Five With Flores

Concerning:

Punishing Fire ∙ Grove of the Burnwillows ∙ Brian Kibler ∙
Cursed Scroll ∙ Ben Rubin ∙ … And Punishing Fire

I am really supposed to be working on this week’s Top Decks right now, which includes some Extended analysis as we approach the 2009 World Championships… But that led me to some personal Extended exploration that I thought I would share with my faithful blog readers.

Of course, like any fan of the game, I went bananas over the Ben Rubin / Brian Kibler Punishing Fire “Zoo” deck that won Pro Tour Austin. Just a great deck, and the bazillionth implementation of the collaboration of that wing of the Underground that has produced, well, the Sickest Ever deck of all time, among others. Their Naya-based Punishing Fire Zoo deck was of course reminiscent of Tomoharu Saito’s exciting finish to last year’s Extended Grand Prix tournaments, but involving bigger thinking.

I often write about how the best deck designers are so successful by killing their darlings… You know, how Dan Paskins went Shrapnel Blast in his straight Red Goblin deck, or how the patron saint of Red Decks, Tsuyoshi Fujita, cut Goblin Piledriver for Goblin Goon… Really not-obvious stuff that distinguishes the designer, differentiates him from the mean, and proves how much more effective his design is than the default.

For Reference: Rubin Zoo

4 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Lightning Helix
3 Qasali Pridemage

3 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Punishing Fire

3 Baneslayer Angel
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Path to Exile

4 Arid Mesa
1 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Marsh Flats
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
2 Treetop Village

sb:
4 Meddling Mage
3 Ancient Grudge
3 Blood Moon
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
3 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain

In this case the big thinking looks to be the interaction between Punishing Fire and Grove of the Burnwillows.

Punishing Fire

Grove of the Burnwillows

This two card combination is strong on its face; it is essentially a one damage net for three mana, and inexorable over a long game. You can give the opponent a life per turn but wipe away his ways to win (for example, your opponent is playing Faeries and has nothing bigger than a 3/1)… You can’t really be stopped over a long game without graveyard removal

Go back and read what I wrote. Not “is” but “looks to be” … Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows is among the most powerful effects in the Rubin Zoo deck, but I feel like the really big innovation was the inclusion of Baneslayer Angel in the strategy. It might not seem brave… But playing a five drop in a Zoo deck is anything but obvious for Extended. After all, this is a format where some players went Steppe Lynx and many thought Woolly Thoctar too expensive to play!

This post is really about Punishing Fire, though, not the Baneslayer Angel end of the Rubin Zoo deck.

I was watching The Magic Show, and Brian said something that really hooked me. The Punishing Fire combination is compelling on its face, sure, but the DragonMaster created an analogy to Cursed Scroll that got the wheels turning.

Cursed Scroll is a card that I have won many tournaments with (though primarily in Black)… I was a huge proponent of Red Decks for Extended a few years back… So this opportunity seemed like a decent window to revisit the strategy.

To be fair Red never really went away. We have just exchanged it for The Lightning Bolt Deck in recent years. The mighty Saito himself played a version of the Lightning Bolt deck, albeit featuring Goblin Guide over Spark Elemental. I am suspicious of a Goblin Guide in general, but it seems particularly out of place in an Extended Red deck. The advantage of the Lightning Bolt Deck over Naya Burn, Naya Zoo, or Rubin Zoo (if the Lightning Bolt Deck can be said to have one) is its ability to ignore creature removal. All of the creatures come with an expriration date (Spark Elemental, Keldon Marauders), or can evaporate at will (Mogg Fanatic); this really makes Threads of Disloyalty or in particular Path to Exile much less attractive to play. So in short, I like Goblin Guide even less than usual in the Extended Lightning Bolt Deck.

