Magic the Gathering

Constructed

Off the Beaten Path – Valakut for Victory

By Sam Feeley ⋅ January 29, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

My apolo­gies for miss­ing last week’s arti­cle, but that’s the price you pay for mov­ing (again).

So two weeks ago we dis­cussed Valakut, the Molten Pin­na­cle in Extended, and I made a men­tion of how stan­dard is not the pseudo-legendary land’s “com­fort zone.” Au con­traire! You may not have access to Scapeshift so you can deal 18 or so dam­age in one fell swoop, but you do have plenty of ramp and crea­ture con­trol tools to make it a win­ner. After see­ing some lists from last October’s Game Days, I put together this:

You had a good run, Time Sieve, but I may have found my new favorite deck in Stan­dard. It has all the fac­tors I look for in a Stan­dard deck – a blast to play, under the radar, and the abil­ity to hang with the Junds and Bush­whack­ers of the world. Yeah, there’s the expense fac­tor, but as long as I don’t have a job out­side of this col­umn, you gotta work with what you have.

I took this list to the tour­na­ment prac­tice room of Magic Online to see what it could do. (P.S. — You can find me on MODO as ‘DJ Samurai’.)

Match 1 vs dumpy­fatkid (R/W/U control)

On the play, I kept two Ter­ramor­phic Expanse, Valakut, Moun­tain, For­est, and two Har­row, while my oppo­nent mul­li­ganed to five. I held off my first Har­row until he tapped out for Ajani Vengeant, which kept a sec­ond Valakut tapped down. The next turn, I topdecked Blood­braid Elf into Expe­di­tion Map and attacked Ajani down to one counter. He held my Blood­braid down while draw­ing cards with Jace Bel­eren, but play­ing Jace ren­dered him unable to counter a Khalni Heart Expe­di­tion, fol­lowed by my third Valakut. An Expe­di­tion Map for Ter­ramor­phic Expanse and a sec­ond Khalni Heart Expe­di­tion ended game one in my favor.

In game 2 on the draw I kept two Moun­tains, Ter­ramor­phic Expanse, Ora­cle of Mul Daya, two Bane­fire, and Expe­di­tion Map. He made it inter­est­ing off the bat with a turn two Lumi­narch Ascen­sion. I tried throw­ing burn spells and hasty guys at him to keep the Ascen­sion down, but he had answers rang­ing from Flash­freeze on Gob­lin Ruin­blaster to Dou­ble Neg­a­tive on Blood­braid Elf and Har­row, sac­ri­fic­ing my only for­est. After Spread­ing Seas turned my lone Valakut into an Island, he got his fourth Ascen­sion counter, and the Angels fin­ished the job from there.

In game 3 on the play I kept two Moun­tain, For­est, Naya Panorama, Ora­cle of Mul Daya, Khalni Heart Expe­di­tion, and Gob­lin Ruin­blaster. He got the turn two Ascen­sion again and put another Spread­ing Seas on a Valakut, but I played a sec­ond one and Blood­braid Elf cas­caded into Nat­u­ral­ize for the Spread­ing Seas. He rebounded with another Spread­ing Seas on a Valakut. Khalni Heart Expe­di­tion induced a Flash­freeze so I could put through Gob­lin Ruin­blaster to destroy his lone non­ba­sic, a Sejiri Refuge. He tried to buy him­self a turn with a Wall of Denial, but a topdecked Ram­pant Growth with only one land up spelled the end for him.

2–1 win

Match 2 vs pvt­danser (Vampires)

I won the die roll and I kept my open­ing hand of Khalni Heart Expe­di­tion, Ter­ramor­phic Expanse, For­est, Moun­tain, Naya Panorama, Ora­cle of Mul Daya, and Blood­braid Elf. I ended up with eight lands in play on turn four and got an active Valakut going very early despite fac­ing Vam­pire Noc­tur­nus and two Blood­ghasts. Thank good­ness there was no Nighthawk involved.

On the draw game 2 I kept Ter­ramor­phic Expanse, Naya Panorama, two Moun­tain, Graz­ing Glade­hart, Light­ning Bolt, and Ora­cle of Mul Daya. Once again I was look­ing down the bar­rel of Noc­tur­nus and dou­ble Blood­ghast, but this time he got through with a Dis­fig­ure on my Glade­hart and a Nighthawk to keep him­self out of Valakut range.

