This article contains many fish. Readers aplenty will "mark."
Really, this article has lots and lots of fish, from playtesting an important matchup (including, technically, "a new deck list"), bagging on the barns, and yet another deck list. No philosophy, no fishing; just fish.
By popular demand viz. "what gives with testing one game of maybe the most important matchup[?]" I decided to put the B/U/R against Dragonstorm. My primary playtest partner this week has been ManningBot, a.k.a. sometime Top8Magic.com intern and #1 Apprentice candidate Asher Hecht. This is how we hooked up [this time]:
*Ring Ring*
Barn Julian the N’Sync Intern, Mother Superior IV, Truth Teller, Lie-spewer: Hello?
MJLaMoAHS: Hey, do you want to come over and test this weekend?
BJtN’SIMSIVTTLS: Sure.
BJtN’SIMSIVTTLS: WTF? I ask you to playtest on Magic Workstation and you always blow me off, and now you want to playtest with Asher? Don’t you like to playtest with me any more?
MJLaMoAHS: 1) There is no Future Sight on MTGO yet, and I wanted to test with Chapin on Sunday, and 2) I started this phone conversation by asking you to come over and playtest.
BJtN’SIMSIVTTLS: 1) No comment, and 2) Oh yeah!
[Insert the grumpy Josh Ravitz quote of your choice.]
Anyway, at Julian’s urging after last week’s article, I decided to add one Persecute to the main deck of the Clutch deck over Whispers of the Muse, "to have at least a chance against Dragonstorm." I didn’t think that it would give enough percentage, and that it was a better idea to overload after sideboarding, but I could take his point.
My previous playtest deck was Makahito Mihara’s World Championship version, which included neither Planar Chaos or any other additions, but Asher was trying out Pact of Negation, which has been getting some buzz in Dragonstorm. My initial reaction is that Dragonstorm is not necessarily the deck into which you want to position Pact. For one thing, the deck often wins over two turns and very often does not have five mana in play the turn it actually wins the game. On balance, I heard a great application for the card, which is to Pact yourself, and then Pact the Pact in order to jack your Storm count. Also, and this came up numerous times testing the matchup, but Remand is terrible against Pact of Negation. I had to read the card to make sure I understood how it worked… The "lose the game" clause isn’t a cost. Remand is utterly useless against this Force of Will.
The Brand New* Deck List:
Creatures (6)
Lands (23)
Spells (31)
I know I posted a sideboard last week, but given how this matchup played out (and the fact that this deck is now my hard #1 choice for Regionals at present – yeah, that good), I think the sideboard has to be largely re-thought, especially in light of the Mono-Blue testing I’ve done over the past two weeks (see below). Two or three Extirpates is probably enough in total, but I would add one or two Tormod’s Crypts, which can be found by Tolaria West. I also think that I might play as many as four Volcanic Hammers and four Last Gasps because especially in a deck with Damnation, they are the best reactive cards against beatdown (that is, mode Gruul) because they are cheap and deal three damage. Hammer in particular is a fine secret squirrel because of Magus of the Moon.
The Battles
Game 1:
I actually screwed this one up (I know, surprise, surprise) because I read a Mark Young a.k.a. mm_young forum post (snap). Mark said that "the best way to beat Dragonstorm is to Repeal their Lotus in upkeep," so on two Remands I decided to let Lotus resolve and fight with Repeal. Asher had a Pact so I let it hit and he went off, powered largely by our permission exchange. I used Remand to stay alive, untapped, Suspended in a 5/5 Aeon Chronicler, and sent the said into his three Hellkites.
Actually, it took a little longer than that. We had a conversation in between his combo off and my attack. It was one of those concession-like exchanges where I was like "I should have Remanded the Lotus" and he was like "yeah, I would have been one short" and I had to think really hard about how I was supposed to win.
Asher blocked with one 5/5 and I flashed Mystical Teachings to get Tendrils of Corruption. My Chronicler lived and I was able to gain nine, killing one of the other Hellkites next turn. Asher was forced to play down the fourth to kill my Avatar, and swung in to put me to about 14. At that point I Damned his board with Blue in hand but no remaining clock. Asher deployed his Hunted Dragon, which I Repealed in combat. I blew the Persecute for one and the Knights got there.
1-0.
