Hey all! When last you heard from me, I had just snagged my first Grand Prix Top 8 in Orlando with a sweet Humans deck, and I was gearing up for the StarCityGames.com Open in Washington D.C. as my last tournament before college took back the majority of my attention. I even spilled the beans on what U/W decks I was going to play in both formats! If you’ve been reading my column long, you should know that I love playing with Stoneforge Mystic and Brainstorm in Legacy, and I was happily locked in to playing Sam Black Delver Humans strategy in Standard.
Anyway, after a week of sleep, recovery, and relaxation as only a student on winter break can achieve, I set out on Friday night to my good friend Branch Staton’s apartment to sleep over before driving down to D.C. and the tournament the next morning. Little did I know, a malicious nail was waiting for my right front tire, and about five minutes out, I had to pull over and call my dad for help. He, of course, immediately came to the rescue, telling me to let the car sit (it was parked legally on the side of a small street) and that he would drive me the half-hour down to Branch’s apartment himself. To be honest, I thought he would just tell me that I’d have to get picked up by someone else if I wanted to get down to Washington, but he proved once again why he’s an awesome dad by spending his Friday night helping me get to yet another Magic tournament. Thanks, Dad!
So, as for the Human/Delver hybrid that I chose, Branch, Kurt and I were all set on playing it, and I was happy with its matchups against everything but Humans. I didn’t like the idea of playing Humans in a field that might have more Primeval Titans due to Conley Woods‘ victory the week before, but the addition of Delver of Secrets and Snapcaster Mage gave the deck another dimension of play against the green menace, and the maindeck Mortarpods made me confident that I could beat all but the nuttiest of Delver draws. Additionally, I was getting to play with Gitaxian Probe and Ponder, which make the manabase a lot more stable than Humans’ and give me more control over how a game is going to play out. Those cards also make it so that the one- and two-ofs in the sideboard will come up more frequently, increasing the impact of narrow and powerful sideboard cards. I feel like the more aggressive build makes my Vapor Snags more powerful than Delver’s, and this deck also makes the best use out of Snapcaster Mage. Really, no other deck can use Senor Snappy as aggressively as this one, and it even makes use of the fact that he is a Human! Here’s the list I used, to the best of my memory:
Creatures (18)
Lands (21)
Spells (21)
I was pleased with the numbers as I had them, and the only change I might make is swapping in a second Sword of War and Peace for the Mortarpod in the sideboard, since I’d like to gain equity against Humans and the deck is already fairly well-equipped to dealing with x/1s. Unfortunately, the main ways you are beating Humans with this deck involve either a quick Delver-flip or a Sword of War and Peace, so you need to take your percentage where you can get it! I know putting in a clunky card that requires a five-mana investment to get going runs counter to most of what this deck is trying to do, but the effect is necessary against a deck like Humans, which is fairly good against Gut Shot and Mortarpod. Humans will out-grind you with Moorland Haunt and Honor of the Pure or just trump you with a Hero of Bladehold in the middle turns. You need trumps of your own if you aren’t killing them with a flying Wild Nacatl, and Sword is the card for the job.
As for the tournament itself, I didn’t sleep too well the night before, not getting more than five hours of sleep, and woke up at around 8 am to a winter wonderland that had come in the night. The snow had made the roads difficult to navigate, but fortunately, I didn’t have to drive. Despite one of his windshield wipers feebly giving out en route, Branch got us to the tournament site in plenty of time; although in my shortsightedness, I neglected to eat anything resembling breakfast.
I’ll reiterate this clichéd Magic advice, just because it’s so true for me. I don’t think that I can ever do well at a reasonably-sized tournament without at least six hours of good sleep and a passable breakfast, and I don’t know many people who can. I fully believe that I didn’t do well at the Opens because I made an unacceptable amount of fatigue-related mistakes. For real, in my match against G/W Tokens, I forgot to Ponder precombat for a lethal Vapor Snag! Obviously, when I finally cast the spell after attacking my opponent down to two, the Snag was sitting there, mocking me for my stupidity as my opponent untapped and cast a Timely Reinforcements. Despite my poor play, I still managed to win that game, but it was far closer than it should have been.
Back to the beginning of the Standard tournament, after depositing my coat under The Eric Klug’s display table for safekeeping, I went and signed up, receiving $50 in StarCityGames.com dealer credit for my troubles! I bought five Ratchet Bombs and a Steam Vents with my dealer dollars because I think Ratchet Bomb is going to be key in post-DKA Standard, and they only had five. Hopefully with all these Lingering Souls and flipped Delvers floating around, the Bomb will be able to shine. Soon enough, the pairings for round one were posted, and it was time to battle!
