You have no idea how happy I am to be able to write this. Over the past 14 (!) Set Roulettes, I was able to peek at the format and brew a little, but since I was never able to play it, I never got the full experience.
Finally, our physical store is becoming stable, we’ve got awesome employees who don’t even need me anymore and GoblinCredible now leads the show for Set Roulette coverage. That means I’m free during most weekends and can finally battle against the awesome community that this format created.
Enough small talk, let’s talk about this month’s format, my thoughts, what you can expect tomorrow and what I’ll be playing. The legal sets:
- Magic 2013
- Time Spiral (including Time Shifted)
- Lorwyn
- Nemesis
- Urza’s Legacy
- Darksteel
Banned cards:
Dread Return
Hypergenesis
Mycosynth Lattice
Ponder
Skullclamp
Frantic Search
Memory Jar
Tinker
Arcbound Ravager
Darksteel Citadel
If you’re new to this year’s Set Roulette rules, we now have a ban list and it consists of every card that has been banned in a Standard format before and everything in the current Legacy and Modern ban list. It will lead to some cards being banned for no reason, see here Hypergenesis, Mycosynth Lattice and more, but we wanted to shake things up in a new year of Set Roulette and needed a formula that was easy to understand.
Lorwyn and Time Spiral being the frontliners of this format is a bit disappointing because those have already been in a Standard format together before. That means we’re seeing a lot of synergies that have already been explored and played. Yet, the 4 other sets are impactful enough that it still gives us a somewhat fresh and interesting format to crack.
Tribal is level 0
Lorwyn builds a lot of great tribal decks by itself that have historically been proven good, then Magic 2013 has tribal stuff in it that supplements really well. Most importantly Master of the Pearl Trident, Arbor Elf, Elvish Archdruid and a few more. Then the other sets randomly add super relevant cards such as Cloud of Faeries, Multani’s Acolyte, Deranged Hermit, Rebels and Mother of Runes which is just great in any creature deck.
Merfolk is the best.
This is the most consistent of all the tribal/creature decks you can play. It’s also very punishing because it kills fast and if you stumble, their counter magic will end you. Whatever you end up registering, you should have it in mind, make sure to not have a terrible matchup against and/or be prepared with sideboard cards. Hilariously, Merfolk Assassin might be the single best card against them.
By nature I want to go deeper than such decks, so I haven't tried to tune it myself, but I've played against multiple different versions. Having a good understanding of the format I think a list like above is close to what I’d play if I played the archetype. I think a mono blue version with Tangle Wire and Daze might be great too.
The deck I’m very close to playing.
Patrick Chapin has been sending me decklists for the past few months whenever we reveal the legal sets. He has never played, but I can totally understand that a deckbuilder who respects themselves just can't help but open up a notepad and start brewing at the sight of this format. With that said, one list that stood up to me was a Rebel deck that would fetch up Skyshroud Poacher and then start getting a bunch of Deranged Hermit.
That sounded really good to me so I started testing it and I was extremely impressed. He originally had Aether Vial in there but I quickly realized that the deck does not care about putting multiple creatures in play other than Rebels you’re chaining up to Deranged Hermit and then finishing up with Mirror Entity for lethal. The deck plays kind of like a combo deck, you don’t really ever attack until the point where you get Hermit and then Entity, which deals 30+ damage.
I also realized that you never wanted to miss a land drop, ever. You can use all of your mana very easily until you have like 10 lands in play. Never thought I'd switch Aether Vials for Search for Tomorrow in my life but here we are. Surprisingly, Search for Tomorrow plays perfectly with the 2 mana rebels as it lets you curve and then activate the Rebel on turn 3.
I was almost locked on playing that deck, but then I realized that one of the best cards in my deck was Parallax Wave. What if I took that further and built a deck around it? We’ll get to it.
Elves is fine.
There’s a lot of ways to build Elves and green decks in general, I think this one is likely the best option. You could go a midrange non-elves route because Thragtusk sounds appealing, but I actually think it’s a trap and Thragtusk isn't even very good in this format. Red is close to unplayable, aggro decks go wide and big and the non creature decks don’t really care about it. Now that we’re elves, are we playing black for Thoughtseize? Profane Command? Nameless Inversion? Engineered Plague? There’s a few options, but the problem is that your only dual is Gilt-Leaf Palace. Gemstone Mine is sketchy. I think I'd rather be consistent and between Treetop, 8 Visionary and Masked Admirer, we’re resilient and get to play Aether Vial. I think the matchups where you’d really want Thoughtseize, you can just board in Thorn of Amethyst and Tangle Wire to better effect. The biggest loss is Engineered Plague.
