First Look: An Initial Analysis of Return To Ravnica

Good morning everyone. Apologies for missing Tuesday's post - there were some life interventions that caused me to temporarily have very little time and even less awareness of that time. I should be back on schedule now - and none too soon, because Return to Ravnica's spoiler season has started with a bang!

And by a bang, I mean that it's absolutely insane. Literally off the wall bonkers. We don't have a majority of the mythics spoiled yet, and I'm already thrilled for the amount of product that I'll be getting. Without further ado, let's jump right into things:

The Mechanics

Izzet - Overload

The Izzet get their traditional mad-scientist on and get an interesting mechanic in Overload. While I'm a little disappointed by design's choice to make the overloads all-upside and always more expensive, there's still a solid amount of value in the cards we have seen. I think it fits the theme very well, even without the potential to have your spell blow up in your own face. This mechanic has a ton of room to grow, and I could see it evolving nicely for 'Sinker' into a real powerhouse in standard.

It's interesting to see how the whole ideal of one-sided board wipes has started to come into it's fullest in the last few years. They've been getting pushed a lot harder since Lavalanche and Contagion Engine were the best options for us. Now, we've got a pretty-well locked down cost-to-effect ratio for the radiate effect. It'll be interesting to see how the existence of spells like bonfire and this effect the way people play - and build their decks.

Selesnya - Populate

Go ahead, cast bonfire. I dare you.

Obviously, as a tokens player, I'm thrilled that this card exists. With the opportunity to advance my board state while casting non-token spells, Tokens is going to seriously be a major force to be reckoned with in the upcoming metagame. I'm currently favoring Junk (BWG) colors due to Selesnyan influence, but I'm also crossing my fingers for an awesome enabler in Teysa, come Gatecrash.

As for Populate itself, it doesn't appear to have a whole lot of depth to it. This is a case of 'exactly what you get on the tin', which isn't bad - it means they don't need to work especially hard to mine the mechanic for all it's worth, while simultaneously keeping the complexity down. This is a good thing, especially in a block like Return to Ravnica, where we'll be getting a minimum of 10 new mechanics in just the first two sets. Locking down the complexity of the common cards is a great thing.

Azorius - Detain

Now here's a mechanic that I love. First off, it hearkens back to an older card that I love - Arrest, so they've already got awesome nostalgia points from me. Second off, the word itself fits perfectly with the flavor of the guild. Azorious permits everything - eventually. Detain captures that flavor perfectly and encourages blue-white to extend creatures to cause the detaining. This should lead to a more interactive style of gameplay that Blue/White is at it's most balanced in.

Also, props to Wizards for not going full-hog on this one and making the effect indefinite. Here's hoping that it doesn't accidentally spawn a major tempo deck again. I think that the majority of players in Standard are quite sick of a one-drop threat, and then nothing but removal and denial for the rest of the game. This mechanic is worrying in what it could do, but design-wise, it does exactly what you'd want to.

Rakdos - Unleash

On first glimpse, Unleash would seem to be a pretty lackluster mechanic. Your creatures can be extra-powerful if they give up their ability to block. Seems fairly straightforward, except that we've had word from Mark Rosewater that this was the mechanic that was the most problematic from a balance-standpoint. This certainly has a reasonable amount that you can do with it - "This gains XX if it has a counter on it" comes to mind immediately, and I'm sure there's plenty else you could do. (Counters as a cost for a powerful, one shot ability perhaps?)

While this seems simple on the surface, and not exactly the most Rakdos thing in the world, I'm willing to hold my breath on it and see where it goes. This set has been awesome enough thusfar that I'm willing to see where Wizards goes with this and trust them until I see the full spoiler. I encourage you guys to do the same.


Golgari - Scavenge

Hasty 3/3 for three with upside? I'll take it!

Back on the topic of abilities that tie into the guild flavorfully, we've got another one out of the park here. Scavenge does everything that the Golgari have been about since the dawn of time - using the graveyard to eke out every advantage in the book. As opposed to Dredge, this seems to be less likely to spawn a Legacy archetype, but that doesn't mean that we can't see hyper-efficient creatures from it. Overall, it seems like a solid ability that should see a fair amount of play in Standard - if only because Dreg Mangler is an extraordinarily efficient creature with a relevant creature type.

I can't see a whole lot of extra design room with this, unfortunately. Unless Wizards is willing to go the "if this card is exiled from a graveyard..." route, it looks pretty one dimensional - either a way to give an aggro deck a little bit of extra staying power, or else a way for midrange decks to keep up the powerful card advantage machine that they run off of.

Some Other Notables
It wouldn't do to write this article without mentioning some of the other all-stars that have been spoiled in the last few weeks. Notably, we have both planeswalkers, and a slew of removal spells that could shake up even legacy.

Glad to see you're over the Emo phase.

On the Blue front, we have a new Jace - complete with Fact or Fiction (ish). Personally, I think that he's a lot better than people are giving him credit for, and I'm actually pretty excited to see him in decks. He's a huge stopgap measure, capable of holding off an awful lot of attackers and still survive the process. For a four mana walker, he starts big and only gets bigger if you need him to, and with a minus ability that is just as good as drawing a card, it's hard to go wrong. His ultimate leaves something to be desired, but in the control mirror, it might just be the answer that you need to win the game.

Oh look, she makes Phage Triplets!

The Golgari have a walker as well in Vraska the Unseen. With only a day since she was spoiled, she's already pre-selling at $40. Some of my friends have bought sets already, speculating that Jund and BUG are going to be the new-era of control. Personally, I'm not so sure that she's THAT good, but she's certainly going to see quite a bit of play.

Her -3 is awesome, being a pseudo-vindicate. Already, we're doing alright on our rate. For one more mana, we get a walker attached to it that has a defensive ability and an easy win condition if we can get her to ultimate. Now, admittedly, the bar for a five mana walker is pretty steep. Elspeth Triel doesn't quite make the bar, but Gideon clearly does. Taimyo is good, but Jace 3.0 is pretty niche. Vraska is certainly on the positive side of that line, but she does have one glaring weakness:

She has the potential to sit there and do nothing for a while.

IF you're behind on the board (say you didn't manage to cast that T4 mutilate against an aggressive deck.) and you cast Vraska. You either -3, destroy their biggest guy, and then lose Vraska in a 5-mana 1 for 1, or you plus her, they attack you, and you're one step closer to death. Your five mana walker has done nothing that you couldn't do better with Hysterical Blindness. I've drafted basic lands over Hysterical Blindness, for comparison. Her plus ability has the potential to do less than a fourteenth pick. That makes me a little leery.

As far as support spells go, there's a couple of very awesome removal spells that deserve a mention. One is easily worth play in Legacy, while the other gets an award for being the first removal spell that specifically targets planeswalkers. Say hello to some new toys, everyone!

Take that counterbalance!

Sorcery Speed, but unconditional. Fair deal.

 So, these spells appear to be fairly notable for their effects, but their position as set-rares is an interesting departure from recent trends. When was the last time we had a staple removal spell at rare? I could be wrong with this, but my initial research wants to say Maelstrom Pulse. That seems like an exceptionally good precedent. I'd expect these cards to be heavily played throughout their time in Standard, with Abrupt Decay making a nice splash in the legacy scene due to being un-Force of Will-able.

At the moment, we're less than a third spoiled with the set, and Return to Ravnica already seems like one of the highest-power (and highest-value) sets to hit shelves in ages. Wizards has pulled out all the stops on this one because they know that fans have been clamoring to get back to Ravnica for years. They know how important it is that they deliver on this set - and they're coming through.

Here's hoping that the next two thirds of the set are just as impressive.

Until Next Time,

-Andrew

Color War: A Multiplayer Magic Format

 Hello Everyone!  This is ‘Marshall’ guest writing for Andrew today.  No, this isn’t a hostile take over.  Yes, he’s fine...well mostly.  As many of you postulated by this point Andrew and I work together on several fronts, I help design different decks and we bounce ideas off each other.  Unlike Andrew, I don’t really participate in competitive Magic, I’m more of a ‘Kitchen Table’ kind of player.  I like tournament decks as much as any Spike, but that’s for their linear and powerful synergies.  For me deck building comes grew to a new height when I developed “Color War”, I specifically choose the word ‘develop’ because I am not the origin of the format, but instead have invested significant amount of time and resources into it.  Andrew asked me a few weeks ago to do a guest article pertaining to my favorite format: Color War.

