I said Spencer’s forum post was my favorite but I actually forgot about this one, which actually touched what passes for my soul:
oldbsturgeon
i just want to say that this article was very inspiring to me for maybe a very strange reason.
i work as a therapist in substance abuse and i sometimes have clients that have codependency issues with another person.
today we were discussing this persons relationship and how the other person is currently dictating the field of battle and that the client is agreeing to her strategy and will continue to stay with her. by eliminating interaction, such as dredge’s strategy, she can focus on her goal of bettering herself, and when her partner trys to interact in will not matter and she will ultimately lose. either her partner must accept the new terms or will fall further trying to pursue her faulty goals.
thanks mike
I was reminded of this because of an email this morning (which has transformed itself into a Star City forum post also) by Anthony LaCassa, or Ath0919 here and on Star City.
Anth0919
Mike,
So I just read this article and all I have to say is holy crap!
I feel kind of stupid for being blown away by the article, since it’s pretty much based on simple math and I’m an accountant. I guess this is something I feel that I should have been able to realize on my own without having it explained. That being said, I’ve just begun venturing into competitive Magic over the past few months.
Thanks for this article… it’s the best I’ve read regarding theory on choosing a deck.
Which just goes to show: It’s not just for teenie weenie kids any more. Grown ups with jobs love michaelj too!
yes Yes YES
I will go over the deck that prompted young Zack Hall to proclaim “you should go into sales” to me yesterday. Maybe later today depending on Lost, Top Chef, etc.
I was reading Star City Games this week and until I saw a poll for most popular articles by some author or other, I totally forgot they had end-of-the-year awards.
What do you think the chances are that this two-time Writer of the Year gets a nod now that he is no longer in the weeklies? Winky-wink.
Anyway, I decided go go over my eight or so months at Star City in 2008 and pluck my favorite articles. I am pretty sure they are all non-Premium now for those of you who don’t have that service.
michaelj sez: This article is superbly written. Ego, yes; but still a fact. That is, it is a good read and would have been the kind of article I would have liked to have read had I not written it (actually I liked re-reading it, so I guess it has nothing to do with whether or not I had written it). This article features Dune battle strategy, lightsaber duels, basically everything awesome including passably awesome Magic strategy.
My favorite forum post:
SRmogg Just wanted to say that as of now this is currently my favorite magic article ever. Like, it was pretty unreal. I’ve read every enderverse novel many times, and I also really like Kurt Vonnegut. I alreayd knew most the startegic content, but if someone didn’t and was looking for a new way to attack a wide open format with many powerful linears like extended, it’s pretty excellent.
michaelj sez: Just a fair number of good ideas in this one, including getting the pat on the head from Pat, actually learning something while I was working on it, and answering a request by Adam Prosak. Just a pretty good article. I had actually forgotten doing the Wrath of God math; at the time (“that” time, actually) I was playing at my absolute best (this was right before Charleston and my States win)… I think combined with my The Touch tee shirt, GerryT’s mulligan advice, and remembering to do the math when I am pressed with a difficult decision, I will probably knock off a Honolulu PTQ win in one try. On that note…
My favorite forum post:
qwertius this article helped me a great deal.
I see myself as a talented player that never reached his potential for several reasons. Flores points to several directions I should look upon to improve.
michaelj sez: I had just come back from meeting millionaire copywriter Dr. Harlan Kilstein the first time, and I had inadvertently invented a sub-array of NLP theory, and was all excited about learning how to do modeling correctly. I actually want to do more modeling exercises in my writing in the future (in fact I have been thinking of creating a mulligans model inspired by GerryT’s post in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers; I don’t know if you noticed but I am pretty excited about that one. Just a great contribution to the site by Gerry). Also this one has a maddening amount of hand-written sections from The Confusion as well as the best opening page of any novel: madness and goodness both.
My favorite forum post:
Anselm And then there’s Thomas Pynchon, who does (almost) everything Stephenson does, but better.
