I played a G/R Beasts deck at the PTQ in Stratford, CT last weekend. I tested this deck a fair amount on Magic Online and quite a bit in real life at Neutral Ground with Julian Levin, Chad Kastel, and others. I played the deck for a couple of reasons, based both on my experience with the Beasts Rock deck that Jeroen Remie talked about in his last few columns as well as testing discretely with versions of this deck. Big props to Julian who cut two Windswept Heaths for two more basic Forests after a little Flow testing; this was a key change that made the deck run more smoothly in that matchup (and anyway, I was taking an uncomfortable amount of damage against Boros, even when I was winning). Basically I thought Beasts (hereafter Bests) was really well positioned to win a PTQ, with a massive number of good matchups, very few bad matchups given the sheer number of potential adversaries, and plans essentially everywhere to win on hate, strategy superiority, or strength of numbers.
Creatures (18)
Lands (25)
Spells (17)
This deck snowballs multiple linear themes, none of which, alone, is peer to any competitive linear mechanic in archetype Extended, but when combined they yield one of the strongest decks in the format. Bests is a classic implementation of my deck design style, making minor slashes in every direction, from every direction. The wounds it makes are designed to appear insignificant, but fester over time, killing opponents with bits of cloth that have been left in healing wounds; that, or sheer exhaustion.
The most obvious linear theme is a Beasts-tribal addition to a skeleton similar to archetype MGA from the end of last year’s PTQ season. The Beasts line is fairly discrete, with only eight Beasts and two synergies (Ravenous Baloth plus Indrik Stomphowler and Contested Cliffs plus either 4/4). However, when I built the deck I saw these as pure gravy. The Bests deck is only a hair slower than the typical MGA deck, which would theoretically include four Phantom Centaurs and no Indrik Stomphowlers; by tweaking the creature balance somewhat I was able to reposition the deck with a valuable linear theme that is essentially unstoppable in any mid-range matchup, steal games with Stomphowler, and weaken the MGA fundamental turn in only a minimal sense, if at all. That addition of Contested Cliffs against certain types of control functions much like Mouth of Ronom does in Standard Snow decks, where Into the North – with the analogue Farseek being seen as generally insignificant for Dralnu or Pickles – creating a difficult pressure point on the usually inviolate Teferi; Contested Cliffs is obviously even more valuable against actual creature decks. The Bests deck features numerous "hate" artifact and utility themes that I will discuss one at a time. The presence of Dwarven Blastminer and Ancient Grudge justifies the addition of Red mana, with or without Contested Cliffs as a specific addition.
Far from any simple – and let’s face it, "big and dumb" – first glance, Bests is a complicated and mature offensive deck. Its maindeck dominates the majority of the viable archetypes in the format, and with only one real exception, its sideboard can be used transformatively to create a strategy-hostile environment where, if any combination of early game threats hit, the game becomes difficult or even impossible for the opponent to win. For example, Bests will sideboard in Chalice of the Void, Dwarven Blastminer, and Ancient Grudge (in addition to main deck Trinisphere and Blinkmoth Well) against NO Stick. If Bests hits any of these cards in the first three turns and then untaps, the number of relevant cards in NO Stick plummets into the single digits. A Chalice of the Void set to two combined with drawing Contested Cliffs and any Beast will lock many NO Stick players out of being able to win at all, as the Chalice deals with Isochron Scepter, Lightning Helix, Fire / Ice, and the majority of the relevant permission spells, and the Contested Cliffs makes Teferi essentially worthless. Trinisphere makes Isochron Scepter playing Orim’s Chant cost six mana every turn (two for the Scepter, three for the Chant under Trinisphere, one to kick). Locking the game is next to impossible under any such conditions, as Blinkmoth Well acts, passively and even inexorably, as another strategy-hostile flick at NO Stick’s dominoes. Bests will attack any "big mana" deck (U/W or Tooth and Nail) with Dwarven Blastminer plus Ancient Grudge. I actually found Richard Feldman criticism of my arguments last week puzzling. I mean, maybe no one sides in Dwarven Blastminer + Disenchant today, but ours is a pre-Porphyry Nodes universe playing under a very different paradigm than was discussed last week. I find that Dwarven Blastminer plus Ancient Grudge (a parallel, if generally superior, card to Disenchant) is very common because you don’t want the big mana deck to be able to lean on artifact sources while you are blowing up ‘Tron pieces… and anyway, most of the opponent’s threats are artifacts. All my Ancient Grudges seem to do is kill Razormane Masticores.
