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physcosick
Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:06 pm
Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 229 Location:
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Dive deep into the current meta and the recent Champs tournament and find out what stood out as amazing and what lagged behind greatly. Also, learn a few things out about the decks as well as some tips on building and playing them.
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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
By physcosick

I. Introduction
II. The Good
a. Analysis
b. Card Choices
c. Match ups
III. The Bad
a. Analysis
b. Card Choices
c. Match ups
IV. The Ugly
a. Analysis
b. Card Choices
c. Match ups
V. Conclusion



I. Introduction

With the release of newest set, Time Spiral, many things have changed. With this new arrival, Kamigawa Block rotates out of Standard and 401 cards (both new and old) replace the “loss”. Many people, including myself, disliked the Kamigawa Block sans Pithing Needle, Umezawa’s Jitte, and Gifts Ungiven. However, Time Spiral has already proven to be an insanely strong set and the future sets have even more promise. But what does this mean for type 2? Lots of changes… for the better. For the longest time, I had not played in a Standard FNM. It just wasn’t interesting. There weren’t really any outstanding decks like back when Affinity dominated the scene. The were also no decks that stood out to me as fun. Magic is all about fun for me. There were a couple decks that were better then others but they were unbelievably boring. SO there was no point. But when I saw the spoilers for Time Spiral developing, needless to say I was a little excited. The new meta has not let me down yet. While the format is still balanced, with the large card pool available, there are many different options so anyone can find something that they like.

Champs is over and done with and you can find many of the top 8 deck lists on pretty much any website. Solar Pox seemed to show up in large numbers do to its sudden popularity via StarCityGames’ pre-Champs standard tournament and sudden endorsement. Glare was also a very strong deck that made its presence known. Glare has many different version that use a variety of different cards and styles such as Spectral Force with Scryb Ranger, and/or Thelonite Hermit or even a red splash for demonfire. Some decks even include all of the strategies but most of them focus on 1 or 2 depending on their style and meta game. Glare and Solar Pox were the two most popular decks at Champs but there was a large amount of diversity including, but not limited to, UG variants, Zoo, Gruul, RG variants, UW Control, UW Tron, Dragonstorm, Snow White, UR Control, UR Tron, etc, etc. But what stands out and what is lagging behind?


II. The good- GW Glare

a. Analysis
I am a huge advocator of GW Glare. I believe it is one of, if not the, best deck currently. But not just any Glare deck… this one:

Lands: 23
4 Selesnya Sanctuary
4 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
4 Temple Garden
4 Brushland
5 Forest
1 Pendelhaven
1 Plains

Creatures: 26
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Selesnya Guildmage
4 Yavimaya Dryad
4 Loxodon Hierarch
4 Thelonite Hermit
3 Watchwolf
3 Birds of Paradise

Other: 11
4 Call of the Herd
4 Glare of Subdual
3 Stonewood Invocation

Sideboard: 15
4 Giant Solifuge
4 Serrated Arrows
4 Honorable Passage
3 Krosan Grip

b. Card Choices

I could go through every card and say why it is good in the deck but lets face it, everyone should realize the utility cards that are needed in Glare that don’t need describing (Glare of Subdual, Birds of Paradise, Call of the Herd, etc) so lets just go over a few of the cards that not everyone uses.

4 Selesnya Sanctuary: The reason why four are so good in Glare is because it doesn’t hurt, especially with such a great mana curve. Not to mention the extra mana helps to achieve that 8 mana in one turn for Thelonite Hermit. No I know you can pay for it over the course of 2 turns but it is much safer to be able to play it and flip it at end of you opponent’s turn in the late game. Against control, Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree destroys control decks. The only true answer most control decks have against the Tree is Faith’s Fetters. So having extra Sanctuaries give you outs to get back your Fettered Tree and be able to play it again for a second try.

Thelonite Hermit: Now this guy is relatively easy to see why he is in here but I wanted to point out one thing about this little guy. Sometimes you have to realize when your board position is good enough. What I mean is: don’t over-extend. Thelonite Hermit is great to have out on the board but if your beating down face creating 1-2 Saprolings a turn then playing the Hermit is not needed. One last thing that is a very useful tip is to never, and I mean NEVER, swing with Thelonite Hermit when your opponent is showing White Mana open with cards in hand because every time you do, I guarantee you a Condemn is coming your way and it is not a good feeling to have to go through (seeing all your 2/2s become 1/1s).

