Getting Fishy in Standard

Hello everybody!

So in standard I am currently rocking 2 decks that both start off with:

4x Seachrome Coast
4x Glacial Fortress
3x Moorland Haunt
4x Mana Leak

And these 2 decks play similarly, but at the same time are VERY different. Don't be fooled by the manabase, both decks are basically mono-colored: Humans and Illusions.

I played Humans to a 3-0 drop at last week's FNM (yes you read that right, I couldn't stay for the last 2 rounds as I had to drive my girlfriend home), and I was very pleased with the deck. I played against UB Control, MB Infect, I think another UB Control, and then I had to leave. It seems my local meta is split between B/x decks and Red Deck, and I happened to be paired against the one that Mirran Crusader auto-wins against.

But that deck was SO last week! The hot new rage for this week's FNM is MU Illusions:

4x Delver of Secrets
4x Lord of the Unreal
4x Phantasmal Bear
4x Phantasmal Image
4x Snapcaster Mage

4x Gitaxian Probe
4x Mana Leak
4x Ponder
4x Vapor Snag
3x Dismemer

10x Island
4x Glacial Fortress
4x Seachrome Coast
3x Moorland Haunt

Sideboard:
2x Frost Breath
3x Steel Sabatage
4x Aether Adept
2x Flashfreeze
1x Negate
2x Gut Shot

Before I comment on the deck, look at it again, but look specifically at the curve. Yeah, curving out at 2 feels awesome. I have 6 cards in the sideboard that cost 3 mana, but aside from that I have been keeping 1 landers on the play and felt unstoppable all game. When Innistrad came out last month, I was talking up Delver of Secrets as hard as I could, and look now: it's winning in Legacy in the RUG tempo deck, and now in Standard here.

What is Tempo?

This is the question I have been asking myself for the past couple weeks, as I feel it's one of the areas I don't actually know much about. After doing a beat of research I have found that Tempo is simply getting ahead of your opponent. A poster child for Tempo would be Aether Adept (or Man-O'-War for you older folk). Basically, when you are playing the tempo game you are trying to advance your own board while preventing your opponent from doing so. The problem with playing the tempo game is that you usually fall behind on card advantage fast. Imagine this series of turns:

T1: Island, Delver of Secrets
T2: Transform, Island, Phantasmal Image the Insectile Aberration
T3: Island, Vapor Snag their Creature, Mana Leak

From here, we have a pair of 3/2s with the opponent at 10 life (1 damage from Vapor Snag), but we had to 2-for-1 ourself to deal with the opponent's board and leave them behind. We only have 2 or 3 cards in hand, depending if we were on the play or draw, and your opponent could have 4-6 in hand, clearly from the card advantage point of view were the underdog.

One of the cool things about having such a low curve though is that we only run 21 lands and thus have a ton of business. In testing occasionally I would have bashed my opponent down to 5 and then we came to a board stalland I was drawing a spell every turn while he was occasionally hitting lands, and I was able to out resource him, and eventually hit a critical mass of board altering action and alpha for exactly lethal.

I have found that this deck is not too easy to play by any stretch. Because you have nothing to go big and steal free wins with, you have to make every card do double duty. If I can get the cards for the deck (Snapcaster and Image being the toughest) then I will probably play this at this week's FNM.

Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack