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Is this card for real? Here comes Alara Reborn rare, Thought Hemorrhage!

Aesthetics:
I had to read this one about twenty times.

Then I went back and looked up Cranial Extraction to make sure I was reading it right. In fact for a Resident Genius I can be a little slow on the uptake; that is, this is what my computer screen looked like at one point:

So yes, this is basically a Cranial Extraction that can potentially ka-blammo the opponent, a kind of a not-great Blood Oath grafted onto essentially the classic Cranial Extraction.

Longtime readers know that when Cranial Extraction was legal in Standard I played it very heavily; to be fair, I played it so commonly in both Standard and Extended that Two-Headed Giant teammate Steve Sadin used to express concern whenever I didn’t have three Cranial Extractions in a presented deck list. Some of my best decks including Kuroda-style Red and Jushi Blue packed three Cranial Extractions in the sideboard each.

Thought Hemorrhage, when it hits, is at least potentially more powerful than Cranial Extraction. It is essentially Cranial Extraction plus. So why will Thought Hemorrhage have such a less dramatic effect on the Standard metagame when it hits?

Let’s go back to those two decks we mentioned a moment ago…

Kuroda-style Red, played by Josh Ravitz; Top 8 2005 US National Championship

4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Solemn Simulacrum
4 Wayfarer’s Bauble

4 Arc-Slogger
3 Beacon of Destruction
4 Magma Jet
4 Molten Rain
4 Pulse of the Forge
4 Shrapnel Blast
1 Sowing Salt

4 Blinkmoth Nexus
15 Mountain
1 Swamp
4 Tendo Ice Bridge

sideboard:
4 Culling Scales
3 Cranial Extraction
4 Fireball
1 Sowing Salt
3 Boseiju, Who Shelters All

Jushi Blue, played by Julian Levin; 2005 New York State Champion

4 Boomerang
3 Disrupting Shoal
4 Hinder
4 Jushi Apprentice
3 Keiga, the Tide Star
4 Mana Leak
3 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
4 Remand
2 Rewind
4 Threads of Disloyalty

2 Dimir Aqueduct
10 Island
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
4 Quicksand
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
4 Watery Grave

sideboard:
3 Cranial Extraction
2 Dimir Aqueduct
4 Drift of Phantasms
4 Execute
2 Rewind

In both cases Cranial Extraction was a Black splash in an otherwise monochromatic deck. Cranial Extraction — especially when it first hit the scene — had a very dramatic effect on the metagame, prompting Psychatog players to touch Morphling for instance, due to not just its ability to wipe out all of a control deck’s win conditions, but the ease of splashing the card.

Forget about Extended for a moment (where we have essentially a Negate / Countersquall situation); where in the modern Standard do we have a deck like a Kuroda-style Red or a Jushi Blue that can slide the Extraction into place? Surely Reflecting Pool Control can make use of this as one of many different available “powerful spells” in a deck that can play all the powerful spells in every color… But that is not the same thing as Cranial Extraction version one point oh, where the addition of a Swamp and some Tendo Ice Bridges could lopside a deck’s iffy (and most popular) pairing, or where some Watery Graves could justify tapping out one turn earlier in the mirror.

Still a card that prompted several double-takes and one trip to Gatherer… Just not the kind of card that will give every deck designer in the room pause, as did the original.

Where can I see this fitting in?
The most obvious home for Thought Hemorrhage is a multicolored control deck such as Standard Quick’N’Toast / Reflecting Pool Control, or what we typically see in Alara Block one-on-ones. Consider…

Scepter of Fugue / Resounding Wave that; untap, Thought Hemorrahage your Scepters. You might be down a card or two, but you’ve changed the tenor of a game where Scepter of Fugue is probably one of the defining threats (or pre-emptive counter-threats to be somewhat more accurate and / or chatty).

Snap Judgment Rating: Role-player (high)

LOVE
MIKE

P.S. For everyone who wants to step back in time to read about the development of great decks with three Cranial Extractions such as Playing Fair, Kuroda-style Red, Jushi Blue and others… Those and numerous other triumphs of the pre-Clark Flores Apprentice Program can be found in Deckade, triumphantly back in print over at Top8Magic!

All Alara Reborn

I was recently inspired by Brian Kibler’s Pro Tour Honolulu qualification with his “Cabal Interrogator” deck.

When Brian told me he qualified, that is what he told me he qualified with. I think it took me a few days to discover that he had actually just played a templated Loam deck, and that the Cabal Interrogators were in his sideboard. Details.

The reason is that as deck designers, we are very interested in whatever clever thing we can point at to show how, you know, clever and / or different we are. Really! I know it is difficult to believe. Some of us play with four Umezawa’s Jittes instead of three and call ourselves geniuses (and / or are voted geniuses into the Magic Invitational), for example.

The problem with these cards is that for every unique and shining gem, you usually have four or five stinkers, ergo the fine line between tech and jank.

In this spirit Five with Flores brings you five cards that have made me feel clever:

1. Card: Meddle
   Deck: Flying Beatdown
   Story: Meddle was a medium-inflexible if obviously trish-advantageous two-for-one, and I have always been a sucker for a two-for-one. Ergo, Meddle, sticking out like a sore thumb. In the first appearance of the wildly popular Penn Flying Beatdown, altran defeated Jon Finkel at a Gray Matter $1,000 tournament in probably no part due to pointing a Meddle at a “bolt” (Incinerate?) Jon had intended for Albert’s Man-o’-War at Finkel’s Jackal Pup. In a commensurate display of maturity, I danced around the tournament area yelling “Finkel lost to the Flores card!”

   In a wild turn of events (for any of you who followed that deck list link)… There isn’t even a Meddle in the Decks to Beat published version of Flying Beatdown! I guess by then I had mentally relegated it to Jank, in favor of Honorable Passage.

