Unlike my birthday or Thanksgiving, the Magic Invitational has never happened on a fixed date, or at a fixed time – although the practice of having it at the E3 convention to show off Magic Online might change that – so sometimes the results in its Constructed formats are useful, and sometimes they aren’t.
Two years ago, Jens Thoren won the Invitational with a tricky little creation designed to abuse Mirari’s Wake in concert with Mirari and Cunning Wish; seven months later, modified versions of the deck proved to be among the most powerful weapons in Regionals and Nationals tournaments around the world. On the other hand, Jon Finkel 3-0’ed the Standard portion of the same event with a Battle of Wits deck which proved mostly irrelevant in both States and Regionals.
Part of that unpredictability comes from the fact that the Invitational is mostly for fun, so not all players take their deck choices so seriously (Finkel played Battle of Wits in every Constructed format in the aforementioned year, just for the hell of it). Another factor is simply the evolution of tournament Magic: new sets come in, old sets go out, people plan and metagame with each passing tournament.
With all of this unpredictability, how can I write an article addressing each of the Standard decks in this year’s Invitational, and their impact on the rapidly approaching Regionals metagame? Because that’s what they pay me to do, duh!
I’ve been able to get some test games with some of these decks online, including some Saviors-influenced modifications, which I will mention as appropriate. At this time, I’d like to give a shout-out to everyone who plays online using the Generic Collectible Card Game software; if you cannot MODO for some reason (I have a Macintosh, for example), then the GCCG is a strong – and free – way to go.
On to the decks!
Red/White Salvagers
You can’t hit a home run every time at the plate. I’m sure that’s what Mike Flores was thinking while Bob Maher took a nasty tumble with this latest Flores creation:
Bob Maher
2 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
9 Mountain
10 Plains
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Auriok Salvagers
3 Two-Headed Dragon
4 Magma Jet
4 Pulse of the Fields
4 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Sunbeam Spellbomb
4 Wayfarer’s Bauble
4 Wrath of God
Sideboard:
4 Beacon of Destruction
3 Engineered Explosives
4 Sowing Salt
4 Stone Rain
It seems that Flores took his mono-Red deck (see below) and switched out most of the burn for Wrath of God, Pulse of the Fields, Auriok Salvagers, and Spellbombs. The problem is that Wrath of God is not a great card in this format right now – Tooth and Nail, Mono Blue, and Eternal Witness all sneer at it – and neither Salvagers nor Pulse of the Fields like to see a Cranial Extraction from the other side of the table.
My question for Flores is, why? What did The Great One do to deserve such a punishment? Does he owe you money? Did he hit you from behind with a steel chair? Did he murder your sensei and burn down the dojo? Have you seen security hologram of him killing younglings? For God’s sake, Mike, WHY?
All joking aside, I think Flores was trying to improve his mono-Red deck’s wretched matchup with mono-Blue (hence, the maindeck Boseiju). The problem with that is, all of the most important cards in the Red/White deck (Slogger, Salvagers, Spellbombs) don’t benefit from Boseiju at all, and practically scoop to a resolved Vedalken Shackles.
Getting Saviors involved: I don’t know if there is a savior for this deck. Reverence, perhaps, but I think I’d rather just put this poor thing out of its misery.
Maher’s matches: Mono Red Burn, 0-1; Tooth and Nail, 0-1; Mono Blue, 0-1.
Control Red
Another Flores deck, put forth in this article. Like most Red decks, the plan is simply to go 20 damage to the head as best you can. Unlike most Rred decks, Arc-Slogger is not the finisher but merely the start, as he sets the stage for a flurry of the best burn spells in the format:
Osyp Lebedowicz
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
20 Mountain
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Solemn Simulacrum
3 Beacon of Destruction
4 Magma Jet
4 Molten Rain
4 Forge[/author]“]Pulse of the [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Shrapnel Blast
1 Sowing Salt
4 Wayfarer’s Bauble
Sideboard:
2 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
2 Culling Scales
2 Duplicant
4 Fireball
2 Flamebreak
1 Sowing Salt
2 Stone Rain
There are people (and not only those named Mike Flores) who assert that this deck is the best in the format. I do not agree, mainly because I cannot duplicate those people’s results against Tooth and Nail. Every time my opponent opens with, “Urza’s Power Plant, go” I never seem to be able to find my Molten Rains or Beacons of Destruction until it’s far too late.
However, I can say with certainty that I would rather play this deck over any mono-Red build in the format. The big reason for that is that the deck’s mana never goes wrong. Magma Jet, Wayfarer’s Bauble, and Solemn Simulacrum all combine to power out Arc-Slogger earlier than turn 5, and double Forge[/author]“]Pulse of the [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] before turn 6. Even more important than that speed is that it is done without wasting slots for cards like Seething Song and Chrome Mox, which are good on turns 1-3 and bad at almost every other time.
I am shocked – shocked! – that Sensei’s Divining Top is as useful in this deck as it is, and I’m not just talking about sacrificing it to Shrapnel Blast. In addition to Magma Jet, you have just enough shuffle effects that the Top can get you out of your atrocious draws. Having said that, I have had many games where I absolutely needed to Top into some burn, and I revealed triple-Mountain or Mountain–Mountain–Molten Rain. Such occasions reminded me vividly of why I hate the Top so much in Limited.
I would recommend Oblivion Stone in the sideboard instead of Culling Scales. There are enough rogue players on the GCCG servers that I have been made to hate life via Ivory Mask, Enduring Ideal, Coretapper + Chimeric Egg, and other bizarreness. You can’t pack silver bullets for all of these, nor would you want to, but you also never know what kind of janky crap you could run into at Regionals. The Stone is probably a better all-around answer than the Scales are, although I admit the Stones also are vulnerable to the dreaded Pithing Needle.
Getting Saviors involved: A nice thing about this build is that it does not empty its hand as quickly as the Ponza-style Red decks, so you might think it is well-suited to run Thoughts of Ruin. However, this deck also needs more mana than Ponza, so the symmetric nature of ToR hoses Beacon of Destruction and Forge[/author]“]Pulse of the [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] (remember, the goal is to Pulse multiple times in one turn). Maybe your cards in hand would be better exploited by Spiraling Embers, although that spell’s sorcery speed is a big drawback.
As mentioned above, Pithing Needle is a problem on the other side of the board, since it can turn off your Tops and Arc-Sloggers. Therefore, Yuki-Onna could be a possibility; there are just enough artifacts in the format that are problematic for you (Needle, Sword of Fire and Ice, Vedalken Shackles) that you can get some value for it, plus it’s simply a 3/1 for 4, which is not so bad for you.
Matches: Red/White Salvagers, 1-0 (Why, Mike?); Ponza, 1-0; Tooth and Nail, 1-0.
Bouncing Rats!
Tim Aten
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
18 Swamp
4 Chittering Rats
3 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
4 Nekrataal
3 Nezumi Cutthroat
4 Nezumi Shortfang
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Skullsnatcher
3 Throat Slitter
4 Aether Vial
4 Umezawa’s Jitte
Sideboard:
3 Cranial Extraction
4 Damping Matrix
2 Distress
3 Echoing Decay
3 Terror
Tsuyoshi Fujita
10 Island
4 Salt Marsh
6 Swamp
2 Waterveil Cavern
4 Chittering Rats
4 Ravenous Rats
2 Thought Courier
3 Trinket Mage
4 Vedalken Mastermind
4 Aether Spellbomb
4 Aether Vial
4 Annul
1 Crystal Shard
2 Echoing Truth
3 Mana Leak
2 Rend Flesh
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
Sideboard:
4 Carry Away
2 Nekrataal
4 Steal Artifact
1 Steel Wall
4 Terror
That Fujita was able to 2-1 with his deck truly boggles my mind; he must be, unquestionably, the best player in the world. When I saw the list, at first I thought BDM had inadvertently dumped some of his MODO trade binder into the .dec format.
Before these jokes start to sound too mean-spirited, I should point out, I’m all for rogue decks. When I get to Tim Aten build, you’ll see how much I like the Rat concept. It just seems like Fujita’s deck has only one game plan, and a bad one at that: pray for a draw containing Vedalken Mastermind/Crystal Shard + Chittering Rats + necessary lands or Vials. Can you imagine how many things have to go right for you in order to obtain that board position? The same goes for some of the deck’s other synergies; even if you are able to go “Trinket Mage + bounce effect,” all that gains you is a few extra Spellbombs and some shuffles for your Top. It’s not like that will win the game all by itself.
