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.

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.

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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.

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.

-----

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.

First Place at GPT Atlanta with BW Tokens!

It started out as one of those days.

You know the type. It’s that day when you sit there in your car, half an hour early for the event, scrambling to find a couple of sideboard cards because watching reruns of How I Met Your Mother seemed so much more important last night. The clock is ticking, you don’t have any money on you, your gas tank is dry, and you haven’t eaten breakfast.

I find the two Revoke Existence that I wanted, finally, after flipping through about a thousand assorted commons and uncommons. That’s another thing I should do when I’ve got more than twenty minutes to spare. Apparently, having a life makes doing other important things – like Magic - inconvenient.

I get into the shop, which is already filling up. I spot a few of the regulars that I know, and start chatting. Alex is on Tokens today, which is unusual. Alex is one of the better players in the store. He won a thousand dollar tournament about a month and a half ago – plus winning States earlier in the year. He’s probably the biggest worry in the room. I wonder if he feels the same way about me – I don’t have any big wins like that to my name. Lance – who I’m 2-0 against in recent play - is on Esper Control It’s a worse matchup than his previous Delver, but nothing that I wouldn’t be reasonable against. I also spot Bernard, who made Top 8 in the GPT that I took 2^nd place in. A bunch of other reasonable players round out the field of 14. Certainly not a big tournament, but not a soft one either.

 I make a change to my maindeck on speculation after I pick up a second Angel of Jubilation. The card looks insanely good in BW Tokens. I finish my deck list and turn it in with my entry fee.

We’re about to start when the door opens up, admitting Justin and Mike.

Someone chimes in. “There’s the Ringers.”

Justin is good. He’s been on a three week winning spree at FNM’s – not dropping a match yet with RG. I’ve heard tell that Sword of War and Peace is a pretty good card on turn 2. He Top-4’d the GPT, though I never had to play against him. RG is a tough matchup for me. Him being at the tournament worries me a bit.

Mike isn’t much better. He plays one deck, and plays it relentlessly well. Once upon a time, it was Valakut, and he racked up win after win with it before it rotated. He switched to Delver and never looked back. He’s been in the Top-8 situation more times than I can remember, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him misplay. He’s also notoriously against splitting prize. It’s all or nothing, in his books. He’s here to win.

As for me, I haven’t eaten in nearly 18 hours because I’m an idiot, and I got around 5 hours of sleep last night, which isn’t enough for me. It’s going to be a long day.

Round 1 – Justin with RG Aggro

The pairings are called, and I’m matched against Lance, but there’s a repair and I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m hoping to get an easy match in the first round so I can go grab some food. Unfortunately, it’s not to be, and I draw the short straw. Round 1: Your Worst Matchup, Piloted by one of the Best Players in the Store.

In game one, our life totals go in opposite directions. His upwards in small chucks, and mine down in significantly larger ones. I never get him below 20. I guess keeping Anthem-Anthem-Hero and lands isn’t the best idea against an aggressive deck. If he’d been a little slower, I could have attacked with the Hero and activated Vault to bump me back up to near-20, but he kills me on his fifth turn.

Game two doesn’t go much better, except I actually case a few spells. After I forget that Wolvir Avenger is a card and lose a token for no reason, I promptly pass a turn without casting a spell, ignoring the active Huntmaster. I deserve to lose this game just as much as I do the first – and I do in short order.

I walk over to the judge afterwards, shaking my head.

“Time on the round?”

“Forty minutes left.”

Well, at least I’ve got plenty of time to eat.

“I’m going to go take a walk,” I inform the judge. I go and get some McDonalds. Maybe I should eat healthier, but at this point, I’m tired, I’m hungry, I have a headache, and I just want some fries.

I dislike losing. I’m sure most people can sympathize with that, but something that I hate way more is not playing my best. Looking back, the first hand was absolutely a mulligan. When your first play can run directly into their Primeval Titan, you probably shouldn’t keep that. The second game was winnable if I’d actually played it smart and not walked into every trick in the RG aggro playbook. I played the match poorly, but I am not a poor player. That game was NOT me. I sat down, watched a match play out while I ate my burgers, took two Excedrin for the headache, and refocused. Four rounds, top 8. I’m still in this.

0-1 (0-2 in games)

Round 2 – Morbid Werewolves

I disliked this guy. He sat down, took one look at me and bitterly spat out “I really hope you’re not on Delver. That card is bullshit.” I shrug. I guess he went against UW in the first round and it went poorly. I’m not of the opinion that Delver is this monolithic institution – it’s beatable like almost anything else if you’re willing to tune your deck to do it.

