Chad Ellis. Now there’s a name from the past. If you haven’t read Chad – and the chances are plenty of you haven’t the faintest idea who I’m talking about – you could do a lot worse than avail yourself of a top quality learning experience, and rectify this situation almost immediately. Almost immediately, because if you do this at once you will stop reading this and I will be fired. Welcome to cause and effect.
One article of Chad’s that had a considerable impact on me when I first read it umpteen years ago was called "Ruthless Honesty." His argument was pretty straightforward. Magic is a game that relies on information, preferably as much information as possible. If we wish to progress as players, the quality of that information is crucial to our development. A lot of the time, the information available to us comes from us – our opinions on new cards, a particular deck archetype, memories of conversations on the way to tournaments, recollections of all the duels and matches we’ve fought out over the years. We may be our own best friend, but when it comes to Magic, we’re frequently our own worst enemy, for one very simple reason:
We like to be right.
Given how fundamentally rubbish at many endeavors we (the human race) are, this is a surprising and highly disruptive facet of our behavior. There’s nothing wrong with liking to be right per se, but when that desire intrudes on our ability to acknowledge our mistakes – now that’s a problem. Chad maintains that it’s not enough to simply say, "Sure, I’m not perfect, I know I get things wrong every now and then." His standards of honesty are higher – Ruthless Honesty. That means always having to say you’re sorry. It means always having to aspire to better play. It means never giving in to "I got screwed." It means a willingness to lay yourself open to the most rigorous self-analysis, and to expect, no, to demand, to be regularly found wanting. What makes this so hard for most of us is that as a group we may have hundreds of different insecurities and neuroses about our place in the world, but one thing almost certainly unites us:
At a fundamental level, we’re not stupid.
I’m going to talk about that most hypothetical of individuals, the Stupid Player, on another occasion. But I’m sure you can see that a pattern of Ruthless Honesty has the capacity to strike at the very core of our being. We may be too fat, thin, tall, short, nerdy, cool, single, married, too anything, but at least we’ve got our brains. Ruthless Honesty can leave us feeling our brains have dribbled out of our ears and gone on a wild drinking spree round Didsbury (that’s in England, but you can substitute some quasi-humorous locale of your own devising if it helps you sleep better at night),
This is an experiment in Ruthless Honesty. I’ve played a dozen matches in the Tournament Practice Room in MTGO this week, all with the same deck. It’s Time Spiral Block Constructed, because I wanted to learn more about the format post-Yokohama and pre-Strasbourg (which I’m flying back from as I write this). The deck has no spectacular new tech, and it’s a variation on a listing from the Yokohama Top 50. The only changes are where I didn’t quite have the cards I needed. So what does this experiment hope to achieve?
1. To see how much Magical knowledge can be learned over a short period of playing, in a couple of different levels:
(A) Individual cards. Are there any cool plays that my opponents make? Did I know card Y could do X and that card Q had summon type Z? Just how far can the individual cards in my deck stretch? In extreme circumstances, can they be used in a way the original deck never intended? What are individual cards doing for those decks? If I was playing them, is there something obviously better? And more besides…
(B) Individual Decks. What are people playing? What space do they occupy in the wider metagame? Where does that leave my deck? How badly can people hurt my deck, either maindeck or after sideboarding? What on earth does my sideboard do against all these other decks? What interactions make each deck strong, or vulnerable…
2. To improve as a player. For every mistake and misstep I make, I come one step closer to what Jamie Wakefield once referred to as "Technically Perfect Play" (that’s another screamer of an article you might wish to peruse). I may need several smacks about the head before I finally put a particular play error to bed, but that’s the point – I’m making those errors in the privacy of my own home, and not in a PTQ. That doesn’t seem like the place to be discovering which of Rite of Flame or Seething Song is a Sorcery and which is an Instant…
3. To start down the painful road to Ruthless Honesty. I’ll be honest with you (obv), there are some things I’ve done in these twelve matches that I really don’t want to share with you. I have pride, and unfortunately I even have pride in some of my Magical accomplishments. I spend a good deal of time with the best players in the world. I respect them enormously, and although I’ll almost certainly never be as good as most of them (although that Craig Jones, running off to America because he can’t beat any Europeans any more… pah, he’s mine I tell you!) I’d really like them to at least understand that I can play a little. Some of the things I do in these matches are so astonishingly, violently, reprehensibly idiotic, the face-burning shame is something I truthfully haven’t experienced since I wet myself on stage playing the second shepherd in the nursery nativity play when I was three years old. Of course, I don’t have to share them. They can be my dirty little secret. But I don’t want any of you to feel the way I did after my Match 12 spectacular. Nobody should have to feel that much shame at once. So my final reason for doing this:
Making Mistakes So You Don’t Have To.
