Some mechanics come and go – we adjust to them while they're in standard, then back to level after they're gone. But some new mechanics are here to stay, and we have to adjust our base understanding of the game to accommodate. With my Vengevines not arriving before the weekend, I went into the Win-a-Flight tournament with my trusty old Brilliant Ultimatum deck, 'Wall Street.' @platypusjedi from twitter had gone undefeated with it at his FNM so I was feeling alright about the deck. I had a mediocre day unfortunately, hitting some bad matchups (Ajani Vengeant decks, Time Sieve) and ending 2-4 over the six rounds – I would have gone home at 2-3, but they were raffling off a planeswalker card each round and the last round was a Jace! I didn't win it, but my second round opponent was a swell guy and I was glad he took it home. Planeswalkers were a major presence this weekend, and they're what I want to talk about a bit further down.

Before I get on to the meat of the article, a bit more about the deck. I will post my updated list at the end of the article but the maindeck changes were -4 Ponder, -1 Path to Exile and +2 See Beyond, +2 Prophetic Prism, +1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. I was inspired by an Adam Kosca 4 colour decklist which used Lotus Cobra to power out his Cruel Ultimatum, and ran maindeck Prophetic Prism. I decided I wanted to do the same as it really takes the sting out of Spreading Seas and when you want to make WWUUUBB on turn 7, the manafixing and cantrip is more than welcome. I had to find some cuts, though. One of my opponents last time around commented that I always shuffled with Ponder, and they were right, because one of its main uses was getting rid of unwanted cards by Jace-ing them to the top of my library and shuffling them away. I usually wanted to spend turn 1 playing a tapped land, as well. I decided the Ponders could go but I wanted to retain the ability to shuffle, so I added two See Beyonds to two Prisms.

I also cut the misers Path for an additional Emrakul, because I wanted more chance of blindly hitting a win. I was really sour about playing Liliana but she is mildly useful, and I couldn't find a better tool for the job of partnering with Jace to manage the top of my deck. Nicol Bolas kept his place and I wouldn't cut him, as he is an absolute gamewinner if he sticks and you can actually play him if you draw him. I landed him against Grixis in round one - probably this deck's best matchup – and again I shrugged off a Cruel Ultimatum, stole his Sedraxis Specter and started blowing up lands. By the time he had dealt with Bolas – killing the stolen specter, attacking with another and double bolting him down from 9 loyalty – I had virtually gained a ton of life and was up on cards.

The sideboard underwent a radical overhaul. I felt the mono-red matchup was practically unwinnable and decided to forgo any specific cards for it – Kor Firewalkers stayed at home, as did Wall of Denial. I expected a small field of hardcore Jund, UW and Superfriends decks, along with assorted Knight of the Reliquary decks and so I created a board with those matches in mind. 4 Celestial Purge are fantastic against Jund, and 4 Path are one of my only outs to Polymorph, as well as being generally good against creature decks. Telemin Performance was a superstar last time and it stayed along with 4 Negate for control matchups, and I originally had 2 Bloodwitches for the UW matchup but about 10 minutes before I printed out my decklist these became Planar Cleansings. I would have rathered All Is Dust but I didn't have any, and as it turns out this was relevant in a positive way.

I played against Time Sieve in round 4 at 2-1, and I had not prepared for this matchup at all. As he is basically a faster combo deck, it looks pretty sour for me, and after he won game 1 I sided in 11 cards (Purges, Negates, Cleansings & Telemin) with the plan of slowing him down by exiling Borderposts and then playing one of my "I win" cards. I Brilliant Ultimatum on turn 7, flipping Planar Cleansing. "Well, that's awkward," replied my opponent as he put his entire board – bar two lands – into the graveyard. The next turn I Teleminned him for his library. Game 3 I untap on turn 5 with Telemin in hand to his one Plains, but he casts Silence in my upkeep and I don't get another turn. With that one glowing moment of accidental-sideboard-tech-blowout behind me I finished with a fairly dire record.

We Need to Talk About Planeswalkers

Playing Wall Street against Super Friends amongst other decks has made abundantly clear to me the power of planeswalkers in large groups. Today I'd like to examine how people use planeswalkers en-masse, what makes the strategy so strong, and what we can do to combat them.

