SOI Standard Poor-Man Challenge: Pre-Finale Stats and Favorites

Deck Challenges Features

zandl

15 June 2016

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        The Top Fives

Below are the cards I felt had the biggest impacts on the games they were seen in, whether they were game-winners, game-savers, or overall value engines.

Top Five Creatures

1. Drana's Emissary
• As a three-drop creature, Drana's Emissary fit nicely into a congested curve in the B/W archetypes. The flyer was able to elude the vast majority of blockers while gaining back a point of life each turn. When two decks stalled out and the games went longer than usual, Drana's Emissary was always the deciding factor.
2. Walker of the Wastes
• Only appearing in a single submission, Walker of the Wastes’s power level was simply off the charts. In an all-Wastes deck, it was a 9/9 trample for a scant five mana that blanked Ultimate Price and every Green or Red spell. Nothing could ever come close enough to take it down when it attacked and it worked even more efficiently with the accompanying Warping Wails and Spatial Contortions for support.
3. Sanitarium Skeleton
• Though similar cards in past challenges have turned out to just be "too cute" or their effects weren’t impactful enough, the time was right for Sanitarium Skeleton in this challenge. Between Call the Bloodline, Nantuko Husk, Bone Splinters, and many other strong spells, the Skeleton always had plenty to do in the decks that played it. Even chump-blocking infinitely in the late-game wasn’t a bad use of the card.
4. Stormchaser Mage
• It goes without saying that this was always the creature of choice for U/R Prowess. Elusive Spellfist was a close second, but flying was nearly just a good as unblockable and haste was a strict advantage. Whether it was Titan's Strength, Rush of Adrenaline, or Uncaged Fury, the Stormchaser was a threat that demanded answers quickly.
5. Heir of Falkenrath  ^Flip
• Enabling all manner of madness spells on turn-three (the most punishing of which being Incorrigible Youths), Heir to the Night  ^Flip could always be counted on to bring the pain. The 3/2 flyer for essentially two mana hit like a truck in the air and set a grueling pace for any opposing deck to keep up with.

Top Five Enchantments

1. Stensia Masquerade
• With the ability to be cast as part of a discard cost, the Masquerade was often what would decide aggro mirrors. Granting first strike to each attacker after the opponent decided to hold back and block was always a back-breaking shift in tempo and the resulting surge of counters usually won the game.
2. Silkwrap
• Neutralizing every creature from the first three turns (and being difficult to interact with without sideboards), Silkwrap was a key defensive spell for many decks. Stormchaser Mage was usually a righteous target, as were Citadel Castellan, Sanitarium Skeleton, Heir to the Night  ^Flip, and Consul's Lieutenant. The card even played off of "processing" creatures well, like Ruin Processor and Ulamog's Despoiler.
3. Vessel of Nascency
• Delirium strategies wound up finding a nice home in the challenge as one of the more popular options. Though all the Green-based delirium decks fell short of the final few rounds, they had a hugely powerful sum of cards to call upon if they were drawn at the right times. Vessel of Nascency smoothed out those draws while giving the user a lot of control over how delirium was set up. As a bonus, it had the ability to pick up lands for the mana-hungry archetype.
4. Autumnal Gloom  ^Flip
• Many of the aforementioned Green-based delirium decks decided to run Autumnal Gloom  ^Flip as their main win-condition. There were almost no spells in the overall card-pool that could deal with an Ancient of the Equinox  ^Flip beyond blocking, but cards like Obsessive Skinner and Tooth Collector were never far behind to play the role of support.
5. Call the Bloodline
• More often than not, decks rode the back of this card to victory after casting it. The obvious synergy with madness was welcomed in most spots, but the real power simply came from the 1/1 lifelink you could generate for yourself each turn. When you consider that most decks were ill-equipped to deal with a continual source of tokens and certain cards, like Sanitarium Skeleton, were designed just to abuse it, it’s easy to see how influential Call the Bloodline was in the meta.

