Midrange Control (70 - Infinite 4/5/2023)

Stats for the deck (and also my snapping habits!) at the time of posting: https://imgur.com/a/CiXkqf6
It looks like a lot of my games didn't count because I played Sunspot over Killmonger for a large part of my climb. Sorry if that makes it look suspect.

SKIP here if you just want deck information.

BOTS – I am aware that people are constantly skeptical of bots. I did play a small amount of bots – ask my buddies that watched me stream it – I mostly played human players. (I’m quite active in MSTZ Bootman’s discord server, say hi if you stop by!) I even started my discord stream by taking 8 cubes from a very human Shuri player. I have a collection level of 3,344 right now, so it’s high enough to not be playing 100% bots and lower pool players. I’m still not pool 3 complete. The majority of my opponents played Shuri, Thanos, Hitmonkey / Sera, and Galactus this season. I’ve hit infinite before, but the highest I ever got was 115 last season, so I'm not playing the high level bots either. Even if my opponents were somehow all bot players, the matchup flowcharts presented in my deck guide should help you play versus human players of those matchups. If you can consistently answer Shuri, Thanos, Hitmonkey/Sera, and Galactus, you should be able to hit infinite, since those decks are really common right now.

I’ll be posting some screenshots of my games versus human opponents later on in the article, so hopefully I’ll convince you that I wasn’t just farming a bunch of bots the whole time. If not, nothing will ever convince you, so feel free to insult this deck and pretend like it’s not usable to hit infinite with. 😊

As for those of you who are still interested…

START here for deck information.

I am pleased to present to you a Sandman midrange deck. This deck is not the most powerful around, but it is strong enough to take you to infinite. After all, I took it to infinite. You can too! As you may have noticed, this is a budget list. I know a lot of people in the community are upset about how inaccessible the best decks seem, so my goal this month was to make it to infinite with a list strong enough to contend with them without breaking the bank. I sincerely hope that it helps you climb to the rank you want.

This deck is designed to lull the opponent into a false sense of confidence and then shutting them down when it's too late to change their strategy. As a result, the bulk of my climb was a lot of 4 cube victories. This deck takes a slow and steady approach to climbing – don’t hesitate to retreat if you’re not sure that you can win. If you look at my snap stats (https://imgur.com/a/CiXkqf6) you will see that my opponents almost never succeeded with their snaps. The basic idea of the deck is to use Sandman to punish overconfident opponents and completely checkmate them. This way, you don’t lose cubes very often, and you get a consistent climb.

It's pretty counter heavy, and it can feel like sometimes you don't draw what you need, but keep in mind that you will see any one of these cards in your hand by turn 5 over 70% of the time. 

As usual, I’ll start with a breakdown of the cards, sorting them into groups to describe their role. Afterword, I’ll talk about specific playlines from common meta decks and how to counter them.

Card Breakdown

(Early Game) Lizard / Sentinel / Mister Fantastic – Lizard, Sentinel, and Mister Fantastic are raw stat dumps for the early game. With these cards, you usually take priority and set up for the all important turn 5 – where the match is typically decided. Fantastic has great synergy with Storm and Doom. I usually play Sentinel on turn 2, Fantastic on turn 3, and some combination of Lizard / Sentinel / Daredevil on turn 4. The goal is to have priority by turn 5, where you can use your control and meta counter cards to effectively end the game. I specifically chose not to play Sunspot because this deck should avoid wasting energy. I also value being able to play Killmonger. Otherwise, feel free to try out some other low cost cards, like Scorpion or Iceman. EDIT: I should mention that I tried to play Sunspot for a lot of my climb, and so the deck wound up not registering a bunch of games. I cut him after I was having a tough time climbing in the 90s.

