Preface
This is a process article even though there is some product included. I actually wrote the outline while playtesting the deck(s) that are discussed down below. As with many experiments, things didn’t turn out like I thought they would… but hey, that’s why we test. The first part is just stuff I think, how I think, what I think about, and how I think those things. It is fairly masturbatory and you might not want to hear these things, but some people probably would. This is not a “fish” article; there are fish here but they are too-common bottom-feeders accidentally trapped in a region famous for very fresh fare, sushi-grade. If you don’t like “fishing” articles, you probably won’t like this one. I’d apologize, but it’s my article, wherein (this time at least) I just open up my brain (such that it is) onto the page… so I don’t see any reason.
End Preface
A few years ago I almost wrote, or more accurately “attempted but never finished” an article entitled “When did I become a Timmy?” or thereabouts. It was during the period when my best decks all slid to summoning Akroma, Angel of Wrath at retail, and even when they were good (i.e. Kibler in the Top 8 of U.S. Nationals) they were so far afield from my old decks with their Dark Rituals and Dauthi Slayers and ubiquitous Duresses that it was almost like I was a totally different deck designer. I think that at that point, with my first child so new and my (then-) last Pro Tour so seemingly distant, I had bought, perhaps again, into some fevered conversation I had had with Scott McCord over pancakes in Orlando some three years earlier; I was a casual gamer. I loved the competition but I had lost the edge (if ever I had legitimately had it). The kids were getting luckier and legitimately better. I was not. I was slipping and making bogus and sloppy errors. I was not making it back onto the Pro Tour again, probably ever.
I won a PTQ the next day.
I’ve always tried to think of myself as a tournament Spike because I love my edges. I’ll take every edge that I can, and more and more, have been studying the gamesmanship of the best players rather than the technical plays, or even the decks they play… But I think that after more than ten years, it’s time to face facts: I’m just not ruthless enough to be the Spike I fancy myself, proclaim myself. I like to win, but winning itself is not why I enjoy playing. My friends have chided me time and again that I lose Feature Matches not just because I am up against better players (hence matches being “featured”), but because I’d rather play to the crowd than against the other guy. I love tournament Magic because, frankly, what other terminus can there be when one directs so much of his time and energies towards this game? What other terminus than breaking a worthy rival against all the power and preparation within you, or challenging him – begging him – to break you? What other barometer than objective victory?
So I am a Johnny; a lusty, feral, angry Johnny. I can accept that. It’s better than being a Timmy, I suppose… any kind of Timmy. I must be a Jonny because I have literally no capacity for playing The Deck to Beat. It’s not just that I don’t do it, but that I can’t bring myself to do it. I’ve actually isolated what it is that I lust for in Magic, why I am always playing these insane long-game decks with intricate mid-range plans that don’t win for a million turns. All I want is to feel like I’m smarter than the other guy. I could stomach playing Vial Affinity in Mirrodin because, logically, there was no smarter choice.
I am reminded, after revisiting this idea several times, of my friend Pat Sullivan and how “satisfied” he is with a tapped Jackal Pup in the middle of the table. Pat and I share affection for Boros Garrison and John Shuler, and a general dislike for combo decks. I didn’t understand the whole “satisfied” thing before… I think I might now. I have attributed the same pleasures to a million different sources over the years… beatdown decks, velocity, high velocity beatdown decks, drawing cards, drawing cards in beatdown decks… It all comes down to cleverness, I think. If you were to crystallize the entirety of my love for Magic down to one process, I’d guess it would be having one Nimble Mongoose in play and one in the graveyard so that I can Genesis it back and block the same Psychatog, dragging a card or two along with it, every turn, keeping that toothy villain off lethal while I swing with any other man. It’s the same with the Gnarled Masses. It’s not that I love an Armodon, a Silt Crawler so much (though I have certainly braved the 0-1 opening all the way to the finals of a PTQ with four Silt Crawler)… it’s that figuring out that a humble 3/3 for three that no one (save Zvi) thought would be good enough to play in Constructed not just makes the cut… but breaks the format, really changes things. It is satisfying to beat down with a Troll Ascetic only when everyone else is doing literally infinite math behind an Auriok Champion. Because the game is only fun while we chase the quicksilver and deceive each other like new lovers, unsure of their footing in the boudoir of battle, at the point they start actually playing and attacking with such Auriok Champions, and start hiding behind Worship, it becomes satisfying – really, really satisfying – to play first turn Wayfarer’s Bauble and grin with your Mono-Red deck, knowing they kept a hand thinking they couldn’t lose, knowing yourself that they just can’t win.
