Life Outside PLT1

Analysing (and attempting to beat) the Standard Meta-Game: WIP

January 18, 2007 on 1:17 pm | In Magic | | DarkSentinel

Last updated: 30/01/07
The Meta-Game is what people are playing. Beat the meta-game and you will win most of your matches!

Disclaimer: I’m wrong. Read on at your own risk.

First, let’s have a look at the Worlds ‘06 Top 8:
1: UR DragonStorm (Dragonstorm + Bogardan Hellkite + Hunted Dragon), Combo
2: UW TriskeTron (Triskelavus + Academy Ruins + Urzalands + UW Control), Control + Combo
3: RW Boros Deck Wins (Creatures + Burn), Aggro
4: UW MartyrTron (Martyr of Sands + Urzalands + Proclamation of Rebirth + UW Control), Control + Combo
5: RG Zoo (Creatures + Burn), Aggro
6: Boros Deck Wins (Creatures + Burn), Aggro
7: RWU Control (UW Control + Burn + Creatures), Control
8: UW TriskeTron (Triskelavus + Academy Ruins + Urzalands + UW Control), Control + Combo

NB: UW Control means lots of counters (especially Remand) and Wrath of God

Immediately we can see that there the dominant themes are: UW Control (4), and Creatures + Burn (3).

We also see a nice mixture of combo, aggro and control.

These decks represent only a part of the meta-game (at least as I’ve experienced it), but they’re definitely the strongest contenders. Other common (and strong ones):
NB: I’m not sure of all the names
UW SoggyPickles (essentially UW Control + Vesuvan Shapeshifter + Brine Elemental)
UWG Blink (UW Control + Momentary Blink + come-into-play creatures)
UWB Solar Flare (UW Control + reanimation)
UWB Solar Pox (Solar Flare + Smallpox + Haakon, Stromgald Scourge)
UR IzzetTron (U control + burn + Urzalands, potentially Triskelavus, or Demonfire)
UG CounterBeats (U control + G creatures in varying ratios, potentially Spectral Force combo)
GW Ghazi-Glare (Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree + W control + Glare of Vhitu-Ghazi)
R Goblins (Goblins)
UR Land Destruction (U counters, R land destruction, Magnivore, Wildfire)
And various others…

How to (attempt to) beat the Meta-Game
Let’s take a closer look at a few decks and their potential weaknesses:
DragonStorm: as a very strong and fast combo deck, Dragonstorm is nonetheless unpredictable. To win properly (DragonStorm + 20 damage in one turn) it needs (in hand): sufficient mana acceleration to hit 8R, a storm count of at least 3, DragonStorm in hand, and at least 4 Dragons in deck (preferably all Bogardan Hellkites). To get this a Dragonstorm player will use Sleight of Hand and Telling Time to grab them, and Remand to slow the opponent down. Take away the pieces and the combo fails.
Removing the pieces: discard, either lots individually or Persecute (for Red)
Preventing the mana build up: counter the accelerators, land destruction, countering Lotus Bloom
Preventing Dragonstorm: Trickbind or Voidslime the storm copies, and counter the original, or just play Swift Silence, Shadow of Doubt works too
Taking away the Dragons: 2 Jester’s Cap will remove all the Dragons, Hide//Seek gains life from removing Hellkites, Traumatise or Glimpse the Unthinkable can potentially do a lot of damage
Surviving the Dragons: Worship + a pro-R (and possibly pro-U) creature, lifegain + Wrath of God, Ivory Mask + Wrath of God, Circle of Protection: Red; Temporal Isolation can also prevent Hellkite damage, early and efficient lifegain, e.g. Martyr of Sands in a W-heavy deck can help you win if you follow it with a Wrath once the dragons are out.
To prevent these countermeasures, Dragonstorm runs Gigadrowse, which not only slows down aggressive creature decks, but also can “End of your turn, I Gigadrowse all your land” (especially in tandem with Dreadship Reef or Calciform Pools), which prevents counters (or even Circle of Protection), from helping. This can be prevented with the use of Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir (which has the benefit of preventing Lotus Blooms from coming into play). Also Gigadrowse is beaten by Rewind, since you can untap four lands that the Gigadrowse taps, and you can trickbind the replicate trigger.
NB: Beating Dragonstorm is hard, there’s a reason it won Worlds (and went 3:0 in the final match), and there’s basically nothing you can do to beat: first turn: Rite of Flame, Rite of Flame, Rite of Flame, Seething Song, Dragonstorm for 4 Bogardan Hellkites.