2. Card: Unforge
   Deck: Kuroda-Style Red
   Story: You probably know from the more famous version of Kuroda-style Red that we eventually cut Unforge; however Regionals-era I was stuck with them. And by “stuck” I mean I played them. Like four. You see I got spooked into thinking due to the renaissance of Jamie Wakefield (“Joshie Green”) at the time that any and all would be packing Troll Ascetics and equipment at Regionals, and Jamie kept telling me that my deck couldn’t beat his deck. Well I’ll show him, I thought, and figured out how to win. And by “figured out” I mean I was dealt Unforge tech by Brian David-Marshall and / or Seth Burn. In actuality the real gold of this deck was the Culling Scales technology that proved unbeatable at Nationals for especially the then-popular White Weenie deck. However I soldiered into Regionals with Unforges; they came up once. Yes I killed a Troll Ascetic (the big selling point was that the opponent would typically tap out to equip an Ascetic). Lost anyway, game and match.
3. Card: Gnarled Mass
   Deck: Critical Mass
   Story: It’s been like four years so now I am comfortable coming out with the truth. We’re all friends here. The Masses weren’t that Critical. Certainly the idea of Gnarled Mass was groundbreaking. Sadin especially latched onto them like they were Blake Lively’s boobies. They were good and helped out in the Black and White matchups but Steve for some reason kept siding them in and siding Keiga out in like every matchup “for tempo” (you got me — kid won a Grand Prix). But right before the PTQ I cut the one I had main deck for the Enlightened Bushi when Josh pointed out that one kills North Tree and the other one doesn’t; by the Grand Prix Gerard was up to two Isaos main deck! But we still had four “critical” Gnarled Masses in the sideboard up to the morning of the PTQ… half of which were culled before opening bell for Consuming Vortex. I maintained at the time that the cards were indistinguishable because they were both “good against beatdown” when in fact I won my match against Tim Gillam for the slot purely by top decking Consuming Vortex when I would have just died to his 5/5 flying the next turn had it been a 3/3 Spirit.
4. Card: Annex
   Deck: URzaTron
   Story: Let’s dial it back to the last Pro Tour Honolulu. Osyp’s URzaTron deck… I get a lot of credit for this deck (most of it self-propelled) but the real process was me making a bunch of bad decks and Osyp and Josh testing everything… Turns out the ‘Tron was actually pretty good. The most defining card in the sideboard (which was arguably the best part of the deck, and mostly Osyp’s) was Giant Solifuge, which was borrowed from a Red Deck I was high on at the end of testing, to superb effect. However the one card I insisted would be great was Annex. You see I had this theory that we could steal other people’s ‘Tron parts. It would be bonzer! The Annexes mostly worked out for Osyp. He looked great all tournament of course. Josh missed Day Two by taking a Mountain (right play I believe) when his opponent’s kill card was Maga (could have ended it right there by swiping Swamp, which was also on board). Eugene Harvey, who also played the deck but not to Osyp’s success, told me he thought that the Annexes were flat out bad, unplayable on the draw, and that he never wanted more than two in his deck.

   Oh well.

   Did I mention I single-handedly designed this awesome URzaTron deck that was the only undefeated Day One deck of the last Pro Tour Honolulu? It was really great and I made it all by myself. If I had been qualified I probably would have done even better than Osyp, but he did okay I guess.

5. Card: Muse Vessel
   Deck: Charleston AngelFire
   Story: To this day I maintain I was very happy with my Muse Vessels. I won almost every match I sided them in. That said, blame Brian Weissman. Brian told me he really liked them in his update to The Deck (Standard) and I mean COME ON, it’s Brian Weissman! So when we were working on Block (where Muse Vessel was legal) I decided that we should play all four because I had the inside track Weissman tech, and most teams would probably be stupid and not play any Muse Vessels at all, let alone all four (and for a while I insisted we play all four main because they were obviously so good). By the way not even my teammates or intimate playtest partners from that summer knew the true origin of Muse Vessel — but now you do.

   Now going into the last week of testing we had a problem that our U/R/W deck was losing to our B/W deck at about a 7-3 clip in favor of B/W in Game One despite being ahead for most of the games (this carried into the Pro Tour where I — armed with B/W — bashed basically every Angel opponent). I didn’t understand this at all because the U/R/W seemed to be so much better equipped in terms of card advantage in every way. I concluded at the end of about 30 games that I played against myself on Apprentice that U/R/W didn’t have enough “stuff” and that the card advantage and Angel-centric card advantage were going nowhere because the deck was just drawing and drawing into more draw and B/W was winning close corner games with well-placed Mortifies all all that kind of stuff. So I concluded that U/R/w needed more “stuff” … Why not the other guy’s stuff?

   The inclusion of Muse Vessel turned around the matchup to between a 6-4 and a 7-3 in favor of U/R/W, which made me happy.

   It did not however make Steve happy, and he always sided out Muse Vessel.

   Here are two points of potential embarassment: 1) Because we played two Muse Vessels main, we didn’t have room for cards like the fourth Demonfire, which probably would have pushed us from no money to the Top 4, and 2) We fundamentally misunderstood the U/R/W deck’s positioning in the control “mirrors” … It wasn’t until after the Pro Tour that we realized Steve was always winning as the beatdown and that all our Muse Vessel and Train of Thought into Swift Silence and Mimeofacture (jank I accidentally picked up from MTGO one night) was actually a colossal waste of strategy when we were winning against control with Lightning Helix to the face, mostly. The problem was that we assumed Steve would be playing against the fast deck, when he kept playing against the slowest deck. Would that we could have swapped Steve and Paul in that Pro Tour…

   Did I mention “blame Brian Weissman” yet?

I’d say “I hope you enjoyed this” … But I already know you did.

LOVE
MIKE

P.S. Speaking of enjoying reading something awesome that I wrote, there is this pretty historic Magic book name o’ Deckade that is back in print over at Top 8 Magic. If you like what you read here, the Podcasts you listen to over there, or you just want to look back at ten years of my fabulous, Magical, life – signed copies are once again available.

Buy Deckade. You know you want to.

Oh, and you’re welcome 🙂

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)…

1. 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.
2. 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!)
3. 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.
4. 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!
5. So what would have been your deck list?
   I’m glad you asked! Here it is: 

   4 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 Vortex 

   4 Blinkmoth Nexus
   2 Darksteel Citadel
   4 Great Furnace
   12 Mountain

   sb:
   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

As you know I didn’t test the Slide deck I played yesterday at all.

So I did not receive an early birthday present of a plane ticket to Pro Tour Honolulu.

I played precisely the deck I posted previously:

3 Engineered Explosives
4 Spark Spray
3 Path to Exile
3 Life from the Loam
3 Edge of Autumn
3 Lightning Rift
3 Astral Slide
2 Wrath of God

4 Kitchen Finks
2 Loxodon Hierarch
2 Cloudthresher

4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Secluded Steppe
3 Forgotten Cave
3 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Forests
2 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple Garden
1 Stomping Ground

SB:
4 Lightning Helix
3 Duegar Hedge Mage
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Plow Under
1 Eternal Witness
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Path to Exile
1 Cloudthresher

Things that I would have gotten from testing:

• Familiarity with the mana base: I made similar small mistakes throughout the day. I don’t think any of them ever affected the outcome of games, but they were still embarassing / lame. This deck has three dual lands and five basics. I kept breaking Windswept Heath during the middle turns and… (you know where this is going)
• Ability to play more quickly. Especially at the beginning of the tournament, I kept going to time (see below). Worrying about the clock definitely affected my play overall.
• Preserving my threats. A couple of times I ran into these situations where I kept Dredging my threats and then pulling useless Flagstones of Trokair with my card drawing. I’d say that this might have cost me my match with Gabe Carleton-Barnes, but I think that matchup is hopelessly difficult
• Specific knowledge. Um. Plow Under is just worse than the Eternal Witness that I cut against other Loam decks! You Plow them, they just Dredge the lands, etc. LOL

Anticlimax: I finished 5-2-1 in a PTQ that should have been nine rounds of Swiss. The draw was first round. I just didn’t play quickly enough. I was in commanding position but found myself in extra turns with a total of three damage sources left in my deck. The losses were 1) very difficult pairing, and 2) the realization of my now-justifiable fears.

