Standard Deviations: An Act of Aggression

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HammerAndSickled

11 June 2011

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Hello! Welcome to Standard Deviations, and thanks for checking out the article! Standard is always the most-played Magic format, since newer players tend to flock to the most recent sets and Wizards offers the most support for the format. A common criticism of Standard is that with the smaller pool of cards, the format is easily "solved" by one "best deck" and therefore creativity, innovation, and metagame choices are diminished. Our Standard today is one of the most diverse formats there is, with multiple deck types and archetypes winning at major tournaments. New Phyrexia has had almost a month to make it's mark on the format, and as we'll see, the major decks have adapted and plenty of new decks have had a chance to shine. Today I'll be talking about beatdown: the most fundamental aspect of Magic. Winning quickly with fast creatures has been a staple of the game since the beginning, and aggressive decks have been under the radar in Standard until quite recently, for one particular reason: Caw-Blade.

The dominant deck in Standard since Besieged has been Caw-Blade, a sort of next-level evolution of the Caw-Go deck Brian Kibler previewed at Worlds. Caw-Go and Caw-Blade are a sort of hybrid of a control deck with an aggressive threat engine in the early game. Instead of the traditional control deck, using spells like Day of Judgment and card advantage to outlast your opponents and clean up with a big bomb (pre-Besieged, we saw Grave Titan and Sun Titan in these roles) the modern Caw-Blade is what could more accurately be called a “fish” deck: also known as aggro-control. The term “fish” came about from one of the earlier aggro-control decks, which was a Merfolk deck that used counterspells to protect the smaller Merfolk and keep the opponent off-tempo. Caw-Blade keeps the counterspells, removal, and planeswalkers of control (namely, Jace, the Mind Sculptor and occasionally Gideon Jura) and supplements them with a lower-curve equipment game plan.

Caw-Blade's main threats are both at 2 mana: Stoneforge Mystic and Squadron Hawk. Inexperienced players might not see the inherent power in these cards, and neither did much of the Magic community at first. Stoneforge was a $5 rare that saw play only rarely in Quest for the Holy Relic decks after Scars, and Squadron Hawk was unheard of in tournaments until Brian Kibler brought a Blue-White control deck with Squadron Hawks to fight the control-oriented metagame he expected at Worlds. For all the hubbub that surrounded the deck when Kibler premiered it alongside pros such as Brad Nelson, the deck ended up falling to the dominant Blue-Black and Valakut decks and largely getting shoved aside.

Then Mirrodin Besieged came out, and with it, Sword of Feast and Famine. Ben Stark and Brian Kibler, among others, were the first to notice how well this card, and its personal tutor, Stoneforge Mystic could fit into the Caw-Go shell. What enticed them about the equipment was its second ability: causing your opponent to discard and untapping all of your lands. Control decks love to have more cards in hand than the opponent, and untapping lands to leave up counter mana on the opponents turn can be backbreaking. With a threat that can be tutored for on turn 2 in the form of Stoneforge Mystic, played on turn 3 with Stoneforge Mystic's ability (uncounterable and at instant speed, since it is put into play through an activated ability), and equipped on turn 4 only to untap the lands you used to pay the equip cost, it was easy to see that the Sword was the one thing the deck had been missing. Squadron Hawk lets you refill your hand with plenty of aerial threats, just waiting to be equipped with a Sword, along with offering free shuffles for marquee control card Jace, the Mind Sculptor. It lead Ben Stark to a first-place finish at Pro Tour Paris, and has dominated the metagame since Besieged to the point where Caw-Blade decks are designed from the ground up to win the mirror match (a term used to refer to facing up against the same archetype as you are playing) because they were more likely to face a Caw-Blade deck than any other deck. Very few decks posted positive win percentages against this powerhouse, and in combination with Valakut it almost drove aggro to extinction.

New Phyrexia has given this powerful deck plenty of tools, the most important of which is Batterskull. While its high mana and equip costs might lend you to believe it fits best in a long-game control deck, remember that Stoneforge Mystic can play it as early as turn 3, and its Living Weapon ability combined with the 3 colorless mana bounce ability mean that an uncontested Batterskull may never need to be actually equipped to anything. A player with only three lands in play can, if the Batterskull is threatened with destruction or simply if the Germ token dies, bounce it back to his hand and replay it for 1W using the same Stoneforge Mystic that found it in the first place. Lifelink and Vigilance are two abilities that hurt a lot of decks in this format, since it offers the ability to rescue the Caw-Blade player from very low life totals quickly. Wholesale adoption of Batterskull in the dominant deck might seem like it could stymie the flow of aggro decks returning to Standard. But a surprising number of players have had success with aggressive strategies. Lets look into them now.

