Yards Pale Ale - A Legacy Deck for GP Atlanta

This weekend, I’ll be flying down to Georgia for GP Atlanta. For those that remember, a few months ago, I won a Grand Prix Trial, earning three byes for the main event. I personally find it useful to set a goal for the trip – something that I can reasonably accomplish that will make me satisfied with my performance. This time around, I’m looking to make Day 2 of the event, requiring an X-2 record in the Swiss, or better. For a format that I don’t have much experience in, that’s a fairly tall order, but nothing that I can’t do with tight play and a little bit of luck.

My brave companion for this weekend is the esteemable Pop. Pop is a friend of mine since High School, and remains one of the better tournament players that I know. He hasn’t played in many competitive REL events, but he’s certainly got the chops to do well. At a PTQ last weekend, he played an unfamiliar deck to a 6-2 record. His play style generally veers towards the Spikey end of the spectrum, generally preferring Sun Titan Nonsense in standard. This weekend, he’ll be sleeving up a Maverick list, and start by battling without byes. He’s stated in no uncertain terms that his goal for the tournament is to end with a better record than me. While a little nervous about the financial worth of the trip, he has nevertheless been testing day and night with the crew from Comic Book Depot, in Wantagh NY.

As for me, those of you who read this blog often will know that I am not a Legacy player. I’ve only really played with Burn before, and don’t know the format nearly as well as I should. As a result, I turned to my best deckbuilder – Marshall.

Marshall loves legacy. He loves everything about it. He loves casting Brainstorms, and attacking with Merfolk, and Lava Spiking people to their face, and absurd combo decks that none of us would ever play. He hasn’t (to my knowledge) participated in any large legacy events, but he still has half a dozen fully updated lists built at all times, with more available if he cannibalizes other nearby decks. If I'm going to be playing Legacy, this is the man that I want to suggest a deck for me.

When I talked to Marshall, our first thought was to simply build Burn and send me with that. It would certainly have been the cheapest and easiest option, plus it was relatively simple to pilot. I’ve never been a huge fan of mountains, but the deck had put up good results recently, so I was feeling reasonable about it. Then Griselbrand rose in Legacy, and combo decks started looking more and more dangerous. I wasn’t thrilled with burn to start with, despite the power level, and these changes gently pushed me in the way of something else.

And frankly, brewing is fun! So we set to work. I offered up a couple of lists to Marshall – mostly White Weenie decks and Death & Taxes style builds from Legacy tournaments in the last few months. My comfort zone for playing Magic has always been Aggro decks with some support, so these seemed reasonable. Marshall countered with a Deadguy Ale build – a white weenie shell, supported by heavy black discard. It seemed strong, so I told him to brew.

He came back with this.

Yards Pale Ale is a riff off of Deadguy Ale, built by Marshall himself to address certain trends in the overall metagame while still presenting a strong plan A. I’ve played around with this deck on Workstation, just testing to see how it feels, and let me tell you, the deck has some pretty incredible disruption behind it. With a strong draw, you can land-lock your opponent, sculpt his hand, and control the field with the always-powerful Stoneforge package. I’m not going to go card-by-card, but let’s look at a few of the aspects of this powerful deck.

AEther Vial

This card allows me to break all the rules. If you cast it on Turn 1 on the play, it often baits a Force of Will, just because of the huge amount of pressure that it puts on the game. Giving you multiple free mana per turn is strong, but in combination with instant-speed, it becomes a heavy hitter. Opponent tapped out? Seems like a good time to play an instant-Stoneforge Mystic.  He cast Show and Tell? Good thing I have an instant speed Tidehollow Sculler to stop it. The amount of power that a single AEther Vial exerts on the game can’t be overstated.

Disruption

One of the most interesting parts about the deck is that very few of the creatures are simple beaters. Each of them has significant roles to play. Thalia provides a way to stop combo decks, while Bone Shredder is a grade-A answer to Emrakul and Progenitus being show-and-telled into play. Tidehollow Sculler gives us backup discard spells, and Mangara of Corondor is a catch all for pesky permanants (which combos with Karakas to be an incredible repeatable-removal lock.) Dark Confidant draws the additional cards needed to bury an opponent in Card Advantage, and Stoneforge Mystic provides a kill condition.

Two cards stand out as notable outliers: Serra Avenger and Mirran Crusader. With the general uptick in Lingering Souls, having a 3/3 vigilant flyer to drop a Jitte onto is invaluable, and Jitte only gets better when you add Mirran Crusader to the mix. Black and Green are two very relevant protection colors – with Goyfs, Knights, and Nimble Mongeese running rampant. Not to mention that he can swing past any of the non-Iona reanimation targets and get those last points of damage in.

Stoneforge

Batterskull and Jitte are legacy staples. Both of them are extremely powerful in their own right, and the ability to cheat one into play past any countermagic (at any point, with a Vial in play!) is equally potent. With powerful attackers like Thalia, Serra Avenger and Mirran Crusader, they become even more terrifying. How is a Maverick Deck supposed to beat a Mirran Crusader with a Batterskull attached?

Discard

While answers to the rest of the deck exist, the thing that really pushes the deck over the edge is the discard package. Hymn to Tourach is insane right now. Discarding two cards at random on turn two takes even the best hands and makes them suspect. Combined with an early inquisition, you can very well take whatever game plan they had and eradicate it, putting them into top-deck mode far earlier than they would like, all while drawing extra cards off Dark Confidant. Tidehollow Sculler allows you to time-walk them at this point, while adding to your clock while giving a potent effect (in a fashion very reminiscent of Snapcaster Mage).

If I were to complain about anything in the deck, it would be the clock. Sometimes, you feel like despite having board presence and cards in hand, a good topdeck could drag them right back into it because you lack the ability to close games out quickly. There is no 10/10 Knight of the Reliquary swinging, or 3/2 flying from turn 1. If you're going to win, you're going to need to grind them out, and that's often a high order.

Our sideboard is a little speculative. I haven’t had time to do significant testing against a full gauntlet of ‘best decks’ but I’m quickly learning the ins and outs of various matchups by grinding on Workstation. (If you use Workstation and you're on tonight, look for Sadrach). Tomorrow, I fly out right after work, and return on Sunday evening. If you’d like to follow my exploits, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@ajrula), where I’ll be posting live results of my own (and Pop’s) rounds - plus any other shenanigans that we get up to in the deep South.

To any other players who are going to be at GP Atlanta, feel free to stop by one of my matches, or message me (Twitter or Reddit) letting me know who you are, and I’ll swing by one of your tables to say hi.

Best of luck this weekend to all of you, and may all your topdecks be great.

-Andrew

Deckbuilding 101: Mulligan with a Plan

Let’s play a game.

You’re sitting down at a Saturday Standard Shootout. You’ve never been to this shop before, and you’ve got no idea what anyone is playing. Your deck is a honed weapon of destruction in your preferred style of play (Combo-Control) and round one is just starting.

You think back to last night, when you were agonizing over those last two slots, and you’re not sure if you ever resolved the issue to satisfaction. Still – the deck’s core is an extremely powerful engine. (Well, three engines…) and you know that a reasonable hand will get you there. Your decklist sits on the counter next to you, and you peer at it.

The deck works off of three separate engines. The first is the Heartless Summoning engine that makes all of your spells undercosted and allows you to accelerate out your midrange creatures. The second is the Grand Architect Engine that lets you generate an impossibly high amount of mana and cast a single enormous creature – often with a game-winning effect. Finally, there’s the Havengul Lich plan, which often involves reanimating your dead creatures for immense additional value, but can also be used in combination with Perilous Myr and Heartless Summoning to deal 2 damage for 1 mana, until your mana sources run out (or, more likely, your opponent and everything he cares about is dead.)

Round 1

Your first foe extends his hand. “Good luck man.” You nod and smile, extending your own greeting. You finish randomizing your deck and pass it back before picking up your own and drawing your first seven. You are on the draw.

The hidden card is an island

Do you keep this hand?

This doesn’t seem bad at all. You have an early play in Perilous Myr, and by drawing only a single mana source in the first three turns, you’ve got access to both Architects and Treasure Mage, allowing you to have something powerful in play by Turn 5. You have a redundant Architect in case the first is killed. You have, in short, a game plan.

Most people have learned to mulligan if they don’t have a reasonable number of lands-to-spells. People know that “Six Lands and a Vapor Snag” is not a good hand. Just like they know that you shouldn’t (generally) keep One-Land-Hands. Both situations just put you so far behind if you don’t draw exactly what you need in a timely manner. When looking at a hand, determine if you can clearly see the line of play that leads to a win.

