So, as I noted in the first article of this series, I feel there are some very specific decks that should warrant testing both for potential playability and for preparedness in a tournament setting. The number one deck in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Block is Faeries by a long shot, the next best deck in terms of performance is Kithkin and the number aren’t even close. If you are planning on attending a Block Constructed tournament sometime in the next two month, I would suggest that you either prepare to lay or prepare to play against Faeries.

I am certainly going to be taking my own advice, focusing exclusively on decks that I feel either have an advantage in the Faerie mirror match, or decks that are tuned to defeat faeries. There are three decks that I am currently interested in playing in Lorwyn block, and I will spend some time in this article to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each and discuss specific choices that can be made when building these decks.

Part I: Faeries

First up is the ubiquitous Faeries. Last time I showed you Gavin Verhey’s build from Vancouver, but for reference here it is again:

This is an interesting build as I mentioned last week as it completely eschews the second set of counterspells in favour of an additional land and additional creature removal. There have been derivative builds similar to this one in the past couple of weeks since Gavin’s victory, but rather than focusing on lists that will ultimately just look a lot like the list I presented earlier, I want to take a closer look at Gerry Thompson’s list from Kansas City.

Unlike the other lists that I have been presenting, this one did not win its PTQ; but I feel it is innovative and just plain interesting enough to give it a look despite its failure to win out on its first real try.

GerryT wrote about this list in his StarCityGames article on Friday July 25th, but some of you might not have access to SCG Premium service. In reality this list is just outright odd compared to the Faeries we’ve been seeing in the PTQs for the first half of the season. Historically, the number one spell that decks have been using to fight Faeries is Firespout; in what bizzaro world does Faeries use it to combat those decks?

In GerryT Faeries, we see 7 counterspells compared with just 4 from Gavin, we maintain 4 Nameless Inversions but add 2 Firespout in place of Gavin’s 2 Peppersmoke. Gerry cuts two Thoughtseize and the Vendillion Cliques to run a single Oona and the Broken Ambitions that Gavin had so quaintly referred to as trash. As Melissa DeTora knows all too well, Oona is a massive beating against Faeries. Not just being a 5/5 flier, but also providing a major breaker in the Bitterblossom race is enough to give a UB opponent fits. Imagine the beating in a Faeries deck. Firespout and six mana sorcery speed creatures in Faeries, huh, what will they think of next, Wispmare in the board?

Unfortunately, things are not just peachy all the time in 5-Colour Faeries world, as we can see by the greedy manabase. 8 Vivids, and 4 Reflecting Pool is a hallmark of Toast and Elementals decks of yore, but to date we have not seen these in even the most innovative of Faerie builds. Accompanying those Five-Colour special lands, we see 6 Hybrid duals from Shadowmoor 4 Secluded Glens from Lorwyn and 4 (COUNT EM) Mutavaults just in case the mana was not shaky enough already.

Let’s compare this to our sample 2-Colour UB Faeries list:

Gavin runs 12 Basic lands, and only 9 lands that tap for more than a single colour. Both mana bases are built from 26 lands, we can see just how greedy Gerry truly got, cutting all twelve basic lands in favour of lands that not only hinder his ability to play an early Thoughtseize, but also that force him to topdeck incredibly well in order to stay on curve. This is the kind of tradeoff you can expect when looking at playing all five colours (though only Green as an innocent bystander attached to a G/R sorcery), you can play any card you want, but you have to get a little fortunate in order to be able to play them when you want.

I would think that four Mutavault might be a little extreme considering the investment he is already making in having access to all the colours, but he is GerryT and I most certainly am not. In his article, he notes that the deck can replace Graven Cairns with Cascade Bluffs, and I think this is a great idea. The deck does not need double black or double red, while having access to hybrid red mana using blue is more functional than being forced to have access to black (your secondary colour) in order to have easy access to your tertiary colour. Other than Cascade Bluffs, and perhaps cutting a Mutavault for some kind of coloured lands, I can see no changes that can even be made to the mana base. It is greedy, but it looks very elegant.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the sideboard choices that Gerry made:

Now, some of that is just plain boring. Filling up to four sowers, and four firespouts (Firespout!) is both wise and obvious, and people have been Puppeteer Clique-ing for over a month now; but it is the exclusions that really throw me.

Shriekmaw has been a staple in Faerie sideboards, up until today I hadn’t seen a UB sideboard without Peppersmoke, and I was sure that Gavin’s Faerie Trickery’s would be a keeper. Gerry shrugs his shoulders and just advances his own plan of just outright crushing the mirror match while using selective choices to help shore up some otherwise unfavourable matchups.

