Reintroductions
Hello again. It has been a while since I have written for this fine website, and I figured it would be appropriate to at least acknowledge that fact. A
lot of people wanted to know why we parted ways (or incorrectly think they already know why). However, it’s all old news, and there is no reason to get
into it now. Suffice to say that I am happy to be back and (as far as I know) StarCityGames.com is happy to have me back.
If you are unfamiliar with me or my work, I suggest reading the introduction from my first piece entitled Introductions and Onions. There is some negative
stigma attached to me and my work, mostly involving accusations of arrogance and overall jerkiness. While not completely unfounded, those attributes
are blown entirely out of proportion, and I urge you to make up your own mind rather than succumbing to the blind following of some of the outdated and
exaggerated stereotypes that are cast over my name.
Many of these negative feelings toward me are due to an article that was published here called Learning to Fish. I stand behind the points I
was trying to make, but many feel that my tone killed the article. I am aware of the harshness of my tone and understand why the article caused such a
backlash. However, I did not write the article that way on accident. It was written in such a way for effect. The whole point of the article was to
shock people out of their complacency and/or arrogance. I may have gone overboard, that I will not deny, but I promise that the reason I wrote it that
way is not because I’m the demon spawn of Satan himself. It was supposed to cause an emotional reaction. Whether or not you agree with my
decision to write in that voice, please recognize that it does not entirely reflect upon my personality.
If you are still upset about that article (get over it, because life is too short), then I ask that you at least take the time to read my explanation in the article-length post I made in the forums of now-friend
Dave Heilker’s rebuttal article, Give ’em Hell, Kid. I’m not saying you have to
love and appreciate the piece; I am merely asking that the people whose opinions of me are based on their reaction to that article reconsider.
But don’t think that I am some pariah, as I have many loyal readers who have supported me for a long time. In fact, a non-small number of people said
that the piece in question itself was one of the more helpful and refreshing articles that they had ever read, so surely it couldn’t have been the pure
evil that some would like you to think. To the people who have always appreciated what I try to do and enjoy my work, I thank you. I only hope that I
can continue to live up to the kind words that I have received over the years.
Moving on, when I heard about Ted Knutson taking over Star City, I was excited but nervous. Excited because I am a fan of his work and knew he would do
a great job. Nervous because I was unsure where that left my professional relationship with the website. While I was still on good terms with everyone
after the original misunderstanding, I didn’t know how this new regime change would affect that. Thankfully, he did not disappoint in either department
by making every single one of the changes that I had previously suggested to the men upstairs and by handing the Content Manager position over to the
best guy I could think of for the job, Steve Sadin. Steve knew the story about my original parting from the website and enjoys my work. As soon as he
was handed the reins, I received a phone call.
And that leaves us here.
So with those reintroductions out of the way, may I present to you part 1 of my Kansas City SCG Open report. Please enjoy.
The Glub Club and Cat, Part 1
I was going a week early for SCG Open: Kansas City at the behest of Ryan O'Connor (the goofy one with the afro). He was already putting Tim Aten up,
and they wanted me to join. The plan was to road-trip to Iowa to hang out with some awesome people for New Years, then chill amongst ourselves until
the tournament. Despite my initial excitement, the trip began ominously. After flying to O’Hare, we sat on the runway less than fifty feet from the
terminal for over an hour. This caused me to miss my connecting flight, which was, quite obviously, the last plane headed for Kansas City for the
night. When I asked what type of compensation I would receive, the customer service agent practically laughed in my face before giving me the
proverbial middle finger and sending me on my way to spend the night in the airport alone.
Remember when airlines cared? Me neither, but I’ve heard stories.
