Build a Winning Rogue Deck Like Conley Woods: 5 Lessons From His Grand Prix Win
January 19, 2012 | Posted by Dee
I was surprised to see a rogue deck win Grand Prix Orlando last weekend. The Standard format has been explored for three and half months, which makes it harder to brew a rogue deck. Plus, I thought the pros would stick to existing decks.
Many pros did play established archetypes but Conley Woods brewed a Jund Ramp deck. His efforts proved to be worthwhile as he won the whole tournament. His deck was especially dominant in the elimination rounds, where he did not lose a single game.
Conley Woods is one of the best rogue deck builders in the game today so you can learn a lot from examining his decks closely. Here are 5 lessons we can learn from his Jund Ramp list.
| Jund Wolf Run Ramp | |||||||||||
Creatures (16)
Spells (19) | Lands (25)
Sideboard (15) |
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1. Don’t reinvent the wheel in mature formats.
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A mature format is one that has been played and explored for many weeks. Right now, Innistrad Standard is closing in on its 16th week so the Magic player base has had a lot of time to discover the best decks and cards.
In this type of environment, it’s really hard to build something totally new that can win a high profile tournament. As the time has passed, all of the best strategies may have already been found.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t surprise the field with a strong rogue deck. It just means that your deck building has to stick with mostly proven strategies and cards.
There’s a common misconception that your deck needs to be totally new to be consider rogue. I don’t buy that. As long as your deck is different enough from existing decks, you have a rogue deck even if it uses similar strategies of other decks.
Look at Conley’s list. You may think that it is totally new. At first glance, it may look very different from other decks, but if you look closely, it’s basically a Wolf Run Ramp deck with black instead of red.
What Conley did was take an existing archetype and modify it to gain an advantage over the metagame. That brings me to the next point.
2. Look for non-linear decks to modify.
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If you’re going to modify an existing deck, you should pick a deck that doesn’t become worse when you change it significantly. You need an archetype that gives you enough flexibility in the card choices so you can take advantage of the metagame and surprise your opponents. Some decks just don’t give you that opportunity because they are too linear.
For example, think about Tempered Steel. You can’t modify it a lot because you have to play too many specific cards to make it work effectively. If you don’t play these cards, then the deck gets worse.
Another example is Red Deck Wins, or Mono Red Burn. You really don’t have a lot of flexibility with this deck. The best creatures and burn spells are pretty clear, so you can only change a few cards. If you make too many changes, the deck becomes less powerful.
On the other hand, there are non-linear decks that still win even though they change a lot of cards or even change colors. Wolf Run Ramp is a prime example of this type of deck.
Over the Standard season, this deck has had many different versions and played many different cards yet it keeps winning.
It started out as a red/green deck with planeswalkers, Beast Within, and Slagstorm. Next, players added Dungrove Elder. They had to replace the dual lands and some Inkmoth Nexus with Forests to make the hexproof creature work. But this new version, Wolf Run Green, was still successful in competitive play.
After that, people took out Dungrove Elder and added white to the deck and GW Wolf Run Ramp was created. White allowed you to play cards like Mirran Crusader, Hero of Bladehold, Day of Judgment, and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. This deck got a couple top 16 finishes in high profile tournaments.
Then, Junya Iyanaga won Worlds with a red/green version that played removal instead of planeswalkers. Also, he took out Viridian Emissary and played Sphere of the Suns instead.
The deck kept changing after it won the most high-profile tournament of the year. Reid Duke brought back white and Viridian Emissary and gave the deck a totally new engine, Birthing Pod. His Wolf Run Pod deck helped him get a top four finish in the Starcitygames invitational.
And just last weekend, a Wolf Run deck with Frost Titan (Wolf Run Blue!) made top eight in a Starcitygames Standard Open.
As you can see, Wolf Run Ramp is a very flexible deck, which makes it a great candidate for modifying.
But how do you know which cards to play to gain an advantage over the field? The metagame is the key here and we should let it inform our card choices.
3. Keep the metagame in mind.
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If you monitor the results of the latest big tournaments and keep up with the winning decks on Magic Online’s tournament page, you should have good idea of the metagame. Also, it helps to listen to the conversation on Twitter.
Conley Woods realized that Delver decks were going to be in full force at Grand Prix Orlando. To win the tournament, he was going to have to beat cheap aggressive creatures backed by Mana Leak and Vapor Snag. Also, many of the Delver decks were going to pack new weapons, Sword of War and Peace and Invisible Stalker.
With these things in mind, he set out to build a deck that could match up well against these decks.
Because of Sword of War and Peace, red and white lost some value. He couldn’t rely on red cards like Inferno Titan and Galvanic Blast. Even Slagstorm wouldn’t be good enough. It deals with hexproof but if the creature is equipped with Sword of War and Peace, you’re out of luck.
Many of the best white cards did not match up well to Delver decks so that made white even worse. Hero of Bladehold and Mirran Crusader suck against Vapor Snag. Oblivion Ring is too slow versus a fast deck. And Elesh Norn is too expensive.
