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I've spent a lot of time working on Block, mostly for my own amusement, but also with the idea that I'd be helping a number of people I know that are going to be playing in the event. I thought I'd share some of the Block decks that I've been working on. I had hoped that this article will go up the day that Yokohama starts, but it ended up cutting it too close, and Craig just couldn't get it up. [Story of my life. — Craig, aged fifteen.]
A lot of people predicted that the Japanese, as they have been doing a lot as of late, are going to make a big splash with something somewhat unpredictable. Even if it is just a huge paradigm shift in the already existing major archetypes, people waited with breathe bated on what surprised that they are going to get from the current front-running group of creative deckbuilders in the Pro Tour scene. While we didn't see any sacred cows destroyed by them, a lot of their conclusions seemed to mirror my own on what we should see in Teferi-based decks.
It's simple, really.
Cancel blows.
No, really. It blows. I would use harsher language if I could be assured that it would be printed, but I really don't want to have to stoop to dashes or symbols to express the proper words on the blowage that Cancel blows. The b-word will have to suffice.
A big reason why Cancel is so bad was the obvious front-runner deck going in: White Weenie. As Frank Karsten has written recently, White Weenie has been the dominating deck on the only regular metagame that we have to look at and gauge things from: MTGO. When you're being killed by a swarm and your first really reasonable counterspell starts at three mana, it seems clear that there is something wrong with the stereotypical idea of a counter-control style deck that plans to sit behind counters and card draw. It simply isn't a winning formula.
You can see what it did to Teferi decks, as they warped themselves to try and beat White Weenie and keep their precious Cancels. They ran four Snapback. They cut their Mystical Teachings to a three-count sometimes. They tried to run a solid three-color manabase. They did all kinds of things. But still, as Frank showed us, White Weenie was still the big winner anyway. At least, before the Big Show.
I love counterspells. Maybe there is something wrong with me, but I really wanted to run them. Yes, even Cancel. But, in the end, it just seemed like all I was doing in my Teferi decks was scrambling to kill things. Card drawing was cumbersome, and so, desperate to find some way to draw cards and inspired by Aaron Souders, I decided to run Careful Consideration for my primary card draw.
Instantly, my winning percentage shot up from a dismal 10-20% to a much better 20-25%. There was just one little catch. The stupid Cancels really didn't like competing with the Careful Considerations. Consideration really, really, really wanted to be cast on the main phase, and I didn't have Awakening around to make me untapped and ready with my Cancels. In fact, I almost always discarded them.
If you read the coverage, you'll see that this happened a lot. Cancel was one of the most popular cards for discard for the Teferi decks. My idea was this: if all I'm doing is discarding this card all the time (except for in the late game), maybe I shouldn't run so many.
There is an old Magic credo: the argument “And if it doesn't work out, I can always discard it to X” is a very flawed one. The (correct) counterargument has always been that you should run good cards, and if you have a good discard outlet of some kind, great, but at least make sure that your cards are still good. Roar of the Wurm and Arrogant Wurm are good cards. Golgari Grave Troll is a card that you want to discard. Running very narrow cards in the main deck and trying to justify it with “I can discard it” never really worked well.
This deck was also going to actually run Mystical Teachings to find narrow bullets. The problem with bullets has generally been that drawing the wrong bullet leaves you stranded with it. Brainstorm was the answer in Ben Dempsey's brilliant deck Temporary Solution from Grand Prix: Boston a few years back, and many decks employed this same solution. Careful Consideration, in many ways, employs the same idea. The crazy thing was, Mystical Teachings could easily go and grab Careful Consideration as just a fantastic card advantage card, but also as a means to ditch those dud bullets.
So, knowing that I could run tutorable bullets, that I could ditch the duds, and that I wasn't going to be primarily a counterspell deck, I immediately started looking for the best set of instants I could come up with for Mystical Teachings. And, me being me, I made the deck into a Baron Harkonnen style deck, with which I'd nearly qualified for the Pro Tour (for the uninitiated, it's a recursive control deck concerned with reducing the opponent's paths to victory).
