The U/W ‘Tron deck has such powerful mana production that it can produce some awfully awful threats. This video shows off the ‘Tron offense including Sundering Titan and the Mindslaver lock.
What is the Mindslaver lock? Check out the video already!
This video observes the U/W ‘Tron deck disrupting the opponents’ strategies with key sideboard cards like Chalice of the Void, Tormod’s Crypt, and Vendilion Clique. While not one of these cards will win against a top deck all by its lonesome, as part of a cohesive strategy and backed by the power of the UrzaTron, these cards can reduce some of the most dangerous decks in the metagame into jelly.
U/W ‘Tron – Nicholas Gulledge
4 Azorius Signet
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Chrome Mox
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Mindslaver
1 Sundering Titan
1 Triskelion
2 Decree of Justice
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Wrath of God
1 Academy Ruins
2 Flooded Strand
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Mystic Gate
1 Plains
2 Tolaria West
4 Urza’s Mine
4 Urza’s Power Plant
4 Urza’s Tower
sideboard:
1 Chalice of the Void
4 Circle of Protection: Red
3 Kitchen Finks
3 Sower of Temptation
1 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Vendilion Clique
I liked testing this deck.
I would consider playing a deck like this — especially for post-Conflux with Path to Exile and Martial Coup — but with Remand. Remand and Condescend help set up the ‘Tron and protect any lead the deck can generate. But hey! I’m the kind of person willing to play a Solemn Simulacrum in Extended.
Since Luis Scott-Vargas won Grand Prix Los Angeles (and Asher did pretty well on top), Storm has become one of if not the most popular deck in Extended. Following is a two-game match exploring the Storm mirror.
For this video I used Luis Scott-Vargas’s version of Storm, which is:
4 Lotus Bloom
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Mind’s Desire
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Ponder
4 Remand
2 Sleight of Hand
2 Electrolyze
4 Manamorphose
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Seething Song
Sideboard
2 Ad Nauseam
3 Brain Freeze
3 Echoing Truth
2 Gigadrowse
3 Pact of Negation
2 Shattering Spree
Here are some things you will notice about this deck…
Luis played main deck Electrolyze. This could theoretically have been Magma Jet (which is cheaper but less versatile against the one toughness creatures in Faeries), or nothing at all (as in Asher’s deck); the Grapeshot version can just Grapeshot Gaddock Teeg to death (though not Ethersworn Canonist).
Luis killed with Tendrils of Agony. It’s tricky, but you can Remand your own Tendrils and re-play it to create a lethal out of smoke, provided you have enough Lotuses and Manamorphoses to produce sufficient Black to play and re-play the Storm sorcery.
The big one is Shattering Spree in the sideboard. One of the cards I was using to beat Storm “back in the day” (at least before the Grand Prix) with the MWC deck was Chalice of the Void. That probably isn’t going to be a solution moving forward. The White deck is probably not fast enough to kill the Storm deck before a solution to Chalice of the Void can be found, especially when the best ineractive card has Replicate.
Storm is a deck that you will want to know; it is very popular (meaning you probably have to know how to beat it at least once or twice to win a PTQ) and an elite deck against Faerie Wizards (another pretty popular deck).
Storm is a powerhouse, and as you can see in the video (if you don’t have a lot of first hand experience with the deck) it is like a bulldozer stapled to a mongoose… nigh-inexorable kryptonite-locked to fast.
The video is pretty funny, especially the Game Three situation where I have double Tendrils, Brain Freeze-Remand-Brain Freeze with the second-to-lethal Tendrils on the stack. It can play tight margin mana with Tendrils and just enough Storm copies, or with sufficient momentum will do a thousand or so damage while decking the other guy the same turn.
Sideboard
1 Pithing Needle
3 Damnation
3 Extirpate
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Choke
2 Ravenous Baloth
2 Seal of Primordium
This deck more or less exchanges the usually defining Death Cloud set from the Life from the Loam versions of The Rock for Tarmogoyf, Bitterblossom, and Umezawa’s Jitte, repositioning the deck from board control to beatdown… while maintaining the card advantage capabilities of the [previously] more common deck.
