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Main » Articles » Looking at Dark Ascension

Looking at Dark Ascension

Chingsung Chang
Posted on January 30, 2012
 Reddit

Disclaimer: Decklists provided in this article are essentially untested and are designed for brainstorming.

It's new set time, and around this time, it's always fun to look at the upcoming Standard format and speculate. I think that Dark Ascension fills a lot of gaps for many interesting decks. Of course, I'll talk about Sorin as well, but we'll save him for later, since I'm not sure he's actually the biggest card in Dark Ascension. That honor might very well go to Gravecrawler.

What's the big deal with Gravecrawler? Well, he provides black with a second 2-power 1-drop, which is quite a big deal. I've written about mana curves before and how taking advantage of it requires taking action starting on turn one. Note that a lot of the strongest proactive creature decks rely greatly on their 1-drops. Just a recent look back in time shows us Delver of Secrets, Wild Nacatl, Stromkirk Noble, Goblin Guide, Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, Green Sun's Zenith (for Dryad Arbor), Aether Vial, and many more cards exerting heavy influence on various formats. Historically, many more 1-drops have been around, and 2 power for 1 mana has always been a great place to start.

So, why haven't we seen much out of the 1-drops recently? Well, the answer is consistency. Note that most of the decks that rely on 1-drops are extremely homogenous and redundant. They rely on consistency to generate a good amount of pressure. Thus, the difference between having four cards and eight cards in that slot is huge. Having two good 1-drops enables excellent consistency from the various decks seeking to take advantage of them.

The Big Winner – Zombies

Zombies as a tribe were a huge winner this set because of Gravecrawler. It might not push them to the top, but it will put them awfully close. The core is black, of course, but I think blue makes a strong argument for a support color in the Zombie tribal archetype.

"Fishbone"

This is built a lot like Merfolk, relying on lords to increase the effectiveness of the creature suite while using countermagic to disrupt your opponent's game plan. Diregraf Captain is the big lord, of course, and it is the card intended to be copied by Phantasmal Image. Cemetery Reaper and Geralf's Messenger are decent things to copy as well. The advantage of this over a deck like Delver is that your creatures are going to be much better in heads-up fights, due to increased power and toughness and built-in card advantage from Gravecrawler, Geralf's Messenger, and Cemetery Reaper.

You also have the advantage of being black, which gives you access to much stronger creature removal in the form of Dismember, Tragic Slip, Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, and Geth's Verdict. It also gives you access to Despise and Ghoulcaller's Chant, the latter of which could be an excellent way to win attrition fights in a deck like this. Ponder is also perfectly reasonable to be in a deck like this, but I'm not really sure where to fit it.

As an added note, red is a decent backup option for Zombies as well. You don't really get much on the creature end (assuming you stay tribal), but you do gain access to burn in the form of Arc Trail, Brimstone Volley, Gut Shot, Incinerate, and more. Grim Lavamancer supplements this plan beautifully. Thus, you end up having black creatures and red spells, which isn't a terrible place to be.

The other direction to take Gravecrawler is simply to use it as support for an existing strategy: mono-red. By going B/R aggro instead of just mono-red, you can get the best of both worlds. Black provides a strong addition to the creature suite in the form of eight solid 1-drops while presenting sideboard options including excellent creature removal.

Comedy option:

"Forty-ones"

This deck is not great, but it's going to be surprisingly effective for a deck that only plays things at 1 mana. It's actually fairly comical that this sort of thing can even be done in this format. I played it a little and was extremely surprised by its effectiveness. Not actually good, but much better than I expected, and definitely very funny.

For real now:

"B/R Aggro"

This is a basic Deadguy Red shell, which should be pretty flexible. The creature suite is quite strong, and the spell suite has many options. I've selected Gut Shot, Arc Trail, and Tragic Slip because I feel that they work well together, but there are a number of other options as well.

I want to talk about Faithless Looting a bit here as well. Faithless Looting could be very good in this type of deck, but I'm always inclined to try the deck without cards like that. The reason is that I like to test the viability and consistency of the strategy. The best way to do this is to make the deck extremely linear and see how it operates. If it works well, tinkering with individual card choices then becomes the name of the game. Faithless Looting is a good piece of card selection. The primary advantage of the card is that it allows you to turn dead lands or expensive spells into extra action. The interactions with Grim Lavamancer and Gravecrawler are also sort of nice. I would definitely look at playing a deck like this one first with Lootings on the side, but I would quickly start putting them in the main if I liked the way the deck was going. Just as a note, with Looting, twenty-two lands is a possibility.

I also want to talk a little bit about Curse of Stalked Prey. I played with card a bit when Innistrad first came out, and I'm surprised it hasn't really caught on. My evaluation of the card was that the first one was extremely strong at winning creature wars and against unopposed boards, but it was often dead in multiples. The thing with Stalked Prey is that it forces your opponent to keep your creature count low, as racing is often a losing proposition (your dudes get bigger, making them both hit harder and harder to kill in combat). Given that the format is moving toward a lot of creature-based fights, having access to this little red gem could be worth looking at. Because when it's bad, it's very bad, Curse of Stalked Prey could very well be one of those cards that is best as a 1-of. You never actually need it, but it's nice when it shows up. As is, I think the strengths of the card merit a second copy but not a third.

