Tales from My First PTQ

You never expect it to be different.

It's just another tournament, you tell yourself. Sure, there's more people – but not more than the M10 prerelease had two years ago at Connecticon. Let's ignore that you weren't playing seriously back then. It's still more or less the same situation.

You've got your deck, and you feel confident with it. You're running on an undefeated streak against Delver – 7 wins and no losses in competitive play against it. You've beaten just about every deck in the format before – and there's no reason to believe that today is going to be any different.

That's how I felt when I walked into the Convention Center last Saturday morning. It was my first Pro Tour Qualifier, and while I didn't have anticipation of winning, I thought that with good play and some reasonable luck, I could certainly make Top 8.

I knew my deck. It was the same that it had been for a while – Black/White Tokens. Still something that I loved playing. Base White aggro decks are really my forte. The give and play that comes from them really plays to my strengths, and I feel confident with the math. With a control deck, I find myself contemplating the angles too much, but aggro is straightforward enough that I know where my efforts need to be focused to avoid the tricky plays. I can next-level myself by just playing a deck that fits me.

After walking in and registering, I catch up with Barret. I'd met him at the SCG Invitational Qualifiers, held by Cyborg One. He used to play Tokens, but has since switched to Wolf Run White. He's contemplating the relative merits of Terminus vs Day of Judgment in the sideboard. Personally, I think that Terminus is generally the better card – especially in a ramp shell, but that's not really a discussion for right now – nor is it a subject I'm terribly qualified to speak about.

I lend him a Wurmcoil Engine, and he gives me a stack of prettily sleeved tokens because “If you're playing the deck, you might as well have tokens that look good.”

Fine with me. Mike Noss, our local level 2, gets on the microphone and announces that seatings are up, and everyone should take their seat. Mike's a great guy, and he's currently mentoring me for Level 1 judge status. Hopefully I'll be certified in a month or two, but we'll see.

Here’s what I register:

I sit down and pull out my playmat and deck. I start shuffling, and the kid sitting across from me looks a little confused. I'm polite, making small talk. Where are you from? Stuff like that. When I pull out a pair of dice, things swerve.

“High roll sound alright to you?”

“...This isn't round one.”

“What?”

“Player's meeting.”

I've never been to a tournament with one of those. I laugh and put the dice away, then politely wait to be informed about what's going to be going on at this tournament, because apparently, I don't have the slightest clue what I'm doing.

Don't worry kids, I'm trying to go Pro here.

Mike talks for a minute. There will be 8 rounds of Swiss, making this the longest tournament that I've ever participated in by a single round. A crowd of 187 players makes the room full, but not overly crowded. First round pairings go up, and we're off to the races.

Round 1 – Sunny with UR Delver

Sunny seems like a nice guy, and he sits down with a smile. He looks like he's been at events before, so we're pretty chatty before the round. I shuffle and present, shuffling his deck. Usually, I'll just cut, but since I'm told that a single cut isn't sufficient at higher level events, I'm trying to build up the habit since I'll be attending some other larger events in the near future. Some of you have seen my schedule – in my opinion, it's sufficiently nuts.

A guy sitting two seats down presents his deck and smiles. “May the odds be ever in your favor.”

I laughed at that. I love this community.

The match starts with him tossing down a Sulfur Falls – tapped, which lets me breathe a sigh of relief. I'd kept a slower hand involving three anthems and a pair of lingering souls. If he can't capitalize on the early game, the late game should almost certainly fall to me.

That's pretty much how it goes after he plays a second Sulfur Falls tapped on turn two, casting a Ponder and shuffling away the results. This is not the ideal start for a tempo deck. Seeing that he doesn't have a single viable threat on the board, I opt for playing out anthems early and then casting a couple of Spirits, followed by a Hero of Bladehold to quickly take game one.

As I’m shuffling for game two, a round a few seats over calls a judge. Being a prospective judge, I listened in on the call a bit, and frowned because I – sadly – knew the ruling. The active player had attacked with Geist of St. Traft, and didn’t explicitly mention creating an angel. The judge explained that he’d missed the trigger, although it’s mandatory, because it creates a wholly beneficial action – creating a creature under your control. The attacking player argued that he’d never heard that before, and that it had always been assumed to make an angel when it attacked. Turns out, after investigation, that it was his first Competitive REL event. My heart went out to the kid, and the ruling cost him the game.

You never expect things to be different, until they are.

Game two starts off poorly, with me quickly dropping to 8 life, but a rather Timely set of Reinforcements balanced out my life total and gave me enough board presence to crush the Delver deck's flimsy offense.

1-0 (2-0 in games)

Round 2 – Kyle with Esper Delver

I sit down for round two, already feeling good. It's strange how a round one win can really light the fire under you. All of a sudden, it's not a long eight round slog sitting before you – it's just five more wins, and then you can double draw into the Top 8 slot. I felt great. Barret and a couple of other people I knew all won their matches as well. Things were going great.

When I pulled my opening hand, seeing seven lands, I was less than thrilled though. I mulligan, with my opponent snap keeping his. I look at my hand and see a one-lander on the draw – worse, an Isolated Chapel. The rest of the cards? Hero of Bladehold – no help there. A midnight haunting, and three Champion of the Parish.

“Gonna keep?” Kyle asked.

“I don't know if this hand is insanely good, or absolutely terrible.”

I topdeck a Gather the Townsfolk, a second hero, and then a land. He's dead on turn 7, despite me never hitting my third land drop. I guess that is a very keep-able hand.

The second game starts of poorly, with him flipping a pair of Delvers and dropping me to five life. Fortunately for me, he misplays and swings into a Midnight Haunting that he'd forgotten was there. (He knew about it from a previous Gitaxian Probe that game, and just forgot to put two and two together.) Thanks to Honor of the Pure, my spirit generator buys both of his Delvers, and it's easy to regain life once Vault of the Archangel comes back online. I gain 24 life, winning the game on 15.

I'm feeling on top of the world. Two matches into the PTQ and I haven't dropped a game. I've not spotted any significant misplays on my part, and my tokens are feeling as powerful as they ever have before. I've crushed one of the best opening hands from the arguably best deck in the format, and I only need to go 4-0 from here to make Top 8.

2-0 (4-0 in games)

Round 3 – Barrett Goss with Wolf Run White

I see the matchup and I shake my head.

“The randomizer hates me.”

I’m shuffling at the table when Barrett comes over. He’s playing Wolf Run White or Naya Ramp, depending on his mood when you ask him. The deck is a horrible matchup for me – mostly because he’s ramping to Elesh Norn. It compounds the issues that I have with Wolf Run because once she hits the field, it’s very rare for my creatures to survive in a fit state to close out the game, and I have no non-creature source of reach.

He sits down and looks at me.

“Someone I know suggested that we could draw.”

“Would that help either of us?”

We talk it over for a bit. It wouldn’t hurt either of us, but it certainly wouldn’t help much either. The matchup is certainly favoring him, so I offer the draw.

He shakes his head. “Nah, we’ll just play it out.”

I shuffle my deck. I’ve beaten bad matchups before. This one should be no different.

Racing against an inevitable Elesh Norn, I manage to take game one by forcing him to cast Day of Judgment on turn 4 to avoid death by Hero of Bladehold. I probably overextended into it a little bit, but it doesn’t end up mattering. When he uses the board wipe, he kills his own Bird of Paradise, and locks himself off of a second white source. Even though I stumble on threats for a moment, I’m able to recover before he can cast Gideon, Elesh, or Terminus – all sitting in his hand, uncastable.

Games two and three go similar to each other. I come out of the gates slowly, and beat him for a few points before he gains a billion life between Huntmasters, Timely Reinforcements, and Glimmerposts. I actually deal him 20 in the second game, only to have him survive the game on 15. In the end, it doesn’t matter because he’s able to Terminus to wipe the board and infect me out with an Inkmoth/Wolf Run both times without issue.

2-1 (5-2 in games)

Losing to Barrett sucks, because I know he’s one of the better players in the room. Beating him would have given me more confidence in my ability to compete on this level, and while I don’t think he’s some juggernaut, it’s certainly a bad matchup for me. Still, I’m a little down while waiting for my next match.

Round 4 – Edgar Flores with UR Delver

“Watch his hands. Also, he’s on UR Delver.” ~Barrett

For those of you who don’t know, Edgar Flores is a pro in various CCG’s – YuGiOh, Magic, Pokemon, etc. He’s also been temporarily banned at one point or another from all of them for cheating and theft. Barrett’s advice was sound, but it ended up not mattering.

The idea of playing against a ‘pro’ was a little intimidating, but I tried to remember that he’s on a deck that I have a good matchup against. All I have to do is play reasonably, and I should be able to take things.

I try chatting with him before the match, and he’s pretty short and clipped with me. He’s clearly not here to have fun. I barely manage to find out that he lost to Humans the previous round.

The short form of this matchup is that he got Stalker + 2 pikes in the first game, and my Oblivion Ring was too slow to save me. The second game, he got Stalker + 1 pike, but I couldn’t find any artifact removal in time and died to him Thought Scouring a ton of gas into the graveyard. I didn’t get him below 10 in either match.

2-2 (5-4 in games)

Round 5 – Mark with UW Delver

I sit down across from my opponent this round and laugh. It’s the kid with the Geist of St. Traft ruling from before. Despite the round one loss, he’s fought back to even. We talk for a bit – he’s a great guy, and he lives near the World Cup Qualifier down in MD. I tell him that I’ll be there, and hope to see him competing.

We also have a good laugh that I’ve gotten four delver players in five rounds. At least it’s a good matchup, right?

The first game is pretty academic when he doesn’t play a Delver first turn, and I get a Vault + any number of creatures into play. I end the game on 25. I’d like to mention that I only lost one game the whole PTQ where I ever had Vault and a creature simultaneously active. Those are some pretty cool numbers.

The second game is a lot closer. He gets me to 2 life, but can’t quite finish me off before I draw the fifth land and gain 9 life while holding up a trio of vigilant 3/3’s. Vault of the Archangel, people. Tell your friends.

3-2 (6-4 in games)

Round 6 – Josh with (You Guessed It!) UW Delver!

The first game goes pretty much textbook – he gets an early delver and uses it to beat me down to 3 life, while I assemble my doomsday machine of creatures and anthems. At one point, he has a Geist of St. Traft, and I’m being beaten down pretty hard.

“Swing with Geist.”

“Just Geist?”

“Yes.”

I look at my life total. I’m on 7, and I have a single ground blocker. I bite my lip.

What do you do?

“I block here.”

“Take four from the angel?”

“…”

“…”

“Yea, take four from the angel.”

I’m not that guy – at least once we’re out of top 8 contention.

“Hey, just for the record, at Competitive REL, you need to mention the Angel coming into play or you don’t get the trigger. Someone got called on it before and lost the match because of it.”

“Oh shit, really?”

“Yea. I’ll take the four, but be careful about it. Some people will call you on that.”

“Thanks man.”

I hit my fifth land, and start to lean on Vault heavily while he’s gaining the same from a Sword of War and Peace. Unfortunately for him, Vault gets more powerful as I get more creatures, and Sword gets weaker when we both play spells. The game ends with me bouncing back up to 21. Sometimes, things just aren’t that close.

Like the second game! He casts T1 Delver, flipping a mana leak, then a T2 Delver, Delver. Both flip on turn 3, and I’m a little confused when he doesn’t Leak my Midnight Haunting.

“Before blocks?” he says, dropping a pair of Vapor Snags on the table.

“…that seems pretty good man.”

“First luck I’ve had all day,” he responds.

The third game is a long drawn out affair which heralds the only time that Vault + creature didn’t win me the game. By the time it went active, I only had one body in play, and despite being on 9 life, he was able to keep my lifegain to a minimum by snagging tokens and finally closed out the game with a late-game Delver that he blind flipped. I scooped it up and gave him a smile.

“Guess you’ve got some luck after all. You’d better win out now.”

“I’ll try to.”

“Triple delver, heh.”

“I’ll never see it again,” he agreed.

3-3 (7-6 in games)

Round 7 – Alvaro with (Seeing a Trend Yet?) UW Delver!

I plop down into the seat. I’m getting a headache, and I’m a little tired, but I told myself that I was playing all eight rounds. I’m hoping to just play out these last two and call it a day. At 5-3, I’d probably be out of the prizes, even if they are down to the top 32.

“Please don’t tell me you’re playing Delver.”

He looks guilty. Great. I wave nonchalantly.

“Sorry. I’m tired and I’ve gone against five Delver players already. I’m getting pretty sick of the matchup.”

Linda, who’s sitting in the chair next to me, laughs. I played against her in the Dark Ascension Prerelease in a win-and-in, beating her for a top-8 berth. She’s pretty cool.

“Isn’t your matchup really good against Delver though?”

“It’s…pretty good,” I admit. My opponent doesn’t look happy.

My notes for these games include one word. “Vault.” Based on the life totals, he was hitting me, then Vault went live, and despite him swinging for 9 each turn, it wasn’t even close. The second game has him mulligan to 5 and get stuck on two lands. His life went 20 – 10 – 1 - Game.

We were joking the whole time, and he smiled when he left. I walked to give in match slips with Linda, joking about how we both did pretty badly. A 4-3 record wasn’t exactly what either of us were hoping for when we showed up. The two of us talk with the Level 2 Judge for a while – she’s borrowing her deck from him.

The last round pairings go up and I mostly want to just get it over with and go get dinner with my girlfriend.

4-3 (9-6 in games)

Round 8 – Linda with RDW

Be careful what you wish for.

Neither match was close. She just absolutely steamrolled me because I don’t have any answer to that many Stromkirk Nobles backed up with burn and Lightning Maulers. She looks guilty about beating me the whole time, but we keep joking about how it’s payback from the pre-release. I’ll have to get her back for it next time we meet.

4-4 (9-8 in games)

Epilogue

Takeaways from this tournament were many and varied. The field was a lot more homogenous than I expected. Delver was literally everywhere, and while the matchup isn’t as invincible as I thought it was, I still managed a 4-2 record against some stiff Delver players. I don’t know what I can do to shore up the Wolf Run matchup, because it feels tough, but I’d like to get some work done on it before the World Cup Qualifiers on the 16th.

PTQ’s are long, by the way. Eleven rounds, if you include the Top 8. I’ve never gone past seven previously, and let me tell you, physical conditioning isn’t as easy as it seems. I felt like a zombie for the next 24 hours. I’m going to need to make sure I start working on that so I can play my best throughout the day – not just in the first three rounds.

I need to work on not tilting when I think I’m disadvantaged. I need to keep looking for my outs, and keep looking for the optimal line of play, rather than slipping into “Cast the biggest thing,” mode, which I’m prone to doing when tired.

Most of all, I learned that while Magic is Magic, it’s also got a different flavor in a competitive environment. It’s not a better or a worse one, just different. That said, it doesn’t mean I need to be a douche while playing. I’m going to continue to play my best – giving away nothing and being a solid player, but I’ll make sure to have fun while doing it.

After all, I’m not exactly a Pro, yet.

-----

This weekend, I’ll be attending a TCGPlayer Diamond Event for $5,000 in cash, plus a ton of various other prizes. It’s in Edison, NJ, and starts pretty early. After that, I’ll be headed on up to New York for my brother’s high school graduation. On Tuesday, you’ll get an article about Deckbuilding, and what to look for when evaluating if a card is good enough for a deck.

