Five With Flores

As you know I didn’t test the Slide deck I played yesterday at all.

So I did not receive an early birthday present of a plane ticket to Pro Tour Honolulu.

I played precisely the deck I posted previously:

3 Engineered Explosives
4 Spark Spray
3 Path to Exile
3 Life from the Loam
3 Edge of Autumn
3 Lightning Rift
3 Astral Slide
2 Wrath of God

4 Kitchen Finks
2 Loxodon Hierarch
2 Cloudthresher

4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Secluded Steppe
3 Forgotten Cave
3 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Forests
2 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple Garden
1 Stomping Ground

SB:
4 Lightning Helix
3 Duegar Hedge Mage
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Plow Under
1 Eternal Witness
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Path to Exile
1 Cloudthresher

Things that I would have gotten from testing:

• Familiarity with the mana base: I made similar small mistakes throughout the day. I don’t think any of them ever affected the outcome of games, but they were still embarassing / lame. This deck has three dual lands and five basics. I kept breaking Windswept Heath during the middle turns and… (you know where this is going)
• Ability to play more quickly. Especially at the beginning of the tournament, I kept going to time (see below). Worrying about the clock definitely affected my play overall.
• Preserving my threats. A couple of times I ran into these situations where I kept Dredging my threats and then pulling useless Flagstones of Trokair with my card drawing. I’d say that this might have cost me my match with Gabe Carleton-Barnes, but I think that matchup is hopelessly difficult
• Specific knowledge. Um. Plow Under is just worse than the Eternal Witness that I cut against other Loam decks! You Plow them, they just Dredge the lands, etc. LOL

Anticlimax: I finished 5-2-1 in a PTQ that should have been nine rounds of Swiss. The draw was first round. I just didn’t play quickly enough. I was in commanding position but found myself in extra turns with a total of three damage sources left in my deck. The losses were 1) very difficult pairing, and 2) the realization of my now-justifiable fears.

Round 1: Hybrid Domain Zoo

Game One:
He started off on a 1/2 Tarmogoyf and a Kitchen Finks. I didn’t feel particularly threatened and played Astral Slide. I actually had the opportunity to Slide his ‘goyf and Path his Finks, but like I said, I didn’t feel very threatened so I let him hit me. This was partly because of his choice of land configuration: He had Overgrown Tomb, Sacred Foundry, and basic Plains in play. Instead I let him get me for four and passed to my fourth turn to play Loxodon Hierarch. He showed me Mana Tithe (+2 to ‘goyf), Steam Vents, Might of Alara, and Tribal Flames. As psulli would say “Lesson learned.”

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-3 Lightning Rift
-1 Path to Exile
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+4 Lightning Helix

Game Two:
I got a two for one, Time Walk, and three life out of Ajani Vengeant. Completely lopsided game.

Sideboarding:
-2 Ajani Vengeant
+2 Path to Exile

Game Three:
Back on the draw in Game Three, I did not feel that I could reliably crush him with Anjani Vengeant again. He had two Mana Tithes in hand at the end of Game Two, so I just wanted the fastest response cards that were the least likely to get gotten. My strategy was fine but here is a good example of lack of testing. See #3. I should have left at least one Lightning Rift in my deck. It’s slow and does nothing before middle Stage Two, but you kind of need a way to win. Ditto on Eternal Witness. He played lots of Hedge-Mages throughout Games Two and Three, and Eternal Witness would have been useful. I tried to do the math to kill him to death with Lightning Helix but he had one too many life points thanks to top decking a Kitchen Finks on turn two of five (basically the only card in his deck that would have saved him). Then he pulled Lightning Helix to stay alive anyway… This is one of those games where I was actually scouring my graveyard to see if I had a Spark Spray left

FAIL: #2 and #3

0-0-1

Round 2: Kithkin

Super nice opponent. I played next to him much of the day due to our acquiring early draws and he seemed like one of those quality people who are nice to play at tournaments while still being competitive.

Game One:
I drew nothing but Path to Exile. I don’t know how else to explain this one

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-2 Lightning Rift
-3 Path to Exile
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+4 Lightning Helix
+1 Eternal Witness

Game Two:
He had a powerful offense of Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers-boltstered beaters. I made an embarassing play of pointing Lightning Helix at a Duergar Hedge-Mage with Umezawa’s Jitte… But it was 4/4. He had a gigantic amount of damage coming every turn but I had some Kithchen Finks and Astral Slides and kept most of the hellfire off. He conceded at about 19 life when I showed him my hand, including a ton of cycling lands and a Lightning Rift, so we could finish.

Game Three:
We went to time again, but my Witness was able to Slide me a hand full of Lightning Helixes and I burned him out from double digits as the extra turns went by. We only got there because of his willingness to concede Game Two.

1-0-1

Round Three: U/G/W

I played against my friend Gabe Carleton-Barnes playing U/G/W Control (Adam Levitt’s deck… not Bant Aggro-Control). This is a miserable matchup for Slide, by the way.

Game One:
Gabe played all four Ancestral Visions, starting quite early, so he had a lot of surplus cards. Therefore he was able to mise me with three Stifles. On the first two occasions, our Finks battled and he Stifled my persist triggers. On the third, I played the “evoke Cloudthresher with Astral Slide in play” trick to run around Mana Leak but he Stifled the comes-back-into-play trigger.

Basically early on he had his first two Visions plus threats. I had some less-than-exciting plays and finally draw Life from the Loam with about 30 cards left in my deck. Then I proceeded to Dredge threats. Game switched gears and just played to deck me. He had more than enough Cryptic Commands at this point to ensure the plan.

In-between games Gabe slid me a Cloudthresher that had been removed from game by the concert of my Slide and his Stifle, preventing me from presenting 59 cards. Who does that?

Game Two:
We had basically zero percent chance of finishing three games. Didn’t matter because Gabe crushed me again. My draw was pretty slow and he used the Stifles to tempo me again. He decided to “play the beatdown” despite being the Blue deck, and that worked out for him.

1-1-1

At 1-1-1 with five rounds to go, I was pretty sure that I couldn’t make Top 8 even with five wins (this PTQ should have been nine rounds), but I didn’t have much choice but to try!

Round Four: B/G Loam

I always thought that this matchup would favor B/G Loam, but Josh had previously explained to me that it is a pseudo-mirror (especially Game One) but that you have the enchantments, which are absurd breakers. The main scary card is Worm Harvest. Basically as the game goes long they can produce a large amount of power each turn and the Slide deck has a limited number of Engineered Explosives and so on with no control about what is going to the graveyard via Dredge. That means that the matchup is essentially a long race. Can the Loxodon Hierarchs and Kitchen Finks (in conjunction with Astral Slide) race Worm Harvest? The damage going very long has to come from Lightning Rift as the Worm Harvest tokens make racing on the ground impossible.

Game One:
Went long (unsurprising). He got Loam first but didn’t do much interesting with it. He took a little damage from his lands; I managed his creatures. Eventually I stuck a Lightning Rift and raced his Worm Harvest with some wiggle room.

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-2 Path to Exile
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+1 Eternal Witness
+1 Plow Under

Game Two:
He got a very fast Loam… and completely failed to find lands with it, burning Dredges for no value. He flipped a Worm Harvest but had no lands in the graveyard, so it was doing zero. I had plenty of time to play Plow Under (which ironically “turned on” his Loam)… But he was way too far behind on board development to exploit it. I may in fact have gone ultimate with Ajani this game.

2-1-1

Round Five: B/G Loam

I played against Nicky Fiorillo, younger brother to Grand Prix and Pro Tour Limited standout John. Nicky is always a super nice opponent, and this match was no different.

Game One:
Typical long game of neither one of us doing anything… Both of us went to Loams, but I had Lightning Rift uncontested; raced the Worm Harvest.

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-2 Path to Exile
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+1 Eternal Witness
+1 Plow Under

Game Two:
Put simply I drew all six Enchantments and had two Slides in play even though Nicky dealt with the first four. I had decent Loam action for a while but Nicky got my Loams with Extirpate, putting me in a kind of topdeck mode once he started making ten Worm Harvest tokens or so.

Meanwhile I was accumulating counters on Ajani Vengeant. The game went to a point where I ripped a cycling land and had double digits worth of Worm Harvest tokens staring across the table. If I could kill all but two, I could explode Nicky’s board the next turn while holding him off with my Kitchen Finks and Hierarch (and double Slide). I ultimately cycled four or five times to hold of the attackers, the finale being an Edge of Autumn cycled off a now-dead Wooded Foothills.

