We were supposed to have a mock tournament last week, but even though a bunch of people showed up, we did loose testing instead with no actual mock; I brought the Mishra deck I posted last week, testing the same list I showed, as well as versions with 3-4 copies of Cabal Therapy, and finally a version with three Counterbalances main. The Counterbalance version was decidedly the best, but the deck was about .75 turns too slow based on the matchups that I tested. It could not compete with Red Deck Wins, beat Affinity only on blowouts, and was not competitive whatsoever with Opposition. We tested this Doran deck, and it was a heavy favorite there (Doran can’t win if you untap with Mishra in play). However, the speed of the deck and its inability to beat Red Deck Wins crossed Mishra as posted off my list of decks to play.
So of course on the way home I designed a new deck. I played one matchup with it online, which was a blowout win over Affinity. Affinity needs a god draw to beat Akroma’s Vengeance plus Temple of the False God main, and is hopeless to Kami of False Hope sideboarded… Seemed like enough testing. Okay, I’ve got my deck.
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3 Flooded Strand
2 Sacred Foundry
12 Plains
4 Temple of the False God
3 Windswept Heath
1 Urza’s Factory
4 Orim’s Chant
3 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Martyr of Sands
4 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Wrath of God
4 Akroma’s Vengeance
4 Eternal Dragon
4 Decree of Justice
Sideboard:
3 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
4 Kami of False Hope
4 Nova Cleric
1 Weathered Wayfarer
This is the kind of deck that I absolutely love. I love playing enough lands. I love big spells like Akroma’s Vengeance in open formats. I love inevitability. This deck has a massive Phase III game plan with Proclamation of Rebirth plus Martyr of Sands hybridized into Onslaught Block-style Mono-White Control. The number of automatic wins the deck can generate is staggering.
The main problem I identified was that I was a dog against certain Phase III plans. You can’t lose to Enduring Ideal. They can go off on turn 4, get every single piece of regalia in their deck, and still can’t net damage even if they have you locked under Dovescape and Decree of Silence. However, other Phase III decks like Tooth and Nail… You can’t just break them with an Orim’s Chant. I needed to pre-empt Tooth and Nail or alternately R/W Balance.
The obvious way to fix this would be to hybridize a turn 4 kill onto my deck, the most obvious being Rith’s Charm plus Biorhythm plus Windbrisk Heights… So that’s what I did:
Creatures (8)
Lands (17)
Spells (35)
Rith’s Charm is a card that I have wanted to play for seven years, since I saw a Domain deck by Andrew Cuneo. There was just never a format where it was a reasonable option before (though I tested it in slow Domain last year)… However, it is just perfect for setting off Windbrisk Heights (make three guys on their end step, attack with them, etc), so besides being as viable as it is strange looking, this deck was a realization of childhood dreams.
There are three problems with this deck, and all of them stem from the fact that I didn’t test even one match with it before playing in the PTQ.
1) The numbers on Sensei’s Divining Top and Biorhythm are wrong. I slashed fours and cut a land to add the three Tops after talking with Chapin on Friday. Top was the best card in my deck. I often found myself siding out one or both Biorhythms; interestingly, Sadin commented that that was probably because I had too few Biorhythms! Jake Van Lunen is trying to test without them entirely.
2) The sideboard is horrendous. I only played seven cards total, and only four of them mattered. Boseiju against Enduring Ideal is to force down Biorhythm or Akroma’s Vengeance, but it is almost impossible for them to beat you, so they are kind of a waste. If I played Saturday again, I think I would run:
4 Engineered Explosives
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Akroma’s Vengeance
3 Kami of False Hope
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
2 Temple of the False God
3) I put literally no thought into beating Cabal Therapy decks, specifically Doran. I played Doran four times, and our Top 8 was six Doran decks. I think that is a very winnable matchup but my game plan was extremely poor, so I think I threw away a lot of games in a matchup that should not have been as difficult as I made it. I literally didn’t understand the matchup until it had eliminated me from Top 8 in Round 8, so I sideboarded wrongly all day, focused on the wrong cards, etc. An ounce of playtesting would have allowed me to choose the right cards and not waste space and opportunity cost. Most egregious was that I was siding out 1 Proclamation of Rebirth most of the day, and was up to two by the end of the day. The correct number to sideboard out is all of them. That card is miserable against Doran sideboarded. I should have had 4 Engineered Explosives (probably the best overall sideboard card) and 2 more copies of Temple of the False God to turbo charge my late Phase II card advantage. If you contain Dark Confidant, Doran is just a bunch of crappy guys with power and toughness with one-for-one disruption. If you have Top and a little shuffle power (no issue for this deck) the only cards that matter are Vindicate, Eternal Witness (because it can get back Vindicate), and Profane Command… You can blank so much of their strategy by just playing right, but I really hurt my chances by sideboarding so badly.
