Tree of Tales – Surveying the Land

– August 5, 2011Posted in: Article, Formats, Standard, Tree of Tales

Welcome back to the Tree folks. Let’s all gather round and take a look at what’s happened of late. Things have been a bit rattled up for the past few weeks, but it finally looks as though we are getting a better view of the environment before us, even if it is only for another 2 months. We have a few results to look at, and the archetypes to watch for are finally apparent.

Did things shape up the way I thought? In most ways yes, but there were a few surprises. Some things didn’t work out as well as I thought they would, and others did better than I could have foreseen. Let’s do this one deck at a time, so as not to get things jumbled up.

Pyromancer’s Ascension

So this deck looks like the real deal, and will be a contender. The power of this deck comes partially from it’s ability to switch it’s play style fairly easily, molding itself to whatever opponent it happens to be playing. Against slower more controlling decks, it can slow play it’s hand, land multiple “verbs” in it’s graveyard, then resolve Ascension and just win.

How to play against it: Be aware of what it has done, and what it’s doing. Short of resolving a turn 0 Leyline of the Void against them and protecting it, graveyard hate is out of the question. Attacking their enchantment is usually your best strategy, especially since this gives you reach against the alternate strategy of Deceiver Exarch/Splinter Twin that many of them move to post board. They usually play a fair number of counterspells given the amount of digging they do, so don’t expect a single hate spell to ruin their day. Also, keep in mind that Nature’s Claim can be a liability, since some of these decks run Mental Misstep out of their sideboards.

Valakut

The big daddy of the environment, this looks to be a heavily played archetype, dominating the Japanese nationals with over 20% of the field. We all knew this would be a strong archetype following the bannings, and it has not disappointed. That being said, I’m not convinced of it as the best deck, given that it still has bad match-ups. A good choice if you don’t want to innovate and ride out the rest of this format.

How to play against it: This can really vary from list to list, since some run Summoning Trap, others run Solemn Simulacrum, and each has it’s own flavor. Non-basic land destruction can be quite helpful against them, as losing their Valakut, the Molten Pinnacles can bankrupt them. Cards like Memoricide are also exceptionally helpful against them, stealing their primary engine early in the game. If you have access to both, so much the better.

RDW

I’m going to clump all the Red burn-creature-smash decks together here, since they all play fairly similarly. The addition of Grim Lavamancer to this archetype has helped quite a bit, and it really makes this one to watch. It can beat you before you even know what happened.

How to play against it: Kor Firewalker. If you don’t know, then look it up. Life-gain can be pretty fundamental in beating these decks, as cards like Timely Reinforcements and Obstinate Baloth just abuse their structure. Leyline of Sanctity can be good, but I’m fundamentally against cards that are really only good when they hit them in your opening 7.

R/U/G Twin

Another archetype that I expected to be huge following the banning. It has produced, just not in the numbers I expected. If budget is not an issue and you like winning fast and large, this is the deck for you. Losing Jace hurt this deck, but it still performs admirably, and can even be combined with the engine of Birthing Pod to great benefit.

How to play against it: Attacking their early mana can be a great help, as it stunts their development. Barring that, controlling their top end and keeping them off card-draw can help fizzle them out, leaving you in a dominant position. Just remember that any of their potential threats can beat you by itself.

Tempered Steel

This gained a lot of strength in weeks of late, becoming a true force to deal with. Quick creatures, huge pumps, and some evasion just gives this deck the right formula to be exceptionally hard to beat.

How to play against it: Creeping Corrosion anyone? Seriously though, artifact removal is at a premium against this deck, basically acting as removal for everything they play. Cards that double it with enchantment removal are just brutal, and can make things very troublesome for this archetype. Lastly, beware the Inkmoth Nexus approach, as Tempered Steel can make Inkmoth end the game quickly.

Caw Blade

So apparently losing Jace 2.0 and Stoneforge Mystic didn’t cripple this archetype, it just brought it down to other people’s level. It still backs on Sword-wielding birds and lands, and seems pretty balanced for our current meta. It just no longer has the insane card selection engine it did before, which slows it down quite a bit.

