Main deck Luminarch Ascension is quite powerful against other control decks.
It turns out that that is true as you will see below (spoilers!)… But Kurt’s deck deserved more attention than the one line I gave it, probably. I actually caught more better notice of the deck listening to the Yo MTG Taps podcast care of Joey and Joe last week… and even though I noticed the main deck Luminarch Ascension, I managed to miss the entire Proliferate sub-theme provided by Contagion Clasp.
I don’t want to do a lot of hardcore analysis of Kurt’s deck, as that is actually the topic of my Top Decks article this week (spoilers!), but I do want to say a bit about Contagion Clasp.
In addition to facilitating the Proliferate mechanic and potentially improving the performance of the deck’s many Planeswalkers, Contagion Clasp is actually an all right card on its own. It kind of fills the same purpose as Oust against creatures like Lotus Cobra or Plated Geopede (or if you’re really lucky, Top 10 card Joraga Treespeaker).
That’s not its job in this deck, not really… But it would be foolish to ignore the fact that Contagion Clasp does have some value as a monster fighter. Little monsters anyway.
Now of course there is the topic of that Luminarch Ascension. If you can get one counter on a Luminarch Ascension, Contagion Clasp can ramp it up to four counters even if you are getting attacked… That really helps to justify the card’s inclusion as a main deck threat, unusual for the often aggressive Standard meta.
Anyway — more spoilers for things to come — you can nab a sneak Peek at this week’s Top Decks, which includes the following videos, both starring Kurt’s U/W deck.
I got a chance to game with my good friend Brian David-Marshall tonight. We elected to do a 10-game set: me playing Daniel Jordan’s U/R/G control/TurboLand deck (you know the same seventy-five I tested here) versus Brian playing a stock Kuldotha Rebirth Red Deck.
#FloresRewards savant Thea Steele asked for more Constructed reporting so I thought I would recount this particular playtest set.
BDM and I played all Game Ones (no sideboards). I have played U/R/G against Kuldotha Red more than once and won each time; I was therefore surprised at how our games played out.
This seemed like a very strong hand but Brian had first turn Kuldotha Rebirth on the play, as well as a Memnite; he also followed up with gas. I lost a close one to I believe the first of a long line of “my last card is the second or third Lightning Bolt”… I think I would have won if he had a different play on turn one (even a Goblin Guide), or if he were playing another deck. I had to push decent spells more than once with Preordain to try to get a hold of the battlefield.
Brian was meant to go first the first five games, so this was a “going second” hand; Explore lets me break serve, of course, and the deck has two different lines it can take even just from the opening hand. The Ruinblaster is usually a 2/1 non-Stone Rain in this matchup, but Brian’s deck does have a couple of targets… He drew one this game 🙂
Brian was stuck most of the game and I had a third turn kicked Goblin Ruinblaster. My turns went like this:
Brian played the first of several games where he opened on Goblin Guide + Memnite.
I drew a lot of Lightning Bolts, but didn’t have time to play them all. I got a Red source, but only one, despite some freebies from Goblin Guide. Also all of his cards pretty much suck, and you don’t want to be trading 1-for-1 with them if you can help it, or you will fall behind.
I tried to spend my time on Jace and Frost Titan but it didn’t quite work out that way.
2-3
GAME SIX
I was supposed to go first this game, but I accidentally stole serve in Game Four.
Brian again opened up with Goblin Guide + Memnite on the play… Then more gas on turn two.
Brian got another super aggressive draw and Bolted me out.
2-5
GAME EIGHT
Brian got another super aggressive draw, but this time killed me with a Galvanic Blast for four rather than the usual Lightning Bolt.
2-6
GAME NINE
This time I shipped to five cards. Brian claimed he would “un-mulligan” me, but the Goblin Guide was of minimal benefit (relative to, you know, taking a bundle of damage.
Game Ten really highlighted the central argument of this matchup, especially Game One.
Brian just overplayed his hand — all in on multiple copies of Kuldotha Rebirth, and laid out all his Memnites like they were nothing.
Meanwhile, in Game Ten — as I always did — I was playing Oracle of Mul Daya. Now Oracle of Mul Daya plays like Jace, the Mind Sculptor against other Blue decks, but against a legitimate Red Deck, it is basically a four mana Grey Ogre. That is awful!
So the turn I played my 2/2 for four, Brian already had eight or so attackers. It didn’t matter if I would eat one, I was going to lose a huge chunk of life total.
As you know from reading my DailyMTG report with this deck, I often sided out the Oracles for Pyroclasm. Brian claimed he wouldn’t play the same way in a sideboarded game… But he really wouldn’t be able to.
I didn’t realize before how reliant on Pyroclasm the U/R/G deck must be to beat Goblins. I had beaten it multiple times, but now that I reflect on the wins, I think I played a sideboarded Pyroclasm once if not twice most of the matches.
That said, it might also be possible that my opponents held back in Game One.
I don’t know about you, but one of my main guiding principles of play (regardless of deck type) I try to play as deceptively as possible. So if I am not going to play a Green card until turn four or five I will often pretend to be a U/R deck for as long as I can. Against a Goblins deck in Game One, maybe they will hold back for fear of U/R’s main deck Pyroclasms.
Brian, of course, knew better.
2-8
Now when Brian approached me for some testo, I was in the middle of testing my U/G TurboLand deck (up 2-1 on the night and 4-2 overall with the current build). I asked Brian to let me play him a real match with the U/G deck; we ran.
I once put Frost Titan on a sub-Sphinx of Jwar Isle level of playability. Oops.
We now join the continuing adventures of TurboLand, already in progress…
Most of you saw my article RE: TurboLand on TCGPlayer last week. And with it, the most heinous excuse for forum replies… well… ever basically (Patrick Chapin is convinced it is one troll with 76 accounts).
Anyway, despite what the trolls say, I think TurboLand is one of the best decks in Standard, and it has been brilliantly +EV for me in the tournament queues. Fair’s fair: I did make some changes to the deck partly based on the comments from the forums on TCGPlayer, so we have this beauty (for your 5K consideration):
The deck was a bit heavy on acceleration, and Explore is one of the only cards that is not good with Genesis Wave. I used the spots for more finishers.
It is important to note that I added sixes and not sevens. Yes, yes – I considered Avenger of Zendikar but that big seven is not as good as a six in this deck. Why? Consistency, predictability, and curve.
You see, this is a Primeval Titan deck, which the original TurboLand was not, and most current Genesis Wave decks are not. What does that mean?
One of those lands is Halimar Depths, so most of the time you can ensure an untapped land drop the next turn (9).
See where this is going?
Nine mana is GGG + 6 for a Genesis Wave follow up. Every non-Genesis Wave card in this deck is eligible for such an on-curve Wave. As good as Avenger of Zendikar might be… It isn’t that 100% of the time, so in the “explosive Landfall token creatures fatties” category, Rampaging Baloths gets the nod.
It is possible it is just right to play more Frost Titans, though. This deck is an “over the top” aspiring enigma, and doesn’t have an excess of battlefield control. Frost Titan is a Genesis Wave-friendly finisher that does just the right thing.
Two notes before we move on to movies:
Primeval Titan into Halimar Depths is a combo. It is almost like having a mini-Jace, the Mind Sculptor. You can always draw the best card of the next three. In some cases you can toggle and tier your draws to set up Oracle of Mul Daya card advantage simultaneously. This can be invaluable for getting Genesis Wave and avoiding Genesis Wave + Genesis Wave issues.
I am having big problems with the Argentum Armor deck. It is embarassing. It is like losing to ghosts in real life. What did you die of? You know, ghosts. Ghosts aren’t real! I know, embarassing. I was chatting with the guys from The Eh Team podcast and Scotty Mac suggested Ratchet Bomb… Might be the answer! The problem is that they have Sword of Body and Mind, and can run past my Frost Titans and my Khalni Garden tokens and motherloving deck me. Embarassing!
Anyway, the games:
This first set is semi-not exciting.