(Control Elements) Daredevil / Storm / Sandman – Daredevil is so crucial to this deck’s success. Because this list doesn’t vomit power out, games are often decided by intelligent placement and obstruction. Being able to accurately place Sandman to guarantee a Doctor Doom win, countering powerful on-reveal abilities with Cosmo, sealing off a lane early with Aero, these are all just examples of how Daredevil lets you control the game. Storm should usually be played on turn 3, and since you are good at swarming the board it’s usually simple to win a Storm location. She’s not the focus of the deck, however; I would say her most important job is removing troublesome locations, like Dream Dimension or Cloning Vats. We do have a lot of synergy for her – Mister Fantastic, Doctor Doom provide power to a Storm lane and Aero drags enemy powerhouses away. This was enough for me to choose to use her instead of Scarlet Witch, but I would understand if you chose to use Witch. Finally, the star of the show, Sandman. Daredevil lets us totally own turn 5 with Sandman. Unlike Sandman Electro lists, we have more stable matchups because we can choose if we want Sandman or not. For example, if we see that the opponent has skipped turn 5 to play She-Hulk + Taskmaster we can slam Sandman down on turn 5 and completely ruin them. When used correctly, Sandman becomes a great way to checkmate people. Of the 3 cards here, Storm is the only card that can be replaced in my opinion. If you do, Scarlet Witch is quite good.

• Daredevil Example This was a match in the upper 90s. Because I saw the Doc Ock coming, I was able to play Sandman on the left and perfectly lock him out of the game. This is a great example of how Daredevil protects you from weird desperate shots.

(Meta Counter) Cosmo / Killmonger / Shang-Chi – All of these cards are terrible in some matchups and game warping in others. Cosmo should not be used against Shuri lists. (I don’t care how tempting it is to snipe Shuri, you lose if you’re wrong!) In fact, I practically never tempo him out unless I’ve got a hard read on some Infinity Stones or something. Instead, I love using him against Galactus and on turn 5, when Daredevil lets us shut down powerful bounce plays or other crazy on reveals. Shang-Chi annihilates Shuri (when used correctly / under the right circumstances) and other greedy power decks. He is awful against Sera and Bounce, however, and shouldn’t see much play in those matchups. Finally, Killmonger is absolutely amazing against most Thanos variants, Dracula Zoo, and is pretty good against Shuri too (sometimes the only way to beat Zero / Titania for priority is to play KM). I would say that he’s the most generically useful card here, since Sunspot is so popular (and yes, I am aware that people put Armor on Sunspot. However, not everyone is lucky enough to Armor Sunspot on time.). He’s also quite important to counteracting Bounce players that play around Sandman by dumping their cards early. I really don’t recommend replacing anyone here, but if you really want to be my guest. Since I know a lot of people are skeptical about Cosmo, here's a couple of examples.

• Cosmo Example Cosmo helps a lot versus Lockjaw. Notice how I didn’t snap, I tend to respect Lockjaw decks because they have so much variance.
• Cosmo Example This was an example of how I used Cosmo to deny them a bounce play. With Daredevil, I was able to see that Falcon would trigger on right. Because he had already filled middle,  America Chavez was a guaranteed win after Cosmo blocked Falcon.

(Finishers) Aero / Doctor Doom – These two cards are absurdly powerful under Sandman. They both finish off games quite well. Aero is a lot more multi-purpose than Doom. She intercepts Galactus players. Aero is quite powerful for fighting Shuri as well – thanks to Daredevil, we can easily see whether we should Sandman or Aero turn 5 to secure victory against Shuri. I should also note that sometimes simply having Aero as 8 points of power is also good enough, like this example. Doctor Doom is also just one of the best finishers in the game, and really rewards us for playing to threaten all 3 lanes. Many opponents have retreated from me simply from the implied threat of Doctor Doom.

• Aero Finish This was a game in the 80s. Sandman + Aero was more than enough to stop this would be surfer deck. Triskelion does make for some weird game states, but Daredevil + Sandman + Aero was still good enough.
• Doom Finish This was a game late in the 90s. Sandman + Doom makes it almost impossible for anyone to win.
• Aero Lane Block I blocked off X – Mansion on turn 5 so that he couldn’t play anything turn 6. He probably banked on me not having Doom; this is a big benefit to this deck, it’s super off-beat and off-meta so it can be hard to guess what it’s playing.

