fbpx

SCG Talent Search – Don’t Panic! You’re still going to win the PTQ!

Thursday, January 13th – Valeriy Shunkov is one of our Top 8 contestants in the SCG Talent Search! He devises a Bant Haterator deck to fight the Extended metagame.


Valeriy Shunkov

Hello again! It was hard for me to come up with the topic for the Mixed Category Top 8, so I decided to just do my job the best I could, and my topic will be the one most relevant for all PTQers: how to break Extended. The topic is even more relevant for me because there are only four PTQs this season in Russia — far less than the number of decent players who actually deserve the slot.


All these decks suck.


“You’re going to get mana-screwed in round four, then you’re going to make a small, subtle mistake in round six that ends up costing you the match.”

© Max McCall
That Deck Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

This quote is a great example of how not to win. It’s all about the mindset: if you’re not looking for a win — you won’t win. Yes, there’s no deck that crushes everything — but it would’ve been banned if it existed. Yes, everybody makes mistakes, and there’s only one winner — but you’re still dreaming, hoping that tomorrow will be that very day when all your diligence, hardcore testing, and your teched-out list will combine with a little bit of luck to push you onto the pedestal. But, regardless of luck, you still have to be well equipped, after all. Therefore, I’ll try to make a weapon to win the PTQ and to share some thoughts about strategies that would be viable in the rapidly changing Extended metagame.

Sometimes, formats look like you can’t choose any one deck — they’re either all bad, or they’re all good — which is, usually, the same thing. Almost every deck you try looks crazy on paper, then it looks promising during the first testing, then you realize that this deck still sucks. You pick the next deck and rinse and repeat. Somehow, you find the deck that satisfies some of your requirements and with which you’re somewhat comfortable.

So, it’s fifteen minutes before the PTQ; you wander around the room scouting the field, and the lightning strikes you: your deck choice sucks. Then you either go on tilt and make some last-minute sideboard switches to beat that one Dredge deck (or Mill or Turbo Fog; underline whatever is your “unlikely-to-face, nightmare matchup”) that you noticed in the corner of the room… Or go on tilt and switch decks entirely.

Stop it.

You know, PV won the Pro Tour after starting 0-2, and Guillaume Matignon won Worlds after going 3-3 on Day 1, and Jonathan Randle made Top 8 after being 71st before the start of Day 3 (the last player who had a theoretical chance to make it). He needed to run hot to end up 6-0 and guess what happened? …So here’s the important lesson: you can win as long as you have a mathematical chance to win, even if you’ve just found yourself in the midst of a PTQ with a couple of losses…

So, why are you on tilt before the tournament has even started?

Even if your deck seems bad… It’s just as bad as the rest of the field’s. I’m not going to read you a lecture about mental state, simply because it’s one of my own weaknesses. Instead, I want to help you avoid falling into the “my deck choice is wrong” pit.

There are several approaches to tackle such wide-open formats, but they all lead to the ultimate goal — if all the decks suck, you should simply build something special to steal the title. When I have no idea about the best available game plan, I simply choose to ruin other players’ plans all day long. In this case, it’s time to find real weak spots of the metagame and to send all your deckbuilding skills in the right direction. Creating problems is always similar to

“Hunting for tech,”


so maybe you’ll find it useful to reread my previous article).

Decks built under this concept are often named “rogue” (because people feel robbed when they lose to them) or “haterators” (because people hate to lose to random piles of draft cards), but a more appropriate name for this sort of deck is “problem creator.” If you do everything correctly, this strategy could be surprisingly successful, but there are many traps around, and the worst of them is creating a powerless, midrange concoction that requires you to draw the right half of the deck in the right matchup (and pray to never see cards from the other half).

In the current Extended, there are some good control decks (Cruel, U/W, and Faeries), a bunch of different combo decks (Wargate, Ascension, Polymorph, Necrotic Ooze, etc.), and aggro decks like Jund, Tempered Steel, Mythic, etc. There are more decks, but Magic Online PTQ results are enough to make our first conclusion: the format is open to innovation, and it seems to be defined by the presence of Faeries and different control variations.

Creating Problems

There’s an approach for cracking a combo-control metagame — a deck based on creatures with textboxes containing words “Hey, I think you have a problem” — so-called “disruption bears.” They’re typically 2/2 or 2/1 for two mana (and one of those mana symbols is usually white). Some of them were designed to suppress a specific deck — such as Kataki, War’s Wage or Leonin Arbiter; some of them are quite flexible at creating problems without dedicated hate against any deck — like Meddling Mage and Gaddock Teeg.

