Welcome to Views and Brews! I decided it was time to herd all of my articles together under one banner and brand them. If you’ve read any of my previous articles, you can expect to continue to get off-the-wall deck lists, poor financial advice, overly-opinionated takes on topics in the Magic community, and lots of crappy movie/book references. In fact, you may already be a winner!

This week, I’ve been playing more Magic than usual. Wizards found it in their hearts to grace me with a backyard Grand Prix the weekend before my birthday, and I’d really like to do nothing more than make a splash. I haven’t been fortunate enough to attend many GPs (having twin toddlers and a pregnant wife can make Magic travel a bit difficult), so when I am lucky enough to have one within an hour’s drive, I am going to go at it like Forrest Gump on Dr. Pepper. It doesn’t hurt that this GP format is Standard, coincides with the major fall release (when the format is always at its most interesting), takes place the weekend after the Pro Tour, and that Theros is an incredibly intricate and deep format for brewing.

After bombing at my last PTQ, I decided to approach brewing for this tournament a bit differently. For that PTQ, I focused on the expected meta for that area, scoured the list for decks, and tried to come up with the best answers for the best two or three decks in the format. I was paired against three “under the radar” decks, and dropped from the tournament in time to have lunch. While lunch was excellent, it wasn’t how I’d wanted my day to go.

So this time, I decided to go about preparing differently. Instead of looking at decks, I’ve been trying to play with a variety of cards. I’ve built Grixis control decks, Simic aggro decks, Esper decks, devotion decks, and I think I even tried to make a 5 color deck at one point. But, in each of these cases, instead of trying to think about how to make that deck better, I just focused on the cards. What color pairs seemed to be performing well? What cards were hard to answer? If I drop a turn five [card]Obzedat, Ghost Council[/card] will it be good enough to race? Is it worth sticking (primarily) to one color for the boost you get from [card]Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx[/card] or one of the gods? What cards are versatile enough to give MacGyver a hard on? I’ve enjoyed this approach much more, and now it’s time to see if it will lead to a better GP performance.

With Pro Tour Theros in the books, we have no shortage of decklists to devour for a starting point. If you’d asked me leading up to the PT, I would have expected to see Junk, or Mono-Red Aggro, or Esper leading the way. But, leave it to the pros and their hours upon hours of testing time to tear those notions to pieces and use them for wiping.

On one side, you had Team Channel Fireball, a team loaded with some of the true masters of the game. After a week of hardcore testing, pouring blood, sweat, and tears into brewing with the most powerful cards in the format, with no expense spared, they came to this stunning conclusion:

On the other side, you had Team Star City Games, part of the oldest and most recognizable brand in Magic, with an unbelievable collection of deck building talent. After a rigorous selection process, most of them came to an equally dazzling selection:

Well then. Not to be outdone, the foreign contingent broke into the top 8 playing all the black cards and (almost) all the green cards. I guess we’ll just follow up one of the greatest multicolored blocks of all-time with a Pro Tour straight out of 1995. I kid, I kid. Kinda.

You’ll notice a distinct lack of a mono-colored white deck. I find it a little odd that the color with some of the best devotion enablers ([card]Precinct Captain[/card] and [card]Boros Reckoner[/card]) didn’t crash this monochromatic shindig. [card]Heliod, God of the Sun[/card] provides a sufficient mana sink, and [card]Elspeth, Sun’s Champion[/card] gives you a legitimate game ender. White black and white decks seem to be all the rage right now, I think red and white have potential outside of the traditional “Boros Blitz” play style. Piggy-backing off an early RW deck brewed by my teammate Kirk Dubé, maybe something like this could represent the god of the Sun:

[deck title=Travis Hall – White Noise]

[Lands]

3 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

4 Sacred Foundry

4 Temple of Abandon

7 Mountain

7 Plains

[/Lands]

[Creatures]

4 Soldier of the Pantheon

4 Precinct Captain

4 Boros Reckoner

2 Heliod, God of the Sun

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

4 Chained to the Rocks

2 Blind Obedience

3 Mizzium Mortars

2 Spear of Heliod

3 Warleader’s Helix

2 Assemble the Legion

3 Aurelia’s Fury

[/Spells]

[Planeswalkers]

2 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion

[/Planeswalkers]

[Sideboard]

1 Assemble the Legion

2 Hammer of Purphoros

3 Ratchet Bomb

4 Stormbreath Dragon

2 Chandra, Pyromancer

2 Celestial Flare

1 Glare of Heresy

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

Taking a page out from the book of Masters Chapin and Rietzl, we have an assortment of early game creatures to both hold down the fort against aggressive decks and provide the necessary early mana symbols to make Nykthos worthwhile (they can beat face too). [card]Chain to the Rocks[/card] also does double duty as the most efficient removal spell in standard (for everything not named Blood Baron) that also enables devotion. In the late game we can use the extra mana provided by Nykthos to fuel an army of enchantment creatures via Heliod, beat down with Elspeth tokens, or even go the “burn you out” route with Warleader’s Helix and Aurelia’s Fury. This may FINALLY be the deck for Aurelia’s Fury, the erstwhile $30 card that has suddenly dropped to price of a dirty left sock, to make good on my observation that it can be a format defining card (yeah, I’m sorry about that one). You have Mizzium Mortars playing the role of sweeper (and remember that you can use Nykthos and Boros Reckoner as a suitable mana fix for the overload abililty) and Spear of Heliod to do some spot removal service. While this deck does boast quite a few creatures, it really feels like it plays out as a control deck.

I’m not sure I’ll have the time to tune this prior to the GP (now just 72 hours away), but it is something I will be working on going forward. If I can’t get it to an acceptable build, I’ll most likely audible to Mihara’s RG deck from the top 8, as it really is the best “combo” deck in the format (hallelujah!), or a version of the mono black build. Regardless, I foresee Nykthos being in my 75. I’ve fallen in love with the card. It takes me back to the days of playing with overpowered cards and ridiculous combos at the kitchen table. I think it will be a big part of standard going forward, and don’t be surprised if it breaks loose in Modern as well… but that’s for another time.

That’s it for this installment! Next week, I’ll discuss the GP fallout, what deck I went with, and unleash new brews!

Bonus decklist: If you really want to make a creature based deck cry, play this. I will not be held responsible for any injuries the occur via flipped tables and gamer rage.

[deck title=Travis Hall – Sphere!]

[Lands]

4 Hallowed Fountain

4 Azorius Guildgate

3 Mutavault

2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

7 Plains

5 Islands

[/Lands]

[Creatures]

Heliod, God of the Sun

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

3 Blind Obedience

4 Azorius Charm

2 Cyclonic Rift

1 Ratchet Bomb

4 Detention Sphere

2 Spear of Heliod

4 Supreme Verdict

4 Sphere of Safety

3 Sphinx’s Revelation

[/Spells]

[Planeswalkers]

4 Jace, Architect of Thought

2 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion

[/Planeswalkers]

[Sideboard]

4 Dissolve

3 Negate

2 Rapid Hybridization

2 Jace, Memory Adept

2 Omenspeaker

2 Last Breath

[/Sideboard]

[/deck]

I strongly considered tossing a [card]Gideon, Champion of Justice[/card] in here, since your opponent will most likely keep playing creatures that can’t attack, it shouldn’t be too hard to get him above 15 loyalty, but I’m afraid that there are just too many Hero’s Downfall seeing play right now to be worth it.

If you like my suggestions, you can follow me on Twitter: @travishall456. I throw around random observations and deck ideas every day. You can also hear me on the Horde of Notions podcast each week, discussing deck ideas for FNM level events and the PTQ grinders.