Grand Prix Trial: GP Boston Recap
I’ll be honest: I’m not normally a fan of articles that present a sealed pool and ask you to consider what you’d build. Often, the general decisions are pretty obvious, and some of the finer points come down to personal preference. Having said that, I’m presenting that exact type of article this week. There is some value in this type of exercise, especially for newer players, and even more so considering that M10 Limited is new to all of us.
What motivated me to make this the focus of my article this week is a sealed pool I consider particularly interesting. One could make a valid case to play at least three of the five colors, and possible even a fourth. The quality cards and bombs are spread across four colors, and several combinations of two colors with a splash can be combined to make a solid deck. While I was very happy with the direction I took, I think this pool might lead to some quality discussion in the forums. Let’s take a look at what I was handed last Sunday:
Basic Land (7):
1 Forest (Foil)
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Plains
Non-basic Land (2):
1 Gargoyle Castle
1 Terramorphic Expanse
Artifact (1):
1 Angel’s Feather
Black (15):
1 Acolyte of Xathrid
1 Bog Wraith
2 Consume Spirit
1 Doom Blade
1 Drudge Skeletons
1 Gravedigger
1 Looming Shade
3 Mind Rot
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Sign in Blood
1 Vampire Aristocrat
1 Warpath Ghoul
Blue (18):
1 Convincing Mirage
2 Coral Merfolk
1 Divination
1 Djinn of Wishes
1 Flashfreeze
2 Illusionary Servant
1 Jump
1 Mind Control
1 Mind Spring
1 Phantom Warrior
1 Serpent of the Endless Sea
1 Sleep
1 Tome Scour
1 Unsummon
2 Zephyr Sprite
Green (17):
1 Bramble Creeper
1 Centaur Courser
1 Cudgel Troll
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Entangling Vines
2 Fog
2 Giant Spider
1 Nature’s Spiral
1 Overrun
1 Prized Unicorn
1 Rampant Growth
1 Regenerate
1 Runeclaw Bear
2 Stampeding Rhino
Red (14):
1 Chandra Nalaar
2 Fiery Hellhound
1 Fireball
1 Ignite Disorder
1 Jackal Familiar
1 Kindled Fury
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Prodigal Pyromancer
1 Shatter
2 Trumpet Blast
1 Viashino Spearhunter
White (16):
1 Angel’s Mercy
1 Celestial Purge
1 Divine Verdict
1 Excommunicate
1 Griffin Sentinel
1 Guardian Seraph
1 Lifelink
2 Pacifism
1 Safe Passage
1 Siege Mastodon
1 Silence
2 Silvercoat Lion
1 Solemn Offering
1 Tempest of Light
I like to start by looking at the bombs, by color:
Land: Gargoyle Castle is very powerful – not quite a bomb, but highly likely to end up in the deck.
Artifact: Angel’s Feather! Uh, I mean, none.
Black: Well, Doom Blade, Vampire Aristocrat, and Rise from the Grave are all pretty good, but there’s nothing here I would consider bomb-worthy.
Blue: Djinn of Wishes, Mind Control, and Sleep are all very strong incentives to play Blue. I consider them all to be bombs.
Green: Overrun is definitely a bomb. Cudgel Troll isn’t quite a bomb, but it is pretty fantastic in this format. Prized Unicorn is also powerful.
Red: Chandra is a bomb, and the Fireball and double-Lightning Bolt definitely suggest at least a Red splash.
White: Guardian Seraph is a border-line bomb. It is able to rumble with most of the fliers in the format outside of the Mythics, Rares, and high-end Uncommons. It lives through Lightning Bolt and is a powerful defensive card. I’m not quite sure I’d call it a bomb, but it is powerful. Double-Pacifism and Divine Verdict suggest that a base-white or white-splash build is going to have plenty of removal.
Before I go any further and show you the build I ran and my thought process, I’d encourage you to take a minute and build your own deck out of this pool, or at least figure out which colors you would run, and why.
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Ready?
Let’s proceed.
Looking at the Black cards, they aren’t completed unreasonable. Double Consume Spirit is interesting, but requires a really significant investment in Swamps, and the pool lacks any Tendrils to really make that worthwhile. I was pretty quick to write off the Black.
