So by now everybody has seen the new God of Dimir colours, Phenax. When he was previewed (without the rest of the set) it was met with mixed reactions, at least it was on Mythicspoiler.com. Half the people were saying how this card sucked and that they wished that Wizards would move away from the Mill deck, and the other half were screaming at how great the card would be, especially if you combined it with Consuming Aberration. Let that combo sink in for a minute. A powerful combo indeed and almost guaranteed to kill your opponent within 2-3 turns. But that is almost entirely a casual deck. Not that there’s anything wrong with casual, as it drives the market, but what surprised me was that nobody was talking about how this card could impact limited.
In limited this card is going to be a bomb, and in my opinion it is almost assuredly a snap first pick. When you figure that your opponent is running a 40 card deck then draw 7 on average for their first hand leaving them with 33 cards, and then by the time you get to play this baby down they have drawn 4-5 cards more leaving them with 28 cards or so. And with this guy as a milling engine, the games won’t last long. Much in the same way that Jace used to pump your deck in 2-3 turns when he hit the table and milled 10. Only this isn’t a planeswalker, can’t be destroyed or attacked directly. It’s an indestructable God. So there is my limited analysis for you.
But back to the group of people that really drive this game, the casual market. This guy is going to be a lot of fun and people are going to try and work him to death to make the fabled mill deck that seems to have become as niche a collection of cards as classic burn has. So I thought to myself, why not try and see what can be done by combining as many high toughness stall out wall-type creatures in the deck as possible and waiting out Phenax to drop.
Sadly we have no one drop defenders in Black or Blue, but we have several two drops that will fit in quite nice. The first is Doorkeeper, a 0/4 defender which has built in milling already, which works well if you don’t have Phenax out already, but is probably a little lackluster once Phenax is in play. Next we have Murmuring Phantasm, a very simple 0/5 defender for one and a blue. Nothing too complicated, but it will clog up the ground rather nicely. In keeping with going alphabetically we have Returned Phalanx next at a 3/3 with defender and a little combat trick that will let you attack if need be.
Moving into our three cost slot we can find Corpse Blockade, a nice 1 /4 creature that has a little combat trick of sacrificing a creature to gain deathtouch. An ability that should make opponents wary about attacking into you at all times if you have another creature to offer up to the god. After that comes a very nice Hover Barrier, a 0/6 defender with flying to boot. There isn’t much out there that isn’t monstrous that this fat wall won’t take care of. And after that comes an old goodie in Wall of Frost, a 0/7 defender that can cause your opponents creatures to stall out for a turn if they are blocked by him. And then we have the new member to the Fat Defender family from Born of the Gods with Black Oak of Odunas, a 0/5 defender for two and a black that can pump itself up with +1/+1 until the end of the turn at the cost of a Black mana and tapping another creature.
But we can’t rely on just these defenders in order to keep our opponent at bay, we need spells too. Defensive spells, such as Hero’s Downfall, Doom Blade, and Voyage’s End. Cards that can stall out our opponent until we can get our awesome defender mill engine online. Another card that came to mind is Far//Away, a multi-purpose card that acts as both an edict and a boomerang effect. Versatility goes a long way in deck construction.
So where would that leave us? Well, lets throw something together.
Creatures (24)
Spells (12)
Lands (24)
Overall, this is a very casual deck, and doesn’t appear to do very much, but when you get the engine online your opponent is bound to pull his (or her) hair out. It has the potential to be a very deceiving deck.
Until next time,
~ Gerald Knight
Creatures (16)
Other Spells (18)
Sideboard
Owen Turtenwald takes down the first standard tourney of the year with what is becoming his stock Mono-Black Devotion. What an excellent way for him to start off 2014 after having such an incredible run last year! Owen won two GPs back 2 back in completely different formats last November, one of them here using a solid Mono-Black Devotion build. There were also two winners at the SCG LA in December here, one from the Standard Open and the other the Invitational mixed Legacy with Standard. When we compare Owen’s list with the last three we showcased, we see it’s mostly streamlining the list to fight the metagame. He removed Erebos, God of the Dead from the main and opted for 3 in the sideboard, which is strong card advantage against control decks and stops life gain from Sphinx’s revelation. Adding more Pharika’s Cure against aggro decks like White Weenie and RDW to both remove and heal back a few life points, and finally a full set of Devour Flesh which is supremely useful against Blood Baron of Vizkopa. Mono Black Devotion shows that it is still one of the biggest contenders in the current Standard meta. I can’t wait to see how it holds up and gets further tweaked once Born of the Gods is released.
UB Control – Dimir Control
Yasooka, Shouta
4th place GP Shizuoka 2013
Lands (26)
Creatures (4)
Other Spells (24)
Planeswalkers (6)
Sideboard
After what was becoming a stale Standard meta abundant with Mono-Blue, Mono-Black and UW Control reigning supreme the Japanese Grand Prix in Shizuoka showcased for us more somewhat fringe decks. I’ve already broken down two new top decks with the GP champion Orzhov Human by Ryo Nakanada and second place Esper Human/Midrange by Shota Takao. These new decks are tuned for the meta with favorable match ups against those top three decks in Standard, something you’d expect when the Japanese start brewing. I wanted to call this deck Dimir Devotion because of it’s Master of Waves, but this is definitely much more then your standard UB control deck using a plethora of removal, counters, draw and disruption coupled with it’s finishers: Master of Waves and Prognostic Sphinx. Blue and Black has a very nice mana base with Dimir Guildgate, Watery Grave and Temple of Deceit so Shouta was able to add the full set of Mutavaults.
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver could be considered a finisher, but his role is more against aggro decks where he slows them down by using +2 ability to exile the top three cards, followed by his -X to bring one of opponents creatures that was exiled to the battlefield usually as an additional blocker. He could become a problem for UW Control if you just keep using his +2 ability mill all his answers and hopefully their Elixir of Immortality till you finally ultimate which is usually good game. What you want to do against midrange and other control decks is bring in your Pack Rats from sideboard and flood the board with rats. Our next planewalker in the list is the good ole MVP for all control decks with a set of Jace, Architect of Thought who’s just great at slowing down the beatdown from aggro as well. Continuing down the list we see more answers against aggro with a plethora of black removal such as singletons Devour Flesh, Doom Blade and Ultimate Price as well as three Hero’s Downfall. Shota also added Domestication which has been gaining popularity in Mono-Blue builds with so much creatures with under 4 power like Master of Waves and Nightveil Specter making them a good catch-all. Another very interesting addition main deck are the three Ratchet Bombs to easily take care of tokens from Pack Rats, any Zombies from Xathrid Necromancer or Elementals from Master of Waves. Yasooka added more originality to his deck with a couple of Warped Physique. There probably mainly used as removal, but I wonder if he ever pumped a Prognostic Sphinx for the win.
It wouldn’t be much of a blue control deck without any counters. Yasooka opted for three Dissolve and Syncopate with a singleton Essence Scatter which sounds good to me. Finally with a couple of Opportunity as draw for late games as every blue control deck does just little less in this one.
The sideboard is tweaked to the metagame with two Gainsay and a Negate to bring in against UW control along with three Duress which seem very sound to me. Let’s not forget the Pack Rats in the sideboard against deck with little or no answers to a turn two Rats, they work especially well with the set of Mutavaults. The rest of the sideboard is pretty much self explanatory with Tidebinder Mage against Green or Red and Gainsay obvisously against Blue decks.
The Blood Baron of Vizkopa have been a common issue lately, but this deck had a lot of counters like Essence Scatter to stop it from resolving and a Devour Flesh main deck. I would prefer Far & Away for it’s versatility cause if the opponent has only two creatures and one of them is the Baron then you bounce the other so the Away resolves with opponent sac’ing the Baron. Another use Far is to bounce opponents creature like a Blood Baron and Thoughtseize it. This deck looks like a fun list, if you like control and your tired of the do-nothing draw-go cycle of UW Control you should try this one out. If anyone sees any more issues with this deck leave comments, i’m sure a lot more people got to test it by now.
Happy New Year everyone
Gregoire Thibault
Follow me on Twitter @Gregsterism
Esper mastermind and longtime magic aficionado Shaheen Soorani battled last weekend at the SCG Invitational in Las Vegas to a third place finish. Fighting through a field of 299 qualified participants he was able to slaughter most every mage who stood in his way. The Invitational, much like the Pro Tour, is a multiformat tournament requiring proficiency in both Standard and Legacy to find success. In true Soorani fashion his weapon of choice for both formats was blue, white and black control style concoctions. With the two byes he had been awarded he drudged to a final swiss record of 12-3-1, the last round an intentional bye with Thea Steele to clinch the top 8 berth. The competition was fierce with hard wins against Tom Ross, Tim Landale, Erik Smith and Jeff Hoogland. Some tough losses came at the hands of Matt Nass the last round of day 1 playing for the perfect 8-0 and against eventual winner Max Brown entering the second leg of Legacy putting Shaheen on the ropes fighting to maintain a top positioning. In the top 8 he was immediately put to the test against Brian Brawn-Duin but dispatched him easily in three games but was knocked out by Greg Hatch after a hard fought five game battle.
