The Combat Phase – Metropolis

Wendy has just left for a girls’ lunch. I came to Madrid with a box designed for Magic that has four rows for cards. In it are my favorites, as well as a bunch of stuff I never got sorted at home. I spend the hour before my first tournament at Metropolis sorting and throwing away cards I know I’ll never use. On the television is
The Book of Eli.
I’m told the ending is worth it. At four I’ve made a good dent in the endless sorting that Magic requires and load my computer and decks into my backpack and head down.

Playing at a new place in Spain is nerve-wracking for me. As I walk there I’m wondering, of course, how I will do. Will anyone know of my articles? Will they be as friendly and have as many cards in English as the players at Evolution? Will I play smart or be disappointed with myself at the end of the day? Will I finally start to play well, have built a good deck, and finish a respectable 3-1 or even 4-0?

That would make me very happy. 

Today we’re playing Standard, and I’m playing my usual Eldrazi Green. Not the one with Eldrazi Monument, but the one with Primeval Titans and Emrakul.

Today I’ve decided I’ll be playing it as a “Go Big or Go Home” variant.

Online I have a version that has Joraga Treespeaker, Llanowar Elves, Overgrown Battlement, and then moves on to three and four-mana Baloths, add in four Primeval Titans and then just a few of the different Eldrazi. I figure while other decks are ramping up to Valakut maximum damage with land search spells, I’ll be smashing their faces in with Baloths.

This used to work out pretty well but doesn’t seem to work anymore, and Red always has Act of Treason in the side.

Today I’ve decided to go big. I have the full set of four each of Emrakul and Artisan of Kozilek, Primeval Titan, twenty-eight land, Llanowar and Arbor Elves, Summoning Trap, Cultivate and Explore. Fine, I won’t beat you down with Baloths and then Eldrazi; I’ll just ramp up like everyone else and hope to hit something huge with Summoning Trap.

I think the deck I’m playing today relies too much on luck than the version with Baloths. I also think it’s weaker against Red. The reason I’m playing this version is because, despite my reasoning, the Baloth version hasn’t won a match all week. 

I show up at 4:25, sign up for the 4:30 tourney and wander around, read, get my laptop started up so I can take some notes. There are so many people playing I start to wonder if I’ve missed the pairings somehow. There’s also a Legacy tournament going on, and both tournaments fill up all the tables. This place is huge for a local store. Eventually pairings are posted.

 Game 1 has my opponent play Leonin Arbiter which slows me down enough for his White Weenie horde to kill me. I won’t lie to you (but I’d like to); I screwed this up. I was holding a Cultivate and had five mana on the board and didn’t realize until the next day that I could’ve paid five for the Cultivate and started casting the Primeval Titans I had in hand. This isn’t so much a play mistake as not wanting to hold up the game too much and reading the card too quickly that I’d never seen before.

Game 2 he beats me down early, but a Wrath of Everything (All Is Dust) leaves him a little surprised, and I start smashing face. Too bad I forgot I’m at two when I attack with everything, and he doesn’t block with a 3/3 and comes over to kill me.

I’m horrified. When did I get so bad at this game? How could I forget that I was at two? He shrugs, we laugh about it, I shuffle up and start to sideboard.

Then I realize I was holding a Summoning Trap in my hand.

Bad Player Flores has got nothing on me.

He asks if I want to play another just for fun, and I say sure. He beats me down, so I’m assuming I would’ve lost the match anyway.

My round 2 opponent is playing black which is never good for green. He wins the first game when I cast two Summoning Traps and whiff both times, getting a Llanowar or Arbor Elf as my choices. I then proceed to play a Primeval Titan, literally, and yes, I do mean literally, suck all the land out of my deck, and proceed to draw Elves, wrath of everything, Cultivate, and Explore every draw phase until I finally just kill him with the Primeval Titan.

Some bad. Why? Because now we’re short on time, and I know I can take this.

In the third game Wrath of Everything takes him by surprise, and I start to unload. Too bad the round is over, and on my last turn I cast Emrakul, and my opponent says it doesn’t matter, we only get five turns after time is called. This time I do call a judge. Do I get another turn after I cast Emrakul because of his special ability? I’m told I do not.

Next up is a kid in his late teens with Plated Geopede, which he sees in his opening draw every game, and then every land he draws is a fetchland. He knows enough to kill my Elves while my Explores and Cultivates decide to stay nestled snugly in the folds of my inner deck. I side in four Vines of Vastwood. I take the second from him, but the third again sees me taking too much time to set up before he kills me. Man, is Red fast these days! I’d like to think my Baloths would’ve made the difference but a 5/5 first striker every turn is too big for even them to deal with.

