Hi all! It's been a while since Ive contributed much to the blog. I have not been seriously dedicated to Magic for a while. I gave up on Theros limited when I couldnt win a match, but probably should give it a fresh try with Born of the Gods. I have been playing some (and reading a lot) about Standard. I went to the January 11th PTQ and audibled last minute to Esper Humans. I was very happy with this choice as I felt it crushes fast aggro and UWx control. I started out a quick 3-0 and then drew with Esper Control in a game three where I think I would have won had I not over extended into a Verdict. After picking up my forth win against Mono Black Devotion, I lost three straight to Esper Control (with a great sideboard plan featuring Nightveil Specters and Blood Barons), Rwg Devotion (that seems like a hopeless match-up, though I made the mistake of not killing a Stormbreath at first chance and allowed him to get +4 mana off of Nykthos, which he used to play another Stormbreath), and last round to Mono Blue Devotion (of which I was quite on tilt and dont remember much). All in all the deck is very fun, maybe it is the fact that I have almost never played aggro, but something like Soldier of the Pantheon into Thoughtseize and a Temple feels really good. I dont know where the deck goes from here, cutting a color to be WU or WB is an option, Brimaz is obviously good, and Ephara seems like exactly what the deck needed to avoid late game flood. There is another PTQ March 1st, but I dont think I will be able to make it. On the other hand I will most likely attend the SCG Open on March 15-16.
Speaking of, my birthday present to myself was a Legacy deck!! After reading Drew Levin's articles about getting into Legacy I realized that not only is Dredge exactly my kind of deck, but it is by far the cheapest Tier ~1.5 deck out there. I am at heart a combo player who learns well by hours of goldfishing, determining keepable hands, lines of play etc. But this is not the reason for this post!
This coming weekend is the Pro Tour in Valencia, featuring the Modern format for its constructed portion. Despite the bashing it gets, Modern has been my favorite format since I started playing again a year ago. This again has to do with my leanings toward combo decks and the fact that Standard has zero of them. For the Modern Grand Prix in Portland last spring I put together an Eggs deck, spent hours and a few practice tournaments preparing, only to have Second Sunrise axed a week or so before the event. Splinter Twin may have been the next obvious choice of combo deck, but I instead fell quite in love with Scapeshift. The GP didnt go great, lack of prep with the deck and major lack of sleep, but I was inspired. The core of the combo is seven lands and a Scapeshift. This means there is a lot of flexibility of what you do up until that point. The traditional Scapeshift deck tries to get there as quickly as possible via the ramp of Sakura Tribe Elder, Farseek and Search for Tomorrow. I feel the weakness of the deck is its lack of interaction and inconsistency. Sometimes you are ramping up mana and die to a couple Tarmagoyfs. Sometimes they Thoughtseize your Scapeshift and you die waiting to topdeck another. This led me to think about building a Scapeshift control deck: instead of ramping as quickly as possible into your combo, you sit back and interact with your opponent and slow them down with cheap counters and bounce until you just naturally get to seven lands and then kill them on the spot.
A hard control deck with an ultimate win condition:
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Spellsnare
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Mana Leak
4 Remand
4 Cryptic Command
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Scapeshift
1 Life from the Loam
1 Noxious Revival (or Call to Mind/ Mystical Retrieval)
4 Steam Vents
4 Stomping Ground
3 Breeding Pool
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Mountain
1 Island
Young Pyromancer is beautiful here. Most decks using him lean on his aggro/tempo characteristics. This deck aims to abuse the controlling effect of generating free chump blockers while playing a normal counterspell game. Bolting a Wild Nactl and getting a 1/1 to chump their Tarmagoyf seems like a great investment for R. Using Gifts Ungiven seems like a flexible and powerful option without much downside now that Deathrite is gone. It maybe that the three Gifts should just be Scapeshift and the two other cards just some more interruption or draw, but I think it is worth testing, and I sure hate getting a hand clogged with two Scapeshifts. The ability to Gifts for Loam and Ghost Quarter against UWR control or Tron is extremely powerful, although may need to be regulated to the board. There may also need to be two Regrowth options so that a gifts for Scapeshift/Snapcaster/Noxious Revival/Call to Mind works through a Thoughtseize. Mystical Retrieval gets around this issue, but is more awkward when they put it in your hand as it plus Scapeshift is now 8 mana. I dont know about Probe, it seems awesome with Pyromancer, and information is invaluable in a deck like this, but it may need to be more interactive.
The mana base is very rough. The mountain count is one extra than Sharfman's GP San Diego Top 8 list, but he admitted that was low, and you need to remember that all his ramp was searching out a disproportionate ratio of non-mountain lands. We probably require at least one more mountain in place of the Cascade Bluffs or Ghost Quarter, if the latter is moved to the board.
Some options Ive thought about adding include: Spell Pierce, Repeal, Izzet Charm, Electrolyze, and Think Twice, as well as adding an Academy Ruins for a Gifts target along with something like Engineered Explosives. Spell Pierce seems a little too narrow when I really need to interact with what ever my opponent does in the early turns due to a lack of sweepers, undoubtedly in the board though. Repeal is probably my top choice to fit in, I have always been a fan of this card as a catch-all since it did duty in the board of my Dragonstorm deck back when Guildpact first came out. It is always mana inefficient, but the extra card, possibly two with Pyromancer, and the flexibility makes it worth a slot or two. Izzet Charm and Electrolyze fall under a heading of not passing the Wild Nactl test (and the fact that Deathrite was one of their favorite targets). Think Twice just seems weaker than Gitaxian Probe, although it is an instant and yields card advantage.
I by no means thing this deck is broken, nor have I tested it at all, I just think it is a powerful take on utilizing Scapeshift and Young Pyromancer, and if anything like it surfaces in Valencia Id like to say I had the idea independently. The two major questions testing needs to answer is whether this is an upgrade to the game plan of traditional Scapeshift, and whether traditional reanimation packages are better targets for Gifts. One thing I know is that Gifts Ungiven is going to show up much more then naively expected this weekend.
Questions? Comments? (Sorry no links to cards Im too busy!)
is a young pyromancer like a wild pyromancer?
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