On balance, the main deck mana is absolutely perfect. I declared one mulligan in eight rounds of Swiss, and my colors were stalled for exactly one turn, total, in a game where I got a fourth or fifth turn kill anyway. The only issue – and this is something that Chapin said was obvious to him but that I am pretty sure the average Level 4 will consistently gloss over – is that when you have the option, you have to play Wooded Foothills early so that you can get relatively pain-free mana late with Windswept Heath; I cost myself two life in the last round… It ended up not mattering, but it could have.
In sum, I think that this deck can be competitive in the current format. I would not recommend it in the Northeast at present due to the proliferation of Doran, which appears to be a soft matchup, at least until we figure out how to get our 60+% sideboarded percentage. However, in other areas where people play Dredge, Enduring Ideal, Next Level Blue, and other Counterbalance decks, and especially Gaea’s Might Get There and Affinity, there is probably no better deck choice.
Dredge is hard for anyone to beat main deck, but I think that a lot of what matters has to do with whether they have main deck Leyline of the Void, and whether they mulligan to it in sideboarded games. Martyr of Sands and especially Kami of False Hope have so much efficacy in this matchup, especially as they can go long in an essentially inevitable way. Wrath of God actually matters in this matchup… Going to four copies of Engineered Explosives would be very effective.
Enduring Ideal is just the absolute easiest matchup. You have 9+ turns to string together Martyr and Proclamation with Shuffle/Top. You side up to four Akroma’s Vengeances and add the Boseiju to help sand off the corners. I faced down a first turn Leyline of the Void in the PTQ… It really didn’t matter due to the multiple inevitabilities of my sideboard plan.
Counterbalance decks are just slow beatdown decks in-context. They have a really hard time with your Martyr combo, and you can set up Akroma’s Vengeance with Boseiju to cut off every game plan. Rith’s Charm is important to hit the Academy Ruins (which can serve to keep them kind of in a game with Engineered Explosives and Pithing Needle even through Boseiju), but they will probably lose to your Decree of Justice even if they have an answer for Proclamation. Basically, their control cards don’t matter because you aren’t vulnerable to Vedalken Shackles or Threads of Disloyalty, their counters only work if you play into them, their Counterbalance is not effective against your long game plan, and their clock is slow.
Ravitz argues that Affinity is actually an easier matchup than Ideal, but I disagree. Affinity can get a nutso Shrapnel Blast or Fatal Frenzy draw, whereas even if Ideal goes off optimally they can’t win unless they have some kind of savage heretofore unpublished tech (or your draw is fatally stunted in some way).
The difference between Gaea’s Might Get There and Red Deck Wins is the presence of Molten Rain. If you are on the draw, you can definitely lose to beatdown with mana disruption (this is the more important way Doran can mise you as well, especially on a Vindicate Birds draw); Gaea’s Might Get There is the superior matchup, especially if you are on the play. If you can get past the point where Molten Rain (or two Molten Rain) matter[s], they will have a hard time winning. You basically have every card that is great against them. You can cut off their speed with early Lightning Helix, you get two-for-one on Wrath of God, and basically auto-win if you get to Martyr + Proclamation mana; even if you don’t, Martyr is just a good card on a chump block that counters their next two Tribal Flames (they gain very little utility on the hand information). The way you lose this matchup is getting blown out on land destruction, especially on the draw. As such, I have found a lot of success buying time with Rith’s Charm on their lands, screwing up colors.
Most of the Level 3 players present at our PTQ thought that Rith’s Charm was the best card in my deck, and by the end of the day, all my opponents were asking for the Oracle wording of the card. I think it would be interesting to see if some of the Extended beatdown decks capable of GRW mana would adopt Rith’s Charm for their land destruction slot… It’s an instant and basically a Gnarled Mass (better, kind of) in a pinch.
