It’s the first You Make the Play of the new year… or for that matter over three months! Featuring Celestial Colonnade and a host of new Worldwake cards!
The scenario:
You are playing a Raka control deck… U/R/W board control, no counters main deck, but lots of good cards. For sake of argument, this is your deck:
Before you make any comments (and I’m sure there will be comments), I am not pretending this is the optimal Raka-colors deck; this is just a with some stats that you can use to help formulate your solution to today’s You Make the Play.
The reason you went U/R/W over Grixis or Esper is that Everflowing Chalice can ramp you to Day of Judgment or one of two very good Planeswalkers on the third turn. Given the interaction between one of those and Treasure Hunt (as well as Halimar Depths and Treasure Hunt), it seemed worth running around Esper Charm and Cruel Ultimatum.
To you are putting a lot of faith in Treasure Hunt. You’ve cut down to 23 lands because of Treasure Hunt’s “cantrip” capability as well as the presence of Everflowing Chalice (aka Motherlovin’ Cup), which should help you get action.
Okay! The problem:
It’s a simple one… given the above deck, do you keep or no?
On the play?
On the draw?
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Treasure Hunt
Ajani Vengeant
Lightning Bolt
Day of Judgment
Celestial Colonnade
Scalding Tarn
I think this should make for an interesting discussion; I think you should think so, too.
So I am not going to work on the solution until we have at least 25 comments 🙂
That shouldn’t be a problem. This You Make the Play drew 38!
Bloodbraid Elf
Bloodbraid Elf
Enlisted Wurm
Mountain
Plains
Reflecting Pool
Who knows what your next card is going to be?
But there is an interesting mental exercise…
What land do you play?
… So, why is this interesting again?
As you could probably tell from the screen shot, this actually came up for me last week, playing with my Mono-Cascade deck*. I was going to just run out Mountain…
Why would I run out Mountain?
When you play this kind of a deck enough–even now that we’ve layered it with four main deck Baneslayer Angels–you try to play around Anathemancer. I know it’s only turn two… But really, you start to train yourself to play Mountain in these kinds of spots as a default.
Anyway, I thought to myself, if I pull Blightning, I can play it on turn three anyway.
It was at that point that I realized my error.
There is only one right play: Reflecting Pool.
Why?
Because you have an equal chance of drawing Blightning or Esper Charm!
Your path is clear starting on turn four. If you only want to consider four mana spells, you have no issue. Any order of your next three lands will allow you to play a pair of Bloodbraid Elves. In this deck, that two-turn sequence is automatically devastating. The opponent will be under pressure and will be down four cards… That’s just how the deck is designed.
But if you draw an actual three mana spell, you can put yourself so far ahead come turn four or five that the opponent will be in topdeck mode whereas you will be playing Ultimatum Magic (that is actually part of the reason I like the Mono-Cascade deck the best… It is just ferociously more powerful than basically everything else that people seem to be playing… but more on that later).
So in this case, you can see that playing Reflecting Pool is the best turn two play. The next best play is Plains.
If you play Plains and then draw Blightning, you can play Reflecting Pool or Mountain and cast the Blightning; it is inferior to Reflecting Pool on turn two because in this case you will have to take a counter off of your Vivid Creek in order to play the Blightning. This may or may not be relevant in the particular game at hand, but this kind of haphazard play can and will have a negative effect on your long term victory prospects if you are not aware of it.
Why?
… For the exact same reason that playing Reflecting Pool is better than playing Mountain on turn two.
We sometimes talk about the general rules in Magic.
Zvi calls this one “Finkel’s Law” (it was made popular by myself and Justin Polin during our short term at Brainburst Premium): Focus Only On What Matters.
Some people who listen to the Top 8 Magic Podcast know that Finkel actually has more than one law. This is a second one: Magic is a game of options. Generally the better play is the one that preserves the most options.
So in this case, playing a Reflecting Pool on the second turn is better than a Mountain because it helps leave open your options… You will be able to play Esper Charm or Blightning on turn three, regardless of which (if either) you draw.
By the same token, playing Plains is better than playing Mountain on turn two, but worse than playing Reflecting Pool because it shines a similar light (or lack thereof) on your options. You will theoretically be able to play either three mana spell, but if you draw Blightning, you will have to spend a counter on your Vivid Creek that you would not have to spend if you instead played Reflecting Pool first. That Vivid counter might end up mattering.
