This past weekend was the release of Innistrad, and, if you’re like me, you’re already wondering about the impact this is going to have on various formats. Today I’m going to talk about Limited and Standard, with a particular emphasis on Standard. Since we’re now officially in the midst of an Innistrad Limited PTQ season and the State Championships are mere weeks away, both formats are particularly relevant right now.
States may not mean much in the larger scheme of things, but it’s always been a really fun event that many players get excited about. States is probably going to have a multiplier of two, which is going to make it a less profitable way of gaining Planeswalker Points than FNM. While I haven’t found any official source to confirm this, when I review my play history, it looks like that’s the multiplier they’ve applied.
I’m trying to grind for PWP now even though I’m not really sure how realistic it is to make top 100 for the PT invite or even top 300 for the three byes. I’ve managed to make it to 303 in the world, with a ton of points that haven’t shown up yet, but there are several Grand Prix coming up and PTQs pretty much every weekend, so only time will tell if I’ll be able to keep up. Since that matters to me, I would totally skip States and play in a PTQ if that were an option. However, the nearest PTQ that weekend is in Rochester, NY, which is almost seven hours away!
Now I may be more diehard than most: I played in GP Montreal; I’m planning on attending GP San Diego; and I’m going to play in 3-4 tournaments a week including FNM, PTQs, and 1-2 other tournaments, but I still can’t see a way to justify skipping States to travel seven hours for a PTQ. So with that in mind, I’ve had to spend some time thinking about Standard.
Standard
If you read my first article about Innistrad Standard: “Looking at Standard with Innistrad,” you might’ve been taken aback by the very rough deck ideas, but keep in mind that I was attempting to brainstorm new decks before the entire set was spoiled. Maybe this was a mistake, but I had hoped to gain some kind of edge by thinking about the new cards as soon as I learned they existed. I succumbed to a kind of deckbuilder’s excitement not unlike what I experience every year when the Fall set is released. As more cards were spoiled, this excitement only grew.
Sure, I was relieved that Hawks wouldn’t be carrying Swords, Primeval Titans wouldn’t be finding Valakuts, and Deceiver Exarchs wouldn’t be copying themselves with Splinter Twin, but it wasn’t just the cards that were leaving the format that made me excited to brew. I was also genuinely impressed with the card quality of Innistrad—for both Constructed and Limited.
I focused a lot of my early energy on making a Snapcaster Mage deck work, which might be wrong. After all, it’s the most hyped card in the set, and a lot of people were and are still talking about it. It has a very obvious power level, and it’s hard to do something with Snapcaster Mage that other people aren’t already figuring out or doing. Some ideas include:
- More Mana Leaks.
- More Timely Reinforcements.
- More card drawing.
- Abusing the cheap cost of Phyrexian mana cards (Gitaxian Probe, Dismember, etc.).
- More Snapcaster Mage (recurring with Sun Titan, copying with Phantasmal Image, etc.).
- Let him carry a Sword.
Because of how cost efficient and powerful Snapcaster Mage is, he could go into an aggressive or controlling strategy, and I’m sure we’ll see him all over the place in much the same way we saw Squadron Hawks.
So, my first attempt at a Snapcaster Mage deck was this U/B Control build:
Creatures (10)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (17)
Spells (29)
Remember though that this was before the full Innistrad set was known. This deck was working pretty well, but as soon as Forbidden Alchemy and Think Twice were spoiled, I was quick to change it to this:
Creatures (11)
Lands (17)
Spells (31)
I didn’t think Liliana of the Veil was that great against a control deck, and I didn’t feel like I needed the help against aggressive decks, so I cut her for this version. I began to favor Grave Titan since my Sphinxes always met with a Doom Blade. Part of the unfortunate reality of so many people wanting to play Tempered Steel was that it made Doom Blade the removal of choice.
Forbidden Alchemy made the deck a lot better, and Dissipate is almost a total upgrade over Stoic Rebuttal. I kept the “cute” Morbid Plunder because it sometimes did absurd things (like more Snapcaster Mage!). Admittedly, Skinrender is pretty random, but it was usually decent so I kept it in for a while.
After playing tons of games against Humans, Tempered Steel, Red Deck Wins, and various other control decks—U/W Saint-Blade and Snapcaster variants mostly—I decided to make additional changes.
