Guide to the Post-Worlds Metagame

OK. So Worlds is finally over and after many battles between dueling Vanquishers, Siege-Gang Commanders and Garruk Wildspeakers, one man, Uri Peleg, was able to weather the storm and take home the trophy with a funky little B/G/w deck whose primary selling point was its ability to bust out a fat 5/5 treefolk on the second turn.
(No, I'm not talking about Sheltering Ancient… although I've been told that that card combos pretty well with the Oni of Wild Places Avatar)

In the top 8, Peleg was able to easily dispatch Katsuhiro Mori in three straight games and then take out Kotaro Otsuka 3-1 before facing the Innovator in the Grand Final. This was a matchup between Doran, the Siege Tower and Mono-Red Dragonstorm and, although I was cheering for Chapin all the way, Peleg was ultimately able to emerge victorious in just four games because, you know, Hypnotic Specter can, like, block…




But now that all that's over, the one important thing that we must not forget to do is analyze the aftermath of Worlds and try to deduce the shape of the standard landscape. Whose stocks have gone up? Whose have crashed? What deck should you play at your next Friday Night Magic?

Well, to put it simply, in terms of decks there were three big winners at worlds: Gilt-Leaf Palace, Karplusan Forest, and Spinerock Knoll… let's take a look at each of these in turn.

Public Enemy Number One: Gilt-Leaf Palace

It does not take a genius to work out that the most successful decks to come out of Worlds are those powered by the Elf Dual land Gilt-Leaf Palace. Not only did a variant of the deck (splashing white for Doran, the Siege Tower) win the whole tournament but FIVE players in the Top 8 had the Black/Green land in their deck (Giving us a grand total of 19 copies!). Now of course, one has to always be a little wary of a statistic like this since Worlds is a multi-format event and as such it is quite possible to make the Top8 without having a good standard result. But if you just look a little closer then you'll see that all of the B/G decks in the top 8 posted excellent results in the standard portion of the swiss: Katsuhiro Mori, Yo****aka Nakano and Christoph Huber all went 5-0 while Roel van Heeswijk and Uri Peleg were able to put up a similarly impressive 4-1.

What then, is the formula for success for these G/B decks? Well, like all “Good Stuff” decks, these G/B lists play the best possible cards at every point in the curve, mixing efficient creatures like Tarmogoyf, top notch removal like Shriekmaw, hand disruption in the form of Thoughtseize and card advantage generated by the undeniably powerful planeswalkers so that what we have in a end is a mish-mash of questions and answers. It does not focus on controlling the board or attacking the opponent but is perfectly capable of doing both, playing the role of midrange control against aggressive decks and aggro control against control decks.

As such, all the G/B decks in the top8, although different, are actually built upon the same skeleton. Indeed, all you have to do is

Play FOUR Thoughtseize (Hand disruption)
Add some Tarmogoyf (Efficient creature)
Add some Eyeblight's Endings and Profane Commands (Removal)
Add some Garruk Wildspeakers (Card advantage)
Add some Other Creatures (maybe some Trolls, maybe some Trees)
Add some Other Removal (Shriekmaw, Nameless Inversion and friends)
Add some Other Card Advantage (Ohran Viper and Masked Admirers are the default)
Add some Land (but don't forget 4x Treetop Village!)
Top it all off with some Mana Elves or Birds to accelerate your curve.

Voila!

Run along now, you've got yourself a G/B deck.



OK. OK. It's not as simple as that. In fact, it's a whole lot more complicated since the major selling point of these G/B decks is their ultimate flexibility. And so, while the cores of these decks remain the same throughout, the peripheral cards are endlessly customizable. You can play certain cards over others to give the deck a different feel and indeed, from just the Top8 alone, one can easily spot three distinct archetypes (B/G Elves, B/G Rock and B/G/w Doran), each with their own game plans, strategies and matchups.

B/G Elves

Of these three archetypes, B/G Elves is the most aggressive of the bunch. In fact, this deck is so aggressive that calling it midrange would probably be a misnomer and indeed, the single thing that distinguishes this list from the others is the noticeable paucity of removal; the deck does not run Shriekmaw while the slow but powerful Liliana Vess has also been relegated to the sideboard. Instead, the deck is built around the various tribal synergies, which means that it is capable of consistently casting Wren's Run Vanquisher, the best aggressive two drop this side of Tarmogoyf, on turn two (When Wizards first published the 5-0 Standard decklists, there was a misprint on Mori's and Nakano's decklists. Instead of having Wren's Run Vanquisher, the decks were listed as running a playset of Wren's Run Packmaster. This is of course ludicrous since Wren's Run Vanquisher is the stones while Wren's Run Packmaster is a piece of s#*t.). In fact, one can even argue that it is better than Tarmogoyf since while Tarmogoyf is obviously a better creature in general, the Vanquisher is almost always a bigger, better and more aggressive play on turn two. Indeed, apart from being a 3/3, which is already above average for a two drop, the Wren's Run Vanquisher is also blessed with Deathtouch which is surprisingly relevant. This means that it can not only attack into Wall of Roots without having to worry about being blocked but it also means that it can also hold off much larger, more expensive creatures like Tarmogoyf and Doran, the Siege Tower. This ability to trade with anything that decides to tussle with it in combat also means that you can fearlessly attack into anything. Whereas a Phyrexian Ironfoot can easily hold of a Call of the Herd Token by himself, such a stop sign does not affect the Vanquisher at all. Similarly, whereas a Call Token is loath to attack into five untapped Islands, Vanquisher laughs at the possible of Teferi and charges ahead anyway. Furthermore, in the three-drop slot, the deck also runs the more aggressive Troll Ascetic over the card-advantage generating Ohran Viper while it is also the only deck of the three to pack a full set of Profane Commands, giving the deck some much needed reach.




What this ultimately means is that Elves is a more aggro-control version of G/B; Vanquisher, Tarmogoyf and Troll Ascetic together combine to make quite a fast clock while Thoughtseize does the discard duty. It thus has an excellent matchup against permission decks like Sonic Boom as the winning combination of discard + cheap threats can easily Overload the opposing deck's countermagic. On top of this, due to the faster speed of the deck, G/B Elves is also much better suited towards dealing with tempo strategies like U/B Mannequin and combo decks like Mono-Red Dragonstorm when compared with a slower deck like G/B Rock.

TarmoRock Katsuhiro Mori
2007 Worlds New York City, NY Format: Type II - LRW  
Finished: 5th - 8th Place Number of Players: 388  

Main Deck
1 Boreal Druid
1 Civic Wayfinder
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Imperious Perfect
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Masked Admirers
1 Mirri the Cursed
3 Tarmogoyf
3 Troll Ascetic
4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
2 Eyeblight's Ending
1 Loxodon Warhammer
1 Nameless Inversion
4 Profane Command
4 Thoughtseize
5 Forest
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
4 Llanowar Wastes
1 Pendelhaven
4 Swamp
4 Treetop Village
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Sideboard
2 Cloudthresher
1 Krosan Grip
3 Liliana Vess
1 Loxodon Warhammer
2 Phyrexian Totem
2 Razormane Masticore
2 Slaughter Pact
2 Viridian Shaman


The downside to the deck of course is that it lacks midrange power. This does not mean that it is bad against aggressive beatdown decks. In fact, G/B Elves are actually quite good against aggressive decks since its creatures, like Tarmogoyf and Troll, are not only hard to get through but Imperious Perfect is also particularly excellent at breaking stalemates (which often occur when your opponent has multiple goblins tokens from Mogg War Marshalls and Siege-Gang Commanders). Furthermore, the deck does have access to some excellent sideboard options in the form of Razormane Masticore, Slaughter Pact and Loxodon Warhammer. However, what this lack of midrange power does mean is that it can easily fall prey to slower, board control strategies. Indeed, Mori's build of Elves lacks the incremental card advantage provided by cards like Shriekmaw and the third copy of Garruk Wildspeaker (unlike the other G/B decks, Elves only runs two copies of Garruk) which means that it has a lot of trouble keeping up with the slower more controlling G/B Rock lists. On top of this, its lack of powerful late game options also means that it, compared to G/B Rock, is not as good at dealing with removal heavy anti-beatdown decks like U/W Martyr. Indeed, the matchup is nigh unwinnable until postboard when Liliana Vess will come in to give the deck some extra staying power.

