Going into the StarCityGames.com Standard Open in Charlotte, I knew that I wanted to play a beatdown deck. Grinding through the early game with a control deck, attempting to stabilize, only to miss that crucial land drop or removal spell you needed didn’t sound like fun to me. Neither did playing nine or ten rounds that would nearly go to time every round, even if it was typically my opponents’ fault and not mine.
The problem is that aggro sucks in Standard. I love me a Fauna Shaman/Vengevine deck, but as soon as you attack them for eight, they resolve a Titan. If you try a less midrange approach and go with full-on aggressive, you get brick-walled by Pyroclasm or the various walls in the format. It’s not a good time to be an aggro deck.
I went back to brewing U/B Control. The red removal just isn’t good enough anymore, as the format has evolved to a point where not everything dies to a Lightning Bolt. Abyssal Persecutor is the real deal, and you can’t just be kold to that guy, so that left U/B as the place to be. A case could be made for U/W, especially one that was tailor-made to beat U/B, but U/B was the place I wanted to be in this tournament.
I said a couple articles ago that Mimic Vat had potential but didn’t really have a home, but that was because U/B wasn’t universally accepted as the best control deck. I think, outside of a few corner cases, it’s widely acknowledged that U/B is control king, thanks in no small part to Nick Spagnolo.
So if I know that U/B is the place to be, and I know that everyone else probably knows that, what do I do? Well, the first option is to build something that beats U/B. The second is just to tune your deck to beat the mirror match. As I didn’t know exactly how many players would adopt U/B, I decided to just play it myself. If a lot of people played U/B, I’d need to be able to beat it, but if only a few played it, they’d probably be the good players, so I’d most likely need to beat them in order to make Top 8.
Abyssal Persecutor was the first step in the right direction. The U/B mirror hinged mostly on sticking a threat and then protecting it. It was very rare that sneaking in a Jace produced a victory because of opposing Creeping Tar Pits and Jaces. I had to turn to the big men in order to get it done.
Frost Titan was lackluster for the reasons that made Persecutor great. Everyone was on Doom Blades, as they should be, and Frost Titan just died. Grave Titan was an acceptable substitute. While being slightly worse against Ramp decks, Grave Titan was much better everywhere else. If you’re U/B, you should have a plan to beat the Ramp decks anyway.
I felt like Mimic Vat was the key. It provided something different that the other U/B decks couldn’t match, nor deal with effectively. Into the Roil and Volition Reins are the only solutions. Bouncing it is only temporary, but Reins is something you need to watch out for.
So I had a brew, but honestly, nothing provides a little inspiration like seeing Gabriel Nassif piloting a similar deck in a Daily Event. He really liked Duress and maxing out on four Chalices, but I never liked drawing two. The mana requirements are so heavy in the deck, and between Chalice and Tectonic Edge, occasionally you have mana sources that you can’t use.
Calosso Fuentes, Ben Hayes, and I played this:
Creatures (9)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (22)
Sideboard
Nick Spagnolo was also in our hotel room but refused to stray from his Trinket Mage-ing ways. It feels like Nick goes a little overboard with his Trinket Mage fetish (I mean, Brittle Effigy in Legacy? Really?), but it certainly works for him, so I can’t fault him.
Round One and Two: U/W Control
Both rounds were incredibly easy but made easier due to my opponents’ mana troubles. Preordain is exactly what my opponents needed.
Mimic Vat was showcased early on, which helped boost my confidence. I hoped for more matches like those.
I sided out Persecutors and then depending on their build, Consuming Vapors or some cantrips. Dispels and Tectonic Edge are great, and then I brought in some Memoricides to both see their decklist and maybe remove something that was threatening at the time (like their Jaces if I had Jace advantage).
2-0 for me, Ben, and Calosso.
Round Three: WW Quest
Game 1 I kept two Creeping Tar Pits and some combination of Doom Blades, Mana Leaks, and Sea Gate Oracles. I was pleased when he turned out to be aggro, but I never drew a third land. Stoneforge Mystic served up Sword of Body and Mind, and it beat me all by itself.
