At least before we have a lot of tangible tournament results, I am thinking there are two main interesting cards to think about for Standard with Avacyn Restored:
Specifically, Cavern of Souls gives you another dual land to play first turn Delver of Secrets (and through a Mental Misstep, if that matters)… Plus you get to play Champion of the Parish for double the possible aggressive starts!
Now if you are trying to buff a Champion of the Parish you need to configure your deck list a little bit differently. The Delver deck is already chock full of Humans (Delver of Secrets and Snapcaster Mage, for instance, are both Humans)… But Geist of Saint Traft isn’t. I decided to go a little bit of a different direction and swap Geist of Saint Traft with Blade Splicer. Blade Splicer is a little bit weaker on offense (2 + 4, with the 4 evasive being a bit more damage than 1 + 3 and the 3 not evasive); but the 3 [Golem] striking first (and potentially generating a fine synergy with Intangible Virtue) makes for an elite defense.
Whether Intangible Virtue or Honor of the Pure is the right buffing enchantment is up for grabs, I think. It is a question of how much you care about Vigilance versus buffing Champion of the Parish; I have Honor of the Pure right now because this seems to be a bit of a “Champion” deck. I am sure you can see the hyper-aggressive starts like…
Champion of the Parish –> Gather the Townsfolk…
Or better yet:
Champion of the Parish –> Champion of the Parish + Delver of Secrets
I am not super satisfied with this pass right now. For one, I don’t even know which is the right two drop enchantment! Other things kind of up in the air…
2 Mana Leak + 2 Gut Shot… I am neither elite against G/R Ramp nor against other Delver decks in the main; when I was playing 2 Gut Shots in Baltimore I felt like a smart guy, but right now many Delver players are main decking threeGut Shots! I felt like Mana Leak was a compromise-able card based on my previous Cavern of Souls blog post (i.e. players like G3rryT and Jonny Magic are playing only two).
3 Blade Splicer or 3 Gather the Townsfolk? This one is pretty debatable. I went with 3 Gathers because we have shifted Cavern of Souls to a primary source of White mana… but it doesn’t actually cast a Gather the Townsfolk… Same reason I dropped the Moorland Haunt count by one (it doesn’t contribute to the Moorland Haunt activation). I guess you can cut a Gitaxian Probe… But that’s like my favorite card in Standard, so please don’t do that.
Obviously this version doesn’t have the “race you with an Invisible Stalker” functionality of the straight Delver deck; that said, I found Invisible Stalker to be the weakest card in straight Delver, worse than a Champion of the Parish, certainly, if you don’t have a Sword of War and Peace or a Pike.
The sideboard is medium-straightforward. The only weird card is Consecrated Sphinx. I actually kind of fell in love with that card in Delver playing a variation of Caleb Durward’s Delver list, whereas I give Jace, Memory Adept a rating of “uh… I guess it’s a card” in most situations.
I do think Mental Misstep is an absolute must for Delver, even though it is a bit weaker now that Cavern of Souls will be entering the Standard Arena… But if you watched Chi Hoi Yim work over Robbie Cordell in the finals of the Birmingham Open (and how could you not, with the attractive and charismatic Joey Pasco YT on the mic?) … You know what kind of havoc Mental Misstep can levy in the Delver mirror… Especially on the draw and when setting up Timely Reinforcements.
Speaking of which, a month or so ago I felt like the Delver mirror was my best matchup in Standard due to my figuring out Mental Misstep (and I know that is ironic as I finally lost the Delver mirror playing for Top 8, on camera)… and the truth is, my Invitational deck was nowhere near as prepared for other Delver decks as this one.
I think the tensions in Standard are going to be interesting. This version — whether you stay with Honor of the Pure or move [back] to Intangible Virtue — is pretty on-par with the “tokens” Delver decks in terms of tokens production + buffing (they are going to have some mix of Midnight Haunting and Lingering Souls instead of Gather the Townsfolk and Blade Splicer), but one Golem can rumble pretty adequately with multiple regular tokens, and you can use your Phyrexian mana to set up a favorable Gather, don’t forget. On balance you have much faster and more explosive mana, and you have literally twice the aggressive draws with Champion of the Parish to get in early damage and put the opponent (or any opponent) on his heels.
Again, just a first pass, but certainly adequate for… say… the first week’s FNM.
I am pretty sure if I were playing in the Rhode Island Open this weekend I would be playing four copies of each of Delver of Secrets, Champion of the Parish, and Cavern of Souls though… Those cards are too good and too fast to ignore, plus they are great together and make for wild synergies with token producers and everything else you want to do with the best deck since Caw-Blade Exarch Twin.
Unbelievably, this is the second Five With Flores post devoted to Aether Adept.
… I can’t believe it either!
Jon Medina invented this thing called FNM Hero where he has to start from scratch with a budget of only $100.
For some reason Medina has chosen to try to “go infinite” at Magic with a bunch of garbage (though given the budget constraints, non-garbage might be hard to come by).
You can actually build a semi-reasonable deck in Standard for under $100 (emphasis on “semi-”).
Obviously the Snapcaster Mages and one Consecrated Sphinx are going to be the most expensive cards; I don’t recall Jon’s exact pricing strictures, but you can get Snapcaster Mage for about $17 on Amazon.com so I assume that using resources other than the most high profile sites you can get the rares for under $100. Everything else is pretty negligible in terms of cost.
I tested a lot of Delver last month and I knew going in that this deck would be even weaker to tokens than regular Delver of Secrets decks. Oh well. Obviously I played against 50% tokens.
The beauty of this is that even though I was playing a super budget deck with literally 21 Islands and 4 Aether Adepts, people still complained about Delver of Secrets. I mean the card is a penny and also the best card in Standard. What do you expect me to play? Maybe a mid-range Green creature for four times the cost and half the power?