The biggest take away I have from trying Jacob’s deck is how much better it is against Burn than the Death Cloud version I was on early in this season’s testing. Beating Burn was simply not difficult nor in any way stressful wheresas with Death Cloud, even when you won, you were on the edge of your seat the whole time.
An inability to win by Death Cloud is counterbalanced a little bit by the fact that this deck can still potentially lock the opponent down with Raven’s Crime. Even against Burn this can be useful because even if they are still clocking you for two or more damage you can end up shaving off their options and preventing them from planning — and playing — optimally.
All in all a very solid deck, well worth the try if you are considering B/G.
This is the “unacceptable” discussion and “solution” (if you can call it that) to You Make the Play – enCRYPTed.
… And the first You Make the Play Video response!
To refresh everybody’s memory, it was Game Three against ‘Tron. We had two up, Spellstutter Sprite in hand, fully loaded Archmage on the table and UU up.
The opponent presented Tormod’s Crypt.
The board looked more-or-less exactly like this:
So what is the what?
The first question is, do we care about a Tormod’s Crypt?
We don’t care about graveyard recursion overmuch; what we care about is that the Tormod’s Crypt can keep up from doubling up with Archmage Persist-ence.
So the first question is whether we should be doing anything about it.
I think — and it will be obvious from my “solution” to the board position — that I thought it would be worth dealing with (I care[d] about my half of an Archmage).
So the next question is, assuming we care, what we are going to do.
I have to admit that at the time (I am sure I was watching Gossip Girl out of the corner of my eye) that I didn’t even consider using the Archmage to defend the Archmage. To me, it was Spellstutter Sprite 2-for-1 or nil.
So I went for the Sprite.
Results were disastrous.
Obviously he was the super uber miser, and had not just natural ‘Tron, Ghost Quarter, and a significant threat, but Mindslaver as well.
Ka-pow!
Mindslaver connected.
Archmage died without ever doing anything profitable for michaelj (AKA Number One).
Interestingly if I had used the Archmage, I would have been in a pretty similar position (albeit with one more Mana Leak). I would have been obligated to eat the Mindslaver anyway. That said, I think using the Archmage to stop the Tormod’s Crypt was the best play.
Pat Chapin — who called my Spellstutter Sprite / terrible read “unacceptable” when I talked to him about it — said he would have done nothing. “You realize you are talking about pulling down your pants to a potential Mindslaver in order to save half a card, right?” (He said something like that).
But what is really interesting is all the things that happened next. Check that action out here:
I’m sure you loved every minute!
Oh, and before I forget – Congratulations to Joshua Scott Honigmann who won a Kentucky PTQ with a Mono-White Control deck similar to what we have been discussing the past couple of days. You go Temple of the False God!
This is actually Game Two of the previous post’s brawl between Zoo and the Lightning Bolt Deck.
… But this time, we are examining the game from the perspective of the enemy!
Why is Spark Elemental worth playing in a world full of Mind’s Desires and Death Clouds? Why would the greatest player of all time have chosen this deck, let alone posted a top finish with it at the World Champsionships?
Check out the SWOT on the Lightning Bolt Deck to find out!
LOVE
MIKE
P.S. Here is Jon Finkel’s Lightning Bolt Deck from the 2008 World Championships:
3 Flames of the Blood Hand
4 Incinerate
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Lava Spike
4 Magma Jet
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Rift Bolt
4 Shrapnel Blast
4 Spark Elemental
4 Sulfuric Vortex
I have been calling this deck the Lightning Bolt Deck largely for want of a better name.
Basically the deck has every “bad” Lightning Bolt reprint from Spark Elemental and Lava Spike on one (Lightning Bolts that can’t kill Hypnotic Specters) to Incinerate on two (Lightning Bolt for twice the cost).
In all seriousness, the critical mass of burn in the Lightning Bolt Deck can help win the game very quickly (as in the video itself). This deck is definitely on my short list.
Sideboard
1 Deathmark
4 Thoughtseize
2 Gaddock Teeg
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Sundering Vitae
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Ethersworn Canonist
Thaler’s deck does a lot of things differently than you might consider doing them. For starters he has all of his Jittes — three total Jittes — in the main deck. We would not have seen that a year ago.
