Some weeks before the start of my trip, I accidentally stumbled upon an IRC community called TheManaDrain. I’m not sure why I came to be there on the first place — I think someone said “hey, they are talking about you in this place” and I just went there to see what it was. It turned out it was an Eternal community, and the people, despite being Eternal players, were actually cool (joking, joking).
Talking to them, I learned a bit about the format and the good decks. I’ve never been much of a Legacy fan myself — I played GP: Columbus, with Flash, and I played Legacy at Worlds in New York, with Cephalid combo. Other than that, my experience with it was very limited. Before I left, I knew that I wanted my deck to either
a) Kill on turn 2
b) Play Force of Will
That ruled out Goblins, Stax, 43Lands, Loam, Enchantress, BG, Burn, Survival, etc. The reason for that was that combo in the format seemed to be powerful enough to just beat everything that couldn’t stop them from doing what they’re supposed to do, and though some of those decks have access to some disruption, none of this disruption matches Force of Will.
I talked a bit with Luis before leaving, and he too said that his options were either Force of Will decks or Orim’s Chant decks. People in TheManaDrain seemed to be of similar mind.
During my chats in the channel, I was introduced to a variety of decks, most of which were just Counterbalance decks with variations. Among those, there was a deck that those people called the Brassdeck. The Brassdeck (because it had been played by Brassman) was a UGr control deck, with your standard Goyf/Top/Counterbalance package. It had Trinket Mages, Shackles and Krosan Grips. I liked most of it, and kept the deck in mind.
Then I got to Chicago. I met my friend at the airport and we took the train to somewhere close to my other friend’s house, where we would be staying for the time before the GP. The walk from the station to his house was the coldest experience I’ve ever had.
Arriving there, we played some games with an assortment of decks. We went to my another friend’s house to play Tempest draft and played some Legacy there, and the next day we went to another friend’s house and played a lot more. Playing there reinforced my belief that I didn’t like the Loam deck that the other Brazilians liked — it didn’t seem attractive enough to me. Other than not having Force of Will and not killing turn 2, it also seemed very vulnerable to the best strategy in the format, Counterbalance.
I also played three games with the Ad Nauseam deck. The first of them, I won, but then sometime later realized I had counted the removed card for Mox for Threshold and, as it turns out, I’d not won. The second I never found an Ad Nauseam, and the third I played Ad Nauseam turn 2 at nineteen life and killed myself. I didn’t like the deck.
At some point, I built a deck I figured I liked. It had the elements I liked from Brassdeck — Shackles, mainly — and it had Dark Confidants and Dazes. Me and Luis were of the same mind that Daze wasn’t very good unless you had something other than Counterbalance to fight for, and Dark Confidant was the perfect card to fight for. I’ve always been a big fan of Bob — in my mind, he is the best creature ever printed. Sure, Tarmogoyf is pretty good, 5/6 for 2, blabla, but in the end, it’s just a creature that attacks and blocks. When my opponent plays Dark Confidant turn two and I can’t get rid of it, it gives me a feeling of desperation like no other card in Magic. I wanted Dark Confidants.
I played with that deck against Goblins, and I lost a lot more than I won, but I liked that in almost every single loss I could identify a point in the game where if I had played differently I’d have won — such as playing a Fetchland instead of a Tundra turn 9 or leaving the Daze on top instead of Force of Will or countering the second Vial at some point. As I was playing, I was learning my deck and the matchup, and I was winning more. It’s a nice feeling to know that the win is in your hands — if I played well, I could beat Goblins.
I was reasonably settled on playing this deck when I got to the event, unless someone had some special tech for me. People talked about Progenitus, and though it was tempting, it seemed far too fancy. Martin wanted to convince me to play Dredge, but, as I said, I like decks with which the win is in my hand, not in my opponent’s. If my opponent leaves home with the thought “I’ll beat dredge”, he will beat you. I think I’m a good enough player that I don’t want to play a deck that depends so much on factors that are not my playskill, so this was out.
Since no one had any supertechs, I sat with Luis, and after playing some versus Ad Nauseam, we built the list we wanted. He convinced me to play Sowers over Thoughtseizes and I convinced him that some form of Enchantment removal (Grip/Trygon) was needed, and that Shackles was good. We built our list and went to his room to get cards for me, and there with Josh and Web we built our sideboard and decided that we wanted to play one Krosan Grip — it seemed like a nice bullet since you get to see so many cards with Top and shufflers throughout the match.
This is the list the four of us ended up playing:
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
4 Underground Sea
4 Dark Confidant
2 Sower of Temptation
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Trygon Predator
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterbalance
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Krosan Grip
2 Ponder
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Vedalken Shackles
Sideboard
3 Hydroblast
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Perish
3 Engineered Plague
2 Thoughtseize
2 Krosan Grip
Honestly, even though the deck seems pretty well suited for it, the deck I wanted to face the least was the mirror, mirror being other Counterbalance decks. I can’t help it — I just hate the mirror, even if I think I’m favored because I have a better build. In the end, I think I was a bit justified in it — I played against five Counterbalance decks in the tournament, and I only beat one. One was a Dreadtill deck, which looks to be a very good matchup, but we ended up drawing on time after he drew the Swords to kill my Goyf in the last turn. The others, including a 75 cards mirror against Josh, I was mostly crushed.
I don’t know if I was doing something wrong — I probably was. One thing that I realized is that I mulliganed far more than everyone else with the deck. I’ve always had it set in my mind that one land hands are usually lousy keeps — I don’t care how many one-drops you have, I don’t care if you only need to draw a land, in the void, you should mulligan all the one land hands. As such, I mulliganed all one landers with Brainstorm and Top, though I kept some with Ponder. Everyone else that was playing the deck didn’t mulligan those hands. As a result of me mulliganing those seven cards, I ended up mulliganing a lot to five as well. I’m still not sure which is correct — but if everyone else kept them and they all did as well as me or better, there has to be some merit to it.
I was also Dazing people’s turn one Tops, when I was on the play. Someone argued that it wasn’t good to be set back just for that and it was more important to fight over your turn two play or their turn two play, and after some thought, I agreed. Now, if I had to play again, I’d mostly not Daze their turn one Top — Unless I don’t have a land to play next turn or something. It’s important to note that, if you do Daze something, you should always float the mana — burning for one is worth it if it makes you play around their Daze.
I also liked taking out some Force of Wills in the mirror — the reason being that you have answers for everything post board, including Grip for Counterbalance, so there is nothing that’s going to win you the game if you resolve it or that is a must counter.
Other than the mirrors, I also lost to a BGw Rockish deck, partially because I topped into three non fetchlands for about 150 turns in a row (incidentally, I almost wish I played other Fetchlands — a lot of my losses were due to topping into three irrelevant cards and having nothing to do with them). I beat Mono Blue control, Goblins, Survival, Landstill, RG Burn and Slivers.
One interesting situation I remember was when I played against the Landstill deck. I had Tarmogoyf in play, to kill him next turn, and he had Academy + Explosives going. He tapped three Mana and played Explosives for two. I Topped in response and saw the Krosan Grip I knew was there, but no other answer. Then my immediate thought was — what can I do to make him do something before blowing this Explosives so I can Krosan Grip it?
I thought a lot about it. What could I do, what could I say to make him pass priority? After some time, I figured it all out — I put the Krosan Grip on top and then activated Counterbalance to counter his explosives with x = 3. Sometimes you get so caught on some play that you think you have to make that you fail to figure out the win that is right in front of you.
There weren’t many other interesting situations that I’d like to mention — nothing really happened in that tournament. I just played the cards I drew, sometimes I won, and sometimes I lost. I’m sure me not fully knowing about the format or the deck I was playing helped games being like that, but, still, I think I should know better than to just play my cards. I was disappointed with Chicago.
