Whenever a format has a consensus Best Deck that appears to be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, I apply a fairly simple test before deciding to run with it. If I think I can play that deck and beat the mirror, chances are I will play it – along with whatever modifications are necessary to beat the mirror. This is what led me to PTQ with Teachings Control in Time Spiral Block, and to Qualify with Psychatog in Extended after it won Pro Tour: LA.
If, on the other hand, I don’t think I can do much better than even against the mirror, or if I don’t think the Best Deck is leaps and bounds better than the alternatives, I will try to find something that is better than the consensus Best Deck. I went with the latter option for the past six Constructed tournaments I attended; here is how those tournaments went.
PTQ – Top 8 but do not win
States – Top 8 but do not win
Ogre’s Time Walk Tournament – Top 8 but do not win
PTQ – Get smashed
GP: Chicago: Day 2
PTQ – Top 8 but do not win
Now if Top 8s were what brought home the bacon, I’d be pretty happy about that 2/3 hit rate. As it is, I’m too busy grousing about the 0% incidence of Winner Winner Chicken Dinners.
The details of most of those tournaments can be found in my article archives, but at last weekend’s St. Louis PTQ I went in feeling I had made the right choice playing Gifts Loam instead of Faeries. Naya Zoo was on the rise as a foil to the success of Faeries, and Elves! had largely replaced TEPS—my second-worst matchup, and the cause of both my losses at the previous PTQ—as the combo deck of choice after its recent first-place GP finish.
Both Elves and Naya are easy matchups for Gifts Loam, and I’d be thrilled to pair against both all day. I’m not as favored to beat Faeries as someone equipped with Saito’s Naya Zoo build, certainly, but I do consider the Faeries matchup slightly favorable to highly favorable, depending on how much hate and practice my opponent brings to the table. So going into the tournament expecting a lot of Naya Zoo and Elves, and the usual-ish amount of Faeries, I definitely liked my chances.
Here’s the list.
Creatures (8)
Lands (28)
Spells (24)
- 1 Umezawa's Jitte
- 2 Gifts Ungiven
- 4 Engineered Explosives
- 1 Darkblast
- 4 Life from the Loam
- 4 Thoughtseize
- 1 Raven's Crime
- 3 Executioner's Capsule
- 4 Path to Exile
Sideboard
The Tournament, Briefly
I went 5-0 in the Swiss, easily defeating two Naya Zoo and one Elves deck as expected, and working through some surprises in the form of the Tooth and Nail and “All-In Black” discard decks that posted some PTQ Top 8s recently. I then drew with my friend Sean Mangner, who was playing Slide and who was the only other 5-0 in the room, and our mutual friend John Penick went on to win the tournament. (Congrats, John!)
The Top 8 bore out the preponderance of Naya Zoo decks in the room (it turned out to be the most popular deck of the day), with half the Top 8 competitors packing Life from the Loams which presumably munched on Zoo decks all day.
I was paired against Tom Harlan for the Quarterfinals, who had knocked me out of the States Top 8 with a surprise Mirrorweave. He was with Bant this time around, a matchup I had never gotten to testing because I had switched into Legacy mode around the time it started getting popular.
GerryT and Penick rattled off most of the decklist for me the round before, but when I got to the critical turn – where I had to decide between Ghost Quartering his Treetop Village on my turn or on his upkeep – my memory told me he was not playing Vendilion Clique; in fact, he was, and summoned one on my end step with the extra mana he got from Ghost Quarter, ending the game just before I was about to stabilize with recurring Explosives, Ghost Quarter, and Darkblast.
The second game was a pitch-perfect example of why I want Pithing Needle in my board instead of Kataki going forward; I died to Sword of Fire and Ice plus a Venser on my Executioner’s Capsule when I had only one Black mana available.
Needle is very strong against Affinity (not Kataki-strong, sure, but sometimes you gotta break a few eggs) because it shuts down Cranial Plating, the critical card in the matchup, and far superior to Stifle and Trickbind against something like Bant.
I heartily prefer the Stifle effects against Faeries for two reasons. One, I can kill Ancestral Vision with them, and it is very difficult for Faeries to beat you without resolving that card. Two, I don’t have to bank on an answer to Relic that can be undone in a second with a Venser or Explosives.
Against Bant, though, it’s a different story. They don’t have Explosives to kill my Needles, nor card draw with which to quickly dig up their two Vensers. They don’t have Ancestral for me to Trickbind. What they do have, like Affinity, is equipment to go along with whatever graveyard hate they might be packing.
If the thought had occurred to me that I might be facing Bant in the Top 8, you can bet I would have had Needles over Katakis. I would have made one other little change, too.
One Sakura-Tribe Elder, One Damnation?
As you might imagine, with a maindeck that is a mix of removal and scary lifegain creatures like Finks and Hierarch, my Zoo matchup is pretty sweet. The only card I am consistently unhappy to draw against Zoo is Gifts Ungiven, as a four-mana spell that does not affect the board is often too slow to make a difference. I want to board my two Gifts out, and I want to bring two cards in to replace them. Beyond that, upgrading Darkblast to a more solid removal spell would be nice, but it’s hardly necessary; I do not feel it important to involve more than two sideboard slots in the Zoo matchup.
The card I would most like to bring in against Zoo is Sakura-Tribe Elder. Elder “gains life” (3 on average) by chumping an attacker, ramps up my mana so I can cast Hierarch and Explosives-for-two a turn earlier, and fetches basics to help work around Blood Moon effects. It can even carry a Jitte if I topdeck it in the late game. There’s a whole lot to love about that little guy, and although I am not so interested in these effects in other matchups, against Zoo I would probably like to board as many Elders as I can fit in my board.
On the other hand, Elder is not so hot against Affinity. Affinity gets you with Cranial Plating, and Elder does squat against that. Now consider that against Affinity, I want to take out 2 Gifts Ungiven, 1 Raven’s Crime, 1 Darkblast, and 1 Umezawa’s Jitte. Gifts and Crime are too slow, Darkblast doesn’t have enough targets, and Jitte too often demands that I attack in order to get counters if I am to have a shot at winning, which in turn leaves me open to a lethal counterattack if the opponent has a Plating or Fatal Frenzy waiting in the wings.
So I’m boarding out five cards against Affinity, and am certainly bringing in 4 Kataki. What’s my fifth card?
Well, let’s take a look at what else I want in my board. I’d hate to have access to any fewer than 4 Darkblast against Faeries, I definitely want the 2 Stifle / 2 Trickbind package for TEPS, the third Gifts Ungiven comes in against several decks, Tormod’s Crypt is amazing in the mirror… assuming I run with the two Elders, that leaves us with:
4 Kataki
3 Darkblast
2 Trickbind
2 Stifle
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Gifts Ungiven
So what’s my fifth card against Affinity? Stifle? Trickbind? Sakura-Tribe Elder? Tormod’s Crypt? None of these cards help me fight Cranial Plating; all my options suck.
Adrian Sullivan suggested Damnation here. It made good sense, as Damnation clears away every creature that could hold a Plating except Blinkmoth Nexus (which I might have Ghost Quarter for anyway), and is perfectly fine against Zoo. Not as good as Elder, sure, but miles ahead of the Gifts I’m boarding out.
So I played 1 Elder and 1 Damnation. The one Damnation gave me the fifth useful card to board in against Affinity, and the one Elder was a nod to my earlier statement that I would “play as many Elders as I could fit.” The most I could fit turned out to be one.
Amusingly, against one of my Zoo opponents at the PTQ, I kept a hand of Tranquil Thicket, Academy Ruins, Ghost Quarter, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and two Hierarchs. My opponent led with Pyrostatic Pillar (for recurring Loam? I’m not convinced this was a good choice) and then Sulfuric Vortex. I fetched a Plains with E.T. and played my third-turn Hierarch without the lifegain. Then I played the other one. My opponent had only a Kird Ape to go with his Vortex and Pillar, so I just raced him. Had Elder been Damnation, I would have mulled to five and might well have lost. By no means is this a convincing argument in favor of Elder – sample size of one, much? – but it’s funny how those little one-of changes can make such a huge a difference. This was the only time I drew Elder in the entire tournament.
I had a long conversation a few weeks ago, in which Adrian tried to convince me to play 2 Damnation and 0 Elder. I couldn’t remember his arguments before the tournament, leading me to sleeve up the one Elder and one Damnation, but I am now convinced that two Damnation is the superior configuration going forward.
I didn’t realize how much I wanted Damnation until I found out I was going to be playing Bant in the Quarterfinals. It suddenly occurred to me the only way I could kill a Troll Ascetic was if my opponent declined to play around Engineered Explosives, and that was not a happy prospect. Damnation would have been a perfect answer to that guy. Moreover, Kitchen Finks may not be as bad as any of the other cards I’m boarding out against Affinity, but he’s not great, and I would certainly rather have a second Damnation than a fourth Finks in that matchup.
If I were PTQing with Gifts Loam this weekend instead of doing the much-less-fun things I will be doing instead, I would board:
4 Pithing Needle
3 Darkblast
2 Trickbind
2 Stifle
2 Damnation
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Gifts Ungiven
What to Play?
So was Gifts Loam the optimal deck for me to play? There are a lot of Faeries (I have given up on trying to call the deck Wizards, despite the fact that it clearly revolves around Riptide Lab) advocates—notably Patrick Chapin and Zac Hill, both of whom I respect immensely—who are convinced that Faeries is the optimal archetype for this format.
However, Tomoharu Saito just pulled off a flawless victory—zero match losses—at GP: Singapore with a Naya Zoo build featuring Gaddock Teeg and Woolly Thoctar, plus spiciness like Volcanic Fallout in the board. This is Tomoharu Saito, not Joe Schmo; it’s not like he lacked the Magical aptitude to pilot Faeries and just ran Naya for kicks, then soared to the top on sheer luck. This was a conscious decision on his part.
Am I to believe Saito was wrong to play that deck? Would he have had a better chance at winning that tournament with Faeries instead? Really? You could make that case, but it would not be easy.
So yeah, maybe I could have played Faeries in last weekend’s Naya-heavy field, and maybe I would have just done what I did with Teachings against the hateful U/G decks—that is, laugh at their attempts to hate me and beat them anyway. Zac in particular has some good examples of Faeries players doing just that at Singapore, and I haven’t put in the testing time to say one way or the other. Who knows? Maybe I would have X-0’d the Swiss and then won my quarterfinals match instead.
What’s most interesting to me here is the question of matchup deficiencies. As I see it, my deficient matchups with Gifts Loam are TEPS, Slide, Mono-Red Burn, and maybe Bant, depending on my sideboard. I am anywhere from happy to thrilled to sit down across from anything else, and each of those decks is the second or third tier of popularity and success at the PTQ level. Not bad.
But could Faeries be better? Suppose I practice the Faeries mirror enough to get similar kinds of win rates to what I get with Gifts Loam. Suppose I also find myself crushing Elves! while having a good matchup against Loam. Unlike Gifts Loam, Faeries can actually beat TEPS and Mono-Red, and I assume it has a similar “depends on the build” answer against Bant. (Slide might be dicey as well, but who knows?)
If I assume Faeries loses to Naya Zoo and Affinity, then it seems like I should be playing Gifts Loam; the only places where their matchups differ, as far as I can tell, is that Faeries loses to Affinity and Naya Zoo while Gifts Loam loses to TEPS and Mono-Red Burn.
Now, if I can beat Naya Zoo with Faeries, everything changes. Then the only deck I am afraid of with Faeries is Affinity, compared to TEPS and Mono-Red with Gifts Loam, which makes their differences in deficient matchups pretty comparable. Then the new question becomes: which deck more consistently wins its good matchups? Since Loam as an archetype is more reliant on drawing a single card (though it does have many cyclers to help find it) and is much more vulnerable to hate, I’m going to assume Faeries. If everything else is pretty comparable, that’s enough for me to break the tie in favor of the Fae.
To me, then, it all comes down to Naya Zoo. Can you, as a Faeries player, beat Tomoharu Saito’s Naya Zoo build? (You know that’s what they’ll be playing, not last week’s Gaddock-free stuff.) If so, I’ll fall in line and suggest you play The Best Deck. If you can’t, I’d suggest you play this.
Either way, good luck this weekend!
Richard Feldman
Team :S
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