How to play against it: Beat them at their own game. Usually cards like Vengevine and Bloodghast give these guys fits, especially if you can handle a Sword of Feast and Famine when it pops up. Without their equipment, this deck is sub-par at best, so attack it when you can. Don’t let them resolve Gideon unless you can work around him, which can be difficult.

There are more decks in the environment, but these ones are what I’m watching for most closely. Each of these has already produced top 8 finishes in major events since the bannings/addition of M12, which means it possesses the qualities necessary to dominate. In terms of planning, those are the decks I’m testing against most closely, based on likelihood of contact.

……………

So this will be my section where I will gloat for a while about the success of the Hive Mind archetype of late. I began building this archetype shortly after M10 was released, as me and my friend Rick were brainstorming about ways to break Hive Mind. The concept was fairly simple: Get Hive Mind into play, then start spamming Pact spells, causing your opponent to lose the game. I offered up Show and Tell as a quick option, and it really took off from there.

The first incarnation of this deck for us was truly horrific, and didn’t produce the consistency that we wanted. We trimmed down some of the fluff, and added more cantrips, then switched to Lim-Dul’s Vault from Mystical Tutor post-banning. The switch from Mystical was what proved to be the biggest catalyst, as Lim-Dul’s Vault may be the most under-appreciated tutor ever printed. I mean, come on people, I was using this card back in ’99!

Those modifications really helped turn this deck around, and we ended up at a list I really liked. I’m not going to post my list, since if you really want one, go check 1^st place at SCG Seattle. That being said, I really have to rub this one in a bit. When I was playing (and winning) tournaments with this deck, it was described as incredibly loose, just plain bad, inconsistent, etc. Now it was won an Open outright, and has placed repeatedly, and in numbers, at Seattle and others. Anyone still think this archetype is loose?

OK, I’ll stop now. Seriously though folks, be prepared. This deck is the real deal, and will own you completely if you aren’t prepared. I’ve beaten decks with upwards of 10 counterspells targeting me. I’ve beaten decks with main deck Stifle AND Trickbind, plus counterspells. The point I’m getting at is as follows; Don’t think this is another TES that you can simply board a couple cards and have a good match-up. Understand this deck, and test against it, and you will find the cracks in it’s armor, and find the best way to abuse this. In my experience, Hymn to Tourach, Thoughtseize, and Wasteland were the instruments of my destruction in the matches I’ve lost.

That being said, my combined record with Hive Mind was 17-3-4. The three losses were to Rock, Merfolk, and Affinity. Rock just punished me out with Wastelands and Hymns, which totally crippled me. Merfolk got there on the back of multiple Wastelands drawn in the match-up. Affinity just flat out beat me, getting there on turn 3 two games in a row. The numbers don’t lie, and if you were a TES player that has finally realized how badly losing Mystical Tutor punished you, switch to Hive Mind and play a much better combo deck.

Well that’s it for this time. I don’t have any relevant tech, as I haven’t been doing much in the way of testing. I’ve already hammered out my list for Extended season, and barring some drastic change in Innistrad, it’s what I will be going with. Legacy has become somewhat stagnant for me, as the only true change in the format has been the surge of Hive Mind, which I’ve been predicting for a long time. So until next time folks, keep turning those cards sideways!

rufio

Posted August 6, 2011 at 10:41 PM

I think having one deck dominating the format is boring… that leads to a stagnant format, with everyone only playing one deck, the reason they banned stone forge mystic and jace in standard. Most of what you said in response to my argument was a useless analogy, So I am going to ignore it. A deck can be well positioned and therefore is a better deck for the meta but not the better deck.

