This is going to be a report from Grand Prix: Barcelona, as well as the history of the breakout deck of the tournament, Cascade Swans. I also hope that by reading this you get to know a little more about me as a person.
It all started a long time ago, shortly after the printing of Ad Nauseam. At that point, there was a deck called Seismic Swans, which was basically Swans, Seismic Assault, Ad Nauseam, and lands, that was played on Magic-League but I’m not sure if anywhere else. At that point, the deck was terrible – it had no way to reliably find Assault to be fast enough against aggro, and no way to make Assault resolve against control, so the deck was quickly forgotten by everyone. Then, about two weeks ago, in a casual chat, my friend Chris Davis casually mentioned “hey, how about that Seismic Assault / Swans deck with Bloodbraid Elf and Bituminous Blast to find the pieces?” – and it immediately struck me as potentially very powerful. We talked a bit more in the open channel about it, and quickly settled on playing some number of Elves, Assaults, Swans, Blasts and Nauseams, and between 40 to 42 lands. At that point it was very late for me, so we talked a bit more about the lands we should play, and then I PMed him saying I really liked the idea, and that I would try it the next day. It’s not very usual for me to be that impressed about a deck idea, because I generally just dislike everything, but I actually had trouble sleeping that night because I couldn’t stop thinking of different configurations and sideboard plans for the deck. I was really hoping it would prove itself to be good.
The next day I talked a bit more to Chris, and the versions we had built were very similar, differing just a little in the lands and the number of Ad Nauseams/Blasts (then again, when you only play five different spells and three of them are must-have fours, there isn’t much room to differ), and I tested a bit with a few friends I could trust not to spread the word. All my testing was done under the terms of “I have a deck and I don’t know how good it is, but if it happens to be awesome you cannot play it anywhere before Barcelona.” Everyone I played with agreed to that, so I figured I should have no problems with the list being spread. Normally I don’t care much about lists being out, but this was an entirely new concept that would get much worse if people started knowing about it, so I really wanted to keep it secret.
I played a ten games set against BW and won 8-2, and then to see how I would do against sideboarded decks we played another ten-game set with him boarded and me not (since I did not have a sideboard at that time)… and I won 8-2 as well. I beat GW even more easily. I was fine with losing to Faeries, which I didn’t expect would be heavily played anyway, but was struggling a bit against Five-Color Control, mainly because the version I was playing against was my own, with Ajanis, Remove Souls, Cloudthreshers and Wraths, which were better cards against the deck than the versions that I expected to see play. I was a bit worried about Runed Halo, so I decided I would play at least one Deny Reality in the maindeck over a Blast, so you can still kill them with Assault after drawing your entire deck. Still, I talked to Chris about the Five-Color Control problem, and he told me to construct a Five-Color Control list that I thought would be problematic to deal with and he would test against that. I built something with Halos, Plumeveils, and Remove Souls, which was pretty much the biggest “hate” I could expect people to play, and after some testing he reported that Runed Halo had not being a problem at all, because he had liked the idea and was playing 4 Deny Realities.
At that point, I became afraid… Afraid because I knew myself. I knew that I had always wanted this to happen – for me to have an awesome deck no one knew about – and the possibility of me simply deceiving myself was all too real. I’m always so afraid of not having anything to play that I’ll sometimes jump into the first deck that seems good, to take that weight off my shoulders. I suspect a lot of people have that problem, if not everyone. Once you’ve found a deck you want to play, you blind yourself to everything that could cause you not to play it, because if you find out you shouldn’t you’d then have to pick another deck and go through the whole process again. I was so scared of going 0-3 because my opponents played Needle/Halo, or simply because the deck wasn’t good enough to begin with, that I considered not playing it. Then I did what any self respecting Magic pro would do… and talked to my mother about it.
