With the rest of the U.S. having had a nice long head start on the Extended qualifier season, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to analyze and playtest… but not actually take a weapon of my choosing into battle at the PTQ level. With a certain irony following last week’s article, I sleeved up Faeries with zero sideboard cards pinpointed at Affinity, neither playing the robotic overlords nor caring over-much if I faced the matchup. With the amount of discussion I gave it last week, you’d think I’d at least carry some copies of Hurkyl’s Recall, but I was content with the matchup without having to resort to narrow sideboard cards.
Having playtested and worked on the deck for over a month now, I brought the following to this past weekend’s PTQ in Edison, New Jersey:
Creatures (14)
Lands (25)
Spells (21)
Sideboard
Some people like to laugh at me for playing Ponder in Extended; I like to laugh at them for being so closed-minded at the benefits of the card in a deck with Islands. Unfortunately, these two opinions are generally unhelpful and don’t resolve well against each other; either you’ve tried it and realized it was good at improving your early-game draw consistency, or you’ve laughed at it and said the card is trash and it’s no wonder I’m not Premium. (Cold, indeed, yes… I know.) In essence this is my update to the Japanese lists from Worlds, which in this case largely means tweaking the mana-base and adding Ponder… not every deck requires major surgery after all. My main decks I didn’t want to see all played Rite of Flame, as the matchups I’m least happy to call myself “prepared for” are All-In Red and Storm Combo. Aggressive decks were overall ones I felt reasonably prepared to face, even against Affinity, though if I was going to face all Affinity all the time I would certainly want some Recalls.
Round 1 — Bernie Parisi, Bant Aggro
For my first round, I got to play against the new Bant aggro deck, not quite remembering just what it did and thinking it was some sort of odd “scrub” deck. Somewhere in the middle of the first game, as I was losing the first game, it started coming back to me that maybe I’d seen something like this before, as I was getting outclassed by a Rhox War Monk and friends. At least somewhat more aware of what was going on, and thus more right-headed as to where this was going to end up, I settled in to try and win the next two instead of just kicking myself for the fact that I never actually got around to playtesting this emergent archetype against anything.
Out of the sideboard, I brought in the fourth copy of Engineered Explosives and two Threads of Disloyalty, thinking they might be huge on a Tarmogoyf or at the worst let me steal Gaddock Teeg and change the rules of the game to “no attacking or I get to play Explosives”. The second game was likewise challenging, with an interesting back-and-forth: I set up the early game with countermagic on Bernie’s first play and some back-and-forth over the early creature drops, starting to get in for damage with Vendilion Clique only to have most of that hard work undone by his mounting pressure of Rhox War Monk plus friend. Umezawa’s Jitte on my side of the table helps me to maintain control, carefully moderating exactly how much damage I am allowing myself to take as his life total climbs but I trade life points for eventual control of the game. With two counters still on my Jitte, I end up going to one life before reversing the trend with a Sower of Temptation for that troublesome War Monk, and as Bernie’s ability to get anywhere relevant at all disappeared he conceded the second after climbing back up to eighteen life from his previous five, to make sure he had a chance of winning the match still.
For the third, we had a downright lopsided game. Where in the first game it was lopsided in his favor because I wasn’t really aware of what his plans were, in this game it was lopsided because he didn’t really do much of anything interesting, just played a Teeg and a Troll Ascetic then ran into a Jitte disparity again. Slowly but surely a Spellstutter Sprite was getting in for one at a time, building up counters, and Teeg was taken with Threads to keep the opponent at “attack and I get to cast Explosives”. Ultimately it didn’t matter; the game was well in hand from the first few turns, and that is the worst position for an aggro deck to be in against Faeries, so an end-of-turn Vendilion Clique led to one attack without Jitte counters then a lethal attack with them, in my first ever playtesting session against the Bant Aggro deck.
