Spooty Decks: The State of Simic, Pt. I

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Spootyone

15 October 2015

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Hello all!

Welcome back to Spooty decks, where I discuss brews and other deck ideas I have mixing around in my head like some kind of colorful stew (perhaps I shouldn't be writing this on my lunch break!). This time around I'd like to begin a series of indefinite length where I discuss the situation revolving around UG decks in standard. Many of you may know me as a GW buff, and I totally am. However, my second favorite color combo is UG. It's an archetype I have explored off and on since learning to play and I've even made a couple successful UG decks, one of which was Primordial Soup - a Kiora ramp deck looking to spit out Sylvan Primordial. Hopefully you all enjoy taking this ride with me as we explore the options available to us as true members of the Simic Combine.

To begin, I'm going to introduce you to one of my current decks: Bounding Realms.

4x Bounding Krasis 1x Canopy Vista 1x Cinder Glade 2x Deathmist Raptor 4x Den Protector 1x Dispel 4x Flooded Strand 4x Forest 4x Hangarback Walker 2x Horribly Awry 4x Island 2x Kiora, Master of the Depths 2x Lumbering Falls 1x Prairie Stream 4x Rattleclaw Mystic 3x Reality Shift 2x Silumgar Sorcerer 4x Skyrider Elf 1x Sunken Hollow 4x Windswept Heath 4x Woodland Wanderer 2x Yavimaya Coast Sideboard: 2x Deathmist Raptor 2x Disdainful Stroke 3x Dispel 2x Exert Influence 2x Greenwarden of Murasa 2x Sagu Mauler 2x Stratus Dancer

This is a deck I've been working on for about a week now. I wanted to make good use of Bounding Krasis and the UG converge creatures, and using Kiora as a sort of engine to force my opponent to stumble while I out tempo-ed them. If you plan on following this series closely, I highly encourage you to take a second to go into the deck page to see the changes that have already been made to the deck. For each one, I go into detail on why I made that change, and what it was replaced with. This will give you a better foothold onto the discussion.

Now, this deck has some glaring weaknesses, and others that are not too obvious. To begin, the deck lacks solid removal. I've been toying around with a couple different options regarding that. Encase in Ice was tested and just recently proved to be not good enough for this deck in this format, being weak to Dromoka's Command and also not dealing with all the creatures it needs to, even if it can manage to target them.

The next step on the ladder for me is to test out Reality Shift . Reality shift is another cheap instant with a downside, so I'll be interested to see whether or not the downside is too great. Reality Shift does a lot of work versus Hangarback Walker, Deathmist Raptor, and other must exile threats, but the random 2/2 may prove to be too large of a speed bump to handle.

Next, I want to discuss Kiora herself. Kiora is an interesting card with interesting applications. She appears to be ramp and card advantage focused, but in this build she is more of an untap engine with additional card advantage options. One thing I recognized quickly about her minus ability was how rare getting free large amounts of cards into the grave is these days. Card advantage plus self mill sounds like the perfect combo to enable a dig through time deck. Additionally, Deathmist Raptor doesn't mind heading to the old bin from time to time, making the choice of creatures to put into your hand a lot easier. More on this in the future.

One of the things I noticed when playing this deck was how often I found everything to be going as planned, only to end up losing the game anyway. When this happens consistently, you can start to believe what your deck is doing just doesn't have enough backbone to support your potentially good playstyle. Because of this, I will now be going into why I think this deck is feeling weak.

First off, we have Skyrider Elf. This is one of the current mainstays of the above deck. But is it worth running? I've begun asking myself this: is a vanilla 2/2 flier for two good enough? 3/3 for three? 4/4 for four? What about a 5/5 for five? At two mana, we have cards like Icefeather Aven. While the aven may be fairly low impact, what does that say about a vanilla version? Strike one. At three mana, we have Mantis Rider. Mantis Rider is very strong and is held back by its inhibiting mana cost. Well...so is Skyrider Elf. Mantis Rider is good, and Skyrider Elf is worlds worse than it. Strike two.

At four mana, we have Thunderbreak Regent. Not only is thunderbreak much easier to cast in its decks, but it comes with a HUGE upside of bolting the opponent when targeted. Skyrider Elf just bows to that sort of power. Strike three. Lastly, we have cards like Dragonlord Ojutai at five mana. Ojutai is very easy to cast, and is one of the single most powerful creatures in standard. I think you know where I'm going with this. Strike four.

It appears that skyrider just isn't doing enough for the deck to warrant it's inclusion, so I'm going to add that to my do not play list unless simic allies appear out of nowhere.

Now, why else is this deck feeling weak? Well, I think it's because the speed of the deck is sitting right in the middle of "aggro enough to kill before they play Dragonlord Dromoka" and "big enough to outplay them in the late game". This deck doesn't feel like it packs enough early game punch OR late game potential. And that's a huge problem when that happens.

