Last week, some people made some very good points in the forums. I used some admittedly fuzzy logic to demonstrate why my manabase was reasonable; the short version was that I was playing, on average, as many or more appropriate color sources to support my BB, 2GG, BWG, and 1UUU spells as other successful decks. Forum posters correctly pointed out that that hardly conclusively proves that my mana is equally stable to theirs (which it is not, of course), but my goal was more to show that it was a reasonable manabase that was able to support its spells.
The added inconsistency comes from the fact that I am playing Cryptic Command, the most difficult-to-cast spell in Faeries, with about the same number of Blue sources to support it, alongside Doran – the toughest spell to cast in that deck, with about the same number of mana sources to support it – and so on. It makes me not quite as reliable as any one of those decks, but also not so unreliable that the deck should be avoided outright due to mana concerns.
At any rate, here’s the updated build.
Creatures (21)
- 4 Doran, the Siege Tower
- 2 Sower of Temptation
- 2 Treefolk Harbinger
- 4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
- 4 Chameleon Colossus
- 4 Scarblade Elite
- 1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
Lands (25)
Spells (14)
I’ve spent the bulk of the past two weeks putting Counter Elves (I realize it doesn’t do as much countering these days as it did when I made Top 8, but let’s face it – at this point enough articles have referenced the deck by that name that changing it now will just make a mess) through its paces. Inspired by the success of Treefolk Harbinger at Kobe, I tried him out in place of the much-maligned 2 Broken Ambitions, and liked them. They were a big help against Red decks and Doran, and were solid everywhere else. In the face of Kithkin starting to maindeck four copies of Unmake or Crib Swap, the only remaining deck in the format against which I did not want four maindeck Doran was Faeries, so I moved an Oona to the board (two maindeck copies was seriously clogging my hand too often against Kithkin and some others) to make room. Little did I know that Patrick Chapin would have a surprise for the metagame on Sunday, courtesy of Gerry T.
I tested the Toast of Justice matchup and got a feel for how it plays out. How do I put this delicately… have you ever full-bore thrown up in your mouth? That’s about how I usually feel by turn 5. If you get paired against it, the best thing you can do is to remember this simple piece of advice: “Don’t jump. It’s not worth it.”
I was initially very discouraged by this discovery; you never want to be a dog to the Hot New Deck, and my next PTQ opportunity is this weekend. Fortunately, I learned some things about the matchup in the course of testing it.
Here’s how the matchup goes: my two relevant threats are Doran and Chameleon Colossus. That’s it. Scarblade Elite and Wren’s Run Vanquisher are stopped easily by Firespout, Kitchen Finks, and Shriekmaw, on top of the usual countermagic, Archon of Justice, and so forth. They are basically irrelevant except when my opponent is manascrewed and they can actually get some damage in. Oona is a fine threat in the abstract, but she costs six; if the game develops to the point where I can cast her, I’ve either lost because I’m flooded or we’re on something like turn 9 and my opponent isn’t dead yet – in other words, he’s stabilized and I’m probably not winning despite having Oona.
So I have basically a ten-threat deck (if you count Treefolk Harbinger, since he can search up my other two relevant threats), four Thoughtseizes, two Crib Swaps, twenty-five lands, and nineteen cards that might as well be Mons’s Goblin Raiders for all they help the matchup out. Even Cryptic Command manages to suck here because I almost never have anything on-board worth defending, and trying to use it for its tapping and/or bouncing abilities usually results in it getting countered.
Given all this, I was surprised to learn that Toasty Justice evidently has a bad matchup against Merfolk. Granted, I’m not sure it does; when Patrick commented at the GP that he had not tested the matchup, the only evidence that it was bad was that Cheon had lost to it in two consecutive rounds. With a little testing, would he still have lost? I’m not so sure. Here’s some food for thought.
Looking at the Kenny Castor Merfolk deck in the Top 8, I see a lot of similarities to my own build. Anything that starts off 4 Chameleon Colossus, 4 Nameless Inversion, 2 Crib Swap is a decklist after my own heart. The similarities continue; we both have maindeck Cryptic Command, Sower of Temptation, and Oona. In fact, transforming Counter Elves into Merfolk practically reads like a nineteen-card sideboarding plan:
-4 Wren’s Run Vanquisher
-4 Scarblade Elite
-4 Thoughtseize
-4 Doran
-2 Treefolk Harbinger
-1 Land
+4 Merrow Reejerey
+4 Silvergill Adept
+4 Stonybrook Banneret
+3 Sage’s Dousing
+2 Sygg, River Guide
+1 Sower of Temptation
+1 Mirror Entity
The only other dissimilarities are that our color bases differ (though we both have exactly seven Vivids) and that Merfolk squeezes in two Mutavault while I am all colored sources.
Taking a glance at the above list, we see that I have Thoughtseize where they have Sage’s Dousing. I can see arguments either way for one being better than the other; Thoughtseize is both cheaper and better at helping force through early threats, but Dousing is a cantrip and countermagic makes the opponent pay for the card they lose.