This is a core limitation to my game and personality: I just don’t have it in me, the ability to choose something that I didn’t at least figure out for myself, even if I didn’t “make” it myself. It seems almost like pulling the light-bulb from the aether above your skull, staring into its brilliance, challenging it to blind you, winning that battle, doing all the leg work, chasing down the project managers, wrangling with the editors, winning those innumerable skirmishes (or at least enough of them), negotiating the moneybags into the dirt, walking away, making them come to you, winning again, putting in the face time, putting on your pretty face, smiling, breaking your back, twice, then showing up to the dinner to be held in your honor only to let some middle manager who skimmed The Game take home The Prom Queen expressly set aside by God, Nature, Fate, the sweat of your own brow, and the mother loving Universe for you. To me, it seems a bit like that. If I were into “most of” the glory, I would have grown up to be boring. I didn’t (though Heezy will never miss the chance to remind me that I have traded any and all for One Woman, God-, Nature-, Fate-, sweat-, and Universe-willing, for the rest of my life); last Extended season I ran the Swiss in a Connecticut PTQ with Friggorid and lost a close match in the Top 8 when I mulliganed six times or something, yet refused to play Friggorid the following week because it had lost its cleverness. Everyone had it. I wrote about it myself. Twice! Everyone had it. No edge. My only friends who played it (clearly still the Deck to Play) – Julian Levin and Tim McKenna – were both Top 8 in that final week. Because of the inability to play something expected, I invariably play something different; in the case that I or one of my army wins something, people remember (because we recognize meaning only via difference, natch, and the rest of halfway successful tournament Magic, especially on the amateur side, is a sea of sameness), and I end up getting a lot of credit as a deck designer. This, though, is a function of multiple things, not just some objective talent or pool of ideas above and beyond everyone else. When I named the G/R LD deck “KarstenBot BabyKiller” it wasn’t just as a joke on Frank; I timed it very specifically. Frank was rising as the hot new columnist on the Mother Ship, and forced to report on online trends and powerful – especially new – online decks; he was also a noted deck designer (Worlds Finalist with the influential Greater Good, and built a precursor to Solar Pox with the Haakon engine)… KarstenBot BabyKiller was a joke — a hilarious one if you ask most of us — but also an experiment. People, even editors and community managers “out of the know” were attributing this deck to Frank, because, well… it was named after him, right?
“Corrupted Bacon is just like Bacon, except that you no longer invented it.”
John Shuler
I’ll be honest: I don’t mind the attention. I also make a lot of decks, some of them good (most not). I do not, however, name all of them after myself any more than Online Tech’s Frank bogarted Sullivan’d corrupted KarstenBot (which was, truth be told, quite a fine deck for its time… even with no Blue) did with BabyKiller. Some of them, sure… but not “all,” and certainly not one of Kowal’s.
In fact, I’d say that I am a notoriously uncreative deck designer. If deck design could be categorized like the creation of Magic cards, I would almost certainly be on the “Development” side of the equation, maybe even Marketing (!) … not the design side at all. People like Adrian Sullivan are good at “ideas” … big, wonderful, sometimes innovative, and oftentimes unrealistic ideas; most of “my” decks come from other people’s “ideas,” most of which can’t be attributed to any one point, even if they can be assigned some source. When they become “mine,” if they become mine, it is when I figure out the cards they need to win the hard matchups, or perhaps dust them off after they’ve lost their luster or popularity… make them relevant, make them relevant again. My main skills are figuring out the metagame in order to make an informed decision on archetype and tuning, getting the numbers and the mana right, and, ultimately, the correct positioning. Even the best players (especially the best amateur players; or, at the other end of the spectrum, the best technical players) today have little art to their positioning. This Girl was not the most powerful deck that could be played at 2006 Champs. It was flawed on many levels, and has shown itself (herself) unable to survive as the metagame has become more informed (this is due in no small part to the insistence of lesser designers to cram Remand where it doesn’t belong, by the way). This Girl was, however, positioned perfectly to shine and win on one particular day, tuned to a specific metagame frozen for that day as a targetable snapshot just long enough that it could be exploited prior to its inevitable and mercurial transformation into something else.