So what really happened?
I actually just pulled another land (either Plains or Exotic Orchard, I don’t remember). He was playing a U/W deck of some sort and got annihilated by discard into more discard into sixth turn Enlisted Ultimatum… Just like they all do! 🙂
* Yes, yes, yes dear readers, I know this whole hypothetical is based on an imaginary, now-outdated mana base. And yes, I made a new one. Check back tomorrow-ish 🙂
The first land drop was simple. The second one, less so.
Opening grip was nothing to write home about, but solid enough. I actually have this hand as better than 60% against the field:
Bloodbraid Elf
Bloodbraid Elf
Enlisted Wurm
Mountain
Plains
Reflecting Pool
Vivid Creek
The first land drop is simple… Of course you run out the Vivid Creek.
The opponent makes life somewhat easy (that is, he doesn’t play some kind of Isamaru, Hound of Konda) by playing a Terramorphic Expanse into an Island.
So you haven’t drawn card number eight yet (that is part of the surprise).
The play should be simple… But it might not be as easy as it seems.
What land do you play next?
LOVE
MIKE
PS Obviously the deck in question is Black Baneslayer Cascade Control. Part of the reason I haven’t posted much recently is that I just play this deck over and over and I can’t stop. I really think it may be my favorite deck of all time (at least to play). If you need the deck list to make your decision, here is a re-paste from last post:
If you haven’t read that entry, go back and check in on Elite Vanguard and friends (and foes!), read the entry, and then back button over this way. Don’t worry. We’ll wait.
La la la.
Done?
Tight as hell, dawg.
The answer — as my old Team Red Bull and Underground compatriot Brian Kibler put it — “Savage Lands, go.”
Is the answer that easy?
To be honest, I was planning to run Lightning Bolt on Elite Vanguard on my own main phase. My theory being that my hand is pretty good and that I just want to get rid of some potential damage. It’s pretty clear he has something in his hand; I am choosing to put a Harm’s Way read on him.
Basics… Let’s imagine he does have Harm’s Way. It’s clearly better to send Lightning Bolt at Elite Vanguard rather than Goldmeadow Stalwart because one of those creatures can live through a Lightning Bolt and the other one can’t (and they have the same amount of power). All things held equal, it’s better to leave the Elite Vanguard on the Battlefield rather than the Goldmeadow Stalwart because, even though they have the same power, the one toughness on the Vanguard is an exploitable liability on the part of our deck; not only can you stick a Lightning Bolt through a single Harm’s Way, you can block and kill it with Borderland Ranger even though Honor of the Pure or Ajani Goldmane (the same is not true of the somewhat tougher Goldmeadow Stalwart).
My initial guy on the play reflects the fact that even though it is better to be able to block and kill creatures, if our plan is Hallowed Burial, this is no requirement for winning.
I have since revised my position to go in-line with Kibler’s. He actually had a good explanation. You can wait until the opponent does something, gives you more information, before making your own decision. For example, what if he hasn’t got another land, and he taps for Honor of the Pure? Clearly the better play is to stick the Goldmeadow Stalwart to death, take three, and leave yourself with a mutual block on the Elite Vanguard.
Some other ideas and issues…
If you don’t shoot the Elite Vanguard on your own turn, I am not convinced you are so much better off waiting for upkeep. It may sound horribly stupid but you are open to say a double Harm’s Way. This is also 2/3 of a Time Walk and a bit of a one-for-two (even if it buys you five to seven free damage, maybe even more)… You’re probably going to win if he runs that because he will not have mana for a cream dream draw involving Spectral Procession. Generally speaking, I am willing to make a slightly sub-optimal play in order to control certain variables. You lose some measure of that control by making a pre-additional information move with your Lightning Bolt, but moving that move to upkeep.
I am not scared of Path to Exile in response to Lightning Bolt. That is tantamount to playing around Rampant Growth.
At least we all agree that we are not going to play the Exotic Orchard.
Here is one that didn’t get as much attention as I might have guessed… Just taking a beating and leaving your Lightning Bolt for Ajani Goldmane. Losing this game will probably be associated with an unchecked Spectral Procession, and the deadliest combo Kithkin can generally muster is Spectral Procession + Ajani Goldmane, so there you go.
