Exact 75: ROCK, Paper, Scissors!

As many of you have already noticed, Innistrad is a great set for standard and everyone and their brother is currently trying to “break the format”. Unfortunately with the exception of Champs (my most favouritest tournament ever, but we’ll get to that next week) and SCG opens, this format is pretty much irrelevant; we won’t be using the EXACT 75 you brew now to qualify for the Pro Tour or win a Pro Tour. However, this lack of highly competitive Standard tournaments is the perfect breeding ground for innovation as you get to understand how your deck works in smaller-scale tournaments before deciding whether to pursue the idea before Dark Ascension comes marching on in. With more and more ideas for decks being kicked around, most players are shifting towards control; most of which are Solar Flare decks. In case you haven’t been keeping up, here’s a sample list of a Solar Flare deck:

[deck title=Solar Flare]
[Lands]
2 Darkslick Shores
3 Drowned Catacomb
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Island
4 Isolated Chapel
5 Plains
1 Seachrome Coast
2 Swamp
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
1 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Phantasmal Image
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Sun Titan
1 Wurmcoil Engine
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Day of Judgment
3 Doom Blade
4 Forbidden Alchemy
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Think Twice
3 Timely Reinforcements
1 Tribute to Hunger
3 Unburial Rites
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Day of Judgment
2 Dissipate
2 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Revoke Existence
2 Stony Silence
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Timely Reinforcements
2 Wurmcoil Engine
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

These decks had some success in the most recent Starcitygames tournaments and have been widely regarded as the deck to beat. This deck sees an inordinate amount of cards and, due to the ever-annoying flashback mechanic, players get maximum value out of every card, regardless of if they are in the graveyard or not. In addition, the deck is extremely rewarding to the top players and allows for better players to do better more consistently (having the ability to see so many cards allows for less variance). Personally, I could never play this deck as it is way too skill-intensive and would not allow me to play tighter and win more. However, there are many opportunities for aggro decks to do well in this format, the frontrunner being a new kid on the block: Wolf Run Red!

[deck title=Wolf Run Red]
[Lands]
4 Copperline Gorge
3 Kessig Wolf Run
12 Mountain
4 Rootbound Crag
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Goblin Fireslinger
2 Hero of Oxid Ridge
4 Reckless Waif
4 Stormblood Berserker
4 Stromkirk Noble
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Koth of the Hammer
2 Arc Trail
4 Brimstone Volley
4 Incinerate
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
3 Volt Charge
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
4 Ancient Grudge
3 Manabarbs
2 Slagstorm
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Vulshok Refugee
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

According to local Standard Champ/Internet troll Justin Richardson, he would consider playing this OVER CONTROL DECKS! After playing several matches with this deck, it is safe to say that this deck is extremely explosive and downright scary to play against when on the draw. New cards like [card]Brimstone Volley[/card] provide a very powerful burn spell for a cheap cost while still being relevant without morbid being active.

The new Big Daddy on campus is [card]Garruk Relentless[/card], the third reincarnation of the planeswalker (man he’s like some sort of trinity or something…) and it can act as removal on a stick, a consistent output of creatures, or a game-ending swing. Needless to say, this card is bonkers and helps make this deck more consistent. However, despite Garruk’s attempts, Wolf Run Red suffers the same issues as all other quick and explosive decks; it is relatively inconsistent and is susceptible to several common cards in the format ([card]Timely Reinforcements[/card] and [card]Tree of Redemption[/card] being the major threats). As much as people are going to play this deck and maybe have success, this deck will not be a top-tier deck for long; aggro always succeeds better early in a format’s creation, things will change soon.

This puts me in an interesting predicament. I can’t play control due to lack of talent and I can’t play aggro due to inconsistency. I guess that leaves me with only midrange to fall back on, but after sufficient testing Bant Pod wasn’t getting it done, what to do? I guess it’s time to start innovating for a midrange deck (hopefully with [card]Birthing Pod[/card]). Fortunately for me, there are a lot of viable Pod decks that are more than playable and that can certainly lead to positive results, so without further ado I’d like to present my newest creation; Rock-Pod!

