The decks to beat… and how to beat them

By Tom Vandevelde

In this article series, I take an in-depth look at what I consider the decks that shape the current League Standard metagame (Khans of Tarkir block, Magic Origins and Battle for Zendikar), the strategy they hope to deploy, and how one might dismantle that strategy. These articles should provide valuable information on how to build your deck and sideboard in function of these defining players in the metagame, and how to play against them.

GR LANDFALL

THE DECK & ITS STRATEGY

There are a number of viable aggressive decks in the current metagame, including BW Warriors and an assortment of Devoid (RB, RU) and Prowess (UW, UR, RW) strategies, but the most powerful among these, in my opinion, is GR Landfall. While you can usually beat most other aggro decks by making sure your deck is not too slow, removing their creatures and playing bigger blockers, or by sideboarding extra removal and sweepers such as Rising Miasma and Seismic Rupture, possibly even some lifegain, GR Landfall is a little bit more difficult to deal with. Let us look at a list:

Creatures (20)

4 Scythe Leopard (U)

4 Monastery Swiftspear (U)

4 Makindi Sliderunner

4 Snapping Gnarlid

1 Den Protector (R)

3 Valakut Predator

Other (16)

3 Fiery Impulse

3 Titan’s Strength

4 Temur Battlerage

1 Atarka’s Command (R)

2 Return to Valakut (U)

3 Become Immense (U)

Land (24)

8 Forest

8 Mountain

4 Evolving Wilds

1 Windswept Heath (R)

1 Wooded Foothills (R)

2 Blighted Woodland (U)

While other aggressive decks rely almost entirely on a quick onslaught of creatures to deal with their opponents and fall short if this strategy fails, the GR Landfall deck attacks its opponents on two axes. Their primary goal is to beat you down by deploying quick landfall creatures such as Scythe Leopard, Snapping Gnarlid and Makindi Sliderunner backed up by multiple landfall triggers coming from the plethora of fetchlands and Blighted Woodland. The landfall ability on these creatures allows them to be ‘ahead of the curve’ (a 2/2 or 3/3 for one mana or a 3/3 or 4/4 for 2 mana, for instance), which means they cannot be blocked easily, and you might find yourself with your back to the wall before you know it. If you manage to stop their attack, however, you are not out of the woods yet. These decks play the lethal combo of Become Immense (or Titan’s Strength) + Temur Battle Rage to suddenly trample over your bigger creatures for enormous amounts of damage out of nowhere. Become Immense + Temur Battlerage on a landfall-triggered Snapping Gnarlid? Take 18 damage, with trample! Become Immense + Temur Battle rage on an Evolving Wilds-triggered Valakut Predator? Take 24! Lists that have Monastery Swiftspear can even deal 18 hasty trample damage out of nowhere for 4 mana. This second gameplan means that GR Landfall is very scary to play against. If you tap out when your opponent has cards in hand, you might suddenly find yourself dead.

HOW TO BEAT IT

So how do we beat this dual strategy?

First, let us take a look at the aggressive part of the strategy. This does not necessarily differ much from other aggressive decks, except that their creatures, when triggered by landfall, are a little bit bigger. The same rules apply then: try to stay alive by using removal and trading creatures in combat. Sweepers from the sideboard are a very efficient tool to get rid of a lot of their threats at once. If you can play Seismic Rupture, Rising Miasma, or even something like Arc Lightning in the sideboard, these are all excellent to bring in. One for one removal is less efficient, but still better than most other things you can have in your sideboard. Lifegain is not as effective here as it was against aggressive decks of the past, because the deck can deal an enormous amount of damage all at once, by way of the combo.

Talking about the combo, how do we beat this secondary strategy of the deck, which makes it so difficult to play against? First, let us make sure we understand the different components of the combo. To turn the creature into a lethal trampling doublestriker, the opponent needs to have an attacking creature, give it a power boost using Become Immense or sometimes Titan’s Strength in order to make it Ferocious, and then use Temur Battle Rage on it to give it double strike and (because of the Ferocious ability) trample. Remember that if they do it the other way around and the creature does not have 4 power yet, they cannot trample over the creature you block with, no matter how small it is. Unless the creature itself has trample of course, like Makindi Sliderunner. This means the opponent who goes for the combo into our open mana is taking a big risk. If we have removal in response to the Battle Rage, they get 3-for-1’d (your removal spell for their creature, pump spell and Battle Rage), which is not good for them – to say the least. The best way to combat the combo, then, is to keep open removal whenever you can, sometimes even bluffing it, if you feel like they have it. The best removal to have against them is something like Murderous Cut or Stasis Snare, removal that is unconditional and instant-speed. Having sorcery-speed removal against the combo obviously does not help much, and if your removal is conditional, you have to watch out that they do not pump their creature in response to your removal spell, thereby fizzling it, and probably killing you. (see Tips & Tricks below)

Don’t have the instant-speed removal required to combat the combo efficiently? There are some other strategies you can try. The first of these takes us back to dealing with their primary strategy: try to remove all of their creatures from the board. If you manage to reduce them to an empty board, they can only kill you out of nowhere with a Monastery Swiftspear and the combo, which is a lot less likely to happen than them killing you with a creature they have on board. Leaving them without creatures also conveniently strands their then useless pumpspells in their hand.

