RG Ponza Update! - MAGIC F2F

Hello again and welcome to the first deck update I’ve ever written. If you haven’t checked them out, I recommend reading my RG Ponza Primer and Sideboarding Guide, published last week on ManaDeprived. In those articles, I explain the history, card choices, matchups, strategies, and sideboarding. As I see this series as an addendum of sorts to those pieces, they are required to fully understand where I’m coming from and where we’re going. Additionally, I’m excited about this series because it will be an ongoing conversation. Not only will I write about new observations and conclusions based on my own experience with the format and deck, I’ll include and respond to feedback and discussions I hear from players who chose to ruin their opponent’s day with [card]Bonfire of the Damned[/card] or [card]Blood Moon[/card]. Over the course of the series, I’ll tap these fellow Blood Besties for feedback in the hopes of reaching correct conclusions or, at the very least, interesting discourse. I fully admit that I will be wrong. While I’ve played over 600 matches with this archetype, my experience with the deck has been against Modern as a whole, gleaning what information I can from each match. While I started with an idea, the deck has developed into something good, but that’s not enough. In this living series, I hope to take the deck, my play, and you, to the apex.

So, what’s the list look like this week?

RG Ponza – Matt Mendoza

[deck]
[Lands]
9 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Stomping Ground
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
[/Lands]
[Spells]
3 Beast Within
4 Blood Moon
4 Bonfire of the Damned
4 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1 Primal Command
3 Stone Rain
4 Utopia Sprawl
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Arbor Elf
2 Birds of Paradise
4 Inferno Titan
2 Obstinate Baloth
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
2 Dismember
2 Sudden Shock
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
3 Kitchen Finks
3 Ancient Grudge
1 Crumble to Dust
2 Firespout
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Each week I’ll structure the articles similarly by putting the decklist up first, then discussing the changes that we make on a week-to-week (and sometimes day-to-day) basis. I’ll follow it up with a discussion about an aspect of the deck, metagame, or whatever is relevant to the deck that week. This isn’t a set-in-stone structure, but it makes the most sense to me.

The changes this week happened in the board. As I mentioned in the Primer/Guide, I would be okay playing 72 of last week’s 75 cards if I were to have jammed Ponza on the beach or in the bathroom battleground (LA or Charlotte). I wasn’t sure of the fourth [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] or the lone [card]Stone Rain[/card] in the sideboard. Additionally, we made a change to a second [card]Dismember[/card] that we were still testing. It helps us deal with many of the board states that trouble us. These boards go wide with lords to outclass our Bonfires quickly, or go quick and narrow to pressure us early with a beefy creature we have to [card]Beast Within[/card]. [card]Dismember[/card] kills lords and nets crucial turns or turns the game around by killing a solo [card]Gurmag Angler[/card], [card]Tasigur, the Golden Fang[/card], [card]Master of Etherium[/card], or [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]. While it isn’t as good as the amazing [card]Sudden Shock[/card] against Infect, a 2/2 Shock/Dismember split is still fine and is better for the deck as a whole. The second [card]Dismember[/card] proved to be an excellent addition.

[card]Stone Rain[/card] was a theoretical call. There were matchups where we wanted the extra land destruction: RG Tron, Valakut, Jeskai, for example. But, as we tested, it wasn’t pulling its weight and we wanted a solution with more umph. In Modern, your sideboard slots are taxed and must be powerful. [card]Crumble to Dust[/card] was the next obvious solution. It definitely loses some equity by not costing 2R, which makes it much more difficult to cast on turn two. But, the games we lose against [card]Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle[/card] decks, for example, are because they either make us very Molten or [card]Through the Breach[/card] an [card]Emrakul, the Aeons Torn[/card]. Rarely do we lose because of [card]Primeval Titan[/card] attacks. Nor do we typically lose if they board in [card]Inferno Titan[/card]s to get grindy-we bring in more creatures and pressure against them so our ground game is strong. That being the reality, [card]Blood Moon[/card] is crucial here. Similarly, Moon keeps our Tron opponents fair (our LD keeps them out of the game). However, they also have the ability to suddenly get out from under Moon via [card]Nature’s Claim[/card] and go nuts. A resolved Crumble keeps them fair, before, during, and after Moon. We are aware that the Temur [card]Scapeshift[/card] lists are more challenging and that Crumble can have a difficult time resolving, but we’re looking at that, and other [card]Remand[/card] matchups, with a close eye.