Planeswalkers are a unique type of permanent. They have an impact as soon as they hit the board, and then an ongoing ability to affect matters each turn after that. The closest analogue I can come up with is a creature with an ETB triggered ability, like Lorwyn favourite Shriekmaw. Shriekmaw has a strong impact as soon as you play him, as he destroys a non-black creature, and from each turn then on you can choose between dealing 3 damage to your opponent or playing defence by threatening to block. This combination of immediate and ongoing effects makes Shriekmaw a very strong card, as even if your opponent removes it to stop it attacking, it has still had time to have an immediate effect. On the other hand if your opponent doesn't remove Shriekmaw, it can have a powerful ongoing effect by attacking for three. It's a lose-lose situation for your opponent.

Planeswalkers are like super-charged Shriekmaws. A freshly played Elspeth can Angelic Blessing a Rhox War Monk, letting you attack for 6 or more lifelinked damage. A shiny new Jace, the Mind Sculptor can Unsummon a Baneslayer Angel, giving you a massive tempo boost. If your opponents don't spend their limited resources – burn spells, attack steps, direct removal – these planeswalkers can have an ongoing impact without any extra investment on your part, and eventually threaten to end the game in your favour. Once again, lose-lose. Even worse when playing against planeswalkers is the limited number of answers to them. There are a huge number of spells available that allow you to interact with creatures, from Doom Blade to Scepter of Dominance. Planeswalkers on the other hand are such a new permanent type that there aren't a lot of spells that can interact with them. Vampire Hexmage is the closest wizards have done to "destroy target planeswalker," and apart from that you'll be relying on generic answers like Maelstrom Pulse or Oblivion Ring. Even if you have these answers, you won't be fast enough to stop them getting at least one ability off unless your answer is a counterspell.

So, what have some clever cookies done to exploit this weakness in people's ability to answer 'walkers? Play tons of them at once, that's what! Carlos Romao's Super Friends deck from GP DC ran 15 of them of many different shades, and any one of them can decide the game if unanswered. The trouble for the opponent is it is very, very hard to answer all of them with the limited cards available. Compare the way Mythic runs Brett Blackman's Mythic Conscription deck from the same top 8 runs 28 creatures, attempting to overload the opponent's removal. Josh Wagner's sideboard Royal Assassins are a fantastic answer to this strategy, but the only card that can hope to answer a planeswalker every turn in the same manner costs 4UBBR. Every single deck in the top 8 ran some number of planeswalkers in the maindeck.

The Answers - Spells

White, generally the best colour for removing permanents, is pretty shallow when it comes to answering planeswalkers. Oblivion Ring is versatile, cheap and effective and it made several sideboards in GP: DC. Unfortunately it is a fragile answer, as a well timed enchantment removal spell – like Maelstrom Pulse, or even another Oblivion Ring – will put the offending planeswalker right back into play. One techy way to exploit this is by removing your own O Ring – first, you remove a Jace with an O-Ring. Your opponent smugly plays a second one – rather than use your second O-Ring on this Jace, use it on your own first O-Ring, which will bring the first Jace back and kill them both with the Legend Rule. Planar Cleansing and Scourglass should be mentioned only for completeness' sake, as All Is Dust is a far better answer except in very specific cases. All is Dust is a fantastic card for control mirrors for the same familiar reasons that Wrath of God is good against creature decks – let your opponent put their cards on the board and deal with all of them with one of your own.

Blue has some very mediocre options for answering an already resolved planeswalker. Bounce spells like Into the Roil are as good as it gets, and it's only the most temporary of reprieves. Blue does have perhaps the best answer available to any colour, however, in the form of the much maligned modern counterspell. Negate is one of the most popular sideboard cards in the format, and with good reason. This solves the 'Shriekmaw effect' I discussed earlier, as a planeswalker that never reaches the battlefield can't even contribute a beast token or a Brainstorm. Counterspell decks are forced to walk a fine line in the current metagame – the proactive strategies are so strong and fast that even one misstep from the reactive player can spell doom, and it is a lot easier to clean up a mess after the fact with Martial Coup than it is with Flashfreeze.

