The final week covering the first round of 32 decks – you can find part one, two, and three at those links. At a glance, 3 out of 4 of these match ups have pretty clear results. Well, currently they do, at least. I’m essentially coming to my conclusions as I’m writing this so maybe some of decks I’ve pegged as underdogs might actually be able to exploit any weaknesses of the other one pretty perfectly? Let’s find out. Here’s the schedule:
Match 13: Deep Freeze vs Air Forces
A white blue mirror match. Control vs Skies, though they both have elements of both. Weatherlight vs Tempest, too: two sets which were released only a few months apart. Though the theme decks of the later were slightly delayed by a decade or so.
Deep Freeze is packing 3 copies of Counterspell and 3 copies of Pacifism… and the rest of the deck is very much what you’d expect given that. More countermagic comes from two Dismiss, two Power Sink, and a single Spell Blast. Master Decoy and Puppet Strings can tap down problematic creatures. There’s card draw, answers for things that need to be answered, and a few evasive creatures to seal the deal.
Air Forces, as the name suggests, is certainly not lacking in the evasion stakes either. There’s plenty of utility in its creatures as well. There’s the classic Man-o’-War with its ETB bounce, Heavy Ballista can complicate combat maths, and Ophidian is great card advantage if you can get it through. The other spells are a selection of countermagic, card selection, and even a couple different ways to gain control of a creature from your opponent.
So maybe not quite a mirror, but they aren’t dissimilar in what they are trying to do. The main difference is the role the creatures play. The control elements of Air Forces is centred more on its utility creatures, whereas Deep Freeze relies more on non-creature spells. Even the nature of the evasive creatures in both decks is a bit different. Deep Freeze has less of them, and stats aren’t as important: it’s happy to just chip away slowly. Essentially it’s more of a traditional strategy: it only needs to think about winning the game once it has got itself into a position where it’s not going to lose the game. In contrast, or at least in this matchup, Air Forces is playing more of a tempo game. It ideally wants to land one of its flying beaters like Waterspout Djinn and then throw all of its resources behind ensuring that it connects every turn.
This can actually be boiled down quite nicely with just one card from each deck. Counterspell vs Memory Lapse.
So how does the game play out? While Air Forces is pretty solid, Deep Freeze just one ups it across most metrics. It’s got more counters, and they aren’t as conditional. It’s got 3 copies of Pacifism vs 2. It has an extra rare, even! Air Forces needs to try and race and I don’t think it is fast enough, and while it has some good tricks Deep Freeze has it’s own: and there’s more of them too.
Deep Freeze is through to the second round.
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Match 14: Garfield vs The Spikes
Oh god. I just clicked that this is a RG Mirror now too. After the WU one. I swear I did randomise these! But this is the matchup this week of which I have absolutely no idea which way things will fall. In saying that I didn’t think that the previous one was going to be close and it wasn’t as clear cut as I’d expected.
Garfield was designed by Richard Garfield, who also designed Magic: the Gathering. Yes, all of it. Well, Alpha edition, and a few other little things such as the rules and the whole concept of a trading card game as a whole. A pretty clever dude. This particular deck was constructed from a card pool of Ice Age and Alliances, and was released as part of the “Deckmasters” box set along with a deck created by Pro Tour Hall of Famer Jon Finkel. The deck itself… it’s a bit of a meme about how formulaic Red Green precons can be and this one doesn’t really dispel that notion. The main things of note are the pair of Yavimaya Ants – essentially a green Ball Lightning – and the high toughnesses of almost every creature in the deck other than Yavimaya Ants. The two copies of Lava Burst are quite nice to have too: this was the Fireball variant in the set.
The Spikes was built around the ~~other~~ unique tribe that was introduced during the Rath Cycle. The ones that were nowhere near as good, or as popular as Slivers were. Which is a bit of a change because the concept behind them was interesting, both mechanically and flavourly. They come into play with a certain number of +1/+1 counters on them, which you can shift to other creatures or remove for effects. The mana cost to do this was probably one of the biggest issues, though there are two Heartstone included to help with that aspect. This likely also explains the amount of ramp in the deck, too. While the mana costs for the Spikes could in no way be considered competitive – they’re Mon’s, Grey Ogres and Hill Giants – you’re not needing a playset of Skyshroud Elf, pair of Rampant Growth and a Hermit Druid (of all things!) to get them into play on time.
I am quite impressed with the choice to have a lot of the non-Spike creatures in the deck to be insects. While this doesn’t make the deck better (or necessarily worse) it feels appropriate.
I’m still absolutely at a loss as to how to call this one. I think I’m going to advance Garfield based on removal. The packages of both decks are fairly even – there’s advantages and advantages to both – but the high toughness of Garfield’s creatures tilts things in its favour. Though Death Spark does have a number of pretty good targets: the Elves and Druid for instance. Shatter and Pillage deal with Heartstone. Actually, I’m feeling more certain now. Garfield should be able to slow down The Spikes mana development, preventing a lot of potential +1/+1 counter silliness, while putting up a fairly solid defensive line.
Garfield is through to Round 2.