Round 1: Hybrid Domain Zoo

Game One:
He started off on a 1/2 Tarmogoyf and a Kitchen Finks. I didn’t feel particularly threatened and played Astral Slide. I actually had the opportunity to Slide his ‘goyf and Path his Finks, but like I said, I didn’t feel very threatened so I let him hit me. This was partly because of his choice of land configuration: He had Overgrown Tomb, Sacred Foundry, and basic Plains in play. Instead I let him get me for four and passed to my fourth turn to play Loxodon Hierarch. He showed me Mana Tithe (+2 to ‘goyf), Steam Vents, Might of Alara, and Tribal Flames. As psulli would say “Lesson learned.”

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-3 Lightning Rift
-1 Path to Exile
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+4 Lightning Helix

Game Two:
I got a two for one, Time Walk, and three life out of Ajani Vengeant. Completely lopsided game.

Sideboarding:
-2 Ajani Vengeant
+2 Path to Exile

Game Three:
Back on the draw in Game Three, I did not feel that I could reliably crush him with Anjani Vengeant again. He had two Mana Tithes in hand at the end of Game Two, so I just wanted the fastest response cards that were the least likely to get gotten. My strategy was fine but here is a good example of lack of testing. See #3. I should have left at least one Lightning Rift in my deck. It’s slow and does nothing before middle Stage Two, but you kind of need a way to win. Ditto on Eternal Witness. He played lots of Hedge-Mages throughout Games Two and Three, and Eternal Witness would have been useful. I tried to do the math to kill him to death with Lightning Helix but he had one too many life points thanks to top decking a Kitchen Finks on turn two of five (basically the only card in his deck that would have saved him). Then he pulled Lightning Helix to stay alive anyway… This is one of those games where I was actually scouring my graveyard to see if I had a Spark Spray left 🙁

FAIL: #2 and #3

0-0-1

Round 2: Kithkin

Super nice opponent. I played next to him much of the day due to our acquiring early draws and he seemed like one of those quality people who are nice to play at tournaments while still being competitive.

Game One:
I drew nothing but Path to Exile. I don’t know how else to explain this one 🙂

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-2 Lightning Rift
-3 Path to Exile
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+4 Lightning Helix
+1 Eternal Witness

Game Two:
He had a powerful offense of Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers-boltstered beaters. I made an embarassing play of pointing Lightning Helix at a Duergar Hedge-Mage with Umezawa’s Jitte… But it was 4/4. He had a gigantic amount of damage coming every turn but I had some Kithchen Finks and Astral Slides and kept most of the hellfire off. He conceded at about 19 life when I showed him my hand, including a ton of cycling lands and a Lightning Rift, so we could finish.

Game Three:
We went to time again, but my Witness was able to Slide me a hand full of Lightning Helixes and I burned him out from double digits as the extra turns went by. We only got there because of his willingness to concede Game Two.

1-0-1

Round Three: U/G/W

I played against my friend Gabe Carleton-Barnes playing U/G/W Control (Adam Levitt’s deck… not Bant Aggro-Control). This is a miserable matchup for Slide, by the way.

Game One:
Gabe played all four Ancestral Visions, starting quite early, so he had a lot of surplus cards. Therefore he was able to mise me with three Stifles. On the first two occasions, our Finks battled and he Stifled my persist triggers. On the third, I played the “evoke Cloudthresher with Astral Slide in play” trick to run around Mana Leak but he Stifled the comes-back-into-play trigger.

Basically early on he had his first two Visions plus threats. I had some less-than-exciting plays and finally draw Life from the Loam with about 30 cards left in my deck. Then I proceeded to Dredge threats. Game switched gears and just played to deck me. He had more than enough Cryptic Commands at this point to ensure the plan.

In-between games Gabe slid me a Cloudthresher that had been removed from game by the concert of my Slide and his Stifle, preventing me from presenting 59 cards. Who does that?

Game Two:
We had basically zero percent chance of finishing three games. Didn’t matter because Gabe crushed me again. My draw was pretty slow and he used the Stifles to tempo me again. He decided to “play the beatdown” despite being the Blue deck, and that worked out for him.

1-1-1

At 1-1-1 with five rounds to go, I was pretty sure that I couldn’t make Top 8 even with five wins (this PTQ should have been nine rounds), but I didn’t have much choice but to try!

Round Four: B/G Loam

I always thought that this matchup would favor B/G Loam, but Josh had previously explained to me that it is a pseudo-mirror (especially Game One) but that you have the enchantments, which are absurd breakers. The main scary card is Worm Harvest. Basically as the game goes long they can produce a large amount of power each turn and the Slide deck has a limited number of Engineered Explosives and so on with no control about what is going to the graveyard via Dredge. That means that the matchup is essentially a long race. Can the Loxodon Hierarchs and Kitchen Finks (in conjunction with Astral Slide) race Worm Harvest? The damage going very long has to come from Lightning Rift as the Worm Harvest tokens make racing on the ground impossible.

Game One:
Went long (unsurprising). He got Loam first but didn’t do much interesting with it. He took a little damage from his lands; I managed his creatures. Eventually I stuck a Lightning Rift and raced his Worm Harvest with some wiggle room.

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-2 Path to Exile
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+1 Eternal Witness
+1 Plow Under

Game Two:
He got a very fast Loam… and completely failed to find lands with it, burning Dredges for no value. He flipped a Worm Harvest but had no lands in the graveyard, so it was doing zero. I had plenty of time to play Plow Under (which ironically “turned on” his Loam)… But he was way too far behind on board development to exploit it. I may in fact have gone ultimate with Ajani this game.

2-1-1

Round Five: B/G Loam

I played against Nicky Fiorillo, younger brother to Grand Prix and Pro Tour Limited standout John. Nicky is always a super nice opponent, and this match was no different.