White did have Day of Judgment but one unsplashable card was not a good enough reason to add the color.
So, what cards could he rely on? Oftentimes, you can find good cards for your deck by looking at other decks. It seems like Conley Woods did just that.
4. Consider cards from other decks.
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Because you can play a wide range of cards in non-linear decks, you should look at the key cards in other decks and evaluate them for your rogue deck.
You should especially look at how other decks have responsed to the metagame. The cards they add because of metagame changes can be great cards for your deck.
For example, some control decks dropped Consecrated Sphinx for Grave Titan because of Vapor Snag in Delver decks. Versus a fast tempo deck with cheap instant speed bounce spells, Grave Titan is much better than Consecrated Sphinx.
Conley needed another fattie for his ramp deck. Inferno Titan was decent enough but Sword of War and Peace lowered its value. So, he tried Grave Titan and it worked out for him.
Grave Titan is black so it matches up well against Sword of War and Peace. It gives you ten power for six mana so you can race Delver decks. Even if they have Vapor Snag, you still get two 2/2 tokens. Those tokens are great at trading with Geist of Saint Traft.
Also, Grave Titan is better against control decks than Inferno Titan. The black Titan can’t be targeted by Doom Blade and you get three creatures for one card, which is a great thing against cards like Liliana of the Veil and Oblivion Ring.
The Kessig Wolf Run combo with Grave Titan’s deathtouch is a nice bonus. You can choose to deal one damage to kill a blocker no matter how much toughness they have and then deal rest of the damage to your opponent with the trample ability. (Here’s the ruling.)
Black Sun’s Zenith and Curse of Death’s Hold are two other cards that Conley played that see play in other decks.
Black Sun’s Zenith has always seen play in UB Control. Along with clearing the board, it gives you more outs against hexproof creatures. Curse of Death’s Hold started picking up steam recently because it’s so effective against Delver decks. Some UB Control players are playing it main deck.
Black Sun’s Zenith meets the mass removal quota for Conley’s deck. In an aggro heavy metagame, you definitely need some mass removal main deck. I mentioned already why Slagstorm and Day of Judgment are worse options.
Curse of Death’s Hold is probably one of the main reasons why Conley decided to play black. The black enchantment provides a very strong effect that you can’t find in other colors. It shuts down key cards in the new Delver decks (Midnight Haunting, Invisible Stalker, Moorlaund Haunt, Snapcaster Mage, and an unflipped Delver).
Once you’ve looked at cards in other decks, you can consider underplayed cards if you still have open slots in your deck.
5. Become familiar with the whole card pool.
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Here are some interesting quotes about Conley:
The great rogue deck-builder Conley Woods said in an interview once that when he’s looking over what to build for a tournament, he goes through and reads every card legal for that format. By knowing what’s out there, he can build these off-the-wall decks that everyone is surprised to come across because he’s not just building with the “best” cards. (Source)
Conley will try the craziest decks, but pretty much all of those end up being really bad; I feel like his greatest strength lies not with weird decks, but with weird cards – he has built so many different decks in his life that he has played cards people don’t even know exist, and sometimes those cards happen to be very good in the decks we think about playing. He also routinely goes through every card on gatherer that meets the characteristics we need and he is not afraid of making any suggestions, which is very useful to make sure we don’t miss anything. (Source)
Conley puts in the effort to become familiar with all the cards in a format. This allows him to find solid cards that have been overlooked.
When he plays them, the surprise factor kicks in and he gains an advantage because many players don’t know how to play against unfamiliar cards.
In his Jund deck, there are at least two underrated cards. The first one is Glissa, the Traitor. Glissa, the Traitor hasn’t seen much play at all in the last couple of months so many people forgot about her, myself included. But she looks solid in the deck.
Glissa, the Traitor is a Green Sun’s Zenith target that works well with the artifacts and removal. Solemn Simulacrum, Ratchet Bomb, and Batterskull can be reused, which makes the deck a little better. Sometimes that small improvement is all you need to win that one extra match to make top eight.
Also, she has very good abilities for the combat phase, her stats are pretty good for a three mana creature, and she can’t be targeted by Doom Blade.
The second card is Ratchet Bomb. This artifact gives you an extra out against hexproof creatures. It can destroy important non-creature permanents like Sword of War and Peace, Runechanter’s Pike, Oblivion Ring, Honor of the Pure, and Liliana of the Veil.
It’s great against Spirit tokens from Moorland Haunt and Midnight Haunting. It kills a flipped Delver right away. And it can give you card advantage by destroying multiple permanents.
It can be slow in some matchups so one copy seems like a good number for the main deck.
Over to You
Conley built a strong rogue deck that smashed the Delver heavy field of Grand Prix Orlando. Have you ever built a rogue deck that took your FNM or another local tournament by surprise?
What are some deck building tips you recommend?
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