Top-Notch Tech - Blue-Green

Brian Kibler

Countersliver. Skies. Fish. They are names that strike fear into the hearts of control players everywhere. They are the aggro-control decks, designed to win with a few early threats with the coverage of many support spells. They rear their ugly heads in every format, from Standard to Extended to - yes - Block constructed. Last block season it was Aggro-Waters or Skies, packing fast, efficient creatures, bounce, and alternative casting cost countermagic. Able to overcome aggressive decks with their ability to steal the tempo away with cards like Waterfront Bouncer, and able to defeat control decks with their mixture of quick beatdown and countermagic, these decks were often seen among the top tables of any given Masques Block Constructed tournament. This season, the metagame has yet to be fully mapped out, but one contender for the IBC aggro-control crown has already shown itself in the early stages of the format - U-G bounce.

Aggro-control decks are essentially based off the premise that if your opponents can't play their game, they can't win. They use various forms of disruption to keep opponents from implementing their own strategy, all the while steadily reducing their life total with fast, efficient creatures. This disruption can come in many forms based on the environment - it isn't limited solely to counterspells, as many often believe. Hand or land destruction, for instance, can be considered an element of an aggro-control strategy, as seen in Ponza strategies such as that used by Chris Benafel in the US Nationals and World Championships last year. Even the more recent Counter-Rebel designs, like that played by Eivind Nitter to this year's European Championship, fall into the aggro-control strategy, with both their counters, Parallax Waves, and Meddling Mages contributing to the control aspect of the deck.

Aggro-control decks have historically performed very well against control and combo strategies, as evinced by Nicolas Labarre's climb to the finals of PT Rome with his Merfolk deck in a sea of Academy and High Tide, as well as by the success of Terry Tsang's skies deck in the very recent control-flooded field of the Canadian National Championships. The combination of fast, aggressive elements combined with disruption tends to throw the slower control decks and more fragile combo decks off their game, giving the aggro-control player a window just large enough to deal the requisite twenty points of damage. Seth Burn recently pointed out on IRC that "Skies is about winning with no cards, no land, and two Cloud Sprites in play" - which is an apt description of the way many aggro-control strategies play out, expending all of their resources to protect their creatures they've invested upon the table.

This full-on investment traditionally makes aggro-control decks weaker against the true aggressive decks in the field. Again, one can look to the past for examples of this, such as Benafel's Ponza deck losing to the blazing speed of Murray Evans and his Stompy deck in last year's World Team Finals. More recently, Skies decks have faced significant difficulties overcoming the pure aggression of Fires in Standard, devoting an enormous amount of sideboard space merely to stand a chance in the matchup. Sligh decks tore through Countersliver, barring such circumstances as Crystalline Sliver/Worship getting into play without an Anarchy in sight. All in all, while one deck devotes its resources to trying to establish and protect its investment, the other merely ignores the opponent almost entirely and goes directly for the throat. By the merits of threat-response theory, one can deduce that the aggro-control deck will sometimes have the wrong answer for the threats presented to it, and the aggressive deck will run it over. There are no wrong threats; only wrong answers.

When this iron triangle can be broken, however, aggro-control decks are truly the deck to play. In Tokyo, Zvi Mowshowitz piloted his team's U-W metagame deck dubbed "The Solution" to victory, riding on the back of fast, aggressive creatures supported by a healthy amount of disruption. The key to his victory was filling in the gaps against aggressive decks, which in the format all happened to be constructed with a red base. Using a full complement of Galina's Knights, Voices of All, and even Crimson Acolytes in the main deck, Zvi was able to coast past beatdown and control decks alike, as he and his team had seemingly truly found the Solution to the format.

That was months ago, however, and in the world of Magic, things change quickly, particularly when sets like Apocalypse come around to shake things up. The Invasion Block Constructed format looks a great deal different now than it did in Tokyo, not only due to metagame shifts, but because Apocalypse disrupts the very thematic foundations of allied color combinations the pre-Apocalypse Invasion block was based upon. This makes a metagame deck like The Solution enormously out of date, sending players scrambling to find the piece to the new puzzle that has been presented to all of us.

Since the first qualifiers at Origins several weeks ago, one of the most hyped decks on the internet was one that seems like it may be suited to fill the shoes of The Solution as the agro-control deck to play in the format. A U-G bear/bounce deck, it performed extremely well in the first two qualifiers in this format on the planet, suggesting that is has, at the very least, a good deal of potential to compete. The list here is courtesy of Chris Cade, and credited to Bill Flemming for its original design.

U-G Machine
Main Deck
	
Sideboard

10 Island
10 Forest
4 Yavimaya Coast 

4 Gaea's Skyfolk
4 Blurred Mongoose
4 Kavu Titan
4 Mystic Snake

	

4 Rushing River
4 Repulse
4 Exclude
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Temporal Spring

	

4 Jungle Barrier
4 Dodecapod
4 Gainsay
2 Disrupt
1 Tranquility 
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SIDEBOARD #2:
4 Jungle Barrier
4 Gainsay
3 Confound
3 Wash Out
1 Tranquility 

The deck is extremely simple, yet elegant in its construction. It knows what it wants to do, and it does it well. Play a creature on turn two, preferably one that has evasion or cannot be targeted. Bounce or counter everything your opponent plays that can deal with it, and go on to game two. This strategy apparently worked well enough, placing a player in the top eight of each of the qualifiers at Origins, although in neither did the U-G player take home the slot.

What are the merits and flaws of this design? First and foremost, its primary virtue is redundancy. The name of Blue-Green Machine doesn't just come from thin air - the deck is literally designed to do the exact same thing every game, with twelve creatures to play on turn two, and twelve spells to clear opposing permanents off the table, along with a splash of countermagic to stop them from getting there. Fact or Fiction reloads the tank whenever you run out of gas. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This seems like it'd be an agro-control player's dream. After all, the versatility of Rushing River and Temporal Spring give you the ability to deal with anything your opponent can play, with the Spring even allowing you to set back an opponent with a poor mana draw or simply a slow start even further. Blurred Mongoose is an absolute monster against decks that rely on targeted removal, and Gaea's Skyfolk soars over opposing blockers at a blatantly undercosted 2/2 flier for two mana. Mystic Snake is tempo and card advantage wrapped up in a neat little package, and its synergy with all of the bounce in the deck is undeniable. It seems almost too good to be true.

The problem is, it IS too good to be true. Why? The answer is almost as simple as a single card: Spectral Lynx. The answer gets progressively harsher as you add more to the mix, as well. Voice of All. Vodalian Zombie. Pernicious Deed. Of all of these, the Zombie and the Lynx are the most frustrating, as they are just as fast as your creatures, and can hold them off indefinitely. They cost less than any of your bounce spells, so you can hardly gain any sort of tempo advantage through returning them to your opponent's hand, and once you can bounce and counter them in one turn, your opponent will often have the ability to replay them and counter back as well. This wouldn't be so painful except that your creatures are universally small and take quite some time to reduce your opponent from twenty to zero, and you have no non-creature finishers to get the job done once the board stalls.


Spectral Lynx can give U-G decks fits.
Nevertheless, your match-up against decks WITHOUT these cards is generally very good. Again, however, there is a problem. There are very few decks in the format that don't play these cards. Spectral Lynx has shown itself to be a virtually defining card of the block. That statement may sound absurd when applied to a mere 2/1 creature for two, but look at the impact Thornscape Familiar had on the format in Tokyo. Slow down the kill of Red/Green decks by a single turn and that tournament looks entirely different. The same can be said of Spectral Lynx in the format now. What would happen if this simple 2/1 weren't there? Perhaps U-G would be the next big thing. With the Lynx perhaps the most ubiquitous creature in the block, however, that doesn't seem particularly likely.

Is there a bright side to this, or is it all doom and gloom? Well, like I said, your matchup against decks without Spectral Lynx and such cards is extremely good. Domain decks, for instance, can do very little about their Restraints being bounced and returned to their library, with a Gaea's Skyfolk beating down all the while. B-R decks have a terrible time dealing with Blurred Mongoose to begin with, and this trouble is only exacerbated by the massive amount of bounce spells the U-G machine plays in order to forcibly toss their creatures out of the way. And if my harping on Desolation Angel last week wasn't enough to turn you off from it, perhaps seeing the enormous complement of spells in this deck to put that Angel right back into your hand after you blow up your own world will finally change your mind.

Am I saying that I don't think U-G decks can possibly compete in IBC currently? Not at all. I'm merely saying that unless something can be done about Spectral Lynx and similar problem cards, this deck will remain merely a contender rather than a champion. The second sideboard listed gets much closer to solving this problem, with Wash Out coming in as an additional answer to both the Lynx and Voice of All. Perhaps there is another answer out there that'll be enough to push this deck over the top. Regardless, this is a deck you'll need to be prepared for in IBC qualifiers this season - maybe someone will find the key, and another Solution will be born. If you have any specific questions or comments about this article, feel free to email me at majesk@aol.com. I will be leaving for Grand Prix Columbus this Thursday and will not return home until after the World Championships, so I can't guarantee an expedient reply, but I will get back to everyone who emails me. Good luck - I hope you can prove me wrong.