My initial design came much more closely to an update to the traditional Red Deck Wins model, while still owing allegiance to the Lightning Bolt Deck:

Punishing Fire RDW v.1.0

2 Pithing Needle

2 Elemental Appeal
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Magma Jet
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Punishing Fire
4 Rift Bolt
4 Shrapnel Blast

2 Arid Mesa
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Great Furnace
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
6 Mountain
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Stomping Ground

sb:
1 Pithing Needle
2 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Ravenous Trap
4 Ancient Grudge
2 Lash Out
3 Threaten

Somewhat surprisingly, this deck has more than held its own in Extended practice. I’ve actually had more problems with Standard-legal cards like Bloodbraid Elf (card advantage) and Knight of the Reliquary (sheer size) than the fast and powerful Extended strategies.

I haven’t lost to any Dredge-oriented decks yet (though one embarassing match I got my opponent to 1 in Game One right before being locked out by the Shield of Emeria); I won Game Three with a well-placed Threaten on a Dark Depths token (apparently he was hybridizing or sideboarding Vampire Hexmage… I smoked him with my sideboard graveyard removal in Game Two).

The most rewarding matchup was against a Cascade-Restore Balance deck. I won 2-1, stealing the first and winning the third outright. In the first I was dead in two to a Phyrexian Totem (he had played two if not three copies of Restore Balance in the first)… then I topdecked Pithing Needle to buy me the three turns I needed to play Rift Bolt and Shrapnel Blast (thanks for all the help, Pithing Needle!). In the third I just played to empty my hand, which made Restore Balance much less fun for him. Burn seems very good against that strategy.

Elemental Appeal was of course my Firecat, but it is a bit awkward with Blinkmoth Nexus… I decided my sacrifice lands weren’t doing enough as I wasn’t playing with Plated Geopede, and I could either run Ancient Grudge just off of Grove of the Burnwillows or not at all. Threaten was looking more and more attractive main deck, anyway.

Here is my second version:

Punishing Fire RDW v.1.1

2 Pithing Needle

4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Magma Jet
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Punishing Fire
4 Rift Bolt
4 Shrapnel Blast
2 Threaten

4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Great Furnace
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
12 Snow-covered Mountain

sb:
1 Pithing Needle
2 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Ravenous Trap
4 Ancient Grudge *
4 Lash Out
1 Threaten

* Provisional… Could be a Shattering Spree or some other awesome card, like Isochron Scepter.

I was very surprised at how effecrive these decks have proved so far.

The question, really, is whether they are worth exploring since we know we can just play Rubin Zoo, which has not just the most powerful combination in this deck, but also a top end that includes Baneslayer Angel (and a bottom of the curve that includes Tarmogoyf). I talked to Ben the week after the Pro Tour, and he pointed out that unlike many other Extended formats, in the current one, his Zoo deck is actually composed of many of the most powerful cards! … That is a hard argument for a knowledgeable Magician to argue away.

That said, the combo-like double Shrapnel Blast draw might be enough to make this a viable option. We’ll just have to wait and see… and draw burn spells.

LOVE
MIKE

Currently Reading: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes

Hey anyone who is reading this!

This is my first blog post (duh, I guess).

A lot of people have been asking me about Star City. I just want to say there are no hard feelings (from my end, any way) and that I plan to write there in the future. Leaving my weekly column was something I had been considering for some time, and it was just time.

However I did write one last article that was never published on Star City. It is kind of uselessly dated now that the Magic Hall of Fame for this year has been decided already, but here it is for anyone who wants to read my last, never-was article for Star City Games dot com.

Enjoy!

(This was originally intended for 29 August 2008.)

–michaelj

First Impressions, Two Trees, and the Democratic Process

The US presidential election is still a little ways off, but ballots for the 2008 Pro Tour Hall of Fame are due… um… today.

Okay then!

I started with the original 66 potential members list and cut down to the 10 or 11 players I would seriously consider voting for (this includes all of the still-eligible candidates I had voted for in the past… or at least all of the still-eligible candidates I remember voting for in the past).

