If any of you reading this recognize me it is most likely from Singleton (old 60CS or the new 100CS) , Prismatic, or perhaps even from various forums. I have been playing Singleton online since the original beta and it is by far my favorite format. It so happens that the site currently has plenty of people writing about 100 Card Singleton so I have been encouraged to tackle a slightly different topic.
What I’ve decided to do is to share my method for breaking down a new format and it so happens that there are some relatively new formats to use as examples. Both Core Set Constructed and Standard Singleton are the most recent additions to the PE scene. With my love for 100 Card Singleton, I obviously opted to delve into its Standard variant. I hope that my prior experience as well as the greater depth I see in the format gives it an edge as my contribution guinea pig.
Before I get too far in I want to mention that Standard Singleton looks to be a fantastic format for those Limited aficionados looking to make the jump into Constructed. You only need one of any single card and it only uses the most current card sets, meaning that if you are a hardcore Limited player, you most likely have all or most of the cards necessary.
My original intent was to write this article about the inception of Standard Singleton to give insight into how to approach it as a new format. Due to a number of circumstances it obviously didn’t happen. Since the start of the format I have only played in the first 2 PEs and with only moderate results, but I felt my decks were on track and headed in the right direction. Since my original plan failed to materialize, I have decided to take a slightly altered route. Since it happens that I have been unable to play in further PEs and since I have not looked at T8 results since that time, I am going to give my analysis and method for exploring a new format. Once finished writing my breakdown I am going to open the results of the most recent PE and see how well my thought process works. This is going to require a level of trust on your part that I actually have not been secretly looking a Top 8 results to craft the perfect guess.
I see many people take an intuitive yet somewhat poorly conceived approach regarding entering new formats. I’m going to call it the “Mad-Libs” approach; you know those crazy stories where you fill in nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Mad-Libs for Magic is where people take a deck from one format and take pieces out and then fill in the blanks with what they hope are equal substitutes. For Standard Singleton this would be akin to taking a Standard Jund deck, pulling out all the multiples, and then trying to match up cards removed with similar cards in the Standard pool. This can be okay if you don’t have to remove too many cards or the formats are extremely similar, but what is so wrong with this approach? It completely ignores everything that is important to the format for which you are trying to build. You are actually creating a bad version of a Standard deck and not a good version of a Standard Singleton deck.
Another major problem is that you may pick a deck with too few cards to substitute. A Standard deck is only going to give you about 1/3 of a Standard Singleton deck so if the other 2/3 of cards that you might possibly fill the blanks with are bad then you are never going to get anywhere. However, if you realize this going into the process, looking at Standard decks will give you an idea of what the powerful cards in a format are and what color or colors those cards may be concentrated in. Just pay attention to the pitfalls of the approach if you are going to take this method and look for the forest in the trees.
One of the most important and valuable methods when building decks for a brand new format is to try and figure out what exactly the constraints for that format are. There are many types of constraints and they take on many flavors: card draw, counters, lock components, removal, land destruction, threats, etc. To give some quick examples here are some of the main constraints in 100 Card Singleton:
- Armageddon and its partner in crime Ravages of War
- Magus of the Moon, Blood Moon, and their new friend Price of Progress
- Racing some common 2-card combos, i.e. Painters Servant/Grindstone and Charbelcher/Severence
- Small Red men backed by burn that can kill turn 4-5 easily if not disrupted
- Counter-magic that is predominantly 2-mana
There are certainly many more things I could list and they are all things to consider when building a deck for 100 Card Singleton, but we aren’t here to talk about 100 Card Singleton, so let’s cut the bull and dive in. Since Standard Singleton is one of the newest formats on MTGO, it’s a perfect example for this method of constructing decks and establishing the constraints of a new or relatively unknown format.
I’m going to present some major card categories in Standard Singleton. I will follow each chart with a brief analysis, with a wrap up at the end and then my T8 breakdown. Apologies if I missed a major card in one of the categories.
Card Draw
It could be that I am spoiled by the plethora of excellent card drawing spells available in the Classic card pool, but from this list it is pretty clear that the pickings are slim. This is going to make it difficult to build any sort of dedicated Control deck that plans to gain card advantage purely from draw spells. Discard may be a good option to supplement card draw since it is somewhat similar. Some options here might be Mind Shatter and Mind Rot with the temptress herself, Liliana, making a strong showing as well. Until it rotates out, cascade will be another means of pseudo card draw.
