Even the best deck designers aren’t perfect. I can’t tell you how many times I have come out of a near miss wishing that I had changed just one or two cards in my listing. It was only after getting my tail kicked with the Quirion Dryad deck in an actual PTQ, for example, that I was able to figure out That I Was Siding The Stupid Dryads Out Every Time. Things like this come up all the time… There wasn’t as much Affinity as there should have been… I really had my blinders on about that Life matchup… You draw how many cards? All of it. But what if I got that “free pass” that every deck designer wishes he had before the big day? This past weekend at Neutral Ground, the rare chance to run my deck for States in an actual tournament setting came up, and against reasonably good players all packing good decks.
There was an actual pre-States warmup tournament scheduled at Neutral Ground, so I went to the trouble of actually getting 94.66% of the cards for my States deck together before last Saturday. I decided to go with the Mono-Blue deck from last Friday’s column, but further testing had me change a few cards. Here is what I played:
Creatures (10)
Lands (25)
Spells (25)
Sideboard
The sideboard is obviously different from the one that I posted last week; I simply hadn’t thought of Execute yet. Because in all my testing there were no interesting ground creatures to kill with a -1/-2 effect, I also took out two copies of Quicksand and replaced them with Duskmantle, House of Shadow as an alternate win condition for this tournament. That was fairly awful, which I’ll get to in a bit.
I also changed Remand for Shadow of Doubt in the main, after Steve Sadin berated me about this. I am still kind of romantically involved with Shadow of Doubt, we have a villa on the coast and don’t speak about it in public; Shadow wants to know why I cut her from my Extended Psychatog deck, but I’ve been – admittedly – distant since. Sorry honey, it’s just hard to argue with another two mana play against optimal Hypnotic Specter. On the play, I can stop Hypnotic Specter Even If My Opponent Leads With Elves Of Deep Shadow, and on the draw, I can stop a normal Hypno on turn 3. Remand is great overall because it, like Hinder, helps get around mechanics like Dredge in a sort of non-intuitive way. Most importantly, the Mono-Blue deck always wins when it gets to turns 5 and 6, and Remand Time Walks the opponent while helping you to draw into more lands. It’s just a great card overall, and I’m really glad to have added it.
The actual turnout at Neutral Ground for the States warmup was underwhelming. Fortunately, BDM had orchestrated his own little mock tournament get together, and I joined a proxy-friendly affair with all above average players and more or less all good decks. Almost all the players had lifetime Pro Tour points and we went over all the different decks before the tournament to make sure that there were good and, more importantly, diverse decks being played so that we could get a bead on what was good.
Prior to the tournament I tested quite a bit against my friend Paul Jordan of such diverse teams as Stalking Tiger, Hidden Gibbons; Stalking Tiger, Hidden Shark; and Paul Jordan LOL, playing some new deck called Fungus Fire. You may not know this, but on top of his PT Teams success, PJ is actually a former New Jersey State Champion. Paul won slightly less than half the games. I must say that Fungus Fire seemed like a steaming pile to me. One of the games he “stole” with Hidetsugu’s Second Rite when I would have won normally, which is fine I guess, but not something that will ever happen a second time (sorry Fungus Fires players); believe me, I’ll mana burn. I don’t know how someone can design a deck with four Sakura-Tribe Elders, four Kodama’s Reach, and multiple Sunforgers But Not Play Sensei’s Divining Top. I mean I don’t like the Top, but at least I’ll play four copies in every single deck where it makes even passing sense.
Round One: Paul Jordan with Fungus Fire
Ironically, Paul was also my first round matchup. In between our test games and the tournament, he added four Sensei’s Divining Tops, cutting some of the marginal cards.
Game One I won by flipping Jushi Apprentice and showing Paul two counterspells. The game had gone long and I was pretty sure that Paul just had mana in his hand.
Game Two Paul and I were both manascrewed. I discarded three times (including one of my big Legends), but Paul was stuck on two despite having double Top. In his efforts to get more land, I was actually able to counter both of the Tops at one point or another, and draw into Meloku, Meloku, Keiga. Paul eventually ran out of relevant White cards and Keiga got him.
Game Three was the first sideboarded game (this tournament was best of five with sideboarding only after the first two games). Paul was on the play and I thought it would be important to hold in his mana advantage so I Forced Sakura-Tribe Elder on his second turn. This ended up costing me the game. I now think that you can’t play to manage the Green deck’s mana accelerators. Mono-Blue has a lot of permission, but only a few real hard counters; therefore you kind of have to save the counters for the cards that matter and let the opponent have the Elders and Reaches. I don’t remember how I lost exactly, only that if I had saved the Disrupting Shoal I would have won.
Game Four I didn’t make a bad Force, so I just won. Basically, I found that even though Fungus Fire has a lot of White Removal that seems relevant (Wrath of God, Faith’s Fetters, Devouring Light), counters are quite good enough to stop those cards because the Blue threats are so insane. There is no way that a deck that essentially relies on Vitu-Ghazi for its offense can run with Keiga and Meloku, not before the game is over, anyway. I like Vitu-Ghazi, don’t get me wrong, I just think that the philosophy of Fungus Fire is flawed. Vitu-Ghazi is good in a deck that has real threats as kind of a cleanup act that comes online to close the game; it’s a bit slow if it’s your only facility to win.