(Consistency) America Chavez – Obviously, the card itself is nothing special. 6 / 9 is hardly a good statline in the metagame we are in, although sometimes it’s enough. She is in here because of the mathematical advantage she provides us. Remember, it often takes hundreds of games to get to infinite. Her increasing your consistency by even 5 percent translates to many games being won because of her presence. Another very important advantage is that she helps us in deciding whether or not to stay or retreat on an opponent’s snap. Because we know that we can’t draw an out on turn 6, we save cubes by knowing immediately whether we should leave! Here are some mathematical calculations that demonstrate how America Chavez affects our deck:

1. Daredevil – Without America Chavez, our chances of drawing Daredevil before turn 5 is 58.33%. With America Chavez, it becomes 63.64%. It took me 279 games to hit infinite, so let’s say that it takes around 300 games with this deck to hit infinite from rank 70. Chavez increases the chance of drawing Daredevil by 5.31%, or 15.93 games. That’s almost 16 more games where we draw Daredevil. If you play to win 1-2 cubes, that’s anywhere from 16 to 32 more potential cubes at least. If you play to win 4 cubes (off of both players snapping), that adds a potential 64 cubes to your climb!
2. Sandman – Without America Chavez, our chances of drawing Sandman before turn 5 is 66.67%. With America Chavez, it becomes 72.72%. This means that Chavez increases our chances of drawing Sandman on time by 6.05%, or 18.15 games. Assuming we win 1 or 2 cubes with this, that’s anywhere from 18 to 36 cubes. If you play to win 4 cubes, that’s around 72 extra cubes! Pretty significant.
3. Sandman + Aero / Doom – This combo in particular is a big cube winner. We want both Sandman and either Aero or Doctor Doom by turn 5, so that we know whether to snap or not. I am a strong believer that turn 6 snapping is quite bad. Without America Chavez in our deck, our chances of drawing Sandman and at least one of either Aero or Doom is 59.394%. With America Chavez, our chances of drawing Sandman and at least one of either Aero or Doom is 67.879%! That means that America Chavez increases our chance of drawing our Snap combo by 8.485%, or 25.455 games. If you’re playing to win 4 cubes, that’s nearly 101 extra potential cubes! Seeing this stat is what made me choose to play Chavez.

America Chavez in your deck makes it more likely for you to draw your win condition. I hope that these percentages convinced you of America Chavez’s worth in this list. Obviously my calculations assume that you win the games in which you draw these cards, but like… duh. These cards are what let you win in the first place. If you want to try this math yourself, check out this website: MTGNexus - Tools & Resources — Draw Odds Calculator. I typically change the deck size to 12 (11 if I’m using Chavez). 

Matchups:

With the basic card functionality described, I will now get into specific playlines for matchups that are meta-relevant right now. I know some of you will be rubbed the wrong way for not putting certain decks here, but I just can’t afford to write about every possible deck. I tried to hit the heavy hitters that are common, but I could have also simply forgotten about a certain deck. Thank you for your patience.

Shuri: In my opinion, Shuri is still the most powerful and consistent archetype in the game right now. This deck was actually formed around countering Shuri’s bread and butter play patterns. Fortunately, it is also one of the most linear decks in the entire game, so I can almost verbatim dictate how to beat it.

1. Try to have priority before turn 5. Put down Daredevil at some point. Use Killmonger to kill unprotected Sunspot / Zero / Titania. If all 3 are on the board, Killmonger can be a crazy 12 power point swing! Obviously keep track of Armor and Cosmo. If you don’t have priority by turn 5, at least keep everything within a Doctor Doom’s distance from winning.
2. On turn 4, Shuri will be played. You will be tempted to Cosmo and try to snipe her. Don’t do it, unless you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN it will work, because if you don’t block her you will lose the game 100%. Also, pay attention to your hand. Shuri players will often snap before putting her down. If you don’t have at least one of Sandman, Aero, and Shang you should probably retreat. Otherwise, we proceed with the flowchart.
3. Turn 5. Daredevil lets us know for certain, but there are certain tells that make it easier to know what they will do even without DD.
   • If on turn 5, the Shuri player does nothing, they are most certainly going to play She-Hulk + Taskmaster on turn 6. Sandman will rip this to pieces. Put him down, and try to play to all 3 lanes. Doom is icing on the cake here, but with clever placement you can win without him. If you lack priority, Doom will be quite important here.
   • If on turn 5, the Shuri player puts down any large card, make sure to Aero the card to an empty location. If you played to all 3 lanes effectively, you should have priority going into turn 6. Shang that card to the moon. Alternatively, you can Sandman turn 5 and Aero the last card they play to the buffed card. Alternatively, if you used Storm to change the lanes, you can Cosmo the only lane they want to put Taskmaster in.
     • Example 1 This is an example of the standard Shuri killer. Thanks to Elysium everything happened a turn early. I guessed on turn 4 that he would put down a Red Skull onto Cosmo so I pulled him with Aero and Shang’d him. If it had been an armor instead I actually would have let it be and Sandman’d instead so that I could Aero into the Armor lane.
     • Example 2 This is an example of Sandman > Aero, made that call because of Daredevil letting me know exactly what was happening. While I prefer Shang, this is also pretty safe. Only a random Arnim Zola would beat this Aero play, but Aero’s nerf makes Arnim Zola a lot less common in current Shuri lists.

