I'm actually not sold on whether or not I like Young Pyromancer or Dragonsguard Elite, but a friend wondered if maybe with Abundant Harvest we had enough action to use Dragonsguard Elite. I was always looking for something to better fit in the Valki slot, and the Elite worked pretty well. I then tried Pyromancer and while it's also pretty good, I can't really decide which one I like better. I think it comes down to Pyromancer being better if you expect black removal and Dragonsguard being better if you expect red removal. I ended up actually crossing the finish line to make Mythic with Pyromancer in the list, but whichever one you like better is fine. Both work great. It's not a huge focus of the deck to maximize them, but it is a focus of the deck to get some little bits of value out of our cheap creatures, so they work here.
Cling has taken the spot of Grafdigger's Cage in the sideboard. I don't like bringing in Cage if there's just a graveyard subtheme, like if your deck can win without using the graveyard. So Cling works much better against Torrential Gearhulk decks, still has plenty of usage against Phoenix and Dreadhorde Arcanist, and also works just fine against normal old control decks as a late game draw engine, since we only can afford to run two Castle Locthwain with the tighter mana base.
Thragtusk in the board has been okay, but I find myself wanting something that has a similar effect and is cheaper. Five mana is a lot, especially when we only run 22 lands and are expecting to be grabbing nonland cards with Abundant Harvest. Grakmaw and Chariot are the two things that come to mind, so maybe that will work in the sideboard, but I'm looking for other ideas. They all block and trade off with attackers for value, and they all play well against removal, so they're good at either winning a value fight or turning a game into a value fight. I'll keep trying some more stuff, but if you're in the market for a five drop at the moment, I do think that Thragtusk is the one.
Tainted Pact is the new hotness. It's kind of funny, most combo decks that turn out to be great go from dedicated combo to be more like midrangey interaction-based with a combo element. What made Splinter Twin such a good deck wasn't Splinter Twin, it was Snapcaster Mage and Lightning Bolt. Tainted Pact seems to be going the other way. I originally envisioned this deck as being a midrange deck with the combo added in, since you can only play so many copies, but instead people are playing things like Solve the Equation and Mastermind's Acquisition. There's a little bit of interaction in the deck, but a good recipe of a quick clock and disruption will be awesome against Pact and similar decks. You strip away their combo pieces, and then don't give them the time to find new ones. I've found the matchup to be a little tough because we don't have that quick of a clock from most of our creatures, like Chevill and Ooze, but you can mess with the numbers if Pact becomes what the format is entirely about.
I see a lot of people on the internet asking for a Tainted Pact or Thassa's Oracle ban. I guess I'm just kind of tired of banning the best deck all the time. The next best deck in the format at large is probably the Gearhulk Magma Opus deck, so are we just going to ban that too? Don't get me wrong, the deck is great, but I think that part of the challenge of Magic is trying to either become a master with a deck you like, or trying to come up with creative ways to attack a metagame. I like rewarding people who get good at playing the best decks, and I like rewarding people who can identify the best deck's weaknesses and exploit them. It sucks to work really hard to be good at Tainted Pact mirror matches and then have the deck banned, and it also sucks to finally figure out how to beat the boogeyman and then they just ban it anyways.
Let's talk Historic Anthology 5. Unlike the last Historic Anthology, pretty much every card in the set is a hit. As for us, I think Kolaghan's Command is the only really good one.
I am going to start with a 2-of Kolagahn's Command, though off the top of my head I'm not sure what to replace for it. The easy thing would be to say Inscription of Ruin, since it does lots of similar things, but right now I'd play six Inscriptions if they let me. Kolaghan's Command is a discard spell that works well with other discard spells, since it's an instant and can get the card they draw when their hand is empty. The all Mind Rot deck will often leave their hand empty, so this will come up often. Plus, with Pact as the frontrunner of the format, more discard spells are better.
My initial thought is to cut one Maelstrom Pulse and one Esika's Chariot. I also don't want to go down on creature count, since, you know, you want creatures in your graveyard to rebuy. It's honestly not a great format for Kolaghan's Command, since the creatures are big and there aren't that many artifacts, but this kind of flexibility is perfect for our deck.
Out of all the cards in the set, I think that the biggest deal is Into the North. This will be the first time that we have a pure Rampant Growth effect in the format. If you're a fan of straight green-black decks, maybe try this one out for a spin. You ramp, you fix your mana, and if you want to you can fetch Faceless Haven. All extremely good stuff. Plus, a hand of two lands and Into the North will get you to at least three mana every time, unlike two lands and Explore. I tried Explore as the Farseek substitute in a more RTR/INN Jund deck for Historic, but Explore just isn't what that kind of deck is looking for.
Outside of Into the North, I think Ojutai's Command is very good and will be losing to it a lot, and Atarka's Command is very good and an easy slot-in for Gruul decks. I also wouldn't be surprised to see Grisly Salvage do some good work. You don't ever want to be the the second or third best graveyard deck in the format, but Grisly Salvage sets you up to just cast your stuff if your graveyard shenanigans are offline.
~
That's about it for me today, I plan on firing up the stream a little bit this week and testing out some Kolaghan's Command. Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment