Right now I’m listening to”Here To Stay,” the new track from Korn. Looping that song over and over, I’m going to hammer out the details of what happened on the Thursday when I was trying to qualify through Nationals via one of the four”Grinders” being held the day before the event. You’re in for a treat today…
In preparing this report and going over my card choices in the first grinder, I learned a valuable lesson. While this lesson is probably elementary to very experienced Limited players, it opened my eyes to a whole new aspect of Sealed deck construction strategy – and I consider myself a fair Limited player. Maybe it will help you too.
Where to start? Well, I’ve told you about my companions, and about the hotel. I’ve waffled on and on about the prices, the evils of smoking, and the Scrabble abilities of DCI judges. I suppose it’s time to get down to business. Buckle up – you’re about to get the inside scoop.
And hey, don’t worry guys, the departure point isn’t far. In fact, it’s just as close as the next paragraph.
Grinder One
Like I said yesterday, the first Grinder was limited, and I passed a fairly good deck, so I was hoping for one in return. While I would like to think that I am a good enough player to do well with pretty much any card pool, I have no illusions about the significance of being passed strong cards. The higher the general power level of the deck I receive, the less luck I need, and the less chance that play errors will make the difference.
Unfortunately, the deck isn’t godlike; it’s pretty average. Here’s the card pool – and I warn you, if you don’t like discussion about how to build a given sealed deck, complete with alternate deck listings, turn back now:
Black:
Afflict
Cabal Trainee
Coffin Purge
Crypt Creeper
Cursed Monstrosity
Dawn Of The Dead
Diabolic Tutor
Dusk Imp
Earsplitting Rats
Execute
Filth
Filthy Cur
Last Rites
Mesmeric Fiend
Overeager Apprentice
Restless Dreams
Afflict, Cabal Trainee, Crypt Creeper, Cursed Monstrosity, Dusk Imp, Mesmeric Fiend and Last Rites are all fine cards. Well, maybe not Cabal Trainee… But it’s not that bad. Sorta like a half-assed Benevolent Bodyguard that only works for combat math. If I want to force the black issue for consistency reasons, I can play Earsplitting Rats and Filthy Cur. Filth and Execute are fine sideboard cards. Looking back on this black, I’m a little disappointed in myself for the colors I did play.
Blue:
Aven Fisher
Balshan Collaborator
Careful Study
Coral Net
Defy Gravity x2 (don’t ask me how, but it was what was registered and what I had)
Mental Note
Obsessive Search
Pulsating Illusion
Repel
Rites Of Refusal
Syncopate
Web Of Inertia
Words Of Wisdom
Aven Fisher, Balshan Collaborator, Pulsating Illusion, Repel, and Syncopate catch my eye here – one thing about Blue in Sealed deck is that it’s great at shrinking your deck size, letting you find your good cards and smoothing your mana. Considering I had trouble finding the right colors to go with my green, I think I should have given Blue the nod simply because of the Mental Note and Obsessive Search – along, of course, with the presence of a number of good flyers. If I’d settled on Blue, my third color could have been Black, which would have allowed me to pump the Collaborator and make use of Mesmeric Fiend, Afflict, and maybe a couple of other cards.
It didn’t work out that way though, because I was distracted by some strong red and white cards. We’ll get to those in a moment. First, there’s the obvious base color for the deck:
Green:
Battlefield Scrounger
Beast Attack
Cartographer
Centaur Veteran
Diligent Farmhand
Druid’s Call
Invigorating Falls
Ironshell Beetle
Krosan Archer
Muscle Burst
Nantuko Mentor
Phantom Nantuko
Phantom Tiger
Rabid Elephant
Simplify
Springing Tiger
Woodland Druid
Beast Attack, Diligent Farmhand, Ironshell Beetle, Krosan Archer, Muscle Burst, Nantuko Mentor, Phantom Nantuko, Phantom Tiger, Rabid Elephant, and Springing Tiger are all great cards, and I was excited to see them. Considering the card quality here, playing Green is a given. The hard task would be to find the most effective splash color – or splash colors. In hindsight, I’m not sure I made the right choices on that score. (You didn’t – The Ferrett, who can carp in retrospect)
Red:
Barbarian Outcast
Browbeat
Chainflinger
Ember Beast
Frenetic Ogre
Goretusk Firebeast
Kamahl’s Desire
Lava Blister
Magnivore
Pardic Firecat
Rites Of Initiation
Sonic Seizure
Sigh. Looking at this, I don’t know what I was thinking, because it just isn’t as good as the Blue. At least now I know why this deck tanked. Chainflinger, Ember Beast, Pardic Firecat, Sonic Seizure, Rites… All fine cards, and I especially like Chainflinger’s ability to dominate tables. But they’re not as good as the fliers, countermagic, and tricks I would have gotten from blue, not to mention the Mental Note to help out with threshold on my Springing Tiger and shrink my deck. I also considered Frenetic Ogre a playable card, and he is, but he’s no bomb when there’s a blocker of any kind on the table – he’s more like a much slower version of Barbarian Bully. My brain continues to fail me in the case of Browbeat, as well – I have no idea when and when not to play it in Limited. (Hint: Way more burn than this – The Ferrett)
White:
Battlewise Aven
Cease-Fire
Cleansing Meditation
Embolden
Funeral Pyre
Gallantry
Militant Monk
Mystic Visionary
Pilgrim of Virtue
Second Thoughts
Spirit Flare
Spiritualize
Suntail Hawk
Embolden and Second Thoughts jump right out at me. Battlewise Aven, Suntail Hawk, and Gallantry are good cards too, and Mystic Visionary is a solid two-drop provided you can consistently play it. Pilgrim of Virtue is a good sideboard card. Still, though – there is no Shelter here, no Zealot, no Hallowed Healer. I think I really overestimated my white and red.