I sign my little sheet and click the box for “drop.”

The weather reflects my mood at going 0-1-2, and I walk out of the store into pouring rain. I call Wendy to see if she needs anything at the store I’m going to pass on the way home. As it turns out, she is a block from me, having gone out for drinks with Candy and Alana after lunch, and we walk home together.

After my disastrous performance I decide to see if I can out-aggro the red decks. I make up this.

For one thing, I refuse to believe 4/5 for three mana isn’t good. I refuse to believe that 4/4 for four and four life isn’t good. Trample is good. Four Khalni Hydras have been sitting in my collection without seeing use for a long time, and I miss them. Terra Stomper was initially Primeval Titan, but 8/8 trample for six is better than 6/6 trample for six, and I don’t need any more lands once I get to six anyway. Vines of Vastwood is great all on its own and now even better thanks to everyone running ways to steal my fat stuff. I hate when people do that. Add in the fact there’s so much trample in this deck, and it becomes even better. Hornet Sting is for Red.

It’s undefeated in all of the three matches I’ve played with it. It’s funny to reduce your opponent to minus fifteen because Overwhelming Stampede has given all your guys +8/+8 and trample. Sick actually.

I take a break to read the interweb tubes and discover new PTQs have started. I generally suck at Sealed Deck, but since the qualifiers are Sealed I decide to familiarize myself more with Scars of Mirrodin and play in some online drafts and eventually PTQs.

It’s now two days later and as with pretty much everything having to do with Magic these days, I’m enjoying it very much. The least expensive route for scrubs like me is to join the Swiss draft queues, and my knowledge has grown by leaps and bounds.

Highlights include: Pulling a Mox Opal out of my second draft pack. Myr Battlesphere is just funny. I lost to it by the way. Elf lord is amazing. Ezuri’s Archers are fantastic for Sealed. Infect is much better than I thought, and no, I make no apologies, I don’t feel dirty for playing it at all. Even if you don’t give someone a bunch of poison counters, adding negative counters to their creatures is a good thing. Untamed Might works really well in an infect-themed deck. I loves me some Myr and some Trigons.

I find it is a slow format. I’m drawn to green as always, and my strategy evolves into 1) pick the big creatures, 2) add in some Wing Punctures, and 3) outlast your opponent. There are no big effects in this set. There are bombs, but there is no Wrath, there is no way to tap all your opponent’s creatures, there is no Overrun. The only card that I can think of that is even close to that is the green fog. (See, this is why I suck at this game now. At my age, my memory is starting to go. I can’t even remember the name of a card I’ve drafted a dozen times. And now MODO has crashed for the third time, so I can’t look it up easily. It won’t let me log in again. Restart the computer. There we go, Blunt the Assault.) There are of course bomb cards, though, like the time I drafted  Skithiryx, The Blight Dragon and a Wurmcoil Engine, and my opponent drafted and drew, Molten-Tail Masticore every game. I got the Dragon once, and it won me the game. Even with the Masticore on the board.

Some advice from someone who has no business giving it except to people completely new to the format: If you want to go the metalcraft route, you really have to commit to it, making about two-thirds of your deck artifacts, which isn’t hard. But then you’re passing up better cards for artifacts just to make metalcraft work. For those of you who haven’t played the format, you’re probably thinking I’m exaggerating, but getting, and especially keeping, three artifacts on the board is harder than you think. Some of those artifacts have useful qualities, like attacking, or blocking, or sacrificing them to some effect. I’ve tried this strategy multiple times, once drafting three Bleak Coven Vampires, and in three games got to drain/gain four life exactly once.

With enough drafts under my belt, I finally feel like I have a pretty good handle on things.

I join an Online PTQ and the chat room indicates we have enough people for ten rounds. No problem, I can make it until three in the morning.

Except my deck can’t.

It would be tough to imagine a worse batch of cards especially for me. My fattest creature is a Molder Beast. I have one option, and that’s the infect route. My one good card is Nim Deathmantle. I have an average amount of poison creatures, a couple Myr, a Myr enhancer, and really, no way to get them through my opponent’s creatures. I also have Hand of the Praetors, and in some decks that would be awesome, but I don’t have enough infect creatures, and none of them are that good.

It could work, but you know how these things work. Bombs make a hell of a difference.

My first round opponent is a bad, slow player. Despite this, he has ways to give his infect creatures flying, and I have no way to stop them, and my infect creatures are too small to get by his blockers.

