A few months ago I referenced to professional wrestling in the 1980s in my DailyMTG column Top Decks, in relation to the explosion of popularity of the Legacy format. This is how it came out in published form:
Some readers sometimes enjoy finding out what gets left on the cutting room floor. So I figured I might share the original (check my emphasis):
Thirty years ago, professional wrestling consisted of two burly — if “manly” and hairsuite — fat men overacting across a padded square, catering largely to regional audiences. First Vince McMahon, then billionaire Ted Turner, the emergence of high production value cable television, and even the emergence of mixed martial arts as a national phenomenon transformed the rasslin’ landscape… And its audiences. We have gone from thuggish strongman contests in smokey high school auditoriums with tabacco spit all over the floor to multimillion-dollar IPOs, high resolution video games played on your iPad, movie stars, and — by force of competition and focus — in-ring performances of such grandeur and violence that the long ago regional beginnings seem a different animal entirely. Once upon a time, Legacy was played infrequently at a large scale and the highest levels (maybe one domestic Grand Prix per year) and catered to a comparatively small and specialized audience; but today, the Star City Games Open Series highlights a competitive Legacy event almost once a week. As a result, we have a format that is full of lively, week-over-week, innovation and give-and-take, with many of the greatest minds in the game devoting time, care, and technology to curating the still-emerging metagame.
My original assumption was that then-editor Kelly Digges didn’t want me comparing longtime Legacy aficionados to chaw-spitting West Texas rednecks (not actually my original intention), but just thought the cut-down version read better.
I liked the original
This past week in my Flashback review, Flashback to Flashback, the DailyMTG folks exercised some good judgment and edited an old Kibler deck list to “something uncouth” …
Wonder why Brian played One Deep Analysis in the sideboard of his ‘Tog deck?
Here is the original text (emphasis, again):
To be fair, at the time, we got to play with Fact or Fiction, and it wasn’t immediately obvious that Deep Analysis was that good. Kibler played the one copy — in his sideboard no less — simply so that he could call his deck “Deep Anal Probe” (notice the three copies of Probe in the main deck).
Yes ladies, even nine years ago, he was a dreamboat of unparalleled wittiness.
Well, it turns out that that one Deep Analysis was better than anyone had anticipated. You could discard it to Psychatog or Probe and it would be a fine two mana draw two. Other players were even more focused and aggressive with Deep Analysis, pairing it with faster discard outlets like Wild Mongrel, Merfolk Looter, or Aquamoeba.
Marshall Sutcliffe (@Marshall_LR of Limited Resources and one of the nicest people you will ever meet in the Magic podcasting community) has been asking me about… Believe it or not… Napster!
Marshall makes the reasonable point that Napster is a deck that we talk about a lot (myself, BDM, and so on)… But only really longtime readers know what the hell a Napster is. So… Here is the rundown, only eleven years after the fact. Briefly, we will go over:
The Deck
The Name
The Tournaments
The Pedigree
The Plan(s)
… and Namor
The Deck
… As Jon Finkel played it (to the 2000 US National Championships win): The Name
At the time, Napster (the “real” Napster) was the industry leader in music sharing; instead of legally downloading music via iTunes or Amazon.com, less scrupulous young people would login to Napster and download the songs they wanted that had been uploaded by different less scrupulous young people. You could pretty much get whatever you wanted without having to pay for it, therefore.
Brian Kibler came up with the deck name.
The deck that would eventually [also] be called Napster could go and get whatever it wanted thanks to playing Vampiric Tutor (we’ll get into more on how that worked in a future section).
The Tournaments
In the Spring of 2000 The Magic Dojo was pretty much a sinking ship. However they were still paying me (and a couple of other people) so we would still show up for work. We would do some work, but the onetime dreams of dotcom IPO millions were a thing of the past.
So while updating our resumes, one of the things we did was play lots and lots of Standard.
The Magic Invitational that year gave us a great set of gauntlet decks; and because I am forbidden from looking things up, I won’t… But I think our gauntlet was a Blue deck played by Zvi Mowshowitz some kind of Rebels deck played by maybe Chris Pikula or Darwin Kastle, and a StOmPy deck played by Patrick Chapin. There were also some combo decks (for example Sabre Bargain).
