We started talking about decks for this Pro Tour as soon as we heard what the new format would be. We were quickly drawn to the power of Windbrisk Heights, and talked about trying to go big with it — getting out Emrakul, the Aeons Torn with Jace and creatures to set it up. Then we talked about essentially playing Mythic with Nest Invaders and Windbrisk Heights.
Emrakul, not surprisingly, proved to be very clunky if drawn, and so we decided to move down to large threats that could theoretically be cast, but could still be insane if cheated into play. Primeval Titan was perfect in this deck because it would find more Hideaway lands. The two decks quickly merged into one, and that was the birth of the deck we played for Pro Tour Amsterdam.
“We” in this story is basically Zvi — except that he didn’t actually play. Over a month ago, he and Gau built and tested this deck:
Creatures (30)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 4 Baneslayer Angel
- 3 Iona, Shield of Emeria
- 4 Lotus Cobra
- 4 Nest Invader
- 3 Primeval Titan
Lands (26)
Spells (4)
The lands might have been slightly different in the original version (I think it was actually -1 Misty Rainforest, -1 Horizon Canopy, +2 Brushland), but that’s not important. I talked to Gau, and he said they’d been testing the deck against everything they knew of, and it was performing exceptionally well. It couldn’t beat Living End, but most of the time it just felt like you were doing things that were vastly more powerful than the opponent.
Cool. That made my preparation schedule much easier. I didn’t really know how I’d fit in preparing for Standard, Limited, Legacy,
and
Extended in — and with Gau basically telling me he’d broken Extended, I was free to focus on the other formats.
A little irresponsible, but at least I used that time moderately well to win the MMS in Standard and top 8 Grand Prix Gothenburg in Limited.
I never played the deck until after Nationals, but it looked awesome. The synergies between Hideaway lands finding titans and titans finding Hideaways seems perfect, and the thought of winning the game for zero mana off the trap cost of Summoning Trap against unsuspecting opponents was very appealing.
After Nationals, I put it together and started playing it.
It was clunkier than I wanted, but it still usually managed to clunk its way into some kind of powerful, game-winning effect. In testing, it was winning more than it was losing, but some of its losses could be pretty embarrassing.
After Grand Prix Gothenburg, I spent essentially all my time in Amsterdam testing. I was working with Alex West, Brian Kowal, and Stephen Neal, and they were less sure we’d all play this deck than I was.
I was tasked with putting together Faeries to test against. Rather than building what I thought might be a stock list, I worked on what I would actually play if I were to try to play Faeries in the tournament, since that seemed like it was the most likely thing to happen if I wasn’t satisfied with the G/W deck.
In Gothenburg, Kenny Oberg told me the he thought Faeries beat decks with Punishing Fire,
unless
they also had Volcanic Fallout. That made some sense, since Punishing Fire doesn’t actually match up well against Bitterblossom.
Alex West suggested Shadowmage Infiltrator — a throwback to Paul Cheon Nationals top 8 Faerie deck — and I realized that if people were trying to beat Faeries with Punishing Fire and Volcanic Fallout, he would be perfect. Better yet, Faeries players were moving to Doom Blade over Smother, so he could be excellent in the mirror (even if he’s just eating a Bitterblossom token every turn, that’s not bad).
I was testing him in the three-mana creature slot, removing Scion of Oona and Vendilion Clique and minimizing my Jaces, since Shadowmage Infiltrator does the same thing.
The loss of synergy made the deck a little less explosive in game 1, but he fit very well into my preferred sideboard plan of just becoming a control deck.
I was running into a lot of pretty bad game 1s where I’d improve after sideboarding — but I couldn’t find a good way to make room to improve everywhere I needed to, and just couldn’t quite get the deck to where I wanted it.
For about a day, we thought BK had broken it by cutting the expensive cards from the G/W deck and slotting in Reveillark Combo instead, using Fauna Shaman over Nest Invader. We played it against the G/W deck to see which was more powerful in and of itself, and the Reveillark deck crushed. Unfortunately, the deck just couldn’t stand up to Punishing Fire and graveyard hate, and we were worried about its ability to win games two and three.
When Gau came into town the day before the Pro Tour, he managed to pull us all back to the G/W deck, although we weren’t quite as excited about it as I had once been.
When we got to the site and heard that everyone was playing Doran, I got a little more excited. That matchup sounded pretty good for us (but I never ended up playing against it).
We played the maindeck listed above and spent the last day working out our sideboard. I settled on:
4 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
3 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Gaddock Teeg
2 Great Sable Stag
1 Terastodon
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Bojuka Bog
BK and Alex West played the Sejiri Steppe in the main, cutting (I think) a Mutavault for it. That was probably the correct choice. I sided it in against (almost) everyone.
This brings us to some highlights from the actual tournament:
Round 1, I played against Pyromancer Ascension. My deck completely failed to perform.
1-0
….
Huh?
My thoughts exactly.