Shall we get started?

I’ve been playing this wonderful little game for the better part of 20 years.   Through these years I’ve seen ups and downs of this game, from Fallen Empires, Homelands, and Champions of Kamigawa, to Invasion, Mirrodin, and Tempest (my personal vote for best all time set).  Through this time I’ve played in many different formats but one hit home more than others, because it answered this one question every magic player has thought of at least once (if not you’re about to):

“Why do the colors have specific allies and enemies?”

I’m not talking about why design has set it up that way, or the theory of why great Richard Garfield deemed it so on the 5th day of creation.  I’m talking about the simple truth we’ve all learned about this game:

Blue mages hate Red and Green mages.

In fairness, everyone hates Blue mages

This is something I learned early on, and I learned why through Color War.  An uncle of mine introduced the 5-way multiplayer format to me and it explained to me these color allegiances much like my body learned it needed oxygen to survive.  This my friends (and Andrew’s readers) is what I’m here to give you!  I’ll be explaining this in two parts: First, I’m going to discuss the basics and rules of the format, and then the decks that I've developed.

1. Color War is a 5 player format, wherein each deck is a single color.  (This is similar to Star, for those familiar with that format, this was just introduced to me prior to Star and I’m stubbornly keeping the name as Color War) [Editor's Note: Marshall is more stubborn than the Goat Tokens he loves so much.]  All 5 players sit in the order of the colors on the back of the Magic card (Go look! we’ll wait).  From here things begin to get complicated.
2. Turn order:  Now that everyone is seated in the correct order.  You should be seated next to your two allies and across from your two enemies.  Watch for dirty looks – they are EVIL. [Editor's Note: For example, Black is allied with Red and Blue, but enemies with Green and White. Think Alara shards, or the Core-Set-Dual-Lands to keep track of allies.] Unlike normal multiplayer matches, the actual turn order does not go in a circle, it follows a star pattern in clockwise order.  This is designed  to prevent two allies from having back to back turns (at least at the start of the game).  My suggestion is to call out the next color when you’re done your turn. Try “Black, you're up!” instead of “Pass” when you first start playing this format.  Turn order remains the same when a player dies, just skip over the eliminated position.
3. You only win when your two enemy colors are dead.  This may explain some of the targeting restrictions above.  Because not only can you win when your two enemy colors are dead, the same applies to your two allies.  Yes destroying their planeswalker or fogging when they go in for a kill, is something you can do as it will slow them down to allow YOU to win.  To answer your inevitable next question, Yes you can tie.  In fact it’s almost as common as normal  solo wins.
4. Targeting:  I encourage some additional targeting restrictions to help balance the format and encourage the format to play as intended. Your mileage may vary on these, but I think they're a good baseline.
• a. You can only attack your enemies
• b. You can only do direct damage to enemy players (EXCEPTION: you can target allies to kill allied planeswalkers).
• c. You can target allied permanents.

Multiplayer Magic...right? Call a Judge?

That’s it, the rest is normal fun multiplayer!

Right?

Andrew, I think I’m missing something here, because something tells me that left to their own devices people would make independent decks packed with color specific hate.

[Editor's Note: Muffled cries]

What’s that? You think so too? Hold on, let me take off the duct tape, I can’t understand what you’re telling me…..

The hard truth is in ever group of magic players there is at least one that takes the time and energy to find a card or two that gives them a significant edge over their friends. I'm sure you all know that guy – you may even BE that guy. Hey, this could be a good thing if it pushes everyone to continuously improve their decks and can provide a natural way to keep the group fresh with ideas.  Unfortunately, this idealism doesn’t really hold true though when it comes to formats with distinct limitations like Color War (and one could argue it doesn’t hold true in normal free for all either, but that’s an argument for a latter day).  The balance of Color War breaks down when cards like Mirran Crusader, Karma, Magnetic Mountain, Conversion, and even something as innocuous as Blue Elemental Blast (props to those that didn’t have to look up those cards.)  It becomes harder to balance when you load up a Black deck with so much removal that it wipes Green and White off the map.  So what is a multiplayer group to do?

The Color War was originally introduced to me with 5 premade 40-card decks, none were incredibly powerful, but they all contained some surprisingly strong iconic cards: Chain lighting and Vesuvan Doppleganger come to mind.  They were built with the idea that any of the 5 could win on any given day.  This was primarily controlled by the fact they were all built by the same person (my uncle.)  After I moved away, and I found a new group of fellow Magic junkies, I decided I wanted to introduce the format to them.  This was around the time of Invasion, and so I knew that I needed to build 5 decks of approximately the same strength.  Since then I’ve been continually tweaking and adding new cards to the lists., keeping them recognizable but still fresh. This is a deceivingly hard thing to do, you want to maintain several things:



1) Each deck should keep the flavor of the color.  When you play as the Green deck you should feel like a big old tree loving hippy with a really REALLY big stick to hit people with.  This also means that even though removal exists in White and Red Black should still be king of the hill with creature removal – it's needed to help balance out White and Green.

2) Each deck should have cards that hearken back to the history of the color, Shivan Dragon isn’t the best dragon in the deck (that probably goes to Thundermaw Hellkite – a recent addition) but every Red mage sees Shivan Dragon and smiles. Feel free to adjust this based on your group. If all of you started within the last two years, 'the History of Magic' probably means very different for you than it does for my group, who still remember a time when the Stack didn't exist.

3) In the same vein I choose to update decks with new cards too, it keeps the circle of friends interested and enjoying the format long past when it would otherwise have started to get stale.

4) I maintain that each deck needs to have cards that surprise the player “You have Rofellos in here??”  Due to the nature of the format resolving these cards or untapping with them isn’t necessarily guaranteed, but I feel that it’s important for players to look at their opening hands and be excited. It's hard to look at some of the best cards ever printed and not be thrilled to play a game with them  - in this way, I try to maintain a feel much like Cube Drafting has.

5) Above ALL ELSE balance trumps card selection.  I have been asked why certain cycles aren’t in the decks - and I'll admit some are due to availability (I’m looking at you, Primeval Titan), but 9 times out of 10 it’s because one member of the cycle is completely unbalancing in the format.  In very few circumstances should one card completely win the game for a color, and at times sacrificing a partial or complete cycle is the cost necessary for the health of the format.



A bit more on balance: Over the years I’ve noticed how difficult it is to keep these decks tuned properly.  When testing a deck individually it can seem the exact level of power you were shooting for, but it’s not until you see various global effects hit the field does the balance start to fall apart.  Probably the occurrence that highlights this so nicely is when Red had Mana Flare (a great ramp spell to help it get to it’s dragons and X spells), and Blue had Palinchron (which by itself is a great fat blue creature that has a way to save itself, very Blue).  Yeah for those that figured out the interaction of  those two cards... whoops?  Since then, I’ve had the benefit of being able to test more frequently with all 5 decks on the field. Below you’ll find the current incarnations of decks – recently updated to include some choice cards from Magic 2013.



When looking at them, keep in mind that these decks are not built to be tournament worthy, but instead to produce fun and exciting games that are difficult to predict.  Even now I keep notes to every game for future edits and balance questions, for example:

1) Gideon might be too good.
2) Switch Cockatrice with another spider
3) Add Vampire Nighthawk
4) Boost Red a little
5) Hapless Researcher

Combined with those is a running list of wins (and allied victories).  The thought is to collect sufficient data to warrant changes.  “Boost Red a little” for instance seems pretty straightforward, except that the process of boosting Red’s strength leads to White performing poorly next time, meriting improvements to white,  perhaps too far, which can cause Black to stumble. Yeah it’s not always that complicated and the occasional gift from a new set helps fill in the hole.