This might seem weird to you, but my mother actually knows a lot about Magic. She doesn’t play, but she always reads all the coverage, sometimes even following the Brazilian forum when they are talking about the tournament, and she reads pretty much all of my articles (Hi mom!). She also reads the forums too, so make sure you don’t go too hard on me. I talked to her about the fact that I thought I had a good deck, that it was different from everything at the time, and it seemed really good but I was afraid of just being wrong and messing up my whole trip with “promises of an easy win.” She then told me that I probably knew enough about the game to know if I was faced with something that was actually good or if I was just trying to be different for difference’s sake, and that if I happened to be wrong, well, so what? I knew Faeries was a good deck, and I had done miserably with it in Kyoto, so picking a deck that was “guaranteed” actually provided no guarantee at all. I could go 0-3 with this deck, but it could also happen with any other deck I chose to play, and there were more GPs after this one – I could afford the gamble. It could be that I was making a mistake, but it was my mistake to make, and I owed no one satisfaction if I did terribly anyway. Ah, always the voice of reason, my mother.
I played a little more against Five-Color Control, this time against Chris, and he told me what he believed I was doing wrong. We discussed some strategies, and in the end it wasn’t that bad. It also helped that I had changed to the four Bituminous Blast version, because they were pretty good against Plumeveil, and sometimes it was actually relevant to activate a Manland at the end of their turn and then Blast it to get a threat they had to counter instant speed. I also played some games against Faeries and, to my biggest surprise, I was winning more than losing pre-board. Most of the time I had more Assaults than they had counters, and Assault was almost always enough to beat them alone (or to give me enough time to beat them – basically, if they had Blossom I could often just Assault them to death, and if they didn’t I could do that to all their guys instead). I then knew I had my deck.
I went to our local store on Friday to play FNM and see how the deck worked against real competition (real as in real people, not as in strong), but no one had the cards for it since Alara Reborn did not exist in Brazil at the time (and still doesn’t now, if you don’t count the people who bring cards from the U.S.), so I didn’t have access to Bloodbraid Elf and couldn’t play it. Since I was already there and wanted to play, I ended up playing Faeries. I think any form of playing is valid practice — after all, it’s still the same game even though you play with a different deck, and it helps you understand the format and sharpens your Magic senses overall.
When I got home, I talked to a few people, like Joel and Rodrigo (Rodry from now on), the two Spaniards with whom I was staying. At first, they were sold on playing Mono U Mill, which is a deck I have never seriously considered since it just doesn’t look like the kind of deck I’d play, but after winning the great majority of my matches with Swans they were convinced to change as well. I also talked to Luis, because we had agreed on testing together for the upcoming tournaments and it seemed even counterproductive not to tell him. If you believe you can contain the information, it’s always good to talk to other people, especially good people, since they might have one small input, and if that’s remotely good it’s already worth the possibility of playing the mirror against them. It’s like the hate drafting thing – it’s worth it to help one person if that in turn helps you against everyone else. Besides, Luis has always done a lot for me, including lending me a full-powered Vintage deck for the Invitational when we didn’t really know each other that well, so I didn’t feel like withholding information I believed to be crucial.
I also talked to Chris and asked him if it was possible that he wouldn’t play this deck at Regionals that weekend. I would understand if he had chosen to play it… After all, if anyone put as much work on the deck as me, that person was him, and I couldn’t very well forbid him from playing what could be called his own deck. I told him I’d greatly appreciate it if he wouldn’t play it. When I had the “do not play this at Regionals” clause, some people argued that “no one would ever know about it” – I knew better. People always know. Still, he told me not to worry, because he was playing BW Tokens and didn’t even have the cards for this deck. I went to sleep, and I was pretty happy.
Next day, Chris PMed me. He said “I have two pieces of good news, and one piece of bad news…”
Chris: Good News #1 is that I qualified with BW Tokens.
PV: Congrats!
Chris: Good News #2 is that the Cascade Swans deck is really good.
PV: Awesome…
Chris: Bad News is that I know the deck is good because some kid used it to qualify at Chicago Regionals.
PV: shafsahfshasfhfshfsfs!!
I asked how that had happened. Surely I had been crystal clear in my requirements to avoid all the leaks? Chris told me that, before we had agreed to keep it secret, he had mentioned the idea to a friend of his, who in turn had no idea he was supposed to keep it secret. The friend had told his friend to play it at Regionals.
At that point, I threw a fit that lasted for about two hours. I was aiming for blood.
