Screw & Scoop

My Worlds state of Mind.

2011-11-08T14:59:00.001Z

This is the email I have sent to Mark Rosewater

Greetings, Mark.

I havebeing playing magic for around 5 years. In this five years most of my friendsthat played when I started dropped it entirely, or just play occasionally.

Our localstore closed, and the few resistant’s, me and another friend, made trips in a 2week basis to the next closest store, which meant to do an 1 hour travel.

Then oneof my friends started to do tournaments on various coffee places and we startedplaying weekly again, people returned.

Some timewent by like this, eventually someone had to take his place and finally we got alocal store again.

Since myfriend picked the tournaments organization, I have helped the best I can and Istill do with my local store. I have been criticized by players and friends; Ieven lost some other friends because of it, either by meaningless discussion orstupidity from both sides.

In thepast years there was only a major change I still dislike, Mythic Rarity. Whileit’s true that they made possible for cheap playable rare they also introducedus to 50€ staple, if we are lucky that they don’t go higher.

I stillprefer the old format where all decks had basically the same price. Nowadays wehave very cheap decks or a deck with 4 to 12 cards that are worth 50€ each,in the best cases.

But, inall this time I never thought of dropping Magic: The Gathering, not even whenmy 500€ deck got stolen. That is, until now.

I willtalk mostly about Portugal and my situation, since about everything elsesomeone already made statements or can do better than me.

We lost PT spot’s, I’m not sure how many, but the biggest loss is thequalification for World’s.

I play magic for fun, but while I play it for fun it’s also true that I play itmostly because of Nationals and the dream of getting on the national team toattend Worlds. When that is removed from my horizons I don’t have any reason tobuy cards.

To playwith my friends, I can easily make a bunch of proxy’s and simply make the deck Ilike instead of investing money on it with barely any return to happen.

Because, no one from Portugal is going to get an invite from ranking with thenew ranking system. Actually it’s very hard for someone that is not living inthe USA to do so.

I wasactually happy with the new ranking system. At least at a local level, it meantpeople wouldn’t sit on ranking to get into nationals they would start playing,if not weekly from time to time, instead of showing up weeks before nationalsfor testing.

With the last changes everything that was good about the new ranking systembecame irrelevant. No invites for worlds means most people won’t care about it.It doesn’t matter how big the prize is, since it will never be that big that isactually worth it. I would haply refuse a prize of 3000€ for an invite toworlds and the free trip along with it.

Thenafter all this you relocate all responsibility of tournaments to localauthorities.

Sorry tosay that this only gives me grief.

I havebeen playing since Betrayer’s of Kamigawa and I never saw our distributor doinganything else besides the very much minimum necessary.

For agame that as mostly survived due to players, to keep growing and advertised,the game will die, at least the game outside of the kitchen table.

Lisbon might be able to maintain an active community,but on the north it will die. Actually it’s already dying, but that’sunderstandable when the stores of the distributor have different entree feesfor their 2 stores, a Prerelease in Porto is 26€ in Lisbon 22€, and when theyblock the entrance to players that have made a formal complain about theirstores conditions, it becomes ridiculous.

So to endthis, no I’m not happy with only hopping to be the National Champion. My dreamwas based on getting on the national team and do something noticeable at worlds,not by being recognized by our Magic community. Most of them have met me atleast once anyway.

With thatgone and so few PT’S and the only place to get extra GP’S being the USA I’mdropping from M:TG.

At best Iwon’t buy any cards and become a casual player, with proxies.

But noteverything is bad, I will have finally more time for my other hobbies.

Sincerely,Rui Gomes.

Modern - Snapcaster Gifts

2011-10-11T13:29:00.001+01:00

Well I have a Modern tournament this Saturday and decided that would be making a gift list to try, which ended being something like this.

Lands 26

4 Marsh Flats
1 Scalding Tarn
3 Hallowed Fountain

2 Watery Grave

1 Godless Shrine

1 Mystic Gate
1 Sunken Ruins
3 Island
2 Plains

2 Swamp

1 Snow-Covered Island

1 Tectonic Edge

1 Ghost Quarter
1 Academy Ruins
1 Celestial Collonade

1 Creeping Tar Pit

Creatures 7
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Phantasmal Image
2 Sun Titan
1 Wurmcoil

Draw 7

3 Gifts Ungiven
4 Forbidden Alchemy

Utility 3

2 Unburial Rites

1 Crucible of Worlds

Counters 8

4 Mana Leak

2 Cryptic Command

2 Spell Snare

Removal 9

3 Path to Exile
1 Dismenber

1 Go for the Throat

1 Doomblade

1 Damnation
1 Wrath of God

1 Day of Judgment

While I was looking for packages for gifts I got a peak at the sun titan package. With some playtesting in standard with Solar Flare I already know how good Unburial Rites into Sun titan is, running it also makes Forbidden Alchemy extremely good, and since you already run ways to drop spells into the graveyard Snapcaster Mage gets insanely good. Regarding the Wurmcoil, at first it was Grave Titan because it left something behind if he got it by Path into Exile but the fact that wurmcoil can be recurred by Academy Ruins.
The question is if the deck is able to keep up with the speed of Modern, I sure think and hope it does or I will be in trouble this weekend :) .

A new post omg :D and with a bug list o_O

2011-10-08T04:23:00.001+01:00

Well lately , or rather for a long time, I didn't and I don't fell like writing for this blog.
Miranda, mostly gave up and with the starcitygames tournaments there's so little space to improve decks in standard that I had no reason to post anything. I have never been a fan of legacy and I don't even have much time or people to test.
So, and to have something going on this blog, I will post the lists I'm currently playing or testing.
So here his a BUG I'm having fun with in standard:

Ramp(12)
4 Rampant Growth
4 Viridian Emissary
4 Solem Simulacrum
Big guys (12)
4 Consecrated Sphinx
4 Wurmcoil
4 Grave Titan
Utility (10)

4Ponder
4 Black Sun Zenith
2 Unburial Rites
Lands (26)
4 UG land
4 GB land
4 UB Land
6 Forest
5 Swamp
2 Island

1 Plains

It's a pretty standard list that tries to ramp into 4th or 5th turn fatties.
It could run heartless summoning as a ramp tool but I ditched it since it made all my fatties vulnerable to dismember.
In my very limited testing it has been running well, and better than I expected against mono red thanks to wurmcoil and grave titan.

The Walker Madness

2011-02-14T15:53:00.002Z

Standard nowadays is boring; I even consider it more boring than when faeries were around.

Jace TMS turned to be the new Tarmogoyf, if someone’s plays blue they have to play Jace TMS, but there aren´t that many answers to planeswalkers as there are to creatures, since Shards of Alara rotated with M10 we went from Oblivion Ring, Pithing Needle, Maelstrom Pulse and Vampire Hexmage as answers to Walkers to only Vampire Hexmage, they gave us a creature with a pithing needle effect on Scars of Mirrodin but creatures are so easy to get rid of that I can’t even consider it an answer to walkers.

So this gave us a wacky field, control decks can be defined by Ux decks, because of the lack of answers to Walkers it’s impossible to play without blue and Jace TMS at the risk of being completely overrun by him, this is the absolute true, the only colors that could compete that as a decent answer to Jace is black, in the form of Vampire Hexmage, unfortunately he’s not easily splash able which limits you to the colors BR and UB where we have dual lands with black. Red is mainly an agro color and is not so common to play it on control decks, and if you are playing blue you are playing Jace TMS so you are playing to drop it before your opponent does and not looking for some way to answer him which by the way you can by just playing your own Jace TMS.

This leaves us with attacking or redirecting damage to Walkers. To attack them efficiently you have to be running a agro deck because most of the times you will need multiple creatures to get through; Jace TMS can bounce, Elspeth Tirel makes 3 1|1 tokens, Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas can turn any artifact into a 5/5, Garruk can make a 3|3 token, Gideon goes up to 8 loyalty counters; or risk being time walked, redirecting damage (or burn) is not so efficient neither; Jace TMS can go up to 5 loyalty counters, Elspeth Tirel to 6, Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas to 4, Garruk to 4, Gideon goes up to 8; so you end up having to attack and throw some burn to kill them or spend multiple cards on it and being fogged efficiently or risk being overpowered by them in a couple of turns. But to make it even worse there are walkers like Elspeth Tirel, Tezzerets, Servant of Bolas and mostly Gideon jura that can protect other walkers and themselves as any card can’t, so besides having to deal with walkers you will need to deal with walkers that protect other walkers and that make you overcommit to wrath effects. While agro decks are still able to handle this, other control and midrange decks aren’t since they have to rely on creatures to attack them and because these decks rarely play efficient casting creatures they end up being easily outmaneuvered either by the walkers effects, by blocking or other cards your opponent can throw in. This is so boring it gets to the point were in a control matchup the one who wins is the one that can get a Jace TMS through counter magic.

So we have a meta with control decks with Jace TMS, agro decks and some combo decks that recently aren’t doing too well. This is a really boring meta, at least for me that is tired of playing Jace battles and that is not very fond of playing agro.

I was having a lot fun playing a Monowhite control deck that was great against agro, efficient against control and really bad against ramp decks but with Scars control matchups became impossible as they completely trash the build.

So while this madness continues, at least until Jace TMS rotates out, I will end playing up some kind of fish build most likely with Jace TMS but I will try to avoid Caw-Go as I’m not very fond of its play stile.

Well time will tell. Until next time.

WB in a brand new field

2010-10-28T19:07:00.001+01:00

It’s been a long time since I posted or have done something on the blog.

Between the improvements I wanted to add to the blog but never finished and a report from nationals that I never started, it got put on hold.

Anyway, the improvements will somehow find a way to get in but the report from nationals would be pretty much useless now.

Well, it was like I took a vacation from my blog.

Since my last post two editions were released, M11 and Scars of Mirrodin, and there was a rotation when Scars got released, which brought big changes to the metagame and a bunch of new decks. While this is a big step down for netdeckers it’s a new playground for people who like to explore the tools they have been given.

So I have to pet decks in hand at the moment a UW Titan Control supporting Trinket Mage, a card that I have been playing for a long time, and a BW deck which I ended calling it Dark Vat.

This time I will be talking about the BW list, and here it is:

Creatures 16
4 Wall of Omens

3 Liliana's Specter
3 Vampire Hexmage

2 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Sun Titan
2 Grave Titan

Spells 19

3 Mimic Vat
4 Sign in Blood

3 Day of Judgement
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Journey to Nowhere
2 Doom Blade

2 Consuming Vapors

Lands 24

4 Marsh Flats

3 Tectonic Edge
9 Swamp
8 Plains

This was my first list which I compiled with the help of some list and comments from a couple of forums. While it looks quite good on paper it isn’t, for a control list it went out of gas pretty fast unless you got a mimic vat on play my first thought was of course to get the 4^th mimic vat on the list but it wouldn’t solve all the problems I didn’t like on the list. Sign in Blood proved to not be a good enough draw/card advantage system to get a spot in the deck, consuming vapors proved to be slow and useless most of the time and besides that the list packs a lot of BB costs for the first turns, which proved to be very prolematic for a combination of colors that doesn’t have any kind of dual.

So the biggest problem was to substitute Sign in Blood, Survival cache passed my mind but it would draw the same amount of cards as Sign in Blood while sometimes being worst, Grim discovery was a option but once again it would at the best of times give 2 cards while being useless if you didn’t draw a fetch in the early game or you have a creature on the sideboard it could get in as a 1 or 2 of but never as a 4 of. While I was playing with this list I started making some changes, first of was the substitution of Sign in Blood for Dark tutelage which I have seen playing on another deck and decided to give it a try, this proved to be excellent and gave the deck a reach it hadn’t before but with this came a toll on our life that had to be solved by something that came in the form of Lonely Missionary, it’s a 2/1 for a cost of 1W that gives you 4 life, this is a nightmare against any agro deck and it still makes control players frown while letting you easily get away with a Dark tutelage on the table, out came the hexmages that weren’t so great on the main list and a wurmcoil because it would be one less 6 cost creature on the board and because it did need to attack to get life from it. The last change was the two Consuming vapors for 2 Condemn, Condemn because there’s still a lot of Vengevines lurking around and because Doomblade can’t hit black creatures, while it’s true it won’t fuel Mimic vat it has been proved pretty irrelevant until now.

So now the list would look like this:

Creatures 16
4 Wall of Omens

3 Liliana's Specter
4 Lone Missionary

1 Baneslayer
2 Sun Titan
2 Grave Titan

Spells 19

3 Mimic Vat
4 Dark Tutelage

3 Day of Judgement
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Journey to Nowhere
2 Doom Blade

2 Condemn

Lands 24

4 Marsh Flats

3 Tectonic Edge
9 Swamp
8 Plains

Has you may see I exchanged the Wurmcoil for a Baneslayer but this change is pretty debatable and the only reason that I did it it’s because my friend, who is playing the list has a Baneslayer but doesn’t have Wurmcoil. Recently I have taken the Baneslayer from my list and added a Sun Titan since it gets back most of your deck and most importantly your engines (Mimic Vat and Dark Tutelage), the fact that you lose some life gain should not be relevant since Sun Titan can bring back Lone Missionary.

So on another note what this deck tries to accomplish is to get a Mimic Vat on play and use creatures like Liliana’s Specter and the titans to gain board position and card advantage so you can overwhelm your opponent, against agro a wall or a Lone Missionary on a Mimic Vat is pretty useful . The reason you only want 3 is because the deck doesn’t necessarily needs it to run and because you will run it to multiples easily if you land a Dark Tutelage, also you can recur it with Sun Titan and finally because you won’t need 2 in play to win.

The sideboard is still a work in progress

While I have been playing my UW list I’m thinking of sleeving this up because it has proven to be good and quite fun to run.

Well until the next time, Anglachel.

Ps:. I don't own the images, you can find the original site by right clicking and copy image location. If by any mean you can't just ask me for it.

M11 Sketch

2010-07-07T22:18:00.003+01:00

So here's the thing:

2 weeks now, I got a ptq. It's with M11. So no netdecking I think.

I expect the majority of the control decks to include things like condemn and mana leak, which, are good to stop Jund.

So, I am thinking in taking something like this:

// Lands

3 [SHM] Swamp (2)

3 [ON] Plains (1)

2 [MR] Island (4)

4 [ZEN] Marsh Flats

2 [M10] Glacial Fortress

3 [ALA] Arcane Sanctum

3 [WWK] Celestial Colonnade

3 [WWK] Creeping Tar Pit

2 [M10] Drowned Catacomb

// Creatures

4 [M11] Baneslayer Angel

4 [WWK] Abyssal Persecutor

4 [ROE] Wall of Omens

// Spells

3 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant

3 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor

2 [ROE] Gideon Jura

3 [M11] Day of Judgment

4 [MPR] Mana Leak

4 [MPR] Condemn

4 [ALA] Esper Charm

// Sideboard

SB: 3 [FNM] Oblivion Ring

SB: 4 [M11] Duress

SB: 2 [ARB] Identity Crisis

SB: 2 [CFX] Path to Exile

SB: 4 [ZEN] Spreading Seas

It's mainly the Conley Woods deck, but I dropped the spreading seas to the side, since they are there exclusively against jund. Besides, if I want to be mana leaking, I can't spend turns spreading the seas. Against jund, spreading seas is effectively a mana leak, since holds their next play.

The side is a bit random yet. So help needed.

Some tips for Nationals.

2010-06-29T14:24:00.000+01:00

When you know that you are going to nationals, the first thing that most people ask themselves is which deck to pick.

Most people will look for the so called Best Deck of the Format and will pick it up and play it, budget questions aside.

While this is not necessarily a bad choice it may be a bad choice for most people as it may not be the best deck for you.

It may not be the right deck for you because of your play style. Yes I am talking about play style, although there is people where this doesn’t show up it still is very prevalent in many people and this niche will do a lot better with a deck that fits their play style.

Let’s take me for an example:

I’m very bad at playing combo since I found it boring and end doing too many mistakes because I don’t like it.

While I’m not a bad agro player, sometime I just hold down the deck by not taking the initiative and risk 2 for 1 for my opponent, while this may not look bad it may give the time your opponent needs to get ahead of you in the game, and even though I know this I end not taking the risk since I normally choose the less risky path but when you are playing agro you should be more daring.

I’m definitely a control player and I play control most of the time. In this category the ones that I play best are agro control or a midrange deck. I found this after 1 year or so of playing magic as I started by playing agro, easily found out that I didn’t like combo when I picked one combo deck and finally I picked a control deck enjoyed playing it and making good results with this type.

What I’m trying to say is if you are still in doubt about what to pick, don’t pick a deck just because someone says it’s the best and try to figure out if the deck may adapt to your play style, because if it does you will end up doing less mistakes and might do better results.

Unfortunately this is not always true and just playing the best deck is sometimes better, but I’m pretty sure that this format is not of that type.

This considered, I will talk a little about the decks that are most played:

Jund – This is a deck that someone who reaches Nationals should know how it plays and how your deck plays against it. If you don’t, you might consider staying home.

Mythic – Mythic is posting some good results lately. But this deck as a bad matchup against Jund and Sparkmage means a lot of trouble for this deck even if he doesn’t have a collar. This deck plays out by getting some mana acceleration on the first and second turns and play big threats after. The best way to hinder them is to kill the mana dorks and slow them down. This is the best because they will rarely drop more than 1 threat per game and because sovereigns is not that good when you don’t have creatures on the board. Still this deck is pretty explosive and can easily throw 10 or more points of damage from nowhere while still playing some of the most solid creatures you may find in standard.

Next Level Bant – This deck only showed up recently and he’s doing some good results supported by his good matchup against control and by not being a good matchup to Jund. This deck plays very similar to Mythic but trades the explosiveness and some solid creatures of Mythic for a reusable threat, a better card advantage engine and removal package. As against Mythic the best way to play against them is to kill the mana dorks as their two and three mana drops aren’t that good and this helps screwing them too since that deck wants GG or WW or UU on fourth turn which sometimes is hard to get. If you have something that removes creatures of permanents from game you should save them for Vengevines and Planeswalkers which are the main threats of this deck.

UWr planes walkers – This deck relies on playing a lot of Planeswalkers. For most decks the most threatening Planeswalkers of this deck are Ajani Vengeant and Elspeth. While Gideon may be a pain because is able to protect is fellow walkers that two are the most threatening. Still the one you should worry about is Jace, may it be is old or upgrade version, this deck relies on sticking it’s Planeswalkers in game but it’s not like you can’t kill them, this is where jace fills in by letting this deck dropping Planeswalkers consistently since he looks for them. If you are able to kill jace without him getting a lot of advantage from it, it will be a lot harder for the UWr player to consistently drop his extra copies of his Planeswalkers since their card advantage system revolves around Jace.

UW Tappout – It’s kind of simple to play against this deck. Keep removal for Baneslayers, kill planeswalkers if possible and try to not over commit to Day of Judgment. Well it’s not that simple but you get the point.