The list of players I cut to was pretty arbitrary, and left off more than one of my good friends, people I talk to or hang out with on a regular basis:

Dirk Baberowski
Marco Blume
Brian Hacker
Itaru Ishida
William Jensen
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
David Price
Ben Rubin
Michael Turian
Jelger Wiegersma

Of the players I had voted for in the past, I decided to cut most of them off the bat, leaving the following:

Dirk Baberowski
Marco Blume
William Jensen
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
Ben Rubin
Michael Turian
Jelger Wiegersma

I still firmly believe that Brian Hacker should have been first class; if you want to look at a previous ballot that I was very proud of writing, please consider One Man’s Ballot from 2006, which in addition to being awesome contains an engaging if somewhat factually inaccurate section on Randy Couture… who has since made a mixed martial arts comeback, won the UFC heavyweight title, and retired again (to the annoyance of Dana White, agents, and lawyers aplenty)… at least unless he can get his superfight.

On the subject of mixed martial arts, hrm… in a bit.

So I am left with eight players, these eight in fact:

Dirk Baberowski
Probably the best player on this year’s ballot, Dirk is typically the fourth player mentioned in the crowd of “Kai, Jon, and Bob” in terms of ability. He was always held in high regard especially by Kai, and if anyone’s opinion means anything, it has to be Budde’s. It is easy to think of Dirk as “merely” a multiple Pro Tour Champion due to his membership in Phoenix Foundation, but don’t forget that he won (if memory serves) his rookie Pro Tour… and that Pro Tour was a draft victory… with green-white. If that isn’t a testament to skill, I don’t know what is. The rules have changed this year (you need vote share to get into the Hall of Fame, rather than just being one of the five most popular); if any player is a lock under the new system, I think it is Dirk.

Marco Blume
Three Pro Tour Top 8s. Two wins. Two wins. Yes, they were with Phoenix Foundation, but… two wins. No matter what anyone ever said about Marco over the years (Gary Wise used to talk about restaurants in terms of how much Marco would have liked one of them) the one thing that I will always remember about him has nothing to do with him, personally. I misspelled his name in a Deck Histories and Concepts article on Ponza Rotta Red as Maro Blume (he was a German National Champion), and when the bags at the Pojo plagiarized the article, they made sure to leave that misspelling in rather than fix it; now there was (is?) a site that was (is?) as editorially capable as it was (is?) ethical!

William Jensen
I always had a good relationship with Huey over the years but I don’t know that I would have short listed him at all but for a forum post that I read by my good friend Jonathan Becker just last week. You can read Jon’s post here, in Teddy Card Game’s forum from last week.

I taunt Jon all the time, disagree with him on sports (I am currently in arrears one Katz’s pastrami sandwich), and so on but Becker really is pretty awesome (if a former member of the Tongo Nation); I have been lucky enough to have made Jonathan my son’s Sirius Black, even.

Jon’s post pointed out that in a significantly shorter career than Ben Rubin, Huey had the same number of Top 8s (including a win, which Ben lacks), and more Grand Prix Top 8s, as well as (slightly) superior average finishes. Rubin fans will be quick to point out Ben’s Masters victories, but you know what? Huey won the very first (a lot of people forget that one)!

Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Steve should have been first class. Shame on me for not voting for him then. I don’t think that most people fathom how good Steve was (heck, is… he played in I think one Grand Prix last year, and won it!) when he was on top. He was the strongest Rochester drafter in the world at his height (or if he was second, it was only to Jon, whom he beat in the LA finals), and racked up double-digit Grand Prix Top 8s in addition to winning odd things that most people on the ballot have never done, like taking a Master’s Grinder with G/R at the dawn of Psychatog. Steve’s ~$88K in lifetime winnings might not seem huge against today’s full list of top performers, but he actually retired something like third or fourth in lifetime winnings. I hadn’t thought of this until just now, but Steve also played the most impressive game I had ever seen, at least by April 2, 2002.

