The week before StarCityGames: Baltimore, Reid Duke and I were discussing the revival of a favorite archetype of mine: B/U/G control/midrange (although I enjoy calling it Team Asia since it has some very notable differences from Team America). Here’s some background about Team Asia: Originally, I had built the list around mid-March of last year for a notable Magic Online grinder (Bing Luke), and it looked like this:

"Team Asia"

• Creatures (10)
• 2 Lorescale Coatl
• 4 Dark Confidant
• 4 Tarmogoyf

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

• Spells (25)
• 2 Spell Pierce
• 2 Spell Snare
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Force of Will
• 4 Go for the Throat
• 1 Preordain
• 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 2 Thoughtseize
• 4 Hymn to Tourach

• Lands (23)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Bayou
• 2 Tropical Island
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 4 Underground Sea
• 4 Verdant Catacombs
• 4 Wasteland

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1 Consuming Vapors
• 1 Darkblast
• 2 Pernicious Deed
• 2 Hydroblast
• 4 Engineered Plague
• 4 Leyline of the Void

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This deck mostly fell out of favor due to the emergence of W/U Stoneforge becoming a dominant deck and Mental Misstep rearing its ugly head to influence the format a great deal. It also had a slight problem of occasionally dying to its own Dark Confidants due to the fact that there were a few situational cards and sometimes the game would drag out, although Jace, the Mind Sculptor fixed all of these problems. Later incarnations of the deck would have Maelstrom Pulse as a versatile answer and Terravore as an undercosted beater (instead of Lorescale Coatl, which was reliant on Brainstorm and Jace to become a large monster).

Fast forward to two weeks ago and me playing a lot of Modern Jund with Deathrite Shaman on Magic Online. Reid and I both Brainstormed similar-looking Team Asia lists, and I finally ended up here:

"Team Asia Update"

• Creatures (14)
• 4 Dark Confidant
• 4 Deathrite Shaman
• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 2 Vendilion Clique

• Planeswalkers (5)
• 2 Liliana of the Veil
• 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

• Spells (18)
• 3 Abrupt Decay
• 3 Daze
• 4 Brainstorm
• 2 Hymn to Tourach
• 2 Ponder
• 4 Thoughtseize

• Lands (23)
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Tropical Island
• 3 Bayou
• 3 Misty Rainforest
• 3 Polluted Delta
• 3 Verdant Catacombs
• 4 Underground Sea
• 4 Wasteland

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Duress
• 1 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 3 Engineered Plague
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 1 Darkblast
• 1 Nihil Spellbomb
• 4 Force of Will
• 2 Umezawa's Jitte
• 1 Maelstrom Pulse

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My matchups in the tournament were:

• Round 1: Win versus W/U Miracles (Jorge Chang)
• Round 2: Win versus High Tide (Matt Braddock)
• Round 3: Win versus Affinity (Mike Gatewood)
• Round 4: Win versus W/U/r Miracles (Jeffrey Folinus)
• Round 5: Win versus B/U/G (Ali Aintrazi)
• Round 6: Win versus R/U/G (Daryl Ayers)
• Round 7: Loss versus Esper Stoneforge (Shaheen Soorani)
• Round 8: Win versus Dredge (Damon Whitby)
• Round 9: Intentional draw
• Top 8 Quarterfinals: Loss to B/U/G control (Brian Braun-Duin)

A friend of mine (Steve Nagy) also played the same deck, and his matchups were:

• Round 1: Win versus W/U Miracles
• Round 2: Win versus B/G Natural Order
• Round 3: Loss versus B/G Pox
• Round 4: Win versus Goblins
• Round 5: Win versus Goblins
• Round 6: Win versus B/U/G (Ali Aintrazi)
• Round 7: Loss versus W/U Miracles-Blade
• Round 8: Win versus W/U/r Miracles
• Round 9: Loss versus Dredge

For those of you who are counting, that’s 7–2–1 for me and 6–3 for Steve, giving the deck a combined 13–5–1 on the weekend, which is quite a respectable match count.

Why play Team Asia? In my experience, it is a lot like Modern Jund, in that you’re not really a dog to any given matchup, and you’re very good at grinding people out with the trinity of Dark Confidant, Jace, and Liliana of the Veil.

You can always tweak the deck to beat your expected metagame due to the fact that in the Vorosh, the Hunter colors, you can pretty much find answers to anything.

Card Choices and Construction

Six discard spells feels right after playing a lot of Modern Jund (four Thoughtseize and two Inquisition of Kozilek forms the standard discard package for Jund).

Not having the fourth Jace, the Mind Sculptor was probably incorrect, and I wouldn’t mind having some number of Life from the Loam somewhere in the seventy-five, although that blurs the lines closer to BBD’s deck.

Daze is also a card I’m unsure about, but it definitely has a fair amount of Game 1 value (you get to board them out and watch people play around them), and it helps protect your turn-two Dark Confidants and so forth.

Vendilion Clique is a card that is basically good as a two-of but not more because they clog your hand in multiples.

Matchups

The most common matchups (I can’t cover all of them since Legacy is a very diverse format, but I’ll cover the most common ones I would expect to see):

Goblins – Prepare to lose Game 1, but Games 2 and 3 are much more in your favor (ask Cedric about Engineered Plagues on turn two and three!).

R/U/G – You’re ahead by a fair amount since R/U/G has to remove Deathrite Shaman, and you can answer Tarmogoyf or Delver of Secrets without any profitable response from the opponent. Be wary of Stifle, and you should be good to go.

W/U (/r) Miracles – Again, I feel that Team Asia is heavy favorite here since the deck has eight to twelve creatures (Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant and Deathrite Shaman to a lesser degree) the Miracles player must answer, although I’ll admit the Miracles deck has about as many removal spells. It’s relatively easy to push through a planeswalker if you sandbag a discard spell for the same turn since Miracles generally doesn’t have that many counters. If you are able to take Sensei's Divining Top on turn one with a discard spell, it is almost always the correct thing to do.

B/U/G variants – Here, it depends a lot on exactly what is in the opponent’s deck. I like our chances against the more controlling builds, but a deck focused on Delvers and Nimble Mongoose may be trouble since the Mongoose is quite annoying to kill without resolving a Liliana of the Veil.

Further Changes

I also want to try several changes in the deck:

"Team Asia Again"

• Creatures (14)
• 4 Dark Confidant
• 4 Deathrite Shaman
• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 2 Vendilion Clique

• Planeswalkers (6)
• 2 Liliana of the Veil
• 4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

• Spells (17)
• 4 Abrupt Decay
• 4 Brainstorm
• 1 Life from the Loam
• 1 Maelstrom Pulse
• 1 Ponder
• 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 4 Thoughtseize

• Lands (23)
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Tropical Island
• 2 Verdant Catacombs
• 3 Bayou
• 3 Misty Rainforest
• 3 Underground Sea
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 4 Wasteland

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Engineered Plague
• 3 Nihil Spellbomb
• 4 Force of Will
• 2 Umezawa's Jitte
• 1 Duress
• 1 Maelstrom Pulse
• 1 Life from the Loam

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I would not claim that this is the optimal configuration simply because it depends a lot on what you expect to play against. I’ve always felt this way about decks I’ve played with (including Jund, Faeries, Caw, and Goblins).

I look forward to playing this deck some more, but I also think Miracles, Miracle Blade (W/U or W/U/r), Goblins, Esper Stoneforge, and other B/U/G lists are good choices.

As usual, I welcome any comments or concerns you might have, either here or on Twitter @jkyu06.

Thanks for reading!