The Combat Phase – Bringing A Ham Leg To Paris

It’s a weird month.

I have actually cast Remand.

Shocking, I know. It pales in comparison to the next thing I’m going to tell you. In a total break from reality, and going in the exact opposite direction from my Tuesday Premier Partner –

I have actually used a deck list from another man.

Yes, it’s true. I’m sorry. I’m weak.

Weirder still, last night a man picked my wine and ordered dinner for both of us. After six oysters, four clams, two Cigala, half a crab, and a dozen shrimp I rode on the back of his scooter to a bar with a clientele almost exclusively male.

Not his motorcycle. His scooter.

Europe is thick with scooters. They are everywhere. In Madrid about one out of every six vehicles is a scooter. In Paris, about one in every four. Not motorcycles. Scooters. You see one motorcycle for about every ten scooters.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? I haven’t told you about decks this week, or even about bringing the pig on the plane.

Last week I showed everyone the decks I was working on. None of which had properly been tested, because I just don’t have the time to tune all the ideas rampaging through my head for new decks to build and try. Somehow, without a job, I actually have less time to play Magic. I don’t quite know why that is.

Well, a few people on the forums thought that Standard Protection seemed to be pretty interesting, and started to put that through its paces and even had good luck with it. (For all of one day.) So, I thought I would see if I could tune it a little better.

Pinoplayer asks if I remember him, and I assent. He informs me of a deck that he thinks that I will like. He will reveal said deck to me if I promise not to write about it before the Pro Tour. I give him my word, but he can’t see my fingers crossed in Spain! Ha ha!

Actually, when he told me, I immediately thought that wouldn’t be possible. The Pro Tour is this weekend, this column comes out Tuesday. It will all be over and done with. A quick check of the Internet shows me my error, and now I have to come up with a new way to do this column.

I can say that I do love the deck he showed me. As is my usual rule, it utterly smashes aggro’s face, and after my first match I changed six cards. After that change, I played the deck against three Blue decks and 1) lost 2) lost 3) lost. Man, do I hate Blue. It’s not just the fact that I don’t like its mechanics, style and power; it’s also the fact that it’s almost exclusively the color being played. I can get in maybe one game in five against opponents not running some sort of countermagic, card drawing, or insane broken creatures.

I make the changes back to the original as I notice three of the cards I pulled out are very good against Blue. I add in 4 Scragnoth into the side as well.

My prediction for Pro Tour: Yokohama?

Just like Standard, a sea of Blue / x decks. A couple of White Weenies will also make Top 8.

The most populous card in the Top 8 will be Vesuvan Shapeshifter.

You want to hear about my man-date, don’t you?

The story starts with Wendy asking her childhood (and still best) friend Collette when a good time to visit her in Paris would be. She immediately says, “you have to come up this Wednesday, I’m having a big media party for work.”

Collette’s husband Mathieu is Wendy’s boss, and Thursday is his birthday. He loves all things Spain, especially Jamon Iberico. A very special type of black-footed pig that is fed on acorns and cured for at least two years. It is a marbled ham that has been compared to Kobe beef. It is a Spanish delicacy and very expensive. Despite the price tag of a hundred dollars a pound, it is consumed voraciously by Spaniards daily. Usually as a small snack or with some fine wine, while watching the sun go down with a woman snuggled in your arms.

You can buy it much cheaper if you buy the entire leg and carve it yourself. This requires a jamonera for holding the ham leg in place and a very sharp, thin, flexible knife, since Jamon should be sliced razor thin. You keep the leg on your kitchen counter and it can last there for months.

We head down to the Museum of Ham to buy some Jamon Iberico. But on the way there, we see a butcher shop with an amazing deal on a whole leg.

“We should get one.”
“Collette will kill me if I buy him a whole leg.”
“Not for him. I was thinking we should get one.”

We debate it for a bit and then continue on our way. When we get to the Museum of Ham, we found out their price on a kilo is a hundred and five euros. Wendy ponders this for a while, and says, “We can’t get him the whole leg… can we?”