“Play for the shot, not the score.”
Unknown (I heard it from my dad)
“There is no ‘best deck’ for a format, only a best deck for a tournament.”
Chris Senhouse, Sensei Six
Even though most of “my” decks come, ultimately, from other people’s ideas, I still have top-down ideas. Everyone does. That’s why any of us plays Magic! For reals! However, my ideas are never grandiose “What if I could Ghost Quarter myself a bunch of times and run out the Second Sunrise?” but instead things like “how come everybody loves Vindicate but no one ever games with a Temporal Spring?” (I told you I am not creative in this way). U/G has always been one of my favorite color combinations. I love U/G Threshold (and GreeDM and I fool around with it literally every Extended… I almost played it in L.A. last year). I qualified with Critical Mass at the end of Kamigawa Block and re-built Critical Mass for 2005’s States Standard, where it won two titles. Well before we had the mechanics-based or even theme U/G decks, I liked U/G. One of the most influential on me was S. Nakamura’s (“S” being —“Satoshi”) from the last APAC Championship ever:
Satoshi Nakamura, Top 8 APAC 2001
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Silt Crawler
4 Blastoderm
4 Chimeric Idol
4 Saproling Burst
4 Opposition
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Gush
Sideboard:
3 Waterfront Bouncer
4 Prodigal Sorcerer
3 Compost
2 Disrupting Scepter
3 Spontaneous Generation
Satoshi made Top 8 of the APAC but you won’t see his name in the final prizes rundown. Confusion on penalty guidelines, some ill-advised deal making, and a job interview conflict in another country cost three players their spots in history: Satoshi, Peter Chao, and future superstar Pro Tour Champ Tomoharu Saito. This is one of those few cases where I personally believe that nothing really horrible was intended by anyone… Satoshi especially had a flawless reputation up to this point. He was a huge influence on international deck design and one of the first Japanese superstars. “The Ernham” Jin Okamoto ended up winning the last APAC in a Top 8 that also featured Katsuhiro Mori playing one of his innumerable eponymous designs, here Morikatsu-Go.dec.
When we think of Opposition decks from about this era, our minds tend to gravitate to the CMU-TOGIT decks of U.S. National Champion Eugene Harvey or World Championship Top 8 “Kartin'” Ken Krouner from the following season… but the Nakamura deck will always have a special place in my memory. I used a tweaked version of the deck to qualify for the Neutral Ground Grudge Match, and Brian Kibler later updated the deck with Odyssey cards for his Magic Invitational appearance (Call of the Herd over Silt Crawler, LOL).
This deck was great because it just “fit” into its metagame nicely (see above). The deck had many of the same cards as the more popular Fires of Yavimaya deck – Blastoderm, Saproling Burst, and the eight-pack of one-mana mana accelerators – and could get similar aggressive draws when “the beatdown.” However, it could also play control and just block, Block, BLOCK against Fires or The Red Zone, and then refill with the eight card drawing cards to get back up, lock it all out with Opposition. The Glare of Subdual precursor was not geared to a lock (here); Satoshi could play attrition, drop the Opposition, then alpha strike twice; Satoshi.dec, as we came to call it, was deceptively explosive at mid-game offense, almost like a combo deck.