Record: 1-0 (2-1)
Round 2 — Brandon Butch, Gifts Rock
If ever there was a grinding, grueling game of Magic… this was it. This opinion may be blowing things entirely out of perspective, but when you’re not entirely sure if you actually slept the night before, it’s much easier to look at something that actually taxes your mental resources and think it was absolutely grueling. The first relevant play was Vendilion Clique to see a quite well-stacked hand of two Engineered Explosives, Tarmogoyf, Loxodon Hierarch, Kitchen Finks, and Slaughter Pact, plus a Gifts Ungiven that I felt would get out of hand if I left it be. Early beatdown on my part led to Hierarch on his part and stabilization, as he tries to time his removal around my Riptide Laboratory as well as he can. Control of the game shifts back and forth, with early damage turning away from me as that first Hierarch becomes two, but coming back my way again with some card drawing and Umezawa’s Jitte as always. For a brief while it comes down to racing, me trying to get Jitte counters as fast as possible to halt the incoming combat issues, which eventually leads to stabilization as we settle into the middle of the game. The Jitte is destroyed by Engineered Explosives and we settle into “fair” for a while, as my life total hovers around ten or so and his begins the slow crawl back down from twenty (again).
Unfortunately, in the middle of this game Gifts Ungiven resolves, which is known to be dastardly and dangerous on the rest of the game’s outcome, and thus things get grueling if I want to win still. Gifts for Loam, Ghost Quarter, Academy Ruins and Eternal Witness. Thankfully he’s limited to just two green a turn so far, so I’m able to keep him under control as I’m using Lab and Sprite to contain Loam, knowing full well that the moment he resolves it once it goes crazy for the rest of the game, starting on Riptide Laboratory and then on me as control spirals entirely away from me. For the next few turns he casts and then dredges Loam repeatedly as I start to settle into a winning position, and one of those turns I am able to use Spell Snare to avoid having to pay as much mana as I have been, letting me resolve Sower of Temptation on one of his just-made Worm Harvest tokens to swing the board more in my favor but still counter the Loam that turn, which a little bit further down the line leads to my being able to stabilize at two life instead of having to make bad blocks just to survive.
The second game is nowhere near as epic; he gets stuck on action while I mulliganed into a solid hand, and was able to Clique him to see that he had just a Kitchen Finks and two Gifts Ungiven for action. I stick one under with the Clique, and just push him aggressively so that he can’t capitalize on a Gifts package in enough time, being the beatdown pretty much unexpectedly but closing the match out 2-0 regardless.
Record: 2-0 (4-1)
With a fast match win, I’m able to run out and get lunch from Subway’s thanks to the fact that the short game two left me fifteen minutes till the end of the round. When playing a sluggish Blue control deck, lunch is key to pick up whenever you accidentally get a chance… this is after all why Mike Flores chose to play Naya Burn instead,
Round 3 — Billy Walmsley, Affinity
Considering I’d just written an article about Affinity being popular and then proceeded to pick a deck they tend to consider a reasonably good matchup, with no sideboard cards of note against them, this is something of a telling matchup here. It is also kind of the start of some magical oddness going my way, as opponents for the next few rounds seemed to get unreasonably bad beats or make some seriously bad calls. For the first game, I lose the die roll but Billy keeps a hand that has him stuck on one land and a Springleaf Drum, which allows him to deploy double Frogmite on turn two when he follows up with Arcbound Worker but otherwise presents no relevant action or further motion. I take beats for one turn, and on turn three pop Engineered Explosives for one to leave him with Ancient Den + double Frogmite, putting a +1/+1 counter on one of his Froggies. I get attacked to 10 next, and cast Sower of Temptation on the larger frog, get attacked to eight since the Froggie is tapped, and then manage to pull out the win against an opponent who doesn’t play his second actual land until turn six or seven by attacking with whatever.
For the second game, he’s on the play and mulligans to a hand he’s clearly not happy with. He then plays a land and Springleaf Drum, followed next turn by a second land and two more Springleaf Drums. For the third turn, he casts Thoughtcast after playing an Ornithopter to go with his Drums, and has left me three whole turns unmolested. In these turns I have managed to obtain complete control, and when he starts actually playing permanents that matter, I either counter them or steal them. If you want to play Affinity, you have to keep better hands than that.
