Having beaten Billy Moreno, the onus is now on me to attempt the feat so far achieved by only one Battler so far, to string two matches together in order to meet Talen Lee current reign of terror as supreme champion of the galaxy and StarCityGames.com Battle Royale. Again taking lessons from the failure of those who have come before me, it became readily apparent that no matter what else I was going to do, I certainly wasn’t going to play Mountains in my deck du jour. And messing with success wasn’t too high on the list of priorities, either; the last deck I played worked out reasonably well for a reason, and was reasonably well-matched to my strengths as a player. Just repeating the same deck as the prior week seemed like a poor choice, if for no other reason than it seems to me to conflict with half the fun of Battle Royale… but maybe half the same deck might still be reasonable. After all, if we’re trying to match Talen Lee success, why not match his recipe? If something worked once, the same flavor with a different twist might just work a second time… this is the lesson taught so far by the history of the Battle Royale, and so my goal was not to make something entirely new but to find out what part of the Tyrant-Snake deck from last week was my “Murray.”
Starting with the idea that the Snake Shaman engine could be replaced with another explosive mana engine, I started with the Tidespout Tyrant theory again and tried a Blue-based deck with an UrzaTron engine to power out the expensive eight-drop… and further hybridized the deck, adding Black for Zombify to go with the fact that Compulsive Research is one of the best tools Blue decks have to draw the full Tron “on time.” Taking a mix of Blue Tron and Solar Flare, I reached the following deck:
4 Urza’s Tower
4 Urza’s Mine
4 Urza’s Power Plant
4 Dimir Aqueduct
4 Frost Marsh
3 Snow-Covered Island
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
4 Dimir Signet
2 Coldsteel Heart
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Compulsive Research
4 Remand
4 Mana Leak
4 Ribbons of Night
4 Phyrexian Ironfoot
4 Tidespout Tyrant
2 Zombify
Sideboard:
4 Last Gasp
4 Drift of Phantasms
3 Repeal
3 Counterbalance
1 Zombify
Unfortunately, in my test-draws with the deck, it had one key problem… it didn’t, um, “work.” Sometimes it’d play a turn 2 Signet, Research on turn 3, and still have nothing… Tyrant to discard but no Zombify, the full Tron on turn 4 but no triple-Blue (no surprises there), and even on the off chance when I got Tyrant into play on turn 4 there was nothing to play that wasn’t a reactive counterspell. So the “explosive” nature of the deck didn’t explode, and from there on in it was just a poor control deck that might do okay but clearly wasn’t the best effort I could put forward for a budget deck challenge. After all, if I wouldn’t give it my stamp of approval if someone else asked me if it were a reasonable choice, actually playing it myself wasn’t exactly a good idea.
Last time, this was the deck that lost out so I could play the Sachi deck. This time, it’s still just not good enough… so, working sideways, we’ll take the Snake-Sachi portion of the deck and see what other synergies can be built in. Snake-based mana acceleration and Karoos works well together, so the second color is already free and a third can be added at minimal cost. Sosuke’s Summons is incredibly good, and I’m actually quite sad I wasn’t able to cast it once in my match against Billy, not even after boarding in the fourth copy for the second and third games. Tokens with buyback sounds like it might work well with other cards we’ve seen recently, and it was very easy to go from Simic to Selesnya. It’s a very different approach to Selesnya than Craig took for a win, focusing less on the aggressive potential of Green/White and getting a chance to use card synergy instead of 3/3s for G/W.
Looking back into history, though, we see Feldman’s strategy used Snakes plus Glare in a U/G/W mishmash that lost to Ben Goodman straight Blue-Green build in the Snakes mirror match. Avoiding the same mistake, then, I aimed to keep to a Green/White build, though I’d be content to use a light touch of a third color… after all, with the desire to have eight Karoos in my deck I already have four sources of another color, and adding just one basic land of a third color gets me five additional sources of that color when you account for Sakura-Tribe Elder. Quickly it was plain to see that a light Blue splash would let me play Patagia Viper, which I would be content to cast without Blue so long as I was using my mana to aggressively pump out tokens, buying back a Summons or two and getting a pair of tokens even if I don’t get my “Snakes on a Plane.”