Anyway I played four rounds in the Tournament Practice Room. It’s not like I made the next Naya Lightsaber or anything, but the results were pretty promising. I didn’t play real tournament queues because… Well, it should be obvious. But I figured that FNM (Jon’s forum for his project) is less competitive than a PTQ / SCG Open (which is what I would prepare for in queues). Here is what happened:
FOUR-COLOR POD
His deck was a fully loaded Pod deck.
If he is reading this he probably wants to jump off of the top of Birthing Pod, maybe into the mythical river Lethe to forget.
Anyway, I kept a triple Delver, one land hand in Game One. He was defeated. Yes, he got one of my Delvers with a Fiend Hunter. The next turn I flipped Mana Leak, turned the other two over, and it was never really close.
In Game Two he got three Birds of Paradise; conveniently I got three Gut Shots, using a combination of “drawing them off the top of my [budget] deck” and Snapcaster Mage[s]. I also Mage’d up double Flashfreeze, which was excellent.
1-0
BW TOKENS
Man!
I got the first game with “Mental Misstep your Champion” / Snapcaster Mage Mental Misstep, and then getting my one Sphinx online.
Game Two was a heartbreaker if we can consider fake budget decks “tested” in the Tournament Practice room heartbreaker-eligible games. I basically got him to three with scotch tape, spit, torn fingernails, and desperation. He had one card, and it was a Doomed Traveler I had bounced. He had two Crusades but I had basically never allowed him to get the pounce with creatures. I had an Aether Adept and an Insective Aberration in play.
What can he rip?
Obviously the Tom Martell commemorative Lingering Souls is the only card that saves him there, so that is what he got. I looked at the shiny Vapor Snag in my hand and frowned. I guess he could have played Day of Judgment there, but the outs were thin. I had one mana open at the end of his turn, so Mise Thought Scour.
… Flipping over what would have been the game-winning Corrosive Gale.
Heart.
Breaker.
(If in fact we can consider this a hearbreaker-eligible game, again).
Sadly he had Vault of the Archangel in play so I didn’t really think it was worth playing out given his army of 3/3 flyers.
Game Three I got frustrated at having such substandard cards and threw it in too early. I guess if you are going to do an experiment like this you shouldn’t really take that attitude. I guess none of my cards are godawful (except Aether Adept, maybe); but not having basic defensive stuff like Ratchet Bomb or a way to get back in a game that starts to fall out of your hands is pretty annoying.
1-1
BW TOKENS (again)
G1 – I was actually pretty worried because my hand wasn’t aggressive and he got a one-two guy-Gather draw… And then conceded turn three when I Mana Leaked his Intangible Virtue. Um, okay. I’ll take it?
G2 – I got a fast double Delver draw, Leaked him once, and then got him to death on a Vapor Snag. Ho hum. The Vapor Snag turn was pretty interesting. He had four lands in play and a Sword of Body and Mind; he had two tokens from previous token generation. I was kind of weighing my options and decided I was going to Snag his Sword attempt, and at least make him tap all four lands to get the Sword online (plus take one less, I guess). But then he played pre-combat Honor of the Pure. Well that’s two mana down! He equipped one of the tokens, I bounced, he right-clicked, etc.
2-1
REANIMATOR
G1 – I kept a one-land double-Delver draw. I Probed him to see Merfolk Looter and flipped my first Delver with Gut Shot. I was so rich I did not even Gut Shot the Looter until the second time it came down.
G2 – This was a weird game where I countered everything and he didn’t have a second White for Sun Titan for several turns despite drawing lots of extra cards. He sat on a Nihil Spellbomb for a long time, which wasn’t actually that annoying, but was kind of a Greater Gargadon ticking down its time counters if you know what I mean. I wasn’t going to get out of the game with Snapcaster Mage is what it meant. Anyway, I countered everything but my deck doesn’t actually have that many counters and he eventually got the Titan and I conceded.
G3 – Probably the most improbable game I have played in months. I have a not-very-aggressive hand, but eventually get Consecrated Sphinx in play. I have previously Probed him and it seemed safe. Well of course he picks that turn to rip Sun Titan and naturally had Phantasmal Image. The next two turns we play cat-and-mouse with him getting the Image but me having Vapor Snag and Gut Shot. He then gets an Oblivion Ring and I can’t defend the Consecrated Sphinx. Now at this point he has a fake-Sphinx in play and I had a line where I could have played Thought Scour to start the “we both draw as much as we like” phase of the game. I could have drawn tons, gotten the tools necessary to deal with both his Titan and Image, or maybe even double-Leaked the Ring, but I didn’t see it at the time. Instead I just bounced his Sphinx so I wouldn’t have to deal with a Sphinx and tried to play the tempo game. Incidentally I had drawn 4-6 cards with my Sphinx and they were all g-d Islands.
I got some Delver beats in and put him to a bad spot. I drew Ponder and found Vapor Snag and two Islands. I probably should have shuffled. I kept the Snag, bounced his Titan and got in with an Adept and Insectile Aberration, putting him to one. Now there are lots of problems with this play. For one, I put myself in a spot where I knew I had lands on top and I would end up having to chump block. My implementation was also bad, but then again, it was 1:30 and I was playing a pretty Baxterized deck so maybe I can be forgiven? I could have waited a half-turn and bounced better even if I kept the Snag / Island / Island tops. The way I did it, he could re-play Sun Titan, get Phantasmal Image, and copy Insectile Aberration, locking me pretty badly down.
Now the game wasn’t over!
I of course had the Islands on top and had to chump his Titan after one attack.
Now it gets really weird.
He rips Trinket Mage (!?!) and gets the Nihil Spellbomb from last game. Now he has Spellbomb + Titan for a draw engine. The other half of the Spellbomb is also annoying as I pick that turn to draw Snapcaster Mage (or rather, Thought Scour into Snapcaster Mage). There is both a Vapor Snag and a Gut Shot in my bin and he is at one life.
