Five With Flores

I wish I had a PTQ!

I would play this:

Critical Mass 2009

2 Chalice of the Void
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Umezawa’s Jitte

2 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Trinket Mage
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Venser, Shaper Savant

4 Kitchen Finks

1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Tarmogoyf

1 Academy Ruins
4 Breeding Pool
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
2 Riptide Laboratory
1 Seat of the Synod
5 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Tree of Tales
4 Wooded Foothills

sideboard
1 Chalice of the Void
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Echoing Truth
2 Repeal
3 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
4 Ancient Grudge
1 Dwarven Blastminer

One of the things that dawned on me recently was how much better the cards are now than Gnarled Mass. I mean you can make the possibly true argument that Isao, Enlightened Bushi was better than Gnarled Mass, but Kitchen Finks and Vendilion Clique really make for a good argument.

It’s not that I’ve abandoned the White deck so much as I don’t think the White deck can win in a format where Storm is one of the top decks. You see Game One you have to be extremely lucky to win, and sideboarded your strategy revolves around Chalice of the Void; if the opponent is playing Luis Scott-Vargas’s version with multiple Shattering Sprees I don’t know how you can reasonably win. Sure you are going to beat the Fae, Red Decks, and so on but I think that an utterly unwinnable matchup against Storm is a dodgy proposition at this particular time.

On balance, this deck (that is, Critical Mass) has no such Storm vulnerability. In fact, I put it as the best deck in the format against Storm (at least from my experience). I have never lost to that kind of combo deck.

You have a couple of things going for you:

1. Your Birds of Paradise accelerates out your Trinket Mage and supplements your operating mana, allowing you to stick a meaningful Chalice of the Void before you’ve lost the game.
2. Your Birds of Paradise and Sakura Tribe-Elders give you a slight mana boost allowing you to play Glen Elendra Archmage with U open, as opposed to just tapping out and losing.

I really like the Storm matchup with this deck and would be comfortable playing it all day.

I like the Faeries / Wizards decks in general but I didn’t know how to win the mirror. The mirror seems quite miserable to me (but scouting from the LA floor from ManningBot seems to indicate that the mirror is highly skill intensive… I must confess that I don’t see how to gain an edge by play skill); however this deck has a fair edge over the Faeries / Wizards style of deck.

In a sense it maintains the old Kamigawa-era Critical Mass edge over Jushi Blue. You are a similar deck with fewer permission spells but tremendously more impressive mana and threats. I was in the process of beating up a Faeries player last week when he played Vedalken Shackles. I did some minor math and decided I would try to overwhelm his Shackles… A single hit from any of my significant threats would be enough. I played Iwamori of the Open Fist. He showed me Azami, Lady of Scrolls. I passed. Before the end he played an instant Vendilion Clique and drew two. I conceded game despite having no illusions of possibly losing a turn and a half before. As you can see the deck no longer has any copies of Iwamori of the Open Fist.

My current strategy is to just play a lot of Arashis. I’ve always loved Arashi and it seems fine at beating Wizards. I side the one main deck copy out quite a bit. I think I’ve only ever gone 5/5 against Zoo.

Speaking of Zoo, that is a nigh-comical matchup. You have Sakura Tribe-Elder, Kitchen Finks, and Umezawa’s Jitte all main, plus Engineered Explosives backup. Really, not a difficult matchup.

What is a difficult but not unwinnable matchup is Affinity. Critical Mass is a dog in Game One. I don’t think that the opposing win expectation is much over fifty per cent, but the Affinity Game One wins are all blowouts so it might “feel” very good for Affinity. Certainly they have some margin to play with if they run the multiple Master of Etherium version. Sideboarding makes Critical Mass a heavy favorite. You have all these great guys and all these Ancient Grudges both. I think that I have been generally lucky drawing Ancient Grudges in sideboarded games, but Critical Mass has been an overwhelming favorite in my experience.

B/G Loam has been interesting. This is a matchup that can go either way. I have won most Game Ones in tempo-oriented fashion, but like I said it can go either way. I’ve noticed that Critical Mass has become a heavier favorite in sideboarded games due to the inclusion of the second Relic of Progenitus. Previously I was concentrating on just not getting blown out by Life from the Loam and sometimes losing to the opponent drawing another one. The two Progenitus version has been much more steady and I think Critical Mass is a moderate favorite in sideboarded games, a slight favorite overall.

Overall I would not hesitate to play this deck the day after tomorrow. I have never tested it but I assume Critical Mass would be a dog to a well played and good version of the Martyr deck. Most of the other matchups seem managable if not favorable blowouts.

I have not missed Thirst For Knowlege, largely because the deck is so active and I can get some of the selection / card advantage back with Sakura-Tribe Elder and Sword of Fire and Ice… The one card I sometimes miss, though, is Pithing Needle (usually when faced with some annoying Vedalken Shackles).

Anyway, that’s my deck. I hope you get something useful out of it. Good luck this weekend to anyone playing. I suggest you obtain The Touch.

LOVE
MIKE

Just a quick fake-update corolla-RE: to yesterday’s Five by Flores (which talked about my five favorite Star City articles last year penned by YT)…

Dictating the Field of Battle

I said Spencer’s forum post was my favorite but I actually forgot about this one, which actually touched what passes for my soul:

oldbsturgeon
i just want to say that this article was very inspiring to me for maybe a very strange reason.
i work as a therapist in substance abuse and i sometimes have clients that have codependency issues with another person.
today we were discussing this persons relationship and how the other person is currently dictating the field of battle and that the client is agreeing to her strategy and will continue to stay with her. by eliminating interaction, such as dredge’s strategy, she can focus on her goal of bettering herself, and when her partner trys to interact in will not matter and she will ultimately lose. either her partner must accept the new terms or will fall further trying to pursue her faulty goals.
thanks mike

I was reminded of this because of an email this morning (which has transformed itself into a Star City forum post also) by Anthony LaCassa, or Ath0919 here and on Star City.

