Hello again kids, and welcome to the another column by yours truly, Johnny Drama. Last weekend I played in a Planar Chaos prerelease, and ended up with a 5-1 Record. To be honest, my performance had nothing to do with the cards I opened. The only reason I managed to do so well is because I had an idea how to build my deck, while most of my opponents didn’t. This is why I decided to give out some pointers at the start of this article, concerning building Sealed Decks at prereleases.
I see a lot of people automatically thinking they need to build a three-color deck, looking for cards to splash. Well, at prereleases from smaller sets, you get an extra pack (normal Sealed Deck tournaments give a Tournament Pack and two boosters, while at small set prereleases you get three boosters). This means that you have extra cards to play with, which usually means that you can build a two-color deck very easily. The only round I lost was the one round in which my opponent played two colors. The other rounds saw everyone struggling with mana.
The rules for prereleases go something like this: build a two-color deck every time, barring some special exceptions (like a nice three-color dragon, or a bad pool), and pay special attention to your mana curve. Cheap cards are good, and tempo cards are good.
I built a U/R deck, with cheap bounce spells and some Giant Growths. My only bomb was a red Akroma, and I only drew her in three games I played. My MVP was the card I think is the early best common in the set, Shaper Parasite, and I only had one of those. You don’t really need to have bombs; all you need is a little sensible deckbuilding.
Of course, this means you are playing fully to win, and not to have a lot of fun with your cards. If fun is your goal, ignore what I said and go five-color Green…
What did I think of the set? Well, I get a lot of complaints from the forums for being negative about a lot of stuff… but once again, I am not really impressed with the set. Playing the prerelease didn’t feel new at all, as most of the cards weren’t, and the fact that all colors can do most things (like kill a guy outright) means that drafting and playing certain color-combinations doesn’t take a lot of thought. That and the fact that there are so many playables amongst the cards means the bad players get a huge edge, and the skill level drops. What can I say? If I don’t like it, I don’t like it.
It does look like an exciting set for Constructed though, as it brings a lot of stuff to colors that previously didn’t have such effects. I wonder what’s coming, as it is a pretty exciting time for Standard (if only there was a Standard event coming up).
With that out of the way, I’ll just dive right into this week’s questions. Remember, though I do read the forums, sending me an email is the only sure way to end up with answers! [email protected] is still the address… drop me a line at any time.
This week’s first question is by Evan Chada:
I have some questions about TEPS in Extended. I have decided to play this particular deck during the PTQ season due to the fact I feel it is most powerful deck, able to go off easily if undisrupted. My questions concern card and sideboard choices. Do you prefer the Raphael Levy version (egg version) or the Jelger Weimersma version (maindeck Duress)? I am currently running the Jelger version because I feel like it has a better chance of wining through maindeck hate cards like Gilded Light and Orim’s Chant. Can you provide a sample list that you would run? Also, are there any sideboard cards that you feel standard lists are ignoring? I have toyed with the idea of adding a Demonfire to my sideboard. My reasoning is that often my opponents will let me “go off,” flipping over Desires and Rituals, and then sandbagging Stifle for the inevitable Tendrils hoping to kill you through manaburn. It is easy enough to sculpt a hand that can hellbent a Demonfire at unsuspecting opponents. Please let me know if I am missing any potential Wish targets. Thank you for your time, and thanks for the column!
Hey Evan. Since I don’t plan on playing TEPS myself in the Dutch Qualifiers, I am using stock versions to test against. This means that I try and find the version that I think people will play, and playtest against that. No tech, just the best version that I think is around. Right now I think Jelger’s version is the deck to play, because at Worlds the deck was new and people weren’t expecting it, so you could get away with not running a lot of disruption. Now that people have caught on, and are playing everything from Chant to Gilded Light maindeck, you have to have answers, and that’s why I think you need the Duresses.
As for Demonfire, the card seems like it could be a nice out against things like Stifle, but to be honest, I don’t think that really is the card you need to worry about. Like you said yourself, the cards you see most to hate the deck right now are cards like Pyrostatic Pillar, Gilded Light, and Orim’s Chant, and against all those cards Demonfire does not help. On top of that, most of the time the deck will not give you enough mana to get a big enough Demonfire off, so you will hardly ever Wish for it. The deck is tight as is, and adding more cards in the board you will always never Wish for is just impossible to do. If they have the Stifle, often enough it is just as good to fetch the Duress / Persecute or any other protection spell. Versatility is key when talking wish sideboards.