These creatures often look weird in the aggressive metagame (who needs Teeg over Watchwolf if you’re supposed to face Wild Nacatl and Tarmogoyf?) but really shine when everyone is planning to win by casting spells instead of turning creatures sideways. Are you surrounded by Faeries, Cruel Control, and Wargate? Check! Does Gaddock Teeg rain on their parade? Check! Do we need this sideboard resident in the main deck? Check!

This is sometimes how a deck emerges, by jamming all possible sideboard hate cards in the main deck to steal as many game ones as possible. This sort of deck is very interesting to tune because you need to fit into the metagame very precisely — or you’ll have no chance to win. That’s why it’s generally great for one specific week — but it’s entirely what you want: one PTQ win.

The main advantage of the Haterator is the ability to ruin your opponent’s game plan; the main disadvantage is that your deck becomes just a mix of bad cards if your predictions were wrong. The way to remedy this situation is to add very efficient beaters into the mix to speed up your clock: problem-creating creatures buy some time for you, and beaters finish the opponents off before they can recover — or just steal some wins all by themselves. As long as we’re in white, the most effective creatures available are Doran, the Siege Tower, Rhox War Monk, and Knight of the Reliquary — which means that we already know the second color of our deck. So, green it is!

As we have two major parts of our deck — bears and beaters — we still need the third part to complete the puzzle. We have a way to suppress opponent’s threats, and we have a way to win, so we must interact with opponent’s answers to ensure that our bears will be on the battlefield as long as needed to win. Two approaches for interacting with opponent’s threats and removal are discard and counterspells. Since we’re pretty much set on two of the colors already (white for bears and green for beaters), it means that our choice of either counters or discard will have direct influence on our third color — blue or black. And before we make the choice, let’s take a look at our bears and hunters and try to realize which weaknesses we should cover up with the remaining spells.

The Bears: Teeg, Pikula, and Others

Gaddock Teeg

The old Kithkin is the only one able to give you good advice about Extended — all other

advisors

rotated out.

Teeg is wonderful: no more Cryptic Command, no more Scapeshift, no more Wargate… he’s even David against the Goliath, Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Teeg can’t win games by himself, but he’s able to provide sufficient tempo advantage and give you the ability to win with other creatures.

And a small quote from
Gerry T’s article:


“If Doran players get smart and start running Gaddock Teeg…”

Truth to be told, I started to play with Teeg long before Christmas, so these words were very encouraging to me. Why Gerry mentioned Teeg in his Wargate article? The reason is that common versions of Wargate decks have precisely zero ways to deal with a resolved Gaddock Teeg — even after sideboarding (not counting a manual installation of the Omen + Valakut combo, but it’s not so hard to prevent Valakut’s volcanic activity if you really want to). And they actually have no way to win through Gaddock Teeg plus…

Meddling Mage

Probably the best-known problem-creating creature of all time. Old glory aside, I’m not sure about his performance now. There are no decks that flat-out die to him, so Meddling Mage often names removal spells to protect your team. But if you name removal, you don’t ruin the opponent’s game plan, and, as long as everybody has different removal in their decks, Meddling Mage looks like a worse version of Mana Leak. Anyway, if your metagame is Cruel-heavy, a Teeg-plus-Pikula-based deck may be successful.

Fulminator Mage

Yes, good ol’ Fulmi isn’t in our colors, but land destruction is the simplest, the best known, and probably the most successful approach to problem creating and disrupting the enemy’s game plan since the printing of Sinkhole, so I just can’t avoid mentioning him. Look at Fulminator Mage plus Renegade Doppelganger. Seems interesting? Add Fauna Shaman and try to enclose this core in the shell of a “good stuff” deck. I didn’t spend the necessary amount of time working on this idea, so I won’t elaborate on it here, but I think that a RUG deck could be a viable choice, especially if Jund grows in popularity.

Leonin Arbiter

This card was designed to suppress Valakut and fetchland-heavy decks. But it’s definitely not a maindeck option because Cruel and Faeries don’t play fetchlands, and Jund plays four or less. Arbiter would be good as a sideboard slot against Scapeshift decks, but there’s another problem: we here at Haterator Corp. are too reliant on searching our own libraries ourselves. Both G/W/U and G/W/B versions are pretty fetchland-heavy, and let’s not forget other cards like Knight of the Reliquary or even Treefolk Harbinger in Doran builds. A G/W version could get along without fetchlands, but if it ever emerges (with a little help from Mirrodin Besieged in the form of Mirran Crusader and the promised, new Swords), I guess it would definitely run 3-4 Stoneforge Mystics, who also conflict with Leonin Arbiter in a tempo deck.