Anyway, sorry for a too-easy You Make the Play this time. Sadly, I got it wrong myself, and I was the motherlover writing it!
How’s this for a Firestarter…
What elements influence your playing Captured Sunlight versus Borderland Ranger on turn four?
If I don’t say it enough, I am glad to have all of you here; thanks for visiting this blog and commenting and participating as much as you do.
So a couple of weeks ago, I presented the following You Make the Play:
This is a seven card hand. You lost the flip so there are 53 cards in your deck and you are playing second. The deck list is the one we have been bandying about the past week or two — Jund Mana Ramp.
So… Keep or no?
The responses were interesting and varied. I was using this You Make the Play as a lead-in for some basic statistics (which we will get to) but my intrepid readership took typically galvanized positions as well as the opportunity to stand on soap boxes.
When the dust cleared (out of nineteen responses), we had a little under 2:1 ratio in favor of keeping the hand… and a handful of people who just don’t like Gift of the Gargantuan 🙂
* Zvi, by the way, said that he didn’t have to look at the hand, and if I were asking, I should mulligan it.
However, like I said, I wanted to use this as a lead-in for some basic statistics rather than a critique of the deck.
When we make plays we often do things on “gut” or fear that end up being terrible decisions. One of the worst mistakes in my entire career was in a Feature Match at US Nationals 2000.
I was playing trusty Napster in its best tournament, and riding a 2-0 open on the day, I found myself in the Feature Match area in a semi-mirror against Donnie Gallitz.
I opened on Swamp, Dark Ritual, Phyrexian Negator and Donnie started with a Duress for my Vicious Hunger. I Duressed Donnie back; his hand was all garbage – Unmask, Stupor, Masticore, and Skittering Skirge. Skittering Skirge was the best card in the hand but I couldn’t take it; Masticore was borderline unplayble in the matchup but happened to be good against my Phyrexian Negator (again I couldn’t take it), so I decided to take the Unmask.
Donnie dropped the Skirge to defend, then mized into Ritual + Persecute. I responded with Vampiric Tutor for Vicious Hunger and got in more and more.
Donnie played his unplayable Masticore (which nevertheless prompted me to sacrifice my Phyrexian Negator). Then I Eradicated the Masticore via Vampiric Tutor, then Tutored again to set up Yawgmoth’s Will.
Ritual + Vicious Hunger to start, smashing Donnie’s fresh Skitting Skirge, then I set up a Phyrexian Negator. Donnie mized into a Yawgmoth’s Will of his own, but if you go back and read the cards they were pretty pointless so all he did was make a dude.
Okay here’s my mistake.
I topdecked a Skittering Horror.
Now of course I played it pre-combat.
My plan was to smash Donnie with my Negator and sacrifice down to just the Negator, and then just kill him the next turn. But the Horror gave me another permanent and another option. So because I drew the Horror and correctly played it, I smashed in and sacrificed down to the Horror and one land instead. I figured if Donnie drew a Vicious Hunger he could make me sacrifice down to nothing, but the same wouldn’t be true of a Horror.
Instead Donnie — no cards in hand — picked up a Skittering Skirge that held me (down to essentially no permanents) off until he came back to win the game… From about three life.
In the same spot I would have just trampled him to death.
I had what Dan Paskins calls The Fear, and made a terrible decision.
I should probably have sacrificed down to double guys; next best would have been Negator and land (which was my original plan).
Dave Price described this as bad because of probability. Donnie had what? Forty cards or more in his deck? What were the chances of his drawing a Vicious Hunger (bad for two permanents if one is a Negator) versus any creature that could stop a Skittering Horror?
It gets worse.
Donnie played his unplayable Masticore (which nevertheless prompted me to sacrifice my Phyrexian Negator). Then I Eradicated the Masticore via Vampiric Tutor, then Tutored again to set up Yawgmoth’s Will.
Eradicate allows you to look through the opponent’s entire deck.
… Where I could have seen that he played no Vicious Hungers at all main deck!
I won Game Two in dramatic fashion, but just had no resources in Game Three whereas Donnie got the fast Persecute. But the fact is: It shouldn’t have gone three games.
So how does this come back to our discussion of whether or not to mulligan this hand on the draw?