I guess 2 Sygg is maybe comparable to two of my Dorans, but the five next-best cards after that are… what, Silvergill Adept and the Mirror Entity? If Merfolk’s top ten cards (that I’m not also playing) for the matchup are three Dousing, two Sygg, four Silvergill Adept, and one Mirror Entity, while my top ten are four Doran, four Thoughtseize, and two Harbinger (for Doran), I have a tough time feeling deficient in comparison.
Merrow Reejerey and Wren’s Run Vanquisher will both die a thousand deaths before they accomplish anything in this matchup, but at least Vanquisher only costs two on his way out. The same is largely true of Banneret and Scarblade Elite, though Elite are Shriekmaw-proof and the Banneret probably does more harm in the early game if it does manage to stick.
From where I’m sitting, something’s not adding up. The cards that separate our builds don’t seem to be drastically different in effectiveness (and in fact, arguably the majority of mine are better-suited for the matchup overall), so it’s a pretty big surprise that I’m testing the matchup and feeling can’t win while they’re apparently feeling can’t lose.
Plus, given that my experience is that the only relevant cards are Doran and Chameleon Colossus, and I’m the one playing ten of those guys backed up by Thoughtseize to force them through compared to four Colossi and only countermagic to help resolve them… either I just need to play this matchup out to see what gives Merfolk that edge I’m lacking, or one of us is just not right about how this matchup usually plays out.
Either way, the end result of this whole thought process is that I’m not sure I’m going to get mileage out of jumping ship for Merfolk or tweaking my deck to try and be more like it (say, by reintroducing Broken Ambitions as a Sage’s Dousing imitator). For now, I’m going to stick with the list that has been working well against the rest of the field.
Matchups
Versus Justice Toast
I’ll start with the matchup I’ve been talking so much about: JusToastIce. I’ve spent plenty of time talking about the maindeck plan, so let’s get right into sideboarding.
+2 Demigod of Revenge
+2 Sower of Temptation
+2 Wickerbough Elder
+2 Shriekmaw
+1 Crib Swap
+1 Treefolk Harbinger
-4 Wren’s Run Vanquisher
-4 Scarblade Elite
-1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
-1 Nameless Inversion
Desperate times, yeah? This matchup is all about stealing games with my few most durable, quality threats. My Elves are just awful here – they die to Firespout, Shriekmaw, a Kitchen Finks in the way, or even just as part of a Wrath – and they never deal enough damage on their own to warrant the slot they take up, so I board them all out for more cards that support Doran, Chameleon Colossus, and Demigod. Sower of Temptation and Crib Swap get the nod over the third Shriekmaw because they are the best at removing Kitchen Finks from the path of my attackers.
I haven’t tried this plan out yet, but the Elders are in there as a tutorable answer for Runed Halo (Patrick says he boards up to four against Green decks with Colossus and Doran) while also putting a 4/4 threat on the board. When you’re sure the opponent will have a target, Wickerbough Elder is basically Indrik Stomphowler that you can pay for in two installments.
Versus Faeries
+3 Cloudthresher
+2 Wickerborough Elder
-2 Treefolk Harbinger
-2 Sower of Temptation
-1 Doran, the Siege Tower
Again, I haven’t tried out the Elders here, but the logic goes that if they have Bitterblossom, he’s an answer and a 4/4 (not tutorable here, since I’m boarding out my Harbingers, but I can live with that), and if they don’t have Bitterblossom, I can suffer a Hill Giant in exchange for playing against the non-devastating flavor of Faeries. The main concern, obviously, is that he’s a lot easier to counter than Wispmare, but as many have pointed out before me, Faeries is not draw-go; big spells resolve against them all the time. We’ll see if he works out.
Versus Doran
This is, I suppose, a mirror-ish matchup in that the critical card for both of us is Chameleon Colossus. You always want to be the guy with a Chameleon Colossus attacking. When Colossus is on offense, the defender’s Colossus is not nearly as good – and, let’s be honest, everything but a defending Colossus is either a chump blocker or Wren’s Run Vanquisher. If the defender blocks with his own Colossus, the attacker will pump to 8/8, meaning a defensive Colossus must always have four mana open to be useful. It’s tough to develop your board under a quadruple Rishadan Port like that, but it’s also tough to win a creature mirror when every attack step makes you pick between taking eight damage or letting The Abyss trigger again.
To get ahead in this matchup, you make everything — and I do mean everything ¬— about Colossus advantage. You take Colossus with Thoughtseize unless the opponent also has Profane Command and you believe he will hit the six mana mark this game. You save your Crib Swaps for him unless there is a serious emergency on the table (of which, usually, Leaf-Crowned Elder is one). You make bizarre sideboarding choices like this one:
+2 Sower of Temptation
+2 Demigod of Revenge
+1 Treefolk Harbinger
+1 Crib Swap
-4 Doran, the Siege Tower
-1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
-1 Nameless Inversion
It seems weird to take out Doran, I know. I thought I’d never want to do it. But the more I played this matchup, the more I learned about the dynamics of it, the more I realized that this bizarre sideboarding plan was actually the way to go.