Chris thought I was overreacting, and I probably was, but it was such an emotional blow for me that it was pretty hard to stand. You see, as I said before, I’ve waited all my Magic life for the moment where I have what is, in my mind, clearly the best deck, and one that no one else knows about. I could close my eyes and imagine myself holding the trophy already, giving interviews on websites. I even thought about what answers I would give in the questions they asked in the Top 8 interviews. I was really happy with my choice, and that is very rare. I was actually choosing a deck because I thought it was the best and I wanted to play it, and not because I had no other option. Then it all crumbled to the ground before my eyes.
Ruined, without chance of recovery, because someone decided to play it at Regionals.
All my work, all the friends I told not to play it who could have qualified with it, even Chris himself, who did not play it partially because I asked … All pointless, because some guy that I didn’t even know, some guy that Chris didn’t even know, decided to go and play it because one of our friends told him to do so. At that point, I didn’t know that person, but I hated him with a passion. If I had the Deathnote book, I’d probably have killed him on the spot.
Chris told me it wouldn’t be that bad. At worst, maybe someone would write about it on Friday before the GP, and by then it’d be too late. No one would care about it. I did not think so. It was a different deck, a combo deck no less, and it was good. People love all those traits. I knew the word would be out, there is no way to avoid it in the world we live today. And, sure enough, I got an e-mail the next day: “Sadly, Sam Black is writing about the deck tonight.”
At this point, I also hated Sam Black with a passion. Why did he have to go and write about my deck? What rights did he have? Couldn’t he build his own deck, and then write about that? How on earth could Adrian Sullivan obtain the lists from Regionals? Wasn’t that unfair? And why did he have to go tell Sam Black? I guessed I hated Adrian Sullivan too. Right now, I see that I was not justified in my hatred – those three people never meant me any harm. They were just doing what they were supposed to do, what was right for them – playing a good deck and qualifying, writing an article about a new interesting deck, looking through decklists from a big tournament – but, to me, at that point, it felt like each of them had personally came and grabbed the trophy from my hands.
Still, agonizing over it didn’t make it any better. I decided that, unless something else changed, I’d still be playing the deck. Even though people had taken notice of it, they wouldn’t be able to tell how powerful it was just by looking. They wouldn’t consider it one of the top decks in the format, they wouldn’t stop playing a deck because they lost to it. None of the alternatives really appealed to me. They were all decks I knew I didn’t want to play. Joel and Rodry thought it was obviously bad but not that much of a problem, since they were counting on most people to simply dismiss it.
I left my home Tuesday morning, to catch my plane to Sao Paulo. After that I went to Dallas, then Boston, then Madrid then Barcelona, arriving Thursday afternoon at Joel’s house. We played some online games against a friend of mine and talked a bit about the list we wanted, and then went to sleep. Of course, I awoke at 5am completely sleepless, as I always do when I travel, and then I waited for hours for Rodry to arrive.
We got at the event and I talked to a lot of people I knew, always trying to avoid the “what are you playing” questions. When people asked me what I was going to play, I told them I couldn’t tell them because I had a testing group I was working with and we were not supposed to go around telling people. Everyone understood this, which (in my opinion) is the way it should be — I know people got angry at my friends for not sharing the list we had decided to play, but, honestly, no one has this right. You are entitled to ask “hey what are you playing,” of course, but they are entitled to say “I can’t tell you.” When I talked to them about the deck, it was under the condition they not share it, and they were simply doing as I had asked — it’s not a matter of being “more friendly” with one person or another, it’s just a matter of being respectful. [He wouldn’t even tell me, even when threatened with being fired… – Craig, amused]
Anyway, in the end, this was the list the three of us played:
Creatures (8)
Lands (41)
Spells (11)
The deck is pretty straightforward, and not hard to play. Most of the time your goal is to get Swans and Assault into play, and then you win regardless of what is going on; the tricky games are the ones where you don’t have Swans, and you have to manage your resources. From what you might have read of my feature matches, it might seem that I killed turn 4 every game. Well, I didn’t, except in those feature matches. I actually won a lot of games without Swans, just by attacking and burning them out with lands. You should not underestimate Seismic Assault in a deck with 41 lands — it adds up pretty quickly. Consider this hand:
6 lands
Bloodbraid Elf
If you assume you are going to draw a land per turn, and that they don’t do anything to stop you, this hand kills turn 5 — with just one spell. Sure, they are going to do something to stop you, but the point remains that it’s very possible to kill someone without having to combo them, and you don’t need any miracles for that to happen.
