Last weekend, I had the opportunity to play in an Extended PTQ in lovely Orlando, Florida, and jumped at the chance. Naturally, I was planning on
sleeving up Prismatic Omens and Cryptic Commands as I had been doing all season, albeit strictly online. While Prismatic Omen isn’t quite as powerful
as Dark Depths was last season, there is certainly a solid amount of overlap that goes unnoticed.
Best Deck In Their Respective Formats
Dark Depths either threatened to end the game early with a flying 20/20 or win via inevitability with Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek. The
various Prismatic Omen decks aren’t quite on the same power level, but Extended is much weaker in general. The power level of DDT compared to the rest
of the Extended format is roughly the same as the Prismatic Omen decks in today’s format.
Most may disagree with me, as the results thus far seem to have proven otherwise. Again, I will point you to last season and specifically, how almost
no one played Dark Depths until I popularized it. While I did well in the Daily Events on Magic Online, no one seemed to take notice. Jason Ford won
Grand Prix Atlanta, and still, no one seems to care. Instead, everyone is focused on the brute-force R/G Scapeshift deck.
The blue Prismatic Omen decks require a bit more effort to win, but you gain so much control over your draws every game that it’s more than worth it.
An apt comparison would be G/B Dark Depths compared to U/B Dark Depths last season. G/B was all about brute force, but toward the end of the season,
everyone knew that U/B was better.
Have Different Plans Of Attack
If DDT couldn’t get the job done with a 20/20, it was easy to switch gears and search up the Thopter combo. Oftentimes, that will secure an easy win,
stranding all their removal in the meantime.
While Prismatic Omen plus Scapeshift is a pretty sick combo, you don’t need it. My Wargate lists have incorporated manlands to go with the Wargate plan
and now Oracle of Mul Daya as well. Vendilion Clique, Sun Titan, and even life gain animals like Kitchen Finks can provide a backup plan in the face of
too much hate.
Decks Can’t Interact With You Game One
It’s been a while since players could reasonably maindeck Disenchant. These days, if that type of effect doesn’t come attached to a 2/2 with exalted,
no one is going to play it. Even then, there aren’t a plethora of those out there.
Cards like Prismatic Omen and Thopter Foundry are difficult to kill in game ones. Once you have Prismatic Omen and Valakut in play, every land you play
is going to help you stabilize, and there won’t be much, if anything, that they can do about it.
Plans Shift Post-Board
Omen and Foundry might be tough to kill game one, but post-board, that all changes. Once your opponents have answers to all your threats, you need to
change what matters in the matchup. I’m sure you’ve heard, “Oh, I have three Nature’s Claims,” or “I have four Pridemages and two Teegs; no one can
beat me.”
That couldn’t be further from the truth. Does Great Sable Stag mean that you’re going to annihilate Faeries? What about Leyline of Sanctity vs.
Valakut? Chill vs. RDW? Okay, well that last one was actually good. They just don’t make hosers like they used to.
When facing down Qasali Pridemage, I don’t mind because I have Path to Exile, Firespout, or Sun Titan. When they’ve got Nature’s Claim, I feel the same
way. Tectonic Edge? Unless you can counter my Sun Titan reliably, I’m still going to win.
Your hate cards are a joke because you aren’t fighting the right battles. Prismatic Omen might seem like it matters, but that isn’t how I’m
going to beat you. I can still function like a regular control deck, kill all your dudes, and then kill you with a manland and a Baloth.
Until people start realizing that a small amount of disruption plus a fast, resilient clock or some way to generate inevitability are the only real
ways to beat the Prismatic Omen/Cryptic Command decks, then I’m going to keep on winning.
The PTQ
With nearly all the ringers, like David Sharfman, in Paris trying to get big in the Pro Tour, the PTQ was tiny. 84 players meant seven rounds, a number
that I wasn’t used to. Even when I was PTQing back in the day, they were typically eight rounds. I imagined that Saturday was going to fly by quickly.
The goal, with myself already qualified for Nagoya thanks to my Level Five benefits, was to block for locals Kitt Holland and/or Zach Efland. Kitt was
dead set on playing R/G Scapeshift, but sadly, the person who was bringing his full 75 accidentally left it at home. Kitt scrambled to throw together
the Elf/Warrior deck that had been doing well in Daily Events, with some Lead the Stampede technology. Efland was on Cedric’s updated Mythic deck.
This is what I played (with the help of the Hollands and Alex Campana):
Creatures (2)
Lands (26)
Spells (32)
Round One: John Dean, U/W Control
My opponent was one of those unqualified ringers but a ringer nonetheless. I mulliganed on the play, which is pretty awful in the control matchups. You
need to make all your land drops, but without a critical mass of spells as well, you will be hard-pressed to resolve enough relevant spells. That exact
thing happened. I successfully made my land drops, but what very few threats I had were easily dispatched, and a Vendilion Clique, a Jace, and a
Colonnade made quick work of me.
I sideboarded:
+ 1 Sun Titan
+ 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
+ 1 Primal Command
+ 1 Into the Roil
+ 2 Vendilion Clique
– 2 Path to Exile
– 2 Scapeshift
– 2 Rampant Growth
And then I chose to draw first. While he probably needs to play the Fish role, get some early guys, and then keep me off balance long enough to finish
me, I still want to be on the draw. His threats are typically irrelevant, especially if I’m able to trade my own Vendilion for his, and they all die to
Prismatic Omen plus Valakut.
My plan worked out perfectly. For games two and three, I made my land drops, had plenty of gas, and stuck a Prismatic Omen each game through removal.
Oracle and Sun Titan were all-stars.
1-0 in matches, 2-1 in games
Round Two: Jeph Foster, Naya
I won game one after he kept a hand with a few too many lands that entered the battlefield tapped.
+ 1 Sun Titan
+ 1 Primal Command
+ 1 Path to Exile
+ 1 Into the Roil
+ 2 Kitchen Finks
+ 2 Obstinate Baloth
– 2 Oracle of Mul Daya
– 2 Rampant Growth
– 3 Mana Leak
– 1 Ponder
Second game, he peeled Noble Hierarch on turn 2, which allowed him to start kicking Goblin Ruinblasters before I had a chance to ramp my way out of it.
Game three was more of game one, except I sided back in Oracles and all the ramp spells that I shaved initially.
+ 1 Sun Titan
+ 1 Primal Command
+ 1 Path to Exile
+ 2 Kitchen Finks
+ 1 Obstinate Baloth
– 3 Mana Leak
– 2 Scapeshift
– 1 Preordain
Ideally, in game two, I want to take out his Pridemage or Teeg with Path or Into the Roil and then combo him out. When he’s disrupting me in another
fashion, the Scapeshifts suddenly become less important. Step one is to make sure that I don’t fall behind in the mana department.
2-0, 4-2
Round Three: Zach Efland, Mythic
Kitt and Zach were both 2-0, and while I wanted to help Kitt more than Zach, I didn’t have that opportunity.
I conceded.
2-1, 4-2
Round Four: U/W Control
I won game one with Oracle of Mul Daya and lost game two when I kept:
Valakut
Misty Rainforest
Explore
Explore
Preordain
Other spells
I was bottlenecked on mana the entire game and slightly color screwed as well. The hand seemed fine if I drew any green or blue land, but I didn’t. The
matchup is good enough that I probably could’ve afforded to mulligan. Still, I sculpted a hand where I carefully played around his counterspells and
would’ve taken control at one life, but he had a surprise Elspeth, Knight-Errant to cut my clock by a turn.
Third game, he was mana screwed a bit. Oracle and Sun Titan crushed him.
3-1, 6-3
Round Five: Mike Reilly, Naya
Mike is a friend of Osyp’s and a former affiliate of team TOGIT (for those of you who are as old as I am). Naya is typically an easy matchup,
especially game one, but he had a solid start. Second-turn Pridemage and turn 3 Woolly Thoctar put me on a clock, but I already had an Oracle of Mul
Daya in play.
I untapped, Explored into the Prismatic Omen on top, and then killed all of his creatures. Easy game, folks.
+ 1 Sun Titan
+ 1 Primal Command
+ 1 Path to Exile
+ 1 Into the Roil
+ 1 Kitchen Finks
+ 2 Obstinate Baloth
– 2 Oracle of Mul Daya
– 2 Rampant Growth
– 3 Mana Leak
One less Finks because he had Woolly Thoctar instead of Jeph’s Boggart Ram-Gangs. A speed bump isn’t very good, while Ponder might find me what I need.
Second game, he mulliganed to five, but the game was still close. Turn 3 Ajani Vengeant kept my mana locked down, but he didn’t present a lot of
pressure. I had more than enough time to find Cryptic Command, reset Ajani, and then play a Sun Titan.
I had a lethal Scapeshift but decided not to run it out there for fear of Deglamer or Nature’s Claim, and it ended up looking like I slow-rolled him.
Turns out he had a Safe Passage but only two mana on the turn I Scapeshifted. There was a read that he had something, but I didn’t even consider Safe
Passage, a card that Mike used to good effect against R/G Scapeshift later in the day.
4-1, 8-3
Round Six: R/G Scapeshift
While my opponent was shuffling, he flipped over a Scapeshift and a Mountain, which gave me a pretty big heads up on what I was up against. We both
played the ramp game in game one, and I made a potentially grave mistake.
I had eight lands with Scapeshift, Wargate, two Mana Leaks in hand, an Oracle of Mul Daya in play, and a Rampant Growth on top of my library.
He had just ramped up to seven and finished his turn by Lightning Bolting my Oracle. I figured that if I Leaked it, I had another shot to be able to
Wargate for Prismatic Omen and then Scapeshift him out. Without thinking, I countered his Bolt.
If I just let it resolve, cast Rampant Growth, and then had double Leak available on his turn, he was drawing dead. Thankfully, he only had Primeval
Titan instead of Scapeshift, and I Oracled into a land.
+ 2 Vendilion Clique
+ 3 Leyline of Sanctity
+ 1 Runed Halo
– 2 Path to Exile
– 2 Oracle of Mul Daya
– 1 Ponder
– 1 Rampant Growth
Oracle is alright, but you’re not playing a long game against them. On the play, it might be worth it, but casting it on the draw is effectively
committing suicide.
Before the finals of Grand Prix Atlanta, I was talking to Jason Ford, playing a similar deck minus Wargate, trying to help him sideboard against Ben
Stark’s R/G Scapeshift deck. I suggested boarding in Primal Command, at least on the play but was quickly no-sirred. The three of us have discussed it
since, and I’m still in the minority.
However, when you’re representing Cryptic Command, your opponent will have to be very gutsy to cast a spell into it. When you’re sitting on a handful
of Commands and need to make your land drops, you should probably be bouncing their lands. Primal Command adds to that strategy and gives you a
different angle of attack.
Ideally, you want to Leak their early acceleration, and Primal Commanding them on the play will likely secure a victory. Searching up a Vendilion
Clique is just icing on the cake. If I lost game two, I vowed to bring in the Primal to further test my theory, which has proven good so far.
I opened up with a nice one for game two:
Mana Leak
Mana Leak
Cryptic Command
Ponder
Forest
Island
Flooded Grove
I drew Explore, led with Island, but didn’t cast Ponder. On turn 2, I was going to Mana Leak something, and then I could Ponder on turn 3 looking for
that fourth land if necessary. He cast Rampant Growth, and I drew Explore, played a land, and passed the turn.
He played a backbreaking Vexing Shusher, and suddenly, I was in panic mode. Mana Leak was likely not going to help me, so I cast Explore, played
Halimar Depths, and then played Misty Rainforest on my turn.
My top three were:
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
Prismatic Omen
Leyline of Sanctity
I decided that I wanted to get Leyline into play as soon as possible, which probably meant double Leaking a spell, and probably bouncing a land with
Cryptic Command. Hopefully, he didn’t have Back to Nature or Nature’s Claim.
All of that changed when he tapped out for Primal Command on my land and searched up Primeval Titan. Leyline was now too slow and wasn’t going to do
much to stop that rampaging Titan. I had a turn of reprieve while he waited to get to seven lands but was able to double Leak his Titan and play
Prismatic Omen and Valakut to kill Shusher.