Round one was against a blue/black concoction featuring Silver Myr, Contagion Engine, and Darkslick Drake. My opponent was cool, though, and when he explained to me afterwards that he didn’t have a sideboard and was mainly at the tournament to practice and get some tips for his deck, I spent some time offering suggestions on his play and what he could change.
Round two was against G/B Conley.dec, and after losing game 1 to a strong draw from my opponent, I found myself on the sorry end of a mulligan to five on the play. I’ve found that the thing that works best for me in unhappy situations like this is to get stubborn. Tell yourself that you’re going to win this game, and just don’t resign yourself to losing! Frequently, your opponents will play more conservatively than normal because they believe that they will win the game unless they walk into a blowout. My opponent played around Mana Leak by waiting and waiting on his Curse of Death’s Hold, and I drew the blowout Negate the turn before he got to eight mana. How lucky! I ended up winning this game by the skin of my teeth, with just enough Spirit tokens to fly over my opponent’s Grave Titan and the lethal Vapor Snag as the last card in my hand for his Inkmoth Nexus. Game 3 was close, too, if memory serves, but I ended up winning the match after a mistake by my opponent. I was feeling fine, if a little hungry, and luck seemed to be on my side. Little did I know that my fatigue would start poking holes in my game the very next round!
G/W Tokens was my opponent’s deck in round three, and despite misplaying games two and three horribly, I managed to get the win. Seriously, I played really, really badly. I forgot that a Ratchet Bomb would blow up my opponent’s Garruk, the Veil-Cursed, and on the last turn, I decided to play around a Gut Shot rather than a second Garruk, the Veil-Cursed. The stupid part was I didn’t even know if my opponent played Gut Shot, and he had a handful of cards after being light on mana most of the game! What was I thinking?! Of course he would have used the Gut Shot if it had been in his hand, so what else could he have been holding? Ugh.
Game three’s mistake, the failure to Ponder precombat, was also awful, but Moorland Haunt + Mortarpod + Snapcaster Mage for Midnight Haunting bailed me out. I definitely felt like I didn’t deserve to be 3-0, but I took it. I’d have gladly traded one of those wins for an extra four hours of sleep and a couple bowls of cereal, though.
The next two rounds were a blur of loose keeps and 2-1 losses to Humans. I won both game twos off of Sword of War and Peace, but I never saw a Delver of Secrets in any of those matches. Of course, I should have mulliganed the bad hands, but it was about 2 pm, and I was feeling really out of it by that point.
I dropped, partially disgusted and partially relieved that I didn’t have to keep battling. I went and got food and an Advil and happily came back to the convention center to see what people were doing. After mentally preparing myself for some trading, I decided to try my hand at the tables, and managed to make some piddling amount of value. It was nice to get back to the other side of the player-trader spectrum, but the difficulty of value trading in a world of iPhones makes me happy I’m playing more than trading nowadays.
After wasting the afternoon trading and watching my friends battle in the MD-VA-NC Interstate Cube Rotisserie Draft, it was time to head to Alex Majlaton birthday dinner, which was a memorable experience, if one that kept me up later than I’d have liked for the second night in a row. “Platonic” Tim Pskowski (he gets a new nickname every week, it seems) and Matt Scott got their cheeseburgers mixed up, and then mixed up again, so I gorged myself on the French fries that came with each erroneous burger. After getting to Tim’s sweet bachelor pad and throwing my clothes in the washing machine, I slept like a baby that night. Fortunately, I got some granola bars the next morning, and with my Legacy deck locked in, I was feeling much better than the day before, ready to battle.
Here’s the U/W Stoneblade list I played, after Tim convinced me that Umezawa’s Jitte was just much, much better than Sword of Feast and Famine.
Creatures (11)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (24)
Spells (20)
I was pretty happy with this list, although I might want to play like two or three Ancestral Visions in the sideboard, maybe over Geist of Saint Traft. I didn’t get to see how good the Geist is, but with more testing, I’ll be able to decide which of those two cards is more valuable. I’m a fan of the second Oblivion Ring, as it always seems to answer a card that my opponents view as a game-ending trump. Whether it’s a Choke, a Counterbalance, a Batterskull, a Knight of the Reliquary, or an opposing planeswalker, Oblivion Ring gets the job done!
