I’m back from the Grand Prix and I had a pretty fun time, even though the actual Magic part of the main event was miserable. I had decided on G/B Loam Dredge, in which I had some input, but it was originally designed by Matt Nass. The deck was stone-cold terrible, but Death Cloud, Faeries, and non-TEPS combo are infinitely in your favor, which is about half of the popular decks I expected at the GP. Unfortunately, I ran into the Red half, which is nearly unwinnable game 1 and still really rough post-board, with Zoo being unbeatable and Burn merely being very difficult. Matt Nass also played the deck and managed a horrid 3-3 record (from 3 byes) on Day 1 despite playing only one Red deck (AIR – the winnable match), but due to all the X-2-1 drops, he managed to make Day 2 anyway and produce a slightly redeeming 4-1-1 record for the day.
I wouldn’t actually recommend my deck to anyone, so I don’t plan on posting the list, but it was essentially the slow Green Dredge deck GerryT talked about pre-Berlin, based a little more around Loam-Crime and Dread Return on Sundering Titan or Empyrial Archangel.
Ultimately I should’ve played TEPS, but the fact is we didn’t have enough cards for everyone from our carloads to play it, and I hadn’t shotgunned it fast enough. Again, Orie Guo basically masterminded the original version and most of the updates to the TEPS list, although this (and the mention in LSV’s article) will probably be the only props he ever gets for it. The deck is ridiculously strong in the current metagame — or was, before it was known – and really only has one bad match in the entire metagame: Elves.
I even wrote about the Swath Storm version of TEPS a month ago, and despite it being horribly outdated, a version of that still made the Top 8, just showing how strong the archetype can be. So yeah, it really does beat Faeries, forum guys, and you know who you are that wanted to argue this point to death despite the zero testing behind it. It was by far the best deck for the format, simply because 90% of the decks in Extended either sit there letting you goldfish them, or they attack your combo turns the wrong way and it ends up being really ineffectual.
If you aren’t going to play TEPS in the current metagame, I highly suggest running Zoo with Gaddock Teeg, Tidehollow Sculler, and Thoughtseize in the maindeck, or Faeries with a plan better than ‘hope I can Stifle something relevant.’ If you want something roguish, you could try either the Beasts deck that Sanchez talked about (and add some way to beat combo decks), or run some form of the WGB Hatorade deck from last season. A combination of Chalice of the Void, Gaddock Teeg, Trinisphere, and discard mauls combo, and running Worship out there beats most Red decks or buys you five-plus turns against them.
On a happy note, other than knowing the best deck coming in, I also got five of the six popular decks on Day 2 correct. I expect the PTQs to reflect this, with perhaps a little more stock put into glass cannon archetypes like GW and Martyr-Proclamation. Elves is also a great choice for the PTQ field, if you can play it very well and you run a set of Thoughtseize main to help out against Fae and TEPS. Decks like Zoo are still a pain, but very beatable, and if they take measures against TEPS, odds are that’s less space dedicated to the removal that stops you from crushing them game 1. Plus Ranger of Eos is hot and spicy, and basically allows you to rebound from a large amount of removal and basically auto-win any Glimpse of Nature turn. It also let’s you bye decks like Burn by fetching Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender and then slapping an Umezawa’s Jitte on it, or even just using it to protect a combo turn.
For those who actually read the coverage, you may have noticed my name attached to some of the pieces. I helped out with Day 2 coverage since I wasn’t planning on playing in any giant 220+ man marathon PTQs. Coverage was surprisingly fun and quite a bit of work… I also finally found out why there’s a notable delay between when something actually gets written and when the Mothership posts the pieces up. Turns out they basically need a third check and gloss-over from a few people back there, which delays actual coverage by something like an hour or so. Covering feature matches is awesome, since you get to see how some very good players carry themselves in stressful situations. It also improves your eye for detail, because covering people like LSV means you have to try to cover everything he does in a 15-20 second window, since he played very fast when going off with TEPS (a notable difference from most of the players using the deck).
Another notable thing about seeing a high number of feature matches was how many slow-play infractions were called, and how many could have been but weren’t. In one feature match between Manuel Bucher and Martin Juza, being judged by our own Riki Hayashi, was that Juza got a slow play infraction towards the end of the game after taking around ninety seconds for an action. Not to be outdone, Bucher also got a slow play infraction once it hit extra turns, though this delay I found a little more understandable as he was trying to figure out how to win the game, and had Juza played faster there would’ve been no reason for the extra turns. There were many games I saw featuring BG or Faeries decks where slow play might’ve been a reasonable call, simply for inexplicable pauses between plays that happened multiple times per turn and just bogged the game down.
Since I wrote up the archetype breakdown, let me clear up one or two misconceptions about the breakdown and some notable things in some lists. The Faeries moniker doesn’t mean every single one was necessarily mono-Blue, though the majority were exactly that. Some had three or four off-color cards in the deck, and some had a few more, like Mat Marr deck. The problem was that if I classified like this, there would be roughly 700 distinctions between how many colors each Faeries deck actually had, because of a one-of Firespout, or two Extirpate in the sideboard, and so on. Instead, all were lumped under Faeries, except for the Gifts Ungiven version, and Saul Alvarado’s UG version featuring Tarmogoyf; Arashi, the Sky Asunder; Rude Awakening; etc. since the Green splash was significant and had a large impact on how his deck would play out. The single UB build was the same; the person running that version had around 14 Black cards out of his 75, meaning that the Black splash was a more integral version of the deck.
This means that although some classifications may have been slightly off, you get a good idea that all the Fae decks were running the same ‘type,’ and, to be honest, while skimming over the lists, many were 55 out of 60 cards identical. The majority seemed to be running Ancestral Visions of varying numbers, almost none had Threads of Disloyalty, and a good number were boarding extra utility lands like Academy Ruins for the mirror match.
The G/B Bitter Crime deck refers specifically to Michael Jacob Top 8 BG list. With the abuse of the Loam-Crime engine, but lacking traditional cards like Death Cloud, Sakura-Tribe Elder, etc. so it didn’t really fit under the Death Cloud name.
Wilt-Leaf Liege was notable in a number of G/B boards as a way to cheat and go early aggro against Raven’s Crime. Other ideas along this line included Dodecapod and Guerrilla Tactics in Red decks, and for Blue, the most played ‘answer’ other than Extirpate was Quagnoth (of all things).
Other than those, if anyone has any questions about the metagame or TEPS / Zoo updates, feel free to hit up the forums. Now we’re moving onto a quick interview I did with my buddy Justin Stanley, who managed a 9-0 on Day 1 despite having zero byes.
Who are you and what, if any, are your Magic accomplishments?
I’m Justin Stanley. I play out of San Francisco/Pleasanton/San Jose. Most of my major Magic accomplishments occurred this weekend: undefeated Day 1 at GP: LA. I won an FNM one time too. That was nice.
What were your goals for the GP? Your expectations?
My goal was to make Day 2. I thought that the x-2 cutoff would be relatively easy to make, as I’ve been playing TEPS for awhile, and knew enough about the matchups to get myself to that landmark. I was pretty confident we had the best deck in the room, and that I’d get there barring some disaster.
After Day 1, I was shooting for Top 16. Key punts and a miscommunication about Persist and priority cost me that one. It was surreal.
Why did you play TEPS? How did you determine your choice?
I tend to think in a combo framework. I had success with Kithkin in Lorwyn Block Constructed, but my mind doesn’t work well in terms of complex combat situations with a relatively large amount of variations for blockers/tricks/etc. I like combo because, from turn 1, you have a decisive turn that you are playing towards. Given the matchup, that turn can be a “Hail-Mary-Desire-For-3” or a long and drawn out counter war with a crapload of storage counters, but in general, you know how it’s going to turn out. The hate that you’re going to run against tends to be pretty obvious, which makes it easier to play around, especially because some of it never ends up coming up at all.
Was there any major difference between playing Day 1 and Day 2?
The competitiveness, hands down. The things that were called were pretty eye opening. It sounds naive, and obvious, but people on Day 2 are there to win, and any edge they can get, they’ll take. Also, it was insane to be playing against people that I’ve read about over the years. My first match of Day 2 was against a Hall of Fame player.
Any interesting stories from the GP? Magic-related or otherwise.
Trying to explain to opponents that Gigadrowsing their Trinisphere does, in fact, let me go on and win the game. Oh, and the Radisson was a horrible venue*. I’m pretty sure that everyone that stayed there would agree. No air conditioning, and the elevators were situational at best. I did see an old woman plow into some Magic player while trying to get into the elevator. I think she took the hit better than he did.
* I cannot express how accurate this is. It was possibly the worst tournament area I’ve ever been to, LA or otherwise. Not only was everything out-of-sync during the set-up and running of the actual tournament, elevators would skip floors, or take phantom rides up to the penthouse level (which was completely under construction). The cooling system was garbage, and the food options were pretty much nil, other than a Subway where we were eating fresh. A lot. Four or five times over the weekend.
I’d like to thank Justin for answering my questions, and congratulate him, Mark Santos, Derek Cockrell, all the guys from Berkley and Nor-Cal that finished in the money, and of course LSV for winning the whole GP. Again.
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
Email me at joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom