Evolving the Magic Online Community Cup Standard Decks
The Magic Online Challenge Cup belongs to the community this time around. One reason is that the community came up with one really good deck. It might have come up with a second one as well, given a bit more time. Let’s look at that evolution, first with the RW Ascension, then with Eldrazi Elves. If nothing else, this does show that Standard is not a static or completely defined format.
The Community Cup Challenge included Unified Standard as one of the formats. We could not play more than four copes of any single card across all eight decks. That meant that, if we put four
Bloodbraid Elf and four
Maelstorm Pulse in our Jund deck, no other deck could play those cards.
With a lot of help from the community, we soon had a set of eight decks to begin testing. The initial selection of decks included a
Time Sieve deck salvaged from the pre-rotation builds. It lost some of the artifact card drawing that had powered the pre-Zendikar builds – namely
Elsewhere Flask, which slowed it down. Here’s that build.
The deck has a couple paths to victory. First of all, with
Time Sieve and
Open the Vaults, the deck could often take several extra turns, then take more turns with
Time Warp. During those extra turns, you could put counters on
Tezzeret the Seeker, then win with his ultimate. Also, if you can use Time Sieve, then Open the Vaults while a
Glassdust Hulk is in play, the Hulk will be at least a 11/12 and unblockable.
After playtesting it for a while, the team discovered some shortcomings. First of all, while it could often take several extra turns, all too often those turns were spent looking for a way to win. With just four Glassdusk Hulks and three Tezzerets, sometimes they just were not there. In the old builds, with Elsewhere Flasks drawing an additional half dozen cards a game, that was less of a problem. In this deck it was.
I remember seeing a post from Mike while he was testing the deck. It went something like this:
8:40: Dangerlinto: Just took three straight extra turns. Deck is fun!
8:40: Dangerlinto: However, I’m not doing anything with the turns.
After a lot of discussion, Hamtastic, AJ Impy and Dangerlinto modified the deck. They kept the white fogs and the Time Warps, but stripped out the Time Sieve / Open the Vaults combo in favor of a better win condition. Now, instead of protecting the deck and life totals while setting up Time Sieve, the deck set up an active
Luminarch Ascension and/or some decent planeswalkers. Here’s what that looked like:
This deck was better. Once active, Luminarch Ascension can crank out a bunch of tokens. The planeswalkers can do what Planeswalkers do when left unmolested. The win percentage of the deck went up significantly from the Time Sieve variant. It wasn’t perfect, however. The deck still had some internal tension. For example, the Walls and Wrath effects were in conflict. More importantly, Time Warp does not put counters on the Luminarch Ascension, which is a primary path to victory.
The next version was RW. It got rid of Time Warp and Wall of Denial – and blue entirely – for more board sweepers and another Fog effect. Intimidation Bolt is a great fog, as well as being removal for annoying weenies. It bought more turns and bought them cheaply, which is what you want a Fog to do.
Another card that really surprised me with its effectiveness was
Scepter of Dominance. It does what
Icy Manipulators have always done: mana screw players at times, and lock down attackers at other times. Both effects are critical. At the MCCC, I watched Hammie beat Jund simply by locking down the opponent’s only green source during upkeep. More commonly, the Scepters lock down a creature or two, forcing the opponent to overextend, so that a Wrath effect becomes a three-for-one or better.
Here’s the deck that the team played in the Standard portion of the event. It went 3-1, and was probably our best performing deck. It was certainly our best original deck.
My plan, at this point, was to take the deck and tweak it a bit, then try it out in the Standard queues. This is normal Standard, not unified, so the cards that the deck could not play can come back. The most notable are the fourth
Arid Mesa, as well as white’s stalwarts
Day of Judgment and
Baneslayer Angel. My plan included removing the two Caldera Hellions and one Earthquake for Day of Judgments. I wasn’t completely sure about Baneslayer Angel. The deck likes to play Wrath effects and sweep the board, but Baneslayer Angel is just broken, and it belongs. I just need to figure out what can be cut.
Well, that was the plan. However, after working as a judge at Pro Tour Austin, Grand Prix Minneapolis and some other events – all of which compensate judges in online product, if you prefer, I have a ridiculous number of packs of both M10 and Zendikar. I am also averaging winning slightly better than 2 packs per draft. All that means that I can do a lot of drafts, and I am in the process of drafting my way into playsets of most of the constructed cards I need. I’m not there, though, so to play the modified Ascension deck, I would have to buy 3 Day of Judgment, 2 Luminarch Ascension and 2 Baneslayers.