Polymorph – This might be the closest to what we can call a combo on this format. Anyway it’s pretty simple to play against it. Just apply pressure and hold down your removal or counters for when he tries to polymorph a creature. Also Jace TMS and oblivion ring are able to remove bounce Emrakul while Iona is bit more difficult.

Red Deck Wins – The best thing against this is Kor Firewalker followed by any lifelinker. If you are able to get some extra life it becomes a lot harder for the red deck to kill you. Beside this, block and kill their creatures whenever you can. Day of Judgment is a lot better now against this deck, since they play more creatures that stick around.

Vengevine Naya – This deck just plays creature after creature. If your deck is able to survive this kind of onslaught is something that only testing can answer.

Vampires – Bloodghast can be really troublesome for control players but what you should be worrying about is Nocturnus, without him this agro deck is only a bunch of 2/x , with him on the table your life is pretty short. So you should save instant removal for Nocturnus while chump blocking the other ones.

Green Monument or G|x monument – This kind of deck relies on monument or overrun to kill their opponents, so your plan most resolve around killing their creatures so they don’t have enough creatures to maintain monument and kill you at the same time or having something to destroy the monument. You can even capitalize with some good chump blocks when you destroy the monument.

Turboland - Apply some pressure kill the oracles and keep Jace out of the board it’s basically the best plan against this deck.

Well this is all for now.

Cumps, Anglachel

Abyssal Jund

2010-06-27T14:47:00.005+01:00

So, as I have seen yesterday's SCG 5k, one deck has caught my eye, Wescoe's Jund. I really like abyssal on the deck, since it provides great approach against Bant, Turboland and decks with Sphinx of Jwar Isle.

But I didn't like his side, so I will try as I write this post to merge my decklist with his, so I can get the best of the two worlds.

Wescoe's list:

4 [M10] Dragonskull Summit
4 [WWK] Raging Ravine
4 [ALA] Savage Lands
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
1 [WWK] Lavaclaw Reaches
3 [7E] Swamp (1)
3 [6E] Mountain (4)
3 [LRW] Forest (2)

4 [ARB] Bloodbraid Elf
4 [ARB] Putrid Leech
4 [ALA] Sprouting Thrinax
2 [WWK] Abyssal Persecutor

4 [ALA] Blightning
4 [M10] Lightning Bolt
4 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
4 [ARB] Bituminous Blast
4 [ARB] Terminate

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [WWK] Lavaclaw Reaches
SB: 2 [ZEN] Goblin Ruinblaster
SB: 2 [ROE] Sarkhan the Mad
SB: 2 [M10] Doom Blade
SB: 2 [ROE] Prophetic Prism
SB: 2 [ROE] Forked Bolt
SB: 2 [ROE] All Is Dust
SB: 2 [ARB] Thought Hemorrhage

As for my list:

2 [M10] Dragonskull Summit
4 [WWK] Raging Ravine
4 [ALA] Savage Lands
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
3 [UNH] Forest
3 [UNH] Mountain
2 [WWK] Lavaclaw Reaches
1 [M10] Rootbound Crag
4 [10E] Swamp

4 [ARB] Bloodbraid Elf
4 [ARB] Putrid Leech
4 [ALA] Sprouting Thrinax
4 [ZEN] Goblin Ruinblaster

4 [ALA] Blightning
4 [M10] Lightning Bolt
4 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
1 [ROE] Sarkhan the Mad
4 [ARB] Bituminous Blast

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [ROE] Sarkhan the Mad
SB: 4 [US] Duress
SB: 3 [ZEN] Malakir Bloodwitch
SB: 1 [ALA] Necrogenesis
SB: 2 [PS] Terminate
SB: 1 [M10] Doom Blade
SB: 3 [WWK] Cunning Sparkmage

So the differences are:
Less a land from wescoe which was moved to the side, the rest of the mana base is the same.
Persecutors main, which are better than ruinblaster against mainly everything except mirror, and UW/UWr.
4 Terminates main, which is a good include.
But the great differences come at the sideboard.
The side against mirror e mostly the same for both.
Due to the great amount of spot removal from Wescoe’s side, it’s matchup against naya, mythic and dredge is better.
Against Bant it’s also better, since it has got persecutors, hemorrhage and more spot removal. Maybe all is dust also comes in?
Against UW/UWR, I think the sideboard is a little clunkier since I don’t like playing prophetic prism, all is dust is way too expensive and will be a great target for negate, since Wescoe doesn’t even have duresses to backup it up.
So I think I can hybridize both lists by cutting the up the less good cards from each.
So, on Wescoe’s lists, I would cut:
2 All is dust, 2 prophetic prism, 1 lavaclaw reaches, and would put the 2 doom blades on hold since it’s way too much removal.
On my list I would cut:
1 Necrogenesis, 3 Sparkmages, and maybe reduce 1 bloodwitch.
Merging the side’s together it becomes something like:
4 Goblin Ruinblasters
2 Sakhan the Mad
2 Thought Hemorrhage
4 Duress
2 Malakir Bloodwitch
2 Forked Bolt
16 Cards
So it all comes to extra 1 card and a land I would like to include, since I am more confortable playing 27. But since I have cutting some extra costing cards, I think I will be fine. I got 6 cards for mirror with the classic “Only 4 pulses to take out”, so I think I would cut one. A Sarkhan or a Blaster? I mean, since I am playing persecutors I do have to play 4 terminates and at least 2 Sarkhans for outs, so I think I would cut 1 ruinblaster. Another hypothesis is cutting also a duress, since I am also playing hemorrhage for the extra land on the side. So the latter is fine for me, cutting a duress for a land on the sb.
So, it’s all about cutting one sideboard card.
Let’s see.... against UW I got on the sb:

3 Duress
2 Malakir Bloodwitch
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
2 Hemorrhage?
1 Lavaclaw Reaches

And to take out I got:
4 Thrinaxes
4 Bolts
2 Bituminous Blast
2 Abyssal Persecutor

Seems good to me.
So yeah, I like my sideplan against control.
Which locks those cards.
The extra card is Sarkhan. I really wanna play forked bolt, I can be really good against mythic. I think I will risk cutting a Sarkhan.
Which leaves the final decklist something like:
// Lands
4 [M10] Dragonskull Summit
4 [WWK] Raging Ravine
4 [ALA] Savage Lands
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
1 [WWK] Lavaclaw Reaches
3 [6E] Mountain (4)
3 [LRW] Forest (2)
3 [10E] Swamp (2)

// Creatures
4 [ARB] Bloodbraid Elf
4 [ARB] Putrid Leech
4 [ALA] Sprouting Thrinax
2 [WWK] Abyssal Persecutor

// Spells
4 [ALA] Blightning
4 [M10] Lightning Bolt
4 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
4 [ARB] Bituminous Blast
4 [ARB] Terminate

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [WWK] Lavaclaw Reaches
SB: 4 [ZEN] Goblin Ruinblaster
SB: 1 [ROE] Sarkhan the Mad
SB: 2 [ROE] Forked Bolt
SB: 2 [ARB] Thought Hemorrhage
SB: 3 [M10] Duress
SB: 2 [ZEN] Malakir Bloodwitch
I am still pondering about cutting a dragonskull for a swamp/mountain.
As for the result, I think now I got better main mu against UW since I got more outs for baneslayer, post board I lose a Bloowitch, but I think I won’t be mattering much.
The matchup for mirror main deck loses a bit, but post board it becomes the same.
The other matchups all improve.
I think I will be testing with this now. If I see that the jund matchup has fallen critically I will just swap the abyssal + 2 terminates package for the ruinblasters.
Well, this was me for trying to improve my jund deck as I was writing this post.
Cya.

Leeching the format

2010-06-22T17:42:00.004+01:00

So here I am, a little less than 2 weeks from the nationals. And the day will finally come, the day I will play Jund.
After struggling so much against it, the afterhours of a ptq fail with mythic were spent amusing myself on the dark side playing leeches and cascading into some blightnings.

I gave up, I will play Jund. I mean come on, the deck is awesome. It's an all around, it can be control and aggro, disrupts hand, manabase, sweeps the board, it wins any attrition war.
So my first steps with deck were playing a ML master, which I ended up 5-1-1, winning 2 mirror's, turboland, brilliant ultimatum and a mono red and losing to Next Level Bant.
Anyway, when the master ended, I went to check on the lists, and turns out the winner was Jund by Ykpon, and quite a list. So I took his list, and I am tweaking it now, and so far I got to this:

// Lands
3 [M10] Dragonskull Summit
4 [WWK] Raging Ravine
4 [ALA] Savage Lands
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
3 [UNH] Forest
3 [UNH] Mountain
2 [WWK] Lavaclaw Reaches
3 [UNH] Swamp
1 [M10] Rootbound Crag

// Creatures
4 [ARB] Bloodbraid Elf
4 [ARB] Putrid Leech
4 [ALA] Sprouting Thrinax
4 [ZEN] Goblin Ruinblaster

// Spells
4 [ALA] Blightning
4 [M10] Lightning Bolt
4 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
1 [ROE] Sarkhan the Mad
4 [ARB] Bituminous Blast

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [ROE] Sarkhan the Mad
SB: 4 [US] Duress
SB: 3 [ZEN] Malakir Bloodwitch
SB: 2 [SC] Siege-Gang Commander
SB: 1 [ALA] Necrogenesis
SB: 2 [PS] Terminate
SB: 2 [M10] Doom Blade

So basically this has everything I wanted on main deck, my main problem is the sideboard.

On main deck I know I want 27 lands, and so far this combination has served me well.
Then, the locked spots are 4 pulses, 4 leeches, 4 thrinax, 4 bloodbraid elf, 4 blightnings.
The goblin ruinblasters are maindecked now, since I expect about 40% junds, plus the UW's and UWR's. So that's gotta be above 50% of the field, which is quite nice to got that edge.
The bituminous blasts are simply game turners, since it involves a powerful 2 cards swing to say at least.
The bolts are cheap removal, always handy for the first turns while laying down some tapped lands.
The lonely sarkhan is there because, I got no more room for another, and since I don't play terminates maindeck, I need the 4 blasts.

As for the sideboard.

There's the other copy of sarkhan, 4 duresses obviously, the malakir bloodwitches are crucial.
Then, I got 2 terminates-2 doom blades split, since I want terminates for mirror, but doom blades kill firewalkers.
The Necrogenesis is there for mirror and aggro decks and the latest adition, yet to test, the siege-gang commander, is for bant.

So far, on my testing, I only got negative matchup's against Bant and Naya.
So we can cross naya of the list, which leaves bant.
Bant will be surely played at the nationals, and I would like to enter a match without feeling like a match loss. So I tested already several cards against it. Bloodwitch is nice and all, but it's not enough, I need something more explosive, which leads to siege gang. Siege gang is everything you need, chumps and direct damage. In spite of this is not tested yet, I believe it will rise the matchup a little.

As for now I am siding like this:

UW/UWr

+ 1 sarkhan, +4 duress, +3 malakir, +2 doom blade
-4 bolts, -2 bituminous, -4 thrinax

The bolts are useless, the thrinax dont get through their walls, and they will always be purged, so no value in this guy here. The malakir bloodwitch is insane if backed up with a duress.

Mirror

+1 Sarkhan, +1 Necrogenesis, +2 terminate
-4 pulse, you may also cut 2 bolts for 2 siege gangs...

Bant

+2 siege gang, +3 bloodwitch, +2 doom blade, + 1 necrogenesis, +1 terminate
- 1 Sarkhan, -4 blightning, -4 ruinblaster

The blightnings are clunky early game, and that's your soft spot and the ruinblasters are pretty underwhelming, destroying a land is near useless and the 2/1 body can't trade with anyone.

These are the main sideboards, but I think I have not reached the final list yet.
Well cya then...

Leveling up

2010-06-09T15:41:00.002+01:00

So I am about 3 weeks to nationals.
The training sessions have begun, both draft as well constructed.
As for constructed I am currently playing the chapin bant, but the list is quite tight and I am not figuring much slots to improve the deck. As for one matchup that really bothers me, which is mirror.

If all the lists look quite alike it will be very though to figure out some t3ch besides playing very focused and hope for better draws.
The mirror match is defined from turns 3 to 6. Those are the turns where you can squeeze a planeswalker, but you have to be careful so you don't get blowout by a vengevine from the other side. The first player to assure a planeswalker on his side of the table is the likely winner. The mirror match is defined by the most cards drawn, lands and creatures in table; there is no card that can be a total blowout and just reset the game. Planeswalkers help in those terms very well. Each turn you get value from them the closer you are to victory.
Elspeth is so awesome in the mirror, it's just the match where her value goes through the roof. There are not flyers in the deck, so having an elspeth to send even an noble through the air can only be stopped by a lost truths, but even a soldier token would kill it.
So besides that, I got nothing on constructed, I think the format is quite defined by now.

As for draft, I have testing very hard, forcing archetypes and testing some combinations.
These are my two last drafts:

// Lands
9 [UG] Island
8 [UG] Plains

// Creatures
1 [ROE] Halimar Wavewatch
2 [ROE] Caravan Escort
1 [ROE] Skywatcher Adept
2 [ROE] Makindi Griffin
1 [ROE] Totem-Guide Hartebeest
1 [ROE] Soulbound Guardians
2 [ROE] Hada Spy Patrol
1 [ROE] Sea Gate Oracle
1 [ROE] Knight of Cliffhaven
1 [ROE] Champion's Drake

// Spells
3 [ROE] Narcolepsy
1 [ROE] Time of Heroes
1 [ROE] Mammoth Umbra
1 [ROE] Smite
1 [ROE] Recurring Insight
1 [ROE] Nomads' Assembly
1 [ROE] Drake Umbra
1 [ROE] See Beyond

And this one is even sickier:

// Lands
8 [UG] Island
9 [UG] Plains

// Creatures
3 [ROE] Halimar Wavewatch
2 [ROE] Venerated Teacher
1 [ROE] Sphinx of Magosi
1 [ROE] Dawnglare Invoker
1 [ROE] Student of Warfare
1 [ROE] Artisan of Kozilek
1 [ROE] Knight of Cliffhaven
2 [ROE] Totem-Guide Hartebeest
1 [ROE] Makindi Griffin
2 [ROE] Caravan Escort
1 [ROE] Skywatcher Adept
1 [ROE] Frostwind Invoker
1 [ROE] Kabira Vindicator

// Spells
1 [ROE] Drake Umbra
1 [ROE] Hyena Umbra
1 [ROE] Puncturing Light
1 [ROE] Guard Duty
1 [ROE] Mammoth Umbra

That artisan sure is quite dislocated, it could be an Ikiral Outrider or a repel darkness I left on the board, but the card is quite powerful in case I get flooded :P
So, the draft bellow I am not going to talk about it, it's just oversickening, I mean, Student, Magosi, 2 teachers and so on.

The first one is quite a bit modest, I got only 13 creatures, but still got 2 sick auras and 3 narcolepsy with a totem beast. I wish I was passed at least 1 more. The Totem Beast is quite underrated. The creature is just too powerful if you got at least a narcolepsy or some nice auras, boar, mammoth, bear and drake as the best.
This is one of my favorite archetipes, UW levelers, it has got a sweet curve starting on turn 1 as well as nice removal and card draw. Plus you get things like totem + narcolepsy :)
Another archetype I tend to draft as well is UB levelers, but it's quite harder since black has not many playable commons. The main reason is vendetta, if you don't have at least a vendetta you really don't have a reason to go into black. I mean, induce despair is not good enough.
Plus, there's another one, maybe the most fun, it's G/R and sometimes B also tokens. It just makes lot of tokens with drones, hatcher's, predator's and invaders then with the red invoker, pennon blade or just hardcast crusher, many ways to kill, it's just awesome.
So, I feel quite confident to the nationals, maybe I can do better than last time, but I still got a ptq ahead, so, one step at a time...

Deck Discussion: Why Brilliant is not that brilliant.

2010-06-04T15:06:00.002+01:00

So this time I will look at a list and write about what I like or dislike on the list.

And this time it will be Brilliant Esper.

Here’s the list I tried:

Brilliant Esper

// Lands
4 [ALA] Arcane Sanctum
2 [M10] Glacial Fortress
3 [ROE] Island
4 [ZEN] Marsh Flats
3 [ROE] Plains
3 [ROE] Swamp
4 [WWK] Creeping Tar Pit

// Creatures
4 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 [ROE] Wall of Omens

// Spells
4 [ALA] Brilliant Ultimatum
3 [ZEN] Day of Judgment
3 [ALA] Esper Charm
4 [ZEN] Spreading Seas
1 [WWK] Smother
3 [CFX] Path to Exile
4 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 [LRW] Liliana Vess
2 [ARB] Fieldmist Borderpost
2 [ARB] Mistvein Borderpost
1 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 2 [M10] Celestial Purge
SB: 2 [ARB] Identity Crisis
SB: 2 [ZEN] Kor Sanctifiers
SB: 4 [M10] Negate
SB: 4 [WWK] Kor Firewalker

Before I even played I took a look into the list. By doing this you can easily see you have 4 cards that never want to be on your hand and another 4 cards that you don’t want to see until you have 7 mana. I’m not fond of decks like this one, having 4 cards that you probably will never have the chance to cast during the game without the help of Brilliant Ultimatum looks pretty bad when you see hands like BUltimatum|Emrakul|5 other cards you already have 1 death card on your hand an 1 that is only active in late game if you happen to draw multiples of this is a complete blowout for an agressive deck.

Besides this the manabase is also clunky, you have 13 lands that can produce black (I’m not counting the fetch) and only 3 of them come into play untapped. While this might not seem a problem it actually is. Decks can capitalize on this by color screwing you, BUltimatum as a very awkward cost of BBUUUWW, while they might not be able to making you ultimatum unplayable it’s possible to get some extra turns that can give your opponent the time to end the game.

For UW Tappout this is a good strategy that can give you some games and for Super Friends you should be aiming for it. Both this decks play Spreading Seas and some number of tectonic Edge and Oblivion Ring (gets rid of Borderposts) while Super Friends also have Ajani Vengeant. Also this deck as a lot of problem to deal with Planeswalkers beside attacking them with a Creeping tar pit, while this is not a bad plan it gives the other control player or screwing your mana even further by Pathing the manland. Ajani Vengeant makes this look really unfair on the first game since it will keep you out of 1 mana and if he goes ultimate you lose. Post side you will have an answer for it but it will still be hard matchup since they bring in 4-8 conters and you will need to play around it with only 4 negates.

Against jund things look pretty bad. On the first game if you reach 7 mana alive you will most likely win, post side it becomes hell. Besides they having Maelstrom Pulse and Blightning that hinder your plays they will also have 3-4 Duress to take away your best card in hand and 3-4 Goblin Ruinblaster to slow you down. I wonder if it can win a game post side against Jund.

It’s not a bad deck but I wouldn’t play this in a competitive tournament unless I am looking to have some laughs.

Cumps, Anglachel.

Adressing Mythic Rarity

2010-05-25T00:54:00.002+01:00

For quite some time there are a lot of people nagging about the price of some mythics.

And I’m one of them.

Paying 50 to 80 dollars for a card is almost prohibitive for me, and when the decks I would like to play have 4-10 cards of this type this is even worse. To top it all this can not be addressed by any other way than buying them or been lucky on a draft.

