Did you miss me? I’m sorry. Life has taken such a crazy turn as of late, but also, I’ve been busy playing a lot of Magic. Some Modern, but mostly Standard. Despite the smaller size of the available card pool, Standard is a very interesting space to be building decks in right now. We have a ton of decks that are viable, and the space seems so far to be pretty level in terms of power. We have the traditional all around strength of the Abzan Midrange decks, coupled with the blistering aggression produced by both UW Heroic and Mono red builds and capped off with the slow and grindy [card]Whip of Erebos[/card] decks. There are also some number of combo decks to be concerned about, nearly all of which are centered around the latest WOTC R&D last minute mistake; [card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/card]. What has been of extra importance to me lately is this though;
Mana.
Pronounced \ˈmä-nə\
Definition (Concise Encyclopedia):
Among Polynesian and Melanesian peoples, a supernatural force or power that may be ascribed to persons, spirits, or inanimate objects. Mana may be either good or evil, beneficial or dangerous, but it is not impersonal; it is never spoken of except in connection with powerful beings or things.
This definition really spoke to me. AJ Sacher, recent guest on The Eh Team podcast and I got into an interesting discussion about this very topic while we were discussing the range of decks in the format currently. One of the things that came up was the beauty of the mana base construction here in Yuuya Watanabe’s Jeskai Tokens list from the World Championship.
[deck title=Jeskai Tokens Combo – Yuuya Watanabe]
[Lands]
3 Battlefield Forge
3 Flooded Strand
1 Island
2 Mountain
4 Mystic Monastery
2 Plains
3 Shivan Reef
2 Temple of Epiphany
4 Temple of Triumph
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
4 Hordeling Outburst
4 Jeskai Ascendancy
2 Jeskai Charm
4 Lightning Strike
4 Raise the Alarm
4 Stoke the Flames
4 Treasure Cruise
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Seeker of the Way
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
4 Disdainful Stroke
2 Erase
2 Magma Spray
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
1 Anger of the Gods
3 End Hostilities
2 Glare of Heresy
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
One of the major things that stood out to him was 3 [card]Flooded Strand[/card]. The deck plays a full 4 [card]Treasure Cruise[/card], and would likely benefit from the extra fetch land in the graveyard. Instead, we have three of them and exactly 3 lands available to be found with them. It might be easy to just jam a [card]Mana Confluence[/card] in there, in order to make it all work, but instead, we see precise numbers, likely derived through tedious intent. AJ has been known for his accurate and in depth analyses in the MTG Community for some time, and when discussing the mana of the other decks in the format, one word come up regularly; lazy.
According to him, mana bases are lazy right now. That got me to really thinking. Some of the more off the wall lists that had been coming out of the prominent authors on other sites were starting to advocate playing 4 or 5 color mana bases, but it just felt really greedy to me. We always look at decks in MTG in terms of the power level of the cards. [card]Siege Rhino[/card] is a very powerful Magic card. It offers an excellent return on a minimal investment, but that investment comes at the cost of ensuring you can produce Green, Black, and White mana simultaneously. [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card] is a very efficient way to remove any creature from the game at sorcery speed, asking only for one white mana. It does however, require a you to control a Mountain. If you do not control said Mountain, then the spell might as well cost 100 mana, because you’re just not casting that card. [card]Chromanticore[/card], potentially considered as the next [card]Baneslayer Angel[/card], is nearly unplayable by most standards as the WUBRG casting cost actually is more expensive than one might first realize. Crafting a mana base to reliably produce all 5 colors consistently on turn 5, while certainly possible, can end up being much more expensive than expected. You might be forced to play a series of pain lands, and maybe even a full set of [card]Mana Confluence[/card]s.
If we cut down the definition of mana however, to “Mana may be either good or evil, beneficial or dangerous, but it is not impersonal; it is never spoken of except in connection with powerful beings or things”, then it asks an interesting question: Is the power level of these cards worth the potential strain on the mana?
Tom Ross recently posted an article in which he was advocating going big. Even bigger than the [card]Whip of Erebos[/card] decks. This in particular was something he had in mind, and the list that I played on stream Monday last week.