Aten’s deck, on the other hand, is quite good. As Brian David-Marshall mentioned in the coverage, it’s based on Cedric Phillips‘ deck from the PT: Philadelphia Last Chance Qualifer. Probably because Phillips didn’t make Top 8, his deck flew waaaaay under the radar: usually you see all the hot tech from the LCQ in the side events by Saturday, but not this one. If not for BDM, nobody except Phillips and his friends (of whom Aten is one) would even be aware that it existed.
Although simply having “Umezawa’s Jitte + infinite two-drops” is nice, the various ninjas are the key to the deck. They allow you to return Chittering Rats and Ravenous Rats to your hand, and then Aether Vial gives those guys another go-round for free (it’s best to Vial out your rats during your opponent’s draw step, after they have drawn – you knew that, right?). Nezumi Shortfang helps with disruption, but he also allows you to abuse the deck’s best creature: Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni. Ink-Eyes may well be the most underrated man (or woman… or rat…) in the format. She rumbles with everybody and lives to tell the tale, either through regeneration or just by being huge. Even if you don’t get a powerhouse creature with its reanimation ability, you still have infinite chump-blockers. If you can get Ink-Eyes + Shizo, your opponent is simply living on borrowed time.
I’m a big fan of this deck; it can pull itself out of some of the ugliest positions you can imagine. At a recent Friday Night Magic event I beat an opponent who went turn 2 Troll Ascetic, turn 3 Sword of Light and Shadow. However, one of the worst things that could happen to this format is if a bunch of Phillips.dec builds showed up; it seems like it would be a very dumb mirror (whoever draws more Jitte blah blah blah). Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Getting Saviors involved: So far, my test games suggest that the much-talked-about Skull Collector is not all that he’s cracked up to be. His is a slow-working ability, so very rarely will he lock up a won game or swing an awful position into a good one. Pretty much the best things about him are that he regenerates (take that, Troll Ascetic!) and that his bounce effect allows you to cut the substandard ninja Skullsnatcher in favor of, say, Hand of Cruelty.
Of all the decks in this article, none needed Pithing Needle more. Aten was forced to run Damping Matrix to avoid scooping to Vedalken Shackles, but the anti-synergy that the Matrix has with other cards in the deck is kind of embarassing. The Needle is also great for Fujita’s deck, since it can turn off many cards which would otherwise own the deck, such as Arc-Slogger, Engineered Explosives, and other friends.
Aten’s matches: Good Stuff Green, 1-0; Ponza, 1-0; Mono Blue, 1-0.
Fujita’s matches: Tooth and Nail, 1-1; Good Stuff Green, 1-0.
Mono-Blue
Olivier Ruel
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
14 Island
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
4 Stalking Stones
3 Jushi Apprentice
3 Thieving Magpie
4 Boomerang
4 Bribery
4 Chrome Mox
3 Condescend
4 Hinder
4 Mana Leak
3 Rewind
4 Vedalken Shackles
4 Wayfarer’s Bauble
Sideboard:
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3 Hibernation
3 Spectral Shift
4 Temporal Adept
4 Threads of Disloyalty
Gabriel Nassif
2 Blinkmoth Nexus
15 Island
4 Stalking Stones
2 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
4 Thieving Magpie
4 Boomerang
3 Bribery
4 Chrome Mox
4 Hinder
4 Mana Leak
2 Rewind
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Vedalken Shackles
4 Wayfarer’s Bauble
Sideboard:
1 Bribery
3 Hibernation
3 Spectral Shift
4 Temporal Adept
4 Threads of Disloyalty
The two builds are very similar, and both players were probably expecting similar opposition. While there is an argument to be made for Echoing Truth, I think Boomerang is clearly the best available bounce spell; in addition to neutering Genju, Boomeranging a turn 1 land is a highly important play against non-Aether Vial opponents. Bribery is great against just about every deck in the format. Both decks max out on Moxen to compete with Slith Firewalker and friends.
