With the recent release of Conflux into the fray, we’re beginning to see changes coming along because of the recent additions. While I’ve been pretty focused on Extended as a format of interest of late, Standard has caught my eye once again… while I won’t be playing Standard for the events in question, it’s certainly interesting that Star City Games is running another one of their famous $5000 Standard Opens next weekend, which is followed quickly by Pro Tour: Kyoto. Worlds did a pretty good job of hammering home what the pre-Conflux Standard metagame looked like, and while Conflux doesn’t seem to be shaking up brand-new archetypes for the most part, it does have a lot of game-changers in the set.
The biggest one, overall, is the printing of Volcanic Fallout. To some, this is a statement of the obvious… but the funny thing about the obvious is, sometimes it needs to be said. The two most popular decks in the format for Day 1 of Worlds were Faeries and Black-White Tokens. In fourth and fifth were Red-White and Mono-White Kithkin. None of these decks want to see an uncounterable, instant-speed Pyroclasm, and yet here it is. One could argue that the Worlds results will inform the Standard metagame, so we can expect an outcome more like the Top 8 than like the starting field… but with a whole passel of cards to be worked in, neither approach by itself will really cover the format change. After all, two of the better decks in Standard didn’t make Top 8 at all, but surely one must be aware of both the Red-White and Esper-flavored Reveillark decks if you want to consider yourself prepared for the format.
Rather than attempt to do a full set review for Conflux, I’m going to step through the top decks from Worlds and look at how Conflux might change the format as we know it… both by providing new cards to add to a deck, and new cards attacking each deck.
Creatures (12)
Lands (25)
Spells (23)
Sideboard
First up, and possessed of five total copies among the Top 8, we have Faeries. We all know it, we sort of love it, and if nothing else we looooooooove to hate it. Bitterblossom has even started to see play in Vintage, I’m told, to complete the sweep of Faeries being awesome in all formats ever… even new formats we haven’t even invented yet, like Singelton Highlander Peasant Type Five, coming soon to a Pro Tour: Mars near you! (Okay, well maybe not actually near you, if it is in fact on Mars.) You’d have to be living under a rock to not know that Faeries is “pretty good in Standard,” and Conflux does some shaking up of the status quo here.
Faeries doesn’t get anything of interest… no, it gets new problems to face, all with the keyword “Uncounterable.” Two huge game-changers come from the color Red, Volcanic Fallout and Banefire, and both show us that no, really, you might not be in as much control as you think you are. Five-Color Control can conceivably play both in its arsenal, since “you can cast anything!” is sort of a theme and a Banefire end-game is a reasonable path to start going down alongside / instead of Cruel Ultimatum-based Five-Color Control. Mono-Red decks are already a poor matchup overall for the Fae but can conceivably play either or both at their leisure, and are almost certainly going to be packing at least Banefire in the main-deck to solve those “my opponent stabilized at five” problems that just come up from time to time.
I’m showcasing Malin’s Faerie deck, because it is the best example of one that is already “evolved for the times.” Malin’s deck features Thoughtseizes and Vendilion Cliques, which are sure to be key at containing the new Red threats that are not polite enough to allow you to counter them. Already, Malin eschews the Scions of Oona that are clearly just poor against a world filled with Volcanic Fallout, ahead of his time by several months perhaps. Perhaps most interestingly, however, is that instead of having to choose between Broken Ambitions and Remove Soul as his turn 2 counterspell of choice, he plays both, and a full set of Thoughtseizes besides.
In a world preparing to face down against the Faerie Menace, it is a decklist like this that appears to be best prepared to handle these new challenges. It is also adequately prepared to handle the mirror match, so… either a heavy Faeries or a heavy anti-Faeries metagame, whichever you predict, it’s prepared.
