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Main » Articles » It's a Cat-astrophe!

It's a Cat-astrophe!

Ben Friedman
Posted on February 3, 2017
 Reddit

Those words describe my feelings about Standard in the days leading up to the Pro Tour here in Dublin. I have a bold prediction that somewhere around half of the decks at this event are going to contain the now-infamous Saheeli Rai-Felidar Guardian combo, leading to a ban at Wizards’ soonest convenience. Dylan Donegan didn’t quite break it last week at the Open in Richmond, but his win will certainly project heavily on the metagame, and it will serve us well to figure out exactly how he improved Saheeli to beat the Week One decks.

His list:

Jeskai Saheeli ? Aether Revolt Standard | Dylan Donegan

Nahiri, the Harbinger
So what changed? Well, Dylan correctly recognized that he would need an answer to opposing Authority of the Consuls, and wanted to filter his draws while threatening a hasty Torrential Gearhulk, to boot. Nahiri, the Harbinger is secretly BFFs with Saheeli Rai, and helps protect her from those rude Consuls while she clones her pet Felidar Guardian a few million times.

But seriously, Nahiri is great here. As an Assassinate with a leftover Planeswalker body, the “exile target tapped creature” ability is fantastic against opposing aggressive Walking Ballistas, Verdurous Gearhulks, and the like. Nahiri protects against Authority of the Consuls, as previously mentioned, and she quickly grows her loyalty while filtering your draws in the control mirror. What’s not to love?

Speaking of card filtering, Oath of Jace is spectacular as a way for Felidar Guardian to get some extra nice value outside the combo. Against control mirrors, both players will have oodles of useless Immolating Glares, Harnessed Lightnings and Fumigates that they’re looking to discard, and against Delirium, the Jeskai player will be digging frantically for those very same removal spells. Oath rules, but it’s not the only Oath that I’m interested in playing in this deck. Oath of Chandra is actually completely legit, because the deck needs to have a turn-two removal spell for opposing Walking Ballistas, Winding Constrictors, and Grim Flayers. Additionally, Oath of Chandra allows your Saheeli Rais to more realistically pressure your opponents’ Saheeli Rais, Nissas, Lilianas or Gideons. That free two damage is no joke!

Oath of Chandra
More importantly, the presence of an Oath of Chandra on the battlefield means that your combo is no longer vulnerable to an opposing Walking Ballista (at least, one of size 3/3 or smaller). If your opponent has a Ballista and you have 7 mana, you can just cast your Guardian, flicker your Oath, target the Ballista, and watch their expression crumble as they realize that their “hate creature” is not going to save them from death by a thousand Cats!

Okay, so we’re pretty high on Oaths as juicy Felidar targets. What other innovations did Dylan employ to take advantage of a vulnerable metagame? Well, Fumigate, for one. Fumigate is absolutely stellar when your opponents are casting Mindwrack Demons, Rishkar, Peema Renegades, Winding Constrictors and Grim Flayers. Sweepers have been kind of bad in a Gideon-and-Vehicle-dominated Standard, but when Gideon goes away in the face of B/G as the “better” aggro deck, Fumigate can come out to prey on those creature-centric midrangey beatdown decks. Immolating Glare is more of the same. If your opponents are casting Mindwrack Demons and Verdurous Gearhulks rather than Gideons, Ishkanah, Grafwidows and Emrakul, the Promised Ends, you absolutely want to be trading a two-mana instant for their four- or five-mana creature.

So wait, you might ask. Why did Gideon go away? What can bring him back? Well, if the opponents are juicing up their creatures to massive proportions with Constrictor, Gearhulk, and Rishkar, you don’t want to be casting a Gideon only to immediately lose it to those giant monsters. If they’re playing a big flying trampler like Mindwrack Demon, you are super sad for your measly 2/2 tokens that must sit and watch in horror as their champion gets chomped on by a Demon. This is the beauty of the cyclical metagame, writ small. Fumigate decks eat up Green creature decks with their sweepers, point removal, and card draw. Green creature decks eat Gideon decks because they make insurmountable board positions quickly, and Gideon decks often can’t establish a toehold quickly enough to avoid getting run over. Gideon decks munch on Fumigate decks because, well . . . the removal is poorly suited to handling a Gideon. Fumigate is an astoundingly bad card when you’re sweeping up a bunch of tokens. The decks that aren’t trying to establish huge board positions, and instead seek to remove opponents’ board positions, can’t really answer sticky threats like Gideon profitably. The extremely narrow subset of answers for an on-board Gideon in Jeskai colors in Standard come out to . . . Flame Lash(!) Ugh. I’m not about that life.

Torrential Gearhulk
But right now, we aren’t living in the world where Jeskai gets pressured by Gideons. We’re in the world where Dylan crushed unprepared opponents with his removal suite geared toward B/G Delirium, to the point where I suspect that B/G Aggro will be nearly non-existent at the top tables of the Pro Tour. It’s truly the Level Zero deck. Jeskai is Level One now, so what comes next?