Artifacts:
Limestone Golem
Trent Rogers got decked with one of these during a Grinders match. Now he rips them up whenever possible. I won’t be playing this guy.
Land:
Bog Wreckage
Tainted Field
The Wreckage would have been handy had I been playing my Black, which I probably should have been.
Here’s what I did play – and honestly, I think I choked:
Grinder 1 Deck (Geordie Tait, Canadian Nationals Grinder 1)
1 Mystic Visionary
1 Battlewise Aven
1 Nantuko Mentor
1 Phantom Tiger
1 Ironshell Beetle
1 Rabid Elephant
1 Krosan Archer
1 Beast Attack
1 Phantom Nantuko
1 Springing Tiger
1 Diligent Farmhand
1 Ember Beast
1 Chainflinger
1 Pardic Firecat
1 Longhorn Firebeast
1 Frenetic Ogre
1 Browbeat
1 Muscle Burst
1 Rites Of Initiation
1 Sonic Seizure
1 Embolden
1 Second Thoughts
1 Gallantry
7 Forest
6 Mountain
4 Plains
I’m not too happy with my performance here – playing Browbeat and Longhorn Firebeast seems like a bad mistake to me, and in retrospect I don’t even know what I was doing playing red at all – the Blue and Black seem better.
Hell, a two-year-old could tip over the table and get hit in the head with a better build than that – my best bet for victory is to carry a gat to the table and blast like I was DJ Ran.
Wiener, by the way, makes a delectable snack treat. I’d just like to mention that before I forget.
Okay, enough goofing around. What should I have done? Well, let’s try to figure it out. First, assume that our ten big green cards are going to make it in:
Ten Base Green Cards:
Beast Attack
Diligent Farmhand
Ironshell Beetle
Krosan Archer
Muscle Burst
Nantuko Mentor
Phantom Nantuko
Phantom Tiger
Rabid Elephant
Springing Tiger
Then, let’s compare what we get from W/R (the splash colors I did use) as opposed to U/B – keep in mind that we’re looking for quite a few strong cards here, and we’re willing to risk that our mana might be a tad shaky.
White/Red Splash:
Ember Beast
Pardic Firecat
Sonic Seizure
Battlewise Aven
Embolden
Rites Of Initiation (good with Springing Tiger)
Second Thoughts
Suntail Hawk
Mystic Visionary
Frenetic Ogre
Longhorn Firebeast
Browbeat
Really, that’s just a whole lot of nothing – and the deck isn’t fast enough to justify cards like Rites, Browbeat, and Longhorn Firebeast. Now, let’s check out the B/U splash:
Black/Blue Splash:
Mental Note
Obsessive Search
Repel
Pulsating Illusion
Syncopate
Aven Fisher
Balshan Collaborator
Afflict
Dusk Imp
Mesmeric Fiend
Cursed Monstrosity
Crypt Creeper
Isn’t that just better? Here we have four flyers, some removal, a counterspell, a great trick, and good weenie creatures. I didn’t even include the Cabal Trainee and Last Rites, also both quite playable if you’re looking for some functional filler. Heck, I wouldn’t even need all those cards – it’s not like Battlefield Scrounger and Cartographer are that bad. They’re warm bodies. Black gives me better sideboard cards to boot – Execute and Filth.
The bottom line is that I played the wrong colors. Here’s the deck as I would build it today:
Correctly-Built Grinder 1 Deck
7 Forest
5 Island
4 Swamp
1 Bog Wreckage
1 Beast Attack
1 Diligent Farmhand
1 Ironshell Beetle
1 Krosan Archer
1 Muscle Burst
1 Nantuko Mentor
1 Phantom Nantuko
1 Phantom Tiger
1 Rabid Elephant
1 Springing Tiger
1 Pulsating Illusion
1 Aven Fisher
1 Syncopate
1 Repel
1 Balshan Collaborator
1 Mental Note
1 Obsessive Search
1 Dusk Imp
1 Mesmeric Fiend
1 Cursed Monstrosity
1 Crypt Creeper
1 Afflict
1 Cartographer (might go well with Monstrosity and Pulsating Illusion… It’s a warm body)
While it feels good to know where I went wrong, and I do feel like I’ve learned something from this exercise. Have you? I especially like how those two Blue cantrips shrink a deck. I always have trouble finding playable cards in Sealed, and I think I should start taking the attitude that the U-cantrips (Peek from Odyssey, Obsessive Search from Torment, Mental Note from Judgment) aren’t really spells at all. They let you play what is essentially a 37, 38, or even 39 card sealed deck, getting you closer to threshold in the process. These are great tools for Sealed deck play, and you can bet I’ll be taking a hard look at G/U/x every time I participate in such an event.
