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Doubtless Apple Part One - by Walkerdog
As illustrated by the Classic meta-game article I wrote two weeks ago, Classic is a wide-open format right now. There are multiple decks across multiple tiers that have done well in any given PE. It’s crazy out there! I’d like to take this time to review every deck you might see, and what testing has taught me about these match-ups from a generalized stand-point and also specific examples and sideboard tech you can use to help yourself against whatever decks you want to have the best chances against. This is Part One of a three-part series covering edges you can get against almost every deck you might see in a Classic Tournament. Big bad Flash is our first focus. It uses an old-school classic in Flash (According to Flores, this used to be broken in some control decks playing
Don’t get discouraged though. There are cards available in almost every color that can be incorporated into your deck to give you game against this deck. In White, if you’re with a weenie/fish style of deck, you can run True Believer (hard to make you lose life if they can’t target you for it), Samurai of the Pale Curtain to stop the Hulk from HITTING the graveyard and Swords to Plowshares to slow down attempts at Dreadfully painful beats. Aven Mindcensor is a lot of fun in respone to Hulk dropping into play, although they can still counter it. These are all decent-to-good main-deck cards that can fit in a lot of decks. Aether Vial is a nice complement to these cards, letting you drop multiple irritating creatures on turn 2/3, and helping evade their counterspells. Black can attack the hand with cards like Duress, Hymn to Tourach, and the like. They also have access to Smother and various other cheap creature-killers to deal with Noughts. After board, Leyline of the Void is awesome too. Don’t forget that they do have access to Reclaim to put Flash back on top. Blue is probably best equipped to fight this fight. It runs Force of Will, Spell Snare, Counterspell, Stifle, and even Force Spike and Trickbind if it wants. Trickbind is impressive against Flash, allowing them no chance to counter the spell while making them throw the Hulk and the Flash away with nothing to show for it. Counterbalance is another important tool that is available to angry Blue Mages everywhere, and can be combined with (Sensei’s Divining Top) to virtually lock Flash out of the game. Red and Green are pretty bad against Flash. Post-board, they can bring in some relevant cards, but really, they aren’t optimal colors if Flash is your opponent. This is illustrated by the huge advantage Flash has over most aggro matchups including Burn. When allowed to go about its business unimpaired by anything, it can win with relative ease around turn three. Some tips for fighting Flash. If you resolve a Duress/Thoughtseize early, ignore Pact of Negation unless you’re in a position to fight a counter-war later. Cards like Flash (of course), tutors, and Stifle are better targets. Attacking their land base is not an awful plan. They run around 17ish mana sources, and usually one or no basics. Ergo, Ghost Quarter, Magus of the Moon, and the like are not horrible against them if you can disrupt them long enough to stick some of these. Counter-wars are usually really in their favor, as they can play theirs for free. Still, with the cheap counters that matter, you can pull these out, especially if you have some edge on them, either 8+ 1CC counterspells (Spell Snare, Force Spike, Pyroblast, etc), or something like Trickbind to attack the Hulk. If you’re in White, Samurai of the Pale Curtain is your first and best friend, and if you can stick him, you’ll be in a lot better shape. Next, you want to have something redundant so they can’t just Echoing Truth/Chain of Vapor him out. That’s where a True Believer becomes useful. If you can have Vial with two counters and three mana open, you can re-play a bounced Samurai, or just play a second one or a True Believer, and still have mana to flash out a Mindcensor. Next, you need to set up a second line of defense, either hording Jitte Counters or several Swords to Plowshares in your hand to fight the inevitable 12/12 trampler. Red can do things like Pyroblast and blowing up lands, otherwise, not much to do but race and pray. Green has even less options. Mostly just pray. Lastly, Meddling Mage is a multi-color card that is pretty awesome in this kind of fight.