The key part here is knowing when you have to defend yourself, to give you time to draw the combo, and when you have to be the aggressor to win without the combo. Against decks like BW and Faeries, for example, you have to know when to push through damage. If you have Swans, Primal Command, Ad Nauseam, or just no prospect of winning with damage, you’ll want to hit the attackers to buy yourself time. If you think you are not comboing anytime soon (i.e. your hand is all lands/Assaults, or they have some form of maindeck disruption, or are playing counters) , you should be aware that you are playing more burn than most dedicated burn decks and, if the game goes long, they will die — kind of like the Philosophy of Fire. One manland attack here, one Elf attack there, some Bitterblossom damage, and suddenly they might be dead at every drawstep, and there is nothing they can do about it.
Mulligans with this deck are fairly easy too. The nature of the deck means hands with a lot of lands are good, and you very rarely lose games because you flood. My friend actually said he lost a lot of games to “spell-flood,” but not many to land-flood. Hands I keep:
6 lands, Bloodbraid/Assault/Sunlight/Swans — if you have Assault and 6 Lands, that should give you enough time to draw into the other combo piece (be it Command, Swans or Ad Nauseam) and also give you enough food to kill them with Elves/Manlands. If you have 6 lands and Swans it’s a bit harder, but I’ll keep it anyway — the deck has 10 Assaults in it, plus Bituminous Blast (which at this point has a 10/13 chance to get the card you want). If you draw the Assault (whenever I say “Assault,” I mean any of the cards that lead to it), most of the time you are going to win the game, so I keep it.
Basically, I’ll keep any hand that access to Assault, or Swans, and is not spell-flooded. You should be fine with two lands most of the time, especially since if you only have two it means you have a lot of spells, so you probably not only have the combo, but backup Assaults.
Hands I don’t keep:
7 lands
1 land, 6 spells
Any hand without Seismic Assault or Swans (5 lands, Primal Command, Bituminous Blast, for example).
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t fall into the trap of the “my deck has 41 lands so I’m going to draw them” way of thinking. The deck has 41 lands for a reason — it needs lands. You need at least five to kill them. What happens when you keep a one-lander and miss for one turn? If you are land- flooded, you can use them for good value, but if you are land short, what do you do? If you have only three lands in play, you actually cannot do anything — you cannot play a spell because you don’t have the Mana, and you cannot discard a land to slow them down because you don’t have it. Every turn you don’t draw a land is a Time Walk for your opponent. You should mulligan the hands without lands, just like you would with any deck. A good parameter for me is to think that I’m playing a 20-land Zoo deck, and then invert it — gives me some idea of the probability in terms I’m more used to thinking, because for most of us it’s not common to work with the probability of drawing land in a 40-land deck, but we already have a general idea of how it works with 20 or so lands.
I was asked a lot which list I liked better, mine or the American version. I have to say I like mine better — after all, if I liked their list more, I’d have played it instead of the one I played, since I had access to it. I like their sideboard plan, but I don’t like the deck you have to play to support it.
I like Ad Nauseam because it gives you a new way of playing the deck. It gets around Everlasting Torment, Thought Hemorrhage for Swans (which is a very valid possibility since they sometimes just can’t hit Assault with it — as it’s in play – and so will go for the next best thing), and it plays well against countermagic due to being instant speed. It is random, like Deny Reality, but a different kind of random. Even if you don’t kill them, there is the possibility of just finding lands and a Swans and then stopping. If you hit any spell before the Swans and end up dying because of it, well, Deny Reality would not have hit Swans on this occasion either.
Bituminous Blast is a card that is more comparable with Deny Reality in its randomness, and Luis had a good point when he said the deck would usually want to kill that same turn or one turn later, so bouncing was as good as killing, but the Blast being instant speed means it has many advantages that Deny Reality doesn’t. Blast is good against Faeries and deceptively good against Five-Color Control, because it presents an end of turn threat, just like Ad Nauseam. It’s also very handy at killing Plumeveil and Meddling Mage, things Deny Reality can’t do. It doesn’t get rid of problematic permanents, such as Torment, Halo or Needle, but the only one of those cards you should expect maindeck is the Runed Halo, since it’s the only one that’s not bad versus most of the field. Against Halo, the Primal Command should be enough, unless they also have counters, in which case you can always kill them with Manlands, Elves, and Swans, and after sideboard there are better ways to deal with those. Overall, I like the instant speed better than the alternatives, which are handling problematic permanents and enabling the LD sideboard, since I think it’s more important against the matches you should have more trouble.