But drafting for this kind of cards is not worth it, because if you aren’t able to hit them you will most likely lose money.

Let’s make a little research:

ROE

Mythic

5- under 10 dollars

7- 10-20

2- 20+

Rares

All under – 10 dollars

ZEN

Mythic

2 – 10+

All under 10

Rares

5 – 10-15 dollars (fetchs)

All under -10 dollars

Worldwake

Mythic

1 – 10+

1 – 20+

All under 10

Rare

All under 10

The only collection that is worth drafting is Zendikar, since they have 5 rares and 2 mythics that will return the cash that you invested on the draft but you will never make a big profit out of it. The only reason Zendikar as +10 dollars rares is because there is no chase Mythic on it or fetchs would easily drop under 10 dollars.

Worldwake doesn’t have any rare over 10 dollars even though they have the manlands that most standard decks play, and this is only because of Jace the Mindsculptor, this set it’s one of the worst for drafting as there are only 2 cards over 10 dollars and both of them are Mythic.

Roe only has Mythics that will pay you out, all it’s rares are under 10, and this collection has been out for only some weeks, in a month or so I doubt there will be rares over 5 dollars.

This is also having a big impact on trading cards for cards. With all rares under 10 dollars, trading them for a chase Mythic is almost impossible. No one will want to trade a JMS, Elspeth, Gideon for a bunch of 5-7 dollar rares they will always ask for money or for another chase Mythic.

Since drafting sets where there is chase Mythics don’t payout to most players, the secondary market becomes a lot more appellative to the players that are looking to build their decks. With 10 dollars you can most likely buy 2 or more rares for your deck and is also better to save this money and eventually buy the Mythics you need.

For me the biggest impact of Mythic rares it’s not on Standard but in drafts. Drafting now is pretty underwhelming compared to other blocks like Ravnica, Lorwin where you could easily hit 3-7 cards over 10 dollars. Now this is basically impossible and draft for me is only a necessity because I want to do some games to playtest for nationals.

This will keep happening and the only sets that I will like to draft will be the ones where Mythics are all under 10 dollars.

And by the way I’m a European player and usually I pay 12 Euros for a draft which is even worst.

Cumps, Anglachel

P.s.: Card prices are from StarcityGames.

Sculpting Standard

2010-05-21T17:58:00.004+01:00

I have to say, I am thrilled about tomorrow's GP. I think it will shape my natz standard. Sure there will be other 2 GP's, but those will just tweak the main decks, I really don't believe some new crazy high tech will be coming for those.
So yeah, it's all about this weekend.
Maybe this post will be absolutely useless since the decks I wanted to talk about maybe completely changed tomorrow, but still, I am gonna give it a try.
So to include the decks in a context, I have to specify the latter. So I am talking about a standard which the most played decks are:

- Jund
- UW
- UWr Walkers
- Mythic
- Naya vengevine
- Red

So, knowing this, it's important for me to refer that I want to play control. If I wanted to play aggro, maybe I would went for vengevine naya. But that's not the point, I don't have enough testing to pronunciate.
The point is, I want to play control, so I got a few choices:

UW (like 5 versions of it)
UWr

Then I got the fringe side of the story:

Esper
Brilliant Esper
Open the Vaults

So, based on my experience, I auto exclude Esper, Open the Vaults and UWr.
Justification:

Esper and OTV suck. Esper is just a UW with esper charms and OTV, well, it's a lame deck.
As for UWr.
Well the deck isn't all that good. It's certainly good and backbreaking against control, sure it is. But against jund for instances... Just an example:
You got 3 walkerz on board against a leech. You pass with 2 cards in hand and just played you gideon.
The jund goes like: Bloodbraid into pulse kicking out gideon and then bloodbraid takes jace down and leech takes ajani. Now what?
I mean, the walkerz are very fragile against a strategy like jund's. Hasty creatures with direct PW removal like burn/pulse can complicate things A LOT.
So yeah, I don't care about UWr. Besides I could manage to tweak my tappout to actually beat walkerz after sideboard. So, no advantage there.
Moving on...

My real decision is about UW vs Brilliant Esper

For reference the lists:

UW Tappout by Corey Baumeister

4 Spreading Seas
4 Wall of Omens
4 Oblivion Ring
2 Everflowing Chalice
3 Path To Exile
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Gideon Jura
3 Baneslayer Angel
1 Deprive
4 Day Of Judgment
2 Mind Spring
2 Sejiri Refuge
2 Tectonic Edge
2 Arid Mesa
6 Island
5 Plains
1 Halimar Depths
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress

Sideboard

4 Negate
1 Jace Beleren
1 Martial Coup
1 Deprive
3 Kor Firewalker
2 Celestial Purge
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Path to Exile
1 Kor Sanctifiers

Brilliant Esper

// Lands
4 [ALA] Arcane Sanctum
2 [M10] Glacial Fortress
3 [ROE] Island
4 [ZEN] Marsh Flats
3 [ROE] Plains
3 [ROE] Swamp
4 [WWK] Creeping Tar Pit

// Creatures
4 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 [ROE] Wall of Omens

// Spells
4 [ALA] Brilliant Ultimatum
3 [ZEN] Day of Judgment
3 [ALA] Esper Charm
4 [ZEN] Spreading Seas
1 [WWK] Smother
3 [CFX] Path to Exile
4 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 [LRW] Liliana Vess
2 [ARB] Fieldmist Borderpost
2 [ARB] Mistvein Borderpost
1 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 2 [M10] Celestial Purge
SB: 2 [ARB] Identity Crisis
SB: 2 [ZEN] Kor Sanctifiers
SB: 4 [M10] Negate
SB: 4 [WWK] Kor Firewalker

In spite of Corey's UW list being the best I have ever seen so far, I am still engaged with the esper one.
I mean, esper kicks everyday uw's ass and post board it eats planesdeck alive. The matchup against jund it's like 50-50, slightly favorable, and naya it's just easy since they got no means to stop us from "comboing".
Mythic however can be a pain on the ass all depending on their draws. The good thing about esper, it just beats random crap, by waiting until t7 for the blowout.
Against mono red though, I think esper is slightly advantaged than UW since it can win at T7 and UW takes a lot of more time than that.
The matchup's theoreticaly go something like this:

Matchup's UW Esper B.
Jund 60-40 50-50
UW - 80-20
Uwr 50-50 60-40
V. Naya 60-40 70-30
Mythic 60-40 50-50
Mono red 40-60 50-50

for Jund:

Game 1, UW's highly favorable and esper is favorable as well that is due to jund's all around maindeck which is not very focused pre board. UW's just has to try to stall board as it is possible by landing spreading seas, doj's, white PW's and then play a mind spring for a virtual win. Esper however is not as easy, it has to build up mana and try to 1-1 with jund until the 7th mana then just let it go ftw.

Sideboard

UW: -3 Path
+2 Purge
+1 Elspeth

Esper B.

-2 path
+2 purge

Basically the decks just upgrade path's into purge's, but the thing is jund does more than that. It brings duress's, malakir blood's and the worst of them all, goblin ruinblaster... after sideboard the matchup complicates for UW and even worse for esper.

UW:

Esper is highly advantaged since most decks just don't play counters maindeck, so it should be easy to resolve the planeswalkers and the ultimatums.

Sideboard

UW:
-4 Wall
-4 Day
-1 Path
+4 Negates
+1 Jace
+1 Martial Coup
+1 Deprive
+1 Elspeth
+1 Kor Sanctifiers

Esper:

-4 Wall
-3 Doj
-1 Path
+4 Negate
+2 Kor Sanctifier's
+2 Identity Crisis

Post board, for esper it becomes like: just play land and before the turn your opponent lays the 4th land you got to stay still always leaving the negate mana up. Well, this is as the mirror should play as well, but here's where esper got the edge:
esper charm! You basically get to resolve your draw spell at the end of their turn so you won't miss land drop's. And esper's lategame's better than UW. If you manage to resolve an identity crisis, game end's.

UWr

So this one does not play counters Main deck. Now UW will probably lose because it has so manyyy dead cards and uwr is loaded with 12 planeswalkers so it's a very rough match G1. Esper mu comes down to an ajani at turn 4. There is no way to stop it/remove it, so...

Sideboard

UW:
-4 Wall
-4 Day
-1 Path
+4 Negates
+1 Jace
+1 Martial Coup
+1 Deprive
+1 Elspeth
+1 Kor Sanctifiers

Esper:

-4 Wall
-3 Doj
-3 Path
+4 Negate
+2 Kor Sanctifier's
+2 Identity Crisis
+2 celestial purge

UW's probably got the upper hand post board with so many counters, more planes, better mana... Esper's totally a new deck, now you can end games with crisis and also got a removal for ajani, there's nothing to fear post board.

Mythic

It can be really though since it has only to land a beater, and then just back it up with a jace and an escort and control can't really do much. It's quite an effort G1... As for esper, the job is easier g1 since it has only to survive until t7 since mythic has no way to stop ultimatum from happening.

Sideboard

UW:

Sideboard
-2 Mind Spring
-1 Spreading Seas
+1 Martial Coup
+1 Elspeth
+1 Path

Esper:

- 1 liliana
+ 1 path

Post board things don't change that much for the control decks, but mythic loads on negates which complicate a lot really. I think that UW got the edge over esper post board against mythic.

Vengevine naya

This one, I trully believe that esper has got the upper hand. Once again, it has only to survive up to turn7 to unleash hell. The vengevines turned what was an awful deck into a good deck, it has haste which can be truly annoying since it comes into play just eats 1/5 of your life total or a planeswalker. It is nearly immune to wrath's...

Sideboard

UW
-1 Spreading Seas
-1 Deprive
-1 Mind Spring
+1 path
+1 Elspeth
+1 Martial Coup

Esper

+1 path to exile
-1 Jace

After sideboard, things actually don’t change much, naya’s side is just an upgrade to fight back control decks with a little more hate in form of ring’s and qasali’s, some have also vapor snare for the angel’s but other than that, it much remains the same.

Mono Red

In UW it all comes down to landing a baneslayer and get to untap with it. Otherwise it will be very rough. As for esper, all is has to do is get to the 7th turn alive, by pathing and smothering all threats and esper charm to wear down the opposing player.

Sideboard

UW
-2 Mindspring
-4 spreading seas
-4 doj
+4 negate
+2 purge
+1 path
+3 firewalker

Esper

-3Doj
-4 Spreading seas
-2 Jace
+2 Negate
+4 Firewalker
+1 Path
+2 Purge

After, sideboard, things complicate for Red. They don’t gain anything spectacular, and the controls gain firewalkers and more instant spot removal making tougher those suicidal lightning freaks to actually get their job done.

Well, so now you see. This is my great dilemma: Stability vs Blowoutness. Let’s see if tomorrow’s GP will actually solve this matter, or just propose a few options…

Bibliography:

The UW decklist as well most of the sideguides were taken from Brad Nelson's article at channelfireball.com

Getting Brilliant

2010-05-17T14:29:00.005+01:00

It's been a while since I play competitive magic, so I have been wandering in the regionals checking out decklists and new t3chs.
So I got a few impressions:

- Sovereign Mythic is actually decaying now since the UW fever has been dropping since many players shifted to UWr Walkers which is a thougher matchup, and the consequent raise of jund players since it can beat walkers.

- The geojund, isn't actually better than the normal jund. It just gives a little better odd's against control while hurting mirror.

- Mono red decks are officially out of the competition. The approach of devasting summons is just terrible.

Basically the meta is stabling into a circle of UWr, UW and various takes of Jund. I think I can consider Mythic as a tier1 also.

Still, there is one deck that really deserved to be better ranked, which is Polymorph. It can easily beat the UW's, go toe to toe with Jund and Mythic. Still, it can lose to some random decks such as allies and mono red's. Probabilly the deck needs a little more tune so it can be considered as a tier1.

Well, I don't think I got much more to add of the actual state of standard since I have been a little out. However, until Portuguese Natz there are still 3 T2 GP's, so they will be definently shaking standard meta.
I am ceptic to believe that new decks will appear, or that a Jund list will be that revolucionary, but I am looking forward to see ROE cards to appear in upgrading decks and leading them to new game plans.
The first GP is already this weekend, and I bet 2 Jund's, 1 UW and 2 UWR at least will be part of the top8.

Now, there was another thing I would like to talk about. It was about Brilliant Esper.
First of, the decklist designed by Alex Viksnins which top8ed Boston 5K:

Creatures [15]

1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Gideon Jura
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Liliana Vess
4 Wall of Omens

Spells [21]

4 Brilliant Ultimatum
3 Day of Judgment
4 Esper Charm
1 Path to Exile
4 Ponder
1 Smother
4 Spreading Seas

Lands [25]

4 Arcane Sanctum
4 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Glacial Fortress
3 Island
4 Marsh Flats
3 Plains
3 Swamp

SIDEBOARD

2 Celestial Purge
1 Doom Blade
1 Duress
1 Identity Crisis
4 Kor Firewalker
2 Kor Sanctifiers
4 Negate

Well, this deck, is a nice approach to the meta. It obviously kicks UW ass by having so many relevant spells. Against jund, it has only to survive until it gathers 7 mana for the win, but still, with no flashfreezes whatsoever it's hard to fight through goblin ruinblasters.
Against the rest of the meta, it looks quite good. Still, it needs a little bit tunning, and I believe it will be figured at the GP. I would keep an eye at this one.
I am so sorry I got nothing else to post since I have been so far away from playing magic and got no testing results or whatsoever, but I think in a few days I will be back on track. Until then.

Report - Stepping on 4 Polymorphs before top 8

2010-05-03T18:15:00.002+01:00

I got the chance to go to another Regional.

This time it played very well for me as I was able to get in the top8.

However the day didn’t start so well. After we arrived at Coimbra and went in some circles around it I was pointed by a woman that we were on the wrong place, and that I had the wrong address (GoogleMaps let me down for the first time). I got really upset which only got me to get the name of the place where we were going to play wrong. Luckily the place with the wrong name (that place actually existed) was not that far away from the tournament place. And after some time and when I have the right name we finally get there.

I want to thank the Judges and the players that didn’t mind to wait for us, so our trip wasn’t a useless loss of time and money. Very big thanks to all of them.

So anyway, once again I was prompted to play Jacerator with some changes. This time I hadn’t the choice to play Jund, since my friend was going. Once again Miranda ranted to me about going with fog and not with a UW control list. I just replied that I would if I had the cards as I did when I went to Viana. Well this time it wasn’t so bad as the month before, since I was able to get some cards. I was still missing Jace 2.0 and Elspeth but there were people that could and did borrow me them and some other cards. In the end I borrowed about 10 cards and had the list I wanted.

As about the list, although I mostly play some sort of UW control mostly at all seasons (if there is one) I didn’t had any preferential list, and to top it all I hadn’t any testing with the cards from ROE. So I ended up relying on Miranda for that. He quickly pointed me 2 lists, 1 made by him and another one from a player on Magic League (Psychatok).

I ended up taking a slight variation of the Psychatok list. Miranda tends to play and made aggressive control lists and I’m more used and comfortable with slowest ones.

You can see Psychatok list here http://www.magic-league.com/deck/60990/standard_t2.html#UW%20Control3187

And I played this:

Main Deck

4 Wall of Omens
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

3 Oblivion Ring
3 Path to Exile
4 Mind Spring
3 Martial Coup
3 Day of Judgment
4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Spreading Seas

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

1 Gideon Jura

7 Island
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Celestial Colonnade
3 Tectonic Edge
7 Plains

Sideboard:
4 Negate
2 Flashfreeze
3 Kor Firewalker
1 Mind Control
3 Celestial Purge

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

So to the report itself:

1^st Round

UG Polymorph

1^st Game

Not much to say about it, as he’s list wasn’t that good and when I played a Jace 2.0, after he played a polymorph into a Emrakul, I just bounced it and is next Emrakul, that he got from another polymorph, and sealed the game with a Elspeth.

Out

-4 Spreading seas

+4 Negate

2^nd Game

The same as game 1.

Record 1-0-0

Round 2

UR Polymorph

1^st Game

He doesn’t have a optimal list like the guy from the first game, and he admits that he hadn’t the cards to make it like he wanted (Jaces mostly). This game gets long as I get some time to get a win condition on table.

Out -4 Spreading Seas

In 4 Negate

2^nd Game

Same as game 1, but a lot faster.

Record 2-0-0

Round 3

UG Polymorph

I know the guy this time and I get to play a polymorph list for the third time while he gets to play against UW for the third time too.

1^st Game

My draws where so bad in this game that it was actually like a joke. He hardcasted one Emrakul with the help of 5 spawn tokens 8 lands and a Garruk. And I sat there looking at him…

Out

4 Spreading Seas

4 Negate

2^nd Game

This game gets dragged for a long time. He takes his time to play and even after he knows he has lost, he still stalls by bouncing my Planeswalkers and tapping my creatures. He was clearly aiming at a tie, and I couldn’t blame him for it.

3^rd Game

When we start shuffling we are warned that there’s only 5 minutes left. A tie it is.

Record 2-0-1

4^th Round

Boss Naya with Vengevine

1^st Game

He mulligans to 6 and I keep my 7 while winning the dice roll. He keeped a very slow hand, while I had 2 spreading seas to make it unplayable. After I drop Iona naming white we are on to the next game.

Out

1 Iona

1 Mind Spring

1 Spreading Seas

3 Celestial Purge

2^nd Game

He keeps his hand while I mulligan to 6. I have a 2 turn spreading seas and once again a 4^thturn day that gets rid of a Nacatl and 2 mana dorks. He strikes back with a vengevine. On my turn I drop Gideon that gets rid of Vengevine. He drops a Bloodbraid that cascades into noble and getting back vengevine, vengevine killed Gideon and bloobraid dropped me to 12. I drop a wall on my turn and oblivion on vengevine. On his turn he attacks with bloodbraid for 4 which kills my wall and drops a manabarbs that gets purged. On my turn I play jace and fateseal him putting a Ranger of Eos on the bottom. On is turn he drops a raging ravine and another mana barbs. Since I had no out for manabarbs at that time I just played spreading seas on his ravine and path on his noble. He had only 1 card on his hand at that time so I just kept fate sealing him until he conceded the turn before I would remove is library.

Record 3-0-1

Round 5

Mirror Miranda’s List

1^st Game

He was a friend of mine and was 4-0-0, and we just play. This goes like a typically mirror match. His list lets him ramp faster than me but I have Iona and more copies of Jace and Oring. The game get’s dragged until I get Iona out and kill him.

