Everybody has problems beating the top decks in the
format. No player can possibly beat every single
opponent that is thrown against them in their life;
otherwise the game would have the same World
Champion every year. However, that doesn’t mean that
you can’t at least try to perfect your skills to
give yourself a better chance against the decks you
have trouble with. It takes a long time to figure
out how to beat the top decks in the format, and
only masterful players can figure out to a science
what cards they can use to win.
As you probably know, Magic Regionals are coming up
in a couple weeks. That means players from all
around are going to try and win invitations to their
country’s National Championships. This is by no
means an easy feat, as players will be using the top
decks in the format from
Firemane Weirding to
Roxodon Hierarchy to try and accomplish this. If
you are going like I am, then it will be your job to
try and figure out how to defeat these decks. Of
course people need assistance in figuring out how to
defeat these decks, which is where I come in. Below
is a list of a good number of the decks that your
opponent may throw at you. The list discusses the
main strategy of the deck, along with cards that you
can use to beat these decks. Please note that these
are suggestions, not concrete strategy killers, so
remember that as you read this.
The Zoo/Gruul Beats
Both these decks are really similar in strategy, so
I decided to make it easier and group the two decks
together. The Zoo and Gruul Beats are built to drop
a lot of quick creatures early in the game like
Scorched Rusalka,
Kird Ape, etc. and back them up
alongside bigger creatures later in the game like
Loxodon Hierarch and
Burning-Tree Shaman, then
proceed to attack the opponent as fast and as often
as possible. To make sure it’s creatures stay as
huge and as dangerous as they already are, the deck
runs
Moldervine Cloak, which can turn even a lowly
Savannah Lions into a 5/4 powerhouse. Because of
their powerful creatures and the rate they can play
those creatures, The Zoo and Gruul Beatdown are
decks you should watch out for.
Now how do we beat these decks? There’s actually a
multitude of ways to beat them. The main card that
wins against them is
Wrath of God. Because both
decks have a tendency to empty their hands quick in
an attempt to win, chances are they won’t be able to
recover quickly if a Wrath of God resolves.
Kindle
the Carnage also works pretty well if you’re not
afraid of getting rid of cards in your hand. Pretty
much any mass-removal card can get the job done
against Zoo and Gruul Beats, as long as any of them
that do damage don’t have too low of a damage ratio,
such as
Pyroclasm. That card is better saved for
Orzhov Control-Aggro.
Orzhov Control/Aggro
This deck can be a huge nuisance if you’re not
prepared for it. The main thing that makes the deck
such a threat is its ability to make the opponent
lose their hand quickly with cards like
Shrieking
Grotesque,
Ravenous Rats,
Hypnotic Specter, and
Cry
of Contrition. Back up those cards with spot removal
in the form of
Mortify and
Last Gasp and threats
like
Ghost Council of Orzhova,
Dark Confidant, and a
certain equipment that everybody loves to hate (you
know what one I’m talking about), the deck is a
threat that you will get eaten by if you’re not
prepared.
The main problem that this deck faces is that all
but one of its creatures has a toughness of
two, so a well-placed Pyroclasm could shut down the
deck’s aggressive nature. To combat the discard
effects, unless you are going to be using a Hellbent-Oriented
strategy, I suggest you run a couple copies of Pure
Intentions in your sideboard as continuous
discard-fodder to opposing discard effects. Since
Pure Intentions returns itself to your hand every
time you discard it from an opponent’s card effect,
you can always select that card as a discard target
except if you’re hit by Hypnotic Specter, and you
will not burn through the cards in your hand unless
you let yourself empty your hand. One other card
that you could use to defeat the discard effects of Orzhov Control/Aggro is Bottled Cloister. Since your
hand will be removed from the game, your opponent
will have no way to get rid of any of the cards in
your hand. Plus, you’ll be netting an extra card
every turn. Just be careful, because you can lose
your entire hand to a Terashi’s Grasp if you’re not
careful.
Another obstacle that Orzhov Control-Aggro faces is
against larger creatures such as
Kokusho,
Yosei,
etc. As I stated before, the only creature in the
deck that has toughness over two is Ghost Council of
Orzhova, so the deck will automatically have a
problem getting rid of these larger creatures. The
only foolproof strategy for them to defeat these
creatures is to massively pump their smaller guys
with Umezawa’s Jitte and remove your bigger
creatures with Mortify, and if the killed creature
is a Dragon then it might not be worth it for them
to destroy it in the longrun.
