On Tuesday, StarCityGames.com orchestrated a throwback to great times past with a revamp of the old school “Battle Royale” format. This week I participated in the Battle Royale alongside such greats as Max McCall, Gavin Verhey, and Matt Sperling. These gentlemen are quite the competition, and their sharp, witty banter did not disappoint. However, I believe I’m getting ahead of myself.
A few weeks ago, a lot of the writers were approached for this idea for renewing Battle Royale, because it used to be a fairly popular format where various writers battled each other across various formats. Being an exercise that shows how different people prepare for a restricted format can be helpful as an overall deckbuilding tool, as well as give you a perspective on what each person does when given said restrictions. This restriction was sure to be a good one, but wasn’t exactly what I was expecting…
The format was Budget Standard: maximum $30, and I decided to go with an old favorite: Vampires. During the last week or so, I’ve been brainstorming various ideas, including variants on the up and coming Goblins deck featuring Kuldotha Rebirth in regular Standard, but I was surprised how necessary Mox Opal felt, and their price tag of $10+ kept me away from playing that particular archetype. What I did discover is that most budget decks were probably going to be aggressive, since most of the control finishers were the M11 Titans that produced unreal price tags. Pyromancer Ascension would be the only real “control” deck, since the cards are pretty cheap, and the deck doesn’t necessarily need Scalding Tarns to perform, though they’re helpful.
While I felt like the budget restriction hampered the ability for someone to play control, I’m not sure how much that really hampered our creativity. There were certainly a plethora of cheap finishers, but mana fixing would be an issue as well. Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse were my first options as far as building control was concerned, but I kept coming back to Pyromancer Ascension. I don’t really know why I abandoned that idea early on, but I remembered Scalding Tarns had become more than $6 each, which made building anything with them pretty difficult. Bad mana bases are not where you want to start when building a control deck, so that made me wary of the archetype.
For the life of me, I couldn’t come up with a combo deck, though I tried a few cool things like Semblance Anvil and Grand Architect, but if someone killed your early mana creatures, you were in a lot of trouble. I expected people to be packing all sorts of removal, since I felt like this format would be overwhelmingly aggressive, not leaving me a lot of time to set up whatever combo I wanted to play.
After building a few dudders that couldn’t beat your average durdle in the Tournament Practice room, I went back to one of my initial aggro ideas. Vampires felt like where I should be starting, with the ability to play good removal and disruption, and the creatures weren’t too bad either considering they were almost all commons.
As I explored various archetypes, I felt more and more confident in Vampires, since black gave me access to an unreal card that most people wouldn’t even think about: Marsh Casualties. This card seemed busted in a format full of cheap creatures, giving me access to a one-sided Wrath effect in all the aggressive matchups. Most creature decks are cold to this card, including Goblins, White Weenie, Vampires, Poison, and other various aggressive decks I’m not thinking of.
The only real problem was filling out the rest of the 75. With such a limited price tag, even the commons and uncommons added up very quickly. Bloodghast was $3, which was kind of a beating, but I knew I wanted them to combo with cards like Blade of the Bloodchief, Viscera Seer, and potentially Bloodthrone Vampire. Pawn of Ulamog might make an appearance, comboing well with the rest of the deck, giving you plenty of fodder to throw under the bus. With Kalastria Highborn joining the fray, it limited my access to playing fetchlands, which would make Bloodghast worse but my overall deck stronger.
After a bunch of playtest games in the Tournament Practice room against various people, here is the list I finalized before the Battle Royale commenced:
Creatures (30)
- 3 Bloodghast
- 4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
- 4 Kalastria Highborn
- 4 Pulse Tracker
- 4 Bloodthrone Vampire
- 3 Pawn of Ulamog
- 4 Viscera Seer
- 4 Captivating Vampire
Lands (23)
- 23 Swamp
Spells (7)
Sideboard
While I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d need Vampire Hexmage for, I felt like being prepared for White Weenie Quest as well as Pyromancer Ascension would be smart. Urge to Feed was the best spot removal spell for the job, seeing as I planned on playing against at least one Vampires opponent and didn’t want something like Deathmark or Doom Blade sitting in my board being dead cards. Inquisition of Kozilek was for aggressive decks, or if I needed disruption and their curve was low. Dark Tutelage was for control, obviously, but could be sided in against mirrors where attrition was the plan. The 24th Swamp was there because I had five cents left to spend, and Swamp was the only card I wanted that was less than 5 cents.
Blade of the Bloodchief was a sign of me trying to live the dream, but it didn’t work out nearly as planned. I sided it out a lot, but in theory it was good. Perhaps I was just using it incorrectly; it did overwhelm my opponents a few times, but most of the time it was a dead card, and I could’ve really used a removal spell or threat.
Around 5 p.m. Central time, I hopped onto Magic Online and set up to battle Max McCall in the first round of the Battle Royale. I asked him before the match:
Me: “Are you set up and everything? Do you have your deck together?”
Max: “Yes, but it’s embarrassing.”
With that thought in mind, I felt like Max was probably Vampires because the tribe has gotten a lot of flak recently due to the presence of such pop-culture garbage like Twilight, True Blood, etc., etc., etc. There are so many Vampires on television that I really just wish people would move on to another ancient monster.
