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Main » Articles » Finding Your Theme

Finding Your Theme

Darwin Kastle
Posted on April 29, 2013
 Reddit

I frequently talk about the importance of finding strong and focused synergy when drafting or deck-building. A good way to help this process along is to find a theme to build your deck around. For some people, this makes them think of theme decks, which, while fun to play against each other, are no match for a typical Standard deck. Yet, many theme decks have the right idea. Pick a concept and assemble a good curve of creatures and spells, with appropriate mana, to execute the concept. When building your own deck, you just need to take it to a much higher level than a theme deck does.

Captain's Call
I examined the deck lists for the Magic 2013 theme decks, and each of the decks had a clear theme with multiple synergies built in to take advantage of the theme. Path to Victory, the W/U deck, is an aggressive deck with a low curve, twenty-five creatures, and token generation such as Captain's Call and Attended Knight to help quickly put a large team into play. Cards such as Griffin Protector, Crusader of Odric, and Glorious Charge synergize with this plan. The theme here is clearly swarming creature aggression. The U/R deck, Depths of Power, included sixteen sorceries and instants, which work nicely with the Augur of Bolases, Archaeomancers, and Talrand, Sky Summoner, which are also in the deck. In this case, the theme is spell-heavy blue control. While some of the themes are more stylistic like those two, a theme can sometimes just be about focusing around a specific mechanic, such as the W/B deck Sole Domination. As the name suggests, it’s designed around exalted, featuring fifteen cards with that mechanic.

The basic themes in Standard are aggression, control, midrange, and combo. Yet, within these categories are endless variations and subthemes. Blue control is much different than black control. Red aggro is much different than white aggro. You can build decks themed around tokens, a specific tribe, the graveyard, a mechanic such as evolve, or perhaps creatures with enters-the-battlefield abilities. The advantage of picking a theme and focusing your deck tightly around it is synergy of course. If evolving one creature when you play something is nice, how about having all your creatures evolve when you play something? If you want to just attack with one creature so you can receive an exalted bonus, why not have all your creatures give you exalted bonuses? It’s all about having your whole deck on the same page and working on the same game plan.

With the addition of Dragon’s Maze to the Standard card pool, the theme I’m the most intrigued by is tokens. I think Advent of the Wurm and Voice of Resurgence might push G/W tokens back up to tier one:

"G/W Tokens"

Advent of the Wurm
G/W already has many tools to deal with aggression, but Dragon’s Maze increases your chances against the bigger threat: control. This deck has three main ways to combat control decks: instant-speed threats, resiliency, and high threat quantity. We already had some instant-speed threats—Selesnya Charm and Midnight Haunting—but they just aren’t quite scary enough unless you have Intangible Virtue in play. Now we have Advent of the Wurm, a major, scary threat whether you have Intangible Virtue in play or not. Probably the best thing about it against control is that once you make it to 4 mana, you can say “go” and see if the opponent wants to play Supreme Verdict. If he does, you’ll immediately be attacking him for 5; if he doesn’t, you have the option of punishing him for it by adding a 5/5 to the board after it’s too late to play Verdict. In addition, if you sideboard in Rootborn Defenses, you can now save your team and potentially make a 5/5 at the same time, which should be enough of a game-changer to win most games pretty much on the spot.

Voice of Resurgence is clearly designed as a control killer, and among other things, it gives your deck greater resiliency. Control deck players will definitely find it annoying that they can’t play spells on your turn without giving you a dangerous token creature, especially when you consider this deck’s ability to make the token into a giant monstrosity. Perhaps more important, though, is that it gives you an upgraded Doomed Traveler effect. If an opponent clears the board with a Verdict or a Bonfire of the Damned, not only might you make some 1/1 Spirit tokens, if you have a Voice in play, you’ll create a much more dangerous token creature. Imagine having a Traveler and a Voice in play when the opponent clears the board and then you play either an Advent of the Wurm or a Midnight Haunting at the end of his turn. Suddenly, you’re hitting him for 7 or 9, and he’s wondering whether it was even a good idea to have played his sweeper. Adding to the problem is that when your opponent sweeps away your creatures, you get to keep your Intangible Virtues in play, making your recovery even more powerful.

Having a high threat quantity means that not only does your deck hold up well against mass removal, it can shrug off spot removal as well. Doomed Traveler, Voice of Resurgence, Gather the Townsfolk, Midnight Haunting, and Lingering Souls all make your opponent’s spot removal seem horribly inadequate in the face of your massive horde. In the control matchup, it will often be possible for you to be the person gaining the card advantage and when that happens; control is losing its biggest advantage.



I’m also excited about adding some Dragon’s Maze cards to my deck themed around evolve and +1/+1 counters:

"Golgari Menace"

The power card of the deck has been and will always be Corpsejack Menace, but Renegade Krasis gives you another creature that can give extra +1/+1 counters to your entire team while it’s already in play. Of course, you will rarely be able to evolve your Krasis more than once the way this deck is designed, but that will often be enough.

Mutant's Prey
Mutant's Prey hasn’t received much attention yet, but it has the potential to be a star in this deck. While you’re not going to be able to eliminate an early creature with it on turns one or two, it gives the deck the small amount of powerful removal it needs for the mid- to late game. Reasons I think it is so good:

  • It’s green. In a deck with twenty sources of green mana, it’s exciting to have green removal; plus, I like the option of killing pro-black creatures.

  • It’s a 1-mana instant. It’s hard to play around a 1-mana instant, and being able to kill an important creature the opponent just played with the 1 mana you have open during the end of his turn is pretty awesome.

  • It’s narrow enough that opponents won’t see it coming. Given that this card will be awful in most decks, it won’t see much play, and people won’t be expecting removal from the g you have open.

When I first introduced the world to Golgari Menace, some players voiced concern about playing a deck without any removal in the main deck, and I think Mutant's Prey is just the thing to help put this deck over the top.



I think blue control is and has long been among the strongest themes in Standard, and I think Render Silent could find a place there:

"Blue Control"

Thanks to Augur of Bolas, Think Twice, Sphinx's Revelation, and so on, you should be able to draw Render Silents early and often, which will be quite annoying for your opponent. If he just taps out and plays something, you have the option of easily Syncopating it. If he waits until he have a lot of mana to play something important, you can shut down his entire turn with a Render Silent. In the late game, you can pretty much keep the opponent’s turns under lock and key thanks to Snapcaster Mage, Augur of Bolas, and Restoration Angel, finding for you more Renders and letting you reuse them. Who cares if it takes all your mana to play a Mage or Angel and a Render? The opponent didn’t successfully do anything on his turn, and you made a 2/1 or an Angel. Seems fair . . . 



So, take a cue from WotCs’ theme decks, and be sure to have a theme when you’re building your next Standard deck. Just be sure to embrace your theme fully and with commitment to getting the maximum benefit from it. If you can do it with cool new cards such as Advent of the Wurm, Mutant's Prey, or Render Silent, so much the better!

TAGS articles, standard, theory, constructed, analysis, deck list, darwin kastle

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