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Main » Articles » The Domino Effect in Deckbuilding

The Domino Effect in Deckbuilding

Emma Handy
Posted on June 23, 2016
 Reddit

Why do we play any given card in a deck? Generally speaking it’s because the card in question contributes something to the overall strategy or plan of the deck.

Not every U/W deck is going to play Reflector Mage, not every Green deck is going to play Evolutionary Leap, and so on. Standard Magic is at a point where there are so many good cards in each color there are very few cards that are going to be played regardless of how fast-paced or slow-going a deck’s strategy may be.

This past weekend at the Starcitygames.com Open in Orlando I played a strange take on G/W tokens:

G/W/r Tokens ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Emma Handy, Standard, SCG Open Top 64

To go ahead and address the elephant in the room, I’ve elected to add Red cards to the deck in order to gain an edge in the mirror and try and up the overall card quality of the cards included in the deck. Arriving at this particular decklist didn’t happen overnight and was a prime example of what I call “The Domino Effect” in deck-building.

The Domino Effect is when different cards become necessary or justified by other cards in a deck. For example; I am playing 11 2-drop creatures in this deck because the third color’s inclusion makes my lands more likely to enter the battlefield tapped. These lands not being able to produce mana the turn they enter the battlefield means there have to be some curve concessions in the deck.

One of the major things to note in this particular deck is the Nissas are the only cards in the 75 that are 3-drops with the intent of being cast on turn three. This is because the goal in many games is to have a curve that resembles:

  1. Tapped land

  2. Untapped land, 2-drop creature

  3. Tapped land, 2-drop creature

  4. Curve out

Sometimes the mana works out for this to not necessarily be the same old song and dance every round; having a plan for how games will play out during deck construction is a way to ensure decks will be able to play out how the deck-builder envisions in their head.

For me, the first step of building this deck was with my decklist from the Starcitygames.com Open tournament in Atlanta two weeks previous:

G/W Tokens ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Emma Handy, Standard, SCG Open 24th Place

After the tournament it was pretty easy to determine G/W Tokens would be the best deck in the format going forward. The deck had quite a showing at the Open and at the Grand Prix in San Jose and was difficult to hate out.

This means there needed to be a plan for the mirror that wasn’t just “hope I draw better/am better at playing with these cards.” In order to figure out what ways to shift the list in order to compensate for the impending mirror matches, the first step was to identify what the most important aspect of the mirror was.

To summarize what could likely be an entire article’s-worth of information, the mirror has generally devolved to one of two things:

Making many changes to accommodate the first point is relatively difficult as Evolutionary Leap has diminishing returns when drawn in multiples and requires relatively clunky answers to deal with opposing copies of the Magic Origins enchantment.

“Gideon Wars” are something that can be fought (and won) in many different ways. This particular list tries to play a high number of 2/2-producing Planeswalkers in order to beat opposing Knight Ally tokens.

Arlinn Kord

Arlin Kord herself is naturally very versatile, boasting five different loyalty abilities. The most applicable uses of the Werewolf ‘Walker (in the mirror) is the ability to put a Wolf token onto the battlefield and the mini-anthem on Arlinn, Embraced by the Moon.

The practicality of producing Wolves in a deck called “Tokens” is pretty self-explanatory, but the pertinence of another anthem effect may not stick out as obviously.

Whenever watching a Mono-White Humans mirror match, the matchup will generally devolve to whoever has the most copies of Always Watching or Gideon, Ally of Zendikar emblems. The reason for this is because, despite both players casting the same spells, one player’s are all going to be slightly larger. The small buff may not seem huge (and when double-blocks get involved, unfavorable trades can happen at times) but over the course of an entire game, those little bits of damage and little edges gained in combat are going to add up.

This theory translates very well to the tokens matchup, doubly so when factoring in the plant tokens from Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. The format has adapted in a way which makes the Plant tokens less relevant than they previously were and breathing new life into the premier chump blockers of Standard is an enormous boon for the archetype.

After making the conscious decision to try and add Arlinn Kord to the deck, it was time to try and make the mana work to accommodate a Red card that would ideally be cast on turn four. The first parallel to draw when splashing a Red Planeswalker in G/W Tokens is to Raph Levy’s take on G/W tokens in Manchester a few weeks ago:

G/W Tokens ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Raph Levy, GP Manchester, 1st Place

The only Red source Raph’s deck were Oath of Nissa! Frank Karsten actually has an amazing piece on the probability of using Oath of Nissa to hit the required Red mana for Chandra by turn six. In this article he explains how there is a 68.8% chance to have the Oath of Nissa to go with a turn six Chandra. Assuming the odds are lower (by using methods outlined in Karsten’s article) to have Arlinn and Red mana on turn four makes me feel like there needs to be some number of Red lands included in the deck. Luckily, the G/W deck has very good mana.

