A Look at English Nationals and the BEST Deck in Standard

I have not read or seen very much Stephen King, but allow me to in my ignorance discuss him for a while. Humor me. For those of

you who haven’t seen IT, skip this paragraph before I spoil the ending for you. I hate people who give away the endings of

movies. I have yet to see Sixth Sense either, but after years of managing to shut everyone up who talked about it, the ending was

leaked to me, and though I still have yet to see it, I am sure that my viewing of it will have been tarnished. However, some films

can be talked about without spoiling them, and I feel IT is one of them. It also contains one of my reasons why I

instinctively distrust anyone who says that King is amazing. It has this scary clown. I mean… really frigging scary. The kind of

scary nightmares are made of. And you, the audience, is gripped by just how scary this clown is, until it is tracked down to its

lair when, for no reason, without any explanation or even possible very subtle hints, it turns into a big arachnid. A big,

completely unscary film-ruining spider. Ooooh sooo scary.

The only thing I have read of Mr. King is his book Insomnia. I really enjoyed the book. All of it was great, except

for the last few chapters, where things go weird and strange, and quite frankly, awful. In a similar way to the spider, he

introduced a level of surrealism at the end that just was not necessary. The rest of the book however was fantastic. It showed how

people suffering from insomnia live and how it ruins their lives in the most bizarre of ways. At first, I was like, “Whatever

– they just do not sleep. How bad can that be?” And then you realize that their whole mentality breaks down. They turn into

empty shells of their former selves, everything becomes an arduous chore. Do you have any idea what a blessing it is to be able to

sleep at night?

You may be wondering where this is all going. The brighter ones among you out there must have already figured out why I am

chatting about horror stories with no seeming relevance to the world of Magic. Yessir, it is because I, your humble writer, have

been suffering from insomnia. And it really is a living hell, this I can assure you. Great timing too. Just when I had decided to

quit all naughty excesses, cut down on my alcohol consumption, improve my diet and get more regular sleep to be thoroughly mentally

prepared for Nationals, it all went tits up.

This is all really a long and elaborate excuse for why I sucked at Nats. I went a miserable, life time low of 6-4-1-drop.

Looking back at my games and the notes I took of them, it seemed like there was little I could have done to change the results. Of

my four loses, only one of them was a real match that was close and that might have been decided by play skill. Two of them were

down to lousy judging (more later). The one error I can identify is a single draft pick, which I think came down to color

preference, but if either option was correct it was likely the one I did not take. Phew, the whining is now over (most of it

anyway).

In the Constructed portion, split over two days but reassembled here for narrative ease, I went 3-1-1. I felt I was playing the

best deck and the best version of the said best deck, my version of U Tron. I played vs. three Tooth decks, one Red Deck Wins and a

mirror match. The draw should’ve been a win versus Tooth, but was not due to bad judges and their inability to enforce penalties

for slow play (my opponent was finally awarded a warning for slow play, and then another for taking too long whilesideboarding),

one table judge had to be replaced for his ineptness, but by then ten minutes had been wasted and the damage had already been done.

In the last turn of extra time, my opponent had been Mindslavered and was left with only two land in play, nothing but land on top

of his library, no Tron pieces in sight and a hand of nothing against my eleven mana, active Jushi Apprentice and with five counters in

hand, but not a damage dealing threat to be found.

My loss was to Dan Paskins playing Red, my worst matchup. No games of Magic were played however, as my double mulligan to five

in both games led me to keep a single land plus Top hand twice. In the first, the lone land was a Power Plant and my Top revealed

the remaining three copies and in the second, the Top revealed no more land at all! I want to make one thing very clear: I have no

problem with what happened in that match – mana screw is just something that happens when you play Magic, the games you should have

a problem about losing are the ones where you misplayed or could have otherwise changed the result of the match. Nothing I could

have done would have changed the outcome of that match and it is just something that one has to take in their stride.

I dropped before I played the last round as I was seething about the draw. To make it worse, due to completely awful

tiebreakers (compared to mine, the best in the tournament for some bizarre reason!) my opponent had known he was out of contention

for top eight whilst I was still very much in the running, and chose not to concede when asked at the end of the game. I cannot

stand people who play like that. Sure, competitiveness can be a little too extreme now and again, and there is definitely a place

for casual gaming, but the penultimate round of Nationals, whilst still being in the running is not the time or place. It was not

like we had had a bad match, despite the presence of the judges. The games were fun and light hearted, I had even let him take back

a game losing mistake when he had accidentally made a second Tron piece on turn 2 instead of a Forest so he could cast his Sakura-Tribe Elder. Rereading this

paragraph, I guess I’m not over the incompetence of the judging or the slowness of my opponent. At the end of the day, it was just

a bad beat. There are worse coming.

