Last weekend I was at Grand Prix: Stockholm, and as always you can read the full details here. Normally I’d be disappointed to fail to make Day 2 off three byes, even for Limited, but this tournament was a strangely positive experience.
Yokohama was very disappointing and a few iffy matches both on MTGO and in real life had me worried I’d completely lost focus. When I received my card pool it seemed like I was back to the bad old luckless days. It really was a stinker. I have a habit of moaning about Sealed Deck pools that normally turn out to be fine, but this one was a real steaming pile of faeces. I knew it was really bad when I told Rich Hagon I wouldn’t be making Day 2, and he agreed with me. Rich Hagon is the epitome of positive thinking. If he doesn’t think you have a prayer then it’s time to start making alternate plans for the afternoon.
I fully expected another 0-2 drop, but that didn’t happen and it gave me a little more insight on why good players always seem to make it through the Day 1 Sealed Deck minefield. In Torino last year I had another stinker, but Raphael Levy was able to fashion a workable deck out of it in under five minutes. I did something similar with this pool. There are more than a few “meh” cards, but overall the deck had a decent mana curve and was consistent enough to take me to within a single point of making Day 2.
If I’d been a little tighter I might have been able to get those extra points. I timed out against Saito with a card that would have won me the match on top of my library. The first game was more interesting. I was in a strong position, but then went too passive and allowed Saito to push the pendulum back in his favor.
Another time out in the last round finally finished me, but that was a little more annoying as I don’t think they gave out any warnings about how much time was left on the round and I couldn’t see the clock from where I was sitting (they really should position clocks on both sides of the hall). When I was told there were only two minutes left for the third game, I was shocked. I think I would have scooped the second game much earlier had I been able to see the clock or heard a five/ten minute warning. Ironically, if that had happened I would probably now be screaming about a key Judge Unworthy on a Deadwood Treefolk that revealed four lands when I only needed to hit it for one damage. At the time I took it in good humor, as it was obvious the game was ending in a draw anyway.
Even though I failed to make Day 2, there were plenty of positives to take from the tournament. For starters it felt like I might have got the deck right as I kept it the same for virtually all of the rounds. I also felt like I’d played myself back into a bit of form and regained some enthusiasm for the game.
The one negative was randomly screwing over Knud Nommensen by not scooping to him after we’d drawn. That was me being brain dead at the end of the tournament, just like in Yokohama when I didn’t even think to ID with Geoffrey Siron for the extra Pro Point. I didn’t think it would matter as he was a dead cert in any case… you’d think so when someone is unbeaten with six wins and three draws.
Then the standings came in, and he finished 70th.
Yes, that would be an “oops” on my part, although I suppose I made the purists (and Quentin Martin, as he went through in 64th) happy.
Is there any real reason why we need to continue having these arbitrary cut-off points for Grand Prix? It just seems really stupid that one guy gets to play on Sunday and one doesn’t when the only thing that separates them is a few percentage points on tiebreakers.
My personal opinion is that anyone who manages to x-2 or better Day 1 of a Grand Prix deserves to play on the second day. Then we wouldn’t have all this nonsense of last round IDs just to make sure or people missing out by point something infinitesimal on tiebreakers.
The Pro Tour runs a straight points cutoff. You either make the four (Limited) or five (Constructed) wins and come back the next day, or you don’t. I see no reason why the GPs should be any different.
If there needs to be a certain number to make it easy to create the draft pods, then increase the number going through from 64 to 128.
The most important thing is that every player with at least an x-2 record should be playing on Day 2.
I expected to help Tim Willoughby out with the coverage for Day 2, but instead I got snatched for the Gunslinging table. That was a blast. I was really surprised at the amount of people that wanted to play against me, or wanted cards signed. I thought everyone had caught on to the fact I’m actually pretty bad by now.
One of the things I’ve been doing lately is to always make sure I have a bunch of decks at hand for different formats, and I was glad I thought to bring them as it meant I could take people on with more than just a random Sealed Deck. Unfortunately I don’t have any Vintage or Legacy decks built up at the moment, so I wouldn’t mind any interesting suggestions (although possibly not Hulk Flash… the whole point of Gunslinging is to at least play a couple of turns).
