Inspired by Mana Leak — or more precisely, Jace’s Ingenuity — the article was primarily about beating Counterspells and Blue players who are not as good as they think they are.
Oftentimes with these kinds of articles I have more ideas than I can remember to get down on paper before I hit the “Send” button to my editor. In this case I think that a number of cases would be supported by more / more concrete examples.
Draw-Go
It is pretty imperative that the Counterspells played in the Draw-Go deck are mana efficient. You will see in an example later in this blog post that Sigurd Eskeland is able to compete with the speed of Jon Finkel’s Deadguy Red deck only due to the speed of Force Spike.
Part of the reason for this is that the Draw-Go deck must be able to not only answer threats at commensurate speed, but at some point, must be able to play at least one reactive card per turn while drawing additional cards, even if only by Impulse or the equivalent.
Force with Force
A super iconic example of this would be with literal Force of Will.
That is not to say that you have to use Force of Will. The modern “I win in the context of a tight mana situation” today might be Pact of Negation (though I suppose that will not last much longer, even in Extended).
I mean 10 years ago, if there were a card like Gaea’s Revenge and the default Blue deck was pure permission… I might see it. In 2010 (that is, the only context in which we can actually consider a Gaea’s Revenge), I would have been very happy to play against Gaea’s Revenge with my Nationals deck, which was a 4x Mana Leak deck that actually sided in Spell Pierce against Gaea’s Revenge decks with Rampant Growth, et al.
The problem is that while that card can’t be countered, it is super slow and the pieces that get you there can all be countered. Realistically Gaea’s Revenge can’t kill you until like turn eight, and you can actually just get raced.
Am I being unfair here? I liked Banefire quite a bit against Blue last year… Is there a huge difference?
Tempo Attack
I was doing some research to help AJ Sacher tonight and came upon a segment from a Jon Finkel — yes Jon em offing Finkel — tournament report from like 1998. Consider:
I played Sigurd Eskeland, as we were the only two 7-0s. He won the coin flip, and we prepared to play the first game, in which I felt I had a huge advantage. I played a first turn Pup, and it got Force Spiked. I was now in a bad position, because I hate to let Draw-Go use their counters. I’d rather just keep hitting them for one or two points per turn. Because I had no threats I was forced to try for a second turn Orc, which got countered, and then I had to cast a Hammer, in the hope that he didn’t have a Dissipate.
(some edits; emphasis mine)
This actually intersects with Do Nothing as well. See how Jon’s plan is to get a small advantage and then have his opponent drown in Counterspells? He will not start playing must-counter threats until it becomes annoying for Sigurd to use his mana in a non-advantageous way.
Just some thoughts.
I hope you like the article over there (if you haven’t already read it) 🙂
Venser, the Soujourner :: Being Wrong :: Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
“Permanents” ::Â Getting Corrected :: … and Venser, the Soujourner
Prequel:
I don’t know how long you have been reading / listening to / watching my stuff.
But the first time I ever did a Podcast for Top 8 Magic was around the time of New York States 2005, the one Julian Levin won, where we put three copies of Jushi Blue and one Critical Mass into the Top 8. In a complete Flores-coup of the metagame, we only lost to each other.
That said, I can still hear Brian David-Marshall’s whispering voice on the very first Podcast, describing my trials in the semifinals against Eric Marro. Eric was playing Gifts Ungiven, and my Jushi Blue deck dispatched him 2-1 in the Swiss, losing the first. I drew a ton of Threads of Disloyalty in the first game, but was much more efficient with all threats and Counterspells in the sideboarded ones.
But Eric was well and truly grinding me out in the Top 8 match. Again our match took forever, with him winning the first one. I was coming off a win over Mark Schmit, a 74-card mirror match that took over two hours (and I again lost the first). I beat Eric, but it took forever. Turns out that I would have won both matches much more easily if I had just read my damn cards.
Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
You see, Minamo, School at Water’s Edge untaps legendary permanents. Mostly because I had only ever untapped legendary creatures in testing (due to my blatant ignorance, obviously) I didn’t realize that I could have blown out both of my opponents by untapping particular lands. Obviously I couldn’t ask for better overall results, but I could have won in less time, with much less grating mental trauma… and of course without reinforcing the old Jon Finkel claim that I make, on average, a mistake per turn.
So it might not surprise you to hear that I made the same mistake when initially looking at new Planeswalker, Venser, the Sojourner:
Venser, the Soujourner is a card that — if you are at all interested in card previews — you have probably already seen. Because you are probably brighter than I am, you probably weren’t scratching your head at what all the fuss was about.
You see — just like my Misstep with Minamo, School at Water’s Edge all those years ago — I didn’t realize that Venser is synergistic with any permanents, not just creatures. It is kind of funny to think back on what was going through my head…
What a creature-centric Planeswalker! Sure, the [-1] ability doesn’t do anything without creatures in play, but you can’t even power him up at all without creatures in play!
(That seemed terrifyingly limiting to me, of course… A Planeswalker that couldn’t always power up? What was this, the anti-Elspeth, Knight-Errant?)
But of course that limitation is not the case. While Venser’s [-1] ability is not so anything without creatures in play, at least you can get him up to 5 loyalty without having creatures in play 🙂
So what are some cool non-creatures you can Momentary Blink with Venser?
Kabira Crossroads (or Sejiri Refuge if that is how you roll) – Power up Venser, make some life points. They aren’t #FloresRewards or anything, but they are still valuable sometimes.
Oblivion Ring – Upgrade your Oblivion Ring by taking out a more pertinent permanent. Or, if your opponent plays a replacement Legend / Planeswalker, you can Momentary Blink the Oblivion Ring and get a 3-for-1 or whatever.
Some kind of 187 – Venser + Manic Vandal might be an absolute disaster given the number of artifacts we anticipate given the return to a plane made entirely of metal. For that matter, an extra Contagion Clasp every turn might not be the worst.
Your guy, under their Mind Control. Venser’s [+2] lets you target permanents you own. So if someone steals something of yours, you can get it back for free!
A lot of Planeswalkers these days are giving us opportunities to take out other Planeswalkers. The [-1] ability lets you attack other Planeswalkers; additionally, it can help you set up poison counters, proliferate, &c.
And finally, there is the Ultimte:
[-8]: You get an emblem with “Whenever you cast a spell, exile target permanent.”
Hella-wow.
This isn’t some kind of panty waisted  Admonition Angel. If Venser Snags your permanent (there’s that word again), it ain’t coming back.
Aesthetics:
The biggest issue I see is that Venser is a five mana Planeswalker. Everything I have written about Koth of the Hammer emphasizes that part of the shift that new Planeswalker represents is the step from five mana (Chandra Nalaar… not heavily played) to four mana (where all the awesome Planeswalkers are costed). For the rest of what I think about this section, jump up some paragraphs.
Where Can I See This Fitting In?
Now that I no longer think that Venser is stuck in a mono-creatures strategy, I can see it played in a variety of decks. U/W Control (or some multicolored variation), or an update to U/R/W Planeswalkers or thereabouts. The issue is that Venser is a five. Last year’s Planeswalker deck was very fours-heavy (Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Ajani Vengeant, Elspeth, Knight-Errant), and just peppered with two or so copies of Gideon Jura.
Elspeth Tirel is the much stronger Planeswalker at five, and as we saw in the previous preview, she is probably going to demand four slots (also, it’s not like Elspeth “plays well” with other Planeswalkers). So there are potential curve issues around playing both Venser and Elspeth. They aren’t catastrophic (like “this will never happen”), but I am already raising an eyebrow at the idea.
But regardless of where you won’t be playing Venser, it is probably more interesting to talk about what you will be playing next to it. I think I would certainly run lots of Preordain, maybe some other cantrips (though I don’t know if Spreading Seas is still going to be the strongest Blue card in Standard with the impending disappearance of Savage Lands)… Once you are in Ultimate mode, it will be very exciting to play lots and lots of cheap card drawing to take complete control of the battlefield.
Koth of the Hammer :: Jace, the Mind Sculptor :: Mana Acceleration
Banned Cards :: Speculation :: … and Koth of the Hammer
Koth of the Hammer
This morning I considered speculating on Koth of the Hammer.
I figured maybe buy all of the copies I could around $20. I figured Koth of the Hammer would more than double in value, in much the same vein as Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
You see, it is my current belief that Koth of the Hammer is the most powerful Planeswalker we have seen.
It is kind of a shame. I was not thinking big enough when I wrote the Koth of the Hammer preview for the mother ship. The biggest thing I could think of at the time was jumping an Inferno Titan into play with Koth’s [-2] ability. Have you got any idea how powerful this card is?
If you play a fifth land on the fifth turn, with Koth in play on the fourth, you have literally 10 mana available! How about this one?
You blow up the world, including basically all of the opponent’s mana and any stray animals, you still have arguably the most powerful Planeswalker in play… and then you play a land.
Koth is so crazy powerful it blows my mind. I liked Jace, the Mind Sculptor from the get-go but Koth seems a few millimeters from too good. You see a card like Jace might go in many different decks, but that doesn’t make it the most powerful Planeswalker. Going in lots of different decks has nothing to do with who is the most powerful. Look at the average banned list entry…
… Which one goes in lots of different decks, again? Cards are banned because they are too good. Being too good usually means providing too much mana in value relative to how much it actually costs. You know, like giving a return of 10+ mana for an investment of only four (not to mention getting additional value out of a card).
Here is something BDM pointed out to me while we were podcasting tonight…
What happens when Jace and Koth fight? All other things held equal, doesn’t Koth just kill Jace? … And then make a bajillion mana and crush you with some super awesome jimmy jazz? Mountain to the jaw? Hi-yah?
yes, Yes, and YES again.
Okay then… What’s the damage? Why am I afraid of Koth of the Hammer? At the beginning of this article, wasn’t I talking about wanting to speculate on him?
Sure, speculation might be a bit dicey with Koth already at a pre-order price of $50 at many stores. That’s not the only problem (he could easily see Primeval Titan or Jace, the Mind Sculptor prices).
… I’m afraid he might get banned.
I own a binder full of Time Spirals, no lies. Well maybe not a whole binder, but you get the picture.
Carapace Forger :: Putrid Leech :: Nest Invader
Metalcraft :: Random Artifacts :: … and Carapace Forger
Here is a Scars of Mirrodin common, Carapace Forger:
Carapace Forger
Aesthetics:
I saw this card in a Metalcraft preview over on the mother ship. I actually thought that it was more interesting than it might superficially look. I mean compare it to a card like Nest Invader. They are both just some Balduvian Bears with some extra text. Neither one is a Wild Mongrel, right? Nest Invader makes a kind of pseudo-irrelevant 0/1 tagalong and Carapace Forger has a potential bonus.
… Point is that the potential bonus on Carapace Forger seems kinds of jeepers creepers to me… maybe.
I mean compare Carapace Forger to Putrid Leech. Putrid Leech is a monster. Everyone who has tried to play a control deck in the last 12 months knows that Putrid Leech is the single most important card to consider when testing Standard. Putrid Leech is the limiting factor. If you don’t have the Terminate, they do like 12 before you can deal with even one Putrid Leech; I wouldn’t be surprised if the little Golgari two-drop has decided more duels Jund v. Control than either Blightning or Bloodbraid Elf.
Putrid Leech just came out on turn two and started hammering for four starting turn three. It was not easy to deal with and it out-classed everything in its weight class. It is kind of silly thinking about Knight of the White Orchid as a battlefield presence when it is stuck battling Putrid Leech. Just the threat of being able to go 4/4 made Putrid Leech dangerous, even when it wasn’t necessarily jumping the curve on turn three.
