The best-laid plans o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft a-gley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promised joy.
To A Mouse, by Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796)
It was my intention that this report be a recount of my triumphant return to the Top 4 for Virginia Two-Headed Giant Champs, and with a little luck perhaps even being able to recount my victory. I had even done a fair amount of practice on the fresh and new 2HG Draft format, figuring that would give me an edge, since I figured most teams would not have bothered nor had time to practice the format yet. There were a few tidbits of knowledge my teammate Jay and I had gleaned that I thought would serve us well… but I think perhaps we were putting the cart before the horse. First we had to survive the Sealed deck portion of the Swiss.
Ah, the best-laid plans… Saturday was a grim reminder of everything I loathe about Sealed deck…
It started out as it so typically does, when you register a sealed pool that you are going to be giving to someone else. And as it so typically is, the pool you register is absolutely ridiculous. It started with a Ping-o-rama, including 2 Prodigal Pyromancers, a Prodigal Sorcerer, and a Fledgling Mawcor. It then stepped up to Pyrohemia, Magus of the Disk, and Akroma, Angel of Fury and went on from there, rolling around and pouring out love in an orgiastic revel of broken cards. Love that would be going to some other team.
I should have known that was a sign of bad things to come. But I tried to remain optimistic. We had a cool name: Frog Level Yacht Club. When we got our real card pool, I saw the glass as half full. We had some strong cards – Oros the Avenger was a definite bomb, and Torchling was no joke. I thought we had a fair amount of removal. By the end of the day though, I found that not only was our cup actually half empty, but the contents of the half-empty cup were actually kinda warm and flat, like the remains of a bottle of Diet Pepsi that had been left out in your car for a couple of days.
Here are the decks we ran:
Frog Level Yacht Club, Player A
2 Rift Bolt
2 Subterranean Shambler
1 Flowstone Channeler
1 Stormfront Riders
1 Prismatic Lens
1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
1 Shade of Trokair
1 Whitemane Lion
1 Candles of Leng
1 Castle Raptors
1 Tivadar of Thorn
1 Torchling
1 Riftmarked Knight
1 Thunder Totem
2 Cloudchaser Kestrel
1 Oros, the Avenger
1 Saltfield Recluse
1 Conflagrate
1 Sudden Shock
1 Saltblast
1 Hammerheim Deadeye
1 Vesuva
2 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Swamp
6 Mountain
7 Plains
Frog Level Yacht Club, Deck B
2 Thallid Germinator
1 Magus of the Library
1 Ashcoat Bear
1 Shaper Parasite
1 Drifter Il-Dal
1 Harmonize
1 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1 Piracy Charm
1 Citanul Woodreaders
1 Uktabi Drake
1 Evolution Charm
1 Tolarian Sentinel
1 Mire Boa
1 Dismal Failure
1 Prodigal Sorcerer
1 Merfolk Thaumaturgist
1 Primal Plasma
1 Chameleon Blur
2 Snapback
1 Think Twice
1 Mirari
8 Island
9 Forest
Yeah, I know these decks are strictly bad, but they have some nice tricks; we’ve got the Tolarian Sentinel and Shaper Parasite combo; we’ve got the Merfolk Thaumaturgist and Saltfield Recluse combo between the two decks. Mirari helps get a lot of mileage out of the decent spells we have in Deck B. Deck A had a lot of late game oomph, such as Torchling, the Shade, Conflagrate… but the change in starting life totals made late game bombs much more risky. I mean, you have to play those cards because the games often do go to the late game and you often do have the time and mana to get them on line. However, it was also made apparent to me in brutal fashion that aggro and tempo strategies can also be effective, and put you so far on the back foot that even once you get one of your late game bombs online, it’s often too late. I know that Wizards did this on purpose in order to give aggro strategies more hope (and to also help make the tournaments run a little faster). But I got the sense that this change made the format feel much closer to regular Sealed deck, where tempo and early answers are critical to surviving long enough for your bombs to make a difference. On the surface, I thought that our deck had a fair amount of removal and early answers, but compared to what we saw getting played across the table, I think we came up dreadfully short.
Did we make mistakes that contributed to a match loss? Absolutely. Did we fall victim to some smart plays by our opponents? Of course. Still, I have to say the luster on the format has been tarnished a bit in my eyes. It just didn’t feel the same.
Of course, if we’d gotten a broken pool of cards and cruised to the Top 4 then I probably would have felt considerably different. Last year’s 2HG Champ and Pro Player Shaheen Soorani, who beat me in the finals, apparently got an absolutely ridiculous card pool which, coupled with his obvious play skills (along with those of his teammate) pretty well reserved a spot in the draft at the end of the day.
The day wasn’t a complete bummer for me, though. The owner of the local game shop has a daughter who teamed up with her boyfriend, and they got 5th place. While 5th place is a devil of a place to be, just missing the cut for the Top 4, I was still very pleased they had done so well and pointed out to them that 5th place out of 53 teams was an incredibly good performance. StarCityGames.com gave out lots of packs for the top teams outside of the Top 4, so they went home with some loot.
