Last week I made the semifinals of a PTQ in Cost Mesa, CA, playing a Heartbeat of Spring/Gifts Ungiven deck I worked on with Rob Owen. Being an absolute mastermind when it comes to deck titles, I dubbed this creation Rob.dec. After the results of GP: Minneapolis, I was still convinced the deck was strong enough to qualify with, so I brought it to another PTQ in Mesa, Arizona.
The Road to Los Angeles, Week 3: July 17-23
Brendan has to stay home and watch his sister this weekend, so Rob and I will be making the six-hour trip ourselves.
Driving across the desert is more interesting this time than it was two weeks ago, because there are lightning storms this time. The jagged bolts flashing across the night sky are pretty cool the first few times, but they soon become jarring to my eyes and more annoying than anything else.
Once the desert gets tired of dealing three damage for one Red mana, I call up Andrej Selivra to see if he’s going to be making the tournament. He says that he will be arriving in Mesa around three in the morning with Jack Dobbins, a Chicago-area player who is down for the summer. I offer to let them crash in our hotel room, and they accept.
Saturday morning comes all too early. Jack and Andrej split off in search of a doughnut house, while Rob and I settle for a close-at-hand Subway. The steak they use on my sandwich looks a bit… old, but I power it down anyway.
This quickly proves to be my biggest misplay of the day.
The tournament site is literally three blocks, a left turn, and two more blocks away from the Subway, but I just do not make it. I have to pull over, stick my head out the side of the car, and start throwing up in the street. With the entire contents of my stomach now relocated to the pavement, we proceed to the PTQ.
Jack and Andrej join us in the parking lot, where we happen upon Jerret Rocha, another Chicago-area player who just happened to be in Arizona over the summer. Jerret is bringing G/W Control to the tournament, Andrej is with Matt Sperling crazy Gifts variant, Jack has White Weenie, and Rob and I are of course playing Rob.dec.
The Tournament
I’ll discuss specific choices later on in the article; for right now I’ll just relate the list I registered.
Rob.dec
**23 Land**
9 Forest
1
“>Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
5 Plains
5 Swamp
2
“>Tendo Ice Bridge
1 Island
**8 Fatties**
3
“>Myojin of Cleansing Fire
3
“>Myojin of Night’s Reach
1
“>Yosei, the Morning Star
1 Kagemaro, First to Suffer
**9 Gifts Package**
4
“>Gifts Ungiven
1
“>Hana Kami
1
“>Footsteps of the Goryo
1
“>Soulless Revival
1
“>Exile into Darkness
1 Cranial Extraction
**11 Accelerants**
4
“>Kodama’s Reach
4
“>Sakura-Tribe Elder
3 Heartbeat of Spring
**9 Utility**
4
“>Sensei’s Divining Top
3
“>Final Judgment
2 Time of Need
Sideboard:
4
“>Hero’s Demise
4
“>Hisoka’s Defiance
4
“>Nezumi Shortfang
1
“>Heartbeat of Spring
1
“>Horobi’s Whisper
1 Final Judgment
Round 1: Ben LoBrutto playing Gifts Ungiven
I start off with a Divining Top and acceleration, while he just keeps making land drops. This means I get to play Mind Twist Myojin before he even has a nonland permanent down, putting me in a rather favorable position. My Divining Top happens to dig up my one Extraction, so I get rid of his Gifts Ungiven and note that he is playing a card-for-card copy of Herberholz’s Gifts deck from GP: Minneapolis. Now that he has been Mind Twisted and can no longer use Gifts to recoup his lost card advantage, I win handily.
Game two takes a bit longer, as he has a second-turn Shortfang to match my sixth turn Black Myojin. We clear out each others’ hands, but after a few shuffles my Top serves up a Gifts for the Yosei lock and the win.
1-0
Round 2: Richmund Wenzel playing White Weenie
Game one is easy. He plays out two guys before I Black Myojin him, so all I have to do is Wrath and play some beaters to finish him off.
Game two he gets stuck on two land, while I Wrath and get rid of the Hand of Honor he plays on the next turn using Whisper spliced onto Kodama’s Reach. Richmund is disappointed to learn that Whisper spliced onto Reach can very much target Hand of Honor, and he scoops as soon as I get recurring Whisper going.