With the product I already have, if I keep winning at the rate I am currently, I will have packs for over 150 more M10 drafts, and almost that many Zendikar drafts. (December 2nd - 9th – M10 NIX TIX drafts. I am so there!)
I will eventually bust the cards I needs – probably even the Baneslayers – so I don’t see the need to buy them now. Of course, without the cards, I can’t playtest the deck on MTGO. No proxies.
I am playing it a bit in paper. The results are inconclusive – I have ended up playing more EDH and 2HG than serious Standard recently.
Moving on.
I am writing this while watching the Day One notes and coverage from Worlds. It appears a Mill deck went 6-0! I will be fascinated to see how much that build shares with the UB Mill deck I built for Sam at the event. Note that the build we designed did
not have
Wall of Bone. I have built the original UB version in paper, and played it in some paper events. It smashes control decks, but had some problems with Goblins and Vampires pre-board. Milling
Bloodghasts is bad.
Here’s my current Mill build.
I have been playing around with some sideboard cards. I want something that can win when all else fails. I have added and removed a copies of Mind Control and Halo Hunter. Both have their uses. Mind Control steals Baneslayer Angels. Halo Hunter is an unblockable fast clock. Both need more testing. Actually, all of the sideboard needs work, but I'll wait to see what Worlds produces before I do more. In the meantime, I'll be drafting.
Finally, I had also built a mono-green deck with Oran-Rief, the Vastwood and Ant Queen and other token producers. Here’s an early draft of that deck.
Over time, I tuned the deck a lot. I replaced the super-Timmyesque
Terra Stompers with better cards. I had worked in
Master of the Wild Hunt and was thinking about
Nissa Revane. I abandoned that deck to work on
Warp World, but if I had had more time, I would have worked on mono-green a bit more. I would also, sooner or later, have lost a draft to
Eldrazi Monument, and would probably have put two and two together. Would I have some up with this?
No idea if we would have got there – but this is a pretty good deck. Expect to see a lot of it for a while, at least until the Worlds decks eclipse it.
PRJ
“one million words” on MTGO
18 Comments
Interesting to see two articles (your's and Josh's) tackle the same format simultaneous from two completely different perspectives. (Though you both did mention Worlds as a touchstone.) I happen to agree with Josh about Worlds being a huge warping factor on the meta game. It always has been since I can remember there being a worlds. (Something about 'Norwegian Green' comes to mind vaguely.)
I like the Boros Ascension deck, very techy. Sam's deck seemed interesting to me in that it had such synergy with the right draws but seemed to stumble a lot if the draw wasn't great. Some decks recover well from such situations that one didn't.
First, it was Ajani Vengent, not Goldmane. Which is nice for the deck since it works well with The Scepter, tap em down, keep em tapped, you can use Ajani as a sort of second Scepter if you have the first one out and build up Ajani's Loyalty that way.
Hammy and AJ should get the bulk of the credit. My main contribution was knowing that when a combo deck gets outraced by both aggro and control decks, it's not a good combo deck. That hold true no matter what format you play.
Apart from the suckitude of the Time Sieve deck, the other driving force was we had Elspeth and Lumiarch as sideboard pieces in other decks, which seemed ridiculous. Hammy drove the bus to get the the conclusion that those cards should be the centerpiece of a deck, which went through the stages you pointed out.
List by Paula Dean
Super Stuffed Turducken
by: Paula Deen | Uploaded: 11/16/2009
Prep Time: 30 mins
Inactive Prep Time: 8 hrs
Cook Time: 5 hrs
Difficulty: Easy
Yield: serves 25
Rating: (0)
Ingredients
Poultry and Brine
1 cup kosher salt
1 cup brown sugar
1 gallon water
18 to 21-pound turkey, skin intact and boned except for drumsticks
House seasoning, recipe follows
Cornbread Dressing, recipe follows
3 to 4-pound duck, boned
3 to 4-pound chicken, boned
Paprika
House Seasoning
1 cup salt
1/4 cup black pepper
1/4 cup garlic powder
Cornbread Dressing:
Cornbread
1 cup self rising cornmeal
1/2 cup self-rising flour
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Dressing
7 slices white bread, dried in warm oven
Cornbread
1 sleeve saltine crackers
2 cups chopped celery
1 large onion, chopped
8 tablespoons butter
7 cups chicken stock
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried sage
1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
5 eggs, beaten
Directions
Poultry and Brine
Mix salt and sugar with the water. Brine is ready when the mixture is completely dissolved. If the water is heated to quicken the process, make sure it is cooled to room temperature before placing meat in. Let the 3 birds sit in brine in the refrigerator overnight.
