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Today, we'll be looking at three decks with post-NPH updates: R/U/G, Vampires, and a new entry: Myr Superion Green. Let's get started!
R/U/G
Upsides: Can adapt the Exarch-Twin combo, gains a fairly good cantrip, and now has a real answer to Vengevine/Bloodghast.
Downsides: Current builds are pathetically soft to the Exarch-Twin combo and have gained little to assist the rough Caw-Blade match while they can have yet another answer to Cobra on the draw.
While you can stick with the old build, I find little reason to leave out the Exarch-Twin combo, even if its inclusion is only in the sideboard. You simply can't get the kind of options the combo gives you from any other eight cards, and they don't disrupt the heart of the deck (Cobra and Jace). As it stands, there are three main problems with R/U/G in its current form. The first is the lack of suitable answers to the Exarch-Twin combo, and while this can be fixed with an updated sideboard, the main deck unfortunately has few viable answers to it. Unless you can counter it or Into the Roil away the Exarch in response, you're basically scooping any game where your opponent assembles the combo by turn six. After sideboarding, you can have options including Dismember, Combust, Beast Within, etc., but all of these are reactive, and only Beast Within hits the backup plans these decks will inevitably have.
Second, the deck doesn't have a good Caw-Blade match right now, let alone before it gains Batterskull and possibly Dismember. Yes, you're correct that R/U/G is actually favored when Lotus Cobra is in play on turn two and in fact is the main selling point about playing R/U/G instead of the Caw mirror all day. In the games where you don't have Lotus Cobra, though, your deck is a steaming pile, and the Caw-Blade deck is in fact the same good Caw deck regardless of exact hand contents! Basically, take all the issues R/U/G has in this matchup and add in that Stoneforge Mystic has gone from very good to a must-kill/counter with Batterskull. You may be asking yourself why, and the answer is simply that you can't keep a Jace alive if you aren't dealing with Stoneforge or destroying the Batterskull itself.
Honestly, just look at this mess:
Any turn two/turn three by Caw-Blade: Stoneforge fetching Batterskull.
Any turn-three/turn-four Jace by R/U/G: Do anything once and only once. In response to bounce or end-step Stoneforge sneaks in Batterskull. Chump with Lotus Cobra or Jace is dead.
Yeah, that's a really fun scenario to be facing down, especially since the only thing R/U/G can do outside of an early Jace is play an early Titan/Avenger, which can be dealt with by other means. Batterskull even makes Precursor Golem into a miserable pile of cards; you can't effectively attack into it, and while you can trade off with it, it'll continue to be an annoyance over the course of the game. Only the large finishers such as Inferno Titan or Frost Titan outright trump Batterskull in a fight.
The third problem comes from simple competition in the metagame, which is going to open up (at least at first) instead of becoming more insular as it is today. Decks like RDW, Vampires, and Fauna Shaman brews all make significant gains while the traditional R/U/G deck gains very little from the new set. Red decks were never good matches to begin with and only get tougher while mono-Black Vampires can become a real deck again with Act of Aggression and Lashwrithe. Inferno Titan no longer becomes an absolute beating since your opponent can kill it or steal it with reasonable consistency, and Korlash on a stick isn't exactly easy for a Bolt-based control deck to beat. Throw in the traditional annoyances of Bloodghast and Kalastria Highborn, and you can see the challenges are a bit daunting.
Plus, do you really want to be playing an inferior Lotus Cobra or Jace deck? You need to take a good, hard look at the new variations on decks coming out, because soon you can make a strong argument that casting Titans and leaning on Jace isn't as good as other options. Speaking of . . .
While the above is rather doom-and-gloom, this doesn't mean R/U/G is dead or that my initial reactions are going to be dead-on accurate. I actually rather like R/U/G shells because the base twenty-four of every R/U/G deck—Lightning Bolt, Preordain, Explore, Mana Leak, Lotus Cobra, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor—is a very strong twenty-four to start with. Add in twenty-five to twenty-six lands, and you only have a small number of cards you can add, which means testing and tuning the deck is actually a rather simple proposition. Mana Leak can also be moved out if you move in a more tap-out aggressive route and simply sideboard in against combo and other midrange decks, freeing up a little more space. Here are a few of my favorite packages from early testing.