For this hand, we can see that we’re going to attempt to stall the field with Perilous Myr until we draw a land of any sort. Then we will cast Grand Architect and Treasure Mage, searching for an appropriate threat depending on our opponent’s deck. This could be a Platinum Empirion, or a Steel Hellkite, a Wurmcoil Engine, etc. Havengul Lich exists in the hand as a very late-game option, but we may not even have to use it.

Seems like a coherent plan, in my book. Luckily, our opponent agrees, and gets stuck on two lands in both games and never casts a spell. Our Empirion runs over him and loses. It must be nice to have good opening hands.

Round 2

You’re feeling great. Your first hand was awesome and you won. You must be great at this game. Unfortunately, you lose the first game after he reanimates an Elesh Norn on turn 3. Frites is a scary deck and does that sometimes. You sideboard for a moment and get ready for the second game. Draw your seven:

Do you keep this hand?

No. You do not. I don’t think this honestly even merits discussion. There are no lands in this hand, and it’s clogged with expensive spells. You’ll need to draw two lands to even be in the game at all, and more than likely still lose because this hand has no coherent plan at all.

Let’s just consider this for a minute. You are running a 60 card deck, including 23 lands. You have drawn 7 cards, none of which are lands, leaving 23 of 53 in your deck. That gives you a 43% chance to draw a land. That’s not so bad! Nearly half!

Stop. Consider that that’s a 57% chance to instantly lose the game on the spot. If you get the first land, you still need to hit the 42% chance for the second land (22 of 52.) Combine those, and we’ll get a nice round 18% chance of hitting your first two lands in your first two turns. You have a worse than one in five chance of even getting to cast a spell by turn two. The spell is a combo piece, and does not directly let you survive. I cannot state how bad this hand is. Standard is not a format where you can durdle around and wait for land drops. That happens in Limited – sometimes, if you’re very lucky.

I suppose this is Karma for the first match…

You mulligan the hand away and keep a good six, barely able to come back and win the game. Game three begins and you draw your opening hand:

This hand has lands and spells we can cast with those lands. It must be keepable, right?

Let’s consult our guiding principle here – what is the plan to win the game if this is our opening hand?

We’re going to play some lands, then cast spellskite, protecting ourselves with Doom Blade and our 0/4 blocker until….something else happens, because we’re pretty much out of plays here. We have no way to cast Myr Superion in our hand, Metamorph can’t copy anything that’s relevant to our side – so we’re restricted to being a 3 mana copy of whatever they’re doing, and Wurmcoil Engine needs four lands to even touch the battlefield.

Yes, the hand could develop well, with a Heartless Summoning or a Grand Architect and a land, but we cannot count on that.

Round 3:

After your crushing defeat to the Frites player, you come to round 3, the final round in the shootout. You’re out of the prize standings, but you’re still in it for the honor and the glory and the planeswalker points. You sit down and pull your opening hand:

This should be a clear keep. You have mana, you have a clear line of play that is extremely powerful, putting a 5/6 into play on turn 3, backed up by Grand Architect – and with a Treasure Mage to follow the next turn. If you draw into something with Ponder, all the better. This hand seems resilient, and hard to deal with. I would keep it under almost any circumstances. You are a good player, and do the same, earning victory in the first game.

But now sideboards come into play. You agonize over the decision for a bit before shuffling up and presenting your deck. When you draw your opening seven though, you nearly cry out in joy!

Sometimes, things just fall into place for you. This hand has a great plan, capable of defending itself with Heartless Summoning and Perilous Myr. It has an aggressive stance with Grand Architect and Treasure Mage to find a significant threat. It has both colors of mana you’ll need to win the game, and a sufficient number of them to cast the majority of your deck. This is the best hand you could hope for.

 A great general rule for magic is that the chances of you drawing whatever you need are about half as good as you actually think they are. You cannot rely on luck to win a game, match, or tournament. You may get lucky, but you can’t rely on it to bail you out. The best way to get lucky is to make good decisions.

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I’ll leave you with this last image – a puzzle of sorts. These are all hands from an actual tournament played by my friend Marshall last weekend. They were given to me without context of what he did and did not keep. I know he eventually took second place, losing in the finals of the tournament to a Delver deck.

This last hand is a question to all of you. You are on the draw against a Naya Pod list and you see the following seven:

Do you keep? Talk about it in the comments, or over on Reddit. On Thursday, it's Tournament Preparation time, and we'll have a spicy Legacy Decklist that I'll be bringing over to GP Atlanta!

PTQ 20th with BW Tokens, and WMCQ Tournament Report!

I woke up. It was dark, with the horizon just starting to gleam with the light of Saturday. The bed was warm, but I had miles to go before I could sleep again – literally. I got up, got dressed, gassed up the car and grabbed some food for the road.

Maryland, here we come.

Last weekend was the final qualifier in the USA for the World Magic Cup. Designed as a replacement for Nationals, the World Magic Cup is a team event with four players representing each country. Three of our champions had already been chosen: LSV, Brian Kibler, and Alex Binek. The fourth would be decided by morning. Frankly, I hoped that it would be me.

The drive was shorter than I anticipated, and upon arriving, I caught up with some of the other players. My list had changed subtly on the suggestion of Marshall, cutting a land and an Angel of Jubilation for a maindeck Timely Reinforcements. This more approximated the curve that a lot of MTGO Tokens results were using, and given the prevalence of Delver in the metagame at the moment, we figured that the Timely Reinforcements would play a good role in game 1.

Here’s the list for the WCMQ:

Don’t use this list. There’s going to be a better one later. I promise.

After catching up with some friends (Shoutout to Mark, who I’d played against in the Philly PTQ), we sat down for the players meeting – 186 players, which meant 8 rounds of Magic, followed by a Top 8. The World Magic Cup Qualifiers had been poorly attended all across the country, since the payout was just so small in comparison to some of the other events. Furthermore, there was almost no publicity at all. Frankly, it just seemed like a glorified PTQ with cash prizes instead of packs. After talking to the Tournament Organizer (who was spectacular all weekend. Seriously, someone should give this woman a prize for being so organized. I’ve never had rounds run that smoothly) and some other people, it became evident that they were expecting something in the way of twice as many people as actually arrived. I’m sure that was disappointing for her. Here’s hoping that Wizards does something to promote the events more like a GP and less like a GPT.

REL Competitive meant that all the general fudgeyness with Lapsing triggers was in effect. I should really do an article about the differences between Regular and Competitive REL some time, because it’s something that newer players to competition screw up pretty often, and I’ve watched enough judge calls that boiled down to “He didn’t make an angel, so I win!”

Regardless, the first round began right on time, and we were off to the presses.

Round 1: Ron with UW Delver

Ron seemed like an appropriate start to the tournament. We sat down and exchanged some pleasantries before drawing our opening seven. Sadly, with no lands, I was forced down to six, while he kept seven. We traded blows for a bit, eventually skewing the advantage towards him as he cast and equipped a Sword of War and Peace to start chunking my HP. I get Vault of the Archangel online a turn too late and he manages to kill me with War and Peace triggers just before I’m able to stabilize off of a Finest Hour Gather the Townsfolk. We move to game two.

I’m going to be pretty honest here, this wasn’t really a game. I drew three consecutive no-land-hands before drawing 4 that also had no lands, but a pair of one drops. Interestingly enough, this match came down to a single turn – with him on three and me on the same. I needed to draw one of seven remaining anthems to kill him. I didn’t, getting a land instead, but he gave me a second opening to draw one of a pair of Oblivion Rings to remove his Gideon and kill him anyway. Sadly, Lingering Souls can’t block something equipped with Sword of War and Peace, and I fell.

0-1   (0-2 in games)

Round 2 – Timothy with RG Aggro

Tim was using a newer RG brew that incorporated Bonfire of the Damned. I don’t know if you’ve ever played against a deck with 1-2 miracles in it, but let me tell you something, it’s terrifying. To know that with any draw step, you could just get blown out of the game is really nerve-wracking. It puts a lot of stress on an aggressive deck to be able to end the game quickly.

In game one, he got a Sword in play on the second turn after I mulliganed to five. Something with the deck just felt off, and I couldn’t draw a good opening hand no matter how much I shuffled, pile shuffled, and reshuffled. Maybe it was just unlucky, but I seemed completely incapable of finding a second land. I lost the first game in short order, despite holding on for a while due to Vault of the Archangel and beating him down to nine through him gaining 4-5 per turn off Sword.

Game two finally found me keeping a seven card hand, and I crushed him despite casting a pair of Bonfire of the Damned – one miracle, and one hardcast. I got a pair of anthems and just ran him over with tokens.

The third game saw him resolve a Turn 2 Sword as well, which killed me in short order. I texted Marshall, informing him what happened and he responded by saying that Gut Shots may not be a terrible sideboard idea against RG in the future. I’m inclined to agree.

