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Article - Exploring Manabases - Part 2

Started by Maqi, 13-08-2012, 11:03:20 AM

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Maqi

Exploring Manabases - Part 2: 5c-Aggro and Bant

The first part of my article showed the most important lands that are required to build stable multicolor manabases.

In this second part of my article series I want to talk about the 5c-Aggro deck and the Bant deck. Both are popular choices and can often be seen in tournaments. They have proven to have tier 1 status, and because of that I think it is worthwhile to present them to new members of our community. Since the topic of this article is "manabases", I will of course be focusing on that aspect when I discuss the decks and mainly explain the subtleties that go into building their respective manabases.

Mana Archetypes
To illustrate the thought process which leads to the decisions made and to save me and yourself some time of sifting through huge highlander lists, I'm going to depict the two decks in a "condensed" form which I will call "concept form" from here on. This - rather than a full list of cards would do - will lead to a better understanding of the idea behind the deck by highlighting their archetypical spells.

5c-Aggro

Concept Form:

Wild Nacatl  
Loam Lion  
Grim Lavamancer  
Kird Ape  
Noble Hierarch  
Birds of Paradise  
Llanowar Elves  
Mother of Runes  
Qasali Pridemage  
Tarmogoyf  
Dark Confidant  
Tidehollow Sculler  
Knight of the Reliquary  
Geist of Saint Traft  
Doran, the Siege Tower  
Aven Mindcensor  
Elspeth, Knight Errant  
Garruk Relentless  
Ajani Vengeant  
Tangle Wire  
Lightning Bolt  
Chain Lightning  
Swords to Plowshares  
Path to Exile  
Lightning Helix  
Demonic Tutor  
Tainted Pact  
Fire/Ice  
Vindicate  
Maelstrom Pulse  
Oblivion Ring  
Blightning  

This is a 5c-Aggro deck in a nutshell. What does this tell us regarding the conception of a solid and strong manabase for this archetype?

  • The deck wants access to its various colors of mana early on. This means that untapped lands should be valued more highly than those which have a chance to enter the battlefield tapped during the early turns.
  • Our one- and two-drops are green (most of the time), white (secondary color) or red (tertiary color). In essence, 5c-Aggro decks are Naya-decks that splash black and blue. Therefore lands that produce green mana and enter the battlefield untapped should be our premium type of land, followed by white and red ones.
  • Cards like Wild Nacatl, Kird Ape and Matca Rioters want specific basic land types in play. We must keep this in mind and try to maximize the number or the availability of these types of lands.
  • The deck is "color hungry" in general. The number of lands that produce only colorless mana should be kept low
  • As this deck is trying to win with creatures, it is vulnerable to board sweepers. One efficient way to fight those are manlands. Therefore we want to include some of these.

Let's start with our "backbone":

10x Fetchland
10x Dual land

Temple Garden (primary and secondary color)
Stomping Ground (primary and tertiary color)
Overgrown Tomb (primary and splash color 1)
Breeding Pool (primary and splash color 2)
Sacred Foundry (secondary and tertiary color)

From here on we want to focus on green untapped lands and on lands that have sweet applications for the deck:

Razorverge Thicket (primary and secondary color)
Copperline Gorge (primary and tertiary color)
Forest
Plains (your only! outs to a resolved Blood Moon)
City of Brass (obvious auto-include)
Treetop Village
Stirring Wildwood
Gaea's Cradle
(sometimes very bad, sometimes extremely broken, it's application as a foil to The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale pushes it over the edge for me)
Horizon Canopy
Wasteland

This adds up to 35 lands. Note that several lands could not be included because the mana requirements of 5c-Aggro are so stiff. Notably missing are Tectonic Edge (another out against the dreaded Maze of Ith), Volrath's Stronghold and Karakas.

Let's move on to the other mana archetype:

Bant

Concept form:
Noble Hierarch
Birds of Paradise  
Ponder
Mother of Runes
Qasali Pridemage
Stoneforge Mystic  
Mana Drain
Preordain
Daze
Eladamri's Call
Fauna Shaman  
Sylvan Library
Knight of the Reliquary  
Vendilion Clique
Geist of Saint Traft
Eternal Witness
Bant Charm
Rhox War Monk  
Kitchen Finks
Oblivion Ring
Cryptic Command
Glen Elendra Archmage  
Jace, the Mindsculptor
Elspeth, Knight Errant
Primeval Titan
Bribery
Treachery
Baneslayer Angel  
Natural Order
Force of Will
Back to Basics
Parallax Wave

What do we learn from this:

  • First of all, the manacurve usually tops out a bit higher than in a 5c-Aggro deck. So more lands are necessary in order to reliably hit your 4th and 5th land drops in time.
  • As an extension to this first point however, you have to note that Bant can make use of blue Cantrip spells like Preordain, Ponder and Brainstorm which help to secure your land drops. So you don't need to add too many more lands to your list.
  • Some of the very best spells of the Bant shard require double mana of one kind (, or ). Consequently, Filter lands and Reflecting Pool are good choices for a Bant manabase.
  • Many Bant lists want to make use of the sheer power that is offered by Back to Basics. To do that, one must maximize the number of basic lands. Usually about 6 to 8 basics should be included because of that.
  • The Titan case: With the Natural Order-Primeval Titan-combo in the deck, it is advised to run a decent amount of utility lands that maximize the effect of an entering Titan.

A typical Bant mana base could look like this:

9 Fetches (Bloodstained Mire of course excluded)
Savannah
Tropical Island
Tundra
Temple Garden
Breeding Pool
Hallowed Fountain
Razorverge Thicket
Yavimaya Coast
Horizon Canopy
3x Island
1x Plains
3x Forest
Celestial Colonnade
Stirring Wildwood
Treetop Village
Mystic Gate
Flooded Grove
Reflecting Pool
Karakas
Wasteland
Tectonic Edge
Tower of the Magistrate
or Yavimaya Hollow (Maybe both if you want to go up to 36 lands)

There is one thing, that both of the above deck types have in common: They have a "green heart". The reasons for this are the following:

1. Green has some very good spells to offer, especially creatures. Therefore it is suited as a base color for decks that want to win by going into the "red zone" (which means: by attacking).
2. Green fixes mana very well, which makes it attractive as a base color for multicolored decks. Cards like Noble Hierarch, Birds of Paradise, Sakura-Tribe Elder or Lotus Cobra are examples of this.

I say this, because I want to make one first big point here: Green is a dominant color in the Highlander format because it makes playing multicolor easier.

Furthermore, as can be seen by regarding the Bant list, Blue is a dominant color in the Highlander format because it makes playing multicolor easier. And that is because of Blue's access to good cantrips and draw spells which help to fix your manabase.


So far, so good. In the third part of "Exploring Manabases" I will be discussing other methods that can be applied to enhance the mana capabilities of Highlander decks: Ramp spells and Artifact mana. Therefore I will present another two different deck archetypes wich represent these two methods of mana management - Jund-Scapeshift and Esper-Control.

See you then! And please feel free to discuss this article!

Maqi


Kristian

Nitpicking, Sacred ground >> Sacred Foundry?

Otherwise well written.
There can be only one!

Maqi