I’m on the play without any one-drops, and he starts off with a Young Wolf. Werewolves never seemed like a spectacular deck to me, but I know it’s quick and aggressive and can steal wins if you play into a bad Moonmist. I play an anthem and he follows it up with a Vexing Devil.

“I’ll take the four, thanks.”

“Fine by me,” he responds with a smile. “Hunger of the Howlpack?”

The 4/4 young wolf crashes in, taking me to 12 on turn 2.

“That’s a pretty solid line.” I comment as I mark my rapidly dwindling life total.

I pass my next turn, and he taps the Young Wolf like his life depended on it. I flash in a couple spirits via Midnight Haunting and double block. He balks, looks at his hand, and nods. The Wolf dies, and he tries to put it back in play.

“Doesn’t undie.” I note. “It had counters on it.”

“Oh, really?” I think he genuinely didn’t know.

The game ends with me playing a Hero, followed by two Honor of the Pure and an attack.

“That card is bullshit,” he says.

“It is pretty good,” I admit I’m feeling a little dumb about removing one from my main board for an Angel. Angel would have been little better than a 4 mana 3/3 in that situation.

He gets the same opening in the second game, but an O-ring solves that problem. He plays six creatures that all eventually fall to tokens and repeated Vault of the Archangel activations. He makes a bunch of bad attacks into deathtouch effects. Eventually, I play a Hero that closes out the game.

“I can’t find a Moonmist to save my life, and I didn’t draw any creatures!”

“Good games.” I don’t really have anything more to say to that. Like I said, I didn’t really like this guy.

1-1 (2-2 in games)

Round 3 – Bernard on UW Delver

I’m feeling much better with a win under my belt, and food in my gut. The wonders of modern medicine have cured my headache, and the adrenaline is flowing, which is mitigating the worst of the fatigue. Bernard is a solid Delver player, and I’d generally count on him to not make many play mistakes. Thankfully, I’m doing great against Delver recently, so I’m feeling confident as we shuffle.

I’ve got the Champion into Honor draw, which normally seems really good. Putting early pressure onto Delver is a great way to slow them down a bit. They’ll pay mana for their Gitaxian Probes and just generally be less dangerous.

Of course, that’s all assuming that they don’t play and flip a pair of Delvers in the first three turns. Sometimes you just get there regardless of anything else.

Game two is even less one sided, but in the opposite direction. Champion into Gather into Intangible Virtue has him at 10 on turn 3, with blockers available for the Geist of St. Traft that he plays. He tries to balance out with a Timely Reinforcements, but a Lingering Souls off the top puts too much P/T on the field for him to stop – plus, my tokens are just all bigger than his.

Game three is closer than I’d like, and mostly revolves around him beating me with a Runechanter’s Pike on a Geist while I flew over him. Vault of the Archangel is a champion again as I gain 14 life over two turns to stay alive on 5 when I kill him.

2-1 (4-3 in games)

I’m able to draw the fourth round, because Justin is still undefeated and helps my breakers out a ton. This makes me very happy, because my opponent was Alex, and the tokens mirror is something out of hell. It all comes down to who has more Anthems, and how you leverage that to your advantage. With two main deck Angels, and one vault more than him, I should have the edge in the mirror, but it’s still not something I want to do.

Luckily, a clean draw lets me watch an awesome BW Control brew fight into the top 8 in a spectacular set.

Round 5 Quarterfinals: Esper Delver

Esper Delver is slightly different from the UW version. He’s got a bunch of tokens instead of an invisible stalker package, but he’s much more effective at clogging the board and waiting for a Sword to kill me with.

Game one starts slowly for both of us, with a non-flipped delver beating on me for three turns before I manage to get tokens and anthems running. I O-ring his Sword of War and Peace, and eventually, vigilant fliers take the day.

Game two is scary. He manages to beat me down to 2 before I stabilize in the air. Being that low against someone playing Gut Shot, Vapor Snag, and Snapcaster is always nerve wracking. You want to push for lethal as fast as possible because every draw you give them could kill you. On the other hand, you can’t go all-in because a single flashed in creature, or a vapor snag to remove a blocker, could leave you dead. You run the numbers, and in the end, either he has it or he doesn’t. This time, he didn’t.

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

Round 6 Semifinals: Justin with RG Aggro Redux

I hope it won’t sound like bragging to say that the top 4 was a stacked set of people. Justin and I paired off, and the other table was Alex and Mike. That is a brutal set of opponents no matter how you cut it – and Mike’s presence means that there would be no splitting of prizes.

I wanted this win more than any in the tournament. He’d beaten me when I wasn’t at my best, and I wanted to prove that I was just as good as he was. I wanted to prove that my deck wasn’t some janky thing he could just walk over.

