#teamswag: February 2014

Over the weekend I had the chance to play in three prereleases, all of which were a good time. I didn't end up opening up any bomb mythics from the new set (you're only allotted 2 BOTG packs and a seeded one, the rest are Theros), but I still managed to make competitive decks each day. It's kind of a bummer when you don't have a lot to work with in sealed, even more so when the color you chose is not the one you end up running. My first prerelease of the weekend was a lot like that.

PRERELEASE 1: "Golgari Good Stuff"

A lot of talk was going around that blue, white, and black were the colors to be in. There's some truth to that, but the way I saw it was that we're only going to open two born of the gods packs and I wanted to choose the archetype that I had performed the best with in Theros (U/G)--seeing as the majority of the cards I would open would be from that set. the white promo is pretty unimpressive as is the black one, so I wasn't really trying to go too deep into those colors anyhow. The red promo looked pretty sick as well, but I'll get into more detail about that down the line. I was left deciding between blue or green as my seeded color, with hopes to pick up one or the other as a splash. I believe blue to be the stronger shell with access to countermagic and tempo cards, like voyage's end and griptide (one of the best cards in limited), along with newer cards like Retraction Helix and Nullify. I ended up being a blue mage.

Much to my dismay, I could not play blue. I had some good blue cards, like a couple of nullify's (bonified counterspell in this limited) and a dissolve, backed by retraction helix and my blue promo, but I opened way too many good black cards to not play them. The problem I found with the blue/black that I opened was that they both had really good cards, but I needed some meat-- some big, fat, huge green or red aggressive creatures. Without them I didn't think my deck would ever really get there. The black that I opened I deemed worth diving in for went as follows: 1x Nighthowler, 1x Pain Seer, 1x Whip of Erebos, 2x Necrobite, 1x Rescue from the Underworld, 1x Insatiable Harpy. That's some pretty sick pulls in a color you're not even seeded in if you ask me. With whip in my deck I decided to go with my gut and stick some big fat green creatures in there. Notable green that I opened up was as follows: 1x Nessian Wilds Ravager, 1x Mortal's Resolve, 1x Snake of the Golden Grove, 1x Vulpine Goliath, and 2x Nylea's Disciple. My deck was shaping up to be a huge lifelink Pain Seer deck--Perfect.

I didn't take notes on individual games that day, aside from getting killed at one life by an Akroan Skyguard due to messing up a Pain Seer trigger. What I can tell you though is that Pain Seer is what Gerry Thompson calls "the truth". I won every single game in which I played him, except the one I punted. My opponents would see my five and six mana green creatures, write off Pain Seer, hope to see me hit a six-drop off pain seer, I'd hit the six-drop off pain seer, then slam a whip and crush. Pain Seer might not be as good as dark confidant, but I don't think he's in anyway a write-off. I think that it's an incredibly good card that just needs a shell. Whether or not that shell will be standard playable is hard to say, but after the first prerelease I ordered the rest of my play-set at around $5 a pop (it's not gonna go lower). I think that if you can make him reliably hit enough it's worth it. It can even have some edges over dark confidant at times (you don't ever have to take the chance if you're low). He also is a 2/2 instead of a 2/1, which doesn't hurt. I'm not saying he's as good as DC, but in this standard, where people play four underworld connections and divination, why not give him a try? The green promo is a lot better than I had initially anticipated it would be, with asphyxiate and excoriate running around. He's either a 6/6 that murders something or a 12/12 that will eventually crush their board. This was probably the second best deck I made all weekend.

PRERELEASE 2: "Izzet Heroic Tempo"

This was definitely the best day for me, I finished 5th and scored around 6 packs of BOTG with a super sweet Izzet deck I call "Heroic Tempo". Out of all the decks I've ever made playing limited this has to be the most unique, cooky deck that I've ever concocted. At the time I put it together all I could think was "Oh god, someone's gonna play an aggressive 5 drop and then I'm gonna lose". I couldn't have been more wrong. What this deck actually did was teach me a better understanding of just how powerful tempo is and how to properly utilize it. Sam Black isn't one of the best players in the world because he always makes the "perfect play", he's one of the best because he has an outstanding perception of how to manipulate tempo within a game. It comes as no surprise then that he's done so well with mono-blue devotion ( a deck based on tempo and one I previously had such disdain for, until recently when I cast my first Master of Babes). The deck changed over the course of the tournament as I fiddled with it, but I'm going to lay out the whole deck list that I ended up with here so you can see some of the crazy interactions I had with it.

