When last we met our intrepid hero, he was recommending one of two decks for 2005 Champs. The first choice deck, called "the best deck in the format" by the same, was Mono-Blue Control:
Creatures (10)
Lands (25)
Spells (25)
Sideboard
The second choice deck, probably the next best deck in the format, was U/G, The Critical Mass Update:
Creatures (21)
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 4 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
- 4 Wood Elves
- 4 Keiga, the Tide Star
- 1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
- 4 Vinelasher Kudzu
Lands (23)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
Short Version:
Our group consisted of five of the 110 players at 2005 New York States. I, Julian Levin, and Mark Schmit, played Mono-Blue; Danny Olmo and Rich Fein played The Critical Mass Update. Steve Sadin, after absconding with all the extra Watery Graves, elected not to show up… Which sort of screwed Rich; after losing to Mono-Blue with Critical Mass Update at the mock tournament the previous week, Rich wanted to play Mono-Blue. For his part, Danny wanted to play "a beatdown deck" and played the best one available. Tim Gillam (prodigalt on the forums) also played The Critical Mass Update, but did not test with us.
At the end of the Swiss, four of the five of us made Top 8. I was first in the Swiss, Danny was second; we were joined by Julian and Mark. Rich didn’t make Top 8, but… that’s just because he lost in the Swiss to Danny.
In The Top 8, None Of Us Lost To Anyone Not In The Group.
Long Version:
The Swiss
Round One – R/W Weenie
One of the main reasons to play Mono-Blue is that we predicted that R/W would be the most common matchup. It is a bye. You are a 7-3 favorite in Game One against a player of equal skill, and it only gets better after boards. You side out 4 Jushi Apprentice, 4 Hinder, and 2 Rewind for 4 Execute, 4 Drift of Phantasms, 1 Meloku, and 1 Dimir Aqueduct. Basically every card in your deck is a two-for-one or somehow invalidates their strategic development. For example, the White Weenie decks want to beat a Blue Control with cards like Hokori, but because of Dimir Aqueduct, that doesn’t work.
Basically, you just buy time for the first several turns – with especially Remand – to survive to turns 5 and 6. Usually you are at about 16 unless they have a really fast draw; then comes Meloku or Keiga and you just win. The advantage after boards when you can’t draw Jushi Apprentice and have all Threads, Executes, and proxy Threads and Executes, the opponent has no possible chance. Even if he can weather the relentless onslaught of early game two-for-ones, there is no way that he can consistently do so in good enough shape to handle the Blue Legends.
Just a quick note on this matchup… Yes, they can Char your Meloku. Yes, that sucks. But usually you can follow up with either another Meloku or a Keiga, and I have had Disrupting Shoal + Threads of Disloyalty or Hinder here more than once. The R/W decks with Shock instead of Char can’t make this play at all.
1-0/2-0
Round Two – Heartbeat
Mono-Blue has a huge advantage against any combo deck. It’s not really that interesting to discuss. Game Two I could have Extracted Maga, but talking to Sean Mckeown had me all thinking about "the man plan" and I went for Early Harvest instead; as such he got a near-leathal Maga that would have been eventually lethal if I hadn’t had a Meloku to chump block every turn.
One cool play I made this match was to let Ideas Unbound hit but counter Early Harvest, forcing the opponent to tap and discard while I flipped the Jushi. On his next turn, I used the big man on upkeep and faced down the last turn with a 14-1 hand advantage while already bashing with Keiga.
Heartbeat seems to have done reasonably well across the country. I don’t consider it a good option to play, at least not any more, because Mono-Blue smashes it and will only gain in popularity.
2-0/4-0
Round Three – Fungus Fire
Friends don’t let friends play Fungus Fire.
Basically that deck has no conceivable chance against Mono-Blue control. Their cards just don’t matter. Unless you count "having a critical mass of inefficient burn spells," Fungus Fire has almost no relevant cards. In Game One I didn’t actually realize that Flames of the Blood Hand could have conceivably beaten my "sacrifice my Keiga to Miren" plan, but since he tapped out to try to kill me and I had quadruple counter backup, it seemed like a fine idea to just counter through.