Out

4 Spreading Seas

1 Path to exile

1 Day of Judgement

4 Negate

1 Emrakul

1 Kozilek

2^nd

I kept a very clunky hand, of Emrakul, Oblivion, Day of Judgment and 3 island and a Colonnade. He starts with island into a borderpost. I draw another colonnade and drop it. He plays a colonnade too and pass, I draw another island and drop my second colonnade. He plays a Kotwo fetch’s a plains and drops a island. I draw Kozilek drop an island and pass. He drops an Elspeth gives +3+3 and flying to kotwo and takes me to 15. I draw a chalice play an island and Oring the Elspeth. On his turn he drops me to 13 drops another kotwo, a spreading seas on one of my colonnades. I draw a mindspring drop an island and play the chalice for 2 counters which got negated by him. On his turn e bashes me to 9 drops a 1 tectonic edge and pass. I draw a tectonic edge, and I’m staring at 2 kotwo while the only out on my hand was a Day but I had only 1 white mana that could be destroyed by the tectonic edge, fortunately for me he missed that fact but I was still in bad position, has I didn’t have 2 white mana. I drop an island and mindspring for 4 which nets me island, glacial fortress, chalice, negate. I had the white mana that I needed and passed, he dropped a land attacked me to 5 and passed, it still looked he didn’t want to destroy my only white mana. I draw a jace, drop Glacial Fortress and play Day of judgment getting rid of the 2 kotwo. On his turn he tries a mind spring for 6 which I negated.

After this the game gets dragged a bit with exchanges from both parts. I then get to a state where I had an Elspeth that made some couple of tokens and he had a jace. He Martial Coupped for 5 tokens and passed. After I draw plains I had in my hand 1 Kozileck, Emrakul, 1 Chalice and the plains. In play I had a chalice at 3 and another one at 2, 8 lands and the Elspeth. I drop the plains and I have a total of 13 manas. I’m at 5 and he has 5 tokens and a jace, so I need to drop the chalice at least at 2 and drop the kozilek, make a token with Elspeth and hope he didn’t have a path or an Oring. He doesn’t so he bounces kozilek to my hand with jace, attacks me with the tokens, I block 1 token with one of my own. On my turn I just drop the emrakul and pump him with Elspeth for the win since he was at 16.

Record 4-0-1

Round 6

UW Polymorph

1^st Game

After I get an Elspeth and a Gideon Oringed, I can easily get rid of 2 polymorph into Emrakul with a Oring and a Day of Judgment. Shortly after I played Iona at white which gets me the deal.

Out

4 Wall of Omen

4 Negate

2^nd Game

My early Jace got negated and he got a 6 turn Iona naming white. I Mindspring for 6 at my turn but I don’t get a jace. I still hope to draw it on my next turn but that would be too good, so we are on to the next game. He had Iona on is sideboard.

Out

1 Day of judgement

1 Mind Control

3^rd Game

I kept a hand of chalice, Iona, Oring and 4 lands. When I attempt a Chalice at 2 he negates it and on his turn he drops a Khalni Garden. I didn’t have an out for Iona so on my turn I draw a chalice played a land and Oring on the token so he couldn’t polymorph. I pass and he does nothing besides dropping a land. I draw mind control now I have an out for an Iona and I can ramp to my own Iona and I tap 6 lands and drop the chalice at 3. On his turn he rings it and pass the turn back and I draw Martial Coup, I drop a land and martial coup for 5. On his turn He drops a land plays 2 See Beyond and passes the turn. I draw a land and attack him to 15 and drop a land. On his turn he plays a coup for 1 and tries a polymorph that gets Emrakul (I’m so unlucky). I draw Gideon, which gave me an out for Emrakul but I would have to take a it from him before doing so. So he attacks with Emrakul I sacrifice my 5 tokens and the Oring that targeted the token. On my turn I draw another land drop Giddeon kill emrakul and pass the turn. On his turn he hardcasts an Iona on white and things look good for me now. On my turn I get a Day of judgment, I drop a land and Mind Control on Iona, attack with the Gideon dropping him to 9. On his turn he tries to Martial Coup but that’s an Illegal play since now I was the controller of Iona and my opponents couldn’t play white spells, he then activates and attacks with a colonnade that gets blocked by Iona, I get rid of his other colonnade with a Tectonic Edge and attack with his Iona and Gideon for the win.

Record 5-0-1

Round 7

ID He was playing RB Burn

So I got my ticket for nationals on my second try and can relax until then now.

Pros:

-Getting in the top 8.

-All the great people that didn’t mind to wait for us. Thank you all.

-The mistakes made by my opponents that let me win games that I shouldn’t.

-Getting my second elspeth at the last minute when I though I never would. Thanks to the guy that borrowed it to me even though I didn’t know you from anywhere.

Cons:

-GoogleMaps giving me a wrong destination.

-Getting lost while not being lost…

-Someone forgetting to bring an Elspeth for me…

-Wasn’t able to find anyone that wanted to be spanked so I could let my rage dwindle.

That’s all folks, until next Time.

O Vingador está de volta!

2010-05-03T17:19:00.005+01:00

Boas
Ultimamente tenho andado um pouco afastado de magic, mas tenho de tentar manter o blog “activo”.
Agora que o standard começa a ganhar a sua forma final, começamos a ver os novos decks em acção. UW tappout afirmou-se como tier1 perfeitamente capaz de bater jund.
Ultimamente na ML e nos reg’s tem se visto bastantes a conseguir óptimos resultados. Aliados também marca presença num dos principais decks do formato. Mythic com a nova aura eldrazi, largou o rafiq e o finest hour, aumentando a sua curva e também o seu output de dano. Jund… continua na mesma.
Porém, com o 5k da SCG, há um novo concorrente. UWr Planeswalkers. Basicamente, é um tappout sem aceleração com splash para ajani vengeant e um reforço em elspeth’s e gideon jura.
O deck é muito divertido de se jogar, tem bom mu contra uw tappout, mas contudo, com a falta de aceleração, e com a redução dos X-Spells, acabou por sacrificar um pouco o seu desempenho contra aggro’s, e principalmente contra jund.
Assim sendo, conto para já, pelo menos com um ciclo de tier1’s de Jund -> UWR -> UW -> Jund… À volta dos tubarões estarão as rémoras, polymorph, aliados, eldrazi mythic e claro, o everlasting mono red sempre a tentar capitalizar nos tweaks dos grandes tiers para bater certo arquétipo e ficar mais vulnerável à sua estratégia.
Contudo seria estranho haver um ciclo com tantos decks de controlo, daí eu acredito que ainda venha a aparecer um novo aggro. Algo mais rápido que boss naya e mais consistente que aliados.
De facto, acho que nunca houvera tantos bons bichos com haste como agora, hell’s thunder, goblin ruiblaster, vengevine, goblin guide, ah, e aquele, como é que se chama?.... ah, já sei, Bloodbraid elf.
Ok, são só especulações. De facto, nem sei mesmo dizer que deck jogaria se os nacionais fossem amanha. Acho que o blightning que joguei no GP começa a ser bom de novo uma vez que o domínio de UW começa a afirmar-se e os decks estão a mudar para o bater. Contudo vou antes postar a lista que tenho andado a afinar.
// Lands
7 [SHM] Plains (4)
5 [B] Island (2)
4 [M10] Glacial Fortress
2 [WWK] Tectonic Edge
4 [WWK] Celestial Colonnade

// Creatures
4 [ROE] Wall of Omens
3 [ALA] Knight of the White Orchid

// Spells
4 [WWK] Everflowing Chalice
3 [ALA] Oblivion Ring
2 [ZEN] Day of Judgment
2 [ALA] Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 [ARB] Fieldmist Borderpost
2 [CFX] Path to Exile
2 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 [CFX] Martial Coup
4 [MOR] Mind Spring
4 [ZEN] Spreading Seas
2 [MOR] Negate

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [ZEN] Day of Judgment
SB: 1 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
SB: 2 [MOR] Negate
SB: 3 [M10] Dragon's Claw
SB: 2 [ZEN] Kor Sanctifiers
SB: 2 [M10] Flashfreeze
SB: 2 [ROE] Deprive
SB: 1 [M10] Mind Control
SB: 1 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Ok, isto é um UW tappout, blablabla, ganha a jund, blablabla. Então, porque posto esta lista se andam tantas aí a fazer top8’s? Então vou explicar a minha lista especificamente.
29 mana sources (22 lands, 3 posts, 4 chalices) – O ramp é importante neste deck, além disso eu gosto de ser capaz de jogar todos os meus spells.
8 value cyclers – Wall of omens e spreading seas, estas cartas são animais no ambiente de hoje em dia. Seas desligam manlands ou então prejudicam a manabase do oponente podendo mesmo funcionar como time warp. A wall pronto, aguenta beats.
3 Ramp Knight – Eu queria mesmo 4, mas não dá, não os conto como manasource nem cycler, mas a verdade é que tem um pouco dos 2 e ainda aguenta beats.
7 X-Spells – Jund não consegue aguentar com um destes resolvidos. Na verdade são estes spells que tornam o mu para aggro tão bom. Nesta lista é perfeitamente normal fazer um martial coup a 5 no 5º turno com o ramp existente no deck.
Removal cocktail – É o standard de hoje em dia, e sinceramente não acho que valha a pena mudar.
Os walkers – 2 de cada um dos melhores planeswalkers do formato é o numero certo.

O que falta aqui:
5/5’s, uns com lifelink, outros com shroud – Eu se usasse um deles, seria o baneslayer, mas a verdade é que não sinto falta deles. Além disso, uma vez que uso 3 coup’s e 2 day of judgement é contra intuitivo usa-los. E não prefiro ter banes a coups. Se me virar todo para jogar um spell, será um spell que me dará segurança de que não há nada do outro lado que me possa compremeter o jogo. Virar-me para um coup limpa a mesa, e nem que o oponente baixe um par de bichos com haste perco o jogo, enquanto com o bane, um removal seguido de um ataque pode ser desastroso.
Gideon Jura – Ele é bom, mas não o suficiente para se encaixar nesta estratégia. Não tenho assim tantos planeswalkers que precise de proteger. E tenho winning conditions suficientes. Digo mais uma vez, se me virar todo, é para arrebentar a board do adversário, não preciso desviar os ataques.
O sideboard:
As claws são óbvias, e prefiro-as aos kor porque não morrem pa deathmark. Quando red largar de vez o preto mudarei para kor.
Package anti Jund – 2 flashfreeze para substituir os doj. Não preciso de sidar quase contra aquilo. /confidence mode off
Na verdade, quase todo o side se foca num MU, o pior deles todos, o mirror. A minha lista que espanca qualquer variedade de aggro (sem contar com mono red :P, esse é renhido), perde algum do firepower no mirror. Sendo o meu objectivo conseguir juntar mais lands que eles de modo a largar os X-spells com backup de negates e conseguir outgrindá-los. O plano tem resultado. Mas o facto é que são partidas bastante renhidas.
De qualquer maneira o side inclui mais 1 jace para o barulho, o full pack de negates, mind control como out para a Iona, deprive, sendo o 5º e 6º negate que tem a vantagem de poder devolver as colonnades que foram encantadas por spreading seas, e ainda tem sinergia com o Ramp Knight.
Os kor sanctifer’s ainda têm lugar de destaque para ganhar ring wars ou simplesmente partir cálices, e ainda podem ser reciclados com o Jace. O Emrac00l, é outra winning condition que entra para lá. Mas não sei se será a melhor. A Iona e Ulamog também são possibilidades. Tenho de ver se consigo chegar aos 15 de mana consistentemente.
Bem por agora é tudo, eu quando voltar a testar devidamente tento postar algo mais interessante :P

Eldrazi's - Edição limitada

2010-04-18T19:10:00.007+01:00

Boas!

Ontem foi o pre release, e devo dizer que gosto bastante desta expansão para limited. Também já tenho feito alguns drafts e tenho gostado bastante.
Parece-me equilibrada, em que todas as cores têm boas cartas, e não há a predominância de uma especifica, ao contrário do que acontecia em Zendikar.
Sendo assim, vou fazer uma curta análise ao limited desta expansão.

Incolor/Multicolor/Lands

Basicamente, todos os eldrazi's são bons para limited. O Hand of E. é o mais fraquinho, pois o corpinho 7/7 e o anni1 não são muito impressionantes por 9 manas.
Claro que existe sempre o custo alternativo, mas não tem sido fácil baixa-lo dessa maneira. Daí, do crusher para cima, eles vão sendo bastante melhores e são verdadeiras bombas.
Mesmo cartas como Not of this World ou skittering invasion podem ser decentes em decks com 3+ Eldrazi's.
Dreamstone Hedron e uma excelente carta neste limitado, uma vez que é um formato bastante lento, com muitas walls e assim.
O Sarkhan ainda não tive grande oportunidade de o experimentar, mas deve ser decente, mas não o consideraria bomba.
All is Dust obviamente, é grande bomba, como qualquer bom sweeper.

Branco

À parte das raras bombas, gostei bastante do dawnglare invoker. Acho uma carta excelente. 2/1 fly por 3 manas não é mau, mas a habilidade dela quando se chega
às 8 manas é absurda. Um excelente early pick. Branco também é favorecido pelo bom removal, smite, guard duty (excelente contra eldrazi's) e puncturing light.
Não gosto muito do oust. Não resolve nada, apenas adia. Usaram-no contra mim várias vezes, geralmente num eldrazi, mas depois de uns turnos lá estava ele de novo.
Mas posso estar enganado. Wall of omens e muito bom já que trava os early beats e o cantrip é muito relevante. Também gostante bastante dos levelers. Por ordem crescente:
Ikiral Outrider < Knight of Cliffhaven // Caravan escort (é tudo uma questão de curva, são os dois muito bons) < Kabira Vindicator e depois os raros Branco não possui aceleração, mas com a sua horda de weenies com futuro promissor no late game acompanhado da sua panóplia de removal, tornam branco uma cor sólida para o beatdown. Uma das melhores cores de limited no formato.

Azul

O Azul de facto, é a cor mais fraquinha do formato. Os levelers são fraquinhos, apenas possui 2 removals, domestication e narcolepsy. Não possui grandes bombas.
De facto, nem há cartas a chamar a atenção.

Preto

O preto é a cor das bombas, consume the meek, pestilence demon, entre outros batrocos, e também do removal. Todo o removal de preto é bom, o meu favorito é o induce despair.
Em termos de bichos, apenas gosto dos 3 levelers, dread drone e o escorpião não é mau.

Vermelho

Não tem grandes bombas, mas transborda removal, até mesmo spawning breath é excelente visto a quantidade de levelers 1/1 que existem. Vermelho para além de splashar devido ao removal,
também é bom em decks dedicados a Eldrazi's uma vez que é a uma cor com bastante aceleração.

Verde

Como de costume, verde possui ramps e aceleradores, e neste caso bastante bons. Kozilek's predator, nest invader e ondu giant são criaturas bastante sólidas,
com excelente ramp built-on. Também existem bons levelers e a boar umbra é verdadeiramente backbreaking.
Outra grande cor a combinar com os eldrazi's.

Em suma:

- Um deck de eldrazi's deve levar sempre G ou R, ou então ambos.
- Um deck rápido só é possivel com branco, pois tem os melhores low drop's do set. Os de verde também são decentes, mas não tão cost-effective.
- Vermelho apresenta óptimo removal, mas pouca qualidade em bichos, muito provavelmente, é apenas splash.
- O azul é demasiado fraco para ser cor principal, pois só apresenta drake umbra e reality spasm como razões de ser jogado. No entanto os counters são uma boa solução para os eldrazis.
- O preto é uma cor equilibrada de removal e com alguns bons bichos, mas é impossível fazer um monoblack, ao contrário de zendikar.

Finalmente, voltamos a um bom limited.
Hasta

Report - 5 Steps closer to Nationals but still 2 far away.

2010-04-12T13:02:00.002+01:00

So this time I’m going to play Standard in the regionals.

So what deck should I take?

I was playing turbo fog in standard and I also have a Boros deck. My first choices was between this 2 at first, but when a friend of mine said he couldn’t go Jund joined my possibilities and I ended playing Jund, borrowing my 2 decks to other people.

So I was going to play the deck that most people play but there are quite a bit of different builds. So which one should I play or rather which one I wanted to play? There was another guy that was with me in this, since he would play Jund too but hadn’t decided which build to play.

So basically, we entered a quest to find the right build for which one of us.

He was faster to choose the desired build than me, he quickly decided by a Göertzen build only changing the Rampant Growth for Terminates and a revamped sideboard.

I took a lot of time to decide, actually I only got the complete list on the day before and only got some last cards on the place (I was rather lucky).

The build I played was one that got 9-0 on the first day of the GP Brussels and proceeded to a top8 finish piloted by Francesco Ciposlleschy. I only did 2 changes on the main list; one was intended, -1 Rootbound Crag +1 Raging Ravine, and the other one was forced,-1 Dragonskull Summit +1 Lavaclaw reaches.

The sideboard was revamped by me, has I didn’t like some cards he had in it.

So the list was this:

creature [19]

4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Putrid Leech
4 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Sprouting Thrinax
3 Vampire Nighthawk

instant [8]

1 Bituminous Blast
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Terminate

sorcery [7]

4 Blightning
3 Maelstrom Pulse

land [26]

3 Dragonskull Summit
3 Forest
2 Lavaclaw Reaches
3 Mountain
4 Raging Ravine
4 Savage Lands
3 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs

60 cards

Sideboard:
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
3 Deathmark
3 Duress
2 Doom Blade
2 Grim Discovery
1 Maelstrom Pulse

15 cards

I won´t say much about the sideboard, I will instead post my sideboard notes that I took to the tournament. It’s a lot more descriptive of what I wanted my side to do than saying this is good against this or against that.

So here it is:

UW Tapout Control		UWR		Grixis		Jacerator		Runeflare Trap
Out	In	Out	In	Out	In	Out	In	Out	In
3Terminate	3 Duress	3Terminate	3 Duress	3Terminate	4Ruinblaster	3terminate	4Ruinblaster	3terminate	3 Duress
1 BituBlast	3 DeathMark	1 Bitublast	2Doomblade	1 BituBlast	2 Gdiscovery	1 Bitublast	3 Duress	1 BituBlast	1 Pulse
4 Bolt	2Doomblade	4 Bolt	4Ruinblaster	4 Leech	3 Duress	3 Nhawk	1 Pulse
3 Nhawk	4Ruinblaster	4 Leech	2 Gdiscovery	2 Bolt	1 Pulse	4 leech	3 Deathmark
4 Leech	1 Pulse		1 Pulse
	2 GDiscovery
UW(b) Open the Vaults		Valakut Ramp		Polymorph		RDW \| BR Burn		WW
Out	In	Out	In	Out	In	Out	In	Out	In
4 Bolt	3 Duress	3 Nhawk	1 Pulse	4SiegeGang	3 Duress	3 Pulse	3 Duress	3Terminate	1Doomblade
1 BituBlast	1 Gdiscovery	1 BituBlast	4RuinBlaster	3 Pulso	2Doomblade	2SiegeGang	2Doomblade	1 BituBlast	3 DeathMark
3 Nhawk	4Ruinblaster	2Terminate	2Doomblade		3 DeathMark			1 Thrinax	1 Pulse
4Blightning	1 Pulse	1 bolt
	3 Deathmark
Naya \| Boros		Mono Green		Vampires		Bant \| Mythic		Jund
Out	In	Out	In	Out	In	Out	In	Out	In
4Blightning	3 Deathmark	3 Nhawk	1 Pulse	3 Leech	1 Pulse	4 Leech	3 DeathMark	2 LBolt	2 Gdiscovery
2Terminate	2Doomblade	3 Leech	3 Deathmark		2 GDiscovery	1 BituBlast	1 Pulse	4 Leech	4 Blaster
	1 Pulse		2Doomblade				1Doomblade	3Nighthawk	3 Deathmark

I actually played some games with this against the Göertzen build and it was mostly 50/50 for my surprise, the Broodmate Dragon proved not to be such a game breaker than I actually though, since most time when we got to Broodmate Dragon mana one of us would be mostly dead.

