This is my Grand Prix: Seattle report. Hopefully it will help you gain more understanding of Standard in time for the StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Opens this month.
I left Barcelona pretty early in the morning, catching a flight to Madrid, then to Boston, then do Dallas, and then finally Seattle. At some point during one of those flights, I’m awakened by a flight attendant who wants to give me a form to fill. She asks if I’m European or American, to which I reply I’m Brazilian. At the mention of the word, she steps back and her eyes go wide with fear:
“Brazilian… and are you feeling okay?”
“Err… yes?”
“Are you sure? Your eyes are red…’
“That’s because I just woke up”
“Hmm… Are you really sure you are okay?”
“I’m from Brazil, not from Mexico, you have no reason to be concerned that I have swine flu any more than any other passenger in this plane! In fact, there are far less cases of it in Brazil than in the U.S. or Spain, so I’m probably the person you should be concerned the least about on this entire airplane!”
(Okay, what I actually said was “yes, I’m okay,” but this is what I thought.)
Ironically enough, as I’m writing this, I’m down with a reasonably bad flu, which probably comes from the air conditioning and sudden temperature changes in Hawaii. Maybe she was right, and I’m a dangerous passenger – make sure you don‘t come near me in São Paulo.
I arrived in Seattle on Wednesday morning, after having spent the night in the Dallas Airport.. Zaiem Beg, who I was staying with, picked me up at the airport and we met a lot of other people, some I knew and some I didn’t, and drafted a lot. Unlike Barcelona, I didn’t really have a clue what I was going to play.
During one of drafts, I asked Gerry Thompson what he thought about playing Swans, and he said he would never do it. I asked why, and he said he wanted to avoid the hate. My argument was that people would be under prepared, because even though they knew about it they didn’t really realize how good it was, despite the results in Barcelona. Then he said something like: “well, those people you are going to beat anyway, regardless of the deck you’re playing… What do you want to do? Do you want to beat the good people or all the brain-deads?”
I wanted to beat all the good people. I realized he had a point there. I started to dislike the idea of playing Swans – after all, I didn’t want to lose to someone who was very bad because they went turn 1 Pithing Needle or turn 2 Meddling Mage.
On Friday, I went to the event and talked to Luis, and he also didn’t really know what to play. We played a lot of games, with Mono Red, Elves, Faeries – everything just seemed terrible. I tried brewing lists and just failed miserably at all my attempts. In the end, I decided to play Faeries, since I didn’t like anything else, and that’s what I do when I don’t like anything else. The environment would be okay for Faeries, since it supposedly beats Swans (though it’s not an easy match; I’d rather be the Faeries player in the struggle), and it’s pretty even against almost everything else, which gives you some room for outplaying people. It’s probably the hardest deck to play against I’ve ever seen, which is good in a Grand Prix because you are going to be paired against some people who are not that good, and they will mess up and give you wins you shouldn’t have. There is also the fact that I have a lot of experience with the deck and am pretty comfortable playing it.
This is the list that Luis and I played:
Creatures (13)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (19)
The numbers seem a little random, but I like this list. I wanted 4 Underground Rivers because of Thoughtseize and Plumeveil (which we had in the sideboard), but after the tournament I was forced to agree they sometimes are very harmful (especially in those River-Sunken Ruins hands, where any basic would have saved you around 3-4 life) – nowadays I would run 2 or 3. The removal is the next random part, and I have to say I’m not entirely sure which is better. Agony Warp is better against BW and the Five-Color beatdown deck, and Terror is better in the mirror and against random stuff. I think we made the wrong choice in playing 2 Terror and 1 Agony Warp — it should have been the opposite. Sometimes it’s frustrating to have them play Mistbind Clique, Wilt-Leaf Liege, Cloudthresher, or a 4/4 Figure and being unable to deal with it, but since we have Deathmarks in the sideboard, the Green creatures should be more under control, and in this format I believe Agony Warp is better. The Peppersmokes I originally disliked, and I’m not sure if I like them now. They were never bad, since they just cycle if anything, but they were never really outstanding. I liked them, and I might play them again.
I believe three Jace is the correct number, as are four Scions and three Spellstutter. I see no one else playing three Spellstutter, but I think it’s correct – you don’t really need it, and it’s bad in a lot of situations. I’d pretty much always rather have the fourth Scion in my deck. Two Sower of Temptations might become something else, but they were our choice to battle the BW decks. Since we could not afford to run Stillmoon because of Persecution, and Infest is kinda bad, we decided to maximize on them and that included playing two in the main.