In fact, the only thing I really worry about when I play this deck is going to time, and playing too quickly as a result of that fear. Legacy is a tough format, and with all the deck manipulation going on, battling other Brainstorm decks can be a nightmare in time management. I think that I lost round five because I played for a quick win, aggressively Wastelanding my opponent instead of developing my mana and getting to cast my haymakers. I also kept a bad hand game one of that match. Yuck.
Round 1 was against a Bant concoction, and I took it down in three games after losing game one to a Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Game three, my opponent was mana-screwed, if I remember correctly.
Round 2 was against a Zoo deck, and my deck kept pace, feeding me enough Swords to Plowshares and Snapcaster Mages to put a Batterskull to work. My opponent also drew a few too many lands in the second game, unfortunately for her.
Round 3 was against Zoo again, and again, my deck did what it needed to do to keep to board stable. I kept a hand with Swords to Plowshares and immediately drew a second one, followed by a Stoneforge and attendant Batterskull. My opponent had a one-turn window in game two to draw a blowout spell like Choke or Sylvan Library, and he bricked, putting me through to 3-0 again. I was feeling better about my deck and my play at that point, and I was confident that I’d be able to top 8 the tournament.
The next round was against Ryan McKinney with U/B Reanimator, and I lost the first game after letting him bring back an Iona on blue. I think, in retrospect, that when I tanked hard on his Reanimate, and then let it resolve, he knew that I had a Force of Will and a Jace and was hoping he’d name white. If I wanted to plant the seed of naming white, I should have snap-okayed his Reanimate. In retrospect, I should have Forced his Reanimate, pitching the only other nonland in my hand, Spell Snare. It’s really close between pitching Jace and pitching Snare, though. Anyway, games two and three I kept reasonably good hands, and Ryan mulliganed and had awkward draws, so I won 2-1. I really enjoy playing this matchup, as it usually is a fairly skill-intensive match, and it doesn’t go to time. Ryan played well but just drew too poorly in game three.
Round 5 was against Calosso Fuentes with RUG Delver/CounterTop, and after keeping a bad hand and losing game 1 quickly, I mulliganed into an acceptable six and won game two after Calosso Brainstormed and Pondered and looked with Top about eight times, never finding the card he needed. He complained a lot about not drawing what he needed, and I thought he was just blowing smoke, but apparently he had an Ancient Grudge in his deck that would have been pretty good against my board of Umezawa’s Jitte and Batterskull. I thought all these decks ran Krosan Grip, so I never bothered to play around it!
Anyway, game 3 we were short on time, and I aggressively Wastelanded his 19-land deck, but he drew and cast a Sensei’s Divining Top, and then I was the one short on mana for the rest of the game. Several key Red Elemental Blasts later, I was dead. If I had just played for a longer game, I would have been fine, but we probably would have drawn, since I can’t kill very quickly.
Another close decision that I made incorrectly because of time pressure; that loss put me to 4-1 and put me into a mini-funk for the next round. I kept thinking back on how I should have played against Calosso and ended up keeping a loose 1 Island, 1 Wasteland hand with a Spell Snare on the play against an unknown opponent. I ended up bricking on Goblin Guide triggers three or so times, and I died without playing any relevant spells. Game two I kept an okay hand, but I got run over. Maybe I should have mulliganed that one, too, since I can easily recoup the card advantage if I just stabilize the board, and I need removal spells to do that. Anyway, I lost fairly quickly in the on-camera feature match, disappointing myself and my buddy Gerard, who requisitioned the camera feature match just for me!
So I dropped and went to go get food, but I took a detour to nap on the couch in the lobby of the convention center. Of course, just as I drifted off, a security guard came shouting, explaining that I was not allowed to sleep on the couches in the center. I guess that’s fair, but it was still unpleasant to have my nap so abruptly ended like that. Maybe he thought I was a homeless person. After all, I had just gone without showering the previous night, and my hair gets pretty disheveled after just one night without a shower. So I reluctantly put on my coat and hat, headed to Chipotle for some much-needed post-tournament refueling, and met up with the bros to head back towards home.
My tireless dad came and picked me up so I could get a good night’s sleep before heading back to college, and on the way home, we discussed the changes to the Pro Player’s Club, my prospective trip to PT: Honolulu, and how I was going to balance school and Magic. He intimated that he had hoped the Planeswalker Points change would encourage me to stop playing and focus on real life, but he understood that with the more recent modifications, it was more attractive to keep playing, and he’d support me throughout. As the great Troy McClure once said when describing The Simpsons’ future prospects, “Who knows what adventures they’ll have between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable?”
Who knows what adventures Magic and I will have between now and the time the game becomes unprofitable? (Let’s hope that’s not for a long time!)
Have a great week, and thanks for reading!