Hello and welcome back to the Shark Tank! This week we'll be discussing what decks have been tearing up the online metagame, as well as a few new tricks some people have come up with to beat them. Recently, Dark Depths decks with Thopter Foundry have become all the rage. Dark Depths (the card) has spiked in price, as well as all the cards that surround it so well. Even I have put Zoo by the wayside and started battling with 20/20's and Thopter tokens. It all began when Thage (aka Gerry Thompson) won an Online PTQ with the deck last week. Here is the list, for reference:

4 Thoughtseize
4 Muddle the Mixture
3 Thopter Foundry
2 Sword of the Meek
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Beseech the Queen
1 Into the Roil
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Doom Blade
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Confidant
4 Vampire Hexmage
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Dark Depths
4 Sunken Ruins
3 Tolaria West
1 Academy Ruins
2 Swamp
2 Island
4 River of Tears

SB
1 Thopter Foundry
1 Sword of the Meek
3 Duress
3 Deathmark
3 Extirpate
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Ghost Quarter


This deck, in all its glory, has been absolutely ravaging people for the last few weeks. I've taken it to a Top 4 appearance at the PTQ in Atlanta last weekend, and won countless packs in Magic Online events. While certain small changes have occurred, this is the "stock" decklist that most people begin with. Changing any one card could greatly affect the outcome of your tournament, since the deck relies on its tutors to find the answers they might have for their problems. Gerry thought of pretty much every deck for his sideboard, except for the mirror (which didn't exist at the time). Consequently, changes must be made to accommodate the existence of a mirror match, now that the deck has become surprisingly popular. While this is most definitely the most powerful deck in Extended, it does have some very key vulnerabilities that you can exploit.

Over the last few weeks, I've mostly abandoned Zoo in the face of countless combo decks. However, I literally forgot that you can just change cards in a Zoo deck to battle particular decks in a given format. Cards like Gaddock Teeg and Baneslayer Angel are pretty worthless right now, but Quasali Pridemage is making a huge comeback. With the aforementioned Dark Depths deck in mind, I set in motion an attempt to build a "format killer" Zoo deck that played Quasali Pridemage as well as Bant Charm in the maindeck.

First of all, when building a Zoo deck, you must first decide what decks you want to beat. If you are expecting a field full of mirror matches, then cards like Ranger of Eos, Bloodbraid Elf, and Baneslayer Angel might be the way you want to go. Punishing Fire combined with Grove of the Burnwillows is also a fine start, since that combination of cards can really punish other aggressive decks. But, when building Zoo from scratch against a metagame that contains approximately 60% combo decks, you really need to have some weapons at your disposal that put a huge beating on the opponent. Lets take a look at some of these weapons, and primarily the ones that you should have in your maindeck.

First up is the absolute trump to the Dark Depths deck, and something people won't really be expecting for a while:



This card singlehandedly neuters their entire strategy, shutting down both Vampire Hexmage and Thopter Foundry. If anything, this card buys you enough time to find your other answers to their combo, while doing virtually nothing to hinder your own game plan. To boot, they will usually only have one answer for it, being either Into the Roil or Echoing Truth, but a handy Bant Charm or Negate can easily keep that from resolving. They will likely side out Dark Confidant against you, so their only win condition at that point will be Vampire Hexmage, who pales in comparison to your creature base.

The best creature in your deck:



Quasali Pridemage was the first creature I looked to in order to improve my Dark Depths matchup. It is also great in a field trying to beat Dark Depths, since it destroys Blood Moon. It also acts as an additional way to combat Faeries, blowing up both Bitterblossom and Umezawa's Jitte, and possibly even Threads of Disloyalty out of the sideboard. He even has the added benefit of winning Tarmogoyf battles, giving you that precious 1-point of exalted. He can also surprise weaker opponents by growing Tarmogoyf by a potential 2 power if you can destroy an artifact or enchantment mid-combat. If you playing Zoo, Quasali Pridemage should find himself with a "4" next to his name on your decklist.


The best utility spell in your deck:



This is the best removal spell in the format right now, hands down. I've talked about this card in the past as being a solid answer to Dark Depths and the mirror, but can't find any reason for it not to be in the maindeck of any Zoo deck I've built in the last two weeks. Its been strong in testing, getting you out of bad situations against Dark Depths, Thopter Foundry, and even countering removal spells mid-combat. Against Faeries, it can sometimes even win a Counterspell war. If you haven't played with Bant Charm in a Zoo deck yet, I highly recommend it. Just be careful when building your manabase, since having basic Mountains can make for very awkward times. That being said, I don't think having a singleton Mountain is necessarily bad, but it could potentially come back to haunt you if your third mana source is a Mountain.


