So the previous blog post lined up scoring based on Swiss points.
However the scoring criteria for #WorldsDraft is individual PT points. So like I said it is deceptive. The standings based on projected PT points is not close at all.
The reason?
Only two drafters have a Top 16 player — YT and Osyp. And Osyp is way out of contention. The other player with a Top 16 player is YT… And I also have a Top 8 player.
So Jamie being tied with me and Patrick at present is highly deceptive. His Shuuhei Nakamura at 18 is worth a PT point less than my Joshua Utter-Leyton at 16. Huzzah!
If Worlds ended right now, I would win by a huge margin of over 10%; I counted all Top 8 players as 12 PT points (5-8) rather than their Swiss positions (despite his position in the Swiss, PV hasn’t won the PT yet).
Here are my numbers, with projected PT points based on last year’s Worlds numbers:
As you can see, the current standings are much less close…
Osyp – 18
Jamie – 24
YT – 31
Phil – 26
Patrick – 27
Therefore I would be overjoyed if Efro ran the tables and won, with all of our current Top 8 horses losing in the quarterfinals. Remember, PV is a very serious threat to Brad Nelson’s once seemingly insurmountable Player of the Year lead.
Interestingly there is one other threat.
According to Twitter…
Should Efro fail to win his quarterfinal match to my horse Guillaume Matignon [please don’t lose, Efro], I would like to see Matignon win it all. Why? In addition to locking YT as the winner of #WorldsDraft, that would put Matignon in a tie for Player of the Year with Brad! It would go to a playoff (which in this amazing fantasy Brad would win); I think that there would be awesome drama around Brad falling so far, but being given a chance to retain his Player of the Year title on the field of battle.
Very Maher v. Finkel 2000 if you get the reference 😉
To the loser? He is forced to write an in-depth strategy article on the format Momir Vig.
Pick order was [somehow] determined by Star City Somebody Ted Knutson; it went a little something like this:
Osyp Lebedowicz
Jamie Parke
YT
Phil Napoli
Patrick Chapin
The format was a traditional Rochester wheel for the first four rounds of picks; but Patrick (before he was assigned #5, mind you), asked that pick orders be identical for rounds four and five. That is, 1-5, 5-1, 1-5, 5-1, 5-1. The theory being that in the last round most of the prime picks would be gone anyway, and it would be unfair to give Osyp another first crack. With that out of the way, this is how things shook out:
Round One:
Osyp – Brad Nelson
Jamie – Luis Scott-Vargas
YT – Martin Juza
Phil – Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa
Patrick – Gerry Thompson
Osyp’s first pick here was hella obvious. All five of us would have made the same first pick. I would have second picked LSV, as Jamie did as well. This left YT with an interesting decision. I went with Juza, though there are a number of reasonable options… for example Phil’s pick of PV. Patrick set up his wheel with Gerry Thompson, a nod to his friend and collaborator… Who coming off a number of strong domestic fishes — err finishes — recently, might have been hotter than the PoY standings indicated.
Round Two:
Patrick – Gabriel Nassif
Phil – Brian Kibler
YT – Joshua Utter-Leyton
Jamie – Shuuhei Nakamura
Osyp – Tsuyoshi Ikeda
Patrick made another wild pick; his theory (and it is a good one) was just that Nassif is the 3d best player of all time, and still a heck of a performer. I mean how long ago was his PT win? Exactly. I mean what would the PoY race have looked like if Nassif, LSV — or heck, Brad — decided to travel to as many GPs as the Japanese?
Phil’s slam of Brian Kibler looked prophetic through the first two days… and who wouldn’t want to root for a Kibler?
I took what would be a controversial pick in Joshua Utter-Beatings. I took some flak from Teddy after the draft, but I had a clear idea of who I wanted on my team, and I didn’t want to risk Josh being taken by one of the other drafters. As Osyp would later point out, National Team members are “more motivated” due to higher EV… But that isn’t why I took Josh. He had hands-down the best deck at US Nationals (even though his collaborators played everything from Pyromancer Ascension to DredgeVine), and Worlds has two Constructed events.
