawn Restoration Angel later in the game but waiting around to do so has a habit of getting you "perished". More importantly however he costs a whopping 5 mana and yet is by far the worst "finishing" creature in this deck. Armada Wurm tramples, the Angels fly and the Legends all have hexproof while Thragtusk is simply a souped up Juggernaut that quickly turns into a 3/3 Beast token whenever his extremely relevant toughness of 3 comes into play. In fact I'd dare to say that the only thing he does better than the other creatures in this deck is provide some relief from Terminus/Supreme Judgment (along with naked Restoration Angels) and that's the primary reason he makes the main-deck at all. In other words, Thragtusk is nice but he's no Sigarda/Armada Wurm and he's almost completely dependent on Cyclonic Rift to actually finish off your opponent. Naturally the Tusk remains excellent in a defensive role but as I've mentioned previously this deck is in no particular rush to adopt such a posture.

• "Bitch, have you ever even read Time Walk? How do I timewalk with Azorius Charm?

Yes, I have read Time Walk. Now I have a question for you; in a primarily creature based format have you ever really thought about what a "turn" really means? For an aggro deck it means drawing a new card, playing a land, declaring another attack to deal X damage and likely casting another threat before shipping the turn. This is also essentially true of mid-range decks in this format with the only real exception being they typically spend the first few turns forcing mana sources into play so they can cast bigger threats and declare larger attacks. When playing against a control deck this can be more narrowly defined as a new draw phase and the ability to untap your lands; in many cases attacks and damage will not occur until board control has been firmly established for either side. In other words we're talking about resource management and tempo here folks. In the early game using an Azorius Charm on an enemy creature provides 3 major benefits; you preserve X points of life, you deny your opponent a live card draw opportunity and you remove a permanent from the board (at least temporarily). This becomes critical once you realize that most of the "action" here in Standard occurs at or above the 4 mana threshold and that many aggressive decks will skimp on lands to jam more sources of damage into their builds. By "topping" a cheap monster in the early game you not only have a chance of keeping your opponent off his all important 4th mana but even if he does have the land in hand, you present an either or choice: "you can have the little dude, or the 4 drop from hell but not both sir." Of course, once your opponent does manage to cobble some lands together this trick loses some of it's luster; after all you certainly don't want to start "topping" cards like Thundermaw Hellkite and Armada Wurm right? Thankfully Azorius Charm has got your back folks; once the game degenerates into a back and forth exchange of sizable threats (a very common occurrence here in Standard) you simply attack with a bunch of dudes and cast the charm in lifelink mode. This allows you to generate a "cushion of life" that will net you an entire extra turn where you don't have to block or interact with your opponent's creatures at all. Let me tell you folks, turning all of your men sideways for a massive attack while sneering at your opponent's creatures behind 30 some odd life points is pretty fun. You like extra attacks right? Remember how good Cryptic Command was? I thought so. Finally, cashing in a Charm for a card at the end of your opponent's turn allows you to generate "library velocity" when facing down a Control deck. This can be critical because in this match-up we're trying to present our opponent with more threats than he can answer; more cards equals more potential threats. Perhaps equally importantly it gives us something to do when our opponent is representing a counterspell as he passes the turn. Obviously we'd rather drop a Restoration Angel in this situation but beggars can't be choosers and anything is better than doing nothing because we're afraid of counter magic.

•  "Doesn't this deck just snap lose to Control?"

This is a fair question and as you can see from the sideboard above I certainly felt Sandy Bant had a problem with control decks that ran counterspells and to a lesser degree board-sweepers. A funny thing happened during play-testing/local tournament play however; I kept beating control decks senseless in game 1. While we're obviously talking about a small sample size here I'm beginning to suspect that the deck's general "threat density" is simply too much for the meager counter-suite run by today's Control decks. By my count this deck presents roughly 18 "must-answer" problems in game 1 alone including: Geist of Saint Traft, Jace Architect of Thought, Thragtusk, Sigarda, Cyclonic Rift, Armada Wurm and especially Restoration Angel. Naturally of course not all of these spells have to be countered but if they aren't it's a reasonable bet that your opponent is going to have to tap some mana to play some sort of answer. This in turn means he will find it more difficult to counter the next threat and so on. What's more, because the vast majority of the cards we're talking about here threaten to win the game by themselves you're never really required to dump multiple targets into a potential board sweeper. When he drops a Supreme Judgment on your Centaur Healer and Restoration Angel? You simply cast Sigarda. When he produces a Terminus for that Sigarda you demand he find another with Armada Wurm and so forth. Arguably the most direct example of this strategy involves using naked Restoration Angels as either a beatdown clock or a Mana Short. You simply leave up 4 mana and wait for your opponent to pass his turn before flashing in the Angel (even if she has no targets); this forces him to either counter the Angel or accept a 3 damage clock until such a time as he can remove her while still leaving up his counters. Naturally if he does counter you respond by playing a better threat like Giest of Saint Traft, Jace or Sigarda on your turn. If he doesn't counter you happily begin chipping away at his life until he decides to do something about it or you draw another Angels. In my experience they run out of either time or counterspells before you run out of threats but millage may vary I suppose. Of course, if you're using the same sideboard I listed above games 2 and 3 become considerably easier. This may however be largely irrelevant since as of this moment I have no definitive evidence that Sandy Bant is the underdog in this match-up.