Round 1: Merfolk Opposition
Obviously Merfolk Opposition is not “in the metagame” … My assessment is that it is a miserable matchup. In Game 1 I was able to force down Akroma’s Vengeance and lucksack a Lightning Helix through his Counterbalance for the kill. Game 2 he didn’t draw anything.
Sideboarding:
+2 Engineered Explosives
+2 Akroma’s Vengeance
+1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
-2 Biorhythm
-3 Rith’s Charm
I didn’t really know what to do, so I just sided to disrupt Counterbalance and his high number of two-mana creatures, adding Boseiju to help force through my Vengeances. Plan A was to not get locked by Counterbalance and Opposition; Plan B was to win on Proclamation assuming he didn’t have Static Orb.
W 2-0, 1-0
Round 2: Doran
I got Game 1 easily. Game 1 against Doran is odd… It’s a potentially hard matchup based on if they have Maher and how much disruption they have, but a lot of games they just draw a bunch of guys and you bury them. Game 2 I was never really in it due to his highly disruptive draw. Game 3 he mulliganed and drew seven, so I got a free Paris to five… His neutered draw didn’t present any pressure despite having lots of graveyard disruption, so it was pretty easy to set up the win with just high quality cards.
Sideboarding:
-2 Biorhythm
-1 Proclamation of Rebirth
-1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
+2 Engineered Explosives
+2 Akroma’s Vengeance
This is the model for most of my Doran sideboarding. As I said above, Proclamation is really bad in this matchup, but I didn’t figure that out until after the tournament.
W 2-1, 2-0
Round 3: Doran
We got deck checked for 11 minutes. I think the flaw in the deck check system is that they give you 11 minutes back, but you spend five of them shuffling, so you really only get about six minutes. We split the first two games. I actually mis-blocked by one Decree of Justice token so it took me an additional turn to win, so I was mad at myself. In this game he had Gaddock Teeg (“I’d better kill that”) but flashed me Profane Command, so I switched to “Under no circumstances will that die.” I sided in all the combo regalia for Game 3 but we were in extra turns almost immediately.
Sideboarding:
-2 Biorhythm
-1 Proclamation of Rebirth
-1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
+2 Engineered Explosives
+2 Akroma’s Vengeance
He made Top 8.
D 1-1 , 2-0-1
Round 4: Enduring Ideal
I ripped Martyr of Sands on the last possible turn in Game 1 (huzzah); that was that. In the second he started on Leyline of the Void and went for a fast Form of the Dragon; I responded with the big Akroma’s Vengeance while working shuffle/Top… Academic.
Sideboarding:
-1 Biorhythm
-4 Wrath of God
+2 Akroma’s Vengeance
+2 Ancient Grudge
+1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
You can afford to side out Wrath even if they have some sort of odd transformation because you are supplementing on Vengeance. Boseiju is your ace, or at least there to neutralize their Boseiju to force through Dovescape or the equivalent. I figured that Ancient Grudge to slow down mana was more useful than the first Biorhythm… You have time to find a singleton in this matchup.
W 2-0, 3-0-1
Round 5: Doran
I was never really in either game… He drew multiple discards in both games and I got Vindicated five times.
Sideboarding:
-1 Biorhythm
-2 Proclamation of Rebirth
-1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
+2 Engineered Explosives
+2 Akroma’s Vengeance
He made Top 2, losing the slot to Chad Kastel.
L 1-2, 3-1-1
Round 6: Gaea’s Might Get There
He was never in either game… Gaea’s Might Get There plays so mana tight; I exacerbated his two-land draws with Rith’s Charm, got two-for-one on Helixes (countering Gaea’s Might). We played a fun game, which he got with multiple Molten Rains… I think this matchup is still favorable on the draw against land destruction, especially if you cheat in some extra Engineered Explosives. I didn’t bother siding Sphere of Law; most of my friends were on Red Deck or Affinity, so I think I had a disproportionate amount of sideboard cards for those decks without considering Doran enough. Sphere of Law is pretty good but you need Akroma’s Vengeance in case they have Sulfuric Vortex, and it’s annoying to brain your own permanents. You mostly lose games where you get blown out on mana on turn 3, and Sphere of Law doesn’t address those losses.
Sideboarding:
-2 Biorhythm
-1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
+2 Engineered Explosives
+1 Akroma’s Vengeance
You win on the merits, so the plan here is to take out the cards that can give you clunky draws. Explosives is great, Vengeance is pretty good as a supplement.
He made Top 8, losing to my Round 8 opponent.
W 2-0, 4-1-1
Round 7: U/G/W Loam/Slide
Game 1 he conceded for time when he realized he wasn’t going to overwhelm my Martyr on damage; Loam had put him too far ahead to deck me.
He had Slide, Eternal Witness, and Tormod’s Crypt, plus Decree of Justice recursion. We went to time, not surprisingly. However, I ran one for the crowd: end of turn I made six Saprolings, then hard cast Biorhythm, attacked with all my guys, flashed Helix off of Heights, and had another Helix in grip, overwhelming his 50+ life in a single turn. Usually I play the heel, but there was a pop in that room like Nassif versus Chapin or Maher versus Davis on the Biorhythm play. I must admit it felt good.
Sideboarding:
-1 Biorhythm
-1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
+2 Akroma’s Vengeance
You really just want to have enough Vengeances to keep them honest. Again, the matchup is going to go long so you can find a singleton Biorhythm to kill, but really they will have a hard time damaging you without some sort of Plow Under recursion.
W 2-0, 5-1-1
Round 8: Doran
Game 1 I buried a Biorhythm on Heights turn 1, killed him with Rith’s Charm on turn 5, with double Helix backup (including one under another Heights). I was pretty high on life at this point.
Game 2 was kind of strange… I have trouble wrapping my head around how I lost. I brained his Treetop end of turn, then Wrathed him for six guys, leaving three permanents on his side versus five spells in my hand, up nine cards with a decent life total. A couple of turns later, he was running lethal Profane Command. Luckily I was actually on one as he missed a little Martyr life. Then he drew what I presume was the only other Command for the fatality.
Game 3… tell me what you would do. I played a land. He went Onslaught dual for Rav dual for Birds. I immediately Helixed the Birds, with a backup Helix and two Rith’s Charms. He ran turn 2 Treetop for no play. I knew I had to go Ponza. I cut off my gut reaction to kill the Treetop and hit the Rav dual. His draw was obviously slow; I got another land… Long story short, I eventually lost to Profane Command after taking nine from Treetops in a game where I had three Decree Angels out, threatening lethal if I had gotten an untap. Would you have hit the Treetops? I think that I am Top 8 if I went the opposite direction on that “judgment call.” I guess it slows him down almost as well; I didn’t have the foresight to understand that even though I was slowing him down, I didn’t really have the game plan to exploit immediately and I should be cutting off his damage capabilities.
One thing I identified about myself in this matchup is that I am detrimentally addicted to land drops. I can have five or six lands and feel an almost pathological need to flip my Top so I can hit another land. I think if I had been satisfied with fewer lands at some point (I had ten in play the last turn, and one in hand) I would have had a better chance to win. Mark that one in the old Fearless Magical Inventory section.
Sideboarding:
-1 Biorhythm
-2 Proclamation of Rebirth
-1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
+2 Engineered Explosives
+2 Akroma’s Vengeance
He made Top 4, beating my Round 6 opponent, but losing to eventual winner Chad Kastel.
L 1-2, 5-2-1
This was pretty disappointing, one game out of Top 8 with a pretty inventive deck (if I do say so myself). That said, both of my losses and my draw were to Doran decks (all three of whom made Top 8), so in a six Doran Top 8, my chances once I got there might not have been so great.
In other news I am actually testing Mishra again, similar to the deck that I posted last week but with more fast response cards… More a deck with Sensei’s Divining Top and Mishra than a “Mishra deck.” Mishra seems like a great strategy if the field is solid Doran decks. If you untap with Mishra in play, you can bury them in card advantage and win with 4/4s and the end game Command after slowing the assault and blanking their disruption.
I hope you liked this short report and new deck. Really, you will feel the love of the people when you kill someone with Biorhythm. Try it!
LOVE
MIKE