Assassin's Trophy: Why GB Rock will bomb this fall
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| Art Credit: WotC & Seb McKinnon |
But first! A couple friends and I went to GP Detroit this past weekend and got our collective butt kicked, going (I think?) 1-6-1.
Ouch.
I brought traverse shadow, splashing white in the main for lingering souls, and siding a watery grave and two stubborn denials. The deck felt good. Lack of threat density did me in a couple times, but otherwise the deck felt fine. More on how it might have felt great later.
My matchups were (in roughly the right order): Bant Spirits, BG Elves, Blue Moon, Eldrazi Tron, GB Tron, Classic Affinity, GW Value Town, and Hardened Scales Affinity.
I was running hotter than the sun in the first two rounds, taking down Spirits and Elves in two games each, despite (still) believing I am disadvantaged in those matchups. Unfortunately, both my teammates lost close matches, so we were quickly 0-2.
Then I slipped up big time in round three when I failed to realize my opponent was on Blue Moon after game 1 (moon never saw the light of day in that game, which ended not in my favor, but it was close), and proceeded to get shut out by it in game 2. 0-3 as a team.
The next two rounds I got squished under the force of tron, going 0-2 in both matches. Only against E tron did I manage to get a blazing start off, but my opponent proceeded to turn 4 an Ulamog and exile both my threats. Game over. My teammates can't carry me in that round, but do get there in the next round when I lose against GB tron. Our record is 1-4 (but we're having fun!).
Classic affinity beats me in game 1, but my sideboard is brutal against them, and I control a very long game 2 and finally win. Game 3 goes to time, and neither of us can close it out. This is where we get a tie. 1-4-1.
Value town goes the other way from my first two matchups and I have a miserable game 1 and 3 where I am slowly by surely ground to a nub. Game 2 I come out of the gate like a rocket and my opponent scoops turn 3. A close match, but now we're 1-5-1.
Finally, my teammates lose their matches before me and my Hardened Scales opponent can get into game 3, but since it is the last round we play it out. He took game 1 (pretty sure this is a very bad matchup for traverse shadow) with a very wide board. Game 2 I save myself with a piece of spot removal and fall to 1 life, then proceed to bolt his face and swing with a battle raged shadow for a total of 20 damage (trampling through a 2 toughness blocker). Game 3 goes for a little bit, and then he gets the ravager ballista setup that I can't do anything about. 1-6-1.
But hey, we had a lot of fun!
Enough bad beat stories! Let's get to the news...
Wizards has made a very concerted effort to push the quality of midrange answers available in modern with the soon-to-be printing of Assassin's Trophy. This is a two-mana instant that answers every kind of permanent your opponent could have for the price of letting them fetch an untapped basic land. Some people are calling it "Path to Decay" and that is a good way of summarizing the text on the card, but it isn't a very helpful way to evaluate this card's placement and power level.
Let's start with the most unique thing about this card: it can function like a spell version of ghost quarter, because it hits land-type permanents as well. Main-deckable two-mana land disruption is modern midrange's wet dream come true. There has been an unspoken rule since 8th edition's printing that land hate comes in two forms only: symmetrical (like ghost quarter, tec edge, field of ruin, etc.), or 3+ mana (stone rain, crumble to dust, etc.).
Trophy breaks that rule. This is a rule that has kept Tron as the nightmare midrange matchup for years, because there has simply never been an efficient way to interact with Tron's enabling pieces: the lands.
But the value versus Tron doesn't stop at blowing up Urza towers and replacing them with forests. This is a 2-mana answer to everything that sticks to the battlefield, isn't hexproof, and isn't indestructible. Karn, Ugin, World Breaker, Gurmag Angler, Blood Moon, Teferi, Jace, Krark-Clan Ironworks, the list is endless. (Okay, maybe Ironworks is a bad example...)
This is the kind of answer you see played in Legacy and older formats, where the motto of the day is not "let's play out our strategies and maybe throw in a little disruption" but instead "I have hyper-efficient permission spells and removal spells, you need to figure out how to play around them to win".
In legacy, sometimes, Force of Will, Swords to Plowshares, Hymn to Tourach, etc. strip you of your entire strategy before you can get value out of it. Trophy is not as good as these spells, but it is definitely the closest modern has ever been.
The benefits go on: where Fatal Push becomes worse in the late game because you need fetches (etc.) to revolt it, and the threats begin to outpace the CMC limit, Trophy gets better as the game goes on, because the fewer basics the opponent has remaining in their deck, the less the cost of the spell to your board state. Just like path, Trophy becomes absurd as soon as the opponent starts saying "fail to find." It also represents a greater and greater tempo advantage as the game goes long, because destroying a game-winning permanent like teferi at the cost of giving your opponent their 9th land is hardly a cost at all.