Izzet Heroic Tempo:

Creatures: 12 Instants: 6

1x Artisan of Forms 1x Retraction Helix

1x Wavecrash Tritan 1x Nullify

1x Opaline Unicorn 1x Lightning Strike

1x Coastline Chimera 2x Fall of the Hammer

1x Master of Waves 1x Dissolve

1x Cyclops of One-Eyed Pass

1x Felhide Spiritbinder Sorceries: 4

1x Mnemonic Wall 2x Scouring Sands

1x Sealock Monster 2x Bolt of Keranos

1x Akroan Conscriptor

1x Arbiter of the Ideal Enchantments: 1

1x Forgestoker Dragon 1x Dragon Mantle

Lands: 18

9x Island

9x Mountain

"But Mac! You can't play 41 cards, only NOOBS do that!" While it's true that adding extra cards dilutes your deck a bit, I've always been a fan of running 41 with 18 lands if you don't have anything you want to cut. Sure I could have cut a Scouring Sands, but those were in and out between games. Anyhow, my bombs in this beauty were Arbiter of the Ideal, Forgestoker Dragon, and Master of waves. Honorable mention to Artisan of Forms and Fellhide Spiritbinder (He's rediculous on his own). I chose red this time after seeing how absurd untapping with Forgestoker Dragon is in limited. He can kill most creatures, since you have at least six mana when you cast him, he can attack through just about anything, and he is a huge clock on his own. I was basically locked into blue as much as I was red as you can see with a master of waves and the blue promo. The one thing that I have to note about BOTG limited is that red has gotten a lot better overall. It seems that their creatures have gotten tougher with more abilities, and they also have access to more removal than before (see Bolt of Keranos and Fall of the Hammer). Fall of the Hammer? Why yes please I'll take 2...or 3, or 5. Simply put, hammer was ridiculous at all times in this deck, or any deck of the red persuasion for that matter. Being able to have a one-sided pit fight at instant speed that's easily castable AND triggers heroic is amazing in limited. One of the best interactions I had with it was against a U/W deck somewhat similar to mine, MoW and all. I had a Master of waves on board and an Artisan of Forms. I attack with the Master and his minions into his two creatures. He blocks the master, before damage I fall of the Hammer on Artisan of Forms targeting his creature and turning mine into another Master of Waves. The Hammer won't resolve once he becomes another copy of MoW (prot red), but all my elementals get pumped up by the extra +1/+1 freshness that is Artisan of Forms, and had it copied another creature his would have died. My opponent put a damper on my day by using retraction helix on my first master in response to the heroic trigger (which works unfortunately), but I thought it was such a cool interaction that I had to share. It's almost as good as the other interaction I was looking for all day, which is to untap a Fellhide Spiritbinder with a Master of Waves on board to create a copy of the Master and swing for an obscene amount. The tokens wouldn't have haste, but they still stick around after the fact due to the original Master of Waves' +1/+1 clause...HOW SICK IS DAT?!! Despite this deck having really good interactions going for it, there were still plenty of games where I had to manipulate a lot of tempo to get things going my way, which is primarily what I want to emphasize about the weekend.

After I played this deck I started thinking about magic differently. I had always heard the word tempo being thrown around and I thought I knew what it meant. I had a grasp on it, but it was like a senior citizen's rock climbing grip...not very good. After Saturday's prerelease I'm addicted to it though. "Oh, you're going to play you're Nessian Wilds Ravager? Ill be stealing that as a 12/12 with a Fall of the Hammer on my Akroan Conscriptor, and killing your only blocker as well ." Or... "Oh no! You're going to do what?! Monstrous you're Shipbreaker Kraken? I'll use retraction helix on my Artisan of Forms to create a copy of it, then bounce that puppy back to your hand." The interactions I had with some of these cards were seriously obscene, especially with Retraction Helix. It's important to note though that when you have these spells that create tempo you have to know when to use them to maximize the efficiency of swing in tempo. Hold that retraction helix till they tap out for a six drop, or sandbag that sudden storm until you have near lethal/lethal on board. I found a new love for opening Artisan of forms and also the heroic mechanic as a whole. I'm not huge on the heroic triggering counters thing, it's just not my style in limited, but copying and stealing creatures? Now THAT'S VALUE!

Anywho, I ended up going 4-1 in the event and was pretty pleased with my performance. I felt like I won games I shouldn't have simply because of my play, not luck. I manipulated tempo to my advantage to win when I was so far behind. I wasn't thrilled to have to rush to work after the event, but I was pumped to wake up on Sunday and get another go at it.

PRERELEASE 3: Simic-Tempo

This day was unfortunately the worst of the pools I had, which stunk cause I ended up getting the archetype I had yearned for--U/G. I picked green this time, finally in my roots. After opening up a Prophet of Kruphix and a Bident of Thassa I was sold that I was basically Algae or bust. The rest of the deck had some weird draws and was kinda dead in the water unless I drew bident, or prophet, but I'll lay this one out for you too since I kept it sleeved up.

