Team Open in Philadelphia: Audio Blog

Hi, folks! On the way home from Philadelphia, I recorded an audio blog about my experiences playing and figuring out Standard for the Team Open. Click here to check it out:

Team Constructed Open Recap

The list I played in Standard:

4 Fetid Pools
4 Drowned Catacomb
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Desert of the Glorified
1 Desert of the Mindful
1 Ifnir Deadlands
7 Island
6 Swamp

4 Disallow
4 Censor
4 Fatal Push
4 Hieroglyphic Illumination
3 Vraska's Contempt
3 Revolutionary Rebuff
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Essence Scatter
1 Supreme Will
1 Pull from Tomorrow
3 Ravenous Chupacabra
2 The Scarab God
2 Torrential Gearhulk

SB:
4 Moment of Craving
1 Golden Demise
2 Walk the Plank
3 Duress
2 Negate
1 Treasure Map
2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury

New Plan

Whelp, some things happened and all of a sudden, Standard looks a little different.

I left you last week(ish) with a Standard list that I thought looked promising, and then 8 of the cards got banned. Here's a new plan:

4 Ravenous Chupacabra

4 Jadelight Ranger

2 The Scarab God

4 Winding Constrictor

4 Merfolk Branchwalker

4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner

3 Walking Ballista

2 Hostage Taker

2 Yahenni, Undying Partisan

3 Nissa, Steward of Elements

3 Fatal Push

5 Forest

2 Swamp

4 Drowned Catacomb

4 Fetid Pools

2 Aether Hub

4 Blooming Marsh

4 Botanical Sanctum

2 Tetzimoc, Primal Death

1 Hostage Taker

1 Fatal Push

4 Moment of Craving

1 Negate

2 Essence Scatter

4 Duress

Even more than before, I am really excited about Jadelight Ranger. Reason one is that Rogue Refiner's absence leaves a gaping hole for a value three-drop, just not one that specifically abuses Energy. Reason two is that, since we have no Attune with Aether anymore, the land count in the deck goes up, which makes Jadelight Ranger's Explores even better. This deck skews away from the Energy mechanic, since we no longer have access to a bunch of Energy laying around. Longtusk Cub is no longer going to be a lot more than just a 2/2 on turn 2. However, Exploring on Jadelight Ranger and Merfolk Branchwalker is still a combo with Winding Constrictor, as are Walking Ballista, Yahenni, and Glint-Sleeve Siphoner. Glint-Sleeve never really was a normal Energy card, and a Siphoner with two Energy counters isn't much worse than a Siphoner with twelve Energy counters, so it's staying in the deck.

Nissa ties the room together. It's a really good three drop on an empty board that's removal-proof, and also a fantastic late game card. Scarab God blah blah blah.

4 Jadelight Ranger

4 Winding Constrictor

4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner

4 Walking Ballista

3 Ravenous Chupacabra

4 Glorybringer

4 Longtusk Cub

2 Yahenni, Undying Partisan

2 Fatal Push

4 Harnessed Lightning

4 Aether Hub

3 Canyon Slough

4 Blooming Marsh

3 Dragonskull Summit

3 Rootbound Crag

3 Sheltered Thicket

2 Forest

2 Swamp

1 Mountain

2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury

2 Tetzimoc, Primal Death

1 Ravenous Chupacabra

4 Moment of Craving

2 Fatal Push

4 Duress

This deck goes the other direction and continues the Energy plan. We get to rock with Constrictors and Glint-Sleeves in place of our Rogue Refiners, so it's really kinda similar to Temur Energy with the blue swapped out with black. We get to kill lots of creatures, which may or may not be that great in the upcoming format. I'm kind of expecting more Abzan or Esper Tokens and blue control decks than what we previously had, due to the red cards that got banned. If that doesn't happen and killing creatures turns out to be good, this deck does plenty of it.

You'll notice the Yahenni, Undying Partisan in both lists. It's a card that I'm kind of high on at the moment. The Token decks all run Fumigate and lots of creatures that die, and against control it's a Haste creature that's Fumigate-proof. I think it's in a good place in the format, but only in creature decks that can kill their opponent's stuff pretty easily.

What I've found on Magic Online so far is lots of decks that Ravenous Chupacabra isn't that great against. I was expecting to nuke lots of Longtusk Cubs and Whirler Virtuosos, but mostly I'm hitting Hidden Stockpile tokens, which isn't awesome. When it's been good, though, it's been real good. It helps push your early threats through for damage and the body is very relevant when you are putting pressure on. We'll see how the format shakes out, but the only 4-drop in that slot that is appreciably better when Chupacabra is bad is probably Gonti, which is a card that's always on my radar.

