I’m usually a”glass half-full” kinda guy. I try and be chipper and positive. But this summer has sucked for me on the Magic front, for several reasons. So if you stick with me through my unusual grousing, I promise things will end on a promising note.
First off, money is extremely tight right now, after buying a house too late in the year to have interest payments offset the taxes on the bonds we had to cash out for our down payment. And we also had to pretty much drain our savings. Add to that the increased cost of sending my 3 1/2 year old to pre-school (while my two-year-old is still at the sitter’s), and times are rough. I’ve been desperately trying to nail down a part-time job to add to our income, and the ideal job is just not panning out. I may end up working evenings and weekends at a Barnes & Noble for peanuts, sadly. Let’s just say the President’s claims that the economy is on the upswing rings kinda hollow ’round these parts.
At any rate, tight finances has meant that I’ve had to sell off a significant portion of my cards for pay for babysitter fees, diapers, car repairs and such. The first wave was pretty easy, dipping into my older rare stuff that I hardly ever play with anymore. The second and third waves cut deeper, selling off Type 2 cards that I play with infrequently. I used to be able to put together three or four Tier 1 and 2 decks for Type 2 or block, one of which I’d play with and the others I’d typically lend out to the slacker Magic players at the shop for whatever tournament was coming up, or for playtesting. I’m now in the position where I have to select only one or two decks to focus my collecting on, and can now only lend cards, not entire decks.
Secondly, there’s this game called Marvel Vs. that unfortunately is being pushed by some really savvy people and attracting many locals in droves. Several Magic regulars have given up Magic altogether for Vs., and several other Magic players have set Magic on the back burner indefinitely to focus on Vs. due to being burned out on Magic or just being energized by learning a new game.
In an area where we’ve been lucky to muster twelve players for local Magic tournaments, this has been a lethal cocktail to my Magic community. As someone who’s loves the social element of gaming more than anything else, having to finally contemplate going online in order to get my game on is rather depressing. While I don’t begrudge Upper Deck for unleashing a fine gaming product, I do secretly hope they stumble badly sometime soon so I can get my players back. I miss you guys!
At any rate, into this gloomy summer a glimmer of hope appeared: the StarCityGames.com Power 9 Type 1 tournament. When it was first announced, I really didn’t pay it much attention. I mean, the last few Type 1 tournaments I played in I hadn’t been very impressed with neither the format nor my performance. It seemed that the great divide between Powered players and non-Powered players was huge and made the game elitist by necessity. If you didn’t have the resources to get Powered up, why bother playing? But later on I learned a few things that made me reconsider going to the tournament.
First was the announcement of this being a Proxy 5 tournament. The Proxy tournaments seem to have been a great idea to draw people into the format, opening it up for non-Powered players to give it a shot. And I’d heard of a few decks that were feasible to build given five proxies. Second was the prize support, a full set of the Power 9 to be drafted by the Top 8 players – Holy Cow! Your prize value could range from several hundred dollars to over a grand. Since the tournament was being held right here in my hometown, it seemed foolish not to at least strongly consider going. But what the heck should I play?
Ben Bleiweiss had mentioned a Type 1 combo that uses Auriok Salvagers to recur Black Lotus or Lion’s Eye Diamond for infinite mana. Trinket Mage can tutor for the Lotus or your kill card, Pyrite Spellbomb. I kinda liked the idea and quickly cooked up this decklist:
Trinket Mage
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Sunbeam Spellbomb
4 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Skullclamp
1 Viridian Longbow
4 Fireslinger
4 Rootwater Thief
4 Trinket Mage
4 Auriok Salvagers
2 Disenchant
4 Force of Will
3 Artificer’s Intuition
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Sol Ring
4 Glimmervoid
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Great Furnace
4 Ancient Den
2 City of Brass
I’ve got two buddies who I swap Magic emails with at work who are also familiar with Type 1: Jay Delazier, who’s not a big T1 playa but is familiar enough with the format to be able to talk intelligently about it, and Shane Stoots, ex-Paragon and current member of Team Short Bus, one of the premier Type 1 teams around and who also happen to mostly live in the same area as I do. Anyway, I shoot the deck idea to the guys to see what they think.