The deck plays 23 lands and four Rampant Growths. I was operating under the idea “If I have three lands untapped on my third turn, I can basically make my land drops all the way to six without interruption” (six land being Broodmate range). I understand some of you think this hand is not strong v. Tokens, but you probably haven’t played the matchup as much as I have. Tokens is often a Batman / Vs. System battle where you just play something better than what they play, top up on your six, and then play sixes every turn while they are still piddling around with three 1/1 creatures (which actually get soundly stomped by some of your sixes).
So…
How do we get to three untapped lands on turn three?
1) We can draw any land on turn one or turn two.
2) We can draw Rampant Growth on turn one or turn two.
3) We can topdeck one of 13 comes into play untapped lands on turn three.
So here are our probabilities.
Turn One – 25/53
Turn Two – 25/52
Turn Three – 13/51
You have twenty-five options on turn one – any of the twenty-one remaining lands, plus any of the Rampant Growths.
You have twenty-five options on turn two (assuming you did not already fulfill your minimal requirement on the first turn) – the same twenty-one lands and the same Rampant Growths. Note that this only works because you have two lands that come into play untapped in your opening hand; the math changes dramatically if you have a different land configuration… For example if both lands came into play tapped, you could not count Rampant Growth without an intervening untapped land pull (which itself would have fulfilled what we need fulfilled).
Turn three you still have options but they decline sharply. You lose eight of your lands (Treetop Village and Savage Lands come into play tapped, so drawing them on turn three is useless in the short term; ditto on Rampant Growth).
Most players can evaluate a situation like this one and look at the first turn. You are under 50% likely to pull a relevant piece of mana on turn one.
You are similarly less than 50% likely to pull a relevant land on turn two. But what about the fact that you get turn one and turn two both?
Turn three is much less likely than turn one or two, but you still have a nice lift… That is an “advantage” of going second in this hypothetical.
So how likely are you to pull the right land?
You start with 25/53, or about 47%… That’s yours, that slight dog / coin flip.
Of the remaining 53%, you get 25/52 (or about 48%), an addition 25%.
So here is the super tricky part. Of the 75% of that lost 53%, you get there another 13/51 (~25%) of the time… about 7%.
Ultimately you’re in at about 79-80% likely to have three untapped lands on turn three.
A faster and arguably easier way to come to the same conclusion is to figure it out in the negative. How unlikely are you to have the land you need on turn three? Your likelyhood of actually having the goods is whatever is left.
Relative likelihoods of drawing non-relevant cards:
28/53
27/52
38/51
Multiply all those together and you’re a hair over 20% not likely to get there… Or 79-80% to have the mana you need (just like we said).
So what happened?
80% is a pretty good bet, so I kept.
It turned out that my opponent was Reflecting Pool Control, one of the deck’s best matchups, and of all the matchups in Standard, the most vulnerable to this type of hand (incremental card advantage via small threats).
So of course I missed my third three times, discarded, and lost one of my best matchups 🙂
At long last, another edition of You Make the Play!
This time it’s an easy one… Do you keep this hand or not? Why or why not?
This is a seven card hand. You lost the flip so there are 53 cards in your deck and you are playing second. The deck list is the one we have been bandying about the past week or two — Jund Mana Ramp.Â
PS Did you cats see that the great Luis Scott-Vargas (LSV) and long-lost RidiculousHat posted on Mis-assignment of Strategy = Options Amputation? Might want to check out the forums from the previous post!
This is the “unacceptable” discussion and “solution” (if you can call it that) to You Make the Play – enCRYPTed.
… And the first You Make the Play Video response!
To refresh everybody’s memory, it was Game Three against ‘Tron. We had two up, Spellstutter Sprite in hand, fully loaded Archmage on the table and UU up.
The opponent presented Tormod’s Crypt.
The board looked more-or-less exactly like this:
So what is the what?
The first question is, do we care about a Tormod’s Crypt?
We don’t care about graveyard recursion overmuch; what we care about is that the Tormod’s Crypt can keep up from doubling up with Archmage Persist-ence.
So the first question is whether we should be doing anything about it.
I think — and it will be obvious from my “solution” to the board position — that I thought it would be worth dealing with (I care[d] about my half of an Archmage).
So the next question is, assuming we care, what we are going to do.