Preheat roaster to 500 degrees F.
Lay turkey skin side down on a flat surface. Dust turkey with House Seasoning and add 1/4-inch layer of cornbread dressing. Lay duck skin side down on top of dressing. Dust duck with House Seasoning and add 1/4-inch layer of dressing. Repeat with the chicken.
Begin trussing up the turkey at the neck. Insert metal skewer about 1/2-inch from the edge and up through the other side. Run butcher's twine between skin and skewer and tighten to draw both sides together. Continue down to legs. With every other skewer, draw together the duck and chicken skin. Tie together turkey legs to resemble standard turkey. Dust turkey skin with paprika.
Roast turducken for 15 minutes. Then turn the roaster down to 225 degrees F to finish, approximately 3 hours. Remove turducken from roaster once the internal temperature in the chicken reaches 155 degrees F. Let rest for at least 20 minutes before carving.
Cut across the middle of the breast completely through. Plate thin slices containing turkey, duck and chicken.
Cook's Notes: If using a smoker to cook, smoke at 225 degrees F for 5 hours, rotating every 20 to 30 minutes until internal temperature reaches 155 degrees F and external temperature reaches 165 degrees F. Try to keep the flare-ups from the fire to a minimum.
House Seasoning
Mix ingredients together and store in an airtight container for up to 6 months.
Cornbread Dressing
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
To make the cornbread, combine all ingredients and pour into a greased shallow baking dish. Bake for approximately 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.
To make the dressing, crumble dried white bread slices, cornbread and crackers. Mix together and set aside. Saute chopped celery and onion in butter until transparent, approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Pour over corn bread mixture. Add stock, mix well and add salt, pepper, sage, and poultry seasoning. Add beaten eggs and mix well. Follow instructions above to stuff birds.
you are largely irrel.
How stupid do you sound?
and that whole comment that he used to be a awesome writer?
dude the guy has covered so many years of competetive formats that it amounts to more writting than you ever did in your life.
if he wants to write about an event that was memorable for him and his friends.
who the fuck are you to say no?
hey why don't you write for a website so i can come spam you with assinine comments
mtgo name menace13
actually i just want to say that pete's articles here and on starcity are some of the most well-written articles around and more respect is deserved for someeone who has invested way more effort into the mgic community as a whole from writing, judging, and everything else. As a sidenote, the whole anonymous thing is really starting to anger me.
pretty sure this is an open forum. speak your mind whether it's criticism or praise.
Yes but constructive is different from trolling, baiting and critique by whom? no fee paying non subscribers is as good as, well nothing.
I disagree a little bit here. I think commentary aimed at improving an artist or writer's approach is well worth it and I bet Pete would welcome such as much as I do.
On the other hand as you said we are nonpaying consumers. (Though I am hoping the readers here do support mtgotraders so that the site continues being a quality place for casual tech.)
The problem is I think, the easy accessibility of the ability to comment anonymously. This means at little cost (seconds of time) anyone can channel their inner idiot for the public to read. Something to slow down the process besides the spam guard captcha would be good.
It's not an open forum.
I will delete or edit a post that is attacking my writers for no good reason.
Now, I'm human, I know what the difference is between harsh criticism and flaming is, what that guy said was flaming. You do not come here and disrespect a writer that 1. Is well respected within the magic community 2. Has written longer than some of you have been alive and 3. did nothing to deserve this attack.
I am fine with harsh words being said, as a writer one must have a thicker skin, but this is garbage.
lol it should have a narrator that reads your post back to you, just so trolls can hear how idiotic their posts sound.
I'd settle for a report post button. Or just restrict to registered members, as has long been considered.
It really grinds my gears that mouthbreathers with nothing worth a crap to say get to say stuff freely.
doesn't matter, I'm looking for a tasty treat to cover his garbage post up with.
Mmmm..with thanksgiving only 2 days away i cant wait josh!
Please find a Tur-duck-en recipe... please!
Simple: Stuff a de-boned chicken, then stick that in a de-boned duck. Stuff the gaps and shove it in a partially de-boned turkey. Stuff the gaps again and roast.
Usually it is better to just mail-order it and stick it in the oven.
Is that a 3 bird combo? :P Need better draw to get to go off in time for dinner if so.
I've never had that before because I am terrified of food poisoning, but that looks great
You know, I like the mill deck editing. I still remember it from the CCC and I'm actually considering using both as a base for the Mill deck I'm taking to Grand Prix. That's AWESOME that a mill deck went 6-0!! I knew it was useful!
-Sam
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