Hey folks!
I gave in a bit, but didn’t fight them off completely, to the forum trolls who said my article titles have been gibberish and apparently just sound dumb. Thus my article title this week is more succinct. Please let me know if this works better or if the quirky/punny article titles worked better for you guys!
Alright, back to your regularly scheduled programming. I played in the StarCityGames.com Open: Richmond two weekends ago (I wasn’t able to make it to Cincinnati this past weekend), playing “Do Nothing” Control in Standard to a stellar 1-2 finish then Stoneblade in Legacy to a top 16 finish, much better than my skill level deserved! We’ll go into that later in this article though, as I’m still figuring out this “Legacy” thing everyone’s so crazy about.
First thing’s first: Standard. I played a version of Five-Color Control in Standard that played the full four Faithless Lootings but only two Unburial Rites…
*Record screeching to a halt*
Wait whaaaa?
Yeah, yeah, I definitely misbuilt my deck. If you don’t get it yet, don’t worry, you will soon enough as I take you down the misguided path I went down when “building” my deck and convincing myself to play it.
In all reality, I wanted to play U/W Humans. Thalia is insane, and I just wanted to be on the “question” side of the “Question vs. Answer” equation of the new format. Unfortunately, my source of cardboard for the cards I don’t own (which, if we’re keeping track, is a lot), Matt Eitel, wasn’t sure if he was playing Humans or any of 15 other decks. So when I finally got to where I realized I needed to make a decision with what I had, unfortunately “what I had” wasn’t a whole lot.
I could just run back U/B Control with Tragic Slips similar to the list I posted last week, but I wanted to be a bit more proactive. I read as many articles as I could looking for as many ideas. I’d seen Todd Anderson article talking about a Five-Color Faithless Looting Turbo Flare list and thought it was interesting. I then saw a similar list in GerryT’s article, with four Desperate Ravings and only one Faithless Looting. (Looking back, I fully understand his list and numbers now.) I then saw Ali’s article and decided to find some sort of unholy combination of the various lists. I wanted to be running the full four Faithless Lootings, as that card seems insane in the deck.
I’d post the list, but honestly there’s no reason. I literally was scrambling last minute for cards at the site and had to cobble together what I could before the event started. I even avoided a requested deck tech after my 1-2 drop since I knew my list was very untuned and raw. The concepts were sound; the numbers were not.
So after a punt in round one, a close match in round two, and a horrible matchup in round three, my Standard tournament ended, and I ran Kenny Mayer’s cube for the rest of the afternoon and into the night. While I played Legacy the next day, I’ll get back to that later in the article.
I continued being stubborn and trying to “Do Nothing” with the deck. I realized that there were so many times I’d have the board state such that if I could even reanimate an Elesh Norn that was deposited in the graveyard already, I’d have won the game on the spot. I realized that, if you’re playing more than 1-2 Faithless Lootings, you need to be focused on the Unburial Rites plan. You need to make sure your Lootings aren’t just doing a horrible Preordain impersonation. Remember, they are, in fact, card disadvantage, and, if you’re not using the cards you discard after you discard them, you shouldn’t be running the card to begin with.
I knew this, but I didn’t realize how much I really needed another Unburial Rites. There were other issues, but this was the main issue. If your deck is meant to reanimate game winning creatures, the first thing you need to make sure of is that your main plan is actually capable of winning the game two times out of three every round. Percentage-wise, I just didn’t have the amount of Rites that I needed.
Long story short: I played FNM this past Friday night with another version of DNC (“Do Nothing Control,” obviously). I went an outstanding 3-2, losing to both Delver decks I played against. Variance definitely played a part, as I felt like I could win the round both times, but I also just felt behind. Not just in these matches, but in almost all of them. Elesh Norn is still amazing, and you generally win the game when she (it?) hits the board; it’s just getting her/it on the board that’s the issue with this deck. There are better and more consistent ways of doing this while being more proactive.
As it stands, I have no intention of ever playing this deck again until such a day comes that the deck is undoubtedly the only playable tier one deck and is way better tuned than what I showed up with. If you’re looking to cheat an Elesh Norn into play, I would actually suggest looking back into G/W Wolf Run, as you can both just cast one on turn five or by podding into one. Perhaps even a reworked Bant Pod list, which I’ll be looking into.
As it stands, I’m actually looking into Zombies for this week in Charlotte, NC. I see that Josh Cho is also switching over from B/R to B/U, which I fully endorse. You get to run some really sweet cards and interactions.
Gravecrawler and Mortarpod allows for some great interactions, as you can essentially pay three mana to ping anything, allowing you some actual late-game reach in conjunction with Diregraf Captain. Sure, it’s not Bloodghast, Viscera Seer, and Kalastria Highborn, but I honestly feel that Gravecrawler and Diregraf Ghoul are better than Pulse Tracker and Vampire Lacerator and you have a much better top-end with Liliana and Cemetery Reaper (which can remove creatures with undying from the graveyard before they return, giving you action against the Strangleroot Geists everyone’s running).
I’ve seen some lists, including some of the ones being run at the StarCityGames.com Standard Open: Cincinnati, which are more grindy lists. It seems that you either want to be running something like Smallpox or you want to be running Diregraf Ghoul. One card aims to grind the opponent down while the other sacrifices utility and usefulness in the late game for speed. While I fully endorse Liliana of the Veil in the list, I can’t really do the same with Smallpox, no matter how well it interacts with Gravecrawler.
I was playing against Akira at Curio Cavern in Alexandria, VA with U/B Zombies and him running Delver Blade. If I hit a one-drop, I had no issues whatsoever winning the game. When I didn’t, he had the tools to keep me on the back foot long enough to seal the game.
It also helps that Geralf’s Messenger is actually ridiculous.
That leads me to believe the more aggressive shell is correct. I like Josh Cho’s ideas in his article, basically making the deck a bit more tempo-oriented with Vapor Snags. I also like the thought of adding swords, as you will always have the ability to suit up a creature with the awesome recursion this deck has.
What would this deck look like?
Creatures (23)
- 2 Cemetery Reaper
- 3 Phantasmal Image
- 4 Diregraf Ghoul
- 4 Gravecrawler
- 4 Geralf's Messenger
- 3 Diregraf Captain
- 3 Highborn Ghoul
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (23)
Spells (11)
In this list we’re looking to apply enough early pressure that our late game of either Sword of War and Peace or recurring Gravecrawler + Mortarpod (hopefully with a Diregraf Captain in play) will seal the deal. The full eight one-drops allows us to start off aggressively in almost every game, and Phantasmal Image provides us with either a two-drop Zombie to follow up our one-drop or a copy of a lord effect later in the game. Never mind the interaction with Geralf’s Messenger, which is obviously amazing.
Since Mono Green has become a “real deck,” we also pack Sword of Feast and Famine in the board as a way of getting past their Sword of Feast and Famines. They have Viridian Corruptors; we have Vapor Snags and Disperses. While theirs will destroy ours permanently, we also gain a ton of tempo using our bounce spells. Blue is the one color that the swords don’t protect against (no one plays Sword of Body and Mind!), and Vapor Snag and Disperse are great ways to catch our opponents off guard.
Similarly, catching some of the coverage of Pro Tour: Dark Ascension, the ChannelFireball crew decided to run Wolf Run Ramp, which means that the deck will likely show up in greater numbers in Charlotte. Sword of Feast and Famine may end up being a decent call for main deck consideration, though I’m not ready to count out the huge amount of U/W decks running around.
This is the deck I’m looking to work on and tune for Charlotte this coming weekend. As for Legacy?
Well, let’s just say that if you saw me on camera, you now realize that I’m not lying when I say that I am incredibly new to the format. Some notable quotes from Twitter include someone saying I’m the worse Stoneblade player ever and that I singlehandedly showed how good Stoneblade is because it carried my poor arse to a win on camera.
I actually don’t disagree, at least not completely. Stoneblade is in fact a powerful deck, and I do make a ton of mistakes. I take lines of play that are misguided because of a lack of knowledge on what’s going on in any given match.
Take my feature match, for example. Who, in their right minds, would play a Brainstorm (with no plan other than hoping it resolves) into a resolved CounterTop lock? (This guy, obviously…) While looking back the interaction is obvious, I was thinking of various other lines, and I got lost in the thought of “maybe there isn’t a one-drop in his top three cards, this resolves, and I start working my way out of this jam.” Of course he flips top, and I look like a total idiot on camera.
(I got incredibly, incredibly lucky and ripped a Stoneforge Mystic the next turn, making my play look brilliant to my opponent until he learned I ripped the Mystic. For some reason, these kinds of things anger the Legacy crowd to no end. I agree with you guys; I should have lost based on the way I played. That’s variance for you, though.)
Also, some questioned my lines of play at the end of the game in regards to seemingly “slow rolling” Elspeth, Knight-Errant. Once again, this is more of a matter of me not knowing card interactions. For some reason, I assumed Engineered Explosives worked the same way that Pernicious Deed did. I took about 5-6 years off of playing Magic from about Scourge to Lorwyn Block and haven’t gotten much of a chance to play with the cards in that timeframe. It is still coming back to bite me, it seems.
As such, I didn’t want to throw my Umezawa’s Jitte into the oncoming “slaughter,” and I didn’t want to play Elspeth, jump Batterskull “for the win,” only to have the token blown up by “Engineered Deed” and my plan blown to smithereens (though, in all fairness, I’d still have an Elspeth on board, so the play was probably still wrong). Kenny Mayer talked to me afterwards, and I now see how people could have thought I was the worst player ever.
I’m working on it folks.
As for the deck, I ran the same 75 I ran in Washington DC when I top 32’d. I got 14th with the deck, missing out on top eight after losing to Ben Isgur in a mirror match in which I had mana issues and kept a pretty terrible hand in game one. I’d like to think my play got better as the day went on though.
As for the deck itself, Stoneblade is obviously really good. Some people doubt Geist of Saint Traft, saying it only plays offense in the deck, which is true. However, it fills a role no other card can fill. The “Oh No” card. Bar none, there is no other card in that deck that garnered as many “Oh no’s” and “That card is really good” after I cast it than Geist of Saint Traft. People knew that “it” was about to hit the fan.
I would definitely much rather have Vendilion Clique against a combo deck like Storm, but against almost anything else, you can play the long game and just drop a Geist of Saint Traft. As someone on Twitter said, Geist is a trump, and trumps win games. Legacy, as it seems to me, doesn’t seem well equipped or ready to deal with a Geist of Saint Traft right now, other than the newfound and increasing popularity of the card, which obviously removes its namesake quite well.
So, for Charlotte, I’m looking at Zombies to see if the deck can be tuned for both the StarCityGames.com Standard Open and also Grand Prix: Baltimore, as I plan on running the deck at both if I find myself happy with it. I may skip Legacy this go around, as my family is in Charlotte, and I’ll probably just do the first Draft Open. If I see you there, please come up and say hi, tell me you love my articles, tell me you hate my articles, tell me how bad of a Legacy player I am, etc… I’d love to hear from you guys! (Just keep it civil, please!)
Thanks for reading. Hopefully this Zombies deck comes together. I see a lot of promise in the deck!
Until next week
Shoctologist on MTGO
@mikemartinlfs on Twitter