Top Five Sorceries

1. Gisa's Bidding
• Though not appearing in too many lists, Bidding was an immensely powerful spell to cast for three mana, especially at instant-speed. Ditching it to Heir of Falkenrath  ^Flip, for example, presented a lot of power spread across multiple bodies. It was also one of the more valuable madness spells in terms of what it gave you.
2. Tormenting Voice
• Tormenting Voice has been quite the powerful card in the challenge. The normal drawback of the spell is that you have to use two cards to draw two cards, meaning you don’t get ahead on hand-size but instead catch a glimpse at a few new options. With the inclusion of madness in Shadows over Innistrad, Tormenting Voice let you draw two for essentially just itself after you consider the value you earned from the discarded spell. Many turn-three plays involved Voice + Fiery Temper/Alms of the Vein, punishing aggressive decks and providing more lines of play to the defending one.
3. Pore Over the Pages
• Once the slower control decks had the chance to stabilize, there were no spells that could even compare to the value that Pore Over the Pages could provide. The spell itself was useful in a number of situations where any other five-mana spell would’ve been less than ideal. Factor in that Pore Over the Pages turned on madness and it’s easy to see the allure of it in slower builds.
4. Flaying Tendrils
• Though there have been plenty of board-states that wouldn’t have cared about Tendrils had it come up, the spell saved a lot of damage (and games) for a number of decks. A fair deal of popular threats, including Aberrant Researcher  ^Flip, Accursed Witch  ^Flip, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Sanitarium Skeleton, all get hosed by it rather efficiently. It was also one of the few (the only?) true sweeper in the common/uncommon pool of cards to choose from.
5. Rise from the Tides
• Without a doubt, Rise from the Tides was the strongest single card in the entire pool. Fueled by spells like Pieces of the Puzzle and Pore Over the Pages, it won games in a single turn and was made even stronger by the lack of accessible sweepers in the format. It worked well with madness spells (which wanted to find the graveyard as soon as they could) and can-trips/draw-spells. The card was a real contender and you’d do well to remember its strength in future challenges.

Top Five Instants

1. Invasive Surgery
• Only appearing in just one or two lists out of all submissions, Invasive Surgery managed to completely shut out a control deck in one round by exiling all its copies of Rise from the Tides - and all its ways to win. With delirium, it granted the user free information of the opponent’s hand and deck, as well, offering a unique advantage seen on no other spell in the card-pool.
2. Uncaged Fury
• Although the U/R Prowess archetype didn’t wind up making it through to the final round, the decks certainly had some powerful plays. None were more potent than those involving Uncaged Fury. Even though three mana was quite a bit in a deck of mostly one-drop spells, the +1/+1 and double strike + prowess always equated to at least six damage before anything else. With a Titan's Strength thrown in for good measure, it was threatening lethal damage off of one attacker.
3. Ultimate Price
• For many decks, this was the go-to removal spell. At just two mana, about 90% of all opposing creatures could be destroyed at instant-speed. This was particularly useful against threats that were too big to burn out or contain with Silkwrap, like Nantuko Husk and Moldgraf Scavenger. The ease of splashing it in a deck (when compared to Grasp of Darkness) was a major selling point for many participants. Though Ultimate Price was largely kept in check by the likes of Vile Aggregate, Bane of Bala Ged, and Citadel Castellan, its strength was obvious.
4. Fiery Temper
• As one of the more anticipated reprints all the way back from Torment, Fiery Temper gave us a taste of what Lightning Bolt was like in Standard (R.I.P.). Temper was a powerful card in the B/R archetypes and was even welcomed into most of the U/R builds, as well. It dealt with nearly all creatures cast in the first three turns and could finish off an opponent if just a bit more reach was required. As it turned out, even a "bad Lightning Bolt" was still a Lightning Bolt.
5. Lightning Axe
• The yin to Fiery Temper’s yang, Lightning Axe was rarely an unfortunate card to top-deck at any point in a game. It turned on some pretty back-breaking Incorrigible Youths and Gisa's Biddings to quickly turn the tides of a given game. Even later on, most decks had enough lands to hard-cast the spell and nuke any problem in the way, most notably hitting the creatures that blanked Ultimate Price.

        The Creator’s Brews

Below are just a small handful of the decks I had designed before introducing the challenge in an effort to gauge the meta (and brew, because it’s fun).