Siege-Gang proved to be very good whenever I played it (I had tried a build with one less Siege-Gang and 1 more Bituminous, but I abandoned that idea) and broken whenever I untapped with him on the board.

Now to the report.

I finished with 5-2 record and so did my friend who played the Göertzen build, but he wasn’t so happy with his sideboard has I was with mine.

So to the games:

1^st Round

U/W Tappout control

1^st Game

I actually never thought I would win this one, I got stuck in 4 lands while he developed his mana and hitting one of my ravines to get me stuck on 3 lands. I already have gotten rid of 1 Jace with a Blighting and a Bolt, and at the time he got rid of one of my ravines he decided to go to the ultimate. He tried to keep me out of land but I had a lot of gas on my hand to play and was drawing even more. He counters a bunch of spells from my part while I’m now getting some lands into play. We eventually reach to a stalemate where he has 4 soldier tokens – from a Martial Coup – Jace with 9 counters and I have a Leech in play 5 untapped lands 1 Bituminous, 1 Bloodbraid, 1 siege gang and a Terminate on my hand- this time he decides to Brainstorm instead of powering up Jace to 11 counters, so the 2 cards that he has in his hand are lands or irrelevant stuff, I decided to Bitublast on one of the tokens so he hasn’t the chance to get a Counter Spell and if I hit a Blightning it would be pretty good. I didn’t get the Blightning instead I got a Bloodbraid into a Thrinax – I can’t complain- he Oringed my Thrinax and passed the turn. On my turn I terminate a token activated 1 ravine and they all go to Jace.

On his turn he played Day of Judgement and I just kept attacking with the Ravine letting her eat a Colonnade and hitting home. He conceded showing me 3 Day of Judgment in his hand.

2^nd Game.

Not much to talk about this one. His 3^rd turn Jace gets obliterated by my third turn Blightning,

His 4rd turn Jace gets destroyed by a Pulse, and a Bloodbraid into a Thrinax eat his life in a couple of turns.

Record 1-0

2^nd Round

1^st Game

Jund probably the Göertzen build

I’m on the play and he both go Leech, then he Blightnings –I discarded 1 bolt and a land to it- and I played a Thrinax he played a Garruk and put a token in play, on my turn I Blightning him – I had it In my starting hand – which got 2 of the 4 cards on is hand 1 siege gang and 1 broodmate and destroying Garruk in the process. He then dropped a siege gang (I think) wich I Terminated and lead the way with a Siege-Gang from my part shortly after he was dead.

2^nd game

The same as game 1 but this time he won since I never got removal to kill is 2^nd turn leech.

3^rd game

He once again starts with a 2^nd turn leech and I kept a hand with 4 land a bolt 1 siege gang and a bitu blast, unfortunately for me He had 2 Blastminer to slow down my 5 turn plays while I only draw land and 2 additional Siege-Gangs to stay still on my hand until it was too late.

Record 1-1

3^rd Round

WR Boros

1^st Game

Well, I’m playing against my deck.

This was a crazy game, since he played 4 Rangers and got me on 1 life before I stabilized. He had 2-4 turns where any burn spell would kill me before I played Bloodbraid into Nighthawk who quickly got me out of his range.

2^nd Game

There isn’t much to talk about this one since I get the nuts draw against him

Record 2-1

4^th Round

WW Soldier Brew

1^st Game

We traded creatures and removal for about 6, 7 turns. I’m at a point where I have 4 lands in play , 2 leech and 2 Bloodbraids in my hand where he only has 6 lands – one of them is a Emeria – and 1 card in hand. I Drop a leech and pass. He draws captain of the watch and plays it. I draw a land play it and drop a Bloodbraid who it’s a Blightning making him discard is only card in hand a Plains and I pass the turn. He draws and plays a Conquerors’ Pledge and pass. Now I’m at 12 life have a Leech and a Bloodbraid in play, I need some sort of removal to get rid of Captain or a Pulse to hit the tokens. The odds where in my favor somehow but unfortunately I drew a CIPT land and my Braid got a Thrinax, so I have 2 Bloodbraids and a Leech facing a board of 9 2/2 soldiers and a Captain of the Watch GG.

2^nd Game

He starts with a Honor of the Pure into a Firewalker then a Blademaster. My second turn Leech got Oringed and the Blademaster got a Terminate pointed to his head. After getting hit 2 3 times by the Firewalker I finally draw a Doomblade but 1 of the 2 cards he has on his hand is a Brave the Elements so he stays lives and I proceed to drop a Thrinax. He drops another Blademaster and hits me again with the Firewalker, I’m at 9 at this time. I drop a Bloodbraid that hits another Doomblade this time getting rid of the Firewalker. He draws and plays a Oring on the Thrinax and attacks with the Blademaster which founded a Bloodbraid in is way. I draw a bolt that promptly kills the Blademaster and drop another Thrinax on his turn he drops a firewalker and pass, I drew a land played another thrinax and still had a land on my hand. He still had a card in his and too who was most likely a land. So he draws, and the 3^rd Firewalker joined the ranks while the other one got me on 6. I draw a DeathMark and who got a Firewalker, attacked with the Thrinax is at 20 life. On his turn he drops a land attacks with the Firewalker and pass I got a Nighthawk drop it and attack with the Thrinax, he draws a purge and it’s GG.

Record 2-2

5^th Round

Boss Naya

1^st Game

It was a quick matchup where I killed pretty much anything relevant to him and ride a ravine into the dome.

2^nd Game

Same has the first one but this time even faster.

Record 3-2

6^th Round

Vampires

1^st Game

I’m stuck at 3 lands and he has 3 Bloodghasts running GG.

2^nd Game

He Kept a 7 hand with only one land to my mulligan to 6 and got promptly devastated.

3^rd Game

On this game there wasn’t mana problems for either of us but I played 3 Thrinax in my first 6 turns and his Vampire Lord got Terminated immediately after hitting play, he even wasted a Ravine from my part but a Grim Discovery got a Thrinax and the Ravine back to once again join his bros and give me the Game.

7^th Round

Jund Göertzen build with Explore instead of Rampant Growths

1^st Game

He started first and we both mulligan to 6 and ramped on the second turn with a explore , on my turn I played leech, he then played Blightning –I discarded a land and a bolt- dropped a land attacked with the leech and decided to pump it but a Lightning Bolt killed him before getting fat. He now has 3 cards in his hand and I Blightning him and hit a Siege-Gang and a Broodmate Dragon. He draws plays a land and drops a Siege-Gang. On my turn I drop a land and Pulse the tokens. He plays another land attacks with the a Ravine and the Commander

I Play a Thrinax and pass, he drops another land attacks with the Ravine that gets terminated.

Them I play a Siege-Gang who got Lightning Bolted but I got another Siege-Gang for my next turn, which sealed the deal.

2^nd Game

He got a 3^rd turn Blastminer into a 4^th turn Siege-Gang into a 5^th turn Siege-Gang GG,

3^rd game

This time he has problems getting black mana and 2 Blastminers make sure he doesn’t get black mana before I’m done with him – I still had a Grim Discovery to get a Blastminer from the GY when the game ended.

So this is all folks.

P.s. There are certainly a lot of mistakes on the report. Since I didn’t make notes I’m doing this from memory which isn’t a exact science. Either way, the essential plays are there.

INVITATIONAL TOP4: Miranda goes Controlish

2010-04-12T10:13:00.005+01:00

Ora boas,
Finalmente vou entrar em férias de mtg uma vez que a altura competitiva fechou para mim, uma vez que não vou jogar regionais.
Não foi grande season para mim, apenas tive um near top8 em 4 ptq’s, e pronto, fiz o top64 no GP que é bastante decente e ainda top4 no invitational de ontem da ML. AH brincam???
First things first, e começo por falar no ptq. Desde o GP que ando a testar DDT, e tendo a chegado a uma lista, que por mim considero óptima, andava a espancar completamente zoo, mirror’s e w/ever.
A lista então:

// Lands
3 [PLC] Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 [FUT] Tolaria West
2 [M10] Swamp (1)
4 [SHM] Sunken Ruins
4 [FUT] River of Tears
3 [M10] Island (1)
4 [CS] Dark Depths
1 [WWK] Creeping Tar Pit
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins

// Creatures
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
4 [ZEN] Vampire Hexmage

// Spells
4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
3 [ARB] Thopter Foundry
3 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
2 [FUT] Sword of the Meek
2 [ON] Smother
2 [GP] Repeal
4 [RAV] Muddle the Mixture
1 [RAV] Compulsive Research
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
1 [FD] Engineered Explosives
1 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 [10E] Boomerang

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
SB: 2 [PLC] Damnation
SB: 3 [M10] Deathmark
SB: 3 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 1 [ZEN] Gatekeeper of Malakir
SB: 1 [RAV] Darkblast
SB: 2 [DDC] Duress
SB: 1 [MR] Chalice of the Void

A lista é absurda e era um verdadeiro win-it-all. Isto, até ir para o mws com o Cavaleiro e ele mostrar-me como quando se chega às 4 manas com 2 especificos pretos seguido de 7 especificos geralmente era gg.
Eu andava a perder para Grixis Control, e não era só isso. Como sabem, o DDT originial, surgiu numa época em que o formato era dominado por UW foundry e Scapeshift. Então o GerryT, fez uma lista UB com 4 seizes, 3 duress e 3 vendilion clique. O que é que aconteceu? Não havia lista de controlo que aguentasse, e o único deck mesmo capaz de fazer frente a DDT era zoo, e quanto mais rápido melhor. Isto implicou uma mudança nas listas, tirar os descartes e enfiar smother’s e deathmarks. Resultado? O ambiente ficou disputado entre Zoo’s e DDT’s com planos de transformação pós side. Quem lucrou com isto? Scapeshift. Zoo é o seu melhor mu, e DDT com apenas 4 seizes + 1 Duress, não era o bicho papão de antigamente.
Daí, eu quis dar uma hipótese ao meu Grixis Control, que é de longe a melhor lista ever. (eu já o ando a testar desde a versão primordial do wrecking ball)

/ Lands
5 [ROE] Island (1)
1 [ROE] Mountain (1)
6 [ROE] Swamp (1)
1 [DIS] Blood Crypt
1 [GP] Steam Vents
1 [RAV] Watery Grave
4 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
1 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
1 [WWK] Lavaclaw Reaches

// Creatures
2 [DD2] Mulldrifter

// Spells
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
2 [RAV] Dimir Signet
2 [DIS] Rakdos Signet
4 [9E] Blood Moon
3 [GP] Repeal
3 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
3 [CHK] Night of Souls' Betrayal
3 [PLC] Damnation
3 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 [M10] Jace Beleren
1 [CFX] Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
3 [ALA] Cruel Ultimatum
4 [FNM] Smother
1 [P2] Cruel Edict

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [PLC] Damnation
SB: 4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
SB: 4 [M10] Negate
SB: 1 [10E] Flashfreeze
SB: 1 [ZEN] Sorin Markov
SB: 3 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 1 [ZEN] Sadistic Sacrament

Esta versão em relação à do Chapin, dropou os counters, porque são inuteis no formato, quer dizer, não há realmente key spells que têm de ser anulados.
A manabase é Blood Moon proof.
Eu jogo com blood moon, pois é autowin contra ddt, fadas, zoo e shift.
A techzinha do jace beleren, geralmente decks de Jace TMS usam extirpates/cranials, se resolver uma contra vocês, ainda têm hipóteses de ganhar jace wars. Eu fiz isto no testing e no ptq mesmo.
Quanto ao ptq:

R1 Dredge

G1 foi disputado, mas o facto é que não tenho grandes formas de lidar contra aquilo de main.
G2 mull a 5 e parei em 2 ilhas com extirpate na mão, mas irrelevante pois ele tinha o seize.

R2 DDT

O meu oponente era bastante fraquinho, mas tinha draw’s absurdos para compensar. Lá me deu para ganhar.
No segundo jogo nem cheirou.

R3 Fadas

Isto não foi muito interessante, pois basicamente era eu tentar baixar NOSB e quando o fazia era autowin.

R4 Congregation zoo

O g1 foi engraçado, pois ele ficou visualmente satisfeito por resolver um magus of the moon, mas curiosamente ele perdeu para mim quando eu resolvi a blood moon.
Os outros 2 jogos foram quase impossíveis pois entraram as silver bullets, teeg e glen elendra e obrigava-me a jogar muito à volta disso. Ele também teve draws muito bons. Mas o mu já era dificil à partida.

Pronto apanhei 2 de 5 decks que nunca poderia apanhar, e foi isto.

Passemos a coisas boas, top4 no invitational.
Sei que acordei cedo no domingo, ando com o relógio biológico meio avariado, e como tinha nada que fazer, siga po mws testar decks.
Peguei nas listas de grixis e bant do Brad Nelson, mas OMG esses fat-asses americanos deviam ser proíbidos de postar em sites, porque só jogam com decks de merda. Eles devem ser mesmo jogadores fora se série para conseguir ganhar com aquelas pilhas.
Então, depois de ter testado quase todos os decks de t2, resolvi dar uma hipótese ao UW que o António Sá tanto me lixou a cabeça, e ainda ganhei um almoçinho à pala desse deck.
Peguei naquilo fiz uns jogos e de facto tava undefeated. Entretanto o GFSS chegou com uma lista, que eu não percebi se era Naya com pulsos e dragões, ou se era Jund com Ranger of Eos.
Eu estava séptico em relação à lista, mas quis dar uma hipótese e fomos para o mws resolver isso como 2 geeks. Turns out, o deck era mesmo mau e acabamos por ir os 2 com UW.

Já agora, para não postar mais decklists, fica aqui o link do Invitational:

http://magic-league.com/deck/60080/standard_t2.html#Blightning%20Burn32984

Então, na R1 apanhei Naya allies.
Ele cometeu um erro que eu capitalizei, que foi o de não anunciar os trigger’s então acabei por ganhar no combate um swing de 7 vida e foi jogo aí.
No segundo jogo, foi mais complicado, estabilizei nos 3 de vida, quando ele tinha um stirring wildwood na mesa, mas quando comecei a encadear mind spring’s ele concedeu.

+1 DoJ, +3 Flashfreeze, +2 Celestial Purge
-4 Spreading Seas, -2 Jace

Na R2, foi jund

Ganhei 2 jogos na boa ali a encadear spreading seas, e depois uns mindspring’s à maneira. Elspeth é MVP contra jund no early game.

+ 4 Purge, +3 Flashfreeze, +1 Negate
-2 Jace, -3 O-Ring, -3 Path

R3, UW Chapin

È um mu para esquecer, visto que eles têm mais jaces, mais counters, mais draw e mais lands.

+4 Negate, +1 Jace, +2 Luminarch
-2 Baneslayers, -3 Path, -2 DoJ

R4-R6 Jund’s

Opá foi uma sucessão deles, e foi a limpar tudo a eito. Ia perdendo na R5, mas ele cometeu um erro e concedeu o jogo. Depois acabei por lhe ganhar o 3º na boa.
Na R6, foi incrivel, no 2º jogo, tinha o jogo completamente ganho, em que ele so tinha 3 lands, sem mais nada, eu tinha 6, e parou-me o cerebro e baxei um baneslayer e ia perdendo por causa disso. Jund não perdoa erros mesmo. Deixo aqui também a referência ao baneslayer, que a cena da vida, não é muito relevante, e contra Jund, gostava mesmo era da esfinge...

Top8 – Jund

Mais um a ir com o caraças, mas este era mais complicado pós side, pois ele tinha Ruinblasters, Mind Rot e Duress. Mas mesmo assim, no 3º jogo com 9 lands, sem cartas na mão, o mind spring deu-me o jogo.

Top4 – Mono White Control

Sabia à partida que ia ser um mu complicado pós side, mas ganhei o 1º, e ia ganhar o segundo não me tivesse esquecido que ele tinha iona. Ainda fiz um mind spring a 4 para tentar encontrar um dos meus jaces para ganhar o jogo, mas nada. Joguei mal e mereci perder.
Pior ainda joguei no 3º jogo em que fiz borrada a toda hora, tava mesmo cansado por estar horas à frente do pc. Enfim, uma ronda para esquecer.

E pronto, não vou maçar mais, isto já está demasiado grande.

Hasta

Quando tudo virará pó... CONTÉM SPOILERS

2010-04-01T10:24:00.003+01:00

Ora boas,
Cá estou eu de novo, desta vez vou tentar abordar um pouco do futuro de t2 com rise of the eldrazi.
Sim, eu sei que ainda só sairam 50 cartas para além dos terrenos básicos, mas mesmo assim já dá para um vislumbre do que está para vir.
A carta que até agora mais me chamou a atenção foi a All is Dust, a carta é absurda. É simplesmente brutal. O efeito é poderosissimo, e a maior caracteristica é que é incolor.
O que significa isto? A priori, que qualquer deck pode usa-lo. Mas se pensarmos melhor, isto é uma solução para monoblacks, mono blues e mono red's de modo a lidarem com encantamentos e artefactos que até agora era impossível.
Esta carta, aliada ao facto de existir o everflowing chalice, implica o aparecimento de novos arquetipos, e quem sabe se não é desta que o big red cola no ambiente.

E quanto ao resto dos eldrazi's? São jogáveis? Na minha opinião sim. É perfeitamente possível fazer cast de um Kozileck ao 4º turno:
Rootbound Crag (1 mana)
Eldrazi Temple, Mana Dork (4 mana)
Land Generico, Emrakul's Hatcher (8 mana)
Eye of Ugin, Kozileck.

Isto não implica necessáriamente um futuro deck, mas foi de facto uma jogada fácil de pensar que leva a considerar a facilidade com que se jogará com os eldrazi's.
Eldrazi's à frente, também gostei bastante dos novos Planewalkers, principalmente o novo Sarkhan.
Na minha opinião, é o 4-5º melhor planewalker de sempre disputado com o Garruk. Consigo vê-lo a jogar lado a lado com um jace, ou então simplesmente num Jund, em que será o novo recurso disputado, visto que consegue ser um blowout com broodmates na mesa, ou dá a jund a unica coisa que não tinham, que era card draw. Ah e os trinaxes agora põe tokens 5/5.
O Gideon, não me pareceu espetacular, mas é uma boa winning condition, e creio que poderá ver jogo na forma de 1 of.
Depois, eu como grande apreciador de Gifts Ungiven, adorei Realms Uncharted, e acho que é uma carta genial.
A mecânica level up, parece-me bastante interessante, e tudo deve-se ao sucesso do figure of destiny.
Ainda em rise of eldrazi, e o que me parece que vá ser splashado em decks como alt winning con, é explosive revelation, que basicamente é um erratic explosion, então com jaces e eldrazi's no formato...