First game KYT wins mostly because he went first. He talks about maybe not playing his Frost Titan on turn six. If he doesn’t play it there (tapping my land) I will almost certainly win. I have double Primeval Titan and Jace in my hand, so I will play a Primeval Titan if he doesn’t play a Frost Titan; he will Mana Leak. He will then be presented with the same decision. Except if he plays Frost Titan now I can resolve my Primeval Titan and presumably win with my Halimar Depths combo or Jace in hand… But he won.
Second game KYT won because I stopped on two.
I won the third game, which was exciting.
We played another 3-4 games, but KYT lost them. In other news, I won all of them 🙂
Anyway, we are hella thankful to KYT for recording and editing these.
Next set:
This one is not unexciting… It is in fact quite exciting. And embarassing. We both basically play awful, awful Magic. But you can at least see the TurboLand deck do some interesting stuff this time around.
Thanks to KYT, again, for his help and testing these!
This deck differs from the version I published on TCGPlayer.com a bit back in that I moved Ratchet Bomb to the main deck; it is my deck’s “Pyroclasm” … But I mostly just moved stuff around. With Ratchet Bomb in the main deck I need some other stuff differently / less.
I wanted All Is Dust for stupid Eldrazi Monument decks and tokens / Planeswalkers various. Between the Ratchet Bombs and Into the Roils main, I didn’t have a lot of anti-beatdown. The only match I can remember losing, you know, memorably lately was to the stupid Argentum Armor deck. Why can’t I play 8 Ratchet Bombs and 8 Into the Roils? I would gladly do that 🙂
Anyway, I just got finished with my first run of testing the new TurboLand deck (coming to TCGPlayer tomorrow!) and wanted to go back to Mono-Blue Control. If you asked me pre-TurboLand I would have for sure told you to play Mono-Blue Control as my main Standard recommendation (though, to be fair, it might not be dramatically stronger than Nick’s proven B/U deck)… I remembered not being hugely satisfied with my sideboard.
How do we fix this?
What can I sideboard out against…
Pyromancer Ascension?
Ramp decks?
Red decks?
Other Blue decks?
White Weenie Argentum Armor?
Black decks / Vampires?
Elves / other little beaters?
I wouldn’t want to side out all my Frost Titans, but I would be fine siding out two. Volition Reins is actually fine (Ascension answer)… I named the sixes in general because of cost; you don’t necessarily want to be messing with sixes when the opponent can kill you on the spot.
Opens:
1
Potentially 5-6
Ramp Decks: Mono-Blue is a bit weaker than B/U because I don’t have Memoricide main (or at all). Counterspells can be dicey against them because of Summoning Trap. I usually try to either Counterspell their mana acceleration and / or to lock down their awesome guys with Frost Titans or Jace after the worst has already happened. Tectonic Edge is actually really important for Eye of Ugin and / or Valakut suppression.
Ratchet Bomb is not the worst. Sometimes you need it against cards like Avenger of Zendikar; it is also serviceable against certain draws (say they have a bunch of one or two drop mana accelerators). It’s never horrendous… Just not great or consistently great. I can see siding two-ish.
Into the Roil has a lot of play; but it isn’t consistent. Like you don’t necessarily want to be pointing it at Primeval Titan a bunch of times. I would side out all four without looking back, especially with Jace in the lineup.
Opens:
0
Potentially 6
Red Decks: Red Decks are gaining in popularity. Their existence is the kind of thing that makes U/W arguably stronger than Mono-Blue (I don’t have Kor Firewalker and / or Wall of Omens). Ratchet Bomb actually makes up a lot in that department, but you need it in a hurry. I think it is about not dying, trading Mana Leak with whatever you can, and then stabilizing with Trinket Mage. You can cut most of the Frost Titans because they are expensive and therefore inconsistent early… But you still need a way to win.
Volition Reins is bad in that they have nothing you really want to steal (Big Red does, with Molten-Tail Masticore, potentially, but not the common Red Deck).
Brittle Effigy might save you, but it is a lot of mana to compete with some probably bad creatures that cost ~1 mana.
