Let me bring you up to speed. The last few weeks, I have been on a Magic Tour of sorts, starting with a trip to Barcelona, then Seattle, and now beautiful Honolulu. I have to say, this whole spring into summer has been absolutely awesome. I am so excited to finally release ¨Next Level Magic,¨ so watch StarCityGames.com all this week for the info.
As you surely know, Next Level Magic is the extensive strategy guide that I am releasing as an eBook here on StarCityGames.com. I am seriously taking a look at what options are available to reproduce it as a paperback or audio file, but that will all depend on how sales do… hint hint. Anyway, the strategy guide is awesome, check out previews here, here, here, and here.
So that pretty much brings us up to today. Today, as I write this, it is Friday and Day 1 of the Pro Tour has just ended. I just got back from Blazing Steaks, the best six-dollar steakhouse in Honolulu, where everyone was celebrating their successes. It is tricky writing a tournament report before the tournament ends, but hopefully things continue to go well for the good guys and the times continue to be awesome.
In case you are wondering what Blazing Steaks is, it is a tiny little restaurant across the street from the convention center that sells absolutely incredible steaks for six dollars. They have larger portions for 10 dollars, but I am not a young man anymore, and 18 oz is a bit much more lunch every day.
The way I found the place was actually a recommendation by a tour guide. The way I met this tour guide is unusual. I was walking out of the Ruels’ hotel room, five miles from the site, and trying to figure out how to get back, as it was the middle of the night and I was in a bathing suit with no wallet, and thereby no cash.
I walked up to a tour guide on a tour bus and asked him directions on how to walk to the convention center. He suggested I hop in, and he would give me a ride. I could not argue with this, and jumped in. He told me that he had just finished a tour and was on his way back to see his wife and kid, but advised me to check out Blazing Steaks, which he described as the best six-dollar steakhouse in Honolulu.
As I said, I made Day 2, so let’s just get that out of the way, as I know some of you just couldn’t handle the suspense /or may not believe I actually made it…
I am staying in a hotel across the street from the convention center, along with Michael Jacob, Martin Juza, and Zac Hill. We all played nearly identical copies of the Five-Color Cascade Control deck that Michael and I have been working on over the past 47 years, since we first started working on this format. Fortune has smiled upon us and we are all rocking Day 2.
I squeaked in to Day 2 at 5-3, but am actually playing pretty good Magic, so I feel pretty good about tomorrow. Michael Jacob is 5-2-1, Martin Juza is 6-2, and Zac Hill is leading the pack at 8-0.
Here is what I played:
Five-Color Cascade
Patrick Chapin and Michael Jacob
4 Wall of Denial
4 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Kathari Remnant
2 Caldera Hellion
1 Celestial Purge
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Esper Charm
2 Ajani Vengeant
3 Bituminous Blast
4 Traumatic Visions
1 Obelisk of Alara
3 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Exotic Orchard
4 Rupture Spire
4 Arcane Sanctum
2 Seaside Citadel
2 Jungle Shrine
4 Swamp
3 Island
2 Mountain
1 Forest
Sideboard:
4 Blightning
4 Deny Reality
3 Celestial Purge
1 Scepter of Fugue
1 Ajani Vengeant
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Infest
Michael played the same 75, and Juza and Zack snuck a Nicol Bolas into the main deck in place of the Purge, with minor sideboard adjustment to compensate. DJ Kastner is also running the same deck, currently sitting at 6-2, so all in all, a fair amount of modest success thus far.
To really tell the story of PT: Honolulu, however, I actually need to back up a little bit. Let‘s move back to Sunday night last week, or rather Monday morning, as it is 3:30am. I knock on Herberholz’s suite, which he is sharing with Nassif and Parke. Doctor Lachmann is in the building, and discussing with Heezy the fact that he is without question not only a better basketball player than Heezy, but so much so in fact that he will dunk on Herberholz in Hawaii.
Herberholz is thoroughly trashed at this point, but is not about to take this lightly. Parke and Nassif are asleep, so no one else was there to mediate these two starved, wild animals, but courtesy and manners broke down, as words got more and more heated. Bets were discussed, but as it was unrealistic to settle the slam dunk bet in the hotel room that night, talks escalated to the primary point of contention between Heezy and Lachmann, which was that, from Heezy’s perspective, Lachmann would never win a dollar off of him, and from Lachmann’s perspective, he would beat Herberholz in any contest he wanted.
At this point, Nassif comes storming out of the bedroom, ready to go, but alas with no pants. We take a moment to help him get ready and he departs, as he appears to have a bizarrely early flight to Hawaii.
Eventually, Mark and Chris asked me to officiate a classic battle of the wits that works like this: Lachmann would look through a stack of draft leftovers and pull out a card. He would look at it and then set it face down in front of Mark. Then he would look Mark in the eye and tell him what the card is.
The only thing is, he might be bluffing. See, Lachmann is under no obligation to tell the truth, and the game is that Heezy must determine if the good doctor is lying or telling the truth.