[Actually this is like my least favorite forum post of all time. Ravitz and I went out and bought Gravity's Rainbow after this forum post and it's been close to a year and neither of us has finished it yet.]
michaelj sez:
I actually forgot that I wrote this one. This was both one of the best articles I ever published and not as good as it should have been (I had been keeping it under my hat for about three years to be honest, and didn’t get to flesh out everything I wanted to in one article… It was meant to be a video series). This article lays out the advanced rock-paper-scissors theory I use (or more aptly, “used” when I was really good at that kind of thing during Kamigawa- and Ravnica-era Standard formats) to pick the right deck consistently. Certainly my favorite of the five, and a short list contender for Article of the Year (provided anyone remembers I wrote it… Like I said I didn’t).
My favorite forum post:
ThePChapin Flores! I knew you still had it in you!
This article hit home with me like no other article since that fateful “How to win a PTQ” last year…”
Grand Slam. Not close.
center425 Man I love the people flaming the advice on sideboards. Honestly, I bet everyone one of you played cards that were awful in your bad matchups for no reason.
So I hope you like reading or re-reading some of 2008′s best stuff, from me, on Star City. Hopefully I will continue to be able to produce passably awesome content now and forever. Hopefully.
LOVE
MIKE
PS In case you haven’t noticed (and I think I mentioned it roughly DI times in this article, you should read GerryT’s comment in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers. Like right now!).
PPS Follow me on Twitter. Please! I want to feel loved.
You Make the Play returns with a mirror match dilemma from this past weekend’s Star City Games $5,000 tournament in Philadelphia, PA.
The situation: You are 4-1 or thereabouts in the Star City Games $5,000 tournament in Philadelphia last week. Your deck in this one is Blightning Beatdown… So is your opponent’s.
That opponent is Zack Hall, who has a Grand Prix Top 4 this year and is probably better than you.
That said, you got Game One at least in part because Zack shipped to Paris on the play; he had a lot of Flame Javelins to your Bitterblossom, but you got there with the card advantage.
This one is kind of like a Who’s the Beatdown? redux.
It wasn’t really intended that way… The first part especially is about the Reflecting Pool Control deck Mike McGee used to make Top 8 of the Star City Games $5,000 event. But game play gave us a rare opportunity to observe the control deck switching roles.
I guess it all came down to turn one, where the opposing beatdown deck played Ghitu Encampment. Because I was on the play, this let me Remove Soul his first play and buy a ferocious amount of time.
Then it was Kitchen Finks, Kitchen Finks against an opponent with no creature set up to block.
Normally a deck like Red Deck Wins or Blightning Beatdown is a challenge for Reflecting Pool Control. However instead of playing a sit-there attack-acceptance strategy where we would win (hopefully) after a lifetime of draw-go Magic, I saw multiple Finks as an opportunity to attack.
A lot of the readership (viewership?) has been asking for full matches. So we will probably be following this one up with Game Two… and why we didn’t side in something that would seem obvious to most of you.
Until then… Don’t get played.
LOVE
MIKE
P.S. Oy! Mike’s deck list:
2 Island
3 Remove Soul
4 Wrath of God
3 Condemn
2 Cascade Bluffs
2 Flooded Grove
2 Cloudthresher
4 Cryptic Command
3 Jace Beleren
2 Mulldrifter
4 Vivid Creek
3 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Marsh
4 Vivid Meadow
1 Negate
2 Ajani Vengeant
2 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Esper Charm
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Mystic Gate
2 Sunken Ruins
4 Reflecting Pool
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:
MichaelJ is sick! No voice! Please forgive me, but I wanted to do a video on the deck I am playing at the Star City Games $5K before, you know, the Star City Games $5K.
