So this is the follow up to Thursday’s post about what to do on turn three. If you haven’t read it, check this out first: You Make the Play

I was actually quite proud of myself that I broke patterned thought and “slowed down” with the “turn two” play of Rampant Growth on turn three… I went for Swamp like most of you said you would.

But what is our strategy here? By what tactics will we accomplish our goals?

In this matchup we want to minimize creature damage. We want to keep him contained so that even if he rips the combo, it won’t immediately kill us. Our resources are limited… but so are his, so the short term objective is to get a two-for-one on your Firespout or Jund Charm. How do we ensure a two-for-one? How do we preserve card advantage?

I feel there is no point in playing the Civic Wayfinder at all at this stage.

However, there might be an even better play hiding in our options… an no one suggested it.

Josh Ravitz says to say “Go.”

That’s right, do nothing. But sulk.

Play possum. I’m stuck on two Forests. Do your worst. Give him a bad beat story for later.

The plan is to play Firespout next turn regardless. We are likely to pull off the two-for-one. But what if we play dead? Will he over-commit? We have the maximum chance of a three-for-one if we sit. Think about it.

What do we get from a Rampant Growth? Very little. In this game we are not on a harsh time limit. We are not going to play Chameleon Colossus next turn (probably). We are going to play Firespout. We can play Firespout with the resources at hand, in hand, and already on the board. The difference is that we can put the ball in the opponent’s court for additional card advantage extraction.

Why commit Civic Wayfinder if we are just going to blow everyone up?

Don’t we want more opposition coming to the party?

I think Josh makes a very compelling suggestion, and not obvious at all.

I don’t know if there is a right answer, but if I had the same situation again, I think I would pretend to be manascrewed. This one is not a resource race. If you kill their guys, you are likely to succeed.

I’m sure most of you find that “solution” thought-provoking, at least.

Did you like this type of problem?

Thanks for reading,

LOVE
MIKE

This is an interesting play that I was presented with at the 2008 New York State Championship.

My opponent was a very good player playing R/W Kithkin Backlash (and I knew he was playing Kithkin Backlash).

I was on the play… This was my opening hand:

Firespout
Jund Charm
Chameleon Colossus
Civic Wayfinder
Fire-Lit Thicket
Forest
Forest

A fine hand against a non-Red-hating beatdown deck, I think you will agree; if not the speediest (but you don’t necessarily have to be the speediest to win this matchup in Game One).

I made Forest, Forest my first two turns; he played Knight of Meadowgrain on the draw.

So on turn three, I had an interesting pull: Rampant Growth (turn two pluck being Kitchen Finks).

My “scripted” play from my opening hand was obviously to start getting ahead with Civic Wayfinder.

So here are the questions:

What play would you make?
What play do you think I made?
What is the right play?

Follow-up tomorrow. See you then!

LOVE
MIKE

Just a quick update about my performance at the 2008 New York State Championships.

I’ll probably write something more substantial about this tournament — and outlining my deck of choice, maybe with a video — in the near future, but I figured I’d update you as to how I did.

I went 6-2, tied for the eighth position, but based on a second round loss I finished middle-of-the-pack in the Top 16.

The deck was great and performed as i thought it would. The only change I made from the previous post was to swap two Lash Outs in the sideboard for two Shriekmaws (which I foolishly bought on-site for $3 each). The reason was that I didn’t want to be too far behind against multiple Burrenton Forge-Tenders. In the sparse testing I did against the Weenie White decks, I crush unless they have multiple Burrenton Forge-Tenders; if they have multiple Burrenton Forge-Tenders, it’s really a question of how many of those little buggers “multiple” is… I don’t think I can easily beat three if they have anything else, and even two Forge-Tenders is rough.

R1 – Won 2-1 v. Faeries
R2 – Lost 0-2 v. the Red Deck
R3 – Won 2-0 v. Reflecting Pool Control
R4 – Won 2-1 v. Reflecting Pool Control
R5 – Won 2-1 v. Kithkin Backlash
R6 – Won 2-0 v. the Red Deck
R7 – Lost 0-2 v. Faeries
R8 – Won 2-1 v. Faeries

Versus the Red Deck in Round Two in Game One all my mana came into play tapped and I was just a turn off; it’s pretty frustrating to be on the play with a Rampant Growth and two Kitchen Finks and getting hit with a Stigma Lasher!

