Black Summer: Darkness Rising

An old article on StarCityGames.com titled (surprise, surprise), "A History of Necropotence," and written by Jim Grimmet, serves as an excellent primer and source of decklists surrounding the infamous Necropotence. Why was Necropotence SO GOOD, and why does it still make nerds everywhere squeal with delight?

Simply put, it stands among the best card advantage engines ever printed.  Sure, you pass up on your draw step, but what you gain surpasses it by far: "Pay 1 life: draw a card (EDIT: essentially)."  I cannot conceive of a more flavorful, beautiful, and at the same time extremely powerful black effect.  Players originally scoffed at the card, but people started catching on quickly and Necro was born.  For months, the entire metagame revolved around it.  Decks of that period HAD to have game against Necro to stand a chance.  Among Necro competitors of the time was a nasty little combo concoction called Pros Bloom:


4 Undiscovered Paradise
3 Bad River
7 Forest
6 Swamp
5 Island

4 Infernal Contract
4 Impulse
4 Vampiric Tutor
1 Three Wishes
2 Memory Lapse
1 Power Sink
1 Elven Cache
1 Emerald Charm
4 Cadaverous Bloom
4 Natural Balance
4 Squandered Resources
4 Prosperity
1 Drain Life

Sideboard:

3 City of Solitude
4 Elephant Grass
1 Elven Cache
3 Emerald Charm
1 Memory Lapse
1 Power Sink
2 Wall of Roots

The basic goal was to ultimately fuel a lethal Drain Life.  You would do this by casting Prosperity and filtering those cards through Cadaverous Bloom into a larger Prosperity into cadaverous bloom into a MASSIVE  Prosperity into a lethal Drain Life.  The problem with combo decks is their need to assemble the components (har, har... get it?).  Very hard to do against Necro... Necro will trade one-for-one all day, and will ALWAYS come out ahead.  Disruption is a complete disaster for a deck like this.  Getting hit with Duress, Hyppies, and Stupor will ruthlessly cripple hands, and the deck just reloads when it's done.

Another attempt at stemming the tide of Black Summer was a Winter Orb lock deck.  Winter Orb was a soft-lock alongside Icy Manipulators to keep the lock in place.  If that wasn't bad enough, since the deck featured a ton of artifacts as mana sources, it functioned without access to mana from its lands, leaving its opponent floundering in tapped lands and creatures, with a gripful of permission to quash any artifact removal or attempts at casting spells.  Still, this was not enough.  Necropotence, despite its weakness in the later stages of the game, managed to pull wins  from it with hand disruption, pump knights, and other nonsense (depending on the variant).

Other decks that had some time in the limelight: Turbo Stasis, U/W control, counterpost, and Sligh.

One of the best breakdowns of the metagame of that era (well... technically, it's just after black summer) I could find was in Mike Flores' e-book titled Michael J. Flores: 10 Years of Decks, Thoughts, and Theory.  An excellent read.  Strongly recommended.

Despite the strength of the Necropotence deck, some decks were able to outlast it.  The pump knight version of Necro was weak to Serrated Arrows and Armageddon.  In addition, Black Vise, though restricted, eliminated Necro's much-relied upon resource: its life total.  Disenchant also gave decks a chance.  Notice: two of the aforementioned cards are white.  If you could stem the tide of the early aggression, get lucky with a turn 1 Black Vise, eliminate lands or a Necropotence, or get a Serrated Arrows out, you had a decent shot of beating one of the most dominant decks ever conceived.

That's about it!  Hope you enjoyed it.  Next week (hopefully) I will have the next installment of this deck series.  Again, I would strongly recommend Michael J. Flores: 10 Years of Decks, Thoughts, and Theory.  Especially if you liked this brief, incomplete, and cursory glance at part of Magic's past.

The State of Standard

Standard is a pretty healthy format at the moment.  With Nationals approaching, there are several tier 1 decks to be considered.  Wolf Run Ramp, Red Deck Wins, and Solar Flare are the big three.  Tempered steel, with its ability to steal games, is not one to be counted out, but does not have the raw power of the top tier decks.

Solar Flare is moving away from Liliana and towards Jace, Memory Adept.  I believe this is among the proper approaches to take, as Liliana is weak in the Wolf Run Ramp matchup.  Of the big three, Wolf Run Ramp seems to be the deck to beat.  The top 8 of Grand Prix Brisbane featured 4 Wolf Run Ramp, 3 UB control, and 1 WG Hero of Bladehold beatdown deck.  View the results for yourself here.  Among the UB control lists was a Tezzeret deck.  Any of the top decks that could fit it in ran Wring Flesh.  Having a 1-mana out to annoying X/1 creatures outside of red is worthy of inclusion.  Wring Flesh as a maindeck card in UB control is probably a good enough reason to avoid running Tempered Steel in the present format.  Oddly enough, the winner of the tournament was UB control.  The deck is legit.  Untapping with a Concecrated Sphinx against any deck seems good.  The card's primary weakness is its lack of an immediate effect.  The deck's other finishers make up for that quite nicely.  UB control's finishers are immune to Dismember, at least if the red zone is not considered in the equation.  If the deck isn't tier 1, it is very close.


There are other tournament results to consider.  The StarCityGames.com Standard Open brings more lists to the table.  There were a great number of innovations in the tournament, as pointed out by Mike Flores here.  For innovative Solar Flare decks, Christian Valent's decklist takes the cake.  The deck features no planeswalkers at all.  None.  Not even in the sideboard.  The deck is a thing of beauty.  As a concession to aggressive strategies, the deck has a miser Celestial Purge, 3 Timely Reinforcements, and 2 Day of Judgment.  In the current meta, I don't know that such a decklist would work.  Ghost Quarter is a must to deal with Kessig Wolf Run and Inkmoth Nexus.  Running lands that don't tap for colored mana can really strain a deck working off of 3 colors.  However, switching numbers around a bit and overhauling the mana base may produce a list that has a solid chance.  The tournament saw decks that ran fewer than four Mana Leak.  Personally, I don't like the card at all right now.  You are quite often outside Mana Leak range once you see something relevant to counter with it.