I wanted to pretend-play eight matches on MTGO, pretending I was in a PTQ or whatever, but I went 6-1in the first seven, and I got a “draw” … However I wasn’t playing real Magic so the draw was irrelevant. So I just played the eighth (basically the nightmare matchup of Kitchen Finks, guys with large toughness, and Wilt-Leaf Liege for my Blightnings) … and got there easily. This solidified my choice of Blightning Beatdown for the $5K.
This is how I described the match on November 24:
8. G/W Little Kid
Game One – You probably know I made a deck with all G/W cards and Wilt-Leaf Liege for Block that won one PTQ (that I know about). I actually started thinking about this strategy again for Standard just because Wilt-Leaf Liege is so good against Blightning and Cruel Ultimatum. So basically, alongside Kitchen Finks and better guys than are in my colors — let alone my deck — this is the nightmare match.
Luckily he had a slow opening, which was my only saving grace. One too many lands came into play tapped so he couldn’t overrun me with superior forces. I stuck a Blightning that was pretty ironic. A turn or two later and I would have been eating 4/4.
Anyway he got out a ton of 4/x and 5/x creatures (with Liege boosts) but I had a late Bitterblossom to get in for a tiny amount of damage… eventually burned him to death.
Game Two – I side out Blightnings (obviously) for Everlasting Torments.
I luck out that his third land is a Mosswort Bridge, meaning my Figure of Destiny is 4/4 before he has a Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers in play. This is just what I need to get in -one too many times-. Then it’s all Hell’s Thunder and burn to the face. No sweat, thanks to his stumble.
And this here is the corresponding video:
DON’T FORGET!
I said way up top (and if you read the previous post) I am sick as hell. Meaning my voice is like cigarettes ground into gravel. Forgive me this one time, I really wanted to get the content out to you.
MichaelJ is sick! Also some things are not available at any price. Others are available for between $4.99 and $24.
First of all, sorry for the few / lame updates the past week or two. I am back in New York and have been in I think five cities in three days (Cleveland, Richmond, New York, Ft. Lauderdale, New York again) between Thanksgiving and now. Most recently I flew down to Florida for less than 24 hours to do a speech, back in the office the next day (today).
I am wiped from traveling and the speech / presentation.
Millionaire copywriter Dr. Harlan Kilstein let me do a presentation at his Tactic7 seminar which was daunting. I have done presentations about being awesome at Google before but… like… only at Google or at seminars talking to Googlers. So yes, it’s a big honor to be one of the few online marketing experts to actually present at the epicenter of the online marketing universe, but the stresses are very different. Sure it can still be intimidating, but when you are speaking at Google, you are sharing with a room full of professionals who basically get paid to be there.
Presenting at Harlan’s made me nervous because the situation was reversed: Entrepeneurs and students were paying to hear me speak. Yes it was Harlan’s event and I was just a guest speaker for the day but the people present paid a deep four figures to sit in that packed room so it was important for me to do a good job.
Luckily I aquitted myself quite adequately.
Unluckily — and if you know me in real life (instead of just listening to my videos) you can probably imagine this — I spent a lot of my speech shouting at the top of my lungs. Specifically I repeated THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR five or ten times, Gregorian chant style (if Gregorian monks, you know, shouted THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR at the top of their lungs).
So I have no voice now.
Which is kind of horrible because I am going to do a video on my Star City Blightning Beatdown tonight. I kind of have to. I did the footage more than a week ago, intending to do the video while I was home in Ohio, but wall to wall family stuff came up for a week and the raw files have been sitting on my computer for however long. But the Star City $5K event is less than two days from now… So when you get to see the video (which will be later tonight, getting back to the “sorry for the few / lame updates the past week or two” bit up top), you will have to deal with my non-voice. I am the equal and opposite of Blackagar Boltagon. My voice is THAT un-powerful at present.
So what does this have to do with this blog post’s headline ["Not Available at Any Price!" if you forgot]?
While I was at Tactic7 I met up with fellow presenter, quality human being, and Career RenegadeJonathan Fields, an imminent Amazon.com best seller and expert in social media (you know, like this blog). Jonathan turned me onto Twitter. So if you want to follow me on Twitter (no one is following me on Twitter, please follow me on Twitter, I want to feel popular), I am unsurprisingly FiveWithFlores, that is, Twitter.com/FiveWithFlores. Apparently I previously registered my Madmanpoet self some time in the distant past, but I have since forgotten the password to Madmanpoet’s account. Poor Twitter.com/Madmanpoet. You are alone forever. Long live FiveWithFlores!
Jonathan pointed out the agile use of “not available at any price” in a sales letter he showed me, and I just found something also not available at any price (though my use is dramatically less agile).
I was perusing 80sTees.com, home of The World’s Greatest Tee Shirt (sorry… still not in stock in M, L, or XL… did anybody bug them yet? I didn’t [yet]), and came upon this Decepticon belt:
I am not sure if that Decepticon belt is cool or lame; only that it is bright purple. However I have the following little mice turning gears in my noggin:
1) It’s only $4.99 (meaning that if it turns out to be lame, I blew less than a latte), and
2) It fits up to 38 inches (meaning I’m good… Is there anything more embarrassing than buying a belt you can’t fit into?)
So I’m thinking to myself, “Self, there is a reasonable possibility this belt is lame. Maybe there could be some other belt that is definitely cool, or at least not lame?”
So I came upon this belt:
IT IS NOT AVAILABLE AT ANY PRICE.
Zero dollars?
Really?
I had to double-take.
This Thundercats belt is $0… You know, like my lifetime winnings in individual Pro Tours.
Yet it is in stock.
How can this be?
When price = $0, that throws the whole cool / lame cost / benefit matrix completely out of whack. Free things are basically automatically cool, or at least not lame.
Then I read that you actually have to buy a Thundercats tee shirt to get the NOT AVAILABLE AT ANY PRICE belt “for free.” Oh, that’s how they get you. Actual commerce and product purchases. The arrogant bastards. You have to pay them before you get goods and services. How gauche. Maybe they should just let me buy The World’s Greatest Tee Shirt instead of it being out of stock. Did I mention “bastards”?
Anyway, I was leaning towards this one, because then I can pretend that I didn’t know there was a double entendre (my life is more or less non-stop shenanigans, and pretending I didn’t know I was committing a faux pas is basically my favorite scam):
The only problem is that if you have a daughter and you want her to be proud, independent, free-thinking, and strong, you have to at least THINK ABOUT / consider certain ridiculous actions and intentional unintentional double entendres, especially if you want to dodge the ire of the Mrs. For the unmarried among you, there is a high benefit to relatively low cost in dodging the ire of the Mrs.
So what is a man to do in order to shotgun a free Thundercats belt?
There is the Underoos-looking route:
Or alternately the hipster “I found these Underoos crumpled under my bed” route:
Personally I like the second one more, but I am worried the Mrs. will mistake it for a ratty old shirt and will accidentally throw it away.
This is more difficult than “Figure of Destiny” or “Tarfire the Birds of Paradise” on turn one.
So long story short, video + Magical post later tonight.
Thanks everybody for continuing to love what Mike Flores loves. If I can get my free Thundercats belt in time for the Star City $5K, it will match my deck of choice (Blightning Beatdown, obv).
LOVE
MIKE
Firestarter:
What is actually more difficult? Figure of Destiny / Tarfire the Birds of Paradise on turn one or Underoos-looking Thundercats shirt / “distressed” Underoos-looking Thundercats shirt?
Game One – Elementals is a deck that I tested early for the States format. Properly built, it can be hell on the Reflecting Pool Control suite, it has fast — sometimes uncounterable — Cloudthreshers for the Fae, and Reveillark for a legitimate Stage Three game plan. The reason I discarded it is that Elementals often got slow draws against The Red Deck that could not be corrected (Shock your Smokebraider, &c.); and the slow games without Mulldrifter just seemed like a lot of comes into play tapped lands and glacial Harbingers.
