Have you ever had a day where you felt an unnatural surge of enlightenment? The kind of day where you rise in the morning knowing the decisions you make are going to significantly alter the rest of your life, and fall in the night knowing that your future has been set in motion. One of those days where you wake up, take a shower, step out, then look into the mirror and pause to look at yourself for once, taking a moment to peer into your own soul, and noticing that there’s something different than every other day. The kind of moment where you make a single promise to yourself; a vow of honor only you know of, but one which carries more weight than a samurai’s oath.
I have those days whenever an important decision is to be made. And because of them, I had the fire. Not just any old fire, like the well-lit fire of a prototypical good PTQ player who keeps making top eights, but the scorching playtest-until-your-fingers-bleed kind of fire that has fueled the greatest runs in Magic history. Ever since I picked up three pro points at the start of the season at LA I knew this was the year to try and make a run; to try and string together at least level three so I could lock up a Pro Tour for next year. I hit up as many Grand Prix as I could, and event by event the pro points slipped through my fingers. School began to get heavy. The fire began to dwindle. I took a breather, and that was all it took. I lost my foothold.
As I stood back and watched the national tournaments roll by, friend after friend began to qualify for Worlds, and I longed to be qualified aside them. Then, finally, a couple weeks ago I woke up and I felt a tug in my mind, and I finally realized I had been fooling myself all along. I didn’t care about locking up an arbitrary Pro Tour slot next year. I didn’t even care about having the pro points. I just wanted to go to Rome. I wanted to go to the world championships and play among the world’s best, in one of the most breathtaking locations anybody could visit in their lifetime. Even with flying out to the last two United States GP’s, there was no way I was going to make up a ten point gap by the time Worlds rolled around. There was only one solution.
It was in that moment — in that epiphany — that I realized I had to qualify for Austin.
With this in mind, I wanted to put in some serious time for the PTQ last weekend. I had been testing pretty regularly, and, in preparation for the week of the PTQ, did the unthinkable: finish all of my homework ahead of time so that I could pound out games around the clock. Everything was poised to work great. Then I became dreadfully ill.
It’s a funny thing, life.
This wasn’t just your average cold. If I had the burning fire and desire to win, this cold was the military helicopter flying over with pails of dousing water and white powder. I have never taken pain numbing pills in my life, and here I was, taking aspirin around the clock, utterly bedridden. I couldn’t go to class, I could barely talk, my body wouldn’t fall asleep at night, and I generally felt like I was dying. After the tragic events in Hawaii, I was not going to let another inconveniently placed cold of death knock off my chances of going to the next Pro Tour. So, I did what any determined-yet-dying Magic player stuck at home would do: attempted to play some Magic Online.
It’s a funny thing, pain.
None of my painkillers worked at all, nor did any of the medicine I traditionally use. Taking my mind off it everything by mailing or facebooking didn’t help at all. Nothing seemed effective. Then, I joined an eight man queue on Magic Online and it all went away. Huh. As soon as my round finished, I began to feel the perpetual closing of my throat and the turning of my stomach again and would stumble back into bed until the next round started. However, as long as I was immersed in the game I was playing, I couldn’t be bothered.
Magic: the ultimate panacea.
The end result of my discovery? A lot of MTGO. An amount I would normally consider feel burnt out by. Turns out, when you have nothing else to do but slowly feel like your body is collapsing in on itself, the alternative looks attractive. And since I couldn’t sleep very well at night, I found myself modoing all day, trying to sleep, and then waking up at 2am and hopping in another queue.
Right. So, enough of the Zac Hill-esque opening. Back to returning creatures with power two or less from the graveyard to the battlefield and playing a control deck with lands that don’t come into play tapped.
Why does all of this matter? I tried out all of my major contenders in tournament settings. Faeries? Very good. Merfolk? A great metagame choice. Five color? Powerful as always. Then I got to my good buddy Reveillark and updated the list from a few weeks ago. I literally could not lose. I knocked down eight man after eight man after eight man and crushed a bunch of people in daily events. Let me tell you, there’s something uniquely satisfying about winning some eight mans and 4-0ing a daily event all before breakfast. I know it looks like I’m exaggerating, but I’m confident I won more than three quarters of all the matches I played. Because I had so much time to do nothing, I could try out pretty much every configuration I hadn’t been able to previously. You know all of those times where you wonder, “maybe you can actually cut those sideboard cards, but I don’t have the time to play twenty postboard games without card X and with card Y to see if it’s going to make a difference”? Yeah, well, I had the time for those games. I tested out all of the sideboard cards and mainboard changes I had wanted to try.
At this point, I think its fair for me to save you the hyperbole and just ship a list. This is the decklist I ended up registering for the PTQ, but with that in mind, please read further in the article for recommendations so you can tweak the deck to your own specifications.
Creatures (20)
Lands (11)
Spells (29)
The mana base is the same from the last time you saw it. The main tweak you can make is cutting a Gargoyle Castle for another Island. Castle wins me a lot of games, but occasionally I do have mana problems when I don’t draw Mystic Gate. They’re pretty rare. Castle has been great, but any opening hand with two is infuriating. That said, I don’t think should be cut, just be aware that if you are someone with chronic color screw issues you may want to consider the possibility.
Hopefully we can all agree on four Sowers, Drifters, and Commands by now, but there are a few that deserve another mention despite what I have said in the past and based on continual comments.
The first card up is Kitchen Finks. This card is an absolute must as a four of, yet a lot of people make the second most incorrect argument in regards to Reveillark (the first I’ll talk about later) when they say that Knight of Meadowgrain is better. Yes, Knight bashes every turn. So in three attacks, it will have gained you more life than a Kitchen Finks. I don’t have the time to be attacking three times and hope to connect against the dude slinging red spells.
Even more importantly, the decks Kitchen Finks is best against have this bad habit of playing with removal spells. Lightning Bolt is one particular such offender. Do you have any idea how many of my opponents have reluctantly Lightning Bolted by Finks? Too many for me to count. It causes a grimace only matched by Faith’s Fettering a Grave-Shell Scarab while they’re tapped out. If they do the same thing to your Knight of Meadowgrain, nothing happened. You haven’t gained any life, they spent a card to kill your guy. Pretty standard. You play a Finks, it’s usually good for at least four life plus blocking some Figure of Destiny once or twice. Yes, it dies to Magma Spray and you only gain two life. Pop quiz: what happens if they Magma Spray your Knight of Meadowgrain? You don’t even gain the two life in that transaction. Seriously, play with four Finks before you even touch Knight of Meadowgrain.
Meddling Mage is a card people often like to knock or cut copies of, and unlike Finks, this is defensible. If you expect a very heavy red or Kithkin metagame, you probably don’t want four in your opening sixty. However, that’s now how the metagame is falling across the country right now. Five Color and Jund are the two decks you absolutely have to beat, with some decks like Faeries sneaking in as other important decks to beat right now. Meddling Mage is good against all three, and worthy of a slot if you expect your metagame to fall in this direction. If you lived somewhere with a very heavy aggro lean, like, say, Denver, I might considering switching at least one copy of them out.
I am still beyond confused when people play less than four Reveillarks. Wanting to play Baneslayer Angel is one thing (which I will talk about later), but there is no excuse to not play Reveillark in a deck so well crafted around it. You will hit five mana almost every game, and when you do Reveillark is always one of the best cards you can draw.
Over time, I have found Path to be one of the best cards in the deck, and the card just gets better in multiples. There is really no good excuse play less than four, which explains the addition of the fourth copy to the main. It’s good in almost every single matchup. The thing is, your late game is more powerful than almost every other decks late game plan, and Path is a perfect card to survive the early game. I commonly path their two drop, or even one drops if it’s Figure of Destiny, just because it buys me the time to set up for a strong turn five. Additionally, Path deals with your opponent’s trump creature later on. I can’t tell you how many times my opponent has tapped five mana for a Baneslayer Angel, and I’ve made their mythic rare look ridiculous by flashing them a Path.
But, one of my favorite things about Path is its versatility. If you leave one mana up, you can Path your own Reveillark to get some extra blockers midcombat, or, my favorite, Path the creature you have Sowered when they’re killing the Sower. Path is so incredibly good in this deck, and especially without maindeck Hallowed Burials I would play no less than four right now.