As with most of the Green decks that I’ve produced for this Extended season, Bests is hell on beatdown. You have all kinds of very good threats to contain Boros, and you are well equipped to win Jitte wars as you probably have more copies of Jitte main than most Jitte-bearing opponents and you have Indrik Stomphowler to break their Jittes. You will lose a fair amount of games to Molten Rain, but because the format has progressed more to Jotun Grunt and Armadillo Cloak from Molten Rain, you don’t have to worry about the land destruction sub-theme from self-aware Boros decks very much. Moreover, aside from being blown out on Elves, your creatures are generally too big to be killed by a single profitable Jitte combat on your opponent’s part, giving you time to win on maindeck and sideboarded artifact removal.
The strangest element of this deck is obviously the four maindeck Indrik Stomphowlers. They cost five mana, and seem clunky in a deck with so many key artifacts both maindeck and in the sideboard. The fact of the matter is that they are awesome. I can’t tell you how many Mindslavers I have spat on with maindeck Stomphowlers. They are very good against decks like Affinity, as they take out the biggest threat on board and stick around to fight Myr Enforcer, possibly gaining four life with damage on the stack. Now to make a deck choice like this one work, you can go one of two ways. You can either accelerate your own mana (which Bests does to a logical but not extreme degree), or you can force the opponent to play at your pace. I originally played four Chalice of the Void in the main and four Trinisphere in the side (and I’m not actually sure which is the "better" configuration, as you can make arguments for each… Chapin even suggested 2/2 main and 2/2 side!), but it seemed very useful to force the opponent to play only one card per turn. Bests is favored over Affinity, for example (and I can’t imagine them winning sideboarded against the four Ancient Grudge), but Affinity is Affinity and anyone can get blown out by the Worker-Ravager-Frogmite-multiple Enforcer draw. The solution was to play Trinisphere main and remove the broken speed element in Affinity’s offense from turn 2. When Affinity is stuck playing one card per turn it ceases to be an impressive offensive deck, and Bests can make more, and more relevant, commitments to the board, being designed to play at a higher curve point.
You can theoretically play Chalice of the Void for one or two against Boros and generate a good amount of maindeck virtual card advantage, simultaneously toppling the opponent’s draw efficiency, but I still never liked Chalice and I don’t think I ever played one in a test game. Trinisphere is actually fairly annoying for Boros, but I’d side out whichever one I were playing for the fourth Jitte and the Grudge package every time.
The deck is stone cold broken against Flow, which is one of the main reasons I like it. I won all the playtest games against Chad and Asher, and Julian had a positive win percentage as well. Chalice and Trinisphere didn’t come up; I’m sure we drew them but never really played them. The best cards in this matchup are Umezawa’s Jitte, Phantom Centaur, Llanowar Elves, Mountain, Forest, and Contested Cliffs. So obviously I dropped a Game 1 in the PTQ and Julian – though winning his Game 1 true to form – lost his Flow match.