Chris Pikula
I don’t know what I was thinking in 2005. I mean maybe you could read A Bunch of Topics and try to figure it out yourself. Buehler himself called me due to my not voting for Comer (I should have voted for Comer, probably, and immediately regretted not doing so). I wish I hadn’t talked to Teddy Card Game that one time because then I probably just would have voted for Finkel, SteveO, Hacker, DaveP, and of course the Meddling Mage. This would have been a fine ballot, certainly better than the one I turned in.

Three years later the Hall of Fame criteria remain performances, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, and contributions to the game in general. For a Hall of Fame candidate in 2008, Chris is probably slightly below average for performances and playing ability, but he was average-or-better in 2005, and a paragon or near-paragon of integrity, sportsmanship, and contributions to the game in general (Pro Tour community, having the coolest Invitational card, tournament report writing, storytelling) all in 2005, and remains so today. Personally I feel like most ballots overly favor performances to the exclusion of everything else — including playing ability to be quite frank — which is a harsh flaw on the part of the voters, not the system. This year, Chris for certain has my vote.

Ben Rubin
I’m definitely voting for Ben. I wish I could have voted for Ben last year, but which of Kai, Zvi, Tsuyoshi, Turian, and Randy could I have cut? Kai only, and Mike didn’t even make it.

Michael Turian
Speaking of Mike… I think it’s a crime he didn’t make the team last year.

Jelger Wiegersma
Scuttlebut in some circles is that Jelger is just the best player on Tour now (again); be might not be tops in performances, but he has a Grand Prix Top 8 that isn’t even dry yet. I don’t know Jelger very well or have very much to say about him so I am just going to go into the storytelling section.

The first time I met Jelger Wiegersma was a Sunday afternoon in 2004. I just checked a calendar, and in fact, I think it was July 4, 2004 based on the timing. Gerrard Fabiano called me to ask if I wanted to eat at Plataforma and of course I said yes. He and some TOGIT guys brought along some foreigners but I had no idea who they were; I would probably have recognized their third, standout Kamiel Cornelissen, but these other two, I had no idea who they were at the time. Okay maybe I knew Jeroen was that Rock guy.

However I definitely didn’t recognize Jelger on sight (I had been averaging one or fewer Pro Tours per year for about three years running at that point), so I had no idea exactly what kind of hole I was digging when I started talking about Affinity. I decided that Somber Hoverguard was the best card in Affinity (”it’s the only card that lets Affinity beat my Green deck”) and rolled my eyes and dismissed Jelger with his cockamamie theory about this “Aether Vial.” Jelger actually humored me. His graciousness was rewarded by the gods, and Von Dutch took Pro Tour Seattle the following week.

It wasn’t until much later that I found out that he was coming off an Affinity Pro Tour Top 8… With Aether Vials and no Somber Hoverguards.

But for right now I am not voting for Jelger. Here is my final five:

William Jensen
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
Ben Rubin
Mike Turian

I didn’t vote for Dirk, but that doesn’t seem remotely as blasphemous as not voting for Jon or Kai (though Josh [Ravitz] suggested I vote for Marco and not Dirk, just to see what happened). I feel like Dirk is very likely to make the Hall of Fame this year, and that I can spend my votes for different kinds of recognition, or at least to help keep some players on the ballots so they can claim Hall of Fame slots in the future.

William Jensen
I decided very early that I was going to vote for Ben Rubin, and what can I say? Becker’s side-by-side comparison swayed me to vote for Billy Jensen, the “other” Rubin, at least on paper.

There are a lot of very good Billy Jensen stories, but this is my favorite:

I am on a flight to Pro Tour Los Angeles and end up on the same one as Huey. I am qualified on rating and have very few actual drafts under my belt (my only practice draft being a local sanctioned 8-man after ratings qualifications are awarded, where I went down 0-2 to Mowshowitz). Billy instructed me how to draft.

“In this format, I like Green-Black or Green-Blue.

“Basically, in this format, you want a tree.

“Green-Black is great because people have all these stupid little Rebels, and the fact is, they can’t deal with a tree. If you have a tree and a Banishing, come on. Usually they need two cards to deal with your tree, and you play your Banishing, and it’s even worse for them than they originally though.