Creatures (11)
Lands (26)
Spells (23)
Five-Color Control is a deck that is practically, by definition, mutable and capable of changing with the times. In my mind, this means that it can add any new card that interests it, and adjust its strategy to meet the new angles of approach that opponents are pointing its way. Here you can see one of the less well-placed Five-Color Control decks, worthy of note if for no other reason than that it is highly visible… but if you want to know about Five-Color Control, it is innovation you are looking for. Patrick Chapin has just this past week put up his first re-tooling of 5c Control for the new Standard, but in addition to looking at Parke’s second-place deck, you might also want to note one of its highly-placing competitors from within the same archetype:
1 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
3 Flooded Grove
2 Island
1 Mystic Gate
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Sunken Ruins
4 Vivid Creek
3 Vivid Grove
3 Vivid Marsh
2 Vivid Meadow
2 Broodmate Dragon
2 Cloudthresher
4 Mulldrifter
3 Plumeveil
1 Ajani Vengeant
4 Broken Ambitions
1 Courier’s Capsule
2 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Cryptic Command
4 Esper Charm
1 Liliana Vess
2 Pyroclasm
2 Terror
2 Wrath of God
Sideboard:
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Broodmate Dragon
2 Cloudthresher
3 Condemn
1 Firespout
2 Negate
4 Vexing Shusher
I think things change with the times, and that both of these versions have successful elements to include as part of their strategy. Patrick swears by Plumeveils, while Jamie was putting Rhox War Monk to work. Jamie favored Remove Souls, while Patrick favored Broken Ambitions so as not to have to guess which card you need to counter on turn two, Bitterblossom or Wizened Cenn. Even their manabases are starkly different, probably to pay heed to the fact that they are casting different spells and thus have different requirements.
However, as important as it is to learn from both of these, nothing is actually the same as in the previous format. Three cards scream to be considered for addition right off the bat, even before accounting for the fact that you could play literally anything you wanted to: Volcanic Fallout, as the “sweeper of choice” where otherwise Jund Charms and Pyroclasms once lived, Path to Exile as a spot removal spell of considerable power, and Banefire… as both something to consider putting to good use, and something to realize is a likely means of killing you as you drag things out into the “late game.” Because of the Banefire situation, I find I tend to be agreeing with the decision to play Rhox War Monk; it inflates your life total to keep you out of Banefire range while also staying above the high-water mark of two toughness unlike its former predecessor in that slot by most going into Worlds, Kitchen Finks. I also agree with Patrick on wanting Plumeveil in my deck… and room has to be made somewhere, of course.
The Cruel Ultimatum Question is not one I am trying to answer, but instead I posit a new question: does the fact that Banefire protects itself while on the stack make it a ‘better’ choice than Cruel Ultimatum? While Cruel Ultimatum is game over ‘if it resolves,’ a sufficiently-large Banefire is merely game over. It covers the ‘if it resolves’ part by itself. While Volcanic Fallout helps to turn the matchup against Faeries from one where you had problems to one where you actually have a reasonable chance for victory, Banefire is what gives you late-game strategic superiority… the sheer act of surviving and doing what you do, playing lands and controlling the board, ultimately turns into actual victory as you tap X + R and remove the opponent’s life total from the game.
I took it on myself as a special project to start working on Five-Color Control, and had a grand plan of playing as many sanctioned 8-man events as I could over the course of the NY Comic-Con weekend. While TJ’s Collectibles ran a solid event, the interest in pick-up games of Standard was understandably small… you could walk a hundred yards and watch a gaggle of Slave-Girl Leias hula-hooping in the (practically) buff, or you could play Standard to win some packs. For obvious reasons, Standard did not win the hearts and minds of Comic-Con-goers, and I got in a sum total of one event over two days of waiting and trying… but Draft, well, that had quite a bit of attention going for it. Slave-Girl Leias still couldn’t beat drafting, especially not with Conflux in the mix and keeping our lives all sorts of interesting.
