Flores Friday - Lots of Topics, Works in Progress

My young friend Asher "ManningBot" Hekt really wants to lock in the #1 Apprentice slot for next year. With Julian going to college (possibly Madison, WI), Asher assumed he was just going to take the ostensibly open position by default. However, we have been discussing the position and it is just not clear.

For example, Erin "No Removal" Riley recently came out of retirement (if you can call it that) to help BDM and Matt Wang with a project for New York Comicon 2007, and hanging out with the TBC / Top8Magic crew, she decided she wanted to start playing again. Erin tricked me into playing Two-Headed Giant States, and we probably should have won (I killed us with Pyrohemia thinking it was going to do 3 to them, but how I stacked it did 6 to us… how embarrassing, who knows these rules?). Julian says that he should just keep the #1 Apprentice spot and be allowed to walk back into it when he gets back in the summer. Decisions, decisions.

There are arguments both for and against poor ManningBot. The biggest minus in my opinion was the bad scout at last week’s PTQ. Asher, unsolicited, accosted me pre-round (I was playing Haterator with Red, a.k.a. h8r8rR, obv) and told me the opponent was Opposition. I quickly asked if he had Trygon Predator, and Asher said yes. Opposition is a miserable matchup for h8r8rR, but winnable under certain conditions… like the ones I got in the PTQ.

In Game 1 I mulled to six and could either play for turn 3 Troll, turn 4 Worship or turn 3 Angel, turn 4 Worship or flip. Now if the opponent has Predator anywhere in his deck, Worship is pretty bad. He can stall one guy indefinitely even without Worship, and will eventually win with his garbage 1/1s and maybe Jitte or a relatively good 8/8. So I played Angel, flipped, and hit with the plan of him "not drawing Opposition." He’s actually going to not have Opposition in the first 15 cards a pretty large chunk of the time, so it was a, you know, plan (not a great plan). He had Opposition and I didn’t get a fifth turn. It turns out he didn’t have Predator in his deck and he could not have beaten Troll plus Worship given my mulligan (he decks).

Game 2 I smashed him with Suppression Field. The matchup is actually pretty good for h8r8rR sideboarded. He has to draw something like three or more Grips, or have more Predator than I have proactive cards to win. Game 3 he drew all four Grips (needed them, spending a long span of turns on one life) and I didn’t draw my Ray.

This is the main argument against Asher.

A random small one is that after the crappy PTQ we went to awesome Katz’s with Matt Boccio. Longtime readers will recognize Matt as one of my old teammates and one of the first big stars of Vs. System circa 2004 (there was a stretch when Boccio made Top 8 of every Vs. 10k / PC / whatever he played in). Oh. Boccio once bagged me savagely. I wrote out my Ravager deck and handed him the deck sheet. He realized that there were no Arcbound Workers and didn’t tell me. I got a match loss round one and won out, losing in Round 8 or 9, whichever was last, to three Disciples when I had third turn Furnace Dragon. Obviously Boccio won. Matt hasn’t played in forever and started off 0-1-1 with Loam, won out per usual, and made 10th (horrible). Anyway, we went to Katz’s. I got corned beef and Julian got brisket and we went splitsies. Julian’s brisket sandwich was literally the finest sandwich I have ever eaten. Thank God we went splitsies. Boccio got pastrami (lean – never mind), and Sadin had his first Katz’s sandwich ever since coming over from the dark side (and by dark side I mean vegetarian). Asher… Asher got motherloving hard salami something with maybe cheese or some kind of vegetable matter. Who knows?

So Asher decided to make it up by going crazy on deck design. He immediately told me to start working on Standard Dredge with Sindgood (Fa’adiyah Seer). After testing DI iterations of Dredge, this is what I was pretty happy playing:

ManningBot Dredge 1

Asher Hekt

Test deck on 03-18-2007

Standard

Creatures (21)

Lands (24)

Spells (15)

Sideboard

How terrible is it that the Japanese get Standard for Kyoto and we get Two-Headed Giant for Boston? I would have worked really hard on Standard, but I’m not even going to Boston. Lots of people really seem to like 2HG (see Amsterdam attendance), but Standard is consistently one of my favorite formats. Blah blah.

