The basic goal of this midrange deck is to aggressively pressure players and planeswalkers, while "staying afloat" long enough to turn the corner against the aggressive decks due to the inclusion of "Explore package". Staying in two colors gives us the ability to play a number of useful utility lands like
Blast Zone
, ensures that we mulligan less (to have all colors of mana in the openers) and thus take less damage from shocklands while playing on-curve (while being more likely to play on-curve due to "Explore" mechanic).
Personally, I find that in WAR Standard you either need to out-grind (or out-tempo) the midrange/superfriends decks (or punish them if they stumble on lands), or quickly go over the top of aggro decks and stabilize. With counterspells at an all-time low due to
Teferi, Time Raveler
(local meta may vary), ramping to powerful payoffs at sorcery speed on turns 3-4 (just like Tron in Modern) while buffering life total with "Explore package" against aggro decks seems to be an approach worth trying.
This is one of the many possible builds of a U/G deck I'm exploring. One other build idea is that of a Tron-style deck (with a mixture of
Llanowar Elves
,
Arboreal Grazer
,
Paradise Druid
,
Incubation Druid
for ramp, and top-end in form of playsets of
Nissa, Who Shakes the World
,
Ugin, the Ineffable
, and
Hydroid Krasis
). Another build idea is that of a hybrid of the current version with the Tron version (a "Bigger Climb"), attempting to strike a balance between busted ramp draws and decent early game against aggro due to the "Explore package". The last version of the deck is a "Simic Theft" build. I have not tried playing that kind of deck yet but will make sure to create another deck guide if I find a "Theft" build that doesn't immediately fold to aggro.
Card Choices
To be filled out
5/31/19: After taking the deck to a local FNM for a spin, I identified a couple weaknesses that need to be addressed.
1. It is virtually impossible to come back from a Turn 3 Oketra in Bant Midrange. If you're on the draw, you always need to be holding up
Disdainful Stroke
to cleanly deal with it in Simic colors. However, this leaves you soft to aggressive draws with opponent's own "explore package".
2.
Incubation Druid
left much to be desired. I have never been able to run it out on the field as it couldn't trade with opponent's attackers, or pressure planeswalkers effectively (especially
Teferi, Time Raveler
)). I would much rather spend mana to keep chaining
Growth-Chamber Guardian
or play spells from my hand, rather than Adapt the druid.
3.
Arboreal Grazer
was bad for the same reasons as
Incubation Druid
. In addition, I found that I need to keep land-heavy hands to make Grazer good on average, which wasn't ideal against midrange matchups where average card quality matters quite a bit. Moving forward, I would much rather play
Llanowar Elves
as it allows for T2
Jadelight Ranger
plays or ends up eating a
Shock
that would otherwise target
Growth-Chamber Guardian
and friends.
4.
Evolution Sage
was in a weird spot most of the time. While Proliferate synergizes with
Blast Zone
,
Hadana's Climb
and "counter" creatures in the deck, it made my hands too flooded with 3-drops. Moving forward, I'm going to cut all copies of
Evolution Sage
in favor of more ramp creatures.
Additional Notes:
1. I was content with 2 copies of
Hadana's Climb
in the maindeck and haven't missed the third. I did not have any issues with hands without a copy of Climb, nor did I have any instances where I had an extra copy stuck in hand. I think that 2 is the correct number moving forward.
Deck Changes:
1. I think that the correct move for optimizing the deck would be to increase the quality and quantity of ramp creatures. To do that, I'm replacing a playset of
Arboreal Grazer
with
Llanowar Elves
. With
Llanowar Elves
I will be able to deploy
Jadelight Ranger
on Turn 2 more consistently, while being able to trade in combat and pressure planeswalkers. In addition, I'm replacing all copies of
Evolution Sage
and
Incubation Druid
with
Paradise Druid
for similar reasons. As it stands, Hexproof on
Paradise Druid
is at a premium, as it ramps you regardless of opponent's
Teferi, Time Raveler
or heavy removal draws. Notably,
Paradise Druid
can be used to flip
Hadana's Climb
through opponent's targeted removal
2. I am going to run 5 Islands in the deck (replacing a few Forests), to account for a playset of
Frilled Mystic
in the sideboard (at the expense of 2 copies of
Disdainful Stroke
and
Negate
). According to Frank Karsten's , we need 17-ish Blue and Green mana sources to play Frilled Mystic on-curve. With 8 Blue sources being the dual lands, and the other 4 being
Paradise Druid
, we need to have 5 Islands to be able to cast
Frilled Mystic
on-curve with 90% consistency. With more ramp in the maindeck, it is much easier to get to UUGG on turn 3 to counter any spell opponent deploys while getting a 3/2 body. Since the format is very much about tempo advantage and snowballs quickly,
Frilled Mystic
gives us a much higher tempo differential compared to conditional
Negate
and other 2-mana counterspells. At its worst (with
Teferi, Time Raveler
in play), Mystic has the same 3/2 stats as the
Evolution Sage
that we're cutting.
Last Updated: 6/1/19
