By now you’ve likely all seen the deck tech for Beastmaster. For those who haven’t, I encourage you to check it out now, as I won’t be repeating the information it contains. I also encourage you to read Alexander West articles on our testing, since they contain vital background information, and there’s no reason to cover the same ground again in many cases. I also recommend reading this article by Sam Black that offers another perspective.
In order to prepare for this tournament, I made the decision to form an old school team. With the rise of Magic Online, frequent midlevel tournaments and other plentiful sources of information the incentives to put in large amounts of work have shrunk dramatically. Back in the day, if a format was chosen for an upcoming Pro Tour, no one would be giving out anything beyond the most basic information so you would need to cooperate in order to process the massive amount of work required to figure out a format from the bottom up. If you were on your own, you would have no hope of having a good picture of what you were likely to face, and would likely show up unprepared even if you put in a lot of work.
Block presented a unique opportunity to recapture that old ethos. Attention and work on the format would be highly limited, and the only source of public information was a small number of tournaments on Magic Online that, as expected, were missing many of the best cards and decks entirely as well as not starting until very late in the game. The beach house strategy other teams have been gravitating towards can hope to make productive use of the final week, which it may or may not do successfully depending on how it is executed, but I much prefer to do most of the work long before the last week. I also prefer to test in person, so geography was a major factor.
I knew I wanted to work with Sam Black and Gaudenis Vidugris again, so I decided to form Team Mythic around the dual locations of Madison and New York City and see who else in both areas was available and wished to join. We had a lot of interest but were able to accommodate almost all the New York City players who wished to join, along with a strong core in Madison. There were a number of late additions as well as players qualified at a blistering pace, and unfortunately a few people who would have been worthy additions had to be turned away due to lack of space. The final testing roster was:
Qualified Members:
Christian Calcano
Matt Ferrando
Gaudenis Vidugris
Jacob Van Lunen
Jamie Park
Jon Finkel
Brian Kowal
Sam Black
Steven Neal
Alexander West
Unqualified Members:
Adrian Sullivan
Brian David-Marshall
Donald Lim
Paul Jordan
Steve Sadin
Tom Martell
Lauren Lee
With ten qualified members once Jon Finkel decided to attend, this team was on the large end of good team size. I think the ideal size is about eight members, with a strong core complemented by several readily available playtesting partners. There were plenty of kinks that I will look to fix for next time, but this was a great group of players, most of whom put in the work, and overall the process was a great success. I built the deck, but they brought me back to it and provided multiple key elements. I couldn’t have done it without them. We ended up putting thirteen people in the tournament rather than ten, because there were three additions on site.
First, Brad Nelson asked us if he could purchase the deck we had. He didn’t know what it was, but he did know we were happy, and he was not happy with his options. After getting input from those I felt had contributed the most, it was clear we wanted to help him out, and a deal was quickly reached that left both sides happy. Then overnight Tom Martell successfully ground into the Pro Tour, putting us at twelve.
That’s where we were at about 8:45am on Friday morning when Noah Shwartz told me he needed to talk to me. He wanted the deck, and was prepared to pay a steep price. I didn’t want to give the deck out to anyone else, as it would have to involve much public scrambling and I felt we already had more copies than I would have liked. After all, the mirror is pretty random, and I came here to win this thing! So I thought to myself what price I would have no choice but to sell the deck at, and told him that was the price. He took it, and went off to scramble for the cards. One other player also asked shortly afterwards, and he turned down the same deal I offered Noah. It was steep, and I can’t blame him for turning it down, but I think we can all agree that in the end Noah got a good deal.
In the end, we had an outstanding performance. I believe that if it were not for the six rounds of draft we would have put in a historically dominant showing, but ten rounds was not enough to separate us from the pack to that extent. Despite that, we put two players in the Top 8, who of course were the last two players to get the deck, and put up an insane 66.3% match win percentage across the Constructed rounds. I look forward to seeing to what extent the deck goes on to dominate what Block play remains, either in Magic Online tournaments or otherwise.
The development of Beastmaster came early in our testing process as the third deck that I constructed. The first decklist was a mono-white Eldazri build that sought to play control with a robust endgame rather than be focused on quickly reaching ten or more mana:
12 Plains
1 Kabira Crossroads
4 Eldrazi Temple
2 Tectonic Edge
4 Dread Statuary
1 Eye of Ugin
4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Expedition Map
2 Dreamstone Hedron
3 Guard Duty
4 Day of Judgment
3 All is Dust
4 Gideon Juza
2 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Wall of Omens
4 Transcendent Master
This list was built before the full spoiler was available. Oust took over for Guard Duty the moment we knew the card existed, and we made some adjustments quickly into something very close to this build (Alexander was reconstructing the deck from memory, and was a few cards off of what the list was):
9 Plains
4 Kabira Crossroads
4 Eldrazi Temple
2 Tectonic Edge
4 Dread Statuary
1 Eye of Ugin
4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Expedition Map
2 Dreamstone Hedron
4 Oust
4 Day of Judgment
3 All is Dust
4 Gideon Juza
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Wall of Omens
4 Transcendent Master
The contrasts between this build and the builds that players used at the Pro Tour are interesting. The biggest contrast, of course, is that this deck is a deck with Eldrazi, while the others are Eldrazi decks. They play multiple Eye of Ugin, they play as many as four Kozilek, and they play Green so they can have mana acceleration. This deck didn’t worry about any of that, nor did it worry about the mirror matchup in any way, since I never build decks with that in mind until they have already proven themselves. The other big contrast is that I used both Day of Judgment and All is Dust where builds that showed up almost always stuck to All is Dust. I understand the impulse before sideboarding to not want to overload on removal with U/W as a quarter of the field, but it seems crazy to me to not have such a card available after sideboarding, especially with the threat of Tajaru Preserver.
