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Main » Articles » Make that a Car-tastrophe!

Make that a Car-tastrophe!

Ben Friedman
Posted on February 10, 2017
 Reddit

Heart of Kiran
Well, that was a bit surprising. Most of us, myself included, expected Jeskai Saheeli (or Four-Color Saheeli) to dominate the Pro Tour, to the point that I expected almost half the field to be packing the combo in one way or another. Unfortunately for my tournament (but fortunately for those who care about format diversity), Mardu Vehicles drove off with the trophy, leaving the slower combo-control decks in the dust. What gives?

The first thing to realize is that the Saheeli decks all started to shave on Shocks. Our list was down to a single copy, and Dylan Donegan’s list from the previous week’s SCG tournament didn’t have any. The lack of one-mana removal in the Saheeli decks meant that it was fairly weak to a start of Toolcraft Exemplar into Scrapheap Scrounger. The second thing to realize is that cards like Fumigate, while great against Verdurous Gearhulks and Mindwrack Demons, are flat-out embarrassing against Heart of Kiran and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Dylan’s deck set the standard for Jeskai Saheeli, and the Mardu Vehicles decks exploited the removal suite Dylan used. It was all too expensive, didn’t hit Gideon, and had timing restrictions (see Oath of Chandra, Immolating Glare, Fumigate). When the Shocks are away, the Toolcraft Exemplars will play!

Additionally, Mardu Vehicles isn’t quite as cold to a single Walking Ballista as it might seem. Sure, if B/G Constrictor is on the play with a Winding Constrictor into a Ballista, it’s going to be an uphill battle. By the same token, Mardu is squarely favored if the B/G deck doesn’t assemble a large Ballista quickly, because cards like Toolcraft Exemplar and Heart of Kiran are just so far above the curve. B/G definitely has ways to turn the corner, especially the lower-to-the-ground versions like Ken Yukuhiro’s B/G Energy Constrictor deck, but in general, this was a case where the StarCityGames circuit fooled people into dismissing Vehicles without giving it its due. If you don’t have a way to match Vehicles with cheap removal or roadblocks, as well as a proactive gameplan of your own, you’re going to lose to it, plain and simple.

Saheeli Rai
Personally, my Pro Tour was a rather disappointing affair. I tried to stay open and flexible during the draft, but ended up 1-2 with a R/W deck after some classic mana flood/mana screw games all three rounds. I ended up on the good side of variance in the first round, but didn’t really get to play much Magic in the second or third. That’s part of Magic, and though it was depressing, it wasn’t the end of the line. I was very confident in my Jeskai Saheeli build prior to the start of Round Four, and the Constructed portion started off very well, with wins over R/B Control and B/G Aggro. In the first, my opponent’s deck was not well set up to beat mine, and in the second, my opponent got manascrewed in Game 2. I was feeling good at 3-2, but the wheels fell off with bad luck and suboptimal play against B/G Glint-Sleeve Aggro, R/W Humans, and the mirror match. Missing land drops with Jeskai Saheeli leads to quick losses, folks! At least I got to enjoy a few pints of genuine locally brewed Guinness with some teammates while we licked our wounds.

Amusingly, my teammate and roommate Ari Lax also missed Day 2 with a terrible Constructed record, but we commiserated about how after several years playing in Pro Tours, we had achieved what we like to call “Pro Tour Zen”. PT Zen comes to you with time, and it’s very hard to rush it. The characteristics of a PT Zen-master are a sense of calm understanding when variance strikes you down early in an event, and the enviable ability to serenely submit a decklist on the night before a Pro Tour. I know that for many, many events, I would be nervous, hemming and hawing and constantly looking to change a single card with last-minute testing as a guide, but the truth of the matter is that you’re rarely going to break it. Often, your stressed-out, last-day testing is not going to offer you any radical breakthroughs, and you would be much better-served trusting the methodical testing of the week leading up to the event. In fact, it can even hurt you when you trust a small sample size of testing matches to influence your final decklist, because there is a high chance that a ten-game set does not tell you the true nature of a given matchup. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the energy in the hours leading up to final decklist submission, but I would strongly advise a healthy sense of perspective, rationality, and acceptance when it comes to finalizing your card choices at your first Pro Tour. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes you misread the metagame, but trusting yourself, your testing, and your intuition is going to get you better results almost every time.

Of course, I say that now after having my first 3-5 Pro Tour since Hawaii 2014, but the sentiment grows for me with every passing event. Needless panic and indecisiveness are rarely helpful, even when making the last-minute audible. Trust yourselves! Seriously.

Okay, enough about my own failed Pro Tour and my acceptance of the occasional misfire in testing. Let’s talk about where Standard moves going forward. As I mentioned before, Ken Yukuhiro’s G/B Aggro deck appears extremely well-positioned in a metagame of Mardu Vehicles and semi-mirrors. Let’s take a look:

B/G Constrictor Aggro ? Aether Revolt Standard | Ken Yukuhiro

Greenbelt Rampager
Three specific maindeck choices stand out to me here as helpful in a B/G Aggro world. One is three maindeck Fatal Push, and the fourth in the board. Push is the best way to answer an opposing Heart of Kiran, which is Vehicles’ most obviously powerful card. The second is Greenbelt Rampager. If your opponent is trying to assemble a 3/2 for 1 mana, the best way to trump it (trumpet?) is with a 3/4 creature for the same mana cost. This elephant holds down the fort so well on turn two against aggro, while offering you a great way to draw tons of extra cards with Lifecrafter's Bestiary post-board against control decks. The third important maindeck consideration is the Aethersphere Harvester. All of the B/G Energy Aggro decks incorporated the Harvester to some degree, and it eclipses Mardu’s Heart of Kiran most of the time, while offering an Energy generator and Energy sink. Lifelink is a perpetually-underrated ability, and the best lifelinker in the format is often a defining creature. I expect Aethersphere Harvester to be no different in the coming year, as an evasive lifelinker that plays offense and defense very well is nothing to sneeze at. It also lets you keep using that Greenbelt Rampager with Lifecrafter's Bestiary over and over again to draw loads of cards, while allowing you a double-spell turn on turn four with it plus that very same Rampager.