Time of Need for Meloku as my one token Blue card… because Meloku is Redonkulous… check. Fun use of tokens to control the board, and perhaps use the Convoke mechanic? Check.
Creatures (23)
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
- 1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
- 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
- 2 Seshiro the Anointed
- 1 Shisato, Whispering Hunter
- 1 Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Scout
- 4 Selesnya Guildmage
- 4 Patagia Viper
Lands (24)
Spells (13)
The deck should naturally work well against other creature-based strategies, thanks to the creature synergy inherent in the Snake tribe and the power of “lots of mana plus Selesnya Guildmage”… oh, and Glare plus my own personal Wrath of God (that misses a fair chunk of my own men) should work reasonably well. Against controlling decks, we’ve got a creature-generator with buyback that is resistant to any counterspell that isn’t Hinder, an army in a box if a two-drop resolves, plus a mana advantage built in thanks to the Karoos and a Legend or two that might help out… Hokori is good for obvious reasons, but Ben Goodman Shisato, Whispering Hunter technology married with Richard Feldman Snakes plus Glare technology may just be the peanut butter-chocolate technology that has been waiting to be revealed forever now. After all, tap your guys, steal your untap phase has to be quite the combo.
Now, for the pricing:
| Card Name | Quantity | Cost Each | Total Cost |
|
Sosuke’s Summons
|
4
|
1
|
4
|
|
3
|
0.05
|
0.15
|
|
|
3
|
2
|
6
|
|
|
3
|
5
|
1.5
|
|
|
4
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
4
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
4
|
.25
|
1
|
|
|
1
|
0.05
|
.05
|
|
|
1
|
.25
|
.25
|
|
|
2
|
1.67
|
3.34
|
|
|
4
|
.25
|
1
|
|
|
1
|
0.9
|
0.9
|
|
|
1
|
3.5
|
3.5
|
|
|
1
|
2
|
2
|
|
|
4
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
4
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
10
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
3
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
1
|
0.5
|
0.5
|
|
|
1
|
0. 5
|
0.5
|
|
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
SIDEBOARD:
|
|||
|
Faith’s Fetters
|
4
|
0
|
0
|
|
Nauralize
|
4
|
0
|
0
|
|
4
|
0.1
|
0.4
|
|
|
1
|
2
|
2
|
|
|
1
|
.5
|
.5
|
|
|
1
|
2
|
2
|
|
|
Total
|
29.59
|
Of course, this was just my initial estimate of how this deck would be costed, figuring I could get a lot of the uncommons at four-for-one and knowing that I could definitely do better on a lot of these cards… after all, Glares at two tix can probably be done better, when dealers can buy them for one ticket each; just advertising myself to buy four for six when the dealers are only giving one tix per Glare will probably work out well enough, and just hunting around long enough will inevitably turn up some kind of a deal. At the worst, an expensive card or two could be cut; cutting the one Meloku and two legendary lands already brings us down basically to our budget before finding any deals on any of these cards, so the more aggressively I shop, the greater my chances of getting to keep my Meloku plus Glare of Subdual combo… or at least get to use the Green and White legendary lands to protect my suite of Legends, even though they are less critical overall than they were for the last deck.
With a little more experience from last time, I was able to accomplish everything I was looking for by using the same techniques and most of the same dealers, so we don’t have a complicated multi-day trading blog like the first time through this. I started everything off the same way as last time, buying tickets off Paypal funds rather than by ordering 25 tix from Wizards of the Coast, if for no other reason than I am offended by paying for tax for imaginary purchases in addition to paying full price. Searching on the Sellers board for the word “Paypal”, I found the seller Go Michigan selling tickets for less than $.90 each. Everyone else was selling for higher, and trying to save a penny or two per ticket by hunting down a slightly better price was only worth a quarter per fraction saved. Measuring the hours of my life versus a few quarters said that $21.50 for 25 tix was perfectly acceptable… after all, it’s not like I’ve got to show off for the readership, I’m already doing much better than “just buying from Wizards”.
Looking around, I couldn’t find a better deal for Azusa, Meloku, or Sosuke’s Summons, and it’s basically impossible to do better for Time of Need or Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro. Just re-using those from the last deck will be fine, and if I need to be really sleazy with the prices I can use the one Sachi I bought for 0.04 tix two weeks ago instead of the “regular” 0.05 tix copies you can find easily by looking around. Hopefully it won’t be critical, but I’m not above it.