That said, the two decks’ goals are sharply different. Nassif’s deck is very aggressive, running a limited countermagic suite whose purpose is to put the opponent’s plans on hold long enough to get either Meloku or a Bribed creature on the table. He is not going for the old-school “counter everything you do and win with my one-power guy” approach; he’s going for the “stall until I can get my Meloku” approach.
Ruel’s deck, on the other hand, plans more for the long term. It runs four more counterspells, one fewer Magpie, and the strong long-game weapon Jushi Apprentice. At first I thought that the Minamo, School at Water’s Edge in Ruel’s deck was there simply because it’s no worse than an Island. He’s not running any legends, right? After some thought, it occurred to me that one win condition in the deck is to slow the game down until the Apprentice flips, and then deck the opponent with Apprentice + Minamo. Now that’s technology!
Getting Saviors Involved: Ideas Unbound is a saucy little number, but not so much in this type of deck, which prefers instant-speed card drawing. Erayo, Soratami Ascendant has an intriguing ability, and in one online game he beat me singlehandedly when my opponent went turn 4 “Mox, Erayo, Boomerang on Mox” and I responded to the Boomerang by tapping out for Magma Jet (at the time I thought Erayo flipped only on his controller’s spells – believe me, I’ll never make that mistake again), but on the whole I simply can’t believe in running him.
So the big question is, what happens when a deck like this gets access to Twincast? I’m going to go out on a limb and say, “not much.” While it would be nice to “fork” opposing spells such as Cranial Extraction or Bribery, it would be just as nice to counter those spells or draw extra cards instead of saving those slots for Twincast. About the best thing I could think to do is copy a Tooth and Nail opponent’s land-search spell to fetch your Boseiju, which would act as a Wasteland on their copy. That’s nice, but I don’t know if you have enough open slots to fit it in. However, don’t let that stop you from valuing Twincast at $15 when I’m trading my copies to you.
Matches: Good Stuff Green, 1-1; Ponza, 0-2; Mono-Black Rats, 0-1; Red/White Salvagers, 1-0 (Why?)
“Ponza”
I actually loathe that name, but I will use it here to refer to those mono-Red decks that ran lots of creatures and/or contained a large land destruction component (as opposed to Flores’ deck, which did neither). There were three, one of them piloted by the father of the modern Arc-Slogger deck:
Carlos Romao
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
18 Mountain
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Hearth Kami
1 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
4 Slith Firewalker
2 Chrome Mox
1 Fireball
4 Magma Jet
4 Molten Rain
2 Forge[/author]“]Pulse of the [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
4 Seething Song
4 Shock
4 Stone Rain
Sideboard:
4 Boil
2 Demolish
2 Flamebreak
4 Pyroclasm
3 Sowing Salt
Eugene Harvey
3 Blinkmoth Nexus
15 Mountain
1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Hearth Kami
1 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
4 Slith Firewalker
4 Vulshok Sorcerer
4 Chrome Mox
3 Genju of the Spires
4 Magma Jet
4 Molten Rain
4 Seething Song
2 Sowing Salt
1 Stone Rain
2 Volcanic Hammer
Sideboard:
2 Shatter
3 Pyrcoclasm
3 Duplicant
3 Oblivion Stone
4 Zo-Zu the Punisher
Masashiro Kuroda
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
14 Mountain
1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
2 Stalking Stones
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Frostling
4 Slith Firewalker
4 Zo-Zu the Punisher
3 Chrome Mox
4 Magma Jet
4 Molten Rain
4 Seething Song
4 Stone Rain
4 Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard:
4 Lava Hounds
3 Shatter
4 Sowing Salt
4 Vulshok Sorcerer
All three players agree on Arc-Slogger, Slith Firewalker, and Magma Jet, but not much else. How many Moxen? Genju or no? Should Zo-Zu and Sowing Salt be in the main or sideboard? Should Vulshok Sorcerer be on the team, or even Frostling? Romao posted the only winning record of the three at 2-1, but that’s not saying much about “the format” because the three rounds featured two Ponza mirror matches. (It was even worse for Tooth and Nail; see below).