0-2   (1-4 in games)

And just like that, I was out of the running. The rest of the day got significantly better, with the highlights being below:

Round 3 – Pedro with UW Midrange

2-0, I win with a Finest Hour Gather the Townsfolk that I orchestrated beautifully.

Round 4 – Peter with Almost Mono-Black Control

2-0 The deck was interesting, skewing very hard towards black control with just a splash of blue for Snapcaster Mage. Unfortunately, black spot removal is notoriously bad against Lingering Souls, and I ran him over.

Round 5 – Joe with Zombie Pod

2-0 I’ve got to give props to any deck that runs Gloom Surgeon. He probably would have won a game if he didn’t exile every Geralf Messenger in his deck. I suppose that happens sometimes  when you’re exiling your topdecks away.

Round 6 – Randy with Solar Flare

0-2 There isn’t a lot you can do to someone who plays T2 Ratchet Bomb, T3 Ratchet Bomb, and T5 Sun Titan off a Pristine Talisman. A similar line of play happened twice. I feel like I need a better way to answer Sun Titans in the future.

Round 7 -  Brendan on ???

2-0 I’d stopped taking notes at this point. I was getting hungry and tired, but I draw well both games and I roll him over in two quick games before dropping to enter the last draft of the day.

Final Record: 4-3 (9-6 in games)

Bonus Round – Draft!

I end up drafting an awesome UG Soulbond Deck with a pair of Druids’s Familiar and Mist Ravens. Unfortunately, the games go extremely long and his Yew Spirit ends up being too much for me to handle in both games. I do get an Entreat the Angels in my second pack though.

I head out from the tournament site, get Chipotle. (God, those burritos are gigantic, and their Guacamole is spectacular. Seriously, get Chipotle. It’s awesome.) I check into the hotel and barely get to turn on A Game of Thrones before I pass out until morning.

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I wake up in an ice cold room, beneath sheets that keep me warm despite. This is actually my favorite way to sleep, for some reason, but I fight out of the bed and head back down to the tournament center for the PTQ that they’re holding. I’m one of the first people there, and so I’ve got time to make some changes to the deck. The maindeck Timely Reinforcements was useless all day, so I take it out, and the Doomed Traveler turns back into a land. I’m holding the Angel of Jubilation, ready to put the miser’s copy back into my deck when I spot the Entreat the Angels I’d pulled in the draft the day before. Marshall had long been a proponant of adding the card, but I felt it was too expensive to cast reliably. I decided to give it a shot, and it paid huge dividends.

 Here’s what I register:

Somewhere in this, I get a text from Pop.

“Joe won the WCMQ?”

Joe was a guy from my first shop, back in New York (Shout out to Comic Book Depot, one of the best stores in NY. Keep putting those results up guys.) He’s a great player, but up until now, didn’t have a great finish to his name. I’d left just as he made Top 8. I had no idea that he’d won the whole thing.

Congrats to Joe Pennachio on the win. You deserve it man.

Then I got ready, because the room was packed for the Pro Tour Qualifier. 216 players gives us another 8 round day. This one went a little bit better for me.

Round 1 – Max with Jund Pod

My mana issues appear to have disappeared overnight, and I roll out in game one. He seems to be playing Mono-Green something that didn’t actually cast any reasonable number of spells in the first game. While sideboarding, we’re talking and he mentions that he had plenty of cards, but none of the right colors. He gives away that his deck contains black, and I balk on adding in Celestial Purges, figuring that he’s trying to trick me. Turns out that he’s not, and he’s on Jund Pod – with Glissa/Ratchet Bomb.

That combo is pretty brutal for me, and I lose the second game.

Game three, I Nihil Spellbomb his Ratchet Bomb away, and get out five (!) anthems. An end of turn Midnight Haunting blows him out for 10 damage from nowhere. Feels good to be able to put 10 vigilant P/T on the field for 3 mana.

1-0 (2-1 in games)

Round 2 – Paul with RG Aggro

Paul is an older gentleman, who came to the PTQ on Father’s Day with his son. They love playing together and competing together. Paul ended up 5-3 on the day, missing prize in his last round, but he was smiling the whole time. He’s one of those opponents that you remember for the rest of the day.

I win game one despite him casting a Wolfir Silverheart and a Sword of War and Peace. Go for the Throat provides the huge blowout and Hero of Bladehold takes him from 16 to 3 with the help of a few one drops and an anthem.

Game two, we both Mull to five, before he finds a reasonable hand. I didn’t until four. Keeping a slow draw, he curves out with Birds into Wolvir Avenger into Thrun into Sword of War and Peace. I didn’t have a prayer here.

Game three he gets a turn two sword and crushes me with it. I really need an answer to that thing. It hoses the deck more than anything else in the format.

1-1 (3-3 in games)

Round 3 – Mark with Esper Delver

Mark and I have a great time before the match, chatting and goofing off. He’s playing fairly aggressively with his Vapor Snags, and so he’s run out of them by the time that I drop my Hero of Bladehold, which takes him down in short order.

Game two we both drop to six, and it’s not close. He tries to buy time with a Feeling of Dread to tap down my team, but can’t find his answer.

2-1 (5-3 in games)

Round 4 – Rebecca with GW Aggro

I present my deck and before she’s able to touch it, the judge jumps in.

“Don’t touch that deck, ma’am! I’m here to perform a mandatory and extremely important deck check on you both!”

Understand that the Bolding and Italics are not exaggerations here. He actually talked like a superhero. Sometimes I love judges. We pass the time by playing a game called Petals on a Rose, which I am apparently horrible at. The deck check comes back fine, and we play two quick games involving me praying that she never peals the Revenge of the Hunted that she has to kill me at a bunch of different places. I manage to hardcast Entreat the Angels for the first time, getting a pair of Angels that win the round.

3-1 (7-3 in games)

Round 5 – Mike with Naya Run Ramp

I dislike the ramp matchup. My deck isn’t quite fast enough to beat their good hands, and it doesn’t have the answers to prolong the game and get them into a bad position. The Naya matchup is much worse than the conventional one because Day of Judgment sidesteps my usual sideboard plan.

Normally, I can just get enough Anthems and Angel of Jubilation into play, and be bigger than his Slagstorms can kill. Day of Judgment has no such restrictions though, and it usually poses a big problem. Add Elesh Norn to the mix, and the deck is more or less a nightmare.

In game one, he ramps quickly, but then fails to land a threat. Despite three Day of Judgments, I’m able to keep putting threats on the table and put him away with a Miracle Entreat for 5.

The second and third games both go similarly, with him casting Primeval Titan and then Poisoning me out Post-DoJ, or just casting a t5 Elesh Norn after a t4 Titan. There is not terribly much I can do about that, despite getting him low in both games. The deck just needs a little more speed or a little more disruption to handle the addition of white to the deck.

3-2 (8-5 in games)

As an aside, after this match, I’ve become more and more convinced that my currentl SB plan only really works against conventional Wolf Run, and that a better answer might be to side in appetite for brains or despise to remove their primary threats on turn 3-4.

Round 6 – Pedro with UW Midrange

I get matched against Pedro again, and he takes a long, drawn out game one where I can’t quite answer the amount of card advantage he musters with Blade Splicer, Snapcaster Mage, and Restoration Angel.

Game two, he takes a swing from my Hero of Bladehold, putting him to one. He casts a Tamiyo, tapping down the Hero and starts to take control while I draw blanks. He misplays though, casting a Gideon and taunting with him, so that he can Ultimate Tamiyo. Hero of Bladehold swings, and the tokens come into play – unaffected by Gideon’s Taunt. They poke him and kill him after the judge he called informs him that – sadly, yes, that works.

The final game was leaning in his favor until I Miracled an Entreat the Angels. Playing around mana leak, I put out a pair of 5/5 flying vigilant angels that killed 3 Gideon and a Tamiyo before they crashed into him for the victory. He flashed the mana leak that he’d been holding the whole game, unable to get value out of it.

4-2 (9-6 in games)

Round 7 – Will with Wolf Run Ramp

Now here’s the ramp matchup that I prepared for. I get a couple of quick creatures out and force him to Slagstorm my guys away. Lingering Souls into a couple of anthems puts him away in the first game.

In game two, I cast T2 anthem, T3 anthem, t4 Midnight Haunting, t5 Miracle Entreat the Angels for 2. He doesn’t come back from that.

5-2 (11-6 in games)

Round 8 – David with RG Aggro

David was tired. That’s all there was too this match. He kept a horrible seven card hand in which he ended up casting a Strangleroot Geist and a Huntmaster of the Fells, with no other action in six turns. I curved out and killed him.