[deck title=Rock-Pod by Jake Meszaros]
[Lands]
4 Razorverge Thicket
3 Sunpetal Grove
3 Isolated Chapel
3 Plains
3 Swamp
4 Forest
3 Woodland Cemetery
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
1 Grave Titan
1 Sun Titan
3 Phyrexian Rager
3 Viridian Emissary
2 Phyrexian Metamorph
2 Acidic Slime
1 Skinrender
1 Archon of Justice
1 Stonehorn Dignitary
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Blade Splicer
1 Suture Priest
1 Leonin Relic-Warder
1 Viridian Corrupter
1 Tree of Redemption
1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Birthing Pod
3 Unburial Rites
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
3 Go for the Throat
3 Memoricide
1 Viridian Corrupter
1 Unburial Rites
3 Beast Within
2 Tree of Redemption
1 Hollowhenge Scavenger
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

For the last few months, I have been playing [card]Birthing Pod[/card] decks in order to continue to play to my strengths (midrange green decks) and I had been tinkering with the idea of a GWB Pod deck before [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card] was banned. However, at that time RUG Pod was the way to go due to the punishing combo that is [card]Deceiver Exarch[/card]/[card]Splinter Twin[/card], I pushed my work on Rock Pod back until the right time came along.

The right time is today.

I do believe that blue used to be the better color in Pod decks than black, but the loss of [card]Sea Gate Oracle[/card] caused blue to lose all good ways of drawing cards off creatures, thereby making the deck more inconsistent. By using [card]Phyrexian Rager[/card] as a means to replace Oracle, black becomes the color of choice to go along with green and white. The combination of card draw and mana filtering off of [card]Phyrexian Rager[/card], [card]Viridian Emissary[/card], The mana dorks ([card]Avacyn’s Pilgrim[/card] and [card]Birds of Paradise[/card]), and [card]Solemn Simulacrum[/card] makes it possible to run less lands, a high count of bombs, and see all the valuable cards more often. In addition, the printing of [card]Unburial Rites[/card] allows the [card]Birthing Pod[/card] player to play more aggressive and restart the [card]Birthing Pod[/card] chain if your opponent gets rid of the creatures along the way.

When playing Rock Pod, there are three major strategies that can be used:

1. “Aggro” Race

[card]Birthing Pod[/card] can get out the gate quickly, that’s a given. Due to this, certain matchups are best played a quick pace in order to win before your opponent can get whatever he wants to do online. Generally this game plan depends on getting a 6 drop out by turn 5/6 at the very latest (if it’s turn 6 it should have a lot of support). This strategy is generally used against Control matchups game 1 until more effective sideboard cards like [card]Beast Within[/card] come in to allow you to pursue…

2. Land Destruction

As previously mentioned, the top deck in this standard format is Solar Flare, a three-coloured deck that depends heavily on its manabase. After lots of testing, the best way to tackle this deck head on and to have success against it is to take out their key lands so that they cannot play their relevant 6-drops ([card]Sun Titan[/card], [card]Consecrated Sphinx[/card], [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card]) and beat them down with your value cards. However, since not every deck is control, the most common route this deck will pursue is the…

3. Grinding

Like all [card]Birthing Pod[/card] decks, Rock Pod has the capability to simply grind out aggro and midrange decks to the point where they simply cannot win. In this strategy cards like [card]Unburial Rites[/card] become crucial as it gives you infinite value and allows you to BURY your opponent in a hole he can’t get out of (see what I did there? SO PUNNY).

Well now that you understand why rock always wins, I believe it’s time to move onto the…
Canadian Player of the Week

Last week’s winner was Barry Hum, a little-known player from my local store who encourages the promotion of Magic in our community. I think it is safe to say that this week’s winner is by no means the same person. This kid out of Ottawa is one of the top players in Canada at 16, recently won a PTQ, and has an 0-1 lifetime record against me (just ask him). You guessed it, Ben Moir is this week’s recipient of the Canadian Player of the Week award for his continual efforts to break through to the next level despite a plethora of unfortunate tiebreakers (17th at GP Toronto, 9th at a Montreal PTQ where his only loss was a CONCESSION to Alexander Hayne, etc.) Congrats Ben, you seem to be winning everything these days, hopefully you will remember your humble beginnings when you are a Pro Tour regular!

Ok I’m done talking now, so go listen to the Eh Team now, I’m sure what JayBoosh has to say is a lot more insightful than this article was (although I didn’t mention [card]Horizon Spellbomb[/card] so that gives me more cred!)