I sat down with our Day 1 undefeateds, Lucas Esper Berthoud, Pablo Ricardo Cortez and Walter Perez to get some insight into their deckbuild. First I asked about how they came to the decision to split red. Paulo Cortez was quick to emphasize that that decision was the key to the entire build.
"We started out with the Black-Red deck, and we tried splitting the blue to make a blue-white heroic deck, but it just wasn't working out. We tried all kinds of things, but the more we looked at the Black-Red, we realized it had cards in it that it didn't need."
His teammate Berthoud explained further.
"The two decks want very different things. Black-Red doesn't need all the burn because it has black removal to rely on. Also, it doesn't have the cards to make good use of Arena Athlete and Akroan Line Breaker. With the white cards you get a dedicated heroic deck, with the benefit that all the enchantments you want to play also trigger Forgeborn Oreads."
I also asked about the way they built their green-blue deck. It had so many tools available, I wanted to know the reasons behind their choices.
"The high-end cards we played are so good, that if the game goes long we don't have anything to worry about. So all we had to do was make sure the deck could survive to that point, which meant playing every two-drop we could get our hands on. The deck wants to put on early pressure, force the opponent to respond to it, and then dominate the endgame."
Here's their exact lists. How do they compare to your take on things?
Lucas Esper Berthoud - Black-Red Aggro
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Paulo Ricardo Cortez - White-Red Aggro
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Walter Perez - Blue-Green
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