Serrated Arrows: Serrated Arrows is one of those cards that is an amazing sideboard slot in many cases but is sometimes a dead card. Three creatures automatically stand out immediately when I think of Serrated Arrows: Dark Confidant, Shadowmage Infiltrator, and Fortune Thief. Now the Infiltrator doesn’t really scare me that much but Dark Confidant and Fortune Thief can cause some problems but Fortune Thief literally makes it impossible for glare to win. Fortune Thief was a card that I assumed wouldn’t get much popularity but is showing up in several sideboard slots and therefore Serrated Arrows deserves a slot in the sideboard. Many decks run a red splash for Demonfire which is their answer for Fortune Thief, but I like my Glare the way it is, call me old fashioned. Don’t get me wrong, I see the validity of Demonfire and I advocate that as well but I will be playing this version. Plus, Serrated Arrows also helps the Zoo match up since most of their dudes are killed from it.

c. Match Ups

The deck, overall, has a very good game against most aggro decks because of quick creatures like Watchwolf (which can pretty much block all of the agro players creatures and live), Loxodon Hierarch, Glare of Subdual, and the ability to basically create “infinite” creatures. The deck also does relatively well against control since it has the card the single handedly creates large problems for control deck: Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree. Plus, many control decks can’t deal with the speed that this deck can generate. Even though it isn’t necessarily faster then any agro deck, it is still relative quick but also has very good late game. Against combo decks like Dragonstorm, Glare has to get a bit lucky. The only true answers Glare has against Dragonstorm are Krosan Grip (Signets and Lotus Bloom), Giant Solifuge, Honorable Passage, and Loxodon Hierarch helps out a lot. But the fact stands that Glare has a lot of dead cards against Dragonstorm in the main deck. Post sideboard, the match-up gets a lot better but it is still very hard.

III. The Bad- Snow White

a. Analysis

My, as well as many other people I know, least favorite deck in the history of Type 2 is Snow White. For those of who don’t know, Snow White is a deck that uses the engine of Proclamation of Rebirth and Martyrs of Sands to gain a lot of life each turn. Needless to say, it is very frustrating to play with and against. I was given this deck the day before states from a friend who guaranteed me a top 8 finish. I didn’t get a top 8 finish. Instead, what I got was, 5 hours of boredom and constant people coming up to me and complaining to me, angry at me because I brought the deck and all it will do is prolong each round. Keep in mind that my state only had about 25 people show up for the tournament which is smaller then our FNMs! The deck is unbelievably slow; I didn’t get any breaks in between rounds until I dropped in round 5. Every time the round would end, everyone would come up and watch my game complaining to each other about how slow the deck is. So learn from me when I say: Don’t play this deck unless you hate yourself and you want other people to hate you even more. Here is a decent deck list of this monstrosity:

Lands: 27
17 Snow-Covered Plains
2 Urza’s Factory
4 Scrying Sheets
4 Mouth of Ronom

Creatures: 5
4 Martyr of Sands
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath

Spells: 28
3 Ivory Mask
4 Wrath of God
3 Sunscour
4 Condemn
4 Gelid Shackles
4 Proclamation of Rebirth
1 Sacred Mesa
1 Millstone
1 Evangelize
1 Debtors’ Knell
2 Cover of Winter

Sideboard:15
4 Faith’s Fetters
3 Moratorium Stone
3 Circle of Protection: Red
3 Sacred Ground
2 Muse Vessel

b. Card Choices

The main deck is basically set in stone and can be labeled in these three categories: creature control, win conditions, and draw engin. The draw engine in this deck is obviously Scrying Sheets and all of the Snow cards (like the 17 Snow-Covered Plains) in this deck can be easily put into the category as well. The deck is full of ways to roll over aggro decks: Martyr of Sands, Wrath of God, Sunscour, Condemn, Gelid Shackles, and the best stall card ever made, or at least available for Standard tournaments, Cover of Winter. The win conditions are pretty much set in stone. The only difference is that some decks play Chronosavant but I personally dislike the guy very much. I would much rather have a Millstone.

c. Match Ups

The only true decks Snow White actually beats hands down are agro decks. However, even though the format is wide open, aggro isn’t well represented (sans Glare). The format is full of Solar Flare, Angel variants, Dragonstorm, and control variants. Speaking of Dragonstorm, you would think that Snow White would have an easy time with it, right? Well, yeah… but it isn’t that obvious. The one bad thing about Snow White is how inconsistent it is. After all, they play they need is “Turn 1 Martyr, Go!” The problem is Snow White needs that against Dragonstorm but it doesn’t always happen. But even if it does happen, it is still possible to win; believe me, I’ve both beaten Snow White with Dragonstorm and lost to Dragonstorm while playing Snow White. The deck is just not good. It only has good game against certain decks that aren’t necessarily dominant right now.

