Standard

Down with the Sickness

There are some people who hate settling down into routine. For me it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. As I write this I am in the middle of a month-long stretch at home, and after GP Vancouver (next week baby!) I will be in an even longer one. The brightest spot of this is that I get to play a ton of Magic with my friends in my local store. And what a week of Magic we had planned! Midgard Gaming was starting “Win More Wednesdays” with double the entry fee but three times the regular prize payout, which is great for the more serious players in town. Of course there would be FNM, and then on Saturday I had a Grand Prix Trial to judge. At the end of the week we had our regular Sunday draft, on the way home from which I was tilted having gone 1-2 with a very strong (on paper) heavy black deck. My very good friend Mark said something about me being “all Magicked out” and I was quick to point out that this never happens to me. I love this game and I cannot fathom any amount of it that would leave me in a state to need a break of any length.

We have two events to look at this week, right? Well…no. The Wednesday event was completely uninteresting, three rounds and I went 1-2. One match I drew the wrong half of my deck, one was an epic encounter of UWR Miracles vs Weeping Angels and the other was me beating Delver. Game two against the Miracle deck was pretty ridiculous as I got a Tamiyo emblem but couldn’t find a win condition. I had a [card]Ponder[/card] in hand and was digging deep, but forgot a trigger to return it to my hand at one point and so it stayed in the graveyard. That left me replaying a Gideon each turn as the Worst Fog Ever until I found a [card]Drogskol Reaver[/card] and the opponent scooped. Nothing else relevant to report, except that [card]Devastation Tide[/card] is great against [card]Oblivion Ring[/card]s.

Weapon Selection

I’m a terrible person. I’ve been saying for weeks that I would play [card]Primal Surge[/card], but the timing just isn’t right. I think the deck needs [card]Viridian Emissary[/card] over one of the mana rocks simply because of all the early damage that decks are getting in these days. It also loves being Bonfired and is better to hit off a Surge than [card]Sphere of the Sun[/card]s. I don’t really want to take out the Elks, so some tinkering is required and I just didn’t have the ability to fit that in this week. Weeping Angels wasn’t in my good books after the Wednesday showing, and Mark’s girlfriend Alysha had asked to borrow Kamikaze. This left me in a bit of a pickle. My options:

  • Nut up and play [card]Primal Surge[/card] as is, and accept the beatings. Sometimes losing makes a good article.
  • Play something akin to Carrie Oliver‘s mono-green deck that took down a WMCQ. Delver is heavily played among the better players in town, so this option appeals.
  • Something UG, either Defiant Infect or Miracle Grow. Nobody is playing this locally and it’s essentially a combo deck, which are both huge points in favour of this plan.

I was mainly leaning towards mono-green since I hadn’t sleeved up Dungroves since last summer and being able to attack with huge trees seemed like tremendous fun. Small problem though: I only have one playset of [card]Phyrexian Metamorph[/card]s, and they are in Kamikaze. Having already promised the deck to Alysha, I needed to go with something else. Right then, UG it is!

I only had one [card]Temporal Mastery[/card], so Miracle Grow wasn’t happening this week. I didn’t like any of the Infect lists I saw online, so I figured it was time to do some brewing and make a hybrid list. Here’s where I ended up:

[deck title=Reverse Jesus]
[Creatures]
4 Blighted Agent
4 Glistener Elf
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Apostle’s Blessing
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Gut Shot
3 Mutagenic Growth
4 Ponder
4 Ranger’s Guile
4 Titanic Growth
3 Wild Defiance
2 Livewire Lash
2 Blessings of Nature
[/Spells]
[Lands]
6 Forest
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Inkmoth Nexus
6 Island
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
2 Corrupted Conscience
1 Mana Leak
3 Mental Misstep
2 Naturalize
4 Spellskite
2 Corrupted Resolve
1 Livewire Lash
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Although [card]Wild Defiance[/card] is good in multiples, the deck never wants the game to still be going on when I have drawn and been able to cast two of them. Three is the perfect number. I would never want to play a deck like this without [card]Livewire Lash[/card], ever since first trying the archetype last year when Mike Flores was a fan of it. Three of each Phyrexian mana spell seems loose, and in retrospect I might have gone with an extra Mutagenic, but with so much aggro around you don’t really want to pay too much life. Twenty land was just fine. [card]Blessings of Nature[/card] is ridiculous in the deck, though sometimes it makes you mulligan. That’s not the end of the world; the deck mulls pretty well and if you don’t have a creature you’re shipping the opener anyway.

The board was a mess. I never needed the Leak and the only other cards that I drew were [card]Spellskite[/card]s and a single Misstep. In fairness, both of those were absolutely key. Conscience is for ramp decks or Frites.

How Did I Do?

