So… The back-and-forth on this…
I never intended to play in this past weekend’s New Jersey PTQ… too close to this coming weekend’s Brooklyn PTQ and I didn’t want to incite the ire of Mrs. MichaelJ (aka @craftyK [follow @craftyK on Twitter])… Plus believe it or not I have really been enjoying my weekend time with the family. Basically my favorite thing to do right now is walk along the Hudson River all the way from my home by the GWB down to 14th Street / Union Square area or even way down past West 4th to like Jaques Torres. This can take all day but we usually make pit stops at like Jamba Juice on the UWS or perhaps Columbus Circle. Or about half the time we pit stop at Dinosaur BBQ at 125 and eat charred, you know, dinosaurs.
I absolutely adore doing this and spending time with the fam by the beautiful river; this weekend was actually getting warmer. I enjoy it by the boats in the UWS portion and especially in the teens down in the village because there are invariably bikini-laden butts tanning with their tops undone enjoying the riverside in a lazier way than we do.
Finally my kids are old enough that they can walk as well. Yesterday Bella aka LeBron James / Batman and Clark aka Superman raced down the concrete by the sailboats on the UWS and Clark skinned his knees. Predictable.
Anyway I didn’t realize this coming weekend is Easter and that my parents are traveling up for a grandkids fam-tango which would include Saturday, i.e. PTQ day.
Generously @craftyK gave me leave to play in New Jersey.
I ultimately declined citing being too tired after a long week at work (and you were all wondering where the Five With Flores updates had gone)… But I would have played Bolts aka The Lightning Bolt Deck!
So why the change from beloved Naya Burn now that Naya… um… Zoo has become the bee’s knees in PTQ performance?
Five Reasons for the change (that I didn’t actually ultimately execute on)…
- PSulli told you — despite doing well himself with Lightning Bolts in LA — not to play it due to always being at a deck disadvantage. So why the change?
Well the deck I really like/liked is/was/whatever Naya Burn. However with the move towards the Saito version with Wooly Thoctar I felt like I was giving up a lot in the mirror… Especially with those motherlovers packing main deck Jitte. I just kept having visions of one of the Saito-clones winning the flip and playing turn three Wooly Thoctar and then untapping to play, um, turn three Sulfuric Vortex. Take two, sir. - Anything else Naya-related?
Yes, in fact! Bill Stark recently made Top 8 of a PTQ with a Legacy-inspired (or at least I was Legacy-inspired after reading some of the Grand Prix coverage) Ranger of Eos Naya Zoo version. Bill Jedi Mind Tricked his way into the Top 8 with an opponent on one life, top decking Ranger of Eos in the last of extra turns, representing Mogg Fanatic (with none left). That would probably have been an even worse pairing for my brand of Naya! (Especially with my obstinate stance on not playing Path to Exile main deck!) - None of this actually tells us why you would play Lightning Bolts… just that you wouldn’t want to play “your” Naya in a slightly changed metagame…
Two reasons actually… One is that The Lightning Bolt Deck has actually done pretty well in some recent Japanese PTQs. - And the other reason?
If I had enough practice, I was talking about playing some Tezzerator. However remember my recent mantra: I just want to play fast and simple decks to preserve my day-long energy levels, not necessarily “the best deck” as other writers have often recommended, or even “the best deck for the tournament” as others (including myself and onetime Sensei Chris Senhouse) have. Despite my short foray into the land of Slide (which remember was in large part a result of a Tarmogoyf shortage), I have been a proponent of decks with Incinerate and Sulfuric Vortex for this format! - So what would have been your deck list?
I’m glad you asked! Here it is:Â4 Incinerate
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Lava Spike
4 Magma Jet
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Rift Bolt
4 Shrapnel Blast
2 Smash to Smithereens
4 Spark Elemental
4 Sulfuric VortexÂ4 Blinkmoth Nexus
2 Darksteel Citadel
4 Great Furnace
12 Mountainsb:
2 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Shattering Spree
2 Smash to Smithereens
4 Volcanic Fallout
I guess we’ll just have to see if I play this weekend.
Just want to point out that I am 100% Blue Envelope LIFETIME with beatdown decks in Holy Saturday PTQs.
LOVE
MIKE
6 comments ↓
I think the deck is a solid pick. There is definitely a strong presence of Zoo in Extended right now, almost too much(due to everyone’s infatuation with Fetch & Shock lands/Tarmogoyf . Its seems as if this deck has a nice matchup against Zoo and also Affinity, due in large part to the artifact hate.
Ah, but you already know this, so I guess this post was kind of pointless…
Anyways, good luck!!
why not run some fetch lands? is it because you fear the stifles in the metagame, or because you think the one damage would be bad enough in some matchups to not run them. I have run bolts for a while and i think the ability to thin your deck just a little is very nice when late game you wanna be drawing gas and not lands. Other than that, i like the list
I agree with Kaibaman11689. No one was more upset about the metagame shift than me. I absolutely loved the deck that i played in Portland and would have only made a couple changes mainly swapping out both mutavaults and two Kataki for 3 Woollthy Thoctar and a land.
It seems now the zoo lists are just getting progressively more and more midrangy to beat each other which frankly i think weakens you against the field. I played with different lists in Seattle and in LA (i’m a college student from seattle who goes to school in LA so i was back on break for the Seattle and Portland PTQs) and really was’t happy with either one. As you said Vortex is the best thing about playing Naya Burn and then you had to cut it because everyone insisted on playing jittes, thoctars and md path to exile.
At the very least playing mono red you won’t have to play beat down mirrors all day which are awful. I think you might want to bump the bridge count to three especially if you think your going to play a lot of zoo, but maybe that’s just me.
DA
Brooklyn. Be there or be somewhere else.
why don’t you like path to exile? it’s the best white card in extended (and standard). all you people who said it wasn’t were wrong.
i love ranger zoo lately. i made a sick version that just mauls blue and naya.
4 nacatl
4 ape
4 fanatic
4 goyf
4 thoctar
3 ranger
4 path
4 helix
2 seal
1 tarfire
2 jitte
4 treetop
1 m
1 f
1 p
2 stomping ground
2 sacred foundry
1 temple garden
4 mire
4 foothills
4 heath
sb
3 teeg
4 hedge mage
3 fallout
2 rule of law
3 pillar
i think loam and monowhite are your only bad matchups. you could board a bunch of vortices to improve that, but i think i’d rather beat teps and elves which you are frankly more likely to see in the t8.
and yes, village is that damn good.
bk
Hope you don’t play against Bant. That deck just seems terrible for mono-burn.
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