In sum, Fungus Fire doesn’t seem to have any kind of a logical plan to me. Like there are so few cards that matter, you can kind of let the opponent have whatever he wants and only deal with the Sunforgers. Whoever designed this deck probably wasn’t thinking about Hinder or Remand when he put in Firemane Angel as the primary kill card. I honestly don’t know how you are supposed to win with no Godos. Nothing about this deck makes sense to me.
1-0, 3-1
Round Two: Rich Fein with Critical Mass Update
Rich was one of two players running the Critical Mass Update in this tournament. Generally I think that the matchup favors U/G, but I was able to beat Rich 3-0 by a combination of luck and trickery.
In Game One, I kept all land and a Jushi Apprentice but Rich went to Paris twice. By turn 4, I had more counters in my hand than Rich had cards in his hand and he scooped.
In Game Two, I let Rich get his Vinelasher Kudzu to 7/7 and then won a fight over Threads of Disloyalty. There wasn’t much he could do to stop me here because Remand is really good in a permission fight, being two mana and all. After I stole the Lasher, I just played Rich’s game and defended my Threads CounterSliver style until I had won.
In Game Three, Rich, under instruction from Mike Clair, decided to fight for the early game, maximizing his Vinelasher offense, bringing in his Jushi Apprentices, Threads of Disloyalty, plus all his Naturalizes and Rending Vines. I figured that was how Rich would sideboard so I took out my Jushi Apprentices and Threads of Disloyalty, and sided in the fourth Meloku, Cranial Extraction (I was pretty sure he had taken out Shadow of Doubt), and my Rewinds and land. In this configuration I was actually a less strategic deck, but I thought it would be better to try to play a “Tinker” game with mana and bombs than fight over the early game essentials. I would be on the wrong end of any Jushi Apprentice or Threads of Disloyalty fight due to Rich’s breaking the system with Rending Vines.
Via this rather odd sideboarding, I came out on top. I drew enough Boomerangs to keep Rich’s Lasher manageable, and just tapped into Meloku once I thought the coast was clear. Rich had drawn one of his two remaining Melokus for the 187, but I had the Disrupting Shoal and a redundant Meloku, so the game de-volved into a standoff. We both kind of sat there for a while, neither attacking, but Rich had three active Jushi Apprentices by the late game. It was inevitable that he would find a way to deal the last four points of damage despite being reduced to playing Threads of Disloyalty on my Illusion tokens (I actually countered one of the Threads). The last turn I picked up all my lands and went for 11; Clair had had Rich remove the Arashi so he actually had no outs against that play.
It was “right” strategically, but really kids, Don’t Try This At Home.
2-0, 6-1
Round Three: Steve Sadin with WW/Ninjas
I was rooting for Julian Levin, Steve’s opponent, to win the previous round; rather than his highly dangerous beatdown/Ninja/counterspell deck, Julian was playing Gifts Ungiven, which is a great matchup for Mono-Blue. But alas, Steve won, and his Aggro-Control deck seemed primed for victory.
Game One, Steve opened on Lantern Kami directly into Ninja of the Deep Hours (net +1 cards) but I traded with a Quicksand, which put me on one land. I tried to counter something just to buy time in the midgame, but Steve countered back, apparently expecting to win the game as easiliy as he had the counter war. He didn’t. With what I expected was his only permission spell clear, I got down Meloku and the scoop quickly followed.
Game Two was the exact same thing… Steve had a one drop into a Ninja, I had the Quicksand, yadda yadda yadda, Melokie Dokie.
Games Three and Four I didn’t have the Quicksand. In Three, the Deep Hours did what it was supposed to do; in Game Four, I just took a million damage from Isamaru. I would actually have won Game Four with two more life points as I went into the Legend twins on Six and Seven (skip five, counter backup on Meloku), but Steve had one Lantern Kami too many and I lost. I drew Duskmantle, House of Shadow in both games, meaning that I would actually have won them both if I had just not made the stupid change.
Side note on Duskmantle, House of Shadow:
I actually thought this card was going to be a HOUSE of Shadow, but in fact it’s not very good. Like for every Sensei’s Divining Top you trick to the bin, there are probably three times you give a Top player a free look with this card; also since we were playing with proxies, I was even sloppier than usual, and actually twisted my mana tapping so that I could Use The Stupid Duskmantle instead of more logical stuff. More than anything else, it put me into Game Five against Steve when I should have mopped him up 1, 2, 3. Don’t play it.
The above side note courtesy of Quicksand. “Play Me! Please.” -Flavor Text on Quicksand
Game Five I was on the play and had all the answers. Sadly, Steve had no answer for Melokie Doke. He did have Bathe in Light, but was two points shy of a lethal alpha before I had complete control.
3-0, 9-3
You’ve probably figured it out already, but my recommendation for Champs this year is once again Blue Control. It consistently beats Gifts, WW, and Boros, creams any less focused control deck, and even has game against CounterSliver decks like Critcal Mass. I don’t think G/B is very good, and I know it can’t make it past the ubiquitous Boros decks in stock form, which is good for Blue Control even though I don’t personally want to be paired against Hypnotic Specter every round. Just make sure you play with four Quicksands starting and you should be good to go for Champs.
Good luck unless you are playing me tomorrow.
LOVE
MIKE