I've yet to cast a Tetzimoc, but I really want to before I dismiss it, but I'm not playing against a lot of midrange mirrors yet.

However, I think I'll be doing more work on Modern in the coming week or so here, since I am again playing in an SCG team open, and likely going to be playing Modern again. Since we last left off, I've cut the Blood Moons out of the board in favor of another Blightning(!), a Grim Lavamancer, and an Obstinate Baloth. I'm finding that the discard is great against Valakut, so long as it's not Inquisition of Kozileks, and that Blood Moon doesn't do enough against Tron anyways. At the last team open I played, there were lots of midrange mirrors and control decks that we faced in the Modern slot, which makes sense to me. Your Modern player is likely to be someone who really likes the format and tinkers around with the list of their favorite deck a lot, not someone who just jams Tron when it's in favor. That's my theory anyways. Hopefully we won't see a lot of Tron (or Dredge, or Living End, for that matter), or if we do, then their Standard and Legacy players suck. But, we'll see, since the Standard format just took a big turn, I might be playing that instead. Wish me luck.

Initial Thoughts on Rivals of Ixalan

Magic is sweet. We basically have to take a long break from the game during December, due to family, Modo Cube, and up here in Vermont, weather. As soon as the new year starts, they draw us back in with spoiler season. There are some cool cards in this set that look to shake things up, and then some other cards that do the opposite. Let's check em out.

I really missed Pharika's Cure or Surge of Righteousness being in Standard. Moment of Craving looks like a better sideboard card than either of them, and it really shores up the Ramunap Red matchups. You still want to have a plan against Hazoret, but one of these plus a good curve should get you into the later turns.

I like overloading to beat aggressive decks with my sideboard cards. The reason is that aggro decks give you less time to draw your sideboard cards than slower decks do. Against Ramunap Red or Mardu or B/R Vehicles or whatever aggro deck exists, you've either stabilized or are dead by turn 5 or so, meaning you've looked at around 12 of your 60 cards. In this case, if you're only boarding in three cards, you're only 60% to actually draw one of them. Against, say, U/B Control or an Energy Mirror, the games last and the outcomes are undecided for much longer, meaning you have more time to draw those cards that swing the matchup. I foresee myself playing 4 of these in every sideboard as long as I'm playing a black deck in Standard and an aggro deck is at least a little represented.

Really cool design, this seems like it's the best of the Ascend cards for a normalish midrange kind of deck. I don't think it's worth it, since while its ability is card advantage, you don't get the value immediately and there's a lot of setup to make it work. Lots of times, even if you have an Ascend theme or subtheme in your deck, you still just won't have it online, and you've cast a Fighting Drake. It is a pure payoff card and doesn't help facilitate Ascend by itself, unlike...

Tendershoot Dryad also gives you value every turn, but needs less setup to get that value and just has Ascend as a cherry-on-top. I like this a lot better than Twilight Prophet in a vacuum, however, the competition for five-drops in Standard is tight. The Scarab God, Glorybringer, Liliana Death's Majesty, and Confiscation Coup are all tough cards to beat in a midrange deck, but I could be proven wrong. The Dryad looks like it's better in a G/W or Abzan tokens kind of deck, which looks to be shaping up really nicely with this set.

This card is really cool, and I think it's really good, but I really can't imagine it's going to see play until Chandra rotates out of the format. Watch out for this one being really good in the future. It does a lot of cool things that a lot of decks are looking for, but Chandra just does better.

What I said about Tendershoot Dryad holds true for Angrath, as far as the viability of 5-drop threats. This card needs to be a better inclusion than both Glorybringer and Liliana Death's Majesty. That said, I'm still at least a little high on this card, at least because it's very similar to Ob Nixilis Reginited and we've seen that card do work in the past. It's certainly a more aggressive card than Ob Nixilis, which isn't always what you're looking for, but it can still create some value each turn.

So of course this card isn't for me, but its existence is interesting. This is a really, really powerful card in a certain kind of control deck that hasn't existed for a little while. In the days of Sphinx's Revelation, Divination was good in the early turn to dig you into your answers and was still fine in the late game since all you wanted to do was rifle through your deck and find Revelations. We don't have Revelation nowadays, but the difference is that in the late game, this card is fire. This card might push the current control strategies to a more pure card advantage style deck, which changes the format quite a bit for the midrange decks of the world.