GerryT flies in the face of all Faerie theory with this startling and innovative list. He made top8 in Kansas City defeating 132 other players just falling short of the win. Clearly there is something to this concept, redeveloping a tier one deck can be risky but it can also be rewarding if the developer has the ability to truly make it worthwhile. I think that while only time will tell if GerryT was right, or if he was fortunate to do as well as he did, but for now I will certainly be keeping GerryT Faeries in mind as I design and develop my block deck.

Part II: Elementals

Next on the chopping block is perhaps the most flexible and fluid deck of the season: 5-colour Elementals.

We have seen different iterations of Elemental control decks, but there have been two that have won PTQ events, and so I will focus my attention on the similarities and differences between the two. Of these lists, I discussed Brian Six’s list last time; but for reference, here it is again:

And here is the new list that recently won a PTQ in Louisville Kentucky:

Now, these two decks share a LOT in common; in fact, they only have a few real differences: Brian runs 3 Firespout, Nick runs 0; Nick runs 1 MD Fulminator Mage, Brian runs 0; Nick runs 3 Incandescent Soulstokes, Brian ran only one (as a tutor target for Flamekin Harbiner, clearly); Nick runs four Reveillark, Brian only runs 3. Other than those four cards and their mana bases, their maindecks are identical.

They both run singleton Wispmare, Festercreep, and Horde of Notions, they run the exact same changeling removal spells, and they both run 3 Cloudthreshers. Their mana bases differ, and their sideboards are almost nothing alike, but they seem to be headed in the same direction, just running along different streets.

Nick runs 8 Hybrid duals, 8 Vivid Lands, 4 Primal Beyond and the Ubiquitous 4 Reflecting Pool.

Brian ran only 6 Hybrid duals, 8 Vivid Lands, 4 Primal Beyond, 4 Reflecting Pool and shockingly 3 Basic lands (1 Swamp and 2 Mountain). Do these three basics give him an edge that is almost imperceptible? I can imagine that having the 25th land was important, and when I build a version of Elementals, I will be certain to run 25 lands minimum. But Basics? That seems like an enormous risk for a deck that depends so heavily on its ability to access all five colours of mana in a hurry.

I think that post-Eventide those basics will be gone right away as the enemy-paired hybrid duals will help streamline the mana base further enabling a greater concentration of Red/X duals giving the lead to more non-basics to springboard perhaps a revolution in Elemental Control.

…

More likely they will just end up running more duals, and their duals will all cost Red to activate.

What is notable about these Elemental decks is not their similarities or differences but the specific choices they made. Let’s take into considering a sample of decks that made the finals of their PTQs but fell short for one reason or another.

The winning lists did not include a number of cards that were included in some of the second place decks: Austere Command, Cryptic Command, Kitchen Finks, Spitebellows all appeared in at least one deck that made the finals of their PTQ but did not win. Does this indicate that those decks that included those cards were significantly worse than those that did not? It is impossible to say, but it is worth noting that these cards did have a lot of success in their builds: Austere Command, Kitchen Finks and Cryptic Command made the finals of a 176 player PTQ, while Spitebellows found itself at the finish line in a Neutral Ground GP Manila Trial just falling short in the face of Faeries.

So, despite the consistency we see in the two winning lists, it is clear that there is a lot of flexibility when we are willing to explore other strong finishes. Maybe it is that consistency that provides the capacity for success in the face of such a hostile metagame, and these alternatives have a very particular weakness when we look at the format as a whole: but one cannot discount success in any form, and for many of these players the different between first and second place is a single land drop, or a single mulligan or a single lucky topdeck; to completely discount the alternative builds is to weaken the pool of knowledge from which you can develop your own builds, and it is variability that truly makes the Elementals archetype exciting to a player like me.

Part III: GB/w Assassins

Finally I want to take a look at what I think is the most interesting divergence from a pre-established archetype: Assassins. In the first article, I took a brief glance at Ian Woodley’s GB Elves build and for reference I will replicate it here:

This is a very intriguing decklist as it basically plays an Elves early game, which evolves naturally into an end game that generates enormous amounts of card advantage using a resource that is mighty common in this metagame: dead creatures. This is a deck that can run out a turn two Vanquisher, turn three Kitchen Finks, turn four Chameleon Colossus and just win the game outright on turn five; but it also has a reasonable late-game thanks to the dynamic duo of Murderous Redcap and Scarblade Elite.

Being able to get multiple cards’ worth of value for a single investment has always been good. It is in many ways why card drawing spells trend towards competitive playable, why Bitterblossom is a tier one enchantment, and why Tarmogoyf goes for the large wads of cash that he does: they all generate or cost your opponent more cards and greater expense than you invest in them. Scarblade Elite is perhaps the most underutilized card advantage engine in block, a situation which looks to be changing as PTQ weeks progress.