• "Why did you choose Armada Wurm over Angel of Serenity?"

 While there is no question in my mind that Angel of Serenity is one of the most powerful cards in the format the simple truth is that she's pretty redundant in this deck. We already have 5 power flyers in the form of Sigarda and we already have a 7 drop that removes all of our opponents permanents from the table in Cyclonic Rift. What's more, because our plan is to cast a bunch of fatties and then overload a Rift the fact that she doesn't come down until the turn we're already planning to drop Upheaval only serves to slow us down an entire turn. Finally once we do drop Cyclonic Rift it's safe to say that 10 power worth of trample is noticeably better than 5 power worth of flyer folks.

• "Is Cyclonic Rift really the best card in Standard?"

Well, I certainly think it is. At a very minimum it's definitely better in a creature based Bant deck than either Terminus or Supreme Verdict. Have you noticed that it's an Instant yet?

• "Why Selesnya Charm? Can I replace those cards with counterspells?"

To answer the second question first; you could but you would lose flexibility and live in constant fear of Thundermaw Hellkites and Angels of Serenity. The key to remember here is that much like Az Charm, this card serves an important function in all 3 modes depending on the match-up. Against weenie hordes the 2/2 knight often trades for a random attacker while the +2+2 Trample ability is extremely useful in creature combat. I've sent more than one opponent to the sideboard shaking their head and muttering about "limited cards" after trampling over a Snapcaster Mage for lethal damage. Another favorite trick of mine is to suddenly grow my Geist of Saint Traft to 4/4, thereby liquidating their 3/3 blocker and surviving another turn to make more Angel tokens. Finally of course exiling 5 power monsters at instant speed for a mere 2 mana is "some good" and can be particularly rewarding if your opponent was counting on getting immediate value from said fatty. 5/5 Olivias, rampaging Thundermaw Hellkites and marauding Angels of Serenity all come to mind but frankly any ole' 5 power beater will typically do.

• "Why didn't you answer my question?"

I'm not psychic; the above questions are merely a representative spread of the questions I've been asked by those I've shared the deck with. If you have a question I haven't gone over in this article please feel free to ask me in the comments section below. I can't promise an instant response but I do promise that I'll work my way through any questions at a reasonable pace and respond to your comment with my own.


Well gang, that's about all the time we have for today. When I original sat down to write this article I expected it to be about 2 pages long and take roughly 3 hours to complete. Roughly 9 hours and 8 pages later I'm still not sure I've gone over all the important details. Unfortunately tired eyes and sore fingers will not be bargained with and so I bid you adieu for the time being. Before I go however I'd like to thank Scott MacCallum, Tommy Liu and Jeremy Skelton for all the deck ideas I stole from them when constructing this deck. I would also like to thank Alex Bianchi for his wonderful article on Manadeprived.com that helped me finally crystallize what I felt Bant mi-range decks were missing in the format. Until next time then; always remember that it's extremely easy to kill an enemy mage when your board is full of fat, broken monsters and his is comprised only of lands. Ciao folks.

The Trick is to Keep Breathing

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." - Frederich Nietzsche, Twilight of Idols

I've always found it somehow ironic that the quote above originates from one of the most thoroughly depressing nihilist philosophers in human history. This guy, quite literally believed in nothing and yet somehow penned a profound statement of hope that has provided strength to countless unfortunates the world over. During times of adversity, hardship and misfortune millions of people have repeated these seven words and found comfort in the idea that they would survive; not necessarily unscathed but somehow better for the experience. Not bad for a dead emo German atheist with a Yosemite-Sam mustache right? I mention this now because I've been thinking a lot about Freddy's most famous statement while lying in bed recently and wondering if I would ever play Magic again.

Hello everyone my name is Nina Illingworth and welcome to another edition of The Cardboard Witch. For the precisely none of you tracking at home; it's been just under 3 months since my last article. Unfortunately my absence has been caused by some fairly serious health problems. As it turns out my broken foot healed quickly and the remaining swelling was actually part of a much larger and more serious problem with my kidneys. The details are pretty gory but basically I turned yellow, started sleeping 14 hours a day and rapidly began changing my lifestyle/eating habits so as not to "become perished". Apparently the limit for how long people who aren't Keith Richards can survive on little sleep and a diet consisting primarily of coffee, cigarettes and recreational drugs is 16 or so years; who knew?  In lieu of a long, boring story about what being *that* sick felt like I've decided to provide a short movie clip I feel captures the experience completely:

See, wasn't that better than some tedious yarn about lying in bed as the world went dark and wondering if this was the end of the game? Needless to say folks, I did not perish and while not every day is completely wonderful I am most certainly feeling much better. In fact, I've recently begun actually playing Magic again, which in turn means I can write about Magic here on the blog. Before we get started however I'd just like to thank all of you for your support during my illness. Whether it was my friends, coworkers, twitter followers, fellow grinders or article readers you guys were always there with words of compassion and encouragement. I daresay that I'm proud to call myself a member of a Magic community that's full of such exemplary, compassionate people. I can't thank you guys enough and I honestly believe that one of the reasons I'm here today writing this to you is the sheer amount of "love" the community heaped on my wretched carcass.