You know how I feel about Fungus Fire. I didn’t think it was good when I first saw it, and I think it’s worse now that I’ve seen players like edt making Top 8 across the country with Heartbeat. The format is too wide at present to accommodate a board control deck that is basically only good against creatures in any kind of long term. Is Faith’s Fetters good enough? Yes. Are Red cards dead? No. Change or die.
3-0/6-0
Round Four – Boros
Boros is a remarkably uninteresting matchup (see Round One). Game One you basically have a huge advantage and in sideboarded games, you two-for-one every significant play they can make while they are constantly topdecking 1/1 flyers (you know, the cards you make for free with Meloku). Again, the Aqueducts make the potential White Weenie hosers of Suppression Field and Hokori less threatening.
I actually lost Game Two when I mulliganed on the draw and stopped at one land. Shrug.
He made Top 8, but eventually lost to Julian in a 74/75 repeat of this Swiss match.
4-0/8-1
Round Five – Gifts Ungiven
He also made Top 8.
Game One I drew three Threads of Disloyalty, which made what should have been a great matchup a bit dicey. I went for a gamble with Meloku. He had been setting up with double Sickening Shoal. I countered the first, he pitched Kagemaro to play the second, I Remanded, but he Topped into a second Kagemaro to win the fight. This ended up being the pivotal turn of the game and I went down. I thought I could beat two or even three relevant spells, but he had truly Sculpted the Perfect Turn to trump me.
Games Two and Three I was unable to ever draw Threads of Disloyalty and therefore could only lose to flood or screw. I got normal draws.
5-0/10-2
Round Six – The Critical Mass Update
I got paired against Danny. We obviously drew.
5-0-1/10-2
Round Seven – Polychromatic Hate
In Round Six, when I got paired against Danny, the other undefeated got paired against this crazy dangerous Birds/Elves of Deep Shadow/Dimir Cutpurse/Hypnotic Specter deck whose only loss was to Danny. I thought the crazy deck would be exceptionally difficult for our Blue decks to beat. He had double redundancy on the accelerators and had a game winning two-drop with double frequency. Moreover, his deck had everything from Mana Leak to maindeck Arashi to give us fits.
"Luckily," I got paired against him in Round Seven. Here’s the deal: Mark could conceivably win to go 5-1-1 and make Top 8, but was worst in the tournament on breakers; Julian could draw, but if Danny and I drew, he would have a 20% chance of not making Top 8.
So All Of Us Decided To Play.
Julian got the Sacred Foundry pairing, so we weren’t worried about him. Danny got paired against Boros too, and that is an equally good matchp for Critical Mass Update as it is for Mono-Blue, except he can still conceivably lose to Hokori if he doesn’t have Jitte advantage; luckily Game Two involved a Jitte on Dan’s side when I looked over. Saving Schmithead fell to me. I had to take out the actual tough matchup.
In Game One, my opponent made a few mistakes, including marching his Cutpurse into a Quicksand, and I won a close one despite his connecting with Hypno for my Keiga and getting Arashi off against my backup. You go, Elves of Deep Shadow!
In Game Two, he got the draw that we all feared and buried me with turn 2 bomb on the play. It wasn’t pretty. At one point I thought I had stabilized with Meloku, but when I blocked Hypno, My Clouded Mirror Met A Last Gasp! Who loses Meloku in combat? Truly his deck had one million insane tricks and had to be removed from contention.
In Game Three, I was on the play and had the Remand draw, which allowed me to buy time into the bombs. He drew all four Putrefies but they weren’t enough.
Whew.
In hindsight, I’m not sure if his deck was that bad a matchup given that both Danny and I beat him, but it certainly seemed harder than the R/W and Fungus decks we had faced elsewise. We were of course labeled scumbags for denying three players who thought they were making Top 8 their spots, boxes and chances for glory, but as Danny, Julian, and I all won, Mark’s win was good enough to put his 5-1-1 into the Top 8 in the last seat.