Next Thursday, we’ll have a tournament writeup for  the Diamond event, so here’s hoping that I did well.

As always, questions comments and ideas either here or on reddit.

Thanks for reading,

-Andrew

Deckbuilding 101: Having a Plan

It happens to everyone. You’ve been playing Magic for a little while – either borrowing decks from friends or using a preconstructed deck, but it’s started to seem hollow and empty to you. You want to build something of your own – something you can use to sling spells, summon creatures, and destroy your enemies. Maybe you have a format in mind, or maybe it’s a casual deck, or meant for multiplayer shenanigans. Regardless, you ideally want the deck to work on a fairly regular basis.

Today we’re going to start that journey – building your first deck. We’re going to do this slowly, over the course of a few articles, so we can get an in-depth look at each portion of the process. If you think that the majority of this is too simple for you, then I’d suggest you look at more advanced strategic articles – I’d recommend Star City Games’ Magic Fundamentals articles, which go into significant depth about the math and statistics behind many famous decks of the past years.

Step 1: Know Thy Enemy

When building a deck, the first thing you need to know is your environment. If you’re playing at your kitchen table with some friends, mainly casual games, you can be pretty sure that the bar might be lower than a Pro Tour Qualifier, or a Grand Prix. Likewise, if you’re planning on building for Standard, you should know what decks are good at the moment, so that you know what you should be aiming to compete against. For purposes of this example, I’m going to use Standard, because it’s the format that the majority of people have the most experience with.

Right now, Standard is broadly made up of three decks that would be described as Tier 1 – the best of the best, and the things you should expect to see at every tournament:  Wolf Run Ramp, Delver and Red/Green Aggro. Each deck has variations on it, but the core remains the same. Let’s take a look at each.

Wolf Run Ramp:

Wolf Run is a popular deck that is built on the foundation of a previously successful deck called Valakut. The principle is that if you have access to powerful lands that can win you the game, Primeval Titan is capable of finding those lands and practically ensuring a kill. Previously, this involved finding a number of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, and many Mountains to launch a torrent of damage at the opponent to kill them. Now lacking Valakut, the deck has changed to a Kessig Wolf Run/Inkmoth Nexus package, instead using the raw number of lands available as a weapon to feed enormous Kessig Wolf Run activations.

This deck is vulnerable before it is able to cast a Primeval Titan, however, and therefore seeks to minimize the time that this takes by casting ramping spells like Rampant Growth and Solemn Simulacrum, while stalling for time with large damaging spells such as Slagstorm.

R/G Aggro:

Red/Green Aggro is a resilient aggressive deck that uses mana-generating creatures to accelerate into large mid-game bruisers. It aims to push damage through in the early to mid-game and finish out (or just accelerate into) a Sword of War and Peace to close out the game. It runs a number of ways to avoid traditional control decks – Strangeleroot Geist has undying, while Wolvir Avenger has regeneration. Huntmaster of the Fells comes with a  second body, and Sword of War and Peace makes all of these into enormous threats that can blow through nearly any defense.

Delver:

More than either of the previous two, Delver is the barometer of the format. It took 6 of the top 8 spots in the last major standard tournament (at time of this writing) and has taken a huge leap forward with the addition of Restoration Angel to its game plan. At its core, Delver is a tempo deck that relies on casting an early threat and then defending it with inefficient but effective removal and counter magic. The addition of Snapcaster Mage basically allows you to have twice as much removal as you should, and cast it while adding additional pressure to the field. This one-two punch makes it difficult to disrupt Delver and when added to a powerful equipment package, makes the deck extremely potent.

Any deck that wants to make it in standard needs to be able to play on the same stage as these three juggernauts. You need to be able to fight through counter magic, powerful early board presence, and a powerful late game.  You need to be able to fight against 1/1 Inkmoth Nexuses at instant speed, 6/6 Titans before they resolve, Birds of Paradise with Sword equipped on turn 3, and everything in the middle.

If that sounds like a tall order, that’s because it is. Doing all three of these is nearly impossible, which is why the vast majority of good decks don’t. Delver cannot fight against a Wolf Run deck that has already resolved a Titan and found a number of its lands. Instead, it sidesteps the problem by trying to kill them first. This brings us to our next lesson.

Step 2: Have a Game Plan

Many times, I’ll see a beginning deck builder misinterpret this as ‘have a theme’, and that’s not terrible advice. There have been many ‘theme’ decks that have been powerful. Faeries was strong, as was Vampires during Zendikar. Zombies is a powerful ‘theme’ deck, and there are plenty of others. The difference between these decks and most freshman attempts is that these have an underlying plan that points towards victory.

Let’s take a fairly standard Werewolves deck for example. It’s full of creatures that are relatively unassuming on the front side, but extremely dangerous for their cost on the reverse. We have instant speed ways of making them more dangerous in Moonmist, and the vast majority of them cost between 1 and 4 mana. In addition, few of them have a way to survive a board wipe (outside of Full Moon’s Rise). All of this is pointing towards one conclusion – we want to kill them before bad things happen to us. We want to attack, relentlessly, and ideally force them to flail for survival.

So, our plan is to kill them quickly. This means that we want all of our weapons to be able to be their strongest as fast as possible. That means that, although something like Uvenwald Mystics is a potential 5/5 with regeneration for 4 mana, it won’t be able to attack before turn 6. That’s way too slow for us. We want quick and powerful. You know what kind of cards fits that mold?

Ideologically, these cards are the cornerstone of a good werewolf deck. They’re cheap, they’re designed to attack, they get a lot of benefit from their creature types. The Captive even gives us an easy way to flip our werewolves.

A plan can be simple. “Kill Him Quickly” is a plan, but having that plan in place helps us guide our deck to the place that we want to be in by the end of the game. Caw-Blade had an extremely complicated plan involving a mixture of Equipment, Stoneforge Mystic, Jace the Mind Sculptor, and Squadron Hawks. While all the parts rarely came into play simultaneously, they all formed pieces of the puzzle that made it so powerful and nearly unbeatable before its ban.

By comparison, Jund was fairly simple – it focused on casting creatures and spells that gave incredible advantage to their owner by virtue of how the cards worked. Each card you used earned you two of theirs to answer, and at the end of the day – you had cards and they didn’t. It’s not hard to see how to win those games. You bury your opponent in card advantage.

Next time you’re starting to design a deck, start by thinking about what you want to do with it. You could be a ponderously slow control deck, trying to take control of the game before landing a single game ending threat. You could act like a combo deck – surviving until you have the pieces you need to win, but when you’re designing a deck, always keep that plan paramount in your mind.

Step 3: Know what is possible in the format.

I could make up a deck right now and know that it would be terrible. I’m going to play a five color aggressive deck that focuses on flooding the board with powerful one and two drops. We’ll play Stromkirk Noble and Stormblood Berserker from Red, Champion of the Parish from white. Diregraf Ghoul and Gravecrawler in black, Delver of Secrets and Snapcaster Mage in Blue, and finally Birds of Paradise and Strangleroot Geist in Green.

All of the cards I just mentioned are good enough to be played in Standard. Together, they are all terrible.  This deck would rarely get to play cards, let alone win games. In Standard, this deck doesn’t have a reasonable way to cast it’s spells because the mana base is insufficient.

Building a deck requires that the tools be available. Mass Land Destruction is rarely supported in standard. Building White/Black Land Destruction (for example) in the current standard is impossible. The only ways to do such a thing are complex and difficult to actually perform. You should not build a deck based around this idea. By comparison, a deck like tokens has a significant amount of support – there are many token generators in standard, and many effects that gain increased potency from a large number of creatures in play (like Anthem effects such as Intangible Virtue, Favorable Winds, and Honor of the Pure).

