A Little Bit Of Everything

It should come as no surprise, then, that my Grand Prix performances since Honolulu run together a bit in my head. I’ve played a whole lot of Magic in a wide range of formats, but I’ve done a great deal of it in a glazed-over sleep-deprived state that isn’t conducive to great play or accurate recollection. So instead of trying to go too in depth on any one of my experiences, I’m going to cover bits and pieces here and there to try and crystalize the lessons to be learned from my experiences.

Lesson number one is don’t do what I’ve been doing. It should really be obvious, but somehow I’d convinced myself that I’d be okay running on fumes at all of these tournaments. Despite taking liberal advantage of the sleep-in-special at every one of the events, I was hazy and unfocused before the end of the first day of all of them. I realize this is one of those things that every generic Magic advice article says, but it’s the truth. Magic is a mentally exhausting game, and if you come into a tournament already operating below peak mental capacity, you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

I know when I get tired, my focus starts to slip, and I make all kinds of absurd mistakes because I miss incredibly obvious things about the game state. Here’s a list of just a few of my less-than-stellar plays in recent events:

• Completely forgot about Doran’s text when my opponent attacked a Dark Confidant into my untapped 2/2.
• Zealous Persecutioned an opponent with Martyr of Sands and a black source untapped because I thought it could only be sacrificed with white mana.
• Attacked a Spirit token into an opposing Stormbound Geist thinking my creature didn’t have flying.
• Upkeeped two Noble Hierarchs for Tabernacle for a dozen turns before trying to tap them to Armageddon, only to be told by my opponent that they couldn’t add mana thanks to Cursed Totem.
• Misregistered my Legacy deck when I copied it over for the third time, leaving off my singleton Sylvan Library.

Don’t try this at home, folks. I’m a professional.

This is hardly a comprehensive list of my blunders over the last month of events. There are certainly others—and these are just the mistakes that I noticed! I like to think that I’m somewhat above this level of buffoonery when I’m playing up to my usual standards. I do have the occasional brain fart even when I’m on my game, but not nearly this frequently.

For point of comparison, in the back half of last year’s GP schedule I made day 2 at every Grand Prix I played in and placed in the Top 64 or better in all of those. This year, I’ve already missed day 2 at four of the six GPs I’ve played, barely squeaking into Top 64 at GP Austin, and posted a sole Top 16 finish in Lincoln as my only finish worth noting.

I can’t keep up with this sort of schedule anymore. Since I’m already guaranteed both Platinum and a spot in the Player’s Championship, the only value I gain from PT points is trying to maintain my lead over LSV for the top American slot for the World Magic Cup. He’s already gained something like five points on me since Honolulu, but realistically the race is just going to come down to who does better in Barcelona since the Pro Tour is worth so much. While I really want to carry the American flag, I have to be pragmatic and recognize that I’m just incinerating money on plane tickets and hotel rooms with how I’m playing.

I’d already been planning on skipping GP Nashville due to a conflicting engagement (www.beyondwonderland.com—priorities, people). I decided to skip GP Mexico City when I couldn’t find any reasonable tickets. I’m probably going to end up going to Salt Lake City since it looks like I can get a direct flight, but I’m not 100% on even that one at this point.

I talked to the powers-that-be at Wizards while I was in Seattle, and they recognize that the GP schedule so far has been packed together too closely. The rest of the year looks much more reasonable, and should hopefully give those of us who are playing the game and seeing the world a chance to rest now and then. I know that I’m far more excited than I reasonably should be that I won’t be traveling to any tournaments in the month of April, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I start to get that itch to battle before the month is up.

The takeaway from this is that it’s important to keep things in perspective. I see a lot of players making huge sacrifices to travel to event after event and more often than not leave with nothing to show for it. Every now and then, you need to take a step back and re-evaluate what you’re doing. It’s easy to shoot yourself in the foot before the tournament even starts or burn yourself out if you don’t give yourself a break now and then. Between the expanded Grand Prix circuit and the SCG Open Series and the like, there are a lot of opportunities to play in big tournaments out there. If you’re anything like me, you may be better off not going to all of them, even if you might feel like you want to.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system—time for some honest to goodness Magic technology.