With all the mushy stuff out of the way lemme just ask you; are you enjoying Return to Ravnica limited as much as I am? Truthfully I was too sick to attend the RtR pre-release myself but once again I have some of the best friends and co-workers on the planet. Knowing I would be depressed about missing the event they kept their pools intact and brought them by to play with me once I was well. I ended up playing the Golgari Starter to a 2-0-1 finish but I think Leon would have beat me with Selesnya if he had played it out rather than offering the draw. I was fading pretty quickly after a mere 2 rounds of Magic and his deck was just better than mine in the endgame. To say I had a great time would be a mild understatement, that was "cracking good fun" as the English would say (50 years ago). In particular I was very impressed with how WotC handled the "choose your own guild" gimmick in the format. When I first heard about the guilds I worried that the vast majority of players were going to choose their colors based on which super cool promo they most wanted to play; only to open their packs and find the cards telling them to play a completely different guild. WotC solved this problem by switching one of the regular packs with a pre-set shrink wrapped selection of cards from your chosen guild/colors. What's more in my experience the VAST majority of the cards in your guildpack were at least playable and more often than not snap inclusions in a good Limited deck. What's particularly impressive about this strategy is the overall "smoothing out" effect it produced on virtually every deck in the room. Think about it folks; if you're guaranteed roughly 11 very good cards in your guildpact and we're playing 40 card decks with around 17 land, how many good cards do you have to open the "normal" way to have a solid deck? That's right, "roughly 12" and you have 5 packs to find those 12 cards. We're literally talking about "no more bad pools" here folks. While I've never been a fan of the MtG storyline I can get behind *any* gimmick that makes pre-release more fun for beginners, casual players and people who only attend pre-release tournaments. Opening a bad pool is a fact of life for PTQ grinders but it's absolutely heartbreaking to casual players who've often been waiting weeks for the event. I know it won't be easy but I hope WotC finds an excuse to use this gimmick at every pre-release event from here on out; even long after we're done with guilds.

Unfortunately due to massive, insane-o, off the charts demand for Return to Ravnica packs, boxes and cases I've only had the chance to draft the set twice at this point. Additionally because I've been sick for so long I actually haven't had the time to pore over the spoiler in great detail yet. I have a pretty good idea of what each of the cards do but otherwise I'm learning as I go folks and it's actually kinda refreshing. Normally I get pretty OCD around previews season and typically by the time I sit down for my first draft I've not only read every card in the set 5+ times but I've also plotted out what decks they belong it, what turn you ideally want to cast them and where I expect other drafters to choose them. While this certainly makes it easier to win my first few drafts it also apparently sucks some of the "magic" out of the draft experience. Sitting down to draft with very little prior knowledge of the cards felt a lot like being a little kid at Christmas time; each new pack was a present to be opened, examined, cherished and then discarded quickly to see what the next amazing package contained. Prior to the draft I decided my strategy was going to involve reading the cards carefully, choosing the most powerful options available in the first few packs and then desperately clinging to the resulting guild until the ride was over. To be perfectly clear I don't believe this is actually a *good* strategy folks but since I had no idea what I was doing it was the best I could come up with on the spot. Fortunately I'm not as rusty at Magic as I suspected and managed to "win" both events, going 3-0 and 2-0-1 respectively. In the first draft I opened a P1P1 Angel of Serenity and promptly got passed a Skymark Roc to cement me firmly in Azorius. When the dust finally settled 40 picks later, this is the deck I ended up with:

"Talk to the Giant" - U/W Tempo

Creatures - 16:

1x Doorkeeper
1x Keening Apparition
1x Seller of Songbirds
2x Sunspire Griffin
1x Lyev Skyknight
1x Tower Drake
1x Vassal Soul
2x Hussar Patrol
1x Skymark Roc
1x Soulsworn Spirit
1x Azor's Elocutors
1x Skyline Predator
1x Palisade Giant
1x Angel of Serenity

Spells - 7:

1x Azorius Charm
1x Dramatic Rescue
2x Inaction Injunction
1x Paralyzing Grasp
1x Arrest
1x Trostani's Judgment

Lands - 17:

9x Plains
6x Island
1x Azorius Guildgate

Analysis: When I sat down to build this deck I honestly didn't think it was very good at all. After talking to a number of people who'd played Azorius at the pre-release I'd been given the impression a good U/W deck in this format *had* to be mono-flying/evasion. While I had a significant number of flyers I was also going to be forced to play with a bunch of "shitty walls" and I assumed I'd be easily overwhelmed by Golgari/Selesnya decks. You know what they say about assumptions right? As it turns out when your opponent's decks are comprised entirely of undercosted 3/3 beaters it's actually a good thing to have a bunch of overcosted 2/4 walls. By striking a balance between 2-3 power flyers and random blockers I was typically able to race my opponents for the first 10 or so life on either side and then completely lock out the board while I proceeded to my endgame. Once we started trading 5-7 casting cost cards I usually found myself winning via Mythic-rare Angel or the Giant/Elocutors combo. As an amusing side note I should mention that I repeatedly passed the Elocutors in pack 3 and only grudgingly chose it when there were absolutely no other options left in the pack. It wasn't until I sat down and read the Palisade Giant I'd taken in pack 2 that I realized I had a game winning combo on my hands. Hooray for dumb luck huh? Other cards that impressed me in the build included Skymark Roc, Lyev Skyknight, Soulsworn Spirit, Skyline Predator, Inaction Injunction and of course Arrest. The real all-star however was Hussar Patrol and if I'm going to be playing Azorius in future drafts I intend to go out of my way to take as many copies of this guy as possible. He's not as sexy as the flyers but time and time again he was *the* reason I didn't die to wave after wave of 3/3 green groundpounders. As for cards I wasn't that impressed with; Seller of Songbirds is probably much better in a G/W populate deck, Paralyzing Grasp was pretty mediocre without a tap effect and Azorious Charm was surprisingly disappointing. The vast majority of the time it functioned like an unsummon more than anything else and it was particularly worthless against haste creatures. By the end of the night I was cycling it almost every time I drew it.