When you’re building a deck, take a close look at the card pool and decide – can I even do what I want to in this format? Are the other decks too good? Is my plan easy to execute? Does the mana work?

Obviously, this isn’t everything that there is to deckbuilding, but it’s a start. Ideally, this will get you thinking about what kind of cards and decks you’d be interested in building. From here, we’ll take a look at how to construct a deck and begin to test it for flaws.

-----

An exercise for all of you right now, new player or old. Think of an archetype that you could play in whatever format you’re most familiar with. Make it an archetype that isn’t currently winning, if possible. Post it in the comments (either here or on Reddit) and answer the following questions:

-What is the game plan for this deck?

-Can I accomplish this game plan in the format I have chosen?

-How do I interact with 3 of the major decks in the format?

Modern Nerddom’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Avacyn Restored Game Day

Hey everyone, and welcome to this special Friday edition of Modern Nerddom. This weekend is Avacyn Restored Game Day, and around Reddit, I’ve been noticing plenty of threads and questions regarding this tournament. Since our community is growing pretty rapidly (Over 1000 new people since the last Game Day, if I don’t miss my mark), I figured that a quick primer wouldn’t go amiss.

Building Standard UWr Miracles!

Tuesday, I threw out a pretty simple question regarding this post. Since I didn’t have any tournaments to report on, I figured that my best bet would be to build a deck from scratch and show you all my process. I enlisted suggestions from the community, and you guys came through for me. I had plenty of suggestions to go through to find the one I wanted to work on.

I started the culling process with 9 potential decks and decided to whittle them down with great sweeping cuts in order to give me one deck that would get constructed. It occurs to me that I’ve invented something about as original as a reality TV show by doing this, but hey – it’s not like any of us watch those, right?

Right?

The first category I eliminated was decks that are already showing promise in Standard. These are all decks that I’ve seen plenty of lists for and know back and forth. They’d be interesting entries for later blogs, but when all the work has been done already, it doesn’t seem profitable to try and recreate an untuned list when tuned versions exist already. Based on that, I cut RW Humans, Grixis Kamikaze,  UG Self-Mill (Heebs actually has this deck) and UR Delver (Marshall is running this and reports that it’s a blast).

From there I turned to decks that appeared to be inferior versions of other decks. Mono-Green Infect was interesting, but I don’t think you gain anything at all from being mono-green. You’d be significantly better served by adding Blue for Artful Dodge, at the very least. Wild Defiance is an awesome card though. I also cut UB Zombie Mill for being both a subpar Zombies deck, and a subpar Milling deck. If you want to do one or the other – great! But I don’t think the mixture of the two is going to be viable.

That left us with three finalists on the Island – Ramp Land Destruction, WRb Tokens, and Miracles. While Ramp Land Destruction was clearly the most interesting of the three, I also think that it’s least likely to be viable. The Developers have made a conscious push away from Land Destruction in recent years, which does a lot to damage it as an archetype. I think that the best angle to take for this one is a Beast Within/Bramblecrush/Acidic Slime strategy using Deadeye Navigator to lock them out of the game in conjunction with Mist Raven/Aether Adept and Acidic Slime.

WRb Tokens was a close contender, but I felt it was very similar to the things I’ve done already in all my tokens write-ups. Adding Hellrider and Rally the Peasants are more or less the only changes I’d make, plus stretching the mana base significantly. I can’t see this being much better than just straight BW.

So, Miracles in Standard! If you follow the professional scene at all, you’ll know that the most recent Pro Tour was just played in Barcelona.

Brian Kibler ‏@bmkibler

Not a bad view from the hotel room #PTAVR http://twitpic.com/9jfj97

Man, I really need to win a PTQ.

If you followed the coverage, you’ll also know that it was won by none other than Alexander Hayne, who piloted a block deck that he amusingly called Hallelujah! The deck is a UW Control shell that uses the advantage of extremely powerful draw steps to cause miracles to be less luck and more a simple matter of time. With that said, his version was designed for the block format, and porting it over to Standard will make things a little more powerful, at least in the abstract.

I’m going to start out on a limb here and say that we should change the colors he chose. Hayne played UW straight, but the manabases in block are much more restrictive than what Standard has available.

To that end, I’d like to splash Red for Desolate Lighthouse and Bonfire of the Damned. Both of these cards are extremely powerful effects that synergize very well with the game plan. That, however, is something for later on. For now, I think that we should start with the deck’s primary colors.

White

White has everything a miracle deck needs on a raw-power scale. We get to run Terminus, arguably the most powerful of our miracles, and Entreat the Angels, which will be one of our primary kill conditions. Any spell that makes multiple evasive flyers seems exceptionally good in my books. Because the format is so aggro heavy, I wouldn’t be against running Day of Judgment in some numbers. Any deck running white should have some number of Oblivion Rings as well, simply as a catch all solution to problems.

Some other cards that I think merit consideration are Timely Reinforcements and Gideon. Again, it may seem like overkill against aggressive decks here, but they really are the vast majority of the format, and we should be able to sideboard against control.

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An aside here about deck construction: At most competitive events, there will be a lot of decks, and a lot of rounds. You can usually afford to lose one, sometimes even two, and make it to the top tables. This is because it is impossible to have a winning matchup against every deck in the room. It just doesn’t happen. When it does, something has gone horribly wrong and needs to be banned. If your deck beats everyone, it’s overpowered, and if there isn’t enough diversity in the opposing decks, that’s equally bad. One way or another, someone will beat you. The real question is how to minimize how often that happens.

Back during Caw’s height, right after Splinter Twin hit the scene in a big way, Valakut players were stuck with a problem. They couldn’t beat Splinter Twin. It wasn’t that they were losing more than they were winning – they just couldn’t put a dent in it. They had no defense against a 4-toughness creature that could – allowing only instant speed responses – make infinite copies of itself and kill you while backed up by counterspells. At first, many tried adding tons of Flame Slash and other removal for the deadly combo, just to try and make the matchup into something you could fight.

The breakthrough came later. If Splinter Twin had an 80% game win percent against you, you weren’t going to turn it around without a complete transformational sideboard for them. It wasn’t worth your whole sideboard just to make the matchup 50-50. They ignored the matchup and hoped not to hit it, instead improving their %’s against the rest of the field.

-----

Blue

While the miracles available in white are potent, Blue is where the dynamics of the deck start to come into their fullest. We have Think Twice and Thought Scour to draw cards on their turn. Temporal Mastery serves as a ghetto-Explore, which is just fine. We’re buying time and draw steps, which is all this deck wants to do.

Ponder serves to fix our draws and ensure that we get lands and spells when we’d like them, Devastation Tide is nearly as good as Terminus, and locks the board down in combination with Tamiyo and Gideon.

Red

While red has a number of spells that I’d consider in a deck like this, I’m going to have to say that I don’t think they’re better than the ones we already have. Pillar of Flame is a good answer to a number of relevant threats, but it’s fairly low impact compared to the rest of the deck. Slagstorm is more of a color commitment than I’d be willing to make. Bonfire of the Damned, however, serves as a late game fireball and board wipe all in one. We could do much worse.

On the other hand, once I started actually putting the deck together, I realized that the amount of slots we have for cards is already extremely tight. I found myself cutting core cards to attempt to fit in the Bonfires. It may be correct to do this, but without extensive tests, I wouldn’t be comfortable with it. I cut the Bonfires from the maindeck, leaving us with only a very light splash for Desolate Lighthouse, and a single Bonfire in the sideboard, just in case.

Here’s the deck list that I came up with.