The Snapcaster has to chump. Predictable.
In the ensuing turn he casts Forbidden Alchemy, binning Spellskite, and brings that back.
Both my second and fourth rounds were winnable. This is remarkable as I figured Tokens was an awful matchup, plus my deck lacked such basic functionality as “non-Island lands” or the plenty of white, viz. Geist of Saint Traft and Moorland Haunt. Think a Moorland Haunt might have won some of those one-point games? In particular I really wish I saw the Thought Scour catalyst “we both have Sphinxes” play in real time. That would have made for a story, wouldn’t it?
Now as bad as the structure of this deck is for FNM Hero purposes, I actually like some of the stuff. I was all ready to credit Caleb Durward with Consecrated Sphinx in Delver, but it turns out that way back in September my first Innistrad deck list had not just Delver of Secrets when the rest of the world was still playing Phantasmal Bear, but Batterskull and Consecrated Sphinx as two ofs, each. Man, I am smart at this! In any case, I found Consecrated Sphinx outstanding in this deck, and I think I would actually play 1-2 in “real” Delver.
Anyway, I got tired of not having Geist of Saint Traft in my deck and packed it in. That said, I think with a bit more focus you can probably 4-0 FNM even with a Baxterized Delver deck, and I know I would much rather be on Delvers than mid-range green stuff, especially if I can’t afford dual lands.
Today we will answer five-and-a-half burning questions that burn like, you know (um, never mind):
Free Preview:
Can You Send Me That Blog Post You Took Down?
What Are You Playing At States and can I have the list?
What is The Unofficial Michael J. Flores Soundboard and how do I get one?
Strange, is that a Shock or three in your sideboard? I thought that you were ‘Doubtful that the card Shock is good enough to play as a sideboard card in 2011.”
Also, how many removal spells do we think they’re holding when we cast our Frost Titan?
Let’s go!
Can You Send Me That Blog Post You Took Down?
Well… Probably not.
I already let @famouspj and @grousehaus read it; plus there were approximately DI of you who read it before I took it down.
Like I said before, pending approval from @chicgrit I might do an audio-only version and put that up. But we are watching “Horrible Bosses” tonight and I haven’t gotten around to reading the now-disappeared blog post to her.
Updates when I have them (if I have them) of course.
What Are You Playing At States and can I have the list?
I posted the list to my Star City Games column Flores Friday earlier today, you can read all about it here.
Because the column this week was basically just my deck list, I wouldn’t feel right posting it here at this point; however there are some changes I am probably going to put into place for tomorrow. Per some head-scratching (and lots of people in the forums picked up on this separately even though I had decided to do it myself previously), I am going to move around some of the removal spells.
This is what to do:
From the main deck, move all the Arc Trails to the sideboard.
From the sideboard, move one Ancient Grudge to the main deck; in addition, move all the Shocks from the sideboard into the main deck. We are not changing around any numbers… Just where the cards are.
Additionally, add one more, each of the M10 dual lands; remove one each of the basic lands. Thanks @G3rryT!
Wait a minute, did you just say Brimstone Volley is the second-best card in Standard?
I didn’t say that here, but I did sort of imply that in the column… Like so:
I certainly think Brimstone Volley is a Top 10 card in Standard (probably Top 5), but I would sooner see Dismember at Number Two (but maybe that’s just me).
What is The Unofficial Michael J. Flores Soundboard and how do I get one?
Enterprising superfan @hamiltonianurst put together some funny Flores-isms from my various podcast appearances. If you check out The Unofficial Michael J. Flores Soundboard you will be able to hear me say such-and-such is a bad card, my deck was awesome, other people are buffoons, or that I will play Blue.
And yes, this made its way around the office last week…
Strange, is that a Shock or three in your sideboard? I thought that you were ‘Doubtful that the card Shock is good enough to play as a sideboard card in 2011.”
Larry Swasey is bringing into the open something that I shared to him — presumably just between the two of us — in a personal Facebook communique. I am typing out this paragraph as I wipe a tear from my right eye, so wounded and betrayed to I feel by Larry bringing our brewing out into the forums like a common G/W deck idea.
Oh well, as above, I actually don’t have any Shocks in my sideboard any more. Ting!
Also, how many removal spells do we think they’re holding when we cast our Frost Titan?
Drew Levin’s question really is something to think about. I am going to be bringing my extra Burning Vengeances and Desperate Ravings to States; but I really like Frost Titan in the Primeval Titan matchups more than I dislike it, you know, elsewhere.
So sorry for the bait-and-switch recently of mad updates followed by the lull the last couple of days (for anyone reading this, that is — which means you, if you are reading this)… Especially the short-lived / zoink! of the hilarious-but-tragic tale of How I Missed My Flight to the Star City Open (no, no don’t bother — it’s still gone).
Interlude:
One of my all-time favorite songs, originally recommended by Joshua Ravitz, and previously embedded on this here blog(sphere):
[He's Gone]
Originally I wanted to post How I Missed My Flight to the Star City Open on Friday night, ideally from the airport, in order to create a furor and fever across the Internet… Only to triumphantly appear on camera on Saturday morning, next to my man Joey Pasco.
For no reason whatsoever:
Just putting it out there.
No, Evan didn’t *ahem* bite when I asked if SCG would reimburse my $50 change fee for, you know, missing the original flight that they had booked for me.
It is actually possible that I will release some audio-only version of the events, as Joey could not contain himself [so great was the hilarity] when I read it out loud, and even attempted to immortalize the above by photo-stalking YT from our hotel room as I read the tearful tale into… the iPad mic which I had my hand over.
Pics or it didn’t happen. Happened.