Treasure Hunt is not great, but it’s not terrible. You might need the re-load.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor is pretty bad, actually. You can feel free to cut most of them, or replace with smaller Jaces. The problem is that they cost a lot of mana but are basically dead. Boomerangs are kind of terrible because their cards are cheap and largely terrible.
Frost Titan is a good man… But six. Unlike some matchups you don’t actually want to have 100 Frost Titans in your hand. I can see cutting 2 or even 3.
Opens:
1
Potentially ~8 or even more
Other Blue Decks: There are lots of other Blue decks, meaning U/W Control, B/U Elixir, U/R Destructive Force, etc. However I think you sideboard basically the same against most of them. The goal here should be to either force down a threat and protect it more quickly than the bad people or to set up a position of inevitability (or both).
I would not side out all the Ratchet Bombs, but I would be fine siding out 2 or 3 of them. Treasure Hunt I can see siding out specifically if I am replacing them with Jaces 🙂
Opens:
0
Potentially 5
White Weenie / Argentum Armor This deck can only win games where you are furious and want to tear your hair — or his hair — out. If you draw an Into the Roil or a Ratchet Bomb [early enough] you will win by huge margin. I wish I could just play eight of each 🙂
Treasure Hunt just isn’t fast; you don’t want to be playing it blind when you are about to be under massive pressure. Brittle Effigy and Volition Reins both actually have a lot of play, but it’s a question of how much time / mana you have versus how good the opponent’s cards are. Yes, sometimes Brittle Effigy is going to destroy them; but other times you won’t have the time for it.
Opens:
0
Potentially 4
Black Decks / Vampires Vampires differs from other little beaters decks with its heavy disruptive elements and creature removal. It is also a highly synergistic linear. The way I like Vampires is loaded with Sorin Markov, but I don’t know if everyone rolls that way.
All your cards are pretty good, actually. I actually think the main thing will be about managing their board versus your cards in hand. I can see moving around Treasure Hunt for Jace, but I think Treasure Hunt is actually pretty good here because they are not lightning quick beatdown and they have Vampire Hexmage and sufficient attackers to hassle your Planeswalkers. This is a matchup where I think it might not be just about mediocre / bad cards and you just want to bring in All Is Dust because it’s awesome if you can play it.
Elves / other little beaters Elves is just some deck with Overrun and Eldrazi Monument. I don’t know if the deck can even win games against a real deck without Eldrazi Monument in play. So focus on answering or trumping that card (while not accidentally dying along the way, of course).
Volition Reins is almost a bad card because there is not much worth stealing in their deck. However they do have Planeswalkers, and Volition Reins is an answer to Eldrazi Monument.
I can see cutting most or all of the Mana Leaks if there is sufficient creature removal to be had. Their cards are mostly worse than Mana Leak and they have lots of Arbor Elf action mid-game to pay for your Mana Leak anyway.
Jace is fine; just not necessarily the best; I love Jace Beleren against these quick decks.
Frost Titan is a curve Liability. You of course need about ~2 in your deck to close out (especially with Elixir of Immortality working), but you don’t want a ton of them in your opener. Like against U/W it is fine to have a bunch and plan around them or set up to win an Attrition fight or whatever… Against decks that are much less powerful than you, you just need to make sure you can live and crush them with card advantage.
1 or more Jace Beleren, Unsummon… You can go up to 13, per the earlier discussion.
As you can see I chose to jot down two different relatively unusual cards: Aether Adept and Unsummon. Aether Adept is the better card as it can not only slow down a Goblin Guide but block one later. Unsummon is weaker but is highly effective against Argentum Armorthe card. I didn’t want to play all Unsummons because as good as they are against White Weenie about to go off with Iron Man Vindicates or whatever, I didn’t want to give away all the card advantage; hence splitting some 187 action. I think there will probably be at present unanticipated matchups where one is better than the other.
I hope you enjoyed walking through this thinking with me. No idea if this sideboard is optimal, yet; but it seems like an improvement over my experience so far, with too many Counterspells and somewhat wanting in terms of battlefield control.
