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Main » Articles » Battling with New Decks and a Ham Sandwich

Battling with New Decks and a Ham Sandwich

Ali Aintrazi
Posted on December 9, 2016
 Reddit

Glimmer of Genius
This past weekend so much went down. We had four big events in one weekend. There was the Standard Grand Prix in Madrid, Standard Grand Prix in Denver, the Starcity Game Invitational, and the Standard Open in Atlanta. That’s a lot of Standard events all over the place. As for myself I ended up going to Atlanta to play in the SCG event since I was trying to qualify for the Player’s Championship. I ended up not making it but I did get top 64 with U/B Control in the Standard Open. I honestly felt like the U/B Control is far from Tier 1 and personally wouldn’t play it again or recommended it. Control is just hard to play in this format and you’re not rewarded for doing so. For example, Blue control decks have Anticipate, Glimmer of Genius, and Torrential Gearhulk as the end game. Now Delirium has Traverse the Ulvenwald (insures you hit land drops for 1 mana and late game is Demonic Tutor), Grapple with the Past (Anticipate that becomes Demonic Tutor as the game goes on), and they have Emrakul the Promised End as their end game. You might say they only have one Emrakul where Blue has four gearhulks but the Delirium deck can not only tutor their Emrakul but can also recur it with Grapple with the Past or Liliana, the Last Hope. I’d just recommend staying away from control for now if you can.

All that being said, I want to go over some of the decks that did well this weekend that aren’t U/W Flash or B/G Delirium. We had some solid finishes with other decks in these tournaments and I’m going to highlight a few of them for all you readers that enjoy trying different decks like do.

Let’s start with the deck list that won Grand Prix Madrid. We’ve seen Aetherworks Marvel fall in and out of favor ever since Pro Tour Eldritch moon. The deck was originally in all in deck that focused all its efforts on getting energy and finding Aetherworks Marvel as soon as possible. However now the deck can still cast Emrakul off a Aetherworks Marvel but it’s also doing other things like casting Planeswalkers and more importantly, Ishkanah, Grafwidow which just happens to buy the deck a bunch of time. What’s more valuable than time when you’re playing a deck with four Emrakuls? I can’t really think of anything. Here’s Carmine D’aniello’s winning deck!

Aetherworks Marvel ? Kaladesh Standard | Carmine D?aniello, 1st Grand Prix Madrid 2016

Aetherworks Marvel
First of all I’d like to congratulate Carmine D’aniello’s on the solid finish, an Emrakul deck won the Grand Prix but at least it wasn’t B/G Delirium! In fact, Aetherworks Marvel decks are designed to prey on B/G Delirium. This weekend was the breakout weekend for said Marvel decks, it was a fantastic choice. Now that they have more removal and Ishkanah they don’t just fold to U/W Flash, which was the decks previous problem. So not only are you heavily favored against B/G Delirium but now you can fight U/W Flash pretty well thanks to Ishkanah and removal.

Instead of splashing White for Nahiri, the Harbinger or Sigarda, Heron's Grace, Carmine decided to just stick to the traditional R/G build. Kozilek's Return is very good against your bad matchup, vehicles so that helps. Kozilek's Return also kills basically everything except Emrakul when you trigger it from your Graveyard giving your Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger or Emrakul a clean board to land on. I’m not sure if there’s anything scarier than that.

A solid choice if you want to cheat Emrakul or Ulamog into play. However, I’d add probably one more threat in the sideboard to play around Pick the Brain and Lost Legacy since B/G Delirium should be playing some number of them in their sideboards.

Next up is the deck I talked about in my last article!

U/B Summonings ? Kaladesh Standard | Bobby Fortanely, Grand Prix Denver 2016, 11th Place

Contraband Kingpin
Bobby finished in 11th place with U/B Summonings. Instead of going big with Part the Waterveil or Grip of Desolation, Bobby went the control route and just threw in three Metallurgic Summonings as alternate win conditions. He shaved on a Gearhulk, but that’s all right when every spell you play creates a creature anyway. I really like the route he went and this is where I would start if I was going to play U/B again. Sure, Metallurgic Summonings might be “cute” but it’s also going to kill you. B/G and even Aetherworks Marvel decks are going to have a hard time beating you through a Metallurgic Summonings, even if you’re being Mindslavered by Emrakul since every spell you cast will create an artifact creature that will essentially have haste because of the extra turn you get thanks to Emrakul.