2-0
Round 3: Justin Verdugo playing Gifts Ungiven
I tell you what, if I do eventually qualify for PT: Los Angeles, I can only hope I play as vigilantly there as Benjamin does in his PTQs. This guy knows exactly what was going on at all times with the game state. He keeps constant track of how many cards I have in hand, how many lands I have in play, whether I have played my land for the turn… nobody’s going to cheat this guy any time soon, that’s for sure.
Anyway, in game one I execute my usual plan of ramping up to Black Myojin. Benjamin attacks with a Tribe Elder and turns it into an Ink-Eyes, allowing him to come in for an extra four points early and reanimate my Tribe Elder. He punches me one more time with the Rat Ninja before I play Black Myojin and clear out his hand, then throw my exhausted Myojin in front of Ink-Eyes to save some damage and to put the Myojin in my graveyard before I reset the board with Final Judgment.
I beat back with White Myojin and Time of Need for Yosei. The Dragon gets destroyed at some point, allowing me to Gifts for the lock while still having a 4/6 in play. Benjamin scoops as soon as I demonstrate one iteration of the lock.
As we are shuffling for game two, my stomach starts churning. We’re now into the afternoon and I’m really starting to feel the loss of that Subway sandwich. Hopefully either I or someone else in our troupe will drop soon, so that a food run can be organized.
Game two is epic. Benjamin casts an early Gifts for Cranial Extraction, Nezumi Graverobber, Nezumi Shortfang, and Death Denied. I have no answer to either of the Rats, but I do have a Black Myojin ready and waiting, so I give him Death Denied and Extraction. If memory serves, he holds off on the Extraction in favor of playing Death Denied for his two Rats, and I clear out his hand with Black Myojin before he gets to play them.
It’s not over yet, though. Ben Tops into Gifts Ungiven, allowing him to refuel. The next few turns see us going back and forth with our Tops, beating our heads together with various threats and answers. I end up expending a White Myojin, a Black Myojin, and I think another Final Judgment throughout the course of these exchanges.
Ben eventually gets a Shortfang to stick, and also plays and flips a Graverobber. I play another threat of some sort, and time is called. Ben Tops into a Meloku that will alpha me for the win on the next turn if I cannot deal with it.
I am holding onto Gifts Ungiven for dear life when Ben activates his Shortfang, so I swap my Top for the top card of my library and discard that instead. I cast the Gifts on his end step to fetch all the remaining Wrath effects out of my deck: White Myojin, Time of Need, Soulless Revival, Final Judgment. I untap, Soulless Revival my White Myojin, Wrath the table, and win the match 1-0 when Ben can no longer kill me in the allotted extra turns. Whew.
3-0
Round 4: Riad Mourssali playing Heartbeat of Spring
Game one I have a Top in play and am getting ready to do my Black Myojin thing, as usual. I lead with a Kodama’s Reach, fetching the second and third Swamp required for my Myojin. I am holding a Gifts Ungiven, but plan on picking up the Island for it using my second Reach. Imagine my surprise when Riaj counters the Blue-fetching Reach with Hisoka’s Defiance. Maindeck Defiance? I definitely wasn’t expecting that…
I still manage to resolve my Black Myojin, but I have to do it after playing a Heartbeat because I have no other eighth land source. My draws dry up, giving me stuff like Final Judgment and White Myojin rather than something that can fetch a Blue source for Gifts into recurring Cranial Extraction, while Riaj almost immediately topdecks Time of Need for Blue Myojin. He draws nine cards and I lose shortly thereafter.
I board out my Heartbeats and some Wrath effects for four Shortfangs and four Hisoka’s Defiance. Riaj plays an early-ish Heartbeat, leaving three Islands untapped. At this point I am holding Black Myojin and a Yosei that I Time of Needed for. I untap and play Yosei to try and bait the counter. Riaj stops it with the second Hisoka’s Defiance of the game.
The odds of him having a third Defiance seem low, and since he only has two untapped Islands remaining, the odds of him playing a Time Stop are zero. I play my land for the turn and announce Black Myojin. Riaj counters with… Hinder! Blown out.
Now I am completely tapped out, and the Hisoka’s Defiance in my hand watches from the sidelines as Riaj untaps and drops Blue Myojin for the win.