The deck, however, performed very well. Out of 5 people playing it, we had one first place (though with a different sideboard), one top 16, one top 24 and two top 64s — not too shabby in a field of 1200 people. Sure, the results might be a lopsided because people playing the deck were better than your average player, but, still, not a single miss in a tournament this big is quite an accomplishment.
If I were to play the tournament again, I’d probably not play Trygon Predator. It was never really bad, but it was never really good — in the end, it just died every time I played him. I liked having a 3, and I liked having something that attacked and was blue, so I guess Vendilion Clique is the next obvious choice. I also think Krosan Grip does better what you want Trygon to do, though it doesn’t attack. Right now, I’d play two Krosan Grips and possibly one Vendilion in those slots.
Ponder was fine, but it was never spectacular. Most of the time it was U: shuffle your library, draw a card. As I said, most of my losses were due to topping into nothings, so maybe more Ponders would have helped in this situation. You see, I don’t really like Ponder, but I think it’s a necessary evil. I think I’d consider cutting two Sowers for a third Ponder and a second Vendilion, but I’d have to play with the deck to see about that. Spell Snare and Counterspell are also pretty good in this format, I think the former better than the later, and should also be considered. I was very happy with my sideboard.
After Chicago, I went to Martin Juza’s house, in Plzen. We played some Extended, though not much since he wasn’t feeling very well. I hadn’t played Extended since Worlds, and the last time I had seriously tested it was before Berlin. Martin had been playing it a lot though, and he assured me the mono Blue Faeries deck was really good. Since I didn’t really have much idea of what was going on, I decided to just trust him that mono Blue was better than Goyf.
Friday before the GP we took a bus to Prague and then drove with his friends to Hanover. I mostly slept the whole way, since, well, I don’t speak Czech. We got there Friday night and I talked a bit to Manuel, Sam, BK and Shuhei. Me, Manuel and Shuhei settled on this list:
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Vendilion Clique
1 Sower of Temptation
2 Venser, Shaper Savant
4 Ancestral Visions
4 Mana Leak
4 Spell Snare
2 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Cryptic Command
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Chrome Mox
4 Mutavault
3 Riptide Laboratory
1 Breeding Pool
1 Steam Vents
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Flooded Strand
1 River of Tears
11 Island
Sideboard:
1 Future Sight
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Threads of Disloyalty
2 Sower of Temptation
2 Flashfreeze
Manuel played this exact list, and Martin played one extra Sower and one Glen Elendra Archmage (which I’ve never really liked in this format) over the Commands, no River of Tears and an extra Future Sight SB over one Sower. Shuhei changed his mind and decided to play Saito’s Naya.
Of all the tournaments I played in this trip, Hanover was the one in which I played the worst, especially on day 1. I realized that, reading this, you might think I’m the worst player ever, since I say I played badly all the tournaments, but, honestly, in most parts of this trip I might as well have been the worst player ever. My mistakes ranged from not fully knowing my deck to not paying enough attention, such as Sowering a Noble Hierarch after attacking. I honestly don’t know why I’ve been playing worse, but there is no doubt that I have. It might have something to do with the lack of sleep — I woke up at 3am for Hanover, for example — but it might be something else that I have to find out. Like, I obviously know that I should Sower his Exalted guy before attacking — it’s not that I’ve unlearned everything I know about Magic, I’m just not paying nearly enough attention, or overthinking most situations.
I won my first match against a BGr rock deck, through seven Boils at the course of two games, and then I lost the next match to Naya. I think I played really well in the third game — I had it almost lost then managed to topdeck a Venser, after drawing like three blanks in a row, when he had two attackers and I was at two. I then toyed with Venser, Mutavault and Lab until I drew a Vendilion Clique. Then the game turned around completely, because attacked once or twice into unfavorable positions where I could just double block and bounce one of my guys, and we got to a point where he had no cards in hand and a Kird Ape in play, and I had a Flashfreeze in my hand. He has to kill me that turn, or I win. Of course I was feeling pretty happy with the position of him having to kill me that turn with no cards in hand and me holding Flashfreeze — in his draw step I played Vendilion Clique and he played Volcanic Fallout. Frown.