Game Two I had Lash Out to allegedly fix my draw and hit a Rampant Growth but sat on four mana for turn after turn with multiple Primal Commands and Broodmate Dragons in my hand, withstanding four (!!!) hits from a Demigod of Revenge and never playing anything.

I don’t have any real excuse for Round Seven; sometimes you just lose. Game One he got the monkey Faeries draw and successfully played his cards in the order they came. Game Two I had a Gutteral Response to cover a Cloudthresher but his answer was a Spellstutter Sprite. If the Cloudthresher resolves it’s a blowout for me; it didn’t so I went from twenty-ish to zero in two attacks thanks to multiple Scions. He showed a great deal of strategic ddiscipline in not blocking my Chameleon Colossus with his second Scion of Oona — I think most players would have crumbled and blocked — and that non-block was highly instrumental in his winning. Just the right play under pressure; the sad part was I was playing for Top 8 and he wasn’t! Random pair-down; he got me, then he didn’t even make it.

That said, I think the Jund Mana Ramp deck is superb against Faeries, though. Two other wins on the day, all the tools… You win most of the time, but not all the time of course. And on the draw, sometimes you just get Clique-Clique locked and never make any meaningful plays.

All in all, not my best New York State Championships. The sad thing is, the deck is probably done. In case you have occasion to play a deck that is generally very good against the Red Deck, very good against Faeries, and smashes Five-color Control (this is the ultimate reason I played the Ramp deck), I suggest Jund Mana Ramp (I make no claims about Reveillark or the mirror, friends).

Final Deck List:

1 Broodmate Dragon
4 Firespout
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Jund Charm

4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Chameleon Colossus
4 Cloudthresher
2 Farhaven Elf
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Primal Command
4 Rampant Growth

4 Fire-lit Thicket
8 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Savage Lands
2 Swamp
4 Treetop Village

sb:
3 Mind Shatter
2 Shriekmaw
2 Broodmate Dragon
4 Gutteral Response
2 Primal Command
2 Lash Out

Some additional links care of BDM at Top8Magic.com:

NY States: Broodmate Dragon Misses By That Much
NY States: Playing for Shards of Alara Boosters

LOVE
MIKE

Something you might want to read before reading this blog post is my article The Breakdown of Theory from Star City Games. This article outlined my theory for Phases in Magic, how duels progress through three distinct Phases that have particular attributes (quite different from the vague and generally inaccurate early game / mid game / late game typical nomenclature).

The interesting thing that I was thinking about this week is how certain matchups can change in Phase III. The initial example I thought of was my Jushi Blue from New York States 2005 when we went three for three into the Top 8, losing only to one another.

My Top 4 matchup was with a player called Eric Marro with Splice Gifts (whom I had previously beaten in the Swiss). The Gifts matchup was generally considered to be in favor of Jushi Blue (in fact, my friend Julian Levin originally intended to play Gifts but I soundly beat him something like 6-0 the week prior to States and he decided to switch to the good guy team… with fine result). However the interesting thing was that my games with Eric in the Top 4 went verylong — easily to the Phase III stage of the game — and something unexpected happened.

I actually started to run out of “stuff”!

Check out our deck lists:

Flores

1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
2 Dimir Aqueduct
10 Island
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
4 Quicksand
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
4 Watery Grave
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
3 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
4 Jushi Apprentice
3 Keiga, the Tide Star
4 Boomerang
3 Disrupting Shoal
4 Hinder
4 Mana Leak
4 Remand
2 Rewind
4 Threads of Disloyalty
Sideboard
3 Cranial Extraction
4 Execute
4 Drift of Phantasms
2 Rewind
1 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror

Marro:

1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
7 Forest
1 Island
3 Llanowar Wastes
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
5 Swamp
2 Tendo Ice Bridge
1 Watery Grave
1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
1 Hana Kami
3 Kagemaro, First to Suffer
1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Carven Caryatid
1 Myojin of Night’s Reach
1 Death Denied
1 Farseek
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Goryo’s Vengeance
4 Kodama’s Reach
2 Putrefy
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Sickening Shoal
1 Soulless Revival
1 Wear Away
Sideboard
1 Cranial Extraction
1 Execute
1 Exile into Darkness
1 Ghost-Lit Stalker
1 Goryo’s Vengeance
1 Grave-Shell Scarab
2 Hideous Laughter
1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
2 Kokusho, the Evening Star
1 Nezumi Graverobber
1 Pithing Needle
1 Rending Vines
1 Shadow of Doubt

