This past weekend was certainly packed with more Magic than any weekend I have had in a long time. I guess it’s a good precursor to the upcoming StarCityGames.com Open Series weekend coming up in August out here in Colorado. I’ll probably have to think harder, and get fed less free cheeseburgers, but the potential reward is a lot higher. I’ll just have to suck it up.
Ahem. Where was I?
Right, free cheeseburgers. Our local gaming shop and Friday Night Magic destination here in Colorado Springs, Compleat Games and Hobbies, was recently purchased by a couple of gentlemen who have since really gone out of their way to grow the local Magic community. We went from having maybe a dozen players at Friday Night Magic, to them being able to host two FNMs at opposite ends of town, and pulling in 25 to 30 people at each one. In a nod to the great Magic community, and a way to pull at everyone’s competitive heartstrings, they decided to run out the old “city championship” gauntlet and host a Compleat Challenge: Three days, three formats, individual prize support for each format but with a plaque and an additional prize for the overall winner.
Now, I love this idea, but you’ve got to pick the right formats. Obviously you need three formats that will allow (and appeal to!) enough players to play all three formats so it legitimately gives you an idea of who the city “champ” is – but you also need to be sure to pick formats that test a wide variety of skill sets. The owners settled on Standard (the usual format for FNM, which would probably be the biggest turnout on Friday and let people just play FNM like normal if they so desired), Rise of the Eldrazi draft, and EDH (a third “fun” format, which as you’ll see is less than “fun” here in the Spring).
Big Red (or, Invaders From MARS!)
After playing to a miserable 4-4 finish at the previous weekend’s PTQ playing (of all things) Jund, I resolved to play something a little more “Johnny” for the first leg of the Compleat Challenge. Deckstorming accomplice Rick Ashby and I had built a Valakut-based control deck about six weeks prior to this that I liked a lot, but hadn’t had any chance to really test out aside from playing enough games against UW Tap Out to learn that … well, it pretty much wrecked UW Tapout.
3 Bogardan Hellkite
3 Siege-Gang Commander
2 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
4 Everflowing Chalice
3 Seer’s Sundial
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Burst Lightning
3 Forked Bolt
3 All is Dust
2 Earthquake
2 Lavaball Trap
2 Chandra Nalaar
18 Mountain
4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Eye of Ugin
Sideboard:
4 Magma Phoenix
3 Pithing Needle
3 Dragon’s Claw
1 Platinum Angel
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Artisan of Kozilek
… and two cards that I’m forgetting, evidently.
What I like about this deck: It provides you with the removal / uncounterable win condition of Valakut, without struggling to protect it like the old red-green Valakut Ramp deck did at times. All is Dust gives you a great way to reset the board AND get back any Valakuts that may have been turned into Islands. With 27 lands, Seer’s Sundial is almost always going to draw you an additional card every turn, without overly hampering your board position – you can find turns where the board is clear and you can draw an extra card and still put out a Chalice or a Commander. The inevitability of Valakut means that even if all you’re doing in a turn is playing a land and playing a removal spell, you still are advancing your end-game plan by getting the Mountain count up. For that reason, it’s almost always correct to just keep playing Mountains over Eldrazi Temples unless you have an absolute need to cast All is Dust immediately.
We went back and forth between Flame Slash and Forked Bolt for our third burn spell for a while, starting out with Flame Slash because it kills things like Putrid Leech (absolutely kills it) and Rhox War Monk. As Vengevine started to dominate the format, we found that being able to kill a pair of mana-producing dorks was simply a better value – and the fact that you could point it at Jace, the Mind Sculptor or even your opponent’s face was just gravy.
The sideboard: Magma Phoenix was a test for the sideboard against Jund. Locally I’ve seen good results with it; unfortunately for me, in my three matches against Jund (at an FNM!), I never saw a single Magma Phoenix, so I really can’t say whether it’s tremendous or just okay. I like that it can’t be killed for any kind of value by Jund, and that it sweeps away Master of the Wild Hunt and all his little lupine buddies. Pithing Needle is for Time Sieve (yes, that also gets played locally at FNM) and for Planeswalkers. Dragon’s Claw is because the RDW matchup looks sketchy, especially if they come out fast, and you get double-value from it since you’re also casting Red spells. Platinum Angel and the other Eldrazi can be fetched by Eye of Ugin; Platinum Angel is great against Mono-Green.
I know the last two sideboard slots are NOT Goblin Ruinblasters, which is probably what I would look at as a second way to fight Jund.
My results after six rounds of Standard: 3-3. I played against three Jund decks and only won one of those matchups; it seems like, well, like my game against Faeries back when they were in Standard – I built a LOT of decks that were great against non-Faeries, but needed 12 sideboard slots to fight against Faeries and even then it was still likely I’d lose. My other loss was against another Mono-Red control deck where I had two Dragon’s Claws on the board and missed multiple triggers, and got Fireballed for exactsies. I also defeated Vampires and another aggro-based deck that escapes me at this time. It wasn’t a stellar performance, but it kept me in the running going into Saturday’s draft.
Saturday Night’s All Right For Rising
Starting out Saturday, I felt fairly confident that I would be able to run a good draft. My table included both of the store owners – neither of which had ever drafted before. But I did have experienced drafters on my left and right, which meant that I might be fighting for the really good stuff.
My first pack had a Heat Ray, a few other playable red cards, and not much else. I’m pretty sure that the Heat Ray is still the right pick; the pack had no other removal, and I could splash the Heat Ray and let my neighbors fight over the rest of the Red cards in the draft. I ended up Blue-Green without any real bombs, but a good number of Umbras and (let’s be honest) a bad number of creatures.
I did open a Sarkhan the Mad, though, so I probably broke even on the draft.
The premise of the deck actually works: Stick a guy or two with a decent body to start with (like the Blue or Green Invoker), put a Drake or Snake Umbra on him, and start going to town. The limited removal meant that I had to use my Umbras to make bigger creatures to dissuade attacking. And work it did … except against opponents who had Dawnglare Invokers, which apparently were in plentiful abundance in our draft. I won against all three opponents who didn’t have Dawnglare Invokers, and lost to the two guys who drafted two and three Dawnglare Invokers respectively. I finished 3-2, but still only 9 points off of the top.
Erayo Sunshine
The format for Sunday’s deciding rounds: Elder Dragon Highlander. One-on-one, best two out of three games, one hour time limit. We followed the “official” banned list — even though there are some “Spike” players locally who have made extraordinarily powerful one-on-one decks, we don’t have the organization to determine what’s “unfun” locally and ban it.
I chose Erayo for two reasons: One, she’s more powerful as a general in one-on-one (since you attract less group hate), and two, I felt she fought better against the strategies I knew would be in play amongst the other competitors. I can post the list in the forums if anyone’s interested.
What I was NOT prepared for, however, was the impact Erayo would have on the time limit. I went to time three times in five rounds, and all of those probably would have been draws, but in this combined format, draws didn’t help either player, so I did concede two of them to go 2-2-1 in this format.
…
A quick aside: I just arrived in Missoula, Montana, finishing the first leg of a road trip from Colorado Springs to Seattle for a wedding this weekend. I checked the official spoilers for Thursday. Fauna Shaper is kinda nuts! I wonder how many people will be discarding Vengevines to Fauna Shaper over the next year of Standard?
…
At the end of the weekend, I was a combined 8-7-1, middle of the pack, and exhausted of Magic. It certainly makes me more amazed by people who can play this game at a high level over multiple multi-day weekends.
Next week: Let’s see what else M11 has to offer!
Until next week…
Dave