Game One:
Typical long game of neither one of us doing anything… Both of us went to Loams, but I had Lightning Rift uncontested; raced the Worm Harvest.

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-2 Path to Exile
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+1 Eternal Witness
+1 Plow Under

Game Two:
Put simply I drew all six Enchantments and had two Slides in play even though Nicky dealt with the first four. I had decent Loam action for a while but Nicky got my Loams with Extirpate, putting me in a kind of topdeck mode once he started making ten Worm Harvest tokens or so.

Meanwhile I was accumulating counters on Ajani Vengeant. The game went to a point where I ripped a cycling land and had double digits worth of Worm Harvest tokens staring across the table. If I could kill all but two, I could explode Nicky’s board the next turn while holding him off with my Kitchen Finks and Hierarch (and double Slide). I ultimately cycled four or five times to hold of the attackers, the finale being an Edge of Autumn cycled off a now-dead Wooded Foothills.

3-1-1

Round Six: Slide mirror

Game One:
He got Loam going first; I Exploded his Lightning Rift before it could do any damage. We went kind of back and forth for a while, him getting a fair amount of damage in, before I could find Loam. Then I realized that all I had to do was stay alive; very slowly I started building my life total with Kitchen Finks (eventually sent to Exile), Loxodon Hierarch (same), and another Finks. It became my plan to deck him as he was three cards ahead from earlier Loam cycling; this worked out.

Sideboarding:
-2 Cloudthresher
-4 Spark Spray
-2 Wrath of God
+2 Ajani Vengeant
+3 Duergar Hedge-Mage
+1 Eternal Witness
+1 Plow Under
+1 Path to Exile

Game Two:
We didn’t really have sufficient time for a second game. So I just sideboarded super defensively: Cards to fight his Enchantments, tons of creature defense just so I couldn’t possibly get blown out in the early game. Worked out.

4-1-1

Round Seven: B/U Faeries

My previous match against Slide reminded me a lot of my Top 4 match in the New York States I won a few years ago: A control mirror match where both players are capable of ample life but where damage nevertheless matters. I won Game One with decking there, too.

But the thing I was afraid of — the reason I wanted to play an attack deck from the beginning — was that I didn’t want to collapse in the second-to-last round of Swiss when I was overall playing well. That is exactly what happened in this match.

Game One he got super lucky with a Stifle to stop me from blowing up his lethal Jitte + Spellstutter Sprite attack; my next card was Life from the Loam, which would have destroyed him.

Game Two I didn’t play optimally (mostly I sacrificed the wrong land to Edge of Autumn, pulling into a Cloudthresher with only three Green-producing lands in play, but one newly in my graveyard). Still, the matchup was good enough… Only thing is that he wouldn’t concede, even though I was going to obviously win that turn (I just wanted every second).

Game Three was one of the worst errors I’ve ever made. To make a very long story short, he drew Relic of Progenitus, but I defended Life from the Loam with a cycling land (still losing most of my cycling lands). Then he drew a second. I didn’t have much but I had Edge of Autumn. The only thing is that I brain farted and elected to SLIDE OUT HIS VENDILION CLIQUE while I was at it. Take three damage, or win the game? I lost the Loam and lost about ten turns later. Needless to say this was SO frustrating as I was poised to be in a playoff for Top 8.

4-2-1

Round Eight: Naya Hybrid Assault

His deck was pretty interesting… Wild Nacatl, Tarmogoyf, Countryside Crusher; Life from the Loam + Seismic Assault.

Game One his draw was just much better than mine, then he played Seismic Assault and Loamed me to death.

Game Two I defended his creatures pretty well and went ultimate with Ajani Vengeant.

Game Three his heart just wasn’t in it (didn’t realize he was still in prize contention). I had to play pretty well to win when I did, despite that… It was a repeat of Round Two when I used Eternal Witness to gather every possible cycling card (with double Lighting Rift in play) and Lightning Helix to burn him out.

5-2-1

It stinks that I finished one match out of elimination play, punting the Top 8 on one of my best matchups. Slide out your Vendilion Clique? Really? Still managed to get out of there with several draft sets in prize support.

Yay?

Well, that was my PTQ this time around. I like being right, but I dislike losing because of fatigue, making such a solitary match-dropping error on a knee-jerk “why not avoid three damage” mistake. I still would have had to win Round Eight (which I did in real life); with even a little practice, I think I could have avoided the draw and possibly my second (and Top 8-costing) loss… But could have should have would have.

Discuss, etc.

LOVE
MIKE

Ironically these terrible decks I made last week will ultimately produce a very nice and useful model for card advantage that you may not be using at present. Really!

It might not be all-inclusive, but I am pretty sure it will change how at least some readers look at card economics.

To begin, I made some bad Extended decks.

Inspired by LSV in Kyoto, I decided to make B/W Tokens in Extended.

Really!

I mean B/W Tokens is a competitive deck in Standard, and recently the Philly 5K champion showed us that you can translate Block Kithkin to an easy Extended Top 4 (and if he hadn’t lost to Osyp’s infinite creature control, I’m guessing Corey could have beaten Josh and his Fae in the finals)… Fae is an Extended Deck. Kithkin can be one. Why not B/W Tokens?

Here is the first iteration:

3 Umezawa’s Jitte

4 Bitterblossom
2 False Cure
1 Ghost-Lit Stalker

3 Beacon of Immortality
4 Eternal Dragon
4 Martyr of Sands
4 Path to Exile
3 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Ranger of Eos
4 Spectral Procession

4 Fetid Heath
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Godless Shrine
2 Mistveil Plains
4 Plains
4 Windbrisk Heights
4 Windswept Heath

sideboard:
3 Relic of Progenitus
4 Thoughtseize
4 Kataki, War’s Wage
1 Proclamation of Rebirth
3 Wrath of God

I decided I wanted to hybridize three major principles:

1) Three-for-ones. Two-for-ones are so passe. I played many cards that can single-handedly trip a Windbrisk Heights, viz. Spectral Procession and Ranger of Eos.

2) Martyr Combo. I figured that as long as I was running Ranger of Eos for card advantage, I might as well go and get the bestest available ones, and splash in some copies of Proclamation of Rebirth. At last check, Fae was the most popular Extended deck, and I wouldn’t be frightened of Fae with Rangers, Martyrs, and Proclamations at my beck and call.

3) False Cure combo. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the combo is Beacon of Immortality + False Cure. I pulled this off one time, ever. In a game I was just going to win with Dragon beatdown anyway.

The dream was to get in there with Windbrisk Heights to complete the False Cure + Beacon of Immortality combo. This never fit together and I think I won a total of one match with the deck.

