If you read Part Two last Flores Friday, you know that I managed a money finish with the Caleb Durward-inspired G/W deck I played at the SCG Standard Open in Edison.
This is the deck I played:
Creatures (22)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (24)
Spells (9)
Mark Reed mentioned Trostani in the comments of Shiny New Thing + Sideboarding, and I thought that would give me more impact against Boros Reckoner than Blind Obedience. Thanks Mark! Josh convinced me a second Terminus was better than a sixth Garruk against other creature decks while doing mostly the same thing. I really wish I drew any Terminus.
Now for some questions and answers:
Wasn’t Selesnya from the first set? Where are the new cards?
Complicated answer on this one…
Gatecrash wasn’t available on Magic Online yet, and I was super happy with my testing with Return to Ravnica-only card availability. In most cases, I am a big fan of adopting powerful new cards—especially if I can do so ahead of the curve—but I was really uncomfortable playing with Saito’s 20-land deck (four-drops and 20 lands seemed tough to me as good as the rest of the deck seemed)… And I didn’t super love anything else.
I will be the first to admit that I initially underestimated how fantastic Boros Reckoner is. That card is truly going to be a card that will change how Standard is played, and the further viability of a deck like this is going to be defined in some wise by its ability to cope with the various Reckoner strategies.
In addition, I once dialed it back a half-tick and won a Blue Envelope with a straight G/W Ghazi-Glare deck when Guildpact was already legal (though I admittedly had Giant Solifuge in my sideboard); so I had precedent—and especially with a Selesnya deck—for not feeling unarmed despite a new set.
Can you explain the Esper matchup?
Control in general is a good matchup for this deck.
This isn’t a “beatdown” deck, though it can take advantage of its early game mana much more than a deck you might traditionally consider a “control” deck.
Control decks in post-Return to Ravnica Standard generally gain advantages through a long Stage Two via Sphinx’s Revelation and win with Nephalia Drownyard.
You have Garruk, Primal Hunter (and in sideboarded games Staff of Nin) to keep pace with Sphinx’s Revelation. While you don’t gain life with any of these methods, your acceleration can get your card advantage out faster (ever run the first turn Arbor Elf, second turn Selesnya Keyrune + Avacyn’s Pilgrim, Staff of Nin opening three?)
Your card advantage is usually less explosive than a Sphinx’s Revelation, but you generally get to access more of the cards and use the card advantage proactively. What do I mean about this? You have all these one drops, you can play them down before you play one of your card advantage bombs, and on balance your opponent usually has to use his extra cards reactively. They are doing a lap around the room just to be able to cast a Thragtusk on their own turn!
And many, many of your cards are efficient to begin with and / or generate card advantage on their own (Borderland Ranger et al), so even when the opponent can start trading card with you… He’s not.
Now what is the opponent trying to do ultimately? Kill you by decking you with Nephalia Drownyard.
You can certainly die that way, but I wouldn’t bet against G/W unless the opponent had a precariously powered Tamiyo, the Moon Sage or some such. If you find one Angel of Serenity and a Cavern of Souls, you can set up an Angel loop that nets you at least two cards per cycle (with one of them being an uncounterable 5/6 flying Ancestral Recall). Killing someone with uncounterable Angels is many times faster than decking them with a Drownyard. Either they kill you first, or they die inevitably in battle.
Can you explain that Giant Growth?
In my first round on video match from Saturday, I made what some players would consider a curious play. I attacked with a bunch of small creatures, and my opponent blocked (to kill) a 2/2 Wolf token. I had Garruk Relentless online, and this was a proposed trade of non-cards for non-card.
Mid-combat I used a Selesnya Charm to keep my Wolf and trample over the top for two.
What was up with this?
This is an old trick I learned from Grand Prix champion Jon Sonne. When you’re green and your opponent is blue… It’s not like anyone is confused about who has the better cards. In particular, Giant Growths match up badly against instant speed removal and bounce.
Some players hold their Giant Growths to try to kill the opponent or generate a substantial advantage as the game nears the close. The thing is that this is when the opponent is most vigilant, and most likely to want to stop you. It’s not like points five and six add up to any less than seventeen and eighteen or anything.
In this case, I also kept my Wolf. Again, many players would have looked over at an active planeswalker and decided to save the Selesnya Charm. I can always use this later, right? But is there really a more strategic opportunity? If I keep my Wolf, that is another two points of damage that I get to put on next turn that I wouldn’t have had otherwise, Garruk or no. I can press and snowball an advantage, possibly shave a turn down the line.
