I was planning to more or less sacrifice this Grand Prix to focus on preparation for the Pro Tour. Despite my Top 4 in Barcelona last year, I was unhappy with my decision to work on Standard when I should have been preparing for the Block PT, as I felt totally clueless in Honolulu. This year I went the other way, and with the PT coming up in a few days, I feel pretty well prepared. That said, I probably didn’t have to sacrifice this GP as fully as I did. I put in a few hours talking to Patrick Chapin, discussing his deck and playing some games with it, and I helped with a few changes, but ultimately I played the deck without really having a good feel for the deck’s matchups or how it played out. I probably should have played a deck I knew better, like Mythic or some version of UW, or maybe even Sarkhan Jund.
Deck choice wasn’t my real problem. The real problem is that I generally don’t like to go to sleep, or rather, I like to stay awake and hop in another draft. I’ve been sick, so I’ve wanted to get plenty of sleep, and the result was that I was sleeping later and later. This problem was somewhat compounded by the fact that I’d get up early to test some days, which meant that I’d sleep later the next day to make up for it, and the result was that on Friday before the GP I woke up at 4:30pm. The problem with this is that when I got into bed at 3:00am the night of the GP, I was nowhere near ready to go to sleep, and I ended up lying awake in bed until it was time to get up for the GP. I spent at least four hours awake in bed. Incidentally, if tournament organizers and the DCI would get organized enough to allow players to submit their deck in advance, print out important notes from the players’ meeting to have posted somewhere in the tournament, and let players who have byes show up when they have to play (provided they’ve registered and submitted a decklist), getting enough sleep (and getting to tournaments) would be much less of a problem (at no cost to anyone else).
I’ve learned that I’m older now. I need sleep, as other writers have also noticed in themselves. This was the most extreme example. A few years ago, I could win tournaments without sleeping. In this GP, I somehow tanked trying to figure out if I wanted to Oblivion Ring my opponent’s Behemoth Sledge or Wild Nacatl, settled on the Sledge, and then put the Oblivion Ring on the Wild Nacatl and lost to the Sledge. I shouldn’t normally have had trouble deciding which in the first place, and in this case, I could barely keep track of my thought process while trying to decide. So I don’t really blame the deck for my failure to win any matches.
That said, a lot of my draws were extremely clunky. On paper, I was worried that the deck had too many four-drops. Playing it, that fear was entirely confirmed for me. Also, while the deck appears to have enough mana sources of each color, I had my White cut off by Spreading Seas and Tectonic Edges multiple times in my short tournament. Oh, I should probably provide the list I was playing if I’m going to discuss details like that: I played what was reported as, “Bant Control (Chapin’s Deck)” (I appreciate the use of “(Chapin’s Deck)” and “(Moreno’s Deck)” in the coverage, for what it’s worth. It makes it much easier to figure out what’s going on, especially in contrast to something like, “Naya” And “Naya (With Knightfall)” … What does that even mean? I thought the distinctions in Naya would be Vengevine or Boss… am I to believe that means most Naya decks weren’t playing Knight of the Reliquary?)
Anyway, my version of our deck, which was the same 75 as Gaudenis:
Creatures (23)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 3 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Kor Skyfisher
- 2 Scute Mob
- 3 Sea Gate Oracle
- 4 Vengevine
- 4 Wall of Omens
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (24)
Spells (6)
Over all, the deck performed well in the tournament. I believe 4 of 7 people playing the deck made day 2, and Gau finished 14th and Brian Kibler finished 17th. After the GP I was still very curious about how good the deck was. It felt like, while I wasn’t performing well for the deck, it wasn’t performing well for me either, but maybe I just happened to hit a series of bad draws. So I tried it out some on MTGO after the tournament. It still felt way too clunky and a lot of draws felt seriously underpowered. I was about to give up on it, but instead, I decided to rebuild it to try to address some of the problems, mostly the curve issue, but also the problem that, after cycling so much sometimes you just end up with a hand full of lands (the deck plays like it has more than 24 when you have 7 creatures and 4 planeswalkers that basically replace themselves. Also, I lost a lot of games where I drew 3-4 Jaces and had no real action. My new version looks like this:
Creatures (24)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 2 Sphinx of Lost Truths
- 4 Nest Invader
- 4 Sea Gate Oracle
- 4 Vengevine
- 4 Wall of Omens
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (24)
Spells (5)
The sideboard is still very much in flux (as it always has been in the GP; most people had a few different cards from each other, but I think we all had the exact same maindeck). I have only played a few matches with this new build, but it’s been playing out very well. Sphinx of Lost Truths has done exactly what I want it to, as has Nest Invader. I miss Scute Mob a little, but I think Sphinx covers for him.
I plan to put a lot of work into this deck before Grand Prix: Sendai, and I hope to play something like it, but if I can’t get it to work, there’s always Jund or Blue/White. Speaking of Jund and Blue/White, I should probably talk about the real results from the tournament, rather than my own miserable experience.
4 Blue/White variations, 3 Jund variations, and the most standard possible Mythic deck in the Top 8. Exactly the decks that did well at States. I’m glad to see that of the two evolutions of Super Friends that made Top 8 at the tournament, one cut Divination for Sea Gate Oracle, and one cut them for Jace Beleren, because those were the exact two changes that I was interested in making to that deck, and I’m glad to see that they both work.