In Extended today we have many models of U/G decks. Last year, people played Threshold; more played Heartbeat. Deep Dog was and is the most common starting block, the parent to modern Madness decks, MadTog2020, and the meteoric Golgari Grave-Troll family… but even the recent history of Magic gives us numerous options for templating. I decided to try my hand at one based on the 2001 Nakamura model for the upcoming PTQ season:
Creatures (16)
Lands (23)
Spells (21)
I called this deck Down, Up because I use a lot of mental tricks and faux visual and mnemonic systems for deck design and tactical play (I actually learned more about Limited Magic by learning Vs. System and how the cards line up against each other discretely than I had with a hand full of Limited PTQ wins and Pro Tour appearances). To me there are different shapes and directions that decks create. The Deck to Play covers the widest part of the metagame circle, typically defeating Rock and Paper, losing to Scissors.
Most beatdown decks are Down, Down or Down, Forward. The Satoshi.dec model plays Down mana and accelerators, then refills its hand (“Up“). Most Selesnya decks are Down, Down, (cards go to the board, interact there, and never leave); some Selesnya cards like Glare of Subdual and Loxodon Hierarch are Down-trump, covering an opposing “Down.” Most Boros and Red Decks are Down, Forward (cards go to the board, followed by cards targeting the opponent’s side of the board, including his face). There is no science to this, and it isn’t exactly an internally consistent system on which I can base my next book, but thinking spatially helps me, at least, to fill holes when designing new decks and to identify problems or figure out where the metagame can be attacked efficiently. I’m not the only moron with voices in his head, and charts and graphs floating in front of his nose: Ask Chapin about “hot” and “cold” beatdown versus control.
I decided that Opposition would probably be too slow, even with acceleration. You go for the Opposition on turn 3… TEPS might just kill you. However, our testing has shown that while TEPS is super strong against beatdown in the “goldfish mirror match,” Boros has nice percentage in games that it can stick a clock and one Molten Rain. What if we could speed up the Molten Rain? I also wanted to find a home for Plow Under. Neither of these cards is Tier 1 in the current Extended, but not a soul likes to play against Plow Under, even when he’s counters, and they rotated the card from the Core Set because it was so un-fun to face. TEPS is the Extended deck I encounter most online, but I also play against a fair number of ‘Tron or ‘Post decks, as well as weird Black decks that scoop to, you know, “good cards.”
The main strides we have made since 2001 have been in manabase. I cut a land to 23 main, went all the way down to one Island (no Gushes) and still have twelve primary Blue sources! I tried to maintain the form of Satoshi’s deck with eight card drawing and eight mana acceleration, but the move from four Opposition to eight Temporal Spring and Plow Under necessitated that I cut a smasher slot. Luckily, Call of the Herd does double 3/3 duty and combines nicely with Life from the Loam. You know from last week how much I want to play Fact or Fiction (the deck I was excited about can’t, um, beat Boros, according to Julian, meaning that it is no longer eligible for Deck to Play). I went with Gifts Ungiven into a light Loam package with Eternal Witness because, honestly, every time I so much as cycle an Eternal Dragon in Game 1 versus some mid-range jank, I end up seeing thee Withered Wretches in Game 2 (can I get a “Hells yeah!”?) … More even than most other Magic players, who reject in wide sweep what everyone else thinks, I love being different.
For litmus testing, I went with the two most prevalent decks in the format, TEPS and Boros Deck Wins. In deference to our all star StarCityGames.com family, I went with Raphael Levy version of TEPS (the best deck he’s ever played) and newcomer Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa Boros because, well… Do I need a particular reason?
Lands (15)
Spells (45)
- 1 Tendrils of Agony
- 4 Cabal Ritual
- 4 Burning Wish
- 3 Mind's Desire
- 2 Plunge into Darkness
- 2 Channel the Suns
- 4 Seething Song
- 4 Darkwater Egg
- 4 Chrome Mox
- 3 Sins of the Past
- 2 Infernal Tutor
- 4 Rite of Flame
- 4 Chromatic Star
- 4 Lotus Bloom
Sideboard
Creatures (21)
- 3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
- 4 Savannah Lions
- 2 Soltari Priest
- 4 Silver Knight
- 4 Grim Lavamancer
- 4 Goblin Legionnaire
Lands (21)
Spells (18)
Sideboard
Game on!