In this game he actually has some Fulminator Mages to slow me down and a Horde of Notions.
I start on Bitterblossom and triple Mogg Fanatics. I kill the Horde two-for-one and he follows up with a Reveillark.
I just attack all in to get damage in.
He borrows a play from my States Jund Mana Ramp deck and runs a Gift of the Gargantuan for a Mulldrifter and Fire-lit Thicket; but I have Flame Javelin to finish.
Game Two – I didn’t sideboard (maybe I should have taken out Demigod of Revenge?) … I opened on Ghitu Encampment and pointed my Mogg Fanatic at his mana guy.
He played another mana guy and I came in with another Mogg Fanatic and Hell’s Thunder, then repeated the previous Mogg Fanatic play.
Time for Blightning!
The bad news… He discarded Gift of the Gargantuan and Horde of Notions (a little scared of Makeshift Mannequin in this spot).
“Luckily” he followed up with a Harbinger for another Horde of Notions, then played Gift for that Horde (pretty nice)… but managed to miss his necessary land drop.
With five mana I sent Incinerate and Hell’s Thunder #2.
His fifth land came into play tapped!
… But he had the dreaded Mannequin. How anticlimactic. In for five.
I flashed a Thunder from down under, putting him to one. He can’t do 15 the following turn.
1-0
2. Faeries with White
Game One – He opens with Arcane Sanctum, then Secluded Glen into Bitterblossom.
I skipped an attack with my Mogg Fanatic to preserve the option of a two-for-one (learned that from Brett’s video); he tries for the Scion, but I burn it.
But his double Mistbind Clique is really much more clever (or at least effective than anything I had this game).
Game Two – I sided out two Tarfires for two Gutteral Responses. I wanted the threat of being able to mess with his Cryptic Command set to Fog… but didn’t really have anything worth taking damage sources out just to force through with extra mana. I came out quickly with Figure and Mogg Fanatic, and we are to Game Three just like that.
Game Three – I open on turn one Fanatic and turn two Blossom; however I stick on two with a hand full of awesome threes. He has a Loxodon Warhammer so my goal becomes to not let him use it on me.
Anyway, once I start to get a little mass he sees the writing on the wall and points a Cryptic Command at my squad… but that’s why I have Gutteral Response (even if I only sided two of them, see above).
It would have definitely been better to side out Incinerate instead of Tarfire. Tarfire is just better against his guys (no one has three toughness), plus Tarfire is cheaper and a Goblin for Auntie’s Hovel. Oh well, that’s why we test.
2-0
3. Reanimator
Game One – He opens Swamp.
I go first turn Figure.
He goes Island.
I’m in. No pumps. He runs Agony Warp. Ha ha, I didn’t pump. Awesome Blossom.
Now it gets weird… Cunning Lethemancer?
The joke’s on you: I discard Demigod of Revenge.
He evokes a Mulldrifter; I evoke the Chris Pikula rule and Tarfire the Lethemancer.
Then he Beacons up his Mully… I play my own five mana Black spell, being a Demigod of Revenge… for Demigod of Revenge.
He points Profane Command at one of my Demigods but passes the turn on three, convenient for my Blightning.
Game Two – I put in three copies of Thoughtseize, dropping a trio of Hell’s Thunders. In hindsight this is probably wrong as there is a particularly good synergy between his Lethemancers and my Thunders. But with a deck as unpredictable as his, I think Thoughtseize is right… just a question of what to pull; I think Flame Javelin?
I drew Thunder anyway.
This game I stuck a pair of Bitterblawesomes. He played Blackman style and kept Warping my jones to only take one from my Thunder and eat a token.
He kept Warping tokens whereas I stuck Blightning the flash on Thunder until he was at 11 and I was gripping circa ten.
