Now in Technicolor!
Posted by BTsume | | Posted On Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 3:14 PM
(Before I get into this post, I'd like to set a note for myself...How much of a correlation between the money you spend on a format and the success you achieve exists? Further, which format is the most cheap-per win percentage.)
Now then, as the title suggests, my G/W deck has been proving to be a bit lackluster following a few more weeks of testing. With Zendikar, I've added Emeria Angel, Captain of the Watch, Mycoid Shepard, and contemplated red, blue, and black splashes...but all these have proved to only sure up places where I was strong anyway, or fail to meet my goals for them. With that in mind, I went over my options for color changing again and boiled it down to it's essentials.
Red
+Burn (Bolt, Punishing Fire, Burst lightning)
+Uril, the Miststalker
+Sweepers (Pyroclasm, Fallout)
Black
+Removal (Pulse, Doom Blade)
+Discard (Hippy, Duress)
+Putrid Leech
Blue
+Removal (Bant Charm)
+Counterspells (Negate, Remove Soul, Flashfreeze)
+Rhox War Monk
This little fight has been going on in my head for weeks now, and I can't figure out truly which one would be better. I pride myself on being able to understand the metagame, don'tcha know. So, why not find a list of possible decks to face in the Type 2 metagame, add in a few Teir 2 rougish decks, and try to find which of the three would be best adept at dealing with that. So, I did just that:
Jund
4 color Cascade
Vampires
4 Color Control
Naya Zoo
Monored
Elf green
Planeswalker Control
R/W control
Bushwacker
Time Sieve (You don't believe me yet, do you!)
Dredge
Bant
Mono White Control
Mono Blue Polymorph
Soldiers
U/W Control
GWB Knight
And...
Is that all? Jeez. It's like we have a diverse meta or something...
Anyway, I'm not going to cover every deck specifically (Maybe I should), but instead make a few generalizations that might come back and bite me.
Against aggro decks, Bant charm is a strictly better O-ring, as they can't really win outside the red zone. War Monk is also just huge in the butt. Red has removal for the earlier guys, but I have to assume things will have four power eventually, and my deck would have to preform well even with it. Smaller aggro decks, like Bushwacker and Zoo though, would be fearful of sweepers. Black can disrupt, gaining me advantage, as well as use cheap removal on most aggro strategies, but black itself lends towards a more aggressive ideology, and I don't think I'll be able to out race Bushwacker...
Versus Control, Red obviously fails pretty hard. I'd rather be making threats then casting spells which don't do anything to their fatties or, if game winning, would only get countered anyway. Black has promise, allowing disruption to slow their plans enough to play my own game of fatty fatty boom boom, plus removal for a 'walker is great when I can also have removal for Baneslayer in the same card. Blue, gives me a good hope with counter spells, even letting bant charm get more action, but without direct removal for a walker all the Rhox War Monks in the world will continue to die, and my losses would be immanent.
Combo is a strange beast, and though each of the colors fail in similar ways: Black's removal doesn't work, blue's counters are on the wrong side of threats and answers, and red's threats aren't good or fast enough. Though each color does get a mark for having a somewhat idea on how to tackle the issue, Red's burn goes to the face, Black disruption could let me get lucky, and blue counters (though not great for the matches) are there and available.
Well, with that out of the way, let create a chart showing the value of the color verses the type of deck, with a correlation of how many decks of that type there are in the environment:
Aggro: Vampires, Naya Zoo, Monored, Elf green, Bushwacker, Bant, Soldiers, GWB Knight. Final Count: 8/ 17 ~ 47%
Control: 4 color Cascade, 4 Color Control, Planeswalker Control, R/W control, U/W Control, Mono White Control. Final Count: 6/ 17 ~ 35%
Combo: Time Sieve, Dredge, Mono Blue Polymorph. Final Count: 3/ 17 ~ 18%
Note: some deck fall into multiple categories, thus these results may be a bit skewed, but I tried to place each deck where it felt like it should be.
Well, now that we've done that, we need to quantitate how each color splash would preform against each archetype:
Note: These are my guesses on how much each color would allow my deck to preform better against the mentioned deck types.
Okay, so aggro is roughly 47% of the field, control 35%, and combo 18%. This is where my math might fall apart, so if I'm wrong, point it out in the comments.
So, with Blue leading against Aggro, Black in control, and the two sharing the same score in Combo, it's really close. Blue's lead in aggro is only one point, while black leads by two in control. However, there are more aggro in the meta so the two are stalemated. Is the aggro match really the most important, or are most of the tier two decks just in there? Well, I figure I can contemplate on this while I'm testing in the next few weeks and figure it out some more. I should have my final choice for color addition by the end of the month, just in time for States on Dec. 5th (YAY! I love States a lot for some reason) Either way, because hopefully I'll be post a lot more on what I'm doing for the run up, as well as weekly or even daily deck lists.
Until then, keep rocking.
Time Sieve 2.0 by Bill Stark of thestarkingtonpost.com
8 Island
4 Marsh Flats
1 Swamp
3 Plains
4 Mistvein Borderpost
4 Fieldmist Borderpost
4 Glassdust Hulk
4 Architects of Will
4 Angelsong
4 Time Sieve
4 Time Warp
4 Open the Vaults
4 Kaleidostone
4 Howling Mine
4 Jace Beleren
Sideboard:
4 Flashfreeze
4 Dispeller’s Capsule
3 Duress
4 Day of Judgment
Now then, as the title suggests, my G/W deck has been proving to be a bit lackluster following a few more weeks of testing. With Zendikar, I've added Emeria Angel, Captain of the Watch, Mycoid Shepard, and contemplated red, blue, and black splashes...but all these have proved to only sure up places where I was strong anyway, or fail to meet my goals for them. With that in mind, I went over my options for color changing again and boiled it down to it's essentials.
