Hello all,

Today I'd like to discuss the issue of Control. Proactive is a fun buzzword for marketing folks, but what it means, loosely, is taking the initiative. When we talk about controlling an opponent, we can do so through reacting to their threats (the best example of this is Counterspell) or by preempting their threats (say, through mana denial or discard effects). In other words, being proactive about controlling one's opponent.

Most forms of proactive control are tempo measures; cards like Winter Orb, Plow Under, or Stone Rain can delay a threat from resolving, allowing your finisher to carry the game. While your opponent may have more "powerful" spells in hand, you attack his ability to use them rather than attacking the spells themselves. Discard can work in a similar manner, nailing the spells still in "limbo" (i.e., in your opponent's hand) before they materialize as threats on the board or tossed at your dome. Again, in order for this type of strategy to be successful, you'll need a quick threat of your own to end the game. Discard is only delaying the threat - after all, your opponent can always topdeck the needed card.

This is what made me rethink the deck I posted last week. While the combination of Discard, Void, speedy creatures and removal can really give opposing control decks fits, Fires still was proving to trump my solutions by having faster and more powerful threats. B/R cannot race a turn 3 hasty Blastoderm and a turn 4 Saproling Burst. Interestingly, it COULD race a turn 4 Blasty and a Turn 5 Burst, if they were not quite so hasty. Fires of Yavimaya is a great answer card to all of my best solutions. Terminate does little against Saproling Burst and nothing to Blastoderm, Flametongue is sorcery speed, ditto for Void, and even when I started dragging in the sideboard, I realized that Perish now needed to be instant speed in order to be truly useful.

Think about that for a second. Perish needs to be an instant. Try and tell me that's not a bit on the scary side.

I kept testing the match-up, over and over, and losing, over and over. Every time Fires resolved, I was dead, even with a double Perish draw. How could this be possible? No deck should lose this often. No single matchup should be this unwinnable. Even if my opponent got seriously land hosed, he'd pull out of it and kill in a turn or two. It was just nuts.

Then I thought about it. I can't race Fires, and I can't control it in a traditional, reactive manner. So I must stop being reactive and start becoming more proactive. This led me to make some changes in the main deck and sideboard to turn this matchup around. I needed to disrupt my Fires' playing opponent, and I needed to lower the curve of the deck post-board. I was literally getting killed with two to three cards in my hand that could have won the matchup IF I had ever gotten another untap phase.

While I don't want to turn this into a case of "My Fires," I'd like to revisit the deck I posted last week.

Void.dec the Return

4x Nightscape Familiar
4x Blazing Specter
4x Skizzik
3x Flametongue Kavu
3x Phyrexian Scuta
2x Crypt Angel
4x Dark Rituals
4x Urza's Rage
4x Addle
3x Void
3x Terminate
2x Dustbowl
4x Sulpherous Springs
4x Urborg Volcano
6x Swamp
6x Mountains

Sideboard
4x Perish
4x Stupor
3x Stromgald Cabal
3x Tsabo's Decree
1x Terminate

Can you see the problem here? It's not a bad deck at all really, (it smashed every non-Fires deck I've played over the past couple of weeks), but it just rolls over and dies to speedy green monsters. Why?

Well, lets look at the instant count in this deck; 4x Urza's Rage, 3x Terminates (+1 in the board), 3x Decree. How many of those spells will kill a hasty 'Derm? Only the six casting-cost Decrees. Yuck. However this is not entirely my fault, since the number of high quality, instant speed, non-targeted creature removal spells in B/R is close to zero anyway, and the Decree is way, way too expensive to be useful against Fires. Enchantment removal and countermagic works great... But I'm trying to build a B/R deck here. The metagame in New England is heavily skewed towards U/W Control decks, and B/R aggressive decks eat them for breakfast. I just needed to figure out a way to go at least 50/50 against the occasional Fires deck.

In order to have reactive control over Fires (namely, killing their creature base), I need to be capable of doing so at instant speed. Countermagic does this admirably, as does most of Black and Red's targeted removal, but Blastoderm and Saproling Burst don't care about targeted spells. Perish is an excellent cleanup card, but too slow to stop the initial onslaught.

Since instant-speed reactive solutions are unavailable or unwieldy, I need to slow the deck down to a point where my sorcery-speed solutions can do their job. Simple enough in concept, but how do I execute it? Discard. If I can nail the Fires of Yavimaya in a preemptive strike, I can slow his Bursts and Derms down to a point where, while they are still beefy, are manageable.

The key is being capable of morphing this mid-game aggressor into a lean and mean aggro-control deck to beat the combo of Burst/Fires post-board. So after putting it through the paces, I came up with an improved version of the deck:

4x Nightscape Familiar
4x Blazing Specter
4x Skizzik
3x Flametongue Kavu
3x Ancient Hydra
2x Crypt Angel
4x Urza's Rage
4x Addle
3x Void
3x Terminate
2x Charcoal Diamond
2x Fire Diamond
2x Dustbowl
4x Sulphurous Springs
4x Urborg Volcano
6x Swamp
6x Mountains

Sideboard
4x Perish
4x Unmask
3x Stromgald Cabal
3x Tsabo's Decree
1x Terminate

Side Note
After discussing this with a great many players, I've got to pass on a tip to those of you planning on spending your hard earned money "chasing" rares. Phyrexian Scuta is terrible in the current format. He may have a place in the creature-light Extended or Type 1, but at present, Standard is sees far too many ground stalls clogged with creatures. I asked a few people at YMG what is the Scuta really good for? "He trades with Blastoderm". That was their serious answer - but why would I want to "trade" at a cost of three life to me? I don't, so let's see if we can do better than mediocre zombie beef. Against Rebels, he's a virtual dead draw and the only deck he really threatens is a U/W creatureless build. Since any deck running discard pounds that one anyway, he's not really helping you win tough matchups. Instead, he's helping you to "Win More" against decks you should beat anyway. We all know what to do with cards that help you "Win More," right? Trade them to little kids for cards that help you to "Win." End Note.

