I’m in Hanover at the moment, about to fly to Singapore for the second half of my first trip around the world for Grand Prix series. GP: Hanover was frustrating for me. When I left the U.S. I thought it was pretty likely that I would play the deck with which Gaudenis took his second GP finals finish this weekend. Testing and talking to Brian Kowal, Manuel Bucher, Shuhei Nakamura, and Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa convinced me to play a more traditional Faeries deck with a Trinket Mage twist instead.
My list was a hybrid of what all of them were playing, and I felt really good about my card choices. Then I played against Bant. I’d never played that matchup before, and it felt terrible. I suddenly felt like everyone was too prepared for Blue decks. The decks were all full of three- and one-mana spells, and they had too much pressure. I started to feel like no one was playing any of the decks against which Blue is good, and I was just hoping to play against the mirror every round. I lost a match to Beasts with Chameleon Colossuses, as I just couldn’t have enough Mana Leaks or Flashfreezes and I didn’t draw enough Sowers, but again, I simply felt like my cards didn’t do anything against his clunky four mana 4/4 monsters. Meanwhile, I assume Gaudenis was crushing decks like that with Tarmogoyf and Cryptic Command.
I finished 6-3 (3-3 plus 3 byes), beating two Faeries and a Zoo deck and losing to Faeries, Bant, and Beasts. In fairness to myself, I did go to three games in all of the rounds that I lost, and I would have won the match that I lost against Faeries if I had drawn a fourth land in the third game before he untapped with Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir.
All of this goes to say that I will not be playing the same deck next week.
I also learned something. The deck that Gaudenis played was a modified version of a deck given to us by John Treviranus, inspired by Justin Meyer’s PTQ Top 8 finish. I decided to listen to people I talked to in Hanover because they’re better players, but, ignoring my own ability to evaluate an idea, the plan to listen to pros because they’re better was not correct. In this Extended season, it made more sense for me to turn to PTQers I knew, because, as I knew first hand, pros have not had nearly as much time to devote to Extended in the last few months. I had access to dedicated Extended players who really had their fingers on the pulse of the format, and I chose not to give them enough credit.
The morning before the GP started, I received a sudden flash of inspiration and built a new deck that I really liked in theory, but I certainly wasn’t willing to abandon a deck I knew was good for a last second brew that had never been played. It wouldn’t have been better to switch to that anyway, as it certainly had some kinks to work out.
Still, when my GP run ended, I was all too eager to work on my new deck. I wished I could PTQ, just to try it out. There was a Legacy tournament I could have played in on Sunday, but I needed to play Extended. I resolved to just go to the site and try to find some pickup games, or maybe just watch some matches. Luckily, I got to the site just in time to hear a call looking for any pro players to participate in the “Champion Challenge,” the new term for gun-slinging. This gave me a chance to sit for over four hours playing my new deck against all kinds of opponents. I got 18 games in with my deck, and I was pretty happy with how it played. This is the list I was using:
Creatures (20)
Lands (28)
Spells (12)
The idea is to use Astral Slide more aggressively than it’s usually used. The card requires far fewer cycles to generate a powerful effect when it’s protecting your strong creatures from removal, and clearing blockers so that a Knight of the Reliquary can connect for eight. This deck dedicates as few slots as possible to its Slide and Loam engines in order to have an effective beatdown plan. In aggro matchups, the creatures do a fantastic job of playing defense to give your engines time to win the late game for you.
Playing with the deck revealed that, as expected, my initial list wasn’t perfect (it felt a little too clunky), but that the theory was pretty sound. I’ve tweaked a few cards now (that I think help it a lot), and I have some sideboard plans that I’m very excited about, but I need to have a few surprises for this week’s GP.
If testing doesn’t get me to a place where I’m satisfied with this deck, I can always fall back on just playing Gaudenis’s GP deck, which is excellent. Throughout the GP, he would wander over and say things like, “Tarmogoyf has been really good for me. Better than I expected. Sometimes I don’t want to play it on turn 2 because I’m afraid it will die, and it’s too good to waste,” or simply, “Cryptic Command is really good.” These statements seemed really obvious, but somehow these cards have inexplicably fallen out of favor in Extended. If you’re thinking about playing them but you weren’t sure if they were still good because they haven’t been in many lists recently, I’ll do my best to remind you. Yes, those cards are still awesome. They probably always were awesome. Looking back on it, it seems pretty unfair that Gaudenis got to play a GP with eight of them while no one else had that many.