It was time, then, to start looking for the new cards. For the maindeck, then, that meant Okina, Eiganjo Castle, Patagia Viper, Selesnya Guildmage, Seshiro #2, Shisato, Hokori, Glare, Hour of Reckoning, and Indrik Stomphowler. First things first: I hit up the dealers I had put on my “buddy list”, and started with the duo of YatBot sellers, Guilds and Azorius. They performed the best for me overall last time I was at this, and the expectation was that I’d get the best deals there… but they mostly sell Uncommons and junky Rares. I found he had two Patagia Vipers at 0.3 tix each, and four Selesnya Guildmages at 0.1 tix each. One ticket spent. Azorius also had four Indrik Stomphowlers at .1 tix each, and I had a credit of 0.95 tix there from my last deckbuilding efforts, so I pick those four up at a reasonable cost and don’t have to worry about the fractional ticket problem that can be such a hassle.
Going to his partner-bot, Guilds, I see they also had two copies of Seshiro the Anointed at 1.3 tix each, so I can buy two and drop the price from 1.67 to 1.3. Instead I pick up one, and change my price accordingly… again, I’m not showing off for the readers, and what would I ever do with three copies of Seshiro? I can’t even repeat on Battle Royale with it, since my sincere hope is that we’re going to see Time Spiral on MTGO before my next deck would be due. He also has two copies of Hokori, Dust Drinker at 1.9 each, and I can still pick this up without leaving a fractional ticket behind. So far I’ve shaved costs on a few uncommons and couldn’t find Hokori for less than 2, so getting .1 tix savings on two cards might not be great but it’s the best I can find. If it comes down to it, and we can choose between a Hokori in the sideboard and a Meloku in the main, I can live with having to decide to cut a Hokori I had paid for… after all, the deck can’t cost more than 25, but I can take a slight loss off my personal funds, since I’m already going to end up spending less than the whole amount because of how many of the cards I already own from last time.
Next up, I set to get myself Glares, and searching for “Glare” I found a lot of dealers selling them for 2, and the dealer RoyalMerchant selling 2 for 3 tix. Buying four would shave a full two tickets off my price, and I can’t honestly expect to do better than that. He had three, and took four tickets for it; I took down the name of his bot service and aimed to shop from a similar bot somewhere else in here to not just leave fractional tickets lying around. I still need a fourth, and started poking around searching with the word “Hour.” This turned up the dealer .3for1Seller, who also had two copies of Patagia Viper… almost the exact same “best” price as I’d found before, and it completes the set of something I’m looking for while also avoiding leaving behind unspent ticket-fractions, which is bad mmkay?
Continuing to search, I found the dealer 2for1Cards, who ironically enough was not selling cards at 2 for 1, but instead at 3 for 1. He also had them available at .33, and he also only had one… but he was using YatBot, which from my poking around I already know and like to use two sellers who use that bot and give good prices, Guilds and Azorius. 2for1Cards also had a copy of Shisato, Whispering Hunter at .33 tix, but my poking around had only found them at .5 tix each. It’s a decent deal, and another way to pick up a card without losing fractional tickets, even though I can probably use the same dealer again. Of all the cards to not be able to find a decent price on… I’m sure I’ve probably thrown out copies of this one or left it on tables after a CBS draft, it’s almost embarrassing to want one now and not be able to pick one up as easy and as casually as I’ve thrown them away.
Searching for Glare again, I found a new dealer had come online, _2_Ticket_Rares. He had one Glare at 3 for 5, or 1.66 tix each. It’s still decent, and he’s using the same dealer-bot as a few others I’ve used in the past, the set of .WOW dealers. I can live with this, and pick up the use of the .34 tickets later. Continuing the search, trawling for dealers, I found a three-for-one seller claiming to have “the best deals” on “great rares”… the dealer Eric Phillips also used YatBot, and had two more Hours of Reckoning at three-for-one, picking me up the cards I was missing at a price I can accept. Closing this all out, I had everything I wanted purchased except for the Rares, and running it through my high-tech ultra-geeky Excel spreadsheet I’d worked up to track actual costs as I was going along, the price of my deck had dropped from 29.59 to 23.97… and that’s after finding two Legendary lands at two-for-one, which I’d seen time and again while shopping around this time and the last. So I get to keep everything I wanted to put in, and kicked the crap out of the estimate I’d had of finding this deck at closer to 30 tickets than 25, and this time I don’t have to make any more compromises in order to complete my deck… it’s bad enough that stuff like Kodama of the North Tree and Arashi are flat-out too expensive to fit into my Green-based legend deck, and Yosei is pretty much flat-out as well.