“Green-Blue is almost as good because a tree and a Counterspell. Wow! Like I said, they can’t deal with your tree to begin with, but a tree attacking them? With a Counterspell in hand? That’s basically like having to deal with two trees… and they couldn’t deal with the first one!”

I foolishly tried to draft a non-Huey scripted strategy in my first draft and quickly had my back to the wall. I missed Day Two on a combination of savage cheating and, believe it or not, blatant judge collusion. Luckily, I was able to hold up the Pro Tour for two hours complaining to the DCI, which was a personal victory because think about the sheer amount of wasted group time! Talk about sharing my misery with the world! (Or at least the rest of the Pro Tour). Huey’s U/G got me a 2-1 in the next draft, though.

I had a separate problem, then, which was I had like five losses in the last two weeks, which blew my top 25 rating. Luckily I won the Nemesis Prerelease at the Pro Tour undefeated in games, as well as a half a dozen Nemesis side events, where I did Huey proud, drafting “Blastoderms and Banishings” every time. Rating was safely back in place… only to be blown at that summer’s US Nationals.

Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
I spent quite some time rasslin’ with Google to find an Edison, NJ Type II report from 1997 where I first met Steve OMS (he put me to 3-1 in Round Four but we both made Top 8). I was going to paste it but I wrote like a bit of an ass (how did I ever catch on?) plus I dropped an F-bomb. If you want to read about a U/W deck from 1997 yourself, have at thee.

Instead, I’ll post my all-time favorite Steve story for the 777th time:

It may have not seemed like much; both of these great Pro Tour Champions was now just one match out of Top 8 contention at the 2000 U.S. Nationals. In the last round of Swiss, just one year before that vaunted expansion of prize money, with nothing on the line but some DCI points that would be ultimately meaningless for combatants of such standing, these players clashed for nothing but pride… and the opportunity to show off a perfect game.

Steve knew that Dave was running Replenish. Going first, his hand was absolutely perfect… A couple of lands, a Dark Ritual, a Phyrexian Negator, a Stromgald Cabal, and that most miserly of mulligans, the Vampiric Tutor itself, stared back at the boy from Brooklyn.

Think back at what you would have done with a grip like this.

Testing showed that in order to beat a Stromgald Cabal, Replenish needed either to ramp up to eight mana under absolutely no pressure or to have a Ring of Gix in play. Steve knew that if YMG had Ring of Gix at all, it wouldn’t have been in the main deck. My first instinct as a spectator and Silver Bullet player was “swamp, Ritual, win!”

And then Steve showed me the right play.

Instead of turn-1 Stromgald Cabal, Steve went for turn-1 Phyrexian Negator. After the Hump passed his first turn, Steve untapped, cast Vampiric Tutor on his upkeep for a second Dark Ritual, and ensured the win by playing Stromgald Cabal on turn 2. Watching this game, it was painfully obvious how vastly superior Steve’s play was to the one I would have made. Of all the people to whom I have ever told this story, the only ones who came up with the complete, correct, answer to that opening hand were Pro Tour champions Finkel and Mowshowitz.

Zvi once explained to me that the problem with perfect play is that, especially with an overpowered-yet-decision-heavy deck like Napster or Turbo-Land, you will have ten possible plays, nine of which are wrong, but seven of which win the game. Making a play like mine would have in all likelihood won the game at some point, but would not have promoted correct play… In fact, a win in the face of an error rewards being bad. Go figure.

For his part, Jonathan Magic said “Mike, if you keep testing with me and Steve, that will be the only play you see!”

Delighted at this prospect, I was prepared to become a technically proficient Magician. Of course history tells us that immediately after this brilliant Championship-over-Championship summer for The Machine, despite a subsequent pair of back-to-back PT Top 8s, Jonathan Magic decided to completely eschew Pro Tour preparation…

… And I remain exactly as bad as I ever was.