I realized that since I spent two weeks writing my Honolulu report, a week talking about GP Baltimore, and week talking about Legacy that I haven’t actually discussed my Doran deck from Lincoln at any point. I did record a Daily with it, which you can find here, but I never actually posted the list or discussed it. So, without further ado:

Doran

Brian Kibler

Test deck on 03-11-2012

Modern

Creatures (22)

• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 3 Doran, the Siege Tower
• 3 Treefolk Harbinger
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Knight of the Reliquary
• 4 Qasali Pridemage

Planeswalkers (2)

• 2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Lands (23)

• 2 Forest
• 1 Plains
• 2 Treetop Village
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 2 Horizon Canopy
• 2 Murmuring Bosk
• 4 Marsh Flats
• 4 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Stirring Wildwood

Spells (13)

• 1 Slaughter Pact
• 1 Nameless Inversion
• 1 Thoughtseize
• 3 Path to Exile
• 2 Maelstrom Pulse
• 2 Zealous Persecution
• 3 Inquisition of Kozilek

Sideboard

• 1 Choke
• 1 Slaughter Pact
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 1 Reveillark
• 3 Kitchen Finks
• 1 Zealous Persecution
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1 Nihil Spellbomb
• 1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
• 1 Grafdigger's Cage

Things worth noting here:

Doran is awesome. He hits super hard, and he’s very difficult for a lot of decks to remove efficiently. This deck features the “Tree Combo” from our PT Amsterdam deck, which is Treefolk Harbinger, Treetop Village, and two other lands that can be used to cast Doran. If you play a turn one Treefolk Harbinger fetching Treefolk Harbinger, you can play the second Harbinger on turn two to fetch Doran. On turn three, you play Doran and attack for six. On turn four, you activate Treetop Village and attack with everything, which is fourteen more—aka exactly twenty damage.

Zealous Persecution has a ton of applications. It kills Dark Confidant, Vendilion Clique, Squadron Hawk, Lingering Souls tokens, Steppe Lynx, opposing Hierarchs, Empty the Warren tokens, Pestermites, Grim Lavamancers, and virtually every creature in Affinity (or “Artifact Aggro” as people are calling it these days. Frogmite or not, I’m calling that deck Affinity forever). You can turn trades into chump blocks, survive for a turn against Deceiver/Twin even with a Spellskite in play, and mess up your opponent’s combat math to kill them out of nowhere. I haven’t been keeping close tabs on the Modern metagame but if it’s anything like it was in Lincoln, I’d consider playing the fourth Persecution in the sideboard. It’s downright awesome.

Pridemage is similarly great. This guy is almost universally underrated in every format in which he’s legal. He provides a remarkably efficient aggressive body with an awesomely flexible utility. He handles Swords, Batterskulls, Splinter Twins, Cranial Platings, Pyromancer Ascensions, and any number of other potential problem cards when needed and contributes to a solid beatdown plan the rest of the time.

I won’t say that this deck is some kind of brilliant answer to the Modern metagame, but I managed to go 12-3 at GP Lincoln while repeatedly forgetting how Doran works. That’s gotta count for something, right?

Now that you’ve seen a good deck—want to see a bad one?

Here’s my sealed pool from GP Seattle:

To use the Sickbrew Sealed widget, click (don’t drag) individual cards from the pool into either the Junk, Pool, or Deck sections. You can click multiple cards at a time to move them all at once! Sort by cost, rarity, and color.