Mono-Red - Patrick Sullivan, 8th place, Starcitygames.com Invitational

4 Goblin Guide
4 Ember Hauler
4 Furnace Scamp
4 Spikeshot Elder
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Searing Blaze
4 Staggershock
4 Arc Trail
4 Flame Slash
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Teetering Peaks
8 Mountain

Sideboard:

4 Kiln Fiend
4 Vulshok Refugee
4 Dismember
3 Shatter

First we have long-renowned master of the Red Deck (and the red zone) himself, Patrick Sullivan. Patrick himself has said that he will find a way to make Red work in every format he plays in, and only will play another deck if he proves to himself that Red doesn't have a chance. At the Star City Invitational held at Indianapolis, he took on a room full of Batterskull players and, well... Crushed their skulls. Metaphorically, of course. He didn't even run Crush!

He did run Shatter in his board, however, providing even a slight nod to the power of the equipment. In fact, much of his maindeck is aimed to fight Caw-Blade, even if it might not seem like it. Cards like Arc Trail, Searing Blaze, and Staggershock all allow Red to kill a Stoneforge Mystic and get some value out of the deal. Flame Slash can kill a Batterskull's Germ token even if it manages to hit the board, and also provides a way to deal with Deceiver Exarch, an important player in a combo deck in this metagame. A Deceiver Exarch enchanted with Splinter Twin can continuously put out copies of itself that enter the battlefield and untap the original, resulting in an infinite army of 1/4s that closes the game immediately. Exarch players tend to flash him in as a surprise block against aggressive decks, saving them some life while setting up a win next turn if unanswered. Flame Slash in the second main phase can remove that avenue of victory, leaving the Exarch player to find a plan B or lose quickly.

Shrine of Burning Rage is perhaps the best thing to happen to Red decks since Shards of Alara rotated. While Koth of the Hammer is a powerful planeswalker, finding his way into plenty of decks, what Red really wanted was an early threat that offered an inevitable win if not dealt with. For two mana, sticking a Shrine usually wins you the game. That's a lot to get from a colorless artifact! It grows in potential every upkeep, every time you cast a red spell, and for 3 mana usually tends to blow for around 10 damage. It is a colorless way to deal with creatures equipped with the ever-so-annoying Sword of War and Peace and offers more targeted removal for Batterskull germ tokens. But more often than not, it will hit the opponent square in the jaw for lethal damage.

Another deck that has been neglected since the arrival of Caw-Blade (its last major showing saw it get second place at Pro Tour Paris, losing to Ben Stark's Caw-Blade in the finals) is Boros. Boros is the name of the Red-White Ravnica guild, and the name has stuck to refer to any aggressive Red-White deck regardless of format. Zendikar-era Boros abused the powerhouse twins Steppe Lynx and Plated Geopede with the rare lands from Zendikar, colloquially known as fetchlands. Fetchland Boros can provide the fastest starts in aggro history, living the dream of “Turn one, plains, Steppe Lynx. Turn two, Arid Mesa for mountain, swing for 4, Plated Geopede. Turn three, Scalding Tarn for mountain, swing for 9, double Lightning Bolt” bringing the opponent down to 1 before they even have a chance to mount a reasonable defense. Caw-Blade decks were often able to Oust or Condemn long enough to get a squadron of Squadron Hawks to provide essentially infinite time versus the aggressive Boros deck. But this weekend saw a revival of the deck, taking 2nd place at Grand Prix Singapore and losing, fatefully, to Caw-Blade in the finals.

Boros - Chikara Nakajima, 2nd place, Grand Prix Singapore

4 Goblin Guide
4 Steppe Lynx
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Mirran Crusader
1 Hero of Oxid Ridge
3 Koth of the Hammer
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Dismember
2 Sword of War and Peace
1 Batterskull
4 Arid Mesa
4 Marsh Flats
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Terramorphic Expanse
6 Mountain
6 Plains

Sideboard:

2 Arc Trail
3 Divine Offering
1 Gideon Jura
4 Kor Firewalker
3 Spellskite
1 Sword of Body and Mind
1 Sword of Feast and Famine

This list eschews two-drop all-star Plated Geopede for a fight-fire-with-fire approach: beating Caw-Blade with its own Stoneforge Mystics, Squadron Hawks, Sword of War and Peace and Batterskull. Evidently it worked, because Chikara Nakajima played nine straight rounds of Caw-Blade before the finals, winning every single one. Famously, Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa said "It's like a 90% matchup in his favor, and he's 9-0, so he's due for a loss, right?" before winning the tournament in the finals with Caw-Blade. Boros packs a punch, and the combination of Sword of War and Peace on Mirran Crusader offers you a 4/4 with protection from 4 colors that can deal 22 damage in one swing given optimal conditions.

Boros also features maindeck Dismember, a card that was ignored when New Phyrexia first released while players were blinded by the myriad other tools we had to play with. Instant speed removal for any color at the cost of four life and one mana is nothing to scoff at, however, and nearly every deck in Standard runs it somewhere in their 75 cards. Its most popular uses are killing Stoneforges before they drop their cargo, slaying a Batterskull before it makes too big of a mess, and killing a Deceiver Exarch before the combo goes off. All of those “befores” show precisely the reactive nature of this Standard format, and why reactive spells like Dismember are invaluable.

