STD: The Sexy Team of Dudes

C'est la peste! Sauve qui peut!

2012-01-10T01:34:00.001-06:00

Went to Atlanta for a magical dude-time at the StarCity this past weekend, but while drippily pacing back and forth between the bed and the sink at 4 a.m. on Sunday I decided it was better to sleep in than agonize over what to sideboard against Pox for the Open.

We all dropped a round to Pox in the Challenge the day before - me salvaging a 3-1 finish with Deadguy by beating Maverick, Death and Taxes, and Ad Nauseum Tendrils*; Sterling with Reanimator losing to my having loaned Carlisle the deck's Elesh Norn; and Quinten with Enchantress... all hating Pox by the end of it.

[* Slaughter Pact cannot target Tidehollow Sculler, even when it is holding your one copy of Tendrils, sir.]

Pox goes to top-deck mode by about turn four, and its plan is taking you there with it. Then it needs maybe ten or more awful turns to actually kill you, but in the meantime you have no grip and no land. I randomly windmill-slammed my one-of Elspeth off the top against the deck, and then spent a good 15 turns playing draw-go against an active LilianaOTV and Cursed Scroll, unable to maintain enough land to cast and keep a dude alive to just swoop in and kill his stupid third Lily, eventually unable even to afford Vindicating it.
Anyway that opponent said he dropped two rounds to Stoneblade, presumably because he can't do anything about Planeswalkers or artifacts, and I guess if blue keeps him off Smallpox or Sinkhole long enough it can resolve JaceTMS and handle top-deck mode quite nicely thank you.

A year or two ago my rationale in preparing for StarCity events was two-fold: 1) don't play blue; it's hard** and Merfolk is[/was] everywhere AND 2) actively fuck over people for making the obvious choice to play blue. Also, while in the abstract JaceTMS is the best planeswalker, ElspethKE not only trumps him but pulls her weight in a vacuum as well.

[** I know I've said before and continue to believe it is very hard to Hymn to Tourach (read: Force of Will) yourself in a profitable way, and I prefer to leave such meta-sustaining moves to keener players.]

Anyway. Adam Cai's list from the event does a lot of the things I wish I'd been doing last week while sighing over how linear G/w Maverick felt.*** But then I wasn't testing post-board, where Choke is pure Wayne Brady. I guess Cai thought so too, even though the card clearly hurt him as well.

[*** The urge to avoid the expected--Punishing Mav--was admittedly a totally off-with-the-nose-to-spite-the-face type of situmation. D'oh.]

The top lists that day packed a few surprises - when was the last time you saw Goblins vying for single-elim? Me, I left Death and Taxes for dead years ago. Now I'm wondering, could he just drop the Stoneforge Mystics for maindeck CatBoss, and instead of choosing among SwordOfs just play three Jittes? CatBoss is part of this dream I have where I Piss Some People Off.

And I like this micro-Zoo list, though his board-hate felt thin and left me wondering if he sometimes mulls to oblivion. Maybe because he can theoretically kill on three he just crushes[/ed] dreams anyway.

In other news, Past in Flames placed 2nd in a 156-man event, and didn't even run black to do so. Well, okay, yes, it did cast Burning Wish for the Tendrils, hitting the cost's BB via I guess Manamorphose or LED. It's interesting to me he went into White for Silence when black provides discard and more rituals, but thanks to his cheaper mana-base I'm planning to take this build for a spin soon, though I barely know how.

Also in that top-8, someone cowboyed up and made Back to Basics awesome in a Stoneblade shell. My one complaint is once your manas are boned the deck seems likely to then need two geologic epochs to actually dead your life to zero, but clearly that wasn't holding back others in contention that day.

Outside that, I just wanna get down with weird stuff like Elspeth Tirel, Volt Charge and Bloodgift Demon. Maybe I'm still sick...

Tread upon the meek, and they shall wound your feet, and make you crawl.

2011-12-07T22:33:00.001-06:00

Hey remember that time I boarded that one card that demapped all the Knights of the Reliquary, Progeniti, Emrakuls, Tarmogoyfs, Inkwell Leviathans, Tombstalkers and Dreadnoughts?

This card could seriously kill all of those bastards at the same time - while leaving my Bob, Mirran Crusader, Mom and Tidehollow Sculler intact.
Oh, and it was easier to cast than Vindicate.
("What are you yammering about, Dan?")

Seriously, do you remember that shit?
The guy that got 10th at Star City St. Louis just might: he boarded two copies of the same card!

Retribution of the Meek (Visions)
2W - Sorcery - Bury all creatures with power 4 or greater.
Yeahhh!

The price has ticked up about a buck in the last two months; it's now in the $3 range. So while it hasn't exploded the way Peacekeeper did last fall, I'm clearly not the only one who's noticed it in Legacy...

Some Events

2011-12-07T00:09:00.001-06:00

In Spring of 2012 a bunch of cool events are happening and I will have a hard time keeping track of them.
Thus I will compile some reminders for my dumb self to reference later:

Jan 7-8 : Star City Atlanta
Feb 25-26 : Star City Memphis
March 10-11 : Grand Prix Indianapolis (Legacy)
March 17-18 : Grand Prix Nashville (Sealed/Booster)

And June 30-July 1 is Grand Prix Atlanta, but no idea on the format there.
One other note to self: 13 stupid points is good for Level 2 as far as Star City 2012 is concerned which is good for free sleeves at each event. Angels, please.

Oh Crap Oh Goodness

2011-11-27T16:14:00.001-06:00

I have no idea why Steven got rid of this blog's awesome Gaddock Teeg profile picture looking all haggard and metal. I was not consulted.
Anyway.

You probably didn't need the ol' Sexy Team of Dudes to tell you the printing of Batterskull promoted Stoneforge Mystic from powerful to bonkers in Legacy. (If in fact you did need that, well, why are we talking? To bring you up to speed, this year something called Mental Misstep happened for awhile, then went away. Good catching up!)

Of late, on top of SFM, you also have two smallish blue guys steering the format: Snapcaster Mage and Delver of Secrets. Personally I feel Snapcaster is good but overplayed, but then I've been putting off dropping a hundred stupid dollars on a set because, after all, he's "just" a rare.
Delver of Secrets on the other hand ($0.25) seems really fun, and has heralded a new incarnation of Tempo Thresh (1/129). Similarly: 1/40. Yep. I'm looking forward to sleeving this up, though a bit wary, because it demands flawless play in the first few turns. Judging when to hold U open for Stifle or Spell Snare and when to instead risk running a Delver out with limited protection may distill a whole game down to one pivotal either/or, and for loose-playing bastards like me that is frightening.

But as far we're concerned with beating men down while denying them resources, there are other games in town: I'm in love with G/W Maverick like this: T8/94. I've long thought Aven Mindcensor was underplayed, and in conjunction with repeated Wastelands via Knight of the Reliquary it's just criminal. Basically the only card you can't tutor out immediately is Swords to Plowshares, but with Maze of Ith at the KotR's disposal, as well as potentially using Green Sun's Zenith to get an early StP back with Eternal Witness, well... you've got options. Also, as I understand it, untapping and reusing KotR via Scryb Ranger does not remove it from combat. Oh, and did you see this one extra-crazy build featuring Birthing Pod? T8/129. Jesus.

Now might be a good time to also note how Scavenging Ooze has been catching on, even in unexpected places (Aggro Loam, T8, SCG Vegas). Having game against Ichorid pre-board is a hell of a thing, and the Ooze lends all types of edge in a million other match-ups as well, even if it is ridiculous that one card costs $20ish when the whole Commander pile it's from retails around $30.

Other tangent: A lot of the dudes we're talking about today (Snapcaster, Stoneforge, Delver, etc along with a slew of others lower on the radar) have something in common, and that is they all die to Punishing Fire. The combo with Grove of the Burnwillows got a big-up for Legacy in some control deck with I think Counterbalance in late contention at some Star City last month, but as you'd expect, what's cranking my personal tractor is the Worlds Finalist Incorporating It In Maverick. Note the big 24 land, including maindeck Bojuka Bog there.

The combo is also spicing up your more conventional Zoo list (T16 SCG Vegas) in profound and exciting ways that Kavu Predator doesn't seem to mind (T8/129) at all. Seems. Fun.

Wrapping up, I don't get why Burn keeps making T16s at StarCity and the like, but it do. Yesterday I picked up four Goblin Guides for $4 (thanks Chuck!) so I may just have to sleeve up a Sligh, but these slopes can prove slippery: I recently built Soul Sisters thinking it wouldn't require any cards I was using elsewhere, only to find myself snapping up still more Elspeths and Stoneforge Mystics (I'm now into double-digit territory on SFMs) in order to tune it.
And no, there is no ranking Legacy Soul Sisters list to link there; I looked.

I mention always needing more Stoneforges only because part of me worries: doesn't this list (T8/129) look a lot like what got SFM banned in Standard? It's played alongside everything from Hymn to Tourach to Force of Will to Tarmogoyf. You can argue that just means it's being widely adopted, but that argument didn't save Skullclamp. Or Mental Misstep.

-Dan

Tígel Üpplecút

2010-09-26T15:01:00.005-05:00

Human interáction is shitty; let's play Magic!

T1: Duress.
T2: Kiln Fiend.
T3: Aphotic Wisps, Manamorphose, Bolt, Lava Dart, flashback - dead ya?
Seems fun.

Pretend all you want, but true to its name, Reanimator isn't dead.

Further, like Elvis, Mone-Blue Control didn't die; it just went home (3/66)... er, thought better of killing you with combat.
(Personally, since I only have two copies of JaceTM, if I build this the third slot will be Call the Skybreaker, which is like Morphling but funnier because it's better.)

Indeed, Jace is taking on a role as quite the Legacy kill-con:
- UGB Landstill, still - 8/57.
- UWb counter-top - 3/125.
- UW Landstill - 4/99.

Here Storm-Combo cuts the Chants for more discard to simplify the colors and squeeze in 2x Cabal Ritual + Ill-Gotten Gains to take 1/45; it's a trade-off. A crafty opponent can hide FOW from the discard effects and/or pick it up with Divining Top, plus flipping IGGy off Ad Nauseum is miserable. This build also gives up on Diminishing Returns off Burning Wish. No one said it would be easy.

It'll be interesting to see how Merfolk changes up its game post-Scars. The new blue lord seems better than Sovereign, particularly if you're using it to drop and gear up Equipment on the cheap, but gear is a non-bo with Kira. Choices between these sorts of powerful options are the sort of problem Merfolk players are glad to have, I reckon.

EVEN MORE BRIEFLY NOTED:

WW/g Death&Taxes 8/204 EXCLAMATION POINT! Plus this bonus (1/25) feat. Student of Warfare. If Stoneforge Mystic wasn't so effing good I could totally see the new cat-boss that effs up shuffles here, but I'm just not sure.

- ONE-land Belcher, now with 100 percent less black, 1/34 thanks to M11's contribution of red Rituals 5-8.

- GW Vengevine Survival. I don't get it and I kinda don't want to until Vengevines get cheaper, but it's there: 1/58.

- That UB/r Faeries deck is STILL hungry.

- Also, Goblins is still a deck. Mogg War Marshall and Gempalm Incerator = friends, hey?

- Another silly Mono-Blue artifact-combo deck.

Until next time,

Hide.

Stripéd Tiger Snaps

2010-07-18T12:34:00.005-05:00

The Grand Prix isn't even two whole weeks away, and my Gauntlet has grown massive. Right now it's Zoo, New Horizons, Dredge, Goblins, Merfolk, Dreadstill, The Gate, Enchantress, Dragon Stompy, the Rock and possibly something else I forgot.

Note the absence of Storm combo and Reanimator - decks you'll recall Wizards tried last month to push out of the Legacy metagame. You know, Legacy?