If you decide do go down this rabbit hole, learn from where I am, look at these decks, and use them.  I understand that several of the cards are not easily obtainable, and none are strictly required to build a color war deck. That said,  I hope when looking at them you’ll see the spirit of each and understand why:

Blue mages hate Red and Green mages.



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Hello everyone – Andrew here for an afterword. First, a great debt to Marshall for helping me with this post. Color War is one of the best formats I've ever played, and I think that it's a great way for a group of friends to get together and play multiplayer when their normal decks might not necessarily be on the same part of the power curve.

I'd also like to thank those of you who helped me out with the white commons in my post on Tuesday. While I didn't get quite the volume of specific feedback as I'd hoped, there was still a ton of great advice – so thanks again. I hope some of you are interested in the project, and will be hoping to play at GP Philadelphia in a couple months.

This weekend, I won't likely be playing much Magic, since I'll be moving to a new place with my lovely girlfriend. Nevertheless, this weekend also marks the PAX Magic party, and that's bound to be a blast for all of us F5'ing on our computers, waiting for spoilers. Personally, I can't wait. All three of the spoiled mechanics so far look to be good, innovative takes on the guilds, and I can't wait to see the rest of them. There's a good chance that I'll take a look at the mechanics on Tuesday's post, and talk about what I see each of them doing in the set.

Or hey, maybe I'll get an entirely different idea by morning – who knows! Check back in on Tuesday to see!

As Always, Sling Some Spells,
Andrew

GP Boston-Worcester Report and a Request to the Community

This last weekend, I attended Grand Prix Boston-Worcester. I went in with high hopes for making day two, on the strength of my previous experience with Sealed in M13 and the pair of byes that I had. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be – I ended up dropping at 2-2 to draft with my remaining time that day – which featured Twisted Drafts (Scourge, Scourge, Guildpact is an *interesting* format, to say the least)

That’s not to say that it wasn’t a great time. I ended up doing quite a bit of trading and selling, finishing with my Legacy deck nearly complete thanks to the Judge Conference.  I’m only five cards away from complete now – two Dark Confidant, a Wasteland, and two Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Counting the two Urborg that I and a friend have coming with From the Vaults, that leaves a paltry three cards before I can actually play in legacy events. Nothing that a couple of FNM wins can’t fix. Now I’ve just got to be able to actually *attend* some. Luckily, my Fridays are looking more open than they had previously, so I might be able to give some reports on those in the future.

So, today was supposed to involve a report of that tournament, but “I got crushed” doesn’t make an especially good story. Instead, I want to talk to you all about a project that I’m working on at the moment. My previous article on the Shard Wars decks was received well, but this one has a little bit more in it for you – I’m actually looking for a core group of people who want to give imput and help with something.

I’m designing a custom set.

The set is tentatively called Illyria, and is going to be a set designed around Legendary creatures, heavy color commitments, and strong warfare themes. I’ve got ideas for a full block of cards, but at the moment, I’m working primarily on the common slots.

The goal is to have a fully functional draft set printed up and ready for public use by October 26-28, where I’ll be unveiling the set at GP Philadelphia. While Cube drafting at GP’s is fairly common, I don’t know if anyone has ever done a complete set with storyline, plot, and printed cards – with the intent to draft  publically.

But I need feedback, so I’m going to try something out.

Below is a link to the White Commons that I’ve planned for the first set so far. Please take a look at them, and feel free to leave comments on the file by right-clicking. I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts so far.

[Illyria – White Common Design Skeleton]

Some words on the design – white in this set is supposed to be a two-faced force. On the one hand is the Inquisition – an aggressive purifying force devoted to the ideal of purging the plane of all non-white mana. They utilize Glory and Chroma as their primary mechanics, and feature heavy color commitments. On the other hand is a group of heretics under the command of Terash Lightblade, who take a more moderate cooperative stance with some (read: Green and Blue) colors. His forces are more defensive, and also focus more on Leadership and Glory, but are more easily splashable.

This is very much an experiment to see what kind of feedback I can gather from the community. If it goes well, then we can look at doing additional passes for later groups of the cards.

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Sorry that this post was a little on the anemic side of things. I’d honestly planned on playing more than two rounds this past weekend and reporting back. This Thursday will make up for it with a guest post by Marshall – detailing the color war decks and his view on the format that he’s lovingly crafted over the years.

Sealed and Draft and GP Boston-Worcester

This upcoming weekend features my second Grand Prix. After a heartbreaking draw to miss Day 2 of Atlanta, I’m crossing my fingers for slightly better results this time around. Last time, I had the disadvantage of playing a format I’ve never played competitively before – Legacy, and still managed to post a decent record. My sealed play is much better, comparatively, though I’ll be going into Boston with one less bye than I did in Atlanta. We’ll see how that ends up playing out.

I’ve been thinking recently about the differences between Draft play and Sealed, because I think that there are a lot of misconceptions about the two formats and how similar they are. Notably, there are a ton of people who seem to think that the same decks are viable in both – while this can occasionally be true, the vast majority of the time, the rules of the format tend to build very different decks.

Sealed

When playing Sealed, a player opens six packs and must assemble a deck from those packs alone. Because there is no interaction with the actual opening process – like there is in draft – the cards you receive are fairly random and it’s difficult to get significant synergy in the format, or occasionally even reasonable removal spells. The result is significantly more emphasis placed on bombs and other stall-breaking cards.

Draft

For those who don’t know, when playing Draft, you open three packs, taking a card out of each pack, and then passing them round-robin around the table. As a result, you have control over the cards that you’re going to be playing with to some degree. You also have a much smaller pool of cards to work with than you would in sealed. This has two major effects – the first is making the format much more dependent on player skill, and the second is that the decks are generally more focused and honed than their sealed counterparts.

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How to: Sealed

When you open a sealed pool, it can be a little overwhelming to look at a pile of unsorted cards and have no idea what to do with them. What do you do when you have a pile with no discernible goal? At least during draft, you can craft your strategy based on what you’re seeing – but with sealed, you’re given a heap. Luckily, there are some simple ways to start to narrow things down.

1)  Play to your bombs: Sealed is naturally a format that doesn’t have a pleathora of removal. One or two spells is often the most that people will be running with – and oftentimes, even those will be conditional. In a format where Turn to Slag could be considered a premium spell, it’s actually very difficult to deal with a large number of threats. Keep this in mind when designing your deck. If people aren’t going to have reliable removal spells, then playing hard-to-stop creatures can give you a powerful advantage. Creatures with Hexproof are very difficult to stop, and high-toughness will often be able to blank Red removal altogether. A single unanswered card often can end games in Sealed – so try to pick colors where you have that single card.

2) Play the colors you have the strongest plan in: This one is a little more tricky. While playing bombs like Krenko, Mob Boss can often be the obvious play, there are other strategies that abuse the nature of the set much more effectively. In M13, Exalted is one of the major keywords, and it synergizes extremely well with itself. The more of it you have, the stronger each individual piece becomes. Look at your cards, and determine what kind of plan you could accomplish with this.

3) Count your playables: One of the easiest methods of building a deck is to go through your pool, find all the cards you would never want to play, and set them aside. Then make a pile of each color out of the remaining cards. It should be fairly obvious which colors you just can’t support playing. Figure out your land base and go from here.

4) BREAK: For those who don’t know it, BREAK stands for “Bombs, Removal, Evasive Creatures, Abilities, and Krud.” (It’s not a…perfect…acronym…)  Originally designed for Drafts to explain a rough order of desirable card types, the BREAK model works well for Sealed as well – to tell you what kind of cards you should be aiming to grab. While you obviously don’t have the luxury of picking cards in sealed, you should still prioritize cards in relatively that order.

Then again, sometimes, you just need a Fire Elemental to beat someone’s face in.

5) SIDEBOARD:  Seriously, this is something that drives me crazy every time I see someone not doing it. Between games, you are permitted to sideboard your deck to become better acclimated to combating theirs. Players who do this WILL have an advantage if they do it right. After you’re done building your deck, set aside some cards from the rest that you could see being useful in various matchups. Building an aggressive blue deck? Maybe adding that fog bank to your sideboard could give you the edge against an opposing bomb, or a hyper aggressive deck where you need extra early blockers. Perhaps it’s not the best option for your initial deck to have enchantment removal, but after seeing an Oblivion Ring, Pacifism and a Mark of the Vampire, an Erase might not seem like such a bad choice for you. Just because you cut a card from your main deck doesn’t mean it couldn’t earn a spot there in the right situation.