Game 2:
I’m pretty sure I raw dogged the Persecute this game. The game actually had an interesting sequence with Gigadrowse where Asher Remanded my Persecute on four, and [tried to] ‘drowse me out the next turn, but there was no way he could sequence a Gigadrowse x3 to tap through my Karoo + Remand (because I had another land in hand). So I stuck the Persecute. It doesn’t take long for Chronicler to kill someone with no hand.
2-0.
Game 3:
Asher stuck three Telling Times and couldn’t hit the Dragonstorm again. He fought down a Hellkite and lost his hand of Gigadrowse and two Pacts to my Persecute. From there a one-for-one was fine, and Chronicler cleaned it up.
3-0.
Game 4:
I called for a take-back on this one, which is perfectly acceptable in playtesting with new cards, on either side. Asher got a non-lethal Dragonstorm for three Hellkites. I had previously Mystical’d for the Clutch, but I didn’t have time to look for the Persecute because I missed my drop and needed to have Remand back. With Asher tapped I untapped and ran the Damnation. He had the Pact.
So we ran it back and I Clutched a land before untapping, which would deprive Asher of the five mana he would have needed to pay for the Pact, and I came back. I guess if you play MikeyP playtest rules you can count this for Dragonstorm, but the loss was michaelj-brand not Go-sis brand.
4-0
Four-oh? Is this for real? I couldn’t believe it. Of course, I lost the next three in a row.
Game 5:
Mull on the play; Asher gets me on turn 4. "I’ve finally got you," etc.
4-1
Game 6:
Mull on the draw. Miss a drop and tap for Aeon with Remand in hand. Asher gets me.
4-2
Game 7:
This one was more of a real game. I managed his Dragonstorm to non-lethal and worked his Dragons with Sudden Death and Mouth of Ronom to stay alive and stabilize. Of course this deck is not used to going down on exchanges, and my tap-out control decks have always been susceptible to topdeck, which is another way of saying he Dragon’d me to death just when I started to see light.
4-3
That’s more like it!
Game 8:
I Persecute. Asher Remands. Asher has two Pacts but no fifth land, and double Songs into Hellkite. I Persecute and get the Pacts and a Gigadrowse. At that point I have to wait a turn to get my fifth land for the Tendrils, but it’s pretty academic.
5-3
Game 9:
Dragonstorm on the mull; good guys raw dog the Persecute again… A bit of a dance early game, but Remand protects the Persecute. For once Clutch gets the intended Detritivore to get a clock on, which is only 2/2 this game. During this time cards start to accumulate on the opposite side of the digital table, and lo and behold, there is a Dragonstorm for three! Remand gets one copy and Tendrils and Tendrils put Go-sis up +18 (could have Damned, but why kill my valuable bear?). Man, Dragonstorm doesn’t quit! I Remand Song into Hellkite, then Clutch for Teachings, Teachings for Extirpate, and finish it.
6-3
Game 10:
This one is actually a loss if Asher’s post-Future Sight Dragonstorm had two Hunted Dragons instead of just five (though let’s be honest, numerous Dragonstorm builds have only one). I Persecuted on turn 3, got Remanded, and then had to go Damnation the next turn. Hunted Remanded; Hunted Repealed! Hunted Persecuted. Telling Time into Song/’Storm (which is two spells). GG.
7-3
Several of the games could have gone either way, and I would likely lost to an older build in Game 10, but I would have been happy with 4-6 range, and this ten game set was 7-3, and not worse than 5-5 even with ill luck and hee haws. Asher doesn’t think it should be favorable, but he likes the B/U/R. I talked to some of the Michigan guys about it (if I had known one Persecute would matter this much, I never would have dismissed Julian last week). This is what your 2007 Resident Genius Mark Herberholz had to say:
"I liked your Clutch deck."
"I didn’t realize that one Persecute would put the matchup to 7-3."
"It’s actually obvious. Seems pretty DG actually."
"It’s a perfect toolbox deck. It plays tutors to search for a lot of cards that are situationally good in various matchups, i.e. Tendrils and Damnation versus beatdown, and Detritivore and Persecute versus control. I have always liked this strategy in a diverse format when the cards allow you to play a deck like this. If you notice some of my best finishes were with ‘toolbox’ like decks. For example PT: Philly, where I searched out various Arcane spells with Gifts Ungiven, or PT: Yokohama where I had a lot of silver bullet spells that I searched up with Mystical Teachings. These types of decks are trying to abuse the ability of certain cards to take over matchups, and I think this deck accomplishes this extremely well."
