Some tips for Nationals.

When you know that you are going to nationals, the first thing that most people ask themselves is which deck to pick.

Most people will look for the so called Best Deck of the Format and will pick it up and play it, budget questions aside.

While this is not necessarily a bad choice it may be a bad choice for most people as it may not be the best deck for you.

It may not be the right deck for you because of your play style. Yes I am talking about play style, although there is people where this doesn’t show up it still is very prevalent in many people and this niche will do a lot better with a deck that fits their play style.

Let’s take me for an example:

I’m very bad at playing combo since I found it boring and end doing too many mistakes because I don’t like it.

While I’m not a bad agro player, sometime I just hold down the deck by not taking the initiative and risk 2 for 1 for my opponent, while this may not look bad it may give the time your opponent needs to get ahead of you in the game, and even though I know this I end not taking the risk since I normally choose the less risky path but when you are playing agro you should be more daring.

I’m definitely a control player and I play control most of the time. In this category the ones that I play best are agro control or a midrange deck.  I found this after 1 year or so of playing magic as I started by playing agro, easily found out that I didn’t like combo when I picked one combo deck and finally I picked a control deck enjoyed playing it and making good results with this type.

What I’m trying to say is if you are still in doubt about what to pick, don’t pick a deck just because someone says it’s the best and try to figure out if the deck may adapt to your play style, because if it does you will end up doing less mistakes and might do better results.

Unfortunately this is not always true and just playing the best deck is sometimes better, but I’m pretty sure that this format is not of that type.

This considered, I will talk a little about the decks that are most played:

Jund – This is a deck that someone who reaches Nationals should know how it plays and how your deck plays against it. If you don’t, you might consider staying home.

Mythic – Mythic is posting some good results lately. But this deck as a bad matchup against Jund and Sparkmage means a lot of trouble for this deck even if he doesn’t have a collar. This deck plays out by getting some mana acceleration on the first and second turns and play big threats after. The best way to hinder them is to kill the mana dorks and slow them down. This is the best because they will rarely drop more than 1 threat per game and because sovereigns is not that good when you don’t have creatures on the board. Still this deck is pretty explosive and can easily throw 10 or more points of damage from nowhere while still playing some  of the most solid creatures you may find in standard.

Next Level Bant – This deck only showed up recently and he’s doing some good results supported by his good matchup against control and by not being a good matchup to Jund. This deck plays very similar to Mythic but trades the explosiveness and some solid creatures of Mythic for a reusable threat, a better card advantage engine and removal package. As against Mythic the best way to play against them is to kill the mana dorks as their two and three mana drops aren’t that good and this helps screwing them too since that deck wants GG or WW or UU on fourth turn which sometimes is hard to get. If you have something that removes creatures of permanents from game you should save them for Vengevines and Planeswalkers which are the main threats of this deck.

UWr planes walkers – This deck relies on playing a lot of Planeswalkers. For most decks the most threatening Planeswalkers of this deck are Ajani Vengeant and Elspeth. While Gideon may be a pain because is able to protect is fellow walkers that two are the most threatening. Still the one you should worry about is Jace, may it be is old or upgrade version, this deck relies on sticking it’s Planeswalkers in game but it’s not like you can’t kill them, this is where jace fills in by letting this deck dropping Planeswalkers consistently since he looks for them. If you are able to kill jace without him getting a lot of advantage from it, it will be a lot harder for the UWr player to consistently drop his extra copies of his Planeswalkers since their card advantage system revolves around Jace.

UW  Tappout – It’s kind of simple to play against this deck. Keep removal for Baneslayers, kill planeswalkers if possible and try to not over commit to Day of Judgment. Well it’s not that simple but you get the point.

Polymorph – This might be the closest to what we can call a combo on this format. Anyway it’s pretty simple to play against it. Just apply pressure and hold down your removal or counters for when he tries to polymorph a creature. Also Jace TMS and oblivion ring are able to remove bounce Emrakul while Iona is bit more difficult.

Red Deck Wins – The best thing against this is Kor Firewalker followed by any lifelinker. If you are able to get some extra life it becomes a lot harder for the red deck to kill you. Beside this, block and kill their creatures whenever you can. Day of Judgment is a lot better now against this deck, since they play more creatures that stick around.

Vengevine Naya – This deck just plays creature after creature. If your deck is able to survive this kind of onslaught is something that only testing can answer.

Vampires – Bloodghast can be really troublesome for control players but what you should be worrying about is Nocturnus, without him this agro deck is only a bunch of 2/x , with him on the table your life is pretty short. So you should save instant removal for Nocturnus while chump blocking the other ones.

Green Monument or G|x monument – This kind of deck relies on monument or overrun to kill their opponents, so your plan most resolve around killing their creatures so they don’t have enough creatures to maintain monument and kill you  at the same time or having something to destroy the monument. You can even capitalize with some good chump blocks when you destroy the monument.

Turboland  - Apply some pressure kill the oracles and keep Jace out of the board it’s basically the best plan against this deck.

Well this is all for now.

Cumps, Anglachel