I’ve deliberately held off from talking about the deck itself until now. To silence the critics, this is the best deck. Sam

Gomersall played an identical version to come third, going 6-3 with it. The total performance was 10-4 if you count my draw as the

win it should have been. Those stats are admittedly neither awe-inspiring nor large enough to use as anything other than a rule of

thumb, but this deck beats absolutely everything that is not White Weenie or Red. By everything I mean every deck that I have seen

so far, every deck that has made Top 8 of a Regionals that is not Red or White loses to this deck. I have no clue about what

happens when Ninth rotates in, but the absence of Plow Under can only be a good thing, and will probably lead to a decrease of both Tooth and more importantly Red

(working on the loose assumption that other decks will appear, and Red will have to change to deal with them rather than being

happy to just beat Tooth).

I cannot stress how much this deck has been tested. Every single card has been subjected to over fifty MODO games, each time

the deck was changed, even by as little as one card, it had to run the fifty game gauntlet to be approved. The only

“slots” main deck are the Echoing

Truth and even then they are very good as Truths and all other attempts to improve on them have been sub par. Chrome Moxes were closest card that almost made

the deck, but they just did not seem to do enough. The sideboard, however, contains wonders. It has been suggested that Melokus and Threads of Disloyalty are needed to

combat White Weennie, but the Melokus are far inferior to the Masticores as they still get shut off by Dampening Matrix and the Threads do not do

enough.

Many people who have played this deck have come to the conclusion that Sun Droplet is the best card against Red. Those people

simply have not tested enough. The Droplet is good, and it was in my Sideboard from the beginning. However I soon realized

something very important. In the games that red would win, the Droplets did nothing. I’m talking about draws that included turn one

Slith, Slith on the play, a Jinxed Choker, a

two-drop backed up by a Zo-zu. The Droplets just got

overwhelmed. In a head to head battle Droplet vs. both Choker and Slith, the Red deck wins. I have not even mentioned Genju of the Spires or the fact that they

are likely to board Shatters! The games the

Droplet helped in, it was normally possible for the deck to win any way, the Droplet just made those games easier.

What was needed was a card that could beat their good draws, the ones where the deck could never normally win. The first card

that was actually doing well was the unlikely Kaijin of Vanishing Touch. It answered their little men, their Sliths and their Genjus. But it was too slow. A

turn 1 Slith on the play was a 3/3 by the time you got to block it, so all the Kaijin did was bounce it. The Kaijin died to Volcanic Hammer. The Kaijin, like the

Droplet, left you tapped out and unable to counter for a vital turn letting them resolve anything from Seething Song, Slogger/Salt,

to simply a game winning Zo-zu. When I gave the deck to Raph Levy for his Nats, it still had the Kaijins as well as the Twincast board. He confirmed that the Kaijins were

good, but just not good enough. I went back to the drawing board.

One of my first attempts was to try and include Trinket Mages; by cutting some Tops main and some valuable board space for

other things, Mages were added. Their targets: Aether Spellbomb, Pithing

Needle, Top, Mox and Steel Wall. Fifty games later and the Mages themselves turned out to be cruddy but the Steel Wall was

golden in the few games I drew it. So they were upped to four and the Mages were put back on the bench.

Wow! That was my first reaction to the Steelies. They changed that matchup by about 10%. You no longer died to their

“God” draws if you had a Wall. What was even better was that it fitted the curve, so that you could cast them and still

counter on turn 3, or cast it on turn 1 and then counter the rest of their game. They covered all of the holes Droplet and Kaijin

were trying to cover, except one: the Genju. Red Genju was still an immense pain. But after trying to find an answer to them, like

switching the Truths for Boomerangs, I had to

settle with what I had found and just concede that Genju’s were a hole in my plan. Let’s hope that no one starts playing the Green

Genju in Tooth just for this matchup!

The Masticores are worth their weight in gold for the WW match up. They ignore the Matrix, and with the exception of being out

raced by Nexi, there is almost nothing their deck can do about them other than Terashi’s Grasp it. If they do not have the

removal in that one turn, you will untap with counter magic and the game is yours. They are also very good vs. Red, giving you a

threat that can actually race them in addition to the Trikes. It also deals with Genju in the same way that Trike does, holding it

off for long enough for you to clinch that unlikely win.

This brings us to the anti control cards. Otherwise known as the four two-ofs. These slots have normally been what is now known

as the “Twincast” board: 4 Twincast,

1 Uyo, Silent Prophet, 1 Mephidross Vampire and a Sakashima the Imposter. A brief

explanation for those of you who do not know what it does. When your opponent resolves a Tooth, even if they used the Boseiju, if

you had a Twincast in your hand it meant you had won the game instead of them. One Twincasts the Tooth, fetching Uyo and a

Triskelion, then used Uyo’s ability to fork the Tooth again, finding a Vampire and the Imposter which copies the Vampire. When

their Tooth resolves there is no combination of men they can find that won’t leave them dead, as your Trike can go nigh on infinite

thanks to the two Vampires. This sideboard strategy is ridiculously powerful, turning your opponents win condition into yours

instead, forcing them to morph into creatures against you – effectively conceding the matchup. The Twincasts also doubled as very

useful spells vs. Tooth, the mirror and Mono Blue Control; they were used either to copy things like Plow Under or counterspells

for UU. As I mentioned, this was the board when Raph used the deck and he was mightily impressed by it. The reason why Sam and I

chose not to run it was at first because we did not have enough slots left in the board to combat Red and the other matchups

efficiently. We were also afraid that the surprise value of the board had been lost, meaning that if Tooth converted to the man

plan, you were left with redundant cards. In hindsight, the Sakashima and Uyo are still very good versus the men Tooth boards in.

If you would want to run the Twincast board you would have to cut the Borders, Jushis and Rewinds and one of the Annuls. However you would have to squeeze in room for

the second Annul again and maybe at too high a price. But enough of the board that we did not run.

The Annuls are one of the most needed cards in the board mainly for their incredible versatility and for their ability to deal

with some of your most hated cards: Genjus, Moxen, Tops, the mirror, Pithing Needles, Aether Vials, equipment, Jinxed Choker and

the dreaded Dampening Matrix. The Shifting

Borders are useful as an instant threat in the mirror (especially when comboed by first stacking Oboro’s ability and then

casting it for maximum effect) and for Tooth were they do the same thing but, more importantly, can steal their Boseiju so you have

no problem winning. The Jushi Apprentices are one of my favorite touches as they rule the mirror, are useful vs. Tooth and

incredible against Blue decks. They were being run main at one point when we had Moxen. They are just an earlyish threat that can

be forced through that means that you will always be the person who does not act first. By that I mean that the other person will

have less chance of finding Tron, and more chance of being the one to miss land drops first which is a huge disadvantage. The one

who breaks first under the pressure is almost always the one who loses. Rewinds are the coverall of the board. In any slow match up

they come in to shore up the number of hard counters. They are very good in combination with the Jushis and also serve the purpose

of being very good if Tooth does transform.

Those four cards were going through my head as rapidly as the proverbial sheep when I tried to get some much needed kip. I

somehow felt that two of them were redundant and I desperately wanted another Borders in the board. I tried cutting one of the

cards for it but then it just made sense to cut the other copy of the cut card as well and use it to beef up another one of the

two-ofs. I never came to a solid conclusion but I am happy with the way the board is now.

Enough of the constructed portion, back to the boring report style bit. Only once have I ever posted a 3-3 record in the

Limited portion of Nats and this was seven years ago, in my first Nationals, which also doubled as my first ever drafts. I was

appalled to repeat that dreadful performance this year. It was in the first draft that I can find the only mistake I made that led

to my sub par performance. After opening a fairly dead pack with only a Yamabushi’s Flame and a Strength of Cedars, I picked the Strength.

I am very happy with this pick as I dislike Red in CBS. It is the second pick where everything went wrong. It featured a choice

between a Glacial Ray and a Thief of Hope with the rare missing. I am very

partial to both R/G and G/B as draft archetypes and I love me a Thief of Hope. I was also very conscious of the Flame I had passed

in the previous pack. For some reason I took the Ray and not the Thief and ended up with a sub par R/G deck instead of what would

have been a solid GB deck. I still do not know why I picked the Ray. I think this was an error but I am sure that there are many

people who happily pick the Ray. Shrug.