Seriously, I can’t say enough good things about Greenbelt Rampager in this deck, as one of the major keys to beating Mardu is having a double spell catch-up turn, which the elephant does so well. When you compare it to Brad Nelson’s Tireless Trackers, Servant of the Conduits, or Gonti, Lord of Luxury, it just looks so amazing in comparison.

Longtusk Cub
Longtusk Cub, though, is an interesting choice. When you compare it to Servant of the Conduit or Tireless Tracker, it’s not that impressive, but as a more aggressive 2-drop that quickly grows out of control (especially with a Winding Constrictor or two, yeesh!), I’m all about it. This little cat can become a 6/6 on turn three with a curve of Attune with Aether, Cub, Constrictor + Attune + attack. Even without the second Attune, you are still almost always hitting for four damage and growing the Cub to massive proportions immediately. If opponents are looking at two or three Fatal Pushes as reasonable answers for an out-of-control Cat, you’re probably a happy camper.

Incidentally, with a Cub, a Constrictor, and a Greenbelt Rampager, you can start looping your Rampagers to give your Cub two +1/+1 counters for every green mana you spend. Are you serious? That’s awesome!

Huge congratulations to Ken Yukuhiro for building what I see as the best Standard deck for the tournament. I expect similar lists to be the best-performing decks at the upcoming Grand Prix in Pittsburgh.

But hey, let’s say that you don’t want to play a dinky aggro deck. You want to do something big. Emrakul, the Promised End was banned, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is only good in Aetherworks Marvel decks (and if you draw it, you want to punch yourself), but Elder Deep-Fiend is still kicking. Maybe a pile of Kozilek's Returns is just what the doctor ordered, hmm? Platinum Pro Sam Pardee mentioned that in his team’s testing, if you were unafraid of losing to the card Disallow, U/R Zombie Emerge was actually a stellar choice against most of the format. I can’t promise you all anything with this list, but I’m inclined to give it a shot and see if I can’t make some sweet turns come together.

U/R Zombie Emerge ? Aether Revolt Standard | Ben Friedman

Kozilek's Return
This deck remains materially unchanged from pre-Aether Revolt, but the thing to recognize is that it’s not about the cards in the deck, rather the metagame positioning. If everyone moves to cards like Glint-Sleeve Siphoner or Toolcraft Exemplar, then Kozilek's Return becomes an absurd Magic card. I’d be wary of bringing this deck to any tournament where Jeskai Saheeli appears to be popular, but we witnessed an instructive phenomenon in October after Pro Tour Kaladesh.

At GP Providence last year, very few people dared to play Temur Aetherworks Marvel, for fear of running headfirst into all of the U/W Flash that dominated the Constructed rounds with all of the 9-1 performances. U/W Flash was as close to unwinnable as a matchup can be for straight up Turbo-Marvel, which meant that a huge number of people played Flash, and no one played Marvel. This left the door wide open for the slow, plodding B/G Delirium deck to come in and dominate the tournament, which it did. (Of course, once we blended the best of both worlds together into R/G Delirium/Marvel, the deck dominated the latter half of the format, but this was the case early on.)

A similar phenomenon may occur here. I doubt that many people are going to play Jeskai Saheeli into the lion’s den of Mardu Vehicles that stands to comprise a quarter of the tournament, but that leaves the door wide open for a deck vulnerable to Jeskai to come in and target the G/B and Mardu aggro decks. The week after the Pro Tour is ripe for smart metagaming, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see the Top 8 of Pittsburgh contain a smattering of B/G Control Delirium (Ishkanahs and everything), B/G Aggro (Ken Yukuhiro’s list, metagamed for Mardu Vehicles), or even a rogue U/R Zombies list. If the format switches back to Delirium or Emerge decks, then it’ll be time for Jeskai Saheeli to strike back. Until then, we’re looking at a surprisingly low-Saheeli format, at least compared to the initial predictions.

Incidentally, if you still really want to make lots of Cats to win the game, you could do far worse than Pierre Dagen’s Saheeli Marvel deck. This one is special, and I tip my hat to those crazy brewmasters for coming up with it. Without further ado, here’s the craziest combo deck I can imagine winning GP Pittsburgh:

4-Color Aetherworks Saheeli ? Aether Revolt Standard| Pierre Dagen

You have to love a sideboard with Fumigate, Chandra, Negate, and Tireless Tracker. The one-of Glassblower's Puzzleknot? As the French pros who played this deck would say, “bon appetit!”

In all seriousness, there’s a lot to work with here, but I’ll leave the truly crazy stuff to someone else. Right now, I’m focusing on the fundamentals: double-spell turns to beat up on Mardu Vehicles, proper removal to line up well against the format, and interesting or powerful sideboard jukes or powerful maindeck one-ofs in case I just have to fall back on a known quantity for the tournament. Blossoming Defense in G/B, I’m looking at you!

Good luck in all of your Standard tournaments this coming week, and I’ll be back with a tournament report as well as some Modern and Legacy updates next week.

Ben

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TAGS articles, standard, metagame, constructed, analysis, decklist, ben friedman, #ptaer, pro tour aether revolt, pro tour dublin

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