The other disadvantage of the deck is the fact that the tribal synergies actually impose some pretty heavy restrictions on particular card choices. Indeed, just as a deck in Legacy will need about 20 Blue Cards to be able to support Force of Will, the G/B Elves deck needs a similar number of Elves (Mori runs 19 Elves in his deck) to be able to consistently cast a turn two Vanquisher. This requirement actually leads to some deckbuilding decisions that many might find baffling. A lot of people have already commented upon the singleton maindeck Mirri the Cursed, describing it as “hella random” and asking why it is there. The problem here however, is that they are asking the wrong question: instead of asking why there is a single copy of the Vampire Cat, they should instead by asking why there aren't MORE copies of the Vampire Cat. Indeed, Mirri the Cursed fits the deck's aggro control strategy quite well. As it has flying, it is great at bypassing roadblocks like Wall of Roots, Phyrexian Ironfoot and Tarmogoyf while the fact that it has first strike means that it will always win in combat against any of the fliers in U/B Mannequin. Furthermore, as it is a Black creature, it is completely immune to Shriekmaw while the fact that it has haste (kind of like a Neo-Solifuge) makes it a perfect aggressive response to a board sweeper like Damnation or Molten Disaster. Thus, it can be said that Mirri the Cursed is the perfect four drop for the deck and we definitely would be playing more if the deck did not require 19-20 Elves to function properly. As such, the deck is forced to run an alternate four drop instead that is an elf; and while although Masked Admirers is undeniably a great card, strategically, it fits much better in a more midrange deck like Huber's G/B Rock. The question as to why Mori has only THREE! Tarmogoyfs and THREE! Troll Ascetics in his deck instead of the full four can also be similarly answered in this manner.

No, it's not because our former World Champion doesn't own a playset.




G/B Rock

Another possible archetype based on the Black and the Green is the more traditional Rock deck. Although the deck runs many of the same cards as G/B Elves, the feel of the deck is completely different. This is because the players who create and pilot these Rock decks have made the conscious decision to give up the power of Wren's Run Vanquisher. Such a decision ultimately has two consequences. Firstly, it means that these decks will not be able to come out very aggressively at all since there are no Black/Green two drops in the current format that are in any way comparable to Vanquisher. Indeed, a turn two Tarmogoyf will often not get beyond Squire stats without assistance from a card like Looter il-Kor, Tarfire or Augur of Skulls. The second consequence of this decision is that the act of eschewing the powerful Vanquisher has the effect of freeing up a lot of deck space. Now the deck no longer has to be filled with substandard elves just to satisfy the elf count but can instead play cards which are better all round (of course, Huber must keep some elves in his deck so as to not have Gilt-Leaf Palace always come into play tapped. But since Gilt-Leaf Palace, unlike Wren's Run Vanquisher, can still be played even if you do not have an Elf to reveal, there is no need to run an extremely large number of them). A simple example of this is how Huber runs 2x Birds of Paradise instead of 1x Boreal Druid and 1x Civic Wayfinder. One of the biggest advantages of freeing up of deck space, of course, is that it grants the Rock player the opportunity to play Shriekmaw. Now that the removal slots no longer have to be taken up by cards which are also elves, Huber can play the insane 187 machine which, of course, completely changes the shape of the deck and its accompanying strategy. Instead of playing out like an Aggro-Control deck, Huber's slower Rock list is much more similar to a midrange control deck that aims to two-for-one the opponent into oblivion with cards that generate small incremental card advantage. As such, more aggressive options like Troll Ascetic are replaced by cards like Ohran Viper, which performs the double role of providing card advantage and defending against opposing Tarmogoyfs, while cards like Masked Admirers fit into the deck perfectly despite the lack of tribal synergies. Indeed, compared to Mori's list, Huber's deck has a much better late game with the curve topping at THREE! copies of Liliana Vess.

TarmoRock Christoph Huber
2007 Worlds New York City, NY Format: Type II - LRW
Finished: 5th - 8th Place Number of Players: 388

Main Deck
2 Birds of Paradise
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
3 Liliana Vess
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Masked Admirers
4 Ohran Viper
3 Shriekmaw
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Eyeblight's Ending
1 Loxodon Warhammer
3 Nameless Inversion
3 Profane Command
4 Thoughtseize
5 Forest
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
1 Horizon Canopy
4 Llanowar Wastes
1 Pendelhaven
3 Snow-Covered Swamp
4 Treetop Village
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Sideboard
1 Damnation
1 Extirpate
4 Eyes of the Wisent
2 Graveborn Muse
1 Nameless Inversion
1 Pithing Needle
1 Riftsweeper
1 Shriekmaw
3 Viridian Shaman

Yet this however, is not a decklist that is completely without weaknesses. Although the deck is quite strong against both beatdown decks and should be able to take out slow decks with Liliana Vess, one of the things that you will have noticed about the list is that it is exceedingly fair. Indeed, none of its cards do anything particularly broken and as such, its relative slowness compared to Elves necessary means that it will have a hard time keeping up with a deck like Dragonstorm (Ohran Viper is not exactly the scariest beatdown card). Thoughtseize is generally not enough to win the game unless you also have pressure and this deck will often be incapable of generating enough early pressure unless it has access to a very early Garruk.