Sayeth Mr. Stoots: “One big downside is that almost your entire mana base is very vulnerable to Null Rod (a card that will be in heavy abundance). While you do have answers for it, I wouldn’t feel as secure with it.” Not just the mana base, but also the Spellbombs (which is the kill method) and the equipment. I thought I was being clever by not using dual lands, since the 7/10 decks abusing Sundering Titans seemed to be so strong right now, but all I did was make my entire mana base vulnerable to Null Rod, one of the most common maindeck disruption cards for aggro decks. D’oh!
I then thought about one of my all-time favorite cards and the fact that Type 1 is the only Constructed format where it’s legal anymore – Survival of the Fittest. I shot out this email to Shane and Jay:
“Has there been any recent work on a non-Mask version of Full English Breakfast? With Null Rod so prevalent (and with artifact kill getting more play due to 7/10’s powerful showing), I can’t help but feel Masks are a liability and going with four Shapeshifters and maybe focus on the Phage combo kill is a better idea? Along those lines, I thought how nice it would be to EOT Survival, dump a Dreadnaoght to fetch an Eternal Witness, and then dump the Witness to get the Shapeshifter. Your turn, drop the Shapeshifter, who’s a Witness – get back the Witness and now the Shapeshifter is a Dreadnought.“
Shane hadn’t heard of any new twist on a Shapeshifter deck, with Vengeur Masque still being the current best Survival deck and not being all that great in the current metagame. But thinking about Shapeshifter called to mind an interesting deck I’d kicked around briefly for the last Extended season, but hadn’t gotten the chance to playtest much. It looked something like this:
4 Tortured Existence
2 Intuition
4 Hapless Researcher
4 Merfolk Looter
4 Vodalian Merchant
4 Volrath’s Shapeshifter
4 Psychatog
1 Wonder
4 Morphling
4 Phage the Untouchable
1 Tidal Kraken
4 Underground River
2 Darkwater Catacombs
2 City of Brass
5 Swamp
11 Island
The idea was to dump Phage into the graveyard and use English Breakfast tricks with Tortured Existence or Psychatog to make Phage unblockable and send him in for the win. But after thinking about what it would take to update this to Type 1 and add Survival of the Fittest to the mix, it seemed too daunting a task for the limited time I had before the tournament. Shane and Jay really didn’t have any ideas either.
Then Jay sent me another email:”Hey Bennie, how about playing U/G madness? Apparently, JP came up with a beating of a version. It only requires five pieces of power and JP is a respected voice in the Type 1 community. Just a thought. I’m trying to find you a deck that will be competitive through 8 rounds of Swiss, yet still be fun to play.“
Shane chimed in:”With the [attendance] numbers they are talking about, and against a high level of competition, you want a deck that you will comfy w/, familiar with, and highly competitive with. I really think U/G madness is a good idea, particularly since it’s only a year removed from T2 and it may be something you are more intimately acquainted with. Plus you get to swing w/ large green wurms.“
I replied:”Okay, as much as I hate to play damn U/G Madness again (since we were saturated with it for nearly two years), it sounds like it might be a good idea. What would you say are its strengths for the metagame?“
Shane:”In my opinion it gives a good clock, has FoW, Null Rod, Wasteland.“
Me:”Cool, that helps me see what’s the most important things to focus on.”
I found the SC article where JP was talking about U/G Madness. I have to say it made me feel a little more confident in the deck. The one quote that made me laugh:”You know what kind of decks Arrogant Wurm and Circular Logic are good against? Decks with life totals and spells.” It was hard not to disagree with that assessment. He gave a really sparse tournament report, and I gleaned a few clues about the sideboard:
- Oxidize comes in against Slaver
- Sword of Fire and Ice comes in against the mirror (and Jay and Shane mentioned it was good against U/R Fish)
- He kept mentioning Wonder being so good against Tog, and Mishra’s Workshop fatties, so I suppose the extra Wonder in the board comes in against those decks.
