Levelling Up - When a Plan Doesn’t Come Together

After returning from Grand Prix: Dallas, I had a tough Magic switch to make. From now on, Extended didn’t matter any more. It was all about Two-Headed Giant and Standard. And at this point, unlike the week preceeding Dallas, I was alone. I started by unsleeving all my Extended decks and building some Standard decks, guided by the Online Tech deck-o-pedia and some advice from Magic Online players who have a permanent eye on the Standard format. I even borrowed dozens of cards online in order to get some practice, only to find out we were in the week of the Planar Chaos online releases, so there were no Standard Premier Events. As usual, I lost some eight-man queues in the first round until my tixs ran out, and then I moved to the Casual Play room where I continued to lose some more.

The first explanation I came up with for my losses was because they were the first Standard games I’d played in Standard since Worlds, while online players were very familiar with the format. They knew the sample decklists of the most popular decks, unlike me, and had a good idea on what to do in each matchup. The decks I tried were Blue/Black Dralnu, Blue/Black Pickles, a new version of U/W Tron given to me by Shaheen Soorani, and of course my favorite deck in the format: Angelfire. While I just copied decks from the Internet, or asked around for some tech off my friends and opponents regarding Dralnu and Pickles, I can surely talk about Angelfire. I’ll leave the new U/W control to Shaheen Soorani, as I can’t win a single game with it against control even though it demolished aggressive decks… I’m sure he’ll be able to fix that somehow.

In the article where I previewed Planar Chaos for competitive play, I discussed some possible cards that could be played in Angelfire. I hadn’t tried them nor built a decklist with them. With Grand Prix: Kyoto approaching, and with Angelfire being one of my favorite decks, it was time to update it with possible Planar Chaos cards, and for a different metagame. After all, how hard could that be? I had just done exactly that with U/W Tron for Grand Prix: Dallas. As a starting point, here is the decklist of Angelfire that made Top 8 at the World Championships.

R/W/U Control

Tiago Chan

7th Place at Worlds on 12-03-2006

Standard

Creatures (10)

Lands (23)

Spells (27)

Sideboard

Please note that for Grand Prix: Dallas I wrote an article after the tournament, and I was pretty sure of the decklist and the ideas I was defending. Right now, I’m still very inexperienced in Standard, and the ideas I’m presenting are still in the development process. Also, for Dallas, I was surrounded by great players like Julien Nuijten, Rasmus Sibast, Frank Karsten, Jelger Wiegersma among others, while for Kyoto so far I’m still working alone. It’s not as easy, as proxying some cards and sitting down at Frank’s table and ask for an opponent to battle… I need to borrow cards from many players on Magic Online, find someone with the motivation to play Standard, or face an unknown opponent and hope he’s playing the deck I want to test against.

One of the latest articles that analyze the Online metagame concluded that the more popular decks are Blue/Black control (either Dralnu or Pickles), Mono Green Aggro, and Dragonstorm. Except fot the Dragonstorm, none of the others were well known at Worlds. The metagame has shifted towards more controlish decks due to the existence, or re-discovery, of Teferi. With this information, and knowing that this build of Angelfire has trouble against control decks, I wanted to try the following cards.

Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir: He has flash, and Angelfire can probably play him before Dralnu because it has six signets to accelerate into five mana. Once in play on your side, this means you’re probably winning since your opponent can’t counter anything. Plus he also serves as a removal spell for oposing Teferis. If this is Dralnu’s best tool, then it might just be the best way to fight it.

Riptide Pilferer: I remember Headhunter and what it did to control decks. Pilferer on turn 2 seems good enough to steal the game against control decks, especially if you can back it up with spells to clear the way for him, or countermagic to protect him. It might be a little too extreme to play him maindeck, but it can also be a good metagame choice, as Japanese players usually like playing Blue decks.

Numot, the Devastator: If this Dragon hits, you should win the match. However, having him hit means you played him and he resolved, and the board position was good enough for you to attack, and your opponent had no answer to that. In this scenario, it’s safe to say you’re winning even without a dragon.

Detritivore: This card caught my eye at Grand Prix: Dallas when U/R Cloudpost had it on the sideboard for some matchups like the Tron mirror. It’s an uncounterable land destruction each turn, with a body attached for free when it runs out of counters. Most of the Dralnu versions I saw played only five basic lands. But it’s possible it might be too slow.