But that’s enough of the Craig Jones LiveJournal. I guess most of you are here to see if I’ve got anything interesting to say about Future Sight.
Or alternatively laugh at the wretched abortions of new deck ideas.
Last week I looked at the White cards, and concentrated on what the updated Block White Weenie deck might look like. This week I’m going to turn the magnifying glass on the Red decks for no other reason than Rich has allocated me the Red cards to talk about for this month’s Mox Radio, and it makes sense to kill two birds with one stone.
As before I’m going to concentrate on possible upgrades to existing decks and the roles cards might play rather than throwing out a bunch of untested decklists.
So what do we have to play with:
Rare:
Magus of the Moon
Molten Disaster
Pact of the Titan
Pyromancer’s Swath
Scourge of Kher Ridges
Shah of Naar Isle
Steamflogger Boss
Tarox Bladewing
Thunderblade Charge
Uncommon:
Arc Blade
Bloodshot Trainee
Boldwyr Intimidator
Char-Rumbler
Emblem of the Warmind
Haze of Rage
Shivan Sand-Mage
Skizzik Surger
Sparkspitter
Storm Entity
Common:
Bogardan Lancer
Emberwilde Augur
Fatal Attraction
Flowstone Embrace
Fomori Nomad
Gathan Raiders
Grinning Ignus
Henchfiend of Ukor
Homing Sliver
Riddle of Lightning
Rift Elemental
First off, I’m not going to pull any punches. I think Red has a couple of truly format-defining cards. There are cards that decks can be built around, there are cards that are utilized by multiple different decks, and then there are cards that fundamentally affect entire formats. Red has two of them in this set.
Format-Defining Cards.
Er, Prof… This is just Blood Moon with legs. Blood Moon has been part of the core set for donkey’s years.
Nope, this is a Blood Moon that attacks for two. This is a Blood Moon that Red decks can play in the main just to urinate all over your $200 manabase.
Aside from the odd sick puppy, most of the time if you ran up against a Red deck you knew you wouldn’t have to worry about Blood Moon until after sideboarding. The reason is that most Red decks run a very tight line. Generally it’s a race to get the last few points of damage through before being splatted by dragons and other superior cards. Unless the metagame is truly skewed, they just can’t afford to draw situational dead cards, especially in the mirror.
Against a mono-color deck, Magus of the Moon is still a Grey Ogre that hits for two, and if you draw multiple copies then they hit for an additional two. It may not be very exciting, but it’s never completely dead. That makes running it in the main a more tempting proposition, and if decks are prepared to run it in the main then the $200 manabase decks probably need to make sure they’ve got game even if half their land suddenly becomes basic Mountains.
Fortunately it’s a creature, which means it’s far easier to deal with than the enchantment it’s based upon.
For that reason you should probably be thinking of Magus of the Moon as complementary to – rather than a replacement for – Blood Moon.
Especially as there’s nothing to stop you running four Blood Moon in the board as well…
Is your manabase ready for the 8 Blood Moon environment?
I can’t believe more people haven’t talked about this card.
It’s a freaking unstoppable X spell!
I’m paying RRRX (with kicker obviously) and I’m going to do you and your monsters X damage.
You will not counterspell it. You will not gain life in response. You will not put up damage shields.
You will not save your monsters with pump spells, regeneration, or other clever tricks that move them out of the way (I’m looking at you, Ghost Dad).
This is not a hellbent Demonfire.
You can’t Boomerang a land in response and counter / prevent it. You can’t Willbender it. You can’t Commandeer it. You can’t drop a Seht’s Tiger and watch the damage slide off.
If your life total is X or less, then you’re dead. No buts, ifs, or clever Blue tricks. Just pick up your cards and shuffle up for the next game.
What this card does is change the game completely. The security of being in total control with a mitt full of counter-magic is no longer there. If your life total is X or lower, then you’re in range.
Teferi? What Teferi? Just put him in the bin.
This card is exactly what is needed to give block a good shakeup.
But Prof, it’s triple Red with the kicker? You need to spend four mana just to inflict a single point of damage.