[deck title=5 Colour Chromanticore – Tom Ross]
[Lands]
2 Battlefield Forge
2 Caves of Koilos
2 Forest
2 Mana Confluence
2 Nomad Outpost
2 Opulent Palace
1 Plains
4 Sandsteppe Citadel
3 Temple of Abandon
1 Temple of Plenty
3 Windswept Heath
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Abzan Charm
4 Crackling Doom
2 Magma Jet
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Chromanticore
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Fleecemane Lion
4 Rattleclaw Mystic
2 Sagu Mauler
4 Siege Rhino
4 Sylvan Caryatid
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Utter End
1 Duneblast
1 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes
1 Glare of Heresy
2 Xenagos, the Reveler
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
3 Magma Spray
2 Negate
2 Thoughtseize
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
He mentioned that in initial testing he played sets of the new wedge lands in a 5 color deck, and that the mana was “too good”. He had Blue mana more often than he needed, and ultimately went to this for his mana base. Stretching a mana base to these lengths has to result in a big payoff, or it is an exercise in futility. In this case, the payoff is a bestowed [card]Chromanticore[/card] on a [card]Sagu Mauler[/card] or monstrous [card]Fleecemane Lion[/card] backed up by premium removal. Even though this was the payoff, the deck also had access to both [card]Siege Rhino[/card] and [card]Crackling Doom[/card], both format defining cards in their own rights. After going 2-2 in the Standard Daily with the list, and 2-0 in some games on the side, I came to the realization that perhaps this one was going a little too deep. Although I never lost a game in which I found the payoff, I won more of them by simply casting [card]Siege Rhino[/card] and [card]Crackling Doom[/card] a bunch of times. That got me thinking about what could be done with 4 Colors. Brad Nelson had come up with a 4 color deck which looked very promising, but ultimately, after looking at the mana base and the main deck copies of [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card], I knew I had to go deeper. I hit up mtggoldfish.com and started to dig for lists. I ultimately settled on this one.
[deck title=4 Color Midrange – GivenToFly – Standard Daily 4-0]
[Lands]
1 Battlefield Forge
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Caves of Koilos
3 Forest
1 Llanowar Wastes
2 Mountain
4 Nomad Outpost
4 Sandsteppe Citadel
1 Swamp
2 Temple of Plenty
1 Temple of Triumph
4 Wooded Foothills
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Abzan Charm
1 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes
4 Crackling Doom
2 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
3 Lightning Strike
1 Murderous Cut
2 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
2 Xenagos, the Reveler
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
2 Anafenza, the Foremost
3 Butcher of the Horde
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Siege Rhino
4 Sylvan Caryatid
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Xenagos, the Reveler
4 Anger of the Gods
1 Back to Nature
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Drown in Sorrow
2 End Hostilities
4 Thoughtseize
1 Utter End
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
I was in love. Instantly. This deck was playing the best threats, the best spells, and the mana even looked outstanding. I had initial concerns about the 4 [card]Anger of the Gods[/card] in the sideboard, coupled with [card]Drown in Sorrow[/card] coming in for the same matches, but ultimately, I think it’s just a hedge on some of the mana draws. There are some hands which BB1 is easy to accomplish on turn 3, and others which can only handle RR1 with similar ease. I know that it looks off upon initial view, but knowing that the wedge lands both produce White and Black mana should help to see where the rest of the decisions have been made and why. If the mana was going to work, then this 75 looked like it was poised to handle anything the format could throw at it in 3 games. We ended up going 3-1 in the daily event with this as a follow up, only dropping game 3 to UW Heroic to exact damage due to a series of excellent draws from the opponent. The equalizer for the matchup is [card]Crackling Doom[/card], and if I had taken a [card]Stubborn Denial[/card] instead of something else on turn 1, then we would have been looking at a smooth 4-0. The thing that stood out to me from both lists was the notable absence of [card]Mana Confluence[/card], clearly showing that the mana can be built well without this crutch in mind. Games with the midrange decks are long and grindy, and the incremental damage can end games eventually. The other thing that merited notice was the casting cost of the spells in these decks. With the exception of [card]Courser of Kruphix[/card], no spell requires 2 of the same mana cost in the main deck until turn 5 or 6, and Courser itself does a good job of assisting with the land flow. This fact lets you cast your spells on time reliably so long as lands are coming.
I will be tuning this list a bit for the next week for sure, so expect to see something more in depth about it, sideboarding, and match up evaluations later this week! Check out the stream at twitch.tv/mrscottymac on Mondays and Wednesdays at 845pm EST!!
Thank you all for your support. Really. You all mean so much to me and my family.
Scott