Red
+Burn (Bolt, Punishing Fire, Burst lightning)
+Uril, the Miststalker
+Sweepers (Pyroclasm, Fallout)
Black
+Removal (Pulse, Doom Blade)
+Discard (Hippy, Duress)
+Putrid Leech
Blue
+Removal (Bant Charm)
+Counterspells (Negate, Remove Soul, Flashfreeze)
+Rhox War Monk
This little fight has been going on in my head for weeks now, and I can't figure out truly which one would be better. I pride myself on being able to understand the metagame, don'tcha know. So, why not find a list of possible decks to face in the Type 2 metagame, add in a few Teir 2 rougish decks, and try to find which of the three would be best adept at dealing with that. So, I did just that:
Jund
4 color Cascade
Vampires
4 Color Control
Naya Zoo
Monored
Elf green
Planeswalker Control
R/W control
Bushwacker
Time Sieve (You don't believe me yet, do you!)
Dredge
Bant
Mono White Control
Mono Blue Polymorph
Soldiers
U/W Control
GWB Knight
And...
Is that all? Jeez. It's like we have a diverse meta or something...
Anyway, I'm not going to cover every deck specifically (Maybe I should), but instead make a few generalizations that might come back and bite me.
Against aggro decks, Bant charm is a strictly better O-ring, as they can't really win outside the red zone. War Monk is also just huge in the butt. Red has removal for the earlier guys, but I have to assume things will have four power eventually, and my deck would have to preform well even with it. Smaller aggro decks, like Bushwacker and Zoo though, would be fearful of sweepers. Black can disrupt, gaining me advantage, as well as use cheap removal on most aggro strategies, but black itself lends towards a more aggressive ideology, and I don't think I'll be able to out race Bushwacker...
Versus Control, Red obviously fails pretty hard. I'd rather be making threats then casting spells which don't do anything to their fatties or, if game winning, would only get countered anyway. Black has promise, allowing disruption to slow their plans enough to play my own game of fatty fatty boom boom, plus removal for a 'walker is great when I can also have removal for Baneslayer in the same card. Blue, gives me a good hope with counter spells, even letting bant charm get more action, but without direct removal for a walker all the Rhox War Monks in the world will continue to die, and my losses would be immanent.
Combo is a strange beast, and though each of the colors fail in similar ways: Black's removal doesn't work, blue's counters are on the wrong side of threats and answers, and red's threats aren't good or fast enough. Though each color does get a mark for having a somewhat idea on how to tackle the issue, Red's burn goes to the face, Black disruption could let me get lucky, and blue counters (though not great for the matches) are there and available.
Well, with that out of the way, let create a chart showing the value of the color verses the type of deck, with a correlation of how many decks of that type there are in the environment:
Aggro: Vampires, Naya Zoo, Monored, Elf green, Bushwacker, Bant, Soldiers, GWB Knight. Final Count: 8/ 17 ~ 47%
Control: 4 color Cascade, 4 Color Control, Planeswalker Control, R/W control, U/W Control, Mono White Control. Final Count: 6/ 17 ~ 35%
Combo: Time Sieve, Dredge, Mono Blue Polymorph. Final Count: 3/ 17 ~ 18%
Note: some deck fall into multiple categories, thus these results may be a bit skewed, but I tried to place each deck where it felt like it should be.
Well, now that we've done that, we need to quantitate how each color splash would preform against each archetype:
Aggro Control Combo
Black: 7/10 8/10 7/10
Blue: 8/10 6/10 7/10
Red: 6/10 3/10 5/10
Note: These are my guesses on how much each color would allow my deck to preform better against the mentioned deck types.
Okay, so aggro is roughly 47% of the field, control 35%, and combo 18%. This is where my math might fall apart, so if I'm wrong, point it out in the comments.
So, with Blue leading against Aggro, Black in control, and the two sharing the same score in Combo, it's really close. Blue's lead in aggro is only one point, while black leads by two in control. However, there are more aggro in the meta so the two are stalemated. Is the aggro match really the most important, or are most of the tier two decks just in there? Well, I figure I can contemplate on this while I'm testing in the next few weeks and figure it out some more. I should have my final choice for color addition by the end of the month, just in time for States on Dec. 5th (YAY! I love States a lot for some reason) Either way, because hopefully I'll be post a lot more on what I'm doing for the run up, as well as weekly or even daily deck lists.
Until then, keep rocking.
Time Sieve 2.0 by Bill Stark of thestarkingtonpost.com
8 Island
4 Marsh Flats
1 Swamp
3 Plains
4 Mistvein Borderpost
4 Fieldmist Borderpost
4 Glassdust Hulk
4 Architects of Will
4 Angelsong
4 Time Sieve
4 Time Warp
4 Open the Vaults
4 Kaleidostone
4 Howling Mine
4 Jace Beleren
Sideboard:
4 Flashfreeze
4 Dispeller’s Capsule
3 Duress
4 Day of Judgment
