Meme or Dream? I Have a Brilliant Idea! I'mma Build My Deck BACKWARDS!
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Meme or Dream?, the series where we take lists that Wizards published on Magic.gg—stating that they got at least six wins in a row playing best-of-three at Platinum rank or better on Magic Arena—and put them to the test to see if they are just as janky as they look, making them a meme, or if there's some special spice hidden behind the janky exterior, making them a meme! Today, we have one of the wildest Meme or Dream? decks ever. Take a look at the list, and then I'll explain why I find it so intriguing...
What first caught my eye as I looked through the decklist on magic.gg was Fog Bank. The meme about current Standard is that blocking is dead, thanks to Monstrous Rage. And Fog Bank is good for exactly one thing: blocking.
Not only is our deck today playing four copies of Fog Bank, but if you look at the list, you'll also see that it's really an Abzan deck that's splashing blue just for Fog Bank. It's literally the only blue card in our entire deck! The deck is essentially Super Friends, with 11 planeswalkers. As far as I can tell, whoever built the deck decided they needed a blocker to protect their planeswalkers, and Fog Bank's ability to prevent all combat damage it takes made it the perfect choice, so much so that they added a fourth color to the deck just for the Wall.
After I stopped laughing about the absurdity of splashing for Fog Bank, I looked closer at the deck and realized something far deeper was going on. The deck has no sideboard, which isn't especially surprising for a Meme or Dream? deck. But the deck is also playing 75 cards, which is the same number as a normal list with a full sideboard. At first, I thought Wizards had made a mistake while posting the list and mixed the sideboard in with the main deck. Some cards, like The Filigree Sylex, Authority of the Consuls, and friends, are pretty common sideboard options. But this theory quickly went out the window once I realized that the deck has 31 lands, which is roughly the right number to play in a 75-card deck, based on various Yorion, Sky Nomad decks.
Then, it struck me. I might be looking at something revolutionary: a deck-building choice that is either the greatest thing I'd ever seen or downright foolish. As far as I can tell, we're looking at a backwards deck! It seems to me that Platinum-Mythic Rank Player had a unique plan: instead of playing a 60-card main deck and a 15-card sideboard and then trading cards in and out during sideboarding, what if you played 75 cards in your main deck and then simply removed whatever cards are bad in the matchup during sideboarding to get down to 60 cards for games two and three? Is the idea silly? Probably. Insane? Maybe. But once I realized what was actually going on and how there was some small chance that Platty actually came up with an entirely new way to build Magic decks, I knew we had to give it a try!
Wrap-Up
So, did the plan work? I think the answer is a solid sort-of. On one hand, our record with the deck was 3-7, giving us a 30% win rate and making the deck a clear meme. The deck is just way too slow for how fast current Standard is, and unfortunately, Fog Bank was just as bad as I feared. We played against Mono-Red, where you would think Fog Bank's blocking power would be most useful. But our opponent just trampled over it with Monstrous Rage, and we died anyway. So overall, the deck wasn't that competitive. (Although I was super impressed with Goldvein Hydra—why doesn't anyone play that card?)
As far as the backwards sideboard plan, it did technically work. We were able to go to sideboarding and take out six lands (to go down to 25) and our nine worst non-land cards, leaving us with a normal 60-card deck in games two and three, although I'm not sure there's really a benefit of playing 75 cards in game one. While the deck is oddly redundant, with a bunch of wraths and expensive planeswalkers, the extra 15 cards did add some inconsistency by making it harder to find our ramp early.
The other problem with the backwards sideboard plan is that we didn't have traditional sideboard effects. For example, I really wanted to have a counterspell against the Simic deck we played against, but that wasn't actually an option since we don't have any counterspells in our 75-card main deck and our sideboard is empty. This made me wonder a bit if the problem was the specific cards in the deck rather than the backwards theory itself. Even if that were true, it wouldn't solve the consistency issues.
So, should you build your decks backwards by putting everything in your main deck and then sideboarding out your worst cards during sideboarding? I think the answer is no in general, although I can't help but shake the feeling that this actually would be very useful for some specific decks, although I'm not sure what decks these would be yet. If you have some ideas, let me know in the comments because I'm still intrigued by the idea of a backwards-sideboarding deck actually working. Oh yeah, and don't splash for Fog Bank, at least until after Monstrous Rage is banned in a couple of months. Even though Fog Bank is a great blocker, blocking just isn't worth it in the current meta.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