Obviously this list as presented is unplayable. There are good reasons that the deck migrated the way it did, and while there’s a lot to like about this build, especially the ‘make your own Eldrazi’ known as Transcendent Master, there is no need to go back down this road. First it was a candidate deck, then it was a test deck, and finally we moved on and abandoned it. Later on we discovered a Mono-Green list that did a much better job of getting Eldrazi onto the table in a timely manner and it proved a frustrating adversary. There were some decks that had a hard time losing a game to it, us and Red being the most important, and others that had a hard time winning one, such as W/U. This set up an RPS dynamic that does not seem to be breakable if you stay within those three decks. Gaudenis built a W/G list with Ondu Giant and we all mocked him for it, but it turned out many players took that approach. I’m not a fan, but I understand the motivation behind it.
The second deck I assembled a copy of was the Rock of the format, good old Red. Both Jake van Lunan and I built early lists. This was my first take, as I started off on Expedition:
4 Burst Lightning
4 Forked Bolt
4 Searing Blaze
4 Staggershock
4 Zektar Shrine Expedition
4 Elemental Appeal
4 Goblin Guide
4 Plated Geopede
4 Kargan Dragonlord
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
16 Mountain
There are two very obvious things missing from this list that were universal in the Red decks that showed up in San Juan. First, the lands did not include Smoldering Spires or Teetering Peeks, and second, I chose not to use the Devastating Summons package. These are related, as Smoldering Spires becomes far stronger when you’re going to go all in, but full separate explanations are still clearly in order.
The lands I felt were definitely a net negative on the deck, and my first order of business was to remove them. While it is good to get through with creatures or make them bigger, this deck wants to use its mana efficiently, and it wants to use its fetchlands efficiently when it has Plated Geopede or if you choose to run Zektar Shrine Expedition, which we later divided on comparing with Kiln Fiend, which Jake liked once we discovered that card while drafting. Every time I had one in my hand, I wanted to play it turn 1 so I didn’t have to worry about it later. I managed to convince the rest of the them to avoid them, but the universal verdict of the Red players is that I was wrong with the package in the deck. Without the Summons package, I still would rather go without tapped lands.
Much more interesting is the verdict on the Devastating Summons package, as none of the decklists that have been posted passed on that package, and even raising the possibility seemed odd to many people. This difference had a dramatic effect on our testing, because we had to deal with the far deadlier – at least to our decks – problem of decks that came without the package. While the package leads to some dramatic quick wins, it also lessons the performance of the deck dramatically when the combination isn’t available, as Devastating Summons fights with Kargan Dragonlord so you are highly reluctant to go all-in without being able to attack on the spot. In the games that I played against the package, no one ever seemed to be able to assemble it reliably, and I did better playing a wide variety of decks with the package gumming up the works.
Having seen what happened, I have reached two conclusions on the Red deck. First, at least given the metagame that was out there in San Juan this deck is a poor choice given its results and its issues against White/Blue. Second, the deck needs to run the package, and we have to attribute the package’s lack of performance in testing across a gigantic number of games to a failure of players to use the cards properly and/or simple variance in setting up good draws. However, having the package is the difference between Beastmaster’s worst matchup and one that is not all that problematic, since the package prevents the Red deck from having the critical mass of burn that it needs, and blocking a few men isn’t usually a problem.
Into that context came Beastmaster. As I mentioned in the Deck Tech, the original version had some obvious mistakes in it:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Forest
4 Khalni Garden
4 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
4 Dread Statuary
4 Eldrazi Monument
4 Beastmaster Ascension
4 Awakening Zone
4 Wolfbriar Elemental
4 Kozilek’s Predator
4 Nest Invader
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Joraga Treespeaker
4 Arbor Elf
Most of the core of the deck is there in that initial build, but it makes several key mistakes, especially with the mana, which cannot come close to handling the extra tapped and colorless lands, both of which make each other worse. Awakening Zone is a terrible card in this strategy, as much as it has its charms in some ways, so it left to bring in Bestial Menace to round out our three strong early decks. Later on, Menace would became Vengevine, after which all the maindeck needed was a land cleanup and a River Boa.
Rather than continue to go in linear time order, I’m going to remark on the attitude I took towards the other major decks of the format.
Our experience with Blue/White was definitely one of my missteps, although I understand why I had the beliefs that I did. From early on, many players on the team though White/Blue would be strong, but I resisted until Sam Black and outside information shoved the deck down my throat. Obviously they were right, as it ended up constituting a quarter of the field and holding up reasonably well. Reasonable White/Blue builds were easily available from the beginning online or the deck could be translated directly from Standard, so missing cards can’t be a valid excuse. What happened was I saw several reasons White/Blue was not going to be a good deck. The first was that the deck didn’t do anything. All these builds did was play three good cards: Day of Judgment, Gideon Jura, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Many versions ran as few as nine copies of those three. The rest of the deck is a few counters and card cyclers fighting for your mana to help you get to those few cards, while all the time your lands are constantly coming into play tapped. Meanwhile, there’s nothing you are building towards, other than a kicked Sphinx of Lost Truths that would leave you wide open.
I saw all this inefficiency, with a few four and five mana spells trying to do all the work and so much mana going to waste. I saw huge tension between spells in the first few turns. I saw no good defense against someone going over the top of the deck in any number of ways, the most obvious being Ulamog and/or Kozilek into an Emrakul. Meanwhile, you’re not quite doing nothing, but you are doing almost nothing turn after turn, giving them all the time in the world to find a solution to the puzzle you are presenting. I didn’t want to deal with all of that, I didn’t want to deal with the time problems the deck seemed destined to have (but didn’t), and I didn’t want to deal with a mirror that seemed to degenerate into who wanted to cripple their deck more than the other guy if it ever came to that, although that wasn’t a concern when I thought the deck wasn’t playable. Going that far was me being quite silly, as of course the deck is solid, but it was a deck I was looking to avoid the entire time. When it started dominating online, I was forced to acknowledge that it was a good deck, to the extent that I hadn’t yet caved, but that in turn created a situation where W/U was going to be the primary target and I was confident it could not stand up to such scrutiny.
Looking at the results breakdown makes it clear that while these matchups are a problem, they are a more than acceptable one. Instead of the utter devastation I expected, W/U managed to put up match win percentages in the forties. Given the circumstances, that has to be a huge win. Luminarch Ascension, which we didn’t find for a while, clearly helps, and also makes the mirror more interesting, but that was never the main mistake that I made. The main mistake that I made was forgetting that some cards these days are far and away better than their casting costs, and that the core three cards in the deck really are that good. The version Sam Black was working on even had Sea Gate Oracle to guard against the risk that the deck might at some point attempt to accomplish something, since that would be no good for anyone. I found this far superior to playing more two-drop cantrips, and it answered many of my concerns, although the attempt to also run no Sphinx was a little low on action even for the International Deck of Inaction. It was a worthy attempt, but was later corrected by none other than Jon Finkel.
The basic lesson of this failure is one that I’ve tried to teach myself many times before, and it is not to let personal prejudice or what I am willing to play interfere with exploration of a format. White/Blue Control might have had deadly weaknesses or holes that couldn’t be repaired, but it was obvious that players were going to try it, and my team wanting to try it so badly was even more evidence of that. I needed to work on the deck and make it the best I could make it, regardless of whether I considered it a candidate, because understanding all the major strategies is vital to understanding the overall format.
The RUG strategy was also not given its due by our group, for similar reasons to W/U. We knew it was strong pre-Rise, but it didn’t seem to gain anything from the new set, and the lists played confirmed that this was accurate. It became quickly clear that Beastmaster and Small Red (as we called the deck we ran) were both giving the deck nightmares, and the logical conclusion was that the deck had lost too much relative power and was no longer viable. It turned out it was viable after all, but we knew we were in a good spot if it showed, so once we knew where we were at we didn’t worry too much on this front.
Koros is the final strategy that showed up enough to be worth talking about. We all knew its obvious power and all the cards that were likely to be in the deck, and we tried various builds that tended not to be as heavy on equipment as the played versions. The problem with Koros is that it is like the W/U of aggressive decks. It has a few cards that, when the time is right, are faster than attackers have any right to be, with Spectral Lynx leading the way, and Adventuring Gear is often devastating. When the deck is on and plays its best cards, it often gets more than double its mana’s worth. However, the rest of the time the deck cannot efficiently use its mana, and once the gas is gone from the tank it is never coming back. There were some fabulous draws, but also far too many where the deck sat home and did not do enough to beat a credible opponent. Beating it required similar responses to beating Red almost all the time, except that its best draws were faster and there was no fear of the Dragonlord, so while we did do a number of games against various naïve builds of Koros, we never got that serious about it as a candidate deck.
The missing deck in the format, from the perspective of the testing we did, was Summoning Trap. We spent a lot of time trying to break Summoning Trap with a variety of creatures and colors including attempts I made that didn’t even get mentioned by Alexander West. Going over that process from my perspective would require a separate look. At one point I was convinced I was going to run a Trap deck, but then we discovered both the changing nature of Red and the rise of the Eldrazi which was a terrible problem for the Trap decks.
Next time I will do an in depth analysis of the final Beastmaster deck. Even if you’re not going to be playing Block, and I appreciate that chances are you have no such plans, a lot of the decks have direct parallels in Standard, and I’ve heard a lot of interest in moving the Beastmaster deck to Standard.