Anyway, fail on their part: Reanimator made 3rd out of 138 in Spain two weeks ago - which is to say, just after the ban took effect. Mostly the deck just swaps Mystical Tutor for Personal Tutor, and incorporates the one-of tutor-target Turbulent Dreams both as a discard outlet and to buy time off the opponent's clock.

Tendrils of Agony still kills Legacy players as well: 6/30 with Doomsday here, and 1/28 with Burning Wish here.

So to me the question isn't if those decks will be an issue in Ohio, but to what extent.

In other news, Survival of the Fittest is suddenly high fashion. It finally cracked the $20 mark on StarCity, and outside the familiar Bant lists that combo off Loyal Retainers into Iona, there are some fascinating possibilities. This one uses Veteran Explorer to power out Greater Gargadons li3k whu7, possibly while clearing the way in with a False Prophet. Mul Daya Channelers and Primal Command seem wacky, but who am I to say?

And despite having made no distinct improvements since like 2007, Welder Survival posted 4/42.

Alright.

Another burgeoning archetype is honest control. To wit: Baneslayer Control, piles of Planeswalkers and creature kill, or good old-fashioned Cunning Landstill (1/138! But do you think that's really the Jace he meant? I sorta doubt it).

Next up, devouring opponents with hoards of ravenous zombies is nothing new -- 7/138 btw, and the only diff from my build is my cheap ass plays Citadels over Paradise. But you already realized my list rocked :-P -- but I've wanted someone to plow down MBA-style since Death Baron was printed. Hooray!

Last thing: I usually steer away from decks that play 4x FOW, Goyf, Brainstorm and Swords because they just feel so... I dunno, obvious? Mainstream? But this build found room for a light equipment package, Elspeth, Spell Pierce and a modest tempo suite. Seems fun. I might swap the second Jitte for Basilisk Collar though, I love the 1x Jitte/Collar/Mystic package so.

If I don't write you again before the GP, rip your fourth land off the top with no cantrips and try not to walk into Cursecatcher.

-Dan

Spinning Bird Kick

2010-07-01T02:59:00.010-05:00

Funny how for the last big Legacy event before Mystical Tutor's exit, it didn't ruin a damn thing.

For my money, Tarmogoyf sucked up way more oxygen from players rabbling for the banhammer than the Tutor ever did, and the Wizards team was unscientifically free-stylin' in proclaiming the only reason Reanimator and Tendrils weren't devouring the format is somehow Legacy players are too gentlemanly to fully exploit the Tutor's power. (I mean, have they talked to Legacy players? Plenty of words come to mind, but 'gentleman' isn't one of them.)

All I know is I built a deck that took Reanimator into its meta-account (alongside other completely disparate concerns like tribal aggro) and played an 11-man event where I beat three different Reanimator decks. Only one of those decks even made top 4. Storm combo was also present, and also missed the cut.

To wit: The top four was me (two-drop Rock), New Horizons, U/W Tempo, and the aforementioned lone Reanimator.

In other words, no "gentleman's agreement" kept the meta off Mystical Tutor, but it didn't matter - those decks all lost out. If there was any such unspoken playground rule, it was precluding pure aggro like Zoo or Goblins - that day I don't think I saw either, even though they've cold eaten up StarCity top-8's lately.

Anyway, regarding the unbannings: If Illusionary Mask mattered, wouldn't it have already done something in Vintage other than cheat Phyrexian Dreadnoughts into play? Pleeeaase, Legacy can handle Dreadnoughts.

Then there's Grim Monolith, which continues a push by Wizards to facilitate big-mana mono-brown lists in Legacy. Again, look to Vintage for a clue. That deck's whole plan is to make Magic unplayable for the opponent.

Now, the argument for why cards like Mystical Tutor go (and cards like Tarmogoyf stay) is Magic should be about interacting: combat, trading tricks and removal, etc. Fine. And yeah, I'll admit it's hard to interact when a turn-two 7/7 flyer has turned off half your deck, or your opponent is ramping up Storm count after casting Orim's Chant and you've become his de-facto fluffer, just shuffling his deck for him a lot.

The reason I mention this is, as far as failure to interact goes, I'm not looking forward to the day my Swords to Plowshares can't interact with an opposing Lodestone Golem because Chalice of the Void is set at 1 and my Trygon Predator got wiped by All Is Dust. They're working on it.

Bottom line: Infer what you want about the wisdom behind the latest B/R update. The format will survive, but not because this list-change is saving Legacy; rather, it's just too beautiful a format to keep down.

Have fun,
Dan

-

Decks you should see:

A Counter-Top Thopter list feat. Counterspell and Jace 2.0 took StarCity St. Louis. I had the privilege of losing to this guy in Indiana back in March; he played a turn-two Crypt against me game-one when I was with Reanimator, and killed me under Humility. I knew the winner was him when I heard he used Jeweled Birds for tokens. Classy.

Also in that top 8: MossNought meets Show-and-Tell/Emrakul. When Andy Shugart deck-teched Jedi Emreka in Atlanta he joked that Progenitus was his back-up plan. Here it's like they trumped the 10/10 with a 12/12 back-up plan instead. WTF mate, seems fun.

Back on the subject of decks packing Counterspell and Jace TMS: Nice UBG Landstill list, although wouldn't you rather pay extra for Doom Blade over Ghastly Demise just for the superior artwork? I seriously might. Anyway, bonus: At the same event, Planeswalkers are moving up in the world. Just ask this Zoo player.

Alright, now, bear with me. If a Magic player were just crazy as a loon, and holding Intuition and just one of the following cards:
--Life from the Loam
--Academy Ruins
--Thopter Foundry
--Sword of the Meek
...then the Intuition for the other three would be pretty sweet right? Because that's where I think this Bant list is going, plus along the way he gets to beat you down with decent creatures. He doesn't actually run Force of Will, but unwitting opponents will play around it anyway.

And if activating Knight of the Reliquary is good, how can you go wrong by untapping her and doing it again via Scryb Ranger? Especially when it lets you activate a Weathered Wayfarer in response.

I figure that Gaea's Cradle is what powers out his big dumb gear package. I'm not sure why he plays Birds of Paradise over Noble Hierarch, except that maybe the flying works nicely with equipping the two Swords? I guess it could be a budget concern, but somehow I doubt that... C'mon, admit it: there's something refreshing about a green/white beatdown deck with neither want or need for Tarmogoyf.

Just fall on it with your elbow; it's gonna hate that more than you do.

2010-06-21T10:15:00.002-05:00

So just when I'd made up my mind the deck from the previous post should be boarding Aven Mindcensor over Ethersworn Canonist, they go and ban Mystical Tutor. Mindcensor still crimps Entomb, Knight of the Reliquary, Infernal Tutor, Natural Order, Conflux, and of course fetchlands, so I'm not ruling it out. But my suspicion is the meta will now shift in a different direction entirely, obviating much hard thought.

To wit: Zoo was already really, really strong. And with Grim Monolith coming off the list, I suspect Stax just got better, although I'm not sure by how much. Where's it been, anyway? I figure there's this thing running around called Qasali Pridemage, see, and dealing with it via Suppression Field messes up Stax's whole plan with Grim Monolith again. Harumph!

With fewer combo-decks around to goldfish it into the ground, 43lands got better.

Oh, and there's some buzz about Death and Taxes stepping up - note the NINE sideboard cards against Storm Combo. Anyway I can see D+T profiting in an aggro meta, but I suspect it's over-hyped because the deck is popular online. Survival might come out a winner from the absence of more combo-ey combo as well.

Anyway. Stuff that I've liked lately:

B/w Aggro made top 8 at SCG: Seattle. He plays both Swords to Plowshares and Gatekeeper of Malakir so either color Iona names is the wrong one. Plus Vampire Nighthawk trades for almost anything out of Reanimator except the first-striking Akrobot, and can even take that out if it gears up either Sword in time.

Grim Discovery is an interesting choice, getting back +1 dude and Wasteland seems good, especially after folding up and throwing away the opponent's hand. The one thing I really dislike here is his having to board four CoP: Red for Zoo and probably Goblins. So perhaps not a great choice going forward from the B+R shift.

In a similar vein you have The Gate, which balances the steep downside of Abyssal Persecutor by running 12 sac-outlets: Therapy, Innocent Blood and Gatekeeper. The deck also pisses life up the wall with two-drops that just beg to be Spell-Snared, like Dark Confidant and Bitterblossom. If they get through that lifeloss is counteracted by the aforementioned Nighthawk as well as the ubiquitous Jitte.

I kind of wish it ran Dark Ritual to be a bit more explosive, and I'm not sure maindeck Faerie Macabre will be needed anymore. The first version of this I ever saw ran mainboard Deathmark - what a maniac. He says it actually plays more like control.

Speaking of Maniacs, tell Team Jedi the secret is out, as their silly deck made it to Germany. I shouldn't hate too bad though; other people, including apparently at least one Dragon Stompy fan, are trying silly shit to cheat out Emrakul as well.

Past that, well, I already linked to Landstill and Dreadstill, didn't I?

'Til next time, put Bob on the stack, THEN trigger Mirri's Guile.

Yep.

-Dan

4-1-1 with GWB at TNLG in Nashville

2010-06-12T23:41:00.004-05:00

I placed 2/11 at Donnie's today with this list:

4 Mother of Runes
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Qasali Pridemage
2 Gaddock Teeg
2 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Serra Avenger
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Thoughtseize
4 Aether Vial
2 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Windswept Heath
3 Marsh Flats
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Karakas
3 Wasteland
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Swamp
2 Savannah
2 Bayou
2 Scrubland

SB:
2 Path to Exile
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Faerie Macabre
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Krosan Grip
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Umezawa's Jitte

I beat Reanimator three times (!) as well as Merfolk and lost to New Horizons in the finals. There was a round four ID against U/W tempo in there because that match-up seemed unfun for both of us.

Some thoughts on the cards:

- Mother of Runes is fantastic, especially in conjunction with Basilisk Collar. I took four or five hits from a Sphinx of the Steel Wind by racing it with a Collared Goyf protected by Mom, and then lived long enough to find mana to cast and equip Serra Avenger and further top-deck Swords to Plowshares.
- Maelstrom Pulse didn't show up that often, but I did kill two massive Terravores with one against New Horizons, which was cool. Plus I like not having all my removal in one color, so I can get around both Iona naming White and the pro-green on Sphinx.
- I only got to Wastelock Reanimator via Knight of the Reliquary once, and then also naturally in the above-mentioned game involving the Collar, which was against Eli, plus also ridiculous.
- Be it resolved that sticking Dark Confidant just rules basically always.
- Do not board out Gaddock Teeg against Merfolk; they board in Submerge. Also, did you realize you can Submerge a motherfucker in response to its controller cracking a fetchland? Lucas took me to school on that one.
- Awkward mana hurt me a few times against New Horizons. So did my inability to remain focused after five rounds of Magic when I'm late for a date. Anyway to shore up that match-up probably I should add a second plains, and/or cut a Bayou for the third Savannah.

Bottom line, for my trouble I won 14 packs of WWK (Jace lottery, haven't opened 'em yet) plus a Grindstone and All Is Dust. Between that and the Sinkhole and other random level-up and foil jank I picked up for my cube off Blake last night in exchange for a buncha dumb planeswalkers I never touch, I'm actually out of cards to covet right now, which is very strange... Must be time for a new set to come out.

Oh, and by the way... I feel fat.

-Dan

Kira + Jitte = Nonbo, plus also I hate Paramore with all my guts

2010-06-07T00:09:00.005-05:00

In the last post I mentioned Landstill might not be as dead as it appeared. Sure enough, take a look. See also: Dreadstill.

Interestingly, higher up that Top 8, and in fact the winner of the 500-man event in Europe, is this Merfolk build, which eschews Standstill outright to free up room for lords 13-16: Coralhelm Commander. Yeah no dude for real I'm going to trade this Adept for your Nacatl kthxbai.

