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UB Heartless Summoning Deck Gets 15th Place Out of 417 Players
November 12, 2011
Updated February 7, 2012: Check out this Heartless Summoning deck with Havengul Lich that got top eight in the first big Standard tournament with Dark Ascension.
Updated January 12, 2012: Check out this Dark Ascension card that adds a lot to Heartless Summoning decks.
Heartless Summoning is a card that I thought was going to make a big impact in Standard. However, that just hasn’t been the case.
The card provides a very powerful effect. You get the mana acceleration of a Lotus Cobra but only for creature spells. Plus, it doesn’t die to all the cards that kill Lotus Cobra. However, it doesn’t fix mana and it shrinks all your creatures.
The drawbacks have proven to be too much for the most part. You don’t see too many people playing with the card and it hasn’t posted a lot of top finishes. That may change though because there was a top 16 Blue/Black Heartless Summoning deck in last weekend’s Starcitygames Standard Open in Las Vegas.
Check out the list below, which got 15th place out of 417 players.
Delver of Secrets, A Rising Star in Standard
November 10, 2011
In the last two weeks, I’ve been testing Standard a lot with Value Bant Pod. Last week, I didn’t see any Delver of Secrets decks but this week that changed. I saw many people playing this blue transform card.
I think its rise of popularity partly came from Lu Cai’s 2nd place finish last weekend at the Starcitygames Standard Open in Las Vegas. He ran a Blue/Red (UR) Aggro deck that used Delver of Secrets and burn spells to quickly kill his opponents.
Check out his decklist below.
Mono Black Infect: The Best Deck in Standard?
November 9, 2011
I was surprised to see that Mono Black Infect had the best win% in the latest Standard Power Rankings. This deck hasn’t received much press. In fact, it’s only 3.9% of the Magic Online metagame.
I’ve played against it a few times and it’s definitely pretty good. Also, it is well-positioned in the metagame. For example, many of the removal spells commonly played in Standard are mediocre against the deck.
Here’s a Mono Black Infect decklist that got 3rd place out of 360 players two weekends ago at the Starcitygames Standard Open in Kansas City.
Value Bant Pod: This Pod Deck is Testing Better Than Wolf Run Ramp
November 7, 2011
Update Nov. 13, 2011: I made changes to the deck and came up with some sideboard plans. Check out this post to learn more.
One of the best decks I built was from the last Standard season. It was a BUG Pod deck with four Frost Titans. It also had Acidic Slime and Entomber Exarch for disruption. I tried building a similar BUG deck for the current Standard format but the mana was just too bad and the lack of Lotus Cobra slowed down the deck too much.
To fix the mana problems, I turned to the Bant colors instead of BUG. Bant not only has much better mana, it also has a suitable Lotus Cobra replacement, Avacyn’s Pilgrim. So far, I’ve gone 53-20 (72.6%) with the deck, which is better than my record with Wolf Run Ramp, 24-11 (68.6%).
Here is the latest version, which I’ve dubbed Value Bant Pod.
Dungrove Elder Deck (Wolf Run Green)
October 29, 2011
Ever since Innistrad was released, the top deck in Standard has changed every week. It started off four weeks ago at Starcitygames Indianapolis with Red Deck Wins taking down the top two spots. Next, Solar Flare made a big push by getting seven of the top 16 spots in Starcitygames Nashville. But Wolf Run Ramp ultimately took down first place and became the new boogeyman.
Then, the first Standard Grand Prix with Innistrad was held. UB Control fought through a sea of Wolf Run Ramp decks to win. And last weekend, the metagame shifted again with Primeval Titan players adding Dungrove Elder to fight the UB Control decks. This new deck, Wolf Run Green, got first and second place at Starcitygames Baltimore. The deck also got 3 more spots in the top 16.
Check out the winning list.