I would not be disappointed if I was forced to register this list, but I think we can do better.
Faeries is interesting
Faeries is my favorite Magic playstyle, I played a lot of it back in Lorwyn Standard and therefore I had to invest time trying to find the best list.
You can’t play Ancestral Vision and Aether Vial. That was my first realization. You need to completely change the deck if you want to play Aether Vial and it involves playing a lot of Sower of Temptations, potentially even Clone as a way to combo with Scion of Oona. That list can’t play Cryptic Command.
The other realization was that naturally, Faeries isn't very good against other creature decks. The Sower of Temptation/Vial version might be better, but stealing tribal stuff just isn't as good as stealing regular creatures. So if I’m playing a version that looks like my list above (with Ancestral Visions), I’m a decent Faeries build, but I’ll struggle a lot against creature decks, yet I’ll probably beat the decks trying to beat the creature decks though.
It’s an interesting spot to be in and I choose to try and find a deck that would do all of it instead, or something just really powerful.
Even Tribal
This deck idea was sent to me by Terragoth, a Mythic Society player and Set Roulette enthusiast. I like the idea, but I didn't get time to play any games with it. Playing a Fires of Yavimaya for 2 mana that also sometimes taps your opponents creatures seems quite good. Blastoderm is secretly very great in the format as well. Feel free to try it out!
Level 1 is beating creatures.
Let’s preface that anything that plays Engineered Plague goes into the category. I haven't explored Mono Black but it’s possible playing Mutilate and Plague main is great.
Dimir Good Stuff
This feels like the jund of the format. You’ve got a decent shot at beating the creature decks but also the decks trying to beat the creature decks. If I were Reid Duke, this is what I would’ve registered.
There are alot of ways to build this deck, you could play Shadowmage Infiltrator, you could be a bit more control with Mystical Teachings too. Either way, this is a solid choice.
Teachings all in control decks of some sort might be decent, but the removal is so bad in this format I don’t think you’ll be able to keep up against the creature decks. Not to mention the horrendous matchup you’ll have against Faeries. I might be wrong here, but it seems like a really bad deck to play in this meta.
Welder
Grim Monolith and Goblin Welder are two very powerful cards, it would be a shame not to explore decks with them. I played this one quite a bit, it’s not bad and Welder unanswered is game over. Without it though, the deck is inconsistent and often casting one of your big threats off Grim Monolith and Lotus Bloom just isn't enough. I wish we could do better than Staff of Nin, Triskelavus and Sundering Titan.
If you’re looking to gamble and have a lot of fun this weekend, I’d recommend it.
Another route I didn't try was Dragonstorm and basically just use Goblin Welder as a way to make mana. Might be better, who knows.
I've explored a lot of decks, I would be surprised if I didn't mention a deck that ended up taking the tournament by storm, but I’ll happily be wrong.
The deck I’m playing
I have not mentioned Parallax Wave and Parallax Tide much, I do expect a few different builds of them to show up because these are ridiculously powerful cards. Especially when you combo to exile the cards forever by bouncing them, destroying them or using Trickbind ...
Parallax Control
This is where I ended up after realizing that Parallax Wave was amazing in a creature format and Parallax Tide, well, great against any decks with lands …
The deck is fairly simple to understand, but it packs a lot of subtleties in how you use the fade counters. You’ll target your own Mulldrifters and Mangara, you’ll even target your lands with Parallax Tide as a way to make more mana sometimes.
I originally had only a few Trickbind to try it out but then realized that it’s likely your best card to pair with the enchantments. It lets you play them and use them the same turn without worried about losing fade counters. By playing four that means you can also start using fade counters even if you don’t have the Trickbind yet, because you can find it later off Ancestral Vision, Mulldrifter or your draw steps.
Funny enough, Merfolk is probably my worst matchup, especially if they have Daze. Thing is, I’m not even sure if it’s actually below 50% of a matchup, either way, I packed a FULL PLAYSET of Merfolk Assassin in the sideboard, lol.
I believe this is the best deck because the Parallax interactions are insane and the cost is just playing a bunch of other magic cards that are all reasonable on their own. It’s like a combo deck where you have to play a bunch of dead cards. This deck plays out like a control deck very often. But it also just randomly locks you out of the game on turn 4 if you don’t interact.
I’ve been writing this article for way too long now and I really have to publish it so it’ll have to end. I hope you enjoyed it, that you will either play or watch coverage at twitch.tv/goblincredible23 tomorrow!
Register Here: https://mtgmelee.com/Tournament/View/6149
Author: Pascal Maynard
