My nameless mailing list (a distinct entity from my PTQ team at this point in the chronology, if not today) had a great run, given a relatively short lifespan. Our list included myself, Osyp Lebedowicz, Josh Ravitz, and the reclusive Andrew Cuneo and Chris Pikula. Real life concerns kept Chris from being able to follow up his GP Philadelphia windmill slam in Honolulu, and though Andrew’s contributions to our Honolulu deck were key, it was just Osyp and Josh from our list who actually played in Hawaii… and Osyp made Top 8.
Despite a great finish in Honolulu, Osyp was noncommittal about the Team Pro Tour and Grand Prix feeders, so branching out inevitably occurred. Josh took BillyP’s spot on the team of US Nationals phenom Alex Lieberman and reigning champ Antonino De Rosa, so naturally they were added to the mailing list. I’m not sure if Ant was the first one to latch onto Magnivore, but I think he was; as such, I started testing Nikolas Nygaard’s list (10th at the Pro Tour) on Magic Online. I thought Nygaard’s list was the right one to test (rather than the more conventional Volcanic Hammer decks) because we were in the initial stages planning to give Steve Sadin Gruul Deck Wins. Steve excels at tactical play, and at that point, Gruul Deck had the best MTGO win percentage (both in Tournament Practice Room and 8-Mans) of any deck we were considering.
Initial results with Nygaard.dec were awesome. I got a ton of flawless victories (opponents losing with no permanents in play). The best was my last match on a Monday night (we do most of our IRL testing on Tuesdays). Per usual, I had acquired a lot of watchers, and it seemed like by the end of the night, the potential opponents were biasing their lists to fight whatever I was fooling around with in the Tournament Practice room. How else can you explain a sideboarded game where the opponent led with Order of the Stars (on Red), followed up with Sacred Ground and two more Order of the Stars before I had played a single land destruction spell? I persevered with Tidings, and a few Eye of Nowhere turns and a bit of Wildfire later, I punched through his indomitable White permanents, winning with him on no lands and -12 life all things said and done.
Vore as a deck seemed powerful, and perfect for my teammate Paul Jordan. Paul won his first constructed PTQ with a transformative Trix deck, and most recently finished one game out of the Grand Prix Philadelphia Top 8 with a Psychatog list I gave him simply because we didn’t have enough cards for another Kird Ape Deck Wins (apologies to Moreno, McKenna, Manning, Magid, Sadin, Luis, and me… The amount of raw talent wasted on that deck is pretty stunning, now that I think about it). Vore controls the game until it can finish with a single Psychatog-like threat. Wildfire is reminiscent of Upheaval. Who cares that we didn’t run Upheaval in the Legacy ‘Tog deck? Vore should be right up Paul’s alley… Or so I thought.
The next night, Vore performed dismally in testing. I ran it to start versus Paul playing Osyp’s URzaTron from PT Honolulu. Paul took exception to my Pro Bowl Vote description of playtesting with ffej, citing Regionals 2003. One of our initial matchup series was Alex Shvartsman (bad) Mono-Black Control versus our (very good) Bests deck, which Paul won 7-3 with Bests. When we switched… he won 7-3 with MBC, mostly on the strength of chump blocking. So basically, Paul also has my number in playtesting. Even so, a 6-4 win for Vore was underwhelming. Vore was our bet for the best anti-control control deck at a time that we assumed we would be playing with Steam Vents. That I was specifically testing against the control deck with the most tenuous mana base made a 6-4, though positive, even more of a negative. The other matchups were even worse.
According to Paul, “Testing with the Vore deck was annoying because I guess I didn’t have a good feel for how to play it and only played against Gruul and Zoo, so I lost frequently. And I didn’t have Hammers at the time because they were in our other deck, so that made the Zoo matchup much worse.”
Frustrated after the repeated thrashings he took in game 1 situations against beatdown decks, Paul flat out refused to run Vore after the initial team playtest session.
Meanwhile, after a first game drubbing of Ghost Dad with double Giant Solifuge, Gruul Deck Wins never won another game, which opened our eyes as to what to do in the “tactical” seat.
We figured out what deck to give Paul by the end of the night, but that left a vacuum as to what to do with our “Steam Vents” deck… or asked if we should stay with the disappointing Gruul Deck at tactical (who loses to Ghost Dad?). For the next week, I fought on Magic Online, trying to see if I could salvage the Kamiel/Julien deck without Wrath of God… but got inconsistent results. Card drawing into multiple Volcanic Hammers would be just like Wrath of God, right? How about Electrolyze? That seemed good at the Pro Tour in our URzaTron deck…
Ultimately, Josh was the voice of reason:
“The minute one of your opponents looks over to the next match and sees you play Wrath of God on his teammate, he is going to empty his hand against your Kamielerson and play balls-out differently from any of your playtest opponents. You can’t split Wrath of God decks.”