And while we're glutting ourselves on that particular Top8: Baneslayer Control. What can I say? Esper Charm seems like a house. It deals with Counterbalance by way of its illustrious 3-mana CMC, and it's a Hymn to Tourach that discards to Force of Will. (Side note, speaking of Hymn, anybody besides me ever miss Rise / Fall? Why isn't it in my cube? Is my head bleeding?)

Anyway. G/W Stoneforge decks with Kitchen Finks and Knight of the Reliquary keep showing up, and I love them, but I really don't understand how they beat combo at all, and in fact question their game against Reanimator as well. My solution is to splash black, but I already filled up quite a bit of space below yammering about going 5-3 on that presumption.

In other news, I realized the reason the Bant Charm deck plays only one Brainstorm is it cold sucks once you have Sylvan Library out, whereas Ponder shuffles away whatever wasn't worth paying 4 life to draw. As to the utility of 4x Brainstorm in a deck sporting 3x Jace, Face Sculptor, you'll have to consult Wafo-Tapa, re: the above-linked Landstill list. (Further, did you notice Lightning Greaves is fucking five dollars? Beats the hell out of me)

Last thing: Zoo devoured the top 16 for SCG Philly, alongside relative newcomer New Horizons, but one good thing did come of it.

Yep.

Broke is the New Fixed

2010-06-03T10:28:00.003-05:00

Legacy is a format where a two-card combo can deck your opponent or cheat an unstoppable 15/15 into play, and yet such decks are only marginally competitive.
Folks argue if you're doing nothing broken you're doing nothing period.

I don't buy that. Take Zoo and Merfolk as examples. They play dudes and they turn those dudes sideways. Maybe along the way they hit a curve of islandwalking Muscle Slivers via Aether Vial while Wastelanding and Dazing your attempts to develop. Maybe they drop a 4/5 for 1G, draw three burn spells off Sylvan Library and sacrifice two mountains to kill your ass.

And yeah, that's rough and stuff. But my point is Legacy is not a format defined by who can stick Iona first and effectively make the other player quit Magic.

(onward)

Maybe that's why I like Rock decks lately. They're not doing anything particularly effing insane, but on the whole they are raping your hand, fucking the board, dropping better guys than you have, and ratcheting up card advantage all the while. I dunno what the last three cards of this list should have been, but it's a pretty solid framework to build from.

It's weird to me how Grim Lavamancer tends to wind up alongside Tarmogoyf, but there's no denying it's good. Last summer I had a deck very similar to this, except with Cloud of Faeries into Standstill into Ninja of the Deep Hours, and running white for Swords to Plowshares instead of red for Lightning Bolt. It was effing hard to deal with, but by no means would I call any of it broken.

Speaking of pretty far from broken, I'm pretty amazed mono-blue control has been fighting its way up the lists lately, but you don't hear me complaining. See also: Soldiers. How in the hell? Nevermind, whatever, it's awesome. Shit, Landstill might not be as dead as once seemed either.

Alright, this is bugging me: the Bant Charm decks with Cold-Eyed Selkie are often seen running ONE Brainstorm. Are these budget Vintage decks that folks randomly sling in Legacy events? What the hell? And I'm surprised by the inclusion of Lightning Greaves, but I fully intend to try it and in fact hope to like it.

And while we're on the subject of decks sporting Stoneforge packages and Sylvan Library, look at this. It's like Land Hax without the Fathom Seer and Force of Will. So basically it's like if someone reworked Land Hax in a form I could fully embrace.

Anyway, to close out our theme of allegedly "fair" decks - those that don't cast three Cruel Ultimatums and a Bogarden Hellkite on turn two - I'll leave you with one silly combo: Legacy Hive Mind.

Yep.

-Dan

5-3 at Starcity Atlanta with GWb Legacy Homebrew

2010-05-13T22:01:00.002-05:00

I knew going into Atlanta that I wanted to roll tribal aggro like Merfolk, mix disruption with a passable beatdown clock, and not fall total prey to the rampant graveyard hate I figured everyone would be siding. Oh, and not be zoo. Plus if I could put my Karakas (Karaki?) to work against Iona, all the better. I hate losing to Counterbalance, but my hope was to either dodge it or stick a crucial Thoughtseize or Pridgemage fast and swarm them from there.

I also aspired to pack the Iona/Retainers combo myself, without going to the trouble of playing islands. Playing islands helps Merfolk, and usually means you’re also running Force of Will and Brainstorm. Those cards are too skill intensive for me - Just being honest, I don’t practice enough to 2-for-1 myself in a consistently favorable way using FOW. Instead of being the paintbrush, I wanted to play the wrench, and that meant instead of FOW and Brainstorm I wanted Thoughtseize and Dark Confidant.

I’d been tinkering with a Survival-based list that was probably trying to do too much: that is, it ran Birds of Paradise but couldn’t find room for Cabal Therapy. Again, with an aim toward trading out the scalpel for a hammer, the night before, we cut the Survival and the Iona/Retainers package, arriving at this:

4 Mother of Runes
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Qasali Pridgemage
3 Gaddock Teeg
2 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Serra Avenger
2 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Thoughtseize
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Aether Vial
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Basilisk Collar (!)
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Karakas
3 Wasteland
7 Fetch
7 Dual
1 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Plains

SB:
3 Krosan Grip
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Extirpate
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
3 Diabolic Edict
3 Kitchen Finks

Match 1:

Wu is a guy playing U/B Reanimator, with a twist.
He was super nice and seemed happy to chat. I’m not actually smart enough to get inside my opponent’s head by making conversation during the match, but it makes things more interesting than punting in silence.

Game one I lose the die-roll and he opens with land, go. Yes! I open with Thoughtseize and take his reanimation spell before unloading fast beats. He Brainstorms a couple times, rearranging his top cards, and starts to go off – he puts an Emrakul in his graveyard, then announces he screwed something up, shuffles his graveyard into his library, thinks some more and scoops.

Game two he Thoughtseizes me on the play, then once again I stick a few beaters before he’s close to going off. By now I’ve drawn Faerie Macabre and am not taking him very seriously when once again he Entombs for Emrakul. “Trigger on the stack?” he asks, offering priority. My premature ass dives into his ruse: “Trigger on the stack, RFG Emrakul.” He responds with Goryo’s Vengeance. “I have to read this.”

Go ahead and look that card up yourself; I’ll wait.

It’s an instant speed Kamigawa Corpse Dance. Yeah. He gets a hasty Emrakul… you’ve seen Emrakul right? The guy that 15’s you while making you sack six permanents? Hurtful. I read his shit. “I… just misplayed.”

Four guys watching our game laugh in agreement.

Okay, fine, so he punted one and now I punted one too. My deck is tuned to aggravate him, there’s still game 3; move on in life and get in there.
Because of his Thoughtseize, he’s seen that I board Diabolic Edict, so he knows naming black with Iona might be smart. He succeeds in this endeavor before I manage to gear up Serra Avenger with Basilisk Collar, effectively triggering a staring contest between the two angels. We play draw-go for a few turns and I’m close to Vialing in Knight of the Reliquary to fetch out Karakas when he goes off again with another hasty Emrakul.

Yeah.

Games: 1-2. Matches: 0-1.

Round Two: Aaron with random MGA.

This is where I got a game loss because some judge thought my registered sideboard list said 5 Faerie Macabres. As awesome as that would be, I asked him “Is my head bleeding?” To which he replied “Does this look like the other 3’s you wrote down?” Whatever. I’ll just plan to 2-0 here and it’ll be fine.

Aaron played mono-green with stuff like Llanowar Elves, Treetop Village and Ant Queen. Hooray. I don’t remember a huge amount about this match, except that I played sloppy once I had Umezawa’s Jitte AND Basilisk Collar in play, even though they were just gearing up Teeg and Bob, who are not exactly my best beaters. I think I Thoughtseized an Overrun early on, and dipped down to 1 at some point?

Anyway. The Collar traded some dude for his Ant Queen, who was wearing Blanchwood Armor as like an 11/11, and Jitte counters then chomped down some ant tokens. Prettymuch the story of the match.

Other than that, I only remember accomplishing one half-smart play: at 2 life, I peeled a Jitte counter to gain life BEFORE revealing to Bob. I only mention it because later on I watched my teammate call a judge and blow a guy out this way. Parker said he probably would’ve lost that game, but the guy with the active Jitte hadn’t planned to flip Tombstalker with Bob. Lolz.

Side note: For the sake of science, when totaling up wins, I’m ignoring the aforementioned game loss from the judge.

Games: 3-2. Matches: 1-1.

Round Three: Jedi Emreka

Did I mention I’m the only member of our crew who isn’t playing stupid “Do I just win here?” combo? Four of the guys I’m with are playing Eureka. As in “Eureka/Show and Tell, put Progenitus/Emrakul into play, I have FOW/Daze backup and I hate you.” Part of the reason I’m mainboarding Karakas and boarding Diabolic Edict is because fuck those fools. That plus Dustin seems smart-ish and he told me to. Hey speaking of Dustin, he’s playing that deck I was just hating on, like, against me, in Round 3. Lol. Lol!

Playing your friends for stakes cold sucks so I offer to just draw with him, but he insists it’s important that he crush me if he’s going to prize out. I came to play, so I guess that’s okay too.

Game one I lose the die-roll and then mull to six. My six has a Karakas in it, which is fantastic as long as he cheats in Emrakul and not Progenitus. Dustin does me right with a Show and Tell for the Big E., and I show him Karakas. Game two!
Is basically the same story, except this time I got to Thoughtseize him, his cantrips gave him garbage and his Show and Tell for Emrakul was a top-deck. It lets me cheat Knight of the Reliquary into play, and Dustin knows that means I’m getting Karakas on my turn. He calls me a “soulless witch” and scoops.

Games: 5-2. Matches: 2-1.

Hey now, I know what you’re thinking, and before you start, just don’t, okay? Don’t. Don’t feel bad for Dustin. I offered to draw with him, remember? And then rolled him with his own good ideas from when he helped me tune my pile. Anyway like a month ago Dustin bought some idiot’s collection for $7500 and just sold it to Starcity in Atlanta for $18k+. What I am saying is that Dustin had an okay weekend even though I fucked him over. Eventually he moved on to bigger and better things, like dropping, and later on buying me a BK veggie burger. Thanks Dustin!

Round 4

This is an older guy from Florida, who appropriately goes by the name Skip, as in ‘Skip says he’s drifted in and out of Magic over the years, and only recently came back.’ He’s happy to think out loud with me, which is enjoyable. Plus at some point he said he has cable and I can visit him in Florida. He seemed hetero so I’d call it a net gain.

Anyway I open with Thoughtseize and see he has an Urborg, Dark Depths, a Living Wish, and two Hymns to Tourach. I’m holding a fairly aggressive hand plus Swords to Plowshares, so I figure I’ll let him waste a couple turns getting Marit Lage out and then Swords it, provided he doesn’t shred my whole grip first; I choose a Hymn.

Sure enough, he Wishes for a Vampire Hexmage and immediately goes unprotected to make Marit Lage. I kill it and start beating him down with a Bob and a Goyf. He has a lot of extra life to bleed off while trying to top-deck, and I’m reluctant to overcommit and beat him down faster for fear of Pernicious Deed, but eventually he scoops.

I don’t remember much about games two and three except that in two he managed to stick Marit Lage, and judging from our life totals in game three I opened on Thoughtseize again, stuck a Bob and Swords’d something. Skip’s life total goes 26, 15, 8, done.

Games: 7-3, Matches: 3-1.

