There were only 150 people at the Houston Regionals this year. That’s pretty darn low considering one of the last Regionals I remember playing in had 900+ people during the Ravager/Tooth/Goblins era, but that was before they put two in Texas. I’m not sure what the turnout was like across the boards, but it felt like there were many familiar faces missing in the crowd.
Speaking of, it’s pretty crazy how you get to know everyone in your local PTQ circuit after playing the game for so many years. I haven’t talked to many of them for more than a couple of sentences, but the faces are at the events are always the same, especially the ones near the top tables.
For this Regionals, Billy, Mandee, Louie, and I posted up at James Wise Canyon Lake house to do some testing on Friday night. I’ve never really had a full playtesting session the day before the tournament, but it was a great exercise to ignore the problems of the outside world to focus my mind on the task at hand. Billy was playing the Fog deck. I got a streamlined version from GerryT via a random PM the night before the tournament that solved all the problems Billy and I were talking about.
Spells (36)
This is a major upgrade from the Japanese Regionals deck. However, we added in a couple of Reliquary Towers because that land makes winning games a little less stressful on your mind, and saves a lot of time in the cleanup phase. This version also:
– Cut some annoying Borderposts because it makes this deck more susceptible to ways to disrupt it.
– Maxed out on Runed Halo because the Tezzy plan is just stupid.
– Cut Batwing Brume in favor of the superior Angelsong.
All of these were problems that Billy and I were talking about that Friday night, and it was quite a pleasure to know someone else was on the same page. Still, Billy finished 3-3, and I doubt he’s going to play this deck again for the PTQ next week.
This deck was a huge player at our Regionals, and it felt like every other pairing had a Turbo Fog player drawing out the round. Billy’s first two rounds were actually mirror matches, making it pretty hard for him to get some momentum at the beginning of the tournament.
Mandee was playing his legendary Mandee B/W deck that he used to define the PTQ and Regionals format with his winning deck list in Dallas. He was a little hesitant to play since he was only 10-20 points short of qualifying for Nationals on rating, but Mandee will rarely turn down a road trip where he isn’t the designated driver, so he made the journey and scrubbed out a bunch, making his Nationals quest a little bit harder.
James Wise was playing a fourteen-board-sweeper Beast deck featuring Woolly Thoctar, Spellbreaker Behemoth, Mycoid Shepherd, and Vigor. He lost a bunch to Anathemancer.
My cousin Louie was playing BW Kithkin, and made Top 4 at a big tournament for the first time, earning the pearly prize. He really stepped his play up on Saturday, and I’m really proud of him. It’s gonna be great to watch him evolve into a quality Magician. He used to play Star Trek pretty competitively, so he’s had an easier time picking up the fundamentals and applying them correctly.
Me? I got two other people and myself to play my Cascade deck. I was all ready to switch to Gerry T’s Fog deck, but my heart just wasn’t in it, and the Cascade deck was playtesting extremely well the night before.
Creatures (16)
Lands (25)
Spells (20)
I know I say this a lot, but in the famous words of Gerard Fabiano: “This deck is the nutter butters.”
I’m not really sure where I came up for the idea for this one, but it completely tears a hole through the current metagame. Token decks can’t beat it, control decks with nonbasic lands can’t beat it, Red decks can’t beat it. I’m not really sure what else I need to beat.
It has an excellent control game plan that looks to maximize the utility of the four-mana Cascade spells by getting seven mana worth of spells for a discount price. The end game is the most potent card in the Standard format: Anathemancer. This deck utilizes it better than any I’ve seen so far, since the high number of Cascade spells enables you to chain through the library digging for the excited little Zombie.
It’s 61 cards right now because I couldn’t find another card to cut for a second Naya Charm, but they both definitely need to be there so I’m lost. I suppose a Wrath of God could be escorted to the sideboard, but leaning on Wrath to make up for the lack of early drops is a pretty key role in here. I’m also pretty sure the mana can be cleaned up a bit so that the filter lands aren’t turned off when my Vivids have zero counters, which was a problem I encountered a couple of times throughout the day.