“It will take him six months to eat a whole leg, and he doesn’t have a Jamonera.”
“Collette loves it too. And so do his parents.”
“Oh, well knowing that, maybe we should. Knowing Mathieu, he’ll see it as an adventure finding a Jamonera and a sharp knife and learning how to carve it.”
“It just seems like a waste to just get one kilo when for a bit more we can get him a whole leg.”
“And, it looks much more impressive to show up at the office with an entire pig leg with little black feet than it does a little package of ham.”
“Okay, let’s go look at that deal again.”

Twenty hours later, I have forgotten the leg in airport security.

Luckily, I remembered about a hundred yards away, ran back, and snatched it out of the security lady’s hands that was about to cut into it and feed it to the salivating Spaniards around her.

The plane ride was a blast. Well, except for those fifteen screaming children and their wonderful parents. Every time the plane would hit turbulence, the adults and children would all go “WhooooAAAhhh!!!” in a cry similar to what you hear on a roller coaster. And every time they did, I wanted to spin around… Never mind. Let’s just say I’m still a little jumpy on flights and leave it at that.

In truth, that’s the right way to raise your kids. If you get scared over silly things, they get scared over silly things and grow up that way. And who wants kids that are fraidy cats?

We land safely and at customs, they pull the guy in front of me and the guy right in back of me out of the line. Wendy grabs me and whispers urgently, “Keep walking. Keep walking.” My leg of ham has escaped detection. Run little pig! Run! While it’s perfectly legal to bring a whole pig leg from one country in the E.U. into another, that doesn’t mean they might not ask you some questions about it. Or maybe confiscate it “for security reasons” like, maybe a party later that night where it will be consumed for the safety of all.

We get on a bus, and they take the luggage and stow it beneath, but when I hand him the leg he just looks at me and shakes his head. Pig Racist! I move to the door and ask the bus driver if the bus accepts pigs. He replies “Oui. En dépit de mes meilleurs efforts, je ne peux pas trouver une manière légale d’interdire des Américains de monter mon autobus.”

Now we’re in a nice hotel. Sixth floor, with a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower.

My man-date starts later that night, when Wendy goes off to have a girl’s night out and Mathieu shows me the town. Since I don’t speak French, he does all the talking. It’s very emasculating.

Paris is everything you have heard. Stereotypically so. Beautiful city. Beautiful women. Porn for sale on every corner (I’m not even kidding). The waiters are just as rude as you would imagine. We order, he asks a questions, Wendy repeats, and he goes “yeah yeah yeah” and walks off. We went to a restaurant that only serves steak Endicott and fries, and when I asked for ketchup for the fries the waitress responded “Nevair!” She actually stormed off and treated us rudely from then on.

Unlike Madrid, there seems to be more fat people here. Probably American tourists, since Paris is more likely to be visited than Madrid.

Wendy and I grab some food before our night out. I get a twelve-pack of snails and they’re good, but not as good as the ones I remember in Middlebury VT. A local restaurant serves them there, and there is butter in the garlic sauce. These are just in a garlic sauce. This, while delicious, is not as good as a sauce with butter. Garlic + Butter > Garlic.

Bread comes, and as usual I don’t have any. Then Wendy surprisingly unwraps some butter that came with it, and now I’m interested. Butter doesn’t come with bread in Spain. It comes dry or with olive oil. Butter > olive oil.

I chow down eight of the snails and leave the rest for Wendy, but she only eats two. She’s too involved with her goat cheese and tomato. We each get a glass of wine the size of a shot glass and pay seven euros for it. About 8.50 American. Not satisfied with my ten snails, and knowing I have a night of drinking ahead, I want to order a cheeseburger (which actually was on the menu) but our waiter has disappeared. While waiting for him to return, I check out the newsstand right in front of the restaurant… and yup, they sell porn. Magazines shrink-wrapped with porn DVDs. Ah, Paris. So different than the land of the free.

In America, such magazines, if sold at all, have a white board in front of the naughty bits on the cover.

At our local supermarket, they actually started putting the white boards over the fronts of Cosmopolitan and Glamour. When I saw that, I immediately went to the service desk.

“I’d like to issue a complaint.”
The high school senior who was working went into the back and got his boss. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, I’d like to complain about your magazines. It offends me that you have white boards censoring women in clothing. It offends me that some people feel the human form, even clothed, is offensive.”
“I’ll make a note of it, sir.”

