You Lika The Juice? - Speeding Up Slowfolk

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,
And they’re like
It’s better than yours,
Damn right it’s better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge.
Milkshake, by The Dan Band

If you haven’t heard The Dan Band do their cover of Milkshake… well, you’re missing out a real treat! Over and above the terribly amusing twist of a guy singing these lyrics (which is the band’s shtick), it’s done to a grinding, funky, Chili Peppers guitar groove which just makes it even funnier… and cooler.

Before I get into talking about what I played in last week’s FNM (where I placed 2nd this time), I just wanted to touch on some interesting technology from last weekend’s bevy of Standard decklists that I haven’t seen anyone else really talk about at the time I write this. Which I found a little odd since it’s such a wacky yet intriguing innovation by everyone’s favorite wacky yet intriguing innovators – the Japanese!

Here’s the deck that caught my eye when going over decklists Monday morning:

Elf Combo

Yuuma Shiota

3rd Place at Nationals on 06-21-2009

Standard

Creatures (33)

Lands (20)

Spells (7)

4 Primal Command
3 Path to Exile

Sideboard

Of course, the rise of Elf Combo is certainly big news from the weekend and something people are chattering about, and there are a lot of Elf Combo lists to peruse though most of them are all pretty stock and straight-forward. Except for Shiota’s 75. The card that leapt out at me was Gilt-leaf Archdruid, a card very obviously created with casual players in mind and one that has not seen any real competitive play. Of course, you could also have said the same thing about Regal Force, and we all know he’s been the engine that’s been fueling the competitive Elf combo decks of late.

The thing that’s cool about Gilt-Leaf Archdruid is that he’s a lot like a walking, talking Glimpse of Nature, since so many of the creatures in your deck are actually Druids. And in all seriousness, once you start going off, how hard would it be to have 7 untapped Druids in play and just steal all your opponent’s lands as opposed to trying to put all of them on top of their library with Primal Command recursion? Mirror Entity can easily make all your creatures Druids for the turn. What an interesting way to negate Path to Exile’s drawback, eh?

Gilt-Leaf Archdruid has been relegated to casual-card status because it’s a five mana 3/3 (that makes it a Snidd, right?), but with the addition of Elvish Archdruid, mana really is no obstacle if the card is right.

Anyway, when I saw that Sam Black (and later in the week, Adrian Sullivan) were doing a metagame overview taking into account the top decks from this weekend, I was incredibly curious to see what they may have thought about Gilt-Leaf Archdruid technology; to the best of my knowledge, Shiota’s list was the only Elf Combo deck to feature it.

Curiously neither of them mentioned it. Here’s what Sam had to say about Elf Combo, and Adrian didn’t have anything to add:

“Combo Elves has 9 automatic four-ofs and wants something like 18-20 land, so that leaves about five slots to play with. Options that were played this weekend included 2-3 Manamorphose, 1 Coat of Arms, 1 Mirror Entity, 1 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender, 1 Cloudthresher, 1-2 Noble Hierarch, 3 Path to Exile (which Yuuma Shiota of Japan cut into his “locked” 36 to make room for), 4 Mirror Entity (mentioned separately from 1 Mirror Entity because it represents an entirely different plan. Tomomi Shiraishi dropped 2 Regal Force to play 4 Mirror Entity, indicating that he was less concerned with “going off” and happy to just play Mirror Entity and attack and kill people), and 1 Scattershot Archer…

“Overall, if you’re just looking to copy a list to try the deck out, I recommend Kenji’s straightforward, streamlined version.”

I find it curious that Sam mentioned all the various tweaks and nuances between the various Elf decks… except Gilt-Leaf Archdruid. Either he missed it (not hard to do with all the other Gilt-Leaf, Wilt-Leaf, Archdruid, Devoted Druid names, it does all sorta run together), he ignored it (figuring it was a bad card with no place in the deck), or he’s purposely skipped over it in the hopes of keeping the funky tech on the down-low in the lead-up to Nationals. I’m guessing by the time this article goes up, if the funky Archdruid bursts onto the U.S. Nationals scene we’ll have an idea which was it was – and conversely, if it’s no where to be found except at the bottom of the standings we’ll have a different answer…

Okay, so here’s Kenji’s version:

Elf Combo

Kenji Tsumura

4th Place at Nationals on 06-21-2009

Standard

Creatures (36)

Lands (20)

Spells (4)

4 Primal Command

Sideboard

This is definitely a pretty straightforward “stock” list. So where does Shiota’s deck differ?