While often maligned for the random nature of opening packs and playing from that pool, Sealed Deck can be a fun and rewarding experience that highlights a solid cross-section of a set. With solid play and good deck building skills, almost any set of six packs can make a reasonable deck to battle with.

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Are you going to GP Boston-Worcester this weekend? I am too! If you’d like to meet up, chat for a bit, or grab something to eat – look me up. Name is Andrew Rula, and I’ll likely be on the Q-S match sheet. Too shy to do that? Send me a message with your name and I’ll see what I can do about looking you up.  It should be a good time!

If you live in the Boston-Worcester area and you’re not going – seriously, reconsider. GP’s are an incredible experience, not to be missed!

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on quite a few projects. For those of you who know me, you know that every November, I’m very involved in a process known as NaNoWriMo – or National Novel Writing Month. This year, I’ll be taking a leading role in the Philadelphia community for this, and it’s eating up a decent amount of my time. I’m also planning on moving next weekend, in addition to working on the Shard War decks and another major project that will (ideally) be publically unveiled at GP Philly in October. Stay tuned here for some other information about that in the coming weeks.

Next week, we’re going to have my GP Boston tournament report, and on Thursday, a guest post by Marshall, detailing a custom multiplayer format that’s a ton of fun to play with friends.

Defending Against Cheating

This past weekend featured the first World Magic Cup, and the presentation was great. If you missed the coverage, I’d wholeheartedly encourage you to head over to the Wizards twitch.tv page (www.twitch.tv/magicprotour) and check out a couple of the matches. It’s a great tournament, with strong coverage segments, and the usual great casting team from Wizards.

That said, since the tournament ended, there have been some allegations thrown around. Some people, analyzing the video, think that a member of the Puerto Rican team cheated in the finals (and who knows how many other matches off-camera).  The video in question can be found here: Was Jorge Iraman Trying To Stack His Deck at the World Magic Cup?

Now, I’m positive that the DCI is investigating this at the moment – that is, after all, their job. So I’m not here to pass judgment or blame or even say if I think he actually did cheat or not. But one thing that this event does highlight is that players need to be careful. At competitive events with cash (or plane flights, or trophies) on the line, people will cheat, and we need to be prepared for it.

Today, we’re going to go into a couple of different ways that someone can try to cheat you, and some easy remedies for it. Note that I’m specifically talking about ‘things that will get him disqualified if a judge is watching.” This is not meant to address someone trying to Jedi-Mind-Trick you into using Esper Charm on yourself. Slimy play is an entirely different thing from cheating.

The methods that a cheater will use vary greatly. Go watch a few magicians (the ‘real’ kind, not the ones playing MtG – the guys who make stuff disappear, or manage to pull a royal flush out of a falling deck of cards [Source: Reddit, thanks /u/SlimGrim]) and you’ll see that their acts are likely very different. Same goes with MtG cheaters – the ways that they can cheat are as numerous as the stars, and there’s absolutely no way that you can be trained to identify and stop all of them.

A quick aside here on what you should do if you notice someone cheating. Immediately raise your hand and call for a judge. Ask to speak to him away from your opponent. The judge is trained in being able to investigate these situations. He will make inquiries into the situation and, if unsure, discuss things with the head judge (if the event is large enough to merit multiple judges). They will come to a conclusion and everyone can abide by it – one way or another. It is not your job to execute a punishment. It is not your job to determine guilt. Your job, as a player, is merely to bring the matter to the attention of a judge if you believe that something suspicious is going on.

Good, now that we’ve covered that, the first major ways that people are going to cheat happen before the game even starts. Our cheater sits down at the end of the last round and carefully stacks his deck to be perfectly spell-spell-land-spell-spell-land all the way through. This devious player is now guaranteed two or three lands in his opening hand, with a third land on the way quickly if he doesn’t have it. Of course, we all know that he has to shuffle before he actually presents, so he makes a great show of cutting the deck a few times in front of you before passing it over. You cut the deck and begin play. He doesn’t mulligan, because his deck is still stacked.

However did that happen?

This is called mana weaving, and it’s one of the oldest cheats in the book. By mana weaving, you make your spell-land density uniform across your deck. This is not randomized. It is important to know the difference between a completely randomized set and something that it uniformly distributed. In this case, they’ll even look similar to the naked eye. The couple of cuts that have gone into the deck will make minor inconsistencies in the perfect weave, but the vast majority of the deck will still be prearranged.

Similar things can happen with a variety of other cheats. Subtly moving a card to the bottom of the deck, then manipulating your shuffle to bring it to the top is not only possible, but extremely easy. Doing the same so that the card ends up in the middle of the deck, slightly off-kilter to encourage you to cut directly to the card, is also possible. It’s even possible to do this while nominally rifle shuffling the deck. There are dozens of variations on these cheats, but they all boil down to the same thing – deck stacking.

How can we stop things like this? Simple, actually. The number one defense against deck stacking, mana weaving, and any kind of nonsense is twofold, and actually required by the rules of Competitive REL tournaments.

He must present his deck to you to shuffle. You, as a cheating-conscious player, should pick up his deck and shuffle it. I don’t mean cut it. I mean shuffle. You are well within your rights to randomize the deck however you find sufficient as long as you don’t damage the cards. (I’d like to take an aside here and remind you to be gentle with your opponent’s deck. We’d like to think that our cards are important to us, and could even be worth a fair bit of cash. No reason to cause damage here. Just be a little gentle with them.)

Cheaters practice at what they do. There’s a good chance that you won’t notice it if they shuffle in a slightly shady manner. However, but shuffling the deck thoroughly – every time, even after he just searches the bottom five cards for a land off his T1 Evolving Wilds – will prevent any kind of weaving or searching or ordering of his deck.

Realize that – you can completely blunt an angle of cheating by playing fairly! That’s awesome.

Some other methods of cheating are a little more insidious and require us to actually pay attention to things. Periodically keep track of the opponent’s number of cards in hand – ask him if need be, and write the information down on your life pad. If it seems like he has more than he should, look back and make sure. If he has drawn an extra card at some point, call a judge – that’s a game loss for a good reason. For all you know, he could’ve subtly moved a Batterskull back to his hand after you Cliqued it away.

There’s one more kind of cheating that I’ve heard about – but admittedly never experienced myself. It’s most endemic at small store FNM’s, especially involving players that don’t necessarily have the best grasp of the rules, or if there’s no official judge present. It usually involves one player bullying the others into accepting ‘his ruling’. Often this player is just lying because he thinks he can get away with it and win the tournament as a result, but sometimes it’s accidental. As always, your best weapon is simply knowledge – know the game you are playing. I’m not saying that you need to be Judge-level-knowledgeable (though that certainly helps) but if you have a smart phone, there are plenty of apps that let you look up a rule if there’s a dispute. (I’d like to publically call out MTGJudge from the iTunes App Store on this one, because it is a *spectacular* resource that also provides a card lookup.) Don’t be afraid to bring the question to an outside party. Remember – your opponent has a vested interest in you losing! Don’t trust that his ruling is correct.

In conclusion, know your rules, and be willing to look them up if you’re uncertain. Shuffle your opponent’s deck. Make sure that you are clear in your declarations and actions during the game, and you’ll find that a healthy amount of cheating just isn’t possible against you anymore.

Personally, that’s worth the extra thirty seconds of shuffling to me. I bet the Taiwanese national team feels the same way, and are extremely happy that they didn’t just leave that Etched Champion on the top.

Also, congratulations to the Taiwanese team. They played some great magic throughout the weekend and provided quite a bit of quality entertainment for me and my friends. I’m already looking forward to the next segment of the year – complete with 2 GP’s, a couple of Star City Games events, and countless other opportunities for me personally– not to mention judging and some other projects I’m working on.

It’s a good time for Magic, cheaters or not. Let’s make the best of it.