Blue, on the other hand, is a definite inclusion in my mind. It has the highest number of bombs, supported by two Illusionary Servant, Divination, and Mind Spring for card draw, and Coral Merfolk to support a low-end curve. Phantom Warrior and Unsummon are both playable as well.
Overrun is obviously a huge incentive to play Green, and the selection of creatures available is pretty solid: Cudgel Troll, 2 Stampeding Rhino, Centaur Courser, Elvish Visionary, Prized Unicorn, and the double Giant Spider are all playable to very good. Rampant Growth is relatively solid in sealed, and Entangling Vines provides additional removal if the pool is otherwise light in that category – though this is unlikely, looking over the pool as a whole.
Chandra Nalaar is this pool’s only Mythic, and it is pretty powerful in sealed. Supported by Fireball, Prodigal Pyromancer, and the 2 Lightning Bolts, a base-Red build will have some excellent removal. The two Trumpet Blasts might be playable depending on how aggressive the list ends up, and Viashino Spearhunter is decent, but overall the Red lacks playable creatures.
In White, the first thing I noticed is that this pool has zero soldiers. That isn’t encouraging. However, it does have some good removal and the Guardian Seraph, as noted above.
In the lands and artifacts, Terramorphic Expanse is an auto-include, while Gargoyle Castle is a likely inclusion depending on the mana in the final list. Unfortunately, the Green does not include any Borderland Rangers. This posed an interesting dilemma for my initial inclination, which was to run Green and Blue, and splash Red for the removal. In my opinion, this list unquestionably packs the most punch, because it includes the most bombs: Sleep, Djinn of Wishes, Mind Control, and Overrun, supported by the excellent aggressive and defensive creatures in Green and the low-end creatures in Blue. The usual knock on Green/Blue decks is their lack of removal, which I could get around by splashing the Red for Fireball and 2 Lightning Bolts. The problem is figuring out how to make this mana work, or if it is even workable:
UUX: Djinn of Wishes, 2 Illusionary Servant, Mind Control, Mind Spring, Phantom Warrior, Sleep
GGX: Cudgel Troll
GGGX: Overrun
With only Rampant Growth and Terramorphic Expanse for mana fixing, is it feasible to play a G/U/r list? And if so, does Gargoyle Castle make the cut? My initial look led me to this manabase:
8 Island
7 Forest
2 Mountain
1 Terramorphic Expanse
With the Divination, Elvish Visionary, and potentially Mind Spring providing extra cards, and the Rampant Growth and Expanse for fixing, this manabase would support the type of deck I was looking for. My first-pass list looked like this:
1 Runeclaw Bear
2 Coral Merfolk
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Centaur Courser
2 Illusionary Servant
2 Giant Spider
1 Prized Unicorn
1 Cudgel Troll
2 Stampeding Rhino
1 Djinn of Wishes
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Rampant Growth
1 Divination
1 Sleep
1 Mind Control
1 Overrun
1 Fireball
8 Island
7 Forest
2 Mountain
1 Terramorphic Expanse
I chose not to play Phantom Warrior or Mind Spring because I felt like they stretched the mana base too much for too little return. This list looked like it had enough removal, would curve out and hold down both the ground and the air, and set itself up for a blowout using Overrun or Sleep. The biggest question I had was the Gargoyle Castle, because I felt like I could probably cut a Forest and be safe casting everything except Overrun – but that’s a problem, since Overrun is one of my best cards. I drew out some test hands, and the mana looked acceptable but definitely not great, and there were some games where 18 lands felt like too many.
