Red/Green Aggro Wins the First Big Standard Tournament with Avacyn Restored
May 8, 2012 | Posted by Dee
This past weekend, Dustin Taylor won the first high profile Standard tournament with Avacyn Restored, the Starcitygames Standard Open in Providence. He played a fairly stock Red/Green Aggro deck.
He only added two Avacyn Restored cards, Wolfir Avenger in the main deck and Zealous Conscripts in the sideboard.
Wolfir Avenger is a great addition because the 3-drop spot for Green Sun’s Zenith was lacking for RG Aggro players. Also, it works well with Huntmaster of the Fells and Swords. Zealous Conscripts is just a solid card versus Wolf Run Ramp and Control. Stealing Titans and planeswalkers for a turn is a powerful play.
Check out Dustin’s decklist below.
| RG Aggro | |||||||||||
Creatures (24)
Spells (13) | Lands (23) Sideboard (15) |
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Why Wolfir Avenger is a Great Card for the Deck
With its abilities, Wolfir Avenger gives the deck new angles of attack.
Flash and regeneration are good against sorcery speed removal. For example, on turn three, you can play around Slagstorm by casting Wolfir Avenger at the end of their turn. Without flash, Wolfir Avenger would die to Slagstorm.
Then, on your turn, you have the option of leaving up two mana to regenerate it.
Regeneration is great because it gives you another creature that is good against mass removal. Cards like Slagstorm and Day of Judgment are pretty good against this deck so it helps to have a creature that fight these cards.
Flash works well with Huntmaster of the Fells. You can pass the turn without playing a spell to transform Huntmaster and still advance your board position and spend your mana by casting Wolfir Avenger on their turn.
Flash is good against counterspells. You can cast it on your opponent’s turn to force him to spend mana on his turn to counter it. If he counters it, he’ll have less mana to counter spells on your turn. If he doesn’t counter it, you’ll have a 3/3 creature with regenerate ready to attack next turn.
On a financial note, I love that this powerful card was made uncommon instead of rare. It’s good to see Wizards printing powerful uncommons (including Strangeroot Geist and Lingering Souls) for competitive budget players.
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Changes to the Deck
I tested the deck for a couple of games. It was pretty good but I felt like it could become better with some changes.
The first thing I did was cut Galvanic Blast for Pillar of Flame. Pillar is better because you don’t have enough artifacts to get metalcraft for Galvanic Blast. Instant speed is nice but exiling Gravecrawler, Geralf’s Messenger, and Strangleroot Geist is better. Also, exiling Delver gives you a little bit of value because then they can’t use it to activate Moorland Haunt.
Second, I cut an Incinerate and added another Wolf Warrior.
Wolfir Silverheart is a great addition for the deck because you can search for it with Green Sun’s Zenith. Also, it impacts the board in a major way. If your opponent can’t deal with it and you have creatures to soulbond with, you get 12 power for only five mana.
It’s especially good against RG Wolf Run Ramp and other RG Aggro decks. Red/Green decks just don’t have many answers to an 8/8 that gives +4/+4 to another creature.
RG Wolf Run Ramp is an unfavorable matchup so it’s great to have a Zenith target for that matchup.
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The last change I made was in the sideboard. I added 2 Nihil Spellbomb. I cut 1 Arc Trail and 1 Act of Aggression to make room.
The deck didn’t have any graveyard hate. Having a card against Frites and Sun Titan Control seemed like a good idea.
One Response to “Red/Green Aggro Wins the First Big Standard Tournament with Avacyn Restored”
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In the post-game he specifically said galblast and incinerate were essential to controlling huntmaster, which is big game for this deck. cutting from 8 to 3 ways to interact on opponent’s turn in favor of beating aggro creatures could be a good meta call (i guess this deck will surge so maybe you’re right, and your black self sacrifice blood artist deck taking off would be another vote in that direction) but it weakens the deck’s plan a to get more controll-y, which seems sketchy without more data. You need another land if you’re going to run silverheart. 6 manage is a lot for this deck, especially since dorks pick up swords a lot.