Back to the Future: Standard PTQ Season

Welcome back everyone to another PTQ season primer! Extended has come and gone from MTGO prominence, and it is time for the prima ballerina to take centre stage once again. The format for Online PTQs for Pro Tour Amsterdam is Standard Constructed, which means you will need to bring a sixty card main deck and fifteen card sideboard with cards selected from Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn, Magic 2010, Zendikar and Worldwake. Rise of the Eldrazi and M11 will be joining us later in the season, but we will deal with those when the time comes.

There are three events in April, beginning this Sunday, then nothing in May while Rise of the Eldrazi begins shaking up the format. Qualifiers continue at a rapid pace in June and July, with thirteen events crammed into those two months. The entry fee is again 25 tickets which is fairly steep, and prizes are awarded to the top 64 players — but past 32^nd you won’t get your entry fee back in packs so you’d better be playing to win. These events are serious business, because the top prize is entry into the Pro Tour in Amsterdam and the Superdraft that takes place there. Everyone playing in the Superdraft will win $1000, hopefully covering your plane ticket to Holland and back and a night out on the town. Here’s the full list of qualifier events:

Sunday, 4/18/10 7AM PDT/ 14:00 UTC Standard

Tuesday, 4/20/10 3PM PDT / 22:00 UTC Standard

Thursday, 4/22/10 6PM PDT/ 01:00 (Friday) UTC Standard

Tuesday, 6/1/10 3PM PDT/ 22:00 UTC Standard

Thursday, 6/3/10 2PM PDT/ 21:00 UTC Standard

Sunday, 6/6/10 7AM PDT/14:00 UTC Standard

Sunday, 6/13/10 3AM PDT/10:00 UTC Standard

Tuesday, 6/15/10 7AM PDT/14:00 UTC Standard

Thursday, 6/17/10 6PM PDT / 01:00 (Friday) UTC Standard

Sunday, 6/20/10 3AM PST/10:00 UTC Standard

Thursday, 7/8/10 6PM PDT / 01:00 (Friday) UTC Standard

Sunday, 7/11/10 7AM PDT/14:00 UTC Standard

Tuesday, 7/13/10 7AM PDT/14:00 UTC Standard

Thursday, 7/15/10 2PM PDT/ 21:00 UTC Standard

Sunday, 7/18/10 7AM PDT/14:00 UTC Standard

Sunday, 7/25/10 11AM PDT/ 18:00 UTC Standard

With that preliminary stuff out of the way, let’s get down to some format investigation. I’ll try to cover all the major archetypes to give you a good idea of what to expect if you’re going in blind, and provide decklists for those of you who want to set up a gauntlet for testing. This isn’t an exhaustive list of archetypes, just the ones I feel you’re most likely to come across in the upcoming tournaments.

Aggro

Red Deck Wins – An archetype as old as the hills. Red Deck Wins plays a bunch of cheap burn spells and creatures that do a fine impression of burn spells with the intention of reducing the opponent’s life total to zero at the earliest opportunity. The current incarnation features such powerful cards as Lightning Bolt, Goblin Guide, and Ball Lightning which are hard to deal with in any the early stages of the game. The deck has good matches against Jund and UW Chapin Control — the former because its removal and discard becomes less relevant, the latter because it has real trouble protecting Jace from hasty attackers. RDW’s weakest match is against White Weenie thanks to its many cheap blockers, some more obnoxious than others — case in point, Kor Firewalker. The linked GP winning deck has a black splash and several sideboarded black removal cards, just to deal with that pesky 2/2.

Vampires — This mono-Black tribal deck relies on a bunch of individually strong, card advantage generating weenies like Gatekeeper of Malakir and Bloodghast which just so happen to share a creature type that lets Vampire Nocturnus launch them skyward. Vampire Nighthawk and Malakir Bloodwitch are seriously hard to handle threats even without their lord in play, and playing all swamps gives the deck two extremely powerful weapons — Tendrils of Corruption against Aggro, and the brutal Mind Sludge against Control. The deck is fading in popularity due to its poor matchup with Jund, however the Vampire tribe has a certain gothic appeal so be prepared to face this deck in your PTQs.

White Weenie — Another perennial deck type, it frequently disappoints players who just want to turn soldiers and knights sideways. That’s not the case in today’s standard as this White Weenie deck has put up some good results, including the linked list which was Top 8 at the last Pro Tour. The deck is heavily metagamed against Jund and RDW, and it plays some of the most difficult to handle creatures for those decks — White Knight and Kor Firewalker each have protection from some portion of Jund’s removal, meaning they will have a lot more “wrong answers” to your threats. First strike and protection from Red are also highly problematic for Red Deck Wins, as detailed above. These guys are surrounded by other efficient weenies, an equipment toolbox, and Elspeth, Knight-Errant who can win the game all on her own. White Weenie has a good matchup against Jund and an excellent one against RDW, but it is a bit of a dog to the Control decks and Malakir Bloodwitch causes it enormous problems, hence the awkward Day of Judgments to deal with it.