David Solis, a.k.a. “Mr. Top 20 Constructed Rating For Three Years Because I Only Play In One Tournament A Year” played the deck along with my buddy Benito for SA.
Benito scrubbed out due to mana issues, whereas David started out 6-0 and would have locked up a Top 8 slot if he wasn’t such a greedy Mulldrifter and declined the round 7 draw so he could live the 8-0 dream. He lost in round 7 due to a big misplay, assuming he’d have another chance to draw in round 8. But when he got paired down in round 8, he couldn’t draw in and was finished off with an exactly lethal Banefire with a pair of Kitchen Finks he skipped playing in his hand. I was pretty sad that my deck didn’t get there, but at least it was pilot errors preventing it from rising to the top.
I started 4-1-1, losing to Five-Color Control, drawing with BW Tokens, and beating two other Five-Color Control players, Jund aggro, and BW Tokens. I played against all the decks I was hoping to, but got pretty unlucky against a good Five-Color Control player that took down Billy in the previous round. I mean, you gotta feel pretty safe from Cruel Ultimatum with three Runed Halo naming Ultimatum out, right? Two Esper Charms and an end-of-turn Cryptic bounce later, and I had to discard my hand of three and sacrifice my Enlisted Wurm.
In Round 7 I was paired against a Turbo Fog player, and my mistake was not scooping early enough in game 1. I spent an extra ten minutes thinking I could pull it out since I still had Maelstrom Pulses in my deck, but it was futile effort since he was already set up with a ten-card grip.
Game 2 I brought in the Wheel of Sun and Moons, and tore him a new one by casting Maelstrom Pulse eleven or so times that game, revealing just how powerful the 20″ rims are in a dedicated Cascade deck. After getting the Wheel in play and having thinned some of the chaff in the deck, I was able to cast Maelstrom Pulse almost every turn, while Runed Halos shut off his Jace and Oona routes to victory.
Game 3 rolls around with five minutes left on the clock. I get a super aggressive Bloodbraid hand with a Wheel of Sun and Moon, so I keep. I didn’t know this before the match, but it’s actually near impossible for them to win if I land a Wheel. I landed two that game, and when turn 5 was called, he was at 20 life, but I had three Bloodbraid Elf, two Kitchen Finks, a pair of Wheel of Sun and Moon, and a Violent Outburst in hand to deal the twenty with a far superior board to his Howling Mine and land.
I swung in for 20, he naturally had the Holy Day, so I asked him to concede since a draw would do neither of us any good on our Nationals quest. I also mentioned how hard it was for him to win through Wheel of Sun and Moon, and how there was little he could do to stop the snowball of Maelstrom Pulses headed his way. He still didn’t want to give me the win, and said he was trying to get his rating up over 1800 in time for Seattle. I told him he wouldn’t lose much since I’m well over 1900, but he wasn’t having any of it, so I conceded to him to keep his dream alive.
He immediately realized I wasn’t some d-bag begging for the win and said “Man, now I feel like a d*ck.” But I had already filled out and signed the match slip.
That should be a lesson to all the ambitious mages out there. In situations like this where both players will be eliminated with a draw, I’ve always thought it best for the person who is down in the game, or will very likely lose, to concede. I wasn’t in that role this time so I had to initiate the question for concession, but just because he didn’t want to concede to me doesn’t mean the game should end in a draw. I believe someone should always step up and give the other player a fighting chance to chase their dreams. It wasn’t me this time, but I knew he was a good enough player to get it done, even though he botched up my concession by losing the very next round.
The rest of my time was spent play testing with Billy while we waited for Louie to be done dominating Houston Regionals. During which a mall police officer came up to Billy and I and yanked us out of the room to talk to us. I was sporting my hometown throwback Kobe #8 jersey… in Houston… so I knew there was going to be some haters in the massive Galleria mall that day, since LA lost to H-Town in Game 6 two days prior (we won the series though!).
