 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||
 |
||||||||||
|
 |
|
Wait...Black in Standard Again?!
OK, so last week was met with pretty good response.
That's great, because I like to build decks, and you
like seeing new decks. This can be the start of a
beautiful relationship (just don't tell my fiancee).
Anyway, personal love interests aside, I think
Standard (Type 2) tournament play has an extremely
bright future. My original thought process was that
Goblin Sharpshooter and Disciple of the Vault should
have been banned right along with Skullclamp.
Personally, I don't think that I be too upset if
either of them got banned tomorrow. However, after
much playtesting, I must admit that I am starting to
agree more and more with WotC's decision. Affinity
Ravager and Goblins are both good decks still. This
just opens the field to a few more decks.
Oh, don't sit here and think that last statement
isn't true. Many store owners and dealers that I've
spoken with are much happier these days. Why?
Because the format is wide open. This has led to a
lot of singles moving. More accurately, a wider
variety of singles are being sold. A month ago,
dealers needed large supplies of Oxidize,
Electrostatic Bolt, and Goblin Piledrivers. Now
cards like Silver Knight, Decree of Pain, and even
Ravenous Baloth are on the move again. Players are
even needing to purchase Swamps and Islands to
complete some of their decks. That's right...I said
it...Swamps and Islands are actually lands that get
to see tournament play again on the major scene.
Fifth Dawn had brought a lot more decks to the
forefront. Obviously green has acquired a lot with
the multicolored stuff. There are some neat
artifacts in the set. Black got some neat
creatures. White got some interesting spells. Blue
got a ton of good stuff. Red got some serious
damage spells. Everything is fun to play all over
again. Is Ravager still good....defintiely. But it
is now less likely to get the insanely "lucky"
draws.
All that being said...I'm not sure how much I like
the change to my new article formatting. I lose
some pretty interesting pieces. I know that I want
to keep doing good and bad play of the week. I
might occasionally do a "Spotlight On" to replace my
recommended card of the week. And my play tip of
the week is probably going to only appear every
other week or every third week. With me posting
decks and other information, there should be plenty
to absorb here on a weekly basis.
So Hot Momma was a pretty fast deck we covered last
week. Maybe that wasn't for everyone. So this week
I will cover a slower deck that more control
oriented. I want to spend a little more time
explaining card choices than matchups. I know that
the matchups are really important to some people.
However, right now, it's how to even say what the
good versions of each deck are going to look like.
With that limited knowledge, giving you a guideline
for the matchups doesn't seem that helpful,
considering there is a good chance for the
guidelines to be incorrect. I'll leave that up to
the testing in your local metagame.
Anyway, here is a a black control style deck to
consider.
Ace
22 Swamp
3 Stalking Stones
2 Plunge Into Darkness
3 Decree of Pain
1 Visara, the Dreadful
4 Diabolic Tutor
1 Royal Assassin
3 Guardian Idol
4 Barter in Blood
3 Consume Spirit
2 Death Cloud
3 Mind Sludge
3 Dark Banishing
3 Echoing Decay
2 Extraplanar Lens
1 Persecute
Sideboard (tentative):
2 Pulse of the Dross
2 Aether Snap
3 Withered Wretch
2 Terror
3 Oblivon Stone
2 Infest
1 Scrabbling Claws
So this may not be the most optimal version of
monoblack control right now. However, in early
playing, the deck looks pretty neat and stable. The
mana draws are decent, which is a huge start for any
deck. Also, the removal spells compliment the few
creature you do have well. But let us go over the
individual card selections.
Swamps are the obvious must have. Hard to cast
black spells reliably without him. Stalking Stones
on the other hand may not be so obvious. I almost
went with Blinkmouth Nexus, but as it turns out,
they aren't any better than he stones. You can keep
creature out of the way long enough for the Stalking
Stones to do their dirty work late in the game, so
it's a non-issue. Also, the stones are larger than
the nexus without extra help. The tradeoff is that
you give up flight, which is totally acceptable.
Plunge into Darkness seems like it might possibly be
one of the best black cards in Fifth Dawn. I like
it a lot. It lets you sacrifice creatures for life
if need be, or you can just pay some life to try and
draw into what you need. This card could just as
well be Night's Whisper though and I'd be fine with
that. Night's Whisper is a damn good card as well,
which could easily fill this slot. Decree of Pain
can help draw some cards as well. You just get the
added benefit of being able to take down a creature
or two with it.