I’d started with some goofy changes, like trying out Martial Coup, because you have to admit that is pretty close to a blowout against a beatdown deck, perhaps even moreso than Cruel Ultimatum: the game is fought on the board, you get rid of the board, and add five power (or more!) while you’re at it, in ready-to-chumpblock form. Admittedly, they’re wiped out by a single Volcanic Fallout no matter how impressive the X, but I try not to worry too much about beatdown decks with Pyroclasms. It’s just not on the list of things that keep me up at night. However, by the time I was done testing, I was worrying that I had too many cards that were only good if I got a whole pile of mana, and didn’t want to have another one while I was at it. I’d also tried out Path to Exile, as a three-of, off the reasonable assumption that “four-of” is a card that you want to / are willing to cast as soon as you have it, and given that I didn’t want to cast Path to Exile within the first three turns of the game I couldn’t conscience playing the full four copies.
The more I Banefired my opponents out, the more I loved it. Back in the day, when we were all crotchety and played terrible cards in terrible formats, we had to walk to school uphill in the snow both ways, and when we got there, we cast Hammer of Bogardan at each other until somebody finally had the good grace to die. Banefire is the incredibly elegant way to tap mana and cause your opponent to die; count to the right number, add any nonbasic land that can do a reasonable impression of a Mountain: boom, down. Banefire… apply directly to the opponent’s forehead! It was changing the terms by which the game was won or lost, and significantly. No longer did you have to play sorcery-speed Magic to test-spell the opponent and overcome them with unwieldy finishers that they, too, could dance around and respond to with Cryptic Command to kill you by doing the same thing back next turn… Banefire, dead, so do you want to drop?
In resolving all of the tensions and disputes I had with the design of the deck, and by testing its heart out, I reached the following list:
4 Vivid Creek
4 Vivid Meadow
3 Vivid Crag
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Mystic Gate
2 Flooded Grove
2 Cascade Bluffs
3 Island
4 Esper Charm
4 Cryptic Command
4 Broken Ambitions
3 Volcanic Fallout
3 Path to Exile
3 Wrath of God
2 Banefire
4 Mulldrifter
3 Rhox War Monk
2 Broodmate Dragon
2 Plumeveil
Sideboard:
4 Celestial Purge
3 Ajani Vengeant
3 Vexing Shusher
2 Runed Halo
1 Rhox War Monk
1 Wrath of God
1 Volcanic Fallout
Celestial Purge is about as awesome a sideboard card as you could hope for, hitting a number of key threats in a variety of matchups, from Bitterblossom against Faeries to Ajani Vengeant and Figure of Destiny against aggressive White decks and all the way to “every permanent in the Red deck, including Demigod of Revenge.” All at the incredibly low price of two mana, as all good color-hosers should cost. The fourth War-Monk is in my mind a necessity against Red decks and very desirable against Faeries, even if Patrick Chapin hates it… I find I like the Pancake Flipper in a world where life totals are important to keep high lest Banefire come a-calling, because this deck lives by the Banefire but also dies by it. The main mechanism for dodging Banefire death is those War-Monks, and after sideboarding we also include Runed Halo: you cannot counter it, and the damage cannot be prevented, but if you have protection from Banefire, the card literally cannot target you. It has other good applications against a variety of decks, solid in the early-game against aggro and not unreasonable against things like Cruel Ultimatum: if it can’t target, it does squat.
I find myself quite enthusiastic about Five-Color Control, and I’m about as die-hard a Faeries fan as they make when it comes to Standard these days. It feels like whatever the format is like, it has the solution, you just have to figure out what the problems are and work the numbers.
Creatures (24)
- 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
- 4 Cloudgoat Ranger
- 4 Goldmeadow Stalwart
- 4 Knight of Meadowgrain
- 4 Wizened Cenn
- 4 Figure of Destiny
- 3 Ranger of Eos
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (8)
Kithkin could play the Big White Hype, but it’s not an automatic given. Aggressive decks have to pay attention to the fact that giving your opponent a jump on you mana-wise might make your job harder when it comes to actually pushing through to kill them, and while ultimately Path to Exile will have a home here in some numbers, it’s not automatically clear you should just replace the Unmakes with them because they are so inexpensive and efficient. Applying Volcanic Fallout to the format, you’re going to suddenly want a greater number of Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tenders main, just so you draw them more often… after all your one-drop, two-drop plan falls down pretty terribly to Volcanic Fallout, and if you just keep overextending you will keep getting punished. You have to do something cleverer, and the easiest answer is to start playing more Forge-Tenders.