So that’s the lesson. In Sealed, you sometimes run short of playable cards. Rather than doing a 6/6/6 mana base and taking everything you can get your hands on (I almost did anyway – but at least I had a Bog Wreckage and a Diligent Farmhand) or filling empty slots with sub-optimal crap like Pardic Swordsmith, the best solution for a Blue player is probably to check the Sealed deck for 1CC cantrips and run those – especially in threshold-hungry U/G decks! It’s more consistent, the mana draws are smoother, and you’ll get to your bombs faster.
Well, we’ve come this far… Might as well check out how I did in that grinder. I’m sure it’s a foregone conclusion, really, but I’ll keep my promises and give you the full details.
Round 1 vs. Luc Bordeau w/ B/G/u
So they post the pairings and I have to play one of the guys from Quebec. As you may or may not know, Canada is a huge place with a lot of room for different types of people – and despite the fact that most of these guys are fellow Canadians, I don’t speak the same language as they do and live about ten to twelve hours away by car. Luckily, while 99% of Anglophones in Canada speak piss-poor French (if they speak any at all – we’re supposed to have two national languages, but only one province really speaks much French), most of the guys from Quebec speak enough English to play Magic without any trouble. I can only imagine the horrors that are going to occur once the Ontario guys get to Montreal.
“Where is, uh…le crapper?”
That’ll be me.
Luc and I get underway, and it’s on!
Game 1:
Luc is off to a slow start and I come out of the gates swinging, while his creature quality seems poor – even my meager forces are slowly gaining the advantage. I have him down to eight life, with me at thirteen and he’s playing stuff like Krosan Restorer, which leads me to believe I’ll have an easy win.
Nope.
I’m serving the slow beatdown with Battlewise Aven when Luc busts out Caustic Tar and I feel like someone just launched a two-ton warhead into my lunch chamber. With the Restorer’s help, he reduces me from thirteen life to zero in a matter of two turns. That didn’t feel too good, though I should have expected it as soon as I saw the Restorer.
I sideboard in my Simplify.
Game 2:
This game I come out strong with a turn 3 Phantom Tiger, and he’s on the ropes. It’s far from a sure thing, though – I remove a creature with Sonic Seizure and the random discard leaves me with no Simplify, opening the door for him to drop the Caustic Tar that wrecked me in Game 1.
He starts to stabilize the board after a rough use of Serene Sunset (I didn’t enjoy it much, that’s for sure) and I think I’m in trouble, but I get my Chainflinger out and all he can seem to draw are one-toughness creatures – including those from an Acorn Harvest.
The Chainflinger is the turning point – he dominates the table and though I fear the Tar (he has the Restorer again), I draw a bunch of creatures and eventually he has to chump block with it. Unable to draw a sixth land for what I assume is the Tar and maybe a Giant Warthog or two in hand, he scoops.
Game 3:
Grinders are single elimination, as you probably already know, so I can’t afford to lose here. Considering I can’t afford to lose, why keep a one-land hand? Sure, I had a couple of two-drops, but I was going first.
There’s nothing to say about refusing to mulligan that hand except that it was the wrong choice and a mistake – it’s as simple as that. I don’t draw land for four turns, and he kills me with no problem at all. I’m eliminated from Grinder 1.
I later watched him play and learned that he had Crush Of Wurms in his maindeck and also a Mutilate. The appearance of the Crush of Wurms was actually pretty funny – a couple of his friends saw him playing in the Grinder and came to look at his hand, which had the Crush in it. They started stifling guffaws at seeing a 9CC spell in his hand during a limited event, and Luc simply smiled and said good-naturedly,”Shut up!”
Defiantly, Luc proceeded to cast Mutilate on turn seven. Then, he ramped right up to nine mana and cast that bastard.
“Crushe de Wurm?”
Even in French, it sounds like hell for the guy who just lost everything he had on the board. Yeah, he won that one.
Here’s something to take away with you today, along with what I told you above about Blue cantrips in Sealed Deck. If you ever start to believe that Magic is all about luck, then listen to this:
I built my deck wrong.
I made a big error in declining to mulligan.
I lost because of it.
And that’s the way it should be. I don’t feel sad about it – I feel vindicated. As long as poor players are doing poorly and good players are doing well, the game is healthy. I don’t think I’m a poor player, but I did play poorly, and I got what I deserved – a whole lot of nothing.
I’ll see you tomorrow for details from the next two grinders…do you think my play will improve? I wish. Prepare for more bad play, this time with the B/R Sorcery deck. A word to the wise… If you’re playing this deck and have a choice between taking Pernicious Deed and Phyrexian Arena with a second-turn Addle…take the Arena.
Tell you more about it come mornin’. Time to skeedaddle!