So the question is, will Carapace Forger ever be in the Putrid Leech class?
The fact is, if we can get Carapace Forger a couple of buddies (I dunno, whatever makes Phylactery Lich playable), then it is possible that it can be Tarmogoyf-class. Really!
Where can I see this fitting in?
There are three kinds of decks where you can play Carapace Forger (as far as I can tell at this point, having relatively little more information RE: Scars of Mirrodin than you do):
Any old deck
Any deck with random  potential value
A true Metalcraft strategy
In theory you can play Carapace Forger in “any old deck” … It would be potentially better than a Runeclaw Bear but probably not a lot better. That said, one of my old playtest partners once made is out of the Swiss rounds at a Northeast Regional Championships (or perhaps it was Mid-Atlantic?) with five vanilla two-drop Bears in his deck. This would be the kind of deck that I can imagine — and therefore assign a minimum of “Role Player” to a card — but later make fun of on the Top 8 Magic podcast when someone actually plays it.
We start to get more value out of Carapace Forger in a deck with random artifacts. In a deck that has a certain amount of equipment (there is probably playable equipment in Scars of Mirrodin; we haven’t suddenly stopped seeing potential value out of Basilisk Collar), Relic of Progenitus, or artifact mana… Carapace forger starts to approach the Putrid Leech level. In general Carapace Forger is not going to be as good as Putrid Leech here because Putrid Leech can basically always jump to 4/4 whereas Carapace Forger only gets to 4/4 with a good amount of help. It is probably worth pointing out that cards like Dragon Claw out of the sideboard will be highly valuable in this potential strategy.
Obviously the card with the word “Metalcraft” printed in italics in the top-left of the text box is probably going to see its best days with lots of other Metalcraft cards. If the idea is to play lots of artifacts in order to build up the value of having lots of artifacts in play, we are going to see the highest incidence of the 4/4 Carapace Forger, and at maximum speed.
It probably goes without saying that if there is a Legacy Affinity deck, Metalcraft cards may be very effective alongside Seat of the Synod and other essentially no-cost opportunities to get artifacts in play.
Superficial “duh” comment – This is a five mana Planeswalker rather than a four mana one (or three, as in the case of Jace Beleren). Obviously Jace is Jace, but for the most part, the most popular Planeswalkers have been the four mana ones (Ajani Goldmane; Ajani Vengeant; Elspeth, Knight-Errant; and Jace, the Mind Sculptor). That is because in the context of competitive Magic: The Gathering, a jump to five mana is basically a jump from four-to-eight, rather than the superficial / obvious / untrained four-to-five. That is the thing holding back Planeswalkers like Liliana Vess or Gideon Jura. Remember when we reviewed Gideon Jura when he was new? We said Baneslayer Angel was the better 3WW… And really, even with the success of the U/R/W Planeswalker deck during the first part of the summer, Baneslayer Angel has had the more impressive continued performance.
The next interesting thing to talk about RE: Elspeth Tirel is the ordering of her abilities. Elspeth starts on four, jumps on a life gain ability that is only really useful when you have creatures on the battlefield, and drops two loyalty by building creatures. In theory you can profitably jump her to six on turn five if you already have creatures in play. Creatures — as in “multiple” — … though you can presumably put her to six loyalty at no value (or very little value and an outlook of chump blocking the following turn).I think the more common strategy (at least depending on matchup… It will be less attractive against decks with Lightning Bolt, for instance) will be to take her down to two loyalty, then build her back up to four mana with an increase in life commensurate with how many animals you’ve got in play (and presumably boosted by her Scatter the Seeds-esque [-2] ability).
What is actually super cool about Elspeth Tirel is her “ultimate” ability. It is not only awesome, but mono-awesome. You can jump Elspeth to six loyalty on turn five (with or without profit) then use her as an improved Nevinyrral’s Disk on turn six. Elspeth will drop down to one loyalty, but unlike the other Planeswalkers that may have been in play — yes, Elspeth Tirel is a Planeswalker-slayer among other gas), she will stick around. In addition, in a protracted game where you are using her tokens production ability, those cats (and by “cats” I mean “Soldiers”) stick around when even mighty monsters all hop into the graveyard.
… Which brings us to her super synergy in multiples! This is kind of the coolest thing, but it takes a second before you can get there.Josh Ravitz used to tell me that people didn’t know how to play Cloudgoat Ranger, and would give all kinds of examples of how they were under-impressive with Cloudgoat Ranger when they could have been slamming for additional damage had they been a little more precise in their play, given multiple copies. Elspeth Tirel has a similar, subtle, clause.Imagine you have a turn five Elspeth Tirel. You immediately go from four loyalty to two loyalty to deploy three Soldier tokens.
You block, whatever (or maybe you don’t have to, I don’t know what the battlefield looks like). You use Elspeth Tirel‘s [-2] a second time and now you have six or however many Soldiers up in that.
Now you run out your second copy of Elspeth Tirel! The first one went bye-bye because you took her from four to two to nil with two activations. Your second Elspeth Tirel, piggybacking the token production of the first one makes six life, jumps to six loyalty, and is surrounded by barns.
Now on turn seven, you can blow up the world leaving not only Elspeth Tirel as the only significant miser on the battlefield, but however many Soldier tokens as well! Talk about teamwork!
What should seem obvious is that if Elspeth Tirel is good enough, she might be good enough as a four-of at the five — something very unusual for five mana Planeswalkers to date — simply because she actually rocks in multiples.
Where can I see this fitting in?
Elspeth Tirel can act as a solo Swiss Army Knife-style threat, similar to Elspeth, Knight-Errant. She does everything… Protects herself (or other Planeswalkers) not unlike Gideon Jura, produces ways to win while generating value, and manages the battlefield a la Akroma’s Vengeance.