I based my initial build on the Dredge deck from Frank Karsten’s Online Tech column, just including Fa’adiyah Seer. I have wanted to play a Dredge deck that wins on Firemane Angel since my Guildpact Set Review for Blue, and this seemed like a good place for sideboarding Firemane Angel. I kept playing against other Dredge decks and, well, I was siding in Firemane Angel every time so I just cut Delirium Skeins to the side (you don’t need Skeins if you have Seer). That is why the mana is so goofy. I actually think the Mountain is wrong, even though I kept wanting it when I didn’t have it. The Plains are there to hard cast Angel of Despair. I think there is a lot of schizophrenia going on in this deck, but it wins a lot because Sindgood is so good.

Basically, once you have a Dredge spell you can get back into the graveyard easily (Darkblast, Nightmare Void, etc.), Sindgood mauls the opponent if you get to untap it. You can replace your Sindgood draw with Dredge, Dredge more Dredge cards, and you don’t have to discard. This deck is really robust against beatdown, Dragonstorm, and control. Beatdown usually beats you up and you tend to stabilize on Firemanes and Grave-Trolls, then you win long. Dragonstorm is a good matchup in three, but you just lose if they have the optimal draw on the play because your fastest Nightmare Void is the same turn as their kill. Control is the easiest. Right now the control decks are not optimized to fight Dredge and especially 1/1 utility crap for two. You only lose to weird stuff, like them Annexing your Pendelhaven and racing you with a 2/3 token or something. Even when the control player is drawing a ton of cards, that usually requires mana, and most often, only one card of his six is going to matter. I leave Wraths and Damnations all the time. If they want to trade Wrath and their giant guy for Sindgood and one or two other guys, I’ll just Dredge and try to clean it up with Svogthos. The dumb card (as always) is Remand. That makes your Dredge card not go to the graveyard. I’ve won every mirror I’ve ever played because I don’t have Skeins starting, so they use their Skeins to set me up and I’m a little ahead to begin. The bad part is that the opponent is usually faster early due to Birds, and has a potential Akroma / Akroma / Hellkite / Angel end game, and White Akroma trumps everything.

I liked Sindgood so much in all my play that I wanted to play Sindbad. Everyone said that I’d have to cut the White if I played Blue, and I really liked Firemane Angel.

Asher called me up and told me to watch a Standard PE on MTGO. The winner (sorry, I don’t remember his name) had Magus of the Bazaar in his deck, and it was sick. I mean, he got it turn 2 every game, but whatever. Sick! I made my own version again (might be worse). This deck isn’t perfect, but I think it has a lot going on:

Flores Dredge

Mike Flores

Test deck on 03-18-2007

Standard

Creatures (32)

Lands (22)

Spells (6)

Sideboard

Five colors! Yuck! You mull a lot, but if you untap with one of the x/1s for two, you usually end up blowing out the opponent. Moving Stinkweed Imp back to the main over Darkblast is a key to smashing MGA and such beatdown decks. I love a Darkblast versus opposing Dredge, anything with 1/1 and 0/1 accelerators, and side it in frequently, though.

The main loss of this deck is the whole Dread Return end game. I was siding out 2+ copies of Dread Return and Angel of Despair consistently, so I don’t hate this over much. You are clearly behind to a topdecked Dread Return in the mirror (especially against Akroma) and you have no way to directly destroy, say, an Urza’s Tower any more. However the Dredge theme itself is so much more robust. Really, untap with Magus of the Bazaar… It’s usually a bloodbath.

The addition of Blue gives you the same Zur’s Weirding / Firemane Angel synergy the U/R/W decks have been playing since Honolulu. Tormod’s Crypt should maybe go back to being Ancient Grudge… You really want to blow up Signets. Then again, the mirror might be a big matchup… I’m not sure. It depends on the metagame.

I think that I’m actually going to take out all the White and Red mana and forget about actually playing the Angels. I’ll still play them, of course, but it is just more consistent if you don’t have to worry about the extra two colors when you need so many early game colors, potentially. Mountain, Plains, Boros Garrison, and Boros Garrison will probably become Forest, Overgrown Tomb, Pendelhaven, and Simic Growth Chamber.

