Subject: Rath Metagame article
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 18:05:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Randolph E Buehler Jr." rebst45+@pitt.edu
To: Frank Kusumoto

With Cursed Scroll banned, the Rath constructed environment at Worlds looked far different from the Rath constructed environment at Pro Tour LA. Since so many people have started preparing for PT Rome qualifiers (which will be Rath constructed), I thought I'd share some insights into this surprisingly interesting metagame.

PT LA was all about the beatdown. Dave Price and his trademark mono-red deck surprised no one by winning. Cursed Scroll and Wasteland defined an environment that saw only one deck with non-basic lands make the Top 8. Almost everyone concluded that you just wanted to dump your hand as quickly and efficiently as possible and start abusing your Cursed Scroll. A few rogues managed to win with Dancing Gnomes decks or Living Death decks designed to hose mono-red. However, the Top 8 consisted of mono-black beatdown, mono-white beatdown, 4 mono-red beatdown decks, and just two other decks (both Living Death decks).

Since Los Angeles, Stronghold has been released, Exodus has been released, and Cursed Scroll has been banned. Without Cursed Scroll, the beatdown decks aren't nearly as good in the mid-game. In addition, slower decks have twice as many cards to choose from in an attempt to find powerful spells (especially Spike Weaver) that can neutralize aggressive assaults. The result is a much more balanced, much more interesting environment.

The first major tournament where this environment was explored and put on display was Worlds. I'm sure the metagame will evolve over the course of the Rome PTQ season, but -- at least initially -- the decks that did well at Worlds are the decks which will define the metagame.

The single most played deck and also the single most expected deck was green/black Living Death/Recurring Nightmare. This archetype uses Survival of the Fittest and Hermit Druid to fill up the graveyard and Recurring Nightmare or Living Death to exploit this resource. Survival also allows for a wide diversity of creatures which can be accessed in exactly the situations where they are good. Playing against a control deck? Go get some Thrull Surgeons. Playing against a beatdown deck? Go get a Spike Weaver. Spike Weaver died? Recur it back into play. The presence of Wall of Blossoms and the absence of Cursed Scroll have shifted the balance of power in favor of graveyard recursion decks. Unlike in LA, they now consistently beat most aggressive decks. Chris Pikula, Jon Finkel, and Raphael Levy all played Death decks on Friday at Worlds to earn their spots in the Top 8.

Once it became obvious that green/black graveyard recursion was "the deck to beat," many deckbuilders devoted their time to figuring out what beats it. Two archetypes evolved along these lines: Tradewind/Awakening and Humility/Prayer. Tradewind/Awakening decks try to set up the very powerful combination of at least one Awakening in play and at least one buyback card in hand. Awakening allows you to use your mana twice on your own turn and once on your opponent's turn which means you can Capsize-lock your opponent very quickly. The rest of the deck is permission and creatures chosen to stall the game as long as possible (like Tradewind, Spike Weaver, Spike Feeder, and Wall of Blossoms). The land is these decks is typically very janky -- after all, the deck wants to cast turn 2 Legacy's Allure and turn 3 Spike Feeder -- but Wastelands aren't nearly as prevalent in the current Rath metagame as they were in LA so most people who played this deck at Worlds seemed to get away with it. Living Death decks are slow enough (especially against decks with permission) that Trade/Awakening decks have time to set up their combos. Furthermore, Living Death decks have no real ways to disrupt those combos. Thus, Trade/Awakening was a smart metagame choice at Worlds and earned top 8 spots for Ben Rubin, Brian Selden, Alan Comer and Scott Johns.