Fellow old guy Scott Bain asks me the following question:
I’m glad you decided to come back and practically start all over from scratch. I personally think that we need the grizzled veterans like yourself to stick around, if only for the reason that it makes older gentleman like myself (28) feel like I am not doing something that is too young for me.
As for the actual questions; how much would you say a Pro spends on Magic cards in about 6 month’s time? Furthermore, do you think that a budget player can compete at the PTQ and GP level?
C’mon now, we are not that old. Jeez man, 28 is nothing. We are at the peak of ou…
Yeah, who am I kidding…when you get to 28, playing cards with 16 year old kids (I am looking at you, Julien) really starts to get to ya, but whatever floats our boat… right?
As for what Pros spend… well, the fact that we need to draft as much as possible to keep up with the ever-changing metagame basically means that we’ll have to buy at least those packs to get going. For some Pros this is a set a week, at the local drafts, for others its at least three sets a day on Magic Online, though those tend to pay themselves back. As for Constructed, the fact that everyone tests with proxies, and most don’t even own cards, means that these costs are somewhat negligible. We borrow, we trade… heck, we sometimes buy cards at the start of the day and sell ‘em at the end. Cards are never really a problem, as long as you don’t mind testing with markers.
I think that is the way a budget player can definitely play competitively, by testing without owning the cards, and only really spending money when you know for sure that you will want to play those cards in a tournament. It is not a fun way to play the game, and certainly not the way it was intended, but it works for sure.
Next up is a question by Lucas Berthoud, which he himself calls “Good Ones” in the subject line:
Good luck on your new adventures back to the PTQ circuit. I hope you keep with the motivation to return to the train and that you are successful on this new journey.
From your past column I learned that you didn’t like your Rock decks for Extended. Still, any chance you could share the lists with us, poor readers? Maybe they would work in my metagame (no Boros, lots of Affinity, and bad control decks).
Also, any thoughts on what’s better for the U/W decks: Cloudpost / Vesuva or Urzatron? I run 4 Mindslavers and I want my deck to be as explosive as possible, so I run the Tron. On the other hand, I still wanna have WW around turns 3-4 for my Wrath, but I don’t consider that to be as important. It would be nice to know precisely by how much the Tron is more explosive and by how much the Posts are more consistent on colored mana, so I could weight those factors with better reasoning.
Hey Lucas. Like I have explained many a time in previous articles, whenever I work on making a good Rock deck, I tend to switch around a lot. The Rock can be built to beat many a deck, and some versions tend to work better in different fields. This means that during testing I must have used at least 150+ cards for the one deck, and listing them all would not be useful at all. Now I know you all would love to see me give out lists, but in order to do so I really want to make sure the deck works.
And I have not found a Rock deck that works.
Now you are not the only one to post that question, and that’s why I included it in here… but really, I can’t get it winning often enough. I must say that you seem to be very privileged to live in a metagame with very few Boros decks, but I don’t really see how it possible for the best deck to be absent in great numbers…
As for the choice of mana acceleration in U/W control decks, and which lands to run, you basically said it all. Tron is more explosive, with lucky draws helping you to explode sooner. Post decks are more consistent, with better colors and less of a luck factor. I am not sure on what kind of scale you want to express these things, as there is no truly scientific way to quantify this (like “Tron is 23 plooziewoozie points more consistent than Post”). This is not something you can express in percentages. It just is.
I, like many other pros, value consistency above pure explosiveness, so I feel the Cloudpost version is slightly better, though I wouldn’t recommend playing either deck. They seem strictly worse than most Orim’s Chant decks, and have a lot of trouble dealing with both combo and beatdown. [This question is tackled in depth in Richard Feldman Deep Analysis column article from yesterday. — Craig.]
Finally, a question by Jordan Goodwin. It’s on my precious Rock again, but this time it’s a little more focused:
I read your “welcome back” article this morning, and it was the perfect chance for me to submit this question to you. In your article you talked about the viability of Rock, and why you didn’t play a variant of it at Worlds this year. This was an excellent question from my reader perspective, because I wondered the same thing. About a year and a half ago I quit Magic, though I recently got back into it. When I ventured into the Extended circuit, I had no idea what to play. I said to myself, “if you don’t know what to play, Rock will always work.”