Second game I played turn 4 Abyssal Persecutor, turn 5 Consume the Meek.
Third game he led on Quest and despite not having Doom Blade or Into the Roil, I felt like I should’ve won this game. It didn’t dawn on me exactly how I punted until I began rehashing the game in my head while writing this, and now I feel like an idiot.
Against the really aggro decks, I like siding out Mimic Vats, a Jace, maybe a Sea Gate Oracle, and a Mana Leak (or more if I’m on the draw) for the Disfigures and Consume the Meeks. Siding out a Chalice is also acceptable on the play since I don’t need the acceleration, and I don’t want to draw a lot of mana sources.
2-1 for me, Calosso and Ben still 3-0.
Round Four: John May, Cedric’s RDW
He won the die roll and had me reeling from turn 1. Goblin Guide revealed Mana Leak, and Kargan Dragonlord followed. With nearly each draw step yielding another Mana Leak, I was conceding shortly thereafter.
In the second game, I had control early with a flurry of removal spells and a Jace that I used to immediately Fateseal myself in order to keep it out of burn range. John commented that I looked too serious for someone in complete control of the game, but at the time, I only had Abyssal Persecutor and five land in hand. I decided to wait on the Persecutor because he was flooded with a couple cards in hand that could easily be Marks of Mutiny.
Jace fixed up my hand in short order, and the Persecutor went the distance.
Third game, I mulliganed into a hand with some much needed removal. He had plenty of threats, again opening on Goblin Guide for the third game in a row, but I was able to kill most of his guys. Meanwhile, he was bottlenecked on mana and couldn’t quite take advantage of his Geopedes or Kargans.
From there, he started to flood, and I played around Mark of Mutiny again, which he ended up with four copies of.
3-1, Calosso punted to be 3-1 (shocking, right?), Ben was still holding strong at 4-0.
Round Five: Cedric’s RDW
We split the first two games, and I won the third after keeping Darkslick Shores, Preordain, two Disfigures, two Doom Blades, and something else. Ben Wienburg giggled when I immediately drew a land, which wasn’t very helpful.
I had to fight through a couple Koths, but Persecutor eventually got him.
4-1 for everyone.
Round Six: Elves with Eldrazi
One of the easiest rounds I played. Both games he basically died to a Persecutor. Thankfully, he had crappy Eldrazi instead of Vengevines.
5-1 for everyone.
After playing one of the easiest matches of my life, I had a lot of time to durdle around. Fatigue and a headache were starting to set in, probably due to my lack of sleep, so I decided to try out some Brad Nelson tech: water.
Round Seven: Ali Aintrazi with U/W
Game 1 I mulliganed to five, but how close the game was is actually a testament to how good my matchup is here. He had nothing to do except attack with Colonnade while I was digging for land.
We traded Jaces, I resolved a Mimic Vat (after he ramped his Ratchet Bomb to four), and Vapored myself to gain a little life and get Sea Gate Oracle imprinted. We traded blows, but he was clearly winning the race. Still, all I had to do was find a Doom Blade or Tectonic Edge to give myself massive breathing room.
Turn after turn, I tore through my deck searching for an answer, but none were forthcoming. Finally, with a lethal Colonnade breathing down my neck, I Into the Roiled his Ratchet Bomb (still on four) and played out an Abyssal Persecutor. He played a Frost Titan to lock down my Vat and potentially clear the way for a lethal attack on the next turn.
I had a Grave Titan, but it didn’t matter through his Frost Titan. Still, he played on, because I had four mana open and didn’t want to slam headfirst into a topdecked Doom Blade. His first Oust on my Persecutor was Mana Leaked, which he allowed. I Leaked his second Oust, which he paid, and then he played a land and killed me.
Second game, no mulligans were involved, so I felt like I had a shot. Despite having Jace in play and going through multiple Preordains and Sea Gate Oracles, I didn’t have much going on. Eventually, Ali drew a Luminarch Ascension, Ratchet Bombed my Oracle, and killed me with Angels.
Overall, a very disappointing loss, even though Ali, to his credit, played pretty well.