Side Note:



Do you know how to prevent Leonin Arbiter’s effect on Magic Online? I didn’t, and it cost me a match in a PTQ.


Assuredly, I played Standard-style R/G Valakut with four Avengers of Zendikar and four Summoning Traps maindeck; the deck is surprisingly powerful, so I wanted to write about it, but another article about Valakut would be soooooooo boring, especially combined with the fact that almost every author would cover Avenger of Zendikar tech by the time this article got published.
End Side Note.

Qasali Pridemage

Two out of four dominating decks are running very important enchantments — Bitterblossom and Prismatic Omen — so Pridemage won’t stay without work, especially if we also remember that Tempered Steel, Pyromancer Ascension, and Splinter Twin exist. Extended isn’t filled by powerful artifacts right now (bye-bye, Jitte), but the ability to deal with Wall of Tanglecord and Wurmcoil Engine is sweet too (though I’d prefer to eliminate Baneslayer Thrinax Robot with some other spell, preferably Eradicate). War Priest of Thune is the new kid on the block to keep in mind, but if you have access to green, Pridemage is just better. Sometimes exalted really matters.

Tidehollow Sculler

The first problem of Tidehollow Sculler is that, like with Meddling Mage, you’ll always be forced to strip them of removal. This card was heavily played previously, but now it seems to be worse than Duress or Inquisition of Kozilek — just because he dies to removal. Sorry, but I think that
Sculler should wait at least until Thoughtseize rotates out. Or at least until we get to lay our hands on the new traitorous Glissa (
go read her text

and find any other artifact worthy of re-digging).

Vexing Shusher

I consider him to be an interesting option, but I also believe that he’s not the guy that we want to have on our team. Why? Because our main goal isn’t to resolve spells but to protect creatures from removal. Resolving is important too, but when I compare Shusher with Spell Pierce or Thoughtseize, I wouldn’t prefer him. But if we’re playing G/W (which is a viable option due to a simpler mana base and less vulnerability to Anathemancer), Shusher is good.

Ethersworn Canonist

Without the storm mechanic and Glimpse of Nature, this once perfect weapon has no relevant targets. But… I think that despite not being represented at Worlds, combo Elves still exists (in a Standard-like variation with Primal Command). So, you should keep Canonist in mind. But, considering that Elves lost some speed, I think that I would prefer another creature to against them.

Linvala, Keeper of Silence

Linvala didn’t have enough targets during the previous season, but now she is a perfect answer to a brave, new metagame. Combo Elves, G/W trap, Mythic Conscription, and more importantly, the popular and powerful Necrotic Ooze combo — Linvala is
the

lady of answers to those dorks. Activated abilities-based combo? Take that! Moreover, Linvala can help you to hamper the onslaught of Red Deck Wins with all those Figures of Destiny and Kargan Dragonlords, while also serving as a sizeable, un-Boltable blocker.

Iona, Shield of Emeria

The most powerful problem-creating creature ever. Forbidding, attacking, winning, even bringing you a cup of tea when cast. But wait… Nine mana? I think this lady is just too good for us. We’re simple two-mana, working-class lads and can’t date with cinema stars and supermodels unless we’re Pete Doherty. Tip: try WindbriskHeights or Polymorph if you really want her.

Last but not the least:

Glen Elendra Archmage

The best way to win counter wars without having more cards and mana than your opponent. A resolved GEA usually means that you’ve already won a game against Cruel Control. But GEA, as you can remember, was the weapon for slow decks against other slow decks, which isn’t be very relevant for us. Voidmage Prodigy would be insane, but this slim and good-looking female Faerie is definitely not Kai Budde.

Summing up, I’d play Gaddock Teeg and Qasali Pridemage in my main deck and Linvala in the sideboard. GEA is another slot for the side, but she depends on our color choices. Meddling Mage is interesting, but I don’t want to play him right now — just because others do his job better.

