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
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Extended in Kentucky - SA
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
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
Monday, June 8, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
DP: Gleaning Heat from European Top 8s
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.
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.
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