Eleven cards
SB: 4 Spreading Seas
SB: 1 Goblin Ruinblaster
Twelve cards
SB: 5 fatties: Avenger of Zendikar, Titans, Karn Liberated, etc.
Sixteen cards
The first setup is probably the weakest on the whole, but oddly enough covers the most angles for Game 1. It can destroy equipment, lock down opposing Titans/equipped creatures, and play an LD plan against opposing ramp or R/U/G decks while usually keeping Caw-Blade off one of its colors. Ruinblaster is still a shaky card and could be too narrow for the main deck, but Beast Within is really at home here against planeswalkers and other high-cost annoyances R/U/G can't easily deal with. You rarely want to use it early unless disrupting mana, since otherwise it disrupts your own Jace usage.
The second and third plans are what I alluded to earlier when I said that you could fit variations of the Splinter Twin combo into the main deck. Gitaxian Probe is nearly good enough to see play in the deck on its own, especially when you need to know if the way is clear to resolve a Jace, Titan, or, in this case, a Splinter Twin. R/U/G also gives the combo a very good sideboard plan where it can simply board in the usual big threats, but still leave in the combo if you think it appropriate. Fauna Shaman also gets better the more you want to bend the deck to house the Exarch-Twin combo, since you don't have to max out on slots and can keep Titans around. It also makes your post-board game against certain aggro decks better since you can fetch up Obstinate Baloth or Precursor Golem, and even drop a Splinter Twin on top of those if you happen to draw it without its companion.
R/U/G is a deck that I believe will have a hard time surviving the new metagame in its current form, and you should look through different packages that give it more raw power.
Mono-Black Vampires
Upsides: Mono-Black now has a Threaten effect, so it can actually pressure Valakut outside of some early beats and killing Primeval Titan. The addition of Korlash in equipment form (Lashwrithe) also bodes very well for the future now that it can accept slowing down in certain attrition matches post-board. New discard addition of Despise is another useful tool against Caw-Blade and Splinter Twin decks.
Downsides: Very difficult to beat a Batterskull with the mono-Black build while B/R Vampires has issues effectively using Lashwrithe.
For this article, I'll be largely turning my attention to the mono-Black build of Vampires, as it seems to have gained the most from the new set and has been explored less then B/R Vamps. Looking at these gains, we have Despise, Dismember, Act of Aggression, and Lashwrithe with one or two other niche cards as possible additions. Despise and Dismember are the easiest to cover, so let's get those out of the way first. Neither one is particularly amazing in Vampires, but it adds to the options you have access to in the removal and discard options. Personally, I know I would prefer Despise over Inquisition or Duress against Splinter Twin or Caw-Blade, but in other matches, it's probably still correct to have Duress around. Dismember competes with Doom Blade and Go for the Throat for removal; it'll probably replace Disfigure at best and not see play at worst.
Lashwrithe changes the game, though, and people haven't quite caught onto just how strong this makes the case for staying mono-Black. People don't have good context for the card if they weren't playing during Time Spiral, and may not realize how effective a well-costed Nightmare actually is. As a Living Weapon, Lash will already will trump Bonehoard most of the time in terms of initial starting size, and has far more surprise value. The ability for Lash to equip for free against certain types of decks is also a huge boost to its value, especially when you take Bloodghast into account. You could even justify Inkmoth Nexus if you were willing to have the slight loss of P/T boost to Lashwrithe and have a nice way to kill planeswalkers or even kill an opponent in two hits. This card is great and makes me excited to try a deck like Vampires again.
Of course, one of the issues I always had with the deck was a sometimes shaky Valakut matchup; it wasn't horrendous, but playing against it on MTGO was never a pleasant experience. It also made me love the Red splash so I could use Mark of Mutiny and not just lose the game to a Titan—which in the case of Primeval was often lethal once the opponent untapped, regardless of whether you killed the Titan. With Act of Aggression, you no longer lose that capability by sticking with monocolor, and if Valakut is still a reasonable deck in the post NPH-world, it'll be nice to have.