Black isn't only used in the occasional splashes into Phyrexian territory, however. The largest tournament for Standard since New Phyrexia launched was the Star City Games Open tournament in Indianapolis, and it was taken by everyone's favorite horror cliché, Vampires. This is yet another deck kept down by Sword of Feast and Famine that was given a chance to punch through with the new possibilities in New Phyrexia.

Vampires - Matt Landstrom, 1st place, Starcitygames.com Open

4 Pulse Tracker
4 Vampire Lacerator
3 Viscera Seer
4 Bloodghast
4 Kalastria Highborn
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
3 Manic Vandal
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Go for the Throat
3 Dismember
6 Swamp
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Lavaclaw Reaches
3 Marsh Flats
2 Verdant Catacombs

Sideboard:

2 Batterskull
2 Skinrender
2 Dark Tutelage
2 Act of Aggression
2 Crush
1 Doom Blade
4 Arc Trail

Matthew Landstrom has some top 8s under his belts and a few first-place finishes on the Open track already with Vampires, but New Phyrexia gave him the goodies to demolish the field of Caw-Blade. The glut of maindeck removal cards makes it hard for any creature-based strategy to weather the storm of Vampires, and the red splash that is common adds Lightning Bolt to the list of things that can kill you or your creatures. The synergy here is with Kalastria Highborn and Viscera Seer allowing the player to completely bypass his opponents blockers, however impressive they are, and go straight for the opponents life. Often when you have a Vampires player potentially stalled, with removal and nice blockers, they can still topdeck a Highborn and kill you outright.

Matt's inclusion of maindeck Manic Vandals helps him fight Batterskull and still present a 2/2 threat, similar to Patrick Sullivan's use of two-for-one burn spells to get value out of his creature removal. Dark Tutelage out of the board lets Vampires simply draw more threats than the opponent, and with nothing in the deck costing more than 3 outside of sideboard cards, the downside is negligible. When an opponent is drawing two cards for every one you draw, it becomes futile to try to match them with one-to-one removal.

Next we have another deck that put up occasional finishes at big tournaments, but never took up a large portion of the metagame. Tempered Steel, affectionately called “Hawkward” for its use of Glint Hawk Idol as a beatdown creature, is a deck that tries to abuse the double-Crusade out of Scars of Mirrodin, Tempered Steel. It follows in the footsteps of plenty of white weenie swarm decks of the past, trying to overload the opponent with small threats that quickly get bigger if unchecked.

Tempered Steel - Richard Sperry, 6th place, Starcitygames.com Open

4 Memnite
2 Ornithopter
4 Vault Skirge
4 Signal Pest
4 Steel Overseer
4 Glint Hawk Idol
4 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Hex Parasite
3 Porcelain Legionnaire
4 Tempered Steel
4 Dispatch
3 Mox Opal
2 Contested War Zone
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Inkmoth Nexus
4 Seachrome Coast
9 Plains

Sideboard:

3 Torpor Orb
4 Spellskite
2 Divine Offering
2 Refraction Trap
4 Spell Pierce

This is a deck that plays aggro while also staying resilient to removal, moreso than Vampires or Red Deck discussed above. Glint Hawk Idol survives Day of Judgment and all sorcery-speed removal, and the combination of Steel Overseer and Tempered Steel quickly help get your guys out of Lightning Bolt and Dismember range. And hey, they're naturally immune to Go for the Throat!

New Phyrexia's influence on this deck might not be apparent, but if you look at earlier attempts at Tempered Steel lists you'll see a big difference: the deck runs no non-artifact creatures! Older builds had to use cards like Ardent Recruit and Glint Hawk, which didn't benefit from the global pump effects, simply because there weren't enough tournament quality artifact creatures. With Hex Parasite and Vault Skirge that problem is solved. Removal is light in White these days, but the density of artifacts here in Tempered Steel allows it to run Dispatch, giving the deck a no-drawback Swords to Plowshares to deal with its enemies. Trickiness out of the board here is Torpor Orb, a card many decried at first but which has quickly grown in popularity. Torpor Orb shuts down many popular strategies, from turning Squadron Hawk and Stoneforge Mystic vanilla to shutting off Titans and the dreaded Deceiver Exarch combo while doing basically nothing negative to this deck except making you pay a mana for Glint Hawk Idol. That seems pretty good!

That's about it for the aggressive strategies of Standard. If you're a lover of the combat phase, or you want to stick it to Caw-Blade, or if you're simply on a smaller budget than the Jace players, then try one of these decks out at your local FNM! New Phyrexia offers plenty of tools for all sorts of decks and has done miracles in making the metagame diverse and interesting. In my own experience, now is the best time to be a deck builder, as there are so many possibilities to be explored and so many opportunities for success. Join me next week when I discuss all of the competitive combo decks in Standard, and show you what I've been playing since New Phyrexia came out! It's a great feeling as a deck builder to have local success with a deck, and then see an archetype you helped develop put up money finishes at big events. Until next time!