In the second game, I orchestrate a T3 Timely Reinforcements for full value after chump blocking his Geist with my Champion of the Parish. A second anthem (adding to the Honor that I cast on turn 2) puts the game well out of his reach. Vault seals the deal, though him missing a Huntmaster transformation trigger certainly didn’t help his case. He scoops  and I finish the tournament with an extremely nice...

Final Record: 6-2 (13-6 in games)

Place: 20th of 216

Current Seasonal Planeswalker Point Total: 527 (aiming for 750 before the end of August)

I took a look at the standing sheet. 6-2 comprised of 12th to 24th place, with around 6% Opponent’s Match Win separating the highest from the lowest. I could very easily have Top 16’d if my opponents had done better in their final round (all my former opponents lost in their last matches). I walked out with 9 packs, and the knowledge that the deck preformed more than admirably. I think that changing the sideboard to account for a t2 sword play, and being able to answer more than one type of Elesh Norn would make this deck a solid contender at any PTQ.

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With the lack of bans in Standard, it’ll be interesting to watch how the format develops in the coming weeks. As for myself – I’ve got this weekend off from tournaments, as I’ll be visiting the girlfriend during her summer break from school. The following weekend is GP Atlanta, and I hope to get some testing done and build a deck before I actually have to get on the flight next Friday.

Expect a report from that tournament – it’ll be my first GP, and I have reasonable hopes of doing well. I’ll tell you what I’m playing next Thursday, and why I think that it’s a well positioned deck for the tournament. This coming Tuesday, we’ll return to our deckbuilding series, with a discussion of Mulligans.

Until then, keep slinging spells the best way you know how.

-Andrew

On Banning Delver

Last week, I told you all that I planned on doing an article on mulligans today, to help newer players with some of the more common mistakes that are often made before the game even starts. However, I’d like to put that article off till next week and instead focus on something more pertinent to this week: the subject of bannings.

The next announcement for the Banned/Restricted list is scheduled for tonight at midnight. In it, was can expect to see some manner of changes to formats that we all know and love. Recently, there have been two archetypes in the crosshairs in two different formats, and there’s a reasonable chance that either could see a ban.

I’ve been following Legacy for the last month or two, since it was decided that I’d be traveling to Atlanta for the Legacy GP that’s happening the weekend after next. In that time, we’ve seen Griselbrand take over the format before it settled back down. Having spoken to a number of people who play legacy much more than I, I’ve been assured that Griselbrand is not a fair card, and never played in fair decks. Once resolved, a Griselbrand leads directly to a victory more assuredly than Emrakul or Progenitus ever could. A flying, 7/7 Lifelinking Yawgmoth’s Bargain on demand is not a card that I would expect to remain unbanned for long. Yawgmoth’s Bargain is banned, and Griselbrand is simultaneously more powerful and easier to get into play. I don’t know if I’d expect him to be banned with this announcement, but certainly would expect him to be banned within the year.

That said, there’s a reasonable case for this week’s results showing that Griselbrand’s influence may have been overstated. The amusing StarCity Legacy Open featured Elves vs Goblins in the semifinals, which included both players mulliganing into oblivion and putting together a good approximation of a Duel Decks series.

I’m not going to lie – the twitter feed was pretty hysterical. I’d watch for the SCG Sweet Tweets article this week. It’s going to be pretty funny.

However, Legacy isn’t going to be the focus of the article today. I know we’ve heard a lot about Delver in recent weeks, but this is the time to lay my cards on the table.

I don’t know if they should ban something.

There are a ton of articles posting one opinion or another. Kibler went on record on his stream saying that he didn’t think Delver merited a ban. Chapin has come out publically saying that Snapcaster Mage is too good and must be banned. We’ve had #BanPonder on twitter, and WotC developers hint that Mana Leak is too powerful for modern development rules. There are results from multiple weeks indicating that Delver is currently taking up more than half of the metagame. (109 players using UW Delver at the SCG Invitational, with another 10 players on the ‘Delverless’ Delver build.) Delver has consistently been putting up results that nearly equal Caw-Blade in dominance.

And yet…

Solar Flare wins twice in back-to-back SCG Opens. Brian Kibler takes down a 5k playing Naya. Only one of the three World Magic Cup Qualifiers in the USA was won by Delver. If it was ban-worthy, shouldn’t it be everywhere? I mean, everywhere?

Let’s not mince words here. A ban in standard is just about the worst case scenario for Wizards of the Coast. They are a business, and their job is to make money. Thankfully for fans of the game, they have decided to take a long-term stance, and try to retain customers for as long as possible. Having an overpowered deck dominate the format may sell more packs (take a look at Worldwake), but ultimately it will lower tournament attendance and make people stop playing the game. This is a long-term net loss for the company, and so it is in their best interests to present a healthy format for us to play.

So, is UW Delver overpowered and worthy of a ban? Let’s take a look.

MTGPulse.com - UW Delver by Gerry Thompson

This is UW Delver in its most recent incarnation, as played to a third place finish at the SCG Invitational. It is designed as a UW Tempo deck that relies on cheap, efficient threats backed up with counter magic and bounce. Post-board, it has the ability to morph into a very respectable control deck and answer a wide variety of threats. Many run equipment to give the deck late-game sustaining power. The deck is a natural merging of the neo-Caw decks that came about when Zendikar rotated and the Illusions deck pioneered by Todd Anderson. As the Illusion core gave way to a more familiar set of Delver of Secrets/Snapcaster Mage/Geist of St. Traft/ Invisible Stalker, the core of the deck began to form.

The revelation came at the hands of Gerry Thompson, Slayer of Formats. Responsible in part for Angel Delver, Dredge, the new Hypergenesis deck, and a number of other decks in their time, he is one of the best players in the game at the moment at doing exactly what he did – taking a powerful deck and tweaking it until it looks unbeatable.

He added Restoration Angel.

It was an unorthodox choice. None of the creatures in Delver would benefit from the blink effect – so perhaps he was only doing it to save them from bounce spells. (Edit: It has been pointed out to me that Restoration Angel has significant synergy with Snapcaster Mage. The rest of this point still stands though.) The truth was more powerful than that. Gerry was attempting to recreate the Faeries dilemma. I pass the turn with four mana up – do I have Mistbind Clique or Cryptic Command?

I pass the turn with 4 mana up. Is it a Restoration Angel or a Snapcaster Mage/Mana Leak?

The results were spectacular, and in the weeks since, many have been calling the format solved. They say that Angel Delver is the pinnacle of what is available to the Standard card pool, and the only improvements that could be made would be to skew the deck to fight the increasing number of mirror matches. They say that this is reason enough to call for a ban. They may be right. I certainly wouldn’t mourn the banning of any card in the deck. I’ve faced delver more than any other deck in these past few months. I’ve messaged WotC representatives, explaining that I’d prefer a metagame where half of my matches aren’t the same game – over and over. I’d love a more diverse metagame, and a ban would surely accomplish that.

On the other hand, it may not be necessary. The 2013 core set releases in two weeks, which could shake up the format a bit. Even a small addition to a deck such as Naya, G/R, or Wolf Run could unseat Delver. Beyond that, we have rotation in three short months, banishing all of Delver’s Phyrexian Mana spells to the depths of Mirrodin’s Core – along with Ponder, Mana Leak, and every Sword that’s left in Standard. Delver will lose a ton from the Return to Ravnica rotation, and while the core of effective creatures will remain, that’s hardly the monstrosity that we’ve had the last months.

Come to think of it, let’s take a look at that term as well – monstrosity. The deck is certainly good. I don’t think that anyone could deny that. It can be aggressive or controlling. It can answer any threat in the format and attack from multiple angles. It gets to fight with superior card selection and card advantage. It does everything that a Spike player could want a deck to do. It’s the type of deck that speaks to professional players – “Play me, I can show your skill. With me, you can gain an advantage with prodigious ponders, and cunning counterspells. Choose me, and your mulligans will impact you less than anyone else. Your probes will give you perfect information, and you will win.”

So professional players have been picking up Delver, and playing, and winning. Part of that is because of the deck. Part of that is because they are professional players. Sam Black took a Delverless Delver list to the finals of a World Magic Cup Qualifier, and LSV won a similar tournament with his version. However, if you take their decks out of the equation, is anyone surprised to hear that LSV and Sam Black did well at a tournament? Is anyone shocked that Gerry Thompson and Todd Anderson have put up good results piloting any deck at a Star City Games open? The players who are playing Delver are also the players who are most likely to win as-is.

So, maybe that’s what this is – an echo chamber. Gerry breaks the format with Angel Delver, and people start jumping on the bandwagon. Once there, they find a list they like, and they keep innovating on it. The best minds in the game are all relentlessly brewing and trying to find the tweak that will give them the edge in the matchup. Blade Splicer over Geist of St. Traft? Switching back to Invisible Stalker? Switching to Esper Colors, or Izzet? Where is the edge? How do we win?