3-1
I sign the results slip and stand up. It’s now been practically 24 hours since I’ve (successfully) eaten anything, and I am starting to get a bit dizzy. I definitely need to get some food soon, as the discomfort is now becoming distracting enough to affect my play.
Round 5: Danny Smith playing White Weenie
Game one I receive my first lifetime Procedural Error when I forget to draw my card for the turn after activating Divining Top on my upkeep. We call over a judge to count permanents and confirm that I did, in fact, miss my draw step and was not trying to cheat my way into an extra card, but since I have already entered my attack step before realizing my mistake, I will not be allowed to back up and draw it. Luckily my opponent’s draw this game is unspectacular, so this midgame mulligan on my part does not prevent me from winning anyway.
In game two, my draw is atrocious. I have to shuffle away my Top before casting a Kodama’s Reach just to get something to stay alive, and after a flurry of action I finally stabilize my position with Heartbeat and White Myojin in play.
I then begin topdecking Forest after Forest while needing only a Blue source for the Gifts I am holding to end the game with a Footsteps lock in conjunction with the Yosei already in my graveyard. I start beating down with White Myojin. I am at four life at this point, so a draw of Shining Shoal outright wins the game for my opponent. I don’t know if it was my stomach talking or what, but somehow I get it into my head that I have to beat down for the win with my White Myojin at all costs, and start recklessly pumping him with Okina and burning for one each time because of my Heartbeat in order to attack for five instead of four and increase my clock by a turn.
I burn down to 2 life after attacking him to 10, when he plays a Cage of Hands on my Myojin, He follows that up with a Kami of Ancient Law that I have to wrath away since I’m at 2 (it kills my Heartbeat on the way out), and then he plays Promise of Bunrei. I keep drawing Forests. He plays Isamaru. I draw Kodama’s Reach, fetch the Island I have been waiting for so long to get, go for the lock and… end up one mana short of executing it. Instead of merely attacking me to 2 life, Isamaru comes across for the kill because of my foolish mana burning earlier.
In game three I mulligan into a six-carder that features a Plains and five spells that aren’t Divining Top. My five-carder contains zero land, and when I go to four (on the play, mind you) and still do not see any land I concede the match (spoiling my 5-0 sanctioned match record against White Weenie) and drop from the tournament at 3-2. I then stagger off to my car and hightail it to the nearest Wendy’s for the best-tasting meal I’ve ever eaten.
I meet up with Jack and Rob after I get back. Rob has just picked up his second loss and dropped from the tournament, but Jack is still in contention at 4-1-1. At some point in our conversation together someone wants to get Andrej’s attention, so Jack calls over to the adjacent table where he is playing.
Jack: “Hey, Post!” (Andrej doesn’t hear him.)
Rob: “Post? What the hell?”
Jack: “His nickname is Lamp Post.”
Rob: “Lamp Post? More like Cloudpost!” (Calling over to Andrej) “Hey you damn Locus, how ’bout you tap for some colorless mana?”
This still fails to get his attention, so Rob and I wait until his match is over to inform him that we have dropped and are heading back.
Rob’s laptop picks up some wireless internet action at the hotel, so we look up a nearby movie theater in which to watch Wedding Crashers. Jack and Andrej come back to the hotel defeated, so we head out to the theater to raise our spirits.
Rob, Jack, and I order our tickets without incident, but as we are getting ready to head over to Chick Fil-A for dinner, we notice a very angry Andrej yelling at the ticket vendor. He snatches up his ticket and storms over.
Andrej: “That bitch just carded me! She thought I was under 17!”
Rob: (Laughing) “Does this mean you’ll be needing a high chair for dinner?”
Andrej: “Like, she even carded me right after I used my college ID to get a student discount!”
Me: “Don’t worry, man. I think Chick Fil-A has a kids’ menu.”
We joke around about it for a bit more, eat, and go watch the movie.
Wedding Crashers is hilarious, so we end the night in high spirits despite the fact that none of us made top eight.
Lessons Learned
I took several important things away from this tournament.