He never once mentioned Stupefying Touch in the tournament report, though it was listed in the sideboard. I presume that’s pretty good against U/R Fish and Welder decks. It’s also not bad in the mirror, against Tog… hell, it sounds like it’s a good card against anyone with creatures with activated abilities!
There’s only one difference in JP’s decklist from the article and the deck listed for Star City’s Type 1 decks to beat, and that was three Blue Elemental Blasts in the more recent version, versus JP’s Back to Basics. I kinda like the Blue Blasts actually, gives you some help against the random goblin deck, and it’s another weapon against the all-worrisome Welder.
Lastly, I had an urge to swap the Aquamoebas for Merfolk Looters, but then I realized that the ‘Moebas might be needed more to keep the pressure on.
I then scared up some forum threads on The Mana Drain and Star City and gleaned some more wisdom:
1. Brainstorm + Fetchlands: Dig deep for Force of Will, plus gives you some quick graveyard fuel for Logics. I had originally wondered if I should run Careful Study instead, but there aren’t enough good pitch targets in the deck to warrant it.
2. Null Rod is evidently a huge pain in the ass for many decks, so you run ’em even if you’re also running Lotus and Moxen. The nice thing about Madness is if you draw the jewelry after a Null Rod is out, they can still be useful as pitch fodder.
3. The cards you typically sideboard out are going to be some combination of Rootwallas, Wonders, and Null Rods. You will typically swap Null Rods for Swords of Fire and Ice one for one against decks that don’t really care much about Null Rod – this was directly mentioned. I’m guessing the Wonders come out against decks that don’t really have a way to clog up your ground assault, and I guess the Rootwallas come out to make room for whatever other cards you want to bring in.
4. Once you get three or four mana sources out there, the rest is Mongrel/Moeba food.
Ultimately, it sounds like JP likes this deck just for the reasons Shane and Jay gave me: it’s got a strong attack, counterspells, card drawing, and Null Rod. Now I just have to hope my mad play skillz can make up for the fact that I can count on one hand the number of Type 1 matches I’ve played in the past five years!
So the Friday before the tournament, I had Scott Britschock’s update to JP’s deck built card for card:
4 Aquamoeba
1 Gush
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
3 Null Rod
4 Arrogant Wurm
2 Wonder
2 Deep Analysis
4 Circular Logic
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Time Walk
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Strip Mine
3 Island
3 Forest
4 Wasteland
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
Sideboard:
4 Stupefying Touch
4 Oxidize
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Wonder
Team Short Bus and affiliates were gathering at Josh Reynold’s house for some last minute playtesting, and since I still needed to borrow some cards from the guys and do some last minute brain-picking, I swung by for a few hours bearing Artifact Mutations and a six-pack of Killian’s Irish Red. After talking and some playtesting, I ended up running this version for the SCGP9:
4 Aquamoeba
1 Intuition
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
3 Null Rod
4 Arrogant Wurm
2 Wonder
2 Deep Analysis
4 Circular Logic
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Time Walk
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Strip Mine
3 Island
3 Forest
4 Wasteland
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
Sideboard:
3 Naturalize
2 Oxidize
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Psionic Blast
2 Echoing Truth
Some notes on the changes:
Intuition
After playtesting, I noted that so many games I had originally came out strong in would eventually slip away to a loss because my opponent gummed up the ground with larger creatures. I kept praying to top-deck Wonder for the win, and too few times was Wonder popping up. After initially thinking I’d just move the third Wonder from the sideboard to the main, Ian Bennett suggested Intuition instead, which was even better than Wonder. I swapped the Gush out for the Intuition.
