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La_Sin_Grail
Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 9:09 pm
Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland
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This is a breakdown based on recent wizards official data on the standard metagame. This includes what decks you should play and which decks you’ll face.
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The first part of determining which deck to play for a tournament is to look online and see what decks are winning. If you want a chance of victory, you’re going to have be beat it. Thankfully, this process is made easier by the official Wizards websites, as well as articles like this, which overview the standard meta-game.

The most winning deck right now is Boros Agro, by whatever name it flies. Basically, BDW runs about even land/creatures/burn, using helix and hammer to remove small opposition and char/fuge to finish. This deck is extremely effective right now because it runs a lot of burn, efficient agro creatures, soltari priest, and scorched Rusalka to finish.

Dragonstorm is second most winning, after a great showing in championships. I’m sure we’ve all seen this list- Lotus Bloom, Seething song, some topdeck manipulation, dragonstorm, and lethal worth of dragons. The only ways I’ve seen people successfully win are kill it before it goes off or play lifegain before they come out and wrath immediately.

Triscuit Tron is my deck of choice in standard. While it is in third place in the winningest deck lists, it’s gained 7% in the last week, almost tripling the amount of winnings. This deck is W/U control, with a tiny black splash (on signets) for the flashback on mystical teachings. This also allows more signets, for a greater capacity to carry colors once the tron is online. This deck tries to shut down the opponent with tron and spell burst. Then, it runs triskelavus with academy ruins for an end-game recurring lock on the board, keeping it empty with spell blast and killing what they don’t like with triskelavus tokens. I’ll come back to specific matchups for this later in the article.

Izzetron- Not much new here. You all know this deck all too well, and because everybody else knows it well, too, it’s falling. It tends to lose to boros deck wins, which is one of the main reasons this deck is falling from it’s elite status.

Martyr Tron is the next most winningest deck, rounding out the top five. This relies on martyr of sands to sacrifice for a dozen life early to stall, then recurring it with proclamation of rebirth. Once your opponent is forced to overextend with creatures (if you can recur +12 life, burn does little), they wrath down the board. Then, once they’ve accumulated a ton and a half of life, chronosavant can deck the opposition the hard way. The deck is rounded out with Condemns, counters, and weathered wayfarer to find tron.

Of course, knowing the metagame isn’t even half the battle. The biggest parts are choosing your decktype and choosing how to tailor it to your needs or to beat specific other decktypes.

For my decktype of choice, it’s got to be triscuit tron. Triscuit is my deck of choice for a couple of reasons. First off, it’s plain good against the two decks above it. Triscuit uses wrath of god to great power, in addition to plenty of counterspells and some fetters. The two best ways of beating agro are to stabilize the board early or stabilize the board a little slower but more grandly. Triscuit owns the second strategy, by being able to fetter a big threat to not only eliminate it completely but to gain life in the process. Against dragonstorm, triscuit tron can use it’s massive quantities of cheap, quality counterspells or run lifegain into a wrath once the dragons hit the board.

I also find triscuit tron a little bit better than the other tron decks. It is more consistant than martyrtron, which practically loses without a martyr, and it abuses signets more efficiently than does izzetron.

Most importantly, though, triscuit tron is highly customizable. Beyond the core of U/W control, triscuit gains access to black through signets, meaning any metagame can accommodated- boarding in mortifies or ronom unicorns against it’s weakest matchup, glare, and can gain access to condemn, sudden death, or more counterspells as your metagame dictates. What’s even better is the the maindeck can be tinkered with, too! You can run Akroma for a finisher instead of Triskelavus if you want, switch in your favorite draw spells, even splash in a little reanimation combo. You can opt in weathered wayfarers if you want to be sure you can assemble the tron, or even adarkar valkyrie if board control matters more to you than resource control. It’s your call: all the deck needs to be triscuit tron is the tron, the expensive mana/signet base, and the standard U/W control elements (Counters, Wrath, and draw), and voila! Your own version of triscuit tron.

Triscuit V. Anything and Everything else:

Boros Deck wins: Control the board with fetters, counter liberally. The worst thing against an agro deck is choosing not to control because you want a bigger target. Fetters and Wog are your best friends here, so try to stick it out with countering (preferably burn spells) and Wogging/fettering their dudes. Then, teferi or your finisher of choice should come down and end the foolishness. Good plus matchup.

Dragonstorm: Obviously, you just don’t beat dragonstorm when it’s on a great run. Obviously, counters help, but if they really do draw a godhand, well, just hope they get to game two quickly. Board in pull from eternity, one of the most underrated cards of the newest set, to pull out their lotus blooms when they need to go off. Then, counters and a board lock should do the trick. Tough against an opposing godhand, but you should be able to do fairly well. Okay plus matchup.

Mirror: This all depends on those few tools you added to customize. If you picked better ones that your opponent, you’re in. Make sure you board out Wogs and board in fetters, unless you’re already playing a full set, in which case bring in condemns. You know the opposition won’t beat you with quantity, just quality.

Izzetron: This isn’t a great matchup, but if you can either counter their wildfire or set up two plus signets with some tron in your hand, it’ll be easy. Just make sure you don’t leave yourself open to tricks, of which Izzetron has many. Okay matchup.