But maybe most importantly, because the stakes are so low (Wolf token versus Lingering Souls tokens), I am very likely to get what I want, and can get to force in damage while advancing my battlefield position; even if I don’t, I still have a good advantage. I am a huge fan of low-cost (especially low-risk) solutions to big problems… And that Selesnya Charm was actually a problem-maker for the opponent.
So… Is this a good deck [still]?
I think it depends and that it is very possible.
Midrange decks (Jund, Junk, Naya, etc.) continue to perform on the Open Series; I found this deck outstanding against any kind of midrange green deck. You have tons of acceleration so you get to essentially the same game point as the opponent faster. For some reason, the Naya decks in Standard don’t want to play Thragtusk, and by extension, Thragtusk + Restoration Angel. Unless they switch mana to accommodate Boros Reckoner… They aren’t even interesting opponents.
Excepting generally low-adoption super bombs like Bonfire of the Damned, most midrange duels come down to a small number of pivotal symmetries: Thragtusk and Garruk, Primal Hunter. Your Thragtusks are the best in the room. They are outstanding against cards like Loxodon Smiter, and you can control the tempo of a Thragtusk-a-Thragtusk fight. And if you can unlock the Restoration Angel achievement? Bam! Like I said, your Thragtusks are the best in the room.
The other big symmetry is Garruk, Primal Hunter. We’ve got four big Garruks and a preemptive Garruk. Our Garruks are primarily huge Harmonizes and sometimes really huge Harmonizes. Fairly often you will launch a Thragtusk into battle, give it +2/+2, and then set up a draw seven (you had best be able to beat another midrange deck from this spot, barring immediate life total concerns).
After the symmetries, you have two distinct advantages and one conditional disadvantage. The disadvantage is that you don’t have a third color, so you can’t get them with Bonfire of the Damned, or as the man with the ChoHawk sez…
Elsewise it can become a fight on the battlefield. You have the biggest potential battlefield trump in Angel of Serenity, and over time even your little Elves (and various small Wolves and Beast tokens) can go super lethal via Gavony Township. Against [other] midrange decks, you can create a position where your 1/1s are trading against their Thragtusks and are creating blowout situations with non-cards.
Because you have so much mana, you can play more—and more effective—Townships and cast more big Garruks than seemingly similar decks.
Everything isn’t rosy all the time, of course. I think you are perfectly fine against regular Reanimator decks (you basically get to the same end game), but I haven’t yet wrapped my head around how to beat Humans Infinite Reanimator combo. Even with a second turn Rest in Peace, you have to put them on a clock or they are going to find a solution to your two caster.
The biggest question mark—as mentioned—is Boros Reckoner. The best solution I have come up with is to either just take three a turn (might or might not be viable depending on how much burn the opponent has drawn relative to how many Thragtusks you’ve drawn) or to try to trade with a Restoration Angel (again, question marks on that one). I think you are probably way behind the Boros Reckoner + Blasphemous Act combo, so like Fujita used to say, “Depends on the metagame.”
Odds, Ends, Hilarious Pics, and Asking Better Questions
I won six or seven matches, which were all lopsided wins against midrange blue or green decks. My losses were to R/W Boros Aggro, G/W Silverblade Aggro, and Bant Auras. All beatdown decks; all three went three games, and I lost the roll all three times.
Both of the green matchups went the same way. They won the flip, blew me out quickly (with Silverblade Paladin + Sublime Archangel or hexproof guy + a million enchantments respectively). I blew them out with overload in game 2 (one or more Terminus I never had to cast and didn’t want to reveal). They got their game 1 draws again, super committed, and I never drew a relevant blocker or Terminus.
The Boros Aggro loss was the worst and only interesting one of the three (and to Sunday winner Zach Mullin). In game 1, I was on my heels throughout but stabilized. Zach had one card in hand and four lands in play along with a Boros Reckoner. I had five life and a bunch of stuff (but no real confidence) and a Restoration Angel to hang back on.
I had basically three options:
1. Leave up six mana (including Gavony Township) with the Angel and some little guys back, passing the turn with Selesnya Charm and Garruk, Primal Hunter in hand.
2. Play Garruk, Primal Hunter and attack with Restoration Angel.
3. Play Garruk, Primal Hunter, leaving back Restoration Angel.
It would take me two to three attacks to win anyway, so I chose option #3. I was at five but was pretty sure I would pull it out if I found a Thragtusk. The plan was to live for a turn, attack with the Angel + Selesnya Charm, and draw five, ideally finding Thragtusk (or at least Angel of Serenity).
In the situation described, I was potentially dead to any burn spell (depending on how blocks or first strike went).
Zach drew his fifth land and killed me with Thundermaw Hellkite.
This wasn’t “the worst” part.
I think I made the right decision mathematically, if not the best decision practically.
Josh and I had a dispute on the way over about what question you ask yourself depending on the action your opponent takes.
Josh: “Why did he do that?”
I don’t like that one because about 80% of the time the answer is “because he made a mistake,” which is not generally an instructive answer.
Josh argued that if he made a mistake, you are supposed to win anyway. This of course is mathematically provably false.
Say your opponent plays a line to win if he draws a burn spell (say a 33% chance) but in the alternative could have played a line to win if he drew a land (say a 40% chance). The latter is obviously substantially better, but he will simply win different games if he makes the mistake of playing to topdeck the burn spell.
I argued that instead of “why” did the opponent do whatever, we should ask this question: what does he actually have?
If I can just figure out what he has, I can make much better decisions.
Round 1 of Sunday, my opponent played Stoneforge Mystic and got Umezawa’s Jitte. I Lightning Bolted the Stoneforge Mystic and Annulled his Umezawa’s Jitte. I started clocking him, and with three lands in play, he played Surgical Extraction on Lightning Bolt.
He had three cards left.
Can you figure out what they were?
I was pretty sure he had both another Stoneforge Mystic and a Batterskull (which was right). If he had only a Stoneforge Mystic, his line would be the same. He needed to keep the Stoneforge Mystic alive so he could play the Batterskull potentially through another Annul or a Snapcaster Mage.
Zach didn’t do anything to lead me to believe he was stuck with a Thundermaw Hellkite in hand, but I must admit I didn’t really think about it. If I had figured it out, I obviously would have left up the six and kept myself alive, hopefully stabilizing against an opponent with no cards in hand.
What was the worst was game 3.
Like I mentioned on Friday, the reason I was looking super cool…
… Was because my eyeglasses blew away in Friday’s superstorm. So I had to play either completely blind (no glasses at all) or just very impaired (prescription sunglasses). In game 3 against Zach, I literally couldn’t tell the difference between my Sunpetal Groves and Temple Gardens. I had a solid hand but thought I had to play Sunpetal Grove into Gavony Township for my second turn Farseek. This yielded a third turn Rhox Faithmender, which gave way to another Rhox Faithmender on turn 4.
Peachy, right?
If I had been able to tell the difference, I would have gone Temple Garden into Sunpetal Grove and played a third turn Trostani!
Then I would have gone Rhox Faithmender (gain ten), another Rhox Faithmender (gain 20), into a Restoration Angel (gain sixteen + gain 20). I think I could have won the match with that level of margin. Even through double Faithmender (I never had a window for Trostani), Zach got the last four with Boros Charm when it looked like heroes were about to get him.
So… It sucks, not being able to see.
That was bad, but this was good.
I mentioned in Part Two that my Sunday deck choice was bad against Josh’s Sunday deck choice, though I thought both U/R decks were very good in general. I played a lot of pickup games against both Josh and Thea Steele (they played same 75 both days); the G/W deck went a bazillion-and-oh against their Naya Humans deck, and their Sneak and Show had a decided advantage against my U/R Delver.
But on Saturday before I had bought my Chain Lightnings, Thea wanted to practice—at least practice drawing—with her Sneak and Show. The only deck I had together was my G/W.
We played one game.
I kept an Elves hand that probably wouldn’t have won a lot of Standard matches.
Thea blew up with a fast Show and Tell.
The result was “the worst day of her life”:
“This is the worst day of my entire life.” -@wmap (playing Legacy v. Standard) twitter.com/fivewithflores…
— Michael Flores (@fivewithflores) February 9, 2013
You can’t see the Show and Tell so good (sorry, blind), but basically my Angel of Serenity ended up sitting on her Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.
So yes, I had a better win percentage against Sneak and Show with my Standard deck—by far—than I did with my Legacy deck.
LOVE
MIKE