Well, I wish I could answer that question, but the Pro Tour hasn’t happened yet! I know that my team has been holed up for the past few days grinding out Jeskai versus the world, and so far it doesn’t look good for the world. Jeskai puts the opponents in the Twin Bind, where they’re stuck leaving mana up, playing awkwardly, dancing in between Gearhulks and Glimmers on one end, and a thousand Cats on the other one. Even Four-Color Saheeli, which plays more value creatures, generally falls behind to the Glimmer of Genius - Torrential Gearhulk cascade of card advantage and giant monsters. Rogue Refiner is a fine Magic card, but it does kind of the same thing as Glimmer of Genius while being vulnerable to the otherwise-dead removal in the Saheeli mirrors. You don’t want to walk your Refiner, Servant of the Conduit, and Spell Queller into a Fumigate, for sure. Even Elder Deep-Fiend, the best way to sneak through a combo kill, doesn’t turn the matchup completely around. Grixis Dynavolt, Colossus decks, Aetherworks Marvel, all the other combo and control decks of the format fall in line behind the best blend of both. I truly think that this is a format which stops at Level One, where no deck can get a huge edge on Jeskai no matter which angle they try to attack from. The best bet would be a hyper-aggressive deck with Gideon and countermagic, but Vehicles was hamstrung by the loss of Smuggler's Copter and Flash was smacked even harder when it lost Reflector Mage as well. A deck something like Julian John’s Esper Aggro deck might be the best bet for those who want to beat the best deck, rather than play it, but even that is a dicey proposition. Let’s take a look:

Esper Aggro ? Aether Revolt Standard | Julian John

Heart of Kiran
An aggro-control deck to answer Jeskai Saheeli, cards like Heart of Kiran and Gideon are sure to put pressure on the control deck while the newest iteration of Mana Leak, Metallic Rebuke, can counter their attempt to stay alive.

(Anecdotal aside: I’m writing this as teammates Pascal Maynard and Timothy Wu are battling Jeskai Saheeli vs. Esper Aggro, and Tim is slowly losing his mind as Pascal repeatedly bashes him with Jeskai. I told you Jeskai was probably the best deck!)

Even if Esper Aggro is strategically favored against the Jeskai deck, there are a ton of problems with casting Toolcraft Exemplar in a format with at least a quarter of people playing Walking Ballista. I would hesitate to bring this deck to a tournament myself, just because it’s basically impossible to beat a curve of Winding Constrictor into Walking Ballista. Heart of Kiran and Gideon are the best cards in your deck, just because they aren’t vulnerable to the best interactive spells in Jeskai (Fumigate and Harnessed Lightning). The problem is, the rest of your deck is pretty underpowered, and you can very easily fall behind to a pretty average draw from a midrange deck.

If you really want to play something that isn’t Jeskai, and you expect opponents to battle with Dylan’s SCG-winning deck, one more option is G/W Tokens. No, you don’t need to play Authority of the Consuls in your maindeck (although it might not be the worst sideboard option), but Gideon, Nissa, and Heart of Kiran have something to say to Fumigate-happy Jeskai opponents. If they don’t draw the combo, they’re probably dead. If they do, you might still have a Ballista to keep them off it for a turn. Sometimes the future lies in Standard’s past, and I expect at least one or two of our contingent to battle with Canopy Vista at this Pro Tour:

W/G Tokens ? Aether Revolt Standard | Ben Friedman

They’re off Oath of Nissa, since it apparently isn’t aggressive enough for their liking. I don’t endorse this specific list, but I do endorse Heart of Kiran with Planeswalkers as a plan to give control decks fits. You’ve got a healthy amount of Saheeli Combo hate, and since your main game plan is so well-suited to beating the control half of Jeskai, you might be able to get away with handicapping yourself with things like Authority of the Consuls.

Or . . . you could stop handicapping yourself, play the best deck, and try to tune your list to attack the mirror in new and creative ways. Here’s my best attempt at press time, and I foresee myself battling with a very similar configuration come Pro Tour time:

Jeskai Saheeli ? Aether Revolt Standard | Ben Friedman

Three Anticipates are in there because Oath of Jace is sort of a split card between Anticipate and Glimmer of Genius, and I don’t want to spin my wheels too much on turns 2-4. Two Dynavolt Towers main and a third in the sideboard are my mirror match considerations. I’d love to add the second Oath of Jace to the maindeck and a third Oath of Chandra to the sideboard, as well as potentially a second Nahiri, the Harbinger or even a Jace, Unraveler of Secrets.

I suspect that Prairie Stream is better than Port Town, but I’m not certain on that front either. The deck might benefit from an extra basic land or two if I do end up on team Stream. Sphinx of the Final Word is another mirror match idea, because if both players end up slugging each other for upwards of ten or fifteen turns, there are worse ways to end the game than unkillable, uncounterable 5/5 flyers that also make your counterspells bulletproof. I look forward to seeing how it plays out, and even if the PT is a bit monotonous, there should be a ton of exhibitions of skill in the feature matches. Spell Queller, Dynavolt Tower, more Planeswalkers, Dragonmaster Outcast, there are tons of angles out there, and the best players will win based on their knowledge of which resource matters at which stage of the game.

I, for one, feel extremely lucky to be a part of it, and hopefully next week I’ll be back with a winner’s tournament report!

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TAGS articles, standard, strategy, metagame, constructed, decklist, 40cardfriedman, ben freidman, jeskai saheeli, copycat combo

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