3-1-1

Round Six: Slide mirror

Game One:
He got Loam going first; I Exploded his Lightning Rift before it could do any damage. We went kind of back and forth for a while, him getting a fair amount of damage in, before I could find Loam. Then I realized that all I had to do was stay alive; very slowly I started building my life total with Kitchen Finks (eventually sent to Exile), Loxodon Hierarch (same), and another Finks. It became my plan to deck him as he was three cards ahead from earlier Loam cycling; this worked out.

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-4 Spark Spray
-2 Wrath of God
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+3 Duergar Hedge-Mage
+1 Eternal Witness
+1 Plow Under
+1 Path to Exile

Game Two:
We didn’t really have sufficient time for a second game. So I just sideboarded super defensively: Cards to fight his Enchantments, tons of creature defense just so I couldn’t possibly get blown out in the early game. Worked out.

4-1-1

Round Seven: B/U Faeries

My previous match against Slide reminded me a lot of my Top 4 match in the New York States I won a few years ago: A control mirror match where both players are capable of ample life but where damage nevertheless matters. I won Game One with decking there, too.

But the thing I was afraid of — the reason I wanted to play an attack deck from the beginning — was that I didn’t want to collapse in the second-to-last round of Swiss when I was overall playing well. That is exactly what happened in this match.

Game One he got super lucky with a Stifle to stop me from blowing up his lethal Jitte + Spellstutter Sprite attack; my next card was Life from the Loam, which would have destroyed him.

Game Two I didn’t play optimally (mostly I sacrificed the wrong land to Edge of Autumn, pulling into a Cloudthresher with only three Green-producing lands in play, but one newly in my graveyard). Still, the matchup was good enough… Only thing is that he wouldn’t concede, even though I was going to obviously win that turn (I just wanted every second).

Game Three was one of the worst errors I’ve ever made. To make a very long story short, he drew Relic of Progenitus, but I defended Life from the Loam with a cycling land (still losing most of my cycling lands). Then he drew a second. I didn’t have much but I had Edge of Autumn. The only thing is that I brain farted and elected to SLIDE OUT HIS VENDILION CLIQUE while I was at it. Take three damage, or win the game? I lost the Loam and lost about ten turns later. Needless to say this was SO frustrating as I was poised to be in a playoff for Top 8.

4-2-1

Round Eight: Naya Hybrid Assault

His deck was pretty interesting… Wild Nacatl, Tarmogoyf, Countryside Crusher; Life from the Loam + Seismic Assault.

Game One his draw was just much better than mine, then he played Seismic Assault and Loamed me to death.

Game Two I defended his creatures pretty well and went ultimate with Ajani Vengeant.

Game Three his heart just wasn’t in it (didn’t realize he was still in prize contention). I had to play pretty well to win when I did, despite that… It was a repeat of Round Two when I used Eternal Witness to gather every possible cycling card (with double Lighting Rift in play) and Lightning Helix to burn him out.

5-2-1

It stinks that I finished one match out of elimination play, punting the Top 8 on one of my best matchups. Slide out your Vendilion Clique? Really? Still managed to get out of there with several draft sets in prize support.

Yay?

Well, that was my PTQ this time around. I like being right, but I dislike losing because of fatigue, making such a solitary match-dropping error on a knee-jerk “why not avoid three damage” mistake. I still would have had to win Round Eight (which I did in real life); with even a little practice, I think I could have avoided the draw and possibly my second (and Top 8-costing) loss… But could have should have would have.

Discuss, etc.

LOVE
MIKE

It’s not 3am yet.

But I am calling the audible I think.

Partly due to every single person I know committing their Tarmogoyfs I am switching to a different Naya-colored deck, Osyp’s Slide deck!

In case you didn’t read Osyp’s PTQ winning report, here is the deck:

3 Engineered Explosives
4 Spark Spray
3 Path to Exile
3 Life from the Loam
3 Edge of Autumn
3 Lightning Rift
3 Astral Slide
2 Wrath of God

4 Kitchen Finks
2 Loxodon Hierarch
2 Cloudthresher

4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Secluded Steppe
3 Forgotten Cave
3 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Forests
2 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple Garden
1 Stomping Ground

SB:
4 Lightning Helix
3 Duegar Hedge Mage
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Plow Under
1 Eternal Witness
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Path to Exile
1 Cloudthresher

I cut one Eternal Witness from the sideboard to play a Plow Under. This is to give me another weapon in the mirror (hopefully in conjunction with that Eternal Witness).

Getting picked up at six… So good night!

LOVE
MIKE

UPDATED:

@grat9717 reminded me to wear the World’s Greatest Tee Shirt tomorrow. I might have forgotten!

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Literally a picture of consistency… or in this case, inconsistency:

I have gotten a lot of comments about this screen shot.

What the heck is going on?

Why did I put that in the blog post?

Huh?

Imagine if you will that this was your hand and board, instead:

1. You are attacking with a Firebrand Ranger.
2. You have three basic Mountains in play.
3. Your hand is two basic Mountains and an, um… Tribal Flames (there is no burn spell bad enough to use a stand-in).
4. Your opponent is at 19.

Really?

How bad is it?

You would be hard pressed to win against a well-built sealed deck with those tools only.

And while “cards in hand” have a non-zero value if for no other reason than you can bluff, that is what was depicted in the previous post’s screen shot.

So why am I bringing this up? Surely there is something productive to talk about beyond “Blood Moon is good against Zoo.” And there is! Zoo is just a perfect example.

I told Josh today that I took out one of the Sacred Foundries from the Zoo deck I listed last time around and replaced it with an Overgrown Tomb. This was night and day better than the previous version, just one card different. Why would this be, and why would I have previously played two Sacred Foundries?

The bonus to this deck from having an overgrown Tomb is simply that it can run another set of “opposites” to cast spells. Zoo is a much more challenging deck to play that it seems at first glance, to a novice. The reason is that in most Zoo games you will have access to 10-13 mana total… That is over the course of the whole game. So you have to make sure you have lands that can cast your spells.

A two land combination that functions pretty well together is Sacred Foundry plus Overgrown Tomb; not the best, but pretty well. Ironically, Sacred Foundry ha[d] no natural partner. If you only have two lands, you are likely to have an extra source of Red, but be unable to play half your hand.

To wit:

Godless Shrine goes with Stomping Ground.

Temple Garden goes with Blood Crypt.

And now… finally…. You have the option to play Overgrown Tomb and Sacred Foundry. Of the three combinations, this is the worst. You can’t play Lightning Helix and you can’t pump Viashino Slaughtermaster. But the reason I didn’t have it is that I was phoning in my mana base reminiscing about pre-Berlin testing, when Overgrown Tomb couldn’t pump Figure of Destiny. It’s the worst land in the deck, but not applicable to this deck.

Anyway, point being, if you get the wrong lands early, even though you have access to ten to twelve taps… You don’t actually get to cast a lot of your spells.

And when you can’t cast a spell… It’s almost like it wasn’t there at all.

• Why don’t we play Nicol Bolas in Zoo?
• Why are fast decks with low mana costs consitently better performers than ponderous mid-range decks that play a lot of weird and expensive stuff?
• Why did I cut some Incinerates from Naya Burn, replacing them with Tarfires?
• Why does Cruel Ultimatum leave a bad taste in GerryT’s mouth?

The answers to these questions aren’t all exactly the same, but they are pretty closely related. In essence, the value of a card is very closely correlated with our ability to utilize it. We don’t play Nicol Bolas in Zoo because it is essentially impossible to cast; ever drawing it would be a mulligan.

Why are fast decks with low mana costs consistently better performers than ponderous mid-range decks yadda yadda yadda? Because if the slower deck stumbles, it loses more than a potential land drop: It loses the efficacy of the cards in its hands. On balance the fast deck “stuck” at two lands will usually be able to knock over an entire city, let alone slow mid-range opponents. Time is also an issue. It doesn’t matter if the slower deck is packing Future Sight or just Future Sight cards.

So card utility — an element on which card advantage inextricably relies — has to do with one three-letter word: Now.

We don’t play Nicol Bolas in Zoo because we can’t cast it now (well… in this case, ever).

Fast decks with low mana costs consistently out-perform ponderous mid-range decks because the fast decks can typically use their spells now whereas the ponderous decks often have their hands clogged, doing nothing, for many turns. When they are mana screwed, fast decks can usually still play a lot of their spells; on balance, the slower decks go from being unable to play their spells this turn to being unable to play their spells ever. Why? Because the game is over and they are dead.

Why did I cut some Incinerates from Naya Burn, replacing them with Tarfires? This one is subtler. I could usually play the Incinerates… But because the Naya Burn deck would often have to operate with only two or three lands in play, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to play the Incinerate and something else. That took immediate utility away from me (even a little bit)… But with three mana I might be able to play a Tarmogoyf and get a blocker out of the way with a Tarfire so I could get in for three the same turn. In a format like Extended — which is essentially all about racing, in so many matchups — not being able to play the right spell this turn might as well be like being unable to play that spell ever.

The thing that I like best about this line of thinking is that there are immediate practical applications.

The most obvious one is how it might affect your mulligan algorithm.

Now a lot of us play with general rules like “you have to keep every hand with two lands” … Let’s see how those theories work out when we think about how many cards we functionally have, based on our ability to cast our spells right now.

(These screen shots are all courtesy of my Domain Zoo deck. Deck list at the bottom.)

This opening hand is about all you could ask for. You go and get Overgrown Tomb with the Bloodstained Mire and lay out a 1/1. You are striking for three on turn two thanks to the Sacred Foundry. This hand can’t fundamentally pump the Viashino and can’t cast Lightning Helix… But you don’t have Lightning Helix.

This second hand isn’t too bad. I know that your instinct is to not Mulligan it. That instinct would be correct. But there is a very concrete reason why you wouldn’t mulligan it. When you mulligan, you are trading this hand for a six-card hand of unknown quantity. This is a six-card hand that’s actually pretty good (you have about a one-in-four chance of speculating it into a full-on seven-card hand with the right topdeck).

Six card hand? Huh?

To wit:

The “seven” card hand only has the immediate utility of a six-card hand. With an Overgrown Tomb the natural land to go and get is a Sacred Foundry. You can’t play Lightning Helix with those lands.

This next “six-card” seven-card hand is a little bit worse than the previous one. I’ve already grayed out the Might of Alara. You actually get to play Lightning Helix for the first time, but with no Green mana you can’t play the Might of Alara. I would not mulligan this hand because you actually have some action… But unless you get to Green, you not only can’t play the Might, you can’t pump the Viashinos (so you basically have some Firebrand Rangers). It goes without saying that the Tribal Flames is a mere Volcanic Hammer… But there’s nothing wrong with that, expressly.

This hand is obviously poop. Clear mulligan - no action due to having no lands. Let’s examine the mulligan hand:

You would have to deeply consider going to five cards on this one. Of the six cards present, two are completely grayed out and I did a little half-thingie on the Wild Nacatls (no one is excited about a 2/2). I would be more inclined to keep this hand on the draw. 

Just something to think about:

• You have a little bit better than a one-in-three to draw a land on your first pull.
• Unless that land is a Blood Crypt or a Blood Crypt proxy such as a Bloodstained Mire or Wooded Foothills — NOT a Windswept Heath — the marginal utility nothing to write home about (by the way a Windswept Heath can’t get a Steam Vents, either). So now you are down to 16% to pull the land “you want” on your next pull.
• If your hand doesn’t improve quickly, you are certain to lose to any competitive Extended deck.

So when we talk about consistencyI think that these black-and-white images are what we are talking about. The decks we think of as less consistent play with functionally less card advantage, at least from an opening hand perspective. Now usually they are paired with greater power… There is no doubt that a Zoo deck that can attack for lethal damage on the third turn is “more powerful” than a ho hum Naya Burn deck that needs the stars to align very nicely in order to get a fourth turn concession (not necessarily kill), but at the same time, its ability to set up those kinds of draws with so many five-card openers means that it might have certain disincentives for play.

Think of the decks we complain about most in terms of “more mulligans” … A lot of those decks only play 20 lands (or not even 20 lands). Unless they are Elves (a deck of all one drops) these decks often have problems getting past Stage One (”basically manascrewed”)… And even a modest Stage Two deck will habitually beat a manascrewed opponent.

One more time for the road:

2 Umezawa’s Jitte

4 Dark Confidant

4 Lightning Helix

4 Might of Alara
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl

4 Kird Ape
4 Mogg Fanatic
1 Seal of Fire
1 Tarfire
4 Tribal Flames
4 Viashino Slaughtermaster

1 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Godless Shrine
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills

sideboard:
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Duergar Hedge-Mage
4 Ancient Grudge
1 Volcanic Fallout
4 Ethersworn Canonist

Next:

How Card Advantage Works, Part 3: How All-in Red Works

That, or my deck for this weekend… One of the two!

LOVE
MIKE