Five With Flores

Concerning:

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

Baneslayer Angel: It has been called by our most recent Pro Tour Champion possible the best large creature in the history of Magic. Baneslayer Angel, a card that I just haven’t managed to put into any decks, ever. Baneslayer Angel–a mismatch in the quick Zoo archetype? Baneslayer Angel… Criss-cross applesauce. Baneslayer Angel!

Har har har.

The context of this post will be even more hilarious when I write about the Nissa Revane and re-vamped G/W decks based on Evan Erwin’s “Conqueror’s Sledge” that I worked on this week

Anyway, here is a very good deck:

Naya Lightsaber

3 Ajani Vengeant
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Woolly Thoctar

4 Noble Hierarch
1 Scute Mob
4 Wild Nacatl

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Baneslayer Angel
4 Path to Exile
4 Ranger of Eos

4 Arid Mesa
4 Forest
3 Mountain
1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
4 Plains
4 Rootbound Crag
4 Sunpetal Grove

sb:
1 Ajani Vengeant
2 Burst Lightning
4 Celestial Purge
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
4 Great Sable Stag

It is based somewhat on Brian Kowal’s Naya Excalibur deck from around US Nationals 2009 and somewhat on Brian Kibler’s Pro Tour winning deck from Austin.

Incidentally I watched this movie with my daughter this weekend:

Twice.

Gold star to the first person who notes in the comments why I pointed that out.

Anyway, the above Naya deck is super good. I borrowed most of the cards from Kibler’s deck; that is, Noble Hierarch up. The presence of Noble Hierarch makes Ranger of Eos particularly attractive. The question was what to play with the Ranger. In Kowal’s Naya Excalibur deck, he had an absolutely brilliant mana base around Rootbound Crag and Sunpetal Grove where Figure of Destiny was perfectly positioned alongside the Plains and Mountains for Wild Nacatl. This deck doesn’t have the luxury of the near-Tarmogoyf Figure of Destiny, but Noble Hierarch is very good (along with Wild Nacatl)… My preference for playing three copies of Ajani Vengeant left just enough room for one Scute Mob.

If there is anything my playtesting has taught me at this point, it is that I often want a second Scute Mob!

Scute Mob is absolutely rapturous. As a post attrition play, Ranger of Eos is an absolute game-shatterer; particularly because it can get the solo Scute Mob. Mother loving monster in this deck. However sometimes you draw it and are forced to trade with an Elite Vanguard early; then you want another Scute Mob to draw later… and you don’t got it.

I went with Woolly Thoctar, like Naya Excalibur, as the only three drop in the deck (Kowal played his Great Sable Stags in the main… I don’t see that as particularly attractive, even with the prevalence of Vampires in Standard). I would actually prefer to play Knight of the Reliquary (like Kibler did in Extended)… But there aren’t many natural advantages in this deck. I only play–and can only afford, really–the four Arid Mesas.

These kinds of lands carry with them particular dependencies. In Extended you can play a bazillion Verdant Catacombs, Marsh Flats, whatever, what have you, and get away with it with only a few mana producing lands in your entire deck. That is because your Arid Mesa can point at your Hallowed Fountain, and so can your Misty Rainforest, and you have to draw through some insane percentage of your deck (in a format that sometimes ends on the third turn) before it catches up with you. But in Standard, if you play with four Arid Mesas in any deck but Boros Bushwhacker (which itself is quite quick to the quick), you have to play with more than four Mountains-plus-Plains to reliably not get thrown off the Island math-wise, if you take my reality show meaning. So anyway, with only four Arid Mesas, Knight of the Reliquary will probably start off as only a 2/2 (maybe a 3/3), but will only rarely get serious in size ahead of time; yes, Oran-Rief, the Vastwood is an absolutely bonkers weapon and tool… But there is only the one in this sixty, and it is not strategic to Naya Lightsaber. It isn’t like in Extended where Ghost Quarter can swat off an entire Dark Depths deck.

So the reason we don’t have room for that other three (Knight of the Reliquary or not) is Baneslayer Angel… baneslayer angel, Baneslayer Angel, BANESLAYER ANGEL! News flash: This card is really good. You get it online with the Noble Hierarch, or just by peeling lands off the top. It is great in attack-on-attack; a very good trump card after a lot of trading. It is a must-deal-with card, and a card that can dig you out of a great many holes. By this point you should know I am up for Baneslayer Angels not just in beatdown, but in Cascade decks, along side Ob Nixilis, just about anywhere.