Simic-Tempo:

Creatures: 13 Instants: 8

1x Vaporkin 1x Gainsay

1x Kiora's Follower 1x Nullify

1x Nessian courser 1x Voyage's End

1x Agenst of Horizons 1x Mortal's Resolve

1x Noble Quarry 1x Shredding Winds

1x Scourge of Skola Vale 2x Sudden Storm

1x Graverobber Spider 1x Fated Intervention

1x Setessan Starbreaker

1x Snake of the Golden Grove Sorceries: 1

1x Prophet of Kruphix 1x Time to Feed

1x Horizon Scholar

1x Nessian Wilds Ravager Enchantments: 1

1x Kraken of the Straits 1x Bident of Thassa

Lands: 17

9x Forest

8x Island

I originally had 18 lands in this deck too, but ended up switching this one around a lot more since I started out 0-2 with it : /. There were just some key cards that I was missing in my original version. I cut Fade into Antiquity for Setessan Starbreaker, which can just be "when this guy ETB destroy target creature" sometimes. The best card I added was probably Noble Quarry. It doesn't seem like much, but being able to push through damage is so good in almost every situation, it's better than trample in my opinion. They either waste removal on it or they can't block anything else, or on the other hand you can bestow it onto a 12/12 ravager and watch all their dudes explode. Definitely not a mistake I'll make again. Also the Gainsay was for the last match I played against a Bant control deck which had some BOMBS in it. My changes were for the better, I didn't lose a match after I made the changes from what I started with to this iteration of the deck. All of the games I lost were really close which is always a bummer. I lost my first match because I didn't think to sac my prophet of Kruphix with a feral invocation on it(I had it in the deck then) in response to removal, so that I could add enough counters to my Scourge of Skola Vale to swing for lethal next turn. That's just the way it goes sometimes though. Nonetheless I made the changes and felt good about it, until I saw my last opponent play kiora and then ramp up into a Shipbreaker Kraken... Turns out Shipbreaker kraken along side Kiora, The Crashing Wave is pretty powerful. Too bad for my opponent I was able to kill his Kiora due to my unblockable creatures via Noble Quarry. Also, there's this funny thing that happens when someone has a monstrous Shipbreaker Kraken out tapping down all your dudes and you have a Prophet of Kruphix out. All your jam untaps on THEIR upkeep, instead of yours, which is better if you ask me. It's like a pseudo vigilance. I was able to push enough damage through in the early game, so that he couldn't attack with his Kraken. Eventually he was forced to block my Graverobber Spider bestowed with the Noble Quarry and eat the 14 other damage I had on board, sending him to his demise in game two.

This Deck turned out to be another quarky tempo-ish deck with the Sudden Storms and Voyage's End things going on. One of the things I started paying more attention to after playing this deck along with the heroic tempo deck from Saturday though was side-boarding. Using a card like Nullify is great when you're on the draw, but can be a little lackluster when you're on the play trying to tap out aggressively. Then they slip a Shipbreaker underneath your counterspell and you throw-up on the table. Then again you can always just have a prophet out and always have the mana for it :P, that's pretty good too. Seriously though, knowing when to side stuff like that out helped me a lot in my last couple games and is applicable to all formats. Probably more-so in constructed where you have 3-4 copies of a lot of cards, which makes a more substantial impact on boarding them out (factoring in chance to draw them). I ended up winning a pack with Hunter's Prowess in it as the rare and a sweet deckbox with "Xenagos, God of Big Thangs, and Fast Thangs too" on it. A pretty descent weekend all around if you ask me.

CONCLUSION: Moving Forward

Looking past the weekend I can only expect that the new cards will shake up the format a bit. Will they change every archetype? I don't believe so, we'll still see mono-black and mono-blue with their shiny new toys, but I think there will be more room for brewing and other decks getting an upgrade to full on tier 1. Cards I would look out for that may be flying under the radar are:

-Pain Seer

-Fall of the Hammer

-Eidolon of Countless Battles

-Fellhide Spiritbinder

-Fated Intervention

-Searing Blood

These are a couple of the cards over the weekend that I noticed performed exceptionally well and that I think may have potential to find their way into some kind of deck in standard. Any deck that creates good tempo swings in standard after BOTG releases will have my up-vote. Ideally I'll play one that's fresh and unexpected, but hey, you can't have it all. Thanks for listening to my adventures, till next time.

#teamswag

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

(Michifus) Podcast Episode 2: Pro Tour BNG Roundup

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

How Would You Build It? Episode 1

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

(Mac) Born of the Gods & Manipulating Tempo

PRERELEASE 1: "Golgari Good Stuff"

PRERELEASE 2: "Izzet Heroic Tempo"

PRERELEASE 3: Simic-Tempo

CONCLUSION: Moving Forward