In my mind, Zo-zu is too good not to include somewhere. As Jamie Wakefield has repeatedly said, so much of the format is Green land acceleration, against which the Punisher excels. Vulshok Sorcerer is amazing against beatdown; if you resolve two of them then the only creatures you have to worry about are untargetables like Troll Ascetic and Kodama of the North Tree, or random fatties like Stampeding Serow. If you’re going to run Sorcerers then you might want to couple them with Hearth Kami (or the aforementioned Yuki-Onna), because Vedalken Shackles and Pithing Needle are good anti-Sorcerer hosers. So between Slogger, Firewalker, Hearth Kami, Sorcerer, and Zo-zu, that’s five creatures you’d like to have as four-ofs. One of them will probably reside in the sideboard; the one you choose depends upon what kind of green decks you are expecting.
I find it interesting that Kuroda and Harvey both passed on Boil, which your average Friday Night Magic player is probably packing as a three- or four-of in his sideboard. The theory is that the mere threat of Boil will affect your opponent’s play as if you had actually sided it in, even if you didn’t. Kuroda faced both Blue decks in attendance, piloted by Nassif and Olivier Ruel, and split the matches 1-1. I imagine the fact that all of Ruel’s card-drawing is creature-based made him more vulnerable to Kuroda’s burn spells, but I’d be interested to know if Nassif and Ruel sideboarded their Spectral Shifts in against him.
Getting Saviors Involved: Well, there’s Thoughts of Ruin, derf. As I mentioned above, one drawback of having ToR in this deck is that you’ll usually have an almost-empty hand by turn 4. Still, as long as you have two cards + ToR in hand at the time you cast it, you’ve managed to make the card strictly better than Stone Rain, and Ponza loooooves its Stone Rain effects. I think it’s worth testing in your builds.
One thing I’ve often wondered is if a mono-Red deck that runs Thoughts of Ruin should just go without Arc-Slogger. I know that sounds crazy; a lot of folks have described the Slogger as the best creature in the format. However, if you can use Moxen to throw down a couple of cheap drops by turn 3 (possibly including Zo-zu) and cut your opponent’s mana base in half with Thoughts of Ruin on turn 4, that ought to be good enough to win on its own against non-Beacon of Creation decks, right? It would certainly blow out Tooth and Nail, and it would make mono-blue think twice before tapping low to play Thieving Magpie.
Matches: 4 Mirrors; Control Red, 0-1; Tooth and Nail, 0-1; Mono Black Rats, 0-1; Mono Blue, 1-1.
Good Stuff Green
I’ve heard that this deck is pretty popular on Magic Online so it’s not surprising that it would show up in the Invitational. Some call it Five-Color Green, but since the maindeck has no Red or White cards, it’s more accurate to name it based upon the fact that it is trying to play with as much good stuff as it can. Three different players had almost-identical maindecks:
Antoine Ruel
2 City of Brass
10 Forest
2 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
3 Swamp
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Bringer of the Black Dawn
1 Duplicant
4 Etched Oracle
4 Eternal Witness
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 All Suns’ Dawn
1 Cranial Extraction
1 Crystal Shard
1 Echoing Truth
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Gifts Ungiven
4 Kodama’s Reach
1 Persecute
3 Plow Under
1 Stir the Grave
1 Terror
Sideboard:
3 Boil
1 Clearwater Goblet
3 Cranial Extraction
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Persecute
1 Plow Under
3 Terror
Kai Budde cut the Echoing Truth to make room for a Viridian Shaman, and Pierre Canali cut the Truth to make room for a second Cranial Extraction. They also had different sideboards:
Budde
4 Boil
3 Cranial Extraction
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Plow Under
2 Terror
2 Viridian Shaman
Canali
4 Boil
1 Clearwater Goblet
2 Cranial Extraction
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Persecute
1 Plow Under
3 Terror
Historically, “good stuff” decks are extremely solid, and this is no exception. It’s hard to go wrong by pairing land acceleration with cards like Eternal Witness, Etched Oracle, and Meloku. Your typical plan is to simply develop your board until you’re able to win with Meloku or Rude Awakening. A backup plan is to get the combo of “Eternal Witnesses + Echoing Truth or Crystal Shard” which in turn allows you to go off with Cranial Extraction or Plow Under.