Idiots.

Fight extremism in all its forms.

I stop reminiscing and go back to looking at magazines with blue movies bundled with them. While interesting, I don’t see anything that looks couples-friendly and decide not to buy. Wait, what am I thinking, this is Paris.

Let’s check the TV Guide in the hotel.

Channel 2 — Noon to 12:30 – Dragonball Z
Channel 3 — Noon to 12:05 — An in-depth look at French military victories.
Channel 4 — Noon to 1:00 — Bones.
Channel 6 — Noon to 2pm — National Geographic’s Discovery.
Channel 5 — Noon to Noon — Le Porno.

We decide to cross the street and check out the other cafe. Their menu is in English and French and they have three eggs and American fries for only nine bucks. Quite a deal in Paris. The waiter is similarly brisk and dismissive.

Mathew is coming to pick me up at 7:00pm. He says be ready for a long night and bring condoms. Yeah, I came to Madrid with my girlfriend, and going out with boys I’m going to bring condoms. I don’t think so.

Wendy is going out with Collette to a business cocktail party.

Mathieu and I have a tame night, and he brings me back to his old college sports bar and then home by midnight. Wendy falls on top of me at 3am, tells me about her night, and then we sleep the sleep of the dead.

The next day Wendy has to go into work, so I bring her spare laptop with me that I have loaded up with Magic Online, and try to get some matches in with Standard Protection.

Match 1 — Gruul.

His two Kird Apes and Llanowar Elf don’t have protection from Wrath. Despite this, they, his burn and my lands beat me down to two before I am able to finish him with Scryb Ranger, Grave Shell, and Dervish. Anything he plays gets killed with Mortify and Putrefy.

I side in 4 Loxodon and 3 Luminesce. Read Luminesce carefully.

When someone attacks you with a Scab-Clan Mauler and a Giant Solifuge, and you block the Solifuge with your Llanowar Elf and then cast Luminesce, what happens?

Well, I took zero damage, kept my elf, and his Solifuge died. That’s what happens.

Then I played a Loxodon, an infinite Grave-Shell, and another Luminesce.

No chance.

Luminesce is, quite literally, insane. You can block to your heart’s content, kill their creatures, and yours survive. You can resist a char at the end of a turn. You can save your creature from direct damage. It’s like a Circle of Protection, a Giant Growth, and a Fog all in one against Red or Black. And with the popularity of Gruul and Izzetron, that makes for an amazing sideboard option.

I did notice in this round that the pain lands were beating the crap out of me. I add in some Farseeks and more basics, and remove the pain lands.

Match 2 has me facing off against another Gruul deck. I keep a two-land hand with no Forests, and never draw one, which leads to my early demise.

In game 2, my elimination can kill off anything he has, and I Wrath away three guys and then do the Loxodon and Grave-Shell pair that Gruul hates so much.

In Game 3 he has to mulligan to five, and when I Wrath away his guys it’s a blow. He gets a Blood Moon on the board, but I have luckily drawn a Forest and a Plains. He concedes soon after.

I keep focusing on Mystic Enforcer. Looking over the games I’ve played, I have to agree with Sean McKeown that

“And dear God, Mystic Enforcer did nothing. Getting Threshold only ever happened when I cast Bustageddon or my opponent Wrathed, and guess which of those two things happened first more often? Mystic Enforcer’s Threshold requirement was more or less satisfied by himself being card #7 in the graveyard, which is to say that he was awful and just had awkward mana and didn’t do anything impressive against anyone despite his potential.”

I can dredge away cards with the Grave-Shell very slowly, but can I do more to hit threshold? Seriously, a 6/6 flying pro Black guy seems pretty good. It might take some work to make that happen, but with the prevalence of U/B it might be worth it.

I decide to add in some Terramorphic Expanse. Those will help out with the land issues, and with dredge. And with the Farseeks, we have some pretty good land thinning. Of course, now, with lands that come into play tapped, and lands that put a land into play tapped, is there really a need for elves? I don’t think there is, but the Scryb Ranger can do some amazing mana tricks with them, so not including them seems foolish. Will have to test more.

