RUG is not a control deck. I had a tough time winning with the strategy until I realized what my deck is and what it is capable of. I used to be very concerned with attempting to control my opponent’s board, using preordain to dig for answers or permission. This was a mistake. Standard RUG is a ‘go big’ style deck that looks like a total pile if it attempts to play by the rules and go toe to toe with most other strategies. It shines when you stop trying to go toe to toe and start trying to break the rules.
A good example of my misunderstanding of the deck is illustrated by my experiments with cutting Explore from the deck. I thought that adding more disruption and control elements while cutting a ‘do nothing’ card would end up being brilliant. It was not. Explore and Lotus Cobra are the two cards that make up the heart of this machine. The notion is, obviously, to accelerate out threats and simply keep game ending threats coming and coming. I don’t know how I missed this. But when I finally got it Valakut stopped being the difficult match-up that I felt it was.
Suddenly with Mana Leak mostly boarded out and only one Lotus Cobra cut as a nod to Pyroclasm I was doing messed up things. Instead of trying to grab a hold of the control role (which is EXACTLY what my Valakut opponent wants me to do) I grab for the beatdown role. Turn three Precursor Golem… got the bolt? That question just plays into the synergies present in my deck. What I mean here is this, if I’ve played a turn two Lotus Cobra, a ‘must kill’ threat, and untapped with it in play turn three it is HIGHLY unlikely that my opponent has a bolt in hand. So, throwing the Precursor Golem out there is not much of a problem and unless they rip that bolt or had a Slagstorm I will untap with eleven power of creatures in play. So, along this line of play my opponent will have taken thirteen points of damage by the end of my turn three and Valakuts game isn’t really even on until turn four. So even if they do manage to get a Primeval Titan out on turn four i’m still very much in business. Anyway, I think I have managed to describe the idea I was chasing. It may be obvious to many, but the simple notion is that RUG wants to be the beatdown, not the control in most scenarios, but especially when it comes to Valakut.
