Hello everyone!

With Pro Tour: Aether Revolt being dominated by Mardu Vehicles, I wanted to talk about the deck half of our team played at the PT and upcoming Standard metagame. I will go through versions of GB decks, to find out which cards you want to be playing in which metagames.

At the PT we played UWR 《Dynavolt Tower》 Control, deck we thought would be good because it had good matchup against BG decks and was advantaged against UWR Saheeli. Unfortunately, like most of other people we did not anticipate 23% of metagame being Mardu Vehicles. That matchup is far from great, it is by no means unwinnable, but you really don’t want to play a deck with 4 《Dissolve》 if your opponent has 1 cmc 3/2’s. After SB we at least had 《Thing in the Ice》 and 《Release the Gremlins》, both cards that are amazing, but that still didn’t make the matchup good. I think the deck might be actually good in the future, when people stop playing Mardu Vehicles and play more GB, but more about that later. Here is the list we played with our sideboard notes for the PT.

Vs. Jeskai Saheeli & The Mirror

Side Out

Side In

It might be a controversial choice to side out Jace in the blue mirror, but most games played out way better if you had only cheap threats and counterspells. After SB both players have about 10 counterspells, so a 5 mana sorcery is not really what you want to be doing. Of course, that is if things go how they usually do, but sometimes you have a window to resolve Jace and he is insane.

Vs. GB Delirium With Demon

Side Out

Side In

Leave in more removal spells and don’t side in Thing. Exact sideboard depends a lot on their configuration, but generally Thing is not great against Glint-Sleeve Siphoner, Gonti or Tracker but is good against Scrapheap Scrounger and Longtusk Cub. If they have a lot of lategame, you want to go under them with Thing and Dragonmaster, sideboarding out most of your white cards.

Vs. Mardu Vehicles

Side Out

Side In

Vs. 4C Combo

Side Out

Side In

With GP Pittsburgh in the books, we can already see the metagame shift. Top 8 had 5 BG decks, 2 Mardu Vehicles and UWR Saheeli. I think this represents how the metagame shifted pretty well, with BG being the best deck for the GP, because it has good matchup against Vehicles. Moving on, I think GB decks in general will be a great choice, because they are customizable to beat pretty much everything, so I will go through all the different versions and talk about the different cards and what they are good against. Before I get to that, I would like to say that for any upcoming tournaments, if BG is the deck to beat, any deck that has a good matchup against BG and has a decent matchup against Mardu should be a good choice. Which might be one of the control decks, especially with 《Fumigate》, or an Emerge deck with 《Kozilek's Return》. I don’t have any good lists for Emerge so I will leave that to other people to figure out and go through the BG decks instead.

First let’s look at the three BG decklists from top 16 of the GP, showing distinctly different versions of how to build it. Just by looking at these versions, you can see that they are quite distinct, and you can’t just call them BG midrange. What are the differences? What versions are better against what metagames? I think the easiest way to recognize what each deck is trying to do is by looking at their 2 drops. Because there are just so many good 2 drops in BG! Let’s analyze them one by one.

The most powerful 2 drop. Everyone knows how good Constrictor into Rishkar is, or about the synergy with Ballista, Gearhulk, Nissa, 《Longtusk Cub》 and other energy cards. With that said, you could expect every BG deck to play it, right? Wrong, Ben Rubin is not playing it, because his deck is slower, centered more around Delirium and thus is not playing as many creatures (most of the Constrictor synergies are with creatures). Kind of makes sense right? But when you don’t have to play the best two drop in your colors to have a good BG deck, it just shows how many different flavors of BG there are. With that said, I think Ben’s deck is an exception and most of the BG decks are aggressively making good use of the snake.