First, and foremost, don’t eat bad food for breakfast. Despite having thrown up that sandwich, I figured I’d be able to tough it out for the rest of the day and just play normally while being somewhat hungry, but I failed to realize how very long a Magic tournament lasts. When each round is about an hour long, hunger has a way of expanding very quickly as the Swiss progresses. Next time I’ll be sure to eat at a more reputable breakfast establishment, and to make sure what I eat stays down all the way to the site.
More importantly, this tournament gave me a brand new respect for the importance of tight play and surprising card choices.
Had I played tightly and not opted to mana burn in order to pump my Myojin, I would have won round 4. Had I been prepared for maindeck Hisoka’s Defiance, I would have won game 1 of Round 5. Had I known to play around a sideboarded Hinder, I would have won game 2 of round 5.
My overall record was 3-2, but I was one play away from 4-1, and only three plays away from 5-0.
Look at my Round 4 match. I lost game 1 quite literally because Riaj was playing Hisoka’s Defiance in the maindeck and I was not expecting it. I knew that he was playing a Heartbeat deck going into the match, but I did not consider the possibility that it would Rich Hoaen build with the maindeck Defiances. At the GP: Minneapolis coverage it was stated that Rich “decided to play a fun deck in order to get knocked out quickly so we could do some drafting,” so I assumed that no one would take this “fun deck” to a PTQ. This left me pretty much in the dark as to what cards to expect from its maindeck and sideboard.
And you know what? That’s exactly why I lost to it.
Had I been expecting maindeck Defiance, I would have fetched an Island with my first Reach, and used my Divining Top to find a third Black source via a Heartbeat, a Swamp, or another color fixer. Any of those would have been easier to turn up than the one Island in my deck, so I certainly would have played it that way had the thought ever crossed my mind that the second Reach might not resolve.
In the second game, I did not even consider the possibility that people might be boarding in Hinder, and once again I was blown out by it.
There are a lot of cards in Kamigawa that have comparable effects overall to the format’s usual threats and answers, but which actually do something very subtly different. Some of these become difficult or impossible to play around when one is expecting the stock threat or answer instead.
I’ll play around Hisoka’s Defiance all day, but if I lose a critical Gifts Ungiven to a Hinder I wasn’t expecting, I may very well lose because of it. Or maybe I’ll play Kodama’s Reach splicing Soulless Revival, thinking that play will let me get back my Hana Kami without putting my Revival in jeopardy of getting hit by Hisoka’s Defiance or Hinder… then I get blown out by Minamo’s Meddling.
Provided you’ve got the Blue sources to cast any of them, Hinder is slightly slower than Hisoka’s Defiance and Minamo’s Meddling is slightly slower than Hinder. However, the side benefit they confer of offering your opponent the opportunity to wreck himself is potentially much greater than the effect printed on the card.
At the recent GP: Niigata, a reporter asked Top 8 competitor Suhan Yoon to “Tell us about your deck. Anything special?” His reply?
“People weren’t expecting the counters from the sideboard.”
I wonder how many matches that fact alone won him. Enough to put him in the Top 8, apparently.
In addition to tightening up my play for next weekend, I’ll be scouting around for ways to surprise my opponents at the next PTQ with cards they won’t be prepared for.
The Environment
Not surprisingly, after Gifts did well at GP: Minneapolis, more people started playing Gifts at the PTQs that followed. Still, I’d be surprised if the qualifier metagame turned on its head and become suddenly dominated by control decks as a result. Gifts is a difficult deck to just pick up and win with, and besides, White Weenie is still a very strong choice against the rest of the metagame.
When I was at the 3-0 table at this PTQ, I was paired against basically the only non-White Weenie player at the table. There was a White Weenie mirror match taking place on either side of me, another White Weenie mirror two seats down to my right, and another match two seats to my left that finished so quickly I had to assume at least one of them was with WW. For the time being, it would seem that WW is still the top dog at the PTQs.
To me, the success of Gifts at Minneapolis just means that now there is an established “pure” control deck in this environment, whereas previously the only mainstream slow deck competing with White Weenie and Black Hand was the G/W/u TOGIT deck.
The Deck
For the third week in a row, I’ll be taking Rob.dec to the PTQ this Saturday. Having five Black Myojins main and a Gifts that is instantly lethal if I can get Yosei in the grumper is spectacular against the other Gifts decks, and at the same time the deck’s matchup against White Weenie is fantastic. There’s really nothing at all I don’t like about this deck.