At 9/10 ready to just play the Gruul Deck that lost to Ghost Dad in the tactical seat (“There is no way I’m playing HALF of Kamiel’s deck!”), Steve decided to try out the Vore at the next Tuesday night session.
“My first introduction to the Magnivore deck was when I walked into Neutral Ground to test with Paul and Mike and Paul was complaining about how awful the Magnivore deck is and that he would never play it,” said Steve. Feeling quite opposite, he continued “My deck felt pretty perfect… I only dropped one match with it, which was against Heezy Street when he played multiple Rumpling Slums against my hand full of Threads of Disloyalty and Wildfires in the deciding game (Heezy Street is arguably Vore’s worst matchup… Even so my match record against the deck was 2-1).
“Against every one of my opponents, save for my final loss, after the match they would mention/complain that Vore is a great matchup for them and that they couldn’t believe that they lost. While I have no doubt that every one of them believed that Vore was a good matchup for them, I found the opposite to be true. I think that this difference in opinion came from the way in which I played Vore compared to how their playtest partners did. I never played a lethal Magnivore and I held my Eye of Nowheres unless I was gaining considerable advantage from them (turn 2, etc.).”
The difference for us was that Steve was playing Magnivore as a tactical deck (like Gruul Deck Wins or even a Vs. System New Brotherhood deck) rather than a strategic resource manipulation deck. He played for the play, for the turn, to get damage in immediately when the opponent wasn’t looking. I was of the opinion that the numbers in the bottom right didn’t matter unless they were 10+, but Steve just played out his Magnivores whenever he could gain any advantage at all. He played out 4/4s against Ghost Dad, and 6/6s against Zoo. “It doesn’t matter if the Vore isn’t lethal… it’s still better than whatever he’s got, so he’s either throwing cards away or taking a ton of damage.” He would race when the opponent was up by 8 life points – which I never understood – and then come out of nowhere with a lethal Eye and second Lurghoyf. Paul joked that he was overjoyed at the switch in decks, because if he had been playing the deck, he would have gone maybe 3-4 instead of Steve’s 6-1 at the first tournament… I certainly wouldn’t have been able to match his undefeated Swiss given the same draws.
What really sealed the deal for us playing Magnivore was the matchup against Ghost Dad. Ghost Dad was supposed to be good against Pyroclasm and supposed to have outs against Wildfire and Magnivore, but our testing – with Steve at the helm – did not bear that out. Steve won ten games in a row against Teysa and friends… and then twenty. Poor Tuna Hwa, who hadn’t played sixty cards in some time, just left Neutral Ground in a huff, “I can’t believe you made me play that deck!”
One funny anecdote came at the eleventh hour… I called Josh the night before the Grand Prix with urgent news:
“Josh, tell Ant not to play Shinka! Oboro and Minamo make sense because you want to get a mana advantage against slow decks, but only beatdown decks play Shinka! It’s just going to manascrew you in the bad matchups.”
“Um, Mike…”
“Yes?”
“Look at your list. We don’t have Shinka.”
“We don’t? Why do I have a Shinka in my hands?”
“You put Shinka in every deck with Mountain.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Never mind, then.”
“…”
In the past, positioning which player in which seat was based mostly in superstition and decidedly un-scientific speculation based on where teams thought other teams would draft which colors. Given the new coaching rules for Constructed Teams, this is no longer the case. Our theory was that the teams “in the know” would position their best player in the center (and that the teams that didn’t think about the new coaching rule wouldn’t matter). The best player on any given team was least likely to be playing a beatdown deck. Ergo, we positioned our best specifically anti-control deck in the center, with our best tactical player at the helm. This way Steve would have the best chance at deck advantage, and also be available to help coach either wing… I just wish I had stepped down a little in the finals; had I let him do some coaching, we might have just won the PTQ in Connecticut instead of going 6-1-2, with that only loss in the finals.
Long story short: In the March 25 PTQ in Connecticut, Steve didn’t lose until the finals. He beat all manner of decks, from Heezy Street to Ghost Dad to KK on Wafo-Tapa, and only lost in the finals because we didn’t expect double Rumbling Slum. But really… really?
Creatures (3)
Lands (10)
Spells (47)
The main deck is basically identical to Nygaard’s; the sideboard was built by the masterful US National Champion, Italian Antonino De Rosa. If you don’t have a Heartbeat player, you can run the Remands that Nygaard did… but really, you should have a Heartbeat player.
