Are you a Quiet Speculation member?
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
With Kaladesh set to come out tomorrow, we are on the eve of a possible shake-up in the Modern landscape. Still, the decklists keep coming, this time in the form of multiple World Cup Magic Qualifier events worldwide! These events are always high-level, as players fight valiantly for the chance to represent their home country on the World Cup stage. While the number of simultaneous events means there a ton of decklists to go through, one of the side effects of this type of weekend is that there are no clear "winners" to shift the metagame. So, this leaves us with the unique ability to focus on one thing, and one thing only. Decklists! Let’s get to it!
Esper Mill, by Sven Restel (7th, WMCQ Australia)
Let's get warmed up. Yes, it had a nice run at Grand Prix Los Angeles earlier this year, but Esper Mill as a viable strategy is way down there with Skred and Budget Jund. Still, Top 8’ing a WMCQ is a pretty solid performance and deserves at least some recognition! Mesmeric Orb can help us turn on delirium for Manic Scribe, and together both cards can add up to a lot of action turn after turn. With maindeck Crypt Incursion and some Path to Exile to help fight creature decks, Sven's list is tuned to buy a bit of time so as to race most of the aggressive matchups in the format. With Surgical Extraction to rip away combo pieces that have been milled over, this deck has surprising game against most of the decks in the format.
At the end of the day, however, Mill is Mill. I’ve received a bit of heat in the past for my strong opinions regarding certain archetypes, and I try not to let bias affect my decision-making process too much, but I don’t expect this performance to be a precursor of a “Mill uprising” or anything crazy. At best, Glimpse the Unthinkable is on par with Boros Charm (milling eight cards when we need to turn over around 45 is a little less than “4 damage”) but the rest of our deck is below rate. Against a field full of slower strategies or a very polarized field where we can tune our deck to beat the majority, it’s possible this archetype could see continued success, but I’m confident in calling this one a flash-in-the-pan performance.
[wp_ad_camp_1]
RG Ponza, by Matt Mealing (4th, WMCQ Canada)
As I’ve been harsh on RG Breach decks lately, I figure spotlighting “RG Ponza” might work to repair some of the burned bridges I seem to have developed with RG players lately. Up until this weekend I hadn’t really seen this deck before, but through my research I’ve found that it’s been putting up some results here and there on MTGO for a few months, with the first "attention" being given to it in March by a Deck Digest article on SCG, and a primer written by Matt Mendoza after he won Kansas States with it. Recently, the deck put up a few results at some SCG IQ events, and this past weekend Ponza took two strong finishes in WMCQ Canada and England.
Essentially, RG Ponza is a mana acceleration/land destruction deck that looks to either Blood Moon its opponents or power ahead on mana and deploy bombs like Harmonize and Stormbreath Dragon until it wins. Unlike traditional RG Ramp strategies that need a delicate mix of lands/acceleration and payoff cards, Ponza generally is in a good position as long as it can get ahead and stay ahead. Utopia Sprawl and Arbor Elf work to overcome the general clunkiness of Stone Rain and Blood Moon against aggressive strategies that might develop too quickly for them to be effective, and should they deploy too much to the board too quickly, Bonfire of the Damned and Obstinate Baloth do good work cleaning up the ground.
Ponza is good right now because Blood Moon is just excellent. Even though Tron strategies haven’t been putting up strong results lately, Blood Moon is probably one of the best cards in the format right now, specifically for that reason. Tron has been out of the spotlight for a while so Blood Moon has disappeared from boards, which has caused a gradual shift in the metagame towards numerous archetypes that just no longer respecting the card anymore.
Like RW Control before it, I think Ponza is a “okay” deck propped up by a few good cards. It plays much better on the play than the draw, and can struggle if it either doesn’t draw/the opponent can kill Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl. Still, while the format is primarily aggro decks and decks weak to Blood Moon, and while midrange is still on the decline, I can’t deny that RG Ponza is a solid choice.
UR Prowess, by Gary Lau (1st, WMCQ Australia)
U/R Bedlam Reveler taking first (and third) in WMCQ Australia should not be overlooked, especially considering the upgrade this deck will be soon receiving in the form of Spirebluff Canal. With free spells like Gitaxian Probe, Mutagenic Growth and Manamorphose to power out Bedlam Reveler, this deck has the ability to be very aggressive yet still maintain power going into the lategame. Stormchaser Mage does great work as Monastery Swiftspear 5-8, but I’m still left wondering if Delver of Secrets could find a way in the deck. I know the list is relatively tight, but 31 spells that flip Delver is just begging to be taken advantage of.
With how mana efficient the rest of the list is, I’m wondering if Faithless Looting couldn’t just be cut. I know that Faithless Looting does good work setting up Bedlam Reveler, and flashing it back later is a good way to get rid of some extra lands stuck in our hand, but given any other option we would rather do anything else with our mana. We’re already playing one Blistercoil Weird, so it seems a quick change to fit at least three Delver of Secrets into the maindeck. Still, this deck has been actively tuned for a couple months now (since Bedlam Reveler’s release) and I think we’re on the precipice of a breakout into one of the top tiers of Modern. Keep an eye out for this one!