5-2 for everyone. We all died in the same round. At least it wasn’t to each other.
The FFfreak technology didn’t work.
Round Eight: U/W Tempered Steel
My opponent had a lot of artifact guys but also some U/W Control elements. First game I lost to a Colonnade, similar to what happened against Ali. My draws in the second and third games were much better though.
6-2
Round Nine: Elves with Vengevines
Game 1, I lost the die roll, but played turn 2 Mana Leak, turn 3 Sea Gate Oracle, turn 4 Sea Gate Oracle, turn 5 another Oracle plus Doom Blade, and then turn 6 Grave Titan. I died, thanks to three Vengevines.
The second game was much easier, as no Vengevines were involved. A couple turns before he died, I saw an Autumn’s Veil on top of his deck with Jace, so it was nice to see that one coming.
In the final game, for fifty marbles, I was once again on the wrong end of three Vengevines. I brought in Memoricides, since Consume the Meek and my other removal spells do a great job of cleaning up the stragglers. Vengevines are roughly all I was worried about.
Nissa fell to Creeping Tar Pit, all of his little guys got swept away, and eventually I found a Persecutor at one life. Jace was controlling his draws somewhat, so I decided to start racing before he could peel something noteworthy. In fact, he did and played his third Vengevine, returning two more. I could handle two of them with Tar Pit and Into the Roil, but the third haster killed me.
6-3
While the Memoricides would’ve helped me, perhaps I should have left in some Mimic Vats as well. One Vat can potentially handle two Vengevines (by imprinting one and blocking the other), but it seemed very slow. Memoricide is sort of slow but solves the Vengevine problem once and for all.
After that match, I dejectedly went back up to my hotel room and passed out, despite it being only 9:30. Nick was, of course, in another Top 8, as if we could expect anything less from him.
I woke up the next morning with everyone else, due to the three alarm clocks going off, but decided to stay in bed and skip the Legacy. I still wasn’t feeling well. Ben Hayes took my Counterbalance deck, as per my request, but ended up playing Aluren instead.
After thinking about my matches (which writing this mini-report definitely helped), I realized that I could’ve avoided nearly every one of my game losses, not just match losses. Immediately after the Open, I was wondering what I was going to play the next week at the SCG Boston Open, but I think I
found it. I’m going to get some rest and play U/B again, but eff the water. It doesn’t work. [
You clearly just didn’t drink enough! –LL
]
Bonus #1
I found out that my U/B Vat list that I gave to Dan Skinner was passed onto strictly MTGO ringer, Prolepsis9. They both played in the Player of the Year MOCS, with Skinner finishing eighteenth and Prolepsis9 winning the entire thing! Now, after only playing four sanctioned matches in his entire life, he’s qualified for Worlds and the real-life MOCS with such luminaries as Brad Nelson and Akira Asahara.
He was kind of enough to give me a few minutes of his time for a quick interview.
Tell me a little about yourself. How did you start playing Magic?
I started playing Magic when I was a kid, around the Dark, but that never went anywhere. I recently found my old cards, and my last deck was an R/G deck with Mana Flares and Fog and Disintegrates. Pretty awesome.
I picked up Magic Online just after Ravnica, lost a ton of tix drafting until I got good enough to start grinding Extended, and went from there.
You are primarily an online player, why is that?
I didn’t grow up in the system playing paper events, so I missed getting into the community aspect of the game. So for now, I just want to play games, which is awesome, but is a ton easier to play online. It’s always on, and games are significantly faster, although I do hang out with a lot of Magic players on GoodGamery.com. Just not live.
Since I don’t know many people in real life, traveling to large events becomes purely an economic decision, and unfortunately with attendance the way it is, there’s no way the prize support justifies the travel costs alone. Plus I have no cards.
What did you end up playing in the MOCS and why?