An absurd card with Constrictor in play and the main reason BG is a favorite against Mardu. Good synergy with 《Verdurous Gearhulk》, a good mana sink and has reach in the lategame, but on its own it can be underwhelming early game. I can see people playing less of them if x/1 creatures stop seeing play, and you face decks with lot of removal (so they can break your synergies). Ben is not on a constrictor plan so he is only playing 2 + 1 in the SB, but Ballista is also playing the important role of Delirium enabler in his deck.

Very good card on its own and the closest we have to a 《Dark Confidant》 now. The biggest downside is the one toughness, which is a big problem in a world of bipedal ballistae. It excels against control and slower decks that don’t have access to Ballista/Liliana. An important thing to realize about it is that you don’t have to be an energy deck to make good use of it. Something as simple as 《Aether Hub》 gives you that important one energy so you can draw a card on the next turn and don’t have to wait two. This card should only get better once BG decks become less popular.

Purely played in energy decks as a powerful turn two play that can snowball if opponent doesn’t have answer right away. Amazing synergy with Constrictor. Problem for this card is that later in the game it is just too small to do anything. Great turn two play, pretty much blank after that. Even on turn two, it usually needs a little push from Rishkar or Attune, which makes it bit more inconsistent than I would like. Very high ceiling but has a low floor.

A card we didn’t see a lot during PT, but the winning decklist packs a whole set. It is simply a good, powerful card that doesn’t need any other cards to make it good. It is important to note that a single +1/+1 counter makes it the right size to attack and block a lot of Mardu creatures, which I think was the main reason to fit them in the deck instead of anything else. 《Sylvan Advocate》 is usually a bit underwhelming in the early game, but those +1/+1 counters really make him shine.

The card saw lots of play in the previous season but gets overshadowed by the other multicolored cards. 《Grim Flayer》 is simply demanding you to build your deck in a different way. With Constrictor, you just put Ballista, Rishkar and Gearhulk in it and it works. With 《Grim Flayer》 you need to carefully balance numbers of all types to easily achieve Delirium, which is usually hard without actual enablers like 《Grapple with the Past》or 《Vessel of Nascency》. That is the main reason why Rubin’s deck looks so different from the other two. With all those restrictions, it will be hard for Flayer to see as much play as last season, because you don’t have the huge payoff in Emrakul anymore.

Only 2 drop not in those three decklists (but is in other GP Pittsburgh Top8 BG decks). It might look a bit underwhelming, but he is at its best against Mardu and BG. Against mardu having a two drop with Lifelink that can help race them is obviously great, and there are so many ways to make it bigger! In the mirror he is hard to deal with favorably other than with 《Fatal Push》, and is a good way to somehow answer Gearhulk if you don’t have removal for it (which is some of the easiest ways to win).

I think he is very similar to 《Sylvan Advocate》, with the Sylvan overall being slightly better but Aetherborn is stronger in certain matchups. Aetherborn is also more synergistic, because the +1/+1 counters on him are amazing. Overall I think Aetherborn is better for metagames with a majority of BG/Mardu, while Advocate should get the nod when there’s a bigger variety of decks around. With that said about the 2 drops that make up the major differences in BG decks, I just want to point out a few things that can help you build your own BG for upcoming tournaments, depending on what metagame you are expecting.

I hope my analysis of successful BG decks will help you understand how to build them for upcoming tournaments where you are anticipating a different metagame, or to help you understand which version you are playing against based on the two drops they play. The Standard metagame is usually shifting very fast, especially in the first weeks, so I would recommend you to prepare for what you think people will play and not only picking best deck from last week.

Thanks for reading!

Lukas Blohon

Lukas Blohon
He’s represented the Czech Republic on the international magic stage for a long time.
Always devoted to his goal of becoming a better magic player, as remarked on by fellow Czech pro Petr Sochurek few people work as hard as Blohon at improving their game.

Achievements include a PT: Dark Ascension Top 8, GP Brussels 2015 Champion, 6 GP Top 8’s & just recently he was the PT: Eldritch Moon Champion. Now he joins the Hareruya Pros to continue making his mark on magic history.

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