Till Next Time,
Andrew

[Editor's Note: It has been brought to my attention that Mike Flores has written a few articles on this topic as well. Please find links to them if you'd like some additional reading:
The Miser's Guide To Savage Cheats
How To Cheat

Thanks to /u/0rangeSoda on Reddit for the tip! Enjoy!]

Looking Forward: Preparing for the Rotation

I don’t know if you feel the same way that I do, but with no big Standard tournaments on the horizon and spoils from Ravnica, From the Vault: Realms, Commander’s Arsenal, and the newly announced Holiday Box popping up everywhere, I’m having some trouble focusing on Standard. I’ll still play in FNM’s and such, but my weekends are looking insanely busy for the next few weeks, so even my opportunities to play noncompetitively are curtailed a bit.

With that in mind, I’ve begun looking at the future. As of the time of this writing, we have three spoils. The first, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, has been spoiled in Duel Decks: Izzet vs Golgari. (A product that plans to release with six (!) preview cards.) He provides a number of interesting synergies with the existing Zombie strategies, and the probable reprint of shock-lands would make the mana base not terrible. Also on the Golgari front, we have a large undercosted beater called Deadbridge Goliath which showcases their mechanic – scavenge.

Scavenge 4{G}{G} – (4{G}{G}, Exile this card from your graveyard: Put X +1/+1 counters on target creature, where X is this card's power. Scavenge only as a Sorcery.)

There’s some interesting design space here involving */* creatures, or something like that, but overall, the mechanic doesn’t excite me all too much.

Populate eh? I could dig it.

 In addition, we have a preview of the Silesnya mechanic – Populate – which would appear to dovetail very nicely with token strategies. I know people who have already been discussing new-era Tokens, assuming we can get another in-color anthem to replace Honor of the Pure.  Populate reads as follows:

(To Populate, put a token on the battlefield that’s a copy of a creature token you control.)

My immediate thoughts are that this definitely synergizes with tokens, for obvious reasons, and could possibly break when added to blue (a color that already has access to tokens-of-anything through cackling counterpart.) I don’t know if it’s strong enough, especially with 99% of the set remaining to spoil, but it’s certainly something that I’ll be keeping my eye on as we move forward.

Which brings me to the point of our article today – moving forward. All of us have our pet decks, crafted lovingly over the last few years of standard since Jace and Valakut left the format. I know I’ve personally struck out in a number of directions before finally settling on Tokens as my weapon of choice. Unfortunately for us, all of those strategies are going to need to be reevaluated come rotation.  This brings us to an exciting time, if you enjoy deckbuilding. The format breaks wide open, everything gets tossed up into the air, and we have a few glorious months to decide what’s going to happen.

Possibly even more important – States are coming up! They traditionally happen shortly after the release of the Fall set. (Last year was October 15^th) Because it’s so soon after the release, it tends to feature some of the best deckbuilding opportunities in the year. Prizes include plaques, free entry to tournaments, and perhaps most importantly, a play mat to the top 8.

I am such a sucker for playmats.

Traditionally, at the start of a new format, the decks that have done well at first were highly tuned lists that were adapted from previous highly tuned lists. Wolf Run Ramp was one of the biggest winners at last year’s States because of the work that had previously gone into making Valakut a contender. Not only did people have the majority of the deck already, making it easy to construct, but they were familiar with it’s playstyle.

Other decks fared less well. Neo-Caw, a deck that broadly tried to play  Caw-Blade’s style without Squadron Hawks and Jace, was utterly crushed without it’s critical cards. It didn’t have the permission to play a true control game, and lacked the power to play as beatdown. It fell by the wayside for a time before eventually returning (in spirit at least) as UW Midrange, a delver variant.

Why talk about these things? Simple – look at the past to determine the future. Decks with strong options nowadays will continue to be strong in a few weeks, if they don’t lose too much. Let’s take a look at some of the better decks in the format and highlight what they’ll be losing:

Makes you want to punch him in the face, right?

UW Delver:

While UW Delver is hardly a single deck, it does tend to have a couple of recurring trends. We can safely say that the creature core will remain intact – Delver of Secrets, Snapcaster Mage, Restoration Angel, and Geist of St. Traft. (they lose Blade Splicer and Hero of Bladehold but many lists didn’t opt for those to begin with.) Invisible Stalker, while not a recent favorite, has seen play before, and could again. Likewise, while they lose the Sword of X and Y cycle, but Runechanter’s Pike is still a very serviceable option. The loss of Phantasmal Image also hurts.

Unfortunately for Delver players, the spell base of the deck has been absolutely gutted. With the loss of all their Phyrexian Mana spells, plus the majority of their card filtering, it goes without saying that the deck is going to need a complete overhaul. They can no longer lean on their incredible ability to use every point of mana every turn for drawing, assuming it didn’t go anywhere else. Speaking of other instant speed ways to spend mana, the loss of Mana Leak is very significant, representing a gap in their arsenal that the replacements (Negate and Essence Scatter) cannot deal with. With the loss of their most efficient options, Delver is probably going to take a pretty extreme hit from this rotation.

Zombies

Plus, Zombies seem like this guy's best friend.

While the core of Delver is it’s spells, Zombies has the opposite situation. While it loses some nominal strength from having no two-drop removal in the format, Tragic Slip is still a powerful option. None of the creatures in the deck (save Phyrexian Obliterator) are rotating. On the other hand, zombies receives one major boon that many have overlooked. Celestial Purge was not reprinted.  While the card had seen significant sideboard play, now Zombies have no direct hate – beating a Geralf’s Messenger never seemed harder.

The blue version of the deck seems weak, with the loss of Phantasmal Image as a primary draw to the color, but the BR Version loses almost nothing in the rotation, and also gets the opportunity to play Bonfire.

I’d be on the lookout for this one, folks.

Nope, No Ramp Targets Here.

Wolf Run Ramp

There are two major problems with this archetype as a whole at the moment. The first is that they’ve lose their surest kill condition in Primeval Titan. Whle that’s bad, it only highlights the bigger issue – there’s nothing to ramp to. Return to Ravnica may provide an answer here, but outside of Griselbrand (at a hefty 8 mana), there’s no Elesh Norn, no Titans, no huge swingy creature to put the game out of reach. The guild leaders and champions may give us some help here, but there’s pretty slim pickings overall.

Also notable is the issue of ramping itself. Without Solemn, Sphere of the Suns, and even Birds of Paradise, the ability to go 2-4-6-Titan has been compromised. We do have Farseek, but there isn’t a whole lot else that feels strong enough to justify ramping as a strategy. We may finally be entering an age where ramping to a haymaker isn’t a viable strategy, for the first time since the Worldwake prerelease.

I can’t say I’m going to miss it.

Reanimator/Solar Flare

Much like above – what exactly are you trying to reanimate? A thragtusk? We can talk more if there’s some decent reanimation targets, but until then, I wouldn’t bother. It is notable that this deck does remain intact except for the ACTUAL WAYS TO WIN.

RG Aggro/GW Aggro

While RG aggro is a great deck with a lot of power behind it, one of the reasons that it’s as strong as it is lays entirely with the Swords. Without them, RG will suffer. I don’t want to say unviable, because the creature and spell base are both potent weapons, but coupled with the probably loss of Birds of Paradise, and I think that the deck could be outclassed by anyone trying to go bigger. The loss of Green Sun’s Zenith also hits their consistency hard, still, the deck’s core is there. I just don’t know if it’s enough. Then again, the lack of Day of Judgment is going to push the format closer to creatures, and having Bonfire as an auto-win in the creature-mirror is always reasonable, and the GW version gets Gavony as a late-game pressure play.

Birthing Pod (Naya, Bant, RG, Zombie, etc)

Birthing Pod is rotating. All these decks die. It’s pretty simple here.

Infect

Sorry Phyrexia. You cannot defeat the ravages of time. No more action here.

Trading Post / Mono Black Durdle

While I poke a ton of fun at this deck, it is going to be the deck with the most consistent board wipes in the format. Without Day of Judgment as an option, this deck has a ton of powerful options. Unfortunately, it loses a lot as well – all of its kill conditions lay in the Scars block, and it loses a ton of consistency with the loss of the Wellsprings. I’d expect this deck to shift – becoming BW at the least, which would weaken its Mutilates, (though, with shock lands, perhaps not too much) but ultimately give it better options.