Ponder is a card I took some time to experiment with during my Magic Online rush. I had unconditionally had them in as a four of for a long time, and wanted to see if I had fallen into the Ponder trap or not. I tried cutting them for two tournaments, and immediately found my results to worsen. The fact is, being able to find your Mulldrifter, Sower, Reveillark, Cryptic Command, etc, on time is crucial, and it’s not like you’re doing that much in the first few turns anyway. Ponder gives you a play, and is a great rip both early and later on. I’m always happy to draw Ponders in this deck, and I would not play less than four.
As a side note, I have a ridiculously bad habit of wanting to sideboard out Ponders, and have had to use extreme diligence to prevent myself from doing so. I still find myself boarding one out every now and then, but there’s no reason to. I don’t know how many of you have the same urge, but please, don’t fall into the mistake of taking out Ponders. Consider this: Ponder helps you find the sideboard cards you’re looking for, as well as having utility. Why would you want to cut them for a sideboard card then? It reduces the ability for your sideboard cards to make an impact. The only deck you can legitimately sideboard them out against is Faeries because you don’t want to feed them into their Spellstutter Sprites if you don’t have to. But even then, if they’re countering a Ponder with a Sprite on any time after turn two, I’m probably still going to be satisfied with its use.
The last card I’d like to comment on is Jace, who is a fresh addition. I tried one maindeck for a while and he was gas whenever I drew him, and so more steadily began to creep into the deck. The truth of the matter is that he’s crucial to one of your two plans against Five Color. If Jace is unanswered, very little can stop you from taking control of the game, and your opponent will often make bad attacks to try and kill him, especially with Path and Cryptic Command to play around. Jace ensures you can keep your cards up against everything, and ensures you don’t get an awkward run of land. Yes, Ponders, Mulldrifters, and Jace is a lot of card drawing, but any game where you have a grip of six or seven cards midgame you are very unlikely to lose.
As far as my sideboard goes, I have some specific sideboarding theories I have discussed in past articles. The ones I especially kept in mind when constructing this sideboard were two parts of the same theory. Firstly, don’t oversideboard. Secondly, don’t take out cards that still have effectiveness in the matchup for cards which are just marginally better. For example, while I would like more counterspells against Five Color and Faeries, you have to start cutting cards like Kitchen Finks and Path to Exile to fit them in, and at that point what are you really accomplishing by removing Path to Exiles for Essence Scatters? Therefore some of the numbers look weird, but it’s because they worked out exactly the way I wanted them to in every main matchup.
The four Forge-Tenders are, I feel, crucial to the red matchup. Corbett “Ogre Gatecrasher*” Gray and a few other local red players have made the argument that the newer builds are less creature based, so he’s not that effective. The problem with that argument is twofold. Firstly, he blocks Figure of Destiny for the first few turns, which stops a ton of damage. Second, he comes back with Reveillark. Compared to something like Harm’s Way, Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender has built in card-advantage in the context of the deck, because as the game goes on he will be brought back with a Reveillark. On a last note, he’s also very good against the random G/R decks that seem to have suddenly grown in popularity online and gains you a ridiculous amount of life, which translates into bought time, which is all you really need to beat an agro deck.
*A few weeks ago, Corbett Grey tried to walk through the screen door at my condo. While it was closed. With Noah Weil as my witness, he broke the screen door, and has been known ever since as Ogre Gatecrasher.
Celestial Purge is amazing against red and Jund, and I would add a fourth if I had more cards I wanted to take out against Jund. Most importantly, though, it keeps Bitterblossom off the table against Faeries. If they stick a turn two Bitterblossom, it’s almost impossible to win. You can’t board four because it’s dead going late which is terrible too, but with Ponder as your ally you can deal with Bitterblossom on the draw a reasonable amount of the time.
The counterspells are part of your plan against Five Color and Faeries, and are very important to containing their plan. This is also the only part of the entire 75 I would change, going back. I feel like Negate is better than Archmage in this deck against 5cc in the plan I want to play, and would have played more Negates instead. I also just love having access to more countermagic sideboard; I found myself bringing the Broken Ambitions in the most random matchups on the play just as another answer to their two or three drop.