Think about it in reverse. The above post-board configuration has 4 Sower of Temptation, 4 Chameleon Colossus, 4 Wren’s Run Vanquisher, 4 Scarblade Elite, 3 Treefolk Harbinger, 2 Demigod, 3 Thoughtseize, 3 Nameless Inversion, 4 Cryptic Command, and 3 Crib Swap. In a matchup where Colossus is everything, exactly which of the above do you want to cut for Doran?
Taking out Oona was also strange to me at first, until I realized that in basically every game I played, casting Oona immediately resulted in one of three things. Either they cast Crib Swap on it immediately (which stops both Oona and Demigod, though Demigod is cheaper and thus gives them fewer turns to draw it), or they are ahead with Chameleon Colossus and it doesn’t matter (both are Black), or I untap with Oona and win. Now, given that the opponent’s deck has zero flyers, what do you think happens when I untap with Demigod? Well, if I untapped with Demigod, that means they already took five from last turn’s Haste attack, and are about to take another five this turn. The number of games I lose after dealing my opponent ten damage for five mana is probably about the same number of games I will lose after untapping with Oona: practically zero.
More relevantly than the mana discount, Demigod can actually turn around a Chameleon Colossus race. If my opponent plays a Colossus and hits me with it once, I’m down 4 life. If I play Demigod on the following turn, I can immediately put him on a four-turn clock – and while I can chump his Colossus attacks, he can’t chump my Demigod attacks.
Versus Demigod Red
+3 Shriekmaw
+1 Treefolk Harbinger
+1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
+1 Crib Swap
-4 Thoughtseize
-2 Sower of Temptation
This is a straightforward boarding plan. All I want to do in this matchup is stall the early game and let my fatties take over. From there it’s a simple matter of managing Demigod via Crib Swap, Cryptic Command, and the occasional out-racing. I didn’t drop a game to either Red deck I played in the PTQ, and that was when I had Imperious Perfect instead of Doran and zero Harbingers to my name.
Versus Kithkin
+3 Shriekmaw
+1 Crib Swap
-2 Treefolk Harbinger
-1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
-1 Chameleon Colossus
Removal is critical to this matchup, which is why I’m boarding in removal for non-removal spells. (Okay, technically Harbs can fetch Nameless Inversion, but that’s not nearly as effective as Shriekmaw). I’m even cutting a Chameleon Colossus for the suboptimal Crib Swap, simply because Colossus is slow and removal of any stripe is so much better.
This remains my second-toughest matchup (after Toasty Justiceful Goodness), and I still haven’t settled on a boarding plan I like completely. I know I want a Crib Swap in for a Colossus, I know I want Oona out, but I can never settle on the optimal mix of Shriekmaws, Harbingers, Thoughtseizes, and Sowers. I removed Soul Snuffers from the board because I just liked Sower better, but then I started doubting whether I even wanted a full four Sower alongside the three Colossi and four Cryptic Commands in the first place; that’s an awfully crowded four-spot against such an aggressive deck.
I’ve developed an alternate boarding plan which goes along with the principle of why I took Stillmoon Cavalier out, but I’ll present it more as a “whaddya think?” than a bona fide suggestion. I removed the Cavaliers because while they were great at stalling the board, Kithkin was better at breaking stalemates than I was. Eventually they’d hit that Mirrorweave or Windbrisk Heights activation that would just cripple me, and barring stupidity like double Cryptic Command with Colossus out, they’d eventually swarm around the Cavalier and get me anyway.
Doran is not at all the same as Stillmoon Cavalier, in no small part because he can actually race. The only reason I’m even talking about this boarding plan is that, well, racing and advancing a stalemate are about the only things he’s good for here, and Kithkin pulls out the race an awful lot. Would I be better off just axing them for a complete overload on removal spells? This board plan assumes so.
+3 Shriekmaw
+2 Sower of Temptation
+1 Crib Swap
-4 Doran, the Siege Tower
-1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
-1 Chameleon Colossus
Is this wise? Probably not. It’s probably bad, for example, to keep in two Harbingers with no Doran to turn them into 3/3s – but then again, an 0/3 for G isn’t all bad when the opponent relies on attacking with early 2/2s to win.
Versus Elementals
+3 Shriekmaw
+1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
-2 Treefolk Harbinger
-2 Sower of Temptation
Killing Smokebraider is critical; hence, Shriekmaw. Harbinger and Sower are the deck’s weakest links because tutoring is not that important here, and they have too many ways to kill Sower of Temptation for it to be better than Shriekmaw or Oona. Incidentally, if they have Fulminator Mage, I would suggest leaving in the Harbingers and boarding out an Oona instead of boarding in the second one; really the only reason you wouldn’t want Oona in this matchup is that you don’t think you’ll be able to cast her because your lands are in the graveyard.
That’s it for this week. Next week we’ll see how this whole Quick ‘n’ Justicey thing pans out.
See you next week!
Richard Feldman
Team :S
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