I only had three mana remaining but was able to use that to Vendilion Clique him on his draw step, revealing:
Reverberate
Explore
Forest
Mountain
Taking Explore was pointless, but Reverberate was scary, as my plan was now Vendilion Clique clocking him while I sat on my Cryptic Command.
Reverberate threw a wrench in that plan, so I had to take it. Thankfully, Explore into Explore yielded nothing for him. A few turns later, he was dead,
with Cryptic still sitting in my hand.
5-1, 10-3
Round Seven: sMann2.0, Faeries
Steve was 5-0-1 and offered the draw, which I accepted. As Kitt pointed out, sMann should have taken the opportunity to dream-crush me. It was a free
roll for him, since he was in with a loss regardless, and it would better serve him not having a good player in Top 8. Whoever wanted to win that PTQ
was going to have to go through me, and everybody knew it.
It wouldn’t be the worst if I lost though. Zach Efland was battling for ninth place at 4-2, and if he won, I would drop, allowing him in Top 8. If I
didn’t get paired up, I most likely would have refused the draw in order to help Zach make Top 8.
In the end, Zach lost, and I was alone in the Top 8.
5-1-1, 6th after the Swiss
Top Eight: Jay Lee, G/W Trap
In game one, he came out quickly with some mana dorks and a Windbrisk Heights that cast Summoning Trap. He found an Emrakul, which I was able to tap
once with Cryptic Command but couldn’t find a Prismatic Omen to go with my Scapeshift.
+ 1 Sun Titan
+ 1 Path to Exile
+ 1 Into the Roil
– 3 Mana Leak
The plan was to remove a Teeg or Pridemage with Roil or Path before finishing with the combo. Sun Titan would be great against what I assumed he would
be bringing in. Primal Command is like a second Sun Titan, but I didn’t feel like either of the other modes would be very good against him.
Second game, his first play was turn 2 Lotus Cobra plus Nest Invader, while I was going nuts with cantrips and acceleration. He followed up with
Gaddock Teeg and Qasali Pridemage, but I was ready.
I started the turn with Prismatic Omen and then played my second Valakut, targeting Pridemage and Teeg. He killed my Prismatic Omen in response, but I
had a Misty Rainforest that I used to kill his dudes for real. Without a second Pridemage, and me with my trusty Sun Titan, I went to town.
My hand game three, on the draw, was this:
Explore
Explore
Rampant Growth
Scapeshift
Assorted good lands
Clearly a little sketchy, but if I drew into virtually anything, he could just be dead. I had a ton of draw steps, but another Summoning Trap into
Emrakul finally knocked me out.
Rats.
At least Jay was a cool dude and ended up winning the PTQ.
When I sat down for round one, I was a little worried about not having any sweepers. Path to Exile seemed like it solved the majority of my problems,
but I was still scared of the random stuff like Elves or RDW with a lot of dudes. A couple Days of Judgment might have been nice, but they’re probably
training wheels.
I settled on two Wargates and two Scapeshifts to hedge. Scapeshift is solid in the matchups you need to race but could be cut. Wargate is good in the
matchups where you’re trying to manual them out like Faeries or the control matchups. Still, it’s pretty slow, and drawing multiples is almost never
good.
The only things that I think I would really change are -1 Preordain +1 Halimar Depths. I started with one Oracle but was continually impressed with it,
so I added them back in. In doing so, I somehow forgot to add an extra land to make them better.
Nothing is set in stone. If you expect sweepers to be awesome, you should play Firespout or Day. Scapeshift is alright but not entirely necessary
either. The main draw to keep white would be the consistency Wargate provides, Celestial Colonnade for a backup plan, and the Leylines/Halo in the
sideboard.
You want to win a PTQ? Play a lot of games in order to make sure that you’re doing the simple sequencing correctly. Even something as simple as whether
or not to play Ponder or Halimar Depths on turn 1 or whether to cast Rampant Growth over Explore on turn 2 (hint: it’s almost always Rampant Growth).
Once you get that down, winning should be elementary.
If you ever enjoyed playing Gifts Ungiven, Mystical Teachings, Mirari’s Wake, or similar decks, this is certainly the deck for you.