Humility/Prayer wasn't as widely played as either of the preceding two decks, however, the few who played it all seemed to do well. The basic combo is fairly well-known: Humility plus Orim's Prayer is a soft-lock that prevents all creature damage to you. If it hadn't been for Cursed Scroll, I might have played such a deck in LA. However, in LA there just weren't enough ways to deal with Cursed Scroll and this archetype did miserably. You still have to worry about Hatred and Maniacal Rage (which both "beat" the combo), but permission and Disenchants make this doable. The most successful version of this deck was distinguished by its Mox Diamonds, Intuitions, and Reclaims which combined to add both speed and consistency to the combo. Death decks are almost helpless if Humility/Prayer hits the table -- they tend to run one or two Cloudchaser Eagles, but 4 Counterspells and 4 Forbids is usually enough to prevent the Eagle from coming into play. Meanwhile, Tradewind/Awakening decks also have trouble when Humility hits the table. They still have Awakening/Capsize, but that's it. If the Humility/Prayer deck simply counters Capsize (and Whispers of the Muse), the game is over. Brian Hacker tried out this niche in the metagame and returned to the Top 8 for the first time in almost two years.

No one playing a beatdown deck on Friday at Worlds made it into the top 8. Of course, since Worlds was 21 rounds of Swiss and only the last 7 were Rath constructed, one cannot necessarily conclude that beatdown is dead. In fact, the only deck that went 7-0 on Friday was a mono-black Hatred deck played by Daniel Brickwell. However, since Brickwell's record before Friday was 7-6-1, he "only" managed to pull himself up to 9th. Pretty much everyone at Worlds built a Hatred deck at some point during playtesting. Most were fairly straight- forward -- 12ish shadows, 8 Zombies, Dark Ritual, Culling of the Weak, 4 Hatreds, and an assortment of other good, cheap black cards. This archetype has the ability to win the game on turn 2, but it can also get horrible draws which mean almost certain losses. Six of Brickwell's fellow Germans played the same deck and their records ranged from 2- 5 to 5-2. Did Brickwell just get lucky draws or lucky opponents or did he play the deck better than his teammates? No one knows for sure, but it seems possible that Brickwell made better use of the "Paris" mulligan rule either to abandon bad draws or go searching for turn 3 wins against decks that couldn't stop them. Brickwell played Reckless Spite to kill Spike Weaver, etc., so he would have a chance against Living Death and his raw speed was usually too much for Tradewind/Awakening or Humility/Prayer decks. If everyone is playing slow, reactive decks designed to beat Living Death, then that opens the door for beatdown decks to come back in!

The other beatdown deck of note was played by Mike Long. Long went only 1-3-3 with his Pros-Bloom deck in type II, so he started Friday with no chance at the Top 8. He chose to play a mono-red deck with Maniacal Rage, 2 Goblin Bombardments, Shocks, Sonic Bursts, 18 1-casting cost creatures, 12 2-casting cost creatures, and only 18 land (NONE of which were Wastelands). He didn't lose until the 7th (and final) round on Friday. It's impossible to know if Long's 6-1 performance was a product of a good deck for the environment or just an example of a good player who started out lower in the Swiss than he belonged. Tomi Walamies started Friday in 12th place overall and chose to play a mono-red beatdown deck, but went only 4-3 (and finished 11th). Jakub Slemr started Friday in 8th place and went with a mono-white beatdown deck but went only 3-2-2 and finished 14th.

So is Rath constructed just a rock-paper-scissors metagame where Living Death beats aggression, aggression beats control, and control beats Living Death? I personally don't believe in rock-paper- scissors meta-games. I think there's always a deck outside the known meta-game which can beat everything (or at least almost everything). At Worlds I chose to play an infinite combo deck centered around Earthcraft. It's too complicated to explain here, but check out my Worlds tourney report on The Dojo (www.thedojo.com) if you're interested in the specifics. It beat everything in my own playtest gauntlet, but it turned out that I hadn't built a good enough Tradewind/Awakening deck and it's almost impossible to beat that deck with my trick deck. (I started Friday 13th, went 4-3, and finished 12th.) I'll be back at it in the upcoming Grand Prixs, trying to find a hand grenade that'll blow up rock, paper, and scissors. See you there!

-Randy Buehler