by Brook Gardner-Durbin

Brook has been achieving successful results lately with the UG Genesis Wave deck, which he considers to be the best deck in standard, and offers his thoughts on how to pilot it in a tournament against the current two best control decks in the format (Ub and Uw).

I recently played a local tournament with a slightly modified form of Mike Flores' UG Genesis Wave deck. For those of you unfamiliar, here is his list:

I made a few changes to his list based on my testing before the tournament. I sometimes felt I wanted a man-land to search for with Primeval Titan, so I cut one Tectonic Edge for one Dread Statuary. I was also short on blue sources at times, so I cut the two Verdant Catacombs for a Scalding Tarn and a Terramorphic Expanse. I was expecting to play against mostly Uw and Ub decks, with only a few aggressive decks, so I cut three of the Frost Titans for three Wurmcoil Engines. I figured that they were better against the expected Day of Judgments and Doom Blades, as well as one of the few Red decks.

If you haven't seen it, David Williams did a deck tech at Worlds with his copy of the deck, featured here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fB3aWKu5Qs

The deck functions by making ridiculous amounts of mana quickly, then hopefully casting a Genesis Wave for six or more. I've had very few games where I lost after resolving a Wave. If you don't have a Wave, you can simply deploy Titans until the opponent stops moving, which usually doesn't take long, or dig with a Jace.

I was attracted to this list for one simple reason: it makes better use of Jace, the Mind Sculptor than any other deck in standard. When you cast Jace in Uw or Ub, you can bounce a creature to stay alive, attempt to hold an advantage by fatesealing, or brainstorm. If you brainstorm, you usually end up putting back at least one card you would prefer not to see again but know you are going to draw again soon because you don't have a way to shuffle. While every Ux control deck today plays a few fetchlands, none play enough that they can reliably expect to shuffle away unwanted cards every turn. This might be argued by some, but I don't think that the spell Brainstorm, without access to shuffle effects, is very good, because it leaves you with as many cards as you started. Brainstorm is not card advantage- you lose a card from hand when you cast it, draw three cards, and put two back. That's not card advantage, that's card selection. If you draw the same cards, its usually not worth the mana to just rearrange them–look at Sage Owl, or a dozen others. The reason Brainstorm is so widespread in Legacy is because most decks have numerous shuffle effects, which means that they can get what they need and shuffle away whatever they don't need at the time. While Jace's brainstorm ability is easily able to put a game away if left unchecked, it is also possible to put the same two dead cards back again and again, seeing nothing new that matters.

Not so with this deck. UG Wave not only has more fetchlands than any Ux control deck, it can also shuffle with Primeval Titans. This means that every time you brainstorm with Jace, TMS in this deck, you are gaining more advantage than when you brainstorm in Ub or Uw because you have a higher chance of seeing what you want and then shuffle away what you don't, instead of seeing what you want and drawing what you don't want in a turn or two anyway. This list can also accelerate a turn three Jace with one of its twelve mana producers, allowing it to put out a Jace before any other list.

I won the tournament with only two games lost- when I mulliganed to five in one game and four in the other. In the second round I played against a Uw list, and as I was beating him to a pulp I started thinking about exactly why it felt so easy.

If you've ever played with Merfolk or another Counter-Sliver style deck, this deck will feel surprisingly familiar. Merfolk and other aggro-control decks put a Grizzly Bear or two onto the field and then defend them with a counterspell or two long enough for the Bears to go the distance. Against a control deck, they are able to sneak though a small threat or two before the control deck's shields are up, then use their counterspells to stop the control deck from resolving a Wrath of God-effect or anything else with significant impact long enough for their Bears to whittle the control player's life to dangerous levels. If a Wrath effect does resolve, this will leave the control player tapped out and allow the Fish player a chance to deploy a few new Bears, or something larger. I see this deck as fairly similar in many ways, despite the lack of counterspells in the maindeck.

When playing against a Ux deck with UG Wave, you usually have at least one mana-producer in play before their counter walls are up. You can then simply poke them for two or three damage a turn until they are forced to tap out to deploy some defense, or they try to play their own threat. With Fish you could counter it, but here you just don't care. There is nothing a Ux control deck can tap out for that has as large an impact on the board as whatever you will cast in your window. If they tap out turn four for a Jace, TMS, you can reply with a Titan. If they go for Gideon, you have a Jace, TMS. They have Grave Titan? You have Genesis Wave for six! Any time they tap out, you are being given a window to push out a game-ender. Your entire deck is accelerators, game-enders, and two Spreading Seas–your chances of not being able to deploy a significant threat in any window are quite low.

That is not to say that I never cast a spell until the blue decks are tapped out. This deck is built to present an incredible amount of inertia quite quickly-if you sit back and let the blue decks play catchup, you are losing the benefit of all of your mana accelerators and the boost in speed they give you. Because you have so many threats, you don't mind trading them one-for-one with the counterspells of a Ux deck. Most blue decks now play at most eight counterspells, so you come out ahead if you trade one-for-one. The fact that it's fairly easy to pay the three for a Mana Leak most of the time only exacerbates the problem for them.