Removing the fourth [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] from the board was another Stone Rain-esque call. We wanted that slot to help against the control and attrition decks, but we didn’t know exactly how we wanted it to do that. We also didn’t know if we wanted a card that also improved the aggro matchups. We landed on the third [card]Thrun, the Last Troll[/card] after I played what I would consider an ideal game against Jeskai if we can’t lock them out with Moon and LD. In that game, Thrun resolved early and my opponent scrambled to stop him. The Jeskai player had to buy themself a bunch of time and resources blocking. This had two effects on the game. The first was that they weren’t able to simply play [card]Nahiri, the Harbinger[/card] to exile my offense and gain control. The second was that Thrun forced them to drop their shields against my other spells to keep them up against my own green harbinger. While Thrun is more expensive than Finks, Thrun resolves (like, Resolves) and there were games where some timely tempo spells and an early Nahiri or [card]Ajani Vengeant[/card] would keep us out. So, by adding a third Thrun, we draw it more often, but we also have more copies if our Jund, Abzan, or Grixis (or sometimes Fairies) opponent wants to discard or [card]Vendilion Clique[/card] the dude.

The boarding changes slightly because of these additions, but not much. While the first Thrun still comes in against many of the aggressive decks in the format, the second, unlike Finks, isn’t appropriate unless they can make you discard it or easily kill or counter your [card]Obstinate Baloth[/card]s.

Crumble is a much closer analog to [card]Stone Rain[/card] and still applies to Valakut and Tron, but also to [card]Celestial Colonnade[/card].

Aggressive Mulligans

A common criticism I hear from new Blood Besties is that the deck mulligans a lot. And it’s true. It’s very important to evaluate your opening hands and understand that, while some bad hands may win in certain circumstances, most just lose. Land destruction strategies require you to get ahead in some way or you risk drawing very dead. There is, however, a flip side to this coin. Some hands are basically unbeatable and our advantage was so strong that our opponent didn’t get to play Magic. Even some of our four-card hands are unbeatable against the right decks. Complicating matters are the high-risk, high-reward one-land hands that have play if you don’t draw a land, but win by a landslide if you do. I thought about this aspect of the deck and I realized something comforting that justifies these mulligans: our early turns are more important than our later turns and can be powerful enough to either win the game on their own or buy us enough time to draw out of our mulligans.

In general, you want hands with dorks. Getting to three on two is important in most matchups, so value that in the dark and mulligan most hands that can’t get you there. Next, value either powerful acceleration or disruption. For example, if you can play a turn-three Titan, keep it. Even if the Titan isn’t enough on its own, most players will have to expend resources dealing with it. All the while, you’ll have enough mana to play your other haymakers as you draw them. Powerful chains of disruption, without a visible top-end (no Titan, Dragon, Command, etc.) are also keepable. They’re riskier, but, once again, disruption can keep your opponent knocked down while you draw a win condition. Note that chains of Rain>Moss/Rain>Moss can fail to be enough sometimes, so Moon is a also a huge factor when evaluating hands heavy in disruption. Also, as I mentioned previously, one-land hands aren’t always mulligans. If they start with Fetch/Forest, Elf, Sprawl, Finks/Baloth/Thrun/Moss, something else powerful, they’re worth the risk most of the time. On the flip side, land-heavy hands can be risky, but can pay off against the aggressive decks as you get to, what I like to call, ‘open up’ your top decks. Your midgame Bonfires, for example, are better. Also, hitting your land drops when they kill your dorks, can allow you to continue to curve out.

Hopefully these basic mulligan tips allow you to better evaluate your hands. In my next update, we’ll dive in and look at a plethora of sample hands and see how they battle against the decks in the format.

As always, if you have any questions, you can email me at mattjmendoza@gmail.com or hit me up on Twitter @mattmendoza. When discussing the deck on social media, please use the hashtag #RGPonza so we can make discussion and players easier to find.