deck:heliod-wives and my first grand prix - a guide

Challenges and Articles forum

Posted on April 8, 2014, 4:33 a.m. by deathtouch_roadrunner

(link is to a slightly updated list)

I recently competed my first large Magic Tournament. Unsure of what to expect and not wanting to stress, I played a deck/brew that I've been playing long enough to feel comfortable with, rather than stressing about the metagame or bringing a 'top deck.'

I'll skip the suspense: My record was 5-3-1, and I didn't make day two. Still, that was enough to make me 366th of 1430 overall, which doesn't seem bad for my first grand prix.

Playing 9 matches in one day was much more grueling than I ever imagined. and I made a lot of mistakes. But it wasn't my deck's fault (or at least I don't think it was): the draw was due to my own mistake repeated times four, while the two losses were caused in no small part by my own stupidity. With a more experienced pilot I suspect that the deck might have some legs.

So without further ado, presenting...

Heliod & Wives (as played at the GP)

Instants & Sorceries (8)

Plainswalkers (2)

Enchantments (23)

Artifacts (2)

Lands (25)

Sideboard

So at this point I'm guessing I'm guessing the immediate thought is "So what the heck is this deck?! Some kind of second rate weirdo control deck?" ... and that thought is actually close to the money (except for the 2nd rate part, hopefully). This is an enchantment-based pillow fort control deck.

The theoretical game plan is pretty simple: keep the board clear until you can lock your opponent out and start pecking down their life. The play can actually be much more intricate than it looks at first glance. It plays over 20 enchantments as means of negating mainboard removal and among other things can require you to keep track of devotion to white, blue, and blue and white, the number of enchantments you control, extort triggers, Ephara triggers, and more. Expect games to take longer than with a typical control list, which sounds crazy, but is pretty much hard to avoid.

I'll cover my GP games by deck category so that I can generalize about matchups, rather than in match order.

Heliod & Wives vs Monoblack Devotion (1-1)

Going into the GP I thought this was one of my best matchups because of black lacking any effective enchantment removal. And in fact, my second of two matches vs. the deck bore this out with a 2-0 win.

In game one a large portion of his deck consisted of dead cards since creature removal doesn't really hit and I got the win. I boarded out Elspeth, Sun's Champion for 2 Revoke Existence in the hopes that he'd keep Hero's Downfall in main (he killed an Elspeth with one during the match). (As you'll see later, this was a totally wrong sideboard decision.)

In the more interesting second game I got 2 Sphere of Safety in play after chaining to the rocks and detention sphering a couple Nightveil Specter and a Desecration Demon . I got out a Tablet of the Guilds and a Blind Obedience eventually peaking at 40 life between them and a Sphinx's Revelation .

At that point the game became a simple contest - he needed to play 3 merchants with 12+ devotion each, and I needed to hold his devotion to under 12 and keep any potential Whip of Erebos out of play until I could draw something to attack with. It turned out to be a pretty sad race - he couldn't maintain devotion above 8 despite repeatedly building Pack Rat armies between Supreme Verdict and Detention Sphere , while I eventually was able to swing, though he did finally play his merchants taking me down to 15 or 16 life. (Incidentally, at least one downfall did get pitched for a pack rat, so taking out Elspeth was probably fine.)

It was my first meeting with MBD that did not go well. A single word is sufficient to explain the reason: Mutavault . Game one, there were two mutavaults facing me by turn 3, with one attacking on turn 2. With no means to contain them early game, I was well within range of a Gray Merchant of Asphodel and lost. In game two my enchantments were facing 3 mutavaults by turn 5 and much the same thing happened.

As someone who's realized for a while that Mutavault can be pretty annoying versus a deck running mostly at sorcery speed, not making pithing needle the go-to sideboard vs mono-black was just plain not excusable. Utter sideboarding fail couldn't have guaranteed the win, but I really felt stupid when I thought about the next morning.

Overall, I still think the mono-black matchup is pretty advantageous.

Heliod & Wives vs Orzhov Black Devotion (2-0)

I think this may have been my best matchup of the day. The gist of these decks is that they are fairly similar to mono-black, but often lack Gray Merchant of Asphodel and pretty much try to win with Blood Baron of Vizkopa and/or Desecration Demon . It probably seems like a bad matchup for me because the Baron can't be hit with Detention Sphere or Chained to the Rocks , but the Heliod & Wives have got a few answers for him. More crucially, the deck doesn't ramp, doesn't have haste, doesn't magnify damage, and has no alternate win conditions. Consequently I had no trouble shutting down the whole deck with Sphere of Safety and winning quickly. (This situation produced one of the highlights of my day - an opponent who was so mad I was afraid they might flip the table or something.)

Another thing I was kind of surprised about is that none of these decks seemed to side Revoke Existence or just never hit it. (Both MBD and Orzhov Black Devotion do side in as many Duress as possible, but that's still only 8 cards that can interfere with things.) It should also be noted that I won one of these games despite missing triggers all over the place and doing stuff like accidentally attacking with one soldier token instead of four after having a judge watching and getting a bit flustered and rushed.

Heliod & Wives vs. Mono-red burn (0-1)

This was my biggest screwup of the day. I can't even say for sure how the matchup against this kind of deck is overall. In theory the ability to have 3 Tablet of the Guilds and 3 Blind Obedience should make it not impossible, but I never got to find out.

In my biggest mistake of the day (possibly because I was feeling rushed after having the previous match go to turns), I started game one with Sacred Foundry , Temple of Triumph , Plains , Detention Sphere , Supreme Verdict , Agoraphobia , and something else I've forgotten, saw that I had 3 lands, and said I'll keep before I could stop myself. Needless to say I lost before being able to play a spell.

