Building Blocks: RWU Control in Return to Ravnica Block Constructed

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Lee McLeod





You can find me on Twitter @leemcleo.

 

  1. M2G1: Killing his Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage with Izzet Charm rather than countering Rootborn Defenses is not the play I would have made in that situation :D

  2. @Random Scrub: I realized that while I was watching the replays over again: “Man I suck at this game.” I really never remember the counter mode on Izzet Charm and it always comes back to bite me.

  3. @LeeMcleod I am in serious doubt to watch the vids.. As a player on MTGO I do not have the money to buy myself 3-4 copies of sphinx’s revelations and every time I see block or standard I keep seeing decks winning with this card… HATE IT! Can’t you guys come up with a deck that can win against control decks in block? I think more people are having the same “problems” with this deck/card.

  4. Firstly: Marc, from what I gather, block is actually full of inexpensive decks that can and do regularly beat revelation decks. Mono-red (finals opponent) is basically free except for reckoners and RG and RG add only shocks and rakdos return/domri rade, I think.

    Lee: Congrats on the win.
    Can’t really take any of the results too serious though, since the games are strewn with errors (mostly from your opponents).
    The staticasters seem pretty sweet against agro, but do absolutely nothing against revelation or RWB decks, but if you are expecting a heavy agro metagame, that might be fine.
    Assemble, on the other hand, seems kind of slow. I guess it great against control and RWB since it gives you inevitability at a relatively low manacost. Against agro it seems kind of slow, a chump blocker the turn after you play it might not be enough. It did shine in the long game against Jund, I guess, which is something. It also has a weakness, if you are relying on blocking with the tokens, to electrickery, overloaded mortars (which you mentioned) and of course opposing staticasters.

    Your own play was mostly fine, except for some minor mistakes, some of which you caught yourself. Your sideboarding against Jund, however, was absolutely horrendeous, made the deck worse in that match up and transcended cringe-worthy and became absolutely hillarious in its horrificness. Had you shuffled all your entire sideboard into the deck and pulled out a random 15 non-land cards you would have 10:1 odds of having a better deck in the match up.
    I mean, the deck plays basically like mono-red with slightly more power but a more painfull, more unreliable manabase from what I have seen. Do you really want a grand total of 4 spells you can cast before turn 3, on the draw, against a deck that can go experiment 1 > BTE + chainwalker > anything at all good? That 5 mana enchantment that gets good 3 turns later, expensive draw spell or those 2 seven drops you boarded in don’t really seem to match up with that well.

    Sorry for the superlatives, but honestly, it really was that bad (though at least entertaining, which is the better way to screw up) but other then that, fine content, sweet deck, good to see you have success with your own brew. I am curious how you do versus control with this build, good luck.

  5. You keep forgetting that you can shoot your own Boros Reckoner to ping your opponent. Not that it mattered, but you could have done that several times.

  6. You, sir, are a better man than I. In M2G2, I would’ve slammed Collective Blessing so hard that the internet table would have broken.

  7. Interesting deck. I’m not sure how well a wincon of assemble, and solely assemble, is going to work against opposing slaughter games or jace decks, both of which shut you down pretty hard. Reckoner isn’t going to get you there against other control decks, not even with staticaster (which you probably board out anyway). It feels like you need a niv mizzit or something big from the side as an alt wincon.

  9. Hello, good deck.
    Now, you could add the izzet planewalker from dragonmaze.
    Assemble the Legion is an excellent win condition.