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Main » Articles » What's Up, Block?

What's Up, Block?

Darwin Kastle
Posted on May 7, 2012
 Reddit

With Pro Tour: Avacyn Restored coming up, it’s time to figure out what people will/should be playing in Block Constructed. Even if you’re not going to Barcelona, or planning on following the action online, perhaps you’re considering going to Grand Prix Anaheim (as I am!). [Editor's Note: I am as well!] Maybe your local store likes to hold Block events. At the very least, if you can’t make it to a Block event learning more about what’s good in Block Constructed can give you ideas for Standard, or inspire you to play it on Magic Online.

There are several factors that will shape the format: mana, creatures, removal, and other spells.

Mana

The format is going to be greatly influenced by lacking friendly dual lands, dual lands you can use on turn one, and Birds of Paradise. If you want to smooth your mana in the early game (besides non-friendly lands that come into play tapped on turn one), there are three key cards: Cavern of Souls, Avacyn's Pilgrim, and Abundant Growth. While there are a few other nonland ways to smooth your mana, such as Caravan Vigil, Traveler's Amulet, and Vessel of Endless Rest, they have two major drawbacks. First, they’re slow, especially the artifacts. Second, they only serve the role of mana in your deck, and since you need mana to play them, it’s hard to count them as land when determining the number of lands for your deck. Thus, you run the danger of constantly mana-flooding.

Abundant Growth
Cavern of Souls is the only land that smoothes your colors without slowing you down. However, for it to do this, your deck not only needs to be mostly creatures, but those creatures need to share a tribe. This is one of the reasons I expect to see a lot of aggressive, tribal decks. Avacyn's Pilgrim is a perfect fit for a G/W Human deck and may see play in other decks that want some fast mana ramping. Unlike the three cards I dismissed above, the Pilgrim comes out on turn one, actually ramps your mana, and can serve as a cheap attacker or blocker.

As long as you’re willing to play Green, Abundant Growth is the best color smoother that doesn’t require you to be playing a tribal deck. It doesn’t count as land because it doesn’t actually give you more mana—it just color-smoothes it. The thing that makes it Constructed-playable, of course, is that it’s a cantrip, which also means you can pretty much ignore it when calculating the lands for your deck.

What this means is that if you’re going to smoothly play multiple colors in this format, you have four choices: play a creature-heavy tribal deck, play base Green, play non-allied colors that can wait a turn for multi-lands, or be willing to structure your deck to use artifacts to generate your off colors in the mid to late game.

"Three-Color-Green Humans"

Creatures

Another reason I expect the format to be filled with aggressive, tribal decks is that the creature selection in the block lends itself to that style. We already see decks built around Champion of the Parish, Drogskol Captain, and Diregraf Captain in Standard. Now people will be taking a hard look at Immerwolf, Stromkirk Captain, and other cards that give you a reason to focus on a particular tribe.

While Werewolf decks didn’t seem to gain anything in Avacyn Restored, in part because there aren’t any Werewolves, they’re really happy to gain Cavern of Souls, and they still bring a lot to the table:

"R/G Werewolves"

The tribal creatures in this block have so much synergy that it will be hard to justify not taking advantage of it. Thanks to having so many powerful champions, I expect Humans to be the most popular tribe in Barcelona.

"G/W Humans"

Champion of the Parish may be the best 1-drop in the format, able to be a 3/3 on turn two and even a 6/6 on turn three. Avacyn's Pilgrim may be the next-best 1-drop, based on its mana-ramping and smoothing ability. Your Humans benefit from both Hamlet Captain and Mayor of Avabruck, and while Champion of Lambholt has the potential to be strong in any creature-heavy Green deck, the fact that it’s a Human makes it amazing in this deck.

Removal

Perhaps the biggest reason I expect so much creature-heavy aggression is that while the power level of cheap creatures is extremely high in this set, the removal isn’t as good. Removal cards the caliber of Lightning Bolt, Oblivion Ring, Doom Blade, Day of Judgment, Ratchet Bomb, and Black Sun's Zenith just aren’t anywhere to be found in this block, whereas creatures such as Delver of Secrets, Champion of the Parish, Stromkirk Noble, and Huntmaster of the Fells see a lot of Constructed action outside of Block.

The red removal is especially deficient. With the number of growing creatures, Werewolves, undying, and so on, the available burn isn’t enough to stop a focused creature deck long enough for a control deck to be successful. I do think it can complement an aggressive red deck, though.

"Burning Red"

The black removal has greater potential. While red removal has the advantage of being able to kill your opponent and not just creatures, black should benefit from the number of creature-heavy decks that should be present in the format.

"Mono-Black Control"

I am a bit concerned that the creature decks in this format will be powerful enough that if you draw your removal in an awkward order, you’ll be overrun, but the removal in the black deck is fast enough, flexible enough, and in large enough quantities that I could see it being the one control deck with a good chance in this format.

Given how good creatures are in this format, it comes as little surprise that some of the best creature-control cards in the format are actually creatures—Dungeon Geists, Evil Twin, Fiend Hunter, and Slayer of the Wicked. White creatures also have some of the best resistance to removal.

"White Weenie"

I’ve used Doomed Traveler and Loyal Cathar with success against removal-heavy decks in Standard. In addition, they are great against other creatures since they have abilities with an effect similar to undying.

Spells

While the mana, creatures, and removal in this format go a long way toward defining it, there are many other spells that will play an important role in Block. I think the big ones come in three varieties: creature token generation, creature enhancement, and spells related to the graveyard, such as flashback cards. Spells such as these are especially relevant because of awesome, cheap, blue creatures such as Delver of Secrets and Snapcaster Mage that care about them.

"W/U Delver"

Gather the Townsfolk
Much as I expect Champion of the Parish to be a four-of in pretty much every white deck, the same applies to Gather the Townsfolk, in large part because of its synergy with the Champion. Midnight Haunting and Thatcher Revolt are other token generation that will surely be seen in Barcelona. Many of the archetypes have creature enhancers that specifically dovetail with them—such as Rally the Peasants and Full Moon's Rise.

Probably the types of spells that are most specific to this Block are ones related to the graveyard. There are spells that fill the ’yard: Thought Scour, Mulch, Tracker's Instincts, Faithless Looting, and Forbidden Alchemy. There are spells that you can play from the grave: Silent Departure, Devil's Play, Think Twice, and Travel Preparations. There are also spells that have a power level dependent on your graveyard: Unburial Rites, Spider Spawning, Harvest Pyre, Runechanter's Pike, and Burning Vengeance.

 

 

Given that there haven’t been any big Block events yet and that a new set is just being introduced, I expect there will still be some surprises in store for us at the Pro Tour in Barcelona. The one thing that I think is clear is that aggression will be rampant, in particular tribal aggression of at most three colors, but probably fewer. The bigger question will be if there will be any control decks or any graveyard combo decks. I’m looking forward to finding out!

TAGS articles, constructed, analysis, deck lists, dark ascension, darwin kastle, block, innistrad, avacyn restored, innistrad block

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