But not all hope was lost! I had a local friend I could call. She had been begging me to visit, but I never had an excuse to, so maybe this layover was
a blessing in disguise. I dialed her up, and she sounded extremely excited that I was in town for the night. She said she would call me back in ten
minutes after sorting out some plans with friends, and we hung up. A little over an hour later, I texted her, asking if she was free or not, and she
said that something had come up and apologized profusely that we wouldn’t be able to spend any time together. I was a little disappointed, but I
figured that she had some big plans already in the works, and I couldn’t expect her to drop anything at the last second like that.
The thing that was so important that she chose to do instead of seeing a dear, old friend for the first time in quite a while? Go drinking.
It’s cool, though. I mean, I would probably want a drink, too, if I had been sober and in AA for over a year. Those guys are total bummers.
Sleeping in the airport with all of the lights on and right-wing news blaring was a challenge demanding of medication. When I woke up, I was delirious
and exhausted, not to mention sore from my precarious sleeping arrangement across some armrests and atop a row of chairs that felt as if they were
cushioned with red oak, or maybe birch. I stumbled my way past an Arby’s to the nearest open restaurant and had them fix me some eggs. Ya gotta eat a
breakfast.
The cute girl next to me on the flight was adorably scared of flying. I talked her through takeoff, and we chatted a bit when she had calmed down. She
was a couple of years older than I and lived about twenty minutes from where I grew up. I am generally fairly nervous around girls but usually am able
to hide it fairly well. However, I didn’t have the energy to fight through that emotional inertia to generate conversation, so I let the silence
settle. Eventually, I fell asleep, presumably snoring and drooling all over myself in front of her, and was awoken by the wheels touching down. She
seemed kind of freaked out but relieved to have survived. I felt bad that I wasn’t conscious to help her through the landing. When I ran into Ryan and
Tim in the airport, she walked by and thanked me for being so nice. This caused Ryan to be very upset with me for not chatting her up more and trying
to get her number. I simply shrugged, and we were homeward bound.
We spent a couple of uneventful days in Ryan’s apartment in wait for the new year. I treated the gang of Tim, Ryan, and his roommate to some delicious
Chipotle (you don’t know how good you have it until it is taken away from you), and we sat around watching stand-up comedy and playing poker. The
roommate’s “dog” is basically a joke of an animal, while his cat is fairly aggressively affectionate. I made everyone acutely aware of my general
dislike of domestic felines, so Ryan was sure to get lots of pictures of the cat cuddling up to me after I had fallen asleep. Both nights.
On New Year’s Eve, we grabbed Adam Boyd and headed up to Brandon Scheel’s place. The entire car ride consisted of Ryan and Tim blasting some of the
worst music known to man while I had my iPod blaring to cover them. Adam also put on headphones, but his weren’t even attached to anything; he was just
trying to block out the angsty, emo punk rock, and the twelve-year-old girl’s pop / hip-hop that the two fully grown men in the front seats were
singing along with and dancing to.
When we arrived, Ryan immediately started mixing drinks as if he knew what he was doing. Besides the awesome people we had been expecting, the small
get-together also included some serious randoms, someone who Tim accurately described as “the caddy from Happy Gilmore,” one of the more
pathetic barnacles I have ever seen, and a Mexican doppelganger of Kenny Castor and his girlfriend who looked like a Midwest version of David Williams’
girl. The night consisted of Clayton Mooney pretending to be drunk and hustling Steve Locke and Ryan in high-stakes beer pong while Aten and I sat in
the corner giggling at our inside jokes and drafting Tempest on MODO. We had a sick R/B deck, but the power went out after we crushed round one.
At a certain point in the evening, Not-So-Big-Anymore Oots left to walk the sub-zero streets alone; the barnacle was belligerently drunk and loudly
insisting that GerryT could do no wrong; the caddy from Happy Gilmore was wearing a tiara over his eyes like Cyclops from the X-Men and
“dancing” alone; and my laptop didn’t have enough battery to draft again. We made the wise decision to take our leave, destined for the grindhouse of
Mooney and Oots.