Jamie stole Shuuhei, and Osyp made basically the worst pick of the draft in Ikeda. Nothing against Ikeda — he has 300+ PT points and not-distant PT finals appearance, but he could have gone way later… I guess I am making the same argument against “the other Tsuyoshi” that Teddy made against my Utter-Leyton pick.
Round Three:
Osyp – Antoine Ruel
Jamie – Paul Rietzl
YT – Andre Coimbra
Phil – Michael Jacob
Patrick Guillaume Wafo-Tapa
This round was 80% sentimental picks and 20% “Phil trying to put Patrick on tilt.” Phil was successful. I know I could have gotten Coimbra later in the draft but was afraid that Osyp would try to do to me what Phil did to Patrick this round so I pulled the trigger.
Round Four:
Patrick – Katsuhiro Mori
Phil – Ben Stark
YT – David Williams
Jamie – Conley Woods
Osyp – Yuuya Watanabe
This round was my only real dilemma. I wanted Katsu Mori — one of the most successful players ever at making Top 8 at Worlds and reigning Japanese National Champion — was going to be my Round Four pick. Patrick had the same information I did and made a superb fourth pick there. I decided to go with my planned fifth pick. Osyp rounded out the round with what looked like the best pick of the draft, Watanabe at motherloving on zillionth or whatever.
Final Round:
Patrick – David Ochoa
Phil – Kyle Boggemes
YT – Guillaume Matignon
Jamie – Matt Sperling
Osyp – Christian Calcano
This round didn’t seem particularly strategic to me as an observer or a participant. I mean I was planning to take Dave this round. Osyp said he was so satisfied with his first four picks that he almost took Jonny Magic here out of respect; who would have known his highest finisher would be Calcano?
The players I had left on my list of people I was willing to pick were Guillaume Matignon and Efro; the first three days of play tell us that they are now paired against each other in the Top 8. I was actually pretty surprised that no one took Efro!
I was always going to take Andre and Dave — I knew they would have the best Standard deck — plus who doesn’t root for the home team? Incidentally, how great is the Wave deck? It beats all five of the five most popular decks in Standard, and has a 75/25 edge over Valakut! The Extended deck (which to my knowledge no one played) was even better. [sad face]
Anyway, this is where we stand right now:
Nominally I am tied with Jamie and Patrick for first place, but the only players who can likely win — based on Top 8 — are YT, Patrick, and Phil. Jamie can’t improve; whereas Phil is nominally 9 points out of the lead, but that is deceptive. The Swiss numbers are misleading to begin with. For example My Utter-Leyton and Jamie’s Shuuhei are both “37 points” but IRL Utter-Leyton made Top 16 and Shuuhei finished 18th; Josh will probably be worth more points when PT points are announced.
And #WorldsDraft is ultimately going to be tallied by individual PT Points.
I hope you will all join me in cheering for Lukas Jaklovsky — but more importantly Jonathan Randle — as we go into Day Three. I can’t really cheer against EFro for something as silly as #WorldsDraft, but if PV wins… It’s not just the pall of Phil coming back from his initial lead thanks to having Kibler on his squad (incidentally Phil was the only drafter with two premium players on his squad, and only then because Patrick made two unusual ones to start)… But Brad will lose the PoY title!
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.
In the quite likely event that you read Top Decks last week, you know that I listed not just Flame Slash but Forked Bolt in the “awesome” at one mana category. This post is going to be a follow up to the Flame Slash post as well as a brief discussion of its one mana twin / competitor / equal and opposite.
First of all, I just wanted to should out to our great FiveWithFlores.com community for some of their additional Flame Slash commentary.
I focused on Malakir Bloodwitch (probably because I tend to think of Naya first… and Burst Lightning was an important component of the World Championship winning deck); but Twinblaze pointed out that Flame Slash is good against Putrid Leech, and Alfrebaut and some others talked about using Flame Slash to help a beatdown deck get past Wall of Omens, or a Red Deck deal with problem creatures like Rhox War Monk (and any Red mages out there know what a serious problem that 3/4 can be).