Record: 3-0 (6-1)
Round 4 — Joshua Vitullo, Domain Zoo
Game 1 I am fortunate enough to win the die roll, which makes a considerable difference. The “what is going on?” issue continues to rear its head from before, as unless I am mis-remembering, Josh leads with a fetch-land and says go, and I have a counter for his turn-two play. His next play is a Kird Ape, which then attacks and hits for 6 thanks to Gaea’s Might and is followed up with another one-drop, which on my turn leads to Engineered Explosives that is popped during combat while I am at what feels like a healthy thirteen life still.
Two Tribal Flames in his second main phase later and this hefty lead doesn’t feel so hefty anymore, but he’s essentially out of cards and I have firm control of the game even if I’m not at a lot of life. He saves up cards while I hit him for minimal damage with creatures, but minimal damage is still relevant when the opponent is starting to take damage from 11 instead of 20. When he finally tries to overload my mana and/or counters for the turn, he hasn’t drawn nearly enough burn for it to matter, so I win the first game from that same three life.
For the second game, I sideboard in four Threads of Disloyalty, and seeing his turn two Tarmogoyf I’m wagering he just didn’t expect those to still be in vogue. Regardless, I stop playing lands after two, and lose the game accordingly… the third land was a game-winner, turning on two Threads in-hand, but as-is we shuffle up again for a very odd third game.
The third game was again an odd one, as Josh had some early pressure but I was able to keep up from early on with countermagic and removal, trading a little bit of life for time with the only relevant threat left in play being a Mogg Fanatic. Meanwhile Josh has been playing a fetchland and sacking it pretty much every turn, and has no action left in hand with me at about twelve or so and me starting to get my action on. I end up at six but with a Jitte with counters on it, his Mogg Fanatic gone and several pieces of countermagic in my hand. He plays a Duergar Hedge-Mage to destroy my Jitte and can even pay for a Mana Leak, and I decided it wasn’t worth spending both my Mana Leaks on it, instead trying to maintain control against another spell… so I kill it with Jitte instead and take another turn or two overall to kill him, which seemed irrelevant with my controlling board position. In retrospect, countering it with two Mana Leaks would have left him tapped out after paying for the first, so it was probably better to Leak it twice and just untap and kill him with the two Jitte counters and the surprise addition of three more damage from the end-of-turn Vendilion Clique that followed.
This missed on-table kill is clear sign #1 that my tiredness is starting to creep in, but thankfully for the rubber game I got an oddity where my opponent played out all eight of his dual lands that game by sacking fetchlands every turn.
Record: 4-0 (8-2)
Round 5 — Jacob Rabinowitz, U/b Faeries
For the fifth round, I run into the Faerie mirror for the first time, but my opponent is nice enough to confide in me the fact that he was given the deck for the first time this morning after three years without playing Constructed Magic, so the chances are decent that I know the matchup better than he does. Claiming to know the matchup is all well and good, but actually putting that knowledge to work is a difficult one, and I feel somehow as if I mis-timed my effects going into this game but really it just comes down to the fact that a turn-one Ancestral Visions only gives me so much time to try and work around stopping him from resolving it. I thought I would have enough time to play Vendilion Clique with my own Spell Snare backup, untap and prepare for his spell, but really it doesn’t work that way and the Clique faces countermagic and gets Leaked. From there, and his draw allowed for the powerful Spell Snare to win the counter war on turn five. Fighting the war at least gives me a window to resolve Glen Elendra Archmage, and we start to grind down on his advantage by reaching parity from there as I stabilize the board when my second Vendilion Clique hits for value and we grind into the long game while I run through some Archmages and he presents an Archmage or two of his own.