The main under-performer in this deck, if there is one (this is one of those decks where Ranger of Eos is the clear over-performer) is his fellow four, Bloodbraid Elf. Maybe I am just used to always hitting an awesome two-for-one Esper Charm or the incomparable Blightning… But in this deck, not so much. Half the time it’s just another Noble Hierarch (though to be fair, that makes for a 5-power hasty muffin in the Red Zone, and sometimes Oran-Rief is even online). But you can’t really complain about hitting a Lightning Bolt, I guess.

Path to Exile? Another story entirely.

But not a reason to cut either.

As for the sideboard, I like most of the cards but I don’t love the sideboard in its entirety. Burst Lightning is an excellent card but I would prefer a card that could deal three on its lonesome for Vampire Nighthawk, earlier in the game. Goblin Ruinblaster, on the other hand, is a blaster of all different kinds of ruins; for example, Emeria, the Sky Ruin.

More later. This is a good and also fun deck!

LOVE
MIKE

Currently Reading: Captain America: The Man with No Face

I was recently inspired by Brian Kibler’s Pro Tour Honolulu qualification with his “Cabal Interrogator” deck.

When Brian told me he qualified, that is what he told me he qualified with. I think it took me a few days to discover that he had actually just played a templated Loam deck, and that the Cabal Interrogators were in his sideboard. Details.

The reason is that as deck designers, we are very interested in whatever clever thing we can point at to show how, you know, clever and / or different we are. Really! I know it is difficult to believe. Some of us play with four Umezawa’s Jittes instead of three and call ourselves geniuses (and / or are voted geniuses into the Magic Invitational), for example.

The problem with these cards is that for every unique and shining gem, you usually have four or five stinkers, ergo the fine line between tech and jank.

In this spirit Five with Flores brings you five cards that have made me feel clever:

1. Card: Meddle
   Deck: Flying Beatdown
   Story: Meddle was a medium-inflexible if obviously trish-advantageous two-for-one, and I have always been a sucker for a two-for-one. Ergo, Meddle, sticking out like a sore thumb. In the first appearance of the wildly popular Penn Flying Beatdown, altran defeated Jon Finkel at a Gray Matter $1,000 tournament in probably no part due to pointing a Meddle at a “bolt” (Incinerate?) Jon had intended for Albert’s Man-o’-War at Finkel’s Jackal Pup. In a commensurate display of maturity, I danced around the tournament area yelling “Finkel lost to the Flores card!”

   In a wild turn of events (for any of you who followed that deck list link)… There isn’t even a Meddle in the Decks to Beat published version of Flying Beatdown! I guess by then I had mentally relegated it to Jank, in favor of Honorable Passage.

2. Card: Unforge
   Deck: Kuroda-Style Red
   Story: You probably know from the more famous version of Kuroda-style Red that we eventually cut Unforge; however Regionals-era I was stuck with them. And by “stuck” I mean I played them. Like four. You see I got spooked into thinking due to the renaissance of Jamie Wakefield (”Joshie Green”) at the time that any and all would be packing Troll Ascetics and equipment at Regionals, and Jamie kept telling me that my deck couldn’t beat his deck. Well I’ll show him, I thought, and figured out how to win. And by “figured out” I mean I was dealt Unforge tech by Brian David-Marshall and / or Seth Burn. In actuality the real gold of this deck was the Culling Scales technology that proved unbeatable at Nationals for especially the then-popular White Weenie deck. However I soldiered into Regionals with Unforges; they came up once. Yes I killed a Troll Ascetic (the big selling point was that the opponent would typically tap out to equip an Ascetic). Lost anyway, game and match.
3. Card: Gnarled Mass
   Deck: Critical Mass
   Story: It’s been like four years so now I am comfortable coming out with the truth. We’re all friends here. The Masses weren’t that Critical. Certainly the idea of Gnarled Mass was groundbreaking. Sadin especially latched onto them like they were Blake Lively’s boobies. They were good and helped out in the Black and White matchups but Steve for some reason kept siding them in and siding Keiga out in like every matchup “for tempo” (you got me — kid won a Grand Prix). But right before the PTQ I cut the one I had main deck for the Enlightened Bushi when Josh pointed out that one kills North Tree and the other one doesn’t; by the Grand Prix Gerard was up to two Isaos main deck! But we still had four “critical” Gnarled Masses in the sideboard up to the morning of the PTQ… half of which were culled before opening bell for Consuming Vortex. I maintained at the time that the cards were indistinguishable because they were both “good against beatdown” when in fact I won my match against Tim Gillam for the slot purely by top decking Consuming Vortex when I would have just died to his 5/5 flying the next turn had it been a 3/3 Spirit.
4. Card: Annex
   Deck: URzaTron
   Story: Let’s dial it back to the last Pro Tour Honolulu. Osyp’s URzaTron deck… I get a lot of credit for this deck (most of it self-propelled) but the real process was me making a bunch of bad decks and Osyp and Josh testing everything… Turns out the ‘Tron was actually pretty good. The most defining card in the sideboard (which was arguably the best part of the deck, and mostly Osyp’s) was Giant Solifuge, which was borrowed from a Red Deck I was high on at the end of testing, to superb effect. However the one card I insisted would be great was Annex. You see I had this theory that we could steal other people’s ‘Tron parts. It would be bonzer! The Annexes mostly worked out for Osyp. He looked great all tournament of course. Josh missed Day Two by taking a Mountain (right play I believe) when his opponent’s kill card was Maga (could have ended it right there by swiping Swamp, which was also on board). Eugene Harvey, who also played the deck but not to Osyp’s success, told me he thought that the Annexes were flat out bad, unplayable on the draw, and that he never wanted more than two in his deck.