Some of the highlights of the deck include Gideon and Tamiyo, who effectively act as a tag-team. If both of these are on the field at once, it’s very difficult to lose. Tamiyo can tap something down for Gideon to kill. Gideon can taunt their team, allowing Tamiyo to draw you a ton of cards unopposed. Gideon can protect Tamiyo as she builds to her ultimate while protecting Gideon with her own tapdown.

Gideon’s ultimate is perfectly serviceable as a win condition, and Tamiyo’s can also serve as a rapid fire Angel factory with Entreat the Angels, or an alternate win condition with Thought Scour milling their deck dry (when you’re not pointing it at yourself for a virtual Ancestral Recall.)

And while they’re doing this, a single miracle of any sort sets your opponent so far behind that coming back would take something even more miraculous. I can’t explain enough how much these two walkers were made for each other. They dovetail perfectly. I’m considering building a deck designed to emphasize these two even more than they already are.

With 13 main deck aggro hosers, the matchup should be great against any deck that turns guys sideways. Since this is the vast majority of the current metagame, this makes this a very well positioned deck.

On the other hand, I think that we’re very very weak against Control and Ramp. While Control is probably a matchup we don’t need a spectacular amount of hate for, given its relative absence from the metagame, Ramp is pretty much inexcusable. The plethora of bounce and board wipe spells should help there, and we can always shut them out with planeswalkers, but I’m putting some Dissipates in the board to help slow them down. We may not be able to counter Primeval Titans anymore, but we can certainly stop Green Sun’s Zenith and enough Ramp Spells that we’ll get to deploy Tamiyo and Gideon to victory.

I’d wanted to do some testing on Magic Workstation (my online testing service of choice), but unfortunately, my evening last night was booked solid with other things, so I’ll have to leave you with this deck untested. It’s likely far from ideal, and could use some definite tuning, but the principles are there.

During the quarterfinals of the Pro Tour, John Finkel commented that you could probably write a computer program to determine how many times this deck just wins the game. During the last IQ I was at, a Zombies player snap-kept a triple Gravecrawler hand, only to fall victim to the turn 2 Terminus flip. One of the shining words of advice for any format is to do the most unfair thing that you can, and every miracle in this deck does exactly that – gaining massive value for little cost.

Top deck your way to victory, my friends!

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This weekend, I’ll be attending the Redcap’s Corner PTQ in the Philadelphia Convention Center. It starts on Saturday at 10am, and promises to be good fun. The format is Standard. If you’re planning on being there, let me know, and we can chat about our decks. Who knows, maybe you and your deck could be featured here next week! I also hope to attend a Game Day on Sunday, but we'll see how that goes.

This Tuesday will be the first entry in a series aimed mostly at beginning deck builders. We’ll go into some of the fundamentals of building a deck, and talk about some common issues with freshman attempts at putting together a pile of sixty and winning with it.

Thanks for reading, and as always, I’ll be watching the comments for any questions from you guys. Keep reading, and I’ll keep watching.

Scheduling Your Grind

Today we’re going to take a bit of a break from Tournament Reports and Deck Lists and narrow in on something that isn’t often talked about in the Magic Community – finding and scheduling these high-level events. Everything I write in this article is from my own point of view, so if you live in a foreign country, things may be subtly different for you. For certain, the required number of planeswalker points is likely to change, so be wary that your mileage may vary.

When we talk about Grinding, we’re usually referring to going to as many tournaments as possible in a given period, trying to ‘grind out’ rewards related to those tournaments. The first step towards this is determining what’s out there. Here’s a quick overview. The Magic tournament scene is broadly split into three circuits right now, as well as independent events. The first and most well-known of these is the Pro Tour Series.

The Pro Tour Series

The Pro Tour is the crowning event of Magic. Held three times per year in varying locations, they offer the largest payout for a Wizards-run tournament. They are held over multiple days in multiple formats, and often feature names that you’ll hear when running around your local card shop. They’ve also got a pretty significant prize payout - $40,000 for first place, and then staggering downwards to the top 75, who each get $1000.

However, the Pro Tour isn’t something you can just walk into. You need to qualify for it. To that end, there’s three major ways to achieve this. You can Top 25 a Pro Tour, Top 4 a Grand Prix, or win a Pro Tour Qualifier (PTQ). All of those are monumental accomplishments, and represent the goal for a number of aspiring grinders.

A step down from the Pro Tour is a Grand Prix (GP). Held most weekends in varied locations on the globe, they feature an 8x planeswalker point multiplier and two days of play – if you make the cut. In addition, they’re the most prominent tournament that offers byes to players for good play. You can earn between 1 and 3 byes for any given GP. The simplest way to get 3 is to win a Grand Prix Trial (Held in local stores) for the appropriate Grand Prix, though you can also qualify for them through Planeswalker Points. Grand Prix’s are the largest public events in Magic, and can break 1500 attendees regularly.

In addition, there’s the World Cup, which has only been added this year. This is an invite only tournament and has the dubious distinction of being the only tournament that you need to qualify to qualify for. You need to achieve the same number of planeswalker points as you would for a single bye at a GP to Qualify for the World Cup Qualifier – which are held three times per country. Alternatively, you could win player of the year, but the Qualifier seems a bit more likely.

That’s a rough sketch of the Pro Tour Series, but it’s hardly the only show in town.

The Star City Games Open Series

Star City Games is arguably the most well known magic sales hub on the internet. They also happen to run the largest independent tournament series on the market. The Star City Games Open series is basically a fully fledged competitor to the Pro Tour, and has comparable prizes.

The crown jewel in the Open Series is the Invitational. Held four times a year, it pays $75,000 out to the top 64 players, including $15,000 for first prize. However, like the Pro Tour, the Invitational doesn’t allow just anyone to walk in – you need to qualify first. There are broadly four methods of qualification. The first is to place highly at the previous Invitational. You can also win a SCG Invitational Qualifier (which come in three flavors – Normal, Super, and Elite, with increasing prize for each), or accumulate enough Open Points (Star City’s reward program, earned from placing well at their events), and finally, you can perform exceptionally well at an Open.

Star City Opens are to the Invitational what Grand Prixs are for the Pro Tour. They’re open events – no qualification needed – with hundreds of players. There’s one most weekends in some city in the USA. They generally feature two types of events – a Standard Open on Saturday and a Legacy Open on Sunday. Achieving top 8 in either of these will get you an invite to the Invitational of your choice that year.

The TCGPlayer Max Series

While I haven’t participated in any of their events as of the writing of this piece, but from the looks of it, it’s got a healthy following as well. The crown event is a $50,000 championship – paying $12,000 to the top finisher. To get there, you need to earn TCGPlayer points, which are available from tons of events held all around the country. Some stores even run weekly events.

While it appears to be the smallest of the big circuits, it could be true that there’s less interest in them, making the tournaments softer by comparison. Again, I haven’t attended any of their events, so your mileage may vary.

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Now for the real question: Why is this important? Why do we care about all these different tournaments that are being run all around the world? Well, we want to go to some of them! We’ve got a couple of free weekends for the next few months and we want to play some high level magic and maybe see some prizes. If that all sounds fun, then there’s something you should know off the bat.

This stuff gets complicated quick.

I’m not an organized person by nature. In fact, I’m very unorganized. I need to-do lists to keep track of my day-to-day tasks. I keep a notebook on me like it’s a crutch. For me, doing this kind of thing requires preparation. The rest of this article is going to more or less go through my methodology for deciding what I’m doing with my weekends for the next two months. (And it should also give you a reasonable idea about the tournament reports that you can expect to see here on a weekly basis!)

First thing I’m going to do is block off the days that I can’t do anything. Understandably, there’s a fair amount of events going on between now and July that I can’t miss for one reason or another.