So what about Forked Bolt?
Forked Bolt
Forked Bolt v. Lightning Bolt
First up, it is not strictly true that Lightning Bolt is better than Forked Bolt. I mean it is probably true, but it isn’t even strictly true that Forked Bolt is better than Shock. I mean we all know that Lightning Bolt is the better card due to the twofold “I deal three damage” and “I do those three damage at instant speed” brothers, but we can’t say strictly.
Because of that, I don’t know that Forked Bolt will do much displacement of Lightning Bolt in the first four slots allotted to Red one mana removal spells (don’t forget that Boss Naya and Naya Allies don’t even play four Lightning Bolts main deck). However I feel like Forked Bolt will be a second string main deck card more readily than Flame Slash.
After all, it goes to the head.
Forked Bolt v. Burst Lightning
Forked Bolt v. Burst Lightning makes for an interesting comparison. Burst Lightning — at least before Rise of the Eldrazi — sat on the front line of the second string. There were decks like Grixis Burn that actually appreciated a Burst Lightning and the ability to deal four points of damage. As a Shock variant, Forked Bolt is not going to match that incentive from Burst Lightning.
How about killing little guys?
I have found a lot of tension during the first couple of turns of a game, especially against Vampires or Naya decks… Which one mana spell should I use? Against Vampires you often want to clear out a Vampire Hexmage before playing Ajani Vengeant; against Naya the target is Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch. So do you Lightning Bolt or Burst Lightning?
It’s been months and I still have no clue!
Against Vampires you typically want to save Lightning Bolt for Vampire Nighthawk… But sometimes you have to make sure you have ammunition for Vampire Nocturnus (I mean, should the worst happen). Against Naya, you usually want to save Burst Lightning for Knight of the Reliquary (provided you can still deal with it at all, Burst Lightning will often be better than Lightning Bolt) or Woolly Thoctar; on the other hand, the Burst Lightning deck I played for months would often have to respect Great Sable Stag.
While Forked Bolt can’t actually kill a Woolly Thoctar [by itself], it does remove a lot of the tension on the first turn. For example Forked Bolt versus Lightning Bolt is not much of a fight when you are faced with Noble Hierarch, Birds of Paradise, or Vampire Hexmage; you can kill any of those little guys, and send an extra point to the opponent’s head. Perfect!
Subtly, Forked Bolt is a good supplement to Lightning Bolt when you have to kill a larger creature. You can tag team to take down a Woolly Thoctar, say, and still point the last ding ding at the opponent; while that doesn’t make up for the craptastic-ness of blowing a second card on a three drop, paying yourself back a point is nice (or you can snag an X/1 while you’re at it, to more-or-less break even).
Forked Bolt v. Flame Slash
As far as second string single [mana] sorceries go, these two are both awesome… but don’t really compete for the same jobs. They are like Diet Coke and Vitamin Water.
Forked Bolt does something pretty unique; in the past you needed to invest three mana for this effect. And even if it was good (Osyp made Top 8 the first Pro Tour Electrolyze was legal), no one has played it in forever… We just don’t like to deal two damage for three mana even when we get to draw a card. Make no mistake, this card can be a blowout against some draws. You know those games where the Green deck kept two lands and two Elves (or whatever Birds / Druids)? Forked Bolt can Mind Twist them at the same time as manascrewing them on one of these draws.
Plus, Forked Bolt is so much more versatile. You can pick it up and point it (or, as we’ve said a couple of times, point half of it) at the head. That makes it hell off the top.
Flame Slash is different. Flame Slash is surgery. That might be a strange thing to say given what a generally inflexible, brute force (if awesome) card Flame Slash is. But think about it: You want Flame Slash for a specific job. Specific kinds of decks want it, typically out of the sideboard, to get rid of or compete against known — dangerous — quantities.