IV. The Ugly- Dragonstorm

a. Analysis

It’s quite humorous to me that I should write this article and declare my favorite deck in the format as “The Ugly”. For those of you guys who don’t know, my favorite deck is Dragonstorm. Now I know a lot of people hate it because, to use one of the many reasons as an example, it can “win out of no where”. But that’s one of the reasons I like it so much. Remember when I told you guys in the beginning of this thing how boring Type 2 has been for me? Well Dragonstorm has changed that drastically! To sum Dragonstorm up in a sentence [deep breadth]: The objective is to use cheap draw spells like Telling Time and Sleight of Hand to draw into your mana accell like Lotus Bloom, Seething Song, and Rite of Flame to power out a nice Dragonstorm to search for Bogardan Hellkites or Hunted Dragons.[sigh] Everyone claims it is a horrible deck yet I always go 3-0-1 at FNMs. The people who complain about the deck saying it is bad, requires no skill, etc always will loose to it then complain more. I had a guy accuse me of cheating and stacking the deck even though he shuffled my deck before I drew my cards! So here is the decklist I have been using at my local FNMs which has been giving me great success week in and week out.

Lands: 22
4 Shivan Reef
4 Steam Vents
2 Dreadship Reef
8 Island
4 Mountain

Creatures: 8
4 Bogardan Hellkite
2 Hunted Dragon

Spells: 32
4 Dragonstorm
4 Telling Time
4 Seething Song
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Remand
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Gigadrowse

Sideboard: 15
2 Trickbind
3 Wipe Away
4 Spell Snare
3 Ignorant Bliss
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
2 Calciform Pools

b. Card Choices

The deck is pretty much centered on drawing cards, mana accelerators (a.k.a. your combo pieces), and Dragonstorm. Generally speaking, the deck goes off on about turn 4-5 but can go off even sooner. There is really not much to say as far as card choices because it is pretty much standard and self-explanatory. The storage lands (Dreadship Reef, Calciform Pools, etc) are amazing against control decks when combined with Gigadrowse. Telling Time has finally found a deck where it is amazing in because any other draw spell besides Telling Time and Sleight of Hand runs you the risk of drawing into your dragons and you don’t want to do that unless you are playing control decks who play Rewind. Plus, Compulsive Research (and the likes) is HORRIBLE because not only do you have to draw into your dragons but you also have to discard useful cards because you only run 22 lands so the lands you draw you’ll want to keep but by turn 3 you probably won’t have any lands in hand. Also, on turn 3, if you go second, even if you discard a land you will have to discard a second card because you will have too many cards in hand unless you play a Lotus Bloom. I recently jumped on the Teferi ban wagon. The card is amazing and just shuts down control decks. EOT Gigadrowse, tap them out, and play Teferi. Next turn go off or play one of the Hellkites and win! However, I have only played Teferi on the board once and Skred killed it!

c. Match Ups

The greatest thing about this deck for me is the ability to win against pretty much anything (but with the chance of a turn 1 kill, it isn’t hard if your extremely lucky). The three worst match ups are UG Control, Zoo, and Snow White. Snow white has to have a first turn Martyr or it is very hard. Just play around them having a condemn in hand because they always will and they will follow up with a wrath. So if you Dragonstorm for 4 or 3, know what is coming. You don’t want to over extend too much and it is ok to get 3 Hellkites and 1 Hunted Dragon to gain yourself 6 life which is meaningless. On the other hand, it does get rid of a white card in their hand to lower the value of Martyr. I said Zoo is bad but it is a race; whoever gets going faster. I’m not exactly sure why UG Aggro Control is so hard since it is the only control deck that will give me problems. Everything else is manageable as long as you don’t get screwed in anyway via your drawing. The hardest deck of those is Solar Pox. The reason why this is a little harder then normal (but still not a bad match up) is because you need for them to screw up somehow. The only problems are you usually can only Dragonstorm for 3 against them and after sideboard they will have both Circle of Protection: Red and Peace of Mind which can be taken care of with things like Gigadrowse, Wipe Away, Trickbind, and Spell Snare. The only problem with Trickbind is that your opponent can activate CoP: Red as many times as he would like before passing priority, making trickbind useless.

V. Conclusion

I hope you guys all enjoyed this little article of mine, which tries to stretch the understanding you guys have for a few decks. Hopefully some of you learned some new tricks. If you are interested in building Dragonstorm or Glare, you can PM me or AIM me if you need any help building or tips on how to play the deck(s). If you want to play Snow White, you obviously haven’t read this article, so don’t bug me Wink

- This has been physcosick. You stay classy Cobracards!
La_Sin_Grail
Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:08 pm
Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland
I’m actually finding that my new anti-agro deck, oddly enough, can beat dragonstorm EVEN IF you go off without using WoG!