While everyone else convolutedly cube drafted, as per Steve Locke specialty cube format, Tim and I played Rock Band and watched cats crawl into
everyone’s backpacks. When we went back to Scheel’s to sleep, the caddy from Happy Gilmore was asleep in a chair with the tiara still over his
eyes, bent all the way over so his head floated above a bowl. Some durdle was on one of the couches, and we had reason to believe that Brandon’s room
was occupied. Realizing the sleeping arrangements were far from ideal and that none of us were really tired anyway, we decided to just make the drive
home on the spot. I stole some crackers, and we were off into the night, playing What Lodden Thinks all the way home.
Despite hanging out with us and being fun and friendly to our faces, while we were gone, Ryan’s roommate had blown up at him for leaving the apartment
in a mess, telling him that not only were Tim and I not welcome back, but that Ryan had to find a new place to live by the end of the month. None of us
remembered leaving the place dirty at all, and we were only going to be gone for fifteen hours anyway, so we were all a little taken aback by this
strange turn of events. If he had simply asked us to clean up more while we were there like a normal human being, we obviously would have obliged,
being guests at his place. Instead, we stopped by briefly to collect our things after he had left for the airport and found the “mess” we had made
dumped on Ryan’s bed.
The mess consisted of a plastic bag, two empty plastic bottles, and some specific green rares left lying on a side table. That unforgivable pigsty we
left for less than a day was grounds to not only disinvite us, but to passive-aggressively dump it on Ryan’s bed and demand that he move out.
Yeahhh, that’s how civilized adults deal with their problemsss.
Oh, and after we were kicked out and forced to go elsewhere, the guy had the gall to ask Ryan to watch his dog while he was out of town. Pretty
realistic, if you ask me.
So we ended up in Mrs. O’Connor’s basement, watching movie after movie on her projector screen in the room that we affectionately referred to as “The
Aquarium” due to all of us fish inside. We would quote certain shows or movies or just each other all week long, confusing and annoying anyone who was
not in “the know.”
At one point in the tournament, Kenny “The Big Croc” Castor outright asked us why we were talking like that. Our quotes and phrases would be shortened
and combined and referenced until what we were saying could no longer be considered English. It’s amazing how obscure and complex of a lexicon you can
create with a couple of smart friends and a little time. We are also all of the personality type that allows inside jokes to thrive, so the development
of our nonsense was streamlined and under optimum conditions. It was mostly the three of us, but it also branched out to the entire The Glub Club, the
name Tim gave our crew of degenerate fish at the event.
While Ryan’s mom was hilarious and unrealistically nice, the same could not be said of his sisters. One just instantly started insulting Tim and me
completely unprovoked the very first time we met her. The other was nice enough but fairly blunt and overwhelming. Her roommate made a dreadful Harry
Potter joke when introducing herself to us and was upset when we didn’t laugh.
“I thought you said these guys played Magic!” she snapped at Ryan.
Tim and I were uncomfortably trying to get Ryan to let us leave when she called us “fussy.” This was humorous to us in its surprising accuracy and
clarity. That’s exactly what we were: fussy. Needless to say, it became a key word of the trip.
I’ll pause the stories for now to balance out the two pieces and skip ahead to the Standard tournament. At this point in the trip, we had been getting
to bed at around 7am every day, and while I was able to fall asleep by 2 and wake up for the tournament, the same could not be said for my cohorts.
After giving me the deck he had planned on playing, Ryan durdled for a bit and then went home with Tim to go to bed. I talked over the last few changes
with Andrew Temple and ended up playing this:
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (26)
Spells (23)
- 4 Mana Leak
- 3 Disfigure
- 4 Spreading Seas
- 1 Consume the Meek
- 4 Inquisition of Kozilek
- 4 Preordain
- 1 Stoic Rebuttal
- 2 Ratchet Bomb
Sideboard
My experience in the tournament has given me some insights about the deck. The Inquisitions are invaluable, and I would definitely play all four main.