Naya Allies — The new kid on the block, Naya Allies originated on MTGO but shot to minor fame when Jeroen Aga went 11-0 at GP Brussels, before falling out of contention. The deck is explosively fast, capable of turn 3 wins and actually quite likely to get there, if unopposed, on turn 4. Nearly every spell you cast will be an ally, or cascade into one, and the rules text on each ally means that nearly all of these spells will pump your team’s power or grant them some other benefit like Protection or Lifelink. The deck has real problems when opposed with board sweepers however it has continued to put up good results in Daily and Premier Events for the last few weeks. Dismiss it at your peril.

Midrange

Jund — The bogeyman of the format. For the two or three of you who haven’t heard the complaints, Jund makes up 30-40% of most tournaments, and with good reason — it wins, a lot. It plays the best card in the format — Bloodbraid Elf — and possibly the second best card in Blightning. All of its cards are extremely efficient, but it is the cascade elf who ties everything together, letting you play already strong cards like Putrid Leech or Maelstrom Pulse for free. This deck has warped the format, and if you are trying out a new deck the first thing you should throw it at is Jund — if you can’t beat this one, don’t even bother, as you can’t possible dodge it all tournament. There is quite a bit of room for customization in Jund, and with so many people playing it week in week out many variations have emerged. The one I’ve linked is the Pro Tour winning list which is heavy on lands, this is the one most people are going to default to so you have to be ready for it — or play it yourself. There’s no shame in it – this is the most popular deck, it’s pretty cheap, and it has few bad matchups, but if you do so then know that when you’re not playing the mirror match, you’re going to be playing decks designed to beat yours.

Boss Naya — Another San Diego list, this one went unbeaten all the way to the semi-finals when piloted by Luis Scott Vargas. This is kinda like the good guy version of Jund, trading the gruesome Putrid Leech and the flaming skull of Blightning for the honourable Knight of the Reliquary and Wild Nacatl. It keeps the amazing power of Bloodbraid Elf and Lightning Bolt, but rather than cascade into discard spells it hopes to cascade into more threats. There are a number of one drop mana-dorks that help power out turn 2 Knights, and Stoneforge Mystic can fetch up the one Behemoth Sledge to turn a simple Noble Hierarch into a pseudo-Rhox War Monk. The sneaky sideboard plan that took San Diego by surprise involves Cunning Sparkmage and Basilisk Collar, the combination of which can eliminate nearly any opposing threat by dealing one deathtouch damage a turn. This deck is a known quantity now but it has a good deal of raw power, so if you want to play Bloodbraid Elf without feeling like a jerk this could be the one for you.

Mythic Bant — For those of you who just bought your third investment property and feel like showing off your wealth on Magic Online, this is the deck for you. With nearly every card a rare or mythic rare this is by far the most expensive deck in my list. What do all those tickets buy you? Enough threats to overload Jund’s removal and outclass their puny creatures, or at least that’s the hope. The deck is UWG which means it can play Knight of the Reliquary and Noble Hierarch the same as Naya, but it goes in a completely different direction from there. By playing bigger and better guys than every other deck Mythic intends to win the creature battle meaning it can afford to not play any removal, which means there is more deck space for more dudes. If you want to smugly ask the question “What are you gonna do about it?” over and over, this is the deck for you — if you can afford it.

Control

UW Chapin Control — We’ve had Bloodbraid Elf decks. We’ve had Knight of the Reliquary decks. Now we come to the Jace, the Mind Sculptor decks, and this one was designed by the closest thing Earth has to a Blue planeswalker, Pat Chapin. The deck is a traditional Blue/White counterspell Control deck featuring just one creature — Iona. It plays a humungous number of lands in order to make use of Treasure Hunt and make sure it is able to cast its expensive game winners, like Iona, Martial Coup, and Mind Spring in reasonable time, while keeping counterspell mana available. Pat says the deck frequently wins just by protecting Jace and going for the ultimate. If you are going to play this deck make sure you read everything you can on it and practice like crazy, as it is not at all an easy deck to play and one mistake on the early turns could leave you too far behind to recover when your expensive spells come online. That said a lot of die-hard control players have been hanging out for a deck like this, so it will certainly see play in the PTQs.

UW Tapout Control — The lack of Control decks in the format means I’ve decided to include both of these decks, despite their similarities. This version, pioneered in Kuala Lumpur by Sam Black and Brian Kibler, forgoes the counterspells of Chapin’s list in favour of more direct action like Baneslayer Angel and Elspeth — the theory being “it doesn’t matter what you do, what I’m going to do is better.” If anything nasty does start causing trouble, the several Wraths and point removal should hopefully clean up the mess. This version seems to be more popular than Chapin’s in online events these days, but be prepared for both, and an early indicator that you’re up against this version is the mini-combo of Fieldmist Borderpost and Knight of the White Orchid.

Go Forth and Test!

There are a load of 2^nd tier decks I haven’t had space or time to discuss — RG Valakut, Open the Vaults, Eldrazi Green, Koros and GWB Junk just to name a few, but if any of those names sound appealing Google is your friend. The next fortnight will see three Amsterdam PTQs on Magic Online so there’s no time to lose! Grab those last few cards you need from the swish new Academy store, find a testing partner in the Tournament Practice room, and start seeing what works and what doesn’t. If you’ve got any thoughts or comments on the above decks or ones of your own please share them in the comments, and I’ll be back in a month when we’ll see what impact the newly risen Eldrazi have had on the format!