Liliana went back into the deck as another answer to Geist of Saint Traft, Mirran Crusader, and Hero of Bladehold. She was also better in a control mirror than I gave her credit for since it can be difficult to damage her, and her ultimate can be really threatening.
Solemn Simulacrum came out of the deck because I didn’t want to have to tap out quite so often. Skinrender finally got cut (as he should’ve been from the get-go if not for the unholy love I have for the card—Pro Tip: try not to unreasonably defend a pet card!). I ditched Morbid Plunder for similar reasons, as maybe being too cute and “win more.”
I decided to get entirely in Grave Titan’s corner and took Consecrated Sphinx out. I did try Wurmcoil Engine for a very short time but eventually just stuck with the consistency of the Zombie-making Giant.
Against Tempered Steel, I was winning around 50% of the time, which wasn’t really where I wanted to be. They’d either get a super-aggressive start and I’d come out a little too slowly or they’d stick something nasty like Hero of Bladehold after I tapped out for a Black Sun’s Zenith. The matchup seemed to be almost completely decided by the flip of the coin and who played first.
There were a lot of cards I could bring in for help: more sweepers like Ratchet Bomb and Black Sun’s Zenith, more spot removal like Steel Sabotage, Victim of Night, and Doom Blade. Ultimately, I didn’t think that any of these cards would shift the matchup significantly. I wondered if putting Despise back in the deck might be a good idea, although my late-game topdecked Mana Leaks and Despises were killing me in most matchups.
The Red Deck Wins set was pretty difficult too. Stromkirk Noble can be problematic if you can’t immediately kill it, and Shrine of Burning Rage quietly ticks up like a Doomsday Clock. Chandra’s Phoenix keeps coming back. Koth of the Hammer probably doesn’t go in that style of red deck, but nevertheless it was a card that I dreaded, if resolved.
So that’s two matchups where I didn’t feel particularly favored. I should’ve beaten the Mono-White Humans deck I played against though at least. Right? In theory, my deck can’t be THAT bad against aggro. Can it?
Creatures (32)
- 4 Elite Vanguard
- 3 Mirran Crusader
- 3 Hero of Bladehold
- 4 Accorder Paladin
- 3 Grand Abolisher
- 3 Mikaeus, the Lunarch
- 4 Elite Inquisitor
- 4 Champion of the Parish
- 4 Doomed Traveler
Lands (2)
Spells (26)
As basic as the above deck might look, it gave my U/B Control deck fits. It’s somewhat embarrassing to admit how many times I was killed by the leftover Spirit token from Doomed Traveler! I even lost a game where I drew my whole deck and could play Black Sun’s Zenith every turn!
I could continue with more matchup analysis, moving on to my control matchups (where I was a bit more favored but not much), but no doubt some of you are already wondering why I spent so much time working on and talking about a deck, that for all intents and purposes, was awful. Well, I think that these kinds of explorations are useful. As Edison said, “I didn’t fail; I found a thousand ways how not to make a light bulb.”
Now the real problem is what we’re stuck with for mana bases now that the Zendikar fetchlands and Worldwake creature lands have rotated out.
Even trying to run Inkmoth Nexus in a two-color deck is a risky proposition now without Creeping Tar Pit and Celestial Colonnade. Without those creature lands, decks like U/B and U/W have a greater propensity to flood out or not put a suitable clock on their opponents.
Without fetchlands, tri-color mana bases just got a lot worse.
Preordain is gone, so there’s no help smoothing out your mana there. Ponder is a sad replacement without the fetchlands to shuffle away the cards you don’t want.
Yet I’m thinking the best direction to take with U/B “control” is to add another color. Mike Flores recently listed as one of his “Five Common Deck Design Traits to Avoid” not playing enough colors. The fact of the matter is, our mana bases are harder, but we’ve played more colors with less, so this isn’t anything new.
Look at what the new Solar Flare decks are doing:
Creatures (9)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (23)
Here, our “U/B control” deck gets an additional choice of finisher, Sun Titan, removal that can actually deal with planeswalkers and Shrines of Burning Rage in Oblivion Ring, Timely Reinforcements for aggressive matchups, Day of Judgment as a nice clean board sweeper instead of the often six- or eight-cost Black Sun’s Zenith, more flashback cards with Unburial Rites, AND it still gets to use two of the best new cards from Innistrad—Snapcaster Mage and Liliana of the Veil!