My second round opponent plays bomb after bomb. I tell him this, and he replies “Still lost though.”

Then he plays a Sword of Body and Mind and says, “Yes, I know. Bombs.”

“Hey, at least you got a nice sword out of it.”

“It sells for 5.50.”

Really? I want one. Or four and then I’ll combine them with Master of the Wild Hunt and Howl of the Night Pack and rule the planes!

I decide not to point out to my opponent that his one Sword of Body and Mind is worth more than all my cards put together from the six packs I got today.

He beats me down in the first game; I sideboard, and then the best thing ever happens.

At first I think he’s conceded because the match never starts. I find my name on the list, and it says I’ve won 2-1. Okay, that’s pretty good because now I’m still in it, but with this crap deck it’s going to be a long slog. At least I’ll learn something I guess.

And then, all of a sudden, a box flashes up on my screen: “One or more players has failed to show up for the game. Jazzzon has won the match.” That would be my opponent. Then it shows me all my bad cards that have been added to my collection.

Double you tea eff?

At first I’m pissed. Then I realize, “I wasn’t going anywhere with this deck today; I wonder what happens if I report this?”

I’m not trying to get something for free – I was just kicked out of an event through no fault of my own. I contact an Orc and get the link for event compensation. We’ll see what happens.

Draft has become my new addiction. I accidentally enter a Sealed Swiss four-booster-pack, thirty-card-deck tournament thinking it was the Swiss draft queue. When all my cards appear in front of me, I’m very confused. Then I see my deck size is supposed to be thirty cards. Okay, how many lands go in a thirty card deck? I’m going to go with thirteen. My green is crap, my black is worse, I never play red or blue in SOM drafts, so I’m left with white, which leaves me not very happy. Little do I know what bombs I have until I look at the artifacts and see a perfect white metalcraft deck with Arrest, a bunch of Myrs for mana acceleration, Precursor Golem (which one opponent used Neurok Replica to return to my hand… um, thanks! No seriously, thanks!). Other bombs include Contagion Engine and, get this, two Glimmerpoint Stags to combo with it. I also have two Ghalma’s Wardens and Soliton. In this format, these can be considered fatties, especially with the two Darksteel Axes I got.

One card I had to read a number of times was Strata Scythe. I couldn’t wrap my head around what this did. I pondered it for two minutes before finally realizing how huge this was. It became even more apparent when I attached it to Soliton making him 17/18. Swing for the win!

Flush with my wins and now enamored of white, I entered the correct Swiss Draft and was all over the place. I picked a few infect cards but mostly I picked white and artifacts. I ended up with another Strata Scythe, a Darksteel Axe, a Tower of Calamities (which has been good in the past), a bunch of high-toughness creatures to draw the game out, Auriok Edgewright, a bunch of white fliers, and enough equipment to make what I thought was my best deck ever. Imagine Auriok Edgewright with a Strata Scythe attached!

In the first round of the Swiss, I faced off against a build I’d never encountered before. B/R infect. Kill your blockers, Shatter your good artifacts, play Grafted Exoskeleton, equip my Goblin Gaveleer, trample in for six infect a couple times. Sideboard, rinse, repeat.

Good Match.

My next opponent fails to show, and workers who have arrived at the apartment are working in my “office.” It becomes uncomfortable sitting at my desk, and I drop to do grocery shopping.

Summing up–

I enter two more drafts the next day and again draft metalcraft white but don’t get anywhere near the same results. So now I’m a little confused. Is it just the bombs that I got that made it work or metalcraft white is viable, and it was just about the matchups? I don’t know yet.

But I think it was the bombs combined with good cards to match them.

Sadly, the best thing I’ve pulled in all my drafting and the Sealed four-pack and the online PTQ is a Mox Opal. While I love the set, and I draft it every chance I get, the monetary value of the cards I’m pulling is just horrendous. Once again, I blame mythics.

I’m convinced there’s a lot of skill in this format and a lot of options to explore, like the R/B infect deck I played that completely smashed me like nothing. I’m also convinced that there is some luck in this format that even the mighty Brian Kibler can’t surpass when handed packs of garbage. (See his column if you don’t believe me.)

As with any Sealed format, getting bombs, and playing them correctly, makes a big difference.

I’m starting to think that metalcraft is not a good route to go. I’ve drafted metalcraft decks that worked, but that was because I had so many good artifacts that metalcraft came easily. Trying to force it and having to draft weak artifacts for your colored creatures is just the wrong way.

Good luck and have fun.

Jamie Wakefield

www.JamieWakefield.com