Chalice of the Void is better against a moronic NO Stick player, but Trinisphere is more consistent if the NO Stick player diversifies (for example, he correctly plays Dismantling Blow in the sideboard rather than Disenchant). I never liked NO Stick and I think the only reason it did well the first week was because not enough players had Ancient Grudge. On balance, now everyone plays Ancient Grudge. Chapin actually has Ancient Grudge as the #1 card in the format, and I think I agree. Green decks splash Red, and Boros decks splash Green for this card. Against a lot of the Week 1 NO Stick decks, if you stick Chalice on 2, they can’t actually win any more, and can’t remove the Chalice. Trinisphere I already talked about above. It neuters the Scepter, and along with Blinkmoth Well, makes their strategy very inefficient… but you are still in charge of winning the game yourself.
Trinisphere should be better against TEPS but I actually found my win percentage to go down in testing when I switched. Chalice set on either one or two, plus maindeck Scrabbling Claws, creates an interesting conflict for TEPS. He can’t really win with Sins of the Past, and either his selection or mana production will be hampered while you crack with reasonable (if not lightning-fast) threats. I can’t actually remember ever losing a sideboarded game to TEPS, either in testing or tournament play. Bests attacks from so many angles (Miners, Chalices, Spheres, artifact control) simultaneously, and any of the angles is good enough, alone, to win (with any two being generally a lock). I win about 1/3 of the games versus TEPS with the opponent controlling no permanents, but most on just buying time with Trinisphere or Chalice in games that they either should or could win, but don’t because they have to waste two turns killing my artifacts. The one super-sick game was when I was cracking with 2/2 Dwarven Blastminer (I would have had to pay three on account of Trinisphere, so I figured mise morph) but spent three lands a turn to tap his Lotus on upkeep.
Difficult Matchups:
Aggro Loam is hard to beat with the Trinisphere version, and the most compelling argument in favor of Chalice of the Void is that Chalice on 2 is two Putrefies out of Game Over for Loam, as all of their response cards – including Burning Wish, Hull Breach, and Ancient Grudge – all cost two, and their deck is godawful if they can’t break Loam and Devastating Dreams. I played Trinisphere because I thought Affinity was going to be the most popular deck. Aggro Loam is actually pretty winnable boarded when you have the Chalices in (but it’s not like you are praying to play it); I also bring in the Blastminers because Loam doesn’t really have that much spot removal, and if you untap with an early Miner he can buy a lot of time (especially when your plan is to turn off all spells that cost two).
Ichorid seems like a hard matchup. I won all the games from Ichorid side, but also won slightly more than half the games from Bests side when I tested against Julian. Julian even got a game where I had two Scrabbling Claws in the first three turns (really impressive sculpt to win, by the way, tricking me with a last Dredge card and fast Psychatog). Ichorid essentially wins 100% of games where it plays second turn ‘tog. Bests tends to win games where Ichorid is actually attempting to win with actual Ichorids, as Jitte and Contested Cliffs are both effectively suppress 3/1 offense, at least enough to race with 4/4s. I wanted Loaming Shaman for the Dredge matchups because Ichorid sideboards Pithing Needle against Tormod’s Crypt. Loaming Shaman is slightly less effective here, and considerably less effective against Loam, but still a beating. I conceded to one Crypt to mix up similar spoilers and diversify against the opponents’ sideboards (Cranial Extraction, Pithing Needle, what have you).
The hardest deck to beat is U/G Opposition. Julian lost to car-mate and Vintage star Elias Vaisberg in the first round, and I also picked up a loss to U/G Opposition in three. Opposition is a Swiss cheese deck in this format, full of holes and low on punch, but it is possibly the single most effective anti-beatdown decks in the format. Coiling Oracle, in context, is just better in every way than Dark Confidant, so U/G has some game. Elias told Julian he was playing around Starstorm the whole match, and we obviously didn’t have it. I think that if I played Bests this week I would play two Starstorms in my sideboard, because they trump basically 57 cards in U/G’s deck, and you can play them at any time (provided you aren’t locked under Static Orb as well as Opposition) and come back from among the most desperate boards. As the deck was when we played it on Saturday, U/G Opposition is almost impossible to beat unless the opponent is highly incompetent. Elias won the PTQ.
