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By: Rasparthe, R.A. Sparthe
Jan 11 2009 4:56am
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Many years ago, Benjamin Disraeli wrote a book named The Young Duke.  More than likely you have never heard of Benjamin Disraeli or read his contribution to the literary world.  Mr. Disraeli was a noted poet and widely published novelist.  That much is probably obvious.  He was also the Prime Minister of England.  Still not his most noted achievement.  His most important accomplishment?  He penned the phrase:

"A dark horse, which had never been thought of ... rushed past the grand stand in sweeping triumph."

Unfortunately, Benjamin Disraeli the poet, novelist, statesman and twice elected Prime Minister of England is most known for coining the term 'dark horse'.  It would be remiss of me to say he personally like to apply the term to the Block Constructed metagame.  He may have been a fan of Magic but it is safe to assume he was not a player.  The fact is, The Young Duke was published in 1831 and its author died in 1881 long before Magic was a twinkle in Richard Garfield's eye.  Still the saying has revelance today, some century later.

For a number of weeks now, we have seen the trio of Jund, Bant, and Naya kicking each other around trying to assert their claim as the dominate deck.  It was a three horse race.  In the last article, close to a month ago, the dark horse started to make its play.  I had thought it was because of the wild and varied four and five color decks we were seeing.  The consistency of the Mono-White jauggernaut was just too much for such shaky mana.  I may have been mistaken.  The more unstable decks have all but disappeared and still Mono-White has risen to dominance.  Mono-White has swept past the grand stand and the rest of field is far behind.

Twenty-six events were run since my last look at the metagame which makes for a pretty good sample size.  There are some interesting things to point out.

1.  Bant has fallen way off the map.  It is a powerful deck but lacks significant removal and is actually quite slow.  This says something about the format and its speed when a turn 4 double-strike enabler is considered too slow.  I have a feeling that while Mono-White remains popular Bant decks will have a hard time staying competitive.  Its Exalted plan is just too hard to keep together against such a fast deck.  It pretty much has to hit a turn 3 Rhox War Monk followed by a Rafiq or its toast.  If not, eventually it has to start throwing Exalted guys in front of first striking weenies and that is a death knell for Bant.

2.  The 'Other' category contains a couple of different 5-Color Control decks.  They don't seem able to post consistent results and if you want to play to control your best choice in this field seems to be Esper Control like the one below.

genestealer - 1st Place - Dec 26


25 Lands

4 Arcane Sanctum
2 Crumbling Necropolis
3 Esper Panorama
6 Island
4 Plains
2 Seaside Citadel
4 Swamp

15 Creatures

4 Sanctum Gargoyle
3 Sharuum the Hegemon
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Tidehollow Strix


20 Other Spells

4 Agony Warp
3 Cancel
3 Courier's Capsule
4 Esper Charm
2 Executioner's Capsule
4 Punish Ignorance

Sideboard

1 Cancel
4 Dispeller's Capsule
1 Executioner's Capsule
4 Infest
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Scourglass

3.  The 'Other' category contains no Grixis decks.  'nuf said.  Is anyone else starting to think that Conflux is going to contain 100 Grixis cards and the rest split between lands and the other Shards just to try and even things out?

4.  Over twenty-six seperate events there are 208 Top 8 slots available.  Decks that contained a Planeswalker took 183 of those spots.  Can we please get a card that has three magic words printed on it : 'Destroy target Planeswalker'.  It can hardly be considered narrow when 88% of decks run a valid target.  Which would you rather see?  A Planeswalker killer or another Tortoise Formation.

5.  Mono-White is so popular its spawned off-color variations that are winning tournaments. 

That last one is significant.    Looking at the above graphs you can see that when you take into account the placings of each deck, Mono-White not only put more people into the Top 8 it also finished much better than any other choice.  With such sucess you will get some variations.  White/Black anyone?

ilikefoils - 8th Place - Dec 9


24 Lands

Arcane Sanctum
13  Plains
Swamp

21 Creatures

Akrasan Squire
Battlegrace Angel
Knight of the White Orchid
Sanctum Gargoyle
Sigiled Paladin
Tidehollow Sculler
 


15 Other Spells

Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Excommunicate
Executioner's Capsule
Oblivion Ring

Sideboard

Angelsong
Dispeller's Capsule
Knight-Captain of Eos
Resounding Silence
Viscera Dragger

 An interesting variation that uses distruption and some of the powerful removal in black to get the job done.  Sanctum Gargoyle also provides some much needed evasion and as a bonus the recursion to reuse the Capsules and/or Scullers.  Still this isn't that strongest variation out there.

latheknight - 2nd Place - Jan 3


24 Lands

Jungle Shrine
Mountain
15  Plains

20 Creatures

Akrasan Squire
Battlegrace Angel
Knight of the White Orchid
Knight-Captain of Eos
Ranger of Eos
Sigiled Paladin

