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Main » Articles » Testing for a New Format

Testing for a New Format

Chingsung Chang
Posted on May 7, 2012
 Reddit

By the time you read this, StarCityGames Open Series: Providence will be over, and you’ll all know whether I did well. I think that I did uncover a lot over the course of testing for the format, but I have no delusions as to my own potential personal performance. There are a variety of factors that prevent me from doing well at large tournaments, and Providence is no exception. My aim over the course of the weekend is to have fun playing the game I love, and if I do well, so be it.

So, I began real testing for Avacyn Restored Standard pretty much as soon as the spoilers for the event started going up. The first deck I tried was the Fires-inspired deck I posted a couple weeks ago, and from there, I moved onto various control brews. What quickly became clear was that the format was constrained by two decks:

"Wolf Run Ramp"

"W/U Delver"

You might comment on the lack of sideboards or Avacyn Restored cards, but neither proved to be a big deal for the type of testing I was looking to do—at least early on. Avacyn Restored doesn’t really add a whole lot to either of these decks, and sideboards were of lesser importance. So, what was my methodology?

The big thing I was looking at was strategic-level interaction. I wanted to see if I could exploit the fundamental strategic weaknesses of various metagame archetypes. It wasn’t about looking at specific cards (a tactical issue), but about looking at what each deck was trying to do and the problems that those plans presented. The goal was to attempt to solve those problems at a strategic level and thus be less concerned with the actual cards the decks were playing.

Ramp, in particular, was a deck that caused a lot of headaches in testing—particularly for control—mostly because what was good against Ramp was not good against everyone else. What was the issue with Ramp? What problems did the deck present?

Ramp presents powerful threats in quick groups. In presenting Primeval Titan as a threat, Ramp actually presents Primeval Titan, Inkmoth Nexus, and Kessig Wolf Run together. When this happens on turns four through six, a control deck has one of the following responses:

  1. An immediate answer to Titan and Nexus

  2. An answer to either Nexus or Titan and the ability to dig for more answers

  3. An answer to one but not the other

  4. An answer to neither but the ability to dig for answers

  5. Nothing

The issue was that in four of these situations, the control deck was very likely to lose. Due to the speed at which these threats killed you, the control deck almost invariably didn’t have the time to look for answers to that first wave of threats; it had to have them already. This was bad since, by far, the most common situation was to have Response 2: the ability to deal with one but not the other immediately. Frequently, the control deck would be in a situation in which it could do something like cast Terminus or Day of Judgment to deal with Primeval Titan but then lose to an Inkmoth Nexus with a Wolf Run over the next two turns since it didn’t have instant-speed spot removal.

This matchup in particular showcased both the strengths and weaknesses of Tamiyo, the Moon Sage. Tamiyo served as a flexible method of dealing with both Titans and Nexus/Wolf Run. Her ability to change what permanent she was locking down was quite useful. However, the fact that she cost 5 mana and only had 5 loyalty upon hitting initially proved to be problematic as well. The control deck would definitely find itself in situations in which it could drop a Tamiyo and lock something down, but she would simply die to a Titan or Nexus and leave the control player dead in the water.

The issue was the nature and speed of the threats that Ramp was presenting. Control lacked a way of dealing with these threats at the speed they were presented. This entire statement is important. If given sufficient time, control had the ability to handle each of these threats in turn. However, it did not have the ability to handle these threats together due to a lack of time to find the appropriate answers. Having the appropriate answer at the appropriate time meant overloading the deck on cheap, instant-speed spot removal, a strategy not conducive to success against the format’s other major deck: W/U Delver.

In summary, this is essentially what happened:

The lack of unity between the two lists of cards ended up serving as a huge sticking point for every control deck I built. I could either target the rest of the metagame and lose to Ramp or target Ramp and have issues elsewhere.

Despite my love for the following deck, I put it down because the ramp matchup is atrocious. It’s good against everything else, but it doesn’t stand a chance against Nexuses and Wolf Runs.

"American Control"

(Gideon is officially Tamiyo’s boyfriend. That is all.)

If you are planning on dodging Wolf Run all day, this is a perfectly reasonable place to be. Pristine Talisman and Pillar of Flame, in particular, proved themselves to be excellent cards in the current metagame when placed in the right shell.

Ironically, my search for strategic superiority in a solid number of matchups led me to a deck that actually has no strategic superiority. Junk Rock proved to be the only deck I found that had good game against the entire metagame. I didn’t find the deck to be particularly favored anywhere, but having a solid game against everyone is not a bad place to be the first week of the new format. This is the Junk Rock list I settled on, provided by a friend of mine, this time complete with sideboard:

"Junk Rock"

This deck’s ability to occupy strategic moments ranging from aggro to control proved to be critical to the deck’s ability to function in a varied metagame. The flexibility of Strangleroot Geist and Lingering Souls was key. The ability to shift stances on a dime gave this deck the ability to compete against a wide variety of decks in the new metagame.

My testing for this new format proved extremely instructive. I learned that due to the angles Delver and Ramp attack from, it is very difficult to create a strategy that is advantaged against both. What is good against Delver is naturally bad against Ramp, and what is good against Ramp is naturally bad against Delver. I wanted to be advantaged in the critical matchups, but I feel that the constraints Ramp and Delver provide make that impossible at the moment.

Thus, the compromise is to be decent against most things but not particularly good against everything else. I do have a last-ditch attempt to play a blue-based control deck in the works, which I will test at FNM before SCG: Providence, but right now, it looks like I’m going to play Junk.

I suppose if I Top 16, you’ll all know what I actually played, but for now, it is undetermined.

Chingsung Chang

Conelead most everywhere and on MTGO

Khan32k5 at gmail dot com

TAGS articles, standard, constructed, analysis, deck lists, chingsung chang, avacyn restored

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