There were tweaks here and there, of course, to have a better set of bullets and utility cards. Brian Kowal, deckbuilder extraordinaire, turned me on to Strangling Soot and talked me out of Whispers of the Muse. The power of Tendrils of Agony made me up my count to two, and other little changes got into the deck until I had this:
| TSP Baron Featured by Adrian Sullivan on 2007-04-29 (Time Spiral Block) | ||
Artifacts 4 Prismatic Lens Creatures 1 Brine Elemental 1 Draining Whelk 2 Vesuvan Shapeshifter Instants 1 Cancel 4 Careful Consideration 1 Funeral Charm 1 Haunting Hymn 4 Mystical Teachings 1 Spell Burst 1 Strangling Soot 1 Sudden Death 2 Tendrils of Corruption |
Legendary Creatures 2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir Sorceries 4 Damnation 3 Gaea's Blessing Basic Lands 1 Forest 12 Island 3 Swamp Lands 4 Dreadship Reef 4 Terramorphic Expanse 1 Urza's Factory Legendary Lands 2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth | 4 Shadowmage Infiltrator 1 Vesuvan Shapeshifter 4 Voidmage Prodigy 1 Darkness 1 Extirpate 2 Krosan Grip 1 Tendrils of Corruption 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir |
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Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
Many of you will notice that, yes, the sucky Cancel card is in the deck. As a bullet, sometimes it does have utility. Spending seven mana to find a Cancel and stop a Bust is well, well worth it. Amusingly, though, it is one of the worst cards in the deck. In the end, there are three - count ‘em... three - counters in the deck. Draining Whelk is an excellent card to tutor for during a dead moment in a game to scare a player into not casting anything, and it can also be a nice random game-ender. Spell Burst can simply be a random lockout at the right times. Blessing lets you “cheat” with only a one-of on the card, and pretend that you're actually having many more copies than you really run on the list.
It's that lockout concept that really drives Baron. As you're playing and the game begins to go long, you'll start drawing into your good bullets with either Careful Considerations or find them with Mystical Teachings. Gaea's Blessing will fill your deck up with as many of those bullets as you care to put back into the deck, and your card draw will find them more and more. Cards that might otherwise stretch your deck out (like the second Urborg) are much less problematic if they can simply be discarded based on your plan for card advantage anyway, and at a certain point your deck is so full of hate for your opponent, the long game almost always goes in this decks favor.
This ability to reuse and recycle cards also lets you fit in the “Pickles” combo. Vesuvan Shapeshifter is already a great card versus creatures, as a cheap answer to cards like Calciderm or Spectral Force, but the big reason that most people have stayed away from the Vesuvan / Brine Elemental slots is that they take up valuable space that they are already struggling to fill. Simply killing the Brine Elemental (not too hard with Sudden cards) completely reduces the value of the Vesuvans, and makes spending the time on the slots feel like a complete waste of resources. If you don't care about the death of Brine Elemental, however, because you can try again later, the whole prospect becomes a hell of a lot more promising.
As I was working on this deck, it started rubbing off on many of the people around me. Kowal made his own Teferi deck, chock full of crazy amounts of burn, and Careful Consideration as card advantage and a way to ditch the useless cards when needed. While the Cancels would zip in and out of his lists, I think that the general lesson - that “break it” is better than “counter it” - seemed to resonate. A lot of the top Teferi decks care a lot more about blowing things up after they happen than stopping them from happening in the first place.
Meanwhile, in an entirely different approach, Ben Dempsey was working on his Red deck. After lots of contemplation, I feel like it can only be called Sligh. It was a lot like a lot of other Red decks that I had seen, but it had a certain something to it that just seemed better and more focused.
Here is one version of our final list:
| Dempsey Sligh Featured by Ben Dempsey on 2007-04-29 (Time Spiral Block) | ||
Creatures 4 Blood Knight 4 Keldon Marauders 4 Magus of the Scroll 4 Sulfur Elemental Instants 4 Fiery Temper 4 Sudden Shock Legendary Creatures 2 Akroma, Angel of Fury 3 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage |
Sorceries 4 Disintegrate 4 Rift Bolt Basic Lands 19 Mountain Lands 2 Fungal Reaches Legendary Lands 1 Gemstone Caverns 1 Kher Keep | 3 Fortune Thief 3 Dead / Gone 1 Reiterate 4 Word of Seizing 4 Browbeat |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
The sideboard is more a creature of my brain than Ben's, but the main deck is essentially card-for-card the same between Ben and I. In a lot of ways, it is very similar to a lot of Red decks out there, except for one thing: it isn't really trying to be sneaky.
The reason that I really like this deck is that it feels like it cheats. Almost by accident, it has cards that are really great against both White Weenie and Teferi. A Sulfur Elemental (or multiples) can be a total nightmare for White Weenie, and versus Teferi decks can often sneak in a few points of damage. Of course, most of these Teferi decks are running their nearly obligatory Cancels, and so they find themselves on the receiving end of a very fast initial beatdown, but when they recover, they are usually at such low life that the copious burn just ends them. The solitary Kher Keep and Gemstone Caverns almost never get in the way of the mana, and while they only effect the game state from time to time, they can sometimes just rip away a win for free. Seeing as this is more common than having it hurt you, it seems like a good deal to me. I'm still shocked that more of the pros weren't running those lands, because they tested fantastically.
Versus other less common decks in the format, you just have a bunch of very simple things going on — efficient men and efficient burn. You absolutely can be hammered to death by a single big creature, but often you can just steal a win because of a small stumble, like Sligh decks have always been able to do. And, of course, sometimes your mana-heavy draws turn into gold because of Disintegrate or Akroma.
In the board, though is where the real excitement is (at least to me). Ben and I are running a few of the same cards: Word of Seizing, Fortune Thief, and Browbeat. Each of these cards can be so potentially devastating against the matchups that they are there for that your post board games are almost inevitably better than your game 1, no matter what the opponent boards. For a Teferi player or any slow deck, Browbeat really is a choice between hells. White Weenie and Green often struggle to deal with a Fortune Thief, and even versus the decks that pack the elimination for it, you force them to spend the time killing it, while you often have the tempo. Word of Seizing can be one of the most insanely game swinging cards in your hardest matchups that usually involve the bigger creatures. Stealing a Spectral Force is such a fantastic feeling, I highly recommend you just put some Word of Seizings into decks just to get the chance.
A note on the Dead / Gone and “random” Reiterate — the deck is attempting to be optimized versus any potential opponent in game 1, so the very powerful Dead / Gone is relegated to the sideboard to come in for those matchups where you know you want a critter-Shock or Unsummon. The Reiterate fits into that special category of sideboard cards that you often never want to see in multiples, but that you can create crazy blowouts with. I like to bring in the Reiterate versus any deck with a lot of targets. Stealing wins by copying a Disintegrate, or the occasional “Call of the Herd with buyback” can be devastating.
While the first two decks I've been playing in Block are honed machines, these last two decks are in the “cool, but not quite there” stage. Still, I find them both incredibly fun, and I thought you might enjoy seeing them...
This first one is my adaptation of a deck I first saw in the hands of the great Aaron “Shazam” Souders. Aaron is one of those inventive people that I just love seeing what his brain has come up with. Back when there was a Junior Pro Tour, he won one, and he's been an on-again off-again teammate. These days he doesn't get out to the PTQs that much, but he had a gem that just got me going.
I'd already seen Walk of Aeons recursion, of course, but I hadn't imagined that it would be doable in Block. In a lot of ways, it is particularly doable in Block. While White Weenie can be a clear problem, but all of the slower decks seem to really struggle with the resilience of the build, and it is shockingly easy to keep the infinite Time Walks going once you've gotten familiar with the deck. Here is the build I currently am running:
| Shazam-Walk Featured by Aaron Souders on 2007-04-29 (Time Spiral Block) | ||
Artifacts 4 Locket of Yesterdays 4 Prismatic Lens Creatures 2 Aeon Chronicler 4 Looter il-Kor 4 Wall of Roots Instants 4 Careful Consideration 4 Think Twice 4 Whispers of the Muse |
Legendary Artifacts 1 Mirari Sorceries 3 Gaea's Blessing 4 Search for Tomorrow 4 Walk the Aeons Basic Lands 7 Forest 11 Island | 2 Aeon Chronicler 3 Riftwing Cloudskate 4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter 4 Willbender 2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
This deck shifts through all of its cards incredibly quickly. Even when you're flying by the seat of your pants, you can pull off infinite turns shockingly often. If your opponent isn't running any disruption at all, it is even easier. Surprisingly, the times when your opponent taps out or simply doesn't have anything in that moment are more common than you'd believe.