Maindeck Differences:
+3 Gilt-Leaf Archdruid
+1 Mirror Entity
+3 Path To Exile
+1 Mosswort Bridge
+1 Plains
+1 Sunpetal Grove

-1 Regal Force
-1 Cloudthresher
-2 Devoted Druid
-2 Noble Hierarch
-1 Burrenton Forge-tender
-1 Forest
-2 Windbrisk Heights

Shiota clearly trims one Regal Force for one of the easier-to-cast Archdruids, and trades in two Devoted Druids for two more. As a bullet, Mirror Entity fits great in his deck, so the Cloudthresher bullet gets bumped.

The maindeck Paths to Exile are interesting, I guess to better fight the mirror in game 1, or to fend off anyone techy enough to try and run Canonist in their maindeck.

I was reading the coverage of Japanese Nationals, and Shiota only popped up in two matches covered – the quarterfinals where he gets annihilated by Five-Color Control, and then the mirror-match brawl with Kenji for the last spot on the National team (which Shiota ended up winning). I didn’t read where Shiota got to steal anyone’s lands with the Gilt-Leaf Archdruid, but it certainly seemed key in helping him draw cards and go off.

If I’d had a crystal ball and could have seen this decklist last week, I’d have definitely played it at Friday Night Magic. As it was, I was kicking around a Bloodbraid Red deck as shown at the very tail end of Todd Anderson Constructed Criticism column last week. Here’s what he said:

“PS: If you aren’t in the mood to play Five-Color or Tribal, feast your eyes on this!

4 Lightning Bolt
2 Magma Spray
4 Lash Out
4 Flame Javelin
4 Volcanic Fallout
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Ball Lightning
4 Boggart Ram-Gang
4 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Savage Lands
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
4 Rootbound Crag
12 Mountain

Sideboard
3 Chaotic Backlash
3 Manabarbs
4 Dragon’s Claw
3 Windstorm
2 Pyroclasm

“The sideboard is a bit sketchy, but I really wanted to incorporate Backlash and Manabarbs since I believe White aggro and Five-Color are going to make big showings at Nationals, as well as upcoming PTQ’s. At this stage in the Red deck’s evolution, Anathemancer is getting worse and worse as more decks revert to basic land strategies, mostly to get more value out of the new dual lands, but also to dodge getting blown out by Anathemancer. Ball Lightning is a very powerful creature *coughburnspellcough*. I am under the impression that every Red-based aggressive deck should play Bloodbraid Elf, and this one feels very powerful. You will probably have a bit of trouble handling the little White menace, but you definitely have game. With the maindeck Fallouts, as well as the sideboard Pyroclasms and Backlashes, you’ll be much better off than usual.”

I ended up tweaking the sideboard a bit:

3 Everlasting Torment
2 Chaotic Backlash
2 Windstorm
2 Pyroclasm
3 Dragon’s Claw
3 Guttural Response

Mainly just wanted to add the Torments and the Guttural, both of which strike me as no-brainer great cards to bring in for certain matchups.

Anyway, around last Tuesday my friend Josh — who just recently got interested in Magic again after about a 1-2 year hiatus — messaged me to see if I had a deck he could borrow. I asked if he wanted to burn people with Lightning Bolts and Ball Lightning? He was down with that.* So why did I bail on the deck so fast? Well, I’d been chewing on Frederico Bastos’s first place deck from the 2009 Portugal National Championship as highlighted in Mike Flores‘ column on the mothership last week:

Elementals
Pre-M10 Standard – Winner, Portugal Nationals
Frederico Bastos

4 Ancient Ziggurat
1 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Primal Beyond
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Meadow
4 Bloom Tender
1 Cloudthresher
4 Flamekin Harbinger
1 Fulminator Mage
4 Horde of Notions
4 Incandescent Soulstoke
1 Mirror Entity
4 Mulldrifter
3 Ranger of Eos
4 Reveillark
4 Smokebraider
3 Soul Warden
1 Crib Swap

Sideboard
2 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
2 Cloudthresher
1 Eyes of the Wisent
3 Fulminator Mage
2 Meddling Mage
1 Nameless Inversion
1 Path to Exile
1 Shriekmaw
1 Tar Fiend
1 Wispmare

Despite my typical rage against Lorwyn block, I don’t hate everything about it. There are some tribes that aren’t played to death that I still find cool and interesting, and Elementals falls right in there. I’d gotten all the key Elementals deck cards before I’d acquired a playset of Bloom Tenders, and had never had the pleasure of playing them together in the same deck and doing crazy, crazy things with Horde of Notions. One of the things I want to do in the coming two months or so is to give a “last hurrah” to some of the little-played stuff from Lorwyn and Shadowmoor block. Bloomin’ Elementals fits the bill.

