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By: maxrochemtg, Max Roche
Apr 15 2015 12:00pm
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Hello, all! Welcome to my first article for PureMTGO. My name is Max (@MaxRocheMTG), and I'm a big fish in my little pond in upstate NEPA. I run and adjudicate FNM for my LGS, and I've recently begun playing a lot of commander on MTGO. I'm not anywhere close to being a pro, but I am an extremely successful small time player who has enjoyed limited success at PTQs and PPTQs. While my expertise of experience is in community building, I think I have lessons and insights to offer as a player and I would like to share them with this community.

For this first article ever, I'll be speculating on what the level zero deck for new standard will be. I've played Abzan since KTK dropped, but is it time to jump ship? Of the many articles by many writers in recent years, Todd Anderson's "Just Play Jund" article has done the most to change my mind about the Jund archetype. He wrote it in Innistrad/Return to Ravnica standard, but the point he made was valid for Abzan in Theros/Khans of Tarkir: "Its goal is simple: to cast its spells. And those spells are so good that games usually end in your favor." Thoughtseize, Hero's Downfall, Siege Rhino, Ugin, Nissa, Courser of Kruphix... These cards just add points to your expected win percentage. A level zero best deck, it has been the bogeyman of Standard, one of the few decks for which you must prepare when facing any meta. Most of its matchups fluctuate within 5-10% of 50/50, and a good pilot uses this to his advantage while a skilled opponent might do the same. It's been my deck of choice for these reasons and more, but I may be trading in black and white for blue and red.

For a comparison, let's begin with Jacob Wilson's Abzan deck from the Invitational. In it, we see a normal compliment of 4 Satyr Wayfinder 4 Courser of Kruphix 4 Siege Rhino and 2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang. There's also a good mix of spells including 4 Thoughtseize 4 Abzan Charm and 4 Hero's Downfall. A deck with that kind of firepower can take down just about anything. Each spell is proactive and generates a little bit of value on its own. The strength of the deck is in its ability to somewhat ignore the opponent's actions and focus on curving out and overpowering them. It's a strong deck with powerful sideboard options and a lot of big planeswalkers at its disposal.

Why, then, am I experimenting with Temur? I think it has similar strengths with the addition of Dragons of Tarkir. It picks up some amazing removal in the form of Roast, and the elephant in the room, a powerhouse of a planeswalker in Sarkhan, Unbroken. Here's a rudimentary prototype that showcases the power in this new standard and its strengths and weaknesses compared to Abzan.

Temur Dragons
 
Creatures
4 Courser of Kruphix
1 Keranos, God of Storms
3 Savage Knuckleblade
3 Stormbreath Dragon
11 cards

Other Spells
2 Icefall Regent
3 Thunderbreak Regent
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
2 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
1 Nissa, Worldwaker
2 Sarkhan, Unbroken
1 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker 2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
2 Dig Through Time
2 Anger of the Gods
4 Roast
8 cards
Lands
3 Frontier Bivouac
2 Shivan Reef
3 Temple of Abandon
3 Temple of Mystery
3 Temple of Epiphany
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Yavimaya Coast
2 Island
2 Forest
2 Mountain
27 cards
 
Courser of Kruphix



This, as I see it, is a baseline for the more Jund-ish, tapout version of Temur. I think there is a perfectly reasonable aggro-control/tempo version with Anticipates and Counterspells and cheaper threats, but this, to me, is a better level zero build. Why? Well, it's just doing really powerful things. The planeswalker package gives us card draw, threat density, protection, mana fixing, and reach. This standard has trouble handling Ugin, Kiora, and Nissa, while the Sarkhans give us some major firepower and Chandra keeps the cards coming all day long. In addition, we have super value creatures like Savage Knuckleblade, Icefall Regent, and Stormbreath Dragon to keep the pressure on our opponent and stretch their removal really thin. Arguments can be made for including Deathmist Raptor and Ashcloud Phoenix, and I am not saying this is the end-all Temur list, but I like where the creatures are at here.

 

The Anticipate version can include more Dig Through Times, but 2 is an appropriate number for the amount of stuff that will be in our graveyard in the average case. That's because this list only has 6 other instants and sorceries. 4 Roasts will help you take care of opposing Tasigur, the Golden Fangs or Siege Rhinos or even Goblin Rabblemasters, and that little boost is really all you need to get your Knuckleblades through.