Something Old, Something New, and So On

Now we’re coming to the toughest point — third color selection. You may guess my decision from the header, but I’ll still explain it. We should think two- dimensionally; firstly, we should consider the kind of disruption we want, and secondly, we need to weigh the quality of available beaters; also, let’s remember that we can drop the third color altogether, as G/W is a viable option, too.

Counterspells vs. discard is a very interesting topic to discuss, but generally, discard spells are better when you’re fighting against pure combo and just want to slow them for a turn or two, and counterspells are better if your opponent’s playing control or combo-control, and you want to prevent him from answering your threats. Employing both discard and counters is sometimes an ideal weapon against such decks, but we can’t afford to have a shaky Cruel-control-like four-color mana base, so we’ll have to make a hard choice here. Or, yes, you can just merge counterspells with discard and play Faeries — and lose to someone who will make the proper choice because both G/W/U and G/W/B are usually favorites when paired against the flying tribe.

I never considered red as a support color for this deck — it doesn’t help you to disrupt your opponent or to protect your threats, but Vengevine Naya presumably has a good matchup against Faeries and would propose a different solution to our metagame problem. I know that Naya lost to Faeries in the final of an online PTQ, but normally R/G/W is the favorite in this match.

When I started to brew my deck around Gaddock Teeg, the first obvious step was to borrow Brad Nelson Doran decklist circa PT Amsterdam. However, I soon realized that I just wanted to play another deck, even if it will use four Siege Towers. Harbinger was good in Amsterdam, but he’s no more, as we don’t need “combo” now. I tried to brew Doran in different ways, but some other smart guy just did my job:


While I wouldn’t recommend playing this deck, you can see the idea: this guy wanted to beat Faeries (which is a reasonable desire now), to punish Jund for Blightning, and to steal key spells from Wargate’s hand. Great Sable Stag maindeck is debatable but still reasonable, depending on the metagame.

So, we come to another problem of Haterators: while you prepare to beat specific decks, you should be ready to face anything, especially in such a wide format. It’s very fortunate for us that the majority of “random” decks are aggro variations, so we can just pack some anti-aggro creatures and effective removal maindeck and feel good. As I see it, two of the best possible aggro stoppers are Kitchen Finks (plus Oran-Rief, the Vastwood) and Rhox War Monk.

If you’d like to adapt the Finks-Rief combo to Doran, I bet you’ll end with B/G featuring maindeck Putrid Leech, Kitchen Finks, and Bitterblossom. It’s so sweet to make Putrid Leech larger than Mistbind Clique and an opponent’s Leech. Faerie tokens can’t be pumped, but Bitterblossom is actually insane when you have a way to gain life, which you have in the form of undying Finks, courtesy of Oran-Rief. But as for me, I just feel more comfortable with Rhox War Monk and some Spell Pierces.

Yes, I said “feel comfortable.” Sometimes it’s just the best possible way — if you can’t make your choice rationally, listen to your feelings. One deck can be pretty intuitive to play; the other can present a constant stream of hard choices leading to subtle misplays leading, in turn, to a loss. For example, I always know how to use Spell Pierce properly, but having both Treefolk Harbinger and Thoughtseize in an opening hand on the play against an unknown opponent forces me to make very difficult decisions, putting me under a mental strain from the very start. It’s a clear way to save your time, to help you stay calm and focused, and to improve your EV when you want to make zero mistakes during eleven or twelve rounds of a PTQ.

So, I finally opted to play G/W/U, which gives me access to Spell Pierce, Mana Leak, and Bant Charm as my counterspells. Bant Charm is the nuts because of its versatility, the ability to deal with creatures you don’t want to see in the graveyard (I’m looking at you, Wurmcoil Engine) and the ability to be a hard counter, totally unexpected at that. Mana Leak looks a little controversial, as sometimes it can feel awkward waiting on Mana Leak instead of casting another creature to close the game with. Just remember: putting your opponent under pressure is important, but protecting your guys is important too.

The Deck

So, my recent decklist of Bant Haterator.


The sideboard is obviously a subject for fine-tuning, but, as it is now, it’s a good starting point.

There are a couple of cards that aren’t in my maindeck, yet could fit there under different circumstances, and those cards are Dauntless Escort and Rafiq of the Many, as singletons.

And here is an answer for the question that, I guess, many of my readers have already asked themselves: why not just run Mythic? I liked Mythic in Standard, but I’m fully aware that it’s a kind of “Glass Hammer” — very powerful, yet very fragile. The Conscription strategy was good and, probably, still is to a degree, shown to us by Cedric Philips by making Top 2 of an online PTQ, but right now, I’d prefer versatility and redundancy.