Two Thoughtseize is a concession to the format – it’s good in the mirror, against Swans, any control deck – it’s just a good card in general to have in your opening hand, because knowing what they have is good with a deck that has so many options. It helps you know when you have to go aggro and when you have to play control, when it’s safe to Mistbind in their upkeep, etc. It’s often bad to draw it late, which is why there are only two – you don’t want to draw them in a stable board position.
Our sideboard was this:
2 Puppeteer Clique
1 Loxodon Warhammer
1 Razormane Masticore
2 Sower of Temptation
3 Flashfreeze
2 Deathmark
2 Plumeveil
2 Thoughtseize
This sideboard was very powerful, and I was very happy with it for the entire tournament. All the cards were relevant, and it did what a sideboard is supposed to do, which is help where you are having problems – I think I can say our sideboard powered us up to our result.
Puppeteer Cliques were awesome for me and as far as I know for everyone else that played them – most decks running Anathemancer will take more damage from it than you, and stealing Cloudthresher plus another guy is also very good. It’s also a big flying threat that you can tap out to play with because it’s hard to handle. If you play this card, make sure you know everything it does – for instance, if you block with it or they kill it main phase, you get to steal a guy and it doesn’t go away until the end of YOUR turn, so you can attack with it. I would consider playing a third copy of this, probably in place of the Masticore.
The Masticore was always good when I drew it, but most of the time it wasn’t needed and could have been something else. With Pulse running rampant, it’s probably not a good card nowadays.
The one Warhammer I was also convinced to play, and it turned out to be pretty good when I drew it. I would consider main decking it now.
Plumeveils, Deathmarks and Flashfreezes are all good against the Bloodbraid decks, and other Green decks in general. As I said before, Plumeveil is the best answer to a hasted creature. Deathmark kills the otherwise pretty unkillable Putrid Leech for just one mana, as well as Doran, so it’s pretty good – I can see playing a third.
Sowers were never spectacular, but they did what they had to do – I don’t think there is any better card against BW. The two Thoughtseizes are complements for the mirror and control matchups, as well as Swans.
My first (fourth) round was against a Jund deck. Game 1 he was stuck on two lands and didn’t play many spells, and game 2 I got a Masticore that got rid of all the creatures he played and then killed him – not anything very relevant in those games.
Round 5 I played against BW Tokens. I knew the player, and he had told me two days before he was not playing Zealous Persecutions, but it seems he changed his mind because he ended up revealing it to a Broken Ambitions Clash – it would probably have been devastating if he hadn’t, but since he did I could play around it and win game 1. Game 2 he had a pretty good draw and I didn’t play anything, and game 3 I kept what was a very bad hand of Scion and six lands (but that had two Mutavaults and one Conclave), and he went Thoughtseize, Sculler, Sculler my next two spells, and I didn’t play anything for the rest of the game. I shouldn’t have kept that hand – my mulligans were not very good in this tournament.
I boarded -1 Jace Beleren, -2 Terror, +2 Sower of Temptation, +1 Loxodon Warhammer on the play, and -1 Jace Beleren, +1 Thoughtseize on the draw.
Round 6 I played against Doran. My opponent quickly won game 1 with a main deck Cloudthresher that I couldn’t deal with – I might have been able to win had I played differently with my Mistbind, though – and he never stopped talking. Not. For. A. Moment. He talked about basically everything, and my evasive answers and “uh-hum’s” and “I guess” were not enough to dissuade him from it. He also complained a lot when he drew an irrelevant card. I generally don’t mind talkative people and I like to chat a lot, and I’ll sometimes ask questions like “where are you from” at the beginning of the match, but I really dislike it when people cannot stay quiet during a match. Stuff like “oooh you attacked? Must have Scion then…”or “what, you did not counter that?” is generally unnecessary to say out loud, and it greatly annoys me. It’s even worse when people suddenly change moods, becoming talkative and making jokes about the game because they won game 1. If you are thinking of starting to do this if you ever play against me just because I dislike it, I’m going to call a judge on you!
Anyway, in game 2 I made a pretty bad play – I had Deathmark in hand, to his Qasali Pridemage, then I drew Bitterblossom. I meant to Deathmark it and then play the Bitterblossom, but for some reason I played the Bitterblossom first, which was really awkward. He let me make a token though, and then killed it the next turn, and I dealt about 15 damage with that token because he never drew any spells and my hand was all reactive.
