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inresponse

Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2006 12:43 am

Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 162 Location:

--- description ---
Looking for a new standard deck? I’ve got two. One is very difficult to play, but has respectable match ups across the board, while the other allows players to enjoy watching their opponents try to play with only a couple of lands.
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Standard has become a much more open format with the additional set of coldsnap. 8 sets total make for an exciting environment where pretty much any well built deck obtain a winning record when played correctly. However, there is still a predictable environment. Currently, that environment is defined by magic online. Every week, hundreds of tournaments take place, including a few premier events (better known as PEs). The winning decks of these tournaments shape the format for the following PEs, and since all the games are reviewable, it’s easy to see what kind of decks are getting the most wins.
The top decks from last week were Vipies, 8stonerain, Budget Boros, Structure and Force, and Satanic Sligh. Besides that, there were many other decks that did well such as Vore and Solarflare (for a more comprehensive look at the standard format, see Felipe Musco’s article this month). Looking at these decks, it’s pretty clear that the format is wide open, and therefore ready to be experimented on by yours truly! Keeping in mind that the format will change in a little over a month, I’ve built 2 decks that can be played either now or when kamigawa rotates out.
The first deck takes a new look at a card that seems like it should be good, but hasn’t proven its worth in standard yet. Life from the Loam is a powerful card advantage engine that just needs a deck to call home. Before I go any further, here is the list:
Life from the Loam Engine
2 Trade Routes
3 Life from the Loam
3 Demonfire
2 Muddle the Mixture
4 Remand
4 Spell Snare
4 Boomerang
4 Loxodon Hierarch
4 Phyrexian Ironfoot
4 Azorius Guildmage

4 Ghost Quarter
3 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
2 Mouth of Ronom
2 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Forest
5 Snow-Covered Island
4 Breeding Pool
4 Yavimaya Coast

Sideboard:
4 Naturalize
2 Trade Routes
2 Wrath of God
4 Faith’s Fetters
2 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree

This deck has a card that creates a nice little combo with Life from the Loam: Trade Routes. Combing these two cards, it is possible to generate a large amount of card advantage in a very short amount of time, without using much mana at all. The deck also uses Muddle the Mixture to transmute for either Trade Routes or Life from the Loam, as well as to counter spells like Wildfire and Wrath of God. Wildfire doesn’t seem like it should be threatening to a deck with 26 lands, but since you actually spend many of your ghost quarters on yourself (for mana fixing), your land count can often be pretty low.

The deck tries to drop either an early guildmage or to hold back with countermagic until it can drop a medium sized creature and start attacking. Against the more controlling decks like solarflare or vore, especially against decks with bouncelands, boomerang often targets a land, gaining large amounts of tempo in the process. The late game against decks like these usually results in multiple vitu-ghazi tokens and an uncounterable demonfire. Against agro decks you often have larger creatures than them, as well as access to counterspells for their most dangerous burn spells. Let’s look at some match-ups:

Vipies: it is important to trade your creatures with their vipers early, and to make sure you remain at a high life total to avoid demonfire finishes. Hierarch is great in this match, and guildmage makes it difficult for their low threat count to attack. Jitte is a problem, but the sideboard should be more than enough, and you have a full set of spellsnares that will probably not be used for much else. I can’t stress enough how important heirarch is here, as it delays their assault and blocks and trades with all their guys except Hypnotic Specter.

Sideboarding:
-2 trade routes, -2 muddle the mixture, -1 vitu-ghazi, -1 snow-covered island, -4 boomerang, -1 life from the loam, -1 demonfire
+4 naturalize, +4 Faith’s Fetters, +2 Wrath of God, +2 Snow-Covered Plains

The sideboard plan takes out the slower strategy and allows a faster, more controlling deck to take its place.

8stonerain: this matchup can be tough because they punish an already stretched manabase. Life from the Loam is key in this match, as it makes their land destruction ineffiecnt. Again, blocking viper and Ninja of the Deep Hours is important, as it slows down their assault. Rumbling Slum is a difficult to deal with big creature, but they usually won’t be able to attack into multiple large bodies like Heirarch and Ironfoot. Once demonfire takes care of slums, your creatures are free to run in unopposed since all their other creatures are relatively small.

sideboard:

same as for vipies, except +1 Life from the Loam and -1 Demonfire.

The match becomes more of a control on agro match after sideboard, but your control deck is better at what it does. Long thought out game plans can be easily disrupted by their cheap countermagic however, so watch out.

