It’s 2am…
I’m sitting here in front of my computer doing what I usually do on the days leading up to a tournament.
Stare at a large pile of cards.
Endlessly.
This night, I was staring at Jeskai cards. Mantis Rider, Seeker of the Way, sure. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx? Ephara, God of the Polis? Heliod, God of the Sun?
What am I doing? In the pile next to it, we have Butcher of the Horde, Flamewake Phoenix, and Savage Knuckleblade along with a full set of Mana Confluence
and about six or seven copies of Chord of Calling. Don’t ask why I had that many there.
It wasn’t that I was trying to build a deck or anything. I was trying to build pieces. I wasn’t really going deep, as going deep implies that you’re
actually going forward with what you’re doing. I was mainly just studying. I know it sounds weird, but it’s very similar to that college student we all
know; the one that has papers and books and probably a laptop scattered all over his or her desk or bed or dining room table, just trying to cram as much
information as possible into their head so that when that test does come around, they’ll know at least a good portion of the information they studied has
been absorbed and ready to utilize.
Standard is a lot of hands-on homework when actually preparing for it, with one exception: the (analogously speaking) “books” you’re using to study with
will most likely change and update each and every day you open it. You won’t know what exactly changes. That’s up to you to figure out. Often times, it’s
best to just get kind of close to where you think the changes will be in the book and/or use the information given in the previous book to semi-predict
what the next edition of that book will contain. Sometimes you may need to look at more than one book. Sometimes you can’t use books at all. It’s all a
matter of how much you’re able to go with the information given to you and how well you’re able to utilize said information for your upcoming test.
All of that said, I was looking for information for the sake of looking for information. I’m a sponge for learning for the sake of learning. Even if I’m
going to forget 90 percent of the things I picked up, the other ten percent could mean the difference.
I think the biggest hurdle for me when it comes to learning things is the actual feeling that I’m learning things. That “level up” feeling is such a
powerful thing to be able to grasp, but you don’t get that feeling every time you learn something. It might be because of the perception of learning one
thing compared to another. It might be because of timing, the circumstances in which such a learning opportunity erects itself. I’m sure there are way more
factors than just these, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet.
It’s 3:45am, and I’m staring at seven copies of Mana Confluence, an Act on Impulse, a bottle of seltzer water, and three white-bordered Lightning Bolts.
Yeah, time for bed…
I wake up to a bird flying into my window.
Poor bird.
I roll over to see Mark Nestico won a PTQ, probably pulling a Goldberg and Jackhammering everyone in the process, theme playing, pyros and all. He was on
R/W Aggro, a deck that absolutely dominated the Thursday IQ I attended. Was splashing blue for Mantis Rider really worth it? The amount of Temples you had
to play was such a huge turn off. I would wrestle around with theorycrafting and my own thoughts for the entirety of the day.
Then I’d pop into Chris VanMeter’s stream and watch as he and Mark would beat the ever-loving crap out of Jeskai and all of their opponents in a daily. I
would say in chat shortly after:
“Brb sleeving up this deck.”
Creatures (17)
- 4 Stormbreath Dragon
- 2 Hushwing Gryff
- 4 Goblin Rabblemaster
- 2 Ashcloud Phoenix
- 4 Seeker of the Way
- 1 Soulfire Grand Master
Lands (24)
Spells (19)
Mark stated that you’d have to reimagine the manabase to really consider Brimaz, King of Oreskos, but I think it doesn’t take much more than an additional
land in the sideboard. I want to sidestep any possibility of getting Valorous Stanced as well, so I’m intentionally leaving them in the board. I want Magma
Spray over Wild Slash to handle Phoenixes for the most part. Yes, I make my Soulfire Grand Master a bit weaker, but who cares? Abzan Advantage gets the nod
over Erase because of how much the counter winds up mattering in the mirror. You want to be playing to the board or to their life total with every spell
you have, so I don’t want to end up with a spell that doesn’t do anything at all when I need to keep the action going. These are all very cosmetic changes
that aren’t going to make a huge impact most of the time but also shouldn’t be skimped on. I’m not big on making big non-cosmetic changes to decks I
haven’t worked on as much as someone I trust, and I trust Mark and Chris greatly.