I built a version of Rock that would be more classified as “Old-School Rock” (though not so Old-School that I used Plaguelords). Here is my deck list for reference.
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Llanowar Wastes
6 Forest
5 Swamp
2 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Troll Ascetic
2 Spiritmonger
3 Eternal Witness
3 Ravenous Baloth
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Putrefy
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard
4 Trinisphere
4 Cranial Extraction
4 Leyline of the void
3 Krosan Grip
As I analyzed the current Rock decks out there, here were the problems I saw:
A) The advent of the 3rd color for Gifts Ungiven, Loxodon Hierarch, Destructive Flow, etc.
B) Almost no one was maindecking Deeds and Duress.
C) Jeroen Remie wasn’t playing Rock.
Firstly, I looked at the third color. No matter how useful, it slowed the deck down to the point where Boros and Affinity housed it pretty good. Then there was the maindecking of the old school staples. I saw deck lists with no Pernicious Deeds at all. Deed is pretty much the hinge for this deck. It’s what allows you to house aggro and / or have a general answer for 75% of decks. And Duress… this one boggled my mind. Admittedly the format is more largely aggro-based, with Boros out there in such high numbers. But is almost never bad. In fact, a couple seasons ago it was ranked in a Scrye article as the best Extended card (of a list that included such cards as Oath of Druids, Tinker, and Goblin Recruiter. To me that speaks volumes about the usefulness of Duress. It’s Black’s first-turn Force of Will, so to speak.
Which now leads me to the last point on my list. Jeroen Remie isn’t playing Rock, so how could I? I’ve been testing it quite a bit, and my win percentage over these Tier 1 decks like Boros and TEPS has been pretty good. But every time I go to an Extended tournament I end up playing Ichorid or Dirty Kitty or something, because I can’t justify playing Rock if you don’t. I figure there has to be something I’m missing. So this is what I need from you after my longwinded question. Try my version of the deck. Test it out against Boros. I think you’ll find that Boros folds like a cheap lawn-chair to a turn 4 blown Deed with a follow up turn 5 Spiritmonger. But I’d like your input on the viability of Rock, and if the deck can’t win, some more in-depth explanation would be awesome so I can start playing it at tournaments, or I can at least let the deck die and put it to rest.
Team M&M Hobbies
Vick Vega
Hey Vick, or Jordan, or Mr. Blonde if you prefer, I disagree with you on your opening assumption. I think that if you are unfamiliar with the metagame, then the Rock is the last deck to pick. I always felt Rock could be built to beat almost anything in any environment, but it needs a lot of testing (and a good pilot with a lot of experience with the different versions) to get it to work. If you don’t know what to play, play beatdown.
I agree with you regarding Deed and Duress, as I feel they are the most powerful cards the deck can play. The problem is that with the focus of today’s decks, you can’t afford to play Duress against Boros, or too many Deeds against decks like TEPS. This means that the people that are playing Rock are taking a gamble regarding the metagame, and are picking a deck geared against what they expect.
I tested decks like this, and while I do expect to win a couple of games with Deed and Spiritmonger versus Boros, I could also see myself drawing three Duresses or Therapies and no pressure. This is why Boros beats you more often than not. Aside from that, like you said, is the fact that even when your deck beats the decks you are expecting, you just lose to the “random” other decks. You need to beat two or three rounds of “random” every tournament. It just isn’t the deck to play right now. What more can I say?
As for your list, a few pointers is the least I can give: The maindeck looks tight enough, though the Swords kinda look out of place. I feel that, against beatdown decks, they often do not do enough, and they are a little too expensive. I would also try and fit in at least one (and maybe two) Genesis, since they are incredible in mirror-like situations.
The sideboard needs work, as some of these cards look out of place (like Trinisphere), and it seems like there could be better solutions. Extra discard is more likely to work – and it fits your deck. Random Trinispheres do little other than hurt you a whole lot too. Also, if you do bring in disruption like the Sphere against Combo decks like TEPS, I often feel you just have to add more pressure to the board too. You will often find they will have plenty of time to find a solutions to your Sphere. Also, not having a single thing in the board versus Boros really makes me nervous as all hell. Boros is the best deck!
So this is it for this week, and as you can see, I am still carrying a large reputation as the Rock master. I would love to see some non-Rock questions though, especially after this week, where I say that it’s just not good enough.
Having said that, maybe with a Black Wrath added to the mix…
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
[email protected]. Mail me. Please.
Jeroen