On the other hand, the following cards don’t seem too hot right now:

Bogardan Hellkite: This seems to be an overkill card. When the opponent is drawing dead, it guarantees they are really dead. There are cheaper threats that also have flash, like Teferi.

Wrath of God: I am tempted to move them to the sideboard, as they’re only really amazing against Mono Green, and even Mono Green is more than prepared to play around mass removal with cards like Groundbreaker and Timbermare, plus their old friend Giant Solifuge. Wrath can kill a Teferi though, but until that point it’s a dead card in your hand.

Sacred Mesa: In an unknown field, Frank and Quentin decided to run one maindeck Sacred Mesa to be a good wildcard against any deck, be it beatdown, control, or mid-range. Knowing the expected metagame allow us to play better-suited cards for those specific matchups that have more devastating effects, rather than versatile cards that can be useful in multiple matchups.

I made this list as a first-pass sketch.

Angelfire With Planar Chaos

Tiago Chan

Test deck on 03-18-2007

Standard

Creatures (13)

Lands (23)

Spells (24)

Before playing the deck

It seemed to me this is more balanced against control and beatdown decks. Losing Wrath of God to the sideboard hurts against aggro decks, but with 4 Lightning Helix and 4 Demonfire plus 2 Psionic Blasts, we might keep the creature decks controlled. The burn also serves to remove blockers so that Riptide Pilferer can hit. The win conditions are now cheaper and better suited against control. Riptide Pilferer maindeck is arguable, but they seem very good against Dralnu, Pickles, and possibly Dragonstorm. Gemstone Caverns shines when you have a two-mana spell you really want to play one turn early.

After playing the deck

I’m not of the impression that it’s not the correct metagame choice, even if it is tweaked. Or maybe the changes were not correct. I didn’t draw the Pilferers enough times on turn 2 against control to compensate for the times I’d draw them when they were useless against beatdown. The Numots were a big fluke, as unexpectedly they proved themselves to be better against creature decks than control. They can be played regularly on turn 5, and they might not be countered. Right now, I don’t recommend this list to anyone, but I still have some time before Grand Prix: Kyoto. However, it might be pointless as I’m not very strong at tuning Constructed decks in the abstract.

My plan for this article was to find the deck I was playing in Kyoto some time in advance, and leave my decklist here two days before the Grand Prix. That plan has miserably failed, as I couldn’t come up with anything worthy of being called a deck. Even though I put some effort into trying to find a good decklist, and even though writing is something I enjoy doing, my first priority is Pro Magic. And in between Dallas and Kyoto I happened to have another Grand Prix in a different format to play. So, on the Friday before Grand Prix: Amsterdam I figured I could finish this week’s article by talking about Amsterdam and Two-Headed Giant, since my column focuses on the formats I’m currently playing.

Two-Headed Giant at Grand Prix Amsterdam

My teammate for Amsterdam and for Pro Tour: San Diego is Frederico Bastos, one of the best players ever in my country despite being a little overshadowed by some younger and newer players. Frederico has teamed with me for the team Pro Tours in Boston and Atlanta, and our team had decent finishes both times. Frederico Top 8’d Pro Tours in Tokyo 2001 and in San Diego 2002, but ever since he fell off the gravy train he never managed to come back except for Team events. Some people ask me why am I teaming with Frederico, who is not on a good Magic streak, when I can team with anyone due to being a Level 6. I could in fact pick players who are more sucessful nowadays. But because I can pick whoever I want, I decided a long time ago that if I ever managed to reach Level 5 I would pick Frederico and try to get him back on the train, or at least get him qualified for the next Pro Tour.

In Amsterdam, we were given this cardpool:

GP: Amsterdam Cardpool

Tiago Chan

Test deck on 03-18-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (68)

Lands (2)

1 Arena
1 Dreadship Reef

I don’t know if people actually analyze the cardpools and take out time to figure what would they build, but I present the cardpool nevertheless. If, by any chance, you’re trying to build the decks yourself, I’ll give you my first impressions of the pool before presenting you the decklists we registered for the tournament.