E agora, para terminar com o brainstorming de ROE, um sketch que me surgiu:

10 Eldrazi's

4 All is Dust
3 Kozileck
1 Emrakul
1 Ulamog
1 Artisan of Kozileck

8 White

4 Guard Duty
4 Oblivion Ring

13 Blue

3 Jace, the Mind sculpur
4 Flashfreeze
4 Treasure Hunt
2 Negate

6 Aceleradores

4 Chalices
2 Eye of Ugin

23 Lands

4 halimar depths
4 Colonade
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Glacial fortress
6 Island
1 Plains

Aproveito este post para dizer que consegui ontem qualificar-me para o invitational da Magic-League num trial de Extended:

http://magic-league.com/deck/60287/extended_t1x.html#UW%20Merfolk43997

Apanhei BW Pox, Genesis, Grixis Control, Doran e depois perdi no top4 para merfolks.
Fiquei bastante contente com a prestação do deck, o que me dá uma força extra para o ptq em cascais.
Quanto ao invitational, que será t2, ainda estou indeciso entre naya allies e br blightning, mas depois tenho de testar.
AH! Para aqueles que andam a testar o BR, tirem uma fetch para o 2º Akoum Refuge, e no sideboard façam:
-4 LD, e ponham, +1 dragon's claw, +1 Tuktuk Scrapper, +1 Hideous End, e +1 carta à vossa escolha.
É tudo, fiquem bem

Contagem descrescente em Bruxelas top64

2010-03-30T18:25:00.003+01:00

Hey
Regressado de Bruxelas, após um top64, concluo que a minha escolha foi a certa.
Fiz 12-4 com um bye, perdendo para 2 jund dia 1, e 2 naya no dia 2.
De facto, estava a trabalhar para um top16, de modo a qualificar me para san juan, mas não deu, e tive de me contentar com os 200 USD's.
Eu tinha deck para melhor de facto, mas as derrotas nem foram próximas e não deu mesmo para o top16.
A lista que joguei foi:

4 Goblin Guide
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Ball Lightning
4 Hell's Thunder
4 Earthquake
4 Blightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Searing Blaze
4 Burst Lightning
4 Lavaclaw Reaches
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
6 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Akoum Refuge

Sideboard:
3 Dragon's Claw
2 Goblin Ruinblaster
2 Doom Blade
4 Deathmark
2 Roiling Terrain
2 Tuktuk Scrapper

A lista é bastante semelhante ao do vencedor do GP Kuala Lumpur, com algumas alterações:

Tirei os quenchable fire, porque aquilo é horrível.
Pus os 4ºs burst e quake, o quake e MVP do deck contra aggro e o burst lightning é melhor que o quenchable fire.
No side, mantive os 6 spot removal para os baneslayer's, monks e firewalkers, o plano LD, só que preferi usar roilling terrain por serem cartas mais proactivas,
e ainda adicionei claw's para ter free wins no mirror e os scrapper para os equip's de naya e os everflowing chalices.
Na manabase, 8 fontes de preto era absurdo num deck sem draw nem fixers, por isso adicionei 2 fontes de mana preta e mesmo assim vejo me a adicionar mais uma.
Tinha a lista lockada e mal chegamos a Bruxelas fomos logo para o site e inscrevemo-nos num trial.
Quanto aos mu's, sabia que tudo seria bastante favoravel, excepto jund que seria renhido, e naya que que era ligeiramente desfavorável.

R1 apanho valakut ramp e como podem adivinhar foi brutalmente facil.

+ 4 LD
- 4 Earthquake

No 2º jogo ele ainda baixa 2 gladeheart e um SCG, mas mesmo assim, no sweat.

R2 apanho Naya, mas com draw's brutais consigo ganhar 2-1.

+ 6 Spot's, +2 Tuktuk
-4 Blightning, -4 Ball Lightning

R3 WW

Enes de facil, 2-0

+ 6 spot's
- 4 Blightning, -2 Ball Lighnting

E assim tou no top4

Semi's apanho Naya e o eventual vencedor do evento, e sucumbo 2-0.

Falhei o objectivo principal, mas deu para testar irl o meu deck e fiquei agradamente surpreendido e ainda ganhei 6 packs lol.

Quanto ao Main event no dia a seguir:

R1 Bye

R2 Jund, cá está ele, o bicho papão. As coisas começam a correr mal, quando sou sovado no g1, e no g2 ele deixa-me a 1, sem cartas na mão, com apenas 3 lands, mas do topo sai o hell's thunder para os 4 de vida que lhe sobravam. G3 é fácil

+4 LD
-2 Ball Lightning, 2 Earthquake

R3 Naya, tive draw's demasiado bons para ele sequer competir.

R4 Mythic, surpreendemente ganho g1, perco g2, mas no g3, o quake do topo arruma o jogo.

+6 spot
-4 hellspark, -2 ball lightning

R5 Tenho um bye na forma de boros.

+ 6 spot
-4 ball lightning, -2 blightning

R6 apanho JUnd, e sou absolutamente sovado.

R7 Mythic, em que ele abre de noble, rhox, rafiq. g2 é facil, tive removal po anjo, g3 foi disputado após ter de lidar com um mycoid sheppard.

R8 Jund, e perco para nut's em 2 jogos.

R9 Jund, perco o primeiro, decido não sidar, e ganho facilmente os outros 2 jogos.

Consegui fazer dia 2, mas o top16 estava bastante compremetido, mas pronto, tinha de me concentrar ao máximo.

R10, apanho naya com 4 baneslayers de base, e os jogos nem foram próximos e perdi 2-0.

R11, apanho mythic, em que ambos keepamos mãos de 1 land, mas eu tinha 3 R burn spells, goblin guide, searing blaze e hellspark, logo tinha jogo para esse land e se comprasse o 2º, ficava sick.
Fui matando os bichos de mana deles enquanto o guide esventrava-o, 2 turnos depois comprei o 2º land e correu tudo bem.
Perdi o jogo a seguir, mas ganhei o 3º.

R12, UW control, um mu muito facil, mas mesmo assim o gajo teve nuts no 2º jogo e conseguiu ganhar-me com chalice e flashfreeze ao 2º, firewalker e flashfreeze ao 3º, entretanto ele n tinha mao, e eu matei lhe o kor, entramos em race de ruinblaster vs colonade e eu comprei 4 lands seguidos gg.

+12 cartas de side (- dragon's claw)
- 4 ball lightning, -4 searing blaze, -4 quakes

R13, Mais um naya que me ganhou 2-1.

R14, Eldazi Elves, alto bye.

+6 spots, 2 tuktuk
- 4 goblin guide, -4 blightning

R15, Koros, tambem muito facil.

+ 6 spot, +2 tuktuk grunt
- 4 ball lightning, -4 blightning

R16, Mirror, ganho o 1º, sido os dragon's claw, mas nao os vi no 2º jogo e perdi, no 3º faço mull a 6, nao volto a ver os dragon's claw, mas mesmo assim ganho.

+ 2 ruinblaster, 1 doom blade, 3 dragon's claw
- 4 quakes, 2 ball lightning

Enfim, fiquei no dinheiro, foi satisfatório. O deck é bastante bom, mas precisa de mais mana preta e de remodelar o side, visto que o LD plano e um falhanço.
Desta vez é tudo, tenho de me concentrar para extended, uma vez que ando a ter umas ideias para bloco.
Hasta

Quando começamos o jogo a 17 com apenas 5 cartas na mão

2010-03-16T19:56:00.005Z

Boas,
Ao contrário dos outros posts anteriores, este vai ser em português.
Ora bem, faltam apenas 4 dias para o meu 3º ptq de extended e tou a pouco mais de uma semana para o GP Bruxelas.
Começando por extended, devo manter-me fiel a Dark Depths, mais precisamente à lista verde e preta uma vez que na minha opinião é o melhor deck de extended, já que possui os melhor mu's contra tudo. A sério, não tou no gozo. Com 8 duress's de main, é possível quebrar todas as defesas de controlo, mirror e atrasar combo's o tempo suficiente.
A juntar isso tenho mais 4 extirpates. Quanto a zoo, tenho o plano dos rites, 3 goyfs e ainda 4 pulsos, 4 deathmarks e 1 smother. Deve chegar nao? De qualquer maneira, devo confessar que cheguei a testar o Boggeme's Zoo, o Blood Zoo, joguei com ele no master, mas acabei 3-2, perdendo para dredge e para mirror de 75 cartas. Por isso posso dizer que os resultados foram inconclusivos, mas vá, eu quero mesmo é ir de depths :D
Adiante com extended, passemos a t2. Como todos sabem, t2 é constituido por Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn e Lightning Bolts. Formando um meta dividido pelo tier1: Jund. Pronto, eu sempre odiei Zendikar, sempre achei que não trazia cartas dignas de constructed e que não revolucionaria o formato, contudo eu estava errado. As verdant catacombs vieram a melhor a manabase de jund possibilitando Putrid Leech ao 2º muitas mais vezes. Depois veio WorldWake, eu torci os dedos de esperança que viessem uns bichos porreiros azuis e brancos, uns aliados tipo mulldrifter, o que não aconteceu, mas em recompensa, vieram Raging Ravine e Lavaclaw's Reaches e agora jund consegue fazer 2-1 até com os lands!! Sim, os nossos path's também trocam com a manabase de jund agora.
Então vocês perguntam: "Miranda, então vais de Jund ao GP?" Tive para ir, porque admitamos, os prozões fazem decks para ganhar a Jund, mas sempre que lhes perguntam qual é o pior mu do deck todos dizem em uníssono: "JUND".
Se analisarmos o top8 do GP Kuala Lumpur, vemos lá 6 Junds, 28 Blightnings e 32 Lightning Bolt's. Nice.
O que eu espero que seja o meta do GP:
45-55% de Jund
5-8% de Naya
10% de Mythic
15% de UW Control
15% de Mono Red

Eu sei que se somarem as % não dá bem 100, mas vocês estão a ter uma ideia. Basicamente as pessoas ainda não perceberam que Naya é um mau Jund. Mythic é bom no g1, mas no g2 quando entra o spot removal, curva-se para Jund como qualquer outro deck. UW Control é um deck altamente, compra enes de cartas, basicamente compra lands e cartas para comprar mais cartas. Preciso de dizer mais?
Mono Red... Mono red é o deck que perde para os WW e assim, mas de momento é o unico que consegue impor respeito a Jund. E eu conto com meio field de Jund, alguns Naya's e alguns UW control. Sâo bons mu's, o que me dá uma boa % de win contra o field. Vai ser a minha aposta.
Já agora os linkzinhos duns mini's:

http://magic-league.com/tournament/info.php?id=60063&view=decks

http://magic-league.com/tournament/info.php?id=60087&view=decks

Por acaso Lol, voltei a encontrar o mesmo gajo na final, que no 1º jogo se queixou dos meus topdecks. (aqueles topdecks de lands para as cartas que têm na mão)
Mas ele da 2ª vez techou o deck e ganhou me por isso, filho da mãe. Não perde pela demora.
Bem, acho que desta vez é tudo, não quero massar muito. Mas ainda tenho umas coisas para dizer a respeito do Jace, e devo voltar também com o report do meu ptq.
Fiquem bem

Report - Crashing at GP Madrid

2010-03-13T11:04:00.006Z

So, 2 weeks ago I went to GP Madrid, since I won GPT in OPorto which gave me 3 byes and some cash to help with traveling expenses, with 2 friend (that are judges by the way).

There isn’t much to say about the trip to Madrid. Well we got lost in Portugal (yea or own country) or rather we missed an exit and had to go a long way before being able to turn back and get in the right track. So after a 6 hour trip by car we were in Madrid, after checking that I’m not in time to make my inscription on Friday I’m told that they already had 1500+ players signed. Seriously, 1500+ for legacy?? And it was in the prior day. Anyway, after the judges meeting, we left the site to check-in on our hostel. In some unbelievable way 2 guys, (aka more judges) that would stay with us in the same room, get apart from us on the Metro station while we were checking were we would have to leave and change trains. Which means they got on the train before us and consequently they got lost, which led to an epic discussion (after we finally find them) about who fault was. After this epic journey and a stupid episode with our hostel board, we tried to explain that I preferred to sleep on the floor since the beds were tiny (and one of us needed to sleep on the floor since we were 5) but ended with them understanding that I slept everyday on the floor and them getting a mattress for me, we got to go out for dinner, and after some hours discussing magic rulings, YEI for me, we got some sleep.

So we start the big day at 6 am and after waiting on the line to enter we are told that there were 2229 players attending GP Madrid. After some babbling about how big that number and other irrelevant stuff I got to see some people playing and eating at a Kebab’s (love byes) since I would be only playing at 3 pm in the best perspectives.

So my list was this:

creature [15]
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Qasali Pridemage
4 Rhox War Monk
4 Tarmogoyf

instant [16]
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares

enchantment [4]
4 Counterbalance

artifact [3]
3 Sensei's Divining Top

planeswalker [4]
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

land [18]
4 Flooded Strand
1 Forest
2 Island
3 Misty Rainforest

1 Plains

3 Tropical Island

2 Tundra

2 Windswept Heath

Sideboard:

2 Vendilion Clique

1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress

1 Sower of Temptation

1 Trygon Predator

2 Krosan Grip

2 Threads of Disloyalty

3 Engineered Explosives

1 Relic of Progenitus

2 Tormod's Crypt

So here we go:

Round 4 Russian Guy Playing

Game 1 - So time to play, “STOP DECKCHECK” or maybe not.

No problem with the lists so we start. For about 40 turns I thought he was playing Eva Green with W splash since he was playing goyfs, pulses, discard etc… Then he played Helm of Obedience and Leyline of the Void which I’m unable to counter and just scoop.

Game 2 - There wasn’t enough time for the second game.

3-1-0

Round 5 Someone Playing Hulk combo.

Game 1 - YEY, another random combo. I quickly lose to the combo on the first game.

Sideboard

+2 Krosan Grips +2 Vendilion +1 Trygon Predator +1 relic +2 tormod’s

-4 Counterbalance -4 Dazes

Game 2 - He sided against balance and I didn’t care, played some creatures countered or destroyed is key spells and landed an Elspeth to make my creatures fly over is walls.

Game 3 – Basically the same as game 2.

4-1-0

Round 6 Someone 2 playing Zoo

Game 1 – I play noble into Monk which he tries a path on the monk I counter with a force, he then attacks with the nacatl and I block with my monk, he then trys to burn my monk wich gets dazed. Then I go home with a monk on my turn and pass, e paths my monk on my turn I drop another monk, pass, drop jace draw a bunch of pridemage and hierarchs and I was attacking with a 8/9 monk, he scooped.

Sideboard

In 2 threads 2 explosives

Out 4 Daze

Game 2 - Same as game 1 with some swords and a threads on the middle

5-1-0

Round 7 Someone 3 Playing WBG Control.

Game 1 – He draws 4 goyfs an I only draw one he has a lot of removal for my creatures even though I 2 removal spell and he just wins with is last 6/7 goyf while I’m looking for an answer with top and a counterbalance on the table. We traded an Elspeth too.

Sideboard

In 2 threads 2 vendillion 1 sower

Out 4 dazes 1 counterbalance

Game 2 – I give him the beats after some needles, paths, swords, explosives, pernicious deed….

In 2 explosives 1 trygon

Out 3 counterbalance

Game 3 – I get timed out but I would win but he doesn’t want to concede so we get a draw and we will both drop from day 2 if we draw or lose another game.

5-1-1

Round 8 Andrzej Lysek playing Merfolks

Game 1 – He starts, and I have balance top active on my third turn but he had board presence with a 2/1 a 1/1 and a mutavault. I’m unable to draw any creature and he kills me after 3 turns.

In 2 threads 1 sower 1 llawan 3 explosives 2 vendillion clique 1 trygon

Out 4 counterbalance 2 elspeth 4 daze

Game 2 – So this goes draw go for some turns with both of us countering stuff and he once again kill me with 2 mutavaults since once again I don’t draw any creature besides 1 vendilion which traded with one lord.

5-2-1 DROP

No day 2 for me, but I get a free beer from someone 3, Heineken by the way, so I could cheer up a little with him, no day 2 for him either.

So I registered for the PTQ and went to get some sleep.

DAY 2

So I’m actually happy to play extended (my favorite format), but Magic didn’t want anything to do with me on that day.

After 3 of the most stupid loss I have since I started playing Magic, a zoo deck countering 5 spell and beating me with only a goyf COMMOM.

DROP

Mad at that shit, I went to play some 2 drafts, and on my first one I make a U/R drck with 8 islands 8 mountains so let’s play.

Game 1 – 4 cards 3 mountains

Mool – 3 cards 3 mountains

Mool – 2 cards 3 mountains – Keep, screwed GG.

Game 2 – 4 cards 3 mountains Seriously?

Mool – 3 cards 3 mountains WTF?? I see a pattern here. Keep, screwed GG.

So, one of those days where I should be sleeping until 11 am as I usually do.

My second draft went better but I got screwed on my third game while he draws all is bombs after a mooligan to 5.

Magic ended for me on that day. So I just spent the rest of my time trading chatting and swearing.

So we get to go home after 2 days of magic and once again we miss an exit and get some extra km on our voyage, at least this time was in spain, and when we get to the frontier we are stopped by the Spanish border control. After some jokes about the situation we are asked if we have any type of weapon which we say no until Mendes realizes he has a pocketknife and asks if that is considered a weapon, which the officer answer with “it wasn’t to show now”. After we get our pockets emptied he frisked us or rather Mendes got is balls touched, Gonçalo got is hip checked and I got a massage on my ankles.

After a thorough search on Mendes car, which didn’t include is car case, we finally got on the road to Home again.

So my first GP was fun, had some hilarious moments, free beer and some of the weirdest games I had.

Pros:

Someone 3 making a scene because I wasn’t Spanish and was able to speak English. Simply hilarious.

Someone 3 giving me free beer and boasting to his friends that I was the best Portuguese player he ever met (and most likely the only one).

Being in the same room as 4 judges made me realize why I never wanted to be a judge and I probably never want, talking about rules all night made me realize that….

Getting the last cards for my standard deck.

Not having my ball touched by some random guy.

And FREE BEER.

Cons:

Playing weird decks on the first day

Leaving bed before 11 am on the 2 day.

Having 5 spells countered by a Zoo deck.

The stupid draft moolingans.

Being in the same room with 4 judges that speak about magic rules most of the time.

And that’s all people.

Comps, Rui Gomes.

PTQ Report: Dark North 4-3

2010-03-08T17:57:00.005Z

Hi again!!
It's been about 2 days since the ptq, which was rightfully won by a friend of mine, Gonçalo Sequeira, who some of you may know as GFSS, that Magic-League über-legend.
So, this blog is mine, not his, so I will stop talk about him (please continue to read, I am a decent player too!!). Jokes aside, he did rightfully won the tournment since he practiced hard with the deck, which is a Zoo btw, not really high tech, just the Boros Fury-Shield on the sideboard. Gonçalo is a pretty solid player, and in my humble opinion, he's struggling as the best national constructed player with Márcio Carvalho. He sucks on limited though.