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Match 15: Flames of Rath vs Jungle Jam
The classic battle of was it really necessary to splash another colour solely for a multicolour rare? Which are Soltari Guerrillas and Sawback Manticore respectively.
Flames is monored, with a small white splash. While on the surface it looks like a classic Sligh AKA Burn deck of the time – a deck archetype which is pretty synonymous with Tempest as a whole – it’s actually a bit “bigger”. It’s got the full 4 Mogg Fanatics as you’d expect, as well as 3 of Fireslinger which was another staple of red decks of the time. The 5 mana Flowstone Salamander, at the other end, was not something which was being played in tournaments of the time. (I discussed this in more detail as part of my review of the Advanced version)
Jungle is a green and white deck. And also a red deck. It does have two fetchlands – the not that great Mirage ones rather than the too expensive Onslaught ones – and three Rampant Growth to find its single Mountain. Which does make splashing for one card feasible enough. But using up those slots in the deck… not for that card, sorry. It’s decent enough, quite good even, but there’d have been better options. Especially at rare, and for the two uncommon fetches too. Fortunately the other rare, Zuberi, is solid given there is a small Griffin tribal theme in the deck. Griffins all having flying adds a bit of uniqueness, too, since having that “Skies” element isn’t seen all that often in GW decks.
So here’s the upset result that I was obviously going to end up with after my matter of fact statement at the start of the post. Flames of Rath is a far better deck than Jungle Jam, which arguably is the weakest of the Mirage MTGO decks. Which themselves, collectively, are nowhere near the power level that Tempest was. But Jungle Jam just happens to have quite a few foils for Flames. Unyaro Griffin sacrifices itself to counter a red direct damage spell. Mtenda Griffin bounces itself to hand and Raise Deads another Griffin. The ramp should let you play them both again fairly easily. But that’s not all: Jolrael’s Centaur has shroud and shrinks blockers with its Flanking ability: really useful in the match up. Benevolent Unicorn reduces damage from spells too. Even the lifegain from Vitalizing Cascade – one of the first things you’d cut from the deck if you were upgrading it – is good as defence against a Rolling Thunder. It feels weird to say, but:
Jungle Jam is through to Round 2.
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Match 16: Fiery Fury vs Ride Like The Wind
An aggressive red deck from Weatherlight, and an aggressive red white deck from Mirage. There’s a lot of overlap between the decks today!
Fiery Fury one-ups Flames of Rath in the Sligh / Burn stakes. I’ve certainly got gold border copies of Goblin Vandal, Viashino Sandstalker, Firestorm, Incinerate and Fireblast! What it is missing, weirdly, is two drops. The deck’s ideal turn 2 play is the mana rock Mind Stone, which is a strange situation for a red deck of the type. It does replace itself with another card when you no longer need it, though, which does make it a bit of an inspired choice despite the unconventionality. This does mean that you could be smashing in with the 4/4 Haste Lava Hounds on your 3rd turn – something I can certainly get behind. Other creatures also have haste, or good stats for their costs at the cost of having the sort of drawbacks which you don’t actually care about. Can’t block? Has to attack each turn? That’s what you’re doing anyway.
Fury’s burn package is probably the best of any Theme or Intro deck level product in the catalogue too. In addition to the cards already mentioned there’s three Cone of Flame which can clear out chump blockers nicely, Splitting Earth which should be able to swallow up any creature you need it to, and the bane of Mirage block limited Kaervek’s Torch.
Ride Like The Wind is a more creature focused style of deck, themed around creatures with the Flanking combat ability. This was depicted creatively by the creatures having the ability being knights on horseback. When a creature with Flanking is blocked by a creature without Flanking then that blocking creature gets -1/-1 until the end of turn. To take advantage of the offensive nature of the ability, this deck wants to be doing a lot of attacking. Strangely, Wind is also very lacking in the two mana area, and extremely congested in the 3 mana area. Every single one of the 3 mana Knights have activated abilities that cost mana too, which then makes you choose between these and further advancing your board.
Fiery Fury is just too good here. It wins the race if it needs to race, or it sits back and plays the control game. There are a number of gears that it can adopt depending on what it draws vs what is happening on the board. Not to mention that Wind realistically can’t play more than one creature a turn until turn 6 and that’s absolutely no problem to deal with. Fury doesn’t really want to be doing much blocking anyway, which takes the power away from Flanking, and eventually it can simply unleash a haste creature and/or a torrent of burn to deal 10+ damage out of nowhere.
Fiery Fury is through to Round 2.
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And that’s it for the first set of 32 decks. Next week I’ll start looking at the 16 that have made it past the first round. These are:
Not sure if I will end up doing two posts of 4 matches again for these, or if I’ll do all 8 at once. It will depend on how things flow when I start writing, I guess. I feel that I probably won’t need to do as much of a write up for each deck so maybe it’ll be much quicker/shorter for me to do?
So there’s still a little bit of time if anyone wants to make a passionate argument in favour of any of the eliminated decks: there’s a few of them which I could probably be swayed to change the result of! Is this the truth or a cynical way of trying to build engagement? Only one way to find out! 😉
And yes: am running a bit behind my own tough schedule with getting this out, so will be editing in links and tweaking the formating again after publishing. 🙂
Beats and Skies 
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