Game 3 he plays turn 1 Reflecting Pool and I Thoughtseize him, seeing Pool, Putrid Leech, Doran and irrelevant cards, but no other land. I took out the Leech, since it would probably take a long time to cast the Doran with his Reflecting Pools alone, but after missing one or two land drops he played a Murmuring Bosk. It was already too late for him, though.
I sided -3 Jace Beleren, -4 Scion of Oona, -2 Broken Ambitions (I think), +2 Sower of Temptation, +2 Deathmark +3 Flashfreeze, +2 Puppeteer Clique. For game 3, since I didn’t see any one-toughness guys in either game, I took out the Peppersmokes for two Scions back.
Round 7 I honestly do not remember what happened. I know I won 2-0 because I checked the coverage, but I don’t remember what happened in the games or what he was playing. I think he was playing BW and I won with multiple Sowers, but I’m not sure.
Round 8 I played in a feature match against Manuel Bucher.
Game 1 he has a decent start, and my lands being Underground River, Sunken Ruins, and Mutavault didn’t help. Still, I was managing to make a comeback, with Mistbind and Bitterblossom, and I would likely have won, but he had the second Volcanic Fallout to kill me.
Game 2 we traded spells up to the point where I played an end of the turn Spellstutter and then Warhammer plus equip. He had an answer for the Faerie, and then I played Masticore. He Cryptic Commanded it back to my hand in his main phase, then I just activated Mutavault and Warhammered it rather than replaying the Masticore. In the end, Warhammer life swings were too much.
Game 3 was pretty good. He started with Leech into Boggart Ram-Gang for seven damage, and I dropped to 12 because of Bitterblossom. He attacked again, I blocked, and Spellstutter Sprited something. When he attacks again, I play Mistbind, blocking the Ram-Gang (I don’t want my Blossom to come back) and chumping the Leech. In my turn I Deathmark it.
He only has a Vivid land with one counter for Red mana, so he is unable to cast Volcanic Fallout. He uses the counter for a Bloodbraid, so I’m pretty convinced he cannot cast Fallout next turn (unless he draws Fire-Lit Thicket, which turns out he didn’t play). He is at 9, I have my Spellstutter, my 1/1 Mistbind (wither), a Puppeteer Clique in hand (he has Anathemancers in graveyard, and three non-basics) and he has Sygg. I’m at two. I think, and realize that if I attack with my guys and Anathemancer him he is going down to four, and since he cannot kill the Pupppeteer (which would mean another Anathemancer hitting him for three) he is basically dead next turn for sure – he would need removal for both my 1/1 Faeries and he only had four mana. I then decide that there is no difference in putting him on 3 or 4, since he cannot remove both guys in his present state, so one is always going to get through, so I decide to play around Bloodbraid/Ram-Gang by leaving one guy back and attacking with just one. What I did not realize was that this would put him to 5, not 4 – and then he would be able to survive by killing one of my 1/1s. In my mind, he would be at 4 if I attacked with only one guy. I don’t know what happened and what led me to think that, but it was honestly a math mistake and not a “play mistake” – as in, I knew what I was doing, I just messed up life totals. As soon as I attacked and realized he had gone to 5 and not 4, I knew I had done wrong, but it was too late to go back. He untapped and played Maelstrom Pulse on my Mistbind, which brought my Blossom back and put me to one on upkeep. I still could have drawn Agony Warp, Mistbind or Cryptic, but I drew a land and died to my Blossom with him at one.
This loss felt very frustrating, because I think I played the whole match really well. Both games he won I was behind a lot on the board and managed to make comebacks, when any other sequence of plays would probably have lost me the game. It might have seen to whoever was watching that it was a normal match, but I knew those were very hard games and none of the decisions had been easy, and I could see I had made the right one in almost every turn, which is not something I can say for many of my games. All that, just to throw it all away at the last moment with some stupid mistake.
Still, I knew I had to stop thinking about it – I’ve made some pretty bad mistakes in the past that have lost me games that I worked very hard to get in a winnable situation (like the “Lightning Helix my own guy” in Berlin) and I knew I could not let them influence my future games. If my friend who, in round 4 playing Swans, had combo’ed his opponent, discarded 10 lands to deal 20 only to be met with a “my turn now?” since his opponent was at 22 from Kitchen Finks (he lost that game) could go on with the tournament, so could I.
I sided -3 Jace Beleren, -2 Sower of Temptation, -4 Scion of Oona, -2 Thoughtseize, +2 Plumeveil, +2 Puppeteer Clique, +1 Razormane Masticore, +1 Loxodon Warhammer, +2 Deathmark, +3 Flashfreeze
I debated taking out the Peppersmokes, but they are good with Plumeveils to stop Putrid Leech, so I left them in.
My last match of the day, playing for Day 2, was against BW. We split the first two games, and the third looked like I was going to win easily because he was stuck on lands, but I couldn’t capitalize on it and soon he was back in the game. I kept drawing lands, and eventually I drew Loxodon Warhammer and bashed with Mutavault. He kept playing creatures, and I drew land after land. He had a Bitterblossom that was slowly killing him (and me), but if I could get some Trample damage through I’d be able to win the race, though I couldn’t attack because he had a Finks on defense. The turn before I would die to Zealous Persecution, when he was at two, he attacked with Finks, and I drew Agony Warp. I attacked with equipped Vault and he had Sculler, Vault, and a token. He thought for some minutes about blocks, and then in the end decided to block with them all. If he blocked with anything other than the three guys, the Warp is going to get trample damage through even if he had Persecution.
Since he blocked with the three guys, I had to Warp first. Sure enough, he had the Persecution to stay alive. My Vault became a 4/1 and he had five toughness, so he would not take any damage and I would only kill one guy. That was when I made use of the best kept secret in professional Magic, and activated Mutavault again. Due to how layers work, if you -x/-x Mutavault and then activate it again on top of it, it’s going to reset to 2/2. Ever lost a Mutavault to Peppersmoke or Darkblast? You shouldn’t have. Because of that, my Vault became 5/2 again despite his Persecution, and I was able to kill both his guys, which meant next turn he could only attack me down to two life even if he had drawn another Persecution Zealous (which he did!), and then died to his Bitterblossom the final turn. I was really happy with my play, because if I had not activated it again, I would have died and not made Day 2.
In the end, I sneaked in with 7-2, after a really hard match. I had mixed feelings about my play in that tournament – when I did not make stupid mistakes I really excelled, but I made a lot of stupid mistakes, more than I believe is tolerable. It only lost me a match, but could have lost me many more. Still, Day 2 is a new day, maybe things would work out better (and they did!).
Before I leave today, I’m going to comment a little on the recent rules changes.
It has been my opinion for the last 3 years or so that, whenever Wizards makes a change to MTG, it’s either something that was not needed or something bad. Nothing ever changes for the better, and there hasn’t been a single announcement that made me happy after the implementation of the Pro Player’s Club. Sure, some things were good, such as Nationals giving Pro Points, but that was as a consequence of one Pro Tour vanishing, so overall it’s a bad change.
Those changes are no different. Some I do not mind – namely token ownership and simultaneous mulligans – but they did not have to be changed. Battlefield and Exile I can live with, though I personally think they are childish names that make me somewhat embarrassed to play Magic. Battlefield… really? Tarmogoyf, I choose you? Exile is decent when applied to creatures, but “I’ll play Extirpate and Exile your Fireball” doesn’t really sound good.
Mana Burn not existing is (in my opinion) pretty bad, not only as a mechanic but flavor wise. In the Magic novels, people who “summon” mana and do not use it are smitten with pain – it makes sense. As a mechanic? Well, a lot of cards are rendered completely useless by it (though not very good cards anyway), but as I see it’s not a change that has the potential to do any good – it’s at best irrelevant, and why would you change something when the best possible result from that is no change at all?
The combat changes are just awful. I remember when I played before and the stack showed up, and how we made fun of it. “Aha, so I punch you, then the punch stops in midair and then hits you afterwards… How stupid!” At that point, I did not see a reason for switching, and it took me some time to get used to it. Now that I’m already used to it they want to switch back again, for no real reason — it doesn’t make anything much easier for new players, and it takes away a strategic value of the game, such as pumping after damage so you don’t get two-for-oned.
Not being able to distribute damage as you choose is the worst of them. Why the hell does this change exist? Just so they have to make exceptions for Deathtouch because the two rules they want to implement conflict with each other? How is that making the game easy? It’s not intuitive, it’s not easy, it’s not good, it did not need to be changed (since when has combat been broken, or hard?)… It’s just a terrible change overall.
Basically, I’m opposed to changing for change’s sake, and this seems to be what this is. I do not think Magic is dying or anything like that, I just think those changes are either irrelevant or bad, and I was perfectly happy without them. I wish they would say “okay, we take that back… no combat changes.” For each person supporting it, there seems to be ten who hate it, so let’s see what they are going to do about that.
See you next week!
PV