To explain:
Game 1, I mulliganned and kept a one-land, Birds of Paradise hand. He Bolted my bird, and by the time I hit a second land he had an active Pyromancer Ascension. I played Nest Invader, and on his turn he played Cryptic Command and copied it with Ascension, bouncing both of my lands. I replayed a land and attacked for two, and he didn’t do anything.
I had no idea how I was still alive when he had a hand full of cards, four mana, and an active Ascension. I’d thought about conceding to avoid showing him anything else — but I had two Summoning Traps in my hand, so you never know. I played my second land, sacrificed my Eldrazi Spawn, and cast Knight of the Reliquary. He cast Mana Leak. My first Summoning Trap found Iona, and my second one found Knight of the Reliquary.
It turned out his hand had three Time Warps, and he just couldn’t find the fifth land.
Game 2, he crushed me with Quirion Dryad and Punishing Fire. I had some Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tenders that didn’t quite matter.
Game 3, he kept a six-card hand with a Forest as his only land and some Manamorphoses. The Summoning Trap that I cast on turn 5 hit a Lotus Cobra, but the one on turn 6 hit Primeval Titan. He was still on one land.
I probably would have lost that round to a good Draft deck.
Round 2, I played against eventual top 8 competitor Thomas Ma, who was playing Jund.
Game one looked bad for me until Iona came out of a Windbrisk Heights to steal the game out of nowhere. I think game 2 involved either Jund Charm and Punishing Fire (or both) stopping me from doing anything. Game 3, he killed all of my guys — but I drew exactly enough lands to play the Baneslayer Angel that was my last threat and hope he didn’t have an answer. His sideboard contained Smothers rather than Terminates, so the Baneslayer barely managed to win the game for me.
Nassif was watching this match and pointed out that I made game 3 a lot more interesting than it needed to be. At one point he attacked in such a way that he was dead to my Baneslayer Angel and Stirring Wildwood, but he had two mana up. I knew this meant he had Smother — I even said as much to him — but I somehow failed to realize that I could just Tectonic Edge one of his lands before animating my Stirring Wildwood, and instead I gave him an extra turn (in which I believe I needed him to miss with a cascade).
2-0
Round 3, I played against Pyromancer Ascension again. The time he had Punishing Fire and Grove of the Burnwillows to support his Tarmogoyf. Game 2 was similar, but he also had Sower of Temptation.
2-1
Round 4, I played against Scapeshift. In game 1, I had a potentially extremely explosive draw with three Lotus Cobras — but I missed drawing the land that would have let me trigger all of them to play Primeval Titan, and then trigger all of them off
that
to play Baneslayer Angel for two turns.
During those turns, I played Nest Invaders instead. If I’d used those Nest Invaders and maybe a Cobra to block his creatures, I could have stayed at twenty, forcing him to get to eight lands to Scapeshift me. Instead, I didn’t — and the turn after I hit my land to get my explosive turn, he killed me with Scapeshift.
In game 2, he failed to find Scapeshift, and at one point chump attacked two Tarmogoyfs into my two Knight of the Reliquaries (one was active, which caused them to suddenly get bigger than the Goyfs).
Game 3, he missed at least one land drop while I was mana-flooded and building up enough mana to play Iona. The turn before I got to enough mana, he cast Harmonize, then played a fifth land and suspended Search for Tomorrow.
I played Iona — but at this point, I was down to eight life and he had two attackers. I was worried that he could attack and kill me with two burn spells, so I named red. I had a Terastodon under a Mosswort Bridge, so the next turn I should be able to set him back far enough that he wouldn’t be able to Scapeshift me out.
On his turn, he played Rampant Growth and then Scapeshift to kill me.
I may or may not have named the wrong color with Iona — but in reality, I don’t think I was supposed to play the Iona at all. I could have used Knight of the Reliquary to find Stirring Wildwood, and between that and the Tectonic Edge I’d already found, I could get to ten power to flip Terastodon from the Mosswort Bridge. This had occurred to me — but I hadn’t thought to do it at instant speed, and the elephants would have been too awkward to give to him during my turn.
If I played this way, I could have ambushed an attack if he tried to get me into burn range and blown up his lands — either in combat or in response to Scapeshift, if he tried to win that way.
2-2
Round 5, I played against Mono-Red. Game one my draw was terrible and he killed me quickly with a Goblin Guide. Game 2, he mana-flooded against my Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tenders. Game 3, I managed to get the one Iona I didn’t side out into play early off a Windbrisk Heights.
3-2
In the first draft, I drafted a U/W deck that I was very happy with:
1 Armored Ascension
1 Augury Owl
1 Blinding Mage
1 Condemn
1 Excommunicate
2 Mighty Leap
1 Serra Angel
1 Silvercoat Lion
1 Stormfront Pegasus
1 War Priest of Thune
1 Vengeful Archon
1 Air Servant
2 Azure Drake
1 Cloud Crusader
1 Diminish
1 Phantom Beast
3 Scroll Thief
1 Water Servant
1 Unsummon
Sideboard:
Solemn Offering
Celestial Purge
Flashfreeze
I list this deck primarily because of a discussion I had with Ben Stark about it. I respect Ben Stark a lot as a Limited theorist, primarily because he can express himself well and he likes drafting decks. He didn’t like this deck because it didn’t have a clear direction. It had an assortment of aggressive cards and controlling cards that fit together somewhat awkwardly.