There are a bunch of different lands which could be included when making a deck go from Green and White to Naya:

Game Trail
Stone Quarry
Battlefield Forge
Needle Spires
Evolving Wilds
Mountain
Timber Gorge
Cinder Glade

The most important aspect of building this version of the deck is making sure there is still a plan that involves not falling behind too far on the battlefield while developing mana. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is great because he can run away with a game in which his controller is at-parity or ahead. On the other hand, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is absolutely horrid when his controller is behind, playing as a 2/2 and a Fog for2ww.

Needing a plan to curve out means as few lands enter the battlefield tapped as possible. Battlefield Forge, Game Trail, and Cinder Glade all have the ability to enter the battlefield untapped under increasingly narrow circumstances and make the cut in place of some of the basic lands that G/W generally plays.

Needle Spires makes the cut due to the power of a double-striking creature land in a deck that plays EIGHTEEN effects that can increase its size (counting Sylvan Advocate and Dromoka's Command). It is not uncommon for a Needle Spires to attack for eight or more damage in a single attack as the game progresses.

When playing this deck there is sort of a hierarchy or proper sequence to playing lands that is incredibly important:

  1. If the mana isn’t required, play Needle Spires

  2. Play Game Trail before Fortified Village when possible. There are more cards in the deck that can be revealed to have Fortified Village enter the battlefield untapped than there are for Game Trail.

  3. Play Plains before Forests. Forest can be revealed for all of the Shadows Over Innistrad lands and Plains can’t be revealed for Game Trail.

  4. If the mana isn’t needed, go ahead and play Battle for Zendikar lands tapped in order to reduce the risk of bottlenecking mana later.

  5. Try and save Basic Forest for last when possible. It can be revealed to the most things and never runs the risk of coming into play tapped. The exception to this rule is when there are multiple Battle for Zendikar lands in hand and the Forest would make two Basic Lands on the battlefield.

I had originally started out with a mana base including a Basic Mountain and Evolving Wilds as a pseudo Tri-Land. Friend and teammate Dalton Ozmun took the deck to a Star City Games Invitational Qualifier with our rough first draft of the deck:

Naya Planeswalkers ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Dalton Ozmun, 2nd Place SCG Invitational Qualifier, Standard

This biggest thing note from the tournament was the mana base needed some tweaking. Dalton and I worked on a couple more mana bases and, while I was comfortable sleeving up the land base for the tournament, I would likely shave a Westvale Abbey for another Fortified Village.

While playing games, I oftentimes found it difficult to give up an extra mana and activate Hangarback Walker. When presenting this problem to Team Bolas, John Taylor suggested shaving a number of Hangarback Walkers in order to play the full four copies of Lambholt Pacifist. When the pair of pump abilities that Arlin has on top of the other pumps that normal G/W Tokens have, it isn’t too crazy to just have Lambholt Pacifist be a 4/4 for 2 mana. It also gives a bit of a pre-boarded feel against all of the flavors of humans that are running around.

After playing a few games with the main deck Lambholt Pacifists it became abundantly clear it was a very welcome addition to the deck, albeit, a counterintuitive one.

All of this tends to have the overarching theme of making sure cards work well together when building a deck. That could mean having actual combos in a deck or inherent synergies between cards like Needle Spires and Sylvan Advocate, or it could mean making sure your deck doesn’t trip over itself too much by having too many odd-numbered spells and enters-the-battlefield-tapped lands.

In this deck and article alone we can see:

  • This tokens deck wants to beat the mirror

  • Arlinn Kord is a card that helps against the mirror

  • Arlinn Kord requires Red mana in order to be a reliable enough mid-game play in the mirror match.

  • Red lands mean more lands that enter the battlefield tapped

  • More lands entering the battlefield tapped means a traditional curve that goes up a mana every turn isn’t always optimal.

  • This requires a more radical curved focused on 2- and 4-drops

  • Without extra mana lying around, Lambholt Pacifist passes Hangarback Walker as a more ideal 2-drop in this shell

Going forward when building a deck it is important to make sure that rather than a pile of things which may work together, everything falls right into place in the end.

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TAGS articles, standard, deck, strategy, metagame, constructed, competitive, decklist, raphael levy, tech, tips, emma handy, g/w, g/w tokens, g/w/r tokens, naya planeswalkers

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