The same is true for the Spreading Seas. The Sea Gate Oracles greatly underperformed, and I would not play them again.
The sideboard was fairly weak, and not including the fourth Disfigure was a huge oversight caused by last-minute tweaking. That card is so important in
all of your iffy matchups that it would be a sin not to have the full set somewhere in your 75. I also believe that three Consumes are too many.
I would like another mana source in the deck, especially if you are cutting the Sea Gate Oracles, and I think that an Everflowing Chalice fits the bill
well. It allows you to accelerate into Jace or play it for two late-game against control, and it’s important to ramp to Consume and Titan against
aggro. If it is just a one-of, then you won’t be punished by the colorlessness of the mana very often and won’t have to deal with awkward draws where
you only have two lands to cast your multiple Chalices. It would be sketchy to cut a land for one, but adding one in a spell’s slot makes sense to me.
The Sorin was just greedy. I think that so many decks just roll over to Grave Titan that it’s worth just having the fourth and sideboarding one out
against decks where it isn’t super important.
The Rounds
Round one, I beat a RDW opponent on the back of aggressive mulligans into removal and discard and by keeping my life total high enough that I could tap
out for Grave Titan without being burned out.
Round two, I beat G/B/W Junk. Game one I Inquisitioned him but tapped out to play a Jace into a Memoricide I knew about. He took my Grave Titans and
eventually got through my 1-for-1s and pecked me down with Lotus Cobra and Fauna Shaman as I couldn’t kill him fast enough without the Titans.
Game two, he Memoricided me again, but I had far more removal and an active big Jace and just rode my avalanche of card advantage, killing and
countering everything he played. I then Spreading Seas’d his four basic lands and Tectonic Edged his two nonbasics before killing him with Creeping Tar
Pits the turn before Jace went ultimate anyway.
Game three, I killed Lotus Cobra and developed my mana while he couldn’t really do anything. On a key turn, he missed on a Summoning Trap after I
countered an Acidic Slime. This allowed me to save my Doom Blade for his second Acidic Slime so it couldn’t block the Grave Titan that I tapped out
for. He showed me Memoricide in his hand at the end of the game, but he never had an opportunity to cast it when it wouldn’t have been countered.
Round three, I got a fake feature match against Quest. Game one, I grinded out Squadron Hawks with Ratchet Bomb and Consume, barely pulling ahead with
Jace enough to stabilize at one life before casting a Grave Titan. Game two, I stabilized and landed a Sorin Markov, but he managed to Quest me out.
Game three, he kept a one-lander, and Jace fatesealed him out of the game after he missed.
Round 4, I beat U/W. Game one, I fell way behind after keeping a one-land hand with Preordain on the draw and missing my third land drop. If I had
known he was U/W, I don’t think I would have kept. However, it had Disfigure, two Spreading Seas, a Mana Leak, and a Jace Beleren, so I was happy with
it against nearly any other deck.
Game two was a long, drawn-out affair where I developed my mana better and Ratchet Bombed his Luminarch Ascension, eventually winning a counter war
over a Jace, which was enough despite the game lasting about fifteen more turns.
I don’t remember what game it was, or even if it was this match, but at one point in the tournament, I played a turn 2 Spreading Seas on my own
Tectonic Edge, so that I could cast Jace. Then later in that game, I Deprived an innocuous spell in order to rebuy my Edge to take out a threatening
manland. I’m actually fairly certain it wasn’t this match, but I’m putting that play here anyway because it’s worth mentioning – it’s a unique
series of plays that somebody could find useful to have in their arsenal.
Anyway, game three was super anticlimactic as he mulled to five and drew all white cards, which are basically blanks.
Round 5, I beat Tuffy Maggio playing Elves. After getting absolutely demolished in game one, game two was fairly easy, as I got him down to basically
nothing with discard and removal. He had two creatures in play and an Eldrazi Monument in hand, which he cast. I killed a guy in response and let it
resolve, countering the creature that he drew the next turn after sacrificing his only remaining creature. This made him throw away his Monument for
free and allowed me to counter the creature he drew (which ended up being a large Wolfbriar Elemental).