Extended

If I were playing in the last PTQ, I’d probably run h8r8rR a.k.a. "No Removal" again. This is the version we played last weekend:

h8r8rR

Mike Flores

Test deck on 03-18-2007

Standard

Creatures (28)

Lands (22)

Spells (10)

Sideboard

The mighty innovation of this deck is Suppression Field. Previously we had no chance to beat Loam. It was something like 9-1 in favor of Loam. However, a lot of the games were close, and there were lots where it looked like Haterator could win, but the Loam player would know that he was going to win. With Suppression Field and Chalice, h8r8rR actually wins those close games. Yes, Loam has outs. Yes, Loam can and should play out. However, h8r8rR is fast enough to win while Loam is stuck behind a Chalice on two, unable to cycle or use Seismic Assault. More than that, Suppression Field is unbelievable versus Tog. Tog is awful, Bob is death. You just stick the Field when the opponent plays Top and Bob. All of a sudden he’s a regular Bob, you know, the kind that kills you. All the extremely awesome cards in Tog are horrendous if you duck your head, lead with your shoulder, move, weave, juke, and stick the Field. Lastly, most of the beatdown decks in this format have something like 11 Onslaught duals. They can’t even crack them, let alone play spells, if you play Field on turn 2. Again, this card doesn’t flat-out win the game, but it makes the opponent slow, slower than he needs to be; both decks play a card per turn; h8r8rR’s is way better.

I didn’t have the stones to main deck Suppression Field and went with Blastminer over Chalice. Playing Suppression Field obviously changes how you enhance your guys. I was going to not run Jitte at all, but without main decking Suppression Field and not main decking Jitte, I could get blown out by Jitte and need Troll + Worship to win. I did, however, up the Sword count back to two (I was running 3 plus 1 Jittes before figuring out the Field). Dwarven Blastminer just got sided out every round. I thought people would still play bad big mana decks and this kind of a strategy is a dog to big mana without Blastminers. This is just to Richard Feldman: I’ve actually tested all my decks – Haterator variants, Bests, Domain – and Tenacious Tron is super easy. I am pretty sure I’ve never lost a sideboarded game with any of "my" decks once I figured out the Grudge overload plans with turn 2-3 nonbasic hate.

I would at least consider playing maindeck Suppression Field with 0-2 Swords and 2-4 Armadillo Cloaks in the booster slot. I actually lost two matchups that are both 70+% in addition to the Opposition match by not mulliganing marginal hands and just drawing a million lands. Unfortunately, I lost to Sadin playing Boros. He just doesn’t understand that I packed to him* out of friendship. I made a mathematically loose play out of fear, which lost the match. I think that when you think about a play, and make the wrong play, it’s usually because you are scared and you didn’t do the math. I had too many lands and two life, two Worships and two Ancient Grudges in hand, one in play, and a Call down. Steve had a Lavamancer. I knew that the Call was not good long; I bought back Eternal Dragon. Steve had about 12 outs, Helix, Char, Rift Bolt, or Ray, and drew the Helix for the win (shoot the Elephant, ‘Mancer me). If I had done the math, I would have realized that I was mathematically favored to draw any creature. It turned out Troll was on top. If I didn’t go "I’m so scared, I better buy back the Dragon" I would have put Steve on a two-outer instead, and almost certainly dead going long (he’d have to draw both Rays because I had three Worship). Steve also doesn’t play Jitte and I sided in Grudge – and drew two! – which contributed to the awfulness of my draw. If I had sided in Field, he would have had real problems working me with Grim Lavamancer the way he did.

1,117 Words About Cheating and Whining

I am not singling any players out by name in this section, so if you take offense it probably means you are a filthy cheater and you know who you are. I read my friend Osyp’s article last week, which spurred a great deal of controversy in the forums. I just want to address a couple of points that came up.

1. The idea that good players don’t cheat, or that people win EITHER by cheating OR by being good.

Sometimes you win because you got the nuts. Sometimes you win because the opponent was manascrewed. Sometimes you out-play him. Sometimes he donks. Why do you only win one way? Why does a player have to be either good or dishonest?

Mike Long was, at one point, one of the best players on the Tour. He had one of the best mental games, could work other Top 8-caliber players like marionettes, and even ran that brutal Kaervek’s Spite win against Jonny Magic at Rye ’97. He was awesome. He’s also admitted to cheating on the Tour. He’s called himself the biggest villain in the game. Maybe Mike only needed to cheat to win one out of every ten games, but if he did, he was still cheating to win.