BW Tokens

These guys look like they could get down with some Spirit tokens.

The loss of Honor of the Pure is actually just crippling here. We could make due without Hero of Bladehold, but we *need* eight anthems to make the deck a real thing. There are options – UW Tokens with Talrand, using Favorable Winds, or Junk Tokens with acceleration and Gavony Township, but regardless, things are going to change.

Or hey, maybe Orzhov and Silesnya both give us some goodies and we reign supreme across the format.

Naya Aggro/Naya Humans

It always seems to come back here, doesn’t it?

Naya does lose a lot – the loss of Birds of Paradise damages their already fragile mana base, but the addition of Shocklands should more than make up for that in time. Blade Splicer will be a hit, and might make the white portion of the deck not worth it, however, my guess would be that they’d add in some lower-end ramp spells and just try to go bigger, assuming they can’t find a good three-drop to fit the bill.

Plus, Bonfire is still good, right?

Swoon

UW Humans/Boros Humans/Balls-Out-Aggro

The balls-out aggro deck is always a popular one right after a rotation – and with good reason. If someone isn’t properly respecting it, it often just gets a walkover. However, this deck usually folds to the careful application of any-kind-of-board-wipe. I’d be careful about this deck, but any kind of sweeper is probably enough to keep you safe, and I suspect that there’s no way this can compete with the Zombie deck out of the gates.

Esper Planeswalkers

Now we’re talking! While the deck does lose some things – Gideon and whichever Titans it chose for that week – it does still have a couple of powerhouses. Sorin and Tamiyo are both strong options, and with a new Jace on the horizon, and new Liliana being able to find shocklands to fix your mana, we could have a real deck here. Lingering souls is still just as good as it ever was, and access to Terminus and (albeit weaker) Mutilates could be the key to surviving an aggro heavy world. Keep an eye on this one too, assuming they can plug the holes – but I think this is probably the most reasonable of the control decks in the future.

Mono-Green Fight Club

People have been giving this deck some credit around the internet, but honestly, I don’t think staying Mono-green is worth it in a world without Dungrove Elder. Try to go with a two-color shell, likely GR or GW. In that case, just look above.

Tempered Steel

Lost the namesake spell. No Inkmoth Nexuses. Not worth chatting about anymore.

Elves

Loses everything. Literally 60% of the deck is gone, including Ezuri, Genesis Wave, and Copperhorn Scout. Llanowar Elves are gone, and we’re stuck with a lackluster tribal shell that doesn’t go anywhere.

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Did someone say awesome legendary dragon?

So, where does that lead us? That’s a topic for another day – when we have more spoils from the upcoming set. There’s a lot to work with in the Innistrad Block, but Return To Ravnica will bring plenty of innovations in tow – not to mention much stronger manabases. Shocklands are going to have more ramifications than most realize. Not only will 3 colors be easier, but when you reasonably start with 2-6 less life, aggro decks get much more dangerous.

We’ve also got some other considerations to take into account – each guild will have a keyword, which means we’re dealing with minimum 5 new keywords in the coming set, and five additional in a couple months after that. It only takes one to spawn the next Dredge Archetype, and a bunch of strong legendary creatures are bound to shake things up (Hi Niv-Mizzet! Don’t eat me!)

It’s an exciting time to play magic. Which guild are you most excited for? Are you going to adapt an old deck, or aim for a new one? What’s your strategy and tactics going towards the next set?

Choose your weapon.

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As always, feel free to leave questions or comments here, or on the reddit thread. I’m helping a friend move this weekend, so I won’t be playing any Magic, but there will still be an article here on Tuesday – likely about my preparations for the Judge Conference and GP Boston-Worcester next weekend, which I will be attending.

Until next time,

Andrew

Bye Bye Bye - Why Planeswalker Points Are Important

Hey man! I haven't seen you around here in ages.

Yea, I've been pretty busy traveling.

So, you coming to Sunday drafts now?

Absolutely. I’m grinding for points. Didn’t you hear? There’s a GP in Philadelphia in October. Got to be ready.

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As some of you may know, this coming Sunday represents the end of the second Planeswalker Points season. For some of us, that makes this week a flurry of furious playing and grinding, with the hopes of gathering those last few points. For others, the entire idea of planeswalker points seems alien and obtuse.

Why are we seeking planeswalker points like they’re some finite resource? Why do some of us keep track of the number with post-its and bookmark the page in our browser to make sure that everything is up to date?

There’s a couple reasons for it, honestly, and to start, I’d like to tell you my story.

A few months ago, I decided that I was interested in joining the Magic Competitive Scene. Previously, this meant going to GP’s and PTQ’s, hoping to qualify and make it to the Pro Tour. Unfortunately, my level of skill at that point was nowhere near where it would need to be to have a chance at either of those events. I wasn’t thinking clearly about what I’d need to do to succeed. I was flush with success with a Top 8 at a 75 person GPT, and I thought I was one of the best players ever. Seriously. I actually thought that.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really have anything to work towards. There weren’t any GP’s in the area, so I just shrugged it  off and kept playing in GPT’s and SCG:IQ’s. The story could have ended here.

Then there was an announcement. A special tournament – held three places across America. The World Magic Cup Qualifier. All jokes about qualifying for a qualifier aside, I knew that this was an event I wanted to participate in – and it was fairly local: just past Baltimore, maybe a two hour drive. I checked the requirements and found that I needed 300 Planeswalker Points to get an invitation.

I fired up the handy website and took a look. The system is pretty simple – three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a loss, and then multiplied by the kind of event it was.

FNM – 7 points

FNM – 4 points

FNM – 7 points

This looked like it was going to take a while.

GPT Baltimore – 66 points.

Wait, what? Sixty six? Well, I suppose that the event was seven rounds of Swiss, where I went 6-1, and you get some points for participation…

 If you’re looking to grind points, events with a multiplier are where it’s at. There’s just no competition. You could win 9 rounds of FNM, and it’s likely worth less than winning three at a GPT – or just a little bit more than two at a PTQ. A single win at a GP is worth more than two flawless Friday victories at your local game shop.

But why do we want these points? Even ignoring the primal urge – present in every nerd – to make numbers go upwards. (Seriously, take a look at every RPG ever. That’s all we’re doing) Surely there are rewards for earning all these points! Well, luckily for us, there are – and the rewards are significant. Let’s take a look at some of the numbers to know for the current system.

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Byes:

By gaining planeswalker points in the current system, you can earn Byes at Grand Prix events. A bye is a free win in one of the early rounds, and any player can have up to three. Having them is an enormous advantage, and for many, these are the primary benefit of Planeswalker Points. These points accrue over the course of a season. The most recent season ran from April 2, 2012 – August 19, 2012. The next season, which begins on Monday, runs from August 20, 2012 – December 16, 2012. If you earn byes during a season, they will apply for the duration of that season and for the next one as well.

                -One Bye: 400 points

                -Two Byes: 750 points

                -Three Byes: 1500 points

Invitation to the World Magic Cup Qualifier:

 Where Grand Prix Byes count based on a single season, the World Magic Cup Qualifier tracks points over an entire year. The most recent World Magic Cup Qualifier season began on April 2, 2012, and will end on March 17, 2013. To be invited, you need to reach a threshold based on your country. These range from the USA – where you’d need 500 points within the year, to small countries like Peru, where the cutoff is a mere 100 points. You can find the list of thresholds HERE.

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For those of you wondering if a Bye is even worth anything to you, it’s a fairly simple question. If you are going to a GP, the bye is absolutely worth it. Compared to the FNM’s and other events that you’ve gone to, GP’s can be more likened to a marathon. With two days of play and thousands of dollars of prize on the line, you need to be at your best to have a chance, and that means giving yourself advantages before you walk in the door.