TEPS
Game 1
Down, Up is on the play and keeps a fairly poor draw which ends up being all Elves, one Birds of Paradise, and a Gigapede. TEPS wins on turn 3 with Desire-Tendrils, with double Burning Wish backup.
0-1
Game 2
Down, Up is on the draw and mulls into a second turn Temporal Spring with third turn Eternal Witness. TEPS burns for Duress to stop the horrible inevitability (which turns out not so inevitable). U/G has taken six from lands, which lets TEPS squeak out a turn 4 kill for exactly fourteen using a naturally drawn Tendrils (U/G being one off of additional Witness for Spring).
0-2
Game 3
Turn 1: Birds of Paradise
Turn 2: Temporal Spring
Turn 3: Ravenous Baloth (for value)
Turn 4: Fact or Fiction with no land drop, flipping: Breeding Pool, Call of the Herd, Fact or Fiction, Living Wish, and Lonely Sandbar. Split: Call of the Herd, Fact or Fiction, Living Wish versus Breeding Pool and Lonely Sandbar (Down, Up takes the lands)
Turn 5: Rip Plow Under
Turn 6: Witness and rip another Plow Under
On the draw, there was really nothing TEPS could do this game.
1-2
Game 4
U/G is on the draw, and mulls into Bird and Sandbar… misses. TEPS has two Lotuses on the play, making for an easy win with quad Ritual on turn 3.
1-3
Game 5
U/G mulls for the fourth time in five games into a weak hand. TEPS again wins on turn 4.
1-4
Game 6
TEPS wins when U/G is tapped for a Call of the Herd on turn 3… and could have won on turn 2.
1-5
Game 7
U/G mulls on the play.
Turn 1: Llanowar Elves
Turn 2: Temporal Spring
Turn 3: Gifts Ungiven for Eternal Witness, Plow Under, Temporal Spring, and Life from the Loam (two Onslaught duals down)… gets Loam and Witness
Turn 4: Plow Under (sandbagged land + Plow Under)
Turn 5: Loam two-for-one and Witness the Plow
Turn 6: Dredge the Loam flipping Tranquil Thicket; Plow Under
&co., &co.
2-5
Game 8
U/G mulls on the draw; TEPS also mulls.
Turn 1: Llanowar Elves
Turn 2: Temporal Spring (good mulligan!)
Turn 3: Witness the Spring
On this turn of respite, TEPS sees the writing on the wall and goes for it with three mana and an Egg only… All-in on Mind’s Desire for four, flipping a Song, Cabal Ritual, and Burning Wish… “That’s why you play these decks!”
2-6
Game 9
U/G opens on Elf, then Spring and Witness for a total of three Springs, giving TEPS one turn of respite while setting up a Gifts. TEPS plays Rite, Rite, Song, Star, Wish, and Desire, lucksacks into two more Rituals, Sphere, Song, and Tutor. Gee gee.
2-7
Game 10
The last two games seemed like they were going U/G’s way, but Game 10 was flat-out unbelievable. TEPS tries to go off on turn 4 with a Mind’s Desire for four, and fails. This leaves TEPS with a Black Chrome Mox (Infernal Tutor) and the mana to Wish for a Mind’s Desire and Tutor for a Lotus, but no actual lands; TEPS suspends both Lotuses. U/G Wishes for Ghost Quarter and has two Eternal Witnesses and starts a loop of Quarter, Witness, and beat. Three turns later, TEPS has pulled Seething Song, Cabal Ritual, and Sins of the Past. With no land, the Lotus breaks for RRR, the other Lotus breaks for UUU, the Mox taps for B, Song hits the bin with Desire and Sins of the Past in hand… If there is any doubt, the first Mind’s Desire flips Mind’s Desire (that is, all the Desires) and Sins of the Past.