There is a nearly infinite combination of mana acceleration and card drawing that you could run in the deck to tailor it to your own tastes, but the concept itself is simple. If you have infinite turns, killing someone is trivial. There might be a better version of this deck out there. I wouldn't be surprised if someone unlocked the secret key and won a Pro Tour Qualifier with something like this, especially after Future Sight hits the scene.
Finally, there's my take on Stompy.
| Primal Beats Featured by Adrian Sullivan on 2007-04-29 (Time Spiral Block) | ||
Creatures 4 Groundbreaker 4 Mire Boa 4 Primal Forcemage 4 Scryb Ranger 3 Timbermare 4 Uktabi Drake Instants 4 Evolution Charm 4 Might of Old Krosa 4 Stonewood Invocation |
Sorceries 4 Call of the Herd Basic Lands 19 Forest Legendary Lands 1 Gemstone Caverns 1 Pendelhaven | 3 Serrated Arrows 3 Spectral Force 4 Whirling Dervish 2 Krosan Grip 3 Squall Line |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
Obviously, the deck is missing a good one-drop. I tried to like one of the one-drops, but none of them really did it for me. Greenseeker came close, but really, no cigar.
The thing that makes this deck really exciting to me is the ability for it to punish an opponent out of nowhere. I've been in games where I had the opponent at seventeen and then killed them the next turn. That's exciting.
That said, this deck isn't nearly as consistent as the other decks. Primal Forcemage can be exciting when it makes your Uktabi Drakes into 5/4 or 8/7 monsters before you even cast your Mights or Invocations, but it maybe they should simply be a big monster like Spectral Force (which is in the board as an attempt to answer an opponent's Force).
I see a lot of people with decks like this running Harmonize, but this never made any sense. Giving a control deck a moment to recover just doesn't seem that great. Punishing them with more damage seems to be the right answer. Yes, the deck has hasty beats, but hasty beats are not the same as burn. There are far more answers to hasty beats than there are to burn. This isn't Madness, that can draw into a counterspell to protect a finisher. It just has to finish them. You can't possibly compete with the card draw of a control deck without giving them time to find answers. Yes, you can win lots of games with Harmonize in a deck like this, but if you can simply kill them, that seems better. And you can.
Evolution Charm is especially exciting in this deck. The best Charms do what Evolution Charm does here. Regrowing a Ball Lightning always seems great, cheating on mana seems great in a beatdown deck, and the occasional Jump has utility more often than you'd think.
This deck is a blast to play. Nothing like this made Top 8 at the PT, but maybe with some help from Future Sight, it could win a PTQ.
All of these decks are very, very fun to play, and the first two are just so incredibly potent. I'm not surprised that we saw decks that played much like the ones I'm proposing do well at the Pro Tour. Maybe something like one of these ones will be perfect. We'll see, though, won't we?
One side note:
Check out this last paragraph of the feature match between Jose Luis Echeverria Paredes and Raphael Levy:
With one counter on one of the Gargadons and three counters on another, Raph could instantly win this game with a topdecked Disintegrate for Teferi. It wasn't there, so Levy played his Keldon Marauders and suspended Rift Bolt instead, making the life totals 7 all. Jose played another Sudden Death on the Marauders and attacked with Teferi, bring the life totals to 6-1. The resolved Rift Bolt brought José to 3, and Levy, in a calmness most of us can only dream about, flashed another Rift Bolt to José, earning the Hall of Famer the game, the match, and (probably) his spot in the Top 8. The audience calmly applauded, although the Swedish contingent was heard to let loose a small whoop.
Hmmm...
Nice Rift Bolt.
Good luck in the PTQ season!