Mission accomplished!
6-0-1/12-3
So at the end of the Swiss, the Top 8 was 4/5s of our group, including first and second seeds. Overall, the records were:
Me 6-0-1
Danny 6-0-1
Julian 6-1
Mark 5-1-1
Danny seemed offended that he didn’t finish first because of a superior 12-2 game record. At the end of the day, we fell to the same <strike>man</strike> small child ™, so it all evened out in the end.
The rest of the Top 8 was one Enduring Ideal, the Boros I had beaten, and two Gifts Ungiven (one of whom was the deck I had beaten in Round five). I know that I often seem cocky, but I think these results speak for themselves. You’ve got a Star City Premium Membership: the next time a tournament like Champs rolls around, use it. New York States was a clean break with the best decks burying everybody else. It wasn’t close and it wasn’t pretty.
But don’t take my word for it. According to effang on the magic.tcgplayer.com forums:
"this [article ] was crap. mike flores made crit mass about 2 months ago, and he advertised this heavily before states. if you guys don’t even know what your opposing pro’s are playing…then that’s just sad.
"i mean, how could they ["they" being YOU, i.e. Star City Premium rather than Brainburst Premium subscribers] be reading about decks that t8 everywhere, and we just get rehashed versions of WWr?"
Good question, effang!
In an odd twist of bad tournament operations, Mark and Julian only had 74/75 of the same cards that I had. Despite the fact that both players had left the pre-Champs mock tournament with correct sideboards dictated by me, Steve told them not to play the fourth Meloku in the sideboard… instead they had the (pre-tuned) third and fourth Aqueducts, which I found to be overkill. That should have given me the advantage in three game matchups against both of them, but that advantage actually disappears or becomes a liability against a resolved Extraction (you get milled for four rather than three, potentially).
Top 8 – Mono-Blue Control
We snuck Mark in the Top 8, but because he was in last place, that meant that Schmithead was up against yours truly in the quarters. I wish I could give you more details on this match, but mostly what I remember was that it went over two hours. I lost a long and grueling Game One at the end of which my old Dave Price Fan Club teammate Tim McKenna (DNP) said "don’t make the same mistake next time" when I didn’t know what mistakes I had made. In Game Two, I got the God draw of double Boomerang (on Watery Grave) on the play, and resolved double Cranial Extraction. Mark didn’t concede and I actually let him in the game. The second Cranial (after the one that hit for Meloku) went for Keiga, which I thought would elicit a scoop, but it was terrible because I knew Mark had double Cranial in his hand from the first Cranial. He actually resolved double Cranial back, for my Keiga and Meloku. It was quite sad that I could get the God draw and still almost lose, but I somehow pulled it out. In Game Three, I decked Mark in an extremely long game, using primarily Mikokoro.
Now in between Top 8 and Top 4 Tim told BDM to make sure to tell me about my mistake, but he forgot.
Top 4 – Gifts Ungiven
It was a re-pair from Round Five! Like Round Five, I drew horribly in Game One. This time I drew all my Threads of Disloyalty instead of just three. I actually could have won a couple of different ways but made a succession of horrible plays which BDM attributes to low blood sugar. [This is amusing, since Mike always tells me he doesn’t it while playing and I always tell him he’s crazy for not taking better care of himself. – Knut] At one point, I discarded double Threads instead of putting them on two Sakura-Tribe Elders when my opponent had a three-to-one creature advantage on me and I knew that he had Ink-Eyes in hand. At another point, I fell for it when he said "looks like you’ve got me" when he was on 22 cards and I had a flipped Jushi Apprentice. I went for it, spending a million mana, and lost to his double creature kill with Minamo on the stack. Awful, awful.
Game Two I got fifth turn Meloku on the play and followed up immediately with Keiga. Bash bash.
