A deck with game against the top decks

The recent national tournaments as well as a round of PTQs have put the top decks of the new standard format on display. The top four archetypes are still the same from my last post:

5c Control
Faeries
Elf Combo
Kithkin

So I’ve decided that the way to combat the metagame is to play Jund. The deck did top 8 at US Nats, so it can’t be all bad. Here’s the list I’m looking at:

Jund Aggro
———-
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Forest
3 Graven Cairns
1 Mountain
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Savage Lands
1 Swamp
4 Twilight Mire
3 Vivid Grove
3 Vivid Marsh

4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Boggart Ram-Gang
4 Putrid Leech
2 Sygg, River Cutthroat
4 Great Sable Stag

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Bituminous Blast
3 Sign in Blood
3 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Volcanic Fallout

Sideboard:
4 Kitchen Finks
3 Blightning
3 Anathemancer
2 Thought Hemorrhage
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Doom Blade

One motivating factor to play this deck is that I’d only need like 8 or so cards to fill it out. But let’s just ignore that fact, shall we? 🙂

I spoke last time about a deck that has both Great Sable Stag and Volcanic Fallout doing well in the meta. This maindeck should beat Faeries game 1, no problem. It might have some trouble with Kithkin and Elves in game 1, but the sideboard helps those matchups a great deal. The sideboard should also provide some better game against 5c Control, which is the dominant monster at the moment. But in PTQ play you have to be prepared for everything, so the sideboard should give you options for a wide range of decks. Here’s my current sideboarding plans (I’ll post more as the testing progresses):

Faeries
+3 Blightning
+3 Anathemancer
+1 Volcanic Fallout
-3 Maelstrom Pulse
-3 Sign in Blood
-1 Bituminous Blast

We all know how hard this goofy deck is to beat, and after the first game, when they have some idea of how to disrupt your plan, it gets even harder. The board here is designed to make the deck a little more “balls out” and put the Fae on a stern clock with more direct damage.

Mirror
+4 Kitchen Finks
+3 Anathemancer
-4 Great Sable Stag
-3 Maelstrom Pulse

The mirror is probably a wild matchup indeed! Taking out the Stag is a good plan since they’ll probably get rid of their Maelstrom Pulses but not their Lightning Bolts. Finks just makes combat that much harder for them (as they probably did for you in the first game). Anathemancer because there are only 3 basic lands in this deck. dur.

Elf Combo
+2 Kitchen Finks
+1 Maelstrom Pulse
+1 Volcanic Fallout
+1 Doom Blade
+2 Thought Hemorrhage
-4 Great Sable Stag
-3 Sign in Blood

Ah the Elves are back and they brought their combo this time! Gotta love them elves… Bring in a suite of removal and some combo-killing Thought Hemorrhages and it shouldn’t be too difficult a matchup. What do you name with the Hemorrhage though? Regal Force? Ranger of Eos? Intriguing…

5c Control
+3 Blightning
+3 Anathemancer
+2 Tought Hemorrhage
-3 Maelstrom Pulse
-3 Volcanic Fallout
-2 Lightning Bolt

Boooo control… I always hate control matchups where your aggro deck runs out of gas and the control deck is able to deal with your threats while maintaining a huge hand size to trounce you with in the late game. It just seems wrong. Blightnings assault their hand while Anathemancers assault their life total. Goooo direct damage!

RB Aggro
+4 Kitchen Finks
+2 Thought Hemorrhage
+1 Doom Blade
-4 Great Sable Stag
-3 Volcanic Fallout

Take out the stuff that hurts you and is easily bolted away. Bring in the stuff that gains you life and rips out their Demigods/Ball Lightnings/etc.

Kithkin
+4 Kitchen Finks
+1 Maelstrom Pulse
+1 Volcanic Fallout
+1 Doom Blade
-4 Great Sable Stag
-3 Sign in Blood

Hello there little buddy. *pat* *pat* Put the removal smackdown on the kith tribe and the goodness of spot removal, bigger creatures, and fallouts should carry you through.

I think the Jund deck is positioned well with the new metagame in such upheaval. Some will jump on the 5-color bandwagon, others will fallback to their old familiar friends Faeries or Kithkin, and others still will look forward to Elf combo and random aggro decks. It should make for an interesting season, that’s for sure!

