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By: PiDave, Dave
Apr 28 2011 11:42am
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This article is about MPDC, a Player Run Event organized by the PDC Community for the MTGO Community at large. The format is Pauper Standard, one of the most rapidly changing formats around. It has a very lively metagame and lots of incredibly talented players and deckbuilders. You can find all the info you need to participate to this series of events in the MPDC Season 12 Master Document and in the MPDC Player Primer, the latter being an incredibly thorough guide written by the event host himself, gwyned. MPDC is sponsored by players themselves and mtgotraders.com, which also brings you this very article. Have a nice read!

Hello everyone and welcome back! This week I could venture again on the battlefield due to a lucky coincidence between holidays and greedy employers (no, I'm not elaborating more on that; let's say I was on vacation both Monday and Tuesday...;-) ). As always the environment looked promising, fun and varied...Even though in the end there was just one new entry in the Top8 decklists. Let's see what happened last Monday:

Gatherling Entry -- Winning deck thread on pdcmagic.com -- Buy winning deck on mtgotraders.com

FlxEx took the 1st place piloting a nice Esper Control build! The deck is back from last season after gaining the superb Phyrexian Rager from Mirrodin Besieged. I'd run that critter just for its new art, but it's so good it's very difficult to exclude it from any list that runs Black. FlxEx's win left last week's winner - Pk23 - in 2nd place with his usual 3 Colors Control. This deck is gaining a lot of steam lately since it just wins. Grinding the opponent little by little, but it does win. However, the deck is very skill intensive and time consuming and Pk23 has made very clear that he has both the skill and the knowledge required to run it successfully. I presume that in the final match the graveyard recursion abilities of the Esper list just overwhelmed the Black-less control deck.

At Top4 level we find Boros Landfall, piloted by rookie player Doqpelganger (congratulations, by the way!), and another Esper Control, this time run by Jeketerri.

The Top8 sees falubaziaczek moving away from Bant Tokens and piloting another 3 Colors Control, fliebana with the old favorite 4 Colors Control, Leflypower669 with the newest incarnation of Kuldotha Red and Owain with BGW Control. Since this last deck is the only new entry of the week I'll happily point my spotlight at it:

 

 

The deck resembles a typical tokens list but there's one thing that strikes at first glance: where the *bleeep!* are our dear Nest Invaders? Actually, the list is some Franken-merge of a BW Control deck with a Tokens package grafted upon. I mean, the Black/White pieces are all there: Kor Skyfisher, (Squadron Hawks), Heartstabber Mosquito...wait. There's no graveyard recursion in this list! That's where the Ramp/Tokens package comes in: instead of relying on Blue draw spells or Black recursion as Card Advantage this list exploits the land fetching ability of Sylvan Ranger to thin out the deck while fixing mana. But that's not all! Kozilek's Predator is a great Skyfisher target for a deck that plans to cast a kicked Oran-Rief Recluse or its finisher (Ulamog's Crusher) as soon as possible. Just sacrifice those tokens for mana and you should be able to take care of the most powerful creatures in the current meta.

Even without the recursion engine Black possess enough power to be a worthy choice: the removal package of the deck has little to envy to Red's most powerful spells, with a full set of Doom Blades taking care of everything a cheap Disfigure can't bring down. The remaining spells let the deck take an aggressive stance, using a kicked Vines of Vastwood and an Inspired Charge to quickly seal a game, or to play the wait game with an unkicked Vines that acts as a spot-removal counterspell. The essential Sylvok Lifestaffs close the list with a touch of Bant nostalgia.

As you can see from the images the color pie is almost evenly balanced between the three colors, plus some colorless card. This reflects perfectly in the builder's land-balance choices, with 6 fetchlands and 7 Forests that enable the pilot to go and find the other colors with a good amount of reliability. The manacurve, however, seems a little odd and uneven: while the 8CMC roof was expected I didn't see the gap at 3CMC until I looked at the graph the first time. This deck packs a lot of expensive spells when you think about the kicker costs that both the Recluse and the Mosquito bring along.

The strategy, as far as I can figure out, is to ramp up as soon as possible while recurring Rangers and Predators with Skyfishers and then stabilize and take care of the opponent's creatures with the removal package and the kicker effects of the more expensive fiends, then take over with an alpha strike or by slowly eroding the opponent's life totals with flyers.  To annihilate the opponent's resources with an early Eldrazi protected by Vines is another path to victory.

The sideboard has even more removal choices: Journey to Nowhere should replace Doom Blade against Black opponents, Shrivel should be enough to take care of a swarm of opposing tokens or even a full flight of (Squadron Hawks); Lone Missionary is a must-have against Kuldotha Red, Boros Landfall and MetalHawk. The Bala Ged Scorpions can take care of many blockers, especially Sea Gate Oracles, and pave the way for an early strike against other types of control decks.

Let's now see where the current season is headed:

It's an archetype rollercoaster as every week Control and Aggro switch places to try and outmaneuver each other. The new pink entry is the Aggro/Combo archetype where Kuldotha Red positioned itself in with its last iteration. I witnessed such explosiveness that I had to oblige and gladly grant a new classification for the goblin wielders' list.

As you can see from the average performance Bant Tokens has lost almost all the head start it took in the initial part of the season while the control decks rise once again as the most probable deck to take the lead in the end.
Come on aggressive players, it's time to find a way to deal with all those overwhelming recursion engines! :-)

A final word: I happen to like the WGB decklist a lot, but there was another one I'd really like to write about. It failed to make it to the Top8 and as per my own rule I want to cover the most successful and innovative deck every week. We'll see what brings next week: if nothing new comes around I may actually end talking about the bold deck that cast a Turn 1 Scythe Tiger.

And on this bombshell, I'm out!
See you next week!
— Dave

P.S. I didn't forget about the tournament report, but it was rather anti-climactic since I went 2-2 losing the first match and ending up far away from the relevant positions. Furthermore, MTGO lost almost all of the replays and  my memory is too fuzzy to write a decent report, so I preferred to skip it entirely. Anyway, I had great fun as always! I hope I can enter some more tournaments before the end of Season 12: it's always nice to play some serious Magic with every one of you guys. :-)
Anyway, if you're interested in the deck I ran here's
the link to its Gatherling entry; there are also some bonus comments on the deck's page. ;-)

4 Comments

Great update, especially the by Copperfield at Thu, 04/28/2011 - 14:48
Copperfield's picture
5

Great update, especially the spotlight on the BGW deck. I brought my own Kuldotha Red list to the tourney thinking I'd do just fine. Instead, Owain landed first turn Sylvok Lifestaff's in both games and there was just no way for my Goblins to keep up with the lifegain. His deck just ate me alive, it's a great addition to the metagame. (I might have to maindeck four insurance-policy Manic Vandals from now on!)

Yeah, I had Manic Vandals by PiDave at Thu, 04/28/2011 - 17:35
PiDave's picture

Yeah, I had Manic Vandals maindecked but against all the lifegain possibilities around I had quite a hard time bringing down my opponent's life points. Lifestaff, Lone Missionary, Kabira Crossroads are all Very powerful, especially in a BW Control deck that abuses Skyfishers and Graveyard recursion. Hard times indeed for pure aggro players. :-)

Thanks for the feedback, hope to read you soon. ;-)

I wonder what happened to the by PiDave at Thu, 04/28/2011 - 17:37
PiDave's picture

I wonder what happened to the font style. :-/ Sorry for the mix-up, guys.

Great article recap as by Thisismich at Fri, 04/29/2011 - 02:41
Thisismich's picture

Great recap article as always... I wish I have the time to join the pauper community again :(