Basically, I’ll have gained some life early from helix/hierarch/firemane, then I temp. isolation the turn you storm away (yes, it’s easy to know when you’re playing against D-storm, so I would save the mana). I’ve been to about 27ish, so storming for say 4 hellkites, to make it easy, would put me to 7, but goes to 12 because of temp. isolation before damage resolves (yes, this is a legal play, cheap as it may be). The next turn, I’ll fetter a dragon (me to 16 or 17 if angel is down/dead), then take ten. Then akroma, since no D-storm decks have any burn (this is not a shot at yours, I’m just saying it doesn’t). Then I stabalize having killed the dragons and use more lifegain outlets, swinging with Akroma, with that ever-frustrating vigilance ftw.

the deck is roughly as follows. 4: Bop, Helix, Fetters, Hierarch, Firemane Angel, Burning-Tree Shaman (who may be coming out but I like him against many activated ability combos as well as turn two against agro since he lives through helix alone), Temporal Isolation, Call of the Herd

3: Akroma, Demonfire

Mine accelerates to creature, hopefully on turn two (although 2 BTS out for 2 llanowar elves in would help this, and I’m testing that in) which should be able to stabalize. Then, I pull the lifegain suite with fetters/hierarch/helix/angel to last long enough to grab Akroma or demonfire for the win. I’m also testing Bog. Hellkite over demonfire (although he’s much worse against blue).

EDIT: So yeah, more to the point, there are ways to beat D-storm even outside countering. While it is good, it’s far from unstoppable.
physcosick
Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:15 pm
Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 229 Location:
La_Sin_Grail wrote:

EDIT: So yeah, more to the point, there are ways to beat D-storm even outside countering. While it is good, it’s far from unstoppable.
Which is why it is the ugly. I’ll comment more when i have the time.

Edit: Yeah it’s all good and everything. The deck has a lot of hate against it and thats fine. But even if it has a bad match up against something, I can still win. Which is why it is ugly. Because it’s really good, but requires more luck then skill (which makes it fun), every deck has hate for it but even that won’t help much because even their hate can be dealt with. Life gain hurts but can be dealt with. It’s all doable, you just need to get lucky... it’s ugly.
La_Sin_Grail
Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:50 pm
Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland
See it’s not the life gain that actually deals with it, though, it’s the lifegain that gives you TIME to deal with it. They can just go WoG the turn after if they had enough life to survive the origional assult.

I wouldn’t exactly call it ugly... I would call it extremely Johnny with less Spike than most competitive decks, but I don’t think ugly is quite the word.

And kudos on snow white being bad. A freaking men.
physcosick
Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 11:07 pm
Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 229 Location:
But when I said it didnt have any terrible match ups, what I meant was: there are no decks that are out there that you Auot lose to. You have a chance with eveyrthing. I played against a deck similar to what you are saying. I went off on turn 3. Another game he had 26 life from 2 helixes on turn 5. I Dragonstormed for 5 (telling time, into rite, seething, etc). Perhaps Ugly isn’t the word, but in this context it is. There really isn’t a better title for this article it fits perfectly. Perhaps ugly isn’t exactly right but... it’s close enough.
La_Sin_Grail
Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 11:30 pm
Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland
I suppose you do have a chance against any deck... but really any good deck has SOME chance. Opposing mana screw or just drawing a godhand can happen even in a bad matchup.
c3poquino
Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 4:36 pm
Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 47 Location:
Loved the article! Dragonstorm rocks! I’ll drop by to post a more detailed analysis and cast a vote.
Cobra
Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 12:17 pm
Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 1202 Location: Austin, TX, USA
Very nice article -- good observations and ideas, all well-presented.

I’m also not sold on calling Dragonstorm "ugly," but I guess I see the reason... Laughing
http://cobracards.com -- Web's best deals on Trading Card Games.
Felipe Musco
Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 1:04 pm
Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil
Well, a guy brought Mihara’s Dragonstorm deck to our FNM, and placed LAST with it. That’s why it’s "the ugly". The deck does nothing. Either you play the combo, or you don’t play the combo. Period. No action in-between at all, unless you call some random Remands and Gigadrowses action...
I don't like YOU.
physcosick
Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:46 pm
Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 229 Location:
Felipe is pretty much right except you do do a lot before going off like setting up your hand and messing with counters on storage lands and lotus blooms (and of course the remands and gigadrowsing like you mentioned). Everyone says the deck requires no skill to play but when I see bad players playing the deck, they do horrible. Where as I consistently make a strong showing week in week out. So it’s certainly undervalued but it’s still ugly because it’s just to reliant on certain factors and every deck has atleast 8 answers to it...

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