Martyr Tron: Ah, a real problem. This and ghazi glare are the only really bad matchups triscuit has. If martyr tron can manage to get the engine on line, there’s little you can do about it. This is going to all be a matter of can they get the combo, which countering draws might help, but this is another if it’s a godhand, you’re toast matchup. Okay minus matchup.

That rounds out the top five, but here are some other matchups of note:

Panda connection- This W/B agro deck takes on many names over it’s evolutions, but the answer is still the same. Wrath, fetters, and some counters can hold this deck off all day until the big beater hits the board. Good matchup.

Ghazi-Glare: This is a tough game. This one is winnable, but only if you play a perfect game. Try to keep hierarchs and forces getting met by mana leaks and spell bursts, then wrath off the board. Fetters is powerful here, and be sure to board in ronom unicorn if you have it- it’s an early stopper and a way to deal with the glare itself. Okay to poor matchup.

Solar Flare: This is a good matchup because you have the anti-flare, counterspells! Wraths become pretty useless here, but your access to removal and more counters should help you prevail. Save fetters for akromas, and board in spot removal. Their limited amount of win conditions should be perfect targets for fetters and condemn. Also, if you have it, board in some reanimation so you can use their smallpox. Okay to good matchup.

In case you couldn’t tell from my band signets article, I think signets are great, great tools for success. For that reason, I’m going to recommend that if you don’t like triscuit that you go with either angelfire or martyrtron. Angelfire is great because it runs evasion, board control, and finishers. It uses signets and even bouncelands to supply a steadily increasing amount of mana into a massive Demonfire for the kill. This is one of few decks that manages a decent matchup against triscuit. Also, martyrtron can just gain so much life it’s unreal before beating face away with chronosavant. 400 life is not easily dealt with, akroma(s) or no.

Still, when it comes to overall consistency, positive matchups, and room for originality, triscuit tron is the right deck in current standard. Against triscuit, the “best deck” is renamed- it’s not BDW, it’s BDL.

Credit for data from:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/fk17

Thanks and have a great new year!

Bernie Makino
La_Sin_Grail
Felipe Musco
Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 11:59 pm
Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil
Cool article, LSG! Add the list you play, broken down card-by-card later, will ya? Also, I think your match-ups are not really what you wrote, I don’t thing a Tron-dependant deck can REALLY beat a fast aggro with a turn 5 clock so consistently... At least, not from what I’ve seen playing Gruul on FNM. Another REALLY underrated card, that helps against Dragonstorm almost as much as against Boros AND Gruul is Luminescence. I actually think it’s better than Pull from Eternity, although I agree with you on this one, it’s a REALLY underrated card. Dragonstorm text is mandatory, so once they play it, evewn if you respond with Luminescence, they’ll HAVE to search and spit out those dragons, just to see Wrath of God seal the deal the following turn... Wink
Anyway, great article, and I’m glad I dropped by on time to rate it! I’ll hold you on adding a more detailed decklist, so I’ll give you a 4 in advance.
I don't like YOU.
Cobra
Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:14 pm
Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 1202 Location: Austin, TX, USA
Nice article, full of very useful information at a very high level!

My only complaint is that your presentation and writing style make this a difficult read for non-experts. I’m definitely not suggesting you "dumb down" your article, just add a few extra touches to help clarify things. Make the organization more obvious, capitalize (or auto-link) card names, explain abbreviations the first time you use them, and definitely give us some decklists! Very Happy I think you usually do all these things, but this particular article seems hastily put together.

I’ll give this a solid five with those edits, or a four as it is.

I believe this article ends up in second place this month, according to the votes that were actually cast on time Wink, so congrats on that!

-- Cobra
http://cobracards.com -- Web's best deals on Trading Card Games.
physcosick
Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:40 pm
Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 229 Location:
My main probs with the article is that you base your claim on the best decks based off of a summary of the most popular decks. Boros Deck Wins is not the best deck in the format. It just that it is the easiest to build and play. Plus, if you build it in type 2, you basically have an extended deck. SO it’s the cheapest option. It is by no means the best deck since Ghazi, and many other decks, totally owns it’s face.
Felipe Musco
Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 7:04 pm
Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil
Yeah, I’ve been packing Demonfires with it against Ghazi-Glare because of that... But must people don’t do that. You’re right on this one.
I don't like YOU.
La_Sin_Grail
Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 8:09 pm
Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland
physcosick wrote:
My main probs with the article is that you base your claim on the best decks based off of a summary of the most popular decks. Boros Deck Wins is not the best deck in the format. It just that it is the easiest to build and play. Plus, if you build it in type 2, you basically have an extended deck. SO it’s the cheapest option. It is by no means the best deck since Ghazi, and many other decks, totally owns it’s face.


No, wrong, wrong wrong. I’m NOT basing it off popularity, but on winningest.

As for matchups, go to the article I linked you to and click on triscuit tron, then read the text that appears. Wizards has stated clearly that it beats boros beats. Even if you don’t like my testing, you’ve got to think wizards knows what it’s talking about. I was a little doubtful myself until I played it and was like "dang...."

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