Alara Reborn is now upon us, and it looks as if it has some powerful and fun cards to play around with.
I’m excited by Thought Hemorrhage. It seems like a strong sideboard card for more than a few matchups, taking away a card that’s a central theme for them before they can deploy it. I know that a lot of people are dismissing it as a narrow card, and I agree that it’s probably not maindeckable, but it still seems relevant in some matchups. Besides, isn’t that what sideboard slots are for? Cards you can use in a few matchups where you need the help?
For instance, I’m excited to try it out against Reveillark. Imagine being able to neuter the threat before they even cast it. It’s 4 mana, so it can be played before they can normally get Reveillark online, either on the play or the draw. It plays nice with Thoughtseize and Blightning, letting you figure out what they are running and what to take down.
It also looks very strong against Turbo Mill, taking Sanity Grinding if you can get it to resolve (easier said than done, of course).
Heck, I’m even excited to take Broodmate Dragon away from Five-Color Control. The Nassif list would have to win on Aggro Drifters and Cruel Ultimatums. Possible, but a lot harder.
Let’s just say that as my newly formed team tests for Regionals and GP: Seattle, we’re definitely going to try a lot of B/R decks, because there appears to be a lot of potential there.
Thoughtseize, Anathemancer, Blightning, Terminate, Thought Hemorrhage, Banefire, and Volcanic Fallout. All of those look very tempting to me. How sick is it going be to Unearth Anathemancer against most of the field? Disruption, removal, direct damage, burn, and just punishing decks for running non-basics. It’s like Magus of the Moon, only more awesome. I like to play control decks, and B/R has me wanting to shuffle up some Graven Cairns!
But before we get on to Standard and teams, I want to talk a little bit about this past weekend’s Launch Parties. Quite a bit of fun, and the Knight of New Alara promo foil opens up some great possibilities for Dark Bant decks to get a new lord. Anyone who came to both of the Launch parties in my hometown ended up with a full playset, too.
Our first launch Party was just an 8-man on Thursday night. I opened up my first pack and it didn’t have a whole lot. I knew I liked R/G, I just needed to figure out if I wanted to go with White as my third color, or Black. I ended up taking a Singe-Mind Ogre, which I think is pretty good, and allows you to get a huge swing for what is really only about 1 mana more. Second Pick, I got passed Retaliator Griffin. I took that as a pretty strong sign that White was open, and snapped it up. I figured on having a nice Naya deck, but things started drying up, and I ended up about as much Black as White at the end of the first pack.
The second pack came through, and was full of Naya goodness. At the end of the pack, I had 14 or 15 playables, so I was pretty close to pace. The last pack, I didn’t see hardly anything decent Naya. Turns out, My neighbor that passed me the Griffin was in Naya, and just straight up made a horrible pick. He didn’t take Sledge, or any of the other justifiable picks he could have. I ended up with two options for my deck, neither one as strong as I likes.
I started out in Jund, and played this:
1 Retaliator Griffin
5 Jund Sojourners
1 Giant Ambush Beetle
1 Vithian Renegades
3 Singe-Mind Ogre
1 Deadshot Minotaur
1 Kathari Bomber
2 Valley Rannet
1 Firewild Borderpost
1 Mage Slayer
1 Trace of Abundance
3 Sangrite Backlash
I liked the Sing-Mind Ogres, as mentioned previously, because the give you a bit of reach, and with a lot of 4 and 5 drops, it’s pretty decent. In 3 rounds, I only hit lands two times. One game I hit two 6-drops. Nice.
Terminate is obviously nuts, and the Mage Slayer is pretty strong as well.
But I had a sideboard plan to jump into Naya. I honestly don’t know which one is the right build to play.
1 Retaliator Griffin
1 Pale Recluse
1 Stun Sniper
2 Gloryscale Viashino
1 Naya Sojourners
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Sigiled Behemoth
1 Jund Sojourners
1 Giant Ambush Beetle
1 Vithian Renegades
1 Deadshot Minotaur
2 Valley Rannet
1 Trace of Abundance
3 Sangrite Backlash
1 Firewild Borderpost
1 Mage Slayer
1 Behemoth Sledge
Yeah, only 20 real spells, and even one of those is only good for cycling. I only had 19 cards to actually affect the opponent with, but they were 19 pretty decent ones. More bombs, less spells.