I have to admit that at the time (I am sure I was watching Gossip Girl out of the corner of my eye) that I didn’t even consider using the Archmage to defend the Archmage. To me, it was Spellstutter Sprite 2-for-1 or nil.
So I went for the Sprite.
Results were disastrous.
Obviously he was the super uber miser, and had not just natural ‘Tron, Ghost Quarter, and a significant threat, but Mindslaver as well.
Ka-pow!
Mindslaver connected.
Archmage died without ever doing anything profitable for michaelj (AKA Number One).
Interestingly if I had used the Archmage, I would have been in a pretty similar position (albeit with one more Mana Leak). I would have been obligated to eat the Mindslaver anyway. That said, I think using the Archmage to stop the Tormod’s Crypt was the best play.
Pat Chapin — who called my Spellstutter Sprite / terrible read “unacceptable” when I talked to him about it — said he would have done nothing. “You realize you are talking about pulling down your pants to a potential Mindslaver in order to save half a card, right?” (He said something like that).
But what is really interesting is all the things that happened next. Check that action out here:
I’m sure you loved every minute!
Oh, and before I forget – Congratulations to Joshua Scott Honigmann who won a Kentucky PTQ with a Mono-White Control deck similar to what we have been discussing the past couple of days. You go Temple of the False God!
You Make the Play returns! This time it is Fae v. ‘Tron in Extended… So are you a metagamer or a savage miser?
It is Game Three.
Your opponent is on the play on account of you savagely destroyed him with Negate and so on in Game Two.
It is game three because even though you savagely destroyed him in game two, he made you look like a child — a child smaller than your Spellstutter Sprites — in Game One, exposing the severe inability of the Herberholz / Nassif-style Faeries / Wizards deck to deal with certain kinds of expensive threats.
Namely Mindslaver.
You conceded to Mindslaver but of course filled your deck with Negate, Annul, and Glen Elendra Archmage for Vedalken Shackles, Threads of Disloyalty, &c.
If you haven’t seen the deck (you have probably seen it because all the guys who have soap boxes to stand on have been saying it’s the bee’s knees, plus you are playing it so how could you not have seen it), here it is:
4 Mana Leak
3 Repeal
4 Spell Snare
4 Spellstutter Sprite
1 Stifle
4 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Threads of Disloyalty
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Academy Ruins
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
10 Island
4 Mutavault
3 Riptide Laboratory
1 River of Tears
1 Steam Vents
sideboard:
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Vedalken Shackles
2 Annul
1 Chain of Vapor
3 Flashfreeze
2 Glen Elendra Archmage
2 Negate
2 Threads of Disloyalty
1 Academy Ruins
Okay, back to Game Three:
It is your opponent’s turn seven. He only has six lands in play even though he has been a savage miser this game because one of his lands — a Ghost Quarter — is in the bin. He plugged your Academy Ruins (not realizing you are also a savage miser and are palming the other Ruins). He has just attacked your face with his Platinum Angel, so life totals are 20-16 in favor of the degenerate mana deck..
This is his board:
This is his graveyard:
(Simic Signet, Ghost Quarter, and Gifts Ungiven)
On turn two you sent Annul at his Simic Signet, his Ghost Quarter “traded” for your Academy Ruins, and his Gifts Ungiven was successfully stifled (not Stifled) by a Mana Leak last turn after he played his Platinum Angel.
Which means, yes. Savage. Miser. He has almost a double ‘Tron, a handy dandy Island, hasn’t missed a land drop, all-natural.
This is your board:
Not too shabby. You even have mana open for your Glen Elendra Archmage… twice if necessary.
Your graveyard is seven cards:
(Annul, Chrome Mox, Chrome Mox, Thirst for Knowledge, Thirst for Knowledge, Academy Ruins, and Mana Leak)
This is your hand:
Mana Leak
Spellstutter Sprite
Spellstutter Sprite
Riptide Laboratory
Riptide Laboratory
Academy Ruins
Tormod’s Crypt is on the stack.
I would do images to show your hand and to indicated Tormod’s Crypt being on the stack but I am tired of looking up hideous background images.
Anyway, the bad guy has two mystery cards in hand.
If I had to draw a picture of this game, in total, it would look, um, EXACTLY like this:
Okay You Make the Play-ers…
He is playing Tormod’s Crypt. Ye olde zero mana spell is on the stack.