I also really like Bobby’s sideboard. Love the Contraband Kingpin in that it acts like a different Jorubai Murk Lurker. Sure, it might not be amazing, but it does its job just fine against the aggressive decks. With Metallurgic Summonings out you’ll not only be creating creatures with your spells but you’ll also be getting a Scry 1 thanks to the Kingpin. It’s a nice little bonus that comes up, be aware however that’s now why the Kingpin is played. It’s just great at blocking small creatures and things like Veteran Motorist.

Dynavolt Tower is another great option that lets you do something your deck wouldn’t be able to do normally. Burning creatures, Planeswalkers, and players out is usually unheard of in U/B but not anymore. I imagine Bobby was either shaving Metallurgic Summonings or Gearhulk when he brought the towers in.

Speaking of Control, if you just want to play a Control deck in this format, I would be on Jeskai Control. The addition of White and Red gives you solid removal, access to board wipes, and the best Planeswalker in Standard, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar.

Jeskai Control ? Kaladesh Standard | Ari Lax, Grand Prix Denver 18th place

Dynavolt Tower
Ari Lax is a great player, so I’m not surprised to see him at the top with any deck really. However, I do like to look at the way he configures his decks. Ari tends to play what he thinks is very good for any given event so he obviously though Jeskai was a solid choice. I really like how he has removed Dynavolt Tower from this list since he has access to actual burn spells if he wants it. Jeskai can also play Revolutionary Rebuff unlike other control decks because of Nahiri, the Harbinger. Early on, Rebuff can do some work, but late in the game it is usually awful. Thanks to Nahiri you can just cycle it unlike other control decks. I really like everything about Ari’s main deck except I’d find room for a single Flame Lash. It’s a good burn spell that also happens to kill Gideon, Ally of Zendikar since most people will zero Gideon when he enters the battlefield.

Ari’s Sideboard is very good too. The plan of Spell Queller and Gideon against other control decks is great. Not only is it good against the control decks, but it’s also very good against the Aetherworks Marvel decks. It allows you to counter their spells with Spell Queller and keep pressure on them with said Queller or Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Again, if you really want to play Control, then I’d recommend Jeskai and starting here.

Up next is Seth Manfield’s Ham Sandwich.

U/W Panharmonicon ? Kaladesh Standard | Seth Manfield, Grand Prix Denver 8th Place

Panharmonicon
Panharmonicon . . .  Man, people have been talking about that card for a while but nobody has really had a solid finish with it. Until now. Sure, Seth can win with almost anything, but I really do think this has some merit to it. The format can be grindy and no better way to grind then through a Panharmonicon some enter the battlefield triggers. Instead of playing Gearhulks and getting multiple triggers off them, Seth played Cloudblazer as his biggest card advantage engine. Cloudblazer with Panharmonicon is equivalent to Sphinx's Revelation when you put 7 mana into it. Except you also get a body with Cloudblazer that you can blink with Eldrazi Displacer to gain a bunch of life and draw a bunch of cards. It’s important to note that Panharmonicon isn’t legendary so having multiples out will insure some absurd things happen.

All the creatures in this deck have enter the battlefield triggers except Eldrazi Displacer which just allows you to rebuy all your ETB triggers. If you look closely you may notice the deck has an infinite combo in it. After you get going with Cloudblazer, Panharmonicon, and Eldrazi Displacer; you can eventually set up a board state where you have two Panharmonicons, Drowner of Hope, and Eldrazi Displacer. This will allow you to generate an infinite number of scion tokens so you can tap down all your opponent’s creatures and then kill them with a bunch of Scions. You will also be able to generate infinite colorless mana so you can even blink your Thought-Knot Seer a billion times, stacking it so you look at your opponent’s hand a billion times before having them draw a billion cards. Pretty sweet huh?

What’s also great is the deck can just function like different version of U/W Flash. The curve of Thraben Inspector into Smuggler's Copter into Reflector Mage is very real and you can easily out tempo your opponent while poking them down to death or at least until you draw Panharmonicon so you can start doing some nutty things.

Thank you, Seth, for the ham sandwich, I just wish I would’ve known about this deck before I played in the SCG Invitational, I would’ve 100% jammed it. I don’t have any Standard events coming up over the next couple of weeks so it will be nice to take a small break from Standard right before we start brewing with new cards from Aether Revolt. I’m super excited for a metagame shake up, let’s hope Aether Revolt can do that!

As always thanks for reading!

Ali Aintrazi

Follow me on twitter @Alieldrazi

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TAGS articles, standard, strategy, metagame, constructed, analysis, deck list, ali aintrazi

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