The Spinerock Knoll is the next point of divergence, and, honestly, I’m not sure about it. I activated it exactly zero times in the entire tournament — but then again I played versus zero decks that had more than four counterspells, which is when Knoll excels. Also I might just have been unlucky with it (my Countryside Crusher got +1/+1 only once in the entire tournament, and I revealed cards for it five times, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad card). Joel activated Knoll three times, once on Day 1, once for the Top 8, and once to beat me in the semis, so it was worth it for him. I like having it because it adds another dimension to those Assault/6 land hands — in a hand like those, it’s like a free Impulse to find the missing part of the combo. Still, it was the land I boarded out the most. You just have to be aware of what you have under there — if it’s a land, you need to take that into account in your calculations to kill them. Sometimes, against decks with permission and ways to deal with Assault, you should put a land under it instead of a Seismic Assault, since it’s not impossible for them to deal with the three of them left in your deck, leaving you with nothing to cascade for.
Onto the tournament!
Round 4: Patrick Chapin 5CB list
This was a feature match, because Tim wanted to see the deck in action. You can find it here.
It is pretty well covered. I killed him turn 5 game 1, after he Commanded my Bloodbraid Elf, and then I barely lost game 2, in part because my Crusher refused to grow bigger than 3/3 for three turns or so. He Thought Hemorrhaged the Seismic Assault from my hand and kept attacking me with Putrid Leech. At one point, I played a Swans, and a fifth land when I was at 5 — since I had no Assaults left, I saw no reason not to keep lands in my hand, since I wanted to have access to 5 lands next turn even if he played like Fulminator or Commanded one back to my hand. Then he played Anathemancer, and I died. Still, he had a Putrid Leech in play and I had an untapped Swans — had he just attacked, I’d not have blocked and would have gone to one, dying anyway, but it was wrong to play the land because he might not have the Anathemancer, decide to keep his Leech to block my Crusher, and then draw the Anathemancer later, so I should just have held it.
Game 3 I made another mistake — at some point, I had Blast in my hand, five lands in play (one of which was a Ghitu Encampment), Assault, Elf and two lands in hand, facing his Bloodbraid Elf. He was at 8, so I could not kill him that turn with attack + burn. The previous turn, he had seemed very upset to draw a Vivid as his sixth land, so for some reason it made me think he had something that cost 6 and he wanted to play. If I Blast his Elf, hitting into another Elf or Swans, I kill him that turn, but if I hit into Crusher or another Assault or Wickerbough Elder that I boarded in, I don’t. I decided that I’d rather kill his guy and attack with both, leaving two mana up and a land in hand so I could kill my own Ghitu Encampment if he had double Anathemancer, which would be lethal otherwise. In the end, it turned out my decision was terrible, because he had Cruel Ultimatum and not double Anathemancer, but his seventh land was also a Vivid so it didn’t matter.
I sided in +4 Countryside Crusher, +2 Wickerbough Elder for -1 Primal Command, -2 Bituminous Blast, -2 B/W Vivid, -1 Spinerock Knoll. I sided those out because I wanted to keep the lands that came into play untapped, and I wasn’t going to need much colored mana from my sideboard, so those Vivids seemed worse than the Knoll. I could actually activate it by attacking with Crushers, but it might have been entirely wrong — I doubt which lands I was siding out would have made a very big difference.
While I am at it, I see people playing different Vivids other than Red and Green, which makes no sense unless you want more than 8. You want your Vivids to add the mana you are going to use more often, which is Red and Green, not only for spells but also for Manlands. It’s much more common to want to activate Treetop Village three times than to want to cast a Black or White spell three times, so by playing the Green Vivid you maximize your chances with the Vivid counters. I never ran out of counters in the entire tournament, but Luis said he did a lot.
I also believe it’s very wrong to run lands that don’t tap for Red, other than Treetops, because you just always want Assault mana as soon as possible and all your Filters work with Red mana. Playing the likes of Swamp and Plains is just no good — if you want basics because of Anathemancer (which shouldn’t be much of a concern since, even though you have 41 lands, as you pretty much never want more than five unless it’s to activate double Treetop… And in that case you should be the aggressor and they should be the ones worrying about one point of damage), just play more Mountains. The Americans played Sunken Ruins, because of Deny Reality and Rain of Tears, but I don’t like it, even in their version — I believe they are probably the reason Luis ran out of counters so much (Treetop, Rugged Prairie, Sunken Ruins hands, anyone?).
4-0
Round 5: BR
I think this is round 5, but I might be mixing it with the BW match from round 6.
Game 1 he plays turn 1 Ghitu Encampment, and I thought “mirror,” but then he played Goblin Outlander and other dudes, which made me feel better. I never like the mirror much. It’s often a match I don’t want to play, and it’s especially true with Swans. Maybe it’s just a trait of the decks I want to play to dislike mirrors, like Faeries.
He attacked me down to 10 on turn 4, and I played Captured Sunlight, going to 14. He attacked me and I killed everything he had but the Outlander, which included the Encampment, then I played Ad Nauseam when we were both at 12, and he died before me.
I sided -2 Ad Nauseam, -1 Spinerock Knoll, +1 Primal Command, +2 Wickerbough Elder (for Torment/Needle).
Game 2 started much the same, with him having early creatures and me getting an Assault into play and killing all his guys. At some point I activated Treetop and attacked with it and Elf for what would be lethal with my hand of lands, but he had Fallout and Magma Spray (I’m not sure why he would keep Magma Spray), so that gave him a window to draw a big burn spell (Javelin or Anathemancer, if I’m not mistaken) to kill me, but he didn’t and I drew another land to kill him.
5-0
Round 6: BW
Game 1 he played an early Bitterblossom, and I had the turn 3 Ghitu Encampment attacking, turn 4 Bloodbraid Elf, kill your token, hit for 3 and go to 13 on upkeep draw. When this occurs, it’s often better to kill the token before attacking. Some people won’t block, in which case it’s better not to kill it, but they really should block in the great majority of the occasions, so you want to kill it for the one extra damage. Two or so turns later, my opponent burned for one to cast Path to Exile of Fetid Heath, and I threw five lands at him in response to Ajani.
I boarded -2 Ad Nauseam, -2 Spinerock Knoll, -1 Bituminous Blast +2 Wrath of God, +2 Maelstrom Pulse, +1 Primal Command
On the play, I keep in the Ad Nauseams and don’t side in the Wraths, but on the draw they are too slow and sometimes you need that time, so I like the Wraths, even though the deck is nowadays built to handle it.
Game 2 was similar from game 1 in the way that I did not have an early combo but had an Assault to kill some of his guys and force some damage through. I had both Wraths in my hand, but only one White mana so couldn’t cast them. I cascaded into a handy Pulse at some point to keep me alive, and in the last possible turn, I drew Rugged Prairie and cleared the board, leaving him with Bitterblossom and Anthem. I had the Knoll in play, and I could Treetop + throw my two lands at him to activate it and get Swans, but my lands were Reflecting Pool, Knoll, Treetop, Graven Cairns, Fire-Lit Thicket, and Rugged Prairie, so there was no way I could activate both — if I leave Red floating, he is just going to block with his creature, and then I’ll burn to death since I’m at one and don’t have any other Green to activate Treetop again. Since I was at one, I had to keep killing his Blossom token. I couldn’t get a spare land to activate the Knoll through his blocker, so I just attacked with the Treetop for multiple turns. He played another Blossom at some point, but I killed him before I ran out of lands.