Naturalize
While JP’s deck was honed to a razor’s edge for his anticipated metagame, I worried about lack of enchantment removal in a metagame as large as the SCGP9 was going to be. I didn’t want to run into some random enchantment that just crushed me and sent me crashing to the loser’s bracket if I wasn’t there already. Echoing Truth was also added to the sideboard for similar reasons, and also being a good way to get rid of an early Darksteel Colossus.
Psionic Blast
While I was lamenting not splashing Red to run Fire / Ice in order to kill Goblin Welders, someone suggested Psionic Blasts. I could only scrounge up two, but I thought they’d be pretty helpful.
With those changes, my deck was finalized. Asking the Short Bus guys what they anticipated the metagame looking like, they predicted U/r Fish, Tog, 4-Color Control, and a small percentage of Workshop decks. Since I was worried about my maindeck’s inability to handle Goblin Welders outside of counterspells (as they say,”sketchy at best”), the assertion that there would likely be few Welders running around was reassuring.
(cue the creepy foreshadowing music of doooooom…)
Okay, since this is getting long and I didn’t finish anywhere near the Top 8, let me go ahead and knock out the tournament report part of this.
Round 1 vs. Workshop Deck #1: Infinite Mindslaver
In the first game, my opponent gets an early Welder on the board, and I don’t have a counterspell. Cursing my luck at facing a Welder in the first matchup, I develop a plan of attack: go as aggressive as possible and counterspell his card drawing. He gets a Mind’s Eye in play that I can’t do anything about, since he can just Weld it back out, but it looks like my plan’s gonna work with his demise the very next turn until he drops a Platinum Angel on my head. I do a quick mental scan of my maindeck list, and note that the only way I have to deal with Platinum Angel is to hope he attacks with it so I can ambush by pitching Wonder. Or try and deck him with Ancestral Recall and Deep Analysis. Both seemed highly unlikely and since it was game 1, I went ahead and concede.
Game 2 he gets a land-light draw, I Waste/Strip him and kill his Welder, and it’s over pretty quickly. Game 3 I manage to counter or kill his first two Welders and got my aggro game going, he’s got nothing in hand but rips a Yawgmoth’s Will off the top, casts a Welder and Time Walk from his yard and with both Mindslaver and Pentavus in the graveyard, my doom is quickly sealed. Both games I lose I’m like this close to winning before going down to a fortuitous top deck, so I still feel pretty good about my chances.
Round 2 vs. Workshop Deck #2: Smokestack
My opponent gets a turn 1 Welder in play for which I of course have no Force of Will. Inside I rage against Shane Stoots and his metagame prediction! He follows up with a Trinisphere, I Wasteland one of his lands and he stalls while I get three lands down and start casting creatures. I adopt my plan from the last match – beatdown and counter my opponent’s card drawing once he actually gets enough mana in play. What do you know… I win!
I feel much more confident after boarding, so I think things are looking up. Unfortunately, I have to mulligan and end up having to keep a hand that’s fairly mediocre, not much more than a slow Type 2-style Madness draw and draw zero counterspells. He gets out an early Welder I can’t find any way to handle and I get hammered. The last game I choose to keep a questionable hand – a Black Lotus, an Mox Emerald, two Brainstorms, an Aquamoeba, a Deep Analysis, and an Intuition. I mean, it’s one land away from being nuts, and I’m on the play. I decide to gamble with it, pop the Lotus for Blue and Brainstorm, finding zero land. I think and think – should I Brainstorm again to dig one card deeper for the land that’s got to be there or go ahead and play the Aquamoeba? If I do that I’m at least two draws away from doing anything… so I end up Brainstorming again and of course not finding a land.
So of course my opponent gets a fast Welder and Smokestack out and I scoop shortly thereafter. In retrospect, the correct play was probably pop the Lotus and cast Intuition for three Polluted Deltas, which would give me access to two permanent sources of mana, letting me cast the ‘Moeba and then pitch and flashback the Analysis next turn. I can certainly chalk that up to being very inexperienced with Type 1 U/G Madness! Would I have won if I’d done that? I don’t know, my opponent had a pretty strong opener, but I certainly would have had a fighting chance.