Here’s the decklist:
Creatures (15)
Lands (23)
Spells (22)
- 3 Dragonstorm
- 2 Void
- 4 Lotus Bloom
- 4 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
- 4 Search for Tomorrow
- 1 Weatherseed Totem
- 4 Harmonize
Sideboard
As you can see, I’ve gone for a slight variation on the deck that fellow Brit Adam Barnett piloted to 25th place in Yokohama. It has lots of things going for it as far as I’m concerned:
1. Although I’m not a Combo player by nature, I simply adore playing Dragonstorm in Standard. There’s an uncomplicated joy about seeing the pieces come together in a seamless blend of power and precision, before a deliciously elegant and brutal kill. Plus, once you’re up against a deck that poses a legitimate threat, you get to deal and double deal, wile your way towards the finishing line, sneaking through the cracks in the U/B defenses, circumventing the Voidstone Gargoyle or (coming soon) laughing in the face of any monkeys who think that in a month of Christmases they’re going to hate me out with pitiful excuse for a hoser Aven Mindcensor. One word little White mages – behave.
2. I, just like Randy Buehler, love Land Destruction. Well actually Randy hates LD, but I mean it. In World War 2, there was a fantastic defensive fortification system called the Maginot Line. My geography’s not up to much as you know, but suffice to say that when the Germans attacked it was from the "wrong" side. Problem was, all the guns on the Maginot Line were fixed position affairs, and couldn’t be turned round. Genius. Sometimes, when I’m looking at turn 1 Chrome Mox Mountain Slith Firewalker in, turn 2 Stone Rain, turn 3 Molten Rain, I feel like the Germans must have felt looking at the architect’s plans on the Maginot Line. In this format, I sometimes get that feeling when I see Control decks with their UUU for Teferi, their BB for Damnation, their R for splash Void, their W for splash Pull from Eternity and, for all I know their G for Greenseeker to, you know, fix their mana. Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, we love you.
3. The big Red/Green deck seems ideally situated in the middle of the format. It’s not single-minded Aggro like White Weenie or Mono-Red. It’s not a traditional Control deck, like all the assorted U/Bx decks littering the top tables. It’s not a hardcore mid-range Rock style assemblage. It’s not even a straight Combo deck, although as we’ll see it can certainly act like one. Instead, as the games go by, we’ll see the deck taking on all these roles at various times, and that versatility means we’re likely to understand more about the format as a whole, without getting warped into seeing it purely from the perspective of a given deck archetype.
4. I think I know what most of the cards do…
Let’s get to it then, a dozen matches, and only 576 mistakes to go.
Match 1.
He goes first. Mountain, suspend Greater Gargadon. I already know this is good in theory, now I get to see it in practice. Before I even get to draw a card, my mana acceleration via Mwonvuli Acid-Moss has been turned off, because my opponent can sacrifice the land I kill to his suspended Gargadon. Sure, the land still dies, but no tapped forest into play for me. Actually, I’ve already committed my first error, by failing to mulligan an opening hand with Wall of Roots and Radha, Heir to Keld, but only one Mountain and no Forests. I never get to do anything, but even in my comprehensively unlanded state (note I didn’t go for "screwed," since I don’t want to convince myself it wasn’t entirely my fault) I’m impressed by his Turn 3 Jaya Ballard, Taskmage. My Radha will just die, my Walls are eminently killable, assuming I get to make any, and even the mighty Bogardan Hellkite and Akroma, Angel of Fury are well within range when you’ve got insta-Incinerate on the board.
Into game 2, but first I have the embarrassing incompetence that is sideboarding. I decide that Harmonize seems too slow, so I replace them with Strangling Soot, which seems to potentially generate card advantage, and a quick route to stabilization. Thankfully I give myself no chance of winning this game either before it starts. This time, I take Radha, Wall of Roots, Lotus Bloom, Akroma, Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, and Dragonstorm. Looking back, what was I thinking? It would be easy to say that I just wasn’t, but I learned something useful. It turns out that I’m being seduced into thinking of Lotus Bloom as I see it in Standard, where the Dragonstorm deck can quite happily go off without any land at all. Bloom, Bloom, Seething Song, Rite of Flame, Dragonstorm for five, good game.
Still, at least I know.
He kicks off game 2 with suspended Gargadon again, and turn 2 I get to experience the synergy of the 9/7 with Mogg War Marshal. If he doesn’t pay the echo, he can just sacrifice the Marshal to the Gargadon, taking off a counter, and putting a replacement Goblin onto the board. When the little blighters die, they too become grist for the countdown. Again, I know all this in theory, but it’s somehow more real and visceral than when I’m just watching it happen on table 9 on Tour. Even though I’m heading for death, I still manage three more observations on the way. First, pressing F6 on MTGO is bad, at least if you don’t know how to unpress F6 on MTGO. Yes, it saves you time. No, it doesn’t let you sac your Terramorphic Expanse at end of turn (eot). And while we’re on the subject, I’m looking out for just what Terramorphic Expanse is doing for, or to, my deck. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Expanse is a little like a mother-in-law – broadly neutral most of the time in a fairly inoffensive "hi how are you" kind of way, but when they come home to roost, boy do they mess up your sex life. So when I really, really wanted a Forest, and got the Expanse instead, I didn’t swear or curse. Instead, I very professionally and neutrally logged it in the ‘Bastard Expanse’ section of my playtest journal.
Final thought – he casts an end of turn Sulfur Elemental, and although, being R/G, I absolutely don’t care about the reason that it’s in his deck – helping to annihilate White Weenie – the simple math-changing effect is pretty powerful. Even with the Expanse, I feel I have one turn to stabilize. Elemental meant I didn’t.
0-2 games. 0-1 matches. 0 points.
Match 2.
I keep a much better hand. Forest, Expanse, 2 Search For Tomorrow, 2 Harmonize, Weatherseed Totem. I’m not sure quite what the Totem does in the deck, but I can see it accelerates mana, and if I can get my Acid-Mosses to resolve, the Harmonizes should see me through to my action cards like Hellkite and Akroma with the mana to make them work. His opening Island doesn’t give an awful lot away, but as soon as he plays a forest turn 2, I’m thinking about Riftwing Cloudskates and Mystic Snakes. It takes a very long time if you’re not very good at the game to start visualizing your opponent’s hand. After all, most of the time we’re busy trying to read our own and work them out, never mind his. My turn 3 Harmonize draws me both Acid-Moss and a Dragonstorm. Yay. He’s playing Call Of The Herd plus his flashback buddy, and also, curiously to me, Psionic Blast. Is this good? I can’t tell, although it didn’t inconvenience me in the least, not this time anyway. Dragonstorm is for three, although he uses a well-telegraphed Mystic Snake on the 3rd resolution. Nonetheless, 10 to the face, plus 10 through the air is game. There’s just time to reflect on how good Wall of Roots is. The tap symbol is such a tiny part of a card in physical terms, but think what a massive impact it has on a card’s value. How hideously worse would Wall of Roots be if you had to wait an entire turn cycle and then "turn off" it’ blocking ability in order to generate that measly G mana. And that’s without using it on our opponent’s turn either. When evaluating new cards, look for the tap sign. If it’s not there, things are looking up.