My Bant brew is well positioned against Faeries and Cruel Control; most Wargate decks are hard to lose to (until Wargate players get smart and start running removal or Avenger of Zendikar, which was already suggested by some writers); Jund and aggressive decks are tougher, but proper sideboarding still allows us to significantly improve the result in our favor. No, these matches aren’t close to 80-20, but you’re pretty much a favorite. R/G Valakut and nonexistent swarm aggro are problematic, but you know, all decks suck, and this one isn’t an exception.

The main weaknesses of the deck are:

1) You always want to see Noble Hierarch or Birds of Paradise in your starting hand, especially in the matches where tempo matters more than hate.

2) The deck is “fair.” You have no ways to achieve any sort of card advantage, so proper mulligans and understanding your game plan are very important.

Our pack of spells is thin at the moment. We have five counterspells and four removal spells. Path to Exile deals with Demigod of Revenge and Wurmcoil Engine, but please refrain from using it early — tempo loss would be crucial, and Path to Exile makes your Mana Leaks and Spell Pierces worse. Bant Charm is a perfect singleton — it deals with big problem creatures; it deals with Ratchet Bomb; it counters Cryptic Command. Still, it costs three mana, which is very unfortunate sometimes. Right now, I play the second one in the sideboard, but it is a subject for discussion.

As for Spell Pierce, well… My friends know that Spell Pierce is my little pet card, but I think it’s good enough, a perfect tempo stealer, and playing four after sideboard against any control deck and some combo decks would be acceptable.

Now it’s time to speak about other decks and our chances against them. We’ll find some cards extremely good or extremely poor in different matches, so the next part of article is named:

The Good, the Bad, and the Sideboard Plans

Faeries

+4 Great Sable Stag

+1 Bant Charm

+1 Spell Pierce

+1 Brave the Elements

-3 Wilt-Leaf Liege

-4 Rhox War Monk

If you read some articles about Faeries, especially those that explain why Faeries sucks, you should note two things:

1) You should deal with Bitterblossom

2) You should deal with artifact creatures to clear the way for your Elks.

Overall, our deck is very well positioned against the current boogeyman — that’s exactly what we’ve wanted. We have a couple of powerful threats and the right tools to protect and help them; we don’t lose to Thoughtseize ripping out our Sovereigns of Lost Alara; we have ways to deal with their threats — that’s exactly where we want to be, as far as I’m concerned…

Wilt-Leaf Liege is too slow for this match, so we have no room for him. Other slots for siding out are debatable — it would be either Rhox War Monk (who is good against Bitterblossom but worse than Great Sable Stag) or Gaddock Teeg (who becomes worse without Liege and with opponent’s Infest). Still, I prefer to let the Teeg stay in the deck, if only for mana-curve reasons. It’s also important to note that you have good removal for Wall of Tanglecord (but you should manage your Qasali Pridemages accurately because of Bitterblossom and Ratchet Bomb), and you have proper removal for Wurmcoil Engine. You know what mode of Bant Charm to use against him, don’t you?

Vivid Control

+1 Bant Charm

+1 Spell Pierce

+2 Dauntless Escort

-2 Birds of Paradise

-1 Wilt-Leaf Liege

-1 Path to Exile

While Cruel is suppressed by Faeries’ dominance, it’s still an important matchup and the trickiest one — just because the deck on the other side of the table can theoretically run every spell in Extended, but you can be sure that they all have the devastating Volcanic Fallout. Your goals are to keep applying pressure and to protect Teeg from removal. They usually have a very limited amount of threats, so our amount of removal will be enough to deal with them, but we still want some Paths and Charms to wipe Wurmcoil Engine away the moment we see it resolved, as otherwise it just rolls over us.

U/W Control

+2 Dauntless Escort

+1 Spell Pierce

-3 Rhox War Monk

This deck emerged after Worlds, and it would have the best position in metagame if not for the existence of Faeries. Still, one deck’s dominance can’t be infinite, and you should probably note Mono-Red growing in numbers to combat U/B tricksters, so U/W should easily become the best deck in the format.