So last month on Twitter, William Bloodworth asked…
This got me thinking… What the!?! Is this possibly a real strategy? I would certainly strangle anyone who killed me with Poison on the third turn!
Let’s look at it simple math style. You play a second turn Kiln Fiend. I am known to love a Kiln Fiend; I played it in my sideboard at US Nationals as insurance against Relic of Progenitus (and a threat in the mirror should be opponent sideboard the opposite direction that I did). Anyway, you play a second turn Kiln Fiend. He is 1/2 to start.
The Kiln Fiend gets big[ger] when you play this Black instant. Kiln Fiend‘s stats jump up to 4/2, and with the Tainted Strike, you are up to 5/2 Infect. Is that worth half the opponent’s “life”? The answer is, more or less.
I think William’s theory is that with a little more Kiln Fiend nudging you can get the full on “kill ya” … I did in the neighborhood of 10 damage with my Kiln Fiends multiple times at US Nationals. If you accomplish the same on the third turn in Standard — while the Kiln Fiend has Infect — then the opponent should be dead on the spot.
My gut reaction is that while this might be cool, I wouldn’t build in this direction.
That is not to say that I don’t at least somewhat respect a Poison kill, just that I don’t think that this is the best way to either kill someone with Poison or break a Kiln Fiend on the third turn. Just as a very simple counter-example, consider Gerry Thompson’s “All-in On Assault Strobe” Red Deck (this is a build that Brian Siu used to mise the New Hampshire State Championships this year… congrats Brian):
It should be fairly obvious at this point that the Assault Strobe route is better than the Tainted Strike route for purposes of consistency. Tainted Strike might be almost as nice, but — besides being in a second color (which Assault Strobe is not) — you have the issue of splitting damage v. Infect / Poison. The last thing you want to be doing when you are playing an aggressive strategy with no real way to regulate your early game draws is to split your attack orientation. Half 20/20 lands and half Thopter / Sword combo is fine for a Blue deck with a ton of libray manipulation, but a Red Deck subject to its opening seven (with no Jace, the Mind Sculptor on the squad)? Tained Strike is just less desirable here.
This isn’t to say we are going to stop talking about Tainted Strike.
No, I don’t know that Tainted Strike is necessarily the route you want to take to turn three Kiln Fiend kill-ville. But the card itself is actually fairly interesting. For one thing, it costs only one mana, yet has a potentially profound effect on the game. For another, it’s in Black. You might expect Blue to do something clever and potential frustrating or confusing for one mana… But Black?
What happens when your opponent’s big burly Green creature is cruising in for the kill? Tainted Strike, of course!
You can point Tainted Strike at your opponent’s Big Bad, save essentially all that damage (just convert it to poison… probably not lethal), and maybe cruise back with a lethal Alpha Strike. Might not be front line material, but it will probably be the kind of thing that is situationally rewarding. Like “It’s a good thing I read that Five With Flores blog post on Tainted Strike… Otherwise I wouldn’t have realized my ‘Giant Growth‘ was capable of saving the draft!” You know, something like that.
Overall, I don’t think Tainted Strike is a Constructed-caliber card. Even as a Limited card it may be niche (and possibly for similar reasons); the idea that you need a card to switch the offensive power of a creature to conform to a sub-theme… Let’s just say it is probably the sign of a designer at odds with himself, and his cards.
The last time Memoricide was legal for the State Championships we called it Cranial Extraction; you may recall a certain b/U Control deck that did well at New York States that year… But enough about me 🙂
This is a short post about Nick Spagnolo’s more modern B/U Elixir deck… And as I intimated in this week’s TCGPlayer column,  I lost to Nick in the second round of the New York State Championship this year.
I probably screwed up all different ways in Game One (for example I could have played my Archive Traps in response to his Trinket Mage instead of giggling like a school girl, prompting Nick to get his main-deck Elixir of Immortality)… But his win over my It! Girl! Pyromancer Ascension was more than legitimate.