Planeswalkers (6)
Spells (25)
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (3)
Sideboard
Creatures (17)
Other Spells (17)
Sideboard
Creatures (17)
Other Spells (17)
This weekends premier tournament results came through huge for Mono-Black Devotion in Standard. Not only was the SCG Standard Open won by MBD but it was the SCG Invitational winner as well. The two decks were 72 of 75 the same list with identical main deck compositions, and only minor meta calls for sideboard tweaks. There’s nothing groundbreaking about the deck but it has matured into a solid fighting machine. The opening of Thoughtseize into Pack Rat has been said by many to be the strongest one-two punch in standard right now. Follow that up with Nightveil Specter or Underworld Connections into Desecration Demon then a backbreaking Gray Merchant and most games can be over before your opponent has even begun. Of course not all games play out quite that perfect so the deck is packed with removal wielding full sets of both Devour Flesh and Hero’s Downfall with a singleton Pharika’s Cure. Speaking of singletons there is also a one of Erebos which still catches opponents with the no life gain clause while also supplying a steady stream of card advantage. The deck can also go all in on the Pack Rat strategy which often is the last permanent you cast once dropped on turn two and is backed up by Mutavault which as rats themselves also take opponents by surprise and turn trades into chumps. Not that we didn’t already know it but this deck will definitely be top tier at least until Journey to Nykthos. Let’s not forget Owen Turtenwald took down the Grand Prix Albuquerque with MBD last month.
Orzhov Control
Marlon Gutierrez
Sideboard
Grand Prix Dallas-Fort Worth Champion Marlon Gutierrez took down the tourney with a pretty spicy Orzhov Control deck. It is strikingly similar to an Orzhov list that we featured last week from GP Vienna. The list is actually exactly the same with the exception of 2 additional Dark Betrayal found in Marlon’s sideboard to combat MonoBlack, replacing a Shrivel and a Wear // Tear. Looks like we were right to keep the Orzhov Control list on our radar and just like the UW Planeswalker Control list we spotlighted last week it was able to climb to the top of the mountain. I doubt they will continue uncontested but we did see a shift in the metagame from a more aggressive field to a more control oriented one.
Creatures (14)
Spells (22)
Sideboard
Continuing along the devotion themed decks we have here one of the usual suspects with a little twist. While this deck is primarily a Black Devotion deck the Red splash does allow for some heavy extra action to be played. The creature package boasts some requisite faces with Specter into Demon into Merchant for the devastating life swings and a miser Erebos for value. The pair of Sire of Insanity can be a real beating especially against control decks when you can capitalize on a superior board presence and strip them of any answers they might have been holding back. A full set of Thoughtseize and a pair of Rakdos’s Return also work hard to restrict your opponent from having many good options left against you. The devotion count is supplemented by standard includes of Underworld Connections and Whip of Erebos which both work to boost your side with card advantage. The rest is a robust removal package geared heavily against both creatures and Planeswalkers with full sets of Hero’s Downfall and Dreadbore backed up with a pair of Mizzium Mortars. All in all this deck looks to have a very strong mid to late game plan and could slip in as an alternative to just straight MonoBlack lists that have been running amok.
Creatures (13)
Sideboard
Here we have an interesting control deck with lots of hand disruption, seven in the main with Sin Collector and possibly three more post Sideboard. Giving you plenty of useful information on your opponents, allowing you to plan out your winning strategy as you chip away his hand. This deck has a very strong removal suite with twelve total in the main, most of the time you already know what your opponents will be summoning so your answers are in hand. Orzhov Control is mostly black with a splash of white for Blood Baron of Vizkopa and Sin Collector less aggressive than its cousin Mono-Black Devotion. Blood Baron seems to be largely a meta call against a field of White weenie (Boros) and Mono-Black Devotion, while Sin Collector is another Duress on a stick. The Pack Rat has turned out to be quite a bomb in this season, otherwise it was just bane in Return To Ravnica Limited. The rats allow you to build an army very quickly with the help of Mutavault to pump them even more. Overall this looks like a solid deck that I’d Like to sleeve up and test it out versus Mono-Blue Devotion. Anyone had a running or tried out this deck please leave us some comments.