"LOL. I like it."
Yeah, yeah, sure. I edited that a little bit. Not that much, to be honest. The comparisons to Mark’s Pro Tour deck do not require a Resident Genius to make. I ported a lot of what he was doing to Standard. His deck was fundamentally an exercise in "extremes in metagaming," with numerous cards that are useless in one matchup but completely dominate another (for example, Urborg + Tendrils against any beatdown). However, I didn’t think about the comparison to Kamigawa Block Gifts. Gadiel (one of my favorite players, as you know) recently said Kamigawa Block Gifts was the best deck ever** because he never lost with it***. That was definitely a massively skill testing deck, and Gadiel is some kind of master. So I guess with his Philadelphia Top 8 and subsequent GP finals, Mark must also be an innovative Gifts Master even if we mostly think of him for his prowess with Kird Ape.
Here is a new deck I have been working on. The MTGO version is obviously pre-Future Sight, but I’ve also gotten some chances to test with Asher on Magic Workstation and also at Neutral Ground, playing around with various new cards.
Creatures (12)
Lands (27)
Spells (21)
I was obviously inspired by Tsuyoshi Fujita’s Yokohama deck. The first version had as many as 29 lands, but Jon Becker said that was too many. Quite simply, I never lost on MTGO with this, so I thought it was possibly the super secret squirrel for Regionals. Gas against Dragonstorm, gas against Dralnu, never lost to Dredge or Gruul. The top-down (which looks suspiciously like a bottom-up) is that this is a Blue deck that doesn’t pack to Detritivore. Like all my Mouth / Chronicler decks, it has been pummelling Dralnu, but a big reason is that it can actually just win the Teferi fight. Dragonstorm is easy. I beat a lot of Dredge but I think it was just because the competition was soft (and also didn’t have Bridges [yet]); I eventually added Crypts to the sideboard. Gruul I always beat but I knew I shouldn’t have been.
Creatures (11)
Lands (27)
Spells (22)
I tested versus Asher with ‘Tron (blowout) and Gruul and Zoo (basically never won Game 1s and never lost Game 2s). Flashfreeze is basically Counterspell for only U1 and not UU. How novel. It still feels sticky. One thing we thought of was playing Bottle Gnomes, which is not terrible against Gruul, and is actually the nuts against Bridge Dredge (like you gain three and they can’t win). Becker suggested Tolaria West for the post-Future Sight version, but our testing (and Chapin’s independent testing in Michigan) put Tolaria West on the weakest card in the deck. However, in the most recent IRL testing session I decided to play one Tormod’s Crypt main, and Tolaria West justifies that.
You have no idea how warm my heart was last Tuesday. I went to the office and found Julian and Paul banished (the actual Top8Magic.com employees were actually working) and bummed around for a while not editing Zvi’s book. I went to meet them at the Ground to test, only to find a table with three men on each side. Damn it! Three men on either side of a table is a draft and draft is the enemy of all that is good (or at least productive) and I knew I should have gotten there sooner. But no! There were crappy commons on the table, true, but they were covered with Sharpie, and there were never fewer than two Dragonstorm matches running. OH, MY BOYS! I almost cried.
Interestingly, the first couple of games against Bridge-Dredge versus newly crowned Grand Prix Champion Sadin were wins for the Blue on the strength of Crypt, but we found over several games (especially when Steve tagged out for the deck’s actual master Miles Rodriguez) that Crypt was not an auto-win, and in fact, the Blue has a hard time beating random 1/1 beatdown. It depends how the metagame plays out. If it is all Dragonstorm and control, the Blue is superb. Gruul is really rough, though, and I’m not convinced that the deck really beats a great player with a tuned Stomping Ground deck, even sideboarding Flashfreeze.
Is Dredge a real deck? I don’t understand how it beats like a Volcanic Hammer.
I honestly think the Draw-Go has potential, and I will still work on it, but right now my chips are in on Go-sis. You’ve probably figured this out by now, but I love going into a Constructed event with lots of testing and lots of information about what other people might play.
LOVE
MIKE
* You need a pretty liberal definition of "new" for this to be true, for example the definition you might get in communist sub-state Madison, WI.
** Brian Weissman disagrees.
*** Except to Critical Mass…