I went 2-1, losing to a deck with 5 Jund Hackblade, 5 Violent Outburst, and 4 Godtracker of Jund. There were 4 more Hackblades and Outbursts drafted, and I saw the ones that went past me. I didn’t see the ones in this deck, as the guy was 2 seats upstream of me, but man, that’s a lot of Hackblades.
After that, I was able to play in a 9-man event that was a lot of fun. I was determined to force Jund this time, as I knew at least two players at the table had a love affair with Behemoth Sledge. I opened a pack with Singe-Mind Ogre, Terminate, and Lord of Extinction.
Which card do you take here? Removal, or the absolutely bomb rare? Keep in mind, we’re still triple Alara reborn, so removal for this guy is extremely slim.
I ended up taking the Lord of Extinction, figuring I would have more shots to get Terminate, and not so many to get him. The guy to my left took one look at all the B/R, decided to go G/W and let the people downstream fight over B/R. Second pick came a Bloodbraid Elf, and another Terminate. The player two seats down was almost definitely in B/R by that point, and I was sure he had the Terminate. I focused on loading up on R/G on the second pack, and picked up three Borderposts as well. I even managed to get a Terminate. Third pack, I took two more Terminates, and ended up going 4-0 with this:
1 Blitz Hellion
1 Lord of Extinction
1 Lightning Reaver
3 Deadshot Minotaur
3 Singe-Mind Ogre
1 Valley Rannet
1 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Terminate
1 Breath of Malfegor
1 Violent Outburst
2 Firewild Borderpost
2 Veinfire Borderpost
I was pleased with this deck, as it is pretty nuts, in my opinion. I had a Jund Hackblade, but opted not to play him, as I wanted all four of my 3-casting cost cascade spells to hit removal guaranteed. I would sandbag them until I needed removal, and then use them. 14 lands and 4 Borderposts feels a little heavy, maybe, but I didn’t want to risk it. I knew the deck had enough power to 4-0, I just had to prevent myself from losing to the deck not giving me mana.
Singe-Mind Ogre was again a very strong card, giving me wins out of nowhere with 5 and 6 points of life loss straight to the dome.
The ability to effectively have 10 removal spells was pretty huge, allowing me to play almost like 5 color control and just kill everything and win with 1-2 good critters.
Frankly, though, I’m looking forward to getting back to Standard.
Standard Talk
I managed to play in a little 5-man standard pickup tournament. Everybody put in a dollar, we bought a pack, and then drafted the contents. So, the first place guy gets the rare, basically, but everyone else gets something too. I played the same deck I showed you guys previously, Five-Color Control with Swans main, and the standard build in the sideboard, just in case.
I managed to go 3-0, beating a Faeries deck, a Naya Cascade deck, and then a Sanity Grinding deck with a lot of creatures to avoid Telemin Performance, which I was running in the board (to combat it and Planeswalker Control).
Faeries was fairly easy, as I run 7 sweepers, and Wall of Reverence and Swans are pretty good on defense.
Naya Cascade had some hairy situations, but you just wait until you see what the cascade card is, and then you counter whichever is the bigger threat.
Sanity Grinding was interesting. I won the first game when he practically decked himself. He made a few mistakes, counting down his Jace Beleren instead of going for ultimate. In three games, I never drew a card off of his Jace, which is just plain wrong. Second, he kept swinging in with Overbeing of Myth into my Swans of Bryn Argoll, drawing 8-9 cards each time. I was able to survive a Sanity Grinding, and when he tried to run the last one out (with a bunch of Twincast) he only had 6 cards left in his library, and that was that.
Game 2, he Boomeranged my land, then cast a Sanity Grinding for 23, and then hit another one for lethal before I could get counter mana up.
The third game I cast Telemin Performance into his own Godhead of Awe, milling away two sanity Grindings in the process. The Godhead went all the way for 20. We cracked our pack, and I took… Thought Hemorrhage. Nice! R/B, here I come.
Team __________
We’re putting a team together for Regionals. Last year, not having a gauntlet was debilitating, to say the least. I went 2-3-1, and I did the best out of anyone locally. Yikes, that’s pretty horrible. To be fair, I was just getting into the competitive swing of things, and I could have easily won my last round if someone hadn’t stolen my deck.
Let that be a lesson, kids: Don’t walk away from your deck, not even for 30 seconds. That’s all it took for mine to get stolen before the last round. Keep an eye on your stuff, and don’t trust anyone.