 


17 Other Spells

Ajani Vengeant
Elspeth Knight-Errant
Oblivion Ring
Sigil of Distinction
Soul's Fire

Sideboard

Ajani Vengeant
Dispeller's Capsule
Knight-Captain of Eos
Magma Spray
Mountain
Relic of Progenitus
Soul's Fire

If latheknight has moved into this deck it has to be powerful.  If you have been keeping track of the Block tournaments latheknight has probably taken more packs home using his version of Mono-White than any other player.  A skilled player without doubt.  Still it says something about the power of this deck to have one of the most stalwart Mono-White players move out his normal deck and into this one.  It has been seeing alot of play over the last few tournaments and look for a more standard version to settle into place soon enough.

With all that said it is good to see a new deck rise to the top.  The Mono-White deck has been around from the beginning of the Shards Block Constructed season.  It hasn't changed significantly although the original versions ran 24 lands and the newest ones going as low as 21.  Three more slots to pack in even more white weenie goodness.  Looking forward, it is hard to imagine that Conflux won't have something worthwhile to add to the mix.

Unless of course it really does have 100 Grixis cards.

As usual all the decks can be found here and here

 

 

8 Comments

by Anonymous(Unregistered) 98.210.212.39 (not verified) at Mon, 01/12/2009 - 01:12
Anonymous(Unregistered) 98.210.212.39's picture

Part of the reason white is ahead of the rest is because there's approximately a BILLION OF THEM in every freaking queue. Elspeth is the only expensive card, so the new infusion of people just brought even more WW...

 

p.s. the B/W deck is actually sick, although we've since swapped out the Excomminucats.

by Rasparthe(Unregistered) 208.113.18.178 (not verified) at Mon, 01/12/2009 - 12:11
Rasparthe(Unregistered) 208.113.18.178's picture

What are you running instead of the Excomm?

by Anonymous(Unregistered) 98.210.212.39 (not verified) at Tue, 01/13/2009 - 02:59
Anonymous(Unregistered) 98.210.212.39's picture

Resounding Silence. as a 3-of and we added the 3rd Sigiled Paladin (might go back to 4th Elspeth though). In the board we now run 2 Sigil in the open slots. With the decrease in slower midrange decks, it became a better more imperative to be able to kill a great deal of guys.

its all good by Anonymous(Unregistered) 151.204.73.119 (not verified) at Sun, 01/11/2009 - 10:06
Anonymous(Unregistered) 151.204.73.119's picture

its just funny cuz both are in my clan on MTGO TheBlockElite and terry sent me the decklist a few days ago and I came on here this morning and see Lathe in the article.  Pretty cool either way

ALA Block Rules! Thanks for this dude :) by Klemzy at Sun, 01/11/2009 - 09:13
Klemzy's picture

I really loved your article! Speceally beacuse past 1 months all im doing every day is playing ALA Block Tournies. So far I tried Jund - Bant and now Esper.

Jund was extremly bored to me cause you had to be kinda lucky to get the right cards...

Bant was perfect until I started losing and I didn't knew why. If I hadn't had something and opponent had I lost.

Esper... WOW! I mean I threw work on, I tried 10 difrent combos but It just stinked! I couldn't win a single tourny with it. I dunno. I allways had best cards, I poped everything up but it still didn't work...

Well NOW Im really greatfull for this article. Really thanks. I've been tring to build perfect ala deck and I tried so many mono-white combos.                             Today I tried your 3 decks and I loved them :P I must say I spended over 400$ on all of them now xD

Im loving this ALA think speceally when I battle against decks that contain 30 lands, 4x all ultimatums and removals... lol!

~Thanks for this great article mate!

give terry poole his credit by Anonymous(Unregistered) 151.204.73.119 (not verified) at Sun, 01/11/2009 - 09:17
Anonymous(Unregistered) 151.204.73.119's picture

terry poole made the deck latheknight piloted

  

by Rasparthe at Sun, 01/11/2009 - 09:32
Rasparthe's picture

Aye, I do not believe that latheknight designed the deck but it is very hard to credit anyone with a deck as being the builder.  Someone usually pops up to state they were first or played it here or there.  If Terry Poole was the designer then he deserves the credit.

thanks for the plug! =) by patlam (not verified) at Thu, 01/15/2009 - 11:47
patlam's picture

Thanks for the nice comment on the deck [I'm ilikefoils/wigician/patlam]. the Wb deck has problems with Jund. A lot of problems. All of my losses were to Jund in that tournament. I have yet to figure out a way around their sweepers and have not played in any tournaments since. I will test out the Wr deck this week. Looks fun.