Black never gets universal answers unless allied with another colour. A fine example is Maelstrom Pulse, and it is the best answer Jund decks have to the river of planeswalkers they are having to face off against these days. For those black decks that don't have the green to pair with, their best answer comes in the form of the two drop surprise package, Vampire Hexmage. I kept wanting to take these ladies out of my Vampires deck when I was running it, first for more removal then later for Kalastria Highborns, but the Hexmage just solve so many problems – Ball Lightning, for example, and now monsters like Gideon. Forget that they are a 2/1 for 2, what's important is that they are a better-than-O Ring answer to planeswalkers that you can play pre-emptively for a lower cost! The downside here is that it exposes you to Wraths, which the planeswalker decks tend to play a bunch of.

Red's answer to planeswalkers is simple – burn them. This doesn't work so good with high loyalty planeswalkers like Gideon or Elspeth, but against a misplayed Garruk or Jace a single Lightning Bolt can take them out with nary a blip in your tempo. The most effective way for red to handle walkers has generally been Blightning – it turns the card advantage tables by forcing your opponents to discard two as well as trading a card for their permanent. Green has a couple of answers to non-creature permanents, but they are not very efficiently costed – Mold Shambler costs 6 and Terastodon costs 8. Terastodon is my favourite as it can knock out multiple planeswalkers at once and give you a beefy 9/9 – even if they triple block with the tokens you give them to kill your creature, you've still 3-for-1ed them. 8 is nothing to be sneezed at though, and getting there is not something any of our big metagame decks fielding green want to do with any regularity.

Creatures

Of course, the major weakness of planeswalkers when compared to, say, an enchantment with a choice of ongoing effects is that they can be attacked by your creatures. One of the key things that determine if a planeswalker sees play or not is its ability to defend itself, whether by removing your opponent's creatures or putting stupid dorks in the way. Some creatures are better than others at attacking planeswalkers – key abilities to look for are Haste, Trample and any kind of Evasion.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor is one of the strongest planeswalkers and his unsummon ability makes it hard to attack him effectively, but Goblin Guide, Vengevine, Hell's Thunder and Bloodbraid Elf are all useful answers. These hasty creatures are a feature of most of today's aggro decks and one of the major advantages they give you is the ability to answer a planeswalker while still progressing your board. They are also the best creatures to answer planeswalkers with removal abilities like Jace or Gideon, as this kind of removal is implicitly too slow to keep up. On the other hand, evasion and trample are much better for fighting the army-in-a-can style planeswalker, like Garruk or Elspeth. A Baneslayer Angel or Sledge-carrying Knight of the Reliquary can happily run over a soldier token to squish Elspeth. Wall of Omens is a perpetual feature of these decks as well, making evasion doubly important for countering your opponent's walkers.

Planeswalkers are here to stay, and dealing with them is going to be a key strategic question for some time to come. They add an interesting extra layer to the game, as you have to consider whether you get more of an advantage from just dealing 20 to the opponent's face or dealing with their friends as well. I've had a quick look today at the generic answers for our newest permanent type, in the future I'll have a look at the peculiarities of each individual. In the meantime share your thoughts on solving the planeswalker question and I'll be busy finding a new deck for the PTQ in a fortnight, with one goal (besides getting a ticket to Amsterdam) – beating Superfriends!

PS: Updated Wall Street decklist

As promised, here's my updated decklist. I feel the maindeck Prisms are the best new card, as it makes your mana so much better and it is pretty easy to get WWUUUBB from your first seven lands. Some Brilliant Ultimatum decks have done a lot better than mine in the SCG Open this past weekend, but the below list may give you some inspiration and it is pretty hard to lose against UW or Grixis.

Wall Street

[cardlist]4 Marsh Flats

1 Arid Mesa

2 Crumbling Necropolis

4 Arcane Sanctum

4 Celestial Colonnade

2 Creeping Tar Pit

3 Island

2 Plains

3 Swamp

1 Mountain

2 Prophetic Prism

2 See Beyond

4 Wall of Omens

4 Spreading Seas

4 Esper Charm

3 Day of Judgement

4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

1 Gideon Jura

2 Liliana Vess

4 Brilliant Ultimatum

1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

3 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Sideboard

4 Celestial Purge

4 Path to Exile

4 Negate

2 Planar Cleansing

1 Telemin Performance[/cardlist]