Hello everybody, I’m back on the Daily again. I hope some of you are pleased to hear that; for the rest of you, just keep in mind that if you want to have that awesome work from Patrick Sullivan last week, then you’ve gotta put up with me from time to time. I’ll try to make it as painless as possible.
This week will be in the spirit of The Reweave Experiment from my last Daily turn, but I chose a more mainstream card this time: Godo, Bandit Warlord. I like it when six-mana 3/3 creatures become mainstream – it appeals to my inner Johnny.
Now, if you’re scoffing at the idea that Godo is a mainstream card, then you haven’t done enough research. Although no copies of the samurai appeared in the Top 8 of Pro Tour Philadelphia, he did appear in Shuuhei Nakamura’s ninth place deck, and in five more decks in the Top 32. It’s not just Block either; the ninth-place deck at Mid-Atlantic Regionals was a Beacon of Creation deck which splashed Black for Cranial Extraction and Red for Godo, who crushed Red decks by tutoring up Sword of Fire and Ice.
I first got on the Godo kick when I built this deck for the Block PTQ season:
Ocean’s Eleven
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Orochi Sustainer
4 Kodama’s Reach
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Final Judgment
4 Umezawa’s Jitte
3 Time of Need
3 Yosei, the Morning Star
2 Keiga, the Tide Star
2 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Myojin of Cleansing Fire
1 Godo, Bandit Warlord
1 Tatsumasa, the Dragon’s Fang
10 Forest
6 Plains
1 Island
1 Mountain
3 Tendo Ice Bridge
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
This deck came about when I was looking at the (link to DeckID=12077) TOGIT Three-Color Control deck which won a PTQ in Orlando in the hands of William Posthelwaite. I took that deck apart and stripped it to its bare bones: 4 Tribe Elder, 4 Reach, 3 Final Judgment. I then added cards that I liked, occasionally differing with the TOGIT deck – Sustainer and Judgment in my mind should be four-ofs, whilst I did not like Posthelwaite’s maindeck Wear Away at all – and making sure to add the win conditions last.
Once I was done adding all of the utility cards I wanted, and I had a good idea what the mana would look like, I had eleven slots left for legendary win conditions (hence the deck’s name). The Yosei, Meloku, Keiga, Myojin, and Hokori were easy auto-includes. That left two slots.
I noticed that I didn’t have any tech for other decks with Final Judgment, so I decided that I had to Godo it up. Godo almost always tutors up the Dragon’s Fang; aside from the awesomeness of giving any guy in your deck +5/+5, you can also use Miren to make it impossible for the opponent to stop your 5/5 Dragon token (if they try to remove the token in such a way that Fang wouldn’t come back, such as with Final Judgment, then you can sac the token to Miren in response, returning the Fang to play).
If I were to play the deck again, I’d probably make the following changes: -2 Hokori, -1 Keiga, +1 Yosei, +1 Patron of the Kitsune, +1 Time of Need. The sideboard was badly misbuilt; we will not speak of it again, except to say that it included 3 Wear Away and 2 Kodama of the North Tree.
I gave the deck a spin at a Grand Prix Trial in Rockville, MD on July 10: it didn’t perform badly, but it showed some holes. The quick-and-dirty tournament report:
Round One I easily beat a mono-Red deck in two games. Ishi-ishi, Akki Crackshot was annoying, but he had very few ways to deal with my flying Dragons and sideboarded North Trees. 1-0
Round Two I faced the eventual tournament winner, who ran a White Weenie deck teched out to abuse Celestial Kirin (at the time, this was fairly revolutionary, but everybody is doing it these days). In game one I Parised into a no-mana-acceleration hand, and he killed me with an EOT Spiritual Visit after I cast Final Judgment on turn 6. In Game 2 I couldn’t play blocking creatures because of his counter-laden Waxmane Baku, so I had to cast Final Judgment earlier than I would have liked. He had Otherworldly Journey to save the Baku, and then played Hokori on his own turn while I was tapped low. I soon lost. 1-1
Round Three I faced a U/W control deck with Hail of Arrows and Ghostly Prison to go with its countermagic. In game one it was impossible for me to break through that defensive wall; when I finally got Tatsumasa + Miren going, he played three Prisons in one turn (!) to stop me. I eventually scooped to a huge Orochi Hatchery.
In game two I somehow resolved a turn 4 North Tree. My opponent obviously had Final Judgment in the grip, but he stalled on five mana and soon died. His deck was so slow that we had no time to finish game 3. 1-1-1
Round Four I faced the U/G control deck with Sakura-Tribe Scout whose list you can find here. My opponent’s draws were simply atrocious and I stomped him in less than ten minutes. 2-1-1
Round Five I faced the exact same U/G deck, but in the hands of the person who had Top 2’ed a PTQ with it, Alex Majlaton (not “Majcktan,” although Alex’s handwriting is so messy that I can see how that mistake would be made). In game one I forced Alex to trade his Keiga for my Yosei, and I played Hokori while he was tapped down, soon followed by another Yosei. I soon won.
In game two Alex threatened to own me with an early Jitte, but I was able to get a race going with Meloku and Godo (who died to Jitte, but not before searching up a Dragon’s Fang). Alex took a couple of shots from my Fang-carrying Meloku, and then he emptied his hand to play two Keiga and steal all of my creatures. I just played Final Judgment, and Alex did not draw a subsequent answer for the recurring 5/5 Dragon tokens. 3-1-1
Round Six I faced a more traditional White Weenie deck (Tallowisp + creature enchantments); the winner would make Rop 8 and the loser got jack squat. In game one I got a turn 4 Meloku, but I did not make tokens aggressively enough, and he punished me with 8.5 Tails + Jitte for a series of disastrous attacks. In game 2 I Parised once into a one-land hand with four two-drop mana snakes; I unwisely kept and did not draw the second land until it was irrelevant to the game result. 3-2-1
So, we see the first and most obvious weakness to running Godo; like any six-drop, he has trouble racing when your opponent can play 2/2 men on turns 1-3. This is a problem which you can try to solve with sideboarding, but it’s worth asking if Godo should be surrounded by some cheap aggro creatures as well. We’ll see how that works out tomorrow.