Throughout my Magic-playing career, I’ve always been a busy guy. I own the Your Move Games stores, and am the premiere tournament organizer for New England (running everything from Friday Night Magic to Prereleases and Grand Prixs). This past year, though, things have just gotten silly. I got married, opened the Your Move Games online store, manufactured my double-sided token cards, moved my providence store to North Providence, bought, painted, and moved into a house, hosted Pro Tour: Boston – and on October 4th, my son Ryan was born. (I can’t wait for the Dougherty vs. Dougherty featured match.)
Needless to say, it was harder than ever to find time to prepare for the Pro Tour. Fortunately for me, I have an amazing team. When one of us can’t work as hard, the others pick up the slack. That’s not to say I didn’t work at all – just not as much.
My normal role on the team is the”new tech” deck designer. As always, the first step in my preparation for the Tour was to sit down at the computer and read all the new cards, paying special attention to cards that do”weird” things. I mulled over this information for a few days… But alas, nothing I came up with was ready for the vicious”lockin’ up the game on turn 2″ world of Extended.
Without any truly new ideas in our pool of decks, I was strongly leaning toward Benzo. The Reanimator deck I designed for New Orleans took the pro tour by surprise, and got eight out of ten players into day 2 – and from there, two got into the top 8, and two in the top 16. Benzo was a powerhouse at the PT, but once people knew about it, you started seeing a lot of its Achilles’ Heel: Phyrexian Furnace.
PT NEW ORLEANS BENZO DECKLIST
1 Rishadan Port
20 Swamp
1 Avatar of Woe
1 Crosis, the Purger
3 Krovikan Horror
1 Nether Spirit
2 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Verdant Force
3 Animate Dead
4 Buried Alive
1 Contamination
4 Duress
4 Entomb
3 Exhume
1 Massacre
3 Reanimate
4 Vampiric Tutor
4 Zombie Infestation
Sideboard
3 Coffin Purge
2 Contamination
2 Massacre
1 Multani, Maro-Sorcerer
1 Null Rod
1 Perish
1 Phyrexian Negator
1 Terror
With the Furnace rotated out of extended It seemed Benzo might be ready for a triumphant return. I’ve always loved the deck’s raw power, and I had tons of practice with it from last season, so I was hopeful. My initial build was very similar to the old version.
NEW BENZO 1.0
4 Rishadan Port
18 Swamp
1 Visara the Dreadful
1 Petradon
1 Nether Spirit
1 Undead Gladiator
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Verdant Force
4 Buried Alive
1 Contamination
4 Duress
4 Entomb
4 Exhume
4 Reanimate
4 Vampiric Tutor
4 Zombie Infestation
This version wasn’t dominating, but tested well. The Petradon was very exciting, especially in combination with ports. Benzo was having some trouble with The Rock, thanks to the Rock’s Diabolic Edicts; I added a Symbiotic Wurm as a 61st card (nasty habit, that 61st card thing) and that matchup got favorable fast.
The problem I was having with the deck was with the Zombie Infestations. In my old version a turn 2 Zombie Infestation was a big threat. With one Buried Alive (for Squee, Horror, Horror) you were making two 2/2s a turn, and the deck maxed out making two 2/2s a turn. Now, that was some gas. The new version could make only one 2/2 a turn after the first Buried Alive, and maxed out at a mere two 2/2s a turn. Much less exciting. As it turned out, almost all the test games were won with the Reanimation. Zombie Infestation was just another way to get a fatty in the grave, and some Edict protection. To make matters worse, this low power facet of the deck was taking up twelve spots (four Infestations, four Squees, four Buried Alive). I needed to do something more powerful with those spots, but as yet I didn’t know what.
Benzo was at this stage, when a few weeks before the Tour I got distracted working on Aluren. Danny Mandel and Darwin Kastle informed me that Cavern Harpy’s creature type is Beast and asked me to work on Aluren with Wirewood Savage. I worked on a couple different versions, and a few days later had one I liked. It was very consistent and would”go off” most games by turn 3.
The most impressive thing about this Aluren build is that it was actually good versus control. It won most of it games in testing against Justin Gary’s Oath deck (which was my #2 deck at the time). The team was quite excited about Aluren for a while. However, most of us gave up on it about a week before the Tour. The combination of its poor testing results versus Suicide Black, and our other decks learning to respect its power and therefore adding cards to stop it (mostly in the form of Stronghold Taskmaster) made the deck look much less attractive.
While I didn’t end up playing Aluren, the time spent on this deck was by no means a waste. I learned how the deck worked – and more importantly, how to beat it.
So I was back looking at Benzo with less than a week before the Pro Tour. The good news was I knew what I wanted to try with those Infestation slots… Hand destruction.
Benzo was winning all its games with reanimation anyway. It would get out a big guy on turn 2, and if the opponent didn’t have an answer card (like Counterspell or Diabolic Edict) you’d just win. So it seemed logical that if you increased the number of Duress-like cards to remove the opponent’s answers, you’d be all set.
I was thinking of something along these lines:
HAND DESTRUCTION BENZO
18 Swamp
4 Rishadan Port
1 Wasteland
1 Verdant Force
1 Petradon
1 Symbiotic Wurm
1 Visara the Dreadful
1 Phantom Nishoba
1 Stronghold Taskmaster
1 Nether Spirit
1 Contamination
4 Entomb
4 Vampiric Tutor
4 Exhume
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Duress
4 Reanimate
Since all this version does is reanimate big guys, it has a wider variety, so you can put out the right monster to beat whatever deck your opponent is playing. While the deck no longer had Zombie Infestation to pitch monsters in your hand, you can Therapy yourself in a pinch (though you must reveal your hand).