This version was going nowhere so I tried one with Ghost Council of Orzhova. I have a soft spot for the Guildpact mobsters (especially Teysa), so I tried to make it a little bit differently.

4 Umezawa’s Jitte

4 Bitterblossom
1 Ghost-Lit Stalker

4 Ghost Council of Orzhova
1 Teysa, Orzhov Scion

4 Eternal Dragon
4 Martyr of Sands
4 Path to Exile
2 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Ranger of Eos
4 Spectral Procession

4 Fetid Heath
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Godless Shrine
2 Mistveil Plains
4 Plains
4 Windbrisk Heights
4 Windswept Heath

sideboard:
3 Relic of Progenitus
4 Thoughtseize
4 Kataki, War’s Wage
1 Proclamation of Rebirth
3 Wrath of God

Like in my Pro Tour Charleston deck Teysa can do some damage with token teammates.

Between the two builds I don’t think I took down an actual match. That means they are probably pretty dismal.

But I decided I could try to resurrect a different old deck. This time I went for Gaea’s Might Get There.

2 Umezawa’s Jitte

4 Dark Confidant

4 Lightning Helix

4 Might of Alara
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl

4 Kird Ape
4 Mogg Fanatic
1 Seal of Fire
1 Tarfire
4 Tribal Flames
4 Viashino Slaughtermaster

1 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Godless Shrine
1 Mountain
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills

sideboard:
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Duergar Hedge-Mage
4 Ancient Grudge
1 Volcanic Fallout
4 Ethersworn Canonist

Gaea’s Might Get There was a respectable deck, and Viashino Slaughtermaster is offensively just better than Boros Swiftblade in a deck like this one.

Sad to say I have only ever completed the turn three big swing one time, but stuck on two lands, was only capable of striking for 10. I lost that game to Swans when he locked me down with a Blood Moon the following turn (though I “got there” match-wise, eventually).

I am not hugely in love with this deck, and if you asked me today what I would play at the next PTQ, I would for certain speak the words “Naya Burn” … But this strategy definitely has legs. The reason I like it less than the somewhat similar (though admittedly “less powerful”) Naya Burn is an issue of consistency.

Consistency is a word that gets batted around a bit in Magic (especially with regards to opening hands evaluations)… And thinking about this consistency was the catalyst to this three (or so) part article set on card advantage.

Intrigued?

What do you think about this screen shot?

Fabulous winks!

LOVE
MIKE

You may have seen Josh Ravitz’s Faeries deck from the Top Standard Lists in the Pro Tour Kyoto coverage on the mother ship (congratulations to the great Gabriel Nassif by the way).

4 Bitterblossom
4 Peppersmoke
3 Thoughtseize

3 Broken Ambitions
4 Cryptic Command
2 Jace Beleren
4 Mistbind Clique
4 Sower of Temptation
4 Spellstutter Sprite

3 Agony Warp

6 Island
4 Mutavault
4 Secluded Glen
4 Sunken Ruins
3 Swamp
4 Underground River

sb:
1 Agony Warp
1 Fathom Trawl
2 Flashfreeze
2 Glen Elendra Archmage
3 Infest
2 Jace Beleren
1 Loxodon Warhammer
2 Puppeteer Clique
1 Thoughtseize

This is how this deck came about:

On Monday when the Star City lists and thereabouts came out online Josh wanted to chat about decks like EsperLark but I told him that I could not imagine playing one of those decks over just Faeries… If I were going to play a Blue deck, it would be Faeries over any of the Blue Reveillark variants (prevous to this the plan was to run Blightning Beatdown with eight Protection from White creatures in the sideboard). Josh was of course coming off of his excellent PTQ finals 9-1-1 in Edison, NJ where he ran circles around every Faeries mirror match opponent that he faced.

Our assumption was that the most popular decks would be Faeries, Boat Brew, and Blightning Beatdown (in that order), and an assumption of a good matchup with Reflecting Pool Control; we got some of the popularity percentages wrong, but at least knew what the top decks were going to be.

My argument was that no version of Fae was going to be advantaged against Blightning Beatdown in Game One… Why not play “all the cards that are good agaisnt other Blue decks?”

So that’s how we got to our version of Faeries.

4 Sower of Temptation
This was a number that I really pushed for: We knew there was going to be a lot of Boat Brew, and we knew that the Boat Brew matchup would improve (in R/W deck’s favor) from a difficult pre-Conflux expectation due to Path to Exile. Mistbind Clique, previously, was the roughest card out of Fae for these decks… but four Sowers is an absolute nightmare out of Fae for Reveillarks.

3 Agony Warp
This looks, I know, like a card that should improve the matchups we decided to throw away main (Blightning Beatdown, nothing spectacular in particular against Kithkin), but we positioned it for one reason: Agony Warp is one of the best cards from getting out from under the other guy’s Bitterblossom.

3 Broken Ambitions
This is the number of and card we selected for the auxiliary permission spell. Basically they all suck, but this one can silence both a Bitterblossom and a whatever else (say Mulldrifter) with flexibility.

2 Jace Beleren
Reflecting Pool Control in particular has issues with active Planeswalkers. I wanted a way to draw cards main, plus there is the curve issue (see Thoughtseize, below).

4 Peppersmoke
Like I just said – we wanted a way to draw some extra cards in this post-Ancestral Visions era. 4 Peppersmoke is the strange cousin of 4 Sower of Temptation… Scanning the entirety of the Top Standard Lists, we were the only ones that ran the quad starting, and certainly the only deck with this doubled up configuration. The reason? We wanted to play all the cards that are awesome against Blue decks… Sower of Temptation is the Reveillark nightmare, 4 Peppersmokes give us an edge against other Faeries decks.

3 Thoughtseize
And this is the finale to our “forget about trying to beat Blightning main but fight Blue” idea… Think about facing this curve with whatever deck…

• Turn 1 Thoughtseize
• Turn 2 Bitterblossom
• Turn 3 Jace Beleren
• Turn 4 Mistbind Clique

Does any other deck have a comparable best curve?

So Josh asked what we are supposed to be sideboarding against beatdown (after chuckling, of course, at our heavy anti-creature main that isn’t supposed to be great against attackers)… The answer was of course… FATHOM TRAWL!

I wanted something to tap out for, under the notion that Blue decks don’t beat decks like Blightning Beatdown with permission. Fathom Trawl is a nice card to tap out for… fills the grip with stuff like Flashfreeze 🙂

We rounded out Agony Warp, Jace, and Thoughtseize; Loxodon Warhammer being the cousin singleton to Fathom Trawl.

Puppeteer Clique was Josh’s idea. Seemed pretty awesome. I’ll have to ask Josh how this worked out against cards like Mulldrifter and Reveillark.