Ultimately, the long-game turns into Jitte recursion on my part, using Academy Ruins to try and sneak it into play after using it to destroy his copy, and with his hand sorely depleted and no Riptide Laboratory to extend his action further I felt pretty solid about it. Unfortunately, the race math changed just enough thanks to a Spell Snare when I’d finally run him out of Archmages, that I was faced with the prospect of trading my one Mutavault for his copy and having Jitte for the Sower that was attacking, leaving us both with no creatures or man-lands and me with a Spell Snare in hand as the only relevant action. I’d felt I could get a better trade if I waited one turn, to make a better decision off of that extra card’s worth of information, but unfortunately ran out of time and was forced to make the poor trade just to pretend I could even stabilize in the first place. Without having drawn another creature, no good came of this, and the first game was his when I had thought I had a dominant position if I could just not run out of life points first.
After sideboarding we’re both playing the Bitterblossom game, but I lead with Visions/Blossom while he leads with Spell Snare/Blossom. While I might have wished to have my Bitterblossom in play, the extra three cards won me the game pretty critically, as I was able to test-spell with another Bitterblossom (which ate another Spell Snare) and resolve Umezawa’s Jitte instead, the card I actually wanted to resolve. Bitterblossom vs. Jitte is not a fair fight for the Tribal Enchantment, as Jacob quickly found out… quickly being a key word, thankfully, as Game One was a bit of a marathoner.
Unfortunately, just under ten minutes for the third game doesn’t actually let us resolve it, what was looking like a game that was swinging quickly into his favor still wasn’t going to end with both of us firmly at fifteen or higher when time was called.
Record: 4-0-1 (9-3-1)
This is the first time in quite a while that a match of mine has actually gone to time, but it’s not like I was going to concede Game One just because it was going long when I felt very strongly that the game was in my favor, and any creature spell or better yet a second Mutavault would have cemented my position firmly in the win column. I try to be friendly now that we’re no longer trying to murder each other and pointed out that his dramatic slow pile-shuffling to count my deck at the start of the match might have been where he could have found the extra time he used, seeing how I double pile-shuffled in an obviously random pattern before I even gave my deck to him, but he said he’d been burned by a cheater pretty dramatically a few years back and insists on this even if people seem friendly and nice. In the end, it turned a probable win for him into a draw instead, and kept me alive a little bit longer so it wasn’t like I complained too hard, as I was just offering advice on how not to draw matches very often. (Zac Hill apparently has something to say about this as well, so it’s not like it’s bad advice to decide which is more important to you, over-shuffling every opponent’s deck or finishing your match on time.)
Round 6 — Rob Vaught, Plasma Swans
This is an interesting but lopsided matchup, as basically played out here in living color. My life total is either twenty or dead as far as his combo is concerned, and the secondary plan of attacking with Swans of Bryn Argoll is interesting but unlikely to get much of anywhere. Rob and I trade back and forth in the early game and I sneak in a Vendilion Clique on the second try, the first having been countered with Mana Leak and the third waiting ready in my hand should this one disappear. I saw two Thirsts, two Snares, Condescend, Chain of Plasma and Swans of Bryn Argoll, obviously putting the Swans under, and the Clique eats a Chain, turning on the third copy in my hand (and eating up his Thirst mana for that turn to boot). His life total begins to decrease in three-point increments but he surprises me by dropping Blood Moon into play, which with my two Islands and numerous nonbasic Mountains complicates my lines of play going forward from here as a turn later he also resolves a Swans that doesn’t really matter.
We start racing, and I start trading Faeries for Ancestral Recalls to get myself another Snow-Covered Island; eventually I draw one and start playing spells again, without fear of a Chain that I couldn’t counter with my Spell Snares, and then things go poorly for him. He finally plays his Condescend to counter my Glen Elendra Archmage, tapping out to do so, and I play Sower of Temptation to steal his Swans of Bryn Argoll, confident in the fact that with just Mountains and Islands (and no Breeding Pools like one of those tapped lands actually was) he couldn’t Firespout or Explosives for enough to matter, leaving him with just Chain of Plasma as an answer to the Swans and/or Sower.
Conveniently, this Sower happened with him at four and my Spellstutter Sprite attacking brought him to three, making “Chain of Plasma targeting something I control” a losing proposition. He untaps and casts his Chain anyway at the Swans, and I get to explain to him that no, really, this was not going to end as happily for him as he thought, if I control the creature being targeted. He concedes before I can draw twenty and dome him to death with his own spell. This seems like the most realistic response anyway.
The second game is just as awesome for me; I was doing absolutely nothing at all, just countering his spells and waiting on Ancestral Visions to resolve, when he decides to get aggressive in his spellcasting instead of waiting around forever… we saw how well that worked the previous game, after all. He plays a turn-five Swans, I cast Mana Leak; he taps that last Island for Spell Snare, which I have a Spellstutter Sprite for. He casts Pact of Negation to win the counter-war, which gives me a turn of him tapped out before I have to worry about responses… which means I responded with Sower of Temptation and had six power instead of zero, and free reign to untap first.
Second verse, same as the first.
Record: 5-0-1 (11-3-1)
Round 7 — Andrew Talaga, Affinity
Deeper into the tournament, we find a competent opponent who won’t keep terrible hands when he should mulligan… and also one who doesn’t waste the fact that he won the die-roll, like my round three opponent. It’s a matchup I’m comfortable with coming out with a win as-is on the play, but on the draw I am really under pressure to have just the right cards early in the game if I want to survive before the clock ticks down from 20.
I don’t know what I am playing against, but see an opening hand of Mutavault, Riptide Laboratory, Breeding Pool, Vendilion Clique, Spell Snare, Sower of Temptation and Engineered Explosives, which I consider a reasonable-to-awesome hand, presuming I draw a second Blue source by turn three. I lead with an untapped Breeding Pool after he has land plus Arcbound Worker, keeping up Spell Snare mana. He assumes I have it and apparently works around this fact for turn two, playing a second land and attacking then following up with Thoughtcast instead of Ravager or Plating, which is overall fine for me. On turn three I play my third land, still no Blue in sight, and he plays a Frogmite off the top and keeps his Worker back from running into my Mutavault. Somehow overconfident in the idea that he ‘just doesn’t have’ the two-drop, and still with no second Blue source, I conned myself into playing Ancestral Vision rather than keeping untapped still, and unsurprisingly this opens the floodgates of damage: Cranial Plating comes down and equips to that Frogmite, which I block with Mutavault, and he plays an Ornithopter as well. On the next turn he attacks me for 11, which was kind of sort of my life total.
Unfortunately, I somehow decided he was worse than he was and that he actually just didn’t have the two, not that he was playing around the Spell Snare. I’d missed the fact that an untapped dual gave away information that broadcast “I Have Spell Snare”, since I have so few duals in my deck at all this just hasn’t come up before since Dissension was legal in Standard. Patience might have been rewarded, but impatience certainly paid a terrible price and for literally no gain.
The second game is the “more traditional” Affinity game; I’m on the play, so I’ve sided out a Visions for the fourth Engineered Explosives and shaved expensive spells to make room for a pair of Threads of Disloyalty just to have something more proactive to do, in efforts to contain his most dangerous cards, Atog and Ravager. I’m on the play, so I get to win, recruiting his creatures to my side of the table and fending off his best cards. He gets Plating active again but I’m able to contain it after another eleven-point swing, which thankfully this time didn’t take me to zero, and lock the game up with Sowers and a Jitte again to start cracking back pretty mightily.
For the third game, I keep a weak hand that I consider pretty slow, but which has two turns to draw a turn-two play or Ponder; I wanted a Mana Leak or Spell Snare pronto but would otherwise be playing turn-three Threads, turn-four Sower. Instead I played nothing on turns one or two while he played Worker, Ravager, cast Cranial Plating and attack for ten. I could Threads something turn three to get it off the table, but the remaining cards on the board kill me right off, so the Sower in hand to follow up with just does nothing.