Unfortunately for me, as I was rushing around late Friday trying to pull the deck together, I found I was missing the following:

4 Horde of Notions
4 Smokebraider
4 Flamekin Harbinger
4 Primal Beyond

Really? Really? These are the cards I can’t put my hands on… only like 16 of the most critical cards in the deck! I know I own these cards, so I’m guessing I must have “pulled” them at some point a while back in order to build an elemental deck and put them some where safe… and then promptly forgot.

I put out some emergency calls and emails, and it looks like I’ll be able to borrow just about all these… until I call up to Richmond Comix a half-hour before the tournament to find out that nobody actually has any Primal Beyonds. I slump in defeat and consider my other options. I built the old Elf combo deck some weeks back for Josh to play and it was still mostly together, but I had not yet gotten any Elvish Archdruids yet, and it just didn’t feel right to play the deck without its critical new upgrade.

That left… Treefolk. The Treefolk deck I wrote about a couple weeks back, that I got destroyed with, annihilated with, embarrassed with.

Just like Elementals, I love the Treefolk tribal stuff. Sadly, unlike Elementals, Treefolk doesn’t seem to have the juice to really kick ass outside of Doran, and he typically surrounds himself with a more able supporting cast.

So Elves? I paw through the cards and an Elvish Visionary falls out. I notice its creature type: elf shaman. Shaman? It suddenly clicks into place – the Visionaries would fit right in to the Treefolk deck and work just fine alongside Bosk Banneret and Leaf-Crown Elder! I do some trimming to work them in to the deck and end up with this:

Speedier Treefolk

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 07-26-2009

Standard

Creatures (27)

Lands (24)

Spells (9)

Sideboard

Between the Visionaries, Rootgrapples, and Leaf-Crowns I’m hoping to generate enough card draw to leverage my larger bodies into winning board positions.

I’m hoping… but as backup, I do have my brand new, as yet unplayed EDH deck on tap…

I end up doing pretty well overall, despite continually having to mulligan and double mulligan one or no land hands. Seriously, it’s not just whining, it’s just nuts how often I have to mulligan with 24 land decks ever since Regionals. I even have brand new sleeves for tonight!

The first round I beat Michael Rook’s funky Sanguine Bond deck in 3 games; he’s got a lot of creature removal and a lot of lifegaining spells with combine with Sanguine Bond to drain the life out of you. I squeak one game out at 2 life and blow out the other one with the nuts draw of turn 2 Doran (set up off Harbinger) and quickly equip it with Sledge.

Second round I get annihilated with Eric Kitchen Sink Bant; it’s got your typical Finest Hour Bant lineup, with some numbers tweaked to add in spicy singletons like Baneslayer Angel and Kalonian Behemoth (!). My game 1 mulligan and game 2 mulligan don’t help much either, though I’m not sure the Treefolk deck is equipped to handle Bant.

Third round I play against Monoblack Control and he’s a little light on mana in the first game and I just beat down slowly with Treefolk. Game 2 I tutor up the Colossus and while he kills everything else I play with mad Tendrils action, eventually the Big C gets there.

The fourth and final Swiss round I play against Frank’s Bloodbraid Jund deck; game 1 he mulligans and keeps a risky hand and his deck doesn’t give him what he needs, and he concedes without me seeing much of what he’s got going on. Game 2 is more of a slugfest, I’m down 5 to his 9 when I draw Doran and my soft-hitting Treefolk suddenly hit really hard and take him down.

Sweet! I’m in the final four elimination rounds!

Quarterfinals I play against my friend Josh playing the Bloodbraid Red deck, so I’m very familiar with what he’s got going on. I figure if I don’t stutter too badly on my mana I should be able to stick enough large men that he has to point two burn spells to kill that he’s pretty much sunk to card advantage. He gets me dangerously low on life — down to seven, but Behemoth Sledge shows up to save the day. Game two he draws a ton of burn, I have a little bit of a slow start but he’s slow on his mana and can’t simply unload on me. It’s a race that I manage to squeak out the win while I’m at four.