June 3 – Brother’s Graduation

June 22-24 – Meeting Girlfriend’s Family

July 6-8 – M13 Prerelease (Weekend at Marshalls)

July 12-14 – Connecticon

Seems easy enough. We just won’t look for events on those days. Next up is to hit the ‘big fish’. These are huge events, and I can’t see anything else interfering with me going to them. Because I played like a madman during the previous planeswalker point season, I have enough points for a single bye to all GP’s, and I have a qualification for the World Cup Qualifier. I generally use www.mtgmom.com to track the dates of important events, so I’ve got that in the background while I do this. It tracks the location of all Pro Tours, GP’s, Star City and TCGPlayer events, which makes it pretty invaluable.  According to that site, the only World Cup Qualifier that I can reasonably go to is in Maryland, and held on the 16^th of June. That’s an open weekend for me, so we’ll slot that into our schedule. I probably won’t win, but it’ll be a fun time, and it’s only a couple of hours drive.

Always check the details of a big event like this, because there might be more interesting things going on. For example, the World Cup Qualifier is a two day event if you make Top 8, so I’ll have to plan to either have a hotel room, or drive there and back if I turn out to make Top 8. Checking the event’s website, it looks like there’s going to be a PTQ on Sunday – so even if I don’t make the Top 8, I’ll likely still want to be there. I’ll plan on getting a hotel room for the night – they have a deal with the event so that it’s less than 100 dollars with a complimentary breakfast thrown in, which is probably cheaper than driving there and back twice, including tolls – and it’s certainly easier on my mind if I don’t need to wake up at 6am to be there by registration.

The other major event on my calendar for this period is GP Atlanta. Pop has agreed to go with me, so we’ll be spell slinging for the weekend in Legacy fashion. I’ve still not 100% settled on a deck, but preliminary results seem to be pointing at a Burn deck. I don’t know legacy too well, so a strong linear deck might just be the best option. This is taking place on June 30-31, but we’ll need to fly out on the 29^th to be there in the morning. Note to self, book hotel, book your plane flight.

The schedule now looks like this:

May 25-27 – n/a

June 1 -3 – Brother’s Graduation

June 8-10 – n/a

June 15-17 – Magic World Cup Qualifier

June 22-24 – Meeting Girlfriend’s Family

June 29-July 1 – GP Atlanta

July 6-8 – Weekend at Marshalls

July 12-14 – Connecticon

We have three weekends free during this period, and with all the travel that I’m going to be doing, I don’t think I’m going to want to do a ton of long-distance travel during those. I check the weekends on MTGMom to find out if anything is really local. The 26^th of May is a PTQ in my hometown, run by my home shop. It’s literally within walking distance of my apartment, so we can add that to the list. June 8-10 has nothing worth noting.  I’d like to have something on June 8-10 so that I’m at least warmed up for the Qualifier the following weekend. MTGMom doesn’t count GPT’s as major events, and so doesn’t list them. You need to use locator.wizards.com for that – search for Grand Prix Trials.

A quick search for premier events on that weekend in my area reveals that two stores are having a double GPT Saturday. I very much prefer Ron’s Comic World for that even though Top Deck Games is closer, though the two affiliated GP’s for either aren’t exactly within travel distance. I’ve got options here, but I’ll leave it up to me on those dates to decide if it’s worth going to. Sometimes you should leave flex in your schedule to account for being tired, sick, or just not feeling like playing Magic. Burnout is a real thing, and you need to take your mental fatigue into account whenever you have major events coming up.

On a lark, I do a quick check for the weekends that I’m not available, and I find something interesting. My brother’s graduation is on Sunday, in New York, and I’ll be traveling up through NJ on the Saturday before. As a result, I’ll be passing by a major event being held in Edison NJ – a $5,000 TCGPlayer Tournament. It starts early in the morning, so if I go and play in it, I can leave as soon as I’m reasonably out of the prize running (or if I win) and head home for dinner. It’s not something I’m married to, idea wise, but it’s certainly a possible thing I could do if I’m in the mood to that weekend.

Also, the weekend of Connecticon isn’t going to be a bust, Magic-wise, because there’s a number of events being held there by Star City Games – including an Elite Qualifier. I’ll most likely play in something, but I wouldn’t want to miss too much of the convention itself, so I’ll make that call once I see the program for the convention.

May 25-27 – Redcap’s Corner PTQ

June 1 -3 – Brother’s Graduation

June 8-10 – (Double GPT Weekend at Ron’s)

June 15-17 – Magic World Cup Qualifier

June 22-24 – Meeting Girlfriend’s Family

June 29-July 1 – GP Atlanta

July 6-8 – Weekend at Marshalls

July 12-14 – Connecticon

Seems like a busy couple of months, but it should also be extremely exciting. Just based on that list, I’ll be traveling to a state I’ve never been to, flying on my own for the first time, playing in two of the biggest tournaments of my life, and all of that wrapped up in a couple of very significant life events. I’m going to be exhausted and running off adrenaline for half of the time, but I couldn’t be more thrilled for the whole thing.

Wish me luck, and check back on Thursday, where I’ll be building a Standard deck from scratch – including sideboard and a few test matches against the top decks in the format. What deck, you might ask? Well, that’s up to you guys! Let me know in the comments section, either here or on Reddit, what kind of deck you’d like to see my construct. I’ll take the suggestion that I like the best, and we’ll see it come to life on Thursday.

Also, a question for the community. I generally have been using Thursdays to write articles on Tournament Reports and Deck Techs, but I've gotten a few comments from people saying that those have gone over their head a bit because they're not as experienced with deckbuilding. How would you guys feel about Tuesdays becoming an introductory deckbuilding series? Again, let me know in the comments - both here and on Reddit.

Top 8 at SCG: IQ with BW Tokens!

I’ll be honest. I didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning.

I'd just won a GPT for Atlanta, had a nice dinner with the girlfriend, and settled in for the night. As is becoming a perennial issue with me, I hated my sideboard from the day before. Despite my win, I was unhappy with my performance against RG aggro the day before. I felt like half of the slots in my sideboard weren’t going to do anything against any decks.

Worst, the tournament was about an hour away by car, and Facebook told me that it started at 1030. That meant that I’d want to be there by 10, which meant leaving before 9, getting up at 830. This was getting to be a production and I hadn’t even gone to bed the night before yet.

I turned off my alarm.

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It’s 8am and I’m wide awake. The room is warm – which happens when you both have a couple extra beers the night before and then pass out on top of each other. She’s up too, and she looks at the clock.

“Well, looks like you’re going to the tournament after all.”

Looks like.

I drive up to the shop, just before 10. I figure I’ve got half an hour to root through my commons and uncommons to find some better sideboard cards, plus rearrange the maindeck for a more general meta. The tournament is a Star City Games invitational.

And no one is there.

I pull out my smartphone, check the event on facebook. 1030am-8pm. Seems about right. I wait for five minutes and the store owner shows up.

“Hey,”

“Hey, isn’t there an event today?”

“Yea. Starts at noon.”

I check the phone again.

“It says 10:30.”

“That’s when we open. First pairings are noon.”

The girlfriend finds this amusing.

“Looks like you’ve got time for breakfast and sideboard.”

Looks like.

 I fiddle with the deck for a while, eating a pack of Pop-Tarts: strawberry, with frosting. Anyone who likes another flavor better is just wrong. I pull the Revoke Existences out of the deck. Sure, they’re versatile, but I’m not really using all the spots anyway, and I’d rather use twice as many spots on instant speed removal, if it comes down to that. I add in a couple of Divine Offerings and Ray of Revelation.

You’re still not running any green sources.