I also tried building a straight R/G list, with the thought being that this would be more stable and therefore might actually be better. That list cut the eight blue cards for the following:
1 Prodigal Pyromancer
1 Viashino Spearhunter
2 Fiery Hellhound
1 Bramble Creeper
1 Trumpet Blast
1 Entangling Vines
1 Chandra Nalaar
Another option would be to splash White, because there are some pretty awful cards in that last, above. The main appeal is picking up the Pyromancer and Chandra, and the likelihood of having fewer mulligans. Ultimately though, I felt like the White splash wasn’t worthwhile, and the straight G/R build gave up way too much power. A W/G/r deck might also be an option, and would really cram the deck with quality removal and still have a decent curve. I ran out of time before really exploring that option, but that deck might’ve looked like this:
2 Silvercoat Lion
1 Runeclaw Bear
1 Griffin Sentinel
1 Centaur Courser
2 Giant Spider
1 Prized Unicorn
1 Guardian Seraph
1 Cudgel Troll
1 Bramble Creeper
2 Stampeding Rhino
1 Siege Mastodon
2 Pacifism
1 Divine Verdict
1 Overrun
1 Fireball
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Rampant Growth
8 Forest
6 Plains
2 Mountain
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Gargoyle Castle
Ultimately I ended up running the U/G/r list, and cut a Forest for the Gargoyle Castle. The whole deck was predicated upon the concept of dodgy mana supporting a higher than expected number of bombs and solid playables, so I decided to run the eighteen lands but include the Castle to further push the power level. The GP Trial had 26 players, meaning five rounds of Swiss. That meant that if I could hit my lands for three rounds, I could draw into the top 8.
During the first three rounds, I took only one mulligan, and won all three rounds 2-1 to start out 3-0. I lost one game to an opponent finding his Overrun before I found mine, one game to not hitting the correct mana, and one game to a Serra Angel I just couldn’t answer quickly enough. I never had a need to activate Djinn of Wishes in the games where he showed up – often just curving out into Sleep was enough for the win. I beat a G/W/r deck that was similar to what mine might’ve looked like, except with Serra Angel and Garruk, partially because he had to mulligan in all three games. My other two opponents both ran Black, and usually had to expend their removal on creatures like Giant Spider or Courser and then lost to the bigger creatures higher up on the curve. The game when I had to mulligan was actually because of Gargoyle Castle. On the draw, I had an Island and a Gargoyle Castle for mana as well as a Rampant Growth, but if I didn’t hit one of the six forests, the hand wasn’t going to be good enough. Thankfully cards like Divination, Elvish Visionary, Djinn of Wishes, and Mind Control can help pull back to card parity very quickly. After drawing in round 5 to hit 3-0-2, I played out a set just for fun against the other 3-0-2, and won 2-1 against a very good R/G deck.
The top 8 draft was pretty strange, which I guess isn’t surprising as everyone is still learning the M10 draft format. The player to my right ended up drafting straight White, as the player to his right was drafting Blue/Black. That meant all the good Red and Green cards were headed my way, and unfortunately I love me some Red/Green decks in core set. I say unfortunately because Red is unbelievably worse in this format than it was in 10th Edition. I kept hoping to see some kind of bomb, but packs two and three were both unkind, and because the people sending me cards early and late weren’t touching Red or Green at all, it was hard to signal the player to my left to stay out of Red and Green. I ended up with a deck with an excellent curve and two Lightning Bolts and two Trumpet Blasts, but nothing truly exciting or game-breaking.
I was paired against another Red/Green player with a similar deck to mine. The first game, I killed him on turn 5 thanks to a first-turn Llanowar Elf, two Bolts for his creatures, and a Trumpet Blast. In the second game, I drew eight consecutive lands starting on turn 2, so that one didn’t go so well. The third game was similar to the first one – I smashed in with a Lightning Elemental and played removal spells and a Giant Growth to keep the beats coming, along with two of my three Stampeding Rhinos.
I then got paired against the Black/Blue player, and got smoked. Both of my hands were border-line playable, but were slow, and without getting the drop on my opponent quickly, I was never really in either game. He had plenty of removal, fliers, and two Sleeps. It was pretty brutal. The TO had decided to split the prize pool equally across the entire top 8, so that meant eight packs for all of us. I can’t say I’m really a huge fan of this prize division, but what can you do.
Hopefully this was useful for those of you attending Grand Prix: Boston. M10 is proving to be a strange Limited format where many of the uncommons outclass the rares – Sleep in particular. It is very easy to pull a pool with White and Blue that has solid defensive capabilities, cheap fliers, plenty of removal (what with Ice Cage, Pacifism, and Divine Verdict all being commons), and a ridiculous game-ender in Sleep. Draft seems to be better, in that at least you can go heavy Black and actually make use of the cards in that color.
Next week, a Vintage article that I promise you won’t want to miss…
Matt Elias
[email protected]
Voltron00x on Xbox Live and SCG Forums