During the second draft I decided I would adopt the same strategy as I had the first time with one minor exception; I would play any guild except Azorious because I'd "been there, done that". Opening the first pack I found myself hoping for a good rare to build my deck around again. Perhaps I hoped a little too hard because when I flipped the the last card in the pack I found myself staring at another Angel of Serenity. So apparently the key to winning at RtR drafts is to open the Mythic-rare Angel folks and I took her without the slightest bit of hesitation. The second pack was a little trickier this time and the best card in it was probably Dreg Mangler or Hellhole Flailer. I briefly thought about selecting one of those two but I really didn't want to commit to 3 colors so early when the Angel was gonna cost me WWW anyways. After scanning the pack a second time I decided to draft Common Bond and force G/W for the rest of the draft. I wasn't entirely sure Common Bond was worthy of a second pick but in the last draft it had been one of the more frustrating cards I'd faced so I figured it had some upside. As the draft progressed however it quickly became clear that I wasn't the only Selesnya player at the table and by the time the draft ended this was the best deck I could build:

"Arrested Development" - G/W/r/b Aggro

Creatures - 18:

3x Azorius Arrester
1x Gatecreeper Vine
1x Brushstrider
1x Selesnya Sentry
1x Oak Street Innkeeper
1x Centaur Healer
2x Stonefare Crocodile
2x Sunspire Griffin
2x Axebane Guardian
1x Sluiceway Scorpion
2x Rubbleback Rhino
1x Angel of Serenity

Spells - 5:

1x Giant Growth
1x Soul Tithe
2x Common Bond
1x Annihilating Fire

Land - 17:

6x Forest
5x Plains
1x Swamp
1x Mountain
2x Transguild Promenade
1x Rakdos Guildgate
1x Selesnya Guildgate

Analysis: Frankly this isn't the best draft deck I've ever built. It lacks synergy and there are a number of cards in here that would clearly be better in other decks. The Arresters are probably the best example of this phenomena; in an Azorious deck like the one I posted above this card would be pretty amazing. Unfortunately I lacked the steady stream of cheap flyers or 3/3 beaters you need to make casting an early Arrester relevant and typically they simply served as "2 turn" speedbumps in this deck. What I did have going for me however was a Mythic-rare Angel, two very hard to kill Hexproof beaters and two copies of "whoop ass in a can": Common Bond. It is absolutely, straight up impossible to participate in creature combat in this format and not generate a potential 3 for 1 for an experienced opponent holding this card with untapped mana. I started the night wondering if I should have second picked my first Common Bond and ended it wondering why the card was still in the pack for me to choose 2nd overall. Whether it was on offense, defense, in response to burn or just to make my Hexproof Rhino bigger, Common Bond flat out won me games all night. I was also mildly impressed with Brushstrider, Centaur Healer, Sunspire Griffin, Gatecreeper Vine and the card that let me find 23 playables; Axebane Guardian. Unfortunately all of the 3/2's were just as bad as you'd expect them to be and I think I sideboarded out Oak Street Inkeeper before game 2 every match. I managed to win my first two rounds while dropping a single game and then offered my 1-1 opponent a 3rd round draw because it would guarantee we'd both prize (1st for me, 3rd for him). The lesson here is "Common Bond is ridiculous".

Well folks that's about all we have time for today. I'm starting to feel pretty tired and the people who care for me keep asking me to listen to my body more, so I think I'm going to take a nap now. I missed Magic but more importantly I really missed the people who make Magic so special for me. Our shop is getting more RtR on Friday so I'll probably be back soon to talk about the other 3 guilds in Limited and some of the cooler constructed decks I've been testing. I've been stealing deck lists off Magic mastermind Seth Burn and writing the names of cards I don't own on basic lands until I can buy a case on Friday. For those of you looking for a sneak preview, lets just say "Nina's got Wurms". Until next time folks, thanks for reading and always remember that you don't have to pass the pack just because the annoying guy to your left makes all of his picks in 15 seconds flat. Ciao.















 

"If I Had Roughly Seventy-One Dollars" - A Budget Standard Deck

Let's be honest with ourselves for a moment folks; the world economy is going to hell in a hand-basket as I'm typing this here today. I won't get into the particulars of why this is happening (that's a very serious subject) but I think it's safe to assume that budgets are shrinking all over the planet right now. Times are tough and they're only going to get tougher; soon we may see a day where players might have to choose between foiling out their EDH decks and the latest completely useless Apple product on the market! Okay, obviously I'm joking with you guys a little bit here but the truth is that not everyone in our community can afford to run out and buy "the best Standard deck" in Magic at the drop of a hat. Whether it's due to age, a lack of employment or because psychotic bankers/tax collectors stole your money, a sudden lack of "liquidity" shouldn't prevent you from enjoying small Magic tournaments and FNMs.