An updated deck list followed by a couple of matches with All-in Red, including two mini-You Make the Plays!
I have been playing mono The Rock lately but some discussion on my mailing list has put me off The Rock for the moment. I decided to play the other Extended deck I like tonight, All-in Red.
This is my deck list:
4 Chrome Mox
4 Demigod of Revenge
4 Deus of Calamity
2 Manamorphose
4 Blood Moon
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Rite of Flame
4 Seething Song
4 Simian Spirit Guide
Basically I reversed the numbers on Manamorphose and Empty the Warrens from the pre-Pro Tour Berlin version. Manamorphose really just improves Warrens; and Warrens was the best threat. I don’t know if Manamorphose will ultimately make the prime time version of the deck list, but I like it quite a bit because I have some gamble to me and have been known to play it just to see what happens. What usually happens is that I reveal a Demigod of Revenge or some such.
In this deck, versus Standard, I actually prefer Deus of Calamity more than Demigod of Revenge. In All-in Red in Extended, you don’t actually get to play multiple Demigods in a single game very often because you simply don’t have the mana (you usually use a lot of the Red Dark Ritual cards and don’t tend to have a lot of staying power); if you can play Deus of Calamity on the first turn on the play, there are really very few ways for you to lose. At the least you usually get to play The Abyss for a while until they can deal with the Deus, at which point you can often clean up with a medium Empty the Warrens or some other threat, exploiting the, you know, calamity that the Deus wrecked.
I originally only wanted to play about three matches but they went relatively quickly and ended up playing about five. Everyone I played tonight was very nice. Thanks for the games all.
ONE
Game One:
My opponent led off on Darksteel Citadel, pass.
Now no Affinity deck will ever do that so I put him on the Lightning Bolt deck. I kept this hand.
YOU MAKE THE PLAY ALERT. What do you run (answer in the forums)?
Chrome Mox
Chrome Mox
Seething Song
Empty the Warrens
Magus of the Moon
Demigod of Revenge
Mountain
Mountain
We can discuss this in future, but what I actually did was to play both the Moxes, imprinting Demigod of Revenge and Magus of the Moon to play turn one Empty the Warrens, burning to 19.
The other option is to play Demigod of Revenge; however as I put my opponent on Lightning Bolt deck, I assumed that he would have a hard time dealing with eight Empty the Warrens tokens whereas he might be able to just Shrapnel Blast the Demigod out of the sky if need be.
He played Keldon Marauders, putting your hero to 18.
I sent all my Goblin tokens and put him to 13.
He counterattacked and put me to 15, then played Sulfuric Vortex.
I looked at his board… Darksteel Citadel and Great Furnace, eh?
I will be on 12 on upkeep. If he hits a land, that Sulfuric Vortex is gonna… well you gotta play the cards that they give you!
He had the double Shrapnel Blast, but sadly (for him), no fourth land. Huzzah!
Sideboarding:
I decided to side in 3 Umezawa’s Jittes and 1 Shattering Spree for 4 Blood Moon. Magus of the Moon is no great shakes but at least he has a body for the Jittes I sided in.
Game Two:
He opened on Spark Elemental.
I responded with turn one Deus of Calamity.
Pause.
Yep. That’s a concession.
1-0
TWO
I played a very nice player with medium Red whom I have played a couple of times before with my version of The Rock.
Game One
He shipped to five and kept a one lander. It wasn’t a competitive hand against my second turn Demigod of Revenge.
Sideboarding:
I sided four Firespout and 3 Jitte for seven Blood Moons and Magus of the Moons (leaving a Magus, obviously).
I had to use the first Firespout on his turn one Slith Firewalker. There were no Seething Song for Arc-Slogger heroics in this one and All-in Red beat medium Red in unspectacular fashion.
2-0
THREE
Game One
I kept two Moon cards versus Lightning Bolt deck. Luckily I drew eight Mountains off the top. So at the end of the game, my spell count was a Mox, Blood Moon, and Magus of the Moon. No, I didn’t get there.
Sideboarding
I sided identically to the first match, above. I probably should have sided in more Shattering Sprees.
Game Two
Turn two Deus of Calamity was deployed, but he blocked to stall and played Ensnaring Bridge! Good gravy. I wasn’t sure what to do and played a naked Demigod of Revenge, which did nothing. Then I topdecked a Jitte. He ran out a Pyrostatic Pillar. I decided I didn’t want to mess with that with my no-acceleration hand and just made two Warrens tokens with the outlook of hopefully getting something online. However he had a Mogg Fantatic to keep the tokens off.