I made a bad keep, and arguably set myself up for this problem by not sideboarding any anti-Affinity cards to deal with this, instead relying on a loose sideboard card (who expects Threads of Disloyalty coming in from the sideboard, when you’re playing Affinity?) that just happened to be better than Ancestral Visions being in your deck when you are on the draw. In essence I lost because I made a bad keep that didn’t do anything before turn three, and died because of it; even on the play, while that would have worked out it wouldn’t have been great, so there’s nothing to say other than that I should have mulliganed, figured it was true at the time, and died accordingly.
Record: 5-1-1 (12-5-1)
Round 8 — Randolph Arends, Loam Rock
It’s round eight of eight and I’m paired with another 5-1-1, and after a quick exchange we both come to note that my tiebreakers are higher but even such notions as “I don’t actually care about the packs” phrased however is needed to make sure I am saying such legally doesn’t quite convince either of us that after seven grueling hours, either of us are going to just roll over. My chances are a ‘definitely maybe’ with a win, while his are practically a given at ‘no’ regardless, but percentage points shift and you definitely can’t make Top 8 if you concede.
Randy has the misfortune of double-mulliganing into a weak hand on the play, basically just lands and Raven’s Crime and maybe a Kitchen Finks if I recall correctly. I play turn-one Ancestral Vision if I recall correctly, letting him discard my hand pretty low and just keeping relevant spells and more importantly lands, knowing he can strip me of most relevant resources but that Vision will bring me right back into the game. I have a Mana Leak for his one creature, and we settle in for a very slow beating indeed as a Mutavault picks up by its lonesome what a Vendilion Clique had started. One Life from the Loam and Randy is back in this, but instead he draws nothing and dies.
This more or less killed him right there; three straight “unkeepable” hands, the third of which he felt forced to keep because the prospect of going to four left him with the feeling that he would be lucky to even get something close to playable. His heart wasn’t in it and I capitalized, again proffering the fact that I would be happy to open prize-split negotiations after a concession to me, this time with a win-win in mind: either he concedes (highly unlikely, but 100% chance of match-win!) or he doesn’t concede but is sorely tempted to, pushing him deeper into his defeatist mindset (highly likely, and HIGH chance of match-win). I’m not usually one to manipulate my opponent, but when it is so clearly obvious that all it takes is a little verbal nudging to get him to give up the match and just die that little bit inside when that weak flame of victory goes out… well, if it’s clear that just a little bit of verbal manipulation will do that, and I can still even be a nice enough guy as I poke at him, I’m content to take it. I’m absolutely a fan of ethical play… and don’t consider simple psychology to be outside the realm of ethical play, I just usually consider it to be largely ineffective.
The spark dead in him, we shuffle up for the second game, this time with Extirpate on my side of things and some fine-tuning to my decklist to position myself properly, such as adding Bitterblossom so I can play something relevant turn two and not really worry about if my hand gets hit with Raven’s Crime. Randy mulligans again, keeping a better hand at least this time or so I guess, Raven’s Criming me as I go turn one Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom off of a fetchland into Watery Grave turn two. I discard two Glen Elendra Archmages first, really just hoping to draw a third land on turn three, which I do; he continues applying discard to my hand but it’s a hopeless cause from the get-go, with that Ancestral Vision coming in before he can truly expose me and with an Extirpate in my hand should Life from the Loam turn up to try and actually profit by so doing.
Randy flashes me an Extirpate when I Vendilion Clique him, showing that it was sided in to control my Glen Elendra Archmages while Persist was on the stack, ruefully noting that here he sideboarded this card in specifically for them and I was casually discarding them like they meant nothing at all to his Raven’s Crime. Stuck on two lands, they were the two least valuable cards and thus the first ditched… but Randy was a dead man walking from the first moment of the second game, and it’s a formality as I get Jitte online to go with that Bitterblossom after drawing three fresh cards, and another match in the bag. With good tiebreakers and word that even some of the really high-up players in the standings didn’t feel so comfortable trying to draw in, and playing it out instead, I felt I had a decent shot at the Top Eight… and, more importantly, I’d done everything I could control already, and stressing out over it wasn’t going to help with anything.