Speaking of good cards: Path to Exile. Wow. That card delivers. If all their creatures are cheap, they probably can’t use the mana. If they’re playing expensive creatures, that’s a huge tempo swing. The card has just been unreal for me.
When I saw that Shuhei and Saito were playing four in their Zoo deck (along with three Woolly Thoctars and four each of Volcanic Fallout and Sulfuric Vortex in their board), I told them their deck looked awesome. I’m not at all surprised by how well they both did, but I am surprised that they were both a little disappointed with it, and Shuhei says he’s playing something else next week.
As for next week, I expect a shift in Blue decks to be more like Gaudenis’s deck, as Faeries underperformed this weekend and the other Blue deck in the Top 8 also had Tarmogoyf. As other people increase the casting costs in their deck, Spellstutter Sprite has been getting worse. If people make these changes, the field gets much better for Elves, as Tarmogoyf Blue is much worse at fighting them, particularly if they don’t have Spellstutter Sprite. If Elves hadn’t just won, that would make this an excellent time to play Elves. As is, hate should be up for the coming weeks, but toward the end of the season, if it goes long enough for hate to fade again and once the Blue decks are less of a bad matchup, Elves may put of a few more top finishes.
Black/Green Loam continues Rock’s extremely long-standing tradition of solid performances. I expect splashing White for Path to Exile to increase in popularity as mana efficiency is extremely important to decks with the loam engine. Thoughtseize and Path to Exile are probably the two best ways to trade one mana and a card for a card, which is exactly what you want to do when you can convert mana to cards with Life from the Loam and cycling lands. It also happens to be a good thing to do when Dark Confidant is in play, and a Black/White aggro/disruption plan with those cards as well as Tidehollow Sculler is also likely to be quite viable at the moment.
I feel like I should comment on Bant. This is a deck I’ve mentioned that I had ignored, but I was forced to give it some respect this weekend. I still haven’t played with it, but from what I’ve gathered from talking about it, watching it, and playing against it, the deck is capable of some extremely powerful draws. However, no Noble Hierarchs were in the Top 8 of this GP, and I don’t think that was entirely accidental. The problem is that it draws a little too much like a combo deck. You need the right mix of pressure, acceleration, and sometimes disruption, and occasionally a draw can fall apart if the wrong piece is missing. Moreover, some matchups, like Elves, are very, very bad.
The interesting thing about Bant is the unresolved nature of the decklist. Two different Bant decks can have very few cards in common, while still both clearly trying to follow the same basic plan of turn 1 accelerator, turn 2 three-mana threat, backed with some kind of disruption. The lists basically seem to be arbitrary collections of whatever cards the builder likes. Personally, I would be tempted to try to weigh it more heavily toward Blue to consider cards such as Venser, Shaper Savant and Sower of Temptation, and I would definitely play for four Path to Exiles. The state of the deck makes it seem like it certainly has the potential to be a much better archetype than it is now, once a more optimal list is found.
I feel like the decks that are best positioned right now are:
– Harvest Elves, preying on the slower Chord Elves if that deck gains popularity after another win, as well as capitalizing on the above mentioned decrease in Spellstutter Sprites.
– Zoo, constructed as the Japanese list mentioned above, with access to 4 Volcanic Fallouts. This looks like a really good deck, and I think it has a reasonably good matchup against all the decks that did well this weekend.
– Tarmogoyf Blue, which will probably need to make some slight adjustments to better prepare for the mirror and Elves.
It will also be interesting to see if, as in Worlds, Swans will be the correct deck with which to follow an Elf win, as the cards to fight Elves are all extremely bad at fighting against the Swan combo.
It should also be noted that Kenny Oberg crushed the swiss again with his Tezzeret deck. This is interesting because, as far as I can tell, no one else has been able to win with that deck, and it generally gets ignored until he picks it up again. Still, even if you can play the deck like Kenny, I can’t recommend it as it plays poorly against Cryptic Command (Gaudenis beat him in the swiss).
For myself, I have a lot of testing to do this week, to figure out of I want to play Elves, Blue, or my Aggro Slide deck. I also have a flight to catch to Singapore, where I’ll eventually be meeting fellow StarCityGames.com Writer Zac Hill to prepare for the Grand Prix. Even if I can’t pull it together next week (which would be very disappointing), I’m confident that I’ll at least have more good news to report for my friends, as we’ve been on a great start so far this year.
Until next time…