Goals for Pro Tour Philadelphia:
Finally cash a Pro Tour again? Check.
Rack up some Pro Points? Check, but partly. Still need another good finish to hit level six this year.
Top 8 a Pro Tour? Well, you can’t have everything.
So, what actually happened?
What did you play at Pro Tour Philadelphia?
I played a Naya deck designed by Brian DeMars and Matt Sperling. There were a bunch of clever names for the deck tossed around, but I think the most concise is ErhnamGeddon 2k11.
Creatures (18)
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Kavu Predator
- 3 Tarmogoyf
- 1 Gaddock Teeg
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 1 Qasali Pridemage
Lands (21)
Spells (21)
So…. you played Busty Zoo, the deck you harangued Kyle Boggemes out of playing two weeks ago?
This deck is not Busty Zoo. The first step was realizing Bloodbraid Elf was garbage. The dream of cascading into Boom / Bust and Geddoning them was offset by every time you cascaded into a Noble Hierarch and wanted to vomit. Hitting anything in the deck other than Knight or Boom / Bust felt like a miserable outcome. Blood Moon wasn’t even good any more in our testing, as the Post decks could just as easily Through the Breach an Emrakul at you without needing their Posts to be active.
To be completely fair, this deck isn’t even Zoo anymore. There aren’t any one-drop animals that just serve up beats. The only Cat in the deck anymore is a Qasali Pridemage. Your guys are all one-card threats. If anything, this deck is more of a Forceless Bant deck than a Zoo deck.
For the record, we had an iteration with Lotus Cobra that proved to be too threat light. The extra Tarmogoyfs were actually a late addition to the deck, as you just wanted a body to fight with against Zoo. They are just there as they happen to be the most efficient real body you aren’t already running.
Why this deck?
Simply put, this was a midrange deck without any of the typical midrange issues. Your answers weren’t conditional one-for-ones; your threats were all efficiently costed and provided extra utility, and most importantly you could represent a fairly proactive game plan when necessary due to Bust.
Even the conditional cards were fairly unconditional in this format outside of a couple tutor targets. Oust and Punishing Fire were often Stone Rains against Cloudpost decks; Infect and Twin both made removal live at various points, and Zoo’s mana base was often vulnerable to a Boom / Bust or mid-combat Beast Within on their land.
Between the tutors and versatile answers, you could pretty much handle everything. Unlike Post, you could handle the combo decks with a cheap clock and Stone Rains while not folding to random hate. Unlike Zoo, you could stare down a resolved Primeval Titan and win a long game against it. Unlike combo, you were consistent and didn’t have to deal with your opponents’ boarding in a million Torpor Orbs or something similar.
Why not a combo deck?
I had almost all of the combo decks in testing. The exceptions are Melira, which I dismissed as too clunky, and the Ascension + Swath Storm deck, of which I didn’t have a list with both enchantments. My Poison list was also closer to Sam Black and was not all-in like the European version.
To put it in the way everyone else has, the only one that wasn’t a Charbelcher was Twin. Twin had room for interaction and had enough redundancy to make it a real deck, even if it was locked into a turn-four kill at best most of the time.
Every combo deck could do the same thing if you packed zero interaction. Average kill on four, some on three. A couple were a bit faster but could be more easily interacted with like Infect; a couple had some built-in interaction like Hive Mind, but it all boiled down to the same two issues.
The first was that the all-in game plan was exactly that: all in. If they jammed a clock and Thoughtseized you right before you tried to go off, you were dead. If they were going to just kill you on three on the play, you were dead. If they wanted to board the right hate, you were dead. You were helpless if things didn’t go to plan and they did anything relevant. Grapeshot me? Good thing I’m at 27 with a Beast Within up. Good luck getting to enough storm any time soon.
The second was that Zoo was actually faster than all the combo decks if it wanted to be. All of our Zoo lists late in testing were closer to Mono-Red Burn splashing Steppe Lynx and Wild Nacatl. No Goyfs, no Knights, no Noble Hierarchs. Just a bunch of one-drops and Lightning Bolts. The Post matchup was awkward, but you killed on turn three more than the combo decks.
The main reason combo did so well was Cloudpost.