Did I mention “congratulations Yellow Hat?” What a great finals with LSV meeting Nassif in a battle of two of the game’s best.

I’m sure you guys have your own takes on how you should build a Faeries deck… But these were the ideas behind our approach.

LOVE
MIKE

This one is going to be more or less a mail bag related to my Naya Burn deck. I will be repeating some stuff from the comments for those of you who don’t follow those closely and answer new reader questions as well.

• DavePetterson thinks it’s okay that I didn’t qualify because then you guys get to read posts like Kind of a PTQ Report. To this I say… Greedy!
• wills wonders — if “Lash Out is the best burn spell in this deck after Tarfire and Seal of Fire. Yes, better in most cases than Lightning Helix” why we don’t run it main. The answer here is that Lash Out is so effective because it is only featured in games where it will matter. Sure in the PTQ I played in that was all eight rounds, but it would be silly to play main deck in a Red Deck with so many options… Path to Exile might make the cut in Naya Burn but I wouldn’t play it main under any forseeable circumstances.
• schwarzott ran this version of Naya Burn to a 5-2 finish in Detroit. He has been having problems with Bant Aggro-Control.4 Lightning Helix

  4 Tarmogoyf
  4 Wild Nacatl

  4 Incinerate
  4 Keldon Marauders
  4 Kird Ape
  4 Mogg Fanatic
  4 Puncture Blast
  4 Seal of Fire
  2 Sulfuric Vortex

  2 Bloodstained Mire
  2 Forest
  3 Mountain
  2 Mutavault
  2 Sacred Foundry
  2 Stomping Ground
  1 Temple Garden
  4 Windswept Heath
  4 Wooded Foothills

  sb:
  2 Mystic Enforcer
  4 Pyrostatic Pillar
  4 Shattering Spree
  3 Volcanic Fallout
  2 Kataki, War’s Wage

  My analysis is…

  1. Only two Sulfurous Vortex in the main. I have found that Bant Aggro-Control is pretty easy to beat as long as they are not blowing you out with defensive Jitte counters and Spirit Linked Rhinos. Sulfurous Vortex is very effective against them, especially since they have to deal a little damage to themselves with lands.
  2. When I beat Bant Aggro-Control, I used two two damage spells to take out Rhox War Monk in all the games I won. This deck only has “one set” of Seal of Fire (no Tarfires). While you can theoretically play Incinerate + Seal of Fire or even just a Puncture Blast to hold down the War Monk, the subtle issue is that especially on turn two (or turn three or four for a deck with only 22 lands) you can find yourself with insufficient mana to respond.
  3. Subtly, the sideboard is an issue. Bant Aggro-Control really needs to beat you with equipment (other than games where you get blown out by Troll + Worship… No outs against that presently). The schwarzott version simply has the wrong reactive cards. Shattering Spree is sometimes more devastating against Affinity (and sometimes not), but Ancient Grudge is so much better than equipment-reliant Blue decks like Fae or Bant Aggro-Control because most of the time Shattering Spree will not give you any card advantage. When the card you are advantaging is as vital to the opponent’s strategy as Umezawa’s Jitte… etc. etc. I have won a fair amount of the time by letting the opponent commit 4-5 lands only to use instant speed artifact hate mid-combat to fart in their direction. In fact most of my wins have been based on Vortex, killing their Jitte, or good old Jitte advantage… and this version has no Jitte of its own! (Jitte has been pretty good in a lot of matchups, including Bant).
• DAisaka09 makes a good point about 8 “Shocks” and the mirror which is full of three toughness creatures. I have been lucky to have won most or all of my mirror matches, and for sure I have drawn the three damage creature kill spells to deal with Apes and Nacatls. I can see maybe 1-2 Rift Bolt being better than the main deck Jittes I proposed in the previous post, or Incinerate again, as a two-of.I don’t think I would consider Puncture Blast, but I have heard good things about it from various directions, actually.
• Dear zsievers,Pyrostatic Pillar is quite good against Storm.

  When you are ahead, it basically makes “every matchup into the Zoo matchup” … That is, a matchup where the opponent is taking lots of collateral damage and therefore falls into burn range.

  I have come around due to my loss in the second Faeries bout that maybe main deck Pyrostatic Pillar is not optimal… Overvaluing it probably cost me the match.

• TheAmericanNightmare doesn’t like Keldon Marauders very much.Personally, I thought it was good. I sided it out against decks like Faerie Wizards, but I like the card very much when the opponent is the beatdown. It does a lot of damage in a hurry against a Storm, and I love the card against opposing attack decks. I was pretty sure Luis Neiman (Luis Not Vargas) had Blistering Firecat in our match and tapped for the Marauders anyway, and just soaked up three while he committed four mana (I already had Tarmogoyf on board as well as another Marauders in hand). At this stage I would not cut it.

  I think the mana base is pretty good. I like the Mountains because this deck is not Zoo. I don’t particularly like taking 100 damage from my lands. I would consider adding more Plains in order to run Duergar Hedge-Mage… lots of decent players are suggesting I add that card.

• thewachman wanted to hear about Osyp’s Slide deck… We already covered that here.
• ReAnimator wanted to know why I didn’t run Magma Jet (long time readers know I love a Magma Jet and even played it in Legacy). I wanted a card that could deal three damage in Lash Out is the simple answer, Magma Jet being not really good enough for the main here.
• mpace started reading Dune thanks to one of my previous articles. This is inspiring for me! Thanks! I think I am going to spend more time on book and comics recommendations (especially as Osyp has no knowledge of obscure graphic novels).

LOVE
MIKE

Hello, my name is Osyp and Mike asked me to guest host his blog.

I suppose the only relevant thing to this blog I can write about, since I don’t like Liz Phair or obscure graphic novels, is my recent PTQ win.

I played GWR Slide at the PTQ in Edison this past weekend and went 7-1 in the swiss. I actually build Slide every season and hope that it’s good; thankfully this time around it’s actually quite good in this current environment.

3 Engineered Explosives
4 Spark Spray
3 Path to Exile
3 Life from the Loam
3 Edge of Autumn
3 Lightning Rift
3 Astral Slide
2 Wrath of God

4 Kitchen Finks
2 Loxodon Hierarch
2 Cloudthresher

4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Secluded Steppe
3 Forgotten Cave
3 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Forests
2 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple Garden
1 Stomping Ground

SB:
4 Lightning Helix
3 Duegar Hedge Mage
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Eternal Witness
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Path to Exile
1 Cloudthresher

The best deck in the format is Faeries, and Slide just happens to be very good against it. This was the matchup I tested the most prior to the PTQ and as long as you’re patient and play correctly it’s difficult to lose. They really don’t have an effective way to beat you, and you have several threats that they can’t really answer. That being said, Faeries can be difficult depending on what build they’re playing. If they’re playing Herbey’s deck from the GP (main deck Trinket mage package and Shackles) than the matchup can actually be difficult, as you have no main deck answer to shackles and they can tutor a relic to break up your loam engine. However that version is surprisingly unpopular and most either play Owen’s UB build or a more standard Mono U version with Glen Elendra and Sowers and no Shackles!