And in case you wonder, yes, I did ask afterward, and Skip did indeed run Deeds; he just never saw them.
Also, it turned out I had game three in the bag no matter what; he cast Living Wish for Hexmage in game two, then forgot to take it back out for game three. At some point he resolved a Wish in Game three, looked through his sideboard, said nothing, looked through his sideboard again, then handed himself Dark Depths, which he was already holding a copy of, simply because there was no Hexmage left to grab in his 14-card sideboard. Heyyy…

Round Five: Justin

Justin is a nice guy and probably would’ve been more talkative if I hadn’t opened Mom, Bob, Stoneforge Mystic, Jitte+equip against his Goblins deck. I remember this match taking longer than it should have – at one point he was able to Ringerleader for FOUR but wouldn’t let me chest-bump him with the +3 card-advantage on the stack.

At some other point I had a big/big Knight of the Reliquary on the field and he Vialed in Siege-Gang Commander to boost his goblin count high enough to kill the KotR by cycling Gempalm Incinerator. Plays like that were good, but Dark Confidant stayed alive too long and I eventually killed him with two Tarmogoyfs, who each enjoyed an additional +1/+1 because Justin was too nice and reminded me Warren Weirding provides Tribal.

I think in game two he top-decked a Vial on his second turn, late to the party, and then when he missed a land-drop I blew it up with Pridemage and further aggravated his development with a random Wasteland. My scrawled life count indicates I persisted Kitchen Finks as well; I think they made him sad.

Games: 9-3, Matches: 4-1.

Afterward Justin’s friend told me Justin had more possible outs and just got on tilt and punted. Maybe it was me talking too much and getting inside his head? Or maybe his can-win attitude is just relatively fragile; that’s what his friend seemed to think. Whatever, sign here, nothing personal guy.

Round Six: Chris.

Hey, remember that time somewhere in the preceding 1600 words where I said I never practice and am a basically shitty player? These things matter when you’re at the big-kids table with the other 4-1s, seated among the top 20 players in a field of 200.

Chris was no fun to talk to. Like, he was at the big kids table and he knew it and he took that seriously. If we were at work or in court that would be respectable, but I do not believe in having a job or showing up for court in Atlanta. Maybe Chris writes some column I’m too cheap to pay to read, and perhaps he was miffed I didn’t ask him to sign whatever card bears his likeness? Actually, let me start this whole paragraph over: Chris was no fun to sit across from and talk at.

Anyway. Chris was playing Progenitus Bant except with Knight of the Reliquary in lieu of Rhox War Monk. I stuck an early Teeg against him, which was a big part of my plan against his deck: keep him off Natural Order and Force of Will by sticking Teeg, then blank his Dazes by living past turn four, and then win because while we both have Goyf/KotR, I also have the benefit of Mom and equipment and Bob. Sounds good, until we remember that my plan against Counter-Top (read: the other half of Chris’s deck) is to basically have him dead-on-board before he can disable 2/3 of my deck with his awful, frustrating CounterTop combo.

Anyway. I Thoughtseize a D-Top early on, ignoring FOW and Natural Order because I have Teeg and Mom down, then he takes forever wondering if he should FOW something but I feel like I’d be a penis if I were to point out I have a Teeg down rendering his FOW unplayable, so I wait until AFTER he’s decided to try to FOW. No sir.

We proceed to play draw-go for a very long time, and he thins his deck with KotR while I try to use mine to Wasteland him down, but he just sacks whatever land I target in response and finds another fetch. Soon his KotR is bigger than mine, but because I have Mom out the staring contest continues.

During this period I draw no Bobs and he amasses four Goyfs to my one. I do some cute blocking using Karakas to save Teeg while chumping, but Chris ultimately deads me.

Game two was pretty infuriating. He stuck a fast Countertop and even though I boarded in Krosan Grip I’m taken down pretty quickly. I’m not sure how Dark Confidant came up in conversation afterward, but he sounds genuinely surprised when he’s all “Oh, you play that card?!”

Games: 9-5, Matches: 4-2.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Suuuure, shittalk the guy and your suck draws cos he 2-0’d your bitch ass.” And you’re basically correct. Later when Chris and I passed in the hall and I asked his record he actually sounded like he was about to cry when he said he’d lost another round, meaning he probably wasn’t in the running for Top 8 anymore. And for some reason my reflex was to switch to a high, whiny voice and answer “Waaah” as I turned for the men’s room. Whatever. When they announced standings and he was tied for like 11th (still in the money) he acted all huffy and yelled out “Oh, of course!” like that’s juuust his luck. Not to be a jackass, but probably in fact, IT IS.

Shittalk shittalk shittalk. I’ve wasted over 2000 words just getting 2/3 of the way through a report about going 5-3, and you’re still reading this? Really? REALLY? Go pet a kitty and go swimming or something. Alt-tabbing over to pornography doesn’t count.

Go on. Get! Scram!

…

Aww, you came back! There, isn’t that nice? Less sticky.

Mmm, yeah.

Round 7 with Jacob.

Jacob was a lot of fun to banter with. He was playing Goblins using Zendikar Fetches to find Sacred Foundry, I think for Path to Exile? I don’t remember a lot about this match-up, but my life-sheet seems to indicate game one I cast Thoughtseize early, Swords’d a Lackey, traded one attack and then ran him over.

Game two he mulls before drawing seven again. I point this out without raising my hand or yelling but he prettymuch immediately calls the judge on himself. I feel kind of bad for this, because people let my stupid ass slide about dumb mistakes all the time, and I missed my opportunity to intervene here and pay that forward to Jacob. Anyway, he gets his warning, then proceeds to stomp me fairly handily for game two.

Game Three I’ve been waiting to tell you about for almost two weeks.

Game three I mull to six before keeping a hand of Vial, Bob, Mystic, Avenger, and two Wastelands.

I decide that Fuck It and keep, because I forgot he probably fucks me with turn-one Lackey and now it’s too late. I go Wasteland Vial pass, and sure enough, he sticks the Lackey.

Next turn I add a counter to Vial, play my second Wasteland and say go. It should be all over, right? I kept a shitty hand against a deck that goes hell of dumb on turn two, and now I lose, right?

He swings in and triggers Lackey to put down… another Lackey? Yeah no dude for real he just wasn’t holding goddamn anything.

So I proceed to whiff on my third land drop,start Vialing out dudes and just hope I live long enough to equip the Jitte I’m fetching with Mystic, that is, before he finds a Ringleader and SGC to cheat in. I think he realizes I’m light on land here and hits my Wasteland with one of his own, and then starts tapping my remaining land down with Rishadan Port.

On my upkeep, I remember that FUCK IT and Waste his Port. I now have zero lands, active Vial on two, some two-cost dudes, and he has Goblin Lackies and not very much land either.

Top-deck war, GO! Jacob proceeds to rip not shit, and Bob gives me all the help I need. What can I say? I didn’t build this deck to show off what an amazing player I am.

Games: 11-6. Matches: 5-2.

Final round: Eight. With Ian.

I’m finishing out of the money, I’m tired, Ian is fun to talk to and probably plays a lot more Legacy than me, and we’re both in GWB. His deck is full of weird choices. I Thoughtseize him early and take some random threat instead of Armageddon in hopes of racing, but then lose my Pridemage because I have to blow up a singleton Crucible of Worlds to keep Ian off Wastelock. Judging from my notes he Swords’s my other guy here.

At some point he sticks the Armageddon and I should have the upper hand except he then gets out a Kor Haven. Like I have equipment on dudes but it accomplishes fuck all. Ian tells me he should’ve blown me the fuck out at this point but botched and will explain later.

A weird stalemate evolves at some point in which I have to call a judge to explain to me how amazing Mom is with Basilisk Collar at killing Ian’s giant swinging Knight of the Reliquary. I do kooky shit to cling to life, like block with a Stoneforge Mystic, Vial in another one to find a Jitte, use the blocking one to cheat in Jitte before she dies. It was probably more of a danger of cool things type situation than a real tech play. I was tired and more stupid than usual. Ian finally sticks a Tabernacle at Pendrill Vale – which he says he should have fetched almost immediately after Armageddon - and since I never really recovered from Armageddon anyway, I scoop.

I don’t remember a goddamn thing about game two except losing. My friends tell me I made horrible moves, like “reveal to Dark Confidant, lose some life, forget my draw phase.” It was pretty hard to care; time to get in the car and drive home through the Appalachians during a ridiculous storm to the newly flood-ravaged Nashville. You’re welcome!

Final record: 11-8, matches 5-3.

As to the list, I like Mom but I’m not sure she’s good enough. Still, she does important shit like keep Bob alive long enough to matter, she makes Basilisk Collar even more awesome, she lets Serra Avenger stall Iona forever, and she helps solve Goyf stalemates.

Gaddock. Teeg. Is. House.

Sword of Fire and Ice costs too much fucking mana and doesn’t help enough when it matters. I’m thinking of cutting it and one Stoneforge Mystic for two Maelstrom Pulses. Adding another KotR and incorporating Bojuka Bog into the 75 might not be a miserable choice either.

Props:
Talkative opponents, for making punting fun.
Parker, for making top 16 with a deck his friends handed him and keeping all the money anyway.
Dustin, for help tuning and for Burger King.
Ryan, for making top 16 in the standard.

Slops:
Parker, see above.
Whoever the fuck snored in the room.
Me and Tacosnape, for not meeting each other in person.
You, for reading 3,000 words about a random homebrew that only went 5-3 in Atlanta. That’s something I would do.
Nashville, for flooding and causing me to take two weeks to write this.

EDIT: Props, me, for rushing the end of this tournament report to go dancing. With a girl! Gasp!

Cheers
-DP

Om nom nom Format

2010-04-13T10:23:00.004-05:00

Merfolk seems to be the linchpin around which everything hinges in Legacy right now. It keeps Counterbalance in check while getting hosed by Zoo, and you'd better be ready for all three when you sleeve up. The CounterTop combo will never fall too far off the radar in a format where almost everything has to be fast, cheap, and therefore vulnerable to a vexing CB soft-lock, but Qasali Pridemage has made his own indelible mark on the format as well. Let's get to the lists:

To improve their game against aggro, Merfolk players are turning to a splash color. Often this is green for Tarmogoyf, but white remains a fair option as well, given Swords to Plowshares and the lifelinking Sejiri Merfolk, a playset of which took 2/178 in Italy.

There are a couple of cute decks out there running full sets of Counter/Top, and eventually killing you with Enlightened Tutor for the Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek combo. If you're not familiar, those last two cards have wrecked extended, because together they read "X: Gain X life. Produce X 1/1 flying artifact tokens. Go nuts. Seriously. Run wild with that shit."

One Thopter-combo build is grafted over a Landstill shell, (1st and 8th of 36 in Europe) and sports Diabolic Edict as an apparent out against Progenitus, as well as Iona naming white. That unfortunate situation sometimes occurs against not just Reanimator but also Survival and even Ichorid match-ups. Two things worth noting on that build: it can tutor for Humility, and packs zero copies of Counterspell.

Anyway, the other list seems more determined to get its combo online quickly, and sports Chrome Mox and Thirst for Knowledge to prove it. It took 1/178. Both builds are more than glad to work under Humility, though the latter reserves that option for the sideboard. A public service announcement: Humility could give a good goddamn about Qasali Pridemage, and is hilarious against Inkwell Leviathan. Picture that.

While I'm thinking about it, Cousin Chelsea has plans to proxy up an Enchantress list. This is about how the modern incarnation of the deck looks, but I have 20 Pegasus tokens if she ever misses the ponies from Sacred Mesa. And in case you wonder, Karakas is another answer for Iona on white. Shoo.

I think it's always helpful to have an Ad Nauseam/Tendrils of Agony list on hand, especially one that doesn't rock Lion's Eye Diamond or ridiculous Doomsday stacks and is therefore semi-possible for mediocre players to win with. All the better if said list can place 6/178.

People have been talking about breaking Metalworker for months, but this is the first list I've noticed that's come anywhere close; it still looks janky as all hell. Power Artifact this Staff of Domination, go ape-shit with Metalworker, draw my deck, tap your field, swing for infinite with Wake Thrasher and Stroke of Genius you beyond oblivion? Truly the work of a mad scientist.

What else? Loves me some mono-red Goblins. 5/62.

Oh, and in case you missed the memo: Stoneforge Mystic is in a lot of decks. It gears up hate bears you can't counter and goes 4/62, it makes persisting Kitchen Finks and fresh Bitterblossom tokens good and scary after a big sweep at 5/40, and is goddamn hilarious when you Lightning Greaves up an exalted Cold-Eyed Selkie and get the fuck in for three -- cards. Yeah, that seems like it'll get you 2/98.

Happy hunting!

We're going

2010-02-16T13:08:00.004-06:00

to the Star City Open in Indianapolis next month.

I've long been a fan of Back to Basics in Legacy because it limits most decks to maybe three functional lands. In other words, it causes your opponent to stop playing Magic. A summer ago I went 3-2-1 in a Chicago 50-man playing Mono-Blue Control, maindecking four Back to Basics and four Propaganda. Aggro Loam and Domain Zoo haaaaated me; it was lovely. But I went to time a lot, and Mono-Red Goblins was a nightmare match-up. Further, Morphling just isn't good enough anymore.

This deck seems to address a lot of those complaints. Splash white but keep the Basics plan - Why didn't I think of that?

First thing I'm doing is cutting the Cunning Wishes for extra copies of Back to Basics, and probably dumping the Divining Tops for fourth copies of Fact or Fiction and Counterspell.

Past that, I get to board in Meddling Mage? Hell and damn yes. Plus the Sphinx is everything you pay 5 mana each turn to wish Morphling was, and I want to marry Elspeth.

In other news, this Pox deck seems exciting, although I've never been keen on Nether Spirit. "Ooh, my 2/2 with no abilities just won't go away, hahah, unless you're playing the most common removal spell in the format. What, Swords my guy? Aww..." I guess he chumps Tarmogoyf for awhile. Great. (I don't mean that. I do not think it is great at all. AT ALL.)

I mean, at the very least you could play Bloodghast instead...

Oh, and if like me you've been wondering whether that Vintage Selkie deck could find a viable port into Legacy, here's your answer.

Last thing: I don't really want to play Storm in Indianapolis, but if I were assembling a build for someone to test against, this would be it. No Lion's Eye Diamond, decent protection, and no ridiculously complicated kills using Doomsday or Ill Gotten Gains. In other words it's cheaper and easier to learn. Which is to say, in the hands of an idiot it's probably the more effective build.

That's what I love.

-Dan

Never Grow Old

2010-02-09T23:10:00.003-06:00

I'm awfully excited about how cool Legacy suddenly is.

Anyway, here are the lists that have set my heart aflutter in anticipation of Indiana next month.

Generic Dragon-Stompy lives! Note the complete lack of Zoo in that Top 8; Magus of the Moon is worthless against an opponent running Lightning Bolt, and Qasali Pridemage could give a damn about basically a third of your deck. Good luck being the beatdown in That match-up, Dragon Stompy! Still a fun deck though. Anyway.

Ryan Hatcher doesn't even know how bad he wants to cuddle with this 42-man winning Legacy Death Cloud build.

Lots of strange choices going on in this Reanimator build, which apparently sports a semi-transformational sideboard. Interesting.

This looks like an update on BHWC Landstill from two or three years ago, mixed with Goyfstill. I like it because of its strong Cunning Wish count: zero. What I am saying is that I do not like Cunning Wish in Landstill.

I've built the Bitterblossom/Spellstutter Sprite/Terminate tempo deck three times now and each time I've been bored off my face. And each time someone adds a new tweak to lure me back: first it was Jitte and Firespout, and now they're incorporating Blightning and Vendilion Clique, the latter of which makes Riptide Laboratory a neat inclusion as well.

-

In other news, have you checked the price on uncommon Legacy staples like Wasteland and Aether Vial? $20 and $10 respectively. Evidently you're lucky to pick up a Force of Will for under $30. So I hope you realized Legacy was cool awhile ago, because apparently a lot of other people have figured it out too, and are shopping accordingly.

-

Oh, and speaking of eternal formats, have you seen the Bant deck in Vintage? First turn Hierarch, second turn Selkie, third turn Pridemage, draw three? Six representatives in the above-linked Top 8, from a 50-man. And then there's this Selkie deck, which won an event of 100+. It eschews UW for Red, giving it Magus of the Moon, Gorilla Shaman, and effectively a red Ancestral Recall with flashback in the form of Reckless Charge via Selkie. How's THAT for a 61st card?

Oh, and in case you wonder, no, Vintage is not too insanely good for Skullclamped Elves to just murder you.

So yeah, let's play for money. Jump, gypsy!
JUMP!

-Dan

Five months

2009-12-14T22:02:00.001-06:00

without Apprentice was five months too long.

Both of the combo decks I goldfished today sport Stifle-Nought with FOW backup as an alternate "oops" win condition.

Let's play for money.

Getting older...

2009-12-03T12:00:00.001-06:00

What if all the cards you remember playing with when you first learned about magic were suddenly legal again? Now, what if I told you they were? Pretty exciting to say the least. Now that I have your attention, I have a special treat for you today. Most of you know that when I write over here it's usually tournament features or deck features (which I haven't done in a while). Today, we're going to dive head first into the format known as Legacy.

Dan is usually good for random deck shout outs and event breakdowns from Legacy, but recently Starcitygames.com announced their plans for the Starcity Open Series. Expanding on the popular 5k series from the past few years they've added more dates across the US and made it so that every date is now 2 days with Standard and Legacy being featured. Players with enough points at the end of the year are eligible to compete in the Starcitygames.com Invitational to close the year. This means more people playing Legacy and a push to make Legacy a relevant format. So, why should we play Legacy?

Pete Hoefling describes Legacy as "the best format you're not playing" and I have to agree. You see, unlike Standard and Extended, Legacy is a very open format. Sure some decks are better than others, but it's the variety and diversity of Legacy that is the pure draw of the format. Many cards that may have been forgotten long ago by tournament grinders and people with pro level aspirations make an appearance and some are pretty successful. Think about how much fun you had playing with Survival of the Fittest on your kitchen table. Now, imagine winning some cash while playing those same Survivals.

ISN'T LEGACY REALLY EXPENSIVE TO PLAY?

Initially it can seem that way. A lot of the cost upfront comes from buying all the ABUR dual lands and Force of Wills. After that you don't need them anymore. So while you're buying the latest hot standard cards trying to keep up with an ever changing meta game the Legacy players who bought duals 6 years ago are still playing with those duals. Sure, you have to keep up with the new sets so you can continue to innovate your deck, but Legacy doesn't feature the same overhauls that Standard features. So, while it may seems expensive for a brand new Legacy player, the cost for being competitive isn't nearly as daunting as Standard.

WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT LEGACY?

Like it or not, this format is becoming relevant. With the newly minted Starcitygames.com open series along with this year's Grand Prix schedule we now have more chances than ever to play Legacy. Given the success of the 5k series in the past, this years outlook seems bright. I would expect more people to be playing magic this year than ever before as such more people will be playing Legacy than ever before. Did I mention how much fun this format is to play?

HOW CAN I FIND A DECK TO PLAY?

Finding a Legacy deck is as easy as looking for one. Deckcheck.net is an excellent resource for finding a deck to begin with. Be careful though, watch the dates and amount of people playing in an event when looking at deck lists. While, that False Cure/Skyshroud Cutter deck looks neat and won last week, the event only had 12 players. Also, mtgthesource.com is a forum dedicated to Legacy with lots of loyal readers and posters who can help you out with your list while sharing their current list. They've also broken down the top decks in the format usually with a primer for learning to play them.

WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT LEGACY?

Obviously with the open series we'll be featuring a little more Legacy content. Already, Dan has been providing you with interesting decks and analysis on them. Starcitygames.com features 2 weekly Legacy writers on the free side. Combo that with mtgthesource.com and deckcheck.net and you have lots of resources to learn this format. Also, our podcast, DrawGo Radio is featuring more Legacy content complete with deck breakdowns and general information for being as good as you can be in Legacy.

Hopefully I've swayed you to the dark side of Magic. A land where Noble Hierarchs battle alongside Daze and Nimble Mongoose. A place where Grindstone and Progenitus are both competitive. in general, a place where combos battle big monsters and devastating control spells. Just a few games and I promise you'll be hooked just like the menfolk you could play!

Until next time,

Steven

It's beautiful.

2009-12-02T19:07:00.005-06:00

Dredge list with ACTUAL LANDS + Bloodghast and a transformative beatdown sideboard rocks an 80-man.

Boosh.

That Dark Painter list is a new one by me as well.

In a slightly smaller event, Entomb once again shows it is crazy.

Most of the time when I read Cunning Wish in Uwb Landstill lists I think it should be Vindicate. The tempo-loss of wishing seems huge when you're most vulnerable in the early game; by the time Wish gets awesome you should be all locked up anyway. But for Steven's benefit, here is a list that does basically everything we thought it should.

The rest of that Top 8 is worth looking at too just for the highly novel Loam list and a very strange Iggy/Belcher hybrid.

In other news, Survival of the Fittest turns me on, whether it be the Gbr variant with Thoughtseize, Therapy and potentially Recurring Nightmare, or the Bant/Exalted shenanigan.

Bant-wise though, this is my new crush.

Go ahead and click through to that Top 8 for an aggro Dark Depths list as well. Supercute!

Oh, and last thing: Did you know Noble Hierarch into Cold-Eyed Selkie is the play in Vintage right now? It's news to me, too, but color me excited.

PTQing in Nashville

2009-11-19T10:41:00.001-06:00

After a less than stellar 5k run, I found myself sitting down the next day for a PTQ. We sit down for the player meeting and are informed that we have 211 strong leading to 8 rounds of sealed deck action. I get passed a pool that looks like this:

Blue
Cancel 2
Cosi's Trickster
Gomazoa
Lethargy Trap
Living Tsunami
Paralyzing Grasp 2
Roil Elemental
Shoal Serpent
Trapfinder's Trick
Welkin Tern 2
Whiplash Trap

Artifacts
Adventuring Gear
Blazing Torch
Expedition Map 2
Explorer's Scope
Spidersilk Net
Stonework Puma

Black
Blood Seeker 2
Bog Tatters
Crypt Ripper
Desecrated Earth
Giant Scorpion
Grim Discovery
Hagra Diabolist
Halo Hunter
Heartstabber Mosquito 2
Hideous End
Marsh Casualties
Surrakar Marauder
Vampire's Bite

Green
Beast Hunt
Grazing Gladeheart
Greenweaver Druid
Harrow
Lotus Cobra
Nissa's Chosen
Oran-Rief Recluse
Quest for the Gemblades
Savage Silhouette
Scythe Tiger
Tanglesap
Turntimber Basilisk
Turntimber Ranger
Vastwood Gorger
Vines of the Vastwood
Zendikar Farguide

White
Arrow Volley Trap
Brave the Elements
Cliff Threader
Kor Outfitter
Kor Sanctifiers
Narrow Escape
Ondu Cleric
Pillarfield Ox 2
Quest for the Holy Relic
Shieldmate's Blessing
Steppe Lynx

Lands
Greypelt Refuge
Jwar Isle Refuge
Scalding Tarn
Sejiri Refuge
Turntimber Grove

Red
Bladetusk Boar 2
Goblin Ruinblaster
Goblin Shortcutter
Goblin War Paint
Magma Rift 2
Molten Ravager
Murasa Pyromancer
Plated Geopede
Quest for Pure Flame
Ruinous Minotaur
Tuktuk Grunts
Unstable Footing
Burst Lightning

Nothing real impressive here aside from the money cards. Black immediately stood out as the color I really wanted to play as it had most of the removal and a solid rare in Halo Hunter. From there I had to find a second color. Blue seemed pretty good with a Roil Elemental, Paralyzing Grasp, Welkin Tern, and Cancel. Red had the Bladetusk Boars and Burst Lightning. White was fairly unplayable. In the end I chose to play Green. I had opened most of my favorite cards in green with a Harrow, Grazing Gladeheart, and Turntimber Ranger so I set about building and ended up with this.