To which I answer: Storage Lands, Tron.
There are a number of big mana decks floating around in both Standard and Block, and Molten Disaster is an ideal fit for all of them.
It’s a mistake to think of Molten Disaster as just an overcosted Earthquake. In a pinch it can provide that role, but more importantly it also provides a source of late game inevitability. At some point you will cast Molten Disaster with enough mana to kill them.
For that reason I can see it playing a similar role to Demonfire in decks like Angelfire and Izzetron.
The split second kicker option makes Molten Disaster a superb weapon against control, but the heavy mana commitments mean it will be best utilized by other control decks.
Izzetron has a nasty anti-control suite already with the Sulfur Elemental package. Now it can top the curve with Tron-powered Molten Disasters to either finish the damage begun with the Sulfur Elementals or sweep away an opponent’s weenie swarms.
Angelfire is nicely set up to utilize the card, as it has life gain to ensure it keeps a higher life total than the opponent. Also, most of its foot-soldiers – Serra Avengers, Lightning Angels, etc – are untouched by the carnage taking place beneath them.
A sideboard switch to storage land fuelled Disasters and Sulfur Elementals might even be an option for Dragonstorm, although this is still vulnerable to sideboard cards like Annex and Riptide Pilferer.
In Block, the deck that will really appreciate it is the Green/Red deck. That deck churns out a ton of mana already and Molten Disaster will function as an effective Wrath of God for any ground based threats. Perversely this will hurt the Teferi decks the most as it gives Red/Green an uncounterable way of dealing with the format’s defining card. It is also useful to the Black/Red deck for the same reason, although Aeon Chronicler is the target in this case.
You’re comparing it to Demonfire. You do know it does X damage to all players?
Yep, sometimes you’re going to kill both players. Then do it. Tear up the world and start again. Drawing a game is better than losing it.
In the future, matches of Magic will last more than three games.
Right, now we’ve got the heavy hitters out of the way it’s time to have a brief look at the rest.
Cards to build decks around.
Lucky Pact. Yep, you can make a 4/4 on turn 1 and cast Angel’s Grace to survive breaking the Pact. You can also do really filthy things with Djinn Illuminatus. Probably more for the Johnnies though.
Shah of Naah Isle
Lucky Djinn (or rather Efreet). Don’t play this. One of the cards will always kill it. It’s interesting how the wording means you can’t even do naughtiness with Thick-Skinned Goblin.
Somebody just laid down a challenge for future R&D workers to come.
Another Johnny card. Discarding your hand every turn is too much negative synergy for my liking. Your burn spells will do more damage, but you’ll have to find them off the top of your library first. This could potentially be very nasty with Rituals and Grapeshot, but I’m not buying it as a serious deck.
He’s expensive but he’ll totally rule the board if you ever untap with him. The top-heavy Green/Red Block decks like our Dragonstorm variant might find room for one.
Autochthon Wurm you for 15!
This will probably slot in the Block Sliver Wild Pair as a tutor for the various combo pieces. I think the deck is probably Tier 2, although I think a player who’s practiced with it a lot might gain a significant edge over less experienced players on the PTQ circuit. The deck will also benefit a great deal from the new dual lands.
I don’t have a deck for this guy, but if there is a decent suspend deck he might play a role in there. The same holds for Shivan Sand-Mage. The Rift Elemental is probably of more interest as he can do some really naughty things with the new cycle of repeat suspend cards. Unfortunately they printed Teferi in the same set so don’t get too excited.
Aggro Cards
Gathan Raiders
Tarox Bladewing
Bogardan Lancer
After playing with Gathan Raiders I can only think, Wow! And they made this guy a common…
Red didn’t get to join in on the discarding cards for fun and profit theme of Torment, as all its enablers were inexplicably made random discard. Thankfully that lesson has been learned (nobody played Red for a year), and Gathan Raiders is here to catch up for lost time.