0-2 isn’t the best start, and I’m pretty much out of the running for a Top 8 berth. Still, I decided to keep on with the tournament, since who knows when I’ll get to play Type 1 again, and when I do, it may be helpful to have some more experience with this deck.
Round 3 vs. Burn
I joke with my opponent that if he drops a turn 1 Goblin Welder, I might just start screaming. He laughs but doesn’t comment one way or the other. I get a slow start, he hits me with a Strip Mine, then drops a Null Rod. I then Strip his Mountain, he has a Mountain and a Great Furnace. An artifact land and Null Rod?”You know that Null Rod stops you from tapping artifact lands for mana, right?””Yeah… oh, crap. What did I just do?” He proceeds to not draw any more lands for a few turns while I churn out my beatdown. He burns the creatures away the best he can on one and two mana, but I finally do him in. The next game he has to mulligan, I Logic his attempt to Pyrokinesis my Mongrel, getting a two-for-one and he pretty much has nothing else to stop me. He ended up dropping from the tournament and winning a side Type 1 event and getting a box of boosters with this same deck. Makes me wish I’d done the same in retrospect…
Round 4 vs. U/r Ophidian
My opponent opens with the sickest series of turns. First, he drops a land and a Lotus, casts Ancestral Recall and then drops an Ophidian. I’m like,”Tropical Island, go?” His next turn he attacks, draws a card, and passes the turn. I try and drop a Wild Mongrel, he Forces it. His turn, he attacks, draws a card, and drops another Ophidian. I try and drop another Mongrel, he Forces, I Force back, he Misdirects my Force. His turn, he attacks and draws two more cards, drops some mana accelerants and a Morphling. My turn, I cast Aquamoeba, and he Forces it. I let him smack me again for five with Superman, drawing two more cards, and I draw something lame off the top and scoop. The next two games go pretty similarly, with us fighting between aggression and counterspells in the early game, then I slip a Sword of Fire and Ice onto the board and eventually a creature comes down, picks up the Sword and wrecks him. Hey look – I’ve crawled back up to .500!
Round 5 vs. Workshop Deck #3: 7/10 Split piloted by none-other-than Shane Stoots!
When Shane sits down from me I cry”Revenge!” and he laughs. I’d already groused to him between rounds about losing my first two matches to Workshop decks. I can’t remember too many details from this match, since I’d already decided that if I somehow managed to win I’d concede the game to him anyway, since I figured he’d probably have a better shot of doing well later on, had better tie-breakers, and might be able to run some interference for other Short Bus teammates still in contention. At any rate, he wins the first game, and I win the next two, but concede the last in response to him scooping. Maybe Shane can help remember how our match went in the forums?
Some final thoughts:
Overall, I had a good time with this deck. It felt strong and competitive even in the games I lost. I honestly think it’s a solid budget deck that can perform well in the right metagame. That said, I think Welders are a huge problem and I would not play this deck again unless I figured out a way to handle them. The best thought I can cook up is to add a Mox Ruby and Taigas to the main and run three Fire / Ice, with a fourth in the board. While that makes you a bit more vulnerable to both Wasteland and Sundering Titan, if you can kill the Welder it goes a long way towards stalling their gameplan.
And lastly, while I had a good time playing the deck, I couldn’t help but dislike the randomness that overly broken cards bring to the format. For instance, the game where the guy top-decked the Yawgmoth’s Will, he was so going to lose the very next turn, and there was pretty much nothing he could do about it except mise the Will. There were several times when I noticed that happening all around, some restricted card yoinked off the top completely turns the game around. I realize that’s a hallmark of the format, and it’s likely why a lot of people enjoy Type 1; but I guess I’ve been playing Type 2 and Block too long, that sort of randomness bugged me. But not enough to stop me from giving Type 1 another whirl at some point.
So, now that I got that out of my system, it’s onto Mirrodin Block Constructed!