I hope this covers most bread and butter Shuri scenarios. The following decks won’t be as detailed because they aren’t as painfully linear as Shuri, and because they are fairly straightforward.

Galactus: Galactus is annoying, but we fare better than most because we run Storm, Cosmo, AND Aero to prevent Galactus, while Shang lets us fight even if Galactus resolves. Thanks to America Chavez, we have the highest chances of drawing these answers by the turn we need them.

1. Galactus Example 1, we see Aero do her job. Most Galactus players aren’t expecting Aero anymore because of her nerf. Thing is, her nerf doesn't matter for the Galactus matchup, since both Wave and Electro force the Galactus to play only 1 card. Only Psylocke could matter, but that's a pretty rare choice in the metagame right now.
2. Galactus Example 2, Daredevil making it impossible for Galactus to surprise me is clutch. Even though I didn’t get to see that he was playing Galactus, the combination of Daredevil and Electro was enough to make me guess that it was Galactus. Also note that if I didn’t have Aero, I could have used Cosmo to block the right lane and prevent him from resolving. (Oh, and shoutouts to this guy for quitting out so fast that Galactus didn’t even flip haha).

Thanos Lockjaw: I saw a lot of Thanos Lockjaw. It’s difficult to control this deck because of how much variance there is, but you’re typically going to Killmonger their stones and slow them down with as much as possible. They’re just as vulnerable to Sandman if you stay ahead.

1. Aero Finish This was the very game that got me to infinite. A lot of people are counting Aero out since she got nerfed, and she can generate you lots of nasty last turn wins.

HitMonkey /Sera: So this is pretty straightforward. If you see that they are going to bounce on T5, put down Cosmo or Sandman and snap. They almost always leave. If they leave a bunch of stuff on the board and don’t play too much turn 6, you could also save Killmonger and blow them away. I found that thanks to Sandman it was simple to farm this deck for cubes. Pretty much every version of Sera hates Sandman, it’s one of the reasons I decided to make this deck Sandman focused since she’s really popular in the metagame right now. Since this deck is everywhere at the moment, I have lots of examples to share.

1. Sandman Doom Example, notice how Sandman perfectly prevents him from playing all of the 1 drops he picked up with Falcon. Most bounce players will leave here, but perhaps this particular player thought I was bluffing since I wasn’t ahead in every lane.
2. Sandman Concede Example, this is what typically happens if you stick Sandman onto the board versus a Sera player. Even if they are ahead, the uncomfortable 50 / 50 of Doom and Aero makes them hesitant to contest.
3. Sandman Bounce Concede Example, I wanted to give this guy a shoutout for surrendering so fast that the cards on his side of the board didn’t even flip up. I hope by this point I’ve given enough examples to show how Sandman deals with bounce shenanigans.
4. Sera Hawk Example, because of Sandman, it was obvious that the opponent would play Darkhawk into Sinister London, ensuring that Shang-Chi would win the game. I didn’t snap because I was worried he would giga brain me somehow, but I probably should have looking back.

Sandman Ramp: This was the most difficult deck for me to face. It often came down to using Aero to pull away Odin from their Doom. It's not super common, but it was the hardest matchup for me. I don’t have great examples for this deck.

Doomwave / Deathwave: Both of these decks get hosed by Sandman t5. If you play to stay ahead you should pretty much always win with a Sandman > Doom finisher. I didn’t run into either deck very often on my climb, so I don’t have good examples.

Final Remarks:

Thank you for reading to this point. I know it was long, but I tried to be as detailed as possible. I know it's discouraging to lose a lot, but I hope that I proved to you that even off meta decks can still get the job done. If any of the links are broken or if you have any questions, leave a comment! I'll try to answer as many questions as I can. I sincerely believe that if you're skilled enough, you can hit infinite even with a deck like this. Happy climbing!