Secondly, he mixes up his one mana removal spells and creatures. Thaler plays with a full set of Mogg Fanatics, and before any one mana burn spells, he stocks the one with almost the maximum number of Shadow Guildmages (killers who can also carry a Jitte)… Once he got there, Thaler mixed up Seal of Fire and Tarfire (one of each) to maximize the potential boost on Tarmogoyf, part tribal, part aura.
When I originally wrote Who’s the Beatdown?, the prevailing strategy in sideboarded games was to try to go more control. Here is a pretty basic example of how a deck might want to do that, Dave Price’s Top 8 deck from Grand Prix Seattle:
SIDEBOARD
3 Cursed Scroll
4 Masticore
2 Null Rod
3 Perish
3 Sphere of Resistance
In sideboarded games against other beatdown decks, specifically the Red Decks that were so hard to beat, Dave would remove cards like Sarcomancy (almost always awful) for cards like Masticore (more expensive, but worth lots of cards). This deck could set up a second turn Masticore with Demonic Consultation and Dark Ritual; cross the old fingers. With three lands — provided one was a City of Traitors — the Black deck could play the control, with the Masticore drawing fire (but possibly surviving still due to high toughness and regeneration), generating much card advantage by being able to pick off Ball Lightning. You can call this a kind of “Tinker” scenario, but for our argument it’s jockeying into the “control” role due to the non-tenability of the “beatdown” role against Fireblast and Ball Lightning when you have all these suicidal Zombies in your deck.
Arguably 2/3 of Dave’s sideboard could be categorized as “creature suppression” … Compare with the main deck’s 1/60 (unfettered beatdown).
The same was not untrue for “control” defaulting decks. Dave’s deck was from about a year after I wrote Who’s the Beatdown?. Look at Randy Buehler’s influential World Championship deck from about a year before I wrote that fairly well received article:
Randy Buehler – CMU Blue
4 Nevinyrral’s Disk
4 Counterspell
4 Dismiss
2 Dissipate
3 Forbid
4 Force Spike
4 Impulse
3 Mana Leak
1 Memory Lapse
1 Rainbow Efreet
4 Whispers of the Muse
Even with 26 lands main deck Randy was willing to side in four more lands for the mirror to prolong the time until he would actually have to start tapping lands by just playing more and more of them (and in this case having something to say about how the opponent spent his mana in the case of Wasteland applied to cards like Stalking Stones)… Jockeying for more and more and more control.
Randy’s Forbidian from more-or-less the exact moment of the original Who’s the Beatdown? sided three lands as well as some glacial Whispers of the Muse that were certainly not there for the ultra-fast beatdown and combo decks of the era; played quickly, these Whispers would increase Randy’s chances of drawing early Thawing Glaciers, played late, they were even more effective in the card advantage department, especially very very long games.
Of course there are no hard-and-fast rules that are completely unbreakable… We’re talking about prevailing trends here. At the time I talked to Zvi about why this might be — players (at least sometimes correctly) positioning themselves as beatdown or control in game one, but both usually going for control sideboarded — and he remarked that it was obvious: Control has more card advantage, and it’s simply easier to win with more card advantage.
The reason this is interesting is because as time has gone on the best deck designers and players have tried more and more to go more beatdown than control sideboarded. Maybe not beatdown in the sense of “siding in Jackal Pups” (though that happens all the time when the format gives you the tools you need), but beatdown in the sense that you want to seize the initiative and force through your threats.
Think about Jund Mana Ramp v. Fae. I think Jund Mana Ramp is the control in this matchup (consider Asher ManningBot’s comment from You Make the Play, You Make the Play), which is as dodgy as it is unexpected (Game One is not exactly the most stable pillar of percentage)… But consider the specifics. Fae is the threat deck. They win not with permission but resolving Bitterblossom on turn two, and overwhelming with Mistbind Clique. Spellstutter Sprite is a pure tempo move one-for-one and Cryptic Command is usually there to get spit out of the way so that the infinite 1/1s and big old 4/4 can get in. Jund Mana Ramp is the Spartan 300 in this matchup. Jund is trying to hold the hot gates. The legions of little Fae are buzzing in… Jund wins by killing lots of them with Jund Charms and Cloudthreshers, usually wins with one big old Cloudthresher that didn’t get countered or killed… You know, how Weissman did back in the day with his one Serra Angel. That’s why getting in with a Kitchen Finks, Chameleon Colossus, or in Asher’s comment a Civic Wayfinder can change the tenor of a game: It’s like a special treat where you aren’t just taking it every turn and trying to survive until you can do something awesome.