Grazing Gladeheart
Harrow
Turntimber Ranger
Turntimber Basilisk
Nissa's Chosen
Quest for the Gemblades
Vines of the Vastwood
Zendikar Farguide
vastwood Gorger

Bog Tatters
Crypt Ripper
Giant Scorpion
Hagra Diabolist
Halo Hunter
2x Heartstabber Mosquito
Hideous End
Marsh Casualties
Surrakar Marauder

Stonework Puma
Expedition Map
Blazing Torch

10x Swamp
8x Forest

Pretty solid creature base and a fair bit of removal. Green also helped provide to help in fixing for the triple black Halo Hunter. The only card I felt I should play, but I didn't was Grim Discovery. After a few mind sludges I realized that maybe I wanted to get my guys back from the yard. So, how did it go?

Round 1 against Scott:

Scott told me he was a newer player and that he was playing in his first PTQ. I didn't write him off as such a novice and he didn't disappoint.

Game 1 he beats me around while I try to gain a stable board position. Then he shows me his bomb, Sphinx of Jwar Isle. I commit a few guys to the board, including a kicked oran-rief recluse and kicked heartstabber mosquito to kill some guys. Along the way I get a counter on Quest for the Gemblades and when he rumbles in with his Sphinx while I'm at 4 I send my recluse adventuring and take down the menace. I take game 1 a few turns later.

Game 2 he leaves my Gladeheart unchecked and I gain a pile. Halo Hunter hits the table for me and he retaliates with his Sphinx, but the life gain combined with the fact that my hunter hits harder seals game 2 for me.

Matches: 1-0 Games: 2-0

Round 2 against Curtis:

Game 1 he never really gets started. I play some guys and he plays some removal but not enough and Halo Hunter seals the deal.

Game 2 he hits Mind Sludge on 6 for my hand which included my Hunter. I try to recover but eventually just die.

Game 3 he hits Mind Sludge again, but this time he backs it up with a flurry of Hideous Ends, Marsh Casualties, and a Disfigure. I ask him what it's like to get such a removal heavy pool. He responds by telling me it's pretty nice. I figured that out.

M: 1-1 G: 3-2

Round 3 against Dillon:

Dillon is a local from back home and the match was pretty relaxed as such. We discussed Grand Prix plans for next season and possible Legacy decks while shuffling. Soon it was down to business.

Game 1 We trade blows with some dudes, then he shows me Day of Judgement. I rip Halo Hunter off the top and win. Lucky me...

Game 2 he has no answer for my turn 5 Halo and it goes the distance.

M: 2-1 G: 5-2

Round 4 against Rob:

Rob seemed like a pretty nice guy, and told me he misbuilt his sealed...

Game 1: Sure enough he was having some issues getting his mana online and it allowed me to bring the pain.

Game 2: We spend some time sideboarding and he comes back with all the black removed and playing better green spells. I mull to 6 and he smashes me in record time.

Game 3: Rob lands turn 2 Luminarch's Ascension. I play a guy on 3 that's dealt with, a guy on 4 that's dealt with, and 2 guys on 5 that are also dealt with. Luminarch activates and he beats me down with angels.

M: 2-2 G: 6-4

Here I faced a decision, I'm most likely out of contention for a top 8 spot, so I could drop and not feel bad. On the other hand, Saturday had ended badly and I could possibly make up some lost rating points if I won a few more matches. I decided to stay in until I took a 3rd loss.

Round 5 against Clay

Game 1 took a solid 30 minutes that ended with me decking him while having 1 card in my library and a massive creature stall on the ground.

Game 2 is a little better. He's playing red/white allies with a splash for hagra diabolist, I manage to play both my rares and then out dude him.

M: 3-2 G: 8-4

Round 6 against Thomas

Game 1 he plays 3 Journey to Nowhere hitting all of my good guys. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have a lot to work with outside of that and I still manage to pull it out.

Game 2 we battle for a while. He knocks me to 2 and I land Grazing Gladeheart and start playing some lands and getting back into the game. I start to draw my removal and make a comeback leaving him with a Torch Slinger equipped with a Machete and Adventuring Gear. He taps out main phase 1 for a KICKED(!) Conquerer's Pledge and swings with a 6/5 Slinger. I look at my hand, see my marsh casualties and decide to go to 2. Untap casualty the board away and swing with just enough to win.

M: 4-2 G: 10-4

Round 7 against Michael

I had the read on him from the last round when he played a friend and knew he was packing Hellkite Charger and a couple Mind Sludges.

Game 1 he gets a solid draw with Vampire Lacerator and Vampire Nighthawk. He out races me with his guys and beats me soundly.

Game 2 he lands Lacerator again and it deals a pile of damage, only this time it's to him. I take this one home with the assist.

Game 3 a couple of big swings take this one down for the home team.

M: 5-2 G: 12-5

So with a round to go I realize I can still prize with a win and that a couple of locals are in good shape to top 8. Time to close it out then.

Round 8 against Corey

Game 1 he plays some little guys and once they're out of the way I start swinging with mine. Halo Hunter creates another win on it's demon back.

Game 2 he lands Sphinx of Jwar Isle and I hit Halo Hunter. I land my Gladeheart just in time to allow me to win the race.

M: 6-2 G: 14-5

All said and done I manage a respectable 25th and regain the points lost from Saturday. One thing I noticed about Zendikar sealed over the course of the day is that the format isn't as fast as people think it is. Sure, you have a few matches where your opponent can kill you really fast, but the format can lend itself a control/midrange strategy if you get the proper cards. Unfortunately, the format leans heavily on the black side making black removal slightly less good, but only slightly. On the positive side of a heavy black sealed format you get cards like Bog Tatters as a maindeckable niche card.

Lastly, I would like to promote my other endeavors, mainly Draw Go Radio. Draw Go Radio is a podcast featuring myself, Carlos, Eric, and Tyler all of STD fame! Find us every week at DrawGoRadio.blip.tv or on iTunes by searching for DrawGo Radio. You can find our twitter feed @DrawGoRadio and become our fan on Facebook. Shameless self promotion over.

Until next time, turn 'em sideways

Steven

WHAT IS

2009-11-12T09:38:00.001-06:00

HIS 60TH CARD?!

http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=29607

My guess is Eternal Witness. Makes for cute Intuition piles where Volrath's Stronghold and Life From the Loam are concerned.

Hott.

This is

2009-11-02T23:48:00.005-06:00

why I suddenly want Bitterblossoms:

Stalker-Faeries - 5/283.

Plus I think their current lull of $9 is a mistake due to the Standard rotation. The card is a Jitte, and $9 there was a mistake as well - one upon which I am glad to have seized.

This top 8

2009-10-07T23:24:00.003-05:00

is awesome.
And not just because it's the first statistically relevant top 8 on DeckCheck in like a month.

Here's a link to the neatest deck in it; you can click through for the other seven.

That's right; it's a motherfucking Show and Tell deck. That top 8'd a 40-man. It cheats Progenitus or Empyrial Archangel in on turn 2, usually with FOW or Daze backup, and runs 4 Mystical Tutors just to be certain. And if you're thinking of racing it, the guy effectively runs 8 Control Magics.
Holy shit that looks fun.

Then there's a competent if uninspired WW/u list, though I'd probably drop the fourth Avenger in favor of a fourth Mom. The sideboard Enlightened Tutor package is cute, if not tech, and it's always nice to see a WW/u/x list that doesn't think it has to include the whole FOW/Brainstorm/Standstill/WTFever package.

What else? Enlightened Tutor is less sexy in the Enchantress list that placed second... I just can't see tolerating the loss of card advantage being worth the potential consistency boost when you already have access to Sterling Grove.

Oh, and the Merfolk list that won it is fucking clean and beautiful at a perfect 20/20/20. And he boards Back to Basics like a champ which redeems the lack of catch-all temporary solution to permanents like Echoing Truth anywhere in the 75.

So yeah, lots of fun shit to think about, other than what fail it is to wish Gaddock Teeg and Cataclysm could play together, which is what I usually do lately.

In other news, come to the drunkdraft at Andrew's next weekend.

And blow me.

-D

Extended in Kentucky - SA

2009-07-27T15:38:00.000-05:00

The Kentucky Open. Typically a defining tournament in US magic since it happens a week or two before Nationals. By now we've all read the various tournament reports and seen the deck lists, but for those who were unaware they had an Extended tournament to. I wish I could sit here and tell you all about how I crushed the competition and walked away with a win and the 32 dual land prize, instead you get to hear the story of crushing defeat and the lessons that can be derived. Before we can get into the tournament itself you need to know that I played Tezzerator, a deck I've been a fan of for quite sometime.
Here's my list:

TEZZERATOR

2 Vedalken Shackles
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
3 Stifle
3 Spell Snare
1 Pithing Needle
3 Firespout
1 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Cryptic Command
4 Chrome Mox
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Trinket Mage
2 Steam Vents
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Riptide Laboratory
4 Polluted Delta
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
6 Island
1 Great Furnace
3 Flooded Strand
1 Breeding Pool
2 Academy Ruins

Sideboard:
3 Blood Moon
3 Krosan Grip
2 Quagnoth
3 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Threads of Disloyalty
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Trinisphere

No major changes in the list. No new tech for you to peek at and have an advantage since I'm writing about extended well before it's relevant, just your basic Tezz list.

Rnd 1 against Steve Sadin:

Game 1: We both mulligan to 6 and keep. He opens with a Wild Nacatl off a fetch land. I land a Chalice of the Void set at 1, effectively shutting down most of his deck. He recovers with tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary until I land an Ensnaring Bridge. A few turns later I play a Chalice for 2 shutting down his burn spells. He scoops it up and we go to game 2.

Game 2: I board in 3 Blood Moon and 2 Threads of Disloyalty. Once again the mulligan demons decide to show up and after a mulligan to 6 we're off. This game is much more in his favor as he lands turn 2 gaddock teeg into tarmogoyf face beatings as I'm stuck with no answers and few lands. I pack it in after a couple of turns hoping game 3 is better.

Game 3: No changes to the board and I decide to keep a hand with one land and double chrome mox (BAD IDEA!). I lead with a land and a chrome mox. He attempts to ancient grudge my mox. I spell snare it. He untaps plays Knight of the Reliquary. Meanwhile, I've drawn my third chrome mox with very few imprint targets. I have found my third land finally. After a second knight hits his side of the board I think it's a good idea to play more chrome moxen, send a tezzeret into play finding my ensnaring bridge. Unfortunately, he still has the ancient grudge in the yard to blow it up. I die 2 turns later.

1-2, 0-1

Rnd 2 against Johnathan Smith:

Game 1: mulligan to 6. Turn 1 Spark elemental, guess who's playing burn! I have chalice for 1 thinking it would buy me sometime to recover. He rift bolts and magma jets me out of the game in no time. On to game 2

Game 2: I board in my Krosan Grips for his Sulfuric Vortex and my trinisphere. I'm on the play and have chalice for 1 again, not learning my lesson game 1. He follows the same strategy as he used game 1. This time he has a shattering spree for my chalice so he can bolt my face. I found trinisphere a turn too late.

1-4, 0-2, Drop.

Ok, so now we know what happened. Why did it happen? For starters I mulliganed a lot, the deck just wasn't with me when it came to drawing.

I walked into the ancient grudge game 3 of round 1: Information about your opponent's hand is invaluable. Any chance you have to gain a fair and legal advantage by knowing something your opponent didn't want you to know is always good. I had all the knowledge I needed to not play into his ancient grudge but instead I only thought about staying alive and panicked.