Woo-hoo! Treefolk deck in the finals! Unfortunately I’m squared up against Eric Unbeatable Kitchen Sink Bant deck and he just crushes me two games straight. I don’t even touch him, and he doesn’t even need to gain life from War Monkâ€”he finishes both games at 20 life. I try to make a game of it in game two, I’ve got a Wall of Reverence equipped with a Behemoth Sledge and nothing else that can actually punch through for damage, but he gets a Jenara, Asura of War down that soon grows big enough to punch through. Ugh, what an ass-whuppin’!

Overall, I was certainly pleased with the changes I made to the deck; it’s capable of some great openers, such as turn 2 Bosk Banneret, turn three Visionary, Visionary, Visionary (yep, pulled that off once). Still, when Leaf-Crown Elder’s kinship fails to fire a few times in a row the deck can feel incredibly underpowered compared to what other people have going. I’m figuring that the deck probably needs to go in a different direction, perhaps running 4 Dauntless Dourbarks in all its trampling smash-facery and just one Elder. A few more Crib Swaps probably wouldn’t be bad either, or maybe some Doom Blades – I did feel like I was terribly lacking in removal.

This is probably it for me and Treefolk in Standard for a while; I’ve got something new I’m brewing up… featuring one of my old favorites – Thousand-Year Elixir! Stay tuned next week…

Have a great weekend!

Bennie

starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com

* Since I haven’t had a chance to play the Bloodbraid Red deck, I figured I’d ask Josh to share his thoughts on it for those who’re interested:

“The first thing I did when I drew my hand was count the amount of burn in it, since not many people run counter spells in the environment so counting up the burn let me know what my opponents life total was before creatures came into play.

Round 1 vs. Another Red Deck
Game 1: I had 12 points of burn and 2 Ball Lightnings. I also played first, which turns out to be huge to the deck.
Game 2: The game stalled, but I Figure of Destiny into an 8/8 flying monster and smashed face.

After talking with the guy after the game, we both agreed I just had won the coin flip, but I seemed to have more burn in my deck as well.

Round 2 vs. Mono Black Control
Game 1: He mulled to 5 and I had a hand full of gas, killing him on either turn 4 or 5.
Game 2: I went turn 1 Figure, turn 2 Spark Elemental, Turn 3 Ball Lightning, Turn 4 Bloodbraid Elf, Turn 5 Bloodbraid Elf. Smash!

Round 3 vs. Exalted Rafiq
Game 1: I steamrolled overtop of him and got him low enough that I was able to burn him out with Flame Javelin and Lightning Bolts.
Game 2: Life gain sucks, he got Rhox War Monk on the board early with a couple of Exalteds and went up to about 40 life, I never recovered. I sided in the Torments.
Game 3: Mulliganed to 5, got steamrolled horribly.

Round 4 vs. Five-Color Control
Game 1: His deck was just very slow against mine, I don’t remember him casting any spell that seemed to be able to stop my onslaught of creatures and burn, game was over on turn 4.
Game 2: My hand was very burn heavy so I kept it, I went first turn Figure of Destiny that soon became 2/2 then 4/4 and he went the distance, I killed him on turn 6 with 2 Lightning Bolts to the dome.

Round 5 vs. TREEFOLK!?
Game 1: He goes first and I’m never able to get a creature on the board that can punch through 4 to 5 toughness guys, I don’t have enough burn to get through either. He wins when he swings for like 30.
Game 2: I go first but I have to mulligan to 6, I keep the hand because it has 3 of the 4 damage burn spells. It comes down to him at 4 and me needing to draw 1 of maybe 20 cards remaining in the deck, and I fail.

Overall, the deck is very fun and very fast with the right hands. It reminds me of old Sligh decks with Jackal Pups. The deck seemed to be near unstoppable with the right hands. The manabase seemed to be a little off as I got mana screwed a few times. The sideboard seemed fairly weak, since the only thing I ever boarded in were the Torments, and it was always hard to decide what to board out. I also feel like the random 2 Magma Sprays could be something else, maybe another creature. (Note from Bennie: he didn’t play against any Kitchen Finks.)