In effect, Elspeth Tirel can be the only threat in your deck if you so wish (her [-5] ability actually Annihilates the bejeezus out of defensive permanents like Circle of Protection: White (or whatever theoretically problematic proxy you will lay there).
Or, she can team up with cards like Conqueror’s Pledge for more immediate value on her [+2]. In effect, she can be good in any kind of deck that can afford to cast her. I would not expect Elspeth Tirel to find mass adoption in White Weenie type decks (as Elspeth, Knight-Errant did), but I also wouldn’t be too surprised to see her in creature decks. After all, the previous Elspeth was an “obviously offensive” type Planeswalker, but was successful in every strategy from Mythic (mono-creatures) to U/W Control (mono-defensive). Even combo decks used Elspeth, Knight-Errant; for example Polymorph variants that used her as a non-creature card source of Polymorph fodder.
For once, answering this actually requires more than two words. Elspeth Tirel is kind of like a Wild Mongrel. In some decks she will act as a centerpiece, a four-of finisher; in other decks she will be a high level role player, acting as a sweeper that has other potential applications (sort of both the Icy Manipulator and Wrath of God in Mike Donais’s Swords to Plowshares-less Canadian National Championship deck). It is probably not difficult to imagine decks that can’t beat Elspeth (kind of like decks that can’t beat Gideon Jura, but worse). You can milk and milk with the tokens and life gain; fire off the Nevinyrral’s Disk if and only if you are actually falling behind, but otherwise make the other guy’s life miserable.
And of course, her [-5] craps all over other Planeswalkers, making Elspeth potentially invaluable in the post-Bloodbraid Elf world.
So writing Restaurant Kryptonite the other night… I didn’t realize it until much later but I missed one of the most potent ingredients in the michaelj ingredients vulnerabilities list. Perhaps the most potent non-prime beef ingredient of them all!
Pecans.
Yes, dear readers, delicious pecans.
I love pecans. The are my number one nut. My dad and sister and wife like these ludicrous nuts such as almonds. But to me, pecans are the holy grail of nuts. Perfect pecans are crisp, Snap like a Bruce Lee roundhouse, and make otherwise excellent desserts absolutely perfect. There is nothing like dropping crumbled pecans on rice pudding, ice cream, whatever.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
Given my new project Flores Rewards it is probably not a surprise to you that I am a rewards program junkie. I have carried an AmEx for the last ten years even though it costs a couple of hundred dollars a year (and other credit cards literally chase you to be their customer). I love rewards. I love points. Ultimately I love awesome free stuff.
Here are all the random rewards cards I carry around all day:
First Column (treats) – Tasti D-Lite (and two old Tasti D-Lite punch cards from individual locations), Crumbs coffee card, Tim Horton
Second Column (coffee) – Two Whole Foods cards, Joe, Starbucks Gold
Third Column (mostly lunch) – ‘wichCraft, Baja Fresh, Hale and Hearty Soup, Go Go Curry (lucky curry), Food Merchant
Basically  I figure you gotta eat (or drink coffee, or whatever), so you might as well pick an option that has a great rewards program.
Anyway, for the first time in my adult life I have been trying to stick by a budget in a specific and concerted fashion. Since 1999 I have been “paying myself” $100 in “fuck you” money [cash] that I spent pretty much on whatever (mostly food, coffee, treats).
Katherine asked me to try to limit myself to $50 in “lunch money” per week as an effort in discipline.
I was initially apprehensive given that:
I make much more money now than I did when I was, you know, 23.
Money is worth less than it was 11 years ago.
Like basically everyone, I am resistant to change when it affects my immediate comfort.
I realized pretty quickly, though, that I was blowing about $6 a day in iced coffees from Crumbs and that represented approximately $30 of the $50 delta. Therefore in an effort to conduct towards marital bliss, I never realized…
… I was only one punch away from my free medium iced coffee / free Crumbs cupcake.
So I sauntered into Crumbs to get my final punch, and what did I see but…
Chocoalte Pecan Pie!
What the!?!
The cruel, cruel irony is that I forced the girl at the Crumbs counter to describe for me the constitution of this exercise in fudge-y pecan wonderment. I cannot honestly tell you what she told me. It was like that Tom Cruise movie about making less money or whatever.
“You had me at ‘Hello.'”
I did not get the Chocolate Pecan Pie cupcake. That would entail paying for it. I would not pay until much later.
First I had to run this:
Ding!
So I got my final punch so that I could shotgun / topdeck / mise the Chocolate Pecan Pie cupcake the next day.
I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I like anything pecan basically. Examples would be choosing pecan-based extra toppings at toppings bars, erring on pecan-ish flavors in selections of coffee, ice cream (for example butter pecan), whatever. So the combination of pecans + Crumbs cupcakes was an easy decision for me.
How can I describe this product?
The Chocolate Pecan Pie cupcake is essentially the Vitamin Water of ingredient marketing-driven decadence. There is like a nickel’s worth of pecans sprinkled up top, and no pie at all. It is a chocolate base cupcake, but has a deep fudge filling. Initially I was going to take pictures of a bisected baked good, but both the chocolate cake and the fudge infusion share a kind of muddy midnight color; differentiating one from the other by sight was next to impossible when it was a few inches from my face… The structuralism was all in taste and texture. Thumbs up to both.
And as for paying later? I have become un-used to eating the random snacks all week that constituted the $50 “fuck you” money that I no longer get to walk around with. A woman at work even asked me if I am losing weight this week! As such, I was not prepared for the 540 calorie yum yum bomb that I dropped into my belly. I felt terrible for the rest of the day. I would gladly do it again.
So.
Did I mention I love rewards programs? It is not so much that I am “cheap” but that I love shenanigans. Every time I get that little punch in the card that brings me 8% or whatever closer to a free $7 salad I feel like I am pulling one over on The Man, that I am picking the pocket of some wealthy scumbag CEO [that I someday want to grow up to be].
