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Main » Articles » Standard and the Pro Tour

Standard and the Pro Tour

Max Sjoeblom
Posted on February 21, 2013
 Reddit

Hey there! As I’m writing this, I’m sitting at Heathrow airport waiting for my connecting flight on my way home to Helsinki. As most of you know, Pro Tour: Gatecrash was held the past weekend in Montreal. Congratulations to Tom Martell for taking the trophy and especially to Joel Larsson, who was part of our testing team for the event. In this article, I’ll talk a bit about the Pro Tour event and then focus on the current Standard format.

The Pro Tour

Lazav, Dimir Mastermind
The Pro Tours during the 2012 calendar year were not big successes for me, and Pro Tour: Gatecrash continued this trend. I started off the event by drafting a solid Dimir deck that I thought was somewhere between 2–1 and 1–2. Before the event, we had come to the conclusion that we wanted to avoid Dimir if possible, but when I opened Lazav, Dimir Mastermind and the next best card was Court Street Denizen, I ended up in blue and black. I was of course willing to switch, but Dimir continued to be open, and I wasn’t really seeing any white cards. I should most likely have been Simic in the Draft, but the ability to switch came a bit too late, and at that point, I was already quite color-committed.

Generally speaking, I think Orzhov and Boros are the best guilds to draft. They offer the highest-quality commons, and the card pools for these guilds are quite deep. I feel that you can quite safely draft Boros, and even if the person next to you is drafting it, too, you will most likely still have an okay deck. This cannot be said for some of the other guilds, such as Dimir or Simic, for which it feels that the table only supports one or two drafters on average.

I went 1–2 in the Draft, first losing to a mediocre Orzhov deck splashing for red and then to Shahar Shenhar’s sick Simic deck. In Constructed, I went 1–3, losing to some very good draws from my opponents. Especially my Constructed record felt like a huge disappointment, as I played against two good matchups, one even matchup, and one bad matchup. I feel that my draws were pretty suboptimal throughout the rounds, and in most of the games, there was not much I could do. My roommates, Sami and Esko, both made Day 2 with a 4–4 record, but the second day didn’t go well for them either.

During Saturday evening, we had planned to see the Canadiens play the Flyers, but our friend had the starting time wrong, so we arrived at Bell Center an hour too late to actually be able to see the game. Luckily, we were able watch most of it in the Cage aux Sports located in the same building. After the game, we headed to the party hosted by ManaDeprived. A big thanks to the guys for throwing the event together! I liked having the chance to hang out with some Magic players without having the pressure of doing well at a tournament. It was nice to see people from many different places, and there were also some very good karaoke performances.

Standard

Before the event, we had put together a testing team that consisted of the Finns and Swedes that were qualified for the Pro Tour. In our initial Facebook group, we were seven people who actively posted decks and discussed the format, and for the testing in Montreal, a few more people were on board. We concentrated quite a lot of effort on beating the Saito Gruul deck, as we felt “mono-red” would be the most-played deck archetype at the Pro Tour. Among the decks we tried were Esper control, R/U/G control, Junk, and W/U Miracles, but none of these were really good. Rancor caused huge problems for the Esper deck, and the spot removal was often awkward, as no one spell kills all of the early red beaters. R/U/G control had quite some potential, but it felt too soft in some other matchups. The idea was to make the Werewolf creatures good with a lot of instants and Snapcaster Mage helping to transform Huntmaster of the Fells back and forth. In case you are interested in trying the deck, here is the last update we had put together.

"R/U/G Control"

Boros Reckoner
At the beginning of our testing, we had tried a deck with Blasphemous Act and Boros Reckoner. The deck also included Gideon, Champion of Justice to go along with Blasphemous Act, but that was not a very good idea. However, we quickly discovered that Boros Reckoner was super-good, and the deck gravitated toward a version with Snapcaster Mage, Restoration Angel, Boros Reckoner, and burn that many people played at the Pro Tour. We felt the deck was not quite good enough, so we moved on to other decks the week before Grand Prix: London. A few days before the Pro Tour, we rebuilt the R/W/U deck from the ground up and quickly noticed it actually had a very good Gruul matchup. Boros Reckoner was often even better than Supreme Verdict, and the combination of Reckoner and a 2-mana removal spell in the early game was often enough to win if you had at least some decent follow-up. I think many players thought they had good or decent matchups against the red decks, but many of these people were surely wrong. For example, Esper control and Jund are decks that we tested and that just didn’t perform well enough against the hasty red beaters, even with main-decked Blind Obedience and a ton of removal. The R/W/U shell is perfect for combating Gruul, as you have access to very good spot removal in Searing Spear and Azorius Charm, Boros Reckoner and Restoration Angel for the midgame, and finally Sphinx's Revelation to lock down the late game.

