Wednesday, June 20th
I was feeling like an asshead already because the previous day I had to crap out on Paul Cheon, informing him that I could no longer room with him for San Diego because my bank completely fubar’d an account transfer and I’d lost my $300 plane tickets. By the time I got my money back, the price of the tickets had jumped to $480, and this was well outside my budget. It wouldn’t have been as big a deal if I hadn’t enthusiastically arranged said rooming situation all of twelve whole hours earlier, in the process bagging on LSV’s nasty ability to register his snores on the Richter Scale, but I had. As a result, Paul was scrambling for a fourth roommate when he thought he had the situation settled.
Solid. Right. Wednesday. The plan was to drive up to St. Louis, pick up Matt Nolan, and then meet up with BStark in Iowa City for the drive up to Grand Prix: Montreal. It was going to be awesome because Bill is the best person in the world to take a trip with, particularly if you’re in a foreign locale and want to eat large amounts of delicious food cheaply. While Canada isn’t “foreign” in the classical sense of the word, I was nevertheless excited to see what he could conjure up. My dreams, however, were shattered with a resounding thud – actually, more like a KRANGG KABOOM CRASSSSSH SIZZPOPPPP – as I turned the ignition to my car only to witness the sad simultaneous destruction of my battery and its poor victim alternator. Sweet. There goes another infinite dollars and another chance to salvage my thoroughly embarrassing 2007 personal performance record in the game of Magic: The Gathering.
“It’s not all bad, though,” said Dave, six hours later. I veiled my cautious optimism.
“Yeah, why?”
“You can still PTQ.”
My ears perked. I knew there was a PTQ in Chicago this weekend, but there was no way random Memphians were willing to drive to it. Was there somewhere else?
I chanced it. “Where at?”
“Mobile, Alabama.”
Ringading. Ringadingding. Never give up hope, boys, because there are always second chances.
Now, I had absolutely no idea who the players were or what decks they would be wielding down there in the Deep South. What I did know, though, is that they wouldn’t have access to Gerry Thompson insane Korlash list, meaning that it wouldn’t warp the metagame, meaning that nobody would be prepared for how to play against it, meaning that instead of being hopelessly perplexed by the format and resigned to Billy’s effective-but-awkward Red/Black deck, whose manabase argued with me like my senile grandmother, I was probably going to be playing the hands-down best seventy-five card list there.
I present “Kowalash,” core design by Gerry Thompson, adapted and tweaked by Yours Truly with substantial input from Brian Kowal, Richard Feldman, Steve Sadin, and Billy Moreno.
Creatures (8)
Lands (27)
Spells (25)
I named the deck after Kowal mainly because he requested it and it sounds neat, but also because a conversation with him resulted in the changes to the deck that made me know it was “the one” … the removal of two Shadowmage Infiltrator for a Snapback and a Draining Whelk. Richard, meanwhile, supplied the sideboard Epochrasites, the Pools, and the maindeck Isolation, courtesy of a Teferi deck he was working on for a different metagame up in Chicago.
I’ve made two related claims so far that I haven’t yet substantiated: “This deck is probably the best seventy-five card list I could take to the tournament,” and “this deck felt like ‘the one.’” The first I can substantiate, but the second is just a value judgment that, while related to claim A, is ultimately just a statement that cannot be backed up by evidence save for the fact that it actually felt that way. I will, however, try to address claim A as best I can.
This paragraph would normally be hidden beneath an asterisk at the end of the page, but I’ve been told that people hate those so I’m just going to try and tackle the issue here. Imagine a six-pointed star after the word “substantiated” in the previous paragraph for those who are fans of my meandering footnote format. Got the image? Okay. I wanted to keep track of how often I take facts to be true without offering evidence supporting them in order to separate myself from other writers who say things like, for example, “Models like Sean’s might appear to work, but that is only because most people play on autopilot and don‘t really think about how they should be trying to win.” I’m not talking about nominal supporting evidence; I am talking about relating the main clause to the subordinate clause in such a way that the connection between one and the other is crystal clear.
So why was “Kowalash” the nuts for this particular tournament?
I can think of at least four reasons, and these were the ones I had in mind when I decided to play the deck. The first is that in the absence of active metagaming, there is absolutely no reason to do anything other than play the most abstractly powerful strategy the format has to offer. In the first weekend of the season, independent of any Grand Prix or PTQ, nobody is going to be hating out one particular deck or innovating any technology to try and stay a step ahead. There will be reasonable predictions about what will show up in what kind of quantity, of course, but without having any real numeric idea of what players are going to play what it’s suicide to try and get too cute. The fact is, I expected a lot of Red Deck, a lot of G/W Tarmogoyf (because Goyf is just that powerful, and the deck really is very cute), a little Pickles, a little U/B control, a little White Weenie, a little R/G, and a smattering of other assorted rogue creations. At the same time, I didn’t want to gun specifically for those two most popular decks at the expense of everything else because of the very real possibility that I might be absolutely wrong. So why is this deck the most powerful?
1) It plays the most powerful cards. In fair formats, Wrath of God is one of the most unbalanced cards ever printed, and Block Constructed decks have been playing bad versions of Wrath for years to great success. Add to that a four-mana Skyshroud Claiming giant regenerator, an instant-speed Demonic Tutor that you can cast twice, two separate undying one-man armies (Epochrasite and Triskelavus), Mind Twist, and Take Possession, and chances are you’re going to be doing more broken things in the abstract than any potential opponent.