Now, there are some who will say that the fight was not fair, as Herberholz had consumed 19 more drinks than the doctor, but a bet is a bet. Lachmann tricked him over and over, though the bet was best 4 out of 9. After three quick wins, Lachmann offered the following deal to Heezy. He pulled out three cards, looked at them and then told Heezy the following:
“Two of these cards are basic land, one is not.”
Then he shuffled the three in front of Mark, three card monte style, and said that Mark could pick one. If he picked a land, he would have to go elbow drop Parke. If he did not, Lachmann would.
Mark picked a card.
Basic Island.
Lachmann turned over all three cards to reveal
Island, Forest, and Crumbling Necropolis.
Mark knew he had been beat. The action moved to the bedroom.
Mark stretched a little, then warmed up his elbow. He leapt high into the air and came crashing down on Jamie, but with an uncanny quickness, Jamie flipped over during Herberholz’s decent and caught him in midair. With cat-like reflexes, he inverted Mark’s kick and proceeded to flip Mark completely through 360 degrees, throwing him into a wall, at which point he leapt off the bed and onto Mark, and began wrestling with him.
Now, I am sure those of you with the Jamie Parke Pin-Up Calendar are aware that Jamie is rare physical specimen, but Mark is no slouch either, and the wrestling match was intense. Mark was pretty drunk, but his tolerance for pain seemed to have improved. It also worked to his advantage that he was the only one resorting to cheap shots, and his opponent was asleep at the beginning of the match.
The battle raged on for 20 minutes, and it looked like Mark was a goner. Jamie was playing with his prey at this point, toying with him and beginning to taunt him. I just could not stand for this. Mark is my homey, and I am not about to stand by as some upstart kart with no heart pummels him. I snuck up behind Jamie and immediately locked both of his arms behind his back, hooking them as I threw my weight against him hard enough to knock him over onto the bed.
From there I locked my legs around each of his legs, and essentially completely destroyed his ability to use his legs or arms in any meaningful manner. I am usually a peaceful man, but I learned a thing or two in my ill-spent youth.
Now that Jamie was completely pinned, Mark took this opportunity to start tapping Jamie in the face over and over. He made Jamie hit himself and he just kept tapping his face over and over, asking ‘why are you hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself?’
Jamie tried to escape, but was a bit dismayed to find that I am stronger than one might guess, and I had not been drinking. After much thrashing about, it became clear that two-on-one was probably not as interesting a fight as one might have imagined, I let him go, and things seem to die down for a minute… until Mark cheap-shotted him again, and the battle renewed.
Wait, Craig, you want me to write about Hawaii? Well, that’s game boys.
The plane to Hawaii was pretty insane. There were 84 people on it, and 51 were mages, at least that I recognized. Talk about a fun flight.
Hawaii is beautiful… What do you expect? It is always the perfect temperature, and everything is very pleasing to the eye. I have been here a few times before, so I am not doing all of the must-do things in Hawaii this time, but I assure you, a visit to the Big Island of Hawaii is well worth it if you ever find a way out here. Honolulu is just an incredible city itself. I could totally live here, if not for how far away it is from everywhere else.
The talk in town was that Jund was everywhere, but the numbers for the different archetypes don’t really do justice to how narrow this format is. The Top 4 decks are all really the same deck, more or less. The field is:
Four-Color Jund: 25 percent
Jund Control: 20 percent
Five-Color Cruel Control: 17 percent
Jund Aggro: 8 percent
Everything else was very minor in terms of appearances. Yeah, by my estimation there were about 120 people who did not play Bloodbraid Elf, and 280 or so that did. Isn’t it funny to think back a month ago when people said that Bloodbraid Elf wasn’t that good?
The other decks of note in the format are the G/W Thornling deck the Japanese are running, the Sedraxis Specter aggro deck, and a couple of Esper decks (one aggro, one control).
I am interested to see what decks will emerge from the top of the standings, but all in all I really like the Five-Color deck that we played. We are great against Jund aggro, Jund Control, Specter, and Four-Color, as well as G/W, though Esper is our worst matchup among popular decks.
I defeated my first three opponents, playing three very different Jund decks, before dropping a match to a Cascade mirror and a match to Esper control. The Esper Control match was interesting in that I have rarely in my life been so blown out. I mulliganed and was already down a game from a game 1, where I kept a two-land hand at five cards and did not get there.
Game 2, I know he has Hindering Light, but my hand has three Blightnings, so I have to start somewhere. In retrospect, perhaps I should not have even boarded them in, though they seem good when I play them, they are just risky. Anyway, I Blightning into Hindering Light.
He plays a Borderpost and a Knight of the White Orchid. I Blightning again and he discards Sphinx of the Steel Wind and Hindering Light. I am pretty sure I am kold at this point. He Path to Exiles his Knight, putting him at six mana. He Sphinx Summoners for a Sharuum the Hegemon and passes. I still have only three land in play and can only muster a main phase Esper Charm, looking for a fourth land.
On his turn, he play Identity Crisis and… well, that’s game boys.
