This is a big week! Those smart people who make good guesses are predicting the population of the Earth is going to reach 7 billion sometime this week! Meaning the 280,608 registered DCI members make up .00004% of the world population! What prestige our dear game holds! It feels pretty good to know that I’m better at something than 99.9% of the population! I’d be hard pressed to find another attribute of mine that puts the rest of the world to shame in such a manner. Even my curly dew, freckled naval, superior Risk skills, and knack for interior décor wouldn’t garnish such an elite numerical value.
My precious NBA is looking like an intramural tug of war match! The players are completely out of line and need to swallow their egos to get a deal settled soon. The problem is that the offer they receive will continue to get worse and worse, as more of the season and revenue is lost, meaning an agreement is theoretically impossible since the players and owners both aren’t budging an inch. I say the owners void all contracts, redesign the pay structure however makes sense for them, make all players free agents, then have a draft to redistribute the $$ and talent. Clearly too radical to be a possibility, but it’d be pretty awesome to see it unfold.
Hearing Derek Fisher attempt to talk intellectually about the whole situation is equally infuriating. C’mon FISH! You’re a 5-time champ! Act right, fool!
I got my new shirt from shirt.woot.com, giving me great gamer gear (GGG) to battle with on my FNM nights! Woot shirts give me confidence when I’m playing, and I assume other mages as well because I see them all over the event halls of Magic tournaments, so I know they’ve got a place in our community. If you’ve never experienced a woot buy, it’s well worth your time. I’ve recently leaned over to wine.woot as well because nothing ensures you’ll get into the red zone like a quality bottle.
I also got my board gaming on by indulging in this wacky game called Ned’s Head. The premise is that you unfold Ned’s head, put a bunch of random stuff in there, draw a card from a deck of the objects, then stick you into his head via his ears and nose, while racing to retrieve the chosen object before your opponent snatches it.
First off, this is a kid’s game, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use “Magic Logic” to evaluate the best means of gaming this one into our favor. My opponent was my girlfriend, so immediately I knew I had a late-game advantage because my larger hands provided me a bit more reach than her petite phalanges. However, this also meant that my hands would have a harder time getting into Ned’s head; the openings are small and hard to squeeze into, while her hands are so small they slide right in like a group of teenage girls into a greasy dive bar.
Since there weren’t any rules of conduct, I found it helpful to grab as many items as I could to play the odds that I’d have the selected item. Another edge is that if she was drawing from the deck, I made sure to have my hand already in Ned’s nostril so I could have first grab. Having the first grab is crucial because you don’t want to fall behind on tempo and have the opponent check more items in his head than you.
Unfortunately, Ned was made of weak bramble and didn’t survive to play another game because he was impaled through the cranium! $25 flushed!
I also managed to snap a picture of a crazy fully nude dude walking down the train tracks that parallel my warehouse property. It’s just been such a BIG week.
There were also a couple GPs this weekend! Too bad they were Legacy and Limited, frustrating my appetite for Standard. Thankfully SCG came through, providing a bit of diversity among the top decks. Infect made a serious showing; Wolf Run Green flexed its muscle; Township Tokens had a couple of strong supporters; and U/W Blade was also in the mix.
Never mind Nevermore brews from last week. I wanted to go hard with my Counter Obliterator deck at FNM. I wanted to land a turn 3 Phyrexian Obliterator because G/R Ramp is soft to it minus a Beast Within, and U/B is weak to it minus countermagic. He’s an awesome creature—completely rampages Mono Red and any other creature matchup since he’s the best defensive creature on the ground in Standard.
What creatures can actually interact favorably with him? None!
Grave Titan? Nope, sacrifice six!
Dungrove Elder? Ha, sac a permanent for each Forest you control!
Solemn or Snapcaster? It tramples!
Hero of Bladehold? Well, you’ve got some dudes but still can’t attack into me or block well!
Wurmcoil Engine? Sac your Wurm + five other permanents please! Hopefully those 3/3 tokens can clean up the game cause you just got annihilated for SIX!
I wanted ways to support him with Mind Rot and Distress, alongside distractions like Liliana of the Veil and Chandra, the Firebrand.
I wanted to have Tezzeret’s Gambit as my card advantage source to speed up an ultimate from Liliana, while pairing nicely with Chandra, the Firebrand.
I wanted my mana to have Drowned Catacomb, Darkslick Shores, Dragonskull Summit, Blackcleave Cliffs, and lots of Swamps.
I wanted Ratchet Bomb and Black Sun’s Zenith as my board sweeper, which is also complemented by Gambit.
I wanted to finally win a damn FNM because I’m looking like a fool writing these articles and losing in the top 8 each week. This week would be different, this week I wanted to rise to the upper echelons of FNM glory, sweeping away opponents easily with my greedy Grixis control deck.
Here’s the list…
Creatures (6)
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (25)
Spells (23)
- 4 Mana Leak
- 1 Incinerate
- 2 Distress
- 1 Mind Rot
- 3 Doom Blade
- 2 Ratchet Bomb
- 3 Sphere of the Suns
- 2 Black Sun's Zenith
- 4 Tezzeret's Gambit
- 1 Volt Charge
Sideboard
I’ve been trying real hard to make this deck work for a good while now, but for several tiresome reasons, I haven’t been able to get a build I’m really comfortable with yet. People are playing fewer Dismember, which is awesome for Obliterator. They’re playing more Doom Blade, which is also great, but he isn’t the part of the deck I keep having to revise.