Game three was marked by a play where I had set up to kill him the next turn with Valakut and a kicked Burst Light­ning. I had Ora­cle of Mul Daya in play, and went down to four life after an attack from Blood­ghast. With my oppo­nent at nine life, he attempted to play Ten­drils of Cor­rup­tion for seven on my Ora­cle, but I denied him the life gain by killing it off myself with Burst Light­ning. The win thus came two turns later, but a win is a win.

2–1 win

Match 3 vs shahi (Jund Ramp)

I won the die roll and kept four Moun­tain, Naya Panorama, Ora­cle of Mul Daya, and Bane­fire – a sketchy keep to say the least. I thought this was a mir­ror when he led with For­est, Moun­tain, Ram­pant Growth, but when he put a Swamp into play tapped, I knew I was up against some­thing very dif­fer­ent. I resolved an Ora­cle of Mul Daya, but it ate a Light­ning Bolt at the end of the turn. He then played Gar­ruk Wild­speaker and made a beast token, made a sec­ond beast token the fol­low­ing turn, and played Siege-Gang Com­man­der the turn after that. I spent my Bane­fires on a beast and Gar­ruk, but he fol­lowed up with another Com­man­der and swung in for the win.

On the play in game 2 I mul­li­ganed into two Moun­tain, Valakut, Blood­braid Elf, and Har­row. He had no plays until a turn four Gar­ruk, but I responded with Ora­cle of Mul Daya and Graz­ing Glade­hart to hold off the rush, gain­ing 14 life in one turn at one point with Valakut, Ter­ramor­phic Expanse, turn­ing the Expanse into a Moun­tain, Ram­pant Growth, and Khalni Heart Expe­di­tion. He con­ceded before I could drop a Bog­a­r­dan Hel­lkite.

Game 3 was no con­test. He couldn’t get much offense going after my triple-Valakut open­ing hand, along with Blood­braid Elf, Ora­cle, and Light­ning Bolts on any­thing relevant.

2–1 win

These results con­firm my sus­pi­cion – this deck has stay­ing power. The one thing that put me off was, what good is all this mana if you have noth­ing to do with it? That’s why Derek Huang put these unused resources to very good use on his way to a Top 8 berth at the TCG­Player 5K in Atlanta last weekend:

I like the inclu­sion of Lava­ball Trap. It may seem a lit­tle costly, but con­sider all it does: blow up two lands and sweep the board at instant speed. Does that war­rant eight (or hope­fully five) mana now? Espe­cially in the mir­ror match, which is becom­ing pop­u­lar online due to its fairly inex­pen­sive cost. The most expen­sive card in the deck I’ve had to pick up thus far has been Blood­braid Elf at about three tick­ets each. Even Hel­lkites go for 2.5.

When mak­ing revi­sions to this deck for World­wake’s release, I took into account these fac­tors, both from play­ing my ver­sion and look­ing at Derek’s per­for­mance in Atlanta:

• X spells are a Blood­braid Elf’s worst nightmare.
• Too many ramp spells can be bad in the late game when you’ve weeded out most of your lands.
• Pyro­clasm will not get the job as a sweeper against most aggro decks.
• Spot removal (Light­ning Bolt and Magma Spray) should stay in the side­board unless the for­mat is dom­i­nated by aggro. Sure, the field might be 1-in-3 Jund right now, but two things inval­i­date that argu­ment: Things like Brood­mate Dragon and Putrid Leech can out­live a Light­ning Bolt, and you have slightly bet­ter odds of fac­ing a con­trol deck of some vari­a­tion (most likely Grixis or Red-White-Blue).
• With all that in mind, here’s the new list, post–World­wake.

So there you have it. Valakut Ramp, like Time Sieve, is a rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive choice and a blast to play. It’s a slight blip on the Stan­dard radar right now, but as it grows in pop­u­lar­ity it may set off some alarms. Have fun at your pre­re­lease – assum­ing it hasn’t been snowed out.

Until next time, there’s no easy way to say goodbye.

–Sam

Sam Fee­ley is a Timmy-Spike and PTQ semi-regular orig­i­nally from Con­cord, Mass­a­chu­setts. He enjoys Magic, sports, cook­ing, and writ­ing. He maintains two blogs, Samurai Entertainment on news, games, and nonsense; and Samurai Sports, about interior decorating. And by interior decorating he means sports.

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