3-0
4. Jund Mana Ramp (possibly Jund Quillspike Combo)
Game One – I shipped Swamp (only land) with double Blossom into Hell’s Thunder and five land… make that six land after my draw step.
He opened on a Jund tri-land.
I went Fantastic.
He played a Devoted Druid and the juices started flowing.
I don’t think he can combo me if I have a Fanatic in play.
I just killed his Druid based on my hand.
He followed up with Garruk and a second Druid. I hit him with Thunder and pointed a second Fanatic at his second Druid.
He went Chameleon.
I went Demigod.
I did the math and realized I had to kill Garruk or the Chameleon would go intensely large + trample. Unfortunately my Demigod was not comely to the Elves and Eyeblight’s Ending got him.
Game Two – Paris to five.
Off curve; third turn Bitterblossom… against his Finks. I start to accumulate tokens and get a Figure.
He Jund Charms and I’m afraid he is going to kill my tokens and Figure and reset his Finks… but he just eats these two Hell’s Thunders that were hanging out in my graveyard. Then he evokes a Cloudthresher to actually kill my tokens. But Figure makes it in for four!
It’s a race!
… Until he plays a pair of Finks and sends Eyeblight’s Ending at my Figure.
I rip all lands of course.
3-1
5. Tokens
He opens on a Fire-lit Thicket.
I answer with Sulfurous Springs into a turn two Bitterblossom. Ouch ouch.
His first move is Nantuko Husk.
I want nothing to do with that and Tarfire it, following with Figure of Destiny.
A follow up Blightning reveals to Soul’s Fires (have I mentioned how good Blightning is?). I have 13 more points in my hand when he concedes.
Game Two – I remove four Mogg Fanatics for four Infests; mulligan a one lander.
I get a quick Figure of Destiny; his first move is again on turn three… a Sprouting Thrinax. I just draw lands and he eventually kills me with Sarkan Vol.
Game Three – Mulligan again; turn two Bitterblossom.
I spend a bunch of turns Incinerating Marsh Flitters; mana is pretty tight this game. He has four Goblins from his Marsh Flitters and I have some Bitterblossom tokens. Eventually I draw lands and play a ton of Blightnings and Demigods.
6.
He plays Birds of Paradise (always trouble).
I play Figure of Destiny turn one over Tarfire.
Luckily he has no explosive turn two and I Tarfire his Birds and get in for two.
Blightning reveals Wrath of God and Garruk Wildspeaker.
He Oblivion Rings my Figure of Destiny; I deal four anyway with Hell’s Thunder, then play another Figure. He plays a Liege of some sort, which I burn out, prompting the concession.
Game Two I remove four Flame Javelins for four Everlasting Torments.
He opens on Murmuring Bosk, plays the 0/4 Harbinger and goes and gets another Mosk. My Figure bounces off of it until he deigns to play a Shriekmaw.
Hell’s Thunder in.
He goes 4/4 of his own – Chameleon Colossus.
This looks like it might be an interesting game except I have three Hell’s Thunders and a plenty of overload damage to race.
5-1
7. Jund Mannequin
Game One – He opens on Birds of Paradise. I open on Figure of Destiny, which earns an Incinerate. Okay; slow game this one. Blightning and Blightning snag six life, Violent Ultimatum, Firespout, Chameleon Colossus, and Makeshift Mannequin.
He tries to slow the old man down with some Fulminator Mages but I have enough lands this game. He switches gears and drops a diffeent Chameleon. Meanwhile I send three Flame Javelins at the face and finish with a Tarfire for the perfect 20.
Game Two – He mulligans into a weak hand and quickly concedes to Mogg Fanatic and some burn spells.
6-1
At 6-1, given the imaginary eight rounds of my imaginary tournament, I am in ID land. Top 8? Heh.
I decide to play one more because I don’t have any footage (look for this video to come up later in the week).