You’re also very good against the best aggressive deck in the format, Affinity, and have a very strong matchup against GB Loam. Game 1 they can’t answer your enchantments, and after board any plan they may have against you (Extirpate, Krosan Grip) can just get trumped by Ajani Vengeant, which will always win the game.

Red decks are also favorable for you, although Vortex gives them a good shot game 1 of stealing a win. However I still feel like your favorable against any red deck as in testing I very rarely lost a best of 3.

Then there’s combo. Elves is a reasonable matchup because unless they draw multiple Glimpse they can’t keep up with your removal and you’ll eventually wear them down. TEPS on the other hand is unwinnable. I knew this going in and didn’t even bother with any sideboard slots as it won’t make any difference, you cannot win. This did not scare me away mainly because I don’t think TEPS is a very consistent deck, it’s probably the least consistent in the entire field (including All-in Red). I don’t think the deck has a real shot of winning a PTQ and I stand by that comment. If you also look at the PTQ results, it rarely makes T8 and even scanning the room at a PTQ, you won’t see many at the top tables. That being said, that doesn’t mean people won’t play it, but the odds are you will only have to play it once, and you can afford to take a loss given your strength against the rest of the field.

With all that said, I don’t think that Slide is the most powerful deck in the format, however the main reason I played it was that I knew I could play it well and wouldn’t make many mistakes. That’s really all you can ask when you’re deciding what to play. If you’re not planning on playing Faeries, you need to ask yourself “Can I play this deck well enough to give myself an edge over less prepared opponents?” Because the truth is 90% of the people you play at a PTQ are not well prepared, and the other 10% is where the luck factor is going to need to come in.

My matchups were as follows:

Rd 1: Faeries 2-0
Rd 2: Naya Burn 2-1
Rd 3: TEPS 0-2
Rd 4: Affinity 2-1
Rd 5: Gifts/Loam 2-0
Rd 6: Elves 2-1
Rd 7: Elves 2-0
Rd 8: Affinity 2-0

In the T8 I actually lost to my good friend Gerard playing Herbey’s version of Fae which I mentioned earlier, however he was already qualified and conceded. I then beat Kithkin 2-0 in T4 and Josh Ravitz playing UB Faeries in the finals 2-0.

I think the deck is a real contender and would recommend it if you expect a lot of Faeries and Affinity at your PTQ. Just don’t be scared off by TEPS and practice a lot, because there are a handful of decisions you need to make each turn (particularly turn 1-3) and the wrong one will drastically change the outcome.

For instance, against Fae post board you need to be careful with your cycling lands and loam. Let’s say your opening hand is a Windswept Heath, Ghost Quarter, Tranquil Thicket and Life from the Loam. Game 1 you would probably sacrifice the heath for a stomping ground, cycle the thicket and untap and play loam. However after board Fae is likely to bring in Relic, therefore that sequence would be terrible for you if they Spell Snare’d your Loam and then played a Relic. A smart Fae player would never play turn 1 Relic for that reason alone. If they do they give you too much information and allow you to make the correct play which is to play the Thicket turn 1. Post board the best way to play around Relic is to just make your land drops and not worry about it until later in the game when you draw an Ancient Grudge. The game will go long, so don’t feel rushed to cycle and dig for cards because there’s no need.

[Thanks Osyp! -mf]

Part 1: Deck List

Here is what I played, Naya Burn:

4 Lightning Helix

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl

2 Incinerate
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Kird Ape
4 Mogg Fanatic
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
4 Seal of Fire
4 Sulfuric Vortex
2 Tarfire

4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
3 Mountain
2 Mutavault
1 Sacred Foundry
3 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
3 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills

sb:
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Ancient Grudge
3 Lash Out
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Kataki, War’s Wage

Commentary
This is essentially what I posted at the end of last week. The only difference is a swap of two Incinerates for two Tarfires. I told Osyp I wanted to play like one Tarfire and he said that he thought that Incinerate was the weakest card in my deck. If I had to do it over again, I would have played all four Tarfires and no Incinerates; moreover I would have done something with those Pyrostatic Pillars. There is a longer winded way of putting this, but they under-performed.

Part 2: Anticlimax

I went 6-2.

Osyp beat Josh in the finals, Slide over Faeries. Josh went 9-1-1 with his only loss being to Osyp.

My favorite Josh moment was in the quarterfinals. Josh came back to win Game One. He was absolutely demolished in the Faeries mirror. Stuck on three lands. Down zero Riptide Laboratories to two, lands down three to seven or thereabouts. Pulled it out.

“At what point would you would you have given up?” he asked me between games.

So Game Two. He has three mana untapped and a bunch of lands. End of his turn. There is a relevant Spellstutter Sprite on the board, but backed up by no mana.

Josh Mana Leaks it rather than spending his Spell Snare (leaving up the one for the Snare). The implications of this decision were many but I only thought one thing, almost fatherly: At what point did you get so much better than me?

So of course this was followed by untap, Future Sight (tapping out), and the concession from Ravitz 🙂

Osyp played brilliantly against Josh in what was not only a lopsided matchup (in Osyp’s favor) but where Josh mulliganed several times, and both games.

Osyp’s facility with Ghost Quarter and Astral Slide to resolve spells was the kind of stuff that they write textbooks about. They were the kind of plays that seem absolutely correct when you see them going onto the stack, but that 80% of players will never see… The same players will complain about bad draws or being mana shy when they explain why they lost.

As for my tournament, I beat Tezzerator, Faerie Wizards, the Adrian Sullivan Ponza deck, Zoo, Bant Aggro-Control, and the Lightning Bolt Deck; I lost to Faeries and All-in Red. Notably I never played Affinity.

The only interesting matchup of the day was my second bout against Faeries. I have won literally every Game One I have ever played with Naya Burn against Faeries; that said, I have lost a fair number of sideboarded games, so it was obvious to me that I was doing something wrong at some point.

