Prelude
I was doing the dishes Saturday morning (I get a lot of my ideas doing the dishes or taking a shower) and I decided to cut all of my Korlashes. I had been testing with Asher “ManningBot” Hecht, who has really been logging in the hours as the ascending #1 Apprentice, all week, and for whatever reason I decided that Korlash was going to be bunk. He’s just so unexciting in this deck. My original model, if you peel back the Flores Fridays, was to go big on creatures that generate card advantage, but gradually the Chroniclers became Jonny Magics, and the Korlashes mostly just jumped into the graveyard (to be fair they often quickly replaced themselves). Okay, Korlash out.
4 Coalition Relic
4 Prismatic Lens
4 Damnation
4 Tendrils of Corruption
3 Careful Consideration
4 Foresee
1 Snapback
2 Take Possession
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
1 Vorosh, the Hunter
2 Ana Battlemage
4 Dreadship Reef
1 Forest
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 River of Tears
4 Swamp
4 Terramorphic Expanse
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Urza’s Factory
Sideboard
2 Ancient Grudge
4 Detritivore
4 Psychotic Episode
3 Snapback
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Take Possession
Main deck changes:
+1 Snapback
+2 Take Possession
+1 Venser, Shaper Savant
+2 Ana Battlemage
+1 Forest
+1 Island
-4 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
-1 Careful Consideration
-1 Snapback
-2 Swamp
With Korlash gone, I needed some ways to win, and I decided that they were going to be Ana Battlemage and Take Possession. I had read in Zac Hill article that Take Possession is very good / important in mirror fights, and it seemed like a fine answer to Mystic Enforcer, which was the only card that I was ever losing to out of G/W. On the other side of the universe, I was getting advice from Kenji (through Josh) that Take Possession is only good against Tarmogoyf, and not to bother with it versus other control. I actually tested with the Take Possessions (from the sideboard) quite a bit with Asher, and they were awful against U/G because of Snapback and Pongify. I mean Snapback is just embarrassing. Seven mana? Do nothing?
There is actually an interesting design tension going on here. I had these Take Possessions coming in, but I didn’t really believe in them. I figured that other B/U decks would run them for similar reasons (also they probably hadn’t tested against the right Tarmogoyf decks, or had advice from Tsumura). I decided that I wanted to play Venser in lieu of one of my Snapbacks in order to fight Take Possession. When I faced other B/U decks online, they usually took my Urza’s Factory. Venser in that spot is just a gigantic beating. I wish that I had had some more time to test out all the innovations going on in my deck list, because then I would have ended up with the deck that I will present at the end of this article, instead of the rough-around-the-edges build that I brought to what will ostensibly be my only PTQ of the season.
Some other design choices:
Ancient Grudge – This card could not be better in this point in the format. Definitely a clear four-of in the next version.
Detritivore – I never sided this in. It isn’t very good against Mono-Blue. More Ana Battlemages might just be better against other control, at a similar mana point.
Ana Battlemage – I covered this fellow a few weeks ago. This card is absolutely superb. I don’t actually sideboard it out against beatdown decks. More and more in testing and even mid-tournament I found that Take Possession was just awful and I never should have wasted space on it. Actually, it might be good against Wild Pair because I don’t have any other real answer to that card (Venser?)… But it’s actively bad against any prepared control or beatdown. Ana Battlemage is good against beatdown because you will often find yourself in slow situations mid-game where the opponent is trying to win with one Calciderm or Mystic Enforcer at a time, and won’t over-commit into a board where he “knows” you “have” to Damn. You can just run out Ana Battlemage for his sandbagged grip, and sometimes some damage. You can block and bounce the 2/2, force him to commit what he has left, and then Damn anyway (with Ana Battlemage back!). One thing that you probably haven’t thought of is that this card is a legitimate threat. You just smash Korlash with it and have Venser or Snapback for a reset. It’s quite difficult to play around.