Oh right. Wouldn’t want to be an idiot and run a spell I couldn’t actually use. I pull out my phone again, searching for any white card in standard that references enchantments at instant speed. The list is not overwhelming, but I don’t want to mess with my mana base with only an hour or two before a tournament. That’s not the kind of audible that actually ever helps. I look over the cards on the list, not finding anything worth playing, and then I spot one.

“I’ll be right back.”
I rummage through commons, find some, and slot the cards into the deck and shake my head.
"Take a look at this," I tell the store owner.
"That card looks pretty bad."
"Yea, but I think it's right."

I register the following.

Some explanations:

First, I disliked the Angel of Jubilation yesterday. He’d done good work, but he’d never done something that Hero of Bladehold couldn’t have served, and there were definitely times where Hero would have done the job better. I dropped them out of the main deck, only to add them in as I looked around the room and saw a ton of Naya variants. Maybe being able to turn off Pod incidentally would be pretty good. I added one back in.

My earlier search for enchantment removal only turned up one servicible candidate in standard. Urgent Exorcism. This card has got to be terrible, but it serves its purpose. Instant speed enchantment destruction wins the Tokens mirror in ways that sorceries never can. Plus, it lets me have an instant speed answer to Drogskull Captain, which could be relevant if anyone actually played that card anymore. Spirits seems like such a good deck. Why don’t more people run it? Probably corrosive gale. Good thing no one runs that either. Both of those cards hurt me a ton.

The rest of the cards in the sideboard are justified with a  mix of “I guess that could be useful in this corner case” and “This is never going to actually help, but it looks reasonable.” I need sideboarding lessons. I’m god-awful at it. Good thing my game 1 strategy is solid.

Pairings go up, and we’re off to the races. 28 people in the room means 5 rounds, then top 8.

Round 1 vs Ben (Esper Control)

Always watch them shuffle. At a competitive event, you can learn a lot about a person by how they conduct themselves. Ben knew his deck, how it fit in his hands. He was comfortable playing. His mat was this custom-looking two-entwined-dragons thing.  On the other hand, he let me know his deck – flashing me the bottom of his stack of cards while he shuffled. Seachrome Coast, Liliana of the Veil. I couldn’t have gotten a better read on him if I’d seen his deck list. Kids, some advice, don't shuffle with the bottom of your deck pointing at your opponent. He will begin to keep hands that murder you.

We joked around about the die roll for a few minutes before the clock started and we drew our starting seven. I beat on him for a bit with a Doomed Traveler, but we can both tell that my offensive pressure if having trouble punching through his Lingering Souls stall tactics. He hits 5 mana his health on 10, then 6 with his health on 8. Then plays a Ratchet Bomb.

Boom.

I flashback my Lingering Souls and start to rebuild, but he's tapping his mana again. Sun Titan into Phantasmal Image into Ratchet Bomb.

Boom. Ouch.

I scoop shortly after that, and we’re off to the sideboards. I find one card there that seems helpful, and even that appears marginal. If he’s running O-rings, Shrine is probably not as good as I’d hope. Oh well.

Game two, he mulligans, and then keeps the second hand after agonizing over it a bit.

“Island, Thought Scour me, Go.”

He mills two lands.

“Plains, Champion, Go.”

“Thought Scour me.” He mills a third land and a Sun Titan. “Go.”

My eyebrows perk up.

“No second land?”

He shakes his head. “Nope. Seems pretty dumb now.”

Nevertheless, he makes it a fight with a pair of Ratchet Bombs. I’m trying to kill him before he gets back into the game, but he nevertheless gets to 5 mana staring down lethal on my next turn. He taps the deck. “Just a land…” he whispers. I know what’s coming. Ratchet Bomb in the yard, Sun Titan in hand, and me with half a dozen tokens on the field. He lands the Sun Titan and he stabilizes at 5 life.

He draws the card, flips the Seachrome Coast, tapped, and sighs. Game Three.

He’s not in this one. I kill him on turn 5 despite a Lingering Souls as defense. The Champion beats keep coming, and he’s sided out his spot removal. One of the best parts about BW Tokens is the diversity of threats. With Champions and Heros, they need to have spot removal, or you can just run them over. However, that same spot removal is lackluster at best against the 2-for-1 token generation that the rest of the deck is built on. It’s a problem, and I’m not sure what the solution is. Luckily, I’m playing the problem, so I don’t have to deal with it.

1-0   (2-1 in games)

Round 2 – Kevin Stenborg with UW Delver

I went against Kevin last time I was at an Invitational. He was playing RB Vampires and I beat him 2-0, but the games were closer than I’d like, primarily because of Shrine. I’d talked to him earlier, and I knew he was on Delver. I also knew he was dreading the Tokens matchup.

As soon as I walk over to the table, he sees me and hangs his head. Sorry man.

“Let’s try some shenanigans,” he says while he cuts my deck, eight different ways, then takes the top seven cards and puts them on the bottom. “Got any shuffle effects?”

“Nope,” I respond – forgetting about my evolving wilds. “We’ll have to check what they were at the end of the game.

The end of the game is pretty soon after that. My scorepad reads “20-18-11-4-Win”. I don’t know what the sequence of play was, but I never took a point of damage. No idea what it could have been except a not-close game.

The bottom 7 was 2 Champions, 2 Gathers, a Hero, a Lingering Souls, and a Midnight Haunting. No lands. Guess those shenanigans hurt a bit. I sideboard in some Timely Reinforcements, taking out Doomed Travelers.

He does better the second game, but after I Oblivion Ring the first Delver, he’s got second Delver that refuses to flip for 6 turns. I end the game on 9 life, having never played a flyer. Sometimes, that’s the breaks.

2-0   (4-1 in games)

Round 3 – Mario with RB Zombies

When he plays the Diregraf Goul on turn 1, I’m estatic.

“What?” he asks.

“I actually have sideboard cards against you! That never happens!”

He looks a little confused, but we play on.

The first game doesn’t go his way. I start faster than him and he’s on the defensive right away. As a tip, if you’re playing a RB aggressive tribal deck, being on the defensive is NOT a good thing. You should avoid that if possible in the future.

As a second tip, if you’re against a Tokens player, and he has a board presence and a Vault of the Archangel running, you’re probably not coming back. I gained 8 life, then 7 life, ending at 25 when I finish off the first game.

I pull out my Oblivion Rings and bring in the Celestial Purges. I need to maintain some board presence, so I don’t want to side out threats for additional removal, but upgrading the removal I have seems just fine.

This game really slams home how unfair the lifelink on Vault is. I cast 3 spells the whole game – Champion of the Parish, Intangible Virtue, and Lingering Souls (once, not flashback.) He on the other hand, amassed a slew of zombies and a Phyrexian Obliterator. With vigilance, evasion, and lifelink, what should have been a blowout turned into a gentle race that ended with me comfortably two turns from death.

3-0   (6-1 in games)

Round 4 & 5

Because of the relatively high number of draws, followed by a relatively high number of pair-downs losing in previous rounds, the top 4 undefeated people were safe to double draw into the Top 8. I took my time to go and get some Subway and creep on a friend of mine who was playing a GWr Ramp Deck focused around Sigarda and other cool nonsense like that. He ended up at a disappointing 3-2 for the day, but missed the top 8.

3-0-2 (6-1 in games)

Round 6 – Kamikaze

 I’d read about this deck online. It uses Blood Artist and zombies to set up a Killing Wave for a pseudo-combo finish. It’s apparently been making some waves, but I’d never actually played against it in practice. Just judging from what I saw in these games, I think it’s the real deal, but I’d have to play against it more. I suspect it might be a deck with a favorable matchup against us, but we can probably board to kill it effectively.

He starts game one with a Gravecrawler, and I’m already generally pleased because I’ve got a ton of tokens to clog the board up with. Late game favors us immensely in the Zombie matchup, but all that fades when he casts Blood Artist on turn 2.