Game 2 I have Mountain, Forest, Search, Double Acid-Moss and double Hellkite. He’s aggressive with Call plus Yavimaya Dryad, but that means that my Acid-Moss will resolve. Hellkite does its thing, and although Psionic Blast drops me to six to give some anxious moments (perhaps it’s there to help the aggro clock side of the deck?), the flying beater is sufficient.
2-0 games. 1-1 matches. 3 points.
Match 3.
I rapidly conclude that this is the first mirror match of the set. Even here though, we have to be careful, because we use that term far too freely for true accuracy. There are any number of subtle ways in which his deck could vary from mine, and it may easily be these unlooked-for cards that utterly destroy me, because I turned off my thought process and just thought about the cards in my deck and placed them in his. For the first time I see Void in my opening hand, and I’m really interested to see what it does for me, since I don’t generally like spreading the manabase to achieve its casting, even if there is only one slot given over to the Black basic land. It’s easy to see in this game why Dead / Gone is so good. Both halves have multiple uses. He uses Dead to kill my face-down Akroma (and yes, that always means the Red one) and if I ever get one face-up, he can bounce it pretty effectively too. Versatility, cheapness, the deadifying of multiple format threats (any unmorphable morph monster, Radha, multiple weenies), it’s a really solid card. I get to use Void for six, because he’s playing Intet, The Dreamer maindeck. I have one in the sideboard, but I haven’t worked out what to do with him yet. I’m guessing he comes in with the Aeon Chroniclers and the Island on the basis that you might just as well have a bonus Dragon floating about the place. As anticipated, the Void is a five-mana one-for-one removal spell. He replaces it with Spectral Force, a spell I’m largely unimpressed by, since it so frequently resembles a 4/4 trampler for five per turn over two turns. Without Scryb Ranger technology, this is how he beats down, eight points over two turns, and that never ever beats a Hellkite. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with a Dragonstorm served "cold" i.e. with no storm. Sometimes, greed is good. Here, a nine-mana Dragon tutor gets it done.
For sideboarding, I’m bringing in the two "lucky" Gemstone Caverns, since surely he will elect to play? Then I can turn 1 Wall of Roots, and turn 2 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss. Bargain. Plus, the Harmonize go away, replaced by Utopia Vow, which seem a decent answer to assorted fatties.
Yay, I get to do the whole Gemstone Caverns thing! Turns out, I don’t know what it does. At all. Well, nearly. Yes, it accelerates me, that’s the bit I knew. Oops, didn’t know I had to remove a card from the game when it comes in, I’ve never played with or against it before, plus (Ruthless Honesty) I’m clearly terminally illiterate. Then, just when I think I’ve got a handle on it and am feeling fine again, I can’t understand why MTGO is letting me keep the luck counter after I’ve already used it once for Green mana. Really? Every turn? No wonder they made me pitch a card. It’s a real voyage of discovery this, ain’t it? Turn 2 Acid-Moss was, of course, the nuts, with me off to the races with a 5-1 mana advantage. Ridiculously fine. My face-up Akroma was just about game, after I’d put Utopia Vow on my own Wall of Roots in order to ramp up even further. Yes, I know I was inviting a two for one via Riftwing Cloudskate or Snapback, but it seemed worth it at the time. He has a small window of opportunity, but Harmonize doesn’t find him a Mountain and a Dead / Gone, both of which he needed to bounce lethal damage the following turn. I’m growing in confidence, fool that I am.
2-0 games. 2-1 matches. 6 points.
