Upon this rock...

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jkarnes

20 March 2012

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About the Rock

Why?

I was reading through the "Ask Team Brewhouse" article and posted a comment about a deck archetype called "The Rock" being viable in the current format but didn't have any kind of list put together. This simply would not do! I knew the cards that I would want to have in my Rock, just not how many and in what configuration. "Building the Rock" seeks to step through the deckbuilding process piece by piece with evaluations on the metagame and card evaluation. Readers of this article can expect to have a fairly powerful working knowledge of what the Rock is capable of and make valid suggestions on what should and should not be in this list.

What is "The Rock?"

"The Rock" is a midrange deck which utilizes efficient disruption in the early game to set up enough time for mid-to-late game dominance through creature quality.

From Wikipedia on Midrange:

Midrange strategies seek to control the game's first few turns and then win in the middle turns with large, yet highly efficient, threats. The black-green "Rock" deck is one of the most common decks to execute this strategy: it uses cheap creature removal and discard in the early turns to disrupt aggro and combo decks, and then starts playing large creatures in the middle turns that are, if not removed, capable of ending the game quickly after hitting play.

My version of The Rock will utilize a mix of discard spells, targeted removal, sacrifice effects, and sweeping removal to accomplish this goal. We don't have access to cards like Pernicious Deed or Spiritmonger in standard at the moment; however, we do have some very attractive options such as Thrun, the Last Troll, Ratchet Bomb (Almost deed), and Garruk Relentless  ^Flip.

Building the Rock

Card Selection

I have a firm philosophy in building around your threats after you've chosen an archetype. In this case I know that I want to build a Rock style deck using Black and Green. My threats will be in the mid-range and my disruption will be early. Cards I prioritize are those that fit the strategy while cards I do not prioritize are ones that do not aid me.

Rawked was the pool of cards I picked out for consideration in the deck. Note that no artifacts have been considered here because of how I deckbuild.

Creatures (17)

Threats (12)

Primeval Titan x2, Bloodgift Demon x2, Thrun, the Last Troll x2, Moldgraf Monstrosity x1, Garruk Relentless  ^Flip x2, Garruk, Primal Hunter x2 , Sheoldred, Whispering One x1.

These are all cards which unchecked will end a game very fast. In order of CMC they are: Garruk Relentless  ^Flip, Thrun, Garruk Primal, Bloodgift Demon, Titans, Sheoldred, Moldgraf.

Other Stuff (4)

Acidic Slime x3, Solemn Simulacrum x3

Anything that blows up Lands, enchantments, and artifacts is boss in my book. Simulacrum thins us out, ramps to 5 or 6 (depending on what we draw or what we have) and replaces himself upon death. Good enough for me.

Disruption (19)

There is very little reason to play Curse of Death's Hold as a 4 of in this deck (and I'm against playing it at all). WRR shouldn't beat us in the midgame with an Inkmoth Nexus due to our package layout and Delver of Secrets  ^Flip based decks will run into the same problem. I wish that tokens didn't have 8 anthem effects to reduce the effectiveness of Curse against them... but then again, tokens wishes we didn't run discard disruption to blank their anthem effects. ;-)

Discard

Despise, Distress, and Liliana of the Veil (doubles as Diabolic Edict). Each of these cards should be set to 3 for a total of 9 discard tools.

Removal

Targeted removal should (due to the current metagame) consist of the following: Doom Blade, Beast Within, and Sever the Bloodline. We will decide on numbers for these spells in a little bit, but we'll probably play some combination of 6.

Non-Targeted removal: Tribute to Hunger as a duet.

Sweeping removal is important to have as an option; however, due to our disruption package will not be as important as it would be in a control deck. +2 Life's Finale or Black Sun's Zenith

That One Random Spell that Wins Unexpectedly

Praetor's Counsel x 1

Land (23)

We're playing straight B/G so the only dual that we really have access to is Woodland Cemetery. A land base should be fairly simple here.

Woodland Cemetery x4, Evolving Wilds x3, Swamp x9, Forest x7.

What does that leave us with?

I feel very comfortable with this 60 card monster. Very. Our worst matchup on paper is clearly tokens due to the lack of Ratchet Bomb main. Our best matchup is Monoblue Delver followed by Hunted Humans, followed by WRR. The deck clearly has some weaknesses as pointed out by MasterFlinter when this was simply a post in the C&A forum; however these are present as a mix of intentional errors and unintentional ones. Testing as provided some fairly wild gaps in how the deck performs and I've already generated a sideboard that gets put in for almost every game two and three in the gauntlet. Expect to see an explanation of what this means in the next article which should debut Friday.

What's next?

Join me next week as we playtest the Rock in standard and develop a sideboard. A link for the deck in its final iteration can be found here: Upon this Rock