Of course, this is the part where you sarcastically roll your eyes at me and stop listening. Right now you're thinking "well that's all fine and dandy Nina but not everyone enjoys getting their ass handed to them by internet savvy munchkins who can bankroll their decks on mom and dad's credit card". Relax, I understand that losing isn't very much fun and that part of "enjoying" a Magic tournament is believing you have some chance to win the damn thing; or at least be competitive. While nobody can change the law of supply and demand as it pertains to Magic singles, building a competitive deck on a budget has become something of an online "Holy Grail" recently. In the past six months there has been a mini explosion of articles on the "Magical Internets" specifically catering to the FNM or MtGO player on a budget. Some of my personal favorites include Jon Corpora's 52 FNMs (when he's writing about a budget list), @Tangent's MtGO Hero and of course FNM Hero by Jon Medina. The efforts of these gentlemen on behalf of budget Magic players everywhere are truly "heroic" (forgive me!) and I strongly recommend you add these articles to your regular reading list if you're grinding FNMs. Of course it never hurts to have options and in this vein I'd like to share the budget deck I've been working on with you today:

"Hungry Like the Wolf" - Gruul Aggro (Standard Budget):

Creatures -26

4x Llanowar Elf 
3x Arbor Elf
4x Bird of Paradise
4x Flinthoof Boar
3x Stormblood Berserkers
4x Strangleroot Geist
4x Wolfir Avenger  
 
Spells - 14

4x Rancor
3x Pillar of Flame
3x Incinerate
4x Beast Within

Lands - 20

4x Copperline Gorge
6x Mountain
10x Forest

Sideboard - 15:

3x Autumn's Veil
2x Ancient Grudge
3x Arc Trail
3x Combust
2x Crushing Vines
2x Overrun


Now, before go any further please allow me to confess that I haven't playtested this deck very much, yet. As those of you who follow me on Twitter are aware I've spent most of the past week either working or writing; aside from a bunch of Sealed matches to test the format, I haven't been playing much Magic at all. I have however been sneaking in literally hundreds of "goldfish" draws when I'm alone at work and it's easily won the few matches I've played on a popular online emulator that shall not be named. At this point I feel that both the deck concept and it's basic framework are fundamentally sound. Ultimately the final build may change slightly but this list is a good starting point for the "budget" G/R aggro player at a bare minimum.

Taking a closer look at the deck the first thing you should notice is that it's ridiculously cheap. There are only 8 rares in the entire build and they are about to rotate out of Standard in 3 months so it should be easy to pick them up on the cheap; for either cash or trade value. Additionally there are a few cards that I would define as "premium" uncommons in this build: Strangleroot Geist, Rancor and to a lesser degree Beast Within/Wolfir Avenger all come to mind. Despite these issues, I was able to price this entire deck out at just under $71 on Star City Games and I'm certain that a resourceful trader could easily come in $10-15 under this price by acquiring the commons/uncommons in bulk. This is assuming that you don't actually own any of the cards on the list already; I mean who doesn't have Llanowar Elves and basic lands? In other words, even if you bought this entire deck at full retail from a convention dealer's table it's probably cheaper than a night out with your drinking buddies.

Naturally just being inexpensive isn't going to be good enough here; after all if you were just looking for the cheapest possible way to play Magic you could buy an intro deck and some penny sleeves for about 12-15 dollars. No, we're looking for some sort of return on our investment folks and that means building decks that can legitimately 3-1 a small tournament or X-2 a longer event to ensure we earn some prizes. We like prizes because winning them means we have to buy less product to remain competitive and thus reduces our overall cost of enjoying tournament Magic. So how does this deck give us realistic chance against all of the other decks we can't afford to build?  I'm glad you asked, let's take a look at some of the core ideas this deck is built on:

Faster than a Snapcaster:  One of the simplest ways to overcome an opponent who's deck is significantly more powerful than yours is to simply outrun him. To be fair, this isn't exactly easy in the current Standard environment because most of the good decks are actually pretty fast.  Pretty fast isn't the same as a single-minded devotion to the "cult of speed" however and this deck has two distinct ways of "going faster" than other builds in the format. First it's built on an extremely cheap mana curve; there are 18 spells that cost 1, 14 spells that costs 2 and a mere 8 spells that cost 3 mana in this design. Additionally, there are absolutely no 4 drops in the entire deck. Finally because we've frontloaded all of our spells into the first 3 turns we don't need nearly as many lands as our opponents; leaving more room for hyper efficient 1,2 and 3 mana spells. By building our deck this way we not only improve overall consistency but we also maximize our chances of having a "live" play of the appropriate cost on turns 1-3. The plan here is to guarantee that we not only draw better opening hands than our opponents but also that we're casting more powerful spells than they are during these key first 3 turns. Naturally the drawback here is that for every turn the game goes past 4; odds are pretty good that our opponents will be casting more powerful spells than we are. If we can't capitalize on the early lead we generate in the first 3 turns we will all but assuredly be eventually buried under a pile of enemy mythic rares. This build also generates speed by threatening damage "out of nowhere" with the haste trait (Geist, Boar), the Flash mechanic (Wolfir Avenger) and powerful instants (Incinerate, Beast Within). The idea is to make it extremely difficult for your opponent to properly estimate combat damage because he never knows how much damage he's facing or even how many attacking creatures there will be by the start of your next attack phase.