Can you honestly say that Naya Aggro has gotten that much attention? It seems to me that Brian Kibler has been the deck’s only proponent, despite his high win percentage with it. He beat a number of Delver decks to get to the top of the $5k that he won last weekend. Was that luck, or is Delver just not as dominant as things seem, because most of the brewing attention in the format has been pouring into a single deck?

And should we ban a deck because a lot of people are playing it, even if it’s not necessarily over-performing? Delver took five of the top eight slots at the Invitational – but it was also nearly 50% of the field. You would expect 4-6 of them to make top 8, especially in a three-day, multiple format tournament. That’s not ban-worthy – that’s statistics.

But the fact is that half of the room is sleeving up Seachrome Coasts every weekend, and it doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon. Wizards has a chance to intervene for the health of the format, but it’s questionable if they will – or should. Delver could be unseated in the coming weeks. Perhaps a green deck, featuring Hexproof attackers and Thragtusk, could take over. Perhaps an exalted deck, utilizing the new Ajani in a Bant shell? There are options in M13 that could make me accept a ‘no bans’ verdict. Delver would fade, becoming a smaller (though likely still powerful) deck, and the format goes on.

Or maybe it doesn’t – Delver remains a powerhouse, fed by the attention of most of the major grinders poring over every card selection in countless daily events. We wait for three months, and all collectively rejoice when it’s finally the day of Rotation. We’ll crack open our Shocklands in Return to Ravnica, and cheer that we’ll never have to put up with Swords and Vapor Snag again.

Three months may be too long to wait for that though. Tournament attendance could suffer, which will ultimately be the trigger point for Wizards. If they think that banning Delver will increase tournament attendance, they will do it. If they believe that it will be neutral or hurt instead, they will not.

Here’s hoping that they make the right choice, whichever it is.

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What do you think? Is Delver too good? Does it deserve a ban? If so, what do you think should get the Axe? Sound off in the comments – I’d love to get some community feedback on the topic.

Preparations for the WMCQ - College Park

This weekend is the final USA World Magic Cup Qualifier, to be held just outside of Baltimore, Maryland – in a town called College Park. For those of you who aren't aware, the previous two iterations, in California and Missouri, were won by Alex Binak and the indomitable Louis Scott-Vargas. Those two, in addition to the (extremely dreamy) Brian Kibler, will form three quarters of the United States of America's National Team.

Making my girlfriend question my sexuality since we met.

The fourth player is yet to be decided. There are quite a few people vying for the title. Patrick Chapin, inparticular, is foregoing the Star City Invitational - arguably the highest EV event in Magic - for a chance to qualify. Competition should be stiff, but the winner will be the final member of the US National Team.

And it very well might be me.

Sure, I don't have a huge tournament win under my belt, but I've been putting up reasonable results for a few months now. I am confident in my deck, and in what it is capable of doing on a regular basis. I think that WB Tokens has legitimately reached its final configuration, barring a significant change in the metagame in the next few weeks. (June 20^th, mark your calenders, folks!) Because Tokens hasn’t been seen at the top tables, I’ll have a reasonable advantage for the first few turns of each game, where I can reasonably play at being a Humans deck, or even a Panda Control deck if I have a slower start.

Here's the version that I'll be playing on Saturday:

The addition of the pair of spot removal is a nod towards the Delver matchup. Delver has the advantage in the early game if they can blind flip a delver – but an instant speed removal spell ends that advantage, while also being able to take out a Blade Splicer, Restoration Angel, or any of the other relevant threats in the format except Wurmcoil Engine and Hexproof dudes that I'm hoping to block or race anyway.

The sideboard is designed with the knowledge that the majority of the top tables will most likely be Delver, or some version of UW Midrange. They're too good, and too popular, for the majority of the winning tables to be anything else. If you're expecting to win at a tournament like this, you're going to need to answer Delver first and foremost. Beyond that, there are a number of tier two decks that I would consider to be big threats at any point in the tournament. The new style of Wolf-Run deck is still a major threat, with Glimmerposts and Caverns to give it a wider range of answers to the possible angles of attack, looks to be a reasonable contender. Likewise, the Zombie deck with Blood Artists has been putting up significant results (as in, it's actually placing periodically through the sea of Seachrome Coasts.) Finally, Esper Control has been showing its good matchup by crushing Delver at the top tables. While it has a worse matchup against literally anything that isn't a Delver deck, that single good matchup might be enough at the moment.

To that end, I've decided to skew the sideboard pretty strongly against those decks. When I was at Edison, I really liked my sideboard options against the Zombie deck and Delver. Both felt powerful situationally, while maintaining the majority of what made Tokens a good choice. My games against Delver were all reasonably close, and the additional removal should be able to tilt that matchup, especially if they continue the trend of dropping swords from their maindeck to improve the mirror.

Against Control, I want to either be able to come out of the gate fast and apply strong pressure, then follow up with a finishing blow. Hero of Bladehold is ideal here, as it's one of the best creatures to play directly after a board wipe, but Shrine of Loyal Legions is the real star. They're forced to deal with the card or it will kill them, effectively at instant speed, and with any number of Intangible Virtues in play, there's a good chance that it will happen before they can find the necessary Oblivion Ring. The goal here is to split my threats between actual permanents, tokens, and non-creature spells, to tax all of Control's possible avenues and find out which is most vulnerable.

I'd like to take a quick aside here and shout out to a couple of the local players from Redcap's Corner, in Philadelphia. Specifically, Kyle, whom I played against at FNM two weeks ago. He served me my first and only loss of the night (3-1) while playing a UW Gideon/Taimyo control deck. It's not something I've had a ton of experience playing against with Tokens at this point, so the practice was well needed. I'd be glad for a rematch in the future!

The plan against Wolf Run is admittedly my weakest. I'm told that Tokens is favored against it, as long as we can buy the first board wipe early, but barring a 4 toughness flyer, I don't know how much additional pressure I could muster. Part of me wants a Sword of War and Peace here, but I'd rather not rely on a spell that requires another creature in play, especially one that plays directly into an Ancient Grudge sideboard plan. Instead, I think my plan is to overload on larger threats, ignoring the smaller ones and aiming to kill them with flyers while racing. This is similar to the attrition style battles that I've had against Primeval Titan decks in the past – when I played Puresteel Paladin against Valakut before Zendikar's rotation. Wolf Run is a different animal, but lifelink and deathtouch are no less potent than they ever were. What worries me more are the Naya variants that are also running Elesh Norn. She has an unparalleled ability to put games away, and I'm always worried about any deck that can put a perpetual board wipe out against me.

There are a few other decks that I plan to be on the lookout for. Mono-green won a Qualifier recently, putting up a strong showing through Dungrove Elder beats. I love the card, so any time it puts up any type of notable result; it perks my eyebrows a bit. I'm also interested in Chapin's Raka miracles deck – especially since he'll be playing at the same tournament. I'd love to be able to meet him – his articles have been a big source of inspiration for me.

It's time to head to bed, with the knowledge that I'm as prepared as I can be. I've got my hotel reserved. For cost purposes, I'll be staying over on Saturday night into Sunday. Since the Top 8 will be held on the second day of play, I'll need to be in the area overnight in case I happen to qualify. If I don't, however, there is a PTQ and a couple of GPT's on Sunday being held in the same location, so I'll be able to get my fill of grinding for Planeswalker Points and Blue Envelopes. Now, the only thing to do is make a point of getting sleep and rest for the next two days before I need to leave. At this point, the best thing that I can do for my chances of victory is to show up healthy, alert, and well-rested. I won’t be attending FNM this week because of that, opting to go to bed early instead, so that I can be up before 7am to make sure I’m there with plenty of time to spare for registration and writing a deck list.

If you're interested in following my tournament results before next Thursday, I'll be live-tweeting my match results as they happen. Follow me @ajrula, and I hope to see and hear from some of you this weekend. If you'd like to meet up before/during/after matches, toss me a comment here, or a message on any social media platform (Twitter/Reddit/etc).

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Next Tuesday, we'll be addressing something that impacts every Magic player - mulligan decisions! We'll provide some real examples from various decks I encounter this weekend, and we'll get to decide how you think they should have gone. On Thursday, a double-sized Tournament report for the WMCQ and PTQ Weekend at College Park.

Deckbuilding 101: Not Losing To Lands

In the last month, I’ve gotten a number of free wins at tournaments. I watched other people get them too.

“Mull to Six.”

“…I guess I’ll keep this.”

“Mull to Five.”