We played lots and lots of Standard and had quite a few good decks we could play.
At the time, BDM was innovating the tournament scene with the Grudge Match (which he resurrected just this past weekend), and we had weekly Standard at Neutral Ground, therefore. Awesome decks like Replenish were coming out at the same time, and the Grudge Match gave rise to ZevAtog the next year (for those of you who don’t know about ten year old decks these were the CawBlade and so on of the age).
I decided to play what Napster was in a Grudge Match qualifier and won it, beating Ben “Manascrew” Murray in the finals. US Regionals was soon after and I played it there, too.
In Regionals I qualified, losing a total of three games (two of them in the Top 4, and one in the Swiss). Both my losses were based on errors. In the Swiss one I had my opponent completely locked down with Agonizing Memories and no creatures in play; I made him put a land and Lin-Sivvi on top of his deck, and the turn he played her out, I ran Vampiric Tutor to get my Eradicate… Which wasn’t in the deck. I had no way to directly kill Lin-Sivvi with the amount of mana I had in play and he got a Protection from Black creature and killed me with it.
Obviously I won the next one.
Eventual Champion Sayan Bhattacharyya beat me in the Top 4 at a point when we didn’t yet have Stromgald Cabal. Stromgald Cabal (main deck) put our Replenish matchup to about 75% (it was about 45/55 in favor of Replenish at Regionals)… I messed up on an Unmask and Sayan beat me after 100 turns of do-nothing (hiding behind Circle of Protection: Black).
After qualifying at Regionals, I hooked up with Jon Finkel and the OMS brothers for US Naitonals testing, and we did exactly one session of Standard. I brought my Black deck and Jon and Chris Pikula played 3-4 different decks against me. We were a slight dog to Blue but beat every other deck by a margin of 70% or greater; as he does, Jon said it would be pointless to play any other decks and thus elected to prepare exclusively for Limited.
Jon won the Limited portion of Nationals that year, famously beating Mageta, the Lion with a “mere” Wandering Eye.
Pro Tip: If you give Jon Finkel perfect information, he will beat you, even if you have an unlimited number of Wrath of Gods.
The Pedigree
Jon used Napster to win the 2000 US National Championship, including one of the most lopsided finals matches of all time (versus Chris Benafel). Benafel was thought to have the dominant matchup with Mono-Red land destruction, but Jon beat him 3-0, after beating him badly in the Swiss as well.
Here was a typical Finkel opening draw against the Mono-Red deck:
Swamp,
Dark Ritual,
Dark Ritual,
Dark Ritual,
Persecute,
Skittering Horror
Things to keep in mind:
Red had no Lightning Bolt at the time.
Jon’s play on turn two was a Rishadan Port
This leads us reasonably-ish into…
The Plans
Napster did lots of different things well, but the main awesome sauce was its twofold dominance as a Vampiric Tutor deck and a Yawgmoth’s Will deck. Unless the opponent was playing a Morphling deck, you could pretty much just play Vampiric Tutor and win the next turn. The game might not be over, but the opponent would be more-or-less incapable of winning.
For example, you could play Vampiric Tutor for Engineered Plague against Elves. Could they win? Maybe. But not before you killed them with Thrashing Wumpus and Skittering-something.
You could get Stromgald Cabal (tap to counter a White spell), and a Replenish deck would need eight mana before it could do anything productive. Zvi, Sayan, and Don Lim eventually figured out to play Ring of Gix to tap Stromgald Cabal, but up until that point, it was a pretty firm soft lock.
All the decks in the format would fold to some kind of Vampiric Tutor. Frank Hernandez (Jon’s Top 8 opponent at Nationals) complained that his StOmPy deck was up against “nine Perishes” in Game One… As above, Jon had more Perish action in his sideboard.
Yawgmoth’s Will is maybe the most powerful Magic card of all time… and they let us play four. No, I don’t know why more people didn’t play it. In Napster the routes to card advantage should be pretty obvious (smash guys, re-buy creature removal), but when you start doing stuff like using your Dust Bowl so you can re-buy a land, plus popping Vampiric Tutor from the graveyard to get your next Yawgmoth’s Will… The deck was easy to win with at 25% efficiency (again, Vampiric Tutor auto-beat almost every deck)… But there was significant room for mastery.
