Well week two of my testing reinforced what I already knew, R/B kicks all form of hind-end in Invasion Block Constructed.  I spent the early portion of the week reveling in the magnificence of my near-perfect record, toying with silly unfocused decks that I ate for lunch.  Just when I thought I had engineered the deck that would define the environment… R/B reared its ugly head once again.  IBC is all about discard since it is the only playable form of disruption available.  While Land Destruction is MIA in this block, tons of playable discard more than makes up for the loss.  R/B decks abuse discard disruption by combining it with loads of aggressive creatures and just a smidge of Direct Damage that doubles as removal.  But alas, I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let me fill you in on what I played this week…

I was playing a very fun, very evil version of Warp Wash that runs all the playable bounce of blue along with the black enchantment Warped Devotion to truly abuse said bounce.  Warped Devotion and Wash Out is obviously where the deck name cames from, and believe me this combo is worthy of having a deck built around it.  As I recall, Wrath of God and Mind Twist are awful good cards.  Often times the opponent must feel like he’s been on the receiving end of both these spells simultaneously when Wash Out strikes with a Devotion on the board.  Here’s the lowdown…

Warp Wash version 1.0

  4 Ravenous Rats
3 Waterspout Elementals

4 Recoil
4 Repulse
4 Undermine
4 Warped Devotion
4 Probe
4 Opt
3 Wash Out
2 Yawgmoth’s Agenda

4 Salt Marsh
10 Swamps
10 Islands

As fun as the decks main combo is… it’s not what makes the deck work at all.  The main focus of the deck is outdrawing the opponent via Opt, Probe, and Repulse.  Running 4 of each of these guys allows you to disrupt your opponent and at the same time helps you find your trump card… Yawgmoth’s FRIGGIN Agenda.  I cannot express how busty this card is with mere words, play it for yourself (if you haven’t already) and find out what I mean.  The ability to recycle all that card drawing via Agenda is nuts… most games ended with my opponent having no cards in play, no cards in hand, and me being forced to discard ‘cause I was drawing too many cards.  Well enough bragging (I’ll be eating humble pie in a sec) lets get to the matches!

B/W/U Counters-n-stuff

Main Cards:  Undermine, Absorb, Exclude, Dromar’s Charm, Armored Gaurdian, Fact or Fiction

Again I want to state my dislike for a deck that tries to “force” Undermine and Absorb together into one deck.  All Warp Wash had to do is ride its discarding and card drawing to victory both games versus this passive deck.  Countering his Fact or Fictions made it all too easy for me to drop the Agenda and just plain win.  At that point just 1 Rat can be a road to victory, although Waterspout Elemental is a champ as it acts as the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th Wash Out and is a beefy flier ta boot!

Results: 2-0 Warp Wash

G/R/b mystery mix

Main Cards:  Thornscape Familiar, Red and Green Battlemages, Shivan Wurm, Terminate, Urza’s Rage

Thornscape Familiar is an excellent card for green as it’s a grizzly bear and mana acceleration combined.  (too bad the rest of green’s card pool got the shaft)  Game one he was able to ride this familiar for plenty of early damage and followed it up with a few black kicked Thunderscape Battlemages for a victory 1 turn before I could take control.  Game’s two and three looked much better for me as my Rats showed up to slow down his early Familiar beats, not to mention he learned on more than one occasion that Repulsing Rats after damage is on the stack spells mucho card advantage for me.  Once in control of the board, Undermines did a total of 15 damage to the opponent thanks to Agenda… ‘nuff said.

Results:  2-1 Warp Wash

5 Color Bombs-Away

Main Cards:  Harrow, Elfhame Sanctuary, Tribal Flames, Exotic Curse, Global Ruin, Collective Restraint

Personally, these decks get a little too “cutesie” for my taste.  While certainly the above cards look powerful when 5 different basic land are on the board, developing this scenario offers ZERO disruption and ZERO defense against the opponent early on.  Probe did a nice job of stripping the “bombs” out of the opponents hand the turn before they were ready to use them.  Also Recoil’s ability to target lands comes in handy during this matchup as 5 color decks only run 1 or 2 of each off color land.  Get those lands into the grave and you’ve effectively countered all the corresponding spells of that lands color as they now have no way of casting them.  This strategy also weakened the all around usefulness of the other cards as they want to have at least one of each basic land in play!  I must say the potential 10 point swing in life totals created by Exotic Curse certainly gave me a scare, but in the end…

Results:  2-0 Warp Wash 

R/B/g

Main Cards:  Rats, Thunderscape Battlemage, Blazing Spectre, Lava Zombie, Addle, burn

Well kids, I’d like to say I put up a good fight against this deck, but I can’t.  I’d like to tell you how I almost won a game, but that’d be a lie.  What I can tell you is how close I came to writing WOTC for an emergency ban on Thunderscape Battlemage!!  Talk about some goodness, let me spell it out for you.  Opponent taps 5 lands, teasing me into thinking it’s only a black kickered Battlemage.  Then he drops Darigaaz’s Caldera and taps it for green.  This DOUBLE kicked Battlemage then proceeded to take out my Warped Devotion I had in play, 2 cards out of my hand, and then provides him with a grey ogre as a road to victory.  That play alone won him game one, game two wasn’t much better as two Blazing Spectre’s stripped my hand clean in a heartbeat.  This is just plain an awful matchup for Warp Wash.  Spectre, Rats, Battlemage… they all are immune to bounce!!  I think what is most scary about this deck is that on top of all the discard, all the beats, and all the direct damage… the deck also boasts enchantment removal!

Results:  2-0 Opponent

R/B

Main Cards:  Rats, Addle, Spectre, Void, Yawgmoth’s Agenda, Lava Zombie, burn

L  See the above match up, only worse.  Addle is a great way to strip the early bomb out of the opponents hand, not to mention it sets up really good Voids.  Game one he was able to turn Void into a Mind Twist by calling “5” and taking 2 Waterspout Elementals and my Yawgmoths Agenda!  Game two has me sobbing as he Addles away my Agenda (again!?!) and then adds insult to injury by dropping one of his own.

Results:  2-0 Opponent

Welp, post game comments are gonna look suspiciously like last weeks as there’s a bunch of Tier 2 decks out there with R/B seriously trouncing all of them.  I don’t wanna dis’ my Warp Wash design, I still think the abuse of card drawing and Agenda is a great engine.  Blue’s abundance of bounce along with Warped Devotion works well versus many decks as shown by my first three matches.  Heck, Warped Devotion all by itself punishes anyone using Gating, not to mention the very popular Dragon Lair tri-lands!  All this is just not enough tho against the disruption, aggresion, and direct damage that’s available in IBC.  So instead of moaning about it any further, I’m gonna figure out how to do something about it.  In my opinion the best way to defeat a deck is to understand how it works… so this week I’m going to indeed play my own variant of a R/B deck and report back to you guys and let you know what I find.  Who knows, I may even find its weakness!!  (although I don’t see how, R/B decks that run enchantment removal is a freak of nature… a FREAK I say!!)  J

Hope this helps… have fun!
Aaron Teare