UW Control: the combination of U’s counterspells and W’s Wrath of God is extremely potent. While counterspells can be beaten through early creature drops (e.g. Mogg Sentry), and Wrath of God can be beaten a number of ways (e.g. Thunder Totem) together they nullify each others weaknesses almost completely. Counterspells have the weakness that mana must always be available to play them, and so do the counterspells, thus if a counterspell player plays a 3rd turn Compulsive Research (a sorcery) or a 4th turn Tidings in order to try to find more Mana Leaks, the opponent is safe from counters for the next turn. Wrath of God can do nothing against burn, and costs 2WW to play allowing some early damage to sneak past, Ghostway can allow creatures to survive Wrath.
To beat UW control thus requires either lots of cheap but effective things (e.g. Boros Deck Wins), things which can’t be countered (e.g. Vitu-Ghazi the City-Tree, or Celestial Crusader), things that are Wrath-proof and hopefully can be dropped during a counter-safe turn (e.g. Weatherseed Totem, or Griffin Guide) or potentially even Chronosavant (that’s probably getting a bit desperate, although Gabriel Nassif ran 2 in Worlds ‘06). Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir or Leyline of Lifeforce mean you only have the Wraths to worry about. If playing blue, dropping a Teferi and the countering everything else (including other Teferis) can win the game, otherwise Spell Snare is a good card in counter-spell duels. Other counter-prevention cards include things with flash (Scryb Ranger), cards like Defense Grid or Leyline of Lifeforce, and cheap creatures (Mogg Sentry). Discard also works. Control decks tend to have
Sidetrack: Blood Moon is an awesome card. It significantly reduces the effectiveness of 2 colour decks, and can cause players of 3-colour decks or 2-colour-tron decks to resign (e.g. MartyrTron, which runs around 1 basic land). It’s less effective against Boros Deck Wins and Dragonstorm (i.e. don’t use it in these matchups)

Boros Deck Wins (aka White Weenie Red): Savannah Lions, Knight of the Holy Nimbus, Char, Lightning Helix, Lightning Helix, gg. Backed up with Knight of the Holy Nimbus, Soltari Priest and lots more burn, boros is a very formidable combo.
How do we beat this? Circle of Protection: Red helps against burn and little red men, Ivory Mask stops burn (albeit possibly too late), (but both are particularly vulnerable to Ronom Unicorn). Wrath kills creatures (including the exceedingly annoying Knight of the Holy Nimbus), but other weenie-hosers like Pyroclasm can’t beat the Knight or Soltari Priest. Perhaps the best way to beat BDW is to have early, efficient, lifegain (e.g. Loxodon Hierarch or Martyr of Sands) and creature control (Faith’s Fetters does both), since burn has difficulties matching lifegain. Decks like Ghazi-Glare are very good for this. Discard can help the burn problem since Boros is hard-pressed to counteract the card disadvantage, but there is always the risk that they will top deck sufficient burn to kill you. Walls (aka creatures with ‘Defender’) can be useful since they help contain the flood of weenie creatures (Aetherflame Wall and Carven Caryatid spring to mind). Cheap creature removal (Last Gasp) can also work a treat. Surviving the first 5-6 turns and still having a decent board position will generally beat Boros.
Sidetrack: more tech: Suppression Field can be a very useful card against decks that use an activated ability, even with Tron it makes Trisketron very ungainly, and can make Knight of the Holy Nimbus that much harder to kill.

Zoo: very similar to Boros, but running even more efficient creatures. The RG version can drop a 2/3 on the first turn, a 3/3 on the second turn, a 3/4 on the third turn and then burn you to death on the 4th. The creatures in RG Zoo are tougher than in Boros, but have less interesting abilities. Overall trying to beat Zoo is similar to trying to beat Boros.

Unfortunately I have just flicked over to magicthegathering.com and there is a significantly better article addressing the exact same issue as this one, linky: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/academy/22

So there we have a few examples from the current meta-game. In smaller player pools (New Zealand towns being a good example) the meta-game is much more diverse, generally skewed towards rogue decks and lower-budget options. Beating that sort of metagame is mostly a matter of Careful Consideration

As for beating the tournament metagame, I’m still trying to come up with a new idea to beat it. But as soon as anything new and good pops up, it gets assimilated into the meta-game, which adds to the ever changing game scene that keeps the game fun and interesting.