The Dervishes aren’t going to make the cut either. I add in more land. I take too much of a beating from the pain lands and the elves. The Dervishes, while cool, can’t get by a Desert, and mono-Black is almost non-existent right now. This makes me want to design and build yet another deck.

Match 3 — Dralnu

He counters a bunch of stuff, Seize the Souls my Scragnoth (that guy just never works), and Extirpates my Grave-Shell.

Game 2 I sideboard wrong. I add in both Leyline and get both in my opening hand. Sadly, I have sided out all but the most important creatures to make these fit. So he Persecutes me, Extirpates my Grave Shell, and then I sit there drawing land while he ramps up mana. I can’t draw a creature to get things started even with Leyline on the board, but I am drawing Mortify and Putrefy and Wrath and thinking that perhaps Defense Grid would be a better card. Or maybe even leaving in all my creatures. After he Repeals my Leyline of Lifeforce, I quit. He has a full grip and I have done nothing to him in seven turns. The flexibility of Repeal once again strikes me as being better than all the problems it solves. Better than Krosan Grip. Better than Worship. Better than Defense Grid.

I add in Defense Grid.

Match 4 — Gaea’s Might Get There Zoo.

Mortify, Putrefy, and Wrath upset his plan. I side in some Loxodon. He concedes from the match while sideboarding.

Match 5 — Alan Webter – Stuffy Dolls.

He kills the things I play and empties my hand with Void, and then he does two huge Tendrils on his Stuffy Doll. I side in Luminesce, and take out some creature elimination since he didn’t play any creatures.

He drops an early Stronghold Overseer, and since I’ve sided out my removal, he can Fog my creatures and stall long enough to get out two Stuffy Dolls. I’m holding Luminesce, but he wins in a completely different way than previously. The power of Rogue decks.

At this point, my laptop starts to freak out from the heat, and I need some more snails.

Playing on a laptop sucks.

Since I’m in Paris, I never get a chance to return to Magic in the next few days. But speaking of Alan Webter, I was crossing the bridge and started laughing about a random thought. I was thinking about the gallery I would have to put up on my web site to show off my Paris photos, and I started thinking about what Alan would take pictures of while in Paris.

“You know what we should have done, Wendy?”
“What?”
“We should have taken a bunch of photos of us eating at McDonalds. And outside “The Gap” on the Champs-Élysées. Coming out of the Disney Store with a bag in each hand. My mom and friends would be so horrified. ‘You went to Paris and you went to McDonalds, The Disney Store, and the Gap?!?! What is wrong with you?!?”

Priceless.

Paris was a nice visit that culminated with eight hours of Hell. We spent our last day walking under the Eiffel Tower, up the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, back down to the Tuileries Gardens, and through to the Louvre. After that, we were pretty beat, and it was time for more snails and pate. Wendy suggests a little nook that Collette showed us the day before that looked very quiet. Our needs are simple. Pate. Snails. Wine.

We find a perfect little spot that looks like its just opening. We ask if they are and they tell us no, two hours. We head over to two other cafes and they are packed. We get a seat between two couples, but Wendy feels too claustrophobic like that, so we move on to the other. It has no seats at all. We head out to the street and it takes fifteen minutes to get a cab to take us back to some restaurants by our hotel.

We find a nice spot in the shade, order, and the waiter says, “We don’t have pate.” Wendy points it out on the menu. “That’s an old menu; the new menu doesn’t have pate. Here is a new menu.” Wendy points out the pate on the new menu. He says he was mistaken, they do have pate. He comes back five minutes later, and it turns out they are out of pate. We move across the street.

The only seats available are in the middle of a group of rowdy college students. We fume a bit then a space opens up in front that is perfect, so we move there and order. In the middle of ordering, another waiter asks if we can move over one table since the party next to us is very large and needs another. We say no problem. Sadly, this spot is in direct sunlight and after five minutes of baking, we move again. The meal is delicious. As we finish, Wendy orders a glass of wine and I ask for the bill. Half an hour later, we’re stressed about the time and worrying about the flight out, and our waitress has not been seen since.

We go back to the hotel and pick up our bags and ask them to call us a taxi. He never shows up, and we end up hailing one.