Reply

Michael Coughenour

Posted August 7, 2011 at 3:06 PM

My analogy was pretty spot on, and completely explained my position. I find the level of variance currently present in the format to be the result of there not being any kind of “break-out deck.” This means that you have next to 0% chance to take your build to a Major without encountering something you didn’t even THINK about. I respect your opinion as a “Casual Legacy player,” but don’t tell me I’m wrong because I represent a far more competitive crowd that attempts to control their destiny. As for your remark in concerns to banning cards to avoid stagnation, Standard and Legacy are two completely different beasts, which I would assume that you would understand given the amount of Legacy play you claim to get. In Standard, a dominant deck almost always leads to stagnation, mostly because the number of available answers is severely limited due to set constraints. There is no such problem in Legacy, with literally every deck having a completely un-beatable opposition. This is why I said that a dominant deck in Legacy leads to innovation, as people modify existing structures in order to accomodate the necessity to beat whatever it may be that is crushing. It happened for Reanimator, it happened for Dredge, it happened for Counterbalance. I’m sorry that it offends you that my opinion represents what most competitive players truly want, which is a low-variance high-skill format where you don’t lose games because you played against 11 different decks in 11 rounds. Stagnation has a very broad definition sir, and the inability to even IDENTIFY tier 1 decks in the current Legacy format means it is becoming more and more painful for good players to play the format, as far too often you end up losing to variance (a.k.a. Luck). I mean, look at the 1st place finishes in the last 6 Legacy majors, and tell me that there isn’t an unacceptable level of variance. If Standard had this many decks poised to win on a regular basis, most competitive players would simply stop playing, because they would have such a diminishing ability to win tournaments that it would make no sense to spend the money on travel and such, and you think this would be healthy for our format? You mentioned meta-gaming, which is an important part of every pro’s arsenal (no, I don’t consider myself a pro). How are professionals supposed to meta-game in a field where any of 10 decks can conceptually win said event? You can’t. So please, don’t attack my positions unless you’re actually going to explain yours sir/.
- Reply
  
  MostlyHarmless
  
  Posted August 9, 2011 at 2:17 AM
  
  “How are professionals supposed to meta-game in a field where any of 10 decks can conceptually win said event? You can’t.”
  
  Gerry Thompson begs to differ. Just sayin’.
- Reply
  
  rufio
  
  Posted August 9, 2011 at 6:37 PM
  
  ” How are professionals supposed to meta-game in a field where any of 10
  decks can conceptually win said event? You can’t. So please, don’t
  attack my positions unless you’re actually going to explain yours sir.”
  
  Well I would argue the play to your strengths and board against your weaknesses, but anybody with a brain and who has play tested before would know this. So how do I attack a meta? well for my local tournaments i play a simple aggro deck for a bit like rdw/tempered steel, I get used to what they are playing, what people are boarding, then choose a deck that is well positioned in the current situation. At my local shop a lot of people were playing caw blade and rdw, I felt that pyromancers was the perfect deck for the situation, top 8’d a few tournaments then saw an increase in hate so now I am switching to valacut and boros alternating until i see the hate go down. So if I was going to prepare for a big tournament I would go to scg and check the results for the last few tournaments figure out which deck i feel best fits my play style and see if it was well positioned. If it was well positioned I would board against the consistent finishers and my bad match ups. If my deck wasn’t well positioned against the consistent finishers then I would switch decks and play the shit out of it until I got it down. Board again the same way.
  
  You make this huge distinction between what is a fun and interesting format in legacy as compared to what people think is a fun and interesting format in standard and I just happen to completely disagree with your statements. I don’t understand how you can admit that if one deck dominating the format in standard leads to people not wanting to play it but not that one deck dominating legacy could lead you to not want to play it. I don’t know if you remember all the survival vengvine decks that were ruining legacy because one deck dominated the format. You couldn’t see a starcity results without having 4 out of 8 decks being survival. So i do think your bulls analogy was useless because they banned the shit out of survival just like jace and sfm… because it made magic boring. If you go to old school extended and the ravager decks that dominated until they banned dark confident. No one wants the bulls, forget about the bulls, people want a format open enough where they can brew, run rogue and run hot. People like innovation, they like magic to be fun and open where one deck beats one deck but loses to another. No one enjoys a coin flip but everyone enjoys rock/paper/scissors.
  