Subtly, Unmask (a Black pitch spell) was there to help you get rid of cards like Perish when off-matchup.
… And that’s about it.
I could write about Napster, um, forever, but I’ll leave it at that. Basically a deck with potentially fast threats (turn one 5/5), more card advantage than anyone else (Yawgmoth’s Will), and the ability to beat almost any deck with one spell.
I leave you with some sketches I did of the King of Atlantis yesterday:
Scribbles:
Slicker:
LOVE
MIKE
Coming Soon:
“The Now-Famous Supermodel NipSlip Incident of 1995″ (and associated shenanigans)
I wrote another article on sideboarding this week, over at TCGPlayer.com
The article was generally well-received but per usual with these kinds of examples-laden, detail-oriented articles I always end up with things that I wish I had added but forgot to, or didn’t think of until after I had submitted, or whatever.
Luckily I have a highly trafficked blog where I can add the odd DVD Extras (P.S. you’re reading it).
Osyp pointed out on Twitter…
Aside on Osyp on Twitter.
Basically I have been stealing everything worthwhile — ultimately including this blog post — from things Osyp said on Twitter. Examples include #FloresRewards (if you haven’t signed up for #FloresRewards yet… you should), and my most recent #FloresRewards video / Feat of Strength [chocolate peanut butter buckeyes]. By the way these went over quite well at Jonny Magic’s tonight.
If you’re not following Osyp on Twitter yet… you should.
Anyway, what my man Osyp said was that I should have called out the URzaTron sideboard as a good example of what we were talking about in the sideboarding article. In case you don’t know, URzaTron was a deck that Osyp used to make Top 8 of Pro Tour Honolulu (Heezy’s). The main deck was mostly designed by me, with Osyp, Andrew Cuneo, Josh Ravitz, and Chris Pikula on the team. But the important part — the Giant Solifuges — were Osyp’s doing.
The cool thing about the main deck (in case you didn’t notice) is that there were no double mana requirements… Just the one Invoke the Firemind. The Giant Solifuge sideboarding swap actually broke that rule (but like I said, Osyp made that part… which was in all honesty the best part of the deck).
The philosophy of this deck was that it went Over The Top relative to the rest of the metagame. You play Keiga or Meloku… What is the other guy supposed to do, even?
The deck was typically the beatdown, even if it looks like a control deck. It used the Counterspells (as Eugene Harvey explained) simply for time management, but it was all about setting the tempo of the game with its superior threats. The Giant Solifuges allowed the deck to obtain greater speed when faced with decks that had comparable or more powerful end games. Really inspired, not-obvious work by Osyp.
The part of the article I wanted to address myself (that is, without Osyp’s prompting) was around enhancing the practicals section at the bottom. I’ll do so now.
Rebels – A modern example might be Pyromancer Ascension. People who are not really intimate with the deck might only think of it as a Pyromancer Ascension + Time Warp [functionally] infinite combo deck. LSV recently talked about siding out Time Warps in some matches. We have seen transformational decks around Polymorph (JVL actually had that in the very first version he showed me, before we even had Call to Mind). Even semi-transformation around Kiln Fiend might count here, but in any case we have examples where one or both of the core “combo pieces” (one of which is the namesake) might be removed in order to reposition the deck while sideboarding. While it is not purely a sideboarding execution, the genius of Gerry Thompson’s hybrid Thopter Foundry / Dark Depths deck was rooted very much in the flavor of this philosophy. His deck, while on its face was much more like a Vampire Hexmage / Dark Depths deck, exhibited exactly the flexibility of “I guess I can side out all my Rebels if you are just going to aim at them”, which allowed for the equally powerful Sword of the Meek combo to kill them to death while they stared at a hand full of Repeals and Ghost Quarters.
