How Paradise Druid Changed Everything About Preparing For Mythic Championship VII

Mythic Championship VII starts tomorrow, and all 68 decklists have been posted publicly.

It's happening!

Decklists for #MythicChampionshipVII are live!

Find them here: https://t.co/xWN20agAt3

And the complete metagame breakdown here: https://t.co/MFRo57wRnE

— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) December 4, 2019

If you’ve taken the time to look at them, you’ve probably already seen that Javier Dominguez, Seth Manfield, and I took a rather random turn in our deck selection. Today I’m going to recount exactly how we came to that decision and hope that our reasoning was correct. 

Before we get started I want to make it clear that I’m writing this article before decklists are revealed. This is logistically necessary for the writing, editing, and posting process, but also a great way for me to show you how my process works. Others might be great at looking at things objectively after the fact, but I’m not one of them. Writing this article before I have perfect information is the best way for me to show you my process, and together we can find its flaws. 

With that out of the way, let’s figure out together how badly I botched things for the final Mythic Championship of 2019! I mean it’s not that important really. It’s just my MPL career on the line!

I prepared for Mythic Championship VII with Brian Braun-Duin and the aforementioned Seth Manfield and Javier Dominguez. Geographical differences were going to play a part in our preparation process, but we accounted for them before testing commenced. The plan was for the two of us on the West Coast to get up as early as possible so that the four of us would have a decent chunk of time to prepare together before our European superstar had to go to bed. It was foolproof (or so I thought). 

From the time the newest string of bannings were made public, we’d only have roughly ten days to prepare. I was flying back home from SCG CON Winter on that Monday, and came down with a very bad cold for the first four days of testing. It was brutal, as I was already burnt out from two months of testing Throne of Eldraine Standard for Mythic Championships V and VI along with my Eldraine Split for MPL Weekly. I tried my best to test during this time, but what really happened was some much needed rest and relaxation. 

This didn’t stop the other three from working their behinds off in those initial days. Thanks to their dedication, and Zvi Mowshowitz Jeskai Fires list, we quickly identified that this was the deck to beat. Obviously there were other strategies, but our internal testing showcased just how powerful this deck really was. 

We also discovered, like everyone else, that Food strategies were also still great. It was uncertain if Jund or Golgari Food was best, but one thing that was certain was these decks were going to be popular for Mythic Championship VII. Thanks to Crokeyz’s loud voice and giant reach, the Golgari Food decks were homogenizing around high quantities of Thrashing Brontodon and Casualties of War in the maindeck.

Homogenization is nice to see when I’m trying to prepare for an event. I know that every Golgari Food deck isn’t going to look like Crokeyz’s, but that’s not why it’s important. It’s not just about what the decks will look like, but what other players are going to be afraid of. If Crokeyz is maindecking all that hate for artifacts and enchantments, certain strategies might not get played. Better yet, others wanting to play these decks might continue to add mirror-match hate to their maindeck, which creates an exploitable arms race. 

To be clear, I’m not actually talking about nuclear weapons when I say “arms race”, but Casualties of War is pretty much the closest thing we have to a MTG nuclear option. The idea of a Magic arms race is that you have to prepare for the “mirror” if others already are doing so. For example, you don’t want to go into a “Food fight” without proper interaction if everyone else is already going to have those great cards against you. It’s a common opinion that the best deck in the “mirror” is the one that sacrifices speed for power, and that’s exactly what we started to see after Crokeyz added all those cards to his deck.

If Food decks were going to be the most-played decks, there was a good chance that they would all have to make sure to have enough “whammies” for the mirrors, slowing them down against strategies that didn’t just play a bunch of unique permanent types. Aggressive decks revolving around Embercleave wouldn’t work nearly as well as they did at Mythic Championship V, as Thrashing Brontodon is great against them and Jeskai Fires loves playing against small critters trying to attack for lethal. No, these Food decks would be exploited in different ways. 

Don’t Blink

Both Izzet and Simic Flash started popping up as not only foils to Jeskai Fires but also a decent way to get around the Casualties of War arms race. The food decks were still powerful against the counter decks, but since they were becoming distracted by Jeskai Fires and the mirror, they were becoming worse against the Flash decks. 

Up to this point, I thought there was a great chance we’d play Jeskai Fires. It was testing well in our internal testing, as we found enchantment removal for Fires of Invention to be the wrong way to approach the matchup. Like I assumed, Crokeyz’s Golgari deck would smash Jeskai Fires but not when Javier piloted the deck. He seamlessly played around the removal and often put me in very awkward positions with the removal spells. Of course there were games where the removal was great, but not as often as I had initially thought. Plus, no matter how prepared you are for Jeskai Fires, there are games you can just never win without counterspells. 

Even though all the Overgrown Tomb decks were packing ample hate for Fires of Invention, the Flash decks were scaring me during testing. I still was testing with Jeskai Fires, but I was scared it was going to end up like Bant Golos all over again, with a ton of Flash decks showing up to prey on the big-mana deck again. Oh, and the mirror is rather random as well, which also played into why I was starting to dislike Jeskai Fires as an option for the tournament. I was still on it, but not terribly happy about it. 

Enter Seth Manfield and his brew. I’ve testing with Seth for years now and the man loves his brews. While I’m trying to perfect our metagame predictions and tighten up sideboard plans, Seth’s always thinking outside the box. Honestly it’s what makes me love working with Seth, as you really don’t want your testing team to have all the same strengths and weaknesses. It’s just an added bonus that he’s a great person to be around, amazing at the game, and works insanely hard. 