Let's try a more aggro route

2 Frost Walker 4 Bounding Krasis 2 Icefeather Aven 4 Rattleclaw Mystic 4 Harbinger of the Tides 2 Clutch of Currents 4 Hangarback Walker 4 Den Protector 2 Lumbering Falls 1 Canopy Vista 1 Cinder Glade 4 Flooded Strand 4 Forest 4 Island 1 Prairie Stream 1 Sunken Hollow 4 Windswept Heath 2 Yavimaya Coast 4 Deathmist Raptor 4 Woodland Wanderer 2 Reality Shift Sideboard: 15x storm crow

This deck is a good bit more aggressive, but might be a little too fragile versus Radiant Flames. A lot of the cards in this build are fairly weak, and the payoff is what? Getting to play UG? A respectable answer, but not a good enough one. Maybe a deck like this wants to try to make use of Collected Company, but I’m really not sure.

How about we try going bigger?

4 Rattleclaw Mystic 4 Hangarback Walker 4 Lumbering Falls 9 Forest 8 Island 4 Yavimaya Coast 3 Kiora, Master of the Depths 3 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon 4 Hedron Archive 4 Explosive Vegetation 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger 2 Nissa's Renewal 3 Encase in Ice 2 Clash of Wills 4 Leaf Gilder Sideboard: 15x storm crow

Now this deck has some punch to it. Hedron Archive is a good mana rock early and card drawing engine late game. And ulamog and ugin are great spells to ramp into that can go over the top of other slow decks you may face. Being in blue grants access to a plethora of counter magic, which can push the odds a bit in your favor versus other ramp strategies.

What this deck has a hard time against, though, is aggro. This is specifically true of atarka red, which can effectively combo kill someone by T5 or earlier. So that makes me a bit uncomfortable when deciding to play this deck. There are potential sideboard option to be had such as Dispel to counter the Temur Battle Rage or Jaddi Offshoot to be a blocker and gain some life, but ultimately this may be a deck that just folds to that strategy.

Next, I want to talk about the megamorph combo. Any green based deck right now is going to have to consider playing Den Protector and Deathmist Raptor due to the sheer power they provide. What's interesting is that UG also has a lot of other morph goodies and even some morph centric cards.

4 Rattleclaw Mystic 4 Den Protector 4 Deathmist Raptor 3 Sagu Mauler 3 Stratus Dancer 1 Ainok Survivalist 2 Secret Plans 4 Island 4 Forest 2 Lumbering Falls 2 Kiora, Master of the Depths 2 Yavimaya Coast 4 Woodland Wanderer 1 Canopy Vista 1 Cinder Glade 4 Flooded Strand 1 Prairie Stream 1 Sunken Hollow 4 Windswept Heath 4 Hangarback Walker 2 Horribly Awry 3 Reality Shift Sideboard: 15x storm crow

Stratus Dancer feels like a strong card versus sweepers if you can get it out there in time. And Sagu Mauler can be a HUGE beating as well as a true surprise. Remaining in blue means continued access to those counterspells , and Kiora even likes playing with raptors as mentioned before. It's possible that a deck with as much stealth as this one has could be built to catch your local metagame off guard and win mostly through dark horse tactics.

Lastly, I want to go back to the discussion on Kiora from earlier. Is there a shell that can play as an almost Kiora control deck? Much like old Kiora, this planeswalker provides a way to ramp as well as card advantage. Also like old Kiora, this one has a hard time protecting itself without creatures around. The fact that she shoves things into the grave means delving is a good way to take full advantage of her applications. Perhaps a deck that rides the line between midrange and control?

4 Rattleclaw Mystic 3 Den Protector 7 Island 5 Forest 2 Lumbering Falls 3 Kiora, Master of the Depths 3 Yavimaya Coast 4 Flooded Strand 4 Windswept Heath 4 Hangarback Walker 2 Horribly Awry 4 Dig Through Time 2 Clash of Wills 3 Scatter to the Winds 1 Dispel 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon 4 Silumgar's Scorn 4 Icefall Regent Sideboard: 15x storm crow

This deck looks a bit like a hodge podge. Usually that's a bad thing. That said, it feels like there's something to be said of the synergies present in these cards. Maybe splashing black will add enough incentive and removal to make this deck tick. This leads me to my next article. Next time, I plan on covering what certain splashes could do for UG in standard. Having light access to other colors opens up a world of possibilities that may push the archetype into competitive status.

I want to hear from you. What archetypes in UG do you like the most? Feel like I left something important out? (I probably did) Maybe you just want to discuss the lovely art on Halimar Tidecaller? Feedback is appreciated as always.

Until next time, may you never be mana screwed