Meanwhile, Dave Humpherys was also working on Benzo; he was trying a version with City of Traitors and Last Rites. The idea was to cast Last Rites on turn 2, pitching everything but reanimation cards, thus stripping your opponent’s hand of ways to deal with the giant monster you just discarded. Dave’s first run looked like this:
Humpherys Benzo
1 Urborg Shambler
1 Woodripper
1 Verdant Force
1 Visara the Dreadful
1 Petradon
4 Reanimate
1 Diabolic Edict
4 Exhume
4 Entomb
1 Sickening Dreams
4 Vampiric Tutor
3 Buried Alive
3 Zombie Infestation
4 Duress
4 City of Traitors
19 Swamps
4 Last Rites
With everything that was going on in my life and practicing for the Masters, the first opportunity I found to try out my new Benzo build was on the plane to Houston! As it turned out, Cabal Therapy was amazing, but the Mesmeric Fiends were lame. The two mana for the Fiend was too slow, they triggered Oath of Druids, and against non-oath decks they were too fragile. It also seemed that Contamination was bad against the expected field, but Nether Spirit was good enough to run without it (due to its synergy with Cabal Therapy).
I knew I wanted a transformational sideboard. Even with the Furnace gone, reanimation is too easy to hate; cards like Coffin Purge and Planar Void can ruin your whole day. However, if your opponents are bringing in cards like that and you’re bringing in Phyrexian Negators and creature kill, you’re probably going to win.
The need for a transformational sideboard is what got me really excited about Humpherys’ City of Traitors Idea. The ability to cast Negators on turn 2 and Butchers on turn 3 after boarding was very appealing.
When I arrived in Houston the Wednesday before the Pro tour, The Hump and I sat down and compared notes. His version had evolved quite a bit by then. We melded our ideas into one deck.
PT Houston Benzo
19 Swamp
4 City of Traitors
2 Faceless Butcher
1 Verdant Force
1 Petradon
1 Symbiotic Wurm
1 Visara the Dreadful
1 Phantom Nishoba
1 Stronghold Taskmaster
1 Nether Spirit
4 Entomb
4 Vampiric Tutor
4 Exhume
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Last Rites
4 Duress
4 Reanimate
Sideboard:
4 Diabolic Edict
1 Woodripper
2 Planar Void
1 Urborg Shambler
2 Engineered Plague
3 Phyrexian Negator
2 Faceless Butcher
Dave and I playtested this version Wednesday night and Thursday morning (while our teammates played in the Masters Gateway). Our results were good. When it came time for Dave and I to go to the site and play in the Masters, we left the deck with Pete and Tom Guevin so they could do some more testing with it.
The Masters is an unusual tournament: Only twenty-eight players, the best in the world, are invited to play, and four bash their way in through the Gateway. Wizards has thirty-two of the biggest names in Magic playing for huge stakes in the world’s most exclusive prize money tournament, and how do they run it? Best two out of three single elimination. This makes the Masters home to the most expensive mana screws of all time.
Of course this provides a ready excuse for me and the other fifteen pros who got knocked out in the first round. Ah well, I guess I’ll just have to be happy with the $2,000 they gave me for showing up.
Dave won his first round (upping his check to $4,000), but lost in the second. Dave and I did a small prize split for the Masters and the Pro Tour, and he was already razzing me about being behind in our split for the weekend. I assured him I’d make it up to him in the Pro Tour.
When we got back to the hotel I asked Tom how the testing had gone with our deck. In true Tom Guevin fashion, I got three answers over the next hour. First it was”The deck did great… It was exciting!” A while later, Tom pointed out that the deck sometimes had trouble with Treetop Village if it was on the Negator plan after boarding. Finally, Tom blurted out”I think the Last Rites are weak. Rob, don’t play that deck, it’s *&@%!”
Dave and I considered adding a Dust Bowl to the main deck to help with the Treetop Village problem, but my hotel roommate, Justin Gary, talked us out of it. He reasoned that Treetops would only be in The Rock and Oath. The Rock was a good enough matchup that it didn’t need the help, and we felt there wouldn’t be much Oath in the tournament, so it wasn’t worth messing with our mana. This seemed like very sound advice – until Justin was smashing me with Treetop Villages in the finals!
The morning of the Pro Tour, I got up early; Tom’s final critique of the deck was bothering me, and I considered a last minute deck switch. I even brought the cards to build the non-Last Rites version with me to the tournament site. In the end, I decided to stick with the Last Rites. The sideboarding plan needed the City of Traitors, and with the City, the Rights were the way to go with the main deck.
As round one pairings were going up, I offered Justin Gary a prize split. Justin and I have split many times in the past, and won each other approximately equivalent amounts of money. I’m always happy with Justin’s chances playing a deck with Oath of Druids in it, so I wanted to be sure we had a split this time as well. Justin, however, was less then thrilled with the lack of testing my deck had. He accepted a very small split (half our normal amount), more out of team camaraderie than anything else. After my strong showing on day one, Justin’s confidence in my deck choice increased… And so did our split.
Next week, in part 2 of 2, I’ll be telling you about the tournament from my perspective. This will not be a blow-by-blow description of the games (you can see the featured match coverage for that), but what matchups I played, and how the deck preformed. Also, for those of you considering playing Benzo in the upcoming Extended season, I’ll give you my sideboarding strategies in full detail.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Like any proud Dad, Rob sent this picture in with his article, saying,”I’ve also attached a photo of the baby and I. Please don’t feel you have to use it. It’s just there in case…” And who am I both to refuse a proud father and a cute kid?