One Inch Punch: Do you know what else most of these 1-3 casting cost, seemingly innocuous little spells have in common? They are almost to a man undercosted and/or overpowered by traditional Magic standards. All things being equal you aren't supposed to get 3/3's for 2 mana without significant drawbacks, your creatures and auras as supposed to stay dead when they're killed and your opponent usually gets a main phase to deal with your monsters before they come crashing in on his life total. This deck breaks these "rules" on a fundamental level and for the most part it does so with creatures that have beneficial abilities rather than debilitating drawbacks. The best example of a card that "breaks the rules" in this deck however isn't a creature at all, it's M13 reprint Rancor. I won't get into a full review of all the sick things Rancor can do here because I've already written about it elsewhere but suffice to say drawing and casting an early Rancor will significantly increase your chances of winning games with this deck. In short despite this build's lack of expensive rares and focus on low casting cost options it's actually surprisingly powerful as a whole. It's not the most "broken" deck in Standard but you aren't exactly showing up to battle with the cardboard equivalent of a slingshot either.

A Can of Whoop-Ass: While there's really no way to account for every opposing deck you'll face at a given FNM there are certain universal truths these events share in common. For example no matter where you play Magic you'll probably have to kill some Restoration Angels if you want to win your FNM. Likewise there's a good chance you'll face opponents running Mana Leak, you'll have to kill a creature that just won't die, you'll have to destroy a Sword of Why Won't You Just Rotate Already and you'll probably have to deal with Spirit Tokens of one form or another.  These are the among the most popular cards in Standard for a reason folks; because their damn good at winning games of Magic. Rather than complain about a lack of creativity however I prefer to use this slavish devotion to netdecking to our advantage and specifically tailor our deck to deal with these commonly played cards. To some degree this is accomplished already in the main deck; we're running Pillar to trump Undying, our mana curve renders counterspells largely irrelevant and Rancor tramples over Spirit Tokens with shocking ease. Unfortunately no 60 card pile can answer everything and that's where our highly targeted sideboard hate package comes in. Got a Sword of War and Peace problem? Bring in a couple of Ancient Grudges and a Crushing Vines in game 2. Did you struggle against Restoration Angel or Hero of Bladehold? Combust is ready and waiting in your sideboard. Do you expect your opponent to sideboard in Timely Reinforcements for game 2? Grab your Arc Trails and Overruns to make his Soldier tokens purely academic. No sideboard strategy is perfect but by specifically attacking cards we're absolutely certain we'll play against at FNM we maximize our chances of "stealing" some prize money with our budget deck.

What do ya say gang? Do I have your attention yet? This deck is fast, powerful and specifically tuned to perform well in the current Standard environment. What's more, it can be easily adapted to address outliers at your own FNM because both red and green have access to a number of quality common and uncommon "silver bullet" sideboard cards. Just drop the cards in your sideboard that you aren't bringing in and replace them with whatever you need to solve the problem at hand. All's fair in love and FNM; there's no rule against tailoring your decks to beat the players and builds you know you'll face week in, week out in your environment. For those of you actually interested in giving the deck a spin this Friday, I've included some play tips based on my (admittedly limited) experiences with the deck below:

Don't keep bad hands: Yes, this is probably just a good rule in general if you want to be successful at tournament Magic. In this case however it is especially important that you learn how to properly and sometimes even aggressively mulligan with this deck. Face it; you don't draw cards, your deck is geared entirely towards turns 1-4 and if at all possible you've like to cast at least one copy of Rancor per game. You don't have time to draw into the right cards and while you can probably win games without playing a 1 drop, you will be dead in the water on any opening hand that doesn't start attacking until turn 4. Your ideal hand probably has a mana dork, 2 lands, 2 "beaters" a removal spell and a Rancor but obviously not every hand you have to keep will be this strong. You simply can't keep hands like 4 land, 2 mana dorks and a Beast Within however and expect to win with this deck. If you absolutely, positively must tempt fate by keeping loose hands full of random 1/1 dudes at least make sure you've got a Rancor handy to simulate a "threat-like substance". 

Think ahead: If there's any real trick to playing this deck successfully it's knowing how to properly sequence your early plays to set up more effective attacks later in the game. Quick, you're on the play, you have Gorge, Forest, Arbor Elf and Bird in hand; what's your first turn play? Relax, it's not a fair question because you need to know what the other 3 cards in your hand are to determine the correct line of play.You probably said Gorge into Bird and you'd be right the vast majority of the time, unless your other 3 cards were Stormblood Berserker, Beast Within and Wolfir Avenger. With that hand you'd obviously want to lead with the Arbor Elf to give you the option of pumping up the turn 2 Berserker. Maybe you'll topdeck a Strangleroot Geist and maybe you won't but by leading with the Elf you'll have a legitimate line of play either way. Let's try a harder one. It's turn 2, you have 2x Forest and a Bird of Paradise in play. Your opponent has no blockers, an untapped Island, an untapped Plains and 6 cards in hand. You have the option of casting Flinthoof Boar as a 2/2 and giving him haste with the Bird of Paradise or casting Strangleroot Geist and a post combat Arbor Elf.  What do you do? This one is a little trickier because the temptation will be to lead with the Geist and cast the Elf to maximize our future options. What's more, you won't be thrilled about casting the pig because you don't have a Mountain yet so he's still a crummy "bear". The problem here is that our opponent is clearly representing Mana Leak and since the Geist effectively counts as 2 cards once he resolves we'll be offering our opponent a virtual 2 for 1 if he does have it. By casting the Flinthoof Boar we minimize the damage our opponent can do with his counter. If he chooses to Leak the boar we're trading 1 for 1 and we can still play the elf. If he doesn't we effectively simulate casting the Geist with our 2/2 pig by giving it haste. This is all a very complicated way of saying that despite it's apparent simplicity this deck does not play itself. I'd strongly recommend repeated goldfishing and at least a couple of practice matches with it before you take it to FNM. 

