With summer officially upon us and a few key lessons learned, Block Constructed is the
buzzing format… and Valencia, Spain the fall vacation hotspot. It would seem that there
is still some life in the format, despite claims by some that a stagnant summer of Teferi
into Mystical Teachings was our lot. Tarmogoyfs by the bucketsful made the Top 8 in
Montreal, and not in the colors I expected. Where I’d presumed Red Goyf decks would
be the deal-breaker for many, it seems a quiet contingent of MTGO testers and innovators
wanted to feel the Thrill of the Hunt. Chasing that thrill put Celso Zampere Jr. through
the Top 8, and Paul Cheon out of the finals once again.
When testing beatdown decks, it seems, the crucial thing to remember is which beatdown
deck wins the beatdown mirror. In Montreal at least it seems that was the Green/White
decks, as detailed in the Professor’s Field Journal. Red cards go to the face quite
well, but a sufficiently threatening pressure from “reach-less” Tarmogoyf decks
seemed to have fared well enough. Mystic Enforcer is probably a key part of the situation
there, as is the fact that the powerful cycler Edge of Autumn is effectively free with
Flagstones of Trokair, and free damage is good damage. What the one lacks in burn it seems
to make up for in girth, casting four-mana Dragons that downed many a competitor this
weekend.
Summer is here, and I for one shall be focusing almost entirely upon Block Constructed
from now until infinity. Other than brief nods to formats of interest, such as this
weekend’s Pro Tour, we’ll be playing Block until August. My intention was to
hit a PTQ this weekend with a carload of fellow predators, but it seems StarCityGames.com
in Roanoke is still quite far from New York City. With the plan shifting instead to the
somewhat closer Richmond, my start for this season begins one week later, but still
significantly earlier than the first NYC qualifier. The old adage says that the early bird
gets the worm, and perhaps the early die-hard can find an edge just by earning more PTQ
experience than his fellow competitors. Learning the lessons of the weekend past is
important, however, and reading between the lines tells us that one key card made the
biggest difference to the Green-White decks.
Underrated? Sure. Unexpected? Definitely. Unreasonable? No. In a world where all
Tarmogoyfs are the same size, this is a two-Tarmogoyfs advantage. In a world where burn
spells deal three and early pressure means bears and Grey Ogres, this is a one-mana Time
Walk for tempo. In a world where Green and White is playable… the cheapest trick with
the best benefits keeps your men whole and attacking. Let us begin, then, by playing four
copies where others played far fewer.
4 Thrill of the Hunt
4 Edge of Autumn
4 Call of the Herd
4 Griffin Guide
1 Stonewood Invocation
4 Mire Boa
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Serra Avenger
4 Mystic Enforcer
3 Saffi Eriksdotter
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Llanowar Reborn
4 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Forest
4 Plains
Apparently poking cheeky fun at Craig leads to decks winning the Grand Prix, if one
wishes to lean on nonsensical and unrelated facts as if they were somehow related. In
honesty I’d have discussed the deck more last week if fellow Long Islander Jim Davis
was not the only reason I’d even heard of the deck at all. While I’m all about
busting out technology when I see the forerunners of a new wave, I still need to maintain
an ethical stance. A deck that is not mine is not mine to talk about, and one of
Jim’s testing group made Top 8 with said deck. Unless you were playing in Montreal
or the first week of PTQs, my need for silence on the matter has affected no one negatively
and done what it needed to do. I may not require congratulations for my ethical approach,
but I did just give myself a cookie. Nobody hears anything if you burn through
your playtest partners, and neither I nor you benefit from that particular end
result.
It would appear that Future Sight’s impact on Block Constructed is to provide us
with a threat so powerful and so efficient that even the polychromatic Blue control designs
feel the need to play Tarmogoyf. To any who didn’t pick up Tarmogoyfs online while
they were less than ten tickets, I’m sorry. While I knew the card was likely one of
the best in the set, in a set chock full of dual lands and amazingly powerful effects,
I’d underestimated online economics and didn’t see anything in the set
jumping into the double-digit values. Trust me, if I did I’d have bought dozens, and
would myself right now be rolling in the tickets instead of “just” owning a set
of four Tarmogoyfs.
With a card so good that literally every deck wants to play it, you’ll note that
the deck that seems to have played it best filled itself with cards that aided in beating
down or happened to incidentally do great things while they powered up Tarmogoyf. Edge of
Autumn was identified weeks ago as a great way to power Tarmogoyf, from a variety of
different test groups. Billy Moreno “BillyStorm” U/R deck played
Flagstones, Edge, and Tarmogoyf, a combination so potent together that they often negated
the need for the rest of his deck to do anything at all. Call of the Herd beats
down and pumps Tarmogoyf, all of these cards work smoothly together… and Mystic Enforcer
closes the deal as a cheap 6/6 Dragon with little more than the usual work going into
growing your Tarmogoyfs. One of the most interesting choices however seems to be Llanowar
Reborn, further advancing the Tarmogoyf technology war by “automatically”
making your Tarmogoyf bigger.
Any number of Tarmogoyf decks saw play, however, from the “standard” G/W to
the same splashing Fiery Justice and performing vicious beatings with Kavu Predator to more
unusual combinations still. Olivier Ruel made the Top 16 with what looks like an otherwise
normal Black control deck, just with Tarmogoyf as the end-game threat of choice for its
size per low, low cost. Blue-Green Tarmogoyf seems to have reinvigorated the faltering U/G
archetype, and you can apparently pick any speed of a deck from fast to slow and find a use
for Tarmogoyf in it.
There is, however, another powerful card from Future Sight that made its first ripple
in Constructed Magic here, finishing in the spotlight even if it did make it to
“just” number two. Some have said that Psychatog would have been “more
fair” as “just” a vanilla 5/6 creature for 1UB, which is to say just one
mana more expensive than many a Tarmogoyf. Those same theorists who feel ‘Tog would
have been more fair if more obviously broken might yet come to note that
Tombstalker is amazingly similar to their theoretical Psychatog… just with flying to
boot. A 5/5 for 1BB is not unreasonable to expect, and my original expectation for
Tombstalker was to find a home as a fast, defensible threat in Blue-based control decks.
Tombstalker rewards the early-game card drawing and card filtering that comes so naturally
to Blue decks, and builds its speed faster and faster for each additional counterspell
cast. Playing this monster and protecting him can be astoundingly easy, and his size per
cost ratio can be absolutely ridiculous when played in the right deck.
It seems that this fact was recognized by at least one testing group, who added said
5/5 flier in their otherwise slow and ponderous Teferi control decks. Said playgroup saw
Paul Cheon finish in second (again), and Luis Scott-Vargas following not too far behind in
the Top 16 of the tournament. All highly powerful but not necessarily obvious cards seem
to require an advocate serving as a proponent to show just how good it is, and for
Tombstalker it seems we finally have a dissenting voice in the sea of
Tarmogoyf-worshippers. While some had talked about playing it turn 2 off a dredged Golgari
Grave-Troll, its more consistent use seems to be as “control finisher,” as it
gains in speed just for you doing what you’d normally do anyway. Spent cards are
rarely an exploitable resource to a control deck, but 5/5 fliers and mana are both
the kind of things that control decks like to “cheat” on. Think of Tombstalker
in the role once held by Keiga the Tide Star and you’ll see that fat fliers are good,
and the cheaper the better.
I expect to see an awful lot more of both of these cards in the weeks to follow, and
with both of them weighing in at huge/huge for cheap, cheap, I wouldn’t be especially
surprised to see the format polarizing heavily around the both of them, one as the aggro
card of choice and the other filling the control role. I’d hate to be the one to
point the finger and call a Ruel brother “wrong,” but from at least one
perspective Tombstalker is very similar to Tarmogoyf and easier for the Black deck to
“splash,” and I’d expect exploration of that fact in coming weeks.
That said, for once this article is supposed to be about me and my exploits learning
the format; Magical Hack is going to be taking a brief departure from math and data
modeling to explore Block Constructed as it becomes the competitive format*. What
has worked in the past for Jamie Wakefield and John “Friggin’” Rizzo
might serve me well as a method for exploring the format, and so our first look this week
will be at the deck that did not come to the top tables: the Red deck. Red as a
color overall was notably weak in Montreal, and so by trial or failure I’d like to
find out why before just deciding that a hundred thousand lemmings can’t be
wrong and beat down with Mystic Enforcer. For the purpose of further experimentation,
then, let us move to the testing realms of Magic Online, where we will be testing the
following:
“The Last Don”
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Thornscape Battlemage
4 Rift Bolt
4 Fiery Temper
4 Dead/Gone
3 Stormbind
2 Disintegrate
9 Mountain
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Forest
2 Pendelhaven
Sideboard:
4 Sulfur Elemental
4 Avalanche Riders
4 Riftsweeper
3 Word of Seizing
My theory going into week one was that R/g was the way to go, and if the lesson is
painful then it is better learned in playtesting than in tournament play. Not all of these
cards play terribly well together, as they compete for the same resources as you manage the
mid-to-long game, but if I have to choose between Disintegrate, Stormbind, and Greater
Gargadon to kill my opponent, I’m probably a happy man already. Somehow, some way,
the Red cards will get there.
The first match I managed to find just fishing on MTGO for games was against White
Weenie. There are worse fates you can have in your testing history than jumping right in
and squaring off against a previous “de facto best deck,” and this would help
to figure out how things work without the main-deck anti-White cards. Blood Knight, Sulfur
Elemental, and Wildfire Emissary had this match chalked up as a “win”
previously. We have none of those, and only have access to one of the three after
sideboarding.
The first game wasn’t pretty. I mulliganed twice on the play and kept with my
two lands being Grove of the Burnwillows, and as much as I don’t mind the card
because it is a dual land, it really does have a downside if it’s
your sole source of colored mana. Somewhere in between getting beaten down and not having
enough cards to put up a fight, I managed to get him back down to twenty after I gave him a
fair chunk of life. Calciderm murdered me, even after my opponent gave me a free turn by
responding to the stop-regeneration trigger on Knight of the Holy Nimbus instead of the
Rift Bolt that hadn’t actually picked a target coming off Suspend yet. Stonecloaker
saved the Knight but at the cost of his own life, and at the loss of no cards to me instead
of countering Rift Bolt. Sadly I still lost that game, but those are the rough beats.
For sideboarding, I dipped heavily into the pool and traded Stormbinds for Word of
Seizing, Battlemages for Sulfur Elementals, and Marauders for Riftsweepers. After winning
game 2 somewhat handily, on the back of Sulfur Elemental and multiple two for ones all over
the place, I realized I’d over-boarded. Word of Seizing did nothing and never
threatened to do anything, so I put three Battlemages back in as solid two-for-ones. For
the third game, Riftsweeper killed Knight of Sursi and then traded for another creature.
Mogg War Marshal traded for Calciderm in its entirety, feeding a Gargadon while it was at
it. Dead/Gone controlled the errant Knight population, and Sulfur Elemental showed up to
do naughty mean things while a safety Disintegrate was held in reserve if I was ever
threatened. Since I wasn’t I held back instead of exposing myself to Honorable
Passage, and for the same reason I chose not to hit my opponent with a Gargadon to finish
the game. I may have given my opponent two extra turns for no reason, but the risk of
losing was nonexistent given the board position so I chose not to take one of the few risks
there was in losing the game.
