Top Notch Tech: Black in Standard Brian Kibler Friday, February 22, 2002 The Pro Tour-Osaka qualifier season is over. Extended, for a time, is behind us. Qualifiers for Nice have begun, and Odyssey Block Limited is all the rage. Sealed deck and draft strategy articles are popping up all over the internet, and everyone wants to tell you just how good Faceless Butcher is or why you should think twice about splashing a Cabal Patriarch. Hardly the time to be the go-to guy for Constructed advice, by any means, particularly with a Block Constructed Pro Tour on the horizon, meaning that for me to say anything about that format would be pretty much equivalent to asking Ben Rubin, among others, to beat me into a bloody pulp. So what is there for me to do? Play Standard, that's what. When I get bored, I build decks. So one night recently, I was bored, and no one was around for me to play Odyssey Block Constructed against, so I thought "Why don't I put together a Standard deck?" Since Torment is rife with black cards, I decided I'd make my deck base-black to see if the "black set" lives up to the hype of making black a powerhouse again. That gave me two fundamental options - am I going to play control, or am I going to be the beatdown? While Mutilate and Cabal Coffers-fueled Soul Burns are enticing, I figure that my best bet at combating a field full of dedicated blue-based control decks is likely to lie in beatdown. Battling through countermagic and Fact or Fictions with a fist full of suboptimal creature removal is hardly my idea of a good time. So beatdown - black beatdown. Even the most cursory glance through Torment gives us what is clearly going to be one of the highlights of the deck, the much-hyped Nantuko Shade. This 2/1 pumpable beast is just what black beatdown needs to be a force in the Standard format - an efficiently costed creature that can slip past counters an get in early damage, but one that is also a force to be reckoned with in the mid to late game. Nantuko Shade is a threat you're happy to play on turn two or turn twenty, as it can dominate the board at any point in the game. Anybody remember these guys? Sadly, the other black creatures in the environment hardly measure up Nantuko Shade's high standards. Gone are the days of two power zombies for one mana, and while that's a good thing for Magic at large, it's unfortunate for our purposes in constructing a black beatdown deck. Gone, too, are the Erg Raiders and Fallen Askari of the stone age aggressive black decks, the Phyrexian Negators of more recent years, and Bad Moon - alas - are but wistful memories that brings a tear to Brian Hacker's eye. Unbridled aggression is a thing of the past, it would seem, at least as far as black is concerned. But this is no reason to fret. While perhaps we can no longer use Dark Ritual to play a 5/5 trampler or three 2/2s on the first turn, we can still maul our opponents with the forces of darkness - albeit a bit more slowly. Mindless beatdown has become much more the forte of red and green in recent times - appropriately enough - leaving black mages to seek other avenues to turn their opponents into a fine red mist. Black's strength is disruption. While perhaps you can't come blazing out the gates with Skizziks and Raging Kavus, you can make sure those creatures you do play will get the job done. A more in-depth look at Torment gives us even more tools to work with. Mesmeric Fiend is one card that's received a lot of attention as far as its applications in Limited play recently, but has been largely overlooked for Constructed purposes. Alongside Duress, however, the Fiend serves to strip your opponents of their tools for reacting to your assault. Chainer's Edict gives you a way to punch through any obstacle on the other team - even my beloved Mystic Enforcer - and Ichorid is a finisher that just won't go away. Torment does not disappoint, it would seem, giving us everything from core creatures to utility spells for our aggro black deck. Fleshing the deck out with the rest of the sets in Standard gives us something like this: Aggro Black Deck Main Deck Sideboard 16 Swamp 4 Tainted Peak 4 Sulfurous Springs 4 Nantuko Shade 4 Mesmeric Fiend 4 Ravenous Rats 4 Phyrexian Rager 4 Braids, Cabal Minion 4 Flametongue Kavu 2 Ichorid 2 Shambling Swarm 4 Duress 4 Chainer's Edict 4 Slay 4 Phyrexian Arena 2 Shambling Swarm 2 Mortivore 2 Persecute 1 Ichorid This is the listing I've been playing most recently, and it differs by only one or two cards from my original version. All of the cards were chosen based not only on the principles of constructing an efficient beatdown/disruption deck, but in an attempt to build a deck that could be competitive in the metagame. In a format as diverse as Standard, one has to be able to stand up to both rampaging Raging Kavus and Fact or Fiction-fueled Psychatogs and Mystic Enforcers, not to mention the occasional Terravore. A purely focused anti-Tog deck or anti-r-g deck will generally curl up and die a horrible death when it comes across a matchup it wasn't designed to beat, and unless you're Kai Budde on a Sunday, you can't expect to have you best matchup every single round. You have to be able to stand your ground against both beatdown and control, and do so admirably, or it's back to the drawing boards. The basic idea of the deck is simple. Against control, you have a solid beatdown curve supported by an abundance of disruption, with Duress, Mesmeric Fiend, and Braids putting a serious hurting on any deck's ability to perform according to plan. The selective discard effects can be used to clear away countermagic and creature removal to open a path for your Shades to wreck havoc on your opponent's life total or Braids to eat away at their land. Many decks have very few answers to Braids to begin with, and a barrage of surgical hand destruction is very effective at turning "very few" into "none". Against beatdown, you have powerful card advantage and tempo elements in the form of Ravenous Rats, Phyrexian Rager, Shambling Swarm, and Flametongue Kavu - the sole red card between deck and sideboard. Yes, it's that good. Chainer's Edict picks off the stragglers, and Nantuko Shade mops things up. Braids is actually surprisingly useful, largely due to the sheer effectiveness of the rest of the deck at producing card and tempo advantage, and also in no small part due to the tendency of aggressive decks to play very tight land counts. They are forced to either expend some sort of removal on the Cabal Minion or risk a major disruption in their mana curve, and if they do - or if you trade Braids with some attacker in combat - you're gleaning even further card advantage that will slowly but surely win you the war of attrition. All of this theory is well and good, and it's useful to get a general notion of how the deck should be played and why the deck ought to work, but it doesn't really tell us what we want to know - does it win? The answer, I've found, is a resounding yes. I played the deck in two online tournaments (under a pseudonym - and if you know what it is, please allow me to keep at least some semblance of anonymity) and blazed through both undefeated. I've tested the deck fairly extensively against some of the popular decks in the environment, and it has performed admirably, if not remarkably well. Let's see how it runs the gauntlet... Psychatog decks don't play many creatures, making them vulnerable to the Edict. First things first - the popularly crowned King of Standard - Psychatog. One of my early design principles for this deck was making sure it beats Tog, and that it does so consistently. While I have played the deck less against Tog than I would like, the testing I have done shows that the theory works out well in reality. Tog decks are simply not constructed to be able to handle as much disruption as this deck is capable of producing, as Duress and Mesmeric Fiend pick apart their hand while your creatures pick apart their life total. Nantuko Shade is simply too large for Psychatog to contain effectively, and Edict wipes away the annoying Atog for the finishing blow. More than a few games come down to near instant wins with an early Braids, and those that go long are often mopped up by a recurring Ichorid coming through for an uncounterable three points of damage per turn. Sideboarding allows you to remove the suboptimal anti-beatdown creatures for Phyrexian Arena, Persecute, and a third Ichorid, giving you additional disruption as well as staying power that rivals that of the Tog deck's Fact or Fictions. Tear apart their hand early, force them to deal with your early aggression, and swamp them under a sea of Arena-fueled card advantage - it's as simple as that. The matchup against Enforcer decks is quite similar, although playing out a flurry of creatures without hand destruction in the early game is more dangerous because of the Enforcer deck's access to Wrath of God. Chainer's Edict takes down everyone's favorite Nomad Mystic despite protection from black, and Ichorid once again keeps pecking away for the final few points. This matchup is likely more dangerous than Psychatog due to the power of white and green sideboard cards, namely Circle of Protection: Black and Compost, if they make it through the barrage of discard, but even these cards hardly spell game over. Arena lets you keep up with Compost well enough, and Braids can put a hurting on your opponent's mana supply to keep CoP: Black from making the game a hopeless endeavor. Flametongue Kavu, while he may not seem like an optimal card in the matchup, stays in for precisely this reason, giving you a non-black source to punch through damage if it should come to that. The other pseudo-control deck in the format, Balancing Act/Terravore, is perhaps the best matchup you could dream for with this deck. I playtested about twenty or so games one afternoon with a JSS player who has had a bit of success with the deck, and I ripped him apart quite literally nineteen games to one. Between Duress and Mesmeric Fiend, the Act deck is hard pressed to "go off" unhindered, and even if it does, Chainer's Edict can take down even the biggest Terravore with ease. Braids offers up her share of auto-wins in this matchup, keeping the opponent pinned below the necessary mana to cast Obliterate. This is one of the matchups where Ichorid really shines, punching through for three damage a turn despite the world being blown up time and time again. Without some sort of impressive sideboard technology on the part of the Balancing Act player, this is not a matchup you should ever lose. Ach! Hans, run! As for the other beatdown decks in the format, the most prominent of these if r-g, and many of the card choices in the deck have been made specifically with r-g in mind. Your disruption is much less effective in this matchup, as you're forced into the role of the control deck and can't take nearly as much advantage of hand destruction and Braids lock when you're being pummeled by Elephants and Raging Kavu. Your best bet is to try to keep pace with your tempo and card advantage cards as well as possible, getting two for ones with Ravenous Rats, Phyrexian Rager, and Flametongue Kavu, and potentially even more with Shambling Swarm. The Swarm is precisely what black needs to keep up with the aggressive red-green decks. The red-green player is hard-pressed to keep up any sort of offense when you keep shooting down his creatures en masse, and this becomes even more evident after sideboarding. Out goes Ichorid, Mesmeric Fiend (or perhaps Duress, depending on the contents of the opponent's deck) and a few copies of Braids, and you up your Swarm count to four and add a complete package of Slays. My original sideboarding plan against red-green was to morph into a control black deck, complete with Mutilates and Corrupt, but I found that plan was far too vulnerable to an early Compost, so I went to the tempo/card advantage plan instead. With so much removal on both sides of the table, creatures go down as fast as free beer at a frat party, turning Mortivore into an absolutely enormous, invincible monster only a few turns into the game. Rather than play the card advantage game against Compost, you just rip your opponent to shreds in a few quick attacks with a rampaging Lhurgoyf. This covers the major archetypes in the format, but is, of course, by no means a full survey of the breadth of the Standard environment. I have seen everything from u-g Upheaval to monoblack Arena-Corrupt based control in the style of the old Necrodecks, and this deck has held its own against them all. Consistent, powerful aggression backed up by a healthy quantity of disruption has been a powerful strategy for black since Magic's earliest days, and Torment has done a great job of revitalizing it. R&D experiment looks to have been a success - it's sure to be an interesting Standard season. Keep your eyes on Sideboard.com for the rest of my series on the Standard format, as I examine the major decks and possible rogue strategies for Regionals. As always, questions and comments are welcome at majesk@aol.com.