Okay, so this card is ambitious, and almost certainly not a maindeck card unless we are living in a very very strange world. However, it might just be the best thing to do as an over-the-top midrange breaker. Other options are Vraska and River's Rebuke, which are good of course. However, this card gives you a ton of options as a late game topdeck that wrecks the board. If you have, like, 9 mana in play, I can't fathom a situation where you don't just win immediately when you draw this, barring an Essence Scatter or something. I'm going to be starting with this as a one- or maybe two-of in my Sultai Energy sideboard. It's also just totally awesome, which makes it definitely worth playing.

Here is a card that I have no idea about. I think that it is a card that requires an entirely new deck than what we have seen in Standard so far, but it's at least intriguing. There are a lot of great cards to have die and come back, including Gonti, Rogue Refiner, Jadelight Ranger, and Ravenous Chupacabra. However, it's slow, might not even be as powerful than the things that are faster than it, and requires a lot to go right in order to work. It's a cool idea to try, but I think the odds that it works are low, I wouldn't be surprised if a deck came out of it.

This is a card that hasn't seen that much hype this spoiler season, so maybe I am overestimating it, but it's definitely my favorite card in the set. This card has three things that it can do that are somewhere between fantastic and good. First, you could get two lands in your hand. You might think that is a little weak, since they are just lands, but the thing is, that means that the top two cards of your library were lands, and now they are gone and you are drawing the cards that were under them. That's good! You had to draw those lands anyways! Alternatively, you can get one card and make a 3/2. That sounds a lot like Rogue Refiner to me, minus the energy boost, and I'm all about putting four more Rogue Refiners in my deck (or adding that effect to a non-blue deck). Scenario three is making a 4/3 creature and ensuring you are drawing a good card. This is the worst of the options, but the good news is that if you play with a deck that has Winding Constrictor, all of a sudden you have a 6/5 on turn three (or a 4/3 and a free land). In the process of tuning Sultai Energy, I've been waffling between my non-Rogue Refiner three-drops. Deathgorge Scavenger, XUG Nissa, and Rishkar are all solid, but I think Jadelight Ranger will settle it. We shall see, but I have high hopes for this one.

So I think this is the only card in the set that gets played in Modern Jund, so let's take a look. First, it does nothing against Tron, and the ideal scenario is that your land hate takes care of both Tron and Valakut, so that's a real strike against it. The second is that it's a cantrip, which is cool, but in the matchups where you are looking for this effect, you aren't winning via incremental card advantage, you want knockout blows to their combos. Third is that it hoses your own fetchlands and creaturelands. This is normal when you play Blood Moon in the sideboard of Jund, but it's a little easier to play with and around. You'll still be able to cast your double green and black spells, and all you have to do is cut some fetchlands to be almost entirely unaffected by it. I like that it's easier on you than playing Blood Moon, but I dislike that it has fewer applications, including the one glaring one in that Tron lands still work just fine. I don't think that it's worth it to use the sideboard slots to shut off Valakut almost exclusively, but we shall see. I do like that they are interested in making land hosers for Modern, since the big mana decks are a real problem. Well, a problem for me at least, the format is fine, I just lose to them a lot. Maybe another couple of hate cards can really turn the format around.

Woof.

I'm gonna start with this as a 4-of in Sultai Energy. I've been switching back and forth between Gonti, Hostage Taker, and Bristling Hydra in the four-drop slot, but Chupacabra just might take the cake here. It's gonna trounce the red decks, as long as you can deal with Hazoret, and it might swing the format back in favor of Sultai Energy rather than Temur. You can now go toe to toe on power level with Glorybringer much easier, and don't even get started with Scarab God and Liliana Death's Majesty. Have we gotten to the point where Fatal Push is no longer a maindeck card? Sounds crazy, but Ravenous Chupacabra is a little crazy. Magic is a weird game sometimes.

Thanks for reading. You can catch me on twitter @griffinzoth if you think all my analyses are wrong, which they might be. Who knows. Spoiler seasons is great.

EDIT: For reference, here is the list I'm gonna try out in Standard when Rivals drops - 

4 Attune with Aether

4 Fatal Push

2 Blossoming Defense

4 Glint Sleeve Siphoner

4 Longtusk Cub

4 Winding Constrictor

4 Jadelight Ranger

4 Rogue Refiner

4 Ravenous Chupacabra

2 Liliana Death's Majesty

2 Walking Ballista

1 Nissa, Steward of Elements

4 Aether Hub

4 Blooming Marsh

4 Botanical Sanctum

2 Fetid Pools

4 Forest

2 Swamp

1 Island

4 Duress

4 Moment of Craving

2 Tetzimoc, Primal Death

1 Negate

2 Essence Scatter

2 Hostage Taker