Record: 6-1-1 (14-5-1)
In the end, I came in tied for fifth place if I recall correctly, if by “tied for fifth” we mean “tenth.” My round-five opponent, Jacob, came in exactly eighth to sneak into the Top 8… and was somehow dismantled by Josh Ravitz in the Faeries ‘mirror’ (as if it counts when Josh plays such a different strategy for the mirror). So sneaking into eighth wouldn’t have quite satisfied me, given that I quite literally have never won a sanctioned match against Josh Ravitz in my lifetime, and doubt now is about the time when I might expect to start bucking that trend. Not when he’s bringing cards like Teferi to a game of knifey-spooney with me.
Going forward, the most interesting trend I noticed was that sometimes I was cutting into my Ponders to find room for sideboard cards… so as committed as I am to them game-one, and overall, I consider their exact number still included after sideboarding to be flexible, and open to negotiation. After sideboarding, I would always have either 4, 3, 2 or 0 Ponders in; I only had literally zero when playing against Loam decks, where I wanted most of my main-deck cards but also wanted to bring in Bitterblossom and Extirpate, and I never had just one Ponder left… either the sideboard card I wanted was more important, or there were other cards I valued and sideboarded out instead. Quite frequently I still had four in, especially if for example I was playing Affinity on the draw; I definitely wanted a turn-two play, and I definitely wanted zero Ancestral Vision in my deck after sideboarding, since I couldn’t afford to wait for them.
The most curious part of this trend was how as the day went on I sideboarded Ponder out less and less, suggesting I was still learning how I felt with the deck some and thus that I had some room to maneuver in what was important. Given the deck’s configuration, I’m sold on the belief that I don’t need four copies of Threads in the sideboard, and probably don’t need that fourth Engineered Explosives either… and I may want to actually shave some room for Hurkyl’s Recall, as I do actually need a high-impact spell against Affinity. It’s just explosive enough that I find it problematic to actually stay alive on the draw, which is not even something I can say about the Zoo matchup, which is arguably why I have four Threads in my sideboard in the first place.
I also found it curious that I would sideboard Bitterblossom in different matchups, but in different amounts and for different reasons. Against the mirror match was the only time I actually wanted four copies, to make sure I drew one and could even replace one later in the game, while against Rock-style decks or even combo-style decks I was bringing in three copies so that if I drew one I could have a solid permanent changing the speed and dynamic of the game… against Combo, giving me a threat every turn I didn’t have to tap mana for, since rarely would I ever want to use Mutavault for non-lethal damage, and against Rock-style decks just to give me a board presence that gained incremental advantage, which is their traditional key to victory.
Going forward, well… I had a good day, and you’d be surprised how many people really don’t beat Faeries in Extended but are tricking themselves into thinking they do. It’s also somewhat disappointing to play Magic for eight hours, only lose five games total, and still miss the Top Eight… but that’s Magic. I usually screw up more than one match a tournament, leaving me as a very consistent 6-2 after eight rounds, and this time I can only really point out one game that mattered (Game 3 against my second Affinity opponent) where I kept a weak hand… and there’s little reason to say that a mulligan against the nuts would have fared better, but it’s still a mistake if you know it’s a mistake when you’re making it, even if it may very well have not mattered in the end. I’m very happy with the list, thinking that maybe slight sideboard changes might be useful to tweak the numbers, so I want to go over my sideboarding in-and-out plans and make sure I need or really can benefit from as many slots as I seem to be spending on those cards, like how I don’t think I actually need all four Threads, and could sideboard just three and get away with it just fine. I’m also content that I more-or-less know what I am doing with it… after all, it is Faeries and I’ve been making a point of playing that deck for almost a year now, so some of the same lessons still apply. And that puts me above the learning curve for the area thanks to the fact that it is only Week One for NYC-area PTQs, but I’ve got a month of at least somewhat-effective testing behind my belt thanks to the fact that I need to keep up with events and test interesting things if I want to be able to say intelligent things when I write my article.
And there you go, guys… your moment of Zen has just appeared in the forums because of that last line.
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com