As boring as the Top 8 looks at first glance, the lists are actually pretty interesting. Knowing that your opponent is Jund or Blue/White is nice, but there’s a lot it doesn’t tell you at this point (unlike Mythic, where everyone seems to be playing something almost exactly identical to Blackman’s list). Bradley Carpenter’s deck is particularly divergent from what you’d expect:
Creatures (27)
- 2 Siege-Gang Commander
- 4 Hell's Thunder
- 4 Sprouting Thrinax
- 4 Putrid Leech
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
- 1 Borderland Ranger
- 4 Lotus Cobra
- 4 Vengevine
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (26)
Spells (4)
Sideboard
Cascading into Hell’s Thunder? That’s probably not what people thought was going to be happening to them. This deck has no Blightning and no instant speed removal, not even Lightning Bolt, but the opponent doesn’t have to know that. If you have mana untapped and you haven’t played a Terminate yet, do you think they’re just going to go for a Conscription off a Sovereigns? Maybe, but before seeing this list in the Top 8, there’s a good chance they won’t. This list is making a lot of sacrifices against Mythic to try to play the Red deck in the mirror and to laugh off Day of Judgment against control. There are a lot of good and interesting things happening here, although I don’t really like the Borderland Ranger.
Check out Joshua Wagner’s sideboard:
Creatures (17)
- 2 Siege-Gang Commander
- 2 Broodmate Dragon
- 4 Sprouting Thrinax
- 1 Thornling
- 4 Putrid Leech
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (26)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
The maindeck is pretty typical, but that’s 3 Royal Assassins coming straight out of 1993 to shut down Mythic. Seriously, how is that remotely fair to Mythic? I’m really glad people didn’t have that one at PT San Diego. Deathmarks and Bloodwitches should make that matchup extremely easy, and then he has 4 Pithing Needles for control. I’m not sure he’s getting full value there, since a lot of planeswalkers will be sided out against Jund anyway, but they’re probably still not bad. This is some techy stuff.
While we’re on the subject of techy sideboards, Owen’s not without a surprise card himself:
Creatures (14)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (26)
Spells (18)
Sideboard
Prophetic Prism, a surprisingly powerful cantrip, makes its debut as a pure mana fixer in this sideboard as a solution to the Spreading Seas problem. Pyroclasm is another interesting choice, an old Jund favorite that I haven’t seen in many lists lately. I’m not sure if this is just there anticipating an increase in decks full of small creatures to get back Vengevine, or if there’s some more specific purpose.
Finally, I feel obligated to take a close look at the winning deck, played by Brad Nelson, who, in case you missed it, it on an absolute tear at the moment, so you should probably take things he does pretty seriously:
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (26)
Spells (19)
Studying this list for the moment, it looks like he’s minimizing his preparation for the mirror, and focusing on beating other decks. He has only 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor and no maindeck counters. On the other hand, he’s set up very well to deal with creature decks, especially punishing people who eschew removal to push Vengevine, which was an excellent approach to punish for this particular tournament, where people for the most part had seen how good Vengevine is but had not seen a way to get it and removal in the same deck (as in Bant). Before this tournament, I’d written that I would play Gideons and no Baneslayer Angels, and Brad had written that he would play Sphinx of Jwar Isle. The format changed since then and a lot less removal was to be expected. This list perfectly anticipates the increased value of Baneslayer Angel and decreased value of Sphinx of Jwar Isle that this change implies.
Moving outside of the Top 8, we see that the Day 2 metagame, conveniently broken down for us in the coverage by Jared Sylva, had UW based strategies composing 25% of the field (Super Friends, U/W Tap Out, and U/W Control are increasingly close to the same deck), Jund carried just over 26%, and G/W/x aggro decks were a little under 40% (roughly half Naya and half Bant). That puts the “other” category surprisingly close to the 10% I roughly threw out when describing the States Top 8 metagame in very loose terms last week (I assumed it was actually more than 10%, but thinking of it as roughly 30/30/30/10 just seemed easiest). About half of the (extremely small) “other” category was Mono Red. This is to say that there really are only 3 real strategies you NEED to take into account when trying to build a deck to beat this format. Keep that in mind.
This is to say that everything looks basically the same as it did after States, except that Mythic did not perform quite as well here (which is odd, if the theory that people have moved to less removal is correct, but it might be that while doing that, more people were more careful about having a functional sideboard plan for Mythic). It’s hard to say, but overall, I think this Grand Prix is relatively mild in terms of its impact on the format, which isn’t surprising for a tournament that happens while all the pros have to be focusing on something else.
Next week is Pro Tour: San Juan, a format in which no one will really care about the results, but they should be very interesting to those of us who have been putting time into trying to figure out how that tournament will play out. I leave for San Juan on Wednesday (and I return Saturday night, unless I Top 8, for what will probably be my shortest Pro Tour trip ever, so that I can get ready to head to Japan for the next Grand Prix). I’m looking forward to this one…
Thanks for reading!
Sam