You know what’s scary? The idea that players will get away with cheating because they are known to be very good. He doesn’t cheat! He’s good!

2. You give a player the benefit of the doubt because his cheats are small.

I think the sophistication of cheating on Tour is at an all time high. The legendary cheaters had all kinds of stacks, and drew extra, or under-drew. Now they make tiny "mistakes" that they can take back or claim "I’m just not very good" to the judge when they make them. They do this all the time. People let them take things back because their offenses are tiny. These are edges. Under-paying for buyback spells, not taking damage for lands, paying U for Circular Logic when you don’t have a Psychatog in play, are all easy cheats you can do because bookkeeping is annoying for the opponent. I’ve lost matches to cheaters – on tour – who tapped big lumps of mana in a pile and didn’t have the right mana to play their spells. I’ve missed points for lands, burn, collaterals like Carnophage. I expect Circular Logic to cost U, not 2U. People run these cheats exactly because they are so ultimately deniable. They can get away with them.

3. American players are whiners / babies in general.

The reason we are whiners is because at least some cheaters from other countries just appeal to their own judges and don’t get reprimanded. I can give you a list a page long of foreign players using language or culture as shields, feigning misunderstanding, or just trying to get biased judging. Here are two examples from my own career, just off the top of my head:

LA 2000: I have played two Gushes. My French opponent has played no card drawing. He is Kris Maging me to the dome. I find this odd. I count the cards. He’s up two cards on me. I raise my hand; essentially "in response," he appeals to a French Level IV Judge. Apparently the flame went out and he’s lost the gift of tongues. I explain the situation. The Judge instructs me there is no discrepancy in card count. I protest. He instructs that if I don’t continue playing, I will receive a match loss. I am flustered and lose (obv, my opponent drew six) rather than immediately appealing to the Head Judge and Tournament Organizer. I end up tying up the Tournament Organizer, delaying the Pro Tour for a full two hours (I’m a whiner/baby), who consults the said Level IV, who says "it didn’t look like you were going to win anyway." This is wrong on so many levels. Ultimately, the Judge apologizes, indicating he was in the wrong, but that he’ll get me next time. Sorry about that. I miss Day 2 on this loss. By the way, this opponent also cheated in the other game he won, and I caught him then, too… to no reprimand.

Charleston 2006: I catch my Japanese opponent stacking. By the way, I am a master of catching people stacking. If I call the judge for stacking, my opponent was probably stacking; the problem in catching them is that some people are really bad at stacking, or kind of do this half-assed stack and hope you can’t figure it out, or they can deny it somewhat even though there is edge. He feigns inability to speak English and appeals to a Japanese judge. I have no idea what the hell they are talking about. The judge indicates that his deck is "not ordered." I point out that he might just not be very good at stacking, or maybe he’s really good (remind me and we’ll talk about this another time). The offense of stacking is based on process, incidentally, not finished product. I am instructed to play. Whatever. I bash him. I find out later that two other American players – including one of my best friends and playtest partners – also called judges on the same Japanese player for stacking on the same Day 2. No warnings for him. Certainly no game losses. His deck wasn’t ordered after all. Come on. What do you think the chances are that he wasn’t stacking?

4. American players used to complain about the Japanese cheating, now we complain about other groups.

The reason Americans – and other Japanese, by the way – complain about the Japanese cheating is because they cheat. There are Japanese cheaters. Do all the Japanese cheat? Obviously not! No one said they all cheat. I actually think Tsuyoshi Fujita radiates a halo of goodness that inspires me to be a better human being, not just a better deck designer, from being near him. He’s freaking awesome. Kenji Tsumura is not only one of the best players of all time, he has ironclad honor. Kenji has a belief in his potential and himself, and understands that lesser practices are for lesser players. If I saw one of them cheat, I’d get my eyes checked. There are plenty of good, honorable, honest Japanese players. Just like there are good American players. There are plenty of Japanese players who cheat. Just like there are plenty of American players who cheat. You know how I know that some of the Japanese are filthy? I don’t play on Tour that much any more. Who do you think told me?

Talk amongst yourselves.

LOVE
MIKE

* This is a lie.