Month: August 2010

It’s so nice to be back to Standard, though I have to say drafting M11 was pretty fun, too. I had to miss FNM last week because of a family trip to Sea World. However, the Tuesday before that Friday, I did play in a Standard-for-a-box. I played Fauna Conscription. I beat UW control in round 1, beat Naya in round 2, lost to UW control in round 3, beat Vampires in round 4; we cut to the top 4 rather than the top 8, and I made it. I lost in the semis to the same UW that I lost to in round 3. The important thing to note is that UW was everywhere, including 3 of the top 4. I find the UW mirror tiresome—most mirrors aren’t that much fun, but this one seems particularly bad—and I like to not play the same deck from week to week, so this week I decided to go with Primeval Valakut. Here’s the list:

Creatures (11)
4 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Primeval Titan
3 Avenger of Zendikar
        
Other spells (21)
2 Burst Lightning
4 Explore
2 Rampant Growth
3 Khalni Heart Expedition
3 Harrow
4 Cultivate
2 Summoning Trap
1 Comet Storm
        
Land (28)
3 Evolving Wilds
6 Forest
12 Mountain
3 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
        
Sideboard
3 Acidic Slime
2 Earthquake
1 Summoning Trap
3 Lavaball Trap
2 Forked Bolt
2 Obstinate Baloth
2 Spellbreaker Behemoth

It’s a fantastically fun deck to play and has a decent matchup against UW.

Round 1: Marvin, playing UW
Game 1 I had a good draw and his was just OK. I ramped a lot, he blew up a bunch of my stuff but I was able to stick an Avenger and then activate an Expedition, so the plants were huge, and he didn’t have a Day, so we were done. Sideboard was +1 Summoning Trap, +2 Spellbreaker Behemoth, +3 Acidic Slime, -2 Rampant Growth, -2 Burst Lightning, -2 Siege-Gang. Game 2 he opened with a Leyline. Not the best for me, but not impossible. I dropped a Spellbreaker on turn 4 and he had no idea what it was, read it, and looked distressed. He blew a Day just to kill it. I followed up with an Slime to kill his Leyline, and he clearly wasn’t expecting that, either. (He had sided in Negates expecting me to side in Back to Nature.) I again managed an Avenger, but he had a Path so the tokens were all just 0/1. He countered a Primeval and then had the counter for the followup Trap, and killed my Valakuts with Sun Titan recursion of a Tectonic Edge. I tried to Comet Storm the Titan and Marvin for 6, but he had the counter and that was it. Game 3 I had another early Spellbreaker followed up by Titan and had 3 Valakut in play, but he had a Day to clear the board. I tried an Avenger, he countered it, I Trapped and got a Titan for 2 mountains (18 damage) and won off that.
1-0 matches, 2-1 games

Round 2: Eric, playing Vampires
He actually had a decent draw and dropped Blooghasts on turns 1, 2, and 3. But he had no way to disrupt me and I just ramped up, threw down a Titan, then a second one for game. I hadn’t thought about this matchup at all, so all I boarded was +2 Earthquake, -2 Summoning Trap. Game 2 he got a Nocturnus on turn 4 that managed to hit me once along with another Vamp and I was within range, but I had a Siege-Gang out and so two Goblin tokens died to kill the Nocturnus. Titan, Valakuts, much damage, game. This was pretty straightforward.
2-0 matches, 4-1 games

Round 3: Alan, playing UW
Game 1 he was a little light on land and I wasn’t, ramping quickly into threats that he couldn’t keep up with. I boarded the same way I did in round 1. Game 2 I missed my turn 3 land drop and just failed to have any early ramping, and that gave him too much time to take control of the board. Game 3 he had to Day a Spellbreaker and later, Path another. I had at least one Valakut out, and I cast Acidic Slime to try to kill one of his Colonnades, and he countered, so I was able to Trap into a Titan, and he could not handle that.
3-0 matches, 6-3 games

Round 4: Joe, playing UW
We ID’d so Joe could get something to eat.
3-0-1 matches, 6-3 games.

The top 8 was four UW control decks, me, another Valakut, the Vampires I played in round 2, and Soul Sisters. i was paired with the mono-white deck this time around.