Chris Pikula
Looking back to that 1997 tournament report against Steve, and now gazing back to my first Pro Tour*, where I — through Worth Wollpert — worked with Chris Pikula, it strikes me that I must have been some kind of annoying barnacle. You know that guy who barges into your conversations with cooler Magic players, tries to attach himself to your entourage, swipes your deck (but then fails to make Top 8 or Top 16 with it)… I am pretty sure that was me!

Wow, holy dark mirror Batman. Like Spock with a moustache or something.

I mean now I’m basically a slick-haired, wolf-lean, rock star of a Magic player, but honestly… I have no idea why Chris is still willing to talk to me at all. Maybe if I continue to vote for him?

By about 1998 or 1999 I was “off” the Pro Tour (for the first time, it seems). Snow was high as an elephant’s eye and at that point I was just not serious about getting on the Pro Tour (contrast with my 2001 self, who would fly to PTQs)… But Chris called me and told me to make the long overnight trek to this Detroit PTQ being run by Mike Guptil. I read a Brian Weissman analysis of the format and visualized Brilliant Halo. For the first time, I made a multi-day trip for a PTQ. Eleven or so rounds later, I had the envelope.

I don’t know how long I would have continued to play Magic but for that win. I just don’t know. I was on fire (at least in terms of local play) for the rest of the school year, winning another PTQ, Top 4 at Regionals, then a set of Grand Prix and Nationals runs that would cement ratings-based invites for every Pro Tour for the next year and a half… But that second PTQ win was another lengthy trip to Detroit, and the Regionals was a four hour drive to a Mike Guptil event in Columbus. I was in law school at the time, and my parents were trying to straighten me out and make something useful of me. Would I have ever moved to New York to manage The Dojo? I really do wonder.

Ben Rubin
Ben and I have a lot of friends in common, but I don’t know him very well. My first clear memory of him (beyond Dave’s beating him to take LA in 1998) was a road trip with Brian Schneider, who declared Ben “one of the greatest of all time” with just his LA and Worlds finishes behind him… no Masters wins yet, no sickestever.dec yet. Brian’s opinions are good enough for me.

I think I might owe Ben a blue envelope, though. It was a Las Vegas PTQ in 2001, which I flew to to hang out with Bill Macey. John Shuler, Chapin, edt, and Buehler were also there. Anyway, I was 14-0 in games through three tournaments against Donate, the top combo deck of the day, (a Grand Prix Trial I had won, a Grand Prix, and the PTQ itself) going into a Donate matchup in the finals. My opponent wanted to scoop the slot. I was riding pretty high on my zero game losses, and intended to play. It was Ben who explained this concept of “what happens if you get manascrewed” to me, and I walked away with the envelope, and even got to keep a decnt chunk of the travel award.

Mike Turian
I was going to write about the first time I met Mike, which was at a Mir/Vis/Lite constructed PTQ in 1997 (I committed one of those all-too-common Flores brain farts to miss Top 8, even though my Mono-Blue deck had Cloud Elemental instead of Ophidian). I thought Mike was just one of those goofball local scrubs due to his G/W Striped Bears / Mistmoon Griffin strategy, but he not only won the PTQ (if memory serves), but placed in the Top 8 of the subsequent Grand Prix with the same deck (this he definitely did). Some scrub!

No one needs to be convinced about Mike’s playing ability. You can just look at the numbers. Listen to the right people, and they will have you believe that Mike is the greatest Limited player of all time (I vote for Jon)… But instead I want to think about Mike the ambassador of the game. I roomed with him at a Pro Tour just before Ravnica, and he was full of so much joy about seeing some cards he worked on actually in print. I think that some people might shy away for voting for Mike because he works for Wizards of the Coast, but the thing about working at WotC that stuck with me (from Mike’s perspective that is) was that working at WotC was even more fun than weekends! Imagine the acquisition that could be harnessed by bottling that sentiment.

Well, those are my votes for this year. Discuss (I’m sure you will).

LOVE
MIKE

* Hacker was first after the Swiss.

P.S. Is it the last PTQ of the year tomorrow?