Can Heroic (U/W) be competitive?
Standard forum
Posted on Dec. 28, 2013, 7:26 p.m. by wnorris17
Hey all, I've been looking into a heroic U/W build for standard to take a break from the U/W control I am currently playing. But you never see any of these heroic decks going to the top in the current meta. Why is this? It seems like a solid foundation and pretty fast since most of the deck runs off of 2 mana.
For FNM and such it might be fine, but in a serious competitive sense, no.
The issue is that it's not necessarily faster than a typical high threat density aggro deck, which typically looks to win around turn 4-5. So you end up with just a worse aggro deck that's weaker to spot removal and must contend with consistency issues of drawing the portions of its deck in unequal measures. Cards like Favored Hoplite are pretty terrible without enablers, where as cards like Dryad Militant will always be 2 power for 1 for the aggro decks. And at the end of the day, consistency is paramount when you're talking about a list being truly competitive.
So unless the next two sets can push the heroic deck to be a consistent turn 3-4 kill, I doubt it will ever see serious competitive results.
December 28, 2013 10:27 p.m.
SwiftDeath says... #4
I don't know about U/W being slow and hard to aggro with but there have been a good amount of R/U/W heroic builds that I have seen in my Meta. It took top 4 twice and beat my B/G devotion deck even passed all the removal. thanks to cards like Gods Willing and quick damage boosting cards including Aqueous Form . He was able to get fast kills so Yes I think that heroic can be a great deck type just not consistently competitive, Kind of like the turn two kill decks from scars of mirrodin.
December 29, 2013 1:55 a.m.
To reiterate what Slycne said, the problem is drawing the wrong parts of your deck together.
Pumps with no creatures, or creatures that are miserable without the necessary pump spells.
The other thing is to, is the pure fact that you need to use 2 cards (creature plus spell) to get an effect as opposed to a single card that can close out games.
In the vacuum of nothing but Elspeth, Sun's Champion and you draw nothing but land and they have no way to remove her, you will eventually win the game, she needs nothing else. Same goes for Blood Baron of Vizkopa , Archangel of Thune etc etc.
The problem with the purely heroic deck is the creatures are underwhelming without spells to enable them so you more often than not are opening yourself to 2 for 1s and it's just an overall inefficient use of resources.
December 29, 2013 2:46 a.m.
The best way to build a W/X Heroic deck is to build it as a white weenie shell and drop the Boros Elite
for Favored Hoplite
, Daring Skyjek
for Phalanx Leader
and Banisher Priest
for Fabled Hero
and then make room for your enablers. I have played alot with my W/U heroic and it's fun but very meta dependent. I think that a W/G variant with more instant speed buff cards would be better at keeping it consistent.
blackmarker90 says... #2
They can do well, their biggest problem is that early removal can really hose the deck. They are fast and powerful, but if you aren't running shocks (guildgates and the upcoming scry are too slow for the speed the deck needs to operate at) and they leave you with an off color hand or remove what you dropped t1/t2 it can be hard for them to recover. I know this because i ran a couple of heroic decks in the past and played one this week in round three of FNM. If you get both color lands opening the deck is in good shape, otherwise things can be a little sketchy.
For a brief rundown of how the match went BUG Superfriends (1st at FNM) is the deck that i ran
December 28, 2013 7:35 p.m.