Anth0919
Mike,

So I just read this article and all I have to say is holy crap!

I feel kind of stupid for being blown away by the article, since it’s pretty much based on simple math and I’m an accountant. I guess this is something I feel that I should have been able to realize on my own without having it explained. That being said, I’ve just begun venturing into competitive Magic over the past few months.

Thanks for this article… it’s the best I’ve read regarding theory on choosing a deck.

(Anthony’s was RE: The Basic Test of Metagaming Competence)

Which just goes to show: It’s not just for teenie weenie kids any more. Grown ups with jobs love michaelj too!

yes Yes YES
I will go over the deck that prompted young Zack Hall to proclaim “you should go into sales” to me yesterday. Maybe later today depending on Lost, Top Chef, etc.

LOVE
MIKE

I was reading Star City Games this week and until I saw a poll for most popular articles by some author or other, I totally forgot they had end-of-the-year awards.

What do you think the chances are that this two-time Writer of the Year gets a nod now that he is no longer in the weeklies? Winky-wink.

Anyway, I decided go go over my eight or so months at Star City in 2008 and pluck my favorite articles. I am pretty sure they are all non-Premium now for those of you who don’t have that service.

Dictating the Field of Battle

michaelj sez:
This article is superbly written. Ego, yes; but still a fact. That is, it is a good read and would have been the kind of article I would have liked to have read had I not written it (actually I liked re-reading it, so I guess it has nothing to do with whether or not I had written it). This article features Dune battle strategy, lightsaber duels, basically everything awesome including passably awesome Magic strategy.

My favorite forum post:

SRmogg
Just wanted to say that as of now this is currently my favorite magic article ever. Like, it was pretty unreal. I’ve read every enderverse novel many times, and I also really like Kurt Vonnegut. I alreayd knew most the startegic content, but if someone didn’t and was looking for a new way to attack a wide open format with many powerful linears like extended, it’s pretty excellent. 

[Had to get a shout out to my man Spencer!] 

Never Settle

michaelj sez:
Just a fair number of good ideas in this one, including getting the pat on the head from Pat, actually learning something while I was working on it, and answering a request by Adam Prosak. Just a pretty good article. I had actually forgotten doing the Wrath of God math; at the time (”that” time, actually) I was playing at my absolute best (this was right before Charleston and my States win)… I think combined with my The Touch tee shirt, GerryT’s mulligan advice, and remembering to do the math when I am pressed with a difficult decision, I will probably knock off a Honolulu PTQ win in one try. On that note…

My favorite forum post:

qwertius 
this article helped me a great deal. 

I see myself as a talented player that never reached his potential for several reasons. Flores points to several directions I should look upon to improve.

Modeling Grand Prix Excellence

michaelj sez:
I had just come back from meeting millionaire copywriter Dr. Harlan Kilstein the first time, and I had inadvertently invented a sub-array of NLP theory, and was all excited about learning how to do modeling correctly. I actually want to do more modeling exercises in my writing in the future (in fact I have been thinking of creating a mulligans model inspired by GerryT’s post in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers; I don’t know if you noticed but I am pretty excited about that one. Just a great contribution to the site by Gerry). Also this one has a maddening amount of hand-written sections from The Confusion as well as the best opening page of any novel: madness and goodness both.

My favorite forum post:

Anselm
And then there’s Thomas Pynchon, who does (almost) everything Stephenson does, but better.

[Actually this is like my least favorite forum post of all time. Ravitz and I went out and bought Gravity's Rainbow after this forum post and it's been close to a year and neither of us has finished it yet.]

The Basic Test of Metagaming Competence

michaelj sez:
I actually forgot that I wrote this one. This was both one of the best articles I ever published and not as good as it should have been (I had been keeping it under my hat for about three years to be honest, and didn’t get to flesh out everything I wanted to in one article… It was meant to be a video series). This article lays out the advanced rock-paper-scissors theory I use (or more aptly, “used” when I was really good at that kind of thing during Kamigawa- and Ravnica-era Standard formats) to pick the right deck consistently. Certainly my favorite of the five, and a short list contender for Article of the Year (provided anyone remembers I wrote it… Like I said I didn’t).

My favorite forum post:

ThePChapin
Flores! I knew you still had it in you! 
This article hit home with me like no other article since that fateful “How to win a PTQ” last year…” 
Grand Slam. Not close.

A Case for Scissors, and Building the Anti-Deck

michaelj sez:
“What’s a girl to do?”

My favorite forum post:

center425
Man I love the people flaming the advice on sideboards. Honestly, I bet everyone one of you played cards that were awful in your bad matchups for no reason.

So I hope you like reading or re-reading some of 2008’s best stuff, from me, on Star City. Hopefully I will continue to be able to produce passably awesome content now and forever. Hopefully.

LOVE
MIKE

PS In case you haven’t noticed (and I think I mentioned it roughly DI times in this article, you should read GerryT’s comment in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers. Like right now!).

PPS Follow me on Twitter. Please! I want to feel loved.