With the GP Trial the next day we had some players from out of town make the trip in. This swelled our numbers to 28 for FNM, still lower than I’d like but better than the last few weeks. Five rounds and I for one was NOT going to accept an ID in round 4…

Round 1 – Andrew Connors with UG Unblockable Dudes

Andrew is one of a set of twins who literally started playing two months ago. He’s young. It’s almost as though he, his brother and the other Little Ninja (Toby, I believe) are replacing The Prodigies as the up-and-comers in the community. And of course there’s Jens, the son of the store owner who recently cut his UB Zombie deck to 60 cards and instantly went 4-1 at Game Day.

Unlike a lot of young players, Andrew listens. He wants to improve his deck and is constantly asking for advice. He’s still very anti-net deck and is working on a budget but he shows a real desire to improve his deckbuilding AND his play skill.

One thing he NEEDS to do is have faith in his ability to win a match. A lot of the young players see that they are paired against me and have already lost in their minds before sitting down. I’m not that good for one thing, but for another you can’t mentally defeat yourself like that. If you show up at a GP and in round 4 you’re playing LSV, do you already assume you’ve lost? The man is human and occasionally loses games of Magic. Play your deck, analyze your opponents as best you can and use what you know to your advantage.

Andrew took me to three games after sandbagging his fifth land masterfully in game 2. I couldn’t find any pump to kill him quickly, and I could tell from his reactions that he was holding a [card]Wolfir Silverheart[/card] to pair with his [card]Latch Seeker[/card]. I attacked with two [card]Blighted Agent[/card]s and my Inkmoth, setting up lethal next turn and holding back a [card]Glistener Elf[/card] to block in case he found the land. He EOT [card]Vapor Snag[/card]ged me, dropped his land and swung in for the win. Fortunately game 3 saw normal service resumed and I won in short order.

Round 2 – Alysha Renouf with Kamikaze

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? I lend a deck to my best friend’s girlfriend (herself a friend of mine) and I have to play it in round 2? GAH. I’m really worried about this matchup too because the deck has enough removal to stop me early game while developing their own board. This was borne out in game 1 as I lost in short order having played too many Phyrexian mana spells. In come [card]Spellskite[/card]s and the extra [card]Livewire Lash[/card], and we have to hope for the best in games 2 and 3.

Prior to the tournament I had tried to convince Alysha to play [card]Primal Surge[/card] instead. If you’re going to play a deck blind, Surge is just easier to pick up and play as it has far fewer nuances to it. Kamikaze SEEMS easy but really requires a lot of analysis of when you’re the beatdown and when you want to win by attrition. Sideboarding with the deck is also not as easy as it looks. The lack of familiarity with the deck would end up helping me in game 2 as she left back a [card]Gravecrawler[/card] to block, and I had the lethal pump. I don’t remember game 3 but I think I won it due to all her blockers coming in tapped. I also remember [card]Gut Shot[/card] being huge against [card]Porcelain Legionnaire[/card].

It’s hard to remember sometimes that Alysha has only been playing for about 4 months. Her skill level is already well above what you’d expect for a player with that little experience, especially given she’s mainly been learning from Mark and me.

Round 3 vs Chris Day with BRW Reanimator

I’d really like to write more about this round, but it lasted 5 minutes. In fact the two tables next to me were both shuffling up for game 2 within 3 minutes of the round starting. Jonny, who was playing Tempered Steel, emptied his 7-card hand on turn 1. Game 1 was just [card]Glistener Elf[/card], attack a couple of times and finally pump. Game 2 was…well, unfair. Turn one forest, Elf, go. He played Mountain and [card]Faithless Looting[/card]. Turn 2 miracle [card]Blessings of Nature[/card], swing for 5 infect, go. He had no blocker and no removal. Chris was playing a friend’s deck and had not played paper Magic for a while, so I felt kind of bad beating him in such a hurry.

So I’m 3-0 again and looking to see what I might face in round 4. There are three possibilities: Shane with RDW, David with BantPod and a guy whose name I didn’t know with UB Heartless. I really, REALLY don’t want to play Shane, he’s a good friend and a member of my playtest group AND the matchup seems very bad for me.

Round 4 vs Shane Crewe-Wyatt with RDW

Crap.

Game 1 I play terribly, possibly because I am tilted at the matchup and he has turn 1 Noble. [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] revealed a triple Shrine in hand, but for some reason I decide that [card]Gut Shot[/card] on Noble and a second Probe are good ideas. I was dead in short order.

