Things evolve.
Such a simple statement may seem trite or even meaningless given what we intuitively understand about the world and about Magic, but sometimes it bears
repeating. Any time we look at ourselves, or at Magic, over a period of time, we can’t help but observe evolution.
When I first submitted an article for the SCG Talent Search, I had just finished playing in 2010 Champs with U/W Control. The
article that I submitted
focused on two primary things: the current state of the Standard metagame (and how I reacted to it) and the process with which I selected the deck.
M11 was fresh in our minds, and Scars of Mirrodin had just been released. Everyone was playing some variant of ramp (Mono-Green Eldrazi or R/G Valakut
Ramp). R/U/G and B/U/G weren’t yet on the scene, and U/B Control was but a glimmer in momma Grave Titan’s eye. Trying to play anything but Primeval
Titan at Champs was like volunteering for the role of ‘Bad Guy #1′ in a Jason Statham movie. There was only one chance for survival.
I wrote about the addition of Everflowing Chalice and maindeck Volition Reins to a core U/W Control shell to gain advantage both against the big mana
decks (yes — I did steal an Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre one game) and against the control decks sporting planeswalkers. Since then, the format has
evolved considerably, and stealing a single large threat no longer is the amazing ‘Hail Mary’ that it was in October.
What I didn’t write at length about, though, is the sheer joy that comes with playing in a real, live tournament
.
Magic Online has contributed a lot to the evolution of Magic. Anyone with an Internet connection and $14 can log in and draft with some of the best
players in the world. No longer are close-knit teams of players isolated in urban hobby shops. It’s so incredibly easy to learn from our mistakes when
they’re all catalogued and can be watched again.
What Magic Online doesn’t really capture, though, is the human element of Magic tournaments. We read about this all the time from both Magic
pros and ‘up-and-comers,’ who detail their trips to steakhouses, Catch Phrase addictions, and xxxxx-drafts. I often read these reports with a very
subtle underlying emotion/thought process: being a pro would be so cool because then I could have all of these great stories to tell…
*** It’s Friday night before the SCG Open in Indianapolis — a large tournament in my own ‘backyard’ so to speak. I’m at a friend’s house (Ryan Mochal —
congrats, now you’re on StarCityGames.com) to pick up my deck for the Open, and they ask, “Hey Jon, what do you like better, Summoning Trap or Green
Zenith?”
I think for a moment. It’s been a long day at work — I’ve been working hard on a pathway analysis for an article that needed to be submitted to a
journal two weeks ago, and I don’t think I’ve seen another person smile for at least a day.
“Well,” I reply, “think of it this way. Summoning Trap is like implanting an electrified metal chastity belt onto yourself… and Green Zenith is like a
nice, comfortable pair of boxer briefs. If something goes really wrong at the tournament tomorrow, you might be thankful that you’re wearing that
Summoning Trap… but wouldn’t you rather have the support and comfort of that Zenith under you for the next 24 hours?”
I look around — they begin to laugh. Thank God. I really needed that to be funny.
***
Preparing for the SCG Open in Indy was a fairly involved affair because I don’t often play with ‘paper cards.’ I have to get my list together ahead of
time so I can drive around town and collect all of the cards that I need. Purely from a ‘Grok’ standpoint, I had fallen in love with Brian Kibler
Caw-Go list because of the way that it interacts with opposing planeswalkers while maintaining the ‘basic shell’ of a control deck. Using Jace, the
Mind Sculptor to Ancestral Recall after placing two Squadron Hawks on the top of the library is an incredibly powerful play, and the extensive suite of
countermagic means that it’s easier to prevent opposing control decks from resolving their limited number of threats. Playing Spreading Seas over Wall
of Omens certainly seemed like an optimal choice, as Squadron Hawk effectively functions as a blocker in place of the wall, and Spreading Seas is an
excellent answer to opposing manlands and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (9)
Lands (26)
Spells (21)
Sideboard
Riverside — Beyond the Eyelids
This tournament was the first big event at which Mirrodin Besieged would be legal, and I closely examined the spoiler for cards that I thought fit well
into the Caw-Go archetype. At first glance, it seemed like two cards, in particular, would both work well in my deck and fit my play style: White Sun’s
Zenith and Blue Sun’s Zenith.
I began testing with the Blue Zenith first and quickly realized that it isn’t well-positioned right now. At an initial investment of five mana, we get
a slightly worse Jace’s Ingenuity, which most control decks aren’t playing anyway (or, if they are, it is in very limited quantities). As we increase
our investment, the card gets better (obviously — it’s an “x” spell), but given the necessity of playing around Mana Leak and Spell Pierce in the
control mirror, where the card theoretically will be useful, it’s not that much better than Jace’s Ingenuity.
I sat back and began to think… maybe raw card advantage isn’t really what we want right now. So many of the cards in Standard have the “answer me or
else” tag under them that the Blue Zenith doesn’t cut it…
The White Sun’s Zenith, on the other hand, is a reactive threat of the sort that would make Mystical Teachings decks proud. Sitting back on several
counterspells in the traditional Caw-Go deck sometimes feels awkward because you don’t have any action at the end of the turn. In fact, the deck often
feels like a very strange U/W Fish deck where you’re attacking with 1/1s and manlands backed up with countermagic. The White Zenith provides an
additional threat that is resilient against targeted removal (here’s looking at you, Go for the Throat). It can provide blockers in a pinch against
aggro (though it’s a bit slow on that front), and it truly shines in control matchups where we can use the Zenith on our opponent’s end step to set up
our other ‘power spells.’