UB Control With 0 Liliana Wins First Standard Grand Prix Post-Innistrad
October 18, 2011
Grand Prix Brisbane was a great example of well-executed metagame strategy. The previous big Standard tournament was the StarCityGames Standard Open in Nashville, which was won by Wolf Run Ramp. But the RG Ramp deck was not the only deck that gained more recognition. Solar Flare got second place and there were seven copies in the top 16.
To have a good chance of winning the first Standard Grand Prix post-Innistrad, you definitely had to have solid matchups against those two decks. Those two decks made up a big part of the day two metagame.
Jeremy Neeman was able to win the tournament with an innovative Blue/Black Control deck that had 0 Liliana of the Veil. It played a ton of counterspells and four Snapcaster Mage to give it a solid matchup against Wolf Run Ramp and Solar Flare.
It also played Nephalia Drownyard. Between the main deck and sideboard, the deck played a full set of this underrated Innistrad land to mill decks with a low number of threats like Wolf Run Ramp and Solar Flare. Check out the list.
Gavony Township Tokens Deck
October 16, 2011
Update Dec. 6, 2011: Check out this GW Tokens deck that did well at the 2011 World Championships.
Tokens is a deck that got a huge boost from Innistrad. There were already cards like Hero of Bladehold, Elspeth Tirel, and Shrine of Loyal Legions from Scars block. Innistrad added two powerful pump effects, Gavony Township and Intangible Virtue, and an instant token spell, Midnight Haunting, to make the archetype much better.
Two weekends ago, Andrew Shrout got top 16 with the deck at StarCityGames Indianapolis with over 500 players. Last weekend, the deck got another top 16 finish at StarCityGames Nashville with over 400 players. And just two days ago, the deck took down two of the Grand Prix Trials right before Grand Prix Brisbane.
Here is the top 16 list from StarCityGames Nashville played by Robert Smith.
Top 8 Solar Flare Deck
October 12, 2011
Solar Flare was the best performing deck in last weekend’s StarCityGames Standard Open in Nashville. There were four copies of the deck in the top 8 and the top 16 had three more copies.
Solar Flare is an Esper Control deck with a small reanimation aspect. It’s not as flashy or powerful as a dedicated Esper Reanimation deck but with the loss of power, it gains a lot of consistency by being able to play more utility cards. Also, it is less vulnerable to graveyard hate because it attacks from a couple different angles.
Out of the top 8 decks, my favorite Solar Flare list was played by David Thomas. Check it out.
Kessig Wolf Run Update
October 11, 2011
Updated Nov. 21, 2011: An unorthodox Wolf Run Ramp deck won the 2011 World Championships. It had zero planeswalkers, Beast Within, Viridian Emissary, and Wurmcoil Engine. Instead, it played burn spells, Sphere of the Suns, and Inferno Titan. Check it out.
My last post was about the new Kessig Wolf Run ramp deck. I did some more testing and changed some more cards based on what I learned from the matches.
Garruk Relentless just wasn’t good enough even against creature decks and it’s pretty subpar versus control. Garruk, Primal Hunter was much better in testing even though it cost one more mana. It’s not bad against creature decks and it’s very solid against control so I went back to a full set of the M12 planeswalker.
I found myself wanting more Beast Within to fight control so I brought back the third copy and moved Slagstorm to the sideboard. With the full set of Garruk, Primal Hunter back in the main deck, this was an easy move to make since the planeswalker provides 3/3 tokens to trade.
Here’s the new list along with a new sideboard card.
Kessig Wolf Run Deck With Primeval Titan and Inkmoth Nexus
October 10, 2011
Update October 11, 2011: Check out the new list.
Yesterday Brian Sondag took down the StarCityGames Standard Open with this sweet Kessig Wolf Run ramp deck. It uses Primeval Titan to fetch Kessig Wolf Run and Inkmoth Nexus. Then it deals lethal poison damage, typically in one or two big swings.
I still have the Primeval Titans from my old Valakut deck so I playtested his deck to see how good it was. Playtesting went very well. I didn’t have too much problem beating most of my opponents.
I made some small changes based on playtesting. Here’s where I am with the deck.
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