Match 4
I mentally, and physically, sit up straighter when I realize I’m up against U/B Control. Why? I’m not entirely sure, but I guess I feel that I’ll have to play around certain cards, like Cancel, Dismal Failure, and especially Draining Whelk. Plus, I’ll need to pay a lot of attention to his manabase, since Urborg plus Tendrils is not good news. I have a nice opening hand of Forest, Molten Slagheap, Bloom, Search, Wall, Harmonize, and Akroma. I try to work out whether I should join up the Bloom and Search or just go ahead and suspend them both on turn 1. In Standard, this is a much easier proposition, since by turn 4 I can often expect to complete the combo and win. Here in Block, that’s much tougher, since I probably need turn 2 Wall, turn 3 Acid-Moss and still that doesn’t get me to nine mana when my Bloom and Search come to play. Because I don’t view the deck as strictly Combo, I’m quite happy to put them both underway turn 1. My turn 3 Harmonize turns into Acid-Moss, and once I’ve messed with his mana and apparently his head, he concedes game 1.
Game 2 starts well too. Forest, Mountain, Bloom, Wall, Void, Hellkite, and D’storm is more than acceptable. Unlike Standard, where having Hellkites in your starting hand is pretty bad news, here I’m happy to see one, since I may well just hardcast it at some point before subsequently Dragonstorming for 2 via an 11 mana Wall / Radha + Storm combo. As you know, I only have a single Swamp in the deck, so bizarrely I’m quite glad to see his Urborg, which gives me all the Black I’ll ever need. I’m always scared of playing cards like Void or Meddling Mage, since the capacity for egg on your face is pretty vast, ranging from naming cards that don’t exist, to a number that isn’t in his deck etc. Thankfully in this game I’m worried about Damnation ruining my plans, so I Void for 4. Damnation costs four you see, and so does Tendrils of Corruption. And so does Mystical Teachings. And so does Plague Sliver. Now that’s what I call value. Void, I love you.
2-0 games. 3-1 matches. 9 points.
Match 5
I don’t quite understand why, but there’s a class of player who inhabit the casual room on MTGO who are, how shall I put this? Flighty. Yes, that’ll do. Play a deck they don’t fancy, spend more than 3 seconds on your main phase, play anything "janky," play any Tier 1 deck, have a name with either vowels or consonants… whatever the reason, sometimes you just can’t make players stick around to play out their games. Sure, it’s only mildly irritating, but it’s straightforwardly rude. What a relief to know that none of you ever do that to people.
So, match 5 is one game only. You know how mono-Blue decks down the years have really needed mass removal to deal with the threat that sneaks in under the radar of the Counterspells shield? I make Turn 2 Radha, and the next time I look he’s on eight life from six hits. Hellkite drops him to three, and his only answer is to bounce it back to my hand. Alright, so I’m surely going to win. He makes an irrelevant morph and I smugly untap, ready to throw the Hellkite at his face. Then I do something that makes me think there’s hope for me yet. I wonder what his morph could be. Vesuvan Shapeshifter? Fathom Seer? Brine Elemental? None of these matter, and he only has two mana open, so my Hellkite will resolve. Ah, but what if it’s a Willbender? That wouldn’t be so clever. I assume that’s what’s lurking under there, and cast the Hellkite, dealing two to the morph and the exact three I need to kill him direct to the face. My opponent taps his two mana, unmorphs his – ta da – Willbender, and looks puzzled when he can’t redirect the damage away from himself. Willbender only works when there’s a single target. I knew this before. Now he knows it too. Yay. I spend more than three seconds sideboarding, and he concedes the match.
1-0 games. 4-1 matches. 12 points.
Match 6
Please see opening paragraph for match 5. If you want to play, play. Don’t leave halfway through.
I lose the one duel we play to a U/G deck with Thelonite Hermit. This is my first, second, and third chances to see the Hermit up close and personal, and boy is he ever a pain in the nuts? Once more, I find myself dreaming of Sulfurous Blast in the sideboard instead of one of the many cards I don’t know how to use properly. While I’m busy losing, I get the chance to curse Molten Slagheap, as a Mountain would have allowed me to flip up Akroma. The Slagheap costs me a turn that I don’t have. I also get to see what Ixidron does in a Constructed setting. I have no conclusion though, since it seemed pretty good this time, but against the field, match after match? In this context, it seriously stunts my mana (no Radha, no Walls) but on the plus side I can still unmorph Akroma, since that ability doesn’t go away just because it’s become a face-down 2/2. There are a lot of cool corners to the rules of Magic, and I’ve found one of them here.
0-1 games. 4-2 matches. 12 points.
Match 7
There are some Pro players who are really slow to start a tournament, and gather momentum as they go. This was the first match of a session online, and that slow start theory is my only excuse for taking an opening hand with no Green mana that my five-year-old daughter could have mulliganed successfully. Raphael Levy talked earlier this year about the Automatic Response, where essentially you’re clicking away without thinking, and I’ve just experienced it firsthand. Grim. I manage to get Akroma face-up via Lotus Bloom, but since I’m playing against White Weenie, I’m not that surprised when he trades his waiting-to-die guy for going-to-help-kill-you guy in the form of Stonecloaker. Even so, it looked like I might have a shot at pulling this one out of the fire, only to exhibit another monumental mental error. He attacked, and had four cards in hand. One of them I knew, the little guy he’d saved earlier. The worst thing he could have would be Fortify. If he had it, I could still survive by making unfavorable, but not catastrophic, blocks. Instead, I found myself thinking, "okay, if you’ve got Fortify, go you, you win." I didn’t block. He had Fortify. He won. I tried to work out how strategic my non-block call had been. It turns out (Ruthless Honesty) that I had stopped caring whether I won or not. I threw a game away just by a mental "whatever." I’m guessing Jon Finkel has behaved in this way approximately never.
For game 2 I work on the basis that I want to kill everything that moves. Since he has Calciderm, I’ll have to settle for everything that moves that can be targeted by Strangling Soot or Utopia Vow. I get the Vow down on Benalish Cavalry + Griffin Guide, which is good times, and get my face-down Akroma Sunlanced, which isn’t. This game showcased the power of Shade Of Trokair. Willy Edel was telling anyone who would listen in Geneva how amazing Shade is, and although I eventually kill two of them, a hardcast Shade number 3 is enough. You may know this: White Weenie is quite good. It really is The Terminator since it can’t be reasoned with, it doesn’t feel pity, and it absolutely will not stop until you are dead. Well, I am dead, you can stop now.
0-2 games. 4-3 matches. 12 points.
Match 8
Another U/G merchant, which is great as this is the new deck on the Block, and I can learn plenty. What I learn game 1 is that Spectral Force is about as okay as I think it is, which is okay and no more, although against virtually nothing it will beat you pretty swiftly. To be honest, it was the Stormbind that killed me – yes, a little Red splash for this fine Enchantment. I did manage to get Void off, so obviously named three to kill the Stormbind. As many of you will know, this does not work, what with Void only destroying Creatures and Artifacts. Now I know this too.
Game 2 is even more of a kicking. My first Acid-Moss succeeds, but the second falls by the Cancel wayside. Spectral Force puts me to 12, and then he morphs up two Vesuvan Shapeshifters to make two more Spectral Force. I don’t suppose they’re Legendary? Pity.
0-2 games. 4-4 matches. 12 points.
Match 9
This was a G/R mirror match. Although I get off a turn 3 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, giving me the well-known five-to-one mana advantage, his single turn recovery shows how silly the ramping in G/R can be. Unsuspend Search For Tomorrow (land 2). Draw. Lay a land (land 3). Cast Search For Tomorrow (land 4.) Who says you only play one land a turn? He Voids for eight, which tediously takes two Hellkite from me, and then makes a (yawn) Spectral Force. A cheap spell plus Dragonstorm gets me the other Hellkites, killing the Force and his Avalanche Riders into the bargain. Then, not entirely unexpectedly, he dies.