In the words of the great Tsuyoshi Fujita, “Depends on the metagame.”
I think Flame Slash is unlikely to be a main deck card, but quite likely to be a sideboard Staple.
I think Forked Bolt will be the new second string main deck card, largely replacing Burst Lightning in that role. That is due to the ability to go to the head and the ability to deal with common creatures while still hitting for a little damage (all for so little mana, of course). However depending on how the metagame evolves one might be more common than the other. Alternately the decision might be dictated by what deck is making the decision. For example, I don’t really see my school of Naya decks fighting over little X/1s rather than caring about the much-mentioned Malakir Bloodwitch.
But it would be perfectly reasonable for some Red Decks to go the other way.
Because you demanded it (and by “you” demanding it, I mean because I felt like writing it), my nightly television schedule!
I watch maybe six hours of television per day; probably more on the weekends. People are sometimes surprised to hear that, and there are other grownups / parents who seem horrified to hear that. However the fact is I stay up working most nights… Either working on my blog or other Magic-related projects (or just playing Magic Online); and of course I wrote a real live book last year.
My wife is much more reasonable than I am and goes to bed at a halfway reasonable time. But for me? I just like having the television on while I am up.
Anyway, I was inspired by Facebook posts by Ken Krouner and then Osyp Lebedowicz recently and decided to do something that Zvi Mowshowitz does on an (at least) annual basis; and post my general tv schedule. Of course I am not 100% married to any given time of day (thanks to DVR), but for the most part, this schedule will adhere to the regular times or nights that these shows appear.
DVR and On Demand:
There are some shows that I never watch live; I just watch them on Prime Time On Demand; these shows include veteran comedy Parks and Recreation and Justified. Who even knows when they are on?
Sunday:
In other circumstances I would list shows like Entourage (incidentally coming off a blah season but absolutely five star season finale) or Dexter (ditto to the season finale; was not blah), but I wanted to concentrate on what I am watching right now.
60 Minutes
I don’t watch 60 Minutes slavishly, but I enjoy it and watch it most Sundays; partly based on the fact that it comes on right before…
The Amazing Race
Another show I don’t watch slavishly; back in the day I was an immovable fan of Fox’s Sunday night lineup (The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, Arrested Development, etc.); now we watch The Amazing Race partly as compromise, having moved over the years between Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Alias and the various masterful HBO Sunday lineups including The Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, and so on. Katherine got me into Survivor and Big Brother very early in our relationship but it took years for us to tag onto The Amazing Race, which is (critically at least) considered the best of the competition reality lot. I would rate it as pretty gripping / pretty good; but if there were a strong HBO option at this time of the year, I would probably be taking it.
Breaking Bad
The amazing thing about Cranston is that he was on what was on (pre-Arrested Development) the best comedy on Fox [and probably on television] but never really got the attention for his comedic or physical work (largely overshadowed by Jane Kaczmarek who was of course fabulous); but now that he is playing the exact opposite character on the exact opposite show, he’s rocked the back-to-back Emmy Awards. I know that Breaking Bad is generally marketed as “the best show on television”. I don’t know I would rate it there; it is very good, though. It is like Weeds in that it follows the formula of The Breakout Novel (starting the characters in the shit, then putting them increasingly deeper in it), which ensures its gripping-ness. Gripping it is, and challenging like nothing else on television.
Monday:
Monday is a heavy television night for me. Because I watch two “simultaneous” teevee shows on Monday, it is consequently a heavy DVR night. Here goes:
How I Met Your Mother
Zvi rates this as the best comedy on television. I don’t know that I would have it as top 3 even, but I love How I Met Your Mother anyway.
Like much of the initial audience, I started watching because of the Doogie Howser, M.D.-meets-Willow Rosenberg casting… and never stopped. They aren’t even the main characters!
House
I adore this show (which most of you remember was initially just drafting on American Idol‘s popularity); it has sustained a strong level of quality for years. It somehow features not just great writing but the hottest woman on earth (which is a not uncommon joke on the show), and a cast of truly lovable misfits and geniuses.