Keep some in reserve: Look, I know that the temptation to flood the board with undercosted beaters and go to town with this deck is intense. You're on a short clock most matches and the casting costs in your deck make it possible to spew your hand out onto the table with frightening ease. To some degree that's even a part of how the deck wins, by overwhelming your opponent with 3/3 beaters and burn spells. Truthfully however Rancor is going to win you a lot more games than putting a 3rd "Watchwolf" into play will and frankly Rancor doesn't work without a creature to attach it to. In this vein I strongly advise you sandbag at least 1 creature over the course of the game; peferably a Boar or Strangleroot Geist but a random Elf will do in pinch. This will allow you to continue applying Rancor flavored beats to your opponent even if he stalls the game out with boardsweepers or heavy removal. 

Unleash your Beast Within: Do you like "tricks"? If you answered yes it's a pretty safe bet that Beast Within is going to be your favorite card in this deck before too long. You probably already know about the one where you Beast Within your own tapped land to make a 3/3 before blocks and ambush one of your opponent's guys. It's a pretty cute trick but it's been lurking around since Beast Within was printed so I wouldn't blame you for shrugging your shoulders here. Have you also thought about how Beast Within interacts with the "return from graveyard" clause on Rancor? Frankly neither had I but after @jjflipped mentioned it on my Twitter feed, I took perverse delight in targeting my own Rancor on the opponent's endstep to set up an easy 5/3 trampler on my next turn. In fact you can replicate this effect with Wolfir Avenger by activating his Regeneration bubble in response to the Beast Within, although this takes 5 mana to pull off and isn't nearly as shocking or elegant as the Rancor play. Of course you're going to spend some Beast Withins on your opponent's permanents when the gamestate calls for it but try to remeber that in this build it's included to target your stuff almost as often as theirs.

Brooklyn, go hard: If there is a final piece of advice I can give you to help you win games with this deck it's to be aggressive. Your deck is fast, it's powerful and your going to win a lot of games based on how the first 3-4 turns play out. Playing smart is important but playing timidly absolutely will lead you to lose winnable games and matches. Come out hard on the bell and try to knock your opponent out with a flurry of punches before the game drags out and he can wear you down with more powerful cards. In the words of my favorite writer, "don't take any guff from these swine!"

Well folks, my boyfriend is tugging on my arm and asking for his computer back so that tells me that we're out of time for today. As always I'd like to thank everyone for reading and offer an additional appology for posting a deck I haven't tested much. While I have supreme confidence that this build is the real deal in terms of budget FNM play, I also plan to devote considerable amount of time to playtesting this week. Assuming everything goes well, I intend to take this deck to my local FNM and come back with a full report on it's performance next Monday. Never let it be said that the Cardboard Witch is afraid to put her money where her mouth is and if I'm asking you to try out an untested build the least I can do is offer myself up to the grand experiment as well. Until next time always remember that FNM doesn't have to be a rich man's game and keep it weird.

(PS: If you're still interested in that part about the world enconomy going to hell in a handbasket please feel free to check out Max Keiser's Financial War Reports and in particular the Keiser Report with Max and Stacey Herbert. It won't make you happy, in fact it might make you furious but I promise the material is presented in an entertaining manner and it's absolutely worth watching. I'm not campaigning for anything here, it's just a news program that's genuinely honest about the financial crisis.)

  

Checking in with the Cardboard Witch

Hey gang; it's Nina. I know it's been a little while since I checked in here on the blog so hopefully ya'll haven't assumed I've run back off to grind PTQs. My foot is still a little wonky, work has been kinda busy and as I mentioned last time I've been toiling away on a big project for another website. Thankfully as of 11 PM yesterday evening that project was completed with at best an hour to spare before the deadline. I'm a sucker for drama I guess and it wouldn't be a Cardboard Witch article if it wasn't handed in seconds before it was due in my opinion! :)

In fact completing that article is one of the major reasons I'm writing to you guys today; thanks to the heroic efforts of editor Dave Mantel (@writer1007 on Twitter) my complete guide to drafting M13 was published around 12 AM this morning by Legitmtg.com. For those of you who aren't regular readers of Legitmtg you can check out my article here ; feel free to stay a while and check out the website. Frankly this is one of my favorite MtG sites on the internet because the Legit crew works so far to provide fun, informative and most importantly free Magic content on an almost daily basis. In particular I'm fond of Jon Medina's FNM Hero articles and Heather Dawn's hilarious, thought provoking, regular feature 20 Tweets . I'd also be much obliged if you guys would leave some comments on my article using Facebook; simply put it's be nice to have some tangible evidence people are reading my stuff to convince the editors over there to publish more of my work. Help a girl out fellas (and ladies)? :)