Heartbeat Maga
Whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em, there is always at
least one combo deck in every format. Vintage has IT
and GrimLong, Legacy has Bomberman and Solidarity,
Extended has CAL, and Standard has Heartbeat Maga.
How the deck works is similar to its Legacy
counterpart. With a
Heartbeat of Spring in play, the
Heartbeat player taps all of their lands then uses
an
Early Harvest to untap all of them, which allows
him to float an incredibly high amount in his mana
pool. Back it up with another Early Harvest, a
Drift
of Phantasms, and a
Maga or
Invoke the Firemind and
you’ve got yourself a nice and dangerous twenty
points of damage to the face.
There’s little that you can do to stop the combo as
it is going. Trying to Mortify or
Seed Spark the
Heartbeat of Spring doesn’t accomplish much, as the
opponent can simply transmute for a new one.
However, that’s not to say that there aren’t ways to
stop you from losing. The main way is to get rid of
their kill conditions. Board in a couple copies of
Hide//Seek, and then game two spring it on your
opponent and remove their Maga, Traitor to Mortals
from the game. This disruption strategy is viable
because if you can remove both of their kill
conditions they will concede, but you need to
perform it quick, otherwise the opponent will simply
go for an Invoke the Firemind and win with that
instead.
Another way you can beat Heartbeat Maga is to throw
the damage from their X spell back at them. How do
you do that? With a little card called
Parallectric
Feedback. Because X is always whatever you paid for
it while it is on the stack, if the opponent tries
to make their Invoke the Firemind or Maga lethal,
you can use Parallectric Feedback to make them take
more damage than that spell would’ve dealt to you.
The best part of that is the Invoke or Maga will not
be able to resolve if Parallectric Feedback kills
them, so you will win before the opponent has a
chance to. This strategy does work, but in order for
it to work you have to make sure the opponent
doesn’t have any counters like
Hinder or
Muddle the
Mixture for backup, otherwise you won’t be able to
stop the opponent.
Owling Mine
This is probably the silliest deck I have seen in my
competitive magic career. Nobody has been able to
abuse
Howling Mine and
Kami of the Crescent Moon
better than this deck has been able to. Alongside
cards such as
Exhaustion and
Gigadrowse to keep the
opponent’s cards tapped well into their next turn,
there is little you can do to stop them. There are
different color mixtures for this deck, but the best
combination in my opinion is Blue/Red which uses
Sudden Impact as another way to kill the opponent.
Another build uses Black for
Megrim and
Underworld
Dreams, but that deck is trickier to keep going with
cards like Mortify in most of the competitive decks,
so I’m sticking with the U/R build.
There are multitudes of ways to keep the opponent
from smacking you around, although the prime
strategy is the same. Empty your hand as fast as
humanly possible. If your opening hand against
Owling Mine is three lands and four birds, keep it.
If you keep your hand low on cards, then there is
little they can do to damage you until they get a
ton of Mine cards into play. So a card like
One with
Nothing would be a great card against this deck,
even though the logic behind it would be flawed.
Another card that completely wrecks the Owling Mine
strategy is Peace of Mind, because it turns all of
those extra cards you get from Howling Mine into
life. Not only does that mean you’ll never have
seven cards in your hand to have an
Ebony Owl
Netsuke hurt you, but the life gain at that large a
level cripples cards such as Sudden Impact, as you
only need to feed two cards to Peace of Mind to
offset the damage.
U/R Magnivore
There are only three people that I have met that
have used this deck, and let me tell you that the
deck is a doozy to deal with. A second turn
Eye of
Nowhere followed by a third turn
Stone Rain, fourth
turn
Demolish, and backed up with card draw like
Compulsive Research and
Tidings make sure the
Magnivore is huge by the time he gets ready to
attack you. And beating this deck is especially hard
if you’re going second, which in some cases can mean
you will never get more than one land into play.
If you’re going first, there’s plenty you can do to
stop the Magnivore deck from going insane on you.
For example, if you’re playing Green, a first turn
Birds of Paradise followed by a second turn
Kodama’s
Reach makes it difficult for them to stop you as
they won’t be able to destroy or bounce enough lands
to offset the ones that you replace every turn. As
for keeping your hands from getting crushed, I
suggest you go with Life from the Loam. Don’t
attempt to use Sacred Ground, because if the
opponent knows what he is doing he will simply get
your Sacred Ground off the field with a Boomerang or
Eye of Nowhere and then use a Wildfire. Life from
the Loam is a much better strategy, because even if
you can’t get them back into play as quick you can
at least make sure you don’t run out.
Eminent Domain
This deck has pretty much fallen off the face of the
earth, but I know that somebody is going to at least
attempt to revive this deck for the Post-Dissension
Regionals, so I feel it’s necessary to cover the
mind spawn of Adrian Sullivan, the current Wisconsin
State Champion. With cards such as
Annex,
Confiscate, and
Dream Leash to steal the lands,
Icy
Manipulator to tap down any lands that they haven’t
stolen yet (along with help Dream Leash),
Wildfire
to make sure the opponent doesn’t get to keep any
lands he does have under his control, and a big fat
finisher like Kokusho or Keiga, Eminent Domain was a
powerhouse at the beginning of the season, and could
possibly make a return if built correctly.
Beating Eminent Domain is easier than it appears.
The main reason the deck is a powerhouse is because
of its ability to accelerate with the lands it takes
from you. However, if the opponent doesn’t get to
keep the lands that they steal from you, there is no
way they can accelerate as quickly. So I propose
running either Tempest of Light or
Primeval Light
(preferably Tempest of Light) to make sure you get
your lands back when the opponent tries to use your
lands as Wildfire food.
I’d get more into detail on this deck, but chances
are low that it will return with all of the faster
decks in the format.
Firemane Weirding
Firemane Weirding is a deck that has really perked
my interest the last couple days. The deck is
All-American (Red/White/Blue) and is built around
the annoying combination of Zur’s Weirding and
Firemane Angel. The combo really simple: Get two Firemane Angels either into play or in your
graveyard, that will let you gain 2 life every turn,
then you can deny your opponent a draw with the life
you gain every turn via Zur’s Weirding. The kill
condition in the deck is the deck’s four Firemane
Angels, which are not only huge for their casting
cost, but near impossible to keep off the field
because of its built-in revival ability.
The way you can beat this deck is to deny them of
their kill conditions and their combo pieces. By
removing the Firemane Angels from the game with
Shred Memory or putting it on the bottom of the
player’s library with
Condemn, they will not be able
to deny you of your draws forever, which will give
you a good chance of winning in the process. As for
decks, if you’re playing Owling Mine against
Firemane Weirding, this is an automatic win for you.
The lock is completely moot with all the draw
effects you will have in play, and you’ll have a lot
of them in play. You can also completely bypass the
ability of Zur’s Weirding by having a copy of Dark
Confidant in play, which will let you net a card
even though you don’t get a draw step. You can also
destroy the Weirding with Naturalize, Seed Spark,
etc. to simply shut off the lock.
Enduring Ideal
This entire deck is built around running the most
powerful Enchantments in the game and getting them
into play from your deck every turn. Confiscate can
take control of the biggest threats on the
opponent’s field,
Privileged Position makes sure you
can’t target any of their enchantments as they play
them, Ivory Mask makes it so you can’t target them,
and
Form of the Dragon makes it impossible to attack
them if you’re not running any of the Kamigawa
Dragons or big fat fliers. Backup strategies in the
form of
Genju of the Realm and
Zur’s Weirding make
sure the opponent doesn’t go after you with the same
strategy every game.
There are three cards in the format that completely
cripple this deck. Those cards are Cleanfall,
Primeval Light, and Tempest of Light, all of which
destroy multiple enchantments instead of
spot-removing them. Spot-Enchantment Removal does
squat against Enduring Ideal decks because they can
simply go for two Privileged Position to make sure
you can’t target the threats they put against you.
Plus, you’re not guaranteed to have enough removal
to deal with everything the opponent uses against
you. However, if you resolve a Cleanfall, Primeval
Light, or Tempest of Light at just the right moment,
the opponent will more than likely concede due to
the lack of a win condition in play (and more times
than not because you can kill them without their
Form of the Dragon to protect them).
Too… much… information…
Don’t even begin to think that I’m done yet. While I
may have covered quite a number of decks today, this
is just a drop in the bucket compared to the entire
format. The current Standard format is so incredibly
diverse that anything and everything is playable if
built correctly. I’ll cover more decks in the next
article, most of them involving cards that can, may,
and probably will be used from Dissension. And
hopefully this information will greatly impact how
you do at Regionals.
two, so a well-placed Pyroclasm could shut down the
deck’s aggressive nature. To combat the discard
effects, unless you are going to be using a Hellbent-Oriented
strategy, I suggest you run a couple copies of Pure
Intentions in your sideboard as continuous
discard-fodder to opposing discard effects. Since
gside
cards such as
lands that they haven’t
stolen yet (along with help Dream Leash),
Dragons or big fat fliers. Backup strategies in the
form of