Now, the big question: is this better than Abzan? Well... that's a toughie.

Abzan gets an advantage in its flexible and powerful removal suite. Abzan Charm, Hero's Downfall, Thoughtseize, and Murderous Cut can do some real damage to our deck. Hero's Downfall is the one thing I, as an Abzan player, was happy to have when facing down Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker and Stormbreath Dragon. Abzan Charm exiles everything in our deck except Courser of Kruphix, which is a bit of a 2-for-1 since we can't use them for Dig Through Time later. Thoughtseize can take away our Digs, our threats, or our answers, making all but the best or most redundant hands less than desirable. The only solace that we have is that Abzan doesn't really have too many good sideboard options against us. Unlike with tokens, Temur Ascendancy, or RG Devotion, their sweepers don't help them out too much. Ugin and Garruk, Apex Predator are tough for us to beat, but not impossible.

We get the advantage in our fliers and removal. All of our threats fly, and our four Roasts each 1-for-1 their creatures without leaving us with too many dead draws. Our planeswalkers will stretch their Hero's Downfalls, and our Digs will help us overload their 1-for-1 removal. Looking at them heads up, I think we're slightly favored, but in a Jund v. Jund, 52/48 way.

Where I think Temur moves into the new level zero is its strength and flexibility against other decks. Aggressive decks will have a lot of big, cheap guys to deal with before reaching over to our life total, and we're playing some number of Anger of the Gods main to hedge that match. We have some card draw and some resiliency in Dig, Icefall Regent, and Knuckleblade to give us an edge against control decks, and we have access to Atarka's Command, Back to Nature, and Destructive Revelry for GW Devotion (as well as the bonus of Anger of the Gods exiling to stop too much Whisperwood Elemental shenanigans). There's also plenty of flexibility in what we play to fit an expected meta. We have access to counters like Silumgar's Scorn and burn packages if we want to go in those directions, and we have the big mana plays like Dragonlord Atarka, Dig Through Time, and Crater's Claws if we want to go that way.

While we do have some weaknesses in this build (Mantis Rider, Arbor Colossus, opposing Temur decks), I think that the color combination affords us the flexibility to deal with those threats if we expect to see a lot of them. Also, I think it's tough to expect a true "best deck" in this standard format; we've seen a great deal of innovation these past two seasons, and nothing has taken up the unbeatable mantle yet. All in all, I think that Temur has taken the title of the most flexible and powerful and should, thusly, move into the level 0 slot in new standard. We'll see what the PT brings this weekend.

Max Roche
Twitter: @MaxRocheMTG
MTGO: RocheMr19
 

2 Comments

Great first article! by CalmLittleBuddy at Sat, 04/18/2015 - 08:36
CalmLittleBuddy's picture
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I am sort of an Abzaniac. I came from the opposite direction. I was playing a Temur Bees deck after M15 dropped (before Temur was Temur) and slowly made my way to the dark side. I've kept my eye on poor Temur as everyone else kept getting tools to win and Temur kept getting clucky non-bos and slow combos etc. No doubt DTK has added a lot to the Temur style decks.

Is it enough? Time will tell. But I have been playing Jacob Wilson's list (or more like my variant of his list) and have found that when both decks draw about even power, Abzan Control still is superior. I think Abzan Midrange and even Abzan Aggro are extremely weak to Temur decks like the one above. In fact I've played against a similar list twice and did pretty well. It was by no means a 'good' match up for my Abzan list and I can see how I could easily get crushed, but once I figured out what to expect, if I draw the right lands, removal and draw my correct threats on time, the decks play pretty even.

The main advantage of your Temur list is it will run folks off the road, particularly in game 1. I see a lot of decks getting slapped to ground by your list. I worry about Mono Red, though. Anger of the Gods is powerful, but at sorcery speed it has the same issue I'm having with Drown in Sorrow. DASH plus burn.

I love the Keranos. Was a 1 of in most of my Blue/Red decks. So hard to deal with for most decks. Makes me want to put one utter end back in my deck. If he starts popping up I just might.

Great stuff. Looking forward to more!

Thanks for the feedback! Next by maxrochemtg at Sat, 04/18/2015 - 21:26
maxrochemtg's picture

Thanks for the feedback! Next article, I'll take a look at aggro. I ended up not playing this list this week because I got a sweet sweet aggro deck together, and I'm going to talk about how it played out at Game Day today :)