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Companion Update
Last week we talked a lot about companions and their ubiquitous effect on various formats, and while I don't want this week to be dominated nearly as much by the newest troublesome creatures in Ikoria, I do want to give a quick update as to where companions stood this past weekend. I took an account of all the Magic Online Challenges in each format, and tallied up the number of companions in the Top 16 of each. They looked something like this.
- 12 of the Top 16 decks in Vintage
- 12 of the Top 16 decks in Legacy
- 7 of the Top 16 decks in Pioneer
- 10 of the Top 16 decks in Modern
- 11 of the Top 16 decks in Standard
Is this better than last week? I think so. Is it representative of a healthy mechanic or metagame? I'm still not sure. 75% of the decks in Legacy and Vintage had companions. Nearly 75% of the decks in Modern and Standard had companions. This means that for the second weekend in a row, 75% of the decks in four competitive formats started with eight cards in their hand.
One thing to note is that the Pioneer breakdown was as follows:
- 5 Breach decks
- 7 companion decks
- 3 Inverter of Truth decks
- 1
Phoenix deck
This was somewhat comical to me, in that it illustrated that if you weren't playing a companion deck, you were playing one of the two dominant combo decks in the format. 15 of the Top 16 decks were one or the other.
I personally don't think it's healthy to have a series of cards that so easily slot into existing decks, or require so little modification - with Keruga, the Macrosage; Yorion, Sky Nomad; and Lurrus of the Dream-Den being the most commonly played - that they end up seeing play in 75% of the top decks, but what do you guys think?
Either way, let's move on to a sweet Standard list that I recently piloted!
Ultimatum Fires
This past week, my good buddy and consistent supporter of the stream, superfritz88, sent over a deck list that he wanted me to try out for a deck donation. It was a Fires of Invention list that looked to take advantage of several of the new Ultimatum cards. As usual, this wasn't your typical Fires of Invention list that everyone else was playing, with a bunch of Kenrith, the Returned King and Cavalier of Flames (although I did ultimately add a copy of Kenrith to the deck). No, this was a completely different list, one I was far more fond of, with a bunch of neat inclusions, not the least of which were the new seven-mana powerhouses.
One thing I'm going to do is show you the final list, and talk about some of the changes we made, rather than showing you both the before and after lists. Take a look.
Ultimatum Fires | IKO Standard | Frank Lepore
- Companion (1)
- 1 Keruga, the Macrosage
- Creatures (8)
- 1 Dream Trawler
- 1 Kenrith, the Returned King
- 2 Bonecrusher Giant
- 4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
- Planeswalkers (10)
- 1 Chandra, Awakened Inferno
- 1 Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
- 1 Sarkhan the Masterless
- 2 Narset, Parter of Veils
- 2 Tamiyo, Collector of Tales
- 3 Teferi, Time Raveler
- Sorceries (10)
- 1 Eerie Ultimatum
- 2 Genesis Ultimatum
- 2 Ruinous Ultimatum
- 2 Shatter the Sky
- 3 Deafening Clarion
- Enchantments (6)
- 2 Elspeth Conquers Death
- 4 Fires of Invention
I found this to be a topical segue between the first part of the article and the deck analysis. Initially, Keruga, the Macrosage wasn't in the deck, but there were four Growth Spirals as the only card that had a cost less than three. So I messaged Superfritz and said, "hey, if we cut the Growth Spirals, we can add Keruga..." His mind was blown and he agreed completely, and that, folks, is how you build Magic decks in the year of our lord, 2020: you look at your deck, figure out what the easiest changes you can make to include a companion are, then you make 'em!
The main premise of the deck is to get to seven lands with a Fires of Invention out so you can cast all of your cool Ultimatums. The three we included were Eerie Ultimatum, Genesis Ultimatum, and Ruinous Ultimatum, with Genesis often being the best one, and typically finding you another Ultimatum in the five cards. We initially only had one Ruinous Ultimatum, but there were several times where it would be a complete blowout (for obvious reasons), so we upped the count to two. We also tried out a copy of Inspired Ultimatum, but it just ended up being worse than Genesis Ultimatum. At the very least, you were always drawing five cards with Inspired Ultimatum, but being able to put the permanents onto the battlefield was so much better.
One of the best parts about this configuration of the deck is that, because you typically aren't using your mana to cast spells, you can often cycle your trilands during your turn if you've already hit seven lands in order to find spells you can cast for free. This is the same reason Cavalier of Flame and Kenrith, the Returned King are often used in the deck: they give you great uses for your unspent mana each turn. Basically, the trilands were a great addition to the deck, as they not only allow us to cast some of our more ambitious spells if we don't have Fires out, they also give us nine lands in our mana base that we can do away with if we already have a sufficient number of lands in play.
The thing the deck wants to do the most, especially without any 1- or 2-drops, is survive until we can land a Fires of Invention. This is why we've included three copies of Deafening Clarion and two copies of Shatter the Sky. In the past, this was a card I would often cut because I was worried about the sweepers clogging up our hand. But this time our deck has so much late-game power that I think this is a fine number.
As some of the other Standard players who are also running Keruga seem to have noticed, playing cards like Bonecrusher Giant and Brazen Borrower is a great way to get around the "only cards with converted mana cost three or more" caveat. This allows you to actually play two-mana burn and bounce spells without actually having to play two-mana spells in your deck. Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath also does a great impression of Growth Spiral in the deck, and allows us to play a Fires of Invention on turn four, while also casting a five-mana spell if we want.
One of the cards we ended up cutting was Narset of the Ancient Way. There were initially two copies in the deck, and while she was fine when we drew her, often drawing a card and taking out a problematic planeswalker or creatures, her first ability was basically useless in the deck. We never needed the mana, and upticking a planeswalker by one solely to gain two life just wasn't that exciting. Ultimately this was where the two Bonecrusher Giants came in. Considering her best use was to deal with an opposing three-mana Teferi, Time Raveler or Narset, Parter of Veils, I was also considering cards that did similar things, like Mythos of Vadrok. Eventually I was thinking about something like Fry, but ultimately settled on the Giant.
The best part of the Fires of Invention archetypes is that they allow so much customization, from Niv-Mizzet Reborn builds, to Ultimatum builds, to the stock Cavalier of Flame builds. You can basically include whatever fun cards and strategies you like, so long as you draw a copy of Fires of Invention or did a halfway decent job on your mana base.
If you guys want to see the deck in action, which I highly recommend, you can find some videos of our matches here:
Other than that, that's all I've got this week! I'm still curious to see what you guys think about companions after having another week to play with them. Sound off with your thoughts on those, and your thoughts on the deck in the comments below! As always, I love you guys, I hope you're staying safe, and be sure to use promo code FRANK5 for 5% off! Thank you so much for reading, and I'll catch you all next week
Frank Lepore