For the last touch, I hit up MTGOSmartShop and found Okina at .4 and Eiganjo Castle at .45 tix each. This drops the final price of the deck to 23.81 tix, way under my last effort… last time, I fell under the wire by only 0.03 tix, and only after making a few sacrifices in my card-choice to cut unnecessary expenses that I would have dearly liked to include, like Oboro, Palace in the Clouds.
With the deck locked in and complete, I had what I was looking for: an aggressive deck that is more consistent than my last effort, because I’m not playing reactive cards that are only good if I’ve got the right mana untapped at the right time… even my “reactive” interactive cards are aggressive in orientation, even my Wrath of God could be considered “aggressive” since it leaves me creatures in play and even (ha HA!) “clears the way” for a token-based offensive… Blue/Green Snakes, Green Snakes from Sosuke, and the Guildmage’s Green Saproling tokens. Instead of combo’ing Divining Tops and Tidespout Tyrants, we have Glare of Subdual for the Tyrant’s board-control element and Selesnya Guildmage as our Tyrant-like “mana sink.” We lose the consistency that Divining Top can give us, which is good with Elders and Time of Need, but trade it for more and better beatdown… turning from a Snake-based combo trick deck to a synergy-based beatdown deck that should prove to be solid against other beatdown decks and decent against budget-price control decks thanks to its mana advantage and the ability to use one card to generate multiple threats, from Sosuke’s Summons and Selesnya Guildmage.
The sideboard is intended to be versatile, able to handle the kinds of threats the deck isn’t already aimed at… the Selesnya guild as presented here is able to control the creatures in play, with Glare and Reckoning, or by being just flat-out better. Naturalize and Indrik Stomphowler will bring a lot of hate for anything my opponent might toss my way, and presumably it’ll even be enough to get past a Counterbalance-based control deck, thanks to there being two distinctly different casting-costs to break past the Counterbalance lock. If it’s something that can’t be Disenchanted or tapped or Wrathed, we’ve got Faith’s Fetters, which can also help for tuning the deck after sideboarding and modulating the speed of the deck for the proper response against any opponent, beatdown or control. Likewise, we’ve got a second copy of Hokori, to push the mana advantage angle a little bit harder in case it looks like it’ll work, and a fourth copy of both Glare and Hour of Reckoning, if it seems that board-control is the proper response to whatever my opponent is bringing to the table.
As to the opponent? Gone are the days of an easy opponent on the Battle Royale, when you’d have to worry about beating the budget Ghost Dad build or facing off against the StarCityGames second-stringers like Talen Lee, Evan “Misterorange” Erwan, or Sean McKeown. After taking down Billy Moreno last week, I’d hoped perhaps I might get to face off against an easier opponent, like someone who hadn’t made top 8 at a Grand Prix or Pro Tour recently, or “just” won their National Championships like our esteemed editor. So far most of the “pros” haven’t been especially interested in the Battle Royale, with just Billy Moreno and Ben Goodman popping in to play at the budget-deck table. This week, though, I don’t get to “relax” and square off against someone with about as much actual success on the professional circuit as I’ve had; taking down Pro Tour Finalist Billy Moreno just gets me the right to square up against Jeroen Remie instead.
I’d like to think I’ve got a solid chance, because I’ve built a good deck with a strong plan and given myself some good tools to gain an advantage with… mana advantage, board advantage from strong creature control and cards that can give more than one card’s worth of use for it, like Summons, Meloku and the Guildmage. The aggressive potential of the deck is strong, as are the sideboard tools to sculpt the deck against Jeroen’s plans and path to victory.
But will I win?
Ask Jeroen.
Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com
[Watch the battle this Friday, at 7pm EST, in the “Anything Goes” Casual Room on Magic Online! – Craig.]