Biasing in Team Standard is very specific. The reason that the properly built Vore sideboard is full of anti-creature elements is the same as the reason why it is easy to metagame against teams playing Heezy Street and Ghost Dad. You are likely to be up against one good, one excellent, and one difficult matchup; in the case that you are up against the opposing Heezy Street or Zoo deck, you can just throw 11-15 cards in replacing your not-good-enough main theme and come out with a serviceable U/R control deck. You’re not quite Wafo-Tapa, but with effective one-for-ones like Volcanic Hammer fed by tons of card drawing and superb two-for-ones like Threads of Disloyalty, chances are that you aren’t even behind any more.
The Genju of the Spires was Ant’s card that we found most difficult to understand. The main deck Genju is easy… You want to live through a Cranial Extraction (and Steve lived through that card no problem). After boards, though… It seems a bit out of place. Why not a fourth Pyroclasm, say? At the end of the day, we all learned to love the extra one-drop. There are multiple matchups where a first turn Genju is going to be game over… and the opponent just doesn’t know it yet. The card is powerful and slips under counter walls without wasting mana. Many times the opponent doesn’t have any way to deal with it at all without tapping five or six main. Combined with a Ravnica dual played untapped or a single blow from Goblin Flectomancer, Genju of the Spires can end games in just three swings.
Speaking of it, Goblin Flectomancer (a.k.a. Remand replacement) is the coolest card of all. Not only is it solid in the mirror (you can move a Demolish) and a ray of hope against Heartbeat (steal your Early Harvest), this card is absolutely unreal against somebody else’s Compulsive Research (you can pick up your jaw now).
In terms of matchups, Vore falls thusly:
The Defaults
Heezy Street – You are behind game 1, but the matchup is very winnable, especially with an aggressive sideboard.
Zoo – This matchup is worse because they typically run more burn than Heezy Street, but, again, the sideboard will save you with quick responses. Zoo has vastly worse mana to Heezy Street, so your land destruction will be more relevant in game 1.
Steve ended 2-1 versus three Heezy Street opponents.
Ghost Dad or any B/W aggro deck – You are way ahead against Ghost Dad. Against other B/W it depends on their specific version (lots of Paladin en-Vec may be annoying), but you should generally be ahead. Remember: Oli’s deck lost to either Pyroclasm or Electrolyse in testing, so Pyroclasm and a lot of card drawing will help.
Steve ended 3-0 versus two Ghost Dad and one Hand in Hand.
Control – We positioned Vore where we did expressly because of its anti-control capabilities. Going first is a huge up against other Blue decks because of the possibility of the Eye of Nowhere draw, but generally speaking, your action is cheaper than theirs, your land destruction keeps them from being able to get card advantage on Compulsive Research, and your focus on TACTICAL rather than long term strategic play will invalidate much of their testing.
Steve ended 2-0 versus Wafo-Tapa and the mirror.
Non-Defaults
Heartbeat – Vore was great for us in PTQ play, but I’m not sure if it is the right choice for you. First of all, I don’t understand his play well enough to transfer the skills Steve used to win narrow margin matchups to you, and secondly, almost every team should have a Heartbeat of Spring deck now. In his forums, Sean McKeown seemed to indicate that Heartbeat had problems with Vore. This is just not the case; the games can be long and annoying, but they come down to Stone Rain versus Sakura-Tribe Elder, Demolish versus Kodama’s Reach, Wildfire versus Muddle the Mixture, and Sleight of Hand versus Sensei’s Divining Top. There is not one fair fight in the bunch, with Heartbeat winning on mana cost or card advantage at essentially every drop plus the ability to win the game in a single turn versus a deck unlikely to field an effective Mana Leak defense in game 1.
Luckily for us, Steve never faced a Heartbeat player.
Gifts Ungiven and B/W control – These matchups are kind of like fighting a real control deck, except they have cards that pretend to be Blue rather than actual Blue cards. Mana ramp and signets can be annoying, but the presence of Tidings allows Vore to overcome these sorts of defenses in long flurries of one-for-one removal, while catch-all defensive measures like Eye of Nowhere and Wildfire can create positional advantage from seemingly disadvantageous economics. It’s all about real Blue cards beating up on fake Blue cards by denying the opponent from ever being able to establish his minimum game.
Steve ended 1-0 versus Gifts Ungiven.
Generally speaking, Vore is worst against Kird Ape and Drift of Phantasms and good-to-superb against everything else. In our matrix, we had it ahead 2-1 against the defaults; should the defaults change, the effectiveness of Vore as part of an optimal configuration will change with them.
Cheers:
Nikolas Nygaard – Nice. Deck.
Antonino De Rosa – Great sideboard and insights.
Steve Sadin – May have lost to Heezy in the finals, but it was his only loss, with a lifetime 2-1 over G/R in this format (well done).
Jeers:
Me – I was informed by the now-legal Joshua Ravitz that my “more on these geniuses in future instalments” note yesterday could be construed ironically. If you haven’t gleaned it already, not one drop of irony was meant.
LOVE
MIKE