A normal GP plays 9 rounds on Day 1. To advance, you need to be 7-2 or better. Going 7-2 in a tournament is no mean feat, and even a single bad mulligan could spell the end of your tournament aspirations. With three byes under your belt, you mitigate that to a paltry 4-2 to make the second day of play (and put yourself in contention for a reasonable cash payout!) In addition, the three byes have the related side effect of making your tiebreakers markedly higher than those without byes. Because people playing since round one will have their tie breaks calculated off all their opponents, they account for the person who started off 0-1, 1-1, and 2-1. Your worst tiebreaker player is the person you hit in the fourth match, who (assuming you win) will be 3-1 at that point. This could buy you the crucial percentage points that elevate you into the “I won something!” arena.

This coming season, for example, I’m planning on attending two GP’s – one in Boston, and one in Philadelphia. Each Bye I earn puts me that much closer to Day 2. Because I played in GP Atlanta, as well as a number of other events, I’ve earned over 900 points, easily enough for my second bye, but still a far cry away from my third. With the addition of a second GP to my personal schedule in this coming season, it would be a reasonable thing for me to expect getting a third bye in the coming season. As my play gets more precise, I expect to earn more points for any given tournament. GP Atlanta earned me a cool 200 points, and I didn’t even make Day 2. If I had, it easily could have been a 350-400 point weekend.  I certainly wouldn’t have been as close as I was if not for the three byes I had.

This is more or less how GP Atlanta felt with three free wins..

This coming season, I’d encourage you to set yourself a goal – be it your first bye, in case you attend a GP early next year (the schedule should be announced soon!) or qualification for the World Magic Cup Qualifiers, or whatever you decide. Set yourself a goal, and then set out to attain it!

[Editor's Note: The Planeswalker Point website can be found HERE.]

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I hope that you guys enjoyed this look at the planeswalker point system, and what we can get out of it as a competitive player. Next post comes in Thursday, where I’ll talk a little bit about what I see in the format going forward.

A Respectable 6-3 at Star City Games: Washington DC

It’s interesting how things happen sometimes. You write something, yell up and down about the new thing that’s going to change it all, and then, forty eight hours later, you’re scrambling to put a deck together – your third in two days.

How did this happen?

Last weekend was the Star City Games: Washington DC event. By random luck, I was able to attend, because my job wanted me to go to Washington DC from Sunday till Tuesday. It meant that I wouldn’t be able to play in the Legacy Open on Sunday, but I was mostly alright with that, since my Legacy deck is still broadly ‘under construction’ – missing a Karakas, Urborg, four Wastelands, and three Bobs. (Plus some other assorted cards that have since been filled). That’s not exactly a small list, but still, we’re getting closer.

So, Standard Open was going to be my best bet – with hopes that I would make Top 8 and secure an invitation to one of the two remaining invitational’s of the year. That was the goal. To accomplish that, I’d most likely have to go x-1 or better, with the potential of a draw in the last round.

To this goal, I wrote an article about my Naya Aggro deck, which can be found Here. The decklist I ended up building to play in the event was as follows:

There was a lot of power in this deck, and it has the potential to run away with games that it was clearly losing. Hero of Bladehold and Gavony Township provide a strong top-end, and four Caverns give the deck a lot of game against Delver Style decks. With Restoration Angel to back up any assault, and Bonfire for the occasional blowout, the deck was strong.

And I hated it.

I played some test games with it, but it constantly felt like I was mulliganing into oblivion. I was never able to find the lands that I wanted, a dork, and some reasonable sequence of plays that didn’t depend entirely on “and then I’ll draw all the cards I need.” I found myself playing out my hand quickly against other similar aggro decks and lacking a way to go over the top to win, instead getting into a board stall and knowing that I really didn’t have many (if any) outs.

I called up Marshall on Thursday, after posting my counterpoint about Bonfire. A lot of the points that I’d made were festering in my mind – countermagic WAS strong against that kind of deck. Tokens did have a lot of recurring threats that made it viable against Naya style decks. Delver was still a flying Wild Nacatl for U that needed to be dealt with.

What if I merged the two decks?

I drove to Marshall’s that night and we spent the better part of four hours piecing together the deck that I’d be taking down to DC. Late night audibles rarely work, because you end up with little familiarity with the deck and not enough practice. I ignored this because I figured that it was just tokens with a support package instead of a Humans package. It looked strong. Plus, I got to sideboard Day of Judgment and go to town with that as tech against Naya and the Elf deck that BW is completely incapable of beating.

This deck looked like it had everything. A strong early game with Delver/Snapcaster/Vapor Snag, it had the late game with Anthems and Lingering Souls. We were able to find a mana base that worked (partially by being very careful to avoid double-colored spells), and enough removal to punch through the biggest offenders in the format. We were positive we were on to something here.

Unfortunately, we finished the deck at Dark O’Clock and didn’t have time to test it. I couldn’t go to FNM on Friday to test it because I was busy sleeping – since my train to DC left at 5am. Still, I felt confident that I’d be able to do well with the deck. I slept a healthy amount before the tournament, and we were ready to go.

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It’s 10:05. The tournament was scheduled to start five minutes ago, but there’s still a line out the door. I’m staring across the board at two Rancors on a Blighted Agent.

“This deck is pretty bad,” I admit – referring to mine, not the UG Infect deck that’s been tossing me around like a ragdoll for the last hour.

“It’s probably a bad matchup for you. Don’t worry.” That’s my friend Mark. I’ve seen him at a bunch of events, and he offered to play a few rounds to get each of us used to our decks. It isn’t going well. I’ve managed to squeak out a single win – he’s got more than half a dozen under his belt.

“It’s not that your deck is good,” I explain. “Well, I mean, it is. You’re really explosive, but my deck isn’t flowing the way it should. The mana feels fine, but I just don’t feel like I’m going to have the power to punch through and actually get a kill.”

“So, what’re you thinking?”

“I’ve still got all the cards that I’d need for BW Tokens…” I say, hesitantly. I could also audible to Delver – since I have that almost built as well, but that doesn’t put me in any better shape.

“I don’t think that’s smart.” Mark answers, and we keep playing. “Maybe you’re just getting bad hands.”

Five minutes later, one of Mark’s friends comes by and reports. “I’m seeing a ton of control decks in the field today – and a lot of Delver too. A lot of Pod, but not a lot of Naya Aggro or Humans.”

Mark taps some creature, probably an Ichorclaw Myr. “Four infect at you?” I try to remove it, and he casts apostle’s blessing in response. Two Wild Defiance Triggers go on the stack and I scoop it up.

“Last call for registration!” goes the shout. I take one last look at the deck and make the call.

“Help me unsleeve this.”

It’s 10:25 and I’m frantically writing on a deck registration sheet, putting back together a deck that I’d played in more than a dozen tournaments. If there wasn’t much Naya in the room, and the read was right, Tokens would cut through the control decks and the Delver decks – all I needed to do was dodge the Naya decks.

Round 1 – Chris with Bant Pod

Chanting “Not Naya” while I shuffled, my opponent leads with Razorverge Thicket into Birds of Paradise – because why not. Luckily for me, I’ve got the fast start, and he’s not really playing Naya at all. He’s on Bant Pod – a deck that I know exists, but not much more than that. I remember the older Bant Pod lists – flicker an acidic slime a bunch of times with Venser and lock you out of the game, or get a Stonehorn lock. I imagine that this deck plays out much the same.

Luckily, I have the Champion > Gather > Anthem > Anthem draw, and he goes down on turn five. Before he’s able to set anything up.

I play game two much more conservatively – unsure if he’s running Day of Judgment in his list. He almost gets a stonehorn lock on me, but I’ve got removal for the Venser to keep me on the right side of the matchup. I end up killing him while I’m on 31 life.

1-0   (2-0 in games)

Round 2 – Steve with Mono Black Control

Game one is agonizing. I get my beatdown on, dropping him down to three life over the opening turns of the game with a fairly aggressive start. I’m still on 20, and feeling great. He topdecks a Mutilate to wipe my board, but I’ve got a Gather the Townsfolk in reserve. This unfortunately does nothing when he drops a Wurmcoil Engine, and I quickly drop to two life as he beats me down with it (and removes my human tokens). He goes back up over twenty before I find a Gather the Townsfolk and a Hero of Bladehold to stop him. I’m poised to gain 20+ life the next turn and kill him off a vault of the archangel swing, but he topdecks a second mutilate and kills me with the Wurmcoil Tokens.