G/W – Something interesting here is the ability to create a corner case. Something that I have always been cognizant of when designing rogue decks is how to produce a corner case, push the opponent into it, and then win 100% of the time that this comes up. Most of these examples work around decking, actually, and the G/W one is no different. Despite the presence of extraordinarily card advantageous threats like Decree of Justice and Eternal Dragon, it is theoretically possible to deck the G/W deck. The deck did a lot of cycling, and the Eternal Dragons could be overcome by a combination of Pulse of the Fields and maybe Scrabbling Claws. In addition to facilitating the semi-transformation, Darksteel Colossus makes it almost impossible to deck the G/W deck… In fact, the G/W deck can play to deck the opponent, if it came down to it; but a more realistic position would probably be having tons of mana and playing and re-playing Darksteel Colossus over and over again.
Kuroda-style Red – Something to be wary of with these fancy sideboarding switches is the control of information. For example, in real life, we were out-thunk by Heezy and Neil. They had a different sideboard than the then-default, and moreover, Heezy was aware of our sideboarding strategy, which in turn, allowed them to apply a sweep-capable sidebaord switch in the face of our supposedly unbeatable anti-Blue sideboarding strategy. A recent example might be Little D over Ma in the Top 8 of Amsterdam. Ma theoretically had a 90% matchup v. Little D, but Little D executed the sweep with his Relic of Progenitus switch-in, which impaired the effectiveness of Ma’s Tarmogoyf and Kitchen Finks. In theory had Conley been looking over Ma’s shoulder, they could have executed a couner-Nassif sideboarding strategy that would have blunted the effectiveness of the Relic plan… But insted, Little D was in a position of liking the Relic so much he kept a mana light hand just because there were Relics present.
Critical Mass – The holy grail of Constructed Magic is to be the beatdown and the control simultaneously. That makes it impossible for the opponent to Execute on a Who’s the Beatdown equation. Generally speaking the optimal sideboarding strategy is to position yourself as both the beatdown and the control if possible. Both Brian Kibler’s Rubin Zoo deck and the Mythic Conscription deck exhibit qualities of seizing both beatdown and control capabilities. Talk to Kibler about Rubin Zoo. If you draw Wild Nacatl, you win on speed; if you don’t, you slow play and win on power. Play the Mythic Conscription deck. It is just like Critical Mass against control… It does the same thing they do, but faster due to Lotus Cobra and so on. Meanwhile, it is also the fastest, most powerful, attack deck thanks to the speed of Sovereigns of Lost Alara. While neither the Naya or the Bant decks discussed in this subsection rely on sideboarding, you can see how they can play either role, fluidly, and in some cases both simultaneously. For example against another Zoo deck, Kibler could go first, play a 3/3 on the first turn (beatdown), trumping a Goblin Guide or Kird Ape, attack the face, and then play lockdown with the Grove of the Burnwillows combo (control), until locking down the game entirely with Baneslayer Angel (a really controlling beatdown). Poor beatdown.
Well, that’s most of what I wanted to say about that.
Spreading Seas [being awesome] :: My Imaginary Superpower (i.e. the lack thereof) :: Changes to my Hall of Fame Ballot ::
Thinking About Stuff :: also Spreading Seas :: also, My Imaginary Superpower
I finished Nationals this year with five losses.
One match — the first match of the tournament — I punted. I was up a game against Jund after the habitual multiple Spreading Seas opener, plus in the second game my opponent stalled on three for a couple of turns. For some reason I Mana Leaked his second Putrid Leech, but whatever.
Spreading Seas
He stalled on Forest, Swamp, and Dragonskull Summit. I drew Spreading Seas and plopped both it, and my Pyromancer Ascension onto the ‘field (it’s not like I had a Mana Leak to defend the Ascension any longer).
The problem?
I put the Spreading Seas on his Dragonskull Summit.
Ooh, that’s a nonbasic! Ooh!
As soon as I did it — playing too quickly, per usual — I realized I had lost the game. If I had simply played the Spreading Seas on his Forest, I would have been able to power up my Ascension and win over the next two turns. Instead, dead.
So I had five losses at the end of the tournament. That first round was a punt if ever there was one.
The disappointing part of the tournament was going 2-1 / 2-1 in my two M11 drafts. I put in the work on MTGO and simply expected to win both of my drafts. My first draft was a bit soft, but I played my heart out, winning with a mulligan to four against an opponent with five Lightning Bolts in his deck. Unfortunately I lost consecutive games to Overwhelming Stampede in a different pairing (after winning the first, per usual).