*** It’s the middle of the Open, just after round 5, and I’ve just hit 3-2 (i.e., out of Top 8 contention). I’m stuck in my head, trying to examine the
mistakes that I’ve made: deckbuilding (didn’t test sufficiently), play mistakes (wasn’t aggressive enough in Round 3… did I punt against Vampires?),
and so on… I walk by Sam Stoddard, who has been something of a ‘writing idol’ to me since he wrote about his Fearless Magical Inventory. He
congratulates me on making Top 4 of the Talent Search. Suddenly, things don’t seem so bad.
I walk over to the pairing sheet to see who I am playing for round 6… Spagnolo, Nick. Uh oh. I’m in a decent frame of mind, though, and we play
our match and chat — he’s a really nice guy. One of my favorite ‘feelings’ at a Magic tournament is meeting someone who is known to be a really
good player and finding out that he’s also a “nice guy.” That’s the kind of thing that sticks with me.
***
After poring over the Mirrodin Besieged spoiler again and again, I didn’t see any other cards that begged to be added to Caw-Go, and all of the other
choices in the original list seemed incredibly solid, so I ended up registering the following deck:
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (26)
Spells (23)
The 62nd-place finish was disappointing, but I played fairly loosely throughout the day, and so there isn’t much more to say about that. The White
Sun’s Zenith proved to be as exciting as I expected in the control matchups, but it was decidedly underwhelming in the other matchups (especially
Valakut), and it probably isn’t a card that needs to be in the maindeck of control lists right now. Lightmine Field was supposed to address the new
Kuldotha Red deck but was a poorly chosen card and should have been Ratchet Bomb. For those of you who are interested, here’s a quick recap of the
matchups:
Round 1: U/R Force (Win, 2-1)
Round 2: U/W Caw-Go — White Sun’s Zenith over Squadron Hawks (Win, 2-1)
Round 3: G/W Fauna Shaman — Maindeck Thrun (Lose, 1-2)
Round 4: Eldrazi Green (Win, 2-0)
Round 5: B/R Vampires (Lose, 0-2) — Mulligan to five twice; I don’t think it’s a bad matchup.
Round 6: U/B Control (Draw, 1-1-1)
Round 7: Kuldotha Red (Win, 2-0) — Yes, in the draw bracket.
Round 8: Valakut (Lose, 1-2) — Misplay in game 3
Round 9: U/W Control (Win, 2-0)
Round 10: U/W Control (Win, 2-1)
*** We’re driving home after the Open, and the dark sky is a comfortable blanket. My passengers fall asleep in the back seat (Chris Hurley is too tired
to sleep after his Top 8 performance with U/B Control). I think back to one of my favorite PTQ travel stories.
It’s 2005, and we’re driving home from a PTQ in a van that we borrowed from a friend. Two of us made the Top 8; neither won, so we’re both tired and
disconsolate. There is a bed in the back of the van, and I crawl back and fall asleep. The other three passengers quickly follow suit, although the
drive home is only supposed to take 90 minutes.
I wake up two hours later and look around — everyone else is still asleep. I look out the window and recognize where we are… less than halfway home.
Also… we are only traveling at 10 miles per hour. Puzzled, I ask the driver why he is driving so slowly, and he calmly holds up a bag of pills. At
first, I hit the ‘fight’ portion of my fight or flight response, thinking he had been driving on LSD (I have little tolerance for impaired driving).
But then I remember that he has ADD and had brought his medicine with him.
Apparently, once we all fell asleep, he got bored and took a few of the pills that he had brought in his backpack to help him concentrate at the
tournament. Somehow, this made him especially paranoid, so he then began driving along the highway at 10 miles per hour for two hours, thinking he was
being followed. He must have channeled the heart of the cards because he wasn’t pulled over, and he didn’t get into an accident.
How lucky.
***
As competitive Magic players, we often say some derivative of “Failure to understand role = game loss.” Such was the case with Caw-Go. After having
played a fairly traditional U/W Control deck at Champs (walls, removal, and countermagic), I didn’t fully understand the mechanics of Caw-Go and
attempted to approach it as if it were Draw-Go. While it certainly has many of the same mechanics, especially the heightened quantity of countermagic,
it’s quite capable of being aggressive, and sometimes control matchups are decided by who can land their Gideon Jura and attack three times.
This is a format that significantly has evolved, and nothing makes that clearer than the results from Pro Tour Paris. Not only did U/W “CawBlade” (not
my name, don’t shoot the messenger) win the Pro Tour, it had a highly disproportionate number of players who won at least six Constructed matches —
23.3% of all decks with at least 18 Constructed points at the Pro Tour were variations of the Caw-Go archetype. Further, the proportion of Caw-Go decks
to non-Caw-Go decks is much larger for the top 25 Constructed decks, at an even 40%. It approaches Standard from a very different
direction than my attempt at control for the Open. It pushes further away from traditional ‘Draw-Go’ and toward U/W Fish: with Sword of Feast and
Famine, every Squadron Hawk and Stoneforge Mystic is a meaningful threat, proportionally reducing the power of our opponents’ removal. Control decks
now need to find a way to answer powerful equipment in the mirror — it may be the case that obtaining ‘Sword’ advantage is equally as important as
generating ‘Jace’ advantage.
I have evolved. I moved to Indiana ten years ago — some of the 12-year-olds that I patiently (and not so patiently) humored over the years have
graduated from college and now drive me to tournaments.
I enter every tournament with the intention of winning — but when I don’t, I can enjoy the company of friends and acquaintances in the Magic community.
We are a unique community: formed on the basis of competition but unified by our love of the game.
We all have stories to tell — some of us can spin a tale in which the combined total of pro points among the participants approaches four digits.
Others of us haven’t played much beyond FNM. And, well… that’s fine.
Just continue to evolve.