I played some dorks, took Pillar damage; he had to burn every one and take Pillar damage to keep Jitte off him. Eventually it was 5-7 my lead but he had this card Shrapnel Blast and saved it for when I foolishly summoned a Simian Spirit Guide.
I am not sure how I should have played it differently. Possibly I should have waited for another Warrens, but I think waiting too long I would have just died to multiple burn spells.
2-1
FOUR
Game One
He opened on a tapped Steam Vents.
I was on the play and answered with turn two Deus.
Concession!
Steam Vents? What is that? I assumed Fae but didn’t do anything on account of possibly being wrong.
Game Two
I got Spell Snared as a two-for one (I had already committed Rite of Flame)… so that prevented a turn two or three Empty the Warrens for six.
Then I resolved some Moon-ish spells, and the race was his Vendilion Clique versus my Magus of the Moon.
Following I got in Empty the Warrens for eight; this survived the aforementioned Vendilion Clique, which took my other Empty the Warrens.
He kept sending the Clique and used Threads of Disloyalty to mise one of my tokens.
Then he showed me Venser, which executed two tokens, and Vedalken Shackles.
I thought I had enough gas because of holding a Deus of Calamity back, but he had Flashfreeze as well.
Luckily I had gotten him to two life at this point.
So basically I could win on a storm Warrens or a Demigod of Revenge, but probably be frozen out by anything else. Unfortunately I knew there was one of my remaining three Warrens on the bottom of my deck, meaning I only really had two Warrens left…
But luckily one was on top.
So Mox for nil got me four tokens… possibly enough to win.
But no! Engineered Explosives ate all my guys and suddenly the fae was off to the races. He even made a Spellstutter Sprite for no value.
On his main phase he Shackled my remaining 2/2 dork to get in with Venser and the Clique. Okay… Shackles tapped. Sprite tapped. YT on two.
I could smell the demigod on top.
Yep, topdeck city!
That’s match. Thank you top of my deck!
3-1
FIVE
Game One
I was on the draw.
He ran out turn one Overgrown Tomb.
I answered with turn one Deus of Calamity.
He was honored to be able to eat a Tarmogoyf.
Oblivion Ring! No fun.
Main deck Jitte? Even less fun; then Dark Confidant.
I basically had to play a Warrens for two just to keep the Confidant / Jitte from running me over.
Check and check plus… but he still had a Jitte with a counter.
I sprang into action with a hasty 5/4.
But he had another Oblivion Ring!
I was waiting for that and played another Deus. Whew.
But he answered with Mogg Fanatic, now wearing the Jitte.
He trades, but greviously, including a Seal of Fire.
Now it’s Spirit Guide beatdown.
But no! Kird Ape.
I play Magus of the Moon.
A terrible battle ensues, killing everyone and soaking up all the Jitte counters.
Nothing from him…
And I Mox for nothing, and play four tokens from Warrens.
And finally I get by a Jitte!
Sideboarding:
I sided out 1 Magus of the Moon and two Manamorphose for three Umezawa’s Jitte. Magus is okay-plus, but I figured he had Red removal and Jittes (which are colorless) as well as Plains for Oblivion Ring… So not that good.
Game Two
This is the hand I kept:
Simian Spirit Guide
Simian Spirit Guide
Mountain
Deus of Calamity
Blood Moon
Seething Song
Magus of the Moon
He opened with Windswept Heath for Wooded Foothills.
I ripped a Mountain.
YOU MAKE THE PLAY ALERT: What do you do?
I elected to play first turn Blood Moon using both Guides.
He answered with a turn two 1/2 Tarmogoyf, which made me think maybe I should have played the Magus instead.
My next two draws were Deus and Seething Song, so little direct improvement, especially as he mised Plains.
Next turn I made Deus with Rite of Flame and Seething Song.
He swung…
I blocked and he finished off the Deus with a Tribal Flames.
He ripped and played Oblivion Ring on my poor Blood Moon.
I ripped and played Deus.
He played Confidant into Confidant…
But your hero picked up Jitte.
Uncontested Jitte did what uncontested Jitte does.