8. G/W Little Kid
Game One – You probably know I made a deck with all G/W cards and Wilt-Leaf Liege for Block that won one PTQ (that I know about). I actually started thinking about this strategy again for Standard just because Wilt-Leaf Liege is so good against Blightning and Cruel Ultimatum. So basically, alongside Kitchen Finks and better guys than are in my colors — let alone my deck — this is the nightmare match.
Luckily he had a slow opening, which was my only saving grace. One too many lands came into play tapped so he couldn’t overrun me with superior forces. I stuck a Blightning that was pretty ironic. A turn or two later and I would have been eating 4/4.
Anyway he got out a ton of 4/x and 5/x creatures (with Liege boosts) but I had a late Bitterblossom to get in for a tiny amount of damage… eventually burned him to death.
Game Two – I side out Blightnings (obviously) for Everlasting Torments.
I luck out that his third land is a Mosswort Bridge, meaning my Figure of Destiny is 4/4 before he has a Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers in play. This is just what I need to get in -one too many times-. Then it’s all Hell’s Thunder and burn to the face. No sweat, thanks to his stumble.
Wherein Michael J. Flores discusses the beginnings of his preparation for the upcoming Star City Games $5000 tournament in Philadelphia, PA. This article features initial deck selection, card choices, and testing with a modified version of Blightning Beatdown.
So there is a big Standard tournament coming up the first week of December.
It is a Star City Games $5000 tournament (you know, the kind Alex Bertoncini always wins) in Philadelphia, PA. I lived in Philadelphia for four years, and won my first PTQ there with a heavily metagamed B/R Necropotence deck.
Aside:
Recently, over at Top 8 Magic, I have been thinking a lot about my deck selection over the past couple of years. It all started when Brian David-Marshall accused me of being the Greenest One of All in a recent Top 8 Magic Podcast. [In case you haven't been reading Top 8 Magic... which you should be] I have been some kind of Green in 80% of my last 20 individual Constructed tournaments. I even did a spreadsheet breakdown.
Yep, down 199 rating points over that time period.
On balance, the twenty individual Constructed tournaments before those I was Green only about 1/3 of the time. Instead, I was up 146 points, qualified for two Constructed Pro Tours, crushed a late summer Standard with my U/W “Wafo-Tapa” deck that won five straight NAC Qualifiers (Steve Sadin, Julian Levin, yours truly, some guy not in our crew, and Chad Kastel), finished Top 16 in that respective NAC, and of course finished two-then-one in the New York State Championships in consecutive attempts.
I am not 100% down on Green at all (in fact, Critical Mass was one of the best decks I ever developed, hands down)… But I think Brian probably has a point that I am biased towards Green.
But not in Philadelphia; when I won that PTQ, it was with B/R.
End aside.
Speaking of B/R, I have been heavily impressed with Oscar Almgren’s Blightning Beatdown since I first stumbled upon it and made the initial Blightning Beatdown videos.
At the pre-States Top 8 Magic Mock Tournament, Brian David-Marshall kicked all kinds of bum with Matt Ferrando’s version of Blightning Beatdown — which didn’t even have Bitterblossom or Demigod of Revenge if you can believe THAT — and recommended it for States on basis of our previous Mock Tournament prognostication with Jushi Blue, B/W Deadguy Ale, &c.
However for myself, Josh Ravitz had already [physically] made me my Jund Mana Ramp deck and told me he would punch me in the face if I didn’t play it. Josh himself, though, smartly switched to Blightning Beatdown! He finished a match out of Top 8 in New Jersey, parallel to me.
So anyway, based on many factors — including a deliberate effort to broaden my color choices, my frustrations with playing Reflecting Pool Control mirrors, and my hatred of plus desire to quash the First Among Equals — I decided to at least try out Blightning Beatdown as the initial weapon of choice. I really love this strategy and its combination of pressure, domination over the Fae, and the namesake card Blightning itself.
