This is the second part of a three deck analysis which covers how a particular deck evolved over time, during one of the most exciting standard formats ever. It is meant as a reflection on how formats and metagames change, and how deckbuilders and players must use superior understanding of a format, and strong play skills to refine a deck, even if it drives a deck down a path away from what was originally intended.
The previous section can be found here.
The first incarnation of Solar Flare came about as players wanted to move away from the riskiness of trying to combo off of greater good and began to fall back on tried and true gameplans. The first major eventuality that began this trend, was the strength of the Yosei-lock. Players figured out they didn't NEED to combo off in order to win and began to look for ways to play more conservatively and more consistently. This is actually a common theme in magic, and is why many formats often start wide open, then with time begin to se more and more blue dominant strategies. What started as a splash of blue for Gifts Ungiven (searchable with Dimir House Guard) turned into a full bore Blue conversion.
THE PLAN
It doesn't take long to win the game with big game breaking creatures. Both big dragons are amazing at clocking people, Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni was an amazing way to turn even Court Hussar into a scary threat. Between court Hussar, Compulsive Research, and Remand, you had plenty of ways to stall an aggro deck and/or cast Wrath of God for advantage. Mortify and Angel of Despair gave you good answers to almost any other permanent at the time so you basically just sat back and played a slow control game till you could get what you needed to win, and just go for it. It was scarily easy to map out your t2-t5, protecting early rounds with a land a signet and a remand, while preparing for your first big threat drop. even in stalled out games, once you hit someone with a turn or two of Yosei-Lock, the game was yours.
RAMP
Dropping green meant losing out on the awesome ramp plays that it offered, but in exchange blue had access to the plethora of signets available in Ravnica. By the time that block was done, ANY 3 color deck could just drop 4-8 signets into the MD and ramp to whatever threat they wanted to play. As an added bonus to blue players, using signets to ramp allowed you to slow play your ramp while still protecting rounds 1-3 with counterspell mana. Also, Compulsive Research was a ridiculously easy way to keep your hand stocked while developing your board.
DIG
Court Hussar, Compulsive Research, and Gifts Ungiven were more than enough to keep you stocked, when you were playing the slow and steady game. As stated before, even court Hussar was potentially deadly when you could kill your opponent's best card and then Ninjitsu it into play for YOUR team. Sometimes all you had to do was ramp to board wipe and then EOT a Gifts Ungiven for Angel of Despair, Kokusho, the Evening Star, Yosei, the Morning Star, and Zombify -- and your opponent would just scoop.
CONTROL
Wrath of God should come as no surprise, rounding out spot removal with Mortify and the bombtastic Angel of Despair. If you were behind a land drop, Remand usually bought you the turn you needed to turn the tempo of the game.
STRUCTURE
Again we see the iteration of 9(ish) win-cons, supported by a healthy dose of ramp and a strong control suite to prevent other decks from getting out of hand. This list is actually a little deceptive as many other iterations ran 24 lands and 6+ signets. However, with time, the raw card filtering of Research + Hussar allowed the deck to skimp a little bit to make room for other threats. Not to mention the mana efficiency of the threats themselves. For example, Meloku the Clouded Mirror never really had a big purpose in the deck aside from the fact that over the course of the format, people figured out it could win games all by itself, usually on a 3 turn clock. Not bad for a 5 drop.
Realistically this was the deck to play or beat at the end of the Ravnica Block, and the only thing that really hurt it was the rotation of the Kamigawa Dragons. Later versions of Solar Flare would lose the consistency of the fatty dragons, and be forced to play the with the higher average power/mana curve of the Time-Spiral Format. While it was "do-able", the nature of the Ravnica + Time Spiral format also made it difficult to predict a meta. Literally any combination of three colors could make a coherent deck.
Also, another deck with which I have a special claim to fame came to light -- Owling Mine. This deck PUNISHED the way that the decks in this era played and even though the meta shifted to account for that deck, it was still risky to play a mana greedy deck with a tempo-lock combo in the field.
So, for almost a full year, Solar Flare was relatively average in performance, even though it was probably the best control deck in the format.
Then something strange happened. Wizards released the Ice Age Themed set, "Cold Snap" and somebody found a strangely powerful synergy in one of the most disruptively unique creatures printed in that format.
Continued...