Then I drew. This match was also very frustrating. We were running out of time and it became clear I was going to win — I had a Visions firing off soon, a Shackles in play, some Spell Snares in hand and more creatures than he had. Then he activated his Mutavault and wanted to tap it for Mana when it had summoning sickness. I told him he couldn’t, we argued over it and called a judge. Then the judge moved to our table, we explained the situation, and he gave the ruling. No extension was granted. I pass my next turn and he sacrifices a Fetchland and starts going through his deck. While he is looking (because, you know, the land he got at that point was totally relevant), time ended. Still on my turn. The game ended with him at two life and me having a Spellstutter Sprite, a Shackles and more counters than he had cards in hand, or something like that. It really felt unfair to draw this game where I couldn’t possibly lose — I’m sure that, had my opponent not called the judge over that one little Mutavault thing, or had the judge given us the one or two minutes time it actually took for him to come over and explain the situation, I would have won. I tried to argue that point, but that was futile. I understand you can’t go giving extensions for every little thing, but at this point, with 3 minutes to go in the match, the one or two minutes the ruling took were very relevant to the outcome. I went a little berserk at the judge, and I apologized for it later, but, somehow, it still doesn’t seem right to me. I don’t think anything could be done about it, though… it’s just something I have to live with, I guess.
I won all the other matches to make day 2, and started day 2 well. My opponent at some point had a Swans of Bryn Argoll, which I Sowered. Then he played Chain of Plasma on it, thinking he’d combo me anyway. He drew three cards and then I proceeded to draw 40 with his Chain of Plasma on my Swans. Awkward.
Also at some point during day 2, I played against a BGw Loam deck. I suspend three Ancestral Visions, and he Crimes my whole hand and plays Phyrexian Arena. I draw the first three cards and there is no second Island — my lands are Mutavault and Riptide Lab. He Crimes some more, I draw still a non Island and pass. I have another Visions resolving next turn, and another in two turns (I think). He Crimes everything away except for my Vendilion Clique. Then he Crimes again, tapping out. At this point, I have a choice — either I just discard it, or I activate Mutavault, return it with Riptide Lab and discard it, keeping my Vendilion. I choose option number two, since Vendillion seems pretty key in this game, where I likely have to race him, but it backfires when I draw my four cards for the turn and still see no second Island or even a play for the turn. I miss a Mutavault attack because of that. He ends up not discarding the Clique, though, and I manage to play it when the next Visions resolves, and to attack once before he killed it.
My opponent’s life was slowly withering away because of his Arena and the random attacks with Spellsutters and Vendilions that he allowed me without reason. It seemed that he had misunderstood the game — he seemed to think it was an attrition war, when in fact it was a race. He more than once allowed me to attack with creatures so he could play Loam, cycle lands, discard my hand, but none of that actually mattered, the only thing that mattered was his life total, which was slowly going away while he tried to establish control in a game where he already had total control.
In the end, he realized he was going to die to his own Arena and started playing sloppily, running into stuff like topdecked Mana Leak on his Worm Harvest when he could have Crimed me first with no real loss. We get to the point where he is at two, and the Worm Harvest isn’t enough to kill me, but he plays two Knight of the Reliquaries that turn instead, which is lethal. I have one turn to draw Command or Venser, but I don’t and die with him at one and Arena in play.
I win game two a bit quicker than that, with Future Sight (though it still took long as he kept playing spells when he was dead on board for no real reason… like, he is at three and I have five flying power in play, then he taps out to play Knight of the Reliquary and Kitchen Finks. What does he think, that I’m not going to attack? I’ve been playing bad but not that bad — I understand that sometimes you might want to play on to see what your opponent does even if you’re dead on board, or to see more of his deck, but he’d have seen the same had he just passed instead of going into the thank for three minutes and then playing two irrelevant spells when we are short on time) and game three, because we are short on time, we both play more aggressively than normal (at least I did). I resolve a Shackles and Sower one of his Knights, when he is too big for my Shackles to take. He kills the Sower, but I have Visions resolving and of it I draw a Relic, which enables me to Shackles one of the Knights. With Venser and Lab going, as well as his Knight attacking, it’d probably be a short time before I won, but time ended.
After the match, a spectator came up and said that I could have Shackled my own Knight when he killed the Sower, while it was still small enough for the amount of Islands I had, thus keeping it when the Sower died. That is a really good play that I totally missed. It’s not the kind of mistake I was making in this tournament, though — it’s a whole different level. I usually see this kind of play — my mistakes are more of the foolish ones, ones that I make and then instantly realize but a split second too late to correct, and not of the “not seeing something that wins me the game” ones. I’m not sure I’d have won the game in time, but it’d have certainly helped my chances. To whoever pointed it out to me, you have my sincere thanks.
So, I drew again. Drawing at this point was as good as a loss to me, but, I found out later, not for my opponent, for I had been paired up. It’s a bit unusual for me to get two draws (and one in Chicago), since I’m one of the fastest players I know, and mostly everyone who plays against me or watches me play says I’m pretty fast. When I mentioned to Richard Hagon that I had gotten two draws, he replied “for most people I’d have said that means you have to play faster, but not for you.” I guess I was playing a little slower than average in both of those tournaments, since I didn’t know my deck as well as I usually do and I had a lot of hard decisions to make that would have already been made for me had I faced those situations before, so it might be it. Still, even if I have to think I’m not really slow, so maybe my opponents were.
When, in the next match, at the two draws bracket, my opponent takes two minutes to keep his hand, two minutes to fetch and two minutes to resolve Thoughtseize, I call a judge. The problem with slow play is that you keep building up “slow play anger” towards your opponent — every time he plays slowly, you dislike it but don’t bring it up, or tell him to play a bit faster. Then when he goes way over the line you call a judge, but the judge doesn’t know that he has been playing slowly since the beginning of the match, though you do. This time, I called the judge instantly. My opponent sped up a bit but it didn’t matter since I had excellent draws with multiple Shackles and Sowers against his Doran deck.
Two rounds to go I lost to Elves, when he killed me turn two on the play game one and then managed to kill my two Jittes game two to just overwhelm me with Visionaries, and then I beat BG Loam to finish inside the top 64.
I had liked the deck, but some things were clearly amiss. I knew that, if I played the same deck for Singapore, I’d go with Martin and play a second Future Sight sideboard, two Sowers maindeck and no River of Tears. Throughout the tournament, I got Choked and Boiled twice, and both times I had my River of Tears in play, but it never mattered to have one Land instead of zero, but I had two hands with River, Mutavault and Visions that I couldn’t cast turn one. I also had games where it was relevant with Shackles, so I decided to cut it. I’m sure that, if you play this build, not playing River of Tears is the correct decision.
We drove back to Prague, and then caught the flight to Singapore, meeting Manuel on our way in Dubai. It was a pretty long flight overall, but the airline was pretty good and the flights were pretty empty, so I managed to sleep just fine.
Arriving in Singapore was a pleasant surprise. The airport was pretty efficient at everything, and the city had a nice view. For some reason I was expecting Singapore to be like Japan but with more people, but it isn’t. There are trees everywhere and though they have the highest people density in the entire world, you almost can’t feel it because those people aren’t all concentrated in the same spot (at least that’s the impression I got from the places I went to… I might be wrong).
The only thing lacking was the weather. One would think that being from a somewhat tropical country myself I’d be used to it, but I’m not — I hate the weather here too. In Singapore it was even worse (I know, I know, Chicago is too cold, Singapore is too hot, I’m very picky, etc). It’s not just that it was superhot, it was smothering.
Still, our hostel had air conditioning everywhere, including in our little prison-cell like room, so it was all fine since we stayed indoors most of the time. We met the Americans there and played a bit, and decided on this list, which Sam Black and Zac Hill ended up playing as well:
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Vendilion Clique
2 Sower of Temptation
3 Venser, Shaper Savant
4 Ancestral Visions
4 Mana Leak
4 Spell Snare
2 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Vedalken Shackles
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Chrome Mox
4 Mutavault
3 Riptide Laboratory
1 Breeding Pool
1 Steam Vents
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Flooded Strand
12 Island
Sideboard:
2 Future Sight
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Stifle
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Threads of Disloyalty
1 Sower of Temptation
2 Flashfreeze
The five lists were identical as far as I know, except for one River of Tears in Zac, Manuel, and Sam’s list, and Trickbinds over Stifles in Sam’s.
Throughout the play sessions, it was interesting to see how people have different play styles, and how that ends up affecting their decisions. When you play a control deck, you don’t have much choice other than being control, and same when you play aggro, but when you play a deck that can do both, like Faeries, people always lean one way or another. Manuel, for example, is much more of a laid back player — he prefers not to do anything unless he has to. I’m much more aggressive in general, and that reflects in how we play this deck, so we ended up disagreeing in a great number of plays. Of course, virtue is to be found in the middle, and the best way to play those decks is to be both when you have to, which we both can do to some extent.
My first game of the tournament was pretty interesting. My opponent was playing Naya. I won game 1, and then game 2 it looks like it’s going to be a blowout in my favor when he misses land drops and I get Jitte going… but he finds lands, Hedge-Mages my Jitte, and I suddenly have my back to the wall. At some point, he attacks with a Wild Nacatl. The situation is this:
I have a Mutavault, a Venser, a Riptide Lab and a bunch of lands, but only five untapped. I have a Spellstutter in hand, and I’m at three life. Based on the way he played the previous turns, I’m pretty sure he has a two-mana burn spell in hand. At this point, my options are double blocking with Venser and Vault and bouncing whatever he kills, so dying to his burn spell (since I don’t have mana to activate Vault and play Stutter after that, even if I block with just Venser); blocking with Venser and letting it die, which isn’t very profitable because then he still has the Nacatl and the burn spell and we get to the same situation next turn except I have one creature less; or double blocking with Venser and Vault, hoping he doesn’t kill the Vault — if he does, I’ll be one Faerie short of countering his burn spell anyway. I realize that, to do that, I have to make it attractive for him to kill the Venser instead of the Mutavault when I double block, so I decide to tap my Riptide Laboratory to activate the Mutavault and pretend it was a mistake. I was hoping that he would be delighted by the opportunity to get rid of my Venser once and for all, and excitement would trump reason and he’d let my Mutavault live, trading my Venser for his Nacatl and retaining the ability to counter his lethal burn spell. My plan works better than expected — apparently I was right that his excitement to kill the Venser would trump reason, since he didn’t waste any time aiming his Incinerate at it — when I was at three life. I decided it was worth countering anyway, to kill his Nacatl, and I ended up winning the game some turns later.
Another funny episode was when I played against Elves. He started with Forest, Birchlore Rangers. I played Island go. Then he played Nettle Sentinel, tapped both, played Glimpse, untapped Sentinel, “uuh…. I don’t have any Mana left… pass.” I guess people get so excited about the possibility of doing something flashy as killing turn two that they end up missing some things, such as the fact that he didn’t have a second land.
I played against three Elves, beating all 2-0, and I also beat three Zoo type decks, two Naya and one five color. I lost to TEPS day one, to a Red Akroma that I didn’t expect game two.
One interesting play in day 2 was when I was playing against 5c Zoo. I knew he had Dark Confidant and Kird Ape in hand, and I had Explosives on one. He attacked with his only creature (a Kird Ape) and I played Venser, bouncing his single Stomping Grounds, making his Ape 1/1, and blocked. Later on Martin told me that, though the play was fine, it wasn’t very relevant because of the Explosives for one I had in play. He said that I’d better bounce the Bob that got played that turn. Maybe he is right — I was still at something like 11 and could afford to take two, and by bouncing the Bob I could race him. My play ended up not being very good because he had a Mogg Fanatic (which he wouldn’t have played had I taken the damage, because of the EE in play) and finished my Venser. Still, if I had not killed that Kird Ape, I’d have to blow the EE to kill it and then face the other Kird Ape in the future. It’s possible that I got lured by the prospect of ambushing Kird Ape with Venser while also bouncing a Dual Land and that ended up clouding my judgment, but I’m still unsure what the right play was.
I also liked the story I heard about Manuel stealing Dark Confidant with Sower and then bouncing it back to his opponent’s hand with Lab — I know a lot of people who would simply not think about that.
Day two was a bit disappointing, since I had to go 4-2 to make it but ended up going 3-3, for a top 16. My losses were to Tezzeret, Ug Faeries and the mirror. At least I don’t think I played very badly in any of them like I was playing the past tournaments — I lost because sometimes you lose in games of Magic. I also learned that, in Extended, it’s much harder to just go aggro if you’re behind in mirrors — in Standard you had Commands for all in attacks and their own Blossoms to kill them, in extended you don’t have any of that. Most of the time you try to fight aggressively and you’ll take them to 3-4 but then be unable to finish them once they establish control of the game.
On the deck, I liked it. I probably wouldn’t change anything if I were to play the mono Blue version. It’s possible though that right now the Goyf version is better. The reason for that is that the aggro decks have changed from being quick with a lot of burn to slow, with big guys and less burn. Before, playing Goyf wasn’t very good if you had to take three damage every game to do it, but right now I believe the big body is more important than the three damage, because they aren’t going to burn you out most of the time. It’s also relevant to play Explosives for three now more than it was before, with Thoctar and Ring aplenty, and if you play fetches it gets easy. I think that, if there is a time to move for the 3 color version, this is the time. I still don’t like that you only have 9 or 10 colored sources — if you use the first fetch for Green, that leaves you only eight White producing lands in your deck — seven of which deal you three damage if you want the mana instantly — that’s as many as I like to have in my Limited decks. I saw many matches that were decided because the Faeries player couldn’t get his colors in time, but I also saw many that were decided on the Faeries player playing two Tarmogoyfs, so I guess you can do either. As I said, if you like 3 color, this is probably the time for it.
I’d like to talk a bit about the Naya matchup before ending this article. I tried to keep the Extended focused talk down a bit, since the format is not very relevant anymore, and instead tried to talk about generic situations that could be applied to any format, but this seems to be a point of controversy enough for me to talk about it.
Some people think Faeries is favored, some people think Naya is favored. I think it’s an even matchup, but, more importanty, I think the responsibility of playing well is on the Naya player. If both players are excellent, Naya will win most of the time, but if the Naya guy doesn’t know what he is doing, he will lose most of the time. That’s not to say Faeries is an easier-to-play deck, just that Faeries punishes the opposition for mistakes more than Naya does. Since most people at the PTQ level are not excellent, if you are a good player I can recommend Faeries and you should go with the thought that you are favored against the aggro decks. Sure, you might find a really good player who is going to know what to do and then you’ll be a little of a dog, but, overall, you should win. At the same time, if you are a Naya player who is good and know what to do in the matchup, you should bear in mind that you’ll have good odds against most Faerie decks, no matter how good their pilots are.
From the Faeries point of view, I think the most important concept is to identify what is the threat in that particular game — the speed or the consistency. There are draws in which you cannot afford to take any damage and have to blow Explosives as soon as they attack, or to Spellstutter that end of turn burn spell, and there are draws in which you have to take damage to be able to stabilize the board by blowing EE at the end of the turn, or playing Venser at the end of the turn. The hard thing is knowing when you should do each, and I think this is the key to the matchup, so this is the point you should work on if you plan on playing Faeries in a tournament.
As always, I hope you liked it, and see you next week!
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