I’m not crazy about Tribute to Hunger, and I wonder if William just didn’t have a fourth Liliana, since the two cards are so similar in function, or maybe he felt that having it as an additional flashback option with Snapcaster Mage was a good idea. There are also no Mana Leaks in his list, which makes me sad, especially since he is running the Snapcaster Mages. The old Solar Flare decks used to run Remand, and I don’t think that Mana Leak would be out of place here at all. However, I could certainly respect not running it. It’s not great against aggressive decks, and this deck might want to tap out a lot on its own turn.
But here’s another Flare list that finished just a little worse that I actually like a little better:
Creatures (7)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (20)
Spells (28)
For starters, I think its mana base is a bit cleaner, and it runs 26 land instead of 25. It manages to fit some really great stuff in: Mana Leak, Sun Titan, Snapcaster Mage, Liliana of the Veil, Timely Reinforcements, Gideon, etc., and it doesn’t run quite so many Unburial Rites or Day of Judgments, which I think is a good thing. However, having no Wurmcoil Engines or maindeck Timely Reinforcements may have caught up with him considering all the red aggro decks that were present.
The point is that these decks manage to fit in most of the same great cards that the U/B lists do but get so much more from the addition of white cards.
Nearly every year at States, I’ve run U/B or U/B/x; I don’t know why, but I’ve always loved the color combination. Now, I realize that Affinity may not have been much of a U/B deck, but if I count it, then I’ve only ever played one deck at States that wasn’t U/B something, and that was Naya. So perhaps you can understand why I would start there for a States deck!
If I were to play in States today, I’d probably run something very close to this:
Creatures (7)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (19)
Spells (30)
Now I realize that it’s probably not perfect. I suspect the sideboard numbers might need to be tweaked a little depending on the metagame, but I think you have to absolutely respect Red Deck Wins and Tempered Steel, and it looks like this deck has the tools to deal with grindy control matchups. You do after all have a lot of 2-for-1s, and Surgical Extraction for flashback cards is definitely where you want to be.
Even though I’ll probably play U/B at States as I have almost every year, there is a lot of undiscovered territory with Innistrad. Heartless Summoning, for example, is begging to be broken by some enterprising deckbuilder. One turns Perilous Myr into a free shock. Two turn Solemn into a free Rampant Growth cantrip. Maybe these things mean something. Maybe there is some unfair way of using the card. While I haven’t found it yet, it’s probably the card I’m most interested in exploring. Plus, it’s black, so maybe I can, you know, still pursue playing my favorite color combination.
As for other strategies, Birthing Pod is still going to be good, but, as I predicted in my previous Standard article, finding the right list is going to be hard since Pod players have to go back to the drawing board. Puresteel Paladin decks might be okay but are probably going to be pushed down by the near infinite Dismembers of the Snapcaster decks. Red decks are kicking the season off with wins, right on cue, but if the past teaches us anything, it’s that this will pass as people adapt. However, States is only a couple of weeks away so will people adapt in time? I’m thinking that Red Deck Wins will still be a fine choice for those looking to play an aggressive strategy, and I’m digging the adoption of Gut Shot.
Whatever you play, make sure that you keep these decks in mind, at a minimum: Red Deck Wins, Illusions, Tempered Steel, Solar Flare, and U/W Control. If you want to play something rogue to punish unprepared opponents, I think Heartless Summoning and Birthing Pod are areas where you might find it.
Limited
While States is important to a lot of people, it’s just one tournament, and the Limited PTQs are more numerous, worth two and a half times more points, and actually offer a greater prize in the larger scheme of things—invitation and travel to the Pro Tour. Not just any Pro Tour either but Honolulu, Hawaii! Getting to play Magic at its highest level is cool and all, but who wouldn’t rather go to a Pro Tour in Honolulu than Philadelphia or someplace like that? I wish Wizards held every Pro Tour in a legitimate vacation destination. Most people don’t qualify for the Pro Tour all the time. So why not make it something really special? I know that I, for one, am definitely more interested in qualifying just because of where the tournament is located!