When Seth rolled up with a Simic Flash deck that also played Paradise Druid, I was unimpressed (to say the least). If memory serves, this is what the first version looked like. 

I sighed, and then picked up one of the Food decks. He won four matches to my three. Then we tried it against Jeskai Fires. He won three matches to my zero. At this point I started coming around to the idea, as a Turn 3 Nightpack Ambusher is much better than one on Turn 4.

Also, Nissa, Who Shakes the World was looking good. Actually, Nissa was looking great! I was pretty sure Nissa wasn’t going to be in fighting shape after losing her best buddy Oko along with Veil of Summer, but she was back to doing things. 

After I thought about it, Nissa being great made a lot of sense. Nissa was still great last “season,” but the entire format had warped to 3/3s being as bad as they could possibly be since everything was, well, a 3/3. Now that Oko, Thief of Crowns is banned, the format is evolving away from that being the case. There’s more focus on getting around Cats who hide in Ovens and Cavaliers who play with fire. Given these distractions, the Elementals created by Nissa were just piling up and dealing me tons of damage. 

SWITCH

This is by far the best word you can see as a deck designer playing against a teammate. I uttered the word to Seth, and he was ready to play enemy for a little bit while I tried out his Simic brew. We eventually tested it against everything known in the metagame, and concluded that the only two very bad matchups for the deck were Golgari Adventures and Rakdos Aggro. It was strong in the Flash mirrors, against Jeskai Fires, and going about 50-50 with Food decks.

We started to really like the deck, but it’s not easy to pull the trigger on a homebrew. After all, the deck did struggle with Adventures strategies, which seemed overplayed for how good we thought they were. Also, there were only two days left in testing, and both Seth and Javier were doing great with Jeskai Fires. In fact, at one point in time, they were both #1 and #2 on the Mythic Ladder on Arena with Jeskai Fires. 

At this point I was also testing Izzet Flash and thought it was good, but didn’t think there was enough time to perfect it enough to register. I really wish I had just one more day to make sure this wasn’t the deck, you know? The same could be said for Temur Adventures, Golgari Clover, and probably a few other decks I tried in the final days. So my brews, but so little time! 

Around this point, BBD was almost locked on playing Jund Food, a deck the other three of us didn’t like that much, not because it was bad (we actually thought it was pretty decent) but it was just not as good as our other options. Plus, we were very unsure on how to build it, given the stress of the arms race I mentioned earlier. 

On the morning of deck registration, all three of us were hesitant to decide between Jeskai Fires and Simic Flash. Both decks needed a little bit of final-day tuning so we wanted to make the decision as quickly as possible. The issue was no one could really decide. There were pros and cons for each deck and questions that couldn’t be answered like what the metagame would actually look like. It’s really difficult to figure that out with these 68-person events, and you don’t want to be too wrong on a metagame decision like playing Simic Flash. We wanted to make the most informed decision possible, but that’s exactly what was holding us back: the lack of information. 

I took a step back, and came to the best conclusion I possibly could. Here’s what I wrote to the guys. 

“Okay, so we are all being indecisive so I’ll make the decision. I love Simic, but it looks like Food will be the most played deck so we should light some fires baby!”

That’s all it took for Seth’s gut to kick in, as that’s exactly what he didn’t want to hear. He just didn’t know it yet. The moment I said Jeskai Fires should be our deck choice was the exact moment Seth made the decision to play Simic Flash. Since he was now going to play Simic Flash, it’s not like I was going to play the nongreen deck, so I also was in. Like dominoes, Javier was also locked in, as he didn’t want to be the odd man out. It’s crazy how this works, but forcing the option on someone is often when they can finally make the decision for themselves. 

I’m not here to say that this is a great way to make decisions, or that we aren’t all crazy people, but I will say this works. If you’re ever between two decks, just flip a coin. It doesn’t matter what side the coin lands on, as you’ll have a reaction to the result that will give you clarity on what your decision should be. I know it sounds silly, but it does work! 

Anyway, once I decided that we were playing Jeskai Fires, we finally got to work on Simic Flash Ramp. This is our end result. 

I don’t know if this is going to be a good choice or not. All I really know is the deck has some bad matchups that shouldn’t be heavily played. Here’s what I predict the metagame to be, and if I’m wrong, we’re in a lot of trouble. 

Archetype	Predicted % of Field	Expected Matchup
Golgari/Jund Food	25-30%	Ever-so-slightly behind
Jeskai Fires	20-25%	Great matchup
Izzet Flash	15%	Slightly ahead
Golgari Adventures	10%	Very bad matchup
Temur Reclamation	10%	Slightly ahead

If this is the metagame, I’d be pretty happy with our decision. If Izzet Flash is played less while Golgari Adventures is played more, I would have been happier with a Jeskai Fires selection. All-in-all the decision felt close so I’m not too concerned. In fact, I’m much happier playing Simic Flash Ramp, which is all that really matters. 

How close did I get? I’m actually a little nervous posting this article, as it really lets you under the hood with my personal predictions. Like, what if I’m really far off with my predictions? I might end up losing a lot of my Standard clout I’ve been working so hard to gain over all these years. 

Good thing I’m never wrong! See you this weekend when we crush Mythic Championship VII with Simic Flash Ramp!