Applying Banefire to the format… kind of makes me want to put Banefire in this deck. Kithkin is notoriously good at getting the opponent to within the last five life points or so before it just can’t attack anymore, and one Banefire can turn the lost game into a won game.
I’d want to see something more like this:
2 Burrenton Forge-tender
4 Cloudgoat Ranger
4 Figure Of Destiny
4 Goldmeadow Stalwart
4 Knight Of Meadowgrain
3 Ranger Of Eos
4 Wizened Cenn
3 Path To Exile
3 Banefire
4 Spectral Procession
8 Plains
4 Rustic Clachan
4 Windbrisk Heights
4 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
4 Rugged Prairie
1 Mountain
Creatures (15)
Lands (25)
Spells (20)
Sideboard
What we are all bound to want to discover is what the new face of Red is going to look like. Red gets a huge shot in the arm from Conflux, with a variety of efficient creatures that happen to say ‘Unearth’ and uncounterable damage-dealing spells. Hellspark Elemental and Shambling Remains both appeal very strongly to the Philosophy of Fire, thanks to the fact that their Unearth makes them burn spells as well as creatures, and able to dish out significant chunks of damage in the attack phase even if you counter every spell they play. This is the new face of Red: largely uncounterable, and quite aggressive. We’ve seen parts of this before Conflux came in, thanks to the fact that Demigod of Revenge can be a bit difficult to deal with using countermagic alone, but there is just so much here that doesn’t actually care if your opponent tries to tap Islands as their strategy.
Banefire might even be too slow for this deck, requiring six lands in play to deal only five damage and even being counterable before then. A good solid framework would probably look like everyone else’s “good solid framework”:
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Shambling Remains
4 Demigod of Revenge
3 Hellspark Elemental
4 Incinerate
4 Flame Javelin
4 Blightning
3 Volcanic Fallout
2 Banefire
7 Mountain
4 Auntie’s Hovel
4 Sulfurous Spring
4 Graven Cairns
4 Ghitu Encampment
1 Swamp
Banefire might be too slow. That’s impressive, in testimony to this deck’s speed… you might not want to wait till six mana to uncounterably end the game, you might just cast Unearth creatures and Fallouts instead.
For the next deck down our list of interesting things to note, we see Esper-Lark. David Irvine finished 9th on tiebreakers at Worlds and has been advocating the deck for some time, most recently here on Star City Games with his additions to the deck after Conflux. Unsurprisingly, Path to Exile makes the anti-beatdown deck even better, even if that is the only change to the deck.
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Fulminator Mage
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Mulldrifter
3 Reveillark
3 Sower of Temptation
4 Cryptic Command
3 Esper Charm
2 Makeshift Mannequin
3 Thoughtseize
3 Wrath of God
2 Adarkar Wastes
4 Arcane Sanctum
2 Fetid Heath
2 Mystic Gate
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Sunken Ruins
2 Underground River
2 Vivid Creek
2 Vivid Marsh
1 Vivid Meadow
Sideboard:
4 Burrenton Forge-tender
2 Glen Elendra Archmage
3 Stillmoon Cavalier
3 Runed Halo
2 Condemn
1 Negate
As near as can be noted, this is what David Irvine played at Worlds when he finished 9th on tiebreakers, sadly out of contention to face on the final day exactly the sorts of decks he designed his deck to beat up on: Red decks, Faerie decks, Kithkin decks, and Five-Color Control decks. One thing I note as worrisome is that we have a board control-style deck that unfortunately tends to get its board wiped by Volcanic Fallout, and thus would be sorely tempted to consider the ‘crazy’ and play main-deck Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tenders. While David has advanced his strategy and gone so far as to take the Forge-Tenders out of the sideboard even, I for one feel that Red is going to make a key resurgence, and even if it’s not Red creatures like a Forge-Tender can block all day, it will still be key Red spells like Volcanic Fallout that will crumble your board position.