6-0
Round 7: BW Tokens
Game 1 was my worst game in the entire tournament. The sequence of plays is a little blurry in my mind, but it was something close to this. I get an Assault in play early, and he has a Sculler for my Bituminous Blast. On his turn 5, he has Sculler and three Tokens, and Windbrisk Heights. He doesn’t play anything and attempts to attack, and then I try to kill his Sculler with a land and he plays Zealous Persecution. I then have to discard yet another land, and end up taking two more damage from his tokens for no real reason, since I couldn’t afford to give him the Heights activation and I would want to kill the Sculler at some point anyway. I should clearly have just killed it on my turn when he was tapped out, there was no reason not to. Then next turn my hand is Cascade Bluffs, Graven Cairns, and Bituminous Blast. I play Cascade Bluffs and attempt to Blast one of his guys, to try to hit Swans, but I realize then that I do not have Black mana. For some reason, I played the wrong land, and instead of giving me a chance to win by hitting Swans (if I didn’t I would die in the counter attack) I just decided to lose instead. Awkward.
I sided -2 Bituminous Blast, +2 Maelstrom Pulse. I believe the Ad Nauseams are good against this deck on the play, and on the play you don’t need Wrath as much.
Games 2 and 3 are pretty academic, with me comboing him out both times through not a single hate card. Game 3 I have Assault and Swans in play, but only one land in hand, so I don’t go for it and instead pass. He is attacking me with some Tokens, but I have a lot of turns to survive so am not in a hurry to try to fight his removal, which he was bound to have since he hadn’t played many spells that game. Three or so turns later, when I have four lands in hand and am at one, he plays Murderous Redcap, and in response I go off, killing him. Turns out he had Zealous Persecution and lands, not removal. With this deck, a lot of the time there is no reason to go for it — there is no Split Second in the format, so they will never be able to do something to stop you that you can’t respond to. Each land you draw matches a disruption spell from them, and since you play 41 Land and they don’t play 41 disruption spells, the longer the game goes with both players drawing one card per turn, the easier for you it is to win through removal spells — and that’s not counting that he cannot afford to tap much of his mana, while you can.
7-0
Round 8: BG Elves
I’m proud of this match — I think I played very well, in contrast to the one before.
My opponent started with Llanowar Elves, Garruk Wildspeaker, and Wilt-Leaf Liege, and on my turn 4 I play Bloodbraid, kill his Liege, and attack the Garruk down to two counters. My Assault manages his creatures for a while, and eventually I find Ad Nauseam (I think) and kill him.
I sided in 2 Wrath of Gods, 2 Maelstrom Pulse, 1 Primal Command, for 2 Ad Nauseam, 3 Spinerock Knoll.
Game 2 was a lot harder, because I was spell-flooded. The same sequence of plays of “Garruk-Liege-Bloodbraid, kill it, attack” happened, but after that I started drawing Assaults, Pulses, Bloodbraids, and Wraths. I Pulse some Garruk tokens, and we get to an interesting point where he has Garruk with two counters ND a 3/3 Token, I have Bloodbraid Elf and Assault, and I’m short on life. My hand is Bituminous Blast, double Wrath, Bloodbraid Elf, land, and Seismic Assault, and I know from previous cascades that Blast is going to hit Swans for sure unless I play Bloodbraid Elf and go through the four of them before I find the remaining Assault. A lot of the times when I cascaded during the tournament, my opponents did not even look at the cards — you should. I also saw people cascading 20 cards themselves, and not even paying attention to what they were, which is pretty much a crime with this deck. That’s free information, so there is no reason not to pay some attention to what is being Cascaded away. In the semis, I noticed that Joel had cascaded 14 lands and 2 spells to the bottom of his library in the first cascade, which was enough information for me to figure out what I thought the best play sequence was (well, I lost anyway, but we’ll get there).
Anyway, at this point, I decide that I want to kill his Garruk, because I don’t know what shenanigans he might have, like Profane Command, and he has one card in hand. I don’t want to Blast the Token and attack, because I’ll be left without Lands and he could remove the Swans before my next turn. If I play the second Elf and attack Garruk with both, he is going to refuse the block and then I’ll be unable to block his attack next turn, which is what I want to do. What I did was attack with just one Bloodbraid Elf. He doesn’t block, I kill Garruk, and then I play my second Bloodbraid post combat. I believe he thought that, if he blocked, I would just discard a land to kill Garruk, because at the time he didn’t know I couldn’t spare that, and he didn’t want to trade his 3/3 guy for my Elf to have his Garruk die anyway, since he knew he had to kill me before I found the missing pieces. He played two guys the following turn, one being a Noble Hierarch, blanking his hand, and attacked with his 4/4 token, which I chump blocked. On my turn I drew the land I needed, Blasted into Swans, and killed him.