That's the key, really—if the format is still mainly a mix of Caw-Blade, Valakut, R/U/G, and bad decks mixed with some new brews like Steel and Exarch-Twin, a slower, heavy-hitting, less disruptive Vamps deck is probably where to be.
"Vampires"
- Creatures (22)
- 3 Gatekeeper of Malakir
- 3 Vampire Hexmage
- 4 Bloodghast
- 4 Kalastria Highborn
- 4 Vampire Nighthawk
- 4 Viscera Seer
- Spells (14)
- 4 Doom Blade
- 4 Despise
- 2 Dark Tutelage
- 4 Lashwrithe
- Lands (24)
- 21 Swamp
- 3 Inkmoth Nexus
As I mentioned earlier, the biggest drawback to a mono-Black build of Vamps is the lack of effective ways to stop Batterskull. Ultimately, the best way is probably going to be battling around it or taking it out with discard before it ever becomes a real threat. Time will tell if this is too big of an obstacle to overcome. Moving on from Vampires, we have a new take on an old favorite, mono-Green aggro, which is one I'm really intrigued by. The card that makes it possible?
Myr Superion
People have joked about how big a vanilla creature could have to be to see play at each mana cost after Tarmogoyf came out. From what I can remember, a 4/5 was considered the best you could have if you have no drawback (even a potential one, à la Goyf). Well, a 5/6 for 2 is even better than our imaginary 4/5 Green Goyf 2.0, so now it comes down to how bad the drawback actually is. I'm sure I'll have to discard three cards, sacrifice a creature, lose 10 life, give it to my opponent after a turn, or some other hilariously limiting drawback.
"Spend only mana produced by creatures to cast Myr Superion. "
Hum. That actually looks . . . manageable. It even lets me cut corners and cheat it into play via other means without it exploding. A quick check of mana creatures in Standard give me quite the long list, but the highlights include a set of mana drops that can cast it on its own or with a little help.
Standard-playable cards that can cast it:
Cards that can cast it with an assist:
Nest Invader + other singleton Eldrazi Spawn creators
Inkmoth Nexus (animate first)
Obviously this implies a heavy Green slant, in which case we might as well add Fauna Shaman for extra redundancy and Vengevine for some much-appreciated beatings. Now, when I mentioned cheating Superion into play, I had one card squarely in mind here: Birthing Pod. Being able to exchange your used-up 1-drops for 5/6 brawlers seems like an amazing deal and allows the deck to either naturally draw Superion, Fauna Shaman, or Pod to have an actual plan in place. Here's what my current shell is:
"Superior Green"
- Creatures (32)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Fauna Shaman
- 4 Joraga Treespeaker
- 4 Leatherback Baloth
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Lotus Cobra
- 4 Vengevine
- 4 Myr Superion
- Spells (7)
- 3 Dismember
- 4 Birthing Pod
- Lands (21)
- 9 Forest
- 4 Inkmoth Nexus
- 4 Misty Rainforest
- 4 Verdant Catacomb
- Sideboard (15)
- 1 Dismember
- 3 Act of Aggression
- 4 Mental Misstep
- 4 Nature's Claim
- 3 Eldrazi Monument
Note that while you can't always get Superion online on turn two, there's a huge number of combinations that bring it online on turn three, and that isn't taking Birthing Pod into account. Is this list optimized? Not yet. However, I'm really impressed by the amount of power you can get going—turn-two Myr Superion and turn-three Leatherback Baloth is quite the tough start to beat, unless your opponent has Day. Sure, Sword of Feast and Famine is still an issue against the Green section, but they still lack sufficient ways to kill Fauna Shaman or Birthing Pod, and post-board, you can go the Eldrazi Monument route and overwhelm Caw-Blade.
That's my take on three more strategies; next time I'll be taking on Caw-Blade, Kuldotha Red, and at least one other deck. Until then, keep sending me suggestions.
Josh Silvestri
E-mail me at josh dot silvestri at gmail dot com
