Twelve hundred and thirty people at Grand Prix: Chicago. I think that speaks for itself.
Until next week…
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[Nice try, Doug — Craig.]
(Okay, Craig, okay…)
I’m driving back to Bloomington right now, listening to some Girl Talk and still decompressing the weekend. I’m impressed with the turnout at the GP, especially with the economy the way it is. I hypothesized with a fellow SCG writer whose name might rhyme with Bephen Brenendian that the turnout would actually be lower than the last Legacy GP, due to the general economic state of the country and card access issues. I’m glad we were wrong. Maybe the size of the GP is more due to it being in the Midwest than the format, as The Crossroads of America has often been the site of record-breaking turnouts to Magic events. I’d like to think that our format has something to do with it, though; I met several Europeans who came to Chicago just to play some cards, an admirable devotion to Legacy!
I wish I had a stellar story about how I took down the GP, or at least made money, but I went Hurloon Minotaur (2-3!) and dropped from the event. It was a combination of lack of playtesting and losing my spirit for the event that eventually took me out. I came to Chicago with my girlfriend and we stayed with one of her friends, and after the fourth round and looking at two losses, I wanted to lose quickly if I was going to lose so I could still have some fun that night. My fifth round opponent, Ben Carp, obliged and killed me with Goblins. Here’s what I played:
Creatures (13)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 3 Eternal Witness
- 1 Tarmogoyf
- 2 Kitchen Finks
- 1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
- 2 Glen Elendra Archmage
Lands (24)
Spells (23)
- 3 Sensei's Divining Top
- 1 Chainer's Edict
- 1 Regrowth
- 2 Smother
- 3 Gifts Ungiven
- 1 Haunting Echoes
- 3 Cabal Therapy
- 4 Pernicious Deed
- 1 Krosan Grip
- 1 Damnation
- 2 Profane Command
- 1 Thoughtseize
Sideboard
I’m calling it Gifts Rock, but if you want to be clever, you could call it Tap Out Control, Persist Rock, or Sophie’s Choice (due to all the tough decisions you give the opponent). I suggest none of these. I designed the deck to basically get to 4 mana and then start casting the best spells in Legacy. I tried Four-Color with White, but I wasn’t too thrilled about the mana, and White gave me just Swords to Plowshares and Vindicate. Here are some design notes:
– The deck was built to be highly resistant to Counterbalance, which explains the low Tarmogoyf count, for example. Pernicious Deed and Profane Command do a number on Counterbalance, either wiping it away or just ignoring it.
– Glen Elendra Archmage is unreal. The problem with traditional Rock decks is that they establish control in the midgame and then still lose to topdecked bombs like Armageddon or Fact or Fiction or Crucible of Worlds. The Archmage bulwarks against those problems and was directly responsible for my 2-1 victory against Boros, stopping the burn spells for long enough to stabilize.
– I’m unsure of whether Birds are necessary. They could be Three Visits, Search for Tomorrow, Thoughtseize, Wall of Roots or Tarmogoyf. It needs to be functionally something that accelerates you into more mana or slows the game down.
– An explanation for Oona is necessary. The deck leans on the graveyard a bit, so I wanted something in the maindeck that could work around something like a Leyline in play. Eventually, the Factories combined with creatures made graveyard hate irrelevant, as I could just race it. I admit to being tied to wanting something like Oona to be cute. It 100% should have been Worm Harvest. The deck wants to make a resolved Gifts into a game win, and getting Worm Harvest and three lands, or three other crazy spells like Echoes, Witness and Profane Command, will end a control standoff. I was forced into positions where an opponent could ride their Factory and hold off my Smothers with their Counterbalances. A Worm Harvest would have made for an entirely different game. I can think of three separate games where a Worm Harvest would have won the game.