While much more winnable than U/G Opposition, you still want to dodge big mana with this deck. You can win Game 1, but if you do it is by the seat of your pants, and winning boarded usually assumes you’ve untapped with Dwarven Blastminer in play on turn 3. You will blow the opponent completely out of the game almost all the time if you do this, but you are less than 50% to have the card itself on the play, and less still to have 2R on turn 3, so the Blastminer plan is far from a sheer lock. This makes for an odd matchup where you are completely unbeatable less than half the time, look like you are going to win most of the time (but don’t actually win most of those times), and win by the opponent slipping on a banana peel maybe one game in ten or twenty. Unlike NO Stick – where you can attack from multiple angles, any one of which is probably trump – big mana only has one real point of advantage or any real strategic vulnerability. They can’t answer your threats very consistently, but they play threats of their own that are considerably more dangerous (for example, both U/W and Tooth decks play Mindslaver, and Tooth and Nail can kill you outright at their feasible flashpoint of nine mana).
Here is a brief report from Saturday:
Tooth and Nail (+B)
This matchup was uneventful. I was the dog but won on beatdown in Game 1, because I had one more guy and one more equipment than he could draw out of. In Game 2 I finally drew Dwarven Blastminer only after he had blown up every Red source in my deck with two Sundering Titans (not at the same time, obviously). This one was actually insane because I opened on the double mulligan and he assembled full ‘Tron very early, but my Flashback kept me in it. He’d run out Razormane Masticores and 7/10s, and I’d have just enough Ancient Grudge action to stay alive. I actually had him to -4 on board, unbelievably, but that turn I picked up Blastminer, swung, passed… and died to the Tooth and Nail on top of his deck. Chad and Julian said that I would have won if I hadn’t used the front side of an Ancient Grudge on his Golgari Signet early because I was wealthy with utility. Late in the game I had to wait around for an Ancient Grudge, and they alleged that I could have gotten in for lethal earlier (remember I got Tooth mised with kill on board). Game 3 we both shipped our openers. My curve was Druid, Call, Centaur one-two-three; he had Deed to trump (tapping out), so obviously my fourth turn play was Indrik Stomphowler. Tooth is a matchup where my deck will win some percentage of the time Game 1, but where any wins are based on just having what we call "some good cards" in a generic sense, whereas their advantages are all strategic and probably trump (Fog, bombs, combo-kills); sideboarded, the advantage is mostly in mana denial, which didn’t really come up, or if it did (the Signet) I erred.
1-0
Dump Truck
I played Miles from Neutral Ground (nice guy… We won a team draft after the PTQ). His deck was full of Cabal Therapies and Meddling Mages, and I joked he’d never want to name anything in my deck. Both went the same way, with Miles stalling with multiple fellows all alleging to be the Descendent of Kiyomaro. I stalled back through his Jittes with Phantom Centaurs. Eventually he conceded to Contested Cliffs.
2-0
U/G Opposition
Game 1 was a bit disappointing. I knew I was a dog but I had figured out the plan to beat Opposition, even with my limited tools. If he doesn’t get Spectral Force, I can dig out either with Jitte or Contested Cliffs (obviously not much I can do about the 8/8). I got the Jitte but had to make a bad trade due to his Pendelhaven. I was setting up for Beast and Cliffs the next turn, but he had seven into Opposition and Static Orb, so after he demonstrated he knew how the stack worked I packed.
I got Game 2 on tempo cheats – Elf, Call, Centaur, Sword – and he was a half step too slow. I’m pretty sure I stole that one, actually.