Vorosh – I can’t believe I cut Careful Consideration for this. I wanted a way to “win quickly” (bs) and this was my pick. I wanted a card that could withstand a Bogardan Hellkite. This is just horrendous if the opponent has Take Possession or anything. One Korlash is probably better (and usually bigger). Too many last minute changes without data this time. It cost me. To borrow a phrase I hear all to often “at least I know what to sideboard out.” In my defense, the standard decks are really shaping up.
The big losses out of the sideboard with all the reshuffling were no Spell Burst and no Sudden Death (two cards I talked about in previous weeks). I have to say that these were miserable pulls. Josh, who finished second in the PTQ, kept telling me I had a great deck… up until Saturday morning, when I pulled every card I actually needed to win in favor of, um, Vorosh. He even brought me the Sudden Deaths I should have played.
One
He opens on Flagstones of Trokair and Mountains. It is his first PTQ. I try not to giggle. I am figuring out how I am going to win, all the while confident that I can’t lose. All of a sudden his Prismatic Lens produces a Mystical Teachings. Uh… For Return to Dust… Oh. This could be bad. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this badly out-played, and I’ve clashed with almost all of the short list. I Venser’d… His Return to Dust (could have saved my Relic). I decided that I wanted to Time Walk him instead of Time Walking myself. Of course I drew nothing, so it wouldn’t have been a bad use of mana. Venser put him to two by the last turn, but I was on bagel. Just awful.
Game 2 took forever, as B/U/g/r versus U/R/W will, and I only had seven minutes for Game 3. He opened on Lens. I strategically drew the one Mountain and showed him Ancient Grudge into Jonny. He played another artifact mana, I drew Lens into Flashback. Another Finkel hit, then both my Battlemages (one for double value against Lightning Angel). He finished with Avalanche Riders on my Dreadship Reef with four counters… I took them all off for Venser. Basically I got the ideal draw for a seven minute game, versus a medium one.
Two
The opponent was Matt Ferrando, NG GM and Top 8 (and sadly not Top 4) at Regionals (like me). I put him on some sort of Goyf deck due to his Regionals deck (my best matchup), and kept a one-lander with two Relics and two Lenses. Obviously my second land was turn 5, after multiple discards… and it was Terramorphic Expanse.
Game 2 I had the third Take Possession. It was really poor. Even G/R/W can trump it with Dead / Gone. Luckily I got lots of advantage from Ana Battlemage versus his reactive sideboard cards and Calciderm (block, Snapback, etc.). His strategy was Word of Seizing plus Greater Gargadon, so my counter-strategy was to do nothing but take hits from Calciderm while setting up multiple Battlemage sequences. Got there.
Three
This one was U/G, the matchup I had tested all week. Our testing had Game 1 automatic from my side almost all the time (cue foreshadowing). He went first and drew three (?) Delays and two Psionic Blasts with a fine beatdown set. No contest.
I had all the sideboard cards in Game 2… And made one of the worst tactical mistakes of my eleven-plus year tournament career. He is crashing with random Looter il-Kor. I have two Swamps and I toss a Tendrils at it, because mise. I notice after this auto-pilot play that I am holding a Terramorphic Expanse, and could have gotten another point. Oh well… It’s wrong but it doesn’t matter. Is that an untapped Pendelhaven? Yeah, I got the Looter next turn with another Tendrils (I drew three) but it’s not just that I burned a card, I burned my best card. He had multiple Delays again to kill me one turn before my Careful Consideration fired. It would have flipped Snapback, Venser, Damnation, and Foresee. I would have won easily if not for that boneheaded Tendrils move.