On the draw, of course I bring in Gemstone Caverns, and Utopia Vows seem good, replacing the Harmonizes that never seem to get cast. His turn 3 Acid-Moss is good as far as it goes, but my Radha plus Bloom gets me well into silly spell range, and I turn Akroma up to outrace, you guessed it, a Spectral Force. One day, somebody will explain to me in exactly what circumstances this PT-winning card is any good. Oh, hang on, phone’s ringing. Mike Hron, how you doing…?
2-0 games. 5-4 matches. 15 points.
Match 10
Now this is a very different opponent to any I’ve faced so far. Turn 1, suspend Mindstab. Basically, I don’t care, because I’m away with the fairies thanks to the usual accelerants. He plays out The Rack and a pair of Phyrexian Totems, but I have Hellkite and a face-down Akroma on board. He has three cards left, and needs Damnation. He has it. Fair enough, that’s what it’s there for. Next turn, I’ve lost the game as he Extirpates all my Hellkites and all my Akromas. Nice.
I bring in the Aeon Chroniclers, since they appear to somewhat counter discard. With double Lotus Bloom, Search, 3 lands and a Dragonstorm, the turn 4 kill is looming before me. Then I do something I’m quite pleased about. I might even have some clue about the game. I draw on turn 3, and get a Mountain. The natural instinct is just to shove it into play. Then I realize that he’s going to die next turn without the Mountain being necessary. And then I think of what he might be able to do to stop himself dying in the meantime. I come up with one spell, Stupor. If I lay my land, my Dragonstorm will be one of three cards next turn he can hit with discard. Keep the mountain, it’s four. I hold the land, he Stupors me, takes the Mountain at random, I discard other uselessness and dome him for 20. A few years ago, I’d have laid the land, he’d have Stupored the Dragonstorm at random, and I’d have felt very dim indeed. Probability, the Magician’s friend.
In the decider, his Phyrexian Totems were very good, as one of them almost killed me alone. 15, 10, 5… hang on, this guy is good. Triple Hellkite is also good, and two are enough to force him into Damnation. With only three mana left, I know it’s safe to flash out BoHell number 3, and that’s good enough. My final thought on this one is that it’s easy to mock decks you haven’t seen before, especially when the decks you’ve seen before have mostly been played by Pros and haven’t featured The Rack. Still, it’s nice to play against something different, and I’m still learning.
Games 2-1. Matches 6-4. 18 points.
Match 11
Irritating little man. U/W something or other is his offering, but since I turn Akroma face-up and he does nothing, my guess is he decides on almost no basis that he cannot defeat the deck, and heads off in pursuit of somebody to play who is running 60 Forests for some serious playtesting where he can win occasionally.
Games 1-0. Matches 7-4. points 21.
Match 12
Aaaarrrggghhhhh!!! It’s the curse of F6 again, this time against Red/White Weenie, when effectively skipping a turn really matters. I still get to a point where I can win the game, and make a judgment call, which is always a bad sign. I have Acid-Moss in hand, and decide that I can kill him in two turns with Hellkite plus Weatherseed Totem. Part 1 goes to plan, he drops to ten, I pass the turn, he untaps, lays a land and Disintegrates me for the exact amount to kill me. He had two cards when I took the decision to race, and needed land plus Disintegrate to be two of the three cards available to him come his next main phase. I don’t have the tools to properly work out whether I was right to race or not. Any offers?
Game 2. Strangling Soot, good times. Face-up Akroma, very good times. Lotus Bloom, I love you.