Game 3 we got average draws both, which means he wins. The main vulnerability Bests has in this matchup is no Krosan Grip, and few instants overall. I sided in all the Ancient Grudges because he has Jittes too (and they obviously matter because Jitte advantage is one of the only ways I can win a strategic game), but for example in Game 3 I had three Grudges and he had Opposition and no Orb. Therefore my sideboard cards were not just sub-optimal but stranded. In other matchups this doesn’t matter overmuch, because you can lean on Stomphowler, but the presence of the key enchantment here presupposes the ability to lock Bests out of five mana on main phase (unless something has gone terribly wrong for them). I really think two Starstorms will make this matchup pretty easy. Most of U/G’s guys are x/1, and Starstorm is an instant. One Starstorm trumps one thousand Beacon tokens, and does a number on nearly all the Elves, even when the opponent has Symbiotes and Rangers. Their clock is very long because all their guys – numerous as they may be – are small, so they spend most of their time locking you down and don’t attack until they can constrict the clock to 1-2 swings. The exception is Spectral Force, but even he can be dealt with, if at great cost. The main thing is not getting demolished by garbage creatures that are only good with Opposition… Destroying all of them breaks, blows, and burns the equation, and gives Bests an opportunity to win on its fundamentals of better men, Jitte advantage, and Contested Cliffs.
2-1
TEPS
I overheard him talking the previous round and thought he was TEPS, but I wasn’t sure. I would have mulled my hand of four lands, an Elf, a Baloth, and a Sword if I had been certain, but that hand wins a large percentage of the time against decks like Boros… You know what I mean? I died before my Baloth ever attacked. Second game I think I had Chalice on 1, Chalice on 2, Trinisphere, and the Miner all in play. Game 3 I only drew the Miner in terms of hate (and no solution to Lotus). I blew up all his lands but still had to cross my fingers that he wasn’t going to win on the Lotus before I could kill him the next turn. This match I did some stupid mana tap that involved paying for Phantom Centaur with a Druid because I mis-counted my mana and I didn’t attack with the Miner that turn (he had no lands in play), potentially costing me a turn, which could or would have been catastrophic if he had a second Chromatic Star.
3-1
Tooth and Nail
This was the most disappointing matchup. Opponent was Christian Culcano from Neutral Ground, a good man and up-and-comer locally. Game 1 I had him dead on board but he mised savagely with Top. I had previously eschewed a Call Flashback to tap his Top with two Claws online, then untapped and dropped the Stomphowler on the Top. I tapped all my Claws to get rid of his two copies of Moment’s Peace in response, and felt pretty good with seven power in play and two counters on my Jitte. Christian had a one-turn window to play Eternal Witness for his sole card in graveyard (the Top), and proceeded to use the Top to assemble both Tower (his missing ‘Tron piece) and Mindslaver the following turn. I just took the counters off my Jitte and Christian elected to tap me out; he followed up the card, card, card puzzle trifecta with Tooth and Nail for infinite.
Do you see the mise?
Christian couldn’t have just gone Top into Tooth from the Tower. If he did, he would not have won; it isn’t clear that I would have won, but he would have been in topdeck mode (admittedly with the Top that served him so well), whereas I had two or three relevant plays already. He can’t play for infinite off Kiki-Jiki with two counters on the Jitte. He can’t go for a Sundering Titan combo, or I’ll just attack into it. He can conceivably go for Mephidross combo – which would be pretty annoying, admittedly – but I could follow up with the Stomphowler in my hand for his Triskelion (both would, of course, be killed) then follow up again with anything, including the Call in my graveyard, to get past his remaining Vampire (Jitte already there). I was as terrified as anyone of any Mindslaver activation, but it turns out that the Fog plus removing two Jitte counters was all he needed given the sick follow up.
I mulled to five in Game 2, and started on second turn Boreal Druid. Christian went Forest plus Top, ‘Tron piece plus Wall of Roots, ‘Tron piece plus Wall of Roots plus Sylvan Scrying, having already drawn the Tooth and Nail for a fourth turn kill. If I had hit Boreal Druid on turn 1, I would have played third turn Chalice of the Void on 2, which while not a kill (I didn’t have much else) would have blanked two cards in his hand and prevented his actual fourth turn kill, at least. I did see Blastminer in the first hand, but that one didn’t have any mana, so I couldn’t keep it.