My second draft was the worst. I drafted literally the best M11 deck I had ever drafted… Birds, Elves, Merfolk Sovereign, three Scroll Thieves (that is a combo by the way), a ton of Foresees (eight-see you might even say), a ton of Counterspells, great curve, great high end starting with Obstinate Baloth. So playing for the 3-0 I won the first game (see any pattern here?), I kept Island, Forest, Birds of Paradise, and Crystal Ball. I mean who loses to stalling with a second turn Crystal Ball?
I in fact stalled on two until turn five. My opponent’s draw was just too fast. His deck was much weaker than mine (save a lone Mind Control), but he got out his small White creatures and had at least a pair of Pacifisms. He beat me in the third game with a topdecked Pacifism, allowing him to force in the last point when I was drawing 2+ a turn with Scroll Thief, again with Crystal Ball online.
I lost a Constructed match on Day Two, so it’s not like winning that second draft would have guaranteed me Top 8… But I know that at the time, drafting as well as I did, that it felt pretty terrible to lose to stalling on mana with a second turn Crystal Ball.
How many [more] Top 8s might you have if you could finish this sentence… “I would have made Top 8 if…”
How about “if I hit my third land drop”?
I can point to countless tournaments over the course of my life where I would have made Top 8 if I just hit my third land drop.
Can you imagine having a superpower of always hitting your third land drop? Wouldn’t you win so much more? It’s almost obvious that you would.
I never thought about it like this before.
I think that’s why we can’t vote for cheaters.
Imagine some cheater with a ton of Pro Tour Top 8s. A ton of Grand Prix Top 8s. How many of them might he not have if he didn’t have the superpower of hitting his third land drop 100% of the time [or you can replace this with whatever superpower he has]?
What if his opponents are just a tiny bit development shy, like Ryan Fuller always bragged his opponents would be?
What if his opponents don’t have quite enough time to finish a round, due to clock management shenanigans?
Do you think his number of Top 8s might be a hair inflated? Isn’t it willful ignorance, then, to vote for him?
I am not one, usually, to succumb to peer pressure in any context. Advertising, yes (“anything sexy, glossy, well designed, or yummy” according to my wife); but peer pressure, no.
But in this case I decided to fold.
A good number of good men have all pushed the same way, and I decided to revise my 2010 Hall of Fame ballot. I am going to fall back on the Brian David-Marshall rule of not voting for a player with a superpower (aka “a suspension”), at least not first class. While I still admire Saito as a deck designer, to be honest, I was only aware of the [stupid] bribery offense and not his savage attempt to get another player a cheap game loss, even if it was the better part of a decade ago.
Anyway, like Tom Martell says (“Hi Mrs Martell!”)… “Columbus wasn’t nine years ago.”
My pulling my one vote probably won’t affect the outcome of whether or not Saito gets into the Hall of Fame or not this year… And like I said the first time around, he has — resurgently shady reputation or no — proved himself more-or-less both the best player and the best deck designer the past couple of years; but I am still moving my last vote to Anton Jonsson.
Officially revised ballot:
Anton Jonsson
Brian Kibler
Gabriel Nassif
Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
LOVE
MIKE
PS: You know you want it –
“I can’t believe that is the real cover.”
–Chris Pikula
So I got my 2010 Magic Pro Tour Selection Committee Hall of Fame ballot today.
In case you guys haven’t been reading for that long, the first ever post on this blog was my 2008 Hall of Fame ballot; way back on October 6, 2008. You can check that action out here (and by “here” I mean, like, this awesome blog).
Anyway there are a bunch of people eligible for Hall of Fame this year; I am not going to list them all. Instead I am just going to run out my gut-pulls:
Marco Blume
William Jensen
Scott Johns
Anton Jonsson
Brian Kibler
Katsuhiro Mori
Gabriel Nassif
Daniel O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
Carlos Romao
Tomoharu Saito
I have voted for more than one of these players in the past.