Game two things were so-so, but then went bad. I'd top-decked a Tablet of the Guilds after containing a couple of his creatures, but drew into land instead of spells and wiped.

Heliod & Wives vs. Esper Controll (1-1)

This match is tough and I don't have enough experience with it to say much. First match with it game one went on forever and essentially came down to my Elspeths both getting killed or thoughtseized, and Esper eventually resolving one.

Most of my sideboard went in for game two, but we didn't even finish and I lost the match because of going to turns despite being in position to win game two in the long run. Game two also made utterly apparent that I really ought to at least sideboard Spear of Heliod just for matchups with Jace, Architect of Thought , as I would have won well before turns with Assemble the Legion tokens if they hadn't been repeatedly been given -1/0 by seemingly endless copies of Jace.

Second match against it I think the other pilot was running the creature removal heavy version since I know they eventually had 3 doom blades in hand. I can't say much more than that, because they scooped around turn 10. The most plausible thing is that they didn't have many counters main or side, but they may have also just been tired and not wanted to play a control deck 'mirror' match.

This matchup is also a good one for bringing up some weird plays.

I had Jace's ultimate go off against me in one match. Its pilot chose to play Ephara, God of the Polis out of all the cards in my deck knowing I had a Detention Sphere in hand and without having the devotion to make her a creature. I can see the viewpoint of making me waste removal on my own cards, but I don't get why Ephara, God of the Polis would be the go-to over Heliod, God of the Sun , Assemble the Legion , or Elspeth, Sun's Champion . I might be missing something, or maybe it was just optimism about being able to play their own Elspeth and draw cards.

Another weird play tangent: the card people most frequently removed with Thoughtseize and Duress over the course of the entire day was Agoraphobia . I think Orzhov-colored decks were worried about it landing on a Blood Baron, which kind of makes sense, but it also got thoughtseized by control decks, and even taken over Supreme Verdict . Yes, sometimes in long games I can recast it extorted once or twice a turn by the end, but I really question removing before turn two when there are good odds I'll have to verdict with it still attached and just let it go.

Heliod & Wives vs. RGu Monsters (1-0)

I've played a number of version of RGx at my LGS and they're always interesting matchups. It's the matchup that punishes the most for missing triggers. It's also a matchup that can go either way, the biggest determinant being Stormbreath Dragon , particularly if it comes in multiples and/or on turn 3 or 4. Xenagos, The Reveler is also quite powerful vs. our deck. All that said, it's also quite winnable. A well-timed verdict can derail the whole machine and most of their planeswalkers are completely irrelevant if you can make it to late game. Nothing is funnier than letting them ultimate Domri into multiples of Spheres of Safety.

The particular deck I played at the GP was a tad green heavy and splashed blue for Ral Zarek to get double Nykthos Activations and also played Kiora, the Crashing Wave . The first game went quite long and eventually the RGu deck scooped to try and play game two while there was still time. Game two actually ended pretty quickly. Not much of it stands out other than Polukranos, World Eater going monstrous for 14 (7 counters) just to kill 2 Heliod tokens before having it detention sphered.

Heliod & Wives vs. BGw (1-1)

This was my first time playing against a BGw deck (and possibly the first time I've played against a Deathrite Shaman in standard). I expected it to be more well situated than average against my Heliod & Wives because almost all the green/black removal can hit relevant things. And indeed it made the game more complicated. I won game one, though I don't remember the details. Game two, however, was ridiculous.

Whip of Erebos + Erebos, God of the Dead + Obzedat, Ghost Council made things very complicated for me. I ended up having around 28 soldier, a couple cleric tokens, and and active Heliod that wouldn't be able to attack for lethal because he had 6+ blockers with lifelink. Eventually I had to attack because of constant pings from Obzedat, took him to 5 because of lifelink, and then extorted Agoraphobia twice to take it to 3 before losing to one last Obzedat ping. If I'd hit a verdict at any point, it'd have been a likely game over (though obviously Golgari Charm was possible), but more particularly I neglected to extort 4 spells over the course of the game, which would have given me a probable win. In general, there were a lot of interactions that I wasn't familiar enough with not having played the deck previously.

There was no game three since game two ended about 20 seconds shy of time for round.

Missing deck?

The keen-eyed might have noticed I've only categorized 8 decks. That's because I don't remember what the 9th deck was.

Other misc.

This deck makes problems for a lot of decks common in standard right now, and doesn't have a completely unwinnable matchup against Esper. I haven't played against Blue Devotion with this particular flavor, but a previous version with Pacifism and no red stymied it. I expect that this version would also be okay so long as it hits a verdict.

However, it's particularly bad against most fringe decks with alternate win conditions. Against some mill decks the outcome is pretty random. Against Maze's End things are pretty much hopeless game one, and still not great game two.

Azorius on a budget

You can make a very similar deck on a a smaller budget - for a long time I didn't have the RW lands or Elspeth (got lucky and ended up opening 2) and ran nearly the same list with Pacifism instead of Chained to the Rocks and AEtherize instead of Elspeth, Sun's Champion in Azorius colors. There are other similar substitions like Akroan Horse for Assemble the Legion that can be made, but they do weaken the deck.

Journey Into Nyx

Heliod & kin seem likely to get much stronger there's a good chance Dictate of Kruphix could find a home already and most cards aren't even announced yet.

Feel free to comment or ask questions!

deck chart

Heliod + Wives Playtest

Standard deathtouch_roadrunner

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deathtouch_roadrunner says... #2

Heliod & Wives vs. BGw (1-1) should actually be (0-0-1). Oops.

April 8, 2014 4:34 a.m.

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