3-2
NO Stick
I might have screwed up in Game 1. I mulled to five and had no development to speak of, though I did have my nonbasics, which are all sick in this matchup. He cast Fact or Fiction, flipping Teferi, maindeck Blastminer, and three lands. I gave him 4-1, stranding Teferi; he took the Miner pile with no Red to be seen. I actually got the Well, but as I said, he got the Miner and trumped my supposed trump. I guess I was unlikely to win anyway.
Game 2 I played Miner, and Chalice of the Void on 2; he eventually answered with Cunning Wish for Urza’s Rage, but he was too far behind on the artifacts and my fatties took it.
Game 3 I played Miner and he just went for basics. I followed up with Trinisphere and hit with the Miner until he found an answer. It’s basically impossible for NO Stick to beat the nonbasics in this deck when they are backed up by four copies of Ancient Grudge, so it was just a matter of time as all his counters were inefficient and I had plenty of mana.
4-2
Oh, I just realized you are probably wondering about sideboard packages that include Chalice of the Void (intending to play X = 2) and Ancient Grudge together. The answer is that Ancient Grudge is the best and you win on card advantage when you have that, either killing all Isochron Scepters and Moxes out of NO Stick, or killing the win conditions such as Sundering Titan and Razormane Masticore out of big mana decks; in the case that you successfully play Chalice of the Void on 2 (against NO Stick) the opponent can’t actually utilize any of the strategic cards that you would normally be playing Ancient Grudge to kill, and it is likely that he can’t destroy the Chalice anyway, even with Cunning Wish. Therefore, even though your Grudge draws are inefficient, there would be nothing to send them at anyway… so it is a lot less horrible than it seems. Remember you are the beatdown, if by default, so the onus is on the opponent to stop your guys and / or hate artifacts or he can’t win. You win on a faster vector, difficult as that might be to believe; it’s all relative. The other thing is that you generally play Dwarven Blastminer face down under Trinisphere (and you have to under Chalice of the Void on 2). Don’t forget this important ability!
TEPS
I had a horrible opening hand (Elf, two lands, two Trinispheres, two Indrik Stomphowler) so I mulled into basically the same hand but with one fewer card. First turn Boreal Druid. First turn Ancient Spring. Mise! Second turn Trinisphere. Concede. Lucky.
I had turn 2 Trinisphere again. He actually lined up a nice prison break turn starting with Channel the Suns into Seething Song, playing extra White and Red mana for Burning Wish and Hull Breach, but he fell a wee bit short of actually going off. He was under a lot of pressure from my guys, but I think he could have waited one turn based on the game state. Possibly he was thrown off by the presence of Red mana in my essentially Mono-Green, deck and assumed I was going to finish with Sudden Shock or something, which would not have been impossible. Go rogue decks! Lucky ducky.
5-2
Flow
This match was against New England standout Melissa DeTora, whom I had last fought at U.S. Nationals 2000. I had a vague idea she was playing a fair deck (she played next to me the previous round where I mised against TEPS) but I couldn’t recall which one, only that she had defeated Ghost Council of Orzhova. I therefore made a critical error on turn 1 that blew the game. I broke Wooded Foothills for Stomping Ground (instead of Forest), and played Boreal Druid. I had both Forest and Mountain in my hand, so I actually didn’t need the Stomping Ground and it was just an investment of two life that would cost me far more than that… I’m not sure it was actually justifiable in any matchup, now that I think of it, and probably not against any fair deck. She was Destructive Flow and I didn’t see any more lands beyond my opening grip. I would have probably been able to function long enough with three lands and a Druid against her Wild Mongrel offensive, but once she got Jitte it was moot and I was stuck on two.