The bus driver that we get for the ride to the airport is an idiot. He pulls up, lets off passengers from the airport, and then pulls a power trip. He won’t let us on the bus, or let us put luggage on. He actually takes a woman’s luggage out from under the bus and sets it on the curb. He tells us to go sit at the bus stop, five yards away. Then he stands there and smokes and chats with an associate for ten minutes. Then he gets onto the bus, drives it five yards and lets us load up and get on. To make matters worse, he drives like a high school student. Going as fast as he can until he gets blocked in traffic, then slamming on his breaks, then speeding up as fast as he can for a five-yard break in traffic, then slamming on his breaks. My snails are threatening to make a break for freedom by the time we get to the airport.

Then our flight is delayed forty minutes.

Then, when food and drinks are served, they forget us. See, we’re in the middle of the plane. Two groups of stewards work each end of the plane until they get to the middle. Well, each group thought the other group had served us, so the middle four rows of people got nothing. Not a big deal since it’s only a two-hour flight, but annoying.

We get off the plane and make our way to the luggage carousel. Not just us, everyone on the flight. We all sit there for thirty minutes until one woman goes exploring and comes back and tell us our luggage is on an entirely different carousel. Long ago unloaded and going around in circles.

To top off the night, we get Mario Andretti as our cab driver home. You know how cabs are always the fastest thing on the road? Well, our cab driver blew by other cabbies like they were old ladies on a Sunday drive. At one point, we saw a sign that said the speed limit was 70 kph, looked at the speedometer, and our cabbie was doing a hundred and fifty. That’s 93 miles an hour.

We blew by other cabs like they were parked.

Except for the plane crashing, everything that could have been awful in the last eight hours was awful.

I get up in the morning and know that I need to finish this very article for the esteemed Craig Stevenson, and immediately start looking over the old version of the deck, not the one that is on the laptop. As much as I love Search for Tomorrow and Terramorphic Expanse, I can’t help but think they are clunky. I do miss my elves. I have always loved Elves of Deep Shadow. [Heh. I’m “esteemed.” — Craig.]

The Loxodon Hierarchs have been too good. They have to get moved into the main, and they can help offset the life loss of the lands.

As for the sideboard, I still cannot get over how many control decks I play, and how much a midrange deck’s worst enemy is a control deck. The deck has already shown that an aggro deck has zero chance against it. Mortify, Putrefy, Wrath, Loxodon, and the ever returning Grave-Shell are almost impossible for them to beat.

The latest version looks like this.

I get one game in the casual room, and then start to write, and then join a tournament at 2:00.

My game in the casual room was typical. Blue/X with every broken thing under the sun in the same deck. Remands, Repeals, Triskelavus, Brine Elemental, Shapeshifter, Tron, Academy Ruins.

The first game his Shapeshifter copies my Mystic Enforcer, while he has threshold and I don’t. I’m holding Putrefy and Mortify. Imagine how I felt at that moment. Would you think it would be a pleased feeling, or maybe something else?

Game 2 I get two early Defense Grids, so he assembles Tron and starts recursing Triskavelus with Academy Ruins.

I do some writing and join the tournament.

Online tournament reports are interesting. Let’s take a look.

Real Life — “I can’t get to sleep until midnight the night before the PTQ. I finally drink a half bottle of Nyquil and still sleep fitfully. I get up at 4:00am, drink coffee, wake Hilary up from the couch and jump in the shower (not together).”

Online — “It was a long weekend. Wendy and I got to bed at 1:30 and slept deeply until 9:30. At that point, I got up to get rid of some beer and went back to bed until 11:15. I get some coffee, do some dishes, and sit down at the computer. I can see it’s snowing in Middlebury AGAIN. Man, that state needs more global warming.”

Real Life — “We go outside to find Josh asleep in my car waiting to go. We drive over the mountain, and the twisty roads of 125 make my coffee and Nyquil of the previous evening boil together in my stomach like a vile witch’s brew. Josh says a bunch of really funny things. We get lost on the way to the site and are worried that we’ll miss registration. As usual, this is an unfounded fear. The tournament is poorly organized and doesn’t start for two hours after we get there.”

Online — “My sister is online and she tells me she hates me because I’m in 60 degree weather and she’s shoveling snow in April. We chat for a bit and compare notes about what we’ve been doing for the last week and how my former dog Thor, that she now has, won’t stop humping her dog Cloie.