Game one started slow for both of us, with the first major action being a turn 3 Huntmaster from him, and a Honor of the Pure powered Lingering Souls from him. He flips his huntmaster to kill one token, but I come back with a second honor and the flashback on the souls, shrinking his huntmaster down and giving me a huge flying armada that kills him over three turns of Vault-augmented attacks.

Game two can be summed up with “Double Sword.” There’s not much that I can do against that. If he draws one, I can usually race it, or have the removal for it. The second makes it nearly impossible to handle.

Mike looks over at our match, having beaten Alex in the unfavorable tokens matchup.

“Justin, you gonna lose your streak?”

“Tokens are pretty good man.” He shoots back.

Mike shrugs towards Alex. “Doesn’t seem too bad.”

“We’ll see about that.” I chime in. “It’s a bad matchup for you.”

“Seems fine,” Mike says.

“We’ll see.”

In game three, I overload the ground with one of those nut draws you only read about. Champion into Gather into Champion and Gather into Hero of Bladehold. He tanks for a while before extending the hand.

4-1-1 (8-4 in games)

Round 6: Mike on UW Delver

After beating the much more difficult RG matchup, I honestly felt pretty relieved. I was 4-0 in competitive play against Delver with this list. Tokens are just so absurdly good against it. Every spell they cast seems less powerful than what you’re doing natively, unless they have multiple swords or something else nutty like that. Barring that, they need to either win with a trick – snapcasts and snags on end step to push through damage – or a fast delver and a ton of counter magic.

Game one isn’t close. I crush him with a double Champion draw. He never touches me because his Geist can never attack without dying.

Game two is close, but eventually, an equipped sword goes the distance and I don’t draw enough power to keep my head above water with Vault. Beating with a 2/2 lifelink deathtouch is nice, but not when it costs you 5 mana every turn and you don’t have any other plays.

The third game comes uncomfortably close. While Delver might be a good matchup for Tokens, it’s also an extremely good deck when piloted by a competent player, and Mike certainly qualifies. I end up with six vigilant flyers staring him down, while I’m on 10.

He taps his deck. “So, draw an equipment for the win, or anything else and I die.”

“Pass turn,” I say. He draws, looks at the card, sets it down, and then goes into the tank.

He thinks, and thinks. Long moments.

“Pass turn.” His voice is even. I’m on ten. He has nine power on the board. He’s at one. I don’t think there’s any outs, but my brain is frantic now. I’m checking for everything. I even look to see if he’s got green mana for a fog effect. (Ironically, he does have the green mana off a Hinterland Harbor, for Ray of Revelation flashback, which I personally really like in his deck.)

I untap, upkeep, draw. Survey the board, sandbag a land and go to combat. No effects. Swing. Effects before blocks? Effects before damage?

He flips the Seachrome Coast and extends the hand.

I won.

That’s never happened before.

5-1-1 (10-5 in games)

I’m a pretty nice guy at tournaments. I banter with my opponents, I joke around when we’re rolling to see who goes first. We’re all here to have fun, even if the game is very serious on both sides of the table. It’s nice to be able to smile and laugh. An extension of that is that I’ll almost always offer a split in Top 8 and above. Some people think that’s weak – and that you should always play to win, but frankly, unless the top spot gets something special, I’ve never seen the point to that at FNM level.

I’ve gotten plenty of good finishes, but never first place.

Aftermath

Being a GPT, the prize included just over half a box for me (which turned out to be pretty good) and three byes for GP Atlanta – a fourteen hour drive from me.

I text people, letting them know that I’d won, and the congratulatory texts started rolling in. At the time, I’d figured that the big win here was the Planeswalker Points – 5 wins and a draw was over 50 points towards the byes that I want for GP Philadelphia in the fall. Between this and the GPT Top 4 from Ron’s Comic World, I was nearly halfway to my first bye at the GP I really cared about.

I get a text from Marshall:

“So, going to learn legacy?”

“Fourteen hour drive for legacy? I don’t even have a deck.”

Then a text shows up from George:

“Congrats. We going to Atlanta?”

Gears start turning. I get a text from Pop:

“Sick! So we’re going right?”

The jury is still out on the final verdict, but the more I think about it, the more that a 14 hour drive doesn’t seem THAT bad. I could learn legacy, put a deck together, but if I’m going to do it, it can’t be alone. I’m going to talk to a few of my friends and see how we could work this out, what decks we could field among us. I’m currently qualified for the World Cup Qualifier, which happens to include a GPT for Atlanta on Sunday alongside a PTQ, which should take some of the sharks out of the water.

This could happen, and that’s pretty exciting.

The next day, I went to a StarcityGames Invitiational Qualifier, but that’s a story for Thursday. Check back then to find out how I did!