The objections from @chicgrit (previously @craftyK) and @famousPJ got me to pull it down; the story — as written — seemed too negative (keep in mind these are nicer people than I am)… But it is possible that with different vocal inflection everything would fall into place like Dominoes. Written and spoken words can be quite different. The anger and violence that you might imagine reading my telling you to…
“Shut up.”
Can be quite different from Elaine from Seinfeld’s trademark ejaculation, even as she shoves a larger man in the chest.
We’ll see.
None of that has anything to do with today’s actual topic, though; which is the politic delta between Think Twice in Standard versus Caleb Durward’s re-adoption of vanilla Counsel of the Soratami, Divination.
U/B Control, by Caleb Durward
2 Grave Titan
8 Island
9 Swamp
1 Spellskite
1 Karn Liberated
3 Dismember
2 Victim of Night
1 Tribute to Hunger
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Doom Blade
2 Divination
4 Drowned Catacomb
1 Dissipate
2 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Go for the Throat
3 Black Sun’s Zenith
1 Solemn Simulacrum
3 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Darkslick Shores
1 Twisted Image
1 Skinrender
2 Mana Leak
Anywho, the default in the format is Think Twice; and for the most part, Think Twice + Forbidden Alchemy. You will sometimes even see three copies of Think Twice / four copies of Forbidden Alchemy; this can happen. Caleb Durward, with his brilliant B/U anti-creatures control deck opted to develop his board (or stunt his opponent’s board) with his first couple of mana, rather than “merely” sculpting his hand. He played neither.
Caleb is quick to make the point that you get an actual two cards for three mana with Divination, rather than two cards for five mana with Think Twice. And of course you can “build your own Mulldrifter” with Snapcaster Mage + Divination, which is great (though this Mulldrifter requires a preexisting Divination, is only 2/1, and doesn’t fly). His arguments are strong and probably fit for his deck style; perhaps most compellingly, Caleb only spent two slots on Divinations where most B/U or Solar Flare-style decks gobble up 6-8 slots on hand-sculpting Flashback card draw.
Obviously there are potential arguments for either card.
Just a couple of points to make from the Devil’s Advocate side (BTW I qualified for US Nationals the last time I played with Divination [Cougar Town], but this Saturday I intend to play with the full eight Think Twice and Forbidden Alchemy):
There is no loss of mana when you are playing against another control deck. That is, you can do nothing with two mana in a Divination deck (you have no play), or you can play the front half of a Think Twice; there isn’t much difference. At the point you pay the back half of the Think Twice or you tap out for Divination on your third turn (which you probably wouldn’t do in a world of Liliana of the Veil), you haven’t actually been forced to back up the three-versus-five difference on the two spells.
This is a not-irrelevant point, and one of the things that has always made Think Twice so compelling for me, personally: It is a legitimate Xerox cantrip. Think Twice is a one- or two- (in this case two mana) mana cantrip that can help you hit your land drops. Whatever other virtues Divination has as a self-contained spell, it lacks this one. There are lots of reasonable two-land hands you can keep with removal spells and a Think Twice, etc. Divination doesn’t always get you there.
So… All mad respect to Caleb for producing another out-of-the-box implementation of available cards (and of course a happy high five for Top 8 on Saturday).
Further thoughts on Think Twice and Divination? Comment below (if you dare).
I actually just bought my Snapcaster Mages from Amazon, partly due to the prices being better than any of the usual sites I have bought from in the past, partly because it looks like the prices elsewhere are going up elsewhere.
Anyway, I was surprised at how few comments there were RE: the two Snapcaster Mage / Twisted Image deck I posted last week.
From 10/22/2011:
2 Batterskull
2 Spellskite
4 Sword of Feast and Famine
My thinking around this kind of deck was that Mono-Blue Illusions was pretty good at last season, and it lost only Spell Pierce. Spell Pierce is kind of fungible. Okay, it also lost Renegade Doppelganger, but adding in Snapcaster Mage (snap-keep him) makes for a +EV swap.
Mono-Blue Illusions was already good enough for Top 16 at the TCGPlayer $75,000 Championship (and a Star City Game Open Series event at the same time)… To me it stood to reason that with everyone else losing cards like Squadron Hawk, Lighting Bolt, and Goblin Guide, we could just slide right in with same-sies (but snap-keeping the upgrade).
I think the people who have had erratic results with Illusions may be suffering from the “no Phantasmal Dragon” syndrome; that is, their deck lists have no Phantasmal Dragons. Phantasmal Dragon seems pretty great to me. I mean, sure, it dies to Dismember… But if it is dying to Dismember there isn’t even any Phantasmal drawback going on.
I wanted to try a non-Illusions route myself, but I can honestly see playing at Phantasmal Dragon even if I don’t have Lord of the Unreal in my deck (let alone the various Bears and so on). I think a 5/5 flyer is just pretty good (though it might be bad against the current crop of Green three- and four-drop Transform permanents); that said, as you can see I didn’t play any kind of Illusions in the above deck.
At this point, if people are going to insist on playing Werewolves, I think I am actually going to play Ponder. We can go very Comer-Xerox and cut a lot of lands if we don’t stray from basic Island, for instance…
Instead of going Phantasmal-linear I decided to pick all good evasions guys; in theory good Swordsmen. Snapcaster Mage doesn’t fly or sneak on by, but he provides the deck a mite of card advantage.
I am thinking about switching to Sword of War and Peace for a couple of reasons… 1) Todd Anderson played a deck about the same route this past weekend, and I can see being murdered by 1/1 White flyers on defense; and 2) this kind of a deck doesn’t really want to play for very long. Sword of Feast and Famine might be disheartening, but Sword of War and Peace actually kills the opponent much faster. Especially considering the Red Deck finals of the last Star City Open, I think a healthy respect for the Red is in order.
To that end… Stitched Drake. This card seems so good. I can see trading my Delver of Secrets for a Stromkirk Noble just so I have fodder to play Stitched Drake. Seems like a great topdeck after an attrition fight. It is like a Dragon where you can leave up Mana Leak mana.