Initial reactions to Trophy by redditors and the like were that it replaces Abrupt Decay (I agree), terminate (I agree), Dreadbore (I super agree), Maelstrom Pulse (I somewhat agree), and Push (I somewhat agree). But there are important notes to be made on other modern spells.
In the same way that Push cannot replace bolt, Trophy does not replace bolt. Trophy is rather inefficient in the early game, especially against small creature strategies. Trophy also gives you no true reach in the late game, and does nothing against archetypes like spell-combo where you need speed over board state interaction.
BUT, Bolt and Trophy pair like peanut butter and chocolate. I can't think of a better and more versatile removal base in modern than 4x of each, plus 4 Thoughtseize.
Other commentators have suggested that Trophy should be shoe-horned into the existing B/G/x decks by pulling single cards out of playsets, like taking a lili out of jund, a souls out of abzan, etc etc.
This is a terrible idea. The real cuts for Trophy (beyond the strictly worse removal spells) are discard spells #5-8. In Shadow decks (which I think are the strongest of all the Bxx midrange archetypes), this means no more inquisitions of kozilek. In midrange-grind like Jund and Abzan and Rock, I think this means no Thoughtseize. Things like Scapeshift and Gifts Ungiven will be harder to handle, but not by much.
Here's my logic for ditching the extra targeted discard. One of the major weaknesses of black midrange decks is the sheer number of discard spells they need to play to stay in the game against non-interactive decks. These are terrible top-decks, and serious tempo disadvantage against go-wide aggro and other midrange archetypes. Copies 5-8 in the decks come at a high price, but a price that (until now) had to be paid, because there were just too many things that you could not answer cleanly, nor survive, if they came down before you put pressure on the board.
Trophy changes that. Outside of instants and sorceries, this spot removal spell answers essentially everything in the mid and late game. Midrange now has (in my estimation) all of the tools it needs to be the truly 50/50 matchup for nearly any modern archetype.
Fast, consistent, powerful threats: Goyf and/or Shadow
Tempo-neutral card advantage engines: Dark Confident, Lingering Souls
Reach: Bolt and/or Temur Battle Rage
Board state control: Assassin's Trophy
Spell sequence disruption: Thoughtseize/IoK, Stubborn Denial
The question is: will you supplement this package with cards that force the grind (Lili, Ooze, etc.) or will you supplement it with cards that increase velocity and consistency (Traverse, Street Wraith, Mishra's Bauble, etc.).
Your first instinct may be to see the secondary text on the card (the opponent fetches a basic land) and think "how do I play Trophy and more basics to avoid being punished by opposing Trophies?"...
Don't fall for that trap. BG rock is a very poorly positioned deck. If you want to grind in modern, play UW. They have sweepers for aggro decks, planeswalkers and snapcasters for midrange matches, and permission for big mana and combo. Their two-color base gets white sideboard cards, where as BG rock get...BG. Not great.
"But I'll be able to Field of Ruin and Assassin's Trophy my opponent's lands!"
Why would you want to do that? How much mana and tempo do you want to invest in swapping your opponent's lands for...other lands? You will still lose to Tron if all you do is spend mana to swap Urza Towers for Forests....
Now more than ever B/G/x decks need a third color to push their strategy over the top. Seeing as how Lightning Bolt pairs so well with Assassin's Trophy, we might as well make that color red.
But that doesn't mean that playing up to the 4-drop slot is correct. Bloodbraid Elf is a mighty card, but when the best aggro decks are go-wide and the best control decks are sweeper heavy and slow as molasses...the Princess of Jund can become lack-luster. Not compared to other 4-drops, mind you, but to other classes of threats.
BBE lets Jund stick the landing in the mid-game and force the opponent to have some really efficient answers to lose.
But when the meta is all about gaining edges in the very early game, and when more and more decks can play unbeatable threats, combo off, or swing for lethal by turn 4, BBE seems too slow.
Will Trophy let B/G/x decks slow other decks down enough to win with BBE?
We'll have to wait and see.
But my first build with Assassin's Trophy is going to go low and fast as a mix of Jund and Traverse Shadow. Below is a rough outline of how it might look.
4 Thoughtseize
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Assassin's Trophy
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Death's Shadow
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Street Wraith / Dark Confidant (still figuring this slot out)
(x) Collective Brutality
(x) Temur Battle Rage
(x) Kolaghan's Command
(x) Lands (18ish, including 1-2 basics)
I think push is useless in Jund colors now. Not that I had much use for it before...
That's my 24 and 1/2 cents on the subject! We'll see where the meta goes...
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