My deck — per usual for me designing a Blue deck — was built for speed. It was built for Defensive Deck Speed, answering opponents very quickly, and then tried to accrue sufficient card advantage to overwhelm a Gifts-type opponent by switching to beatdown and protecting Keiga or Meloku for the few turns necessary to force the terminus. The problem was that while I had fast reaction to everything Eric could present in Phases I-II, it seemed like the games could go long enough that he could “come back” just because he had more “stuff” than I did.

In fact, this is a mis-analysis. Gifts should win in Phase III, should it get to a true Phase III position. Jushi is the beatdown; consider:

Remand is a great card, one-for-one. However the opponent still has the card (if not the mana he put into the card) whereas you cycle into something else (which can be an awesome card, or it might be a Dimir Aqueduct).

Mana Leak is a great card on turn two, useless in Phase III if the opponent is careful.

Hinder is like Remand, but stranger… It is one-for-one, but in a really long game, Eric would still have that “countered stuff” in his deck whereas I could at some point be in a position of deck exhaustion.

Unexpectedly — and from a Phases perspective — the Jushi deck wants to keep the match in a deep Phase II. Jushi’s Phase II is better than Splice’s Phase II. Jushi does not have a legitimate Phase III (simply the best Phase II in the format at the time), however it can be trumped by Splice’s legitimate Phase III, should the game come to that point.

I lost both Game Ones to Eric (both in Swiss and in the Top 8)… At the time I blamed it on drawing too many Threads of Disloyalty (which was probably partly true), but I think I may have erred on Misassignment of Game Role! Imagine! Jushi is the beatdown in the Gifts matchup because it can’t withstand a Phase III (Eric overwhelmed me in both the Game Ones he took, going long), complete with a Sculpting of the Perfect Hand on his part.

Here is a short interview with Eric Marro from Top8Magic

Here is BDM and Julian chatting about my matchup

So why am I thinking about this right now?

Well, part of it is that I am working on States decks for 2008… and part of it is that I am kind of worried about losing in Phase III even if I love my deck.

Here is a four-color control deck that is my current favorite deck:

2 Makeshift Mannequin
2 Shriekmaw
4 Cryptic Command
4 Mulldrifter
4 Remove Soul
4 Bant Charm
4 Esper Charm
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Archon of Justice
4 Wrath of God
4 Flooded Grove
4 Mystic Gate
2 Plains
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Sunken Ruins
4 Vivid Creek
4 Vivid Meadow

Sideboard
4 Relic of Progenitus
3 Primal Command
4 Condemn
4 Wispmare

Here is a five-color control deck advocated by Evan Erwin from a recent episode of The Magic Show:

3 Island
2 Pyroclasm
2 Wrath of God
1 Condemn
1 Cascade Bluffs
2 Flooded Grove
1 Nucklavee
4 Mulldrifter
4 Cryptic Command
2 Shriekmaw
4 Vivid Creek
3 Vivid Grove
3 Vivid Marsh
2 Vivid Meadow
2 Negate
2 Cruel Ultimatum
3 Esper Charm
3 Bant Charm
2 Mystic Gate
1 Firespout
3 Fulminator Mage
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Sunken Ruins
4 Reflecting Pool

Sideboard
3 Condemn
2 Cloudthresher
2 Jace Beleren
1 Makeshift Mannequin
2 Mind Shatter
1 Cruel Ultimatum
1 Bant Charm
3 Memory Plunder

Evan’s deck has Cruel Ultimatum… Per my usual designs, I have built my control deck to tap out quickly and for Defensive Deck Speed. Will it lose, lacking a Phase III, in this mirror?

By the by, Memory Plunder in Evan’s sideboard looks pretty saucy for the mirror. I built my deck so that I could theoretically sideboard Knight of the White Orchid for the mirror; you can see what a difference in philosophy that is… I want to start winning in Phase I or Phase II whereas the Erwin / Chapin set wants even more Cruel Ultimatums. Realistically, I think I will have to sideboard Hindering Light to win, nay crush, in the mirror’s long game.