Four
I knew Blue Pickles was one of the best from talking with Josh all week, but decided to take all my anti-Pickles out because I wanted to win the mirror and beat Goyf decks. Of course I hit Pickles and didn’t have anything. He opened on three Ancestral Visions, which was awful for me. My deck eschews Mystical Teachings to get the two-for-ones and grind out a “faster” advantage in every kind of matchup. Ancestral Visions makes my whole deck strategy look like a joke when it comes out turns 1, 2, and 3. There is almost no way I can win. I find the way and draw both my Take Possessions. I flip up his morph with Snapback; it’s a Brine Elemental. I Take Possession following, he doesn’t even bother to flip (it’s a Willbender). He goes Brine up and Shapeshifter down-up; I Willbender, untap, and take his Shapeshifter. A turn after I start locking him down, we realize you can’t actually Willbender Brine. Floor ruling is that he can untap (he realizes mid-turn), which I am 80% sure is wrong; I don’t fight it because if Kenji can give back wins to people who screw up on Pact, I can elect not to profit from, well, cheating (even if unintentional). With his extra mana and, you know, not being locked by his own cards after going up six and more cards, it is easy from his side.
Next game he draws three Cancels and multiple Delays after a quick Aeon suspend. My lone Psychotic Episode is a joke. There is no way to get out from under his giant suspend threat given his hand. That’s the tournament.
B/U is obviously viable, and I think my version has some merits, even if the actual deck I took to Neutral Ground had issues. I have been working a bit on fixing it. If I were going to play B/U again, this is what I would take:
Creatures (9)
Lands (26)
Spells (25)
- 3 Careful Consideration
- 4 Prismatic Lens
- 2 Snapback
- 4 Tendrils of Corruption
- 4 Damnation
- 4 Coalition Relic
- 4 Foresee
Sideboard
I redistributed the Take Possessions to bounce cards, which are much better against beatdown given all the other removal and card drawing, and going to two Vensers should take most of the starch out of the opponent’s Take Possessions. I moved Vorosh to Ana Battlemage, which is just better in the same colors (does more damage a decent amount of the time, too); the third Ana Battlemage can go back to being Careful Consideration, but honestly, this deck usually has a ton of card advantage… I think you can spare number twelve.
The more radical changes are in the sideboard.
4 Sudden Death
4 Spell Burst
These are for Pickles. The deck I brought can’t really beat Pickles. If you switch to a one-for-one elimination strategy with more card drawing (they don’t actually have a great solution to Jonny Magic, other than locking you), you just win… especially on exchanges like one-for-three (Spell Burst v. any morph). You still have some Willbender issues, but nothing insurmountable.
2 Snapback
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
I previously sided up to four Snapbacks and two Vensers, but the third Venser is here to really fight Take Possession and just be another effective answer to Griffin Guide and Call of the Herd. This deck is actually very good against aggressive decks, playing on a “Necro” strategy of tempo-oriented one-for-ones, some “Drain Life”-style action, with strong card drawing fuelling the one-for-ones from a separate sector.
4 Ancient Grudge
I hate cutting Detritivore, but it never saw play. Ancient Grudge does much the same thing now that most B/U decks are going to a four Lens / four Relic model. This card is just bonkers in the current metagame.
The way the deck is set up now, it goes very hostile towards Pickles reinforces the strong anti-beatdown setup, or sets itself up for a good resource war against other mid-range accelerated board control decks. Note that this version doesn’t have any direct defense at all against Wild Pair Slivers… but I don’t think that will be as much of an issue in the next couple of weeks.
While I think this is a very defensible direction to take the B/U shell, I don’t think I would necessarily go B/U if I were going to control next PTQ. Josh’s Kenji-built Pickles deck could easily have won the Neutral Ground PTQ (he conceded in the finals to a friend), and it rolls over the dominating B/U decks easily (admittedly they aren’t running a dedicated anti-morph eight-pack, necessarily). While G/W won in New York, the wind seems to be blowing U/G for the Goyf decks, and Pickles is much better against U/G than it is against G/W, which can actually be a bad matchup with Scryb Rangers and Serra Avengers. If you fear going up against Goyfs all day, though, it’s B/U for sure.
Untapped Pendelhaven? Really? I’d say that was worse than the Arrows, but it only cost me undefeated at 3-0 and not a Nationals slot.
Take care everybody.
LOVE
MIKE