They are all deserving misers but a man gets only five Hall of Fame ballot votes. Briefly…
Marco Blume
I always chuckle when I read Marco’s name. I wrote an article on Ponza ~11 years ago which was viciously plagiarized by The Pojo. You can still read “their” article, which has “Maro” Blume credited with a German Ponza deck, a misspelling I made all those many years ago, surviving still on “theirs”.
[LOL! I hadn't read the 2008 ballot before writing this, and didn't realize that I had just re-bought my own line from two years ago.]
William Jensen
Billy “Baby Huey” Jensen has a better resume than a fair number of the people already in the Hall of Fame. It’s basically silly he hasn’t been inducted yet. I’ve learned a lot from him.
Scott Johns
Ditto on William Jensen. Scott is a Pro Tour winner with five Top 8s and years of service to the community.
Anton Jonsson
To be honest I didn’t have the Limited master on my original short list but when i sorted the 2010 candidate pool and saw how many Top 8s he had, it seemed negligent not to consider him. Unfortunately I have little frame of reference on Anton’s game, but he comes very highly recommended by friends like Brian David-Marshall and Teddy Card Game.
Brian Kibler
I had already decided to vote for my old Underground and Team Red Bull teammate the Dragonmaster last year. Then he went and won a Pro Tour and Grand Prix and so on. Kibs is going to be a landslide this year and I plan to jump on.
Katsuhiro Mori
A few weeks ago I had this conversation with Zvi Mowshowitz:
Me: What are the chances someone other than Katsuhiro Mori has the MTGO nickname “Katsuhiro Mori”?
Zvi: Pretty low, why?
Me: Because I just bashed him in a queue, but I kind of don’t believe it was really him.
Zvi: No?
Me: He was playing Mono-Red.
Zvi: What were you playing?
Me: Eldrazi of course. Can’t lose; I mulled to five Game One and 2-0′d him anyway.
Zvi: Nah couldn’t have been him, but weird MTGO name.
Katsu is super fun to play against, for fun at least (I have never played him in a tournament). He once beat me in same-deck of Pierre Canali’s U/R Wafo-Tapa deck. He was super tricky, which is about par for the course for him.
Gabriel Nassif
Hat is basically everyone’s hero (mine included). Neither Jon nor Kai (nor Bob, nor Dirk) got unanimous inductions, so I greatly doubt Nassif will. But he’s certainly got This Girl’s vote.
Daniel O’Mahoney-Schwartz
It was just Danny OMS’s birthday! Happy birthday Danny OMS! Katherine and the kids and I are going to Shake Shack with him this weekend. Dan is a good friend and I hang out with him pretty much every week. However My annual OMS brother vote is going to…
Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Should have voted him in first class. My bad.
Chris Pikula
Ditto on Chris.
Carlos Romao
There are few Constructed players I admire as much as Carlos. The Psychatog master just added a notch to his already much-perforated belt with a Planeswalker Top 8 that helped cement little Jace as a pre-emptive Staple in Standard.
Tomoharu Saito
Not only did his just win another big tournament, but he’s basically the best deck designer in the world.
This year I decided to do something different moving from the short list to the shorter list. I am just going to run all the automatic votes and see how many slots I have left over.
As I am not a buffoon I am obviously voting for Nassif, Saito, and Kibler; master, master, and DragonMaster. I think Nassif is as worthy a unanimous ballot-gatherer as ever drew breath. Saito has been around the best player in the world for some years if not the clear best. I wouldn’t have half so much glory as a deck designer if he hadn’t helped Andre Coimbra in the Extended portion of Worlds; so mise! Like I said, I was going to vote for Kibler even before he won that Pro Tour and Grand Prix because in order for the American block to start getting our O’Mahoney-Schwartz brothers and Pikulas into the Hall of Fame we have to stop fracturing our votes. That means getting our deserving boys off the ballot and into the Hall of Fame so that we can make more room for our, you know, additional deserving boys. That starts with Kibler. Congratulations old friend. The enemy’s gate is down!
With two votes left, that makes for a wonderfully convenient number of openings for SteveO and Chris.
Final ballot:
Brian Kibler
Gabriel Nassif
Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
Tomoharu Saito
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
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:
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