First I have to win an Innistrad Limited PTQ though, which means two things: Make it through the Sealed portion of the event to the Top 8 and then draft a good deck. The Sealed part is the easiest. We don’t have to worry about metagames or playtest gauntlets; we just get what we get and try to do the best with it. However, I have some thoughts on Innistrad Sealed that might come in handy.
Three-color decks seem normal, at least more normal than you are likely to see in many Limited formats. Your mana base and mana fixing are going to be key. Caravan Vigil, Traveler’s Amulet, Shimmering Grotto, and the new enemy-colored lands could save your life. Don’t be afraid to play an extra land. Drawing first is probably the way to go unless either you or your opponent have a particularly fast deck (they do exist; I opened one last weekend and went 5-1 with it).
- Your bombs aren’t as big of a blowout as in other Limited formats. This is one reason I am really liking Innistrad; there seems to be far more skill involved. There are no Grave-Titan-level bombs in Innistrad, though there are a ton of very good cards. There are no Mind Controls either. Both planeswalkers are strong, of course, but there’s much less of a disparity in power level than in many past sets.
- The timing of your spells matters a LOT more because of the transform mechanic. I held back a Blazing Torch I wasn’t likely to need right away, just in case I needed to play two spells in a turn. Instants, particularly flashback ones, are great for managing transform cards. Suppose your opponent doesn’t play a spell because they’re trying to transform a creature; if you play a card like Think Twice, you’ve just wasted your opponent’s whole turn while advancing your own position!
- Morbid is another mechanic that can create some interesting scenarios, as you try to kill a creature or prevent one from being killed. Sometimes, you’ll use removal differently than you ordinarily would just to make another of your cards better.
- As in any Limited format, study the cards, especially combat tricks.
- The cards of Innistrad are strange. I suggest practicing a lot of Limited if you don’t know what I mean. Many cards are tricky to evaluate at first glance.
Some of my favorite cards so far are:
- Galvanic Juggernaut – a 5/5 for four! Sign me up! Having to attack every turn is rarely a liability since that’s usually what you want to be doing! Untapping him is a cinch. Creatures die. A LOT. And it doesn’t even matter whose creature dies! You can also untap him with:
- Village Bell-Ringer – What a combat trick! And it’s a creature too! Because it has flash, you can manage transform cards either by not playing a card on your turn so you can transform yours or playing this on your opponent’s turn so their card doesn’t transform. Either way, you end up with a creature and advance your position. You can untap guys tapped with Feeling of Dread or Claustrophobia or have an army of surprise blockers or a surprise attacker. All that and it also has Horned Turtle stats, making it an excellent blocker.
- Darkthicket Wolf – One of my Sealed pools had multiples of these, and I went 5-1 despite having not even one removal spell in my whole pool! I had a very aggressive curve of creatures, of which, these were the absolute best. If you’re on the play (and you should be if you have that kind of deck), this creature presents a lose-lose situation for your opponent. Either block it and lose your creature while the Wolf lives or let it through, and then I’ll add something else to the board. In my opinion, this innocuous two-casting-cost common might be one of the best green creatures in the set.
- Bonds of Faith – I was amazed to get three of these in a draft (I ended 5-1). While it’s often just a Pacifism (which is more than a good enough reason to play it), you can also occasionally play it on one of your Humans for an advantage. There was even a game where I played it on my opponent’s only Human blocker so I could use Smite the Monstrous on it and win.
- Voiceless Spirit – Very reasonable for its cost. You get evasion AND one of the best combat abilities, first strike. I was able to get in a lot of damage with this guy, but I was also able to give decks fits because they had difficulty profitably attacking while the Spirit sat untapped on my side.
This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of the best cards or anything, but they’re certainly cards I am more than happy to open. Obviously cards like Brimstone Volley are better, but hopefully everyone already got the memo that removal is good in Limited and doesn’t need me to talk about that. For the record though, I did first pick a Brimstone Volley in my first Innistrad draft, but I also took a Trepanation Blade over a 2nd Juggernaut, which I realize now was a mistake.
So hopefully, you all find information like that helpful and have enjoyed this week’s installment of More Ways to Win!