Last week, I tried my hand at brewing up a removal-heavy black-red deck for Innistrad Block Constructed. One of my main conditions for that deck was keeping it two-colors, since the mana fixing in the format is very bad overall.

This time, I'm taking the deck through a premier event... except now I'm splashing green for Garruk Relentless.

So what happened?

Well, part of the beauty of the online metagame is how fast decks adjust. When I initially built my BR deck, white-based aggro was the only matchup I was concerned with, as control decks were nowhere to be seen. Predictably, I wasn't the only one who wanted to prey on the little white men, and so I started facing a lot of control matches in dailies. This was problematic for a couple of reasons:

• Control decks are chock full of removal, and between Bloodgift Demon, Olivia Voldaren, Army of the Damned, and Bloodline Keeper, I lacked a more resilient threat in face of all the Sever the Bloodlines.
• As it turns out, facing Garruk Relentless on opposing control decks was a lot more problematic than facing him in aggro matchups - especially when those control decks were (like me) packing maindeck Witchbane Orbs, effectively shutting off my way to deal with the pesky planeswalker (burn spells).

As savvy readers will certainly realize, playing my own Garruks was the most obvious way to counter those problems. Still, I wanted to keep my removal suite intact (since I still expected to face a lot of white aggro), and I most certainly did NOT want to play with Shimmering Grottoes. I found a compromise by running the following green sources:

The basic Forests were there not only thanks to the Amulets, but also because I wanted to keep running Ghost Quarters. I now definitely respect the mana fixing capabilities of the card, even if it means giving up on a land drop. Sometimes quartering your own Swamp to get a Forest (or a third Mountain to flashback that Devil's Play for the win) is a legitimate strategy, and one that has won me games.

In the end, this is the list I settled on to run at a Premier Event.

Black/Red Control (with a Green splash)

a Innistrad Block Constructed deck by Rick Longo

Creatures 3 Bloodgift Demon 3 cards Other Spells 3 Blasphemous Act 4 Brimstone Volley 3 Dead Weight 4 Devil's Play 4 Garruk Relentless 2 Liliana of the Veil 4 Sever the Bloodline 2 Traveler's Amulet 3 Victim of Night 2 Witchbane Orb 31 cards

Lands 2 Forest 2 Ghost Quarter 10 Mountain 8 Swamp 4 Woodland Cemetery 26 cards Sideboard 2 Ancient Grudge 2 Curse of Death's Hold 1 Heretic's Punishment 3 Moan of the Unhallowed 1 Olivia Voldaren 4 Tribute to Hunger 2 Witchbane Orb 15 cards

ROUND 1

ROUND 2

ROUND 3

ROUND 4

ROUND 5

ROUND 6

TOP 8

I'm pretty happy with how the deck performed - I made the Top 8, and most of my losses came from the inevitable mana flood / screw problems we all come across every once in a while. Plus, I didn't even have to face my very worst matchup - blue-based control decks, like Burning Vengeance - and, when Dark Ascension hits, we'll even have a pretty awesome solution to that match in Grafdigger's Cage.

One consideration is the rise of blue/red builds packing Invisible Stalker - that deck took three top 8 spots, which may warrant the inclusion of extra Lilianas, or maybe bringing some of our Tribute to Hungers to the maindeck. You can check out the eight top lists for this tournament here.

That's all the content I have for this week. Thanks to the MOCS end-of-season tournament, which is rapidly approaching, now I want to devote almost 100% of my playing time to Modern (which I gotta admit, hasn't been proving to be my favorite format - but that's talk for another day). Wish me luck, and see you next time!