Wargate

+1 Spell Pierce

+2 Dauntless Escort

-2 Path to Exile

-1 Brave the Elements

Wargate is a very interesting and powerful deck, but our pack of hate makes us extremely well positioned against all the common builds. Just install Teeg and Pridemage and win. Some modern variations pack Avenger of Zendikar, Sun Titan, or Primeval Titan (thanks to Gerry T and other experienced deckbuilders toying with the deck), so be ready to side Path to Exile back in. You still have ways to deal with these threats or to attack through them (second Brave the Elements would be necessary if they have Avenger of Zendikar), but keep in mind that Wargate has a large potential for improvement and could become a tougher matchup as the PTQ season unfolds.

R/G Scapeshift

+1 Bant Charm

+2 Dauntless Escort

+1 Spell Pierce

+1 Brave the Elements

-3 Gaddock Teeg

-2 Path to Exile

This match isn’t the one that we really want to play against, but countering Harrow in Extended is as sweet as it is in Standard. Volcanic Fallout is a problem, but hopefully you have enough ways to deal with it.

Jund

-3 Gaddock Teeg

-2 Qasali Pridemage

-3 Mana Leak

-2 Spell Pierce

+4 Kitchen Finks

+4 Great Sable Stag

+1 Bant Charm

+1 Brave the Elements

This match is all about effective trades and time management. You have a lot of opportunities to make your creatures better that the opponent’s. Rhox War Monk is the nuts; Wilt-Leaf Liege is crazy. I wrote a sideboarding example, but there are different Jund decks, and you should feel free to sideboard in a different fashion — you may use Linvala or not side out Spell Pierce if they are removal-heavy or play a completely different game if you see a Torrent of Souls version.

To be clear, the only real problems from the other side of the table are Demigod of Revenge and Putrid Leech. Turn 2 Leech is harsh, but there’s a tricky moment: if they start to pump Leech every turn, just survive for some turns, and they soon will find themselves at low life against very efficient creatures. As for Demigod, you have Path to Exile and Bant Charm to be sure that he’ll never return from the graveyard. And remember the proper sequence of actions when you counter Demigod.

RDW

-3 Gaddock Teeg

-2 Spell Pierce

-1 Mana Leak

+4 Kitchen Finks

+1 Brave the Elements

+1 Bant Charm

Red Deck is an ideal Faerie killer, so I expect it to grow in popularity, if only for a short time. We’re well prepared for this match because of huge amounts of lifelink (and Qasali Pridemage should deal with Leyline of Punishment). If they run both Figure of Destiny and Kargan Dragonlord, side in Linvala.

G/W Trap / Mythic

+2 Linvala, Keeper of Silence

+1 Bant Charm

+1 Kitchen Finks

+1 Brave the Elements

-2 Spell Pierce

-3 Gaddock Teeg vs. Mythic / -3 Qasali Pridemage vs. G/W Trap

Just pray to face another deck in the next round. You can try to race them, install Linvala, and draw all removal, but, to be honest, it’s nearly impossible to win. Nevertheless, as my article is called “Don’t panic,” I should note that I’ve beaten Mythic at the last MTGO PTQ. Yes, I drew nuts, but sometimes it’s just my turn to draw nuts.

Tempered Steel Aggro

-3 Gaddock Teeg

-2 Spell Pierce

+1 Bant Charm

+4 Kitchen Finks

Qasali Pridemage is the star. Kill everything you want to kill, then crush ‘em. If you survive during the first three turns, each subsequent turn will bring you closer to the win.

Necrotic Ooze Combo

+2 Linvala, Keeper of Silence

+4 Great Sable Stag

-2 Spell Pierce

-3 Gaddock Teeg

-1 Qasali Pridemage

You aren’t very vulnerable to their LD plan, and your removal is extremely good in this match, so just try to keep Necrotic Ooze out of contest.

You’re still going to win this PTQ

Just remember it, and don’t panic. Every deck has its strong and weak sides, and this one isn’t an exception. Maybe it will be completely useless in the metagame of your PTQ. Maybe you just won’t feel comfortable when playing it. But I hope the ideas behind my brew will still be helpful to you, and you’ll be able to build a well-positioned deck for the tournament you’re going to win. Don’t be afraid to tread the deep waters of experiment and return with the big fish!

Good-bye, feel free to ask anything you want. Remember, even if you find yourself in the midst of a PTQ where everyone else’s deck seems great, or your own deck seems as bad as the rest of the field’s, Don’t Panic! You’re still going to win!

Valeriy Shunkov

amartology

on Twitter
amarto in MTGO
valeriyDOTshunkovATgmailDOTcom