Structure and Force: The Japanese deck that uses counterbalance is a great deck, but takes a lot of skill to play correctly. One good thing about this match is that they have no basic plains or swamps, so your ghost quarters are better than ever. I recommend destroying their nonbasics as soon as possible, just to keep them off their creatures. Once you have started reusing ghost quarters with life, they run out of basics quickly, and it is easy to dismantle their manabase. This match up is very good for you, but usually goes pretty long. If they do get high on lands, watch out for meloku, as it can potentially win games from nowhere, even if you have Mouth of Ronom to kill it. Vitu-Ghazi tokens combined with early beats from guildmage should put them in burn range for a Demonfire.

Sideboarding:

- 4 Loxodon Heirarch
+2 Trade Routes, +1 Vitu-Ghazi, +1 Wrath of God

The one wrath comes in for the late game in case meloku does show up. Its casting cost of 4 makes in uncounterable by counterbalance, and therefore a great answer to the one man army.

Solarflare: This game is decided by how long your guildmages survive. If they drop after most of the solarflare players removal is used up, you are in good shape as the guildmages shut down the entire deck. This match can also be won quickly by dropping early threats and using boomerang/ghost quarter on karoos. Muddle the Mixture should often be saved for zombify.

Sideboarding:

-4 Loxodon Heirarch, -2 Life from the Loam, -1 Trade Routes, -2 Mouth of Ronom
+4 Faith’s Fetters, +2 Snow-Covered Plains, +3 Naturalize

Dropping the combo pieces to one each leaves room for early game disruption and midgame control with fetters, but still leaves the late games possibility of trade routes plus life, especially with muddles to transmute.

Burn Decks: I am going to classify Satanic Sligh and Budget Boros as “burn decks.” The basic goal is to drop a heirarch and ride the life advantage to victory. It’s usually pretty easy to so this since there aren’t really too many things the burn decks can do about a 4/4, except char him, making him an 8 life spell, as well as hitting your opponent for 2. Against satanic sligh it is best to lead with a ghost quarter so your opponent can’t drop a genju on their land. Don’t be afraid to trade your guys for theirs.

Sidboarding:

same as vipies

One thing to be careful about against these decks is getting too low on life. Sometimes you have to make bad blocks just so you can be out of burn range. Also, try to wait for an opportunity where your heirarch can be cast with no chance of flames of the bloodhand.

UW and monoblue control: This match up is by far the most boring, and pretty much revolves around dropping threats early, ghost quartering their lands to keep them off colored mana, and ending with a mass amount of vitu-ghazi tokens. These decks often differentiate between lists, so it is difficult to come up with a specific sideboarding strategy.

This deck offers the tools to beat any deck in the format, and only gets better when time spiral hits standard. Cards like Terramorphic Expanse fit into this deck automatically, and due to the large number of answers present in this deck, it’s easy to deal with the random undefined archetypes that will be everywhere after the rotation.

While the first deck is quite expensive, demanding multiple expensive rares, this next deck is very cheap to build, and very competitive. The deck is designed to beat Katsuhiro Mori’s Structure and Force deck, and does so impressively (barring the turn 2-3 counterbalance + top draw).

First, the list:

4 Skred
4 Seal of Fire
4 Coldsteel Heart
4 Stone Rain
3 Cryoclasm
3 Demolish
4 Demonfire
4 Phyrexian Ironfoot
3 Stalking Yeti
3 Shard Phoenix
4 Scrying Sheets
4 Mouth of Ronom
16 Snow-Covered Mountain

Sideboard:
4 Blood Moon
4 Smash
1 Stalking Yeti
1 Cryoclasm
3 Bottled Cloister
2 Rimescale Dragon

This deck is pretty much a revival of the big red decks popular during mirrodin. Those decks used Molten Rain, Stone Rain, and Demolish to deal with lands, this deck just replaces the first with Cryoclasm. The low threat count is very efficient as most serve multiple purposes. I’m not going to go over match ups with this deck, because it is extremely simple to play. The one thing I do want to suggest is that you use your mana as best as possible. This deck plays some of the best cards in the format in Skred and Demonfire, as well as an answer to one of the most prevalent, Jitte. The one difficulty this deck has is in the match up with satanic slight. That deck has so many burn spells that it just out races your slower clock. However, since your spells do not fall to spellsnare and your stalking yetis and demolishes hit the mana cost most dreaded by counterbalance, that match up is a breeze. Surprisingly, that control deck cannot survive a stalking yeti, since it kills all their creatures, and even deals with meloku when combined with a lowly seal of fire. If you want to have a blast at your fnm, or if you want to just watch someone’s face when you cast the lethal, uncounterable demonfire right at their head, you should definitely play this deck.