This year, we’re going to have an archetype for each player, so we have both a balanced gauntlet, and someone in each genre, ready to capitalize on emerging tech.
I was planning on rocking Five-Color Control up until a few weeks ago, but as I said, I really don’t want to play 7 rounds (hopefully more, with Top 8) with it. I’m burnt out, and ready for something new.
However, my experience will not go to waste, as we do have another player who wants to try to fill the void, and see if he can man-up to Five-Color Control.
We don’t have a team name yet, feel free to drop suggestions in the forums. We were going to call ourselves the Unknown Team, as we play at the Unknown Store, but that’s been done before. Maybe we will anyway, who knows.
More importantly, I’m really enjoying playing with strong analysis, being able to watch matches and analyze them from both sides of the matchup. This week, I’m going to try to get everyone to do the Fearless Magical Self-Inventory, so we can start seeing the weaknesses we have. Even if we can’t fix them, perhaps we can start to recognize them, and avoid them if possible. The first step is admitting you have a problem, or at least that’s what I hear.
I’ve spent the last few months trying to find all of the weaknesses in my game (and trust me, they’re definitely there.) Just because I win FNM’s doesn’t mean I’m good. It just means I’m less bad than the other players. But as you start playing in stronger and stronger talent pools, you are less likely to be the least bad player there.
I hesitate to use the word good, because, frankly, I’m not sure I am good. Every player makes a lot of mistakes in every game. Mike Turian once said that you could even blink at the wrong time. I imagine that even if you play technically perfect (doubtful) that you probably are still messing up on bluffs, tells, reads, and just timing. Even responding too quickly could be a misplay. All you can try to do is be the least awful player you can.
Regionals Mini-Primer
In a few weeks, it will be time once again for U.S. Regionals. These tournaments are some of the most highly anticipated (largely) amateur tournaments every year, with the top four finishers in each of several tournaments receiving an invitation to the 2009 U.S. National Championship. The format, as ever, will be Standard. With the latest Pro Tour and StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open information, we are fortunate to have removed our metagame from under the boot of the cult of Oona. Make no mistake, Faeries will be not be insignificant. Many a player will still be sleeving up 75 cards worth of Fae, but it’s no longer the powerhouse of dominance it once was. That said, there will be a metagame.
If you’re testing, and I should hope you are, here are a few tips for you to follow.
– It is usually best to test against the highest finishing known and published version of deck for playtest, rather than choosing based on personal preference, because…
– In a single day event that cuts to single elimination before invitations, it is more important to beat the decks that will show up as opposed to the best versions of the best decks. In other word, if you want to make it to the Top 8, odds are you need to be able to beat the most popular build of a deck. That is most likely going to be the published version.
– Keep up on emerging technology. If Chapin produces something broken again, you need to be aware of it, how it plays, and if you can beat it. If GerryT has some new update to your chosen deck for the mirror, you need to know about it, so that you can either run it, or be a step ahead and meta-game around it.
– It is generally pointless to have rogue decks on both sides of the table. You need to be testing against typical builds. See above.
– Have spectators watch the match for two reasons. One, it gets you used to a crowd, and potential audience. If you make Top 8, you’ll have a small crowd. Two, they can all watch, learn, and teach. Maybe they have an idea for how to use your Esper Charm against B/W Tokens that no one else had considered.
– Finally, be open to criticism. We all suck at Magic, and we all have room to get much, much better. Let other people help you. To do that, they have to tell you what you’re doing wrong. Don’t get defensive, don’t get angry, listen and learn.
I want to give some advice up front. If you have been playtesting a lot with a certain deck and feel comfortable and experienced with it, do not switch decks at the last. Even if you learn that another deck has slightly better matchup percentages against the field, familiarity with your preferred deck can easily outweigh those. The format is nowadays so wide open with viable strategies that the difference between decks is very low, and the best way to get an edge on the field is by playing a deck much better than anyone else rather than simply picking the consensus best deck. Always select the one that you feel contented with and that fits your personal playing style.
Remember how we were talking earlier about making mistakes? As you become more familiar with a deck, you make fewer mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, you still make mistakes, but hopefully not the worst ones. Even then, if you get into a situation, if you know your deck, you know your outs. If you switch to Five-Color Control at the last minute, you will waste time and energy thinking “How many removal spells am I running? Did we run Terror or Path to Exile?” Familiarity is a good thing.
Thanks for reading.
This is Jeff Phillips, reminding you: Don’t make the Loser Choice.