I like this deck a lot. I see it as containing a lot of powerful, versatile cards that allow it to easily play as the aggro or the control deck, as circumstances dictate.
I think both Scroll Thief and Azure Drake are generally awesome cards that don’t need you to be trying to do anything in particular. Scroll Thief is at its most insane if you can keep them from having blockers to draw a card every turn… but it’s deceptively good as a blocker when it isn’t drawing any cards. Its mere presence on the board stops the opponent from playing as aggressively as they’d like, because they can’t afford to give you a card.
Azure Drake can function as a hard-to-kill two-power evasive creature or as a Giant Spider, and is excellent at both. I wanted to be an aggressive tempo deck, and I believe I took Vengeful Archon in pack 3 over Aether Adept because sometimes it’s best to just take the most powerful cards.
It’s great when you can build a deck that’s better than the sum of its parts. It’s wonderful to beat people with cards you picked up late, but they’re all working together to work toward a very specific plan. But when you just have enough powerful cards on a good curve, you don’t have to do that, and your deck isn’t worse for it.
I don’t have much more to say about the Limited portion. I went 3-0 with the deck and 2-1 with the R/G deck I drafted on day 2.
I wasn’t feeling great about my chances in the tournament after my 2-2 start, but winning the next six matches helped a great deal. I was sad to lose the last round of the draft to miss my 6-0, but going into the last five rounds at 8-3 didn’t feel too bad.
In round 12, I played against Noah Boeken, playing White Weenie. I lost this match by failing to play around Mana Tithe in game 1 by playing a tapped land before casting Knight of the Reliquary rather than an untapped land. I knew the deck had Mana Tithe, so this play was just terrible.
In game 2, I managed to cheat Iona into play at some point, and in game 3 he put me to one with a Brave the Elements that forced me to chump block just enough to stop me from activating my hideaway lands from there.
8-4, and two of those losses were probably avoidable.
Round 13, I played against Terry Soh. I sat next to him in round 1 and his deck looked sweet, so I remembered it and knew that I was playing against R/G Fauna Shaman LD with Grove and Punishing Fire. That knowledge didn’t do anything to let me stop him from crushing me with Punishing Fire and land destruction creatures.
8-5
Round 14, I played against Restore Balance. This matchup is probably better than Living End, but not by much. They still have a deck full of Wrath of God effects — and even if I get Iona on White, they can play Jace and bounce it.
Game 1 took him three Restore Balances, but he beat me.
In game 2 I had two Ethersworn Canonists, so I was feeling pretty good — but I forgot that he’d likely be bringing in Volcanic Fallout. So I didn’t bring in Forge-Tenders, and lost to his Volcanic Fallout.
8-6
Round 15, I played against Faeries. Game 1 my start was bad and I lost to Vendilion Clique. I don’t remember the details of why exactly my hand didn’t do anything and whether I should have mulled or aggressively or anything.
Game 2, I played a turn 2 Great Sable Stag on the play, but his curve of Bitterblossom, Vendilion Clique, Mistbind Clique, and Cryptic Command was good enough to race it.
8-7
Round 16, I played against Elves and managed to get Iona into play before he killed me in both games.
9-7
An unimpressive finish that probably could have been an 11-5 finish if I was playing better. The deck choice wasn’t right for the format and I didn’t have enough experience. I needed to know exactly how to mulligan, and to be familiar enough with the interactions in the format to naturally avoid the misplays that I made.
I’ve been working with Gau a lot over the last two years. Since he lives in New York and works now, he hasn’t been able to play as much Limited as he used to, and it’s been hurting his Limited showing at Pro Tours this year. Meanwhile, I’ve been letting him and Zvi do most of the work on the decks we’ve been playing at the Pro Tours, and he’s been consistently doing well with them. (If he was writing this report instead of me, and was telling you the details of his 8-2 finish with the deck, it would probably look a lot better.)
A note here: this deck doesn’t lose a single card from the rotation of Time Spiral block, and it no longer has to play against Punishing Fire or several of the more problematic combo decks. This deck is worth a serious look for the next Extended season, even if it wasn’t a breakout hit here.
Gau commented in Amsterdam that he’s been consistently impressed by how important putting work in is and how much it correlates with results (at least for us).
He’s right — and I’m going to need to put a lot more work into actually playing the decks I want to play for Worlds this year, even after I figure out what they are. It’s been obvious for a long time that tournaments like PTQs are all about being familiar with your deck. Somehow, the fact that Pro Tours are always a new format, where building a new deck is
so
important, has managed to overshadow the importance of knowing that new deck inside and out. I think this is the most recent mistake I need to put serious focus into correcting.
It’s always something.
Thanks for reading,
Sam