Gifts Ungiven is the engine that makes the deck go, but you don’t necessarily need it as a four-of. For example, if you wanted to fit in the fourth Gifts, you might think you could go down to two Plow Unders and still be okay. Then your matchup against Tooth and Nail and other control mirrors would get a lot worse. You could cut the Engineered Explosives for Gifts, and then White Weenie and Slith Firewalker would start blowing you out. You could cut the Terror for a fourth Gifts, and then Arc-Slogger would start beating you when it wouldn’t before. So although you can customize this deck quite a bit, you do want to have several cards on hand to fill certain needs (board sweeping, targeted removal, mana denial, etc).
One problem with the deck is that it may be solid, but it’s not spectacular either. It’s like the Rock in Extended: it works slowly and it doesn’t blow anyone out. With a deck like that, you will occasionally have a disastrous result, like the 2-7 record posted by the three Invitationalists who ran it. What’s worse, in none of those nine matches did the Green deck face its worst enemy, Ponza. Mono-Red decks with heavy land destruction and creature components, such as the one played by Carlos Romao above, simply dream about playing against a deck such as this one. That’s a serious knock against playing this strategy at Regionals.
Getting Saviors Involved: Elder Pine of Jukai has quickly become one of my favorite Saviors cards, what with his tendency to load your hand up with land. Haru-Onna is another guy who does good things for you if you are on this strategy, and there’s also the absurd Stampeding Serow, who combos well with Eternal Witness and Haru-Onna. It seems that I would prefer a mono-Green utility/spiritcraft deck instead of five-color good stuff.
Matches: 2 Mirrors; Tooth and Nail, 0-3; Mono Blue, 1-1; Mono Black Rats, 0-1; U/B Rats, 0-1.
Tooth and Nail
Depending upon who you talk to, either Arc-Slogger or Tooth and Nail will be the most-played cards at Regionals. [Excluding lands, it will probably be Sakura-Tribe Elder or Eternal Witness. – Knut] Although Arc-Slogger won the title at the Invitational, if we throw Maher’s deck in the trash (something that I’m sure Maher would have done if the event was played with actual cardboard), then the matchup of “awesome Red creature” vs. “awesome Green sorcery” was dead even. Here were the decks that chose the sorcery:
Jeroen Remie and Julien Nuijten
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
10 Forest
4 Urza’s Mine
4 Urza’s Power Plant
4 Urza’s Tower
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Duplicant
4 Eternal Witness
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Sundering Titan
1 Triskelion
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Mindslaver
2 Oblivion Stone
4 Reap and Sow
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Sylvan Scrying
3 Talisman of Impulse
4 Tooth and Nail
Sideboard:
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
2 Duplicant
4 Heartbeat of Spring
1 Mephidross Vampire
1 Mindslaver
4 Plow Under
2 Sundering Titan
Sam Gomersall
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
10 Forest
4 Urza’s Mine
4 Urza’s Power Plant
4 Urza’s Tower
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Duplicant
4 Eternal Witness
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Sundering Titan
3 Mindslaver
3 Oblivion Stone
4 Reap and Sow
1 Rude Awakening
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Sylvan Scrying
3 Talisman of Unity
4 Tooth and Nail
Sideboard:
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
4 Creeping Mold
4 Heartbeat of Spring
1 Mephidross Vampire
4 Plow Under
1 Triskelion
Terry Soh
10 Forest
4 Urza’s Mine
4 Urza’s Power Plant
4 Urza’s Tower
2 Duplicant
4 Eternal Witness
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Sundering Titan
4 Kodama’s Reach
3 Mindslaver
3 Oblivion Stone
1 Plow Under
3 Reap and Sow
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Sylvan Scrying
3 Tooth and Nail
Sideboard:
2 Iwamori of the Open Fist
2 Molder Slug
3 Plow Under
2 Razormane Masticore
4 Troll Ascetic
2 Vine Trellis
Remie, Nuijten, and Gomersall all played perfectly serviceable Tooth decks: not too much different than what you would see if you looked at the LCQ decklists, and not too much different than what you’ll probably encounter at Regionals. What I really want to talk about, though, is Soh’s deck. There’s some real innovating going on here.
He fits in four copies of Kodama’s Reach, which is a really important card should you be thrown off of the typical Urzatron plan. The deck often runs short of color mana, to the degree that you don’t want Sakura-Tribe Elder to be your only way to attain the GG necessary for your best spells. When you add in the fact that Red decks are trying to hate your nonbasic lands right out of the format, it becomes really important to play Tooth and Nail off of nine Forests if needs be.