"Black/Colorless Control"

4x Bane of Bala Ged 2x Blighted Fen 4x Essence Depleter 3x Flaying Tendrils 4x Hedron Archive 4x Read the Bones 4x Spatial Contortion 12x Swamp 4x Ultimate Price 4x Walker of the Wastes 4x Warping Wail 11x Wastes

My goal here was to combine the versatility of Spatial Contortion and Warping Wail with the removal and card-draw of Black. Though Walker of the Wastes is best with only Wastes on your side of the board, controlling just a few would still allow it to surpass anything an opponent could muster. Bane of Bala Ged goes bigger and acts more as a crippling finisher, all the while Essence Depleter sits and casually restores lost life from aggressive decks and Read the Bones. In building this deck, I was looking for Black’s removal to be paired with bigger finishers without investing too deeply in another color and getting pigeonholed into certain card choices.

"Blue/Red Tutelage"

2x Blighted Cataract 4x Comparative Analysis 4x Fiery Impulse 3x Geistblast 4x Highland Lake 5x Island 4x Magmatic Insight 12x Mountain 4x Pore Over the Pages 2x Roast 4x Send to Sleep 4x Skyline Cascade 4x Sphinxs Tutelage 4x Tormenting Voice

Sphinx's Tutelage proved to be a powerful sleeper card out of Origins when U/R Tutelage swept a Grand Prix just weeks after its release. With this in mind, I had to ensure that Tutelage wasn’t overpowered in this format considering the rarity restriction only blocked out Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip and a few lands. Lo and behold, this brew was strong - but it had the inevitable problem that any semi-combo deck has: if you don’t see your trump card, you lose. Much of that was ameliorated by the buttload of draw spells, but the deck could never consistently win more than a couple games in a row before variance reared its ugly head.

"Green/Black Elves"

4x Gnarlroot Trapper 4x Shaman of the Pack 4x Elvish Visionary 4x Sylvan Messenger 4x Dwynens Elite 4x Tajuru Warcaller 4x Deadbridge Shaman 4x Leaf Gilder 2x Pulse of Murasa 4x Ultimate Price 4x Foul Orchard 3x Holdout Settlement 8x Forest 7x Swamp

In much the same way U/R Tutelage took over last summer with just a few rares, there was an Elf deck on the verge of Tier One that was largely commons/uncommons save for Collected Company. Shaman of the Pack is a potentially game-winning creature and there was certainly no shortage of Elves to choose from to build a proper deck. Creatures like Sylvan Messenger and Elvish Visionary sifted through the top of the deck to keep the hand and battlefield stuffed to the brim. If Shaman of the Pack wasn’t enough to get the job done, Tajuru Warcaller could come down and crush anything in the way. The deck was strong and consistent, but some well-timed removal usually had some fairly detrimental effects on its speed and versatility.

        The Creator’s Favorite

Which submission caught my eye and gave me something new to think about?

tulse’s Mysterious Ramp

2x Adverse Conditions 3x Anticipate 1x Blighted Cataract 2x Breaker of Armies 2x Brood Monitor 2x Dampening Pulse 4x Evolving Wilds 2x Explosive Vegetation 9x Forest 3x Graf Mole 4x Island 4x Jaddi Offshoot 4x Plated Crusher 2x Pore Over the Pages 4x Press for Answers 4x Skyline Cascade 1x Spawning Bed 1x Void Shatter 4x Weirding Wood 2x Woodland Stream

The beauty of this build comes from its ability to stall nearly indefinitely and slam Plated Crusher after Plated Crusher onto the board to win. It could gain a ton of life through Jaddi Offshoot and Graf Mole, lock down opposing threats with Skyline Cascade and Press for Answers, and shrink the entire opposing board with Dampening Pulse. Ramp and card-draw were present in relevant numbers and there was always value to be gained from every action. The deck also played a considerable number of cards found nowhere else in the challenge: Weirding Wood, Adverse Conditions, Plated Crusher, and Spawning Bed. Though the deck didn’t make it past the third round, it’ll always be a champion in my eyes. <3

Final Round Participants

The upcoming final round is a round robin, meaning each deck plays every other. The deck with the highest game-win percentage will be declared the champion of the challenge. Finale results will be posted this Friday, June 17th. The final round participants will receive links to commemorative banners, created by the illustrious and pulchritudinous Mrs. zandl, to display proudly on their profiles. Prizes will also be doled out as soon as the article goes live Friday.

tempest’s B/G Eldrazi
DarkLaw’s U/B Rise from the Tides
amerishin’s B/R Madness
tpmains’s U/B Control
Nobueno95’s U/W Flyers
CaptainLick’s Colorless Eldrazi
Wee_Dragonaut’s U/R Eldrazi

Happy tapping, players!
zandl

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