Knowing your opponent's deck as opposed to the deck you tested against: A while back I read an article about playtesting. I think it was over on channelfireball.com. In it, the author talked about innovating your playtest gauntlet prematurely. Sadly, I did just that. Our burn deck featured more 1-drop burn spells then the guy I played round 2. Because of this I played a Chalice of the Void set for 1 because it would've been devastating to our red deck. His red deck was a little more resilient to such a play and as such I felt safer than I really was.

All in all the trip was a lot of fun, as usual with this group. I'd like to properly thank Will for driving and Carlos and Flynn for being entertaining as always. Also, I'd like to thank the city of Louisville for having multiple Denny's.

Until Next Time,

Steven

<333 wilt-leaf liege <333

2009-06-08T12:56:00.000-05:00

DP: Gleaning Heat from European Top 8s

2009-05-14T21:11:00.000-05:00

A couple of hott and scientific Legacy Top 8s posted over on DeckCheck.

FRENCH DRAGON STOMPY

The first is supposedly the biggest non-Wizards Legacy event, Bazaar de Moxen, with 474 players, and wouldn't you know it but Dragon Stompy took it home. The build is fairly boilerplate, with one exception.
The deck contains zero Arc-Sloggers.
In its stead, the player is running 4x Taurean Mauler.

People have complained about consistency issues and inbuilt non-bos in Dragon Stompy since its inception. Seriously, casting Arc-Slogger is hhhaaaarrrrddd when more than 20% of your lands destroy themselves as soon as you play more land.
At the same time, having Arc-Slogger trapped in your hand cold sucks when a gangster wants to get hellbent and eat face with his Pit-Dargon.
Sometimes you can't even imprint the Slogger to Chrome Mox due to your own Trinisphere. Next thing you realize, you're 24, so even if Chuck-E-Cheese wasn't bankrupt, your mom STILL wouldn't take you there to cheer your sad ass up.
What I'm saying is sometimes Dragon Stompy makes it difficult to win with Dragon Stompy.

After James Mink made Top 4 at GP: Chicago, he wrote that Jitte was largely unnecessary, except against tribal aggro. Mink played an insurance mountain (read: one extra beyond the prescribed ten) which probably helped him resolve Arc-Slogger when it mattered. So why the hell would Mink need Jitte when his library is face up and the opposing team is full of holes? No wonder he found it unnecessary.
By contrast, with no Slogger, the European version probably NEEDS Jitte, in order to sling -1/-1 counters across the board and get better mileage out of its ponderous 12 - Twelve! - gray ogres. Sixteen if you count the Raiders as 2/2 for (3), really.

Ugr Faerie Fish

Anyway, in the same event was a beautiful Ugr aggro/control deck.

12 Creatures: 2 Cloud of Faeries, 2 Ninja of the Deep Hours, 4 Tarmogoyf, 4 Spellstutter Sprite.

26 Spells: 4 Brainstorm, 3 Daze, 2 Fire/Ice, 3 Lightning Bolt, 4 Force of Will, 3 Spell Snare, 3 Stifle, 3 Standstill, 1 Crucible of Worlds.

22 Land: 3 Polluted Delta, 2 Flooded Strand, 4 Mishra's Factory, 3 Wasteland, 1 Mutavault, 3 Tropical Island, 3 Volanic Island, 2 Island, 1 Breeding Pool.

Basically this looks to me like a mix between Tempo Thresh/R and NinjaStill, except unlike NinjaStill it probably actually fucking works.

Synergies I like about this deck:
- Crucible-Wastelock.
- Cloud of Faeries into Standstill.
- Spellstutter Sprite into Ninja of the Deep, now I'm holding Spellstutter Sprite again!
- Fire + Goyf > Opposing Goyf.

And the deck boards Shackles and Threads just to be certain it drinks other Goyfs' milkshakes.
It also boards one random Misdirection, which I like to imagine spent the day puking in opponents' shoes and cancelling their credit cards while they were on the phone with their dads. That is to say, I like to imagine the Misdirection was like the gift of an unwanted cat, or a 17-year-old roommate.

Lorescale Coatl

Now we move to the other Top 8, a humble (by comparison) 42-man in Madrid.

I've been waiting patiently to start seeing Thresh variants with Lorescale Coatl, which appears similiar to Quirion Dryad, except that the Coatl is a Binford nailgun to the Dryad's Swingline stapler. Hell, even the added U in the casting cost is awesome; now it pitches to Force of Will! Hey great!
I will admit I'm a little puzzled by the inclusion of Price of Progress in the board here. I thought the opponent in this match-up would be eager to board POP in, since it likely Sixes the Coatl player, but I guess in the right situation, if one of the fetches you crack goes for a basic island, then you Eight the other guy when it matters. Get there?

Variants on the last two decks:

Much of the remainder of that Spanish Top 8 is variations on the above two ideas. Lots more decks with Tarmogoyf and Fire/Ice and either Lorescale Coatl or Spellstutter Sprite. Vendilion Clique seems to find room either way; I'm sure bottoming Fire/Ice was sauce in the semis.

I suspect if the Stifle/Wasteland tempo package is this successful in the Spanish meta, Dragon Stompy players must come out in force. But then, the red removal package shines there - Mountains/schmountains! Lightning Bolt and Fire still kill Magus of the Moon just fine.

And stuff...
omfg i wanna play wilt-leaf liege in standard even more than usual lately.

D-Po out.

NinjaStill: Drawing Cards is Not Enough

2009-05-08T16:28:00.000-05:00

So last night Ryan and I approximated the mono-blue ninja deck for some Legacy shenanigans.

It went about like this:
Creatures - 22 - 3 Ornithopter, 3 Mothdust Changeling, 3 Mistblade Shinobi, 3 Looter il-Kor, 4 Ninja of the Deep Hours, 4 Spellstutter Sprite, 2 Trinket Mage.
Spells - 18 - 2 Umezawa's Jitte, 1 Shuriken, 1 Relic of Progenitus, 4 Force of Will, 3 Spell Snare, 3 Stifle, 4 Standstill.
Land - 20 - 4 Mutavault, 1 Tolaria West, 1 Riptide Laboratory, 1 Wasteland, 1 Seat of Synod, 12 Islands.

We tested it about five games apiece against Team America, Aggro Loam, and Enchantress.
It was not very good. At least, after turn 5 or so it was basically shitty, on the balance.

The deck draws a lot of cards, and that is swell. However, most of the cards it draws just cause it to draw more cards.
Granted, this is not always a terrible strategy. A deck like Threshold plays 12 or so cantrips, only a handful of creatures and counters, and what would appear to be nowhere near enough land - like 17.
Threshold just uses the cantrips as a consistency engine, maximizing card quality while filling its graveyard for profit. The few creatures, counters and removal spells it plays are all top-notch - Goyf, FOW and Swords to Plowshares - and because it sculpts its hand so perfectly, the deck doesn't have to screw around with inferior filler spells.

This does not work with the ninja deck. In part I think this is because unlike Thresh, the deck has no means of filtering its draws. In part I think also it's because the creatures do not present a scary clock or even come close trading with Goyf, barring an active Jitte. Last but not least, Mistblade Shinobi is cute, but once the opponent re-plays his fatty and can block, his utility plummets.

Most games started with Ryan doing his best to keep me off Standstill. He was never happy when it resolved, and I would usually get in for 8 or 10 damage in the early turns, between Thopter-dropping Ninja of the Deep, and Spellstutter Sprite and Looter-il-Kor getting in for a few points. Somewhere in there I might Force of Will a Pernicious Deed or Spell Snare a Dark Confidant, whatever.
Once I ran out of counters, Ryan would resolve a Tarmogoyf and my ninjas would become useless. Messy combat would ensue and usually I would not draw enough threats to push through the final few points.

So. Scratch that off my list of decks to try, and file it under "danger of cool things."

In other news: Dreadstill + Elspeth = Red Bull gives this giant robotic worm from hell WIIIIIINNNGGSSSSSS..... (because the planeswalker makes the Dreadnought fly for extra win).

Still to come: Zur! The Enchanter. Plus: T2 - Dark Bant, without the dark?

Eternal Daydreamzzz

2009-04-26T11:43:00.000-05:00

by DP

As the three people that read this know, my main format is Legacy, and I plan to use this spot to arrange my thoughts on whatever decks I'm developing.

To begin, let me admit that if I hated fun and cared only about flying elbow-first through opponents like a rally car through a crowd of spectators, I'd build one of the many Threshold variants.

Let me explain:

Everyone going to Grand Prix: Chicago knew the main deck to beat would contain Tarmogoyf, Brainstorm and Force of Will.

Granted, there is a whole spectrum of such decks; Tempo Thresh with Bolts, CounterTop Thresh with Swords, Team America, Ugx Dreadstill, baseruption, Goyféd Landstill variants, It's The Fear, etc. Regardless, they all plan to kill you with unfair fat while burying your dreams of having land, resolving spells and basically playing Magic.

My point being, everyone going to Chicago knew their deck had to drop buckets of neurotic cats on said match-up's face while it slept. But ultimately, what won was simply the same deck, plus tuned for the mirror.

Tangeant on Nassif's build: If you're already running a low curve and Divining Top, it's probably a mistake Not to play Dark Confidant. And what's better than killing the other guy's Tarmogoyf? Stealing it with Sower and Shackles, that's what. Take a hint from Extended, cha!

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is, because I am the main Legacy player I know, it does not make sense to just build the established best deck, choke-slam all takers and call it a day. I would have no takers, and therefore no fun!

Instead I have to vary my repertoire, so I can attract casual interest from my friends without ruining Sunday afternoon - which is basically what you're doing when you Crucible-Wastelock a suffocating opponent already flailing under Counterbalance.

I like to think this steady churn of decks makes me a better player; it forces me to examine off-beat builds that can randomly top 4 a Grand Prix, like Dragon Stompy. And it causes wise investments: I picked up my set of Tombstalkers at $3ish because I wanted to play Pox. Now it turns out they have wider applications and their value is spiking, but I am already armed. Thank you, random jank, for steering my collection in useful directions!

Regrettably, there is a downside to all this. It is the Danger of Cool Things. That is, the allure of trying to accomplish awesome plays, but at the expense of consistency, versatility and general practicality.

It is, after all, a slippery slope from weird-but-good decks to weird-and-silly-but-ultimately-suboptimal decks. I consider this the fine line between Dreadstill, which is no joke, and Thresh variants with Natural Order for Progenitus, which is cute but not much of an improvement on the established build.

Not to say that cool, goofy builds never win - they can, especially when thrown like a grenade into an unsuspecting meta. But let's face it: While it's awesome to trap a man with a White Stax shell, then kill him with Leyline of the Void/Helm of Obedience, there is a reason I saw that deck at a low table in Chicago.

So, what you can expect from this space is my investigation into what is simply rad, and what is rad and actually wins.

Some previews of decks I'm building:

Zur the Enchanter fetching Steel of the Godhead, Oblivion Ring and Pernicious Deed. Support: FOW, Confidant, Swords.

Mono-blue Ninja Faeries. Sample, ideal opening:
Turn 1: Island, Ponder, go.
Turn 2: Island, Cloud of Faeries, Standstill, go.
Turn 3: Ninja of the Deep Hours, ¡IHATEYOU!, go.
Turn 4: Profit.

-Dan

Carlos Reborn; STD Posts 5-1-1 Resultsss

2009-04-26T11:05:00.000-05:00

Hello, friends; it is DanPo.
Hear this and fear this, mothers and fuckers: I will be contributing here when the fancy strikes me, and will endeavor to baffle you with style and tech. Deal.

Saturday the Sexy Team of Dudes represented in Nashville's Alara Reborn pre-release, and Carlos savagely vanquished a month-long drought that began moments after the STD rendered Pat Chapin impotent in Chicago.

