Anything But: The Impact of Deck Types

Without looking any deeper than the matchup comparisons you can see that MU post is very different from MUC or delver.

Post? Tossup for delver, terrible for MUC, excellent for MU Post.
WW? Bad for delver, great for MUC and MU post
Stompy? Tossup for delver, good for MUC, bad for MU post (although I am working on solving this matchup)
TPPS? Good for delver, tossup for MUC, edge for MU post

Finally the decks exhibit what Simon called on this site the “circle of control”. Delver is favored over MU post, MU post destroys MUC, MUC destroys delver (at least the version of MUC I played did – the deck specialized in delver hunting).

I think what’s called MUC is actually a midrange deck, delver is tempo or aggro control and MU post is control.

How does MUC play? Well, if you’re facing delver or stompy you’re sitting back and setting up. The game comes down to if he can take you from 20 to 0 before you can get a spire golem down through his counters. Once that happens the game turns around. MUC is the control. How about if MUC faces MBC? Then the plan changes. You’re not dealing with his threats then dropping a resilient finisher – nothing MUC has is resilient to MBC. MUC has to drop a threat and protect it to take the MBC player to 0 before he draws duress + corrupt. It’s playing the beatdown and playing it pretty well. A deck that can play the control and the beatdown effectively is a midrange deck.

How does MU post play? MU Post plays like a classic control deck. Counter threats that you can’t handle early, transition into board control (bounce the early plays and play blockers that trade favorably in this case instead of the classic sweeper) then drop a resilient threat backed with countermagic. A crusher is one of those threats. A silkbind faerie with an equipped longbow is another (that doubles as a board sweeper). The only matchup where you have to play the beatdown is the one where your disruption is ineffective (fissure storm). Guess what? That matchup is horrible because MU post isn’t a beatdown deck. MU post can play the control but it can’t play a beatdown strategy.

As far as the card choices, I’ve come around on capsize.

The list started with it and I started playing the deck. What I learned was that the best matchup the deck had was vs other post decks – either UR or UB (mono green post rolls over to any blue at all) so I rethought the deck a touch. I toned down the anti-control cards (capsize) and emphasized the anti-aggro cards (the repeals). However, an extremely early capsize is just game over vs post decks and can still be used as a really bad boomerang vs aggro decks if you draw it early – and it has decent late game.