One match against White Weenie leveraged neatly in the “win” column, and I
was appreciating my goofy Battlemages already. One of the theories I’d had in
designing the deck exactly as it was said that I had to aim to be the more controlling
aggressive deck against other aggro matches. Battlemage lends to this plan neatly by
providing a reasonable man and taking out another man as it comes down, similar in theory
to how Red/Green worked when Battlemage and FTK were around. I didn’t really like
the Marauders, but they aren’t necessarily pointed at that matchup… fortunately,
most everything else is, at least in a vague general sort of way.
Fishing for matches again found me an opponent, this time one playing the more
traditional mono-Red version of the Gargadon deck. Both he and I suspended Greater
Gargadon on turn 1, but his life total was 21 to my 20 for the right to do so. The usual
assortment of creatures traded for each other and removal spells, though Thornscape
Battlemage was a nice removal spell that also left a body. Gargadon fights happened, but I
was still over fifteen to his ten or so, and my hand was chock full of burn. Rather than
run headfirst into a Goblin token his ‘Don stayed on defense, but an end of turn
Fiery Temper into all-out attack into Disintegrate put the first game away.
For the second, Marauders switched into Riftsweepers, and I am keeping a critical eye
on the Marauders to make sure they at least pull their weight against the controlling
decks. My first pass of the deck switched those two around, with Riftsweeper main, but the
lack of Suspend cards in decks like G/W or even generally in B/U had me put the more
aggressive card in the main instead. If everyone’s going to play decks with
aggressive Suspend creatures or Search for Tomorrow or Ancestral Visions, I know the
configuration will swap back. In the meantime, I just toggled the deck back to its
“main deck” configuration from the week before, which was tuned to win the R/g
mirror I’d assumed was one of the critical matches.
Game 2 didn’t work much better for my opponent, as I had Riftsweeper and he
didn’t. This didn’t kill his Gargadon, but it did allow me to pick
and choose the timing of when his Gargadon could come into play. After the initial bout of
trades went through, I had two suspended Gargadons and he had one, plus I had a Tarmogoyf
and two Battlemages. A pretty favorable position, to be sure, since I also had the life
advantage thanks to my removal spells leaving warm bodies. The critical turn came up and I
played Riftsweeper, to which he sacrificed every permanent save a Sulfur Elemental to bring
his Gargadon in. This left Riftsweeper targeting the closer of my two Gargadons, then
jumping into the graveyard to dance a merry dance as my Gargadon came through. My
second Gargadon likewise came across immediately, leaving me two Gargadons, one Battlemage
and the Tarmogoyf as my permanents in play. One swing into the Red Zone later and I had
Gargadon, Battlemage, Goyf versus a clear board and four life, also known as victory.
In both games, Grove of the Burnwillows gave my opponent at least a life or two each
game, but using it for colored mana saved me a few life as well. While some would
say the Grove is a terrible card for an aggressive deck, 1-2 life over the course of a game
is generally not too much of a price for good mana. Grove excels when placed into a deck
with a controlling stance, and this deck takes a controlling stance in the aggro mirror,
mitigating its impact as the key thing to count is your life, not theirs. Thus it’s
little wonder I’ve already bought myself four copies from StarCityGames.com and had
them ship them to my home for the PTQ season, as the card feels right at home despite the
initial disconnect between its effect and the deck’s overall plan. So far I am
putting Grove as a solid dual land in my book, meaning the only Future Sight dual I
don’t like was the initially-impressive Nimbus Maze.
There are still a few more keys matches to look at, especially the G/W deck Craig Jones
said looked like a nightmare matchup for his version of the Red deck. I’d had to
call it a night on the first day of testing, because I’d been out drafting instead of
playing Constructed that night and had only an hour on MTGO, so it was put on the dance
card for some live testing the net day. Playtesting never felt like such a battle against
the clock before… but adulthood has a much more rigorous schedule than my college years I
remember so fondly as the Magic-playing years. Add to that the other offbeat claims on my
time, like this weekend’s handyman work for my fiancee’s mother, and missing
the PTQ I’d wanted to attend almost seems wise… I hadn’t tested any
beforehand. Testing for this weekend’s PTQ was likewise to be a fight against the
clock, with time needed to actually write this article and Friday night lost in
its entirety to driving. With Monday resulting in just two matches and Sunday
spent getting the missing cards on MTGO, as of Tuesday afternoon time was already
looking pretty sparse.
But testing has to be a priority, if one is to expect to succeed. My failing at Magic
in general, if it can be called that, is that I do not get enough time to playtest… and
haven’t since I stopped living in walking distance of Neutral Ground, circa spring
2002. Everything is a battle against the clock of adulthood and a real job, and only
slowly am I starting to come up to speed on MTGO with the cards to play my test decks. And
even then the battle becomes an economic one, juggling price against time, as I can
generally draft and churn a profit while having fun… but it takes time to do so, which
can be valuable testing time instead. My hope is that I can merrily continue churning
through Time Spiral drafts for the entire summer using, well, the same two draft sets in my
account right now to last until Llorwyn, and pick up some Tenth Edition and churn
through that as well when it comes out online. Without all the expensive Ravnica
Block lands I’m more or less stuck watching Standard from the sidelines or borrowing
cards short-term, but Ravnica’s rotation should even the playing field a little.
… On a related note, that reminds me, time to trade my last remaining Demonfire
before it fades to absolute worthlessness. Having invested ten tickets to get it, it
doesn’t feel fair that all I get back is a Horizon Canopy, but a few days after
making the swap it seems to be apparent that it’s probably the most important dual
land for Block Constructed. This seems to be true despite Mike Flores exclamation
that the card is terrible and downright unplayable, because taking damage from lands lets
bad players beat you, but Mike isn’t always right despite the press mill churning out
statements to the contrary. The simple concept of “playing more land” to
mitigate its damaging effect, while smoothing your draw in the early-game without flooding
in the late-game, seems to work pretty well for the rest of us mere mortals. I for one can
deal with drawing lands like I have 24 in the early game in a beatdown deck, then
“only” like I have 20 in the mid- to late-game. Others seem to be agreeing,
and feeding Tarmogoyf, both of which seem to be egg on the faces of those who look
at Horizon Canopy as “just” a bad Brushlands.
“Live” playtesting as always turned into a drafting session, and the option
of decks to test against only included a Coalition Relic UB/x control deck and no G/W deck.
Online testing let me get in more games against Coalition Relic decks and a few games
against Green/White, as well as a quick match against a Blue-Green Shifter deck. U/G was
an amazingly interesting match with an absurd let-down at the end, with a titanic game one
that is the kind of game a Red mage should be proud of. I’d fallen into the
controlling role accidentally, as my default aggressive start was stymied by a Wall of
Roots and even after killing the offender I’d found it rather hard to finish the
opponent off when Keldon Marauders keep dying. Morphs revealed themselves to be Deranged
Hermits and Gushes, Cloudskates put a clock on, and there were slight two-for-one trades
everywhere. Greater Gargadon was on suspension and I’d managed somehow to get my
opponent to exactly nine life, then set up a suspended Rift Bolt with a Fiery
Temper in hand after blocking an attack with Thornscape Battlemage to block a Saproling
instead of a Riftsweeper and go down to exactly one life left.
Pointing the Rift Bolt at his only untapped creature, a face-down morph, he paid to
reveal that it was Brine Elemental, leaving him tapped out with no cards in hand and no
other untapped creatures. Fiery Temper targeted Brine Elemental to finish it, and I fed
absolutely every single other permanent I had in play to feed the Gargadon, attacking for
exactly lethal with my one remaining permanent, already destined not to untap next turn.
Slinking over the finish line exactly, after somehow spending all nineteen of my expendable
life-points, I’d realized the Red deck has a pretty astounding come-from-behind
potential. What was already a theory of design finally played itself out in a match to
impress me, and I was quite pleased. Game 2 was a rout as I faced too many Shapeshifted
Tarmogoyf copies, and game 3 was again a game of inches that I was beginning with a
commanding lead… but I fell too far behind. Far too many turns were spent wondering when
I would draw my fourth land for the two Battlemages in hand, casting miscellaneous other
spells to have their full impact but waiting on my two-for-ones. By the time I drew it,
its relevance was past-tense, as I was too far behind to catch up.
Afterwards I realized I was being stupid in my sideboarding, as when I’d taken
out my Keldon Marauders I’d replaced them with Sulfur Elemental just to have a
creature that did something. Riftsweeper was of course the actual correct choice, as
future games saw my opponent suspend Aeon Chroniclers and Search for Tomorrows, both of
which were crucial to the opponent winning that game. Sulfur Elemental, however, was not
of relevance, not even as a threat that couldn’t be countered with Mystic Snake.
Checking the U/G decks that are around and noting they have Search for Tomorrow
and Aeon Chronicler often as a four-of, the correct sideboarding plan has been
noted and altered. They also have Riftwing Cloudskate, and this never occurred to me
simply because my opponent never suspended it. Being an idiot is fun sometimes, but it
does skew match results and it teaches you how to play badly as you learn how your
deck works. I’d advise against it.
Unfortunately I was unable to find another U/G opponent in the time allotted, but felt
that with this change the matchup would remain somewhere on the par of even, with the more
explosive potential lying firmly in the Red deck’s hands.
The matchup against Coalition Relic.dec led me to an interesting realization… these
new Relic control decks are quite powerful, and if you take away their artifact mana
sources their mana is downright abysmal. They’re trying to cast seven-drops
and get UU, RR, BB, W, and G all out of the same deck, meaning it’s more vulnerable
than average against mana control strategies… counting on card draw and artifact fixing
to make it work, which doesn’t work if the artifacts aren’t there. I played a
variety of decks of this sort and found the games were closer than I’d expected,
usually because Tarmogoyf ended up on their side of the board or the occasional Hail Mary
Tendrils actually saved them the turn before Stormbind killed them, letting them get an
awful lot more turns before Stormbind came within range of killing them again. Mogg War
Marshal was actually the MVP here, surviving removal and feeding rush Gargadons, and the
matchup wasn’t quite favorable as-is.
And then I played against Green/White. And it was very, very close, a game of inches
and careful math unfortunately disrupted by key Riftsweepers on clutch Gargadons.
Dead/Gone of course proved amazing, and Thornscape Battlemage was quite strong as it killed
a threat and left a threat, giving me something to work with as I beat down. I
took out Stormbind for Word of Seizing, since it seemed as if it would do so little and
might just accidentally die to a Cloudchaser Kestrel that would otherwise be terrible.
Even without drawing the Word the games were very close, essentially leaving me exactly one
turn short of killing my opponent with the final attack or one Dead/Gone away from
blowing him out of the game completely. Essentially it felt as if I wouldn’t really
profit from the Words of Seizing any more than I would with Stormbind, as it’s hard
to find the right place to apply it unless you have Gargadon active. The latter is a task
I found very hard to maintain against the Riftsweepers made plentiful by cycling effects,
and mostly Gargadon’s rules text allowed me to still deal damage with an Isolated
creature one time, good for about five damage but not something to hinge a two-card combo
on.
The Green/White deck felt like a hard fight but one that could be won, with
the biggest problem being that Keldon Marauders died so easily and did nothing really
effective. The proper sideboarding technique in retrospect felt like it would be replacing
Marauder with Sulfur Elemental, to keep an active damage source instead of trying to hit
for five and somehow have it work out. Looking back I’m more sure this was the
correct approach, especially since two Sulfur Elementals kills all copies of Saffi and a
single Elemental brings Serra Avenger into range for Stormbind, Dead/Gone and
Thornscape Battlemage. The much-celebrated Words of Seizing more or less felt unnecessary
against any deck I’d faced, originally intended as a pinpoint threat against a card I
wasn’t afraid of (Teferi’s Moat) and was at-best functioning as a clunky wrong
answer (Mystic Enforcer, Tarmogoyf). Having tested enough to get a better feel for
what’s out there, and how my creation was faring against the field, I had
the following design notes:
1. The manabase felt slightly off, especially since I wouldn’t mind giving my
opponent an extra life to cast a Green spell but could not afford the same luxury with all
of my plentiful Red spells. The deck requires one more Mountain.
2. The deck can likely afford as many as two fewer Forests, as six dedicated Green
sources plus eight fixers is so much Green it was never a trouble. If needed I could go
down to “just” twelve with two Forests, two Pendelhaven, and four each of Grove
and Expanse. With just over half the lands in the deck providing Green, it still feels
like it would ensure I have the mana I need on command and at a price I was willing to pay,
even if my opponent gained a life once in a while.
3. One Plains main-deck would allow Thornscape Battlemage to imitate Avalanche Riders
against Coalition Relic decks in addition to imitating FTK against beatdown decks. Future
configurations should test one Mountain and one Plains where there are currently two
4. Word of Seizing is useless in the sideboard. It costs more than I want to spend,
and does less than I want to get for that mana. It also is unnecessary as an answer to the
threats I’d worried about, as the deck is more than capable of winning against a
single copy of Teferi’s Moat and can even answer two copies with what seems like a
sufficiently large quantity of burn spells.
5. Ancient Grudge out of the sideboard would allow me to absolutely decimate
“Big Mana” Coalition Relic decks, the Block Constructed analogues of Solar
Flare and Izzetron. Between Avalanche Riders, Thornscape Battlemages, and Ancient Grudges,
their manabase is already dead and their spells uncastable, leaving them smoking in the
rubble instead of stealing your Tarmogoyfs and winning the game.
That said, the new test version that is the likely version to be the “final
edit” for this weekend’s PTQ in Richmond is:
“The Last Don”
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Thornscape Battlemage
4 Rift Bolt
4 Fiery Temper
4 Dead/Gone
3 Stormbind
2 Disintegrate
10 Mountain
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Forest
2 Pendelhaven
1 Plains
Sideboard:
4 Sulfur Elemental
4 Avalanche Riders
4 Riftsweeper
3 Ancient Grudge
The bad matchup I’d worried about doesn’t feel as bad as it could have
been, and the deck feels highly competitive against the main components of the field. If
the W/G decks start packing more and more Thrills of the Hunt, like my list above with the
full four, my opinion of the viability of that matchup sadly goes plummeting
downward. The question then perhaps is whether or not the W/G decks are turning on each
other to cannibalize the mirror matchup yet. If they’re still using the
beat-the-control-deck stance that keeps Thrill of the Hunt as only a minor component of the
deck, my chances of success becomes much better against them.
… All going to show, this format is much more interesting than I’d originally
thought, because Tarmogoyf is becoming the John Malkovich of the format and insinuating
itself absolutely everywhere while still tending towards allowing a large number of viable
decks and strategies. (So long as you play Tarmogoyf, or at least his similarly-cracked
but less well-recognized older brother, Tombstalker.)
A Green card is one of the two best cards in Block Constructed. What’ll they
think of next?
Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com
*: Also, I’m told I have to take a departure from my gratuitously long sentences
and tangled, complex, oft-unnecessary punctuation. You’ll note this is the only
semicolon in the article, and after the last two weeks’ game-theory pieces full of
colons, semicolons, and “dot dot dot,” efforts have been made to cut sentence
size way down and punctuation more for readability than to briefly interrupt
thought-flows**.
**: Zac Hill tells me that footnotes are cool, and once you put one of them in, there
are destined to be more of the cheeky bastards. And thus this week we have footnotes,
because I would rather not face the chatter of his squirrely wrath.