But sideboarded, Jund can tear fingernails getting into the beatdown spot with Mind Shatter, or specifically Mind Shatter + Gutteral Response. So much more active. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. When it’s working, you either work them and they have no chance to be either beatdown or control because they now have nothing and you are about to untap and smash whatever they have left with the soon-to-be-full value Cloudthresher in the grip; when it doesn’t, you are still making active plays that are wearing on a limited screen of counterspells that will eventually buckle if they don’t, you know, execute on their plan and beatdown you to death.
During the span that made me Resident Genius a couple of years ago, many of the successful decks I put together — Josh Ravitz on Kuroda-style Red, my PTQ win with Critical Mass, and Osyp Lebedowicz with URzaTron — featured controllish decks with sideboards set up to beat controllish decks by forcing through table-shattering threats… All three of those sideboards were masterworks.
So why am I on this topic?
Here is a video I just uploaded to ye olde YouTube:
If you watched B/W Tokens Part I you can see that I had overwhelming offense in the sky with multiple Marsh Flitters and Cloudgoat Rangers while he couldn’t get through on the ground due to my little White men. However he was playing with the powerful Chameleon Colossus, which is usually medium scary for Bitterblossom players.
I mentioned in the video I sided out Glorious Anthem which just makes me even more beatdown in favor of Wrath of God and Elspeth, Knight-Errant (block one Chameleon Colossus forever and / or guarantee Wrath of God card advantage) in order to cover that side of the spectrum. In this case I am going kind of old school, siding control / card advantage cards, but you see how I cut off both beatdown [which I already had] AND control [in the case that he could get his bit threats through] roles.
You see a lot of successful decks implementing exactly this strategy, even if no commentator indicated that was what they were going for.
LOVE
MIKE
PS:
Michael Jacob’s B/W Tokens
4 Bitterblossom
3 Marsh Flitter
4 Terror
2 Thoughtseize
4 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Ajani Goldmane
4 Cloudgoat Ranger
4 Glorious Anthem
2 Knight of Meadowgrain
1 Knight of the White Orchid
4 Spectral Procession
At the recent Star City Games $5,000 tournament in Philadelphia, a lot of people came up to me and asked about The World’s Greatest Tee Shirt. I am proud to say that having explained the desperate situation that the heroic Autobots found themselves in — at least until the arrival of their mechanical messiah — and how Optimus Prime, the Touch in tow, was able to save the day (or at least Autobot City) well enough that players present seemed to “get it” and new friends like Garrett Sheier even went and got themselves some Optimus Prime tee shirts.
So I thought I’d share what I talked about “in real life” in Philadelphia… and keeping in mind that you don’t have me swearing like a sailor in your ear… maybe you will come to understand why I find a tear in my eye every time I see that newly beloved tee shirt image. Transformers: The Movie has been one of my favorite films for over twenty years.
…
Here’s the setting.
The Decepticons are blitzing Autobot City! The Decepticons are BLITZING Autobot City. I know you are used to some skirmishes over the tee vee seasons with ‘bots from both sides of the Red / Purple insignia division walking away or even rolling out as it were, but the film to this point has been a murder of murders. Ironhide. Prowl. Wheeljack. I owned some or all of the vanquished ‘bots. At age 11 I didn’t yet realize that this was a ploy to, you know, sell more bits of plastic and die-cast metal.
But through the long night some of the Autobots have survived. The villanous Richard III-like Megatron calls for the final destruction of all that is holy and good and energon-powered on Earth, the end of a war that began in the time of the dinosaurs, perhaps… but not at all a good ending for us and ours.
Devastator, six ‘cons strong, shrugs off a heavy blow and is tearing Autobot City in two with mighty hands of steel, threatening to expose the last hidey-hole of the now exhausted Autobot faithful.