This past week, three Assassins deck made top8s in PTQs: two in Denver, Colorado; and one in Madison, Wisconsin. The two Denver lists are shockingly similar to Ian Woodley’s version with a few minor tweaks, but Bryant Cobarrubias in Wisconsin did something that I am really excited about: Dorassassins!

No, it’s not very well developed. Yes, there are things that I would LOVE to change about it. But heck yeah it excites me to no end! I think that combining the virtual card advantage of a turn three Doran with the long-term attritional advantage you gain with an active Elite on the board makes for a very potent sort of strategy. I just wish it did more tricky things. I don’t love Incremental Blight maindeck, but I can understand it. I think I’d run Murderous Redcap over it though. I don’t love Festercreep maindeck in here, but I understand it. I’d probably run 2 Nameless Inversions and 2 Shriekmaws over it though.

I think that there are a lot of things going on in this deck that the more traditional straight BG version cannot brag for: turn three Doran, Crib Swap your guy, tap Scarblade remove Crib Swap Scarblade your guy. Even Kitchen Finks seems fine in here, as it gives a lot of the same benefit of Masked Admirers, except being cheaper and juts a touch more resilient. They also give a better kind of card advantage when we talk about some newly emerging red-based aggro decks on the horizon (that is for another Article).

The white splash costs a lot of operational benefit, however; the mana base looks a little slow for what the deck is designed for, and I have no real love for the sideboard (but that’s not the white splash’s fault, entirely). I would like to talk about the mana base first.

Woodley runs a mana base of 10 basics, 10 five-colour lands (6 Vivids and 4 Reflecting Pools), and four Gilt-Leaf Palaces. 24 land seems a little sparse for a deck that seeks to go long like this one (Chameleon Colossus can run eight mana in a single turn if you let it), but he is the guy who won. Alternatively, the Doran deck runs 9 Basics, 8 Five-Colour Lands (4 Vivids and 4 Reflecting Pool), 4 Gilt-Leaf Palace and 4 Murmuring Bosk. 25 land feels better, and trust me when I say that the one land can make a huge difference. Cobarrubias would be suggesting that adding one land, cutting two Vivids and one basic lets you run a full on White splash for three-mana instants and three-mana creatures.

This is something I don’t particularly agree with, and I would surmise that it might have been mana issues more than anything else that cost him a blue envelope. If I were to fix this manabase, I would suggest fewer basics, more Vivids (up to six certainly), and maybe a couple of Hybrid duals to flesh out the white splash. I feel that this will be an easier proposition with the release of Eventide, as these kinds of decks really do need all of the help they can get, mana-wise.

Back to the sideboard. I think that Woodley was looking to firm up the matchups he felt were 'important' at the time, while not diverging much from the established theory of consistency being superior to flexibility:

I dislike a lot of these cards, primarily Gutteral Response and Raking Canopy. What would be better in those spots? That I'm not 100% sure of, but I think that the Doran deck might have a few suggestions:

Nope! Look at that, 4 Gutteral Response and 3 Raking Canopy! He is actually increasing the number of 'cards that I hate' as the weeks progress. This might indicate something wrong with the way I am perceiving this format, or it could be indicating a difficulty with the determination of importance in the Faeries matchup. The thing to understand is that it isn't especially important when Faeries is attacking you, it is that they are capable of attacking you on so many different metrics: they have the capacity to generate more card advantage and better tempo than any other block deck in recent history (short maybe Pickles from last year), and they are able to abuse that tempo with a horde of 1-toughness flying men.

What is important in the matchup? Is Cryptic Command important? Without a doubt! I would argue that it is one of the three most fundamental building blocks to a successful Faeries deck. Does this make Gutteral Response good, however? I don't think that it does, and here's why: a deck that seeks to defeat Faeries consistently should be look to attack them and not defend from them. You are not looking to 'survive' a hugely advantageous Cryptic Command, are you looking specifically to prevent them from gaining the position to make that backbreaking play in the first place. Apply early pressure, force them to make difficult choices, make them pay miserably for their desire to overwhelm an unprepared opponent.

The miserable Cryptic Command becomes important as the Faeries board begins to clog, as their Bitterblossoms start to steamroll, as their Mistbind cliques turn off your defense mechanisms, as their Scions of Oona make your traditional defense meaningless. It is when the rest of the pieces fall into place that the singular threat of Cryptic Command becomes all to real. If a deck can find a way to prevent a Faerie's opponent from establishing the kind of board presence that makes Cryptic Command such a singular threat, then Guttural Response truly becomes obsolete.

What else is important in this matchup? Are Bitterblossoms and Mistbind Cliques important? Without a doubt! I actually feel that these two cards might combine for more backbreaking opens than Cryptic Command wins late-games. Being able to generate the kind of card advantage that BB provides and the insane tempo of Mistbind Clique is unknowable outside of the Faerie experience. But how you you fight those things? Do you fight them with Raking Canopies? No, you certainly do not, and here's why.