Furthermore, as the spells that B/G Rock utilizes are relatively more expensive than the spells in B/G Elves, the Rock deck does run the risk that it will get out-tempoed by either permission or bounce. Indeed, the deck has a terrible matchup against U/B Mannequin as the deck has no real way to regain the tempo lost from bounce effects (Not to mention the fact that many of the cards in Rock are basically inferior versions of Mannequins card—Viper is basically an inferior Finkel while Mulldrifter is usually better than Masked Admirers). Permission is also a problem since what will often happen is that a blue deck will be able to trade a 2 or 3 mana counter for a 4 or 5 mana spell and indeed, unless the Rock player has turn 2 Ohran Viper on the play, the Sonic Boom player is a huge favorite. This of course, explains why Huber has anti-Blue cards in his SB like Eyes of the Wisent while Mori's Elves list does not.

Apart from the possibility of losing to tempo, the final weakness of the B/G Rock deck is that it is actually possible to get out-midranged by a bigger and badder curve. Although the Rock player can gain card advantage at any point in his curve which tops with the very impressive Liliana Vess, some decks are capable of doing better than just merely two-for-one. Indeed, some decks will just continually trade spells with you and then suddenly play a couple of three for ones in succession: a Harmonize into a Siege-Gang Commander and then a Bogardan Hellkite. Shriekmaw is good, but it is after all, only a two-for-one.

The other problem with Shriekmaw is that it is a card that gets progressively worse as the format develops. Indeed, players are often prepared for it and are designing their decks in such a way so as to avoid getting wrecked by it. Back at States, Shriekmaw could kill anything and everything, but now, cards like Phyrexian Ironfoot, Doran the Siege Tower, Nath the Gilt Leaf and Siege-Gang Commander are seeing more and more play.

TarmoRock Uri Peleg
2007 Worlds New York City, NY Format: Type II - LRW  
Finished: 1st Place Number of Players: 388

Main Deck
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Doran, the Siege Tower
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Liliana Vess
3 Llanowar Elves
4 Ohran Viper
3 Shriekmaw
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Eyeblight's Ending
2 Nameless Inversion
2 Profane Command
4 Thoughtseize
1 Brushland
3 Caves of Koilos
1 Forest
2 Gemstone Mine
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
1 Horizon Canopy
4 Llanowar Wastes
1 Pendelhaven
4 Treetop Village
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Sideboard
2 Cloudthresher
2 Loxodon Warhammer
2 Nath of the Gilt-Leaf
1 Oblivion Ring
3 Riftsweeper
2 Serrated Arrows
1 Shriekmaw
2 Stupor

Uri Peleg's Doran list is actually a very interesting case. While Mori's Elves list could be said to lean more towards Aggro-Control and while Huber's Rock list could be said to lean more towards Mid-range, Peleg's Doran list tries to get the best of both worlds. On the one hand, it can play Aggro-Control since although it does not have access to Wren's Run Vanquisher it can nevertheless generate a blisteringly fast clock by playing Doran the Siege Tower on turn two (Doran is basically Vanquisher +2). This is a potentially fatal threat for the opponent and is extremely difficult to answer. In fact, Doran is nigh unkillable due to the fact that he is a Black creature with more than 3 toughness (this makes him immune to Incinerate, Nameless Inversion, Shriekmaw, Slaughter Pact etc) and unless the opponent is able to muster up an Eyeblight's Ending or an Oblivion Ring very quickly, the Treefolk Shaman will most likely go all the way. When this is backed up by Thoughtseizes and Tarmogoyfs into Planeswalkers, a control deck will have a difficult time keeping up.

Yet on the other hand, Peleg's Doran deck is also able to play midrange control. As he is not burdened by the restriction of having to play 19-20 Elves in his deck, he is able to fill his deck with strong mid-endgame cards like Shriekmaw and Liliana Vess and Nath of the Gilt Leaf from Sideboard. Doran himself is also a great midrange creature since he is so huge and so efficient for his cost that he will almost always lead to a 2 for 1 against beatdown decks. Peleg's 3-0 thrashing of Mori's Elves deck is a testament as to how strong a midrange deck the Doran deck can be.

But then again, nothing is perfect and the one glaring weakness that his deck has is the mana base. Doran costs GWB and is fiendishly difficult to cast. And although Peleg has done an excellent job on the mana, resisting the temptation to play any White cards other than Doran himself, the deck nevertheless still has some consistency issues and mulligans more often than either G/B Elves and G/B Rock.

But then again… that's just the price you pay for power…
Part two is coming soon so stay tuned!
by Kuan-Kuan Tian