2-8
To say this was disheartening doesn’t quite cover it, because I luckily learned quite a bit. My initial theory was that Temporal Spring would be a substantial interactive tool and that successfully playing the Spring early would result in game wins. To be fair, both U/G game wins came on the back of turn 1 mana accelerator and turn 2 Temporal Spring. However that game plan failed a fair amount of the time too, meaning that it probably isn’t good enough. I was originally going to test the same Down, Up version 1.0 against Boros (I assumed a winning record against TEPS, which obviously didn’t happen); instead of beating a dead – and I mean literally dead horse – into the ground, I went with my already-planned second stage “alternate model” U/G deck:
Creatures (21)
Lands (23)
Spells (16)
As with the previous version, this deck list implies a readily accessible White splash (Birds, seven Onslaught duals, two relevant Ravnica duals) and would sideboard a basic Plains (though PJ has stated he thinks this is where the fourth Windswept Heath should be due to the solo Wish in the first version). The White would be for sideboard cards, like Worship for the Gigapede / Troll Ascetic soft lock, potentially Sphere of Law, and so on.
Boros
Game 1
U/G has no acceleration on the play. Boros gets Isamaru, into Silver Knight, into a key Molten Rain, into three two-power one-drops. U/G answers with Troll. Boros is all-in with Helix, Dart, and Barbarian Ring.
0-1
Game 2
Boros keeps a one-lander on the play with Isamaru, Lion, Firebolt, and Lavamancer.
U/G goes Elf, then Troll, then Baloth. Baloth dies to a Sudden Shock after eating a Hound (Troll Ascetic elected not to fight Savannah Lions in the same combat); stuck on two, R/W concedes to Fact or Fiction flipping both Fact or Fiction and Gifts Ungiven.
1-1
Game 3
U/G mulls to Island, Fact or Fiction, Call and Gifts (four cards). Not a winner.
1-2
Game 4
R/W gets the turn 2 clock and two Molten Rains. U/G’s hand was pretty good, and certainly capable of beating a generic 2/2, but the Molten Rains did their job: four damage and two Time Walks.
1-3
Game 5
Elf is met by Dart (we consistently sent Darts at first turn mana accelerators when on the draw with Boros). R/W follows with Isamaru and Sudden Shock, which trade for U/G’s first Baloth. As with Game 2, this Baloth gained no life. Then came a second Baloth. The third Baloth was dealt with via a clever Goblin Legionnaire (attack, stack damage, shoot you, resolve damage, post-combat Sudden Shock). But then again, there were three Baloths, and even gaining no life, they were biting two cards at a time. The remaining 4/4 picked up a Sword… and you know how these things go.
2-3
Game 6
This was a super interactive game where U/G had no accelerator, but turn 2 Jitte. U/G is “up cards” every turn, but R/W keeps coming in for damage and value. Sudden Shock tricks down another Baloth, and R/W wins a close one. U/G lost despite playing turn 2 Jitte, Baloth, Witness, Call, and two Trolls (one back from the Witness).
2-4
Game 7
Elf meets Dart again. Second Elf is met with Lavamancer and Isamaru. Lavamancer shoots Elf, Elf’s dying breath is Fact or Fiction. The spread is a disaster… Call, Call, Troll, Breeding Pool, and Flooded Strand. How do you even split this one? Lands against will signal the land pile and two flashback Elephants. We ultimately split it Breeding Pool, Call, and Troll (which was obviously mised) over Call and Flooded Strand.
Troll goes online with a Sword of Fire and Ice from 16. The Sword sends up a Baloth. R/W keeps ripping Goblin Legionnaires, which make life less not difficult, and plugs with Lavamancer over and over while a Soltari Priest keeps attacking. Unbelievably, Isamaru chumps the Troll plus Sword on the last turn and Boros wins it! I have no idea how this happened, but rumor has it that the Boros Deck Wins.
2-5
Game 8
U/G has no one-drop, while Boros has two. U/G scrambles, but is ultimately down on tempo and loses.
2-6
Game 9
Lava Dart kills first turn Birds, while Firebolt and Sudden Shock hold the tempo. Silver Knight leads into Hound of Konda, and R/W is all tempo, always sideways. U/G stabilizes and is playing around the fifth land (flashbacked Firebolt) but it is Molten Rain for value that wins it for Boros.