For reference, here is Oscar Almgren’s original LCQ-winning version:
4 Bitterblossom
4 Ashenmoor Gouger
4 Blightning
4 Demigod of Revenge
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Goblin Deathraiders
Here are the modifications I made for this one:
-4 Ashenmoor Gouger; +4 Hell’s Thunder
-4 Goblin Deathraiders; +4 Mogg Fanatic
I like the relentless pressure that Hell’s Thunder gives you when you already have a little momentum. Neither 4.4 for three mana is particularly good against beatdown, but the Shards of Alara option is a much better racer. Ashenmoor Gouger is better against the Fae, but Hell’s Thunder is much better against Reflecting Pool Control. Those are obviously the two most popular decks, and the First Among Equals is already a cakewalk, so I wanted to err leaning the other way.
Josh played Goblin Deathraiders at States, but no Tarfire. Basically both of us — and Oscar himself — all ran some combination of these Goblin cards. I just wanted more fast action (which might be in slight conflict with this deck’s Ghitu Encampments and annoying basic Swamp).
I borrowed Oscar’s mana base in the entirety; no complaints so far, really, other than I mulligan more than I am used to and I don’t particularly love the Swamp; on balance Josh loves the Swamp and says you might need 26 lands in this strategy (I don’t know if I am that brave, though).
As for the sideboard modifications, I really wanted to play with Gutteral Response because the only way the Fae can get out of your tempo games is usually with multiple Cryptic Commands, and Gutteral Response v. Cryptic Command is about the best fight you can expect in Standard. I really don’t like Magma Spray and if you are already playing Everlasting Torment, I just don’t see the value in it; those are the side justifications.
A brief card breakdown:
Bitterblossom
Unsurprisingly, the best card in the deck. It feels so much better in this deck than in the Fae. I really like the pressure this card provides against control — which typically operates in that old school “remove the threats” way even in 2008 — allowing you to sit back and set up with burn spells. Just such a great card… which is why I and everyone else hates it so damn much. But hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!
Blightning
Probably my favorite card to play in the deck. You just feel so powerful resolving this on turn three. Do you realize it only does one fewer damage than a Flame Javelin? Ka-pow! My favorite play is attacking with my 2/2 Figure of Destiny on turn three with mana open, and playing the chicken game. Nope; let’s go to damage. Grumble Grumble. Here, have a Blightning. Grumble Grumble.
Demigod of Revenge
Ferrando didn’t play this card at all! Honestly I don’t play it very much on account of stalling. It is still like the best big guy in Standard, and one of the scariest possible threats against any kind of Counterspells.
Figure of Destiny
Obv.
Flame Javelin
Obv.
Hell’s Thunder
As above; we replaced Ashenmoor Gouger with this guy, 4/4 for three for 4/4 for three. Ashenmoor Gouger is mostly better against Faeries and Hell’s Thunder is mostly better against Reflecting Pool Control. Of the two most popular decks, one is a near bye. So we went with the card that was / is better against the other one, that is more likely to tap out for a Firespout / Wrath of God and give you an open to brain for four.
Incinerate
This is probably my least favorite card in the deck. I can see going to two copies for 26 lands per Josh’s suggestion, and / or swtiching to Lash Out. But no official changes as of yet.
Mogg Fanatic
Mogg Fantastic! I re-added this to the strategy (if you recall my pre-States Demigod Deck Wins videos all featured Tattermunge Maniac) based on the Brett Blackman video. He could not stop ranting about how bad Mogg Fanatic is for Faeries. In.
Tarfire
I actually have loved this card so far. Not powerful, but a Goblin for my Auntie’s Hovels… and it works nicely with this deck’s often tight mana.
As for testing format, I decided to do eight rounds in the Tournament Practice room as an initial run.
Wherein Michael J. Flores discusses the beginnings of his preparation for the upcoming Star City Games $5000 tournament in Philadelphia, PA. This article features initial deck selection, card choices, and testing with a modified version of Blightning Beatdown.