Game 2 I think I could have started attacking her earlier. I had both my Phantoms and Sword. She had two Trolls and Jitte. We both had sundry garbage creatures, which is why I didn’t want to risk my beautiful Phantoms. I assume she sided out Destructive Flow because I was able to dominate the middle turns with Contested Cliffs (though she certainly worked hard with Putrefy responses, et al). I didn’t think she was going to attack any time soon as I had the 11-7 life lead, and anyway I was sandbagging Ancient Grudge. I was just waiting for an opportunity to get a devastating Alpha Strike, possibly with Jitte online, but Melissa pre-empted with Dark Confidant. I was very happy because I didn’t think she would last the next three turns. One Troll, one Sword, and one Elves of Deep Shadow later, she didn’t.
Game 3 I disliked because I put on a good read and didn’t follow it. I played this match horrendously, throwing away Game 1, needing her to give me a way to win in Game 2, and figuring out the correct call but failing to act on it in Game 3. Melissa had some artifact early (probably a Jitte) and I smashed it with Ancient Grudge. I had some turn where I played a scary Call token or something, leaving G up, and I could have either passed or played Llanowar Elves. I was very greedy because I wanted to hit five mana for Stomphowler the next turn, so I played the Elves even though I thought she might have another equipment. She did, a Sword, and I ended up chumping with the Elves (Sword would have gotten it anyway). I followed up with Stomphowler (mising land #5), again tapping out, and she had equipment again, this time another Jitte. The counters didn’t matter because my guys were 3/3 and 4/4, but it was annoying. Somewhere along the line she got value with a Flametongue Kavu (or maybe it was the other game?), which was awesome, but the board was a mess. She got another Jitte, drawing tons of cards off Dark Confidant. I told her that all I wanted was for her to have to suicide the Confidant with Jitte; she eventually did and I got in with all my guys late-game after clogging the board with fairly costed (which in this format some people take to mean overcosted) 3/3 and 4/4 utility.
6-2
According to former Lead Developer, second best deck designer of all time, and all around genius Brian Schneider, the X-2 (he actually told me 5-2 at the time, but 6-2 is actually steeper) is the correct result that a good player with a good deck will achieve at a PTQ. So you can go ahead and pat yourself on the back the next time you miss Top 8 by .5-1 matches. That record, as I’m sure you all know, is one lucky rip or bad mulligan from Top 8. I was disappointed because I came into the tournament thinking that Bests was the best possible positioning choice for the week, despite being clearly out-gunned in speed and strength, but I failed to prove it or even make Top 8. Given the decks that showed up at the tournament, I am not sure if Trinisphere was the proper call; as I said before, TEPS is a favorable matchup whether or not you have Trinisphere or Chalice of the Void, but the Top 8 included Aggro Loam, which is very difficult to beat if you don’t keep Chalice of the Void for 2 around. I didn’t play Affinity (which was our projected most popular deck, and for these purposes, the tiebreaker).
I do believe that the minor adoption (but relative success, given its tiny percentage) of U/G Opposition necessitates Starstorm if you want to try Bests. I think that the proper cuts are the fourth Jitte and the lone Tormod’s Crypt for two copies, but this hasn’t been tested. My theory is that Tormod’s Crypt is an outlyer that we brought in as a threat diversification (answer diversification, actually) measure where we already had Claws and Shamans, and we tend to win Jitte fights regardless due to Stomphowler, bigger creatures, and all four copies of Ancient Grudge. Anyway, Starstorm is good in most matchups where you would bring in the fourth Jitte. Another potential tweak might be to play all four Jittes main, running only one Sword, but I don’t know if I love that because Sword is so good in this deck, as it is rich in mana and its big creatures consistently get in.
Unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to get to play tomorrow (my mommy is visiting New York for the long weekend). I think that there are many fine choices for the field, but my shortlist would be one of the two Boreal Druid / Jitte decks I’ve posted, or Down-Up III.
Thanks for reading.
LOVE
MIKE