In any case, the Ancient Hydra is a perfect replacement for the Scuta. Not only does he have better synergy with Familiar and Crypt Angels, but he can also get three or four for one against Fires or Rebels. Usually dropping an Elf and Bird, plus dropping a 'Derm, all at a cost of zero life to me.

The diamonds came in to turn Armageddon from backbreaking to simply scary. They also accelerate to five mana consistently than Dark Rituals did. A point of contention is the 22 lands, but with the Diamonds and Familiars in the build, it seems to work out just fine.

The major change in the deck is the sideboard. I merely replaced Stupor with Unmask... But this is a much larger change than you might think. Stupor would be a dead card to board in against Fires (or at least not that effective), but Unmask can really help. It allows the deck to become an Aggro-control strategy, post sideboard.

-3x Flametongue Kavu (too small; most targets in Fires have five or higher toughness)
-3x Void (Too slow and ponderous against Fires. Even cast on turn 4, it often won't do enough to justify tapping out)
-2 Crypt Angel (Again, a terrific card, but 5CC is too much for a non-finisher)

+4 Perish
+3 Unmask (which are still in the build for control, but also help this matchup immeasurably)
+1 Terminate.

This lowers the overall cost of the deck (post board) from an average cost of about four and a half to an average cost of three. Fires, in many respects, plays out like an Extended deck, with all of the real action taking place in the first four turns. Unmasks, Terminates and aggressive Perishing (even if it only nails a Bird and Elf) can turn the game around in those first few turns.

Why Unmask instead of Coercion? Good question, but the absolute key is nailing Fires before they get the chance to drop it, since B/R has absolutely no way to get rid of it if it lands. With Unmask, even if they play first, you get a shot at nabbing it. Failing that, it can take out a Burst or Derm, which is not an insignificant benefit either.

Play Tips
You'll need to be aggressive about mulliganing. You need to start off with either an Addle or Unmask in your opening hand, as it is critically important to stop the Fires from hitting the table. The few matchups I have won against Fires, pre-board, have been because of a successful second-turn Addle.

Targeted discard puts you into the position of being proactive. Nightscape Familiars and Ancient Hydras do much the same thing, as just their presence on the board can hold off threats. Most players don't want to run Birds into Hydras or Derms into regenerators. In turn, this can buy you the time to drop your threats or to generate massive card advantage with a Blazing Specter.

The Fires matchup is an incredible nail-biter from start to finish. Often you can more or less ignore every other card they possess, except for Blastoderm, Saproling Burst, and Fires of Yavimaya. However, if you can gain the early tempo, nailing their Fires and dropping a Blazing Specter, you might be capable of pulling it out.

If you can keep the most aggressive deck in standard off-balance, you can imagine what this deck does to everything else. This could change if U/W decks started focusing their sideboard to beat this deck, but currently they seem to only worry about the mirror and Fires.

That was my reason for choosing this deck. With the Unmasks, you gain effective answers to any of the more common sideboard problems such as Chill, Story Circle, and Light of Day. The Cabals can really punish anyone using heavy White, while the Decree's slaughter a certain type of pain-in-the-butt White creature. Actually, this sideboard may also be overkill against White/Blue decks. If Nether-Go or opposing B/R is starting to become the norm, you may want to run additional Crypt Angels or Pyre Zombies in place of the Cabals. Pyre Zombies are far too slow for main deck inclusion, but might have a place in the sidelines, cheering on the other gold cards in the mirror.

Next week, I'm going to review the upcoming Standard environment for Regional and the JSS qualifying season. If the spoilers are correct, this will be our last chance to enjoy cards like Armageddon, Recall (for all you Turbo-Chant fanatics), Tutors, my beloved Cabal and Perish (heck, nearly all of the sideboard stuff) and lots of other classic cards. The environment will shift radically with 7th edition.

Till next time,

Jon

P.S. - For those of you who remember how my old playtesting group fell apart, I'm happy to announce that a new team has been formed. This team is not as casual as my old group (so I don't know if I'll have terrific tales about Ray of Commanding a Lhurgoyf, swinging for 100+ and then Swording it), but these guys have some terrific Drafting and Constructed skills, so I'm very excited about the prospect of working with them. In particular, I want to send out thanks to Anthony Sculimbrene, who spent a great deal of time testing this deck with me.

P.P.S. - To all of the terrific people I met and talked with at GP: Boston, thanks for taking the time to stop by and discuss Mental Magic, Internet writing, Draft and Sealed strategies and especially to the two gentlemen from New Mexico who spent so much time working with me on my Sealed decks over the weekend. I won't be able to attend GP Detroit, but expect to see me at both DC and Denver. I never did have the time to write up my GP report. Sigh, maybe someday.

Take care, all.