Quarterfinals: Matt, playing Soul Sisters
I have to say, I absolutely love this deck; however, on paper the matchup certainly seems to favor Valakut. If Sisters gets a really good draw and the Valakut deck doesn’t ramp enough early, it’s winnable for Sisters, but that’s a tall order. Matt’s build also didn’t include Elspeth, which I think hurts in this matchup. Anyway, game 1 he beat me down a bit early, but I was ramping and got a Titan early enough to just go off for enough damage to kill him. I hadn’t thought of this deck for boarding, so I decided +2 Earthquake, +2 Forked Bolt, +2 Acidic Slime for -2 Rampant Growth, -2 Summoning Trap, and -2 Siege-Gang. He got a very good start but I got a Siege-Gang and used Goblin tokens to kill some of his guys (but not his Firewalker), he swung back to beat me down to 1, but I came back with a Titan and killed his Firewalker with Valakut damage. He O Ringed my Titan, but I had another and had 2 Valakuts out and the swing with my Titan plus a Harrow meant I had enough damage for it to be lethal.
4-0-1 matches, 8-3 games

Semis: Travs, playing Valakut
They couldn’t have put the two Valakuts on opposite sides of the bracket, could they? Of course not. This matchup is mostly about who gets a Titan first, so ramping is key. I had seen Travis playing and I thiink his main is a little better—he runs an Inferno Titan main—but my sideboard is much better since he wasn’t running either Lavaball Trap or Acidic Slime in his board. He won the die roll, we both ramped, he dropped his Titan the turn before I could drop mine, and I didn’t have enough when I dropped mine to be firing off Valakut, but of course with his first actual swing with his Titan killed mine, and he beat me. I boarded +3 Acidic Slime, +3 Lavaball Trap, -2 Summoning Trap, -2 Burst Lightning, -2 Siege-Gang. Game 2 was tough. I opened with a non-keepable hand, since it had no green source or way to find one. That’s not huge for this deck, but the second mulligan was, as in my six-card hand also had no green sources or ways to find one, and I had to mull to five. I had a turn 2 Explore but no other early ramp, which he did. When I had five land out, I had no play, and did manage to Lavaball Trap off his one Valakut. He came back with a Siege-Gang, which left the Titan in my hand as dead. He swung through once and ramped, and so when I was up to seven land I cast the Avenger to get him to sac his goblins, which worked. I had a bunch of plants, but they were all 0/1 and my Avenger was dead. The way was clear for my Titan, but he came back with a Titan and brought out 2 Valakut. I had an Acidic Slime in my hand and another Titan, so I could kill his Titan on my turn, then Slime one of his Valakuts the following turn, so I had a shot, but I was at only 11. I dropped my Titan and killed his along with his Siege-Gang. Unfortunately, he topdecked a ramp spell and did 12 damage to me with a pair of Mountains. Grr.
4-1-1 matches, 8-5 games

The deck is very good overall. I’m not sure what I’ll change the next time I play it—which won’t be next week since I always rotate—but I don’t see it as having any particularly bad matchups in the field right now; maybe RDW isn’t very favorable before the Baloths come in. It’s both competitive and fun to play, so what more could you want?

The other thing I like is that it won’t lose much to the Scars rotation. Rampant Growth is undoubtedly the worst ramp spell in the deck, so that’s not much of a loss. Siege-Gang can be replaced, probably by Rampaging Baloths, The Spellbreakers in the board can probably be replaced with something else nearly as good, though the loss of Earthquake might make the deck a little soft to decks like Naya and Bant, though with Bant losing Conscription, I’m not sure how popular that will be post-rotation. Overall, though, a good deck with at least some chance of having some version of it around post-rotation.

Still tons of UW at the shop, though, so next week I might play the Esper anti-UW deck… of course, then I’ll probably get paired against multiple rounds of RDW…

I was going to reply on Twitter to @wrongwaygoback’s recent piece on combo decks, but my thoughts evolved into something actually pretty long, so I decided to hammer out my own blog post.

First, you need to go read that piece. I’ll wait…. OK, done? Great, then let’s move on.

To start off, I think the math needs some comment. As was noted, the probability of drawing at least one copy of a card is a lot better if you have 8 of them than if you have 4. We all sort of know that but it can certainly be eye-opening to However, those numbers are really optimistic. For example, the 39% probability of drawing at least one in your opening hand (I actually get 40% when I calculate it, but close enough) includes horrific opening hands that you wouldn’t likely want, like six lands plus your combo card, or no lands plus four copies of your combo card. So those numbers, even for the 8-card case, are really the upper bound—the situation really isn’t even as good as those numbers indicate. (Note those numbers don’t include mulligans, which both improves the situation in terms of odds but makes it worse in terms of card parity, which is rarely good. Mulligans also complicate the math.)

What I really want to get into, though, is the even messier (both conceptually and mathematically) issue of what a “combo” deck really is, at least in many cases. For the very essence of many combo decks is that most of them don’t rely on a single card, whether 4-of or 8-of, but the deck’s ability to generate multiple cards at the same time; hence, “combo.” This actually creates more difficulty, since you need not just one card to be an 4-of, but two. For the sake of argument, I’ll consider a simple two-card combo with no tutors running 4 of each combo piece. So, what’s the probability that you draw at least one of each card (assuming you’re on the draw)?