Soh also cuts Darksteel Colossus entirely, intending to bring wins home with Kiki-Jiki + man of choice. Note that “man of choice” doesn’t have to be Sundering Titan; Kiki + Eternal Witness can also end the game in short order, since it usually leads to repeated shots of Plow Under or Mindslaver. It seems that the format doesn’t really require Darksteel Colossus at all — if you don’t win after you bring forth Kiki + Titan/Duplicant/Witness, then you probably weren’t going to win no matter what you did.
Finally, Soh has a transformative sideboard to deal with hate. This is a big deal, as there are a lot of decks out there which may have thought that they could stomp T&N simply by slotting some copies of Sowing Salt or Cranial Extraction. However, the giant fat that come off the bench for Soh laugh at Cranial Extraction and can be easily summoned without an Urzatron. My lone compliant with his board is the two copies of Vine Trellis; yes, Trellis is good against Slith Firewalker, but if you’re going to be on the Heartbeat of Spring plan against Sowing Salt, then you might be just as well off with a couple of Forests.
Getting Saviors Involved: The real question is, “what should be done about Thoughts of Ruin?” I have heard people on the forums suggest Sakura-Tribe Scout to accelerate the combo, but this seems to me like the wrong idea. The Scout is a nice man, but he doesn’t do his duty on the turn he comes into play, and his duty isn’t really even that important because he doesn’t search up the lands you might need. What Tooth and Nail will need in the new format is not more speed, but more reliability in the face of hate cards like ToR.
I think one way to go might be to ditch the Urzatron concept altogether, and go Green/White with Vernal Bloom and/or Heartbeat of Spring. Then, in addition to old reliable Sacred Ground (good in the Tooth “mirror” as well as against Red!), Saviors would then offer you Reverence or Hail of Arrows for creature defense. I’m not saying this is good, or even necessary, but if you have The Fear regarding land destruction it might be worth considering.
Matches: Apparently there was some kind of rule that all of the Red decks and all of the Tooth decks had to play at least one mirror match. 4 Mirror, U/B Rats,1-1; Ponza, 1-0; Mono Red Burn, 0-1; Good Stuff Green, 3-0; R/W Salvagers, 1-0 (WHY???).
So there you have it: my take on the decks from the Invitational. If you want the matchups faced by each individual decklist, all match results from the Invitational’s Standard portion are listed after I sign off. Until next time, good luck at Regionals and happy hunting.
This article written while watching the NBA playoffs.
mm underscore young at yahoo dot com
Later.
Round 13 Results
Tim Aten won 2-1 vs. Pierre Canali
Gabriel Nassif won 2-0 vs. Masashiro Kuroda
Osyp Lebedowicz won 2-0 vs. Bob Maher
Julien Nuijten won 2-1 vs. Jeroen Remie
Tsuyoshi Fujita won 2-0 Sam Gomersall
Carlos Romao won 2-0 vs. Eugene Harvey
Kai Budde won 2-1 vs. Olivier Ruel
Terry Soh won 2-0 vs. Antoine Ruel
Round 14 Results
Terry Soh won 2-0 vs. Bob Maher
Tim Aten won 2-0 vs. Carlos Romao
Masashiro Kuroda won 2-0 vs. Olivier Ruel
Osyp Lebedowicz won 2-0 vs. Eugene Harvey
Antoine Ruel won 2-0 vs. Pierre Canali
Julien Nuijten won 2-1 vs. Sam Gomersall
Jeroen Remie won 2-0 vs. Tsuyoshi Fujita
Gabriel Nassif won 2-1 vs. Kai Budde
Round 15 Results
Carlos Romao won 2-0 vs. Masashiro Kuroda
Sam Gomersall won 2-0 vs. Antoine Ruel
Jeroen Remie won 2-0 vs. Eugene Harvey
Gabriel Nassif won 2-0 vs. Bob Maher
Osyp Lebedowicz won 2-1 vs. Julien Nuijten
Tim Aten won 2-1 vs. Olivier Ruel
Tsuyoshi Fujita won 2-0 vs. Pierre Canali
Terry Soh won 2-0 vs. Kai Budde