Greetings everyone,
Board Wipe Death, also know as BWD is the deck that a lot of people still struggle with no matter how familiar or known it becomes. Some people call it the "Pay to Win" deck for the expensive cards it contains, others call it "Bored Wipe Death" because of how slow and boring it makes the tempo of the game even though you know you will probably lose eventually.
But what we all know that despite it being very famous, a lot of people still struggle with even though it is a little bit rarer nowadays to encounter BWD decks since not a huge percentage of players have them, but still whenever it is encountered, a lot of people will think it is an automatic loss.
So after encountering this deck several times with my Ramp Magic deck, I noticed that it can work pretty well with as I won 3/4 of my games against BWD with this deck, so in this post I will be going through how exactly to play against BWD and why does this deck work very well against it.
But first of all, let's look exactly at what is BWD and how is it played.
What is BWD?
Board Wipe Death is a very late game deck, where your opponent basically will try to Ramp, keep sleeping your creatures, and make you overdraw cards and also heal if he needs to, keep wiping your board at 7,8 mana and then get to late game and finish off the game with the late game finisher cards that they usually have. Now people usually hate this because of how much answers does this deck have to everything, and they can easily get to late game where they shine. A BWD deck can look something like this:
This is a 1.6 ETH BWD deck, as you can see it contains a lot of expensive cards and that is why a lot of people name this as a Pay to Win deck. Now let's take a look at the deck I was using that works well against BWD and go deeper to why it does that:
My deck
This is the usual Ramp Magic deck that I usually use, except I added 2 new cards to it for various reasons, not only for BWD but it turns out they also did me a lot of good against it as we will see later on. Now let's first see what is the problem with BWD in general and how to deal with each of them:
Problems with BWD and solution with this deck!
Sleep
Perma Sleep is one of the most annoying problems faced with BWD. They can sleep cycle your creatures for a lot of turns in a way that some aggro and almost all mid range decks just does not have enough to finish them off on fast enough. These cards are used to keep sleep cycling your creatures:
These cards can usually sleep cycle your creatures for at least 4 to 5 rounds which is usually enough for BWD to get to the point where it starts taking control.
Solution to Sleep
Now sleep is not a big of a problem in our case. Since our deck is also a late game deck, we also want to get to late game as healthy as possible so it actually suits us. In addition, our deck does not have a lot of early game creature threats, so basically the sleep spells for BWD does not give them much of a value.
Milling
The second problem with BWD is usually milling their opponent which is basically making them overdraw and mill some cards so that they run out of cards as quickly as possible. One of the strategies of BWD also is to make their opponent draw a lot of cards and make them die from mana only since they have nothing to play. These are the cards used to make the opponent overdraw:
Solution for Milling
There are 2 ways to work through with this deck. First is when you feel lime you might overdraw, you going to have to play 1 or 2 creatures at a time on board, even if you might feel that they are not very useful at that point. Careful not to fill your board though and give them more value for Sulfuric Rain.
The second solution is to use spells that are not very useful against this deck on nothing. I did not make this deck to specifically counter BWD but it happened to be, so there are spells that are not very good against this deck so it is usually better off throwing them at nothing so you do not Mill and lose the key cards for late game that we are going to mention late on. Cards you can get rid of not to overdraw are these for example:
This way your opponent might also overdraw or be forced to get rid of some spells for nothing since he also will not get much value from them since you do not use a lot of creatures!
Wiping Spells
The third problem will be the wiping spells that BWD use to easily clear the board and finish off any annoying creatures they might face and they are 2 famous cards:
Now in our case, we will be the ones answering all the opponent threats as you will see later on, so the good strategy for that is not to play your late game threats until the opponent is forced to use these spells, or bait out 1 or 2 of them and leave space to 2 late game creatures of yours. Since you will have answers to all his late game threats, he will be under the pressure not you.
Late game finishers
Now after all this Ramping, sleeping and getting to late game, of course the last step of BWD is to use these late game finishing creatures to finish you off. The late game finishers for BWD are usually these creatures:
These two monsters are usually impossible to be dealt with and are usually used to finish off the game and not give your opponent a chance. Not in our case though, let us see why.
Solution for Late Game
Now to dealt with these annoying creatures there are 2 keycards that we will be using, these are your only hope to win the game so losing them is like losing the game indirectly and that is why Milling is a big problem here and you have to be very careful of it, and these cards are:
These 2 spells will render their late game beast useless, you can use god power to pop ward first and then use it on them, this way they will not have anything to finish you off with and thus winning you the game! The only extra problem here might be a Jason but you can deal with his legendaries with the late game creatures you have depending on what he gets. Plus you should also have an extra Metamorphosis in case he got another 9 mana legendary.
As for Demogorgons, you can simply use Epiphany or Astric Implosion on them since they will also not get much value from their sleep.
Neferu's Khopesh
The last problem is this annoying relic, since it cam keep bringing back theHippacria since it has 0 base strength so it will always be lowest strength creature, therefore it might force you to deal with it 2 or 3 times which is basically impossible. I was not aware of what this relic does before but it makes a lot of sense to use it here and it is so devastating.
Solution for Relic
Now as you would expect, this is the only solution for the relic. You will have to perfectly time playing it to get rid of it since Iron-tooth Goblin is an excellent relic removal card. I did not add it specifically for BWD but because I felt like the deck is lacking relic removals, but it happened to be so handy here. He might be able to bring back Hippacria one time with this, which is where the extra Metamorphosis might go.
Final Thoughts
Now the key to perfecting this matchup is of course, practice. You might not be able to start winning against BWD from the very start, but eventually after you experience it several times it should go well. Also since I was already very familiar with my deck I was able to adjust faster thus knowing what cards to use, waste and when to do so. So always remember practice makes perfect. And if you are a Ramp Magic player yourself hope you do not struggle anymore against BWD if you do so!
Now there are not a lot of decks that can counter BWD at the moment, but there might be even more in the future with the new expansion being release, and new keywords getting into the game which I am excited to see how they effect the game! The meta might totally shift just like how Dralamar was a very good answer for BWD decks and pretty much all deck XD
Not going to lie I felt pretty good dealing with BWD decks since I also do not like them much so thought I would share that with all of you. So that was it for this one, hope it was helpful in any way, especially if you hated BWD like I do; stay tuned for more decks as I still did not decide what will I play this week but I will make sure to share with you when I do so see you soon!
Mad Love, Peace out <3
Awasome and very detailed guide. This is a deck that I want and also think I will try.
Could you maybe share the deck code? I think it would safe time for many people.
Else I dont have anything to say, it is really well made.
Happy Eastern :)
GU_1_4_CEhCEhBHMCANCANCCyCEkCEkCEnCEnIBnIBrIBrCEqCEqIBoIBoCBmCEvIBsIBsCAMIBpIBpHBSCBlIBSIBSCBjCBj
Thanks for your comment mate here is the deck code hope you like it!
On paper your counters work but I don't think Control Magic is favored against BWD. Gudecks had BWD winning 60% of the time in Mythic against Control Magic.
Maybe there are versions of BWD that have an extra something that can win them the game idk. The ones I encountered were pretty basic with only 2 win cons and the relic.