I won’t bore you with the probability formulae for this, but here are the results:

Opening hand: 15%
Turn 1: 18%
Turn 2: 22%
Turn 3: 27%

Those are not what you’d call really strong odds, and this again is somewhat optimistic in that it includes all hands that have at least one of each card, meaning it includes degenerate hands with no lands, or hands with 1 land and three of each combo card, etc. Even if you make one of the two combo cards an 8-of via some efficient tutor your probability of having at least one of each is only 40% by the time you’ve seen ten cards. I believe this is the reason a lot of combo decks have been historically unstable and many decks are really mixtures of combo and control, because they need to assure that they can live long enough to get both pieces. The 50-50 point for at least one of both pieces with a 4-of and an 8-of is when you’ve seen 12 cards, which is still a lot. Even non-tutor searching cards like Brainstorm (or my favorite from the old days, Impulse) improve your odds enough to be highly worthwhile.

There are perfectly viable approaches to solving this kind of probability problem. Consider Thopter Depths from last extended season. The deck didn’t become dominant until both the Dark Depths–Vampire Hexmage combo and the Thopter–Sword combo were run in the same deck. (Certainly, it was good before, but even better after.) Muddle the Mixture also really helped, because transmuting for 2 got you a Hexmage, a Sword of the Meek, or a Thopter Foundry—and it could also protect combo pieces if you already had them out there by being a counter. Muddle rocked in that deck.

Now, this analysis doesn’t apply to all combo decks, since in many cases casting one part of the combo generates the other, e.g., Polymorph gets you your big fat creature without you needing any other specific card. However, you have to meet another condition, a game state condition: you have to have a creature in play. That one isn’t too hard to achieve, though, so the combo makes sense as being viable. Pyromaster’s Ascension doesn’t require a specific second card to “go off” but also does require that you achieve a specific game state, and again one that’s not too hard to reach (multiple instances of the same card in your graveyard), but probably harder than “have at least one creature in play.” These one-card “combos” have the same probability analysis that Neale showed (that is, really bad without a tutor), but they do require a little more than just the combo card. So there I think Neale’s analysis is definitely something to consider when building a combo deck of this type. Note that Hypergenesis is this kind of combo deck, but cascade gave it an avenue to having many cards that would trigger the combo, and thus a reasonable probability of “going off.”

However, there are still other ways to go besides one- and two-card combos. Consider the most recently-popular “combo” deck in Standard, one that many wouldn’t classify as a combo deck at all: Mythic Conscription. Sovereigns of Lost Alara combos with Eldrazi Conscription, but the Sovereigns tutors for the Conscription (much like Polymorph). In addition, this generally also depends on game state, as the modus operandi of the deck was not to attack with Sovereigns, but to use Sovereigns with another creature to do damage the turn Sovereigns come into play. So in that sense, it’s a little like the Ascension deck, since when it started there were no good, efficient tutors for Sovereigns.

But Mythic Conscription doesn’t actually require Sovereigns to win. Technically, Polymorph can win by hard-casting Emrakul (lots of luck with that game plan) and Pyromaster’s Ascension can win without the Ascension (barely), but these are horribly difficult ways to win. Mythic Conscription, on the other hand, is as much an aggro/ramp deck as it is a combo deck—you can easily win without the Sovereigns or the Conscription seeing play at all, usually on the back of other very strong cards like Knight of the Reliquary or Baneslayer Angel, which could ramp out very early. Because of this, lots of people wouldn’t classify it as a combo deck at all.

Now, I’ve played Mythic Conscription a fair amount, and I’d say a majority of my losses were games that I would have won had I drawn Sovereigns at any point in the game. As a pure aggro/ramp deck, it was a good deck, but it was Sovereigns that made it into a top-tier deck. On that basis, I’d claim that it’s reasonable to label it, at least in part, a combo deck—just one where the combo is not actually required.

Anyway, I want to finish by considering the end of Neale’s post which was essentially “don’t build combo decks around Pyromaster’s Ascension and Fauna Shaman because there aren’t good tutors for them.” I agree that those aren’t the best centerpiece combo cards. I’ve never had any interest in the Ascension combo decks, and I think Neale has hit the underlying reason why.

However, I don’t see Fauna Shaman as a card to build around in a combo deck—Shaman is the tutor for some other combo piece, as in the recent Italian national champion Soverign Conscription deck. Or maybe Shaman is not a combo piece, but just a really good card because it allows you to viably run a bunch of utility 1-ofs that you can tutor for, like in the Spanish national champion Naya deck. I think those aptly demonstrate that the Shaman is the real deal, even if the Naya deck isn’t really a combo deck at all, and the Bant deck is only kind of a combo deck.

Postscript: I love both of those builds, though I think I’d run the Lotus Cobras in the main in the Bant deck and put the Walls in the sideboard.