• 2 Artful Dodge
• 1 Bone to Ash
• 1 Selhoff Occultist
• 1 Stitcher’s Apprentice
• 1 Chant of the Skirsdag
• 1 Forbidden Alchemy
• 1 Relentless Skaabs
• 1 Sturmgeist
• 1 Increasing Confusion
• 1 Stormbound Geist
• 2 Curse of Exhaustion
• 1 Bar the Door
• 1 Increasing Devotion
• 1 Smite the Monstrous
• 1 Loyal Cathar
• 1 Midnight Guard
• 1 Doomed Traveler
• 1 Gather the Townsfolk
• 1 Spectral Rider
• 1 Gavony Ironwright
• 1 Sudden Disappearance
• 1 Break of Day
• 1 Unruly Mob
• 1 Boneyard Wurm
• 1 Somberwald Dryad
• 1 Village Survivors
• 1 Prey Upon
• 1 Grizzled Outcasts
• 1 Ambush Viper
• 1 Ulvenwald Bear
• 1 Mulch
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Crushing Vines
• 2 Woodland Sleuth
• 1 Spidery Grasp
• 1 Moonmist
• 2 Favor of the Woods
• 2 Ancient Grudge
• 2 Fling
• 2 Infernal Plunge
• 1 Scorch the Fields
• 3 Ashmouth Hound
• 1 Afflicted Deserter
• 1 Tormented Pariah
• 1 Skirsdag Cultist
• 1 Heretic’s Punishment
• 1 Village Ironsmith
• 1 Nearheath Stalker
• 1 Forge[/author] Devil”][author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] Devil
• 1 Geistflame
• 1 Traitorous Blood
• 1 Erdwal Ripper
• 1 Corpse Lunge
• 1 Curse of Thirst
• 1 Gravepurge
• 1 Walking Corpse
• 1 Typhoid Rats
• 1 Night Terrors
• 1 Vengeful Vampire
• 1 Chosen of Markov
• 1 Death’s Caress
• 1 Highborn Ghoul
• 1 Morkrut Banshee
• 1 Markov Patrician
• 1 Stromkirk Captain
• 1 Geistcatcher’s Rig
• 1 Avacyn’s Collar
• 1 Sharpened Pitchfork
• 1 Chalice of Life
• 1 Cellar Door
• 1 Heavy Mattock
• 1 Graveyard Shovel
• 1 Traveler’s Amulet
• 1 Inquisitor’s Flail

I’ll just let you bask in the glory of that monstrous pool for a bit while you ponder how you’d construct it yourself. After all, I may not be going to GP Nashville, but I suspect some of you might be and maybe you’ll end up with a similarly exciting pool that you’ll have to make the best of.

So what did you see? The best cards in the pool are clearly Increasing Devotion and Increasing Confusion, so my first inclination was to try to build a controlling U/W deck to try to win with those two rares. Unfortunately, both blue and white leave a lot to be desired in the creature department as well as the removal department as well as the housewares and men’s furnishings departments. In fact, the only thing either color really has going for it is its respective rare. Sturmgeist and Stormbound Geist are my only fliers, and Chant of the Skirsdag is the only way to stop a flier unless it happens to die to Smite the Monstrous. Oh, and there isn’t a single four-drop in either color.

Green offers essentially nothing and can be quickly dismissed. The only exciting card in the entire color is Prey Upon, and the creatures aren’t even that good. It does have a pair of four-drops, though, if I’m looking to investigate some crime in the forest.

That leaves black and red, which actually have a reasonable assortment of creatures, albeit very little that’s particularly exciting. There’s a bit of removal but not all that much—only Geistflame, Forge[/author] Devil”][author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] Devil, Corpse Lunge, and Death’s Caress, along with Morkrut Banshee if I trigger morbid. There’s also Heretic’s Punishment, which is somewhere between a bomb and completely unplayable depending on how fast your opponent’s deck is. It’s a great way to break through in a stalemate, though, which is something a removal-light deck certainly needs.

Ultimately, here’s the deck I decided to play: 

3 Ashmouth Hound
1 Afflicted Deserter
1 Tormented Pariah
1 Skirsdag Cultist
1 Heretic’s Punishment
1 Nearheath Stalker
1 Forge[/author] Devil”][author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] Devil
1 Erdwal Ripper
1 Vengeful Vampire
1 Chosen of Markov
1 Highborn Ghoul
1 Morkrut Banshee
1 Markov Patrician
1 Stromkirk Captain
1 Geistcatcher’s Rig

1 Geistflame
1 Traitorous Blood
1 Corpse Lunge
1 Death’s Caress

9 Mountain
8 Forest

This deck’s biggest vulnerability was against high-toughness ground creatures—a single Horned Turtle is nearly unbeatable. Against slower controlling decks without many aggressive fliers, I sideboarded into this deck: 