Now, Hallowed Burial. This brings me to the aforementioned most incorrect argument I see people make the most incorrect argument in regards to Reveillark about this card. It has begun to drive me insane. Everybody I show the deck to makes the same comment. You know the one. “But Gavin, you want your creatures in the graveyard not on the bottom of your library. Don’t you want something else?”
Asdf. No, I don’t want to play with something else.
First and foremost, your creatures have a special hidden ability. It’s so special that it’s not even written on the cards. It’s the ability to block. If you have creatures you want in the graveyard and your opponent has creatures you want to kill, say go, block, and then cast Hallowed Burial. Maybe they’ll even cast another creature in the process!
“But Gavin, what if they have more creatures than I do! I don’t want to lose any precious life, but my creatures will still go away.”
Yeah, well, back in the pre-Morningtide days of U/W control, sometimes you would have to wrath away your own creatures. And back then, you didn’t get them back. Yes, it was painful to sacrifice your own Serra Angel for the sake of crushing your opponent anyway, but people still did.
The same thing applies today. Look at what happens when you cast Hallowed Burial when they have more creatures than you do. You trade what, a Mulldrifter and a Sower for, I don’t know, six of their creatures? Done deal. It doesn’t matter that your cards don’t go to the bottom of your library if its crushing your opponent anyway. Plus, let me tell you a secret: there are more Mulldrifters and Sowers where those two came from.
But you already knew all of that, didn’t you? Of course you did, you smart Reveillark player, you.
As a final note, in this format the only decks you want to bring Hallowed Burial in against are dying species: Kithkin and Elves. If you resolve a Burial against them then you should be able to move ahead far enough that whatever else you had in play probably doesn’t matter.
One card you will notice is absent: Baneslayer Angel. Now, make no mistake, Baneslayer Angel is very good. In a U/W deck with a different focus which so happened to also contain some copies of Reveillark, Baneslayer Angel was the card that won UK Nationals. The problem is that I don’t feel like it’s really something you need in your game plan, because it doesn’t actively fill a role you don’t have. A grand majority of the times I tried casting Baneslayer Angel against a deck I would have wanted it against like red, either Reveillark would have done the same job or they had a Doom Blade and I felt like an idiot. I feel a lot more comfortable tapping out for a Reveillark than a Baneslayer Angel, and I feel with Baneslayers popularity the format will move to be even more hostile toward it. I am perfectly happy playing without them.
Now, I could just provide you with a sideboard guide and call it good. However, instead, I would rather teach you to fish and allow you to build a sideboard for your metagame. I’m going to tell you which cards should come out in which matchups, and then which cards are good against that deck and how to play the matchup, and you can be the one to decide which sideboard cards you should be using. Make sure to keep the most important principle of sideboard construction in mind: don’t sideboard more cards for a matchup than you have to take out.
Kithkin
-4 Meddling Mage -3 Jace Beleren
Best cards to sideboard against Kithkin: Hallowed Burial, Plumeveil
Ironically, against Kithkin you have up to seven cards you can take out, but you need nowhere near that many cards. You can bring in Plumeveils if you want them for another matchup, but really, you want to just sideboard a few Burials and call it good. This matchup is extremely difficult to lose. A few builds have Lapse of Certainty which could probably be annoying, but I wouldn’t be too concerned about it on the whole. Kithkin is an atrocious deck choice right now that the format is very hostile against so I wouldn’t expect to face that many, especially if you just use the best Kithkin avoidance strategy: winning round one and two.
Jund
Best cards to sideboard against Jund: Celestial Purge, Plumeveil,
That’s right, there are no cards you actively want to remove against Jund, Your deck is already one mean, lean, Jund hating machine. I’ve been cutting some combination of Jaces and Kitchen Finks against them because I have Celestial Purge in my sideboard for Faeries anyway, so feel free to do that as necessary, but this matchup is so good that you really don’t need to sideboard any cards specifically for Jund. You just play an attrition war and Path their Putrid Leeches and Ram Gangs. Their most dangerous card is Puppeteer Clique, and is pretty much the only way you can lose games where you don’t get mana screwed or flooded. Also, make sure to avoid walking into Jund charms on your graveyard. You have tons of good removal, and Reveillark is a backbreaker against them.