What’s not to love?
Thoughts?
…
I have been making an effort to draw every day, and I am going to be posting my sketches and (hopefully someday) some finished stuff here on my blog. Guess what? It’s my blog and I can do whatever I want!
Even when I thought I was going to become a famous comic book artist, I never really played with colors. This one-two is one of my first attempts, ever.
The subject is an old lady doing yoga… You know, to mix it up from babes in evening dresses and / or essentially half-naked male superheroes with giant fish-packages.
Marshall Sutcliffe (@Marshall_LR of Limited Resources and one of the nicest people you will ever meet in the Magic podcasting community) has been asking me about… Believe it or not… Napster!
Marshall makes the reasonable point that Napster is a deck that we talk about a lot (myself, BDM, and so on)… But only really longtime readers know what the hell a Napster is. So… Here is the rundown, only eleven years after the fact. Briefly, we will go over:
The Deck
The Name
The Tournaments
The Pedigree
The Plan(s)
… and Namor
The Deck
… As Jon Finkel played it (to the 2000 US National Championships win): The Name
At the time, Napster (the “real” Napster) was the industry leader in music sharing; instead of legally downloading music via iTunes or Amazon.com, less scrupulous young people would login to Napster and download the songs they wanted that had been uploaded by different less scrupulous young people. You could pretty much get whatever you wanted without having to pay for it, therefore.
Brian Kibler came up with the deck name.
The deck that would eventually [also] be called Napster could go and get whatever it wanted thanks to playing Vampiric Tutor (we’ll get into more on how that worked in a future section).
The Tournaments
In the Spring of 2000 The Magic Dojo was pretty much a sinking ship. However they were still paying me (and a couple of other people) so we would still show up for work. We would do some work, but the onetime dreams of dotcom IPO millions were a thing of the past.
So while updating our resumes, one of the things we did was play lots and lots of Standard.
The Magic Invitational that year gave us a great set of gauntlet decks; and because I am forbidden from looking things up, I won’t… But I think our gauntlet was a Blue deck played by Zvi Mowshowitz some kind of Rebels deck played by maybe Chris Pikula or Darwin Kastle, and a StOmPy deck played by Patrick Chapin. There were also some combo decks (for example Sabre Bargain).
We played lots and lots of Standard and had quite a few good decks we could play.
At the time, BDM was innovating the tournament scene with the Grudge Match (which he resurrected just this past weekend), and we had weekly Standard at Neutral Ground, therefore. Awesome decks like Replenish were coming out at the same time, and the Grudge Match gave rise to ZevAtog the next year (for those of you who don’t know about ten year old decks these were the CawBlade and so on of the age).
I decided to play what Napster was in a Grudge Match qualifier and won it, beating Ben “Manascrew” Murray in the finals. US Regionals was soon after and I played it there, too.
In Regionals I qualified, losing a total of three games (two of them in the Top 4, and one in the Swiss). Both my losses were based on errors. In the Swiss one I had my opponent completely locked down with Agonizing Memories and no creatures in play; I made him put a land and Lin-Sivvi on top of his deck, and the turn he played her out, I ran Vampiric Tutor to get my Eradicate… Which wasn’t in the deck. I had no way to directly kill Lin-Sivvi with the amount of mana I had in play and he got a Protection from Black creature and killed me with it.
Obviously I won the next one.
Eventual Champion Sayan Bhattacharyya beat me in the Top 4 at a point when we didn’t yet have Stromgald Cabal. Stromgald Cabal (main deck) put our Replenish matchup to about 75% (it was about 45/55 in favor of Replenish at Regionals)… I messed up on an Unmask and Sayan beat me after 100 turns of do-nothing (hiding behind Circle of Protection: Black).
After qualifying at Regionals, I hooked up with Jon Finkel and the OMS brothers for US Naitonals testing, and we did exactly one session of Standard. I brought my Black deck and Jon and Chris Pikula played 3-4 different decks against me. We were a slight dog to Blue but beat every other deck by a margin of 70% or greater; as he does, Jon said it would be pointless to play any other decks and thus elected to prepare exclusively for Limited.
Jon won the Limited portion of Nationals that year, famously beating Mageta, the Lion with a “mere” Wandering Eye.
Pro Tip: If you give Jon Finkel perfect information, he will beat you, even if you have an unlimited number of Wrath of Gods.
The Pedigree
Jon used Napster to win the 2000 US National Championship, including one of the most lopsided finals matches of all time (versus Chris Benafel). Benafel was thought to have the dominant matchup with Mono-Red land destruction, but Jon beat him 3-0, after beating him badly in the Swiss as well.
Here was a typical Finkel opening draw against the Mono-Red deck:
Swamp,
Dark Ritual,
Dark Ritual,
Dark Ritual,
Persecute,
Skittering Horror
Things to keep in mind:
Red had no Lightning Bolt at the time.
Jon’s play on turn two was a Rishadan Port
This leads us reasonably-ish into…
The Plans
Napster did lots of different things well, but the main awesome sauce was its twofold dominance as a Vampiric Tutor deck and a Yawgmoth’s Will deck. Unless the opponent was playing a Morphling deck, you could pretty much just play Vampiric Tutor and win the next turn. The game might not be over, but the opponent would be more-or-less incapable of winning.
For example, you could play Vampiric Tutor for Engineered Plague against Elves. Could they win? Maybe. But not before you killed them with Thrashing Wumpus and Skittering-something.
You could get Stromgald Cabal (tap to counter a White spell), and a Replenish deck would need eight mana before it could do anything productive. Zvi, Sayan, and Don Lim eventually figured out to play Ring of Gix to tap Stromgald Cabal, but up until that point, it was a pretty firm soft lock.