Slivers: This is one of the best plans in Two-Headed Giant draft, and qualiity slivers can turn an average card pool into gold. It’s not the case in this one, despite the three copies of Synchronous Sliver and double Venser’s Sliver we only find four more uncommon gold slivers, each with marginal playable abilities. The best ones are Sedge Sliver, Might Sliver, and Pulmonic Sliver, but commons like Sinew, Poultice, Watcher, and Bonesplitter are a must for the archtype to work. Spitting, Reflex, and Synchronous are great complementary Slivers, but not enough to make Slivers viable by themselves.

White and Blue are weak in overall, full of average cards. Blue still has a Serendib Sorcerer, but White has more playables. Red and Black are fine, nothing spectacular and with few playables, but compared with Blue and White they have to be played even without that much depth. At least it has Kaervek the Merciless, pretty much the only bomb rare in the pool. Green is by far the best color, with close to twenty playable cards. There’s no reason to go Mono-Green, so the most obvious builds are Red/Black and Green with Blue or White.

GP: Amsterdam Deck A

Frederico Bastos

Test deck on 03-18-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (17)

Lands (17)

8 Swamp
9 Mountain

Spells (6)

This deck was missing some playables but it was most likely the correct color combination, which should make for at least one half of our deckbuilding choices correct. This way we can use Kaervek in one of the decks with no need for splashes, and we’re putting together the second best and third best colors in terms of quality and quantity. And still we need to scrap for playables, which should say a lot about or cardpool.

GP: Amsterdam Deck B

Tiago Chan

Test deck on 03-18-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (16)

Lands (16)

Spells (8)

Green was the color with the most playables, but still very unexciting overall despite the large number of quality cards. It seems correct to mix Green with either Blue or White, as Green/Red or Green/Black would had too many cards and leave the other deck without much. Basically Green with Blue or White allowed us to have a second deck in Red/Black. Other than Serendib Sorcerer and Pongify, Blue offers nothing else exciting, so a mediocre White collection was picked over Blue. Since Green had something like 18 playbles, we actually had to cut some cards.

Utopia Vow: Even with the format being slower, and creatures bigger, than in one-on-one Magic, I didn’t feel like playing three copies of this card. I absolutely don’t want to play this early in the game, as everyone plays with artifact and enchantment removal, and most of the creatures have some sort of activated reusable ability, so two seemed more than enough.

Magus of the Candelabra: Our friends told us this card was great in this format, as it allows you to use all your mana efficiently in every turn, by untapping your teammate’s lands and possibly accelerating some power cards. The reason why I didn’t play it was the lack of cards to accelerate into. Other than Kaervek the Merciless, what else can I accelerate in Frederico’s deck? Bogardan Rager? Perhaps Tectonic Fiend?

Essence Warden: Everyone praises the lifegain of this little guy. I decided to cut him because I believe he’s only good in powerful decks, which was not the case here. With good decks, you want to stay alive as long as you can, because that allows you to draw and see more cards in your deck, therefore increasing the chances of getting the good stuff. I believe when you have weak decks, you don’t want to play for the long game, as you’ll inevitably be outclassed by better cards. Essence Warden is not a defense against those cards, and it is not a threat to kill your opponent. It’s a card that buys you time, a lot of time, in order for you to find the other cards that will win the game.

Wild Pair: I’m not sure if it was correct to leave this enchantment out. It seems very good providing card advantage and selection after it’s in play. It needs you to play at least two creatures after playing the enchantment, fetching two others in order to give you advantage. My view was, even though I had some creatures with the same total power and toughness – including two copies of the same card – I was never very excited about getting a free creature since they were all mediocre. The best pairs we could make were double Giant Dustwasp, double Wormwood Dryad, and Castle Raptors with Sporesower Thallid. There are many other pairs, but they don’t seem worthwhile, and even the best combinations are not too appealing. For example, Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and Andre Coimbra team had Wild Pair in play, and the controller of it cast Viscid Lemures. With the Wild Pair ability on the stack, they activated the Viscid Lemures ability five times, making him a -1/3 creature, with a power and toughness combined of two. Then he searched for a 1/1 creature, which had a total of two as well, and put that creature into play for free. It was Triskelavus.

We were very aware that we weren’t making Day 2 with these cards, especially since a score of 7-2 was needed. That meant winning five rounds. During the byes, I checked the decks of some other teams, and only Bernardo da Costa Cabral and Robert Van Medvoort competed with us on the Worst Decks front. Frederico doubted our chances of reaching Day 2 so much that he left for the city centre with one of his non-Magic friends, and returned only to play the round.