2-7
Game 10
U/G holds R/W off for a l… o… n… g… time from four, because two Lavamancers run out of fodder. R/W is on the suicide plan and starts running men in just to get the Lavamancers back up (U/G can’t avoid the block)… Two copies of Fact or Fiction make it interesting (both being 1-4 splits for Ravenous Baloth), but U/G’s mana is too painful in the long game (drew and needed the Coliseum). Boros eventually finishes it.
2-8… again.
I’d call this set of decks an unmitigated disaster, but I did learn a couple of things that might be useful moving forward:
1. I am spoiled by Loxodon Hierarch. Ravenous Baloth… Wasn’t this card once a Cadillac of four-drops? It’s possible my mana could have supported Hierarch anyway. Baloth was pretty threatening but was held in serious check by Sudden Shock.
2. Sudden Shock is better – and trickier – than you think. I have played against this card a fair amount on Magic Online, but when I lose to it there, it’s usually because my opponent sacked a one-outer (or I lose an early Tribe Elder or ‘Tog). When an awesome opponent has Sudden Shock, it’s really impressive… It takes some getting used to.
3. I still think FoF is the nuts… But this isn’t the deck.
4. Sword of Light and Shadow? Seriously! The men in the Red Deck now are White, not Red, and life gain is relevant. You can also loop Hierarchs, Baloths, and early chump blockers.
5. Another alternate model for U/G is the “Beacon Green” school from post-Affinity Standard about two Championship Seasons ago. Here is a U/G deck that I’ve had a fair amount of success with on MTGO (I don’t think it’s quite there, though):
Creatures (12)
Lands (23)
Spells (25)
- 4 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Plow Under
- 2 Gaea's Blessing
- 2 Memory Lapse
- 2 Kodama's Reach
- 3 Beacon of Creation
- 4 Fact or Fiction
- 4 Remand
Sideboard
The only reason I have Snow-Covered Forests, by the way, is because it is the only way I can get more than ten copies of the same basic land picture.
Yes, the presence of even light countering makes decisions more difficult. Paul said that one of the things that was flawed with the Down, Up testing was that TEPS would just go off against UUUG or whatever open because Down, Up has no permission. It’s really hard to be honest and gauge how you will fight from that position, though, given actual knowledge of the opposing U/G deck list.
Pro Tip! I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: I like playing light graveyard card advantage and selection engines (here Gaea’s Blessing and Eternal Witness) in decks that don’t expressly need the ‘yard to get ahead, but just use it for additional margin. Middling players will consistently bring in all their hate, to the detriment of their core deck strategies. This is a fine way to get an edge on opposing player mistake.
Divert has been awesome. Paul and I thought it would be good against Boros and Aggro Loam. We were wrong: it’s great. Gaea’s Blessing has been used to shuffle other people’s Tranquil Thickets more often than it has been used to get back my own Remands.
Post Script:
A good deal of the prep done for this article was for a Top8Magic.com Mock Tournament to be held… Well, by the time you read this on Flores Friday, it will have been the previous night. Pat Chapin recently called me and asked what won my Sixteen Mock Tournament (Boros). “I know,” Pat said… He was leading. “And Boros was the nuts at Worlds! Tell me… Are your Mock Tournaments ever wrong?” Jushi Blue… Deadguy Ale… They are a pretty good indicator of what can be good, though Luis almost convinced me to audible to Beach House with our last pre-States event! Paul Jordan was going to play Down, Up tonight [I am editing this draft Thursday afternoon]. At the conclusion of the testing for this one [actually that was last night], I sent an email to my current PTQ Extended list and said Down, Up was no good. Paul called me angry… He had just sleeved up a copy for the Mock.
“I guess I’m just playing Boros.”
Rock aficionado Jeroen Remie PJ, FinkelDraft Orcish Librarian
What a strange article!
I caught a cold from my daughter.
LOVE
MIKE