Carlos' Esper deck contained such hice as Sen Triplets and a foil Akrobot: Sphinx of the Steel Winds. It was like watching a factory machine that conveys fresh grapes beneath an unrelenting steel piston, but here the grapes were the heads of Carlos' opponents and the piston was his elbow.

-

His main brag in the early rounds occurs in game three as he's bearing down on an opponent with his Akrobot. The player tries to steal the match with Slave of Bolas (new Threaten) targeting the Sphinx. Carlos panics!

"That's enough to kill me," he blurts. His opponent nods and starts to pile his cards together in satisfaction, when, "Wait..."

Carlos riffles through his hand and counts to himself. He reads the cards. He counts again. What plan could he be hatching? He...

"Oh, nevermind!" Carlos says, revealing his ruse: "My guy is pro-red." He glares. Then his elbow slams down like a meteor. GG.

PTQ Nashville Style

2009-03-24T15:24:00.000-05:00

PTQ report from Nashville, TN 3/21:

So, Saturday was our local PTQ in Nashville. Unlike Chicago where I thought untested Naya was the way to go I found myself sleeving up UGW Wizards. Here's the deck:

1 Meloku
3 Tarmogoyf
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendelion Clique
2 Venser

3 Path to Exile
4 Spell Snare
2 Cryptic Command
4 Mana Leak

4 Ancestral Visions

2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Engineered Explosives

4 Mutavault
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Breeding Pool
2 Riptide Laboratory
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
7 Island

SB:
2 Gilded Light
3 Kataki, War's Wage
2 Sower of Temptation
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Relic of Progenitus
3 Stifle

I managed to finish a respectable 4-2-2. I don't remember enough to give a full tournament report but here are some highlights:

Round 2 against Mono-Black Control my hand is stripped to 3 cards and he drops a Nyxathid. The problem, I have an Ancestral Visions coming off suspend the next turn. Combined with my draw for turn puts me at 7 cards = dead Nyxathid.

Round 4 against Mono-Red Burn in game 2 I'm on the play. He suspends turn 1 rift bolt, on his upkeep I play gilded light forcing him to bolt himself. Later on after bashing with Tarmogoyf a lot, he's at 3 and forced to shrapnel blast my 'goyf then suspends rift bolt and passes. The result? Another gilded light to the face, for the win! Unfortunately, he wins the match but not before I make him sweat a lot!

I forced the draws against Reliquary loam and Astral Slide, 2 match-ups I'm not sure I should ever win so to not take the losses there is a small victory in itself.

My losses were to Fae and Mono-Red, and I managed to skip the zoo match-up completely. If were to play this deck again (which I would!) I would try to find room in the sideboard for targeted artifact removal, probably krosan grip. Since in the mirror you really need an answer for either Jitte or Vedalken Shackles.

Also, Congratulations to Ryan on his first PTQ top 8 and to our friend Brad on 10th place.

Until next time!

Steven

Theft. Big Problem or Biggest Problem?

2009-03-09T23:58:00.000-05:00

If you speak to a magic player about things that upset them about other players you commonly get 2 answers. Intentionally cheating during a game and stealing. Over the weekend especially on Friday many people found their bags, cards and all, stolen. So what do you do? Well, neither the venue staff or the tournament organizers are responsible for your belongings the best you can hope for is to have misplaced it and some honest individual found it and turned it in to event staff. However, at such a high level event it seems to be getting harder to have such luck. Many people found their bags taken from right beside them, as happened to a close friend of STDs. So what can you do if you find that your belongings have been removed from your person?

Step one is obviously to check with event staff to see if it was turned in. Many times at smaller events this is the case and you will soon be reunited with your belongings.

But what happens when you aren't lucky enough to have a happy reunion with the countless dollars you have invested over the course of your playing career? Unfortunately, many times you just lose it. Unless they catch the person who took your stuff then you probably have no hope in seeing it returned and even if they do, depending on how long it's taken then to apprehend the fiend then they may have already sold your cards.

This weekend one such card thief was caught in the act during Grand Prix Chicago. He was caught Saturday afternoon during round 4 trying to grab another bag. Fortunately for the unknowing player a judge saw the whole thing and caught him. Early estimates indicate that upwards of 30 bags and collections were found inside the persons hotel room. In addition to the bags in Chicago he has also been suspected in similar incidents from Grand Prixs in Denver and Los Angeles. Sadly, stopping one person won't stop all of them, so when playing an event of any size remember to always keep your stuff with you and when you're playing keepyour bag under your chair and wrap the strap around leg.

Until next time,

Steven

Grand Prix Recap!

2009-03-09T23:55:00.000-05:00

With over 1200 people in attendance, Grand Prix Chicago shattered the previous North America Grand Prix record. Did I mention it was Legacy? A format usually relegated to kitchen tables in the United States and often seen as unsupported by big events from Wizards and the DCI. However, every couple years there is a Grand Prix, the last of such was in Columbus, often cited as GP-Flash. So what does all this mean to you? Well, several members of STD made the 9 hour journey to the state of Illinois to play in this record breaking event. How'd we do? Not well, of the four of us who played and whopping 0 made day 2.

Even let downs have high points though, Carlos was featured in a match over at the mothership during round 3. His opponent, none other than Patrick Chapin. When the smoke cleared after two games against what some consider one of the best minds in the game an elated Carlos was the one with the victory. His prize, a one-way ticket to defending US Nationals champion Michael Jacobs. This time, however, Carlos wouldn't fare as well, losing the match, his first of the weekend. Carlos would go on to post a 4-3 record before dropping.

Dan was playing Dragon Stompy, a last minute audible from the more consistant, though arguably less explosive Dreadstill. On a roller coaster ride of a day he would go on to post a 3-3 record.

I decided to play the explosive deck, Ad Nauseam Tendrils. Ending the day at 3-2.

With some luck a full tournament report from each of us including decklists will happen this week.

Until then,

Steven

BIG weekend for the Team

2009-01-27T15:49:00.000-06:00

So last Saturday was the block tournament held at Outer Limits. A group of 16 strong showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, save our own Ryan who thought food poisoning was a good idea 2 days before. When the smoke would clear at the end of the day the only 4-0 would be myself with a Grixis control deck that performed so badly in testing I almost didn't play.

So, let's see the list:

4x Sedraxis Specter
3x Viscera Dragger
2x Broodmate Dragon
4x Hell's Thunder
2x Caldera Hellion
2x Cruel Ultimatum
4x Blightning
2x Infest
4x Agony Warp
3x Courier's Capsule
3x Grixis Charm
3x Resounding Thunder

4x Crumbling Necropolis
4x Savage Lands
5x Island
5x Mountain
5x Swamp
1x Forest

Sideboard:
4x Jund Charm
1x Grixis Charm
2x Infest
4x Naturalize
3x Cancel
1x Forest

Couple things about the deck:

1. I'm usually very against running lands in the sideboard but with only 5 green sources main I felt like siding in either the Jund Charms or the Naturalizes would leave them dead without at least 1 more source available.

2. Broodmate Dragon is good.

Following the block tournament on Saturday, Ryan and I along with our friends Tyler and Chad took the STD show on the road to McMinnville for a little Sunday standard action. I sleeved up Kithkin for the occassion while Ryan played GWU 'Lark, Chad played Mono-Red, and Tyler piloted B/W Tokens. In the swiss rounds Ryan and I both went 3-0-1 while Chad went 3-1. When the top-4 had settled the placings went 1, 2, 3 for STDs.

Love,

Steven

Shards of Alara Block Constructed

2009-01-10T15:26:00.000-06:00

With the PTQ season rolling into full swing and everybody testing extended, along with Prerelease in just under 3 weeks (Feb 1st, 12:30p Outer Limits Murfreesboro). Outer Limits in Murfreesboro is hosting a Shards of Alara Constructed event on Jan 24. Registration opens at 12:00 pm and round 1 starts at 1pm. Entry fee is $5. Join us here over the next 2 weeks as we throw out some decklists and possibly some testing results for this event.

Until Next Time,

Steven

without a dope beat to step to

2009-01-04T14:17:00.000-06:00

so it's been a while since we updated here at STDs. Just to let you know we haven't forgotten it's just been a slow couple weeks leading up to 2009. I can assure you, however, that we'll be back bringing you news and stories about our antics again soon. Hold tight!

love,
steven

Pictures 2

2008-12-15T01:45:00.001-06:00

Pictures

2008-12-15T01:24:00.000-06:00

As promised, pictures from the weekend:

The Long Road Home

2008-12-15T01:19:00.000-06:00

So...Worlds has come and gone. With it, lots of driving and Magic. Congratulations to the 2008 world champion Antti Malin of Finland and his Faerie deck. Antti defeated resurgent Jaime Parke and his 5-Color deck 3-1 to bring home the trophy. Another congratulations goes out to Team USA who defeated Australia in the team finals. You can find the lists for these decks and the rest of the top 8 at magicthegathering.com. For STD, today was a little trading and a couple of 8-man standard queues. One queue featured Ryan playing Faeries and Will piloting STD's ReveBant build. Both went 1-1 with Ryan losing to Kithkin and Will losing to the Fae. Carlos spent most of his day doing deck techs on the Legacy builds we had intended to play on Saturday for a podcast based out of Memphis whose name escapes me at the moment (sorry guys). I managed to catch the next Standard flight to finally give the River Kelpie deck I had been keeping up wraps a trial run. Unfortunately, the deck is completely cold to Mono-Red and that's what I got paired against first round and went 0-2. Here's the list:
3x Raven's crime
3x Negate
2x Pyroclasm
3x Firespout
4x Cryptic Command
2x Makeshift Mannequin
2x sower of Temptation
3x River Kelpie
4x Mulldrifter
2x Shriekmaw
2x Jace Berelen
3x Ajani Vengeant

4x Vivid Creek
3x Vivid Marsh
2x Vivid Crag
4x Crumbling Necropolis
2x Sunken Ruins
1x Cascade Bluffs
1x Sulfurous Springs
1x Shivan Reef
2x Underground River
4x Reflecting Pool
1x Island

Sideboard:
2x Mind Shatter
2x Glen-Elendra Archmage
3x Remove Soul
4x Fulminator Mage
2x Memory Plunder
1x Counterbore
1x Oona, Queen of the Fae

Admittedly, the sideboard needs loads of work. It was thrown together at the last minute. With a little work I think this deck could be really good.

Good Morning from Memphis!

2008-12-14T11:08:00.000-06:00

Yesterday the Top 8 for the 2008 World Championships was decided. Along with the individual event, the team final will also happen today. As sad as it may seem, STDs will not be bringing you live coverage of the Top 8, especially since we're still in our hotel room as the semifinals play out. You can find all the official coverage of Worlds and the Top 8: here. Still haven't forgotten about the pictures they'll be up tonight along with another update re-telling the day's events.

Steven

Saturday at Worlds

2008-12-14T04:21:00.001-06:00

Wow, I really meant to get this up before early Sunday morning. Most of Sexy Team of Dudes went out to Memphis this morning for a weekend of World Championship Magic. The team, consisting of Ryan, Carlos, Will, and I were geared up for the Legacy tournament in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the stars did not align and allow such a thing to happen (sorry D-Po). Even though we lost the battle between man and construction zone we did make it in time to play some flashback Ravnica block sealed deck. Of the team Ryan managed to finish the highest. He started out 6-0. Sadly, the event was 8 rounds of swiss. Ultimately, 6-2 would have to suffice. The rest of us struggled to 2-3 on the day in what could only be described as a disappointment. The night was not completely lost, however, since a late night excursion to Denny's was in order. Expect another update tomorrow with pictures from our adventure as the snoring contest going on beside me has completely broken all concentration remaining.

Until next time, if you say "Hi" and she says "Hi" back, you're probably off to a good start.

Steven