Game three, he mulliganed and had a slow start that I was able to control. I countered a Monument and then played a Grave Titan, but he had a Wurmcoil
Engine for the turn that I was tapped out. Thankfully, he attacked with it for no real reason, allowing Grave Titan to attack back. He tried to
double-block it, but I had a removal spell. He realized he couldn’t trade hits that way and bashed with just his Vengevine, which I double-blocked with
tokens.
I drew a Consume and held it in my hand for a while. I was just setting it up to make sure that he was left with nothing after it resolved. I was
looking for a removal spell or something to let me kill his Wurmcoil Engine. One turn, he forgot how poorly the exchange of hits worked for him last
time and bashed with his 6/6. I chumped it with one of my two Zombies and attacked back. He gained six life and ate a token, then allowed me to make
two tokens and lost that six life right back. With the free 2/2 that he gave me, I was now threatening to eat his Wurmcoil, so it could no longer
attack. I traded two tokens for his Vengevine again.
Eventually, I Preordained into another Grave Titan, and the trap was ready to be set. I bashed with the first Titan, and he traded away the Engine. He
then played his last two cards to get back the angriest of all vegetables and attacked with it and the two 3/3s into my three Zombies. I traded two
away for the Vengevine and chumped a token. End-step, Consume wiped the board clean, so that I could untap and cast a fresh Grave Titan.
Christian Valenti, who watched games two and three, said that it was a good example of why he doesn’t play blue decks because he probably would have
found multiple ways to lose both of those games. The key to game two was to know how to use the counter in my hand to deal with not only his Monument
but also any creature he happened to draw.
The keys of game three were to not tap out and die to Monument on turns 4 or 5 and being patient with the Consume the Meek to grind down his hand via
Vengevine trades and get both of his Wurmcoil tokens.
Round 6, I lost a heartbreaker to R/B Vampires.
Game one, he won the roll and had a Bloodghast. Game two, he had another Bloodghast, but he overextended into Consume, and I was able to pull it out
using some fancy Jace maneuvers on the last turn to kill him right away without having to risk him drawing something to kill me from one life.
Game three, he had a fast start while my mulligan didn’t have much cheap removal. He overextended into Consume for no reason, allowing me to wrath his
board. I did it on my turn, so that he wouldn’t get all of his Kalastria Highborn triggers off, as he had only a Marsh Flats up. Then he had to call a
judge to ask if he could stack the triggers and get the Bloodghast back and then pay to drain me. The answer was obviously yes, and so he put the
drains on the stack and fetched up a Swamp.
He then tapped the land and said “Drain you for two and return Bloodghast.” I saw this exact situation happen at Worlds, and I know that the player was
disallowed from returning his Bloodghast because he had already passed that trigger when he resolved his Highborn trigger. However, the judges allowed
the take-backs, citing it as out-of-order sequencing, and he got his Bloodghast.
I was at five and was going to untap into Grave Titan. However, he casually drew for the turn, casually attacked me with his bonus Bloodghast, and
casually killed me with a Lightning Bolt that likely should have been sideboarded out.
Round 7, I lost a frustrating match to Boros. Game one was a close one that was lost when I missed my fifth land drop to allow me to Consume before he
hit me with an Adventuring Geared Spikeshot Elder. He also drew six fetchlands and needed every last one of them to landfall me out. Game two, he
landed a Koth after I countered the first one, and that was enough.
And just like that, I was out of contention.
Round 8, I beat Valukut. Game one, I messed up a couple of times (probably still tilting) and would have died because of it had he drawn a Primeval
Titan. Luckily for me, he didn’t, and I was able to win despite myself. Game two, he mulled to five on the play and didn’t do anything of consequence.