This is a ludicrously useful card that is beatstick and madness / discard outlet all in one mean little package. In the worst case he’s a Trained Armodon with the additional cost of discarding a card. At the other extreme he’s a 5/5 Balduvian Hordes that enables you to cast Fiery Tempers and Reckless Wurms for the budget price. All beatdown decks will want to play him because colorless Phyrexian Negators with a smaller drawback are quite good I hear.
Yes, I should have included him in the White Weenie deck.
Where he’s really going to shine is in some form of madness deck, and I think Future Sight might just have provided enough tools to finally get that archetype up and running.
Rorix Bladewing was utilized as a top end finisher in Goblin decks at PT: Venice. His little baby, Tarox, may find use in a similar role for Time Spiral block decks. I’m not sure how relevant the grandeur ability is as I’m not sure the Red decks will really want to run too many copies. He’s a good late threat and may even be the Hunted Dragon replacement when that rotates out of Dragonstorm.
Bogardan Lancer. Yeah I’m probably scraping the barrel here.
The Burn
Being able to set things on fire has always been a strong point of Red. Time Spiral Block is stocked full to the gills with burn spells already so what else does Future Sight add:
Riddle of Lightning
Thunderblade Charge
Ghostfire
Arc Blade
Keldon Megaliths
Riddle of Lightning is an easier to control, but more expensive, Erratic Explosion. It’s more of a combo card than a burn spell. Arc Blade is durable but slow (and owned by Teferi).
I’ve heard comparisons between Thunderblade Charge and Hammer of Bogardan, and quite frankly they seem like nonsense. Red decks aim to get in early damage with critters and finish with burn to the head. Hammer was great for this as it just kept coming back. In contrast Thunderblade Charge requires you to still have creatures charging into the red zone. At this point in the game most Red critters are dead or staring nervously at elephants and dragons. If by some miracle you’re still attacking with them, then you probably don’t need the Charge anyway.
Still, it does three damage for three mana, and you might actually get to reuse it at some point in the game, so it’s not all bad.
Ghostfire is also a big card in the impact stakes. It’s Red burn, but it’s colorless. It doesn’t even show up on Gatherer when you search for the Red cards from Future Sight. The amount of damage for the cost (three for three) is pretty much par or slightly below, although being an instant alone allows it to compare not too unfavorably with Volcanic Hammer.
The fact that it’s colorless really pushes it over the edge.
White, your reign of terror with cards like Silver Knight and Soltari Priest is over.
Last week I mentioned White Weenie might have some new tools to fight Mono-Red in Block Constructed. Well, Red does too, and this one blows White’s one trump (and usually only prayer of actually winning a game), a Griffin Guided Soltari Priest, right out of the water. It will even take down switched-on Opal Guardians with the help of Serrated Arrows or Sulfur Elemental.
Like Gathan Raiders, this card will go straight into the Block Red deck and also hang around for the next few years as an answer to any annoying pro Red creature that might appear in future sets.
Despite it being bad enough already for our shadowy priests with the addition of Ghostflame on top of Sulfur Elemental, Red has another source of colorless damage in the form of Keldon Megaliths.
While the big mana decks have inevitability in the form of Molten Disaster, lower curve decks have the Megaliths to ping away an opponent’s last few life points. Players sometimes forget that mono-Red decks can also play the role of the control deck (RDW versus Goblins in Extended before the Goblins decks got too silly comes to mind), and a couple of active Megaliths will prevent most creatures from straying into the attack zone against you.
Coming into play tapped is a substantial drawback, but on first glance the effect seems worth it on this occasion, especially as we’ll probably want to get hellbent to fully utilize our Gathan Raiders in any case.
As usual I’ve spent a little longer on this and written a little more than I intended, so I’ll just finish off with some updated deck lists.
The observant amongst you might have noticed I haven’t really mentioned the additions to the storm decks.
There is a mono-Red deck floating around on MTGO that apparently looks a little like this:
Ignite the Warrens
4 Wild Cantor
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Rite of Flame
4 Grapeshot
4 Rift Bolt
4 Seething Song
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Ignite Memories
4 Molten Slagheap
16 Mountain
Post Future Sight it may look a little like this:
Creatures (15)
Lands (20)
Spells (25)
Future Sight has some cards that look quite interesting for this type of deck. Grinning Ignus can’t go infinite, even with Cloud Keys or Locket of Yesterdays, as you’ll always run out of Red mana, but he does give you a way of sinking additional Red mana into additional storm copies. You can always use him as a delayed Ritual to boost mana on the following turn. He’s a bit fragile, but may find a home in this type of deck (which is admittedly rogue).
