Competitive Standard, Modern, and ...Commander?

Posted On 3:10 PM // Leave a Comment

Newsletter
Thursday, June 1st

It's a tale of three formats on StarCityGames.com this week! The bombshell introduction of Duel Commander on Magic Online has created a ton of interest, and Pro Tour Champion Ari Lax can't help but get involved in trying to understand this new way to play! But first, we've got Sam Black breathing brand new life into Standard with his trademark Abzan Tokens archetype! And if you're one of the growing Modern army, Jadine Klomparens has a deck she thinks can go toe-to-toe with Death's Shadow! The SCG Tour is taking a rest this weekend, but we'll be back next weekend for SCG Charlotte!

— Danny West, Content Coordinator

Brad Nelson
Modern Open

Matt Tumavitch
Standard Classic

Jonathan Sukenik
Modern Classic

Updating Abzan Tokens
For Grand Prix Omaha
By Sam Black  

Declaration in Stone has been great. It's the best removal spell against Zombies because it lets me sweep their tokens or exile things that come back, and I don't mind giving them the Clue tokens because the game reaches the point where nothing they do matters, often before they can afford to cash them in. It also exiles Ulamog or an army of Thopter tokens against Aetherworks Marvel, and it's nice that I can sometimes cast it on myself; if I have two Thraben Inspectors and an Anointed Procession, I can just use it to make four Clues, which is sometimes what you need to do, especially if you also have Ulvenwald Mysteries on the battlefield.

Tireless Tracker is experimental. It's obviously great with Ulvenwald Mysteries, and it's a good way to punish people who figure out that creature removal is generally bad against me. On the other hand, it's kind of like Yahenni, Undying Partisan, in that it's doing its own thing a little more than it's contributing to the strength of my other cards, and I'm not sure where it's right to become less focused in that way.

The rest of my sideboard is just the cards that had previously been working for me.

So that's the deck. Now let's get to the matchup and sideboarding guidelines, which I imagine are what you were really still reading for.

June 30 - July 2
Modern/Standard

July 15-16
Standard

July 22-23
Team Constructed

Assessing Abzan Traverse
By Jadine Klomparens  

The other reason Abzan Traverse shines against these non-interactive decks is that Traverse the Ulvenwald allows the deck to pack some serious hate in the form of tutor targets. Having a tutor package is an entirely new aspect for the B/G universe, and one that really helps in matchups like these. Previously, B/G strategies had to pick and choose what bad matchups they wanted to stand a chance in. To beat Tron ever, for instance, you basically needed all four Fulminator Mages in your sideboard. Using four sideboard slots like that is quite the commitment, and you couldn't possibly do that for every bad matchup. But with Traverse the Ulvenwald, you get the same level of impact with only one sideboard slot. What a bargain.

All that being said, I'm not trying to tell you that playing Abzan Traverse over Jund magically turns all these horrid matchups into byes. You are still a dog in all of them, but it's much closer than it used to be. Instead of having a batch of awful 25-75 matchups, Abzan Traverse has a batch of 40-60 matchups. That may not sound like a lot, but it's enough to allow you to still be in contention in a tournament even if you hit a bunch of bad matchups, and that's plenty.

Exploring 1v1 Commander
By Ari Lax  

A second-level meta-realization: lifegain isn't going to be that important. Normally lifegain is good when it directly converts to card advantage against an opponent trying to convert cards to damage. Since Lava Spike and red-style aggro is going to be bad, at best even your tacked-on lifegain is going to be a Fog. Not worth it.

Deriving further from this, Commander damage isn't going to be that important. The difference between 21 damage and 30 isn't a ton, and once you start looking further, the difference gets even smaller. It's likely your opponent pays a couple of life to effects like fetchlands, Vampiric Tutor, and Force of Will. Once you start breaking the damage down into smaller quanta and accounting for the couple of self-damage, you realize you are only saving one attack on a Commander with four or more power. A three power Commander saves multiple hits, but that's seven hits, which starts pushing the bounds of an individual threat being quick enough. Also, notice that the two solid, cheap-threat generals I listed were Geist of Saint Traft and Vial Smasher the Fierce, neither of which lethals through Commander combat damage.

Basically, this all points towards you killing your opponent via other means in many decks: combos, burying your opponent in card advantage, or creating virtual kills via soft locks or destroying their resources. That part is at least consistent with multiplayer Commander.