I’ll go through the process of describing what happened in the three rounds that we played, just because some very interesting stuff happened right in the first one. We played against a team consisting of a Spanish player that I know: Omar Sagol, a longtime Pro Tour regular, and the editor and writer of a great Spanish magazine. Some of the things that happened this round.

* Frederico was manascrewed.

* I won the die roll and forgot to draw a card on turn 1. I was player B. I only realized it later when I rewound back to my opening hand. This was about to happen again the following round, but Frederico reminded me to draw a card.

* I had five lands in play and a Citanul Woodreaders in my hand. I need to draw either a land, or something that costed five mana or less. I drew Flagstones of Trokair, and one of our opponent’s already had one in play. I’ll never play Flagstones of Trokair again in Limited. Well, not until someone plays Boom / Bust against me.

* They bluffed us, I assume intentionally. They attacked with several creatures, and we blocked a morph with the unkicked Citanul Woodreaders. After getting some damage through and playing more stuff, the morph controller passed with three mana untapped, a combination of Islands and Mountains. Frederico had a Prodigal Pyromancer active, and an Urborg Syphon-Mage with summoning sickness, and was still stuck on three lands. Frederico asked me if he should shoot the morph or them. I thought for a while about shooting neither, as it would be a huge boon if we could activate the Syphon-Mage at least once, as this time the game was a close race and Frederico couldn’t cast any spell in his hand. I realize they wouldn’t send a morph into combat to die, so it’s either Aquamorph Entity, Fathom Seer, or Shaper Parasite. If it’s Shaper Parasite, then they’re risking too much in not unmorphing it right away to kill the Syphon-Mage. And the profit of that play is only to prevent one point of damage to them. So they’re risking taking an eight-point life swing by passing the turn in order to prevent one to them. We ended shooting the morph, which was indeed a Parasite, and so we lost the Syphon-Mage. If it was intentional then it was a bold play from their side, with minimum gains, but it was almost guaranteed that we would take the bait. I just wished I had more confidence in my instincts, instead of blindly following the conventional play.

* Next turn they played a Dragon, to which we had no answer too… and they also had a Sengir Nosferatu.

Round 2 was a one-side massacre that only took a while because our decks (and probably our opponents) were having fun with us.Our decks because both Frederico and myself were manascrewed. Frederico mulliganed to six cards and kept with two lands. I kept with three lands and drew an extra card on turn 1 because I was player B, yet I only drew the fourth when the situation was aready messed up. To make things worse, they Frozed Aether. We gave them a lot of free points of damage, and when we were back in the game we were at a one-digit life total. The exact turn after we recovered from the manascrew, one of our opponents played Oros, the Avenger while the other played Triskelavus. When the match ended two turns later they had several ways to kill us, so all the talking in German was to figure it out which one was the absolutely positevely best or safest way to proceed.

Round 3 was the only match at the Grand Prix we enjoyed. Neither us nor nor our opponents were manascrewed. No team played a single rare or bomb. There was plenty of interaction between the four players. The match was very close and exciting. Our opponents were also very friendly, and even though they won and ended our Grand Prix, we weren’t upset with the loss. This is how Magic should be.

I wish I had more to say about Grand Prix: Amsterdam, but it was another plan that didn’t come together. I seriously expected to be able to play a few more rounds before being eliminated. That’s the thing when your column is a reflection of the Magic you play: sometimes there’s loads of exciting stuff to talk about, while other times there’s nothing left to say.

As I finish writing this week’s article, I’m already in Japan. I wrote this article in four different countries. I still need to figure it out what to play at this Grand Prix, but I need to rest for now. You can bet I’m tired, but loving every single moment of it. Hopefully I’ll have a better understanding of the Standard format for the next article, and some interesting stories from Grand Prix: Kyoto.

Thanks for reading!

Tiago

Levelling Up – When a Plan Doesn’t Come Together

Creatures (10)

Lands (23)

Spells (27)

Sideboard

Creatures (13)

Lands (23)

Spells (24)

Creatures (68)

Lands (2)

Spells (33)

Creatures (17)

Lands (17)

Spells (6)

Creatures (16)

Lands (16)

Spells (8)