2) It plays two of the three cards that define the format, Damnation and Tendrils of Corruption (the other being Greater Gargadon*). Everybody knows about Damnation, but not everyone understands exactly how utterly insane Tendrils is in just about every situation. Moreover, the difference between the two standard Tendrils and this deck’s four total copies is enormous. People will try and bait your second Tendrils, unload a giant threat, and look absolutely flabbergasted when you show them the third. Now, later on in the season I actually advocate finding ways around the format’s defining cards instead, because there’s a good bet other people will be doing the same thing and there’s nothing worse than losing due to inadequate technology. In the first week, though, it was very possible that a good portion of people didn’t get “the memo” about Tendrils, and I wanted to exploit that as much as possible.
3) It rarely gets manascrewed or manaflooded. Steve warned me about being overconfident when I implied that assuming I’d get to actually play a game of Magic, I’d probably be able to beat anyone there, and that’s certainly a legitimate warning to heed. What I was meaning to say, though, is that in the early stages of a season I’m more willing to be conservative. Knowing me and my abject hatred of all things conservative, that’s saying a lot. But when I’ve got a handle on the format I’m more willing to accept circumstances beyond my control if what I’m playing is so mind-bogglingly powerful that the literal only way I’m likely to lose is if my deck beats itself (if I had created Levy’s Zoo deck, for example, I’d definitely be taking that risk.) In something more open, though, I’m all for being able to play out the maximum number of matches as possible and just see what happens—particularly when I have this many tutors. With 31 mana sources, it’s highly unlikely that you’re not going to draw enough lands. At the same time, with 2 Infiltrators, a Factory, a Trike, 3 Teachings, and 4 four-mana card drawing spells, it’s very rare that you won’t have anything to do with your mana once you get to seven or eight – particularly since Vesuva is in the format blowing up your Urborgs, and four of your lands can tutor up spells.
4) It is capable of exploiting initiative. I’m not prioritizing this step because it’s a new theory of mine, either. Rather, in formats with limited card pools, there are very few cards that can help an aggressive deck turn back the tide once the control deck starts presenting threats. A corollary to that statement is that this is a control deck that can punish bad draws. Damnation plus Korlash or even Damnation plus Shadowmage Infiltrator is extremely difficult to recover from, because they’ve probably burned an Isolation on your first Korlash and none of their non-Tarmogoyf non-Mystic Enforcer clocks can race Bobby Lashley once he starts a-swinging. Even independent of Korlash, the singleton Draining Whelk basically wins you the game from all remotely even board positions, particularly since there’s no reason for anyone to expect you to be packing countermagic!
As for the tournament itself, I was actually surprised by the level of competition. I ended up winning, thankfully, validating my status as an ostensibly-knowledgeable writer (at least to me) in the fact of my hitherto abysmal 2007 tournament record. I beat two G/W Goyf decks, two G/W/R Goyf decks with Fiery Justice based on Alex Kim list, two Mono-Red lists (one with Magus of the Moon), one routine G/R deck with Gathan Raiders to complement Akroma, and one U/G Wild Pair with a bunch of bounce, losing only to a rogue R/W/U creation with four Coalition Relics and maindeck Take Possession and Molten Disaster. I may have gotten lucky not facing any U/B lists with Teferi, given my high number of spot removal spells, but I’ve found the matchup is honestly about even given its ability to transmute up Factory, to always kill Teferi, and its comparative independence from Mystical Teachings (which this list can afford to strand in the yard while traditional U/B builds cannot).
I could write a primer on the deck if anybody was interested, but in truth I have no idea if it will be good on down the line: the Korlash technology is out, Gerry’s Psychotic Episodes are a nightmare for this list, and now that people are aware of Take Possession they won’t assume that all of their Enforcers demand Damnations and that their Factories must be matched. At the same time, I’m pretty sure the list won’t ever be bad; you have so many options that you can customize it to do whatever you want, and I’m familiar enough with the deck to provide a blueprint for where it should progress on down the line. I will say that Triskelavus/Academy Ruins is insane and should probably go into every Blue deck that can support it, not only because control decks must have a specific answer for Ruins but also because hard casting Triskelavus is basically always good in every matchup. Additionally, it’s insane not to have any Pull targets in the main and in the board (you don’t generally board E-Pok in against Pull decks) because people have to board them in anyway due to Vore being such a potential blowout.
My main point, though, was to emphasize what you should be looking at going into a developing format. I don’t think we’ll be seeing any real innovation independent of the GP lists until around weeks three or four of the season, meaning that for now your principal concern should be tuning a solid, flexible list that allows you to play as many real games as you can. After all, the winner of a PTQ is supposed to be the best player there. If you think you’re good enough, you should have no problem proving it.
Zac
* I’ve got to asterisk here, because after I’ve ranted about not defending claims there’s really not much I can say about this one except that I’m pretty sure everyone will agree with me after playing fifty or so games against a representative sample of the format. If this is controversial, let me know why you don’t think any of those three cards deserves the spot or, conversely, if something else should be there instead. I will say that Mystic Enforcer is close to becoming a fourth, but probably isn’t there yet because most decks can answer him without going too far out of their way.