All seems lost.
But there is hope.
Hope that rides on sixteen wheels.
Here is a music video (I didn’t make it, but they let some other videos sit on the same site as Five With Flores), albeit largely less popular:
Â
Â
Check it out at about 0:09… That long shot of Optimus Prime rolling out and crossing the bridge to what will be his final battle. Can you hear the palpable hope alongside Stan Bush’s power ballad crooning?
0:16… The Decepticons hear it, and are rallying to the bridge. 300 Spartans nearly held the hot gates against the greatest army history had seen to that point. But can a small army of robotic killing-machines stand against a single sixteen-wheeler?
0:21… We have completely misjudged this situation! The ‘cons aren’t rallying… They’re RUNNING! From a single Autobot! He must have “the Touch” or some such.
0:24… This is the reflection of a supervillain’s face right before he’s…
0:25… splattered to the sky by an oncoming sixteen-wheeler.
0:33… Prime is so tough he seems completely immune to blaster fire, even in truck-mode. Eff these guys and their stupid blasters.
0:35… There go the jets. This is the iconic moment. Prime is vaulting from “run over the slower Decepticons” truck-mode to “heroic mass-murderer” Autobot mode. If you aren’t cheering as he launches from the ground to the sky, I fear, my friend, that you have no soul.
0:37… He hasn’t even hit the ground yet, but his gun is in his hand.
0:39… Fatality!
0:40… Fatality!
0:41… Fatal… Um, we know Soundwave lives, but he seems pretty effed up anyway. Remember, Prime hasn’t even hit the ground from his transformation yet and he has already run over 2-3 Decepticons and shot another 2-3 to death already. Has this guy got the Touch or what?
0:42-0:47… We aren’t even a FULL MINUTE into the song yet and Prime has just unloaded 10-12 more rounds. We see the results of the last two; that is, two more ‘con corpses. Given his shot percentage to this point, how many ‘cons did he drop along the way?
1:07… No clue why Megatron flying tackles Prime here instead of shooting him with his black hole-powered cannon. This guy needs like, a life coach or at least to listen to Top 8 Magic or something. What a poor play.
1:25… Oh, that’s why! Black hole, black shmole! Prime would just dodge his lightspeed cannon-blast! (No clue why being disparately shown to shrug off blaster fire and dodge singularity-level destruction moving at the speed of light, he was successfully tagged by a hurled piece of debris, which you can see sticking out of his gut… You know when the Japanese guy shoots all his rounds and Gojira and they don’t hurt him, but then he inexplicably throws his empty revolver at the rampaging dragon-god? Imagine that the gun knocked him back into the sea. Logic.).
1:34… Megatron has a lightsaber!
1:35… Prime is vulnerable to lightsabers (I mean who isn’t?); this will be important at a later date.
1:44… Megatron, though, is vulnerable to PRIME’S EVER LOVIN’ FISTICUFFS!!!
2:00… Also Prime’s Judo!!!
We all know how this fight ends. It is Optimus’s last fight. Though he defeats Megatron and routs essentially the entire Decepticon invasion force, he is greviously wounded and has to pass the torch — or the Matrix of Leadership in this case — to the Prime of the next generation.
3:11… Rodimus Prime unleashes the Touch and lights our darkest hour. Do you see how the Touch can be passed to the most incompetent of potential heroes?
But you can surely see how Prime’s inspiration and leadership — and most importantly the hope he represented to the embattled and desperate heroes — combined with the magical music of the time combine sublimely (almost like Devastator or perhaps Voltron to go off-universe) into The World’s Greatest Tee Shirt:
Your old buddy michaelj (or Mrs. michaelj properly) ordered two. They will be mine for Christmas! Thank you beloved Better Half!
If you have foolishly not gotten yours yet, think about it like this… Do you not have the Touch? Do you want it? Are you constantly complaining about bad mana, bad luck, being topdecked? Perhaps you need the Touch, or perhaps the Power. Did you notice Prime teasing your opponent and calling him a loser with that L-shape up top his head?
You just might want to think about that.
I plan to start next year’s Extended PTQ season with the Touch in tow.