Finally, a third viable option is to have discard or counterspells to deal with the non-creature part of the combo. Strip combo pieces from their hand with Duress, or Negate/Dispel their Become Immense or Battle Rage, so they cannot kill you. Of these two options, I much prefer the Negate/Dispel plan, because it plays around them just topdecking the part of the combo you stripped with your Duress.

THE BEST CARDS AGAINST THEM

Instant-speed, unconditional removal such as Murderous Cut and Statis Snare, backed up by sweepers such as Rising Miasma and Seismic Rupture is the ideal strategy. Other instant-speed removal such as Fiery Impulse, Gideon’s Reproach or Complete Disregard can work too, as can Negate and Dispel to deny them the chance to combo you out.

THE BEST DECKS AGAINST THEM

GR Landfall does not have many truly bad matchups. Most of the other aggro decks will get outclassed creature-wise and get outraced or comboed out, Tutelage is probably too slow, and many of the midrange and control decks will have to watch out for the combo. Your best shot is probably a black-based or white-based midrange or control deck with lots of instant-speed removal. UB Control with Ultimate Price, Murderous Cut and Rising Miasma seems like the deck’s worst matchup, and I could see a BW Warriors list with some good removal doing well against it too.

TIPS AND TRICKS FOR THE MATCHUP

Be aware of when you use your conditional removal. While it is often correct to play around the combo by keeping open your unconditional removal, this is not always the case with conditional removal. Make sure you don’t get blown out by trying to Complete Disregard or Fiery Impulse you opponent’s 3/3 Snapping Gnarlid when they have an uncracked fetchland in play. They can fetch in response to trigger landfall on their creature a second time and fizzle your removal spell. Experienced landfall players will try to trick you in this way and keep up fetchlands when they do not have immediate need for them, so be aware of this.

Blighted Woodland can sometimes trigger landfall three times in one turn, so be aware of this possibility. It can result in an enormous amount of damage out of nowhere (+3/+3 to their team).

The same goes for Atarka’s Command. Be sure to remember the mode of Atarka’s Command that is used the least: put a land into play from your hand. If they put a fetchland into play, they can suddenly add quite a bit of damage through landfall triggers.

Watch out for pump spells without Battle Rage on Makindi Sliderunner (trample) and Den Protector (becomes unblockable). They don’t need to use the full combo here to do a lot of damage.

The same goes for Temur Battle Rage on a creature with 4 power or more due to landfall. These do gain double strike and trample, even without the pump spell.

Some GR Landfall lists play Subterranean Scout to give a creature unblockable before they play a land and grow it into a bigger threat, sometimes even adding the combo.

Compared to Red Decks of old, the GR Landfall deck has little to no reach in the form of burn. Since the combo deals an enormous amount of damage anyway, it can sometimes be correct to take a lot of damage early in order to build up a board presence of your own. If they cannot trigger landfall continuously, their creatures become much less impressive and you will have better blocks.

Do not be afraid to bluff a removal spell, especially against experienced GR Landfall players. A good GR Landfall player will rarely play into removal, unless they are desperate or quite sure that you don’t have it, so bluffing removal might buy you the turns you need to topdeck something.

I hope this guide to playing against GR Landfall taught you a thing or two about the match-up, and will help you beat them in the future! Stay tuned for the next instalment of this series, where I tackle my personal favorite: UB Aristocrats.

Until next time!

Tom

Profile:

Tom Vandevelde has been playing Magic since Tempest in 1997, and competitively since Time Spiral. Deckbuilding is his favorite part of the game, which has led to him taking an interest in less conventional formats like League Standard. Alongside his teammates on Team Wrecking Ball he is shooting for the Pro Tour, but you will just as often find him playing Pauper, Pack Wars or Mental Magic, or helping out newer players. You will often find Tom streaming on twitch.tv/wreckingballmtg, where you can actually challenge him to League Standard matches in between rounds! Be sure to come hang out and ask questions!