The mana allows only for small splashes in each department. Mana Leak for their late-game expensive spells because Leak is at its best in the late game when it can handle those monsters that simple removal can’t. The red offers Chandra along with some instant-speed removal spells, both of which are great at solidifying what this deck aims to do: grind out the opponent by means of attrition over a long game.
One issue with that game plan is that all my lands do nothing, and I have to sacrifice using my spells as lands because of Liliana and Obliterator. Another problem is that I feel like I’m running too few at times and too many at others. This means the deck isn’t consistent enough on its own and likely needs some card to bring it all together. Something like Druidic Satchel, Forbidden Alchemy, or Think Twice are all good options to fluidize a deck, the latter two having synergy with Liliana, so perhaps that’s the direction I’ll take next week.
As for the tournament, I was 20 minutes late showing up for round one because I got stuck in traffic! No worries though, I was an odd man and got the bye for the second week in a row!
Round 1 – Bye!
Round 2 – Andrew “Google” Tschope with U/B Control
Google is a prominent shop figure, getting his nickname from the fact that he’s a programmer for the search engine we use on a daily basis. His deck choices are always slow and grinding, and it was no different today.
Game one I landed an early Chandra and went to town, copying Mind Rot to rip his hand away. My only action was a Grave Titan, but he had the Go for the Throat and Black Sun’s Zenith to tie those guys up before following up with some Solemn Simulacrums.
I was busy digging with Tezzeret’s Gambit to find… LOTS OF LANDS! The land to spell count at the end of the game was 15 lands to 7 spells!
I still thought I was fine. I had Chandra growing, was posturing with lands in my hand, but out of nowhere he ripped Sorin’s Vengeance, then flashed it back with Snapcaster for the kill!
I boarded my Negates and Mind Rot in, not wanting to have another blowout from nowhere.
Game 2 was much of the same. He used Solemns; my Chandra resolved and helped me to Mind Rot him. I drew 17 lands, 8 spells, and despite going through nearly half my deck, never found a Grave Titan or Obliterator to finish him.
He cast Sorin’s Vengeance on me five times that game, but I was only able to Mana Leak two and Negate one. He played four along with four Snapcaster Mage, so I was in some trouble from the get go!
Still, mana flood is no joke, which highlighted an early concern about not having any use for my lands other than casting spells. Utilizing your lands to turn into spells has long been a great way to gain an advantage, something like Inkmoth Nexus or even Stensia Bloodhall to kill planeswalkers would be appreciated if it didn’t hinder Obliterator. If only Creeping Tar Pit was available…
1-1
Round 2 – Kevin Grigsby with Mono-Black Infest
Game one I had a mull to six, but with three lands, Chandra, Incinerate, and Tezzeret’s Gambit, I felt pretty safe. He played a couple of 1/1 flying, infect dudes that I was hoping my Chandra would clean up, but after failing to draw a fourth mana source, I used Black Sun’s Zenith to clean it up.
He landed a Vatmother—I still had no land—then followed it up with a Lashwrithe for a 9-poison TKO. This deck seems for real: Lashwrithe + Inkmoth Nexus is NO JOKE!
Game two we had some interactive early plays, but again I stalled on two lands with a Sphere of the Suns and never had a fourth source to cast my THREE Phyrexian Obliterators in hand.
BAH!
1-2-DROP
No mood to chase PW points!
Those two quick losses due to inconsistency had me thinking about what I could do to streamline the deck. Perhaps adding Tezzeret and some early artifact is the way to go?
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (25)
Spells (20)
- 4 Mana Leak
- 2 Tumble Magnet
- 3 Ratchet Bomb
- 2 Nihil Spellbomb
- 3 Sphere of the Suns
- 3 Go for the Throat
- 1 Batterskull
- 2 Forbidden Alchemy
Sideboard
Something like this is what I’m leaning towards, although I wouldn’t doubt there are several Next Level Obliterator decks possible. It’s moments like these that I wonder if the premise of the Obliterator decks—having the right mana to Liliana into Obliterator consistently—might not be the game plan I want right now.
This deck really just feels like a bad copy of Yasooka’s GP Brisbane deck; however I did like Spellskite + Obliterator. I’ve got more Liliana and the beastly Obliterator, but he’s got lots of instant-speed options combined with the artifacts to have a clean mix. Here, I’m much more stagnant and slow rolling in my approach, and that might be incorrect. Maybe something like a mono-black version?
Spells (22)
- 4 Distress
- 2 Ratchet Bomb
- 2 Black Sun's Zenith
- 2 Virulent Wound
- 3 Lashwrithe
- 2 Batterskull
- 3 Tezzeret's Gambit
- 4 Victim of Night
Sideboard
Spellskite + Obliterator quickly became my favorite interaction in the Tezzeret version, so I adopted the same philosophy in the mono-black and have been winning lots of games! It solves the problem for Obliterator of them having Liliana, Dismember, Victim of the Night, AND Beast Within!
Victim of the Night is awesome, since nobody really plays any of those night folk at the moment. Distress can really slow down those ramp decks by making them skip their Simulacrum drop, and combined with Liliana’s discard pressure, you can cause some havoc for their late drops.
If they answer Obliterator, you’ve got Batterskull, Lashwrithe, and Grave Titan to back him up. Batterskull in particular has been very useful and curve efficient.
I think I’ve finally found an Obliterator deck that I can win some Friday Night games with!
Thanks for reading,
Sanchez
…
Top 5 Picks
1) Paint it Black – Rolling Stones
2) Blueberry Hill – Louis Armstrong
3) In The Flesh – Pink Floyd
4) What’d I Say – Ray Charles
5) Like A Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan