I regret a few deck selections I’ve made recently.
It isn’t that I think the decks I played were bad, but that I think I could have done better selecting decks in two recent events that would have been better-suited to a winning result.
The first one was what can only be called a huge mistake that I made at GP Portland.
I played this:
Creatures (16)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (14)
Steve Rubin called this “Stuff I Own Bant.” I wish I hadn’t played it.
In my preparation for Grand Prix Portland, I was coming straight off of a fair finish at Pro Tour Eldritch Moon with G/B Delirium. I was looking at a lot of decks for the event, but I really wanted to start out the new season well. In the days between the Grand Prix and the Pro Tour, I had narrowed it down to a few decks:
– G/B Barely Delirious
– G/B Delirium
– U/R Thermo-Alchemist
– Mono-Blue Eldrazi
These were my big three. However, I had had several matches where I’d play against a non-Collected Company Bant deck that was incredibly powerful against the U/R Thermo-Alchemist deck and Mono-Blue Eldrazi, the two frontrunners for my deck choice for the event. It was a crazy-looking deck and it basically looked like it was maximizing Tamiyo, Field Researcher as well as running a smattering of powerful counterspells.
I already liked counters. I knew that. And then out of nowhere came this interesting deck. Doing some research, I discovered it had even had some solid results here and there, including a few League 5-0 results, and some finishes besides that.
Then, of course, I ended up with a complication.
My old friend Joel Priest lives in Portland, and he has basically not been a Magician since the early 2000s. Joel was a successful Magic player out of the DC area a very long time ago, and when we hung out my first night in town, I got him excited to check out the Grand Prix, and eventually to play in it. More awesomeness was added to the mix when, by sheer happenstance, another old-school pro player from the late ’90s and early 2000s, Richie Frangiosa, showed up in town to referee a major roller derby event. He hadn’t played in even longer, but I got him interested as well.
I had the cards for everyone.
But I didn’t have the cards for anyone to double up.
When I look at that event, I’m pretty sure I should have just played the Thermo-Alchemist deck. I had played against Pedro Carvalho at the Pro Tour, and only barely lost. I had tried working on a deck much like his deck leading into the Pro Tour. I had started working on a U/R Thermo-Alchemist 75 in the days after it.
It just so happened that the U/R Thermo-Alchemist deck was perfect for Joel, and rather than make the choice that probably was also perfect for me, I ended up simply looking at my other choices, now with G/B, Mono-Blue Eldrazi, and Bant Control as my choices.
I ended up on Control, as seen above.
The deck I had based it on had some issues I didn’t care for. The mana felt off, it didn’t have enough two-drops (only the four Sylvan Advocate), and the counterspell mix felt off. I spent a few days working on it, trying to get it to a state that I liked. Having succeeded at making the changes I’d wanted, I played it in several Magic Online events and was happy with the way that it felt.
It played out smoothly. It did some of the powerful things that Mono-Blue Eldrazi did that I loved with counterspells.
I didn’t like it as much as I liked U/R Thermo-Alchemist, but I really wanted Joel to play, and I didn’t have enough cards to field two copies of the deck. I didn’t have as much work put into the deck as I had with Mono-Blue Eldrazi, but Mono-Blue Eldrazi’s major problem remained unsolved: I couldn’t beat Humans. At least not with any consistency.
And so I beat a few things quite handily with the Bant Control deck. And then I faced Bant Company and lost 0-2. And then I faced Bant Company and lost 0-2. And again. And again.
The Bant Control deck was a solid deck, pound-for-pound. It could go toe-to-toe with any number of really great decks, and had the edge against many.
But holy damn did it have a bad Collected Company problem. If I’d done more of the work, I might have realized that. Meanwhile, Joel dropped from the event at 5-1; he’d had a great time, but one of his friends had some fun things going on in the city, and he wanted to go hang out and do Magic another day.
It was a disappointing finish, to be sure, especially with the extra effort put into the Control list. I still think that the Control list is a powerful deck. The problem is that being powerful doesn’t matter if you are poorly positioned in regards to whatever the current Magic metagame might be. “Being a good deck” is never a thing that exists in a vacuum, it only ever exists in a context.
As things lead into the next event I played in, I was offered a very different, unique opportunity.
I was heading to my first RPTQ. For the event, I was looking at a few different options.
– G/B Delirium
– Mono-Blue Eldrazi
– U/B Jace’s Sanctum
By this point, it had struck me that basically everyone had worked out that if they wanted to beat U/R Thermo-Alchemist, they could manage it. All of the decks with black in them were running things like three Kalitas after sideboarding, and sometimes as many as three or four Call the Bloodline. When it comes to Magic, I’m much more on the “sadist” end of the spectrum, and I didn’t want to be playing a day of Magic against Noose Constrictor, Bant Company with solid plans for Fevered Visions, Caustic Caterpillar, and more.
I ended up on the G/B deck; I’ve always been a fan of Rock-style decks. The deck was powerful, had great game against everything, and I knew it inside and out. There were a few snags.
I lost a match to Abzan Delirium, basically on the strength of their Sigarda, Heron’s Grace alone. I very nearly almost won, and maybe could have done so, but I just barely crumbled to the deck in extra turns. The card was an utter beating against me, and it just kept coming back thanks to Liliana, the Last Hope and Grapple with the Past.
Other than that, it was basically a good day. I also lost to Four-Color Emerge, which I knew to be a bad matchup, despite some of the cards I’d fit in, like Murder, to try to better fight that matchup.
But what I should have played was my then-current build of Mono-Blue Eldrazi.
Creatures (6)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (27)
Spells (25)
I never fully solved the problem of Humans. This deck has a very, very rough time against Humans.
But I absolutely should have played it at the RPTQ because I should have gone with my instincts as to what kind of opposition I could expect at the event.
It’s not that I played an utterly poor choice, like I did at the Grand Prix. The Bant Control deck was solid in and of itself, but it was poorly positioned against the most popular and best deck. Conversely, the G/B Delirium deck was solid in and of itself, and it wasn’t horrible against anything. In fact, the Bant Company matchup feels like it hovers around 50/50 leaning my direction, depending on how they have their deck built and how experienced they are. Other than Emerge decks, most of the other matchups feel quite good.
However, the Mono-Blue Eldrazi matchups feel incredible in most popular matchups. It’s just that that pesky Humans matchup is a real problem. Similarly, pure, fast red aggro is a problem, but that is so exceedingly rare that I wouldn’t worry about it.
No, I should have picked Mono-Blue Eldrazi simply because of the nature of the event I played in.
The RPTQ is a unique event for a lot of reasons. Not only is the event relatively small compared to other events of any importance, but it is entirely populated by people who have succeeded in Magic on a small scale. There were the Silver people like me, and there were all of those Preliminary PTQ winners who made the trek to the event.
This means that, for the most part, any particular playgroup wasn’t going with a whole crew. Friends not only weren’t splitting up card pools a million ways, but they could often pool their cards together for the one or two buddies they had that were going to attend.
In addition, the stakes were high. For the most part, you’d have people that were going to do one of three things:
1) Play the best deck (as they perceived it)
2) Play their pet deck (either metagamed or brewed)
3) Play the deck they had played the most
Generally speaking, in this current moment, this would mean that they’d be playing Bant Company, first and foremost, with some people playing various Emerge decks, and a smattering of Delirium and Fevered Visions.
This is exactly what happened.
With the roughly fifty people at the RPTQ I attended, if someone was playing Humans, they were on Bant Humans, and the more aggressive build wasn’t something I noticed anyone playing.
Wow, is Mono-Blue Eldrazi amazing in these instances.
I’ve gotten quite a few 4-1 League finishes, a few 5-0 finishes, and only a rare 3-2 online, with nothing worse. There is something really amazing about moments like this…
Your opponent resolves their Emrakul, the Promised End. They take your turn and think before casting Ulamog, nuking two of your lands, and give the turn back to you. Two turns later, they die.
Your opponent drops a second Fevered Visions and finds themselves racing a Reality Smasher, then a second Smasher.
Your opponent casts a Collected Company at the end of your turn, only to have the world reset by Engulf the Shore, and then sits with Spell Queller in hand when you cast Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger two turns later.
There are few things truly scarier for an opponent in the know than a second-turn Mage-Ring Network. It says, “Hey, buddy – you’d better be working on making me dead. If you’re not, you’re in for a world of pain.” Simply put, there is almost nothing that is a better late-game play than Ulamog. Even Emrakul can’t compare.
The full spoiler for Kaladesh isn’t out yet. While I’m gnashing my teeth waiting to see all of the amazing cards that we’re going to be playing with, I’m still enjoying the hell out of playing Standard with Mono-Blue Eldrazi while I wait for the world to rotate. You can bet that if I were playing in the Standard Classic this weekend in Orlando, I’d definitely be playing it in that event, despite the problematic Humans matchup.
In the coming weeks, we’re going to be having our first Standard without a core set. If you’re looking for a great anti-Bant Company deck before things change, Mono-Blue Eldrazi is your deck.
Until the new set is out, I’ll see you in the Leagues!