Another player that also deserved to win that top8, and was a victim of severe bad beats, was João Andrade. You probabilly know him since he was the living end that lost to GerryT on a Magic Online PTQ. He was playing living end on this ptq as well. And man, he can really make that thing look like a deck.
The third player, who deserved to win the tournment was me. Why? Because I had the best deck for the meta!!! So why didn't I win? Because I mulliganed a lot? No, maybe 3-4 mulligans all day, but I won those games. Got Screw/Flood? Nope. My opponents topdecked all day??? I guess not. So, why didn't I win? Because during my testing I underestimed tier 398 decks. When I practiced with UB Depths for the other ptq, I got assured I had trained against ALL possible decks in extended. People called me crazy, because most decks don't see play, but still I had to be prepared. For this ptq, I just practiced against zoo's and dark depths. So I did deserved to win, but at the same time I didn't because I flawed my practice and was punished by it. Fail and learn.
But, what did I play after all? BG Depths, aka, Dark North.
Hey wait!! Isn't that list by Chris Fennell just some cheaper version of the DDT? Yes and no. So with into the north, you can really combo faster with dark depths and also with rite of comsuption and 8 discard spells you will kill them more often and safer. Also you got the goyf jitte plan, not as good as the thopter one, but a much more easier and less corruptable one.
So, for reference, the list:

// Lands
4 [CS] Dark Depths
3 [RAV] Overgrown Tomb
1 [CS] Snow-Covered Forest
5 [CS] Snow-Covered Swamp
4 [PLC] Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs

// Creatures
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
4 [ZEN] Vampire Hexmage

// Spells
2 [SHM] Beseech the Queen
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [M10] Duress
1 [ZEN] Grim Discovery
3 [CS] Into the North
1 [M10] Naturalize
2 [SHM] Rite of Consumption
4 [RAV] Shred Memory
4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
1 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
1 [ON] Smother

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [ON] Smother
SB: 4 [MOR] Bitterblossom
SB: 2 [RAV] Darkblast
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of the Void
SB: 4 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse

The list is pretty much similar to the Chris Fennel one, I just switched the Pendelhavan for 1 mox, since I was mulligan some times due to the useless green mana, and cut one beseech for a smother. I hate beseech. On the sideboard, I'd rather a good card against zoo than a second jitte.
I'm pretty satisfied with my changes, and I guess I wouldn't change anything else.

As for the tournment:

R1 Zoo

So it begins. I keep a nice hand and open with Tomb into seize, eating 4 points of damage to see his hand of 2 Knight's, Bant Charm, 2 Qasali's and a nacatl which was discarded. Unfortunently he topdecked a loam lion to start some early beats. Next I ramp up a into the north for the great depths. Next he attacked me with an exalted Loam Lion. I topdeck an hexmage, duress his bant charm and he topdecked into nothing and we went into game 2.

He had no 1st play which was great for me, but I had a seize to see his hand: Path, purge, bant charm and 3 lands. Took away his bant charm. He played draw go for some turns, while I was transmuting into rite of comsuption. Drew the hexmage, made token rite it. He called a judge to certify he couldn't stop the slaughter.

R2 BW Vampox

So, maybe you are familiar with me getting all the weirdest matchup's, have you seen this one? I MEAN WHAT THE FUCK??
So he opens with duress, taking a rite, then smallpoxes while having a flagstones in play, next turn he seizes and extirpates my hexmages. Do I need to say more?
Game 2, I open up with some seizes and duress, taking his extirpates and celestial purge. The he lays a nighthawk, I play hexmage with a depths in play. I attacks me with the nighthawk and I block with marit lage, he plays another one.
So this is where I may have misplayed, but please, tell me what you think:

He was at 22 with a nighthawk. I had 4 mana with a bitterblossom and a pulse in hand. So I got 2 choices:
Kill his hawk and swing for 20. Play Bitterblossom so I can have a late game in case he draws some answer (he plays purges, path, small pox, gatekeeper, god knows what else!). I opted to attack into his hawk and play bitterblossom. He had the smallpox. I start to build an army, and start to draw blanks while he draws bloodghast, gatekeeper and nighthawk.

So ok, I lost, rightfully. But really? Did he expect to win a tournment with an anti depths pile? wtf? I put him on a 2-2 drop, he got 3-2.

R3 Mirror, but really mirror

LOL, so I got paired with the only guy who has the same deck as mine. Nice.
Game 1 He mulligans, and I open with a dark confidant. Later I seize him and took away his only spell, shred memory, played another dark confidant, and he conceded.
Game 2. He mulligan to 5, and I kept a decent hand. He opened with an urborg. I go with swamp duress and see his hand:

Darkblast, Hexmage, Dark depths, goyf

So, I am dead. Still, I passed. He played dark depths and hexmage and passed, which was a huge mistake since he gave me an out. I really need my deck to give me a dark depths!! PLEASE DECK!!! I draw a blank... I want to scoop, but my inner force makes me to want into the north. So I play into the north. He says: "Ok". Got it? I won the game! lol
So I broke his depths, then his urborg, played bitterblossom, hexmage and overwhelmed him with my army.

R4 Tribal Zoo

So he mulligans, and opens up with a wild nacatl, and I build up my combo with into the north. Later I know that he tribaled me for 5 leaving me at 7. Then I duress away his tribal flames. He attacked me and I chumped nacatl with hexmage, made token and went to 5. He drew blank and he went into game 2.
Game 2 was an exactly copy of game 1 really lol.

R5 Zoo

When I saw my oponent I loled because it was a small kid. He was 15 years old. But hey he was 3-1!
So game 1 I opened with urborg-depths-hexmage and he didn't have any white mana open so game 2.
Game 2 I kept a skechy hand, which I need a black mana source, which I didn't drew and rightfully lost.
Game 3, he had an slow start and I am able to attack with a jitted goyf and kept thing under control with discard and win. Still, props for the kid!

R6 UW Foundry

Time for the "WTF match" number 3.
So I mulliganed for 5 and seize him and discard a muddle. His hand was pretty irrelevant to me.
At some point he casts tezzeret and search's up for the sword of the meek. If he had searched up for the thopter, I had the naturalize, so this way was harder. On my turn, I had the option to muddle into into the north or hexmage way his tezzeret. I went for the combo! Next he searched up for thopter. I comboed and killed his thopter and started to block his tokens. When I was at 5, he attacked me with 5 tokens, blocked one and went to 1. This was his huge mistake. I swing for 20, left him at 3, muddle for rite and won.
So, now was the hard part. How to side? I didn't know. Which plan to follow? Goyf + jittes or dark depths? I mean if he played the thopter, I couldn't win with goyfs, on the other hand, he was going to have much more out's for the hexmage combo.
Result: I tried each game plan and failed horribly. Thing is, I deserved to lost! Sure I did! I didn't know what to do, rightfully I lost.

I should have dropped now, I was too much tired, and my chances for top8 were minimal. So played into a zoo, with a few misplays and a little bad luck, and I got 4-3.

So, I think this deck is great, it's awesome. I should have practiced a lot more. It can get you so much free wins. Some by comboing way too early, others by not letting mistakes pass by. I mean, I was playing really focused in spite of getting paired with that vampox thing. But when I got the foundry deck, I didn't really know what to take, which plan to follow... I really messed up. So this is the part for I didn't deserve to win the ptq, and got out of contention. It was sad. Still, my losses were to the almost worst players I got all day. It was a matchup thing, not playskill/luck.
So I got still 2 more ptq's, I don't know I am going to play again this deck, maybe, maybe I will return to the UB, or maybe something way more t3chier...

Cya!!

Report : Next Level Ajani - Whooot?

2010-03-02T22:32:00.006Z

Hello!

So I am here to talk about a new deck I have been brewing with some friends. We call it Next Level Ajani, so the list:

// Lands
1 [10E] Treetop Village
2 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
2 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
1 [GP] Stomping Ground
1 [GP] Steam Vents
1 [WWK] Stirring Wildwood
1 [DIS] Breeding Pool
1 [ZEN] Forest (3)
1 [ZEN] Island (1)
1 [ZEN] Plains (1)
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
2 [RAV] Temple Garden
1 [DIS] Hallowed Fountain
1 [RAV] Sacred Foundry

// Creatures
3 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
2 [ALA] Ranger of Eos
4 [ALA] Rhox War Monk
2 [ALA] Ajani Vengeant
2 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
4 [ALA] Wild Nacatl
1 [U] Birds of Paradise

// Spells
4 [CFX] Path to Exile
4 [ALA] Bant Charm
1 [DS] Sword of Fire and Ice
1 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
3 [MR] Chrome Mox
2 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 [9E] Mana Leak

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [ARB] Qasali Pridemage
SB: 2 [MR] Chalice of the Void
SB: 2 [RAV] Loxodon Hierarch
SB: 1 [SHM] Kitchen Finks
SB: 2 [BOK] Threads of Disloyalty
SB: 4 [M10] Negate
SB: 2 [ARB] Meddling Mage

So there is some strange stuff going on. First of all, is this a zoo, a bant or some crazy fun deck? A 3 noble-1 bird split, really?
So I will explain step by step the genesis of this deck.
With the last ptq, I saw some flaws on Mirandoran, since they were the lack of topdecks and the incapability of fightning über-agressive zoo's. So I wanted to pack some good cards to topdeck,
cards that would turn the tide against aggro and also be nice cards against control. What cards I am talking about? Ranger of eos, Ajani Vengeant and Jace 2.0. So, 2 problems come up:
1st: Ajani is red, and Mirandoran is GWub, so splash a fifth color? ARE YOU NUTS??
2nd: What would ranger pick up? Nobles? Not really, but some loam lions... hummm
Ok, so this would obvious suck. But if I splashed red, I could add up some wild nacatls. Final solution: Cut black. So I would lose confidants and thoughtseizes of relevant.
How to cover these tough losses? So card advantage would be covered by the Jaces and the rangers. And the disruption package, well that's tougher, but somewhat mana leaks and ajani would make it.
So, about the deck.
Well, this deck makes some sick stuff such as: 2nd turn Planeswalker, amazing topdecks, capability to race an active thopter with rhox + Sword of fire ice or even attack with a 3/3 nacatl at the second turn just like a Zoo deck!
Another virtue on this deck it's its draw quality, the draw's are amazing since you can draw such good spells. The downside of the lack of black it's the matchup against dredge and combo decks.
Meddling mages or even chalices of the void are not great haters by nature, but until I can find something better, they will have to do. Plus I packed a full playset of negates, but the matchup against dredge it' s the near scoop.
Well, I decided to test this deck so I ran it in a M-L trial and got 3-1. So the report:

R1 UGr Scapeshift

1st game was pretty fast, since I kept a 3 lander, 2 path, 1 ranger and 1 stoneforge mystic. Obviously this is not a hand to go against shift. But how should I know?
2nd game, I open with 2 Meddling Mages at firespout and scapeshift, and open the beats with a war monk. Later on the game he casts a echoing truth on my MM. I recast one at scapeshift and he electrolyzes it, then I recast the other and get's firespouted and the monk get's magma jetted as well. My offense is all about a treetop and he clearly doesn't have a scapeshift and an Ajani finnished the job.
3rd game, I opened with a t2 Rhox War Monk powered by a mox, and start buidling my life total. I did not played another spell for a long time since I had a mana leak and a negate in hand. At some point he tries to bounce my monk and I leak but my leak gets negated. I replay the monk and restart the beats. I am at 27 at this point. Later I see he missed his 8th land drop, so I go with Jace, and try to keep him off mana. Later I join a nacatl to help the monk. At his turn he has 3 cards in hand.He plays flooded grove. He plays firespout and kills my nacatl. Then he plays a electrolyze on me. The he gets all tapped to try to bounce my wark monk with a crypic but I negate it. GG.

R2 Tribal Zoo

I open up with a noble, and he goes godless shrine into loam lion. Tribal zoo, oops. Next, I put a monk who gets tribal flamed. Next I bring a goyf into play and he matches with a loam lion, an ape and a lynx of his own. I mean, really?? I attack with goyf and he goes down to 8. Next he lays a fetch and attack with 4 2/3, my nobles chumps the ape, and i got a path for his lynx, but by some reason I decide not to use and got down to 8 as well and he just plays a qasali. Next turn, my goyf eats his qasali and I replay another goyf and pass. Next turn he attacks with all his fellows, my goyf blocks the ape and I path the lynx, going to 4. He does not have a tribal flames and passes. Next turn I attack ftw.
Game 2 he opens strong with a lynx dealing 4 then he follows up with a nacatl and a loam lion. I try to match with a rhox war monk, but this was clearly a misplay since I had a threads, and it would have been a safer play, however I did not had a mountain at the time, so if I stole a nacatl, I would have been just a 2/2. I lost this game fairly quickly afterwards since he had and answer for a jitte I played.
Game 3 is fairly interesting, I open up with a wild nacatl for his loam lion, but decide to leave it to block and just play a jitte. Next turn he plays a nacatl of his own and passes. I decide not to equip since he has a sacred foundry untapped and just play a RWM, which not surprisingly get's pathed eot. In his turn, he just helixes my nacatl and attacks for 5 leaving me at 10 and passes back. I play an ajani vengeant and kill his nacatl. He kills ajani with his lion and plays an ape.
I just play 2 goyfs and equip jitte. He plays a jitte of his own, killing mine and pumping my goyfs to 5/6 and shifts the turn back. I drew blank and pass to a finks of his own. Life totals are at 12 -21. Then I go to 16 with a fresh Loxodon Hierarch.
Then I just do draw-go for a few turn while he plays a goyf and a lynx. Suddenly with only 1 card in hand he attacks with his goyf, and I block with my 2, and I didn't really know what card he was bluffing, maybe an helix or a bolt, but still it would be one goyf trading with one of his own and a removal card. Turns out that his card was another goyf, and the first just hits the bin in vain. Later on I am able to threads his goyf, and start to attack him with that one, and that makes him to make trades and I am able to take control of the game with my 6/7 beasts.

R3 UB Dark Depths

So he starts with a swamp and I put him correctly on DDT, I lead with a bird and he follows with a sword. I add a Rhox to the table and he instantly assembles the combo with one mana up. I attack with the monk and he makes a token to chump, and I dismantle the foundry with a bant charm. He then leads with a dark depths and shifts the turn back. I keep attacking with monk and go with stoneforge mystic and fetch a sword. He repeals my bird for the cantrip. On his turn he wants to please the thirst but I leak it. On my turn I equip the monk with the sword providing a 12 life swing a turn and in 2 turns the game is over.
Game 2, he leads with a thoughtseize and I reveal:
Stirring Wildwood, Plains, Breeding Pool, Chrome Mox, Monk, Goyf and Pridemage, which hits the bin.
I draw nacatl and play it to start the early beats. He follows with a Dark confidant and I topdeck a threads. So I play plains, Chrome the rhox and off we go! Dark confidant switched to the light side and nacatl went for 2 damage. He replayed another confidant, mine revealed a temple garden and I swung for 4 damage which connected. Played a goyf and passed. He revealed a repeal and went to 11, played a DD and passed back. I revealed a nacatl and fell to 17. Swung with my 3 creatures, bob's traded and goyf got repealed. After combat he was at 9, with no board and I played goyf and nacatl. Passed back, he thirsted for nothing and conceded.

R4 Dark Scapeshift

This game, was basically me going for the throat and I was able to gain 8 counters with jitte. He missed his 8th land drop and his only solution was to scapeshift. He did for 7 lands. And one hit my stoneforge mystic, and the other 6 went for my 4/5 goyf which had the jitte with those 8 counters, but then when I replayed a goyf he conceded.
The other games, were not close since I tried to stick a mage but he got damnation, pulse and deathmark for removal and could not kill him before he assembled 8 lands.
Shame.

Still, the deck overperformed since I was able to win against the regular shift combo and tottally dismantled that dark depths and was able to beat such an agressive zoo.
Here is the Trial decks link for reference:

http://magic-league.com/tournament/info.php?id=59567&view=decks

Any doubts or questions feel free to reach me.
Cya

P.S. The 3 noble - 1 bird split, was because in testing sometimes I lost to dark depths due to not have a blocker. The singleton bird is there so sometimes you can fetch it of a ranger and provide you one more turn needed to draw an answer or sometimes just go to ultimate attack phase.

Deck Tech: Developing MeekWalker for Extended

2010-02-23T05:24:00.005Z

Hi there.

For those that don't know me my name is Rui Gomes, you can call me Gomes since it’s easier to spell.

As Miranda did, I also went to PTQ San Juan at Oporto. I did 4 – 2 – 1 winning against 2 Dark Depths, 1 Vampires and a Zoo deck; lost against a zoo deck and a Dark Depths and got a drawn with a Bant Deck. I did better than I though despite doing some mistakes, my bad draws (I suck at top decking) and since we made the deck at 2 am on the tourney day.

As about what I was running, it was an attempt of creating a Planeswalker control deck featuring the new Jace. Sincerely, I just decided to go with planeswalker on that day when Miranda just tossed something like “Why don’t you use the new Jace in there” and I went like “Well, there are some people that tried to do a planeswalker list, but I don’t have them anyway” and he just followed with “I will have two tomorrow I can borrow you” and then I said “Ok, let’s change the list then. Getting a little back, I was going to take a Tezzerator list to the PTQ and we were discussing some of my choices when the planeswalkers where tossed into the mix.

After we both had that little discussion we just started brainstorming ideas and throwing out cons and pros of some cards, while doing some changes to the tezzerator list since it already supported the colors for the walkers we wanted to add, namely Jace, Ajani Vengeant, Elspeth and Tezzeret. So will explain how we did it beginning with my Tezzerator list:

Creatures [3]
3 Trinket Mage

Instants [14]

3 Path to Exile

4 Mana Leak

3 Spell Snare

4 Thirst for Knowledge

Sorcerys [6]

4 Ancestral Vision

1 Day of Judgment

1 Wrath of God

Artifacts [11]

3 Chrome Mox

3 Engineered Explosives

2 Sword of the Meek

3 Thopter Foundry

Planeswalkers [3]

3 Tezzeret, The Seeker

Lands [23]

1 Academy Ruins

4 Scalding Tarn

2 Misty Rainforest

1 Ghost Quarter

2 Hallowed Fountain

4 Island

3 Mystic Gate

1 Sacred Foundry

1 Plains

1 Seat of the Synod

1 Steam Vents

1 Watery Grave

1 Tolaria West

The first thing that did got out was 2 Tezzeret and 4 Ancestral Vision for 2 Jace, 1 Elspeth, 2 Ajani Vengeant and 1 Spell Snare. Then Miranda pointed out that 2 trinket mages should be enough since they were mostly explosives 4 to 6, so one got cut down for a wrath, then he said he would be playing a path to exile instead of the third explosives, at that moment I did the change but later I took it back since I always felt confortable playing with only 3 paths for the random gaddock teeg. I also changed 1 ajani for another Tezzeret, I’m not a big fan of the vengeant and I also wanted to have two tutors for my combo.