Esper Midrange, by Atsuki Kihara (5th, WMCQ Japan)
Finally, I’d like to take a look at this sweet Esper list from WMCQ Japan. Rather than messing around with Sphinx's Revelation or Esper Charm, Kihara instead modeled this archetype after the Grixis and Jund midrange strategies in the format. Removal, diverse threats and card advantage - this deck has it all. Where Grixis has Lightning Bolt and Kolaghan's Command, this Esper list is opting instead for Path to Exile and Lingering Souls. Backed up by a bunch of removal, Geist of Saint Traft is a hard-hitting, difficult-to-interact-with threat that attacks opponents from an entirely different direction than Liliana of the Veil, Lingering Souls and Gurmag Angler. Most Esper decks were already packing Geist of Saint Traft in their sideboard, so I like that Kihara chose to just embrace that post-board plan of attack for Game 1 as well.
There is a lot of built-in adaptability with a list like this, thanks in large part to the overall power level of its various components. When we’re packing four Lingering Souls, four Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, four Geist of Saint Traft, four Liliana’s and five delve threats, the rest of the mix can be whatever form of disruption/card advantage/removal we desire. Kihara chose for this event to play a playset of Disfigure alongside Path to Exile (the assumption being if we can get to the midgame we should have no problems winning) but any mix of Serum Visions or more discard spells could see play given the right metagame conditions. I plan on testing this deck out extensively in the coming weeks.
Conclusion
This round of WMCQ events gave us a bunch of sweet new decklists to look at heading into Kaladesh. I did my best to present some of the most interesting options, but I really only skimmed the top of what is an extensive list of data out there to analyze. What did you think about any of the lists we went over today? Did I miss something you think I should be paying attention to? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll see you next week!
Thanks for reading,
Trevor Holmes
The_Architect on MTGO
Twitch.tv/Architect_Gaming
Twitter.com/7he4rchitect
The esper list looks pretty spicy. I just can’t help but wonder why there isn’t even a single collective brutality in the list. Between the playset of discard and disfigure, brutality can free up some slots while fueling delve.
Glimpse mills for ten, not 8 and is better rate than boros charm.
Mill is better than raw damage for being harder to interact with – kitchen finks and timely reinforcements or wall of omens dont do anything vs mill. Mill is soft to leyline of sanctity but not a lot else. Archive trap glimpse is 23 cards and mind funeral is good for 12 more often than not. Ive found mill a pretty consistent turn 4 kill that gets some real mileage out of surgical, crypt incursion, and visions of beyond for its trouble.
Just not very good vs anyone packing singleton emrakul or primal commands, and sometimes too slow vs aggro or punished for rapidly growing goyfs or enabling fast tasigurs.
Yeah, I’m assuming Trevor is confusing Glimpse with “Breaking” from Breaking/Entering as that mills 8. Interestingly, that player isn’t even using Breaking! Normally that’s been one of the backbone cards of the deck. He appears to be much more focused on the repeatable sources of mill, like Ashiok, Manic Scribe, and Mesmeric Orb instead. Orb is a total beating in a long-game if not answered.
However, from my experience playing against the deck with multiple different decks, I’ve found that unless the mill player gets at least one free Archive Trap (definitely the best card, and really they usually need 2), that they basically need a perfect curve of multiple one-drops into a lucky mind funeral, followed by Glimpse. The deck is also, as a pseudo combo deck, really weak to targeted discard.
I will say though, from my experience, that a Mill hand that has multiple free Traps seems pretty much impossible to beat unless you have Emrakul. And the deck has staying power with those repeated-able discard outlets. But I’ve found any deck that can kill T4 with any reasonable consistency is likely to win vs. mill unless they get at least one free Trap. However, maybe this is the optimal build, which may do really well in the hands of a skilled pilot.
I was hoping to see UW Tron in this article (It top8’d the French WMCQ), but am glad i got to see Ponza here. As always, a good piece
This variant of esper mill is suboptimal…
The second professional players recognize mill, they simply stop fetching, which means that you don’t get to use archive trap, which will shut down your bridge long enough for aggro to kill you.
9 cards to protect ashiok is also not nearly enough.
The UR Prowess deck looked fun, so I tried it out – and it really, really is. It plays sorta like a Death’s Shadow deck in just 2 colors. It’s really explosive and can easily do lethal in one turn with all the phyrexian mana – like one game where I had 2 swiftspears on board, 3 life and one card in hand, with my at opponent at 15 life. I topdecked Manamorphose into Reveler and went off for 18 dmg in one swing.
From what I’ve seen, the reason it doesn’t run Delver is that Delver *just doesn’t fit* with the theme of the deck – it’s trying to win in one single turn, while Delver does gradual damage over the course of many turns.
I think this may not be the the optimal build, but it sure feels powerful and fun to play.
Really like seeing these articles. Always cool to see some new tech.
Been flipping back and forth between RG Ponza and RW Boom/Bust for the last few months (apparently I hate it when people smile, lol) and gotta say that it’s great to see a sub-optimal list like this one doing well. Almost every time Ive seen one of these lists over the last few months they are full of Bonfires when they should have Anger of the Gods and often short on the Beast Withins (like the list above). Also, why no Inferno Titans? This deck really wants them, especially when you aren’t running a full set of bolts. Finally, seeing Thundermaws in the deck makes me wonder if he was expecting a particular metagame. If I start seeing a lot of Lingering Souls I might put some in the board, but in the MD I prefer Titans, which do similar work but are more versatile. Combustible Gearhulk is worth testing here too.
Maybe worth taking a look at (silver pro/GP finalist/WMC semi-finalist) Francesco Giorgio’s Jeskai take on the Prowess deck (complete with Mantis Riders). Only losses in the England WMCQ were to Dredge (unfortunately including the final).