Okay, to get you up to speed on the apparently hip new lingo, I present to you the greatest achievement of Steve Sadin year. The way it works, you defeat an opponent, perhaps in a draft, perhaps in a PTQ, perhaps in playtesting. Then at the end of the game, when your opponent shows you the card he could cast because he was mana screwed, or reveals the top card and it was good or some such, you show him your hand full of cards and remind him ‘I still had all these!‘
This usually works best when done to friends that are mana screwed against you. Send them a message…
I suppose I should talk a little specific Magic strategy regarding our deck choice, as Block is a cool format that people seem to enjoy online, even if it is not going to be a PTQ format.
The way this deck works is that it uses Cascade as draw engine, quickly cascading through the library and casting all of the Esper Charms for fuel and defending with Walls and Pulses. The Walls are especially important as they essentially remove your opponent’s best creature each turn, but have a number of other great interactions.
First of all, you can cascade into a board where your opponent doesn’t have much. The Wall stops what he does have, but upgrades when he does. Next, there is the synergy between Caldera Hellion and Wall of Denial, though Ajani profits from the deal as well. The Wall is ideal for proactively stopping Haste creatures, and is one of the best answers to Thrinax, Specter, Uril, and so on.
It is kind of strange, but I am working on the record for most consecutive Pro Tours with Walls in my decks. Wall of Roots, Plumeveil (yeah, I know it is not a Wall… Defender, ok?), Wall of Reverence, and now Wall of Denial. I don’t know what I am playing in Austin, but I assume it will involve Walls.
We are very serious about our cascades not missing, so we usually don’t Bloodbraid into an empty board except against control decks. If you think of it as a Flametongue Kavu that Esper Charms 30 percent of the time, you will get much more value out of it. Keep in mind that is just for this block deck, Bloodbraid Elf is obviously very different, depending on what format and what you are cascading into.
The Kathari Remnant caught a ton of people by surprise, but he deceptively good, and much better than Captured Sunlight in my opinion. First of all, he usually prevents much more than four damage, and is a great answer to Uril, Rafiq, or Sphinx of Steel Wind. Sure sure, they have Terminates etc, but what are they going to do? Not sideboard them out? I have no problem at all with people using removal on my Remnant, as it is rather like Terminating an Elvish Visionary.
Some people ridicule his small stats, but the key is that he is a bit of an Icy Manipulator, but one that draws a card, often killing another creature or straight up drawing two more cards. I think that this card should cross over into Standard, as he is just sweet. Would I play Bloodbraid Elf if he was 0-1? Yeah, yeah I would. The times you pump up the Remnant and attack (a.k.a. the big bird plan) are just gravy.
The Ajani’s are not the best cards in the deck, but are fine answers to other Ajani, plus they are additional ways to win. Keep in mind that he has a tendency to die rather quickly, so usually the best thing to do is Helix immediately.
The Bituminous Blasts are important for combating Jund and GW, or we would love to be hosers and main deck the Deny Realities. Caldera Hellion replaced the Jund Charms we used to have, as we wanted a sweeper that didn’t mess up our cascades, plus he is actually a solid victory condition, thanks to eating Walls or Birds. It is also not irrelevant that you can get him back with Cruel Ultimatum.
Traumatic Visions is kind of wild, but is actually the secret to making control work in this format. It fixes your mana, provides countermagic that doesn’t mess up the cascade chain, and is just generally a surprisingly solid card. It is so sweet that we essentially have 30 land in our deck, but don’t get flooded quite as bad. It is also nice that with 10 basics and 4 Visions, we tend to not get wrecked as bad by Anathemancer. Besides, when one person has Counterspells, and the other doesn’t, who do you think is resolving their Cruel Ultimatum?
The end game features three Cruel Ultimatums, as it is just so vital in order to actually get far enough ahead to win. We kind of wanted a fourth, which is where the Obelisk of Alara came from. Better to not have the same name, for the purposes of Thought Hemorrhage. Nicol Bolas is cool to, though I did not play it on account of a million Celestial Purges in the field.
To tell you something about this format, even Gerry Thompson played Cruel Ultimatum. When few people have any counterspells, it is just one of the best things you can be doing.
The most interesting aspect of the sideboard is the plan against control. In the mirror, you take out Pulses, Walls, the Purge, and a Hellion, bringing in 4 Blightning, 4 Deny Reality, the Scepter, and the Ajani. The idea is that you just start Cascading, and every spell is a Blightning. You use Esper Charm as Blightning also, and essentially Stupor them on turns 3, 4, 5 and 6, destroying their hand and leaving them without seven mana to Cruel you, even if they draw it. I think this plan is far superior to the Thought Hemorrhage plan, but we will see how it pans out.
The rest of the sideboard is okay, though I could see cutting Infest and Scepter or Ajani for two more Pridemages. It is hard to say if Esper will gain in popularity, but I suspect it will.
Anyway, I’ve gotta get some sleep and get ready for tomorrow. I will be back with the exciting conclusion next week. The agenda for this week is Next Level Magic. The finally formatting of the eBook is taking place as we speak, and details for the launch will be available very soon. I am excited!
Support the cause, purchase a real copy of Next Level Magic, as the type of player who would steal a guide this useful and profitable to read is not the type of person who will actually get that much value of out it anyway. Obviously I would say that, but in this case, it is very true.
Anyway, continue to wish me retroactive luck, and see you soon.
Patrick Chapin
‘The Innovator’