Remember, even changing a single card to something else entirely is a big deal. There are very real things that you lose big time by going from a four-of
to a three-of, or a one-of to a two-of. Treat every single card in your deck as an individual piece, and don’t think that it’s okay to shave or touch on to
cards just because three is not that big of a difference than four. It is a big difference. It always will be. Don’t neglect that. It is not the same deck.
It is different. Work on it all over again if you’re changing anything.
It’s 5:30 am on Friday…
I wake up to the sound of one of my walls leaking water, eroding, and crumbling apart from the inside…That ain’t good.
Ugh…
I guess I should work on Modern for a bit…
I had an Elite IQ the day after Regionals, and I knew that Geist of Saint Traft was going to be in my deck. I just didn’t know which among the roughly six
Geist of Saint Traft decks I was going to run with. I didn’t care much about the Pro Tour affecting things. People are going to play what they have, and
that is that. I hardly expected many others to adjust that quickly and try to metagame for the actual Pro Tour top 8 in an IQ, so if anything, I felt more
free to do what I wanted.
I was feeling the G/W Hate Bears deck for a bit, but I wanted to be more aggressive and have more explosiveness out of the gates. I couldn’t really find a
hybridization of the Zoo decks and the Hate Bears decks like I wanted, but I knew I could play a Zoo deck with a Hate Bear sideboard, which I was fine
with. I was also much less focused on this IQ than Regionals, so I decided to only spend a day working on the format and let things settle how they settle.
Zoo was looking more and more like the deck to play for me, but the ridiculous number of options was intimidating. Do I go the full five colors for Siege
Rhino instead of four and a half? How big do I want to be? Do I even want Tribal Flames? I probably want Ghor-Clan Rampager, but what about Elspeth? If
there’s a lot of Lingering Souls, then Chandra, Pyromaster may be better.
Of course you’d say that.
Then there’s the manabase. I want Kessig Wolf Run, and that’s not even up for debate. How much damage can we afford to take if we do play Siege Rhino?
Would we still want Lightning Helix if we play Rhino? Likely not, but Snapcaster Mage gets more attractive.
What about the sideboard? I already knew I wanted hate bears in the board, but Thundermaw Hellkite is probably going to make the cut too, as it’s what I
want to be doing when Lingering Souls is big and when things slow down. Dark Confidant is an option against combo decks, and countermagic is pretty nice
too, specifically Spell Pierce.
Maybe I should call this deck “Lowry’s Greatest Hits,” because I’m probably just going to jam all of my favorite cards anyway, and they’re all going to be
good.
Creatures (25)
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 4 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 2 Snapcaster Mage
- 4 Geist of Saint Traft
- 4 Loxodon Smiter
- 2 Ghor-Clan Rampager
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (20)
Spells (13)
You know, if Lingering Souls gets popular, I know just the card for that…
Crap. I need to figure out what’s going on with Standard!
The Hushwing Gryff in the maindeck was a statement. I wanted to beat all the green decks floating around, and that was the card to do it. The only other
three-drop that’s on the table is Monastery Mentor, and that card sucks.
No, for real. It’s not good.
The problem with Monastery Mentor in R/W Aggro is that it doesn’t directly translate to any sort of pressure. It takes a little while for it to get going,
and you can’t afford to waste time like that. Yes, I’m sure that some people have “had good results” in their testing, but what does that mean anyway? A
card can look good in testing, but that doesn’t mean it actually is good; does it mean you can’t do better? It’s one thing if you’re playing the card in a
deck like Jeskai Tokens, where you can afford to take the turn off to cast cards that are absurdly busted anyway, while also complementing the Mentor, but
here, you aren’t doing anything complementary, you’re just playing a three mana 2/2. Maybe if we play it out of the board…
Wait…First round pairings are up already!?
This’ll be fun…
Wait, no, it’s only 7am, and I dozed off…
Back to work!