– I have Cranial Extraction on the sideboard for the combo match. I was also considering Negate and Lifeforce (seriously) against Ad Nauseam decks. The problem with that match is that your discard will stop them initially, but they can and do still find their Ad Nauseam and kill you. Extracting Tendrils of Agony or countering the Ad Nauseam was the only way to really stop that.
– Although the deck still needed some work, I am proud of the sideboard and that there were no dead cards and enough cards to bring in during every matchup. I’m considering Dominate to Annex Mishra’s Factory or take Dreadnoughts or Tarmogoyfs, but that still may be too cute and the board doesn’t exactly have the room for it. Diabolic Edicts are necessary to stop Tombstalkers and act as more creature removal, so I can’t really cut those to make space.
– The deck has some problems with Standstills, since you have to break them and can’t really fight well under them. I’m considering cutting the Volrath’s Stronghold for a third Factory. Swapping Birds for Thoughtseize would also go a long way to taking the punch out of Standstill.
In summation, I liked the deck and with a few changes, I think it would have performed better for me. I’ll be playing it at Legacy events in the future and hopefully bringing you good news of that.
The tournament was a blast, and the promo Chrome Mox looked cool and helped pay for my entry, so that’s pretty nice of Wizards to do. There were Vintage events on Sunday, but being in Chicago, I wanted to see the Art Institute. Alas, their modern and contemporary sections, the reasons for my visit, were closed for renovation. What a bummer! I also had to endure people taking pictures of the paintings with their cameras, which annoys me to no end and also sounds like a really bourgeois complaint. I did get to pop in through IKEA and buy more champagne flutes, so all was not lost.
I’m digging the Top 8 of the event. We’ve got several different decks, some old and some new. Nothing repping Natural Order for Progenitus made the playoffs, but lots of people died to it this weekend (don’t worry, there’s a Facebook group for you). Legacy’s premiere threat, Tarmogoyf, shows up in a full six of eight decks. Make of this what you will; I think it’s unfortunate, but not banworthy by any means. I’m also psyched that Brian Six did so well, as he told me before the event that he had to run what he did because of card access issues. I’m happy to see his excellent performance. I suggested the Ethersworn Canonists on the sideboard over Gaddok Teeg, so if they ever came in handy, I think it’d be appropriate to cut me a check. He gave me an epic shout-out in the player profile write-up though, so maybe I should be writing him a check. Speaking of sideboards, did you see Nassif’s? The singleton domination really pleases me, and I’m wondering whether he had a reason to do that or just felt like mixing things up for fun.
I dig the Green/Black decks, as they remind us that Hymn To Tourach is still a game-winner, if you didn’t catch that from Pikula’s finish at GP: Philly and Owen Turtenwald finish at GP: Columbus. It’s a perhaps-underplayed card in Legacy, and it is best powered by the also-present Dark Rituals. The window of opportunity created by Hymn opens up a lot of space for quick creature beats It’s nice to see Dragon Stompy/All-In Red/Ancient Tomb Red in the Top 8 as well, showing that corner strategies can pay off. I predicted a Faeries deck in the Top 16, so hopefully we’ll get a write-up from Wizards to see if I’m right or not.
Regarding the end of the event, I’m glad to see Andy Probasco making it to the finals. Andy is not only one of the nicest guys I know, but also technically near-perfect in his play. As this is going to print, all I know is the end result, and I’m looking forward to reading play-by-plays as much as anyone else.
On the other hand, it was a Counterbalance mirror final, capping off a whole weekend of the enchantment. The numbers from Day 2 show at least 20% of the field on the spell, and the interview with prominent players saying nearly unanimously that the card was the best two-drop is telling. There will be Chicken Littles calling for the banning of Counterbalance or Top and ostriches in the sand, saying that bannings would be lunacy. I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, and I trust that the DCI will make the right decision.
As a Midwesterner, I can only hope that Wizards and independent TOs bring more Legacy events to the region, so I can play Legacy without having to travel far and then write articles about it…
Until next week…
(This time for realsies.)