“Mull to Four.”

“Yea, sure. Thanks deck.”

I talked with my second round opponent afterwards. He was on Esper Spirits, but the black splash that the deck normally takes – solely for Lingering Souls flashback – had been expanded outwards to a full-on three color deck. He had added Hero of Bladehold, Dungeon Geists, and a number of black removal spells. I shook my head.

“No wonder,” I said, “You’re playing three colors.”

He shrugged. “Finkel did it. It’s basically the same list.”

“Not exactly.”

“Besides, you’re playing three colors too!” He gestured down at my deck for the day, Naya Aggro.

“Not exactly.” I repeated.

One of the most important and least cared about aspects of deck building is your land base. Especially now, in an era of colorless-activation lands, enemy color fixing, and alternate-color flashbacks, access to mana has rarely been more important – and never have the players been more ambitious with trying to make it work.

Unfortunately, ambition often leads its way to taking mulligans all the way into oblivion.  Where do things go wrong? Usually right from the start. Let’s take a look at some of the common problems.

Play All The Colors!

Let’s say we have a nice, mono-blue  Standard deck. This doesn’t really exist in standard, but it’s the baseline from which we’ll work. This deck REALLY wants to play a Delver of Secrets on turn 1, and follow it up with a mana leak on turn two. Say we want to also cast Dissipate on T3, and Snapcaster Mage into Mana Leak again on T4. Assuming a land base with 23 or 24 Islands, what’s the chances of us getting the correct lands? That’s right. It’s pretty good assuming you keep a hand with more than one land.

On the other hand, we’ll take a deck such as Solar Flare from Innistrad’s debut. This deck had a notoriously horrendous land base, and part of that was its need to heavily play three colors. Here's a sample mana base from one of the first events it was legal in:

4 Island

5 Plains

2 Swamp

2 Darkslick Shores

3 Drowned Catacomb

4 Glacial Fortress

4 Isolated Chapel

1 Seachrome Coast

So, in this deck, we need to hit the following mana considerations:

T1: Nothing. The deck did not play any 1-drops. This is, perhaps the only reason the deck could function. The addition of a 1-mana spell would strain the lands even more dramatically.

T2: We need {U} for Think Twice or Mana Leak, or {B} for Doom Blade. A single UB dual land, or two basics should cover this without difficulty.

T3: Here’s where things get tricky. We want {B}{B} for Liliana of the Veil, but also {W} for Timely Reinforcements. Both are critical to our safety. We also need {W} for Oblivion Ring, {U} for Forbidden Alchemy, and {B} for Tribute to Hunger.

T4: By this point, we would prefer to have {W}{W} available for our three Day of Judgment, but we also need to consider Snapcaster Mage at this point, requiring severe colors to flash back anything, potentially even {U}{U} for a flashback Mana Leak.

T5+: Eventually, we are planning on utilizing all of our colors in the late game for Elesh Norn, Sun Titan, Unburial Rites, a variety of Counterspells, as well as Snapcaster Mages and their affiliated flashbacks.

To avoid falling behind in tempo, we also want our lands to come into play untapped. When this Solar Flare mana base was published, there was no Evolving Wilds in the format to fix your colors.

Quick, thought experiment time:  Find me four lands in sequence that give you {U} and {B} on turn 2, {B}{B} or {W} on turn 3, and then {U}{U},{ B}{B}, or {W}{W} on turn 4, using the above land list.

I don’t doubt that it’s possible. My first impression is to lead with Seachrome Coast, then Swamp, followed by Isolated Chapel, and then any untapped land on the fourth turn.  See, not that difficult, right? It only required me to draw the singleton Seachrome, and one of two Swamps.

Are there other solutions? Absolutely. There’s probably a ton of permutations that would allow it, but the fact that it takes time to work out the correct line of play for your lands should tell us something: There’s a reasonable chance that, with a deck like this, we’re not going to have our ideal land drops. If you’ve played magic for any length of time, that should scare you. Note that the above mana base doesn’t include any colorless sources, which only make colors more difficult to get on a regular basis. There is a lot of power in those colorless activation lands. Kibler has raved more than once about the power of Gavony Township, Moorland Haunt is a mainstay of the most dominant deck since Caw-Blade, and Vault of the Archangel is bolstering the Tokens deck to nearly-unraceable status.

What do you do in this deck with a Think Twice and a Liliana, your mana sources being Isolated Chapel, Glacial Fortress, and Darkslick Shores?

Worse yet, that mana base was Top 8 at a 500+ person event, so we can infer that it was one of the best possible versions of an Esper land base back then.

Mono-Green Aggro looks a ton more stable from that angle. It seems really easy to just play a Forest every turn. Does this mean we should just cut our losses and play Mono-colored decks all the time? Absolutely not! Two color decks can be very nearly as consistent, and a third color splash isn’t difficult if you keep an eye on your double-colored costs and colorless sources. The goal, then, is to get as much power into the deck while keeping it consistent.

For a common current example, adding Blue to a White-based creature strategy, at the moment, is relatively painless. Merely add the eight U/W lands available, plus 2-3 Moorland Haunts, and you gain an incredible amount of power (Being able to recur 3-6 spirits every game) for relatively little cost. (With only 2 sources that don’t make white, how often won’t you be able to case Mirran Crusader on T3 for {W}{W}{1}?)

Can You Afford That, Son?

It may be a less common problem, but every so often, you’ll see a Red Deck, running 21 lands, and expecting to play Urabrask, or Inferno Titan. Even just adding those as singletons, you commit your deck to being able to drop a fifth or sixth land when reasonably, you won’t be able to.

Yes, more expensive cards are more powerful, as a general rule, but it’s critical for you to understand how often you can hit those relative land numbers. I could link a bunch of charts, explaining with statistical precision how land drops work over turns, given varying numbers of lands in your deck, but all those charts never did anything for me. Personally, I use the following guidelines:

Quick and Dirty (23-): Only do this if your mana curve tops out at 3 or less. I hesitate to suggest it even then. This rule can be bent for some older decks who work extremely efficiently, such as Legacy Burn, but as a general rule, you should not go below 23.

The Sweet Spot (23): Twenty Three seems to be a great number for a large number of decks, especially of the aggressive persuasion. It allows you to consistently hit three mana on time, and very often, get your fourth land drop without much delay. I would hesitate before playing 5-drops though.

Midrange(24-25): For those of us who like our five slot, you may want to consider adding an extra land or two. Also consider this if you have a number of colorless sources – things like Moorland Haunt, Gavony Township, or Kessig Wolf Run. As of late, I have been favoring this option more often than not, because of the power of the lands currently available to us from Innistrad Block, as well as Inkmoth Nexus.

The Top Shelf (26+): With 26 or more lands, you’ll be able to reach 6-drops consistently, but you open yourself up to an entirely different can of worms. At this point, you’ve gone from 1/3 of your deck containing lands up to nearly half. This means that your late game top-decks will be blanks more often than not. Generally, this many lands is the realm of controlling decks with good card drawing and filtering, to allow them the ability to throw bad ones back, and keep drawing gas.

Again, all of these are suggestions – not hard and fast rules.  Add more lands if your play testing reveals you always wanting more after your turn. Remove some if you top deck land too much, and find yourself light on gas in the later game. I cannot overstate the importance of testing to discover this. I’ve built aggro decks that have had enough Flashback and Card advantage that I never found myself needing more spells – but always wanting another land, even if my curve ended at four.

Remember, it’s a lot easier to lose games to mana screw than mana flood. When in doubt, err on the side of additional lands, and try to make those lands as powerful as possible.

Tight Play

All of this planning should lead us somewhere – to having a deck that has a consistent mana base and plays out well the majority of the time. However, even the most lovingly crafted creation is subject to the whims of fate. You will get bad hands. Even a deck with 45 lands will sometimes draw none of them. Even a deck with 5 lands will occasionally draw them all. Some would say that this is just variance, but in actuality, it’s another chance to prove your skill.

The ability to accurately assess an opening hand’s playability is one of the most critical skills that you can cultivate as a Magic player.

Proper mulliganing skill is far more complex than can be covered as a subtopic in an already long article, but it does dovetail significantly with your deck building and your mana base. The Proper construction of a deck will allow for two things: Less frequent mulligans, and less impactful mulligans.

The first half of that seems fairly intuitive. A deck with a proper curve and a reasonable land base should be more likely to draw a solid hand than a five color monstrosity that runs nothing except one-mana cantrips and seven-mana bombs. The second half, however, is a little more ephemeral. What does it mean to have less-impactful mulligans?