We continued tuning our deck and added quite a lot of cards to the sideboard to combat opposing control decks, as all the main-decked removal was mostly dead in these matchups. We decided to skip the Geist of Saint Traft plan, as it was too resource-intensive against decks with actual creatures. If you go all-in on the Geist, you need to kill every single Snapcaster Mage and Restoration Angel your opponent plays. I think this was a good choice, as many Esper decks were playing Restoration Angel, and it’s not very nice to run your Geist of Saint Traft into an ambushing Angel. For reference, here is the list we played.

"R/W/U Control"

Psychic Spiral
From testing, we were expecting Esper players to bring in Rest in Peace, which made the Psychic Spiral plan much worse, but during the Pro Tour, most opponents did not bring in Rest in Peace even when they had it, so perhaps we were overthinking or our opponents were not thinking hard enough. Psychic Spiral is one of those cards that has a huge impact and still only takes up one slot in the sideboard. When you resolve it, you almost always win the game, and having a single copy in your seventy-five means you actually have five copies of it due to Snapcaster Mage. Against Esper and other heavy control decks, we were bringing in a whole twelve cards (everything except Mizzium Mortars and Rest in Peace), so the control matchup became quite a lot better after sideboarding. The single most problematic card for this deck during the whole tournament was Obzedat, Ghost Council. There really are no good answers besides countering it, so that is one of the reasons we chose to play one Essence Scatter. If you figure out a good way to beat a resolved Obzedat, be sure to let me know, as it is one of the biggest challenges this deck faces. Harvest Pyre is one option, but without Thought Scour, you actually don’t have five cards in your graveyard all that often.

I think this was a very good deck choice taking into consideration that we were expecting a very aggro heavy metagame. This time around this didn’t really work out, as midrange and control were both more heavily played than we thought. I would recommend this deck in a metagame that consists of mainly aggro and midrange decks that are not Jund. The threats presented by Jund can be very hard to deal with, especially after sideboarding. They attack from many different angles, so it is hard to always have to right answer. If you compare this with Naya midrange, for example, they only have permanent-based threats and not Rakdos's Return or Slaughter Games. As mentioned, the control matchup really improves after sideboarding, but the first game can be rough. Luckily for you, the deck is also diluted with cards that are mainly good against aggressive decks, so you might both end up with awkward draws.

All three of us Finns decided to play this version, but in hindsight, it would have been a better idea to play the more aggressive version with Boros Charm that Kenny Oeberg and some of the other Swedes ended up playing. Boros Charm is quite bad against aggressive decks, but against Jund midrange, it is very good. Boros Charm also allows you to kill opponents out of nowhere. The list was quite similar to the one Joel Larsson took to the finals, but without the Blasphemous Acts, instead playing a Thundermaw Hellkite and a Tamiyo, the Moon Sage.

Hot Tip

For those of you attending high-level Standard tournaments in the near future, such as Grand Prix: Quebec City, I have a deck suggestion for you. I think now is the perfect time to go hyper-aggressive and run the original Saito Gruul list. In case you have forgotten, here is what it looks like.

"Saito Gruul"

Ghost Quarter
The sideboard is somewhat open, but it could include cards such as Volcanic Strength, Reckless Waif, Traitorous Blood, and Flames of the Firebrand. Another interesting idea is Ghost Quarter if the various four-colored decks become more popular. These decks seldomly play basic lands, so you have the chance to run four Strip Mines in Standard. This trend might change if Ghost Quarter catches on, and most decks will probably start running one or two basics to at least have something to search for.

The reason I think this deck is a good choice for the upcoming weekend is that it was underrepresented in the Pro Tour Top 8, so people will not be as prepared for it. Because many people will think the deck performed badly, they will start cutting anti-aggro cards in favor of more cards for the midrange and control matchups. This suits you just fine, as you just continue smashing face with those beaters, while your opponent is stuck with Dissipates in hand. The deck is very solid and super-powerful in what it wants to do, and it is sure to punish opponents who stumble.

For those of you trying out the red menace this weekend, good luck! Next week, I will most likely have another look at the Gatecrash Limited format. If there is interest, I might also write a more in-depth article on the R/W/U control deck we played, with matchup analysis and some talk on sideboarding. As usual, if you have any comments, ideas, or suggestions, be sure to let me know either via Twitter or through the comments section below.

Thanks for reading,

Max

@thebloom_ on Twitter

Maxx on Magic Online

You can find my music on: http://soundcloud.com/bloomlive

TAGS articles, pro tour, standard, constructed, analysis, deck lists, max sjöblom, pro tour montreal

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