   Oh well.

   Did I mention I single-handedly designed this awesome URzaTron deck that was the only undefeated Day One deck of the last Pro Tour Honolulu? It was really great and I made it all by myself. If I had been qualified I probably would have done even better than Osyp, but he did okay I guess.

5. Card: Muse Vessel
   Deck: Charleston AngelFire
   Story: To this day I maintain I was very happy with my Muse Vessels. I won almost every match I sided them in. That said, blame Brian Weissman. Brian told me he really liked them in his update to The Deck (Standard) and I mean COME ON, it’s Brian Weissman! So when we were working on Block (where Muse Vessel was legal) I decided that we should play all four because I had the inside track Weissman tech, and most teams would probably be stupid and not play any Muse Vessels at all, let alone all four (and for a while I insisted we play all four main because they were obviously so good). By the way not even my teammates or intimate playtest partners from that summer knew the true origin of Muse Vessel — but now you do.

   Now going into the last week of testing we had a problem that our U/R/W deck was losing to our B/W deck at about a 7-3 clip in favor of B/W in Game One despite being ahead for most of the games (this carried into the Pro Tour where I — armed with B/W — bashed basically every Angel opponent). I didn’t understand this at all because the U/R/W seemed to be so much better equipped in terms of card advantage in every way. I concluded at the end of about 30 games that I played against myself on Apprentice that U/R/W didn’t have enough “stuff” and that the card advantage and Angel-centric card advantage were going nowhere because the deck was just drawing and drawing into more draw and B/W was winning close corner games with well-placed Mortifies all all that kind of stuff. So I concluded that U/R/w needed more “stuff” … Why not the other guy’s stuff?

   The inclusion of Muse Vessel turned around the matchup to between a 6-4 and a 7-3 in favor of U/R/W, which made me happy.

   It did not however make Steve happy, and he always sided out Muse Vessel.

   Here are two points of potential embarassment: 1) Because we played two Muse Vessels main, we didn’t have room for cards like the fourth Demonfire, which probably would have pushed us from no money to the Top 4, and 2) We fundamentally misunderstood the U/R/W deck’s positioning in the control “mirrors” … It wasn’t until after the Pro Tour that we realized Steve was always winning as the beatdown and that all our Muse Vessel and Train of Thought into Swift Silence and Mimeofacture (jank I accidentally picked up from MTGO one night) was actually a colossal waste of strategy when we were winning against control with Lightning Helix to the face, mostly. The problem was that we assumed Steve would be playing against the fast deck, when he kept playing against the slowest deck. Would that we could have swapped Steve and Paul in that Pro Tour…

   Did I mention “blame Brian Weissman” yet?

I’d say “I hope you enjoyed this” … But I already know you did.

LOVE
MIKE

P.S. Speaking of enjoying reading something awesome that I wrote, there is this pretty historic Magic book name o’ Deckade that is back in print over at Top 8 Magic. If you like what you read here, the Podcasts you listen to over there, or you just want to look back at ten years of my fabulous, Magical, life - signed copies are once again available.

Buy Deckade. You know you want to.

Oh, and you’re welcome