Perhaps mummies.
As it turned out, Max was on Poison of the Mono-Green variety. Sporting such beats as Groundswell, Adventuring Gear, and even Soaring Seacliff, Max had done his homework. He sunk most of his $30 budget into fetchlands, helping to pump his tiny infected vermin but couldn’t quite afford all eight (or perhaps even seven). This lamentation was announced during his match against Matt Sperling, but we’ll get to that in just a bit.
After setting up the match and allowing the audience to join and watch the game, Max and I were down to business. I kept a sketchy opener in the first game featuring three Pulse Trackers and went to work on his life total. After drawing a land on the third turn, I cast a few guys and set in for a long grind of blocking Ichorclaw Myr. After he landed a Cystbearer and halted my squad, I was forced to try and double-block to kill off a creature, but he had
triple
Groundswell with landfall to kill me on his unblocked Ichorclaw Myr.
After siding in the removal and Inquisitions of Kozilek, I went to work on his board and hand. During the match, Max commented on how cold his deck was to Pawn of Ulamog and how bad my army of 1/1s and 2/2s looked against his Cystbearer. Max’s misplay ended up costing him the game, where he used a fetchland and Adventuring Gear on defense to save a creature and kill mine, but then topdecked a Soaring Seacliff which would’ve killed me via poison and flying.
In the third game, I absolutely massacred him. He tried for Canopy Cover on a Blight Mamba but was murdered by Gatekeeper of Malakir. A few turns later, Marsh Casualties took out tokens from a Carrion Call, and I followed that with another Gatekeeper to kill his Cystbearer, running more attackers into the fray. At the end of the game with Max having an empty board, I “still had all these”-ed him by casting my topdecked Kalastria Highborn with a Viscera Seer in play.
1-0
After this match, Matt with Pyromancer Ascension battled Max with Poison. In the first game, Matt tapped out for Jace Beleren and felt the grounds swell up around him. The second game was quite the opposite blowout, with Matt assembling Pyromancer Ascension and steamrolling all of Max’s creatures. Sperling mulliganed to five in the rubber game and looked to start taking control, but Max had the Nature’s Claim for the almost-active Pyromancer Ascension to put Sperling very far behind. He couldn’t kill all of Max’s creatures, and was eventually POISONED.
Matt was ready for battle right after his previous match, so we went ahead and got started instead of waiting around for no reason. Neither game was particularly close with Matt nut-drawing me in the first game with two active Pyromancer Ascensions on the fourth turn, all the while sending my creatures to the grave. I didn’t see any Bloodghasts and was quickly dispatched.
Game 2 was another flood and another massacre. My deck can’t beat Pyromancer Ascension, and I didn’t draw an Inquisition to handle his engine before it overwhelmed me. I tried to get cute and use Blade of the Bloodchief to keep my creatures out of burn range, but he had so many copies of his spells that I just couldn’t punch through.
1-1
After this match, Gavin was the only person not currently present, but we were informed he was on his way. Gavin ended up battling with a Vampire deck similar to mine, but I didn’t see either Blade of the Bloodchief or Marsh Casualties, instead showing maindeck Inquisition of Kozilek (which I pondered for quite some time) and Urge to Feed.
He beat both Max and Sperling to be the only current undefeated in the tournament.
In the first game, Gavin opened with a pair of Vampire Lacerators, as well as a few Kalastria Highborns to make my blocking pretty poor. I could only muster a few 1/1s and a Blade of the Bloodchief, which didn’t do anything.
In the second game, I massacred Gavin with a kicked Marsh Casualties, giving me a huge advantage with a four-for-one. A pair of Gatekeepers of Malakir later, and we were onto the last game of the Battle Royale.
This game looked like I had an early advantage, but Gavin was able to land a Dark Tutelage before I could put enough pressure on him. After drawing a pair of Vampire Lacerators, he was able to blow me out with an Urge to Feed during combat, putting me on the back foot. There was a one-turn window where I could take control of the game if he didn’t draw a Vampire or removal spell, but he drew his fifth vampire for Captivating Vampire to begin taking control of all my threats. I was drawing dead and scooped them up.
1-2
While the performance of the deck was fairly disappointing, I ended up with the same record as Max and Matt, with Gavin sweeping us. Vampires ended up winning, making me feel like I made the right choice but potentially built my deck incorrectly. I couldn’t quite prepare for everything I might face against, and with such a small field, I wasn’t sure what cards would be good maindeck and which would be better to sideboard. Having no way to kill Pyromancer Ascension seemed like a bad idea in retrospect, but you can’t beat everything.
Overall, this exercise was a lot of fun, and I’d gladly participate again. Lauren Lee did a great job of getting the word out and ran things pretty smoothly on the client. In the future, I’d like some sort of Ustream support for these events, since Magic Online apparently has a “maximum number of viewers” per match, and multiple people were locked out of the matches that wanted to watch.
I’d love to continue competing in these and especially love the diversity that restricted formats bring. Maybe next time we can revert back to some old Block Constructed format, but card availability is certainly an issue with some formats like Legacy.
I hope you guys enjoyed this as much as I did, and I’ll be looking forward to your suggestions and opinions in the forums. Thanks for reading!
Todd
strong sad on MOL