Game Three again went super long. I had kind of a ratty draw but just kept playing guys and sacrificing them to Miren, the Moaning Well. Eventually he decked to Mikoko, Center of the Sea; I finished around 37 life.
So what had I been doing wrong?
Minamo, School at Water’s Edge untaps any Legendary permanent. If I had played for this synergy, I would actually have won Game One against both Mark and Gifts, and beaten Mark in Game Three between two and four turns earlier (he nearly won by Hindering his own spell).
How awful.
Top 2 – Mono-Blue Control
Both my Top 8 and Top 4 matchups took one hour forty five minutes or longer; Julian had won his semifinal match when I was still in Game Two with Mark and was rested for three hours. BDM said that I was playing progressively worse over the course of the previous two rounds, which were grueling.
But I wanted the title.
Julian suggested several splits, including "you get the title and prize for the box" but I made him play for it. I assumed the student couldn’t beat the master. Had I learned nothing from training Paul and Josh?
Young master Levin dispatched me in two quick games, a stark contrast to my previous single elimination matches. In Game One, he got what can only be described as an unbeatable draw. He had turn 2 Jushi on the play and I had no Disrupting Shoal. I tried to buy back the board with Boomerang, but never had the mana to fight a proper war. It wasn’t close.
In Game Two, my progressively Bad Player Flores descent came to a head When I Waltzed Julian Into Trying To Extract Me when I had Disrupting Shoal + Rewind in hand – exactly the play I wanted him to make – and said "okay," losing both my own Extractions in the process. I could pretty much have scooped right there. You know you are playing badly when the opponent falls for your swindle and you, um, let him beat you.
BDM says that Julian is my next Paul Jordan. At Neutral Ground we’ve been trying to engineer the next Jon Finkel for the past three years at least; we thought Matt Boccio was going to do it, then Steve. Maybe Julian? He’s improved significantly in just the past month, and He’s Young.
Congratulations Champ.
LOVE
MIKE
Props:
Tony Tsai – From whom I borrowed most of my cards.
Tim Gillam – Two Watery Graves
Rich Fein – One Watery Grave
Julian Levin – One Keiga, the Tide Star; also the finals
Slops:
Steve Sadin (DNP) – Should have been four Mono-Blue in the Top 8.
Chris Pikula (DNP) – Could have been five.
Me – 🙁
PS: If you want to win in Standard, Play This Mono-Blue. It’s the best. If you want to play a beatdown deck, play Critical Mass Update like Danny did. You might lose, but it will probably only be to a player good enough to the be New York State Champion.
PPS: BDM and I are working on this cool new take on Magic reporting over at Top8Magic.com (a new site). This isn’t a site that will be competing with Star City Games, so don’t worry. We have no interest in selling Magic cards and certainly won’t be publishing Premium Magic articles. In Fact, I’m 99.99% sure that when the actual stuff we’re going to do is up and running, Pete will be banging down our door to work with us.
What we do have right now is "live coverage" (Podcasts) from both our pre-States mock tournament and New York States itself. BDM thinks this is "way cooler than a tournament report." It’s certainly more immediate.
So anyway, check out Top8Magic.com. I wanted to prop the mock tournament more last week, but the site ("under construction" still) didn’t have the links up yet. I’m crossing my fingers as I send this article to Teddy Cardgame that the States stuff will be up by F. Friday.
PPPS: I think everyone should give Mr. Cardgame a round of applause. When he and I first conceived of the 2004 Championship Deck Challenge, the goal was to actually put together some lists that would help the Star City readers do well at Champs. That endeavor produced the Mono-Blue deck, but never really put a dent in the dominance of Affinity or even Tooth and Nail. This time around, the redux was more successful than I could have hoped, and our decks kicked ass in areas way outside New York States. I am really proud of the guys I see chatting in the tournament discussion forums, talking about how they did well by adopting some of the options from this year’s Deck Challenge, making Top 8, winning their Champs outright, or simply hitting 10th at their first sanctioned events. You know you’re doing something right when the competition’s readership starts complaining. Great job Teddy.