2014-15 Precon Championships: Round 7 and the Leaderboard

G1: If it were up against another intro deck, I think Abzan Siege is actually quite strong, but I’ve played with Landslide Charge and it can be quite the beating and while it didn’t survive FNM with its unmodified decklist, it put up quite a good fight back then. The piles of burn that it has against the rather slow build of Abzan Siege is going to give it the advantage, atop its superior mana base, being able to blow out its creatures before they can outlast into dangerous territory. Of course, if Landslide Charge somehow manages to stumble and Siege has time to grow, it can get very difficult for the burn to overcome the potentially huge outlasted creatures, but I think most decks that stumble will find recovery difficult, so the odds are definitely for Charge.

G2: I love the Jeskai and even their temporal successor, Dragon Clan Ojutai, but the creatures in Enlightened Mastery are honestly quite underwhelming and most don’t synergize well with what the deck is doing–where there more prowess or prowess-like creatures in the deck, the value from all those rebound spells would be fantastic, but the defenders and otherwise fat butted creatures like Updraft Elemental or Student of Ojutai aren’t really much of a win condition, essentially making the deck reliant on its few bombs (or Skywise Teachings) to actually win. There is draw and filtering, but while #TeamOjutai is trying to find its bombs, Relentless Rush is doing to keep crashing in. Now if there is a best match for Ojutai, Relentless Rush might be it because a lot of its smaller creatures are going to find it tougher to get through, but they’re fast and the deck not only has its little guys attacking as a win condition, but it also has two Impact Tremors and its own bombs as win conditions and I ultimately think that having more win conditions is what’s going to give Relentless Rush the win.

G3: Grave Advantage is a bit of a curious deck, it has a bit of a self-mill plan in order to activate its delve cards, but it only have five delve cards altogether. A self-sacrifice theme almost moves towards this goal, but that’s all I can do with its graveyard and while its bombs are super good between the Archfiend of Depravity and Hornet Queen and there is some filtering offered in that self mill. On the other hand, Furious Forces is really straightforward: get to 8 power to turn on Formidable and get more advantage with its somewhat better costed green creatures. Both have about the same amount of removal usually featuring a fight or fight-like mechanic. In the end, I think, as much as I’m more inclined personally towards Forces’ strategy (and dragons), that I’m doing to pick Advantage and this is why: Formidable is a very fragile ability and a well-timed Grim Contest could really hurt Forces’ ability to attack well. Grave Advantage on the other hand gets to eventually cast undercosted dudes while hopefully digging for increasingly more relevant cards and these guys, while removable like most intro pack creatures, don’t rely on other creatures to turn on its abilities. For that, I choose Grave Advantage.

G4: Normally, I’m all for non-Commander decks beating the slower one hundred card singleton lists, but Sworn to Darkness’s list is actually strong enough to make me pause. What’s more, I think that Massed Ranks’ focus on the bolster mechanic and general lack of removal isn’t particularly inspiring, particularly given the amount of removal on a stick that Sworn has in addition to spell based removal. Massed Ranks does have some potential in the use of Scale Blessing and Enduring Scalelord, but both of those are fairly slow options that require bolstered synergy and that slowness of the deck might be enough for Sworn and its options for ramp and draw to get where it needs to be and win. So despite my usual tendencies, I’ll vote for Sworn.

It seems that almost all of my preceeding prophets have the same opinion, and I´m inclined to agree with them – but where is the fun in that if everybody makes identical prophecies?

Game One: Landslide Charge. It´s hard to go against an Event Deck, so no deviation here.

Game Two: Relentless Rush. The descendants of the Jeskai have a lot of cretures to hide behind, but very few to actually attack with. The Kolaghan can simply wait, save their removal for key targets and rush in with Dash. I prefer the Jeskai playstyle more, but I can´t see it win. No deviation here either.

Game Three: Furious Forces. Really. The yet-another-Sultai-deck-variant is vulnerable in the early game. If Grave Advantage draws one of its key Walls and a Grim Contest, it can definitely disrupt Forces´ assault long enough to win with its bombs. But if it doesn´t, Forces stands a chance. I played Grave Advantage and often ended up mana flooded with lots of cards in the graveyard, but no Delve cards in hand to use them, and desperately defending against numerically superior armies, waiting for the right draw to win. Most of the time the right draw never came.

Game Four: Massed Ranks. Now I admit this is a desperate bet, but I vote for the underdog. I don´t even like Massed Ranks very much and consider it the weakest of all Dragons of Tarkir decks, relying almost exclusively on combat tricks, making it very vulnerable to removal. Sworn to Darkness has the stronger cards by far and if it starts with some ramp and / or a board sweeper, it will win. But being a Commander deck, most of the time it will have neither and start with a hand of mostly spells with a 5+ casting cost. If it then doesn´t draw the fifth land on curve, the delay gives Massed Ranks a chance, especially if it establishes an aerial threat. In short, Sworn can only beat itself, and I´m willing to gamble that the run of luck that the Commander decks had had so far will run out… hopefully now.

G1: Landslide Charge, as the all-around more solid deck, takes the match.

G2: Relentless Rush has a much superior removal package that I think will give it the edge.

G3: Furious Forces has better removal fewer durdly do-nothing cards, so it will win.

G4: I think I’ve got to vote Sworn to Darkness. Its opponent lacks the oomph to score a quick win, so even thought Sworn to Darkness looks slow, I think it will survive long enough to take over the game.