All the decks in the format would fold to some kind of Vampiric Tutor. Frank Hernandez (Jon’s Top 8 opponent at Nationals) complained that his StOmPy deck was up against “nine Perishes” in Game One… As above, Jon had more Perish action in his sideboard.
Yawgmoth’s Will is maybe the most powerful Magic card of all time… and they let us play four. No, I don’t know why more people didn’t play it. In Napster the routes to card advantage should be pretty obvious (smash guys, re-buy creature removal), but when you start doing stuff like using your Dust Bowl so you can re-buy a land, plus popping Vampiric Tutor from the graveyard to get your next Yawgmoth’s Will… The deck was easy to win with at 25% efficiency (again, Vampiric Tutor auto-beat almost every deck)… But there was significant room for mastery.
Subtly, Unmask (a Black pitch spell) was there to help you get rid of cards like Perish when off-matchup.
… And that’s about it.
I could write about Napster, um, forever, but I’ll leave it at that. Basically a deck with potentially fast threats (turn one 5/5), more card advantage than anyone else (Yawgmoth’s Will), and the ability to beat almost any deck with one spell.
I leave you with some sketches I did of the King of Atlantis yesterday:
Scribbles:
Slicker:
LOVE
MIKE
Coming Soon:
“The Now-Famous Supermodel NipSlip Incident of 1995″ (and associated shenanigans)
Somewhat Fake-tacular (though, for those who haven’t consumed DI, DI-content-filled) update today.
At the end of last week I did essentially a FULL REVIEW OF INNISTRAD (more or less every card, more or less)… Over at Top 8 Magic with the Pro Tour Historian Brian David-Marshall.
So if you haven’t downloaded the five parts (one for each color, with goofball stuff bundled into Red), hop on over to the first-ish [and still best!] Magic podcast’s home for all of that jazz. Warning: I don’t know if BDM and I actually understand / understood how Tree of Redemption works… But it’s all a riot anyway / five hours or so of good-natured awesome sauce over there:
Innistrad Green (this one is about 20 minutes as I was like “whatever Werewolves” at the time)
Local Awesome Sauce
You may have noticed that we went from “not updating for months” to “updating more or less every day” (more or less) over the last week or two [yes, I took the weekend off]. So for those of you who missed what went on last week, here are some helpful helpings:
You Make the Play is (historically, analytics-wise) the most popular kind of update I do on Five With Flores, and this one was pretty hip, too. Expect an article-length, relatively in-depth follow up on that one tomorrow-ish. You can still weigh in on the Facebook Social Plugin (or comments) here.
Speaking of the Facebook Social Plugin, no idea what is going on there so far. It seems like it splits into Parallel Lives and creates two different comments sequences for each post. No idea why the heck it does that, but it is making me turn green, rip my purple pants, jump 40 miles at a time towards New Mexico, etc.
(please bear with us)
Technology
Last thing… NEW DECK LIST
2 Batterskull
2 Spellskite
4 Sword of Feast and Famine
Master deck designer. Thought-provoking narrator of MTGO videos. Pro Tour Top 8 competitor. Star City Games Premium Columnist. National Champion.
And killjoy.
Before we integrated the Facebook comments on the blog itself, old MJ smothered our collective enthusiasm RE: Falkenrath Marauders with his stoic, Value RUG-Pod driven pragmatism on FB proper…
One might say that the man has a point.
Now on the subject of MJ — and even the echo of Demigod of Revenge dredged up during the Falkenrath Marauders discussion — I got to thinking about a bit of an older(er) school situation. Consider this deck, which Jacob used to make Top 8 of Grand Prix Seattle/Tacoma a couple of years back:
Now everyone knows that Michael won the 2008 US National Championships with a Demigod of Revenge deck, but today’s backwards-winking You Make the Play posits playing his Five-color Blood deck against the hellacious Spirit Avatars.
The Situation: Your opponent is playing a B/R Blightning Beatdown deck. The action has been brutal, but you stabilized by blowing up all his guys with Jund Charm, up until he got in there with a Demigod of Revenge.
Lucky ducky, you had your Cruel Ultimatum to take care of it, and are now sitting pretty pretty.
You – Eight assorted lands (you can cast whatever you want), and a lone Bloodbraid Elf
Him – Ghitu Encampment and four assorted Black- and Red-producing lands.
Graveyards:
You – Cruel Ultimatum, Jund Charm, Jund Charm; some guys you used to trade earlier.
Him – Demigod of Revenge and some assorted other lands and spells
Your opponent draws his card for the turn, smiles, and plays it:
Demigod of Revenge!
So… How do you approach this turn?
You Make the Play!
LOVE
MIKE
P.S. Got some kind of weird results with the Facebook Social Plugin yesterday. Please excuse our clutter while we continue to upgrade Five (and by “we” I mean YT).
I mean, I say pretty much whatever I am thinking at the time; and maybe unlike other people I change my mind about things fairly often (based on learning, new knowledge, and so on). For example I didn’t like Sensei’s Divining Top at the beginning… But after some soul-searching, later the same year Patrick Sullivan expressed disappointment in me that I had gone from “the premiere topless deck designer” to, whatever, another Top-jockey.
Unlike many other people I consider myself flexible and am willing to change my opinion on things, hopefully, in the effort of improving as a person.
So the one thing I wanted to point out is that in this Top 8 Magic Podcast I said that I made a deck that “beats everything” … Before getting into the meat of this blog post I wanted to address what I mean by that.
For sake of argument say you had a deck that has 55% win expectation against every deck in the field. From the position of who beats what, this deck technically “beats everything” … But what is the win expectation of a player in an eight-round tournament?
4-4
Does this deck have superior win expectation to, say, every other deck in the field?
I don’t know. CawBlade variants have an above average win expectation as well. This has nothing to do with the fact that the 55% deck does in fact “beat everything” (in a sense). And I’m not saying that the MWC deck that I was referencing has a 55% win expectation per se; just using that number to make a simple argument.
Now I said on the big Twits that I would post an 11th-hour blog post before tomorrow’s National Qualifiers.
I wrote about my Mono-White Control deck in today’s Flores Friday on StarCityGames.com. Out of respect for Star City I am not going to reprint the deck list here; however I will address sideboarding with the MWC.
This is the sideboard I was playing with most recently in this week’s videos:
2 Contagion Clasp
1 Tumble Magnet
4 Baneslayer Angel
2 Celestial Purge
2 Day of Judgment
4 Kor Firewalker
That said, I pretty much just crammed in a bunch of cards that I liked that I couldn’t fit into the main deck and called that the sideboard. That is lazy sideboarding, though; so hopefully in the context of this blog post we can make some amount of incremental improvement.
If you want the MWC deck list (and to learn the frankly hilarious story behind it), I encourage you to pop the $.15 or whatever it costs to read over at Star City, here:
The approach we are going to take to refine the sideboard will be a bottom-up approach instead of a top-down. I asked the Indomitable Twitter Army to give me the five decks they were most interested in beating, and the answers are more-or-less these:
U/W CawBlade
DarkBlade
RUG
Valakut
RDW
U/W CawBlade
Summary: U/W CawBlade has the advantage of being able to play two different games. It has an initiative-based game based on Stoneforge Mystic + Sword of Feast and Famine, and can also win a long game with Jace, the Mind Sculptor + Gideon Jura.
MWC has the ability to keep even and trade during the first ten or so turns of the game, matching Stoneforge Mystic and Squadron Hawk. You can possibly win or lose the game at this stage mostly depending on whether or not you hit your lands. This is a point in the game where Preordain really shines; and MWC ain’t got no Preordain. Luckily you have a good number of lands.
Unfortunately I have relatively little experience playing against a Sword of Feast and Famine + Mortarpod configuration of CawBlade (tons against people who are just going and getting Swords), so I can’t speak to an opponent who is primarily using his guys to keep you from equipping Sword of Feast and Famine to a Squadron Hawk.
Presuming your opponent is primarily trying to hit you with a Sword, you can either chump (presuming you are doing something proactive going the other way) or trade (ideally), or lean on your artifacts. For example, getting your Contagion Clasp and / or Tumble Magnet is going to be desirable at this stage.
Let’s assume that you live past the first few turns, and the initial Royal Rumble of small creatures. The typical CawBlade deck only has eight dudes, and you can catch them with a big Day of Judgment or All is Dust to remove the opponent’s swordsmen, hampering their long-term with Sword of Feast and Famine. So let’s talk about the Planeswalker phase.
Basically you can attack their Planeswalkers to death or catch them with All is Dust. You have to be a bit wary about when you are tapping out. It is often desirable to sit back and let them ‘walk you in exchange for powering up Everflowing Chalice with Contagion Clasp so that you can pay 2, 3, or 5 mana on an All is Dust. Luckily, once you are out of the initial 1/1 and 1/2 battling, the opponent’s actual ability to close out games is not at hyperspeed.
What sucks?
Nothing sucks completely. All your cards have at least some utility.
I think there is tension around Wall of Omens and Survival Cache because those cards presumably draw you into lands. However they, along with Wurmcoil Engine, fall into a not-bad but not-optimal bucket.
One thing to consider about Wall of Omens is that a Wall of Omens will contain just a Stoneforge Mystic + Sword of Feast and Famine (i.e. there is no matching Squadron Hawk). Another thing to keep in mind is what your curve is at. If the opponent doesn’t have some kind of legitimate creature removal, Baneslayer Angel is actually quite a bit better than almost anything else, provided you aren’t being demolished by Tumble Magnets.
Expedition Map probably seems a bit odd as we are taking out a colorless creature, but you want another land (ideally for Eye of Ugin) as you are upping curve.
DarkBlade
Summary: Darkblade is actually just a better CawBlade against you. Your Tectonic Edges are a bit stronger and your special lands are a bit stronger as they have less Tectonic Edge action, but Inquisition of Kozilek is spectacular against you.
To be honest, despite a good record against CawBlade in aggregate, I have struggled more with DarkBlade with MWC.
I would leave in Wurmcoil Engine because it is quite good against Go for the Throat, and Baneslayer Angel isn’t. Contagion Clasp is pretty good here as Hawk suppression early, and of course the card is too good with Tumble Magnet.
RUG
Summary: RUG is a powerhouse cross-strategy deck. It includes explosive mana from Lotus Cobra, sheer power from Jace, the Mind Sculptor, an aggressive man-land, and equal Blue supplementation equal to CawBlade.
The most important thing is to keep from being blown out by Lotus Cobra. If you are playing a fair game, you are going to win. Tumble Magnet is good against Raging Ravine, and to a lesser extent, Inferno Titan… But honestly, who cares? You need to tap Primeval Titans but just taking damage isn’t a huge deal for you. Additional consideration is Precursor Golem, and Tumble Magnet is not very good against that card.
Obviously ever Contagion Clasp in your collection is in. Day of Judgment is arguably better than All is Dust in this matchup because of Precursor Golem. I would play to keep from getting blown out and try to win a long game, as if you can keep from auto losing to their Top 10 paradigm-warpers Jace and Lotus Cobra, your long game is actually superior.
-1 Tumble Magnet
-4 Survival Cache
+2 Contagion Clasp
+1 Expedition Map
+2 Day of Judgment
Survival Cache is iffy in this matchup due to being kind of awful as a mid-game topdeck against Inferno Titan or Avenger of Zendikar (and can even be goofy against Lotus Cobra + Lightning Bolt). You need the Expedition Map to make up for it.