Of course, while I'm here I might as well share some sick brags. Last week I managed to finally hobble out for FNM after roughly 6 weeks without tournaments. I was a little worried that I'd be rusty/out of touch with the current environment but as it turned out I was fine.  I went 7-0 (14-3) over the course of two tournaments with a slightly modified version of Scott MacCallum's (@mrscottymac on Twitter) "Esper Angels" deck and managed to pick up a couple foil copies of Forbidden Alchemy to give away as gifts to friends. Overally I was mostly just happy to get back to playing "real" Magic after sitting out so many tournaments with a mangled foot. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend FNM tonight because of work issues but I did get a pretty nice "pick me up" today, read 'em and weep boys:

Regrettably, due to work, health and "still not having a passport" reasons I won't be able to actually attend the FNM Championships even with WotC volunteering to pick up my tab. I'm a little bummed out about that of course but to be honest with you getting the invite is still pretty gratifying anyways. I'm also a little ashamed to admit it but this is the coolest thing I've "won" in Magic after my invite to last year's Canadian Nationals. It's not the worlds greatest accomplishment but I guess it's nice to have something to prove that I'm at least getting better at magic after all of this time.

Finally I'd like to remind all of you out there that we still have a contest going on here on The Cardboard Witch.  As mentioned previously on this blog I'm still looking for a mono blue casual deck to complete my set of 5 Demo decks.  The rules are posted in the the link above and entries are accepted in the comments section of that article.  The contest closes August 1st and the best choice as judged by the love of my life (Leon) will earn it's author an absolute free, shipped copy of Entreat the Angels and Tamiyo the Moon Sage.  Right now there's only about 7-8 entries so you still have a VERY good chance of winning prize if you show off your "casual" deckbuilding skills before August 1st.

Well folks that's about all my fingers can take for the moment. I'm sorry this wasn't a real blog post so much as a quick update but I promise to make my way back here soon; I've got a couple of new Standard decks I want to talk about and there's at least 15 cards in M13 that have caught my eye for constructed play. Unfortunately there's only so many hours in the day so these things are going to have to wait until next time. For those of you following me on social media I'm finally on Facebook at: nina.illingworth.7 .  To be honest I'm not using the account much so far except to comment on my own articles at Legitmtg.com but you're more than welcome to send me a "Magical" friend request if it strikes you fancy. Until next time folks always remember to keep it weird and to never take candy from strangers. Unless it's really good candy and the stranger it question seems like a nice man who just happens to own a walk in freezer.

-nina

Bonus Content:

So, as it turns out I have some of the coolest friends on the planet. I was pretty bummed out last night about missing FNM and I resigned myself to an evening without Magic sometime just after 6PM. Just as I was about to settle into a massive funk and start binging on junk food 3 of my friends/teammates stopped by the shop randomly to chat about Magic. One thing lead to another and pretty soon we had an impromptu 4-man M13 sealed tournament going and it was quickly agreed that once again this tournament was for the title of Champion of the Universe. Team Dickwolf doesn't screw around folks and after 3 epic rounds that may or may not have featured my opponent's constantly mana flooding I was able to win said title. While unfortunately I've already sorted the sideboard/pool back into my collection as it turns out I still have the actual deck in front of me so I thought I'd share it with you guys:

"My Kingdom for a Jungle Shrine"- Champion of the Universe Winner

Creatures - 12:


1x Flinthoof Boar
2x Arms Dealer
1x Reckless Brute
1x Yeva's Forcemage
1x Bladetusk Boar
2x Primal Huntbeast
1x Sublime Archangel
1x Fire Elemental
1x Garruk's Packleader
1x Captain of the Watch

Spells - 11:

2x Prey Upon

1x Rancor

1x Farseek

3x Krenko's Command

1x Flames of the Firebrand

1x Oblivion Ring

1x Captain's Call

1x Turn to Slag

Lands - 17:

6x Forest

6x Mountain

3x Plains

1x Evolving Wilds

1x Sunpetal Grove

Analysis: As far as pools go this one was a classic case of opening strong cards in all 5 colors but lacking the depth to easily commit to any 2 of them. Believe it or not this pool also had a Vampire Knighthawk, a Talrand's Invocation and 2 Welken Terns. Unfortunately my remaining black/blue playables were pretty awful overall and I eventually realized I had 2 choices.  I could play a G/W deck with about a billion 2/x white "Bears" (2x Silvercoat Lion, 2x Ajani's Sunstriker) and splash the Flames of the Firebrand or I could just refuse to play all of my marginal white cards and go G/R splashing 2x WWX bombs instead. As you can see I chose the raw power of the Naya build and I'm pretty happy with the results. This deck looks really clunky but it actually has a tremendous amount of synergy and multiple ways to actively win the game. Whether it's a tokens + Exalted victory, a Packmaster + Hill Giants draw engine or just combining Arms Dealer and random Krenko's Command tokens this deck has a LOT of amazing things going on during game play. More importantly it was riotously fun to play; even if I was hanging around with a bunch of Dickwolves. :)

Goodnight folks

-nina (actually going to bed this time)