That is why I made Flores Rewards for you! Get ready for a heady combination of shenanigans, free stuff, and fun!
I still owe cake. I am going to research this week if they will make the Chocolate Pecan Pie cupcake into, I dunno, some kind of gigantic forty-person mutant cupcake Forbidden Dance. If so, I will soon no longer owe cake.
The main difference between the deck that I played and the one that Conrad used to make the US National Team is the presence of Joraga Treespeaker in the main. If you don’t know the story, I was lamenting the randomness of Ramp mirrors. It seemed that if one player got two accelerators and the other only one, then the one with two would always win. It had very little to do with play skill.
I was pretty confused. I wasn’t really questioning the master of mana acceleration when I asked why they would want to play Birds of Paradise.
“If the limiting factor is acceleration, why not add a kind of acceleration that not only can they not interact with (the Valakut decks are going to take out their Lightning Bolts, which don’t do anything), but that can allow you to break serve? I mean you will be able to play Cultivate on the second turn!”
I ended up having dinner with Conrad the night before Nationals and told him about breaking serve with Joraga Treespeaker. He went crazy and added it to his sideboard as a “Sol Ring”. I didn’t take credit for the one drop tech for very long, and quickly owned up that I had gotten the idea from Zvi. Anyway, Joraga Treespeaker ended up being an All-Star for Conrad and he mentioned to me after the tournament he would consider playing it main deck, over the weaker cards.
I quickly evaluated that I wanted all four copies of All Is Dust, and Conrad told me he wanted another Fog given how half the decks in the metagame only attack. So that’s how I came to the above deck list.
Conrad explained how even though the Mono-Green deck is weaker than the Valakut Ramp decks in terms of being Primeval Titan decks, it is a stronger Summoning Trap deck. Watching him play over the course of the National Championships, I could see how strategically he played the deck. He used the Primeval Titan as a toolbox rather than just a mallet. Defensive Primeval Titan; grinding Primeval Titan; Mjolnir-to-the-skull Primeval Titan, too, make no mistake… But more than the superficial superstar.
So how did I do?
Unfortunately, the Mono-Green Ramp deck did not perform as well as the other decks I liked this run.
I played it in eight MTGO queues (the last four being just tonight), and went 1-7.
The Mono-Green mirror was basically an abombination. I had a Joraga Treespeaker in my opener in the first, but my only Green source was Khalni Garden, so I ended up way off curve. He was on the play anyway and drew multiple awesome threats; I had a Primeval Titan but was way behind to his better acceleration draw-into-Primeval Titan and opted for a Hail Mary Summoning Trap to try to mug the Titan and get back in the game.
In the second game I ramped to third turn Summoning Trap… and whiffed. Just that kind of match.
I felt like Soul Sisters should be a good matchup. The first match I lost to a mis-click, but the deck just never came out for me. I was always just a little bit shy in both matches. Other than the mis-click I felt like I was managing my resources correctly but the dominoes just didn’t line up. For instance over the three games of the first match I never saw even one All Is Dust; in the second I drew all four All Is Dust in Game One and two in Game Two (sadly a mulligan to five)… but stalled just under its cost both times around (Soul Sisters seems pretty soft to All Is Dust).
I guess that is just the problem with Ramp decks in general. Your cards are so expensive that you can lose very thin margin games on just getting to an Incredible amount of mana when you need low Amazing, or maybe Monstrous.
The Fogs were good. They bought time against the U/G deck’s Eldrazi Monument and Overrun, but again, I was just shy of what I needed cards and mana-wise.
Of course it could just be me.
Before finishing this blog post I decided to play a round with Joshua Utter-Leyton’s Mythic Conscription deck (my MTGO file for that deck is “Utter Beatings”). In the first game I played Noble Hierarch; Lotus Cobra + Noble Hierarch; third turn kill. He got the first Linvala, Keeper of Silence in Game Two, and by the time I played mine he had already disrupted me enough with his Cunning Sparkmage that I couldn’t Recover. With one or two more mana I would have flat-out won, but he had two Fauna Shamans running, after all; in the third, I played a Noble Hierarch into a Knight of the Reliquary; into third turn Linvala; into Elspeth, Knight-Errant.
You know, average draw.
Or… Nope, not just me.
This isn’t an indictment of Primeval Titan; that card is a game changer that allowed the Green decks to build in a less profligate fashion. But I don’t really know what to say… It hasn’t been performing on the same level as Eldrazi Conscription.
Yesterday we chatted a bit about my post-Nationals enthusiasm RE: Utter-Leyton’s Mythic Conscription deck. However I was very excited and showed interest in three different decks that came out of that tournament. I felt Mythic Conscription was the strongest (especially after playing all of them), but it wasn’t the first I tried.
Teen Heartthrob Gavin Verhey (and my co-conspirator at new project http://FloresRewards.com) sent me his Soul Sisters deck list. As you probably know, Gavin finished Top 32 at US Nationals with Soul Sisters elevating his life total turn after turn… Better yet, he had some sideboard tech for the inevitable, impending, “shiny new deck” mirror matches: Felidar Sovereign.
“I think you just want to get into the position where you play Sovereign and hold two Brave the Elements. I don’t think you will be able to race very often… but we never tested it.” -Gavin
I cut one Celestial Purge, the Sun Titan, and the War Priest of Thune from Gavin’s original deck list. My reasons were basically that the deck is already hard against Red Deck and Jund (ergo less necessity for Celestial Purge, even if it is better than Oblivion Ring against Pyromancer Ascension); Sun Titan is whatever… I don’t know when I would play it, really; and War Priest of Thune — while a beating in decks that can actually clock Pyromancer — primarily gains value only against monkeybrains when you are presenting a sad 10+ turn clock.
So how did I run?