Gossip Girl
Longtime Top 8 Magic podcast listeners know that I long called Blake Lively as “the next it girl” two years before the premiere of Gossip Girl. That’s how good michaelj is at calling an it girl 🙂
Gossip Girl is a lot less interesting than it was in, say, the first two seasons when we were still trying to figure out who Gossip Girl was / is; I must admit that despite the acquisition of Kristen Bell (who is the voice of Gossip Girl), I was initially embittered at the fact that Gossip Girl supplanted my all-time favorite television show Veronica Mars on the CW. What, they couldn’t have two shows set in an environment of mystery and rich teenagers? I still like Gossip Girl enough to follow it closely, based on an adoration of Blake Lively (versus Serena) and Chuck Bass, though I am kind of annoyed by every other character but Nate Archibald (who is the unsung baller of the show, having tagged basically every major character-ette despite being poor for about half a season) and Little J (us something-Js have to stick together).
24
This last season is easily the worst season ever. However the show has not gotten less gripping, and being the worst season of one of the best shows of all time does not remove it from the must-view list. The way they are scripting 24 right now, I am tired just watching. Poor Renee. Poor Jack.
Tuesday:
Glee
They had me with the pilot-closer “Don’t Stop” and haven’t let go. This show features so many people I love (Kristen Chenoweth being the best example) and such great performances of such great music… If you don’t watch Glee (and twice-plus), you’re dumb basically.
Lost
Is the final one the best season ever of one of the best shows ever (like a mirror to 24, kind of)? I don’t know. But I can’t look away. If you aren’t deeply into Lost yet, you are in for a treat. I am going to re-watch my DVDs from season one starting this summer. There are so many details that even though I know the macro story, I bet I will love making small connections for myself all along the way; I can’t imagine how great it will be for first time viewers.
A lot of the criticism of Lost comes from a position of ignorance. Zvi actually makes the best analogy when he talks about the complexity of Magic (you know, the best game of all time); yes, it’s complex. Lost is a complex show. Both are necessarily complex and difficult for new devotees. But if they weren’t so complex, they wouldn’t be so unassailable. And they both are. When was the last time a president moved the State of the Union for a television show. TDG.
That.
Damn.
Good.
V
It took me a while to get into V because it was originally on Wednesday nights, when I have Movie Klub… But it ended up being the first show I bought to watch on my iPod. V is so surprising and scary it made me jump while watching it on a little three inch screen.
I am not unique but probably still a little bit unusual in that I am a current fan who was also an original 1980s V fan. However I have some additional crossover in that Elizabeth Mitchell’s character Juliet was my favorite character on Lost, and she is the lead on V now. Anyway, a very watchable show that I don’t like to miss. Full of alums from Firefly and other SF geek stuff you might like.
Wednesday:
Earlier this week, KK was lamenting the lack of good television on Wednesday nights. Wednesdays are actually a special case for me; I have Movie Klub, hosted by the incomparable Lan D. Ho at casa Jon Finkel and try to hit that every week. I don’t have any real / regular Wednesday night viewing, but I really should catch up with Top Chef Masters and possibly The Ultimate Fighter. But right now, I am behind on both.
Thursday:
Survivor
Arguably the first great competition reality show, Survivor is now in its 20th (?) season… and this is probably the best season ever. Survivor: Heroes v. Villains is an All-Star season that brought back all of my favorite players (Tom, Boston Rob, and Russell H.) along with a host of other popular players (Rupert, JT). The game play has been amazing. The best players have been putting on a clinic and the players who were supposed to be some of the best are all gone now. Russell made a move that looked to me like the best move ever on his way to ousting the dominant Boston Rob (early favorite for “best ever”) and just last week Parvati (Russell’s chief ally) made a move that required a truly inspired read on the enemy — the perfect marriage of information and opportunity.