I’m not really a deck brewer, mostly relying on other people’s decklists and tinkering once I feel like I understand what it does and how it needs to change based on the metagame. Jarvis Yu fed me a Mono-Red list which was okay, but I didn’t really love it. I ran into a lot of bad matchups, but I knew it was time to bail when I was losing a lot against common hate like Kor Firewalker. The deck clearly is built to win (or should be) through some amount of hate, but I was either not finding wins or taking way too long to do so, and that’s an easy way to lose winnable matches as well as burning out in a long tournament. I switched to Valakut Ramp as a Hail Mary, since I figured given the Daily Events results, it was a real deck, and I wouldn’t be giving up too many points on deck choice alone. I found it easy-ish to play, and it mulliganed really well but also was very draw dependent with a random mirror. At this point, I was setting my sights for a slim chance of victory by drawing well and winning a bunch of coin flips.
Skinner shipped me your U/B Mimic Vat/Persecutor list at literally the last hour, and after running a couple of 2-mans, I felt infinitely better about my chances. It’s very well positioned against everything I’d seen previously and was also very similar to two decks I grinded infy with back in the day, U/B Tog and Gifts Rock, so I at least had some basis to find correct plays.
What were your matchups?
I played against a pretty representative smattering of the metagame, hopefully to be detailed in a tournament report. Mostly all the games involved managing mana and board position until you stabilized and then burying them in big spells, hoping to close the game out before they regained control. Mono-Red was a little more draw dependent, since the speed of the games is much quicker, but the general feel was the same.
Did you like the deck? Would you recommend it?
I really like the deck, and I’d recommend it to anyone. There are no terrible matchups, except maybe the R/U/G Ramp deck, and it’s possible I was just misevaluating what needed to be done. As someone who loves Islands, I may be a little biased, but there’s a lot to love about it. This might need to be reevaluated if the meta shifts against it, since I think there’s a good chance this is the new deck to beat.
What did hope to face? What did you want to avoid?
Even though it wasn’t the best matchup, there was something very satisfying playing against other U/B builds that had both Doom Blades and Doom Blade targets; just knowing that you have a deck edge was nice. My best matchup was probably the aggressive creature builds, in that any stumble on their part usually gives you time to lock the game up, and you have a ton of cheap removal post-board.
After playing against the R/U/G deck, I think that matchup is either really bad for us, or needs a very well thought-out post-sideboard game plan. They have a number of different lines of attack; each requires different answers, so it might just be an inherently bad matchup. Again, to bring it back to old Extended, it was similar to playing Gifts Rock against Aggro Loam: you had to try to shut off multiple late-game plans while also being put under pressure by credible early threats.
What would you change?
I’d like some Duresses available, since they seem pretty good in any type of mirror, and I could see the informational advantage being very important. Between the card selection and the competing lines of play, knowing how to pick and play out your cards can help in maximizing value.
I’m pretty sure that there’s a lot of updating to do when the meta shifts away from Frost Titans and towards Persecutors. Also, while Mimic Vat is in theory awesome, it didn’t do so much for me, at least in this tournament.
Were your matches difficult? Do you think you ran above average in the tournament?
I punted some games by not playing the deck fast enough and also tried to punt by keeping some awful hands. Other than that, I think I played pretty well. The deck definitely drew me out of some sketchy situations and except for one game (in the finals), I found excellent sixes when I mulliganed.
Thanks for your time and congratulations!
Thanks! I’m still way stoked and excited to play my fifth sanctioned match at Worlds.
Bonus #2
While searching for a viable beatdown deck, I came across this brew from the MTGO Player of the Year points leader L1X0.
Creatures (25)
Lands (17)
Spells (18)
- 4 Beastmaster Ascension
- 4 Shared Discovery
- 1 Brittle Effigy
- 4 Mox Opal
- 4 Kuldotha Rebirth
- 1 Panic Spellbomb
Sideboard
It’s tons of fun and capable of absurd, explosive draws. It’s somewhat inconsistent, but if you ever draw a Beastmaster Ascension, you’re probably a favorite to win the game. Overall, a cool, mostly cheap deck that’s something to look into if you want a change of pace.
GerryT
(Sorry about the lack of
Twitter
updates from Charlotte, but my phone unexpectedly went busto. Hopefully that will be fixed by Boston.)