“Wendy comes and sits on me lap and reads this and tells me that our Sony Bravia 40 inch HD TV has been delayed until the twentieth. When she gets off, I go into the kitchen for some Jamon and Red Bull.

“I sit down and dice start to roll on my screen. The tournament has started right on time.”

Real Life — Round 1 — Dragonstorm. “My opponent is a nice guy. We shake hands and wish each other luck. He is playing Dragonstorm. Since I have played my deck a thousand times, I know just how to beat him. He takes the first game, but in the second I side in Luminesce, and in game 2 I cast it, then Wrath. He never recovers. In game 3, he gets mana screwed and I roll him. I go find a quiet corner and take some notes on the games, and then I go get some more coffee and water. I’m still exhausted and bleary eyed. I dump a piece of pizza into the roiling cauldron that is my stomach and wait for the round to end. Josh and Hilary have both won. Josh says a bunch more humorous stuff that is shocking to all around him.”

Online — Round 1 — Dragonstorm.

My opponent wishes me luck and to have fun. He plays a Steam Vents and I immediately hate him. With horror, it dawns on me that in the last three days, I have forgotten about the wonder that is Luminesce, and it is not in my sideboard. It’s so easy to change a deck online, I’m constantly revising and tweaking and playing two games and then revising and tweaking some more. I get rolled in two quick ones and wonder if I’m going to be dropping to enter some 8 mans for this article soon without the wondrous tech of Luminesce. I make the bed, do some laundry and write this article.”

Round 2 — Mono Blue.

Admittedly, he has some lands that produce Black, but he never plays anything that requires Black mana.

He has Willbender, Teferi, Brine Elemental, Shapeshifter, Boomerang, and countermagic.

I have Scragnoth.

TxM: I cannot believe I’m losing to such bad cards

Game 2 I side in Leyline of the Void and Defense Grid. After the game is done, someone in the common room laughs and says “Hey, MLGreen, you must hate Blue, huh?”

Considering that in the next six rounds I will play six Blue/X decks, I don’t think of it so much as “I hate Blue” as a wise metagame choice. This isn’t to say that I don’t hate Blue…

Match 3 — Lightning Angel.

He plays a Sacred Foundry and I think “Yay! Finally a deck without Blue! And then he Remands a few things and I sigh.

In game 1 I kill anything he puts on the board, including Numot, and recurse 4/4s. Man, I love Grave-Shell Scarab. When I played Grave-Shell Scarab before, he wasn’t as good as he is now. The environment has changed to make him much better against a wide variety of decks.

Game 2 is surprising. I get creature superiority and he blows up all the lands, then Wraths. With five Signets on the board and a full grip. I take a few turns of not drawing land and then concede.

Game 3 has me kicking myself for not having Luminesce in the sideboard, as he basically burns me out with Lightning Helix, Lightning Helix, Lightning Helix, and Demonfire with two cards in hand.

If only I’d had that Luminesce…

Round 4 — Blue/White

Shapeshifter, Teferi, Counters, Wrath, Willbender, Grand Arbiter Augustine IV.

Now that I’m running eight ways to target and eliminate creatures, everyone’s running Willbender.

Game 1 is all Scragnoth and Grave-Shell.

Game 2 I am color shy, and he gets out a Sacred Mesa. The fliers kill me before I can find another Wrath.

Game 3 I get off to fast start with two Elves and a Grave-Shell Scarab. Then a Scragnoth. He Wraths, I get back a Grave-Shell. In doing so I dump another Grave-Shell into the bin. See how good that is? I play him, draw another one, and just keep playing them. He keeps throwing blockers in the way, but I keep beating.

Round 5 is Dragonstorm. You know how that goes.

At 2-3 you might not think this is encouraging, but it is. The deck is undefeated versus agro, and with a mistake in the sideboard, it still went 2-1 against control decks and easily would have won against the Angelfire deck if I’d had the right sideboard. It lost to two Dragonstorm decks, but that can happen to any deck. As it is, I like the theme of the deck and I like the way it plays. I’ll continue to work on it.

Until next week,

Jamie