Valakut
Summary: Valakut can be customized in any number of ways. There is a huge difference between playing a Summoning Trap deck with Lightning Bolts and even Pyroclasms main and a turbo turbo version with Green Sun’s Zenith, Lotus Cobra, and no creature suppression but Tumble Magnet; especially early game. The possibilities on blowouts are so swingy, and whether or not your little dudes survive (or you can sneak in with an Inkmoth Nexus) varies grandly. That said, the most important thing is to contain Primeval Titan. That’s it. That guy either beats you outright or finds a bunch of copies of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and that onetime Top 10 card beats you. If you can contain Primeval Titan, you can fight Valakut heads up with Tectonic Edge, and again, your long game is simply superior.
This configuration presumes the Lotus Cobra version, which seems to be more popular (Contagion Clasp for Cobra, Tumble Magnet for Primeval Titan, Expedition Map for Tectonic Edge):
-4 Survival Cache
-1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
-1 Wurmcoil Engine
+2 Contagion Clasp
+1 Expedition Map
+1 Tumble Magnet
+2 Day of Judgment
RDW
Summary: Don’t die. This one is yours to win. Goblin Guide + Kabira Crossroads is a sick combo!
-4 All is Dust
-1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
-1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
-1 Eye of Ugin
-3 Stoneforge Mystic
+1 Tumble Magnet
+3 Baneslayer Angel
+2 Celestial Purge
+4 Kor Firewalker
Overall strat is to side out all the expensive cards, focus on cards you can cast as long as you are not manascrewed, and crush with color hosers and life gain.
Weird pull here (which you wouldn’t make against Boros, say) is Stoneforge Mystic. Swords are still gas, especially if you apply one to a Kor Firewalker, but spending a bunch of mana in the hopes of being blown out by a Searning Blaze is loose at best.
In sum, I think I’d cut a Baneslayer Angel for an Expedition Map.
LOVE
MIKE
Post Script: The “Modern” MichaelJ Model
The MWC deck is viable according to the “old” paradigm of deck design; that is, you should play it (if you are going to play it) because “it beats everything” (supposedly). However longtime readers (or should I say followers of this blog) know that my current paradigm, that is the paradigm I used to build Naya Lightsaber, qualify with Grixis Hits, and so on know that I currently build by trying to play the most Top 10 cards possible.
MWC has a fair number of Top 10 cards (overall #2 card Stoneforge Mystic, Squadron Hawk, Tectonic Edge, and arguably Tumble Magnet); but clearly it lags CawBlade’s Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Mana Leak; and Preordain.
If I don’t play MWC, I will play U/G Genesis Wave, as encouraged by Josh Ravitz and Brian David-Marshall. This would be my deck list:
sb:
4 Tumble Magnet
3 Wall of Tanglecord
4 Spreading Seas
4 Obstinate Baloth
U/G Genesis Wave plays a fair number of Top 10 cards (certainly more than MWC)… Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Primeval Titan; Lotus Cobra; Tectonic Edge (and arguably Spreading Seas and Tumble Magnet). That said, it certainly gives up Mana Leak and Preordain.
The U/G Genesis Wave deck has plenty of very good cards but actually exists at a crossroads. It is a “modern” designed deck from one standpoint but also leans on MWC’s advantage (U/G is actually the best deck in the format both against other Jace decks and other Titan decks). On balance, MWC basically never loses to bad decks, whereas U/G is traditionally somewhat soft to Boros or Kuldotha Red (argh on that one).
So for those of you looking for the U/G Genesis Wave deck, that is the current listing.
Bonehoard :: Lhurgoyf :: Inevitability
TDC Heat :: Sword of Feast and Famine :: … and Bonehoard
Bonehoard
I can’t believe I missed this one when initially, especially given my history.
Bonehoard is almost strictly better than a card that I considered a bomb in previous years, Lhurgoyf.
I played Lhurgoyf in my 1998 Northeast Regionals deck, TDC Heat (you may remember this deck from the pre-Psylum version of The Dojo, or perhaps from my writeup of Lord of Extinction two years ago). I think I testedmore for that Regionals than almost any other tournament I’ve ever played. The big decks at the time were Deadguy Red, Tradewind Rider decks, and Mono-Blue Control. TDC Heat, with its islandwalking River Boas, was extraordinarily effective against the Blue decks. Against the Red ones, your creatures were simply better than theirs, you had Uktabi Orangutan to smash Cursed Scroll, and would trade one-for-one with everything else. Then, as the dust cleared, you would untap with a gigantic Lhurgoyf. Rawr.
Bonehoard, as I said, is almost strictly better than Lhurgoyf. For four mana, you tap for a [potentially] huge X/X… just one tiny toughness off of Lhurgoyf. The differences are:
Bonehoard’s Living Weapon is Black, not Green. Black creatures don’t die to Doom Blade, and therefore are more resilient than Green creatures, all other things held equal.
You don’t stop at just one.
I honestly don’t know how I missed this one. Not only is Bonehoard the stones by itself, but you can move it onto an evasion creature for a mere two mana. You can not just play — but continue to play — the attrition game. One problem with Lhurgoyf was that as big and powerful as it could be — including after a Wrath of God against a control player — it was still just one creature. Someone might kill it. You might be able to kill the Living Weapon, but the next guy, and the Next guy, and the NEXT guy after that would all be able to hit as hard.
Also, you might kill in one with Inkmoth Nexus
So… Bonehoard or Sword of Feast and Famine?
I am pretty sure — especially given Sword of Feast and Famine’s performance in Paris this week — that the latest Sword is the higher ranking piece of Mirrodin Besieged equipment, but there will probably be decks that want to play lots of Bonehoards. I can envision some future incarnation of Green or White creatures tapping and trading and playing Bonehoard after Bonehoard. “Just” creature elimination is not going to be able to deal with these beyond the Living Weapon. Even a puny Birds of Paradise will go lethal very quickly, given the right conditions.
(no shipping!)