  So in my opinion what makes a healthy format? Where your ability to read the meta and plan for it, the reliance of you knowing how to play your deck, and how your match ups work are the most important skills for winning a tournament. It should not be Hey can I beat caw-blade because I know that 70% of the format is caw-blade and the best deck right now to play is caw-blade designed to beat caw-blade….
  - Reply
    
    Michael Coughenour
    
    Posted August 25, 2011 at 11:02 PM
    
    Well, I certainly would say that average players would tend to agree with you sir. I do not. Without any clear dominant upper tier, you might as well be throwing darts at a board. You can take your awesome deck down to the tournament and get stomped, 0-2, because you played against a bunch of crazy rogue shit that no respectable pro would even touch with gloves. This doesn’t make for a good format in my eyes. I like knowing what the powered upper tier is, and then designing my build accordingly. Your survival analogy is just funny. Did you know that in other parts of the world, Survival wasn’t even being played? Turns out that Extirpate and Tormod’s Crypt OWNED that deck. So you see, relevance is really subjective. You say that you look at your deck’s weaknesses and strengths, and sideboard accordingly. That seems rediculous to me. I sideboard to win particular matches, simply put. I can’t do this in a Legacy format where I could see any of 15 decks on any given sunday. I prepare my board for 3-4 of those decks, and then hope I don’t get plowed by the other 11 I’m ignoring. Even matches where you statistically have an advantage can’t necessarily be ignored, as they could have relevant hate in their board for you. Variety is great, but the smorgasbord of current options is bad for Legacy imho.
    
    That being said, for most mid-range players, your view is the more common one (I know because I did a poll), which technically makes me wrong when viewed against my peers. Congratulations sir. That still doesn’t mean I agree with you, nor that I concede your points to be correct. I simply accept that I must be significantly more competitive than a lot of my peers, which makes sense, because I always tend to be a little more upset when I lose than most of my peers. The majority of pros were in the same boat with me in saying that they preferred the Standard format with the domination of Caw-Blade, because it made testing for majors much easier. Play-skill was all that truly mattered (well, a little luck), not whether you had perfect match-ups throughout a day. I much prefer a format that rewards me for being a good player over a format that punishes me because I didn’t tune my deck to beat Goblins, RDW, UW, Valakut, RUG and more. Sorry, but I will never understand a player who hates knowing what he will be facing.
    - Michael Coughenour
      
      Posted August 25, 2011 at 11:05 PM
      
      Sideboarding in legacy is much different than Standard. In Legacy, you have access to numerous cards that DESTROY other archetypes, cards like Mindbreak Trap for TES and Engineered Plague for Goblins. If built correctly, most Legacy decks don’t have too many glaring weaknesses, but having an ace in the hole for a particular match can be brutally powerful.

MostlyHarmless

Posted August 9, 2011 at 2:14 AM

I really don’t care about standard at all, so I’m going to skip that part and jump right to the legacy section. While you’re correct that Hive Mind is a beast of a deck in this meta, you’re also selling TES seriously short.

1 – “Don’t think this is another TES that you can simply board a couple cards and have a good match-up”
This is straight up ridiculous. The only decks that can “simply board in a couple cards” against TES and expect to win are counterbalance and team america. TES gets an incredible number of free wins because people think 4 hate cards are good enough. If you think a couple cards will save you, you haven’t tested against a competent opponent and you will lose because of it. To be fair, the hate against storm is more powerful than that against Hive Mind. Fortunately, storm also has access to much more powerful answers (because it plays 3-5 colors) and can find them more easily (because of its tutors, particularly Burning Wish).

2 – “If you were a TES player that has finally realized how badly losing Mystical Tutor punished you”
This is also ridiculous. Do some research. TES was usually only playing 2 Mystical Tutors before the banning, and they were generally the first cards boarded out in every match. Maybe you have this deck confused with Ad Nauseam Tendrils?

3 – “Please show me the last major where TES took 3 of the top 8 spots”
Yes, yes, we understand that Hive Mind did well. It was well positioned for the metagame in Seattle and a lot of people were playing it. I think the major reason that TES does not put up such impressive results is that there aren’t very many experienced pilots, and none of them regularly attend SCG Opens. I will point out that when Bryant Cook and Liam Kane attend an Open or other large tournament, they play TES and they do well (the last few were 11th, 8th and day 2 of GP: Providence.