… Are there more cards in Conflux than Path to Exile and Volcanic Fallout? While I know that there certainly are, it doesn’t seem to me that anything else really warps the decision-making process quite like they do. Oh, right, I forgot Banefire again! How silly of me!
Defending against Volcanic Fallout might prove key, especially since you can (apparently) expect to see it against both aggressive and controlling decks, from now until the Faeries consider themselves to be nailed into their coffin good and snug this time. Reveillark as a strategy is very strong, but requires somewhat small creatures as part of your recursion plan, and I would look into testing against a Fallout-heavy environment before assuming that what worked before will continue to work now.
Considering that I have zero test games with the deck, and David has a hundred-plus, some of which were at crucial playtesting sessions such as “the 2008 World Championships,” my suggestion if you are interested in the archetype would be to look at Dave’s article from this week, hyperlinked above but also here because we Magic players are lazy, lazy creatures. The archetype’s existence at all is largely due to his work on that particular creation, and its continuing advancement in the format on the road to first the StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open and then PT: Kyoto is an interesting story.
And then there was the last deck of note: second-most played at Worlds, yet no Top 8s, nor even a presence at the top of the leaderboards: B/W Tokens.
BW Tokens: Michael Jacob, Team USA Standard Deck
4 Arcane Sanctum
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Fetid Heath
2 Mutavault
3 Plains
3 Reflecting Pool
1 Swamp
4 Windbrisk Heights
4 Cloudgoat Ranger
2 Knight of Meadowgrain
1 Knight of the White Orchid
3 Marsh Flitter
4 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Ajani Goldmane
4 Bitterblossom
4 Glorious Anthem
4 Spectral Procession
4 Terror
2 Thoughtseize
Sideboard:
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Head Games
3 Stillmoon Cavalier
2 Thoughtseize
3 Wispmare
3 Wrath of God
To many, now, the Token deck is prey. While it stands up nicely against Faeries and Kithkin, with pretty even matchups overall, the previously-good matchup against Five-Color Control starts to erode, and the format-changing Volcanic Fallout greatly cuts into its ease of living. While Michael Jacob didn’t even have Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender in his deck, it is crucial to being able to handle Red decks; without them, you actually have a fight with them, or worse yet a chance to get blown out by Volcanic Fallout… with them, you have a joke matchup, so you should have four. Following up on Worlds, Gerry Thompson reviewed his tournament and revised his listing for the archetype here, to come up with the following list:
Creatures (11)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (20)
Sideboard
Path to Exile might be better than Terror, but then again, since we’re not talking about a fast aggressive beatdown deck, saving one mana might not be all that impressive. There aren’t a lot of Black or Artifact creatures that need killing, so while Path to Exile could make the cut here and be “better”, I don’t see it as strictly better, and thus wouldn’t even include it.
This archetype didn’t perform as well as expected at Worlds, and hasn’t grabbed the spotlight… despite being the second most-played deck in the format, and actually winning Worlds just like Faeries did. It did so next to a Stifle-Naught and Elves Combo deck in Legacy and Extended as part of a three-man team, so it’s not as “glamorous” as Faeries’ win in the finals of Worlds in the Individual portion of the event, but it still shouldn’t be neglected. It functions basically as a better Kithkin deck, adding disruption spells and requiring that it get more bang for its card instead of maximizing the aggressive potential of the deck, in a format that is growing readily more hostile to Kithkin and Faeries. Unlike the Kithkin, this one won’t get blown out by a single Volcanic Fallout, either due to non-creature permanents like Ajani or Glorious Anthem that might help take the team out of Fallout range, or simply due to the fact that spending one card to make multiple permanents taxes their Wrath effects and leaves you a lot of room for recovery.
But even at that, you should be packing your Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tenders. If Path to Exile, Volcanic Fallout, and Banefire are the new hot cards, the old cards that are gaining momentum at the moment are Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender, Thoughtseize, and Vendilion Clique to combat these new trends.
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com