The second deck I want to cover is another combo deck. Dredge (I still prefer Friggorid, but we've moved past that at this point) is a deck that attacks you FROM the graveyard. Using various outlets to get cards with Dredge (like Golgari Grave-Troll) into their graveyard, they then try to mill themselves of as many cards as possible. This allows them to flip both Ichorid and Narcomoeba into their 'Yard. Then, they can beat down with Icky, flash back Cabal Therapy that may have shown up in their GY, and get 2/2 Zombie tokens with Bridge from Below. Then, they can sacrifice three of these assorted "free" creatures to flash back Dread Return, targeting Akroma if they want a slower (but often-times safer) kill, or Flame-Kin Zealot which will give the massive amount of 2/2 Zombie you've made by this point +1/+1 AND haste, allowing for the kill that turn. The deck is IMMENSELY powerful, but slightly more fragile than Flash. This is due to relying on, well, the graveyard. Honestly, most of the best ways to fight this deck are in Black and Blue. Black has Extirpate (you probably want to target Dread Return, then Narcomoeba), Leyline of the Void, and discard (you want to hit their discard enablers obviously, not so much the Dredge guys), along with randomly good guys like Withered Wretch. Blue has good cards. I mean, Trickbind/Stifle can do some good work, as can stuff like countering a Dread Return, Echoing Truth on a 2/2 token, and countering their discard outlets (Remember, Lion's Eye Diamond is a 0CC SPELL, so you can still Mana Leak it, hit it with Counterspell, etc). Meddling Mage is again solid (name Dread Return usually). Trinket Mage finding a Tormod's Crypt can be useful of course, as can Engineered Explosives, since for two mana you can blow up all their 2/2s. White and Red aren't total wusses either in this matchup. White has good removal in Swords to Plowshares (keep those Putrid Imps at bay) and Jotun Grunt if they don't have a fast draw. Mogg Fanatic in Red can remove their Bridges from the game, timed properly, and even though it is slow, Molten Rain can wreck them if they were relying on one-two mana. Green is, as in mostly cases, pretty awful at disrupting here. The first thing that is important to remember when playing against Burn is tight play. I know that we all try to play our best at all times, but against this deck you need to remember to conserve your life point like they’re water in the desert, cuz it’ll eat them up quickly. Building and playing with basic lands is an important consideration here, as they can help against this deck and against Ghost Quarter. White is the best color to fight Burn. With cards like Pulse of the Fields, Circle of Protection: Red, and the like, White tends to be able to shut
Black’s discard is good, especially two-for-ones like Hymn to Tourach. The other thing Black must do is have a solid threat. Dark Confidant is shaky here because he burn through your life quickly, but sometimes you just want to draw gas off of him. Tombstalker is huge here, as you can shred both player’s hands, and then have a 5/5 flyer to win in four turns, tops. Gerrard’s Verdict probably should get some love here as a two-for-one that can heal you if they decide not to pitch gas. Blue can play a counter-fight, and can run a nice Trinketmage package to fetch up a singleton Ivory Tower, an idea advocated by Dangerlinto. Counterbalance is also beastly against this deck, stopping most spells aside from Fireblast, and you have Counterspell for that right? That’s about it for Blue’s options, but I think that was plenty of good ones. Green doesn’t have much available. Again. I suppose if they’re with Goblins, (Hailstorm) might be solid, but really, not much to see here. Move along. Next up I have two interviews with the top two finishers from the 10 Feb PE. First up is the People's Champ, the Defending U.S. National Champ, GP Winner, and all-around good guy (Plus a member of The Cheontourage), Luis Scott-Vargas! He was rocking his old-school fob account for this tourney, and here's what he had to say. 6:04pm: walkerdog : so, what make you decide on the classic PE? 6:04pm: fob : classic is a fun format and i enjoy playing it. 6:04pm: walkerdog : have you played in any of the PEs (classic) before this one? 6:04pm: fob : yes, i've played in a few others. 6:05pm: walkerdog : what deck did you run? Something Rockish is my guess? 6:05pm: fob : it's a counterbalance-based control deck. so not really rogue 6:06pm: walkerdog : any card a particular MVP? 6:07pm: fob : it's got all good cards so that's hard to answer 6:07pm: walkerdog : little bit've Deed too? 6:08pm: fob : ancestral visions also 6:08pm: walkerdog : roger 6:09pm: fob : UB flash, UGr threshold, UBr flash, UBw CB/top +bob/tog +enlightened tutor package control 6:10pm: walkerdog : nice record against flash... 6:10pm: fob : also i won against mono black. 6:10pm: walkerdog : how do you feel against RDW/Burnish stuff? 6:11pm: fob : a quick CB+top is key game 1. 6:11pm: walkerdog : gotcha 6:11pm: fob : being able to presure them is a big point as well 6:12pm: walkerdog : I hear that 6:12pm: fob : you're welcome I appreciate LSV sharing his time and his list during his prep time for the Finals. His opponent in the Finals was one ConradKolos, another well-known online player and also a U.S. Nats Top 8 star. 7:25 walkerdog: would you mind a quick interview once the tourney is over? (He won like ten seconds after I PMed him this) 7:25 ConradKolos: haha 7:25 walkerdog: oh nice Standstill
Classic deck from Conrad Kolos
7:34 ConradKolos: and i played two red decks (one with green creatures like mongoose or whatever), the other straight burn and a Helm of Awakening/top/Brainfreeze deck in the swiss 7:35 walkerdog: awesome 7:35 ConradKolos: in the top 8 i played threshold, the mirror, and a 4c counterbalance deck 7:35 walkerdog: this matchs up pretty well with most decks right? good control elements for every angle and whatnot? 7:35 ConradKolos: actually no 7:36 walkerdog: better against aggro due to the 2-color mana-base? 7:36 ConradKolos: right 7:36 walkerdog: gotcha 7:38 ConradKolos: none in particular, mostly that no one knows how to play into counterbalance top 7:41 ConradKolos: ok, well once someone responded to my look with a lighting bolt, but i had a fetch land, so basically i got to counter his spell and had a free look at a fresh library after everything happened
7:41 ConradKolos: if he had just waited, i would have had to take that look on my upkeep 7:42 ConradKolos: and people still try to stifle things that dont work 7:42 ConradKolos: like standstill and balance 7:43 ConradKolos: you should probably try to get fob's deck 7:43 ConradKolos: cause it was really good 7:44 ConradKolos: anything else? 7:44 walkerdog: no, I appreciate your time Thanks also to Conrad for taking time from his busy PE-winning schedule to chat it up with me. LSV did say that if he could've draw ANY fetch-land or White-producing land, he had a STP for the win. I am enjoying seeing and playing against Pros and well-known players in the Classic format. I would like to mention, looking at CK's list, that his Calciform Pools look broken. Charging them up to 4-5 while both sides stall under Standstill, then firing off a MASSIVE Decree of Justice feels like cheats to me!
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