For an example, I offer Caw-Blade during the height of its power. Because of the deck’s natural card advantage engine in Preordain, Squadron Hawks, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Caw Blade was afforded an almost unparalleled ability to mulligan without penalty. When you can effectively draw three cards on your second turn by playing a creature or Brainstorm for free (literally, without even spending a card), you can regain a great deal of the threat density that you lose by tossing back your first hand. In standard now, we have a number of options that permit this same effect. We can play cards like Faithless Looting, which can fix land-starved or land-flooded hands. Cards with flashback, like Lingering Souls, provide additional options without costing us extra cards. Snapcaster Mage provides similar benefit. A mulligan to six isn’t as damaging to Delver as it might be otherwise, because they have such card selection and recursion – they can often make up the difference.

It is this effect that allows a Wolf-Run Ramp deck to mulligan to five, and keep a hand with two basics, two ramp spells, and a titan. Because of the inherent power in the cards being used (Especially the titans), and the strong central core tenants of the deck (Ramp into a titan, which finds me the tools to win the game), the loss of a card or two from their opening hand, while not ideal, is not as crushing as it would be to a poorly constructed deck. In short, a good deck’s plan is hard to derail.

Compare that with UB control at the moment, which has an extremely sturdy landbase, but even a mulligan to six leaves them with their back against the wall. As your cards outnumber theirs, the resolution of a single threat could very well put the game away.

So, next time you’ve built a shiny new homebrewed deck and you toss a land base together, stop and look again. Lay out your lands and ask yourself: Could these do more? Are these doing enough? How often will this cause mulligans, and is the power increase worth the corresponding loss of a card to more common mulligans?

Moreover, is the way that I constructed this deck costing me games?

My guess is that by making this an active part of your deck building, you’ll find that you have a much firmer footing in games, and your deck will seem to guide itself towards your top 8, rather than fighting you all the way to the 0-2 bracket.

The exercise for this week is simple: Take a deck that you own, and post your land base. Why did you choose those lands? Why those numbers? Do you have any colorless non-basics? How critical are they to your overall plan? Analyze your land base in as much detail as you’d like, and post the results either here in the comments, or on reddit.

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Thursday will be a departure from the normal tournament report format since I didn’t play in anything last weekend. Instead, we will delve a little deeper into my preparation for any given event, with an eye towards what I’ll be playing this Saturday at the World Magic Cup Qualifier in College Park, Maryland! Tune in to see how I’m preparing for the event – and the PTQ the next day.

Tournament Report: TCGPlayer $5000 Standard with BW Tokens

It's late again.

I'm sitting at my desk, with my deck laid out across it. Half of it is sleeved, half of it is sitting with a pile of other cards. Most are terrible, but some of them are getting serious consideration, despite their flaws.

“You getting any sleep tonight?” comes the voice over Skype. A friend of mine – he's not going to the tournament tomorrow.

“Yea,” I respond, only half sure that I'm telling the truth. “I just need to figure this out.”

“Wasn't it a good matchup? You said it yourself – you're 10-2 against Delver in Competitive REL events.”

“It's different now.”

Each card seems heavy, like I'm a novice deck builder fumbling through his first attempts at a mana curve. I look back up at the screen, with Gerry Thompson's list writ large across it. The Big Bad Wolf, come to knock my house down. Things were different when their whole deck could be beaten by two anthems and a Lingering Souls. Back then, the only thing with 4 toughness was a Sworded creature, or an ephemeral angel. Now they had 3/4 flying Snapcaster Mages. How do you even compete with that?

I finish the deck, then look back over towards my bed. I need to be up in not-very-long to drive for two hours to Edison. I have no idea what to expect for a $5k tournament. I've never been to anything bigger than a PTQ, and even that was just the once.

And Delver beat you twice there too.

It's late, and my mind is getting to me. Time to get some sleep and come at this fresh in the morning.

---

It's huge.

I walk in, nearly an hour early for the tournament and there's already more people than the PTQ that I attended. I grab a decklist and a registration sheet and get to work building. I run into some people from the Depot, and a bunch from All-Stars. Some of the local grinders are here too, and I make a point of saying hello's to them. A bunch are still frantically putting cards together. I don't know how you can justify showing up to an event without a deck built. That just seems like setting yourself up to lose.

I scout the room, and I don't trust what I see. I hear people talking about Wolf Run, and Three-And-Two-Half-Color-Control (which wins this week's deck name of the week award). I see a couple people sleeving up mono-green Infect, which I’m fairly sure has a good matchup. Nowhere, of course, do I see Delver.

Maybe everyone’s afraid of it. Maybe no one will be running it because they’re expecting hate?

A guy can be hopeful. I’d rather go against a room of anything but Gerry T’s Delver today. I don’t think I broke the format with my tech. I don’t think I’ve even substantially altered the deck. I’m pretty much running the same thing I had been with minor sideboard tweaks – they’re not even anti-Delver tweaks. My game plan is to ignore that Restoration Angel exists and just hope that the ground I gain because of the lack of Sword of War and Peace is better than the ground I  lost to an extremely well-tuned list and Restoration Angel.

Here’s what I register:

Some comments about the cards here might be warranted. The maindeck is my typical, though I’d wanted to squeeze in two Go For The Throat, I ended up not being able to because I couldn’t find a pair the night before. I’d have cut an Oblivion Ring (to the sideboard) and a Doomed Traveler to fit them, and I think they’d make the deck run more smoothly.

Sideboard wise, I was trying some new things. Angel’s Tomb was tech from MTGO. There’s a vaguely successful tokens build incorporating it as an answer to Wolf’s Run. I don’t know if it’s any good, but I’m trying it. Same goes with the Demonlord of Ashmouth. I was concerned with the color commitment, but if I could resolve one against Wolf Run, there isn’t much that they can effectively do to stop it post-sideboard. I actually wanted to run Indomitable Archangel in both spots, but I didn't have them handy. Maybe Restoration Angel would be a consideration as well?

The rest is just tweaks on existing numbers, which I actually have started to like more than I have before. This bodes well for me, and makes me feel much more comfortable when sideboarding on the spot. I traditionally haven’t used sideboard guides, because I feel like we should be flexible when boarding, but it’s important to have easy things to side-out in matchups.

During the player’s meeting, we’re informed by a judge not using a microphone that we’ve got 309 people, and that there will be nine rounds. So, average length of a Grand Prix. That seems…

I do some math. We’re starting at around 11am. If each round goes for an hour, that brings us to 8pm. Top 8 will take another 3 hours, and that’s 11pm. Assuming each round is no more than an hour. I quickly estimate that the winner will be leaving here around dawn.

Lovely.

They post pairings in four different places, depending on last name, and I make sure that I’m at my spot way in advance of the postings. I like getting to my seat before my opponent and setting up – and it works this time. I sit down across from a guy named Matt.

Round 1 – Matt with Kamikaze

The Kamikaze deck is the closest thing that we have to a Standard Combo deck. It uses Blood Artist and Zombies to get off to an aggressive start before sacrificing all its creatures for lethal through Falkenrath Aristocrat or Killing Wave. Unfortunately, their game plan relies on getting early damage in, because in the late game it’s rare for them to be able to Killing Wave for more than 10.

He starts with a Gravecrawler against my Champion/Gather Draw. We both beat each other down as I add an Anthem and he adds a Geralf’s Messenger. I toss an Oblivion Ring on the Messenger and he calls it a day after I gain twelve from Vault of the Archangel.

Sideboard: +3 Celestial Purge, +3 Timely Reinforcements, +1 Mortarpod, -1 Angel of Jubilation, -3 Hero of Bladehold, -3 Oblivion Ring

The thought behind sideboarding is that the late game favors me if I can get any life-gain. I just need to survive till then. My plan is to have a lot of early board presence. I really like this sideboard, and I encourage you to try it out if you’re running base-white.

Unfortunately for me, my deck shuts that plan down immediately by forcing a mulligan to 5 off of two no-land hands. The mull to five is strong though. Another Champion/Gather/Honor hand. He tries to bury me in his card advantage, throwing removal and bodies at me, and my life dwindles into the single digits without me really being able to compete, but a clutch Mortarpod keeps his Blood Artists at bay, and blocks his stronger zombies long enough for me to churn out a full-value Lingering Souls that kills him in two turns with Vault to back me up.

1-0  (2-0 in games)

Round 2- Matt Thompson with Kamikaze

Before the round, I’m sitting there and talking with a friend of mine from the New York shop. I’m chatting about how I crushed Kamikaze, and he’s doing the same about Humans. My opponent looks nervous. I’m vindicated when he plays a turn one Diregraf Ghoul.

Game one is absurdly close. We trade damage for a while, and I’m gaining a ton of life almost as fast as I’m losing it. I bounce from 7 up to 15, taking him down to 6 life, with lethal on the board. Desperate, he plays a second Blood Artist and then Killing Wave for 3, sacrificing his whole team and forcing me to sacrifice mine or die. I go to one life, and him up to fourteen.