Another ok sideboard card is:



This is one of those cards that you really hate to play, but sometimes it is just a necessary evil. It breaks up both parts of the Dark Depths combo, since Marit Lage is a black creature and Celestial Purge exiles it. Thopter Foundry also happens to be black, which is pretty lucky for you. Additionally, Celestial Purge can remove problematic cards like Blood Moon, Deus of Calamity, and Demigod of Revenge from the game, making it worthwhile in consideration for your sideboard. While it might not be quite up to par for Zoo, it definitely deserves some thought for other decks like Martyr or some UW Thopter.


While plenty of cards are very good against Dark Depths, they have plenty of answers at their disposal. I have learned the hard way that there is no such thing as too much hate for Dark Depths, since they can easily run you over with their disruptive spells, followed by a 20/20 or a ton of Thopter Tokens. I know how the deck works, and I know how people play it, and I know just how good it is. If you aren't prepared to beat this deck, you will lose. With all of this in mind, another thing to remember is that Dark Depths has trouble with beating very aggressive strategies that can also present disruption of their own. Even a single Path to Exile on the back of a Wild Nacatl is enough to put them to bed, since often they will try to combo without protection in order to keep from dying to your early pressure. This forces them into uncomfortable situations in which they can really get blown out, and gives added benefit to playing cards like Kird Ape as opposed to Noble Hierarch.

While creatures like Baneslayer Angel and Ranger of Eos are fine in format defined by aggression and grinding creature battles, they are not good in a format defined by combos. They are just too slow and gum up the rest of your deck's strategy, while adding little of value and costing a bit too much. Cutting these from your deck can buy you valuable slots for cards like Quasali Pridemage and Bant Charm, which shine in a format defined by artifacts. The versatility of these cards, as well as their aggressive nature, make them perfect for a deck like Zoo. Given the tools at your disposal, your maindeck should always be targeted towards the metagame you are trying to beat, and at this point that metagame is based on Thopter Foundry.

If you want cards that are better against a more diverse field, you could take the Tribal Flames approach, much like I talked about two weeks ago. However, with the evolution that Extended takes every other week or so, you could easily find yourself behind the curve and with an outdated deck. I have literally changed major archetypes three times in the last three weeks, because each time I felt like that particular deck was the best at the time. I began with Scapeshift, which punished Zoo decks left and right, but ultimately surrendered to decks packing incredible amounts of disruption. The deck is very resilient to had disruption, but folds to a Blood Moon played under bad circumstances. Additionally, it was very difficult to race aggro decks with Meddling Mage and Negate on backup.

Before the first live PTQ of the season in Atlanta, I decided that I would put my opponent on the defensive, and attack them with a variant of Zoo that used both Ranger of Eos for the aggressive mirrors, as well as Tribal Flames to race combo and deal with the larger monsters like Tarmogoyf and Baneslayer Angel. While this worked out until the finals of that particular tournament, I ended up being destroyed by Dark Depths, which I was totally unprepared for. This was also a version that didn't expect people to be playing Thopter Foundry too much, since the UW version was not popular at the time, and the UB Thopter Depths deck had not really been discovered. I built that deck to beat a metagame full of aggressive decks, as well as having the tools to beat linear combo decks such as Scapeshift. This was done using cards like Meddling Mage (which is still good today), and even Aven Mindcensor.

While some of these cards could still prove useful, they should probably not be played maindeck unless some very strange things occur in the metagame. For one, Scapeshift is seeing less and less play online, which means that cards like Aven Mindcensor are no longer as valuable as they once were. Additionally, everyone expects Meddling Mage, and most people are well-equipped to handle him. Negate is pretty spicy, since it catches a lot of people off guard, and can literally come out of nowhere off a fetchland. This is especially true if they think you are just playing a Tribal Flames version of Zoo, and then you just roll them with Negate. However, this only works as long as people don't know you have it. Online, it is easy to watch replays of games from previous matches, so opponents might be able to pick up on what you played after sideboarding. However, most people are too lazy to watch an entire match on replay, so they might not know you have it since they usually just watch Game 1.

I'm not sure what the best version of Zoo is right now, I do know that it looks pretty close to this:

4 Wild Nacatl
4 Kird Ape
4 (Quasali Pridemage)
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Knight of the Reliquary

4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Lightning Helix
2 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Bant Charm

4 Arid Mesa
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Stomping Ground
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple Garden
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Treetop Village

SB
4 Damping Matrix
4 Meddling Mage
4 Negate
3 Ranger of Eos


If you want to give this deck a try, just know that I've beaten every Dark Depths deck I've played with it thus far. In actuality, I can say that this is the first deck I've built that has a winning percentage against Dark Depths, as well as having solid game against the rest of the field. Damping Matrix combined with an aggressive curve is just very difficult for the Depths players to deal with. Your other disruptive cards give them fits as well, since they only have so many answers. Also, they are probably siding out Dark Confidant, which will usually mean they are drawing less gas against you, and fewer disruptive cards.

If you have any questions about the deck, or the format in general, please feel free to ask in the forums. Thanks for reading!

Todd
strong sad on MOL