First PTQ Austin Weekend with M10 – Analysis and Musings

There were four PTQs for Austin over the weekend, using the new Standard format with M10 cards and rules. I know there were also four Nationals events around the world, but several people on several sites have already analyzed the Nationals while I haven’t heard anyone talk about PTQ data. I, for one, think that PTQ data is somewhat more reliable than “big tournament” data because the tournament scene is so much more similar. Especially PTQs with a large field, which indicates moreso the cream of the crop rising to the top. Here’s the PTQ data from the Daily MTG site:

July 18: Edison: Nick O’Connor (Attendance: 276)
July 18: Winnipeg: Trevor Humphries (Attendance: 32)
July 18: Tallahassee: Koby Kennison (Attendance: 129)
July 19: Louisville: Justin Brown (Attendance: 133)

So we have three fairly large PTQs and one small one in Winnipeg. I always wonder about those small PTQs (and wish I lived there instead of Michigan) and whether or not you can rely on that data. Sometimes I thnk no because the decks are more likely rogueish and not “put to the test” like a top8 deck from a field of 276 players would be. For instance, look at the breakdown from Winnipeg:

1 5c Control
1 Jund Ramp
1 Elf Combo
1 Black/White Discard
1 BR Aggro
1 5c Blood
1 Soldiers

I just noticed I only have seven decklists from that event. /ponder Anyway, these decks are very much not in the mainstream… I mean, Soldiers? Black/White Discard? This leads me to believe that most of the decks were created in somewhat of a vacuum and weren’t as finely tuned as larger events.

Let’s have some fun with numbers!!!

Here’s the breakdown from the remaining PTQs:

Edison
3 Faeries
2 Kithkin
1 Elf Combo
1 White Weenie
1 5c Cascade

Louisville
3 5c Control
3 Elf Combo
1 Jund Aggro
1 Kithkin

Tallahassee
2 Kithkin
2 Faeries
2 Merfolk
1 5c Control
1 5c Cascade

As you can see, each metagame had it’s own dominant decks with 2 or more top8 slots. If we mash all those top 8 #s together we get:
5 – 16% – Faeries
5 – 16% – Kithkin
5 – 16% – Elf Combo
5 – 16% – 5c Control
—————————-
2 – 6% – Merfolk
2 – 6% – 5c Cascade
1 – 3% – Jund Aggro
1 – 3% – Black/white Discard
1 – 3% – Jund Ramp
1 – 3% – BR Aggro
1 – 3% – 5c Blood
1 – 3% – Soldiers
1 – 3% – White Weenie

Compare that to the analysis of the four Nationals tournaments done by, I think, Adrian Sullivan from StarCity:

7 – 17.5% – Faeries
6 – 15% – Kithkin
6 – 15% – Elf Combo
6 – 15% – 5c Control
—————————-
3 – 7.5% – 5c Blood
2 – 5% – 5c Cascade
2 – 5% – Jund Cascade
2 – 5% – Red/X
2 – 5% – Green/Red Beats
1 – 2.5% – GB Elves
1 – 2.5% – Merfolk
1 – 2.5% – Mannequin Control
1 – 2.5% – Sanity Grinding

Intriguingly enough, you get nearly the same results, with four strong Tier 1 decks emerging: Faeries, Kithkin, Elf Combo, and 5c Control. Everything else is relegated to Tier 2 duty.

This is very promising data, as it gives us a nice floor for the rest of this PTQ Austin season from just the first weekend of tournaments. I’ve been thinking about how to attack this format and perhaps the way to go about it is to look at what the top decks are and then make an “answer” deck that addresses their modes of attack. I am definitely going to be playing green in some form and Great Sable Stag seems like a wonderful card against Faeries and 5c Control. Also, Volcanic Fallout supposedly works wonders against Faeries, Kithkin, and Elves. A deck that plays both cards should be at least decent. I’m thinking Jund, because I wouldn’t mind having Maelstrom Pulses, Terminates, and Bituminous Blasts as well as hand disruption in Duress and Thoughtseize. Yep, my brain’s already in overdrive. We’ll see after this weekend how US Nationals shakes things up.I should have a decklist up by the weekend so stay tuned!