Being on one life against a deck that runs Geralf’s Messenger, 4/1 haste creatures, and I assume some manner of burn spells is very unnerving. I panic for a turn or two, attacking with a Champion and Doomed Traveler to gain one life via Vault once he removes the Champion. I’m on two, and it’s his main phase.

He plays nothing and passes. I let out a huge sigh of relief, and draw a Midnight Haunting. He plays nothing again, and I fire off the Haunting, swinging me back to nine life the following turn off a Vault activation.

Sideboard: +3 Celestial Purge, +3 Timely Reinforcements, +1 Mortarpod, -1 Angel of Jubilation, -3 Hero of Bladehold, -3 Oblivion Ring

It worked last time, so I went with the same sideboard plan. Game two was quick, after my turn 2 Mortarpod trumped his turn 2 Blood Artist. I timely Reinforcements to trump his gravecrawler, and once I get a pair of anthems going, he’s forced onto the defensive and never comes back.

2-0  (4-0 in games)

Round 3 – Ryan with Delver

I’m nervous going to round 3. Anyone can win two, but starting off 3-0 seems so much better. I’m confident, but being at the literal top table is a little surreal, especially after you notice that Jackie Lee and Mike Flores have both picked up early round losses. If they’re losing, do I actually just have the best deck for the room?

My opponent looks vaguely hipster-ish, but smiles and seems like a cool guy. He doesn’t banter much, and we start the round. He begins with a mulligan to six, but manages to dig out of it through raw card efficiency. An early snapcast-ponder puts him back to parity with me, and I beat him down pretty hard until he casts a Restoration Angel to protect an attacking Geist of St. Traft. On two life, he goes offensive, forcing blocks for me to survive on two life myself, which I can’t capitalize on because of a second Restoration Angel and a Angel-Snapcast-Vapor Snag to stop my two remaining flyers.

Sideboard: -3 Hero of Bladehold, -1 Angel of Jubilation, -1 Doomed Traveler, +3 Timely Reinforcements, +2 Nihil Spellbomb

The second game goes my way, with me slowly draining him out after casting a Timely Reinforcements for full value. He isn’t able to put on enough pressure to deal with it and the follow up, and I kill him with plenty of cards left in hand.

One of his friends comments over his shoulder: “This seems like a terrible matchup for you.”

He nodded and admitted to it. “It’s probably not what I’d like to be playing against.”

Game three goes to time. After our long drawn out first game, even the abbreviated second doesn’t stop it. As time is called, it’s my turn, and I have nineteen flying power on the field across eight or nine creatures. He’s on 17, and I have an active Vault of the Archangel. He has a Sworded up Angel (War and Peace), a normal Angel, and a Geist of St. Traft, plus a flipped delver. I am on 24, and have a couple of cards in hand, so does he.)

We trade back and forth, and it’s turn 4 – my last turn. He’s on five, and I still have more than double lethal damage on the field. He’s tapped out on creatures, but not on mana. I’m at seven. We have a huge crowd, as a game at the top table going to time and still being close despite a complex board position tends to attract people.

I swing out for lethal, tapping out because I don’t have an intangible virtue. I activate Vault of the Archangel. He starts tapping mana. Snapcaster Mage, targeting faith’s shield.

“That’s some kind of protection thing?”

He nods.

“Alright?” I say. “Can I see the card?”

He tosses it over to me and I read it with dread. Fateful Hour. If he’s at five or less, it also gives protection to him. In this case, from white.

“I don’t gain any life, do I?”

He shakes his head.

“I think you’ve got this one.”

I extend the hand.

2-1 (5-2 in games)

I’d like to note that this game was 100% non-loseable. First, I’d used a Nihil Spellbomb much earlier in the game to dig for a land, to activate Vault of the Archangel. This wasn’t strictly necessary, but if I had held it even a turn longer, I’d have been able to remove the shield from his graveyard and win. Digging for the land may still have been the correct choice, and only now reading my recap am I realizing that I made a misplay on my last turn.

At the time, my options seemed to be “Attack for the win” or “Defend for the draw”. Either way, Faith’s Shield giving protection from white wins him the game. However, if I had forced him to use Faith’s Shield to defend my attack, by only attacking with half my force, I could have survived by blocking his whole team and drawing the match.

I didn’t take the Faith’s Shield in his graveyard into account, and I should do that more often. Noting what spells are available for Snapcaster Mage is not something that you can ignore in the matchup. I don’t think I played badly here, and I honestly think that the match should have ended in a draw if I played it well, or a win if I had thought to hold my spellbomb.

Round 4 – John Reuben with Delver

I was pretty bummed out after my last round. I’d really been hoping to go 3-0 and position myself well for the second third of the tournament. Losing, especially in such a close match, had me questioning things left and right.

I sit down to my opponent, and he plays out a Seachrome Coast into Ponder to start. I come out the gate quickly, beating down with a Doomed Traveler and Champion. I add an anthem to the board, and then a Lingering Souls takes down the game.

Sideboard: -3 Hero of Bladehold, -1 Angel of Jubilation, -1 Doomed Traveler, +3 Timely Reinforcements, +2 Nihil Spellbomb

In our second game, I mulligan to six, and lose a close match that was broadly because I ran out of token generators and couldn’t find a black source to flash back the pair of Lingering Souls rotting in my graveyard. This is, to my knowledge, the first time that a mana-color issue has screwed me in this deck. I guess it was bound to happen eventually.

Game three isn’t close. I get early presence, and he can’t recover fast enough even through a Timely Reinforcement.

3-1 (7-3 in games)

Round 5 – Derek with Delver

A third successive Delver opponent puts me a little sour-mouthed. Can’t I go back to fighting Zombies? Those are easy. It’s almost like I’m playing against an expected meta. That’s still relatively new to me – considering that the majority of tournaments that I’ve played in have had a meta entirely dependent on who the good players in the room are. I’m going to need to get used to that going forward.

My first match went long, and ended with me barely grinding out a win with a last-second Vault activation. He can’t quite get the last three points of damage in, and I take the match.

Sideboard: -3 Hero of Bladehold, -1 Angel of Jubilation, -1 Doomed Traveler, +3 Timely Reinforcements, +2 Nihil Spellbomb

Game two sees me mulligan to six, and then lose a close race to Sword of War and Peace on a Restoration Angel. He ends on five life, and a Vault, or removal spell, at any point would have won the game for me.

Between games two and three, I sideboard out two Oblivion Rings and bring in two Divine Offering.

Game three ends up being a tragedy as I lose a race to Restoration Angel in the late game. Ironically, I lose with a pair of Divine Offerings in my hand, no targets for them, and plenty of mana to tap. If only they had been Oblivion Rings…

3-2 (8-4 in games)

Aftermath

Despite there being four more rounds, it was nearing 4 o’clock and I since I was most likely out of the range of the top 32 prize pool, I decided that the rest of the night would be better spent trekking up to New York in time for dinner. I spent the rest of the weekend with my family and saw my brother graduate from my High School – which is always a nice turn.

I’m not sure what the answer to Delver is. I feel like there needs to be one, and that if there is, I’ll need to find it. They've gotten stronger, but in different ways. I think Tokens is still a good place to be against them, but it's going to need to evolve a bit. Expect a very different list next week.

This weekend, I have FNM and a pair of GPT’s at Ron’s Comic World. I’ll be attending those, if only for the experience and the Planeswalker Points. I’m at 313 for the season so far, which puts me in easy range of my first GP Bye for next season. Those byes are going to turn out to be important, since I’ll be attending GP Boston and GP Philadelphia during that season, and byes at either are likely to be very important to my success there. I’m not at the point of assuming that I can win a GPT for any given event, and so getting 2 Byes from points would be spectacular. I’ve got a ton of big events coming up, and doing well at them should make that threshold reachable.

In the meantime, I’m brewing aggressively for the Worlds Qualifier on the 16th. I really would like to do well there and come out with a strong record. I may just take Tokens, but if I do, it’s something that I want to come with something stronger. Maybe an Esper List foregoing the Champion/Gather/Honor package for Favorable Winds, Snapcaster, Delver, and Restoration Angel? That seems like giving into the Delver Menace, but it might just give me the best chance to win this thing.

All I know is that all this talk of banning Ponder and Snapcaster doesn’t matter in the least to me. The Qualifier is on the 16th, and the next ban announcement isn’t till the 20th. After that, it’s all Legacy practice until Atlanta, and then the M13 prerelease the following weekend. I won’t be playing Standard post-ban until Connecticon on July 13-15.

Here’s hoping that the format sorts itself out soon.