So the final list was pretty much this:

Creatures [2]
2 Trinket Mage

Instants [15]

3 Path to Exile

4 Mana Leak

4 Spell Snare

4 Thirst for Knowledge

Sorcerys [3]

1 Day of Judgment

2 Wrath of God

Artifacts [11]

3 Chrome Mox

3 Engineered Explosives

2 Sword of the Meek

3 Thopter Foundry

Planeswalkers [6]

2 Tezzeret, The Seeker

2 Jace

1 Elspeth

1 Ajani

Lands [23]

1 Academy Ruins

4 Scalding Tarn

2 Misty Rainforest

1 Ghost Quarter

2 Hallowed Fountain

4 Island

3 Mystic Gate

1 Sacred Foundry

1 Plains

1 Seat of the Synod

1 Steam Vents

1 Watery Grave

1 Tolaria West

Then we discussed the Sideboard and I ended up with this one

4 Bitterblossom - Good against dark depths, faeries and teachings also an alternate win condition.

4 Meddling Mage – Good against combo decks.

3 Extirpate – Against dark depths, Teachings, Tezzerator, Cascade, Martyr and so on…

1 Smother – Against anything agro like.

1 Path to Exile – Same as Smother.

1 Chalice of The Void – Excellent against cascade and good against faeries.

1 Relic of Progenitus – Mostly against Dredge.

1 Tormod’s Crypt – The same propose as Relic.

As I already said, I did better than I expected also a lot of people freaked out seeing me playing walkers, especially when I had 2 or 3 in play which in some cases was hilarious.

So after a night sleep I spended my morning capitalizing in the experience I had with the deck the day before. Tezzeret proved to be a bad card in the deck, since the only relevant thing he could fetch was the combo and we would only getting half of it since I always draw 1 of the pieces, it also proved to be slow and irrelevant in most cases because against agro I couldn’t get an activation from thopter when I droped it at turn 4 or 5, which in some cases was relevant, and I don’t have enough artifacts to capitalize on his last ability. So It was the first thing I cut for 2 Muddle The Mixture, it provides you a piece 2 turns earlier and it can always counter after you have the combo out which should be a lot better than having a tezzeret sitting at your hand.
Then I added 1 Jace and 1 Elspeth, both proved to be beasts every time I dropped them while also being 1 of the main targets of my opponents discard, having multiples sitting at your hand should be irrelevant since jace replaces that disadvantage and if a Elspeth is sitting in your hand is probably because you have the board controlled. I still kept the vengeant although I wasn’t always happy to draw it but he also didn’t go so bad and I didn’t play against control were he should be best, so in 1 Jace and 1 Elspeth out 1 Tolaria west (I was floded several times and the search option never was relevant) and 1 Spell Snare (they proved to be not that good on this environment) but they are a beating against faeries and dark depths while also making possible to sneak a planeswalker in through counter magic.
After this I took out the trinket mages, they weren’t bad but beside fetching a explosives they didn’t do anything else since agro players would just kill him and proceed with the beatings. I also wanted something that could put pressure on control and combo players while still being good against agro and when I saw Calcite Snapper I had to try it. It can do both jobs, it slows down agro players by blocking any 1 drops while being immune to any spot removable and it should make them commit more to the board providing 2 for 1 or even 3 for 1 trades with explosives and a wrath should be at least a equal trade off; so out came 2 Trinket Mage and 1 Wrath of God (It kills the turtle).
Finaly I wanted to add the third Muddle The mixture so I just cut 1 Mana Leak for it and later took out the other 3 for 3 Cryptic Command since my plan against agro resolves around getting at least 2 for 1 with wrath and explosives. and because they are very bad in late game and there isn’t much in the early game that I want to counter that muddle can’t, also Cryptic Command is an excellent top deck in late game.

So now the list looks like this:

Creatures [3]
3 Calcite Snapper

Instants [16]

3 Cryptic Command

3 Path to Exile

3 Muddle The Mixture

3 Spell Snare

4 Thirst for Knowledge

Sorcerys [2]

1 Day of Judgment

1 Wrath of God

Artifacts [11]

3 Chrome Mox

3 Engineered Explosives

2 Sword of the Meek

3 Thopter Foundry

Planeswalkers [6]

3 Jace, The Mind Sculptor

2 Elspeth, Knight Errant

1 Ajani Vengeant

Lands [22]

1 Academy Ruins

4 Scalding Tarn

2 Misty Rainforest

1 Ghost Quarter

2 Hallowed Fountain

4 Island

3 Mystic Gate

1 Sacred Foundry

1 Plains

1 Seat of the Synod

1 Steam Vents

1 Watery Grave

Sideboard:

4 Meddling Mage

3 Hide/Seek

2 Extirpate

2 Mystical Teachings

1 MindBreak Trap

1 Ravenous Trap

1 Echoing Truth

1 Pulse of the Fields

About the sideboard, the MM are pretty much staples when combo is running around; hide/seek are there against any problematic artifact and when you put them in against zoo they aren’t so bad as an classic ench/art destroyer since it can always net you some life, it also serves other proposes against other decks by taking wincons out of their plans; Extirpate, just go see my previous explanation; Mystical Teachings, a friend of mine was running it on his side in the PTQ and it’s just pure awesomeness letting you have a little toolbox on your sideboard while still giving you card advantage and something for control/combo players to play around;

Mindbreak Trap is an extra counter that should prove to be nice in counter wars and against some combos still I’m not sure if this is the right choice; Ravenous Trap is for dredge decks, one is enough because you still have extirpates, explosives, counters and MM to mess around with them, besides that Mystical Teachings can search for it; Echoing Truth is good against tokens of any kind and is searchable by Mystical Teachings; Pulse of the fields, gives you life when needed and is also searchable by Mystical Teaching so 1 is enough.

And that’s pretty much I have for today, if you happen to test it tell me how it went since I don’t have much time/people to test it with.

Until next time, Rui Gomes.

Dark Depths: Report of a PTQ 9th

2010-02-20T23:46:00.004Z

Hi again!
Today I will post about my ptq report where I played Dark Depths. First, the list:

// Lands
4 [CS] Dark Depths
4 [FUT] River of Tears
4 [SHM] Sunken Ruins
3 [PLC] Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 [FUT] Tolaria West
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
2 [ZEN] Island (1)
3 [ZEN] Swamp (4)

// Creatures
4 [ZEN] Vampire Hexmage
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant

// Spells
4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
4 [RAV] Muddle the Mixture
4 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
1 [FD] Engineered Explosives
3 [ARB] Thopter Foundry
2 [FUT] Sword of the Meek
3 [MR] Chrome Mox
2 [FNM] Duress
1 [DS] Echoing Truth
2 [GP] Repeal
1 [SHM] Beseech the Queen
1[WWK] Smother
1 [PLC] Extirpate

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [MR] Chalice of the Void
SB: 2 [LOR] Sower of Temptation
SB: 1 [RAV] Darkblast
SB: 3 [SHM] Rite of Consumption
SB: 2 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 2 [US] Duress
SB: 1 [ZEN] Into the Roil
SB: 2[WWK] Smother
SB: 1[DIS] Ghost Quarter

So, the main is pretty much the standard, only some minor touches concerned with the meta I expected and my play style. The sideboard:
Chalice is there against faeries and cascade combos. Sowers against the mirror. Darkblast for mirror and elves mainly, but it may be coming in against a zoo deck with steppe lynxes. Extirpate for mirro rand control matchup’s, duress is basically the same. Into the roil is an additional bounce spell, muddleble that is. Smother’s for mirror and zoos. Ghost Quarter for… ehhrr… Ghost Quarter . So the rites. Now, while most dark depths players tend to turn into an attrition war against zoo, I am against that. I think that most of the games you just won’t win it. It’s not like you got 3-4 deathmarks and you can hope to wipe out their entire team and just hope to combo under the hate. Not happening. So in order to go through major hate, such as path and bant charm I’d rather to: Hexmage into depths into rite of comsuption GG. Pretty much that. Think about it.

So for the report:

First round I got paired with BW Martyr. It’s a good matchup pre-board since they have no real way to deal with thopter combo so you can lategame them ftw. However, as my list plays with 6 duress effects main, plus the extirpate and a beseech I was able to extirpate his path’s and swing for 20+ damage in one hit. Pretty cool. So Marit Lage 1 – 0 Thopter.
Second game would turn out to be a lot more complicated than the first as expected. I don’t remember much, just that he was beating me with finks and 2 martyrs, while I thoughtseized him the other finks leaving the path because I had no dark depths yet and I had a bob and serious race thing going on. He stopped on 3 lands and his only card was arena, I bounced it back to gain a little time, and things actually got to a point where I was at 1, he was at 16 with one card in hand and I attacked with Marit Lage. He had to sacrifice both of his martyrs to gain 6 life and then fell to 2. His card was Crovax, I passed, he fell to 1 from his arena and then scooped. Marit Lage scores again.

Second Round I was paired against Living End

So first game I got semi-nuts draw, and sword-comboed at second turn. I just kept making tokens and he was playing living ends. I stopped at 3 lands too much time but I was able to contain the beats. Later on the game, I found more lands, and dark depths comboed out. And I finnished him off. Two things here: He killed my first marit lage token with a living end, which was sad and second, I got pretty lucky since he didn’t draw a blood moon or a chewer. Yeah, the Thopter makes is point.
Second Game, I was extirpating him like nuts, leaving him playing from the top until I played Dark Depths and an Hexmage ftw. Marit reaches the hat-trick.

Third Round against Tron (WTF!?!?!?!?)

I don’t remeber quite well. It was just easy. Duress the path, make big giant token attack gg.
Second game I was seizing him and saw path and meddling mage of relevant. I took the path. He played the mage for Hexmage, and I muddled into echoing truth. Later on the game I echoed his mage and played hexmage on my turn.On his draw step I extirpated his path’s so I could see if he got some ghost quarter in hand, which, if he played at his main phase could disrupt my combo. No ghost quarter though, but he drew something that scared me of my pants: Thirst for knowledge. He got some repeals on his deck, so it would be pretty sick if he would drew one. So eot I make my token. He bluffed a repeal and I attacked ftw.

Marit-Lage 5 – 1 Thopter

Fourth Round against Mirandoran
This, as expected would prove to be my thoughest match of the day. And it was against a friend of mine. Sad.
Still he got to play first, got the sick play of 1st turn bob, and I could not assemble a combo under all that pressure.
On game 2 I had all the pieces for the rite combo, but a seize took the hexmage of. A few turns later I was able to draw a replacement and just threw a 20/20 on his face leaving both his path and bant charm dead. I think this one also counts for Marit Lage.
Third game, he has no thoughtseize, and I have:
T1, Urborg
T2, Dark Depths into Hexmage
T3, Rite of Comsuption
Talk about the nuts…

Marit Lage 7 – 1 Thopter

Fith Round against Dark Foundry

It was pretty awkward since my opponent never got decent draws, or maybe because I pack too much disruption, but it was an unusual easy match. Well, first game, Marit Lage got there with a muddle shelding her from a repeal, second game he never got a third land and he conceded.

Marit Lage 8 -1 Thopter

Sixth Round

I didn’t play it and no, I don’t want to talk about it.

Seventh Round against Sullivan Special

So 1st game, I actually lose because I only drew about 3 spells and got ultra flooded. First time in all tournment.
Second Game, he’s beating me up with a countryside crusher while I try to assemble the combo pieces. At the end of his turn I repeal his giant and draw into the hexmage needed to throw the angry Miss Lage with a rite.
3rd game, I don’t really now, but maybe I could play a little better. What I was trying to do was trying to survive until I drew a rite of comsuption or an hexmage since I already got the depths. However I didn’t want to waste a tutor since he could draw into a thoughtseize. Maybe it was a misplay. But still, I think I will stand for my decisions.

Marit Lage 9 – 1 Thopter

So yeah, I really rather go with marit lage for the win since it’s pretty much harder to stop then the thopter. But it comes a lot from how you tend to let the game evolve. It was pretty fun day, I think I played pretty well, maybe with the exception of the last round since I was so mad and couldn’t think clearly, and it was really the round I needed for the deck to go into auto-pilot mode.
Well, that’s all
Cya

Deck Tech: Mirandoran

2010-02-19T22:42:00.002Z

Hi everyone.

Last Saturday, me and some friends attended the PTQ San Juan at Oporto. Personally I sticked to the best-deck-in-format, Thepts. However, this post is not about what I playes, but about the deck that 2 friends of mine piloted to top4 and top12.

So let’s go for the list:

// Lands

1 [RAV] Temple Garden

2 [RAV] Overgrown Tomb

1 [GP] Godless Shrine

1 [RAV] Watery Grave

2 [10E] Treetop Village

1 [ZEN] Forest (2)

1 [ZEN] Swamp (1)

1 [ZEN] Plains (1)

4 [ZEN] Marsh Flats

4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs

1 [DIS] Breeding Pool

1 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest

// Creatures

3 [LRW] Doran, the Siege Tower

4 [RAV] Dark Confidant

4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch

2 [ALA] Tidehollow Sculler

4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf

3 [SHM] Kitchen Finks

3 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic

// Spells

1 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte

4 [CFX] Path to Exile

4 [ALA] Bant Charm

2 [MR] Chrome Mox

4 [LRW] Thoughtseize

1 [WWK] Basilisk Collar

1 [DS] Sword of Fire and Ice

// Sideboard

SB: 2 [ARB] Qasali Pridemage

SB: 2 [PLC] Extirpate

SB: 3 [ON] Smother

SB: 3 [LRW] Gaddock Teeg

SB: 3 [ARB] Thopter Foundry

SB: 1 [FUT] Sword of the Meek

SB: 1 [DS] Sword of Light and Shadow

So, first of all this is a Doran deck. Doran decks are often called bad zoos because they just don’t put the same amount of pressure as any another aggro deck. While that is often true, thing is, Doran can capitalize in multiple game states such as card advantage, damage and hand disruption.

Doran creatures also have some interesting atributes, like an aggro deck it has goyfs which are the most cost efficient vannilla creature alonside with Doran itself, and other creatures are usually “handy”. While zoo decks play only cost efficient vannilla guys, Doran decks play guys that can be some sort of card advantage such like Dark Confidant aka Bob and tidehollow sculler.

But let’s go with card by card analysis:

Doran and Goyf – Like I mencioned before, these are the cost efficient, go aggro, muscle heads of the deck. No real t3ch here.

Kitchen Finks – These while still some muscle heads as the ones mencioned before, finks are usually a x for 1 since the persist ability and the bloat ability can lead to some sick plays.

Noble Hierarch – These are still in the auto-4-of’s since they are useful birds since the exalted trigger makes them able to carry equipments and win goyf wars. Pretty handy dude.

Dark Confidant – Bob, man of the hour, player in the most sick opening in extended (land, mox, bob) it’s also a auto-4-of. This is the difference between Doran and Zoo decks, the card advantage. Bob, while a little shy in combat, it can provide gás to make sure you will not run out of steam.

Tidehollow Sculler – Another 2 for 1 guy, this one started as a 4 of in maindeck, but while we had to had some other more useful things, scullers got cut. I mean, they are good, but maybe for their lameness against zoo, they were considered the weakest link.

Mystic Sunforger – Now, this is where the t3ch begins. Sunforger is the MVP of the deck. It made things possible that were not before. Things such as: only having 1 jitte in the deck, a equipment toolbox with the pro’s your guys need and to turn an aggro-midrange deck to a deck with the most powerful late game in extended. Sick stuff.

Path, Bant C., Thoughtseize – The handy disruption package. Seize is obviously powerful in a metagame thepts oriented and so are the path’s and bant charms. Bant charm is actually one of the top3 instants in extended alonside with path to exile (spell snare is missing) since they can answer basically all decks.

Chrome Mox – This deck doesn’t have na high land count, so some extra mana source is yet needed, alonside with that it actually powers up some sick plays such as t1 Bob <3.

Jitte, Sword and Collar – First of all these are the best equipments. Second of all, I wanted them to have diferent costs since that can matter in some games. Sure collar has the less impact in the game, however is powerful enough for a mere 3 mana activation. It really gives you an edge over other aggro decks. Jitte and Sword are pretty much paired in power and they have diferent costs. That is just awesome. Basically equipments have a desvating effect on board. They do more than pump your creatures, they actually can make life swings and act as removal. They stay on board and every creature you play becomes a threat, even a noble.

Sideboard

1 Sword of Light And Shadow – Since the most removal in extended is path or smother, this becomes a pretty neat choice for tuttoring. Also the triggers are pretty decent against aggro.

2 Qasali Pridemage – Some more artifact hate alongside with some answer’s to blood moon won’t hurt.

2 Extirpate – Basically against Thopter combo. But also cool against dredge and the sick play seize + extirpate vs scapeshift.

3 Smother – additional removal against those pesky aggro decks.

3 Gaddock Teeg – A nice solution for wrath’s, cryptics and scapeshift. Teeg with a specific sword equiped can be a gg against some decks.

3 Thopter Foundry + 1 Sword of the meek- And here comes the über-t3ch! So remember stoneforge mystic tutors for equipment? Do you actually know that sword of the meek is an equipment?? So, you got 3 mystics and a sword, but unfortunently there’s no other creature that can search for thopter, so I had to play 3 in side. But come on! What some awesome sideboard plan!!

So this is the deck. So it basically lost against 3 thepts and 1 zoo while got some other 11 victories, while some were other thepts and zoo’s. So I guess those mu’s need to be improved. But hey this is a 4 color deck, you can splash some pretty cool stuff.

Still with the new metagame, I mean, the updates from GP Oakland, the deck strategy has certainly to change, maybe adding some night of souls betrayl, chalices or darkblasts.

Well, that’s all folks.

Cya

Screw & Scoop

My Worlds state of Mind.

Modern - Snapcaster Gifts

A new post omg :D and with a bug list o_O

The Walker Madness

WB in a brand new field

M11 Sketch

Some tips for Nationals.

Abyssal Jund

Leeching the format

Leveling up

Deck Discussion: Why Brilliant is not that brilliant.

Adressing Mythic Rarity

Sculpting Standard

Getting Brilliant

Report - Stepping on 4 Polymorphs before top 8

O Vingador está de volta!

Eldrazi's - Edição limitada

Report - 5 Steps closer to Nationals but still 2 far away.

INVITATIONAL TOP4: Miranda goes Controlish

Quando tudo virará pó... CONTÉM SPOILERS

Contagem descrescente em Bruxelas *top64*

Quando começamos o jogo a 17 com apenas 5 cartas na mão

Report - Crashing at GP Madrid

PTQ Report: Dark North *4-3*

Report : Next Level Ajani - Whooot?

Deck Tech: Developing MeekWalker for Extended

Dark Depths: Report of a PTQ *9th*

Deck Tech: Mirandoran

Contagem descrescente em Bruxelas top64

PTQ Report: Dark North 4-3

Dark Depths: Report of a PTQ 9th