Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Best Deck in the World
The Magic 2011 World Championships is in the books. It spanned three days and three formats: Standard, Modern, and Innistrad draft. Japan's Junya Iyanaga was crowned champion and this is his Standard deck.
Junya piloted this deck to a 6-0 start on day one then continued the perfect streak right through the top 8 elimination matches. Of course the "best deck in the world" can't be decided by one tournament (he got some favorable matchups in the top 8 for example) but if a deck goes 9-0 in a tournament of this caliber you know it's powerful.
This is one of the "Wolf Run" decks you've been hearing about. The game plan is ramp into Primeval Titans then fetch up Wolf Run and Inkmoth Nexus which combine to be fatal very quickly. Green Sun's Zenith provides some redundancy to find the Titans.
What makes this version of the ramp deck a bit different is heavy reliance on red. Some versions of Wolf Run nearly completely eschew red, viewing it as a necessary evil to trigger the Wolf Run ability, but Junya embraces red in this build running a full set of Inferno Titans. Eight Titans! No wonder he seemed to draw one every game.
I'm glad to see Inferno Titan in a champion deck because this completes the cycle. We've seen Primeval Titans dominate through land fetching shenanigans since Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. Grave Titan and Frost Titan have shown up frequently as finishers in high powered control decks and Sun Titan has recently seen the top tables in the graveyard based Solar Flare. Inferno Titan had a harder time seeing play perhaps because red decks generally want to be fast, but Junya saw that Wolf Run was the perfect home for the fiery giant.
With a ton of mana ramp, eight titans, and two zeniths you can pretty much count on a titan coming down early. Primeval fetches the lands to get deadly, but Inferno acts as machine gun. The metagame's shift towards weenie based decks (and Channel Fireball's top eight blitz with Tempered Steel) makes the Red Titan crushingly powerful. On turn four you can cast an Inferno Titan and wipe out an opposing Mirran Crusader and Avacyn's Pilgrim, or flay three Memnites. If your opponent doesn't have an answer he'll do it again next turn and potentially hit you for ten. If it's not the titan that wipes your board of weenies it'll be the Slagstorm.
Another little innovation is the ramp suite. He goes with a full set of Sphere of the Suns and Simulacrums. Also note the choice to run the old favorite Rampant Growth instead of the recently hip alternative Viridian Emissary.
Congrats to Junya. This mega ramp, eight titan, monster earns a place in Magic History.
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