[card]Spellskite[/card] is really my only hope in this matchup, or so I thought at the time. I kept an opening hand with two [card]Spellskite[/card] and no other creatures as a result and soon found a [card]Blighted Agent[/card]. I had taken out the [card]Gut Shot[/card]s for this matchup to give me a chance at living through early burn. Shug (as in Sugar Shane) had kept a hand with no one-drops, but his turn 2 Stormblood enabled a turn 3 bloodthirsted Stormblood. The game came down to one pivotal turn: I have double Skite, a tapped [card]Blighted Agent[/card] and a freshly-played [card]Glistener Elf[/card] on board. I have lethal next turn and just have to survive 2 Nobles, 2 Beserkers and [card]Chandra’s Phoenix[/card]. I forgot about one card though: [card]Hero of Oxid Ridge[/card]. I did some quick maths and realized I was dead…or was I? No! [card]Ranger’s Guile[/card] my Elf, allowing me to block the Hero and survive long enough to rip the [card]Titanic Growth[/card].

Game 3 was decided by [card]Wild Defiance[/card], which is of course the actual key to this matchup and one I had somehow missed when figuring out my line of play in game 2. [card]Spellskite[/card] was keeping me alive from a lethal [card]Shrine of Burning Rage[/card] accumulation, and Defiance + Mutagenic was enough to seal the deal. Shug was tilting pretty hard but he recovered pretty quickly. I still think the matchup is something of a coin flip, maybe Infect is slightly favoured after board because of [card]Apostle’s Blessing[/card] protecting against Grudge.

Shane went on to secure third anyway, so all’s well that ends well.

Round 5 vs David Bishop with BantPod

I wish David got to Midgard more often. He’s probably the only local player who has more experience with [card]Birthing Pod[/card] than I do, and is also a big-time coffee drinker like me. We had already agreed to draw and split as the only two X-0 players in the room, and to play for the extra pack. While shuffling up we discuss various coffees and both drool over the prospect of finding some Jamaican Blue Mountain for less than infinity dollars. If you’ve never tried this stuff, you are seriously missing out. Liquid silk, my friends.

I know I won this one to go 5-0 (technically 4-0-1) but I don’t remember if I won in 2 or 3. I know the last game was decided by me baiting him into flashing back [card]Ancient Grudge[/card] on my Inkmoth with [card]Wild Defiance[/card] in play, then casting [card]Apostle’s Blessing[/card] to give the lethal pump and win the game. Due once again to the magic of tiebreakers, David ended up first in the standings. No big deal, I got my promo anyway.

What Did I Learn?

[card]Wild Defiance[/card] is very, VERY good in the deck when combined with [card]Apostle’s Blessing[/card]. Players can’t afford to risk you having the pump so they will often try and kill any creature when you attack. Targeted removal pumps the creature, and your Blessing pumps again, getting you in for a minimum of 7 infect without any pump spells.

People don’t know how to play against the deck. The temptation with instants is to cast them at the last minute, but that can lead to blowouts with this deck. If you kill my dudes on your turn I either have to let them die or spend my pump spells for little to no value.

Unlike a lot of combo decks, this one mulligans quite well due to [card]Ponder[/card] and [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card]. It’s also more resilient than it looks. You rarely want more than one creature on the board at a time, and the [card]Gut Shot[/card]s and Blessings are there to get you past the odd blocker if necessary. I never wished for an [card]Artful Dodge[/card].

How people play this deck without Blessings and [card]Livewire Lash[/card] is a mystery to me. Both were stellar when I drew them.

Bacon cinnamon rolls are freaking AMAZING. We were just sitting there waiting for the event to start when Flemming and his wife Roxanna showed up with two still-warm trays of what appeared to be regular cinnamon rolls (with icing). I naturally claimed one in a hurry and necked the whole thing…apparently my face when I realized there was bacon in the icing was a sight to behold. Seriously, try them.

What’s On Deck?

Mono-green is something I will play before M13 hits, but this week I really want to play [card]Primal Surge[/card]. There aren’t a lot of counters being played right now and the deck does enough powerful things for it to be viable anyway. There’s also a brew I’m working on based on someone challenging me to use an unheralded artifact from New Phyrexia.

Side Note: Grand Prix Trial

People who have read anything of mine before will know that we don’t get much in the way of big events out here. This month Midgard offered a sealed GPT with three byes for GP Vancouver in the offing. Very, very few local players have ever done a called draft, and even fewer local judges had ever done one (including yours truly) so I was a little apprehensive. It made me incredibly proud to only have 3 Deck/Deck list problems and ZERO problems in the draft. Oh, and for those curious as to what Midgard Gaming looks like, here is a shot of just one room in the store:

Let the registration of pools begin!

 

We’re very, very lucky. The event was one by Chris “Extra Balls” Stoyles who managed to draft the most aggressive Boros Humans deck I’ve seen in the format. It was pretty obvious to anyone who saw it that he was going to take the thing down barring mana screw. In case you’re interested, we streamed the whole event on my Twitch channel, with commentary for Top 8. I’ll be honest though, it will be of limited interest to anyone who doesn’t know the players. Mark did a good job on commentary during the top 8, and considering it was our first attempt it wasn’t terrible.

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