Back In The Saddle - Esper Tokens for GP Atlantic City

It's been a while since I've addressed Standard in one of my blogs, and this upcoming weekend seems to provide me with the perfect time to talk about it. Since becoming a judge, my opportunities to play competitive magic have declined pretty significantly. It's not that I enjoy it less, it's just that opportunities to judge seem to keep cropping up, and I have only so many weekends that I can fill with Magic. Couple that with the holidays, and I haven't been at a Competitive REL tournament since November – and that wasn't even Standard. (It was a Legacy Tournament – which I am happy to report I Top 8'd, with much the same BW list that I've been running for some time now.)

Since the last time I'd checked in, Standard has changed a bunch. The last couple of FNM's that I'd gone to had been decidedly during the era of Jund. It was everywhere, and I was of the opinion that my former tokens list couldn't compete on the same level as it. Something needed to be done.

Luckily for me, the format shifted, then shifted again. Despite not playing, I still followed the scene, checking in with some of my favorite authors and noting the results from Star City Opens and GP's. I have to say, from the look of things, it seems dynamic and interesting, but I still can't quite muster the same level of enthusiasm that I had during the Scars-Innistrad Standard. Perhaps having a 'bad guy' in the format spurs me on to more deck building than normal. Maybe the relatively small subset of cards that sees play in every deck is irking me. I hadn't been able to really pinpoint what it was until recently.

When I sat down to write my New Years Resolutions, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to have a couple dedicated to Magic. I'd slacked off on quite a few projects – my Shard War decks, Illyria, and I'd been sitting on my hands regarding advancing as a judge. Most of all, I didn't have any decks (except my Legacy deck) that I really wanted to play all that much. I vowed to change that before the end of the year.

For those who have been reading this blog for the last few months, you know that I fell in love with BW Tokens, lovingly updating it week by week, and having a reasonable amount of success with it. I felt like I understood the deck on a fundamental level, and all it's match-ups. Unfortunately, the rotation was not kind to my poor spirit tokens.

People had been telling me for months before the rotation that the deck was strong, but would be much better once Ratchet Bomb and Elesh Norn were gone. Interestingly, none of those people kept saying it after Detention Sphere was printed, and that was only the start of the issue. Olivia becoming highly played provided a roadblock. Still, I could fight through those things. After all, the titans were gone, and the caliber of board wipe that remained in standard was a far cry from Ratchet Bomb and Sun Titan.

That said, Tokens was not without casualties. Specifically, two of our hardest hitting cards went by the wayside. Hero of Bladehold and Honor of the Pure both provided huge offensive boosts to my squad that were proving difficult to replace without serious reworks to the deck.

 

The inspiration for the update actually came from my friend (and deck building prodigy) Marshall. He'd been working on a Spirits tribal list for a while (and was actually working on a list extremely similar to John Finkel's Pro Tour Honolulu list as Finkel was winning with it). After the success of the deck, it was poorly positioned for a while, with the whole format devolving into creature mirrors between R/G, Naya, Pod decks, and Angel Delver. It also had some issues with an unstable mana base if you tried to add the black splash for Lingering Souls. With the rotation, Marshall felt it was time to give it another shot.

The addition of Hallowed Fountain did wonders for the land base, allowing him to cut into a third color for more than just a narrow splash. After seeing his list, utilizing Drogskol Captain, I realized that it had a remarkable resemblance to my tokens list, and decided to modify it:

As usual, I began with an existing deck. A lot of my card choices seem to mirror the briefly seen Esper Flash lists that were thrown around for a week or two. I'd played the Esper lists (as well as the UWr version) casually for a couple of test games before dismissing them. I didn't like how many turns I was spending just cycling through cards, and I didn't like how low my threat density was. With a the core of the tokens deck still intact (Midnight Haunting + Lingering Souls + Intangible Virtue), I felt that there was definitely a deck still there, and I searched for a way to intensify that.

In the meantime, on the back burner, I had a playset of Restoration Angels that I love fiercely. I wanted them to see more play, I just needed a deck to slot them into.

Once I decided to add blue to the deck in earnest, the question became “What can I gain?” Snapcaster seemed an obvious choice, but in testing, I found that the deck was already mana-hungry enough, and didn't often produce too many good targets for the Wizard. I cut down to two copies from four. Augur of Bolas, despite the occasional flub, served as a much better two drop for my Flash Tokens. Plus, it provided a great body to flicker with Restoration Angel. The breakthrough came later, with Favorable winds providing the redundant anthems that I'd always wanted.

Once I had favorable winds, all the formerly aggressive draws were out. I didn't want to lead Champion of the Parish into Gather the Townsfolk. There was too much spot removal in the format, and I couldn't follow it up as strongly without Honor of the Pure to provide consistency. On the other hand, I did have a powerful engine that allowed my flyers – token or not – to trump similar plays by other decks. My Restoration Angels could block (and kill!) opposing ones, and with spot removal on the rise, my swarms had never been more effective. Once I'd decided on the flyer emphasis, it naturally brought my curve a little higher – towards the 4 and 5 mana range. Geist Honored Monk started seeming like a great creature to play – with Restoration Angel being able to hit it for added value. A few counters, and a smattering of removal spells (or at least, what I could find given the color constraints) rounded out the list.

The final card was a single copy of Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. He was too slow for my previous list, but here, he seems just right. All of his abilities are relevant, and he comes at a point in the game when each could be the correct thing to do. I'm considering adding a second if I can get a hand on one.

The end result (sans sideboard) is this:

The deck has one main issue, right now: the insanely aggressive decks. Not the midrange-y zombies lists, which tries to kill you with 4 and 5 drops. Those we can deploy a wall of Spirits to block effectively. I'm talking more in the terms of Naya Humans, Mono-red, and things in that vein. Thalia still provides a major roadblock for the deck – serving to give a one sided cost bump to almost literally every card in the deck. I'm still working on a solution to some of those, but I'm confident in my ability to work it out in time for this weekend. While I don't love it the way I loved BW Tokens, it's at least a deck that I can feel comfortable playing for a long day. I've already got a room at Atlantic City with two of my good friends, as well as my girlfriend, and I'm planning on seeing if I can grind my way through 9 rounds to a 7-2 record, and a berth in Day 2.

What do you think about my list? Do you see any glaring omissions in it? Anything that you think could be improved, or significantly changed for the better? Feel free to leave a comment. Going to be at Grand Prix Atlantic City? Drop me a line if you want to catch up. I'm more than happy to chat with anyone.

May all your (and my) spells resolve.

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

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

How did this happen?

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

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

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

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

And I hated it.

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

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

What if I merged the two decks?

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

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

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

-----

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

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

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

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

“So, what’re you thinking?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Help me unsleeve this.”

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

Round 1 – Chris with Bant Pod

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

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

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

1-0   (2-0 in games)

Round 2 – Steve with Mono Black Control

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

Ouch.

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

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

2-0   (4-1 in games)

Round 3 – Robert with GW Elves

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

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

2-1 (4-3 in games)

Round 4 – Brad Nelson on BW Zombie Pod

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

Geralf’s Messenger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3-1 (6-3 in games)

Round 5 – Gavin with RG Pod

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

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

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

4-1 (8-4 in games)

Round 6 – Andrew with Esper…well…

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

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

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

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

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

4-2 (8-6 in games)

Round 7 – Naya Pod

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

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

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

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

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

5-2 (10-7 in games)

Round 8 – Ian on RG Aggro

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

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

6-2 (12-8 in games)

Round 9 – Russo with RG Aggro

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

6-3 (12-10 in games)

Aftermath

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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!