I played Soul Sisters in eight tournaments over about two days. These were the results:
Jund – Won flip, won match; +10 points
Mythic Conscription – Lost flip, lost match; -8 points
Mythic Conscription (same guy) – lost flip, won match; +8 points
G/R – lost flip, lost match; -10 points
Naya Fauna Shaman – lost flip, lost match; -8 points
RDW – lost flip, won match; +6 points
Four-color Ramp – won match; +6 points
Jund -lost flip, lost match; -10 points
Basically I ended up dead even, and down a couple of points. I know that MTGO points are not really indicative of anything (heck, they aren’t even public) but I have a personal goal of attaining and maintaining a 1900+ rating on MTGO. I have read this is the rough equivalent of Pro-level execution, and that seems as fine a goal as any… But of course experimentation with decks rather than a single-minded focus to maximize points is at odds with that goal. Clearly my performance with Gavin’s Soul Sisters is nowhere near my post-Nationals performance with Mythic Conscription (or, for that matter, my performance levels with Mono-White Eldrazi, Esper, or Pyromancer Ascension… the decks I liked coming into Nationals).
So what happened?
My opening match with Soul Sisters was a classic case of Exhaustion and profitable trading. My Jund opponent was able to deal with most everything, but I always netted something along the way. Game Two I lost to three Jund Charms (basically a Wrath of God for your guys but not his Putrid Leeches)… but the match in three more or less went according to book.
I split matches with Mythic Conscription (same guy). My only notes for this one are “same guy” in the second row; ha. I remember the second match just trying to Overwhelm him with the grind. Everything I did was more value (generally life) and he had to respect my little Ajani’s Pridemate. Calls could be close but I remained outside of Sovereigns of Lost Alara range… at least most of the time.
The first time around I remember being completely out-classed. Soul Sisters is best of breed when everything is going according to the Cliff’s Notes… Serra Ascendant is Baneslayer Angel; Ajani’s Pridemate is Tarmogoyf; so on, so forth. But when you are one square peg out of a round hole  you can be completely dominated by the Mythic Rares in a Conscription deck. All of his cards represent so much mana, so much incremental cardboard, it can he hard for the little White men to compete.
The G/R deck I wasn’t pleased to lose to; not at all. I was basically manascrewed both games, and he got two if not three Cunning Sparkmages; it’s not like I was planning to roll over to a Nest Invader.
The Naya Fauna Shaman matchup was extremely frustrating. I was again dominated by Cunning Sparkmages in the first game but had Linvala in the subsequent ones. Linvala is a house against a deck that relies heavily on Knight of the Reliquary, Noble Hierarch, &c… Or at least it is supposed to be. In the third game he just had some Knights and drew a ton of dual lands to make them big. The problem was that even though he was locked out of Cunning Sparkmage, he had Basilisk Collar and Knight of the Reliquary was so big he could keep pace with my lifegain. Late in the game he got the Stoneforge Mystic and applied a second Basilisk Collar to a second Knight of the Reliquary and eventually bowled over the so-called “race” we were in, eventually going completely over the top. I don’t know what I could really have done better… My deck was executing, I got my sideboard card, and he still beat me, and with his third-string plan.
The RDW match was probably my favorite of the set. He revealed a Kor Firewalker with Goblin Guide on the second turn and packed on the spot. Moral victory!
No clue how I beat the four-color Ramp deck. His crushed me Game One and also had everything… which is unsurprising four a four-color deck that can cast every super expensive (as in secondary market value) spell. But what can I say? Sometimes Ajani’s Pridemate is just bigger than Primeval Titan. Too bad.
Unfortunately we finished the set with a loss to Jund. This was another case of just being out-classed on power level and card versatility.
Post Script
One of the reasons I was interested in this deck at this stage is that I was looking ahead to the TCGPlayer.com $5K tournaments here in New York City come October. Mythic Conscription is obviously going to lose its current flair with the disappearance of Sovereigns of Lost Alara (though it is possible that a Planeswalker-heavy classic Baneslayer Angel build might be just fine); I was just looking for a way to get a jump on the playtest process.
I failed to win all my good matchups, and even if I stole the Ramp match, I don’t think that I was really well positioned in the queues. For example, I was all excited to run out Felidar Sovereign tech, and… No mirror matches.
If there is one thing that I would note it is that I never felt like I had enough land. Gavin’s deck plays only 23 lands, but when I played against Tom Ross’s build at US Nationals, it always seemed like it had an unending amount of land for a deck so deep in one-drops. Just something to think about: Remember, Conrad Kolos’s deck from the all-Jund Pro Tour had about a billion lands, and still mono-one-drops.
Good luck to my peeps in Amsterdamn; bad luck to not my peeps.
You might not know this about me, but I keep fastidious records on my MTGO tournament play statistics.
That is how I know what decks are good!
So after coming back from US Nationals last week, I was very excited to try out some of the breakout decks from that tournament.
Specifically, I looked at three decks:
Mono-G Ramp, a la new TCGPlayer columnist Conrad Kolos
Soul Sisters – in particular because teen heartthrob Gavin Verhey clued me in on the mirror match sideboarding tech
Mythic Conscription because Utter-Leyton’s deck looked so sick I had to take a personal day at the mere prospect of playing it.
Overall, the most impressive deck of the three was Mythic Conscription. I will detail the other two (less exciting) decks [or my experiences with them, anyway] in blog posts later in the week (probably), but for now I wanted to talk about Utter-Leyton’s Conscription deck.
I wrote a lot of my ideas about this deck in last week’s edition of Top Decks. Those didn’t really change based on my playing the deck. In fact my respect for the version just increased.
Overall I was enchanted my the success of such a no-frills deck. I had been mesmerized by all these Fauna Shamans and Squadron Hawk engines and only one copy of Eldrazi Conscription, loading up on Primeval Titans, and so on. But Utter-Leyton’s deck bucked recent trends, uncompromising in its refusal to, you know, compromise. Great deck, and worthy of the very deserving champion.
The card a lot of people have pointed out in this deck is Explore.