Despite screwing around and being out-classed by Nick’s main deck one mana artifact in the first few turns, I was able to set up Pyromancer Ascension and defend it from his Into the Roil. This put me in a good card advantage situation, and I was drawing 2-3 cards per turn for the next several. The Elixir of Immortality re-bought Nick’s Memoricide, and he pointed it at Call to Mind. Either Call to Mind or Lightning Bolt was fine. I lost with essentially no ways left to win.
Anyway, I didn’t know it at the time that I filmed this, but Nick would go on to win States himself. This is a video that I will have in Top Decks this Thursday; but as these things go, I have to have them up ahead of time to, you know, embed them in ye olde articles… So here’s a sneak Peek. Enjoy!
This week on TCGPlayer I presented Seven Traits of The Best Deck. If you haven’t read it, you should. I know I have a tendency to toot my own horn at times, but I quite liked this one: Seven Traits of The Best Deck
Per usual (for me lately… apparently I am getting old), I have more and more to say about even the topics that spawn 3,000+ word full-length articles.
Luckily I have a highly trafficked and much-beloved blog with which I can expand and expound (as opposed to my not-yet-highly-trafficked, if even more beloved blog http://FloresRewards.com).
Today I am going to talk a bit [more] about point 3, “They Get the Most Out of Their Mana”.
One thing to remember when working on a mana base is that lands are a double-edged sword. Yes, you ultimately want consistent lands that come into play untapped and produce the colors you need to, you know, help you present that unbeatable opening hand. But in addition, lands can be a very low-cost source of additional value, particularly in one-color decks.
Back at the end of the 1990s, at the World Championships, seemingly all the successful decks were one color. Why? They let us play Wasteland. And the next year, they let us play Rishadan Port! All these lands are good examples of:
How one-color decks could be successful by playing such “colorless” lands (you could add a tool to manascrew your opponent without overly disrupting your own mana base), and
Why one-color decks did so much better than multicolor decks (the multicolored decks were getting their splashes, off-colors, and even first big plays pre-empted and screwed by the damn Wastelands and Rishadan Ports!)
I am a big believer in maximizing the consistency of the mana base in terms of performing what I want, when I want… With “when I want” defined as “immediately.” To with, when Kamigawa Block was legal, like all my decks that were two or more colors played four copies of Tendo Ice Bridge. If you needed a color — any color — and you needed it now, there was no better land than Tendo Ice Bridge (especially since so many of my teams were built with four copies of Meloku the Clouded Mirror).
Here are some then-and-now examples of how some of the best decks (though in these cases, the second best decks, both times) made subtle changes to existing mana bases to gain value:
That sideboard of course had elements of one of the best sideboards of all time, but was not the true work of poetry that Josh used to eventually battle to the Top 8 of US Nationals.
I am just going to pause for a second to think about how great Josh’s sideboard was. It was clearly one of the best sidebaords I ever built, but more than that, was probably one of the best sideboards of all time.
I mean we were able to fit both a full transformation and a solid repositioning in those fifteen cards!
For purposes of this blog post, the etra value came from just running Tendo Ice Bridge. In a de facto one color deck, Tendo Ice Bridge was free. It came into play untapped, it tapped for Red if you needed it to… But along with the one Swamp (and eight artifact searchers), Tendo Ice Bridge allowed Kuroda-style Red to flatten Tooth and Nail with Cranial Extraction.
For those of you who want me to use more recent deck lists, here is one from just last weekend.
The one thing I was really impressed with talking to Tim at the $5K was his use of two Mystifying Mazes. Some mono-Green players didn’t use it at all!
Tim talked about how it was good quite often and they added a second copy because it was so low cost (there is that “one color deck” bonus again)… He recounted that even with his Eye of Ugin stripped, he was able to win a race with a single Primeval Titan purely because he played two copies of the mighty Eye.
Tim’s mana in general was extremely impressive, though. One thing that struck me was his play of Growth Spasm, cutting darling Cultivate (he said he might cut them all if he had it over again). Growth Spasm gets you to a faster Primeval Titan than Cultivate, and he focused getting the most out of his mana on getting the most powerful card, most quickly.
