Quiet Speculation: Lessons from the Grand Prix

I’m sitting in the airport on the way back from Grand Prix: DC, and my headphones just died as they announced my flight would be delayed by two hours. Clearly, Johnny Rungood is dead. Life got the Blightning, Bloodbraid Elf, Cascade into Blightning draw on me today, it would seem. Nonetheless, that means I have some time to tickle the digital ivories a bit and get my thoughts on the weekend to my MTGO playing readers.

The first thing I noticed is how fast everything evolved this weekend. Coming in to the tournament, Jund was a big underdog, and that’s just where I wanted to be. No one was gunning for the Big Green Menace, and it appeared that Mythic was the Deck Du Jour. Thus, Jund was my deck of choice.

I started by looking at the most effective decks in Standard over the last few weeks, and one thing became clear; Lotus Cobra fit perfectly into my deck. Once I realized that the majority of the field would not be as scared of Blightning as before, I was happy to cut them from my 75 entirely. That’s right. Not a single copy. The new Jund decks have to keep board parity with the other turbocharged Green decks like Naya and Mythic, so anything that didn’t directly help me gain board parity was not included in my list. This, I think, is the main reason I made Day 2. It’s not like I tested for hours or got a lot of sleep (two things I really preach, but given the last-minute nature of this event, did not have the luxury of practicing).

I’m intentionally omitting my list because I want to talk about that in another piece, and instead talk about the format as a whole. Discussion of Jund is an article unto itself. It seems that this format has become very polarized again, but not on the axis of archetype. We have a true Combo-Control-Aggro metagame, even if people don’t realize it. The Polymorph Combo decks are real, people. I lost to one on Day 2, and it was simply Red-Blue. I’ll see if i can find a list, but right now, all you need to know is that he killed me in response to Bloodbraid Elf by shooting my face with spawning breath, untapping, and Emrakul’ing me out of the game. Lost that one, folks.

The Control decks come in the Planeswalker-heavy variety, the Tap-Out style UW decks (which just seem worse than PWs), and the Chapin-style draw-go UW decks. All have their place, and I anticipate we will see them merging into one archetype before the season is over.

Aggro decks are almost all Green-centric, as they ought to be. You’d need to be crazy or stupid to not include Bloodbraid Elf in your Aggro decks (unless you play Mythic, in which case, you’re both). Lotus Cobra works so much better with Aggro than many think, and I am sure we have not even come CLOSE to optimizing our decks for our serpentine buddy. Vengevine is out right unfair, especially with Lotus Cobra and Bloodbraid Elf assisting in the rebuy process. The amount of value that those three cards generate off eachother is quite unfair, and I cannot see playing a beatdown deck without all 3.

In my opinion, the Red/Green decks are probably the way to go with Beatdown. Your choice of splash color – White or Black – is really the only discussion at hand. White gives you access to worse removal (Path is totally elite, but Doom Blade and Terminate are often better) but far better creatures overalll. Black gives you access to the Suicide-Black style Putrid Leech and Sarkhan the Mad, who can do very good things. I have not decided which archetype I prefer, but I will be tinkering with them over the next few weeks. I just know that there’s no way I’m not playing beatdown in this format.

Cards to monitor on MTGO include:

Lotus Cobra – He’s much, much better than you think. The initial hype was probably warranted, and the drop-off was, too. Once Alara Block rotates, we can really see what this guy can do. Look to the upcoming Pro Tour to get a glimpse of what New Standard will look like in the fall.

Sarkhan the Mad – At time of writing, he’s still very cheap. He is instrumental in many Jund builds today, and his unique set of abilities makes him a very powerful tool indeed. You’re only going to see more lists including the mad shaman of Jund.

Vengevine – Sadly, this doubled on MTGO right around the time I said to keep an eye on it, so this news is less timely than I’d like. That being said, I believe he was an outright mistake at Mythic, and I do hope R&D give careful consideration to how they choose their rarities from now on. I don’t like this card at Mythic one bit. It’s totally unfair, and his little brother Lotus Cobra combos with fetch lands to ensure that you always have free mana to rebuy the Vine. A format staple for a long time to come.

Sarkhan Vol – Man, does this guy get around or what? Pre-insanity Sarkhan has the pedegree of a top-tier rare (just check historical prices from his release time), but he did what many top prospects do and flare out. Naya decks are sideboarding him against blue-based decks, and while I have not seen this in action, I have multiple reports confirming it. Could be a sick value play on a long out of print Mythic.

Sarkhan Vol is the only Alara-Block card I can really recommend right now. Historically speaking, late May & early June marks the time when the soon-to-rotate set begins its slow decline, losing approximately half its overall value. There is a very tangible tipping point that occurs, so if you have a large stock of Shards cards, I would begin the process. Things like Noble Hierarch and Knight of the Reliquary will hold some value, but as all things do when they rotate, they will probably dip too far, too quickly. Oddly enough, most of Conflux will retain long-term value since the cards are timeless and versatile. Progenitus should be an interesting case, as Emrakul seems to have totally usurped the Soul of the World. Progenitus is the world’s baddest Hydra Avatar, but Emmy is the baddest of asses among an entire race of ancient malevolent old badass gods. Sorry Progenitus, you’re out-tentacled here.

Overall, I expect to see a slow creep in Zendikar-block Mythics as they become the gold (bronze-ish?) standard of the new format. The changes will be slow, likely over a few months, but the MTGO market moves much faster than the paper one does. It’s also a great leading indicator for those who speculate on paper, so it would behoove you to do both if you do one but not the other. Hope you enjoyed this bonus article! Set reviews are often necessary but can be so dry and repetitive. Get to a Grand Prix whenever you can; this was the most fun I’ve had playing Magic in, quite literally, years.

See you guys in a few!

KBR