My second draft was incredible. I was spoon fed the most ridiculous W/U deck by the person on my right, which was lucky as my

concentration levels were disappearing due to the side effects my insomnia kicking in. I had no draft choices to make until the

first pick of Saviors! I opened an 8.5 Tails, got shipped a Nagao then wheeled the only other playable White card

out of my first booster. I got a 10th pick Kami of Ancient Law, an 11th pick Blessed Breath and then another Koala 12th pick! All of which I was loath to pass the first time around but I had to

pick my Teller of Tales fourth and cards

of similar value over them. The whole draft is featured on the Nationals coverage, which should be up soon. Despite this ridiculous

deck (2 Waxmanes, Hand of Honor and other

such tasty cards were also to be had), I was very worried about my semi finals opponents. Ben Ronaldson had a very good R/B deck

with all the removal and all the good creatures and Chris Stocking, the man feeding me who unfortunately finished ninth on

tiebreakers, had an equally impressive R/B deck with the awesome Jitte and Kiku. I lost to Ben in close games despite being color

screwed in the first two games before finally finding an Island in the third to lose to his turn two Hand of Cruelty followed up by an Ogre Marauder and a plethora of removal. I was

a lucky receiver of a —BYE— in the last round as it seemed most of the pod had already dropped!

My last bad beat handed to me by the judging staff occurred in the last round of the first draft. I had a Feral Lightning, a Kodama’s Might, a Barrel-Down Sokenzan and a Glacial Ray

in my hand as well as a few creatures. I had several men on the board including two snakes with the “Tap for a turn if they

deal damage” ability whilst he had a Myojin of Cleansing Fire in play with its counter still on it. It was the last turn I would be able to attack to actually

get some damage through and I was confident that my inexperienced opponent would not know that if he blocked one of the snakes with

the Myojin it would still tap it due to the bizarre indestructible rule which states that “It cannot die from lethal

damage” rather than “Prevent all damage dealt to it”. If he blocked, then my attack next turn would force him to

blow the Wrath and then allow me to win with Feral Lightning and then burn him out with Ray splicing action. It was fairly obvious

that he would block one of my snakes, as he did not want the counter to trade for the Strength of Cedars he feared I had in my

hand. A complicated board position to be sure.

I call a judge over to double check the snake/indestructible interaction, and before she can reach the table I indicate her to

stay away, as I obviously do not wish to discuss the ruling in front of my opponent. The head judge ambles over out of interest and

I get him to confirm that the ruling is as I suspected. He then asks me to correctly ask the question to the other judge, who was

reasonably inexperienced, so as to instruct her how to correctly answer a rules question without inadvertently coaching the player.

I left the judges to it and returned to the table. I double-checked all the maths, ensuring that it would work out as I wanted and

was about to make the attack when the ‘bad’ judge reappeared over my shoulder. She then pointed at all the relevant cards saying

something like "If you’d just asked how this card affected this card with such and such ability, I could’ve answered

easily." OMFG! My opponent’s face revealed that he had had no clue that that would be the case and I went ballistic. All the

head judge could do was profusely apologize for the judge’s behavior and allow the game to continue. That was obviously the correct

ruling, but damn did it sting hard that a judge had thrown the game for me after I had made it clear to her that her presence at

the table was not wanted. I mean…

A few turns later and I had not drawn the cards I needed to break through the Myojin (Serpent Skin/Molting Skin), he had drawn and cast a Hankyu and then a Freed from the Real on the Myojin, so I

was forced to make an attack using the Feral Lightning that knocked him to eight. All I needed was one of my two arcane spells left

in the deck to splice him out with the Ray but it was not to be. It was not to be and I succumbed in the second game to a

combination of Kitsune Healer, Patron of

the Kitsune and Yosei! It was unlikely that my deck

would have won another game against his deck but that is beside the point.

The rest of the tournament went well leaving England with the first good Worlds team in a while. The tournament showcased a lot

of good decks that will hopefully have effects on the other nationals. Mark Knight’s second place Erayo Ninja Affinity, my deck and

Neil Rigby’s “Fatty’s Last Chance” a Pristine Angel/Worship U/W control deck

were all highly innovative. I hope that this report has read less like a bitter whining session and more like a tale of bizarre

events including a strategically angled look at the best deck in the format. Nationals continues to be an event that I cannot do

well in, leaving me with yet another missed chance to go along with the last six years of failed opportunity. Hopefully, U Tron

will put up a good performance this weekend in the U.S. to make me feel that something was gained from my hard work.

Until next time,

Quentin Martin