Ouch.

Luckily for me, his good luck breaks and he mulligans in the second game. Despite him activating mindslaver twice on me, he can’t quite get a lock on the game and I kill him through two pristine talismans that gained him 16 life over the course of the game.

Our third game is a classic Tokens vs Control matchup, with me always having more gas to stop his attempts to regain control. I slow roll every token maker, buying a board wipe from him every turn until he eventually runs out. Even his pair of pristine talismans can’t keep him up through two anthems and any creatures.

2-0   (4-1 in games)

Round 3 – Robert with GW Elves

Let me just go on record and say that I don’t know why this deck isn’t bigger. In game one, I remove his turn 2 Archdruid, and still die on turn 5 to a swing for 45 damage off a Craterhoof Behemoth that he green sun zenithed for. Shockingly, I almost survived. Almost doesn’t count.

I have no notes for game two. It went more poorly than game one.

2-1 (4-3 in games)

Round 4 – Brad Nelson on BW Zombie Pod

I read the pairings and I’m on fire. Brad Nelson, player of the year for 2010. This is the first game I’ve ever had against a player of his caliber, and I’m nervous as all hell. I sit down, and try to make some small talk – he seems pretty quiet. Understandable, since he’s already picked up a loss. We present our decks and I move to cut his, but my hand slips and flips a card.

Geralf’s Messenger.

Both of our hands shoot into the air and I get a warning for Looking At Extra Cards.

I apologize, and he nods. “It’s alright, just sucks because it’s a pretty big tell.”

That’s pretty fair, I think. I hope that he doesn’t think I did it deliberately, because I can see how it could be interpreted like that. Brad is one of my favorite writers, and I’d hate to think he had a negative opinion of me because of a mistake like that.

I’d like to tell you guys that I drew a hand that was marginal against Zombies and kept it because I was doing the honorable thing. Truthfully though, the hand was just all gas. He gets some quick hits in with a nighthawk before I land two heroes. He answers the first, but the second gets a combat step with Vault of the Archangel and start beating in for 24 point life swings. He goes down and we sideboard.

I love my zombies sideboard in this deck – it’s one of my favorite parts about playing it. To this day, I’ve only lost to zombies once with Tokens, and that was due almost entirely to a gigantic misplay on my part.

Today kept up that trend, and despite him getting the Restoration Angel/Geralf’s Messenger combo going, I beat him down and win the round.

3-1 (6-3 in games)

Round 5 – Gavin with RG Pod

I don’t have a lot of experience against this deck, and I keep a slower hand. He doesn’t seem interested in playniog that game, and crushes me in a quick game one.

Game two, he mulligans and we both stall out on the ground, unable to make a profitable move. The game comes down to me being able to draw flyers, and him never finding a bonfire to miracle.

Game three, I pull off a miracle’d Entreat the Angels for 1 on turn 4, and the angel went the distance to beat him down for the win.

4-1 (8-4 in games)

Round 6 – Andrew with Esper…well…

The round starts, and I win Game 1 without any real idea what he’s playing except Esper colors. He cast a lingering souls, a ponder, and a mana leak – which effectively means he could be any Esper archetype ever. He boards in a bunch of cards, but I’m hesitant, and end up presenting my original 60.

I think I actually stand by this decision. My sideboard cards for the Esper matchups are pretty weak overall, and I’d rather not dilute my deck with dead cards if I guess wrong. Unfortunately, I have a quick draw and he has the answers for it, stalling me out until his plan becomes obvious – as he copies a bunch of Sun Titans with the least fair clone creature ever printed.

To be honest, I’m positive that I could have won this one. I made a bad removal early on, sacrificing a creature to kill his doomed traveler clone – thinking that it would be sacrificed and not give him the token. This is 100% absurd – the only reason I thought it was because my opponent a few tournaments ago had missed his trigger, not because it doesn’t happen.

I got him to 1, and he killed me with triplicate Sun Titan attacks and Dead Weight and such. It was unpleasant.

Game three, I was forced to mulligan, and I couldn’t put out enough pressure. He stabilized at 8 life, and I never got to touch him again.

4-2 (8-6 in games)

Round 7 – Naya Pod

And here we go, folks. The matchup I feat more than anything – Naya. Cocked and ready to go with a quartet of Bonfires, we squared off. I lose the first game after he gains a ton of life off a Thragtusk to change the math on our race. Both of us sideboard, and we’re off into game two.

Game two was the best match of magic that I have played in a long time. I have a slower start, with a slew of anthems. After losing my board in the late game to a catastrophic Bonfire, he beats me down to 4 life – with him still on 20. Things look grim, but I topdeck a Gather the Townsfolk, putting 20 power and toughness onto the board with a vault – but one mana shy of using it. He had a single flyer – a restoration angel that dropped me to  1 life. I attack, and he first-strikes down one token, eating eight damage, and losing only a little bit of his ground force while we trade off creatures. I gain sixteen, going to seventeen and having more than lethal on the board. He draws, and finds no help, playing another Blade Splicer and hitting me for three in the air, I go to fourteen. I draw for the turn, attack, and pass after destroying a few more of his guys.

He topdecks a bonfire, and hitsme for five with it, wiping my board. The crowd (because we’ve drawn a crowd at this point) goes wild, and he turns his guys sideways for the win.

I drop Midnight Haunting, blocking his angel and a splicer token to go to six, and then counter swing to kill him the following turn.

 Game three was sadly a little anticlimactic, with him mulling to six and stumbling on lands. He still made a fight of it, but I manage to get an Angel of Jubilation out to turn off his Pod, and without the mana advantage, the threat of a bonfire was minimal. I killed him with a Pod rotting in hand, and a Bonfire that could never have killed anything.

5-2 (10-7 in games)

Round 8 – Ian on RG Aggro

In our first game, I manage to get the tempo advantage on him once I’ve got an anthem set up, and I run him over pretty handily. Our second game isn’t close, with him getting a turn 2 sword of war and peace and crushing me.

Our third game goes much the way of the first, with Vault fo the Archangel sealing the game once I get ahead. Ian reveals after the match that he runs four Sword of War and Peace main, as well as four bonfires that he never saw a miracle of. I was probably lucky to get out of this one.

6-2 (12-8 in games)

Round 9 – Russo with RG Aggro

I know Russo – he plays at the shop I used to go to all the time back in NY. He’s on RG Aggro, and while I’d love to say they were both close games, decided by the skill of both players, he crushed me in both with T2 Sword, and T2 Sword. I really don’t know if there’s a good answer to that card in white that doesn’t open you up to an insane blowout if they don’t have it.

6-3 (12-10 in games)

Aftermath

While the tournament was 10 rounds long, a quick look at the standings after the ninth round revealed that there was no way that I could make the top 64. It was unfortunate, and crushing, because up until then, I felt like I was doing fairly well in the tournament.

My losses were against Elves (which is a bad matchup – I’ll need to Sideboard some Day of Judgment in the future. The loss to Esper was avoidable – I think – if I had remembered my Phantasmal Image interaction better and not flubbed the second game.

The games against Russo were probably not winnable – as he had the nut draw in both games, but without Sword in the picture, I can’t imagine that he has a terribly good match against me. Both games were winnable if I had a turn or two to breathe, so maybe Gut Shot would have been all I needed to take the lead there.

Altogether, for the longest tournament I’ve ever played in (10 rounds is monumental, and kudos to the judges for keeping it running so smoothly) it went reasonably. I would have liked to have finished x-2, but then again, so would everyone else in the room. Next time, I will.

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This weekend, I’ll be attending (and judging) the Top Deck Games Summer Open. If you’re interested in going to GP Boston, this represents a great tournament with a robust prize, in addition to some spectacular side events that range from Standard Win-A-Box to Ravnica/Dissention/Guildpact drafts. You should absolutely come on down and check it out.

The facebook event can be found Here. I'll be one of the guys in the Judge Blacks.