Like I said, impressive.
You’ve probably already seen this, but here is a video that I (with BDM) did with Tim a couple of days ago. If you haven’t already seen it, it was at least nominally done for Top Decks, but I have to have all these ducks lined up ahead of time in order to submit them to the mother ship. Enjoy!
Joraga Treespeaker :: Scars of Mirrodin :: Not Testing
Really, Not Testing :: Not Testing at All With, You Know, Scars of Mirrodin :: … and Joraga Treespeaker
I came up with a pretty spectacular strategy for Scars of Mirrodin Standard.
And by “I” I mean Brian David-Marshall came up with it. Well, he came up with a card idea and I ran with it. “The Champ” Andre Coimbra started brainstorming with us, but elements all conspired to my deciding to abandon it for this weekend’s TCGPlayer 5K in New York.
First of all, none of the lists I came up with had the right number of “4” … Lots of “2” … Which means garbage. With no metagame to test and no very good frame of reference with, you know, no metagame so far… I… Did I mention “garbage” yet?
Second of all, Andre pointed out to me that the reason Naya Lightsaber was the best was that all the cards were awesome and even though they worked well together, none of them were over-reliant on any others. He pointed out that even if I (and by “I” I mean BDM) were right about the new format, we were highly reliant on a card that was at this point completely unproven.
So I decided to counter-brew.
And by counter-brew I don’t mean Counterspell but rather turning back the clock. I basically cribbed two or three different Zvi Mowshowitz lists and came up with this:
The shell is a 16-accelerator mold in the vein of Zvi’s Amsterdam deck.
There are lots of different cards you can use for the last four accelerators… In Amsterdam the Team Mythic-2 crew played Nest Invader. However that version played Windbrisk Heights, so the extra weenie was worth it to help set off the powerful Hideaway land. In Standard Joraga Treespeaker just helps hook up the fastest ramp deck in the room. You probably know from Conrad Kolos’s US Nationals tournament reports that Joraga Treespeaker was his way of breaking serve in the mirror… The accelerators in this deck are twice as fast as those in a mono-Green Eldrazi Ramp deck, so you can go off slightly faster, even if the deck in total is less powerful than the Eldrazi Ramp end game.
Tom Martell asked me why I would rather play a Baneslayer Angel than Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre… In addition to being slightly faster than a more common Ramp deck, I think this deck has a better chance against RDW. As you can see, half my sideboard is devoted to the devotees of Goblin Guide.
I was inspired by how good I found Joshua Utter-Leyton’s no-Fauna Shaman deck, the best of the pre-Scars of Mirrodin Standard decks. The notion of playing full-on Bant without Knight of the Reliquary was frightening. So it was U/G or G/W.
G/W tested a lot better.
I don’t want to Jinx myself but I tested tonight and won five straight matchups. All my opponent’s decks were jazzed with Bloodbraid Elf or full-on Howling Mine + Temple Bell + Font of Mythos combo kills… I even beat the Red Deck 2-0! Just, you know, didn’t die 🙂
So this is basically terrible testing; and probably all the testing I am going to do for this tournament. I am super busy writing this week (I don’t even know how I pulled back the time to write this blog post to be honest), and as you know, except in rare events when I am hanging out / preparing with my IRL friends, the days off all-Sunday playtesting-while-babysitting for the Apprentice Program largely evaporated with the coming of Clark. So 99% of my playtesting these days comes on Magic Online… And as awful as the testing for this one was, I feel like the entire Alara Block + M10 has to be more powerful than just Scars of Mirrodin.
I think the deck must be pretty self-explanatory, but I will talk about one other card you may not have anticipated: Rampaging Baloths.
I feel like this guy is a monster, and I chose to play it over Sun Titan. Sun Titan is okay, but nothing spectacular in this deck, unless you are looping Tectonic Edges. That just isn’t consistent enough in my estimation.
That’s it!
If anyone has any comments on the mana base in particular, you know where the comments go.
Firestarter: What should I cut, if anything, for Bojuka Bog?
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.