I didn’t really know what to make of it. Yes, there were times when I had a Lotus Cobra followed by a third turn Explore and things went absolutely bananas… But when I was reaching for sideboard slots, this was also always the first card I considered cutting (and to be honest, I won an awful lot of matches with one Explore in my deck!) Sorry, ffej 🙁
Match rundown:
Soul Sisters – Won flip, lost match; -9 points
R/G Valakut – Won flip, won match; +10 points
White Weene (regular, not Soul Sisters) – Won flip, won match +7 points
B/G Ramp – Lost flip, won match; +9 points
B/G Ramp (same deck) – Lost flip, won match; +8 points
Mono-Green Valakut Ramp – Won match; +6 points
Mythic Conscription – Won match; +7 points
Overall, 6-1; +38 points
I try to keep track of whether or not I win the flip but I only remember about 2/3 of the time; I don’t know if it is useful to keep track of this if you don’t remember 100% of the time. As you can see over the first seven matches I played with Utter-Leyton’s Mythic Conscription deck I only remembered to record this 5/7 times.
Regardless, the performance was pretty wicked — 6-1 — and the points more than made up for my performance with Soul Sisters, Mono-Green Ramp, et and cetera.
At this point Utter-Leyton’s Mythic Conscription is my best win percentage of any deck over the 166 lines of my spreadsheet for the current Standard format! Huzzah!
A few months ago I wrote about the so-called Danger of Eldazi Conscription. Some paps on Twitter pointed out that the approach I suggested in this blog post might not be optimal for fighting Mythic Conscription decks. For example, given all the Lotus Cobra mana-making gas in a Mythic Conscription deck, it is possible that the opponent might just play an Eldrazi Conscription that he draws.
But when you do get the Conscription combo… it is, as they said back in the 1990s, some good.
I don’t remember how I lost the Soul Sisters matchup… As a Soul Sisters player in different points in the post-Nationals testing process, I did a fair amount of losing to decks with Forest / Noble Hierarch.
Most of the other matchups I won with a combination of card quality, tactically devastating Mana Leaks, Planeswalkers, Sovereigns of Lost Alara, and math.
To wit:
Card quality – Have youseen the awesome sauce of cards in this deck? The moron threat is Jace, the Mind Sculptor. A lot of games your opponent is playing clunky style and you are doing three or four different insane things. For example you play out a turn one Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch, a second turn Lotus Cobra, and like 100 things on turn three thanks to Explore and two copies of Misty Rainforest or Verdant Catacombs.
Tactically devastati Mana Leaks – I am the kind of magician who runs out a Mana Leak basically whenever I have two mana, but some Mana Leaks are made differently from others. For example you Crash with a small animal after powering out Sovereigns of Lost Alara, but seem otherwise tapped out. Your opponent goes for his Big Play (â„¢) in response and you pop off your Knight of the Reliquary with the best two drop ever printed in play. Oh no, you hear the opponent mouth. That’s right, buddy; you’ve been swindled. Mana Leak.
Planeswalkers – I initially found it weird that so many of the threats in this deck are Planeswalkers (I originally considered Jace a non-strategic card that wes mostly good at suppressing opposing copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor), but they were okay. Soldier production on the part of Elspeth, Knight-Errant is a little odd against Soul Sisters, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. That said, it was pretty fun to make my Soul Sisters opponent pick up Ajani’s Pridemate on six consecutive turns, especially as it was always bigger than a 3/3 🙂
Sovereigns of Lost Alara – Playing this version of this deck I often felt like Diamond Dallas Page in the late 1990s… Biding my time, looking for my spot, trying to stick my Diamond Cutter. In this deck, your Diamond Cutter is actually connecting with Eldrazi Conscriptiontwice. Like sometimes one big hit will not be enough because you don’t get the Annihilator benefit and they will attack you to death on the bounce back. Or you might think you have an open but you can smell the Path to Exile a mile away. That is when you have to be clever.
Math – I found Mythic Conscription to be surprisingly cerebral to play. Yes, there are games when it is reminiscent of Critical Mass. Namely you play the “U/W Control” game of Jace, the Mind Sculptor + Counterspells even better than U/W does because you can get your mainline plan online a turn faster with Birds of Paradise, Lotus Cobra, or Noble Hierarch; that’s kind of fun. But the really rewarding games are the multi-turn offenses, I think. Turbo out Elspeth, Knight-Errant, go to the air for about 4-5 points, set up Sovereigns of Lost Alara + Exalted + Elspeth evasion for a lethal strike the next turn. You know, math.
Approach:
Mythic Conscription exemplifies the decks of the Tier One metagame. Basically this is all really good cards laced together by some mana acceleration (and some of those cards are themselves really good cards) and Mana Leaks. Therefore who’s the beatdown equations occur a little bit differently than they do in traditional Magic. Whether you are the beatdown or the control is less a matter of what deck you are playing against than the circumstances surrounding the cards you draw. So if you draw Birds of Paradise, Knight of the Reliquary, Lotus Cobra, and Sovereigns of Lost Alara… All things held equal you are probably going to try to cram Sovereigns of Lost Alara down the opponent’s throat, possibly defending with the Knight. If you draw Birds of Paradise, Jace the Mind Sculptor, and Mana Leak, you are probably going to play a “U/W Control” type game… and it doesn’t matter than you were paired against what should nominally be the “control” deck in both cases.
I played against a mess of decks with Primeval Titans. My approach there was largely borrowed from Zvi Mowshowitz. Basically he has a six and I have a six. I can disrupt his ability to accelerate to six… It is a lot harder for him to do the same. If his six hits, I might be annoyed. If my six hits, he gets crushed for 11+ damage in a single turn. If that damage is coming from a Birds of Paradise, it might be tantamount to dying on the spot. Good matchup, as far as I can tell.
The one thing I never got was when to play Jace’s Ingenuity.