Like much of the Survivor audience I fell in love with Russell’s hardcore game play last year, and he took the #1 spot in my opinion from Tom, despite finishing only second. This year I was afraid that Russell might not have been able to play his balls-out swing-for-the-fences style, but he has been as aggressive as ever, and a dominating player from the social side, making plays that cracked Boston Rob’s numbers advantage and eliminating JT (with JT never seeing the blindside coming). However it might be Parvati (seductive winner of the last All-Star season) who emerges as the best player of all time. KK (Survivor superfan) and I are separately rooting for our favorites between these two allies, against one another.
The Office
By the second season, I had The Office as the funniest show of all time. While I think that it has dipped in quality somewhat, I still have it as the #2 comedy on television.
30 Rock
Arguably the best show on television, probably the best written, and certainly the best comedy.
So obviously it will lose its Emmy lock to Glee later in the year (but I’d be fine with that). One half an hour I try to hit every week, and without fail.
Friday:
Ben 10 Alien Force / Ben 10 Ultimate Alien, Batman the Brave and the Bold, Star Wars – The Clone Wars
These are all Bella’s shows; we watch them on Saturday morning before the rest of the family gets up, typically; however they all get DVR’d on Friday night.
Batman the Brave and the Bold is charming; it has more of a reverence — even fanboy quality — for the superhero mythos than any Batman cartoon in recent memory. I will not soon forget the Christmas episode when [robot] Red Tornado gets Batman a mug that reads “World’s Greatest Detective” for a gift. It is probably not a better show overall than the early 1990s Bruce Timm / Paul Dini Batman: The Animated Series that spawned the Superman and Justice League franchises, but I like Batman the Brave and the Bold more than the 2000s The Batman.
Star Wars – The Clone Wars really hit its stride this season; much better than the first. I love a lightsaber fight.
Saturday:
Doctor Who
Without a doubt the high point of my television week is my favorite show, Doctor Who.
Back when Battlestar Galactica was on Friday nights on The SciFi Channel, I secretly looked forward to Doctor Who even more.
I have been a Doctor Who fan since the age of four. I used to dream about his companions as a kindergartner and after a fair sized gap based on living in the wilds of western Pennsylvania (I don’t think our PBS affiliate had Doctor Who), I came back to Cleveland, eyes stuck on Peter, Colin, and Sylvester (Doctors five, six, and seven) until the show’s cancellation at the end of — if I recall — my Seventh Grade year. I saw the made for tv movie as a freshman in college, but like everyone else I didn’t like it. Today, Doctor Who I find better than ever.
Peter Davidson was “my” Doctor growing up (Doctor #10 David Tennant has said the same thing), but Tennant ended up my favorite Doctor of all time. He wound up his run just earlier this year.
The show has re-started a bit with Matt Smith as the eleventh man [in continuity] to play The Doctor, with Stephen Moffat taking over as head writer with this season. My sister and I have been positively giddy, because Moffat wrote all the best eps the past several seasons anyway (typically creepy one-ofs).
If you don’t know what I am talking about, here are the basics:
The Doctor is / started out basically the smartest man in the universe. He is a Time Lord, a member of a race who can travel through all space and time. In fact he was chief among the Time Lords. In the early 1960s he quit his job as Lord President of the Time Lords to run around all of time and space adventuring. Yes, he is a bit mad.
The original actor who played the Doctor was quite old but the show had to go on; the writers conceived of an idea where — by nature of their immortal alien backgrounds — Time Lords can change their faces and regenerate bodies that have been ravaged by age or ravaged by bullets (as in the case of #7)… Really just opening the show up to a separate actor. The Doctor is in a sense the same person (same genius, same madness, same sense of justice), but each actor puts a very different personality on that framework. They are all different men as well, act differently, and so on.