“What’s that do?” I ask, motioning at the card.

“Whenever a creature dies, I gain one, you lose one.”

“Seems decent,” I respond.

And the game goes on. A few turns later, he’s attacking with a Geralf’s Messenger, which I block and kill with a token.

“I’ll gain two, you lose two, then you lose two more from Geralf’s coming back?”

I look down at the table, then at the Blood Artist. “Each creature? Not just yours?”

“Yep.”

“That card seems nuts.”

“He’s pretty good.” He admits.

I draw for my turn, it’s a Swamp. I’ve got 8 power and toughness in the air, and he’s on 13. If I attack, he’ll be dead in two turns. I have four lands in play. I have a Vault of the Archangel and the Swamp in hand. Then, then unthinkable happens.

“Land for turn,” I declare, dropping the Swamp.

Yep, you read that right.

I stare at the Swamp, willing for it to be the Vault of the Archangel that would let me gain 8 life and be well out of reach of any kind of nonsense. Sadly, my psychic powers haven’t progressed to that level quite yet, and it remains a basic land. I attack for 8 and pass my turn.

He checks his life pad. “You’re at 9?”

“Yep.”

“Blood Artist, Killing Wave on 0?”

“Okay…”

“I’ll sacrifice everything. You take 10. I’ll gain 10?”

“…..huh. So I’m dead?”

“Looks like.”

Looks like.

I couldn’t tell you why I did it. I’d planned the Vault. I’d even not played it early, to goad him into trying to race when I secretly had 8 life more than he thought I did. The game was over – I just needed to actually remember how to play my own cards.

I win the second game with a quick start off a Champion, despite another misplay involving not blocking with a mortarpod, then sacrificing it directly after combat. Taking 4 damage for no reason is the best way to lose games, but thankfully, he draws dead and I beat him.

Game three, I look at my hand. Two Honor of the Pure, a Champion of the Parish, a Hero of Bladehold, a Plains, and two Lingering Souls. Plenty of gas, and a Champion to boot! Oh, it’s a one lander? I’m on the draw. Everything will be fine.

“Land, Diregraf, go.”

I draw. Another Hero. No problem.

“Land, Champion, go.”

“Land, Gravecrawler, Tragic Slip, beat for two?”

Oh no. I draw. Midnight Haunting.

“Pass.”

“Really?”

I look down at my hand and sigh. “Yep.”

“Sometimes your deck doesn’t get there man.”

“Looks like.”

He was wrong. Not about what he said – sometimes your deck just doesn’t get there. That’s true. But I’m willing to say that it’s happening a lot less than you think it does. You’re failing your deck far more than it fails you, and this was an iconic example of it. I’m not the world’s best player. I don’t think I overreach in saying that I’m good, and that I’ll find most of the lines of play that I should be taking, but every so often, I’ll have a match like this. No matter what I do, it seems like I make the wrong play, or the play that runs right into something I knew was there, or don’t take the obvious line like “Block with Mortarpod, Sacrifice before damage to kill your Blood Artist,” or “Don’t keep the terrible one-land hand.”

Unsurprisingly, he crushed me in the rest of that game with a very mediocre draw. I never got him below 20, and never hit my third land. I screwed that match up horribly, and I knew it. What I didn’t know was why.

I still managed to Top 8 the tournament, which was nice. I earned my second Top 8 pin from IQ’s, and I’ll certainly be participating in them again – I’d love to earn an invite to the Invitational one way or another. Still, I can’t help but think that I was *right there*. I win that round, and I’ve got one more against a miracle-y control deck that I think I could beat if I just didn’t overextend too hard. Top 2 drew, and that was that.

And you misplayed and missed it.

Take that, brain. Play better next time. Maybe you’ll learn something here.

As for you, reader, maybe you’ll learn something here too. When you’re in a game, if you remember this, slow down. Think. Look at the cards in your hand and actually use your brain. Look for the line you missed. Don’t just drop your lands like they’re not the important things in your deck. Don’t nod and say “Yep,” when your opponent does something, unless you’re sure you don’t actually want to block with that Mortarpod.

-----

I’ve gotten some questions about a few cards over the last week or so, and I’d like to touch on them.

The Fours

Hero of Bladehold, Angel of Jubilation, and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad made up a trio of cards that are all extremely awkward in Tokens for one reason or another.

Sorin is slow, giving us either a 1/1 useless creature on turn 4, or half an anthem that I’d usually pay half as much for (and get twice the value, if not more.) He can grind out a ton of value against  UB Control – if you can slip him past counterspells – but otherwise, he seems nearly useless to me. I would not play him.

Angel of Jubilation has a lot of promise, and I say that because I think she’ll be great once we get our next rotation and lose Hero of Bladehold. She pumps our team, and she turns off a couple of critical spells (all of which are from the Mirrodin block, ironically, but hey, who knows what’s coming.) Plus, she’s a reasonable threat all on her own that gets bonuses from half our anthems. Seems great, and she is, when you’re winning. When you’re ahead, casting an Angel closes out the game – often giving them one less draw than they’d otherwise have. Plus, she’s very reasonable against removal, often having an immediate effect on the board even if they have sorcery speed removal (and a lot of the instant speed stuff won’t hit her.) There’s only one reason she’s not a 3-4 of in my deck.

Hero of Bladehold is insane. She’s a 3/4, which invalidates just about all the nonblack removal in the game. She gets benefits from both your anthems – her tokens take Intangible Virtue buffs – and she’s easier on the mana than Angel is (with one less white mana.) While she doesn’t have evasion, you generally don’t need it when you’re the most dangerous thing you can do with 4 mana since Jace the Mind Sculptor. Hero of Bladehold is the real deal, and you should all be playing her in your tokens deck – three of, if not four, depending on how many 4’s you want to play.

Blood Artist + Killing Wave

After seeing Kamikaze in action, I’ve got to say that I’m impressed. Blood Artist makes every combat into a miserable experience full of loathing. Zombies can just trade away creatures like they’re nothing, and laugh hysterically as you try to come back. The combo-finish with Killing Wave is just icing on the cake.

If only I had a deck that played tons of relatively disposable creatures that also happened to run black mana for Blood Artist and Killing Wave…

Wait.

Wait, I know this one.

This merits testing. Luckily, I have some people who play magic on tap, and I’ll be prodding them for test games in the near future.

Entreat the Angels

My conclusion on this card is simple. How much are you going to get out of it? Well, I took a look at my games this weekend and counted out how many of them went beyond 7 turns. The answer was virtually none of them. I say virtually because there was a game against control that went past that, but it was during a Ratchet Bomb lock, and so that doesn’t really count. Since my version of the deck doesn’t go late, nearly as a rule, we’ve got to look at this spell for its miracle cost alone, which seems much better. Unfortunately, though, I don’t think it has what we need. I think it misses the cut for the same reasons that Elspeth isn’t in the mainboard. This is a powerful linear strategy. Entreat plays well with the strategy, but isn’t ultimately aggressive enough for use here. Maybe if the deck slows down dramatically for some reason in the future, but as for now, don’t bother.

A Splash of Nature

Something I’ve been thinking about recently has been splashing green. I think that I could do it with little cost, and it would let me run Ray of Revelation in the sideboard, or naturalize. Both of these seem like much better options for the current metagame than Revoke Existence or Urgent Exorcism, but I’ll have to play with it to see. I suspect it won’t be possible to do this and Blood Artist/Killing Wave, and it may be true that neither is actually good enough to improve the main deck.

Thanks for reading everyone. Next Thursday, we’ll take a look at a new brew from AVR – something non-token-y for a change! If you’ve got any suggestions, please throw them in the comments, and I’ll be sure to see what I can do.