These are the two decks I have been working hardest on lately, and they have both proven much better than I originally expected. So if you are looking for a new deck to throw around the local gaming shop, or something to take to your state tournament, both are great options.

Last edited by inresponse on Wed Sep 20, 2006 6:23 pm; edited 2 times in total

Felipe Musco

Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2006 10:50 am

Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

Cool article, inresponse, and thanks for the mentioning, I feel honored! There’s a couple of no-links on your cards’ names, might wanna watch out for that. It’s really good that you’ve written this article, I wrote one showing what Standard IS, you wrote one showing what it CAN be, and as soon as Time Spiral’s out, I’ll write one showing what it WILL be, meaning, I’ll adapt those Standard decks with the new cards, as well as give the death sentence to decks like Snakes and Heartbeat. Wink

Cool article overall, liked the ideas, Life from the Loam IS underrated IMO, I hope it breaks the meta this time! Oh, btw, could you pm me your "Top 10" Standard cards, in a specific order? I want to complement my article: instead of eliminating the "good cards" from the list completly, I’ll add a "Top 10 Members’ Choice" table at the end! How does it sound?
Oh, and I’ll be back to take a closer look at the decklists later, so I can try to give some advice, if it’s possible (I’m generally better at advising Sideboards), I’m a little busy right now. Glad you could make it this month, I was starting to think I might run unnoposed, AND let’s face it, we DO need more articles showing up ’round here, I mean, check the LotR’s area, they’re crammed full or articles there!

I don't like YOU.

inresponse

Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2006 4:49 pm

Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 162 Location:

how do you make the names of cards link? Loxodon Heirarch is spelled correctly, but it still doesn’t link.

Felipe Musco

Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2006 5:06 pm

Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

Nope, it’s Hierarch, not Heirarch. If it’s not linking, just type half of the name on the Advanced Search, and chek on the other half it it show. For instance, type in Loxodon.

I don't like YOU.

inresponse

Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2006 6:18 pm

Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 162 Location:

oh woops, I tought that’s how I was spelling it. score one for fast typing.

La_Sin_Grail

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:01 pm

Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland

Erm... I don’t really think a four color deck has a chance in standard right now. As it is, there’ve been a total of 0 4-color decks in the top twenty lists at least since July, when I started looking at them regularly.

I like the use of loam, but I think it’s a better combo with tron, gifts ungiven, and sakura-tribe scout. The four colors is what I would call overkill.

I think that second red deck has potential when browbeat arrives, but I’m not sure it can actually finish people as is.

physcosick

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:39 pm

Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 229 Location:

Color is not a prob in the deck. If you didn’t notice, you can get whatever colors you want by destorying ur own lands with Ghost Quarter and than searching for the snow land of your choice, only to be life from the loamed back. No other deck can do what this deck does when it comes to color fixing. If there was more color fixing like this, there would be more 4 color decks running around.

La_Sin_Grail

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:44 pm

Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland

It’s too slow. that’s why it doesn’t work. It’s not that you can’t get the right colors, it’s that you can’t stop agro fast enough I don’t think. Anyways, I see no real use for boomerang in the deck... it’s double blue and kind of slow.

If I were going to play trade routes, it would be Kudzu/Meloku/Trade Routes/Azusa beats. Kudzu is amazing with roots.

physcosick

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 6:03 pm

Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 229 Location:

WRONG! lol

The deck stops aggro with boomerang (also helps against control) since it buys u a turn! Than Loxodon Hierarchs rapes aggro! Than you have Phyrexian Ironfoot. Both creatures amanzing against aggro. Not to mention the guildmage’s tapping ability! And the sideboard wraths. No prob at all, sir.

Don’t assume, don’t think, just try it and get good with it. Once your good at playing the deck you will realize it’s awesomeness!

This might be good for states since states is usually aggro heavy.

inresponse

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2006 7:42 pm

Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 162 Location:

yeah, the deck does look really awkward, which is one reason I was hesitant to post it, but it has just performed so well in testing that I thought I should show it off.

The boomerangs are extremely powerful against solarflare since they allow you to set them back 2 lands when they drop a bounceland, and combined with ghost quarter can keep them off their mana in the early game. The best way to beat that deck, which is THE most popular deck in the format, is to get them low on life before they start dropping huge guys, and then finish them off with a medium sized demonfire, usually for 7-8. Boomerang is also an answer to Genju of the Spires, which is big problem from satanic sligh, and usually the only way they can beat you.

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