Diabolic Tutor is still one of the best black cards
in the format. The ability to search out ANY cards
from your deck is pretty powerful. It also lets you
save space in the deck to add a few more cards. You
can get away with more cards having one or two
copies, because of this card. You're rarely upset
to draw one of these.
Guardian Idol is the new card that I think should
appear in most serious control decks. It's overall
versatility remains to be seen. However, it helps
with the mana situation in this deck a lot. Have a
two casting cost mana producer allows for a lot of
things to happen early on turn three. It also
doubles as a creature. Since it activates to become
a creature, you can keep it from getting nailed by
your mass removal spells.
There are a horde of removal cards outside of Decree
of Pain in the deck. Barter in Blood, Consume
Spirit, Death Cloud, Dark Banishing, and Echoing
Decay make up this section of the deck. The reason
Echoing Decay made the cut instead of Terror simply
comes down to the metagame being played right now.
There is a chance you can kill multiple goblins with
it. You can also kill most of the Affinity Ravager
deck creatures with it (whereas Terror would do
nothing). Death Cloud and Consume Spirit can double
up as finishers for the later part of the game.
It's always good to have a clean up crew you can
topdeck for the win. Extraplanar Lens is also
hiding out to help some of these expensive spells
along.
I felt that having some form of discard was needed
and I couldn't truly settle on spells that fit well,
but were still good against most of the metagame
decks. So I went with three Mind Sludge and one
Persecute. These seem to fit well without any major
problems. With some control decks starting to rear
their ugly heads again, discard is going to be an
important game element sometimes.
The creature choices aren't amazing, but there also
aren't very many of them. Honestly, there are only
two TRUE creatures in the deck; Visara, the Dreadful
and Royal Assassin. Visara, is a late game closer
if things get tight, but can also put your
opponent's attackers on ice for a little while.
Royal Assassin seems like a forgotten card that is
really good in the format right now. When a
creatures is tapped, he can off them. This helps
with big Ravager creatures that just got some
counters on them. Also, when you think about it,
most decks aren't playing direct creature kill, so
this little guy's life expectancy is a bit longer
than normal these days. Don't forget though that
you do get Stalking Stones and Guardian Idol to use
as creatures if you need them. You are not without
help.
The sideboard is a jumble of cards to help in
control matchups and the heavy beatdown match.
Outside of those, you just have to experiment with
what you need and add it in there. This is one of
the few times getting to play Aether Snap is good.
You can wipe out Ravager decks and Sunburst based
decks with this card. You just gotta love the
ability to remove counters. All of the extra
creature kill will be good against decks like White
Weenie and Goblins though.
This deck should hold you over until next week at
least. I have an idea. Why don't you guys write me
and let me know what type of deck I should post?
You can be as vague as you want or as specific as
you want. Be aware though that there's a lower
chance me working on a deck if it's too specific.
For example...asking for a Red/Blue beatdown deck is
going to be a lot more likely of appearing than a
Red/Blue beatdown deck with Card Alpha, Card Omega,
and Card Beta in it. I also want to hear more of
what you think about these decks. Do you enjoy me
posting rogue decks. Do you want me to post more
traditional stuff. What ideas are you liking or
disliking?
With that business done, I want to take a moment to
remind all of you players out there to not overthink
yourselves when playing. I've watch players do this
all week for some reason. Games are won on the
little plays. People keep working about trick plays
or special things they can do when activating
cards. The truth is, those little tricks only come
in handy once every 50 games or so (if even that
often), so why worry about them. Concentrate on the
situation at hand. Don't cloud your head with lots
of outside thoughts. If you hit a critical juncture
in the game, you need to be able to observe all the
small possibilities and be confident in your
decision. After all, if you haven't looked at the
small stuff, how can you truly know the implications
of your next play? Sound simple, but I've watched
players through games away by convincing themselves
that things are a certain way when hey aren't. Or
players have even created scenarios in their heads
of how things should play out and then they don't.
Don't overthink yourself.
Well, that looks like all the damage I can to here
this week. I have no clue what type of deck I want
to tackle next. I think it might be one more new
one while I wait for the metagame to shakedown a
little bit. Things are still too volatile to try
and tackle one of the big dogs at the moment.
Besides this is more fun.
Until next time,
DeQuan Watson
a.k.a. PowrDragn
PowrDragn on IRC
PowrDragn on City of Heroes - Champion server
powrdragn at pojo dot com
|
|||||||