Do you remember why Cryptic Command becomes so great in the late game? Because with a clogged board, Cryptic Command can singularly defeat an opponent from 20, tapping important blockers, countering a vital reactive spell, bouncing a fundamental defensive non-creature. These things create the space for a Faerie deck to really overwhelm an opponent's established defense, which grants them the opportunity to defeat an otherwise prepared opponent. Unfortunately, Raking Canopy does one thing very well: it prevents your Faerie opponent from attacking you. This might seem like a good thing in the sense of life preservation, but unfortunately what it actually accomplishes is forcing your Faerie opponent to build up their board aggressively in hopes of creating an opportunistic gamestate where they can Cryptic Command you out of the game.

Raking Canopy does nothing proactive, and instead forces your Faerie opponent to play a slower, more controlling game where they can truly utilize the abusive elements of their card advantage and tempo synergies. This is a card that trends your opponents to playing correctly, and it does so at an opportunity cost that far exceeds the meager life points you might preserve in the short term.

If I'm looking for a sideboard that I would feel comfortable taking against Faeries, I would start with Jason Henry's board from Denver:

No, I don't think this is perfect, and it leaves some room to still punt games against both Faeries and Kithkin; but it provides the best possible leveraging tools against those decks that you absolutely must defeat at least 5 times over the course of a 7-round PTQ.

Cloudthresher gives you a few things that Raking Canopy never will: proactive capacity to alter the board state, while doing so at instant speed which allows you to create inopportune situations for your Faerie opponent. Being able to act at instant speed is a powerful mediator in the Fae matchup and being able to do something so potentially backbreaking at instant speed forces your opponent to make difficult decisions about when they want to be able to stop you from acting out your plan. The fact that when it resolves for the full effect you get a very large reach creature on top of the semi-wrath of God effect can be monumental in creating an important swing of momentum.

The Wispmare is the sideboard card I was looking for from the previous two sideboards; it provides that capacity to defeat one of the most fundamental pillars of the Faeries deck, but it does so while also providing a realistic threat to their capacity to 'aggro you' which becomes their plan B following the destruction of their plan A Bitterblossom. Without Bitterblossom, the Fae deck has a hard time building up aggressive resources, being forced to play one-for-one creatures like Mutavault, Scion of Oona, and Spellstutter Sprite. The singular tie that binds these? None of them can break past a Wispmare (Mutavault can with the help of a Scion, but there are things that can solve that issue). This supremely efficient defensive posture helps you when you are looking to be the control deck.

Note that I determined that Wispmare puts you on the control while Gutteral Response does not; the large difference is that Wispmare does something proactive to force your opponent to change his plan, which allows you to reposition for a longer game. Being able to take your opponent off their established solid footing is what makes games against Faeries winnable. It isn't the capacity for sometimes doing something that might not lose you the game this turn; that is how you lose the game next turn to something you weren't expecting.

Henry also does something more interesting than the other two decks: he sideboards in Liliana Vess. Certainly a one-of isn't going to be that foreseeable in a given game, but there are matchups where you will be running long (elementals, toast, mirror) and against those decks, having the ability to generate single-investment long-term card advantage can play a huge role in deciding whothe victor will be. Being able to ultimate her on turn eight can also be a major turning point, getting back all manner of Mulldirfters, Shriekmaws, Colossi and Vanquishers can just turn a stalemate into a checkmate in one little activation.

The rest of his sideboard is unsurprising: his Incremental Blights are where they should be (as opposed to the maindeck Blights of the Cobarrubias deck), his Crib Swaps help to ease the deck into phase two against the mirror and Faeries, and his Faerie Macabres are exciting and effective against the rushing tide of Reveillark-based decks coming to the forefront of the tier two hierarchy.

I know I spent a lot more time with the Assassins archetype than with the other two; but I feel this was entirely warranted, as it is a predominantly unexplored archetype and really needs to be cracked open before people can really begin to understand it. I would have liked to go into more depth with the Elementals deck, but I assure you I will go into depth with that one next time. I feel that Faeries is still a very flexible archetype, and if GerryT proved anything it is that even the best deck can have heavy development time taken to create something exciting and new.

Next time I'm going to take these three archetypes and look specifically at Eventide, as these next few weeks will be all about redevelopment of the established metagame and discovery of the design space afforded us by these new cards and abilities. All of this is leading up to the stunning climax of the Season on August 23 when I go head-to-head with the best in my region for shot at the Big Game. Join me next time as I look at where I think the metagame is headed and how I think it will get there.

-- Matthew