Round 9, I beat a tilting Alex Bertoncini playing RUG. Game one, I Inquisitioned his Explore, Disfigured his Cobra, and then we played draw-go until he
eventually tried a Jace, which I countered. I let an Oracle resolve, which missed and then got Disfigured. I played my own Jace and jumped it to five
to prevent him from using the Lightning Bolt I knew about to kill it and to keep him off of six lands for his Frost Titan. After some consideration, I
let him keep a Raging Ravine. I countered his Frost Titan and Consumed his Avenger of Zendikar tokens while beating him down with Creeping Tar Pits.
Game two, I killed some creatures and countered some spells, ultimately resolving a Grave Titan, which was enough.
Something strange and somewhat stupid happened after that where I turned the match slip in wrong, and they refused to correct it. In essence, I
conceded to Alex even though reality says otherwise. The judges at these things sure do like that Bertoncini kid. But who could blame them? He’s a
pretty good guy.
Round 10, I beat Caw-Go. I lost game one to being out-mana’d while a Squadron Hawk pecked away at me. He was lamenting a mistake and chiding himself
all game. Afterwards, he said that it was because he had a Leyline of Sanctity in his opener and stone forgot to put it into play, and I Inquisitioned
him a couple of turns later. Awkward. Game two, I got Jace advantage early and held onto it, which allowed me to play way more lands than him.
Game three, he had a Squadron Hawk early but was light on mana. He was lamenting another unseen mistake and chiding himself once again, but all became
clear when he searched up the full suite of Hawks and sheepishly discarded a Flashfreeze to get back down to seven cards. I played extremely patiently
and cautiously, just trying to get as many lands into play as possible and to get him to burn counters and extend his board.
Eventually, an active Jace Beleren prompted him to play a second Hawk, which allowed me to play a Ratchet Bomb and blow them both up along with the
Spreading Seas on my manlands. Then I deployed the Spreading Seas that I had been slow-rolling onto his Celestial Colonnades. He still had the other
two bird-brothers, but I used my mana advantage to force him into weird spots and eventually squeeze all of the permission from his grip. Doom Blade
struck a Hawk from the sky and was followed by big daddy Jace. The planeswalker drew me into more permission and Grave Titan, which I resolved on the
following turn.
Things looked good, except that we had gone to time, and I wasn’t going to be able to kill him fast enough. I knew his one-card hand had nothing of
worth thanks to some more targeted discard, and I showed him my hand of all countermagic and removal, pointing to my board of Jace, the Mind Sculptor,
two Creeping Tar Pits, and Grave Titan against a Squadron Hawk and asked for a concession.
Since a draw is usually the same as a loss, it makes sense for one player to concede to the other in situations like this. Especially in this case, as
a win has a chance at top 32 while a draw or a loss leaves you well out of the money. Since I was so unbelievably far ahead, I asked that he be the one
to concede to me, and he accepted.
Now, I know some people are against the whole concession thing, but in my opinion, this was a nice and honorable thing for him to do, and I appreciated
it. I ended up missing the money, as he would have had he won. Now I don’t want to turn the forums of this article into a debate about the ethics of
concessions; I just wanted to acknowledge this player for doing what so many others wouldn’t do despite it being, in my opinion, the right thing
to do.
Anyway, this first piece back is long enough, so I’ll just wrap it up. I think U/B is still very good, and I’d suggest the following list for anyone
considering it for any upcoming Standard tournaments:
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (26)
Spells (24)
- 4 Mana Leak
- 3 Disfigure
- 4 Spreading Seas
- 1 Everflowing Chalice
- 1 Consume the Meek
- 4 Inquisition of Kozilek
- 4 Preordain
- 1 Stoic Rebuttal
- 2 Ratchet Bomb
Sideboard
I hope you enjoyed part one. My apologies for jumping ahead to the tournament like that, but I figured that each part deserved its own day of
competition, and the tales should be split between them. Thanks for reading. It’s good to be back.