Faeries
-4 Sower of Temptation, -1 Reveillark, -1 Ponder (only on the play)
Best cards to sideboard against Faeries: Celestial Purge, Negate, Broken Ambitions, Essence Scatter
While everybody cries the faeries matchup as terrible, I actually had my win ratio against Faeries players online to above 50%. You have to focus on what matters, and there are two main avenues of faeries you have to prevent. The first is Bitterblossom. If they have an unchecked Blossom on turn two, you are going to lose. On the play, especially after sideboarding, you have Mage, Purge, and two mana counters to deal with it, so it becomes a lot more realistic to beat a Blossom. On the draw, Purge is the only way to deal with one on turn two, and so you have to keep all of your Ponders in so you have the maximum chance to find one.
The second avenue Faeries uses you have to contain is Mistbind Clique. Normally, you don’t have any countermagic that costs less than four, so if they’re on the play they can always Clique you on turn four. Path is crucial for shutting off Cliques of course, but having access to some countermagic for Clique is strong. I was playing with Essence Scatters, but determined Broken Ambitions does the same thing while also stopping a turn two Blossom and being good against five color. (Which is why the split in my list.) If you can contain Mistbind Clique and Bitterblossom, you will usually win. You have superior control strategies going, and Reveillark is surprisingly hard for them to effectively deal with.
Five Color Control
-4 Sower of Temptation
Best cards to sideboard against Five Color Control: Negate, Glen Elendra Archmage, Broken Ambitions
After playing a ton of matches against five color, I finally figured out the match goes. There are two ways you win this matchup. The first is you have an aggressive draw with Mages and Finks, and maybe they stumble on lands, don’t have fallout, you have a Command, etc. The damage adds up fast.
The second is where you play the control deck. In game one, you almost always Meddling Mage Broken Ambitions or Esper Charm on turn two; the former if you have Jace in hand. If you can stick a turn three Jace (remember, Mage into Broken Ambitions!) and they don’t immediately answer, it’s difficult for them to win. After sideboarding, I actually feel with so many counterspells you are the superior control deck. If you can just shut off their card drawing by Negating Esper Charms and Jace and wrest control, your plan is far superior going long. The problem with Glen Elendra Archmage is that he costs too much to contain cards like Esper Charm, which turn out to be the real problem. Furthermore, Fallout nugs a counter off him anyway. I would rather just have Negate, because it facilitates both of my plans better.
I hope this article answered any lingering questions about Reveillark, and I’d be happy to answer any questions in the forums. I seem to be the person people keep coming to for Reveillark advice, and I’m thrilled to keep evolving the deck and talking with all of you. Receiving e-mails from people who have played with my decks in PTQs and doing well is always touching, especially when they make top eight. (Congratulations again to Aslan, who made top eight of his PTQ with almost an exact copy of my Reveillark deck!) I was amazed by how many people came up to me at the PTQ and said they were playing the Merfolk, Reveillark or UBr faeries decks I have posted in the past few weeks. Thanks guys! This article is the six month anniversary of me starting to write for StarCityGames.com, and it’s you that makes writing so great!
As for how the PTQ went, I will admit I went 1-2 drop. (beat Jund, lost to R/B [I drew fourteen lands to five spells and am not sure what else I could have possibly done besides mulligan; I have actually never lost to Red online] and lost to five color control in a game tight game three where I didn’t find my lands on time.) I don’t like to chalk things up to luck, and admittedly, there was a mulligan in round two which was maybe sketchy. However, I just feel like my deck didn’t perform the way it had been, and I would confidently play the deck again in a PTQ next week because I continue to receive great results with it; looking at this PTQ as results is just results oriented thinking.
After I dropped from the PTQ, I played in a Cruise Qualifier, which I won all of my swiss matches in and then drew into the top eight. I hit the top eight and played against Alex West with Five Color. All three games were really close, but in games two and three I drew too many Glen Elendra Archmages, where if they were Negates I would have won. Had I beat Alex, I’m confident I would have easily won the cruise qualifier. (Ironically, somebody with my exact merfolk maindeck from a few weeks ago and a slightly modified sideboard won the qualifier.)
I’m looking forward to hearing from you in the forums and through e-mails. As always, you can e-mail me at gavintriesagain at gmail dot com. Talk to you soon!
Gavin Verhey
Team Unknown Stars
Rabon on Magic Online, Lesurgo everywhere else