4 – “It is far more easily disruptable. Not only does TES lose far more
easily to a counterspell, but they enable cards like Mindbreak Trap to
beat them as well.”
Also wrong. TES runs 7-9 disruption spells main and has an extremely high threat density. The only reason TES loses to a single counter is if they decide to go off turn 1 with no protection (a play which will beat every single non-force deck and 40% of the force decks). If you want to beat TES with counters, you should have at least 3-4 (not counting worthless cards like daze) backed up by a decent clock, or at least 6-7 if you plan on winning a long game. God forbid TES just draws an Empty the Warrens. Combo decks don’t survive in Legacy if they can’t beat a Force of Will.

5 – “2. It requires significantly more decisions in order to achieve it’s
desired status. 3. It is a far more skill intensive deck than Hive
Mind. I’m not saying that Hive Mind doesn’t require skill, but TES
requires so many more decisions than Hive Mind that you have
significantly more chances to make an error and lose a game”
These are the same point, so I’ll lump them together. Honestly, they hardly qualify as a point at all. Your argument is that difficult decks are inherently worse? Decks with more options are bad? That’s ridiculous. You should rate decks by what happens when you make the right decisions, not what happens when you make the wrong ones. If you play TES well, it’s excellent. If you play it badly, it’s a pile that will only beat bad zoo players. This also explains point 4. The deck is fairly difficult to pilot, so fewer people play it and even fewer play it well enough to win a serious tournament. Therefore, it has fewer wins.

Now, I am not disputing the fact that Hive Mind is a good deck. It’s very powerful and has some very good matchups, which makes it a strong meta choice. It has the added benefit that you can pick it up a week beforehand and pilot it reasonably well. That said, TES is also a very good deck. If you want to play combo for a weekend, I would recommend Hive Mind. If you want to play combo for a while and are willing to put in some time to learn, get a storm deck.

Reply

Michael Coughenour

Posted August 25, 2011 at 10:47 PM

Ok, point by point.

Complexity – Yes, I am quite simply saying that a combo deck that requires less decision trees to achieve a winning game state is a better deck. If the archetype in question requires a LSV level pilot to be a competitive deck consistently, then the deck itself is probably not nearly as dominant as you might think. If Caw-Blade required extreme play-skill to win events, you probably wouldn’t have seen the retardedly large number of non-names qualifying with it. Is complexity inherently a bad thing? No, but if it detracts from the ability of an average player to play said deck, then it is.

Disruptability – Ummm, you are aware that most good Hive Mind lists run 8 FREE counterspells, as well as discard and sometimes even more free counterspells (MMS)? Sorry to say it, but Hive Mind is significantly less disruptable, ESPECIALLY since they can tutor for Boseiju and just win. Good TES lists only run 1 additional color (red) over Hive Mind, and the sole pro to that is Burning Wish, and I won’t even go into that. Storm is pretty easily hosed by Mindbreak Trap, a pair of counters, even Stifle can cause problems (Stifle your Storm trigger?). Also, if you get your set-up stopped with TES, you flatly lose the game on the spot, which isn’t a factor for Hive Mind (get countered? reload almost instantly).

Mystical Tutor – Yes, ANT was hurt significantly more by losing Mystical, but thats because no one in their right mind would have run the current TES list back then, as ANT was so much better it was redonkulous. Sorry to say it, but ANT was the benchmark, then they banned Mystical Tutor, and suddenly 3 color storm decks were the rage, mostly because no one could make the UB build work consistently following that banning.

The point I made regarding boarding a few cards in vs. TES is that in reality, most Force decks have a pretty good game against TES, as they either run other counters on top of FoW, or they run discard to supplement it. Either way, if they bring in 4 Mindbreak Trap/etc. then they will strengthen their match-up to the point where it can be insurmountable barring a godly draw. The same cannot be said for Hive Mind, as most people’s game 1 plan against them is to simply get lucky.

Tree of Tales – Surveying the Land

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