Looking at Sorin

Now I want to look at the elephant in the room as far as Dark Ascension is concerned: Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. I spoke last week about thinking about how your cards are useful and putting them in the best position to succeed. Sorin is an excellent example because there are a number of things that he can do. Let's take a look at the card and try to maximize it.

Sorin has two abilities worth maximizing—his first two—so let's take a look at the strengths of these two abilities:

+1: This ability is great at creating a stream of small threats (tokens). These can be used offensively to kill your opponent or defensively to buffer damage. The lifelink is an added bonus if the tokens are used to buffer damage.

−2: This ability has best synergy with high creature counts, either as a result of persistent token generation or simply of playing a lot of creatures.

Thus, the maximization of Sorin is likely going to be in a midrange deck that has high creature counts. Midrange allows Sorin's two-way functionality to maximize itself while allowing him to be a strong offensive threat as well. The logical place is, of course, W/B tokens. There are two main directions to take the deck: one based on Lingering Souls, Timely Reinforcements, and Midnight Haunting, and the other based more on being aggressive with actual creatures.

"W/B Tokens"

I'm pretty sure this isn't the best build of the deck, though—it avoids some of the strengths of the archetype. This build focuses on maximizing tokens, which I'm not sure is the best way to go. Altar's Reap is something worth trying in this style of deck, though, as it could end up being a solid card-draw spell.

Here's a take on being more aggressive with actual creatures, backed up by Sorin, mainly for his −2.

"Aggro Tokens"

If you look at both of these builds, you will see the main problem I have with straight W/B tokens, though: mana usage. Just going W/B puts a lot of your good spells in the 3- to 5-mana range, which causes mana usage problems because the deck takes a while to get off the ground. I don't really see many good solutions to this problem, either—the vast majority of the high-quality threats are in this range. This means that you either lower threat density (bad for a highly proactive deck), or you just actively select worse threats (also not good). It's possible for some balance to exist, but I'm not optimistic.

I think that the best overall solution is going to be to add Sorin to existing strategies to take advantage of him as a threat. G/W tokens is a logical place to start, but it isn't a deck I have been following, so I won't provide a list. Suffice to say, it shouldn't be hard to splash Sorin with Evolving Wilds, Woodland Cemetery, and Isolated Chapel. Essentially, it's a G/W tokens list splashing for the flashback on Lingering Souls and Sorin. The main advantage you reap from this is, of course, the mana acceleration provided by green, most notably in the form of Avacyn's Pilgrim.

I do feel, however, that B/G/W Pod is an interesting direction to take Sorin. Birthing Pod is definitely a creature-focused archetype that can very well take advantage of Sorin's −2. Here's an idea for a starting point.

"B/G/W Pod"

Birthing Pod is naturally a strategy well focused on creatures, and there are some excellent value creatures running around right now. Solemn Simulacrum, Viridian Emissary, Acidic Slime, the Titans, and more are all on-color and provide excellent value at all stages of their lives. Grim Backwoods in particular seems to be an excellent way of taking advantage of Birthing Pod and the type of things that the deck is trying to do. Sacrificing a Solemn Simulacrum or Viridian Emissary to draw a card seems like good times. The fact that Primeval Titan can search it up is just gravy.

Last, but not least, we have a control application of Sorin: Esper. Sorin with Elspeth Tirel strikes me as a very strong interaction for control decks. Together, they do a strong job of buffering damage by producing tokens and gaining life, but they also have the ability to turn around and be offensive very quickly. Sorin's emblem makes Elspeth's −2 a much stronger threat, and Elspeth's +2 can gain a significant amount of life over the course of the game, especially in matchups in which Timely Reinforcements is strong. A nice side effect of this method of control is that it presents a very limited number of good targets for opposing creature removal. You're still going to play Snapcaster Mage, but who really wants to use a removal spell on a Snapcaster or a token?

”Esper Control”

I feel that Dark Ascension fills in a lot of holes in the format. Gravecrawler fills a basic need of a number of different archetypes, so I wanted to take some time and look at that card. Whether that card pushes the archetypes that want it to the forefront of Standard remains to be seen, but it is definitely utile and worth looking at.

Sorin is, of course, the flagship rare of the set and worth looking at in a variety of applications. I think Esper is the best home for him at the moment, but that could easily change with the next set. I feel that W/B runs into huge mana usage issues with him, and B/G/W is not the greatest home for him because the deck is just awkward. That leaves blue as a support color, and combined with Day of Judgment and Elspeth Tirel, he provides a good source of long-term advantage for the deck.

This, of course, is only part of what Dark Ascension provides for Standard. I'll take a look at some of the more eccentric stuff next week—like Burning Vengeance and Birthing Pod.

Chingsung Chang

Conelead most everywhere and on MTGO

Khan32k5 at gmail dot com

TAGS articles, standard, constructed, review, analysis, deck lists, dark ascension, chingsung chang

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