Five With Flores

This is the “unacceptable” discussion and “solution” (if you can call it that) to You Make the Play - enCRYPTed.

… And the first You Make the Play Video response!

To refresh everybody’s memory, it was Game Three against ‘Tron. We had two up, Spellstutter Sprite in hand, fully loaded Archmage on the table and UU up.

The opponent presented Tormod’s Crypt.

The board looked more-or-less exactly like this:

So what is the what?

The first question is, do we care about a Tormod’s Crypt?

We don’t care about graveyard recursion overmuch; what we care about is that the Tormod’s Crypt can keep up from doubling up with Archmage Persist-ence.

So the first question is whether we should be doing anything about it.

I think — and it will be obvious from my “solution” to the board position — that I thought it would be worth dealing with (I care[d] about my half of an Archmage).

So the next question is, assuming we care, what we are going to do.

I have to admit that at the time (I am sure I was watching Gossip Girl out of the corner of my eye) that I didn’t even consider using the Archmage to defend the Archmage. To me, it was Spellstutter Sprite 2-for-1 or nil.

So I went for the Sprite.

Results were disastrous.

Obviously he was the super uber miser, and had not just natural ‘Tron, Ghost Quarter, and a significant threat, but Mindslaver as well.

Ka-pow!

Mindslaver connected.

Archmage died without ever doing anything profitable for michaelj (AKA Number One).

Interestingly if I had used the Archmage, I would have been in a pretty similar position (albeit with one more Mana Leak). I would have been obligated to eat the Mindslaver anyway. That said, I think using the Archmage to stop the Tormod’s Crypt was the best play.

Pat Chapin — who called my Spellstutter Sprite / terrible read “unacceptable” when I talked to him about it — said he would have done nothing. “You realize you are talking about pulling down your pants to a potential Mindslaver in order to save half a card, right?” (He said something like that).

But what is really interesting is all the things that happened next. Check that action out here:

I’m sure you loved every minute!

Oh, and before I forget - Congratulations to Joshua Scott Honigmann who won a Kentucky PTQ with a Mono-White Control deck similar to what we have been discussing the past couple of days. You go Temple of the False God!