Counter-Magic
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Unfortunately for Control decks counter-magic is in the same short supply as card draw. Not only are the pickings slim but nearly all of them are conditional. From this list it is painfully clear that there isn’t going to be a deck that answers every threat with counter-magic. Rather, any Permission deck is going to have to ration their counters, and pray they have the correct one for the situation. Not an ideal scenario for Control, whatsoever.
Mass Removal
Yet another knock to Control decks, not only are the mass removal options limited, but most either only take out small creatures or have rather high or limiting casting costs. From this list, unless you have a Red bearing opponent, it is fairly safe to run out those creatures; chances are they don’t have their sole Day of Judgment.
Nice article! You really hit all the bold strokes, plat! Bravisimo!
Neat article- I liked your card inventory. Recently I’ve been trying to play a bit of standard singleton myself, and I’ve noticed that the games feel pretty swingy (i.e. one turn you feel like you’re winning the next you’re trying to find the next trump card). It’s also a bit like block constructed- limited card pool, with Jund dominating because of decent discard and cascade. I was wondering if there were any initial thoughts about a deck to combat Jund? I’ve been working on U/W control with alot of sweepers, Wall of Denial and other untargetable or fat creatures like Baneslayer Angel, and those situational counters you mentioned. My thoughts are that though they’re situational, your counters are a bit better because you’re countering their one copy of that card in their deck. A fog like mill deck also comes to mind, but I haven’t really worked that out. Help me out on breaking Jund Menace! http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/809761
Thanks for the feedback.
My intent was originally to show people a way of approaching a new format, but like you when I looked up the recent T8s and saw the Jund dominance I was left wondering what to do to combat such a metagame. One of the strengths of Jund is there premium access to removal, so fat creatures aren’t necessarily a problem. While a great card, I wouldn’t consider Baneslayer an issue for Jund to deal with as they will have at least 4-6 answers for Baneslayer. The problem that I see is that one needs a way to win a war of exhaustion vs Jund. The idea that immediately sprung to my mind was an Esper deck based on recursive threats like Sharuum, the Hedgemon. Baneslayer would likely make an appearance in such a deck, but not as a specific answer to Jund. If one can consistently recur must deal with threats eventually the Jund player will run out of removal. The issue is getting to 6-8 mana to start abusing some of the recursive artifact synergies without losing first.
I haven’t tried such a build myself yet, but like I said it was the first thing that sprung to my mind.
I am taking a gander at Std Sing for my next battery of articles/videos, and I am not going to play Jund! Soooo, any brainstorm would be helpful. Maybe a UWb Esper would be the way to go (Steel Wind should auto win versus Jund)? I like the 5c decks, but I really don’t want to lose games to my own mana.
Sadly, even the four/five drop LD spells seem to give some decks trouble- I was playing Jund in the daily event I joined and lost due to mana screw. Ruinblaster and Acidic Slime being pretty good. As far as Esper, Thopter Foundry found a home at Hawaii so maybe that’ll be good for this format as well?
Dear WoTC,
Pls quit creating one overly dominant deck per STD season. Kinda sucks, yo.
Regards,
Trav-bo
Oh, and before I forget, I started up a thread in our forums. Take a gander and share some. I’m sad, I’m lonely, I eat stories to stay slightly rotund.
Without Sword of the Meek I’m not sure how good Thopter Foundry would be. Unless there is another way to abuse the effect in standard that I am not aware of.
Yeah LD is pretty good in this format, especially against decks that run double colored mana costs across 3+ colors. I tend to try and keep all of my double colors to a single color in a deck and run the other colors as splashes. I made that mistake in the first PE I entered. I ran a Jund deck with double green, red, and black and lost due to mana issues.
LD, still my fav. Pls reprint Plow Under someone!
Thanks for the format introduction and getting my interest piqued. Although I wish I could say that I read this and went off to build some super-techy deck for the premiere event today, I cannot. Straight up copied the decklist here with few changes to sideboard/maindeck configuration and rode the card advantage / removal suite (and some timely luck)to a second place finish.
Thanks again,
Brian (StasisFreak)
Nice job StasisFreak! Just goes to show you not to innovate- Dust_ and I made homebrews and only made Top 4 and Top8, respectively.
The Blue-Red-White deck you played in the finals seemed pretty good; I don’t think I could have beaten it either!
Hey man great job, StasisFreak. I likely would have played Jund too if i entered a recent event, so I don’t blame you for not coming up with some super0techy deck.
I think Mono Red might be better than Jund!