The problem was at least in part that I was winning all of those Game Ones (win the flip or no), meaning that I was always on the draw in Game Two. My model included valuing Pyrostatic Pillar, so I was forcing myself to make room for more Pillars… but they are not particularly good going second in sideboarded games. I was usually cutting two Lightning Helixes to fit my three Lash Outs (though this is something I am comfortable doing in many matchups, including Zoo-ish matchups… Lash Out is almost always better since you have to invest three life to make three life under pressure); and that was sub-optimal.

So Game One I won in a hurry. Concession on turn four, I believe.

Game Two I went to Paris, took some damage from lands, and foud myself with a pair of Lash Outs and a pair of Ancient Grudges in hand (I sided in two for this game). My board was a Wild Nacatl and a Mogg Fanatic.

He was doing not so much, played Thirst for Knowledge for no bonus, untapped, and played Threads of Disloyalty on my Nacatl (1/1 on his side, I believe). I ran Lash Out for value and got in with Mogg.

He played Sower of Temptation #1; I got him with the Mogg and got more value with the Lash Out, but nothing still.

He played a naked Sower.

I finally ripped a Tarmogoyf.

He ripped yet another Sower and killed me in basically one swing.

So I was on the play in the third game. I thought quite a bit about this and decided that I was going to morph into a 100% burn / anti-Jitte deck, taking out all my Nacatls, Apes, and ‘Goyfs. The reason is that even though I “shouldn’t” lose to Sower of Temptation very often, I was not likely to beat a Threads of Disloyalty on Tarmogoyf… and this game he showed me Firespout, Sower, Threads, and Chrome Mox… and since he played Thirst for Knowledge, I felt it safe to assume he was packing Vedalken Shackles, too.

Therefore he was an anti-creature Faeries deck, and if I made myself a creature-poor burn deck, I might be able to ride the repositioning. As it turns out, he out-sideboarded me and presented two Glen Elendra Archmages. I drew two Ancient Grudges and all three Jittes but he still out-Jitte’d me thanks to Academy Ruins. The sheet said “4” at the end of the game, but he had an active Jitte, so who knows what his true life total was? That said, it was probably closer than it should have been.

My other loss was to All-in Red in two non-competitive games where he mised on the first turn. In either game if he didn’t follow up with Blood Moon I think I could have won. Nothing to say here… That deck shouldn’t do well, but you can’t complain about those kinds of matchups in the loser’s bracket.

Of the rest of my matches the most interesting was v. Luis Neiman (aka Luis not Vargas) right after I had dropped. He convinced me to un-drop and then we were paired! Pulled it out after getting face planted by Blistering Firecat in Game One (actually tagged all three games by that guy to one degree or another). Luis Molten Rained me to a Mutavault in Game Two and drew nothing, so I came back to force the third.

Part 3: What If… ?

I have to think on the new version of the deck list for a while, but I think I would play this again. Probably look something like this main:

2 Umezawa’s Jitte

4 Lightning Helix

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl

4 Keldon Marauders
4 Kird Ape
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Seal of Fire
4 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Tarfire

4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
3 Mountain
2 Mutavault
1 Sacred Foundry
3 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
3 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills

The Jitte’s a little out of place… Maybe Lash Out or Incinerate? Lash Out is the best burn spell in this deck after Tarfire and Seal of Fire. Yes, better in most cases than Lightning Helix. For example against one of the burn decks There was a Sulfurous Vortex in play before I even had the White for Helix! (Though admittedly it saved me from Zoo with a little careful damage stacking). In general you have to invest a couple of life to get back a couple of life… Still a great card, just not as good as Lash Out in a strategy that wants to hurt the opponent.

More later…

LOVE
MIKE

Hello my dear readers!

I decided earlier this week that I am going to play Naya Burn on Saturday.

It was really down to Naya Burn or the Lightning Bolt Deck and I was actually on the Lightning Bolt Deck for a few hours before talking to Red Deck master Patrick Sullivan. If there is one player in the multiverse who you want to listen to when trying to win a PTQ with little Red men, it’s Patrick Sullivan.

PSulli instructed me to not play the Lightning Bolt Deck (despite his solid performance with the archetype at Grand Prix Los Angeles) and to play Naya Burn in the alternative.

So why play only one of these two decks?

I noticed that I have been collapsing late in tournaments. I am old now, see. Even tournaments where I make a run for the Top 8 I am typically winded by round six or seven. And win it all? I haven’t won a PTQ in three years.

But with long years come long teeth and a long view. Among the weapons at my disposal is an understanding of the physical realities of playing with Magic cards. We are playing with real cards, remember. We live in a real universe with real interactions with not just our opponents but our own bodies. I have made some improvements to mine recently but I decided that I want to try to give myself a little more breathing room if possible.

Look at it like this: I am likely to win in the early rounds not matter which reasonable deck I choose. However consider I play MWC… If I play MWC even against a helpless and incompetent opponent I am consigning myself to playing about sixty turns, just to get out of the first round! Now multiply that by the eleven or so rounds required to win a PTQ. Can it be done? Of course! But the fact of the matter is that — for me Me ME — and the fact that I have been gassing late in tournaments, I just wanted to try to preserve as much psychic energy as possible.

In the same situation with Naya Burn (that is, an incompetent and helpless opponent) I could win the same match in ten total turns.

Plus, Naya Burn (and the Lightning Bolt Deck for that matter) has a secret Stage Three (kind of) but can get there without having a million mana in play. One of the things that has bothered me about my game for about the last five years is that I have relied over much on having a lot of lands in play; I was once able to play to Top 8 caliber in premiere events stuck on one land.

It’s like GerryT chided me a few weeks ago: It’s all about having sufficent fire to try to win each and every game.

This time around, I think I have the best chance of keeping that fire kindled if I can save up the mental energy over the course of the day.

So… Naya Burn:

4 Lightning Helix

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl

4 Incinerate
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Kird Ape
4 Mogg Fanatic
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
4 Seal of Fire
4 Sulfuric Vortex

4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
3 Mountain
2 Mutavault
1 Sacred Foundry
3 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
3 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills

sb:
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Ancient Grudge
3 Lash Out
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Kataki, War’s Wage

(my likely PTQ list)

1) Pyrostatic Pillar is there to turn “every matchup in to the Zoo matchup” … It has been working out pretty well as a two-of in the main. You’ll notice this is the only two-of (and I hate two-ofs in general) in a deck full of four-ofs. Well, that’s what happens when you play 22 lands.

2) I like Lash Out quite a bit. If Incinerate is good enough for Extended, surely the same is true for Lash Out.

3) Affinity Overload! See previous post, &c.

4) What’s better, swapping in main deck Kataki (over Keldon Marauders) for mise value or figuring out how to transform into a Gargadon Sadin style deck?

Discuss!

LOVE
MIKE