Whether you try to force them to tap out and then push through a threat, or are willing to trade threats for counters until one sticks, depends on your hand and board. I would consider two damage on board the absolute minimum to consider attacking worthwhile. Blue decks are not going to live in fear if you are attacking them with one Joraga Treespeaker a turn–there is no way they are going to lose to that. I generally try to attack them for a few a turn and then make a threat when I have a hand with a Lotus Cobra and a Treespeaker or two, but only one significant threat. If my hand is lands and a Primeval, I will probably wait to cast the Primeval until they are tapped out or I have the mana to pay for at least one Mana Leak. On the other hand, if you have a Garruk, a Jace, and a Titan of each color, it is much more acceptable to lob threats at them until one sticks because it is quite unlikely that they will have enough counters for all of them.

Because UG Wave can play very different games depending on its hand, it reminds me quite a bit of Mythic from last standard. Sometimes you have nothing but action and cast threat after threat until the control decks run out of answers; sometimes you attack for two with a Cobra and sit on your counters, waiting for them to give you a window–either way, you aren't worried about much the Ux control can do to you.

After sideboarding, it gets even better for UG because the Ux decks don't have a good plan against you. If they bring in more creature removal or cheap counters to try to stop the accelerators, you are content to let the control deck sap their resources while you build lands. Once you hit six lands, you can cast your Titans the old-fashioned way, and the control decks will have used a solid percentage of their counters and creature-control. If they allow your accelerators to live, you can start casting fatties as early as turn three, or turn four with protection, and overwhelm them before they have a chance to sculpt their hands with Preordains and Jaces. You, on the other hand, get to bring in your own counterspells. A well-placed Negate or Spell Pierce can allow your Primeval Titan or Jace, TMS, to resolve which will usually be back-breaking.

Against blue control decks, I take out either the Treespeakers or the Battlements for Negates. If they are Ub, they are likely going to have either Disfigure or Doom Blade, which can turn leveling a Treespeaker into a Time Walk for them, so I'll pull those. If your opponent is Uw, they are not going to have targeted, instant speed removal, so the Battlements would come out.

Depending on your metagame and how many sideboard slots you can devote to Ux control, you can also cut one or two Genesis Waves for something else. Other options I'm still testing are Nest Invader and Spell Pierce. Nest Invader lets you needle them more easily, and the mana is not insignificant when they are probably going to be trying to keep your producers off the table. You can get away with taking out a Wave or two because they have to play around it the entire game, even if they know you took out one, because if Wave resolves it's GG. In the sideboarded games they are going to be doing a better job of killing/countering your producers, so you aren't going to have as much mana running around. This means both that a Wave is more likely to stick in your hand, unable to be cast with meaningful impact, and it also means Wave is more likely to run into a Mana Leak because you won't have the mana available to pay.

Honestly, you can get away with not sideboarding at all because the match is tilted so heavily in your favor, but why push it?

The sideboard Williams played at Worlds looked like this:

Aggressive decks are the worst matchups for the UG Wave deck, which is what you would expect from a deck that crushes control. Against aggressive decks I'll usually side out the Genesis Waves. If you survive long enough to be casting a Wave, you're usually going to win anyway. Against most aggro decks you don't need three Titans and a Jace–one Titan is usually enough. You need cards that can interact in the early game to make sure you survive long enough for your superior card quality to take you home. If they are playing Vampires, the Spreading Seas come in, but against other aggressive decks I'll take out the Seas. Quest, Boros, RDW, and Elves (or any other aggressive deck I'm forgetting) don't have manabases as sketchy as Vampires, so your chance to get a free win from Seas are quite low. If you want to take out even more cards after the Waves and Seas, I'll usually cut Jace next. He is good in the late game, but drawing two makes you want to cry, and you often can't afford to spend a turn casting Jace instead of something with a larger effect on the board. The Slimes are good if your opponent has equipment, but fairly unexciting otherwise.

Against Valakut or other ramp decks, the Seas and Acidic Slimes should buy you enough time to hit them with something big until they stop moving. If they are creature-based ramp, like the mirror or Mono-Green Eldrazi, the Tumble Magnets can be quite effective.

I think this is currently the best deck in standard, and I plan to continue playing it as long as I can. It can beat the blue decks by attacking from several angles before they have their shields up, as well as being much better able to sideboard against them than they against it. The Ramp matchups are close to a race, but your deck is usually faster and Genesis Wave >> anything they're going to do. Its Achilles heel is fast, aggressive decks, so if you expect to be playing against more of those than blue decks, this might not be the deck to choose.

Good luck!

Brook Gardner-Durbin
@BGardnerDurbin on twitter
http://magicthebloggering.com/

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