4-1
So 4-1… Not conclusive but certainly a fine record for the night.
Please address how you would have dealt with those opening hands in the comments below.
Before we get to the next You Make the Play (in case you hadn’t yet noticed You Make the Play is about Ajani-times more popular than anything else to read on this site!), I wanted to tie up some older installments of You Make the Play. First, regarding Thoughtseize v. Rampant Growth – Fight! (itself a response):
The opening hand consisted of these pretty pixels:
And the question was how to spend a first turn Thoughtseize. My opponent took the Rampant Growth (which I at the time didn’t want him to take) and I beat him up with a Civic Wayfinder on the way to winning the match.
What do the kiddies have to say?
#1 Apprentice Asher ManningBot Hecht “Civic Wayfinder, obv. You probably did like six before he stopped it. That matters.”
I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective, but good old Civic Wayfinder did in fact get in for relevant damage!
The Pennsylvania Champ, Brett Blackman “I would have taken Rampant Growth.”
Isn’t this what we spent the preceding post debunking? Well, this isn’t the last time YT clashes with his betters.
Zack Hall has four cards in hand and a Figure of Destiny (1/1) in play. You have four lands including a Ghitu Encampment. Zack is up a card due to playing second, and is presently nuking you with Blightning. This is your grip:
What do you pitch?
Now before we get all the way settled, let me just ask you a question. Which side of this divide would you rather be on?
GP Top 8 competitors Zack Hall and Gerard Fabiano…
… or Magic commentators, Evan Erwin and Mike Flores?
Choose carefully.
To answer Dave Petterson, the life totals were 19-14 my lead.
Interestingly, most of the earlier responses favored holding onto a Flame Javelin, and most of the later responses –especially after the absolutely superb response by Alexan — had us holding Demigod of Revenge. The Demigod of Revenge camp, which included the newly wedded BK, were much more strategic: “We’re probably losing… now how do we find a way to win, however improbable?”
At this point it probably won’t surprise you to learn that…
Team Keep the Demigod: Fabiano & Hall
Team Keep the Flame Javelin: Erwin & Flores
Of course my favorite response was from wobblethegoose:
“Pitch a Demigod of Revenge and Flame Javelin. Prior scouting lets me know that Hall is running Unwilling Recruit, significantly reducing the EV of a resolved Demigod.”
What a savage metagamer.
Anyway, this is what I was thinking… Two things:
1) I am behind, but I can predict what Zack is going to do with his mana. Unless he has a Demigod of Revenge, he is going to put four mana into the Figure -at some point- if not next turn, and I can steal mana and take out his key threat, potentially buying me the time to topdeck out of this situation.
2) I lost a fair number of Demigod mirror matches in Block Constructed because I tried to play the Demigod beatdown. I went for it with Demigod of Revenge and my opponent sat and waited, Flamed my Demigod, then counterattacked with his Demigod when I was tapped.
It’s as Kowal said, we’re probably not going to win… and maybe I wasn’t playing to win… but I did. This is how it went down:
I pulled a land and immediately played it. I coyly looked at my graveyard and eyed the Demigod.
Zack’s eyes rolled back. “Please don’t slow roll me!” I had previously double-pumped both fists and danced about when he shipped to Paris in Game One (you may have seen this dance on The Magic Show). I smiled and didn’t have it this time, passed with all five lands open.
Zack played his fifth land and played Demigod of Revenge. He did not attack with his Figure of Destiny, no doubt worried that I might eat it with Ghitu Encampment.
Of course I killed the Demigod with Flame Javelin.
Along the way I got a little card advantage back with a Blightning of my own, revealing a pair of Unwilling Recruits. Had I kept the Demigod of Revenge, I am pretty sure I would have lost to those on the spot. My last turn, I got in with a Hell’s Thunder when Zack’s remaining removal spell was a Lash Out, and landed the last three with a topdecked Incinerate.
I obviously got immensely lucky on topdecks, and that Zack’s last removal card couldn’t stop the four from Hell’s Thunder, but I was just so used to getting beaten up when I “went for it” with my own Demigods in Block that I was almost “trained” not to try. I don’t know if this is faulty thinking, but in this case it got there when the alternative might have cost me the game.
Pretend Raka Control Deck
(obviously a re-read), 
(actually I just lent it to 