I did get to pass on my wisdom to a friend’s team who did make Top 4, and I hope it helped them in their draft. Here’s what I found that I thought was valuable:
- You have wiggle room for hate drafting. While you won’t be doing this early on, once you’ve solidified into your decks you may open up a bomb late in the draft that doesn’t fit into your deck, but you can be sure one of your opponents could use it. The first time I drafted the format, I stayed true to building the best two decks I could throughout the draft, but I ended up having to cut some fine cards due to having so many playables. I also ended up passing a Stormbind because I wasn’t playing Red in my decks. With what I know now, I would have picked the Stormbind and happily placed it in my sideboard, happy to know none of my opponents would wreck me with it.
- Pick mana fixers high. Yes, even higher than that. Mana fixers are crucial to maximizing your draft and making sure you can play just about every bomb and strong card you draft. There are not enough mana fixers to go around usually, so each one you take is one somebody else is not going to get. Remember when I said I had to cut good cards from my decks when I built them? Again, you have wiggle room to let “good” cards go over mana fixers. In one of my practice drafts, in the first pack I opened I picked Word of Seizing and Greenseeker as my 1st / 2nd picks and was happy to do so.
- If you go with the Sliver plan, do it early, from the very first pack if possible. There won’t typically be good slivers passed much, so you’ll need to open some gross slivers to make this work. If you are not on the Sliver plan, it’s safe to draft large Slivers since they are typically good on their own, and can get downright nasty if your opponent is playing lots of Slivers. In one draft I had a Stonebrow, so I ended up drafting three Battering Slivers and two Venser’s Sliver. Speaking of Venser’s Sliver, if you’re not on the Sliver plan, I think these should go a little higher than they typically go, since they are not unreasonably bad by themselves, but if your opponent is going with Slivers, you can benefit from their Slivers while giving nothing else in return.
During our first round bye, and in between some rounds when we finished early, Jay and I played around with two Standard decks I had brought with me. One was my Dredge deck, updated with Planar Chaos, and the deck I won a local Friday Night Magic sixteen-man event with recently. Here’s the current build for Dredge fans out there, along with a few points of interest:
Creatures (23)
- 2 Avatar of Woe
- 4 Wall of Roots
- 3 Mindless Automaton
- 2 Dimir House Guard
- 2 Golgari Thug
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 2 Indrik Stomphowler
- 4 Fa'adiyah Seer
Lands (24)
Spells (14)
Sideboard
Yes, Damnation is as good as advertised, and yes it’s expensive as hell and hard to find. Unfortunately, it is also very necessary to the deck. Dredge decks win by incrementally taking control of the game, utilizing the graveyard for a never-ending stream of useful cards. The strategy can often be overwhelmed by fast, aggressive creature decks. Damnation helps punish those decks in spades, and with Wall of Roots you can play it as soon as turn 3 if you need to. I used Dimir House Guard in the original Dredge deck I played at States two years back, to fetch Nekrataal, Nullmage Shepherd, or Nightmare Void. I remember when Mike Flores mentioned the deck in his Swimming with Sharks, and he had this to say:
“The selection is extreme in this case when we hit Dimir House Guard. I am sure that I am not alone in double-taking that particular 2/3 for four mana… In a Constructed deck?”
My main intention at the time was tutoring for a way to kill artifacts or enchantments, and Nullmage Shepherd was the best option at the time that was also a creature (critical for the times it gets Dredged into the graveyard and retrievable by Golgari Thug). Dimir House Guard himself was a creature you could get back with the Thug too. At the time he was an odd choice… but a few months later we had the “Beach House” B/W decks using House Guard to transmute for Wrath of God, Persecute, Cranial Extraction and other powerhouses. So now we come full circle, having Dimir House Guard transmuting for the new Wrath, Damnation!
The other flashy new Planar Chaos addition is Fa’adiyah Seer, a card I mentioned here in my review of Planar Chaos (for those who missed it before, if you replace the Seer’s draw ability with Dredge, you don’t have to discard anything because you didn’t technically draw a card). Now that I’ve logged a lot of games let me declare Fa’adiyah Seer as positively insane in this deck. Somebody watching one of the games we played at Champs said it was like you could Demonic Tutor for a Dredge card at instant speed, every single turn. If you get to use the Seer’s ability a few times in a game you will typically be way ahead in card advantage.
One last change to my philosophy of Dredge is a new emphasis on special lands. Everybody knows how good Life from the Loam is, and it’s a critical component in a Dredge deck, letting you Dredge each turn but still be able to develop your mana. We’ve now got some incredibly effective non-basic lands out there that effective weapons against a lot of decks. Mouth of Ronom puts the hammer down on Teferi, and to a lesser extent Dralnu (though the card advantage he gains might be able to weather sacrificing four permanents). Ghost Quarter breaks up the Urzatron, and Desert is a potent weapon against Weenie decks. Of course, Svogthos, the Restless Tomb has always been the finisher of choice for Dredge decks. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is a great bonus card here, fixing your Black mana for even your colorless lands. Anyway, with the Life from the Loam engine going, your lands become a recursive, potent tool to beat some decks out there, which is why I’ve got a bunch of lands in my sideboard. On a side note, there are a few land destruction decks floating around that are going to hate the fact you can go up to 25 or 26 lands after sideboarding if you need to.
Okay, so what was the other deck Jay and I played around with? It was the deck I mentioned last week as one I might be playing for Regionals… but seeing as we’ve run out of time here today, I think I’ll save that for next week. See ya then!
Bennie