I called him a LA hater, and he got really pissed at me and demanded a search because he claimed “my hand was shaking when I went to grab my wallet for my ID.” He kept referring to some bag I was carrying, but all I had the entire day was my deck box. He also kept saying his job isn’t to babysit, but I told him I’m 21 and past the diapers stage.
He had absolutely nothing on me, other than of course multiple occurrences of camera surveillance catching me smoking cigarettes in the parking garage two floors down.
As for the chronic Cascade deck… here is my updated sideboard. The only maindeck change I would make is turning a Forbidding Watchtower into a Treetop Village, since all the White mana can be a big problem sometimes.
3 Violent Outburst
4 Pyroclasm
2 Wheel of Sun and Moon
2 Thought Hemorrhage
2 Identity Crisis
1 Pithing Needle
1 Anathemancer
Four Outburst was far too much, especially since you only have 3 Runed Halo to search for, and given how often this deck chains through the entire library I’d much rather have a singleton Wheel of Sun and Moon instead of a fourth Outburst for that slot. Boarding into the Wheels can be a little tricky, and it’s really just there for the decks that aren’t hurt by Anathemancer/Finks, like UW Control, Turbo Fog, and possibly some basic Jund mana ramp decks.
Identity Crisis and Thought Hemorrhage are there to combat Five-Color Control late game, as well as the Turbo Fog decks that are on the rise. The seven Pyroclasm slots are obviously there for the BW Token matchup, and the extra Anathemancer is there to maximize that game plan against the decks that are really crippled by it.
Here’s a rough matchup guide…
Five-Color Control
Depending on how many counters they are running, this matchup can go from very easy to moderately problematic. If they can use their Esper Charms and Cruel Ultimatum to attack my hand while mana problems are weighing me down, they can easily steal a win. Most of the time, Anathemancer just tears them a new one, and is the tactic I focus on when I’m playing. Resolving an Anathemancer trigger 3-4 times is the goal, but playing around Jund Charm and executing the game plan once my mana is set up is the tricky part.
Getting to seven mana is very important, and waiting to get the most damage out of Anathemancer is equally important, and those tactics thankfully overlap quite nicely. They don’t have any true threats against me, so I’m just looking to sneak damage in with Finks, Bloodbraid, and Enlisted Wurm until Anathemancer knocks his knees out.
Sideboard:
+2 Thought Hemorrhage, +2 Identity Crisis, +1 Anathemancer (+1 Pithing Needle if Ajani is there)
-1 Runed Halo, -2 Wrath of God, -2 Shriekmaw (-1 Bituminous Blast if Ajani is there)
Runed Halo is important game 1 because it keeps them from blowing me out with a Cruel before I can kill them, but postboard Thought Hemorrhage and Identity Crisis do basically the same thing. Forcing them to use a counter isn’t too hard when you have a card that deals them five damage when it comes into play, and the Halos were easily played around anyway unless I landed two or more. Pulse stays in to combat whatever anti-Anathemancer options they have, whether it be Runed Halo, Pithing Needle, or Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tenders.
Faeries
Here is another strategy that just can’t compete with Anathemancer. Finks and Bloodbraid provide a good early game distraction while the Cascade cards do their job to find Anathemancer. Maelstrom Pulse is particularly devastating since it can clear out a swarm of Faeries to reset their clock. The race is very important here because their Mistbinds are extremely devastating to a deck with few answers to it. Sure, I have Bituminous Blast, Runed Halo, and Maelstrom Pulse, but only Halo and Bit Blast are actually decent against it.
Sideboard:
+1 Anathemancer, +2 Thought Hemorrhage
-1Wrath of God, -2 Shriekmaw
I don’t feel like I have to do too much to win this match. Playing against Faeries and predicting their tactics, cards in hand, and such has been one of the subtle secrets for success these past couple of years, so I’m not too worried about anything they can bring to the table.