I dropped in a Kagemaro in place of a Judgment for this PTQ, because they do functionally the same thing against WW, and the ability to tutor up extra Footsteps-recurrable Wraths with Time of Need sounded appealing.
In retrospect, I should have just stuck with the fourth Judgment. The problem I had with Kagemaro was that he made me spend my early color fixers digging out Black sources, when that was the last thing I wanted to be doing against White Weenie. In that matchup I need early White for Final Judgment and White Myojin, and if I spend all my early mana development fishing out Swamps for Kagemaro, I am giving White Weenie an awful lot of time to rebuild while I finish assembling my mana base.
Exile into Darkness, on the other hand, was every bit as good as advertised against the two White Weenie players I played. I didn’t miss the Ethereal Haze lock at any point during the day.
The maindeck Extraction and sideboarded Hisoka’s Defiances were the result of further testing against the Gifts mirror. Countering six-to-eight mana Spirits with the two-mana Defiance was a fantastically efficient use of mana, and Extraction was useful in setting up the Yosei lock. The thing about the Yosei lock is that you can’t attain it using only one Gifts Ungiven. If you Gifts for Yosei, Hana Kami, Soulless Revival, and Footsteps of the Goryo, the only way you can get the lock going is if your opponent is foolish enough to put Yosei in the graveyard for you. If he hands you Yosei and any other card, you now have to play the Dragon, get the Dragon killed, and then find another Arcane spell to splice Soulless Revival onto to get both lock components back in your hand. Ugh.
We discovered it was much better to consider the Yosei lock a two-card combo. One of the combo pieces is getting Yosei in the graveyard, and the other is casting Gifts for Soulless Revival, Hana Kami, Footsteps of the Goryo, and another Arcane spell (like Cranial Extraction). From that position, you can rearrange things using Splice and whatnot such that you end up with Footsteps of the Goryo and Soulless Revival in hand, at which point you are all set to execute the lock.
You can set up this situation in a number of ways.
The easiest way is to start out with a Gifts for recurring Cranial Extraction. Realistically you won’t be able to loop it more than twice, because by then your opponent will usually have put something on the table that you will have to deal with. Still, even just executing it once to get rid of your opponent’s Gifts is great, because it makes it all but impossible for him to recover from an encounter with Black Myojin. Once you find a second Gifts Ungiven, you can cast it for Yosei and a land (or an Exile into Darkness if you have a Heartbeat out and are worried about Graverobber), and deliberately fail to find two other cards. This will put Yosei in the graveyard, at which point you use Hana Kami to return Footsteps of the Goryo instead of Cranial Extraction, and begin looping that instead for the win.
That being said, the preferred way to set up the Yosei lock is to just Time of Need for Yosei and play him. Since the primary spot-removal cards of the Splice decks these days are Sickening Shoal and Kiku’s Shadow, putting a Yosei on the table usually means he’s either headed for the graveyard soon, or will stay on the board and kill the opponent by himself. As soon as your opponent gets him into the graveyard, every Gifts Ungiven you ever draw is essentially lethal within a turn or two of your casting it.
One more thing.
Rob, being Rob and all, insisted upon playing Sway of the Stars and Maga, Traitor to Mortals at the PTQ. He went 3-2 as well, losing one game to a double-mana screw draw and another to a burn deck that he was unable to race.
Rob insisted to me that Maga was a clutch finisher for him all day, so at his behest I’ll add one back into the sideboard and see how it fares in testing.
For the upcoming week I’ll be working on the following.
Creatures (12)
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 1 Yosei, the Morning Star
- 3 Myojin of Night's Reach
- 3 Myojin of Cleansing Fire
- 1 Hana Kami
Lands (23)
Spells (25)
I’ll also be on the lookout for some surprise card to work into the sideboard, probably in place of the Shortfangs. Those were mainly in as insurance against that mono-blue deck that placed at Minneapolis, and nobody ended up playing that at the tournament. (Or if they did, they may have just been run over in the early rounds by the hordes of White Weenie that showed up.)
That’s it for this week. Drop me a line in the forums if there’s something you’d like to see added to the next installment of the series.
Until next time!
Richard Feldman
Team Check Minus
[email protected]