As you can see from the tournament statistics, I played against ramp decks a couple of times; I often found myself siding Jace’s Ingenuity in against those, especially when I was going to drop a copy or two of my Planeswalkers. I often felt I’d rather have a 3/2/2 split of Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Jace’s Ingenuity; and Elspeth, Knight-Errant against decks that couldn’t deuce my Planeswalkers with their own copies, but no idea if that plan would be co-signed by the man who took all the names with this deck.
I held back on writing this blog post (my Mythic Conscription matches all took place around 8/26) because of my article on TCGPlayer today. I wrote about how Pyromancer Ascension was the best deck — and gave a lot of really good reasons that I certainly believed in at the time — and didn’t want to conflict with that article before it came out. I still think my Pyromancer Ascension choice was fine (and would probably play my same 75 again), but the solid results from even seven matches with Utter-Leyton’s Mythic Conscription certainly impressed me.
LOVE
MIKE
PS – In the unlikely case that you haven’t seen or heard about Flores Rewards, check out this video. I think you will like it 🙂
You can also check out the new Flores Rewards blog at — you guessed it — http://FloresRewards.com!
A little over a year ago I was very involved in a local chapter of Toastmasters.
Toastmasters is an organization that helps people of all walks of life with their oral verbal communication skills. For example our chapter had a couple of life coaches, some moms, immigrants who needed to improve their confidence with English, an iPhone app developer, a highly successful CEO entrepeneur, and the CFO of a large public company… all sponsored by some huge engineering firm.
Anyway, one of the activities at Toastmasters involves pulling quotes out of a box and spontaneously jawing about whatever is on a card for about three minutes. I volunteered to moderate this activity one week, and because I can’t do anything the regular way, instead of using the proscribed plastic box with the canned — literally canned (“boxed” really) — cards, I made my own… entirely from headlines from America’s Finest News Source.
I also hand-wrote the headlines on the backs of my business cards, so that whenever someone pulled one, they were forced to topdeck one of michaelj’s cards (that’s how I roll).
Because that’s how I roll.
People didn’t get what America’s Finest News Source was / is from the outset, and were reading the headlines straight (maybe they were just not as madly creative as I was / am). Anyway, this is one of the headlines I used:
You can click the above image if you actually want to jump over to The Onion.
“Area Woman Will Eat Anything With Tuscan in Name”
Come on!
That’s a softball!
Anyway, I was thinking about this… Of course it’s hilarious to wag your finger at / turn your nose up to birds who order things with “Tuscan” in the name, but aren’t we vulnerable to the exact same kinds of behavior? I know I am.
Here is a list of five ingredients that I absolutely fall over backward for every time I see them in a menu.
#5 Pepper / Chiles / Chipotle
Peppers — and extensions and / or specific iterations of peppers — are like the Made to Stick of food preparation. If you staple a pepper onto something where it doesn’t seem like it belongs… Bingo, ya got me.
For example, chile rubbed… anything.
Or Jacques Torres Wicked line (hot chocolate and / or dark chocolate solitaires and / or candy bars) that have ancho and chipotle peppers in them. “Are you ready to be naughty?”
I once ordered a Wicked Peanut Butter* Mocha at Jacques Torres and every man in the line immediately changed his order to match.
“Is that good?”
“Only if you like flavors.”
I think my attraction to peppers stems from some desire for my food to have taste. I mean if you take a perfectly good whatever and then kick it up a notch… You grok, no?
#4 Bacon
In this case I am basically a one-man extension of the Top Chef judging panel. Add bacon, win.
I mean I love bacon so much — probably not a surprise.
I will often switch my order preference from something on the menu to something else simply because the something else comes with bacon automatically; conversely, if you can add bacon for $1.00 or whatever, I am running sick ads. Admit it, you would too.
#3 Peanut Butter
Peanut butter is my literal restaurant kryptonite. If there is something peanut butter on the menu, I just immediately order / add that thing. Part of my obsession with Tasti** the past couple of months comes from frequenting specific branches that have peanut butter sauces and / or sundaes on the menu. This is kind of weird insofar that I love nuts and peanuts are not even close to the top of my list of nuts; but add peanut butter to an otherwise reasonable menu option, and I will usually topdeck that.
#2 Garlic
Garlic is a transformational ingredient.
Like I was walking down the street in Minneapolis last week and overheard two kids talking about the steal they got on French Fries. They were $9 … but for a “big plate” of garlic French Fries. Do you know how much a potato costs? I don’t know if $9 is a reasonable price for a sliced up, deep fried, potato even in a top flight steak house… But add the word “garlic” to the name? All of a sudden you dress it up like a big blue ribbon on gigantic, recently hosed-off town sow.
Ta-da!
#1 Rib-eye
These six letters, lined up in this particular order, are a combination of yellow, wood, kryptonite, lead, and mercy. Basically any weakness any superhero can have, that is what rib-eye is to me.
I was recently at an awesome restaurant with my wife, and she took recommendations from the waiter. He suggested some kind of curry fish (typically curry would fall under the “pepper” category, and get a certain amount of extra ups from YT in terms of predilection to order). However there was rib-eye on the menu.
This was not a restaurant known for steaks. They were known for their insane view of the city (and it was in fact superb), but according to my wife, the curry whatever kind of fish was one of the best meals she had ever eaten. I, on the other hand, got a thoroughly mediocre steak (probably not even prime).
I would order the rib-eye again; every time. That is because rib-eye is a combination of yellow, wood, kryptonite, lead, and mercy; any weakness any superhero has, that is what rib-eye is to me.
Can you imagine what would happen if there were, say, a garlic rib-eye on the menu? They actually have that at Plataforma.
* Jacques Torres peanut butter is actually “European” and full of hazlenuts. Mise.
** Speaking of Tasti, we are about to bust out some great content for Flores Rewards. Go check out the still in utero http://FloresRewards.com now!