Turbo Fog
This goes down just like I talked about earlier. Game 1 is hard to win without some luckily-timed Maelstrom Pulses, and conceding before it gets out of hand to save time is very important.
Sideboard:
+2 Wheel of Sun and Moon, +3 Violent Outburst, +2 Thought Hemorrhage, +2 Identity Crisis, +1 Pithing Needle
-4 Wrath of God, -2 Shriekmaw, -3 Anathemancer
The real problem here is how bad a kill condition Anathemancer is opposite their basics, so killing them takes much longer than it does most other matches. Perhaps a singleton creature in the sideboard, like an Oona or something, would be a good answer instead of Pithing Needle.
Still, they really can’t win through two Wheel of Sun and Moon, and assembling that combo isn’t too hard once you have a force on the table that commits them to Fogging every turn.
Jund Aggro/Red decks
This matchup is practically a bye. Captured Sunlight really starts to shine here since it will always be +4 life and kill something, Finks, Anathemancer, or Runed Halo against them, any of which creates favorable situations for my deck. They simply don’t have any combination of cards that I can’t deal with, since Maelstrom Pulse only reinforces my anti-Red cards while being quality removal.
Sideboard:
Don’t need it.
BW Tokens
This is another matchup that I wanted to beat every game I play, like Jund Aggro and Red decks. Game 1 can be pretty up and down depending on how many Anathemancers I draw. If I get two of them, they have no shot, but if I spend a lot of time trying to find it and get hit by any Ajani +1 counters, I could be in trouble. I have so much life gain that it usually doesn’t matter, and I’ll find a Wrath or Naya Charm in time to tap them down and kill them.
Sideboard:
+3 Violent Outburst, +4 Pyroclasm, +1 Anathemancer
-3 Runed Halo, -2 Shriekmaw, -3 Bituminous Blast
After board I have an insurmountable seventeen Wrath-like effects (not mentioning the unpredictable Cascades), giving me all the time in the world to execute my Anathemancer angles. Boarding out the Blasts may be wrong, and some combination of Wurms/Blast may be better, but I feel like I get more value out of the Wurm whenever I cast it since I can reliably get in a big chunk of damage from Naya Charm. They really don’t have much in the way to stop the way my deck attacks them, especially if they board into Forge-Tenders.
Those five are the biggest decks in the format right now, and seeing as I have such a good plan against all of them I’m probably going to end up playing this deck at a PTQ next week. In the meantime, I’m going to work on a better manabase. I know it can be done. I’ve just been a lazily lounging on the lake lately, and haven’t had time to seriously look at it.
I’m honestly not that big of a fan of this deck, but it performs so well every time I play it. I’d really like some other opinions on it if anybody has some extra time to test it in the forums to get a feel on just how good this deck is. Billy likes it, James Wise likes it, Mandee doesn’t like anything but BW Tokens, David Solis likes it, Benito likes it, but I’m still undecided on just how consistent and focused it is.
The Cascade mechanic is only beginning to be understood, and its potential really has no ceiling since we’re going to have a lot of new cards to play with it when every set comes out, making it a mechanic we have to continually re-evaluate as the format collapses in a few months then begins to expand and evolve again.
For instance, take a look at Sam Black article from this week to see a really focused Cascade deck that really only does two things: Cascades into Swans of Bryn Argoll or Cascades into Seismic Assault. I’d expect similar versions with different plans to emerge over time, since this is one of the most powerful mechanics since Dredge.
Thanks for reading.
Kyle
Bonus Cascade Deck
Creatures (25)
- 4 Boggart Ram-Gang
- 4 Kitchen Finks
- 4 Rip-Clan Crasher
- 2 Jund Hackblade
- 4 Cerodon Yearling
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
- 3 Anathemancer
Lands (23)
Spells (12)
This was my attempt at a more focused aggro Cascade deck, but I hated playing with so many two-mana 2/2s with so little protection against Volcanic Fallout.