Everyone had to drastically skew their decks to beat Post except for combo. All the Zoo decks started changing from Tribal Flames to Unified Wills. Doran-style decks just folded out of the metagame, as they couldn’t handle Primeval Titans.
It also didn’t hurt that there were too many combo decks to cover them all with a few sideboard slots. Our sideboard hit a lot of the overlap, but there still was a ton going on. Have a Gaddock Teeg? Good thing I’m playing Ascension and my spells all cost less than four. Have a Qasali Pridemage? I’m just going to Exarch-Kiki you.
How did the Constructed portion go?
I went 5-4-1. I defeated Mono-G Post, Elves, Pyromancer Storm, Busty Zoo, and Death Cloud. My losses were to Through the Breach Post, Hive Mind, Tribal Zoo, and Storm.
Mono-G Post was against Lino Burgold, and I have no memory of what happened. The typical plan is either get a Predator and Knight into play before they Titan, at which point Titan is a blank, or just Armageddon them. I assume this happened.
Elves was more of a joke. They can’t beat Punishing Fire; not to mention the fact post board you have 11 spot removal and two one-sided Wraths in Fiery Justice.
The Pyromancer Storm deck I beat was piloted by Phil Yam, and he folded to hate cards games two and three. He couldn’t beat a Pridemage and Seal game two, and game three I just resolved Rule of Law.
Busty Zoo was another lopsided matchup. He had 3/3s and 3/2 hastes while I had eight copies of Knight and Kavu Predator that immediately got out of Lightning Bolt range. Game one I actually Boomed him out of the game after he missed a land drop, while game two he locked himself out with Blood Moon.
Death Cloud was a grind. Game one I lost by playing around Death Cloud but not Damnation, but game two ended early with a Thoughts of Ruin. Game three came down to him Death Clouding improperly and locking himself out of the game. He chose to do it for one too many, leaving him with a Garruk, which my Wildwood easily handled next turn, and only one land to my four. To be fair, had he done it for three, his board would have been Garruk to my Knight, which was equally bad, but he would have survived with an extra land, giving him Go for the Throat as an out.
My loss to Through the Breach I’m unsure on. Game one I know I played miserably, but he drew all air while I bungled my way to a win. Game two I was stabilized, but he ripped Emrakul on the one turn he had to do so before I took him off 15 mana. Game three he just recovered from an early Thoughts of Ruin and hasted in an Emrakul. I feel like there had to be something I could have done, but I have no idea what. There are just too many lines with Zeniths, Knights, and split cards over long games to be sure.
The Hive Mind loss was completely out of my hands. The best I could have done was mulligan a hand of Boom / Bust, Birds, 2 Oust, Beast Within, 2 lands on the play, which I figured was enough to let me draw one of my 15 threats against anything but U/R combo. I left him with no permanents in play but didn’t draw a win condition before he drew more lands. Game two I just died on turn two, but in such a way that I was just off of not losing. I had turn one Birds, turn two Zenith for Teeg, but he had Hive Mind on one. I had turn three Pridemage activation, but he just killed me on two.
Losing to Zoo was my fault game one, as I didn’t properly slow roll a Kavu Predator to let it live through Bolt; I was too enticed by the nut draw of turn two Ousting a guy with Predator in play if I drew a white source. I burned a Green Sun’s to turbo it out and was justly rewarded with no more threats the entire game after it died. Game two I just flooded out massively and died. The trick in this matchup is just to hang around and make sure your threats don’t die to their bad removal of Lightning Bolt and Helix, and I definitely did not execute that plan game one.
My loss to Storm was to Conley Woods. Game one I was just dead on three with him also having the Lightning Bolt for my Knight on two that would have left me with Pridemage mana up on three. Game two I kept a mediocre hand mostly based on thinking he had Empty the Warrens to make my Gaddock Teeg live. It wasn’t, and he easily won through the rest of my light disruption.
Any changes you would make to the deck after playing it?
Not many. The list was very well tuned.
Arena needs to be somewhere in the deck, most likely main. It’s a Knight tutor target that eats mana Walls and Deceiver Exarchs on top of just ending aggro pseudo-mirrors. I would likely cut the second Beast Within.
The sideboard could use some minor swaps, but that is mostly based on metagame guesses. My Rule of Laws this week, some Krosan Grips next week, etc.
If the Pro Tour was tomorrow, would you play this deck again?
No, but that doesn’t mean it is bad.
Simply put, I would need a lot more testing to be comfortable with the deck. There are so many decisions with Green Sun’s Zenith, Knight, Boom / Bust, and even just curving out that I was very iffy on. The two people who built the deck went 7-2-1 and 8-2 with it, while the two playing it who didn’t build it went 2-3 and 5-4-1. Given an extra week, I would run the deck back for sure, but if it was Thursday night again I would play something else.
Up until five minutes before the event, I might have considered switching if handed a fully built Twin deck. The deck was consistently turn four with interaction. There is definitely a reason it won the Pro Tour. A friend of mine played a list we had worked on and ended up getting 27th place, and my list would be very similar to his.
Creatures (13)
Lands (17)
Spells (30)
- 2 Mountain
- 4 Island
- 1 Serum Visions
- 4 Remand
- 2 Spell Snare
- 1 Rite of Flame
- 4 Ponder
- 2 Firespout
- 2 Dispel
- 4 Splinter Twin
- 4 Preordain
Sideboard
I also strongly considered a Burn Zoo deck, but couldn’t bring myself to concede to Cloudpost. Depending on how things shape up, this deck is likely a strong future competitor.
Creatures (19)
Lands (20)
Spells (21)
- 3 Flames of the Blood Hand
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 2 Mountain
- 4 Magma Jet
- 2 Molten Rain
- 4 Tribal Flames
- 2 Rift Bolt
Sideboard
Anything interesting in the Limited portion?
I was almost 100% sure my first deck was an 0-3 deck while building it. I had one two-drop creature, was playing Smallpox and seven drops, and my mana looked awful.
Turns out that Smallpox is actually really good in the right deck (aka one with Vengeful Pharaoh) and that Primordial Hydra, Royal Assassin, and Garruk’s Horde are all unbeatable.
Outside of the unrealistic number of rares, the deck was actually an interesting one. I drew first every game and ran 18 lands with two Llanowar Elves. My goal was to use Smallpox as a way to trade mulligans with them, but make my deck better at mulliganing than they were. They would be down a two-drop and lands when on the play, while I could afford to lose the lands, and their stunted draw would just lose to one of my bombs.
Not only was this correct, but 18 lands let me have a legitimate mana base while splashing Fireball off no fixing. Whenever I have to run one source for a singleton card, it never works out. I would rather draw one of my two Mountains and not draw Fireball than play the “draw two singletons” lottery.
And yes, discarding Vengeful Pharaoh to Smallpox is just as good as everyone thinks it is, if not better.
My second draft deck was boring B/R Bloodthirst. I easily crushed some people then lost to Brian Kibler due to a timely Fog. I didn’t consider Fog when making my play, but my line lost to it and beat any removal spell; whereas the line that beat Fog lost to any removal or bounce spell. Either way, I can’t complain with a 5-1.
What changes should Wizards make to Modern?
The first is easy: Ban Cloudpost. Once that is out of there, you can start attacking combo and Zoo from reasonable angles. The fact it exists is what lets combo run rampant, similar to how Valakut existing made things easier for control decks in Standard by crushing the dreams of Fauna Shaman players everywhere.
Beyond that, I have no idea. Banning Rite of Flame, Through the Breach, Blazing Shoal, and Splinter Twin are all arguable and may or may not be correct. Unbanning Ancestral Vision or Bitterblossom is also arguable. This format is still very young, and time will tell how to best stabilize it or if it even needs external help to do so.
All in all, the trip to Pennsylvania went well for me. The six pro points I got between the Pro Tour and Grand Prix locked me for Level Four next year assuming I show up to Worlds; multiple friends of mine got on the train from the Pro Tour; and I got to hang out with awesome people from all over the country. I’m unfortunately going to be unable to attend Grand Prix Montreal, but I plan on being at StarCityGames.com Open: Indianapolis. In the mean time, I’ll probably start sharing some of the Modern brews that didn’t quite make it there for the Pro Tour.