Game 3 features the Play of the Day. It’s mortifyingly wrong on so many levels, and if ever Ruthless Honesty is costing me, it’s costing me now. This happened several days ago and I’m still properly ashamed. Here’s how it went down:
Turn 3 he casts Sedge Sliver as a 2/2. Turn 4 it’s a 4/4 flyer thanks to Griffin Guide. I’m busy making Akroma face down, and shortly thereafter, Akroma face up. He draws a Swamp, making the Sedge a 5/5 flying regenerator, and then adds insult to injury with Sinew Sliver, pushing it to 6/6. Also on his side are a pair of thoroughly untargetable Calciderms. I have 2 Wall of Roots in varying stages of decay, Radha, Akroma face down, and Akroma face up. It’s his turn, and I can’t afford to let anything through, or I’ll be dead. I have one card in hand, Bogardan Hellkite. He is on 18 life. God, it’s starting to sound like one of those hideous Rosewater puzzles. "Using exactly 39 steps, put Timmy to -14 life without using Red mana." Still, now’s the chance for you to engage brain and work out how to beat him. Do this now, because my solution is exactly three words away.
Clearly, I’m going to flash out the Hellkite, which I can theoretically do before or after blockers, if I’m not proposing to put the Hellkite in the way of anything. The two Calciderms are pretty straightforward. They don’t trample, and my Wall of Roots are doing nothing. I could block one of them with the Hellkite and trade, and that would mean losing face-up Akroma to the Sedge Sliver (which flies, remember.) I can’t even make the Sedge 5/5 by pointing Hellkite damage at the Sinew Sliver, because he has plenty of Black mana open to regenerate it. There is in fact nowhere I can profitably deposit the Hellkite’s arrival gift other than my opponent’s face. Then I start to see possibilities of a thrilling victory. Since I’ve now established that I’m putting him to thirteen, can I possibly kill him on the backswing next turn? I carefully tot up my mana. Plenty of Green, two Mountains plus Radha if I need her. Thirteen is a lot of damage though. Of course, I can pump Akroma, but only four times and that will be ten. Ten is less than thirteen.
And then I see it.
Since I have to block the Sedge, it obviously makes sense to chumpblock with the Hellkite rather than Akroma, since even without pumping, Akroma does one extra point. Everything goes smoothly. I’ve even checked the precise mana requirements one last time.
He attacks.
I flash out my Hellkite.
I deal him five, dropping him to thirteen.
I block the Sedge with the Hellkite.
I block both Calciderms with my Walls.
I grin as he passes the turn.
I untap.
Draw Lotus Bloom.
Declare my attack.
In comes Radha, Akroma, and my morph.
Do I want to activate this ability? Yes please, I’d quite like the utterly crucial Red mana from Radha.
Phew. Mana successfully in pool without misclick.
Pump Akroma once. It’s seven power.
I have six mana left, exactly three green and three red.
I can’t let him get to blockers, or the Sinew will make the difference.
Seven plus six is definitely thirteen damage.
He’s definitely on thirteen life.
I check the unmorph cost one last time.
3RRR.
I triumphantly unmorph the Legendary Creature that is Akroma, Angel of Fury.
I stare bewildered at the screen. Where have my wonderful flying beatsticks gone? My opponent hasn’t cast anything. Have I misclicked? Am I still connected?
Oh. My. God.
I cannot bear the shame. Sadly for some of you, this does not mean I’m about to kill myself. Instead, with a trembling hand I will replay this game, and discover that the correct play was to chump with Akroma, hope to draw a Mountain, flip up Akroma number two with two spare Red mana to pump it to eight, because although 7 + 6 = 13, 8 + 5 = 13 too, and Bogardan Hellkite plus Akroma are not two copies of the same Legendary Creature.
Then I will thank you all for reading, and trust that you are gratified that I have been tirelessly Making Mistakes So You Don’t Have To. Thanks to Ruthless Honesty, I can’t even shed a tear of self-pity. I think Jon Finkel has done that approximately never too.
Until next time,
As ever,
R.