Storm Entity is another way to abuse the storm count and probably better than the War Marshall.
Haze of Rage is interesting as it is a storm spell with buyback and is useful for pumping up Warrens tokens. I haven’t put it in this listing as generally if you make a lot of goblins you’re fine anyway. It might be worth a look, especially if you can find an easier way to give the goblins haste than Emblem of the Warmind.
I did like the deck and looked at it back before Worlds. It’s a bit too much on the inconsistent side though. The new cards are interesting, but the deck really wants some form of card drawing in there. Going back to Blue for Ancestral Vision and maybe incorporating Rift Elemental to manipulate when the suspend cards come in could be really good. I think it’s probably more of a casual deck that occasionally utterly crushes tier one standard decks with the right draw.
Continuing with Standard I think it’s time to end the reign of the $200 manabase and enter the 8 Blood Moon age with Gruul.
Creatures (26)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Kird Ape
- 4 Giant Solifuge
- 3 Scab-Clan Mauler
- 1 Scorched Rusalka
- 3 Tin Street Hooligan
- 3 Gathan Raiders
- 4 Magus of the Moon
Lands (22)
Spells (12)
Sideboard
Basically the Gruul deck will need to up the number of Forests to make up for the fact the dual lands might be only tapping for Red for periods of the game. The extra lands might represent negative synergy, but Blood Moon isn’t always going to be out and they’re likely to be good in the matches where Blood Moon isn’t (and you can always toss the Magus to Gathan Raiders if he’s particularly unexciting in the matchup).
The Izzetron and Angelfire decks should probably try and work in at least two Molten Disaster somewhere, although I’m not familiar enough with those decks to know what should get cut.
While in Stockholm, I was challenged on the Gunslinging tables by an interesting looking Red/White/Black Tron deck with Graven Cairns for fixing. It had the usual big mana spells of Bogardan Hellkite, Demonfire, and Molten Disaster, but it was also using Hide / Seek as an answer to Dragonstorm. Taking a Hellkite out of an opponent’s deck (and gaining 8 life) would prevent the combo from killing him in one shot, and then a Wrath would then remove all of Dragonstorm’s victory conditions. Interesting deck idea, but unfortunately I don’t have a list.
Onto Block and mono-Red starts to look a little like this:
Creatures (21)
- 3 Greater Gargadon
- 4 Magus of the Scroll
- 2 Mogg War Marshal
- 4 Blood Knight
- 4 Sulfur Elemental
- 4 Gathan Raiders
Lands (24)
Spells (15)
Sideboard
Adding a Green splash (as Saito did) gives Stormbind and Timbermare and possibly even Quagnoth (good luck to other Red decks trying to kill him) in the board. Probably at the expense of the Disintegrate, and maybe Rift Bolt.
I nearly did the usual trick of forgetting the artifacts, as Epochrasite is probably very strong in the mirror. (This meant Tarox got the last minute heave-ho).
With the Urborg / Tendrils package now out in the open and extremely popular Big Gargs might have to come into the main. Hell, I’m a sucker for that card anyway.
An interesting possibility might be to sidestep the Tendrils completely. Bram Snepvangers played a deck that was just straight burn at Yokohama, although it wasn’t successful. In which case storage lands and Molten Disasters might play a role with the anti-White creatures (and Epochrasite) lurking in the sideboard for the creature decks. I think the metagame would have to go to stupid uber-control-on-control to get to this stage though.
With time finally running out I think I’ll leave the other Red Block archetype (big mana Green/Red) for when I get to the green cards (so I’ll at least have something to talk about). I’m pretty sure it will be running Molten Disaster and probably not Grove of the Burnwillows for that reason. You might want to play it fast though. There’ll be a lot of games where Molten Disaster for the draw is the best option.
Thanks for reading,
Prof