8-0
Round 9: Five-Color Cascade
My opponent missed a tardiness game loss by about five nanoseconds in this match. For a moment, I thought I’d be getting a free win at 8-0.
He was playing the Cascade deck with Captured Sunlights, Blasts, and Elves, and he had Cryptic Commands, Maelstrom Pulses, Esper Charms, and Runed Halo, so it was not an easy match, but not impossible either. He gets down a Halo on Seismic pretty early, and I’m hitting him with Bloodbraids. Even though he has the Halo on Seismic, he keeps countering/killing it with Charms, since if he doesn’t I’ll just kill all his guys. The big point in the match was when I attacked with Treetop and Elf, and he Blasted Treetop — the Blast revealed Bloodbraid, and the Bloodbraid then revealed Esper Charm. Esper Charm killed my Assault before Bloodbraid resolved, so I couldn’t kill it before blockers, and then he was able to trade with mine. After that I cascaded into the fourth Assault with the Blast, which he countered, and even though I shuffled them back with Command it was not enough to deal with his multiple Kitchen Finks.
I sided -2 Bituminous Blast, -2 Cascade Bluffs, -2 Spinerock Knoll, -2 Vivid land,
+1 Primal Command, +1 Maelstrom Pulse, +2 Wickerbough Elder, +4 Countryside Crusher .
(Yes, I did not have much idea what I was doing with my sideboard either. Also, I have memories of playing Blast game 2/3, so it’s possible that I left one in, but this is probably how I would sideboard now.)
Game 2 I got an early Crusher into play, which he Pulsed, and then another, which of course never grew bigger than 3/3. He played Head Games at some point, exchanging all my lands for Vivids. Since I had 5 lands in play already, I didn’t bother to play more, but that turned out to be a mistake because he played Bituminous Blast and hit Command, bouncing one of my lands that came into play tapped, and then the next turn I drew Primal Command but couldn’t cast it because I had only four. I guess I was too much on auto pilot, not playing my sixth land, and I didn’t really consider the possibility of him cascading into Command (since I know if he is casting it it’s not going to be to bounce a land).
At one point I have an Elder, a Treetop, and a Crusher, and he has an Elf and another creature, and is at 6. My hand is lands and Ad Nauseam, and I cast it at the end of his turn. He has the Cryptic Command. At this point, if he bounces Crusher, I’m in bad shape because I’m probably going to draw a land and then I’ll give him turns to draw anything. He decides to instead draw a card, so I draw into Pulse (but most spells in my deck would have done the job by then, and since I had Crusher it would have been really unlucky not to have killed him that very same turn), remove a blocker, and kill him.
Game 3 he had two early Runed Halos, on Assault and Crusher, and my board is Crusher, Crusher, Bloodbraid, while he is tapped out. I Crusher into Bloodbraid (obviously the first card anyway), play it, and hit my one Maelstrom Pulse, which was pretty convenient. I pointed to his Runed Halo, and he asked which. I had to pause to that question, but since he was tapped out I just said “both” and he said “oh right.” I attack him down to four life, and he plays Wrath of God. Next turn he Head Games me and again gives me a lot of Vivids. At this point, all I have to do is resolve Assault, and playing a control deck he cannot kill me fast enough to prevent that from happening.
9-0
I was 9-0! I felt incredibly happy at that point, not only because of the record but because of the deck. It felt like the right deck to play despite everything, and I was happy with my choice.
I guess I’ll have to leave you for today — this is pretty long already, and since this is the Tournament Month I don’t have enough time to write this all at once, because I’ve been traveling non-stop. I don’t know if I’m playing Swans in Seattle — I might, and I might not. The deck is certainly strong — it’s hard to argue with the Day 2 / Top 8 numbers it had — and to say it only happened because it caught Barcelona by surprise is just to fool yourself, in my opinion. Still, nothing is set in stone, so don’t be surprised if I turn up playing something else. If I play this, it’s going to be pretty close to the version we played, which I liked a lot, with minor changes in the sideboard.
I hope you enjoyed this, and see you next week!
PV