1 Selhoff Occultist
1 Stitcher’s Apprentice
1 Relentless Skaabs
1 Stormbound Geist
1 Sturmgeist
1 Loyal Cathar
1 Midnight Guard
1 Doomed Traveler
1 Spectral Rider
1 Gavony Ironwright
1 Unruly Mob
1 Geistcatcher’s Rig

1 Chant of the Skifsang
1 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Increasing Confusion
1 Bone to Ash
1 Increasing Devotion
1 Smite the Monstrous
1 Gather the Townsfolk
1 Sudden Disappearance
1 Break of Day
1 Avacyn’s Collar
1 Sharpened Pitchfork

9 Plains
8 Islands

This deck couldn’t reasonably beat any kind of aggressive deck with fliers, since it had basically only Chant and Rig to possibly stop them. Against slower decks, though, it had a lot of tools to lock up the ground and win the long game with bomb rares.

I managed to finish 6-3 in the Grand Prix, losing in the last round on camera to Matt Sperling to miss day 2, who had a U/W deck complete with Gavony Ironwright and a plethora of cheap fliers. My worst nightmare!

How would you have built this pool?

And last, but not least, Standard. Hooray!

I’ve been playing a decent amount on Magic Online with the following deck:

B/W Aggro

Test deck on 03-11-2012

Standard

Creatures (20)

• 4 Mirran Crusader
• 4 Blade Splicer
• 4 Elite Inquisitor
• 4 Doomed Traveler
• 4 Loyal Cathar

Planeswalkers (5)

• 1 Elspeth Tirel
• 4 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

Lands (24)

• 12 Plains
• 5 Swamp
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 4 Isolated Chapel
• 2 Vault of the Archangel

Spells (11)

• 3 Oblivion Ring
• 4 Honor of the Pure
• 4 Lingering Souls

Sideboard

• 2 Divine Offering
• 2 Celestial Purge
• 2 Doom Blade
• 2 Day of Judgment
• 1 Gideon Jura
• 1 Elspeth Tirel
• 1 Revoke Existence
• 2 Nihil Spellbomb
• 1 Batterskull
• 1 Vault of the Archangel

Basically, my thought is that Lingering Souls is awesome but I think the token decks people have made with it are terrible. They’re far too devoted to the token theme, playing too many cards that are dependent on other cards to be even remotely playable. Their token generators suck if they don’t draw a crusade effect or if it’s destroyed, and their crusades suck if they don’t draw enough token makers or if they run into an opponent with Ratchet Bombs.

So instead I built a B/W Aggro deck that uses Lingering Souls because it’s just a damn good card. I briefly had Champion of the Parish and Gather the Townsfolk in the deck, but I felt like I was ending up in the same spot as the token decks—the two cards were great when I drew them together but terrible when I drew them apart.

Instead, I’m playing a selection of resilient and well-positioned creatures. Elite Inquisitor is downright awesome in the current metagame—he’s a nightmare for Zombies to deal with and can hold off Geists of the Strangleroot and Saint Traft variety alike, all while attacking for two each turn. Blade Splicer is similarly awesome against opposing creature decks and gives you a bit of cushion against Sword of War and Peace with the artifact body. Mirran Crusader is great against the field, presenting a huge clock against control and pushing past the hordes of black and green creatures. All of these creatures’ first strike synergizes quite well with Vault of the Archangel, which can turn virtually any race situation around and help you take out huge creatures.

The cards that I’m the least sure about are Doomed Traveler and Sorin. Doomed Traveler is mostly around for curve considerations, and he can provide a nice speed bump when they deck doesn’t come together too quickly, but he’s pretty low impact against most decks. Sorin is pretty hit or miss. He can be absolutely devastating when you’re at parity or ahead, but his low loyalty makes him pretty hard to use if you’re ever behind. I do like the fact that he makes black creatures so you have extra outs to Sword of War and Peace, and the lifelink can help keep you alive as he gums up the board, but for four mana he often just doesn’t do quite enough.

All told, I like the deck, and I’ve had a lot of success with it online against a variety of archetypes. I plan on continuing to tinker with it over the next few weeks, and if it seems up to the challenge I’ll give it a spin at the SCG Invitational in Baltimore. If anyone has any ideas for the deck I’d be more than happy to listen.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. I need some sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

-bmk