In the current continuity, The Doctor is the last of the Time Lords and has basically declared himself God. While 99% of the time he exudes a foppish, fun-loving, outward persona, he harbors a darkness that did not exist before the 2005 reboot. You see it was the Doctor who was responsible for the destruction of all his own people — and these are a people who could theoretically travel through time and space — in order to end a great war. My favorite element of the current series (that was not really present when I was a kid) is when the Doctor goes all Alpha Male on the enemy. He can beat a conquering alien in a swordfight, stop an entire invasioni single-handedly with no weapons, or get really nasty; for example a family of aliens who tried to steal the Doctor’s immortality… he made them immortal, but basically locked them in unending hell-like punishments for crossing him.
The Doctor has always travelled in his adventures with designated Companions (usually beautiful British women), though apparently there is no sex. My favorite companion was Dr. Martha Jones (an actual medical doctor); my second favorite Companion is Matt Smith’s current one, Amy Pool, a scottish redhead who was the victim of the Doctor’s absent minded time meddling starting at the age of seven. She is also a superbabe in that pasty redheaded Scottish way that we Americans only see on foreign television shows.
If that seems SF-nerdy, oh well. Doctor Who is the epitome of SF nerd television. Doesn’t matter. Favorite show. Et cetera.
As with Figure of Destiny, I am embedding a YouTube video of my favorite Doctor Who episode of all time, “Blink” at the end of this blog post. “Blink” won the short form Hugo Award in 2008 (Moffat’s third consecutive win for a Doctor Who episode, beating out Battlestar Galactica‘s best ever episode, “Pegasus” in 2006). The Companion is Martha Jones (my favorite), and the Doctor is David Tennant (my favorite); however most of the screen time goes to Carey Mulligan, who in the last two years has become an international celebrity via her roles in Public Enemies, An Education, and the upcoming Wall Street sequel.
I hope you like “Blink” … As I said it’s my favorite ep ever, and I find it genuinely creeptacular; if you do, there is hope you might like the rest of the show, and thereby adopt it as your favorite as well.
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.
Hello, my name is Osyp and Mike asked me to guest host his blog.
One of the more awkward requests I’ve gotten, but Mike’s a friend so I was more than happy to oblige.
I suppose the only relevant thing to this blog I can write about, since I don’t like Liz Phair or obscure graphic novels, is my recent PTQ win.
I played GWR Slide at the PTQ in Edison this past weekend and went 7-1 in the swiss. I actually build Slide every season and hope that it’s good; thankfully this time around it’s actually quite good in this current environment.
3 Engineered Explosives
4 Spark Spray
3 Path to Exile
3 Life from the Loam
3 Edge of Autumn
3 Lightning Rift
3 Astral Slide
2 Wrath of God
The best deck in the format is Faeries, and Slide just happens to be very good against it. This was the matchup I tested the most prior to the PTQ and as long as you’re patient and play correctly it’s difficult to lose. They really don’t have an effective way to beat you, and you have several threats that they can’t really answer. That being said, Faeries can be difficult depending on what build they’re playing. If they’re playing Herbey’s deck from the GP (main deck Trinket mage package and Shackles) than the matchup can actually be difficult, as you have no main deck answer to shackles and they can tutor a relic to break up your loam engine. However that version is surprisingly unpopular and most either play Owen’s UB build or a more standard Mono U version with Glen Elendra and Sowers and no Shackles!
You’re also very good against the best aggressive deck in the format, Affinity, and have a very strong matchup against GB Loam. Game 1 they can’t answer your enchantments, and after board any plan they may have against you (Extirpate, Krosan Grip) can just get trumped by Ajani Vengeant, which will always win the game.
Red decks are also favorable for you, although Vortex gives them a good shot game 1 of stealing a win. However I still feel like your favorable against any red deck as in testing I very rarely lost a best of 3.
Then there’s combo. Elves is a reasonable matchup because unless they draw multiple Glimpse they can’t keep up with your removal and you’ll eventually wear them down. TEPS on the other hand is unwinnable. I knew this going in and didn’t even bother with any sideboard slots as it won’t make any difference, you cannot win. This did not scare me away mainly because I don’t think TEPS is a very consistent deck, it’s probably the least consistent in the entire field (including All-in Red). I don’t think the deck has a real shot of winning a PTQ and I stand by that comment. If you also look at the PTQ results, it rarely makes T8 and even scanning the room at a PTQ, you won’t see many at the top tables. That being said, that doesn’t mean people won’t play it, but the odds are you will only have to play it once, and you can afford to take a loss given your strength against the rest of the field.
With all that said, I don’t think that Slide is the most powerful deck in the format, however the main reason I played it was that I knew I could play it well and wouldn’t make many mistakes. That’s really all you can ask when you’re deciding what to play. If you’re not planning on playing Faeries, you need to ask yourself “Can I play this deck well enough to give myself an edge over less prepared opponents?†Because the truth is 90% of the people you play at a PTQ are not well prepared, and the other 10% is where the luck factor is going to need to come in.
In the T8 I actually lost to my good friend Gerard playing Herbey’s version of Fae which I mentioned earlier, however he was already qualified and conceded. I then beat Kithkin 2-0 in T4 and Josh Ravitz playing UB Faeries in the finals 2-0.
I think the deck is a real contender and would recommend it if you expect a lot of Faeries and Affinity at your PTQ. Just don’t be scared off by TEPS and practice a lot, because there are a handful of decisions you need to make each turn (particularly turn 1-3) and the wrong one will drastically change the outcome.
For instance, against Fae post board you need to be careful with your cycling lands and loam. Let’s say your opening hand is a Windswept Heath, Ghost Quarter, Tranquil Thicket and Life from the Loam. Game 1 you would probably sacrifice the heath for a stomping ground, cycle the thicket and untap and play loam. However after board Fae is likely to bring in Relic, therefore that sequence would be terrible for you if they Spell Snare’d your Loam and then played a Relic. A smart Fae player would never play turn 1 Relic for that reason alone. If they do they give you too much information and allow you to make the correct play which is to play the Thicket turn 1. Post board the best way to play around Relic is to just make your land drops and not worry about it until later in the game when you draw an Ancient Grudge. The game will go long, so don’t feel rushed to cycle and dig for cards because there’s no need.
It’s a redux of Vengeant Reveillark aka the Brian Kowal Boat-Brew.
Our good friend Osyp Lebedowicz just scored Top 8 at the Star City Games $5,000 tournament in Philadelphia with Brian’s deck, which he considers one of the top two decks in Standard (alongside the Fae).
For those of you who haven’t seen the most recent list, here it is cut down to a manageable 60 cards:
Sideboard:
4 Guttural Response
4 Stillmoon Cavalier
4 Voice Of All
3 Wrath Of God
The Boat-Brew is just chock full of great cards; Osyp was close to saying that Bantoine Ruel (Ranger of Eos) is his favorite card in Standard, but his final vote goes to powerhouse Planeswalker, Ajani Vengeant.
The deck is very robust against the majority of the Standard field, though there is a potential soft spot against Faeries. Faeries with four Sower of Temptation is very difficult to overcome, particularly because Sower of Temptation is just the scariest possible prospect when you are laying out 4/3 Reveillarks.
Osyp took the time to talk to me about some potential changes for the deck, along with justifications.
1) The deck already cut the first Murderous Redcap; Osyp wants to do away with the other three, plus one Kitchen Finks, and replace that quartet with Spectral Procession. Spectral Procession is a known quantity in Windbrisk Heights decks. It is also probably better against Red Decks than Kitchen Finks because the tokens can block a Demigod of Revenge while still getting damage in.
2) Swap the main deck Burrenton Forge-Tender for a Flamekin Harbinger. Flamekin Harbinger might seem like a strange choice for a deck with… What? Three elementals? But think about it like this: With Flamekin Harbinger, you can get Reveillark with Antoine Ruel, meaning Ranger of Eos gets better and better. If you can get your 1/1 killed (not hard) look to be able to set up more than one Reveillark. Osyp feels the Red Deck matchup is strong enough to justify this change, and the following video does nothing to change this opinion:
